John Hull — Simple Rancher or U.S. Government Terrorist?
Question: If the U.S. government can bomb U.S. consulates abroad to "simulate terrorism",
what might it have done with respect to the Murrah Federal Building?
AFFIDAVIT OF
Robert M. Hayes
2104 Selkirk Lane North
Lakeland, Florida
(813) 644-4364Although I will reveal the full details of my intelligence background and activities only before a grand jury, trial jury or congressional committee, I will say that during and after my military service in the United States Army (RA11312792) I worked for or with the Army Security Service, the National Security Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Army's Criminal Investigative Division.
This affidavit is limited to my activities from approximately 1971 through 1977 in Lakeland, Florida; Sao Paulo, Brazil and Albuquerque, New Mexico.
I moved to Lakeland in 1971 to accept a position as chief engineer of Davy Powergas, now known and [sic: as] Davy McKee. Subsequent to my arrival in Lakeland, I was approached in Lakeland by a man who identified himself only as "Erickson" of Army CID in Pensacola. He asked me to assist in an investigation of an alleged conspiracy to steal a military payroll from Fort Stewart, Ga. The investigation was halted after the chief suspect, Military Police Sgt. Robert Earl Ward, was severly wounded Nov. 23, 1971 in a gun battle with Punta Gorda, Florida police officers. Ward was charged with two counts of attempted murder for wounding two policemen.
Early in 1972, I learned that all civil and military charges against Ward had been mysteriously dropped. The suspicious circumstances surrounding the lack of prosecution prompted me to telephone the Lakeland Police Department on March 5, 1972 and arrange to surrender two Browning .38 automatic pistols and a modified .30 military carbine that Ward had stored at my apartment. I subsequently learned from a source in the Federal Bureau of Investigation that ballistics test of the two pistols confirmed the weapons had been used in at least one murder in Long Island, New York.
On March 6, 1972, I received a call from Erickson asking me to meet him the following day at Roberts Flying Service at Lakeland Municipal Airport. On the morning of the 7th, I met in Lakeland with Richard Barest, Ward's Lakeland attorney, who suggested I leave Lakeland.
Following the meeting with Barest, I met Erickson, who arrived at Lakeland airport in a U.S. Air Force plane. He informed me that my participation in the investigation could not be acknowledged nor my safety guaranteed. He also recommended I leave Lakeland.
Acting on that advice, I traveled to Sao Paulo, Brazil, arriving on July 12, 1972. I lived at first with a Lebanese family. Through the family, I was introduced on July 25 to Ferris Dubakues, an agent of Al Fatah, a radical Palestinian terrorist organization affiliated with the Palestinian Liberation Organization. Dubakues attempted to recruit me as an Al Fatah terrorist, but I refused to participate in any way in terrorist activities.
I subsequently was contacted by Max Schoener, an Israeli intelligence agent, or and Seymour Malkin, who frequently worked for Schoener. At their request, I agreed to work for Mossad.
I later met and worked for Frederick Mayer and Franz Jank, agents for West German intelligence. I continued accepting assignments from Mossad and sometimes sold information developed for one intelligence agency to the other agency.
During this and subsequent periods, I used the aliases of Roberto Reis in Brazil and Roberto Reyes in Argentina. My passports and other credentials in those names and that of Al Assal have since been destroyed.
On Jan. 9, 1973, I was granted resident alien status in Brazil. I subsequently applied for and was granted Brazilian gun permit 745123 for a .22 Astra automatic and permit 741426 for a .38 Taurus revolver.
After working for a Brazilian engineering company, I eventually formed Hayes-Bosworth, a Brazilian company engaged in heavy engineering and construction projects for Brazilian and foreign clients. Between 1972 and 1976, the company's success provided me with the funds, contacts and time to indulge my lifelong interest in Latin American politics.
While building Hayes/Bosworth, I continued my affiliation with Israeli and West German intelligence and eventually was recruited by the United States Central Intelligence Agency.
My first contact with the CIA came on June 19, 1973 when I was introduced to Joe Siblay. Our initial meeting occurred at the Sao Paulo apartment of a mutual friend, who introduced Sibley as an engineer engaged in consulting work for Anaconda Copper Co. in Chile.
This and subsequent conversations with Sibley established him as an American expatriate extremely knowledgable in Chilean politics and reasonably familiar with Latin America in general. These conversations also established Sibley's strong anti-communist attitude, an attitude I shared both then and now.
I next met Silbey [sic: Sibley] on Feb. 14, 1974 at my office at Hayes/Bosworth. We met again on Feb. 22.
In March or April of that year, I received a call from Frank Ryan, an official at the U.S. consulate in Sao Paulo. He asked me to come to the consulate to update some paperwork. When I arrived at the consulate, Ryan escorted me to an office within the consulate, where Sibley was seated at a desk.
After Ryan left the room, Sibley informed me that his "real" name was John Joseph Michaels and produced corroborating identification that I recognized from previous experience as genuine CIA credentials. He then recited in great detail and accuracy my previous connections with and service for various U.S. intelligence organizations, including the agency. He also recited details of my work for Israeli and West German intelligence.
Michaels then requested my assistance in illegal clandestine operations that he referred to as "projects." He said these operations were targeted against communist agents in Latin America, primarily those working for or under the control of Cuban intelligence operatives.
I agreed to work for Michaels and subsequently accepted several operations in which the identity and loyalty of the targets was established to my satisfaction. These operations occurred between 1974 and 1976 and ranged from routine intelligence gathering to kidnapping, interrogation and assassination.
I accepted these operations in the belief that I was serving the best interests of the American government and was operating with the sanction of that government. I received no payment for conducting these operations and frequently spent large sums of my personal funds to accomplish them.
My relationship with Michaels ended abruptly [in] 1976 after Michaels proposed an operation that I considered not only absurd, but also contrary to the best interests of the U.S. government.
In the spring of 1976, Michaels proposed that I arrange to "simulate terrorism." I responded that there was no way to "simulate" terrorism. I insisted that an act is either terrorist or not, and anyone knowingly engaging in a violent act against civilians is in fact a terrorist and beyond sanction.
Despite my objection, Michaels continued to endorse the concept, explaining that evidence would be planted in such a manner to ensure that the operation would be blamed on Cuban agents.
When I asked what the target of this "simulated" act was to be, he proposed three: A large Catholic cathedral in Sao Paulo, a twin theatre complex near the U.S. consulate in Sao Paulo and the U.S. consulate itself.
Although I refused the operation in unmistakable terms, Michaels insisted that I reconsider and said two of his agents would contact me for further discussion.
In late June or early July of 1976, I was approached at my office by two Americans I knew to be subordinates of Michaels. They once again proposed a bombing attack of one of three targets originally proposed by Michaels.
The meeting resulted in two other meetings. The third and final meeting ended in an angry exchange in which I rejected both the operation and the concept and told Michael's subordinates that I never wanted to see him or them again.
The following week, the two Americans were found dead in a downtown Sao Paulo park with their hands and feet bound by wire. Each had been shot in the back of the head. No arrests were made in connection with the death.
The deaths of the two Americans were followed by the violent deaths on the same day of four of my associates. No arrests were made in connection with their deaths.
Reliable contacts in the Brazilian government and military and contacts in other circles warned me that my own death was imminent if I did not flee Brazil.
Before I could arrange a departure, I was visited at my office by heavily-armed members of the Brazilian Air Force security branch. The officer in charge of the detachment had orders to transport me to Cumbica, a facility widely known in Brazil as a military concentration camp. Through threats of violence and the timely intervention of Brazilian friends, I postponed my arrest.
Although I remain unaware of the precise connection between Michaels and the Brazilian Air Force, I am convinced this visit and a subsequent incident with the security force were ordered and orchestrated by Michaels.
After the incident at my office and warnings from friends, I prepared to flee Brazil with my pregnant American wife. Accompanied by several heavily-armed employees, my wife and I arrived at the airport to return to the U.S. We were met by the same Brazilian officer who had attempted to arrest me at my office.
The officer said that both I and my wife were wanted for questioning at Cumbica. I informed the officer that I would accompany him if my wife were allowed to continue to the U.S. I also informed him that should he refuse, my men would engage his in a gun battle in the airport lobby. Under those conditions, he permitted my wife to depart and delayed my arrest until her plane had sufficient time to clear Brazilian air space.
Once I was convinced my wife was safely out of the country, I accompanied the officer to the airport parking lot, where there was an explosive diversion that permitted me to escape under cover of gunfire.
After hiding with friends for a day, I drove across Brazil with a friend, crossed the border into Paraguay and made my way to Asuncion. The following day, after an attempt on my life that left me wounded, I flew from there via Braniff Airlines to Miami. I traveled under my own passport.
I was met at the Miami airport by agents from the local CIA office. Although they denied any specific knowledge of me or my activities, they asked what my plans were. Upon telling them that I planned to fly to Albuquerque, New Mexico to join my wife, who was staying there with her parents, they asked me to call the Denver CIA office after my arrival.
I contacted the Denver office and later was contacted by the CIA office in Santa Fe, New Mexico, which dispatched an agent known to me as Carl Tollonin to debrief me. Tollonin later was joined by a second agent known to me as Roy Clarkson. Over a period of several months, first Tollonon [sic] and then Clarkson attempted to convince me that I had been duped by Michaels and had never worked for U.S. intelligence. They also convinced me that Michaels had been killed smuggling weapons in the Middle East.
Throughout this debriefing I considered Michaels the source of my problems-- which included the premature birth of my first daughter, a birth that I believe was accelerated by the strains the situation in Brazil had placed on my wife. And I blamed Michael's wrath on my refusal to "simulate terrorism."
Once Clarkson persuaded me that Michaels was dead, I was prepared to forget the incident and rebuild my life. I remained in Albuquerque for several years. During that period I was asked by contacts I knew to be CIA agents to assist in an effort to compromise certain Arabic students attending universities in the Southwest. Once compromised, the students were to be manipulated by the CIA after they returned home and rose to prominence within their countries. I refused to participate.
While still in New Mexico, I was recruited by a statewide task force to become an undercover informant in an investigation of organized crime. The task force was created by then New Mexico Attorney General Jeff Bingaman, who now is a U.S. Senator from New Mexico, and his assistant Roy Anescowicz. The task force's chief investigator was former CIA agent Sam Papich. My primary contact with the task force was an investigator named Pete Donahue.
My value as an informant arose from my social contacts with alleged organized crime figures George Demuksian, Gerry Tevisanno and Billy Marchiando. I agreed to provide the task force with information on their activities, and ultimately testified before a statewide grand jury in 1978. Despite the evidence presented by the task force, no indictment was returned, a fact I attribute to deliberate prosecutorial mismanagement by Bingaman.
I eventually returned to Lakeland in 1981 and buried the Brazilian incident and my other intelligence activities in my past. But Michaels returned to haunt me late last year when I read a November 16, 1987 Time magazine article titled "The Misadventures of el Patron." The article detailed the activities of John Hull, an American expatriate operating a farm on Costa Rica's northern border with Nicaragua. Hull was identified in the article and in previous testimony by himself and others as a CIA agent whose farm was used to transship weapons and other supplies to the Contra rebels opposing the Sandinista government in Nicaragua.
Although he has consistently denied it, Hull also has been accused in court testimony and published accounts of participation with others in an aborted plot to bomb the U.S. embassy in San Juan, Costa Rica and to blame the bombing on agents of the Sandinista government.
The article was accompanied by a color photograph of Hull, which I immediately identified as John Joseph Michaels. After subsequent research and further examination of the photograph, I remain convinced that John Joseph Michaels and John Hull are the same individual, and that Michael's activities in Brazil are part of a continuing pattern of operations that led to the plot to bomb the U.S. embassy in Costa Rica, as he had asked me to bomb the U.S. consulate in Sao Paulo.
Robert H. Hayes
January 1988
CERTIFICATE OF NOTARY PUBLIC
BEFORE ME, personally appeared ROBERT HAYES, who after first being duly on oath, deposes and says that he is the person who executed the statement to which this certificate is attached, that he has read the statement and the facts and matters contained therein, that they were freely given and are true and correct to the best of his knowledge and belief.
WITNESS my hand and official seal, this 7th day of January, 1988.
Elizabeth B. Jones[?]
NOTARY PUBLICMy commission expires May 12, 1988.
Posted at http://www.aci.net/kalliste/rhayes.htm on July 12, 1997 (now disappeared).
Recovered from the internet cache and reposted on Serendipity on December 7, 2003.