JOHN SIMKIN: The AM/WORLD Project

17 April, 2025 | By John Simkin

The declassification of the CIA memorandum discussing the activities of Gary Underhill and Samuel Cummings dated 19th July 1967 has allowed researchers to place both men within the highly secret AM/WORLD project in 1963. (1)

The first AM/WORLD document released (27th January 1999) was a five-page memo prepared on 28th June 1963. It was sent by Joseph Caldwell King, Chief of the CIA’s Western Hemisphere Division. “This will serve to alert you to the inception of AM/WORLD, a new CIA program targeted against Cuba. Some manifestations of activity resulting from this program may come to your notice before long… The Kennedy Administration, it should be emphasized, is willing to accept the risks involved in utilizing autonomous Cuban exile groups and individuals who are not necessarily responsive to CIA guidance and to face up to the consequences which are unavoidable in lowering professional standards adhered to by autonomous groups (as compared with fully controlled and disciplined agent assets) is bound to entail.” (2)

In his autobiography, Spymaster: My Life in the CIA (2005), Ted Shackley explained that Manuel Ray had been used in several unsuccessful operations against Fidel Castro. He had him checked out by David Sanchez Morales and Thomas Clines. After he read their reports, he “concluded by describing Ray as a far-left ideologue and as much a political and economic threat to American interests in the Caribbean as was Castro.” Instead, he chose Manuel Artime to run AM/WORLD. “Artime was different. He had solid anti-Batista credentials stemming from his early days as a captain in the Rebel Army. He was an early participant in the Movement for Revolutionary Recovery (MRR) and had helped to build the party, although his ambition had then made him a divisive force in the movement.” (3)

The document goes on to point out that the “CIA will confine itself to supporting the efforts” of Manuel Artime and his exile group. “Artime will be in touch with a senior CIA officer, operating under a fully documented alias, who is to serve as his adviser and hopefully as his sole direct link with the Kennedy Administration.” In fact, it was not Artime but Enrique (Harry) Ruiz-Williams who would be in direct contact with Robert F. Kennedy about AM/WORLD. Lamar Waldron has pointed out that the CIA was being somewhat disingenuous as Artime had been working with the CIA since 1959, when he attempted his first CIA-backed coup against Castro. “But what was different about AM/WORLD was that Artime – and the others – were now taking orders not from the CIA, but from Bobby Kennedy”. (4)

The decision to appoint Manuel Artime was confirmed in a memorandum sent by M. K. Holbik to Howard J. Osborn, Director of Security on 16th October 1964: “AM/WORLD was an autonomous operation. In theory, as I understand it, the Agency would furnish funds and materials, but the actual handling, direction, or control of the Project would be by the Project head, Manuel Artime; cryptonym, AMBIDDY-1. AMBIDDY-1 need no longer accommodate divergent political philosophies and will be able to dictate his own terms. This we realise, is an authoritarian doctrine, but we are firmly convinced that any movement which wants to challenge Fidel Castro need to be run along authoritarian lines, insists on a modicum of homogeneity in outlook and enforce strict discipline. Until AMBIDDY-1 provides unmistakeable evidence that he is not the man for the job, we intend to give him our unstinting support, in full awareness of the fact that his judgment is not infallible and that in the choice of his co-workers he may occasionally commit a blunder. As long as his batting average holds up, we won’t worry. (5)

The AM/WORLD memo (104-10315-10004) was declassified on 27th January 1999, and discovered by Stuart Wexler in 2004 who showed it to Larry Hancock. With the help of researchers such as Malcolm Blunt, Hancock obtained the names of other CIA officers involved in AM/WORLD. Hancock points out that AM/WORLD had its own separate operations staff based in Miami and Mexico City. The head of AM/WORLD and Artime’s case officer was Henry Hecksher. The ranking exile under Artime was Rafael ‘Chi Chi’ Quintero who worked closely with CIA paramilitary officer, Carl E. Jenkins, the was military advisor to the AM/WORLD project. David Atlee Phillips was designated to organize safe houses and related activities for AM/WORLD. Other CIA officers who attended AM/WORLD and AM/TRUCK (an effort to produce an internal revolution against Castro in Cuba) meetings, included Ted Shackley and David Sanchez Morales. (6)

In another memorandum dated 14th November 1963, Desmond FitzGerald explained to Ted Shackley why he had chosen Manuel Artime (AMBIDDY-1) to head the AM/WORLD project: “AMBIDDY-1 need no longer accommodate divergent political philosophies and will be able to dictate his own terms. This we realise, is an authoritarian doctrine, but we are firmly convinced that any movement which wants to challenge Fidel Castro need to be run along authoritarian lines, insists on a modicum of homogeneity in outlook and enforce strict discipline. Until AMBIDDY-1 provides unmistakeable evidence that he is not the man for the job, we intend to give him our unstinting support, in full awareness of the fact that his judgment is not infallible and that in the choice of his co-workers he may occasionally commit a blunder. As long as his batting average holds up, we won’t worry.” (7)

David Sanchez Morales with his key role heading CIA Operations in Miami, had a hand in all the CIA actions against Fidel Castro in 1963. Bradley Ayers, a US Army Ranger (Special Forces) Captain who was assigned to the CIA JMWAVE station to train Cuban commandos and who worked for the Special Group Augmented (SGA), later claimed that “Morales held sway with Ted Shackley and dominated the entire operational agenda at the CIA Station…. Morales was often demonstrably irritated with changes to planned covert/paramilitary operations that were handed down by CIA headquarters at Langley or by orders from Bobby Kennedy’s Special Group that seemed to be micro-managing the secret war against Castro.” (8)

Larry Hancock has argued that “This CIA autonomous group project was part of a larger Kennedy administration multi-agency effort to produce a coup within Cuba which would internally remove Fidel and Raul Castro, allowing their replacement with a new provisional government in which exile leaders would play a key role. The CIA was not in charge of this effort but was limited to supporting Artime’s military build-up off shore and other related political actions including helping him establish contacts and infrastructure in a number of Latin America countries.” (9)

However, it is not clear that the Kennedy administration was aware of the AM/WORLD project. Arthur Schlesinger explained to Anthony Summers in 1978 why the CIA did not want President Kennedy to negotiate with Fidel Castro during the summer of 1963. He pointed out that the head of the CIA’s Cuba unit, Desmond FitzGerald, masquerading as an American Senator, had told Rolando Cubela that a coup against Castro would have the full backing of the United States Government: “The CIA was reviving the assassination plots at the very time President Kennedy was considering the possibility of normalization of relations with Cuba – an extraordinary action. If it was not total incompetence – which in the case of the CIA cannot be excluded – it was a studied attempt to subvert national policy.” (10)

In 1963 Gary Underhill and Samuel Cummings, became involved in the AM/WORLD project. (11) By the late 1950s Cummings, a former CIA officer, had become the owner of Interarmco, one of the world’s largest military and civilian arms trading companies. He travelled the world buying foreign weapons with which to supply resistance groups behind the Iron Curtain. (12)

Larry Hancock and Stuart Wexler pointed out in Shadow Warfare: The History of America’s Undeclared Wars (2014) that over $326,000 from the AM/WORLD project was spent with Cummings’ company Interarmco. “That was for everything from rifles to cannons. AM/WORLD personnel actually travelled to Europe to facilitate issues and make changes in orders for weapons not in stock with Interarmco. Cut out firms were established in Panama and Costa Rica. In Costa Rica the project used an airfield which was already being used for smuggling.” (13)

The day after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Gary Underhill left Washington in a hurry. Late in the evening he showed up at the homes of friends in New Jersey, Robert and Charlene Fitzsimmons. He told Charlene: “I couldn’t believe they’d got away with it, but they did. They tried it in Cuba, but they couldn’t get away with it. After the Bay of Pigs. But Kennedy wouldn’t let them get away with it. He was about to blow the whistle on them…The country is too dangerous for me now. They’ve gone mad. They’re drug runners and gun runners. They get the intelligence and come back and tell the government how to run the country. And they’re lying. And those idiots are listening to it. Kennedy gave them some time after the Bay of Pigs. ‘We’ll give them a chance to save face,’ he said. The CIA is under enough pressure already.” (14)

Gary Underhill told his friends that he had become aware of this “clique” was involved in selling weapons: “This country is too dangerous for me. I’ve got to get on a boat. Oswald is a patsy. They set him up. It’s too much. The bastards have done something outrageous. They’ve killed the president! I’ve been listening and hearing things. I couldn’t believe they’d get away with it, but they did. They’ve gone mad! They’re a bunch of drug runners and gun runners – a real violence group. I know who they are. That’s the problem. They know I know. That’s why I’m here.” (15)

The journalist, Asher Brynes visited Gary Underhill on 8th May 1964. His apartment door was unlocked, he was found in bed dead from a single shot behind his left ear. The weapon used was one of his own pistols. (16) In addition to the wound behind the left-ear, the pistol was found under the left side of his body. Brynes felt this to be suspicious as Underhill was right-handed. The police investigation was minimal, and the coroner reported the death as a suicide. (17)

If Underhill was working on the AM/WORLD project was he right when he claimed that Lee Harvey Oswald was a patsy and that he was murdered by members of the CIA. If so, he was suggesting that people like Henry Hecksher, Rafael ‘Chi Chi’ Quintero, Carl E. Jenkins, David Atlee Phillips Ted Shackley and David Sanchez Morales were involved in the assassination. (18)

Robert F. Kennedy also suspected that members of the AM/WORLD project might be involved in the killing of his brother. On the evening of the assassination, Kennedy spoke to Enrique (Harry) Ruiz-Williams, a Bay of Pigs veteran who was his closest associate in the Cuban exile community. Kennedy shocked his friend by telling him, “One of your guys did it.” The journalist, Haynes Johnson, was with Ruiz-Williams at the time later recalled: “Harry stood there with the phone in his hand and then he told me what Bobby said… It was a shocking thing. I’ll never forget, Harry got this look on his face. After he hung up, Harry told me what Bobby had said.” (19)

As David Talbot pointed out: “When Bobby Kennedy told his comrade-in-arms Harry Ruiz-Williams, ‘One of your guys did it,’ he might as well have been saying, ‘One of our guys did it’ or even ‘One of my guys did it’. Bobby was saying that his brother had been killed by someone in his own anti-Castro operation… He was supposed to know where the darkness fell, and how to keep his brother safe from it. His brother’s death was his fault – this is certainly another wound that his brother’s killers aimed to inflict. For they knew it would not be enough to assassinate the president – they would have to find a way to stop his avenging brother from coming after them as well, to hobble him with guilt and doubt.” (20)

Gene Wheaton gave an interview in 2005 about the AM/WORLD project. The interview was eventually posted on YouTube on 15th June 2017. Wheaton provided very important information on two important members of the AM/WORLD project, Carl E. Jenkins and Chi Chi Rafael Quintero. “I first met Carl Jenkins in Iran in 1976… In 1985 he became my Washington representative when I became Vice President of the cargo airlines National Air, this was during the Iran-Contra thing and they wanted my airplanes for the Contras… We became like brothers… Chi Chi Quintero would come up to Carl’s place in Fairfax, Virginia… from his home in Miami… We were just like a family, they would talk directly to me and to each other in my presence, as if I was one of the spook crowd, the covert crowd.”

“There was a CIA funded program to assassinate Castro and Carl was in charge of training the Cubans in Miami to assassinate Castro. They would go to Texas and Mexico and take old convertibles, stick old watermelons on the back seat, in something they called triangulation shooting teams… According to them, they were the ones that diverted the Castro funds and training for their own agenda to snuff Kennedy… They were CIA people who were training people to assassinate Castro, but if you are training people to assassinate one man, you can use that training to assassinate anybody… They were furious with JFK because he backed off at the last moment at the Bay of Pigs… There was another clique above them who were worried about Kennedy not increasing the program to escalate hostilities in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Carl was training Chi Chi and several other shooters, about five of them.”

Wheaton also spoke about the connection between Carl E. Jenkins, Lee Harvey Oswald and Carlos Marcello: “Carl Jenkins formed the first Marine Corps Reserve Unit in New Orleans in Louisiana and was the CIA liaison officer between CIA headquarters and Carlos Marcello and organized crime in the area. Carl helped recruit Lee Harvey Oswald into the CIA while he was a marine… Lee was just a stooge they set up as part of a Operation Security Plan for deniability when they put a real dirty operation into place.” (21)

References

(1) CIA Memorandum (19th July 1967)

(2) Joseph Caldwell King, memorandum (28th June 1963)

(3) Ted Shackley, Spymaster: My Life in the CIA (2005) page 71

(4) Lamar Waldron, Ultimate Sacrifice: John and Robert Kennedy, the Plan for a Coup in Cuba, and the Murder of JFK (2005) pages 56-57

(5) M. K. Holbik, memorandum to Howard J. Osborn, Director of Security (16th October 1964)

(6) Larry Hancock, Someone Would Have Talked (2006) pages 110-111

(7) Desmond FitzGerald, memorandum to Ted Shackley (14th November 1963)

(8) Bradley Ayers, sworn statement (3rd November 1989)

(9) Larry Hancock, Someone Would Have Talked (2006) page 507

(10) Anthony Summers, The Kennedy Conspiracy: The Truth? (1992) pages 400-401

(11) Larry Hancock, Underhill and a Clique within the CIA (22nd March 2025)

(12) New York Times (July 21, 1967)

(13) Larry Hancock & Stuart Wexler, Shadow Warfare: The History of America’s Undeclared Wars (2014) pages 212-213

(14) Robert Fitzsimmons, letter sent to Jim Garrison on the comments Garry Underhill made to Charlene Fitzsimmons (3rd May 1967)

(15) Paul Golais, The Citizen’s Voice (8th April 2001)

(16) Larry Hancock, Someone Would Have Talked (2006) page 495

(17) Jim Garrison, interview in Playboy Magazine (October 1967) page 67

(18) Larry Hancock, Someone Would Have Talked (2006) pages 110-111

(19) Haynes Johnson, Washington Post (17th April, 1981)

(20) David Talbot, Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years (2007) page 12

(21) Gene Wheaton, interviewed by William Matson Law and Mark Sobel and posted on YouTube on 15th June 2017.

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John Simkin (BA, MA, MPhil)

While studying at the Open University John Simkin became convinced by the ideas of Jerome Bruner on active learning. Since he began teaching history in 1978 he has attempted to produce materials that enable active learning to take place. This has included educational computer programs such as Attack on the Somme, Wall Street and The Russian Revolution. The internet provides the best opportunity so far to make active learning a reality.

Over the last twenty years he has written several history books including Gandhi (1987), The Vietnam War (1988), Race Relations in the United States (1988), Slavery: An Illustrated History of Black Resistance (1988), Hitler (1988), Stalin (1987), The Roman Empire (1991), Making of the United Kingdom (1992), Expansion, Trade and Industry (1992), The Medieval Village (1996), The Norman Invasion (1996), etc.

In September, 1997, along with Judith Harris Simkin, Mr. Simkin established the Spartacus Educational website and over the next six years produced online material for the Daily Telegraph, the European Virtual School and The Guardian and its educational website, Learn. He was also a member of the European History E-Learning Project (E-Help), a project to encourage and improve use of ICT and the internet in classrooms across the continent. He currently teaches several courses at the University of the Third Age, including Understanding the Modern World: The Romans to the Information Society and History of Ideas.

Mr. Simkin has published ten e-books, Charles Dickens: A Biography (October, 2012), First World War Encyclopedia (October, 2012), Assassination of John F. Kennedy Encyclopedia (November, 2012), Gandhi: A Biography (December, 2012), The Spanish Civil War (December, 2012), The American Civil War (December, 2012), Henry VII (September, 2015), Henry VIII (September, 2015), Anne Boleyn (September, 2015) and Mary Tudor (September, 2015). He is the author of, Using New Technologies to Enhance Teaching and Learning in History (December, 2012), and in September 2015 was one of the historians interviewed for the BBC documentary, The Hollywood Spy.

As of October, 2019, the Spartacus Educational website contained 21,036,905 words and 33,196 sources. Spartacus Educational is committed to producing free content, especially to those countries that find it difficult to purchase books.

You can find a more detailed autobiography here: John Simkin

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