Phillip A. Twombly

Phillip A. Twombly was Executive Vice President of Coca Cola for their Caribbean operations. Later he owned a bank in Fullerton, California. According to Chauncey Holt this bank was used to distribute CIA funds for covert operations.

In 1963 Holt received instructions from Twombly to provide false ID documents for Lee Harvey Oswald. These documents (in the names of Lee Harvey Oswald and Alek Hiddell) were delivered by a man called George Reynolds. In August, 1963, Twombly asked Holt to travel to New Orleans, where he met Oswald and Carlos Bringuier.

Chauncey Holt later claimed he was went to Dallas in November, 1963, with Charlie Nicoletti, James Canty and Leo Moceri. In Dallas he passed on forged documents and guns (with silencers) to Charles Harrelson and Charles Rogers (Richard Montoya). Holt was told that "an incident was going to be created which could be laid at the door of pro-Castro Cubans. The word attempted assassination was never used. We assumed that from all this light loaded ammunition that maybe somebody was going to try to take a shot from somewhere, probably the Dal-Tex building, or one of the buildings around there. But at no time was it ever intimidated to us that an assassination or attempted assassination on Kennedy."

When the Kennedy motorcade reached the Dealey Plaza Holt was in the parking lot behind the Grassy Knoll. After the shooting took place Holt went to hide in a railroad car. He was joined by Charles Harrelson and Charles Rogers. However, soon afterwards, Dallas police officers entered the railroad car and arrested all three men. The three men along with Jim Brading were interviewed by Gordon Shanklin of the FBI and then released.

In October, 1991, Holt confessed to John Craig, Phillip Rogers and Gary Shaw about his role in the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Holt's story was undermined in 1992 when the Dallas Police Department revealed that the three tramps were Gus Abrams, John F. Gedney and Harold Doyle. Ray and Mary LaFontaine carried out their own research into this claim. They traced Doyle and Gedley who confirmed they were two of the tramps in the photograph. Gus Abrams was dead but his sister identified him as the third tramp in the photograph.

Primary Sources

(1) Chauncey Holt was interviewed by John Craig, Phillip Rogers and Gary Shaw for Newsweek magazine (19th October, 1991)

I should point out of course, one name I haven't mentioned and probably the most important on the West Coast was Phillip A. Twombly. Twombly had been at one time an Executive Vice President of Coca Cola for their Caribbean operations. And along with Donald Kendall (Pepsi Cola), was considered by the CIA to be the eyes and ears of the CIA (down there). So he came to California and bought a bank in Fullerton, which was strictly for the use as a conduit of finances.

All of the instructions that came to the West Coast came through Twombly. Twombly in turn, we would, we rarely met face to face. He had two assistance, one, a man by the name of David L. Palmer, and he had a gentleman by the name of Marilyn Mahab?, who used to pass on all the information to us in the way of instructions as to what we were to provide.

All of the requests that came for the stuff that we were to produce for Oswald, who we had never heard of, didn't even know, came from, through Twombly. These were pamphlets we were suppose to do, false identifications, a number of false identifications that ended up in the hands of authorities. We did IDs for Oswald in both his name and Hidel...

Phillip Twombly asked us if we would be willing to fly to New Orleans and give some support to Oswald, who was a stranger to us. The only thing we knew about Oswald at the time was we had detected the address on there as being 544 Camp Street. Although we were not familiar with Oswald we certainly knew what was at 544 Camp Street because we had done that before. It was the HQ of Sergio A. Smith's organization, the CRC. There was a restaurant in the first floor and Guy Bannister had an office in the building, although he used an address around the corner, it was in the same building. And George Reynolds knew the man who owned the building, a guy by the name of Sam Newman, and he knew him.