Tag: ALLEN DULLES

  • Why Tim Weiner Never Called Me

    Why Tim Weiner Never Called Me


    On November 22, 2021, Tim Weiner wrote an article about Oliver Stone’s new documentary dealing with the JFK assassination for Rolling Stone. It’s really a hit piece, the literary equivalent of a drive by shooting. And, as we shall see, it’s not about what Weiner says it’s about.

    Weiner begins by saying that JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass is “rooted in a big lie.” What is that lie? According to Weiner, the lie is that Kennedy was murdered by the Deep State (i.e. the CIA backed by the military-industrial complex). From here, one would think that Weiner would now confront the evidence in the film and, point by point, counter it and thus reduce Oliver Stone to, in his words, “a tinfoil-hatted fabricator.”

    He does not do that. Not even close. Like a cardsharp, Weiner skips that step and jumps to this accusation: if anyone thinks the CIA killed Kennedy, you are being deluded by a Soviet era disinformation campaign. Unfortunately, I’m not kidding. But before Weiner begins playing his Russian aria, he first does a prelude. He says this about JFK’s assassination:

    Either Lee Harvey Oswald, trained by the United States Marines as a sharpshooter before he defected to the Soviet Union, got off a million-to-one shot in Dallas. He acted alone. Or he was an instrument of a conspiracy so immense that it staggers the mind.

    Right out of the gate Weiner sets up a game of false alternatives, because JFK Revisited shows Oswald’s “million-to-one shot” did not happen. The film takes pains to demonstrate that the Warren Commission’s Magic Bullet, labeled CE 399, was not fired in Dealey Plaza that day. JFK Revisited proves this on more than one basis. The film also proves that the FBI and the Warren Commission lied about the provenance of CE 399. It does this with evidence made possible by the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB), but Weiner does not want the reader to know this since it knocks out one of his false alternatives. If he admitted this evidence, then one would be left with, well, a conspiracy.

    This phony prelude leads to Weiner’s main theme. It’s not an easy job to soften and make acceptable the life and career of CIA Director Allen Dulles. One would think that, after all we know about Dulles today, no one would try, but Weiner has to, in order to sketch in his other false alternative. Namely that Stone says that Dulles was the “presiding genius of the plot against the president.” (The film doesn’t really say that, but accuracy is not what Weiner is after.)

    So now Tim pulls out his make-up kit for Dulles. He writes that the CIA Director did not back the plots to overthrow Charles de Gaulle of France, which is a startling statement. For many interested observers, one of the best books on the career of Allen Dulles is The Devil’s Chessboard. Author David Talbot uses a variety of sources to show that Weiner is wrong. For example, the newspaper Paris-Jour centered on Dulles as the main culprit in the attempted overthrow of April 1961. Later, bestselling French author Vincent Jauvert traced the sources of these stories in the French press to de Gaulle’s own foreign ministry. (Talbot, p. 414) In fact, De Gaulle had come to this conclusion himself. (London Observer, May 2, 1961) Author Andrew Tully also noted columns in Le Monde and l’Express which he wrote were owed to high French officials. (CIA: The Inside Story, pp. 48–49)

    In the USA, The Nation reported that high level French government employees thought the CIA had encouraged the attempted overthrow. And using l’Express, they wrote that one of the dissident French generals had several meetings with CIA agents who advised him that getting rid of de Gaulle would do the free world a great service. (The Nation, May 20, 1961) These stories also appeared in American mainstream newspapers like The Washington Post. (April 30, 1961) Most fatally for Weiner, his former employer The New York Times also printed the story. Scotty Reston wrote that the CIA was indeed “involved in an embarrassing liaison with the anti-Gaullist officers.” (New York Times, April 29, 1961) But further, Talbot goes into the reasons behind the conflict between Dulles and de Gaulle. It was the desire of the French leader to get rid of NATO’s Operation Gladio elements in France and also his intent to set free the French colony of Algeria in North Africa. (Talbot, pp. 416–17) One would think that all this would be enough to satisfy most objective observers.

    In a neat bit of cherry picking, Weiner never mentions any of these sources. He borrows a trick from Max Holland and says that the idea that the CIA backed the attempts by dissident French officers to overthrow de Gaulle was all part of a Russian disinformation campaign that began in Italy. To most informed observers the idea that Scotty Reston would rely on the Italian newspaper Paese Sera is ridiculous on its face.

    But further, for Weiner to use Holland as a source for the John F. Kennedy assassination is inexcusable. Ten years ago, Holland made one of the worst documentaries ever produced on the Kennedy assassination. In fact, as Pat Speer has noted, there were indications that Holland knew his thesis was faulty before the documentary even aired. How bad was it? Even Commission zealots Dale Myers and Todd Vaughan attacked the show. The Lost Bullet was so indefensible that one would think no one would ever treat Holland with any degree of respect again. (Click here for details)

    But this is the JFK case, so normal rules of credit and reference do not apply. Therefore, Weiner trots out Holland once more. And he then doubles down on the man. He says that New Orleans DA Jim Garrison arrested Clay Shaw because of a story that ran in Paesa Sera three days after. (Hmm) He then adds that Garrison bandied this story about as a basis for his prosecution of Shaw and also that it became a central basis for his whole case against the Central Intelligence Agency.

    Again, this derives from Max Holland. Holland has been selling this line for a very long time. He was pretty much eviscerated on it by Gary Aguilar back in 2004. This was during a debate that was broadcast by CSPAN and is still available on the web; therefore Weiner could have easily located it. (Click here for the debate) Aguilar proved that, unlike what Holland and Weiner imply, Garrison did not make the Paesa Sera story a part of his case against Shaw—either in public or at Shaw’s trial. For example, in his 26 page Playboy interview—the longest ever run by the magazine at that time—the DA never brought it up.

    But then Weiner does something that is probably even worse. And it shows his utter disdain for the work of the Assassination Records Review Board. He says that Shaw was not a longtime operative of the CIA. Because of the work of the Board, we now have documentation that proves that the defendant lied about this at his trial. Shaw had three CIA clearances, one of them being a covert security clearance. (William Davy, Let Justice be Done, p. 196) As Joan Mellen discovered, Shaw was also a valuable and well-compensated contract agent. (Mellen, Our Man in Haiti, p. 54) Adding the documentation up, Shaw’s CIA career extended over a period of 23 years. Unlike Tim, most people would think that qualifies as being longtime. In fact, the Board’s CIA specialist also discovered that the CIA had destroyed Shaw’s 201 file. Why? (Click here for details)

    Virtually everything in the above paragraph is displayed in the film. Somehow Weiner either missed it or chose to ignore it, but in JFK Revisited we also feature authors Jefferson Morley and John Newman. Those two discuss what Garrison based his own investigation on at its inception: Oswald’s activities in New Orleans. Specifically, how he interacted with the CIA run anti-Castro Student Revolutionary Directorate (DRE) and the fact he stamped his pro-Castro flyers with the address of the extremely rightwing Guy Banister. We then detail how:

    1.) The FBI covered up Oswald’s association with Banister, (Newman, Oswald and the CIA, p. 310); and

    2.) The CIA lied about their liaison to the House Select Committee on Assassinations having no association with the Oswald case in 1963. The truth was that George Joannides was the CIA handler of the DRE in 1963. (Miami New Times, April 12, 2001, “Revelation 1963”)

    Most people, as Garrison did, would think that this information about Oswald in New Orleans would tell us something about him, probably that he was not really a Marxist. The latest discoveries on this issue were made possible by the ARRB and are in the film.

    In fact, one of the most shocking things about Weiner’s article is this: He cannot bring himself to mention by name the Assassination Records Review Board. Or the fact that JFK Revisited uses their work to an unprecedented degree. This is quite a bit of alchemy since the film interviews three men who worked for that body, and it mentions the Board throughout. In addition, it displays declassified documents which back up many of the declarations in the film. Weiner does not refer to any of these documents or witness statements.

    Toward the end of his screed, Tim writes that he cannot tell us that there wasn’t a conspiracy. He then says that maybe there is a bombshell in the still classified archives. That utterly inane statement demonstrates why Weiner’s article is not criticism; it’s a hatchet job. As demonstrated, Tim does not want to tell the reader what is in the film. The fact that, under oath, the official JFK autopsy photographer told the Board that he did not shoot the pictures of Kennedy’s brain that are in the archives today. John Stringer gave five reasons for his denial. Two of them being that he did not use the type of film with which the extant photographs were taken, and he did not utilize the photographic process evident in those pictures. JFK Revisited has Doug Horne, an ARRB employee who was in the room with Stringer during his sworn testimony, narrate this passage. (Horne, Inside the ARRB, p. 810)

    Just like he does not want to tell his readers about the above, Tim also won’t reveal that the FBI lied about CE 399, the Magic Bullet. They did so in three ways. The film proves that the Bureau lied about its identification by the first two people who handled it. (The Assassinations, edited by James DiEugenio and Lisa Pease, pp. 282–84) It also proves that the Bureau lied about an FBI agent’s initials being on the exhibit. They are not. Third, by their own records, the FBI lab had the Magic Bullet before it was transferred to the agent who delivered it there. This delivery, of course, was by the agent whose initials are not on the bullet. (James DiEugenio, Destiny Betrayed, second edition, p. 345)

    Like the issue of the autopsy photos, the information about CE 399 is proved out in the film. It would be of great interest to anyone watching, since it goes to the heart of the Warren Commission’s case against Oswald. Like everything else above, Weiner does not mention it. In fact, before writing his piece and attributing sources of information in the script to Paese Sera, he never called this writer, which would seem to be a significant trespass of journalistic ethics since I wrote the script. I could have informed him of the actual sources we used for things like the attempted overthrow of de Gaulle or Clay Shaw and the CIA. Those sources had nothing to do with what Weiner attributes them to. When the annotated scripts are published next year, this will be made plain to anyone who reads them.

    So, the question then becomes: Why didn’t Tim Weiner pick up the phone to call Jim DiEugenio? Or shoot an email to Jim to find out what my actual sources were in writing the script? It would have been simple to do either. All he had to do was call Oliver Stone’s office or find me on the web through the Kennedys and King web site.

    Since Weiner neither poses nor replies to that question in his column, it leaves the answer open for speculation. He closes his hatchet job by saying something about “a moral obligation to call bullshit when we see it.” Tim is so wrapped up in his own agenda that he does not recognize his own paroxysm of hypocrisy. When a writer does not present any of the documented material that he calls “bullshit” then yes, one can declare it as such. But that is not journalism; its classic propaganda that does nothing to inform the public. When a film can document what it says with sworn testimony and documents written at the time, that is not “bullshit.” These are unpleasant facts that were kept hidden from the public for decades. And it was only through Oliver Stone’s making of his film JFK in 1991 that they finally began to emerge.

    One last point about Tim’s concluding issue about disbelief in government. One can see through the graph in Kevin Phillip’s book Arrogant Capitol that, unlike what Weiner wants you to think, that erosion of belief is not a recent phenomenon. That graph extends from 1960 to the mid-nineties. The year of the single biggest drop in trust was 1964, when the Warren Report was published.

    Another factor that led to overall cynicism was ten years of war in Vietnam—the most divisive conflict since the Civil War. As JFK Revisited shows, if Kennedy had lived, this would not have happened. The film also shows that President Johnson consciously reversed Kennedy’s withdrawal plan in order to escalate that war. There is no mention of this by Wiener in his article. By that excision, Wiener’s hypocrisy is in full view.  For on December 23, 1997, there was an article in the New York Times about the ARRB declassifying documents from the May 1963 SecDef meeting in Hawaii where Defense Secretary Robert McNamara was collecting Vietnam withdrawal schedules from the Pentagon. The title of the story was “Kennedy Had a Plan for Early Exit in Vietnam.”

    The reporter was Tim Weiner.  What a convenient lapse of memory. Tim Weiner is an object lesson in why the public has lost faith in the MSM.

    Click here for what appears to be Tim’s current Twitter account.

  • Review of Greg Poulgrain’s JFK vs Allen Dulles: Battleground Indonesia

    Review of Greg Poulgrain’s JFK vs Allen Dulles: Battleground Indonesia


    “Dulles is a legendary figure, and it’s hard to operate with legendary figures.”

    -President Kennedy

    Let us state the preconditions for the drama that historian Greg Poulgrain is going to compose in his stellar volume, JFK vs Allen Dulles: Battleground Indonesia. Sukarno led Indonesia to independence against both the Dutch and the Japanese. After World War II, he became the first leader of an independent Indonesia. He then became one of the foremost spokesmen for the Non-Aligned Movement, that is, the Third World leaders who did not wish to get involved in American/Russian Cold War struggles but wished to navigate their own foreign policy choices free of those entanglements. Some of his partners in this enterprise were Nehru of India and Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt. In fact, the first meeting of this group was in Bandung, Indonesia in 1955.

    At the time Sukarno was leading this movement, the two men supervising American foreign policy were the Dulles brothers. John Foster as Secretary of State and Allen as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. To put it mildly, they did not appreciate the attempts at neutralism in the Third World. (Robert Rakove, Kennedy, Johnson and the Nonaligned World, pp. 10–11) They believed that there was no such thing as neutrality in what they cast as a rigid, dogmatic Cold War world outlook.

    Partly due to this, the CIA tried to overthrow Sukarno in 1958. At that time, this was perhaps the largest Agency operation ever. Ostensibly, it was not successful. And American participation in the attempt was exposed by the shooting down of CIA pilot Allen Pope. To put it gently, Sukarno did not appreciate what the Dulles brothers had tried to do. He also did not like the fact that the United States would not help him in his quest to attain West Irian from the Dutch. Sukarno thought that territory was entitled to Indonesia and should have been turned over at independence.

    Thus, another layer of intrigue is placed over the situation. As Poulgrain notes, Allen Dulles and the Dutch knew something about West Irian that Sukarno did not. In 1936, there had been a joint Dutch/American mountain expedition to the highest point in West Irian, this included Dutch geologist Jean Jaques Dozy. Dozy’s report was discovered in 1960 by Forbes Wilson of Freeport Sulphur. Wilson sponsored a second expedition. Both groups found out that there were immense deposits of gold, silver, and copper in the Carstensz Pyramid, in a place called the Ertsberg. Two miles away, in an alpine meadow, was another huge deposit in an area called the Grasberg. The combined value of the mineral resources in those two places staggered the imagination. To make just one statement about it: This was the largest repository of gold in the world at that time. And it is why the Dutch did not wish to give up the area. Allen Dulles was trying to find a way to let American interests exploit both the Ertsberg and the Grasberg.

    Besides Sukarno and Allen Dulles, the third major character involved in Poulgrain’s epic tragedy is John F. Kennedy, both as a senator and as president. In 1957, Kennedy made a speech on the floor of the Senate which startled the Dulles brothers, President Dwight Eisenhower, and Vice-President Richard Nixon. He made clear his disagreement with the administration over their support for France in its attempt to keep the North African colony of Algeria as part of the French empire. (Allen Nevins, editor, The Strategy of Peace, pp. 66–80) Kennedy opened that speech by saying that people around the world wanted to be independent and that the enemy of independence was imperialism. Kennedy was saying he understood that the era of European colonialism was ending and he was willing to side with the Third World nationalists in Algeria against the longtime American ally in Paris. Sukarno and the Non-Aligned Movement now had a potential ally in Kennedy. In the election of 1960, that potential was realized.

    When Kennedy took office, he arranged a deal. Sukarno would return Pope to the USA and Bobby Kennedy, along with diplomat Ellsworth Bunker, would convince the Dutch to give Sukarno West Irian. This was called the New York Agreement and it was signed at the United Nations in late summer of 1962. The Dutch were out of the picture concerning the Ertsberg, but Dulles still understood what the real situation was. Kennedy and Sukarno did not. With the assassination of Kennedy in 1963 and the overthrow of Sukarno in 1965, Dulles achieved his original goal for his backers, the Rockefellers. How those last two steps were achieved form the backbone of Poulgrain’s work, because they depict the triumph of both Dulles and Freeport Sulphur, which later became the giant mining conglomerate Freeport-McMoran. They also depict one of the most horrible of modern-day atrocities: the attempted extermination of the PKI, the Indonesian communist party, which resulted in the expulsion of Sukarno and the rise of the military dictatorship of General Suharto, who would rule Indonesia for three decades.

    [The above prologue was by James DiEugenio]

    It’s a rare thing when an author achieves a comprehensive and penetrating analysis of a long-forgotten historical episode, while delivering his story with a pace more apropos to a thriller novel than a groundbreaking addition to the historiography of the C.I.A. at mid-century. Dr. Greg Poulgrain’s sweeping and important book is one of the most exciting reads in recent memory—equal parts Indiana Jones, Ian Fleming novel, and geopolitical tour de force—with keen attention paid to the inner personalities of two of the most iconic figures of the 1960s, Allen Dulles and John F. Kennedy. We watch as they played their delicate chess game to determine the future of the Indonesian government; and, by extension, control of the nation’s vast offshore petroleum reserves, along with the largest gold deposit ever discovered in human history.

    Poulgrain’s book stands out for a number of reasons, not least for the flair he possesses as a stylist. Often books on subjects such as this plod through the historical data, citing numerous and turgid anecdotes and stenographic notes from dry briefings that largely put one to sleep. I’ve always found this unfortunate, as the real history of the C.I.A. during the 1960s contains the stuff of the greatest fiction, the greatest cinema. And Poulgrain seems to have noticed. While never shying away from the archives and the documented record, his achievement lies first in his framing of the chance 1936 discovery of the Ertsberg mother lode by a daring prospector working for a Dutch petroleum company as a dramatic hook. He then juxtaposes this earlier timeline against the colorful backdrop of the later power struggle playing out between a freshly elected President Kennedy and his soon to be nemesis, C.I.A. Director Allen Dulles, all the while filling in the relevant gaps to guide the reader through this powerful climactic showdown, which includes a chapter on UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold.

    Moreover, Poulgrain was able to meet with Jean-Jacques Dozy, the prospector who struck gold in 1936, as well as with key political figures relevant to the later political drama in Indonesia during the overthrow of Sukarno in 1965. He conducted a series of interviews from the late 1970s to the late 1980s. And he weaves together his personal notes from these interviews to enrich and enliven the story even further, lending a sort of murder-mystery air to the book in high fashion. How much gold was really in the Ertsberg? Were the explorer and his team complicit in the initial coverup? Who really held the keys to Indonesia’s future? Were internal forces and internecine Indonesian strife responsible for the fated events that unfolded over the next three decades? Or were Dulles and friends in Langley solely to blame for another bloody coup by proxy? Such are the questions the author explores in his fine work.

    A special notice should go to the portrayal of the night of September 30, 1965. That evening may rank with the Night of the Long Knives as to pure treachery and diabolical aim. Many historical commentators have tried to figure out what really happened on that evening, which created such a reversal of Indonesian history. Due to the interviews he did with some of the survivors of that dark episode, Poulgrain gives us the best explication ever written unraveling that mystery. The book is worth reading just for that chapter. (See Chapter 7)

    As most readers of this genre understand by now, Allen Dulles represented an iconic, often sinister, and looming figure in the grand tapestry of mid-century America. From his longstanding ties to the giant law firm of Sullivan and Cromwell, to his role in the creation of the Treaty of Versailles, to his vast Rolodex of spies, assassins and international contacts, to his close friendships and admiration for postwar Nazi war criminals like Reinhard Gehlen, he presents an impenetrable and often sociopathic personality, someone who, in his own words, enjoyed the sound of a rat’s neck breaking as the spring trap snapped shut.

    Driven in large part by pure imperialistic greed and deception, and at other times by what appears to be a genuine aversion to anything resembling socialism, collectivism, or non-alignment with U.S. anti-communism, Dulles was the perfect foil to the pro-Third World, pro-decolonization John F. Kennedy. Three years prior to his close victory over Richard Nixon, Kennedy delivered impassioned speeches on the Senate floor, championing the freedom of the Algerian people against the French:

    I am concerned today that we are failing to meet the challenge of imperialism—on both counts—and thus failing in our responsibilities to the free world. (Remarks of Senator John F. Kennedy in the Senate, Washington D.C., July 2, 1957, John F. Kennedy Library)

    Yet, in many ways, Sullivan and Cromwell was about imperialism. If one is representing the Rockefellers, as Allen Dulles was, then one is involved with an imperialistic system of beliefs. This ideological impasse between two irreconcilable worldviews serves as the tense thematic backdrop against which the book’s many detours add both color and historical perspective to the dramatic saga of the Indonesian archipelago at the beginning of the decolonization era. As Poulgrain notes, “Kennedy realized during his first year in office that much of the advice on Indonesia from DCI Dulles was premised on the belief that Sukarno’s leadership was Indonesia’s fatal flaw.” (JFK vs. Allen Dulles, p. 46)

    While most scholars seem to place the singular showdown between Dulles and Kennedy at the Bay of Pigs debacle—designed to fail by Dulles and associated C.I.A. cohorts in order to force Kennedy to commit U.S. carrier air support—Battleground Indonesia, the subtitle of Poulgrain’s book, presents a fascinating window into a largely overlooked, but critically important, episode in the Pacific. This episode would represent, along with the Congo Crisis, some of the last gasps of pure unfettered imperialism in its most crystalline form, a quixotic adventure involving obscure shell corporations operating illegally under C.I.A. protection, powerful moneyed interests from the shadow world, familiar names from the later Kennedy assassination plot like George de Mohrenschildt and L. Fletcher Prouty, and corrupt Indonesian officials and splinter groups with their own diverse interests. All of this played out under the wary eye of a sitting U.S. president who intimated that some of his closest intelligence advisors were obfuscating and distorting the situation to suit their own agendas. It is, at once, a tragic and incredible story that has been largely lost in the dizzying array of C.I.A. exploits the world over and, as Poulgrain observes, “into this matrix of intelligence entanglements, Kennedy proceeded unawares.” (JFK vs. Allen Dulles, p. 9)

    The attraction of this work also lies in another achievement that is often forgotten in books of the genre, namely, the personal touch. Frequently, Poulgrain plays the role—commandingly—of amateur psychologist and adds in important depth and essence to the characters involved in this grand undertaking to gain control of the Ertsberg and its associated billions of dollars of ore, to name but one of the numerous story arcs in JFK vs. Allen Dulles. Too often, we forget that human beings, no matter what their titles or powers, are still just that, human beings and, as such, are often fallible, naive, ruthless, proud, furtive, bold, corrupt, cowardly, impetuous, sanguinary, honorable, and countless other adjectives. They are rarely the simple paper cutouts in the annals of history in the extensive catalog of books attempting to detail their exploits.

    This book lives up to its title: JFK vs. Allen Dulles, while tying together a grand panoply of monied interests, international power players, secret agents, and heads of state, ultimately still reads like a battle of two central personalities: President John F. Kennedy, the fresh and enterprising ingenue, filled with a sincere conviction to deliver on his promises to liberate the oppressed people of the developing world—perhaps the last sitting president to legitimately champion the ostensible slogans of the United States overseas and at home—against the Old Guard hardline anti-Communist Director of Central Intelligence Allen Welsh Dulles, Kennedy’s eventual nemesis and the likely architect of his untimely demise in the backseat of a limo in Dealey Plaza. It’s a brilliant dramatic conceit and, when combined with the copious and fresh source material and alluring insights of a first-rate researcher like Dr. Greg Poulgrain, makes for one of the best reads in its genre.

  • The Ordeal of Malcolm Perry

    The Ordeal of Malcolm Perry


    On the afternoon of the JFK assassination, within an hour or two after his death, there was a press conference at Parkland Hospital. Three important pronouncements were made. In fact, they were so important that they should have shaped the case in a permanent manner.

    First, acting press secretary Malcolm Kilduff talked about how Kennedy had died.

    Malcolm Kilduff at Parkland press briefing

    When he did so, he pointed to his right temple and said something like: it was a matter of a bullet through the head. Very shortly after, Chet Huntley said the same thing live on NBC television. On the air, he revealed his source to be Dr. George Burkley, President Kennedy’s own personal physician.

    Dr. Kemp Clark, chief of neurosurgery—the man who actually pronounced Kennedy dead—said he observed a large gaping hole in the rear of Kennedy’s skull. (Michael Benson, Who’s Who in the JFK Assassination, p. 80) Dr. Malcolm Perry, who cut a tracheostomy across the bullet wound in Kennedy’s neck, said that the wound was one of entrance. (James DiEugenio, The JFK Assassination: The Evidence Today, p. 367)

    Therefore, from these three pieces of evidence, one would have had to conclude that Kennedy was hit from the front. That implication would be almost inescapable. Therefore, some strange things happened with this key press conference. First of all, there is no film available of it today, which is remarkable in and of itself, because, as one can see from pictures and film snippets, there were many reporters in that conference room. It is very hard to comprehend how not one of them called for a film camera to cover the initial public pronouncement of President Kennedy’s death. Second, initially, the Secret Service told the Warren Commission that they did not even have a transcript of this conference. According to former Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) analyst Doug Horne, there are two real problems with the Secret Service saying this. First, according to Horne, the Secret Service went around collecting the films of this press conference. Thus making it disappear. (See Horne at Future of Freedom Foundation conference of May 18th. This is at the FFF web site.)

    But further, the Secret Service lied to the Commission about having the transcript. In responding to Commission counsel Arlen Specter’s request, Chief of the Secret Service James Rowley wrote a letter to chief counsel J. Lee Rankin. He said that he could not locate either the films or the transcript of this press conference. (DiEugenio, p. 367) As the ARRB proved, this was a lie, because they found a transcript of that press conference that was time stamped, “Received US Secret Service 1963 Nov. 26 AM 11:40”. (ibid) Does it get much worse than that? In other words, the Warren Commission’s own investigators were keeping important pieces of evidence from them—and then lying about it.

    As most of us know, Perry was pressured to alter his first day story. By the time of his appearance before the Commission, he now said that the edges of the wound were neither ragged nor clean and that the wound could have been an exit or entrance. Gerald Ford got him to say that the reporting from the press conference was inaccurate. Allen Dulles applied the icing on the cake: he said Perry should issue a retraction—which, of course, he just had. (DiEugenio, pp. 166–67)

    The reason Ford and Dulles could do this is because, in all probability, the Secret Service had absconded with the films and the transcript. But further, Perry had been worked on. As the Church Committee had discovered, a man named Elmer Moore had taken it upon himself to convert Perry to the Commission’s point of view. Moore was a Secret Service agent who was forwarded to work for the Commission. One of his first assignments was to take up a desk at Parkland Hospital and convince the doctors there that they were wrong and the autopsy report was correct. One of his priority targets was Perry. (DiEugenio, p. 167)

    As Pat Speer later discovered, this story about Moore gets even worse. After he performed his assignment in Dallas so effectively, he got a promotion to a longer term one. He became the aide de camp to Commission Chairman Earl Warren. (DiEugenio, p. 168)

    But it was not just Moore—and it was not just a couple of weeks later. As Horne stated during that FFF conference, Nurse Audrey Bell testified that Perry told her he was getting calls that evening directing him to alter his testimony.(DiEugenio, p. 169) This is now backed up by a startling piece of evidence surfaced by author Rob Couteau. Martin Steadman was a reporter at the time of the JFK assassination. Couteau discovered a journal entry by Martin that is online. Steadman was stationed in Dallas for several days after the assassination gathering information. Some of it got in print and some of it did not. From all indications, the following did not.

    One of the witnesses he spent some time with in Dallas was Malcolm Perry. Steadman was aware of what Perry had said at the press conference about the directionality of the neck wound. Steadman wrote that, about a week after the assassination, he and two other journalists were with Perry in his home. During this informal interview, Perry said he thought it was an entrance wound because the small circular hole was clean. He then added two important details. He said he had treated hundreds of patients with similar wounds and he knew the difference between an exit and entrance wound. Further, hunting was a hobby of his, so he understood from that experience what the difference was. And he could detect it at a glance.

    Steadman went on to reveal something rather surprising. Perry said that during that night, he got a series of phone calls to his home from the doctors at Bethesda. They were very upset about his belief that the neck wound was one of entrance. They asked him if the Parkland doctors had turned over the body to see the wounds in Kennedy’s back. Perry replied that they had not. They then said: how could he be sure about the neck wound in light of that? They then told him that he should not continue to say that he cut across an entrance wound, when there was no evidence of a shot from the front. When Perry insisted that he could only say what he thought to be true, something truly bizarre happened. Perry said that one or more of the autopsy doctors told him that he would be brought before a Medical Board if he continued to insist on his story. Perry said they threatened to take away his license.

    After Perry finished this rather gripping tale, everyone was silent for a moment. Steadman then asked him if he still thought the throat wound was one of entrance. After a second or so, Perry said: yes, he did.

    What is so remarkable about this story is that it blows the cover off of the idea that the autopsy doctors did not know about the anterior neck wound until the next day. Not only did they know about it that night, they were trying to cover it up that night.

    But things always get worse in the JFK case. And this issue does also, because, if the reader can comprehend it, that night was not the first time Perry was told to revise his story—or to just plain shut up. Bill Garnet and Jacque Lueth have written, produced, and directed a documentary called The Parkland Doctors. It was shown at the CAPA Houston mock trial a few years back, but only to those in attendance, not to the viewing audience. Robert Tanenbaum is the host of the documentary. He let me see it at his home two years ago. It is a good and valuable film, since it features seven of the surviving doctors at that time, 2018.

    Towards the end of the program, Dr. Robert McClelland made a bracing comment about Perry. He said that as Perry was walking out of the afternoon press conference, a man in a suit and tie grabbed him by the arm. After he got his attention, he forcefully said to Malcolm, “Don’t you ever say that again!” I turned to Tanenbaum and said: “This is about ninety minutes after Kennedy was pronounced dead.” Tanenbaum said, “Jim, they knew within the hour.” At the very least, someone knew that there had to be a cover story snapped on.

    Malcolm Perry was a victim of a large-scale crime. The evidence above indicates that the cover up was planned with the conspiracy. I would love to know who that well-dressed man who accosted him was.

    One last point. When Elmer Moore was asked to appear before the Church Committee, he brought a lawyer with him. (DiEugenio, p. 168)

  • James Saxon and John Kennedy vs. Wall Street

    James Saxon and John Kennedy vs. Wall Street


    In this author’s opinion, the best book ever written about President John Kennedy’s economic policies is Donald Gibson’s Battling Wall Street. It was first published in hardcover in 1994. It was re-released in 2014 in a trade paperback edition. Before addressing my main subject, I would like to review a bit of that important book. The main reasons being:

    1. It is relatively rare, and
    2. No other book I know of equals its thoroughness of subject matter.

    As Walter Heller, the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors, stated, Kennedy was very interested in the details of economic policy and he was a good student of worldly philosophy. One of his major goals as president was to attain higher rates of growth and productivity. (Gibson pp. 6, 20) As early as 1961, Kennedy said that he supported “long range planning for national economic growth.” (ibid p. 21) This included a multipronged program of tax policy, trying to balance the budget, investment in technology and education, and the use of fiscal policy for capital improvements.

    In the decades since, the Republican Party has tried to use Kennedy’s tax cut proposal—achieved after his death by Lyndon Johnson—as intellectual support for the whole Arthur Laffer/supply-side economics concept. There are many, many problems with this faulty comparison. First, any economist should know that Kennedy was a Keynesian, not an apostle of what we call today, the Austrian School, best represented by the late Milton Friedman. (Heller had nothing but disdain for Friedman, considering him something of a clown.) As Heller later said, Kennedy chose the tax cut option as a stimulant, because he knew it would be an easier sell to congress and it would cure the mild recession faster than a capital investment program. (Gibson, p. 21) Once the recession danger had subsided, he would then begin a capital investment program.

    Further, as Timothy Noah pointed out in 2012, when congressman Paul Ryan was selling this false comparison, there was a distinct difference between the Kennedy/Heller tax cut and the Mitt Romney/Ryan proposal. The latter was an across the board cut. The Kennedy proposal was weighted toward the middle and especially the lower classes. (The New Republic, 10/11/2012) As Noah wrote, this, in itself, demonstrates that it was a demand, not supply, oriented cut. As Noah also pointed out, Ronald Reagans’ 1981 tax cut was also supply-side oriented, since the higher ratio of tax cuts went to the upper class. Budget director David Stockman later admitted that the upper-class cuts were the point of the act. But it was hard to sell ‘trickle-down economics.’ So, they dressed it up with a new term: ‘supply-side’. (Ibid) And let us not forget: at the time JFK entered office, the top marginal rate was 91 percent. Kennedy was proposing to cut it to around 71%. When President Reagan was done with it, that top rate was eventually reduced to 28 per cent. In other words, Reagan cut it by more than 60 per cent. There can be little doubt that this colossal cut for the already wealthy contributed to the very serious problems of income inequality and the bankruptcy of the treasury.

    As Gibson points out, that marginal cut was only part of Kennedy’s tax reform program. He also wanted to encourage investment in plant and technology, so he provided an investment tax credit for corporations to do so. (Gibson, p. 21) Kennedy added a caveat to this: it was only good on materials located in the USA and had an operative life of six years or more. In other words, it was aimed at improving domestic production in the long term. One of the specific aims of this incentive was to make American goods more competitive in world markets by increasing productivity. (ibid, p. 22) In other words, it was a nationalist program.

    Related to this, Kennedy wanted to end the policy of tax deferral for companies investing abroad, especially in low tax countries and places like Switzerland. His tax reform program would move to eliminate these kinds of tax breaks. (The only exception to this was to preserve certain tax breaks if a company invested in a developing country emerging from colonialism, e.g. Indonesia.) As Gibson comments, Kennedy’s overall program was not anti-business. It was really pro-production and nationally oriented.

    II

    Kennedy’s tax proposal was also aimed at securing for the treasury billions of dollars “in income from interest and dividends going unreported and untaxed each year.” (Gibson, p. 23) His proposal was to use an annual withholding tax, as with middle class income. For dividends, he proposed a higher rate of tax on families with incomes over $180,000 per year—almost two million today. He also proposed tax code alterations to prevent the wealthy from concealing income garnered through advantages like investing in holding companies.

    As Gibson notes, many of these proposals—and others—did not make it through congress or to the ultimate revenue bill passed in 1964. It’s not possible to predict if Kennedy would have brought them back if he had lived. But even in their raw proposal state, they would indicate where Kennedy was headed. And that would be on a notably liberal—today the word is progressive—pathway. Kennedy felt that wealth should be acquired and used through productive investments that benefited society as whole. He was not in favor of profits accrued through financial speculation and inheritance. As Gibson notes, Kennedy’s overall program was trying to guarantee that the

    …search for profit would not end up destroying rather than creating economic prosperity for the country. In this he was very clear, consistent and coherent. (p. 24)

    Kennedy did not like running deficits, but if they were necessary, he would utilize them in aid of economic expansion and low unemployment, in other words, for Keynesian aims. (Gibson, p. 27) Part of that aim was to prepare a stand by program to prevent future economic downturns. A future downturn was to be alleviated through a combination of tax cuts, capital improvements—including direct grants in aid to cities and states—and expanded unemployment insurance. In this regard, and as we should all be cognizant of today after CV 19, JFK seems to be granting options to himself from the domain and prerogatives of the Federal Reserve. (Gibson, p. 29)

    The program as a whole was to be greater than the sum of its parts. In other words, Kennedy meant to have it perform in a synergistic fashion. As Gibson wrote, “each specific policy would reinforce and intensify the other initiatives.” (ibid, p. 30) Kennedy wanted to shift capital from non-productive to productive investments. He was specifically interested in expanding low cost energy production. (Gibson, p. 24)

    The above program, combined with Kennedy’s policies overseas (which this site had reviewed at length), made the president rather unpopular with the corporate aristocracy. The early sixties were the maturation of the multinational corporation. But beyond that, Kennedy had made himself a target for big business by his stand in the U.S. Steel case in 1962. As the late John Blair wrote about that conflict, it was “the most dramatic confrontation in history between a president and a corporate management.” (Blair, Economic Concentration, p. 635)

    Kennedy had taken much time to negotiate a freeze on both wages and prices in the steel industry, in order to head off an inflationary spiral in the economy. After he thought this had been accomplished, on April 10, 1962, Roger Blough of U. S. Steel requested a personal meeting with the president. This was about ten days after the agreement had been signed. Blough flew into Washington and handed the president a press release saying that his company would announce a 3.5% price increase in six hours. (Gibson, p. 10)

    Kennedy was outraged that Blough would turn on him at the last minute. He perceived that what the steel companies were trying to do was to humiliate him and cripple leadership of his economic program in public. Most readers of this site know how this turned out. Attorney General Robert Kennedy had FBI agents serve subpoenas on the chief executives of the steel consortium in the wee hours of the morning for suspicion of collusion and price fixing. JFK went on national television to condemn their actions. In no uncertain terms he said that the:

    …simultaneous and identical actions of United States Steel and other leading steel corporations increasing steel prices by some $6 a ton constitutes a wholly unjustifiable and irresponsible defiance of the public interest. (Click here for details)

    Beyond that, he then went even further in his priority of the pubic good over corporate greed. He stated that the American people would find it hard to accept,

    …a situation in which a tiny handful of steel executives, whose pursuit of private power and profit exceeds their sense of public responsibility, can show such utter contempt for the interests of 185,000,000 Americans.

    Within hours, one by one, the steel companies capitulated. (Gibson, p. 11) I don’t have to ask the reader the last time he recalls a president speaking up like this for the interests of the common man over the Wall Street oligarchy. In fact, Fortune magazine theorized that Blough may have been acting as an emissary for the corporate class to discourage the Kennedy example of cooperation between government and business. (Fortune, May, 1963) That article said that this hidden motive could explain the bizarre timing and inherent disdain of Blough’s audience with JFK. The article also stated that it was almost as if the intent was to provoke the maximum friction between the new president and the business world. Author Grant McConnell agreed that Blough’s awkward move was meant as a direct challenge to Kennedy. (Steel and the Presidency, 1962, pp. 6–7) McConnell then developed this idea further:

    Acceptance would have had the result of forcing the administration to abandon any hope of dealing actively with economic issues, which was of course, one of the chief desires of many business leaders.

    III

    There are indications that Blough was representing more than himself in his conflict with Kennedy. One such indication was the continual attacks on Kennedy and his administration in what many have called the Lucepress, that is Henry Luce’s Time-Life-Fortune magazine empire. In fact, one of the earliest and most lasting assaults on Kennedy was published in Fortune magazine. Fortune was a business-oriented monthly publication at that time, e.g. publishing the annual Fortune 500 and Fortune’s Investors Guide. It was designed for the Wall Street, high-end investor class to inform them about business directions and places where capital could be increased through speculation.

    Yet, in September of 1961, reporter Charles Murphy was allowed to publish an article called “Cuba: The Record Set Straight.” It was not at all a business article. Without exaggeration, it was an all out attack on Kennedy’s foreign policy. And it was not actually written by Murphy; he was the ghostwriter. It was actually designed by Howard Hunt, under the supervision of Allen Dulles. Hunt himself spent two days working on the formal composition with Murphy. (James DiEugenio, Destiny Betrayed, Second Edition, p. 54) That Luce would allow his flagship business magazine to be used in such a way tells the reader how highly he valued Dulles and, inversely, what he thought of Kennedy.

    The article is written in pure Hunt/Dulles, heightened Cold War style. Although its title refers to Cuba, it attacks Kennedy for seeking a neutralist solution in Laos and for not backing Ngo Dinh Diem strongly enough in Vietnam. It then leaps to the conclusion that because of those weak policies, Kennedy had to resort to the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. It was this article which began the whole myth of the cancelled D-Day air strikes. The idea that, on the morning of the actual landing of the Cuban exiles, there was a scheduled air strike from Guatemala intended to knock out the last remnants of Castro’s air force and thereby allowing the invading force to land freely and proceed up the beach uncontested.

    At the time this article was being composed, President Kennedy had already decided to terminate Dulles as CIA Director. His brother Robert had served on the Taylor Commission, the White House inquiry into the Bay of Pigs debacle. RFK had the opportunity to examine Dulles and he had concluded that Dulles had lied to his brother about the operation’s chances of success and certain crucial elements of its staging. (DiEugenio, pp. 42–43) It was Robert who then motivated his brother to terminate Dulles for this subterfuge.

    As we know today, and as President Kennedy knew back then, there were no such D-Day air strikes scheduled from Guatemala or anywhere else except Cuba. Both the CIA and Kennedy understood that the president wanted further sorties to be flown from a secured air strip on the island. (DiEugenio, p. 45) As Bobby Kennedy later concluded, Dulles knew the operation would fail on its own. He was gambling that Kennedy would send in the Navy to save the expedition, rather than sustain a humiliating defeat. Dulles was wrong. Kennedy found out about his scheme and decided to relieve him. Through his friend Luce, Allen Dulles now had Hunt and Murphy covering for him. He would blame the failure of the Bay of Pigs on Kennedy.

    In 1963, Fortune opened up on Kennedy’s general economic policies. They scored his Keynesian approach to the economy. The editors said the real wise men of economics were monetarists like Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek. They also criticized JFK for running budget deficits to create growth. As Gibson observes, “Fortune was among the leaders in rejecting virtually every major aspect of Kennedy’s domestic economic program.” (ibid, p. 59)

    But that was not all. Charles Murphy wrote another article in Fortune in March of 1963. It was entitled, “Billions in Search of a Good Reason.” This one went after Kennedy’s foreign aid program. Murphy criticized Kennedy’s efforts to try to promote industrialization and growth in the Third World. He concluded that this process had gotten out of hand.

    Murphy also criticized Kennedy’s attempts to deal with these nations directly in bypassing international organizations, e.g. the World Bank. Murphy also scored his failure to stipulate that aid must be linked to agreements to purchase goods from America. This seems to be partly a reaction to Kennedy’s Alliance for Progress, which offered direct aid from the Treasury to Latin American nations. As Walter LaFeber notes in his book Inevitable Revolutions, that program was stripped down under Lyndon Johnson. When Nixon became president, he assigned Nelson Rockefeller to write a report on the program. Once Rockefeller’s report was submitted, the president eliminated the alliance. (Click here for details)

    Murphy concluded his article by saying that a large and important part of the banking community was against Kennedy’s foreign aid program. He specifically named the chairman of the board of Chase Manhattan and the president of First National Bank of Chicago. To even have Murphy writing these articles was clearly a conflict of interest on a personal level. Because once Kennedy had read the 1961 article on the Bay of Pigs, he was so angry that he stripped Murphy of his Air Force reserve status. In a letter to Edward Lansdale, Murphy said this did not bother him that much. Why? For his true loyalty was not to President Kennedy but to Allen Dulles. (DiEugenio, p. 46)

    As anyone who knows what Kennedy was trying to do in places like Congo and Indonesia, it would be fitting that the banking community would be opposed to his reformist policies. As John Perkins outlines in his book, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, the aim of the international banking community was and is to keep emerging nations in debt so that they can control investment, thereby substituting imperialism for colonialism. Kennedy actually mentioned his opposition to this policy in his Inaugural Address: “…we pledge our word that one form of colonial control shall not have passed away merely to be replaced by a far more iron tyranny.” To this writer, that statement—and Kennedy’s policies in places like Indonesia and with the Alliance for Progress—seems to be in opposition to the emerging globalist agenda of the American banking community. As the European colonial era was ending, Wall Street saw an opening for American imperialism to take its place.

    IV

    Douglas Dillon was ambassador to France as part of the Eisenhower administration. He was quite familiar with the Rockefeller family, since he attended the elite private school of Pine Lodge in New Jersey with three of the Rockefeller brothers: Nelson, Laurence, and John. After the war, he became chairman of his father’s firm, Dillon, Read, and Company, a large investment bank on Wall Street. He was a lifelong Republican, who aided Dwight Eisenhower in his campaign to secure the GOP nomination in 1952. He was also a large contributor to Ike’s general election. As many authors have pointed out, John Kennedy did not really appoint his own cabinet. His brother-in-law Sargent Shriver and, to a lesser extent, Ted Sorenson and Phil Graham of the Washington Post organized a search list, which they then brought to Kennedy. (Arthur Schlesinger, A Thousand Days, p.132) According to Arthur Schlesinger, it was Paul Nitze who first suggested Dillon as Treasury Secretary. Then Graham and Joe Alsop pushed him on Kennedy. What made this even more odd is that Dillon had contributed to Nixon’s campaign in 1960. (ibid, p. 135) When Schlesinger pointed this out, Kennedy replied he really did not care about that issue. What he wanted to know was if Dillon was able and would he go along with his program?

    Dillon was able, but if Kennedy had demanded a bit more research, he would have found out that Dillon was a questionable enlistee in his program. For instance, from before he was elected, it was clear that Kennedy was going to support the democratically elected Patrice Lumumba in an independent Congo. Dillon had backed the Allen Dulles view that Lumumba was in the arms of Moscow—which he was not. He also feared Lumumba’s powers of oration to rally the army about him. (David Talbot, The Devil’s Chessboard, p. 379–80) Another African leader that Kennedy favored was Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana. Dillon thought that Nkrumah was a Castroite and, therefore, Kennedy should not aid Nkrumah’s pet project, the Volta Dam. (Philip Muehlenbeck, Betting on the Africans, pp. 84–85)

    As Donald Gibson notes, one of the things that many of his critics were disturbed about was Kennedy’s willingness to loan what they called “easy money” for credit purposes. Which, of course, is what the Alliance for Progress was about: low interest or no interest loans for infrastructure and capital improvement. By 1962, Dillon seemed to have gone over to the side of Kennedy’s critics on this and other issues. For example, he was pressing for less government spending, except for defense expenditures. The Wall Street Journal, another consistent critic of Kennedy, wrote in 1963 that the activists in the administration, like Heller, had gained the upper hand over the conservatives like Dillon. (Wall Street Journal, 10/3/63, article by Philip Geyelin) The article said that Kennedy did not want to rely on monetary policy to cure a balance of payments problem. And, in fact, the president had come to think that such problems were too important to be left to bankers. He also did not agree with another of their notions, namely letting interest rates rise. (Hobart Rowen, The Free Enterprisers: Kennedy, Johnson and the Business Establishment, p. 179)

    By 1963, there was a split within the administration over general economic policy. There was on one side the activist Kennedy group which included JFK, Heller, and Franklin Roosevelt Jr. of the Commerce Department. On the other side was Dillon, the Federal Reserve, and their outside backer David Rockefeller of Chase Manhattan. (Gibson, p. 74)

    V

    One way that it appears that Kennedy tried to get around this logjam was through James Saxon. Saxon was Kennedy’s Comptroller of the Currency. That position charters, regulates, and supervises all national banks and, back then, thrift institutions. It also had control over branches and offices of foreign banks in America. I first recall reading about Saxon in the late Jim Marrs’ book, Crossfire. As Marrs described it, Saxon had been:

    …at odds with the powerful Federal Reserve Board for some time, encouraging broader investment and lending powers for banks that were not part of the Federal Reserve System. Saxon also had decided that non-Reserve banks could underwrite state and local general obligation bonds, again weakening the dominant Federal Reserve banks. (p. 275)

    From here, Marrs went on to the controversy surrounding Executive Order 11110, where Kennedy authorized printing silver certificate currency out of the Treasury. I believe Marrs was wrong about that issue, as many others have been. (Click here and scroll down to EO 11110) But he was correct about James Saxon’s struggle.

    In November of 1963, Saxon granted an interview to US News and World Report. The interview was given before the assassination, but not published until after Kennedy’s death, in the issue of 11/25. In the introduction to the interview, the editors wrote that:

    A little-known federal banking agency suddenly has burst into the news, stirring controversy. James J. Saxon, Comptroller of the Currency, who has shaken up many banking regulations, now finds himself at odds with the Federal Reserve Board and some of this country’s leading bankers. The Comptroller approved scores of new national banks, and branches, spurred key mergers, revised outmoded rules. Result: Keener competition for deposits and loan customers.

    In this interview, Saxon explained why he was taking these rather exceptional measures. He attacked the banking establishment for not doing all they could to fulfill their customers’ needs; whether they be individuals or businesses. He specifically criticized low interest rates on saving accounts and the shortage of installment loans. He also complained about the reluctance of banks to make loans to farmers. He added that some of this was due to over-regulation, but he was also clear that banks “ought to be out working with all sorts of businesses, with industry, with farmers finding ways to be helpful. Many haven’t been doing it.” Saxon noted that he was attempting to relax rules in certain areas in order to encourage more widespread granting of credit. He said that he was very well received among commercial entities interested in borrowing.

    Saxon went on to say that his reform agenda had run into opposition within the banking industry itself, mainly from bankers of the older generation. He also specifically said he had problems with the Federal Reserve Board. He mentioned the Chairman of the Board, William McChesney Martin, as being in disagreement with him. The interviewer stated that when Saxon went to congress, Martin opposed all of his reform suggestions.

    Saxon thought the Fed had too much power over what banks could offer as interest rates on accounts and also too much control over loans on large construction projects. In regards to that, he specifically stated that the Fed should not determine how money can be used. In the interview, he said that Rockefeller’s Chase Manhattan had too much sway with the Fed. Saxon wanted more competition in banking and he wanted more new banks in more communities, since he felt banks had much to offer to the life of a community, no matter how small. I encourage everyone to read this remarkable interview.

    At the end, he clearly implies he had John Kennedy’s backing and no one had resisted his policies from above. In reading the interview, one wonders if Saxon was the man Kennedy sent forward to duel with Chase Manhattan, since Dillon would not. It turns out that Kennedy and Saxon had a common problem, namely Dillon.

    After Kennedy’s death, on May 18, 1964, Saxon sent Dillon a memo.  It was really more of a complaint. Saxon’s office had sent three bills to Dillon to pass on for approval to congress. They all coincide with the tenor of the Saxon interview. The first was to expand the comptroller’s office powers over foreign banking and financing corporations. The second was to clarify requirements of reports on conditions of national banks. The third was “to remove the power of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System to examine National Banks.” Saxon was quite upset that Dillon had stalled on all three, to the point that he felt his office was being discriminated against. He complained that his views were being ignored, especially when the Federal Reserve took a contrary opinion, which they likely did in regards to the third bill he mentioned to Dillon. One has to wonder if, with Kennedy dead, Dillon felt free to marginalize Saxon.

    At the end of Part 6 of his “Creating the Oswald Legend” series, Vasilios Vazakas points to the upper levels of the American Power Elite as to where the final approval over JFK’s assassination came from. As Gibson points out, and as I have tried to indicate here, the economic powers in America had been pushing for a globalist agenda even during Kennedy’s presidency. They wanted European colonialism to be replaced by American imperialism, which would allow American business entities to be shipped abroad. They also wanted old-fashioned tight-money monetarist rules in banking. Kennedy opposed both.

    As David Talbot notes in The Devil’s Chessboard, Doug Dillon supervised the Secret Service back in 1963. Even Howard Willens of the Warren Commission was surprised as to how Dillon managed to escape a real grilling, including refusing to turn over certain Secret Service records. (Talbot, p. 584) Willens later found out that Dillon had enlisted Warren Commissioner John McCloy in his cause and McCloy had gone to President Johnson to give Dillon more backup. McCloy was employed at the time by the Wall Street law firm of Milbank, Tweed, Hadley, and McCloy. McCloy’s office was located in New York, at Rockefeller Center.

  • The Stanley Marks Revival: The Prophecies of Murder Most Foul! and Two Days of Infamy

    The Stanley Marks Revival: The Prophecies of Murder Most Foul! and Two Days of Infamy


    Thanks to the help and encouragement of Stanley Marks’ daughter, Roberta, Murder Most Foul! and Two Days of Infamy are now coming back into print for the first time since the late 1960s. That is right: Fifty year later. The timing seems apt. Throughout his oeuvre, Marks warned time and again of the growing threat of fascism in America, pointing repeatedly to figures like Allen Dulles, J. Edgar Hoover, and Ronald Reagan: all handmaidens in the march toward the right wing that continued in the decades after the assassination.[1] And now, in the incarnation of the forty-fifth president of the United States, we have a figure who doesn’t even bother to disguise his naked grab for power, and the phrase “coup d’état” is being spoken openly, even in the mainstream media.

    Stanley Marks circa 1934, Chicago. When he was only four years old, Stanley lost both his parents to the influenza pandemic of 1918, which infected a third of the world’s population. Stanley’s daughter, Roberta, recalls her father saying that “he never had enough food. When you see pictures of him as a youth, he was bone-thin and skinny. That is, until he married my mother, whose cooking he adored.” Stanley’s privations and experience with hunger on Chicago’s hardscrabble streets may have helped to open his eyes to a certain political awareness and helped to mold him into a lifelong FDR New Dealer.

    So much of where we are today is foreshadowed in the writing of Mr. Marks: in particular, the fueling of racism and xenophobia, the attempted erosion of civil rights, and the empowerment of the oligarchy and its principal tool of control, the police state. Speaking directly to the readers of a future generation, in 1969 Marks wrote:

    The balance of this small volume now attempts to enter the “dark world” that is slowly, oh, so slowly, being lit, although full light may take until the year 2038—if the “basic principles of American justice” have the strength to remain as principles guiding this long-suffering nation.

    This still remains a big “if”—as the nation continues to suffer while awaiting a firmer grounding in those “basic principles.”

    II

    Shortly after reading Murder Most Foul!, in his essay “The Kennedy / Dylan Sensation,” Jim DiEugenio wrote that Marks’ early “condemnation” of the Warren Report in 1967 “is a far cry from, say, Josiah Thompson, who at the end of his book [Six Seconds in Dallas; also published in 1967] said he was not really sure that the evidence he adduced justified a conspiracy.”

    It wasn’t until many months later that either of us realized just how astute a remark that really was. For, in Stanley’s second JFK-assassination book, Two Days of Infamy: November 22, 1963; September 28, 1964 (which neither of us had read yet, due to its rarity), Stanley writes:

    As will be shown, the Warren Commission proved the innocence of Lee Harvey Oswald, but his innocence can only be found if the person reading the “Report” will read the testimony in the “Hearings” or the evidence in the National Archives.

    Thus, a defense lawyer on Oswald’s behalf, because of the prestige associated with the seven commissioners, would be reduced to assume the burden that his client, Oswald, was innocent “beyond a reasonable doubt.” The author of Six Seconds In Dallas fell into this trap, for he wrote that although he believed there was more than one assassin, Oswald had to be guilty because he could not prove he was innocent! Hence, the burden of proof, as they say in law, shifted from the prosecution––the Commission––to the shoulders of Oswald. This, of course, is contrary to every principle of Anglo-American jurisprudence upon which this nation is founded.

    Now, more than fifty years after the publication of both Murder Most Foul! (September 1967) and Two Days of Infamy (March 1969), one is left to wonder to what extent Marks was aware of his own gift of prescience. And we should add that, in this March 1969 text, he was already using the term “conspirators” when referring to the assassins of the Kennedys and King. He states unequivocally: “All three were murdered as the end result of three interrelated conspiracies,” adding: “History has shown that an invisible coup d’état occurred when President Kennedy was murdered.” In 1972, after the author Joachim Joesten learned of Stanley’s work, he credited him with being one of the first Americans who dared to use the word “coup” in this context: “To my knowledge, nobody but Jim Garrison and an obscure West Coast writer named Stanley J. Marks has ever endorsed before my unswerving contention that the murder of John F. Kennedy was nothing short of a camouflaged coup d’état.

    Private Stan Marks at the army base library, circa 1945. By his late twenties Marks had accumulated a private collection of over 5,000 books.

    Stanley’s work was accomplished in the early days, well before the release of millions of pages of documents that were pried from government archives as a result of the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act (effective October 26, 1992). That legislative act led to the creation of the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB). The ARRB made it possible for an author such as Gerald McKnight to create a classic tome on the Warren Commission deception, Breach of Trust (2005), with its in-depth look behind the scenes of the WC drama. But in reading through Stanley’s work, published decades earlier—although it lacks many of the details that would emerge only later—one is struck by how much in parallel his conclusions are with those of contemporary scholars such as McKnight, James Douglass (JFK and the Unspeakable; 2008), Jim DiEugenio (Destiny Betrayed, Second Edition; 2012), and Lisa Pease, whose book A Lie Too Big to Fail (2018) deals with the RFK case.

    Marks followed Two Days of Infamy with Coup d’État! Three Murders That Changed the Course of History. President Kennedy, Reverend King, Senator R. F. Kennedy (February 1970). And then, perhaps inspired by the release of Oliver Stone’s film on JFK, in his seventieth-eight year, Marks released his last assassination-related title, Yes, Americans, A Conspiracy Murdered JFK! This appeared in June 1992: just a few months before the Assassination Records Collection Act became effective. Thus, the year 1992 marks a milestone not only in JFK research, thanks to the ARRB, but in the passing of an intellectual torch from the old guard to the new.[2] One also cannot help but wonder what conclusions Stanley may have drawn if he had access to such voluminous records earlier in his life. He died seven years later, in 1999.

    Dust jacket of the first edition of Two Days of Infamy (March 1969). Marks inscribed the copy: “To my daughter Bobbie, the apple in my orchard and the filament in the bulb of her parent’s life. With Love, Daddy.” An ad for the book appeared in the July 11, 1969 edition of the Los Angeles Free Press (a popular Sixties counterculture newspaper) and included the caption: “Now available at bookstores with courage.”

    While Murder Most Foul! remains his most seminal work, as well as the most avant-garde in terms of stylistic approach, his subsequent texts continue to expand upon many of the points first raised in that book, as well as introducing fresh ideas and perspectives to the case. Therefore, it’s important to view Murder Most Foul! in the context of Marks’ complete oeuvre. For example, picking up on a theme first introduced in MMF—that is, the collective cynicism born as a result of the lies published in the Warren Commission Report, which would eventually accumulate like a growing poison in the national psyche—in Two Days of Infamy he writes:

    Perhaps it was the cynicism, inherent in citizens of all nations, that convinced the American citizenry that the “Report” issued by the Warren Commission was supported by rotten timbers incapable of supporting the truth. The suspicion increased in the same ratio and in the same speed as smog increased with the density of automobiles on a Los Angeles freeway. The American people were becoming deeply convinced that the Commission had perpetrated a gigantic, gruesome hoax the like of which concealed a conspiracy that reached into the very gut of American government and society. Today, that hoax, that whitewash feared by the people has been exposed to the light of day, for the citizenry were, and are, absolutely right in their assessment of the Warren Commission. There now exists overwhelming evidence, provable in a court of law, that the Warren Commission, either willfully or negligently, concealed the conspiracy that murdered President John F. Kennedy. This deed was committed by the Commission in “the interests of national security.”

    Later on, Marks returns to the subject of perfidy committed in the name of “national security.” And he adds that, even if Oswald was “part and parcel of the conspiracy,” he represents no more than a “piece of string [tied] around the conspiracy package.” He concludes:

    The dilemma faced by the Commission resulted in a solution based not on fact or on law, but on a phrase: “in the interests of national security.” The Commission published a series of deliberate lies, not to protect the “national interests” of the American people, but to protect those interests that had interests contrary to the interests of the president of the United States, who had the interests of all the American people whom he represented.

    That being the dilemma, it would have been far better for the Commission to have proclaimed the conspiracy even though it be directly connected to the right-wing fascist elements in the United States than have this nation live a lie.

    Thus, it was “‘in the interests of national security’ that the Commission was under an obligation to destroy any testimony regarding the possibility of shots not coming from the Book Depository.”

    This is just one example of a far-reaching, “bigger picture” perspective that Marks should be remembered for. And now, decades after these remarks first appeared, we have the latest personification of an attempt to overthrow an election in America in the figure of President Trump, whose circus-like legal actions are merely the endpoint of a line first drawn on November 22, 1963.

    It’s also tempting to reinterpret Marks’ phrase “not to protect the ‘national interests’ of the American people, but to protect those interests that had interests contrary to the interests of the president of the United States”. Did Stanley mean that JFK’s interests included the fates of those nations that were struggling to reject the yoke of neocolonialist domination, much to the chagrin of multinational corporate, oligarchic interests that had billions of dollars to lose if Kennedy was allowed to live? As far as this reactionary group was concerned, it would be out of character to make an exception for John Kennedy, when far less threatening figures were being gunned down during the global war on the left that transpired, often in a clandestine manner from 1945 to 1990 and still continues—with far less fanfare—to this day.

    Stanley with his daughter Roberta at Union Pier, Michigan, circa 1950.

    Marks adds to cynicism another deadly poison: loss of faith in the media, because of its betrayal. Back in 1967, Marks was already noting that there was no way of knowing “how many agents of the CIA now work for various organizations in the mass communication media” (MMF). In Two Days of Infamy, he again picks up this theme, adding: “The investigators of the ‘Report’ have presented the result of their investigations to the public; but the silence of the press lords to further an investigation of the Commission’s allegations has led to a further decline of the general public’s faith in all forms of mass communication.”

    Again, keep in mind that this statement was published in March of 1969. Since then, we have seen a snowballing––and then an avalanche––of mistrust in what we now refer to as the MSN; and this has occurred on both sides of the aisle, left and right. But Marks goes on to blame not only the MSN and the Warren Commission, but the critics themselves for what followed. He refers to the first generation of researchers when he says:

    The critics’ primary failure was their repeated implication that the murder of President Kennedy could not be solved unless, at the same time, they proved a conspiracy. The critics have constantly proclaimed that unless the Zapruder film, the X-Rays, and other photographic evidence was released from the National Archives, no solution could be obtained. Their demands obscure the main issue: “Was Lee Harvey Oswald the ‘sole and exclusive assassin of President Kennedy’ as charged by the Warren Commission?”

    The film, X-rays, and other photographic evidence is not the prime evidence in securing an affirmative or negative answer. That evidence is secondary.

    The prosecution, in this case the Warren Commission, must affirmatively prove three elements: (1) Lee Harvey Oswald was at the 6th floor S.E. corner window at the time the shots were fired; (2) those bullets which caused the death of President Kennedy came from a weapon he used at that time and (3) the rifle allegedly used was a functional operating lethal weapon from which those bullets were discharged.

    As we witness time and again in his assassination-related publications, no matter how far afield Marks goes to explore “bigger picture” implications, as a trained attorney, he always circles round and returns to the case at hand. Thus, two of his principal concerns are to show why Oswald could not have been convicted of being a “sole assassin” in any law court that followed the basic principles of American justice; and to prove this with specific facts, on a nuts-and-bolts legal level:

    In a court of law those three elements must be proved beyond a reasonable doubt by the evidence in the possession of the Warren Commission. Each of the three must be proved; not just one, or two, but all three.

    Thus, if Oswald was not at the S.E. corner window at the exact time those three bullets were fired, he could not be found “guilty” even though the remaining two elements be proved in the affirmative.

    If element (2) be proved in the affirmative but element (1) in the negative, then a trial judge would rule Oswald “not guilty.” If element (3) was proved affirmatively, the trial judge would still rule Oswald “not guilty” if (1) or (2) not be proven by the evidence given in court. Further, if (2) be proven but (3) proves that the rifle could not discharge those bullets because it was defective and incapable of firing bullets through its barrel, then Oswald would be found “not guilty.” A consensus does not operate in a criminal courtroom.

    Peppered throughout the text are examples of straightforward forensic evidence that any lawyer worth his salt would present to demonstrate his case against the WC conclusions. “Any attorney defending Oswald on the charge of being the ‘sole and exclusive assassin’ of President Kennedy would have an easy task to obtain a ‘not guilty’ verdict with the testimony of the physicians and federal agents that proved beyond a reasonable doubt that President Kennedy was struck in the back by a bullet striking him from an angle of fire between 45 and 60 degrees. This proved that such an angle of fire could only come from a window of the Dal-Tex Building or the County Building but not from the 6th floor of the Book Depository. Oswald was innocent.” And it is the presentation of such clear evidence that allows Marks to then expound on the risible nature of the Commission’s groundless theories:

    In spite of the testimony of the physicians and the federal agencies, the Commission decided to confuse the people by outdoing Baron Munchhausen—a paragon among liars. The Commission therefore proceeded to “produce” a “Tale of Bullet No. 399.” This “bullet,” sayeth the Commission Barons, first entered the president’s back, hesitated a moment, reversed itself, flew up his back, made a 90 degree turn, turned downward into the back of his neck, went through his neck, made another angle turn, entered the governor’s body, “tumbled” through the wrist, entered his rib cage, and came to rest when the “tumbling” lacked inertia, in his thigh! The leading Baron aide was a man by the name of Specter.

    Even after decades of rehashing the magic bullet fiasco in the voluminous assassination literature, Marks’s version leaves one with the impression of a fresh and lively spin.

    III

    Just as he does in Murder Most Foul!, by the end of Two Days of Infamy, Marks turns much of his ire on commissioner and former CIA Director Allen Dulles and for good reason. Like a prosecuting attorney delivering a summation through the use of rhetorical device, Marks’ refrain, echoed repeatedly in an imaginary courtroom, is the incredulous: “No conspiracy, Mr. Dulles?” And at one point, with a slight change in modulation, he adds: “The same Dallas police also testified that although Tippit’s clipboard was attached to his dashboard they never looked at it or read it! Do you believe that, Mr. Dulles?” (My italics.) Such passages also exemplify Marks’ lively, provocative, arch yet charming humor: a hallmark of the author’s writing that serves as a counterpoint to the sometimes strident, rage-fueled cadences that mark his discourse with an undertone of righteous indignation.

    Marks’ disdain for Dulles may be traced back to an article that appeared in Look magazine in July 1966, in which Dulles remarks: “If they found another assassin, let them name names and produce their evidence.” Stanley first quotes this in MMF, where he follows it with the remark: “This contemptuous statement directed at the American citizenry revealed the attitude of the Commission.” In Two Days of Infamy, he further qualifies it as “The most contemptuous statement ever issued by a member of any governmental commission investigating the murder of the head of his government.” But Marks cites this quote not merely to inform us of its existence, but to take up Dulles’ challenge. Indeed, the deeper one reads into Marks’ work, the more easily one can imagine that the impetus to produce such tomes grew directly from the outrage spawned by this outrageous declaration. After citing one example after another in which the Commission is caught with its pants down––or, perhaps more fittingly, called out for being an Emperor without any clothing––Marks rests his case by stating:

    The author has produced the evidence; it was the duty of Mr. Dulles and his commissioners to name the names of the assassins and the conspirators.

    That failure is theirs, not the responsibility of the American citizen.

    But Marks finds no solace in reaching this conclusion. Rather, he reminds us of a terrible truth:

    History has proven that once assassination has become the weapon to change the government, that style and form of government preceding the assassination falls beneath the hard-nailed boots of the assassins. Both right and left favor no democratic spirit in the people. The cold of Siberia and the gas ovens of the concentration camps have proved it.

    The tragedy of the Warren Commission is that they helped set those boots on the road to the destruction of American democracy.

    And how could so many have fallen prey to such a deceit? In part, this turning of a blind eye to the possibility of a conspiracy occurred because the citizens of the United States are “living in a dream world concocted by the mass communication systems.”

    One should also note that not all the ire falls upon Dulles. That other intractable head of so-called intelligence, J. Edgar Hoover, is the subject of so much justifiable vitriol that Marks was certain to have had a file opened on him by the FBI as a result. He lambasts Hoover for declaring just five months after the assassination of Bobby Kennedy that “Justice is incidental to law and order,” and adds:

    Mr. Hoover’s belief in “law and order” is on the exact same level as Hitler’s “law and order”; Stalin’s “law and order”; Mussolini’s “law and order”; Tojo’s “law and order”; Batista’s “law and order”; the Greek Colonel’s “law and order, 1968 version”; and so forth. Mr. Hoover’s basic philosophy is identical with the philosophy of any other “police state” objective.

    In 1943 Marks published a dozen essays in the Chicago Defender, one of the most celebrated African American newspapers in America. The illustration above features Marks’ weekly column, “War and Warfare.” The Defender played a key role in encouraging Blacks to leave the South and join “The Great Migration” North, to work in Chicago’s factories. During WWII it promoted the “Double V Campaign”: a proposed “Dual Victory” over both foreign and domestic “enemies” who remained opposed to racial equality and justice for all, thus incurring the wrath of J. Edgar Hoover, who tried to convince President Roosevelt to prosecute its editors for treason. Although Hoover was forced to back down, he opened files on the Defender and kept it under surveillance. Stanley’s publications eventually led to his blacklisting by the House Un-American Activities Committee.

    But Marks also views Hoover as something of a foxy figure. Since the Bureau’s memoranda and reports on the assassination were often as truthful as they were deceitful, and since the official FBI assassination report often contradicts the Warren Commission Report, Marks speculates that Hoover was attempting to have it both ways: protecting himself and the Bureau no matter what the final outcome. Indeed, Hoover’s performance was rather sly and of the type that only an attorney could truly appreciate. For example, speaking of the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle supposedly owned and used by Oswald for the assassination, Marks highlights Hoover’s brilliant use of legalese:

    In the official FBI Reports, Vol. 1 to 5, there is no statement by the Bureau that that rifle given to them was ever “used” by any rifleman. The FBI constantly referred to this rifle as being “owned” by Lee Oswald; never did they state that he “used” it for any purpose. How can a rifle discharge three bullets when the rifle has never been used?

    Note that fine line between truth and deceit: whether or not this rifle was really “owned” by Oswald, the Bureau nonetheless betrays the Commission by refusing to take that extra step of stating that it was “used” by him.

    Marks attempts to summarize this paradox of the Bureau’s seemingly shifting, alternating allegiances in the following manner:

    The federal agency that is the paradox, the Chinese puzzle, in the entire investigation is the Federal Bureau of Investigation. As has been stated in previous chapters, that Bureau overwhelmed the Commission with evidence that proved Oswald innocent in both murders. What is the puzzle is the fact although the Bureau time and time again warned the Commission that its “conclusions” would not stand the scrutiny of the light of day, that agency then turned right around and conducted itself in a manner implying they had something to hide––to conceal their possible involvement in the assassination. The Bureau was involved in suppressing the same evidence they had originally uncovered and exposed to the world! […]

    The Bureau’s conduct can only lead to a conclusion that the Bureau was operating on both sides of the fence, in the slim hope that any investigation of the “Report” would not be undertaken by a serious investigator of that “Report.” “Heads or tails,” the FBI could prove that they had given evidence, or uncovered evidence, disproving the Commission’s accusation that Oswald was the “sole and exclusive killer of President Kennedy.” What is perplexing is Mr. Hoover’s defense of the Commission in the face of that evidence and his various statements, which were obtuse or contradictory, that did nothing to add to the honor of the FBI.

    Appearing beside William Styron’s Confessions of Nat Turner, the #1 bestseller, and Rosemary’s Baby listed at #6, Murder Most Foul! somehow managed to get a brief mention in the mainstream press despite being a self-published text. The reviewer, Donald Stanley, ran a feature column with the San Francisco Examiner, and the review appeared in the December 24, 1967, edition, about three months after the publication of Murder Most Foul! This may have been the last time Marks was mentioned in any major media until recently.

    IV

    Marks’ phrase “two days of infamy” refers to the date of JFK’s murder and, ten months later, to the release of the Warren Commission Report. By grafting FDR’s “infamy” term onto these more recent dates of iniquity, the author is reminding us of the rage and indignation that rise up within many who lived through both the attack on Pearl Harbor and the coup d’état of November 22, 1963. This outrage extends beyond the personal figure of JFK and the experience of his loss. For, as Marks warns in the first chapter of Two Days: “A nation can be destroyed if its leaders can be murdered with impunity.” As a result of the Warren Commission hoax perpetrated by those ignoble seven commissioners, “The truth was never ascertained; the evidence never evaluated; and the truth uncovered was covered. Never was so much done by so many that produced so little.” Later on, with typical Marksian aplomb and incisiveness, he adds:

    The historical verdict of the Warren Commission is that the Commission proclaimed a precedent whereby it is now permissible for the president of the United States to be murdered by men who believe that the vice president, who becomes the president upon the death of the president, would be more amenable to the philosophies of the murderers.

    *   *   *

    As we were putting the final touches onto the new edition of Murder Most Foul!, Roberta Marks went through an old box in her garage that contained some of her father’s papers. Lo and behold, she unearthed a precious––and curious––document. Just a few years after Robert Kennedy’s death, Stanley Marks had received an unexpected request. On March 12, 1973, the JFK Library wrote Marks a letter requesting information on how to purchase a copy of Murder Most Foul! for their collection. And from this we may surmise that RFK’s trusted colleague, Dave Powers, who served as JFK’s personal assistant and whom RFK later placed in charge of assembling materials for the official JFK Library, would probably have been familiar with at least the title of Marks’ book.

    How to explain such an interest in this little-known work?

    The John F. Kennedy Library contacted Marks with a request to purchase a copy of Murder Most Foul! for their collection.

    Thanks to Vincent Palamara’s Survivor’s Guilt: The Secret Service and the Failure to Protect President Kennedy, I recently learned that Powers had long maintained a skeptic’s view of the Warren Commission Report. In discussing the possibility of Secret Service involvement in the conspiracy, in Survivor’s Guilt Vince writes that, in 1996, ARRB Director Tom Samoluk informed him that Dave Powers “agreed with your take on the Secret Service.” If Powers held this belief, it might explain why this unusual purchase of Murder Most Foul! was authorized for the JFK Library.

    A photo of this letter addressed to Marks, composed on U.S. General Services Administration stationery, is reproduced here and in the new edition of MMF.

    Purchase info for Two Days of Infamy here.

    Purchase info for Murder Most Foul! here.


    [1] In Two Days of Infamy, Stanley writes of Governor Ronald Reagan: “If it be morally correct for the Czech students to defy Stalinism, should not it be morally correct to defy Reaganism?”

    [2] One could also argue that since Destiny Betrayed was first published in 1992 and then completely rewritten a decade later, it serves as a symbolic bridge between the Old World of JFK research and the New.

    (Special thanks to Al Rossi.)

  • The Jakarta Method by Vincent Bevins

    The Jakarta Method by Vincent Bevins


    Vincent Bevins’ book, The Jakarta Method is an ambitious volume. It essentially tries to tell the story of the Cold War, largely from its impact in what we today call the “Third World.” In his introduction, Bevins writes that he has avoided speculation entirely. (p. 7) He then adds that there is much we do not know. As we shall see, he fails to deal with some things we do know and he does not avoid speculation.

    I note upfront, Bevins is not an academic, let alone an historian. He is a journalist who has been employed by the LA Times, Washington Post, and the Financial Times of London. He gives acknowledgements to several academics, including Bradley Simpson of the University of Connecticut. As we shall see—and as I will explain—that is a rather revealing statement by the author.

    I

    The book has no index. But I took extensive notes. Oddly—considering his subject—Bevins gives rather short shrift to the origins of the Cold War. One of the strangest things about the book is this: I could find no mention of George Kennan. Any writer dealing with the subject would have to at least make mention of the crucial importance of Kennan in how it all began. Bevins does not.

    George Kennan enlisted in the American diplomatic corps out of college in 1925. He was stationed in Prague during the Anschluss and in Berlin until the American declaration of war against Germany in December of 1941. Kennan had studied the USSR and sided with the likes of former ambassador William Bullitt and State Department experts like Loy Henderson and Chip Bohlen on the subject, thereby disagreeing with Franklin Roosevelt’s former Russian ambassador Joseph Davies about the possibility of any kind of reliable alliance with Joseph Stalin against the Third Reich. Yet, as anyone who has studied the era understands, this was what Roosevelt was relying on in his pre-war strategy and his actual tactics during the conflict.

    At the end of the war, Kennan was appointed deputy chief of mission in Moscow. What makes what he did there so important is that FDR had passed on in April of 1945. Davies’ influence was now weakened. In February of 1946, Kennan cabled his famous/infamous Long Telegram to Washington. It’s called that since it was well over 5,000 words in length. (Click here for more information)

    Many observers consider the Long Telegram crucial in understanding what came afterwards. It provided an intellectual underpinning for the hardliners in the White House and State Department to sanction the Cold War and depict it as a life and death struggle over the fate of mankind. Whatever one thought of Kennan, he was an intelligent, well-read man who could write. So even if one disagreed with him, one had to admit he knew how to construct an argument. It was the Long Telegram and Kennan’s article in Foreign Affairs magazine the following year that set the stage for the American policy of containment against the—according to Kennan—naturally expansive Soviet Union. President Harry Truman adapted it and it governed American policy towards the USSR for the next forty years. And some would say longer.

    Now, one of his implicit arguments—never formally stated, but clearly implied—is that the Cold War, and all its accompanying savagery, was somehow inevitable. That pall hangs over The Jakarta Method as thickly as it does David Halberstam’s similarly flawed—and today obsolete— book on Vietnam, The Best and the Brightest. But, if FDR and his Secretary of State Cordell Hull had stayed in power, it is highly suspect that Kennan’s Long Telegram would have carried the day. In fact, Kennan spent a large part of his later career denying that he ever meant his cable to be carried to the extremes it was taken to. (Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick, The Untold History of the United States, pgs. 211, 229–30) The Kennan-induced hysteria led to Paul Nitze’s complete militarization of the Cold War with his 66-page document labeled NSC 68, presented to Truman in 1950. Nitze was not satisfied with containment. He advocated rollback. (Click here to read NSC 68)

    It’s not just important to mention FDR’s cooperation with the USSR before and during the war. We should also note his plans for after the war. In a secret interview with Robert Sherwood in 1946, Anthony Eden, Churchill’s foreign minister, said that he blamed the present state of affairs on the death of Roosevelt. He spoke of Roosevelt’s subtlety and contrasted that with Truman and Winston Churchill. Eden told Sherwood that, had Roosevelt lived and maintained his health, he would have never let the Soviet/American situation deteriorate as it had. He concluded that FDR’s “death therefore was a calamity of immeasurable proportions.” (Roosevelt’s Lost Alliances, by Frank Costigliola, p. 2)

    This relates directly to Bevins’ subject. For instance, FDR did not want Indochina to be returned to France after the war. He said, “The people of Indochina are entitled to something better than that.” Stalin supported Roosevelt on the decolonization issue. FDR also said, one week before his death, that once the Japanese had been cleared from the Philippines, that archipelago would be granted its independence. (Stone and Kuznick, pp. 112–13). Neither of these occurred. Winston Churchill resisted this decolonization movement. It was Truman who befriended Churchill even after he was defeated for reelection for prime minister. He then allowed Churchill to make his wildly Manichaean Iron Curtain speech in the USA in March of 1946. It came less than a year after FDR’s death. Five months later, Eden made his comments to Sherwood about the calamitous loss of Roosevelt.

    When looked at in this manner, the so-called inevitability—or the ineluctable tragedy of the Cold War—is not so inevitable and not so ineluctable. With Roosevelt and Hull in power, it might not have happened. Or at least it would not have been so epochal. I could not detect that alternative in the Bevins book. In my view, any real historian would have noted it.

    II

    When I got to Chapters 2 and 3, I detected another historical lacuna in The Jakarta Method. This is where Bevins begins to focus on Indonesia and also the rise of the CIA as an overseas arm of American foreign policy. I got the impression that somehow Bevins thought that CIA clandestine operations officer Frank Wisner and American ambassador to Indonesia Howard Jones were more important in those two areas than the Dulles brothers and Dwight Eisenhower. This is the impression a novice would get in reading those two chapters (pp. 31–75).

    Blanche Weisen Cook noted in her book, The Declassified Eisenhower, that while he was serving as president of Columbia University in New York, Dwight Eisenhower was attending a tutoring course at the Council on Foreign Relations. He concentrated on economics and how America was influencing the world through the Marshall Plan. In all likelihood it was through this process, plus his disagreement with the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that Eisenhower became enamored with both covert action and the use of economic forces in order to confront communism and control nationalistic revolution in the Third World. This was much more attractive to him than risking a final and devastating war with Russia. As she wrote, “For Eisenhower, missiles represented deterrence. Yet covert operations, misinformation, nonattributable intervention were part of his active arsenal.” (Letter to the New York Times of August 2, 1981) I should also add that, in her book, the key role of C. D. Jackson as a propaganda expert was first fully revealed. It was through people like Jackson that Eisenhower made propaganda and psychological warfare a constant in countries like Poland, Hungary and Italy. (ibid)

    Eisenhower actually asked at an NSC meeting in 1953 why it was not possible “to get some of the people in these downtrodden countries to like us instead of hating us.” (Stone and Kuznick, p. 258) Eisenhower never really learned how to answer that question in any practical way. As historian Philip Muehlenbeck notes in his study of African colonial liberation, from 1953 to 1960 nineteen independent states emerged on that continent. Not once did the USA ever vote against a European power over a colonial dispute at the UN. (Betting on the Africans, p. 3) Eisenhower rarely, if ever, criticized colonial rule by an ally. He would often find a reason to go golfing when a new African head of state arrived in Washington. (ibid)

    His vice-president had the same lack of empathy and understanding of the Third World. Richard Nixon made his reputation in the Alger Hiss case. That case helped launch the Red Scare of the 1950’s. Therefore, a virulent strain of anti-communism now existed domestically as well as in American foreign policy. Nixon was part of both. In 1954, Nixon was the first high official to advocate for inserting American troops into Vietnam. (John Prados, Operation Vulture, E book version, Chapter 9) To say Nixon was rather condescending to the peoples of the Third World is an understatement. At an NSC meeting the vice-president claimed that “some of the peoples of Africa have been out of the trees for only about fifty years.” (Muelhenbeck, p. 6) These personal traits carried over into action. While Nixon was president, the military wanted to cut back on Operation Phoenix in Vietnam, Nixon had it renewed. (Anthony Summers, The Arrogance of Power, p. 334) Bevins covers Phoenix as part of his theme of brutalization of third world populations. (p. 267) Yet, I barely recall Nixon being mentioned in the book in relation to Indochina.

    For this reviewer, there was another lacuna in the book which I also found strange. In large portion, Bevins draws the Cold War in terms of ideology. Certainly that is the way that operatives like Frank Wisner and Tracy Barnes saw it. But as one goes up the ladder the motivational funnel broadens. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and his brother, CIA Director Allen Dulles, both worked for decades at the giant international law firm Sullivan and Cromwell. That firm represented sprawling corporate interests in varying fields e.g. banking, petroleum and mining. Many of these were part of either the Rockefeller or Morgan empires. Those business interests had large holdings in the Third World. As international corporate lawyers, the Dulles brothers were beholden to these interests and therefore sensitive to them. This is why Michael Parenti has said that the acronym CIA could also stand for Corporate Interests of America. The book doesn’t have a bibliography, but from scanning his notes, Bevins would have benefited in reading A Law unto Itself, a history of Sullivan and Cromwell. Concerning the CIA’s 1954 overthrow of the democratically elected Arbenz government in Guatemala, he just says the Dulles brothers worked on Wall Street and they did some things for United Fruit. (p. 46) Later, he does supply a bit more information, but this is in his footnotes. (p. 279)

    Bevins follows this pattern with Operation Ajax in 1953 in Iran, the overthrow of Mossadegh. Bevins spends all of six paragraphs on the overthrow. Considering the subject of the book, this was so skimpy as to be jarring. Bevins did not have to devote a full chapter to Iran, but to deal with this very important subject in just six paragraphs was, for me, a non-starter, because it does not do justice to the event, the people involved in it, its importance in history and therefore to the story he is telling. And that story relates to Iran, the Third World, and the United States.

    III

    In 1933, the Anglo-Iranian Oil company—later to become British Petroleum—was formed. It was a combination in ownership of the British government and private business, i.e. British Shell. That entity purchased a 100,000 square mile claim of land in Iran. The company then sold off 20% of it to Exxon and Mobil. The terms were a 20 year sublease expiring in 1953. (John Blair, The Control of Oil, pp. 43–44) The interests of the American ownership in the company were represented by Allen Dulles at Sullivan and Cromwell. And the Shah of Iran was a longtime acquaintance of Mr. Dulles. (Nancy Lisagor and Frank Lipsis, A Law unto Itself, p. 210)

    The Anglo-Iranian Oil Company was the pride and joy of Winston Churchill. He looked at it as a way of supplying the great British navy with an endless supply of cheap fuel. (Robert Dreyfuss, Devil’s Game, p. 109). The company was rather stingy in its arrangement with the Iranian government. The split between the two was 84–16% in favor of the company. There was a lot of money involved since the company was the third largest producer of crude in the world. (Stone and Kuznick, p. 258). From the time he was in the Iranian parliament, Mohammad Mosaddegh detested dealing with the British. Like another secular Arab leader, Gamal Abdel Nasser, he considered them the worst colonizers on the globe. As early as 1944 he advocated nationalizing their holdings. (Dreyfuss, p. 109) This was made worse when Mosaddegh learned that the American owned Arabian American Oil Company had a 50/50 profit sharing deal with Saudi Arabia.

    Shah Reza Pahlavi did not really want to be a monarch. He admired what Kemal Ataturk had done in Turkey. So he also wished to turn Iran into a republic. But the powerful set of mullahs, named the Ulema, resisted this. (Dreyfuss p. 110) They were backed by the radical fundamentalist terrorist group the Muslim Brotherhood. The Brotherhood resorted to assassination of members of the Shah’s government between 1949–51. In a very important point, completely missed by Bevins, this extremist group was backed by the British who supplied them with suitcases full of money to bribe the mullahs and to purchase followers in the Grand Bazaar of Tehran. (Dreyfuss, pp. 111–13) As Robert Dreyfuss points out in his fine book Devil’s Game, the British did not want the Middle East turned into a Pan Arab union of republics, for this would mean that they would not get the favored oil arrangements they had from the royal monarchies.

    Mossadegh led the political group called the National Front. The Shah appointed him prime minister in 1951. He announced a series of progressive and democratic reforms; peasantry was banished, unemployment insurance was begun, land reform was instituted. On May 1, 1951 Mossadegh nationalized Anglo-Iranian. He wished to use the profits for the betterment of Iranians. In another key point slighted by Bevins, when Mossadegh visited Washington in 1951, Truman warned London not to attack Iran. A policy which his Secretary of State Dean Acheson was in agreement with. (Dreyfuss, p. 113; Stone and Kuznick, p. 259) Therefore, Churchill decided to wage economic war on Tehran. Mossadegh cut off diplomatic relations with London.

    The British knew they needed an ally in their goal of overthrowing Mossadegh. He was being granted emergency powers because of the economic warfare. Under Truman and Acheson, the USA would not volunteer. Under the new administration, America did so. In fact, people in the CIA understood something had now changed with Iran policy. Previously, they liked Mossadegh and he was seen as a bulwark against the Tudeh, Iran’s small communist party. (William Blum, The CIA: A Forgotten History, p. 69) They were now going to work with the British MI-6 to displace him, and the issue was oil. (Dreyfuss, p. 115) When the CIA station chief in Tehran resisted, Allen Dulles removed him. (Stone and Kuznick, p. 260)

    With his brother Allen as CIA Director, the blueprint to overthrow Mossadegh was designed in John Foster Dulles’ office in the State Department in June of 1953. (John Ranelagh, The Agency, p. 261) The idea was to get the Shah to dismiss Mossadegh, which he was reluctant to do. In August of 1953, he finally did. Then the Shah fled to Rome. Once Mossadegh was formally dismissed, the idea was to portray him as a tool of Tudeh, which Foster Dulles knew he was not. But both the New York Times and Allen Dulles said he was. (Blum, pp. 70, 75). In fact, during the entire crisis, the Russians did not try and extend aid to ease the economic embargo, even in the face of the actual overthrow. And Mossadegh did not ask for Russian aid. (Blum, p. 75) Step three was the CIA, under their ground supervisor, Kermit Roosevelt, would now enlist the British allied Muslim Brotherhood and the Ulema to raise violent demonstrations against Mossadegh. They even got some of the Brotherhood to masquerade as members of the Tudeh. Under disguise, they threw rocks at mosques and mullahs and wore placards saying they would hang the mullahs from lampposts in all major cities in Iran. (Dreyfuss, p. 117; Stone and Kuznick, p. 260) Step five was, in the face of this CIA created chaos— which weakened Mossadegh—to secretly supply the army and enlist them on their side. (Blum, p. 73) In the midst of this violent and deadly maelstrom, step 6 was now taken: the Shah was to appoint a new leader, handpicked by the CIA and Kermit Roosevelt. After a final tank battle was waged in front of his home, Mossadegh stepped down. He was first imprisoned and then placed under house arrest. His followers were jailed, many were executed. Allen Dulles, who had temporarily stationed himself in Rome, now ordered a plane to transport the Shah from Italy back to Tehran. (David Talbot, The Devil’s Chessboard, pp. 235–38)

    I have outlined what happened in Tehran from 1951–53. I invite anyone to compare the above six paragraphs with what Bevins has written on the subject. (See pgs. 38–40). I guarantee the reader will learn more, in every way, from the above. Recall, this was the first successful overthrow of an elected government through covert action by the CIA.

    The results, for the American oil companies allied with the Anglo-Iranian company, were tangible. They got an increased share of the company. (Blair, p. 46) The Shah was now the recipient of well over 100 million dollars in aid in the first year he was restored. (Stone and Kuznick, p. 260). He gratefully joined the Baghdad Pact. The Dulles brothers were quite pleased with what had occurred in Tehran, as was Eisenhower. Kermit Roosevelt was not. When Foster Dulles asked him to repeat the performance later, he declined. In 1958, he quit the CIA and went to work for Gulf oil. (Ranelagh, p. 264). As anyone can understand, except perhaps Vincent Bevins, the forces that the Dulles brothers helped unleash to bring down Mossadegh in 1953 were, in large part, the same forces that overthrew the Shah in 1979. This included the Ayatalloh Khomeini, who, in 1979—with the help of the BBC and ABC—turned the USA into the Great Satan of the Middle East. (Stone and Kuznick, p. 260) Khomeini also ushered in the explosion of Islamic fundamentalism that—as we shall see, but Bevins does not—Senator John Kennedy warned about in 1957.

    IV

    I have tried to show above how there was a discernible darker gradation from Franklin Roosevelt, to Harry Truman, to Dwight Eisenhower in regards to the Cold War. I did not really detect this in Bevins’ book. It was under Ike that Allen ran the CIA and Foster was Secretary of State. It was then that the CIA tried to perfect the art of the overthrow. Prior to this, the Agency was run by two military men. On and off, Allen Dulles had served in both the State Department and the Office of Strategic Services, as well as at Sullivan and Cromwell, for virtually his entire life.

    With that in mind, and in this reviewer’s opinion, to leave out Truman’s regret at what Allen Dulles had done to the CIA is not being candid with the reader. Those regrets were real and he shared them with others like Admiral Sidney Souers. Appointed by Truman, Souers briefly ran the Central Intelligence Group, the immediate forerunner to the CIA. Years later, Truman had communicated with Souers about what Allen Dulles had done to the CIA. Both men were gravely disappointed in the result. Souers wrote to Truman that Dulles “caused the CIA to wander far from the original goal established by you, and it is certainly a different animal than I tried to set up for you.” (James DiEugenio, Destiny Betrayed, Second Edition, p. 379)

    This was not an isolated opinion. Both Robert Lovett and David Bruce also lamented what the Dulles brothers had done. Both were scions of the Power Elite e.g. Bruce was a longtime ambassador who married into the wildly wealthy Mellon family. Lovett worked for Brown Brothers Harriman as well as serving under Truman as Secretary of Defense. As well established in the upper circles as these men were, they were highly critical of what the Dulles brothers had done with the CIA. They filed a report while serving on the civilian control board for the Agency. Bruce referred to what Allen Dulles was doing as “king-making”. Agreeing with Truman, both men wrote that intelligence collection had been superseded by covert action under Dulles. And this was not what Truman had in mind at the outset. (DiEugenio, p. 49) Their complaints fell on deaf ears since Eisenhower was president at the time.

    This is important because it touches on what is supposed to be the main focus of Bevins’ book: Indonesia. In the Bruce-Lovett report, it specifically points out that Foster Dulles had removed ambassador John Allison in advance of the attempted coup against Sukarno in 1958, for the reason that Allison opposed it. (DiEugenio, p. 49). He was replaced by Howard Jones, who was kept in the dark about what was upcoming.

    Before addressing the attempted 1958 coup against Sukarno, I think it’s important to mention the Bandung conference of 1955, Bevins does deal with this event, but I think its notable to point out a chronology. Many commentators believe that Sukarno of Indonesia and Nehru of India called the Non-Aligned Conference at this time because the CIA had overthrown elected governments in Iran and Guatemala in the two consecutive years prior. These leaders specifically singled out their lack of trust and belief in John Foster Dulles. (Robert Rakove, Kennedy, Johnson and the Nonaligned World, p. 3) But it was not just Dulles’ interest in Third World overthrows that made him suspect. It was also his penchant for ringing the world with anti-communist treaties. Nehru specifically called this out as “a wrong approach, a dangerous approach, and a harmful approach.” (Rakove, p. 5) For instance, Dulles created the Baghdad Pact just two months before Bandung. As noted, the Shah joined. Gamel Abdel Nasser of Egypt did not. (ibid, p. 6) Foster Dulles counted this against Nasser. It was one of the reasons why the USA pulled out of the Aswan Dam deal, which led to the Suez Crisis of 1956, which led to Nasser going to the Russians for co-financing of Aswan. (See this essay for an in depth treatment of this event) This is what Nehru meant when he said Foster Dulles’ penchant to divide up the world was a harmful approach. The Baghdad Pact was especially offensive to the non-aligned leaders since the United Kingdom—the greatest colonizer in the modern world—was part of it.

    Bevins deals with Washington’s reaction to Bandung in five sentences. (p. 59) Yet, Dulles’ State Department called the expansion of the non-aligned movement “one of the most dangerous political trends of the fifties.” Foster Dulles was so predisposed against the movement that he thought of staging a shadow conference featuring conservative, American allied nations. At a speech in Iowa in 1956, the Secretary of State said that the idea of neutrality was simply a false pretense. He added that his alliance system had eliminated that alternative. After his death, Dulles was reviled in the non-aligned world as the man who made their foreign policy immoral. (Rakove, pp. 6–10) There is even evidence that the CIA plotted to blow up Zhou En Lai’s plane as he was traveling to the conference. (NY Times, November 22, 1967, p. 23)

    In 1957, the CIA decided to enlist a group of officers in the outer islands of the Indonesia archipelago to rebel against Sukarno. This ended up being the largest covert action project the Agency had attempted prior to the Bay of Pigs invasion. But to fully understand what Eisenhower and Foster Dulles were doing, one must keep this in mind: Sukarno was not a communist. There were no communists in the high echelons of the military or in his government. That included D. N. Aidit, the leader of the PKI. In fact, the military was opposed to the PKI.

    Then what was this really about? One way to reply is that it was part of the CIA’s war on neutralism. If we recall, there were no real indications that Mossadegh was a communist either. Therefore, one way to interpret the almost mad reaction to both men is simply that Foster Dulles meant what he said about there being no room for neutrality in the Cold War. As a result, and due to a wide examination of the record, Audrey and George McT. Kahin ended up agreeing with Blanche Weisen Cook. In 1995, in. a book length study of the attempted overthrow, they wrote that “Probably at no time since World War II has violence—especially on a militarized level—in the execution of American foreign policy been so widespread as during the Eisenhower administration.” (Subversion as Foreign Policy, p. 8)

    The 1958 overthrow attempt against Sukarno failed. It was climaxed by the shooting down of a CIA pilot, Alan Pope. This exposed the denials of U.S. involvement by the American government and the New York Times. (Bevins, pp. 68–69) Australian Indonesia scholar Greg Poulgrain postulates that Allen Dulles saw the fail coming. He, therefore, shifted allegiance in the conflict for the purposes of giving the army Strategic Reserve Command, Kostrad, more power and stature in the government. (The Incubus of Intervention, pp. 8–10) As we shall see, Allen Dulles knew something about Indonesia that neither Eisenhower nor Sukarno did.

    V

    Up until this point, I was ready to call Bevins’ book fair to middling. If I was a professor, I would have given him a passing grade. When I got to his writing about John Kennedy, I altered that grade downward. It is important to note just what he does.

    Kennedy’s first appearance in The Jakarta Method is as a senator. (Bevins, p. 59) The author spends two paragraphs on JFK and what he labels as a speech he gave in the senate opposing Eisenhower’s backing of France in Algeria. He does make a vague reference to other speeches Kennedy made after Bandung, which occurred in 1955. But Bevins references this as a speech by Kennedy on European colonialism from 1952, before Bandung. (Bevins, p. 281) In that reference, he says this speech took place in the senate. But Kennedy was not in the senate in 1952. He was still in the lower House. It gets worse. Because the rebellion in Algeria did not begin until 1954, two years after the date Bevins puts on this speech. Kennedy’s milestone speech against Eisenhower and Foster Dulles on Algeria did not occur until 1957. And, as I have noted, in that speech Kennedy warned about the possible explosion of Islamic fundamentalism in north Africa.

    Whatever the reason for this sloppiness, it indicates something faulty in Bevins’ depiction of Kennedy. For Kennedy did not begin his crusade against the State Department’s approach in the Third World in 1955 or in 1957. It began in 1951, owing to his meeting with diplomat Edmund Gullion in Saigon amid France’s attempt to retake Indochina after the war. (Richard Mahoney, JFK: Ordeal in Africa, p. 108) There, at a rooftop restaurant, Gullion told the young Kennedy that France would not win their colonial war in Vietnam. (Click here for a full discussion)

    As several authors have described, this meeting had an impact on Kennedy. He immediately began to communicate his doubts about supporting the French effort—and the State Department’s overall performance in the Third World—to his constituents. (Mahoney, pp. 14–15). In other words, from 1951 to the end of his senate term, Kennedy was in opposition to both Truman/Acheson and Eisenhower/Dulles. At times, he specifically said both political parties were wrong in their approach to the problem of nationalism in emerging nations. (Mahoney, p. 18) He was upset that Eisenhower had greatly increased aid to France for its colonial war in Indochina—going way beyond what Truman had been willing to give in that lost cause. (Mahoney, p. 16) Therefore, at the start, Bevins’ portrayal of Kennedy in relation to his main theme is both foreshortened and inaccurate.

    This continues with president elect Kennedy and the Congo. What Bevins does with this episode is startling. He leaves out the fact that Kennedy was the chair of a senate subcommittee on Africa in 1959–60. During the 1960 campaign, the senator mentioned Africa close to 500 times. (Muehlenbeck, p. 37) The problem was, unbeknownst to Kennedy, Eisenhower and the CIA had marked out Patrice Lumumba, the elected leader of Congo, for assassination. Allen Dulles was backing the Belgian plan to split off the mineral rich Katanga province from Congo, thereby depriving Lumumba of Congo’s main source of wealth. When the USA would not help the democratically elected Congo leader expel the uninvited Belgian paratroopers, Lumumba turned to the USSR. That sealed his fate in the eyes of Eisenhower and Allen Dulles. The CIA now put together a series of murder plots to assassinate Lumumba. (John Newman, Countdown to Darkness, pp. 236–68)

    They did not work. But the CIA cooperated with the Belgians to capture Lumumba and have him shipped to Katanga. There, he was executed by firing squad, his corpse soaked in sulphuric acid and then set aflame. (Newman, pp. 295–96). Bevins writes that Lumumba was killed three days before Kennedy was inaugurated. He does not note that the CIA never told Kennedy about his murder. He found out about it through Adlai Stevenson at the UN almost a month later. Bevins also fails to note that some authors think the CIA hurried the plots in order to kill Lumumba before Kennedy took office. (John Morton Blum, Years of Discord, p. 23) And he does not show the reader this picture.

    Kennedy gets the news of Lumumba’s death on 2/13/61 from Adlai Stevenson. This picture was taken by Jacques Lowe who said Kennedy groaned and said “Oh no.”

    But perhaps most importantly, Bevins does not tell the reader that—not knowing he was dead—Kennedy immediately began to alter American policy in Congo. He even removed the ambassador and replaced him with Gullion. (Mahoney, pp. 77–78) He did these things because, unlike Eisenhower who wanted him killed, he favored Lumumba. And unlike Allen Dulles, he did not back the Katanga secession. He admired UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold, who moved to stop the secession. (Susan Williams, Who Killed Hammarskjold?, p. 239)

    And, this only tells the reader half the story, for Bevins then makes a Bob Beamon historical leap to Josef Mobutu taking control of Congo. (Bevins, p. 84) Again, this is startling, since it did not formally happen until 1965. But by making that elision, he cuts out the whole two year struggle Kennedy went through with Hammarskjold—and then after Dag’s murder—to keep Congo independent and stop it from reverting back to European imperialism. Kennedy did this mostly on his own. Because after the assassination of Hammarskjold in September of 1961, the UN was not that eager to spend more money on this conflict. Kennedy went to the UN twice to convince them to see the mission through. Partly perhaps because Gullion had cabled Washington that he suspected the Hammarskjold plane crash was not an accident, it was done by sabotage. (Interview by Oliver Stone with Richard Mahoney for the upcoming documentary JFK: Destiny Betrayed. For a concise treatment of this whole tragic episode, click here)

    And here is the capper. By avoiding all of this, Bevins can dodge the fact that President Lyndon Johnson reversed Kennedy’s Congo policy and essentially reverted back to what Eisenhower and Allen Dulles were advocating. (Mahoney, pp. 230–31; Jonathan Kwitny, Endless Enemies, pp.79–85). This is how Mobutu took over and became a 30-year dictator, imperial stooge and, perhaps, the wealthiest man in Africa.

    VI

    Following the lead of the late Alexander Cockburn and author Roger Morris, Bevins tries to implicate Kennedy in the Ramadan Revolution of February, 1963. This was the overthrow of the leader of Iraq, Karim Qasim, by the Baath Party. (Bevins, p. 89) Morris made this implication in an article he did for the New York Times in March of 2003. This was at the height of the MSM’s wild propaganda war against Saddam Hussein and Iraq. We know, through the disgraced work of Times reporter Judith Miller, that the Times was an armature for Dick Cheney to build a huge broadcast and print communications wave. That wave was created to prepare America for President George W. Bush’s (ultimately) disastrous invasion of Iraq. That pointless attack ended up being the worst American foreign policy disaster since Lyndon Johnson landed ground troops in Vietnam. In the face of all this, Bevins uses a Times newspaper column as his source for the Qasim overthrow. Even though there have been much more scholarly sources—books and dissertations—written on the subject since that time. Let us use those to indicate the quality of his scholarship.

    In 1958, Qasim led a violent coup against the Hashemite monarchy, one which killed both the king and the crown prince. Qasim then tried to navigate amid four sources of power in the country: the communist party (CPI), the Baath party, which admired Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, the army, and the Kurds of Northern Iraq. The main outside influence was the Iraq Petroleum Company, owners of the large oil concession which was of major value to both Iraq, and the world’s, supply. To put it mildly, Qasim was not up to this juggling task. In 1959, in a plot which Hussein was a part of, the Baaths tried to assassinate him. (Bryan Gibson, US Foreign Policy : Iraq and the Cold War 1958–75, London School of Economics dissertation, 2013)

    In the beginning, the problem for Qasim was posed by the Pan Arabists and a demonstration they held in Mosul. This caused him to withdraw from the Baghdad Pact, which angered Allen Dulles. (Gibson, p. 47) But according to both Gibson and another dissertation by Brandon Wolfe-Hunnicutt, done at Stanford in 2005, nothing Dulles had planned for was ever approved or put in action. There is no evidence, according to Wolfe-Hunnicutt, that the Baath had any connections to the CIA prior to the 1959 plot. (p. 42, The End of the Concessionary Regime.) Gibson agrees with this, saying the CIA did not even know about it. (pp. 57–58)

    What is striking about the Kennedy administration is that it does not appear that President Kennedy was very interested in Qasim, especially in comparison with Eisenhower, who had set up a special committee on Iraq. (Gibson, p. 49) That committee was, for all practical purposes, rendered null during the Kennedy administration. (Gibson, p. 68) By this time, 1961, Qasim had abandoned the CPI. In fact, he had actually turned on the communists. (Wolfe-Hunnicutt, pp. 52–56). As time went on, he had serious problems with the British, because he had revised the concessionary agreement with the oil consortium, the IPC. This was a largely British owned company centered in London. Qasim now claimed all the land IPC had not used for oil development as Iraq’s. (Wolfe-Hunnicutt, pp. 68–71)

    An even more serious problem was the Kurdish rebellion in the north, which evolved into a civil war. This went on for months on end. The Kurds were good guerilla fighters who inflicted a series of defeats on the Iraqi army at the end of 1962. This caused a drop in morale in the military ranks. (Gibson, p. 92) And that set the stage for the February 8, 1963, coup against Qasim. Because the Baaths, after the Kurdish victories, now infiltrated the army. But in addition, representatives of that party now negotiated with the Kurds. (Ibid) There is no credible evidence that the CIA or State Department commandeered this plot either. (Peter Hahn, Missions Accomplished?, p. 48) Consequently, the underlying tenets of what the author presents in this passage are dubious.

    That includes the idea that the CIA supplied names of hundreds of communists for the Baath Party to eliminate. Bevins says the number ended up being 5000. (p. 267) Neither the CIA station nor the State Department had even 1/20 of that many names in their files. (Wolfe-Hunnicutt, p. 85) Finally, although Bevins says Hussein was part of this overthrow, most biographies of Saddam place him in Egypt studying law at the time. For that reason, the idea that this led to his rise to party leader is both questionable and illogical. But beyond that, the Baaths were removed just eight months later. When Saddam returned to Iraq, he was placed in prison.

    VII

    The author gives the Alliance for Progress the back of his hand. (Bevins p. 88. For an objective view of that socio-economic effort, click here) In my view, he makes a mess of the Bay of Pigs invasion, and Operation Mongoose. (pp. 85–88) Predictably, he leaves out President Kennedy’s attempt at détente with Castro after the Missile Crisis. He also makes the spurious statement that Bobby Kennedy suspected Castro may have been involved in his brother’s assassination. (Bevins, p. 106)

    Next to Indonesia, his second area of concentration is Brazil. He writes that Janio Qadros, who was president from January to August of 1961, angered the Kennedy administration because he admired neutralists like Nehru and Nasser. This is nonsense. Anyone who has read anything about Kennedy—going as far back as 1983 and Richard Mahoney’s book—would know that Kennedy liked and worked with both men.

    Kennedy made a mistake in approving Lincoln Gordon as ambassador to Brazil. In that position, Gordon proved to be a Henry Jackson type Democratic cold warrior. Today, his cables are almost legendary in their rhetoric against Qadros’ successor, Joao Goulart. In one Gordon compared the turn of Brazil to the left as equivalent to the fall of China to Mao Zedong. Unfortunately, Kennedy and his Secretary of State Dean Rusk took these seriously. This began a program to weaken Goulart in 1963. (Anthony Pereira, June 20, 2016, Bulletin of Latin American Research).

    But Kennedy did not approve his overthrow. In fact, he refused to take a meeting with David Rockefeller for that reason. (A. J. Langguth, Hidden Terrors, p. 104). In January of 1964, President Johnson—who was quite friendly with the Rockefellers—did take the meeting. Quickly, the coup planning was on. There is a debate today over whether or not the American arm of the overthrow was necessary. Some, like the late scholar Thomas Skidmore—a Brazil specialist—believed that Goulart had alienated the military to the point that they would have gotten rid of him themselves. But there is no doubt that the USA was involved. Bevins tries to say that few people knew about that at the time. (pp. 110–11) Yet there were demonstrations in Rio de Janeiro against Hanna mining, a Rockefeller company. And pro-Goulart newspapers wrote that John McCloy, the point man for David Rockefeller, was in Rio in late February of 1964 negotiating with Goulart. (Kai Bird, The Chairman, p. 551) In his biography of McCloy, Bird tends to agree with Skidmore: the Brazilian military did not need the outside help. (ibid, p. 553)

    Robert Kennedy was quite upset with what Johnson had done with the Alliance for Progress. He was also outraged that Johnson had sent troops to the Dominican Republic to stop Juan Bosch, who JFK had favored, from returning to power. Bosch said at the time that the aims of the Alliance stopped when JFK was killed in Dallas. (Arthur Schlesinger, Robert Kennedy and his Times, p. 722) When Bobby became senator from New York, he arranged a tour of Latin America. When he got to Brazil he met with the new leader, Castelo Branco. After that meeting, he was being driven back to his hotel when he saw some of the crowd being struck by soldiers trying to keep them away from his car. He jumped out of the car and shouted, “Down with the government! On to the palace!” (John R., Bohrer, The Revolution of Robert Kennedy, p. 245)

    McCloy was doing his mission for Rockefeller while he was serving on the Warren Commission, the official inquiry—some would call it the official cover up—of President Kennedy’s assassination. That subject greatly interested Goulart when McCloy visited him. (Bird, p. 552) In 1968, Lincoln Gordon was on the nominating committee for the Ramsey Clark panel. He helped pick the doctors who reevaluated the medical evidence in the JFK case. By reviewing the autopsy photos and x-rays, the panel radically altered the original autopsy findings. But, even at that, it still decided that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin. (Lisa Pease, “The Formation of the Clark Panel”, Probe Magazine, Vol. 3 No. 1) Bevins is oblivious to these two rather disturbing ironies.

    VIII

    We conclude with what is supposed to be the heart of The Jakarta Method. That is the author’s discussion of the 1965 coup that resulted in the house arrest of President Sukarno and the rise to power of General Suharto. At the start, Bevins makes the following statement: “Indonesia was one place where Lyndon Johnson took a different approach from his successor [sic].” The idea that Indonesia was the one place where Kennedy and Johnson differed is ludicrous. Several scholars have proven that, as Johnson was freezing out Sukarno in 1964–65, he was also getting ready to reverse Kennedy’s policy in Vietnam. He was going to do what President Kennedy would likely never have done: insert thousands upon thousands of American combat troops to fight the war for Saigon. Johnson also appointed Thomas Mann as his czar over Latin America, and Mann would begin to cut back on the Alliance for Progress. (Walter LaFeber, Inevitable Revolutions, pp. 156–60) LBJ also swung strongly against Nasser and toward Israel in the Middle East. (Robert Rakove, Kennedy, Johnson and the Nonaligned World, pp. 245–47) Further, Kennedy was thinking about returning Mossadegh to power in Iran. (Robert Dreyfuss, Devil’s Game, pp. 224–25)

    Bevins also underplays both the speed and completeness of this alteration. Roger Hilsman, an Asian specialist under Kennedy, noted that everyone was taken aback when Johnson refused to sign continuing aid to Indonesia, since they knew it would have been a matter of routine with Kennedy. Beyond that, Johnson made sure that whatever aid America was sending went to the military. (Hilsman, To Move a Nation, p. 407)

    A problem with Sukarno in 1964 was the confrontation with the British over the creation of Malaysia. Bobby Kennedy was sent by Johnson to try and get a cease fire there, which he did. But RFK was surprised that he only had one meeting with Johnson over this issue. Bobby later felt “he had been used as a decoration to paste the Kennedy name over the politics of another man.” (Hilsman, p. 409)

    When Johnson called off the visit to Jakarta that Kennedy had scheduled for 1964, everyone realized the obvious. As Hilsman wrote:

    The United States, in fact, had made a major shift in its policy. It had abandoned its effort to steer the new nationalism of Indonesia into constructive channels, and moved to a hard line in support of the British effort to isolate Indonesia politically and contain it militarily. (ibid)

    Bevins’ underplaying of the shift toward Indonesia is strange since he greatly appreciates what Bradley Simpson has done in this field. Simpson clearly states in his book, Economists with Guns, that there is no question that Johnson immediately reversed Kennedy’s policy. He repeated this on camera in an interview with Oliver Stone for the director’s upcoming documentary, JFK: Destiny Betrayed.

    Once LBJ signaled the change, the dam broke. Howard Jones, a moderate, was replaced as ambassador by Marshall Green, a hardliner. (Bevins, p. 126) As Simpson is at pains to elucidate in his book, the CIA and the State Department now began to do what they could to undermine Sukarno and search for an alternative. This traffic was especially marked in the late summer and fall of 1964. Then, in December of 1964, there were reports in intelligence circles that Indonesia would fall amid a premature leftist coup. That would provide the opportunity for the army to crush the PKI and make Sukarno a prisoner of their goodwill. (Lisa Pease, “JFK, Indonesia, CIA and Freeport Sulphur”, Probe Magazine, June/July 1996)

    But someone else also seemed to know what was coming. That was the board members and owners of a company called Freeport Sulphur, later Freeport McMoran. As Lisa Pease noted in her milestone article, there were reports that Freeport had made large mining plans as early as April 1965, when Sukarno was threatening to nationalize American industries. Then, just one month after the first outbreaks of the September 30th Movement, Langbourne Williams of Freeport called Forbes Wilson. a chief engineer for the company. He asked him if he had the time to work on Freeport’s project in West Irian. (Click here for more information) As Pease points out, this is quite notable. Since, at that time, no one could possibly determine what the outcome of the huge upheaval taking place was going to be. But as both Pease and author Greg Poulgrain have shown, Freeport had tens of billions of dollars riding on the outcome. And Gus Long, another director of Freeport, was sitting on the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board under Johnson. It was his reward for supporting LBJ in 1964. That board advised, reviewed and recommended intelligence operations.

    As far as I could detect, Bevins spends all of two sentences on Freeport. (pp. 152–3) By doing so, he underplays the role of the Power Elite in this the Indonesian atrocity. To be specific, and as Pease points out, Freeport was a Rockefeller controlled company. Therefore, this reveals Johnson’s closeness to that clan, but also his overall friendliness with big business, which is what Bobby Kennedy warned the USSR about in his and Jackie Kennedy’s secret letter to the Kremlin in late November of 1963. They said that the détente President Kennedy was working on would be put on hold for this precise reason. (David Talbot, Brothers, pp. 29–34). This pattern is also notable in Vietnam and in Johnson’s weakening of the Alliance for Progress.

    Bevins does not make any clear statement as to what really happened with the abduction and killing of the generals by the September 30th Movement, which triggered the horrible reaction by the army against the PKI. Bevins outlines three theories as to what the plan may have been. (pp. 130–31) In this reviewer’s opinion, Greg Poulgrain’s solution, outlined in his new book, is the best explication we have yet.

    Finally, I must say that the book’s title indulges in a bit of poetic license. The concept of the American government assembling names of people in the Third World for elimination purposes actually began in Guatemala in 1954. (Larry Hancock, Nexus, p. 19) And Bevins is not the first to show that the threat of this kind of extermination was used later in Chile. Don Freed and Fred Landis pointed it out way back in 1980. (Death in Washington, p. 93)

    As I said at the outset, this book had a quite ambitious aim. For the reasons stated throughout, it does not achieve it. America’s Cold War reaction was not a monolithic type movement. It was impacted by the death of Roosevelt, which gave an opening to the messianic fear mongering of Kennan and Nitze. That, in turn, impacted Truman in a way it would not have Roosevelt. Eisenhower and the Dulles brothers made this all the worse since they combined the ideological imbalance with an allegiance to the Eastern Establishment and its monetary agenda. If we view Kennedy objectively—which he does not—he was trying to move back to Roosevelt. Kennedy was not in the grasp of the Power Elite as the previous administration was, e.g. Kennedy never joined the Council on Foreign Relations; the Dulles brothers almost ran that group.

    Bevins was too beholden to his journalistic roots and his MSM background. Like journalist David Halberstam and his useless relic about Vietnam, The Best and the Brightest, he built a narrative first. He then fitted his ordained facts into that narrative. Historians, at least good ones, don’t settle for that.

  • Creating the Oswald Legend – Part 3

    Creating the Oswald Legend – Part 3


    I. Was Oswald a Government Agent?

    In part 3, we will try to answer the most important question regarding Oswald. Was he a secret agent of some U.S. intelligence service and, if so, who was controlling him? We will examine his actions in Dallas and New Orleans and, finally, his alleged trip to Mexico before the tragic events of 11/22/1963. We will show that what happened in Mexico has many similarities with his USSR defection and the U2 incident.

    The Warren Commission had examined the possibility that Oswald was some kind of a “government agent”. J. Lee Rankin, the Commission’s general counsel, during the January 27th, 1964 meeting, was trying to convince the other members that they should counter the “dirty rumor” that Oswald was a “government agent”. Three days earlier, the chair of the Commission, Chief Justice Earl Warren, and Rankin had met secretly with members of the Texas Court of Inquiry to discuss whether or not Oswald was a CIA informant. Henry Wade, the Dallas District Attorney, informed them that somehow he learned that Oswald’s CIA identity number was 110669 and that it was consistent with the CIA’s filing system. Rankin later found out from Oswald’s CIA 201 personality file that Oswald’s CIA number on the file was 289248. Rankin never shared the above information with other members of the Commission and instead told them that there was a rumor out there, saying that Oswald was an FBI informant with identity number S-172 and S-179, which were bogus.[1]

    It was Waggoner Carr, the Texas Attorney General, who had provided the information to Rankin that Oswald had an FBI badge with number 179 and he was being paid $200 a month.[2] If that was true, then there should have been records at FBI HQ and probably in Dallas and in New Orleans. He would not have a badge, but a number that would be consistent with the Dallas field office abbreviation (DL), a four-digit number and the letter S at the end to denote security (e.g. DL1268S).[3]

    As it was concluded in part 2 of this series, Oswald’s Pro-Soviet, Pro-Communist bona fides would have allowed him to infiltrate communist subversive and pro-Castro organizations targeted by both the CIA and FBI. It is doubtful that Oswald would have been directly employed by the CIA or the FBI, but he was most likely employed by a private investigating agency that had connections to both or one of these two agencies, most likely the CIA.

    Peter Scott believed that this particular investigating agency’s field was that of industrial security.[4] To answer if that was the case, we should examine the life of another Marine who, like Oswald, showed sympathy towards revolutionaries, communists, and subversives. His name was Robert C. Ronstadt and in 1946 he started selling subscriptions to the Communist Daily People’s World and in 1947 joined the Communist party. However, he later testified to the House Un-American Activities Committee that he was only pretending to be a Communist. In reality, he was working in the Los Angeles firm Allied Records and he was tasked to smoke out employees with Communist sympathies and affiliations. It was also revealed that his true employer was not Allied Records but the private investigative firm owned  by P. McCarthy and Joseph Dunn that was responsible for providing industrial security to Allied Records. Ronstadt was not an FBI agent, but his employers, McCarthy and Dunn, were reporting their work to the FBI. Later, Ronstadt left the security company and became a paid informant to the FBI.[5]

    During the Cold War, all defense contractors and oil companies were obliged by law to conduct industrial security investigation to make sure that no leftists and subversives were hired by them. It was Lee Pennington Jr., an FBI agent, who joined the private organization the American Legion and started collecting and storing information on subversives in a massive library. The infamous James McCord of the CIA contacted Pennington, when he was looking to expose subversives.[6] Later, Pennington became a CIA consultant and transferred his library files from the American Legion to the newly created American Security Council (ASC ), which was a joint FBI-CIA-military industrial complex organization. Among its benefactors were both right wing anti-communists and Wall Street Eastern Establishment members. Some of them were Bernard Baruch, Nelson Rockefeller, Eugene W. Rostow, Henry and Clare Luce, Senator Thomas Dodd, Averell Harriman, General Lyman Lemnitzer, General Edward Lansdale, General John Singlaub, Patrick Frawley, Ray Cline, and James Jesus Angleton.

    Angleton created the Security and Intelligence Fund (SIF) after his forced retirement. John M. Fischer, one of the ASC’s presidents, was a founding director of SIF. Two other members of the Council, Elbridge Durbrow and General Robert Richardson III, were also SIF’s President and secretary/treasurer respectively. Large defense contractors like U.S. Steel, General Dynamics, Lockheed, Motorola, and McDonnell-Douglas were consulting its industrial security database to check potential personnel who could pose threats to their security.[7] Other notable members of the ASC were Admiral Felix B. Stump, Air America’s board Chairman, Henry O’Melveny Duque, Nixon’s former law partner, and vice presidents from Atlantic-Richfield, Standard Oil of California, General Dynamics, and the National Security of Industrial Association.[8]

    Do we have any evidence that Oswald was doing industrial security to expose subversives?

    When Oswald returned to Dallas from the USSR, he contacted Peter Gregory who was a petroleum engineer in Fort Worth. In August 1962, Gregory invited Oswald to dinner, where he met George Bouhe, leader of the White Russian community. We can recall from part 2 that Oswald was probably receiving leaflet materials from a White Russian organization and not the Cuban Consulate, as it was first believed. Bouhe introduced Oswald to other members of the White Russian community, among them Max Clark and his wife Katya, born as Princess Sherbatov of the Russian Royal family.[9] Max Clark was a retired Air Force Colonel and he used to work at General Dynamics as industrial security officer. Clark had also received covert security clearance from the CIA for “Project Rock” while working for General Dynamics. A CIA document had linked “Project Rock” to Project Oarfish, a code for the manufacturing of the U-2 airplane.[10] Clark later denied that he was working for the CIA, but he probably had some connection to them through that project. Surprisingly, another infamous character, William Harvey of CIA’s staff D, also had security clearance for “Project Rock”. According to a CIA document, they re-evaluated Harvey’s file in respect for approval to get security clearance to the above mentioned project.[11]

    Max Clark was working closely with I.B. Hale, a former FBI agent and later head of General Dynamics industrial security. It was Virginia, wife of I.B. Hale, that had helped Oswald to get a job at Leslie Whiting on July 1962.[12]

    George DeMohrenschildt was encouraged by Max Clark and J. Walton Moore of the CIA to befriend Oswald and become his mentor.[13] It was George DeMohrenschildt who helped Oswald get a new job at Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall (JCS) after he quit his job at Leslie Welding. JCS was doing contract work for the U.S. Army Map Service and that work was related to U-2 flights over Cuba. Oswald got the job four days before President Kennedy was shown pictures of missiles in Cuban taken by the U-2.[14]

    When Oswald moved to New Orleans, it is possible that his job there was related to industrial security in search for subversives. He was employed by the Reily Coffee Company, but he also worked covertly for Guy Banister. William Monaghan, an ex-FBI agent, was the company’s Vice President and specialized in industrial security. Alfred Claude, the man who hired Oswald, left Reily and went to work in Chrysler’s aerospace division, which was based in NASA’s New Orleans facilities. Emmett Barbee, Oswald’s supervisor, and two other Reily employees, Dante Marachini and John Branyon, went on also to work for NASA[15], more likely in the industrial security division. Oswald was frequenting a New Orleans’s garage and had revealed to its owner, Adrian Alba, that he was going to work for NASA. Bill Nitschke, a Banister associate, confessed that Banister had given an offer to NASA to get a contract for industrial security in NASA’s New Orleans facilities.

    That Banister’s investigating agency was doing industrial security work can be indicated by the testimony of former Banister associate, Joseph Oster. He told L.J. Delsa, an HSCA investigator, that Banister was using two sources to seek out subversives and Communists, FIDELAFAX and the American Security Council.

    One of the people who Oswald met in New Orleans was Ed Butler, the founder of INCA, the Information Council of the Americas. After Kennedy’s assassination, Jim Garrison learned about Oswald’s activities in New Orleans and his contacts with Butler and INCA. Butler got so scared that he packed all the INCA files and parts of Banister’s files and moved to Los Angeles, where he found employment with Patrick J. Frawley, a prominent member of the American Security Council.[16]

    It will not then be a surprise to learn that, in the fall of 1962, Oswald subscribed to the Daily Worker newspaper of the American Communist Party USA, applied for membership in the Socialists Workers Party, and subscribed to that party’s newspaper The Militant.[17] Both parties were a hive of leftists, subversives, and Communists.

    One could conclude that Oswald was not on the direct payroll of the CIA or the FBI, but possibly through Max Clark he was employed by an unknown industrial security private agency with the purpose of reporting on subversives that were of interest to CIA, the FBI, and defence contractors.

    Had this agency been created and controlled by the CIA or the FBI? For Ed Butler was in contact with people like Charles Cabell, Deputy Director of the CIA, and CIA officer Ed Lansdale, a member of the ASC.[18]

    When Oswald was in New Orleans, he was in contact with Guy Banister, David Ferrie, and Clay Shaw.  When Oswald was fifteen, he met David Ferrie in the Civil Air Patrol (CAP), where Ferrie was a Captain. In 1961, Ferrie and an exiled Cuban, Sergio Arcacha Smith, were part of the CIA’s training and preparation for the Bay of Pigs invasion.[19] During the same period, Banister’s office was located in the Balter building in New Orleans. In the same building were located the offices of a Cuban exile organization, the Cuban Revolutionary Council (CRC), and Sergio Arcacha Smith was the New Orleans representative.[20] When Banister moved to 544 Camp Street, Arcacha Smith rented an office for CRC in the same building. It was CIA officer E. Howard Hunt who had helped create this organization.[21] Gordon Novel has said that he met Arcacha Smith in 1961 at Banister’s office upon Ed Butler’s recommendation and, at that meeting, was a person who fit the description of David Phillips.[22]

    In Part 2, we concluded that high-level CIA officer James Angleton had utilized Oswald for a Counter Intelligence operation. John Newman thought that Oswald was an off-the-books agent for Angleton. When Oswald returned from Russia, Angleton probably would not have used him as an official CIA agent, but he may have used his connection with the American Security Council and “hired” Oswald from the back door through an industrial security private firm. Angleton was very close to William Sullivan, the head of FBI’s Counterintelligence Division 5, and they had cooperated in the past against the KGB in search of a mole. Most of Sullivan’s men were in continuous cooperation with Angleton’s Counter Intelligence and his secret CI/SIG mole hunting unit. Don Moore of the FBI’s Soviet Counterintelligence interviewed Soviet defector Anatliy Golitsyn and he was the FBI’s representative to the joint CIA/FBI mole hunt task force that included Sullivan and Sam Papich. Papich was the FBI’s liaison to Angleton’s Counterintelligence staff and, as we shall see later on, he was part of a joint CIA/FBI effort to discredit the Fair Play for Cuba Committee in foreign countries where it had support.[23]

    Angleton and Sullivan also conspired to rehearse questions and answers for the Warren Commission. It can be logically concluded that Oswald’s mission against subversives was a joint CIA/FBI project orchestrated by Angleton.


    II. Oswald as Agent Provocateur

    Lee Harvey Oswald moved to New Orleans in April 1963 and visited his Uncle and Aunt, Dutz and Lillian Murret, where he stayed for a while until he could a find a job and settle down on his own. As it was shown earlier, Oswald got a job at Reily Coffee Company and then secured his own apartment.

    In part 2, we reported that Oswald was a frequent visitor to the First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles where the people that later founded the Fair Play for Cuba Committee (FPCC) were members. We have also concluded that Oswald’s Soviet bona fides were a part of his preparation to later infiltrate this particular organization. In New Orleans, he did so. On May 26, 1963, Oswald wrote to the central offices of the FPCC asking them to accept him as a formal member and informed them that he would open a small office to use as branch of the organization. He asked if the organization could provide him with a charter, leaflets, paperwork, and a photograph of Fidel Castro.[24]

    On May 29, 1963, the director of FPCC, Vincent Lee, informed Oswald that he was accepted as an official member of the organization. But he tried to discourage him from opening a chapter in an area which he knew would attract few members, since they would have to work hard just to put together a rudimentary apparatus. He also warned about a branch office provoking violent reaction of the city’s well known right-wing extremists, so he advised renting a postal box. [25]

    Oswald did rent a P.O. Box in his own name with number 30061, New Orleans, Louisiana. He added his wife’s name, Marina Oswald, and someone by the name of A. J. Hidell to also be able to receive mail. He then made an order to print 1000 leaflets and 500 applications using the name Lee Osborne. [26] On the leaflets, he had his name printed with A. J. Hidell as the chapter President.  He then informed the Worker and Militant of his new P.O. Box.[27]

    In May and June of 1963, Oswald was distributing FPCC leaflets in at least three New Orleans locations: Tulane University, Canal Street, and the port. Two university students had in their possession FPCC leaflets with “Hands off Cuba” and the name A. J. Hidell instead of Lee Harvey Oswald. A military intelligence officer reported to the FBI that he had found one such a leaflet at Tulane with the name A. J. Hidell, P.O. Box 30016. Oswald also distributed leaflets outside the aircraft carrier Wasp.[28] Although the correct P.O. Box address was 30061, for some peculiar reason on the above occasion, it was written 30016.

    On June 24, 1963, Oswald applied for a passport to travel to England, France, Germany, Holland, the Soviet Union, and Poland. He received it the next day with the warning that he was not allowed to travel to Cuba. On July 19, 1963, the Reily Company fired Oswald on the grounds that he was not working efficiently and he was absent from his post quite often. On July 27, 1963, his cousin Eugene Murret asked him to talk about his life in the Soviet Union at the Jesuit College in Mobile, Alabama, where he was a student.[29]

    During his speech, he said the Communist Party USA had betrayed itself. It had become a sidekick of the USSR against the American government, so the Soviet Union could become the absolute ruler of the American continent. This is strange since Oswald first joined the Communist party USA and now was accusing it of betrayal. It is also odd that he accused the Soviet Union while some days ago, he had applied to travel there. On August 1, 1963, Oswald wrote a letter to Vincent Lee informing him that he had opened the P.O. Box and distributed leaflets on the streets. Then he wrote something bizarre, but prophetic, saying to Vincent that some exiled Cubans attacked one of his demonstrations, the police intervened, and because of that he lost any support and was left alone.[30] We don’t know if Oswald possessed clairvoyant powers, but something similar happened four days later. On August 5, 1963, he visited the clothes shop of Carlos Bringuier, an Anti-Castro exiled Cuban and member of the Revolutionary Student Directorate (DRE), to offer him his skills that he had acquired as U.S. Marine. He appeared to be anti-Castro, but on the 9th of August his true face was revealed when Bringuier and two of his associates witnessed Oswald distributing FPCC “Hands off Cuba” leaflets while seeking support for Castro. This double-faced behavior of Oswald made Bringuier extremely angry and he accused Oswald of  being “a traitor and Communist”. Oswald didn’t seem to be very shaken and replied “OK Carlos, if you want to hit me, hit me”. The police intervened, like Oswald had foreseen, and arrested them all.[31]

    Oswald was locked in jail and he could have been immediately released if he had paid the $25 bail, but he chose not to and stayed in for the weekend. During that time, he was visited and questioned by Police officer Francis Martello and FBI agent John Quigley. What he said to both of them and how this impacted him on 11/22/1963 will be explained later on.

    The focus for the time being will be on the aftermath of his arrest and his subsequent radio interview about the Canal Street event. On the 12th, Oswald testified before the court that he was guilty of disturbing the peace and was sentenced to ten days. However, he paid the bail of $10 and was set free. The Cubans were not sentenced and were released.[32] Oswald continued his leafleting and Bringuier asked the help of Ed Butler of INCA to expose Oswald’s true colors.

    First, Oswald gave an interview to William K. Stuckey’s WDSU-radio program “Latin Listening Post” and talked about his FPCC organization, but he refused to reveal the names of its members. Oswald was questioned if he was a Communist and if Castro’s regime was a Soviet front in the western hemisphere. Oswald did not deny being a Communist, but he said that he was not member of the Communist Party. Stuckey asked Oswald if the FPCC activities promote Communism, which he denied saying that the organization is only concerned with Cuban matters. When asked if he had visited Latin America, he answered that he had been only to Mexico. It should be noted that Oswald never offered the information that he had lived in the Soviet Union. He said the American government and their anti-Cuba policies had forced Castro to seek help from the Soviet Union. Finally, he accused the CIA of mishandling Cuba and called the CIA defunct and Allen Dulles defunct, which might be something an anti-Castro exile would say who thought the Agency did not do a proper job in Cuba during the Bay of Pigs.[33]

    At the end of the interview, Stuckey asked Oswald if he could come again for a more detailed interview and he agreed. On August 21, 1963, Oswald appeared on Stuckey’s show “Conversation Carte Blanche” to debate Carlos Bringuier and Ed Butler of INCA.[34] Stuckey began the interview by asking Oswald if he had lived in the Soviet Union, a tip provided to him by Bringuier. Oswald was surprised by the question and replied that he had. Bringuier intervened and asked him if he represented the Fair Play for Cuba Committee or Fair Play for Russia Committee. Oswald replied that this was a provocative question that didn’t need answering.

    Stuckey then dropped the bomb and asked Oswald if he’d renounced his American citizenship and had become a Soviet citizen. Oswald replied that this had nothing to do with the topic of Cuban-American relations. But Stuckey insisted that it did, since Oswald had been proclaiming that Cuba is not a Russian puppet and now it was revealed that he had past relationship to Russia and maybe he was a Communist. Oswald did not answer if he was a Communist, but admitted that he was a Marxist.

    Stuckey wondered how he supported himself his three years in Russia and asked if he was given any government subsidy there. Stressed, Oswald almost revealed his true purposes when he said that:

    …I worked in Russia. I was under the protection, I was not under the protection of the American government, but I was at all times considered an American citizen. I did not lose my American citizenship…I am back in the United States. A person who renounces his citizenship becomes legally disqualified for returning to the United States.

    In the first interview, he denied that Cuba was under Russia’s control and insisted the FPCC’s concern was only Cuban independence and opposing intervention in Cuban affairs. In his second interview, he was exposed as a Marxist and possible Communist working for the Soviets and taking his orders from them, perhaps as a Soviet spy himself. Oswald, wittingly or unwittingly, had connected the FPCC to the Soviet Union and had hurt the organization’s reputation and credibility. After this debate, Oswald’s career as member of FPCC and Castro’s supporter had lost its purpose, value, and meaning.

    With his help, his interlocutors made the FPCC look like a Russian Trojan horse in America and a dangerous Communist spying niche. It is more likely that Oswald was acting as such as part of CIA’s anti-FPCC campaign which, as John Newman found out, had been orchestrated by James McCord and David Atlee Philips since 1961.[35] The CIA and FBI suspected that the FPCC back then was trying to infiltrate students that were travelling to Cuba. So Phillips decided to dangle an American student, Court Wood, into the FPCC by pretending to be pro-Castro interesting in starting a new FPCC chapter, something that Oswald tried to emulate two years later.[36]  Although the CIA was not allowed to run domestic operations, the FBI knew they did and turned a blind eye to them as FBI agent in New Orleans Warren DeBrueys told author Jim DiEugenio.[37] It would be very plausible that this CIA anti-FPCC campaign had been passed to CIA’s Domestic Operations Division (DOD), formed in 1962. 

    Researcher Peter Vea discovered a list of documents in the National Archives regarding Clay Shaw’s contacts with the Domestic Contact Service (DCS). One of these documents stated Clay Shaw had been granted covert security approval for project QK/ENCHANT.[38] Newly discovered documents revealed that the CIA was examining the prospect of using Banister’s agency as a cover company for project QK/ENCHANT. Based on ARRB investigation, QK/ENCHANT was a cryptonym for “permission to approach” and utilization for cleared contact purposes. These probably indicated the use of individuals and companies as contact cover for CIA proprietary organizations.[39]

    Author Bill Davy showed the above document to former CIA officer Victor Marchetti and, after examining it, he said to Davy, “That’s interesting…he was doing something there.” He added that Shaw would not need a covert security clearance for DCS. Marchetti then said he was likely doing something for Clandestine Services.  When Dave asked which one, Marchetti replied:

    The DOD (Domestic Operations Division). It was one of the most secret divisions within Clandestine Services. This was Tracey Barnes’s old outfit. They were getting into things…uh exactly what I don’t know. But they were getting into risky areas. And this is where E. Howard Hunt was working for at the time.”[40]

    The DOD offices were not located at Langley, but on Pennsylvania Avenue, in Washington. When Richard Helms was asked about the DOD behind closed doors in 1968, he described the DCS which was not a part of the Directorate of Plans.[41] Donald Freed wrote in his book Death in Washington that the DOD was involved in illegal domestic cover companies and operations against the FPCC.[42]


    III. Setting Up the Patsy

    In this section, we shall look into the events and incidents showing that Oswald was set up to take the fall for Kennedy’s murder. There were many such efforts, but we will concentrate on the most important, since it will be impossible to report in every detail the life of Oswald in this article.

    A. Senator Dodd, Hidell and the Mannlicher – Carcano

    The Warren Commission had a hard time proving that Oswald owned a Mannlicher-Carcano rifle, the weapon that allegedly was used to kill Kennedy. What is certain, though, is that Oswald was interested in how to purchase weapons by mail. When he was working at the Reily Company, Oswald was spending his time visiting Adrian Alba’s garage and engaging him in conversations about mail order weapons. Oswald would also study some magazines about guns in Alba’s office. He had asked Alba, “How many weapons had I ever ordered, and how long did it take to get them, and where had I ordered the guns from.”[43]

    The Dallas Police said they found an order page from the June 1963 American Rifleman magazine about a Manlicher–Carcano.[44] Oswald, however, had already ordered a Manlicher–Carcano from Klein Sporting Goods on March 12th, 1963, using a coupon from the February issue of the same magazine under the name A. Hidell. He also ordered a Smith & Wesson .38 gun from Seaport Traders of Los Angeles on January 27th, 1963, under the name A. J. Hidell. This was the same gun that Oswald allegedly used to kill Officer Tippit.[45] Was it a coincidence that these two weapons companies were under investigation by the Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms agency (ATF)?

    Besides ATF, there was another ongoing investigation about these two companies, conducted by Senator Thomas Dodd, another member of the powerful American Security Council. Dodd was the Chairman of the Senate Juvenile Delinquency Subcommittee trying to legislate the use of interstate mail orders for weapons.[46] Dodd’s subcommittee started its hearings two days after Hidell ordered the Smith & Wesson gun and the Manlicher–Carcano was also one of the weapons investigated.[47]

    Senator Dodd was also member of the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee—headed by the racist, right-wing Senator James Eastland of Mississippi—which was investigating the FPCC. Dodd called the FPCC “the chief public relations instrument of the Castro network in the United States” and believed that both the Socialist party and the Communist Party had infiltrated the committee. It might have been possible that Oswald, as a member of a private investigating firm, was contacted by Dodd’s committee to infiltrate these three organizations.[48]

    The son of one of Senator Dodd’s friends, who had been hired as an investigator to do work for the subcommittee, was involved in a strange incident in Mexico, causing a disturbance in a strip club. He was arrested by Mexican police for having a gun and posing as a police officer. The same man was arrested for carrying three weapons and ammunition in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, on a weekend that President Kennedy was there.[49]

    As others have pointed out, it would have been stupid for Oswald to order a rifle via interstate mail intending to kill JFK, since it would leave a trail that would ensnare him. It would have been easier to buy a rifle from a gun shop in Dallas anonymously. When Oswald was arrested in New Orleans, he was interviewed by Lieutenant Francis Martello of the New Orleans Police Intelligence Division and New Orleans FBI Agent John Lester Quigley. He showed two FPCC cards, one signed by Vincent T. Lee and the other by A. J. Hidell, his alleged New Orleans FPCC officer. As a result, this information was related by Martello to the 112th Army Military Intelligence Group (MIG) at Fort Sam Houston and by Quigley to the Office of Naval Intelligence in Algiers, Louisiana.[50]

    After the assassination, Colonel Robert E. Jones of the 112th MIG informed the FBI that Oswald was carrying a fraudulent Hidell selective service card; therefore this information linked Oswald to Hidell and the weapon used to shoot the President.[51] This would trace back to the FPCC and, perhaps, Castro as a leading force behind the assassination.  One has to wonder why Oswald would order a weapon using an alias and then carry with him an identity card that would link him to the weapon on the day of the assassination.

    B. The Clinton-Jackson Incident

    Jim Garrison was the first official to present witnesses that had seen Oswald in the company of David Ferrie and Clay Shaw in the areas of Clinton and Jackson, ninety miles north of New Orleans.

    One day, during the late summer of 1963, Ed McGehee the owner of a barbershop in Jackson was visited by a stranger who he later identified as Lee Harvey Oswald. Oswald asked if he could find a job as an electrician in the area. McGehee told him to ask in the East Louisiana State hospital and informed him that it was a mental hospital, something that Oswald did not know and surprised him. He advised him to contact state representative Reeves Morgan.[52]

    Oswald visited Morgan, but he told him that he could not help him since he could not put him ahead of his own constituents. He advised him to register to vote and that might net him extra points in his search of work. Van Morgan, playing in the front yard, noted the black Cadillac parked outside the house; with a man with a shock of white hair in the driver’s seat.[53]

    The next day, Oswald and his two companions went to the neighboring village of Clinton to register. It happened to be the day when a drive to register black voters—organized by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)—was on. When the Cadillac appeared, most voters thought it might be the FBI, so they noticed the car and its occupants. Several witnesses, from simple voters, to the Registrar, and the local Sheriff, testified that they identified the three people as Lee Harvey Oswald, David Ferrie, and Clay Shaw. The Sheriff even approached the car and asked the tall grey haired driver for his license. It turned out to be Clay Shaw of the International Trade Mart of New Orleans. Oswald and another man were the only two white voters trying to register that day.[54] When Registrar Henry Palmer asked him for ID, Oswald showed him some Marine separation papers and offered two references, both doctors, Malcom Pierson and Frank Silva. Oswald said that he was living in the state hospital together with the above mentioned doctors. Then Palmer asked him why he wanted to register and Oswald replied that he was advised this would help him secure a job at the hospital. Palmer replied that this was not so, since he knew many people out of Mississippi that were working in Jackson. Hearing that, Oswald left the office, returned to the car and the trio departed.[55]

    Oswald then resurfaced at the East hospital trying to get a job, but he was making a spectacle of himself. Talking loudly and being obnoxious, he asked the hospital employees what it would take to take Castro down, since he was a Marine and he was involved in getting rid of Castro. Frank Silva, a Cuban doctor that Oswald had used as a reference, heard the conversation and took an immediate dislike to Oswald.[56]

    Maxine Kemp, the hospital secretary, remembered Oswald filling an application and a year later, after the assassination, looked for the file and found it. When Garrison investigators went there looking to find it, the file had disappeared.[57]

    Why did Shaw and Ferrie take Oswald to Jackson to seek a job at the hospital and register as a voter? If we could consider Oswald’s actions against leftists and subversives, it would make sense to try to register with the black voters so to link CORE through himself to FPCC, Castro, and the Soviet Union, something that would comprise the CORE movement for racial equality.  However, the most important aspect of this trip was his visit to a mental hospital acting as a troubled young man talking nonsense and behaving erratically. Garrison believed that if Oswald had secured a job at the hospital it would have been easy for someone to alter his file from employee to a mental patient, something that would fit with his later portrayal as the lone nut assassin.

    C. The Odio Incident

    Sylvia Odio was the daughter of the Cuban truck magnate Amador Odio, who was imprisoned back in Cuba along with his wife for actions against the Castro regime. She was living in a Dallas apartment with her two children and her sister Annie, who was helping Sylvia move to another apartment. In late September, Sylvia was visited by two men who presented themselves as Cuban exiles and an American. The exiles were introduced to Sylvia by their war names: Leopoldo and Angelo. They said they were members of JURE, Manolo Ray’s liberal exile organization of which Amador Odio was a founding member.[58] They had come from New Orleans and asked Sylvia to write them letters in proper English to be used to attract financial support for JURE. Sylvia declined since she did not know or trust these strangers and they then left. But the next day one of the Cubans, Leopoldo, called her and told her that the American accompanying them was named:

    Leon…he was an ex-Marine, an expert marksman…he could do anything, like getting underground in Cuba, like killing Castro. He says we Cubans don’t have any guts; we should have shot President Kennedy after the Bay of Pigs. He says we should a thing like that.[59]

    Sylvia never heard from them again and wrote her father about these strange visitors. After the assassination of President Kennedy, Sylvia and her sister Annie recognized Lee Harvey Oswald as “Leon,” the American that came to her house. Sylvia was certain that they visited her apartment on Thursday, the 26th of September or the next day. This created a huge problem for the Commission: Oswald was supposed to be on a bus to Mexico on the 26th of September. This incident is very similar to Oswald’s bragging to Doctor Silva about getting rid of Kennedy and showing radical, unpredictable, and bizarre behavior.

    JURE was considered by the CIA as a leftist organization that had infiltrated the JMWAVE station. At one point, CIA Officer Henry Hecksher had ordered Manuel Artime, E. Howard Hunt’s protégé, to fire on JURE vessels.[60] Hunt despised Ray and referred to his philosophy as Castroism without Castro.   It is plausible that this incident could have been an effort to connect JURE to Oswald and, subsequently, to Castro and the assassination of Kennedy.

    D. Castro’s Gun Dealer

    Either just before or right after visiting Sylvia Odio, two men visited Robert McKeown, a former gun dealer at his house in Bay Cliff near Houston. One of them introduced himself as Lee Oswald and his companion, a Cuban, as Hernandez. They explained that they wanted to buy a large number of guns to start a revolution in El Salvador. McKeown was skeptical and refused to sell them anything, since he was on probation for smuggling guns to Castro in Cuba on behalf of Prio Socarres. When he refused, Oswald tried to convince him to at least sell them four Savage automatic rifles with telescopic sights for $10,000. McKeown again refused and said to Oswald that he could buy these for a few hundred dollars from any Sears Roebuck store in Texas.[61] He thought that the whole deal was fishy and maybe someone wanted to get him in trouble if the guns were really for Castro; especially when he recognized Hernandez as a man he knew in Cuba years ago as a Castro supporter.[62]

    If McKeown had fallen for the trap and one of the rifles was proven to be used in the JFK assassination, then the gun could have been traced back to him and eventually to Castro and Cuba as the instigators of the crime.

    The most important event that took place to incriminate Oswald was the infamous Mexico City incident. Due to its complexity, it will be examined separately, in more detail than the above four.


    IV. Mexico Histrionics

    Oswald’s trip through Mexico and what occurred there is the most convoluted and enigmatic event regarding the assassination, one that could lead to the core of a momentous plot. Analysing it in all its aspects is not within the scope of this essay. One should read John Newman’s book Oswald and the CIA or the Lopez Report, to name just two sources, for a detailed and deep analysis. A summary of the incident will be presented here to note if any parallels can be drawn between the episode and the U-2 shoot down in the Soviet Union.

    Oswald visited the Cuban Consulate in Mexico City on a Friday, September 27, 1963, around 11 a.m. and asked Sylvia Duran—the consulate’s secretary—to grant him an in-transit visa to Cuba on his way to the Soviet Union. To make his case, he showed her his work papers from Russia, his marriage certificate, and his membership cards in the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) and in the FPCC. Duran found his behaviour odd, since he was a member of CPUSA, which was illegal in Mexico; and he had not gotten a visa from CPUSA which had a special agreement with Cuba’s Communist Party to get instant visas for its members. Duran asked him to get some passport photographs, Oswald left, and then returned with photographs, but Duran advised him that she could not issue him an in-transit visa to Cuba unless he first had obtained a visa to the Soviet Union.[63] So Oswald went to the Soviet Embassy. The Soviets refused him a visa, telling him that that he had to fill in an application form that would be sent to Washington and it could take months for a reply. Oswald returned to the Cuban Consulate and told Duran a bold lie, that the Soviets had issued him a visa. Duran, incredulous, called the Soviet Embassy to find out if they had. KGB operative under diplomatic cover Valery Kasimov told her that the reply from Washington could take months. As John Newman concluded, those who handled Oswald had advised him to lie because they wanted to force Duran to call Kostikov and the conversation would be recorded by CIA’s LI/ENVOY telephone tap secret operation in Mexico City. But neither of the two mentioned Oswald by name and instead referred to him as the American.[64]

    Duran would not issue Oswald a transit visa and told him to leave. Oswald got angry and displayed erratic and aggressive behaviour, making a bad impression on the Cubans. He had to be escorted out of the Consulate.

    The next day, Saturday 28, 1963, he returned to the Soviet Embassy, which was closed on weekends. But he managed to meet with Kostikov for a final desperate attempt to get a visa. According to the Russians, he had a revolver, which he said he needed to protect himself from the FBI. They denied his request and asked him to fill in an application for Washington’s Soviet Consulate. Oswald never filled in the form and gave up, leaving the premises.[65] He never again visited either the Cuban Consulate or the Soviet Embassy.

    What happened next is the beginning of the most enigmatic tangled web that surrounded Oswald: a man and a woman impersonating Duran and Oswald, called the Soviet Embassy asking for the visa application that Oswald had not filled in. The name of Oswald is not mentioned. Also, the man spoke poor Russian but good Spanish which was the opposite of Oswald’s case. The imposter told the Russian that he went back to the Cuban consulate to ask for his address in Mexico since they had it.[66] Newman believes that the impersonators wanted it recorded that Oswald had some special relationship with the Cubans. Duran later denied that she made the call as did the Soviets, so it is likely that the Russian recorded answering was also an impersonator.

    Because Oswald’s name was not mentioned, another call occurred on Tuesday, October 1, 1963. The imposter called the Soviet embassy and asked if there were any news on a cable to Washington. Those impersonating Oswald did not know the details of his visits to the Cuban Consulate and Soviet Embassy nor that he had declined to fill in the visa application. If they had known, they would have never asked such a pointless question. Again, the caller spoke poor Russian, which would later pose a problem to them. The imposter asked what was the name of the Soviet official he spoke to and the Russian replied “Kostikov.” Why was it so important to link Oswald to Kostikov? Because Kostikov, according to CIA was, part of KGB’s department 13, responsible for assassinations.

    Newman concluded that the impersonators wanted the names of both Oswald and Kostikov to be mentioned so it would be recorded by LI/ENVOY, planting a virus into the CIA’s records that would be activated on November 22, 1963. That virus would link KGB assassinations and the Soviet Union to the murder of President Kennedy. President Johnson would use the impersonation charade to convince Senator Russell and Chief Justice Warren into preventing a conflict “kicking us into a war that can kill forty million Americans in an hour.”[67] The WWIII virus made sure that the Warren Commission would never investigate what really happened in Mexico.

    It is undeniable that someone impersonated Oswald on these phone calls. But did they impersonate the historical Lee Harvey Oswald or another imposter? There are indications that the real Oswald never travelled to Mexico and there are testimonies by Duran, Cuban Consul Azcue, and a Cuban student that confirm he was not the real Oswald they saw in Mexico.

    Duran testified under interrogation that Oswald was blonde, short, dressed inelegantly, and his face turned red when angry.[68] When the CIA gave Duran’s testimony to the Warren Commission, they eliminated the above description. When Duran testified to the HSCA, she offered the following description: “as approximately five feet six, with sparse blonde hair, weighing about 125 pounds.”[69] Consul Azcue gave a similar description “a white male, between 5’6″ and 5’7″, over 30 years of age, very thin long face, with straight eye brows and a cold look in his eyes.”[70] A Cuban student, Oscar Contreras said that he met an American named Lee Harvey Oswald and he was blonde and short.[71] If these testimonies are true, the impersonator who made the calls had impersonated an already impersonated Oswald: which perplexes things even further.

    Two CIA assets working undercover inside the Cuban consulate told Lopez that the man they saw was not the man accused of assassinating the President.[72] This issue could have been resolved if photographs of Oswald going in and coming out of the embassies existed. The CIA has never been able to present any such photographs and thanks to the Lopez report we know why. Anne Goodpasture was a CIA officer from Staff D posted to the Mexico CIA station. She tried to disguise her role in retrieving photos each day. But Lopez and Hardway found out the man she named in this function only did the legwork for Goodpasture. They finally discovered that Goodpasture was responsible for photographic and electronic surveillance. The translating team said that they did not review all photographs from the Soviet Embassy, only what Goodpasture would allow them to see, and all such photographs were under her control. They also revealed that, although Goodpasture was an assistant to station chief Win Scott, she was a closer assistant to David Phillips, the Chief of Cuban Operations and Covert Action. During that same period, Phillips was also working for the SAS/CI.[73] Phillips was questioned by HSCA Chief Counsel Dick Sprague if he had any photographs of Oswald in Mexico. He replied that the camera was not working those days.[74] Hardway wrote a memo to HSCA Chairman Louis Stokes saying that about ten feet of film was taken from the camera that covered the Cuban Consulate on the 27th and 28th of September. These were developed and sent to CIA HQ, then lost and never seen again.[75]

    The CIA always maintained that the tapes had been erased and there were not any originals for Lopez and Hardway to compare with the existing transcripts. There was a missing conversation of September 30, 1963, that the translator, Mrs. Tarasoff, had transcribed. She remembered that it was a very lengthy call and Oswald had spoken in English and had requested financial aid from the Soviets. She had marked it as urgent and according to her recollection Phillips had also heard it.[76]

    On October 1, 1963, a diplomatic pouch was sent to CIA HQ addressed to a Michael Choaden. This was an alias for Phillips. Phillips had access to all information from Mexico to Washington and vice versa. He had the original tapes that Goodpasture had given him, plus the copies and transcripts at CIA HQ. Simply put: Phillips would have been able to alter the tapes or phony up the transcripts.[77]

    On October 8, 1963, the Mexico station sent a cable to CIA HQ to report an American citizen’s contact with Kostikov. This contact had been known for a week. Phillips tried to explain the delay to Lopez by saying the translators were too slow. But Lopez found out they had finished the translation after 24 hours. Phillips insisted that he was certain about this, since he signed the cable because it concerned Cuban matters. That was another lie, because he had left Mexico the 1st of October and the cable did not say anything about Cuban matters.[78]

    The cable had two separate sections. The first reported that an American male, Lee Oswald, who spoke broken Russian, talked with Soviet consul Kostikov. The second section informed that they had photos of someone entering and leaving the Soviet Embassy that was age 35, athletic build, 6 feet, receding hairline and balding top. The cable did not state that this “mystery man” photographed was the same as Lee Oswald, who was only recorded on the phone.[79]

    It should have been obvious that the mystery man was not Oswald. When Goodpasture was questioned about it, she replied that it was the only photograph of a non-Latin person taken on October 1, 1963. But Lopez and Hardway discovered that the photo was taken on October 2, 1963.[80] All of these falsehoods made Hardway and Lopez suspicious of Goodpasture and Phillips.


    V. A Sinister Mole Hunt Deja Vu

    The Mexico desk at CIA HQ received the Kostikov cable and John Whitten—alias John Scelso—then retrieved Oswald’s 201 file. He found out that it had been dormant for the previous eighteen months. This file had been kept by its custodian Ann Egerter of Angleton’s super secretive CI/SIG. What Whitten could not possibly have known was that the FBI report of Oswald’s debriefing in 1962 was missing. He also could not have known that the FBI reports concerning Oswald’s activities with Cubans and the FPCC in Dallas and New Orleans were not included in his 201 file. Around September 23, 1963, just before Oswald went to Mexico, all this crucial information had been bifurcated to file 100-300-011, entitled “Fair Play for Cuba Committee.”[81] There were no indications that the Cuban affairs office (SAS) read that file, but its Counterintelligence staff SAS/CI did.[82] More importantly, Whitten had no information about Kostikov and did not know that he was suspected of being a KGB officer responsible for assassinations.

    On October 10, 1963, CIA HQ sent a cable to State, FBI, and Navy connecting the mystery man to Oswald and informed them that Lee Oswald contacted the Soviet Embassy and spoke to consul Kostikov. It described Oswald as 35 years old, athletic build, six feet tall with receding hairline. It also reported that this Oswald might be identical to a Lee Henry Oswald that had defected to the Soviet Union and implied that he was still there with his family.[83]

    The same day, they sent another cable to the Mexico City station that included a different description of Oswald as five 5’ 10”, 165 pounds, light brown wavy hair and blue eyes.[84] This cable also identified Oswald with a Lee Henry Oswald that had defected to the Soviet Union and still living there according to latest HQ info dated may 1962; no word about his return to the States and his escapades in Dallas and New Orleans.[85] Most of the Counterintelligence officers in CI/SIG knew that the information included on these cables was not true, but rather deceptive.

    Jane Roman, one the counterintelligence officers who signed both of the cables was interviewed by John Newman and Jefferson Morley in 1994. Roman admitted to them that:

    I am signing off on something I know isn’t true…The only interpretation I could put on this would be that this SAS group would have held all the information on Oswald under their tight control…

    She added “Well, to me, its indicative of a keen interest in Oswald, held very closely on a need-to-know basis.”[86]

    On September 16, 1963, a day before Oswald obtained his tourist visa to Mexico, the CIA sent a memo to FBI for a joint operation to embarrass the FPCC in countries where it had support by planting deceptive information. It would have been a counterintelligence operation inspired by CI/OPS and carried out by SAS/CI.[87] As we have seen in the previous section, Oswald was probably under the control of the CIA’s Domestic Operations Division (DOD), but now that he was to be moved outside of U.S. soil, the SAS and David Phillips would have taken the reigns. Could this have been his mission in Mexico to discredit the FPCC, as he had in New Orleans?

    The CIA, and most likely Phillips, had already run an impersonation operation against an American named Eldon Hensen in Mexico. Hensen wanted to help provide useful information to the Cubans and requested a meeting. The CIA station in Mexico City had an agent pretend to be Cuban and meet Hensen. As a result, Hensen walked into a trap.[88]

    However, most clandestine operations have at least two purposes and an operation might be hidden inside another. It is possible that the SAS could have used Oswald or his legend in an operation designed to kill Castro, although no such evidence exists.  Bill Simpich, in his book State Secret, made the case that the disinformation and false data presented in the two cables were designed as a mole hunt to find out who had betrayed a CIA operation in Mexico by impersonating Oswald. I would agree with him up to a point, that there was a mole hunt but it was not benign, as he seems to think, but a sinister one. The name Lee Henry Oswald, the wrong descriptions of Oswald, Marina’s surname pronounced Pusakova instead of Prusakova were marked cards used in a mole hunt.

    This mole hunt had eerie similarities to the one we described in Part 2, which Angleton used as a cover for the U-2 shoot down. Simpich also believes that it was CIA officer from JM/WAVE, David Sanchez Morales, that had used his Cuban intelligence forces, called AMOTs, to impersonate Oswald and Duran. Morales was clever and knowledgeable of counterintelligence operations, but he was not in any way a CIA general. Would Morales be able to bifurcate information into two separate Oswald files? It was this bifurcation that kept his Cuban activities secret and lowered his profile so he would not be included on the Secret Service security index. These two files emerged after November 22, 1963, to complete Oswald’s profile and reveal that an ex defector to the USSR had been involved upon his return to the States in pro-Castro activities and had been in contact with a Soviet KGB assassinations officer in Mexico City. Further, could Morales have foreseen that the FBI would remove the flash warning from Oswald’s file on October 9th, the day before the CIA issued the two faulty memos? That warning had been intact since 1959. This also allowed Oswald’s threat profile to be lowered.  One last point, as we shall see, the probability remains that Oswald was not in Mexico City. Could Morales have known that the double operation was planned with a man who was not going to be there?  Who was a legend?  And would Morales know what specific legend it was? Was Morales really that far up the food chain?

    By excluding Oswald’s Cuban escapades from the two cables, only the Soviet Counterintelligence staff would be responsible for drafting and signing them, while the SAS was kept in the dark. Tennent Bagley, the Chief of Soviet Russia/CI, had nothing to say about Kostikov’s role as KGB assassination officer. Yet on November 23, 1963, submitted a memo describing Kostikov as “an identified KGB officer…in an operation which is evidently sponsored by the KGB’s 13th department responsible of assassinations.”[89] It is worth mentioning that Bagley was transferred in 1963 from the Bern station in Switzerland to Langley and promoted as Chief of SR/CI, just in time for the suppression of Kostikov’s KGB role. Could Morales have been able to transfer Bagley, an Angleton ally, back to CIA HQ and place him in the right place to ensure that everything would go as he planned and loose ends would be unexposed? Could Morales have anticipated with precision each of Angleton’s moves, all the way to the point that the FBI would remove Oswald from the security index, ensuring he would not  be picked up and removed from the motorcade route in advance?

    Putting it all together, we can try to synthesize the puzzle of what happened in Mexico City. Angleton, who John Neman believes was privy to the conspiracy to assassinate the President, had to design a foolproof plot. The idea was to make it appear that the Cubans and Soviets manipulated Oswald in Mexico City in such a way to use him in the assassination of Kennedy. Angleton knew that the exposure of this plot would plant a WWIII virus in Oswald’s files that would halt any real investigation in order to prevent a possible nuclear war. To achieve that, Oswald’s profile had to be lowered for the six weeks before the assassination. Angleton had to come up with a cover story so no one would ever question his role in the plot. As Newman revealed, he was the only person with access to all the Oswald files and information and he managed to manipulate and restrict his FPCC activities in Dallas and New Orleans. He knew the allegedly explosive information about Kostikov’s involvement in wet affairs and he was in a position to instigate a SAS counterintelligence operation against the FPCC in Mexico.

    Would Oswald have been asked to go to Mexico if only his legend was to be used? Or was he too important for the assassination plot’s success to place him in suspicious and dangerous situations in the Cuban and Soviet embassies, especially with someone as lethal as Kostikov in direct proximity? More importantly, if anyone had taken a photo of him and somehow his legend was exposed, it would have been extremely difficult to lower his profile. He would have been marked a potential threat and would have not have been allowed on the motorcade route. Therefore, it is logical to conclude that a short, blonde man was sent to Mexico to impersonate the real Oswald as part of an SAS counterintelligence operation.

    But we don’t really know how the impersonation was justified for this legitimate CIA operation. The plan was for Oswald to fail to get a transit visa to Cuba, thereby provoking Duran to call Kostikov and plant the WWIII virus. Even if Duran had mentioned Oswald by name to Kostikov, I believe that the telephone call impersonations on 9/28 and 10/1 would have still occurred. This necessitated the bifurcation and also the removal of the flash warning.

    Angleton used the impersonations as an excuse to start a mole hunt in a similar way he did back in 1960 when a mole had betrayed the U-2 secrets that led to its shoot down. Angleton did not find any mole. But he used the mole hunt as an alibi to cover his role in the U-2 incident, which resulted in the Paris Peace Summit cancellation.

    The mole had returned to action and now he had betrayed the CIA operations against Cuba in Mexico, even contacting the head of KGB assassinations before he himself tried to get to Cuba. Angleton had the excuse to manipulate information and to lower Oswald’s profile in a way that it would not raise suspicion until after November 22. Again Angleton would fail to catch a mole, but he had used the mole hunt to cover his true role that resulted in the murder of a U.S. President.

    Below a table would present the parallels between the two mole hunts, in the Soviet Union and in Mexico.

    Oswald in Soviet Union

    Oswald in Mexico

    Oswald defected to USSR

    Oswald claimed to return to USSR via Cuba

    Visited Embassy on a Saturday so he could not defect

    Visited Soviet Embassy in person and phone calls to the embassy on Saturday when closed

    Never returned to sign defection papers

    Never returned to complete visa application

    Impersonated to look like he was replaced by a Soviet Illegal

    Impersonated to look like a Cuban or Latin person had replaced him

    Angleton believed that the U2 was compromised possibly by a Soviet mole inside CIA

    SAS operation to embarrass FPCC
    A possible SAS operation to assassinate Castro and the CIA surveillance operations were all compromised possibly by a Soviet mole inside CIA

    Purpose to cancel Paris peace summit

    Purpose to show that the Cubans and the Soviets controlled Oswald in a plot to kill Kennedy to revenge CIA’s plan to kill Castro

    Oswald legend was used as part of staged mole hunt to find out the Soviet mole that betrayed the U2 secrets

    Oswald legend was used as part of staged mole hunt to find the Soviet mole that betrayed the SAS operation

    Mole hunt was used as a cover to hide Angleton’s true purpose

    Mole hunt was used as a cover to hide Angleton’s true purpose

    FACT: A mole was never uncovered but the Peace Summit was cancelled

    FACT: A mole was never uncovered and JFK was killed instead

    Angleton was the man pulling the strings from the CIA HQ and David Phillips and Anne Goodpasture were his foot soldiers covertly pulling strings down in Mexico City. It is more likely that Morales would have also taken orders from Angleton and not the other way around. This author remains incredulous to the theory that Morales was such a diabolical puppet master that he could organize such an evil plot from Miami, forcing CIA’s Counterintelligence and Angleton’s CI/SIG to unwittingly dance to his music resulting in the President’s assassination. And then get away with it.

    Go to Part 1

    Go to Part 2

    Go to Part 4

    Go to Part 5

    Go to Part 6

    Go to Conclusion

    Go to Appendix


    NOTES

    [1] Gerald McKnight, Breach of Trust, University Press of Kansas, 2005, p. 332.

    [2] Gerald McKnight, Breach of Trust, University Press of Kansas, 2005, p. 129.

    [3] Gerald McKnight, Breach of Trust, University Press of Kansas, 2005, p. 131.

    [4] Scott, Peter Dale, Deep Politics, University of California Press 1993, pp. 243-244.

    [5] Scott, Peter Dale, Deep Politics, University of California Press 1993, p. 244.

    [6] Scott, Peter Dale, Deep Politics, University of California Press 1993, pp. 244-245.

    [7] The American Security Council.

    [8] Scott, Peter Dale, The War Conspiracy, Mary Ferrell Foundation Press 2008, p. 235.

    [9] DiEugenio James, Destiny Betrayed, Skyhorse Publishing, 2012, p.152.

    [10] Weberman J.A., Coup d’etat in America, Nodule 15, p. 39.

    [11] CIA RIF#104-10106-10582, 17/9/1959.

    [12] Simpich Bill, The Twelve who built the Oswald legend, part 6.

    [13] DiEugenio James, Destiny Betrayed, Skyhorse Publishing, 2012, p.153.

    [14] DiEugenio James, Destiny Betrayed, Skyhorse Publishing, 2012, p.154.

    [15] DiEugenio James, Destiny Betrayed, Skyhorse Publishing, 2012, p.157.

    [16] Ed Butler: Expert in Propaganda and Psychological Warfare

    [17] Summers Antony, Not in your Lifetime, Open Road Integrated Media, 2013, p. 187.

    [18] Ed Butler: Expert in Propaganda and Psychological Warfare

    [19] DiEugenio James, Destiny Betrayed, Skyhorse Publishing, 2012, p.86.

    [20] DiEugenio James, Destiny Betrayed, Skyhorse Publishing, 2012, p.105.

    [21] DiEugenio James, Destiny Betrayed, Skyhorse Publishing, 2012, p.395.

    [22] DiEugenio James, Destiny Betrayed, Skyhorse Publishing, 2012, p.105.

    [23] Scott, Peter Dale, Dallas ‘63, Open Road Media, 2015, kindle version.

    [24] Weberman J.A., Coup d’etat in America, Nodule 18, p. 3.

    [25] Weberman J.A., Coup d’etat in America, Nodule 18, p. 4.

    [26] Newman John, Oswald and the CIA, Skyhorse Publishing Inc. 1995, p. 30.

    [27] NARA, JFK Files, RIF 124-10011-10133.

    [28] Newman John, Oswald and the CIA, Skyhorse Publishing Inc. 1995, pp. 310-311.

    [29] SAC Mobile, November 30, 1963, FBI 105-82555-383 1st NR.

    [30] Warren Commission Report, Vol. XX, pp. 524-525.

    [31] Gerald McKnight, Breach of Trust, University Press of Kansas, 2005, p. 315.

    [32] Kaiser David, The Road to Dallas, Belknap Press 2008, p. 219.

    [33] Weberman J.A., Coup d’etat in America, Nodule 19, pp. 60-74.

    [34] Gerald McKnight, Breach of Trust, University Press of Kansas, 2005, p. 321.

    [35] Newman John, Oswald and the CIA, Skyhorse Publishing Inc. 1995, p. 236.

    [36] Hancock Larry, Someone Would Have Talked, JFK Lancer Productions and Publications Inc. 2006, p. 165.

    [37] DiEugenio James, Destiny Betrayed, Skyhorse Publishing, 2012, p.158.

    [38] DiEugenio James, Destiny Betrayed, Skyhorse Publishing, 2012, p.385.

    [39] Hancock Larry, Someone Would Have Talked, JFK Lancer Productions and Publications Inc. 2006, p. 427.

    [40] DiEugenio James, Destiny Betrayed, Skyhorse Publishing, 2012, p.385.

    [41] Marchetti-Marks, The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence, Coronet Books, 1974, p. 257.

    [42] Hancock Larry, Someone Would Have Talked, JFK Lancer Productions and Publications Inc. 2006, p. 427.

    [43] Scott, Peter Dale, Deep Politics, University of California Press 1993, p. 248.

    [44] Scott, Peter Dale, Deep Politics, University of California Press 1993, p. 248.

    [45] Scott, Peter Dale, Deep Politics, University of California Press 1993, p. 249.

    [46] Scott, Peter Dale, Deep Politics, University of California Press 1993, p. 249.

    [47] Evica, George Michael, And We Are All Mortal, Hartford University, 1978, p. 253.

    [48] Evica, George Michael, And We Are All Mortal, Hartford University, 1978, p. 253.

    [49] Evica, George Michael, A Rifle Symposium, The Assassination Chronicles 1976.

    [50] Scott, Peter Dale, Deep Politics, University of California Press 1993, p. 258.

    [51] Scott, Peter Dale, Deep Politics, University of California Press 1993, pp. 259-260.

    [52] DiEugenio James, Reclaiming Parkland, Skyhorse Publishing, 2013, p.157.

    [53] DiEugenio James, Destiny Betrayed, Skyhorse Publishing, 2012, p.89.

    [54] DiEugenio James, Reclaiming Parkland, Skyhorse Publishing, 2013, p.158.

    [55] DiEugenio James, Destiny Betrayed, Skyhorse Publishing, 2012, p.92.

    [56] Mellen Joan, Farewell to Justice, Potomac Books, 2005, pp. 220-221.

    [57] DiEugenio James, The Assassinations, Feral House, 2003, p. 208.

    [58] Hancock Larry, Someone Would Have Talked, JFK Lancer Productions and Publications Inc. 2006, p. 20.

    [59] Hancock Larry, Someone Would Have Talked, JFK Lancer Productions and Publications Inc. 2006, p. 21.

    [60] Hancock Larry, Nexus, JFK Lancer Productions and Publications Inc. 20011, p. 156.

    [61] Hancock Larry, Someone Would Have Talked, JFK Lancer Productions and Publications Inc. 2006, pp. 26-27.

    [62] Russell Dick, The Man Who Knew too Much, Carroll & Graf, p. 280.

    [63] Lopez Report, p. 192.

    [64] Newman John, Oswald and the CIA, Skyhorse Publishing Inc. 1995, p. 616.

    [65] Newman John, Oswald and the CIA, Skyhorse Publishing Inc. 1995, pp. 616-617.

    [66] Hancock Larry, Nexus, JFK Lancer Productions and Publications Inc. 20011, p. 145.

    [67] Newman John, Oswald and the CIA, Skyhorse Publishing Inc. 1995, pp. 616-617.

    [68] Lopez Report, p. 186.

    [69] Lopez Report, p. 194.

    [70] Lopez Report, p. 205.

    [71] Fonzi Gaeton, The Last Investigation, Marry Ferrell Press, 1993, 2008, pp. 289-290.

    [72] Fonzi Gaeton, The Last Investigation, Marry Ferrell Press, 1993, 2008, pp. 293-294.

    [73] DiEugenio James, ch. 6, Chicago and Mexico, excised from Reclaiming Parkland pdf.

    [74] DiEugenio James, ch. 6, Chicago and Mexico, excised from Reclaiming Parkland pdf.

    [75] DiEugenio James, ch. 6, Chicago and Mexico, excised from Reclaiming Parkland pdf.

    [76] DiEugenio James, ch. 6, Chicago and Mexico, excised from Reclaiming Parkland pdf.

    [77] DiEugenio James, ch. 6, Chicago and Mexico, excised from Reclaiming Parkland pdf.

    [78] DiEugenio James, ch. 6, Chicago and Mexico, excised from Reclaiming Parkland pdf.

    [79] Newman John, Oswald and the CIA, Skyhorse Publishing Inc. 1995, p. 398.

    [80] DiEugenio James, ch. 6, Chicago and Mexico, excised from Reclaiming Parkland pdf.

    [81] Newman John, Oswald and the CIA, Skyhorse Publishing Inc. 1995, p. 619.

    [82] Newman John, Oswald and the CIA, Skyhorse Publishing Inc. 1995, p. 394.

    [83] Newman John, Oswald and the CIA, Skyhorse Publishing Inc. 1995, pp. 398-399.

    [84] Newman John, Oswald and the CIA, Skyhorse Publishing Inc. 1995, p. 399.

    [85] Newman John, Oswald and the CIA, Skyhorse Publishing Inc. 1995, pp. 400-401.

    [86] Newman John, Oswald and the CIA, Skyhorse Publishing Inc. 1995, p. 623.

    [87] Newman John, Oswald and the CIA, Skyhorse Publishing Inc. 1995, p. 623.

    [88] Newman John, Oswald and the CIA, Skyhorse Publishing Inc. 1995, p. 362.

    [89] Scott, Peter Dale, Deep Politics II, Mary Ferrell Foundation Press 2003, pp. 31-32.

  • Garrison Interview, “Some Unauthorized Comments on the State of the Union” (May 27, 1969)

    Garrison Interview, “Some Unauthorized Comments on the State of the Union” (May 27, 1969)


    This remarkable interview with Jim Garrison was done about two months after Clay Shaw was acquitted.

    It is an interview with a European publication since, for reasons he notes, Garrison had given up doing such things with the American press.

    Note that some of the things he brings up differ from his previous interview in 1967 in Playboy. For instance, quite early, he brings up the importance of Vietnam to the assassination, and he then returns to this at the end. He is now open about the role of the FBI in cooperation with the Warren Commission in the cover up. (p. 3). Right after this, he singles out Allen Dulles for his role on the Commission. He then becomes one of the first commentators to say there was a link between the murders of JFK, King, and Bobby Kennedy. He understands just how important Pierre Finck’s bombshell testimony was at the Clay Shaw trial (p. 18). He then describes the after-effects of a coup d’état and how the new government ratifies itself (p. 20). He is very pessimistic on the truth about Kennedy’s murder ever coming to light. In retrospect, what makes all this so impressive is how correct he was in the light of history on all these points. It is also enlightening to compare his ideas about the case to what others were writing and saying at the time. Most of the other critics were still concentrating on what happened in Dealey Plaza. They were not even aware of the bombshells in Finck’s testimony. But we now know the Justice Department certainly was, to the point they sent Thornton Boswell, another JFK pathologist, to New Orleans to discredit Finck, although they did not follow through on the plan.

    Our thanks to Bart Kamp and the invaluable Malcolm Blunt for this engrossing interview. Thanks also go to Prof. Dennis Riches of Seijo University, Tokyo, for providing the following, more legible transcription of the original document.

    ~ Jim DiEugenio


    (Click here to open the document in another page.)

  • Jim DiEugenio’s 25-part series on Destiny Betrayed, with Dave Emory

    Jim DiEugenio’s 25-part series on Destiny Betrayed, with Dave Emory


    jd emory dbFor three months, beginning in November of 2018, Jim DiEugenio did one-hour-long interviews on Dave Emory’s syndicated radio show For the Record. Emory has been broadcasting for 40 years. These 25 programs constitute the longest continuous interview series he has ever done. The subject was a sustained inquiry into DiEugenio’s second edition of Destiny Betrayed. Emory was very impressed by the author’s use of the declassified record excavated by the Assassination Records Review Board and how it altered the database of Jim Garrison’s New Orleans inquiry into the assassination of President Kennedy. This series is also the longest set of interviews DiEugenio has ever done about the book. Emory read the book and took extensive notes, which made for an intelligent and informed discussion of what the present record is on the Garrison inquiry.


    December 3, 2018   For The Record #1031 Interview #1
    December 10, 2018   For The Record #1032 Interview #2
    December 14, 2018   For The Record #1033 Interview #3
    December 17, 2018   For The Record #1034 Interview #4
    December 21, 2018   For The Record #1035 Interview #5
    December 24, 2018   For The Record #1036 Interview #6
    December 28, 2018   For The Record #1037 Interview #7
    December 28, 2018   For The Record #1038 Interview #8
    January 7, 2019   For The Record #1040 Interview #9
    January 11, 2019   For The Record #1041 Interview #10
    January 14, 2019   For The Record #1042 Interview #11
    January 18, 2019   For The Record #1043 Interview #12
    January 21, 2019   For The Record #1044 Interview #13
    January 25, 2019   For The Record #1045 Interview #14
    January 28, 2019   For The Record #1046 Interview #15
    February 1, 2019   For The Record #1047 Interview #16
    February 4, 2019   For The Record #1048 Interview #17
    February 8, 2019   For The Record #1049 Interview #18
    February 11, 2019   For The Record #1050 Interview #19
    February 15, 2019   For The Record #1051 Interview #20
    February 18, 2019   For The Record #1052 Interview #21
    March 1, 2019   For The Record #1053 Interview #22
    February 25, 2019   For The Record #1054 Interview #23
    March 1, 2019   For The Record #1055 Interview #24
    March 4, 2019   For The Record #1056 Interview #25