Lieutenant Colonel Dan Marvin has spent his life serving his country. A veteran

Lieutenant Colonel Dan Marvin has spent his life serving his country. A veteran of eight combat campaigns, he earned 21 awards and decorations. Fifteen years a paratrooper, he served in the elite special forces, the Green Berets. Just a few weeks after the assassination, he volunteered for specialist guerrilla training at Fort Bragg. Almost all of the instruction in the guerrilla warfare school was classified. The most secret was the top secret training on assassinations and terrorism. At that time, we went to a different building that had a double barbed wire fence around it and guard dogs. We did, myself and a friend of mine, form a very distinct impression that the CIA was involved in Kennedy's assassination. During a coffee break, we overheard one of the CIA instructors say to the other, things really did go well in Daly Plaza, didn't it? Or something to that effect. And that just reinforced or really added to our suspicions. And we really felt before the end of the training was over that one of those instructors may have been involved himself in the assassination of John F. Kennedy. I had to do a lot of rethinking, and perhaps it's the way that soldiers of fortune are, I don't know, but I just then convinced myself, as did my friend, that it had to somehow be in the best interest of the United States government that Kennedy was killed. Otherwise, why would our own people have done it? Simple as that. At Fort Bragg, 15 months after his training, Dan was summoned to meet an official from the CIA, a company man. David Vanick, a fellow officer in assassination training, also attended. First, the company man took me aside and showed me his badge, his ID card, and he asked me if I would volunteer to kill a man, a United States citizen, a naval officer. He didn't tell me who it was at first. I assumed what he was talking about was killing a man overseas.

He asked me at first if I would accept an assignment to kill somebody. He didn't give me the name, but then I asked for the name, assuming it would be, like I said, overseas. And he gave me the name, William Bruce Pitzer. Hard name to forget, really, once you hear it. And so I told him yes. And then he said we have to, he started to lay out the details of it. And the details included the fact that I would have to get him before he retired. And he retired in a very short period of time, if I remember correctly, and he was stationed at Bethesda Naval Hospital. So I'd have to actually get him here in the United States. So I refused because that wasn't the way that we were trained that this was going to happen. We were supposed to be used as their assets, the CIA's assets, for use in assassinations overseas. In the United States, the mafia was supposed to supply resources they need for killing somebody here in the United States. So he then asked David Vanek. He went over to David Vanek and talked to him. Now, I don't know what he talked to David Vanek about. He might ask him the price of ice cream. But I never saw David Vanek after that day. Now, that was in August, the first week of August of 1965. In November 1963, William Bruce Pitzer was head of the audiovisual unit at Bethesda Naval Hospital. A close colleague at the time was a young petty officer, Dennis David. Three or four days after the assassination, I walked in his office and I saw he was working on some film. He had a movie editor. Well, there's reel-to-reel and it runs across the screen.

And he showed it to me and it was a 16-millimeter film of the autopsy. There were also some slides. He had some slides that he had that showed of tissue slides and also showed some slides of President Kennedy that were taken while he was on the table at the morgue. And, you know, we looked at him, kind of horrified, I guess you would say, at the seriousness of the wound. But I remember one of the things that I remembered was that we saw they had a picture of Kennedy laying on the table and it was a front profile, if you will, or front view. And the only thing we saw was a little hole about here in the temple. And another photograph or another slide that Bill had showed a huge keeping hole here in the back. And so Bill had logically assumed that the wound was a frontal entry wound as opposed to what the Warren Commission later said being shot from behind. Dennis left Bethesda for a new posting. But in November 1966, a colleague gave him some distressing news regarding his old friend Bill Pitzer.

He'd been found dead in a pool of blood in his studio at Bethesda. The official verdict was suicide. Lying face down on the floor, a .38 revolver by his side, he had a bullet wound in the right temple. When the occupational therapist had told me this, I remember, I said, you know, that doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense because Bill was left-handed and, you know, because we used to kid him all the time when playing bridge about being a southpaw because sometimes he'd deal in reverse instead of dealing them in the correct sequence. He'd deal them in the opposite way and we'd kind of harass him about it. There are grave doubts about Pitzer's alleged suicide. His left hand had been so mangled as if tortured that his wedding ring could not be removed and given to his widow. Bill had told me shortly before I had left Bethesda, which was around the 7th of December of 65. He told me that he was planning on retiring because he had enough time in and he was wanting to get out and that he also said he had some damn lucrative offers from some TV networks and other people have asked me why I think he was assassinated and I think it was because that with him retiring, they were, they, and I don't know who they are, were afraid that he would take these pictures that he and I had seen, this 35mm and the 16mm film that he was, that he would take them and that the, if he went to work for a major studio, that they would use them or he would have them aired and that would really, you know, blow some people out of the water if that would have transpired. I could be wrong, I could be all wet, but I do know those films exist because I was there, I saw the damn things. I am absolutely certain that the name that I was given underneath those pine trees in Fort Bragg, North Carolina in the first week of August was William Bruce Pitzer. I put it completely out of my mind from 1965 until 1993 and I was watching a special in November 93 about the assassination of Kennedy. I think it was a special by Jack Anderson. And at the end of that special on the television, they rolled a list of 42 names of people who had met a violent death that were somehow associated with the assassination or the cover-up or the autopsy or something. And I was sitting there in my living room watching that and the name William Bruce Pitzer came over the screen. And it just, it made me go right back to that day in August of 1965. That was the William Bruce Pitzer that I was asked to kill, unless there's two William Bruce Pitzers that worked at Bethesda Naval Hospital. That man, the name of the other Green Beret that was approached by the CIA agent in August of 1965 at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, was David H. Vanek, captain, who went through the same training I did, same class I was in. And I have tried, ever since I saw the name William Bruce Pitzer come out on that screen, I've tried to find him. And I've been totally unsuccessful.

I sent letters to the special office and the retired services directorate, where they mail, they'll take a letter that you send them with a man's name and serial number, and they'll forward it to him. Or if he's deceased, they'll send it back to you. I got no response from them. So I finally sent another follow-up letter and demanded a response, or I threatened to go to Senator D'Amato to help me on the response. And then I did get a response. But the response was that David H. Vanek never existed in the United States Army. But Dan still has published Army orders proving that Captain David H. Vanek was with him at the Special Warfare Center. Recognizing just what kind of a person I was, and which I am hopefully no longer, it is not an easy thing to do. It would be easier for me to just melt into the woodwork and let my family, especially my grandchildren, think of me as kind of the friendly old giant that helps them do things and plays with them, rather than what I've done in the past. And I know that when this, if it is, made public, the information that I've given will adversely affect my relations with my family. And I just hope and pray that our love survives it. And I hope and pray that it does some good for this nation. I hope and pray that it's a good for this nation. I hope and pray that it's a good for this nation. I hope and pray that it's a good for this nation.