ROBERT “TOSH” PLUMLEE DECLARATION

11/21/2004

For a collection of documents on Tosh Plumlee click here

The following statements contained within this paper, are my personal story. Anything in previous publications is subject to question and is or has not been, reviewed, approved, or authorized, by me. My purpose in producing this unadulterated information and statement is to clarify previous errors of fact, which have been attributed to me. Therefore, this statement supersedes all previous versions of what others have claimed, speculated, or produced in media and print form, as being my true testimony and story.

Any reproduction of this article, in whole or in part, without written permission from the author is prohibited, and will be considered as a copyright violation and subject to the penalties provided by law.

I hereby declare the following to be true and correct to the best of my knowledge.

Dated this 21st day of November 2004.

Part 1: Background Information

My name is William Robert Plumlee, also known as ‘Tosh” I am a retired commercial pilot and have worked for and with the United States Government for many years. My background follows:

I was enlisted and assigned to military specialized operations at Fort Bliss, Texas in April of 1954.(RA18389060; Recon Training Command, RTC-D8) I was associated with various Military Intelligence units of the Fourth Army based at Fort Bliss, Texas, and also the Fourth Army Reserve, located at Dallas Love Field, Dallas Texas. This service period was in the early to mid fifties and into the early sixties.

Approximately 1962 through 1963, I was assigned to Task Force W Section- C-7 tab B and D during the Cuban Project which operated at the time from the JM/WAVE station attached to Miami, Florida’s ‘Cuba Desk’ of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). I operated as a contract “Undercover pilot” and also, at times, I was assigned to specialized Cuban operations of the CIA’s “Covert Action Group” (CAG) I was engaged in many secret operations through out the early sixties.

Some years later, after brief retirement, known as ‘The Farm’. I reactivated myself and became attached as an undercover operative and contract pilot for the federal government during President Reagan’s “Drug War”. I was attached to a secret team known as ‘America-Mexico Special Operations Group’ (“AMSOG”), HQ’ed Panama Southern Command. I was also a pilot and associated with the Contra Resupply Network.

I have testified four times in close door session, to various Senate and congressional investigative committees (Director FBI 1964; J Hoover; Senator Church, 1976-75; closed-door testimony, classified TS; to Congressmen Tom Downing’s investigators, before the HSCA was formed; to Senator John Kerry’s Committee of 1988-91 also classified ” “TS Committee Sensitive” and the “Tri-State Drug Task Force”, (Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico) chaired by Arizona Governor, Bruce Babbit. The cover operation contact cut out was the Phoenix Organized Crime Div. Phoenix AZ,1975-86. I worked with Senator Gary Hart and his security adviser Bill Holden, on previous intelligence matters with the NSC and the drug war with Colombia and Costa Rica. I worked UC operations with KiKi Camarena and his pilot, before they were murdered and I was a Military/DEA contract pilot, attached to Panama and Colombia, Costa Rica Investigative Task Force on Narcotics.

I have a secret classified file as defined within the National Security statutes under the name of William Robert (Tosh) Plumlee aka William H “Buck” Pearson code named “Zapata”, Miami Cuba Desk, 1960-63 MI/CIA OMC-TFW7; Section C (locate Tab B & D) classified information; portions declassified Aug 1998. Associated with Operation 40 connected to the NSC and the “White House Situations Rooms briefings. I was a contract operative for the CIA, associated with Tracy Barns, Wild Bill Harvey, Frank Bender, John Martino and many others.

I have limited this paper to one particular mission that I was assigned to on November 20, 1963. I was a covert ‘contract’ military Intel pilot on civilian status for this secret operation. I have titled this work as: “The Flight To Dallas; A Pilots Memoirs”. I have certified this copy as a declaration and personal testimony; a true account of my activities between November 20 through November 22, 1963

***

Part 2: Flight to Dallas – November 20-22, 1963

Beginning November 20, 1963, I was assigned to be a co-pilot on a top secret flight, which was attached to a Military Intelligence unit and supported by the CIA. Our mission, we were told, was to ‘Abort’ a pending attempt on the President’s life which was to take place in Dallas. We were contracted as “cut-outs” a system used to shield a secret operation from public exposure. Our team was based out of South Florida. My pilot for this operation was Emanuel Rojas. We had flown together before. I was the co-pilot for this operation. The first leg of the flight would be from Lantana, Florida ( about five miles south of West Palm Beach) to Tampa Florida. The aircraft used for the first phase of this trip was a D-18 Twin Beach aircraft. We took-off before day break on November 21, 1963 expecting to arrive in Tampa about sunup. We were to pick up other personal at Tampa. One of these people was John Roselli, whom I knew.

I had known John Roselli before this flight. I had flown Roselli and others to places like Cuba, Bimini, Galveston Texas, Las Vegas and California. He was also known to me as”Colonel Rawlston” or just “the Colonel”. We (Rojas and I) were to pick up ‘the Colonel’ at Tampa’s Congress Inn that morning. We changed aircraft at Tampa to a waiting DC-3 that was registered to ‘Atlantic Richfield’, and continued our trip to New Orleans, where a couple of people, who I did not know, got off and a few others got on. The Colonel stayed on board the DC-3. We continued our trip leaving New Orleans and continuing to Houston International Airport where we spent the night at the Shamrock Hilton, not far from the airport. We parked the aircraft on the Trans Texas side of the airport not far from the Texas Air National Guard and their AT6 type aircraft.

The next morning, November 22,1963, about 4:30-5 a.m., our weather briefing was not favorable for a VFR flight into Dallas’s Red Bird airport. We selected Garland as an alternate in case the weather had not improved by the time we arrived near Dallas air space. We did not file a flight plan nor intended to file IFR. This would have left a record of our flight with air traffic control. We continued to Garland,in northeast Dallas instead of Redbird Airport in Oak Cliff, a suburb of Dallas. We made this decision because of possible bad weather southwest of Dallas that had not cleared as yet.

We arrived in Garland near daybreak. There had been so many threats against the President’s life that we didn’t have a great sense of urgency about this particular one. While waiting out the bad weather in Garland, and about thirty minutes after landing three of the passengers were picked up by car, including Roselli. (There are three documented corroborations of my presence at Garland airport that morning). After the weather had cleared sufficiently for the plane to continue via VFR flight rules to Redbird Airport in Dallas, we left Garland for the ten minute flight to Red Bird. We landed at Redbird around 9:30 or 10:30 a.m., perhaps as late as 11 a.m. where everybody got off and went their own way.

It was my impression at that time that I was flying an abort team into Dallas, comprised of John Roselli, a couple of Cubans and some people that I surmised were connected with organized crime in New Orleans. The CIA’s specific information about the assassination, which their field personnel had obtained from Texas informants and international sources, was past to Military Intel units attached to the Pentagon. Some of this information, I had been told, came from the interrogations of Two Cubans who had plotted to fire on Air Force One with a bazooka on November 17 in West Palm Beach, Florida.

The pre-mission briefing was held at Loxahatchee, Florida on the evening of November 20th, but since I was not “field operational” at that time, except as a ‘contract pilot’, I was not directly addressed at the briefing, other than routing and weather reports pertaining to flying the team into position. There would be no formal flight plans filed and the routing would be conducted under VFR (Visual Flight Rules) I only began to learn the full scope of the operation from my pilot Rojas and a field operative friend of mine named Sergio. Most of the details of this operation were told to me only after we had become airborne. I would learn more operational details upon reaching Redbird Airport.

I learned that it had been discussed by the abort team where to go, how to abort, and what to look for. I had not at first paid much attention to any of these details as bits and pieces unfolded. I was told that the abort team, for whom I was only the pilot at that time, would probably be looking for a minimum of 19 or 20 people that would be in the Plaza. Most of the team members felt that this was another false alarm, there had been many during the past few weeks. The detailed instructions to the team had come from Robert Bennett and Rex Beardsley, as well as another case office whose name I can not recall.

Although my specific assigned function was only a pilot. Upon arriving at Redbird Airport, Sergio asked me if I wanted to come along and see the President. I could also act as a spotter for him and his team, which, he said, were assigned to the south side of the plaza. I was told other members of the team would be patrolling the north side and the overpass. I understood we would be looking for a type of triangulation ambush. I gladly accepted Sergio’s offer. It seemed like an adventure I didn’t want to miss. We were driven from Red Bird Airport to a place not far from the Oak Cliff Country Club, then driven to Dealey Plaza, where we (Sergio and I) checked various areas and attempted to spot potential members of an attack team from the position on the South Knoll. The original information the team had received from sources in Texas and the CIA was an attempt was going to be made outside the Adolphus Hotel, but for reasons unknown to them, I was told ,the routing of the motorcade had been changed at the last minute to Dealey Plaza.

While on the south knoll, Sergio and I were attempting to evaluate the most logical places where shooters might be located, but everything was confused, the timing was off, team members were late getting into position. They were not where they were supposed to be and the limited radio contacts that we had with them were not working, or spotty at best. It was soon after our arrival that the motorcade arrived. When the shots rang out, I had the impression of 4 or 5 shots, with one being fired from behind and to my left on the South Knoll, near the underpass and south parking lot. While leaving via the south side of the underpass near the train tracks, Sergio and I smelled gunpowder. I never saw Roselli in Dealey Plaza that day.

We were picked up on the back side of the underpass, southwest side, by a person who had previously been at the Country Club. After driving away, and on the way back to Red Bird we stopped in the parking lot of Ed McLemore’s Sportatorium, where Sergio changed out of the clothes he had muddied when he fell down the slippery west side of the railroad tracks. We stopped by the place in Oak Cliff, then returned to Redbird Airport. We waited for a few of the operatives who had been on our flight into Dallas to return. We waited as long as we could before departing without Roselli and some of the others. At approximately 2 o’clock in the afternoon, we took off from Red Bird without filing a flight plan. Our original flight out of Dallas called for us to fly to Shepard Air Force Base in Wichita Falls, Texas. But because of the assassination that routing was changed at the last minute by Rojas. We would head for Houston and back to south Florida.

On the plane, besides myself, were Rojas, Sergio, a person who I knew as Gator from the Loxahatchee camp, and two other individuals that I didn’t know. Gator had identifying characteristics of an unusually large Adam’s Apple and a missing finger, which had supposedly been bitten off at an alligator farm.

The people on the flight out of Dallas were very quiet. I interpreted their silence as dejection at the mission’s failure to abort the assassination of the President. I believed that if these men had been the shooters or assassins themselves, they would have been very excited because they had carried it off. That’s why to this day I take issue with the idea, which I have been asked to speculate on many times, that the attack on the President was in behalf of the CIA, Mafia, or Military Intelligence, and I had unknowingly flown an attack team in which had assassinated the President.

Part 3 – Conclusion

When I later learned that Oswald had been arrested as the lone assassin, I remembered having met him on a number of previous occasions which were connected with intelligence training matters, first at Illusionary Warfare Training in Nagshead, North Carolina, then in Honolulu at a radar installation and at Oahu’s Wheeler Air Force Base, then in Dallas at an Oak Cliff safe house on North Beckley Street run by Alpha 66’s Hernandez group, who had worked out of Miami prior to the assassination.

The post-mission debriefing was held on November 25th, my birthday, in West Palm Beach by Rex Beardsley, Bob Bennett and, I believe, Tracy Barnes. There was some discomfort or unhappiness about my having been present in the Plaza without authorization. Sergio was reprimanded for taking me along as a ‘spotter’. The report was transmitted to field headquarters Miami to JM/WAVE Headquarters, and the CIA’s Miami Cuban Desk.

I regret that prior to the production of this narrative, the context and substance of my story has been changed and/or misstated by others to suit their own purposes. When I have spoken on tape, I have been asked to speculate on certain facts which were inaccurately produced as my own factual assertions. One of the most significant problems has been that my story has been tailored and changed to support the claims of others, about whom I knew nothing.

I certify this declaration to be true and correct to the best of my knowledge.

Dated this 21st day of November, 2004

William Robert “Tosh” Plumlee, aka William H.”Buck” Pearson.

***

Notes Regarding References:

Certified military Records can be found on William R. Plumlee at the Texas Adjutant General, State of Texas, Headquarters,Texas National Guard; also at the archived files of the Fourth Army Reserve and Fifth Army, located at Camp Mabry, Austin Texas.

The following is a brief summary of these records:

Enlistment Record of William Robert Plumlee:

Texas National Guard 49th, Armored Division; United States Army, Fourth Army HDQ, Fort Bliss Texas; Fourth Army Reserve, Dallas Love Field, Dallas, Texas.

Recap of documents found at the Texas Adjutant General, Camp Mabry, Austin Texas:

William Robert Plumlee S/N RA- 18389060; 9th of Feb 1955; grade CPL; Auth for grade 25-1; enlisted under authority of (NGR25-1) For service in NGS Texas; Company C 156Tk Bn. Fourth Army Reserve; DoB 11 25 37; Civil Trade or Occupation: Aircraft Mechanic, Southwest Airmotive, Dallas Love Field, Dallas, Texas.

Enlistment Records:

22Oct52 thu 8th Feb53 NG Enl s/n25926077 Pvt disc. HonMin; Disc. 8Feb53; re enl.

28th Sept53 thu 2Mar54USAR 4th Army; 18389060 Grade at disc.USAR, CPL.

3Mar54 thu 2Jul USA s/n18389060 rank CPL; United States Army (USA) Ft Bliss Texas assn. temp dty (unknown).

6Jul54-No Record of Disc. tnsf. Texas 4th Army Res, Dallas Love Field, Dallas Texas. Co C156Tk Bn.CO Capt. assn ‘Specialized operations, Intel: Commanding officers; Capt. Gilbert B Cook; Texas National Guard: 2ndLt. Charles R Brannon, Arty; Ft. Bliss, Texas, (RTC); Capt. Edward G Seiwell, Fourth Army Reserves, Dallas, Texas; MOS: WR Plumlee 1795, 3795 Tank Crew man Tk Commander, Sherman Tank. Cpl. Plumlee USA MOS ‘Unknown’; Unknown sta. Ft. Bliss, Texas; Fort Hood,Texas, National Guard; Unknown.

Office of Origin (OO) Records at Office of Adjutant General State of Texas Camp Mabry, Texas.

Texas National Guard; Texas Fourth Army Reserve; Certified Copy of Available Documents By; XXX referenced doc loc. “on file”.

Medical reports: Personnel Records Center, St Louis, MO.

NOTE: For anyone interesting in taking the time to open up the following links I think you will find the information more that interesting in reference as to how J.Edgar Hoover obstructed Justice in withholding inportant files from investigative committees:

There are two different sets of FBI files on William Robert Plumlee. One set was released to the HSCA; 1978, while the other (Plumlee/Rosellie; 62-2116 file) was not declassified until 1997. A careful review of these pages will show how J Hoover withheld information contained within FBI files from the HSCA as well as other investigative committees:

NOTE: THE FOLLOWING REFERENCED FBI FILES HAVE BEEN REMOVED. (DECEMBER 1, 2004) AFTER I WAS ADVISED THAT WITHIN THOSE RELEASED FOIA FBI PAGES CONTAINED MATTERS WHICH ARE STILL CLASSIFIED “TOP SECRET COMMITTEE SENSITIVE”, AS RECLASSIFIED ON AUGUST 12, 1991. I WAS NOT AWARE OF THIS AT THE TIME SOME OF THESE PAGES WERE POSTED BY ME ON THIS FORUM. I WILL REVIEW THESE PAGES AND REPOST THE REFERENCES THAT ARE CONSIDERED NOT TO “COMPROMISE” PROCEDURES AND METHODS

For a complete interview (27 pages) with Tosh Plumlee, see the book: Files on JFK