Homer Echevarria - Taking Care of Kennedy



Secret Service Report on Echevarria, located in Commission Document 87.

On November 21, 1963, a government informant named Thomas Mosley was negotiating the sale of machine guns to a Cuban exile named Echevarria. In the course of the transaction, Echevarria said that "we now have plenty of money - our new backers are Jews" and would close the arms deal "as soon as we [or they] take care of Kennedy." The next day, Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas.

Mosley, an ATF informant, reported his conversation to the Secret Service, and that agency quickly began investigating what it termed "a group in the Chicago area who may have a connection with the JFK assassination." Echevarria was a member of the 30th November group, associated with the DRE with whom Oswald had dealings the previous summer. Mosley said the arms deal was being financed through Paulino Sierra Martinez and his J.G.C.E.--Sierra interestingly was connected to Bobby Kennedy's effort to unite various exile groups, through Harry Ruiz Williams.

The Secret Service investigation was soon taken over by the FBI. The FBI quickly dropped the case, leaving this explosive statement unresolved. The Warren Commission received the Secret Service reports but did not direct the FBI to take any action in the matter.

Worth noting is that in 1995, the Secret Service destroyed presidential protection survey reports for some of Kennedy's trips during the fall of 1963, including the cancelled Chicago trip planned for the beginning of November.