Antonio Veciana and LHO
- edwinwalker
- Jul 1
- 4 min read
For JFK Assassination researchers, Veciana is famous for testifying to the HSCA in 1977 that CIA officer, alias “Maurice Bishop” helped him organize Alpha 66 to try to assassinate Communist Cuba’s leader, Fidel Castro – and in that context, "Bishop" introduced him to Lee Harvey Oswald (hereafter LHO). This introduction occurred in Dallas in the late summer of 1963, as he recalled it.
Perhaps most JFK Assassination researchers know that “Maurice Bishop” was an alias for CIA officer, David Atlee Phillips, the CIA’s Chief of Operations for the Western Hemisphere in 1963. He often lived in Mexico City -- to keep an objective eye on the US border.
In his unpublished novel, THE AMLASH LEGACY (1988), Phillips portrayed a high-ranking CIA officer who lived in Mexico City and tried several times to assassinate Fidel Castro. His character admitted:
“I was one of the two case officers who handled Lee Harvey Oswald. After working to establish his Marxist bona fides, we gave him the mission of killing Fidel Castro in Cuba.
“I helped him when he came to Mexico City to obtain a visa, and when he returned to Dallas to wait for it, I saw him twice there. We rehearsed the plan many times: In Havana Oswald was to assassinate Castro with a sniper’s rifle from the upper floor window of a building on the route where Castro often drove in an open jeep.
“Whether Oswald was a double-agent or a psycho I’m not sure, and I don’t know why he killed Kennedy. But I do know he used precisely the plan we had devised against Castro. Thus, the CIA did not anticipate the President’s assassination, but it was responsible for it. I share that guilt.” (THE AMLASH LEGACY)
Naturally, no CIA officer would ever admit to any alias, or to any plot to kill Fidel Castro, or to knowing LHO personally. But it is fascinating that his novel, THE AMLASH LEGACY, tends to agree in important details with the claims of Antonio Veciana.
The plan was evidently for LHO to use all his New Orleans newspaper clippings from the summer of 1963 which loudly proclaimed him to be a “Secretary of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee” in New Orleans.
Actually, the leaders of the FPCC in Washington DC testified to the Warren Commission (WC) that they firmly told LHO that he could not start an FPCC branch in New Orleans. But under the advice of Guy Banister (who had been trying to topple the FPCC since 1962) LHO started a Fake FPCC Branch in New Orleans anyway – and pretended to be its Secretary.
LHO was assisted by a key WC witness, William (Bill) Stuckey, a New Orleans radio show host. LHO famously appeared on Stuckey’s radio show, “Conversation Carte Blanche” on August 17, 1963, debating with Bill Stuckey, Carlos Bringuier, and Ed Butler.
Ed Butler was probably the leader of the project. He was a close friend of the CIA, and of Carlos Bringuier, another Cuban Exile and a passionate enemy of Fidel Castro. Butler was the founder of INCA (Information Council of the Americas) which was financed by Clay Shaw and Clint Murchison and staffed by Guy Banister himself.
It wasn’t only the New Orleans FPCC that was Fake – the whole scenario was Fake. LHO was pretending to be a supporter of Fidel Castro, when in fact he was the ally of Carlos Bringuier. There is good evidence that their fight on Canal Street was faked. One policeman at the scene suspected as much.
Then, at the police station, while in jail, LHO called the FBI to make a statement to them. Who does that? The FBI agent who took LHO’s statement didn’t get why he was called. Evidently, it was only to make a record of the fact that the FBI “took an interest” in this fake fight by this fake Castro supporter.
The purpose (probably planned by Ed Butler) was to make newspaper reports, police reports, FBI reports, and a radio program, to advertise LHO as a Castro-supporter. Ed Butler had contacts all over Texas and South America and allegedly called NBC news cameras to film Oswald handing out FPCC fliers on Canal Street a few nights before the radio show.
I digress a bit to show that when LHO traveled to Mexico City in late September, 1963, to attempt to convince the Cuban Consulate to give him an instant Visa to Havana – the “credentials” that LHO presented to the Consulate was a collection of newspaper clippings affirming that LHO was indeed a “Secretary of the FPCC in New Orleans.”
This was important, because of the rumor that FPCC Secretaries were admitted instantly into Cuba (since the FPCC was a major source of income for Fidel Castro). Sadly, for LHO, the consuls in Mexico City required far more than newspaper clippings to dispense an instant Visa to Cuba.
David Atlee Phillips in his AMLASH LEGACY story, claimed that he tried to help LHO get a Visa into Cuba -- not as a friend of Fidel Castro, but as an enemy. An enemy, and very possibly as an asset of Antonio Veciana and his Alpha-66 group (which probably had allies in Havana itself).
It was in 1962 that Phillips had helped Veciana startup Alpha-66. It was in the Spring of 1963 that LHO came to New Orleans, in contact with David Ferrie and Guy Banister (according to Jim Garrison). His job at Reily Coffee Company was across the street from Guy Banister’s office.
It was in the Summer of 1963 that LHO was fired from Reily Coffee Company for absenteeism and started his Fake FPCC chapter in New Orleans in earnest. LHO was not alone. He apparently worked closely with this team led by David Atlee Phillips, Ed Butler, Guy Banister, David Ferrie, Carlos Bringuier, and their whole crew.
It is interesting that Veciana testified under oath that “Maurice Bishop” had an official Alpha-66 meeting with him and brought LHO to that meeting. Antonio Veciana -- without intending it -- precisely affirmed Phillips’ story in THE AMLASH LEGACY.
Thank you,
--Paul
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