◆ SpookStack

The nineteenth meeting of the Taylor Committee took place on the 22 and 23 of May 1961. The only witness at that session was Jake Esterline, Chief, WH/4, and the overall project director. Addressing his opening remarks to the formation of WH/4's anti-Castro task force in January 1960, Mr. Esterline proceeded 'to spell out the chain of command for the members of the Taylor Committee. He testified that the line of authority went from him to Col. J.C. King, Chief, Western Hemisphere Division and then to Richard Bissell, Deputy Director of Plans. This meant that about half of the time he was dealing with Bissell's alter-ego, C. Tracy Barnes, Assistant DDP for Action. When Esterline finished that brief presentation, a member of the committee made the following comment "Mr. King, this is interesting. I never knew whether you were in the chain of command or not." Inasmuch as this was the twelfth meeting of the committee where Col. King had been present, one wonders why this question had not been raised before. The justi-fication for Col. King's continuing presence never was officially exp1ained.* Esterline proceeded with the story of the planning and initial paramilitary training of some 300 men in Panama. * Esterline,/ ~ \ ~irect access to Mr. Bissell, the DDP. E. Howard Hunt's explanation for King's presence is that "Colonel J.C. King emerged as its ITaylor Committee's] general factotum." 142/ Dick Drain, C/OP/WH/4 stated that there were "numberless irritations that arose from the fact that J.C. King was neither 'in' it nor 'out' of it. He was just sort of 'in-and-out' and almost never had enough of the picture, understandably, to know what the hell he was talking about." 143/ 149