Jose Joaquin Sangenis Perdimo, a Cuban exile who worked with the CIA at the Bay of Pigs, died mysteriously in 1974. Code-named “Felix,” he had worked with Watergate plummers Hunt and Barker. In 1972 he was awarded a secret merit medal by the CIA.
The individuals who comprised Operation 40 had been selected by Sangenis in Miami and taken to a nearby farm “where they took some courses and were subjected to a lie detector.”
Joaquin Sangenis was Chief of Police in the time of President Carlos Prio, recalls Escalante. “I don’t know if he was Chief of the Palace Secret Service but he was very close to Carlos Prio. And in 1973 he dies under very strange circumstances. He disappears. In Miami, people learn to their surprise — without any prior illness and without any homicidal act — that Sangenis, who wasn’t that old in ’73, had died unexpectedly. There was no wake. He was buried in a hurry.”