David Sánchez Morales

David Sánchez Morales (August 26, 1925 - May 8, 1978) was a Central Intelligence Agency operative who worked in Cuba.

Biographical highlights
Morales, of Mexican descent, spent his early life in Phoenix, Arizona, and attended school at Arizona State College in Tempe (now Arizona State University) and the University of Southern California in Los Angeles before joining the Army in 1946. He served in the 82nd Airborne, and was recruited into US Army intelligence during that time. Morales maintained an Army 'cover' even after joining the Central Intelligence Agency in 1951.

Shortly after joining the CIA, Morales became an operative for the CIA's Directorate for Plans. It's alleged that he was involved in Executive Action, a series of projects designed to kill foreign leaders deemed unfriendly to the United States. Morales reportedly was involved in Operation PBSUCCESS, the CIA covert operation that overthrew the democratically-elected President of Guatemala, Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán. During that operation he acquired a reputation as the CIA's top assassin in Latin America.

Through the 1960s and mid-1970s, Morales was involved at top levels in a variety of covert projects, including JMWAVE, the ZRRIFLE plot to assassinate Fidel Castro, the Bay of Pigs Invasion operation, the CIA's secret war in Laos, the capture of Che Guevara, and the overthrow of Salvador Allende. He worked closely with Tracy Barnes, William D. Pawley, David Atlee Phillips, John Martino, Johnny Roselli, and the infamous Ted Shackley.

Involvement with the Kennedy assassinations
Some researchers (among them Gaeton Fonzi, Larry Hancock, Noel Twyman, and John Simkin) believe that Morales was involved in the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Sanchez's friend Ruben Carbajal claimed that in 1973 Morales opened up about his involvement with the Bay of Pigs Invasion operation, and stated that "Kennedy had been responsible for him having to watch all the men he recruited and trained get wiped out." Carbajal claims that Morales added, "Well, we took care of that SOB, didn't we?" It's been suggested that Morales was the 'Latin-looking' man seen with Lee Harvey Oswald in New Orleans in 1963. Numerous employees of New Orleans taverns saw Oswald with a man matching the appearance of Morales, as well as witnesses to Oswald's baffling public leafleting for the Fair Play for Cuba Committee.

Morales is alleged to have once told friends, "I was in Dallas when we got the son of a bitch, and I was in Los Angeles when we got the little bastard", presumably referring to the assassination of JFK in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963 and then the later assassination of Robert Kennedy in Los Angeles, California on June 5, 1968. Bradley Ayers, a former CIA operative, told the Assassination Records Review Board in 1995 that he had found a credible witness who could place Morales at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles on the night RFK was murdered.

In addition, E. Howard Hunt confessed just prior to his death to his son St. John Hunt that he and several others, including Morales, William King Harvey, Cord Meyer, and Vice-President Lyndon B. Johnson, were involved in the conspiracy to assassinate JFK.