BOGOTA RIPPLES: Was This the First CIA Sponsored Assassination? Greg Parker
JORGE ELIÉCER GAITÁN
There is a war between the rich and poor,
A war between the man and the woman.
There is a war between the left and right,
A war between the black and white,
A war between the odd and the even
Gaitán was a Columbian populist Liberal Party politician who was assassinated in Bogota as he left his office building for lunch on April 9, 1948. The presidential campaign was in full swing - and it was one he was widely tipped to win. As a backdrop to this, George Marshall was in Columbia attending the 9th Pan-American Conference to build support for the creation of the Organization of the American States which would act as a bulwark against communism. Protesting against the conference was the Pan American Youth Congress organized by Fidel Castro.
Gaitán, much like Kennedy, had made a lot of enemies on all sides of politics, as well as in business - not the least in Gaitán's case, United Fruit. This was as a result of seeking justice for striking workers who had been fired upon in 1928 by order of the company. He compounded this by starting up his own political machine in 1933, the Leftist Revolutionary Union - though he rejoined his old party two years later.
JUAN ROA SIERRA
You can still find a job,
Go out and talk to a friend.
On the back of every magazine
There are those coupons you can send.
Why don't you join the Rosicrucians,
They can give you back your hope
Sierra was born in the slums of Bogota. One of fourteen siblings raised by a sole parent (his father having died of a venereal disease when Sierra was five), he had little schooling, and soon enough found himself in a succession of menial jobs in which he was usually described as being given to day-dreaming. At the time of Gaitán's assassination, he was unemployed and had sought Gaitán's assistance in finding a job. His death came about when he was identified on the streets as the assassin and set upon by an angry and vengeful mob that had gathered at the spot. His former mistress was later to describe him as a liar with peculiar ideas who dabbled in witchcraft and believed he was the reincarnation of Columbian hero, General Santander. This belief had come about after joining the Rosicrucians who had apparently written to him advising that he buy a mirror and two candles, and that he should stare into the mirror and "see who emerged".
GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ
I came upon a butcher,
he was slaughtering a lamb,
I accused him there
with his tortured lamb.
He said, "Listen to me, child,
I am what I am"
At the moment of the assassination, future Nobel Prize winning author, Gabriel Garcia Marquez was dining at a nearby cafe. When he arrived at the scene his journalistic instincts kicked in as he observed a well-dressed man inciting the gathering mob to attack Sierra. When this was accomplished, a car pulled up and whisked the mystery man away from the scene.
THE GOVERNMENT REACTION
Your story was so long,
The plot was so intense,
It took you years to cross
The lines of self-defense
The incumbent conservative oligarchy publicly called both the assassination and subsequent riots part of a premeditated plan by communists to sabotage the Pan-American Conference. It nevertheless, tried, in secret, to ascertain the facts.
GEORGE MARSHALL
Waiting for the miracle
There's nothing left to do.
I haven't been this happy
since the end of World War II
Marshall's position was summed up in the New York Times editorial of April 14, 1948: "Backing up the findings of the Colombian Government, Secretary of State Marshall and other delegates to the Inter-American Conference have now likewise accused Soviet Russia, and its tool, international communism, of instigating the riots that wrecked Bogota and cast a pall over the whole Western Hemisphere. Basing their judgment on first-hand information and personal observation on the spot, they see in the tragic events which interrupted their deliberations the same powers and patterns at work as in the attempted insurrections in France and Italy. And that makes Bogota, as Mr. Marshall said, not merely a Colombian or Latin American incident but a world affair, and a particularly lurid illustration of the length to which Russia is willing to go to in its no longer (cold war) against the democracies."
THE WASHINGTON REACTION
We asked for signs
the signs were sent:
the birth betrayed
the marriage spent
Yeah the widowhood
of every government --
signs for all to see
The immediate reaction in Washington was that the Bogota situation was "a South American Pearl Harbor." This reference however, was not a lament for Columbia and its people. It was a lament for what was considered another intelligence failure and the possibility of a Communist coup. The day after the assassination, the CIA came under heavy fire. Dewey was one who went on the offensive. On April 12, with one eye on the Republican presidential nomination, he stated without any apparent facetiousness "During the war the United States had the finest intelligence service operating all over South America under J. Edgar Hoover. After the war Mr. Truman ordered the entire service discontinued. He cut off our ears and put out our eyes in our information service around the world."
But it was Rep Clarence Brown who cut to the chase. The day after the riots, Brown urged an investigation of the intelligence community by the House Committee on Expenditures in the Executive Departments.
VICE ADMIRAL ROSCOE HENRY HILLENKOETTER
The rain falls down on last year's man,
an hour has gone by
and he has not moved his hand.
But everything will happen if he only gives the word
Hillenkoetter was the first Director of the CIA and served in that role until late 1950. His initial reaction to the inquiry was to try and have it quashed. Discussing strategy with Truman however, he was convinced that facing the committee with the CIA's record would show the critics to be wrong. Truman also saw political advantage in such a move, as it would take the wind out of Dewey's sails. And so it was, on April 15, Hillenkoetter confronted a special subcommittee of the Committee on Expenditures armed with a wad of classified CIA intelligence reports from which he read excerpts. His testimony charged that appropriate warnings of possible unrest and even violent outbreaks aimed at embarrassing the American Inter-American Conference delegation had been made, but that some of these had been blocked from transmission to the State Department by Embassy officials. The unwanted spotlight now shone on State - which had been in conflict with the CIA for what it termed the latter's "empire building". As for the assassination - Hillenkoetter emphatically told his inquisitors the sole perpetrator was Sierra, and that his motive was purely personal. Gaitán, he told the subcommittee, had just an hour before his death, obtained an acquittal for the man accused of killing Sierra's uncle. It would not be the first time Hillenkoetter would have to face a committee over alleged intelligence failures. The second would be as a result of North Korea's invasion of South Korea on Jun 25, 1950. For all of this, he is probably best remembered for his involvement with The National Investigations Committee On Aerial Phenomena (NICAP) - a UFO group.
THE SCOTLAND YARD INVESTIGATION
Don't argue now you'll be late
There is nothing to investigate
The Columbian government obtained the services of three Scotland Yard detectives, headed by Sir Norman Smith, to conduct an independent, but secret (closed) investigation. Their actual brief however, was to review the investigations already undertaken, along with all government files and documents which might have bearing. The reality, as they found out on arrival in mid-June, 1948, was that the main task would be to act as advisers to the chief investigator; a Gaitán loyalist, Dr Jordon Jimenez. The findings of the detectives regarding identifying the guilty party or parties are summarized below with all comments in brackets mine:
The evidence and findings on Sierra can be summarized as:
JOHN MEPPLES SPIRITTO - AKA JOHN MECKPLESS ESPIRITTO AKA GEORGIO RICCO AKA JOHN MAPLES SPIRITTUS
Give me back my broken night
my mirrored room, my secret life
it's lonely here,
there's no one left to torture
It needs to be stated from the outset that information on Spiritto is scant, and in some cases, contradictory. Papers across the US reported in early Jan, 1959 that two American Soldiers of Fortune had been given military posts in Las Villas province under the provisional government. The reports identified the two as "rebel Maj. William Morgan, of Ohio and John Spiritto of Los Angeles". The reports described the two as "veterans of the rebel fighting in central Cuba."
Spiritto was arrested on or about March 26, 1959.One version has it that this arrest was purely on suspicion of involvement in the murder of another member of the revolutionary forces - to wit, the death of a rival paramour. Visited by US Embassy officials, he refused to cooperate in being registered as a US citizen. He did at that time however, state he was born in San Pedro, California on June 24, 1924. He also produced a New York driver's license dated April 2,1956. [1]
In the above version, after being found guilty, his sentence (one year) was suspended on the proviso that he remain in Havana Province. Another version has it that he had been identified as a CIA agent and leader of the counter-revolutionary organization, Clandestine Second Front of Escambray. In this version, he was held for "several years" and returned to the United States upon release and also names his CIA contacts as Frank Sturgis and Embassy Attaché, Robert Mayor Van Horn. Fabian Escalante however, revealed in The Secret War that it was another Embassy official, Arthur Avignon [2] who was his case officer. According to H.P. Albarelli Jr, (William Morgan: Patriot or Traitor? April 21, 2002), Spiritto was sent to Cuba by the CIA to keep an eye on Morgan (also working for CIA) who was proving to be somewhat ill-disciplined. [3] He goes on to describe Spiritto as a "former special employee of the Federal Narcotics Bureau" who had, in the early 1950s, "been employed in Manhattan as part of the CIA's top-secret Artichoke Project."[4]
What's not disputed is that Spiritto was interrogated by the counter-intelligence service of the Ministry of the Interior. According to Carlos Cajaraville, a former official involved in the interrogations, Spiritto gave the following additional biographical data. He was of Sicilian heritage, had fought in WWII, and then had resided in Mexico where he learned to speak fluent Spanish courtesy of his new employer, the CIA.
THE CONFESSION
By the rivers dark,
In a wounded dawn,
I live my life
In Babylon
The most significant information to emerge from Spiritto during his interrogations was his confession to involvement in the assassination of Gaitán. The key features of his confession follow:
A NEW TWIST TO THE TALE
Through gardens of pastel
I walked in charcoal and in lime
footprints left to tell
of this awful crime*
The Columbian government initially blamed the radicals who they said were intent on disrupting the Inter-American Conference and wanting to fuel a communist coup. But this was a game of chess where thinking many moves ahead was required, and the "lone nut" scenario was soon adopted - with the help of an official investigation so finding, and for added certainty, that finding being reviewed by the putative best police force in the world - Scotland Yard. An old axiom in politics is never hold an inquiry unless you already know what the outcome will be. In this case, the government had at least partial control of the investigation by cherry-picking what files it would hand over to it.
Sir Norman Smith, in his report, outlined some of the difficulties he and fellow detectives faced in the review, adding that their brief did not allow any independent investigative work. It is true that they prised two files out of the government which had not been made available to Dr Jordan Jimenez, but this was within their brief as the files were in relation to rumors mentioned by Jimenez. In any event, these files did not arrive until well into the review, and moreover, Smith felt strongly that even more damning files were being withheld.
Nevertheless, the government could not control everything that came out, and steps would need to be taken to cut off any damaging leads generated by the investigation and subsequent review. We will come to how and why this was done soon enough.
If any of the above sounds at all familiar to anyone aware of the JFK assassination, the subsequent FBI investigation, and the Warren Commission Report, remarkable similarities can also be found in the background of Juan Roa Sierra, Lee Harvey Oswald, Jack Ruby and Sirhan Sirhan as demonstrated here:
Raised by single mother: Sierra, Oswald, Ruby, Sirhan
Impoverished upbringing: Sierra, Oswald, Ruby, Sirhan
Interest in Occult: Sierra, Oswald, Sirhan
Member of AMORC: Sierra, Sirhan
Poor work history: Sierra, Oswald, Ruby, Sirhan
Shot victim at close range w/multiple witnesses nearby: Sierra, Ruby, Sirhan
Reportedly calm and/or relieved after event: Sierra, Ruby, Sirhan
Claimed no memory of event: Ruby, Sirhan (Sierra unknown)
Unknown persons of interest reported leaving the scene: Sierra, Oswald, Sirhan
Had indicated prior to event expectation of coming better circumstances for themselves: Sierra, Ruby
No plausible motive put forward: Sierra, Oswald, Ruby, Sirhan
The two names appearing the most have been highlighted.
The archetypal portrayal of lone assassins, spree and serial killers is that of the socially isolated misfit from a deprived home who indulges in strange practices and habits. This is an over-generalization, convenient for the media (in particular, for newspaper headline writers), and perpetuated in Hollywood by the "black hat"/"white hat" mentality. However, it can be even more convenient for those seeking to find a patsy for an assassination, since what the background actually suggests is a personality that may be malleable. That they fit the manufactured stereotype of "lone nuts" is a bonus, making them easier to "sell" to the public. Project Bluebird in fact was not the starting point of "mind control" research in the US. [6] It merely made it possible to conduct such research on US soil. Between the end of the war, and the beginning of Bluebird, Mexico would have been an ideal location for this research, giving access to German doctors and scientists who had fled Europe for South America prior to Operation Paperclip. Moreover, potent drugs were easy to obtain, and an impoverished and often superstitious populous would offer up many subjects on which tests could be carried out.
The CIA must have trained Spiritto in more than just Spanish during his time in Mexico in preparation for his later work in Manhattan with Artichoke. In fact, why teach him Spanish at all, unless he had a mission to accomplish in Latin America prior to all the fun and games in New York?
Looking at the career of John Spiritto, his confession, and the facts as far as they can be determined, it seems more than possible that Sierra was the first CIA "brainwashed" assassin (or false assassin/patsy) preceding programs such as Bluebird, Artichoke etc. Artichoke techniques had been developed and refined in Germany, Russia and Great Britain from around 1920. The United States, through the OSS, had begun co opting behavioral scientists during WWII in its own search for human control methods.
THE SECOND ARREST
The Whirligig Beetles are wary and fast
with an organ to detect the ripples**
One potentially damaging loose end in the Jimenez/Scotland Yard reports was the identity of the person who accompanied Sierra twice on his visits to try and obtain an audience with Gaitán.
The latter report was dated July 30, 1948. On August 24, this loose end was "tidied up" with the arrest of Cesar Bernal Ordoñez by military police. Ordoñez was subsequently identified by both Gaitan's secretary and the elevator operator as Sierra's companion. He was described as possibly mentally deranged, with "wild eyes", and having something of a persecution complex (he had complained about "big interests" persecuting him over an invention "greater than radar"). Case closed. Sierra was a lone nut colliding - not colluding - with another lone nut twice in Gaitàn's office. The US Embassy was so "relieved" over this arrest, the Ambassador, through Second Secretary, William Wieland, immediately notified Marshall. Wieland should have familiarized himself with all the little details before getting too excited. It can be seen in Smith's report that Gaitàn's secretary was unable to furnish much information to Jimenez during his investigation. It was not a matter of lack of co operation, but lack of recall on detail. Perhaps understandably, her recall improved sharply when confronted by the military police. Not only could she identify the mystery man, she could now recall what he said, and that, though he may have been "with" Sierra, he was actually there on separate business. A similar scenario plays out in the case of the elevator operator.
Given the above-mentioned concern regarding the secretary's identification of Sierra's friend as Ordoñez, and the Embassy's "relief" over the second arrest, it does not seem outrageous to suggest that the "tolerably well-dressed" friend was actually Spiritto, possibly trying to ensure that the mild-mannered Sierra would be remembered by Gaitàn's staff, and that, whoever this person was, he was likely the same "well-dressed" individual seen by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I would nominate the German palmist as possibly one of Spiritto's "pro-Nazi" collaborators, given that Nazism and the occult often went hand-in-hand. I would also nominate Rafael Del Pino (recall he was in Bogota with Castro at the time) as possibly being involved by helping ignite the riots rendering them attributable to communist influence. Del Pino was a naturalized US citizen, a member of the CIO affiliated Union of Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America, and had served in the US army. On Dec 8, 1959, he was sentenced in Cuba to 30 years for counter-revolutionary activities - one of a number of Americans so accused - including Morgan and Spiritto...
MAIN SOURCES where not already stated:
Paul Wolf's archival research site
Amazon review of Living to Tell the Tale by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Castro Hid Testimony About the Assassination of Gaitán an article by Gerardo Reyes and Pablo Alfonso
Wikipedia
Terrorfileonline
All lyrics by Leonard Cohen except *from an unpublished manuscript, The Justification Walz by Greg Parker and **by Tom Waits
ENDNOTES
[1] The CIA's Technical Services Division had supplied another of it's operatives in Cuba, David Christ, with a forged NY driver's license, among other fake documents. Recall that Spiritto had a NY driver’s license when arrested in Cuba, despite living on the West Coast.
[2] Helms' biography, The Man Who Kept the Secrets by Thomas Powers, relates in the book how, two days after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, two men in work clothes, but with "Ivy League" haircuts approached a teller in the Dupont Circle branch of the Riggs National Bank in Washington with an unusual request. They asked the teller for six to eight bank checks totalling well over $100,000 to be made out in the name of Arthur Avignon.
[3] At least two of his interrogators have stated that Spiritto used the language of intelligence and knew things about what happened in Bogota that could have only been known by someone there, or who had "inside" information.
[4] The project studied hypnosis, forced opiate addiction (and subsequent forced withdrawal), and the use of other chemicals, among other methods, to produce amnesia and other vulnerable states in subjects. Magician John Mulholland was consulted for the project. Recall Sierria's fascination with the occult and instructions he'd received in self-hypnosis.
[5] Gaitán's daughter Gloria was reported to have broken down when she heard the part of the confession concerning inducements because, she said, she remembered her father coming home and telling her mother about them.
[6] Project Artichoke started out as Project Bluebird and ran from August 20, 1951 to April 19, 1953, having been signed into existence by Roscoe Hillenkoetter on Apr 20, 1950. Its next incarnation would be MKULTRA.
JORGE ELIÉCER GAITÁN
There is a war between the rich and poor,
A war between the man and the woman.
There is a war between the left and right,
A war between the black and white,
A war between the odd and the even
Gaitán was a Columbian populist Liberal Party politician who was assassinated in Bogota as he left his office building for lunch on April 9, 1948. The presidential campaign was in full swing - and it was one he was widely tipped to win. As a backdrop to this, George Marshall was in Columbia attending the 9th Pan-American Conference to build support for the creation of the Organization of the American States which would act as a bulwark against communism. Protesting against the conference was the Pan American Youth Congress organized by Fidel Castro.
Gaitán, much like Kennedy, had made a lot of enemies on all sides of politics, as well as in business - not the least in Gaitán's case, United Fruit. This was as a result of seeking justice for striking workers who had been fired upon in 1928 by order of the company. He compounded this by starting up his own political machine in 1933, the Leftist Revolutionary Union - though he rejoined his old party two years later.
JUAN ROA SIERRA
You can still find a job,
Go out and talk to a friend.
On the back of every magazine
There are those coupons you can send.
Why don't you join the Rosicrucians,
They can give you back your hope
Sierra was born in the slums of Bogota. One of fourteen siblings raised by a sole parent (his father having died of a venereal disease when Sierra was five), he had little schooling, and soon enough found himself in a succession of menial jobs in which he was usually described as being given to day-dreaming. At the time of Gaitán's assassination, he was unemployed and had sought Gaitán's assistance in finding a job. His death came about when he was identified on the streets as the assassin and set upon by an angry and vengeful mob that had gathered at the spot. His former mistress was later to describe him as a liar with peculiar ideas who dabbled in witchcraft and believed he was the reincarnation of Columbian hero, General Santander. This belief had come about after joining the Rosicrucians who had apparently written to him advising that he buy a mirror and two candles, and that he should stare into the mirror and "see who emerged".
GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ
I came upon a butcher,
he was slaughtering a lamb,
I accused him there
with his tortured lamb.
He said, "Listen to me, child,
I am what I am"
At the moment of the assassination, future Nobel Prize winning author, Gabriel Garcia Marquez was dining at a nearby cafe. When he arrived at the scene his journalistic instincts kicked in as he observed a well-dressed man inciting the gathering mob to attack Sierra. When this was accomplished, a car pulled up and whisked the mystery man away from the scene.
THE GOVERNMENT REACTION
Your story was so long,
The plot was so intense,
It took you years to cross
The lines of self-defense
The incumbent conservative oligarchy publicly called both the assassination and subsequent riots part of a premeditated plan by communists to sabotage the Pan-American Conference. It nevertheless, tried, in secret, to ascertain the facts.
GEORGE MARSHALL
Waiting for the miracle
There's nothing left to do.
I haven't been this happy
since the end of World War II
Marshall's position was summed up in the New York Times editorial of April 14, 1948: "Backing up the findings of the Colombian Government, Secretary of State Marshall and other delegates to the Inter-American Conference have now likewise accused Soviet Russia, and its tool, international communism, of instigating the riots that wrecked Bogota and cast a pall over the whole Western Hemisphere. Basing their judgment on first-hand information and personal observation on the spot, they see in the tragic events which interrupted their deliberations the same powers and patterns at work as in the attempted insurrections in France and Italy. And that makes Bogota, as Mr. Marshall said, not merely a Colombian or Latin American incident but a world affair, and a particularly lurid illustration of the length to which Russia is willing to go to in its no longer (cold war) against the democracies."
THE WASHINGTON REACTION
We asked for signs
the signs were sent:
the birth betrayed
the marriage spent
Yeah the widowhood
of every government --
signs for all to see
The immediate reaction in Washington was that the Bogota situation was "a South American Pearl Harbor." This reference however, was not a lament for Columbia and its people. It was a lament for what was considered another intelligence failure and the possibility of a Communist coup. The day after the assassination, the CIA came under heavy fire. Dewey was one who went on the offensive. On April 12, with one eye on the Republican presidential nomination, he stated without any apparent facetiousness "During the war the United States had the finest intelligence service operating all over South America under J. Edgar Hoover. After the war Mr. Truman ordered the entire service discontinued. He cut off our ears and put out our eyes in our information service around the world."
But it was Rep Clarence Brown who cut to the chase. The day after the riots, Brown urged an investigation of the intelligence community by the House Committee on Expenditures in the Executive Departments.
VICE ADMIRAL ROSCOE HENRY HILLENKOETTER
The rain falls down on last year's man,
an hour has gone by
and he has not moved his hand.
But everything will happen if he only gives the word
Hillenkoetter was the first Director of the CIA and served in that role until late 1950. His initial reaction to the inquiry was to try and have it quashed. Discussing strategy with Truman however, he was convinced that facing the committee with the CIA's record would show the critics to be wrong. Truman also saw political advantage in such a move, as it would take the wind out of Dewey's sails. And so it was, on April 15, Hillenkoetter confronted a special subcommittee of the Committee on Expenditures armed with a wad of classified CIA intelligence reports from which he read excerpts. His testimony charged that appropriate warnings of possible unrest and even violent outbreaks aimed at embarrassing the American Inter-American Conference delegation had been made, but that some of these had been blocked from transmission to the State Department by Embassy officials. The unwanted spotlight now shone on State - which had been in conflict with the CIA for what it termed the latter's "empire building". As for the assassination - Hillenkoetter emphatically told his inquisitors the sole perpetrator was Sierra, and that his motive was purely personal. Gaitán, he told the subcommittee, had just an hour before his death, obtained an acquittal for the man accused of killing Sierra's uncle. It would not be the first time Hillenkoetter would have to face a committee over alleged intelligence failures. The second would be as a result of North Korea's invasion of South Korea on Jun 25, 1950. For all of this, he is probably best remembered for his involvement with The National Investigations Committee On Aerial Phenomena (NICAP) - a UFO group.
THE SCOTLAND YARD INVESTIGATION
Don't argue now you'll be late
There is nothing to investigate
The Columbian government obtained the services of three Scotland Yard detectives, headed by Sir Norman Smith, to conduct an independent, but secret (closed) investigation. Their actual brief however, was to review the investigations already undertaken, along with all government files and documents which might have bearing. The reality, as they found out on arrival in mid-June, 1948, was that the main task would be to act as advisers to the chief investigator; a Gaitán loyalist, Dr Jordon Jimenez. The findings of the detectives regarding identifying the guilty party or parties are summarized below with all comments in brackets mine:
- There was no reliable evidence that any political party was involved in the assassination
- The same could be said for speculation concerning police involvement
- There was a lead in a government file indicating the possible involvement of two Cubans with Sierra. The two were
- named as [Fidel] Castro and [Rafael] Del Pino. After having the allegations in the document thoroughly investigated, it was considered that they were based on evidence entirely lacking in substance
- Juan Roa Sierra acted alone when he shot and killed Gaitán
The evidence and findings on Sierra can be summarized as:
- His mother reported that he had started acting strangely and quit his job about eight months prior to the assassination. This was around the time he took an interest in Rosicrucian-ism and the Occult through his dealings with a German palmist he'd been visiting. His mother, distraught at his behavior and unemployment, visited the Palmist who would only tell her that her son "ought to be a mechanic." She further advised that her son suffered from heart problems, fainting fits and severe headaches [unfortunately the time when these conditions first manifested was not obtained, nor was any information regarding what - if any - medical treatment he was receiving for them].
- Sierra had consulted the Palmist ten times over an eighteen month period - the last consultation being two days prior to the assassination. According to the Palmist, Sierra had told him on that last visit of a dream he'd had about treasure or an Indian tomb which could be found in one of two towns not far from Bogata, and that Providence had chosen him for a higher destiny. The Palmist made a point of emphasizing that Sierra had insisted this destiny was a lone one. He further advised that he saw in Sierra a "psychic sensibility", and did not detect any mental disorder, though he was sensitive and sometimes withdrawn
- Correspondence between Sierra and the Rosicrucian Order in San José, California was located
- One unnamed witness said of Sierra, "I noticed in him something a little strange because he spoke of magicians."
- Another advised "he did not like to work. He said his life must be different. He felt himself half-prepared to fill a superior position by virtue of the special knowledge he was acquiring and the special instruction he was giving himself."
- Sierra had told people in the recent past that he was a supporter of Gaitán, but more recently still, was heard to have made a sarcastic remark about him
- Gaitán's secretary advised that Sierra had come several times to her office adjoining that of her employer, in the hope of seeing the politician. He was unsuccessful on each occasion. On two such visits he was accompanied by a man she described as "thin, tolerably well-dressed, but of a rather wild appearance, with bulging eyes and an aggressive manner."
- Sierra's last visit had been at 9:30 am on the day of the assassination. He had been alone on that occasion, and had not indicated the reason for the visit. This particular visit was different in one aspect; it was the first time the secretary actually booked an appointment for Sierra to see Gaitán
- Some eyewitnesses to the assassination described Sierra as "blazing with passion" during the murder. However, there was total agreement as to what happened immediately after - that being Sierra "surrendering himself almost willingly"
- The crowd which attacked the alleged assassin, battered his face beyond all recognition and stripped him of all clothing bar a tie. Despite this [and an unsatisfactory autopsy], his identity as that of Sierra was accepted
- Sierra had purchased the revolver on April 7, and the ammunition the following day
- Sierra told no less than four people he was purchasing the revolver as part of equipping himself to act as a servant for some foreigners intending to visit wild country. He further told them that, upon his return, he expected to be far better off. No corroboration was found regarding this purported trip
- Whilst recognizing the limitations of trying to determine a man's mental state under the circumstances, the tentative conclusion was reached that Sierra was an "unsuitable tool" for use in any plot, that he suffered abnormalities with regard to his obsession with mysticism, with tendencies toward megalomania. Whilst these were considered harmless foibles by family and acquaintances, he was most likely pushed over the gulf into "murderous intention" by the refusal of Gaitán to offer him a hearing, let alone a job in keeping with his notion of his grand destiny [the Scotland Yard report makes absolutely no mention of the potential motive for the assassination spelled out by Hillenkoetter on April 15. Given that this should have been a readily ascertainable piece of public information, its absence here causes consideration of it being a total or partial CIA fabrication. Perhaps the belief at Langley was that merely being refused an interview was hardly going to float as a tenable explanation for assassination – especially since Gaitán's secretary had actually made an appointment for Sierra on his last visit. It should be noted however, that the CIA has stuck to that story to this day]
JOHN MEPPLES SPIRITTO - AKA JOHN MECKPLESS ESPIRITTO AKA GEORGIO RICCO AKA JOHN MAPLES SPIRITTUS
Give me back my broken night
my mirrored room, my secret life
it's lonely here,
there's no one left to torture
It needs to be stated from the outset that information on Spiritto is scant, and in some cases, contradictory. Papers across the US reported in early Jan, 1959 that two American Soldiers of Fortune had been given military posts in Las Villas province under the provisional government. The reports identified the two as "rebel Maj. William Morgan, of Ohio and John Spiritto of Los Angeles". The reports described the two as "veterans of the rebel fighting in central Cuba."
Spiritto was arrested on or about March 26, 1959.One version has it that this arrest was purely on suspicion of involvement in the murder of another member of the revolutionary forces - to wit, the death of a rival paramour. Visited by US Embassy officials, he refused to cooperate in being registered as a US citizen. He did at that time however, state he was born in San Pedro, California on June 24, 1924. He also produced a New York driver's license dated April 2,1956. [1]
In the above version, after being found guilty, his sentence (one year) was suspended on the proviso that he remain in Havana Province. Another version has it that he had been identified as a CIA agent and leader of the counter-revolutionary organization, Clandestine Second Front of Escambray. In this version, he was held for "several years" and returned to the United States upon release and also names his CIA contacts as Frank Sturgis and Embassy Attaché, Robert Mayor Van Horn. Fabian Escalante however, revealed in The Secret War that it was another Embassy official, Arthur Avignon [2] who was his case officer. According to H.P. Albarelli Jr, (William Morgan: Patriot or Traitor? April 21, 2002), Spiritto was sent to Cuba by the CIA to keep an eye on Morgan (also working for CIA) who was proving to be somewhat ill-disciplined. [3] He goes on to describe Spiritto as a "former special employee of the Federal Narcotics Bureau" who had, in the early 1950s, "been employed in Manhattan as part of the CIA's top-secret Artichoke Project."[4]
What's not disputed is that Spiritto was interrogated by the counter-intelligence service of the Ministry of the Interior. According to Carlos Cajaraville, a former official involved in the interrogations, Spiritto gave the following additional biographical data. He was of Sicilian heritage, had fought in WWII, and then had resided in Mexico where he learned to speak fluent Spanish courtesy of his new employer, the CIA.
THE CONFESSION
By the rivers dark,
In a wounded dawn,
I live my life
In Babylon
The most significant information to emerge from Spiritto during his interrogations was his confession to involvement in the assassination of Gaitán. The key features of his confession follow:
- He was dispatched from Mexico to Columbia to neutralize a candidate who could become a destabilizing political factor in the region
- This was done under Operation Pantomime
- His initial efforts were in the form of offering Gaitán inducements to renounce his candidacy. These all involved leaving Columbia for Europe [5]
- The inducements were rejected
- He then coordinated, but had no direct role in the assassination.
- He would not confirm nor deny that Sierra was in fact the person killed by the mob, or that any of his associates had urged the mob into a killing frenzy
- In all aspects of the operation, he was supported by fellow CIA agent, Thomas [also spelled Tomás] Elliot and pro-Nazi activists
A NEW TWIST TO THE TALE
Through gardens of pastel
I walked in charcoal and in lime
footprints left to tell
of this awful crime*
The Columbian government initially blamed the radicals who they said were intent on disrupting the Inter-American Conference and wanting to fuel a communist coup. But this was a game of chess where thinking many moves ahead was required, and the "lone nut" scenario was soon adopted - with the help of an official investigation so finding, and for added certainty, that finding being reviewed by the putative best police force in the world - Scotland Yard. An old axiom in politics is never hold an inquiry unless you already know what the outcome will be. In this case, the government had at least partial control of the investigation by cherry-picking what files it would hand over to it.
Sir Norman Smith, in his report, outlined some of the difficulties he and fellow detectives faced in the review, adding that their brief did not allow any independent investigative work. It is true that they prised two files out of the government which had not been made available to Dr Jordan Jimenez, but this was within their brief as the files were in relation to rumors mentioned by Jimenez. In any event, these files did not arrive until well into the review, and moreover, Smith felt strongly that even more damning files were being withheld.
Nevertheless, the government could not control everything that came out, and steps would need to be taken to cut off any damaging leads generated by the investigation and subsequent review. We will come to how and why this was done soon enough.
If any of the above sounds at all familiar to anyone aware of the JFK assassination, the subsequent FBI investigation, and the Warren Commission Report, remarkable similarities can also be found in the background of Juan Roa Sierra, Lee Harvey Oswald, Jack Ruby and Sirhan Sirhan as demonstrated here:
Raised by single mother: Sierra, Oswald, Ruby, Sirhan
Impoverished upbringing: Sierra, Oswald, Ruby, Sirhan
Interest in Occult: Sierra, Oswald, Sirhan
Member of AMORC: Sierra, Sirhan
Poor work history: Sierra, Oswald, Ruby, Sirhan
Shot victim at close range w/multiple witnesses nearby: Sierra, Ruby, Sirhan
Reportedly calm and/or relieved after event: Sierra, Ruby, Sirhan
Claimed no memory of event: Ruby, Sirhan (Sierra unknown)
Unknown persons of interest reported leaving the scene: Sierra, Oswald, Sirhan
Had indicated prior to event expectation of coming better circumstances for themselves: Sierra, Ruby
No plausible motive put forward: Sierra, Oswald, Ruby, Sirhan
The two names appearing the most have been highlighted.
The archetypal portrayal of lone assassins, spree and serial killers is that of the socially isolated misfit from a deprived home who indulges in strange practices and habits. This is an over-generalization, convenient for the media (in particular, for newspaper headline writers), and perpetuated in Hollywood by the "black hat"/"white hat" mentality. However, it can be even more convenient for those seeking to find a patsy for an assassination, since what the background actually suggests is a personality that may be malleable. That they fit the manufactured stereotype of "lone nuts" is a bonus, making them easier to "sell" to the public. Project Bluebird in fact was not the starting point of "mind control" research in the US. [6] It merely made it possible to conduct such research on US soil. Between the end of the war, and the beginning of Bluebird, Mexico would have been an ideal location for this research, giving access to German doctors and scientists who had fled Europe for South America prior to Operation Paperclip. Moreover, potent drugs were easy to obtain, and an impoverished and often superstitious populous would offer up many subjects on which tests could be carried out.
The CIA must have trained Spiritto in more than just Spanish during his time in Mexico in preparation for his later work in Manhattan with Artichoke. In fact, why teach him Spanish at all, unless he had a mission to accomplish in Latin America prior to all the fun and games in New York?
Looking at the career of John Spiritto, his confession, and the facts as far as they can be determined, it seems more than possible that Sierra was the first CIA "brainwashed" assassin (or false assassin/patsy) preceding programs such as Bluebird, Artichoke etc. Artichoke techniques had been developed and refined in Germany, Russia and Great Britain from around 1920. The United States, through the OSS, had begun co opting behavioral scientists during WWII in its own search for human control methods.
THE SECOND ARREST
The Whirligig Beetles are wary and fast
with an organ to detect the ripples**
One potentially damaging loose end in the Jimenez/Scotland Yard reports was the identity of the person who accompanied Sierra twice on his visits to try and obtain an audience with Gaitán.
The latter report was dated July 30, 1948. On August 24, this loose end was "tidied up" with the arrest of Cesar Bernal Ordoñez by military police. Ordoñez was subsequently identified by both Gaitan's secretary and the elevator operator as Sierra's companion. He was described as possibly mentally deranged, with "wild eyes", and having something of a persecution complex (he had complained about "big interests" persecuting him over an invention "greater than radar"). Case closed. Sierra was a lone nut colliding - not colluding - with another lone nut twice in Gaitàn's office. The US Embassy was so "relieved" over this arrest, the Ambassador, through Second Secretary, William Wieland, immediately notified Marshall. Wieland should have familiarized himself with all the little details before getting too excited. It can be seen in Smith's report that Gaitàn's secretary was unable to furnish much information to Jimenez during his investigation. It was not a matter of lack of co operation, but lack of recall on detail. Perhaps understandably, her recall improved sharply when confronted by the military police. Not only could she identify the mystery man, she could now recall what he said, and that, though he may have been "with" Sierra, he was actually there on separate business. A similar scenario plays out in the case of the elevator operator.
Given the above-mentioned concern regarding the secretary's identification of Sierra's friend as Ordoñez, and the Embassy's "relief" over the second arrest, it does not seem outrageous to suggest that the "tolerably well-dressed" friend was actually Spiritto, possibly trying to ensure that the mild-mannered Sierra would be remembered by Gaitàn's staff, and that, whoever this person was, he was likely the same "well-dressed" individual seen by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I would nominate the German palmist as possibly one of Spiritto's "pro-Nazi" collaborators, given that Nazism and the occult often went hand-in-hand. I would also nominate Rafael Del Pino (recall he was in Bogota with Castro at the time) as possibly being involved by helping ignite the riots rendering them attributable to communist influence. Del Pino was a naturalized US citizen, a member of the CIO affiliated Union of Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America, and had served in the US army. On Dec 8, 1959, he was sentenced in Cuba to 30 years for counter-revolutionary activities - one of a number of Americans so accused - including Morgan and Spiritto...
MAIN SOURCES where not already stated:
Paul Wolf's archival research site
Amazon review of Living to Tell the Tale by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Castro Hid Testimony About the Assassination of Gaitán an article by Gerardo Reyes and Pablo Alfonso
Wikipedia
Terrorfileonline
All lyrics by Leonard Cohen except *from an unpublished manuscript, The Justification Walz by Greg Parker and **by Tom Waits
ENDNOTES
[1] The CIA's Technical Services Division had supplied another of it's operatives in Cuba, David Christ, with a forged NY driver's license, among other fake documents. Recall that Spiritto had a NY driver’s license when arrested in Cuba, despite living on the West Coast.
[2] Helms' biography, The Man Who Kept the Secrets by Thomas Powers, relates in the book how, two days after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, two men in work clothes, but with "Ivy League" haircuts approached a teller in the Dupont Circle branch of the Riggs National Bank in Washington with an unusual request. They asked the teller for six to eight bank checks totalling well over $100,000 to be made out in the name of Arthur Avignon.
[3] At least two of his interrogators have stated that Spiritto used the language of intelligence and knew things about what happened in Bogota that could have only been known by someone there, or who had "inside" information.
[4] The project studied hypnosis, forced opiate addiction (and subsequent forced withdrawal), and the use of other chemicals, among other methods, to produce amnesia and other vulnerable states in subjects. Magician John Mulholland was consulted for the project. Recall Sierria's fascination with the occult and instructions he'd received in self-hypnosis.
[5] Gaitán's daughter Gloria was reported to have broken down when she heard the part of the confession concerning inducements because, she said, she remembered her father coming home and telling her mother about them.
[6] Project Artichoke started out as Project Bluebird and ran from August 20, 1951 to April 19, 1953, having been signed into existence by Roscoe Hillenkoetter on Apr 20, 1950. Its next incarnation would be MKULTRA.
