Agency: HSCA
Originator: HSCA
From: FONZI, GAETON.
To: MARSTON, DAVE.
Document date: 05/25/1976
Document type: MEMORANDUM.

## Page 1

JFK Assassination System

Identification Form

Agency Information

Date:

10/13/20

AGENCY : HSCA

RECORD NUMBER :

180-10108-10061

RECORD SERIES: NUMBERED FILES.

AGENCY FILE NUMBER : 015107 (FOLDER 1 OF 4)

Released under the John

F. Kennedy

assassination Recorda

Collection Act of 1992

444 USC 2107 Notel.

Case#:WH 54653 Date:

10-23-2017

Document Information

ORIGINATOR: HSCA

FROM: FONZI, GAETON.

TO: MARSTON, DAVE.

TITLE:

DATE:

05/25/1976

PAGES:

7

SUBJECTS :

FAA.

KEY-WEST INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT.

USIA

OSWALD, LEE; POST-RUSSIAN POLITICAL & SUBVERSIVE

ACTIVITIES.

RUBY, JACK; BACKGROUND ASSOCIATES & RELATIVES OF

OSWALD,

LEADS & INFORMATION.

DOCUMENT TYPE:

MEMORANDUM.

CLASSIFICATION: Unclassified

RESTRICTIONS : Consulted

CURRENT STATUS : Withhold

DATE OF LAST REVIEW: 06/24/1993

OPENING CRITERIA:

COMMENTS :

Box 297.

IN 54653 DocId: 32262492 Page 1

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## Page 2

fy)

MEMO - 5/25/76

TO:: Dave

Marston

FROM: Gaeton

Fonzi

I returned from Key West

early this morning more frustrated than

tired.

"Although there are a

few lines I left out down there which

1'1! check back on in a

yet to be checked,

there's

coup cossibility that deure faraldom!

story may

eventually wind

For that

reason,

there should be a record. of the details of my investigation,

in addition

to

minor nuances and suspicions which

later may turn

out

to be relevant.

of.

fascinating

importantly, however, are a couple

investigative sidestreets. which

coincidentally (1

like to

believe) popped up.

initially talked

to Faraldo last Friday by telephone.

After an

hour's conversation with him,

1was. left with the impression,.as

I mentioned then, that he seemed a credible character.

There were,

however, strange. undulations. in his ability to recall.details.

Some

recollections were extremely detailed, others extremely fuzzy.

(He was absolutely sure the number of the plane was CU-T 583; yet

he wasn't too sure about the month or even the year.,. still,

there were no inconsistencies in the details he told Sarah,

those

he told to

me on the telephone

and those he told to me in

person.

And, in fact,

undulations in recollected

details may be a characteristic

of memory after. 13 years.

The basic details remain the same: The incident occurred in the.

late summer months, late July, August or early september, in, he

believes,

1963.

He is absolutely not sure of the year, but doubts

whether he would have remembered Oswald or Ruby if he had seen

them more than a year prior to the assassination.

Faraldo was

in the hospital men Kennedy was killed.

He had had,

I believe,

heart problem.

His recollection of the incident

is

thät it öccurred

not too long before that.

He was manager of the Key West International

Airport then

and

arrived

at work between 9 and 9:30 in

the morning.

The group was in

the

lobby of

the airport when

he arrived.

The lobby

has two parts to it,

the ticket counter. area and the waiting area,

both very small, a glass partition and doors separating them.

The group was in the ticket counter. area,

and most of them remained

in that area all day.

There were between 30 and 40 in the group..

They were, most of the time, in clusters, many sitting in small

circles on the floor, a few with guitars.

They were relatively

quiet, well-behaved and caused no disturbance. Neither, according

to the guy who was janitor then, did. they leave much of a mess.

They were mostly young, boys and girls,

"hippie-looking,"

a few

dressed in

olive-drab

ratigues. taraldo recalls he had a rule

against

being shirtless in the lobby

area (not a general rule sir

most Key West

establishments) and

he did have to

tell a few

,Cof

the guys, presume) who had wandered outside, removed their shirts

in the

heat,

to put them

back

on

when

they returned

to the lobby.

That's one of the

factors which

makes

him sure it was

in the summer.

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2.

Faraldo says he learned

talking with a few in the group

that they.

were going

to cut sugar cane and that they

had something to do

with the Fair Play

The leader of

the group appeared

to be a guy with a beard, but

he wasn't an obvious leader barking orders or giving commands.

Although Oswald was a part of the group, says Faraldo, he

was more distinctive than

the others'in

more and appeared a bit nervous. (That, at least, made him

distinctive to Faraldo who was then daily on the

look-out for

potential. hijackers.

Oswald was dressed casually, sport shirt

and pants.

Ruby also

casually dressed, but he spent

of the

time.not mingling with

the group but standing against

the doorway that led

the waiting area torear plane-boarding

area. (There are

corridors;: the airport building.is

rectangular;

the planes

right off

the runway and up to

the building.

Once, as Faraldo reported to Sarah, he saw Oswald approach Ruby

and heard him.ask: "Have.you.heard.anything from the Big Bird

Faraldo recalls

thinking Oswald may have been asking about

when

the plane

was coming in, but he later had doubts about that

assumption when he again overheard Oswald asked others. in the

group specifically about the time the plane was coming in.

Faraldo recalls that a plane finally did arrive late in the evening

to pick up the

group.

He says. Oswald got on the plane with the

group.: He didn't

see Ruby get on and

doesn't know if he did.

At various times during the day, Faraldo wandered around the airport

taking photographs of

the group.

He used a movie camera and a:

35-mm still camera.:

(At first

he

told me he used a Pentax 35mm,

later said he had thought about it and didn't think he had his

Pentax at the time and used either

a Leica or an Argus.)

He

shot the movie film

for WTVJ-TV, a Miami television station, for

which he was a regular

stringer.

and his 35mm

film

He sent both his movie film

undeveloped to Miami with á crew member of

a National Airlines flight,

which was his regular procedure.

His movie: film was in an

envelope marked WTVJ.

The crew member was

told to give it: to a

cab driver at. the Miami airport to deliver

to the television station.

It was addressed to Ralph Renick, the

news director.

The still

film was put in a brown manilla envelope,

folded over;

taped and addressed to "Director, FBI, Washington, D.C."

(Faraldo believes: he put just his name as a return address.) The

National crew member was told to drop the envelope in a mail pouch or box

at the Miami airport.

Faraldo doesn't remember the crew member's

name or the National

flight number.

I spoke with about 20

might possibly have been in a position

to corroborate

Faraldo's

memory of the group being at Key West Airport.

Less than a half dozen were directly suggested by Faraldo. Only

a few remembered such an

incident, none with any clarity or detail.

Clennie Demeritt, for instance,

who worked the ticket counter;

National Airlines

at Key West then, says he does remember something

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## Page 4

about a group going

to Cuba. to cut

sugar cane, thinks they were

but doesn't remember

they went.

He thinks it might have

happened

on his day off

with the Immigration Department then, vaguely

remembers reading something about

such a group in the newspapers,

but thought they: left from Canada or Mexico.

who has been with the: Federal Aviation Administration

at Key West. for 20 years,

also vaguely remembers reading about

such

a group; but thinks he didn't see them because he was on the

late

shift..then.

Anthony Alonso Sr.,

then the Key West Airport janitor, does recall

the group, corroborated Faraldo's contention that

there were 30 or

40 in the

group,

thinks they were

"foreigners"

and pins the time down as

11162.0n:163.".

or "strangers,"

He-is a very old man,

initially answered "Yeah!" to most of my questions and would

not

be considered a reliable witness, probably, because of his age.

Don Pinda,

a photographer for the Key West Citizen, who Faraldo

thinks might have covered the incident, doesn!+ remember it at

all. and says all his negatives from that time were lost in a

hurricane.

A:page-by-page check of the bound volumes at the Citizen's office

produced no record.

The Historian at the Public Library, a Mrs.

Betty Bruce, who was described as "remembering

everything," could

not recall the incident but will doublecheck: the microfilm files

this. week..for me.

John Mangialleto, currently FAA Chief at Key West, told me FAA

records are kept

only 15 days before being destroyed.

He had:

no recollection of the incident

Neither U.s. Customs nor Immigration has any records of any such

outgoing flight as Faraldo describes..:

No one who wörked the control tower in 1963 has any recollection

of such a flight. (Prior to the Cuban missile crisis in October of

1962, Key West Airport had no control tower.

One of the key questionable factors. in Faraldo's contention is that

a Cuban-owned Aerovia @ Airline plane was sent up from Cuba to pick

up the group late at night.

Although we spoke to about a half-dozen

former Key West employees of Aerovia l, none could remember such

an incident.

Aerovia Q,

however, quitits regular flightsfrom

cuba to Key West late in 1961 and records indicate that the last

payment: for office space in the

airport

was made in March, 1962.

Faraldo contends it would still have been possible for

an Aerovia

@plane to fly in from Cuba to Key West in 1963 merely by filing

a flight plan with the FAA. (As noted, flight plan recoros are.

not

retained beyond 15 days.

Henry Till, flight service attendant for

the FAA in Key West since 1961, says it's "very unlikely" that a

Cuban plane landed in Key West

in 1963.

There is another major inconsistency, in Faraldo's contention. He

says he is absolutely sure he

of the manifest (the

passenger list) of the

refle says he kept the manifests of

al! of Aerovia l's daily flights, each day would staple them all

together,

envelope and put the

envelope

prepared

HH 54653

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4

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## Page 5

by Aerovias @'personnel and said that the person who would have

prepared

the manifest for

the flight in question. was Celia

Godinet.

Through her

brother who is still in

Key West, Faraldo

got me her address

in Miami.

She told me she left Aerovias

when it closed

down its flights. in 1961.i

Nevertheless, Faraldo specifically remembered where he had kept

that box of manifests at the airport.

With the

help of the current

manager, we rummaged through

every possible storage area

without success.

storage room where Faraldo is most sure

they were was recently gutted after a rain

ruined the ceiling

and flooded it.

said Feraldo,

the ceiling between

air conditioning ducts.

was on a shelf suspended

The ceiling

and the ducts

were torn out. and.thrown. in a'black soggy

heap on

the side of

the building.

The current manager, R. Kenneth Agnew,

said everything that had

stored in that

thrown out.

We probed through the heap of discarded

without

any luck.

With the Key West angles

almost exhausted, tidinally decided to

check: RalphRenick at WTVJ this morning. As soon as.l mentioned

Faraldo's name he said,

"I know what you're talking about.

mentioned it to us some time ago and we went back through

our files

and couldn't

find anything.

It would have been a damn.

good story

for

us to break, obviously, if we did find it.

He had: Oswald

and Ruby in the group, right?"

That took care of my oblique approach.

Because of my interest, Renick said he would

check the files again..

He said he did vaguely recall such a group being in Key west "ei teer

coming or going."

He admitted, however, that contributions. from

stringers doesn't get the same

careful.treatment as thestation's

own. film,

and that's not too careful, "so," he said, "there's

the possibility it slipped through our fingers.

it's not filed

it didn't happen."

So, in sum, what do we have?

point, a story

that cannot be corroborated with hard

on the surface we have, up until this

evidence in

any way.

in fact, a few factors that seem strangely

suspect and may even fit

into a pattern of misinformation associated

with assassination

investigations.

There are, however, other factors

which make it difficult to totally discard Faraldo's contention.

most of all, a guy with a good reputation.

An engineering

graduate

of Auburn, he was airport

and is nationally known in his field.

manager. at Key west for 31 years

Today he runs

diesel injection servicing.business.and does commercial aerial

He has provided information for other govenment agencies

described by one. Federal agent for me as a source of "highest

ranking" whose information is always. "very good."

Faraldo retained his credibility over the many hours I spent with

He is now, however, very anxiety

ridden and perhaps on the

edge of a nervous breakdown.

visibly distraught when we

weretold the manifest records he had kept over the years were

so casually discarded.

In addition, he and his wife are extremely

the shooting

sinking of their houseboat.

In checking

out that incident, 1

am absolutely certain now it has nothing to

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## Page 6

5

our investigation.

A few weeks ago, Faraldo had filed

a claim in court against a fellow

named Michael Gill for an

unpaid 5599 bill for repair to his 401 sailboat, the "Restless

Lady."

Faraldo won the

and got a Judgement against gill.

Gill's lavyer was Key West city attorney Manny

recently

indicted with

a few tok other city officials

most were convicted, James was

for drug"dealing;

acquitted on a legal technicality.

Faraldo had noticed

marijuana stashed on Gill's boat when

transferred to a friend

named Hollitiene

, Gill had the boat ownership

A week after the

judgement was filed, Gill was arrested for cocaine dealing.

It appears that Gill and his friends are seeking. revenge.on

Faraldo.

• Hollifield was seen just. last Saturday a cruising

around the boatyard where Faraldo is repairing his boat.

As crédible.

as he is, there is

another factor which may be

an influence

quality of Faraldo's memory:

Several years

ago he was attacked by

irate tourist who had gone bezerk after

being told

car out of a no-parking lane.

A huge

guy, a building contractor

from North Carolina, he smashed Faraldo's

face in, crushing his facial bones and damaging

his eyes. He then

kicked him on the ground, breaking his neck and back.

still wears a neck brace constantly and often a back brace.

He has been

unable to

get the

guy. extradicted from North Carolina,

despite the fact the fellow has

attacked three other people there.

Here are a

other things I found out about George Faraldo:

A Navy veteran, he is an experienced pilot, an expert photographic

technician and

an electronic expert.

I would estimate

the value

of photographic and electronic equipment l saw.

myself at well

over. $100,000.

He was very

early involved

gathering

activity in Cuba for

the United States Information

Agency. (l, asked him if he thought it was possible, that he was

really working for

"Yes," he said,

i would think so.")

/ SIMILAR TO

He said he had known Batista personally ("1

think he was one of

the best friends

the United States ever had," he said) and was

very friendly with former Castro Air Force Chief, Pedro Diaz

Lanz

- although, like

Hunt, he didn't remember the guy

who fled Cuba with Lanz,

our friend Frank Fiorini.

Faraldo said he made a number of intelligence gathering trips into

after Castro took over

retained and beaten by

Castro police.

He also

numerous aerial photographic missions

and claims to have

shots of the missile sights long before Kennedy

existed.

He explained how he had aerial cameras

built into the bottom of his plane and wired to be triggered by

him from the cockpit.

for his intelligence-gathering work but when

gathering work eve gen esked himsey

his equipment, he smiled and said, "No comment."

Once, Faraldo

gave him card which

he was approached .byca. man

from Washington who

said he represented the "Union"-something.

(Perhaps

"Union News," Faraldo

isn't sure.)

The man said he was

interested in

operations" and said he would

a quarter of a million

if he worked with him.

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Faraldo said he didn't believerand told him to deposit the

money

first

in his bank account.

according

said he would but,

he never showed up again.

he thought he

to farill fiad the man's card, but before

Faraldo said

on Monday night

we spent two hours looking for it,

first

at

his home and then at his office.

In the course of that search here

are names from other cards

we came across, each

of. whom

Faraldo says he has

had contact

with:

Reinaldo Padial

- a hunting and fishing guide"who led Faraldo

to the cuban interior on one trip to a possible submarine base

near the Bay of Pigs.

Gordon Kelly - United States Information Agency; Washington

#383-7700.

Forrest: K.. Geerkin - Consul of the United States of America.

C. Conrad Manley - Officer in Charge, USIA, Miami

G. L. Latimer - U.S. Customs, Enforcement, Miami.

Faraldo wouldn't tell me the details of

any of

these fellows,

his relationship with

neither would

he tell me the name

of

his regular contact

with the

"USIA."

Faraldo says he stopped

when

after

working for the USIA a few years ago

dangerous trip

to Cuba he personally hand-carried

his film to Washington to the USlA office on Pennsylvania Avenue.

Yet when he checked on it

several days later he was given

the run-around about what had happened to it.

told it had been "lost in the

and s finally

soup." (ruined while being developed)

So; Faraldo says, except for his

supplying information to

certain drug enforcement

business today.

agencies, he is out of the intelligence

immm.

Funny how

these casual over-the-transom

leads turn.out

o be far

more maze-like than

they first appear.

*

ddendum:

CrOSS

However the Faraldo lead turns'out, l may have come

a bigger break

in coincidentally meeting the current manager

naged key estation strport and my grapevio sources here

Faraldo told me he had once

in Miami

ad some time ago told me that the fellow who once managed the Marathon:

irport had

ut Agnew

extensive photos of the No name sey derandon urn

is the man.

e had, in:fact,: gotten to know

the boys

retty well.

Yes, he knew Richard Whatley and,yes, he remembered

he fellow with the mohawk haircut.

ut his description

He didn't remember his name,

of the guy

makes him

a pretty warm prospect

or the Odio

connection.

Agnew is going to dig

up some photos

or. me. (Remember the No Name

peration described

Key group

was a Fiorini/InterPen/lAB

by Hans Tanner

as.

financed by

"dispossessed hotel

nd gambling room owners who operated under Batista."

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P.S.:

Just located

and called Faradldo's former secretary

who

now lives here

in Miami.

It's by

no means hard

corroboration, but

she does

recall the group being

at the

airport and Faraldo running

up and down to

his office

taking photos.

She

doesn't

remember anything in particular

about the group,

except that it was.at the Key West Airport.

She worked upstairs

coffee

in the office and only went down to the

shop to get a cup of coffee.

She says she went to

work for Faraldo shortly

after the

Cuban

missile crisis in

October, 1962.

She

left Key West 10 years

ago.

Although

she thus far provides

backing of Faraldo's

her memory wasn't detaileflection that the incident occurred

in the summer of

1963.

#

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