Eladio del Valle, member of CIA Operation 40: Murders linked to JFK assassination by CIA Operation 40. By Gualdo Hidalgo, Latin Heritage Foundation's publisher

 

 Jim Garrison eventually became convinced that a group of right-wing activists, including Ferrie, Guy Banister, Carlos Bringuier, Eladio del Valle and Clay Shaw were involved in a conspiracy with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to kill John F. Kennedy. Garrison claimed this was in retaliation for his attempts to obtain a peace settlement in both Cuba and Vietnam.

Another suspect, Eladio del Valle, was found dead in a Miami parking lot twelve hours after Ferrie's was discovered in his room. Police reported that de Valle had been tortured, shot in the heart at point-blank range, and his skull split open with an axe.

Eladio del Valle and Herminio Diaz Garcia -Santos Trafficante's bodyguard in Havana- are mentioned as gunmen who killed John F. Kennedy on 22nd November, 1963.

Just before leaving Cuba, Tony Cuesta asked to see General Fabian Escalante, the head of Cuba's G-2 Spy Agency. Cuesta told Escalante that he had been involved in the assassination of John F. Kennedy and named De Valle and Herminio Diaz Garcia as being shooters in the conspiracy.

Eladio del Valle’s and David Ferrie’s deaths occurred just as New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison, who was investigating Kennedy’s assassination, was planning to drag them into his probe. Eladio del Valle died three days after being contacted by Garrison, and Ferrie’s death came just days before Garrison planned to arrest him as part of his investigation.


CIA Operation 40 killed JFK and more than a hundred witnesses

Operation 40 was the code name for a Central Intelligence Agency-sponsored counterintelligence group composed mostly by Cuban exiles. It was approved by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in March 1960, after the January 1959 Cuban Revolution. The group was presided over by Richard Nixon and included Admiral Arleigh Burke, Livingston Merchant of the State Department, National Security Adviser Gordon Gray, and Allen Dulles of the CIA.
CIA assembled virtually the same team that was involved in the removal of Arbenz: Tracey Barnes, Richard Bissell, David Morales, David Atlee Phillips, E. Howard Hunt, Rip Robertson and Henry Hecksher. Added to this list were several agents who had been involved in undercover operations in Germany: Ted Shackley, Tom Clines and William Harvey. Tracy Barnes functioned as head of the Cuban Task Force. He called a meeting on January 18, 1960, in his office in Quarters Eyes, near the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, which the navy had lent while new buildings were being constructed in Langley. Those who gathered there included Howard Hunt, future head of the Watergate team and a writer of crime novels; Frank Bender, a friend of Trujillo; Jack Esterline, who had come straight from Venezuela where he directed a CIA group; psychological warfare expert David A. Phillips, and others. Vice-President Richard Nixon was the Cuban "case officer," and had assembled an important group of businessmen headed by George Bush Sr and Jack Crichton, both Texas oilmen, as fundraisers.

Operation 40, Mexico-City-1963.jpg

Special operation charged with assasinating Fidel Castro. Decided to kill a bunch of other people instead.

    Other members: William King Harvey; Thomas G. Clines; Porter Goss; Gerry Patrick Hemming; David Sanchez Morales; Carl Elmer Jenkins; Bernard Barker William Robert “Tosh” Plumlee; William C. Bishop;    Ted Shackley – CIA station-chief in Miami after the Bay of Pigs invasion; Jose Sanjenis Perdomo – former Chief of Police during Cuban President Carlos Prio’s regime; Frank Sturgis; Felix Rodriguez
Antonio Veciana; Luis Posada Carriles; Orlando Bosch; Rafael ‘Chi Chi’ Quinterol Roland Masferrer;     Eladio del Vallel Guillermo Novo; Carlos Bringuier;     Eugenio Martinez (‘Musculito’); Antonio Cuesta;     Hermino Diaz Garcia;m Juan Manuel Salvat;     Ricardo Morales Navarrete;  Isidro Borjas; Virgilio Paz Romero; Jose Dionisio Suarez; Felipe Rivero;     Gaspar ‘Gasparito’ Jimenez Escobedo; Nazario Sargent; Pedro Luis Diaz Lanz;  Jose Basulto; Alvin Ross; William “Rip” Robertson; Ricardo Morales Navarrete; Bernard Barker; Paulino Sierra; Barry Seal
 



Eladio del Valle was tortured and then killed within hours of his friend David Ferrie.
Eladio del Valle was born in Cuba. He was a supporter of Fulgencio Batista and served as a congressman in Havana. He went into exile just before Fidel Castro gained power in January, 1959.
Del Valle moved to Florida where he was active in the Free Cuba Committee, an organization formed by Sergio Arcacha Smith. He also worked for Santo Trafficante and with his friend, David Ferrie he was involved in fire-bombing sugar fields in Cuba.
During his investigation into the assassination of John F. Kennedy case, Jim Garrison wanted to interview Eladio del Valle to obtain information against Clay Shaw. However, he was unable to find him.
In 1966 Bernardo De Torres joined Jim Garrison in his investigation of the assassination of President Kennedy. William Turner, the author of Rearview Mirror: Looking Back at the FBI, the CIA and Other Tails (2001) has argued: "A veteran of the Bay of Pigs, De Torres showed up on Garrison's doorstep early in the probe, saying he was a private detective from Miami who wanted to help, and dropping the name of Miami DA Richard Gerstein, a friend of Garrison's, as an opener. In retrospect, Garrison remembered that every lead De Torres developed ended up in a box canyon. He also learned that De Torres was forwarding reports on his investigation to the Miami CIA station."
Garrison asked Bernardo De Torres to find Eladio del Valle so he could be interviewed about the assassination. Del Valle, a wealthy former Cuban congressmen under Fulgencio Batista, had headed the Free Cuba Committee in Florida, and reportedly had links to Santos Trafficante. (15) He was also a close friend and associate of David Ferrie, another man who Garrison was investigating. "In the course of checking out all possible associates of Oswald's in the city, we discovered that the alleged assassin had been seen during the summer with a man named David Ferrie. I got my people on the telephones right away to investigate a possible Oswald-Ferrie relationship." Del Valle had reportedly paid Ferrie $1,500 a mission to make air raids against Cuba.

Garrison became suspicious of De Torres and on 7th January, 1967, he ordered his staff "under no circumstances" to offer any information to him. Four days later he wrote at the top of one of De Torres' memos: "His reliability is not established." Garrison became convinced that De Torres was working for JM/WAVE, the Central Intelligence Agency station in Miami. Declassified documents show that De Torres gave the CIA's final report on Jim Garrison on 2nd March, 1967, According to Gaeton Fonzi, De Torres's CIA handler was Paul Bethel. 

Gaeton Fonzi points out in a memorandum to Robert Tanenbaum: "Torres was among a group of ten Cubans who helped Secret Service men protect President Kennedy when he visited Miami four days before his assassination. The latter is interesting because the only one who ever had a story of localities assisting Secret Service men here in Miami on Kennedy's visit was Jerry Patrick Hemming, who says he also was involved in that security effort. Miami Police reports list Torres as an associate of Anselmo Leon Alliegro, an old pal of Hemming's. Police once found a quantity of explosives and weapons in Alliegro's home. Alliegro said they belonged to Torres."

Antonio (Tony) Cuesta was born in Cuba in 1928. Cuesta was a successful businessman in Havana. He was opposed to the government of Fidel Castro and moved to the United States. He helped to establish two anti-Castro exile groups: Alpha 66 and Commandos Liberty. He worked closely with Eddie Bayo, who was later involved in Operation Tilt.
Cuesta carried out raids on Cuba and was involved in the sinking of the Russian merchantman Baku. His activities were reported in Life Magazine in the spring of 1963 by his close friend, Tom Dunkin.
Cuesta was captured during a mission at Monte Barreto in the Miramar district of Cuba on 29th May, 1966. A member of his team, Herminio Diaz Garcia, was killed during the raid. Cuesta, who always vowed that Castro would never take him alive, attempted suicide by setting off a grenade, which blinded him and blew off his right hand. Cuesta spent a long time in hospital as a result of his serious injuries.
In 1978 President Jimmy Carter arranged for a group of imprisoned exiles to be released. This included Cuesta. Just before leaving Cuba Cuesta asked to see General Fabian Escalante, the head of Cuba's G-2 Spy Agency. Cuesta told Escalante that he had been involved in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. He also named Herminio Diaz Garcia and Eladio del Valle as being involved in the conspiracy. Cuesta asked Escalante not to make this information "made public because I am returning to my family in Miami - and this could be very dangerous."

Eladio del Valle was murdered on 22nd February, 1967. Police reported that del Valle had been tortured, shot in the heart at point-blank range, and his skull split open with an axe. His murder has never been solved. He died only hours after his friend, David Ferrie. Diego Gonzales Tendera, a close friend, later claimed de Valle was murdered because of his involvement in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. A senior member of the Cuban Secret Service, Fabian Escalante, agreed: "In 1962 Eladio Del Valle tried to infiltrate Cuba with a commando group of 22 men but their boat had an English key - a little island. In the middle of 1962. Of course, we knew this. I tell you about this, because one of our agents who was one of the people helping to bring this group to Cuba, was a man of very little education. They talked English on many occasions on this little island with Eladio Del Valle told this person, on many occasions, that Kennedy must be killed to solve the Cuban problem. After that we had another piece of information on Eladio Del Valle. This was offered to us by Tony Cuesta. He told us that Eladio Del Valle was one of the people involved in the assassination plot against Kennedy."
In 1975 Harry Dean claimed he had been an undercover agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In 1962 he infiltrated the John Birch Society. He later reported that General Edwin Walker and John Rousselot had hired two gunman, Eladio del Valle and Loran Hall, to kill President John F. Kennedy. However, Dean was unable to provide any evidence to back up his claim.


Robert Morrow, First Hand Knowledge (1992)
    My involvement with the plans to assassinate John F. Kennedy commenced at the end of June, 1963. On July 1, I was contacted by (CIA head of Domestic Operations Officer) Tracy Barnes. He 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.
    One day later I received a second phone call. It was Eladio del Valle calling from, I assumed, Miami. He asked me to supply him with four transceivers which were not detectable by any communications equipment then available on the market. Although his request seemed impossible, I told him that I had an idea which might fulfill his requirement. I could provide him with sub-miniaturized units whose operation would be confined to a range of fifty or one hundred kilohertz. To operate any sizable distance, the units would require an antenna at least several feet in length. A wire taped to the user's leg would easily suffice for this purpose. The set-up would not be pretty, but I could assure him that no one would be monitoring these low frequencies.
    Del Valle then requested that I deliver the transceivers and the rifles to David Ferrie. I was surprised by Ferrie's involvement in the transaction. Barnes, in our previous conversation, had neither informed me that the rifles were being made for Clay Shaw in New Orleans nor that David Ferrie would be the person responsible for picking them up once I had completed the required alterations. Del Valle explained to me that the rifles and communications equipment were for his Free Cuba Committee, and that Clay and Ferrie were assisting him in the operation. I assured him that the equipment would be ready on time as I would immediately order the Motorola-made special transceiver units. Motorola was manufacturing the units for railroad communications equipment; they were relatively easy to secure.
    The radio transceivers for del Valle were more difficult to create than I had originally thought they'd be. An unusual amount of power was required for them to transmit over any significant distance. To solve this dilemma, I included an extra pack of four "D" type battery cells to be used for transmitting purposes only. The pack was plugged into the transceiver unit and could easily be carried in the user's pocket. Ironically, I later learned from del Valle that the transmission time was to be limited to five minutes, which meant my additional adjustments had been unnecessary.


General Fabian Escalante, Chief of  Seguridad del Estado, G2 (Security of the State, Cuba )- Cuban Officials and JFK Historians Conference (7th December, 1995)
    Eladio Del Valle worked for two police services - military intelligence and the traditional police. He was in charge of narcotics. He was also a legislature in the government - a representative. He was from a little town from the south of Havana. He was a captain in the merchant marines. In 1958 he was doing business dealings with Santos Trafficante in a little coastal town south of Havana. There he brought in contraband whose destination was Santos Trafficante. When the revolution triumphed, he went to Miami. Eladio Del Valle went to Miami. He settled in Miami, we don't know the address and he allied himself with Rolando Masferrer and other Batista supporters and they formed an organization called the Anti Communist Cuban Liberation Movement. From that moment on, Eladio was involved in many project against Cuba. But as I told you yesterday, we managed to penetrate this organization. And we came to know of a lot of projects, efforts, for an invasion of Cuba in secret. In order to provide arms to internal rebel groups, they needed David Ferrie as the pilot on these flights. In 1962 Eladio Del Valle tried to infiltrate Cuba with a commando group of 22 men but their boat had an English key - a little island. In the middle of 1962. Of course, we knew this. I tell you about this, because one of our agents who was one of the people helping to bring this group to Cuba, was a man of very little education. They talked English on many occasions on this little island with Eladio Del Valle told this person, on many occasions, that Kennedy must be killed to solve the Cuban problem. After that we had another piece of information on Eladio Del Valle. This was offered to us by Tony Cuesta. He told us that Eladio Del Valle was one of the people involved in the assassination plot against Kennedy. As you know, he was taken prisoner and he was very thankful to be taken back - he was blind.
    He asked that this information not be public. I am only saying it here, because he is already dead. It is finished. We didn't have any other kind of information to give. There are some things you must respect. He gave us this information and in 1978 we didn't know if it was true or not. In 1978, we were not aware of the participation of Eladio Del Valle. We didn't know who he was. Remember that I explained to you yesterday that when the Select Committee when they came to Havana - they didn't give us any specific information. They just came to question us. We didn't know the relationships.


Dick Russell, The Man Who Knew Too Much(1992)
    The most intriguing news to come out of the Nassau conference, however, was Escalante's revelation about what another leader of the Alpha 66 group allegedly told him. As we have seen, Nagell would never reveal the true identities of "Angel" and "Leopoldo" - the two Cuban exiles who he said had deceived Oswald into believing they were Castro operatives. Instead, on several occasions when I prodded him, Nagell had cleverly steered the conversation toward a man named Tony Cuesta - indicating that this individual possessed the knowledge that he himself chose not to express. Cuesta, as noted earlier, had been taken prisoner in Cuba during a raid in 1966.

    "Cuesta was blinded (in an explosion) and spent most of his time in the hospital," Escalante recalled. In 1978, he was among a group of imprisoned exiles released through an initiative of the Carter Administration. "A few days before he was to leave," according to Escalante, "I had several conversations with Cuesta. He volunteered, 'I want to tell you something very important, but I do not want this made public because I am returning to my family in Miami - and this could be very dangerous.' I think this was a little bit of thanks on his part for the medical care he received."

    Escalante said he was only revealing Cuesta's story because the man had died in Miami in 1994. In a declaration he is said to have written for the Cubans, Cuesta named two other exiles as having been involved in plotting the Kennedy assassination. Their names were Eladio del Valle and Herminio Diaz Garcia.


Metropolitan Dade County
OFFICE OF THE MEDICAL EXAMINER
1700 N.W. 1th Avenue
Miami, Florida 33136

[handwritten note = AKA - Eladio Del Valle y Gutierrez]

Case No. 420 A
NAME OF DECEASED - Eladio Ceferino DelValle   Age 45 - Race White - Sex male

ADDRESS - 3101 N.E. 164th Street, [handwritten = North Miami Beach]

PLACE OF DEATH - Found: Automobile, parking lot, Corner 37th Avenue and N.W. 7th Street

TIME AND DATE DEATH:
FOUND: 1:30 a.m. 2/23/67

INVESTIGATING AGENCY - Miami Homicide

POLICE INVESTIGATOR - Det Giordano

HISTORY: At 1:30 a.m. 2/23/67, a police officer, on routine patrol, noted a 1966 four door Fleetwood Cadillac parked in the middle of a parking lot at N.W. 37th Ave. and 7th Street.  Vehicle had also been seen in same area at 10:30 p.m. 2/22/67.  Upon checking officer found the deceased on floor in rear of automobile, behind the right front seat, with legs drawn up beneath him.  Examination of body revealed multiple lacerations of scalp and a puncture would on the left chest.  Rigor complete in neck, jaw and all extremities.

PRIMARY CAUSE OF DEATH: Multiple blunt impacts of head and gunshot wound of chest.

CONT. CAUSE OF DEATH: [blank]

TOXICOLOGICAL FINDINGS: CSF - Negative alcohol

PROBABLE MANNER OF DEATH - Homicide

ONSET OF TERMINAL EVENT - Motor Vehicle

AUTOPSY - 2/23/67

BY - Peter L. Lardizabal, M.D.

FUNERAL DIRECTOR - Rivero [Rivero written in cursive -- Caballero crossed out]

[typed on bottom margin]  M.E.   FINGERPRINTED

[reverse side of page]
[written on top margin = DOB 8/26/21]

IDENTIFICATION OF BODY

I HEREBY IDENTIFY THE BODY VIEWED BY ME AT THE OFFICE OF MEDICAL EXAMINER, IN THE PRESENCE OF Peter L. Lardizabal, M.D. on 2/23/67 at 11:00 a.m.
AS THAT OF Eladio Ceferino DelValle.

SIGNATURE - (Eladio del Valle Jr.)

ADDRESS - 3101 N.E. 164th Street
North Miami Beach, Florida
TEL NO. - 945 9487
RELATIONSHIP - Son