Originator: VITATE, GUY
Document date: 09/01/1978
Document type: OUTSIDE CONTACT REPORT

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180-10083-10181

2023 RELEASE UNDER THE PRESIDE ASS iOn SYNEY ASSASSINATION RECORDS ACT OF 1902

Identification Form

Agency Information

AGENCY :

HSCA

RECORD NUMBER :

180-10083-10181

RECORD SERIES :

NUMBERED FILES

AGENCY FILE NUMBER :

011343

Document Information

ORIGINATOR :

FROM:

TO:

TITLE:

VITATE, GUY

DATE: 09/01/1978

PAGES:

3

SUBJECTS :

BAY OF PIGS

VITATE, GUY

VECIANA, ANTONIO

CIA, STAFF

DOCUMENT TYPE: OUTSIDE CONTACT REPORT

CLASSIFICATION :

Unclassified

RESTRICTIONS :

3

CURRENT STATUS :

Redact

DATE OF LAST REVIEW: 11/14/1996

OPENING CRITERIA :

COMMENTS : Box 205.

v9.1

HH 50955

DocId: 32250123

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KENNEDY

Fonzi

011390

OUTSIDE CONTACT REPORT

DATE 9/1/78

1.

Identifying Information:

Name

Guy Vitale

Telephone: 305-323-5369.

Address

107 N. Virginia Avenue, Sanford, Fla. 32771

Type of Contact:

Telephone

.. X Person

11. Summary of Contact:

Guy Vitale is a retired

employee of the Central Intelligence

Agency. He was interviewed

relative to a possible association

with Antonio Veciana, as indicated by files review.

Vitale

said that, following an assignment in Athens,

he returned to headquarters and was

asked in about December,

1960, to

take part in

"The Project,"

as preparation for the

Bay of Pigs invasion was termed.

His general assignment, he

said, was to "hand-hold WT operators."

That, he

said, meant

to act as a case

agent for Cubans being trained in wireless

telegraph operations. He remained

at headquarters in Washing-

ton

for the first two or three weeks of this assignment

"handling cable traffic."

He was then assigned to a secret

training installation outside Washington to take charge of

a large group (more than 20) of Cubans.

He described his job

as providing general orientation to them and then releasing

them to instructors in guerilla warfare and demolition.

Vitale said he had no contact with anyone in Miami prior

to the Bay of Pigs.

After the Bay of Pigs, he said, he was

detailed to go to a small island off Puerto Rico to

gather up

what he termed "the remnants of the invasion" -- mostly

those Cubans who never made it to the beachhead. He took

these men back to Miami and turned them over to

other Agency

personnel there.

Vitale said his only other trip outside

Washington was prior to the

Bay of Pigs.

That was to New

Orleans, around March of 1961.

He was assigned to take

three

Cubans, whose names he

does not

recall, to New Orleans.

There

he turned them

over to personnel at a

training camp

in Belle Chase, Louisiana.

Following

that, he was

detailed

very briefly to Pass Christian, Mississippi, to handle a

-more-

HH 50955 DooId:32250123 Page 2

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2.

small group of Cubans who had gone Awol from training.

His job was to re-group them

and reinstill their confidence

for the up-coming invasion. That detail, he said, only

lasted a week or two.

Vitale said he never dealt with any politically important

Cubans.

The only names he could recall offhand were verry

Prieto,

"Magoo," Grillo and Bulsado. Mostly, he said, he

handled men trained as wireless telegraph operators who were

infiltrated into Cuba to act as communication links for

paramilitary

groups.

After the Bay of Pigs, Vitale said, the Agency went to

what he termed the "single team concept." That, he explained,

meant that paramilitary

groups were limited to a team of

five or six persons and

each

would have its own wireless

telegraph

operator to be infiltrated into Cuba with the

team.

Vitale said that the teams were run out of the Agency's

Miami station.

"We just

audited the records," he said.

His job, then, was

as an assistant case officer and

intelligence analyst.

The senior case officer was

Calvin Hicks.

"Miami would send up the plans and Hicks

would evaluate them and pass them on for higher approval,"

Vitale said. "I did the leg work and paper work and things

like that."

Vitale said he had very little

direct contact with personnel

at Miami's JM/WAVE station.

"I had a lot of friends down

there from pre-Bay of Pigs days and l would visit

them on

vacation," he said, "but l remember only one operational

trip down

there,

and that was to deliver some photographs."

He does not know what the photographs were of.

Vitale said heano dealings with E. Howard Hunt, Bernard Barker,

Frank Fiorini Sturgis, Doug Gupton, Manolo Ray, Luis Conte-Aguerra,

or Radio Swan.

Vitale said he does not recall the name of Antonio Veciana at

all.

When shown

a photograph of Veciana, he said he does not

recognize the man.

When told that Veciana was associated with

Alpha 66, he said: "1

don't think that organization was ever

used by the ClA, according to my recollection.

Perhaps some

of the individuals were, but not the organization."

Vitale also did not recognize the names of Olien, Pratchett

or Maurice Bishop. He said he has a good friend by the name

of Whitney Bishop

who retired from the Agency about five years

ago and who,

Vitale believes, was

in communications.: He met

in Athens.

shown a

sketch of Maurice Bishop, Vitale

sald it does not look at all like his friend and that

sketch does

not remind him of anyone he ever knew or saw.

-more-

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3.

Asked about his relationship with the Special Affairs Staff,

Vitale said that was headed by Besmond Fitzgerald and that

the Paramilitary section in which he worked was a component

of the staff, although he had no contact himself with

Fitzgerald.

Vitale was also asked about

his involvement with the

subversive machine program.

He said that came about 1967

and it involved him being assigned to what he termed a

"machine run." He was assistant to a fellow whose name

he doesn't recall because it was only a very brief assignment.

It involved culling names from Agency reports from all over

the world and putting them on a programming card to be fed

into an IBM

machine.

Asked about his involvement with the destruction of cs

documents, Vitale said that

was part of his responsibility

as a records officer. The material destroyed, he said,

was evaluated

by

him

and judged to be no longer useful.

It was, he said, just a matter of getting rid of overloaded

paperwork.

The destruction

sometimes

was based on his own knowledge,

in consultation with

the originator of the document.

Vitale said he was never asked to destroy any documents

for the purpose of covering up Agency involvement with an

operation.

Vitale said he hadacontact with any operations in the Florida

Keys and was not familiar with ZR Rifle. ("| believe

that's

an African diograph," he said. )

Although Vitale said he knew David Phillips headed the Cuba

project,

he never had any operation contact with him. "I

wouldn't have on my level," he said.

In his assignment in records keeping, Vitale said he never was

involved

in any

"super-secret" or "hip pocket" operations in

which records were falsified or deliberately not kept.

He

said that,

as far as he knows, the

Agency files he

was associated

with reflect actual operations as they were.

Generally, Vitale unsolicitedly expressed satisfaction with his

career in

the ClA.

He said: "There are two things I took with

me when I left the ClA that

I want to hang on to, and that is

my secrecy oath and my pension.. They also have

a

very good

medical plan. "

Vitale had earlier been shown

Carlucci releasingghim

from

of the interview.

a letter from ClA Acting Director

his

secrecy oath for the purposes

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