Swimming Pool for Assassins: How the CIA Took Care of Its Killers in 1963
New JFK files show Air Force Col. Jack C. Ledford was paymaster for the Agency’s covert killing contractors
Professional assassins do not work pro bono.
That is the key takeaway from a recent JFK Facts article that identified Air Force Col. Jack C. Ledford as the secret funding source for William K. Harvey’s ZRRIFLE assassination program in the early 1960s.
Harvey, a highly capable officer in the early days of the CIA, is the subject of ongoing interest to JFK assassination researchers because of the numerous unanswered questions surrounding ZRRIFLE as well as his known hatred for President John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert, and the recent disclosure that he obtained a fake FAA credential months before he left the United States to become CIA station chief in Rome.
Documents recently found on the Agency’s FOIA website and in the new JFK files illuminate the role Ledford played in Harvey’s assassination-related activities in 1963. The new records show that Ledford had the ability to facilitate both small and large financial transactions.
Ledford held a key position. As assistant director of the Office of Special Activities (OSA), he was responsible for funding top secret airborne reconnaissance projects via black budgets. The payment system, which distributed U.S. Treasury checks, was utilized by the CIA and the armed services.
With multiple channels of covert funding, Ledford also supported Harvey’s ZRRIFLE duties throughout 1963, which nominally involved plotting to kill Cuban leader Fidel Castro.
If Harvey was involved in the plot to kill JFK (as even his admiring biographer Bayard Stockton had to admit was an open question) he likely would have used Ledford’s OSA apparatus to fund his activities and cover his tracks.
In March 1963 Ledford redirected up to $5,000 from an airborne reconnaissance program to pay for the construction of a swimming pool at the CIA’s secret training facility in Virginia, known as Camp Peary.
And therein lies a tale about the care and feeding of assassins.
