June Cobb

Cobb agreed, traveling to Cuba afterwards. Her duties in Havana included translating Castro's speeches and working as a public relations assistant. She also translated Castro's new land reform laws into English. She worked on the 18th floor, down the hall from Castro's office. She and William Alexander Morgan were the only Americans to gain any sort of influence in the new regime.

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.

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

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. 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.

As of December 1965, Cobb was roommates with Eunice Odio. 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.

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. Later that year, Cobb was transferred to Mexico City and her cryptonym was changed to LICOOKY-1.

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.

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

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.

Cobb's first CIA operation involved befriending CBS newscaster Richard Gibson, a co-founder of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. Cobb determined that Gibson had made a trip to Cuba, met with Castro and Osvaldo Dorticós Torrado, and received money for operating expenses and to maintain the FPCC New York office. In later testimony, Cobb said that she had firsthand knowledge that Cuba was funding the committee. During 1961, Gibson wrote a number of letters to Cobb.

Around 1961, alongside Raul Osegueda, Cobb translated former Guatemalan President Juan José Arévalo's 1956 allegory The Shark and the Sardines to English. From Mexico, Cobb assisted Guatemalan revolutionaries fighting Miguel Ydígoras Fuentes, helping them obtain equipment. 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.

In early 1960, during Castro's second trip to New York, tabloids reported that 17-year-old Marita Lorenz had been raped by the Cuban leader. She was pregnant, and Cobb later said that the father was Castro's bodyguard, Jesus Yanez Pelletier. Lorenz's mother later reported that Cobb had called her and offered her employment if she would return to Cuba with her daughter. Che Guevara conducted an investigation of the incident and Cobb was included in a roundup of the suspects. She was protected by Castro and Sánchez, but the relationship cooled and she lost the access she had had before.

From May 24–26, 1960, Cobb met with Hermsdorf, who evaluated her at her hotel. Without mentioning the CIA, he offered her a long-term employment opportunity and invited her to meet him somewhere outside of Cuba. They arranged to meet at the Drake Hotel in New York on June 3. Cobb traveled to the United States in early June 1960. She also stopped in Washington, D.C., where she stayed at the Raleigh Hotel. The CIA arranged surveillance of her hotel room and of a polygraph that she took.

Cobb left Cuba in September 1960, and on September 12 formalized her contract with the CIA, which stipulated that she received $200 each month for a year-long operation, called JMARC, "to penetrate the Cuban government in an effort to obtain information on present and planned activities of the Castro regime." Cobb was given the cryptonym AMUPAS-1. From September 21 to 29, the CIA maintained surveillance of Cobb's hotel room in New York City. Cobb was acquainted with Kennedy advisor Richard N. Goodwin, and soon had direct access to the White House through him.

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

Cobb visited Havana in February 1959 and later recounted meeting with Fidel Castro's Minister of Health regarding their campaign against vice and cooperation with doctors from Bolivia, Peru, and Colombia against the use of coca leaves. During her trip she was given a copy of Castro's 1953 "History Will Absolve Me" speech. When she returned to the United States, she set about translating the speech to English. Cuban journalist Luis Conte Agüero learned of the translation and visited Cobb in New York. He wrote a prologue for the booklet and assisted with printing costs.

After Castro was sworn in as Cuba's Prime Minister, he visited the United States in April 1959. One evening in New York, Cobb accompanied Agüero to the Statler Hotel where she was introduced to Castro. She had brought a copy of the translated speech. Castro was pleased when he saw the booklet she had made and ordered a print run of 1,000 copies to be made and distributed in New York. Cobb also met Castro's private secretary Celia Sánchez, who invited her to Havana to work under Castro in the Ministry Office.

Cobb returned to the United States in June 1959, and again for medical treatment in September and December of that year. While recuperating from surgery, Cobb stayed at a beach house owned by Castro and Sánchez.

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.

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

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. The brothers were released quickly, owing to their family connections. 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.

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.

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

Cobb returned to Colombia in 1951 and contracted leishmaniasis, 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. In early 1952, Cobb began a relationship with the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. 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.

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

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

Viola June Cobb (August 24, 1927 – October 17, 2015) was an American informant for the CIA. She worked at Fidel Castro's headquarters in Havana as a translator and public relations worker in 1959 and 1960. After leaving Cuba, Cobb continued working for the CIA in Guatemala and Mexico. She was the first CIA asset to relay an account of Lee Harvey Oswald having attended a twist party in Mexico City weeks before the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Earlier in the 1950s, Cobb was involved with the production and trafficking of narcotics with her Colombian fiancé and his twin brother. She later provided information to the US Federal Bureau of Narcotics that led to arrests in Cuba and Colombia.

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