Robert Morrow, a dedicated JFK researcher, has just relocated an important find at the Princeton Library in the Dulles Archives. It was first written about at length in book form by David Talbot in his biography of Alen Dulles, The Devil’s Chessboard. (See pp. 546-47) Lisa Pease first located it many years ago in their online collection. But it was then lost due to a reorganization of the Dulles files. That reorganization threw off the reference pages for location purposes. But Morrow requested the archivists find it, and they did in what was, according to Robert, ‘a big, complicated digital file.’

Since it had been lost, it weakened the claim that this invaluable day-by-day calendar datebook clearly makes. According to Talbot, Dulles was in Washington that day but he did not spend the late afternoon or evening at his home in Georgetown. He was at the top secret CIA facility known officially as Camp Peary. It was unofficially known as The Farm. And according to the date book, Dulles was there from at least late Friday afternoon, through Saturday and Sunday of that dramatic weekend. In other words during the Kennedy autopsy, while Lee Oswald was in detention and after Jack Ruby shot the alleged assassin.

This is odd since, at the time of the assassination of President Kennedy, Allen Dulles had no formal role in the government of the United States. He was what was called a “gray eminence” a figure from a storied past collecting his civil service pension and giving speeches promoting the Cold War. But The Farm, located in southeast Virginia’s, York County, was not a club for Agency veterans to swig bourbon and talk about the overthrow of Mossadegh. It was a busy, coordinated center for testing and experimenting clandestine activities. This huge, sprawling base—over 9000 acres—is partly used to train CIA employees in the Directorate of Operations, as well as their equivalent in the, at that time, new Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). (An example would be the opening scene in David Mamet’s spy thriller Spartan.) Interestingly, according to Wikipedia, it is also available for off-site conferences and working groups. According to a CIA officer who visited there for three weeks, one thing they did was to stage mock executions. It was heavily guarded, but with a living legend like Dulles that stricture probably did not apply.

As Talbot writes, prior to Dulles renovating it, Camp Peary was used by the Navy Seabees and then as a prisoner of war camp for captured German sailors. According to former CIA officers Phil Agee and Victor Marchetti, “among the well-trained professionals turned out by The Farm were skilled assassins.” (Talbot, p. 546). Dulles had built for himself a sort of second home at Camp Peary, one with a well-stocked library, including current CIA reports and intel estimates. Quoting Dan Hardway, former House Select Committee on Assassinations investigator, “The Farm was basically an alternative CIA headquarters, from where Dulles could direct ops.”

And let us not forget another important point that Talbot elucidates in his book. Not only did Dulles continually meet with high CIA officials after he was fired by President Kennedy over the Bay of Pigs. He was also meeting with a mysterious but prominent Cuban exile leader named Paulino Sierra Martinez. (Talbot, p. 458). In fact, in the spring of 1963, Sierra met with both Dulles and General Lucius D. Clay. Both men had made a name by crosssing Kennedy. Dulles over, to name just one example, Cuba and the Bay of Pigs; Clay during the Berlin Crisis. Clay later said that Kennedy has lost his nerve during the Berlin confrontation; Dulles later exclaimed about JFK that: “He thought he was a God.” Sierra was largely based out of Chicago, the location of the famous Chicago Plot to kill JFK in early November, and the place where Homer Echeverria said his group would come into a lot of money as soon as they took care of Kennedy. Secret Service sources said that Echeverria’s weapon purchases were being financed by Sierra with mob money. (Talbot, p. 461)

Thanks much to Morrow for retrieving this very revealing piece of evidence. One more strike against the travesty that was the Warren Commission.

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Update: Attorney Dan Alcorn sent me what he feels to be contradictory evidence to the calendar notations about Dulles at the Farm. Lisa Pease replied to this evidence on the linked podcast below.