Talk:Chauncey Marvin Holt

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This page seems to be in need of a re-write or at least clean-up; it seems to be written with a definite bias in favor of Mr Holt's claims, despite significant evidence to the contrary. (Lonenut2000 (talk) 17:45, 22 December 2010 (UTC))

Yeah. I would like to know what is verifiably known about Holt. As far as any claims he made for himself, he was obviously full of it. MrG 71.208.24.153 (talk) 22:04, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

This simply doesn't meet any reasonable standards of objectivity. The three tramps have been indentified, and none of them are Holt. See: http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/3tramps.htm

-- John McAdams — Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.26.206.224 (talk) 03:38, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

Moved

The following paragraphs have been moved to the talk page from the mainspace due to lack of citations. Location (talk) 22:58, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

He was an adventurer who became known as a painter of celebrity portraits, but who also worked as a pilot, an accountant and a mafia associate as well as claiming to have been a contract operative for the Central Intelligence Agency. He served organized crime figures Meyer Lansky and Peter Licavoli in 1953, was employed by Lansky as an accountant for the International Rescue Committee which, according to Holt, was a proprietary interest of the CIA. In 1955 he was involved as a covert operative in the CIA-staged coup that overthrew the government of communist-leaning President of Guatemala Jacobo Arbenz. In his career as an artist, he painted numerous portraits, including those of Lansky and Licavoli, as well as of numerous entertainment industry personalities, such as Clint Eastwood. He is a renowned prevaricator whose stories have never been proven (or disproven, and people have tried to do both).

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During the 1960s and 1970s, Chauncey Holt's association with the CIA placed him in the midst of covert operations in Brazil, Chile and Laos. At the same time he had a close friendship and business interests with Peter Licavoli, which continued until the mobster's death in 1984. Holt was also deeply involved with attorney Frank Belcher Sr. with whom he maintained, at the Bank of America office in Burbank, a special account through which many of Holt's CIA contract agent "projects" were funded and funneled.

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In 1975, the CIA began to purge rogue contract agents, known as "cowboys", from its employ. Some were forced into retirement, while others such as Chauncey Holt ended up in prison. On January 2, 1976, Holt wrote a letter to his old CIA ally, William King Harvey, describing his own recent indictment by a federal grand jury. Harvey responded that he could only offer "token assistance", including sending copies of pertinent CIA documents which were on the verge of declassification. Those records confirmed that Holt's services were utilized by the Clandestine Operations Division of the Central Intelligence Agency.

In 1977, Holt was convicted of mail fraud and sent to the federal prison on Terminal Island. Prior to sentencing, he refused an offer from the Organized Crime Task Force of a place in the Witness Protection Program and early release from prison in exchange for testimony against Lansky and Licavoli. Representatives of the CIA did promise him preferential treatment in prison and a "payoff" if he agreed to keep silent about his activities on behalf of the Agency. He kept his word, until the principals died.

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Holt is best known for his confession of involvement in the JFK assassination. He testified that he drove with mob hitmen Charles Nicoletti and Leo Moceri to Dallas from the Grace Ranch in Arizona. The ranch was owned by Peter Licavoli and allegedly served as a base for CIA operations, drugs and gun smuggling.[2] Holt was also carrying forged secret service badges and lapel pins to Dallas, on orders of his CIA contact Philip Twombly. Holt delivered the lapel pins and badges to anti-Castro Cuban exile Homer Echevarria. He also delivered handguns and ID's to Charles Harrelson on the parking lot of Dealey Plaza behind the grassy knoll. Harrelson, the father of actor Woody Harrelson, was a convicted hitman, who died in 2007 while serving a prison sentence for the 1979 murder of federal judge John H. Wood, Jr.. Harrelson maintained on several occasions to have assassinated John F. Kennedy and to be one of the "Three Tramps" hiding in a box car on the railroad tracks behind Dealey Plaza just after the shooting. He denied these claims on other occasions.

After the assassination, Holt, Harrelson and Rogers were apprehended from a boxcar in the railroad yard and detained by the Dallas Police. They were released the same afternoon. While they were escorted over Dealey Plaza, seven pictures were taken by press photographers. These pictures became known in history as "the three tramps". Holt related that during the Warren Commission, he and other CIA operatives involved in the Kennedy assassination, stayed in a luxurious CIA safehouse in Acapulco, owned by attorneys Frank Belcher and Joseph Ball. Joseph Ball served as senior counsel on the Warren Commission.

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Lois Gibson works for the Houston Police Department and is one the most respected forensic facial experts in the world. She was recently awarded with a notation in the Guinness Book of World Records for the highest crime solving rate based on composite sketches. Lois Gibson has made a comparison study of the "three tramps", photographed in Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963. She concluded that the three men were Chauncey Holt, Charles Harrelson and Charles Rogers.

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Holt's story was undermined in 1992 when the Dallas Police Department alleged that the three tramps were Gus Abrams, John F. Gedney and Harold Doyle. Ray and Mary LaFontaine carried out their own research into this claim. They traced Doyle and Gedney who confirmed they were two of the tramps. Gus Abrams was dead but his sister identified him as the third tramp in the photograph. Other researchers like James Fetzer, Lois Gibson and Wim Dankbaar point to the inconsistencies in this research and even suggest it was a deliberate attempt to discredit the story of Holt.