Home/ Resources / Projects / CIA Pseudonyms / pseudonym: FRANK_COLONEL

Pseudonym: Frank, Colonel

Definition:
Either Jack Hawkins or Colonel Frank Egan.
Category:
alias
Status:
Speculative
Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Hawkins_(U.S._Marine_Corps_officer)

Wikipedia article identifies Jack Hawkins as using the nickname Colonel Frank and the alias John Haskins.

1993.08.02.15:32:06:460028: INTERVIEW WITH POW (FORMER BAY OF PIGS PRISONER)

Re July-November 1960: Interview with Edgardo Antonio Buttari Puig, 12/23/62: "...(300 men involved in the training between July-Sept 1960. The grey group became the planned infiltrators, the black group became the action group...Miguel Orozco was assigned the overall head of the 'grey' groups. Eneido Oliva was the overall leader of the 'black' groups. Cubans arriving in the camp after the first part of October 1960 were organized into infantry companies. By November 1960, there were about two infantry companies of 60 men each. They underwent basic military training for about 20 days. Jose Perez San Ramon was assigned overall leader of the infantry companies which were designated as the "K" group. Late in November 1960, Col. Vallejo left and was replaced by an American known to me as 'Frank'. Although he never wore military insignia, I assume he had the rank of Colonel in the US Army, since he replaced a US Army colonel. 'Frank' arrived with a group of others among whom I recall 'Burnie', 'Gordon', 'Pat', and one known as 'C.B.' (initials only). 'Frank' reorganized the entire group. He dissolved the teams and organized the Brigade 2506."

John Prados, Safe for Democracy, pp. 219ss-223 (Ivan R. Dee, Chicago, 2006)

10/60:...As Guatemala chief years before, (Jake) Esterline knew the prominent Alejos family...the Helvetia (mountain) plantation became known as Camp Trax...In October there were exactly four CIA trainers at Camp Trax. Its total agency staff numbered nine. Trax lacked any counterintelligence officer for a long time while Radio Swan spent months looking for an announcer...Jake Esterline led a task force many of whose ley slots were filled by people renowned in their specialties, either in Project Success or elsewhere. Take the political action staff: Howard Hunt and Dave Phillips were known political operators, and Jerry Droller was well esteemed...the task force also included Jim Noel, former Havana station chief; his deputy; the Cuba desk officer from WH division...The air boss was Col. Stanley Beerli, CIA's top airman and the mastermind behind U-2 opertions, his field assistant Gar Thorstud...Esterline's deputy, Ed Stanulis, had been top planner for the Western Hemisphere Division. Dick Drain, chief of operations, fresh from service in Greece, had held the same job at the station, and had psychological operations experience in the Eisenhower White House (with Nelson Rockefeller)...The top trainer at Camp Trax was an army Special Forces lieutenant colonel, Frank Egan; and the field commander, Hawkins, had participated in World War II amphibious landings and had been guerrilla commander against the Japanese in the Philippines...Esterline thought highly of (Rip) Robertson and didn't mind bringing him back...(Robertson) became an amphibious warfare trainer, case officer aboard the landing ship Barbara J. Another fresh face was Grayston L. Lynch...Hawkins employed Lynch to train Cuban frogmen and later as case officer aboard the landing ship Blagar."

1993.07.14.15:07:44:590280: INTERVIEW WITH POW (FORMER BAY OF PIGS PRISONER)

Re late January 1961: Edgar Antonio Buttari interview (continued): "On 30 January 1961, Manuel Villafana/LITAINT-1, head of the Cuban Air Force in exile attached to the Brigade 2506, visited Trax Base. Villafana (circulated a letter to the FRD) demanding, in the name of the members of Brigade 2506, to remove the general staff of the Directorate, FRD, and reinstate Jaime Vanosa Carela as Navy chief...Villafana had the approval of the Brigade headquarters, but the opposition of the majority of the Brigade members. We considered this an act of insubordination to the Chief of the Joint Staff and to the civil authorities of the FRD. This incident caused a mass disturbance within Trax Base...the 2nd and 3rd infantry battalions refused to continue training until FRD representatives arrived at Trax Base...the principal American instruction, "Burnie"...on 31 January 1961...told us that Jose Perez San Roman was to be reinstated as supreme head of the Brigade...all Brigade members left the platform area and returned to their barracks. Villafana and San Roman remained alone...Some men refused to continue training until an acceptable solution was reached. About 14 of these men were sent under arrest to Peten plains where they were fed by airdrops...the 2nd and 3rd infantry battalions were combined and reorganized..."

Peter Wyden, Bay of Pigs: The Untold Story (1979), pp. 57-59.

Early 1961: At Camp Trax in Guatemala, "'Colonel Frank' - probably Lt. Col. Frank Egan, in command of all indigenous Brigade training - see https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=9985&relPageId=155 - and the US command of thirty-eight advisers (military men posing as civilians) lorded it over the Brigade from their hilltop residence 'like mandarins over a Chinese province'...there was a mutiny. Some 230 men 'resigned', including all of the Second and Third Battalions. Whereupon San Roman resigned to join up as an ordinary soldier...With Colonel Frank away, his superior, another American officer named 'Bernie' and known as 'Sitting Bull' (note: identified as Carl Jenkins by Bradley Ayers) because of his squat appearance, assembled the Brigade in formation and announced from a wooden platform: 'I am boss here, and the commander of the Brigade is still Pepe San Ramon...(Son of the former Cuban defense minister Rodolfo) Nodal ..(had) been elected one of the five leaders of the (one hundred) dissidents...Nodal found himself under arrest in tents normally occupied by the Brigade's tank units. He was one of twenty men who were considered the principal troublemakers and he was (apprehended)...along with fellow dissidents, he was spirited by seaplane and canoe to a camp in the Peten, a mountainous, almost inaccessible jungle in northernmost Guatemala. It was guarded by four Americans and twenty-five Guatemalans. The prisoners were issued thin slippers to discourage escapes. Nobody tried to get away. Two weeks after the invasion, Nodal was flown to Miami and released. He phoned his family at 3 am. They did not know he was alive."

104-10069-10111: LAUREANO BATISTA

May 1961: Laureano Batista/AMPALM-2 of the Christian Democratic Movement/AMPALM had a weapons and explosives net from Miami to Cuba. Batista said he could no longer reach his contacts Colonel Roderick or Jack Peters. He said he had met Peters and had never actually met Colonel Roderick. In fact, these two men were the same person. Batista's two contact persons in the CIA were Peters and "Mr. Frank" - probably Colonel Frank Egan. Batista's contact with them was broken after the Bay of Pigs. Frank only told Batista "we have to lay low for awhile."

https://www.maryferrell.org/pages/Essay_-_Why_is_Fidel_Castro_Still_Alive.html

1966-1976: "(Fabian) Escalante dangled one of his most successful penetration agents for almost four years before the CIA took the bait. Nicolas Sirgado Ros was made general director of supplies for the Ministry of Construction, socialized with known dissidents in Cuba and took frequent business trips to Europe. Finally, in London in 1966, Sirgado received a call from an executive in a Belgium business firm suggesting a meeting to discuss "trade questions." A tall, affably suave man who introduced himself as Harold Bensen showed up at Sirgado's hotel room and, after some preliminary probing, revealed he was with the CIA. (Bensen, says Escalante, was really David Atlee Phillips, the CIA officer then in charge of Cuban Operations.) Bensen offered Sirgado a salary if he began working for the CIA, paid in dollars deposited in a Chase Manhattan Bank account in New York. After his work was through, Bensen promised Sirgado, he would be resettled comfortably in the United States. For more than ten years, the CIA considered Sirgado one of its most valuable Cuban assets....In 1974, at a debriefing meeting in Italy, the CIA gave Sirgado his most challenging assignment. It taught him how to install a microtransmitter in the office of his boss, Construction Minister Osmani Cienfuegos. Sirgado did a beautiful job. The CIA picked up an inordinate amount of information from Cienfuegos who, fortunately, always talked loud enough to provide the Agency's evedroppers with clear reception. Early in 1976, Sirgado received special recognition for his work. In an informal ceremony in a hotel room in Madrid, an officer who wore a patch over his right eye and called himself Colonel Frank said he had come to personally congratulate Sirgado and convey the compliments of CIA Headquarters for his more than ten years of service. He also gave Sirgado a personal letter from then National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger and, as a personal gift from Kissinger, a Rolex watch."

William Turner & Warren Hinckle, Deadly Secrets, p. 67

Late 1960: The Guatemala training camp called Base Trax was under the direction of a dour Army lieutenant colonel who used the nom de guerre of Colonel Frank.

Howard Jones, Bay of Pigs (Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 38

"Lt. Col. Frank Egan (was) the CIA operations officer sent to organize the Cubans training in Guatemala. He and five American trainers and Cuban officers had selected leaders based on a rigid field performance and by early December had begun seven weeks of training nearly six hundred forces...Egan was particularly impressed by Jose Perez San Roman (Pepe) 'a natural born leader' who became captain and leader of the brigade."

Contributors:
Bill Simpich

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