Robert Kennedy: In His Own Words

[H2O Man]

My favorite politician is the late Senator Robert F. Kennedy (D-NY). As we approach the anniversary of his death, I like to look through the numerous RFK books in my library, including those written about and by him. This year, I thought I’d share some information on one of those books, as it is as important as it is overlooked by both historians and the general public.

I found the book in Boston, where I was staying for several weeks in late june-early July of 1988. Its title is “Robert Kennedy: In His Own Words (The Unpublished Recollections of the Kennedy Years)” published by Bantam Books (1988). I’ve rarely seen it in other book stores for sale, but I’m sure that in this day and age, one could find copies for sale on the internet.

In 1964, ‘65, and ‘67, Kennedy was interviewed by Anthony Lewis, John Bartlow Martin, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., and John Francis Stewart, for the John F. Kennedy Library. The series of interviews cover the “Thousand Days” that President Kennedy served in office. They go into great detail, not only about the issues the Kennedy administration was confronted with, but also the personalities of those in the administration.

Those who, like myself, hold RFK in extremely high regard, tend to separate his public career into two distinct phases: his career before November 22, 1963, and the relatively short span from 1964 until his death in June of 1968. While this is fair, reading this book reinforces the belief that Robert Kennedy had begun his transformation while serving as Attorney General: the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Civil Rights movement expanded his thinking on the conditions the United States was confronted with in both foreign and domestic affairs.

The majority of these interviews were conducted in that brief period between Dallas and his becoming the driven social-political activist between 1966-68, of which his 90-day run for the Democratic nomination for President stands alone in American history. It was that period that most of his biographers refer to as a time of severe depression. This book documents that Kennedy -- not surprisingly -- experienced the range of emotions that are known as the Kubler-Ross model for dealing with death and dying.

In his early career, Robert Kennedy earned a reputation for being “ruthless.” Indeed, that description is something he jokes about in the interviews. His public enemies viewed him as a self-righteous, hostile , vindictive prick. More than a little of this comes through in what Kubler-Ross identifies as the “anger stage” of grief -- in which an individual focuses rage upon proximate people in their surroundings. The mutual dislike between RFK and LBJ is, of course, legendary. However, in the early interviews, Robert attacks the reputations of the majority of those who played roles in the Thousand Days -- both inside and outside the administration. It’s only in the final, 1967 section that one encounters RFK’s acceptance of people and events, although it is clear that he has become re-focused on eventually reaching the goals that he and his brother shared.

For people of my generation, it brings up the two “political” questions that continue to haunt us: what if Dallas had not happened? What if RFK had not been murdered? What direction might our nation have gone in?

The book provides insight into the “everyday” workings of a White House. This includes the built-in tensions between the White House and State Department. It also details the difficulties a President has in exercising control over intelligence agencies, such as the FBI and CIA, as well as the military leadership.

Perhaps the most interesting part, at least for me, was Robert Kennedy’s description of events involving the Bay of Pigs. He tells of how military officers working with the rebel forces as they trained in Nicaragua were prepared to go far beyond the limitations that President Kennedy had laid out for the US military and the para-military forces they were training. His description includes the quote that what they planned was: “Virtually treason!” (page 245)

It was on this foundation, constructed during his pre-Attorney General days, and his experiences in the Kennedy administration, that Robert was transformed into a US Senator and presidential candidate who had the potential to make the United States a much better country. There are, f course, another dozen books that I would recommend to anyone who is interested in that era. RFK’s death in 1968 is part of the history of that period of time -- especially that year -- when our nation underwent a wide range of changes.

Peace,
H2O Man

[longship]

1. As always, well written. R&K nt

[H2O Man]

4. Thank you!

[malthaussen]

2. Now I may have to read that one.

Curse you, H2O man, I already have more books than I can reasonably expect to read in what's left of my lifetime.

-- Mal

[H2O Man]

5. You'll thank me

while you're reading it!

There is a small group of DUers -- obviously including you and I -- that should get together to discuss books, politics, etc. I think that would be one of the most enjoyable things that I could do in the brief time I plan to hang out on this living rock, as it circles the sun.

[malthaussen]

7. I've always wanted to come up your way and have a smoke by the sweat lodge.:)

A feast would be nice, too, but I have to watch in now with the damned diabetes.

-- Mal

[H2O Man]

16. I was out there

earlier today, and will be again later this evening. You are always welcome.

And our post-sweat feasts are always "health conscious."

[Iliyah]

3. K & R

[H2O Man]

6. Thank you!

[CaliforniaPeggy]

8. Thank you for this informative post, my dear H20 Man!

You always illuminate whatever you're talking about, and this post is no exception.

I am better informed for knowing, and reading, you.

K&R

[H2O Man]

17. Well, thank you!

I surely do appreciate that!

[malthaussen]

9. Plenty of used copies at Amazon for one cent...

... shipping $3.99. There's a moral there, somewhere, I've always thought.

-- Mal

[H2O Man]

18. Wow!

That is strange, isn't it? I've had associates order books for me from Amazon, and always thought I was getting a good deal. But a penny? For this book?

[malthaussen]

33. Resale price appears to be proportional to number of copies out there.

That one cent is for a hardback, too.

-- Mal

[Gregorian]

10. I can't help but to feel depressed reading that.

But I thank you.

I've asked where we might be as well. We are wherever we are at the moment, but perhaps would have maintained integrity of things like the media, and corporate power and size. I am beginning to think that people are the same, and besides the lies about being a conservative country, we aren't.

I have to wonder about how perhaps similar relationships with agencies outside of the White House have forced Obama away from goals he has had (aside, but even including things like McConnell making it clear he would resist our president every step of the way).

But what really does depress me is the whole topic with respect to this moment right now. I can't really come right out and say it. It's too frightening. I hope that kind of tragedy is behind us. Liberals have been injured. That's partly what you are writing about. We don't typically use force, and as such are vulnerable to those who do. And that begs the question of how the universe works.

Each administration is on a river. The flow is fueled by fear, greed such as the Pentagon. Conservative administrations float down that river. Liberals either never get in the water (Bobby), or at the very least have to swim upstream. So it appears that someone like Obama broke his campaign promises, when actually he was unable to move beyond the downstream forces. And Bush could pull in the oars and enjoy smooth sailing without an impeachment.

Actually, I'm not sure why you posted what you did. But I came away with those thoughts. The question is- are today's shady forces in government enough different from yesterday's to even have room for someone like our man from Vermont.

[H2O Man]

19. I always think

about RFK in early June. He was a unique character, who played a hugely significant role in that era. I've known people who absolutely hated him, and others who believe he was a saint. I suppose that to be considered a saint must require that a large group loves you, and a large group hates you.

I decided to write about this particular book this year for two reasons: the first being that I re-read it last night; the second being to focus on his humanity. To emphasize on his struggle with "depression," and to recognize that he could not have been the man he was in 1966-68, without first battling aspects of his own being.

To me, that struggle and the victory he achieved makes him a prophet. I'm far more comfortable with that description that "saint" or "ruthless bastard."

I believe that in general, we should pause and consider the meaning of his life every June. I'm far more interested in his life, than his death -- although that was a hugely significant event in our history, too.

It's possible that if people here think about RFK, and what he stood for and hoped to achieve, it could improve the quality of, say, the primary arguments that waste so much space on DU:GD.

[canoeist52]

11. The book, "JFK and the Unspeakable" sitting on my lap right now.

Chapter II, "Kennedy, Castro and the CIA" has parallels to our current situation. Many of today's seemingly senseless political choices are beginning to make sense now.

[H2O Man]

20. Great book!

The author's second in the series, "Gandhi and the Unthinkable," is also extremely important. I look forward to the third, on Malcolm X and Martin Luther King.

I recently loaned my copy of the JFK book to a close friend. He is an intelligent, relatively well-informed person. But he found the book eye-opening.

I'd love to hear more about your impressions of it!

[zeemike]

12. What if indeed.

It does haunt us.
The world could have been such a diferent place...a better one.
I remember the book and the times...it seems like such a dream now.

[H2O Man]

21. Right.

Parts of it was like a wonderful dream. RFK in particular seemed to have the ability to bring a lot of groups together, including some that would not have otherwise considered breaking bread with many of the others.

A lot more ended on that Los Angeles floor than one man's life. I think that is hard for people who weren't alive then to fully understand.

[wiggs]

13. Just read The Last Campaign and was amazed. This guy was something, and

I had no idea. I'm a bit young to remember much about him (was 10 at the time of his assassination and living out in the sticks) and I haven't read that much about his candidacy and campaign, assuming that he was the younger brother of a more important figure. But how different could things have been had he survived and especially if he had won! Special, passionate, authentic dude who had serious credibility not only because of the rightness of his positions but because he started out with a different outlook and philosophy and converted through experience to become a committed advocate for the vulnerable.

Good book. Also points out how similar our times are right now to the days of the mid and late 60s...unpopular, confused war based on lies....civil injustice (sadly similar 50 years later)...income inequality (though probably more focused on smaller groups). Enjoyed the book on many levels.

A current candidate reminds me of some of the things I read about RFK.

[H2O Man]

22. Outstanding book!

I'm glad that you mentioned it. Thank you!

I have that, and a book on Eugene McCarthy's campaign. Both were important, for many reasons. And, of course, there was overlapping between them, an area filled with tension.

McCarthy was a most curious figure. What he did was amazing. Yet, looking back, his campaign had flaws that those helping to run it were very aware of. McCarthy was an arrogant man, who believed he was more deserving of the presidency than either JFK in 1960, or RFK in '68. (There was the rather ugly comment he made in 1968, about how Robert would be forced to run against JFK in opposing McCarthy. That ended the Kennedy camp's attempts to coordinate the two campaigns against LBJ.) And he believed that he was doing a huge favor to the young Americans who worked so hard for him.

Kennedy appreciated those who were willing to volunteer for his campaign. He was driven to run, even though he questioned if it was the right timing. His top advisers, including brother Teddy, were split on that. And he knew the risks involved.

When my older daughter asked me what I thought was the most important book on the 1960s for current college students to read, I recommended "The Last Campaign."

[99th_Monkey]

14. I worked for Bobby in Oregon & California

I had been torn between working for Eugene McCarthy or Bobby Kennedy, once he
announced. I was hanging on the edge of my seat watching news to assist me in
making the right decision.

But when I saw a news clip of Bobby in a motorcade going through Watts, people were
streaming out of their homes to the street, many weeping for joy and hope for a better
tomorrow with Bobby at the helm.

I was so overcome with emotion, I wept with them. That was it for me. Bobby was the one.

One of the highest points in my life was when Bobby visited the Portland headquarters,
where I managed the phone bank and he shook my hand gazing into my soul with
his sky-blue eyes, and he thanked me for my work.

Thank you H20 Man for your awesome post.

[H2O Man]

23. Thank you for

sharing this with us! Sometimes, when I post an OP here, I am delighted by some of the responses ....never more so than with your's here.

I remember how that election season divided my family. Everything from one older brother supporting McCarthy, the other supporting RFK. And, at family reunions, listening to my father and his siblings debate and argue about various candidates. One of my uncles was a high-ranking Office of Naval Intelligence officer, who despised both JFK and RFK. He was convinced that they were attempting to subvert the nation, as part of a socialist agenda. As foolish as that sounds now, it was real to him at the time -- and I dare say was equally true for many in positions like his.

Other brothers were senior investigators in the State Police. They admired RFK from his years as Attorney General, going after organized crime. One was in charge of Nelson Rockefeller's security when he traveled outside of Albany; my impression is that Rocky, if he could not get the republican nomination, hoped that RFK would beat Nixon in November.

I still have the RFK magazine that his campaign had published in late May (with a June date on the cover). And I still have the tie-clip RFK handed out, on the Norwich courthouse steps when he ran for the Senate in 1964. My friend Robert, Jr., has told me that there are very few of these in existence these days.

[99th_Monkey]

25. It's awesome these many years later

having this conversation. peace out my brother.

[AikenYankee]

15. Thank you H2O Man ....

[H2O Man]

24. Thank you!

[malaise]

26. Thanks for this excellent post

WaterMan

[H2O Man]

28. Thank you!

[DFW]

27. My dad was friends with him

I met him several times, and went to school with two of his sons (Joe and Bobby, Jr.) for a brief while. Actually, at the time, my dad often talked on the phone to two Senators he called "Bob," the other one being named Dole. Both respected my dad's objectivity as a journalist, although both knew perfectly well where my dad's sentiments lay (his mom was one of the early out-of-state supporters for Humphrey for US Senate from Minnesota, so you can guess).

My dad was devastated when Bobby was shot, was sure he was on his way to being our next president. As a teenager, I used to hang out at Bobby's Senate office and flirt with his secretaries and receptionists. It was always an upbeat place, full of bright, dedicated people.

Of the many autographed photos I inherited from my dad's office, there is one, from Bobby to my dad, saying "with high regard," which is something Bobby only said if he meant it. In person, Bobby wasn't very outgoing, and you had to get to know him to get him to open up. But his philosophical views were out there for everyone to see, and the people who liked what they heard loved him, whereas the people who hated him were usually very, VERY ugly souls.

Sirhan didn't just murder a man, he killed the best hope of a nation.

[H2O Man]

29. Very cool.

RFK and Dole's careers in the Senate didn't actually overlap, though his campaign for the office would likely have begun while Kennedy was running for president.

Robert never had the ease in public that his brothers John and Ted had. From everything that I've read, and heard from those who knew him, he often came across as shy in private -- other than in his workplace. My impression is that he was most at ease with children; I'm curious if you think that is accurate?

The last time I went down to Pace to see Robert, Jr., I brought the June 1968 RFK campaign magazine. It has a 3-page interview with Robert, Jr., who was, of course, already collecting a wide range of animals for "pets," and clearly in love with nature.

[DFW]

30. Sounds accurate to me

I never was with him when he was with children, unless me as a 15-16 year old can count. But shy in private--definitely. Spot on. I have talked to Bobby Jr. on the phone several times over the last few years, but never actually met up with him since grade school, although we came close to rubbing shoulders when my younger daughter graduated from Pace Law 5 years ago. But he cut out right after the ceremony, and was gone by the time I got to the podium.

Though I have been at events with JFK and Ted, I never actually met either one. For my 11th birthday, my dad got JFK to dedicate a photo of himself to me in his own hand. By my 12th birthday, LBJ was president. I still have that pic in the original flimsy wooden frame I received it in back in 1963.

[Octafish]

31. Robert F. Kennedy saw conspiracy in JFK’s assassination

By Bryan Bender and Neil Swidey
BOSTON GLOBE STAFF NOVEMBER 24, 2013

EXCERPT...

Walking the grounds of Hickory Hill just an hour after receiving confirmation of his brother’s death, Bobby confided in an aide something truly unsettling. That aide, Edwin Guthman, would later recount it in his book “We Band of Brothers.” “I thought they would get one of us,” Bobby said, adding, “I thought it would be me.”

SNIP...

‘One of your guys did it,” Bobby said matter-of-factly, calling from Hickory Hill later on Nov. 22.

He was speaking to Enrique “Harry” Williams, a veteran of the Bay of Pigs operation and the Cuban exile whom Bobby trusted most. Journalist Haynes Johnson happened to be with Williams in Washington’s Ebbitt Hotel at the time, and he later wrote about how stunned he was when Williams hung up the phone and relayed the attorney general’s comments.

In the time that Bobby had been overseeing his brother’s so-called Special Group team on Cuba, he had come to appreciate just how ungovernable the Cuban exile community could be. It hadn’t taken long on Nov. 22 for speculation to focus on the possible involvement of Fidel Castro, given the Kennedy administration’s repeated attempts to oust or assassinate the Communist leader. That speculation only intensified after the arrest of Lee Harvey Oswald, whose record of pro-Castro agitation quickly came to light. Yet it’s intriguing that Bobby’s suspicion of possible Cuban involvement seemed to focus squarely on the anti-Castro crowd.

While he trusted Williams and wasn’t accusing him personally, Bobby knew how furious many members of the exile community had become with the Kennedys, based on the administration’s failure to go all out in the effort to topple Castro. The Kennedy brothers had refused to launch a full-scale military invasion of the island nation, and by 1963 had even begun authorizing some back-channel efforts toward compromise with both Castro and his Soviet benefactors. This, Bobby knew, would be viewed as intolerable by the most hard-line Cuban exiles.

Just one day before his brother’s murder, Bobby had received a classified CIA report assessing the exile community’s reaction to a recent speech on Cuba policy that JFK had delivered in Miami. “The conservative and moderate elements were disappointed, having hoped for a more militant stand against the Castro revolution and regime,” stated the Nov. 21 report. Written by Richard Helms, the wily CIA deputy director who many believed was really running the agency, the report was contained in the confidential RFK Justice Department files released earlier this year.

As Bobby’s post-assassination suspicions appeared to bounce from Cuba to the Mafia to the CIA, he surely had to confront the reality that the lines separating all three had become increasingly blurry. In those same newly released RFK files was a personal note that Helms had written to Bobby, flagging an article that had appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times in 1962. Headlined “CIA Sought Giancana Help for Cuba Spying,” the article described a “fantastic tale of attempted Cuba espionage” involving the Chicago mob boss and covert operatives for the government.

This, of course, was the same Giancana whom Bobby had been doggedly trying to put away for years. The idea that the CIA would have turned to the mobster for a little help with Cuba would have seemed too outlandish for many Americans to believe. By now, however, Bobby knew the article had barely scratched the surface. The truth was a lot worse.

In the spring of 1962, two CIA officials had showed up at the attorney general’s office to inform him that the Justice Department needed to drop its prosecution of a Giancana associate. When Bobby asked why the CIA was so intent on keeping Giancana happy, according to the 2007 Talbot book “Brothers,” one of the intelligence officers told him that “the CIA had enlisted the gangster in a plot to assassinate Fidel Castro.”

CONTINUED...

https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/11/24/his-brother-keeper-robert-kennedy-saw-conspiracy-jfk-assassination/TmZ0nfKsB34p69LWUBgsEJ/story.html#

The fact this is not front page news, nor taught in our nation's schools or even discussed freely in public, demonstrates that treason doth prosper.

Thank you for another outstanding essay, H2O Man. Like an oasis in a desert, truth, the cool water there, life.

[H2O Man]

32. Thanks!

Much appreciated!

[Octafish]

35. The Group is still putting out the line that RFK kept quiet out of shame re Cuba CIA Mafia plots.

An ex-CIA Agent said in public a year or so back that Castro knew about JFK assassination ahead of time...

Spies: Ex-CIA Agent In Raleigh Says Castro Knew About JFK Assassination Ahead Of Time

Former CIA agent and author Brian Latell in Raleigh

By The Raleigh Telegram

RALEIGH – A noted former Central Intelligence Agency officer, author, and scholar who is intimately knowledgeable about Cuba and Fidel Castro, says he believes there is evidence that Castro’s government knew about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963 ahead of time.

SNIP...

Robert Kennedy, as the Attorney General of the United States, was in charge of the operation, said Latell. Despite the United States’ best efforts, the operation was nonetheless penetrated by Cuban intelligence agents, said Latell.

Latell said there were two serious assassination attempts by the United States against Castro that even used members of the mafia to help, but both of them were obviously unsuccessful.

He also said that there was a plot by the United States to have Castro jabbed with a pen containing a syringe filled with a very effective poison. Latell said that he believes the experienced assassin who worked for Castro who originally agreed to the plan may have been a double agent. After meeting with a personal representative of Robert Kennedy in Paris, the man knew that the plan to assassinate Castro came from the highest levels of the government, including John F. and Robert Kennedy.

The plan was never carried out, as the man later defected to the United States, but with so many double agents working for Castro also pledging allegiance to the CIA, Latell said it was likely that the information got back to Havana that the Kennedy brothers endorsed that plot with the pen.

CONTINUED...

http://raleightelegram.com/201209123311

It's not easy to explain away why he might feel that way, considering how JFK had ordered CIA to stop the assassination program against Castro.

Kennedy Sought Dialogue with Cuba

INITIATIVE WITH CASTRO ABORTED BY ASSASSINATION,
DECLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS SHOW

Oval Office Tape Reveals Strategy to hold clandestine Meeting in Havana; Documents record role of ABC News correspondent Lisa Howard as secret intermediary in Rapprochement effort

Washington D.C. - On the 40th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and the eve of the broadcast of a new documentary film on Kennedy and Castro, the National Security Archive today posted an audio tape of the President and his national security advisor, McGeorge Bundy, discussing the possibility of a secret meeting in Havana with Castro. The tape, dated only seventeen days before Kennedy was shot in Dallas, records a briefing from Bundy on Castro's invitation to a U.S. official at the United Nations, William Attwood, to come to Havana for secret talks on improving relations with Washington. The tape captures President Kennedy's approval if official U.S. involvement could be plausibly denied.

The possibility of a meeting in Havana evolved from a shift in the President's thinking on the possibility of what declassified White House records called "an accommodation with Castro" in the aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Proposals from Bundy's office in the spring of 1963 called for pursuing "the sweet approach…enticing Castro over to us," as a potentially more successful policy than CIA covert efforts to overthrow his regime. Top Secret White House memos record Kennedy's position that "we should start thinking along more flexible lines" and that "the president, himself, is very interested in (the prospect for negotiations)." Castro, too, appeared interested. In a May 1963 ABC News special on Cuba, Castro told correspondent Lisa Howard that he considered a rapprochement with Washington "possible if the United States government wishes it. In that case," he said, "we would be agreed to seek and find a basis" for improved relations.

The untold story of the Kennedy-Castro effort to seek an accommodation is the subject of a new documentary film, KENNEDY AND CASTRO: THE SECRET HISTORY, broadcast on the Discovery/Times cable channel on November 25 at 8pm. The documentary film, which focuses on Ms. Howard's role as a secret intermediary in the effort toward dialogue, was based on an article -- "JFK and Castro: The Secret Quest for Accommodation" -- written by Archive Senior Analyst Peter Kornbluh in the magazine, Cigar Aficionado. Kornbluh served as consulting producer and provided key declassified documents that are highlighted in the film. "The documents show that JFK clearly wanted to change the framework of hostile U.S. relations with Cuba," according to Kornbluh. "His assassination, at the very moment this initiative was coming to fruition, leaves a major 'what if' in the ensuing history of the U.S. conflict with Cuba."

CONTINUED with links, resources...

http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB103/index.htm

For those new to the Party, it was CIA director Allen Dulles, under Eisenhower and Nixon, who contracted with Murder, Inc. in 1960.

Ever wonder about the sanity of America's leaders? Take a close look at perhaps the most bizarre plot in U.S. intelligence history

By Bryan Smith
Chicago Magazine
November 2007
(page 4 of 6)

EXCERPT...

By September 1960, the project was proceeding apace. Roselli would report directly to Maheu. The first step was a meeting in New York. There, at the Plaza Hotel, Maheu introduced Roselli to O'Connell. The agent wanted to cover up the participation of the CIA, so he pretended to be a man named Jim Olds who represented a group of wealthy industrialists eager to get rid of Castro so they could get back in business.

"We may know some people," Roselli said. Several weeks later, they all met at the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami. For years, the luxurious facility had served as the unofficial headquarters for Mafioso leaders seeking a base close to their gambling interests in Cuba. Now, it would be the staging area for the assassination plots.

At a meeting in one of the suites, Roselli introduced Maheu to two men: Sam Gold and a man Roselli referred to as Joe, who could serve as a courier to Cuba. By this time, Roselli was on to O'Connell. "I'm not kidding," Roselli told the agent one day. "I know who you work for. But I'm not going to ask you to confirm it."

Roselli may have figured out that he was dealing with the CIA, but neither Maheu nor O'Connell realized the rank of mobsters with whom they were dealing. That changed when Maheu picked up a copy of the Sunday newspaper supplement Parade, which carried an article laying out the FBI's ten most wanted criminals. Leading the list was Sam Giancana, a.k.a. "Mooney," a.k.a. "Momo," a.k.a. "Sam the Cigar," a Chicago godfather who was one of the most feared dons in the country—and the man who called himself Sam Gold. "Joe" was also on the list. His real name, however, was Santos Trafficante—the outfit's Florida and Cuba chieftain.

Maheu alerted O'Connell. "My God, look what we're involved with," Maheu said. O'Connell told his superiors. Questioned later before the 1975 U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (later nicknamed the Church Committee after its chairman, Frank Church, the Democratic senator from Idaho), O'Connell was asked whether there had ever been any discussion about asking two men on the FBI's most wanted list to carry out a hit on a foreign leader.

"Not with me there wasn't," O'Connell answered.

"And obviously no one said stop—and you went ahead."

"Yes."

"Did it bother you at all?"

"No," O'Connell answered, "it didn't."

CONTINUED...

http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/November-2007/How-the-CIA-Enlisted-the-Chicago-Mob-to-Put-a-Hit-on-Castro/index.php?cparticle=4&siarticle=3

The noise makes it harder to find that signal. Which is the idea. If one is a disinformationist. Look what a Warren Commission staffer was recently quoted as saying that didn't make it into Detroit media anywhere:

What the Warren Commission Didn’t Know

A member of the panel that investigated JFK’s death now worries he was a victim of a “massive cover-up.”

By PHILIP SHENON
Politico, February 02, 2015

EXCERPT...

Slawson feels betrayed by several senior government officials, especially at the CIA, whom he says he trusted in 1964 to tell the truth. He is most angry with one man—then-Attorney General Robert Kennedy, who assured the commission during the investigation that he knew of no evidence of a conspiracy in his brother’s death. It is now clear, as I and others have reported, that Robert Kennedy withheld vital information from the investigation: While he publicly supported the commission’s findings, Kennedy’s family and friends have confirmed in recent years that he was in fact harshly critical of the commission and believed that the investigation had missed evidence that might have pointed to a conspiracy.

“What a bastard,” Slawson says today of Robert Kennedy. “This is a man I once had admiration for.”

Slawson theorizes that that attorney general and the CIA worked together to hide information about Oswald’s Mexico trip from the commission because they feared that the investigation might stumble onto the fact that JFK’s administration had been trying, for years, sometimes with the help of the Mafia, to assassinate Castro. Mexico had been a staging area for the Castro plots. Public disclosure of the plots, Slawson says, could have derailed, if not destroyed, Robert Kennedy’s political career; he had led his brother’s secret war against Castro and, as declassified documents would later show, was well aware of the Mafia’s involvement in the CIA’s often harebrained schemes to murder the Cuban dictator. “You can’t distinguish between Bobby and the CIA on this,” Slawson says. “They were working hand in glove to hide information from us.”

Although there is nothing in the public record to show that Robert Kennedy had specific evidence of a foreign conspiracy in his brother’s death, I agree with Slawson that RFK and senior CIA officials threw the commission off the trail of witnesses and evidence that might have pointed to a conspiracy, especially in Mexico. Slawson also now suspects—but admits again that he cannot prove—that Chief Justice Earl Warren, who led the commission that bore his name, was an unwitting participant in the cover-up, agreeing with the CIA or RFK to make sure that the commission did not pursue certain evidence. Warren, he suspects, was given few details about why the commission’s investigation had to be limited. “He was probably just told that vital national interests” were at stake—that certain lines of investigation in Mexico had to be curtained because they might inadvertently reveal sensitive U.S. spy operations.

That might explain what Slawson saw as Warren’s most baffling decision during the investigation—his refusal to allow Slawson to interview a young Mexican woman who worked in the Cuban consulate in Mexico and who dealt face-to-face with Oswald on his visa application; declassified CIA records would later suggest that Oswald had a brief affair with the woman, who was herself a committed Socialist, and that she had introduced him to a network of other Castro supporters in Mexico. “It was a different time,” Slawson says. “We were more naïve. Warren would have believed what he was told.”

CONTINUED...

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/02/warren-commission-jfk-investigators-114812_Page2.html#.VN982vnF-UV

Gee, H2OMan, why would CIA not want the Warren Commission, the Attorney General, and the American public to which it reported, know the truth about its illegal assassination program? To the present day?

[MerryBlooms]

36. My first exposure to politics...

My daddy held me on his shoulders to see Bobby Kennedy speak at the Medford Oregon Courthouse... "Kitten, pay attention, this man is going to change the world'".