Tag: MEXICO CITY

Case linkage and patsy casting for regime change operations

Case linkage, also called linkage analysis or comparative case analysis, is an offender profiling process that helps crime investigators determine whether a series of crimes were committed by the same offender.

The Warren Commission and the investigative agencies at their service never performed this type of standard research for the JFK assassination.

In The Three Failed Plots to Kill JFK: The Historians’ Guide on how to Research his Assassination published in 2016, I did some data mining from the works of reputable authors and original source documents (mostly from the Mary Ferrell Foundation) which centered on three previous plots (L.A., Chicago and Tampa) to assassinate JFK within the six months that preceded the murder and six potential patsies (Vaughn Marlowe, Richard Case Nagell, Thomas Arthur Vallee, Harry Power, Santiago Garriga and Policarpo Lopez). (Before reading this follow-up, it is strongly recommended that you read the original article by following the above hyperlink.)

What we can conclude from this analysis is that the peculiarities that one can find in their personas, associations and actions is hardly a haphazard collection of traits and behaviors. I have argued that there is a ZR/Rifle (CIA Executive Action) signature at play that points the finger straight at its signatories and the reliable executors of this regime-change M.O., namely: David Atlee Phillips, William Harvey, David Morales and their long established network of assassins and frame-up artists which includes Mafiosi and Cuban exiles.

Crucial to this line of inquiry will be the use of data visualization which will play a determining role in a summation phase of our quest to correct history book and mainstream media falsities in their accounts of November 22, 1963.

In this article, we will push the analysis even further by covering a fourth failed plot, add some information about one of the potential patsies already profiled, and add two more to our already impressive list. We will begin, however by discussing how the use of data visualization should be considered more often by authors in order to help synthesize this complex case.

Numerical data may be encoded using dots, lines, or bars, to visually communicate a quantitative message. Effective visualization helps users analyze and reason about data and evidence. It makes complex data more accessible, understandable and usable. (Wikipedia)

In Oswald’s Intelligence Connections: How Richard Schweiker clashes with Fake History, I chronicle some 64 characters (soon to be updated to over 75) that Oswald had touch points with that either certainly (over 30) or plausibly had intelligence connections. They were fluffed off by the Warren Commission instead of being mapped out in a diagram and analyzed for who they really were and who they linked up with—exactly what the Mueller Probe is doing for anyone with a direct or indirect relation with the Trump camp.

In my CIA and Mafia’s “Cuban-American mechanism” article, the chart below is used to showcase Santo Trafficante’s links with CIA, Mafia and Cuban exile persons of interest. Of particular interest are the persons with their names in red: No fewer than six for certain and two plausibly are directly involved in the Oswald set-up, murder or cover story and also are connected to Trafficante. The Trafficante, Roselli, Harvey, Morales, and Robertson links should also stimulate a lot of research:

Also in this article, readers can inspect a table that singles out David Atlee Phillips as a person of extreme interest.

In all, Oswald and Phillips shared 23 touch points—20 of which took place within the year in and around the assassination. It is simply impossible to ignore this number of connections between a CIA officer and a lone drifter!

The Phantom Plot in Nashville, May 1963

After reading the Previous Plots article, researcher Frank Cassano sent me information about another plot that failed in Nashville which had been covered by Bill Adams in 1993 for The Fourth Decade:

Synopsis of Assassination Attempt Against JFK, May 18, 1963, in Nashville TN

A few years ago I began looking into other assassination sites as well as other potential assassins and potential patsies. I was able to track a potential JFK assassin to the general area (Knoxville, TN) of a planned JFK motorcade in May of 1963. The trip was altered prior to the actual day of the trip and JFK instead made a visit to Nashville, TN. His visit, on May 18, 1963, included several motorcades.

In early 1992 I was shocked to see a tabloid print a story about an assassination attempt against JFK during the Nashville trip! Congressman Bob Clement of Tennessee had made a startling revelation. He said his father, the late Gov. Frank Clement (governor of Tennessee in 1963) told him of a strange incident while JFK awaited a helicopter after visiting the Governor. The tabloid quoted Congressman Bob Clement of Tennessee as stating, “While the President waited for the helicopter, a man approached with a gun hidden underneath a sack. Secret Service agents spotted him and grabbed him”.

I called and interviewed the congressman in the early summer of 1963. I also obtained actual Nashville news stories about the congressman’s revelation in January of 1992. As a result of reading the news stories and talking to Congressman Clement, I have been able to piece together the following story:

President Kennedy arrived in Nashville on May 18, 1963. He rode in a motorcade to Vanderbilt University where he gave a speech outside in the football stadium. JFK left the stadium in another motorcade and drove to the governor’s mansion. Somewhere between the Governor’s mansion and the helicopter landing site at Overton High School, a man approached JFK with a handgun under a sack. It is unclear whether JFK was in his limousine or not at the time. The governor witnessed this event and the subsequent capture of the suspect by the Secret Service. The man was held at the High School for some time. Nothing more is known about the man. The Secret Service asked the governor to keep the event out of the press for fear it would lead to more assassination attempts.

I have also found some writings about a gun found in a paper bag in the vicinity of Dealey Plaza, however the foundation for this aspect of the story is not solid.

While this failed plot is by far the thinnest of the four looked into, it is worth noting for the following reasons:

1. As with the Chicago plot, a suspect was picked up and released without any trace: no names, fingerprints, photos, reports, etc.
2. The Nashville attempt, as was the case for all of the other failed plots, was revisited by neither the Secret Service nor the FBI after the JFK assassination.
3. The Secret Service once again took steps to keep media from publicizing it.
4. None of the four failed plots were known to the Warren Commission.

Over and above underscoring this pattern of secrecy, it may be worth pursuing whether or not there are still files or witnesses that could shed light on the incident and the suspect. Who were the arresting agents? Are they alive? What can we learn about this suspect? Was he also communist leaning? Was he linked to the FPCC? Did he have Cuban contacts? Why was he let go? Was he at least placed on an FBI watch list? Perhaps an FOIA request would be in order.

More on Harry Power

In the “Three Previous Plots” article, the alternate patsy that had the skimpiest profile was Harry Power. Other snippets of information about him have since surfaced.

Here is how Harry Power was originally covered:

San Antonio, November 21, 1963

Because of the code of omertà surrounding the JFK assassination, Harry Power’s story is perhaps the sketchiest of the potential scapegoat cases we will have discussed. But since no stone should be left unturned when investigating a murder, especially a president’s, it is worth identifying and earmarking for more analysis.

Harry Power was yet another ex-marine who checked in to a Terre Haute House Hotel room in Indiana on November 25, 1963 with a long package. When he checked out, he left behind a rifle … a Mannlicher-Carcanno, according to a retired Chief of Police Frank Riddle … a Mauser, according another unidentified source.

A United States Government Memo in 1967 describes the allegation. Riddle claimed San Antonio authorities informed him that Power was a member of the Young Communist League and an expert rifle marksman. An ex-co-worker described him as anti-Kennedy. He had held a job in San Antonio Texas in 1962.

Riddle stated that all information had been turned over to the Warren Commission and that the rifle was taken by Secret Service agents. The Secret Service claimed to have only found out about this incident in 1965. Their key source is none other than the head of the Washington Secret Service, Chief Rowley himself, who you will recall played a key role in keeping the Chicago plot as secret as possible. The FBI did confirm, however, that the Terre Haute Police department had in fact followed up on this lead around when Riddle claimed it happened … which would indicate further Secret Service and Warren Commission complacency.

According to Dick Russell, Richard Nagell told Jim Garrison that Power was a Trotskyite who had met Oswald.

Given that JFK motorcaded in San Antonio on November 21 and that Power could easily be linked to that city, it is not a major leap to see similarities between Power, Oswald and the other scapegoat candidates that seem to have been lined up before the assassination. [slightly edited]

The Indiana Rifle story had received little interest until journalist Sheldon Inkol researched it in 1993 (The Third Decade, Volume 9, Issue 5: “The Indiana Rifle,” by Sheldon Inkol) and updated his findings in 1995 for The Fourth Decade. From his research and FBI file 62-109060 JFK HQ, we can now add the following points:

1. The rifle found in Indiana was most likely a Mauser and not a Mannlicher-Carcanno.
2. Because of an NSF check written by Power, we know that at one time he was in New Orleans.
3. An ex-co-worker of Power’s who was the witness Riddle referred to was Roger Dresch, who also stated that Power was a hunter who sighted a rifle with a scope at a shooting range, that he had been a paratrooper who complained about his father being an alcoholic, and who occasionally talked about becoming a hermit in the wilderness.

According to Inkol, it is Dick Russell who first revealed the name of Harry Power in The Man Who Knew Too Much in 1992. There had been only small articles about the incident before this. Inkol credits veteran researcher Larry Haapanen, who interviewed Riddle, for having confirmed the name of Power after following up on an article in 1970.

Dick Russell provided the following to the Harry Power profile:

A National Archives document about the affair was declassified in 1970 … a file reports that Power had been investigated in connection with the shooting attempt on General Walker in Dallas, a shooting that the WC falsely claimed to have been by Oswald and his Mannlicher-Carcano. Other files associated with the Power rifle claim that it was a 7.65 Mauser. CIA agent Richard Nagell told Garrison investigators in 1967 that Power was a Maoist or Trotskyite and “had known Lee Harvey Oswald and had been seen with him …”

Inkol adds the following points, based on police investigations:

1. There were no fingerprints on the Mauser.
2. Indiana Police indicated that the hotel where the rifle was found was right across from the Democratic and Republican headquarters.
3. According to Riddle, the FBI tried to link Power’s presence to a political rally going on the night before in proximity to the Terre Haute hotel.
4. The editor of the Indianapolis News and the NRA, who had found out about the incident, were asked to keep it silent by authorities.
5. Power seemed to have a troubled marriage.
6. He had financial difficulties.
7. He was described as a “Smart Aleck”, “Trouble Maker” and person with a warped outlook on life.
8. He had failed at one point to get a driver’s license.
9. He may have been from Chicago.

According to Inkol, Frank Riddle insisted that Power was a suspect in the attempt on General Walker’s life the previous April—something the Warren Commission tagged on Oswald. In 1964, Secret Service Chief James Rowley confirmed to Riddle that the FBI and the Secret Service had files on Power.

Inkol tempers Riddle as a source as he points out that some have qualified him as a “blow-hard”.

Inkol is not convinced that Power was even in the hotel. He argues that the description given (age, height and weight) of the person with the rifle in the hotel is very different from the San Antonio description of Power.

He believes that one possibility that merits further investigation is that he was being set up as an alternate patsy or part of a subversive pro-communist group intent on attacking the U.S. Government—who could have been pinned as the shooter from the knoll if a front shot had to be admitted to.

He also points out that had the assassination taken place in San Antonio where Kennedy motorcaded a day earlier, the patsy might have been Power instead of Oswald.

Inkol ends the first article with a fleeting comment about the Indiana rifle being perhaps linked to a seventh potential patsy according to David Lifton who twice interviewed the next subject we will discuss, but revealed very little to Inkol about him. I decided to contact Lifton to follow up on this tantalizing clue about yet another alternate scapegoat (not to be confused with the famous astronaut), who even without a link to the rifle is, in terms of his profile, an Oswald dead ringer!

John Glenn

Unlike most of the other potential fall guys that figure in this analysis, the case of John Glenn and his wife Marcia is quite well documented. This, however, has nothing to do with the FBI, CIA, or Warren Commission’s efforts to scrutinize this Oswald semi-replica.

According to the WC, Oswald opening an FPCC chapter in New Orleans was a demonstration of his ego trip … period! Fortunately for researchers, the FPCC was under intensive scrutiny by the Internal Security Subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee and the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC).

Through their reports and the writings in 1993 of Jerry Rose (The Third Decade, “Red Summer of ‘63”), we can paint a better picture of Glenn and the role the FPCC came to play in making our cast of puppets easy to frame for the crime of the century.

The FPCC was characterised as “Castro’s Network in the USA” by the HUAC. Membership within this anti-U.S. organization was described during hearings as an effective door-opener to enter Cuba via the Cuban Embassy in Mexico City and Cubana Airlines.

Though the HUAC had been seriously rattled by the McCarthy era witch-hunts, Castro was breathing some new life into this outfit for political showcasing of American patriotism.

One area that got their attention was the travel to Cuba by American students despite a travel ban. On June 25, 1963, 58 students left New York and transited through Russia satellite Czechoslovakia on the way to Cuba where they were apparently well received by the Castro regime. This group had been infiltrated by an informant named Barry Hoffman who had gotten approval from agencies that were tied to the FBI, CIA, and State Department. During hearings in September of 1963, he painted the students as pro-Cuba and anti-U.S.A. and talked about rumors that Cuba had not dismantled the nuclear installations on the island.

Evidently, he was a poor spy who was not trusted by the other students. He was “number 3 on their fink list”. Numbers 1 and 2 were John Glenn and his wife Marcia.

On November 18, 1963—four days before JFK’s assassination, the Glenns’ testimony before the HUAC had the effect of smearing the FPCC. Transcripts of the hearings point out striking similarities with Oswald:

John Glenn joined the U.S. Air force in 1950.

While in the service, Glenn received training in the Russian language at Syracuse University and became a Russian linguist for Air Force Intelligence, with security clearance for secret, top secret, and cryptographic information. Meanwhile, he continued his regular college studies through night school and correspondence courses. Glenn, while still receiving regular military service pay, including food and housing allowances, returned to full-time studies at the Indiana University where he obtained a degree in business administration in January 1954.

He then resumed active duty with Air Force Intelligence for 2 more years, including 16 months overseas, before being discharged in January 1956, after reaching the rank of staff sergeant.

During the summer of 1958, he visited the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, and Poland for about 40 days as a guide for the Tom Maupintour Associates, an American travel agency. The next summer he toured the same countries, plus Yugoslavia and Rumania, in a similar capacity for another travel organization.

The witness confirmed information obtained through an investigation by the Committee on Un-American Activities that he had traveled to Mexico in the spring of 1962 in an attempt to get a Cuban visa. He was unsuccessful.

It was at about this time, the fall of 1962, Glenn told the subcommittee, that he joined the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. He had been a sympathizer of the group much earlier, he said. He admitted having written a letter printed in an Indiana University publication, dated February 10, 1962, in which he said that “the people in Fair Play are willing to argue to anyone who will listen that our government and our press are lying through their teeth [about Cuba].”

The witness admitted that, without having applied for U.S. validation, he traveled to Cuba with the group of alleged students who departed from New York on a BOAC plane on June 25, 1963. Glenn acknowledged the accuracy of the subcommittee’s information that on the return trip, after arriving in Spain with the main body of U.S. “students” on August 26, 1963, he left the group and traveled to Morocco. He said that after he and his wife had learned they could stay abroad for a while, they had decided to travel to Algeria to observe the political developments there, which were supposed to be similar to what they had witnessed in Cuba.

When the Glenns arrived in Morocco from Spain, the witness testified, they received an entry permit to Algeria from the Algerian Government. While hitchhiking their way to Algeria, however, they were arrested by the Moroccan police and ordered deported to Spain as undesirables. He said he learned from both the American consul in Rabat, Morocco, and the Moroccan police that the deportation was ordered by the United States Government.

On October 15, 1963, according to investigation by the Committee on Un-American Activities, Glenn reported to the American Embassy in Madrid, Spain, that he and his wife did not have a ticket for return transportation to the United States. The embassy purchased a ticket for them, and they were flown to the United States on an Iberian Air Lines plane.

Their landlord testified that the Glenns possessed communist literature, including The Militant, which Oswald also subscribed to, that connected them to the Socialist Worker Party and its affiliate YSA.

In his article, Jerry Rose speculates that “given the possibility that Glenn was connected somehow with a rifle in Indiana which was believed to be related to the assassination, it is possible as well that Glenn, like Oswald, was being groomed as pro-communist patsy if Oswald for any reason did not work out in the role.” Rose advances that Glenn’s forced return and appearance before the HUAC suggest (but do not prove) control from high places … an interpretation he felt at the time that was worth pursuing.

David Lifton

When I first reached out to David Lifton through some of my contacts who know him, I was a bit apprehensive. But after some email exchanges, David Lifton generously shared some of his observations.

Here are the preliminary questions I sent David:

1. Can you summarize when the interviews took place, where, how long they lasted, who was present?
2. What led you to want to interview Glenn in the first place and how did you set them up?
3. What were the topics covered and what were the main things he had to say and that you observed?
4. Glenn’s learning of the Russian language, links to the FPCC, the way he entered Morocco and came back. Some point out the similarities to Oswald and the fingerprints of intelligence—what did your interviews (and other research) bring out in this area?
5. Inkol mentions that you said that Glenn had a link to the Indiana Rifle (which is the one that links to William Power I believe). Can you discuss this?
6. Do you think Glenn was being set up as a potential patsy?—please explain.
7. You mentioned you knew about William Power. How? and if you do read my article, you will see that what I have on him is quite thin (I have found a few more bits of information that I will add). If there is anything you can add I would be most grateful.

Without going into details, David’s preamble to answering my questions deals with how the passage of time and moving his office unfortunately cloud his recollection of his meetings with Glenn. What follows here are his responses:

So… that having been said, and based on current recollection.

RESPONSE TO Q1-3: Glenn’s name came up in connection with my embarking on a comprehensive search of all print (i.e., newspaper) coverage of the JFK assassination, using a set of microfilms I purchased from University Microfilms in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

I believe that it was the San Antonio papers—either the San Antonio Light, or the News—Express (there were only two San Antonio papers) —that carried stories about what happened on 11/21/63. About a “mystery car” parked at a curb, and some remarks made by one of the occupants of that car, to the effect that “He’ll never get through this city.” Something like that. That led to the San Antonio Police dispatcher putting out a call for that vehicle to “call in to your headquarters” or some such thing. Then, 24-36 hours later, after JFK was assassinated in Dallas, this incident (call it the “San Antonio incident”) then resulted in significant “follow-up” coverage, and that led to the name John Glenn and the story of the San Antonio rifle, linked to the Indiana (Bloomington, IN, I think) rifle.

Anyway, I clipped those stories, then obtained the House (or Senate? not sure) hearings that took place on or about Nov 18, 1963, at which Glenn testified, as I recall.

With that as background, I then sought contact with Glenn, who—I somehow learned—lived in Venice, California.

My first meeting with Glenn was at the UCLA Student Union. What I remember is that it was dark outside, and the SU cafeteria was crowded, and that was how I met him.

I questioned him closely and established—to my satisfaction (again, “as I presently recall”) —that he did not fit the profile of an “alternate” patsy because there was no evidence whatsoever that there was any third party in his life influencing where he was living, or what he was doing, or asking him to do anything.

Of course, I was disappointed in the result, but that’s what I found.

Subsequently, when Robert Sam Anson (who I came to know) was writing about the JFK assassination (for Esquire, I think), he wanted to follow-up on this. Again, as I recall. And, again, as I recall, the two of us actually went to John Glenn’s Venice apartment and spoke with him.

I do not remember the details at all. What I do remember is being in John Glenn’s apartment, and having the sense that he was “just like Oswald,” something like that. I believe I had that sense because he had either a poster of, or paraphernalia connected with, The Militant. Again, I don’t remember. What I do remember is the UCLA Student Union “first meeting” and my sense of disappointment that my

hypothesis wasn’t panning out.

RESPONSE to Q4: See answer to Question 1. FYI: I kept a very imperfect “journal” of my daily work; and I would often write letters home, but I don’t believe they would have contained any relevant information.

Anyway, that material is stored “elsewhere.”

RESPONSE to Q5: I believe that the “primary source” for these “links” comes from the San Antonio newspaper coverage—again, I was using microfilmed records of the S A Light and/or News Express for the period 11/20 —11/25/1963.

RESPONSE to Q6: That was my hypothesis, but what I remember is being (very) disappointed that my questioning of him failed to unearth any supporting data. (Could he have been deceiving me? I suppose he “could have,” but I’m pretty confident that I was not being fooled, and that he was who he “appeared to be.”)

RESPONSE to Q7:

1. Please send me the link to your article (or anything else you wish me to read) again. I’m not sufficiently “organized” to lay my hands on it at this moment.
2. As I recall, it all stemmed from my work with the microfilmed records of the two San Antonio newspapers.

Also, and this may be of interest to you—or maybe not—I think that some of this “San Antonio” stuff may have been covered in the Dallas Morning News in the day or two after JFK was assassinated.

David followed up shortly after with this following point:

P.S.  What I forgot to mention in my memo …

That the San Antonio newspaper (one of them) reported after the assassination of JFK on Friday 11/22/63, that the “mystery car” was a Secret Service vehicle.

And that’s what made the whole incident so very important.

Harry Dean

Harry Dean is one of those characters I put into the category of unreliable witnesses who may have important knowledge, but that have made many statements that are easily contestable and that have had researchers chasing their tails. Unfortunately, in the JFK assassination soap opera—we are faced with a whole slew of personalities who mislead yet can sometimes be decoded to a certain degree. Frank Sturgis and Gerry Patrick Hemming come to mind, as they along with others tried to send HSCA investigator Gaeton Fonzi and other researchers on wild goose chases. They nevertheless give us a better picture of the decadent setting Oswald immersed himself in.

When dealing with such characters, without fully dismissing them, it is prudent not to waste much time on them and only go with what can be corroborated.

Before reading some of Dean’s forum posts, I looked at what other researchers had to say about him.

For over 50 years, Dean made claims in letters and forums that he had been recruited, selected, and led by American Intelligence forces to take on special missions such as spying on Castro while in Cuba, the John Birch Society, and the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. Only in 2017 would he finally admit that he was not an official FBI informant.

In a 2005 post on The Education Forum, he came up with the following claim:

But among the widespread ‘rightist’ movement were assassin-minded persons that would take action to aid in seizing control of the U.S. government if only given the word.

Even being tight-knit with the individuals involved, except for bits and pieces of confusing information I failed to timely detect a clearer picture of the real and more subtle plot to kill the president … the plan move relentlessly … but a ‘need-to-know’ method of secrecy was being applied among my radical associates.

When the name of a Fair Play For Cuba Committee communist was broadcast throughout the rightist circuit after the airing of an August, 1963 radio program from Station WDSU, New Orleans, Louisiana, Lee Oswald was ‘selected’ by another of our {JBS} associates, retired U.S. Army General E.A. Walker of Dallas, Texas.

The subject was chosen by ‘Guy” Gabaldon as ‘the fall guy’ in the secretive plot against Kennedy. None of us objected, and found it humorous to frame a communist. I quietly considered it as goofy as the weird, but hazy, arrangements to kill the president.

When Kennedy visited Mexico City in late June of 1962, Gabaldon, in league with some rightist Mexican Federal Police Officials, was set to shoot president Kennedy. Only a last minute escape problem aborted that assassination scheme … Two other of our associates … Lawrence John Howard—aka Alonzo Escruido, and Loran Eugene ‘Skip’ Hall—aka Lorenzo Pacillo, were dispatched by Gabaldon to enlist Oswald in {a phony CIA, Central Intelligence Agency set-up} at Gabaldon’s Mexico City area office.

General Walker did not orchestrate the assassination, nor the framing of Oswald! Nor did the Mafia, the Cuban exiles, Birchers, etc. Walker could not have organized the weakening of security, the botched autopsy, the Mexico City Oswald imposter episode, the Warren Commission failures, the propaganda offensives. The framing of Oswald began before he left Dallas for New Orleans.

This goes a long way in explaining why some have suggested that I not include Dean in a comparative analysis of potential patsies.

However, when researching the documentary trail about Harry Dean on the Mary Ferrell site, as well as on forums and websites (see: https://sites.google.com/site/xrt013/harrydean) that provide an in-depth analysis of Dean’s statements and pertinent documents—we can nevertheless find information about the FPCC, Dean himself and other characters that seem to be part of a model:

A 1962 Los Angeles FBI File reveals the following about Dean:

LAX advised Chicago FBI office about phone conversation which Harry had with SA William J. McCauley.   During that phone conversation, Harry “confided that he had been an informant for the Chicago Office, having been a Secretary of the Chicago chapter of the FPCC, but that largely because his wife had become very upset over his activities on behalf of the FBI, he had discontinued his informant activities and had come to the LAX area about one year ago, and is now employed as a plasterer operating out of the Union Office on Vermont Avenue, Los Angeles. He added that he has, since his arrival in Los Angeles, had casual contact with Edgar and Marjorie Swabeck, whom he had previously known in the Chicago area, and from them has learned that Marjorie Swabeck is secretary of the LAX chapter of the FPCC at the present time. He said that he otherwise has taken no particular interest in the FPCC, and that while he himself is personally not averse to resuming informant activities in behalf of the FBI, he hesitates to do so because of his wife’s feeling in the matter. The Chicago Office is requested to verify and furnish a brief summary of the subject’s background, particularly his activities as an informant and his reliability while known to the Chicago office.”

Another L.A. 1962 FBI file goes on further:

SAC Chicago to SAC LAX

Dean first called the Chicago Office in August, 1960, to report that he had been elected Recording Secretary, Chicago Chapter, FPCC. He did not divulge his name and address at this time. Later in the same month he called this office, stating his name and advising he was residing at 1540 Central Avenue, Whiting, Indiana, and that he owned his own business, the Whiting Plastering Company. He told of his connections with the FPCC, furnished information concerning the leadership of this organization, and said he would be amenable to an interview with an agent of the FBI.

The Indianapolis Office conducted an inquiry in Whiting, Indiana, in September 1960. Detective Captain Edward Grabovac, Whiting, Indiana Police Department, advised that Dean, whose real name he believed to be Gordon Hunt and who had used the name George R. Baker, had skipped town and the Whiting PD had a warrant for his arrest on bad check charges. Grabovac said Dean was a self-employed plasterer.

The Whiting, Indiana PD procured an identification record from the Detroit, Michigan PD under FBI #4657880. This record revealed that Dean had been committed as a mental patient in Canada in 1948 and was sentenced at Chatham, Ontario, for breaking and entering to ‘one year indefinite’. At this time, Dean had one arrest by the Detroit PD for disturbing a religious meeting and two arrests for using indecent and obscene language.

He was also AWOL from Fort Knox, Kentucky in 1949. In December 1960, Dean again called this Office to report that he had been residing in Detroit for the past two months. At that time he said he was living in Chicago but he refused to divulge his local address. He continued to telephonically contact this office on several occasions until June 1961.

He furnished information concerning Cuban nationals connected with the 26th of July Movement and on local persons connected with the FPCC. He was last contacted by two agents of the Chicago Office on June 7, 1961, at which time he was told that this office did not desire his assistance. Former CG___-S advised in August 1960, that Dean was a white male, age about 25 (in 1960), stocky build and black hair. While Dean voluntarily furnished info to the Chicago Office over a period of nearly a year, he was never considered a PSI or informant by this Office.

Even though Dean does not seem like a highly prized asset for the FBI, the paper trail on Dean also confirms the following: Dean had been committed as a mental patient in Canada in 1948 and was sentenced at Chatham, Ontario.

An OSI file (NARA Record Number: 104-10404-10041) confirms that Harry Dean was in the U.S. Army in 1945 and then again in 1948 using the name George Robert Baker and that the Office of Naval Intelligence has three files on him. It also states that he had been arrested by the RCMP and the Detroit Police under the Registration Act.

In 1958 he became a member of the 26th of July Movement, a group led by Fidel Castro.

In late 1959 and early 1960 he received three letters from Juan A. Orta, the Director of the Prime Minister’s Office of Cuba.

He visited Cuba in June 1960.

In August, 1960, he had been elected Recording Secretary, Chicago Chapter, FPCC.

He soon after became a voluntary informant to the FBI (who nevertheless considered him a Fruitcake).

In 1961, he moved to Los Angeles, where he had casual contact with Edgar and Marjorie Swabeck, whom he had previously known in the Chicago area, and from them learned that Marjorie Swabeck is secretary of the LAX chapter of the FPCC at the present time. (Which perhaps brought him into the realm of Vaughn Marlowe and Richard Case Nagell).

In 1962 he joined the John Birch Society.

He also claims to have known Larry Howard and Loran Hall whose names come up with respect to the assassination, and he warned the Los Angeles FBI about a plot to murder JFK that emanated from General Walker which was discussed during a John Birch Society meeting where Oswald was identified as the patsy.

In one of his posts Dean states that the Swabecks may have been setting him up. The NARA documents do confirm a relationship that would have begun in 1960 when Harry met Edgar Swabeck during his travels to Cuba. According to Dean they played a role in getting him to set up the Chicago FPCC branch.

By 1961, the Swabecks were now part of an L.A. FPCC chapter when Dean reconnected with them. They tried once again to involve him in the FPCC. It would not be a great leap to conclude that the Swabecks probably knew Vaughn Marlowe.

Edgar Swabeck’s father seems to have been Arne Swabeck, one of the founding members of the Communist Party in the U.S. In the late 1920s, he was expelled from the party as a Trotskyist and worked together with James P. Cannon and other American Trotskyists to create the Socialist Workers Party. Swabeck visited Leon Trotsky in his exile in Turkey in 1933. He made a cameo appearance in the movie Reds. He was also reference person for The Militant, published by the SWP.

It is also worth asking: If the murder had taken place in L.A., would a link to the cast of FPCC characters have also caused the downfall of the SWP which was very close to the FPCC management in L.A.?

Potential patsy analysis: a new perspective

When I completed the first article, I felt we could deduce that the subjects discussed where being actively groomed to become patsies; in other words, that operatives maneuvered easily discarded freelance assets or other malleable figures into assuming weaponized, pro-Castro and/or communist, anti-Kennedy misfit personas, and placed them in the proximity of the kill zone with abundant incriminating evidence. The string-pullers were also fully prepared to pounce with propaganda initiatives to put the blame of the assassination on Castro! While this seems to fit well—admittedly to varying degrees—in the cases of the first seven subjects profiled, the analysis of our two latest characters suggests something similar but with certain caveats.

In the cases of Dean (pending more research) and Glenn, we can state that the credentials are also very suspicious, but that certain elements fit less well the claim that they were being groomed to take the fall: Their FPCC links predate when the winning stratagem was being mapped out, which arguably had its origins no earlier than when the ZR/Rifle (executive action) architect and disgraced CIA officer William Harvey met with mobster John Roselli in late Winter 1963. It was after these meetings that definite attempts on JFK’s life began multiplying and that the subsequent incriminating behavior and travels of Oswald, Nagell, Lopez, Vallee, Power and Garriga were too well timed to be considered mere coincidences.

So how we interpret the profiles of Dean, Glenn, Nagell, and Marlowe with respect to their FPCC links needs to be more nuanced. While we cannot state at this point that they were maneuvered into joining the FPCC in order to be groomed as patsies, their connections to this organization, which was being heavily infiltrated by intelligence, when combined with their other traits, are nevertheless very telling and more in line with the role of informants who had patsy credentials. Some of the other subjects required fine-tuning of their personas and logistical maneuvering in the months leading up to the hit. The analysis of all the candidates on the short list bolsters the case that a cash-strapped Oswald did not leave his young daughter and pregnant wife in the lurch so he could pursue his ideological dream of opening an FPCC chapter in one of the most hostile places imaginable towards this dwindling organization.

Senator Richard Schweiker of the Church Committee famously stated that the fingerprints of intelligence were all over Oswald. As we can see in the updated chart, Oswald has company!

• Eight of the nine subjects profiled are connected to cities visited by Kennedy during the six months that preceded his assassination.
• Each of these cities were territories exploited criminally by Mafiosi of interest in the assassination.
• At least three moved to the cities and got employment in strategically located buildings along the motorcade route shortly before the planned presidential visit.
• Seven were ex-military.
• Eight of them exhibited behavior that can very plausibly be linked to intelligence gathering or Cuban exile interaction.
• Seven were directly linked to the FPCC. Seven of them had visited Mexico City.
• Six attempted to visit Cuba, three of them successfully.
• Seven had links to Cuban/Latino exiles.
• Six were described as having psychological problems.
• Seven exhibited anti-Kennedy behavior.
• None were probed seriously by the Warren Commission.
• Intelligence services, notably the Secret Service, kept crucial information about these subjects as well as the prior plots totally secret from the Warren Commission.

Potential alternative patsy comparison chart

More on the FPCC

In the original article, much was written to underscore just how unlikely it would be for the subjects analyzed to be involved in 1963 with a dying FPCC. The timing was not right, their profiles contrast with the students and intellectuals who were most ideologically attracted to this outfit before the missile crisis, and the opening of chapters in hostile locations like New Orleans and Miami in 1963 can simply be described as mindless … unless, of course, other stratagems were at play: perhaps its infiltration by informants, which was rampant by then, and patsy grooming ploys.

It stands to reason that the persons in a position to lead the infiltrators and monitor their movements deserve our utmost attention and that the FPCC should be turned upside down by the research community, because when Oswald joined the failing FPCC, he was most likely on a mission.

In this respect, John Newman’s research into the FPCC infiltration and David Atlee Phillips’ role is worth noting. From his 2013 countercoup article here are some key points:

• In early 1961, eleven weeks before the Bay of Pigs invasion, the CIA seized an opportunity to become more actively involved in running operations against the FPCC. CIA Security Office and Western Hemisphere elements identified an Agency employee who knew Court Wood, an American student just returned from Cuba under the sponsorship of the FPCC. This opportunity to surveil Court Wood, which developed at the end of January, was irresistible in the judgment of the person in the CIA’s Security Research Service (SRS) of the Security Office who conceived and authorized the operation. That person was James McCord, the same James McCord who would later become embroiled in the (Watergate) scandal during the Nixon Presidency.
• It is fitting that one of the Agency’s legendary disinformation artists, David Atlee Phillips, should have been in charge of the CIA’s CI and propaganda effort against the FPCC. Phillips would reappear in Mexico City at the time Oswald visited there, taking over the anti-Castro operations of the CIA station in Mexico City during the very days that CIA headquarters and the CIA Mexico City station exchanged cables on Oswald’s visit to the Mexican capital.
• “At the request of Mr. David Phillips” wrote the fortunate CIA employee picked to spy on his neighbor, “I spent the evening of January 6 with Court Wood, a student who has recently returned from a three-week stay in Cuba under the sponsorship of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee.” The employee said that Court and his father both were pro-Castro and “extremely critical” of American foreign policy. “I’ve been advised by Mr. Phillips to continue my relationship with Mr. Wood and I will keep your office informed of each subsequent visit.”
• What the operation tells us is that, by 1960, CIA was sufficiently interested in countering the FPCC to engage in an illegal domestic operation. The fact that controversy would follow the two men in charge, McCord in connection with Watergate and Phillips in connection with the Kennedy assassination, cause this page in CIA’s anti-Castro operations to stand out in hindsight.
• We have in the past utilized techniques with respect to countering activities of mentioned [FPCC] organization in the U.S. During December 1961, New York prepared an anonymous leaflet which was mailed to select FPCC members throughout the country for the purpose of disrupting FPCC and causing a split between FPCC and Socialist Workers Party (SWP) supporters, which technically was very effective.
• These tactics dramatize the lengths to which the FBI was willing to go to discredit the FPCC, whose chapters in Chicago, Newark, and Miami were infiltrated early on by the Bureau. As we will see in Chapter Sixteen, during Oswald’s tenure with the FPCC, FBI break-ins to their offices were a regular occurrence.
• According to FBI records, on April 21, 1963, Dallas confidential informant “T-2” reported this letter to the FPCC, in which Oswald said he had passed out FPCC pamphlets in Dallas with a placard around his neck reading HANDS OFF CUBA, VIVA FIDEL.
• Whether Oswald had stood on a street corner or not, important undercover FBI assets in New York were in motion against the FPCC during the time or shortly after Oswald wrote the letter. As we already know, the Fair Play for Cuba Committee was the subject for intense FBI and CIA interest and counterintelligence operations. A major FBI Chicago office investigation of the FPCC appeared on March 8, four days before Oswald ordered the rifle from Chicago. This study was transmitted to the CIA.
• By picking such an organization to correspond with and carrying out actions on its behalf, Oswald—by default or by design—had insinuated himself into the gray world of the watchers and the watched.

The SWP

Because of the Socialist Workers Party’s strong links to the FPCC and with at least four of the subjects we have profiled, and because it published The Militant, the newspaper being clutched by Oswald in his infamous backyard photo, it is worth researching this political outfit which was considered subversive by intelligence agencies.

In 2005, its national leader between the early 1960s to the mid 1980s, Barry Sheppard, wrote a political memoir about this organization.

The SWP had its roots in the 1930s and was officially founded in 1938. It quickly became an active supporter of leftist causes and the maligned Labor Movement—a target of Hoover’s FBI. Its existence was marked with volatility and controversy. It was a target of the McCarthy era witch-hunts in the fifties—these flared up again under the actions of the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1960s, when a certain Lee Harvey Oswald and at least three of the alternate patsies decided to join. The SWP also supported The Nation of Islam and later Malcolm X, The Freedom Riders, Algerian Independence, Peace movements—many of the issues Kennedy haters were boiling mad about!

It was an enthusiastic supporter of the Castro revolution:

Reflecting our own growing confidence in the revolutionary leadership, The Militant began to carry speeches by Castro and other Cuban leaders, which were among the best popular explanations of what the revolution was doing. In one of the first speeches we published, Fidel explained that the US-inspired counter-revolutionary fronts would fail because, unlike the guerrillas of the July 26 Movement, they could never build a base in the peasantry with their program of returning the land to the exploiters. Over the next years, others on the US left also came to support the Cuban revolution, but The Militant was always the best and most consistent US source providing truthful news about Cuba and publishing the ideas of the Cuban revolutionaries in their own words.

The SWP was very involved with the FPCC:

We came to be part of the leadership of the FPCC partly as the result of a crisis in the organization. The original FPCC leadership was somewhat timid, and shied away from forthright defense of the revolution as it radicalized. In response, Cuban members of the July 26 Movement living in the US blocked with the SWP and some other militants, and took over the leadership of the Committee. It was while he was staying at the Theresa that Castro met Malcolm X. A few years later, I would interview Malcolm for the Young Socialist in his office at the Theresa. The revolutionary Black nationalist was attracted to the Cuban Revolution from the start and supported it until he was murdered in 1965.

When Castro was refused lodging during his New York U.N. visit in 1960, he received support from the SWP:

Castro declared that the delegation would camp out in Central Park. Berta Green, a member of the SWP who was also the Executive Secretary of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee (FPCC), got in touch with the Hotel Theresa in Harlem, which agreed the Cubans could stay there.

Sheppard’s memoir shows that the SWP was much larger than the FPCC when he describes protest mobilization during the missile crisis in 1962:

We stood up to it. The PC discussed and approved the thrust of a statement to appear in the next issue of The Militant. It ran under the headline, “Stop the Crime Against Cuba!” We alerted SWP branches and YSA chapters that night to mobilize to support the broadest possible actions against the threat. In New York, there were two major demonstrations. One was called by Women Strike for Peace and other peace groups. We joined some 20,000 protesters at the United Nations on this demonstration. Then the Fair Play for Cuba Committee held its own action, more specifically pro-Cuba in tone, of over 1,000 people, also near the UN.

The following points concerning the July 1963 convention cast even more suspicion around the timing and motives of openings of FPCC chapters in the deep south by Santiago Garriga and Oswald and the continued involvement with the FPCC by the other subjects:

At the convention, a meeting of pro-Cuba activists discussed the situation in the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. Cubans living in the United States who supported the July 26 Movement had helped us build the FPCC. Now most of them had returned to Cuba. In most areas, the FPCC had dwindled down to supporters of the SWP and YSA. Since we did not want the FPCC to become a sectarian front group, the meeting decided to stop trying to build it. The FPCC then existed for a while as a paper organization, until the assassination of President John Kennedy dealt it a mortal blow.

Sheppard’s account of the SWP reaction when the Kennedy assassination was announced is noteworthy:

We were listening to the news when the announcement came. I said, “I hope it’s not that nut who tried to join the party, that guy who is a one-man Fair Play for Cuba Committee chapter in New Orleans.” Imagine how I felt when it turned out he was the one charged with the act. The SWP and YSA had received letters from a Lee Harvey Oswald, asking to join. His letters, as I remember them, were politically confused, and the photo that was sent with them was strange. In it, the person who was supposedly Oswald held copies of The Militant and the Communist Party’s Worker. He also sported two or more rifles and hand guns sticking out of his belt. A similar picture appeared on the cover of Life magazine after the assassination. Oswald, it turned out, had posed for similar photographs holding the Communist Party’s paper and the Workers’ World Party’s Workers’ World. One look at the picture and everyone in the leadership of the party and YSA thought we were dealing with a nut or a provocateur. Oswald purchased subscriptions to The Militant and Young Socialist. But no one in our leadership thought we should accept him as a member. In any case, our policy was not to accept at-large members in places where there was no party branch or YSA chapter, for the reason that there was no real way of evaluating the applicant. The press featured Oswald’s connection with the FPCC and speculated that Castro or some unspecified “reds” were behind the assassination. We were a potential target because we were well known as supporters of the Cuban revolution …

… The New York Daily News, attempting to fire up the atmosphere against the left, stated in an editorial: “The fact remains that Oswald was a Marxist and proud of it. The fact remains that the Communist Party continually preaches death to imperialism, capitalism, etc. It is only natural for lamebrains such as Oswald to conclude that this means killing your enemies wherever and whenever you can reach them defenseless. Ideas have consequences.” This was all a pack of lies. As The Militant pointed out a few days later, the editorial was also an attempt to cover up the fanatical hatred that the right wing had for Kennedy, particularly because of the concessions the government was being forced to make to the fight for Black rights. In Dallas during the days before the Kennedy visit, for example, the rightists had posted leaflets displaying a photo of Kennedy and the words: “Wanted for Treason.”

Dan Hardway’s 2016 declaration

HSCA investigative attorneys Dan Hardway and Ed Lopez co-authored a section for the HSCA’s Final Report on the CIA and LHO in Mexico City which remained classified in full until 1996. The draft, after further declassification in 2003, was published by the Mary Ferrell Foundation Press as Oswald, The CIA, And Mexico City: The Lopez-Hardway Report, and shed light on missing/ destroyed tapes and photos, Oswald impersonations, lying CIA officials and peculiar behavior by Oswald or a frame-up artist—all completely fluffed over by the Warren Commission.

In 2016, Dan Hardway prepared a written declaration in a support of a Jefferson Morley Freedom of Information civil action which should really trouble historians who describe JFK conspiracy proponents as flakey opportunists. In his own words, here is who media and historians have chosen to snub:

From July of 1977 until December of 1978, I was employed as a researcher on the staff of the United States House of Representatives Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA). In that capacity I had a top secret security clearance and, during a major portion of my employment, had access to un-redacted Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) records. My primary area of responsibility in research for the HSCA was the possibility of any relationship of any nature between the CIA and Lee Harvey Oswald (LHO), with special focus on the CIA’s awareness of, and reporting on, LHO’s activities in Mexico City. Implicit in that focus was the issue of whether the evidence from Mexico indicated any operational connection between LHO and the CIA.

My research for the HSCA also covered areas related to people of interest, including David Atlee Phillips and William Harvey, among others, and CIA assassination programs. I was also tasked with research and analysis of the response of the CIA’s Mexico City Station LHO’s trip to Mexico City and to the assassination.

The following are some of the most damning statements made in this very important affidavit:

• Beginning in May of 1978, the CIA assigned George Joannides to handle liaison with Edwin Lopez and me. In the summer of 1978, Mr. Joannides began to change the way file access was handled. We no longer received prompt responses to our requests for files and what we did receive no longer seemed to provide the same complete files that we had been seeing. The obstruction of our efforts by Mr. Joannides escalated over the summer, finally resulting in a refusal to provide unexpurgated access to files in violation of the Memorandum of Understanding previously agreed to by the HSCA and the CIA.
• I did not do any research aimed at George Joannides, or his activities in 1963, because, while working for the HSCA in 1977-1978, I was not informed that he had had any involvement with any aspect of the Kennedy case and I had no basis to even suspect that he had. In researching possible connections between post-assassination stories about LHO and David Atlee Phillips, I did little, if any, research that I recall into the Directorio Revolucionario Estudantil (DRE) because, among other reasons, the CIA had firmly represented to the HSCA that all ties between the DRE and the CIA had been terminated prior to 1963.
• … to review CIA 201 files on many of the individuals who had been sources for stories that appeared in the immediate aftermath of the assassination tying LHO to Castro or the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. I was able to establish that most of the sources of the stories were, or had been, agents or assets used at one time or another by David Atlee Phillips.
• Before our unexpurgated access was cut off by Joannides, I had been able to document links between David Phillips and most of the sources of the disinformation that came out immediately after the assassination about Oswald and his pro-Castro proclivities. I confronted Phillips with those in an interview at our offices on August 24,1978. Phillips was extremely agitated by that line of questioning, but was forced to admit that many of the sources were not only former assets that he had managed, in the late 50’s and early 1960’s, but were also assets whom he was personally managing in the fall of 1963. Mr. Phillips was asked, but could not explain, why the information that came from anti-Castro Cuban groups and individuals pointing to Cuban connections all seemed to come from assets he handled personally, but acknowledged that was the case. Mr. Phillips also acknowledged that back-channel communication methods existed, but denied that any were used in Mexico City.
• We have, since 1978, learned that George Joaimides was running the propaganda shop at the CIA’s Miami JMWAVE Station in 1963. It is extremely unlikely that Mr. Joannides could have occupied that position and not have known, and worked with, David Atlee Phillips. In addition, in 1963, as we now know, George Joannides was the case officer handling the DRE. In 1977 the CIA specifically denied that DRE had a case officer assigned when asked that question by the HSCA.
• One possible inference from the known data, at this point, is that the CIA brought someone out of retirement who knew where to not let us look and he impeded and, eventually, shut down our research. His specific work in regard to my research was commended by his superior in his annual performance review from 1978.
• In addition to being a primary source of stories about LHO in the days after the assassination, the DRE also had a highly visible encounter with LHO in New Orleans in September 1963. George Joannides’ s performance evaluation dated July 31,1963, reports that Joannides has “done an excellent job in the handling of a significant student exile group which hitherto had successfully resisted any important degree of control.”
• David Phillips recruited a group of students in Havana to work against Castro while Phillips was serving under deep cover in Havana in the late 1950s. At the time, the group was known as the Directorio Revolucionario, or DR. Phillips was the DR’s first case officer. When the DR’s leadership fled Cuba in 1960, William Kent, who was very close to Phillips and worked with him, organized them into an effective organization in Florida, known as the Directorio Revolucionario Estudantil, or DRE.
• In August, 1963, LEO had an encounter with DRE representatives in New Orleans. That encounter resulted not only in widespread publicity in New Orleans at the time, including newspaper articles, television coverage and radio interviews, it also resulted in the first reports trying to tie LEO to Castro after the assassination of John Kennedy. DRE released their information the day of the assassination and it was covered in both the Miami Herald and the Washington Post the next day.
• The CIA never told the Warren Commission about their support of, and work with, the DRE in 1963. The CIA never told the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities (the “Church Committee”) about it. The Assassinations Record Review Board (ARRB) asked the Agency about DRE. The CIA initially told the ARRB the same thing they told the HSCA: the Agency had no employee in contact with DRE in 1963. The ARRB, however, in examination of Joannides’s CIA personnel file, discovered its clear indication that Joannides was the DRE case officer in 1963.
• In the early 1960’s, David Phillips was working at Headquarters where he, along with Cord Meyer, developed the first disinformation operations aimed at the Fair Play for Cuba Committee.
• To summarize what we now know: the DRE originated as the DR under the tutelage of David Phillips in Havana in the late 1950’s. William Kent took over running the group, now known as the DRE, once they had fled from Havana to Miami. In his position, he was responsible to Phillips. Crozier came in to assist Kent with his workload. Kent and Crozier were not too successful with the hard-to-control group and Richard Helms gave the DRE an officer responsible directly to him, which officer was Joannides. But Joannides’s performance evaluations indicate that his immediate supervisor, prior to October 1963, was Kent. We do not know what working relationship Joannides had with Phillips either directly, or indirectly through Kent. It is unlikely that Phillips did not continue to be involved in, or at least kept apprised of, operations of a group that he had started and nurtured, both directly and indirectly, which continued to be directly active in his primary area of responsibility: anti-Castro propaganda. Indeed, it would be in keeping with what is known if he used that group in operations against the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, or that he continued to be involved in disinformation operations aimed at the group, having designed the first one.
• After David Atlee Phillips testified a second time before the HSCA in Executive Session on April 25,1978, several staff members, myself included, sought to have the Chief Counsel recommend to the Committee that it refer Mr. Phillips to the Justice Department for prosecution for lying to Congress.
• On September 16, 1963, the CIA informed the FBI that it was considering action to counter the activities of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee (FFCC) in foreign countries. In New Orleans, on September 17,1963, Oswald applied for, and received, a Mexican travel visa; on September 27, Oswald arrived in Mexico City. On that day, and the following day, Oswald, or someone impersonating him, may have visited the Cuban Consulate. On those same days, the Mexico City CIA Station was testing an impulse camera in their photo surveillance operation aimed at the door of the Cuban Consulate. Sometime in late September Phillips left Mexico City on a temporary duty assignment at CIA Headquarters. It is at this time that Phillips was promoted to chief of anti-Castro operations in Mexico City—the Cuba desk. On October 1, the Mexico City Station sent bulk materials to Headquarters.

Dan Hardway’s state of mind can be inferred by the open-ended questions he poses near the end of his declaration:

• Were the promotions rewards for a successful disinformation operation aimed at the FPCC in New Orleans, an operation that the Agency thought it could export to Mexico? While TDY, did Phillips meet with Kent at HQ? Did he meet with Joannides in Miami? Did they review the results of a disinformation and “dangle” operation they had just run in Mexico City?—their first attempt to export the successful domestic anti-FPCC disinformation operation? Did they review the production from the impulse camera? Was that camera’s production the “bulk material” in the pouch? We don’t know the answers because the questions were never asked; George Joannides shut down the HSCA investigation into this area before this level of detail could be discovered and connected. Given all this, a reasonable researcher has to ask whether the Oswald visit in Mexico City was part of an intelligence operation that had both counterintelligence and propaganda purposes? It also, in this context, becomes appropriate to ask whether there has been an active cover-up and whether George Joannides’ undercover assignment to work with the HSCA was part of that cover-up.

Hardway’s concluding remarks do not give the impression that he believes that Oswald was simply a drifting malcontent or a pro-Castro ideologue, and that Joannides and Phillips could be counted on for knowing what really happened:

• In regard to the issues of 1963 there would be great public benefit to knowing whether LHO had been involved, wittingly or unwittingly, in an intelligence operation. Even without settlement of that ultimate question, additional information about what George Joannides was doing in 1963, in particular with the DRE in New Orleans, would go a long way to providing insight into that ultimate question. Similarly, being able to explore the relationship between David Atlee Phillips and George Joannides would benefit the public by either confirming or disproving vital aspects of the events of 1963.

Conclusion

Dan Hardway’s declaration is recent, blistering, and completely demolishes the history books’ stenographic claims that Oswald the Lone Nut killed JFK. Hardway underscores many disturbing observations that cannot be explained by mere happenstance. His position is nevertheless soft-pedalled compared to what Schweiker and Gaeton Fonzi have stated. It is now possible to go a lot farther in our deductions.

Case comparison analysis of the potential patsies and prior plots to assassinate JFK would bring investigators to study common traits, behavior patterns, entity links, chronological sequences in order to develop a profile of the offenders. The perpetrators in this case were able to:

1. recruit dreamy, malleable ex-marines or Cuban exiles who were drawn to the world of espionage;
2. have access to a network of Mafiosi and Cuban exiles who shared regime change objectives and could work in proximity with the potential patsies while providing layers of separation for the decision-makers;
3. use propaganda to create pro-Castro, anti-Kennedy, misfit, violent, and dangerous personas;
4. lead the subjects into joining left-wing, subversive organizations, visiting Mexico City, and trying to enter Cuba;
5. move some of them near the kill zones and cause them to behave suspiciously in visible, controversial, and timely manners;
6. ensure a weak investigation and keep incriminating evidence secret;
7. place the blame on communists or Castro himself with the help from friends in the media.

Only a select few had the means to carry all this out.

They wrote up the technique in a playbook called “ZR/Rifle” and applied it, or versions of it, a number of times in foreign countries. Some of them hated Kennedy so much that it is quite plausible that they went rogue. A few of them even admitted the existence of a conspiracy, their involvement, or their knowledge of it.

William Harvey’s links with other CIA persons of interest, Johnny Roselli and Santo Trafficante and their network of Mafiosi, Jack Ruby and Cuban exiles who hovered around Oswald during the last months of his life, his links to the FPCC infiltration programs, travel to Dallas shortly before the assassination and role in ZR/Rifle tactics qualify him as a person of extreme interest in the coup.

Visual data shows how David Atlee Phillips’ universe overlaps with Oswald’s through over 20 common touch points involving Cuban exiles, propaganda tools, the FPCC, Mexico City, Oswald babysitters, etc. Case linkage shows that no fewer than six of the eight alternate patsies were also marked as pro-Castro with their bizarre FPCC links, the very organization Phillips was turning inside out in his plots to counter Castro sympathizers. Throw in his lies, quasi-confessions, and his being thrown under the bus by colleague E.H. Hunt, and we have a strong case to make about who some of the leading plotters were.

If we accept that these are some the fingerprints of intelligence that Richard Schweiker referred to, the offender profile suggests quite strongly that at least a few of the fingers the prints came from belonged to David Atlee Phillips and William Harvey! In the late 1970s, after the HSCA asked the Justice Department to re-open the case, these two suspects, and their networks of assassins, operatives and propaganda assets who have been discussed in previous articles, should have been rounded up, and would have been in a normal murder investigation. The fact that this one was presidential seems to have lowered the bar of diligence and motivation. It should still be done posthumously, for the sake of correcting what is related to unsuspecting high-school history students, and of preventing future attacks on a democracy.

The next question we can ask ourselves, is who provided the brains and handled upper management tasks for the Big Event? The entity link diagram and a chronology analysis point so far to a group of like-minded, discarded and/or disgruntled CIA officers who were all loyal to a disgraced Alan Dulles who, after being removed from his functions by the victim, remained committed to his worldviews, well connected and a man on a mission. Stay tuned!

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