Betrayal

[Dealey Joe]

Robert D. Morrow was born in about 1930. After attending Pennsylvania Military College he became an engineer in Pittsburgh. In 1956 he joined Martin Company as a senior engineer in Baltimore, Maryland.In January, 1958, Morrow moved to Washington where he set up an independent laboratory at his home in Hazelwood Avenue. For the next six months he works with Stan Clark on the Doomsday Project. In July he joined the Neurology Project with Dr. John Seipel of Georgetown University.Mario Kohly arrived in the United States in February, 1959, and began organizing exile groups against Castro. Soon afterwards Kohly met Marshall Diggs. In March, 1960, Diggs recruited Morrow to work for Kohly. Three months later Morrow met Tracy Barnes and agreed to be Kohly's CIA contact.Kohly agreed to accept help from the CIA in overthrowing Castro and in July, 1960, established the Cuban Revolutionary Council (CRC). According to Morrow, the CRC informed John F. Kennedy of CIA plans to invade Cuba during the 1960 Democratic National Convention. Morrow also claimed that Kohly met Richard Nixon and the CIA in October, 1960. This resulted in the formation of Operation 40.In March, 1961, Kohly's 300 man guerrilla army in the Escambray Mountains was decimated by Castro's forces. This damaged the potential success of the Bay of Pigs operation. Kohly now changed his strategy and with the help of Morrow he started a counterfeiting operation to undermine Cuban economy.Morrow continued to work for the CIA and he traveled to France to pick up a package for Tracy Barnes. While in Europe he bought arms for Kohly's new army.In July, 1963, Morrow claims that Barnes: "requested that I purchase four Mannlicher 7.35 mm surplus rifles. According to Barnes, the rifles were available in the Baltimore area from Sunny's Supply Stores. Upon my agreement to make the purchase, Barnes requested that I alter the forepiece of each rifle so that the rifles could be dismantled, hidden and reassembled quickly. I thought this last request odd until I was informed that the rifles were to be used for a clandestine operation."The following day, Morrow claimed that Eladio del Valle asked him to purchase four transceivers. In August 1963, Morrow delivered these rifles and transceivers to David Ferrie. Morrow believed that that the idea was to blame Fidel Castro for the assassination of John F. Kennedy in order to trigger an invasion of Cuba.In October, 1963, Mario Kohly was arrested by the FBI for taking part in this counterfeiting operation. Despite evidence provided by Morrow that this was a CIA operation, Kohly was convicted in April, 1964. He was sentenced to two years in prison.In 1976 Morrow published Betrayal: A Reconstruction of Certain Clandestine Events from the Bay of Pigs to the Assassination of John F. Kennedy. The book was a partially fictionalized account of what Morrow experienced between 1958 and 1964. In his book, Morrow argues that Lee Harvey Oswald went to the Soviet Union as a CIA agent. On his return he became a FBI informant.According to Morrow in 1963 Jack Ruby, Eladio del Valle, Guy Banister, David Ferrie and Clay Shaw organized a plot to kill John F. Kennedy. This group manipulated events to make sure that Oswald would be identified as the assassin. The actual killer was an unnamed man impersonating Oswald. This man killed J. D. Tippit when he refused to go along with the plan to kill Lee Harvey Oswald who was waiting in the Texas Theatre. When Oswald was captured alive Ruby was forced to murder him in Dallas Police Station.His next book was First Hand Knowledge (1992). Morrow claimed it was an autobiographical account of what he knew about the assassination of John F. Kennedy. According to Morrow, the major players in the plot included Tracy Barnes, Mario Kohly, William Harvey, Marshall Diggs, Carlos Marcello, Santo Trafficante, Guy Banister, David Ferrie, Clay Shaw, Eladio del Valle, Sergio Arcacha Smith, Rolando Masferrer, Michel Mertz and Thomas Davis.Researchers into the Kennedy assassination have been highly critical of Morrow. For example, this is what Ulric Shannon had to say in his review of First Hand Knowledge: "Morrow describes Ferrie as receiving a serious flesh wound in the left shoulder during the Bay of Pigs invasion. Yet researcher Bob Harris contacted the New Orleans Coroner's Office and spoke to an assistant coroner who was familiar with Ferrie's autopsy. Indeed, Ferrie had no scar of any kind on his left shoulder. Other examples of Morrow's ignorance of his supposed acolytes revolve around Clay Shaw. For instance, Morrow claims that Shaw and Jack Ruby were very closely involved in planning of the assassination. Yet no other source, credible or otherwise, has ever suggested that Shaw and Ruby even knew each other. Morrow also paints Shaw as one of the more rabid right-wingers in the New Orleans area, even though all that is known about Shaw (including recently disclosed private correspondence) indicates that he was liberal in his thinking."At a conference on 28th June, 1991, Morrow claimed that: "The assassination of President Kennedy was, to put it simply, an aniti-Castro 'provocation', an act designed to be blamed on Castro to justify a punitive American invasion of the island. Such action would most clearly benefit the Mafia chieftains who had lost their gambling holdings in Havana because of Castro, and CIA agents who had lost their credibility with the Cuban exile freedom fighters from the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion."