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Outlook

Review

Baseless: My Search for Secrets in the Ruins of the Freedom of Information Act

A frustrating search for the truth about America’s biological warfare

By Mark Athitakis

August 28, 2020 at 8:00 a.m. EDT

Nicholson Baker likes to get to the bottom of things. His first novel, 1988’s “The Mezzanine,” followed every passing thought in the mind of a narrator riding up an escalator. He obsessed over the notion of World War II being a “good war” in 2008’s “Human Smoke”; 2001’s “Double Fold” was a fussy investigation of library preservation protocols. He once wrote a 150-page essay on the word “lumber.”

So writing “Baseless,” his book about the Freedom of Information Act, was only ever going to be an exercise in frustration. He may wish to get to the bottom of things, but FOIA, especially when it comes to matters of national security, will barely let you see where the bottom might be. Any investigative reporter will tell you that FOIA — a law enacted in 1967 that requires the federal government to release records upon request — can often obscure as much as it reveals, thanks to redactions and outright that’s-classified denials. Disappointment is constant regardless of what a journalist is fishing for, and in “Baseless,” Baker is trying to land a whopper: Did the United States use biological weapons on China and Korea during World War II and the Korean War?

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Publication Spotlight: Baseless: My Search for Secrets in the Ruins of the Freedom of Information Act

A major new work, a hybrid of history, journalism, and memoir, about the modern Freedom of Information Act – FOIA – and the horrifying, decades-old government misdeeds that it is unable to demystify, from one of America’s most celebrated writers

Eight years ago, while investigating the possibility that the United States had used biological weapons in the Korean War, Nicholson Baker requested a series of Air Force documents from the early 1950s under the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act. Years went by, and he got no response. Rather than wait forever, Baker set out to keep a personal journal of what it feels like to try to write about major historical events in a world of pervasive redactions, withheld records, and glacially slow governmental responses. The result is one of the most original and daring works of nonfiction in recent memory, a singular and mesmerizing narrative that tunnels into the history of some of the darkest and most shameful plans and projects of the CIA, the Air Force, and the presidencies of Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower.

In his lucid and unassuming style, Baker assembles what he learns, piece by piece, about Project Baseless, a crash Pentagon program begun in the early fifties that aimed to achieve “an Air Force-wide combat capability in biological and chemical warfare at the earliest possible date.” Along the way, he unearths stories of balloons carrying crop disease, leaflet bombs filled with feathers, suicidal scientists, leaky centrifuges, paranoid political-warfare tacticians, insane experiments on animals and humans, weaponized ticks, ferocious propaganda battles with China, and cover and deception plans meant to trick the Kremlin into ramping up its germ-warfare program. At the same time, Baker tells the stories of the heroic journalists and lawyers who have devoted their energies to wresting documentary evidence from government repositories, and he shares anecdotes from his daily life in Maine feeding his dogs and watching the morning light gather on the horizon. The result is an astonishing and utterly disarming story about waiting, bureaucracy, the horrors of war, and, above all, the cruel secrets that the United States government seems determined to keep forever from its citizens.

 

“Written with bemused fascination and occasional outrage . . . this lucid yet freewheeling narrative unearths much queasy detail about biological weapons and their promoters. The result is a colorful, engrossing recreation of a sinister history—and a convincing case for opening government archives to public scrutiny.” —Publishers Weekly

“Engaging, bracing, and moving new book . .  Ultimately, what is so compelling about Baseless is not the prosecutorial brief. It’s watching Baker, a thoughtful, sensitive, and vividly expressive soul, grapple with the pathological secrecy of his own government and with the heinousness of what he suspects it has done.”—The New Republic

“Gripping . . . This flowing account reveals the dark side of wartime strategies clouded by denials of FOIA requests. It will fascinate Cold War-era historians and readers concerned about access to government information.” —Library Journal

“The leading villains in Baker’s saga, which he aptly describes as ‘a sort of case study, or diary, or daily meditation, on the pathology of government secrecy,’ are the Air Force, Army, and CIA, and his disclosures are rarely banal but rather consistently provocative and disturbing. Using both direct and circumstantial evidence, the author suggests that illegal weapons have been used against North Korea and perhaps against so-called enemy forces in other nations. Readers should be impressed by Baker’s persistence, and most will end up charmed, however obliquely, by his obsessions.” —Kirkus Reviews

“The synchronicity is extraordinary, almost chilling: Nicholson Baker’s gripping diary of his endless attempts to ferret out facts relating to the Pentagon’s top-secret biological weapons programs is published while the whole world is suddenly upended and aghast amid a lethal biological attack of an apparently natural origin.  I say apparently natural – for as every page of this book is peppered with tales of bizarre weapons – infected feathers, for God’s sake! plague-saturated voles! –  you come away doubting everything  the US government ever says.  And yet, through it all, Baker tells us with a meticulous diarist’s calm about his dogs and the Maine countryside and the birdsong, and you feel, in the end, everything will be alright, and germ-free.” —Simon Winchester, author of The Man Who Loved China and The Professor and the Madman

“A luminous meditation on the power of secrets and mysteries. Baker shows us the ways in which a government shielded by a bodyguard of lies threatens the foundations of democracy.” —Tim Weiner, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Legacy Of Ashes and The Folly and the Glory

“One of America’s most brilliantly creative writers navigates the mirrored labyrinth of government secrecy with a combination of astonishment and rage.  Along the way, he discovers an array of long-hidden terrors while balancing the joys of daily life against the dread that envelops all who confront the reality of covert power.” —Stephen Kinzer, author of Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control

About the Author

Nicholson Baker is the author of ten novels and six works of nonfiction, including The Anthologist, The Mezzanine, and Human Smoke. He has won a National Book Critics Circle Award, a Hermann Hesse Prize, a Guggenheim fellowship, and a Katherine Anne Porter Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He lives in Maine with his wife, Margaret Brentano.

Related:

How America Covered Up Its Germ Warfare Program

Nicholson Baker’s new book, “Baseless: My Search for Secrets in the Ruins of the Freedom of Information Act,” dives deep into government secrecy and America’s untold history of biological warfare.

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Publication Spotlight: Bart Kamp’s Anatomy of Lee Oswald’s Interrogations Vol. II

Anatomy Of Lee Harvey Oswald’s Interrogations Vol II

Dallas Police Department / FBI / HSCA / JFK Assassination / Lee Harvey Oswald / Photography & Film / Prayer Man / Secret Service / TSBD / Warren Commission

By Bart Kamp 25 July, 2019

Copyright © 2019

Photo by Shel Hershorn

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In Dec. 2016 I started to work on the second paper, Anatomy Of Lee Harvey Oswald’s Interrogations, after I had released the first Volume of Anatomy Of The Second Floor Lunch Room Encounter a few months prior. I can now safely say that I have finally finished this beast of a paper. As that is how it felt, I have given it way more time than I intended to and at certain points in the last year I just had to put it aside as it just kept going on and on. Especially when I was granted access to Malcolm Blunt’s archive where I found some key documents that cemented this thing just a wee bit more. In the end this instalment (Vol. 2) is better than I could have hoped for due to the subterfuge of evidence I managed to get my hands on and which are pasted inside the paper and linked to it.

Oswald facing the press guarded by M.G. Hall, R.M Sims, E. Boyd and T.L. Baker

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The two hour talk I did in April 2018 at Canterbury Christchurch University was a summarisation of what was going to be released a short while after. But then I decided to change the whole thing. Since its original release the paper had accumulated an extra 150 pages and it had become too cluttered with info that had no real bearing on the actual period while Oswald was incarcerated.

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Publication Spotlight: Blood in the Water – How the US and Israel Conspired to Ambush the USS Liberty

By Professor Joan Mellen

Presents evidence suggesting collusion between US and Israeli intelligence in the attack on a US naval surveillance vessel during the Six-Day War and the more than fifty-year long cover-up.

On June 8, 1967, the USS Liberty, an unarmed intelligence ship reporting to the Joint Chiefs of Staff under the auspices of the National Security Agency, was positioned in international waters off the coast of Egypt when it was attacked with deadly violence by unmarked jet planes firing rockets and machine guns and throwing napalm onto its deck. This ambush was followed by a torpedo strike that blew a forty-foot hole in the starboard side of the ship. Lacking the capacity to defend themselves, thirty-four sailors were killed and 174 wounded, many for life. By the end of the day, Israel had confessed to having been the aggressor, simultaneously arguing that the attack had been an “accident” and a “mistake.”
The facts said otherwise. So intense and sustained was the attack – it lasted for nearly an hour and a half – so specific was the aiming for the antennae and satellite dish on deck, that it was scarcely credible that Israel’s aggression was not deliberate; such was the view of Marshall Carter, the director of the National Security Agency, his deputy director Louis Tordella, and Richard Helms, the Director of Central Intelligence.
Based on interviews with more than forty survivors, knowledgeable political insiders, and Soviet archives of the period, investigative writer Joan Mellen presents evidence suggesting complicity between US and Israeli intelligence in the attack on Liberty and the more than fifty-year long cover-up. What were the underlying motives? Was this a false flag operation conducted in the midst of the Six-Day War? Was it conceivable that Israel would have initiated such an operation without a green light from the United States?

For the sake of justice, truth and the murdered and surviving sailors, this is a story demanding to be told.

Click HERE to listen to Alan Dale’s conversation with Professor Mellen about Blood in the Water, 44:12 – Recorded September, 2018 |

Purchase Blood In the Water

Visit Joan Mellen online at http://joanmellen.com/wordpress/

 

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Publication Spotlight: A Certain Arrogance: The Sacrificing of Lee Harvey Oswald and the Wartime Manipulation of Religious Groups by U.S. Intelligence

Clearly he understood that, at this late date, being content merely to identify and, if possible, prosecute the conspiracy’s sponsors, facilitators, and mechanics would amount to hollow acts of vengeance. Cleaning and closing the wound while leaving the disease to spread is simply not a survivable option.

With the nobility of knowledge comes obligation: How can we utilize all that has been learned through our post-Dallas investigations to heal and immunize the long-suffering victims of the malady of which the assassination of John F. Kennedy is but the most widely appreciated and putrescent manifestation?

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History in the Making: Important New Works by Dr. John Newman

Where Angels Tread Lightly: The Assassination of President Kennedy, Volume I, Revised Edition

Countdown To Darkness: The Assassination of President Kennedy, Volume II

The second volume in a series on the assassination of President Kennedy, “Countdown to Darkness” describes events during a dangerous quickening of the Cold War. The book’s first chapter contains new revelations about how Oswald was a witting false defector to the USSR in a CIA plan to surface a KGB mole in the CIA. The race for a long-range delivery system for nuclear weapons came to its final, unexpected, and unstable conclusion—the “missile gap” favored the United States, not the Soviet Union. The European colonial empires were collapsing in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Africa, spawning Cold War hot spots, where Moscow and Washington rushed in to fill the void. The inevitable consequence of Castro’s revolution played itself out as communism established itself—armed to the teeth by the Soviet Bloc by early 1961—a few miles from the American underbelly. This book reveals how deeply the Eisenhower Administration was in denial about the entrenched Castro police state, the complete penetration of all anti-Castro groups by Cuban intelligence, and the convulsive spectacle of the exiled Cuban leaders. As Eisenhower marshaled his subordinates to overthrow Castro, the president lost patience with DCI Allen Dulles. Eisenhower wanted a Cold War triple play—the elimination of Castro and, to ensure support from Europe and Latin America, the simultaneous elimination of Congolese Prime Minister Lumumba and Dominican Republic Dictator Trujillo. Dulles approved a CIA plan to use the Mafia to assassinate Fidel Castro in the fall of 1960, as the Democratic and Republican nominees entered the U.S. presidential election campaign. The Nixon-Kennedy debates turned into a spectacle over the crisis in Cuba. JFK pummeled Nixon for not standing up to Castro and not arming the rebels inside and outside of Cuba, while Nixon, who knew that was exactly what the administration was doing, was unable to respond due to the covert nature of the plan. In the NSC, the president had demanded, “Everyone must be prepared to swear that he has not heard of it.” Unfortunately for Vice President Nixon, Kennedy had heard all about it. By the fall of 1960, the principal Cuban exile groups in Miami, and their underground sections in Cuba, had long since descended into chaos. The principal CIA officer responsible for holding them together, Gerry Droller, was singularly incompetent. But that mattered little, as the rate at which Soviet Bloc weapons were pouring into Cuba rendered the exile leadership problem irrelevant. The exile government would never be put ashore in Cuba. All of this came together in a terrible ending. The covert CIA paramilitary plan was unable to keep pace with the consolidation of the regime in Havana, and that plan breathed its last before Kennedy was inaugurated. It did not take long for Allen Dulles and the Pentagon chiefs to figure out that if they told the president the truth about Cuba and Laos, he would abort in Cuba and negotiate over Laos. So they lied to President Kennedy about their views. They assumed that when the exile invasion force was being slaughtered on the beachhead, the president would change his mind and send in the marines and airplanes. The lie about Laos nearly worked. But when the lies about Cuba—that the brigade could succeed and the Cuban people would rise up in rebellion to assist it—did not work, the countdown to darkness came to its tragic, and ignominious end. Once past that foreboding event horizon, political and economic forces inexorably cleaved inward like matter pulled into the singularity of a black hole. Within a year, Kennedy would fire the top three men at the CIA, most of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and its chairman.

Click HERE for a new postscript to Countdown to Darkness: SY HERSH AND THE KENNEDY-CAMPBELL AFFAIR

JFK and Vietnam, Second Edition

The publication and suppression of JFK and Vietnam was a watershed event in 20^th Century American history.  The book revealed, for the first time, how President Kennedy’s opposition to sending U.S. combat forces to Vietnam led those favoring intervention to concoct a false story of battlefield success to prevent a complete withdrawal from Vietnam. The book detailed the intense struggle that erupted in the administration over the president’s decision to withdraw from Vietnam in the fall of 1963.  JFK and Vietnam exposed how President Johnson ordered key changes be made to a National Security Action Memorandum (NSAM 273) two days after the assassination, opening the door to the direct use of conventional American military forces in Vietnam.  In 1992, JFK and Vietnam received high praise from Publisher’s Weekly and Kirkus Reviews.  It was favorably reviewed by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. in the New York Times Book Review.  Elsewhere the book caused a media firestorm with proponents of conflicting views making absolute declarations in opposition to Dr. Newman’s basic thesis: Kennedy was opposed to U.S. intervention in Vietnam and was withdrawing the U.S. advisors at the time of his assassination in November 1963.  The National Security Agency attempted, unsuccessfully, to block the publication of JFK and Vietnam.  Shortly after publication, the publisher, Warner Books, suppressed the book.  Six months later, the Galbraith family intervened with Time Warner Inc., and the copyrights were yielded back to the author.  JFK and Vietnam, second edition (2017), represents the continuation of Dr. John M. Newman’s research, progress in his understanding and perceptions, and describes the fascinating sequence of events that unfolded following publication in 1992, including the consequential relationship that was formed between Dr. Newman and former Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara following the book’s debut.  That relationship led McNamara, after 25 years of silence, to publish his memoir on the Vietnam War–In Retrospect.  In its original form, JFK and Vietnam was a landmark work that illuminated the false calculations, mistakes, manipulations, deceptions and intrigue which led to the Vietnam War.  A quarter century later, JFK and Vietnam, second edition, expands upon and adds to what so powerfully defined its original impact.

Praise

JFK and Vietnam

“This commanding essay in critical history is the most authoritative account anywhere of President Kennedy’s Vietnam policy–and it is fascinating reading as well.”  — Arthur Schlesinger Jr., Special Assistant to President Kennedy

“A brilliant, meticulously researched and fascinating account of the decision-making which led to America’s long agony in Vietnam. Mr. Newman has added to our history–and hopefully our modesty–as we approach the decisions of the future.”  –William E. Colby, former director, Central Intelligence Agency

“This great book brought to light the dark mystery of John F. Kennedy’s decision to withdraw from Vietnam. Celebrated on first publication, JFK and Vietnam has been confirmed by many new sources, witnesses, papers and tapes. This new edition is a triumph of history over evasion.”  –James K. Galbraith, The University of Texas at Austin.

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Where Angels Tread Lightly: The Assassination of President Kennedy, Volume I

“John Newman is one of this country’s greatest scholars on Cuba, the CIA and the JFK assassination. This book is a ground-breaking investigation of America’s failure in Cuba that uncovers the CIA role is Castro’s rise to power and their ensuing efforts to destroy him. It exposes the genesis of one of America’s darkest deceptions — the myth that Castro was responsible for the assassination of President Kennedy.”  –Eric Hamburg, Producer, NIXON film and former aide to Senator John Kerry

“John Newman has done more to advance the work begun by the House Select Committee on Assassinations to explore the CIA’s connections to Oswald than anyone else. Where Angels Tread Lightly is a meticulously researched, in-depth account of U.S. policies and operations during the late 1950’s and early 1960’s that were designed to eliminate a perceived communist threat in Cuba, but instead brought together the forces that eventually led to the assassination of JFK. This extraordinary volume shines new light on the CIA officers and operatives who were involved in those operations.”  –Dan Hardway, investigator, House Select Committee on Assassinations

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Countdown to Darkness: The Assassination of President Kennedy, Volume II

“This is a definitive study of the disastrous hand-off from Eisenhower to Kennedy on Cuba, Laos, and the Congo — by the man superbly qualified to carry it out.”  —Peter Dale Scott, author of essential works which include The War Conspiracy, American War Machine, The American Deep State, The Road to 911, Deep Politics and the Death of JFK. His most recent book on American history is Dallas ’63: The First Deep State Revolt Against the White House

“This important new work on the roots of the JFK assassination delves deeply into the deception and intrigue during the buildup to the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion. Newman examines the shocking conflict between President Kennedy and the Joint Chiefs of Staff over Laos and Cuba, and offers a dramatic introduction of Lee Harvey Oswald and his probable role as a false defector to the Soviet Union.”  –Bill Simpich, author of State Secret: Wiretapping in Mexico City, Double Agents, and the Framing of Lee Oswald

The Author

Dr. John M. Newman is the author of 1992’s JFK and Vietnam,  republished as an updated and expanded 2017 Second Edition, 1995’s Oswald and the CIA, which was updated for a 2008 edition, 2011’s Quest for the Kingdom: The Secret Teachings of Jesus in the Light of Yogic Mysticism, 2015’s Where Angels Tread Lightly: The Assassination of President Kennedy Volume I, which has just been revised and republished, and 2017’s Countdown to Darkness: The Assassination of President Kennedy Volume II, all of which are now available for purchase from Amazon.com

Dr. Newman is a retired U.S. Army intelligence officer who served for two years as Executive Military Assistant to the Director, General William Odom at the National Security Agency. He has testified before various sub-committees of the U.S. House of Representatives, and has worked as a consultant on two major motion pictures and to various U.S. and foreign media organizations including PBS Frontline, the History Channel, C-Span, NBC, and other news organizations. For the past quarter century his work has introduced revelations about America during the Cold War.

Visit Dr. Newman’s author’s page at Amazon.com

LISTEN

February 2017: Alan Dale Speaks with Dr. John Newman on THE NATURE AND SCOPE OF THE JFK ASSASSINATION

READ

Interview transcript: John Newman Feb 2017

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Publication Spotlight: THE CIA AS ORGANIZED CRIME How Illegal Operations Corrupt America and the World

Author of three books on CIA operations, Douglas Valentine’s research into CIA activities began when CIA Director William Colby gave him free access to interview CIA officials who had been involved in various aspects of the Phoenix program in South Vietnam. It was a permission Colby was to regret. The CIA would rescind it, making every effort to impede publication of The Phoenix Program, which documented the CIA’s elaborate system of population surveillance, control, entrapment, imprisonment, torture and assassination in Vietnam. While researching Phoenix, Valentine learned that the CIA allowed opium and heroin to flow from its secret bases in Laos, to generals and politicians on its payroll in South Vietnam. His investigations into this illegal activity focused on the CIA’s relationship with the federal drugs agencies mandated by Congress to stop illegal drugs from entering the United States. Based on interviews with senior officials, Valentine wrote two subsequent books, The Strength of the Wolf and The Strength of the Pack, showing how the CIA infiltrated federal drug law enforcement agencies and commandeered their executive management, intelligence and foreign operations staffs in order to ensure that the flow of drugs continues unimpeded to traffickers and foreign officials in its employ. Ultimately, portions of his research materials would be archived at the National Security Archive, Texas Tech University’s Vietnam Center, and John Jay College. This book includes excerpts from the above titles along with subsequent articles and transcripts of interviews on a range of current topics, with a view to shedding light on the systemic dimensions of the CIA’s ongoing illegal and extra-legal activities. These terrorism and drug law enforcement articles and interviews illustrate how the CIA’s activities impact social and political movements abroad and in the United States. A common theme is the CIA’s ability to deceive and propagandize the American public through its impenetrable government-sanctioned shield of official secrecy and plausible deniability. Though investigated by the Church Committee in 1975, CIA praxis then continues to inform CIA praxis now. Valentine tracks its steady infiltration into practices targeting the last population to be subjected to the exigencies of the American empire: the American people.

Editorial Reviews

AMAZON CUSTOMER REVIEW  * * * * *

Of the extraordinary, valuable and informative works for which Mr. Valentine is responsible, his latest, CIA As Organized Crime, may prove to be the best choice as an introduction to the dark realm of America’s hidden corruptions and their consequences at home and around the world. This new volume begins with the unlikely but irrevocable framework by which Mr. Valentine’s path led to unprecedented access to key Agency personnel whose witting participation is summarized by the chapter title: “How William Colby Gave Me the Keys to the CIA Kingdom.”

By illuminating CIA programs and systems of surveillance, control, and assassination utilized against the civilian population of South Vietnam, we are presented with parallels with operations and practices at work today in America’s seemingly perpetual war against terror.

Through the policies of covert infiltration and manipulations, illegal alliances, and “brute force” interventions that wreak havoc on designated enemy states, destroy progress and infrastructure under the claim of liberation, degrade the standards of living for people in the perceived hostile nations, “…America’s ruling elite empowers itself while claiming it has ensured the safety and prestige of the American people. Sometimes it is even able to convince the public that its criminal actions are ‘humanitarian’ and designed to liberate the people in nations it destroys.”

Mr. Valentine has presented us with a major body of work which includes: The Strength of the Wolf; The Strength of the Pack; The Pheonix Program, to which we may now add The CIA as Organized Crime, and for which we are profoundly indebted.

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Publication Spotlight: Orwell Triumphant by Professor David R. Wrone

Strictures Against Howard Willens and Richard Mosk’s “The Truth About Dallas,” Being an Article That Affirms the Warren Commission’s Conclusions about the Murder of JFK in Broad Daylight on the Street of an American City and Their Refutation of the Critics of Its Findings.

Howard Willens and Richard Mosk were staff members on the Warren Commission. In “The Truth About Dallas,” published in The American Scholar the summer of 2016, pages 52-63, they “lay out one last time” how, after exhaustive research, The President’s Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy known as the Warren Commission arrived at its findings.  And, they assert, they are “as confident as ever” about its conclusion.  They are also weary of the long battle they have waged in defense of the investigation and the Report’s doctrines as well as their rebuttal efforts against the unwashed denizens of denial.  Their work is framed in heroic terms.

They concur with the findings of the seven Commission members, holding that: a book  handler Lee Harvey Oswald fired three shots from the easternmost window of the Texas School Book Depository’s 6^th floor.  They assert: the first bullet hit JFK in the back of the neck went through the neck and continued on to wound Governor John Connally; the second bullet missed both men; and the third bullet hit JFK in the back of the head and killed him.  In addition, there was no conspiracy.

As is so often the case in these brief troglodytic defense articles of the official findings of the federal investigation, two factors interfere with a full responsible address of their arguments.  It would take a small volume to address each of the false factual and conjured theoretic assertions found in Willens and Mosk’s pages with notes to refute their position with the federal investigation’s own documents.

Not only does space restrictions limit the ability to address all of and in full the article’s errors and misdirections, there is the further problem of finding a responsible medium to publish a serious, fact-based rebuttal.

“Freedom shrieked when JFK fell, and hope, for the moment, bade the world farewell,” to paraphrase a line from one of Abe Lincoln’s favorite poems that expresses the denial of freedom of expression to dissenters.  The blind adherents to the official conclusions have erected an authoritarian bulwark against those who dissent from the official findings.  To them and their partisans, most dissent is properly relegated to the dark corners of minor circulation alternative history journals and newsletters when not found buried on obscure internet websites avoided by the public and politicians.  Only the most bizarre and weird conjectures regarding the Commission’s findings are permitted to find a national coverage.  This device enables the authoritarians to tar serious, scholarly and responsible, work by erudite critics with the claim that all criticisms of the government conclusions are from nuts.

Willens and Mosk’s criteria for separating the sound from unsound literature about The President’s Commission on Assassinations investigation of the murder is whether an author accepts or rejects the Commission’s findings.  If he or she argues Oswald alone and unaided killed JFK, it is good.  If Oswald did not murder the 35^th president or multiple shooters participated, the Commission’s work is, ipso facto, fraudulent, a type of offal generated by the madness of the crowds.  The Warren Commission conclusions are held by defenders of the official findings under the legal-political principle of Rex non potest pecarre, “The King can do no wrong.” The Commission is the king.

That the literature of dissent cleaves critics of the Commission’s conclusions into responsible or sound and irresponsible or false categories is a reality.  The responsible critics embrace the finest modern scholarship that is faithful to the highest standards of thorough objective research and careful reasoned judgments.  The irresponsible critics conjecture with little factual basis blind support for the official findings with reprehensible scholarship.   That Willens and Mosk throughout their article considers responsible critics to be scholarly lepers to be shunned and isolated is outrageous, a sin and a shame, certainly anti the principles that made America a great and good and thriving nation.

On page 59 the two state, “Our conclusion that Oswald fired the shots that wounded Connally and killed Kennedy was, and is, firmly based on the available evidence.”  In fact the evidence states the contrary.

The first point for examination is their treatment of the murder scene.  They state Oswald owned and used the rifle found on the sixth floor of the Depository.  The documentary evidence, however, proves beyond doubt that Oswald did not purchase, possess, own or use that particular rifle.  For example, the Commission’s lawyers used a certain magazine issue for the source of the coupon Oswald allegedly used to purchase the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle.  The actual different magazine did not contain the order blank and was published after he allegedly had the rifle in hand.  Further to note, the Oswald connection to the order coupon is based on analysis of the 26 hand printed characters found on a single tiny 35mm frame of the sporting goods store record.  No question was ever raised on the possibility of forgery and police departments across the nation constantly confront forgers and some are in the Rembrandt class.  In addition, hand printed characters are of no probative value.

Willens and Mosk omit that the alleged assassin killed JFK using a truly junky rifle that had to be twice repaired by officials in order to test it, that it had a misaligned telescopic sight that required shims to stabilize it and a rough two stage trigger pull.  In fact, during Oswald’s sojourn in the Soviet Union his associates in hunting related that he was such a poor shot that he could not kill a rabbit with a shotgun at close range.  Yet, the Commission and the two staff attorneys allege he performed a feat of marksmanship that the best rifle sharpshooters in America that the Commission could assemble could not duplicate either for speed or to match the accuracy.

Purchase aside, the evidence that Oswald had his Mannlicher-Carcano posted to his Dallas post office box does not exist.  Post office records reveal the section of the document on who could receive packages at the Oswald post office box was mysteriously torn off.  To assert he retrieved the rifle rests on no evidence whatsoever. Pictures of him with the rifle cannot be authenticated as the Carcano found in the Depository.

Willens and Mosk assert that Oswald’s palm print was found on the rifle barrel just as the Report so says, which is the sole evidence he owned and used it.  The investigative record, however, is unimpeachable in Commission and FBI documents and court records that prove otherwise.  As the Commission work drew to a close in late August two Commission staff, Liebeler and Stern, Willens and Mosk’s Commission cohorts, were deeply upset about whether the print was legitimate.  Chain of possession was questionable.  The print lift had arrived from Dallas to the FBI days after the rifle had been examined by the FBI laboratory where they had found no evidence of such print on the barrel of the rifle.

In memos Liebeler and Stern expressed doubt as to the palm print lift’s authenticity as the print was from a flat surface whereas the barrel was round.  The barrel, moreover, presented no evidence of a lift existed: No photo of it in place had been taken as is normal police work, no lifting powder residue could be found and no standard tape cover of the print had been made, again both standard operations.

The staff and the chief counsel J. Lee Rankin, two weeks before the Commission issued its Report, got around the vexing problem by use of a solicited authentication document from the FBI. The Bureau mailed one in (!) with the unsworn (!) statement of an FBI official with no forensic credentials (Hoover) (!) who just said it was legitimate.  It was hearsay five times removed—Dallas to the FBI lab to Alan Belmont administrator to Clyde Tolson second in command of the organization to Hoover to Rankin–as well as false to the fact.

This blatant piece of corruption was put to rest finally in a New Orleans trial four years later, when FBI agent R. Frazier, who had assisted in the lab study of the print, swore under oath that all concerned knew the print was a fake. Why? In addition to the specious evidence we just recounted, the poor metal of the junky rifle in fact could not take prints.  The palm print was impossible to have been on the rifle.  In this connection we note for the record that when the Dallas Police lab made copies of LHO’s prints they used a flat surface.

Willens and Mosk state the three cartridges found on the sixth floor came from the rifle.  To assert this as valid evidence linking the scene to the murder they clipped out of their text the results of the FBI study of the cases.  The cartridges, the commissioners and its staff were told, had also been chambered in an entirely different rifle.  Further, Willens and Mosk assume and assert as a fact that the rifle had been fired.  The standard test determining that a rifle was fired is the running a cotton swab down the barrel to evaluate the presence of gunshot residue.  If there is no residue in the barrel, the rifle was not fired or has been cleaned.  Frasier swore under oath had not been tested to see if had been fired.  It is an invention to say it had been fired that day.

The legal duo further wrote “eyewitnesses saw a man with a rifle at this window.”  Evidence is otherwise.  The Commission Report claimed only one citizen, Howard Brennan, sitting outside across the street on a low wall looked up and saw a person in that window and that person was Lee Harvey Oswald.  However, Howard Brennan committed perjury that day, first saying the man (Lee Harvey Oswald) in a line up was not the one he saw and then in a second lineup after being told Oswald was a commie swore that was who he saw.  The Zapruder film, however, shows Howard Brennan sitting on the low wall  not looking up at the window at the time of the first shot but rather over his shoulder at the Sheriff’s buildings behind him.

Other film is vital here. The Robert Hughes film, for example, shows an empty window on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository at the alleged sniper location just 3 seconds before the shooting.  Further refuting the integrity of the Howard Brennan’ testimony, Warren Commission attorneys in 1965 public talks in New York City told an audience that Brennan’s eyesight was so bad he could hardly even make out the building.  The staff simply did not address the eyesight in the Report and set up a grossly corrupt exhibit where attorneys guided his testimony before the Commission.  Even then he failed to pick the right window. They had no shame.

Inside the building we find Willens and Mosk errors and assumptions continue.  Dallas Police official photographs of the alleged scene at the 6^th floor window as they first came upon it show the window was not open far enough.  The rifle could not have been poked through, scope and all, and cocked over the 12 inch sill at an angle sufficiently steep to hit JFK 61 feet below.  To assert Oswald fired a rifle from that window, Willens and Mosk had to spurn physical facts.  Only by firing through two panes of glass could Oswald have gotten a rifle aimed at a steep enough angle to do so.   No glass was broken.

The most telling piece of evidence for Oswald not having fired a shot that day requires Willens and Mosk to excise a troublesome fact from their public “education” article.  The crucial fact can be found in an FBI document [62-109060 Serial 3816 not recorded #2], which is a memo between FBI’s #3 official, Alan Belmont, to Clyde Tolson, dated September 23, 1964.  [See, discussion in Wrone, Zapruder Film, 172.] This memo was sent the day before the Report was released.  In it Belmont relates that the Neutron Activation Analyses [NAA testing] at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, of the paraffin casts taken of Oswald’s cheek on the 22d prove he had not fired a rifle that day.  The paraffin casts of seven control subjects who fired the rifle and were positive for gunshot residue on their cheeks as identified by NAA testing of their casts.  Oswald was demonstrated to have no gunshot residue on this hands or cheeks; control subjects did have gunshot residue on their cheeks and hands.  Oswald did not shoot a rifle before his arrest.  Oswald was innocent.

Willens’ and Mosk’s contention that there is no evidence for any other bullets being fired that day has no merit.  In the official records of the Commission and the FBI are numerous references to other shots being fired and bullet impacts that the FBI sought to hide, lie about, and control.  Two bullets struck the inner grass, one hit a manhole cover, one hit in front of the limousine on the street, one behind the limousine on the street.  A whole bullet, .45 caliber, was found under the viaduct, a 6.5mm steel jacketed slug was found atop the viaduct, on the north sidewalk a bullet left a fresh scar with lead smear in its trough, a .30 caliber cartridge was found on the roof of a near building.  A motorcycle policeman riding on the left of the limousine later told family members he had experienced a bullet striking part of his cycle and bouncing off.

Another bullet struck the curbing on Commerce Street resulting in the wounding of James Tague. The damage the size of a silver dollar with lead in the base Willens and Mosk render, like Tague, invisible. Imagine discussion the assassination as self-proclaimed authorities and leaving out one of the persons wounded.  An evidentiary factor intrudes here for the FBI studies, diagrams, etc., showed the bullet came from the grassy knoll.

Yet another bullet is proved to have existed by study of the wounds.  Army Colonel J. Dolce, America’s foremost ballistics expert, a surgeon with 3 years battlefield experience, years of research experience, and author of The Edgewood Arsenal report, concluded without doubt the hit to John B Connally’s arm came from the grassy knoll and was impossible to have been caused by a bullet exiting his chest.

Another factor comes into play here too.  From a ballistics perspective, it was not possible for the bullet to have transited Connally’s body and exit his chest and continue on to strike his wrist as is postulated by Commission staff attorney Arlen Specter’s single bullet hypothesis espoused by Willens and Mosk and the Commission.  Why is this?  Connally held his hand palm side to his chest and the surgeons who operated on him were vehement that the bullet entered from the back of the hand.  The Commission attorneys simply ignored this and shunted Dolce aside and refused to let this most qualified national expert to testify.

Evidence in the form of Dr. R. Robertson’s forensic study of the head wounds and skull fractures establishes two bullets hit JFK’s head, at least one coming from the grassy knoll area.  His report is buttressed by the reports of seven spectators standing or sitting and two policemen on their motorcycles riding escort, from 3 to 15 feet away from JFK who saw the bullet hit his right temple.  Additional weight is added when the effluvia blown from the head by the force of the temple shot is looked at.  The force of impact splattered over one of the motorcyclists riding to the far left and rear of the presidential limousine.

Willens and Mosk claim a single proved bogus threat on JFK existed and that was summarily dismissed by subsequent federal investigations of the murder.  The records, however, give a starkly different picture.  The records reveal many threats on JFK’s life in this time period.  In Miami they were two solidly recorded threats, one by a right wing mendicant fascist Cuban and one by a National States Rights party figure.  There are records of threats on JFK’s life in Tampa, in New Orleans by right wing business-political organizations, in Richardson, Texas, in Denton, Texas, by a student Young Republican organization, in Dallas by a political Cuban working in Parkland Hospital, by folks in a meeting in a Dallas bank’s public room three weeks before comprised of Americans and Cuban right wing fanatics that was taped and names recorded.  They vowed to kill JFK.  The Dallas Police intelligence division officer told an investigating critic in 1968 that in Dallas alone there were “50 organizations” it listed for him, ranging from far right to extreme left, who wanted JFK dead and had the skills and abilities to do it.  Yet, none were investigated by the federal officials.

The treatment of Oswald’s background is chimerical in nature.  Willens and Mosk delete the rightist element in Oswald’s background.  In the Marines he had a crypto clearance that is above a top secret clearance.  In the 26 volumes of the Commission it has the records of Oswald’s August of 63 speech at a Battles Wharf Jesuit college where he damned communism, Marxism, and socialism.  He had an intelligence number of 110669 and seemingly had connections with some unknown branch of federal intelligence.  Earl Warren held a one man fake Commission meeting at Dulles airport on January 24 with Dallas authorities where he was able to obtain the thick Dallas records on Oswald’s relationship to U. S. intelligence and later, presumably, destroyed them.  This is attested in Commission files and by Warren Commission critic Harold Weisberg’s interviews with the Texas judges, lawyers, and elected officials involved along with several documents they gave him relating to their flight to Dulles airport.

In a further striking omission Willens and Mosk did not tell their readers of one of the most critical facts in the assassination investigation.  There were dissenters on the Warren Commission to the Commission’s own report conclusions.  How can this be?  They proclaim they know the facts of the case and are professionals.  But, of the seven commissioners four did not accept the Report.  Earl Warren himself in after years did not accept the lone assassin theory. Hale Boggs in 1965-66 in interviews with critics did not.  John Cooper and Richard Russell vigorously protested in the last secret executive session that Russell forced upon Warren.

Russell forced the Commission to include in its Report his dissent from the findings, but Rankin and Warren forged minutes of the meeting and modified Russell’s dissent in the Report to render his dissent meaningless.  This is sustained by records from the Russell library, Cooper’s records (he concurred with Russell’s statements), Warren Commission records; correspondence of Russell with vociferous critic Weisberg whose manuscript “Russell Dissents” brilliantly relates the event.

Russell who was in failing health issued a cri de coeur and urged the critics to fight the cover-up of the assassination.  Joining the dissent of the commissioners were three important legal and political figures.  The District Attorney of Dallas Henry Wade, the Chief of Police of Dallas Jesse Curry, and LBJ himself (!).  All did not accept the findings of the Warren Commission investigation.  Wade kept the case open for years waiting for enough solid information to come forth that he could charge someone.  For Willens and Mosk to omit this dissent by commissioners and by two key Dallas public figures, and by LBJ is unconscionable.

Willens and Mosk’s article must be judged as a piece of state propaganda as described in George Orwell’s novel 1984.

What do we know for certain about the murder of JFK?  In the end bullets struck Kennedy from the front and from the rear and none came from the sixth floor of the Depository.  Further, Lee Harvey Oswald fired no shots and played no role.  Ten witnesses even placed him on the lower floor of the building at the time of the assassination. The crime was never honestly investigated and truths embedded in the historical record at the National Archives underscore that this was an Ameriform coup d’etat.

David R. Wrone, Ph.D is a professor emeritus of history at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, recipient of the “Excellence in Teaching Award” for 1969-1970 and the “Scholar Award” for 1993-1994, a specialist in the fields of Native American history and political assassinations, and the author of 2003’s The Zapruder Film: Reframing JFK’s Assassination.

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Publication Spotlight: CIA & JFK: The Secret Assassination Files by Jefferson Morley

As the editor of JFKFacts.org, a website devoted to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Jefferson Morley is asked, “So who killed JFK? What’s your theory?”

Morley, a former reporter for the Washington Post and author of Our Man in Mexico: Winston Scott and the Hidden History of the CIA, invariably disappoints. “I don’t know. It’s too early to tell.”

Fifty-plus years after JFK’s death, this answer is laughable but serious. The JFK story remains unsettled well into the 21st century, no matter what the various conspiracy and anti-conspiracy theorists may proclaim. Indeed, the complex reality of how a president of the United States came to be gunned down on a sunny day, and no one lost his liberty — or his job — continues to live and grow in popular memory.

This is a book that reveals deceit and deception on the part of the CIA relating to the Kennedy assassination and why the CIA should reveal to the American people what it is still keeping secret.

Employing his investigative reporting skills through interviews and examination of long-secret records, Morley reveals that the CIA was closely monitoring the movements of accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald in the months preceding the assassination of President Kennedy.

Questions naturally arise: Did the CIA suspect that Oswald was up to no good? Or was its surveillance part of a CIA scheme to frame Oswald for the assassination of President Kennedy? Why did the CIA keep its surveillance secret from the Warren Commission?

Morley also reveals a close relationship between the CIA and an American anti-Castro group that began advertising Oswald’s connections to communism and the Soviet Union immediately after the assassination.

That raises questions: Why didn’t the CIA reveal that relationship to official agencies investigating the assassination of President Kennedy? Why did a federal judge and the chief counsel of the House Select Committee on Assassinations accuse the CIA of deceit and deception?

The U.S. government retains almost 3,600 assassination-related records, consisting of tens of thousands of pages that have never been seen by the public. More than 1,100 of these records are held by the CIA.

What is in those secret files? What do they reveal about JFK’s death? Why has the CIA been so reluctant to release them? And when will they finally be revealed to the public? Will they answer the disturbing questions that the revelations in this book raise?

Visit Jeff Morley’s Amazon page HERE.

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Publication Spotlight: Dallas ’63: The First Deep State Revolt Against the White House (Forbidden Bookshelf) by Peter Dale Scott

“[A] staggeringly well-researched and intelligent overview not only of the JFK assassination but also of the rise of forces undermining American democracy. . . . A kind of Rosetta stone for cracking open the deepest darkness in American politics.” —Kirkus Reviews on Deep Politics and the Death of JFK

“Highly recommended.” —Library Journal on Deep Politics and the Death of JFK

“May well be the most thoughtful and serious-minded of the 2,500 titles on the subject published over the years.” —Toronto Star on Deep Politics and the Death of JFK

“Peter Dale Scott is our most provocative scholar of American power. Scott picks up where the pioneering C. Wright Mills left off, shining a light on the dark labyrinth of power—a shadow world that has only grown more arrogant and wedded to state violence since the days of the ‘power elite’ and the ‘military-industrial complex.’ There is no way to understand how power really operates without daring to follow Scott’s illuminating path.” —David Talbot, Salon, on The American Deep State, author of Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years, and The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government

“Breaks new ground on the deceptions that covered up anti-Castro assassination plots and protected the operation to assassinate JFK . . . an essential read.” —John Newman, author of JFK and Vietnam, Oswald and the CIA, Where Angels Tread Lightly: The Assassination of President Kennedy Vol. I

“An incandescent affirmation of Peter Dale Scott’s stature as our sharpest and most discerning historian whose works expose and document the intricacies, concealed alliances, and underlying continuities that exist between a public state which is bound by the checks and balances of constitutional authority, and a deep state which is neither influenced nor informed by constitutional constraints. Highest recommendation.” —Alan Dale, host of JFK Conversations

Peter Dale Scott is an historian and poet; a scholar whose artistry is directed towards revealing truth as an author and educator; a translator of poetry; a former diplomat; an investigative writer of political prose; Professor Emeritus of English at the University of California, Berkeley; a lover of words, and the author of Dallas ’63: The First Deep State Revolt Against the White House (Forbidden Bookshelf).

With a foreword by Rex Bradford and a preface by Bill Simpich: From deep within American society emerged the plot that killed a president

Beneath the orderly façade of the American government lies a complex network, only partly structural, linking Wall Street influence, corrupt bureaucracy, and the military-industrial complex. Here lies the true power of the American empire: This behind-the-scenes web is unelected, unaccountable, and immune to popular resistance. Peter Dale Scott calls this entity the deep state, and he has made it his life’s work to write the history of those who manipulate our government from the shadows. Since the aftermath of World War II, the deep state’s power has grown unchecked, and nowhere has it been more apparent than at sun-dappled Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963.

The central mystery of the JFK assassination is not who fired the guns that fateful day, but the untouchable forces behind the shooters. In this landmark volume, Scott traces how culpable elements in the CIA and FBI helped prepare for the assassination, and how such elements continue to influence our politics today.

In his 1993 publication Deep Politics and the Death of JFK, Scott looked closely at the foreground of the assassination: Lee Harvey Oswald, Jack Ruby, and their connections to Dallas law enforcement, to the underworlds of Dallas and New Orleans, and to Cuba. This new book, in contrast, looks at the assassination as an event emanating from the American deep state, including actions of the CIA and FBI in Washington and Mexico City, and apparent continuities with later deep events, notably Watergate, the Iran-Contra affair, and 9/11. Dallas ’63 concludes with an overview of the 2 pivotal decades between the death of JFK and the Reagan Revolution, when all 4 presidents following Kennedy were increasingly at odds with deep state ambitions for world hegemony and saw their presidential careers prematurely terminated.

DALLAS ’63 is available from Amazon.

Professor Scott’s most recent political books are The Road to 9/11: Wealth, Empire, and the Future of America (2007); The War Conspiracy: JFK, 9/11, and the Deep Politics of War (2008); American War Machine: Deep Politics, the CIA Global Drug Connection, and the Road to Afghanistan (2010); and The American Deep State: Wall Street, Big Oil, and the Attack on U.S. Democracy (2014).

His books have been translated into six languages, and his articles and poems have been translated into twenty. The former US poet laureate Robert Hass has written that, “Coming to Jakarta is the most important political poem to appear in the English language in a very long time.” In 2002, Dale Scott received the Lannan Literary Award for Poetry.

Peter Dale Scott’s website is www.peterdalescott.net and his Facebook page is www.facebook.com/peter.d.scott.9

Professor Scott’s 2014 address to the AARC Conference may be viewed here.

 Publication Spotlight: State Secret: Wiretapping In Mexico City, Double Agents and the Framing of Lee Oswald by Bill Simpich

The Mary Ferrell Foundation is pleased to present the online serialization of this book by Bill Simpich. State Secret: Wiretapping in Mexico City, Double Agents, and the Framing of Lee Oswald delves deeply into the strange story of the Oswald Mexico City trip two months before the assassination, and how these events were used as part of the framing of Oswald after 11/22/63. With a focus on the wiretap operation and the curious manipulation of CIA information on Oswald, and based on voluminous research using the MFF’s CIA records, Bill presents a compelling new analysis of this mysterious event.

 “State Secret recounts an oft-told tale in the events leading to the Dallas tragedy: the story of Lee Harvey Oswald in Mexico City in September and October 1963. Bill Simpich adds revelatory new detail along with minimal theorizing and maximum lucidity about what we don’t know. To put it simply, he lays bare a state secret: the fact pattern of a counterintelligence operation.”  Jefferson Morley, Investigator; Journalist; author of “Our Man In Mexico: Winston Scott and the Hidden History of the CIA” and “Snow-Storm In August: The Struggle For American Freedom and Washington’s Race Riot of 1835;” Editor In Chief, JFKFacts.org.

“The most important recent development in the JFK research community has been the ability to data-mine thousands of pages of primary material in record time. The ability to find leads, collate and cross reference data, and share information through sites like Mary Ferrell and the AARC is a quantum leap for serious researchers who are willing to put in the effort to run down each angle. No one has illustrated the power of these new tools like Bill Simpich, whose original and thorough examination of the intelligence connections to Lee Harvey Oswald is some of the most important work to be introduced in the past decade. That he has freely provided the fruits of his intense labor is a tribute to his sincerity and a model for other researchers.”  Stuart Wexler, Historian; Researcher; Lecturer; co-author of “The Awful Grace of God” and “Shadow Warfare,” with Larry Hancock, and most recently, “America’s Secret Jihad,” his first solo effort.

“Standard intelligence requires that the identity and activities of virtually everyone associated with both operations and intelligence collection be protected from foreign espionage though the use of cryptograms (crypts), cover names and cover identities – as well as the use of aliases by operational personnel. While necessary for operational security, those practices make the historical study of intelligence documents extremely difficult, even once they are released in full. It requires intense study and comparison of literally thousands of both field and headquarters documents to determine the true names of both individuals and operations – such extreme efforts have been undertaken by no more than a handful of researchers. Simpich is clearly among the leaders in such work. In State Secret, Simpich has taken us beyond spy novels into the real world of intelligence operations – a world far more complex in fact than in fiction.”  Larry Hancock, author of acclaimed volumes on America’s hidden histories: “Someone Would Have Talked,” “Nexus,” co-author with Stuart Wexlar of “The Awful Grace of God” and “Shadow Warfare.” His newest work is “Surprise Attack: From Pearl Harbor to 9/11 to Benghazi,” publication date, September 15, 2015.

State Secret: Wiretapping In Mexico City, Double Agents and the Framing of Lee Oswald

Preface*

This book is about the counterintelligence activity behind the JFK story and its role in the death of President Kennedy. It examines how the existence of tapes of a man in Mexico City, identifying himself as Oswald, were discovered before the Kennedy assassination and hidden after the assassination. On November 23, 1963, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover wrote President Lyndon Johnson and the Secret Service chief, telling both of them that the caller was not Lee Harvey Oswald. These tapes showed that the supposed “lone gunman” had been impersonated just weeks before the killing of JFK, tying him to Cuban and Soviet employees in a manner that would cause great consternation in the halls of power on November 22.

The other aspect of this book is about how the importance of the Mexico City tapes collided with the national security imperative of hiding American abilities in the field of wiretapping. These tapes were created by wiretapping the Soviet consulate. World leaders prize wiretapping because it enables them to find out the true motives of their friends and adversaries. It’s no wonder that Edward Snowden was castigated for daring to reveal the nature of these jewels. Back in 1963, wiretapping was the domain of the CIA’s Staff D, the super-secret division that did the legwork for much of the signals intelligence or ‘sigint’ that was provided to the National Security Agency.

Ampex 601 tape recorder

The hiding of the tapes paralyzed any effort to conduct an honest investigation into what happened. Within days of the assassination, the agencies were flooded with phony evidence tying Oswald to a Soviet assassination team and Red Cuban plots. Lyndon Johnson and Robert Kennedy probably knew little about the tapes, but acquiesced to the cover-up rather than run the risk of a war on Cuba which might include the USSR. This story explains why LBJ was so insistent that Chief Justice Earl Warren chair the investigating commission and prevent the possibility of “40 million dead Americans”, and why the Warren Commission was denied access to the investigators, witnesses and documents needed to solve the case.

To win over Warren, LBJ said that “I just pulled out what Hoover told me about a little incident in Mexico City.” The purpose of this book is to bring this state secret into the sunlight. Sunlight on this secret dissipates idle talk of mystery. The more facts we can expose to the cold light of day, the less time is spent feeling our way through the dark. […]

The cover-up of the President’s death is a state secret. The tale of the Mexico City tapes is a state secret. Much of the history of the United States is hidden from us, behind a wall of overclassifications and redactions. By comparison, we know more about the JFK case than I ever thought was possible. Much more of it sits in the National Archives and on the websites of the Mary Ferrell Foundation, the Poage Legislative Library at Baylor, the Harold Weisberg Archive at Hood College, the National Security Archive, the presidential libraries, and many more locations, waiting for us to read it, sift through it, and analyze it. The hyperlinks in this story enable the reader to view the original documents and engage in the hunt. Are we interested in serious work, or would we rather argue about it as a form of entertainment?

Preface

Chapter 1: The Double Dangle

Chapter 2: Three Counterintelligence Teams Watched Oswald

Chapter 3: The Cuban Compound In Mexico City Was Ground Zero

Chapter 4: Mexico City Intrigue — The World of Surveillance

Chapter 5: The Mexico City Solution

Chapter 6: The Set-up and the Cover-up

Conclusion: Only Justice Will Stop A Curse

The JFK case is not an insoluble mystery, but more of a steeplechase. What we need is access to our history and a passion for tough-minded analysis. It’s not a lot different than a clear-eyed examination of the roots of war, or what it will take to end world hunger or global warming. Errico Malatesta was a well-known Italian agitator who spoke throughout Europe about his vision for a better world. Malatesta would often suggest that “everything depends on what the people are capable of wanting.”

–Bill Simpich

Read State Secret: Wiretapping In Mexico City, Double Agents and the Framing of Lee Oswald

*The Mary Ferrell Foundation and the Assassination Archives and Research Center have been able to publish 1.5 million documents and provide a variety of research tools because of the financial support of people like yourself.  Rather than charge money for his efforts, Bill Simpich asks you to contribute a donation at the home page of either or both of these invaluable organizations.

Publication Spotlight: Where Angels Tread Lightly by John M. Newman

Fifty years ago the darkest secrets about the assassination of President Kennedy were secretly hidden underneath of the CIA’s plots to destroy Castro—and they have remained so until now.

“John Newman is one of this country’s greatest scholars on Cuba, the CIA and the JFK Assassination. This book is a ground-breaking investigation of America’s failure in Cuba that uncovers the CIA’s role in Castro’s rise to power and their ensuing efforts to destroy him. It exposes the genesis of one of America’s darkest deceptions — the myth that Castro was responsible for the assassination of President Kennedy.” Eric Hamburg, Producer, Nixon film and former aide to Senator John Kerry

“Where Angels Tread Lightly builds upon Newman’s previous works, JFK and  Vietnam and Oswald and the CIA. Newman puts the past histories, cryptonyms, and pseudonyms of CIA officers and operatives who became entangled in the plots to overthrow Castro under a powerful microscope. This work is essential reading for anyone interested in the dark operations that produced the false story that Castro was behind the Kennedy assassination.” Peter Dale Scott, author of Deep Politics and the Death of  JFK and The American Deep State

“John Newman has done more to advance the work begun by the House Select Committee on Assassinations to explore the CIA’s connections to Oswald than anyone else. Where Angels Tread Lightly is a meticulously researched, in-depth account of US policies and operations during the late 1950s and early 1960s that were designed to eliminate a perceived Communist threat in Cuba, but instead brought together the forces that eventually led to the assassination of JFK. This extraordinary volume shines new light on the CIA officers and operatives who were involved in those operations.” Dan Hardway, investigator, House Select Committee on Assassinations

Where Angels Tread Lightly

The Assassination of President Kennedy

Volume 1*

There is no darker story in our recent history than how the American struggle with Fidel Castro became entangled with the assassination of President Kennedy.

CIA operatives use pseudonyms when they handle their sources. The Agency also uses cryptonyms for people and for operations. The original intended use of these methods was not simply to keep the American public in the dark. The CIA’s pseudonyms and cryptonyms have been and still are also used internally at the secret level. The internal use of cryptonyms and pseudonyms was designed for CIA counterintelligence operations. Their use makes it difficult for moles to piece together sensitive operations generally. It is the foundation of what is called “compartmentalization” and the “need to know.” However, keeping these cryptonyms and pseudonyms secret forever is unnecessary and even harmful. It can undermine the faith of the people in their institutions of government— especially if something goes wrong with intelligence operations. And something did go terribly wrong with American intelligence operations before, during, and after the assassination of President Kennedy.

The main lens for the entire series of volumes is the period 1959-1963—perhaps the most seismically active period of the Cold War. The struggle between Fidel Castro and John Kennedy cannot be understood outside of the context of the Cold War any more than the Cold War can be understood apart from the struggle between Castro and Kennedy.

MAJOR WORKING HYPOTHESES

The following working hypotheses pertain to the entire series of volumes in the present work. The substance of Hypotheses Three and Four was presented in the 2008 edition of my previous work, Oswald and the CIA. We will build upon them as the volumes of this series unfold.

• Hypothesis One: At some point in 1962, regardless of how much earlier someone might have wanted President Kennedy to be assassinated, the contours of the plot that eventually emerged began to fall into place: an American Marxist, Lee Harvey Oswald would assassinate JFK and appear to have done so for Fidel Castro with the assistance of the KGB.

• Hypothesis Two: The plot was also designed to make it appear that the Kennedy brothers’ plan to overthrow Castro had been successfully turned around by Fidel, resulting in the assassination of President Kennedy.

• Hypothesis Three: Lee Harvey Oswald was sent by his agent handler to New Orleans in the summer of 1963 to build upon his pro-Castro Cuban legend that he had begun to establish in Dallas at the beginning of that year.

• Hypothesis Four: Oswald’s CIA files were manipulated by CIA counterintelligence in the weeks before the assassination to support the design mentioned in Hypothesis One and Two. In this connection, Oswald (or an imposter) traveled to Mexico City (28 September-3 October 1963) and spent time in the Cuban Consulate and met with a Soviet diplomat, Valery Kostikov, who was known to U.S. intelligence to be the head of KGB assassinations (Department 13) in the Western Hemisphere.

• Hypothesis Five: An essential element of the plot was a psychological operation to raise the specter of WWIII and the death of forty million Americans. This threat of a nuclear holocaust was then used by President Johnson to terrify Chief Justice Earl Warren and some of the other men who served on the Warren Commission to such an extent that they believed there was no alternative to writing a report stating Lee Oswald alone had assassinated the president.

When I returned to active investigation of this case I knew straight away that I had to make a critical decision: all in or stay out. I also knew that all in meant do more than a new book. It meant perhaps three, four or even more volumes. It also meant testing hypotheses, making mistakes, and readjusting the investigation to follow the evidentiary trail. That is what is supposed to happen in murder investigations.

In this investigation, however, we are attempting to look inside a very dark box. The people involved in the design of the plot, even if it was only a few, were very sophisticated in propaganda and deception operations. In his book The Craft of Intelligence, former Director of Central Intelligence Allen Dulles wrote about the “collateral effect” of a successful deception operation. He used the term “black operation,” which is similar to the term used in this volume, “dark operation.”

Dulles explained the “collateral effect” this way: once a “single piece” of the enemy’s deception has succeeded in its purpose, “then almost anything that happens can be taken as one of his tricks.” This is what happened when British and French intelligence failed to believe some half-burned documents “from the complete plans of the German invasion of France through Belgium, for which Hitler had already given marching orders.” British and French officials felt that“the whole thing was a German deception operation.” The point that Dulles was driving at was this: “Often the very fear of deception has blinded an opponent to the real value of the information which accidents or intelligence operations have placed in his hands.” The burned documents had fallen into British and French hands by accident, when a German plane landed in the wrong place.

It is worthwhile pondering how Dulles’ point might apply to the Kennedy assassination. As stated in the Introduction to this work, in this case a very big “single piece” of deception succeeded in its purpose:

The plot to assassinate President Kennedy was designed to deceive both people in the government and the public at large. A convincing trail of evidence was established to make it appear that the Kennedy brothers’ plan to overthrow Castro had been turned around and used against them by Fidel himself, resulting in the assassination of President Kennedy.

We should heed Dulles’ advice and not fear that “almost everything” is a successful deception operation. We should, as Dulles advises us, realize that accidents in intelligence operations happen. Such accidents have occurred in this case too. They have placed important clues into our hands.

Where Angels Tread Lightly is available from Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Where-Angels-Tread-Lightly-Assassination/dp/1478302410/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1429988328&sr=8-1&keywords=where+angels+tread+lightly

*All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without prior written permission from the author.

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ADDENDUM TO AFTERWARD

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