Cuban exile told sons he trained Oswald for CIA

[Jon Banks]

Miami Herald:

Cuban exile told sons he trained Oswald, JFK’s accused assassin, at a secret CIA camp

Almost 40 years after his death following a bar brawl in Key Biscayne, Ricardo Morales, known as “Monkey” — contract CIA worker, anti-Castro militant, counter-intelligence chief for Venezuela, FBI informant and drug dealer — returned to the spotlight Thursday morning when one of his sons made a startling claim on Spanish-language radio: Morales, a sniper instructor in the early 1960s in secret camps where Cuban exiles and others trained to invade Cuba, realized in the hours after President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas in 1963 that the accused killer, Lee Harvey Oswald, had been one of his sniper trainees. Morales also told his two sons that two days before the assassination, his CIA handler told him and his “clean-up” team to go to Dallas for a mission. But after the tragic events, they were ordered to go back to Miami without learning what the mission was about.

“My brother asked ‘Who killed John F. Kennedy?’ and his answer was, ‘I didn’t do it but I was in Dallas two days before waiting for orders. We were the cleaning crew just in case something bad had to be done.’ After the assassination, they did not have to do anything and returned to Miami,” his son said on the radio show. Morales Jr. said his father told them he did not know of the plans to assassinate Kennedy. “He knew Kennedy was coming to Dallas, so he imagines something is going to happen, but he doesn’t know the plan,” he said. “In these kinds of conspiracies and these big things, nobody knows what the other is doing.” Morales also knew Oswald, his son claims. “When my old man was training in a CIA camp — he did not tell me where — he was helping to train snipers: other Cubans, Latin Americans, and there were a few Americans,” he said. “When he saw the photo of Lee Harvey Oswald [after the assassination] he realized that this was the same character he had seen on the CIA training field. He saw him, he saw the name tag, but he did not know him because he was not famous yet, but later when my father sees him he realizes that he is the same person.”

Read more at: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/article255356661.html#storylink=cpy

[Alan J. Ford]

Birds of a feather? ---->

https://www.maryferrell.org/pages/David_Morales_-_We_Took_Care_of_That_SOB.html

[Charles Collins]

Miami Herald:
Read more at: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/article255356661.html#storylink=cpy

So, do we know when and where this allegedly took place?

[Jon Banks]

So, do we know when and where this allegedly took place?

His son says he doesn’t know where the camp was.

We don’t know if Oswald ever visited the Miami area but Louisiana had some anti-Castro related training camps too.

[Charles Collins]

His son says he doesn’t know where the camp was.

We don’t know if Oswald ever visited the Miami area but Louisiana had some anti-Castro related training camps too.

I didn’t expect that there was anything except ambiguous allegations allegedly made by someone who is no longer alive. Yawn…

[Jon Banks]

I didn’t expect that there was anything except ambiguous allegations allegedly made by someone who is no longer alive. Yawn…

A common problem with most of these reports of people who claim to have knowledge of a conspiracy to kill JFK.

It sounds plausible given that the CIA is still cagey about what they were doing in New Orleans in 1963 and how much they knew about Oswald before the assassination but at this point there's no way to verify the claim. 

[Jon Banks]

Redacted JFK Files Show Ricardo ‘Monkey’ Morales Was a Trusted CIA Operative and FBI Informant

Ricardo Morales, the Miami man who told his son he met accused presidential assassin Lee Harvey Oswald in a CIA training camp, was considered a credible source by the Agency and FBI. His heavily-redacted 130-page CIA personnel file, among the JFK assassination records whose release was postponed by the White House on October 22.

While the details of the story told by his son Ricardo Jr. on a Miami radio station this week have not been corroborated, the declassified portions of CIA files show that Morales, nicknamed Mono, Spanish for monkey) provided reams of information about the personnel and operations of the Cuban intelligence services. Approved for sabotage missions in March 1964 under the code name AMDESK-1, Morales was paid $200 a month. He reported on an infiltration operation run by a group called the Movimiento Democratic Cristiano (MDC) in June 1964 but was never used on any mission by the CIA station in Miami. He was terminated as a CIA agent in September 1964 for a “security violation.”

Morales and Angleton

Morales, however, was immediately re-recruited for another secret mission in Congo run by the Agency’s Special Operations Division (SOD). Within three weeks he was approved for CIA counterintelligence activities, indicating he was known to James Angleton, the Agency’s top counterspy.

The CIA memos about the operation, code named WIPEGASUS, are among the redacted files whose release the White House postponed on October 22. The purpose of the PEGASUS operation is not known. The redacted memos can be found on the web site of the Mary Ferrell Foundation, which houses the largest online collection of JFK assassination records.

Morales and Oswald

In his appearance on Miami’s Actualidad Radio 1040 AM, Ricardo Morales, Jr. recounted his father telling him two stories.

Morales said he was ordered on a CIA mission in Dallas shortly before November 22, 1963, whose purpose was unknown. Morales Sr. did not identify the case officer who allegedly sent him on this mission. The available record shows Morales had a CIA handler, code named “Alexander Ratwick,” but not until 1964.

Morales also told his son that he met Oswald in a CIA training camp. He didn’t tell his son  when or where. There was a training camp near New Orleans where Oswald lived in 1963, that was run by an anti-Castro group called the Movimiento Democratico Cristiano (MDC). Morales is known to have informed the CIA about MDC activities in 1964.

When Morales’s anti-Castro compatriots bombed a Polish ship and other communist targets in 1968, his fingerprints were found at one of the bombing scenes. The FBI received testimony that the explosives came from the CIA. Morales then became a witness for U.S. prosecutors. He wore a wire for the FBI while meeting with other Cuban suspects in the case. In a 1972 memo, the chief of the Agency’s Western Hemisphere division said the FBI considered Morales “honest and objective” as an informant.

Morales’s career as terrorist and informant grew ever more complex, as detailed in a mind-bending (and paywalled) Harper’s magazine cover story in January 1982. Morales was shot to death in a MIami bar in December 1982.

https://jfkfacts.org/redacted-jfk-files-show-ricardo-monkey-morales-was-a-trusted-cia-operative-and-fbi-informant/


Interesting stuff

[Charles Collins]

From the article linked to in the original post:


The “Monkey,” a former intelligence agent for the Castro government in the early days of the revolution, later worked for or collaborated with the CIA, the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration, Israel’s Mossad and Venezuela’s DISIP intelligence agency during the 1960s and ‘70s. According to CIA documents declassified in 2017, Morales was terminated as a CIA contract worker in 1964 after a mission in the Congo because he was “’too wise’ and not too clever for own good.”


Read more at: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/article255356661.html#storylink=cpy


This guy worked for Castro? Now it does start to get interesting…