During the time of the governments of Ramón Grau San Martín and Carlos Prío Socarrás, he was involved in several personal attacks, being a man of trust of the gangster Jesús González Cartas aka "El Extraño" and Luis Fernández de la Cámara "Ojos Gachos".
In July 1948 he participated in the murder of Rogelio Hernández Vega at the Consulate of Cuba in Mexico.
In June 1951 he was arrested for being involved in gangster acts that caused the death of one person and two other injuries in the vicinity of the Plaza del Vapor in Havana.
In May 1957 at the service of Dominican dictator Rafael Leónidas Trujillo was involved in an assassination attempt against President José Figueres of Costa Rica.
At the end of the 1950s, he established relations with the head of the mafia in Havana Santo Trafficante, participating in gansterile activities at his services. He worked as the security director of the casino at the Hotel Habana Riviera and in 1960, following the arrest in Havana of Santos Trafficante, he served as one of his bodyguards.
On April 17, 1961, he was arrested on suspicion of conspiracy activities together with Alicia Mckenzie Sánchez, telephone operator of the Habana Riviera Hotel.
Herminio Diaz Garcia was born in Cuba in 1923. He was a member of the Cuban Restaurant Workers Union and worked as a cashier at the Hotel Habana-Rivera. Later he became involved in illegal activities and eventually became a bodyguard for Santos Trafficante.
Diaz Garcia killed Pipi Hernandez in 1948 at the Cuban Consulate in Mexico. In 1957 he was involved with an assassination attempt against President Jose Figures of Costa Rica.
Diaz Garcia moved to the United States in July, 1963, where he worked for Tony Varona. Some researchers believe that Dia Garcia was one of the gunman who killed John F. Kennedy on 22nd November, 1963.
In December, 1963, Dia Garcia was involved in an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate Fidel Castro. He was also involved in providing weapons to anti-Castro groups.
Diaz Garcia was killed on a mission at Monte Barreto in the Miramar district of Cuba on 29th May, 1966. Tony Cuesta was captured during the mission. 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. Herminio Diaz Garcia is buried in Columbus, Havana.
In 1978 President Jimmy Carter arranged for a group of imprisoned exiles in Cuba to be released. This included Tony Cuesta who was involved in an attack on Cuba in 1966. Just before leaving Cuba Cuesta asked to see Fabian Escalante. Cuesta told Escalante that he had been involved in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. He also named 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."
Tony Cuesta returned to Miami and died in 1994. The following year, Wayne Smith, chief of the Centre for International Policy in Washington, arranged a meeting on the assassination of John F. Kennedy, in Nassau, Bahamas. Others in attendance were: Gaeton Fonzi, Dick Russell, Noel Twyman, Anthony Summers, Peter Dale Scott, Jeremy Gunn, John Judge, Andy Kolis, Peter Kornbluh, Mary and Ray LaFontaine, Jim Lesar, John Newman, Alan Rogers, Russ Swickard, Ed Sherry, and Gordon Winslow.
Some high-level Cuban officials attended the conference. This included Fabian Escalante, Carlos Lechuga, former Cuban diplomat, and Arturo Rodriguez, a State Security official. Escalante revealed details of Cuesta's confession. He also informed the group they had a spy in the anti-Castro community in Miami and knew about the plot to kill Kennedy.
Alvin Ross;
The incident occurred late Sunday near the Comodoro Yacht Club in suburban Miramar, when Commandos L, a Miami-based action group, put Sandalio Herminio Diaz and Armando Romero ashore from a 23-foot boat, the Cuban communiqué said.
Tony Cuesta, 39 - year - old group leader, and Eugenio Zaldivar Xiques were captured after being seriously wounded in a gunfight 10 miles off the coast. Two other crewmen, listed only as "Guillermo" and "Roberto" (alias Cara Vieja), were missing - and presumed drowned.
In Miami, where Cuesta has lived since 1960, his wife said she had no further information about the fate of her husband.
"I hope and pray he is all right," said Mrs. Cuesta. "But regardless of what happens, we must continue the fight against Castro. I knew before he set out that the operation was risky."
According to the Cuban Interior Ministry communiqué Commandos L launched the infiltration attempt from Marathon. The Castro officials made their usual claim that the group was sponsored by the American government.
"The objective, according to the prisoners' confession, was to assassinate the prime minister in order to create conditions favorable for an imperialist aggression," the communiqué claimed.
Government-controlled newspapers in Havana carried pictures of material allegedly seized from the boat, including hand grenades, plastic explosives, submachine guns and anti-Castro leaflets.
The infiltration try came immediately after Castro announced an island-wide combat alert against "imperialist aggressors" following a series of incidents at the U. S. Naval Base at Guantanamo in which an armed Cuban soldier was shot and killed.
Last year, Commandos L teamed up with the Cuban Referendum in Exile (RECE), sponsored by rum millionaire Jose M. Bosch, to carry out a series of attacks against Cuba.
However, Ernesto Freyre, of RECE, denied knowledge of the Sunday raid, stating, "I am sorry but there is nothing I can say."
In November, the two groups joined with the 30th of November Movement here to strafe a police station on the Havana waterfront. Three years ago, Cuesta led a Commandos L raid against the Russian freighter Baku in a Cuban port which prompted a Soviet protest note to Washington.
Sunday's infiltration attempt came on the heels of a claim by the Second Front of the Escambray-Alpha 66 that they raided a naval past at Tarara Beach, same 20 miles east of Havana, on May 19 and slipped back to a "secret Caribbean base" without losing men or equipment.
Despite the latest failure, exile activists here appeared to intensify plans for future anti-Castro action.
Manuel Antonio de Varona, former Cuban prime minister and head of the Rescate movement, flew here from his exile home in New York to coordinate plans for an action group merger that reportedly included the Second Front.
Varona, who served briefly as head of the now-defunct Cuban Revolutionary Council, said, "We must not give Castro a breather. There should be well-coordinated actions from outside to encourage the people inside to work toward overthrow of the dictator."
Herminio Diaz is one of the people we feel was most definitely involved in the plot against Kennedy. Herminio Diaz died in Cuba in May 1966. He had a confrontation against Cuban forces when he tried to enter Havana illegally.
Tony Cuesta returned to Miami and died in 1994. The following year, Wayne Smith, chief of the Centre for International Policy in Washington, arranged a meeting on the assassination of John F. Kennedy, in Nassau, Bahamas. Others in attendance were: Gaeton Fonzi, Dick Russell, Noel Twyman, Anthony Summers, Peter Dale Scott, Jeremy Gunn, John Judge, Andy Kolis, Peter Kornbluh, Mary and Ray LaFontaine, Jim Lesar, John Newman, Alan Rogers, Russ Swickard, Ed Sherry, and Gordon Winslow.
Some high-level Cuban officials attended the conference. This included Fabian Escalante, Carlos Lechuga, former Cuban diplomat, and Arturo Rodriguez, a State Security official. Escalante revealed details of Cuesta's confession. He also informed the group they had a spy in the anti-Castro community in Miami and knew about the plot to kill Kennedy.
This photograph was taken in a nightclub in Mexico City on 22nd January, 1963. It has been argued by Daniel Hopsicker that the men in the photograph are all members of Operation 40. Hopsicker suggests that the man closest to the camera on the left is Felix Rodriguez, next to him is Porter Goss and Barry Seal.Hopsicker adds that Frank Sturgis is attempting to hide his face with his coat. It has been claimed that in the picture are Albertao 'Loco' Blanco (3rd right) and Jorgo Robreno (4th right).
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. Special operation allegedly charged with assasinating Fidel Castro (killed a bunch of other people instead),
It seems that Operation 40, created to remove Fidel Castro, had been redirected to kill Kennedy, as part of a freelance operation. David Atlee Phillips in the unpublished manuscript entitled The AMLASH Legacy wrote: "I was one of those officers who handled Lee Harvey Oswald... We gave him the mission of killing Fidel Castro in Cuba... I don't know why he killed Kennedy. But I do know he used precisely the plan we had devised against Castro. Thus the CIA did not anticipate the president's assassination, but it was responsible for it. I share that guilt." And Frank Sturgis stated that "this assassination group (Operation 40) would upon orders, naturally, assassinate either members of the military or the political parties of the foreign country that you were going to infiltrate, and if necessary some of your own members who were suspected of being foreign agents."
RICHARD NIXON, THE CASE MANAGER OIF OPERATION 40November 21, 1963 - Richard M. Nixon in Dallas, Texas
CIA Nazi Rats and Miami's Castro Rats are hiding the picture of Richard NixonRivhard M Nixon appointed Colonel John Alston "Jack" Crichton, U.S. Army Special Agent OSS in Europe, Second World War.in Operation , which Warren Hinckle and William Turner described in Deadly Secrets, as the “assassins-for-hire” organization. Jack Crichton was the commanding officer of the 488th Military Intelligence Detachment.\
488th Military Intelligence Detachment
In 1956 Jack Alston Crichton
started up his own spy unit, the 488th Military Intelligence Detachment
in Dallas. Crichton served as the unit's commander under Lieutenant
Colonel George Whitmeyer, who was in overall command of all Army Reserve
units in East Texas. In an interview Crichton claimed that there were
"about a hundred men in that unit and about forty or fifty of them were
from the Dallas Police Department."
In November 1963 Jack Alston
Crichton was involved in the arrangements of the visit that President
John F. Kennedy made to Dallas. His close friend, Deputy Police Chief
George L. Lumpkin, and a fellow member of the the 488th Military
Intelligence Detachment, drove the pilot car of Kennedy's motorcade.
Also in the car was Lieutenant Colonel George Whitmeyer, commander of
all Army Reserve units in East Texas. The pilot car stopped briefly in
front of the Texas School Book Depository, where Lumpkin spoke to a
policeman controlling traffic at the corner of Houston and Elm.
As
Russ Baker points out in Family of Secrets (2008) Crichton served as
the "intelligence unit's only commander... until he retired from the
488th in 1967".
The Dallas Police preparing for the visit of President Kennedy ...
https://www.youtube.com › watchOperation 40 Members:
Alvin Ross;
Antonio Cuesta;
Antonio Veciana;
Barry Seal
Bernard Barker
Carl Elmer Jenkins;
Carlos Bringuier;
David A. Phillips
David Sanchez Morales
E. Howard Hunt,
Eladio del Valle
Eugenio Martinez (‘Musculito’);
Felipe Rivero;
Felix Rodriguez Mendigutia;
Frank Bender
Frank Sturgis;
Gaspar ‘Gasparito’ Jimenez Escobedo;
George Bush
Gerry Patrick Hemming;
Guillermo Novo;
Henry Hecksher.
Hermino Diaz Garcia;
Isidro Borjas;
Jack Crichton
Jack Esterline,
Jose Basulto;
Jose Dionisio Suarez;
Jose Sanjenis Perdomo, Chief of Police Cuban Pres Carlos Prio
Juan Manuel Salvat;
Luis Posada Carriles;
Nazario Sargent;
Orlando Bosch;
Paulino Sierra;
Pedro Luis Diaz Lanz;
Porter Goss;
Rafael ‘Chi Chi’ Quinterol
Ricardo Morales Navarrete
Richard Bissell
Rolando Masferrer;
Ted Shackley, CIA station-chief in Miami
Thomas G. Clines;
Tracy Barnes
Virgilio Paz Romero;
William C. Bishop;
William Harvey.
William Robert “Tosh” Plumlee;
William “Rip” Robertson;
Was Cuban professional hit man Herminio Diaz a second ...
Daily Mail-Oct. 16, 2013
Anthony Summers said evidence shows Herminio Diaz, who was part of the ... Before tragedy: President John F. Kennedy and his wife Jackie ..
Nov 19, 2013 - Uploaded by The Telegraph
Investigative journalist Anthony Summers, interviews a Cuban exile who claims a second gunman may have .
(1) Mary Louise Wilkinson, Miami News (31st May, 1966)
The incident occurred late Sunday near the Comodoro Yacht Club in suburban Miramar, when Commandos L, a Miami-based action group, put Sandalio Herminio Diaz and Armando Romero ashore from a 23-foot boat, the Cuban communiqué said.
Tony Cuesta, 39 - year - old group leader, and Eugenio Zaldivar Xiques were captured after being seriously wounded in a gunfight 10 miles off the coast. Two other crewmen, listed only as "Guillermo" and "Roberto" (alias Cara Vieja), were missing - and presumed drowned.
In Miami, where Cuesta has lived since 1960, his wife said she had no further information about the fate of her husband.
"I hope and pray he is all right," said Mrs. Cuesta. "But regardless of what happens, we must continue the fight against Castro. I knew before he set out that the operation was risky."
According to the Cuban Interior Ministry communiqué Commandos L launched the infiltration attempt from Marathon. The Castro officials made their usual claim that the group was sponsored by the American government.
"The objective, according to the prisoners' confession, was to assassinate the prime minister in order to create conditions favorable for an imperialist aggression," the communiqué claimed.
Government-controlled newspapers in Havana carried pictures of material allegedly seized from the boat, including hand grenades, plastic explosives, submachine guns and anti-Castro leaflets.
The infiltration try came immediately after Castro announced an island-wide combat alert against "imperialist aggressors" following a series of incidents at the U. S. Naval Base at Guantanamo in which an armed Cuban soldier was shot and killed.
Last year, Commandos L teamed up with the Cuban Referendum in Exile (RECE), sponsored by rum millionaire Jose M. Bosch, to carry out a series of attacks against Cuba.
However, Ernesto Freyre, of RECE, denied knowledge of the Sunday raid, stating, "I am sorry but there is nothing I can say."
In November, the two groups joined with the 30th of November Movement here to strafe a police station on the Havana waterfront. Three years ago, Cuesta led a Commandos L raid against the Russian freighter Baku in a Cuban port which prompted a Soviet protest note to Washington.
Sunday's infiltration attempt came on the heels of a claim by the Second Front of the Escambray-Alpha 66 that they raided a naval past at Tarara Beach, same 20 miles east of Havana, on May 19 and slipped back to a "secret Caribbean base" without losing men or equipment.
Despite the latest failure, exile activists here appeared to intensify plans for future anti-Castro action.
Manuel Antonio de Varona, former Cuban prime minister and head of the Rescate movement, flew here from his exile home in New York to coordinate plans for an action group merger that reportedly included the Second Front.
Varona, who served briefly as head of the now-defunct Cuban Revolutionary Council, said, "We must not give Castro a breather. There should be well-coordinated actions from outside to encourage the people inside to work toward overthrow of the dictator."
(2) James Richards, JFK Assassination Forum (25th June, 2004)
I'm sure there was Mafia involvement which came via John Roselli. One of the shooters (Herminio Diaz Garcia) may have come via this connection. Diaz Garcia was Trafficante's bodyguard during the Havana casino days and was most likely the man Roselli reached out to in those early days of the Castro assassination plots.
(3) Fabian Escalante, Cuban Officials and JFK Historians Conference (7th December, 1995)
Herminio Diaz is one of the people we feel was most definitely involved in the plot against Kennedy. Herminio Diaz died in Cuba in May 1966. He had a confrontation against Cuban forces when he tried to enter Havana illegally.
(4) 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.
Tag Archive for Herminio Diaz. New JFK Files: CIA drags its feet on compliance, failing to release 12 ... Tony Cuesta, anti-Castro fighter with a JFK story.
May 27, 2014 - General Escalante gave a detailed account in his book JFK: The Cuban Files. ... The sharpshooters Herminio Diaz and Armando Romero ran to ...
Nov 15, 2013 - The Cuban assassin with a deadly secret: 'I shot JFK' .... student days called Herminio Diaz Garcia, an introverted but exceptionally brave man.
Eladio del Valle was mos definitely involved as a shooter. But I'm not sure about Diaz. Unless he was the shooter on the roof.
ReplyDeleteGentlemen, thank you very much for this valuable information!
ReplyDeleteVive Cuba!
Alan Singler, U.S. Army retired
Correction to my May 2, 2020 comment. I've identified Eladio del Valle & Herminio Diaz as the two pergola shooters. There's no doubt about it.
ReplyDelete