Pseudonym: Bishop, Harold
"In July, 1961, after Bay of Pigs, CIA worked to consolidate counterrevolutionary groups into the 'Unidad Resistencia' (United Resistance) organization. Jose Pujals Mederos made an undercover visit to the United States to meet with CIA officers Jim Bender (or Boulding), Harold Bishop and Carl Hitch. There Mederos was appointed head of CIA operations in Cuba in place of the arrested Alfredo Izaguirre. Programs included 'self aggression' against Guantanamo to justify counter-attacks on other countries to provoke war against Cuba..." 00/00/75: SSCIA document: Miscellaneous Records of the Church Committee: Page 135 (Page 1 of document entitled: The CIA in Cuba: Chronological Summary of Cuban Allegations): ...
104-10113-10114: CABLE TO DIRECTOR RE ATTEMPTS AGAINST CASTRO'S LIFE
Re 1961-1971: "On 18 November, Prensa Latina issued two long Spanish-language articles listing 20 or more attempts against Castro's life. Following day items appeared in English...names mentioned...as involved in attempts...Pierre Owen, Diez Uro (French CIT), Renee Sigler, Sanchez Rivas, Jose Pujals Medero (CIA handlers Jim Bender, alias Jim Boulding; Harold Bishop, Carl Hitch). Jorge Luis Cuervo Calvo, Jesus Dominguez Benites (disguised as cameraman during Castro's 1971 visit to Chile) Chronology article lists following: 1960: Armando Cubria Ramos and Mario Tauler; 1961 Guillermo Coula and Higinio Menendez; July 1961: '30 November Organization' - no names. 1961: Emilio Adolfo Rivero Caro, Adolfo Mendoza, Jorge Garcia Rubio, and Alfredo Izaguirre with Jose Pujals above. October 1961: Antonio Veciana. 1963: Manuel Campamopmo Sousa with Santos Perez Nunez. March 1963: Nino Diaz. April 1963: The "Anti-Communist Civic Resistance" organization. No names. July 1963: Ibrahim Machin Hernandez. September, 1963: Diez (of paragraph 2 above). 1964: Oswaldo Figueroa Galvez and Felipe Alfonso Herrera. September 1964: Nemesio Cubillas and Angel Arencibia (in Celia Sanchez residence). January 1965: Julio Cruz Cecilas and Fermin Gonzalez Carballo. 1965: No names during attempt at Vita Nuova restaurant. June 1965: Ramon Grau Alsina. May 1966: Landing foiled - no names. 1966: Ronaldo Cubelas. 1967: Landing foiled at Cayo Fragoso. 1971: Dominguez noted above.11/23/76, memo to Director...Also see 1993.08.11.19:16:31:090058 - p. 3 for traces done on 13 of these men in 1978.
Transcript of Fonzi-Escalante Interview, Part 1
April-August 1971: "Another anecdote: I don't know what Antonio Veciana has told you but I'm going to tell you what I know. The case, as we call it, From The North Terrace of the Palace. To us it was a puzzle. First of all we arrest on August 8, 1961, a CIA agent named Jose Pujals Maderos/AMCOAX-1). This man had been a very old informant of the CIA in Havana. And after the Bay of Pigs he was enrolled by another CIA agent, Isedro Izzajidre (note: Alfredo Izaguirre/AMPUG-1) on a plot to kill Fidel and Raul Castro...But they both had some differences, and about middle of June, Pujals leaves for the United States. The actions against (Izaguirre), if I don't recall wrong, was on July 22. We arrested the main people in the plot...the CIA radio man Jorge Garcia Rubio...And the main thing was that plot was organized. This plan was also linked with a provocation at the Navy base in Guantanamo. But that's another story...It looked like the end of July...let me give you another detail that I didn't give you before - according to what Pujal Madero/AMCOAX-1 said, that he gets to Miami and has a meeting with Howard Hunt and he travels to Washington and has an interview with someone called Harold Bishop...and he was the person who told him to contact Veciana and Reynold Gonzalez...We don't even have a description of him...but that is a detail so you can bear it in mind...The interesting thing is Bishop and that its not Maurice, it's Harold...And then he (Pujols) comes back to Cuba at the end of July and contacts Veciana and Gonzales and we captured him on August 8th...From August 8th we already know that it was a new plot to kill Fidel, but we didn't know where it was going to be or when or how big it was..." 12/9-10/95, Gaeton Fonzi interview of Fabian Escalante, p. 25.
"Later, in Escalante's intelligence files it would be called Caso Terraza Norte - the North Terrace Case. It was part of a much larger operation that was going to include not only the assassination of Castro but the instigation of massive chaos and terror in Havana designed to ignite a public uprising. Escalante began discerning hints of it in reports that flowed in during the summer of 1961, but a clearer image didn't emerge until the arrest of CIA agent Jose Pujols in August, shortly after the Agency had infiltrated him back into Cuba following a meeting in Washington. Pujols had been the CIA's link to the group called the MRP (Movimiento Revolucionario del Pueblo). In Washington, Pujols had met with two CIA officers, one of whom was introduced to him as Harold Bishop. Escalante believes, from Pujols' description, that "Harold Bishop" was another alias used by David Phillips. Interrogated by Escalante, Pujols said the CIA had put a major operation together that included a sabotage and terrorism campaign. Harold Bishop asked him to help in coordinating the MRP's role by getting in touch with Antonio Veciana, who had recently become the MRP's chief of sabotage. Pujols said that the terrorism campaign would include setting explosives and incendiary devices in several of the major Havana department stores. The CIA said nothing about a Castro assassination plot to Pujols, but Escalante assumed there would be one, it was always part of the pattern. All he had to do was figure out where and when."
Fabian Escalante, The Cuba Project (Ocean Press, 2004), pp. 94-95
"(After AMPUG-1/Izaguirre was arrested), CIA officials Harold Bishop and Frank Bender met with agent Jose Pujals, who had been in Washington when he was caught unaware by the Operation Patty setback. Pujals was ordered to assume command of the CIA agents on the island and particularly to determine the state of the MRP's plans...If everything was normal, he was to coordinate an operation whose code name would be Liborio, which would include assassinating the Cuban leader (and) launching an extensive sabotage and terrorism campaign, and orchestrating, in conjunction with the Catholic hierarchy, a psychological warfare project designed to discredit the revolution in the eyes of the people...Pujals arrived in the capital in late July, 1961, after a risky voyage in which the CIA infiltrated him back into the country...a few days later he met with Reynold Gonzalez, Veciana and the spy Octavio Barroso, and explained to them the plan as instructed by his CIA controllers. The idea was to ignite Havana - to burn down the big clothing stores and the electrical and transportation facilities - and at the same time to assassinate various members of revolutionary organizations. This would provoke public indignation, and surely end in a mass demonstration in front of the Presidential Palace...the opportunity to assassinate Fidel. At the same time they would coordinate with the Catholic hierarchy the dissemination of a supposed Patria Potestad law, which they themselves would write, saying that the state was going to take away parents' power over their children. The conspiring priests would then proceed to spread the lie from their pulpits, in such a way that the population, eminently religious, would challenge the revolution and thus create the internal conditions which, together with the physical elimination of Fidel, would produce the fall of the government. On August 8, Pujals and Barroso were arrested by Cuban security forces who...captured them in Barroso's home."
1993.07.21.08:58:07:430620: ROBERT A. MAHEU: OS/SAG FILES PROVIDED TO THE HSCA
1963: Several members of the Society of Former Special Agents of the FBI ran a confidential reporting service known as "Bishop's Service, Inc." William K. Harvey ran an office in Indianapolis, Ronald Macmillan ran an office at 1255 Post (the old Jack Tar Hotel), San Francisco, and the president Harold Swenson ran the home office at 111 Fourth Avenue, NYC." MFF has a number of articles about the Society in its Grapevine newsletter, featuring other members such as Robert Maheu: https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=139102&relPageId=30&search=GRAPEVINE_AND%20SOCIETY