I first researched and wrote about Garett Underhill in Someone Would Have Talked, some twenty years ago.  At that point I covered him as a loose end, given that he had expressed his fears that a ‘clique within the CIA’ had been involved in killing President Kennedy, that they had been involved in illegal smuggling activities, they were opposing JFK’s policies, and that they posed a threat to the President.

Underhill’s background and connections were impressive, directly related to his long-time work in monitoring and consulting on foreign military matters related to weapons, in particular international sales and shipments of arms.  He had served as an advisor on weapons to LIFE magazine during WWII, and afterwards served as an analyst for several publications including Collier’s magazine, Fortune, Esquire and The Washinton Post.

His expertise also led him into consulting work for the Army during the 1950’s and, most importantly, becoming a business associate of Samuel Cummins and INTERARMCO, the world’s largest military and weapons trading company. Details on that relationship are covered  in my book Shadow Warfare which explores Cummins his CIA connections –  with a history reaching through years of its covert operations and ‘deniable ‘weapons shipments around the world.

In 1963, Underhill was working for Fortune magazine, with a particular interest in Cuba. Immediately following the President’s assassination, he privately expressed fears that his research had exposed him to a clique of CIA officers, formerly working in SE Asia and involved in illicit weapons shipments which had also involved drugs. He feared that this clique viewed JFK as a threat and had been involved in killing him. Beyond that Underhill was panicked by the thought that they knew who he was, and that he was aware of their activities.

Over time and with further research, Underhill’s remarks began to be much less of a loose end, especially as I researched and wrote about arms shipments into Thailand, Laos, and related activities in the Golden Triangle area – where arms going in were entangled with drugs coming back in the same channels. An area where CIA officer Henry Hecksher had worked (after his time as Chief of Station in Laos).

Most importantly in Shadow Warfare I also explored a new and highly deniable CIA project which involved shipments of weapons and equipment going into the Caribbean in the fall of 1963 – a project headed by Henry Hecksher designated as AMWORLD.  With his interest in Cuba, it seems more than likely Underhill would have become aware of weapons shipments going to a project that was covertly sanctioned, but overtly presented as something totally against JFK’s public position of no further American military action against Cuba. It would have appeared to be a direct violation of JFK’s orders to turn off American support for Cuban exile missions against Cuba.

While Underhill likely did not know any details of the sanctioned project, he certainly could have heard from Cummins that the people involved were old SE Asia hands, individuals we now know to be Hecksher and Carl Jenkins (newly assigned to the project and coming back from duties in Laos and Vietnam).

With what we have learned over time we can speculate that Underhill might well have reached the conclusion that CIA officers out of SE Asia had gone rogue, using their established connections to get weapons to support people working in direct opposition to JFK’s announced policies – for that matter it must be noted that AMWORLD itself would later be shut down over media reports of drug smuggling associated with its operations.

Underhill might also have feared that his inquiries via Cummins had been shared with the AMWORLD officers – something would have been of interest to them given their security concerns. While the CIA officers in charge of AMWORLD maintained a distance from its field operations, they were very much concerned about its security and visibility.

What Underhill could not have known was that a what appeared to be a very illegal and rogue operation against JFK’s policies – a project buried so deeply in deniability that recruits were told the Kennedy’s had abandoned them – was actually an operation known to him and strongly supported by Robert Kennedy. Sadly, his fears may have been meaningless, ironically his immediate thoughts about a ‘clique within the CIA’ being a threat to the president may have been much more accurate.