Spring 1963

President Kennedy and family planned to spend Christmas in Palm Beach at the Kennedy compound with his parents, Bobby, and Eunice.

Tehran – May 1963

Inside SAVAK, Colonel Farzin Hedayat crafted a plan born of vengeance. The Shah despised Kennedy’s pressure for reform. Killing him on Christmas Day, exiting Mass in Palm Beach, would be symbolic—America’s Catholic president gunned down on Christ’s birthday.

Palm Beach – June 1963

A three-story Victorian home near St. Ann Catholic Church offered a clear shot. Posing as Cuban refugees, five Spanish/English speaking Iranian agents bought it. Led by Majid Farrokh, they installed a Steyr Mannlicher rifle behind a shuttered attic window.

The Patsy

They abducted Yevgeni Orlov, a broken Russian defector, from New Jersey. High on heroin, he was kept on the second floor. On Christmas morning, they would drag him upstairs, plant his prints on the rifle and ammo, fire the shot from behind him, and leave him with the evidence. The world would blame Russia. Iran wouldn’t be mentioned.

The Plan

Perfect. Cold. Psychological warfare—Communism, madness, foreign conspiracy.

But Then—Dallas.

November 22, 1963, 12:30 p.m.

Majid heard it on the radio: “President John F. Kennedy has been shot in Dallas…”

Later, “…President Kennedy is dead…”

Rage followed. The plan—years in the making—now useless. Documents burned. The rifle disassembled and buried in the Everglades. Orlov was dumped at a Miami bus station with a bottle of booze and no memory.

Aftermath

Majid vanished. Colonel Hedayat returned to Iran. The Shah fell in 1979. They’d never speak of the operation again.

And Yet—

Somewhere, rust consumes a rifle built for a shot never fired.

And in a drawer in Tehran, a single page remains.

Operation Winter Garlan
Palm Beach, Florida — December 25, 1963
“Let the sand be red.”