Little story on Roselli and his JFK assassination involvement.

by William Tosh Plumlee

Beginning November 20, 1963, I was assigned to be a co-pilot on a top secret flight, which was attached to a Military Intelligence unit and supported by the CIA. Our mission, we were told, was to 'Abort' a pending attempt on the President's life which was to take place in Dallas. We were contracted as "cut-outs" a system used to shield a secret operation from public exposure. Our team was based out of South Florida. My pilot for this operation was Emanuel Rojas. We had flown together before. I was the co-pilot for this operation. The first leg of the flight would be from Lantana, Florida ( about five miles south of West Palm Beach) to Tampa Florida. The aircraft used for the first phase of this trip was a D-18 Twin Beach aircraft. We took-off before day break on November 21, 1963 expecting to arrive in Tampa about sunup. We were to pick up other personal at Tampa. One of these people was John Roselli, whom I knew.

I had known John Roselli before this flight. I had flown Roselli and others to places like Cuba, Bimini, Galveston Texas, Las Vegas and California. He was also known to me as"Colonel Rawlston" or just "the Colonel". We (Rojas and I) were to pick up 'the Colonel' at Tampa's Congress Inn that morning. We changed aircraft at Tampa to a waiting DC-3 that was registered to 'Atlantic Richfield', and continued our trip to New Orleans, where a couple of people, who I did not know, got off and a few others got on. The Colonel stayed on board the DC-3. We continued our trip leaving New Orleans and continuing to Houston International Airport where we spent the night at the Shamrock Hilton, not far from the airport. We parked the aircraft on the Trans Texas side of the airport not far from the Texas Air National Guard and their AT6 type aircraft.

The next morning, November 22,1963, about 4:30-5 a.m., our weather briefing was not favorable for a VFR flight into Dallas's Red Bird airport. We selected Garland as an alternate in case the weather had not improved by the time we arrived near Dallas air space. We did not file a flight plan nor intended to file IFR. This would have left a record of our flight with air traffic control. We continued to Garland,in northeast Dallas instead of Redbird Airport in Oak Cliff, a suburb of Dallas. We made this decision because of possible bad weather southwest of Dallas that had not cleared as yet.

We arrived in Garland near daybreak. There had been so many threats against the President's life that we didn't have a great sense of urgency about this particular one. While waiting out the bad weather in Garland, and about thirty minutes after landing three of the passengers were picked up by car, including Roselli. (There are three documented corroborations of my presence at Garland airport that morning). After the weather had cleared sufficiently for the plane to continue via VFR flight rules to Redbird Airport in Dallas, we left Garland for the ten minute flight to Red Bird. We landed at Redbird around 9:30 or 10:30 a.m., perhaps as late as 11 a.m. where everybody got off and went their own way.

It was my impression at that time that I was flying an abort team into Dallas, comprised of John Roselli, a couple of Cubans and some people that I surmised were connected with organized crime in New Orleans. The CIA's specific information about the assassination, which their field personnel had obtained from Texas informants and international sources, was past to Military Intel units attached to the Pentagon. Some of this information, I had been told, came from the interrogations of Two Cubans who had plotted to fire on Air Force One with a bazooka on November 17 in West Palm Beach, Florida.

The pre-mission briefing was held at Loxahatchee, Florida on the evening of November 20th, but since I was not "field operational" at that time, except as a ‘contract pilot', I was not directly addressed at the briefing, other than routing and weather reports pertaining to flying the team into position. There would be no formal flight plans filed and the routing would be conducted under VFR (Visual Flight Rules) I only began to learn the full scope of the operation from my pilot Rojas and a field operative friend of mine named Sergio. Most of the details of this operation were told to me only after we had become airborne. I would learn more operational details upon reaching Redbird Airport.

I learned that it had been discussed by the abort team where to go, how to abort, and what to look for. I had not at first paid much attention to any of these details as bits and pieces unfolded. I was told that the abort team, for whom I was only the pilot at that time, would probably be looking for a minimum of 19 or 20 people that would be in the Plaza. Most of the team members felt that this was another false alarm, there had been many during the past few weeks. The detailed instructions to the team had come from Robert Bennett and Rex Beardsley, as well as another case office whose name I can not recall.

Although my specific assigned function was only a pilot. Upon arriving at Redbird Airport, Sergio asked me if I wanted to come along and see the President. I could also act as a spotter for him and his team, which, he said, were assigned to the south side of the plaza. I was told other members of the team would be patrolling the north side and the overpass. I understood we would be looking for a type of triangulation ambush. I gladly accepted Sergio's offer. It seemed like an adventure I didn't want to miss. We were driven from Red Bird Airport to a place not far from the Oak Cliff Country Club, then driven to Dealey Plaza, where we (Sergio and I) checked various areas and attempted to spot potential members of an attack team from the position on the South Knoll. The original information the team had received from sources in Texas and the CIA was an attempt was going to be made outside the Adolphus Hotel, but for reasons unknown to them, I was told ,the routing of the motorcade had been changed at the last minute to Dealey Plaza.

While on the south knoll, Sergio and I were attempting to evaluate the most logical places where shooters might be located, but everything was confused, the timing was off, team members were late getting into position. They were not where they were supposed to be and the limited radio contacts that we had with them were not working, or spotty at best. It was soon after our arrival that the motorcade arrived. When the shots rang out, I had the impression of 4 or 5 shots, with one being fired from behind and to my left on the South Knoll, near the underpass and south parking lot. While leaving via the south side of the underpass near the train tracks, Sergio and I smelled gunpowder. I never saw Roselli in Dealey Plaza that day.

We were picked up on the back side of the underpass, southwest side, by a person who had previously been at the Country Club. After driving away, and on the way back to Red Bird we stopped in the parking lot of Ed McLemore's Sportatorium, where Sergio changed out of the clothes he had muddied when he fell down the slippery west side of the railroad tracks. We stopped by the place in Oak Cliff, then returned to Redbird Airport. We waited for a few of the operatives who had been on our flight into Dallas to return. We waited as long as we could before departing without Roselli and some of the others. At approximately 2 o'clock in the afternoon, we took off from Red Bird without filing a flight plan. Our original flight out of Dallas called for us to fly to Shepard Air Force Base in Wichita Falls, Texas. But because of the assassination that routing was changed at the last minute by Rojas. We would head for Houston and back to south Florida.

On the plane, besides myself, were Rojas, Sergio, a person who I knew as Gator from the Loxahatchee camp, and two other individuals that I didn't know. Gator had identifying characteristics of an unusually large Adam's Apple and a missing finger, which had supposedly been bitten off at an alligator farm.

The people on the flight out of Dallas were very quiet. I interpreted their silence as dejection at the mission's failure to abort the assassination of the President. I believed that if these men had been the shooters or assassins themselves, they would have been very excited because they had carried it off. That's why to this day I take issue with the idea, which I have been asked to speculate on many times, that the attack on the President was in behalf of the CIA, Mafia, or Military Intelligence, and I had unknowingly flown an attack team in which had assassinated the President.