Documents will be presented to show that:

1. There was a plan personally directed by Robert Kennedy (RFK) for a major coup in Cuba on in the Fall of 1963. This plan was farther along, much broader in scope, and reached much higher in the Cuban government that the AM/LASH plot.

2. There were government Contingency Plans designed to deal with any possible retaliation by Castro (including the assassination of US public officials), in order to keep the Coup Plan secret. Also, that the government had evidence of possible Cuban activity related to the planned attempts on JFK's life in Chicago, Tampa, and Dallas.

3. Persons associated with Trafficante and Marcello knew about RFK's Coup Plan, and discussed it in documented conversations before and alter JFK's assassination. Among these people are mobster John Roselli's roommate (John Martino), Carlos Prio, Frank Sturgis, a Cuban exile narcotics partner of Trafficante, and even Jack Ruby himself.

4. The Mafia was able to penetrate and compromise each of the five main exile groups associated with the Coup Plan.

5. Robert Kennedy controlled the activities at the autopsy for national security reasons.

6. Individuals who worked on the Coup Plan also worked on the Contingency Plans to keep it secret, thus allowing RFK to maintain a firm chain of control.

7. That National Security concerns about the Coup Plan are one of the main reasons that so many documents related to the assassination still remain classified.

8. That LBJ, in a recorded conversation with J. Edgar Hoover, was concerned that Oswald was linked somehow to the Coup Plan.

9. That Oswald-far from being a unique individual-had more than 16 parallels in his life and actions in 1963 with another Fair Play for Cuba member that the government suspected in JFK's death.

A southern racist, Joseph Milteer, accurately predicted not only the assassination of JFK, but also the cover-up ("a propaganda campaign to prove...that the Jews...had murdered Kennedy"). Even as he spoke, such a campaign was launched in Chicago, falsely linking a Cuban group ("our new backers are Jess") both to the assassination and (in Secret Service reports) to a Cuban exile named Paulino Sierra Martinez. In fact, two different operations were being conflated: illegal arms purchases by the Cuban exile DRE, and Paulino Sierra's legal efforts to form a junta to arm other aggressive Cuban activist groups, notably Alpha 66 and the SNFE, outside the United States.

In this second operation, Sierra was following the guidance of Enrique Ruiz Williams, who in turn was working, outside CIA channels, with Robert Kennedy. The erroneous Secret Service reports about Paulino Sierra and the assassination would explain Robert Kennedy's reported comment to Ruiz Williams, on the afternoon of November 22, that "one of your boys did it."

Milteer also commented that "the patriots...had infiltrated the communist group" and "arranged from there to have the execution carried out." Certainly Minutemen, whose ideology and tactics were similar to Milteer's, had become involved in the DRE arms purchases; an informant inside the Minutemen (Thomas Mosley) was the apparent source in Chicago linking Jews to the assassination; and a close Minuteman associate of Mosley's, Richard Lauchli (if we can believe FBI and CIA reports) had infiltrated the Sierra operation.

Beyond question there was a well-orchestrated campaign to link Paulino Sierra's Cuban exiles to the assassination and other illegalities. The incriminating assassination remark in Chicago was attributed to a member of the 30th of November Group, part of Sierra's junta. Early reports from the CIA JMWAVE Station in Miami raised suspicions about Manuel Rodriguez Orcarberro, leader of the Alpha 66-SNFE coalition in Dallas. Oswald was linked by two Dallas sheriffs (without any known corroboration) to the same Alpha 66 group in Dallas. When the FBI interviewed Army Major George Nonte about proposed DRE arms purchases from Thomas Masen, a Minuteman gun dealer, Nonte said erroneously that the arms were for Alpha 66.

Much remains unknown about Sierra's Junta operation, which may well have acquired other objectives besides those worked out by Sierra with representatives of Ruiz Williams and the State Department. Beyond doubt Sierra was contacted by representatives of Havana casino interests; he checked on these contacts with U.S. authorities, but may have thought that some of these contacts at least would be sanctioned by the U. S. government.

Available CIA and FBI files on Sierra suggest that both agencies were curious and even suspicious about Sierra's intentions. Using at least two and perhaps three of Hunt's future Watergate burglars, CIA in Miami watched Sierra closely. At the same time, the distorted SCA summary of CIA files on Sierra omits the fact that Sierra apparently met in Washington in April 1963 with Allen Dulles, Gen. Lucius Clay (then the senior partner of Lehman Brothers, a group with Cuban interests), and Morris Liebman, a representative of the American Security Council. It would appear that Sierra's objectives and plans were coordinated with those of the influential Citizens Committee for a Free Cuba, a report on which is included in Sierra's CIA file.

On August 19, 1963, a representative of CIA Headquarters flew to Chicago and met with the notorious FBI-mob double agent Richard Cain. (Cain had previously worked with the CIA's FRD front in the Bay of Pigs operation.) A CIA report on the meeting says that Cain "agreed to assist the Agency by providing information on undercover activities of the Cubans, especially Paulino Sierra and his contacts." In fact most of Cain's succeeding reports concerned prospective DRE arms purchases in Chicago, the same deals that were falsely linked in Secret Service reports to Sierra.

Immediately after the assassination, Cain told both the CIA and the press than in February 1963 the Fair Play for Cuba Committee in Chicago had discussed assassinating the President, and that Oswald might have visited Chicago in April. Another CIA report says that "in 1963 [Cain] ... became deeply involved in the President Kennedy assassination case."

According to the Secret Service file on the assassination which erroneously linked Sierra to the DRE arms purchases, the name of Sierra as backer was supplied by a Chicago FBI agent. At the time Richard Cain was a top organized crime informant for the Chicago FBI reporting to the same William Roemer, who in 1993 assured Posner that Ruby had no organized crime connections.

The Review Board should as a matter of priority secure and release all of Cain's reports to the CIA on Sierra and DRE arms purchases, to establish whether or not Cain contributed to the false story that Sierra and DRE members were part of an assassination plot, whose "new backers" were allegedly "Jews. "

Many observers have long been convinced that while there may have been other factors also that triggered the decision to assassinate President Kennedy, the key element may well have been his decision to move ahead in negotiations with Fidel Castro. It is true that the Kennedys were also pursuing a covert campaign to undermine or even overthrow Castro, but that probably would have been put aside once the negotiating effort got into high gear, as it seemed likely to do. Jean Daniel, a French newsman acting as intermediary between Kennedy and Castro, was with the latter at the time of Kennedy's death. Castro had responded enthusiastically to Kennedy's overture and indicated his own intense interest in beginning negotiations. All might have followed from that. Kennedy's death put an end to any such hopes.

But did those who wished Kennedy out of the way know of this second track? Yes, we now know that they most certainly did. New information obtained from the Cubans, and from sources within the CIA, make it clear that word of these intentions to negotiate had been spread precisely within the circles most opposed to them.

The Mafia, the more fanatical elements among the Cuban exiles, and a few rogue elements In the JMJWAVE station in Miami already hated the President because he had not used U.S. troops at the Bay of Pigs, had then reached an agreement with Khrushchev not to invade Cuba, and now, worst of all, was beginning negotiations with Castro. All felt betrayed, especially the Mafia, which, if the negotiations moved forward, would lose any chance of getting back its action in Cuba, and which was also outraged over the President's campaign against organized crime.

Shortly after the last COPA conference, when author Dick Russell ( The Man Who Knew Too Much, Carroll & Graf, 1992) urged the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) to subpoena testimony and records from key witness Richard Case Nagell, the ex-CIA/KGB double agent was found dead in the bathroom of his home in Los Angeles on November 1, 1995. The morning before his death, the ARRB had mailed Nagell a letter, seeking to gain access to all his records.

An autopsy ruled Nagell's death to be from a heart attack at the age of 85 [sic --- he was 65 - FP]. His body was already decomposing when his landlord, who had not seen Nagell for several days, alerted authorities. The ARRB immediately issued a subpoena for any records on the premises and flew an investigator to Los Angeles.

A number of weapons were inventoried and Nagell's house was sealed off by the L A. Coroner's office, pending the arrival of an executor for his estate. An LAPD officer was said to be watching the house to be sure that nobody broke in. Meanwhile, a curious message went from the coroner's office to the L.A. Public Administrator, which is in charge of estate arrangements. "When entering the house, beware of traps or pitfalls, due to deceased's CIA background connections," it said. Clearly, L.A. officials realized this was no ordinary case.

Was Nagell's death really from "natural causes"? What, if anything, has surfaced about his knowledge of Lee Harvey Oswald and the assassination in the months since? Author Russell will describe his continuing investigation into the Nagell mystery --- his contacts with family members and the ARRB.

Russell will also provide a summary report on the landmark conference with former Cuban intelligence officials in Nassau in December, 1995; revelations about Cuban exile involvement which support Nagell's allegations; and what former Cuban G-2 chief Fabian Escalante revealed concerning the Cuban's knowledge of Nagell's activities.

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