Bill Harvey...Totally Incompetent in Nov. 1963? But Why the Secrecy?

[Benjamin Cole]

This is a fairly accurate AI synopsis of Bill Harvey, the CIA'er and his 1963 dinner in Rome with then-CIA Director John McCone, universally described as a non-nonsense sort of guy (who was close to AG Robert Kennedy, btw).


AI Overview

During a disastrous dinner in Rome in 1963, a heavily intoxicated William King Harvey physically and verbally embarrassed himself before CIA Director John McCone, sliding under the table while McCone's assistant frantically kicked his shins. This public breakdown capped years of spiraling alcoholism that ruined Harvey’s career after his exile to Rome. (Harvey also had a visible handgun in his belt.)

The Rome Dinner with John McCone

The Setting: Sent to Rome as Chief of Station in 1963 as a punitive demotion after clashing bitterly with Robert F. Kennedy over Cuba operations, Harvey was already deeply embittered.

The Incident: During an official visit by CIA Director John McCone to the Rome Station, Harvey showed up intoxicated and belligerent.

The Collapse: Harvey lost control at the dinner table, culminating in him slumping or sliding under the table while agency colleagues and assistants tried desperately to manage the catastrophe. McCone later remarked that Harvey had effectively destroyed himself and his utility to the agency.

Bill Harvey's Alcoholism

Escalation: Known as a hard-drinking, pistol-packing operative ("America's James Bond") during his prime, Harvey's heavy drinking transitioned into debilitating clinical alcoholism during the early 1960s.

Impact of Stress: The pressure of managing executive-action assassination capability like the ZR/RIFLE project, coupled with his intense hatred for Robert Kennedy, accelerated his reliance on alcohol.

Physical and Professional Decline: Stationed in Italy, his health and operational focus completely deteriorated. He suffered from severe physical toll and insomnia, leading superiors to note he was "coming apart at the seams". Medical teams were previously dispatched to intervene during his deterioration, and his alcoholism ultimately forced his exit and retirement from the CIA.

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Harvey is occasionally touted about as one of the organizers of the JFKA, as he had organized offshore assassinations and was reckless and hateful.

Of course, being an alcoholic does not exonerate Harvey in November 1963, but it makes one wonder who would have anything to do with him.

There is one outstanding question though. Some JFKA researchers have mentioned a CIA officer who said he saw Harvey on a flight to Texas in November 1963, when he was supposed to be in Rome.

Bill Harvey's specific travel records and expense vouchers for November 1963 have not been released, despite massive recent tranches of declassified JFK assassination documents. While the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has opened thousands of pages concerning Harvey’s operational history, it continues to withhold the specific financial and travel logs that would definitively confirm or deny his presence in the United States during the month of the assassination.

Travel Vouchers: The specific travel vouchers and expense claims submitted by Harvey for late 1963 remain withheld. JFK researchers and legal advocacy groups have repeatedly filed Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests and lawsuits targeting these exact documents to verify if he flew to Texas.The CIA's Stance: The agency has historically resisted releasing these specific operational logs, citing ongoing national security or method protection, leaving the question of his exact whereabouts on November 22, 1963, legally unresolved.

Hard to imagine there are legitimate national security reasons to keep secret Harvey's travel records from 63 years ago.

The JFKA never fails to intrigue.

[Steve M. Galbraith]

In an account apparently given by Harvey's deputy in Rome, Mark Wyatt, Harvey was dead drunk at the time the report of the assassination arrived (it was after 7:00 p.m. in Rome). This narrative below is from the Stockton book on Harvey, "Flawed Patriot."

"By the time of the JFK assassination, Harvey had been stationed in Rome over four months. On November 22, he was at a Mediterranean island stay-behind training site. “Bill Harvey … was unconscious. His drinking had progressed from habit to disease after his exile to Italy…. When the telex noting Kennedy’s murder was received by his deputy, Harvey had to be awakened from a late-day martini stupor. The man who hated the Kennedys … staggered to his feet.” (The news would have hit Italy sometime after seven in the evening.) “What he is reported to have said to his deputy should be taken with Harvey’s condition in mind; the auditor recorded it for posterity: ‘This was bound to happen,’ blurted Harvey, ‘and it’s probably good that it did.’ Soon, when Harvey discovered that his deputy was spending time helping local officials with condolences, he sent the deputy packing for the U.S. ‘I haven’t got time for this kind of crap, Harvey told him.’”

Mark Wyatt, Harvey’s deputy in Rome who may have been the source of the above account, told me forty years later, “One night, we got the call that JFK might not live. Bill was so pie-eyed drunk, we could hardly get him on his feet. The Italians were saying to him, ‘Mr. Harvey, we have to get you back!’ It was a stormy night, so we had to get back to the mainland by ship.” I have also heard that a high officer put his personal plane at Harvey’s disposal to get him back to Rome. Wyatt, again, enigmatically: “Harvey said to me later, ‘Mark, we tried so hard, but no one will ever know who shot JFK!’ Bill interpreted it as the Mob getting to Oswald. I felt terrible about it.”

Wyatt was also the source (he said he saw him on the plane) of the allegation that Harvey was on a flight to Dallas in November, 1963.

[Benjamin Cole]

SMG--

Thanks for the additional info.

Yes, it was CIA'er Wyatt he claimed he saw Harvey on a flight to Texas...which is a little too neat, as Wyatt was also stationed in Rome. So Wyatt, though stationed in Rome, was coincidentally in the US and saw Harvey en route to Texas? Well, anything is possible.

I suppose it is also possible a temporarily sober Harvey ventured to Texas to organize the JFKA, or at least a Harvey who held down his drinking to a mild roar.

IMHO, the JFKA was such a simple plot, I doubt it needed any sort of oversight. By circumstance, LHO had a perch and a rifle, and a great angle on limo. Someone fired from the GK, possibly as a diversion. There may have been a second gunsel behind JFK, and I suspect there was.

Larry Hancock holds the second JFKA conspiracy, that of resolutely adhering to the LNT (see the WC-FBI post-JFKA) may have been unrelated to the first JFKAC.

I agree with Hancock on this. In fact, IMHO, no one at the WC or FBI knew what happened at the JFKA, as they were not parties to the assassination. Like everyone else they had to guess after the fact, but with the instruction that the LNT prevail.

Still...why not release Harvey's travel records 63 years after the fact? That brings reasonable doubt into the picture.

[Michael T. Griffith]

Mark Wyatt, who served as Harvey’s deputy, told a French journalist in 1998 that he saw Harvey on a flight to Dallas in November 1963. Wyatt found this strange because Harvey was stationed in Italy at the time.

Based on Harvey’s flight to Dallas in November 1963 and on comments that Harvey made about JFK’s death, Wyatt told his children that he believed Harvey either had advance knowledge of the assassination or was involved in it.

Wyatt’s daughter urged him to testify to the HSCA, but he could not bring himself to do it because of his sense of loyalty to the CIA.

Who would have had anything to do with Harvey? Well, for one group, people who shared his intense hatred of JFK. He was, after all, the CIA station chief in Rome, and before that he headed the CIA's assassination program. Citing an isolated public display of bad conduct due to drunkenness does not mean Harvey was incompetent. He continued to work for the CIA into early 1967, and then he took an extended leave of absence and then retired in 1968.