The Real Tosh Plumlee

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Audio Recording and Transcript:  Bill Simpich questions Sara Peterson and Katanna Zachry about Tosh Plumlee’s credibility

April 30, 2021 at JFK Conference / Webinar in Kansas City

[Beginning at 0:37 sec.]

Simpich:  “Here’s my question because I love a lot of the figures, but there’s one that I do not love in this case . . .and I’m ready for all the arrows, is Tosh Plumlee.  And the reason I say that, and you probably know that Tosh has at least been questioned as a reliable source.  I just wanted to share that he was not only one of the most important, you know, alleged witnesses, in this case but he was also in the Dark Alliance case, the Gary Webb story about the cocaine(?) . . .uh, Tosh well, this is how I knew about Tosh, because I worked on that case back in the day, that’s how I met Peter Dale Scott. 

Now, here’s an article out of the Huff Post from a few years ago – just let me read a few lines: 

“Uh, two years before the Iran-Contra bubbled up in the Reagan White House, pilot Tosh Plumlee revealed to Senator Gary Hart that the planes would routinely transport cocaine to the United States after dropping off arms to the Nicaragan rebels; and then he spoke in media interviews, he wrote letters to Senator Gary Hart, he sought out Gary Hart in 1983.  Gary Hart told the Huff Post in 2014 he remembered getting this letter, you know, decades later, you know, after the fact, and found his allegations worthy of follow-up.

“Plumlee flew weapons into Latin America for decades, for the CIA.  When the Contra revolution took off in the 1980s he continued to transport arms south for the spy agency and bring cocaine back with the blessing of the U.S. government. (Emphasis, through voice inflection, in original).

“I have to say I think that he’s got one of the most active imaginations I’ve ever seen.” [Emphasis in original, merely highlighted here.  Editor’s note:  It isn’t clear precisely what he was referring to but it would seem to suggest that he thought that the general idea of the CIA’s, or the government’s involvement in flying drugs back into the U.S., never mind Plumlee’s, is so fantastically absurd as to be conceptually impossible].

“And uh, I just, you know – I’m very tough on everybody, even my witnesses, for years, I’ve touted Robert Barret . . . you all know who Barrett is [he was an FBI agent, referenced in Richard Trask’s Pictures of the Pain, among other books – ed.].  And I really felt that he was a truth-teller in the Kennedy case, because, not only did he report that Westbrook showed him the wallet of, allegedly of Oswald’s, minutes after the assassination, but he shouted out two names that were in there, Oswald and Hidell.  But then I got some memos from the, uh, newspapers from decades past, where he used different people’s names as the names that he found in the wallet.  And then he said it wasn’t Westbrook on other occasions, he said it was another man, and, I just started studying Barrett, and I found that this guy was a disinformation agent, he was uh, I could go on and on about Barrett but he spent a lot of time infusing information into the case. And I feel very [unintelligible, might be “burned by that”].   And I also found out that Barrett was a guy who was charged by the FBI to collect all the movies, all the film, in the days, the weeks and years after the assassination. And, I have to admit that I look at Barrett in a whole new light now (laughter).

“But I could carry on about Barrett, but I won’t.  But I could also carry on about Plumlee, and we can do it off-line if you want.”

[The remaining interview includes his comments about the need to create a “credibility index” for investigators and witnesses who would be selected and rated “by people who we rely on” – [What could possibly go wrong with that? – Ed.]].