Chauncey Holt

Chauncey Holt was born in Kentucky on 23rd October, 1921. When he was 19 he joined the United States Army Airforce (USAAF). The following year he was court-martialed and sent to the U.S. penitentiary barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, for attacking another soldier with a Springfield rifle.

Holt was released in June 1940 but deserted from the USAF after the attack on Pearl Harbor. He eventually returned to duty but in 1942 he travelled in a car from Fort Knox to Louisville. He was arrested and charged with taking the car without permission and was sentenced to 18 months in the Industrial Reformatory at Chillicott, Ohio. On his release he found work with the Bethelem-Fairfield Shipyard Company.

After the war Holt met Peter Licavoli, a leading figure in the Mafia in Detroit. Holt was sent to Florida where he worked for Meyer Lansky as an accountant and pilot. This included several trips to Cuba where Lansky had extensive business interests. Lansky also sent Holt to worked for the International Rescue Committee (IRC). This was a Central Intelligence Agency controlled organization that had been set up to distribute funds to organizations attempting to overthrow left-wing governments. During the time Holt was also involved in producing forged documents for the CIA and the Mafia.

Holt also became involved in what later become known as Executive Action (a plan to remove unfriendly foreign leaders from power). This including a coup d’état that overthrew the Guatemalan government of Jacobo Arbenz in 1954 after he introduced land reforms and nationalized the United Fruit Company. However, the main target of this operation was Fidel Castro who had established a socialist government in Cuba.

In March I960, President Dwight Eisenhower of the United States approved a CIA plan to overthrow Castro. The plan involved a budget of $13 million to train “a paramilitary force outside Cuba for guerrilla action.” The strategy was organized by Richard Bissell and Richard Helms. An estimated 400 CIA officers were employed full-time to carry out what became known as Operation Mongoose. Holt later claimed that he worked on this project with figures such as Sam Giancana, Johnny Roselli, Edward Lansdale and William Harvey.

After the failed Bay of Pigs invasion Holt worked for Meyer Lansky in California. Meyer took over the Los Angeles Stamp and Stationary Company where Holt continued to produce illegal documents and false police badges. He also worked closely with Phillip A. Twombly, a former Executive Vice President of Coca Cola for their Caribbean operations. Twombly now owned a bank in Fullerton, California, which was used to distribute CIA funds for covert operations.

In 1963 Holt claims he received instructions from Phillip A. Twombly to provide false ID documents for Lee Harvey Oswald. These documents (in the names of Lee Harvey Oswald and Alek Hiddell) were delivered by a man called George Reynolds. In August, 1963, Twombly asked Holt to travel to New Orleans, where he met Oswald and Carlos Bringuier.

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was established in September 1947. Its role was to evaluate intelligence reports and coordinate the intelligence activities of the various government departments in the interest of national security. Richard Bissell joined the CIA and was placed in charge of the Directorate for Plans, an organization instructed to conduct covert anti-Communist operations around the world. His deputy was Richard Helms, who had successfully mounted a mount a massive convert campaign against the Communist Party during the post-war elections in Italy.

The Directorate for Plans was responsible for what became known as the CIA’s Black Operations. This involved a policy that was later to become known as Executive Action (a plan to remove unfriendly foreign leaders from power). This including a coup d’état that overthrew the Guatemalan government of Jacobo Arbenz in 1954 after he introduced land reforms and nationalized the United Fruit Company.

Other political leaders deposed by Executive Action included Patrice Lumumba of the Congo, the Dominican Republic dictator Rafael Trujillo, General Abd al-Karim Kassem of Iraq and Ngo Dinh Diem, the leader of South Vietnam. However, his main target was Fidel Castro who had established a socialist government in Cuba.

In March I960, President Dwight Eisenhower of the United States approved a CIA plan to overthrow Castro. The plan involved a budget of $13 million to train “a paramilitary force outside Cuba for guerrilla action.” The strategy was organised by Bissell and Helms. An estimated 400 CIA officers were employed full-time to carry out what became known as Operation Mongoose.

Sidney Gottlieb of the CIA Technical Services Division was asked to come up with proposals that would undermine Castro’s popularity with the Cuban people. Plans included a scheme to spray a television studio in which he was about to appear with an hallucinogenic drug and contaminating his shoes with thallium which they believed would cause the hair in his beard to fall out.

Charles Harrelson was born in Huntsville, Texas, in 1939. After leaving school Harrelson moved to California where he eventually became an encyclopedia salesman. He later turned to crime and in 1960 was convicted of armed robbery. He was also believed to be a contract killer.

Jack Anderson, is one of those reporters who believe Harrelson was involved in the assassination of John F. Kennedy. In their book he Man on the Grassy Knoll, John R. Craig and Philip A. Rogers claimed that Harrelson and Charles Rogers were the two gunman behind the picket fence on the Grassy Knoll.

It was also claimed that Harrelson, Rogers and Chauncey Holt were the three tramps arrested in Dealey Plaza on 22nd November, 1963. It was not until 1992 that the Dallas Police Department revealed that the three tramps were Gus Abrams, John F. Gedney and Harold Doyle.

In 1968 Harrelson, the father of the actor, Woody Harrelson, was convicted of the murder of businessman, Sam Degelia, in a contract killing in South Texas. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison but with time off for good behavior, he was free in five years.

https://spartacus-educational.com/JFKharrelson.htm

Photograph of the tramps arrested at the Dealey Plaza. It has been argued that
Charles Rogers is on the left and Harrelson is in the middle of the photograph

Who were the three tramps that were arrested right after JFK’s assassination?

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Tony Garcia

Former systems analyst, self-employedAuthor has 3.5K answers and 3.8M answer viewsUpdated 5y

As an answer to your question, what follows, in part, is the story of Roderick A. MacKenzie. I ask that you tread very carefully here. Read it with a healthy dose of skepticism but also with a mind cognizant of the literature published on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Then decide for yourself.Roderick A. MacKenzie III, 77, is a former mobster and forger of police and government identification cards; he is also the author of a self-published book, The Men That Don’t Fit In: The Factual History of a Rogues Life from 1934 to 1967 (2010, Now Available – The Men That Don’t Fit In (PDF) – Paranoia Magazine), in which he claims he was employed by Chicago Mafia chieftain Sam Giancana to run a Dallas, Texas safehouse on Holland Avenue when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963.MacKenzie also claims that his “handler” was a member of the Defense Intelligence Security Command (DISC), Jake Miranda, who sent him to CIA’s “Flaps and Seals” school at Fort Detrick, Maryland, which specialized in making phony documents—a skill MacKenzie was already well acquainted.MacKenzie’s criminal past and connections to organized crime are well documented. He claims to have been employed by Permindex, a Swiss-based company about which the Italian newspaper Paese Sera wrote a story alleging that individuals connected to the company worked for CIA and had been involved with the OAS (Secret Army Organisation) in plots to assassinate French President Charles DeGaulle. [CIA’s only comment on this was to verify that Clay Shaw had volunteered information to the Agency’s Domestic Contacts Division. In the late 1960’s, Shaw had been accused by New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison of having been involved in the assassination of JFK.]MacKenzie claims to have been in the company of Lee Harvey Oswald and David Ferrie, whom he describes as “queers,” and Jack Ruby, whom he was told by Chicago Mobster Johnny Roselli and Dallas police officer J.D. Tippit, was a “switch hitter,” i.e., bisexual.According to MacKenzie, his role at the safehouse was essentially that of a janitor; he cleaned up the place. By mid-November he was told by Roselli to move out of the safehouse to the Cabana Motel for a few weeks, though to come by the safehouse daily to keep it clean.What MacKenzie claims he later saw at the safehouse was “a war room for an Army.” The place was littered with maps of Cuba, Houston, Dallas, Fort Worth, the southwestern United States and Gulf of Mexico area. He assumed a hit on Fidel Castro was forthcoming. He says he never gave a thought to it being a hit on the President, and, in fact, he claims that no one at that time and on his level even knew Kennedy was coming to Dallas. [Odd, since news of President Kennedy’s trip to Dallas had already been widely publicized in the newspapers and on radio and telelvision.]Around the time of the Pepsi Convention in Dallas on November 21, MacKenzie says he was informed by Roselli that “cleaners” would hit the safe house on the 22nd, and he was told to stay away. The cleaners, MacKenzie explains, “are sent into a situation when it has to be wiped clean of any past, and as often as not those involved in the past of the operation are terminated as well.” After the cleaners accomplished their task at the safehouse, MacKenzie was told by Roselli that he could move back in on November 25th.The night of November 21st was a very busy night at the Cabana Motel, according to MacKenzie. It was a noisy, with many Spanish-speaking people hanging around in the parking lot. MacKenzie claims he saw Frank Sturgis, aka Frank Fiorini, hitman and future Watergate burglar; Richard Nixon; Sam Giancana; and hitwoman Ruth Ann Martinez emerge from vehicles in parking lot.MacKenzie describes the JFK hit as “a classic, well thought-out hit by a very large cast of characters.” He explains, “They brought just about everyone who was anyone in the business of nastiness and criminality together to witness or unwittingly be part of it. I was one such person. We were all disposable, as well, and did not know that either.” Following the assassination, MacKenzie spent a day drinking with Malcolm “Mac” Wallace, the man whom he claims “had directed the killing teams for Lyndon B. Johnson and his Texas Mafia with the help of the other Mafia.” MacKenzie describes Wallace as “quite talkative, in a conspirator way.”MacKenzie went on to identify several individuals purportedly associated with President Kennedy’s assassination as having visited or stayed at the safehoues: Jack Rubenstein (Ruby); Mac Wallace; Corsican assassin Jean Souetre, aka Michel Roux, aka Michel Mertz; Jake Miranda; J.D. Tippit; Percy Chauncey Holt; Charles Harrelson, Charles Rogers and several other French or Corsican hitmen.MacKenzie claims that the three so-called tramps were Charles Harrelson, Percy Chauncy Holt and Mafia hitman Charles Frederick Rogers. They were an additional hit team positioned under the bridge and above the railroad area in case the president was not shot. He also details the entire command structure and layout of the hit team in Dealy Plaza. This can be found in his book and from a search online.