“Dark Complected Man” Dies

Orlando Bosch; Cuban exile, CIA contractor, terrorist, assassin, and long suspected of being the “dark complected man” (DCM) acting bizarrely at the scene of the JFK assassination, died in Miami on April 27th at the age of 85. The DCM was in the company of the “Umbrella Man” (UM) on the curb right next to Kennedy’s limousine when the fatal shots were fired on November 22, 1963 in Dallas.

As the limousine carrying Kennedy approached the pair the UM strangely raised an umbrella and “pumped” it. Seconds later and immediately following the shot striking Kennedy in the throat about ten feet in front of the pair, the DCM raised his arm in an apparent signal. As the limousine sped away and bystanders were still sprawled on the ground or running away, the pair calmly sat on the curb and chatted.

Photo 1) The “Dark Complected Man” and the “Umbrella Man” calmly sitting on the curb near the “Grassy Knoll” chatting moments after the fatal shots.

DCM and UM take it easy, while assassination witness Bill Newman
and his family still lie on the ground; half-lying on the ground also
is Cheryl McKinnon (center), who heard shots from the knoll and
saw "puffs of white smoke." (Photo by Art Rickerby)

Photo 2) A different shot of the pair. Photo analysts determined (although not conclusively) that the man on the left in the white jacket is Orlando Bosch.

Photo 3) From the Zapruder film, as JFK has been shot in the throat. The umbrella is open, and the Dark-Complected Man's arm is raised.

The “Umbrella Man”, Louie Steven Witt, a Dallas warehouse manager, testified before the House Select Committee on Assassinations after being identified and turned in by a co-worker. He told them he raised the umbrella because he “knew it would annoy Kennedy”. This statement was typically never pursued by the HSCA or anyone else. The DCM’s raised arm is suspected to be a signal to the shooters that the first (second?) shot had hit and/or that another shot was required to finish the President off.

One theory is that the assassins wanted Kennedy to know (in his final seconds) exactly why he was being killed. The umbrella symbolized Kennedy's recent refusal to provide a covering “umbrella” of air support during the CIA’s failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. The term had been widely used and the significance of the raised umbrella would have instantly been understood by Kennedy.

Did the Cuban Exile community work with the CIA, FBI, DPD and unknown other lettered groups in the assassination? Lee Harvey Oswald, the fall guy, certainly had connections to that community as well as to the CIA.

Orlando Bosch was educated in Cuba as a medical doctor and was a university acquaintance of Fidel Castro. He left Cuba for the USA shortly before Castro’s revolution only to soon return to attempt to organize a counter-revolution. He failed in this attempt and fled back to the USA.

Former U.S. Attorney General Dick Thornburgh called Bosch an "unrepentant terrorist." He was accused of taking part in Operation Condor and several other terrorist attacks, including the 6 October 1976 bombing of a Cuban civilian airliner in which all 73 people on board were killed, including many young members of a Cuban fencing team and five North Koreans. The bombing is alleged to have been plotted at a 1976 meeting in Washington, D.C. attended by Bosch (who later bragged of his involvement), Luis Posada Carriles, and DINA agent Michael Townley. At the same meeting, the assassination of Chilean former minister Orlando Letelier is alleged to have been plotted. Orlando Bosch was pardoned by George H. W. Bush over the objections of his Attorney General.

A June 2009 edition of the Cuban state newspaper Granma expressed anger at the lack of criminal charges, stating, "months after the administration change in Washington, nothing seems to have changed in the banana republic where the monstrous Orlando Bosch, the pediatrician killer, sleeps peacefully in his bed."

A report of my visit to Dealey Plaza in Dallas can be read here and here.