June Cobb

Viola June Cobb was born on August 24, 1927, in Ponca City, Oklahoma, to Jasper E. Cobb and Jesse Lois Sharp.[1] She graduated from Ponca City High School, and went on to attend University of Oklahoma for one year[2] in the mid-1940s.[3] She then worked at a Ponca City radio station and for a local newspaper as a courthouse reporter.[2] She was an adjunct of the Civil Air Patrol squadron in Norman, Oklahoma, attaining the rank of 2nd class Lieutenant.[1]

After leaving the University of Oklahoma, Cobb traveled to Mexico, where she met Rafael Herran Olozaga, who was from a wealthy and politically-connected Colombian family. Both his great-grandfather, Pedro Alcántara Herrán, and his great-great-grandfather, Tomás Cipriano de Mosquera, had served as Presidents of Colombia.[4] His family disapproved of the relationship, considering Cobb beneath his station. They were later engaged.

Cobb took extension classes with Olozaga[5] at the National University in Mexico City in 1947.[3] In Mexico, she worked for an oil firm in public relations. She also edited Modern Mexico, a Mexican Chamber of Commerce publication.[3]

In 1948, Cobb traveled with Olozaga and his twin brother Tomas to Colombia. The brothers had plans to cultivate and traffic opium.[4] By 1949, they were on a six-month expedition in the Ecuadorian jungle where they were engaged in cocaine production.[6] Cobb worked for Pan American Airways and was a public relations employee in Guayaquil, Ecuador.[3] Six months later, Cobb was back in Colombia. She returned to Oklahoma in 1950 and spent around ten months living with her father,[7] working as a news reporter in Kay County.[3]

Cobb returned to Colombia in 1951 and contracted leishmaniasis,[8] a rare tropical disease. She returned to the United States for treatment, spending several months hospitalized at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. After she recovered, she spent five months working at the hospital as an administrative assistant for Dr. Isidore Snapper.[9] In early 1952, Cobb began a relationship with the Federal Bureau of Narcotics.[4] During the summer of 1952, she was employed with Time magazine in their letters department. Cobb then moved to Chicago and worked as a secretary again for Snapper, who was now the director of medical education at Cook County Hospital.[9]

Cobb returned to New York City in 1953 and found work as an interpreter and translator. Her friend Warren Broglie,[10] manager of the Waldorf Astoria, referred clients to her.[11] Towards the end of 1953, Cobb worked briefly for Foster Wheeler, a firm that was building a refinery in Colombia.[12] In the summer of 1954, Cobb was treated for agranulocytosis at Beth-El Hospital in New York.[8]

By 1955, Cobb was traveling in Latin America. In 1956, she worked for the Colombian-American Culture Foundation in Medellin and taught briefly at the American school.[12]

In December 1956, the Olozaga brothers were arrested in Havana for possession and distribution of heroin. The pair were apprehended by Cuban law enforcement officials, with the assistance of US FBN agents, a day after Cobb had left Cuba for Coral Gables, Florida. Cobb had traveled with the brothers to Havana to help them sell several grams of heroin and several ounces of cocaine.[4] The brothers were released quickly, owing to their family connections.[13] In a joint operation of the FBN and the Colombian Intelligence Service, the brothers were arrested again in Medellin, Colombia in February 1957 for running a cocaine laboratory on their parents' estate. FBN agent George Gaffney later recalled that the 1957 operation originated in New Orleans when "a woman with CIA connections offered information" to an agent.[14]

In 1957, Cobb briefly worked as a secretary for county attorney Ralph Haynes.[3]

For a time in 1958, Cobb was acquainted with Dimitre Dimitrov, a Bulgarian politician who had been imprisoned in Greece and interrogated by the CIA as part of Project ARTICHOKE.[15]

By 1959, Cobb had moved to New York City. She lived briefly at the Hotel Iroquois.[16]

Around 1961, alongside Raul Osegueda, Cobb translated former Guatemalan President Juan José Arévalo's 1956 allegory The Shark and the Sardines to English.[33] From Mexico, Cobb assisted Guatemalan revolutionaries fighting Miguel Ydígoras Fuentes, helping them obtain equipment.[20] She was deported by the Guatemalan police on November 9, 1961. CIA Mexico City cables related that Cobb was deported with Achilles Centeno Perez. Guatemalan border officials told them they would be killed if they returned to the country. Cobb's entry to Mexico was assisted by George Frederick Munro, whose family maintained a ranch in Cuernavaca that Cobb said she visited several times. Munro advised Cobb against returning to Guatemala, where she wanted to complete an undisclosed task on behalf of the CIA.[34]

In March 1962, Cobb was called to testify before an executive session of the Senate Subcommittee on Internal Security.[35] Prior to her appearance, She did not reveal her association with the CIA and members of the subcommittee appeared unaware of the fact.[35]

An August 12, 1962, article by Jack Anderson in Parade magazine painted Cobb as a "soldier of fortune", detailing her time working for Castro and her involvement with drug trafficking in Latin America.[20]

In June 1963, the CIA reapproved Cobb as an informant for WH/3-Mexico D.F., despite an October 1962 CIA security memo recommending no contact with her other than assessment.[36] Later that year, Cobb was transferred to Mexico City and her cryptonym was changed to LICOOKY-1.[30]

Cobb then moved to Mexico City. She was a CIA asset for the Mexico City station, reporting to David Atlee Phillips.[29] Warren Broglie, who was then managing Hotel Luma, passed information to Cobb that she relayed to station chief Winston M. Scott.[35] When she was in need of a residence, her friend Eunice Odio suggested she call Elena Garro.

Following the assassination of John F. Kennedy by Lee Harvey Oswald, and the release of the Warren Report, Cobb was privy to a conversation between Elena Garro, her sister Deva Guerrero, and her daughter. They expressed surprise at seeing Oswald's face in the newspapers, as they said they recognized him from a twist party at the home of Rubén Durán. They said that he was accompanied by two other men who looked like beatniks. In an October 5 report, Cobb informed the CIA of the conversation.[37] Cobb wanted the women to tell American authorities what they knew, but advised them against going to the American embassy, instead suggesting that they go to Texas.[38] Cobb was asked to leave Garro's home after their cat's back legs were found broken.

Oswald had checked out a copy of The Shark and the Sardines from the Dallas Public Library on about November 6, 1963. The book had not been returned.[33]

As of December 1965, Cobb was roommates with Eunice Odio.[39] In 1965 and 1966, Cobb set up Milton Abramson, a New York-based drug trafficker, Adela Castillo, and others for arrest by the FBI in the United States.[2]

Cobb lived at a Manhattan senior center prior to her death on October 17, 2015.[40]

The CIA's extensive file on Cobb is estimated to include over 2,500 pages. Following the Kennedy assassination, all of the documents related to Cobb's work with the Federal Bureau of Narcotics were marked secret.[4] Following the passage of the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992, many of the documents have been declassified. Some of the Warren Commission's declassified files indicate that the CIA, in the late 1970s, refused to help House Select Committee on Assassinations investigators locate Cobb for an interview about Oswald's activities in Mexico.[41]

Further documents concerning Cobb that are related to the assassination were scheduled to be released under the JFK Records Act in October 2017. The National Archives and Records Administration announced that it was preparing a 221-page file of documents related to Cobb.[41]

• Albarelli, H.P. Jr. (2013). A Secret Order: Investigating the High Strangeness and Synchronicity in the JFK Assassination (1st ed.). Walterville, OR: TrineDay. ISBN 978-1-936296-56-9.
• Newman, John M. (2008). Oswald and the CIA: The Documented Truth About the Unknown Relationship Between the U.S. Government and the Alleged Killer of JFK. New York: Skyhorse Publishing. ISBN 978-1-60239-253-3.
• Russo, Gus; Molton, Stephen (2008). Brothers in Arms: The Kennedys, the Castros, and the Politics of Murder (1st ed.). New York: Bloomsbury USA. pp. 46–47, 72–75, 77, 93–94, 227–228, 411–414. ISBN 978-1-59691-532-9.
• Shenon, Philip (2013). A Cruel and Shocking Act: The Secret History of the Kennedy Assassination (1st ed.). New York: Henry Holt & Company. pp. 279, 495–497. ISBN 978-0-8050-9420-6.

• HSCA Segregated CIA Collection (microfilm - reel 11: June Cobb)
• AMUPAS-1, LICOOKY-1, Mary Ferrell Foundation.
• CIA soft file on June Cobb circa April 1960, John M. Newman.