My involvement with the plans to assassinate John F. Kennedy commenced at the end of June, 1963. On July 1, I was contacted by (CIA head of Domestic Operations Officer) Tracy Barnes. He requested that I purchase four Mannlicher 7.35 mm surplus rifles. According to Barnes, the rifles were available in the Baltimore area from Sunny's Supply Stores. Upon my agreement to make the purchase, Barnes requested that I alter the forepiece of each rifle so that the rifles could be dismantled, hidden and reassembled quickly. I thought this last request odd until I was informed that the rifles were to be used for a clandestine operation.

One day later I received a second phone call. It was Eladio del Valle calling from, I assumed, Miami. He asked me to supply him with four transceivers which were not detectable by any communications equipment then available on the market. Although his request seemed impossible, I told him that I had an idea which might fulfill his requirement. I could provide him with sub-miniaturized units whose operation would be confined to a range of fifty or one hundred kilohertz. To operate any sizable distance, the units would require an antenna at least several feet in length. A wire taped to the user's leg would easily suffice for this purpose. The set-up would not be pretty, but I could assure him that no one would be monitoring these low frequencies.

Del Valle then requested that I deliver the transceivers and the rifles to David Ferrie. I was surprised by Ferrie's involvement in the transaction. Barnes, in our previous conversation, had neither informed me that the rifles were being made for Clay Shaw in New Orleans nor that David Ferrie would be the person responsible for picking them up once I had completed the required alterations. Del Valle explained to me that the rifles and communications equipment were for his Free Cuba Committee, and that Clay and Ferrie were assisting him in the operation. I assured him that the equipment would be ready on time as I would immediately order the Motorola-made special transceiver units. Motorola was manufacturing the units for railroad communications equipment; they were relatively easy to secure.

The radio transceivers for del Valle were more difficult to create than I had originally thought they'd be. An unusual amount of power was required for them to transmit over any significant distance. To solve this dilemma, I included an extra pack of four "D" type battery cells to be used for transmitting purposes only. The pack was plugged into the transceiver unit and could easily be carried in the user's pocket. Ironically, I later learned from del Valle that the transmission time was to be limited to five minutes, which meant my additional adjustments had been unnecessary.

I met Diggs and his client in an office Diggs occupied with several associates at 1025 Connecticut Avenue, at the corner of Connecticut and "L." Mario Garcia Kohly was as impressive as his prestigious international counsel. Known to certain Cuban political factions as the next president of Cuba, he enjoyed valuable patronage from certain members of the Eisenhower administration's elite inner circle. He and his family were established members of the Cuban aristocracy and prominent in the Cuban banking, financial and political arenas. I learned that his father had distinguished himself throughout his twenty-three year tenure as the Cuban Ambassador to Spain and in his retirement was a statesman of impeccable repute and an orator and writer with profound insight on the Cuban political situation.

Mario Kohly's resume was equally illustrious as that of his father and the other members of his family. A distinguished statesman and diplomat, Kohly was also one of the most illustrious members of Cuba's investment banking elite. He enjoyed a distinguished reputation in the world of international finance, corporate finance and business. As an international investment banker, Kohly was Cuba's premier trade and financial representative to the international community at large and major American energy-related industries in particular. I was to find out much later that he represented, in Cuba, an extraordinary number of prominent American corporations in industries as diversified as banking and energy, foodstuffs and finance, corporate finance and real estate development.

When Castro "nationalized" Cuban industries, the Cuban economy was devastated. He had taken over stock holdings, assumed ownership of private property, appropriated bank accounts-essentially wrested all control of proprietary assets from all existing corporations, foreign or Cuban. Billions of dollars in assets were confiscated. Castro's nationalization program not only brought all business dealings in Cuba to a grinding halt, but effectively destabilized the Cuban economy. Prominent American and European multinational corporations, financial institutions and banks suffered heavy losses.

Kohly brought suit against Castro's government on behalf of both Cuban and foreign interests whose contractual rights or ownership had been usurped by Castro's government. Numerous foreign corporations had executed contracts under the Batista regime which provided them with legal recourse against the Cuban government for infringement of contractual rights and nonperformance of contractual obligations under the tenets of the signed agreements. Some multinationals holding total proprietary rights under international trade agreements which provided one hundred percent ownership of Cuban companies by non-Cuban nationals brought suit against Castro's government for full restitution of loss of revenue, capital and profits as the result of the nationalization program.

As people made their way to the door, I realized that I had witnessed a truly historic moment. In fact, I realized that I would help make a portion, albeit very small, of American political history. The covert projects Kohly and I were working on (with the CIA) would now receive the full backing and support of the American government.

I remember reflecting upon the historic implications of this meeting when Tracy Barnes excitedly pulled me into the next room and asked, "Well, what do you think?"

Unsure what reaction he expected of me, I asked him to explain the whole speech in his words. His answer contained the first mention I had heard of a plan that eventually evolved into the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion.

Barnes in a serious tone declared, "It means the CIA is going to strongly recommend Kohly's ideas to form a provisional government after Castro is gone. Kohly's plans have already been given to the powers that be. And that means all his plans, including his preparations and actual strategy for the invasion." " Barnes hesitated momentarily before plunging forward. "We have a slight problem. The Cuban leaders selected by the State Department vehemently oppose the idea of Kohly as the next Cuban president. The CIA is in favor of Kohly's presidency. Actually, we intend to actively support it. That's why you were chosen to work with Mario; you are there for us."

The execution of John F. Kennedy would be performed by a series of teams selected from CIA-sponsored exile and mercenary groups in Miami and New Orleans. The modus operandi to be employed would be very simple. The murder of the President of the United States could not resemble a standard syndicate killing. It should, ideally, be made to look as if it were the work of a lone gunman. As a sure kill could not be guaranteed by the work of only one gunman, two additional firing sites would be necessary.

The next item to pursue was the involvement of Fidel Castro. Trafficante planned the scenario. He would act as a double agent and, through an intermediary, warn Castro that the CIA, under presidential directive, would execute another assassination attempt on the Cuban dictator. Trafficante would then select two expendable subordinates who would be set up to murder Castro. The hitmen, under the impression they were actually working for the CIA, would be caught by Castro and reveal, after having been tortured, the identity of their supposed employer. As further evidence of their CIA affiliation, they would be equipped with assassination items readily identifiable with the clandestine agency. With both this evidence and the confessions of the hitmen, Fidel Castro would undoubtedly make a statement indicating his desire for revenge against the United States government. After the death of JFK, Castro's statement would be viewed as evidence of his complicity in the President's assassination.

Now that the actual plan for the assassination of JFK had been completed, it was time to find the players to fit the designated roles. To this end, Trafficante sent out word to the Mafia families and clearly detailed his requirements for personnel, armaments, communications and management of the two-phased operation.

David Ferrie received word of Trafficante's requirements and suggested Lee Harvey Oswald for the role of lone gunman in the assassination scenario. Oswald was the perfect patsy and fit all the requirements established to render the assassination a non syndicate hit: he was supposedly a liberal political activist with no traceable mob connections and presently residing in New Orleans - Marcello's home territory. Trafficante chose Rolando Masferrer, a Cuban mercenary closely associated with Kohly and del Vane, to assist in the implementation of the JFK assassination scheme. Masferrer would both coordinate and finance the assigned Kennedy hit teams, one of which would include John Michael Mertz. The staged Castro assassination attempt was coordinated by Tony Verona, "Prio" Socarras' former prime minister. To legitimize the Castro assassination attempt as a CIA operation, Trafficante had John Roselli report Verona's dispatch of a Castro assassination team to the CIA. The team's existence was leaked to Castro via Trafficante's use of a Cuban attorney named Carlos Garcia Bongo."

Trafficante's plan worked. On September 7, 1963, Fidel Castro told Associated Press reporter Dan Harker that the United States was assisting terrorist plans to eliminate Cuban leaders. He added a warning to his statement, maintaining that, if this continued, U.S. leaders could find their own lives in jeopardy.

Although Trafficante and Ferrie maintained vigilant security precautions while both planning and staffing the JFK operation, their secrecy was breached. J. Edgar Hoover learned of both the contract on JFK and the ensuing plot to assassinate him. His method of securing the information was through FBI surveillance of the Trafficante organization and paid FBI informants. A Cuban Mafia member told a wealthy Cuban exile, Jose Aleman of Miami, that Trafficante felt indebted to Aleman's cousin, and wanted to reciprocate by helping Aleman solve the cash problems he was having trying to build a new motel. Trafficante said Jimmy Hoffa had already cleared a loan for Alemdn from the Teamster's Pension Fund.

On September 25, 1964, when the final copy of the Commission's report was delivered to the Bureau, it would be sans any questionable information regarding Cuban exiles, the Mafia, or the CIA. Hoover was pleased, Helms relieved, Kohly upset that Castro was not blamed, Masferrer and the Mafia dons delighted, and a host of other U.S. citizens-such as myself-puzzled. This was a condition that would not, however, last much longer for me.

Seventeen days after Hoover received the Warren Commission Report on September 25, 1964, I found out just how deeply I was involved in the Kennedy assassination. The unexplained October 12,1964 murder of Mary Meyer, former wife of Richard Helms' number-two man, and James Angleton's deputy, Cord Meyer, on the towpath of the C & O Canal in Georgetown, would confirm my revelation.

Mary Meyer, aside from being a good friend of Angleton and Robert Kennedy, had been the favorite mistress of John F. Kennedy. Unfortunately for Angleton, Mary was also the sister of Tony Bradlee, wife of Washington Post editor, Ben Bradlee. According to Tony, the friendship between Mary and Ben Bradlee ceased six months prior to her murder. It was due to an article Bradlee had published in Newsweek magazine alluding to her affair with the President.

After her murder, Bradlee claimed he discovered Angleton breaking into Mary's studio with a pick lock in an attempt to find her personal diary. Tony Bradlee, now divorced from Ben, says she found the diary among Mary's personal papers and turned it over to Angleton. Angleton maintained that he burned it along with other personal correspondence of the dead woman.

Angleton would be forced into retirement in late 1974 as a result of his involvement in the CIA's illegal "Operation Chaos," a secret domestic spy program that had been greatly enlarged under the Nixon administration.

Shortly prior to Mary Meyer's murder and after the release of the Warren Commission Report to the American public, I was contacted by Marshall Diggs who requested an urgent meeting. I had not heard from Diggs for nearly nine months and was alarmed by the urgency of his request. He suggested that we meet for lunch - at Paul Young's Restaurant in Washington. I arrived promptly,

Diggs looked much older than I had remembered him. What we discussed during the course of the next hour also aged me. After the waiter had taken our order and served our drinks, he discreetly retired. Then Diggs, without any preamble, informed me there could be a possible attempt on my life. My attention was immediate, focused and complete.

"There is a very prominent lady here in Washington who knows too much about the Company, its Cuban operations, and more specifically about the President's assassination."

Cautiously, I remarked, "So?"

"What my friend claims to know could frankly mean a lot of trouble for Kohly's people, myself, the former Vice President and especially you. If you remember, the President was killed shortly after Robert closed down your counterfeiting operation.."

"I remember, but ... Cuban involvement? We all thought that was a dead issue. Seriously, we never heard anything about such a possibility from the Warren Commission."

"Forget that," he said, shaking his hand at me impatiently, "and listen carefully. The Commission was suspicious, and had they been allowed to pursue certain leads.... well, it's probable you and I wouldn't be sitting here."

"Damn it, Marshall, if you're trying to frighten me, you are. It's over... and not one mention of Cubans, any Cubans, or the CIA. There isn't a hint of anything, other than that Oswald got up one morning and decided he didn't like the President."

"I wish his brother thought that," Diggs said, shifting his sad gaze from his plate to my eyes.

"You mean RFK?"

"Yes, RFK. Now damn it, listen. As I said, there's a certain lady in town who has an inside track to Langley, and most importantly, to Bobby. Fortunately, an intimate friend of mine is one of her best friends..."

I interrupted, "Marshall, who the hell are you talking about?"

I had caught him off guard. He stopped for a moment, pondering. Then he replied, "The woman in question is Cord Meyers' ex-wife, Mary"

"Mary Meyer. . . ." At first it didn't ring a bell, then it struck me. "You mean Cord Meyer of the CIA?"

"The same," he replied, "except Mary divorced Cord in 1956. Then, after lack Kennedy was elected, she started spending nights in the White House."

"Well, well, well," was all I could say.

"To get to the point, Meyer claimed to my friend that she positively knew that Agency-affiliated Cuban exiles and the Mafia were responsible for killing John Kennedy. Knowing of my association with Kohly, my friend immediately called me."

Trying to curb the fear that started my stomach churning, I tentatively asked, "Well, Marshall.... did Mario have anything to do with it?"

Soberly, he answered, "I don't know about Mario directly. If I were to hazard a guess I'd say del Valle, possibly Prio, because of Jack Ruby. I do know Mario had a lot to do with trying to pin the blame on Castro."

"Uh huh, del Valle, and are you trying to tell me lack Ruby is the gun runner we dealt with in buying Kohly's arms in Greece?" "The same."

At that point I could only expect the worse. I was starting to get that old feeling of total anxiety that gripped me last fall and winter. In almost a daze I said, "Well, it doesn't surprise me. So, why don't you warn him about Meyer?"

"That's the whole point. I don't know where he is and don't want to know. He's been told he's going to lose his appeal; so, he's preparing to jump bail and disappear."

It is known that Ferrie suffered from hypertension. A physician: friend confirmed to Garrison that if someone suffering from hypertension took a whole bottle of this specific drug, it would cause death very quickly. Garrison later wrote: "I phoned immediately but was told that no blood samples or spinal fluid from Ferrie's autopsy had been retained. I was left with an empty bottle and al number of unanswered questions."

Eladio del Valle was also killed the same day in Miami. For three days Garrison's men had been looking for him. He was eventually found. He had been tortured, bludgeoned, shot, and left in his car in a parking lot. Because Guy Banister had succumbed to a heart attack in 1964, that left only one person to indict, Clay Shaw. Shaw would be the most difficult of the New Orleans group to convict. He was receiving help from CIA Director, Richard Helms.

Damning proof of Helms's concern about Shaw surfaced in 1975. It was in an interview of a former, high ranking CIA staff officer, Victor Marchetti. Marchetti disclosed in True magazine: "I, was then told, 'Well... Shaw, a long time ago, had been a contact of the Agency.... He was in the export-import business ... he knew people coming and going from certain areas-the Domestic Contact Service' -he used to deal with them ... and it's been cut off a long time ago'. .. and then I was told, `well of course the Agency doesn't want this to come out now because Garrision will distort it, the public would misconstrue it.'"

In the interview, Marchetti added: "At that time or shortly thereafter this guy Ferrie came up ... and I was given a similar kind of explanation, that he's been involved in the Bay of Pigs and been a contract agent or contact at the time."

After a disastrous trial, Shaw received a verdict of not guilty within hours of the judge's instructions to the jury.

The events surrounding Shaw's death were, according to Garrison,' also mysterious. On August 14, 1974, a neighbor saw some men carrying a body on a stretcher in the front door of Shaw's carriage house. The entire body, including the head, was covered with a sheet. The neighbor, finding this unusual, called the coroner's office, which promptly sent its investigators to Shaw's residence. By the time they arrived, the place was empty. After a day of inquiry, the Orleans Parish coroner's investigators learned Shaw had just been buried in Kentwood, in Tangipahoa Parish where he was born.

The New Orleans coroner, Dr. Frank Minyard, concerned about the circumstances and the speed of the burial, decided to exhume Shaw's body so that he could assure himself that Shaw had not died a victim of foul play. Before he could obtain the court order, however, word of the proposed exhumation reached the media. This caused the .local New Orleans papers to publish scathing editorials protesting the callous desecration of Shaw's remains. With the heated publicity, the coroner reconsidered. There was no exhumation."

Although I was concerned about Garrison's investigation and the deaths of Clay Shaw and Dave Ferrie, I was particularly worried by Helms's admission that Shaw had worked as a contract man for Tracy Barnes's Domestic Contact Division (known facetiously as the Domestic Dirty Tricks Operation Division).

In a 1979 trial, Helms was asked if he knew Clay Shaw. He responded, under oath: " The only recollection I have of Clay Shaw and the Agency is that I believe that at one time as a businessman he was one of the part-time contacts of the Domestic Contact Division (Tracy Barnes's operation), the people that talked to businessmen, professors, and so forth, and who traveled in and out of the country."

In a subsequent trial, in 1984, this answer was repeated to Helms, and he was asked, "Do you recall making that statement under oath on May 17, 1979?" He responded, "If it says here I did make it under oath, I guess I did." " Helms also conceded then that he had publicly this fact when he was the Director of the Agency.

One of Morrow's most significant revelations is his belief that the principal operations planner in the assassination conspiracy was David Ferrie. Morrow knew Ferric well and flew with him on a number of covert CIA missions into Cuba. Morrow is convinced that Ferric, working under Carlos Marcello and Guy Bannister, was the brains, the "mastermind," behind the assassination.

Long suspected by many writers on the assassination to have been a major player in the plot to kill the President, David Ferric has remained until now a shadowy, elusive figure. Circumstantial evidence of his possible involvement cried out for verification but no one ever came forward to vouch for his participation in the plot. Now Robert Morrow has placed him, from first hand knowledge, at the center of the web of intrigue that saw two Mafia bosses conspire with elements of the CIA and the Cuban exile community to assassinate President Kennedy. This revelation alone makes Robert Morrow's First Hand Knowledge one of the most important works on the Kennedy assassination in recent years.

One of Robert Morrow's most salient points is that the conspirators plotted the assassination in such a way as to give the American public the impression that Fidel Castro, or at least his supporters, planned the killing of Kennedy. The purpose of this ruse was to outrage the public sufficiently to induce them to call for another U.S. invasion of Cuba to overthrow the Castro regime. This view, supported by Mr. Morrow, confirms one held by many assassination investigators. At a conference of Kennedy assassination researchers and writers held at the State University of New York at Fredonia on tune 28-30, 1991, it was concluded that "The assassination of President Kennedy was, to put it simply, an anti Castro `provocation,' an act designed to be blamed on Castro to justify a punitive American invasion of the island. Such action would most clearly benefit the Mafia chieftains who had lost their gambling holdings in Havana because of Castor, and CIA agents who had lost their credibility with the Cuban exile freedom fighters from the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion."

Another man to publicly associate Mary Meyer's death with a conspiracy to assassinate Kennedy is writer and self-proclaimed former CIA contractor Robert Morrow. Morrow has claimed in two books to have been involved in acquiring Mannlicher rifles to kill Kennedy. He claimed he provided sophisticated communications devices to three hit teams that killed the president and made counterfeit money used to undermine Castro's regime. According to Morrow, the assassination was the work of a conspiracy between the mob, the intelligence agencies, and "the leaders of our nation."

In a second book, published in 1992, Morrow brought Mary Meyer into his conspiracy theory for the first time. He claimed that shortly before the Warren Commission's report came out, Marshall Diggs, deputy comptroller of the treasury under Roosevelt and one of those people in the federal government Morrow claims was witting of the conspiracy, "requested an urgent meeting" with Morrow about two weeks before Mary's murder. Morrow wrote that Diggs told him that "a prominent lady here in Washington knows too much about the Company, its Cuban operations and more specifically about the President's assassination." In Morrow's account, Diggs said that Mary Meyer had told a close friend of his "she positively knew that Agency-affiliated Cuban exiles and the Mafia were responsible for killing John Kennedy." Morrow claims Diggs also told him that CIA official Tracy Barnes was "concerned" about Mary and that the Cuban exile leaders ought to be informed. Morrow passed it on and the exile leader, Robert Kohly, supposedly replied, "Tell Diggs I'll take care of the matter." A week later Mary Meyer was dead.

The assassination of President Kennedy was, to put it simply, an aniti-Castro 'provocation', an act designed to be blamed on Castro to justify a punitive American invasion of the island. Such action would most clearly benefit the Mafia chieftains who had lost their gambling holdings in Havana because of Castro, and CIA agents who had lost their credibility with the Cuban exile freedom fighters from the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion.