In The Shadow of Dallas and LA

[James Lewis]

Seamus, I think you rather underestimate the rank and power of David Morales within the CIA. From the Mary Ferrell Foundation's profile of Morales. Emphasis mine:

David Sanchez Morales, aka "El Indio," worked for the CIA under the cover of Army employment. He was involved in PBSUCCESS, the CIA's 1954 overthrow of the Guatemalan government, and rose to become Chief of Operations at the CIA's large JMWAVE facility in Miami. In that role, he oversaw operations undertaken against the regime of Fidel Castro in Cuba.
Morales was involved in other covert operations of the CIA, reportedly including plots to assassinate Fidel Castro, training intelligence teams supporting the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, the CIA's secret war in Laos and its controversial Operation Phoenix in Vietnam, and the hunting down of Che Guevera in Bolivia.

From Someone Would Have Talked:

It's also clear that like many of the men directly involved with the Bay of Pigs, Morales felt that John Kennedy was a coward and very likely a traitor to his country. Morales expressed his tremendous anger about seeing his friends butchered in remarks to both Carbajal and his lawyer and business partner, Robert Walton.

David Morales felt especially strongly about John Kennedy. At one point while in Walton's office. Morales noticed a small Kennedy ceramic decal and immediately offered to break it into pieces for Walton.

However, on one special evening after approximately eight hours of extremely heavy drinking, Morales went a good deal farther than that. It was in the spring of 1973, five years before his death. Morales entered into a heated exchange with Robert Walton while Reuben Carbajal and Walton's wife listened. The subject was John Kennedy.

At some point, Walton began to talk about himself, his background, his interest in politics and doing volunteer work for Kennedy's campaign. At that point. Morales literally flew off the bed of the hotel room in which they were drinking and started screaming curses against Kennedy and talking about how Kennedy had been responsible for him having to watch all the men he had recruited and trained get wiped out.

Several minutes later after he had worn himself out. Morales sat back on his bed and after a minute of silence simply said to himself, "Well, we took care of that SOB, didn't we?" Not bragging, no bluster, just talking to himself.

When a man of David Morales' rank, position, experience and reputation makes a first person remark about "taking care" of the President of the United States, it deserves to be taken seriously - when the man in question can be shown to have been in the same location at the same time and with an established association with John Martino, a man who confessed to his personal participation in a conspiracy to murder the President, Morales' remarks become extremely significant.

Yes, he ostensibly worked under Shackley, but for the most part, Morales was his own man and did pretty much what he wanted when conditions permitted it. When you couple the above with the fact that he was also one of the main cogs in the CIA's Phoenix Program, it becomes apparent that not only was David Morales not to be trifled with, but he, along with Edward Lansdale, would be the the perfect person to at least help with the planning and operational aspects of assassinating the President. After all, he was once called the CIA's "number one hit man".