Kennedys and King Test host626

Tag: LEE HARVEY OSWALD

  • Fred Litwin on the Facts of the JFK Case

    Fred Litwin on the Facts of the JFK Case

    This is a relatively concise review of Fred Litwin’s first book on the John Kennedy assassination, I Was a Teenage JFK Conspiracy Freak. It will be by chapters—excepting Litwin’s discussion of the Jim Garrison inquiry. Jim DiEugenio has reviewed Litwin’s work on that issue at length and in depth. (Click here and here)

    Chapter 1

    Litwin says first generation critics “started finding small inconsistencies” in the case. But they were actually big inconsistencies (e.g. the dubious provenance of CE 399). (Click here for details) He also avows: “The motorcade had to turn onto Elm Street so it could take an exit to the Stemmons Freeway which would have taken them to the Dallas Trade Mart for Kennedy’s speech.”

    Like his previous statement, this one is also false. The motorcade could have taken Main St. to Industrial Blvd. What is so odd about this error is that the correct information is in the House Select Committee volumes, which, on other occasions, Litwin values highly. (HSCA Vol. 11, p. 522) He incorrectly says there are “20,000 pages” in the Warren Commission’s 26 volumes of testimony and evidence. There are really 17,816 pages. Shockingly, before even going into the actual evidence at all, Litwin casually says: “The authors of the Warren Report were honorable men who conducted an honest investigation and reached the right answer.” As many have pointed out, in this day and age, for anyone to call people like Allen Dulles, John McCloy, and Jerry Ford honorable men is wildly archaic. He incorrectly says John Connally’s “lapel” flipped as an indication of a bullet transit—yet his chest wound was not near the lapel! (Click here for details)

    The Canadian author then goes through the “overwhelming evidence” against Oswald. He claims Oswald had “a long…package”—but the two witnesses to it said it was not long. (WC Vol. 2, pp. 239–240, 249) Litwin claims that “after the assassination, Oswald was the only warehouseman missing”—but Charles Givens was also missing. (WC Vol. 3, pp.183, 208) Litwin nonchalantly says Oswald “killed police officer J.D. Tippit,” which, with the accumulation of evidence we have on that case today, is a quite dubious statement. (Click here for details)

    But Litwin marches on. He also claims that “many witnesses identified Oswald“—but those “identifications” were based on rigged lineups and some were made months after he was dead and nationally known. One of the best examinations of the line ups was made by the late British police inspector Ian Griggs. To name just two problems: Griggs noted that in the British model, there should be 7 other people in a line up and they should be of similar age, height and appearance. (Ian Griggs, No Case to Answer, p. 81) After a seventeen-page analysis, Griggs concluded that, to put it mildly, these guidelines were not adhered to with Oswald. For example, there were only three other people in the Oswald line ups. As per similar physical appearances, Homicide Detective Elmer Boyd said, well “Sometimes they do and sometimes they don’t.” (Griggs, p. 83) As per age, Oswald was 24. Two of the stand-ins were 18 years old. Further, Oswald was the only one with bruises on his face. And although the others made up their names and occupations, Oswald did not. Even though, by the time of most of the line ups, his name and place of work had been broadcast on radio and TV. (Ibid, pp. 85–86)

    But further, one of the witnesses, Helen Markham, was so weak and faint that the police had to administer her ammonia. Or as Captain Fritz testified to the Commission:

    We were trying to get that show up as soon as we could, because she was beginning to faint and getting sick. In fact, I had to leave the office and carry some ammonia across the hall, they were about to send her to the hospital or something and we needed that identification real quickly, and she got to feeling all right after using this ammonia. (WC Vol 4, p. 212)

    Line-up witness Cecil McWatters, a bus driver, later admitted that Oswald was not even the man he recalled from his bus ride. He was trying to identify Roy Milton Jones. (Griggs, p. 87) Then, of course, there was the testimony of cab driver Bill Whaley. Whaley said that anyone could have identified Oswald, because he was carrying on and yelling at the policemen. He said it was not right for him to be placed in a line-up with teenagers. If Litwin had been in Oswald’s place, would he not have done the same? (Griggs, p. 90)

    Litwin then says that “one expert concluded that one of the four bullets recovered from Tippit’s body matched the revolver found in Oswald’s possession”—but 8 other experts disagreed with him, and moreover that bullet did not appear for a quarter of a year! (WC Vol. 3, p.474) Litwin says “the expended [Tippit] cartridge cases matched Oswald’s gun to the exclusion of all other weapons”—but those cases did not appear for a week (WC Vol. 24, pp. 253, 332) and four officers’ initials disappeared from them. (WC Vol. 7, pp. 251, 275–276; Vol. 24, p. 415) They could not be identified by the three witnesses as the ones they found that day. (WC Vol. 24, pp. 414–415) And as most of us know, two of the cases were from Winchester Western and two were from Remington-Peters. While three bullets were from Winchester and one was from Remington. (Henry Hurt, Reasonable Doubt, p. 152)

    Litwin says “Oswald’s right palm print was found on the rifle barrel”—but the only person to see this print said it was an old print. (Gary Savage, First Day Evidence, p. 108) Litwin then says “his fingerprints were found on the bag used to carry the rifle to work.” Yet, when FBI expert Sebastian LaTona initially examined the bag on 11/23, he could find no latent prints on it. (WC Vol 4, p. 3) Litwin then declares: “Faced with this massive amount of incriminating evidence, the critics could only chip away at the margins.” But as the reader can clearly see above, this author did not “chip away at the margins.” I simply debunked Litwin’s claims with original evidence.

    Litwin then proceeds to speak in paragraphs to derail witness Lee Bowers’ account, but he never gets to the meat and potatoes. So I will spell it out here…Bowers told Mark Lane on camera on March 31, 1966:

    There were, at the time of the shooting, 2 men standing at the top of the incline. And one of them, from time-to-time as he walked back-and-forth, uh—disappeared behind a wooden fence, which also is—uh—slightly to the west of that. At the time of the shooting, in the vicinity of where the 2 men were, there was a flash of light. The area was sealed off by at least 50 police within 3 to 5 minutes. I was there only to tell ’em what they asked, and—uh—so that when they seemed to want to cut off the conversation. (Click here to watch the video)

    Litwin also apparently doesn’t know that subsequently two of Bowers’ friends independently came forward and confirmed that, yes, he did see more than he told the Warren Commission, but he was afraid. He didn’t want his life threatened or ruined, being one of the key witnesses against Lee Oswald as the lone shooter. (Josiah Thompson, Last Second in Dallas, pp. 66—67)

    Litwin avows that “Dealey Plaza was an echo chamber which made it hard for witnesses to determine the direction of the shots.” This is not accurate. As Josiah Thompson points out in Last Second in Dallas, “The knoll is covered with trees and grass and a wooden fence, all sound-absorbing materials.” (Thompson, p. 38) And further, the flash of light, smoke, fresh footprints, cigarette butts, and an anomalous shape in the Moorman photo all confirm the 58 grassy knoll ear witnesses! (See Thompson, Chapter 5) All of which are JFK 101 and never mentioned in Litwin’s book. Litwin declares “there were absolutely no witnesses to gunmen on the grassy knoll or behind the picket fence.” Well, of course, everyone was looking at the President, not at some random fence in the corner! Snipers are trained to not be seen. But, as we shall see, we do have physical and photographic evidence left behind which indicates such.

    Litwin claims “the Dallas doctors did not see the [rear skull] entrance wound because they didn’t turn Kennedy’s body over”—but they did lift the head up and this wound was seen by Drs. Jenkins and Grossman. Litwin says “Virginia and Barbara Davis saw Oswald run across their lawn after the [Tippit] murder.” But remember, they pointed him out of a rigged lineup. Also, the Davis sisters were really confused witnesses. For instance, Barbara claimed she saw the killer again “a few minutes later” after the shooting! (CD 630e, p. 1) And Virginia claimed she heard the second gunshot “a few minutes later” after the first one! (CD 630f, p. 1) So they were confused witnesses.

    Chapter 3

    Litwin incorrectly says the Zapruder film is “27 seconds” when, of course, it is 26 seconds. He says the parade route “never changed”—but Secret Service agent Gerald Behn confirmed to Vince Palamara the route was changed for the Dallas trip! (Survivor’s Guilt, p. 104) Palamara’s book is the best there is on this issue. He brings in not just Behn, but three other DPD witnesses to back him up.

    Litwin likes to make a big deal that in 1972 Drs. John Lattimer and Cyril Wecht, after viewing the autopsy materials, concluded JFK was only hit from the rear. But the fact is that we have come very far since 1972 and, because of this, Wecht has since changed his mind. But Litwin doesn’t explain this context. He cites Lattimer’s old myth of Connally having an “elongated wound in the back”—but Connally’s doctor testified it was elongated only after he removed damaged skin. (WC Vol. 6, p. 88) He says “Kennedy’s head moved forward before it moved back and to the left”—but this has since been shown to likely be an optional illusion due to camera movement. (Thompson, Last Second in Dallas, pp. 197–205) Litwin says the back and to the left “was probably caused by a neuromuscular spasm”—but as another reviewer has pointed out, “no expert in neuroscience has ever supported this hypothesis.” Moreover, neuromuscular spasms only occur when the nerve centers—at the bottom of the brain—are inflicted and JFK’s were not. Litwin also says “there might also have been some minor movement due to something called the ‘jet effect’”—but the fact of the matter is that this theory met a timely end in 2014 (Click here for details)

    Litwin: “The autopsy materials…totally refuted a shot from the front.” This is false. The lateral X-ray (assuming it’s authentic) clearly shows a trail of bullet fragments going from front to back. Due to the new work by Dr. Michael Chesser, we know it goes from front to back, because the largest fragments are in the back. That means a shot from the front. (Click here for a long version of Chesser’s work)

    Chapter 5

    Litwin touches a bit on the acoustics evidence, but ignored the recent work that has been done on it. His argument seems very dated. He avows that “the autopsy X-rays and photographs…showed a small wound in the back of Kennedy’s head”—this would be news to the autopsy doctor James Humes, who couldn’t find one when shown the materials during his ARRB deposition. Litwin says “the Zapruder film shows the back of Kennedy’s head to be intact after the fatal shot”—but (assuming the film is authentic) the back of the head is unfortunately in shadow in the Zapruder film. What Litwin also doesn’t say is that actually a few frames are not in shadow and they do in fact show the rear of the head blown out! (Frames 335, 337, 374)

    He says “you can see a visible exit wound in the right front”—but that is actually a flap of scalp hanging down. Litwin ignores the following facts: Press secretary Malcolm Kilduff indicated in public that a shot hit Kennedy in the right temple. Or that Chet Huntley of NBC News announced this same description on TV that day and gave as the source Dr. George Burkley, Kennedy’s physician. Finally, Bill and Gayle Newman, two of the closest witnesses to the shooting, both said the bullet came from behind them—i.e. the stockade fence—and hit Kennedy in the right temple. (Thompson, Last Second in Dallas, p. 32) Is it only a coincidence that the Newmans did not testify before the Commission and neither did Burkley?

    He says “his [Harrison Livingstone’s] witnesses all disagreed with each other.” I’m not sure what Litwin means here. All the witnesses Livingstone interviewed were unanimous that the back of the head was gone. Litwin (like Gerald Posner) misconstrues a 1990 quote by autopsy technician Paul O’Connor—“It has been so many years and so much has happened, I kind of doubt my own ability to remember fine details.”—Posner attributes this to O’Connor’s overall memory, but actually it was attributed to the specific question as to whether JFK was wrapped in a mattress cover! (High Treason 2, p. 272) This is simply literary hackery and Litwin just copied it from Posner’s book. (See Posner, Case Closed, p. 300)

    Litwin always makes a big deal that “every forensic pathologist who had viewed the autopsy evidence had concluded that Kennedy was shot from behind.” What Litwin leaves out is that these forensic pathologists—Ramsey Clark Panel, the HSCA—never had the body in front of them. And none of them ever saw Kennedy’s brain, since it disappeared from the National Archives. But here’s the thing, none of their reports ever mention the words “grassy knoll,” “knoll,” or “fence”. They didn’t even take that into consideration. So that talking point is simply not valid. But further, Litwin also ignores this: Dr. Michael Baden conservatively acknowledged a grassy knoll headshot was possible. (HSCA Final Report, pp. 80–81)

    Litwin incorrectly accuses critics of “ignoring the HSCA test results.” But these two tests—the NAA and Tom Canning’s trajectory analysis—have been through discredited by, for one, Don Thomas. (Hear No Evil, Chapters 12, 13 respectively.) He jumps on critics for using “faulty diagrams” of the single-bullet theory. He then shows a still from Dale Myers’ animation and declares: “They were in perfect alignment for a shot to hit both men.” But of course, Myers’ dishonest animation only works if you move JFK’s back wound up, stretch his neck, lean his neck way forward, shrink Connally, and slide his seat in 6 inches when it was actually 2.5 inches. (patspeer.com, Chapter 12c; click here for details) Litwin discusses the unreliable “Badgeman” image in the Moorman photo, but completely ignores the more reliable anomalous shape that Josiah Thompson points out in Six Seconds in Dallas. What is notable about this aspect of the Mary Moorman photo is that it contains two figures behind the stockade fence atop the grassy knoll. One is a fixed point, a signal tower. But the other figure disappears—it is not there in later photos, so that, very likely, was a person. (Six Seconds in Dallas, p. 127) Coincidently, the flash of light and smoke was seen there, and the fresh footprints and cigarette butts were found there. Again, none of this is mentioned in Litwin’s book. He incorrectly calls Robert Groden’s 1993 book The Death of a President—it’s actually The Killing of a President.

    Chapter 6

    Litwin nonchalantly mentioned Thomas Canning’s HSCA trajectory analysis—but none of the wound locations in Canning’s analysis are the same as the locations that were reported in the HSCA’s Forensic Pathology Report. Canning chose them. Yes, he chose his own wound locations! (HSCA Vol. 6, p. 33, see especially the footnote at bottom) All trying to confirm a bias—aka a lone assassin. Moreover, Canning’s trajectory analysis for the single-bullet theory is at Zapruder frame 190, and Litwin believes it happened at frame 224. (ibid, p. 34)

    Litwin says “Oswald qualified as a sharpshooter in the U.S. Marines,” but ignores Commission lawyer Wesley Liebeler’s own memorandum which states that the FBI could not duplicate the shooting feat that the Commission attributed to Oswald. But in addition, all of the FBI shots were high and to the right of the target “due to an uncorrectable mechanical deficiency in the telescopic sight.” (Edward Epstein, The Assassination Chronicles, p. 148) In his famous internal memorandum—famous to anyone but Litwin—Liebeler complained that it was “simply dishonest” for the Commission not to mention this serious problem with the rifle in their chapter on the subject. But further, the military test Litwin refers to was the first shooting test Oswald took. In his second test, later on in his service, he scored considerably lower and that score was considered a “rather poor shot.” (WR, p. 191) So by the time he left the Marine Corps, that was his status. As Liebeler went on to explain, there is no evidence that he improved while in the USSR. In 1962 and 1963, the only evidence of any “practice” was that he went hunting with his brother once.

    Liebeler said that the chapter glossed over the evidence that Oswald was a poor shot and had accomplished a difficult feat; and created a ‘fairy tale’ that Oswald was a good shot and had accomplished an ‘easy shot.’ (Epstein, p. 152)

    Litwin incorrectly claims “there were numerous witnesses who heard a shot before Kennedy was hit in the neck”—there were only three. (patspeer.com, Chapter 9) Litwin claims “four of the Dallas doctors involved in treating Kennedy went to the National Archives in Washington, D.C., in 1988 to view the autopsy X-Rays and photographs. They all went on the record to confirm the authenticity of the autopsy materials.” This is nonsense and sleight of hand. First of all, this goes directly against what these four doctors said in the past when originally shown the back of the head photo (showing it intact).

    Dr. Peters—“I don’t think it’s consistent with what I saw. There was a large hole in the back of the head through which one could see the brain. But that hole does not appear in the photograph.” (The Continuing Inquiry newsletter, 11/22/81)

    Dr. Dulany—”There’s a definite conflict. That’s not the way I remember it.” (“Dispute on JFK Assassination Evidence Persists”, The Boston Globe, 6/21/81)

    Dr. Jenkins—“No, not like that. Not like that…No…That picture doesn’t look like it from the back.” (The Continuing Inquiry newsletter, 10/22/80)

    Dr. McClelland—“He firmly rejected the autopsy photos.” (The Continuing Inquiry newsletter, 11/22/81)

    And likewise all the other Dallas treating staff have denounced the photo. Now, concerning what those four doctors said in 1988 to NOVA, they said that if the pathologist’s hand in the photo is holding up a flap of loose skin to cover the defect in the back of the head, then the photo would be accurate. But as Dr. Michael Baden has said: “There is no flap of skin there.” (Case Closed, p. 310) So therefore, the photo is in all probability inaccurate.

    Litwin mentions ARRB chairman John R. Tunheim telling Vincent Bugliosi that “there’s no smoking gun” in the remaining sealed files—as if conspirators would leave behind a trace for all the world to see! He incorrectly says Doug Horne “wrote a series of books”—it was actually one book with five volumes.

    Chapter 7

    Litwin avows: “Over the years, more and more documents and records have been released but no major revelation on the assassination has emerged.” This is simply not true. For instance, in 1993 the sealed HSCA testimony of JFK’s mortician Tom Robinson was declassified and it was a bombshell. For years, Warren Commission defenders have demanded to know, “Where’s the grassy knoll bullet?!” The answer came when Robinson’s testimony was released. He said:

    They were literally picked out, little pieces of this bullet from all over his head…They had the little pieces. They picked them out…I watched them pick the little pieces out. They had something like a test tube or a little vial or something that they put the pieces in…Fairly many pieces…They were all small that could be picked up with forceps…The largest piece that I saw [was] maybe a quarter of an inch. (RIF#180-10089-10178)

    Robinson said “that the total number would be close to 10 fragments.” (ARRB MD 180)

    These numerous fragments have to be from the knoll headshot (Z–313). Why? Because they disappeared. They were removed and disappeared. The FBI never examined them. (They would’ve had to have been removed from the head early in the autopsy, for the six autopsy technicians don’t remember them.) In the end, the only fragments from the autopsy turned over to the Warren Commission were two from the Depository headshot (Z–328) that matched Oswald’s rifle. (Thompson, pp. 222–28)

    When I asked Litwin if he knows who Tom Robinson is, his response to me was: “The terrific British rocker…I have several of his CDs.” (4/6/21 Facebook message)

    Litwin’s Postscript

    Litwin writes: “Oliver Stone is locked in for life his with conspiracy theories—there’s nothing that could ever change his mind.” I simply turn the question around on Litwin: is there anything that could ever change YOUR mind? He simply replied: “Evidence.” (ibid)

    Well, I’ve spent countless hours both in person and online TRYING to patiently tell Fred Litwin the evidence, but it’s always the same—excuses, arguments from authority, and stubbornness. I was (and am still) truly shocked by his blatant denial and ignorance. It’s actually mind-torturing. At this point, I can only shake my head. As someone once said, “You can pile up all the evidence in the world and they don’t wanna listen.”

    My Postscript

    Litwin relayed a story to me:

    It’s a story that should be in my Teenage Conspiracy Freak book, but isn’t. It goes like this. As I was slowly changing my opinion, I decided it was time to read Posner’s book. I bought it…but I couldn’t open it. It sat there for days…until I decided to read the medical evidence chapter. I thought it was a great chapter—in fact, I wish I had written it…and I knew then that there was no conspiracy…and I put the book down…a changed man. (1/15/21 Facebook message)

    I was taken aback by this. First of all, in his book, he says what turned him around on the JFK case was the House Select Committee on Assassinations in 1979. Now that is moved forward to 1993? And he still cannot provide any evidence of anything he wrote while he was in the critical community camp? Second, Gary Aguilar interviewed two Kennedy autopsy doctors, Dr. Boswell and Dr. Humes, who both denied the words Posner put in their mouths. Boswell went even further: he said he never talked to Posner. (Click here for details) The truth of the matter is that Gerald Posner’s book Case Closed has been debunked 7 ways to Sunday ever since it was first published in 1993. (Click here for details)

    I reminded Litwin of this and he just said: “It has not been debunked.” I then proposed, “If I could prove it has been debunked, what would you say?” Litwin retorted: “If you could prove the earth is flat, what would I say?” (ibid.) When I told him “Baden says it’s possible a shot from the knoll”, Litwin retorted: “It’s possible we are being visited by flying saucers; and it is possible that Bigfoot exists.” (4/5/21 Facebook message)

    Folks, that’s Fred Litwin for you.

  • The Devil is in the Details: By Malcolm Blunt with Alan Dale

    The Devil is in the Details: By Malcolm Blunt with Alan Dale

    This book is an oral history. The interviewer is Alan Dale and the interviewee is Malcolm Blunt—with minor appearances by authors Jefferson Morley and John Newman.

    Dale is the executive director of Jim Lesar’s Assassination Archives and Research Center (AARC). He has worked with authors like Newman and Joan Mellen. He is a close friend and admirer of Malcolm Blunt, who is, by far, the major personage in the book. Unfortunately, many people, even in the critical community, do not know who Malcolm is. Why is that?

    That is because every once in awhile there comes a character in the JFK case who isn’t interested in doing interviews, starting a blog, writing books or articles, or getting on the radio. This type of person essentially wants to dig into those 2 million pages that were declassified by the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB). He or she wants to find out what is and is not in that treasure trove. I was lucky enough to know someone like this back in the nineties. His name was Peter Vea. He was an American living in Japan at the time the ARRB was forming. He said he was returning to the USA, relocating to Virginia and planned on visiting the National Archives to see what had been declassified. He asked if I would be interested in him sending me some of these documents. I said, of course I would. Many of the articles in Probe magazine were based upon the discoveries that Peter made in the archives. And Bill Davy’s fine book, Let Justice be Done, owes much to Peter’s work. But yet, Peter is virtually unknown today.

    Malcolm Blunt took up Peter’s baton. The extraordinary thing about Malcolm is this: he does not live in America. He lives across the pond in England. He travels to America to make long visits to the National Archives. Up to now, he has not written a book. He shares his discoveries with other researchers who he thinks would be interested in the particular subject matter. I know this because I have been the sometime recipient of his largesse.

    In this book, Alan Dale tried to elicit some of the discoveries Malcolm has made in his many visits to the Archives. In that regard, it is an unusual book, since I know of no prior attempt to do such a thing. The volume is made up of ten long interviews done from 2014–18. There is a lengthy back matter section, consisting of 8 appendixes and a penultimate 3-page section labeled as “Afterthought.”

    II

    A ways into the book, on page 321, Malcolm explains why he decided to take this route as his journey of discovery for the assassination of John F. Kennedy. He explains that he was disappointed in most of the books he was reading, which he thought were rather theory heavy but factually light. Plus, so many had different ideas as to what happened. He decided to go the alternative route: no theories, just as many facts as he could find in the documents. He started in Dallas at the police archives there and then moved to the National Archives in Washington. There he began with FBI files and then he went into everything else.

    One of the first discoveries he made was rather important. Contrary to what the official story had been, the FBI did not receive the assassination evidence out of Dallas after Lee Harvey Oswald was shot. They were in receipt of it over the weekend and then returned it to Dallas on Sunday. (p. 19) In his testimony before the Warren Commission, FBI employee James Cadigan gave away this information. Since the hearings were closed, Commissioner Allen Dulles had that part of his transcript excised from the record. (p. 20)

    Maybe one reason for doing that is because the Dallas inventory of exhibits differs from the FBI inventory list. One example being that the FBI had turned Oswald’s Minox camera into a light meter. Malcolm also notes that the Minox in the National Archives—there were two shown to Marina Oswald during her House Select Committee on Assassinations interview—is inoperable. It is sealed shut. (p. 23) Malcolm thinks the reason for this is that it would reveal police officer Gus Rose’s initials inside the camera. And that would prove the police picked up the camera on their weekend visit to Ruth Paine’s home. Resisting FBI pressure tactics, Rose always insisted he picked up a camera there and not a light meter. (John Armstrong, Harvey and Lee, p. 910) This chicanery would indicate that both Dulles and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover wished to keep that camera out of Oswald’s hands. They wanted no indication in public that Oswald owned what was considered at that time a rare and expensive spy camera.

    With Jefferson Morley visiting, Malcolm and Alan review what they consider another landmark on the road to discovery about the JFK case. This was the Morley/Newman interview with Jane Roman. (p. 29) In 1963, Jane Roman was a senior liaison officer for the CIA’s Counter Intelligence staff, which meant—among other things—that she handled communications with other federal offices. Morley saw her name on a routing slip concerning documents about Oswald before the assassination. He located her in the Washington area and he and Newman talked to her in the autumn of 1994. Morley had fished out a document that Roman had signed and sent to Mexico City saying that, as of 10/10/63, the latest information CIA had on Oswald was a State Department report from May of 1962.

    Here was the problem: that Oswald cable was clearly false. Because—as was her position—she had read and signed-off on, at the minimum, two FBI reports on Oswald from 1963. They arrived on her desk just a week prior to October 10th and one described Oswald being arrested in New Orleans. Her signature was on both Bureau reports. When presented with this puzzle as to why she had been part of a false declaration to Mexico City, Roman replied that her only rationale would be that the Special Affairs Staff had all the data about Oswald under their tight control. She also added that she was not in on any sabotage aspect as far as Cuba went. She then said that the person in control of the cable to Mexico City would have been Tom Karamessines, who was the right hand man to Dick Helms. Helms was the Director Of Plans in 1963, in other words he was in charge of covert operations. (Jefferson Morley, ‘What Jane Roman Said”, at History Matters.com)

    When Newman pressed her on what this all meant, Roman replied with something that was probably a milestone at the time. She said, “To me it’s indicative of a keen interest in Oswald held very closely on a need to know basis.” She then added that there must have been a reason to withhold that information from Mexico City. (John Newman, Oswald and the CIA, p. 405) For the first time, someone had an oral declaration from a CIA employee that the Agency had a keen interest, on a need to know basis, about Oswald. This was just weeks before the assassination. And Richard Helms’ assistant was the principal officer on the cable. Later in the book, Malcolm will relate another conversation with a different CIA employee and it will echo this one, except it will be about Oswald back in 1959—before his defection to Russia.

    III

    Blunt now goes into areas that, as far as I know, no one has ever broached before. Everyone knows about the CIA and its 201 files, sometimes called personality files. This was a rather common file within the Agency that had about five different reasons to be opened. Yet I had never heard of a 301 file. These are corporate files held in Record Integration Division (RID) and also in the Office of Security (OS). They included companies, charities, churches, banks, and financial service companies. The CIA had interests in dropping people into these organizations for cover purposes. (p. 354) What makes this even more important is another disclosure Blunt made earlier. That is the CIA had something called an IDN system in place prior to 1964. That system named individuals who had been targeted at their organizations. (p. 289) I don’t have to tell the reader how helpful that combination should have been to any real inquiry into the JFK case e.g. with Reily Coffee Company. And why was IDN dismantled in 1964?

    Malcolm also points out two pieces of internal subterfuge that impacted the inquiry of the Warren Commission. As he was going through the FBI documents at the Archives, he noticed the code UACB on many of them. What that meant in FBI lingo was this: Do not follow this lead. The acronym literally stands for: Unless Authority Communicated from Bureau. (p. 264) Malcolm said that, within the first 48 hours, many of the FBI documents were marked like this in the bottom left hand corner. (p. 118)

    This perfectly jibes with what the late FBI agent Bill Turner once told this reviewer. Turner had been in the FBI for about ten years. He had left by the time of the Kennedy assassination. He had now become a journalist, but he still had ties within the Bureau. In 1964, he was writing a free-lance article on the JFK case. He asked a couple of active agents if he could see some of their reports. He then saw more of these later when the Commission volumes were issued. He immediately recognized something was wrong.

    As Turner told this reviewer, there were three steps in any FBI investigation:

    1. The gathering of all relevant leads
    2. The following out of those leads to their ultimate end, and
    3. The collation of all-important information into a report that did not come to a conclusion.

    He then said if you did not do step two—which clearly the agents had not done in the JFK case—then your report was worthless. But, in spite of that, the FBI had come to a conclusion about the Kennedy case anyway. To him, this was a dead giveaway that the fix was in from above. FBI agents simply did not act like that on their own. These two sources of information on the same key issue dovetail with each other. They help explain why the Warren Commission ended up being stillborn.

    Malcolm then expands on this point—and again in a way I had not seen before. The US Attorney’s office in Dallas had accumulated four boxes of witness statements and sent them to the National Archives in 1965. This included statements from people like Ruth Paine. According to Malcolm, the boxes contained statements that were “excised from testimony; it’d been cut out. It’s what the US attorneys down in Dallas called ‘No Good Testimony’.” (p. 256) When Blunt went looking for it, he found it has been reduced to two small gray boxes, he said there is “a little bit in the first box; not much in the second box.” (ibid)

    Again, one should relate to this something that Barry Ernest discovered. It is what is referred to today as the “Stroud letter.” Marcia Joe Stroud was an assistant US attorney in Dallas. In 1964, she was reviewing some witness depositions from the Texas School Book Depository. One was Victoria Adams and another was Dorothy Ann Garner, Adams’ supervisor at the Scott Foresman bookseller’s office in the Depository. While searching through the National Archives, Barry saw a cover letter dated June 2, 1964. In part, the letter read as follows:

    Mr. Belin was questioning Miss Adams about whether or not she saw anyone as she was running down the stairs. Miss Garner, Miss Adams’ supervisor, stated this morning that after Miss Adams’ went downstairs, she (Miss Garner) saw Mr. Truly and the policeman come up.” (The Girl on the Stairs, p. 215)

    As Barry writes in his book, the feeling he had when he read this was like getting punched in the stomach. In the entire 888 pages of the Warren Report, one will not see the name of Dorothy Garner. And she was not called as a witness before the Commission. Yet, Stroud had sent this cover letter over Adams’ testimony to the Commission early in June of 1964. The Commission took testimony until early September. (Walt Brown, The Warren Omission, p. 238) This letter certified that after Adams and Sandra Styles went down the stairs, Depository supervisor Truly and policeman Marrion Baker came up the stairs. In other words, the idea that Adams was on the stairs before or after Lee Oswald came up is highly improbable. One has to wonder, was this part of the “no good testimony” that the Dallas US attorneys took? Except this one survived. But it was not discovered until 1999.

    IV

    Malcolm was and is quite interested in Richard Snyder. Snyder was the State Department employee in Moscow who first greeted Oswald at the American embassy after his arrival there via Helsinki. The book certifies the fact that, as Greg Parker and Bill Simpich have also mentioned, Snyder worked for the CIA before he joined the State Department. He was a part of Operation REDSKIN. This was an attempt to recruit students studying Russian at places like Harvard. At this time, Snyder was being supervised by Nelson Brickham of the Soviet Russia Division of the CIA and one of the people he pitched was Zbigniew Brzezinski. Yet, Snyder denied he was working for the CIA at this time. (p. 107) As Parker wrote, when he went to Moscow, at the time Oswald was in his office, there was an assistant named Ned Keenan with Snyder and Ned had been part of the REDSKIN project. (p. 44)

    This circle closes after Snyder left the State Department; he applied for a position in the CIA. As Malcolm notes, they placed him at work for an agency called Joint Press Reading Service. His job there was to read and analyze foreign publications. (p. 280)

    The book also reminds us that Snyder’s colleague at the embassy, John McVickar, somehow knew that Oswald would be placed at work at a radio factory in Minsk. (p. 217) Once he got there, Moscow surrounded him with their agents. According to Malcolm, at one time, the KGB enlisted as many as 20 assets to surveil Oswald. (p. 220) And as Ernst Titovets revealed in his book, Oswald: Russian Episode, this included using spies on buses and also bugging his apartment. (Titovets, pp. 61, 115) In the light of this, the recent book co-authored by former CIA Director James Woolsey about the Russians recruiting Oswald as an assassin to kill President Kennedy is preposterous.

    This all coincides with another genuine find by Malcolm Blunt. He allowed Kennedys and King to use this hidden jewel in Vasilios Vazakas’ fine series, Creating the Oswald Legend, Part 4. (Click here for details) I am speaking here about the stunning discoveries by Betsy Wolf about the creation and routing of Oswald’s file at CIA after the defection.

    We have seen above how the Russians clearly suspected that Oswald was not a genuine defector, to the point that they used an extensive combination of human and electronic surveillance to monitor his every move. What happened at CIA would imply they were correct. There is no trace in the Warren Report or its 26 accompanying volumes of testimony and exhibits, that they had any hint of what Malcolm uncovered at the National Archives. It was not until over a decade later that the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) began to uncover this troubling but revealing mystery about Oswald. The person who did it was HSCA researcher Betsy Wolf. Yet most of the startling discoveries she made were not detailed or explained in the HSCA report or its accompanying volumes. In fact, as Malcolm found out, much of her work only exists in the form of her handwritten notes. He could not find where her original work product about the Oswald file had been typed into memorandum form. Further, her work was deemed so sensitive that much of it was delayed on a timed-release pattern (i.e. it was not declassified until after the Assassination Records Review Board closed its doors in 1998).

    Since much of what Malcolm discusses in the book is based on Wolf’s notes, I will source most of what follows from those notes as used by Vasilios in his first-rate article. Betsy Wolf was puzzled by the fact that the CIA had not set up a 201 file on Oswald after they knew he had defected to Moscow—in fact they did not do so until 13 months later. What further bewildered here was this: he had offered the Russians secrets of the U2 spy plane. Oswald was familiar with the U2 from his tour in the Far East at Atsugi air base in Japan where the high altitude aircraft was housed. In late October of 1959, the CIA was getting this kind of information through both the Navy and the State Department; the latter since Snyder was a diplomat. This data—plus the fact that there were more than five documents on Oswald at CIA—should have caused the opening of a 201, or “personality file.” In fact, Betsy discovered that four documents on Oswald arrived at CIA the first week after the defection. Yet, in apparent violation of CIA’s internal guidelines, no 201 file was opened.

    This leads to the second conundrum about the routing of Oswald’s original file: its destination. In an interview the HSCA did with CIA Officer William Larson, he said that the Oswald documents should have gone to the Soviet Russia (SR) Division. (HSCA interview of 6/27/78) They did not. These early files instead went to Office of Security (OS). What made that puzzling is that in this same interview, Larson said that OS did not set up 201 files. (Ibid) And Malcolm adds this: there was a bridge between OS and CI/SIG (Counter Intelligence/Special Investigations Group). This was James Angleton’s super-secret compartment which, quite literally, spied on the Agency’s spies. (p. 31)

    Just from the above, this is all rather fishy. Did someone not want a 201 file set up on Oswald? When Betsy interviewed Director of Central Reference H. C. Eisenbeiss, he said that the way documents were funneled into the Agency—called dissemination of files—was governed by written requests from customer offices. (Wolf notes of 9/18/78) This would indicate that someone from OS directed Oswald’s files bypass the general system and go only to OS instead. After all, as Malcolm notes, some of these early documents from State and Navy had multiple copies attached for expected distribution to various departments. In one case, as many as fifteen copies were included. (pp. 344–45)

    Only toward the end of her search did Betsy find out what had happened. Betsy’s notes include an interview with the former OS chief Robert Gambino. According to Malcolm, her handwritten notes are the only place anyone can find anything about this particular interview. (Wolf notes of 7/26/78) Gambino told her that CIA Mail Logistics was in charge of disseminating incoming documents. In other words, someone made this request about the weird routing of Oswald’s files from OS’s Security Research Service. (p. 324) And this was done prior to Oswald’s defection. Malcolm concludes that with what Betsy unearthed, there should now be no question that the CIA knew Oswald was going to defect before it happened.

    An important part of the book deals with Malcolm’s friendship with CIA officer Tennent ”Pete” Bagley. Bagley worked out of the Counterintelligence unit in the Soviet Russia division; he also worked in Europe at, among other stations, Bern and Brussels, where he was chief of station. Malcolm met him after he was retired and living in Brussels. In retirement, Bagley was writing books about his career. They largely focused on the CIA’s battles with the KGB, for example, on whether or not Yuri Nosenko was a plant or a real defector. Bagley thought he was the former.

    While putting together Betsy Wolf’s discoveries about the odd nature of the opening of Oswald’s files at CIA HQ, Malcolm decided to talk to Bagley about it. He told him how his old Soviet Russia division was zeroed out of information about Oswald’s defection for 13 months—even though, at times, the CIA was getting 15 copies of an Oswald document. (pp. 344–45) Malcolm then drew the routing scheme up as he had deciphered the entry path from Betsy’s work.


    Bagley looked at the illustration of the routing path. He then looked up at Malcolm and asked him something like: OK, was Oswald witting or unwitting? Malcolm did not want to answer the question, but Bagley badgered him. He blurted out, “Unwitting.” Bagley firmly replied: Nope. He had to be witting and knowledgeable about how the CIA was using him and, therefore, he was working for them in some capacity.

    In this reviewer’s opinion, what Malcolm Blunt did on this issue— excavating the heroic work of Betsy Wolf, piecing it together part by part, then showing it to Bagley—constitutes one of the keystone discoveries made possible by the ARRB. Its importance should not be understated. It is a hallmark achievement.

    V

    Malcom follows up on this discovery by commenting on it in two ways: one through a comparison, one by creating a parallel. He and Alan note that another defector’s files, Robert Webster, did not enter the system like this. They were normally distributed and went to the Soviet Russia Division. (p. 68) He then says that this almost incomprehensible CIA anomaly with Oswald in 1959 is then bookended by another attempt to rig the system (i.e. with Oswald in Mexico City in the fall of 1963). What are the odds of that happening to one person in four years? (p. 295) He also adds that, to him, the weaknesses in the Mexico City story are the tendentiousness of the alleged trip down and his return. Both David Josephs and John Armstrong agree with that analysis.

    Malcolm’s recovery of Betsy Wolf’s notes also contributed something else that was important about Mexico City. Something that, to my knowledge, no one knew before. Miraculously, Betsy got access to a chronology penned by Ray Rocca. As James Angleton’s first assistant, Rocca cabled Luis Echeverria on November 23rd. Echeverria was the Secretary of Interior in Mexico who would eventually take over the Mexico City inquiry—thereby foreclosing the Warren Commission and getting out ahead of the FBI. Rocca wired Luis about the relationship between Oswald and Sylvia Duran. How did Rocca know that Echeverria would eventually be running the inquiry about Oswald at that early date? At that time, James Angleton was not even in charge of the CIA investigation for the Warren Commission.

    Secondly, on that same day, a CIA agent escorted Elena Garro de Paz to the Vermont Hotel. This is the woman who would try to discredit Duran by saying that Duran was seen at a twist party with Oswald and had some kind of sexual affair with the alleged assassin. Since Duran worked at the Cuban embassy, this implied that somehow Castro was a part of the plot. (John Newman, Oswald and the CIA, pp. 379–85) How on earth did anyone know about the significance and the opposition of these two witnesses within 24 hours of the crime?

    In addition, there is this nugget of new information. The National Security Agency (NSA) had intercepts on Mexico City communications. The Warren Commission knew about this. So J. Lee Rankin sent a letter to Jack Blake of the NSA about this information, since he knew it was independent of the CIA coverage. (pp. 63–65) There is no evidence today that there was a reply.

    Malcolm explored the papers of a relatively unknown personage who I recently wrote about, Comptroller of the Currency James Saxon. While going through his papers at the Kennedy Library, he came to the same conclusion I did: Kennedy was using Saxon to challenge the suzerainty of the Federal Reserve Board. (Click here for details) In fact, he even goes further than I—and even author Donald Gibson—did in that regard. He tells Alan that Kennedy wanted Saxon to actually attempt to supersede the Federal Reserve as far as its control of the banking system. (p. 269) This was Kennedy’s way of loosening the money supply and injecting a Keynesian stimulus into the economy. (p. 270) This would serve as a complement to his tax cut and would precede his planned capital improvements program. Malcolm also adds that—because of this—the longtime chair of the Federal Reserve—hard money banker William McChesney Martin—was not a fan of Kennedy. (ibid) And for whatever reason, Lyndon Johnson agreed with Martin. The new president did not renew Saxon’s five year term when it expired in 1966.

    Because Malcolm has spent so much time in the National Archives, he is in a good position to alert us as to what is there and what is not—but should be. One of his most interesting discoveries is the fact that the Office of Security file series on Oswald has a rather large hole in it. Since Oswald’s file was originally opened by that department, they later put together a series on the alleged defector. Both CIA Directors, Robert Gates and George Tenet, called for the assembly of all CIA files on Oswald for the Review Board. Yet that series did not come forth until the Board called for it themselves. They did this based on the work that Betsy Wolf had done for the HSCA, this is how they proved it existed. (pp. 327–28) It was supposed to consist of seven volumes. Yet somehow today, it is missing Volume Five. That one does not exist today. Yet as Malcolm notes, Betsy Wolf took notes on it, so it did exist at one time.

    This is only the beginning of a very serious problem about these Kennedy assassination files. As Malcolm and John Newman note, somehow, some way, many of them have simply disappeared. (p. 240) And it’s not just from NARA. Malcolm found out that the papers of author Edward Epstein from his book Legend were housed at Georgetown. Reader’s Digest had financed the rather large budget for that book, which included payment for a fleet of researchers, including Henry Hurt. They then placed much of the documentation under the name of their since deceased editor, Fulton Oursler Jr., at Georgetown. One of the boxes contained many of the interviews done with the Marines who knew Oswald. Some of these subjects were not interviewed by the Warren Commission. These were made off limits to Malcolm and he told Pete Bagley about it. Bagley knew Oursler and got permission for Malcolm to see the interviews. Blunt flew over and requested the box. When he got it, the Marine interviews were gone. (p. 51)

    VI

    There are many other areas that I have not addressed, simply because this review would be twice as long if I did. But I would like to close this discussion of Blunt’s discoveries with the story of Cliff Shasteen. Shasteen was the 39-year-old proprietor of a barber shop who cut Oswald’s hair in Irving, where Ruth and Michael Paine lived. You will not find his name in the Warren Report and the reader will soon understand why. He said that he cut Oswald’s hair about every two weeks, a total of three or four times, while other barbers who worked for him also cut Oswald’s hair. (WC Vol. 10, p. 314) Oswald usually came in on a Friday night or on a Saturday morning. Cliff also recalled a youth, aged about 14, who came in with Oswald, and once by himself—and that was about four days before the assassination. (WC Vol. 10, p. 312) While there by himself, he began spouting Marxist philosophy, shocking the adults in his presence, including Shasteen. (Ibid; see also Michael Benson, Who’ Who in the JFK Assassination, p. 415) As Benson notes, even though Shasteen testified before the Commission, neither they nor the FBI ever found out who the sometime companion was. Shasteen greatly regretted not taking him out for dinner to find out where he got his philosophy from.

    Malcolm and Alan mention this intriguing incident and the testimony of grocery store owner Leonard Hutchison, where Shasteen said he also saw Oswald. (p. 265; see also Sylvia Meagher, Accessories After the Fact, pp. 364–65) But for many years, the identity of the companion who wanted to put on a show, minus Oswald, was unknown. Thanks to some fine work by Greg Parker, we now have a good idea who the “Marxist” was. His name very likely was Bill Hootkins. (p. 305; also, click here and scroll down) And this is where it all gets rather interesting. In fact, it may explain why the FBI never found out his identity.

    At this time, late in 1963, Hootkins was Ruth Paine’s private Russian language student. Ruth worked with the sons and daughters of the Dallas elite at a private school, St. Mark’s. She had an agreement to tutor them at that facility, so she would pick Hootkins up at his home, drive him to the school, and then return him to his house. What makes this even more intriguing is that Hootkins became a rather proficient and prolific actor, and his career may have started at this time. (Click here for details)

    According to Parker, FBI agent Jim Hosty knew about Ruth’s work at St. Mark’s and later learned about the Hootkins lessons. But as Parker notes, somehow, no one in the FBI put together Hootkins and Shasteen, even though Shasteen’s description fit Hootkins quite well. And Ruth Paine had Hootkin’s contact details in her address book—a point which Ruth tried to brush off. But as Shasteen also noted, he saw Oswald drive up to his shop with Hootkins in a car he described that matched one of the Paine automobiles. (John Armstrong, Harvey and Lee, p. 582)

    Parker incisively notes the manner in which Ruth answered questions to the FBI about the incident. When asked if she had any idea about who the kid was, she said she knew of no boy of 14 associated with Oswald from the neighborhood. As Greg notes, Hootkins was not from that neighborhood. She also denied ever letting Oswald drive her car alone. Yet, when Oswald drove to Shasteen’s, he was with Hootkins. The answer also leaves open the possibility that it may have been her husband Michael who allowed Oswald to take the car.

    Of the early critics, only Sylvia Meagher ever mentioned Shasteen and Hutchison. But this reviewer finds it interesting that one of the lead investigators on Shasteen was FBI agent Bardwell Odum. (WC Vol. 10, p. 318) As most of us know, Odum was quite friendly with the Paines. In fact, as Carol Hewett points out, Odum cooperated with the Paines to posthumously separate Oswald from his Minox camera. (The Assassinations, edited by James DiEugenio and Lisa Pease, pp. 238–49) According to Parker, the other two barbers working with Shasteen had their statements “fragrantly altered” by the FBI. “They were specifically told what to add—and what was added had the sole purpose of trying to distance Hootkins from the whole affair.” (3/19 email from Parker)

    Blunt takes this intriguing episode a bit further. It only seems that no one noticed this rather interesting episode. It appears that someone, somewhere actually did notice. During his talk with Shasteen, Oswald was asked where he picked up his yellow shoes. Oswald said he went down to Mexico every so often and that is how he got them. (p. 303) It turns out that Malcolm later discovered that this might be a case of file seeding, that is of an agency planting disinformation in another agency’s files, because it turned out that the CIA began sending materials over to the FBI about one Ramon Cortez. Cortez was in the import/export business and owned a company called Transcontinental, which sent black market vehicles from the USA into Cuba. Cortez owned a shoe factory in Tijuana called Clarice. The CIA began to push the Cortez/Transcontinental documents onto the FBI in, get this, December of 1963, when they had this information in 1961.

    As much file work as Malcolm has done, and for as long as he has done it, he still understands the Big Picture issues. Led by people like Paul Hoch, Tony Summers, and Peter Scott, he addresses what had been the conventional wisdom about Jim Garrison for many years. Namely that there was no there, there. And whatever was there was worthless. Blunt takes issue with that thunderous cliché. He says that Garrison was a patriotic man who was doing his best under the stress of a terrible attack by the CIA. When Malcolm reviewed his materials, he concluded that “the guy did miracles, really.” (p. 378) He then mentions the newest documents on Permindex, which John Newman used for Jacob Hornberger’s ongoing webinar. (Click here for details) About John Kennedy’s assassination, he states that considering who he was and where he was headed—for example in the Middle East—his loss was incalculable. (pp. 273, 384) He sums it up tersely with, “Jesus Christ! What we lost when we lost that man.”

    Let’s all hope we don’t lose Malcolm Blunt.

  • Truth Is the Only Client

    Truth Is the Only Client

    Mainstream media has abandoned the most important murder case in world history. A Hollywood producer has personally told me, “They just don’t want to touch it anymore.” With a plethora of famous crimes being re-discovered by avid Netflix viewers, one might think JFK would be picked up somewhere. It has not. In other words, you have to “do it yourself” now. An example of this is the 2019 self-produced documentary Truth Is the Only Client, which features the surviving Warren Commission staff members. Yes, mainstream media didn’t even pick this one up. It can be watched for free on Amazon Prime.

    The film starts off by resurrecting the late prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi, who says the assassination is “the most complex murder case by far in world history. Nothing even remotely comes close.” This is true. But he follows this by saying that “conspiracy theorists” are the reason it is complex. This is not true, not even close. As journalist Jefferson Morley has said, “Suspicions of a conspiracy originated in the circumstances of the crime…It was the facts of the crime that made people think it happened in a different way than the way the Warren Report set forth.” (Jacob Carter, Before History Dies, p. 8) Also, we are researchers, not “conspiracy theorists.”

    Warren Commission assistant counsel Samuel A. Stern then spewed the now common bit of it being “so hard to accept” that a nobody killed a somebody. Nice try, but not the case. Researchers have continually pointed out the holes in the evidence or, back in the sixties, the contextual chasms in the Warren Report. And much later, they began to fill in those chasms with new evidence supplied by the Assassination Records Review Board. For instance, if Kennedy was only hit from the rear, then why did over forty witnesses at both Parkland Hospital and Bethesda Naval Medical Center see a large avulsive hole in the rear of Kennedy’s skull? (See Dr. Gary Aguilar’s essay, “How 5 Investigations into JFK’s Medical/Autopsy evidence Got it Wrong,” Section Five) And as Aguilar discovered when the records were reviewed, the House Select Committee on Assassinations misrepresented this fact in its report. (See Volume 7, p. 37) As we shall see, the man who oversaw the writing of those volumes is later featured on this program.

    Assistant counsel Burt W. Griffin declared, “If we could find a conspiracy, we’d all be national heroes!” Well, they did have 58 eyewitnesses who reported a frontal shot—but they buried them in their tens of thousands of pages of appendices and commission documents. They had the Zapruder film showing JFK being thrown to the rear—but they somehow missed that in the Warren Report. And it’s almost certain they saw the Moorman photo that seems to depict the grassy knoll gunman behind the fence—but they never published it. Maybe because as soon as you have a frontal shot, there’s a conspiracy. The staff members buried or omitted this vital evidence and, therefore, were not national heroes. However, first generation researchers Josiah Thompson, Sylvia Meagher, Harold Weisberg, and Mark Lane brought all this evidence to light and did get some national acclaim for their toil.

    Bugliosi then outlines the Warren Commission’s supposed shooting scenario and does so rather nonchalantly, as if it’s absolute fact. What he doesn’t say is that this is not actually the Commission’s shooting scenario, but rather Gerald Posner’s shooting scenario. Assistant counsel Melvin A. Eisenberg claimed Oswald’s “prints” were found on the rifle—but there was only ONE print and the only person to see this print said it was an old print. (Gary Savage, First Day Evidence, p. 108) Assistant counsel Howard P. Willens claimed that “inside the [paper] package were found remnants of the carpet in which it was kept at the Paine garage”—but he apparently forgot that the FBI could not make a positive identification. (WC 4 H p. 81) And by the way, it was a blanket, not a carpet. Bugliosi touted the long-debunked myth that Oswald was “the only worker” missing from the Texas School Book Depository, when really 17 were never in the building after 12:30. (WC 22 H pp. 632–686) Bugliosi nonchalantly says Oswald killed Patrolman J. D. Tippit, but the late researcher Larry Ray Harris showed Oswald was most likely innocent of that crime. (“November 22, 1963: The Other Murder,” Dateline: Dallas, 11/22/93) Bugliosi says Oswald “told one provable lie after another, all of which, of course, show a consciousness of guilt”—but it only shows he was involved in some way and doesn’t mean he killed the President. Bugliosi also said that “six and a half months before,” Oswald attempted to murder Maj. Gen. Edwin Walker—but the alleged bullet could not be linked with the rifle (WC 3 H p. 439) and the two witnesses said the perpetrator was not Oswald. (WC 5 H pp. 446–447; 26 H p. 438) Also, it was actually seven months before, not six.

    The film did a segment on Oswald’s life. The exposition was very similar to the 2003 Peter Jennings program Beyond Conspiracy. Like the 2003 version, this one comes out à la the official portrayal of him as a nobody, which has long been debunked in so many ways. There’s quite a remarkable and emotional interview with Ruth Paine, which, to me at least, helped seal the deal that she was not involved in the plot to kill JFK. But what she did say was striking—“I’ll help these officers in whatever way they need.” That she did.

    The Commission’s Howard Willens (and later Bugliosi) spewed the usual “there was no way for the bullet to go after exiting from the President’s neck other than into Connally”—but of course it is highly unlikely that any bullet exited JFK’s neck. For at the autopsy the back wound was probed and found to not go anywhere. (CD 7, p. 284) The bullet lodged in the back and most likely fell out. (It also would’ve smashed the first rib had it traversed where the measurements place it.)

    Willens then said something incredible:

    Governor Connally insisted then, and until his death, that he had not been hit by the same bullet that hit the President. As I have said, he was the Governor of Texas, he wanted his own bullet.

    This is an absolutely outrageous straw-man argument. In fact, there’s no evidence whatsoever to support this claim. Willens simply made it up. The truth is that, as an experienced hunter, Connally understood from the sound pattern that the bullet that struck Kennedy could not have struck him. He deliberately hid his own conclusions about what had happened and this actually helped the Commission! In 1982, Connally was at a political function in Santa Fe. Reporter Doug Thompson asked him if he thought Lee Oswald fired the gun that killed Kennedy. Without batting an eyelash Connally replied with: “Absolutely not. I do not, for one second, believe the conclusions of the Warren Commission.” Thompson asked him why he then never spoke out against the Commission. This is how Connally responded: “Because I love this country and we needed closure at the time. I will never speak out publicly about what I believe.” (Joseph McBride, Into the Nightmare, p. 418)

    The film next turned to HSCA chief counsel G. Robert Blakey, who insisted Connally’s back wound was “oval…which is an indication that it hit something else”—but Connally’s doctor testified it was a neat entry wound and was oval only after he removed damaged skin. (WC 6 H p. 85, 88) In fact, just simply look at the holes in his suit coat and shirt and they are not oval. Blakey said that, since the left side of JFK’s brain was undamaged, there couldn’t have been a frontal shot—but this ignores the possibility of a tangential headshot. To explain the head snap to the rear, Blakey says this was a neuromuscular reaction—but that only occurs when the nerve centers (at the bottom of the brain) are inflicted and JFK’s were not. The film then flashes across the screen: “No witnesses saw a gunman shooting at the President from the Grassy Knoll.” Well, of course, everyone was looking at the President, not at some random fence in the corner! Snipers are trained to not be seen.

    The film next does something amazing. It shows the apparent forward head movement between Zapruder frames 312 and 313 and acts as if this is the first time it’s being discovered! The Travel Channel had done the same thing a year before. In reality, of course, it was discovered over half a century ago by Ray Marcus. It was first written about in print by author Josiah Thompson, who has since changed his mind and concluded it was actually an optical illusion due to camera movement. (See his new book Last Second in Dallas)

    The narrator tells us, “Clearly there is no evidence of anything striking the President from the front.” This is abominably incorrect. Kennedy was thrown to the rear, the blood went back and hit the motorcycle officers, and nearly 100 eyewitnesses felt the shot came from in front on the knoll. In a panic attack, Jackie Kennedy is seen retrieving a part of her husband’s skull off the rear of the limousine. A flash of light and smoke was seen on the knoll, fresh footprints and cigarette butts were found there—coincidently where a shape appears in the Moorman photo that’s not there in later photos. So that was a person. This is all JFK 101 and none of it is mentioned in the film.

    The film touched a bit on the acoustics evidence, but ignored all the recent work that’s been done on it. Their argument was very dated.

    The film did a segment on Jack Ruby and Blakey laid out what he saw as connections between Ruby, Oswald, and the Mob. But incredibly, the narrator dismissed it all by simply saying, “I disagree.” [!] The rest of the segment is again similar to the 2003 Peter Jennings program—à la the official portrayal of Ruby. There was also an interview with right-winger Bernard Weissman, but heavily downplayed his role all while having a cute fluffy dog in his lap!

    Bugliosi avows that Oswald would’ve been “one of the last people” the CIA or Mob would pick to kill Kennedy—but of course, critics do not believe this. Critics believe Oswald was involved in the plot as a double agent who was double-crossed. Bugliosi also tells us that Blakey and ARRB chairman John R. Tunheim assured him that there was “no smoking gun” in the remaining sealed files, as if conspirators would leave behind a trace for all the world to see! Bugliosi then makes an absolutely disgusting straw-man argument: Critics “love and revere JFK, and yet they’ve devoted a good part of their life desperately trying to exonerate Lee Harvey Oswald, the very person who brutally murdered their hero JFK.” I can’t think of anything more disgusting. Critics are simply in search of the truth, NOT solely “desperately trying to exonerate” Oswald. Warren Commission staff attorney Lloyd L. Weinreb then repeated the common talking point of it being “much more acceptable to believe that there’s a conspiracy.” Staff historian Alfred Goldberg took it even further: “Belief in conspiracies is exciting…That’s what feeds their paranoia.” Again, disgusting. I repeat, people simply point out the HOLES IN THE EVIDENCE.

    In sum, there is nothing new in Truth Is the Only Client. It just repeated the same old same old, while omitting so much more. It has essentially tried to take the modern and improved Oswald-did-it narrative from Vincent Bugliosi and Gerald Posner and then declare the Warren Commission way back in 1964 got it right after all. Sorry, but it does not work that way, folks.

    The film was also way too long and quite frankly very boring. Astonishingly, it has a 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes. Yes, you heard me correctly. 100%. To put that into perspective, here is a list of famous films that do NOT have 100% on Rotten Tomatoes:

    – Casablanca

    – The Godfather

    – Gone with the Wind

    – Lawrence of Arabia

    – The Wizard of Oz

    – The Graduate

    – On the Waterfront

    – Schindler’s List

    – It’s a Wonderful Life

    – Sunset Boulevard

    – The Bridge on the River Kwai

    – Some Like It Hot

    – Star Wars

    I think we all know what this is about.

  • Creating the Oswald Legend – Part 6

    Creating the Oswald Legend – Part 6

    1. A WILDERNESS OF MIRRORS

    The Man Who Knew too Much

    Jim Garrison called Richard Case Nagell the “most important witness there is.” A detailed examination of Nagell’s actions is not within the scope of this essay, since he has been the subject of extensive research, beginning with Dick Russell’s books The Man Who Knew Too Much and On The Trail of the JFK Assassins. Other books that document his life and actions are Larry Hancock’s Someone Would Have Talked and Jim DiEugenio’s second edition of Destiny Betrayed.

    What is important to take away from the Nagell story is that both he and Oswald appeared to have some similarities and that Nagell had come very close to unraveling a plot concerning the assassination of John Kennedy. Not only had Nagell met Oswald in Japan while both were stationed there, he had also visited the American Embassy in Mexico City on September 28, 1962, where he stated that he was “bitter, disgusted, disillusioned and disaffected” and that he might go to another country. He returned to the Embassy, on October 1, 1962, to ask what would happen if he renounced his United States citizenship and what the penalty would be if he would go to a country behind the Iron Curtain.[1]

    His behavior was very similar to Oswald’s, when the latter tried to renounce his citizenship and defect to the Soviet Union during his visit to the American Embassy in Moscow.

    Nagell claimed that it was in Mexico where he was recruited by a CIA official who he had met previously in Japan and was given the mission to work as a double agent. Larry Hancock believes this was Henry Hecksher and his job was to establish contact with the Soviets and KGB officers in Mexico. His real task was to feed disinformation to the Soviets during the Cuban missile crisis.[2] The Soviets, on their turn, gave him another mission, to find out about a violent anti-Castro group, Alpha 66, that was plotting to assassinate the American president; and to keep tabs on a certain Lee Harvey Oswald who was not a stranger to the Russians, since he had defected and lived in the Soviet Union.

    Nagell discovered that the Cuban exiles were plotting to assassinate Kennedy in Miami and later in Los Angeles. In California, the scapegoat was Vaughn Marlowe who, like Oswald, was involved with the FPCC: he was an executive officer of the Los Angeles branch[3]. However, these alleged plots did not come to fruition.

    Before Oswald moved to New Orleans, Nagell visited the city and began investigating people who later came up in the Jim Garrison investigation, specifically Eladio Del Valle, Sergio Arcacha Smith, and David Ferrie.[4] He then discovered that the Cuban exiles had learned of the secret back channels of communication between Kennedy and Castro and felt betrayed. They now wanted to avenge Kennedy and were planning to assassinate him. Oswald was being set up by the Cubans and the CIA. Among those setting him up were David Ferrie and the two strange Cubans who visited Sylvia Odio, Leopoldo and Angel. Nagell claimed to be in possession of a tape recording of four men plotting to kill President Kennedy. One was Arcacha Smith and another was identified as “Q,” probably Carlos Quiroga, who was Arcacha’s right hand man and had very likely supplied Oswald with pro-Castro literature.[5]

    What makes that interesting is that when Garrison polygraphed Quiroga, he asked him if Arcacha Smith knew Oswald and if he had seen any of the guns used in the assassination. Quiroga’s answers to both questions were negative; but the polygraph test indicated that he was trying to be deceptive.[6] Garrison had asked Nagell to testify at Clay Shaw’s trial, but Nagell decided that it was not a good idea when a grenade was thrown at him from a speeding car in New York.[7] Garrison tried to extradite Arcacha back to New Orleans, but he was denied his request. Any real investigation would have revealed that Arcacha was Howard Hunt’s man while trying to set up the CRC in New Orleans, was identified by Rose Cheramie and Mac Manual, and also was one of the men who accompanied Rose and had knowledge of the upcoming hit in Dallas. Additionally, as we saw in Part 5, Arcacha was involved in gun running and the drug trade.

    In this regard, it is appropriate to link to Nagell’s first interview with Jim Garrison’s office, where he specifically mentioned Sergio Arcacha Smith. To show how important the Agency thought both Garrison and Nagell were, the reader should keep this in mind: William Martin, the interviewer for Garrison in who Nagell confided, was CIA.

    Nagell then found out that Angel and Leopoldo were trying to recruit Oswald to help them assassinate Kennedy in Washington D.C. This was to be done sometime in late September. They passed themselves on to Oswald as Castro G-2 intelligence agents and reasoned that they wanted to retaliate for Kennedy’s efforts to assassinate the Cuban leader. So Nagell met with Oswald in New Orleans and tried to convince him that Angel and Leopoldo were not Cuban agents, but were anti-Castro Cuban exiles working in accordance with CIA and wanted to kill Kennedy to provoke an invasion of Cuba to avenge his death by Castro. (Click here for more details)

    Oswald denied there were discussions to kill Kennedy and that he was a friend of the Cuban revolution.[8] It is possible that Oswald, whose role was to infiltrate subversives and Castro sympathizers, had found out about the plot and was trying to spy and monitor the Castro agents in a desperate effort to stop the attempt. As to how important Nagell was in the JFK case and how much corroboration his testimony had, I refer the reader to Jim DiEugenio’s discussion of the second edition of Dick Russell’s book about the man.

    Nagell believed that Oswald did pull a trigger in Dealey Plaza, but he could be excused on this point. Nagell was not aware of the information that researchers have in their possession today. For example, the near certainty that Oswald was not on the sixth floor makes it impossible for him to have fired those shots. The latest research indicates that Oswald was probably on the first floor during the shooting and possibly outside the building watching the parade.[9]

    So, if Oswald was not the culprit, who were the shooters in Dealey Plaza and who organized the ambush in such a way to ensure its success and the safe escape of those involved without being caught?

    Nagell’s allegations about Angel’s and Leopoldo’s attempt to set Oswald up as a patsy corroborate John Martino’s claims that the “Anti-Castro Cubans put Oswald together.” Larry Hancock in his recent e-book “Tipping Point”[10] presents such a case where CIA Cuban exile teams in JM/WAVE were trained to kill Castro, but later shifted their focus to Kennedy after they learned that JFK was secretly negotiating to restore relations with Castro. To them, this constituted the ultimate betrayal. It is likely that such information would have been passed down from William Harvey to Johnny Roselli. Therefore, in this scenario, those most likely involved in the conspiracy to kill Kennedy were Roselli, Harvey, David Morales, Rip Robertson, Felipe Vidal Santiago, Roy Hargraves, John Martino, CIA paramilitary officer Carl Jenkins, and Cubans like Chi Chi Quintero, Felix Rodriquez, Carlos Hernandez, Nestor Izquierdo, and Segundo Borgas.

    Researcher William Kelly holds a similar view and believes that the operation in Dallas was based on the “Pathfinder” plan, which was a covert contingency plan to assassinate Castro with a high-powered rifle from a high building as he drove in an open jeep. When the Kennedy brothers rejected “Pathfinder,” it was re-directed from Castro to assassinate John Kennedy instead.[11]

    The above theories are prevalent today and many researchers believe that they come close to the truth. However, there are other suspects and theories regarding the shooters. One of them implicates the French paramilitary group OAS and/or the French intelligence service SDECE in the assassination.

    Dinkin’s Prognostication

    The story of Private First-Class Eugene Dinkin has been told by Noel Twyman in his book Bloody Treason and Dick Russell in his book The Man Who Knew Too Much. Dinkin was a cryptographic code operator stationed in Metz, France and he had concluded that there was a plot being prepared to assassinate Kennedy involving “some high-ranking members of the military, some right-wing economic groups, with the support of some national media outlets.”[12] Dinkin tried to warn many different people about the conspiracy, but no one really believed him. He claimed to have written a letter to Robert Kennedy before the assassination to warn him:

    …that an attempt on President Kennedy would occur on November 28th, 1963; that if it were to succeed, blame would then be placed upon a Communist or Negro, who would be designated the assassin…[13]

    Dinkin was arrested on November 13, 1963, placed in a psychiatric hospital, and later was transferred to Walter Reed hospital. Many researchers believe that Dinkin had learned about the assassination plot by intercepting and decrypting sensitive military communications. According to an FBI report based on interviews with Dinkin, he found out about the plot after studying the military publication Star and Stripes, where he could detect subliminal information regarding the assassination. This is a hard thing to accept and seems to be an unlikely fit. It is more likely that he decoded messages that revealed the plot, but it was his psychiatric confidant that “forced him” to come up with the military publication explanation.

    DA Jim Garrison discovered that one of Dinkin’s duties as a code breaker was to decipher military messages, especially those originating from the French paramilitary organization OAS.[14] Garrison discovered that Clay Shaw was associated with the mysterious company named Permindex, which reportedly had been involved in assassination attempts against French president Charles De Gaulle. Jack Soustelle, a leader of the OAS, was a personal friend to Ferenc Nagy, a founding member of Permindex.

    The OAS vs JFK

    In 1977, a CIA document dated April 1, 1964, revealed that the French authorities wanted to know why a French national—Jean Souetre aka Michel Roux, aka Michael Mertz—had been expelled from the US at Fort Worth or Dallas 48 hours after the assassination, to either Mexico or Canada.[15] Jean Souetre was a member of the OAS (Secret Army Organization), which was violently opposed to France granting Algeria its independence. This poses the question as to whether or not the OAS provided the shooters in Dallas. The OAS had a motive to kill Kennedy, since he had strongly and openly supported the cause of Algerian independence since 1957.

    To mystify things even more, Souetre might have been impersonated by Michael Mertz, a SDECE agent who, in the past had infiltrated the OAS and eventually saved De Gaulle’s life. Mertz was involved in drug trafficking from France to the US, so he was another suspect as being one of the shooters in Dallas. It is possible that neither of these men were involved in the JFK assassination, which would mean someone implicated them in such a way to make it look as if they were in Dallas. The effect would be to draw attention from the real culprits and obscure the truth even further.

    In 1988, Stephen Rivele alleged that the Corsican mafia had assassinated Kennedy and an individual named Lucien Sarti was one of the shooters in Dealey Plaza. Later Howard Hunt, in his deathbed confession, implicated Lucien Sarti as being the gunman behind the fence on the Grassy Knoll. Sarti was killed by the Mexican Federal Police in Mexico City in 1972. It was Hunt and Lucien Conein who were the driving forces behind Richard Nixon’s great heroin coup, designed to replace the French heroin network, and ordered the kidnapping and killing of the Corsican mafia members. How convenient it was that Rivele’s allegations and Hunt’s confession implicated their arch enemies, the Corsicans and the old French connection to the assassination of a US President. Before that, it was Edward Lansdale and Lucien Conein who had defeated the Corsicans in Southeast Asia thus clearing the path for Santo Trafficante to control the opium smuggling from the Golden Triangle.

    Harvey and ZR/Rifle

    It was Bill Harvey who had written in his notes on the ZR/RIFLE program that “Corsicans recommended Sicilians lead to Mafia.” [16] Oddly, Hunt wrote that he was a bench warmer in the plot, in that he did not want to be part of a conspiracy that had anything to do with William Harvey, who was an alcoholic psycho. Hunt was likely deflecting attention from himself by implicating Harvey and his Corsicans in the assassination of Kennedy.

    Many theories name William Harvey as the man who selected the assassins from his ZR/RIFLE program and may have designed the Dallas hit. Mark Wyatt, Harvey’s Deputy in Rome, revealed that Harvey was in Dallas in November 1963. According to Wyatt, he had bumped into Harvey on a plane to Dallas sometime before the assassination. When he asked Harvey what was doing in Dallas, he replied vaguely, “I am here to see what’s happening.”[17]

    However, to be fair to Harvey, he was not in Dallas on November 22, 1963. Wyatt said that they were both attending a Gladio meeting in Sardinia, Italy, when they heard about the assassination. Later that afternoon, Wyatt found Harvey collapsed in his bed after drinking martinis.[18]

    If Harvey was part of the plot, you would have expected him to be in Dallas instead of lying unconscious in bed after heavy drinking. Could it be possible that Harvey’s trips to Miami and his involvement with ZR/RIFLE were unrelated to the assassination and had to do with operations against Castro?

    There is something interesting that Malcolm Blunt discussed about Harvey with Alan Dale. The information that in August 1963, Harvey wanted to meet with Clare Boothe Luce, some months prior to the assassination. Again, could it be possible that he did not want to meet her about the assassination, but to discuss her anti-Castro operations? We cannot really be certain if Harvey was involved in the assassination, that he only had prior knowledge, or knowledge at all.

    Edward Lansdale in Texas

    Some researchers believe that Edward Lansdale was the man who masterminded the Dealey Plaza operation. This is based on Fletcher Prouty’s assertion that Lansdale was in Dallas that day and is seen in a photograph walking by the three tramps.

    If that’s the case, there is no way in the world that Lansdale would have accepted to cooperate with Harvey, and vice versa, in such a crucial event. Lansdale remarked about Harvey, “People who ‘d been up against the Soviet types were always very strange to me…I am sure they thought I was strange.”[19] Harvey not only found Lansdale wacky, but he thought he was a security risk. It was impossible for them to communicate about how to bring down Castro during Operation Mongoose. The final break between the pair came on August 13, 1962. Lansdale wrote a memo: “Mr. Harvey: Intelligence, political (including liquidation of leaders), Economic (sabotage, limited deception) and Paramilitary.” Harvey was furious with Lansdale after that and called him to let him know how stupid he was to put such comments in a document.[20]

    Then there is the question of where Lansdale’s loyalty was located? To the Pentagon, since he was an Air Force General, or to the CIA? In Malcolm Blunt’s book The Devil is in the Details, Alan Dale, Blunt and John Newman were pondering this question. Blunt brought up Robert Gambino from the Office of Mail Logistics who had written a memo on Lansdale. There he offers the information that although Lansdale was a military man, he was working mainly for the CIA.[21] Then Blunt and Dale mention that Lansdale resigned or retired temporarily from the army in October 1963. A short time later he returned to the army and he was promoted. The man who was pushing for his promotion was none other than Allen Dulles himself.[22] Not only that but Lansdale headed the first mission in Saigon in 1954 and this mission was a CIA creation.[23]

    We have established that Lansdale was mainly a CIA guy with an Air Force uniform. But was he in Dealey Plaza as Prouty claims? John Newman found out that after his retirement, Lansdale visited his friend Sam Williams in Denton, Texas, which was near Dallas around the time of the assassination. He discovered a letter from Lansdale to Williams saying, “Hey, I am coming down to see you Sam.”[24] As Newman said, this proves that he was in the Dallas area, but it does not prove he was in Dealey Plaza. A little discussed factor about Lansdale is that he had connections to the Power Elite, specifically to the Kennedy family’s nemesis clan: the Rockefellers. He was Nelson Rockefeller’s clandestine associate in Southeast Asian propaganda activities. Lansdale was an adviser to the Rockefeller Brothers Fund/Special Studies Project and was appointed head of new counterinsurgency office at the Pentagon after the Bay of Pigs.[25]

    Deliberate Obfuscation?

    Whoever designed the Dealey Plaza scenario seems to have designed a confluence in Dallas that day. Everyone who had a motive to want Kennedy killed was somehow in the area: anti-Castro Cubans, the Mob, right wingers, Minutemen, Pentagon members (James Powell, army photographer), and the Texas oilmen who would distribute hostile flyers containing accusations against the President. It seems the anti-Kennedy universe was in Dallas for the purpose of killing Kennedy.

    If that was so, the script writer could ensure that if anyone ever tried to search for the truth, he would encounter such a tangled web of both contradictions and dead ends, that it would be impossible to separate facts from fiction. Then again, the best, most successful disinformation mixes facts with fiction and the truth, which is best hidden between lies. Unfortunately, we do not know the identity of the person who designed this diabolical scenario. It could have been Lansdale, Harvey, David Phillips, Hunt or any other covert action officer. But it’s likely we will never know who orchestrated the Dealey Plaza operation and who the shooters were.

    James Jesus Angleton’s favourite phrase to describe the world of espionage was “a wilderness of mirrors.” In the case of the Dealey Plaza assassination, the wilderness of mirrors was reflecting a confusing, distorted picture where everything was possible, but nothing was certain.

    Is it possible that Larry Hancock’s theory about the shooters and those involved in Dealey Plaza is the one closer to the truth? The main problem would be that the Cubans talked too much and gossiped around; even the CIA officers would find it hard to trust them with sensitive information. If you add to this the fact that the Cuban exiles were infiltrated by Castro agents, it would have been difficult to keep the assassination plot secret. The same probably happened in the plots against Castro, but that was not a problem if the plots to kill him all failed. After all, to those who wanted Kennedy dead, it would have been in their best interests for the assassination attempts against Castro to fail. As John Newman postulates in his new series of books: “for the plot that was used in the JFK assassination to work, Castro had to be alive after the president’s death.”[26] In the case of the JFK assassination, it was imperative for the plot to succeed, because the stakes were so high. If it was to fail, or if Oswald talked, those involved would face charges of treason.

    A better, safer solution that would guarantee absolute secrecy and confidentiality would be to bring in a military or paramilitary team from Laos. That unit could be flown to Mexico or the USA with Air America via the drug trade routes. They would finish the job and return to Laos where they would possibly end up being killed in a risky mission against the Viet Cong. Admittedly, this is speculation and nothing more. But it does indicate a more surefire way of concealment.

    1. ELITE CONNECTIONS

    In part 3, we reviewed Oswald’s appearance on Bill Stuckey’s New Orleans radio show “Carte Blanche”. There, he talked about his political views and debated with Ed Butler and Carlos Bringuier. The result of this interview was a record production by Dr. Alton Ochsner’s INCA, an album with the title, “Oswald: Self-Portrait in Red.” On the front cover was a drawing of Oswald’s face and on the back of the album was the headline “I am a Marxist” with the date of August 21, 1963, at the bottom were photographs of Congressman Hale Boggs, psy war specialist and Ochsner employee Ed Butler, and Dr. Alton Ochsner himself. Ed Butler did not only have connections to the previously discussed American Security Council, but he was also in contact with General Edward Lansdale and CIA Deputy Director Charles Cabell.[27]

    Dr. Ochsner and the CIA

    This is all fitting, because a CIA document of May 23, 1968, has finally been released completely unredacted. It was secured by Malcom Blunt. It reveals that Ochsner was a cleared source of theirs since May of 1955. But also, the CIA had sources inside Ochsner’s large New Orleans clinic. The memo continues by saying that Crescent City CIA officers, Hunter Leake and Lloyd Ray, were both socially familiar with Ochsner. In the document, the CIA admits they are in contact with INCA. The memo concludes with this: “Mr. Edward Butler, Staff Director of INCA, is a contact of our New Orleans Office and the source of numerous reports.” In light of this, we should also note that in about 24 hours, the CIA sponsored DRE put out a broadsheet saying Oswald killed Kennedy for Castro. (Click here for details) As noted, Carlos Bringuier of the CIA sponsored DRE was the other participant in Stuckey’s debate.

    Dr. Ochsner was working closely with Butler to fight Communism in Latin America and promote free trade. He had also been President of the American Cancer Society, President of the American College of Surgeons, President of the International Society of Surgeons, and President of the Alton Ochsner Medical Foundation.[28] Ochsner had the reputation of an extreme right-winger: anti-welfare, anti-Medicare, and racist. The truth of the matter is that he was all that and more and he was part of the local aristocracy and the elite establishment. He was the President of the International House (IH) and he was also a member of the International Trade Mart (ITM), where he worked with Clay Shaw, who was once a Managing Director of the IH. There is a photograph of Ochsner with Shaw at the New Orleans Public Library.[29] Ochsner sat on the Board of Directors of the Foreign Policy Association of New Orleans with Shaw. This organization invited CIA Deputy Director Charles Cabell to New Orleans to discuss the Communist threat.[30]

    Ochsner was also a member of the exclusive New Orleans Boston Club and he had been invited to the secretive west coast Bohemian Club. During his time at Tulane University, he managed to attract financial support from the Rockefeller and Carnegie Foundations.[31]

    Ochsner would count among his friends, Turner Catledge, managing editor of the New York Times, Samuel Zemurray of United Fruit, and Edgar and Edith Stern of the Sears Roebuck fortune. John J. McCloy served as an honorary chairman of the IH, while David Rockefeller was a trustee and Chairman of the IH’s executive committee.[32] Ochsner’s INCA organization was getting financial support from Standard Oil, the Reily Foundation, Mississippi Shipping Company, the Hibernia bank, and ITM.[33]

    In the late 1930’s, the New York IH Chairman was Henry L. Stimson, former Secretary of War and former Secretary of State, among his trustees were John D. Rockefeller III and Frederick Henry Osborn Sr.

    Osborn, Allen Dulles and the Paines

    The last was an interesting individual, well rooted in the upper classes of the Eastern Establishment. He was a trustee of Princeton University and a member of the Rockefeller Institute and the Carnegie Corporation. Osborn was a Director of the Population Association of America, the American Eugenics Society, and of the Association for Research in Human Heredity. He was also an associate of Dean Acheson. Acheson appointed Osborn in 1947 to be one of the US representatives to the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission.[34] In 1947, John D. Rockefeller III established the Population Council and appointed Osborn the Council’s first Director.[35]

    Osborn, along with Wickliffe Preston Draper, founded the Pioneer Fund; the purpose was to advance pro-eugenic research and propaganda. In 1937, Osborn stated that the Nazi’s racial sterilization program was “the most important social program which has ever been tried.”[36]

    Like his friend Allen Dulles, Osborn had graduated from Princeton and both worked together to establish an organization called Crusade for Freedom that merged with Radio Free Europe in 1962. There are letters exchanged between him and the Dulles brothers at Princeton University.[37]

    It was his son Frederick Osborn Jr. and his wife Nancy who provided character references for Ruth and Michael Paine, when the FBI was investigating them for their close relationship to Marina and Lee Oswald. Why a prominent member of the Eastern Establishment like Osborn would bother to explain to the FBI that the Paines had nothing to do with the assassination is a question that has never been answered.[38] Maybe the answer was that both Ruth and Michael Paine’s families were considered to be upper class, with links to the Eastern Establishment.

    Ruth and Michael, the Good Samaritans

    Michael Paine’s ancestry goes back to the Boston Brahmins: the Forbes and the Cabot families. His grand uncle Cameron Forbes was the Governor and Ambassador to the Philippines and later joined the board of United Fruit. Michael’s cousin, Thomas Dudley Cabot, was a former President of United Fruit and his brother John M. Cabot was in the State Department discussing with Maurice Gatlin the CIA plan to overthrow the Guatemalan government on behalf of United Fruit. Gatlin was a close associate of Guy Banister. Cabot was also President of the Gibraltar Steamship Corporation, a CIA front through which David Phillips established Radio Swan.[39]

    Michael’s mother, Ruth Forbes, was a very good friend of Mary Bancroft. Bancroft was an ex OSS agent who worked under Allen Dulles in Switzerland. Dulles and Bancroft were romantically involved for a short period, but later remained friends. Bancroft was also a friend of Henry Luce of the Time-Life Empire.[40]

    Ruth Forbes divorced Michael’s father and she married Arthur Young. Young was a famous inventor and one of the creators of Bell Helicopter. That connection helped his step-son Michael Paine get a high tech/high security clearance to work at Bell Helicopter in Fort Worth. Before that, Michael was employed by the Franklin Institute, a CIA conduit.[41]

    Ruth Paine had a great fondness for Arthur and Ruth Forbes Young and would regularly ask their opinion on undisclosed topics. She visited them in the summer of 1963 in their home in Philadelphia.[42]

    Ruth Paine’s father, William Avery Hyde, and his wife Carol were prominent members of the Ohio Unitarians. Her father had worked for the OSS during WWII and he later became the USAID’s regional director for Latin America.[43]

    CIA Agent Joseph Dryer, a friend of George DeMohrenschildt, was asked by the HSCA to identify from a list certain people who might have connections to DeMohrenschildt. Dryer identified two of them. One was Army Intelligence officer Dorothe Matlack and the other was William Avery Hyde.[44] A 1993 CIA declassified file revealed that Ruth’s sister, Sylvia Hyde Hoke, had worked for the Agency as a psychologist. It is worth noting that Sylvia’s husband John Hoke was employed by the USAID.[45] It is also worth noting the following in this aspect: Ruth did some traveling in the summer of 1963. She visited with her sister at her home. Yet, during her grand jury appearance with Jim Garrison, not only did Ruth deny knowing what agency of government Sylvia worked for in 1963, she also pleaded ignorance about where her sister lived at that time. (Click here for details, see pp. 55–62) Obviously, with Ruth drawing a blank, it made it more difficult for Garrison to attain this information, since the CIA was hiding it from him.

    On his return from New Orleans, Oswald had applied for employment through the Texas Employment Commission. Ruth Paine had arranged for Oswald to get a job at the Texas School Book Depository and told him about it on October 14th. Oswald was interviewed on October 15th and started work the following day. However, on the 15th, an employee of the Texas Employment Commission phoned the Paine residency and asked for Oswald. He wanted to inform him that they had found him a job at Trans Texas Airport. Ruth Paine answered that he was not home and so they called back the next day to hear that Oswald had taken a job elsewhere. Ruth never informed Oswald about this job, even though it paid about $100 more per month than the TSBD one.[46]

    The backyard photographs of Oswald posing with a rifle were found by the police at the Paines’ home. But a week later, another piece of evidence turned up out of the blue— on November 30. It was a note found inside a book incriminating Oswald in the attempted murder of General Walker, which is bizarre since Oswald, for seven months, had never been considered a suspect in that case .[47]

    Ruth Paine also provided other evidence: a betting guide and a English-Spanish dictionary that allegedly proved that Oswald had visited Mexico.[48] Ruth was also responsible for discovering the well-known “Kostin letter“ allegedly written by Oswald saying that he met Comrade Kostin (meaning Kostikov) in Mexico City.[49] What makes this odd is that in an FBI phone interview of November 28, 1963, Ruth told agent Don Moore that she had no idea Oswald had been in Mexico. And when Oswald showed up in Dallas, “neither he nor his wife furnished any info to Mrs. Paine to the effect that Oswald had been in Mexico.” That report then concludes with: “In fact, Oswald claimed that he had been in Houston and then had been in Dallas a few days before he called his wife at Mrs. Paine’s.” This is one more disturbing discovery made by David Josephs, who has all but proven that Oswald was not in Mexico City as the CIA says he was. If this is so, then one has to ask: why was it so necessary for Ruth Paine—and then Priscilla Johnson—to turn up evidence that imputed he was?

    What makes this doubly odd is that some of these items were discovered after the Dallas Police searched the Paine home and garage—twice! A good example would be the Imperial Reflex camera which was allegedly used to take the backyard photographs. That camera was not on the original Dallas Police inventory list. It was found by Ruth two weeks after the assassination. It would appear from the above information that Ruth Paine was instrumental in maneuvering Oswald and somehow finding certain pieces of a puzzle for a murder he did not commit.

    C. D. Jackson and Life magazine

    Another person from the Upper Class that left his traces in Dallas post assassination was C. D. Jackson. He was an expert in wartime propaganda, public relations, advertising, publishing, psychological warfare, black ops, and he was an opinion maker. During the Eisenhower Presidency, he was the Special Assistant to the President for International Affairs and he had been an editor-in-Chief of Henry Luce’s Time, Life, and Fortune magazines. Henry Luce was the man who invented the term “American Century,” which involved global American dominance projected by American businesses leading a worldwide economy. Jackson shared Luce’s vision and he had been called Henry Luce’s “designated choreographer” for the “American Century.”[50]

    The evening of the assassination Luce’s reporter Patsy Swank called Richard Stolley of Life magazine and informed him that a local clothing maker, Abraham Zapruder, had filmed the assassination. So Stolley contacted Zapruder and arranged to meet him the next morning. He viewed the film and then reported his findings to Jackson who, in turn, ordered him to buy the film. Stolley purchased the original copy as Zapruder claimed to him for $50,000.[51]

    When Jackson viewed the film, he “proposed the (Time Inc.) company obtain all rights to the film and withhold it from public viewing at least until emotions had calmed.”[52] On 29 November 1963, Life published a special issue on the assassination that included only thirty-one selected frames, which did not allow the readers to understand the sequence and direction of the shots, especially the fatal head shot.[53]

    Marina Oswald was isolated at the Inn of the Six Flags by the Secret Service. James Herbert Martin was the manager and later became Marina’s agent and she even stayed at his home for a while.[54] Martin, who sold the infamous “back yard photos” to Life magazine, also arranged for Marina to pen a book. That was arranged from C. D. Jackson and Life’s Edward K. Thompson, through their Dallas representative Isaac Don Levine.[55] It was Allen Dulles who had urged C. D. Jackson to have Marina’s story written by Levine, but that book never materialized.[56]

    C. D. Jackson was indirectly connected to the Pawley-Bayo mission (CIA crypt Operation TILT). This was a sea voyage into Cuba. It was allegedly designed to exfiltrate Soviet scientists who wanted to defect and testify before Senator James Eastland’s Senate Internal Security Subcommittee. That testimony was to state that the Russians still had missiles present in Cuba. Journalist Carl Bernstein believed that in the 1950s Jackson was so intertwined with the Agency that he went so far as to arrange for CIA employees to travel with Time-Life credentials as cover.[57]

    Apart from millionaire William Pawley and Cuban exile Eddie Bayo, others that took part in the operation were John Martino, Eugenio Martinez, and CIA agent Rip Robertson. Pawley had asked CIA Deputy Director Pat Carter and Ted Shackley of JM/WAVE to help him with the mission. Pawley would have used his private yacht, while David Morales supervised the mission. Operation TILT failed, since the exile Cubans disappeared on their way to Cuba and were never heard from again.

    Peter Dale Scott has written that the real purpose of the mission was to assassinate Castro. Jack Anderson reported the Johnny Roselli story that the assassination team was captured in Cuba and Castro “turned them” and sent them to Dallas to assassinate Kennedy instead.[58] At one point, Bayo had asked for help from a wealthy Kennedy supporter, Theodore Racoosin, who later reported that someone from within the White House—possibly Robert Kennedy—had authorized him to organize meetings with Cuban exiles and learn details of CIA Cuban operations. Scott believes that this operation was used to blackmail the Attorney General, so he would not investigate his brother’s assassination.[59]

    Henry Luce had funded the raid and Life magazine was allowed to send a journalist to report and photograph the mission. That journalist was Richard Billings, an in-law of C. D. Jackson. After the assassination, Billings was sent to Dallas to investigate the murder and later pretended to help Jim Garrison in his investigation. But he later turned on Garrison and began a Life campaign to smear and deter Garrison’s efforts.[60]

    We can surmise that C. D. Jackson was handling the damage control after the assassination for Life. He could control the Zapruder film and probably influence Marina Oswald’s testimony, to assure that the public would not find out all the facts, thus altering their perception of what happened in Dallas. This would fit a psychological warfare and propaganda expert connected to the CIA.

    Shaw, Ferrie and Freeport Sulphur

    The connections to the Eastern Establishment would not end with C. D. Jackson. There were more links in New Orleans to be explored. During his investigation, Garrison was contacted by a witness who revealed to him that a Mr. “White” of Freeport Sulphur company had contacted him to discuss a possible Castro assassination plan. The same witness had heard Clay Shaw or David Ferrie talking about some nickel mines in Cuba.[61]

    Another witness, Jules Ricco Kimble, told Garrison’s office that a Mr. “White” along with Shaw and David Ferrie had flown in a plane to Cuba to make a deal regarding some nickel mines.[62] Garrison discovered who Mr. “White” was:

    “One man whose name we first thought to be WHITE apparently is WIGHT, Vice President of Freeport Sulphur who reputedly made the flight.”[63] It could be a coincidence, but Johnny Roselli testified that he “represented himself to the Cuban contacts as an agent of some business interests of Wall Street that had nickel interests and properties around in Cuba and I was getting financial assistance from them.”[64] This, of course, was when Roselli was associated with the CIA and trying to arrange the murder of Fidel Castro. It would have been interesting if Roselli had named those nickel interests in Cuba, but it may be more than an assumption that he was talking about the same nickel mines involving Freeport Sulphur. What may be more important though was Freeport Sulphur itself.

    Freeport Sulphur was established in Texas in 1912 and later moved to New York. The company’s activities were mining sulphur that was essential in the production process of chemicals, papermaking, pigment, pharmaceutical, mining, oil-refining, and fiber manufacturing industries. New York City multi-millionaire John Hay Whitney supported the corporation financially and, for a while, he was the head of the company.[65]

    Freeport Sulphur’s Board of Directors included Admiral Arleigh Burke and Augustus Long, Chairman of Texaco Oil Company and Director of the Chemical Bank. It also included Jean Mauze, husband of Abby Rockefeller, who was granddaughter of John D. Rockefeller and a sister to David and Nelson Rockefeller; Godfey Rockefeller, the brother of James Stillman Rockefeller, and Benno C. Schmidt one of the original partners of J. H. Whitney.[66]

    As Donald Gibson pointed out, Jock Whitney’s New York Herald Tribune was promoting the Lone Nut theory within 24 hours of Kennedy’s assassination. Finally, the last member of Freeport Sulphur’s Board of Directors was Robert Abercrombie Lovett, a former partner of Brown Brothers Harriman and a trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation and of the Carnegie Corporation.[67] Among his closest friends were Henry Luce, John McCloy, and Dean Acheson. It was McCloy, Lovett, and Acheson that later advised LBJ on Vietnam and recommended escalation of the war.[68]

    1. A PAWN ON THE GRAND CHESS BOARD

    In light of what we know today, Oswald was an expendable pawn in the grand scheme of things. It seems that the Cuban exiles and their Mafia co-conspirators—especially those from the Santo Trafficante and the Nevada Casino group—were manipulated to implicate Oswald in the Kennedy Assassination. They falsely believed that by framing Oswald to make it look like the Cubans and Castro were the driving forces behind him, this would have led to an American invasion of Cuba to avenge the President’s murder.

    However, they were betrayed by the real instigators who never had Cuba as their real target. And simultaneously set up both the anti-Castro Cubans and the Mafia as false sponsors of the crime. It was J. D. Tippit’s murder that led to Oswald’s arrest and the consequent swearing in by LBJ in Dallas that put a halt to their plans. Certain elements of the CIA and the Eastern Establishment turned around the Bringuier/Butler “Cuba did it” theories and designated Oswald as a lone nut who had acted alone, driven by personal sociopathy. LBJ was not the mastermind of the assassination and it may be that he was not privy to the plot. He might have been informed, but without knowing the details. It is also possible that he was manipulated in such a way to make sure that he would stop the Pentagon from invading Cuba and then force a cover up so the responsible parties would have never been brought to justice. (Click here for details) What is certain beyond reasonable doubt is that LBJ reversed JFK’s foreign policy in Vietnam and in Southeast Asia in general.

    Johnson and Vietnam

    Kennedy had been preparing to withdraw from Vietnam for months, but a few days after his death LBJ altered NSAM 273 to allow American navy ships to patrol near North Vietnamese waters. In August of 1964, this resulted in the Gulf of Tonkin incident. That provided the excuse for committing both US air attacks and then combat troops into Vietnam. That incident had been preceded in March, 1964, by Johnson’s approval of NSAM 288. This allowed the US Air Force to directly bomb scores of targets in Vietnam.[69] So when Tonkin happened, LBJ just pulled out the target list. In three years, Kennedy would not approve such an agenda. In three months, Johnson had.

    Newly released tapes reveal that LBJ told McNamara on February 20, 1964 that “I always thought it was foolish for you to make any statements about withdrawing. I thought it was bad psychologically. But you and the president thought otherwise and I just sat silent.”[70] In another tape, LBJ asked McNamara on March 2, 1964, to write a memo explaining that he never meant that he and Kennedy wanted to withdraw a thousand men from Vietnam; it was only a test.[71]

    One has to wonder: why the freeze to invade Cuba? After all, there had been efforts through Operation Mongoose to harass Castro and these efforts led some to think it was designed to recover all the lost American business interests that had been damaged by Castro’s policies in Cuba. It is possible that the perpetrators knew they could not invade Cuba without risking a confrontation with Russia. Therefore, the idea was to avoid a nuclear holocaust.

    For Moscow, Cuba had become the equivalent of East Berlin. This emotional attachment would have created extreme tension and heightened paranoia in the Cold War arena. Most importantly there was a new territory to advance their business interests, immensely vaster and more profitable than Cuba. That was Southeast Asia. The Cuban exiles and the Mafia were not to be left in the cold and outside of the merry dance. As journalist Henrik Kruger outlined in his book The Great Heroin Coup, they were compensated for their efforts by access to the Golden Triangle and world drug trafficking by replacing the Corsicans and the French network. The drugs would now enter from Mexico to the US instead of Marseilles. Lansky’s Miami and Caribbean banks were given the privilege to launder the profits from the illicit drug trade.

    Laos had been a target of American interests. The concept was to take control of its opium fields and after the American intervention it worked splendidly. That area became the third largest producer of opium in the world.[72] Opium, of course, can be refined into heroin.

    On August 30, 1959 there was a crisis unfolding in northern Laos near the Vietnamese borders. The Washington Post reported that “3,500 Communist rebels, including regular Viet-Minh troops have captured eighty villages in a new attack in northern Laos.” Later, a UN investigation found out that it was a minor incident and that no North Vietnamese invaders were discovered and that most Vietnamese soldiers had crossed over to Laos to surrender.[73]

    The truth, however, was distorted by none other than Joe Alsop, the man who, five years later, tried to convince LBJ to create a presidential commission to investigate JFK’s murder. He arrived in Laos in time to report about a “massive new attack in Laos” by “at least three and perhaps five new battalions of enemy troops from North Vietnam.”[74] Later he wrote of “aggression, as naked, as flagrant as a Soviet-East German attack on West Germany.”[75]

    There was more than opium at stake. There were big interests represented by the munitions and oil industries. LBJ’s friends from Texas were to be hugely compensated from the war that the new president was promoting. The Texas located company manufacturing Bell helicopters—where Michael Paine worked—would profit immensely from their use in Vietnam. General Dynamics plane production—located in Fort Worth—would gain huge contracts during that war.

    Another of LBJ’s friends who profited from the Vietnam War was David Harold Byrd, owner of the Texas School Book Depository. In early November, 1963, Byrd and his investment partner James Ling bought $2 million worth of stock in Ling-Temco-Vought (LTV), a defense company they owned. It may have been a coincidence, but the fact is that the navy awarded LTV the first major contract in February 1964 to construct the A7 Corsair fighter plane for operations in Vietnam. Peter Dale Scott calculated that this sum of money was worth $26 Million by 1967.[76]

    LBJ was a close friend to the Brown Brothers, who owned a construction company named Brown and Root. In 1962, a consortium of private American construction corporations made up of Raymond International and Morrison-Knudsen (RMK) were building Vietnam’s infrastructure. But the construction was limited. The original contract was for $15 million. But in the beginning of 1965, the sum had reached $150 million. RMK could not keep up with the demands of construction. They added to their team two large American companies, Brown and Root and J.A. Jones, to form the largest ever consortium, RMK-BRJ.[77] This consortium took the largest share of all Vietnam construction work, around 90 percent of the total. The US Navy granted RMK-BRJ a cost-plus-fixed-fee to quickly prepare Vietnam for a major U.S. military presence.[78]

    The Rockefeller brothers also made huge profits, since they had ownership and shares in big defense contractors like Standard Oil of California, Standard Oil of New Jersey, Boeing, and General Motors. That last company gained more than $1.3 billion in military contracts in 1968.[79] But these were short-term profits for the Rockefellers. The real deal was in reconstructing the infrastructure after the war had ended and financing would be needed to achieve that. Under this mistaken assumption, in 1965, Rockefeller’s Chase Manhattan Bank opened a branch in Saigon—a huge fortress with no windows but thick glass blocks and stone walls that could withstand mortar attacks.[80]

    A major force behind the Vietnam War was the Rockefeller’s Southeast Asia Development Advisory Group (SEADAG). That membership included Rockefeller Brothers Inc., Chase Manhattan Bank, the Rockefeller Foundation, Standard Oil of California, Standard Oil of New Jersey, and Standard Oil of Indiana.[81] SEADAG’s Samuel P. Huntington believed that cheap labor created by forced relocation would help Saigon win the conflict.[82] Anthropologist Jules Henry explained that the war would create cheap labor that would be able to compete with the lower productive costs of Chinese and Japanese industry and that “the destruction of the Vietnamese countryside is the first, and necessary, step to the industrialization of Vietnam and nationalization of its agriculture.”[83]

    LBJ and Congo

    Vietnam was not the only issue among JFK’s policies that the elites were opposing. Kennedy was determined to change Eisenhower’s policy in Belgian Congo and had decided to let the UN bring all opposing armies under control. On his own, and behind the scenes, JFK called the Russians and informed them that he was ready to negotiate a truce in Congo. Clare Timberlake, the US Ambassador to Congo, learned of this and alerted CIA Director Allen Dulles and Joint Chiefs Chairman Lyman Lemnitzer that Kennedy was selling out to the Russians and breaking away from Eisenhower’s policy.[84] Senator Thomas Dodd was one of the major forces who opposed Kennedy’s Congo policy. He initiated hearings in the senate on the “loss” of Congo to Communism.[85]

    Congo, especially its Katanga region, was full of minerals. JFK had agreed with Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba that the riches of Congo should be shared among its people. Also, that more of the profits from the foreign investments should be used to counter unemployment and improve Congo’s standard of living. Lumumba made a critical mistake when he informed US businessmen that he wanted to break away from the Belgians and negotiate directly with the Americans about Congo’s uranium while bypassing the Belgians. Lumumba thought that this would please the Americans. But he did not know that US corporations had a big stake in Belgium’s monopoly of copper and uranium in Katanga province through Tanganyika Concessions Limited: a company in which the Rockefellers were shareholders.[86]

    The Rockefellers and the Guggenheims held stocks in the Belgian diamond mining operation in Kasai province, Northwest of Katanga. Their investment was $20 million, while their Belgians partners had invested only $2 millions.[87]

    Kennedy’s Treasury Secretary Douglas C. Dillon also had a stake in Congo. He was an investor in Laurence Rockefeller’s textile mill and also in Laurence’s automobile import company in Congo.[88]

    Unfortunately, the Belgians and the CIA murdered Lumumba and eventually replaced him with dictator Joseph Mobutu. At around this time, early in 1964, LBJ reversed Kennedy’s policy in Congo. The CIA recruited Cuban exile pilots to fly operations against the Congo rebels involved in the Simba Rebellion. Once the UN withdrew, LBJ sent airplanes, advisors, and arms to the Belgians for support.[89]

    Sukarno and Indonesia

    An all too familiar situation occurred in Indonesia, where Kennedy was determined to cooperate with the neutralist and left leaning President Sukarno. Kennedy decided to help Sukarno acquire control of the Dutch New Guinea area the Indonesians called West Irian. He assigned his brother Robert to negotiate the return of West Irian to Indonesia from Dutch colonial rule.[90] What Kennedy did not know, but Allen Dulles did, was that West Irian was a region extremely rich in minerals, even richer than Katanga.

    In the 1920s and 1930s, Allen Dulles was a lawyer at the giant corporate law firm Sullivan and Cromwell. He represented the Rockefellers there and he knew that Indonesia had huge mineral and oil potential. One of the oilfields in Sumatra exploited by Caltex was the size of similar oilfields in Saudi Arabia.[91]

    In 1936, a joint Dutch and American expedition—including explorer/geologist Jean Jacques Dozy—was organized by Allen Dulles through Sullivan and Cromwell. That expedition discovered two enormous mineral deposits in West Irian. The American firms that financed the expedition were two divisions of Standard Oil. One of the two colossal deposits was called the Ertsberg and the other the Grasberg. Both were extravagantly rich in gold, silver, and copper. Just the gold content was much larger than the wealthiest gold mine in the world, then located in South Africa.[92]

    In 1962, a second expedition involving Freeport Sulphur’s geologist Forbes Wilson, took place. But neither man revealed the enormous gold content. According to Australian scholar Greg Poulgrain, they both gave the impression that the main mineral was copper with smaller amounts of silver and gold.[93]

    Two Rockefeller companies were also doing oil business in Indonesia: Stanvac (jointly held by Standard Oil of New Jersey and Socony-Mobil, Socony being Standard Oil of New York); and Caltex, (jointly held by Standard Oil of California and Texaco.)[94]

    Freeport Sulphur, a Rockefeller controlled company, would be hugely rewarded by the West Irian mineral mines. As Lisa Pease explained, 1962 was a very difficult year for Freeport. They lost their Cuban nickel mines. And they were planning with Clay Shaw to arrange a scheme to bring in nickel from Canada. They were under investigation about stockpiling surpluses that President Kennedy was determined to make an issue in his 1964 presidential campaign.[95]

    When LBJ became president, he quickly reversed Kennedy’s Indonesia policy. As Poulgrain notes in his new book, JFK vs Allen Dulles: Battleground Indonesia, the State Department and the CIA began planning to replace Sukarno in late 1964. In the summer of 1965, when Marshall Green became the new ambassador, these plans went into operation. Sukarno was overthrown and a huge massacre of the PKI took place. More than a half million were killed. The minerals of West Irian did not go to the Indonesians, but to the new President Suharto and foreign business interests. Later Freeport Sulphur subcontracted Bechtel to handle the engineering aspects of the mining.[96] Freeport was later renamed Freeport McMoran. It became one of the two largest mining corporations in the world. The eventual wealth mined from the two deposits topped 100 billion dollars. (Click here for details)

    As Carol Hewett discovered, Allen Dulles was close to the DeMohrenschildt family. According to Poulgrain, Dulles managed to transfer George DeMohrenschildt to West Irian to work on Standard Oil’s drilling since the region had one of the largest oil deposits in Indonesia.[97]

    Dulles lied to Kennedy on several occasions regarding the Sino-Soviet split. He told him it was not real, but a Cold war ploy to fool America. It was real and Dulles was using Indonesia as a wedge to further the split between China and the Soviet Union. Both were trying to influence and gain the support of the PKI, Indonesia’s large communist party, which backed Sukarno. Dulles wanted to depose Sukarno and eliminate the PKI. The result would make the Chinese and the Soviets accuse each other of being at fault. Dulles and Henry Kissinger participated in the Rockefeller Brothers Panel Report in 1958–1959, where the Sino-Soviet split was first mentioned.[98] It is worthwhile to note that Anatoliy Golitsyn, the Russian defector who was influencing James Angleton, had convinced him that the Sino-Soviet split was fake. With that nonsense, one has to wonder how genuine a defector Golitsyn was.

    Kennedy was planning to visit Jakarta in early 1964. If he had not been killed, he would have met with Sukarno and that would have helped Sukarno consolidate his regime in three areas: social, political, and economic. And Dulles would have seen years of covert work thrown into the trash can. From 1958, his first attempt to overthrow Sukarno, Dulles was planning on regime change. That would have allowed his clients to control the oil, gold, copper, and silver reserves of Indonesia rather than go to the citizenry of Indonesia, as Kennedy and Sukarno had planned. The policy of wedge against China and the Soviet Union would have been disrupted.

    Foreign policy was not the only arena in which the Rockefellers would clash with Kennedy. There was a White House state dinner taking place for France’s Cultural Minister Andre Malraux in May of 1962. David Rockefeller was invited. Kennedy asked Rockefeller to write a letter presenting his views on the economy. David responded with a long letter, where he advised Kennedy:

    Because of the vital need for increased investment, the requirement of lower taxes and the importance of fiscal responsibility, I would urge upon you a more effective control of expenditures and a determined and vigorous effort to balance the budget.[99]

    David also tried to focus on the nation’s tax system and the urgent need to take it apart and re-examine it:

    Today the tax burden falls much too heavy on investment—more heavily in fact than any other industrialized country in the world. In my opinion, this tax burden must be lightened, and soon—preferably through a material reduction in the corporate income tax rate.[100]

    Kennedy replied that his administration had tried to cut business taxes, reduce tariffs, increase trade, reduce labor cost, and keep the dollar strong.[101] Most importantly he insisted that, “our tax laws should surely not encourage the export of dollars by permitting ‘tax havens’ and other undue preferences.”[102] This point must have angered David, since the Rockefellers had many such tax havens in small Caribbean banks, Swiss Commercial banks, private investment firms in Luxemburg, and stock holdings in foreign companies. American corporations overseas had ‘parked’ profits in foreign commercial banks and in foreign subsidiaries. Kennedy’s 1962 tax bill targeted these tax havens by subsidiary companies. Kennedy published his correspondence with Rockefeller in Life magazine to show that he was on agreement with David on most economic issues. But David Rockefeller was not very impressed with Kennedy’s public relations move.[103]

    In November 1963, David’s brother announced himself a candidate for the Republican Party to oppose Kennedy in the 1964 general elections. Nelson accused Kennedy of “jeopardizing the peace and demoralizing America’s allies with a weak foreign policy.”[104] After Kennedy’s assassination Nelson called his loss a “terrible tragedy.” But to his friend Alberto Camargo, he showed his true colors when he said to him: “For Latin America, Kennedy’s passing is a blackening, a tunnel, a gust of cloud and smoke.”[105]

    To exemplify what he meant, David Rockefeller met with LBJ in January of 1964. As A. J. Langguth wrote in his book Hidden Terrors, this is something Kennedy would not welcome. Soon after, the coup in Brazil was enacted. Johnson also began to eat away at Kennedy’s Alliance for Progress, particularly through his friend diplomat Thomas Mann. As Walter LaFeber notes in Inevitable Revolutions, Richard Nixon then had Nelson Rockefeller write a report on the Alliance. At Nelson’s recommendation, Nixon eliminated the program. That was some blackening tunnel filled with smoke Nelson foresaw.

    Unfortunately, we will never know the true identity of those that ultimately decided that President Kennedy had to be erased, thus instigating the assassination. But it probably was not the CIA or the Pentagon per se; they were likely the executive arm of powerful people, among the elites of the United States. The CIA has overthrown foreign governments in Iran, Guatemala, and Chile. But they were urged in those actions by big corporations whose interests had been comprised by new leftist governments. Another way to pose the question is not just by asking, Cui bono? But also, in how many ways did they benefit? Can all these changes going in one direction, can all this and more, be just a coincidence?

    It would have been very dangerous for the CIA and/or the Pentagon to have dared to assassinate a US President on their own—not some president from a banana republic. This would have been murder and treason. They were likely first given reassurances from the Powers Elite that a cover up would take place, one that would guarantee their impunity.

    It is more likely that those involved in the crime were a mixture of CIA and military elements serving big business interests in a fashion similar to the mentality and ideology of individuals that converged in the American Security Council. However, this should not give the mistaken notion that the American Security Council instigated and executed the assassination. It came from much higher up.

    Go to Part 1

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    Go to Conclusion

    Go to Appendix

    References

    [1] Russell Dick, The Man Who Knew Too Much, Carroll & Graf, 1992, pp. 39–140.

    [2] Russell Dick, On The Trail of the JFK Assassins, Skyhorse Publishing 2008. p. 160.

    [3] Russell Dick, The Man Who Knew Too Much, Carroll & Graf, 1992, chapter fourteen.

    [4] DiEugenio James, Destiny Betrayed, Skyhorse Publishing, 2012, p. 96.

    [5] DiEugenio James, Destiny Betrayed, Skyhorse Publishing, 2012, p. 97.

    [6] DiEugenio James, Destiny Betrayed, Skyhorse Publishing, 2012, p. 184.

    [7] DiEugenio James, Destiny Betrayed, Skyhorse Publishing, 2012, p. 294.

    [8] Russell Dick, On The Trail of the JFK Assassins, Skyhorse Publishing 2008. p. 161.

    [9] www.prayer-man.com

    [10] https://www.maryferrell.org/pages/Tipping_Point

    [11] JFKcountercoup: PATHFINDER – Parts 1 – 5 The Plan to Kill Castro Redirected to JFK at Dallas

    [12] https://kennedysandking.com – The Death of Eugene B. Dinkin

    [13] Russell Dick, The Man Who Knew Too Much, Carroll & Graf, 1992, p. 349.

    [14] Russell Dick, The Man Who Knew Too Much, Carroll & Graf, 1992, p. 352.

    [15] Russell Dick, The Man Who Knew Too Much, Carroll & Graf, 1992, p. 353.

    [16] Malcolm Blunt archives, William King Harvey – Google Drive

    [17] Talbot David, The Devil’s Chess Board, Harper Collins Publishers, 2015, p. 477.

    [18] Talbot David, The Devil’s Chess Board, Harper Collins Publishers, 2015, p. 476.

    [19] Martin David, Wilderness of Mirrors, Harper Collins Publishers, 1980, p. 136.

    [20] Martin David, Wilderness of Mirrors, Harper Collins Publishers, 1980, pp. 137–138.

    [21] Blunt Malcolm, The Devil is in the Details, 2020, p. 102.

    [22] Blunt Malcolm, The Devil is in the Details, 2020, p. 102–103.

    [23] Blunt Malcolm, The Devil is in the Details, 2020, p. 103.

    [24] Blunt Malcolm, The Devil is in the Details, 2020, p. 318.

    [25] Colby & Dennett, Thy Will Be Done, Harper Perennial, 1995, p. 358.

    [26] Newman John, The assassination of President Kenendy, vol I, p. xxi.

    [27] https://kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/ed-butler-expert-in-propaganda-and-psychological-warfare

    [28] Haslam Edward, Dr. Mary’s Monkey, Trine Day, 2007, p. 169.

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

    [30] Haslam Edward, Dr. Mary’s Monkey, Trine Day, 2007, p. 183.

    [31] Gibson Donald, The Kennedy Assassination Cover-Up, Krosha Books, NY, 2000, p. 163.

    [32] Gibson Donald, The Kennedy Assassination Cover-Up, Krosha Books, NY, 2000, p. 165.

    [33] Gibson Donald, The Kennedy Assassination Cover-Up, Krosha Books, NY, 2000, p. 167.

    [34] Gibson Donald, The Kennedy Assassination Cover-Up, Krosha Books, NY, 2000, p. 184.

    [35] Evica, George Michael, A Certain Arrogance, Trine Day 2011 p. 306.

    [36] Evica, George Michael, A Certain Arrogance, p. 307.

    [37] DiEugenio James, Destiny Betrayed, Skyhorse Publishing, 2012, p. 195.

    [38] Evica, George Michael, A Certain Arrogance, Trine Day 2011, pp. 304–305.

    [39] DiEugenio James, Destiny Betrayed, Skyhorse Publishing, 2012, p. 196.

    [40] DiEugenio James, Destiny Betrayed, Skyhorse Publishing, 2012, p. 195.

    [41] DiEugenio James, Destiny Betrayed, Skyhorse Publishing, 2012, pp. 195–196.

    [42] Evica, George Michael, A Certain Arrogance, Trine Day 2011, p. 287.

    [43] DiEugenio James, Destiny Betrayed, Skyhorse Publishing, 2012, pp. 195–196.

    [44] Evica, George Michael, A Certain Arrogance, Trine Day 2011, p. 284.

    [45] DiEugenio James, Destiny Betrayed, Skyhorse Publishing, 2012, p. 197.

    [46] DiEugenio James, Destiny Betrayed, Skyhorse Publishing, 2012, p. 163.

    [47] DiEugenio James, Destiny Betrayed, Skyhorse Publishing, 2012, p. 200.

    [48] DiEugenio James, Destiny Betrayed, Skyhorse Publishing, 2012, p. 203.

    [49] Scott, Peter Dale, Dallas ‘63, Open Road Media, 2015, chapter. 2, kindle version.

    [50] Robert E. Herzstein, Henry R. Luce—A Political Portrait Of The Man Who Created The American Century (New York, Scribners, 1994), p. 217.

    [51] Stern John Allen, C.D. Jackson, Cold War Propagandist for Democracy and Globalism, University press of America, 2012, p. 146.

    [52] Evica, George Michael, A Certain Arrogance, Trine Day 2011, p. 232.

    [53] Evica, George Michael, A Certain Arrogance, Trine Day 2011, p. 234.

    [54] Scott, Peter Dale, Deep Politics, University of California Press 1993, p. 288.

    [55] Hinckle & Turner, Deadly Secrets, Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1992, p. 185.

    [56] Scott, Peter Dale, Deep Politics, University of California Press 1993, p. 55.

    [57] https://spartacus-educational.com/USAluce.htm

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

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

    [60] Hancock Larry, Someone Would Have Talked, JFK Lancer Productions and Publications Inc. 2006, p. 11.

    [61] Pease Lisa, https://kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/david-atlee-phillips-clay-shaw-and-freeport-sulphur

    [62] Pease Lisa, https://kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/david-atlee-phillips-clay-shaw-and-freeport-sulphur

    [63] Pease Lisa, https://kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/david-atlee-phillips-clay-shaw-and-freeport-sulphur

    [64] HSCA Report, Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders, p. 76.

    [65] Pease Lisa, https://kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/david-atlee-phillips-clay-shaw-and-freeport-sulphur

    [66] Pease Lisa, https://kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/freeport-sulphur-s-powerful-board-of-directors

    [67] Gibson Donald, The Kennedy Assassination Cover-Up, Krosha Books, NY, 2000, p. 169.

    [68] Gibson Donald, The Kennedy Assassination Cover-Up, Krosha Books, NY, 2000, p. 170.

    [69] DiEugenio James, Vietnam Declassified, 2017 Lancer presentation.

    [70] DiEugenio James, Vietnam Declassified, 2017 Lancer presentation.

    [71] DiEugenio James, Vietnam Declassified, 2017 Lancer presentation.

    [72] Scott, Peter Dale, The War Conspiracy, Marry Ferrell Foundation Press, 2008, p. 240.

    [73] Scott, Peter Dale, The War Conspiracy, Marry Ferrell Foundation Press, 2008, p. 72.

    [74] Scott, Peter Dale, The War Conspiracy, Marry Ferrell Foundation Press, 2008, p. 73.

    [75] Scott, Peter Dale, The War Conspiracy, Marry Ferrell Foundation Press, 2008, p. 73.

    [76] Scott, Peter Dale, The War Conspiracy, Marry Ferrell Foundation Press, 2008, p. 342–343.

    [77] Carter James, Inventing Vietnam, Cambridge University Press, 2008, p. 158.

    [78] Carter James, Inventing Vietnam, Cambridge University Press, 2008, p. 159.

    [79] Colby & Dennett, Thy Will Be Done, Harper Perennial, 1995, p. 562.

    [80] Colby & Dennett, Thy Will Be Done, Harper Perennial, 1995, p. 562.

    [81] Colby & Dennett, Thy Will Be Done, Harper Perennial, 1995, p. 559.

    [82] Colby & Dennett, Thy Will Be Done, Harper Perennial, 1995, p. 564.

    [83] Colby & Dennett, Thy Will Be Done, Harper Perennial, 1995, p. 564.

    [84] DiEugenio James, https://kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/dodd-and-dulles-vs-kennedy-in-africa

    [85] DiEugenio James, https://kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/dodd-and-dulles-vs-kennedy-in-africa

    [86] Colby & Dennett, Thy Will Be Done, Harper Perennial, 1995, pp. 325–326.

    [87] Colby & Dennett, Thy Will Be Done, Harper Perennial, 1995, p. 326.

    [88] Colby & Dennett, Thy Will Be Done, Harper Perennial, 1995, p. 326.

    [89] DiEugenio James, https://kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/dodd-and-dulles-vs-kennedy-in-africa

    [90] DiEugenio James, JFK’s Foreign Policy: A Motive for Murder, 2014 Lancer presentation.

    [91] Poulgrain Greg, JFK vs Allen Dulles: Battleground Indonesia, Skyhorse, 2020, p.44.

    [92] DiEugenio James, https://kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-reviews/poulgrain-greg-the-incubus-of-intervention

    [93] DiEugenio James, https://kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-reviews/poulgrain-greg-the-incubus-of-intervention

    [94] Pease Lisa, https://kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/jfk-indonesia-cia-freeport-sulphur

    [95] Pease Lisa, https://kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/jfk-indonesia-cia-freeport-sulphur

    [96] Pease Lisa, https://kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/jfk-indonesia-cia-freeport-sulphur

    [97] DiEugenio James, https://kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-reviews/poulgrain-greg-the-incubus-of-intervention

    [98] Poulgrain Greg, JFK vs Allen Dulles: Battleground Indonesia, Skyhorse, 2020, p.45.

    [99] Life, July 6, 1962, p. 33.

    [100] Life, July 6, 1962, p. 32.

    [101] Colby & Dennett, Thy Will Be Done, Harper Perennial, 1995, p. 402.

    [102] Life, July 6, 1962, p. 33.

    [103] Colby & Dennett, Thy Will Be Done, Harper Perennial, 1995, p. 403.

    [104] Colby & Dennett, Thy Will Be Done, Harper Perennial, 1995, p. 411.

    [105] Colby & Dennett, Thy Will Be Done, Harper Perennial, 1995, p. 416.

  • Rand Development and U.S. Intelligence

    Rand Development and U.S. Intelligence

    Foreword by Paul Bleau

    It is well known that some of the best intelligence the CIA collected throughout its existence came from natural allies who were involved abroad in the course of their everyday operations. CIA friends included businesses, media, NGOs, their own embassies, aide organizations etc.

    Data, photos, and information on persons of interest to the CIA were kept in 201 files. These files, and other information related to people related to the JFK assassination, have been the subject of much scrutiny. Lesser known and explored are the 301 files where information on organizations of interest is kept.

    In 1996, the CIA handed over 64 boxes of material to the AARB that they had provided to the HSCA. A description of their contents can be found in ARRB files, in them you will see some focus on events, 201 files, and individuals of interest to the JFK assassination, but almost nothing on organizations of interest:



    Relatively little has been done to connect the dots on the role organizations may have played wittingly or unwittingly in the coup.

    We know that many organizations in Oswald’s orbit had links to intelligence including the Riley Coffee Company, the FPCC, Banister and Associates, Albert Schweitzer College, Alpha 66, the DRE, INCA, WSDU, and the Texas School Book Depository. Permindex and the International Trade Mart connect to both Clay Shaw and intelligence. Sullivan and Cromwell, United Fruit, Freeport Sulphur, and a number of other movers and shakers, as well as countless media organizations, were known to have hovered around U.S. security endeavors during the Dulles reign. They, of course, prefer that this dark history exclude their names, which was accomplished by the lone nut tale peddled by the Warren Commission. Knowing more about some of these interests would help us understand Oswald’s murky path that allowed puppeteers to “place him” strategically in the right spot at the right time to become a patsy.

    For instance, it is impossible to imagine that the FPCC does not have a very thick file, given the surveillance programs of this outfit by both the FBI and CIA and its heavy infiltration by informants. Imagine if we could know more about who the informants were and their supervisors from the CIA and FBI.

    Gary Hill in his book “the Other Oswald” explores the strange case of Robert Webster, who defected to Russia and returned to the U.S. at nearly the same times as Oswald. He shows how the Rand Development Corporation, Webster’s employer, is closely linked to intelligence, MKULTRA, and Webster’s saga.

    In this article, he expands on his research on Rand and demonstrates just how much we could learn by understanding organizations Oswald and other of the main characters are linked to.

    RAND Corporation

    The RAND Corporation’s the boon of the world,

    They think all day long for a fee,

    They sit and play games about going up in flames,

    For Counters they use you and me.”[1]

    In researching my book on Robert Webster[2], The Other Oswald, A Wilderness of Mirrors, I came to see that Webster’s employer, Rand Development Corporation, and his boss, Dr. Henry J. Rand, played important roles in determining Webster’s destiny. Their shadowy presence, always lurking behind the scenes, permeates his story. I decided to try to find out what this mysterious organization was about and why it was manipulating this easily influenced man.

    Although Anthony Summers[3] labeled Rand Corporation as Rand Development’s parent company, I was unable to find any connection between the two companies.

    General H. H. “Hap” Arnold

    Rand Corporation’s website describes its 1948 origins as follows:

    As [WWII] drew to a close, it became clear that complete and permanent peace might not be assured. Forward-looking individuals in the War Department, the Office of Scientific Research and Development, and industry thus began to discuss the need for a private organization to connect military planning with research and development decisions.

    Commanding General of the Army Air Force H. H. “Hap” Arnold articulated this need in a report to the Secretary of War:

    “During this war, the Army, Army Air Forces, and the Navy have made unprecedented use of scientific and industrial resources. The conclusion is inescapable that we have not yet established the balance necessary to insure the continuance of teamwork among the military, other government agencies, industry, and the universities. Scientific planning must be years in advance of the actual research and development work.”

    Other key players involved in the formation of this new organization were Major General Curtis LeMay; General Lauris Norstad, Assistant Chief of Air Staff, Plans; Edward Bowles of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, consultant to the Secretary of War; Donald Douglas, president of the Douglas Aircraft Company; Arthur Raymond, chief engineer at Douglas; and Franklin Collbohm, Raymond’s assistant.

    The name of the organization? Project RAND.

    Curtis LeMay

    Similar to the Russians’ “doomsday machine” in the satirical movie, Dr. Strangelove, RAND was to be a machine whose purpose was to fuel the fires of the cold war through research and development and inter-agency cooperation. The involvement of General Curtis LeMay[4] in such a project is no surprise. It was LeMay who was responsible for promoting RAND as his own project. It is apparent that the Air Force seems to have played a major role in the birth of RAND and oversaw its operations in the early years.

    Wikipedia lists the birth of RAND Corporation as 1945, not 1948 as RAND’s website declares. However, its actual charter is dated March 1, 1946. Wiki says:

    RAND was created after individuals in the War Department, the Office of Scientific Research and Development, and industry began to discuss the need for a private organization to connect operational research with research and development decisions. On 1 October 1945, Project RAND was set up under special contract to the Douglas Aircraft Company and began operations in December 1945.

    Since the 1950s, RAND research has helped inform United States policy decisions on a wide variety of issues, including the space race, the U.S.-Soviet nuclear arms confrontation, the creation of the Great Society social welfare programs, the digital revolution, and national health care. Its most visible contribution may be the doctrine of nuclear deterrence by mutually assured destruction (MAD), developed under the guidance of then-Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and based upon their work with game theory. Chief strategist Herman Kahn also posited the idea of a “winnable” nuclear exchange in his 1960 book On Thermonuclear War. This led to Kahn being one of the models for the titular character of the film Dr. Strangelove, in which RAND is spoofed as the “BLAND Corporation.”

    Pravda labeled RAND as the American “Academy of Science and Death.”

    By its own definition, it is apparent that RAND’s purpose was to serve the Military Industrial Complex.

    Rand Development Corporation

    Rand Development is a more elusive entity. When I first saw that there was no mention of Rand Development in the history section of the RAND Corporation website, I thought that it was because of its involvement with the MKULTRA project. Or maybe because an employee, Robert Webster, defected while working on a Rand Development project in the Soviet Union. Or it could be because Rand Development went bankrupt in 1972 and no longer exists.

    Whereas RAND Corporation’s name came from the initials of “Research ANd Development,” Rand Development got its name from its founder, James Henry Rand III also called H.J. Rand.

    H. James Rand

    Dr. James Rand III,[5] turns out to be an extremely fascinating entrepreneur.

    James set up the Rand Development Company in 1950 with the primary aim to devise medical devices to benefit patients. He developed the first artificial larynx, which enabled an East Cleveland policeman to be reinstated in his job afterward.

    By 1951, at age 38, Rand had 100 inventions to his credit. These included: the mechanical respirator, a tank respirator that replaced the bulky iron lung, an oxygen regulator for aircraft, a pulsating air mattress to eliminate bedsores, a plastic shoe sole, and a completely mechanized wheelchair that could be operated by mouth.

    Rand also invented the Bendix automatic washer, the first Remington shaver, a non-leaking faucet valve, and a metal-impregnated cloth called Milium, used to line coats. He was also a co-inventor of a defibrillator and a respirator for chest surgery.

    Rand Development prospered under James Rand. The company was even featured in a cover story in Business Week magazine in 1956.

    James worked in the mid-1960s on a controversial cancer vaccine and began marketing it in 1966. In 1967, the federal government took his firm to U.S. District Court and won a ban due to not enough testing on animals first and manufacturing they determined was performed under unsanitary conditions. They banned the vaccine’s manufacture and use in the United States. The cancer vaccine never became available to the public. The trial was fraught with desperate cancer patients pleading for continued use of the vaccine.

    In 1968, a federal grand jury indicted Rand Development on charges of stock manipulation and mail fraud. Those charges were later dropped in 1970, because they were based on the 1967 vaccine ban case that Rand had testified in and violated his right against self-incrimination.

    An improved version of the vaccine was later tested in Mexico and showed some excellent results, as Rand said in a 1977 interview. The results of the tests had been published in Austria, but not accepted in this country.

    Rand Development went bankrupt in 1972, and the assets, contents of labs, and offices were sold at auction.

    According to his obituary,

    James Henry Rand III was born on February 23, 1913, in Pelham, New York, to James Henry Jr. and Miriam Rand. He was a brilliant young boy for whom conventional schooling was inadequate. At age thirteen, Rand ran away from Peekskill Military Academy in New York, where he felt he would not learn anything new in science. He jumped a freight train and emerged from the boxcar in Cleveland, where he spent two weeks living at the Salvation Army before he was caught and returned to his family.

    He returned to the military academy, which he completed in two years instead of the usual four. He spent a year in Europe, first at the University of Vienna and the University of Berlin. He enrolled at the University of Virginia at age 16 using two names: H. J. Rand and James H. Rand, to complete both his freshman year and his first year of Medical School.

    James elected not to work at his father’s business, Remington Rand. While in his early twenties, he put together a chain of fifty-eight radio stations, that was later taken over by a larger company. His first invention was an instrument to mix the cabin atmosphere in the airplane with hydrogen, enabling pilots to get the correct mix of oxygen while flying. He sold this to the Bendix Corporation, who also hired him, where he worked out several inventions, including the automatic washing machine and the Remington electric shaver for Remington Rand, his father’s firm.

    James Rand had a distinguished World War II record. He worked as a spy with the French underground until 1942, when he joined the Army Air Corps and the Office of Strategic Services. He worked in the White House map room until presidential aide Harry Hopkins discovered that he was the son of a prominent Republican and was banished.

    He then became assistant chief of guided missiles, assigned to the guided missiles section in Sicily and Italy; he captured several enemy radar stations. Before the capitulation of Berlin, Rand, as a member of a secret mission, entered the city and brought out several German scientists to America.

    As a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army, Rand flew the first plane to carry guided missiles in combat and received many decorations, including the Legion of Merit, the Bronze Star, ten battle stars in the European Theater, and the Merit Ribbon.

    Rand was past president of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History and chairman of the 1949 heart campaign. Bethany College gave him an honorary doctorate and the Cleveland Jaycees named him 1949 Young Man of the Year. He founded the Cleveland Heart Society in 1953, as well as the National Inventors Council.

    His wife Mary filed for separation in 1969, stating that her husband was guilty of gross neglect of duty. Rand had not paid her support money or given her funds to operate the home. He later married Martha Osborne.

    James, who had diabetes since the age of 38 and also was using a heart pacemaker since 1974, died on November 6, 1978, of abdominal cancer, the disease he tried to conquer. He had used his cancer vaccine on himself.[6]

    Rand and the Intelligence Community

    Rand’s wartime connections to the Army Air Corps and the Office of Strategic Services explains his close links to the CIA and Air Force intelligence, ATIC, after the war. His OSS secret mission, rescuing German scientists from Berlin in 1945, links him to Operation Paperclip and Allen Dulles. Later, Rand Development Corporation became a CIA proprietary.

    President, James “Henry” Rand, and top executive, George Bookbinder, had served together in the O.S.S., the forerunner of the CIA. Bookbinder worked under Frank Wisner[7] in Bucharest during the war.[8] He had close ties to the Rockefeller-owned Chase Manhattan.[9] Rand’s Washington representative Christopher Bird was a self-admitted agent of the Central Intelligence Agency.

    The CIA ties to the Rand Development Corporation were exposed in 1968, when the Department of Interior conducted an expense inquiry into an anti-pollution contract between the Rand Development Corporation and that Agency. A Congressional Expense Inquiry showed that Rand Development held several CIA contracts. Doctor H.J. Rand was one of the first to undertake negotiations with the USSR for the purchase of technical devices and information on behalf of the Agency. An FBI Memorandum[10] tells of Sperry-Rand[11] developing an ink that “came out only under certain light.” The same document reveals that H.J. Rand received an $80,000 fee for the part he played in a law suit undertaken by the U.S. Department of Justice against the USSR. At this time, Rand Corporation was also conducting detailed studies of the Soviet economy in order to find out what proportion of the Russian GNP went into national defense.

    It would seem to me that “invisible ink” might be used as a tool for spying. In fact, it’s hard to think of many other applications it would be useful for.

    At the time of the U2 incident involving Francis Gary Powers, H.J. Rand had been trying to get the Russians to take out U.S. patents on several devices, including a sleep-inducing electric pulse generator he said would be very useful in surgery on patients whom anesthetic drugs are dangerous. Once the Russians took out the patents, Rand would buy the patents and market the Soviet products in the United States. However, the negotiations ended when Rand’s Russian offices were shut down in fallout of the U2 incident.

    George H. Bookbinder, New York Times, November 15, 1959

    Powers being shot down also foiled a plan to abduct Robert Webster—who had defected while working for Rand Development in 1959—and get him out of Russia in H.J. Rand’s car. Rand had left his car in the Soviet Union and planned one “last trip” to Moscow to bring the vehicle back. Accompanying Rand on the trip would be his usual sidekick, George Bookbinder, and also Dan Tyler Moore. Moore, whom Rand was reluctant to contact because of his erratic behavior and connections to journalist Drew Pearson, was his brother-in-law. Moore, formerly OSS, lived in Cleveland and was, at one time, affiliated with The Middle East Company. The branch office of the Middle East Company located in Turkey was referred to by the Soviets as a US Intelligence Operation. Rand described Moore as “a flamboyant type who is willing to try anything once or twice.” Rand’s hair-brained abduction scheme was never pulled off, due to the Powers incident that resulted in a tightening of security on all things American. The same document (the Grant-Gleichauf telecon) relating to Moore contains a provocative statement, “…the purpose of this notification is to provide some warning that an accident may be on its way to happen.” What accident? This document was dated May 4, 1960. Could the accident be the Powers downing? Were they anticipating this happening ahead of time? The event happened on May 1. This document is dated May 4, so it had already happened. However, as Bill Simpich believes, the key is the April 26 letter, that makes it clear they were planning to get Webster out of Russia over the weekend. It is credible that these words were spoken before May 1. In State Secret, Bill  writes:

    On April 26, Rand called the CIA Cleveland field office and told them that he and Bookbinder were heading to Moscow in the next ten days to try to get Webster out. On April 28, the CIA Miami chief got the word that Rand, Bookbinder, and their colleague Dan Tyler Moore were heading for Moscow. Like Rand and Bookbinder, Moore was ex-OSS. Moore was also the brother-in-law of Washington Post columnist Drew Pearson and had the savvy to put together a plan to smuggle Robert Webster into Rand’s car and out of the USSR. The Miami chief ended his message by saying that his note was ‘some warning that an accident may be on its way to happen.’ The plan was to smuggle Webster out on May 4.

    Anthony Ulasewicz, a field officer of Nixon’s White House/Special Operations Group, described his first meeting with Nixon counsel and crime boss, Murray Chotiner: “When I first met Chotiner, the first thing he did was hand me a file on Rand Development Corporation and its officers.” Chotiner’s file on the Rand Development Corporation disclosed that, during the 1968 presidential campaign, Rand was named as a defendant in a lawsuit started by some angry Minnesota businessmen. The charge was that the Small Business Administration and the Government Services Administration were guilty of fraud and conspiracy in the way a government contract for some postal vehicles was awarded to a wholly-owned Rand Development Corporation subsidiary, the Universal Fiberglass Corporation. The Universal Fiberglass Corporation, the lawsuit charged, was born for the sole purpose of obtaining this contract. “Despite apparent lack of qualifications, a crony of Senator Hubert Humphrey awarded the contact to the Universal Fiberglass Corporation. The Universal Fiberglass Corporation defaulted and disappeared under Rand Development’s umbrella.” Murray Chotiner was trying to bring this situation to the attention of the media.[12]

    But the CIA was not the only intelligence agency connected to Rand Development. Air Force Intelligence, ATIC, also worked closely with them in projects dealing with the Soviet Union.

    An FBI memo states, “In as much as James H. Rand, President of the Rand Development Corporation, Cleveland, OH, is cooperating with the U.S. Air Force in obtaining information from the Soviets, it is possible that Rand has already furnished information to the Air Force bearing on this matter.”[13]

    H.J. Rand’s father was Vice President (chairman) on the board of Sperry-RAND, which also worked closely with the United States Air Force. Sperry-RAND had initially funded the Rand Development Corporation. James Rand III was a twin son of Remington-Rand founder James Henry Rand Jr. who turned over the operation of Remington Rand in 1958 (which had previously merged with Sperry Corp), to James’s twin brother Marcell. Vice-president of research and development for Remington-Rand in those years (1948–1961) was the former chief of the Manhattan Project, General Leslie R. Groves. Among other sundry defense contracts, Remington-Rand was collaborating with Bell Labs on nuclear missile guidance systems.

    Internal memos from the CIA requested by the HSCA investigation note that Rand and Bookbinder had traveled previously in 1958 to the USSR with “Brigadier General” W. Randolph Lovelace, an eminent physician with Atomic Energy Commission contracts who co-founded the Lovelace Clinic in Albuquerque New Mexico. One memo reads: “For your information, only Rand, Bookbinder, and Lovelace have had frequent contact with Soviet officials both in the United States and the USSR, including Mikhail Ilich Bruk, formerly with the Soviet Ministry of Health, who was identified by AEDONER [Yuri Nosenko] as an agent of the KGB.”

    When Robert Webster defected in 1959, he did so as an employee of Rand Development at a Moscow Trade Exhibition. On October 17, 1959, Webster was living in Moscow. He attended a meeting at the central office, visas and registration (OVIR); with the original Soviet representative he had contact with, an unknown Soviet, H.J. Rand, his assistant George H. Bookbinder, as well as Richard E. Snyder of the U.S. Embassy. Webster stated he was free to speak and told Snyder when he had applied for Soviet citizenship that he had been granted a Soviet passport on September 21, 1959. He filled out a form entitled “Affidavit for Expatriated Person” and wrote his resignation to Rand Development Corp.

    While it is possible that Webster may have been a witting asset in a false defection stratagem, his pre- and post-Russia odyssey behavior and treatment lead me to believe that, unlike Oswald, he was a genuine, albeit confused defector, who went to Russia, not for ideological reasons, but mostly to escape a complicated personal life at home. We may never know for sure.

    My research further revealed that Webster was part of an ATIC project called LONGSTRIDE. Internal CIA memos revealed that Webster was known as “Guide 223” and fellow Rand Development employee Ted Korycki was known as “Lincoln Leeds.” The fact that the CIA approached ATIC at the Moscow Fair, rather than Rand Development itself, indicates inter-agency cooperation.

    Rand’s liaison with ATIC was Major Joseph Carels. In light of the recent revelation of Webster’s role in Project LONGSTRIDE, it appears that Carels was lying when he advised that Air Force Intelligence Headquarters had no information regarding Webster. As a result of a teletype inquiry by Carels to Air Technical Intelligence Center (ATIC), Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, (this organization handles covert projects of AF), Carels was advised that the subject was an employee of Rand Development who could not be located and thus was reported as missing. The message stated that the subject has taken a 20-day in-tourist tour to Kiev. “Subject (Webster) is a technician and is not witting or involved in ATIC[14] activities.”[15] Rand Development Corporation’s connection to the U.S. Air Force at the Moscow Fair may have been unknown to Webster, however it is likely that Webster’s movements were likely being choreographed by Air Force intelligence, whether he knew it or not.

    Dr. Rand was obviously a source for ATIC as is indicated by an AIRTEL TO BUREAU NY 105-37687 stating: “Inasmuch as James H. Rand, President of Rand Development Corporation, Cleveland, Ohio, is cooperating with the Air Force in obtaining information from the Soviets it is possible that Rand has already furnished information to the Air Force bearing on this matter.”

    Another FBI memorandum states; “Rand cooperates with Air Force Intelligence on technical intelligence projects.”[16]

    An area that needs more research is that involving the connections of Sylvia Hyde Hoke, the sister of Ruth Paine. Sylvia, a psychologist, was employed by the Air Force as a “Personnel Research Technician.”[17] It was the Personnel Research branch of the Air Force that implemented Project LONGSTRIDE, of which Webster was involved. Hoke was also employed by the CIA since at least 1961. Perhaps it is just a coincidence that the two Hyde sisters are somehow linked with the two defectors, Oswald and Webster. The same two that James Angleton was dangling to the Soviets in his mole hunts?

    There also seem to be connections between the elusive triad of espionage entities (CIA, ATIC and Rand Development) and experiments in behavior and mind control.

    The CIA’s MKULTRA projects are well known. But what is known of the role of Rand Development and ATIC’s in this murky misadventure of controlling human minds?

    Rand Development’s Washington representative, Christopher Bird, served as ‘Biocommunications Editor/ Russian Translator’ for Mankind Research Unlimited, Inc., a Washington think-tank specializing in parapsychology and other behavioral sciences.  Dick Russell reports that “MRU’s Company Capabilities list included brain and mind control…acquiring on a daily basis, a large amount of unique bio-cybernetics data from Eastern Europe.”[18]

    According to CIA psychiatrist, Dr. Louis Jolyon (Jolly) West,[19] ATIC and Rand Development worked closely together in behavior modification research. He claimed that Air Force Intelligence, like the CIA, was also involved in mind control research projects. West himself, although he initially denied it, was conducting LSD research under the MKULTRA banner.

    It is now clear that the H.J. Rand Foundation was a part of MKULTRA SUB-PROJECT NO. 79. The document below lists Rand as a “cut-out” for the purpose of funding organizations engaged in very “sensitive” research. The document is dated 1957–1962, the very time in which Robert Webster was employed by Rand. It encompasses his defection and return from Russia (59–62). Also, this is the same time period of Oswald’s Soviet odyssey. It also states that “all” of the Rand Development’s participants were witting of the agency (CIA) relationship. That would include plastic’s expert Robert E. Webster. Note that this document is approved by C.V.S. Roosevelt.

    Roosevelt, grandson of Theodore, who served as the chairman of the Technical Surveillance Countermeasures Committee, which involved securing American facilities against electronic eavesdropping. Richard Bissell’s testimony during the Church Commission, as well as CIA source documents, connect Roosevelt directly to plans to poison Castro. Roosevelt, as a head of the CIA technical division, was Sidney Gottlieb’s supervisor. According to Roosevelt, his work for the CIA mainly involved creating devices to detect listening devices. He also mentioned that he took part as a subject in the CIA experiments on LSD as part of MKULTRA. Retiring from the CIA in 1973, he served in retirement as a defense consultant and on the board of Aerospace Corporation.

    Further evidence of Rand Development’s involvement in MKULTRA is their 1958 study revealing that, “a defensive use for hypnosis was a more practical use than the previously sought offensive goal of a Manchurian Candidate.”

    NARA Record Number: 157-10014-10093

    TESTIMONY OF RICHARD BISSELL, 10 SEP 1975



    RAND Corporation was the CIA think-tank where Daniel Ellsberg copied the Pentagon Papers. According to the New York City phone directory, Rand Corporation and Rand Development were located on opposite sides of Lexington Avenue in New York City. However, this seems to have been a deception.

    Researchers Alan J. Weberman and Michael Canfield visited the address of Rand Development Corporation listed in the NYC phone directory. The building registry had no listing for Rand Development Corporation. The doorman told them that he had worked there for 33 years and there had never been a Rand Development Corporation in the building. He suggested they go to Rand Corporation across the street at 405 Lexington Ave. From what I could find, RAND’s NYC office was part of a HUD study group for LBJ’s Great Society described as an Urban Institute.

    Another odd coincidence involving the Air Force is that four of Oswald’s fellow employees at Reily Coffee went on to employment with NASA. Oswald himself cryptically hinted that working there might be in his future. He told Adrian Alba, proprietor of the Crescent City Garage next door to the Reily Coffee Co. in New Orleans, that he had “found his pot at the end of the rainbow,” and that he expected to get a job at NASA in New Orleans. As stated, four of Oswald’s coworkers at Reily did get jobs at NASA in New Orleans within weeks of his departure.[20] However, by the time he had returned to Dallas, in the fall of 1963, he was telling his landlady, Mary Bledsoe, that he would soon be working for Collins Radio, a CIA front company deeply involved in the military industrial complex.[21]

    In fact, it is obvious that Oswald had ties or links to an array of CIA/Military Industrial Complex friendly companies; Collins Radio, NASA, Reily Coffee, Guy Banister Associates, Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall, and perhaps the TSBD.[22] In addition, he wrote or belonged to organizations being investigated by the FBI and CIA; the FPCC, the American Civil Liberties Union, C.O.R.E., and the American Communist Party. In addition, Oswald was as an underage worker with the Gerald F. Tujague Inc., a freight broker on the New Orleans water front. Tujague was a friend of Guy Banister.  In addition, Tujague was Vice President of the Friends of a Democratic Cuba. The purpose of the FDC was to raise funds for the CIA-backed Frente Revolucionario Democratica (FRD-Cuban Democratic Revolutionary Front.) Tujague told FBI agents that Oswald was in regular contact with the U.S. Customs Export Office, yet another government agency.

    Summary

    In essence, RAND Corporation rose out of the ashes of WWII. The Manhattan Project had shown that pooling the best minds; scientists, physicists, mathematicians, and technicians had resulted in a huge leap forward in weapons development. The prospect of these great thinkers going back to work in the private sector was anathema to Hap Arnold, the only five-star general in the Air Force. He and Franklin R. Collbohm became the fathers of the RAND PROJECT. But it was General Curtis LeMay who took the project by the horns and became its godfather. Subsidized and more or less subservient to the Air Force, the project arose out of the Air Force’s interest in developing intercontinental ballistic missiles. In addition to General Arnold, key players involved in the formation of Project RAND were: Edward Bowles of M.I.T., a consultant to the Secretary of War; General Lauris Norstad, then Assistant Chief of Air Staff, Plans; Major General Curtis LeMay; Donald Douglas, President of Douglas Aircraft Company; Arthur Raymond, Chief Engineer at Douglas; Franklin Collbohm, Raymond’s assistant.

    The RAND (Research And Development) Corporation of Santa Monica, California, began as a United States Air Force Project in 1945 under contract to the Douglas Aircraft Company. Its broadly defined function was to study American national security and, in particular, the role of airpower in that context. Three years later, the Ford Foundation endowed RAND as a private, nonprofit research corporation “to further and promote scientific, educational and charitable purposes” to the nation’s general benefit. As one of the first American “think tanks,” however, its staff focused primarily on military and strategic issues funded by the U.S. government. For the first two years of its existence, RAND allocated the lion’s share of its Air Force research funds for applied science projects to subcontractors like Bell Telephone, Boeing Aircraft, and Collins Radio Company.[23] Other RANDites who would later play a role in American politics include: Condeleezza Rice, Dr. Luis Alvarez, and Donald H. Rumsfeld, who at one time was Chairman of their Board of Trustees.

    Rand Development was a separate entity used primarily by the CIA, but also working closely with Air Force Intelligence (ATIC). The areas of the corporation’s usefulness included information related to the Soviet economy and military budget; negotiations with the USSR for the purchase of technical devices and information on behalf of the CIA; cooperation with Air-Force Intelligence on technical intelligence projects such as LONGSTRIDE; and acting as a CIA “cut-out” in an MKULTA sub-project defined as funding of organizations involved in very sensitive research. This research included mind and behavior control, a subject of interest to both the CIA and ATIC. In return, Rand received financial rewards through favoritism in the securing of government contracts, as well as a monopoly in being allowed negotiations involving Soviet technology.

    My research on Robert Webster led me to believe that H.J. Rand was not only his boss, but his close friend and mentor. Their relationship was very similar to that of Oswald and George de Mohrenschildt. I doubt if we will ever know whether James Rand played any role in encouraging Webster to defect or connecting him, knowingly or unknowingly, with an ATIC project (LONGSTRIDE). But it seems odd that Webster, a man with no connections to the Air Force (an ex-navy man), was involved in this Air Force Intelligence project while in the Soviet Union. In addition, he became a Soviet citizen. Think about it. A defector who gave up his U.S. citizenship to become a Soviet citizen is now part of a U.S. intelligence project? If he was aware of this he could be defined as an American spy or at the very least some kind of dangle.

     

    Bibliography

    Conspiracy, Anthony Summers, McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1980.

    Soldiers of Reason, Alex Abella, Mariner Books, 2008.

    The Man Who Knew Too Much, Dick Russell, Carroll & Graf Publishers, 1992.

    The Other Oswald, A Wilderness of Mirrors, Gary Hill, TrineDay, 2020.

    [1] The Rand Hymn, by Malvina Reynolds

    [2] “The Other Oswald, A Wilderness of Mirrors,” Gary Hill, TrineDay 2020. www.theotheroswald.com

    [3] Summers says: “Rand Development Corporation was formed by the Rand Family. The name ‘Rand Corporation’ is a title made from the contraction of the words ‘Research and Development.’” It seems he may have linked the two unintentionally by inference of name. Also, Dick Russell, in his book The Man Who Knew Too Much, said: “Like its parent, Rand Corporation, it (Rand Development) also held several CIA contracts.” The footnote for this statement reads: Rand Development ties; WCE915, WC XVIII, HI 13; Summers Conspiracy pp 177–178. But the WCE915 document says nothing about Rand. It is a letter from Richard Snyder to the State Department about citizenship of defectors.

    [4] It was LeMay that was responsible for the firebombing of Tokyo in WWII that resulted in the deaths of 100,000 civilians. These were mostly women, children and old men. It was also he that proposed a first strike on the Soviet Union during the Kennedy administration. His take was that we would only lose 30 or 40 million Americans. That, he felt, was an acceptable sacrifice. In his book, The Fog of War, he was quoted as saying, “If we had lost the war, we’d all have been prosecuted as war criminals.”

    [5] Also known as H.J. Rand.

    [6] https://bratenahlhistorical.org/index.php/james-rand/

    [7] In the OSS Wisner was transferred to Germany where he served as Liaison to the Gehlen Organization. Later, in the CIA, he ran the Office of Special Projects (OSP), which later became the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC). J. Edgar Hoover called the OPC “Wisner’s Weirdos.”

    [8] NYT 6.15.59; Smith OSS Univ. of Calif. Press London 1977, p. 397.

    [9] State Secret, Chapter One, Bill Simpich.

    [10] See this document in appendix C of “The Other Oswald, A Wilderness of Mirrors, Gary Hill, TrineDay, 2020. www.theotheroswald.com

    [11] Rand III’s father (James Rand Jr.) founded American Kardex, an office equipment and office supplies firm which later merged with his father’s (James Rand Sr.) company, the Rand Ledger Corporation. Rand later bought out and merged with several other companies, notably the Remington Typewriter Company, to form Remington Rand. In 1955, Rand merged his corporation with the Sperry Corporation to form Sperry-Rand, one of the earliest and largest computer manufacturing companies in the United States.

    [12] Ulasewicz, Pres. Priv. Eye, 1990.

    [13] 124-10210-10354

    [14] ATIC later evolved into NASIC.

    [15] Memorandum from P.H. Fields to F. A. Frohbose 105-81285-3.

    [16] 124-10210-10354

    [17] NARA Record Number: 1993.07.24.08:39:37:560310-FB1105-1261128-7,12/12/63; also, CIA memo dated 7/30/71 claims Hoke a CIA employee since 1961.

    [18] Ibid from A.J. Weberman “Mind Control: The Story of Mankind Research Unlimited, Inc.” CovertAction (June 1980), p. 17.

    [19] “Jolly” was appointed by the court in his capacity as a brainwashing expert in the Patty Hearst trial and worked without a fee. Believing that Hearst displayed all the classic signs of coercion and brainwashing, after the trial, he wrote a newspaper article asking President Carter to release Hearst from prison. West also visited Jack Ruby several times in his jail cell along with Dr. Robert Stubblefield, who was also involved in the MKULTRA program. What went on in that cell, no one knows. But Ruby was suddenly found insane.

    [20] In Deadly Secrets, Warren Hinckle and William Turner write, “Oswald told Adrian Alba, the owner of the garage next door to where he was working, that his application was about to be accepted ‘out there where the gold is’—the NASA Saturn missile plant in suburban Gentilly. NASA of course didn’t employ security risks. But tucked into its Gentilly facility was an active CIA station that provided a Kelly Girl service for operatives in between assignments” (p. 239). The endnote reads, “The CIA’s practice of providing interim employment for its agents and assets is well known,” The passage in Turner repeats the familiar statement from Adrian Alba, then adds, ”On the face of it, the idea that [the Marxist] Oswald could get a job at a space agency installation requiring security clearance seems preposterous…But [Jim] Garrison pointed out that it is an open secret that the CIA uses the NASA facility as a cover for clandestine operations.”

    [21] Bledsoe on Oswald’s activities: 6 WCH 404 and Oswald on Collins Radio WCE-1985.

    [22] Another possible link he made was his travel arrangements on the first leg of his trip to Russia through “Travel Consultants,” a New Orleans based travel agency also used by Clay Shaw. On the agency’s questionnaire he gave his occupation as “shipping export agent.”

    [23] See chapter 12—“The Other Oswald, A Wilderness of Mirrors,” Gary Hill, TrineDay 2020, for Collins links to the JFK Assassination.

  • Creating the Oswald Legend – Part 5

    Creating the Oswald Legend – Part 5

    1. TIPPIT AND LBJ PREVENTED A WAR

    In the fall of 1963, President Kennedy had established back channel communications with Castro through journalist Lisa Howard and William Attwood, in order to open a secret dialogue with the Cuban leader. Kennedy used a second back channel, the French journalist Jean Daniel introduced to Kennedy by Attwood. When the CIA learned of these back channels, some officers felt Kennedy had excluded them from his decisions and that he was betraying their efforts and work. The word was passed down in Miami that Kennedy was preparing to begin talks with Castro. One of the first CIA officers who would have learned about it was James Angleton, who would have been alarmed. Angleton likely would have alerted CIA officers like Dave Morales and David Phillips, who would have spread the rumor in the exile community.

    Gaeton Fonzi interviewed Cuban exile Rolando Otero, who told him that there was a rumor circulating in certain areas of the exile community that “Kennedy was a Communist, he’s against us; he’s messing up the whole cause.”[1] Another exile, Felipe Vidal Santiago, had made similar remarks when interrogated by Cuban Intelligence, according to Fabian Escalante, Chief of Cuba’s G-2.[2] Escalante had also revealed that Cuban Intelligence had infiltrated a CIA connected exile group and a CIA officer had said to them in a secret meeting that took place in a safe house that “You must eliminate Kennedy.”[3]

    There is no way that foot soldiers like Santiago and Otero would have known about this sensitive information, originally known only to Kennedy, Castro, their confidants, and, perhaps, Dick Helms. Larry Hancock believes that they learned it from exiles like John Martino and Bernardo De Torres who had links to the CIA officers and their operations.

    John Martino was an exiled Cuban who worked in a Havana Casino owned by Santo Trafficante Jr. back in 1956. He was imprisoned in Cuba between 1959 and 1962. When he returned to the States, he became involved in the anti-Castro cause. He took part in the notorious Operation Tilt, he had both Mob and CIA connections. Later in life, he admitted to his business partner Fred Claasen that the anti-Castro Cubans put Oswald together and tried to frame him as a Castro assassin in a plot to murder President Kennedy. Those Cubans posed as Castro agents and it is more likely that Oswald played along to reveal their agenda as part of his mission to smoke out subversives and pro-Cubans. The plan was to fly him out of the country and kill him en route, possibly on his way to Cuba, in such a way that would prove Castro and Cuba were pulling Oswald’s strings.[4] Are there any evidence or indications that the anti-Castro Cubans were really planning to fly Oswald out of the States?

    Wayne January was a charter air service operator at Red Bird airport. On November 20, 1963, he was visited by a young couple looking to hire a small aircraft to fly to Mexico. January thought that the pair was asking peculiar questions and acting suspiciously, so he decided not to charter the plane to them. He also observed that there was a young man that stayed in the car the whole time. Later, he identified him as Lee Harvey Oswald.[5]

    The late Antonio Veciana described a plot to assassinate Castro in Chile that he thought was very similar to the Kennedy assassination. Veciana revealed that the plan involved planting fake documents and manipulated photographs on the assassin, to make him appear to be a Moscow Castro agent turned traitor. He would then be killed after Castro’s assassination.[6]

    If the plan to incriminate Oswald and Castro was so well planned, then what bungled the effort and prevented a military invasion of Cuba to avenge Kennedy’s death?

    There were two wild factors that the planners had not anticipated that neutralized their scheme. The first wild factor was officer J. D. Tippit’s murder, which made sure that Oswald would not be leaving the country as planned.

    The assassination of officer Tippit will not be explained in detail, since this is not the purpose of this essay. Joseph McBride’s book Into the Nightmare and James DiEugenio’s essay “The Tippit Case in the New Millenium” are two good sources to get a deeper understanding of the complexities surrounding that murder case. However, this essay would concentrate on three police officers who were involved in the Tippit case and had probable CIA connections. These officers were Captain W. R. Westbrook, Sergeant Gerald Hill, and reserve officer Kenneth Croy.

    Croy’s actions that afternoon were bizarre. He was near Main Street and asked a policeman outside the Courthouse if he was needed to assist them with the investigation of the President’s murder. Croy claimed that the policeman replied that he was not needed; so he decided to go home. He heard on the radio that an unidentified officer was shot at 10th and Patton. Croy was likely the first policeman to get to the crime scene, the first to talk to a witness, and he also ”discovered” a wallet allegedly given to him by a civilian. Strangely enough, he never filed a report and never asked the name of the witness he talked to or the name of the person that gave him the wallet.[7]

    Captain Westbrook, the Chief of the Police Personnel Department, was at the TSBD when he heard on the radio that a police officer had been shot in the Oak Cliff area. He decided to go there to investigate a murder; which was odd since he was a personnel officer and not a homicide detective. In 1995, James Hosty revealed in his Assignment: Oswald a piece of very important information that was withheld from the Warren Commission and kept under wraps prior to Hosty revealing it. Hosty said that his colleague, FBI Agent Bob Barrett, who was present at Tippit’s murder scene, told him that Captain Westbrook asked him: “Have you ever heard of a guy named Lee Harvey Oswald?” Barrett said no. Westbrook then asked him, “How about Alek Hidell?”[8] Then Barrett said that he saw Westbrook holding and searching a wallet, which was supposed to be Oswald’s wallet. This wallet would link Oswald to Hidell and to the weapons that killed both Tippit and Kennedy. However, the Warren Commission gave a different version concerning the wallet: that it was found on Oswald after he was arrested at the Texas Theater. Westbrook’s “personnel” work was not over, since he heard on the radio that a suspect was seen entering the Texas Theater looking suspicious, without paying a ticket. So the personnel officer went there and witnessed the arrest of Oswald. He then gave the order to drive the suspect to the police station. So, the Chief of Personnel had managed to be present at the three major crime scenes: Dealey Plaza, 10th and Patton, and the Texas Theater. It was a remarkable work of sleuthing for a Personnel Officer.

    The third Officer who had the privilege to also be present at the three major crime scenes was Sergeant Gerald Hill, a member of the Patrol Division that was temporarily assigned to the Personnel Office, which meant that Hill was working under Captain Westbrook on November 22, 1963.

    Hill was the man who first reported on a radio call at 13:40 that the shells found at the Tippit crime scene were fired from a 38 automatic, not a 38 special. Later when testifying for the Warren Commission, he denied under oath that he made such a call; but twenty years later he admitted to Dale Myers that he made the call after all.[9] Hill had instructed Policeman J. M. Poe to mark the shells at the scene of the Tippit murder. But when the shells that Poe had marked, allegedly corresponding to Oswald’s 38 special, had no markings, Hill was nonplussed. He said the DPD was so clean that he could not imagine who could do something so dishonest.[10]

    When Hill returned from the Texas Theater, he sat down to write a report regarding Oswald’s arrest. Captain Westbrook informed him that Oswald was not just the suspect in Tippit’s murder, but also for President Kennedy’s assassination.[11]

    For a more detailed analysis about Gerald Hill’s actions during November 22, 1963, one should read Hasan Yusuf’s excellent essay “Gerald Hill and the Framing of Lee Harvey Oswald.”

    If patrolman Tippit had not been murdered, the police would probably not have gotten to Oswald so soon and if he had managed to escape in the manner John Martino described on his way to Cuba, then the plot to blame Cuba could have succeeded.

    As Officer Jim Leavelle told Joseph McBride, the murder of Kennedy was, to the police, something that happens every day; but the killing of a cop was very personal and a matter of honor to the Police, so they had to catch the culprit.[12] It was then up to people like Captain Westbrook to connect a cop killer to the President’s killer.

    The second factor was the swift swearing in of LBJ as President inside Air Force One in Dallas before returning back to Washington. As Jim Bishop described in his book “The Day the President Was Shot,” a strange phone call was received by the White House Communications Agency (WHCA)—located in the Dallas Sheraton hotel—after the assassination that:

    Officials at the Pentagon were calling the White House switchboard at the Dallas-Sheraton Hotel asking who was now in command. An Officer grabbed the phone and assured the Pentagon that Secretary of Defense Robert MacNamara and the Joint Chief of Staff were now the President.[13]

    This was not something abnormal but, in case of the President being incapacitated or missing the authority for nuclear strike, the responsibility would have passed first to the Secretary of Defense and then to the Deputy Secretary of Defense. In such a scenario, the Pentagon would have been able to authorize an attack on Cuba, if the evidence after the assassination had pointed that Castro or the Soviets were the driving forces behind Oswald.[14]

    As researcher Bill Kelly explained in his essay “The Swearing in on AF1 Re-evaluated,” the two most important things that LBJ did after the assassination were, first to go to Air Force One because it had a superior communications system, and second to take the oath aboard the plane before leaving Dallas. This gave him the power to stop a military invasion of Cuba. President Kennedy’s decision to give LBJ a special role in the event of nuclear war was crucial. So, LBJ knew exactly how to act to secure the continuity of Government, as LBJ was privy to the secret planning and protocols to be used under a nuclear attack.[15]

    1. CIA POLICE TRAINING and THE CIS

    Coming back to Captain Westbrook, a most astonishing revelation was that after he retired from the Dallas Police Department in 1966, Westbrook became a Police advisor in South Vietnam. As researcher Greg Parker found out, Westbrook was employed as a security advisor in Saigon by the U.S.A.I.D. (United States Agency for International Development).[16]

    The CIA was running a police program. Its purpose was to train friendly overseas police and to allow CIA to “plant men with local police in sensitive places around the world.” Also, to bring to the United States “prime candidates for enrollment as CIA employees.”[17]

    In 1962, Kennedy wanted to separate USAID’s economic programs from the CIA’s police training programs, but staff members of the National Security Council (NSC) had managed to convince him otherwise. Kennedy decided to set up a task force to evaluate CIA’s police program and a result was the creation of the Office of Public Safety (OPS) under USAID’s authority but actually run by the CIA.[18]

    John Gilligan, director of USAID under Jimmy Carter, said that “At one time, many USAID field offices were infiltrated from top to bottom with CIA people. The idea was to plant operatives in every kind of activity we had overseas, government, volunteer, religious, every kind.”[19] John Hannah, Nixon’s director of USAID admitted publicly that the USAID had funded CIA operations in Laos and that both organizations had co-operated in Ecuador, Uruguay, Thailand, and the Philippines.[20]

    In 1974, the CIA released the “Family Jewels” report. There was a folder included on pages 594–609 that had to do with the CIA’s Counter Intelligence Staff, Police Group (CI/PG). This CI/PG would be in constant liaison with the OPS of USAID and its training facility, the International Police Academy (IPA) in Washington. The CI/PG would exchange daily information with USAID on training programs with IPA and tours for foreign police/security representatives sponsored by the CIA’s Area Divisions.[21]

    James Angleton wrote a memo explaining how USAID cooperated with CIA in law enforcement training and operations:

    ■■■■■ [redacted, but likely “The CIA”] does not maintain direct contact or liaison with any law enforcement organization, local or federal at home or abroad. When the need arises, such contact is sometimes made on our behalf by ■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■ [likely “USAID”] has such contacts at home and abroad because of the nature of its activities (training of foreign police/security personnel at home and abroad), and its Public Safety programs around the world.

    ■■■■■■■ has such contacts at home —local and federal level —because its personnel are personally acquainted with law enforcement officers throughout the United States. Members of the ■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■ have appeared as guest lecturers at such federal institutions as the U.S. Park Police, IPA, the U.S. Secret Service, and the U.S. Treasury Enforcement Division.[22]

    Recommendations about Police Training were given by the CIA Inspector General in his final Report to a working group on organization and activities, drafted in April 1962:

    We are convinced the United States Government support to the Police in friendly nations can provide great benefits…will assist CIA in its work…We recommend the Police Group in the CIA staff receive such augmentation as is necessary, and that project [24] be transferred from NE Division to CI Staff.[23]

    CI means counterintelligence, Angleton’s domain.

    It is plausible that Captain Westbrook had secured his new job with help of the CIA and we can at least suggest that he had been recruited by the CIA during 1963 or even before that. Westbrook would have been useful to them, since he was the Chief of Personnel and that would place him in a unique position not only to influence police staff but also to hire policemen on CIA’s directions. It is also plausible that Westbrook was in liaison with CI/PG that would have bring him indirectly in contact with Angleton or even the Domestic Operations Division (DOD) which, as we shall see, was also involved in Police training.

    We have shown that CIA had been training police forces around the World. But do we have any evidence or indications that they were training policemen domestically?

    CIA’s 1947 chapter forbade any “Police or Subpoena power” and only the FBI had the right to legitimately train the domestic Police forces. Through the Freedom of Information Act, the late Phillip Melanson acquired documents showing that the CIA provided training to Metropolitan Police. This ranged from seminars, briefings, workshops in bugging, clandestine action, disguise techniques, lock picking, equipment loaning, and explosives detection.[24] One of the documents revealed that CIA agents posed as cops and had received police badges and ID cards as early as 1960 to pursue “foreign intelligence targets”, as the CIA claimed.[25] The CIA would also contact “friendly” police departments to ask for discreet handling of CIA personnel when in trouble and also to check on CIA employees and other people.[26]

    Some of the police departments having received training and equipment were New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Washington D.C., Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, Miami, San Diego, and Minnesota. Dallas was not in those documents, but the name of some police departments was blanked out and Melanson believed that one of them was Dallas. He reasoned that Dallas would have not refused the CIA’s generous offer of training., especially when Mayor Earle Cabell was a CIA asset and his brother was a CIA Deputy Director and the force was full of right wingers and anti-Communists, who were always eager to unmask subversives and spies.[27]

    Another document revealed that there was a CIA-Dallas Police project in 1967 to infiltrate peace groups and Black power organizations and plant false evidence linking their leaders to drug involvement. But Melanson believed that this relationship existed prior to that, probably since 1963.[28]

    The CIA would usually establish contact with the intelligence units of a police department. And there was such a unit in Dallas at the time JFK was assassinated. It was the Criminal Intelligence Section (CIS). This unit was also involved in Presidential protection by helping to identify and neutralize potential dangerous local threats. But the Warren Commission did not report this. The excuse was to protect Secret Service methods. A Dallas Police memo stated, “This section had previously (before beginning work on protection for the President’s visit) been successful in infiltrating a number of these organizations; therefore the activities, personalities, and future plans of these groups were known.”[29] Considering all these, it would have been very unlikely that the CIS would have not been aware of an ex-Marine Russian defector living in Dallas, or the animosity and threats of right wingers and anti-Castro Cubans towards the President.

    The official story holds that Oswald became a suspect when it was reported that Oswald had left the building. The CIS had compiled a list of twelve TSBD employees who were unaccounted for. There was a black employee named Charles Givens who had a criminal record and was also missing. A Dallas Police APB went out for Givens: “he has a police record and he left (the depository).” However, the CIS list had put on top the name of Harvey Lee Oswald.[30] Melanson believed that a common CIA practice was to keep two files on certain individuals, an overt file and a covert file that usually had the first two names transposed.[31] Givens was the same person who changed his testimony and placed Oswald on the sixth floor of the TSBD.

    As we described earlier on, it was L. D. Stringfellow, a CIS officer who provided the 112th MIG the incriminating information that Oswald had defected to Cuba in 1959 and was a card-carrying member of Communist Party. CIS was not only aware of Jack Ruby’s gun running activities, but withheld this information. They also investigated Ruby’s shooting of Oswald and found nothing sinister.

    In 1963, it was one of the three sections of Police’s Special Services Bureau, along with Vice and narcotics, and their offices were not located at the City Hall, but at the Dallas Fair Grounds, where Jack Crichton’s underground Emergency Command and Communications bunker was located.[32] In the force were officers George Lumpkin, Jack Revill, Stringfellow, and W. P. Gunnaway.

    Colonel Jack Crichton, was the head of the 488th Army Reserve Intelligence unit in Dallas. According to Russ Baker, Crichton revealed “in a little-noticed oral history in 2001, there were about hundred men in that unit and about forty or fifty of them were from the Dallas Police Department.”[33]

    Crichton was the man who, through Lumpkin, arranged for his friend Ilya Mamantov to translate Marina’s testimony and, as we have shown earlier, to falsely connect Oswald to a dark and scopeless rifle. Researcher Bill Kelly believes that Crichton’s 488th Army Reserve Intelligence unit was connected to ACSI-Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence, U.S. Army Reserves and that Captain Lumpkin and Army Reserve Colonel Whitmeyer were ACSI officers.[34]

    This seems to be a bit contradictory and it might raise the question as to whether the Dallas Police officers were linked to the CIA or to Army Intelligence, but being one does not exclude the other. As Bill Simpich found out, the CIA and Army Intelligence worked together to form the Caribbean Action Center (CAC) for collecting intelligence from Cuban refugees. One of the major participants in this group was Dorothe Matlack, Assistant Chief of Staff of Intelligence (ACSI) for Army Intelligence and Liaison to the CIA.[35] Matlack had joined the Interagency Defector Committee (IDC) in 1953. This involved State, DIA, Army, Navy, Air Force, FBI, and CIA. She also cooperated with Tony Czajkowski of the CIA’s Domestic Contacts Division and CIA Defector Coordinator George Aurell and worked with the CIA in analyzing reports made by notorious defectors such as Anatoly Golitsyn.[36] On May 7, 1963, Matlack and Czajkowski met with George de Mohrenschildt and his wife Jeanne.[37]

    In 1973, CIA’s John Maury said to a congressman that “less than fifty police officers all told, from a total of about a dozen city and country police forces, have received some sort of Agency briefing within the past two years.”[38] The truth is that the CIA did more than a simple briefing. Richard Helms testified in a secret session of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the Chicago Police had received training from the Agency. The Chicago Police had taken part in CIA training both at Langley and the “Farm” in Virginia at least since 1967.[39]

    As we shall see, the CIA continued training police forces during the Nixon years. The main force in charge of this task was the Domestic Operations Division.

    1. DOMESTIC OPERATIONS, AIR PROPRIETARIES AND THE DRUG TRADE

    During the Nixon Presidency, the CIA had been involved in a spying scandal against anti-war movements. Angleton and his Counter Intelligence Staff were the main suspects for conducting these illegal domestic operations. Angleton played a major role in the CIA training of foreign law enforcement personnel and, as we saw earlier, his Counter Intelligence Police Group (CI/PG) was cooperating with USAID for that purpose. It was only natural to be singled out as the culprit. Tad Szulc revealed that the main force behind these illegal domestic activities was another component of the CIA, the Domestic Operations Division (DOD). Which was assisted by the Technical Services Division, the Foreign Intelligence Division D, home to Staff D, William Harvey’s ZR/RIFLE; and the Records Integration Division (RID).[40]

    Between 1969 and 1972, Nixon ordered the CIA to train and assist police departments, especially the Washington one, in the methods of intelligence and communications. Division D was responsible for intelligence gathered by communications for the local police forces, the RID helped with computer read outs from files kept by CIA’s Counter Intelligence, the FBI, and Military Intelligence, while the Technical Services Division provided highly sophisticated devices that were unknown to the Police personnel.[41]

    It is worth noting that Division D had shown an interest in Oswald. Chief Counsel Robert Blakey of the HSCA had wondered why Division D had opened a file on Lee Harvey Oswald.[42]

    The CIA did not deny their involvement in training domestic police forces. It claimed it acted in accordance with the 1968 Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act, whose purpose was to reduce urban riots and lower the crime rate. The act allowed the use of wiretapping and electronic eavesdropping, so the CIA thought that spying on US citizens was within the limits of this act. Although the above revelations of CIA Police training had to do with Nixon years, as we have seen, the CIA were training policemen before 1968.

    The DOD was very similar to an Area Division, but operated inside the US and not in foreign countries. The HQ was not at Langley, but in a Washington office near the White House and had stations or a network of offices in at least fifteen US cities.[43] One of the DOD’s largest offices was the one in Las Vegas, which is strange since that particular city was not a known center of espionage.[44] However, Las Vegas was the home of the Nevada Casino crowd connected to Meyer Lansky and his money laundering network from illicit drug trade.

    The DOD was created in 1962 and Tracy Barnes was in charge of the newly created division. According to Malcolm Blunt, “it was set up by Wally Lampshire and Tracy Barnes and evolved from the Domestic Operations Branch which focused its attention on ‘refugee problems’ pertaining to those individuals arriving from Eastern Europe, in the early 1950’s.”[45]

    In 1962, CIA’s Inspector General proposed its creation and strongly urged that “the new Domestic Division utilize the Contact Division of OO, which is to be transferred from DD/I to the DD/P, as the nucleus of field work inside the United States.”[46] The Division’s “OO” offices had the task to debrief American travelers (business men and ordinary people alike) returning home from overseas, especially from countries like Latin America or the Soviet Union.

    The CIA’s Deputy Director for Plans (DDP) during 1963

    The DOD was a functional division of the DD/P, like Division D, Special Operations, Operational Services, Records Integration, and Technical Services, that would assist the area divisions and Staffs in various aspects and covert operations. (see CIA DD/P chart above)

    Angleton’s Counter Intelligence was obliged to ask the FBI to assist tracking Soviet illegals, moles, and spies entering the US. But with the creation of the new division, he could conduct his operations with the DOD without having to inform Hoover about it. Malcom Blunt believes that “DOD would have been ripe for exploitation purposes. And of keen interest to Angleton for positive counterintelligence usage. In other words DOD was somewhere other agency elements could drop personnel into and thus be a vehicle for disguised operations: such as Howard Hunt’s PCS/DOD in 1962 when he turned up in the Soviet Russia Division.”[47]

    1. ANGLETON AND HOWARD HUNT

    Malcolm Blunt met with Pete Bagley in a little restaurant in Brussels. They had a conversation about his CIA years and were discussing E. Howard Hunt. Bagley dropped a bomb about Hunt being in the Soviet Division in 1962. Blunt asked “Oh, you mean James Hunt who worked for James Angleton?” Bagley replied matter of factly, “No, Howard Hunt, the Watergate guy. Nobody could figure out what he was doing there.”

    Understandably, Blunt almost fell off his chair. If one reads Hunt’s files, there is no sign he ever worked in Soviet Russia Division. So Blunt obtained the HSCA Subject file on Howard Hunt and discovered that as part of the mole hunt, Bruce Solie of the Office of Security/Security Research Staff (OS/SRS) handed over Security and Personnel files to the FBI on various suspected moles. One of these was CIA staffer Peter Karlow. Those files contained the explosive information that Hunt was attending parties with, amongst others, the Karlows.

    Blunt is of the opinion that Hunt was spying on his own colleagues and that this would explain his sudden appearance in the Soviet Division. He also suspects that Hunt could only have been there under the instructions of Angleton, although Angleton always denied any relationship with Hunt.[48] We do know that it was Angleton’s personal favorite, Soviet defector Golitsyn, who had pointed out that a supposed KGB agent inside the CIA had changed his Polish name. Anatoliy Golitsyn finally revealed that the mole’s Polish name was Klibanski. The CIA found out that Klibanski was CIA agent Peter Karlow, the son of German immigrants and a veteran of the Berlin Base. In 1962, CIA’s Office of Security following Golitsyn’s accusations, destroyed Karlow’s professional life and forced him to resign.[49]

    But Angleton’s connections to Hunt did not end there. Years later, Victor Marchetti wrote an article in The Spotlight. He claimed there was a 1966 memo from Angleton to Helms saying there was no cover story to hide Hunt’s presence in Dallas the day of the assassination. Therefore, Hunt did not have an alibi. Marchetti also stated that the CIA was planning a limited hangout to expose Hunt’s involvement. However, this did not happen and Marchetti had not actually seen the memo.[50]

    In 1978, Joseph Trento said that he had seen the memo and the person who gave him the memo was Angleton himself. Trento told Dick Russell that Angleton had revealed to him: “Did you know Howard Hunt was in Dallas on the day of the assassination?” Angleton added that Hunt “had possibly been sent there by a high-level mole inside the CIA.” Trento believed that Angleton was trying to hide his own connections to Hunt and that it was him that had sent Hunt to Dallas.[51]

    Angleton was likely using the DOD and its staff to do his devious work inside the States. Angleton had claimed a Soviet mole had betrayed the U-2 secrets back in 1959. He was certain that the same mole had betrayed a CIA operation in Mexico involving Oswald and post-assassination he was accusing a mole of having sent Hunt to Dallas the day of assassination. It seems that it had become a habit for Angleton to blame all these on a Soviet mole inside the CIA. One that nobody ever found.

    One must understand that, at this time, 1975–79, both the Church Committee and the House Select Committee on Assassinations had deposed Angleton for their JFK investigations. In fact, Senator Richard Schweiker himself had questioned Angleton for the Church Committee. And it was not just Angleton. They were deposing people who worked very close to Angleton, like Ann Egerter who handled the Oswald file at CIA.

    As we saw in the last installment, the HSCA’s Betsy Wolf was figuring out the riddles of Oswald’s 201 file and how it had been diverted around the existing system so no one would have access to it. Far from having little interest in Oswald, she was finding out that there was extraordinary interest in Oswald, even before he had defected, to the point that someone had interfered with the normal file dissemination system.

    Testifying in public, with reporters and cameras on hand, this was something new to Angleton. He had worked in secret for decades. Under this exposure, he blurted out a most unforgettable utterance: “A mansion has many rooms, I’m not privy to who shot John.” That memorable phrase indicated to Lisa Pease that Angleton was concerned that perhaps the investigations were closing in on him. He was trying to show that he had not acted alone, but with the approval of Richard Helms.[52] The late Gordon Novel wrote a letter to this effect to Mary Ferrell in the seventies, one which Jim DiEugenio has seen. The significance of Novel’s knowledge was that Angleton was not going to take the fall alone. Interestingly, the correspondence by Gordon occurred before the controversy over Marchetti broke out.

    1. THE DOD, HUNT AND THE DRUG TRADE

    The DOD would recruit anti-Castro Cuban exiles with the purpose of breaking into foreign embassies and United Nations missions that were suspected of being friendly and sympathetic to Castro’s regime. In one instance, the DOD agents raided the house of a Latin American diplomat in New York in search of finding diplomatic codes, but instead found $300.000 in stock certificates in his safe.[53]

    Another important aspect of the DOD was his affiliation with the CIA proprietary organizations. The CIA’s Inspector General proposed that the DOD take over the functions of the Cover and Commercial Staff that included the commercial managerial aspects of proprietary organizations and contacts with businesses and foundations inside the States.[54] The Air Proprietaries Branch of the Development Projects Division (DPD) was transferred to the DOD and this branch had the responsibility of “managing commercial organizations which have acquired to serve as cover for air crews and aircraft used in clandestine activities; to recruit and supervise the training of these crews; to keep these crews and equipment in a state of readiness to enable quick response to operational needs; and to provide guidance to overall agency air requirements on a world-wide and long range basis.”[55] The Air Proprietary Branch as part of the DOD took over the management of the Civil Air Transport (CAT) from the DD/S.[56]

    One such proprietary was the PR firm of Robert Mullen Company in Washington. This company employed E. Howard Hunt after he retired from the CIA. It was Richard Helms who recommended Hunt get a job in that company.[57]

    It was later discovered that the company was a CIA front organization from its first organization in 1959. When E. Howard Hunt retired from the CIA in 1970, Richard Helms suggested he should go and work for Robert R. Mullen.

    The most infamous and most important CIA proprietary company was the Pacific Corporation Holdings, located in Washington D.C., that was incorporated in Dover, Delaware, a State with a friendly tax law that allowed companies formed in Delaware but not operating there to not pay state corporate tax.

    Pacific Corporation was the parent company of the CIA air proprietaries, Civil Air Transport Co., Ltd., CAT Inc., later renamed Air America Inc.; Air Asia Co., Ltd.; the Pacific Engineering Company; and the Thai Pacific Services Co., Ltd.[58] Air America took over all the operations in South East Asia, while Air Asia operated from Taiwan.[59]

    Another air proprietary linked to Pacific Corporation was Southern Air Transport (SAT), incorporated in Miami and operated in both the Far East and Latin America. SAT had received a loan of $6.7 Million from Actus Technology, another CIA proprietary that was acting as conduit between Air America and SAT. One third of its fleet was leased from Air America and it also depended on Air America for maintenance and ground handling services. SAT had obtained a loan of $6.6 Million from two banks and the loans were guaranteed by the Pacific Corporation.[60] As we showed in part 2, Percival Brundage, the Unitarian who had links to the Schweitzer College that Oswald had applied to attend, was holding SAT stock as nominee for the real owners, the CIA.

    Most importantly, the air proprietaries like CAT/Air America not only provided their services to facilitate the opium trade in the Golden Triangle, which included Laos, Vietnam, and Thailand, but also were involved in the replacement of elected governments in Laos, Cambodia, and Indonesia.[61] Air America did not only operate for the CIA, but they were doing contract work for large oil companies in the Southeast Asia.[62]

    The CIA drug trafficking in Southeast Asia is not within the scope of this essay. Anyone interested in that topic should read Alfred McCoy’s book The Politics of Heroin and Peter Dale Scott’s book The War Conspiracy. What is interesting though, is the involvement of Cuban exiles from Miami, Dallas, and New Orleans in drug trafficking; some of whom were probably in contact with Lee Harvey Oswald. Santo Trafficante’s main areas of influence were Florida and the Caribbean, operating casinos in Cuba. After 1959, large numbers of anti-Castro Cubans moved to Florida and Trafficante used them to take control over Florida’s bolita lottery, a Cuban numbers game. This worked as a cover, since these Cubans became Trafficante’s new group of heroin couriers and distributors, who were unknown to American law enforcement agencies.[63] They used drug smuggling to finance their operations—trafficking cocaine from Latin America and later heroin from Marseille. Manuel Artime, E. Howard Hunt’s protégé and head of the Cuban Revolutionary Council (CRC) in Miami, was involved in drug trafficking to finance his war. The DOD under Barnes and Hunt would protect the Cuban drug network and Angleton was aware of it. Another CRC member of New Orleans, Sergio Arcacha Smith, who was associated with Hunt, Phillips, and Banister, was involved in contraband operations from Florida to Texas, specializing in drugs, guns, and prostitution.[64]

    In 1968, Trafficante visited Hong Kong and Southeast Asia to examine the possibilities of importing heroin from those regions to the US via Mexico and Latin America.[65] Later, according to Henrik Kruger in The Great Heroin Coup, Hunt employed Cubans from the Trafficante drug trafficking network to eliminate French smugglers and the old French Connection by redirecting the heroin trade from Marseille to South East Asia and Mexico to supply the US.

    In part 3, we entertained the possibility of Oswald being handled by the DOD. This would bring Oswald in contact with a nexus of Cuban exiles involved in the drug trade and the DOD operations involving CIA air proprietaries.

    Go to Part 1

    Go to Part 2

    Go to Part 3

    Go to Part 4

    Go to Part 6

    Go to Conclusion

    Go to Appendix

    References

    [1] Hancock Larry, Nexus, JFK Lancer Productions and Publications Inc. 20011, p. 114.

    [2] Hancock Larry, Nexus, JFK Lancer Productions and Publications Inc. 20011, p. 115.

    [3] Hancock Larry, Someone Would Have Talked, JFK Lancer Productions and Publications Inc. 2006, p. 233.

    [4] Hancock Larry, Someone Would Have Talked, JFK Lancer Productions and Publications Inc. 2006, pp. 16–17.

    [5] Hancock Larry, Someone Would Have Talked, JFK Lancer Productions and Publications Inc. 2006, p. 383.

    [6] Hancock Larry, Someone Would Have Talked, JFK Lancer Productions and Publications Inc. 2006, pp. 384–385.

    [7] DiEugenio James, https://kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/the-tippit-case-in-the-new-millennium

    [8] DiEugenio James, https://kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/the-tippit-case-in-the-new-millennium

    [9] Simpich Bill, https://jfkfacts.org/jerry-hills-lies-heart-tippit-shooting/

    [10] DiEugenio James, https://kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/the-tippit-case-in-the-new-millennium

    [11] DiEugenio James, https://kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/the-tippit-case-in-the-new-millennium

    [12] https://ourhiddenhistory.org/entry/james-dieugenio-the-j-d-tippit-murder-case-in-the-new-millennium-an-our-hidden-history-interview

    [13] Kelly bill, http://jfkcountercoup2.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-swearing-in-on-af1-re-evaluated.html

    [14] Kelly bill, http://jfkcountercoup2.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-swearing-in-on-af1-re-evaluated.html

    [15] Kelly bill, http://jfkcountercoup2.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-swearing-in-on-af1-re-evaluated.html

    [16] Yusuf hasan, http://jfkthelonegunmanmyth.blogspot.com/2014/09/a-few-words-on-former-dpd-captain.html

    [17] https://pando.com/2014/04/08/the-murderous-history-of-usaid-the-us-government-agency-behind-cubas-fake-twitter-clone/

    [18] Colby & Dennett, Thy Will Be Done, Harper Perennial, 1995, p. 398.

    [19] Blum William, Killing Hope U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, Zed Books, 2004, p. 235.

    [20] Colby & Dennett, Thy Will Be Done, Harper Perennial, 1995, p. 743.

    [21] Price David, Cold War Anthrpology, Duke University Press, 2016, pp. 130–131.

    [22] Price David, Cold War Anthrpology, Duke University Press, 2016, p. 131.

    [23] https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/2018/104-10118-10427.pdf pp.12–13.

    [24] Melanson Philip, Dallas Mosaic: The Cops, The Cubans and the Company, The Third Decade, Vol 1, No 3, March 1985, p. 10.

    [25] Melanson Philip, Dallas Mosaic: The Cops, The Cubans and the Company, The Third Decade, Vol 1, No 3, March 1985, p. 11.

    [26] Melanson Philip, Dallas Mosaic: The Cops, The Cubans and the Company, The Third Decade, Vol 1, No 3, March 1985, p. 11.

    [27] Melanson Philip, Dallas Mosaic: The Cops, The Cubans and the Company, The Third Decade, Vol 1, No 3, March 1985, p. 11.

    [28] Melanson Philip, Dallas Mosaic: The Cops, The Cubans and the Company, The Third Decade, Vol 1, No 3, March 1985, p. 11.

    [29] Melanson Philip, Dallas Mosaic: The Cops, The Cubans and the Company, The Third Decade, Vol 1, No 3, March 1985, p. 12.

    [30] Melanson Philip, Dallas Mosaic: The Cops, The Cubans and the Company, The Third Decade, Vol 1, No 3, March 1985, p. 13.

    [31] Melanson Philip, Dallas Mosaic: The Cops, The Cubans and the Company, The Third Decade, Vol 1, No 3, March 1985, p. 13.

    [32] Kelly Bill, http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2019/01/following-acsi-colonels-around-board-dp.html

    [33] Baker Russ, Family of Secrets, Bloomsbury Press NY, 2009, p. 122.

    [34] Kelly Bill, https://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/free/lobster76/lob76-powers.pdf

    [35] Simpich Bill, https://aarclibrary.org/the-jfk-case-the-twelve-who-built-the-oswald-legend-part-8-the-cia-army-intelligence-mambo/

    [36] Simpich Bill, https://aarclibrary.org/the-jfk-case-the-twelve-who-built-the-oswald-legend-part-8-the-cia-army-intelligence-mambo/

    [37] Simpich Bill, https://aarclibrary.org/the-jfk-case-the-twelve-who-built-the-oswald-legend-part-8-the-cia-army-intelligence-mambo/

    [38] Marchetti V. and Marks John, The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence, Coronet edition, 1976, p. 253.

    [39] Marchetti V. and Marks John, The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence, Coronet edition, 1976, p. 253.

    [40] Szulc Tad, How Nixon Used the CIA, New York Magazine, January 20, 1975 p. 32.

    [41] Szulc Tad, How Nixon Used the CIA, New York Magazine, January 20, 1975 p. 32.

    [42] CIA files, 104-10147-10432, from from Dealey Plaza UK/Malcolm Blunt/CIA Documents

    [43] Szulc Tad, How Nixon Used the CIA, New York Magazine, January 20, 1975 p. 31.

    [44] Szulc Tad, How Nixon Used the CIA, New York Magazine, January 20, 1975 p. 32.

    [45] Blunt Malcolm in private correspondence to James DiEugenio.

    [46] https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/2018/104-10118-10427.pdf, p. 9.

    [47] Blunt Malcolm in private correspondence to James DiEugenio.

    [48] Blunt Malcolm in private correspondence to James DiEugenio.

    [49] Trento Joseph, The Secret History of the CIA, Basic Books, 2001, pp. 288–289.

    [50] Di Eugenio James & Pease Lisa, Assassinations, Feral House, LA, 2003, p.195.

    [51] Di Eugenio James & Pease Lisa, Assassinations, Feral House, LA, 2003, pp.195–196.

    [52] Di Eugenio James & Pease Lisa, Assassinations, Feral House, LA, 2003, p. 197.

    [53] Szulc Tad, How Nixon Used the CIA, New York Magazine, January 20, 1975 p. 33.

    [54] https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/2018/104-10118-10427.pdf, p. 9.

    [55] https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP33-02415A000800320002-5.pdf

    [56] https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/2018/104-10118-10427.pdf, p. 10.

    [57] https://spartacus-educational.com/JFKbennettRF.htm

    [58] Szulc Tad, How Nixon Used the CIA, New York Magazine, January 20, 1975 p. 32.

    [59] Marchetti V. and Marks John, The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence, Coronet edition, 1976, p. 167.

    [60] https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/document/cia-rdp75b00380r000400050057-5

    [61] Scott, Peter Dale, The war Conspiracy Marry Ferrell Foundation Press, 2008, p. 57.

    [62] Scott, Peter Dale, The war Conspiracy Marry Ferrell Foundation Press, 2008, p. 229.

    [63] McCoy Alfred, The Politics of Heroin, Lawrence Hill Bokks, 2003, p. 75.

    [64] DiEugenio James, Destiny Betrayed, 2nd edition, Skyhorse Publishing, 1992, p. 329.

    [65] McCoy Alfred, The Politics of Heroin, Lawrence Hill Bokks, 2003, pp. 250–253.

  • Warren Commission Document (WCD) 298: FBI Letter from Director of 20 Jan 1964 with Visual Aides Brochure

    Warren Commission Document (WCD) 298: FBI Letter from Director of 20 Jan 1964 with Visual Aides Brochure

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    The Evidence IS the Conspiracy, Table of Contents

  • Creating the Oswald Legend – Part 4

    Creating the Oswald Legend – Part 4

    I. ANGLETON & ROUTING OSWALD’S FILE

    In part 3, we discussed how Angleton controlled and manipulated Oswald’s incoming cables from Mexico in such a way to ensure that no one would understand their meaning until after the President’s assassination. We also presented the possibility that Angleton was using the mole hunt as a cover to hide his involvement in the assassination. In this section, we will show how Angleton was holding, close to his vest, the Oswald files from the very beginning. He did it via a very unusual mail routing system to ensure absolute control.

    We must first return to four years earlier, when Oswald defected to the Soviet Union and tried to renounce his citizenship. On October 31, 1959, Richard Snyder sent a Confidential cable from the U.S. Embassy in Moscow to the State Department. Cable 1304 described Oswald’s willingness to defect to the Soviet Union and his intention to give up military secrets to the Russians. The cable reads:

    Lee Harvey Oswald, unmarried age 20 PP 1733242 issued Sept 10, 1959 appeared at Emb. today to renounce American citizenship, stated applied in Moscow for Soviet citizenship following entry USSR from Helsinki Oct. 15. Mother’s address and his last address US 4936 Collinwood St., Fort worth, Texas. Says action contemplated last two years. Main reason “I am a Marxist”. Attitude arrogant aggressive. Recently discharged Marine Corps. [That was encircled] Says has offered Soviets any information he has acquired as enlisted radar operator.[1]

    On November 3, 1959, the State Department received a cable from the US naval attaché in Moscow, Captain John Jarret Munsen containing the following information: “OSWALD STATED HE WAS [A] RADAR OPERATOR IN MARCORPS AND HAS OFFERED TO FURNISH SOVIETS INFO HE POSSESSES ON US RADAR.”[2]

    The CIA received both the Snyder and Munsen cables, but claimed that they had no idea about the exact date of receipt.[3]

    On November 4, 1959, the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) sent a cable to the Embassy in Moscow requesting to learn more about Oswald. This cable was also sent to army and air force intelligence, the FBI, and the CIA. It is known that Angleton’s CI/SIG received this CNO cable on December 6, 1959, but nobody could explain who possessed this cable from November 4 to December 6, a period of thirty-one days. It had simply disappeared somewhere inside the Agency and it turned out they had been withheld in the Office of Security (OS), which was part of the Directorate of Support. Along with these cables, there were newspaper clippings about Oswald and a cable from Tokyo regarding Oswald’s brother, John Pic.[4]

    The exact date that these cables and clippings were received by the OS is not known and author John Newman believes that they were first located in Angleton’s CI/SIG and then were sent to the OS.

    A November 9, 1959 document says Oswald was placed by the CIA on the Watch List, a select group of 300 people whose mail would be illegally opened by the highly secretive and illegal program HT/LINGUAL. [5] This program was used to detect Soviet Illegals, as was shown in part 2, and also for Angleton’s infamous Mole Hunt.

    The HT/LINGUAL project was responsible for opening incoming and outcoming mail from the Soviet Union, China, Pakistan, and South America. The OS played an important role in this HT/LINGUAL program, since it was responsible for monitoring and opening the mail in coordination with the Post Office, while Counter Intelligence would translate and analyze the material.[6]

    A CIA file, 104-10335-10014, released by NARA on April 26, 2018 contains the following information describing the Oswald files that the OS had prior to the assassination:

    At the time of the assassination, the Office of Security (OS) held two files which contained information on Lee Harvey Oswald. One file, entitled “Defectors File” (#0341008), contained a reference to Lee Harvey Oswald and the second file was Office of Security subject file on Lee Harvey Oswald (#0351164). This information was reflected in the automated security database known as the Management Data Program/Personnel Security (MDP/PS)…Both the Defectors File (#0341008) and the file of Lee Harvey Oswald (#0351164) were handled by Marguerite D. Stevens of the OS/Security Research Staff during the pre-assassination time frame. Of the documents listed above, a majority of them contain a notation or the initials of Marguerite D. Stevens, leading one to believe she was the officer responsible for the collection, analysis, and filing of this information…The Security Research Staff (SRS) was the component responsible for collecting, developing, and evaluating information of a counterintelligence nature to detect and/or prevent penetration of the Agency’s organization, employees, and activities by foreign or domestic organizations or individuals. SRS conducted research in connection with employee loyalty cases and maintained records identifying personalities, environments, and personal traits of individuals who had been of counterintelligence interest over the years. SRS maintained liaison with various government agencies in connection with counterintelligence activities and coordinated the counterintelligence effort throughout OS. Using organizational charts of this time period, SRS reported directly to the office of the Director of Security.

    It was extremely bizarre that the cables about Oswald went to the OS and not to the Soviet Russia Division (SR), as one would have expected, particularly because it would seem that Oswald’s defection to Russia would have been a matter of interest to the latter and not to the former. But it seems that this oddity was the main reason Oswald’s 201 file was not opened in late 1959, which is when it should have happened. Instead, it was opened over a year later on December 8, 1960.[7]

    It is interesting to compare the Oswald files destination with files of another defector, Robert Webster. His files went to the Soviet Russia Division (SR), as was supposed to happen, and they were copied to the Counter Intelligence (CI) and the Office of Security/Security Research Staff (OS/SRS). The men in charge of the OS/SRS were General Paul Gaynor and Bruce Solie. They cooperated very closely with Jim Angleton and his CI/SIG group, since the OS/SRS’s main function was counterintelligence. The truth is that “the SRS was a component started up in 1954 when Angleton wanted, in his words, to build a bridge to the Security Office; and it was almost co-joined with Angleton’s CI/SIG.”[8]

    II. MALCOLM BLUNT UNVEILS A HEROINE

    There are a few people who have gained national notoriety for their involvement in the JFK case. Some examples would be Mark Lane, Jim Garrison, Oliver Stone, and Josiah Thompson. To a lesser extent, there are people like Sylvia Meagher, Harold Weisberg, Gaeton Fonzi, and John Newman. There are also those who did estimable work, but due to classification restrictions were only belatedly recognized (e.g. Bob Tanenbaum, Dan Hardway, L. J. Delsa, and Eddie Lopez). Due to the film JFK and the releases of the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB), their contributions have now been recognized in books and within the critical community.

    But there are researchers who toil mostly alone and work in the archives. They give their work to only a few trusted people. One man who fit that description early on was Peter Vea. It was his work which greatly helped authors like Bill Davy, Joan Mellen, and Jim DiEugenio write their books on New Orleans and the Garrison inquiry. This caused a new evaluation of that aspect of the Kennedy assassination history.

    Another person who fits the Peter Vea profile is Malcolm Blunt. What makes his case even more unusual is the fact that he lives in the United Kingdom. But he travels to Washington and does valuable work sorting through the Kennedy archives at NARA. It is through his work, and his work only, that we discovered a key figure who would have otherwise remained anonymous. Her name is Betsy Wolf.

    Betsy Wolf was one of the researchers for the House Select Committee on Assassinations. She interacted with attorneys Michael Goldsmith and Dan Hardway on matters related to the CIA. On page 514 of the HSCA report, she is listed as a researcher under the name Elizabeth Wolf, but she signed all of her work with the first name of Betsy.

    To say that Wolf was a dedicated, deliberate, and detailed researcher/investigator does not begin to describe the kind of analyst she was. That virtually no one knows anything about her work is due to the fact that, while the ARRB was in session, from 1994-98, only some of her work product was declassified. Much of her material was placed on a time-delayed release pattern when the ARRB formally disbanded. What this meant was that many of her materials were deemed so sensitive that they were given a release date after 1998. In fact, some of her notes were not declassified until 2010. And even then, a few of them have redactions. Even more maddening, the vast majority of Wolf’s output is in the form of handwritten notes. For whatever reason, the HSCA chose not to transcribe much of her output into formal memoranda. So, at times, her notes are difficult to read, and also to date.

    Why was her work not transcribed? Why did it take so long to get it declassified? It appears to be because one of her major areas of inquiry was exploring the mystery surrounding the Oswald file at CIA. One of the key points she addressed was this: Why was there no opening of a 201 file on Oswald once it was known he had defected to the USSR in late October of 1959? When Oswald arrived in Moscow, he talked to former CIA employee Richard Snyder at the American Embassy. (Snyder’s formal Agency employ was discovered by Wolf and is in her notes.) What made the late opening even more perplexing was the fact that the State Department knew that Oswald had threatened to give away top secrets to the Soviets. That threat was magnified because the former Marine Oswald had been a radar operator and his military service associated him with the U-2 spy plane. (See John Newman, Oswald and the CIA, pp. 29-46) The fact that the Agency did not open a 201 file—one of its most common files—upon learning this information greatly puzzled Wolf. Oswald’s 201 file was not opened until thirteen months after his defection, in spite of the fact that the U-2 was a CIA project.

    Wolf approached her assignment as if no one had ever done any research on the subject before. Considering how little the Warren Commission delved into the area, this was largely true. She investigated and asked for the charters of different directorates and divisions within the CIA (e.g. Soviet Russia, Office of Security, CI/SIG). A paradox that stymied her was the following: a rule that had been followed informally was that a 201 file should be opened whenever a subject accumulates at least five documents. (Michael Goldsmith interview with CIA officer William Larson, 6/27/78). This made an impression on Wolf because Larson was the Chief of the Information Management Staff. Larson also said that the Office of Security did not open 201 files. (ibid) Yet, this is where the early documents on Oswald went.

    Why was this important information? Because prior to the 201 file on Oswald being opened, there were twelve items in the Oswald file. (Blind Memo of HSCA Team Five) Wolf found this so odd that she wrote it down three times in her notes and also listed the items. Four of the documents—from the Navy and State Department— had been sent to CIA within a week or so of the defection. Both Navy and State knew about Oswald’s threat to give secrets to the Soviets. And this information was in the cables. (ibid) According to three witnesses that Wolf interviewed, Larson, CI/SIG chief Birch O’Neil (sometimes spelled O’Neal), and CIA Director Dick Helms, that information should have caused the opening of a 201 file. (Wolf notes of 7/20/78 and 9/9/78) In other words, there were two reasons to open the 201 file on Oswald over a year prior to when it happened. Neither one triggered the opening. Further, when Wolf looked at the 201 file, it only contained copies and the two Naval dispatches were gone. (Op. cit, Blind Memo) She later discovered that the Office of Security (OS) had the originals and these were not dated as to when they arrived or who handled them. (ibid)

    In addition to Larson saying that OS did not open 201 files, he said something else that was rather mystifying, that OS worked closely with the Counter-Intelligence division (CI). And CI could cause the opening of a 201 file. (Op. Cit. Larson interview) What could be a more compelling reason for the counter-intelligence office opening a file on Oswald than his threatening to give secrets of the U-2 to the Soviets? (ibid, pp. 45, 48) But again, it did not occur. Larson also said that if he had been in his position in 1959, he would have sent Oswald’s files to the Soviet Russia (SR) division. (ibid, p. 56) Larson said that for such a lacuna to happen, SR must not have been aware of the State Department memo. (ibid, p. 74) Larson also stated that project files are held separately from the 201 file. But if the subject is part of an operation, that operation number should be on the 201 file. As we shall see, there was no such number on the first document once the Oswald file was opened.

    Larson’s interview was apparently too revealing. Malcolm Blunt first discovered it in 2006. But in his visits to NARA in 2010 and 2017, he couldn’t find it.

    Why was Oswald’s 201 file opened when it was? Ann Egerter, worked at Counter Intelligence Special Investigations Group (CI/SIG). According to the information Wolf dug up, CI/SIG was formed in order to locate and stop security leaks, either in the field or at HQ. It was close to OS, but it was more concerned with operational security than Agency security. (Wolf notes of 12/8/78) Egerter said she opened the 201, because of a request from the State Department saying they needed information about a list of defectors who recently went over to the USSR. (Op. Cit. Blind Memo, p. 16) She continued by saying that they got the request on 10/25/60, and she and O’Neil cooperated in replying to it. In an interview she did with Wolf, Egerter stated that she worked closely with O’Neil, who headed CI/SIG, and his deputy was Scotty Miler. (March 31, 1978 interview) She then added that both were very close to James Angleton, chief of counter-intelligence. Egerter now went about setting up a 201 file on Oswald, except the cover sheet was rather odd.

    The opening document of Oswald’s 201 file

    Note the middle name of Henry, not Harvey, and the slot that is labeled Source Document is filled in with the acronym CI/SIG, which is not a document. Finally, in the notes below Dottie Lynch is still waiting for the file. She works in the SR division where the file should have been placed originally.

    Wolf had not yet figured out why Oswald’s files went to OS in the first place. There were two key inquiries she did in order to understand this aspect, which in CIA parlance is called dissemination of files. One was with H. C. Eisenbeiss, Director of Central Reference. He said that dissemination had been founded on written dissemination requirements from customer offices.  (Wolf notes of September 18, 1978) This would seem to indicate that someone in OS requested Oswald’s files be directed to that office.  Wolf’s interview with Robert Gambino went further.

    As Malcolm Blunt explained to the author, OS Chief Robert Gambino described incoming mail dissemination. This was in an HSCA interview that cannot be found anywhere except in Betsy Wolf’s surviving notes. (Wolf interviewed Gambino on 7/26/78) Gambino revealed to her that it was CIA Mail Logistics, a component of the Office of Central Reference (OCR)—part of the Deputy Director of Intelligence (DDI)—that was responsible for disseminating all incoming documents. In the case of Oswald, his files bypassed the General Filing System and went straight into the Office of Security and its SRS component. (This is illustrated in the file routing graph below; note the detour at the second step from the top.)

    If someone wanted to get a file from Mail Logistics, they would have to request it ahead of time.  So, the SR Division would have to ask Mail Logistics for Oswald’s incoming documents. But, in this case, Mail Logistics closed off the SR Division. A possible explanation for doing that was in order to surface a mole who Angleton believed was in the SR Division after the arrest of CIA spy Pyotr Popov by the KGB. Since the file was restricted, the mole would have had to sign for it, thereby exposing himself. However, this author still maintains that the search for Popov’s mole was only an excuse for Angleton to cover the shooting of the U-2 and the Paris peace talk cancellation. A third possibility would be that Oswald was a special project for Angleton, one he wanted no one else to know about. A fourth alternative would be that there was a dual filing system on Oswald. An idea that Wolf seriously entertained.

    One copy of Oswald’s file would have gone to RID (Records Integrating Division). But this is a passive location, where CIA staff would trace a name of a person of interest that could come up.[9]

    Let us close out this section with other compelling discoveries made by Wolf. She discovered that, in preparation for the Warren Commission looking at CIA documents on Oswald, there were 37 of them missing. A key attachment to this document was gone and there was no index as to which documents were missing. Neither was there any indication as to where they were or when they would be replaced. (Wolf notes of 4/5/78) From November of 1959 to February of 1964, Oswald’s file contained a grand total of 771 documents, 167 originated with CIA. (ibid) By 1978, the Oswald file contained 150 folders and envelopes.

    The first fact exposes the lie David Belin of the Warren Commission once said on Nightline, namely that he had seen every CIA file on Oswald. The second one belies the claim that CIA Director Robert Gates once said, namely that there was little interest in Oswald by the CIA.

    Somehow, some way, Wolf had access to a chronology set up by Ray Rocca. Rocca was Angleton’s right hand man at CI. In that chronology are two fascinating insights into Angleton and Mexico City. The first is that Rocca had cabled Luis Echeverria on November 23rd concerning the relationship between Oswald and Sylvia Duran, the receptionist at the Cuban consulate. This is important because, as David Josephs has revealed, Secretary of Interior Echeverria would eventually take over the investigation of Oswald in Mexico City; leaving the FBI and Warren Commission out in the cold. What makes this important is that this was before Helms had assigned Angleton his liaison duties with the Commission. Secondly, the day after the assassination, a CIA agent escorted Elena Garro de Paz to the Vermont Hotel. In other words, within 24 hours, Angleton and Rocca are controlling Duran, a prime witness to Oswald not being in Mexico City, and Elena Garro, a witness who would eventually say that Oswald was having an affair with Duran.

    This neatly leads us to our next topic.

    III. BLAME IT ON CUBA & RUSSIA

    Rita Hayworth had sung “put the blame on Mame,” but there were some elements worldwide that started singing after the assassination a different version of the song, “put the blame on Cuba and Russia”.

    In part 3, it was shown that on November 22, 1963, after Oswald’s arrest, Colonel Robert E. Jones of the 112th MIG provided information to the FBI that linked Oswald to Hidell and FPCC and by extension to the rifle that was used to assassinate the President. The 112th MIG also transmitted crucial information to the U.S. Strike Command (USSTRICOM) at McDill Air Force Base in Florida. This was given to them by Assistant Chief Don Stringfellow, Intelligence Section, Dallas Police Department: Oswald had defected to Cuba in 1959 and was a was a card-carrying member of Communist Party.[10]

    USSTRICOM had been given the mission to swiftly and surprisingly attack Cuba, if necessary. FBI agent Jim Hosty later wrote that he had learned from independent sources that fully armed fighter airplanes were sent to attack Cuba, but their mission was aborted just before entering Cuban air space.[11]

    On November 22, 1963, Dallas Police Lieutenant Jack Revill sent a memo to Captain W.P Gannaway of the DPD Special Service Bureau that agent Hosty had informed him that Oswald was a member of the Communist Party.[12] It seems that early on there were some forces within the U.S. trying to spread the notion that Oswald was a Communist and to blame Cuba for the crime.

    The new agencies repeated the same theme and UPI dispatched cables about the assassination, as Fabian Escalante presented them in his book “JFK, The Cuba Files.”[13]

    —–“Dallas, November 22. The Police today detained Lee Harvey Oswald, identified as a member of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee and the main suspect in the Kennedy assassination.”

    —–“Dallas, November 22. The assassin of President Kennedy is a confessed Marxist who spent three years in Russia trying to renounce his U.S. citizenship…an ex-marine and president of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee.”

    Similar UPI cables referred to Oswald as a pro-Castro American and a Marxist partisan of Prime Minister Fidel Castro. Another dispatch the following day November 23, reported that Oswald had admitted to the Dallas Police that he was a Communist and member of the Communist Party.

    US News & World Report joined the bandwagon and, on December 2, 1963, published an article titled “Lee Harvey Oswald, Castro defender and Marxist, who was charged with the assassination of Kennedy.” Some days later, it was reported that the assassination was carefully planned, Oswald was an active Communist, and Castro was terrorizing the Americas and creating problems.

    As discussed in Part 3, Oswald had come into contact with Carlos Bringuier and the DRE in New Orleans. On November 23, 1963, the DRE published a special report of its monthly magazine, Trinchera, and linked Oswald to Fidel Castro. Under the title “The Presumed Assassins,” there was a photo of Oswald next to a photo of Fidel Castro.[14]

    On November 26, the CIA and Mafia-affiliated Frank Sturgis said to the Sun-Sentinel newspaper that Oswald had connections to the Cuban Government and that he had made a call to the Cuban Intelligence. The same day John Martino, another CIA and Santo Trafficante Jr. ally, stated in an interview that he had contacted Cuban G-2 in Mexico City and had distributed FPCC leaflets in Miami.[15] Martino also revealed that Castro killed Kennedy to retaliate for a plot devised by Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev to replace Castro with Huber Matos, who was in a Cuban jail.

    Robert Slusser, an expert in Soviet affairs, maintained that Kennedy was killed by the Soviet secret police.[16] There were more rightwing pressures on CIA when Senator Dodd of the American Security Council, the same Senator that we discussed in part 3, disseminated Julien Sourwine’s Senate Internal Security Subcommittee report, the false information that Oswald had been trained at a KGB assassination school in Minsk.[17]

    Before Oswald was charged with murder, CBS aired Oswald’s interview from last August in New Orleans against Stuckey and Butler. Then Senator Dodd called Ed Butler to testify before his Senate Sub-Committee. According to Butler, Oswald was a Communist with a hatred of his country and not just a crackpot.[18]

    Oswald’s friend Peter Gregory helped the Secret Service with translating Marina Oswald’s testimony. Earlier, another White Russian, Ilya Mamantov, who was one of Gregory’s friends, had told the false story that the alleged murder weapon was a dark and scopeless rifle that Oswald had owned since his days in the Soviet Union. Gregory had intentionally distorted Marina’s testimony to support the above claim.[19]

    Back in Mexico, a young man from Nicaragua, Gilberto Alvarado Ugarte, visited the American Ambassador Thomas Mann on November 25, 1963, and claimed that he had visited the Cuban Embassy, where he had seen Oswald talking to a tall thin red- haired Negro. Alvarado said that Oswald had offered to kill Kennedy and he saw the red-haired Negro giving Oswald $6,500 to carry out his threat.[20] Alvarado also claimed that Oswald met a girl there—meaning receptionist Sylvia Duran. She gave him an embrace and invited him to her house, implying that Oswald and Duran had an affair. Elena Garro De Paz, a Mexican writer, collaborated Alvarado’s story a few years later. She also claimed that Duran was Oswald’s mistress and that both were at a dance party that Duran’s husband had organized. She also claimed that the red-haired Negro was also in the company of Oswald.[21]

    Alvarado claimed that he was a leftist trying to go to Cuba. Win Scott, the CIA Station Chief in Mexico, cabled Langley to find out about him. The response was that Alvarado was a known informant for the Nicaraguan Intelligence Service. Scott asked David Phillips to interrogate him and Alvarado told him that the incident happened on September 18. Phillips said that Alvarado had knowledge of the Cuban Embassy personnel and that he was “completely cooperative” showing some signs of fearing for his safety. The FBI interviewed Oswald’s landlady in New Orleans and testified that Oswald was in New Orleans on September 18.[22] The problem was solved when Alvarado changed the date to September 28, the day that Oswald was supposed to be in the Cuban Embassy. It was Phillips who had sent the initial cable under the alias Michael C. Choaden that Alvarado “claims he [is] awaiting false Mexican documentation prior [to] receiving sabotage training in Cuba.” In a second cable, L. F. Barker, an alias for Phillip’s colleague Robert Shaw, reported that Alvarado had admitted he was a member of Nicaraguan Intelligence, but that was no reason to doubt his story. Barker described him as “a young, quiet, very serious person, who speaks with conviction.”[23]

    Eventually, Alvarado was handed over to the Mexican government for interrogation. They reported back to Win Scott that Alvarado had recanted and signed a statement admitting that his story was “completely false.” A few days later Alvarado repeated his original story. He now said he changed when he was threatened by his questioners and told they would hang him by his testicles.[24] A technician from Washington performed a polygraph test on him. He failed.[25]

    Phillips later wrote that he had the theory that Somoza, the Nicaraguan leader, had dispatched Alvarado to plant the false story in order to force the U.S. Government to move against Cuba. As Phillips said, “it was a nice try, but a transparent operation.”[26]

    Nicaraguan intel had a close cooperation with the CIA and Phillips knew all along that Alvarado was a CIA informant, and the FBI believed that he was under CIA control. Three CIA reports admitted that Alvarado was a CIA informant.[27]

    Hoover, according to document CD 1359, said to Earl Warren that Castro had told an FBI informant with the codename “Solo” that Oswald had threatened to kill Kennedy inside the Cuban Embassy. This was never published.[28] In 1995, the identity of “Solo” became known. He was Jack Childs, an FBI informant inside the Communist Party USA. Childs said that he had told the FBI in 1964 that Castro confided to him that Oswald was so upset when the Cubans did not issue him a visa that he yelled “I am going to kill Kennedy for this.”[29]

    Years later, Castro denied that he ever uttered that statement. Clarence Kelly, who replaced Hoover as FBI Director, wrote in his autobiography that Oswald had offered to kill Kennedy inside the Cuban Consulate.[30] Kelley claimed that Oswald offered to reveal information to the Cubans and Soviets on a CIA plot to kill Castro in exchange for Cuban and Soviet visas. Kelly was certain that Oswald offered to kill Kennedy inside the Soviet Embassy and this was revealed by informants inside the Soviet Embassy.[31]

    To this day, there is no tangible evidence to support the idea that Oswald made such a threat, which leaves two possibilities. Either this was manufactured after the fact to support the Alvarado story; or Oswald did say this inside the Cuban Consulate as part of his role in the SAS operation to discredit the FPCC in foreign countries.  But yet, as Arnaldo Fernandez points out, no eyewitness in either location heard Oswald say this. And there is no tape of it either. (Click here for a review)

    There were more dubious efforts to incriminate Cuba as the driving force behind Oswald’s decision to kill President Kennedy. Fabian Escalante, head of Cuban Counterintelligence at that time, presented five letters whose purpose was to incriminate Cuba in the assassination. Two of them were dated before November 22, 1963, while the other three after the assassination.[32]

    The first letter was signed by a Pedro Charles. Dated Havana, November 10, 1963, it read:

    My friend Lee…I recommend great prudence and that you don’t do anything crazy with the money I gave you…After the business I will highly recommend you to the Chief, who will be very interested and pleased to meet you because they need men like you. I told him that you could blow out a candle at 50 meters and he does not believe me, but I made him believe me because I saw it with my own eyes. The chief was amazed. Well Lee, practice your Spanish well for when you come to Havana…after the business I will send you your money…[33]

    That letter was postmarked Havana, November 23, 1963. It reached the U.S. and Marina Oswald 12 days later, which was impossible according the mail system in those days.

    Another letter addressed to Oswald was signed by a “Jorge”, dated Havana, November 14, 1963. It was accidentally found in the Cuban postal system when a fire broke out on November 23, 1963. Jorge was writing about the time they had met in Mexico and Oswald had talked to him about a “perfect plan” that would weaken the politics of that braggart Kennedy.[34] Braggart would be a word used by the Cuban exiles about JFK, not a G2 agent.

    Upon examining these two letters, the Cubans concluded that they were both written first in English and then translated into Spanish. But without great success. They also concluded they were written by the same person and this person was privy to the assassination plot.[35]

    Another letter was dated November 27, 1963. It was received by the New York Daily on December 8, 1963, and signed by Miguel Galvan Lopez, an ex-Captain of the Rebel Army and Cuban Exile. It confirmed that:

    Oswald was paid for by Mr. Pedro, an agent of Fidel Castro in Mexico. This man befriended the ex-marine and sharpshooter Lee Harvey Oswald…Mr. Pedro Charles had given Oswald $7,000 as an advance…Later he handed over $10,000 to complete the job…the crime was agreed at $17,000. Mr. Pedro Charles who uses other fictitious names…is currently at the residence of the Cuban Ambassador to Mexico…I would like you to know before anyone the truth concerning the assassination of President Kennedy in Dallas.[36]

    A similar letter was sent to Robert Kennedy claiming that Pedro Charles had paid Oswald $7,000 to assassinate his brother.[37]

    The Cubans concluded that all five letters were written by the same person. The sole purpose being to incriminate Castro and Cuba for the assassination of President Kennedy. They were scheduled to arrive in the U.S. after the assassination, to provoke an American invasion of Cuba as revenge for the crime. The FBI examined the letters and concluded that they were faked: postmarked at the same place and two were typed on the same typewriter, yet they were supposed to be written by different people. The FBI concluded that Cuba had not sponsored the assassination and these letters were provocations. Things were about to drastically change and take a spectacular U-turn.

    IV. THE LONE NUT

    Dallas District Attorney, Henry Wade, stated on November 23, 1963, that “Preliminary reports indicated more than one person was involved in the shooting…the electric chair is too good for the killers.” Little did he know that a day earlier, November 22, 1963, someone from the White House situation room had announced to everyone aboard Air Force One on their way back to Washington that Oswald was the lone assassin and there was no conspiracy.[38]

    Something would later be apparent to those who wanted to blame the crime on Cuba. It was simply that there were opposing forces within the country that promoted the story that Oswald was the lone assassin acting alone. There was no foreign or domestic conspiracy.

    On November 23, 1963, James Reston of the NY Times, wrote an article entitled “Why America Weeps” followed by the sub-heading “Kennedy Victim of Violent Streak He Sought to Curb in the Nation.” Reston concluded that “an assassin” had shot the President due to “some strain of madness and violence.”[39] Associated Press reporter Jack Bell, who was in Dallas, wrote a story in The Times that “the assassin took his stand” and that “His three well aimed shots plunged America and the world into grief.”[40] Not only had Bell come to similar conclusions as Reston, but he had asserted a day after the assassination that only three shots were fired, when the investigation was still in progress.

    On November 25, 1963, The Times published a story by reporter Foster Hailey, entitled “Lone Assassin the Rule in the U.S.; Plotting more Prevalent Abroad.” Hailey stated that in other countries like Russia and Japan assassinations were politically or nationalistically motivated and the result of organized plan by Government figures. But in the U.S. the assassinations were done by a single person without advance planning. Hailey then concluded that “seems to have been the case of Lee H. Oswald, the killer of President Kennedy who was himself slain yesterday.”[41]

    There were rumors in Dallas about a conspiracy. The investigation was still ongoing. The alleged assassin was killed while literally in the arms of the Dallas Police. But instead of raising questions, Hailey had decided to close the book on Kennedy’s assassination, at a time when much of the public was wondering if Jack Ruby had been on a mission to silence Oswald. And on a historical note, the assassination of Abraham Lincoln was clearly a broad-based conspiracy, which had three targets: Lincoln, Vice-President Andrew Johnson and Secretary of State William Seward. Eight people were put on trial and one of them, Lewis Powell who had almost stabbed Seward to death, famously said that they only apprehended half of the plotters.

    In spite of that fact, the NY Times was not alone. Similar conclusions were presented by the New York Herald Tribune in an article entitled, “Shame of a Nation—History of Assassinations.” The article stated that assassination was used around the world for power struggle, but not in the U.S.  It also included an excerpt from a book The Assassins by Robert J. Donovan, which was about American presidential assassinations:

    They involved neither organized attempts to shift political power from one group to another, nor to perpetuate a particular man or party in office, nor to alter the policy of the Government, nor to resolve ideological conflicts. With one exception (Truman), no terroristic or secret society planned these assaults on our Presidents or was in any way involved.”[42]

    Coincidentally, it was the Donovan book that Allen Dulles passed around at the first executive session meeting of the Warren Commission. Mayor Earle Cabell, the brother of former CIA Deputy Director Charles Cabell, stated on November 23, 1963, in the Dallas Morning News that Oswald was a maniac and the assassination was “the irrational act of a single man” and that it “could only be the act of a deranged mind.” It was only recently revealed that Mayor Earle Cabell had been a CIA asset since 1956. (Click here for details)

    Newsweek, Time, and The Wall Street Journal, all followed with similar articles blaming the assassination on one single assassin, Lee H. Oswald. U.S. News and World Report was a vocal proponent of the “Cuba did it” story, but on December 16, 1963, took a U-turn and argued that:

    President Kennedy was assassinated by a lone gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald; Oswald had no accomplices at any level. He alone planned the attack and fired the fatal bullets; No conspiracy, on the part of groups in the United States or abroad, aided the death of the President or his assassin.[43]

    In other words, these reports paved the way for the Warren Commission to come to its lone nut conclusion. That theory was actively promoted by Alan Belmont, the number three man in the FBI chain of command. Hoover would later fall in line to participate in the official cover-up. But it was Belmont who was certainly a prime force behind the cover-up, since he was running the day-to-day operations of the FBI inquiry. Hoover had discussed with the Chief of Secret Service, James J. Rowley, on November 22, 1963, possible conspirators like Cubans or the Ku Klux Klan. Later that day, Hoover informed Robert Kennedy about Oswald’s FPCC membership, his defection to the Soviet Union, and that he had visited Cuba several times “but would not tell us what he went to Cuba for.”[44]

    Hoover called LBJ on November 23, 1963, at 10.01 a.m. and told him that the evidence against Oswald “at the present time is not very, very strong” and that “the case as it stands now isn’t strong enough to be able to get a conviction.”[45]

    Belmont had a different agenda. On November 24, 1963, a few hours after Oswald’s death, he sent a memo to Clyde Tolson promoting Oswald as the lone assassin. Although he informed Tolson about Oswald being a Marxist, the FPCC, and his Soviet Union defection, he concluded that “we will set forth the items which make it clear that Oswald is the man who killed the President.”[46] As Donald Gibson noted, Oswald’s leftist connection and the fact that the FBI had been warned that Oswald would be murdered were of no interest to Belmont.

    On November 25, 1963, Belmont sent a memo to William Sullivan stating that: “In other words, this report is to settle the dust in so far as Oswald and his activities are concerned, both from the standpoint that he is the man who assassinated the President, and relative to Oswald himself and his activities and background et cetera.”[47] Later, John J. McCloy used the same expression when there were concerns regarding conflicting evidence about the assassination: “This Commission is set up to lay the dust, dust not only in the United States but all over the World.”[48]

    Belmont had done everything he could in directing the FBI investigation to the desired conclusion that Oswald was the lone assassin. At the same time, more powerful individuals were trying to convince LBJ that he should create a Presidential Commission to investigate the assassination. This commission would later become the Warren Commission and would cement the conclusion that Oswald was a lone nut who, alone and without assistance, killed JFK.

    Most people are under the impression that it was LBJ or Assistant Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach who came up with the idea of a Presidential Commission. However, as Donald Gibson revealed in his book The Kennedy Assassination Cover-Up, Katzenbach was not the originator of the Warren Commission.

    The source of this misunderstanding was Katzenbach’s memo to Bill Moyers, Assistant to LBJ on November 24, 1963 that warned:

    The public must be satisfied that Oswald was the assassin; that he did not have confederates who are still at large; and that the evidence was such that he would have been convicted at trial.

    Speculation about Oswald’s motivation ought to be cut off and we should have some basis for rebutting thought that this was a Communist conspiracy or (as the Iron Curtain press is saying) a right-wing conspiracy to blame it on the Communists. Unfortunately, the facts on Oswald seem about too pat—too obvious (Marxist, Cuba, Russian wife, etc.). The Dallas police have put out statements on the Communist conspiracy theory and it was they who were in charge when he was shot and thus silenced.[49]

    There were two investigations going on, so there was a question as to why a Presidential Commission was necessary. One was being conducted by the FBI and the results would have been presented to President Johnson. The second was being done by the Attorney General Waggoner Carr of Texas.

    Eugene Rostow, Dean of the Yale Law School, called Bill Moyers at the White House on November 24, 1963, to suggest the possibility of a Presidential Commission which would include distinguished citizens. It should be noted that Rostow told Moyers there was someone else in the room when he called, but he did not say who it was. Rostow told Moyers that he had already spoken to Katzenbach about three times, but he was speaking directly to Moyers because Katzenbach “sounded too groggy so I thought I’d pass this thought along to you.”[50] According to Gibson, Katzenbach wrote his memo as a result of his conversations with Rostow.

    On November 25, 1963, LBJ received a call from esteemed and influential journalist Joseph Alsop of the New York Herald Tribune. Alsop was considered a VIP member of the Ivy League and Eastern Establishment with connections to intelligence services. Interestingly, during this call, Alsop said he too had talked to Moyers. Alsop suggested to LBJ the need for a presidential commission, but the President argued that it would ruin the Texas and FBI investigations. Alsop tried to convince Johnson otherwise and offered the information that Dean Acheson, the former Secretary of State, was also in favor. Alsop was indirectly admitting that he was acting in collusion with Acheson.

    The other early supporters of a Presidential Commission were Secretary of State Dean Rusk and, from the Washington Post, Katherine Graham, Alfred Friendly, and Russell Wiggins.[51]

    Even though LBJ was the legal creator of the Warren Commission, the real instigators behind its creation were elite and important members of the Eastern Establishment. On December 4, 1963, Dean Acheson praised LBJ for appointing the Warren Commission and LBJ replied that “we did the best we could and I think we’ve got Hoover pretty well in line.”[52]

    By creating the Warren Commission and having it appear to be of Johnson’s origination, the most important and crucial aspect of the cover up had succeeded. However, there were still loose ends to tighten up and tuck in. The first was Ambassador Thomas C. Mann in Mexico. He was aggressively promoting the Cuba did it story based on Alvarado’s testimony. Hoover was not very impressed with Mann and mocked him for “trying to play Sherlock Holmes.”[53] So Hoover sent Agent Larry Keenan down to Mexico, where he met with Win Scott, Ambassador Mann, David Phillips, and the FBI Legat Clark Anderson. Mann predicted that “the missiles are going to fly,” but Anderson and Scott disagreed, believing that the Soviets were too professional to be involved in this charade. Keenan intervened and informed Mann that Hoover had concluded that Oswald was a Communist who had acted alone. To back up his claim, he told Mann that LBJ and Robert Kennedy shared the same opinion. Later, Mann said that this “was the strangest experience of his life” and added “I don’t think the U.S. was very forthcoming about Oswald.”[54]

    A second loose end were the recorded tapes of Oswald’s talks with the receptionist Duran and Russian diplomat Valery Kostikov in Mexico. On November 23, 1963, at 10.01 a.m. Hoover called LBJ and informed him: “That picture and the tape do not correspond to this man’s voice, nor to his appearance. In other words, it appears that there is a second person who was at the Soviet embassy down there.”[55]

    The same day a memo from Belmont to Hoover and a memo from Hoover to Secret Service Chief Rowley confirmed that FBI agents from Dallas who knew Oswald had seen the photos and listened to his voice and they were of the opinion that the individual in question was not Lee Harvey Oswald.[56] In order for LBJ to play his WWIII trump card and intimidate Senator Richard Russell and Chief Justice Earl Warren into accepting their Warren Commission appointments, the tapes had to disappear. The tapes had left Mexico on a plane and arrived in Dallas on November 23, 1963, where the FBI agents listened to the tapes. Later the CIA advised that all tapes had been routinely erased.

    Back at CIAHQ, John Whitten, responsible for the investigation, had learned about the FBI agents listening to the tapes and that even some tapes were erased. There was one tape discovered after the assassination. The lone gunman theory had no place for Whitten’s involvement, therefore Richard Helms—who was running the CIA’s interactions with the Commission—replaced him with Angleton. A cable from Win Scott to CIAHQ linking Kostikov to Rolando Cubela was the pretext that Angleton needed to hijack the investigation. Cubela was AM/LASH, a CIA agent, and Cuban national designated to assassinate Castro. This cable would create a triangulation between Kostikov, Oswald, and Cubela and the implication would have been severe for the CIA, even if there was no proof that this ever happened.

    Everything was now constructed: the media was indoctrinating the public, a blue-ribbon panel was established, the threat of atomic annihilation was in the air, Belmont was helming the inquiry, and Angleton was running the cover up about Oswald. With all these in place, the path had now been cleared and was about to be paved, or as Belmont said, the dust would now be settled. The lone nut and lone gunman would become the official version, the one that would perpetuate the cover up to this day.

    NOTE: Section II written largely by James DiEugenio using documents supplied by Malcolm Blunt.

    Go to Part 1

    Go to Part 2

    Go to Part 3

    Go to Part 5

    Go to Part 6

    Go to Conclusion

    Go to Appendix

    [1] Joe Backes, ARRB Summaries: Page 16.

    [2] Newman John, Oswald and the CIA, Skyhorse Publishing Inc. 1995, pp. 22-23.

    [3] Newman John, Oswald and the CIA, Skyhorse Publishing Inc. 1995, p. 23.

    [4] Newman John, Oswald and the CIA, Skyhorse Publishing Inc. 1995, p. 27.

    [5] Newman John, Oswald and the CIA, Skyhorse Publishing Inc. 1995, p. 54.

    [6] Newman John, Oswald and the CIA, Skyhorse Publishing Inc. 1995, p. 56.

    [7] Newman John, Oswald and the CIA, Skyhorse Publishing Inc. 1995, p. 48.

    [8] Blunt Malcolm in private correspondence with this author.

    [9] Blunt Malcolm in private correspondence with this author.

    [10] Scott, Peter Dale, Deep Politics, University of California Press 1993, p. 275.

    [11] Hosty James, Assignment Oswald, New York, Arcade publishing, 1996, p. 219.

    [12] Scott, Peter Dale, Deep Politics II, Mary Ferrell Foundation Press 2003, p. 78.

    [13] Escalante, Fabian, JFK: The Cuba Files, Ocean Press, 2006, pp. 152–153.

    [14] https://jfkfacts.org/nov-23-1963-the-first-jfk-conspiracy-theory-paid-for-by-the-cia/#more-9594

    [15] Escalante, Fabian, JFK: The Cuba Files, Ocean Press, 2006, p. 154.

    [16] Scott, Peter Dale, Deep Politics II, Mary Ferrell Foundation Press 2003, p. 33.

    [17] Scott, Peter Dale, Deep Politics, University of California Press 1993, p. 215.

    [18] Ed Butler: Expert in propaganda and psychological warfare.

    [19] Scott, Peter Dale, Deep Politics, University of California Press 1993, pp. 267-269.

    [20] Fonzi Gaeton, The Last Investigation, Marry Ferrell Press, 1993, 2008, p. 279.

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

    [22] Morley Jefferson, Our Man in Mexico, University Press of Kansas, 2008, pp. 222–223.

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

    [24] Morley Jefferson, Our Man in Mexico, University Press of Kansas, 2008, pp. 229–230.

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

    [26] Morley Jefferson, Our Man in Mexico, University Press of Kansas, 2008, p. 230.

    [27] Morley Jefferson, Our Man in Mexico, University Press of Kansas, 2008, p. 230.

    [28] Newman John, Oswald and the CIA, Skyhorse Publishing Inc. 1995, p. 428.

    [29] Scott, Peter Dale, Deep Politics II, Mary Ferrell Foundation Press 2003, p. 90.

    [30] Newman John, Oswald and the CIA, Skyhorse Publishing Inc. 1995, p. 429.

    [31] Scott, Peter Dale, Deep Politics II, Mary Ferrell Foundation Press 2003, p. 101.

    [32] Russell Dick, The Man Who Knew too Much, Carroll & Graf 1992, p. 461.

    [33] Escalante, Fabian, JFK: The Cuba Files, Ocean Press, 2006, p. 135.

    [34] Escalante, Fabian, JFK: The Cuba Files, Ocean Press, 2006, p. 138.

    [35] Escalante, Fabian, JFK: The Cuba Files, Ocean Press, 2006, p. 143.

    [36] Escalante, Fabian, JFK: The Cuba Files, Ocean Press, 2006, p. 136.

    [37] Escalante, Fabian, JFK: The Cuba Files, Ocean Press, 2006, p. 137.

    [38] Tale of the Tapes – By Vincent Salandria.

    [39] Gibson Donald, The Kennedy Assassination Cover-Up, Krosha Books, NY, 2000, pp. 27–28.

    [40] Gibson Donald, The Kennedy Assassination Cover-Up, Krosha Books, NY, 2000, p. 28.

    [41] Gibson Donald, The Kennedy Assassination Cover-Up, Krosha Books, NY, 2000, pp. 29–30.

    [42] Gibson Donald, The Kennedy Assassination Cover-Up, Krosha Books, NY, 2000, p. 30.

    [43] Escalante, Fabian, JFK: The Cuba Files, Ocean Press, 2006, p. 157.

    [44] FBI Memo from Hoover to his staff, November 22, 1963, 4.01 pm.

    [45] Gibson Donald, The Kennedy Assassination Cover-Up, Krosha Books, NY, 2000, p. 40.

    [46] Gibson Donald, The Kennedy Assassination Cover-Up, Krosha Books, NY, 2000, p. 42.

    [47] HSCA Report, Vol. III, p. 668.

    [48] Gibson Donald, The Kennedy Assassination Cover-Up, Krosha Books, NY, 2000, p. 98.

    [49] Katzenbach: Memo to Moyers.

    [50] Gibson Donald, The Kennedy Assassination Cover-Up, Krosha Books, NY, 2000, pp. 54–55.

    [51] Gibson Donald, The Kennedy Assassination Cover-Up, Krosha Books, NY, 2000, p. 85.

    [52] Gibson Donald, The Kennedy Assassination Cover-Up, Krosha Books, NY, 2000, p. 85.

    [53] Morley Jefferson, Our Man in Mexico, University Press of Kansas, 2008, p. 224.

    [54] Morley Jefferson, Our Man in Mexico, University Press of Kansas, 2008, pp. 225–226.

    [55] The Fourteen Minute Gap.

    [56] The Fourteen Minute Gap.

  • Gary Hill’s The Other Oswald: A Wilderness of Mirrors

    Gary Hill’s The Other Oswald: A Wilderness of Mirrors

    Summary

    This book is a worthwhile read for a mature JFK assassination research audience.

    The author is quite knowledgeable and has shown himself to be proficient at information gathering from mostly a smart selection of credible work performed by serious JFK assassination researchers, documentary proof, collaborations with other solid researchers, and adding his own personal sleuth efforts in the form of interviews of people of interest.

    Gary Hill’s instincts and logical construction are mostly solid, but at times flawed.

    The book is important, because of its focus on “defector” Robert Webster and his comparative analysis value to Oswald, as well as the author’s attempts to explain the murder in an all-encompassing manner based on some of the most recent information available.

    The author offers many footnotes and presents a large number of photos as well as documents that support his writings. A number of the footnotes, however, do not really help researchers access key sources and some important points that are made are written in a vague manner. The basis on which the author forms his conclusions are at times tenuous and hard to follow.

    There are a large number of chapters that barely mention Webster.

    Because the book is so full of information, which is sometimes put out without proper context, seasoned researchers may learn a lot, beginners, however, may be confused.

    Gary Hill exposes himself to criticism by at times referencing controversial writers and anecdotes that have been mostly discredited—which could be used to undermine his mostly solid rationale.

    Like most of us who have written about the case, the author could have used additional layers of editing to weed out errors of grammar, minimize risky affirmations, and add clarity to certain explanations.

    In terms of understanding the big picture of what really happened on November 22, 1963, Warren Commission apologists including most journalists and history book writers deserve a score of 0 on ten, Gary Hill deserves at least an 8.

    Introduction

    When I was asked to review this book, I was intrigued by the subject matter. My knowledge of Robert Webster was sketchy at best, yet I always felt that his story could be important. There were only a handful of Americans who set foot on Soviet soil before the early sixties and there was a false defector program going on that most likely included Oswald:  the fact that Webster entered and departed Russia at around the same time as Oswald is significant. This book could perhaps reveal similarities or differences between the two that could bolster the case that Oswald was an intelligence asset.

    While writing one of my articles for Kennedysandking.com, I came upon an interesting piece about how U.S. intelligence reacted when two genuine defectors, National Security Agency (NSA) officials Bernon Mitchell and William Martin, committed treason against their country and defected to Russia. They left no stone unturned in their investigation that required thousands of man-hours in detective work and damage control. Even though Oswald worked at the Atsugi intelligence base in Japan as a radar operator for the prized U2 spy planes, the post defection investigation of him was cursory at best—a sure sign that something fishy was going on.

    Was Webster an intelligence asset? Had he really met and associated with Marina Prusakova? What were his background and M.O.? What became of him upon his return? Who, if anyone, was running him?

    Otto Otepka was kicking a hornet’s nest when, in 1960 as head of the State Department’s Office of Security, he began querying the false defector program. The Oswald file was a hot potato. Otepka’s career spiraled downwards shortly after his insistent efforts. What could we find out about the other false defectors? According to Mary Ferrell: “The CIA did admit privately to HSCA staff that at least one officer named Thomas Casasin had ‘run an agent into the USSR’ and, like Oswald, this agent had come back with a Russian wife.”

    Like the author, I strongly believe in the common threads approach to solving who was behind the Kennedy assassination. This is why the analysis of prior plots and alternative patsies has occupied a large part of my analysis and writing. I am of the opinion that there is a template that points to the same puppeteers who were stringing Oswald along.

    This rationale applies elsewhere:

    If Oswald was an informant and infiltrated the FPCC like many others…find out who was behind the FPCC infiltration program;

    If Oswald was being overseen by Clay Shaw, Guy Banister, George de Mohrenschildt, Ruth Paine, and others, find who they were connected to;

    If there were other similar political assassinations, internal or abroad, find out where they lead;

    If witnesses were being eliminated or threatened to keep silent, solve these crimes and you may discover axes that intersect;

    Find out how the media and investigative cover-up is orchestrated and you may zero in on the usual suspects;

    Gary Hill uses similar case analysis and entity linkage around the false defector program, that Oswald was most likely part of, in his contribution to fully solving the case. For advancing this area of research forward, the research community can thank him and should build on this promising area by shining the spotlights on every other defector, false or genuine, of this era so as to find out exactly how Oswald fit into a template here also and who designed and oversaw it.

    Gary Hill… The researcher

    I hadn’t heard much about Gary Hill, so I tried to find out a bit more about his background and came upon an article about him and his book which was quite impressive and showcased solid credentials:

    Hill has spent 50 years of his life researching the Cold War in general and the assassination of JFK specifically. He has appeared on talk shows, published articles, and given lectures on the topic.

    His substantial JFK library consists of hundreds of books, articles, and photos and thousands of documents obtained from the CIA, FBI, Military, and NARA via the Freedom of Information Act. He has interviewed witnesses and published articles in local newspapers and journals such as The Fourth Decade and JFK/Deep Politics Quarterly and local newspapers such as the Cranberry Journal and New Castle News.

    He was a charter member of the Citizens for Truth about the Kennedy Assassination (CTKA), Cyril Wecht’s Coalition on Political Assassinations (COPA), and JFK Lancer. He is listed in the Master Researcher Directory.

    The preface of his book is by Bill Simpich and the foreword by Walt Brown, two JFK assassination researchers of repute who put the book on a solid foundation before even reaching the first chapter. I was further reassured when I read the bibliography:  Many of my favorite authors and books were listed, I was even surprised to see one of my articles referenced. Four books that I noticed that were not in his impressive list are Destiny Betrayed and JFK; The Evidence Today (though Probe articles and Lisa Pease are referenced); Nexus; and On the Trail of the Assassins, which are must-reads in my view.

    Over and above being very well-read, the author received support from super investigators Carol Hewitt and Dick Russell, who were able to visit a mostly unresponsive Robert Webster. Hill himself interviewed some of Webster’s family members, friends, and ex-work colleagues. He was able to obtain photos, writings, and Webster’s detailed life and professional chronology based on solid primary source documents.

    The book is filled with anecdotes, claims, and facts and is quite well documented and footnoted, but with some inconsistencies. I found that some of the points that were very interesting were either not referenced or at times based on shaky evidence (I will give examples later). However, the overall construction is quite tight.

    There is no doubt that the author is experienced, connected, dedicated, and driven. The challenge authors who cover this subject always face is how to make such a complicated case easy to digest and interesting while avoiding pitfalls.

    Robert Webster

    This book has been recently released, so it is not my intention to reveal everything about the lead protagonist. That would lower the need to read it. I have read some 40 books about the assassination, as well as over 100 articles, and I can attest that this reading enriched my knowledge about the case and will add to some of the areas I have been researching. Let me suggest the leading reasons to add this book to your collection based solely on the subject of the lead character.

    The author presents a strong case that Webster and Marina likely knew one another, which, of course, leads us to speculate that Marina may have been a Russian intelligence asset. The author does a good job of describing Russian brides becoming sleeper agents through their marriage to foreigners.

    We also find out that police forces in the U.S. took a special interest in Webster on the very day JFK was assassinated and that he may have been using Oswald’s name.

    Readers get to see striking similarities in Webster’s work history and Oswald’s. Both simply cannot be tied down. Oswald and Webster both joined the Navy where the ONI played a leading role in the false defector program.

    The parallels don’t stop there:  Webster worked for intel-connected The Rand Development Company; he possessed important plastics technology experience he could tease the Russians with; he married a Russian with whom he fathered a child; his sojourn in Russia had a number of similarities with LHO’s.

    I found Hill’s research around the reactions to the defection in Webster’s ultraconservative community and how it was closely held by his friends to be very interesting.

    Hill reveals to us how Webster left his American wife and kids under financial stress, met a Russian girl, who could very well have been an intelligence asset, ended up marrying her and fathering a child, both of whom he eventually left behind when he returned to the U.S.

    Hill argues soundly that Webster, contrary to Oswald, was a genuine defector who moved to Russia not for ideological reasons, but to escape his family problems, marry his Russian sweetheart, and exploit a business opportunity around bringing Russia up to speed in plastics technology. These affirmations are backed by witness descriptions of him, as well as CIA profile reports.

    He makes the point that, before 1959, there had only been two U.S. defectors to the Soviet Union and then, in an eighteen-month period between 1959 and 1960, there were nine who all had military backgrounds and were privy to sensitive information.

    Like a number of other “defectors”, Webster followed Richard Snyder’s advice to renounce citizenship on a Saturday, when it was technically not possible to do so. (Snyder was a CIA asset under diplomatic cover in the Moscow embassy). This made it easier to return to the U.S. Curiously, Webster was accompanied by his intel-connected bosses from Rand during his defection visit.

    Hill underscores that Webster was codenamed Guide 223 and was linked to a project related to the mechanization of documents called Longstride. Very interestingly, Hill points out a link here to Ruth Paine’s sister of all people, a psychologist with strong intel relations, employed by the Air Force.

    Rand has a number of similarities to some of Oswald’s employers in that it is clearly a CIA-friendly company. It would be interesting to see if there is a 301 file on it. There was a 201 file on its president H. G. Rand. Rand’s Washington representative was ex-CIA agent and psy-war specialist Christopher Bird.

    One of the key points Hill makes is that Webster upon his return to the U.S. testified intensely for two weeks before the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee… a fate Oswald avoided. This, on its own, is worth the price of admission. Does anyone really believe that Oswald was not debriefed? Can anyone explain why Webster’s debriefing was done openly and Oswald was given special treatment? But there is more… Webster could no longer work at Rand, because of the classified projects it was involved in, whereas Oswald was parked at Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall where he was involved in sensitive work.

    From all of this, Gary Hill presents a strong case for who oversaw both Oswald and Webster’s files. To find out who: Read the book! I can confirm that the case makes sense.

    The above wealth of information is presented to the reader by the fourth chapter… Need I say more?

    The fourth chapter focuses on the false defector program and Oswald’s defection. While the author does a good job here of comparing the two defections, he is less convincing when he tries to argue that Oswald was suddenly rushed into the Soviet Union because of Webster’s defection so that he could be part of a double dangle by the CIA, that they were both being “manipulated” by U.S. Intelligence while in Russia, and that they could confuse the KBG because they were lookalikes. I had to read this chapter more than once and still had trouble following the line of reasoning. It is also in this chapter that he discusses links between MKULTRA mind control and Oswald, which he will later include Webster as a probable victim. The author claims that there are many indications that Oswald was under psychic driving conditioning (e.g. at his stay in Atsugi well before his defection). He also indicates that there could be a smoking gun document that proves Webster was an MKUTRA subject. We will get to this later.

    A 50 year research veteran’s view of the case

    By chapter 5, the author shifts sharply to another theme, where information around Webster and false defector programs is minimal.

    I have to say, I would have liked to see more around the original subject matter. He does mention that at one point in the early sixties, six out of seven ex-marine defectors returned to the U.S. like Oswald and Webster. What were their stories? How do they compare? What conclusions can be drawn? Unfortunately, this area was not developed.

    The cases of Bernon and Martin, two real defectors, are also quite well documented. This would also have bolstered his analysis.

    Instead, for some ten chapters, we get to hear Hill’s take on the whole JFK assassination, and I mean everything: Mockingbird, MKULTRA, Mexico City, Garrison, Tippit, Rose Cheramie, LBJ, RFK, prior plots, Oswald doubles, the cover-up, who is behind the assassination and a lot more. His focus on Webster only comes back in the very last chapter.

    If you go on the basis that even one new piece of information was gained by reading a book and that you are better off for that experience, then almost anyone who reads these ten chapters will be winners, because there is bound to be new knowledge to be gained from a well-read old-timer who is passionate about the subject. Gary Hill, now seventy-two, passes on his conclusions from fifty years of research to the next generation of researchers. This project is ambitious and not without risk, however. While I feel much of the author’s research and conclusions are solid, I also feel there is, at times, overkill, overreach, questionable sources, faulty reasoning, and potential for confusion.  If ever Mr. Hill would like to write a second edition, let me provide some constructive criticism. But first let’s cover some of the interesting points he makes.

    The overall case chapters 5 to 13:  The Good

    Hill emphasizes how the HSCA contradicted the Warren Commission by underscoring Charles Murret’s, Oswald’s uncle, links to organized crime including Marcello and Jack Ruby.

    He shines a light on LHO’s cousin Dorothy Murret who, like LHO, travelled around the world on a dime. He presents evidence that she may have been connected to intelligence.

    One of the areas where the author is at his best is when he describes how intelligence departments of police forces are intertwined with the CIA. This goes a long way in explaining the suspicious behaviors of key players in the police forces in Dallas pertaining to the JFK assassination, Chicago related to the failed plot in early November 1963, L.A. with respect to the RFK assassination botched investigation, and even Mexico City where key witness Sylvia Duran was tortured.

    You will also find in this book a nice summary of the MKULTRA program and its roots.

    Because I have written pretty extensively about failed plots to assassinate JFK and potential patsies, I was especially interested in his prior plots chapter. He covers the subjects of Vallee (Chicago), Lopez (Tampa) and Powers (San Antonio) pretty well the way I had, which is normal as we have similar sources. When I wrote about FPCC infiltrator John Glenn of Indiana, I saw nothing to convince me that he was implicated in a failed plot, nor any evidence of plans to frame him. What I did observe is a clone of Oswald the informant, in this sense his inclusion in this chapter could create confusion. I was happily surprised to find out about the name of yet a new suspicious character named Miguel Casas Saez, whom the author describes as a Cuban agent with FPCC links and who may have tracked JFK in Chicago and Tampa, before being in Dallas the day of his assassination. He then ran into money, made his way to Mexico through Laredo, and was flown to Cuba with special seating arrangements in the cockpit of a Cuban plane that had been held up for hours awaiting him.

    Wow! This to me sounded very much like a report on another potential FPCC-marked patsy, Policarpo Lopez, who would have made a similar escape and was allegedly flown to Cuba as the lone passenger on a Cuban passenger plane: a sure sign of a template!

    It smacks of yet more Castro was behind it malarkey… Coming out of JMWAVE’s David Morales’ network.

    I was frustrated here, however, by his footnote to the intel document which is limited to 104-10021-1004.

    So, on my own, I eventually found the document at Mary Ferrell and upon closer perusal, this anecdote ended up being somewhat of a wet firecracker.

    1. He claims that Saez was reported to be at an FPCC meeting in Tampa on November 17—yet after scouring files, talking to Larry Hancock (who is referenced in this section), and reading the writings of John Newman and others about Saez, I could find nothing to back this up. If the author can show evidence of this, I strongly urge him to reveal his sources as it would be, in my opinion, quite important.
    2. The author relies on Lamar Waldron to state that Saez (similar to Policarpo Lopez) received the red-carpet treatment by being seated in the cockpit on a Cuban plane for his escape out of Mexico. The intel. document reveals no such thing. Is there another solid source? Larry Hancock and I discussed this point and he believes that with time some authors mixed up the alleged Saez escape M.O. with Policarpo Lopez’.
    3. Larry also pointed out the weakness of the source (and sub-sources), in that it comes from a likely biased Cuban exile, who got this from a Cuban source in Cuba, who got his info from a dentist, who got it from Saez’s aunt, who got it from lord knows where.
    4. Larry, having seen many wild Cuban stories to try and frame Castro, stated that this one was too amateurish to be even a CIA planted story. “Think about Cuban agents coming into the U.S. after battling a hurricane, one then heads up to New York to visit an ex-girlfriend’s uncle, and then after involvement in killing JFK, Saez ends up back in his village showing off American made T-shirts and shoes.”

    The following is the intel document, which is hardly a smoking gun but is not entirely insignificant:






    Intel document: 104-10021-1004

    No mention of the FPCC, sitting in a cockpit, and very weak sources and sub sources! It does not even come close to the CIA documents on Policarpo Lopez in terms of explosiveness. The two elements that I feel are suspicious, however, are the mention of an agent being present in Chicago on November 1 during the Vallee incident and the entering of Mexico through Laredo as had Lopez and Oswald, which would have been known by very few at the time the report was written, and could suggest that the supposed sources were being given inside information. One could also ask why this document just floated around all these years without closure. Was it kept in the plotters’ back pockets for future consideration and then kept hidden because it became more embarrassing than anything else? So, mark this section of his book down as a mixed bag.

    Let’s get back to some of its strengths.

    The whole picture of Oswald being part of a network of informants is becoming crystal clear, when you consider his FPCC behavior and the company he kept with the Paines, Guy Banister, Clay Shaw, David Ferrie, the FBI, White Russians, and Cuban exiles. Hill nails this point down and adds a few delicious observations I had not been aware of. Consider this beautiful quote: “Dan Hardaway (sic) may have discovered a slip-up [David] Phillips inadvertently made in a footnote of a self-published book entitled Secret War Diary. Phillips wrote, ‘I was an observer of Cuban and Soviet reaction when Lee Harvey Oswald contacted their embassies.’ According to Hardaway (sic), ‘One of the purposes of an intelligence dangle is to observe the reaction, and from the observation, identify roles, procedures, and processes of the enemy.’”

    The author goes on to describe interesting links between the De Gaulle assassination plots and persons of interest in the Kennedy assassination. However, some of his writings in this section are based on the research of Steve Rivele, whose work is far from being unanimously accepted.

    From Spartacus:

    “Rivele’s material was used in the 1988 television documentary, The Men Who Killed Kennedy. As well as Lucien Sarti, he also named Sauveur, Pironti, and Roger Bocognani as being involved in the killing. However, Pironti and Bocognani both had alibis and Rivele was forced to withdraw the allegation.”

    In his babysitters section, Hill goes over many of the connections that have come out through the years between the people who were close to Oswald (the Paines, de Mohrenschildt, etc.) that completely destroy the Warren Commission’s description of Oswald as a lone nut.

    We also get a pretty good snapshot of the Tippit murder and the controversies that surround that investigation.

    The author’s exposé culminates with what seems to be a growing consensus among the most serious researchers:  that there was, what Hill calls, a three-headed monster made up of the Cuban exiles, the Mafia overseen by Intelligence that was behind the assassination with a cover-up led by LBJ, enabled by the media, the Warren Commission, and Hoover.

    Many of the villains he points the finger at are becoming usual suspects. The author, however, ventures even further in an area that does not get enough attention:  The role of the 488th Military Detachment. His focus on Pappy Bush buddy, Jack Crichton, is potentially important. His role in the motorcade logistics, security lapses, and the cornering of Marina with his own hand-selected translator should be of interest.

    So overall, I would say that this is a solid read with lots of substance and interesting information about Webster and the case overall.

    But it is not without pitfalls.

    The overall case: The Bad

    One of the theories the author puts forth is that both Webster and Oswald were subjects of MKULTRA mind control programs. In the case of Oswald, he points to his ability to face interrogations after capture, his aversion to doctors and dentists, that he was secretive towards Marina, that he had been in Atsugi (one of two CIA bases involved in MKULTRA), that his loner, rebel personality with a dark side made him a great candidate for mind control (sounds a bit Warren Commission apologetic), he was at the right place, at the right time, and had all the qualifications! One witness noticed a change in personalities in Oswald after his stay in Atsugi. Marina stated that he had two personalities. Oswald once made an inquiry about LSD.

    This is all interesting but highly speculative… Where is the beef?

    This already highly tenuous path opens the door to the author’s next even more tenuous deduction: “If Oswald was part of a behavioral-changing project aimed at creating false defectors, who, in fact, believed themselves to be genuine, and Oswald and Webster’s stories are nearly identical in every other facet including like personalities which fit the desired mold perfectly, was Webster also part of MKULTRA?”

    I have many problems with this line of logic:

    1. It is far from demonstrated that Oswald was part of MKULTRA.
    2. There is at least one major difference between Oswald and Webster that the author himself pointed out earlier: Webster was a genuine defector and Oswald was not! So why even talk about creating a false defector with Webster? But this particular part of his book gets worse!

    While the links the author makes between Webster’s employer and Rand’s Christopher Bird with mind control experimentation and a reference to Webster’s psychiatric help are interesting, he posits that perhaps Oswald and Webster were being programmed during their hospital stays… in Moscow. For me this is where this whole theory is guilty of overreach. It was so difficult to get a spy into Russia in the first place, how in the heck are you going to pull off an LSD/hypnosis treatment of your subjects there, one of whom is a genuine defector… over a two-year period!

    Let me play the devil’s advocate on another opinion that is dear to Gary Hill:  That Webster would have been the patsy had there been a motorcade in Cleveland. While I agree that Webster’s eccentric personality and odyssey could put him on a long list of candidates, he may have had some disqualifying characteristics:

    1. Many, if not all, of the other potential patsies including Oswald were either willing informants, intel pawns, or mafia-linked, who were therefore easy to give marching orders to. This is not the case for Webster.
    2. We do not know that his personal or professional relations could have synergistically nudged him in the right direction the way Oswald’s babysitters and others did.
    3. The two weeks of senate hearings he attended may have shone too much light on him thus staining him for any strategic manipulation. So, while plausible, Webster’s potential for being an ideal patsy is far from a slam dunk.

    Like other authors, Hill expresses the opinion that the assassination strategy was so brilliant that it even placed the CIA in a bind and that it was made purposefully confusing with an overabundance of evidence, so as to have investigators running in circles:  A wilderness of mirrors. I had a nice discussion with Larry Hancock about this. My take is that there is so much evidence because of two quasi-catastrophic glitches that occurred:

    1. The plotters fully expected that the assassination would be blamed on Castro and lead to an invasion of Cuba. They were completely blindsided when they suddenly had to go the lone nut route:  Had Plan A gone ahead, there would have been no problem with front shots, Oswald associates, the Zapruder film, witnesses, etc. Instead, they had to bring in Mockingbird, intimidate and remove witnesses, hide the Mexico City charade, put the Warren Commission in place, concoct a slap-happy autopsy, push the single-bullet theory, contain the Cuban and Mafia partners, destroy subsequent investigations, hide files, and everything else that goes with putting the genie back in the bottle!
    2. The second problem was that Oswald survived 48 hours! He began talking and had to be silenced by a Mafioso. This, of course, opened up a whole other flank… and forced an equally ridiculous cover story. This is why there is so much evidence. This is why the case has been largely solved. This is why there is so much mistrust of the media, politicians, and other cornerstones of the U.S. There was nothing brilliant about it!

    Another problem that should be underscored is that a volume this ambitious is also very risky and should get many layers of vetting and editing. While I am convinced that Gary Hill is quite knowledgeable and performed a lot of research, I believe that he could have added a few extra waves of fact checking and quality control. Some of the things he has written will undoubtably present openings for critics to pounce on, while unfairly omitting to point out the quality of much of the book’s contents.

    According to the index, there are approximately 750 names of places, people, projects, organizations, etc. in the book. This is certain to cause confusion among readers and create a monster for even the writer when it comes to fact checking.

    I cannot tell you how many times people like Jim DiEugenio, Albert Rossi, Chris Lamay (who sadly departed us last year), Larry Hancock, Steve Jaffe, Vince Palamara, Dick Russell, and others pointed me in the right direction, had me remove unsound evidence and corrected my grammar. Despite all this, I find myself cringing sometimes when I read some of my earlier writings whenever I see a spelling error or a false fact.

    In this book, there are a number of grammar errors:  Poor Dan Hardway sees his name spelled Hardaway no fewer than seven times (this is the second book review I write where this has happened). Dealey Plaza is spelled correctly some twelve times and Dealy three times; Bathesda should be spelled Bethesda, Marsaille should be spelled Marseille… add a number of typos to these errors and good work like this will take a credibility hit. My suggestion is to proofread the document yourself only when alert, use Antidote software, and get two wordsmiths known for their pickiness to go over your work.

    My editor would have recommended against bringing up Tosh Plumlee, Steve Rivele, Barr McClellan, Judith Vary Baker, and referring to the whole Joseph Kennedy Mafia-double-cross saga, because of the doubts they evoke in the minds of many. I am certain that his friends Walt Brown and Carol Hewitt would have urged caution.

    Though I found most of the sources the author refers to reassuring and clear, at times I felt that he too often went with other authors’ writings rather than examining the original source documents, the Saez files being a good example. At times the author refers to documents with no way for the reader to find them: “Documents unearthed in the 1970s show the FBI had suspected Osborne as a major suspect in its massive JFK assassination investigation”; “According to testimony given by a witness in an assassination attempt on a district judge to assistant attorney Bill Alcorn, on November 22, 1963, Osborne and ten riflemen were living at 3126 Harlandale Street”; “New forensic evidence suggests that two individuals known as Lee Harvey Oswald enlisted in the Marines in 1956.”

    Generally speaking, I think Gary Hill would have been better served by focusing more on Webster and false defectors and by staying clear of some of the more debatable stories that have popped up over the years. This, however, is a personal opinion and I do understand the temptation to broaden the scope, as many authors end up doing.

    Final thoughts

    The JFK assassination was arguably the most important one in the last century. We are still feeling the aftershocks, quite intensely actually. The pillars of U.S. democracy cracked at the seams in 1963. An elected and popular president was taken out, for the benefit of so few. A masquerade of law and order was put in place by the benefactors. The fourth estate shamed itself by choosing the side of the winners. Historians brainwashed decades of young students by parroting the Warren Commission fairytale. In power behind the scenes and emboldened, the perpetrators were pulling the strings on a number of political assassinations that followed, unholy drug and arms deals, political dirty tricks, coups and wars, Wall Street money games, and other major scandals that came in waves and went unpunished. You know something is wrong when the people responsible for millions of deaths in Vietnam alone, trillions of dollars in damages and inequalities in the world’s most powerful country are living the life of Riley, while at the same time four white cops took George Floyd’s life because of a fake 20 dollar bill.

    While most people believe there was a conspiracy in the murder of JFK, those who have a pretty good idea of what actually happened probably number under 1000 worldwide. Gary Hill is one of them. While some of the details in his book are debatable, he understands the large picture.

    The U.S. and much of the world is disease-ridden right now with punch-drunk leadership that seems clueless. The pandemic is not just one of COVID-19. It is one of intolerance, inequality, distrust, brutality, weaponized citizens, climate threats, stress, and division.

    There is mobilization going on right now, all around the world that is seeing people of all ages and all races demanding change from their leaders. It is reminiscent of how Vietnam was finally forced to an abrupt end by young, concerned citizens on a mission. Ordinary people are demanding much more than the end of chokeholds by police. They are asking for meaningful and just progress. If change is to be long-lasting, they need to get at the root of what has caused these problems in the first place, which begins with understanding the real political systems we live under. Why does everyone want sensible gun laws, climate policies, and health care, but cannot get it? Find out who the real power brokers are and you will understand how your country really does govern itself.

    Which brings us back to understanding 1963. Within a few months, two major pieces of work will be released that will shed even more light on the JFK assassination, which will bring us very close to a complete picture of what really took place and its impact on the world we live in. One is Oliver Stone’s new documentary JFK: Destiny Betrayed, the other, based on a preview I have received, is a paper written by Larry Hancock which will appear on the Mary Ferrell site.

    Gary Hill solved the case to his content after fifty years of reading, researching, and networking. He did not sit on this. He decided to pass on his knowledge and opinions about the overall case to the rest of us and to document what he found about Robert Webster and he shares these findings. He did not do this for money or glory. His book is not perfect, but it is good and he deserves our gratitude for doing his share in fitting in small pieces of the puzzle.

  • Kerry Thornley: A New Look (Part 2)

    Kerry Thornley: A New Look (Part 2)

    VII

    Thornley was associated with some of the more reactionary characters in the Crescent City:  Courtney, Bolton, Butler, and Bringuier. On the day of Kennedy’s murder, he told Allen Campbell, “It could not have happened to a nicer guy.” (Caufield, p. 229) On that day, he asked Bernard Goldsmith, “Did you hear the good news?” (ibid) But as David Lifton said, this was all beside the point. This author does not agree.

    One of the reasons Thornley gave for his incontinent antipathy for Kennedy—and he gave it more than once—was what he called the civil war and massacre in Katanga. (Gorightly, p. 53) As readers of this site understand, Katanga was part of the immense Congo Crisis, one that lasted from 1960-65. It began with the election of Patrice Lumumba in June of 1960. Lumumba wanted Congo to be free from Belgian and European colonialism. In fact, there was a constitution written and Lumumba won an election. As Jonathan Kwitny noted, Congo was going to be the first democratically-elected, constitutionally-constructed republic in sub-Sahara Africa. (Kwitny, Endless Enemies, p. 75) The mother country had other designs. Belgium deliberately pulled out early and almost completely. This was done in order to leave Lumumba on his own—with little money, means or machinery. As John Newman has noted, the Belgians even took the Congo’s gold reserves with them. (John Newman, Countdown to Darkness, p. 155)

    They did leave behind part of their army. A key aspect of the Belgian plan to retake Congo was for Katanga—by far its richest province—to break away and create its own state. This would deprive Lumumba of another source of funding—while keeping Katanga under imperial reins. As Newman notes, CIA Director Allen Dulles was aware of this Katanga scheme two months before Lumumba came to power. (Countdown to Darkness, p. 153) As both Kwitny and Newman make manifest, without Belgium and England, there likely would have been no Katanga breakaway. Therefore, to call this a civil war would be like calling the Vietnam War a civil War. There would have been no South Vietnam if not for Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, and the Dulles brothers. The creation of Katanga was an extension of an imperial war. When the secession crisis started, the Belgians sent in paratroopers to fire on Lumumba’s men. Belgium, England, and France now sent thousands of mercenaries to boost Katanga.

    Because Allen Dulles was in on the plan, the White House denied any aid to Lumumba when he visited Washington. (Countdown to Darkness, p. 220) The idea was to make Lumumba go to the Russians. Realizing Moscow would extend help, that aid became Washington’s pretext to declare that Congo was undergoing a Castro like communist transformation. That CIA cable was written and distributed on August 18, 1960. As both Kwitny and Newman write, this declaration was complete hyperbole; Lumumba was not a communist. The cable was clearly designed as a provocation to begin covert action against Lumumba, which it did. (Countdown to Darkness, p. 223) The Agency began to devise a series of plots to murder Lumumba. Depending on what sources one uses and who is counting, there were as many as five of them. These were not rogue conspiracies. They were approved by both President Eisenhower and CIA Director Allen Dulles. (Countdown to Darkness, p. 227) The CIA even bribed Josef Mobutu, chief of the army, to assassinate Lumumba. (Kwitny, p. 67) Cooperating with the Belgians, the plots succeeded. Lumumba was killed by firing squad on January 17, 1961, in Katanga. His body was then soaked in sulphuric acid. When the acid ran out, his corpse was set afire. (Countdown to Darkness, p. 296)

    There is evidence that the CIA’s multiple plots to do away with Lumumba were caused by their suspicions of what Kennedy would do when he was inaugurated, which may be why he was shot three days before the inauguration. (Kwitny, p. 69; John Morton Blum, Years of Discord, p. 23) The suspicions were justified. Not only was Kennedy planning on backing Lumumba, he also backed UN Secretary Dag Hammarskjold, who also opposed the European created Katanga state. As we know, Hammarskjold was also murdered in September of 1961. The evidence for this is convincing today, so I will not use the word “killed” in reference to it anymore. Between Susan Williams’ book Who Killed Hammarskjold? and the film Cold Case Hammarskjold, there is little or no doubt about it. (Click here for the evidence)

    With those two men dead, Kennedy essentially took charge of the UN operation. The idea was to create an independent state under labor leader Cyrille Adoula and to restore the mercenary state of Katanga to Congo. Working through the UN, which he visited twice, Kennedy succeeded in attaining Hammarskjold’s aims. Like many things he achieved, this was undone after his death by a combination of the CIA and Lyndon Johnson. Thus, Congo became an imperial vassal state under long term dictator Josef Mobutu. For selling out Lumumba, Adoula and his new nation, Mobutu became an incredibly wealthy puppet. (Kwitny, p. 87)

    Why is that important to this story? In order to ask this question: What kind of person would celebrate the murder of Kennedy and the victory of colonial forces seeking to exploit both the native population and vast mineral wealth of Congo? Forces which were willing to twice resort to assassination to achieve their aims? I would call those kinds of people fascists. Katanga fit the strictures of a fascist state: a paramilitary enforcement army, one man rule (by Moise Tshombe), beatings, and summary executions of its enemies, like Lumumba. And according to FOIA attorney Jim Lesar, the CIA paid former Nazi commando Otto Skorzeny to work for Tshombe. (Personal conversation with Lesar in November of 2013) With the assassination of Kennedy, all of those tendencies now triumphed. Mobutu ruled for three decades. Today the wealth of Congo has been dissipated to an oligarchy at home and abroad; while 80% of its people live in poverty. This is what Thornley was celebrating. There is no crying ignorance either. Any interested party could find out the general outlines of the story, since it attracted so much attention. The fact that Thornley was a rightwing nut was known to Garrison, through people he interviewed like Bernard Goldsmith. Goldsmith called Thornley so far right he did not even want to talk politics with him. (Biles, p. 57) Thornley’s idol Ayn Rand thought Congo was a communist state.

    What is “inspiring” about this? What is “countercultural” about it? Kennedy was opposed on the issue by the likes of William F. Buckley. Buckley is the guy who sponsored James Kilpatrick’s screeds for Jim Crow well into the sixties, and, in 1963, Kilpatrick submitted an article to the Saturday Evening Post (ultimately rejected) that argued that African Americans were inherently inferior to whites. This policy was also opposed by Kennedy. (Click here for details)

    VIII

    The above information about Thornley should have been interesting enough to make him what investigators call “a person of interest”. Why was almost all of it, and even more, lost? In fact, actually buried, after the Shaw acquittal.

    There are two related reasons. David Lifton decided that his friendship with Thornley was more important than Jim Garrison’s investigation. Therefore, he decided to battle Garrison on both Thornley and other fronts, doing what he could to damage his reputation and credibility. He worked with Edward Epstein, and as the MSM buried Garrison—CBS, NBC, Saturday Evening Post, Newsweek—so did the leading lights of the critical community.

    I won’t go into all the details of the toxic assault that Lifton began on Garrison over what he perceived as the DA’s betrayal of a man he somehow, some way, considered a fine person and a valuable witness. For who? Albert Jenner? As Harold Weisberg wrote in a letter mentioned below, Lifton said Thornley appeared in New Orleans voluntarily since he had nothing to hide. According to Weisberg, Thornley was hauled into a Tampa court where the judge ordered him to appear in New Orleans. Lifton penned a two part attack article for an alternative weekly Open City that, for all its insight and subtlety, might have been written by Hugh Aynseworth. In his book Best Evidence, he termed the Garrison inquiry “a farce” (p. 717); and then when James Phelan died, he called Lisa Pease to let her know he had spoken at the funeral of the FBI informant; and she would like him if she knew him. Today, Phelan has been unveiled as nothing but a despicable character. (The Assassinations, edited by James DiEugenio and Lisa Pease, pp. 313-18)

    Like Clay Shaw with the MSM, Kerry Thornley himself was the origin of many of the stories used to attack Garrison on this particular issue. (Letter from Harold Weisberg to Open City, June 17, 1968) In his Open City article, Lifton tried to insinuate that it was Garrison and his methodology which generated a case against Heindel. Again, I refer the reader to the above referenced grand jury examination of Heindel as the litmus test on this issue. No one who has read that testimony could come to the conclusion expressed in The Prankster andthe Conspiracy about using Heindel in a massive plot to finger Shaw. And that testimony has been available since the nineties, when the ARRB secured many of those files. (Click here for the grand jury testimony of Heindel and others)

    As shown above, it’s not safe or scholarly to consistently use people like Lifton, Dave Reitzes, and Thornley to smear Jim Garrison. Due to their unrestrained virulence, one will run into ditches. In the last issue of the paper magazine garrison, editor S. T. Patrick had Adam Gorightly run an article saying that Harold Weisberg had sent Lifton’s then friend and working colleague, Fred Newcomb, pictures of Thornley which Harold wanted commercial artist Newcomb to make up to look like Oswald. This had been around since the sixties, when Lifton’s working pal Newcomb had sent letters presumably presenting that case to Thornley’s Florida attorney, who then got the charges in the Tampa Times. Like Lifton, Newcomb, and Thornley, Gorightly configures this to mean that somehow Jim Garrison was using unethical means to incriminate Thornley as an Oswald double.

    Harold Weisberg passed away in 2002. Gorightly’s book, The Prankster and the Conspiracy, was published in 2003. In that book, I saw no attempt by the author to interview Harold about this issue. Yet he does mention and utilize it for negative propaganda effect in the book. (p. 128) In fact, Gorightly plays this theme of photo alteration with Garrison as often as Jimi Hendrix playing power chords at Woodstock. To him, it is the ultimate proof of the dastardly Weisberg/Garrison plotting against his cultural/generational hero Thornley/Kesey.

    I learned about this episode back in the nineties. I have never been one to take Lifton at face value on anything he says about Garrison or Weisberg. In my view, Weisberg had done some good work on the JFK case. I did not always agree with him, but I thought that someone who had pretty much devoted his life to the case should be given the opportunity for a reply. Especially when people were attempting to defame him in public and portray Thornley as a put upon male version of Joan of Arc. After all, in all my research, neither Garrison nor Weisberg had been accused of these things—except by the hapless and not very credible MSM clown Jerry Posner.

    So, I called Harold and when I read back the accusation, he instantly said: “Jim, that is the kind of spin that someone like Lifton would put on it.” I said, “Spin?” Weisberg replied “Yes, spin.” He then explained to me that what he was trying to do with commercial artist Newcomb was to show that, even if you tried, you could not make Thornley resemble Oswald to the point that someone would mistake him for the alleged assassin. Of course, he could not tell Newcomb that or it would defeat the whole purpose of the exercise. If one looks in the declassified files, the associated identification of Thornley took place in late 1967. (Mellen, p. 273) The Weisberg letter to Newcomb was sent about four months later, in March of 1968. Therefore, the circumstances would bear out what Weisberg told this author.

    In this author’s opinion, Harold Weisberg deserved to be heard. If one does not let the accused reply, then one is involved in a slime job.

    But the reader needs a background on this issue. As Weisberg wrote about the identification incident, the owner of a printing company in New Orleans could not identify Oswald to the Secret Service as the man who picked up the handbills that the alleged assassin had ordered for his FPCC chapter. According to Weisberg, the FBI, which apparently had gone through the same experience, now leaned on the Secret Service to drop the inquiry. If this was allowed to continue, the myth of Oswald the loner in New Orleans would have ceased. (Weisberg, Never Again, p. 18) As an honest investigator is supposed to do, Weisberg picked up several photos from Garrison’s collection to create what is called a spread of faces. Among them were Thornley’s. Douglas Jones identified Thornley. (Mellen, p. 273) Weisberg said the same thing about his photo ID methodology to author Jeff Caufield in interviews before he passed away. (Caufield, p. 229) Garrison’s critics say the incident was not possible, because Thornley was not in New Orleans at the time. This may or may not be true. But as the reader will understand by now, for good reason, this author has a justified problem with Thornley’s credibility.

    As most readers understand, in the mid-seventies, through a nationally broadcast screening of the Zapruder film, the Kennedy assassination exploded into the public consciousness again. It was investigated by both the Church Committee and the HSCA. A rather strange thing happened to Garrison at this time. Kerry Thornley started bird dogging him. Garrison made a speech at Georgia State in 1975. Thornley, who happened to be attending the university, sent a go-between to approach the speaker. He wanted to talk with the former DA, specifically about how Garrison had made a mistake about him back in the sixties. (Gaeton Fonzi memo of 9/23/76) Sensing that Thornley was about to dump a pile of dis-info on him, Garrison declined.

    Thornley persisted. He then mailed him two letters. Garrison did not respond. Thornley now decided to send him what he claimed was the basis for the DA’s mistake. This was in the form of a fifty page memoir of Thornley in the sixties. Finally, he now recalled certain details from his past that he had—somehow, some way—forgotten to tell the DA back then. Even though he had all kinds of opportunities to do so—by phone, by letter, before the grand jury. Thornley now realized that he had been a part of a JFK assassination plot. It was so secretive that, in two years of inquiry, Garrison had not been able to uncover it, or how it worked. That is because the major perpetrators went under the pseudonyms Slim Brooks and Gary Kirstein. Who were these men? Well Thornley now claimed they were respectively Jerry Milton Brooks and Howard Hunt. Yes, that Howard Hunt. The man who had just been all over the news for about three years because of the Watergate scandal. Brooks was a former Minuteman who had turned informant for author Bill Turner. (DiEugenio, p. 192)

    I don’t want to spend very much time on Thornley’s piece of pulp fiction. It would embarrass Quentin Tarantino. But the idea that Jerry Milton Brooks had these kinds of connections within the CIA is so far out it should be riding with Elon Musk at NASA. As for Hunt, after working on the Bay of Pigs, he was then detailed to Allen Dulles for 1961 and into 1962, and eventually helped Dulles write his book, The Craft of Intelligence. (DiEugenio, pp. 55-56) He was then transferred to Tracy Barnes where he did commercial covers for his new unit DOD, or Domestic Operations. The idea that Hunt teamed up with Brooks to pull off the JFK murder, that Hunt worked for Mafia Don Joe Comforto, that Hunt spent that much time in New Orleans, that the two consulted with someone like Thornley on where to go to war after, and he suggested Vietnam, and they then tried to frame Thornley—anyone who believes this utter claptrap deserves nothing but unmitigated derision. It cheapens the subject matter and is an extension of the utter contempt Thornley had for President Kennedy. It is nothing but self-serving camouflage designed to protect Thornley with a fallback position for the Church Committee and the HSCA. Thornley understood Garrison might be consulting with a new inquiry and he wanted to get to the DA before the new investigation got to him.

    IX

    In the fall of 1967, Kerry Thornley and his wife Cara decided to leave California. They informed very few people. The reason Thornley gave for leaving the Golden State was an odd one. He needed more privacy in order to study Zenarchy. (Gorightly pp. 86-89) I won’t bother going into that. Just like I will not go into the other fruitcake endeavors, like Principia Discordia, that Kesey/Thornley spent his time on. But I will add that Thornley did admit he was also worried about the FBI talking to him about what he now really believed about the Warren Report.

    Because of this move, Jim Garrison did not have an easy time finding Thornley. (Garrison, On the Trail of the Assassins, p. 71) In fact, according to the DA, it took quite a long time to locate Thornley. In the nineties, I interviewed former Garrison investigator Jim Rose, who had his logs and journals on hand. A former CIA agent, he explained how he had used his Agency resources to locate Thornley. (DiEugenio, p. 191)

    But after spending considerable time, effort, and funds to find the witness, Thornley refused to talk to the DA. Please compare this with the Warren Commission. In that instance, Thornley dropped everything, including about ten days of credit on a rental, in order to hightail it to an easy job in Virginia where he could conveniently be available to cooperate with the Commission in preparations for his testimony. But now, that whole relationship is pretty much reversed. And then some.

    In a memorandum Thornley wrote on October 24, 1967, he expresses trepidations about Garrison. In some way, he feels that the DA is covering up for LBJ, who Lifton thinks is behind the assassination. By letter, he now begins to dictate terms to Garrison. One of those terms ended up being he would only meet assistant DA, Andy Sciambra at NASA, which was the place where many of those who worked with Oswald at Reily Coffee Company had been later transferred. (DiEugenio, p. 191) Apparently, coffee grinders make good aerospace designers. (Garrison, pp. 115-16) As he entered the establishment, Sciambra recalled thinking that, if someone like Thornley could command entry into such a place, then Garrison probably didn’t stand a chance in Hades of winning out. Obviously, Thornley did not just call NASA and say: I need a secure room to meet with an opposing attorney; put me next to a rocket silo, so he gets the message. No, not Thornley. Someone did that for him. Someone involved in protecting him.

    In one of the declassifications revealed by the ARRB, the CIA admitted that it ran something called a Cleared Attorneys Panel in major cities—one of them being New Orleans during the Garrison investigation. The existence of this panel was first exposed in a classified letter by attorney James Quaid to CIA Director Dick Helms on May 13, 1967. In that letter, which was declassified relatively early in the ARRB process, Quaid asked to be placed on the CIA’s preferred list of lawyers in New Orleans. To show the level of deceit involved in this covert operation, when this author, along with Bill Davy, interviewed Clay Shaw’s lead attorney Irvin Dymond in New Orleans in the mid-nineties, he said there was no such panel and the letter must be a fraud.

    At the time of the interview, the further releases on the subject had not yet been declassified. One of them later revealed that Shaw’s partner at the International Trade Mart, Lloyd Cobb, had been accepted and “granted Provisional Security Approval in connection with his use on a Cleared Attorneys’ Panel for the Office of General Counsel.” (Memo of 3/13/68, italics in original) The program went up to the CIA’s Chief Counsel Larry Houston. The idea that Dymond would not know that his client’s partner had been accepted on that panel is too ridiculous to contemplate.

    The reason Dymond lied is because in his Playboy interview, this is what Garrison said was happening. Many of his clients and suspects were being furnished with attorneys paid by the CIA. For example, Gordon Novel had four attorneys being “clandestinely remunerated” by sources unknown to him. One of those lawyers, Herb Miller, was shared by Novel with a man he talked to a lot while Garrison was trying to get Gordon back to New Orleans, namely Allen Dulles. (DiEugenio, pp.262-63)

    How does this relate to Thornley and the issue about NASA explained above? Simple. James Quaid’s law partner was Edward Baldwin. Baldwin ended up being one of Thornley’s lawyers. (See the above referenced Quaid letter, Gorightly, p. 153) Quaid understood that Baldwin had hopped on the gravy train early; Quaid now wanted some of those “clandestinely remunerated” Agency fees too. Baldwin was in the thick of all this agency intrigue. When Garrison was attempting to try Walter Sheridan for bribing and intimidating witnesses, Baldwin was one of the former NSA officer’s two lawyers. Mr. Baldwin also increased his wealth by defending local newsman Ric Townley. This is the reporter who threatened Marlene Mancuso, Novel’s estranged wife, with investigation unless she helped Townley “destroy Jim Garrison.” A few days later, Townley called her and said “If you don’t get out, you could get killed.” (Mellen, p. 192, 93) Nice defendants for Mr. Baldwin. Thornley’s other attorney was Arnold Levine in Florida who, according to Thornley, said words to the effect, pay me when you can. Plus, however and whoever, Thornley had access to NASA.

    When Jim Rose discovered through his Agency sources that Thornley had moved to Florida for Zenarchy purposes, he found he had two places there: one in Miami and one in Tampa. He drove down to look at the place in Tampa. It was a large white-frame house on something like a one acre lot. Many have wondered, how could Thornley afford a place like that? His defenders, like Lifton, constantly rant that he was poor and had no such resources.

    For some possible elucidation, let us flash forward to the days of the HSCA. Thornley had moved west to east at the time of the Garrison investigation. After failing to get his audience with the DA, but sending him his pulp fiction novella, he now moved east to west, back to California. When the HSCA found him, he did not want to speak to them until he lawyered up. (HSCA report of 5/24/78) When tossed a couple of questions, like did he recall with any precision when he moved back to New Orleans in the fall of 1963, Thornley said they could meet the next day for a discussion. The next day, Thornley failed to show up. The LAPD agreed to look for the runaway witness, but the HSCA was winding down and, as with the Warren Commission Chief Counsel Robert Blakey—and his writing assistant Dick Billings—did not want to open any more doors. (Mellen, p. 346) The home where Thornley first met with the two investigators was a large 5-bedroom, 2-bath on a sprawling lot, this time 2 acres. Thornley sure had access to some nice homes while he was under investigation for the JFK case. Just another coincidence.

    In the light of the above revealed record, we can and should establish some things about Thornley that are based on that adduced record. Thornley was perceived to be an important witness by the FBI and Secret Service. About that there can be no doubt. Second, Thornley gave the Warren Commission what they wanted. That one can easily discern that from the forensic analysis of his testimony above. One can also see that not only did he give them what they wanted, they also did what they could to cover certain instances that an objective investigator would have pursued e.g. his true associations with people like Butler and Bringuier, the bizarre height discrepancy, his possible knowledge of Albert Schweitzer College.

    As for his perjury, as shown above, there isn’t much that Thornley was not lying about, or at least equivocating upon. And it’s a shame that we had to wait until the ARRB to get the evidence. Some of it from Thornley himself. All the people he once said he did not know, or was not sure about, he now said he did know. And not only did he do a hit job on Oswald for the Warren Commission, he was doing it in New Orleans right after the assassination: Oswald was a demented communist.

    But yet, Thornley then admitted to both Doris Dowell and Bernard Goldsmith that he knew Oswald was not a communist. How can one explain such behavior? I believe it’s not explainable, unless we allow that Thornley was playing a role, his motivation being his almost pathological hatred of JFK, which David Lifton cannot bring himself to confront. But to hammer it home, in 1992 on the syndicated program A Current Affair, he said, “I would have stood there with a rifle and pulled the trigger if I would have had the chance.” (Program of 2/25/92)

    X

    As mentioned previously, Adam Gorightly uses David Lifton as a frequent source about Jim Garrison in his book, which, to me, is sort of like using Donald Trump as a source on Barack Obama. And he also frequently uses John McAdams’ partner Dave Reitzes and also Thornley himself. And, as we can see from above with the late Harold Weisberg, he allows them to run rampant without allowing voice to the people they run over, even when that person has something relevant to say that changes the equation. To put it mildly, this is what is called doing a smear job.

    But yet, using that dubious paradigm, Gorightly allows Thornley to say that Garrison—not Weisberg, but Garrison—also used photographic deception with a witness at the Mexican embassy in New Orleans and with witnesses who said they saw Thornley at Oswald’s apartment talking with Marina Oswald.

    No one has seen more of Garrison’s extant files than I have. I have shared these with others. In fact, a three man team went through them and filed them with me once we had them in Los Angeles. Jim Garrison never did any of what Thornley is saying. Gorightly also attempts to smear Garrison by saying a copy of an affidavit on Thornley being with Oswald was not signed. I have seen literally scores upon scores of affidavits from Garrison’s office. Some are signed and some are not. The reason some are not signed is the same reason that some people do not keep a copy of a signed will laying around the house. Do I need to explain that? The reason that some are signed is that many came from Garrison’s own archives.

    I mentioned the liberal use of snark to cheapen the subject matter. At the beginning, Gorightly strikes the mantra of I used to be a JFK researcher, but now I realize it’s really a kind of “circle jerk, leading to no ultimate conclusion, just a form of entertainment masquerading as intellectual pursuit.” (Gorightly, p. 17) Spoken like a researcher who writes FOIA’s for HSCA documents, but does not know anything about the true state of the evidence.

    Then there is the LSD meme. The author writes that at Atusgi, or perhaps one of the Tokyo bars, Oswald might have been made an MK/Ultra subject. (p. 186) He then adds on the hoary story about a New Orleans assistant DA who recognized Oswald after the assassination as a man who had quizzed him about importing drugs, perhaps LSD into the USA. He leaves out the fact that the FBI decided not to follow up the story, because the witness had such bad eyesight he was not capable of face-to-face identification. (Rolling Stone, March 3, 1983) The two stories were so asinine that co-author Martin Lee did not even use them in his book Acid Dreams.

    He uses this to connect to, in this same section, the discredited Tim Leary story that he supplied Mary Meyer with LSD and she gave it to President Kennedy. As I have pointed out, this is completely undermined by the fact that Leary never came close to mentioning doing such a thing for nearly 20 years, even though he had written about 20 books in the meantime. Some of them almost daily diaries. But we are to think he forgot to mention that time he met the former wife of a CIA officer, the striking looking Mary Meyer? Please.

    But with Gorightly on Thornley there are no brakes, because he also writes that, in his last weeks in New Orleans, Oswald was at animal ritual killings and blood guzzling sacrifices. No kidding. Forget Jim Garrison and the Clinton/Jackson incident you circle jerker you. It’s really about Loren Coleman? (Gorightly, p. 115)

    But this, I think, is the impression Gorightly wants to leave, that somehow in all those many months, all those pages of files, all those CIA infiltrators—like Gordon Novel, who he seems to know jack about—there really was not anything at all to the Jim Garrison inquiry. And its biggest crime is that it somehow detracted us from the Ken Kesey type talents of Kerry Thornley. My question though is why stop there? If you want to go out the window with hyperbole, why not compare Thornley to the greatest writer in English of the 20th century: How about Joyce?

    On this site, the reader can listen to my 26 hour interview with Dave Emory. He read Destiny Betrayed, took copious notes and went through that amply footnoted volume, which is based largely on the declassified documents of the ARRB. This is what intelligent discourse is made of outside the eccentric versions of New Orleans inhabited by John McAdams and David Lifton.

    Let me list just ten achievements of the deceased DA in comparison to work by Americans that came before him between 1964-67.

    1. Garrison was the first critic to declare that Oswald was an agent provocateur, probably in the employ of the CIA.
    2. The DA was the first critic to find out just what the stamp 544 Camp Street on Oswald’s pamphlet meant.
    3. Garrison was the first person to make a solid connection between Oswald, Ferrie, and Shaw, at the above Clinton/Jackson incident.
    4. The DA was the first critic to understand that Mexico City was a central part of the plot to kill Kennedy.
    5. Garrison was the first critic to comprehend that the escalation of the Vietnam War was a direct result of Kennedy’s murder.
    6. First critic to prove that Clay Bertrand was Clay Shaw (DiEugenio, pp. 387-88)
    7. Garrison’s leads were paralleled and backed up by the FBI (Click here for details)
    8. First critic who said JFK’s murder was a coup d’etat
    9. First critic who said the murder of JFK was designed to roll back JFK’s foreign policy. (Click here for details)
    10. First critic to say the murders of MLK and RFK were related to JFK.

    Please compare this (partial) list to what Richard Popkin, Tink Thompson, Ed Epstein, Sylvia Meagher, and Mark Lane were writing at the time. Ask yourself why Gorightly leaves it all out. And what does this say about the value and the deliberate intent of his work.

    For more, listen to those 26 hours. Adam Gorightly describes himself as a crackpot historian. As far as the JFK case goes, he should call himself Adam Gowrongly.

    see Kerry Thornley: A New Look (Part 1)