Hit List: An In-Depth Investigation Into the Mysterious Deaths of Witnesses to the JFK Assassination

by Richard Belzer

hitman “came clean,” so we know a great deal about the case.

  1 Brandt. I Heard You Paint Houses

  2 Ibid.

  3 Ibid.

  4 Ibid.

  • The hit on Hoffa wasn’t sanctioned (formally authorized) by the New York mafia, but they didn’t block it either. The hit was sanctioned by the Detroit Outfit, with the blessings of the Chicago Crime Family as well.

  • FBI’s suspect list was right on target. The “house was painted” by Frank Sheeran. The “cleaners” (according to Sheeran himself) were the Andretta brothers, associates of Anthony “Tony Pro” Provenzano, a “made” member of the Genovese Crime Family of New York. The bosses authorizing and masterminding both the hit and the clean-up were Tony Pro, and East Coast Crime Boss Russell Bufalino (Sheeran’s boss).

  • In Sheeran’s defense, if he had warned his friend Jimmy Hoffa, or had asked not to make the hit, he too would have definitely been murdered. In mafia tradition, he was being spared in exchange for making the hit himself. He also knew that Hoffa was a dead man whether Sheeran was the trigger man or it came from someone else. As Sheeran put it:

  In the end, they made the decision to spare me out of respect for

  Russell.1

  • Hoffa’s body was cremated by the Andretta brothers who were the “cleaners” on the hit (they worked for the Tony Pro faction).

  • As East Coast Crime Boss Russell Bufalino whispered to his top hitman Frank Sheeran:

  There won’t be a body. Dust to dust . . .2

  See: I Heard You Paint Houses: Frank “The Irishman” Sheeran and the Inside Story of the Mafia, the Teamsters and the Last Ride of Jimmy Hoffa, Charles Brandt, 2005

  Conclusion

  Murdered by the mafia for internal mob reasons. However, do take note of what Crime Boss Russell Bufalino tried to explain to Jimmy Hoffa:

  There are people higher up than me that feel that you are demonstrating a failure to show appreciation, for Dallas.3

  Further Research

  I Heard You Paint Houses: Frank “The Irishman” Sheeran and the Inside Story of the Mafia, the Teamsters and the Last Ride of Jimmy Hoffa, Charles Brandt, 2005

  Bound By Honor: A Mafioso’s Story, Bill Bonanno, 2000

  Richard Nixon’s Greatest Cover-Up: His Ties to the Assassination of President Kennedy, Don Fulsom, October 5, 2003, CrimeMagazine.com

  1 Brandt. I Heard You Paint Houses

  2 Ibid.

  3 Ibid.

  Victim

  CIA Officer John Paisley

  Cause of Death

  Shot in the head execution-style, diving weights affixed to his body and thrown into the ocean.

  Official Verdict

  Suicide

  Actual Circumstances

  Assassination

  Inconsistencies

  Numerous (see text)

  47

  John Paisley,

  September 24, 1978

  One of the most fascinating aspects of all contemporary history is the absolutely frantic search for a “mole” (a foreign intelligence agent disguised as a loyal employee) known to exist at the highest level of U.S. Intelligence, at the height of the Cold War between the world’s two superpowers.

  For almost twenty years, a quiet but ominous fear has haunted the corridors of the Central Intelligence Agency. It is the specter of a “mole”—an American official somewhere in the upper echelons of the CIA who is really a Soviet agent planted by its own spy network, the KGB.1

  That fear turned out to be well-founded, because it was learned that very sensitive information was being obtained by the Soviets in some unknown manner—so the search for the mole was on.

  As far as how “big a deal” that was, here’s how one CIA source put it:

  If there is a mole inside the CIA hierarchy, this means that every particle of our intelligence is suspect and possibly contaminated. It means the Soviets have detailed knowledge of our verification capability and can circumvent it. It changes the world power balance.2

  No one knew who that mole was, and John Paisley, as Deputy Director, was right in the thick of the search. Extremely sensitive intelligence was known to be “leaking” out of the CIA and going directly to the Soviets—but no one knew how. And—just like a movie—it turned out that the mole was quite probably Paisley himself.

  Paisley was one of the CIA’s highest-ranking officers, serving as Deputy Director in the highly sensitive Office of Strategic Research. That high-level position made him privy to many secrets.

  The search for the mole was one of the highest priorities in the history of U.S. Intelligence. And to James Angleton, the CIA’s Chief of Counterintelligence, the search became an obsession that was driving him crazy.3

  Veteran CIA officer Victor Marchetti testified that Paisley had extensive knowledge about the JFK assassination and was murdered during the investigation of the House Select Committee on Assassinations because he was “about to blow the whistle.”4 A CIA memo stated that “Coast Guard personnel found some papers dealing with the Cuban crisis” aboard his boat.5 Counterintelligence Operative Richard Case Nagell revealed that Paisley was the Soviet mole the CIA had been trying to identify for several years.

  1 Russell, On the Trail of the JFK Assassins, 167.

  2 Ibid.

  3 Ibid, 177.

  4 John Simkin, “Deaths of Witnesses Connected to the Assassination of John F. Kennedy,” Spartacus Educational, accessed 9 Nov 2012: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKdeaths.htm

  5 John Simkin, “John Paisley: Biography,” accessed 30 Nov. 2012: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKpaisley.htm

  It is not yet clear if Paisley was assassinated by agents acting on behalf of U.S. Intelligence, or if Russian Intelligence agents assassinated him because they knew that their mole had been found. But it is clear that John Paisley was assassinated.

  Evidentiary Inconsistencies in the Assassination

  of CIA Officer John Paisley

  1. Kill-shot was behind victim’s left ear. Paisley was right-handed.

  2. No weapon, expended cartridge, blood or brain tissue was found aboard the boat; clearly indicating that the victim was killed elsewhere and then dumped into the ocean.

  Investigator Bernard Fensterwald summed up some more of the evidence, point-by point:

  • There’s no sign that anybody fired a shot aboard that vessel.1

  • No gun was ever found.2

  • There wasn’t any suicide note.3

  • He had talked to a number of people that day, in person and by (ship) radio, and certainly didn’t seem depressed or like anything was wrong with him.4

  • He apparently was in the process of eating a meal when whatever happened occurred.5

  3. Thorough investigations have concluded that Paisley was murdered. It is quite unbelievable to suppose that a person committed suicide by putting diving weights around their waist, jumping off a boat, and shooting themselves in the head before they hit the water—yet that is what John Paisley would have had to do to even come close to the official government version. Not possible. As the authors of the book intelligently concluded:

  Although the physical evidence defies that conclusion, the police determined that Paisley had wrapped two nineteen-pound weight belts around himself, jumped from Brillig (his boat), and shot himself in the head in midair.6

  1 Russell, On the Trail of the JFK Assassins, 172.

  2 Ibid.

  3 Ibid.

  4 Ibid.

  5 Ibid.

  6 William R. Corson, Susan B. Trento & Joseph J. Trento, Widows: The Explosive Truth Behind 25 Years of Western Intelligence Disasters (BDD: 1989).

  Conclusion

  Unless and until further information comes to light regarding linkage between Paisley and the JFK assassination, Paisley’s murder clearly appears to be the result of his nefarious intelligence associations: National Security Assassination or Assassination by Soviet Intelligence.

  Although some linked Paisley to the JFK
assassination via knowledge to which he was privy, his assassination instead appears to be directly related to the issue of the high-level mole in U.S. Intelligence. The CIA had the obvious motive: Paisley apparently turned out to be the high-level mole the Agency had been deceived by for many years.

  Further Research

  On the Trail of the JFK Assassins, Dick Russell, 2008, Skyhorse Publishing

  The Man Who Knew Too Much, Dick Russell, 2003, Carroll & Graf

  Widows: The Explosive Truth Behind 25 Years of Western Intelligence Disasters, William R. Corson, Susan B. Trento & Joseph J. Trento, 1989, BDD

  The CIA and FBI Suppression of Information, Alan Weberman; 2004

  John Simkin, “John Paisley: Biography,” Spartacus Educational: www.spartacus

  .schoolnet.co.uk/JFKpaisley.htm

  Nothing is more unlikely than that preposterous official version:

  • According to the official theory, he jumped in the water with the gun and then blew his head off, having put two diving weights on to begin with.1

  Right, we believe that.

  The reason police “concluded” the above insanity was because it was literally the only way that the assassination could be officially framed as a “suicide.”

  1 Russell, On the Trail of the JFK Assassins, 172-173.

  Victim

  Gary Powers, CIA pilot

  Cause of Death

  Helicopter crash

  Official Verdict

  Pilot Error: Poor Fuel Management

  Actual Circumstances

  Powers was flying a news helicopter for a Los Angeles TV station, covering a story on large fires in the area.

  The National Transportation Safety Board report attributed the probable cause of the crash to pilot error (poor fuel management).710 To us, like many others, that does not seem very likely, with a pilot of the caliber as Gary Powers.

  Inconsistencies

  Tons of them (see below).

  710 Check-Six.com, “The Francis Gary Powers Helo Crash,” accessed 7 Nov. 2012: http://www.check-six.com/Crash_ Sites/Powers-N4TV.htm

  48

  Gary Powers,

  August 1, 1977

  As far as his “claim to fame”:

  Gary Powers was an American pilot whose Central Intelligence Agency U-2 spy plane was shot down while flying a reconnaissance mission over Soviet Union air space, causing the 1960 U-2 incident.1

  As we detailed in our book, Dead Wrong, the “U-2 incident” of Powers’ shoot-down mushroomed into a huge crisis, torpedoing international peace talks and extending and expanding an extremely expensive and protracted “Cold War” between the Superpowers; leading many to speculate that it was planned and executed for precisely that reason.2

  As we also established, CIA agent Gary Powers was one cool customer: calm and collected, and used to performing with perfect poise under intense pressure. For example, when reporters asked him how high he was flying in his U-2 when he was shot down, Powers calmly responded:

  Not high enough.3

  Therefore, his death bears close examination, especially since it relates to pilot error under pressure. Powers was a highly decorated pilot, earning the Silver Star, the Distinguished Flying Cross, the CIA Intelligence Star, the National Defense Service Medal the Prisoner of War Medal, and “the CIA’s coveted Director’s Medal for extreme fidelity and extraordinary courage in the line of duty.”4 To put it plainly, if you had a problem airborne, he was your man—the guy you knew could get you out of it.

  Powers flew a Bell 206 Jet Ranger helicopter for a Southern California TV news station. Covering some large fires in the area on August 1, 1977, he reportedly ran out of fuel and crashed his helicopter in the Sepulveda Dam Recreation Area.

  However, many have speculated that a pilot with the skills of Gary Powers should have been able to put the helicopter down with no problem at all. Lieutenant Colonel Craig Roberts was a very experienced helicopter pilot. Here’s his take on it:

  Powers, an experienced and very professional pilot, ended his life in a very incredible—and not very believable way. He supposedly died in a helicopter crash after running out of fuel.5

  At the scene, however, things seemed very much under control:

  1 Ibid.

  2 Belzer & Wayne, Dead Wrong

  3 Ibid.

  4 Wikipedia, “Francis Gary Powers”

  5 Roberts & Armstrong, The Dead Witnesses, 125-126.

  Powers radioed Van Nuys airport control tower that he was returning for fuel and asked for a direct approach, indicating to the news reporters

  after the crash that he must have been dangerously low on fuel. He then radioed the KNBC news room and advised that after he took on a load of fuel he would be ready for the next assignment. The news room told Powers that he and his cameraman, George Spears, would probably be assigned to cover a brush fire nearby.1

  Then something very dramatic obviously happened very quickly and it all went to hell in a hurry:

  As Powers approached the airport, something happened that caused him to lose control of the Bell Jet Ranger helicopter. As any helicopter pilot can relate, engine failure for any reason is hardly a reason for a helicopter to crash out of control. Unknown to the general public is the fact that when an engine stops in a helicopter, it does not simply fall out of the sky. The pilot enters a maneuver called “autorotation,” and by lowering the collective stick, which places the main rotor blades into a negative angle of attack, glides the aircraft back to earth by using the spinning blades, driven by the upwards flow of air, as a “parachute.” A normal “auto” gives a pilot at least a forty-five degree angle of glide—and in the Jet Ranger, a very forgiving helicopter, a much longer range to find a safe landing area. Autorotations are a totally controlled maneuver, and every helicopter pilot practices many of them before being awarded a commercial helicopter pilot’s license.2

  We checked with our covert operative friend, Tosh Plumlee, who was, for many years, a CIA pilot and a very experienced helicopter pilot. He agreed with Lieutenant Colonel Roberts:

  Powers was noted as being a very safe pilot and lack of fuel would not be one of his weak points in flying the Ranger. His autorotation skills were exceptional according to his flight reports and FAA check rides. At 1,500 feet over L.A., he would have had at least a two-mile radius to maneuver to a safe landing, even if he landed on the “freeways.” However, the loss of a tail rotor at very low altitude and at low forward speed would make the chopper very hard to control because of the main rotor torque. The spin encountered and loss of collective control would cause rapid loss of altitude; and if at low altitude would be deadly combinations, as the record and witnesses indicated at the time of the accident. Why this concept was not addressed by the safety board at the time of the investigation is beyond me.3

  1 Ibid.

  2 Roberts & Armstrong, The Dead Witnesses, 125-126.

  3 Tosh Plumlee, email to author, 7 Nov. 2012.

  Lieutenant Colonel Roberts confirmed Plumlee’s suspicions:

  The true story of Power’s death might lie in the statement of one witness who told firemen at the scene that he had witnessed the crash, and that it appeared that the helicopter’s tail rotor came off. This would be a more plausible explanation for the death of an experienced pilot.

  Though tail rotor failure, or “catastrophic severance,” would make Powers’ situation much more serious than a mere engine failure, all helicopter pilots are trained to handle such an event with other emergency procedures. By maintaining his forward air speed at sixty knots, Powers could have accomplished what is known as a “run-on landing” at Van Nuys. It will never be known if Powers diagnosed his problem at the time of failure, and if not, he would have encountered severe control problems if he slowed the aircraft to see what was wrong. This would be a more plausible answer to what happened that day.

  Whether Gary Powers knew anything of importance concerning the Kennedy assassination is unknown. But his ties to the CIA, the U-2 proje
cts at Atsugi, Japan—where Oswald was based—and the fact that he spent a year in Russia while Oswald was in the Soviet Union might provide a clue. Powers was forty-seven.

  Cause of death: Helicopter crash—possibly due to sabotage.1

  Plumlee investigated the specifics of the crash and also concluded that it was sabotage:

  I have always believed the Jet Ranger was sabotaged involving the tail rotor assembly.”

  That was a weakness of the Jet Ranger, to begin with, making it the weakest point for sabotage:

  There was “a known fault of the Jet Ranger, or ‘Death Ranger’, as it was known in some circles, because of the tail rotor failures on some early models of the Ranger. The Long Ranger was a later modification of the Jet Ranger and the tail rotor assembly was strengthened and modified at that time.”2

  An eyewitness to the crash said he heard a popping noise, looked up, and “saw the back prop fall off.” That too sounds like sabotage, not like running out of fuel, does it not?

  That eyewitness report of the prop flying off also seems to be substantiated by the final radio transmission received from Gary Powers, which was the following:

  TV-4 (his handle)—Just lost—3