Yes, the CIA Director Was Part of the JFK Assassination Cover-Up

[Octafish]

History that helps explain how today's America came to be or news without complete context to comfort the afflicted without really costing anybody (who matters) a thing.


[font size="1"]Former Director of Central Intelligence Allen Dulles, President John F. Kennedy, newly-appointed DCI John McCone.[/font size]

Yes, the CIA Director Was Part of the JFK Assassination Cover-Up

John McCone was long suspected of withholding information from the Warren Commission. Now even the CIA says he did.

By Philip Shenon
Politico, October 06, 2015

John McCone came to the CIA as an outsider. An industrialist and an engineer by training, he replaced veteran spymaster Allen Dulles as director of central intelligence in November 1961, after John F. Kennedy had forced out Dulles following the CIA’s bungled operation to oust Fidel Castro by invading Cuba’s Bay of Pigs. McCone had one overriding mission: restore order at the besieged CIA. Kennedy hoped his management skills might prevent a future debacle, even if the Californian—mostly a stranger to the clubby, blue-blooded world of the men like Dulles who had always run the spy agency—faced a steep learning curve.

SNIP...

But did McCone come close to perjury all those decades ago? Did the onetime Washington outsider in fact hide agency secrets that might still rewrite the history of the assassination? Even the CIA is now willing to raise these questions. Half a century after JFK’s death, in a once-secret report written in 2013 by the CIA’s top in-house historian and quietly declassified last fall, the spy agency acknowledges what others were convinced of long ago: that McCone and other senior CIA officials were “complicit” in keeping “incendiary” information from the Warren Commission.

SNIP...

Robarge suggests the CIA is responsible for some of the harsh criticism commonly leveled at the Warren Commission for large gaps in its investigation of the president’s murder, including its failure to identify Oswald’s motive in the assassination and to pursue evidence that might have tied Oswald to accomplices outside the United States. For decades, opinion polls have shown that most Americans reject the commission’s findings and believe Oswald did not act alone. Four of the seven commissioners were members of Congress, and they spent the rest of their political careers badgered by accusations that they had been part of a coverup.

“The decision of McCone and Agency leaders in 1964 not to disclose information about CIA’s anti-Castro schemes might have done more to undermine the credibility of the commission than anything else that happened while it was conducting its investigation,” the report reads. “In that sense—and in that sense alone—McCone may be regarded as a ‘co-conspirator’ in the JFK assassination ‘cover-up.’”
If there was, indeed, a CIA “cover-up,” a member of the Warren Commission was apparently in on it: Allen Dulles, McCone’s predecessor, who ran the CIA when the spy agency hatched the plots to kill Castro. “McCone does not appear to have any explicit, special understanding with Allen Dulles,” the 2013 report says. Still, McCone could “rest assured that his predecessor would keep a dutiful watch over Agency equities and work to keep the commission from pursuing provocative lines of investigation, such as lethal anti-Castro covert actions.” (Johnson appointed Dulles to the commission at the recommendation of then-Attorney General Robert Kennedy.)

The 2013 report also draws attention to the contacts between McCone and Robert Kennedy in the days after the assassination. In the wake of the Bay of Pigs disaster in 1961, the attorney general was asked by his brother, the president, to direct the administration’s secret war against Castro, and Robert Kennedy’s friends and family acknowledged years later that he never stopped fearing that Castro was behind his brother’s death. “McCone had frequent contact with Robert Kennedy during the painful days after the assassination,” the report says. “Their communication appears to have been verbal, informal and, evidently in McCone’s estimation, highly personal; no memoranda or transcripts exist or are known to have been made.”

“Because Robert Kennedy had overseen the Agency’s anti-Castro covert actions—including some of the assassination plans—his dealings with McCone about his brother’s murder had a special gravity,” the report continues. “Did Castro kill the president because the president had tried to kill Castro? Had the administration’s obsession with Cuba inadvertently inspired a politicized sociopath to murder John Kennedy?”

CONTINUED...

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/10/jfk-assassination-john-mccone-warren-commission-cia-213197

DUer MinM found on the DUer John Simkin's Education Forum what John Newman wrote regarding the importance of Mr. Shenon's parenthetical statement saying RFK recommended Dulles to serve on the Warren Commission:

Shenon’s latest piece in Politico (“Yes the CIA Director was Part of the JFK Assassination Coverup”) is a continuation of the newest stage—begun in 2013—of the propaganda campaign to convince Americans that Robert Kennedy got his brother John killed and then worked to cover it up. The genesis of this new stage was a call from a Warren Commission lawyer to Shenon, who then fed Shenon and used him as the mouthpiece for this outrageous scheme. The Castro-did-it propaganda was part of the true coverup of the plot to kill JFK, and it was in play even before the shots were fired in Dallas. But I knew when I read Shenon’s 2015 paper edition of his book, A Cruel and Shocking Act, that we would be facing a newer, carefully orchestrated campaign to stick it to the Kennedys right at the time when the battle lines are being drawn to force the release—as required by the JFK Records Act—of the remaining JFK records by October 2017. Now, Shenon takes a recently released internal CIA analysis (which also dates to 2013) about DCI McCone blocking the CIA’s anti-Castro plots from the Warren Commission, and uses it to bolster his (Shenon’s) baleful version of history. I will comment on that (David Robarge’s) analysis after thoroughly reading it. Shenon’s Politico piece ends by restating a myth he hopes to make stick: that President Johnson appointed former DCI Allen Dulles to the Warren Commission “at the recommendation of then Attorney General Robert Kennedy.” I will hold back here on commenting about this fabrication because David Talbot’s new book, The Devil’s Chessboard, (to be released next week) so thoroughly (pp. 572-574) demolishes it

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=22318

Professional Grade Perception Management, especially when considering that the CIA hired Mafia in 1960 when Eisenhower was president, not Kennedy, and Nixon was thought to be the next president.

AUG 1960: Richard Bissell meets with Colonel Sheffield Edwards, director of the CIA's Office of Security, and discusses with him ways to eliminate or assassinate Fidel Castro. Edwards proposes that the job be done by assassins hand-picked by the American underworld, specifically syndicate interests who have been driven out of their Havana gambling casinos by the Castro regime. Bissell gives Edwards the go-ahead to proceed. Between August 1960, and April 1961, the CIA with the help of the Mafia pursues a series of plots to poison or shot Castro. The CIA’s own internal report on these efforts states that these plots "were viewed by at least some of the participants as being merely one aspect of the over-all active effort to overthrow the regime that culminated in the Bay of Pigs." (CIA, Inspector General's Report on Efforts to Assassinate Fidel Castro, p. 3, 14)

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/bayofpigs/chron.html

So. If this is all ancient history, as some have asked over the years, why do so many bits and pieces of the story continue to find the light of day and make news? For instance, this intriguing history on the Bush connection from one of the nation's best known political science professors, Larry J. Sabato, author of "The Kennedy Half-Century: The Presidency, Assassination, and Lasting Legacy of John F. Kennedy," in April 1969, Prescott Bush wrote Clover Dulles regarding the change in leadership at CIA almost 8 years earlier:

I recall in the summer of 1961, after the ill-fated Bay of Pigs affair, you were away and we called Allen to come for supper, and he accepted. That afternoon he called and asked if he could bring a friend, and we said "surely." So he brought John McCone, whom we had known well, but had not thought of as a particular friend of Allen's. But Allen broke the ice promptly, and said, in good spirit, that he wanted us to meet his successor. The announcement came (the) next day. We tried to make a pleasant evening of it, but I was rather sick at heart, and angry too, for it was the Kennedys that brought about the fiasco. And here they were making Allen seem to be the goat, which he wasn't and did not deserve. I have never forgiven them. (Misspellings corrected here.)

SOURCE p. 368 online:

https://books.google.com/books?id=X7OnBQAAQBAJ&pg=PA368&lpg=PA368&dq=john+mccone+%2B+prescott+bush&source=bl&ots=dJAjiC_h6D&sig=fkfjmBYhc8KD3Relu4Vc93mEyCo&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CD0Q6AEwBmoVChMInOeZgovAyAIVBpiACh0JnAxi#v=onepage&q=john%20mccone%20%2B%20prescott%20bush&f=false

Clearly shows how the players, like the aspens, look like a forest of individual trees above ground, but really are connected by their roots underground.

[H2O Man]

1. Recommended.

Thank you for this.

[Octafish]

2. You are most welcome, H2O Man!

You are an excellent teacher on this subject, helping explain how 1,037 days of the JFK Administration really represented an interregnum. The author (and DUer) James DiEugenio explains how that conclusion is fact, based upon the change in foreign policy JFK represented from the Eisenhower years, where the US sided with the colonial powers over democratic movements from Iran to Vietnam -- and how LBJ returned to the foreign policy of the Eisenhower years, specifically siding with the colonial powers over democracy.

Those 1,037 from 52 years back are too important to forget. The world is on the verge of collapse. JFK's attitude that government can do great things -- the American people can do anything, from going to the moon to creating a planet of peace and prosperity for all.

[H2O Man]

4. I like to remember

one of our early conversations on what JFK's presidency represented, and thus was ended. We talked about things my father told me, as I recall!

(I've been tempted to call you recently. Maybe we can talk this weekend?)

[Octafish]

8. Great memory, yours.

That is it exactly. Your father had explained to you the business as usual approach...

Feel free to call anytime.

[arthritisR_US]

31. Wow, your link at the bottom of post (tag line?) is truly

amazing. There is so much brilliant material I have to digest, feels like Christmas came early

[Octafish]

35. Vincent Salandria was on the case, starting Nov. 22, 1963.

His story:

Vince Salandria: The JFK Conspiracy Theorist

Fifty years ago Arlen Specter and the Warren Commission told America that Lee Harvey Oswald had acted alone in the assassination of JFL. Vince Salandria has spent a lifetime trying to debunk that conclusion. Shortly before his death, did Specter hint that Salandria just might be right?

BY ROBERT HUBER
Philadelphia | FEBRUARY 27, 2014

THREE YEARS AGO, Vince Salandria got a phone call from Arlen Specter, a man he didn’t know. Salandria had been in the Senator’s company only once before, but that was almost a half-century earlier, at a public event. When he called, Specter wasn’t running for anything—he had recently been voted out of office. All he had was a simple request of Salandria, who was 83 years old, a retired Philadelphia school-system lawyer: Would you have lunch with me? They eventually met at the Oyster House, on Sansom Street in Philadelphia. The lunch would turn out to be one of strangest meetings of Salandria’s life.

Vince is a man of high energy; he’s still doing pro bono lawyering in labor relations for the city’s schools. He’s small—all of 137 pounds—with a large balding head that narrows toward his jaw. He has an impish smile, and it would be easy to call him cute. But he isn’t, by nature, impish or cute—Vince is intense. And that was especially true when, as a young man, he attended an event held in Arlen Specter’s honor.

In October 1964, the Philadelphia Bar Association invited Specter, then a young prosecutor in the D.A.’s office, to speak about his work as an investigator for the Warren Commission, which had been formed to come up with a definitive answer to who assassinated President John F. Kennedy. Specter was assigned to figure out the basic logistics of the shooting: how many shots, how many gunmen, where did the bullets come from? The commission’s report had just come out, declaring Lee Harvey Oswald the lone killer, and the bar association had Specter address about 150 people one evening in a City Hall courtroom. Afterward, he asked if there were any questions.

Vince Salandria—who in 1964 was a history teacher at Bartram High School in Southwest Philly—stood up that night in City Hall and said he had some questions. Though really, his questions were more like statements. He said that Specter’s analysis—specifically, that a bullet had gone through the President’s neck and into Texas Governor John Connally in front of him, where it penetrated his back, smashed his right wrist, wounded his thigh, and then ended up on a gurney in a Dallas hospital in pristine condition—was a fabrication. An impossibility. An absurdity. A concoction that amounted to fraud.

Vince stood up and said that to Arlen Specter, back in 1964, before anyone else had. How could Specter come to a conclusion that was so clearly and patently wrong?

CONTINUED...

http://www.phillymag.com/articles/vince-salandria-jfk-conspiracy-theorist/

Mr. Salandria got people to pay attention to the facts -- not the story.

[arthritisR_US]

46. I read Specter's request as an admission of a coverup of the actual facts.

Excellent article, thank you!

[Octafish]

52. You are most welcome, arthritisR_US!

Specter must've been sworn to secrecy; and he kept his pledge, as far as I know. Reading between the lines, though, he knows he did what Salandria said and what we can see.

The Warren Commission and staff were under tremendous pressure, not just in terms of the case, but in terms of preventing World War III. The single bullet theory became their least implausible explanation for public consumption.

LBJ and Hoover discussed the "little incident in Mexico City" problem by phone. It seems someone wanted to "make hay" of the assassination and blame Cuba and the Soviets by planting a trail of glowing black dots between Lee Harvey Oswald and Nikita Krushchev.

In light of what we've since learned, that bothers me.

[panader0]

3. Another rec. Don't stop doing this Octafish.

[Octafish]

5. Thank you, panader0!

Those who care about the future need to know how things got to be the way they are.

[edhopper]

6. There's a forum for this

doesn't belong here.

[Octafish]

7. Please, show what's speculation.

Show.

[edhopper]

9. pleas discuss

JFK conspiracies in the appropriate forum.

[Octafish]

10. So, you can't show what's speculation.

Skinner indicated to me that we can discuss the assassination of President Kennedy in GD, as long as the discussion is based on fact.

[edhopper]

12. okay then

carry on.

[Octafish]

16. Funny. I never thought I needed your permission.

Allow me to say you should learn more about the subject, as well as information and democracy.

[edhopper]

17. Didn't intend it that way.

[nationalize the fed]

41. +1000 & k&r

NGU. Ever.

Hopefully Truman is rolling in his grave for creating the CIA. One of the worst things a president has ever done.

"Rasta don't work for no CIA" -Bob Marley, O.M.

Bob said a small ax can cut down a big tree. You're an ax man hacking at the big trees of lies that infect this once great nation!

[Octafish]

127. Duppy Conqueror

Last edited Mon Dec 21, 2015, 09:43 PM - Edit history (1)

From: Treasure Trove of JFK and LBJ Documents declassified by CIA

The CIA’s Historical Review Program on 16 September 2015 released a collection of presidential briefing products written during the Kennedy and Johnson presidential administrations. This large-scale release of The President’s Intelligence Checklists (PICLs) (an acronym pronounced “pickles”) and The President’s Daily Briefs (PDBs) includes almost 2,500 documents exclusively written for the president each day except Sunday. They summarized the day-to-day intelligence and analysis on current and future national security issues. President Kennedy received the first PICL -- a seven-page 8 ½- by 8-inch booklet -- on Saturday, 17 June 1961 at his country home near Middleburg, Virginia. The PICL was replaced by the PDB on 1 December 1964, during the Johnson administration. In addition to the PDBs and PICLs, the collection includes The President’s Intelligence Review and its replacement, Highlights of the Week, as well as ad hoc supplemental products and annexes that featured topics of presidential interest. The CIA originators of the PICL, and later the PDB, strove to craft a daily current product that was true to sensitive source reporting and yet was easily readable by the president and his advisors.

http://www.foia.cia.gov/collection/PDBs

Fascinating peek into history, what before the creation of the National Security State was called the People's business.

Here's something that more people interested in democracy should know:

Truman criticized CIA after the assassination of President Kennedy and Dulles asked for retraction.

Truman's column on CIA cloak and dagger got published in the Washington Post and, evidently, few other newspapers at the time. What could have bugged Dulles -- who was no longer DCI -- so much that he got the Mighty Wurlitzer to hum a different tune?

Limit CIA Role To Intelligence

By Harry S Truman
The Washington Post, December 22, 1963 - page A11

INDEPENDENCE, MO., Dec. 21 — I think it has become necessary to take another look at the purpose and operations of our Central Intelligence Agency—CIA. At least, I would like to submit here the original reason why I thought it necessary to organize this Agency during my Administration, what I expected it to do and how it was to operate as an arm of the President.

I think it is fairly obvious that by and large a President's performance in office is as effective as the information he has and the information he gets. That is to say, that assuming the President himself possesses a knowledge of our history, a sensitive understanding of our institutions, and an insight into the needs and aspirations of the people, he needs to have available to him the most accurate and up-to-the-minute information on what is going on everywhere in the world, and particularly of the trends and developments in all the danger spots in the contest between East and West. This is an immense task and requires a special kind of an intelligence facility.

Of course, every President has available to him all the information gathered by the many intelligence agencies already in existence. The Departments of State, Defense, Commerce, Interior and others are constantly engaged in extensive information gathering and have done excellent work.

But their collective information reached the President all too frequently in conflicting conclusions. At times, the intelligence reports tended to be slanted to conform to established positions of a given department. This becomes confusing and what's worse, such intelligence is of little use to a President in reaching the right decisions.

Therefore, I decided to set up a special organization charged with the collection of all intelligence reports from every available source, and to have those reports reach me as President without department "treatment" or interpretations.

I wanted and needed the information in its "natural raw" state and in as comprehensive a volume as it was practical for me to make full use of it. But the most important thing about this move was to guard against the chance of intelligence being used to influence or to lead the President into unwise decisions—and I thought it was necessary that the President do his own thinking and evaluating.

Since the responsibility for decision making was his—then he had to be sure that no information is kept from him for whatever reason at the discretion of any one department or agency, or that unpleasant facts be kept from him. There are always those who would want to shield a President from bad news or misjudgments to spare him from being "upset."

For some time I have been disturbed by the way CIA has been diverted from its original assignment. It has become an operational and at times a policy-making arm of the Government. This has led to trouble and may have compounded our difficulties in several explosive areas.

I never had any thought that when I set up the CIA that it would be injected into peacetime cloak and dagger operations. Some of the complications and embarrassment I think we have experienced are in part attributable to the fact that this quiet intelligence arm of the President has been so removed from its intended role that it is being interpreted as a symbol of sinister and mysterious foreign intrigue—and a subject for cold war enemy propaganda.

With all the nonsense put out by Communist propaganda about "Yankee imperialism," "exploitive capitalism," "war-mongering," "monopolists," in their name-calling assault on the West, the last thing we needed was for the CIA to be seized upon as something akin to a subverting influence in the affairs of other people.

I well knew the first temporary director of the CIA, Adm. Souers, and the later permanent directors of the CIA, Gen. Hoyt Vandenberg and Allen Dulles. These were men of the highest character, patriotism and integrity—and I assume this is true of all those who continue in charge.

But there are now some searching questions that need to be answered. I, therefore, would like to see the CIA be restored to its original assignment as the intelligence arm of the President, and that whatever else it can properly perform in that special field—and that its operational duties be terminated or properly used elsewhere.

We have grown up as a nation, respected for our free institutions and for our ability to maintain a free and open society. There is something about the way the CIA has been functioning that is casting a shadow over our historic position and I feel that we need to correct it.

SOURCE: http://www.maebrussell.com/Prouty/Harry%20Truman's%20CIA%20article.html

So. One month after the assassination, President Truman expressed public concern CIA had strayed off the reservation from intelligence gathering of foreign news sources to cloak-and-dagger operations. Time -- and the Church Committee -- has since shown CIA operated, illegally, domestically.

Allen Dulles, on behalf of CIA, even asked Truman to retract it. From Ray McGovern...

Fox Guarding Hen House

The well-connected Dulles got himself appointed to the Warren Commission and took the lead in shaping the investigation of JFK’s assassination.

Documents in the Truman Library show that he then mounted a small domestic covert action of his own to neutralize any future airing of Truman’s and Souers’s warnings about covert action.

So important was this to Dulles that he invented a pretext to get himself invited to visit Truman in Independence, Missouri. On the afternoon of April 17, 1964, Dulles spent a half-hour trying to get the former President to retract what he had said in his op-ed. No dice, said Truman.

No problem, thought Dulles. Four days later, in a formal memo for his old buddy Lawrence Houston, CIA General Counsel from 1947 to 1973, Dulles fabricated a private retraction, claiming that Truman told him the Washington Post article was “all wrong,” and that Truman “seemed quite astounded at it.”

No doubt Dulles thought it might be handy to have such a memo in CIA files, just in case.

A fabricated retraction? It certainly seems so, because Truman did not change his tune. Far from it.

In a June 10, 1964, letter to the managing editor of Look magazine, for example, Truman restated his critique of covert action, emphasizing that he never intended the CIA to get involved in “strange activities.”

CONTINUED...

SOURCE: http://www.consortiumnews.com/2009/122909b.html

Your kind words have made my day, nationalize the fed. You me and malaise got a quorum. Please know that your friendship means the world to me.

[H2O Man]

14. The OP is not

a "conspiracy theory" -- rather, it is a fully documented reality. It is uncomfortable, for sure. And, in a real sense, it could result in people's considering alternative theories.

A large segment of the DU community truly appreciates Octafish's attempts to make people think. Please consider allowing those of us who are in that group to engage in meaningful discussions to do so, without those who do not hold similar views attempting to derail our discussions.

Thanks, edhopper!

[edhopper]

15. That's why we have forums for this

but if the Mods allow, have at it.

[H2O Man]

20. DU:GD

is the appropriate forum for documented issues involving the activities of CIA directors. The OP is not about a "theory." Again, the subject in the OP is well documented.

I appreciate -- though disagree -- that "theories" regarding who murdered JFK are not allowed on DU:GD. Like some other heatedly disputed issues, those can degenerate into meaningless arguing and insults.

Have a good day!

[edhopper]

22. same to you.

[H2O Man]

23. Thanks!

I always respect and enjoy your contributions here. Glad to be on the same team!

[edhopper]

25. I love some of the non political discussions

But in the end we want a Democratic Government.

[LanternWaste]

11. The title of the OP.

The title of the OP.

[Octafish]

13. What's wrong with it?

That's what the CIA historian reported.

[Rex]

19. Actually no the title reflects the context.

Of what has been reported. There is no speculation involved.

[Logical]

81. Please SHOW absolute proof. It is all shit rehashed for 50 years. nt

[Octafish]

96. You call me obsessed, yet all you got is ad hominem.

Let me break it to you softly: Just because you haven't learned anything new, doesn't mean others haven't. Trying to stop people from learning, especially information and news of a political nature, is most undemocratic.

[Logical]

97. There is a forum for this. And it is not GD. nt

[SidDithers]

50. Some posters are exempt from Forum SOPs...nt

Sid

[etherealtruth]

56. Next up .... chemtrails, mind control via vaccine, the pope piloted the 9/11 planes n/t

[Octafish]

73. Ad hominem shows all you know is smear.

Oh. Still waiting to see where I'm any of what you say.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022073759#post46

[villager]

76. Truly... some really are... nt

[edhopper]

72. I would disagree that it is

but the Mods are allowing, so here it is.

[Octafish]

75. So what, exactly, do you find wrong with the OP?

Please. Show. You can stop at the first thing you find.

[edhopper]

79. The topic is

Kennedy assassination conspiracy.

Usually sent to the other forum.

But the Mods allow this thread, so here it is.

[Octafish]

80. So, evidence -- including what the Director of CIA did -- for conspiracy is to be hidden.

Withholding evidence is obstruction of justice.

Evidence against conspiracy is to be invited.

I can show you a dozen active GD threads of the latter, most any time.

[edhopper]

84. look

I think this belongs in the other forum, you don't.
The Mods agree with you, so I accept their decision.
How it works.

[Logical]

82. He loves the CS shit. An obsession. nt

[Octafish]

85. Speaking of obsessed...

Is there a reason -- besides the ad hominem -- that you never add to the discussion, Logical?

Five posts, as of this writing, on this thread alone, and not even one link or source to back up your contention that the case is closed.

[Logical]

86. Otca, where is the proof? This would be WORLD WIDE NEWS if it was proved. It is like all the....

other fringe shit. (/11 truthers, UFOs, Ghosts.

No real proof, just hope!

[Octafish]

92. I didn't ask you to prove anything - just to support your contentions.

Since you don't, one name that comes to mind is Hypocritical.

[Logical]

95. The burden of proof is on the person making a nutty claim. nt

[Octafish]

98. So, it should be easy for you. Yet, you don't. That's telling.

Tell you what: You should read more. It will expand your horizons. Here's a good place to start:

Go through my Journal on DU3 or DU2.

While you're at it, look for any crazy stuff and show where I'm wrong. I'll apologize.

So far, on this thread and every other time I've asked you to show where I'm wrong, you haven't.

[Logical]

99. For god sake, then why isn't the fact the CIA killed Kennedy on the....

Front page of every newspaper in the country?

[Octafish]

100. Nice disinformation. Where did you get the CIA killed Kennedy?

This thread is about how Director of CIA McCone obstructed justice in the investigation of President Kennedy's assassination. So did former DCI Allen Dulles, a member of the Warren Commission. Among the revelevant information they withheld from investigators is the fact the CIA had contracted with the Mafia to murder Fidel Castro -- in 1960, when Eisenhower was president.

As for the roles of the leading newspapers in keeping all this covered up, you need to learn about Operation MOCKINGBIRD.

An excellent overview of the impact Capitalism's Invisible Army makes on the "free press" and its import for democracy...

The covert “selling” of anticommunism

The Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America

By Nancy Hanover
World Socialist Web Site, 17 August 2015

EXCERPT...

The Mighty Wurlitzer

The detailed and engrossing 2008 book, The Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America, by Hugh Wilford, investigates the CIA’s ideological struggle from 1947 to 1967 to win “hearts and minds” for US capitalism and prosecute the Cold War.

SNIP...

Most important of all, the reader comes away with a sense of the immense significance attributed by the American ruling elite to the ideological struggle against socialism.

The author correctly emphasizes, “If anything, these practices have intensified in recent years, with the ‘war on terror’ recreating the conditions of total mobilization that prevailed in the first years of the Cold War.” He adds that the agency is “a growing force on campus.”[3]

The metaphor—a “Mighty Wurlitzer”—was coined by Frank Wisner, the head of the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC), a paramilitary and psychological operations group created in 1948, which was folded into the CIA in 1951. He prided himself on directing the network of organizations to play any propaganda tune on demand, likening it to the world-famous theater organ.

The agency sought out those who might be predisposed in a socialistic direction, targeting constituencies that had grievances with the status quo. It selected representatives from ethnic groups, women, African-Americans, labor, intellectuals and academics, students, Catholics, and artists and organized them into various front groups to promote anticommunism. These links, in turn, provided the agency with the cover it needed to influence strategically important sectors of foreign populations.

Ironically, as the federal government was conducting its House Un-American Activities witch-hunts and assembling the attorney general’s List of Subversive Organizations, supposedly to ferret out Communist Party “front groups,” the CIA was busy doing precisely that—creating front groups of thousands of unwitting Americans for covert political operations.

CONTINUED...

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/08/17/wur1-a17.html

For those too lazy to read: Use your memory and try to recall the run up to the second Iraq war, where NYT and WaPo and CIABCNNBCBSFauxNoiseNutworks all swore up and down Saddam had nuclear weapons poised to destroy the USA.

Almost forgot: Your efforts to tarnish me, Logical, remind me of what happened to Gary Webb when he wrote about the CIA connections to the crack cocaine epidemic. Rather than discuss what Webb reported, his critics made out that he had written something else. That's how smear artists operate.

[Zen Democrat]

128. I was 15 and nothing added up. I became suspicious with LBJ reading a few cold words in near nursery

rhyme sing-song to a shocked and grieving nation. He was phony. Then Oswald kept asking for a lawyer, but never had one. Then he was conveniently dead; killed by a shady character with past connections to Chicago, Marcello, the FBI, and Dick Nixon, and Oswald was executed in the basement of the police station handcuffed to two police detectives. The burden of proof was on LBJ's Commission, which Warren rarely attended, and which few of my generation believed. That there are people who continue to argue that the "Warren Report" is or ever was relevant makes me curious where their "conviction" comes from. Surely not from the truth.

[Octafish]

140. Here's video that shows Secret Service ordered off JFK's limousine.

Makes my heart sink every time.

[librechik]

115. thank you, edhopper!

Every once in awhile I am reminded how the specter of censorship is alive and thriving on DU.

[edhopper]

118. Your welcome

the Mods allowed, so here it is. So I moved along, careful not to engage in the subject.

[Rex]

18. The CIA sits on its secrets hoping enough time will pass

that people will either forget or pass away due to age.

[H2O Man]

21. I agree

100%.

[Octafish]

24. Once no one is around who remembers, CIABCNNBCBSFauxNoiseNutworks can tell the tale.

We all see what kind of job the Corporate Owned News media have done in seeing the traitors that lied American into war in Iraq (father and son!) are held to account, let alone their job investigating and calling for the prosecuting of the banksters has been.

Well, if you're old enough to see any of that. Trust me, I'm old enough to remember 1963. And it's not like what CON media have been saying. It's closer to what John Newman and Larry Sabato are reporting.

Thank you for grokking, Rex.

[jwirr]

26. I feel like crying. I wonder if we can ever change this world

for the better? Business as usual.....

[Octafish]

27. That feeling of powerlessness...

...isn't you. It's the information environment. It's rigged to give us certain ideas and not others. And as long as it's shaped by the conservatives, the longer we'll live with the perception that we are insignificant, endangered and under attack.

The Machine: Taking the Risk out of Democracy, Corporate Propaganda vs Freedom & Liberty

Corporate McPravda owns the airwaves. And Corporate Tee Vee is still where most Americans get most of their information.

The Propaganda System That Has Helped Create a Permanent Overclass Is Over a Century in the Making

Pulling back the curtain on how intent the wealthiest Americans have been on establishing a propaganda tool to subvert democracy.

Wednesday, 17 April 2013 00:00
By Andrew Gavin Marshall, AlterNet | News Analysis

Where there is the possibility of democracy, there is the inevitability of elite insecurity. All through its history, democracy has been under a sustained attack by elite interests, political, economic, and cultural. There is a simple reason for this: democracy – as in true democracy – places power with people. In such circumstances, the few who hold power become threatened. With technological changes in modern history, with literacy and education, mass communication, organization and activism, elites have had to react to the changing nature of society – locally and globally.

From the late 19th century on, the “threats” to elite interests from the possibility of true democracy mobilized institutions, ideologies, and individuals in support of power. What began was a massive social engineering project with one objective: control. Through educational institutions, the social sciences, philanthropic foundations, public relations and advertising agencies, corporations, banks, and states, powerful interests sought to reform and protect their power from the potential of popular democracy.

SNIP...

The development of psychology, psychoanalysis, and other disciplines increasingly portrayed the “public” and the population as irrational beings incapable of making their own decisions. The premise was simple: if the population was driven by dangerous, irrational emotions, they needed to be kept out of power and ruled over by those who were driven by reason and rationality, naturally, those who were already in power.

The Princeton Radio Project, which began in the 1930s with Rockefeller Foundation funding, brought together many psychologists, social scientists, and “experts” armed with an interest in social control, mass communication, and propaganda. The Princeton Radio Project had a profound influence upon the development of a modern "democratic propaganda" in the United States and elsewhere in the industrialized world. It helped in establishing and nurturing the ideas, institutions, and individuals who would come to shape America’s “democratic propaganda” throughout the Cold War, a program fostered between the private corporations which own the media, advertising, marketing, and public relations industries, and the state itself.

CONTINUED...

http://truth-out.org/news/item/15784-the-propaganda-system-that-has-helped-create-a-permanent-overclass-is-over-a-century-in-the-making

Thankfully, to help spread light when the protectors of the First Amendment won't, Maria Galardin's TUC (Time of Useful Consciousness) Radio. The podcast helps explain how we got here and what we need to do to move forward, starting with putting the "Public" into Airwaves again:

Alex Carey: Corporations and Propaganda
The Attack on Democracy

The 20th century, said Carey, is marked by three historic developments: the growth of democracy via the expansion of the franchise, the growth of corporations, and the growth of propaganda to protect corporations from democracy. Carey wrote that the people of the US have been subjected to an unparalleled, expensive, 3/4 century long propaganda effort designed to expand corporate rights by undermining democracy and destroying the unions. And, in his manuscript, unpublished during his life time, he described that history, going back to World War I and ending with the Reagan era. Carey covers the little known role of the US Chamber of Commerce in the McCarthy witch hunts of post WWII and shows how the continued campaign against "Big Government" plays an important role in bringing Reagan to power.

John Pilger called Carey "a second Orwell", Noam Chomsky dedicated his book, Manufacturing Consent, to him. And even though TUC Radio runs our documentary based on Carey's manuscript at least every two years and draws a huge response each time, Alex Carey is still unknown.

Given today's spotlight on corporations that may change. It is not only the Occupy movement that inspired me to present this program again at this time. By an amazing historic coincidence Bill Moyers and Charlie Cray of Greenpeace have just added the missing chapter to Carey's analysis. Carey's manuscript ends in 1988 when he committed suicide. Moyers and Cray begin with 1971 and bring the corporate propaganda project up to date.

This is a fairly complex production with many voices, historic sound clips, and source material. The program has been used by writers and students of history and propaganda. Alex Carey: Taking the Risk out of Democracy, Corporate Propaganda VS Freedom and Liberty with a foreword by Noam Chomsky was published by the University of Illinois Press in 1995.

SOURCE: http://tucradio.org/new.html

If you find a moment, here's the first part (scroll down at the link for the second part) on Carey.

http://tucradio.org/AlexCarey_ONE.mp3

It's important for there to be more than a handful of companies providing "news." Democracy depends on it.

When we realize that We the People can do anything -- from going to the moon to having peace in our time with prosperity for all -- we will. What conservatives worry about, besides losing their positions as unchallenged leadership, is having to pay for it with taxes and public humiliation.

[jwirr]

28. Once again thank you. I really do understand this and try

to remember that we cannot give up no matter what. I can even understand where the rulers at the top are coming from - I love medieval history - the rulers with their thumb on the little people. But I had really hoped that we were all beyond that today.

You know it just dawned on me - it was kind of nice not knowing who killed JFK - because the more we know the worse our world back then looks. That may be why I am feeling down.

My brother in law used to say "Keep up the struggle." I guess I need to thank him for the idea.

[Octafish]

37. Beethoven.

When I get melancholy, I try to remember the maestro. What he really wanted in life was to have a family. Frustrated from marrying the woman he loved, reportedly because he was of lower social rank (a commoner), Beethoven decided to devote his energies to music -- the language of the Divine. Soon thereafter he lost his hearing and despaired. Then, he realized that he was still blessed.

For my brothers Carl and (Johann) Beethoven

Oh you men who think or say that I am malevolent, stubborn, or misanthropic, how greatly do you wrong me? You do not know the secret cause which makes me seem that way to you. From childhood on, me heart and soul have been full of the tender feeling of goodwill, and I was ever inclined to accomplish great things. But, think that for six years now I have been hopelessly afflicted, made worse by senseless physicians, from year to year deceived with hopes of improvement, finally compelled to face the prospect of a lasting malady (whose cure will take years or, perhaps, be impossible). Though born with a fiery, active temperament, even susceptible to the diversions of society, I was soon compelled to withdraw myself, to live life alone. If at times I tried to forget all this, oh how harshly I was I flung back by the doubly sad experience of my bad hearing. Yet it was impossible for me to say to people, "Speak louder, shout, for I am deaf." Ah, how could I possibly admit an infirmity in the one sense which ought to be more perfect in me than others, a sense which I once possessed in the highest perfection, a perfection such as few in my profession enjoy or ever have enjoyed.--Oh I cannot do it; therefore forgive me when you see me draw back when I would have gladly mingled with you.

My misfortune is doubly painful to me because I am bound to be misunderstood; for me there can be no relaxation with my fellow men, no refined conversations, no mutual exchange of ideas. I must live almost alone, like one who has been banished; I can mix with society only as much as true necessity demands. If I approach near to people a hot terror seizes upon me, and I fear being exposed to the danger that my condition might be noticed. Thus it has been during the last six months which I have spent in the country. By ordering me to spare my hearing as much as possible, my intelligent doctor almost fell in with my own present frame of mind, though sometimes I ran counter to it by yielding to my desire for companionship. But what a humiliation for me when someone standing next to me heard a flute in the distance and I heard nothing, or someone standing next to me heard a flute in the distance and I heard nothing, or someone heard a shepherd singing and again I heard nothing. Such incidents drove me almost to despair; a little more of that and I would have ended me life -- it was only my art that held me back. Ah, it seemed to me impossible to leave the world until I had brought forth all that I felt was within me. So I endured this wretched existence -- truly wretched for so susceptible a body, which can be thrown by a sudden change from the best condition to the very worst. -- Patience, they say, is what I must now choose for my guide, and I have done so -- I hope my determination will remain firm to endure until it pleases the inexorable Parcae to break the thread. Perhaps I shall get better, perhaps not; I am ready. -- Forced to become a philosopher already in my twenty-eighth year, oh it is not easy, and for the artist much more difficult than for anyone else. 'Divine one, thou seest me inmost soul thou knowest that therein dwells the love of mankind and the desire to do good'. Oh fellow men, when at some point you read this, consider then that you have done me an injustice; someone who has had misfortune man console himself to find a similar case to his, who despite all the limitations of Nature nevertheless did everything within his powers to become accepted among worthy artists and men. 'You, my brothers Carl and [Johann], as soon as I am dead, if Dr. Schmidt is still alive, ask him in my name to describe my malady, and attach this written documentation to his account of my illness so that so far as it possible at least the world may become reconciled to me after my death".

At the same time, I declare you two to be the heirs to my small fortune (if so it can be called); divide it fairly; bear with and help each other. What injury you have done me you know was long ago forgiven. To you, brother Carl, I give special thanks for the attachment you have shown me of late. It is my wish that you may have a better and freer life than I have had. Recommend virtue to your children; it alone, not money, can make them happy. I speak from experience; this was what upheld me in time of misery. Thanks to it and to my art, I did not end my life by suicide -- Farewell and love each other -- I thank all my friends, particularly Prince Lichnowsky's and Professor Schmidt -- I would like the instruments from Prince L. to be preserved by one of you, but not to be the cause of strife between you, and as soon as they can serve you a better purpose, then sell them. How happy I shall be if can still be helpful to you in my grave -- so be it. -- With joy I hasten to meed death. -- If it comes before I have had the chance to develop all my artistic capacities, it will still be coming too soon despite my harsh fate, and I should probably wish it later -- yet even so I should be happy, for would it not free me from a state of endless suffering? -- Come when thou wilt, I shall meed thee bravely. -- Farewell and do not wholly forget me when I am dead; I deserve this from you, for during my lifetime I was thinking of you often and of ways to make you happy -- please be so --

Ludwig van Beethoven

Heiligenstadt,

October 6th, 1802

SOURCE w/details: http://www.all-about-beethoven.com/heiligenstadt_test.html

That's what it means to me -- what it meant to your brother in law: Keep up the struggle! No matter how heavy the burden, we are blessed, indeed, to be part of the work, whatever the nature of that may really be. When it comes to democracy, as long as there are two of us we have a chance.

[jwirr]

40. I had no idea that is where he got this. That is totally inspiring.

[Octafish]

55. The guy was a Democrat before there was a Party.

Goethe seems to have better "understood" his place in the pyamid.

Goethe’s social attitudes, like his musical tastes, were shaped in a more formal age. For Beethoven, 21 years his junior, the only true aristocrats were artists. In the mythology, his disillusionment was clinched by Goethe’s behaviour when they encountered royalty in the street, as reported 20 years later by Bettina: "Beethoven said to Goethe: 'keep walking as you have until now, holding my arm, they must make way for us, not the other way around. Goethe thought differently; he drew his hand, took off his hat and stepped aside, while Beethoven, hands in pockets, went right through the dukes and their cortege... They drew aside to make way for him, saluting him in friendly fashion. Waiting for Goethe who had let the dukes pass, Beethoven told him: “I have waited for you because I respect you and I admire your work, but you have shown too much esteem to those people.”’

SOURCE: http://www.gramophone.co.uk/features/focus/a-meeting-of-genius-beethoven-and-goethe-july-1812?pmtx=most-popular&utm_expid=32540977-5.-DEFmKXoQdmXwfDwHzJRUQ.1&utm_referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F

The composer Luigi Cherubini compared Beethoven to an "unlicked bear cub.'

"Like to a chaos, or an unlicked bear-whelp,
That carries no impression like the dam."

— Shakespeare:3 Henry VI, act iii. sc. 2 (1595)

Reading about Beethoven's measure of the aristocrats makes me glad for my politics today. Lots of voices, all free to speak their mind and each equal under the law, working toward the goal of making this life better for ALL. That is the essence of Democratic politics -- where each human life is treasured for the marvel it truly is.

[jwirr]

58. Good way to start the morning. We are part of a very long

process. Let us keep walking.

[raouldukelives]

47. Amazing. nt

[Octafish]

57. "The heart grows stronger by facing the evils of the world." -- Ludwig van Beethoven (Fidelio)

He was at the point of quitting after realizing he was going deaf. Then he realized what it was all about and moved the art of music to a new dimension.

"Whoever gets to know and understand my music, will be freed from all the misery that drags down others." -- Ludwig van Beethoven

[SalviaBlue]

119. This IS inspiring.

I appreciate your contributions to DU very much.

Keep up the good work and thank you!!

[cpwm17]

29. Am I the only one that was not involved in the JFK assassination plot?

I get left out of everything.

It seems the CT'ers accuse just about everyone, with no evidence; and every new conspirator needs to have a stack of new book$ written about their dastardly deed.

[Octafish]

32. Were you director of the CIA?

Last edited Fri Dec 18, 2015, 06:39 PM - Edit history (1)

If not, then this thread's really not about you.

Do you have anything to add about the OP, including Mr. McCone's role in the cover-up of the CIA's involvement in the "assassination cover-up"?

In addition to its obvious import in terms of Democracy, I think the subject is very important to our understanding the nation's current situation.

I remember what the country was like on Nov. 22, 1963. It's a very, very different place today.

[Logical]

64. This shit is just like 9/11 truthers. So old and so wrong. nt

[treestar]

68. No, I'm not involved either

Though might be due to having trouble remembering. I was 3-4. I recall plotting other things. But maybe what I was doing was still part of the conspiracy and I just didn't know it.

[cpwm17]

88. I'm your age, but I don't remember the 1960's

except election night in 1968 that Nixon won, since I was spending the night at my grandmother's house. That was my first exposure to any of those national figures and how I learned about presidential elections. While visiting my grandparents' house, I also remember my other grandmother saying there would be nothing on TV because of an assassination – presumably RFK.

We had no TV (selfish right-wing father) and I wasn't exposed to anyone that talked current events. I didn't even have any knowledge of the first moon landing. Like I wrote, I miss out on everything.

[treestar]

89. Nixon is the first one I remember too

about the moon landing. I remember getting to get up in the middle of the night.

When Nixon won in 1968 our local paper did a full size portrait of him. I remember dad holding it up and saying Tricky Dick made the paper !

[Wellstone ruled]

30. Unti the CIA papers are

declassified,we only have fragments to go on. The truth is out there,and I hope the final story is written before the last of the Military Intelligence people serving in Europe during that time frame,pass away.

[Octafish]

42. Agree completely.

Jefferson Morley is on the case, suing the CIA in federal court to release the documents it has concerning one George Joannides.

CIA disclosures bare the origins of the JFK cover-up

by Jefferson Morley
JFKfacts.org, Sept. 17, 2015

Three days after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the CIA told his successor Lyndon Johnson a bit of news: the agency’s sources had just confirmed press reports that accused assassin Lee Oswald had visited the Cuban and Soviet Embassies in Mexico City two months before.

Here’s what the President’s Intelligence Checklist (TPIC)– just released by the CIA and LBJ Library–reported on November 25, 1963.



SNIP...

So as the CIA touts its revelations online, the November 25, 1963, presidential briefing illuminates a dark truth about the history of the agency.

Within days of JFK’s assassination, senior CIA officials were concealing their knowledge of JFK’s accused assassin from their colleagues, from the American people, and from the new president.

In other words, the newest evidence shows that the JFK assassination cover-up originated in the CIA’s Directorate of Operations and Counterintelligence Staff.

SOURCE: http://jfkfacts.org/assassination/news/in-newly-released-presidential-briefing-papers-cia-bares-the-origins-of-its-jfk-coverup/

It's been 52 years. It's not a matter of needing to know what's in the files. It is our right as citizens.

[Wellstone ruled]

45. The Russians have more info than the

citizens of the U.S.. Pay back for trying to disassemble the CIA. And expose the people behind Vietnam.

[Octafish]

54. Sad to say I wrote this on DU in 2005...

Vietnam and Iraq Wars Started by Same People

And I was only reposting info from earlier posts on DU.

In all those years, the mainstream media have failed to make the connection between Vietnam and Iraq, which is why DU is so important.

[Wellstone ruled]

63. Boyhood Bud did

thirty in one of the Service Branches,in saying that,before he passed,the stuff he talked about was to say interesting. As you eluded too in your comeback post,pretty much the same stories came from him. Our Military-Industrial-Complex runs this country and the Suit's are not going to get their shoes or hands soiled. And they could give a rat's ass what we say or do. Power and Wealth is their bottom line.

[elias49]

33. KickandRecommend!!

[Octafish]

60. 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.”

Half a century after the Warren Commission concluded there was no conspiracy in John F. Kennedy’s assassination, the commission’s chief conspiracy hunter believes the investigation was the victim of a “massive cover-up” to hide evidence that might have shown that Lee Harvey Oswald was in fact part of a conspiracy. In new, exclusive material published today in the paperback edition of a bestselling history of the investigation, retired law professor David Slawson tells how he came to the conclusion, on the basis of long-secret documents and witness statements, that the commission might have gotten it wrong.

By Philip Shenon
Politico, February 02, 2015

Fifty-one years ago this winter, working from a cramped, paper-strewn temporary office on Capitol Hill, a fresh-faced 33-year-old Denver lawyer named David Slawson was earning his place in modern American history.

SNIP...

What Slawson does suspect is that Oswald, during a long-mysterious trip to Mexico City only weeks before the assassination, encountered Cuban diplomats and Mexican civilians who were supporters of Castro’s revolution and who urged Oswald to kill the American president if he had the chance. “I think it’s very likely that people in Mexico encouraged him to do this,” Slawson told me. “And if they later came to the United States, they could have been prosecuted under American law as accessories” in the conspiracy.
He has also come to believe—again, only recently—that the CIA knew about these meetings but hid the evidence of them from the Warren Commission.

What has changed Slawson’s mind so dramatically on questions that he thought were settled half a century ago? I interviewed him repeatedly, over several years, for my 2013 book on the Kennedy assassination, and Slawson says that our conversations, as well as material that I had gathered from declassified government archives and from other researchers, shook his confidence. “It never occurred to me until you interviewed me and I read your book that the commission’s investigation had been blocked like this.” It never occurred to him, he said, that the CIA and other agencies “tried to sabotage us like this.”

It was clear to me from the earliest days of my research on the book just how much I would want Slawson’s cooperation. It is hard to overstate his significance in the work on the commission—and in the investigation’s finding that Oswald acted alone. Although he had been the junior member of the two-lawyer team that focused on a possible foreign conspiracy, the work fell almost entirely to Slawson. His senior partner appeared in the commission’s offices only one day a week, according to the commission’s records, and Slawson finished up doing “90 percent of the work,” he told me.

In 2010, after two years of gathering up tens of thousands of once-classified documents from the National Archives and elsewhere, I made the first of several transcontinental reporting trips to meet with Slawson at his home in Washington State, where he moved after his retirement from USC. Each time, I brought with me the latest batch of documents that I had retrieved. And after each trip, Slawson grew more and more alarmed to discover how much evidence about the assassination—and specifically, about Oswald and the possibility of a conspiracy—had not been shared with him in 1964.

SOURCE:

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/02/warren-commission-jfk-investigators-114812

PS: Thank you, elias49! It's not ancient history when We the People are still suffering the consequences, like Mr. Slawson (I'll post further on him -- whom I believe is a man of integrity, even though I don't agree with much of what he believes -- below)

[bobthedrummer]

34. K&R #20

Speaking of cover-ups, criminal conspiracies, DCI's, and blowback that continues to this day here's an active thread that is worth checking out

Chapter 21-Omaha
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1016139460

[Octafish]

61. Thank you for keeping that most important history alive.

When the Speaker of the US House of Representatives is being blackmailed by a person he sexually assaulted as a child, we have a problem.

When the Deputy Whip of the US House of Representatives expresses prurient interest in a child, we have a problem.

When an Assistant US Attorney travels to Detroit to sexually assault a child, we have a problem.

Apart from you and a few on DU and the Net, America isn't being warned about this problem.

[annabanana]

36. Octakick. . . . . n/t

[Octafish]

66. Coming from you, that means a lot...

Image courtesy of the BARTCOP Collection.



...and I like it. Like it. Yes, I do! (in Mick Jagger voice)

And I mean it, thank you Anna-ken. (in Octafish foghorn voice)

[annabanana]

87. lol - you crack me up . . .n/t

[rsexaminer]

38. I'm not sure

I'm not sure how anyone can actually believe the officially story. That's the real conspiracy theory.

[Octafish]

67. POLITICO as the fountainhead for this story is interesting, too.

The magazine's founding family is good friends with the Bush family. A view through that window:

Well, Joseph Allbritton was one of the big banking corporate moguls of Washington, D.C. He owned the sports team. I forget whether it was the basketball team or the Redskins. At one point he owned a bunch of newspapers and radio stations. He owned Riggs Bank. But fundamentally, he participated in a conspiracy to hide Augusto Pinochet’s money. And he—they evaded the assets—Juan Garcés managed to get Pinochet’s assets frozen, but Riggs Bank violated that court order to freeze his assets by secretly starting to funnel back to him all of his money in $50,000 cashier’s checks. They had a courrier that would bring literally bundles of these checks to Pinochet’s house in Santiago. And the story returns to Juan Garcés, because more than $8 million of this $20-plus million stash of money was given back to Pinochet illegally by Riggs, and Juan Garcés stepped in and said, "That money belongs to the Chilean people and to the victims of Pinochet." And he recovered it. -- Peter Kornbluh

SOURCE: http://www.democracynow.org/2013/9/10/the_pinochet_file_how_us_politicians_banks_corporations_aided_chilean_coup_dictatorship

So, why would friends of the GOP/BFEE/War & Money Party print news -- facts like who what why that happened -- rather than spread disinformation or misinformation like the rest of Corporate McPravda?

Regarding the official story, you might enjoy the work of Gerald D. McKnight, "How the Warren Commission Failed the Nation and Why." McKnight, a professor of history, documents the dual cover-up: of the crime's facts and of the official investigation and reporting. Nothing fancy, just the facts.

[JEB]

39. K&R Important stuff.

Thanks for bring this new information to our attention.

[Octafish]

69. Why Mr. Slawson is a hero -- even if he thinks Lee Harvey Oswald is the lone assassin.

David Slawson, as a former Warren Commission investigator, tried to warn us that CIA obstructed justice and was told to zip it...

Phillip Shenon, via David Talbot:

• In the years following the Warren Report’s release, several of the commissioners and staff members distanced themselves from their own report and publicly criticized the manifold deceptions of the agencies on which they had relied, namely the FBI and CIA. Among those who suffered grave doubts was lawyer David Slawson, the man who had been the Warren Commission’s lead investigator into whether JFK was the victim of a conspiracy. In 1975 Slawson aired his criticisms to the New York Times, attacking the CIA for withholding vital information from the commission and calling for a new JFK investigation. Within days of the story breaking in the Times, Slawson received a strange and threatening phone call from James Angleton, the spectral CIA counterintelligence chief. Angleton – who had not only closely monitored Oswald for several years before Dallas, but later took charge of the agency’s investigation into the alleged assassin – adopted a decidedly sinister tone during his call with Slawson, making it clear to the lawyer that he would be wise to remain “a friend of the CIA.” Slawson and his wife were deeply unnerved by the call. He thought the message was clear: “Keep your mouth shut.”

SOURCE: http://www.salon.com/2013/11/06/the_jfk_assassination_we_still_dont_know_what_happened/

Gee. This story should be on the front page of The New York Times and Washington Post.

Good thing there's DU and good friends who read.

[KamaAina]

43. Yes, Bush 41 was CIA at the time, and yes, he was in Dallas.

But no, unlike any other American born before about 1960, he claims not to remember where he was on that fateful day.

[Octafish]

70. Wish that was taught in school, printed in the paper and broadcast on tee vee.

And for some reason, it really bothers a certain segment of society when Bush's connections are pointed out. Starting within the hour of the death of President Kennedy, Texas oilman George Herbert Walker Bush phoned the FBI to identify a suspect in a "confidential" phone call. He then added he was heading for Dallas. Here's the memo of what Poppy told the FBI:



Here's a transcript of the text:

TO: SAC, HOUSTON DATE: 11-22-63

FROM: SA GRAHAM W. KITCHEL

SUBJECT: UNKNOWN SUBJECT;
ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT
JOHN F. KENNEDY

At 1:45 p.m. Mr. GEORGE H. W. BUSH, President of the Zapata Off-Shore Drilling Company, Houston, Texas, residence 5525 Briar, Houston, telephonically furnished the following information to writer by long distance telephone call from Tyler, Texas.

BUSH stated that he wanted to be kept confidential but wanted to furnish hearsay that he recalled hearing in recent weeks, the day and source unknown. He stated that one JAMES PARROTT has been talking of killing the President when he comes to Houston.

BUSH stated that PARROTT is possibly a student at the University of Houston and is active in political matters in this area. He stated that he felt Mrs. FAWLEY, telephone number SU 2-5239, or ARLINE SMITH, telephone number JA 9-9194 of the Harris County Republican Party Headquarters would be able to furnish additional information regarding the identity of PARROTT.

BUSH stated that he was proceeding to Dallas, Texas, would remain in the Sheraton-Dallas Hotel and return to his residence on 11-23-63. His office telephone number is CA 2-0395.

# # #

Gee. Why was Poppy Bush in Dallas when JFK was assassinated? One would think he'd remember the coincidence.

Here's an FBI document from the same week of the assassination in which FBI Director J Edgar Hoover briefed one "Mr. George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency." Some strange coincidence there, wot?



Here's a transcript of the above:

Date: November 29, 1963

To: Director
Bureau of Intelligence and Research
Department of State

From: John Edgar Hoover, Director

Subject: ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY
NOVEMBER 22, 1963

Our Miami, Florida, Office on November 23, 1963, advised that the Office of Coordinator of Cuban Affairs in Miami advised that the Department of State feels some misguided anti-Castro group might capitalize on the present situation and undertake an unauthorized raid against Cuba, believing that the assassination of President John F. Kennedy might herald a change in U. S. policy, which is not true.

Our sources and informants familiar with Cuban matters in the Miami area advise that the general feeling in the anti-Castro Cuban community is one of stunned disbelief and, even among those who did not entirely agree with the President's policy concerning Cuba, the feeling is that the President's death represents a great loss not only to the U. S. but to all of Latin America. These sources know of no plans for unauthorized action against Cuba.

An informant who has furnished reliable information in the past and who is close to a small pro-Castro group in Miami has advised that these individuals are afraid that the assassination of the President may result in strong repressive measures being taken against them and, although pro-Castro in their feelings, regret the assassination.

The substance of the foregoing information was orally furnished to Mr. George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency and Captain William Edwards of the Defense Intelligence Agency on November 23, 1963, by Mr. W. T. Forsyth of this Bureau.

# # #

Seeing how George Herbert Walker Bush would go on to become President, as would his dim eldest son, I believe it's vitally important that we learn the Truth.

The United States and the world haven't been the same since November 22, 1963. And not a single major player in the nation's mass media have stepped up and demanded a real investigation. So, it's up to us, We the People.

Thanks for grokking and caring, KamaAina! It really is about Democracy.

[KamaAina]

74. The smoking gun!

[Octafish]

141. It really bothers some people when it gets mentioned.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=7188106

When asked, they never explain "Why?"

[KamaAina]

143. Well, what does he care? He's Canadian.

[Ichingcarpenter]

44. Where and Why is JFK's brain missingj after it was in government hands?

At Bethesda

Gee modern foreseen dno't mean shit without evidence.

[Octafish]

71. JFK's doctor -- Admiral George Burkley -- thought more than one shooter was involved.

Absolutely, Ichingcarpenter! The record is not complete; and there are many evidenciary trails. Forensic science depends on factual observations and untainted evidence. Hard to get anyone else to support your finding without the evidence to go on.

Gary L. Aguilar, MD and Kathy Cunningham explain:

HOW FIVE INVESTIGATIONS INTO JFK’S MEDICAL/AUTOPSY EVIDENCE GOT IT WRONG

More on this important and unreported of the forensic science story:

Admiral George Burkley thought more than one shooter was involved.

Adm. Burkley got a lawyer to make sure he could get through to the House Select Committee on Assassinations.

AGENCY: HSCA
ORIGINATOR: HSCA
FROM: RICHARD SPRAGUE
TO: FILE
MEMORANDUM
March 18, 1977
TO : FILE
FROM : RICHARD A. SPRAGUE

William F. Illig, an attorney from Erie, Pa., contacted me in Philadelphia this
date, advising me that he represents Dr. George G. Burkley, Vice Admiral, U.S.
Navy retired, who had been the personal physician for presidents Kennedy and
Johnson.

Mr. Illig stated that he had a luncheon meeting with his client, Dr. Burkley,
this date to take up some tax matters. Dr. Burkley advised him that although he,
Burkley, had signed the death certificate of President Kennedy in Dallas, he had
never been interviewed and that he has information in the Kennedy
assassination indicating that others besides Oswald must have participated.

Illig advised me that his client is a very quiet, unassuming person, not wanting
any publicity whatsoever, but he, Illig, was calling me with his client's
consent and that his client would talk to me in Washington.

Gee. For some reason, the Warren Commission failed to get the TESTIMONY of Adm. Burkley -- the one man who was JFK's doctor, was in the motorcade, treated him in the ER at Parkland Hospital, and was present at the autopsy later that night at the US Naval Hospital in Bethesda, evidently causing problems for Gen. Curtis LeMay.

[Ichingcarpenter]

133. Three levels of information

Happen in stories of real concern


Such in the economic coup d'etat by the bankster system in 2008
for example

There is

1. THE OFFICIAL STORY often in place to guard the real story

2.THE COUNTER STORY put out by diligent researchers and distorted by the media as conspiracy theory

3.THIRD FORCE NARRATIVES (junk conspiracies) : Where a bizarre meme is used to alienate those looking into alternative research and discourage average people from doubting the official story


Carry on my friend.

[Octafish]

145. C-SPAN has an excellent program discussing Lee Harvey Oswald, CIA and Mexico City

http://www.c-span.org/video/?321703-2/discussion-lee-harvey-oswald-cia-mexico-city

Thank you for the narrative triad. It's why musicians love trios -- the conversation can get somewhere.

[raouldukelives]

48. K&R nt

[Octafish]

77. The Disinformation Continues to the Present Day

David Slawson, the Warren Commission staffer profiled in the OP,was threatened by CIA's James Jesus Angleton, merely for questioning publicly why the CIA withheld critical information from his investigation, specifically concerning the CIA-Mafia plots to assassinate Castro.

What gets me is that Corporate Owned News continue to report that the idea to hire the Mafia was Kennedy's. The reality is that the guy who entered into it was Allen Dulles, on behalf of President Eisenhower, in 1960. The same Allen Dulles would later withhold that critical information from the Warren Commission on which he served.

[CanSocDem]

49. Kickin' the Sat mornin' history lesson.

Thanks Octafish!



.

[Octafish]

83. Lots more to learn. For instance, FBI and CIA continue to obstruct Justice.

Some people are doing something about it, like the good people at the National Security Archive of George Washington University:

JFK Assassination Records and the Enduring Lessons from the Assassination Records Review Board

Lauren Harper
Unredacted, NOVEMBER 24, 2015

JFK assassination records are likely the most frequently and prominently requested classified documents in the National Archives and Records Administration’s (NARA) possession. The Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992 (JFK Act) requires that each assassination record be publicly disclosed in full by October 2017 – unless the President upholds an agency appeal and “certifies” that releasing a record would cause specific harm. The timing of the Act’s “final release date” has the potential to further affect election year politics in an election cycle already dominated by records retention, declassification, and state secrecy. This is also a timely opportunity to consider more broadly the Kennedy Assassination Records Review Board’s (the Board’s) recommendations to improve declassification practices of even the most sensitive government records.

The JFK Act of 1992 – spurred by renewed public interest in assassination records thanks to the success of Oliver Stones’ film, JFK – mandated that all federal records pertaining to JFK’s assassination be transmitted to NARA. The Act further required that each assassination record be publicly disclosed in full, and be available in the collection no later than the date 25 years after the enactment of the Act (October 26, 2017) unless the President certified that releasing the documents would cause “identifiable harm to the military defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement, or conduct of foreign relations” that outweighed the public interest in disclosure.

SNIP...

As the Board itself noted, the Clinton administration “played a fairly low-key role. ‘Generally, the President just wanted people to cooperate,’ one interviewee said… Not unlike a parent coming up against sibling rivalry, the agencies ‘were told [by the Administration], ‘Work it out, because the President doesn’t want to touch this.’ A Board member mentioned that Chief of Staff John Podesta was ‘very supportive of our efforts — he never overruled the decisions of the Review Board.’ Fortunately for the Board the relationship with the Administration was smooth because ‘the wrong President could produce very different results. Clinton was very supportive, and interested in the work of the Review Board.’”

SNIP...

Jefferson Morley, clarifying a slide presented by Martha Murphy, head of NARA’s Special Access Branch, on NDC prioritization earlier this year, reports that 1.1% from the total collection of JFK Assassination Records collection were withheld in full (3,603 individual records); and 11% were partially withheld, and these estimated 41,000 records withheld in full or in part are the records subject to the upcoming 2017 release. NARA is currently preparing for the release and notifying agencies that have equities in the remaining documents. Murphy recently stated that NARA has “sent letters to agencies letting them know we have records here that were withheld, 2017 is coming.” Murphy further noted that “while no agency has formally requested a waiver yet, some ‘have gotten back to ask for clarification’ and are seeking ‘more information.’” Murphy noted that while she couldn’t say whether or not the records would resolve the enduring sense of mystery surrounding the assassination, she said that the records will provide a “beautiful snapshot of Cold War America and the intelligence community.”

The appeals process for the 2017 release hasn’t been disclosed yet, but a good bet is that any appeal process would include the National Security Council. There may possibly be convincing arguments to keep some documents secret for “personally identifiable information,” including tax records or social security numbers of persons who are still alive. Court sealed documents including grand jury records could also pose difficult to release.

There are also, however, many other currently censored documents — including those initially withheld to protect law enforcement and CIA information — whose release should be and easy decision. Fifty years after the assassination and 25 years after the signing of the JFK Act, there is extremely little information that can harm US national security, or law enforcement actions; and almost none of this harm can conceivably outweigh the public interest of having access to documents of such an important incident.

CONTINUED...

https://nsarchive.wordpress.com/2015/11/24/jfk-assassination-records-and-the-enduring-lessons-from-the-assassination-records-review-board/

Gee. Why would the secret government continue to push back? If it's case closed, why the need for secrecy?

PS: You are most welcome, CanSocDem. Thank you for caring about how things got to be this way.

[cantbeserious]

51. Thank You For Sharing These Truths

eom

[Octafish]

90. You are most welcome, cantbeserious!

That's why DU is so important: People can learn what they aren't getting from the tee vee plus what's been left out of the school books. For instance, what Lyndon B. Johnson and J. Edgar Hoover had to say on the phone about a "little incident in Mexico City" that could have led the nation to World War III.

For all their faults, they seemed worried that a stampede to war could destroy the nation and planet.

[haikugal]

53. Thanks Octafish. Your posts are important to me!

K&R!

[Octafish]

101. Here's a truly important source of information: ABRAHAM BOLDEN.

Secret Service didn't like African Americans in 1963. So, President Kennedy, personally, integrated the White House detail.

Former U.S. Secret Service Agent Abraham BOLDEN was the first African American Secret Service agent to serve in the White House, personally appointed and literally hand-picked by President John F. Kennedy to the White House detail. Agent Abraham Bolden reported overt racism by his fellow agents and outright hostility toward the "n------loving president," quoting fellow Secret Service agents on the JFK detail.

In addition to enduring all manner of personal indignities, he was concerned at the lack of professionalism in those assigned to protect the president and reported his concerns. He was told, "OK. Thanks" by his superiors. When the problems weren't addressed, Bolden requested transfer back to the Secret Service office in Chicago.



Abraham Bolden speaks at JFK Lancer.



The story of a man who told the truth:

After 45 Years, a Civil Rights Hero Waits for Justice

Thom Hartmann
June 12, 2009 11:52 AM

A great miscarriage of justice has kept most Americas from learning about a Civil Rights pioneer who worked with President John F. Kennedy. But there is finally a way for citizens to not only right that wrong, but bring closure to the most tragic chapter of American presidential history.

After an outstanding career in law enforcement, Abraham Bolden was appointed by JFK to be the first African American presidential Secret Service agent, where he served with distinction. He was part of the Secret Service effort that prevented JFK's assassination in Chicago, three weeks before Dallas. But Bolden was framed by the Mafia and arrested on the very day he went to Washington to tell the Warren Commission staff about the Chicago attempt against JFK.

Bolden was sentenced to six years in prison, despite glaring problems with his prosecution. His arrest resulted from accusations by two criminals Bolden had sent to prison. In Bolden's first trial, an apparently biased judge told the jury that Bolden was guilty, even before they began their deliberations. Though granted a new trial because of that, the same problematic judge was assigned to oversee Bolden's second trial, which resulted in his conviction. Later, the main witness against Bolden admitted committing perjury against him. A key member of the prosecution even took the fifth when asked about the perjury. Yet Bolden's appeals were denied, and he had to serve hard time in prison, and today is considered a convicted felon.

After the release of four million pages of JFK assassination files in the 1990s, it became clear that Bolden -- and the official secrecy surrounding the Chicago attempt against JFK -- were due to National Security concerns about Cuba, that were unknown to Bolden, the press, Congress, and the public not just in 1963, but for the next four decades.

SNIP...

Abraham Bolden paid a heavy price for trying to tell the truth about events involving the man he was sworn to protect -- JFK -- that became mired in National Security concerns. Bolden still lives in Chicago, and has never given up trying to clear his name.

Will Abraham Bolden live to finally see the justice so long denied to him?

CONTINUED...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/thom-hartmann/after-45-years-a-civil-ri_b_213834.html

After the assassination, he went to Washington on his own dime and reported what he saw to the Warren Commission. For his trouble -- and despite an exemplary record as a Brinks detective, Illinois State Trooper, and Secret Service agent -- Bolden was framed by the government using a paid informant's admitted perjury and spent a long time in prison. The government also drugged him and put him into psychiatric hospitals.His real crime was telling the truth.

Americans know the Truth: the country hasn't been the same since Nov. 22, 1963. President Kennedy kept the nation out of Vietnam and started toward the moon. Imagine what the New Frontier could have become for us today? Certainly would not be a time where "money trumps peace."

OP from 2014: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025609769

PS: Thank you for the kind words, haikugal. The feeling is mutual!

[Logical]

59. Oswald acted alone. Sometimes people get lucky! You love CS shit. nt

[Octafish]

102. If that were true, you wouldn't spend so much time trying to stop its discussion.

Oswald was "lucky" is your theory. It is what the Warren Commission reported. The facts don't support that conclusion, as what the House Select Committee on Assassinations reported.

What is the truth regarding "Who killed JFK?" I don't know the answer, but I want to find out.

That's why you trying to shut down its discussion is so worrisome. If the assassination were a conspiracy, the people that ended JFK's life also would want us to move on.

[Logical]

65. The ONE ARMED MAN Did it!!!!!! nt

[Octafish]

103. What is your problem?

There's nothing funny about the assassination of President Kennedy.

To think someone calling himself a Democrat would find humor in that also is telling.

[Logical]

105. The humor is that we are still discussing who did it when we know who did it. nt

[Octafish]

114. No, we don't know ''who did it.''

The guy you said "did it" -- the guy Allen Dulles and J Edgar Hoover said "did it" -- got shot dead in police custody on live TV. Before he was murdered, Oswald did manage to state before the television cameras "I'm just a patsy."

While in jail, he tried to telephone John Abt to defend him, an attorney who specialized in defending conspiracies. He also phoned a Mr. John Hurt.

JFK, Oswald and the Raleigh connection

by Randolph Benson

EXCERPT...

It was through the work of independent researcher Michael Canfield that a copy of the Raleigh Call slip first became public. He secured a copy of the slip, which became available as the result of a Freedom of Information lawsuit filed by a civil rights activist, while conducting research for the 1975 book Coup d'Etat in America. The book, co-authored with Alan Weberman, was the first major work to deal with the Raleigh Call, and the slip was reprinted in the appendix.

On the slip were two numbers attributed to a "John Hurt": one for a John W. Hurt, one for a John D. Hurt. Canfield called both numbers. John W. Hurt turned up nothing of interest. However, when Canfield spoke to John D. Hurt, he sat stunned, silent when Hurt revealed, "I was in the counterintelligence corps in the Army during World War II."

That Oswald called a former military intelligence officer from jail—only to be assassinated by Jack Ruby a little more than 12 hours later—was notable and, to that point, publicly undisclosed.

SNIP..

Victor Marchetti was a 14-year veteran of the CIA who had served as executive assistant to then-Deputy Director Richard Helms. Marchetti had also written extensively about the Raleigh Call in The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence, the first book on the assassination censored by the U.S. government.

In an interview with Proctor, Marchetti stated that in calling Hurt, Oswald was clearly following standard procedure for a CIA asset under duress. This includes contacting his case officer through a "cut-out," an intermediary with no direct involvement in an operation—John Hurt.

&quot Oswald) was probably calling his cut-out. He was calling somebody who could put him in touch with his case officer," Marchetti told Proctor. "He couldn't go beyond that person. There's no way he could. He just had to depend on this person to say, 'OK, I'll deliver the message.' Now, if the cut-out has already been alerted to cut him off and ignore him, then ..."

CONTINUED...

http://www.indyweek.com/indyweek/jfk-oswald-and-the-raleigh-connection/Content?oid=3192079

Some people think it's all innocent. I don't. Either way, it's my right to demand justice if the perpetrators are still at large.

[Logical]

116. FFS, you are gullible! How many murderers say "I didn't do it"??????? You have to be....

Just messing with us.

[Octafish]

121. Who's ''gullible,'' really?

Me, because I'm interested in learning more about how a pivotal moment in the history of the nation and a turning point for the planet; or you, Logical, interested in shutting down discussion and saying, "Move on!" based on what J Edgar Hoover, Allen Dulles and a some more of President John F. Kennedy's political enemies from the right said?

Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy's children said their father considered their report "shoddy" and that their father suspected a rightwing conspiracy. They kept that information within the family until January 2013, the 50th anniversary year of their uncle's assassination when they told Charlie Rose in Dallas. That show, for some reason, has not been broadcast.

[Logical]

124. You also need to investigate this also......

Bush Body Count/Clinton Body Count[edit]
The Clinton Body Count, as it is popularly known, is a conspiracy theory that Bill Clinton, while he was president and before, was quietly assassinating his associates (often anyone who got in the way of his career, such as Vince Foster). It was started as a retaliation to the Bush Body Count (which ostensibly had various members of the Bush family responsible for events like JFK assassination and the October surprise killing lesser co-conspirators on their way).[91] The Clinton Body Count is a list of about 50–60 associates of Clinton who have died "under mysterious circumstance".[92] The individuals named originated from a list of 34 suicides, accidental deaths, and unsolved murders[93] prepared in 1993 by the pro second amendment group American Justice Federation[94] which was led by Linda Thompson. The list was posted to the group's Bulletin board system.[92]

A later investigation revealed that many deaths had detailed records, and that assassination was unlikely. It argued a political leader can have a loosely defined circle of associates, some who are at greater risk for death either in the military or a high-stress job that can lead to suicide.[95]

[Octafish]

125. George deMohrenschildt knew both Lee Harvey Oswald and George H.W. Bush.

I wrote about it on DU in 2004:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=2738624&mesg_id=2739847


And 2003:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=199853&mesg_id=226308



As for what you wrote, who knows? I don't remember ever bookmarking anything from you, Logical.

[Hepburn]

78. Excellent...KNR

When the Warren Comm Report came out, I read it and studied it and re-read it and as a youth come to the conclusion that the US gov't lies. I have not found any reason to change that opinion.

[Octafish]

104. Allen Dulles in WC secret session said that was to be expected.

Last edited Mon Dec 21, 2015, 08:39 PM - Edit history (1)

From Harold Weisberg's FOIA requests we learned:

Walkthrough: Warren Commission Executive Sessions

The Warren Commissioners met in secret executive session on multiple occasions. Originally marked "top secret," the transcripts of these meetings were declassified in the years following the Commission's work, some of them only after Freedom of Information Act lawsuits by Harold Weisberg.

These transcripts provide a fascinating glimpse at the Commissions' inner workings, reveal its political motivations and constraints, and provide clues to some of the mysteries of the JFK assassination

EXCERPT...

21 Jan 1964 - This session began with discussion of staff hiring and the presentation by Rankin of an outline for six areas of investigation, with Bertrand Russell said was missing an important one: "who killed President Kennedy?" A discussion of what turned out to be an overly optimistic timeframe also noted the huge mass of reports pouring in, with Dulles noting that the staff would need to do the bulk of the work because he doubted that the Commissioners "could ever read all that stuff." Lengthy discussion of the rules by which witnesses would testify ensued, with particular focus on the upcoming first witness, Marina Oswald. Told that Marina might say that Lee was "a Soviet agent," Russell commented "That will blow the lid if she testifies to that."

22 Jan 1964 - This session was called specifically to address the allegation that Oswald was a paid "FBI Undercover Agent," number 179, paid $200 per month from September 1962 until the assassination. Waggoner Carr, the Texas Attorney General, had called Rankin that morning with allegations which had come from a member of the press (Lonnie Hudkins, though not named in the transcript). Rankin noted that "I am confident that the FBI would never admit it, and I presume their records will never show it...," and noted that Oswald's use of postal boxes "would be an ideal way to get money to anyone that you wanted as an undercover agent." Rankin also noted that if the allegation were true "then you would have people think that there was a conspiracy to accomplish this assassination that nothing the Commission did or anybody could dissipate." Rankin expressed puzzlement that the normally conservative FBI was so insistent the Oswald was the sole assassin, saying "They would like to have us fold up and quit." After more such discussion, Dulles said the transcript of the meeting itself "ought to be destroyed." This was indeed done, but an original court reporter's tape was later recovered and the transcript re-made from it after a long legal battle brought by Harold Weisberg.

27 Jan 1964 - Five days later, discussion of the allegation that Oswald was an FBI informant continued. According to Rankin, the Justice Department did not want to confront FBI Director Hoover with the allegation, so he suggested that perhaps "I should go over and see Edgar Hoover myself, and if that produced unsatisfactory results, that ""the Commission would have to feel free to make such other investigations and take testimony if it found it necessary." He added: "We do have a dirty rumor that is very bad for the Commission...and it must be wiped out so insofar as it is possible to do so by this Commission." Warren disliked the idea of going to the FBI "until we have at least looked into it." Dulles noted that the Bureau had already categorically denied the allegation in the press. Boggs: "Of course, we get ourselves into a real box. You have got to do everything on earth to establish the facts one way or the other." Commissioners discussed putting FBI agents under oath and questioning them, since according to Dulles "The record might not be on paper." Boggs: "The man who recruited him would know, wouldn't he?" Dulles: "Yes, but he wouldn't tell." After much discussion, in which the fear of J. Edgar Hoover is readily apparent, the consensus was that the allegation had to be investigated independently by the Commission. It never did.

A fascinating section of the Jan 27 session includes a discussion of the medical evidence. Rankin opened by discussing the confusion around the bullet wounds, and noting that "we have an explanation there in the autopsy that probably a fragment came out the front of the neck," something definitely not present in the autopsy report in evidence. Rankin said "we have the picture where the bullet entered in the back, that the bullet entered below the shoulder blade to the right of the backbone," showing two things: the Commission did have possession of the autopsy photos, and the Commission knew that CE 386, entered into evidence later on March 16, was a false representation of the location of this wound. After a discussion of the confusion over where the pristine bullet was found at Parkland Hospital, Russell commented: "This isn't going to be something that would run you stark mad," one of the more prescient comments made in all these sessions.

CONTINUED with links to WC executive session transcripts with all the relevant quotes:

https://www.maryferrell.org/pages/Walkthrough_-_Warren_Commission_Executive_Sessions.html

Thank you for standing up for Democracy and Justice, Hepburn -- on DU and through the decades.

[AzDar]

91. K & R

[Octafish]

107. Thanks, AzDar! You know how different this world would be...

From an outstanding review of David Talbot's latest, from DUer James DiEugenio

[font size="5"][font color="blue"]"I am delighted to come to Harlem and I think the whole world should come here and the whole world should recognize we all live right next to each other, whether here in Harlem or on the other side of the globe. We should be glad that Castro and Khrushchev came to the United States. We should not fear the twentieth century, for the worldwide revolution, which we see all around us is part of the original American Revolution." -- Sen. John F. Kennedy, NYC, 1960[/font color][/font size]

(The Devil's Chessboard, p. 350)

SOURCE: http://www.ctka.net/2015/TalbotDulles.html

Never see that history on tee vee or mentioned in the newspaper when talking about wars without end and the disappearing middle class and all the gun violence in the rotting cities and places where people gather.

[mountain grammy]

93. K & R and a million thanks, not only for the OP, but for the entire thread

which I've bookmarked to read in it's entirety later. Thank you for your posts, Octafish.
Kennedy was murdered one week before my 16th birthday. As the weekend wore on, my mother kept saying, "it's that fucking Dulles." How she knew that, I'll never know. I thought she'd lose her mind when he was appointed to the Warren Commission.

I'm currently reading The Devil's Chessboard by David Talbot. My mom's rantings are haunting me.

[Octafish]

108. Thank you for sharing that amazing and important history, mountain grammy.

That book is an amazing read. It puts together the rise of the secret government that rots America from within, the BFEE.

David Talbot writes on Facebook today:

Well, it's official. Pamela Paul, the book editor of the New York Times, has informed my publisher that the Times will not be reviewing "The Devil's Chessboard" -- no explanation apparently given. This follows word from the Washington Post, as told to my book publicist, that the Post "won't touch" my book. So despite glowing coverage in the book industry press (starred review in Kirkus, Amazon book of the month, etc) and in independent (mostly online) publications, the censorship of my book in the mainstream press is virtually complete.

What can we surmise from this media blackout of "The Devil's Chessboard"? Clearly there are taboo subjects in the American "free press" -- especially when it comes to the national security arena. Among these verboten topics are some of the darkest secrets of the CIA -- as well as the shameful complicity of these very same newspapers with the CIA.

At a critical moment in American history, when the public desperately needs open discussion of U.S. foreign policy and why we are so reviled throughout the Muslim world, the leading press institutions shut off discussion of a book that sheds important historical light on this subject. In this sense, the New York Times and Washington Post -- our much heralded "liberal" beacons of truth -- remain a big part of the problem. Shame on the Times and Post editors for their cowardly coverup.

SOURCE: http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?s=ad77afeb2532161fcd848b4436a169bb&showtopic=22539

The author is sad to write the NYT and WaPo refuse to review it. Gee,can it be any more obvious, MOCKINGBIRD?

Thank you for sharing. I wish I could express how much your friendship means.

[bobthedrummer]

94. I'm adding this December 11, 2003 thread to this discussion, if it isn't already linked upthread

on edit:It's on topic after all these years because of the truth it contains.

The Bush Organized Crime Family (Octafish 12-11-03 OP)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x875102

Thanks again, Sir.

[Octafish]

110. JFK debunker John McAdams hosts one of those...

Know your BFEE: A Crimeline of Treason

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/blog/DU_Bush.htm

Funny how Corporate Owned News quoted him extensively instead of all the academics meeting to discuss what's been learned since Nov. 22, 1963.

I shared on DU some of what I learned there:

Octafish to attend JFK assassination conference. Do you think JFK still matters?

JFK Conference: Amazing Day of Information and Connecting with Good People

After JFK Conference, when I got home, I felt like RFK.

JFK Conference: Bill Kelly introduced new evidence - adding Air Force One tape recordings

JFK Conference: Rex Bradford detailed the historic importance of the Church Committee

JFK Conference: Lisa Pease Discussed the Real Harm of Corrupt Soft Power

JFK Conference: James DiEugenio made clear how Foreign Policy changed after November 22, 1963

JFK Conference: Mark Lane Addressed the Secret Government’s Role in the Assassination

JFK Conference: David Talbot named Allen Dulles as 'the Chairman of the Board of the Assassination'

JFK Conference: Dan Hardway Detailed how CIA Obstructed HSCA Investigation

Noah's Ark - Nov. 22, 1963 (at Oakland Community College in Michigan)

JFK Remembered: Dan Rather and James Swanson talk at The Henry Ford (like Heinz History Center, a Smithsonian Affiliated Institution.)

Seven Days in May -- tonight on TCM

Machine Gun Mouth

Thanks for standing up the War Party, bobthedrummer. You are my teacher and brother-Sir.

[cpwm17]

106. Here's an excellent thread from Bolo Boffin proving Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin:

Bugliosi: 53 Reasons It Was Lee Harvey Oswald:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/11354552

[Spider Jerusalem]

109. The hilarious thing, here:

Philip Shenon is convinced Oswald did it, as well. What he's written about "CIA/FBI coverup" is related to the CIA/FBI hiding information indicating that they should have been aware Oswald was a threat before the assassination (things like the report of him saying he was going to kill Kennedy while he was visiting the Cuban embassy in Mexico City, for instance).

[cpwm17]

123. I guess, then, the CIA and FBI would be part of a let-it-happen-on-purpose conspiracy. n/t

[Spider Jerusalem]

134. Hardly

Oswald didn't get the job at the TSBD until after he came back from Mexico City (prior to that he wasn't even in Dallas; he was in New Orleans). The route of Kennedy's motorcade wasn't decided until a few days prior to the visit. Kennedy being in a place where Oswald could carry through on his threat was a coincidence. This lays out the timeline and background events pretty well: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/the_spectator/2013/11/philip_shenon_s_a_cruel_and_shocking_act_stunning_reporting_in_new_book.html

[cpwm17]

135. I don't believe it was any kind of conspiracy,

including let-it-happen-on-purpose, but some people may think that.

Yes, it appears that Oswald got lucky with the motorcade route. That's how life works. There could have been a number of people that may have wanted to kill JFK, or any other president. You never hear about them since nothing usually happens. This time something did happen.

It makes since that Oswald assassinated JFK for JFK's treatment of Cuba and Castro.

[Octafish]

112. Vincent Bugliosi doesn't consider the Chicago Plot when talking about Oswald.

DUer Jim DiEugenio brought up important evidence showing there was a conspiracy to assassinate the president before Dallas. Attempts were made on the President's life in Miami and Chicago -- same M.O. as Dallas, ambush, high-power rifles, high-rise, and one patsy by the name of Thomas Arthur Vallee, a USMC veteran from a U-2 base in Japan. The plot was broken up by the Secret Service in Chicago. Not that they wanted to, they sort of had to when the local cops got a call from a landlady with the guns, passports, maps and "parade route" in Highlighter still on the bed.

Very important read in PDF:

http://www.thechicagoplot.com/The%20Chicago%20Plot.pdf

Once a New York Times reporter, Black is the author of "IBM and the Holocaust" and "War against the Weak."

Bugliosi sure does do a great brief for the prosecution. The thing is, he looks at things from the perspective of prosecuting Oswald. He does not consider exculpatory evidence, such as the Chicago plot.

[Octafish]

131. Retired FBI Special Agent Don Adams interviewed Joseph Adams Milteer...

If anybody who ever worked for J Edgar Hoover deserves to be heard, it's Don Adams. The guy is the real deal, a brave agent who stepped forward. Among his assassination-connected work, FBI Special Agent Don Adams interviewed racist Joseph Adams Milteer.

The racist had been taped recorded detailing a plot to shoot the president using snipers shooting from a high rise. He also said the assassins would set up a patsy to take the fall. That's all on tape -- US Government records -- created surreptitiously by FBI undercover informant William Sommerset.



Milteer apparently was photographed in Dealey Plaza.

Milteer was a rabid right-wing racist who was tape-recorded by FBI detailing the assassination of JFK "with a high-powered rifle from a high-rise office building." then a couple of weeks later appears in photographs in Dealey Plaza should make the front page and lead every broadcast, but it doesn't, for some reason.



So Don Adams, the rookie, and a senior FBI agent in Georgia got sent out to interview the guy taped detailing a plot that looked like occurred in Dallas, but had also been broken up in Chicago and possibly Miami or Tampa. After asking Milteer three questions and zero follow-up, the two Feds turned around and left. The rookie, Adams, had not been briefed about Somerset's recordings.

Before his death, he went on the record with a book on the experience:

http://adamsjfk.com/?page_id=30

When a rabid right-wing racist who was tape-recorded by FBI detailing the assassination of JFK "with a high-powered rifle from a high-rise office building," then a couple of weeks later appears in photographs in Dealey Plaza. should make the front page and lead every broadcast. That it doesn't, shows that traitors still run the show.

[PCIntern]

111. Great Post. K and R.

You're the best, Octafish!

[Octafish]

113. The Warrant Report

Thank you, PCIntern. Right back at you.

From someone much smarter and better educated than I can ever be, thanks to birth and probation:

The Warrant Report

Tim Madigan on the philosophers who investigated the Kennedy assassination.

EXCERPT...

It is a remarkable fact that three of the earliest and most influential critics of the Warren Report were professional philosophers – Bertrand Russell, Richard Popkin and Josiah Thompson. Russell, who was 91 years old at the time of the shooting, was one of the first prominent individuals to raise serious questions about the report, even before it was completed. In early 1964 he helped organize the ‘Who Killed Kennedy Committee’, and befriended attorney Mark Lane, author of the first major critique of the Warren Report, Rush to Judgment. Writing from his home in Wales and guided by Lane’s investigations, Russell issued his ‘Sixteen Questions on the Assassination’ a few weeks before the Report came out. Raising doubts about the impartiality, credibility and competency of the Commission, he pointed out that all of its members – who were appointed directly by President Lyndon Johnson – were deeply connected with the Washington establishment, especially its secretive investigative agencies, the CIA and the FBI. Some of the Commission could be suspected of having a vested interest in covering up uncomfortable facts about their own strained relations with the late president. For instance, Commission member Allen Dulles, former head of the CIA, had been fired by Kennedy after the Bay of Pigs fiasco in 1961. Not a single Commissioner, Russell asserted, would have been accepted as an impartial member of a jury if Oswald had been tried (a moot point after Oswald’s own murder by Jack Ruby a few days after the JFK shooting). Russell also raised questions about the fact that several people in Dealey Plaza at the time of the assassination had claimed to hear bullets being fired from in front of the President. Such claims were dismissed by the Commissioners, who seemed dedicated to proving that all bullets had been fired solely by Oswald, from behind the presidential motorcade. While accepting the well-known point that witness testimony is often unreliable, Russell nonetheless expressed his worries that the Commissioners were so eager to prove Oswald was the lone gunman that they ignored evidence contradicting this. Most of all, Russell asked why the Report’s conclusion was known well before the investigation was completed. This seemed to go against all the proper methods of truth-gathering and rules of logic, and looked more like an attempt to make the premises fit the conclusion rather than having the conclusion follow from the premises.

Shortly after the Warren Report was issued, Richard Popkin, then a Professor of Philosophy at the University of California at San Diego, wrote a highly influential article for the New York Review of Books entitled ‘The Second Oswald: The Case for a Conspiracy Theory’ (later expanded into a book). Popkin argued that if one used just the Warren Report as evidence, then one must necessarily conclude that there had to have been at least two Lee Harvey Oswalds for all the various details of the Report to make sense. The government’s own case for a lone gunman contradicted itself.

Popkin admitted that reading all 26 volumes of the report was a daunting task – especially as at the time there was no index for the work – but it was a labour he was up to. Popkin was noted for his encyclopedic memory, his ability to put together disparate facts (as witnessed by his investigative work in the history of ideas, which detailed previously unknown connections between various Sixteenth Century theologians and philosophers) and his dogged pursuit of problems. Popkin, a student of Skepticism, basically cast a skeptical eye on the purported solid evidence offered by the Warren Commission to prove that there was no conspiracy. If there was more than one ‘Lee Harvey Oswald’ who was at more than one place simultaneously, or more than one person purporting to be Oswald, then there had to be a conspiracy. Thus, the Warren Report proved the very opposite of its own conclusion.

SNIP...

Here lies the continuing epistemological nightmare of the Kennedy shooting. Will we ever know what actually happened that day? There have recently been Warren Report defenders such as Gerald Posner (Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK, 1994) and Vincent Bugliosi, the prosecutor of the Manson family, who just published Reclaiming History: the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy (2007), a 1,632 page book in which Bugliosi painstakingly attempts to answer every criticism of the Report. But there remains something deeply unsatisfactory about the Report. Whether because of the shoddy nature of the Commission’s investigations, the uncertainties and contradictions of the eyewitness interviews, the ulterior motives of the Commissioners and their aides, or other more controversial reasons, the very public murder of President Kennedy continues to nag at our collective consciousness. The trail grows colder, but questions remain – questions initially raised by three devoted professional truth seekers.

SOURCE: https://philosophynow.org/issues/66/The_Warrant_Report

Now, that's the logical -- the philosophical -- perspective.

What Corporate Owned News doesn't bring up is the information that Allen Dulles withheld from the Warren Commission, specifically the Mafia-CIA plots to assassinate Castro. That will make it easier for National Archives to continue holding essential documents that have bearing on the case.

Going from what we've learned since 1963 and the Warren Report in 1964, Dulles and CIA actions have more than a potential bearing on the case. They also are proof of obstruction of justice.

[librechik]

117. I find Shenon a troublesome source.

he strikes me as a mockingbird recruit. I won't bother you with documentation, I don't have it, but have listened closely to his public presentations and vaguely remember thinking, no that's wrong, and no that's cleverly wrong a couple of times.

Nevertheless the new book is worth reading, has lots of scholarship in it, and is worth comparing to Talbot's Devil's Chessboard. Funny too books with such similar material yet divergent opinions coming out at the same time.

I would apologize to Shenon but I know too much about NYT journalists to give them a pass.

Thanks for posting, Octafish --great thread!

[Octafish]

120. A Thank You to Phil Shenon from Dan Hardway

Mr. Hardway served as a staffer on the House Select Committee on Assassinations, working directly with CIA (at CIA HQ, etc) on documents requested by Congress. I heard him address the Duquesne conference in 2013.

THANK YOU, PHIL SHENON

By Dan Hardway © 2015
Assassination Archives and Research Center,

We all need to thank Phil Shenon for bringing attention to the CIA’s latest position in their continuing stonewalling of the truth in regard to the JFK assassination. The new limited hang-out that Shenon helps test float in his October 6, 2015, Politico piece, “Yes, the CIA Director was Part of the JFK Assassination Cover-Up,” is acknowledgment that DCI John McCone participated in a “benign-coverup” by withholding crucially important information from the Warren Commission. Once again, we can benefit from what is normally gleaned from a limited hangout: 1) it will fill in some blanks; 2) point the way to further avenues of investigation; 3) illustrate the continued lying while admitting to past lying; 4) illuminate the real issues by its misdirection; and 5) ultimately contribute to the long unravelling leading to the eventual revelation of truth. In this case, Shenon’s latest spin on the CIA’s new limited hangout does all this and more. I say “his spin” deliberately because Mr. Shenon’s latest article in Politico1 doesn’t even accurately represent his cited CIA source.

We can elucidate this from an examination of some of the specific assertions Mr. Shenon makes in his article which is based on a recently declassified chapter out of a top secret CIA biography of former CIA Director John McCone.2

SNIP...

VI. “Without this information, (about the Castro assassination plots) the commission never even knew to ask the question of whether Oswald had accomplices in Cuba or elsewhere who wanted Kennedy dead in retaliation for the Castro plots…. information … that might have prompted a more aggressive investigation of Oswald’s potential Cuba ties.”

This is pure spin on the part of Shenon designed to limit the damage of the admission that the CIA has made. At this point in the article, Shenon is explaining how the Agency’s failure to disclose the CIA’s plots, “in cahoots with the Mafia” undermined the commission’s inquiry. If all you read is Shenon, you may think that the only place an investigation of the CIA shenanigans with the Mafia could have led was to Castro and Cuba. But that is far, far from the truth. If the commission had opened the CIA/Mafia/anti-Castro Cuban anti-Castro operations can of worms, much more would have demanded investigation than just the possibility of Cuban government retaliation. Maybe the best way to illustrate that would be to restate this assertion by Shenon: “The commission never even knew to ask the question of whether Oswald had accomplices in, or was used by, persons in Miami, New Orleans, the Mafia, the anti-Castro Cuban organizations, or the intelligence agencies who wanted Kennedy dead in retaliation for his abandonment of the anti-Castro operations, his back-channel negotiations with Castro, his actions during the Bay of Pigs, his failure to invade Cuba during the missile crisis in October as he was strongly urged to do by the national security establishment.” Do you see the problem? An investigation into the CIA/Mafia Castro assassination plots inevitably leads to the broader questions and a broader investigation. These questions are truly incendiary. It is understandable why the Agency would not want these issues investigated. It is also clear that the cover-up, consequently, was anything but benign. Shenon’s attempt to restrict the implications to just the possibility of a Cuban government sponsored retaliation, without ever even acknowledging these broader possible implications, is a strong indication of where he wants to lead a hopefully gullible reading public.

Perhaps the best proof of the validity of this expanded proposition, that revelation of the Castro assassination plots leads to a broader investigation, is history. All you have to do to understand that revelation of the Castro plots inevitably leads to opening up the whole incendiary spectrum of possible suspects and conspiracies is to look at what actually happened when those plots were revealed. When those plots did come to light in the Church Committee’s investigation, the immediate follow-up line of investigation as pursued by the HSCA was not just to investigate the possibility of Cuban national retaliation, but to also pursue the implications of possible involvement in the Kennedy assassination of the frustrated actors in those plots: the CIA, the Mafia and the anti-Castro Cubans. As has been demonstrated widely in the literature since 1978, those three groups had an abundance of possible motivation.21 Indeed, in the time that has now passed since the public confirmation of the CIA’s involvement in the Castro assassination plots, the great weight of the investigatory evidence and analysis tends to show that there is no basis for finding that Castro’s government was involved in a retaliatory strike. Even Robarge reports, “McCone was convinced that neither the Cubans nor the Soviets had sought revenge against John Kennedy, largely because SIGINT (Signals Intelligence) had disclosed the stunned reactions of Cuban and Soviet leaders to Kennedy’s death.”22 Indeed, Robarge also acknowledges Oswald’s “extensive pro-Castro activity and contact with the Soviet embassy in Mexico City violated a longstanding KGB prohibition on its overseas agents having contact with domestic communist parties or Soviet legations.”

Why, then, is Shenon so insistent on reviving the theory that the assassination was a Castro retaliation? Robarge tells us, as many others have since revelation of the Castro assassination plots in the 1970s, that the concern was that revelation of those plots which may have provided a motive for Castro retaliation and that possibility by itself was enough to possibly cause a nuclear war “that can kill 40,000,000 Americans in an hour,” as President Johnson put it. So, even though a lot of disinformation work was done by CIA assets to set up that scenario immediately after the assassination – most of which assets had links to CIA Officer David Atlee Phillips who was succeeded in Miami by George Joannides who still worked for him – it was not used or acknowledged by the government. Even though the theory is rejected by even Robarge, however, it is now safe to assert it as no one thinks that it could lead to war after the passage of so much time. So, in Shenon’s able hands, it is now becoming the fallback position favored by those who still don’t want any investigation of possible incendiary operations that would implicate the CIA in anything more than a benign cover up.

On the other hand, and contrary to Shenon, the evidence fairly evaluated calls into serious question whether the assassination can be laid at the feet of the CIA, the Mafia, the anti-Castro Cubans, or a combination thereof. In light of that, do you not have to wonder whether the CIA’s trying to keep incendiary and diversionary issues from the commission was, in fact, an attempt to keep this incendiary issue from the commission by diverting them to the sole issue of LHO as the lone nut assassin? It should now become more clear why the CIA would finally admit to conspiring to obstruct justice and conceal the Castro assassination plots from the Warren Commission. It wasn’t just to prevent investigation into a communist plot, although that provided convenient cover, it was to prevent investigation into activities that directly implicate the Agency and its allies in the assassination. The cover-up conspiracy was hardly benign, but the Agency realizing that it can no longer legitimize its claim of no cover-up, now seeks to avoid the full implications of their guilt in the cover-up with a propaganda campaign that both labels the cover-up as benign and seeks to, once again, legitimize the propaganda ploy of blaming Castro and the communists for the assassination of the President – the very first theory first floated by the CIA funded anti-Castro Cuban group DRE the day after the assassination, the same DRE that was once run by David Atlee Phillips, that ran what appears to be a propaganda operation in New Orleans in August 1963 involving Oswald, and was run by George Joannides in 1963; the same George Joannides who worked as a CIA undercover operative to derail the HSCA investigation into the post-assassination disinformation efforts of the Agency and the anti-Castro Cubans. Benign, indeed. The conspiracy continues unabated. The disinformation and propaganda campaigns continue unabated. Robarge and Shenon perform their roles, and their articles can only be properly understood, as part of that continuing propaganda campaign.

CONTINUED...

http://aarclibrary.org/thank-you-phil-shenon/

Gee. Obstruction of justice on the part of the nation's secret agencies like the FBI and CIA in the assassination of President Kennedy is way more complicated than what the public has been told by Philip Shenon, the New York Times or anything out of Corporate Owned News.

Good thing for Democracy there's DU and a whole lotta people who pay attention.

PS: You are most welcome, librechik. Thank you for caring all these years on DU. Can you believe it? We're now well into our second decade.

[G_j]

122. K&R

thanks!

[Octafish]

130. You are most welcome, G_j! Politico seems to be bolstering Shenon's Dallas expertise.

The spate of "exclusive" stories all support the Lone Nut hypothesis. Moreover, Shenon says he's looked over the FBI-Poppy memos and determined Poppy's presence in Dallas a coincidence.

The evidence supports a more sinister connection, Russ Baker reports.

[randys1]

126. Movie please LOL but seriously, I never believed the official story...this is fascinating

[Octafish]

136. The thing missing from the coverage: Context.

Not that the subject is easy to understand on a good day with GOOGLE, but the CIA historian Robarge makes out that McCone withheld from the Warren Commission (and WC member and former DCI Dulles) what Dulles had done: contracted the Mafia to murder Fidel Castro and some more "communists." The reality is much more complicated, as the following report from a former Cuban law professor shows.

Shenon and the CIA’s Benign Cover-Up

By Arnaldo M. Fernandez
CTKA.net,

EXCERPT...

Shenon is trying to take advantage of a declassified chapter of the still classified biography of McCone written by CIA historian David Robarge in 2005. It was internally released as a report two years ago ("Death of a President: DCI John McCone and the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy," in Studies in Intelligence 57, No. 3, September 2013). After being redacted for its public release on September 29, 2014, it´s now available at the National Security Archive.

Robarge didn´t question the Warren Commission findings, especially that Oswald was the lone gunman. Shenon adds that it’s "a view shared by ballistics experts who have studied the evidence." In making that preposterous statement about the evidence in the case, Shenon ignored the quanta of proof to the contrary. Which was furnished by, among others, Martin Hay in his essay Ballistics and Baloney. Shenon also snubbed the fact that the WC reported a wrong Mannlicher Carcano carbine as the murder weapon, (Armstrong, Harvey and Lee, p. 477), a wrong CE 399 as the Magic Bullet (DiEugenio, Reclaiming Parkland, p. 227), and a wrong CE 543 shell (Kurtz, Crime of the Century, p. 51). And finally, as Dr. David Mantik has revealed, the current autopsy report, that is by the House Select Committee on Assassinations, wants us to think that the bullet which killed Kennedy – that is the one which struck him in the head – also has magical properties. Why? Because it struck Kennedy in the rear of the skull, then split into three parts. Miraculously, the middle part stuck in the rear of Kennedy’s skull without penetrating it. But the head and tail of this same bullet proceeded through his brain, went out the side of his head, and fell onto the front of the limousine. (See DiEugenio, Reclaiming Parkland, pp. 133-35) Nowhere in any of Shenon’s growing archive of literature on the JFK case, does he ever confront any of these disturbing, but true, facts. He just assumes that the ballistics evidence supports his thesis. It does not.

Shenon focused on Robarge´s suggestion that "the decision of McCone and Agency leaders in 1964 not to disclose information about CIA’s anti-Castro schemes might have done more to undermine the credibility of the commission than anything else that happened while it was conducting its investigation." In other words, Shenon is again ginning up the old news about the CIA not telling the Warren Commission about the CIA-Mafia plots to kill Castro. Which has been around since the Church Committee report in 1975. In other words, for 40 years. Thusly, the former New York Times reporter persists in reopening a line of inquiry already proven fruitless: that the Kennedy brothers and the CIA compelled Fidel Castro to take a preemptive lethal action against a sitting U.S. President. As if the Cuban leader wasn´t aware that killing JFK wouldn´t solve anything, but entailed risking everything. And at the same time that President Kennedy was engaging in back-channel diplomatic moves to establish détente with Cuba, something that Lyndon Johnson, with help from the CIA, dropped after Kennedy’s death – much to Castro’s chagrin. (DiEugenio, Destiny Betrayed, Second Edition, p. 394)

For Robarge and Shenon, the cover-up by McCone and others – Deputy Director Richard Helms, Counterintelligence Chief James Angleton, former Director Allen Dulles – may have been benign under the bureaucratic impulse towards CIA self-preservation. But it was a cover-up nonetheless, since it withheld information that might have prompted an aggressive investigation about Oswald’s ties to Castro. In reality (something absent in Shenon’s writings), the CIA’s cover-up was aimed at avoiding a deep investigation of Oswald’s ties to itself and to anti-Castro Cuban exiles.

The key is not that the CIA revealed nothing about the assassination attempts on Fidel Castro, but that it revealed very little about its close tabs on Oswald: the CIA knew what he was doing and was evaluating him. As John Newman, and others, have noted, three CIA teams were watching Oswald all the way down from Moscow (1960) to Dallas (1963): the Counterintelligence Special Investigation Group (CI-SIG), Counterintelligence Operations (CI-OPS), and the Counter-Espionage unit of the Soviet Russia Division (CE-SR/6).

CONTINUED w/links...

http://www.ctka.net/2015/ShenonFernandez.html

Philip Melanson and John M. Newman have done the pioneering work, clearing out the rumors and innuendo from fact -- uncovering and documenting the secret government's interest in Lee Harvey Oswald before the assassination. Now it's up to us to make sure the rest of the story becomes part of the record. Democracy depends on truth, not disinformation. That's for tyrannies.

[smirkymonkey]

129. K&R

Thanks for this!

[Octafish]

137. The CIA Keeps (Accidentally) Legitimizing JFK Conspiracy Theories

Now we learn that the CIA chief at the time did all he could to bury "incendiary" information.

BY CHARLES P. PIERCE
Esquire, OCT 7, 2015

It is somewhat lost to history what a writhing ball of snakes the national security establishment was during the three years of John F. Kennedy's presidency, especially after the collapse of the Bay of Pigs invasion and, subsequently, Kennedy's rejection of that establishment's more bellicose proposals during the Cuban Missile Crisis. These were the days of Operation Northwoods, a proposal from the Joint Chiefs of Staff to manufacture a casus belli that would have so inflamed American public opinion as to make an invasion of Cuba inevitable. One of the possibilities suggested in the memo was blowing up John Glenn on the launching pad at Cape Canaveral. The memo is stored in the archives of the Kennedy Library in Boston. I've held it in my hand. It is an altogether remarkable government document, and it made it all the way up the policy chain to the Secretary of Defense before Robert McNamara turned it off. That's what it was like back in those days.

(Which is not to say the Kennedy brothers didn't contribute to the atmosphere in their own way, with their off-the-books attempts to rid the world of Fidel Castro.)

So it should be no surprise that, after the president was murdered in Dallas, the national security establishment's first objective was not to tell the truth to the American people about how their president was snuffed in broad daylight. It was to concoct fictions and diversions, most devoted to bureaucratic ass-covering. This brings us to Philip Shenon's report today in the magazine version of Tiger Beat On The Potomac, in which Shenon tells us of how John McCone, who was put in charge of the CIA after Kennedy fired Allen Dulles, did all he could to bury "incendiary" information where the bumbling Warren Commission couldn't find it.

But did McCone come close to perjury all those decades ago? Did the onetime Washington outsider in fact hide agency secrets that might still rewrite the history of the assassination? Even the CIA is now willing to raise these questions. Half a century after JFK's death, in a once-secret report written in 2013 by the CIA's top in-house historian and quietly declassified last fall, the spy agency acknowledges what others were convinced of long ago: that McCone and other senior CIA officials were "complicit" in keeping "incendiary" information from the Warren Commission. According to the report by CIA historian David Robarge, McCone, who died in 1991, was at the heart of a "benign cover-up" at the spy agency, intended to keep the commission focused on "what the Agency believed at the time was the 'best truth'—that Lee Harvey Oswald, for as yet undetermined motives, had acted alone in killing John Kennedy." The most important information that McCone withheld from the commission in its 1964 investigation, the report found, was the existence, for years, of CIA plots to assassinate Castro, some of which put the CIA in cahoots with the Mafia. Without this information, the commission never even knew to ask the question of whether Oswald had accomplices in Cuba or elsewhere who wanted Kennedy dead in retaliation for the Castro plots.

While I have neither the time nor the patience to go down America's deepest, darkest, and most mystical rabbit hole, I should note that I always thought this would be the fallback story if the Warren Commission's fabulism ever truly fell apart – that Castro had ordered a retaliatory strike on the president and that the unsung heroes of our intelligence agencies kept the lid on it so as to prevent an overwhelming public outcry in favor of invading the island. In other words, the same complex network of operators and interests who wanted to blow up Glenn on the launching pad, when presented with an actual casus belli, chose instead to deceive the American people in the interest of hemispheric peace. OK.

CONTINUED...

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a38623/cia-jfk-conspiracy-theories/

PS: You are most welcome, smirkymonkey! Interesting times, these, when We the People are learning what has been done to Democracy in the name of national security.

[smirkymonkey]

138. It's amazing how so many people implicitly trust the government and think they are

incapable of corruption. I appreciate your threads Octafish, even though I don't always comment. Thanks again!

[burrowowl]

132. K&R!!!!!!

Good job Octafish!

[Octafish]

139. Both McCone and Dulles hid CIA-Mafia assassination plots from Warren Commission and America

Two things that are very important to remember: 1. JFK wanted peace with Castro and Cuba.

2. It was Allen Dulles who contracted with the mafia while EISENHOWER was president (and Nixon vice-president on his way to a "he's a shoe-in" election in 1960):

So, to the Republican Dulles and his ostensible future "boss," Vice President Richard Nixon, the Bay of Pigs Thing was supposed to have ushered in a new era of moneymaking for their mutual "friends," like Meyer Lansky, the Banker for Organized Crime, the Outfit contracted to murder by Dulles in 1960:

AUG 1960: Richard Bissell meets with Colonel Sheffield Edwards, director of the CIA's Office of Security, and discusses with him ways to eliminate or assassinate Fidel Castro. Edwards proposes that the job be done by assassins hand-picked by the American underworld, specifically syndicate interests who have been driven out of their Havana gambling casinos by the Castro regime. Bissell gives Edwards the go-ahead to proceed. Between August 1960, and April 1961, the CIA with the help of the Mafia pursues a series of plots to poison or shot Castro. The CIA’s own internal report on these efforts states that these plots "were viewed by at least some of the participants as being merely one aspect of the over-all active effort to overthrow the regime that culminated in the Bay of Pigs." (CIA, Inspector General's Report on Efforts to Assassinate Fidel Castro, p. 3, 14)

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/bayofpigs/chron.html

Details on the actual sit-down:

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

To show the lasting power of those who benefited from the assassination, the Mighty Wurlitzer plays the false tune that the Kennedy brothers -- not Dulles and Nixon -- were the ones who wanted Castro dead.

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

This is so disgusting, it has infected the body politic of our nation. The only remedy is sunlight, the best disinfectant.

PS: Thank you, burrowowl! Please know your friendship means the world to me.

[Octafish]

148. Both McCone and Dulles hid monitoring of Oswald in New Orleans from Warren Commission and America...

The CIA was financing a group of rabid anti-Castro Cubans in New Orleans, "DRE" for Directorio Revolucionario Estudantil (Spanish for Revolutionary Students Directorate). In the summer of 1963, they tangled with one Lee Harvey Oswald, who was handing out leaflets for the pro-Castro "Fair Play for Cuba Commitee" in New Orleans. The leaflets were stampled with an office address: "544 Camp Street, New Orleans, La." which is odd, as that's the side door to the offices of one Guy Bannister, former FBI man and rabid anti-Castro commie fighter doing private detective work for the spooks and such.

CIA admits undercover officer lived in New Orleans

by Jefferson Morley
JFKfacts.org, September 25, 2014 j

George Joannides, chief of CIA covert operations in Miami in 1963, also had a residence in New Orleans, according to the CIA.
In a court motion filed last week, the CIA acknowledged for the first time that deceased CIA officer George Joannides lived in New Orleans while handling contacts with an anti-Castro student organization whose members had a series of encounters with accused presidential assassin Lee Oswald in August 1963.

SNIP...

As an undercover CIA officer living in New Orleans, Joannides was well positioned to report on Oswald’s actions in late 1963.

Using the alias “Howard,” Joannides served as case officer for the Cuban Student Directorate (DRE), the anti-Castro organizations funded by the agency that publicized Oswald’s pro-Castro ways both before and after JFK was killed. He also served as chief of the psychological warfare operations branch of the CIA’s Miami station, according to declassified CIA records.

The CIA had an office in New Orleans where Oswald, an itinerant ex-Marine married to a Russian woman, lived from April to September 1963.

Lee Oswald came to the attention of CIA-funded anti-Castro exiles in New Orleans in the summer of 1963.
In August 1963, Oswald had a series of encounters with members of the New Orleans chapter of the Cuban Student Directorate who challenged his public support of Cuban president Fidel Castro.

The Cuban students publicized and denounced Oswald’s pro-Castro activities on a local radio program.

They sent one member, described as an “intelligence officer,” to visit Oswald’s house posing as a Castro supporter, to learn more about him.

The group issued a press release on August 21, 1963, calling for a congressional investigation of Oswald, who had not shot anyone at that point.

At the time, the CIA, via Joannides, supplied the Cuban students in Miami with $51,000 a month, according to CIA memo found in the JFK Library in Boston. The group’s activities involved “propaganda, political action and intelligence collection,” according to Joannides’s fitness evaluation from the summer of 1963.

When it came to Oswald, the DRE delivered what the CIA paid for.

The first JFK conspiracy theory, published with CIA support, on Nov. 23, 1963.
Within an hour of Oswald’s arrest for killing JFK on November 22, 1963, DRE leaders in Miami called reporters to say the president had been killed by a communist. The group’s information about Oswald helped generate headlines nationwide about “the pro-Castro gunman.”

The day after the assassination, the DRE published a broadsheet featuring the photos of Oswald and Castro under the headline “The Presumed Assassins.”

It was one of the first JFK conspiracy scenarios to reach public print. According to former members of the DRE, the group was wholly dependent on CIA funds provided by Joannides at the time.

‘Attenuated connection’

My Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, filed in 2003, sought records that would show what Joannides knew about the contacts between the DRE and Oswald, as well as what he reported to his superiors.

In ten years of litigation, CIA officials have stated repeatedly said they will “neither confirm nor deny” the existence of records related to Joannides’s participation in any specific covert project, operation or assignment in the summer of 1963.

The phrase, “neither confirm nor deny,” is a standard CIA response to inquiries about covert operations.

In the Nov. 7 court filing, Machen stated:

“While it is true that Joannides was a CIA officer and liaison to DRE, an anti-Castro group that had a couple (sic) of encounters with Oswald, this doesn’t implicate either Joannides or DRE in the assassination. Even then, the records cited for support by Plaintiff do not pertain to this attenuated connection, and those that do have already been publicly released in the JFK Act collection.”

Machen’s sworn statement erred in saying members of the group had “a couple of encounters” with Oswald.

In fact, the Warren Commission report found that DRE members came in personal contact with Oswald on five different occasions in August 1963.

CONTINUED...

http://jfkfacts.org/assassination/news/cia-admits-joannides-had-a-residence-in-new-orleans/

Gee. Lots and lots of smoke there that We the People have a RIGHT to know the cause. Why does the US government STILL lie about George Joannides and CIA's contacts with Lee Harvey Oswald before the assassination?

[KingCharlemagne]

142. The CIA had every reason to hide Operation Mongoose from

the Warren Commission, but not because it was a conspirator in JFK's assassination.

Here's my take (borrowing liberally from Bugliosi's ideas): after the Bay of Pigs and Cuban Missile Crisis, JFK had pledged to Khrushchev that there would be no furthered aggression against Cuba. And yet . . . the CIA was still trying to assassinate the legitimate leader of Cuba (a fact that would only emerge into broad American consciousness during the Church Committee hearings in the 70s). The CIA could ill afford to have it publicly revealed in 1963 that it was engaged in assassination attempts!

And yet . . . the Cuban government routinrly broadcast news bulletins about those attempts on Radio Havana at the time. Living in Dallas and New Orleans, LHO would have been able to listen to those broadcasts with few difficulties. And LHO believed in the Cuban Revolution and would have been infuriated that the U.S. was trying to kill Fidel.

This set of facts makes LHO a far more sympathetic and tragic character, imo. His awareness of CIA perfidy came a good 15 years in advance of most Americans'. I don't approve of his actions -- violence rarely solves anything, not least the violence of political assassination. But his outrage at the CIA's activities is well-established and suggests his heart was in the right place.

Long and short: the CIA had every reason to conceal evidence from the Warren Commission. But the reason was both far more banal and yet far more evil than your thread might suggest. The CIA's actions inspired a deadly rage in a young, idealistic LHO. The American people could NEVER be allowed to learn what LHO knew.

[Octafish]

144. Excellent points. But if Oswald did it, why does secret government continue to cover-up?

And why were the authorities unable to find a motive for that hatred? Or even a single witness who could testify (herasay) that Oswald had animus against the President?

The dots left on the ground -- those so fully and accurately documented by Bugliosi -- left a trail from Dealey Plaza to Cuba and from the Cuban embassy in Mexico City to the KGB SMERSH man at the Soviet embassy and from there to Moscow.

When LBJ and Earl Warren discussed what the evidence showed -- and the dangers and consequences of nuclear war -- they were laying out the rationale for the cover-up.

The thing is, if there is nothing more to know, why have the FBI, CIA, Pentagon and a whole lot more of who-knows-what-agency done all they could to prevent the public airing of the facts half a century later?

In more recent days, US government agencies have been ordered to turn over all relative documents. Yet, the US Navy has reprimanded one of its officers for doing so, LCDR Pike. She tried to comply with the Assassination Records Review Board and got railroaded for her trouble by the brass.

http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2011/10/railroading-of-lcdr-terri-pike-over.html?m=1

[KingCharlemagne]

146. Let us begin with a fact about LHO : he was a firm believer in and

advocate of the Cuban revolution. LHO had previously (on April 10, 1963) attempted to assassinate that traitorous tight-wing scumbag General Edwin Walker as an openly avowed enemy of the Cuban revolution. (IIRC, Walker was involved in planning and logistics for the Bay of Pigs fiasco and had openly advocated various extra-constitutional means for JFK's removal from office.) So LHO supported the Cuban Revolution and hated its enemies.

All well and good.

But imagine LHO's fury when he heard English-language broadcasts from Radio Havana that assassination attempts on Fidel were ongoing. It does not require a hugely sympathetic imagination to see how LHO's fury could shift to (from his point of view) a golden target of opportunity. (Bugliosi further speculates that LHO may have hoped to gain respect from the Cubans for removing an enemy of the revolution, hoping thereby to speed the issuance of a transit visa so he, Marina and their child could return to the USSR.)

As for why U.S. agencies have been less forthcoming in the years since, never underestimate the bureaucracy's imperative to place itself beyond reproach. So, for example, had the American people learned en masse in1963 about the CIA's illegal and ongoing plots against Fidel, conceivably the CIA could have been destroyed from the resultant public furor. If the American people had understood LHO's real motives, they might have begun to see that LHO had a VERY LEGITIMATE GRIEVANCE, even though his attempts to seek redress for the same were, imo, wrong. The Intel community could simply not afford the risk such disclosures would carry. The 'cover up' was thus more of a CYA effort and not necessarily evidence of any direct involvement in the assassination itself.

Hence my original 'more banal but more evil.'

[Octafish]

147. Good analysis, based on the story as reported by FBI/CIA. Ignored was CIA monitoring Oswald...

...and the role of CIA and the Mafia in killing Castro and Friends. That's where the banal goes pultroon: In the name of preventing nuclear war, Justice Warren failed to learn all there was to know. Since then, the HSCA -- House Select Committee on Assassinations -- got two staffers over to the CIA and started looking over the files. Then, one day, the investigators asked about Johnny Roselli and got a little too close. So, CIA recalled their liaison and appointed George Joannides. How was Congress to know Joannides wasn't just a liaison, but a participant in the FBI-CIA program monitoring Oswald in the summer of 1963?

The author is an eyewitness, serving as a staff member of the House Select Committee on Assassination in the mid-1970s. Today an attorney, Hardway has gone on-record to detail how CIA went out of its way to obstruct Congress:

A CRUEL AND SHOCKING MISINTERPRETATION

by Dan Hardway, (c) 2015

EXCERPT...

To fully appreciate why I say that, a little background from Washington in 1978, is necessary. In 1978 the CIA resisted the HSCA’s inquiry into Mexico City more than any other area of inquiry. The chief counsel, G. Robert Blakey, told the Committee on August 15, 1978, “(T)he deeper we have gotten into the Agency’s performance in Mexico City, the more difficult they have gotten in dealing with us, the more they have insisted on relevance, the more they have gone back in effect on their agreement to give us access to unsanitized files. For a while we had general and free access to unsanitized files. That is increasingly not true in the Mexico City area….” And we have since learned that they used George Joannides to shut down the investigation into Oswald and Mexico City. In doing so, they lied to us about who he was. He ran propaganda operations in

Miami in 1963-64 and was the case officer for DRE, the anti-Castro group that scored the anti-Fair Play for Cuba Committee coup using Oswald in New Orleans in August of 1963. As G. Robert Blakey has since acknowledged, “The CIA not only lied, it actively subverted the investigation.” I think the CIA expected we would take the superficial approach of considering the “Castro did it” theory, but when we went beyond the initial appearances and began pushing our investigation into the propaganda sources, seeking interviews with the actual penetration and surveillance agents, seeking to find others in Mexico City who may have seen Oswald, then the Agency resistance to our investigation turned to a stonewall. Shouldn’t it be enough to raise serious questions that when a Congressional Committee investigating specific disinformation operations ran by the CIA, the CIA brings one of those involved in the operation being investigated and uses him in an undercover capacity to forestall and subvert the investigation? But that’s not all.

Consider the scenario of U.S. intelligence involvement in Oswald’s activities in Mexico City that we were not able to fully investigate in 1978. Let’s start with some background on David Phillips. David Phillips was one of, if not the, most experienced, ingenious, respected, and qualified disinformation officers in the CIA. In 1963 he was stationed in Mexico City, but, in early October, he was temporarily assigned to duty at Headquarters because he was being promoted from running anti-Castro propaganda operations to overseeing all anti-Castro operations in the Western Hemisphere. He was an experienced hand. In the late 1950’s he had been under non-diplomatic cover in Havana, where he worked with student leaders who would eventually form the Directorio Revolucionario Estudantil (“DRE”). During the Bay of Pigs, Phillips was stationed at CIA Headquarters where he had responsibility for the propaganda and psychological warfare aspects of the antiCastro operations. In running those operations he not only oversaw the operations he ran personally from Headquarters, he was also the supervisor of the propaganda operations flowing out of the JMWAVE station in Miami by William Kent (aka Doug Gupton, William Trouchard). When the students who had been recruited by Phillips fled Cuba, they were reorganized under Kent’s tutelage into the DRE based in Miami.

Phillips was transferred to Mexico City later in 1961 after the Bay of Pigs. Kent was promoted to Headquarters, and George Joannides took over Kent’s position in Miami, including supervision of DRE. While still stationed in Headquarters in the early 60’s, David Phillips had worked with Cord Meyer to develop the first disinformation campaign aimed at discrediting and disrupting a group of Castro sympathizers who had organized themselves into the Fair Play for Cuba Committee (FPCC). In the summer of 1963 Lee Harvey Oswald formed a chapter of the FPCC in New Orleans. In August of 1963 Lee Harvey Oswald, still in New Orleans, had an encounter with DRE which led to a lot of publicity linking Oswald to communists, labeling him as pro-Castro, and discrediting the FPCC. In July and August of that year there is strong evidence that Oswald was used to identify and contact pro-Castro students at Tulane University. In early September, Oswald was seen with David Philips in Dallas.

On September 16, 1963, the CIA informed the FBI that it was considering action to counter the activities of the FPCC in foreign countries. To my knowledge, the operational files on this new anti-FPCC operation have never been released by the CIA. In New Orleans, on September 17, 1963, Oswald applied for, and received, a Mexican travel visa immediately after William Gaudet, a known CIA agent, had applied for one. On September 27 Oswald arrived in Mexico City. This activity did not occur suddenly or in a vacuum. Oswald had started establishing his pro-Castro bona fides earlier that summer in New Orleans, including establishing an FPCC chapter there.

CONTINUED...

http://aarclibrary.org/a-cruel-and-shocking-misinterpretation/

The evidence revealed since 1964 shows that whoever was behind the assassination didn't really matter as much as their objective: Link Oswald to Cuba and let blame fall on Castro. That way, somebody could have their nuclear war on the the commies and smash the USSR once and for all and be happy. Now that's evil.

[JEB]

149. K&R for the original post and subsequent informative posts and links. Bookmark.

[Octafish]

150. Richard Helms obstructed Justice in 1964...CIA still does...

"CIA Lying Performance” Then and Now: The JFK Assassination Versus The CIA’s Obstruction of Justice in 2015

Why CIA’s Richard Helms Lied about Oswald, Part III

By Peter Dale Scott
WhoWhatWhy, Dec. 28, 2015

EXCERPT...

Now let us compare the CIA’s lying performance in 1964 with its lying performance in 2015. In the wake of the Kennedy assassination, members of many U.S. agencies, including also the FBI, the Office of Naval Intelligence, the U.S. Air Force, and the Secret Service, withheld relevant information from those investigating the murder.[1] But to my knowledge there is in 2015 only one U.S. agency that is still actively maintaining the cover-up – and that is the CIA.

I am referring to the CIA’s declassification and release of a previously classified CIA study by CIA historian David Robarge, “DCI John McCone and the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy.”[2] The essay is worth reading, and it contains interesting information on such matters as McCone’s relationship with Robert Kennedy. It is also significantly selective: it does not mention for example that McCone only learned late on the night of November 22 that “the CIA had known beforehand of [the alleged] Oswald’s trip to the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City,” nor that as a result McCone “was enraged, ripping into his aides, furious at the way the agency was run.”[3]

Buried within Robarge’s discussion of John McCone and the Commission – a pertinent but hardly central topic – are a more important thesis statement and conclusion about the CIA itself. In the light of what I have just said about Helms, I would charge that both of these statements are false – so false indeed as arguably to constitute, once again, obstruction of justice.

The thesis statement on page 8 is that “Under McCone’s and Helms’s direction, CIA supported the Warren Commission in a way that may best be described as passive, reactive, and selective.” This claims that the CIA’s deception of the Warren Commission was a sin of omission. But no, the CIA was not just passive. Helms perjured himself, just as he lied again in the 1970s.

Worse, the article focuses on the failure of the CIA to tell the Warren Commission about its plots to assassinate Castro, which may very well have been relevant; but in so doing it deflects attention away from the CIA’s suppression of its own LCIMPROVE operation in October involving “Lee Oswald” (or “Lee Henry Oswald”), which unquestionably was of very great relevance.

Worst of all is the article’s conclusion:

Max Holland, one of the most fair-minded scholars of these events, has concluded that “if the word ‘conspiracy’ must be uttered in the same breath as ‘Kennedy assassination,’ the only one that existed was the conspiracy to kill Castro and then keep that effort secret after November 22nd.”

Of the many things wrong with this sentence, the worst service to truth in my mind is the skillful effort to divert attention away from the Angleton operation involving Oswald, and to focus instead on plots to kill Castro. This is an old ploy dating back to 1965, following in the footsteps of old CIA veterans and friends like Brian Latell and Gus Russo. It allows a writer like Philip Shenon to quote from the Robarge study the old red herring question “Did Castro kill the president because the president had tried to kill Castro?”[4]

CONTINUED...

http://whowhatwhy.org/2015/12/28/why-cias-richard-helms-lied-about-oswald-part-3/

[JEB]

152. Sounds good to me...

“to splinter the C.I.A. in a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds.”

[Hotler]

151. Kicking So we never forget. n/t