Wow, there's a lot of CIA boating lore. This article also mentions the prior disappearance of CIA operative John Paisley from his sailboat in 1978, 18 years earlier: "Paisley’s decomposed body was found in the bay a week later, weighted down by two diving belts and containing a gunshot wound to the head. Authorities said it wasn’t clear if he was murdered or committed suicide."
I agree. I kept reading and felt like I was truly entering a wilderness of mirrors. The writer of that Times piece, Tad Szulc, was sui generis. He was connected to deep black sources.
>Tad Szulc, 74, Dies; Times Correspondent Who Uncovered Bay of Pigs Imbroglio
Those guys must have known each other. They were contemporaries. Paisley b. 1923, Szulc b. 1927. They traveled in the same circles. They were both really good at their jobs. The Paisley article had some deep CIA sourcing, and Szulc's sources trusted him enough to share.
https://apnews.com/article/b383af025d66de91e4688caf602e7253