Kennedys and King Test host626

Tag: JFK ASSASSINATION

  • Speaking the Unspeakable: The Assassination and Martyrdom of Thomas Merton

    Was the hero of Jim Douglass’ book murdered in 1968?

    Read the review of Hugh Turley & David Martin, The Martyrdom of Thomas Merton, by Edward Curtin

  • The Tippit Case in the New Millennium

    The Tippit Case in the New Millennium

    Original black and white photographic negative taken 
     by Dallas Times Herald and United Press International
    photographer Darryl Heikes.

    Up until the earthquake caused by Oliver Stone’s film JFK, there was an accepted paradigm in the critical community regarding the murder of Dallas Police patrolman J. D. Tippit. Two good examples of what that case looked like under critical scrutiny could be accessed in Henry Hurt’s book Reasonable Doubt, and Jim Garrison’s memoir, On the Trail of the Assassins. The former was published in 1985, and the latter in 1988. Garrison asked some cogent questions about the ballistics evidence in the case, which, in turn, cast aspersions on the honesty and efficacy of the handling of the evidence.

    As Garrison wrote, the Warren Commission version of the Tippit shooting said that Oswald alone killed Tippit at about 1: 15 PM. After President Kennedy’s assassination, Oswald departed work at the Texas School Book Depository and took a taxi to his boarding house. The official story then has Oswald walking to the crime scene at 10th and Patton from his rooming house at 1026 North Beckley in the Oak Cliff area of Dallas, a distance of around 9/10 of a mile. In itself, as both Hurt and Garrison noted, this created a problem. It began with Oswald’s landlady testifying that she had seen him standing on the corner across the street from the rooming house waiting for a bus after he went into his room at about 1:00 PM. When asked what time she saw him there—waiting for a bus that would take him in the wrong direction from 10th and Patton—she replied it was about 1:04. (Garrison, p. 194; Hurt p. 144) The idea that someone could traverse the nearly one mile distance from the rooming house to the crime scene in something like 11 minutes is hard to swallow. I know two researchers—both of them much taller than Oswald—who tried to negotiate that distance and actually walked the route. Neither of them came close to equaling what the Commission said Oswald did. And neither of them walked normally; they both power-walked the distance. As Henry Hurt added, no one saw Oswald running that distance, or walking for that matter. Recall, this is about a half hour after President Kennedy’s assassination. If Oswald had been running, wouldn’t someone have noticed him? (Hurt, p. 145)

    But, as both Garrison and Hurt showed, the idea that Tippit was shot at the 1:15 PM time is not supported by the weight of the evidence. For instance, Mrs. Donald Higgins was later interviewed by Barry Ernest for his book, The Girl on the Stairs. She told Barry that the time of the shooting was 1:06. And she lived only a couple of doors down from the crime scene. (See the e-book version, p. 58.) Roger Craig said that, when the news of the shooting came over the radio, he looked at his watch, which said 1:06. (Garrison, p. 194) Even Helen Markham, who became hysterical after the shooting, said Tippit was shot at the latest about about 1:07 PM. (Hurt, p. 144) As Hurt notes, T. F. Bowley came on the scene after the shooting, with Tippit’s body lying in the street. He had to stop his car, and then walked over to the abandoned Tippit car, and he then picked up the radio. He said that the time on his watch after he arrived at the scene and stopped his car was 1:10. It is important to hold in mind that the Warren Commission did not interview either Mrs. Higgins or Mr. Bowley. (Garrison, p. 196) In fact, the Warren Report actually says that another witness, Domingo Benavides, made the call to the police that Bowley actually made. (WR, p. 166) The late Larry Ray Harris was probably the foremost authority on the Tippit case at the time of his death in a car accident in 1996. When I spoke to him at an earlier seminar in Dallas, he told me that the most likely time of the shooting was probably 1:08 PM.

    This, of course, is a key evidentiary point. Because if it is hard to believe that Oswald was at the scene at 1:15, it is not possible to think he could be there at 1:08 PM—that is, unless someone drove him there, and no evidence of that has surfaced in over fifty years. Consider this fact: Just 9 years earlier Roger Bannister became the first man to run the mile in less than four minutes. The idea that Oswald could do something similar—in street clothes, on cement sidewalks—and that no one would recall him doing so, that would be absurd. I doubt if even Dan Rather could have swallowed it. This may be the reason that Bowley and Higgins were not interviewed.

    But the riddle of the time of death is even more complex. Because the legal death certificate document pronounced Tippit dead at 1:15. This was done by Dr. Richard Liquori at Methodist Hospital.

    Tippit death certificate
    (note the time of decease 1:15 pm typed over
    what appears originally to be 1:09)

    If one allows for the time for the ambulance to get to the scene of the crime and return, this would appear to back up Mrs. Higgins’ claim that the shooting occurred at 1:06 PM.

    What made the situation worse was this: the witness who was closest to the actual shooting scene could not identify Oswald as the shooter. This was Domingo Benavides. (Hurt, p. 145) This is compounded by the fact that the Dallas Police never even took Benavides to a lineup in order to identify Oswald. (WR, p. 166)

    Warren Reynolds was also an eyewitness. He also could not identify Oswald as the killer. He worked about a block away from the scene. When he heard the shots, he ran out on a patio and peered in that direction. He said he saw a gunman running towards him stuffing a handgun under his belt. He began to follow him, but after a block, he lost him when he ducked into a building. Reynolds gave interviews to the press and his name was in the news for about two months. Yet no official investigator talked to him in this time period. Finally, in late January, the FBI interviewed Reynolds. He said he could not feel free to offer a positive identification of the man as Oswald. Two days later, Reynolds was shot through the head. He miraculously survived. Evidently, the down time did his memory some good. He now was ready to identify the fleeing man as Oswald. (Hurt, pp. 147-48)

    With these kinds of witnesses, the Commission felt they had to rely upon Helen Markham for probative value. (Sylvia Meagher, Accessories After the Fact, p. 256) At this point in time, I do not think it is necessary to pile on this poor woman. But what I would like to accentuate here is the following fact: the Warren Commission understood what a liability she was to their case, before they published. They used her anyway. At a public debate in Los Angeles in 1964, Commission lawyer Joe Ball characterized her testimony as full of errors and called her an “utter screwball”. (Anthony Summers, Conspiracy, p. 87). Neither Ball nor fellow lawyer Wesley Liebeler wanted to use her in the first place. Liebeler labeled her testimony with the ultimate insult. He called it “worthless”. (Edward Epstein, The Assassination Chronicles, pp. 142-43) The men doing the heavy lifting in the trenches were clearly overruled from above.

    Why did the Warren Commission overrule their own working lawyers and decide to make Markham the chief witness in the Tippit case? One problem was that a witness they billed as being a direct eyewitness to the crime was not. This was taxi driver William Scoggins who had his view of the shooting obstructed by hedges. (Joseph McBride, Into the Nightmare, p. 455) When Scoggins was shown a few pictures of Oswald, he narrowed it down to two. He then picked the wrong one. (WC 3, p. 335) Another problem was that his identification took place during the infamous Dallas Police lineups. Scoggins was at the same lineup as another cab driver, William Whaley. Whaley said about this proceeding: “You could have picked Oswald out without identifying him, by just listening to him because he was bawling out the policemen, telling them it wasn’t right to put him in line with these teenagers.” Whaley continued by saying Oswald told the police they were trying to railroad him and he wanted his lawyer. Whaley concluded, “Anybody who wasn’t sure could have picked out the right one just for that.” But further, when asked their names and occupations, the others in the lineup—who were policemen—gave fictitious answers. Oswald said his true name and that he worked at the Texas School Book Depository. (Meagher, p. 257)

    Another witness who said he saw Oswald fleeing the scene was Ted Callaway. The problem with his testimony is that Benavides worked for him at a car lot. Callaway asked Benavides if he saw the man escaping. Benavides said he did. Before he took off looking for him, Callaway asked his employee: Which way did he go? As Meagher asks, is not Callaway’s testimony therefore paradoxical? Why did he have to ask his employee where the guy went if he already saw him? (Meagher, p. 258) In addition to that, before Callaway viewed the lineup, he was given some input by Leavelle. He was told that the police wanted to wrap up the Tippit case real tight since they thought the man who killed Tippit also killed Kennedy. (Joseph McBride, Into the Nightmare, p. 474) As Hurt points out, time after time, witnesses to a man fleeing the scene were not questioned until late January. And at that late date they were only shown one photograph: Oswald’s. (Hurt, p. 147) This was two months after the media had begun its daily pounding of the public consciousness with the idea that Oswald was Kennedy’s killer. (As we shall see, the FBI went even further in this case in its violations of investigative protocol.)

    II

    The ballistics evidence in the Tippit case is also a morass. First of all, there is the enigmatic message sent out over the police radio by the ubiquitous Sgt. Jerry Hill. A message Hill actually tried to deny before the Warren Commission but which he admitted to decades later. Further, Hill once told a writer that the shells were arrayed within a hand towel of each other. Such was not the case, since they were recovered yards apart from each other. (See Bill Simpich, “Jerry Hill’s Lies: The Heart of the J. D. Tippit Shooting,” 3/12/16)

    Hill reported that one of the shells at the scene indicated “that the suspect is armed with an automatic .38 rather than a pistol.” This was shortly after another Dallas cop described the man escaping the scene—who did not match Oswald’s description—as being armed with an automatic. (Garrison, p. 198) Michael Griffith wrote in a review of Dale Myer’s book about the Tippit case that, in 1986, Hill admitted he had picked up one of the casings for examination This is important because the shells are marked with ‘.38 AUTO’ at the base. And Hill said he specifically looked on the bottom.

    As Garrison went on to explain, an automatic is clip loaded from its handle and its spring action ejects cartridge cases from the spent round. A revolver keeps the cartridge shells in the chamber as the turret rotates to the next round. As several authors have shown, including Garrison, it is hard to believe that experienced policemen could mistake an automatic handgun and ammo for a revolver. (For a telling visual presentation of this key point, see Robert Groden’s book Absolute Proof, p. 298) Especially since the Dallas police used .38 Special ammo and the shells were marked at the bottom. (see again Simpich, “Jerry Hill’s Lies”) This is an important point to recall as we progress through the ballistics evidence, and later, the issue of possession of the weapon.

    Of the bullets taken from Tippit’s body, three are Winchester Western manufactured and copper-coated. The last is a lead bullet made by Remington-Peters. As Garrison noted, this seemed to suggest that two men might have fired at Tippit. (Garrison, p. 199) But further, the shells did not match the bullets. Two of the shells were made by Remington and two by Winchester. (Garrison, p. 201) This has led some to think that perhaps there was a shot that missed and a shell that was not recovered. The House Select Committee on Assassination suggested this but labeled it as speculation. (McBride, p. 256)

    But the automatic/revolver dispute and the mismatching of the manufacturers and the ammo is only the beginning of the problems with the ballistics evidence. On the day of the shooting, the police made out an inventory of the evidence found at the scene. There was no mention of cartridge cases of any kind. (Garrison, p. 200) Moreover, it is also standard police procedure to send the bullets and shells to the FBI lab the day of the crime to have them identified and matched to the weapon. In the Tippit case, the authorities sent only one bullet to the Bureau. The police said this was the only projectile recovered from the victim’s body. (Joseph McBride, Into the Nightmare, p. 244) The FBI could not match this bullet to the weapon allegedly taken from Oswald later at the Texas Theater. And further, that bullet was described by the FBI as “so badly mutilated that there is not sufficient individual microscopic characteristics present for identification purposes.” (WC 24, p. 263)

    There was a complicating factor to this issue. As Henry Hurt explained in Reasonable Doubt, and John Armstrong amplified on in Harvey and Lee, the Smith and Wesson .38 revolver in evidence had been altered by its purchaser George Rose and Company, located in Los Angeles. The company sent 500 of these guns to its gunsmith in Van Nuys, California. Among the modifications made were the re-chambering of the cylinder so the weapon could accommodate a .38 Special cartridge. This altered chamber made for a slight slippage upon firing and thus did not allow the usual markings to be placed on the bullet. (Armstrong, p. 482; Hurt, p. 143)

    When they could not get a match on the first bullet, in March of 1964, the Commission sent FBI technician Cortlandt Cunningham to Dallas to find the other bullets. The police said they had misfiled them. But they turned up in the dead files, a point that the Commission tried to paper over. (McBride, p. 254) Predictably, four months later, the same thing happened: the bullets did not match. (Garrison, p. 199)

    Thus, the emphasis was now on the shells. It was not until six days after the police sent the first bullet to the FBI that they finally marked the evidence inventory sheet with four shells. These the FBI were able to match to the weapon. The delay in getting the shells on the inventory list and the failure to send all the ammunition exhibits promptly to the FBI has led some to suspect that the police fiddled with the evidence—to the extent that it suggests that the original weapon perhaps really was an automatic. This is not at all a critic’s meandering speculation. Warren Commissioner Hale Boggs himself expressed similar reservations about the delay. Boggs asked Commission counsel Melvin Eisenberg, “What proof do you have though that these are the bullets?” (McBride, p. 258)

    But even that is not the end to the problems with the Tippit ballistics. Benavides had found two cartridge cases at the scene. He handed them to Officer J. M . Poe. Hill told Poe to mark the shells with his initials. His marks were not evident when the policeman inspected the exhibits for the Commission. (Hurt, pp. 153-54) Further, when the witnesses who found the other two shells were asked by the FBI to identify them as the ones they originally recovered, they could not. (WC 24, p. 414)

    One would think it could not get any worse. But, in the JFK case, it usually does. When McBride interviewed Detective Jim Leavelle in 1992, the crusty old cop tried to put the whole issue of police identification to rest by throwing a giant curveball at it. He now said that neither Poe, nor the man Poe gave the shells to, Sgt. Barnes, ever marked the cartridge cases at all. (McBride, p. 256) Consider the ramifications of this charge. First, Poe is now a liar. But by labeling him as such, it attempts to rid the Dallas Police of the substitution of evidence accusation. What it really does, however, as McBride notes—as if it had not been done already—is it makes the whole “chain of custody on the shells highly suspect.” (McBride, p. 256)

    III

    As noted above, Jim Garrison came to suspect that there were probably two assailants. His judgment relied on the mismatching ballistics and the testimony of witnesses not in the Warren Commission.

    Acquilla Clemmons worked as a caretaker for an elderly woman on the next block. She ran down the street after she heard the shots. She saw two men, one with a gun. The gunman was “kinda chunky, he was kinda heavy, he wasn’t a very big man. He was a kinda short guy.” (McBride, p. 492) The gunman’s accomplice, who was tall and thin, then waved at the shooter and told him to “go on.” The two men left the scene heading in different directions. Two days after the shooting, a man Clemmons thought was from the DPD visited her and told her she should not talk about what she saw. If she did, she might get hurt. So when a reporter visited her with a camera, she refused the interview. After giving a long and filmed interview to Mark Lane in 1966, Clemmons apparently disappeared. (McBride, p. 492) It seems clear from looking at who was brought before the Commission and who was not that, as Jim Garrison pointed out, the Warren Commission had an agenda as to who they would and would not hear. (Garrison, p. 197) In fact, after Garrison was interviewed for Playboy, an anonymous writer mailed in a letter that was printed in the January 1968 issue. He said that, like Clemmons, he had seen two men shoot Tippit and they both ran off in different directions. Neither man was Oswald. (p. 11)

    As if the witness censorship and the oddities with the ballistics evidence were not suspect enough, let us now turn to the radio transcripts. As most of us know, there were three versions of the radio messages that were eventually delivered to the Warren Commission. Sylvia Meagher pointed out that the first transcript the police turned over did not include what was perhaps the most important instruction given to Tippit that day. That was the order for him to move into central Oak Cliff at 12:45 PM. (Meagher, p. 260) This was about 15 minutes after President Kennedy was killed. But as has been noted by others, this order created some serious evidentiary problems. First, there were three DPD witnesses the Commission had already heard from on the issue of Tippit’s location. They were at a loss to explain why Tippit was in Oak Cliff, about four miles out of his area. None of them proffered this order at 12:45 as the reason for it. (Meagher, p. 261) Second, just prior to this message, the dispatcher had said, “Attention all squads, report to downtown area Code 3 to Elm and Houston with caution.” (WCE 705, p. 397) Which, of course, makes perfect sense. (The police tried to disguise this order in the first transcript, but the FBI actually listened to the tapes and this was their accurate transcription. Police Chief Jesse Curry confirmed this in a letter to the Warren Commission, see WCD 1259, p. 3)

    In fact, one can reverse the question for effect: Why at this time would the police detail anyone to any location except Dealey Plaza? Further, why would the dispatcher take the time to give out such a superfluous order in the immediate wake of the tumult that followed the biggest crime ever committed in the history of the city? Yet the Commission accepted this since it was one way to explain the fact that Tippit was out of his assigned territory at the time he was shot. (Hurt, p. 161) And, one might add, what on earth was so important about central Oak Cliff? No one had radioed in any disturbance in the area.

    But that does not end the controversy. On the transcripts, there is no acknowledgement of this order, even though it was given to two men, Tippit and R. C. Nelson. (WCE 1974, p. 26) What’s more, the police already had a man in Oak Cliff. His name was William Mentzel. (McBride, p. 427) In other words, at a time when cars were being directed from the outermost areas to Elm and Houston for Kennedy’s assassination, not one, but two cars are being directed to Oak Cliff—when there is already a patrol car there. And, in fact, the dispatcher does not try and contact Mentzel to check on his location before he sends in two other cars.

    But that is not the capper about this order. The capper, at least for me, is that Nelson did not head to Oak Cliff. He went to Dealey Plaza. As Henry Hurt noted, there was nothing said about this apparent discrepancy by the Commission; indeed, neither the Warren Commission, nor the House Select Committee on Assassinations, called Nelson as a witness. (Hurt, p. 162)

    At 12: 54, Tippit stated he was at Lancaster and 8th. The dispatcher replied with—considering what had happened and what was about to happen—one of the strangest police radio instructions imaginable. Murray Jackson told Tippit to, “Be at large for any emergency that comes in.” (Meagher, p. 263) As we will see, what makes this exchange even more notable is that Tippit might not have been at Lancaster and 8th.

    We now come to the message at 1:08. Between 12:45 and that time there were four messages involving Tippit. Three went from the dispatcher to the patrolman and one allegedly came in from Tippit; this was at 1:08. In one version of the messages, Tippit called the dispatcher twice and got no answer. In the FBI version, Tippit’s call number at that time, 78, is missing: the message is assigned to No. 488. The FBI notes the sound is garbled and No. 488 is not identified by his name, and there is no other message that is assigned to whoever this person is. Tippit researcher Bill Drenas, who wrote an interesting essay, “Car #10 Where are You?”, did a thorough examination of the tape and transcripts. He concluded that the voice is not Tippit’s either. But he disagrees with who the real caller is. He says it is call number 388. Which would be from the Criminal Investigative Division.

    From this perspective, Mrs. Higgins’ time for the shooting, 1:06, may be correct. If that is so, then the other salient point she told Barry Ernest is also relevant. Higgins said that after the shots rang out, she went out to her porch. She saw a man fleeing the scene. It was not Oswald. (James DiEugenio, Reclaiming Parkland, p. 125)

    IV

    The above is the author’s attempt to present a précis of what the evidence in the Tippit case consisted of in the early nineties. For after the tsunami caused by Stone’s JFK, the calculus of the Tippit case was altered.

    The first tremor occurred in 1995 when Dallas FBI agent James Hosty published his book on the Kennedy case entitled Assignment Oswald. In that book he revealed a stunning piece of information, one that had been concealed for 32 years. Hosty wrote that his FBI colleague Bob Barrett had told him something unusual occurred at the scene of the Tippit murder. Barrett told him that one of the policemen, Captain Westbrook, asked him if he had ever heard of a Lee Harvey Oswald. When Barrett said he had not, he then asked him: How about an Alek Hidell? Again, Barrett replied he had not. As Barrett was answering the questions, Westbrook was leafing through a wallet found at the scene.

    This extraordinary development was raised from the realm of memory into that of fact when a film from TV station WFAA was later uncovered. That film shows three policemen handling the wallet at the scene of the Tippit murder.

     

    WFAA footage of police handling wallet

    These images were captured at 01:24 and 02:50 of this ABC news feature from 2013.

    This reinforcement drove diehard defenders of the official story into overdrive in a mad attempt to camouflage the damage it did. For the question now became: Who carries three wallets? The Warren Report has Oswald’s wallet being taken from him in the police car after he was apprehended at the Texas Theater. The report also says Oswald left a wallet at the home of Ruth and Michael Paine, where his wife Marina was staying, that morning. (DiEugenio, p. 126) The late Vincent Bugliosi tried to squirm out of the dilemma by saying the wallet was most likely Tippit’s. This explanation is effectively neutered since three Dallas police officers were sent to Methodist Hospital to recover Tippit’s effects at 2:00 PM. They delivered them to the station at 3:25. Among the artifacts was Tippit’s wallet. (DiEugenio, p. 126) But, even further, at a JFK Lancer seminar several years ago, intrepid researcher Martha Moyer told this author that she had talked to another officer at the scene, patrolman Leonard Jez. He told her not to let anyone bamboozle her: it was Oswald’s wallet.

    The implication of the wallet at the crime scene would be that someone dropped it there in order to implicate Oswald. Beyond that, since the official story had Oswald ordering a handgun and rifle in the name of Alex Hidell, it would demonstrate he ordered the weapons and then used them to kill both policeman Tippit and President Kennedy. But from that hypothesis extends another problem. According to researchers John Armstrong and Bill Simpich, no one ever saw the wallet on the ground. The best estimates are that the film of the wallet being shown to others was taken at about 1:30-1:40 PM. With the ambulance arriving and departing, with patrol cars there, with so many bystanders on hand by that time, how could so many people have missed the wallet on the pavement? And in point of fact, some of the witnesses actually said there was no wallet on the ground. (See Bill Simpich, “Who Found Oswald’s Wallet,” 4/21/14)

    Therefore, under examination, this new evidence seems to indicate the possibility that someone brought the billfold to the scene. That idea now focused attention on three people who had been more or less ignored prior to the discovery of the WFAA film. Those three are Westbrook, reserve officer Kenneth Croy and witness Doris Holan.

    409 10th Street, where Doris Holan
    resided at the time of the shooting

    Holan was never called by the Warren Commission. Nor is there any evidence she was ever interviewed by either the Dallas Police or the FBI. Like many important witnesses in the JFK assassination, she was discovered by private citizens many years after the fact. Local Dallas researchers Bill Pulte and Michael Brownlow were the first to talk to her. Which is weird since she lived only one door down from the crime scene, at 409 10th Street, on the second floor. This placed her in a perfect position to see what she was about to disclose. The most remarkable information to come to the fore in the two interviews she granted was this: As she looked out her window upon hearing the shots, she saw a second police car at the scene. It was in the driveway between 404 and 410 East Tenth. This was adjacent to the spot on the street where Tippit’s car stopped. Knowingly or unknowingly, Tippit had blocked the driveway, which led to an alley at mid-block. She said a man got out of the car, looked at Tippit’s body and then went back down the driveway. He was alongside the car, which was retreating back toward the alley. She also saw a man fleeing the scene in a different direction. (McBride, pp. 494-95)

    Brownlow had previously found a second witness to the police car. This was Sam Guinyard, a porter at a used car lot at 501 East Jefferson. And as McBride further notes in his book-length study of the Tippit case, Virginia Davis had said that when she heard the shots and ran out, the police were already there. Years before he talked to Holan, another witness who wished to remain anonymous related to Pulte that he had been told there was a man in the driveway who approached Tippit. (see Harrison Livingstone, The Radical Right and the Murder of President Kennedy, p. 348)

    Diagram courtesy of David Josephs

    To my knowledge, the Holan testimony made its first appearance in book form in the 2006 Livingstone reference just cited. This was late but fortunate, since Holan had passed on in the year 2000. Holan’s revelation opened up a new vista for the Tippit case. Now writers began to focus on Westbrook and Croy, since Croy was the first known person to handle the wallet and Westbrook was the last. Of course, the Warren Commission did no inquiry into the existence of the Oswald wallet at 10th and Patton, even though there was a film available. And, as mentioned, they were oblivious to Holan. But, in retrospect, there were still some notable things to be garnered from the Commission testimony of both William Westbrook and Kenneth Croy.

    V

    The first is that neither man was a detective or a patrolman. Yet both were at the scene of the Tippit murder quite quickly. In fact, Croy was reportedly the first man there. Westbrook was the chief of the personnel department. (WC 7, p. 110) That is, he handled background inquiries for applications and investigated complaints. He did not even wear a uniform. On the day of the assassination, Westbrook sent his men to the Texas School Book Depository. After the office was empty and he was the only one there, Westbrook told the Commission he got antsy, so—and he fittingly prefaced the following with “believe it or not”—he decided to walk to the Depository alone. He also added that, even though he had a radio, he would stop occasionally to get an update on a transistor radio from groups of people standing on the sidewalk. The distance between the police station and the depository is about one mile. If one adds in the stopping to listen to civilians with radios, one could say that Westbrook’s unaccounted time here could amount to as much as 20 minutes or more.

    Capt. William Ralph Westbrook

    Westbrook testified that while he was at the depository, he heard someone say an officer had been shot in Oak Cliff. He felt —and again this may also be hard to swallow—that since he was in personnel he should investigate the homicide. (WC 7, p. 111) Although Westbrook mentioned Barrett in his Commission testimony, he never noted the wallet he questioned the FBI agent about. Strangely, Barrett did not appear before the Commission.

    While at the scene of the Tippit murder, Westbrook said the word about a suspect at the Texas Theater came over the radio. So Westbrook got a ride to the theater with another officer and Barrett. Almost immediately upon arrival there someone tipped him off as to where the suspect was sitting. Westbrook witnessed his arrest and directed he be escorted out of the theater and to the station. (WC 7, p. 113) Westbrook said that after this he went back to his desk at personnel.

    In other words, it was all in a personnel officer’s workday. Thanks to being bored at his personnel desk, Westbrook became one of the few officers who showed up at the depository, the Tippit murder scene and the Texas Theater. But this does not actually do his busy day justice. As former British detective Ian Griggs has noted, Westbrook is also credited with finding the Tippit killer’s jacket and going to a nearby library to investigate a false alarm about the assailant being there. (Ian Griggs, No Case to Answer, p. 131-32) As Griggs points out, although he is credited with finding the jacket, Westbrook actually denied he did so. He said some other policeman gave it to him—but he cannot recall his name. Further, he did not place the discovery of the jacket on the report he gave to the Commission. Attorney Joseph Ball had to ask him, “Did you ever find something?” (WC Vol. 7, p. 115) Westbrook immediately said he did not find it; some other officer did.

    Kenneth Croy

    That declaration of not knowing who gave an officer an important piece of evidence applies to Croy also. But before getting to that point, we should, as we did with Westbrook, review Croy’s Warren Commission testimony. And we should keep in mind that, as with Westbrook, the Commission never challenged Croy, nor tried to corroborate what he said.

    First of all, Croy was not a regular officer. He was a reserve officer. He drove patrol car duty perhaps once a month. (WC 12, p. 195) On the day of the assassination, Croy said he was just off of Main street when he heard President Kennedy was shot.

    Croy was just a few blocks from Dealey Plaza at this time. He then said that he drove to the nearby courthouse to see if the police might need some help. (WC 12, p. 200) Considering the circumstances, it is hard to believe that Croy had to ask this question, or that the police would say no if he did. But Croy said he could not recall whom he asked, and Commission counsel Burt Griffin did not probe the answer to Croy’s question on November 22, 1963. Croy added that, amid all the tumult going on a few blocks away, he decided to go home. He then said that he heard a call about an officer being shot.

    As the reader can see, there really is no way so far to corroborate Croy’s whereabouts from the time of the assassination to the time of him arriving at the scene of the Tippit shooting. And Croy insisted he was the first policeman there. (WC 12, p. 201) From his description, once he was there, he talked to Helen Markham. But as Griffin questioned him about his discussion with Markham, a surprising admission came into the record. Croy claimed he did not file a report on his activities that day. Once Griffin elicited this piece of information, he just passed it by, making no comment or inquiry about it. Which is remarkable considering Croy’s insistence he was the first officer at the scene.

    Croy stated he was at 10th and Patton for approximately 30 minutes, perhaps a bit more. (WC 12, p. 202) When Griffin asked him what he did after he left, Croy answered that he went to get something to eat. He also said he stayed home the rest of the day. Again, Griffin let this pass. There was no question as to why Croy did not go to the station to pen a written report or give an oral report. When Griffin asked Croy if there were any officers at the scene that he knew, Croy replied in a curious way: “There were several officers there that I knew. I don’t know their names.” (WC 12, p. 203) He went on to say that he only knew them by sight. In other words, we are led to believe that even if Croy had written a report he would not have been able to relate it to any other officer.

    As Croy left 10th and Patton, he said he drove near the Texas Theater and saw squad cars around the building. He decided not to stop since he felt the situation was well in hand. After first telling Griffin he was going to get something to eat and go home, he then said that he actually met his estranged wife at Austin’s Barbecue. (WC 12, p. 205) And this is where Croy’s story gets even more retroactively bizarre. He now added that right after Kennedy’s assassination, the cops he did talk to told him he was not needed. The wife from who he was separated happened to drive up next to him and he asked her if she wanted to get something to eat. Consider this fact: Croy was in uniform. He was just off Dealey Plaza; sirens, and scores of policemen are pouring into the area; searches are being organized of the depository building and the area behind the picket fence.

    Approximate location of Croy when he and his estranged wife arranged to meet for lunch after the assassination. If this really happened, it would make for a good SNL skit.

    Croy now added something even more puzzling. He said that before going to the diner, he intended to go to his parents’ house to change his clothes. Presumably, this was when he heard about the Tippit shooting. Due to his job duties, he was late for the dinner with his estranged wife. He colorfully adds that she was angry. Apparently sharing a hamburger was more important than the murder of a police officer. (This writer is not aware if Griffin ever called her to confirm this tale.)

    Croy is important because when the story about the wallet finally did break, he was the policeman who was credited with first handling it. His story was that he was handed the wallet by a civilian. Of course, Croy never asked the name of this witness. (See again Simpich, “Who Found Oswald’s Wallet”)

    Considering his modus operandi that day, it was as if Croy were operating in a fog. To show how thick the fog was, Croy once told one researcher that he did not examine the contents of the wallet. He then told another researcher that there were seven different ID’s in it and none were Oswald’s. (See part 2 of Hasan Gokay Yusuf’s review of Myers’ book)

    With a hapless performance such as his, whether that fog was designed or accidental is a natural question to pose.

    VI

    With the new evidence arrayed as it is above, the question most objective observers would ask is: What would have happened if you had a real investigation in the Tippit case instead of the somnolent Warren Commission? To show the difference that would have made, consider a speech that former HSCA Deputy Counsel Robert Tanenbaum made in Chicago in 1993. Tanenbaum was an experienced prosecutor who rose to Chief of Homicide in New York City. He never lost a murder case. After listening to a highly sophisticated and complex debate over the medical evidence, Tanenbaum stepped to the podium and said words to the effect: I like to get down to basics. My opening question for an investigation would be: Why did Tippit stop Oswald?

    Which is an interesting query. As most people know, the official story attributes a description of the alleged assassin to Dealey Plaza witness Howard Brennan. The Commission said that by his looking upward from about a hundred feet away, and through a window six stories up that he managed to convey a description of the man he saw down to his height and weight. Add in the fact the window was only partly open and as Tanenbaum said, it was not a floor to ceiling window. So how could that description be accurate? The professional prosecutor also added that if one goes with the Commission’s sniper’s nest scenario, then how could Brennan see anything but a partial view of the subject? Further, not only did Brennan not identify Oswald in the police lineup that evening; there is a serious question whether Brennan was even at the lineup. (Griggs, pp. 90-96)

    Moreover, it is simply not possible to verify a chain of communication from Brennan’s alleged description of a man who was 5’ 10” and 165 pounds to the Dallas Police. The official story has Brennan giving his description to Inspector Herbert Sawyer. But Sawyer would not confirm Brennan was the man. (WC 6, pp. 322-25) Also, Brennan did not identify Sawyer. (WC 3, p. 145) Nevertheless, in the face of this, writers like Gerald Posner still insist that the description came from Brennan to Sawyer. (Posner, Case Closed, p. 248) Yet when one looks at the footnote Posner refers to, one can read that Sawyer testified that he based his broadcast description from evidence that did not make it clear whether the sniper had been on the fourth or fifth floor, or even in the building. (WC 6, p. 322) So how could this be Brennan?

    The FBI spent many weeks trying to find out who the source for the description was. They gave up and J. Edgar Hoover decided to label the source as an unidentified citizen. (FBI memo of 11/12/64 from Richard Rogge.) The HSCA chose not to rely on Brennan in any way. (Summers, p. 79) But what makes the description even more odd is that it also included the information that the suspect was armed with a rifle: namely, either “a 30-30 or some type of Winchester.” (WC 6, p. 321) So why would Tippit stop someone clearly armed without calling for a back-up first? But, of course, we know that whoever shot Tippit did not likely have a rifle. So, again, why did Tippit stop the person?

    This lacuna in the official story has driven the other side into overdrive. As with the tall tale of the wallet being Tippit’s, they offer a palliative explanation: that Oswald changed directions on 10th Street, and because that action looked suspicious, Tippit thus stopped the man who killed him. But as Michael Griffith has ably pointed out, to do this one must rely on witnesses who altered their testimony, plus testimony offered 14 years after the fact by a witness who saw something that no one else saw. As Griffith noted, none of the police or Secret Service initial reports found any witnesses who said this occurred. They all said the assailant was walking west, toward the patrol car, not away from it. (Michael Griffith, “Did Oswald Shoot Tippit?”)

    This puzzling hole in the evidence allows for the alternative that Tippit did not pull the man over because of the radio message. If in fact Doris Holan was correct, Tippit stopped his car almost right in front of the driveway where the second police car was situated. That would leave open the suggestion that Tippit was being lured, not just out of his proper area, but onto some kind of disguised trapdoor.

    At this point in our analysis, it would be appropriate to chronicle the rather strange itinerary that Tippit’s life took during its last hour. Before I begin to trace this schedule, I wish to stress that the reader will find none of the following information in the Warren Report. This tells us all we need to know about the Commission’s completeness and honesty. The source I will use for this information is Joseph McBride’s Into the Nightmare; that book is, in my view, the best compendium of information on the Tippit case today.

    Between the hours of approximately noon and 12:35, Tippit was most likely on a shoplifting call and then home for lunch. (McBride, pp. 506-17) At approximately 12:40, he was seen in his car by five witnesses at a GLOCO filling station. Interviewed by author William Turner, the witnesses said Tippit appeared to be watching the Houston viaduct, which crosses over from Dealey Plaza. That viaduct connects to the Kennedy crime scene within ninety seconds. (McBride, p. 441) We should recall that, at about this time, the order came on the radio: “Move into Central Oak Cliff area.” Yet, according to five credible witnesses, that was not really what Tippit was doing.

    Another piece of the millennium’s new evidence now enters the equation. Just a few moments after this, Tippit pulled over a car driven by insurance agent James Andrews. Andrews told a Dallas researcher that Tippit drove in front of him and cut him off on the 300 block of West Tenth. Tippit jumped out of his car, walked forward and inspected the space between the front and back seat. Perplexed, Andrews looked at the officer’s nameplate. Without saying anything, Tippit got back in his car and drove away. Andrews commented that Tippit “seemed to be very upset and agitated and acted wild” (McBride, p. 448)

    Tippit was next reported at the Top Ten Records store at 338 West Jefferson Boulevard. Two witnesses, Dub Stark and Louis Cortinas, saw him there. Cortinas said that Tippit was in a hurry and asked people to move aside. Tippit, whom he knew fairly well, then commandeered the phone, called someone, and apparently did not get an answer. He then hung up and walked off, looking worried or upset about something. (McBride, p. 451) At around this time, 1:00 PM, the dispatcher called Tippit and got no answer.

    As McBride comments, it seems logical to assume that—unless this was the first time he ever saw the viaduct—Tippit was waiting for someone to cross over by car or bus. He then actually did stop a car, apparently to look for someone hiding in the back. Frustrated at both places, he then tried to make a phone call in order to get further directions. Finally, he proceeded to his death at 10th and Patton, driving his car very slowly, as if he were looking for someone. (WC 3, pp. 307, 324) In this new light, it is possible to see his death more fully and accurately than either Henry Hurt or Jim Garrison did.

    VII

    One of the most interesting parts of McBride’s book is the fact that he interviewed someone no one else did. That would be Edgar Lee Tippit, father of the patrolman. Through that long interview, McBride attained some new background information on Tippit and his family. This and other research the author performed revealed a much fuller picture of Tippit than allowed by the Commission. As Sylvia Meagher once said, the portrait drawn in the Warren Report reduces Tippit to little more than a cipher. (Meagher, p. 253) There was almost no background investigation done for the report. As Meagher pointed out, it did not even appear that they talked to his widow.

    William D. Mentzel

    Edgar Lee did talk to Marie Tippit. He told McBride, “They called J.D. and another policeman and said he [Oswald] was headed in that direction. The other policeman told Marie.” (McBride, p. 426) But he added something more. Marie also told him, “The other boy stopped—he would have got there but he had a little accident, a wreck. They both started but J. D. made it. He’d been expecting something. The police notified them Oswald was headed that way.” (McBride, p. 427) Marie said this information was given to her by the other officer. McBride concluded that the officer who spoke to Marie was William D. Mentzel. As noted above, Mentzel was in the area already and he told the HSCA that he responded to an accident at a bit after 1:00. As we have seen, there is at least one instance where Tippit did use a phone, and as McBride notes, Mentzel also reported that he contacted the station by phone, not by his police radio.

    In an interview McBride did with Gary Revel, he stated further that Wade told him that “Somebody reported to me that the police already knew who Oswald was, and they were looking for him.”

    For someone to have put together the wallet Croy initially produced at the scene, the contents of which Westbrook described to Barrett, implies that some special part of the DPD had been alerted to who the patsy was earlier than the rest of the police force. After all, when Jerry Hill announced on the radio at 1:52 that Oswald had been apprehended at the theater, it was only in relation to the Tippit case, not the JFK case. (Griggs, p. 138) Because the information about the wallet did not become known until the mid-nineties, in their examinations of the Tippit case, neither Garrison nor Hurt mentioned Westbrook or Croy. (Although, to his credit, Garrison did write that it seemed probable to him that part of the Dallas police colluded in the crime before it happened: see Garrison, p. 203)

    But both Garrison and Hurt did mention the name of officer Jerry Hill. Like Westbrook, Hill holds the distinction of being one of the very few cops who maintains he was at the three main scenes: the Depository, 10th and Patton, and the apprehension of Oswald at the Texas Theater. In addition, he was in the unmarked car that escorted Oswald to the station. If the reader recalls, Hill was the policeman who first reported from the Tippit scene that the shells fired there were from an automatic. When Henry Hurt confronted him with this discrepancy, along with the fact that, even though Hill instructed Poe to mark the shells with his initials, those markings had disappeared, Hill responded with one of the most farcical comments available in the literature. Hill said that he could not imagine any kind of evidence manipulation because the Dallas Police Department was so clean it scared him. (Hurt, p. 155)

    Hill at the TSBD

    Surely the reader must know that statement is so contrary to the facts that it actually lends suspicion to Hill. As this author wrote in his examination of Vincent Bugliosi’s elephantine book Reclaiming History, the contrary is true:

    No other county in America—and almost no state, for that matter—has freed more innocent people from prison in recent years than Dallas [Tarrant] County where Wade was DA from 1951 through 1986. (James DiEugenio, Reclaiming Parkland, p. 196)

    Henry Wade, of course, was the DA who supervised the Kennedy and Tippit cases. What makes this even more deplorable is that none of this would have ever been exposed except for the power shift that took place in 2006. That year, the city elected its first African American DA in over a half century. Craig Watkins was not from the good-ole-boys network. He never worked for Wade or met him. In fact, he said of the previous regime, “There was a cowboy kind of mentality and the reality is that kind of approach is archaic, racist, elitist and arrogant.” He began a review of prior convictions. Literally dozens of innocent people were set free. In three cases, the charge was murder. As Watkins said, many of Wade’s cases “were riddled with shoddy investigations, evidence was ignored, and defense lawyers were kept in the dark.” In other words, the combination of Wade and lead detective Will Fritz made for a thoroughly corrupt local law enforcement system—in pure numbers, the worst in America at that time.

    Take the following example. More than one witness said that that Tippit’s killer leaned into the police car, touching it with his hands. So the police had the car dusted for prints. The DPD said the prints were not legible. But it turned out that the HSCA discovered there were actually two sets of prints taken, and the second one was legible. Dale Myers took the prints to a reputable analyst. After comparing them to Oswald’s, he said they did not match. This was about par for the course for the DPD in defending the rights of the accused. (James DiEugenio, Reclaiming Parkland, p. 126)

    And Jerry Hill knew about it; in fact, he was part of it in 1963. As stated above, Hill was a member of the police team that apprehended Oswald at the Texas Theater. In 1967, he was hired by CBS as a consultant for their four-part series on the Warren Commission. As part of his duties on that show, he did a long interview with correspondent Eddie Barker. In that interview, he said the police did a “fast frisk” on Oswald at the theater and found nothing in his pockets at the time. This poses a serious problem for both Hill and the police, because they later claimed that Oswald had five live bullets in his pockets at the station. Since Oswald was handcuffed at the theater, where did they come from? (See my “Why CBS Covered up the JFK Assassination, Part 2”)

    In October of 1963, Hill went on what he called a “special assignment”. He was detailed over to the personnel division to work under Westbrook. (WC 7, p. 44) There was never any question by Commission lawyer David Belin about why this happened at that time, a notable omission in light of the fact that Westbrook already had six people working for him. (Griggs, p. 15)

    According to the Warren Commission, it was Hill who had possession of the handgun taken from Oswald upon the arrival of the suspect at the police station. But as Gokay Hasan Yusuf has pointed out in his essay, “Gerald Hill and the Framing of Lee Harvey Oswald”, there is some confusion about who actually took a handgun from Oswald at the theater and when it was transferred to Hill. When Hill arrived at the station, he placed the gun in Westbrook’s office while he wrote a report. This was so odd that Westbrook himself admitted to the Commission that the gun should not have been there. (WC 7, p. 118) Concerning this point, Hill testified that he had tried to turn over the gun to Lt. T. L. Baker, but for some reason Baker did not accept it at that time. (WC 7, p. 51) It would have been nice if the Commission had asked Baker about the matter and why he did not accept the weapon, but when Baker did testify, he was only asked eight questions, none about this episode. (WC 4, p. 248)

    One last point about this .38 Smith and Wesson. According to the Warren Report, that weapon was ordered by Oswald and was delivered not by the post office but by a private company called Railway Express Agency (REA). This was a forerunner of FedEx. They required certain legal restrictions on firearms delivery, specifically on small firearms, like pistols and revolvers. For instance, one had to show an ID, and an affidavit of good character. (James DiEugenio, Reclaiming Parkland, p. 128) This was to be done at the REA office in Dallas. So the procedure should have been that REA would send a card to Oswald’s post office box first. Then Oswald would pick it up and walk over to REA office. He would then show his ID and affidavit, pay for the revolver, get a receipt and the transaction would be recorded by REA.

    To make a long story short, there is no proof that any of this happened. In other words, there is no paper trail that leads from the card being picked up by Oswald to the transaction being processed by REA. In fact, there is not even any proof that the FBI ever went to the REA office. The Warren Report glides over this without referring to it, leaving yet another of its innumerable lacunae. The Commission does not even ask: Why would Oswald order the weapon under an alias, namely Hidell, knowing the summons card by REA had to go to a post office box in his real name? But the bottom line is that there is no proof Oswald ever picked up the gun. So how do we know he had it?

    VIII

    According to Hill, while he was making out his report, Captain Westbrook told him he should change the report to say that Oswald was the suspect in not just the Tippit case, but also the murder of President Kennedy. (WC 7, p. 60) There is no trace in the transcript that the Commission lawyer batted an eyelash at that jarring disclosure, let alone asked Hill to detail the reason Westbrook told him to do that. And again, in going through Westbrook’s testimony, this author could find no cross-check on that exchange, that is, no inquiry as to whether Westbrook actually told Hill to do this, and if he did, what the reason was behind it. Hill was part of the circle of policemen who stated that Oswald somehow tried to fire a handgun at the theater. This was proven false by Cortlandt Cunningham of the FBI for the Commission. (WC 7, p. 61; McBride, p. 202) It would have been an important part of the case to have the names and interrogations of the 24 spectators in the theater at this time. But after giving the order to collect that information, Westbrook said he did not know what happened to the list. (WC 7, p. 118; Griggs, p. 137)

    That afternoon, at approximately 5 PM, Hill did an interview on the radio that went national. It is important to note that Hill was an experienced print and TV journalist who, as Bill Simpich discovered, had worked the Dallas police beat out of an office at the station. (WC 7, p. 44) During this interview with Sacramento’s KCRA host Bob Whitten, Hill did about everything he could to incriminate Oswald in the public mind. This was before Oswald had been arraigned on either charge, before the FBI had linked him to the weapons, and before the Bureau had tested for fingerprints, or ballistics. Hill accused Oswald of being a violent person who may have shot another policeman previously—an accusation that he seems to have manufactured out of thin air. Hill also said that Oswald would not even admit he pulled the trigger on the gun in the theater. Which, as Cunningham showed, he did not. He then said that Oswald had admitted during interrogation he was an active communist. Hill talked about Oswald’s time in Russia, how he had defected and returned with a Russian bride. How Hill attained this (mostly false) information is unclear, as is his motive for conveying it on the air. But his story was that he got some of it from Westbrook. (WCD 1210; “Gerald Hill and the Framing of Lee Harvey Oswald”)

    As most people familiar with the JFK case understand, there is usually a punch line in these kinds of mysterious and unexplained matters. In this one it is the following: Within a year of the publication of the Warren Report, Westbrook resigned the force. He then became an advisor to the security forces in Saigon. That assignment was handled through the Agency for International Development. Those who follow the JFK case know that AID often worked under the auspices of the CIA. (Gokay Hasan Yusuf, “A few Words on former DPD Captain, William Ralph Westbrook”, 9/13/14)

    In light of these latter revelations, the murder of J. D. Tippit takes on a new evidentiary significance. There had been hints of what it all really meant before. As Deputy DA Bill Alexander once said to Henry Hurt: he knew that the man who killed Tippit had killed Kennedy. (Hurt, p. 157)

    As Evan Marshall, a former 20-year homicide investigator, told the late Harrison Livingstone:

    The Tippit shooting has always been to me a Red Herring of the first order. As someone who spent 20 years as a big city cop, I can assure you that nothing affects a cop like the murder of a brother officer. Perhaps the hope was that the officers who responded to the theater would kill him there. (Livingstone, The Radical Right and the Murder of John F. Kennedy, p. 339)

    Detective Jim Leavelle stares
    as Ruby shoots Oswald

    When Joe McBride was researching his book on the Tippit murder, Marshall’s comments were both amplified and certified by another lawman, Detective Jim Leavelle of the Dallas police. In commenting on the differences between the murder of President Kennedy and Tippit, he described the first as such:

    As the old saying goes back then, “It wasn’t no different than a south Dallas nigger killin’.” When you get right down to it—because it was just another murder inside the city limits of Dallas that we would handle. It was just another murder to me. And I’ve handled hundreds of ‘em. So it wasn’t no big deal. (McBride, p. 240)

    Leavelle differentiated that case from Tippit’s with the following: “What some people don’t realize is that when a police officer gets killed, that takes precedence over the shooting of the president, because that’s close to home.” (McBride, p. 241)

    As I have tried to show here, this seems to be what happened. Of course, I cannot prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. Not even close to that standard. However, as Tanenbaum said in the speech referred to above, it is not the duty of private citizens to do the work that should have been done by the FBI, the Warren Commission and the HSCA. But I have little doubt that if someone like HSCA chief counsel Dick Sprague had been running the Warren Commission, and he had this information, he would have honed in on Westbrook, Croy and Hill like a laser. He would have moved heaven and earth to find out the source for the assassin’s description which, in all likelihood, did not come from Howard Brennan. He would have been at the scene with Doris Holan, walking her through what she saw. He then would have looked for corroboration. And those witnesses would have been provided protection. He personally would have gone to both the post office and REA to try to figure out how the heck Oswald got that handgun.

    That, and much more, would have all been part of what a real investigation of the Tippit case would have been like. None of that is in the same universe with what really happened. And as a result, the people who really arranged for and killed Tippit succeeded tactically in a spectacular way. For within about 30 minutes after the ambulance carted Tippit’s body away, more than a half-dozen police cars descended on the Texas Theater in response to a reported infraction—the infraction being that some unknown person had gone into the theater without paying. That was enough to lower the noose around Oswald’s neck. Once apprehended and handcuffed, Westbrook ordered the arresting officers to get Oswald in the car and take him to the station. (Griggs, p. 138) At 1:52, under Radio Call Sign 550-2, Jerry Hill made the announcement that they had their man in the murder of officer Tippit. As we have seen, Westbrook—the man who would soon be working with the CIA—then told Hill to add President Kennedy as the other victim.

  • NARA: New Group of JFK Assassination Documents Available to the Public

     

  • Biological Map in JFK’s Neck Points to South Knoll

    Biological Map in JFK’s Neck Points to South Knoll

    If you want to know where one of the shots that hit John Kennedy came from, you can consult a biological map, and the one in Kennedy’s neck is pretty reliable. Other researchers present bullet paths through the head, but the one in the neck is easier to see.

    If the wound in Kennedy’s throat was an entrance, this of course means that one shooter was firing from in front of the motorcade. (Please go here to see some reasons to believe it was an entrance.) But the path through Kennedy’s neck can tell you approximately where in front the shooter was. Consider the three dots below that represent damage reported by Parkland Hospital:

    • A small hole in the skin in the middle of the neck
    • A larger hole in the right side of his trachea
    • Bleeding in the area of the right mediastinum over the lung

    Connect these three dots and you have a diagonal line across Elm Street that leads to an area in front—and to the left of Kennedy. The south knoll.

    In other words, the damage in the neck shows the path of a bullet going northeast—which means it came from the southwest.

    No Fourth Dot

    If the wound in Kennedy’s throat was an exit instead of an entrance, then we would have to assume that a bullet entered the back and exited the throat. But in an article published long ago, the late John Nichols, MD, PhD explained why this could not have happened: the wound was only 5 centimeters or 1.9 inches from the midline of the back and even closer to outer edge of the spine itself. In its hypothetical journey to the middle of the throat, the bullet would have to go through the spine.

    And he showed that for the bullet to avoid hitting the spine, it would have to have entered the back further to the right than it actually did.

    Here is a scan showing the cross-section of the neck of a man whose size was very similar to Kennedy’s. It was done by David Mantik, MD, PhD to demonstrate what Nichols was talking about.

    The red line begins in the lower right-hand corner—where the bullet wound was in Kennedy’s back. The wound could not be probed and seemed to stop within an inch after penetrating. In any case, a medium-high velocity bullet could not have followed the path below without creating tremendous, obvious damage, shattering the bones it went through as well as damaging tissue lateral to its path.

    mantik scan

    X-rays of Kennedy’s spine showed no such damage. The shadow of a line appeared between two parts of the spine, suggesting a separation of the transverse process and where it attaches. Promoters of the Lone Nut Theory have tried to use it as proof of a shot at the seventh cervical level—but buried in the HSCA Hearings is an expert radiologist’s report of several additional shadows, proving they are all meaningless artifacts:

    Unenhanced x-ray: “The first rib appeared to be separated from the sternum …” (JFK Exhibit F-34). Enhanced x-ray: “there appear to be fractures of the posterior aspects of the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th ribs. These are artifacts.” (7 HSCA 219)  (Please go here to see my story on this, and more.)

    The lead pathologist who performed the autopsy, James Humes MD, testified that they saw no fractures in the vertical column, that is, the spine. His words:

    … we examined carefully the bony structures in this vicinity [of the back wound] as well as the X-rays… and we saw no such evidence, that is no fracture of the bones of the shoulder girdle, or of the vertical column, and no metallic fragments were detectable by X-ray. [I believe “vertical” should have been “vertebral,” possibly a transcription error.]

    Reversing the Path

    Any bullet—whether from the front or the back—missed all parts of the spine. And so I propose we use, as a biological map, Nichols’s diagram of a path that misses the spine:

    nichols

    Where the bullet stopped, we do not know. Nor do we know what happened to it. It is entirely possible that it was found during the autopsy and furtively removed by one of the pathologists, his back to the audience, his body obscuring Kennedy’s.

    Trusting the Parkland Hospital doctors’ report—but not the pathologists’—we do know the damage suggests the bullet went to the right somewhere inside Kennedy, just above the right lung. And so I suggest we use the uppermost path in Nichols’s diagram as our map. It goes far enough to the right to miss the spine.

    Below is another diagram from the Nichols article which I have cut to include only the path through the front of the body. In other words, I have disconnected it from the back wound. It shows a simple overhead drawing of Kennedy and his right arm:

    angle schematic

    You will have to orient this diagram in relation to where the limousine was at the time of the strike, and it may be impossible to get it exactly right. I suggest finding several possible locations, bracketing them—no earlier than this position, no later than that position.

    I would wish you happy hunting, but this is really a grim business. 

  • Thursday April 26, 2018 Deadline Looms

     

  • The CIA and Mafia’s “Cuban American Mechanism” and the JFK Assassination

    The CIA and Mafia’s “Cuban American Mechanism” and the JFK Assassination

    KUsomething:

    “Jesus, you don’t look so good!”

    WOsomething:

    “Look who’s talking, I’ve never seen you so baggy-eyed.”

    KUsomething:

    “I don’t handle the heat very well. I wonder how the Old Man is doing. Apparently, it’s a lot hotter a few floors down.”

    WOsomething:

    “Tell me, have you seen AMHINT-24 around?”

    KUsomething:

    “You mean the one who bumped into GPFLOOR in the courthouse after his rumble on…”

    WOsomething:

    “No that was AMSERF-1.”

    KUsomething:

    “Then was it the guy who got all those articles written about him with the help of AMHINT-5? … I thought he was AMDENIM-1.”

    WOsomething:

    “AMHINT-24 was in on the brouhaha on … uh, Canoe  Street; he also helped Don Santo Junior recruit AMLASH with the help of their friend AMWHIP-1. It gets a little confusing because many were part of AMSPELL… Then when you throw in the 30 or so AMOTs living here… Maybe AMSHALE-1 will help clear things up when he joins us.”

    KUsomething:

    “I don’t think we will be seeing him here, he seems to have gotten most of his shit together… I doubt he would even speak to me anyway, after getting shot at and all…”

    WOsomething:

    “Well, I can think of only a few others who might be soon joining us. Hopefully, they won’t blame us like the others do.”

    KUsomething:

    “Man it’s hot!”

    Introduction

    In 2013, just before the fiftieth anniversary of JFK’s assassination, this author completed a study on how North American history books describe the JFK assassination and how their authors justify their writings. The most distributed books overwhelmingly portrayed the crime as one perpetrated by a lone nut, and their key sources are the Warren Commission along with a few authors who re-enforce this notion.

    After corresponding with the historians, it became clear that almost all were unfamiliar, if not completely unaware, of critical information that came out in the half-century that followed. Many of the post-Warren Commission sources cannot simply be fluffed off as conspiracy theorist machinations. These include five subsequent government investigations; one civil trial; a number of mock trials; three foreign governments’ analysis of the assassination; and some groundbreaking work by a number of dedicated, independent researchers.

    In a subsequent article, it was demonstrated that most government investigations that followed (and therefore should have trumped) the Warren Commission, as well as the only civil trial about the case, proved that a conspiracy took place and that the Warren Commission hardly even investigated this possibility.

    When one considers the written conclusions from many of the reports, jury decisions and comments from investigation insiders, which contradict the Warren Commission report, it is clear that many of these historians were in breach of their own code of conduct by woefully disrespecting the official record. Furthermore, they showed no effort in following the proper historical research methodology that can be summarized as follows:

    1. Identification of the research problem (including formulation of the hypothesis/questions);
    2. Systematic collection and evaluation of data;
    3. Synthesis of information;
    4. Interpreting and drawing conclusions.

    By stopping all research beyond the obsolete Warren Commission report and limiting themselves to a few discredited authors, historians never made it to step two in their work. In fact, the impeaching of the Warren Commission by both the Church Committee and the HSCA should have stimulated investigators, journalists and historians to start anew with one of the hypotheses being that there was a probable conspiracy.

    Over and above underscoring historians’ ignorance of the work of their own institutions, this author sought to contribute to the data collection step in the research by analyzing previous plots to assassinate JFK and bringing out patterns that should have been impossible to ignore and that clearly pointed the finger at persons of interest in the case. In a fourth article, Oswald’s touch-points with some sixty-four plausible or definite intelligence-connected characters (since updated to seventy-five) underscored the Warren Commission’s hopelessly inaccurate and simplistic description of him as a lone malcontent.

    Another source of valuable information that historians are oblivious to comes from what foreign governments knew about the conspiracy. Cuba in particular was very motivated to monitor many of the persons of interest in the Kennedy assassination; for them their survival was at stake!

    Gaeton Fonzi, as an investigator for both the Church Committee and the HSCA, was perhaps the first to sink his teeth into the confusing world of Cuban exiles who were involved in plots to remove Castro. This allowed him to better connect the dots with CIA and Mafia forces that were influencing them. In doing so, researchers who were effective in disproving Warren Commission conclusions would now be better prepared to identify the plotters. Malcolm Blunt, John Newman, Bill Simpich and others began deciphering CIA cryptonym codes related to a hornet’s nest of secrets and covert operations that Allen Dulles kept hidden from his Warren Commission colleagues. In doing so, he deprived them of crucial information that could well have brought the spotlights right back on him.

    On the Mary Ferrell Foundation website, we can now find a database of CIA cryptonyms and pseudonyms carefully designed to designate people, organizations, operations and countries. For example, cryptonyms that begin with the letters AE relate to Soviet Union sources, in particular defectors and agents, and those that start with LI refer to operations, organizations, and individuals related to Mexico City. The category, which has by far the most cryptonyms, is the one that starts with the letters AM, which were used for protecting the identity of operations, organizations, and individuals relating to Cuba. As we will see, an impressive number of crypto-coded jargon revolves around the world of Oswald and the Big Event.

    In this article, we will: first, assess what some foreign intelligence services concluded about the assassination; second, explore how seemingly different factions came together to form one of America’s most ruthless team of covert operators, assassins, saboteurs and terrorists that wreaked havoc abroad and on American soil for decades; third, describe the make-up and some of the covert actions of what the Cubans called The CIA and Mafia’s “Cuban American Mechanism”; and finally, see how this obscure, misunderstood entity came to play a role on November 22, 1963.

    France, Russia and Cuba nix the Warren Commission report

    It is important to preface this section by recognizing that the quality of foreign government data is sometimes difficult to evaluate. Some would argue, perhaps rightly, that it does not always come with primary source information, that the data is old and that there could be hidden biases. On the other hand, we will see that foreign intelligence also had different sources that would logically have been well connected and positioned to observe the goings-on in and around the persons of interest, including Oswald himself; that they may in fact have had fewer biases than those controlling U.S. investigations; and that their research is much more recent than the sources lone-nut backers rely upon. As a matter of fact, Cuban analysis takes into account key ARRB declassified documentary trails that Warren Commission backers’ hero Gerald Posner could not do when he wrote Case Closed just before the ARRB vaults of classified documents were opening. In an open-ended investigation, not looking into what these sources can reveal is simply derelict.

    It was not only foreigners who suspected foul play the minute Ruby terminated Oswald; dark thoughts were omnipresent in the U.S. The very first media reactions clearly indicated that Oswald was bumped off in order to seal his lips.

    In an article written for the Washington Post, and published one month after the assassination, former president Harry Truman, who had established the CIA in 1947, opined that the CIA was basically out of control:

    For some time I have been disturbed by the way the CIA has been diverted from its original assignment… This quiet intelligence arm of the President has been so removed from its intended role that it is being interpreted as a symbol of sinister and mysterious foreign intrigue– and subject for cold war enemy propaganda.

    He said the CIA’s “operational duties … should be terminated.” Allen Dulles, then sitting on the Warren Commission, tried unsuccessfully to get Truman to retract the story. Some have speculated that the timing of the writing of this article was linked to the assassination.

    Shortly after the media congratulations greeted the Warren Commission Report release, valiant independent researchers such as Vincent Salandria, Penn Jones, Sylvia Meagher and Mark Lane played key roles in debunking it. Some foreign governments were also forming their own opinions about what really took place.

    Neither Jackie Kennedy nor Bobby Kennedy believed the Warren Commission, nor did they trust U.S. intelligence to find the underlying cause of what really happened. According to the late William Turner and Jim Garrison investigator Steve Jaffe, they received information from French intelligence, which had monitored Cuban exiles and right-wing targets in the U.S. (perhaps because they felt some of the attempts on De Gaulle’s life stemmed from the U.S.). They reported that the president had been killed by a large rightwing domestic conspiracy.

    As for the Russian reaction to the JFK assassination, the most recent ARRB releases leave no doubt about where they stood on the matter. In 2017, a CIA note describing Nikita Khrushchev’s feelings about the assassination was declassified. It revealed a May 1964 conversation between the Soviet leader and reporter Drew Pearson, where the head of state said he did not believe American security was so “inept” that Kennedy was killed without a conspiracy. Khrushchev believed the Dallas Police Department to be an “accessory” to the assassination. The CIA source “got the impression that Chairman Khrushchev had some dark thoughts about the American Right Wing being behind this conspiracy.” When Pearson said that Oswald and Ruby both were, “mad” and “acted on his own … Khrushchev said flatly that he did not believe this.”

    The research community also gained access to a J. Edgar Hoover memo sent to Marvin Watson, Special Assistant to the President on December 2, 1966, which described what Russian intelligence believed about the murder:

    The Memo also adds this explosive point made after two years of Russian intelligence efforts that had been intended for internal use only:

    We can safely guess that this only hardened Khrushchev’s opinions.

    When interviewed by NBC’s Megyn Kelly in 2017, Vladimir Putin stated, “There is a theory that Kennedy’s assassination was arranged by the United States intelligence services,” Putin told Kelly. “So if this theory is correct, and that can’t be ruled out, then what could be easier in this day and age than using all the technical means at the disposal of the intelligence services and using those means to organize some attacks, and then pointing the finger at Russia?”

    Though one can question his motives, there is no doubt that the ex-lieutenant colonel in the KGB had easy access to the intelligence on which he could base such a tantalizing statement.

    The most vocal foreign leader about the assassination was Fidel Castro.

    The Cuban leader was perhaps the first person to remark publicly that something was awry in the JFK case. He learned of the assassination on the day it happened while engaging in diplomatic discussions with one of JFK’s secret envoys, a French journalist named Jean Daniel. Immediately upon getting the news, Castro remarked to his visitor: “This is an end to your mission of peace. Everything is changed.” Later Castro commented: “Now they will have to find the assassin quickly, but very quickly, otherwise, you watch and see, I know them, they will try to put the blame on us for this thing.” A day later, after frantically following all the cables about the subject, the early ones linking Oswald to pro-Communist and Cuban interests, he felt it confirmed a plot to blame him so as to give the U.S. the excuse it needed to invade his country.

    Cuba was plunged into crisis-mode, the overthrow of the Island was already a clear and present danger and it would be under assault for decades. Its security and intelligence forces went into even higher gear. Among them, some Cuban exiles in the U.S. who had access to privileged information on plots to remove Castro, which intersected with the one to remove Kennedy— perceived to be the biggest roadblock into regaining an empire to be plundered once again by ruthless opportunists.

    The hit team: Was it a mosaic of diverse groups and organizations, or a well-tuned, synchronized network?

    One of the biggest problems researchers have in convincing skeptical audiences that there was, in fact, a large-scale conspiracy behind the coup d’état is that the involvement of so many different factions would have been too complex to pull off. In fact, here is what two historians remarked in their correspondence with me when I challenged their writings:

    • Was it Cubans, the CIA, the Mafia, Lyndon Johnson, the Federal Reserve . . . many of the villains contradict each other?
    • I’m always reminded of the headline in the comedy newspaper, The Onion, which read something like: JFK ASSASSINATED BY CIA, FBI, KGB, MAFIA, LBJ, OSWALD, RUBY, IRS, DEA, DEPT OF ED, DEPT. OF COMMERCE AND MORE! That about sums up the feeling from professional historians about those proposing we rethink the JFK assassination.

    Of course, it would have helped to ask who the persons and groups of interest were. Something the Cubans did. Out of all the foreign governments that looked into the assassination, Cuban intelligence efforts were the most persistent and the best connected. Their findings were eventually revealed. Thanks to some of their writings and exchanges with serious assassination researchers, we can better understand how interrelated some of the suspects were before, during and after the assassination. Their stories begin in the early part of the twentieth century.

    Cuba pre-revolution: Enrique Cirules, The Mafia in Havana, a Caribbean Mob story, 2010

    Enrique Cirules (1938 – 18 December 2016) was a Cuban writer. His books include Conversation with the last American (1973), The Other War (1980), The Saga of La Gloria City (1983) Bluefields (1986), Ernest Hemingway in the Romano Archipelago (1999) The Secret life of Meyer Lansky in Havana (2006) and Santa Clara Santa (2006).
    Enrique Cirules  

    His The Mafia in Havana won the Literary Critic’s Award in 1994, and its 2010 edition is the basis for most of this section.

    This book goes significantly farther than what its title suggests, as it chronicles how a network of imperialist-exploiters from 1930 to the revolution in 1959 plundered the Island. It sheds light on how the foursome of the Mafia, U.S. intelligence, Captains of U.S. industry and the Cuban elite ran a rigged system with an invisible government pulling the strings using Cuban figureheads for the benefit of so few.

    The Mafia actually began running alcohol in Cuba in the early 1920s; however, the creation of a large criminal empire began in 1933 when Lucky Luciano tasked Meyer Lansky, the top Mafia financier, to begin a relationship with Fulgencio Batista who by then controlled Cuba’s Armed Forces. Batista used this position to influence Cuban presidents until he was elected president in 1940 and would go on to become a long-lasting American puppet dictator who made off with some 300 million dollars by the time he was forced to leave as Castro and his band of rebels were closing in on Havana.

    Cuba was an ideal location for the Mafia: only ninety miles off U.S. shores, virgin territory, with neither laws nor taxes to worry about, and Cuban leaders in their pockets. For a long time the Mafia operations were organized under Lansky who was the number one chieftain in Cuba, drug tsar Santo Trafficante Sr., Amadeo Barletta, and Amletto Batisti who actually established a bank to finance his Mafia interests. By the 1940s, the Mafia was careful to select Cuban nationals to participate in their operations. One wealthy Cuban who did well under this regime was Julio Lobo (AMEMBER-1) who was an important player in the sugar and banking industries. He also connects well with some of the Cubans of interest in the JFK assassination.

    By the end of World War II, the Mafia controlled casinos, prostitution, and the drug trade. Cuba was a stopping point for heroin destined to the U.S. and a key market for cocaine. They also began taking over banks they used to finance shady deals, get their hands on Cuban subsidies and launder Cuban and U.S. based rackets. At around the same time they took over important parts of the media. Trafficante even began training undercover agents within Cuban political groups. Barletta at one point was the sole representative of General Motors in Cuba. He also owned media outlets and many businesses.

    By far the most powerful of the foursome was Lansky, who is said to have been aware of everything that went on in Cuba. He intimidated all the leaders, including Batista. Lansky always kept a low profile, but he was well known by all the power brokers and key operators who governed the country. He was suspected of having maneuvered to block his ex-boss Luciano from gaining entry on the Island after his expulsion from the U.S. His high rank in the pecking order could be seen by his refusal to allow credit to the Vice-President of the republic in one of the casinos, his snubbing of the Minister of the Interior who sought to exchange greetings with him and by even pressuring Batista himself into protecting Mafia-friendly policies. An invisible government was now in charge of Cuba where profits of the Mafia empire were greater than the rest of the Cuban economy.

    By 1956, other U.S. mobsters, including Sam Giancana and Carlos Marcello, wanted in, which led to a bloody mob battle in the U.S. coined the Havana Wars.

    U.S. industry leaders took their share of the spoils as the Rockefellers used their banks to quickly take over large segments of the economy in the early 1930s. By the 1950s, Rockefeller interests owned much of the sugar, livestock and mining industries.

    Where one could find American imperialism thriving, not far away was Sullivan & Cromwell, the leading international lawyer/lobbyists of the era who joined their clients on Cuban soil and opened doors for others like the Schroeder Bank. Through the Dulles brothers, who were partners in the firm, the symbiosis with U.S. intelligence and government was ensured as John Foster Dulles later became Secretary of State and Allen Dulles would go on to head the CIA.

    The free reign in Cuba could not have worked without the efforts of U.S. intelligence, who became the gatekeepers of the Island as early as 1902 when they infiltrated the Cuban military. By the 1930s, they were using Mafiosi, journalists, lawyers, businessmen, politicians all over the Island. During the war years, Franklin Roosevelt became alarmed by the trend towards Marxism and was particularly worried about Cuba. The key diplomat he designated to ensure that Batista would squash any rebellion was no other than Meyer Lansky, because of his excellent relations with the dictator.

    Fearing a revolt, the U.S. took steps to fake a demonstration of democracy to give the Cuban people the impression that they had a voice. They convinced Batista to call an election in 1944 that the U.S. rigged to place another puppet, Doctor Ramon Martin (AMCOG-3), in power. The new leader could not take two steps without a Batista henchman breathing down his neck. During this era, Carlos Prío would have a stint as prime minister while Tony Varona was second in command—both of whom would go on to become key leaders of Cuban exiles in Miami. The invisible government later created a crisis around these political leaders so that Batista could come back in 1952 and save the day—so many smoke screens all marketed to the populace as a showcase of democracy by the Mafia and CIA-run media.

    By 1955, when a rebellion threat was growing again, Lyman Kirkpatrick, inspector general of the CIA, was making repeated trips to Cuba to help Batista, who had been scouted by the U.S. in the early 1940s. Cirules produced a letter from Allen Dulles to Batista where he reminds him of their recent meeting and the decision to have the new head of the Bureau of Repression of Communist Activities, General Tamayo, come to Washington to receive special training.

    In 1958, Castro took over and the Imperialist-Finance-Intelligence-Mafia network was forced out with many of their Cuban protégées. But not without a futile last stand from Tony Varona, who haplessly tried to lead the police forces.

    As we will see, many of the persons of interest in the JFK assassination did not just join forces sometime around 1962 to develop a plot to remove JFK. They were part of a well-connected network of very cunning people in existence for many years, if not decades, who desperately shared the same goal to regain their former power and wealth, who were very secretive, who planned the removal of Castro and who came to see JFK as an obstacle and a traitor. For some of them, their obsessions and their violence persisted for decades.

    Journalists and historians never asked themselves who these people whose names kept popping up from deep event to deep event were. If they had looked into their backgrounds, they would have discovered a ruthless cast of characters, who were linked to the Mafia and/or intelligence and/or U.S. imperialist forces and/or the Cuban elite. This network, which scattered away from Cuba in 1958, would quickly coalesce again in Miami and spread to New Orleans, Dallas and other American cities. What followed was an onslaught of assassination attempts against Castro, acts of terrorism that would span 40 years and a regime change in the U.S. on November 22, 1963, during lunchtime in full public view on a sunny day.

    American style state-sponsored terrorism

    The network of many of the persons of interest in the JFK assassination had its origins some thirty years before the revolution, and while many faces changed over time, the gangs lived on for decades with a moral compass that was pointed towards hell.

    Before discussing this partnership and Dealey Plaza, it is worth underscoring the forty years of fury unleashed on Cuba, and its friends, in the form of covert action according to the perpetrators, terrorist acts according to the victims. We will let the reader decide. The following is a partial list:

    • In March 1960, the Belgian steamship La Courbe loaded with grenades was blown up in Havana, killing 101 and injuring over 200;
    • In 1961, a volunteer teacher and a peasant were captured and tortured to death;
    • Also in 1961, explosives in cigarette packages were used to blow up a store;
    • In 1962, the Romero farming family were murdered by counter-revolutionaries;
    • In 1964, a Spanish supply ship was attacked;
    • In 1965, led by Orlando Bosch, terrorists bombed sugar cane crops;
    • In 1970, two fishing vessels were hijacked and their crews of 12 kidnapped;
    • In 1981, dengue fever broke out in Cuba killing 151 people, including 101 children; terrorist Eduardo Arocena admitted to the crime in a federal court in New York;
    • In 1994, terrorists from Miami entered Cuba and murdered a Cuban citizen;
    • In 1997, explosives were detonated in the Copacabana, killing an Italian tourist;
    • In 2003, the Cuban vessel Cabo Corriente was hijacked.

    The targets were not only confined to Cuban territory:

    • During the years that followed the revolution, British, Soviet and Spanish ships carrying merchandise to and from Cuba were attacked;
    • In 1972, Cuban exiles blew up a floor where there was a Cuban trade mission in Montreal killing one person;
    • In 1974, Orlando Bosch admitted sending letter bombs to Cuban embassies in Lima, Madrid and Ottawa;
    • The terrorists were particularly active in 1976: explosions were set off in the Cuban embassy in Madrid and the offices of a Cuban aviation company; two Cuban diplomats were kidnapped, tortured and assassinated; two other Cuban diplomats were murdered in Lisbon; a bomb exploded in a suitcase just before being put on a Cuban airline in Jamaica; terrorists downed a Cuban airliner that had departed from Barbados, killing all 73 aboard.

    Even U.S. soil was fair game for the terrorist cells:

    • In 1975, a Cuban moderate living in Miami was shot and killed;
    • Cuban diplomats were killed in New Jersey and New York City in 1979 and 1980;
    • In 1979, a TWA plane was targeted, but the bomb went off in a suitcase before departure.

    Overall, Cuba counted 3500 who died and 2000 who were injured because of these acts of aggression to go along with billions of dollars in damage.

    The terrorists, who had become full-fledged Americans, were well known to authorities but acted with impunity:

    • Orlando Bosch (AMDITTO-23) told the Miami press that “if we had the resources, Cuba would burn from one end to the other.”
    • There was not much remorse if we base ourselves on what Guillermo Novo Sampol had to say after a Cuban airline exploded in midflight, killing 73 passengers: “When Cuba pilots, diplomats or members of their family die—this always makes me happy.”
    • Convicted terrorist Luis Posada Carilles (AMCLEVE-15) confirmed in a New York Times interview that they had received training in the use of explosives by the CIA.

    Fabian Escalante’s investigation

    Fabian Escalante joined the Department of State Security in 1959. Escalante was head of a counter-intelligence unit and also part of a team investigating a CIA operation called Sentinels of Liberty, an attempt to recruit Cubans willing to work against Castro. At the request of the U.S., he presented the HSCA with a report on Cuban findings about the JFK assassination that was never published by the committee because of some of the information it contained. He is recognized as a leading authority on the CIA in Cuba and Latin America.
    Fabian Escalante  

    Some of his critics state that he seems to base most of his analysis on the work of American researchers and that he is biased. In his defense, it is important to note that very few American investigators have gone through as much committee-based research as Escalante. While it is true that some of his sources like Tosh Plumlee and Chuck Giancana are not convincing for many, he himself tempers his observations by often emphasizing that more research should be done to follow-up on leads ignored by U.S. media and intelligence. His exchanges with people like Dick Russell and Gaeton Fonzi helped push the analysis forward. As we will see, some of his insights certainly go an awful lot farther than what we can see on CNN. In the following sections, we will look at Escalante’s work, which will be at times bolstered by findings from other sources that dovetail with his analysis.

    Cuban intelligence, though lacking in structure during the days that followed the revolution, had privileged access to informants in the U.S. and Cuba who at times penetrated exile groups in the U.S. and their antennas on the Island. They also captured combatants who revealed secrets they kept about the assassination. Furthermore, they were able to obtain information from their Russian counterparts. Finally, they kept abreast of all U.S. research in the subject to a degree far superior to what historians or mainstream media ever did. By 1965, a Cuban spy, Juan Felaifel Canahan, had infiltrated CIA special missions groups in Miami and won Cuban exile leader Manuel Artime’s confidence. Artime was involved in the plot to assassinate Castro code-named AMLASH, which brought together the CIA, Mafia, and Cuban exiles in the master plan. It was only after 1975, after the publication of a Church Committee report, that they suspected that this partnership was behind the assassination of JFK.

    In 1993, during his retirement, after launching a security studies center, he again put together all the pieces of the puzzle he could put his hands on. His research would be enriched by ARRB releases. Even Escalante admits that he does not have full access to all the Cuban files, but what he does know is worth listening to.

    In 1995 Wayne Smith, chief of the Centre for International Policy in Washington, arranged a meeting on the assassination of John F. Kennedy, in Nassau, Bahamas. Others in attendance were: Gaeton Fonzi, Dick Russell, Noel Twyman, Anthony Summers, Peter Dale Scott, John M. Newman, Jeremy Gunn, John Judge, Andy Kolis, Peter Kornbluh, Mary and Ray LaFontaine, Jim Lesar, Russ Swickard, Ed Sherry, and Gordon Winslow. In 2006, his book analyzing the assassination, JFK: The Cuba Files, was published. While some of Cuba’s sources are deemed contestable by some reputable researchers, it is clear that they had access to sources that not even the FBI could have tapped. Their findings may not be perfect but they certainly are more fact-based and up to date than anything a historian will find in the Warren Commission report.

    The network factions

    In JFK: The Cuba Files, Escalante describes how the departure of Cuban exiles, CIA operators and Mafiosi from the Island, where they had originally joined forces, gave birth to what he called the CIA and Mafia’s “Cuban American Mechanism”. Its members were based mostly in Miami and were trained to do a lot of the dirty work to get their empire back in a manner that was plausibly deniable by their supervisors.

    Most researchers are aware of the influence the business elite had on U.S. foreign policy. It is now fully accepted that regime change in the 1950s in the Middle East was for the benefit of U.S. and British oil magnates, and the removal of Arbenz in Guatemala was asked for by United Fruit and made good on by Dulles and a cadre of CIA officers who mastered the art of delivering a coup. Many of these specialists were involved in covert actions against Cuba and some became persons of interest in the JFK assassination.

    Escalante demonstrates the importance of the corporate elite in dictating U.S. policy by quoting a statement made by Roy Robottom, Assistant Undersecretary of State for Hemispheric Affairs: “… In June 1959 we had taken the decision that it was not possible to achieve our objectives with Castro in power … In July and August, we had been drawing up a program to replace Castro. However, certain companies in the United States informed us during that period that they were achieving some progress in negotiations, a factor that led to a delay …” By the end of 1959, J.C. King, head of the CIA’s Western Hemisphere Division, recommended the assassination of Castro. In March 1960, Eisenhower approved the overthrow under a project codenamed Pluto.

    The Mechanism assumed a life of its own after the failed Bay of Pigs in 1962, and held JFK responsible for the debacle.

    Structuring the Cuban exiles

    The author describes how “venal officials, torturers, and killers from the Batista Regime fled Cuba and sought refuge in the United States” to escape justice in Cuba, and began forming groups with an eye to re-taking the Island. In this chaos, the Mafia, the CIA, and the U.S. State Department would quickly aid them. This is what also gave birth to the Miami Cuban Mafia. Some of the prominent leaders were of course Batista puppets, including Carlos Prío Socarrás, who was President of Cuba from 1948-52, and Tony Varona, who was Vice President under Prío, also a Mafia associate. They led the Revolutionary Democratic Front (FRD) (AMCIGAR), an umbrella group for hundreds of smaller groups. The FRD was eventually replaced by the Cuban Revolutionary Council (CRC) (AMBUD) which was conceived by the CIA as a government in waiting.

    The command structure of the Cuban exiles was focused at first on the Bay of Pigs invasion. After this fiasco, in 1961, the management of the Cuban exiles centered on acts of sabotage and terrorism under the Operation Mongoose program led by Edward Lansdale and William Harvey. Harvey was later exiled to Rome after almost messing up the delicate Missile Crisis negotiations when he intensified covert actions against Cuba.

    In the early 1960s, JMWAVE in Miami became the largest CIA station with over 400 agents overseeing some 4000 Cuban exile assets, Mafia partnerships and soldiers of fortune. The Cuban exile counter-revolutionary organizations were so numerous (over 400) and weirdly connected that Richard Helms of the CIA had to send Bobby Kennedy a handbook to explain the situation. Some groups were more political in nature, others military. Many had antennas in Cuba.

    The handbook describes the unstable structure as follows:

    Counter-revolutionary organizations are in fact sponsored by Cuban intelligence services for the purpose of infiltrating “unities” creating provocations, collecting bona fide resistance members into their racks and taking executive action against them. It is possible that the alleged “uprising” on August 1962, which resulted in the well-nigh final declination of the resistance ranks, was the result of just such G-2 activities.Guerrilla and sabotage activities have been further reduced by lack of external support and scarcity of qualified leadership. Exile leaders continue to hold meetings, to organize to expound plans of liberation, and to criticize the United States “do nothing policy.”But it is the exceptional refugee leader who has the selflessness to relinquish status of leadership of his organization or himself by integrating into a single strong unified and effective body. “Unidades” and “Juntas” are continually being created to compete with one another for membership and U. S. financial support. They print impressive lists of member movements, which in many instances are only “pocket” or paper groups. Individuals appear to leadership roles in several or more movements simultaneously, indicating either a system of interlocking directorates or pure opportunism.

    In order to place in perspective the hundreds of counter-revolutionary groups treated herein, it is necessary to understand the highly publicized CRCConsejo Revolucionario Cubano—Cuban Revolutionary Council). The CRC is not included in the body of this handbook because it is not actually a counter-revolutionary group, but rather a superstructure, which sits atop all the groups willing to follow its direction and guidance in exchange for their portions of U. S. support for which the CRC is the principal channel.

    The CRC was originally known as the FRD (Frente Revolucionary Democratica) and was not officially called CRC or Consejo until the fall of 1961.The Consejo has always been beset with factionalism and internal dissension. It and its leader Dr. Jose Miro Cardona have been continually criticized by Cuban exile leaders for a “do nothing” policy. The CRC does not participate in activities within Cuba but acts as a coordinating body for member organizations. It has delegations in each Latin American country as well as in France and Spain. Besides the main office located in Miami, it has offices in Washington, New York, and New Orleans. CRC gives financial support to member groups for salaries, administrative expenses and possible underground activities in Cuba.

    The following is a list of the groups (the handbook gives additional information on each group-membership numbers in U.S. and Cuba, key members, year of foundation etc.):

    Part I: Leading Organizations [7 groups]

    1. Movimiento Revolucionario 30 de Noviembre – 30 Nov, MRTN, M-30-11 — 30 November Revolutionary Movement
    2. Movimiento de Recuperacion Revolucionario – MRR — Movement for Revolutionary Recovery
    3. Unidad Revolucionaria – U. R., Unidad — Revolutionary Unity
    4. Directorio Revolucionario Estudiantil D.R.E. — Students Revolutionary Directorate (DRE) (
    5. Rescate Democratico Revolucionario RDR — Revolutionary Democratic Rescue
    6. Movimiento Revolucionario del Pueblo — Revolutionary Movement of the People
    7. Movimiento Democrata Cristiano MDC — Christian Democrat Movement

    Part II describes those organizations currently judged to be above average in importance. [52 groups]. See appendix 1 (note: in this author’s opinion Alpha 66 in this group became very important).

    Part III describes those judged to be of little apparent value, paper organizations, or small disgruntled factions.

    The CIA ensured funding to the tune of $3 million a year according to CIA operative E. Howard Hunt. U.S. militia forces recruited some of the other Cuban exiles. Two CIA stations were key in the destabilization efforts: one in Mexico City, where David Phillips played a key role; the other in Madrid, headed by James Noel. Both spies were very active in Cuba before the revolution.

    Captain Bradley Ayers trained commandos. Training grounds could be found in Florida and near New Orleans, where Guy Banister, David Phillips, and David Ferrie were seen in the company of Cuban exiles and soldiers of fortune. According to Escalante, the Mafia, represented by John Roselli, exercised control as an executive and got involved as a supplier of weaponry. The Mafia could even count on CIA watercraft to bring in narcotics and arms. Finally, as Escalante continues, organizations created by private citizens interested in freeing “Cuba” popped up in various cities seeking additional and illegal funds for the huge cost of the operation and lobbying effort. Escalante cites as examples: in his native Texas, George H. W. Bush as one of those “outstanding Americans”, along with Admiral Arleigh Burke and his Committee for a Free Cuba; and in New Orleans, there was the Friends of Democratic Cuba.

    A repressive police and intelligence apparatus, called Operation 40, was formed to cleanse captured territories of communists and other adversaries. Mercenaries like Gerry Patrick Hemming, through his group called Interpen, and Frank Sturgis and his International Anticommunist Brigade, offered their services for waging the secret war. Private citizens and corporations joined the Mafia by getting involved in financing operations and launching NGOs such as the Friends of Democratic Cuba in New Orleans, located at 544 Camp Street. Here, Lee Harvey Oswald would eventually set up his Fair Play for Cuba Committee office and hob-nob with Cuban exiles he was supposedly at odds with.

    Operation Tilt, undertaken in 1963, and sponsored by Clare Boothe Luce (Life Magazine) and William Pawley (QDDALE), who were two close friends of Allen Dulles, is a clear example of how big business, Mafia, Cuban exiles and intelligence teamed up on an anti-Castro mission that went against JFK policy. Described by Gaeton Fonzi, among others, the scheme can only be seen as reckless and quasi-treasonous. In the winter of 1962, Eddie Bayo (Eduardo Perez) claimed that two officers in the Red Army based in Cuba wanted to defect to the United States. Bayo added that these men wanted to pass on details about atomic warheads and missiles that were still in Cuba despite the agreement that followed the Cuban Missile Crisis. Bayo’s story was eventually taken up by several members of the anti-Castro community, including Nathaniel Weyl, William Pawley, Gerry P. Hemming, John Martino, Felipe Vidal Santiago and Frank Sturgis. Pawley became convinced that it was vitally important to help get these Soviet officers out of Cuba. William Pawley contacted Ted Shackley at JMWAVE. Shackley decided to help Pawley organize what became known as Operation Tilt or the Bayo-Pawley Mission. He also assigned Rip Robertson, a fellow member of the CIA in Miami, to help with the operation. David Sanchez Morales, another CIA agent, also became involved in this attempt to bring out these two Soviet officers.

    On June 8, 1963, a small group, including William Pawley, Eddie Bayo, Rip Robertson, Virgilio Gonzalez, Eugenio Martinez, John Martino. Richard Billings and Terry Spencer, a journalist and photographer working for Life Magazine, boarded a CIA flying boat. After landing off Baracoa, Bayo and his men got into a 22-foot craft and headed for the Cuban shore. The plan was to pick them up with the Soviet officers two days later. However, Bayo and his men were never seen again. It was rumored that he had been captured and executed. However, his death was never reported in the Cuban press.

    William Pawley’s background is particularly revealing. Gaeton Fonzi points out in his book, The Last Investigation: “Pawley had also owned major sugar interests in Cuba, as well as Havana’s bus, trolley and gas systems and he was close to both pre-Castro Cuban rulers, President Carlos Prío and General Fulgencio Batista.” (Pawley was one of the dispossessed American investors in Cuba who early on tried to convince Eisenhower that Castro was a Communist and urged him to arm the exiles in Miami.)

    Lee Harvey Oswald and the subterfuge according to Escalante

    Like most Americans, the Cubans found Oswald’s murder by a nightclub owner in the basement of the Dallas Police headquarters simply too convenient. His immediate portrayal as communist and pro-Castro made them strongly suspect that this was all a ruse to attack Cuba.

    Within days of the assassination, Castro stated the following: “ … It just so happened that in such an unthinkable thing as the assassination a guilty party should immediately appear; what a coincidence, he (Oswald) had gone to Russia, and what a coincidence, he was associated with FPCC! That is what they began to say … It just so happens that these incidents are taking place precisely at a time when Kennedy was under heavy attack by those who felt his Cuba policy was weak …”

    When Escalante analyzed all they could find on Oswald (post-assassination cryptonym: GPFLOOR), he was led to the following hypothesis:

    1. Oswald was an agent of the U.S. intelligence service, infiltrated into the Soviet Union to fulfill a mission.
    2. On his return, he continued to work for U.S. security services.
    3. Oswald moved to New Orleans in April 1963 and formed links with Cuban organizations and exiles.
    4. In New Orleans, Oswald received instructions to convert himself into a sympathizer with the Cuban Revolution.
    5. Between July and September 1963, Oswald created evidence that he was part of a Cuba-related conspiracy.
    6. In the fall of 1963, Oswald met with a CIA officer and an agent of Cuban origin in Dallas, Texas, to plan a covert operation related to Cuba.
    7. In September 1963, Oswald met with the Dallas Alpha 66 group and tried to compromise Cuban exile Silvia Odio.
    8. Oswald attempted to travel to Cuba from Mexico.
    9. Oswald was to receive compromising correspondence from Havana linking him to the Cuban intelligence service.
    10. The mass media, directed by the CIA and Mafia’s “Cuban American Mechanism,” was primed to unleash a far-reaching campaign to demonstrate to the U.S. public that Cuba and Fidel Castro were responsible for the assassination.

    Through his investigation, he found evidence of the parallel nature of plans of aggression against Cuba and the assassination of Kennedy. The Cubans simply found that there were too many anti-Castro Cuban exiles in Oswald’s realm, suggesting a role in a sheep dipping operation. They show that his history as a provocateur in his pre-Russia infiltration days was similar to his actions in New Orleans, and that James Wilcott, a former CIA officer in Japan, testified to the HSCA that “ … Oswald was recruited from the military division with the evident objective of turning him into a double agent against the Soviet Union …” Escalante also received material on Oswald in 1977 from their KGB representative in Cuba, Major General Piotr Voronin. Then, in 1989, while in the Soviet Union, he met up with Pavel Iatskov, colonel of the first Directorate of the KGB, who had been in Mexico City during Oswald’s visit.

    Iatskov stated the following: “At the end of the 1970s, when the investigation into the Kennedy assassination was reopened, I was in Moscow, and at one point … one of the high-ranking officers from my directorate … commented that Oswald had been a U.S. intelligence agent and that his defection to the Soviet Union was intended as an active step to disrupt the growing climate of détente …” They speculated that Oswald was there to lend a blow to Eisenhower’s peace endeavors by giving away U-2 military secrets, which dovetailed into the downing of Gary Powers a few short weeks before a crucial Eisenhower/ Khrushchev summit.

    It was through some of their intelligence sources in the U.S. that the Cubans found out about the formation of the Friends of Democratic Cuba and its location in the famous Camp Street address. They identified Sergio Arcacha Smith, Carlos Bringuier and Frank Bartes as exiles who were often there and who were visited by Orlando Bosch, Tony Cuesta, Antonio Veciana, Luis Posada Carilles, Eladio del Valle, Manual Salvat, and others. This same source recognized Oswald as someone who was in a safe house in Miami in mid-1963. Escalante believes that Oswald did in fact visit Mexico City with the intention to try to get into Cuba, to push the incrimination of Castro even further.

    Letters from Cuba to Oswald—proof of pre-knowledge of the assassination

    In JFK: the Cuba Files, a thorough analysis of five bizarre letters that were written before the assassination in order to position Oswald as a Castro asset is presented. It is difficult to sidestep them the way the FBI did. The FBI argued that they were all typed from the same typewriter, yet supposedly sent by different people. Which indicated to them that it was a hoax, perhaps perpetrated by Cubans wanting to encourage a U.S. invasion.

    However, the content of the letters and timeline prove something far more sinister according to Cuban intelligence. The following is how John Simkin summarizes the evidence:

    The G-2 had a letter, signed by Jorge that had been sent from Havana to Lee Harvey Oswald on 14th November, 1963. It had been found when a fire broke out on 23rd November in a sorting office. “After the fire, an employee who was checking the mail in order to offer, where possible, apologies to the addressees of destroyed mail, and to forward the rest, found an envelope addressed to Lee Harvey Oswald.” It is franked on the day Oswald was arrested and the writer refers to Oswald’s travels to Mexico, Houston and Florida …, which would have been impossible to know about at that time!

    It incriminates Oswald in the following passage: “I am informing you that the matter you talked to me about the last time that I was in Mexico would be a perfect plan and would weaken the politics of that braggart Kennedy, although much discretion is needed because you know that there are counter-revolutionaries over there who are working for the CIA.”

    Escalante informed the HSCA about this letter. When he did this, he discovered that they had four similar letters that had been sent to Oswald. Four of the letters were post-marked “Havana”. It could not be determined where the fifth letter was posted. Four of the letters were signed: Jorge, Pedro Charles, Miguel Galvan Lopez and Mario del Rosario Molina. Two of the letters (Charles & Jorge) are dated before the assassination (10th and 14th November). A third, by Lopez, is dated 27th November, 1963. The other two are undated.

    Cuba is linked to the assassination in all the letters. In two of them an alleged Cuban agent is clearly implicated in having planned the crime. However, the content of the letters, written before the assassination, suggested that the authors were either “a person linked to Oswald or involved in the conspiracy to execute the crime.”

    This included knowledge about Oswald’s links to Dallas, Houston, Miami and Mexico City. The text of the Jorge letter “shows a weak grasp of the Spanish language on the part of its author. It would thus seem to have been written in English and then translated.

    Escalante adds: “It is proven that Oswald was not maintaining correspondence, or any other kind of relations, with anyone in Cuba. Furthermore, those letters arrived at their destination at a precise moment and with a conveniently incriminating message, including that sent to his postal address in Dallas, Texas …. The existence of the letters in 1963 was not publicized or duly investigated, and the FBI argued before the Warren Commission to reject them.”

    Escalante argues: “The letters were fabricated before the assassination occurred and by somebody who was aware of the development of the plot, who could ensure that they arrived at the opportune moment and who had a clandestine base in Cuba from which to undertake the action. Considering the history of the last 40 years, we suppose that only the CIA had such capabilities in Cuba.”

    Jack Ruby’s links to Trafficante

    Escalante is of the opinion that Jack Ruby and Trafficante were acquainted and that Ruby did in fact visit Trafficante when the latter was detained in Cuba in 1959. Here is his rationale:

    1. Ruby’s close friend Louis McWillie ran Trafficante’s Tropicana Casino;
    2. Ruby’s visits to Cuba after accepting invitations from McWillie, coincide with the detention of Trafficante and other Mafiosi;
    3. McWillie told the HSCA that he made various visits to the Tiscornia detention center during Ruby’s visits;
    4. After Ruby’s stays in Miami, he met with Meter Panitz (partner in the Miami gambling syndicate) in Miami. McWillie spoke with Panitz shortly before the visits. Trafficante was a leading gangster in Florida. Ruby kept this hidden from the Warren Commission;
    5. Ruby’s entries and exits logistics dispel any idea that he went to Cuba for vacation purposes;
    6. Ex-gun-runner and Castro friend Robert McKeown told the HSCA that Ruby approached him to try and get Castro to meet him in the hope of getting the release of three prisoners. McKeown also had contacts with Prío before and after the revolution and had met Frank Sturgis;
    7. John Wilson Hudson, a British journalist, was also detained in Tiscornia at the same time as Trafficante (confirmed by Trafficante). Wilson gave information to the U.S. embassy in London recalling an American gangster-type called Ruby had visited Cuba in 1959 and had frequently met an American gangster called Santo. Prison guard Jose Verdecia confirmed the visits of Trafficante by McWillie and Ruby when shown a photo. He also confirmed the presence of a British journalist.

    Operation 40

    “We had been operating a damned Murder Inc. in the Caribbean.”

    ~ President Johnson

    In 1973, after the death of Lyndon Johnson, The Atlantic published an article by a former Johnson speechwriter named Leo Janos. In “The Last Days of the President,” LBJ not only made this stunning statement but also expressed a highly qualified opinion that a conspiracy was behind the murder of JFK: “I never believed that [Lee Harvey] Oswald acted alone, although I can accept that he pulled the trigger.” Johnson thought such a conspiracy had formed in retaliation for U.S. plots to assassinate Fidel Castro; he had found after taking office that the government “had been operating a damned Murder Inc. in the Caribbean.” It is very likely that Johnson garnered this information from reading the CIA Inspector General Report on the plots to kill Castro.

    There is compelling evidence that it is through Operation 40 that some of the assassins that Johnson may have been referring to received their training and guidance. The existence of this brutal organization of hit men was confirmed to the Cuban G-2 by one of the exiles they had captured: “The first news that we have of Operation 40 is a statement made by a mercenary of the Bay of Pigs who was the chief of military intelligence of the invading brigade and whose name was Jose Raul de Varona Gonzalez,” says Escalante in an interview with Jean-Guy Allard:

    In his statement this man said the following: in the month of March, 1961, around the seventh, Mr. Vicente Leon arrived at the base in Guatemala at the head of some 53 men saying that he had been sent by the office of Mr. Joaquin Sanjenis (AMOT-2), Chief of Civilian Intelligence, with a mission he said was called Operation 40. It was a special group that didn’t have anything to do with the brigade and which would go in the rearguard occupying towns and cities. His prime mission was to take over the files of intelligence agencies, public buildings, banks, industries, and capture the heads and leaders in all of the cities and interrogate them. Interrogate them in his own way.

    The individuals who comprised Operation 40 had been selected by Sanjenis in Miami and taken to a nearby farm “where they took some courses and were subjected to a lie detector.” Joaquin Sanjenis was Chief of Police in the time of President Carlos Prío. Recalls Escalante: “I don’t know if he was Chief of the Palace Secret Service but he was very close to Carlos Prío. And, in 1973 he dies under very strange circumstances. He disappears. In Miami, people learn to their surprise—without any prior illness and without any homicidal act—that Sanjenis, who wasn’t that old in ‘73, had died unexpectedly. There was no wake. He was buried in a hurry.”

    Another Escalante source concerning Operation 40 was one of its members and a Watergate burglar: “And after he got out of prison, Eugenio Martinez came to Cuba. Martinez, alias ‘Musculito,’ was penalized for the Watergate scandal and is in prison for a time. And after he gets out of prison—it’s the Carter period, the period of dialogue, in ‘78, there is a different international climate—Eugenio Martinez asks for a contract and one fine day he appears on a boat here … and of course he didn’t make any big statements, he didn’t say much that we didn’t know but he talked about those things, about this Operation 40 group, about what they had done at the Democratic Party headquarters …”

    In the Cuba Files, Escalante underscores a reference to Operation 40 by Lyman Fitzpatrick, CIA Inspector General, in his report on the Bay of Pigs: “…the counter-intelligence and security service which, under close project control, developed into an efficient and valuable unit in support of the FRD, Miami base, and the project program. By mid-March 1961, this security organization comprised 86 employees of whom 37 were trainee case officers, the service having graduated four classes from its own training classes, whose instructor was (censored) police officer. (Probably Joaquin Sanjenis)”

    A memo by Arthur Schlesinger Jr. refers to this organization and its dark mission:

    Schlesinger’s Memo June 9, 1961
    MEMORANDUM FOR MR. RICHARD GOODWIN

    Sam Halper, who has been the Times correspondent in Habana and more recently in Miami, came to see me last week. He has excellent contacts among the Cuban exiles. One of Miro’s comments this morning reminded me that I have been meaning to pass on the following story as told me by Halper. Halper says that CIA set up something called Operation 40 under the direction of a man named (as he recalled) Captain Luis Sanjenis, who was also chief of intelligence. (Could this be the man to whom Miro referred this morning?) It was called Operation 40 because originally only 40 men were involved: later the group was enlarged to 70. The ostensible purpose of Operation 40 was to administer liberated territories in Cuba. But the CIA agent in charge, a man known as Felix, trained the members of the group in methods of third degree interrogation, torture and general terrorism. The liberal Cuban exiles believe that the real purpose of Operation 40 was to “kill Communists” and, after eliminating hard-core Fidelistas, to go on to eliminate first the followers of Ray, then the followers of Varona and finally to set up a right-wing dictatorship, presumably under Artime. Varona fired Sanjenis as chief of intelligence after the landings and appointed a man named Despaign in his place. Sanjenis removed 40 files and set up his own office; the exiles believe that he continues to have CIA support. As for the intelligence operation, the CIA is alleged to have said that, if Varona fired Sanjenis, let Varona pay the bills. Subsequently Sanjenis’s hoods beat up Despaign’s chief aide; and Despaign himself was arrested on a charge of trespassing brought by Sanjenis. The exiles believe that all these things had CIA approval. Halper says that Lt Col Vireia Castro (1820 SW 6th Street, Miami; FR 4 3684) can supply further details. Halper also quotes Bender as having said at one point when someone talked about the Cuban revolution against Castro: “The Cuban Revolution? The Cuban Revolution is something I carry around in my check book. Nice fellows.

    Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.

    Frank Sturgis, one of its members and a Watergate burglar, allegedly told author Mike Canfield: “this assassination group (Operation 40) would upon orders, naturally, assassinate either members of the military or the political parties of the foreign country that you were going to infiltrate, and if necessary some of your own members who were suspected of being foreign agents … We were concentrating strictly in Cuba at that particular time.”

    In November 1977, CIA asset and ex-Sturgis girlfriend, Marita Lorenz gave an interview to the New York Daily News in which she claimed that a group called Operation 40, that included Orlando Bosch and Frank Sturgis, were involved in a conspiracy to kill both John F. Kennedy and Fidel Castro. “She said that they were members of Operation 40, a secret guerrilla group originally formed by the CIA in 1960 in preparation for the Bay of Pigs invasion … Ms. Lorenz described Operation 40 as an ‘assassination squad’ consisting of about 30 anti-Castro Cubans and their American advisors. She claimed the group conspired to kill Cuban Premier Fidel Castro and President Kennedy, whom it blamed for the Bay of Pigs fiasco … She said Oswald … visited an Operation 40 training camp in the Florida Everglades. The idea of Oswald, or a double, being in Florida is not far-fetched. The 1993 PBS Frontline documentary “Who Was Lee Harvey Oswald?” had a photo of Oswald in Florida, which they conspicuously did not reveal on the program.

    In Nexus, Larry Hancock not only provides another confirmation of this outfit’s existence but describes part of its structure and its role: Time correspondent Mark Halperin stated that Operation 40 members “had been trained in interrogation, torture, and general terrorism. It was believed they would execute designated Castro regime members and Communists. The more liberal and leftist exile leaders feared that they might be targeted following a successful coup.”

    Hancock also asserts that “documents reveal that David Morales, acting as Counter-intelligence officer for JMARC, had selected and arranged for extensive and special training of 39 Cuban exiles, designated as AMOTs …. Sanjenis was the individual who recruited Frank Sturgis … They would identify and contain rabid Castroites, Cuban Communists …” A final confirmation of Operation 40 comes from Grayston Lynch (a CIA officer involved in the Bay of Pigs): “The ship Lake Charles had transported the men of Operation 40 to the Cuban landing area. The men had been trained in Florida, apart from the regular Brigade members, and were to act as a military government after the overthrow of Castro.”

    Other than Morales, Sanjenis, Sturgis, and Felix (probably Felix Rodriguez), it is difficult to pin down names of actual members with certainty. This author has not found any documentary traces. But there is no doubt that it existed and that it was a Top Secret project that was rolled over into the Bay of Pigs so that President Kennedy would not know about it. It was so secret that, according to Dan Hardway’s report for the HSCA, Richard Helms commissioned the study on Operation 40 to be done by his trusted aide Sam Halpern. Hardway wrote that only one person outside the Agency, reporter Andrew St. George, ever saw that report. Exactly who was in Operation 40 is a moot point; what is important to retain is that the most militant and violent Cuban exiles were recruited and trained by the CIA to perform covert operations against Cuba, Castro, and anyone who would get in their way no matter what country they were in and no matter who they were.

    The Mechanism’s Team Roster: The Big Leagues

    Out of the thousands of Cuban exiles living in the U.S., only a select few could be counted on to be part of the covert activities that would be used to remove Castro, and that became useful for the removal of Kennedy. These received special training in techniques used for combat, sabotage, assassinations and psychological warfare. The training would be provided by people such as Morales, Phillips and perhaps some soldiers of fortune.

    When analyzing these figures, it is easy to see how many were, or could easily have been, linked to one another before and after the revolution and during the November 22, 1963, period. It is only by understanding the universes of the factions that worked together on that dark day that we can explain how Oswald and Kennedy’s lives came to their tragic ends.

    The first 18 persons profiled were considered the most suspicious by the Cuban researchers. Because the Cuban data precedes 2006, we will enrich some of the pedigrees with more current information.

    Table 1

    Other persons of interest come from JFK: The Cuba Files and various other sources:

    Table 2

    Aftermath of the assassination

    “Operation 40 is the grandmother and great-grandmother of all of the operations that are formed later.”

    ~ Fabian Escalante

    The assassination of JFK was a landmark moment in American history. The country would go on to be rocked by a series of scandals that would see public confidence in politicians and media go into a tailspin. LBJ gave us Vietnam and Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Bobby Kennedy and John Lennon saw their freedom of speech rights contested, with extreme prejudice. Watergate, Iran/Contra, George Bush Junior’s weapons of mass destruction, and the Wall Street meltdown would follow. Now even U.S. grounds are the target of foreign rebels who have mastered the art of using terrorism tactics similar to those that were used against Cuba.

    The role some of the members of the Mechanism played in future deep events adds credence to what is alleged about them regarding the removal of JFK. Their murderous accomplishments have their roots in the Dulles brothers’ worldviews. Allen Dulles’ protégé E. Howard Hunt became one of Nixon’s plumbers. In 1972, after Arthur Bremer attempted to assassinate presidential candidate George Wallace, Nixon aide Charles Colson asked Hunt to plant evidence in Bremer’s apartment that would frame George McGovern, the Democratic opponent. Hunt claims to have refused. Hunt, with his ex-CIA crony James McCord, and Cuban exiles Bernard Barker, Virgilio Gonzalez, Eugenio Martinez, together with Frank Sturgis, would all be arrested, and then let off rather easily for their roles in Watergate. Hunt would even demand and collect a ransom from the White House for his silence. In 1985, Hunt would lose the Liberty Lobby trial that, in large part, verified the infamous CIA memorandum from Jim Angleton to Richard Helms stating that they needed to create an alibi for Hunt being in Dallas on November 22, 1963.

    Recruited by David Morales in 1967, Felix Rodriguez succeeded in his mission to hunt down and terminate Che Guevara in Bolivia. Rodriguez kept Guevara’s Rolex watch as a trophy. He also played a starring role in the Iran/Contra scandal. In the 1980s, Rodriguez was the bagman in the CIA’s deal with the Medellin cartel and often met with Oliver North. He was also a guest of Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush at the White House.

    In 1989, Loran Hall and his whole family were arrested for drug dealing.

    As discussed earlier, Novo Sampol, Carilles (who also had links to Iran Contra), and Orlando Bosch continued in their roles in American-based terrorist activities for decades. Arrested in Panama, Luis Posada Carriles and Guillermo Novo were pardoned and released by Panama, in August, 2004. The Bush administration denied putting pressure on for the release. The Bush administration cannot deny providing safe haven to Bosch after an arrest in Costa Rica, which saw the U.S. decline an offer by the authorities to extradite Bosch to the United States.

    Veciana continued for a while to participate in attempts to assassinate Castro. He eventually outed David Atlee Phillips. For his candor, he was possibly framed and thrown in jail on narcotics trafficking charges. He was also shot at. The Mafia may not have regained their Cuban empire, but they no longer had the Kennedys breathing down their necks. American imperialists and captains of industry set their sights on the exploitation Vietnam, Indonesia, the Middle East, Africa and cashed in on conflicts.

    Risky Business

    Being a member of the Mechanism also came with its share of professional risks—namely, short life expectancies. When the Warren Commission whitewash was taking place, there were few worries. When the more serious Garrison, Church and HSCA investigations were in full swing, the word cutoff took on a whole new meaning. Intelligence did not seem to bother too much about being linked to rowdy exiles and Mafiosi when it came to removing a communist; the removal of JFK … well, that must have been a different matter. There were many deaths that occurred before 1978 which were timely and varied from suspicious to murderous:

    William Pawley died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, in January 1977.

    Del Valle was murdered in 1967 when Garrison was tracking him down, shortly after David Ferrie’s suspicious death.

    Sanjenis simply vanished in 1973.

    Artime, Prío, Masferrer, Giancana, Hoffa, Roselli and Charles Nicoletti were all murdered between 1975 and 1977.

    Martino, Harvey and Morales all died of heart attacks.

    Out of some 45 network members discussed in this article, 18 did not survive the end of the HSCA investigation, 8 were clearly murdered and 7 of other deaths were both timely and suspicious.

    Trafficante’s links

    The unholy marriage of the CIA and the Mafia with the objective of removing Castro was initiated by Allen Dulles and Richard Bissell. They had Sheffield Edwards go through Robert Maheu (a CIA cut-out asset), to organize a partnership with mobsters Giancana and Trafficante using Johnny Roselli as the liaison. The CIA gave itself plausible deniability and the Mafia could hope to regain its Cuban empire and a have the ultimate get-out-of-jail-free card in their back pockets.

    William Harvey, author of executive action M.O. ZR/RIFLE, eventually oversaw the relationship between himself and Roselli, which involved assassination expert David Morales as Harvey’s special assistant.

    Trafficante, who spoke Spanish, was the ideal mobster to organize a Castro hit because of his long established links on the Island. He was also seen as the CIA’s translator for the Cuban exiles. Through Tony Varona and Carlos Tepedino (AMWHIP-1), they tried to get Rolando Cubela (AMLASH) to murder Castro. Trafficante and his friends have very close ties to the Kennedy assassination, to the point where Robert Blakey (head of the HSCA) became convinced the mob was behind it. Blakey now seems to be open to the idea that the network was a lot larger.

    Trafficante’s links to persons of interest

    Victor Hernandez connects to Trafficante through his participation in the attempts to recruit Cubela, a potential hitman who had access to Castro. He wound up joining Carlos Bringuier in a Canal Street scuffle with Oswald that the arresting officer felt was for show. This was a key sheep-dipping moment of the eventual patsy. Loran Hall met Trafficante when the two were in jail in Cuba. He ran into him a couple of times in 1963. When the Warren Commission wanted the Sylvia Odio story to go away, Hall helped in the pointless tale that he in fact was one of the people who had met her.

    Rolando Masferrer had links with Alpha 66, Trafficante and Hoffa. According to William Bishop, Hoffa gave Masferrer $50,000 to kill JFK. Frank Sturgis connects with so many of the people of interest in the JFK assassination that it would require a book to cover it all. He likely received Mafia financing for his anti-Castro operations. He is alleged to have links with Trafficante. So does Bernard Barker, who some think may have been impersonating a Secret Service agent behind the grassy knoll.

    Fabian Escalante received intelligence (in part from prisoner Tony Cuesta) that Herminio Diaz and Eladio del Valle were part of the hit team and were in Dallas shortly before the assassination. Robert Blakey had the Diaz story corroborated by another Cuban exile. Diaz was Trafficante’s bodyguard and a hitman. Del Valle worked for Trafficante in the U.S. and was an associate of his in Cuba. It is important to note that Diaz’ background fits well with what is alleged, however some doubt the hearsay used to accuse him.

    John Martino showed pre-knowledge of the assassination and admitted a support role as a courier. He also helped in propaganda efforts to link Castro with Oswald. He worked in one of Trafficante’s Cuban casinos.

    As we have seen in an earlier section, Jack Ruby’s links to Trafficante are many. He is known to have spoken often with underworld personalities very closely linked to Trafficante, Marcello and the Chicago mob during the days leading up to the assassination. These include McWillie, James Henry Dolan and Dallas’ number two mobster Joe Campisi. We all know what he did two days after the coup. His seeming nonchalance in implicating others may have led to his demise while in jail.

    The following excerpts from the HSCA report should leave no doubt in the historians’ minds about the significance of just who Ruby’s friends were, what he was up to, and just how badly the Warren Commission misled the American people by describing him as another unstable loner:

    … He [Ruby] had a significant number of associations and direct and indirect contacts with underworld figures, a number of whom were connected to the most powerful La Cosa Nostra leaders.

    … Ruby had been personally acquainted with two professional killers for the organized crime syndicate in Chicago, David Yaras and Lenny Patrick. The committee established that Ruby, Yaras and Patrick were in fact acquainted during Ruby’s years in Chicago.

    … The committee also deemed it likely that Ruby at least met various organized crime figures in Cuba, possibly including some who had been detained by the Cuban government.

    … The committee developed circumstantial evidence that makes a meeting between Ruby and Trafficante a distinct possibility …

    … The committee concluded that Ruby was also probably in telephonic contact with Mafia executioner Lenny Patrick sometime during the summer of 1963.

    … The Assassinations Committee established that Jack Ruby was a friend and business associate of Joseph Civello, Carlos Marcello’s deputy in Dallas.

    … Joe Campisi was Ruby’s first visitor after his imprisonment for murdering the President’s alleged assassin. (Incredibly, the Dallas Police did not record the ten-minute conversation between Oswald’s murderer and a man known to be a close associate of Carlos Marcello’s deputy inDallas.)

    … The committee had little choice but to regard the Ruby-Campisi relationship and the Campisi-Marcello relationship as yet another set of associations strengthening the committee’s growing suspicion of the Marcello crime family’s involvement in a conspiracy to assassinate President Kennedy or execute the President’s alleged assassin or both.

    …As for Jack Ruby’s connections with the Marcello organization in New Orleans, the committee was to confirm certain connections the FBI had been aware of at the time of the assassination but had never forcefully brought to the attention of the Warren Commission.

    Jack Ruby’s connections to the mob and his actions before, during and after the assassination were obviously a chokepoint for HSCA investigators. If we analyze Trafficante’s points of contact with very suspicious figures, one can easily argue that we have another.

    All these relationships should be enough to suggest that Trafficante played a role in the hit, at the very least in the recruitment of Ruby to eliminate Oswald. Over and above being tightly connected with key leaders of the Cuban exile community, he has at least nine (seven definite) links with people who became actors in the Kennedy assassination and/or Oswald’s universe (five definite and four plausible). Any serious investigator cannot file this away as coincidental or innocuous.

    David Phillips’ links to Oswald

    For a historian, pushing data collection further in this area and synthesizing the data would lead them to a new hypothesis: They would concur with Blakey that the mob was involved in the assassination.

    This would lead to a completely new area of investigation (that Blakey sadly dismissed) regarding who was complicit with the mob, which would invariably lead to data collection around CIA mob contacts such as William Harvey and David Morales who link up with our next subject. David Phillips’ overlap with the world of Oswald left some investigators from the Church and HSCA Committees with the feeling that they were within striking distance of identifying him as one of the plotters. That is when George Joannides and George Bush came in and saved the day.

    For exhibit 2, we can lazily accept that the entwinement of Phillips’ world with Oswald’s was mere happenstance, or conclude logically that it was by design:

    Phillips’ links to Oswald

    If Oswald was in fact a lone malcontent who somehow drifted by chance into the Texas School Book Depository, how can one even begin to explain so many ties with a CIA officer who just happened to be in charge of the Cuba desk in Mexico City, running the CIA’s anti-Fair Play for Cuba Committee campaign, and one of the agency’s premier propaganda experts? The perfect person to sheep-dip Oswald and to apply ZR/RIFLE strategies of blaming a coup on an opponent, ties into over 20 different events that were used to frame Oswald, blame Castro or hide the truth. He also connects well with up to six other patsy candidates who, like Oswald, all had links with the FPCC and made strange travels to Mexico City. It is no wonder the HSCA and Church Committee investigators found him to be suspicious and lying constantly, even while under oath.

    He made no fewer than four quasi-confessions, and his close colleague E. Howard Hunt confirmed his involvement in the crime.

    David Phillips’ name does not appear anywhere in the Warren Commission report. Nor in the 26 accompanying volumes. Which is especially startling in light of the fact that he was running the Agency’s anti-FPCC crusade.

    Conclusion

    JFK’s assassination has been partially solved. The arguments that can satisfy the skeptics are not yet fully streamlined and the willingness of the fourth estate and historians to finally shed light on this historical hot potato is still weak.

    Blue-collar and violent crimes perpetuated by individuals get the lion’s share of the publicity and serve to divert attention away from what is really holding America back. Behind the Wall Street meltdown, there were scores of white-collar criminals who almost caused a full-fledged depression. How many went to jail? Who were they? It is pure naiveté to believe that such crimes will get the attention of politicians, yet the limited studies on the matter indicate that they cost society over ten times more than blue-collar crime.

    State-crimes are almost never solved, let alone investigated. Politicians, media and the power elite fear being dragged into the chaos that would be caused by a collapse of public trust and avoid these issues like the plague. However, every now and then, a Church Committee does come along and exposes dirty secrets that, instead of hurting the country, will help straighten the course. The catalyst often comes from the youth who were behind the downfall of Big Tobacco and are now taking on the NRA.

    This article helps dispel the notion that the Cuban exiles, Mafia and CIA partnership was too complicated to have taken place. There is still explaining to do on how the Secret Service and Dallas Police Department were brought in to play their roles, but researchers like Vince Palamara have already revealed a lot in these areas. At least four of the people Oswald crossed paths with in the last months of his life had cryptonyms (Rodriguez, Hernandez, Bartes and Veciana). If the alleged sightings of him with other Cuban exiles are to be believed and other cryptonyms were to be decoded, that number would more than triple. Still other crypto-coded figures, who may not have met him, played a role in framing him. Still others are persons of interest in the assassination itself. By really exploring Oswald’s universe, we can get a glimpse of who some of the first line players and their bosses were. It is world of spooks, Mafiosi, Cuban exiles and shady businessmen who were part of, or hovered around, the “Cuban-American Mechanism”.

    If we were to push this exercise even further and explore the universes of Phillips, Morales and Harvey, we would fall into the world of Allen Dulles, a world brilliantly looked into by David Talbot in The Devil’s Chessboard and also by Fletcher Prouty. Understanding Dulles’ CIA and Sullivan & Cromwell’s links to the power brokers of his era would probably go a long way in explaining how the plot was called.

    It is this author’s opinion that today’s power elite are not far away from having the conditions needed to let this skeleton out of the closet. Their cutoff is time: most of the criminals have already passed away. Another cutoff may be Allen Dulles himself: he is long dead and he was not a formal part of the CIA when the crime took place. But as Talbot showed, the trails to him are still quite palpable.

    He may end up being the one who takes the most heat. And deservedly so.

    Appendix: Cuban exile groups judged to be of average importance in CIA handbook

     

    Asociacion de Amigos Aureliano AAA — Association of Friends of Aureliano

    Asociacion de Amigos de Aureliano – Independiente AAA-I — Association of Friends of Aureliano – Independent

    Accion Cubana AC — Cuban Action

    Asociacion Catolica Universitaria ACU – Catholic University Group

    Agrupacion de Infanteria de Combat AIC — Combat Infantry Group

    Alianza para la Libertad de Cuba ALC — Alliance for the Liberty of Cuba

    Agrupacion Montecristi (AM) — Montecristi Group

    Buro Internacional de la Legion Anticomunista BILA — International Bureau Anti-Communist Legion

    Batallon de Brigada BB — Brigade Battalion

    Bloque de Organizaciones Anti-Comunista BOAC — Bloc of Anti-Communist Organizations

    Comite Anti-Comunista de Ayuda a la Liberacion Cubana CACALC — Anti-Communist Committee to Aid Cuban Liberation

    Comite Coordinador de Organizaciones Democraticas Cubanas en Puerto Rico CCODC — Coordinating Committee of Democratic Organizations for Cuban in Puerto Rico

    Cruzada Femenina Cubana CFC — Cuban Women’s Crusade

    Confederacion Profesionales Universitarios Cubanos en el Exilio — Confederation of Cuban University Professional in Exile

    Confederacion de Trabajadores de Cuba en Exilio CTCE — Confederation of Cuban Workers in Exile

    Directorio Magisterial Revolucionario DMR — Revolutionary Teachers Directorate

    Ejercito Invasor Cubano EIC — Cuban Invading Army

    Ejercito Libertador de Cuba ELC — Liberating Army of Cuba

    Ejercito de Liberacion Nacional (ELN) — National Liberation Army

    Frente Anticomunista Cristiano FAC — Christian Anti-communist Front

    Fuerzas Armadas de Cuba En El Exilio (FACE) — Armed Forces of Cuba in Exile

    Fuerza Anticomunista de Liberacion (in US) FAL — Anti-Communist Liberation Force

    Fuerzas Armadas y Civiles Anticomunistas FAYCA — Armed Forces and Civilian Anti-Communists

    Federacion Estudiantil Universitaria FEU — University Students’ Federation

    Frente de Liberacion Nacional FLN — National Liberation Front

    Frente Nacional Democratica Triple A (FNDTA) — National Democratic Front (Triple A)

    Frente Organizado Anticomunista Cubano FOAC — Organized Anti-Communist Cuban Front

    Frente Obrero Revolucionario Democratico Cubano FORDC – Labor Revolutionary Democratic Front of Cuba

    Frente Revolucionaria Anti-Comunista FRAC — Anti-Communist Revolutionary Front

    Frente Unido de Liberacion Nacional FULN — United Front of National Liberation

    Gobierno Interno de Liberacion Anticomunista GILA — Internal Government of Anti-Communist Liberation

    Ingenieros de Combate Commando 100 — (Commando 100 Combat Engineers)

    Juventud Anticomunista Revolucionaria JAR — Revolutionary Anti-Communist Youth

    Junta Nacional Revolucionaria JNR — National Revolutionary Unity

    Junta Revolucionaria Cubana JURE — Cuban Revolutionary Unity

    Movimiento de Accion Revolucionaria MAR — Revolutionary Action Movement

    Movimiento Democratica Liberacion MDL — Democratic Movement for Liberation

    Movimiento Democratico Martiano MDM — Marti Democratic Movement (also Frente Democratico Martiano)

    Movimiento Masonico Clandestino MMC — Masonic Clandestine Movement

    Movimiento Revolucionario Accion Cubana MRAC — Cuban Action Revolutionary Movement

    Movimiento Recuperacion Revolucionaria Cubano — Cuban Revolutionary Recovery Movement

    Organizacion Autentico OA – Authentic Organization

    Operacion ALFA 66 — Operation ALPHA 66

    Organizacion del Ejercito Secreto Anticomunista OESA — Organization of the Anti-Communist Secret Army

    Pro-Gobierno Constitucional de Cuba en Exilio PGCC — Pro-Constitutional Government of Cuba

    Partido Revolucionario Cubana (Autentico) PRC — Cuban Revolutionary Party (Autentico)

    Resistencia Agramonte RA — Agramonte Resistance

    Segundo Frente Nacional de Escambray SFNE — Second National Front of the Escambray

    Unidad Cubana de Accion Libertadora UCAL — Cuban Union of Liberating Action

    Unidad de Liberacion Nacional (de Cuba) ULN — National Liberation Unity

    Union Nacional Democratica “Movimiento 20 de Mayo” UND — Democratic National Union “May 20”

    Union Nacional de Instituciones Revolucionarias UNI — National Union of Revolutionary Institutions

    The author wishes to express his thanks to Kennedys And King and to Chris La May for their proofreading and assistance with graphics.

    Addendum

    The following FBI teletype shows how the cooperation between the Mafia and the anti-Castro Cubans continued right up to the month of the assassination, despite JFK’s orders to cease and desist. The FBI informant states that Trafficante offered to pay for the arms and ammo purchased from the mob by the Cubans through him, provided they could demonstrate it would be used in efforts against Castro. [The editors]

    fbi trafficante

  • Does Paul Street get paid for this junk?

    Does Paul Street get paid for this junk?

    I really hope the answer to the question posed by this article’s title is no. Why? Because Street’s latest exercise in fruitiness is nothing but a recycling of two previous columns he wrote. His current article, which was supposed to be a salute to the memory of Martin Luther King, is really no such thing. It is actually a cheapening of King’s memory, because Street chose to elevate King at the same time that he denigrates President Kennedy. But beyond that, the article is ironically titled, “Against False Conflation: JFK, MLK and the Triple Evils”, since Street himself is guilty of conflating one column he did in January on King with another he did in February on Kennedy. The latter was posted at Truthdig; the former at Counterpunch. What he does in his current effort at the latter site is largely a cut-and-paste job of the two articles. Which is what I mean about hoping he does not get paid for this stuff.

    I demolished his February piece on Kennedy at length already. (See Paul Street Meets Jane Hamsher at Arlington for the ugly details) But what he does now is make believe that demolition did not happen, and he simply modifies it slightly to serve as the first part of his worthless essay. So if he is getting paid, it’s easy money.

    When I heard of what he had done, I emailed Counterpunch and asked if I could reply on site. After four days I received no reply. Therefore, I will reply here again. And to place Street on warning: whenever I hear about more of his nonsensical writing on the subject, I will reply in the future. Especially since his scholarship is so bad that this is like shooting fish in a barrel. In fact, Kennedys and King may end up with a special section called “Street is a Dead End”.

    As I stated, Street slightly modified the first part of his hatchet job on President Kennedy. He opens his article by aseerting that he does not pretend to know the full stories behind who killed Kennedy or King. But he cannot help but list the lone gunman option first. Anyone who has the slightest interest in the subject would howl with laughter at anyone who would proffer that option today. That Street leaves it open tells us a lot about the argument he wishes to make. For if he did admit that JFK was killed by a high-level plot, it would tend to undermine his nonsensical thesis.

    This is especially true in light of the fact that so many of President Kennedy’s policies were altered and then reversed after his death. For example, there were no American combat troops in Vietnam on the day Kennedy was killed. By the end of 1965, not only were there 175,000 combat troops in theater, but also Rolling Thunder—the greatest air bombardment campaign in history—was operating over North Vietnam.   We can make other comparisons to the same effect from the scholarly literature that Street refuses to consult. For example, by reading Richard Mahoney’s JFK: Ordeal in Africa, one can see that a very similar trend followed in Congo. By reading Lisa Pease’s essay about the giant conglomerate Freeport Sulphur, one can see the same trend line in Indonesia. (See JFK, Indonesia, CIA & Freeport Sulphur) By reading just a few pages from Donald Gibson’s masterful volume, Battling Wall Street, one can see that it occurred in the Dominican Republic as well. (See pages, 76-79) By reading Robert Rakove’s fine overview of Kennedy’s revolutionary foreign policy, one can see that the same thing happened in the Middle East, where Kennedy favored Gamel Abdel Nasser. After his death, Johnson and Nixon moved back to favoring Iran and Saudi Arabia, with disastrous results. (See Kennedy, Johnson and the Non Aligned World.) The story of Africa outside the Congo also followed a similar plot line. And the reader can see that by reading Philip Muehlenbeck’s Betting on the Africans.

    What is remarkable about Street’s articles is that there is no evidence at all in any of them that he read any of this material. Consequently, in addition to the ignorance he shows on the subject, there is also a tinge of arrogance involved. Does he think that since he knows better, somehow he is above reading the latest scholarship on the subject? Well, that is one way that he can keep his screeds coming, isn’t it?

    The other point that he implies with his opening is that the assassinations of the Sixties are not really linked in any way. Again, this is quite a difficult thesis to swallow. Lisa Pease and I wrote a 600-page book on that very subject called The Assassinations. There, with rather intricate and up-to-date evidence, we tried to show how the four major assassinations of the decade—President Kennedy, Malcolm X, King, Robert Kennedy—all shared similar characteristics in both their outlines and design, and in the cover-ups afterwards. We also offered a final essay in which we tried to show that it was the cumulative effect of those murders that brought us to the election of 1968: the coming of Richard Nixon and the rise of the hard right to power—a phenomenon that drastically altered the social and economic landscape of this country, and from which it may never recover. One only needs to look at what happened after Nixon left office: how Jerry Ford allowed Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney to bring the Committee on the Present Danger into the White House and do battle with the CIA over their estimate of the Soviet Threat, an unprecedented event. The people they brought in—Paul Nitze, Paul Wolfowitz—thought as Rumsfeld and Cheney did: namely, that Henry Kissinger, Nixon, and Alexander Haig were too moderate. (See Jerry Sanders, Peddlers of Crisis.)  

    That remarkable, little noted occasion had two effects. First, it gave birth to the neoconservative movement, and its later cast of characters, e.g., Jeanne Kirkpatrick and Richard Perle. Second, it was the final burial of Kennedy’s progressive, visionary foreign policy. And I do not just mean his attempt at détente with Cuba and the USSR. I also mean his attempt to mold a policy concerning the Third World which was not bound to Cold War ideology, but which was characterized instead by an effort to understand and ameliorate the problems of nations coming out of the debilitating state of European colonialism.

    Indonesia and Congo offer the two most notable examples. And if Street had done a little bit of reading on the subject he would have known better. For as Susan Williams wrote in her study of the murder of Dag Hammarskjold, Harry Truman made a curious comment when he heard about the UN Secretary General’s death. He said, “Dag Hammarskjold was on the point of getting something done when they killed him. Notice, I said ‘When they killed him.’.” (Susan Williams, Who Killed Hammarskjold?, p. 232) Why on earth did Truman say this? We did not learn why until Australian scholar Greg Poulgrain published another book Street has never read.   It is called The Incubus of Intervention. In examining how Kennedy’s Indonesian policy was opposed by Allen Dulles, the author talked to George Ivan Smith, a close friend and colleague of Hammarskjold’s at the United Nations. Smith revealed that Hammarskjold and Kennedy were secretly cooperating not just on the Congo, but on the problem of Dutch occupation of West Irian, which Indonesian leader Achmed Sukarno felt should be a part of Indonesia. Smith added that Kennedy had let former Democratic president Truman in on that cooperation. That is why Truman made the comment he did. (Poulgrain, pp. 77-78. For a fuller discussion of the Hammarskjold/Kennedy nexus, see Hammarskjold and Kennedy vs. The Power Elite)

    What is so remarkable—in fact, admirable—about this revelation is this: Kennedy kept his pledge to Hammarskjold even after the UN Secretary General was killed! As anyone who reads Mahoney’s book, or Lisa Pease’s essay, or Poulgrain’s book will see, Kennedy was diligent throughout his abbreviated term on both fronts. He personally visited the United Nations on two occasions to ensure that the UN would not forget what Hammarskjold was doing in Congo after he died. And Kennedy allowed American troops into battle to stop the secession of the Katanga province, a move sponsored by Belgium and, to a lesser extent, by England. (See Desperate Measures in the Congo)

    The same was true of Indonesia. Kennedy stuck by Sukarno until the end. He engineered the ceding of West Irian to Indonesia under the negotiated guidance of his brother Robert. President Kennedy had also arranged a state visit to Jakarta in 1964, in part to stave off the confrontation between Sukarno and the United Kingdom over the creation of the Malaysia federation. When Sukarno wanted to expel foreign corporations, Kennedy negotiated new agreements with them so that Indonesia would benefit from the profit split, which JFK requested be 60/40 in Indonesia’s favor. After Sukarno was overthrown, that split was 90/10 in favor of the companies. (Poulgrain, p. 242) Without Kennedy, Sukarno lasted less than two years. President Johnson now backed Malaysia in the dispute with Sukarno, and consequently, Sukarno withdrew from the United Nations. As Lisa Pease notes in her above-referenced article, President Johnson altered Kennedy’s policy towards Sukarno very quickly, and within 12 months the CIA started to plot his overthrow.

    These are just two examples. But they typify President Kennedy’s overall foreign policy. If Street can show me another president since him who did these kinds of things in two separate instances—that is, attempt to foster a revolutionary, nationalist government against European imperialists, and work with the United Nations to do so—I would very much like to hear about them.

    Ignoring the above two cases, Street brings up Vietnam in relation to the issue of Kennedy and the Third World. Here Street says that there has been since 1991 an ongoing debate on whether Kennedy was going to withdraw. He states that the debate was between Oliver Stone and Jamie Galbraith on one side, and Noam Chomsky and Rick Perlstein on the other. He then claims that, somehow, the latter two writers have won that debate. First off, Chomsky has not done any new work on Vietnam since before 1991. But secondly, other authors have done new and important work that is based on new material. Real historians like Howard Jones, David Welch and David Kaiser have uncovered new evidence to make the original argument, first offered by John Newman in 1992, even stronger. For Street to even bring up Perlstein shows just how threadbare he is. For Perlstein did nothing but reiterate Chomsky’s dated, musty and unconvincing polemics. To note just one difference in the quality of scholarship: Welch offered up declassified tapes of Lyndon Johnson actually admitting that he knew Kennedy was withdrawing from Indochina and thus had to cover up the fact he was breaking with that policy. (Welch, Virtual JFK, pp. 304-14) I ask the reader, how much more proof does one need? Well, how about Assistant Secretary of Defense Roswell Gilpatric revealing that his boss Robert McNamara told him that Kennedy had given him orders to wind down the war? (Welch, p. 371) Is Street, who was not there, going to say he knows better than Johnson and Gilpatric, who were in the room?

    This relates to the overall comparison of King with the Kennedys. As anyone who studies American history understands, after the Civil War, the states of the former confederacy passed local and state laws which created the conditions of segregation throughout the southeast: from Texas to the Atlantic Ocean. No one wanted to challenge these laws out of fear of violent retribution from white terrorist groups, but also because of the political price that was going to be exacted. The most that any president did was Harry Truman, who decided to integrate the armed forces. Which really did not cost him much politically, since it was invisible stateside.

    From the beginning, the Kennedys decided that they were going to take the issue on, no matter what the price. They decided they were going to use the Brown vs. Board decision as a legal basis to break down the structure of segregation. Kennedy announced this before he was elected. And he stated he was prepared to lose every southern state at the Democratic Convention because of that stand. (Harry Golden, Mr. Kennedy and the Negroes, p. 95) Which, of course, completely contradicts Street’s dictum that the Kennedys were constricted on civil rights because of votes in the South.

    But prior to that, during the debate over the 1957 civil rights act, Kennedy stressed the prime role of Title 3 in the bill. That clause allowed the Attorney General to enter into a state to enforce school desegregation. When Kennedy, in no uncertain terms, came out for Title 3, he began to lose support in the South. It got worse when he made a speech in Jackson, Mississippi—let me repeat: Jackson, Mississippi—where he reiterated that he supported the Brown vs. Board decision as the law of the land. (Golden, p. 95) Again, this is before he entered the White House.

    It did not change once he was elected. Kennedy had his civil rights advisor Harris Wofford draft a long memorandum on how to strategically attack the segregation problem. Wofford advised that the president use a series of executive actions to forge a path and build momentum until it was possible to pass a bill over a filibuster in the Senate. (Irving Bernstein, Promises Kept, p. 47) To anyone who studies Kennedy’s presidency, it is common knowledge that this memorandum furnished the design of his plan to attack the bastions of southern racism.

    His brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, understood this out of the gate. To the Kennedys, civil rights were simply a matter of doing the right thing. As RFK said, “it was the thing that should be done.” (Robert Kennedy in his Own Words, edited by Edwin Guthman and Jeffrey Schulman, p. 105) The Attorney General announced this in public at his famous Law Day speech at the University of Georgia in May of 1961. In other words, three months after the inauguration, RFK went into the Deep South and said he was going to support Brown vs. Board in the courts. Does Street think this helped him get votes for his brother in the South?

    Quite the contrary. But, as many have noted, what these pronouncements did was provide a catalyst for the civil rights movement. They finally had someone in the White House who was on their side. This sparked King and his allies to incite even larger displays of civil disobedience. As Bobby Kennedy noted later, the emerging images and films of Bull Connor’s actions to stamp out the Birmingham demonstration were the impetus that made his civil rights bill possible. JFK used to joke about it by calling it ‘Bull Connor’s Bill’. (Guthman and Schulman, p. 171) It was that, plus Kennedy’s showdown with Governor Wallace at the University of Alabama, that provoked Bobby Kennedy to suggest his brother go on national television and make his famous speech about civil rights. That powerful oration was then followed by the Kennedys helping King arrange the March on Washington in August of 1963. (Bernstein, pp. 103; 114-15) This provided the ballast to start Kennedy’s civil rights bill on its path through Congress.

    One of the most bizarre things Street says in his article is that, somehow, the Kennedys were responsible for things like the killing of civil rights workers in the South. In his mad crusade, is he trying to blame the Kennedys for the rise of the Klan? That began about ninety years before Kennedy entered the White House. Or is Bobby Kennedy to be blamed for J. Edgar Hoover’s lack of rigor in counteracting white racists? As Burke Marshall, who was in charge of the civil rights division at Justice, once noted, it was Bobby Kennedy who had to push Hoover and the FBI into investigating civil rights matters. (Guthman and Schulman, p. 139)

    In his zealous jihad, Street can do what he wants to rewrite history and rearrange the make-up of government bodies. He can blame the whole Reconstruction Era on President Kennedy. He can ignore what Hoover failed to do. He can discount all the previous Attorney Generals before RFK. He can erase the record of all the presidents from Lincoln to Kennedy who did next to nothing on civil rights issues. He can cast a blind eye to the virtual inaction of President Eisenhower and Vice President Nixon in the six years after Brown vs. Board. But there is one simple truth that no one can deny: the Kennedys did more for civil rights in three years than all the previous 18 presidents did in nearly a century. That is an ineradicable fact.

    And Street’s hero, Martin Luther King, knew it. This is why, in March of 1968, King told his advisors that he would be behind Bobby Kennedy in the election. At this time, both McCarthy and President Johnson were in the race, but RFK had not formally declared. King preferred Bobby Kennedy over McCarthy for the specific reason that Kennedy had a stronger record on civil rights than the Minnesota senator. And he knew Kennedy would withdraw from Vietnam. (Martin Luther King, Jr: The FBI File, edited by Michael Friedly and David Gallen, p. 572)

    But further, as Arthur Schlesinger revealed through Marian Wright, it was Bobby Kennedy who gave King the idea for the Poor People’s Campaign in Washington. He suggested it to her, and then she relayed it to King. (Schlesinger, Robert Kennedy and His Times, pp. 911-12) So much for Street’s charge that the Kennedys never wanted to redistribute wealth. King very much liked what RFK offered as a candidate. As he told his inner circle, Bobby Kennedy could become an outstanding president and there was no question that King was going to formally endorse him. (Schlesinger, p. 912) But I am sure Street would say: Well, King was wrong about that one. Even though he was there.

    The judging of presidents is a comparative exercise. There is no absolute standard to propose. Mother Theresa, or an equivalent, would not have been a viable candidate. With the declassification process we have had—and which Street is apparently oblivious to—presidents like Johnson and Nixon have looked worse, Nixon much worse. But the more documents we get on JFK, the better his administration appears. Street does not read them, so he does not know. But whether he denies it or not, the bottom line is simple: King was right.

    It’s always nice to be able to hoist a pretentious gasbag on his own petard.

  • Jefferson Morley, The Ghost: The Secret Life of CIA Spymaster James Jesus Angleton

    Jefferson Morley, The Ghost: The Secret Life of CIA Spymaster James Jesus Angleton

    Was there ever a person who was so hidden from public view in 1963, yet ended up being such a key character in the JFK case than James Angleton? Offhand, the only other character in the saga I can think of to rival him is David Phillips. Which puts Angleton in some rather select company. But what makes the Angelton instance even odder is that, unlike with Phillips, there have been at least three other books based upon Angleton’s career. To my knowledge there has been no biography of Phillips yet published.

    The veil around Jim Angleton began to be dropped in December of 1974. At this time, CIA Director William Colby had decided that Angleton had to go. Since Angleton had been handed carte blanche powers first by CIA Director Allen Dulles, and then by Richard Helms, he was not willing to leave quietly. So Colby had to force him out. He first gave a speech about certain CIA abuses before the Council on Foreign Relations. He then directly leaked details about Angleton’s role in Operation MH Chaos to New York Times reporter Sy Hersh. MH Chaos was a massive program that spied on the political left in the United States for a number of years. Combined with the FBI’s COINTELPRO operations, they composed a lethal one two punch to dissident groups on issues like civil rights and anti-Vietnam war demonstrations.

    Colby’s leaks to Hersh did the trick and Angleton was forced to resign at the end of 1974. That timing coincided with what some have called the “Season of Inquiry”. This refers to the series of investigations of the CIA, the FBI and the JFK assassination that took place after the exposures of the Watergate scandal. Specifically, these were the Rockefeller Commission, the Church Committee, and the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA). The author of the book under discussion, Jefferson Morley, goes through these to show how Angleton became a star attraction for some public inquiries. Angleton did not handle these proceedings very well, with consequences for his own reputation. As we will see, in the wake of his exposure he made one enigmatic comment that would haunt the literature on the JFK case forever.

    It was these appearances that likely led to the beginning of the literature on the legendary chief of counter-intelligence. Wilderness of Mirrors was a dual biography of both Angleton and William Harvey by newspaper reporter David Martin, published in 1980. Considering the problems with classification, it was a candid and acute portrait for that time period.

    Several years later, two books on Angleton were published in rapid succession. In 1991, Tom Mangold published Cold Warrior. Mangold’s book was a milestone in the field and remains a valuable contribution not just on Angleton but on CIA studies to this day. Somehow, Mangold got several Agency insiders to cooperate with him in a devastating expose of the damage Angleton had wreaked on the Agency and its allies. This was done through his almost pathological allegiance to a man named Anatoliy Golitsyn. Golitsyn was a Russian KGB operative who had been working as a vice counsel in the Helsinki embassy when he decided to defect at Christmas, 1961. He warned that any other defectors who followed would be sent by the KGB to discredit him. He prophesied about the presence of a high-level mole in the American government. He then demanded audiences with the FBI, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, the president of the United States and intelligence chiefs of foreign countries; most of which he got.

    In two ways, Golitsyn’s overall concept played into the nightmare fears of Western intelligence: first, as to the existence of high-level double agents in their midst; and secondly, regarding Western leaders who were already compromised, e.g., Prime Minister Harold Wilson of the Untied Kingdom. Due to the largesse of Angleton and British MI6, Golitsyn became a millionaire. As for the accuracy of his knowledge of Soviet affairs, he said the Sino-Soviet split was a mirage, that the coming of Gorbachev was really a deception strategy to isolate the USA, and that the whole Perestroika revolution was also a KGB phantasm. He forecast the last two in his books, New Lies for Old (1984) and The Perestroika Deception (1995). Needless to add, in order to buy Golitsyn one had to accept that the rise of Gorbachev, the collapse of the USSR, and Boris Yeltsin’s use of American economic advisors to administer Milton Friedman economic “shock doctrine” to decimate the Russian economy back to conditions worse than the Great Depression—all of this was somehow a colossal KGB Potemkin Village designed to deceive the West. The question being: Into believing what? That somehow the USSR had not really collapsed? This is how ultimately bereft Golitsyn was, and this was how craven our intelligence chiefs were. They did not just believe him, they made him into a wealthy retiree. Mangold’s book revealed almost all of this. It was shocking to behold.

    A year after Mangold, David Wise published his book Molehunt. The Wise book was kind of a reverse imprint of Mangold. Wise did scores of interviews with the victims of what the folie à deux of Golitsyn/Angleton had done. That is, the careers that were ruined, the reputations that were sullied, the promotions that never came. It got so bad that Congress had to pass a bill to compensate certain victims for the damage done to their careers. In 2008, author Michael Holzman wrote another biography. James Jesus Angleton, the CIA and the Craft of Intelligence was a rather sympathetic look at the man and his career. And it attempted to rehabilitate both Angleton and Golitsyn, while trying to contravene William Colby’s dictum about Angleton that, to his knowledge, he had never caught a spy.

    II

    Holzman’s book was published about a decade after the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) had officially closed its doors, which makes it surprising how little information the author used concerning Angleton, the JFK case and Lee Harvey Oswald. After all, John Newman had published his milestone book on that subject, Oswald and the CIA, in 1995. He reissued that volume the same year that Holzman published his. Because he had been an intelligence analyst, Newman understood how to read and then blend together documents into a mural that made previously uncertain events understandable. He did this with the help of the releases of the ARRB.

    There were two areas of Newman’s work that one would think any biographer of Angleton would find of the utmost interest. The first would be how the information on Oswald was entered into CIA files after his defection. The second would be the extraordinary work that was made possible about Oswald in Mexico City after the release of the HSCA’s legendary Lopez Report. Taking up where Holzman dropped the baton, the strength of Jefferson Morley’s book is that it does have a featured focus on this aspect: the Oswald file at CIA and its relation to Angleton. And this is the most valuable part of the book.

    As Morley notes, James Angleton had suzerainty over the Oswald file at CIA for four years. (p. 86. All references are to the Kindle version) Contrary to what the late David Belin said on national television, the contents of that file were never fully revealed to the Warren Commission. And they were obfuscated for the HSCA. The file itself was personally handled by Birch O’Neal, one of the most trusted and most mysterious of the two hundred men and women who worked for Angleton in Counter Intelligence. From day one, O’Neal began to lie about what was in the Oswald file. He told the Bureau that there was nothing there that did not originate with the FBI and State Department. As Morley has noted on his website and in this book, that is simply not true. But further, the ARRB files on O’Neal have been released in heavily redacted form, and three are completely redacted.

    As Morley further explains, the rule inside the Agency was that if three reports came in, a 201 file should be opened on the subject. Yet this rule was not followed with the Oswald file. This exception to protocol allowed the file to be limited in access when it was opened in December of 1959. (Morley, p. 88) It was only when Otto Otepka of the State Department sent the CIA a request on the recent wave of American defectors to the Soviet Union that a 201 file was opened on Oswald.

    If the Warren Commission would actually have had full access to the file, the obvious question would have been: If Otepka had not sent the request, would a 201 file have been opened at all? Otepka’s request was about information on whether the defectors were real or ersatz. When Director of Plans Richard Bissell received it, he sent it to Angleton’s office. These circumstances strongly suggest that there was a false defector program being run by CIA, and that Angleton had a role in it.

    To his credit, Morley also uses some information that was first introduced in the Lopez Report. This was the fact that there were two differing cables sent out of Angleton’s office once CIA got word of Oswald meeting with a man named Valeri Kostikov in Mexico City. One was sent to the Navy, State, and FBI. It had information about Oswald but a wrong physical description of him. The other cable was sent to Mexico City and had a correct description, but it did not include the most recent information that the CIA had on Oswald concerning his activities in New Orleans—for example, that he had been arrested, detained, tried and fined for his pro Castro activities there. (pp. 136-37) This clearly would have been important in evaluating whether or not he posed a potential threat. In other words, if Oswald had been meeting with a Russian diplomat in a nearby third country, and prior to that he had been protesting on the streets of a southern city in favor of Fidel Castro, and was trying to get an in-transit visa through Cuba to Russia, that would seem to be significant information one should pass to the FBI.

    But this cable did not provide the correct description of the man. When the CIA sent up its request, it contained a picture of a man who was not Oswald. He has come to be known as the Mystery Man, although the Lopez Report identifies him as a Russian KGB agent under diplomatic cover. Consequently, that cable described Lee Oswald as a 35 year old with an athletic build and six feet tall. What makes this even more puzzling is that the CIA had accurate info on Oswald as being 24 and 5’ 9”. The other cable was sent to Mexico City and although it was allowed to be disseminated to the FBI there, it did not include the information on Oswald’s return to the USA or his New Orleans hijinks. The Warren Commission only saw one of these two cables and the HSCA only mentioned them in redacted form. (See “Two Misleading CIA Cables about Lee Harvey Oswald”)

    As mentioned by the author, neither Jane Roman nor Bill Hood of the CIA could explain this paradox. (p. 137) As Morley offers: if what Oswald was doing in New Orleans—setting up an FPCC chapter with him as the only member, raising his profile via street theater— was part of an operation, then Mexico City station chief Winston Scott would not need to know about that. (p. 137)

    One week before Kennedy’s murder, on November 15th, Angleton’s office received a full report from Warren DeBrueys of the New Orleans FBI office about Oswald’s activities there. As Morley writes, “If Angleton scanned the first page, he learned that Oswald had gone back to Texas after contacting the Cubans and Soviets in Mexico City. Angleton knew Oswald was in Dallas.” (p. 140) In other words, all the information that an intelligence officer needed in order to place Oswald on the Secret Service Security Index was available to Jim Angleton at that time. He did nothing with it.

    III

    But it is actually worse than that. As Morley notes,

    Angleton always sought to give the impression that he knew very little about Oswald before November 22, 1963. … His staff had monitored Oswald’s movements for four years. As the former Marine moved from Moscow to Minsk to Fort Worth to New Orleans to Mexico City to Dallas, the Special Investigations Group received reports on him everywhere he went. (p. 140)

    As Newman originally noted, Oswald’s files from Moscow and Minsk should not have gone into the Special Investigation Group (SIG). They should have gone into a file at the Soviet Russia division. (Newman, p. 27) The cumulative effect of Morley’s book is that it makes the case that the idea that Oswald was some kind of sociopath who no one knew anything about in Washington is simply not tenable today. The CIA has hidden its monitoring of Oswald for decades. And it took the JFK Act and its forcible declassification process to reveal its extent.

    Morley quickly moves to some interesting developments that took place within just hours of the assassination. Oswald’s street theater antics in New Orleans now got played up in the media. Ed Butler turned over a tape of Oswald defending the FPCC on a local radio station. The CIA-backed Cuban exile organization, the DRE, were calling reporters to inform them of Oswald’s FPCC activities in the Crescent City. They even published a broadsheet saying Oswald and Castro were the presumed killers of Kennedy. (Morley, p. 145) Of course, Butler and the DRE’s intelligence connections were not exposed at this time, nor did the Warren Commission explore them. To accompany this there is a mysterious message that Richard Helms’ assistant Tom Karamessines wrote to Winston Scott in Mexico City. He told the station chief not to take any action that “could prejudice Cuban responsibility.” (Morley, p. 146)

    Morley has an interesting observation about Kostikov and AM/LASH. Hoover asked Angleton in May of 1963 if Kostikov was part of Department 13, responsible for terrorist activities and murders in the Western Hemisphere. The reply was negative. (Morley, p. 149) Yet this would change six months later. (Newman, p. 419) It would change again, when Angleton testified to the Church Committee. There he said he was not sure. But Morley further reveals that Rolando Cubela, a prospective assassin tasked by the CIA to kill Castro, was also in touch with Kostikov. This was done through Des Fitzgerald who was in charge of Cuban operations in 1963. Fitzgerald probably thought that Cubela may have told Kostikov about the CIA using him. Kostikov then told the Cubans, and Castro may have decided to strike first, using Oswald as a pawn. This may be why Fitzgerald wept when Jack Ruby shot Oswald on television. He reportedly said, “Now, we’ll never know.” (Morley, p. 150)

    The first liaison between the CIA and the Warren Commission was a man named John Whitten. But he was rather quickly moved out by Richard Helms and replaced with Angleton. The CIA now adapted a stance of waiting out the Commission. (p. 155) Here, Morley passed up a fine way to exemplify this fact. When Commission lawyer Burt Griffin testified before the HSCA, he revealed that he had sent a request to CIA to send him all the files they had on Jack Ruby and several related persons, like Barney Baker. Two months later, in May of 1964, they still had no reply. So they sent a reminder. They finally got their negative reply in mid-September, when the Commission volumes were in galley proofs. (HSCA Volume XI, p. 286) You can’t wait out a committee any better (or worse) than that can you?

    Continuing with the JFK case, Morley makes a brief mention of the formation of the CIA’s Garrison Group. (p. 192) And he also adds that one of Angleton’s assistants, Raymond Rocca, was a key member. Rocca proclaimed at its first meeting that it appeared that Jim Garrison would be able to convict his indicted suspect Clay Shaw. I wish Morley had made more of this body, because as is evidenced from the declassified files of the ARRB, the CIA itself began to take offensive measures against Garrison at around this time. The convening of this intra-agency group was ordered by Richard Helms. Helms wanted the group to consider the possible implications of the Garrison case before, during, and after the trial of Clay Shaw. (James DiEugenio, Destiny Betrayed, Second Edition, p. 270)   Which they did. For instance, Angleton ran name traces on the possible jurors in the Shaw trial. (p. 293)

    As Morley noted in his previous book, Our Man in Mexico, when Winston Scott passed away in 1971, Angleton immediately hightailed it to Mexico City to confront the widow of the CIA station chief. (Morley, p. 213) By using some not so subtle threats about Scott’s death benefits, he essentially emptied the contents of Scott’s safe, which amounted to 3 large cartons and 4 suitcases full of materials. This included a manuscript Scott was laboring on at the time of his death. By all indications, this cache included at least one tape of Oswald in Mexico City.

    The last time Angleton’s proximity to the JFK case came up was near the end of his career. Senator Howard Baker had been on Sam Ervin’s committee investigating Watergate. His minority counsel, Fred Thompson, had uncovered a lot of material about the CIA’s hidden role in that scandal. (See Thompson’s book, At That Point in Time.) This, along with the exposure of MH Chaos in the New York Times, provided much of the impetus for first the Rockefeller Commission, then the Senate Church Committee, and the Pike Committee in the House of Representatives.

    Morley leaves an important point out when he introduces this crucial historical episode, about which there are still documents being withheld from the public. As Daniel Schorr noted, at a closed press briefing in Washington, President Ford was asked why he had stacked the Rockefeller Commission with such conservative stalwarts—e.g., General Lyman Lemnitzer and Governor Ronald Reagan—and appointed Warren Commission lawyer David Belin as chief counsel. Ford replied that there might be some dangerous discoveries ahead. Someone asked him, “Like what?” Ford blurted out, “Like assassinations!” There was no discussion of what assassinations were referred to. However, since the NY Times article was about domestic CIA spying, and both Ford and Belin served on the Warren Commission, Schorr assumed it was about domestic assassinations. But when Schorr went to Bill Colby at CIA, the director did a beautiful bit of ballet on the issue, one that has never been properly appreciated. He told Schorr that Ford must have been talking about foreign plots. (The Assassinations, edited by James DiEugenio and Lisa Pease, p. 194)

    This was a masterful stroke by Colby. It was now the CIA plots against Patrice Lumumba, Rafael Trujillo, Achmed Sukarno, and first and foremost Fidel Castro, which took center stage. Because many felt the Rockefeller Commission would be a fig leaf, it was superseded by Senator Frank Church’s and Congressman Otis Pike’s now near-legendary efforts. (For anyone interested in reading up on this fascinating subject, this reviewer recommends Schorr’s Clearing the Air. Schorr ended up being fired by CBS due to the influence of then CIA Director George H. W. Bush.)

    As Morley notes, Angleton made some rather startling comments both in the witness chair and to reporters outside. Some of them follow:

    • “It is inconceivable that a secret intelligence arm of the government has to comply with all the overt orders of government.”
    • “When I look at the map today and the weakness of this country, that is what shocks me.”
    • “Certain individual rights have to be sacrificed for the national security.” (All quotations from p. 254)

    And, as alluded to above, there was the granddaddy of all Angleton quotes. In reply to a query about the JFK case, Angleton said, “A mansion has many rooms, I was not privy to who struck John.” (p. 249) That particular quote has sent many writers scurrying to understand what on earth Angleton meant by it. Perhaps the best effort in that regard was by Lisa Pease in her two-part essay on the spy chief. Her work benefits from the use of an episode that, for whatever reason, Morley ignored. This was the legal dispute between a periodical called The Spotlight and Howard Hunt, which was chronicled in Mark Lane’s book Plausible Denial. As Pease notes, Angleton did all he could to dodge questions about this incriminating episode. It originated over an article in Spotlight about a memo to Richard Helms. Angleton’s memo stated that they had to create an alibi for Howard Hunt being in Dallas on the day of the assassination. (Lane, p. 145)

    Hunt denied that any such thing happened. And he won a lawsuit against Spotlight. But on appeal, that decision was reversed. In his book, Lane shows that, in fact, the CIA had tried to help Hunt in constructing his alibi. And contrary to skeptics, it turned out that Angleton himself had actually shown the memo to journalist Joe Trento. (DiEugenio and Pease, p. 195) What is remarkable about this is that the Trento meeting happened in 1978, while the HSCA was ongoing. And Angleton had called Trento to specifically show him the document. As Lisa Pease wrote, the HSCA—through researcher Betsy Wolf—was closing in on Angleton’s association with Oswald through CI/SIG. In her opinion, this memo was meant to send a warning shot across the bow of his cohorts: If I go down, you are coming with me.

    IV

    To his credit, Morley spends quite a few pages on Angleton’s governance of the Israeli desk at CIA. There is little doubt that Angleton was a staunch Zionist who was not at all objective about the Arab-Israeli dispute. (Morley, p. 74) For instance, Angleton did not disseminate the information on the suspected construction of the Israeli atomic reactor at Dimona for U2 over-flights. (p. 92) Angleton leaned even further toward Israel because he suspected a growing alliance between Cairo and Moscow. Morley concluded this section with a good summary of how the Israelis betrayed America by stealing highly enriched uranium for their first bombs from a nuclear plant they purchased as a front near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. (See “How Israel Stole the Bomb”)

    My complaint about this section is that Morley does not sketch in how Angleton’s near rabid devotion to Israel was in opposition to President Kennedy’s policy in the Middle East. There were two specific aspects he could have highlighted in this regard. First, once he became president, JFK did all he could to forge an alliance with Gamel Abdel Nasser of Egypt in order to reach out to the moderate Arab states. (Philip Muelhenbeck, Betting on the Africans, pp. 125-27) And he was doing this simply because he felt that what Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and President Eisenhower had done previously—asking Nasser to join the Baghdad Pact, and cutting off funds for the Aswan Dam—had helped usher Nasser into a relationship with Moscow. An extreme cold warrior like Angleton would not appreciate this kind of diplomatic strophe. The other point that is missing here is that, as Roger Mattson noted in his book Stealing the Atom Bomb, Kennedy was adamant about there being no atomic weapons in the Middle East. (Mattson, pp. 38-40, 256) This was an integral part of his overall policy there in which he tried to be fair and objective to both sides. It would thus appear that Angleton and Kennedy held differing views on this issue. And after Kennedy’s murder, Angleton’s views won out first under President Johnson and then further with Nixon.

    That point branches off into President Kennedy’s foreign policy toward Cuba and the USSR at the time of his death. Morley does some work on Angleton’s influence on Cuba policy as late as May of 1963. But he does not sketch in Kennedy’s policy shift toward Castro that came after the Missile Crisis; nor his attempt at a rapprochement with Khrushchev at that time. Today, all of this seems important in light of the attempts by certain suspect characters—some he has mentioned—to blame the assassination on either Cuba or Russia.

    Also relevant in this regard is the production of the Edward Epstein authored book Legend: The Secret World of Lee Harvey Oswald, which Morley deals with rather lightly. That book had one of the largest advances for any book ever in the JFK field. Today, in inflation-adjusted dollars, it would be well over a million, closer to two million. According to more than one source, including Carl Oglesby and Jerry Policoff, Angleton was a chief consultant on that project. Released during the proceedings of the HSCA, Epstein ignored all the evidence that showed Oswald was some kind of American intelligence operative. Instead, the book did all it could to insinuate that Oswald was really some kind of Russian agent, perhaps controlled by George DeMohrenschildt, and that Oswald did what he did for either the KGB or Cuban G-2. As Jim Marrs later discovered, Epstein employed a team of researchers. They were instructed to only look at any possible communist associations they could find. As Lisa Pease later discovered, in Epstein’s first edition of his previous book on the JFK case, Inquest, he acknowledged a Mr. R. Rocca, Who she suspected to be Ray Rocca, one of Angleton’s important assistants specializing on the JFK case.

    To me, this area would seem at least as interesting and important as Mary Meyer, which Morley spends about ten pages on. To put it mildly, after doing a lot of research on this issue, I disagree with just about every tenet of his discussion of the matter. And I was more than a bit surprised when Morley even brought in the Tim Leary aspect of this mythology. As I showed, Leary manufactured his relationship with Meyer after the fact in order to sell his book Flashbacks. And if one reads the current scholarship on Kennedy’s foreign policy by authors like Phil Muehlenbeck and Robert Rakove, the idea that Kennedy needed Meyer to advise him on this is risible. (See my review of Mary’s Mosaic for the details)

    Also disturbing in this respect is his use of Mimi Alford and her ludicrous, “Better red than dead” quote she attributed to JFK during the Missile Crisis.  Greg Parker did a very nice exposé of Alford and the man who first surfaced her, Robert Dallek, back in 2012 that unfortunately is not online today. It showed just how dubious she was. But suffice it to say, anyone who reads, for example, The Armageddon Letters—the direct communications between the three leaders—can see how fast and hard Kennedy drew the line. (See the letter on pp. 72-73) The missiles, the bombers and submarines were all leaving and they would be checked as they left. In fact, as Parker pointed out, Kennedy had criticized the “better Red than dead school” less than a year before the crisis during a speech at the University of Washington. But he also criticized those who refuse to negotiate. Kennedy was not going to let the atomic armada stay in Cuba for one simple reason: he suspected that the Russians had done this to barter an exchange for West Berlin. Kennedy resisted that because he saw it as unraveling the Atlantic Alliance. Anyone who has read, for example, The Kennedy Tapes, will understand that. (See, for example, p. 518, where Kennedy himself makes the association.) What Kennedy conceded ultimately was very little, if anything. He made a pledge not to invade Cuba, which he was not going to do anyway; and he silently pulled missiles out of Turkey, which he thought were gone already. They were supposed to have been replaced by Polaris missiles, which they later were. So in his actions here, unlike with the Mimi Alford mythology, Kennedy simply lived up to his 1961 speech. Either Morley has little interest in Kennedy’s foreign policy or he has little knowledge of it.

    The strength of the book lies in the tracing of the Oswald files through the CIA under Angleton’s dominion. No book on Angleton has done this before. And that is certainly a commendable achievement. Hopefully, this will become a staple of future Angleton scholarship, which I think the book is designed to do.

  • Mort Sahl Interview with Elliot Mintz

    Mort Sahl Interview with Elliot Mintz

    Click here for the audio

    (This transcript has been edited for grammar and flow.)

    Elliot Mintz:

    KPFK listener-supported Pacifica Radio Los Angeles. My name is Elliot Mintz. This is Looking Out. Mort, this is just … I can’t tell you what a gas it is to have you here tonight.

    Mort Sahl:

    Well, we moved heaven and earth, Elliot, as you know and the listeners don’t know. There’s an abundance of riches, in addition to … First, I was doing nothing. I don’t know how many of the listeners know that. In addition to doing the show after you and I got together and we decided to do this, then of course, they called from New York and said they had a Johnny Carson show for me in that that way that they have of calling, it always sounds like Operation Headstart. They’re going to help me … Urban renewal. The fact is they have a lot of letters and they can’t hold the audience on a chain that much longer. They want to know if I’m dead or not, so they’re going to import for the show and they want to do it Monday. That would mean, of course, flying in Sunday because you have to report at noon in order to brief the producer.

    So there’s no way to do it. They won’t let you fly in that day because they’re afraid of weather delays. Then they wouldn’t let me … I said, “Well, I have a show to do in Los Angeles on Sunday.”

    And they said, “Cancel it.”

    And I said, “I can’t do that.” And then I said, “I’ll have to cancel this.”

    “Well, you’ve been canceling a lot of shows, you know, that wouldn’t look too good.”

    And then, of course, the singular morality … Then I said, “What about Tuesday?”

    They said, “Well, you couldn’t be on because Bob Hope is on Tuesday and he has a different position than you on Vietnam.” They told me that, so I couldn’t be on with him. And then I finally put it off until Thursday. I’ll be on the Carson show Thursday night for those of you who have a duality of purpose in listening to KPFK and watch NBC. Covering the full spectrum.

    Elliot Mintz:

    I think Jim Garrison once described NBC as the network who believes in the right of the people to know, right?

    Mort Sahl:

    He’s not afraid of them, which is enough in itself. And I spoke with Mark Lane this week who was in New Orleans and I’ll be down there later this week after the New York trip. And, as you know, he has a bribery, public bribery indictment against Walter Sheridan of NBC. Walter Sheridan has a strange history for a broadcaster. As a matter of fact, Bill Stout of CBS once put it this way to me, he said when it came to the Garrison case, NBC News had reported they hired a house detective. They hired one of Robert Kennedy’s lawyers on the Hoffa case to operate there.

    Mort Sahl:

    Yes. That’s who Walter Sheridan is. And he did the Frank McGee show, which was called The Case against Jim Garrison. And he went down there and Garrison has an indictment against him on the basis of trying to bribe Perry Russo; to defect to California where he would not be extradited and to discredit Garrison publicly. And Garrison also charges in that indictment that Sheridan used the phrase, “I will destroy Garrison. I’m here to destroy Garrison.” He used it many times around New Orleans. Now NBC turned that show over to Sheridan not to any of its other reporters. He felt, as he said in Playboy, Garrison that Sheridan had gone too far because they gave him equal time very quickly. They kind of backtracked.

    On the other hand we find Newsweek’s continual bias against Garrison. And I want to tell all the good liberals out there that that’s your journal. Phil Graham, the Washington Post, good social Democrat. Not Time Magazine, not a fascistic magazine, but a good liberal magazine. Newsweek hired Hugh Aynesworth to cover Garrison. They said he’s an outstanding scholar having worked for the Dallas Times Herald, an outstanding scholar. For instance, in his last exchange with Mark Lane in Dallas, he told Mark Lane something to the effect that Warren was not objective about Oswald because both of them were left-wingers, extreme left-wingers.

    Elliot Mintz:

    Wow.

    Mort Sahl:

    So that’s the guy that Newsweek feels is an authority on the case.

    Elliot Mintz:

    I want to begin at the beginning.

    Mort Sahl:

    All right.

    Elliot Mintz:

    And follow this thing very, very closely so we can really understand not only what’s surrounding the suppression of what Jim Garrison was doing in New Orleans, but also what has been done against you personally.

    Now, there was a time that you were appearing in nightclubs and making billions and billions of dollars and selling record albums and you were a comedian and the rest of it, and you didn’t talk about the assassination. Something then happened that obviously was to lead to the change of your entire life. When did it begin for you, Mort? When did you begin to begin to-

    Mort Sahl:

    Well, I began to ask questions about this case. I used to ask them socially and I couldn’t find anybody to answer me, but then I only mixed with liberals, you know. That’s like looking for an honest man and not having a lamp. Then, of course, I ran into … when I had the television show over at Channel 11. We had the … Mark Lane was coming to town. He was originally scheduled on the Joe Pyne Show and some benefactor steered him toward my program instead. And he did cancel the Pyne show and they were furious as well they might be, I suppose, about a commitment. And Mark Lane came on in October of 196-

    Elliot Mintz:

    6.

    Mort Sahl:

    6. Right. He came on with me and he made five appearances. Publisher’s Weekly and the New York Times agree that Rush to Judgment is a national best seller because of California and because of southern California and more specifically because of that program. And yeah, we sold a lot of books. I told people it was most important book in their lifetime. I told Lane when I met him that I thought he was the most important man in the country.

    Elliot Mintz:

    Rush to Judgment?

    Mort Sahl:

    Absolutely. And I think Garrison now has replaced him as the most important man in the country. Mark and I got along very well and the shows were good. We found we didn’t need the, you know, actors or fun and games or anything. We just have to talk and the people cared about it. We really got a storm going and because the people responded, I kept going with it. Then, of course, the KLAC show was in the works and I kept going with that. And when the KLAC show began to roll, of course, I got the first national interview with Garrison. I got 90 minutes on tape with Garrison and Lane, which I paid for my own trip to New Orleans because the station didn’t think it was worth it. After all, it was only a man investigating the murder of the President.

    Elliot Mintz:

    This is radio station KLAC?

    Mort Sahl:

    KLAC. And I went down there and I came back and I played that. Of course, there was great suppression. KTTV, the program director, Jim Gates kept saying to me, “Well, if theatrically …” So he would say he wasn’t suppressing me, it wasn’t a matter of censorship. It was a matter of showmanship and he said, “Theatrically, it’s boring. It just hearing you talk about Kennedy.” And even when I was finally fired at KTTV the first time, which was a year ago December, he came to my house and gave me my notice and said, “Your ratings are very bad and you’re going off.” And instead of leaving well enough alone, he then got nervous and said, “I think it’s because you just talked about the same thing all the time. Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy. We’re sick of hearing about Kennedy.” And I’m excising the profanity.

    You know, as we always say, speak for yourself. I haven’t found too many people in the American electorate who are really sick of talking about Kennedy. I find people who were cowed and who are fearful. Anything that happens other than having your head blown off in Dealey Plaza is somewhat anticlimactic. Sane men have grown insane on this subject. For Robert Vaughn to be quizzed by Senator Robert Kennedy, to be pursued around Senator Kennedy’s mansion, “Why was Mort Sahl fired? Why does he claim he was fired?”

    And for Robert Vaughn to say, “I was fearful of the interrogation, so I said I didn’t know.” And then for Robert Vaughn publicly to declaim , “As a matter of fact Senator Kennedy is a very busy man. He has the world on his shoulders and he doesn’t have time to even know who Mort Sahl is.” I know what makes people move this way, but I have found some continuity of integrity on the part of people in any issue but this issue.

    Now I’m skipping here chronologically, which I don’t mean to do on you, but-

    Elliot Mintz:

    Let me raise a question.

    Mort Sahl:

    Yes.

    Elliot Mintz:

    At its peak, your KLAC telephone talk show and the KTTV television show. What were the ratings like? What was the audience response?

    Mort Sahl:

    The ratings on the television show were good and healthy and I think that it’s important for the audience to know that we presented 30 to 40 minutes of sketches every week and I wrote them and I produced the program myself and I was in the office seven days a week and I did all the monologues in between and I booked the guests and I was on there for two hours. I spent seven days in that office and I made $600 a week gross.

    Now that’s a pretty cheap way to bring the show, which is sold out on sponsorship. No sponsors complained and you must be very guarded about that. When you hear remarks like KLAC made about our biggest goal is to have no sponsors. It has become a device in our society because there is an argument of the new left that capitalism will censure people it sponsors. It very seldom is the sponsors.

    Elliot Mintz:

    How were your sponsors on the program?

    Mort Sahl:

    I never had any trouble in television. We were sold out and they never complained. We even kidded them, especially the used car people. We were sold out. Gates himself said at the end of his show that when he finally discharged me for something he called insubordination, he said, “the ratings were healthy and the show was a good entertaining show, but this guy can’t follow direction”. That said many times, and of course that may be said with a gleam toward heading you off at the pass so that no one else will hire you because it is a limited industry to begin with. Limited in courage, limited in perspective, limited in goals.

    When the radio program was on at the same time, of course, I had Harold Weisberg on, I had Lane on, and we rang up tremendous ratings. Jack Thayer, who was the potentate at KLAC, brought their ratings by in the evening shift at KLAC, had a 17.7 the last time he brought them by, which meant that we passed KHJ. People were really listening. Why were they listening? Because I was talking about their President, whom they love. I was talking about the draft, which is every young man’s stake, and I was talking about where I thought it was at because I was taking their pulse. Now, because, so they … Of course, in the superstate, to paraphrase Garrison, they must drop you for not communicating.

    The fact is they dropped you because you do communicate. That’s the real grind. To reach other people. I was never such an extraordinary man until I became an ordinary man and joined the people. When I began to express really what was on their minds, but I took a different course of action. I took a course of action that satisfied me. Now when they dropped the radio program, they gave me no notice. The night they chose, I said to the audience, “Should I disappear it is not voluntary. I’ll stay here as long as you need me and you want to talk to me. And if I disappear, you must rise as an army. It is non-voluntary.” I played Kennedy’s inauguration, Roosevelt’s inauguration and a Garrison speech for 20 minutes. And the next day I was told not to report. The agency that represented me at that time did not contest this. We’re to gather they’re not interested in money in a capitalistic society?

    Elliot Mintz:

    Which agency was this?

    Mort Sahl:

    Creative Management Associates. They did not rise as an army. In fact, one of the executives up there quoted me a story by Jill Sharing in the [Los Angeles] Free Press. It’s good to know they read the Free Press, isn’t it? It’s amazing, huh? They don’t quote it when it’s not convenient though. It’s got to be the Free Press on their terms.

    Elliot Mintz:

    They’ve got to figure out some way, you know, of bringing it back home on a personal level.

    Mort Sahl:

    That’s right. Document it, bring it back home. Very well put. They dropped the show and somebody … I guess I shouldn’t betray the confidence. Somebody who’s influential here in town said to me, “You’re going to be dropped on television now. The only difference is the first time you were fired,” and a lot of you remember this. When I was fired on television, I talked about it on the radio.

    Elliot Mintz:

    Mm-hmm (affirmative).

    Mort Sahl:

    The station got 31,000 letters and reinstated me. This time-

    Elliot Mintz:

    31,000?

    Mort Sahl:

    31,000 in three days at one source, Jim Gates. I got a couple of thousand myself up in Las Vegas at Caesar’s Palace and other people at the station got letters. That was the core of them in three days. This time they cut the live show, the radio show.

    Elliot Mintz:

    Mm-hmm (affirmative).

    Mort Sahl:

    And then the television show was controlled by tape. So I immediately received a letter saying, “You’ve been fired on radio. That is regrettable. Do not discuss it on television. If you do, this will be insubordination.” And then I got a series of letters for record that would come every day, special delivery from Jim Gates at KTTV, and they would say, “Do not discuss this.” KLAC maintained that “Mort is gone but anybody’s free to … He has his platform at KTTV”.

    So Mark Lane then directed one of the young men on the Citizens Committee of Inquiry, which I want to talk about later, to call the station and say that it is obvious I’m the only public platform for the district attorney in New Orleans and therefore it is his opinion that that contributed to my being fired. They wouldn’t let the young man on the air. So since they had said I had my own platform on television, I put him on television. So they erased him from the television tape. They sent me another letter and said, “You cannot bring this up. You’re not to discuss the radio station.”

    So I checked with an attorney and the attorney said, “That means that in their interpretation for them to beat you with chains and for you to go on the air and if someone in the audience says, ‘What is that scar?’ And you said, ‘They hit me with a chain,’ that’s termed ‘disparaging’ by them. You have a right to express yourself under an FCC license granted to Channel 11 as long as you don’t disparage them.”

    So I went on the next week and I said, “That tape was erased.” The young man was on there, so they erased that tape.

    And they sent me another letter and they said, “If you mention anyone at this station by name or by title or refer to the fact that you have a radio program, you will be fired.”

    That day I was in the office and Garrison called me from New Orleans and he said, “I have an exclusive for you to break on the air. I have eyewitnesses placing Ruby, Oswald, and Shaw together in Baton Rouge. Eyeball witnesses.”

    So I went on the air and I told that on the air. And I mentioned for about three minutes, about the radio program that I isolated so that if it was cut out they could see the rest of the show, which was funny. It was a good show. Biff Rose was on. Phil Ochs was on. Hamilton Camp, Joyce Jamison. They erased the entire tape and sent me a letter the next morning firing me for insubordination in mid-contract at a time when they owed me $83,000. So that’s a capricious form of behavior you might think for a large organization.

    But they saw fit to do that over this issue. They saw fit not even to call me in, and I want to make a point here that this is not capitalism. You know, “shape up or ship out. This is the way we do things.” This is a different form. No one came to me and said shape up. It was just over. No one spoke to me. Nobody. Just the vast silence.

    Elliot Mintz:

    My guest is Mort Sahl and we’ll continue with much more.

    All right, so here you are at KTTV and KLAC with incredibly high ratings, 31,000 letters received in a period of three days, and having turned Los Angeles on to obviously the most important issue of the day. And you were fired you were through. What was it like after that, Mort. Did you start to go around and look for other jobs right away?

    Mort Sahl:

    See, KTTV, this pending legal action, I’m going to the union for arbitration through AFTRA, which I’m a member and have been for 15 years to settle this. So I’m not saying there’s a correlation between what I said about the assassination and what happened there, but the assassination is not my first experience at twisting the arm of the establishment and it’s not my first experience at being threatened or paying for it. I’m the same guy who was on the cover of Time Magazine August 8, 1960. I’m the same guy who emceed the Academy Awards with Laurence Olivier, Bob Hope, Jerry Lewis and Tony Randall in 1960. And I’m the same guy that had my own show on NBC a few years ago. I’m the same guy that’s been under contract to all three networks.

    Now, what was the attitude? You know, we have to use a very broad canvas, not a broad brush here, to see what the attitude is here. I am submitted to network shows at the same time because I have a national reputation. When I was submitted to the Dean Martin Show, the agent said, “Oh no, not that guy. Never. Because he’s making speeches and he’s gone crazy on that subject.” I’ve gone crazy. It’s only a couple of years that they were selling Kennedy to me. They thought I was for Stevenson. That’s because I like to know who I’m voting for. And I confess, when I meet a stranger, I don’t condemn them, but I ask who he is before I vote for him. That happened to me repeatedly. And of course, you know, I saw the whole liberal syndrome.

    I tried to call it the way I saw it in Los Angeles and there were many subjects on that program. And while I want to stay with the assassination tonight, I just briefly want to point out that everybody knows who they are and that since god put me into the role of holding the mirror up to Dracula, who knows very well what he looks like anyway. They didn’t stand up to be counted when they were needed. I made the appeal. I stood up there and I said, “You know who you are and you know the fight I’m in. What’s at stake is America.” That’s the reason that when Budd Schulberg went to Watts and sold the television show off it or two of the articles to Playboy, I pointed out that Bud Schulberg knows better. Before he knew the history of the Negro people, he knew the history of the Jewish people, and he knew the history of the Un-American Activities Committee and that we must all face ourselves.

    Now that wasn’t pleasant for everybody, but we have to say it on the air. I talked about all the ex-left in Hollywood and what they have become since they joined the establishment. They haven’t become right, they haven’t become anything. They had become eunuchs and I wanted to remind them and ask them if it was worth the price. Because as Garrison says, in the Faust legend, the price is you. I pointed that out. I pointed out that the country is going down the tube because we’re not … We have no hope. We have no optimism as we had under Kennedy and we’re trying to rationalize the war. I pointed out, as unpopular as it may sound, that there’s a vast store of Jewish people in this city who have turned their back on their commitment, which is survival, who have gone the other way, and who will give Ronald Reagan, a standing ovation in the Hollywood Bowl because he says the right things about Israel.

    Well, I suppose everybody will, including Omar Sharif and Danny Thomas, the only two Arabs in the show business community. But as hard as it is going down, again we have to point out that the Jewish people–and I know some here who even fled from Hitler–come full circle now and not only rationalize the war in Vietnam, but make the same error they made in Germany: that if they have enough money, they will buy out. Garrison is painting a picture of a neo-Nazi group and as Jack Ruby raved on toward the end in the jail: I helped them because it was a money deal, but I see I’m helping people who will burn my people.

    There are Jewish elements, Jewish liberal elements, that turn their back on the President and they know better. And I know some people out here and they’re in this industry and their answer to me is a large blue pencil drawn through my name in case I can get a job. And imagine that all they think they can do to a man in America is take away his right to make a living. In between, of course you’ve got the all the liberals with their knees knocking, looking the other way. I’d tell you something about the issue if I knew anything about it, but I don’t know. Well, I’m sure that they do. In fact, those who are most fearful are those who come up with the worst conjecture. Yes, I found myself completely unemployable. Completely.

    Elliot Mintz:

    You couldn’t get a job anywhere.

    Mort Sahl:

    Yeah, nowhere. You know-

    Elliot Mintz:

    What would happen when your agents would call the nightclubs, TV stations, or-

    Mort Sahl:

    What would happen is – America’s not Germany and it’s not well enough organized. So sometimes guys fall in the trap and a guy would call you and offer you a job on Friday and by the time I get back to him on Tuesday, he would’ve changed in his mind.

    Elliot Mintz:

    What happened in the interim, Mort? Who would make the telephone calls to the booking agents?

    Mort Sahl:

    Well, I did. Then after a while, I didn’t.

    Elliot Mintz:

    No, I mean, who spoke with the booking agents and the people who could give you employment and say, “Don’t touch Sahl?”

    Mort Sahl:

    Oh, you mean from the other end?

    Elliot Mintz:

    Yeah.

    Mort Sahl:

    Well, several people. A vice president of a network here in this city, and there are only three, said to my agent, “If I try to use Mort,” he said, “whom I respect, I’ll lose my job.” That’s a man with seniority I might add at the network.

    Vice president of a leading motion picture and television studio here said, “Don’t ever mention his name in this office.” That offended. That offended by it.

    Elliot Mintz:

    Were they functioning independently, Mort, because of their own hang-ups or with somebody … like who threatened the vice president of the network?

    Mort Sahl:

    Well, you don’t know… It’s hard to be both, as I told you the other night, a corpse and a detective too. 15% of this puzzle is missing because people won’t come out of the bushes and say … They will come out of the shadows and say, “We are conspirators.” I don’t believe that the government calls everybody. I think that people are sufficiently corrupt and enjoy a mutuality of interests that they will behave as they do.

    One of the leading television commentators said to me when I said, “What are you going to do about the Garrison case?”

    He said, “Oh, I’m going to stay away from him.” He told me that openly, but that would be his course. That would be his fearless course of informing the American people of who killed our President.

    The best way, of course, was for everybody to call me paranoiac and to look the other way. And I’ve had some pretty important people tell me that, because what can they do? Can they admit, again, that this is not the best of all possible worlds? Because then they might have to do a patch and we’ll have to do a repair job. But they’re not prepared sufficiently to even sweep the room and take care of it, be custodians of the room hygienically, let alone re-paper the walls and make some improvements on the property. They are all by and large a gutless breed. There are several levels here in Hollywood. There’s the level of “I’m not talented. He’s having bad luck. It might rub off on me and I’ll really be in trouble. I better keep away.” The straight opportunism. But there are some remarks that are hard to answer. There’s Bill Cosby who said, “I have a wife and kids. I can’t be seen with him.”

    Elliot Mintz:

    Wow.

    Mort Sahl:

    How’s that? How’s that? A wife and kids and I addressed my remarks to him one week. I said, “I’d like to know what you’re going to leave your wife and kids. What are you going to leave your kids in America?” We have America. That’s all we have. And the signs are that we are losing her.

    Elliot Mintz:

    Mort, what about your friends? What happened with them?

    Mort Sahl:

    My friends?

    Elliot Mintz:

    Your close friends, people who-

    Mort Sahl:

    Well, they vanished. I know they’re around because I go to see them in pictures all the time. But I’m glad that they’re still available to me on film as my memories are treasured.

    Elliot Mintz:

    Really? Was it really like that? I mean, right now-

    Mort Sahl:

    There was a social ostracism. What friends do I have now?

    Elliot Mintz:

    Yeah. How many people could you call now and say, “Hey man, I’d like to get together with you and rap,” you know?

    Mort Sahl:

    Well, you’re the newest. I would say Mark Lane, Jim Garrison, Maggie Field and Enrico Banducci at the hungry i.

    Elliot Mintz:

    I’m in pretty good company.

    Mort Sahl:

    Man. I wouldn’t go back for anything. Last week I was here negotiating for something and I had to go out to dinner. It was very interesting. I walked into a restaurant in Beverly Hills and you only have to, you know, take a flight of fancy with me now. You got to remember the breed which I was, I came down the pike and I was a great threat in 1956, ’57 and they denied me and then, of course, I made it stick with the people. So then they tried to absorb you and I was everywhere, you know, and put his footprints in the cement at Grauman’s Chinese. I emceed for television. I’m that guy, I’m the guy, I made pictures and I did television shows and I addressed people at campuses. Okay.

    So I went to the dinner and I walked into a Beverly Hills restaurant and my former manager was there, who still handles the affairs of Peter Lawford. He’s the guy who once threatened me with never working again in America.

    Elliot Mintz:

    Peter Lawford?

    Mort Sahl:

    Both of them. If I didn’t stop kidding President Kennedy. They loved him, you see. They also, these same people, then changed gloves from the left hand to the right hand and see that you continue not to work for asking who killed him. President Kennedy is very lucky that I can be objective, at least his memory is, that I can be objective about it. I didn’t love him so I can give full time to finding out who did him in. Fantastic.

    Elliot Mintz:

    You knew him, didn’t you?

    Mort Sahl:

    Yes, I did. And I wrote for him for 19 months. I said that on KLAC. Senator Kennedy, as I understand it asked Mr. Vaughn if I ever claimed that and Mr. Vaughn said, with the customary courage, “I don’t know what he said.” Well, I said it. In fact, Senator Kennedy’s had the opportunity to ask me. And for those of you who can’t get a framework on this, you must remember that I go into the White House at will. I repeat: at will. I ate with Senator Kennedy last May and I ate with Lyndon Johnson the May before that. I was in Washington for five days in July. I went to the White House. I walked through the gate. They know me, they know me and I refuse to go away. I’m like a very persistent epidemic.

    Now back to the point. So I walked into … Well, it’s interesting in light of having that access and then doing a local television show and having people running for Congress using me in the most opportunistic vein. If nothing else, they should not think that I’m a fool and they should not think I’m ambitious on the level of the House of Representatives. I’ve rejected the best, you know, so if I’m a neurotic, I’m neurotic A1. Zero cool. But anyway, back to back to the … Yeah, and I forgot to mention I used to sit in with Senator Fulbright in the afternoon at will, who I really dig. Although I’m sure that a lot of liberals out there think he’s a racist. That’s their way. At any rate.

    So I walked into Stefanino’s and I walked in with a good guy to talk some business and there sits a Mr. Evans, who doesn’t say anything to me. I’ve openly accused him on the air.

    Elliot Mintz:

    Who is Mr. Evans?

    Mort Sahl:

    Mr. Evans is Mr. Lawford’s manager, used to be my manager.

    Elliot Mintz:

    I see.

    Mort Sahl:

    Confidant to the President at a certain recreational level and who now thinks, “That guy’s killing himself by discussing the subject, the assassination. He’s doing himself in. He’s self-destructive. It’s a terrible thing to watch.” But they watched it every Friday night as long as it was on. He’s sitting in that restaurant. When people came through the door, actors who know me and know him and they refuse to speak to me during the evening. They averted their heads. There’s that much terror. And then a manager came over to me, he used to handle Georgia Harris and he said to me, “Hey, listen, I’m not with the hate group.”

    And I said, “The hate group?”

    She said, “I don’t care what anybody says, I’ll use you. I’m going to do a picture, there might be a part for you. I don’t care what anybody says.” That’s in reference to paranoia.

    The next night I was in a restaurant called Dominic’s to further conduct business, which is great in restaurants. Jim Arness came in, very jovial, good guy, but then he’s a conservative. You have nothing to fear. He couldn’t get near you because he couldn’t find your body beneath the liberals pounding it. There was a George Axelrod, who used to be my friend, who two years ago asked me to direct a film for him. He now says, “You used to be America’s conscience and now you’re America’s insanity.” That’s his reply to my plea to clean up the Kennedy case. Because it started as a toothache. It is now an abscess and eventually the patient is going to die. You have no way to get away from Jack Kennedy. You chose him and you rise with him as the phoenix or you go down in flames with him. Sorry folks. But that’s the deal.

    Now I watched all that last week. Those are all small examples, but they’re the microcosm of the whole thing. The people who are fearful to talk to you, who ask you questions and who run away from you. It goes all the way down to the actors who would run into me in Carl’s Market or the Mayfair on Santa Monica at two in the morning. It was open that late, and they’d say to me, “Hey, what’s with your friend Garrison? He better get his head examined.”

    And I’d say, “In essence, this is what’s with my friend Garrison,” because the Playboy thing was in the works, the interview was coming. I’d say, “The president reached an agreement with the Soviet Union about Cuba among other things. And he’s sent the FBI in to bust the anti-Castro Cuban exile groups’ training. And the next day the CIA gave them a blank check to go ahead and countermand his order. And that conflict is what brought the government down.”

    People say, “You’re preaching rebellion.”

    I say, “We had rebellion. The government was overthrown in Dallas for all we know.”

    And then they run off into the woods and I’ve got them coming and going, man. I got them boxed in both ways. If they accuse Johnson, which a lot of them want to do because they want to help Robert into the chair, then I say, “There’s no evidence connecting Johnson to the case and if there is, why are you nominating him and rationalizing the war in Vietnam?”

    Or then they come up to me and they say, “Well, if all of this is true, aren’t you afraid?”

    And then I say, “No, because a lone gunman did it in Dallas and he’s long gone.”

    I’ve got them coming and going because they have no position. But I tell you that I knew everybody in this town or know just that I don’t see them. And there is no studio open, there is no television, there is just a vast uneasiness because they have to meet you. They have to meet you because the plan isn’t complete. Eventually you’re going to get an invitation to a screening or a premier and you’ve got to meet them in the lobby. And that’s when they got to begin tugging at their collars. When Garrison came out here the last time to set up this thing on Eugene Bradley, everybody thought all he was doing was sitting in the Daisy. That’s what he was doing. I took him into Daisy, and we sat in there and all the actors who said I was crazy, and all the comedians, three or four of them in rebellion could have turned the tide, ran up to me and asked to meet him. They’re all on his side because he’s here.

    Can you imagine what’s going to happen if he wins? I’ll tell you all out there, and you all know who you are, what’s going to happen if he wins. First of all, we’re going to get the country back. I like that part.

    Elliot Mintz:

    Yeah.

    Mort Sahl:

    But there’s going to be a terrible retribution for those of you who denied him and think that your liberal credentials will let you change hats. You know, General Smedley Butler, the Marine Corps, talked about the revolution in Nicaragua. The vast majority of peasants had no political belief and they used to wear … the rebels had a red hatband and the fascists had a blue hatband. And most people who are smart had a hatband that was reversible.

    Garrison has charged that all the attorneys defending all the people in this case are retained by the CIA. And he stands flatly on that charge.

    Elliot Mintz:

    Now the cat defending Edgar Eugene Bradley was a former FBI man wasn’t he?

    Mort Sahl:

    I noticed that. Yeah, yeah, as a matter of fact, I noticed that too. Also the New Orleans States-Item pointed out this week, which our papers missed here, that Dr. McIntyre, Bradley’s associate there, has been active in a draft “J. Edgar Hoover for the Presidency” movement. I haven’t heard anybody bring that up since Walter Winchell. I’d hate to see Hoover step down to the presidency. But you know if that’s the will of the people let it be heard. Anyway, as Garrison always says to Mark Lane, he says, “Your sarcastic remarks about the director have made my job insufferably difficult.” But at any rate-

    Elliot Mintz:

    Let me interrupt for a second.

    Mort Sahl:

    Yeah.

    Elliot Mintz:

    Tell us just about J. Edgar Hoover.

    Mort Sahl:

    Hoover. Well, Hoover’s now 73. The mandatory federal retirement age, I should say, is 70. Johnson waived it for him. Well, of course everybody says … I mean the folklore is that he has so much on everybody that nobody can throw them out. He’s been in office 44 years.

    Elliot Mintz:

    44 years?

    Mort Sahl:

    44 years, which means that he looks upon the President as transient, for one thing, and as Garrison has said “he’s the finest director the Bureau has ever had”, and also the only director that the Bureau has ever had. So that’s fantastic. Of course the Bureau, who Mark Lane says is run, and most people agree, as a Gestapo like organization; because it reflects the views of that one man who runs it and nobody messes with him. No one ever has. All the Attorney Generals walk down the hall to his office. He doesn’t report to them. The only one to tangle with him was Bob Kennedy. That was about the only one.

    Elliot Mintz:

    What is the relationship like between Bobby Kennedy and J. Edgar Hoover.

    Mort Sahl:

    It isn’t very good. As reported in Look Magazine, when the president was killed, Hoover informed Bobby Kennedy; called him at Hickory Hill and he said, “Your brother’s dead,. He then hung up. Bobby Kennedy wanted to make certain that he realized that he was the boss; which is certainly right along with being Attorney General. By the way, as Garrison’s pointed out. Robert Kennedy had the right to arrest the members of the Warren Commission as accessories after the fact, and ask that they be hanged, which I do not believe he did, although I haven’t gone into the record.

    Elliot Mintz:

    Why? Why is Bobby Kennedy walking around with his mouth shut?

    Mort Sahl:

    I don’t know. There are several answers. One is that, of course, the best source would be him. We would have to ask him. The second is that the elements are so terror ridden that they would kill him if he said anything. The third is that it was a fait accompli and all the people in the government were then told, “It’ll be anarchy. You must go along for the good of your country.” In other words, it’ll bring the country down if they know what happened. Although ironically enough, the way they brought the country up, they brought the country down. We now not only doubt the CIA, we doubt everybody. There are people who say he has a deal with the President to carry on in 1972.

    But I will say that he has an amazing lack of inquiry about this case. When I was interviewed in Washington by Jeremy Campbell for the London Observer, funny how you’re heard in America. I was interviewed in Washington by the London Observer and the San Francisco Chronicle picked up the story and ran it on the front page on Sunday. The front page it says, “I know who killed Kennedy says Sahl,”; front page three columns with a photo headline.

    I never heard from Robert Kennedy about that even to admonish me for being irresponsible. Mark Lane has never heard from him, and certainly Garrison has never heard from him. In fact, there’s evidence that he’s tried to bulldoze the Garrison investigation. It was reported to me last May when Robert Kennedy was out here, was a dinner at which were present, Pierre Salinger, Andy Williams, Milton Berle, Robert Vaughn, and Ed Guthman, who used to be an administrative assistant to Robert Kennedy. He is now the national editor of the LA Times. And you know their view on Garrison.

    Elliot Mintz:

    Mm-hmm (affirmative).

    Mort Sahl:

    The only time they give up that cartoon section, they let Johnson offer it, is to go after Garrison. Guthman got up and said, “Gee, Mort’s through in the business and it’s a shame. He committed suicide by hanging out with Garrison and Lane.” First of all, I appreciate their concern for the postmortem about me and I appreciate the judgment that I’m through. And I wonder what would make them say that. I wonder why Garrison and Lane would be the enemy. They’re only acting as patriots. They’re proving that they love their president. Not because he’s a dead president. He’s not a remembered president or a spirit in this country.

    Elliot Mintz:

    Mort, so you believe Bobby Kennedy right now has a pretty good idea who killed his brother?

    Mort Sahl:

    I don’t know. I don’t have any idea. Garrison has said that there is no way that the President would not know what’s going on here, which is not to say he’s a conspirator. No way. I don’t know how Robert Kennedy, I don’t know what he knows. I have no idea. He’s quite enigmatic about it all.

    Elliot Mintz:

    You believe right now that President Johnson has a pretty good idea who killed Kennedy?

    Mort Sahl:

    President Johnson, of course, he must know. Just from an overlap of information, he must have some information. He must know that Lee Oswald did not do it. He has to know that. In order for this immense cover up to go on. So does the Vice President.

    Elliot Mintz:

    You’re listening to KPFK, listener supported Pacifica Radio, Los Angeles.

    Mort Sahl:

    So we walk up to the house, there’s a tricycle in the driveway, and we knock on a door and Garrison comes to the door in his bathrobe because he had the flu. And I put my hand out, I said, “I just came down to shake your hand.”

    And he said, “I hope you’re going to do more than that.”

    That was the beginning. And we sat down and we talked to him until about 4:00 in the morning, and we talked to him about everything. He’s got a great oratorical style, you know, and he’s a true believer. He really is in the liberal tradition of this country, which some people would call a liberal-conservative tradition, but prizing the individual against federalism. We went there on successive nights and he brought the detectives over to meet us, the guys working, among whom was Bill Gurvich, who later defected. You recall, he made a statement to the press defecting after he left Robert Kennedy’s office.

    Bill Gurvich who said, “Clay Shaw’s being railroaded and Garrison has no case,” was in the office and he told me with great relish how they got Clay Shaw. How Clay Shaw had come in. I asked him to come in and Garrison said, “I’m charging you with conspiracy to murder John F. Kennedy,” and Shaw said nothing. The perspiration broke out on his upper lip.

    And he said, “I’d like to go home and consider this.”

    And Garrison said, “I don’t think so.” After looking at Andy Sciambra, his assistant, because he knew that the guy wanted to clean out his apartment, they always know that. So they went to the apartment. Of course they got the whips and chains and the executioner’s gown and the shoes in the shape of coffins, which he said was a Mardi Gras costume. But of course the shoes had never touched the sidewalk. Nothing but a carpeted floor.

    Elliot Mintz:

    The shoes and the shapes of coffins?

    Mort Sahl:

    Of coffins. Then Gurvich told me that he was going to get Sergio Arcacha-Smith, another one of the Cubans who was in Dallas, but Governor Connally had not extradited. He was going to go down there. He said, “If we get the extradition, I want to go get him.” He said with great relish.

    I said, “How much is involved in going into Dallas to bring a guy back?”

    And he said, “There’s nothing involved.” He said, “I go down there and I knock on the door and he comes to the door and I say, “I got you Arcacha.’” And he said, “Then we come back.”

    And I said, “What if he resists?

    He said, “I hope so,” and we all laughed a lot.

    The detectives would come in Garrison’s den, which has a bust of Bertrand Russell up there, which the press doesn’t tell you. The press says to you Garrison has a picture of Napoleon. Yes he does, but he also has a bust of Bertrand Russell. And he quotes from Hamlet a lot. We found out a lot of things about him. We found out that when the Doubleday stores in New Orleans had James Baldwin’s book, Another Country, they censored it on the basis of pornography and were going to close the stores. And they asked the district attorney to prosecute the case. Garrison called the guys that had the store and he said, “What are you going to do? You’re going to fight this?”

    They said, “No, we’ll just pay the fine and reopen.”

    He said, “You can’t do that.”

    And they said, “Why?”

    And he said, “Because next time they’ll burn your books.” And he helped them win, even though he’s a prosecuting attorney.

    So we found out a good deal about him and his character. And the guys were walking in and out, a lot of the guys were voluntary because he only has a staff really of four.

    Elliot Mintz:

    Four people-

    Mort Sahl:

    Yeah, in the office. He’s got the greatest DAs office in the country before this case. I mean, he says he has no gray mice. They’re all lawyers who fight, who are very hard to come by, because if I wanted to name a profession that’s the lowest I would have to say the legal profession.

    Elliot Mintz:

    Why do you say that?

    Mort Sahl:

    Well, they really are the prostitutes of our time because their passion can be purchased. And because the ones I’ve met are all star struck. They talk about the scales of justice, but boy, it’s no accident that she’s blindfolded and that her dress is tattered. They are unbelievable. Anything goes.

    I had a lawyer out here for 10 years when the President was killed. He used to give presents to his clients at the end of the year. I mean, he’d send you a picture or plastic glasses. And when the President was killed, he sent a card out. It said, “Because of our great loss this year, we’re going to send the money to a donation and some of the gift to a clinic for mental health because it was a deranged person that took the life of our President.” Perfect liberalism. All looking the other way.

    There wasn’t one member of the American Bar Association who said anything about defending Lee Harvey Oswald. There wasn’t one member of the American Civil Liberties Union that went in to defend Lee Harvey Oswald. And because, as Garrison said to me in the den that night, we lost an adversary proceeding because the law wasn’t protected by lawmen. Then we not only lost our President, we lost our justice too.

    Elliot Mintz:

    Mort, we come to the point, I guess, in any discussion about this particular subject. The inevitable reality that we must confront ourselves with, however difficult that might be. Who killed John F. Kennedy?

    Mort Sahl:

    Well, as far as we can tell … I must tell you that Garrison has every confidence he’s going into court February 14th, which is a month away. I expect he will. But the scenario points toward a coalition of anti-Castro, Cuban exiles, oil rich psychotics, according to the district attorney in Texas, retired militarists, various voices of the right. That is at an operational level of the conspiracy and at the planning level. The Cubans were a good setup up because they were disenchanted with the Kennedy administration and also they were lawless. You’ve got to remember that these informants who worked for the CIA along the way, if you have government by hoodlum, what are you spawning? Every cop we know in LA has his contacts on Main Street or East 5th Street. He’s got junkies and pimps and peddlers, et cetera. But he knows what they are and he keeps them within perspective to work for the greater good as they say.

    The CIA keeps them on staff for 20 years and gives them a watch at the end of their service and that’s the difference. This undercover thing of doing what you want to, and countermanding orders of the President, and writing blank checks, and not being checked by the Congress, spawns a government by hoodlums. That is not to say that the government subsidized the assassination. We don’t know that and Garrison denies it. I said, “Why do you say ex-CIA men?”

    He says, “Because I can’t conceive of anybody in my government wanting to harm the President.”

    But the point is somewhere along the line we gave up. We gave in when the government said, “We know better what’s good for you than you know for yourself.”

    That’s why the liberalism of today, whether it’s Lawrence Sherman in the 28th District saying, “I’m going into the convention with a B-slate,” or Robert Vaughn saying, “The wars, the aberration of Lyndon Johnson and not Robert Kennedy is puny,” or Carl Reiner saying, “Dick Van Dyke and I are going to host a black tie party at the Daisy for Eugene McCarthy or dissenting Democrats.”

    This is 20 years too late, man. They’ve been drafting people like you for 20 years. So that eventually 435 honorable men in the Congress don’t even object, and nobody votes against the Un-American Activities Committee, and nobody says anything about the war, and nobody says anything about anything, and nobody says anything about murder in the streets. I’ve been crying fascism, fascism. How much success, how heady was the sensation, and how intoxicated with the fascists in this country to get to a point where they thought they could go ahead with this boldest stroke as killing him in the street? Well, obviously what makes them think they can get away with it? The experience of getting away with it over the years! They tend to get power drunk because they’ve been successful. It gets crazier and crazier. They’ve extended fascism without challenge for so long in this country, a generation since 1945, the dark days, this long night started with Roosevelt’s death. You can chart the whole thing and it gets to a point where a whole generation doesn’t know any better.

    Robert Kennedy talks about a massive retaliation and communism and capitalism and vehicular capability. You’re brought up on those terms, man. You can’t even tell when somebody is jiving you anymore because it’s 20 years of madness.

    As much as my Jewish friends aren’t going to like it, the German people weren’t born crazy. They were made so by their government. They were made in the form which is most convenient to that government, which is fascistic, which broke the backs of the unions and used the anti-Semitism as a dodge. Same thing is happening here. They’re trying to drive the American people crazy. I’ll tell you something: I think they’re succeeding. There’s great evidence in the barbarism of day-to-day life and in the lack of direction and the degree of a lack of mental health in this country.

    I’m not suggesting going to a psychiatrist because most of them are sellouts too. Sad to say because they know better, but all they want to do is to repair you and get you back on the line to keep punching out Mustang frames. That’s the trouble.

    Look what you have here. FDR dies. What was the plan? To make Germany an occupied agricultural state. But what happens afterwards? Truman goes into office and he forms the Defense Department, the Marshall Plan, he aids the fascists in the hills of Greece to “stop communism”. He founds the CIA in 1947. He gives J. Edgar Hoover a blank check, and they go ahead with the Un-American Activities Committee and they start the witch-hunts. And McCarthy comes on and bombs and the Japanese people, civilian areas, atomic bombs. And the Korean War, the bold stroke, anti-communism. We will not tolerate it anywhere. The Truman Doctrine outside the Western hemisphere. And Russia and Korea and China and Vietnam and Santa Domingo. You can see it step for step. 22 years of fascism. So that the country becomes a colonial power.

    Now, of course we’re not made for that because that’s not our tradition. So that’s the conflict. That’s why everybody’s hung up. And they say, “Well, why do the kids look so weird?” Because you’re driving their body in one direction, their head is going in another. They’re being pulled apart. We’re not made for it. We weren’t measured for an SS suit. Man, if I was going to form a fascist state, I would go to the Germans. They’re set up for it. It’s like Sinatra told me, “Buy a record company, don’t found one.” He bought one that was set up already.

    You have to be efficient. He had a commitment too, by the way.

    Elliot Mintz:

    Sinatra?

    Mort Sahl:

    I don’t hear from him anymore. I don’t hear from anybody anymore. Where are all of you or don’t you care? Because I don’t know where you’re going live. You only go to make a movie in England for three months. That’s almost closed. Where are you going to go? You can’t hide in Switzerland. You know you are an American. You’re not going to feel that good. Everybody says, “Well, if you’ve got enough money, you’ll feel good anywhere.” It’s really not true. There isn’t anything quite like America, and especially if you’re an American, you’re really going to miss it. I know you take it for granted, but you’re going to miss it. You’re going to miss the sun coming up in the morning. You don’t think so until you’re in the Holocaust and of course it’s too late.

    But to get back to your question, to stop theorizing for awhile, this group of neo-Nazis who have brought us fascism in the name of “National Security”. The facts on who shot the President are in the archives because of national security. Everything is national security. The CIA’s national security. The FBI is national security. And meanwhile you don’t recognize your own country. Look at what we have. Think of America as a body and think of the pressure points in a first aid class. Mark Lane is saying to you, “I’ve got his pulse in the left arm and it has an accelerated pulse.”

    And Jim Garrison has got the right arm and he says it. Mario Savio is up there by his right temple and he says it, and Stokely Carmichael is down by his left ankle and he says it. Adam Powell says it in his own way. Everybody tells him, and [Bob] Dylan tells them and none of these guys know each other. They don’t hang out together, as the saying goes. They say the same thing. They have that in common. The patient has a high fever and an accelerated pulse, and I can’t find anybody who cares about this guy.

    They talk about heart transplants. They don’t care what happened to America. That’s what it’s all about. You don’t have to love your parents. I’m not demanding that. Miss Liberty. What about it? What about the pursuit of the American dream? An awful lot of good men died so that a good many of you can sit out there and think about whether you want to sell out or not.

    I’m worried that it’s too late for you to sell in. That’s what really terrifies me. I don’t know whether we’re over the hill or not. Naturally, I’m going to get up tomorrow and go after it the same way. The bell rings, you come out of your corner swinging because we’ve got to keep trying because this is all we have. But it is evident, you know, nobody has to be naïve about the elements in this country. Why did I indict liberals earlier, the so-called Social Democrats in my routines when I say the far right? Because there aren’t enough evil men in this country. Their army, they are the generals, but the privates in their army, the vast ranks of the unwashed, are the liberals. In other words, evil men can only do evil because of the indifference of good men, to paraphrase a philosopher.

    And that’s what it is. The road to fascism was paved with those liberal bricks. Every young man who was headed for the left was castrated by a good liberal who wants him to fit in. And when you cock a gun and put it at the temple of a liberal, he signs the petition on the right, not on the left. There is no left in America. There is no dissension. A few university professors. How many people came up to you and said, “It’s a terrible thing what happened to Dr. Spock?” They’re just glad it didn’t happen to them. Right? The only reason I’m talking about Vietnam is because we’re talking about Kennedy. I know where they’re at. They have sold us out. That’s really what they’ve done. They’ve sold out a generation. Every time you meet a guy of 40, you have a right to spit in his face because he’s cast a shadow over your future.

  • Michael Paine dies at 89