Gene Wheaton redux.....

[Peter Lemkin]

Inside and Outside Men

INSIDE AND OUTSIDE MEN

When General Odom asked former CIA case officer Haveland Smith what makes a good case officer - Smith replied "The Sting!"

Refering to the Hollywood movie staring Robert Redford and Paul Newman that depicted the Big Con confidence games of the early 20th century.

The movie was based on a book The Big Con by Kentucky lingeuist professor David Maurer, whose book was required reading if you took a class in covert operations and psychological warfare taught by Paul Linebarger as described by Joseph Smith in his book. [Portrait of a Cold Warrior].

Maurer learned the secrets of the Big Con from the confidence men themselves while studying their unique slang used to communicate among themselves.

Of the two basic types of Big Con confidence game characters - there are the Outside Men - usually new to the Big Con, Grifters who have graduated through the underworld ranks of what they call Short Con Games - petty thieves, pickpockets, 3 card monti and carnival shell games, who work the streets, markets, bars, restaurants, card parlors and race tracks, looking for easy marks to play against the Big Store in a Big Con game.

Once a good mark is identified he is given the hook and lowdown and taken to the Big Store - which is set up like a betting palor, stock office or boxing ring, depending on the game in play, where he is introduced to the Inside Man, an experienced Big Con confidence man who knows the score.

When U.S. Army Ranger Bradley Ayers was assigned to train anti-Castro Cuban commandos at JMWAVE, he said, "I saw that they had missed no detail in setting up the false front of Zenith Technological Enterprises. There were phoney sales and production charts on the walls and business licenses from the state and federal governments. A notice to salesmen, pinned near the door, advised them of the calling hours for various departments. The crowning touch was a certificate of award from the United Care Givers' Fund to Zenith for outstanding particiipation in its annual fund drive."

There Ayers met the chief of station Ted Shackley and Ayers' immediate boss Gordon Campbell, the head of Maritime Operations, both Inside Men who worked behind a desk inside an office.

As Maurer described them, the Inside Men are "suave, slick, and capable...because of their high intelligence, solid organization, the wide-spread connivance of the law, and the fact that the victim must virtually admit criminal intentions himself if he wishes to prosecute....as relatively few good con men are ever brought to trial."

As Joe Smith quoted Maurer after reading The Big Con, "Big-time confidence games are in reality only carefully rehearsed plays in which every member of the cast EXCEPT THE MARK, knows his part perfectly. The Inside Man is the star of the cast; while the minor participants are competent actors and can learn their lines perfectly, they must look to the Inside Man for their cues; he must not only be a fine actor but a playwright extempore as well. And he must be able to retain the confidence of an intelligent man even after that man has been swindled at his hands."

While the similarities between the Big Store fake gambling palor of The Big Con of the Sting and the false front of the JMWAVE station are readily apparant, the use of the same slang in "Inside Men" and "Outside Men" also holds true.

Ayers himself, without knowledge of Maurer and his study of the language of the con-artists, refers to Gordon Campbell's assistant Karl as his "Outside Man," who delt personally with the Cubans who were also considered "Outside Men."

As Ayers put it: "Outside Agents were American or Cuban CIA employees who were not cleared for entry into the unvercover headquarters. These employees were either too 'hot' because of exposure to exiles or did not have proper clearance. Contact with these persons was always made clandestinely on the outside, using indivually assigned operational cover, in my case, the Paragon Air Service cover."

In some cases - as with Desmond FitzGerald, clearly a swave and sophisticated Inside Man, he rarely but occassionally met with Outside Men operators in person - but did, as with his meeting with Rolando Cubella (AMLASH).


And David Atlee Phillips, who went from a very successful Outside Man - case officer and was promoted to an Inside Man - Chief of Cuban Ops. In his book Nightwatch, Phillips recalls the incident when Plan Centaur documents - regarding a plan to kill Castro in Chile, were given to an foreign embassy and the press. The resulting flap, said Phillips, had his superior repremand him, reminding him that he was no longer an "Outside Man" operating on the street, but an "Inside Man," runing operations from behind a desk.

Every agent or operative has a case officer - an Outside Man who works directly with the Cubans, and acts as a "cut out" in intelligence terms, or "buffer" in mob talk, to ensure the Inside Men are not exposed.

INSIDE MEN

Allen Dulles - Director of the CIA

Richard Bissell - Head of CIA Plans/Operations for U2 and Bay of Pigs

Cord Meyer, Jr. - Head of CIA International Organizations Division

Ted Shackley - Chief of JMWAVE

Gordon Campbell - Head of Maritime Operations (until his death in 1962?)

Desmond FitzGerald - Head of CIA Cuban Operations - Chief of Western Hemisphere Division (1964)

David Atlee Phillips - Head of Cuban Operations - later Chief of Westen Hemisphere Division.



OUTSIDE MEN

Captain Bradely Ayers, USA Ranger

Captain Edward Roderick, USA Ranger - trained Cubans at Point Mary, Key Largo

John "H. I." Harper - CIA explosives expert and small arms trainer of Cubans

William Attwood - JFK's personal representative in the backchannel talks with Cubans at the UN underway at the time of the assassination.

"Karl" (LNU) - Shackley and Gordon Campbell's Outside Man at JMWAVE

Col. Sam Kail - US Military Attache US Embassy Havana.

Dorithie Matlack - ACSI Outside Contacts person, met with deMohrenschildt

MORE TO COME -

For lists of Generals, Colonels, Majors and Captains see Playbook, Program, Players at:

http://JFKCountercoup2.blogspot.com