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Discover the Truth at: http://www.theblackvault.com Date:09/30/93 Page: 1 ....----. -JFK ASSASSINATION SYSTEM

IDENTIFICATION FORM :j AGENCY INFORMATION AGENCY SSCIA RECORD NUMBER 157-10002-10084 RECORDS SERIES TRANSCRIPT AGENCY FILE NUMBER DOCUMENT INFORMATION ORIGINATOR SSCIA FROM TO TITLE TESTIMONY OF MR. HALLEY (ALIAS)

DATE 08/19/75 .• PAGES 132 < SUBJECTS SSASSINATIONS STRO 5412 COMMITTEE CUBA CIA DULLES, ALLEN JMWAVE STATION OPERATION MONGOOSE BISSELL MCNAMARA, ROBERT KENNEDY, JOHN F. KENNEDY, ROBERT F. 303 COMMITTEE SPECIAL GROUP 40 COMMITTEE LANSDALE, EDWARD PARAMILITARY, CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS COVERT ACTION POISON ROSELLI, JOHN TRAFFICANTE GIANCANA, SAM MAHEU, ROBERT ORTA, JUAN GODOY, ARTURO •'f/•.

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NW 50955 Docld:32281924 Page 1 Date:09/30/93 Page:2 JFK ASSASSINATION SYSTEM IDENTIFICATION FORM AMLASH-1 HUNT I. HOWARD ZRRIFLE QJWIN ALPHA 66 FBI VARONA HARVEY SHACKLEY DOCUMENT TYPE PAPER, TEXTUAL DOCUMENT CLASSIFICATION T RESTRICTIONS REFERRED CURRENT STATUS p DATE OF LAST REVIEW 09/30/93 OPENING CRITERIA

COMMENTS Box 245 Folder 5

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1 matters pertaining to that survey to the team who was then in

0 2 charge of the operational activity in Miami. That team was "'N "

~ Mr. Baron. Was that team the equivalent of JWNAVE station? I I 5 Mr. Halley. Yes. was the head, then, of what waul~

6 be the equivalent of the JMWAVE Station.

7 'i Mr. Baron. Was he the head of JMWAVE until the~int when :j 8 you replaced him, or until the point you became Chief of the II II i JMWAVE Station? 9 i I I Mr. Halley. That is correct. He was the head of that 10 I I 11 I unit until such time as I replaced him. I I 12 I Mr. Baron. Were you aware during this survey that you

13 I,, were conducting of any link between Task Force W and the so-call d .I ii Special Group in the White House which was part of the National 14 !I I 15 Security Council structure and used the project name1 MONGOOSE

16 for anti-Cuban operations?

17 Mr. Halley. My understanding at the time that I conducted

18 this survey was that there was a three-man group in existence

19 which was headed by Mr. Robert Kennedy that was conducting a ""0 0 0 N survey to see what kind of activities could be conducted against u 20 ci c 0 Cuba. The other members of that particular group were General ;, 21 c 22 Lansdale and Mr. Helms.

23 This three-man group had subordinate to it for all practica

24 purposes the task force unit which was managed by Mr. Harvey. u.. 0 I am not familiar, however, with the other terminology that you 0: 25

NW 50955 Docld: 281924 Page 3 T P SECRET I T P SECRET 42 I i i 1 I put them into rubber rafts, where they would paddle in or use I N 0 2 a silent outboard motor if the surf was high. N "

6 iJ Mr. Halley. No, they were not paid. For instance, they I 7 11 might work for a particular cover company. In other words, I 1 8 1 am on 1 y us~ng· th 1s· as an examp 1 e. Let us say we h a d th ~ ABC

9 Shipping Company. That shipping company,was a subsidiary of I 10 I the Station, if you will ,and· the ABC ShiJ?ping Company .ran !j ! i maybe one LCI and maybe two or three smaller boats which it 11 ',I 12 could deck load and that company might have fifty or seventy-

13 II five employees, as an example, all Cuban~, maybe some of them I I 14 ! was Nicaraguans or Costa Ricans as most of these vessels -- I i I I 15 would have to go and look at each vessel .• i 16 Does that give you a feel for the size of the problem?

17 Mr. Baron. How many such companies would have been in

18 existence at that time, companies operating as CIA proprietaries

,.., 19 or companies in cover and supplying the JMWAVE Station with 0 0 0 personnel or with equipment? u"' 20 ci 21 Mr. Halley. We are talking about all of these companies, they probably I distinguish between 22 I

23 companies that ware set up simply to pro~ide cover as opposed 24 to companies that were proprietaries. You know, these terms

25 mean different things to me. The nature of the Agency's

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1 involvement in each is different. I am having a little

;::; 2 0 trouble -- N " .:t .) Mr. Barono Could you explain what different categories of

"0 [ 4 compani~s you were receiving help from at that point, and about

5 how many of each there might have been?

6 Mr. Halley. I do not think I could. do that. v1e are

7

8 period of time. Some of them might simply have been a company

9 set up and registered and run out of some attorney's

10 office. It simply provided back stopping for the ownership of

11 the small boat.

12 Everything has to be owned by somebody, it has to have a

16 I don't think there is an overview statement.

Mr. Baron. Would it be fair to say that you had coopera- 17 1 i 18 tion on a qrand scale from all kinds of people in private

19 enterprise.in the Miami area, or in Southern Florida? "'0 0 0 N Mr. Halley. I think it would be fair to say that we had u 20 ci 21 extensive cooperation.- I do not like your word "grand" -- that

22 we had extensive cooperation from the ciyilian sector in l 23 Florida, in the state of Florida, to fac~lit.ate the conduct of I .. 24 this clandestine mission. u. 0 -... 25 Mr. Baron. Did you also have extensive cooperation from

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1 Mr. Baron. Back to the structure of the relationships

r;"i 0 2 between yourself as Chief of Station at JMWAVE and any operative "' .," .;: .) ., or employees who worked underneath you at that Station, would ::: 0 a.~ 4 it be fair to say that any activities run out of the Station

5 ultimately were channeled out through you?

6 Mr. Halley. They should have been, and they were -- you I 7 know this Station went through several mutations in organization I

8 during its existence. I guess the organizat~onal structure that!

9 existed for the longest period of time was something like I am !

10 going to describe to you. i ! 11 There was a Chief of Station, whichi was myself. I had a I I 12 Deputy Chief of Station for operations. 1 That is the gentleman

i til 13 who is now retired, I think he is still! alive, by the name of c I a: I < it 14 I had a second Deputy Chief of Station and

15 he was for Support Patterns. That is a gentleman who is also

16 retired,

17 Then the: rest of the Station was organized into a number of

18 branches. Each branch was organi oz:ed alo~ng functional lines. I .., 19 Let me give you an example. .There was a Foreign .Intelligence 0 0 0 N u 20 Branch. These were people in, what in my terminology would be 0 classical foreign intelligence operations. That is, trying to 21 I

t 22 recruit a Cuban diplomat abroad, as an /example. dealing with, I you know, a Uruguayan diplomat in the Uruguayan Embassy in 23 I . ' 24 Havana. They are working with resident!agents in Cuba who might

0 .,- 25 live in some city like Havana and have a legal job as a baker or

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1 So they had agents in Cuba that were reporting foreign I

N intelligence to them so they had collection assets that were 0 2 N

.~

4 w.lork at a downstream Point when FitzGerald came in with a - i 5 clouple of groups -- in other words, they!had contact with

6 ~rtime. I had no contact with the Artime group as a general

7 : rllule. They also had contact with Manolo! Ray which I did not I I I 8 have contact with. So they were working[with these kinds of I 9 jarger exile groups. ; II 10 I. The Task Force also specialized in much more economic

11 activity ~~an I did. That is a question of looking at such

12 lings as

' ' I ., 13 .Mr. Baron. In terms of param~l~tary operations, if an 0 ' a: I <( 3: 14 assassination operation had been run by Task Force W, would

15 ~ou have assumed as Chief of Station in Miami you would have

16 oeen aware of such an operation?

17

18

19 "'0 0 0 N u 20 ci Mr. Halley. No. ;.a 21 c: s.. You know, the Agency is a highly compartmented mechanism . 3: 22 : t.J vi 23 You know, let us dispel one thing very promptly here. If you I 24 ire asking me was I aware of all these cpntacts, you know, with 25 the Mafia -- and I think I can tell you :frankly at that time I

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1 attempt against Castro.

2 Mr. Halley. I certainly was not aware of that at the

3 tim.e, as I recall from, you know, looki~g at the files in the I I I 4 i\ '12-'73 period, seeing any evidence of that in the file at the II I

5 time. I; II i I 6 Mr. Baron. There are folders in the N~LASH file. !Iq ! 7 Did you read all of those files?

8 Mr. Halley. No, I did not.

9 Mr. Baron. How did you gather your impression that that

10 was in the AJ~ASH files?

11 Mr. Halley. I think I may have read one or two volumes

I

12 of whatever my question was at the t;me, 1because these cases I 13 keepI coming up. You know, there must have been some inquiry I 14 at the time that necessitated my looking at the folder or I 15 discussing it with my staff and so on.

16 Mr. Baron. As far as you knew, what was the objective of

17 the contact with Artime?

18 I Mr. Halley. You mean the CIA contact with Artime?

19 Mr. Baron. Yes. 0 "'0 0 N u 20 Mr. Halley. As a concept, the Artirne thing was looked at ci c: a,0 21 as another track, an approach to the overall Cuban problem to c: .c: "' ~ 22 ste if they could sort of do it on their own. If they could 1/J I 23 simply be given, you know, X number of dollars, some equipment,

24 slme guidance, and give them an opportun~ty to find a Cuban I ' 25 solution to what was a Cuban problem. That was also, you know,

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1 money. I was opposed to it at the time. I And once it was set

2 u~, and I did what I was supposed to do, ~which was to train "'0 N., ~"' 3 Altime and contribute to his training, I then did not pay an

4 il aLful lot of attention to the thing except what I picked up, il I 5 ill yoj u know, over the years, and again in trye '72-'73 period,

6 1 and t a lk e d t o o ff ~cers· wh o h a d , you k now;I more ~nt1mate· · k now 1 edgei

1 7 ',!. o·'f ~.;t and go t an appra1sa· 1 o f 1· t as t o w.ah t th ey th oug ht h. a d

8 Ii occurr.:!d.I I ! Mr. Baron. Had you heard at any point that Artime was 9 I

10 •rppliad weapons for the specific purpos~ of assassinating

11 Castro?

12 Mr. Halley. No, not for the specific purpose of assassir.a-

13 tling Castro.

14 Mr. Baro~:~.. Was it your general impression that AMI..ASH-1 15 was a reliable agent?

16 Hr. Halley. I really do not know that much about him,

17 ~~ou know. This was an operation that was run at that time ou~ i 18 If Washington and, you know, my knowledg~ was as I described it

19 to you, the conversations with FitzGerald, newspaper "'0 0 I : 0 articles, so forth, in that particular timeframe. u"' 20 c:i Baron. Did the CIA to your kno~ledge use any gambling 21 Mr. ! I 22 Sy"ndicate contacts inside Cuba or people' outside Cuba who were Jonnected to gambling interests inside c'uba for any operational 23 purposeI :a.nc· 1 u d.:a.ng th e 1nte· 11·1gence ga th!er i ng..., 24 Mr. Halley. The only case that r recall is this case that 25

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1 years I have seen literally --

(Discussion off the record.) I N 2 0 I N I " Mr. Halley. Let me go back. You a~ked me about ZRRIFLE.

5 I read, you know, hundreds of pages of t~affic, so wh~n you ask I 6 me do I know what ZRRIFLE is, I must answer you off the top of I I 7 my head no. I have tried to be helpful. ' I have asked you I I 8 slveral times if you could give me a steering ti9 or show me I . . g what dkrectkon you are going, I might be able to try to comment

10 ol it, but ZRRIFLE as such means nothing.to me. You really I could not expect that it would, given the t~ousands of these 11 I . 12 th1ngs that come across my desk. Mr. Baron. That is absolutely understandable. I want to 13 try to see what happens in the way of getting an unrefreshed 14

15 rrcollection from you, then I will go back over these two, especially the next one, QJWIN. Do you recall a CIA asset who 16 wentI by the cryptonym QJWIN? 17 I Mr. Halley. No, I do not. Knowing the system, and so 18 forth, normally it would have something to do with It M 19 0 I . 0 0 N does not ring any bells with me. That is all I can give you, u 20 ci a sort of Pavlovian response. You flash Q~~IN on the screen, 21 I am telling you now I do not know, but it probably has 22 something to do with 23 ' ' Mr. Baron. Were you aware that a ptoject involving the 24 25 drvelopment of a capability of carrying on assassination was

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1 Mr. diGenova. Were there any restrictions, once, for 0: "';:; 0 2 example, those weapons caches w:re delivered either by land or N "'"" ~ 3 Jir -- and we have spoken to who was in the Havana OJ :: 0 :~ I & 4 ~~ yation, for example, for awhile ann ha 5 ~~ Ts head of the Havana Station for awhile who indicated that

11 they were aware of the weapons drops and were intimately 6 1 ! I .! I 7 I f

8 Mr. Halley. That was all before my time. I have no

9 J<:nowledge of that. During my time,: we made no drops by air.

10 Mr. diGenova. Were there any limitations that were

11 Jlaced of how the weapons would be used that were delivered into

12 Cuba to these internal resistance groups?

I 13 Mr. Halley. I cannot speak to this period that you are

14 addressing.

15 Mr. diGenova. During your period.

16 Mr. Halley. During my period, the weapons ware issued

17 essentially as self-protection for the people who were living I 18 in the bush. Secondly, to be used in a military operation at such time as we got the whole package together. Thirdly, they M 19 0 0 0 N lere to be used for self-protection if they conducted raids, u 20 c:i 21 lmbushes, sabotage operations.

22 Mr. Baron. Thera is one further quote from Martinez in

23 this article that I would like to ask you to comment on. I some ... 24 re is quoted as saying: "I took a lot of weapons to Cuba, u. 0 of them were very special weapons for special purposes. They -0:· 25 I NW 50955 Docld:3 2~1924 Page 11 P SECRET T p SECRET 116

8 ~ 1 Mr. Baron. Are you aware of the program? ..r ""' N 2 Mr. Halley. Yes, I am. 0 N., " Mr. Baron. How· was that spelled?

Mr. Halley. ·~:·.. ·~

5 ~ir. Baron. ~'fua t was that program?

6 Mr. Halley. That was a program involving a Cuban emigre

7 group that was used as an opera~ional support mechanism ~o

t th M' . . 8 supperI e t ~am~ Stat~on.

9 Mr. Baron. What kind. of support di~ t.~ey provide? ' 10 Mr. Halley. They wel!e interviewers! of refugees who came

11 out of Cuba. They provided translator personnel to translate I 12 the Spanish language publications that were of interest to us. I i 13 'Phey provided information on the various' mainstream activities I 14 that were going on in the Cuban exile community.

15 Mr. Baron. Did they provide support for paramilitary

16 clperations against Cuba?

l? Mr. Halley. They might have identified people whom they I 18 thought we should interview or look to or see if they would I iit into other paramilitary programs. In other words, they M 19 0 0 0 N had the contacts in the Cuban community. Say we had a require­ u 20 ci 21 jent for a diesel engineer. We would say to the organiza-

1 22 tion, we would say we are looking for a Cuban who is a diesel I . 23 ing1neer who has a first engine's license, and they would go

24 through all of their contacts until they would ~orne up with

0 ; 25 jne a week or ten days or whatever, having identified

NW 50955 Docld:3 ,l,.:. Paqe 12 T P SECRET T P SECRET 117

1 the fellow, where he was, what he was doing. Ne would then

2 i +nd somebody around to talk to him independent of them and "'0 "' . .," <( 3 I pick him up to work for us in our maritime activities. I " 0 .c 0.. !I It was that kind of op~rational supoort . I'.I II 5 :1 Mr. Baron. People w~o were ?art of this program were 'I II'I 6 II not used as paramilitary operatives, at least insofar as they

7 'r,~:l: olperatcI d under the aegis of this program~ There were some of

8 I them who may have been in the paramilitary program and then

I g J~ft it and were subsequently picked up in the organiza-

10 I jion.

11 I Could we go off the record for a moment? ti !I (Discussion off the record.) 12 I o( ' tape: 7 13 Hr. Halley. rve are now back on the i r~cord. Cl a: o( The also worked with us on a common project, which ;t 14

15 was things like that, so they

16 were used across the board for operational support tasks.

17 Mr. Baron. One more general question.

Did the JMWAVE Station 18 have an operational relationship with the FBI? 19 "'0 0 0 N Mr. Halley. I would not -- u 20 0 Mr. Baron. Was the FBI involved in supporting your 21 activities in any way? I 22 I Mr. Halley. I would rathar phrase ~at in my language, 23 because I think 24 u. 0 Mr. Baron. Go right ahaad. .. 25

NW 50955 Docld:3 281924 Page 13 T P SECRET /d ~9~~

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