Category: Letters

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Here, Mr. Turner: You appear to have lost this.

Dear Mr. Ted Turner:

What happened?

Two of the very best producers you have, April Oliver and Jack Smith, came to CNN management with the story of a lifetime – the first confirmed use of nerve gas by the U.S. in a black operation run by the Studies and Observations Group (SOG) called Tailwind. CNN attorney David Kohler vetted the story before it went on the air.

April Oliver warned Tom Johnson, Richard Kaplan, and others that this story would likely be vehemently denied, and to expect opposition from people such as Henry Kissinger, a man directly implicated in the chain of authorization, as well as from the CIA and the Pentagon.

After the program aired on June 6, 1998, what happened?

CNN management hired a bunch of CIA men, one a former chief of clandestine operations, to review a story about one of the CIA’s own operations, one that potentially involved war crimes. Does it make sense to ask such men to investigate a story that reveals the secrets of an employer whose secrets they have sworn to protect?

When these men, in conjunction with attorney Kohler and the corporate attorney Floyd Abrams served up a report that used evidence in a manner so selectively as to border on the dishonest, this report was used as an excuse to fire the producers and retract the story. Was that fair?

You claimed, after the retraction, that “Nothing has upset me as much in my whole life,” adding that it was worse than the death of your father.

We agree.

We think that when a network has a solid story, is aware of potential ramifications, airs the story, and then waffles at the first sign of disgruntlement from high government officials, that is a terrible, horrible thing. In fact, it endangers our democracy.

What is the point of watching news if not to learn important information that helps us make decisions in voting booths? The people deserve to know what the CIA and the Pentagon did during the Vietnam War. The people deserve to know if war crimes have been committed. And CNN has a duty to provide the people that information. By retracting such a well-documented story, you have failed the people utterly in your endeavor to provide important news to the citizens of our country.

The Abrams report never claimed the story wasn’t true. And quite to the contrary, the report pointed out many cases in which the producers had a plethora of evidence that enabled CNN management to have a comfort level airing the broadcast. The report only claims that there wasn’t evidence that proved beyond any shadow of a doubt that the US had used nerve gas to extract defectors during the Tailwind operation. But you have allowed news outlets to misrepresent their findings enough to assert the story was “false.” Why?

The only “proof” it appears Abrams would consider would be a full admission from the Pentagon and the CIA. Lacking that, Abrams and his CIA investigators can claim forever that there is no proof. If such a standard is to be accepted, we might as well rename our country after Orwell’s Oceania and adopt “newspeak.” Evidence is useless against such a standard.

If it follows that the truth will set you free, what happens when lies are allowed to go unchallenged?

There is a battle going on for the heart and soul of this country. One side wants to tell the truth about covert operations, and is willing to take their battles to the halls of Congress if necessary. The other side just wants to be accepted by the powers that be, to be invited to parties, not to rock the boat. When the history of this episode is complete, on which side of the battlefield do you want to be found, Mr. Turner?

You cannot retract the retraction. But you can do something. Start by releasing the transcript of the “Valley of Death” broadcast which has been pulled not only from the CNN Web site, but from the vendors who normally carry CNN transcripts. Then follow the story. If the story was considered “insupportable,” allow the producers to present additional support. Give air time to new interviews, such as the one already in the can of a veteran who came forward after the broadcast to tell of a similar event in Cambodia.

If you can’t help us learn important truths about our past, what is the point of continuing in your venture?

Take a stand, Mr. Turner. Do it before any more time is lost. You owe it to your viewers and to your country.

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Pierre, you liar and hypocrite:

There is no statute of limitations for conspiring to obstruct justice in a capital murder case. Stand by for your summons. Or do you think that being an expatriate in that neutralist haven of Switzerland will save you. You see, Pierre, should you choose to exercise Switzerland’s non-extradition treaty with the United States, you may do so at the peril of forfeiting your retirement check for ignoring a summons from the U.S. Congress. Take another sip of that fine wine, Pierre.

It wasn’t enough for you to screw up the JFK autopsy and provide Arlen Specter with your expert opinion before the Warren Commission. You had to go along with the government’s faulty desires to “get that case behind us”, so we could all heal the wounds which continue to fester 33 years later. No, Pierre, you got involved in the RFK aftermath, and then the Panamanian Police effort which I am sure you recall, was supervised by the CIA. Coincidence, I guess, how most knowledgeable people think the CIA was responsible for the JFK and RFK murders also. But let’s not get presumptuous.

But perhaps we should talk about CIA black terror and assassinations missions later.

I wonder if the Assassinations Record and Review Board will want to grill you about the following matters as were exposed in Probe. Perhaps they will feel, as I do, that your behavior in my case sheds backward light on your performance at Bethesda on the night of 11/22/63.

1. What was the reasoning for involving yourself in attempting to change the findings of a so-called expert in forensic pathology, one Richard Mason, an Army pathologist, who had testified as the government’s first witness in a Top Secret murder trial conducted on January 29th and 30th, 1968.
2. Did you also believe that your protege, Mason, was terribly mistaken or flat out wrong in his deduction that the wound in question was caused by a .22 or.25 caliber projectile? Did Mason’s opinion rub you the wrong way also?
3. Did Mason’s “field expedient” test leave you with the feeling that such an experiment would not stand the scrutiny of your peers? I’ll bet you got a lump in your throat when you observed Mason’s findings and conclusion that there were microscopic particles of gunpowder residue in the wound tract? That was a real frost for your forensic mind.
4. Were you stupefied by Mason’s testimony based on his detective-minded, non-supportive conclusions which flew in the face of all other testimony at the trial? Is that why you encouraged him to reevaluate his expert opinion and ultimately recant his in-court expert testimony, in writing? Is that why you sent Mason a letter of congratulations for changing his expert testimony? Pierre, how could you?
5. Did the post-trial review conducted a month after the trial cause you to have some concern because the legal experts had modified Mason’s irrefutable in-court testimony by contradicting his expert opinion that it was impossible for a .38 caliber bullet to have caused the wound in question by concluding, “science can not say under any fact or circumstances that a .38 could not have caused the wound in question.” ??? Did that bother you very much, Pierre? Those damn lawyers can certainly make life difficult for you experts, can’t they?
6. Did you have difficulty sleeping with the knowledge that the FBI had detected a particle of quartz stuck to the bullet fragment that Mason had submitted to the FBI lab for analysis? Did you spill any wine when you were advised that the bullet fragment had been lost in the registered mail? Did it bother you in the least that the FBI could not determine the make, caliber, or manufacturer of the bullet fragment Mason removed from the face of the deceased? Do you recall that the FBI report was issued nine days after the trial ended in a conviction and the sentencing of an innocent man to life in prison? Was that the reason you needed Mason to change his testimony and get on board with the new theory that, irrespective of Mason’s testimony, as well as that of a firearms examiner, both of whom concluded that a .38 could not have been used to kill the deceased, that a conviction with any theory was better than no conviction at all?
7. In September, 1968, you received Mason’s recantation of his expert testimony at trial. You must have been happy since you sent Mason a letter of congratulations for finally altering his testimony 8 months after trial. So you had Mason’s recantation, the FBI lab report, the autopsy protocol, the autopsy report, Mason’s original testimony, but you don’t have the bullet fragment since it was lost in registered mail. You have made Mason’s recantation available to the government prosecutors, but they choose to argue Mason’s original testimony before the Appeals Court. Why? Because only you and the government know about his recantation. What a sensitive situation. And what do you decide to do? You decide to say nothing until you are confronted by one of my lawyers who asks you if you have any new information from Mason or knowledge of where hi is located. You said you had none. This was in March of 1969. But my lawyers did not know you were lying. They had no knowledge of either the FBI report or Mason’s altered testimony; or of your correspondence with him coaxing him to alter the testimony and get on board with a new .38 caliber theory. How do I know this? Because of the assignments of error submitted to the Board of Military Review, first step in the appellate process. You see, Pierre, my lawyers quoted your own book on forensic science in detail on the point of not having doctors like Mason relying on unproven, untested, field expedient “tests” like the one he did. But you probably weren’t aware of us using your own book. You were too busy testifying at Jim Garrison’s trial of Clay Shaw where you revealed the equally unbelievable bad work you supervised at President Kennedy’s autopsy.
8. Were you ware Pierre that one of your subordinates blew your cover in the McCarthy case after your cover was blown by Garrison in the Kennedy case? I’ll set the scene for you. My lawyer was sitting in the Pentagon cafeteria in early March of 1970. Suddenly he was joined by a lawyer who worked for you in the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology. He startled my attorney by asking if he had seen the McCarthy file in your office. Recall, you had denied the existence of such a file and specific information in it. When my lawyer said no, your colleague escorted him over to your office. He then gave him the file from your cabinet. He cautioned him by saying there was a sergeant down the hall, but there was a copy machine in the same room. When my lawyer opened this file, the first page was Mason’s recantation. This was fairly forthright. He says he was mistaken about the weapon being a .22 caliber and the wound being a contact wound, which, by the way, was the compelling testimony leading to the original guilty verdict. The FBI lab report and your coaxing of Mason to switch was also in the file.

Why do you think your lawyer did this? Was he upset with your performance at the Shaw trial? Or was it something deeper? Was this the opportunity to remedy this circus be letting you be the fall guy for a change? Did you then feel you might be summoned to explain your actions or did you feel secure in the knowledge that you were still part of the “Secret Team”, and therefore were untouchable? What was the result of this discovery of this secret file? The appellate court saw it all and they were not pleased. They focused on Mason’s switch in testimony and deemed it “newly found evidence and fraud on the court.” They then reversed the premeditated murder conviction. Why did they do so? Evidently they thought that a pathologist should be able to recognize the difference between a .22 caliber contact wound and a .38 caliber blast. And they couldn’t accept you conduct in attempting him to switch his story to better fit the gun that I had in my possession at the time i.e. a frame-up on your part.

One more thing Pierre. Richard Mason, lately of San Diego, signed an affidavit in December of 1969, stating that he had never “knowingly” kept any information from my defense team. He swore to this in front of a notary public in San Francisco. Does that mean he perjured himself? Probably, since Mason had written his recantation in September of 1968. As stated above, this was located in your files in March of 1970.

Maybe you thought that your associates in CIA and Pentagon would forever keep this matter from being public record, exposed to the light of day and illuminated by fact. Wrong, Pierre. And there is more to come.

Will you come down from your Swiss chalet now, to talk to someone besides Don Breo and JAMA?

John McCarthy
April 1996

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See further this article.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The Washington Post
1150 15th Street, N.W.
Washington, DC 20071
Attn: Mr. Ben Bradlee

Gentlemen:

In your Friday, August 18, 1995 edition of your newspaper an article appeared in the IN BRIEF column on page A23. The caption under the photograph of Lee Harvey Oswald read, “Lee Harvey Oswald, on a Mexico trip shortly before the Kennedy assassination, contacted the Cuban and Soviet embassies and attracted CIA attention.”

This photograph is NOT, ” . . . on a Mexico trip shortly before the Kennedy assassination . . . “. It is a photograph taken in the basement of the Dallas Police headquarters basement on Sunday morning November 24, 1963.

The CIA’s head of operations for the Western Hemisphere, David Atlee Phillips, during a debate with author Mark Lane in September 1977 admits, “There never was a photograph taken of Lee Harvey Oswadl in Mexico City.” (Between September 26 – October 3, 1963, the CIA “claimed” that Lee Harvey Oswald visited the Cuban and Soviet embassies in Mexico.)

The Dallas Police headquarters basement photograph was taken by Jack Bears, Dallas Morning News, with his Mamiyaflox [sp?] with a 65mm lens and a flash attachment.

As a prominent national newspaper you, as well as all others, are duty-bound to adhere to &3147;Accuracy-in-the-Media”. You have not in the past, especially related to the JFK assassination, and you still continue down the road to disinformation. Will you “correct” your error in a future issue? I trust you will.

Thank you for your immediate attention to this most important matter. DO NOT ALLOW THE COVER-UP TO CONTINUE . . .

Sincerely,

Donald Knight

[Mr. Knight’s attachments included the photo used in the Post, which was clearly cropped from the picture of Oswald just as Ruby stepped in to shoot him the Dallas Police Department basement. We would still be interested in why the Post used such a misleading caption on a very famous photograph.]

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Harry Connick
District Attorney
619 South White St.
New Orleans, LA 70119

Dear Mr. Connick:

Thank you for taking the time to call me (Thursday, March 28th) in response to my letter of March 24th, regarding your decision to prosecute Gary Raymond and Richard Angelico, and your disagreement with the ARRB over Kennedy Assassination documents still in your possession. It is gratifying to find someone in your position to take the time to respond by phone.

Enclosed is the March/April 96 issue of Probe, CTKA’s newsletter, with the appropriate passages underlined.

My opinion is that the law is rarely as black and white as your interpretation would suggest. The underlined sentences dispute your legal interpretation, and I would be interested in your response.

My overriding concern is to reestablish public confidence in government for future generations, including my two children. I believe that a serious study of the Kennedy assassination leads one to the inevitable conclusion that a far reaching conspiracy resulted in JFK’s death (as well as Oswald and Tippet), and the subsequent cover up was much more damaging to our democratic institutions than the assassination itself.

Therefore, I believe that the public’s right to know (and the government’s responsibility to admit the truth) far outweighs the rights of citizens who gave “secret” grand jury testimony over 20 years ago. Even if you believe that no conspiracy existed, you would have to acknowedge that the government’s response has been filled with distortion, lies, and cover up. Your responsibility at this point is full cooperation with the ARRB if at all possible.

Sincerely,

Pete Johnson

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February 2, 1993 President William J. Clinton
The White House
Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. President:

This is my first letter to a President, although I have been a political junkie observer for forty years. I voted for you; however, a major part of my decision was a negative vote against President Bush. Mr. Bush’s connections to the big money spook world (CIA asset in 1963, director in the 1970s) and his late 1992 decision to block release of the JFK assassination files sealed the voting decision of this fiscal and military conservative.

I did not vote for President Kennedy in 1960; however, I would have in 1964 had not the arrogant OSS types at the CIA preempted our (the voters) right to choose leaders based on performance. The terrorizers, however, were terrorized on January 25 [1993] when a gunman brazenly shot up the front gate of the CIA at the peak of the morning rush hour. The motive appears to be revenge for an assassination in Pakistan in 1984. I hope that the arrogant and imperious management at the CIA note that the hit directly at their staff people occurred only five days after your inauguration and decide that repeats of Dallas and Watergate might be a bit more risky. The 1990s are not the 1960s and ’70s.

Most sincere best wishes for you and your administration.

Yours truly,

Dan M. Griffith

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Director Louis Freeh
Federal Bureau of Investigation
Washington, DC 20535

Dear Director Freeh:

I certainly want to congratulate you on your successes as Director fo the FBI these three years, including a welcome moderation of the unfortunate excesses of previous years.

It is unfortunate that some White House personnel seem to have taken advantage of an apparent weakness in Personnel File Security in order to inappropriately obtain supposedly secure Personnel Files for purposes yet to be revealed. Your indignation at this breach and apparent abuse is to be applauded.

Lastly, those of us from Pres. John Kennedy’s generation have now waited 33 years for the release of documents long held in secrecy by the FBI and other agencies. Before we pass from this life, we would certainly appreciate the ready and un-redacted release of all the documents provided for under the Act of Congress concerning the release of assassination-related records/documents.

I was only 17 when WWII ended so was not called to serve, but I still managed to accumulate a total of 49 years of active, reserve, and retired service with the U.S. Navy, a fact of which I am very proud.

Millions of men older than I served, fought bravely, were wounded, or even gave their lives to preserve this most free and open country.

In memory of all those who served, I hope that you can now see your way clear to release all pertinent records with as few redactions as possible – people involved most likely are dead by now, or safe in retirement.

This would be a very positive and welcome move, both for yourself as Director, and for the FBI as a newly proud institution.

Thanking you in advance for your attention to and positive consideration of this request, I am

Sincerely yours,

Charles C. Marks, Jr.

P.S. By taking positive action in this regard you would be setting a fine example for others, who doubtless look to yours as a lead agency!

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HERO TO TRUTH

To the Editor:

The story of district attorney staff worker Gary Raymond has reached Philadelphia, and I find it distressing and shameful. So do the eighth-grade students in my classes. America is nothing if it cannot live by its stated ideals of respect for an informed citizenry. America is nothing if it jails honest men like Mr. Raymond, who had the heroic courage to refuse to follow the bidding of his employer, District Attorney Harry Connick, and destroy historical records.

The files of Jim Garrison’s case against Clay Shaw in the assassination of President John Kennedy are public record funded by tax money and now mandated by Congress to be reviewed by the Assassination Records Review Board. It is out history and not the private property of any elected individual. America was conceived in order to protect us from private agendas like those of King George and Harry Connick.

Every student in our schools knows that question and hypothesis must be proved by evidence. That is basic curriculum and the foundation for civilized progress. Destruction of evidence is a deliberate act of war against the entire process of rational thought. Destruction of evidence is what Harry Connick is advocating. It is sad to witness a judicial process in New Orleans that has acted as an accessory to this reprehensible action that flies in the face of law, of Congress and of constitutional protection.

The public has a right to know what is in files paid for with tax dollars. Elected officials who deny that right should be promptly impeached. A democracy lives only when a rich diet of information is available – then let the people decide. Harry connick is not the one to decide. He would wipe out a valuable source of data. That’s abuse of power, and a failing grade in any classroom in America.

Too many unanswered questions remain about the murder of a president. The evidence has been withheld, and answers have been provided without evidence. That’s bad science, bad governing and abuse of power. Gary Raymond is a hero in this story, one of the many officials who have borned the slings and arrows of official hits simply because they dared to look for evidence, and perhaps for truth.

Pearl Gladstone

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I ought to be outraged at the revelations contained in the Sept. 1 Insight article “CIA, Contras and cocaine linked to L.A. gangs,” by Gary Webb of the San Jose Mercury News. Having studied the Central Intelligence Agency’s drug trafficking, I am no longer surprised by it. However, I am surprised by the lack of reaction of the public and the press to this unacceptable governmental criminal activity.

The details of the current story are not much different from past stories, such as those related in the book Compromised:Clinton, Bush, and the CIA by Terry Reed and John Cummings, and Cocaine Politics: Drug Armies and the CIA in Central America, by Jonathan Marshall and Peter Dale Scott.

One common thread to the newspaper articles is the perspective that drug trafficking is a past CIA transgression, the assumption being that the current version could not be a participant. Unfortunately, there is no evidence that any administration has taken any action to curb the abuses of this corrupt, immoral agency. Another common thread is the high level of protection afforded these traffickers as a result of their work for the CIA.

This particular story stated that “federal prosecutors obtained a court order preventing defense lawyers from delving into his (the defendant’s) ties to the CIA.”

The author also said that agents from four organizations–the Drug Enforcement Agency, U. S. Customs, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Office and California Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement–“have complained that investigations were hampered by the CIA or unnamed `national security’ interests.” The reality is that the power of the federal government to conceal the truth about drug trafficking cannot be adequately conveyed in one paragraph.

The American public should be outraged at the continuing drug trafficking by the CIA and other military intelligence organizations. The power of these organizations may exceed the power of the executive branch, making it difficult for any elected administration to curb the abuses of this entrenched and clearly corrupt bureaucracy.

The pressure applied by an outraged American public is the necessary first step. Just as our outrage at Waco, Texas, and Ruby Ridge, Idaho, put our elected officials on notice, we must apply an even greater pressure on our “secret government.”

Laws should be passed that ensure that any government employee (or contract agent) who conspires to facilitate large-scale drug trafficking using protections afforded by his or her position within the government should face no less than the death penalty or life imprisonment.

The politically popular war on drugs cannot be won when it is being fought between and among powerful governmental agencies.

Pete Johnson
Westerville, Ohio

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A recent edition of The Dispatch carried a Forum page column by Georgie Ann Geyer, appropriately headlined “New Castro-JFK link answers no questions.” In it, she states that Lee Harvey Oswald’s strange journey to Mexico points to a Castro involvement that is hard to deny.

At the same time, the concluding sentence is, “This new information only leads us back to one truth: We still do not really know who killed John F. Kennedy.”

The idea that Fidel Castro (or the Mafia) killed Kennedy leaves a major question unanswered. Why, then, would the Central Intelligence Agency and Federal Bureau of Investigation cover up important facts during the investigation (as reported by Newsweek, November 1993).

If Castro did it, why was not a complete, effective and honest investigation done, with the conspirators ultimately brought to justice? Does anyone seriously think that Castro felt he, himself, or his small renegade nation would be safer with Lyndon B. Johnson as president? Who stood to gain most by Kennedy’s death?

The CIA lied and covered up many important facts during the investigation, but it was not alone. Anyone familiar with Harold Weisberg’s work has an idea of the depth of deception. The lies of the CIA are numerous and well-documented, up to and including the agencies aiding and abetting in the murder of an American (and let’s not forget Guatemalan) citizens, as charged by Rep. Robert Torricelli, D-N.J.

I cannot believe the “Castro” or the “Mafia” theory until we have an honest accounting by the American government, which cannot possibly occur while the CIA operates in a lawless and immoral environment, concerned not with the protection of democracy but with the control of it.

Pete Johnson
Westerville, Ohio

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The regressive ramblings of columists Marianne Means on the Kennedy assassination and Christopher Mathews dissembling on Watergate, where 10 years later we find the same collection of CIA operatives bringing down another uncooperative administration, are perfect examples of the co-option of our media into little more than a propaganda tool for the economic/political establishment running the country for their own personal benefit.

Despite such ongoing disinformation campaigns in “our” media, the evidence unearthed by many honest researchers over the years has established beyond any doubt a CIA-orchestrated government complicity in our political assassinations and the “set up” of the Nixon/Kissinger administration. Such owner-advertiser-controlled information sources we generally rely on have not, however, been able to prevent up to 89 percent (CBS poll) of the public from drawing the obvious and correct conclusion. Neither ignoring the laws of physics in the JFK assassination or the contradictions in the chain of evidence for Watergate will make any of the examples of illegitimacy in our system of government or justice go away.

The manifestations of the co-option of our democracy are today seen in the ongoing exploitation of the working class and the poor. With representational government now sold out to the highest corporate bidder along with our “free” press (the only check on such exploitation), the animosities and frustrations so created will increasingly be violently vented, correctly or incorrectly, against such illegitimate authority and government. As we were warned, “the love of money is the root of all evil,” so it is now evidenced.

R. T. Lee