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A CRUEL AND SHOCKING MISINTERPRETATION

Phil Shenon and I agree on at least a few things. In any resolution of the mysteries surrounding the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Mexico City will undoubtedly be important. The investigation into what happened there in 1963 was, for some reason, seriously curtailed by the U.S. government. The government has, since then, fought tooth and nail to keep the full story about what happened there secret.

While I have never met Mr. Shenon, I have spoken with him several times by telephone. I first heard from him when he called me around 2011. He introduced himself as a reporter for Newsweek Magazine. He said he was working well in advance on an article for that magazine for the 50th anniversary of JFK’s murder. He wondered whether I would be willing to talk about the HSCA’s investigation in Mexico City. I agreed to speak with him.

Over the course of that first conversation, and several follow-up calls from him over the next couple of years, it became apparent to me that Mr. Shenon was only interested in our work investigating what had happened in Mexico City in 1963 insofar as it might provide some kind of basis for linking Oswald to Castro or the Cubans. I tried to discuss the details of the HSCA investigation into what happened in Mexico City in its anomalous issues, but he was uninterested in those details. While there is an acknowledgment in his book, A Cruel and Shocking Act, stating that Ed Lopez and I were “generous with their time and interviews for this book,” precious little, if any, of what we shared with him made it into the book or any of his subsequent writing on the subject of Mexico City. Not only does Mr. Shenon ignore the post-HSCA materials we tried to bring to his attention, he also ignores the primary thrust of our report written for the HSCA.

I would not take issue with Phil Shenon if I thought what he is claiming is, merely, that the possibility of Cuban assistance to Oswald should be investigated. While I think the evidence of that is very weak at best, I will not deny that any avenue of investigation that remains open should be pursued. What I take issue with Mr. Shenon about is his single-minded concentration on that one issue and the resultant misrepresentation of facts and questions related to, and arising from, Lee Oswald’s activities in Mexico City. It appears to me that Shenon may be carrying water for the proponents of the original conspiracy theory – that Castro did it – rather than offering any objective review of the complete evidentiary base of that underlies the Mexico City visit. Shenon deliberately ignores the indicators and evidence that suggest Oswald’s trip to Mexico was either designed in advance, or spun in the aftermath, to give the appearance of Cuban and Soviet collusion in the Kennedy assassination.

Shenon’s thesis, as most recently explicated in his article in Politico, “What Was Lee Harvey Oswald Doing in Mexico?”, is built on suspicions expressed by some government officials after the assassination and Charles Thomas’s reporting of the Duran twist party – a report based on a story first told by Elena Garro de Paz. Many had initial suspicions after the assassination: Lyndon Johnson alleged a communist conspiracy within twenty minutes of JFK’s death; Bobby Kennedy’s first question to CIA Director John McCone that day was, “Did some of your guys do this?” (The Warren Commission, in Executive Session, was very concerned about Oswald’s intelligence connections, but Allen Dulles told them it was something that couldn’t really be proven, as a good intelligence officer would lie under oath to the Commission.) When Shenon and I talked, I tried to get him to consider evidence and facts that have come to light about Mexico City and the CIA’s handling of various investigations since, including the one I worked on in 1978, in his evaluation of the twist party story that lies at the root of his speculations. My efforts had no effect. Any possible explanation other than Cuban complicity has been ignored by Mr. Shenon who seems hell-bent on promoting the idea that Castro was behind the assassination, refusing to address any other possibility.

I tried, in vain as it turns out, to get Mr. Shenon to consider that what we had learned about Oswald’s activities, and the government’s reaction to those activities, could support a different explanation which also pointed to an additional avenue of investigation that needed to be publicized and followed. In my view, Oswald’s activities are more consistent with his being involved in an intelligence operation being run by U.S. intelligence than with him trying to make contact with Cubans to garner support for an assassination attempt on the sitting leader of this country.

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

George Joannides

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

David Atlee Phillips

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.

There are too many similarities between Oswald’s activities in New Orleans and Mexico City to simply dismiss, without investigation or discussion, the possibility that he was being used in an intelligence operation, either wittingly or unwittingly, in both cities. In addition to his contacts with the Soviet and Cuban diplomatic facilities in Mexico City, which could have been part of an intelligence dangle, an attempt to discredit the FPCC, or both, there is now also evidence of Oswald’s contacts with students at the National Autonomous University of Mexico and his presence at social events with Cuban Consulate

Secret Wars Diary by David Atlee Phillips

employees. David Phillips frequently lied about Oswald and Mexico City, but in a footnote in a little known book he self-published, Secret Wars Diary, he wrote: “I was an observer of Cuban and Soviet reaction when Lee Harvey Oswald contacted their embassies.” [Emphasis added.] One purpose served by an intelligence dangle is to enable the dangling agency to observe the reaction and, from that observation, identify roles of employees, procedures and processes of the enemy.

There can be little doubt that Oswald’s activities, especially the more flagrant, blatant and egregious ones such as those alleged by Shenon to have occurred at the Cuban Consulate, could only have scandalized the Cuban diplomats who heard the threats and bluster – all to the discrediting of the FPCC, just as the publicity about the New Orleans encounter between Oswald and the DRE formed one of the propaganda nails in that organization’s coffin. It is much more likely, in my opinion, that the seasoned Cuban diplomats would be offended than it is that they would support someone exhibiting Oswald’s alleged behavior to attempt an assassination. It is much more likely that the Cuban diplomats would have, as the evidence shows they did, consider Oswald as a U.S. intelligence provocation. The Cubans knew of the surveillance on their facilities. Why would they use someone to do such a job who showed up under surveillance and announced his plans? On the other hand, someone as provocative as Oswald should have generated a cascade of response that, when observed by the watchers, would have revealed an abundance of information. It could also serve to discredit the FPCC with the Cubans. The CIA prevented us, in 1978, from interviewing then surviving penetration and surveillance agents who would have known more about such an operation.

In 1978, we knew not only about the allegations of the twist party, but also about the stories of Oswald’s contact with students. The CIA prevented us from interviewing Oscar Contreras, a student Oswald contacted. But Anthony Summers, and others, have interviewed him since. Contreras acknowledges that Oswald, in late September, 1963, approached him and three other students who were members of a pro-Castro student organization. He asked them for help getting a visa to Cuba from the Consulate. Contreras did have contacts at the Consulate and spoke to the Consul and an intelligence officer. Both warned him to have nothing to do with Oswald as they suspected he was trying to infiltrate proCastro groups. Contreras still wonders how Oswald identified him and his friends as the students, out of the thousands attending the University, as the ones with contacts in the Consulate. Shenon, some way or another, sees this incident as supporting possible Cuban involvement in the assassination. No mention is made to the similarity to what Oswald was doing with Tulane students in New Orleans.

While in New Orleans, Ruth Paine had asked fellow Quaker, Ruth Kloepfer, to check on the Oswalds while they were in New Orleans. Mrs. Kloepfer’s husband was a professor at Tulane University. There is information in the extensive records in this case that Oswald passed out FPCC leaflets near Tulane University and the homes of some of the professors there who were members of a local leftist group. The

Lee Oswald in New Orleans leafleting for the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, 9 August, 1963

individuals who helped pass out pamphlets on the last occasion when Oswald passed out his FPCC literature in downtown New Orleans, were introduced by Oswald as students from Tulane. There are, keeping things in parallel, indications in the documentation about the case that Oswald, while in Mexico City, made contact with Quakers studying at the Autonomous University. There are indications that one Quaker student at the University at that time was an active agent of the CIA, although that person has never been identified and it has not been determined that he had any contact with Oswald in Mexico City. The reason that it has not been determined is that it has not been investigated.

It has to be pointed out that June Cobb, a known CIA agent, was very involved in Agency actions aimed at the FPCC in the early 1960’s. She appears again as the first person to report Elena Garro de Paz’s story about the Duran/Oswald twist party. At the time she made that report to the Mexico City CIA station, Cobb, a CIA asset, was renting a room from Elena Garro de Paz, Sylvia Duran’s cousin. And Shenon bases most of

Elena Garro De Paz

what he writes on a supposition that, based on this twist-party story, Duran was at the center of the Cuban recruitment of Oswald. But the fact is that it is still very much in question whether Duran had been recruited as an asset by the CIA. David Phillips, as well as other CIA employees, in 1978, were of the opinion that she may have been targeted for recruitment by the CIA. The CIA, then and since, has gone out of its way to keep details about Duran buried, claiming, among other things, to have destroyed her Mexico City P file.

But the point is, the activities in Mexico City in September and October, 1963, are a capsule version of Oswald’s activities in New Orleans in June, July and August of 1963. In the context of the other information we’ve learned about the CIA’s FPCC black propaganda operation, the people involved in those operations and the role of at least one of those people, George Joannides, in subverting the HSCA investigation, how can anyone not seriously consider whether Oswald’s Mexico City activities were part of a CIA anti-FPCC operation? The very first conspiracy theory, that Castro and the communists killed JFK – the one expressed by President Johnson 20 minutes after the assassination, and first seeing print in the DRE’s CIA funded newspaper, Trinchera, on November 23, 1963 – still has followers and proponents, the latest being Phil Shenon. None of the proponents, it seems, have ever really considered whether they may be the victims – or a part – of a very good, deliberate disinformation operation – possibly the best Phillips and Joannides ever ran.

________________________

Dan Hardway, J.D. Attorney in private practice; former investigator, House Select Committee on Assassinations.

RFK’s Secret Role in the Cuban Missile Crisis

Recently declassified information shows the critical part JFK’s younger brother played in resolving the Cold War’s most dangerous moment

By Matthew Hayes on August 6, 2019

RFK's Secret Role in the Cuban Missile Crisis — Credit: Bill Eppridge *Getty Images*

‘This is the result of the photography taken Sunday, sir. There’s a medium-range ballistic missile launch site and two new military encampments … in West Central Cuba. The launch site at one of the encampments contains a total of at least 14 canvas-covered missile trailers, measuring 67 feet long and more than nine feet in width.”

On a Tuesday morning in October 1962, these chilling words informed President Kennedy and his advisors that the Soviet Union was constructing nuclear missile sites in Cuba. Thanks to recording devices established and activated by JFK, we can actually hear CIA briefer Marshall Carter and deliver this precise analysis of U.S. spy plane photos. Their tone appears calm and measured, yet this briefing would light the touch paper for the Cold War’s most dramatic crisis. Nuclear missiles now lay in place merely 90 miles off the U.S. coast, contrary to the express assurances of Soviet Premier Khrushchev and in the face of repeated warnings from President Kennedy in preceding months.

These missiles presented a dramatic challenge to the precarious balance of Cold War power, and the next 13 days would see a dangerous stand-off between two nuclear superpowers with a combined arsenal of some 4,000 warheads. Before the crisis was resolved, one of these warheads would be ordered for launch.

Robert F. Kennedy, JFK’s younger brother, was 36 years old at the time. One of the youngest attorneys general ever appointed, RFK was also the president’s de facto chief of staff and most trusted advisor. Known as “that terrier of a man” by some in the Kennedy administration, RFK was profoundly committed to his brother’s success. On the campaign trail for his brother years earlier he had remarked, “I don’t care if anyone likes me, so long as they like Jack.” He carried this temperament through to the president’s administration, doggedly pursuing his brother’s objectives, ever ready to cut through departmental etiquette to ask forceful questions and to challenge the answers.

By October 1962, he had already proved himself indispensable to the president. It was to his younger brother that the president had turned after a botched invasion of Cuba in 1961 (the Bay of Pigs fiasco), appointing him head of a task force examining the causes of the disaster. A year later, it was no surprise that RFK was one of the first to be notified of the missiles, receiving an urgent phone call from the president a few hours ahead of the CIA briefing.

In the coming days and weeks RFK would make a unique and indispensable set of contributions to resolving the crisis. We are now able to follow these contributions in rich detail, thanks to the remarkable in-the-room access provided by the White House tape recordings, as well as new archival sources recently declassified.

First, RFK went after the raw data. His personal files on the crisis hold as many as 3,584 documents directly reviewed by him over the period. Immediately after hanging up the phone to his brother, he coordinated a private briefing with the CIA. Joining cabinet discussions later that morning, RFK was already extremely well-briefed on the missile sites, their disposition and readiness.

Such preparation was an RFK trademark, especially where it required out-of-the-box thinking. In his private notes on the Bay of Pigs disaster, RFK had judged “underestimation” of Castro’s forces as a key failing of the Kennedy administration. Determined not to repeat the mistake, RFK was one of only two presidential advisors to predict the installation of missile sites in Cuba, warning his brother of the possibility over a year before the crisis.

He then took active measures to prepare for the possibility, instructing the Departments of State and Defense to investigate possible responses, whilst also outlining his own proposals in interdepartmental security briefings. These proposals were remarkably prescient of those actually debated and subsequently chosen during the Cuban Missile Crisis. As a direct result of RFK’s proactive, terrier-like energy, the key government departments tasked with handling the Cuban missile crisis had been remarkably well-prepared in contingency thinking and intelligence.

Perhaps even more importantly, so had the president’s closest advisor. As the crisis developed, RFK continued to seek new information and advice, acting as his brother’s eyes and ears—able to go where he could not, to source frank perspectives unhindered by presidential deference. At times this meant spotlighting another advisor’s counsel in a cabinet meeting; at others summarizing a loud mess of opinions into a coherent range of actionable options for the president.

In a few unique circumstances, it even meant playing up a blunter edge to his persona, asking the sort of direct questions the president could not. In one remarkable exchange during the crisis, apparent in the tapes, the president can actually be heard whispering instructions to RFK on a difficult question he wanted put to the head of the CIA. RFK also held a number of pivotal one-on-one conversations with fellow advisors during the crisis, privately relaying these back to the president in a number of off-the-record discussions.

Indeed, we know, from diary entries, references in official memoranda and the tapes themselves, that RFK met privately with the president throughout the crisis. These were frank one-on-ones that gave the president an opportunity to talk through options freely, and RFK the chance to bring new information and advice to the president outside of busy group meetings. As Kenneth O”Donnell, JFK’s special assistant at the time, would later remark, “Bobby could always reach him.” On one evening at the height of the crisis, the two brothers even discussed JFK’s possible impeachment.

In the first days of the crisis, whilst other presidential advisors were still processing the shocking news, RFK jumped far ahead, coldly calculating and interrogating the possible U.S. response. He insisted that an invasion remain on the table, and even pushed for a reduction in the lead time required to initiate one. Until recently this approach was held up as evidence for a belligerent, hawkish advisor, promoting the sort of military action that would have led to dangerous escalation.

Yet declassified private notes, and a closer understanding of the brother’s intimate relationship, now support a more holistic view of RFK. He saw his role as pressing for all alternatives, regardless of where they might lead. In the words of McGeorge Bundy, national security advisor at the time, RFK’s function was “to go and prod and poke people into doing their best, and staying with the problem, and not giving up until we got a better answer.” RFK would subsequently put his weight behind the famous blockade plan, a naval quarantine of Cuba designed to pressure the Soviets to remove the missiles.

CONTINUE READING THIS ARTICLE AT SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN

You know who was into Karl Marx? No, not AOC. Abraham Lincoln.

The two men were friendly and influenced each other

Karl Marx, left, in 1867 and President Abraham Lincoln in 1865. (Wikimedia Commons; Library of Congress/Friedrich Wunder; Alexander Gardner)

By Gillian Brockell

July 27

It was December 1861, a Tuesday at noon, when President Abraham Lincoln sent his first annual message ⁠ — what later became the State of the Union ⁠— to the House and Senate.

By the next day, all 7,000 words of the manuscript were published in newspapers across the country, including the Confederate South. This was Lincoln’s first chance to speak to the nation at length since his inaugural address.

He railed against the “disloyal citizens” rebelling against the Union, touted the strength of the Army and Navy, and updated Congress on the budget.

For his eloquent closer, he chose not a soliloquy on unity or freedom but an 800-word meditation on what the Chicago Tribune subtitled “Capital Versus Labor:”

“Labor is prior to and independent of capital,” the country’s 16th president said. “Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.”

If you think that sounds like something Karl Marx would write, well, that might be because Lincoln was regularly reading Karl Marx.

President Trump has added a new arrow in his quiver of attacks as of late, charging that a vote for “any Democrat” in the next election “is a vote for the rise of radical socialism” and that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and other congresswomen of color are “a bunch of communists.” Yet the first Republican president, for whom Trump has expressed admiration, was surrounded by socialists and looked to them for counsel.

Of course, Lincoln was not a socialist, nor communist nor Marxist, just as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) aren’t. (Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) identify as “democratic socialists.”) But Lincoln and Marx ⁠— born only nine years apart ⁠— were contemporaries. They had many mutual friends, read each other’s work and, in 1865, exchanged letters.

When Lincoln served his sole term in Congress in the late 1840s, the young lawyer from Illinois became close friends with Horace Greeley, a fellow Whig who served briefly alongside him. Greeley was better known as the founder of the New York Tribune, the newspaper largely responsible for transmitting the ideals and ideas that formed the Republican Party in 1854.

And what were those ideals and ideas? They were anti-slavery, pro-worker and sometimes overtly socialist, according to John Nichols, author of the book “The ‘S’ Word: A Short History of an American Tradition … Socialism.” The New York Tribune championed the redistribution of land in the American West to the poor and the emancipation of slaves.

“Greeley welcomed the disapproval of those who championed free markets over the interests of the working class, a class he recognized as including both the oppressed slaves of the south and the degraded industrial laborers of the north,” Nichols writes.

Across the Atlantic, another man linked the fates of enslaved and wage workers: Marx. Upon publishing “The Communist Manifesto” with Friedrich Engels in 1848, the German philosopher sought refuge in London after a failed uprising in what was then the German Confederation. Hundreds of thousands of German radicals immigrated to the United States in this same period, filling industrial jobs in the North and joining anti-slavery groups. Marx had once considered “going West” himself, to Texas, according to historian Robin Blackburn in his book “An Unfinished Revolution: Karl Marx and Abraham Lincoln.”

Marx was intensely interested in the plight of American slaves. In January 1860, he told Engels that the two biggest things happening in the world were “on the one hand the movement of the slaves in America started by the death of John Brown, and on the other the movement of the serfs in Russia.”

He equated Southern slaveholders with European aristocrats, Blackburn writes, and thought ending chattel slavery “would not destroy capitalism, but it would create conditions far more favorable to organizing and elevating labor, whether white or black.”

Marx was also friends with Charles A. Dana, an American socialist fluent in German who was the managing editor of the New York Tribune. In 1852, Dana hired Marx to be the newspaper’s British correspondent.

Over the next decade, Marx wrote nearly 500 articles for the paper. Many of his contributions became unsigned columns appearing on the front page as the publication’s official position. Marx later “borrowed liberally” from his New York Tribune writings for his book “Capital,” according to Nichols.

Like a lot of nascent Republicans, Lincoln was an “avid reader” of the Tribune. It’s nearly guaranteed that, in the 1850s, Lincoln was regularly reading Marx.

The editorial staff of the New York Tribune sometime during the 1850s. Horace Greeley is seated third from the left. Charles A. Dana is standing in the center. (Mathew Brady/Library of Congress)

In 1860, two major factors helped to propel Lincoln — a one-term congressman and country lawyer most known for losing a Senate campaign — to the Republican nomination for the presidency. First, the support of former German revolutionaries who had become key players in the Republican Party; and second, the support of the party’s newspaper, the Tribune.

Once Lincoln took office, his alliance with socialists didn’t stop. Dana left the Tribune to become Lincoln’s eyes and ears in the War Department, following along with troop movements and telling Lincoln what he thought of his generals. A soldier working in the telegraph office later wrote that “Lincoln waited eagerly” for “Dana’s long d[i]spatches.”

And Greeley continued to urge Lincoln to take a harder line against slavery, to make the Civil War not just about preserving the union but about abolition. Marx did the same in the pages of the Tribune.

In 1863, they got what they wanted when Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation.

[Lincoln moved to end slavery on New Year’s Day 1863. It went on for three more years.]

In January 1865, Marx wrote to Lincoln on behalf of the International Workingmen’s Association, a group for socialists, communists, anarchists and trade unions, to “congratulate the American people upon your reelection.”

He said “an oligarchy of 300,000 slaveholders” had defiled the republic and that “the workingmen of Europe feel sure that, as the American War of Independence initiated a new era of ascendancy for the middle class, so the American Antislavery War will do for the working class.”

A few weeks later, a reply came via Charles Francis Adams — son of former president John Quincy Adams, grandson of former president John Adams and U.S. ambassador to Britain under Lincoln.

He told Marx that Lincoln had received his message, and it was “accepted by him with a sincere and anxious desire that he may be able to prove himself not unworthy of the confidence which has been recently extended to him by his fellow citizens and by so many of the friends of humanity and progress throughout the world.”

Notably, Adams indicated Lincoln considered Marx and company “friends.”

He went on to say that the Union “derive[s] new encouragement to persevere from the testimony of the workingmen of Europe.”

Both letters ran in newspapers across Britain and the United States. Marx was delighted, telling Engels it created “such a sensation” that the “bourgeoisie” in private clubs were “shaking their heads at it.”

[Frederick Douglass needed to see Lincoln. Would the president meet with a former slave?]

Lincoln also met with the New York chapter of the Workingmen’s Association, telling its members in 1864: “The strongest bond of human sympathy, outside of the family relation, should be one uniting all working people, of all nations, and tongues, and kindreds.” Which is perhaps a more eloquent rendering of Marx’s famous rallying cry: “Workers of the world unite!”

Lincoln never took up the mantle of socialism. He believed in the system of wage labor even as he proposed reforms to it; Marx rejected it as another form of slavery. But Lincoln certainly viewed socialists as allies, and Nichols writes, “It is indisputable that the Republican Party had at its founding a red streak.”

Though this fact may be little known now, it hasn’t been a secret to other figures in American history. When the socialist orator and frequent presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs made a campaign stop in Springfield, Ill., in 1908, he told the crowd, “The Republican Party was once red. Lincoln was a revolutionary.”

It was also noted by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. In February 1968, at a celebration of the life of W.E.B. Du Bois at Carnegie Hall, King brought up that the co-founder of the NAACP became a communist in his later years.

“It is worth noting,” King said, “that Abraham Lincoln warmly welcomed the support of Karl Marx during the Civil War and corresponded with him freely. … Our irrational obsessive anti-communism has led us into too many quagmires to be retained as if it were a mode of scientific thinking.”

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.

The other self critique I had was that it was nowhere close to the quality of the Anatomy Of The Second Floor Lunch Room Encounter paper. The info was there but it was just a huge swamp. So decided to try the idea of putting it in a rough time line setting instead.

This was easier said than done and it has taken me a year just to do this. Quite a few reports and interviews summarised that weekend and it was quite a job to peel the material layer by layer and get it in the right time period and setting. No doubt things will get more material added on at a later date, but for now this will have to do.

The only other person that made an attempt on timing the happenings around Oswald that weekend was Mae Brussell. She managed to kick things off with the limited material available at that time.

I hope you enjoy reading this pretty long read, which is filled with documents, pictures and videos. And quite a lot of external links to boot.

Going to end with especially thanking Malcolm Blunt, Ed Ledoux and Alan Dale for proof reading this paper.

To view Anatomy of Lee Oswald’s Interrogations Vol. II click HERE.

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Kindling for War and Coups: 7 Ways the U.S. Has Planned ‘False Flag’ Operations Against Cuba

A “false flag operation” is a time-tested technique of intelligence services. It is the propagation of a vicious lie—the deceptive attribution of an outrageous deed to the enemy—so as to justify hostility and war.

From the explosion on the Maine battleship in Havana Harbor in 1898 to the supposed attack on U.S. Navy ships in Vietnam’s Gulf of Tonkin in 1964 to the bogus story of Iraqi anthrax in 2002, American advocates of war have falsely attributed heinous crimes to target regimes for the purposes of justifying U.S. military action.

Once the jargon of military and intelligence professionals, the term “false flag operation” has entered the American vocabulary. Thanks to Alex Jones, James Fetzer and other hucksters, “false flag operation” now signifies treacherous machinations by unseen forces to dupe unwitting Americans into believing the media. To call the massacre of schoolchildren a “false flag operation,” as Jones and Fetzer have done, is itself a vicious lie that treats the victims and survivors as an enemy, the better to demonize mainstream news organizations. It is a demonstration of cruelty that is proven to drive traffic.

It was no surprise that when two Persian Gulf oil tankers were attacked last Thursday, “Gulf of Tonkin” immediately spiked on Google, while right-wing sites played up claims of a false flag attack.

Because false-flag thinking is both a right-wing media meme and a reality of geopolitical struggle, distinguishing between the two is more urgent than ever. It was no surprise that when two Persian Gulf oil tankers were attacked last Thursday, “Gulf of Tonkin” immediately spiked on Google, while right-wing sites played up claims of a false flag attack.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says a video of a ship, allegedly belonging to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, alongside one of tankers, is “unmistakable” evidence of Iranian responsibility. The attacks, countered Iran’s parliamentary speaker Ali Larijani, were “suspicious.”

“Suspicious acts in the Sea of Oman against oil tankers… seem to be supplementary to the [U.S.] economic sanctions as the Americans went nowhere with the sanctions, [also,] especially, given America’s historical record in the area [of false flag ops],” Larijani said, according to Iran’s PressTV.

Russian government spokesman Dmitry Peskov recalled the U.S. government’s claims in 2003 that Saddam Hussein had stockpiled “vials of white powder,” namely anthrax. The claims, which helped justify the disastrous U.S. invasion, were found to be false by the CIA.

The Russians and the Iranians aren’t the only ones to suspect a ruse. Julian Lee, oil industry analyst writing in Bloomberg News, didn’t use the term “false flag,” but he noted the timing of the attacks was most helpful to advocates of confronting Iran.

The attacks occurring during the visit of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to Tehran, a visit blessed by President Trump. Abe urged Tehran to avoid conflict at all costs and pledged to do his utmost for a diplomatic solution. Then came an attack on a Japanese ship, Kokuka Courageous, which undermined and overshadowed his message.

Lee observed:

“This would seem very clumsy timing from a country seeing the first tangible signs of any easing of the crippling sanctions imposed by the Americans. But it is absolutely understandable if you’re someone whose ultimate goal is to derail any easing of tensions between the two nations, and to effect regime change in Tehran. Whoever is behind the attacks is no friend of Iran.”

Until the United States and Iran document their conflicting claims with verifiable evidence, the issue of who was responsible cannot be decided. The video, by itself, proves nothing.

As Defense One observed:

“The boat’s clear and distinct connection to Iran or the IRGC, however, is not evident in the video itself. Nor is it clear from the video (1) where the boat came from, (2) who the occupants were, (3) whether what was allegedly removed was in fact a limpet mine (as the OSINT folks at Bellingcat pointed out this morning), or (4) where the boat went to after its occupants concluded their activity from the side of the Courageous.”

Of course, the historical fact that false stories have proliferated as U.S. policymakers sought justification for war doesn’t prove anything specifically about the tanker attacks in 2019, except that it would be naïve to reflexively rule out a false flag operation.

The Northwoods Paradigm

What is indisputable is that the U.S. government has turned to false flag operations to achieve strategic goals. Case in point: Operation Northwoods, a top-secret plan to create a pretext for a U.S. invasion of Cuba in the early 1960s. At the behest of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Pentagon planners, assisted by CIA personnel, proposed a dozen different crimes that could falsely be blamed on communist Cuba.

Some of their schemes, as pitched by Pentagon planners, were:

“A series of well-coordinated incidents will be planned to take place in and around Guantanamo to give genuine appearance of being done by hostile Cuban forces.”
“A ‘Remember the Maine’ incident could be arranged in several forms: a. We could blow up a US ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba…”
“We could develop a Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities, and even in Washington.”
“The terror campaign could be pointed at refugees seeking haven in the United States. We could sink a boatload of Cubans en route to Florida (real or simulated)…”
“Harassment of civil air, attacks on surface shipping and destruction of US military drone aircraft by MIG type planes would be useful as complementary actions…” (After the reports of the tanker attacks last week, the Pentagon publicized the destruction of a U.S. military drone aircraft by Iranian-backed forces. )

The JCS unanimously approved the Northwoods plans in 1962 and 1963 and presented them to the White House. President Kennedy rejected the idea the first time, and ignored it the second. While never implemented, the Northwoods plans represented the Pentagon’s best thinking on how to carry out an “engineered provocation” at that time. The Northwoods documents are authentic, and the Defense Department has never disavowed the methods they espouse.

Made public for the first time in 1997, the 200-plus pages of Northwoods material illuminate seven key goals of what the JCS called “pretext operations.”

Create indignation among Americans. Or as the JCS stated, “place the United States in the position of suffering justifiable grievances.”
Depict the enemy as a violent rogue actor. To make the bogus charges of terrorism stick, the Northwoods planners said, “Exploding a few plastic bombs in carefully chosen spots, the arrest of Cuban agents and the release of prepared documents substantiating Cuban involvement would also be helpful to projecting the idea of an irresponsible government.”
Contrive an “unprovoked” attack on the United States. The Northwoods planners said “It is possible to create an incident which will make it appear that Communist Cuban MIGs [Soviet-made fighter jets] have destroyed a USAF [U.S. Air Force] aircraft over international water in an unprovoked attack.”
Mimic real enemy actions, if possible. “Justification for U.S. intervention probably would be more convincing to the American public and rest of the world if it could be related to real and valid provocations rather than based wholly on manufactured cases which entail risk of compromise.”
Go to great lengths to generate false but incriminating detail. To stage a fake hijacking, the Northwoods planners suggested:

“An aircraft at Eglin AFB would be painted and numbered as an exact duplicate for a civil registered aircraft belonging to a CIA proprietary organization… At a designated time the duplicate would be substituted for the actual civil aircraft would be loaded with selected passengers, all board under carefully prepared aliases. The actual registered aircraft would be converted to a drone.

“Take off times of the drone aircraft and the actual aircraft will be scheduled to allow a rendezvous south of Florida. From the rendezvous point the passenger-carrying aircraft will descend to minimum altitude and go directly into an auxiliary field at Eglin AFB where arrangements will have been made to evacuate the passengers and return the aircraft to its original status. The drone aircraft meanwhile will continue to fly the filed flight plan. When over Cuba the drone will being [sic] transmitting on the international distress frequency a ‘MAY DAY’ message…”

If necessary, sacrifice human life to make the operation credible. In the Northwoods proposal to “sink a boatload of Cubans en route to Florida (real or simulated),” the merciless parenthetical shows that even people fleeing the target regime were considered potentially expendable to achieve U.S. goals.
Exploit the news cycle to promote false claims. In early 1962, the United States was preparing to launch astronaut John Glenn into space. Operation Dirty Trick would be mounted to “provide irrevocable proof that, should the MERCURY manned orbit flight fail, the fault lies with the Communists… This could be accomplished by manufacturing various pieces of evidence which would prove electronic interference…”

False flag operations, in other words, are not just a figment of the conspiratorial imagination. They have been seen as viable instruments of U.S. regime change policy. These tactics have never been repudiated by U.S. officials. That doesn’t mean last week’s tanker attacks were a false flag operation. It does mean false flag operations are a weapon in Washington’s arsenal.

Jefferson Morley
Independent Media Institute

Jefferson Morley is a writing fellow and the editor and chief correspondent of the Deep State, a project of the Independent Media Institute. He has been a reporter and editor in Washington, D.C., since 1980. He spent 15 years as an editor and reporter at the Washington Post. He was a staff writer at Arms Control Today and Washington editor of Salon. He is the editor and co-founder of JFK Facts, a blog about the assassination of JFK. His latest book is The Ghost: The Secret Life of CIA Spymaster, James Jesus Angleton.

This article was produced by the Deep State, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

Khashoggi Killing Inquiry Should Look Into Saudi Prince’s Role, U.N. Expert Says

By Nick Cumming-Bruce

June 19, 2019

GENEVA — Saudi Arabia is responsible for the murder of Jamal Khashoggi in its Istanbul consulate last year, and there is “credible evidence” justifying an investigation into the role of the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, a United Nations expert said in a report released on Wednesday.

The expert, Agnes Callamard, also said that the United Nations secretary general should establish an international criminal investigation to ensure accountability for the crime.

“There is credible evidence warranting further investigation of high-level Saudi officials’ individual liability, including the crown prince’s,” Ms. Callamard said in a 100-page report, issued after a five-month investigation.

Prince Mohammed, the day-to-day ruler of Saudi Arabia, was already widely suspected of having ordered the killing, a conclusion reached by Western intelligence agencies.

But the report by Ms. Callamard, the special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions for the United Nations human rights agency, is the most complete set of findings yet made public on the death of Mr. Khashoggi, a dissident Saudi writer who lived in the United States.

“Evidence points to the 15-person mission to execute Mr. Khashoggi requiring significant government coordination, resources and finances,” Ms. Callamard wrote. “Every expert consulted finds it inconceivable that an operation of this scale could be implemented without the crown prince being aware, at a minimum, that some sort of mission of a criminal nature, directed at Mr. Khashoggi, was being launched.”

Mr. Khashoggi disappeared after visiting the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2 to obtain papers that would have enabled him to marry his Turkish fiancée, Hatice Cengiz, who was waiting outside.

Saudi officials said at first that Mr. Khashoggi had left the consulate alive and denied any knowledge of his whereabouts, but they later admitted that he had been killed in the building after what they said was a botched mission to bring him back to Saudi Arabia. A “local collaborator” disposed of his body, Saudi officials have said, but it has not been found.

“Mr. Khashoggi’s killing constituted an extrajudicial killing for which the state of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is responsible,” and may also have been an act of torture under international treaties, Ms. Callamard wrote. “His attempted kidnapping would also constitute a violation under international human rights law.”

Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister, Adel al-Jubeir, dismissed the findings as a repetition of questionable claims made before.

“The report includes clear contradictions and allegations that challenge its credibility,” he wrote on Twitter. “We affirm that the judicial authorities of the kingdom are the only ones competent to look into this case with full independence, and we strongly reject any attempt to harm the kingdom’s leadership or to take the case away from Saudi justice.”

Saudi Arabia has put 11 officials identified as being linked to the killing on trial, but has conducted the proceedings in secret.

Western intelligence agencies have concluded that the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, ordered the killing of Mr. Khashoggi.CreditSergio Moraes/Reuters

Ms. Callamard said that the trial failed to meet international standards. She called for Saudi Arabia to suspend the trial and cooperate with the United Nations in conducting further investigations and in deciding on the format and location of a trial. Failing that, she said, it should carry out further investigations and allow international participation in the trial.

She urged the F.B.I. to open an investigation, if it has not already done so, and she asked the United States to make a determination under American law on the responsibility of the crown prince for Mr. Khashoggi’s death.

[Prince Mohammed has close ties to President Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner. The Khashoggi case puts them in an uncomfortable position.]

Ms. Callamard also called on the international community to impose targeted sanctions on Saudi officials said to have been involved in the murder, including Prince Mohammed. The sanctions should focus on the prince’s personal assets abroad “until and unless evidence has been produced that he bears no responsibility for the execution of Mr. Khashoggi.”

Ms. Callamard is to present her findings to the Human Rights Council in Geneva next week in a session that will also be addressed by Ms. Cengiz, Mr. Khashoggi’s fiancé.

Ms. Callamard coupled her recommendation with a scathing assessment of Saudi Arabia’s actions after the murder. She said that the Saudi investigation of the crime had not been conducted in good faith and that it may have amounted to obstruction of justice, citing evidence that officials hindered the work of Turkish investigators, including having the murder scene forensically cleaned before it could be examined.

She said that Saudi Arabia did not respond to her requests to visit the kingdom and did not reply to questions she submitted. The Turkish authorities gave her only limited access to evidence, allowing her to listen to about 45 minutes of the seven hours of recordings they had of Saudi officials in the period of Mr. Khashoggi’s death.

Despite such obstacles, her detailed report presents a damning picture of meticulous Saudi preparations for dealing with Mr. Khashoggi that began as soon as officials knew which day he would visit the consulate.

She cited recordings of a conversation between Maher Abdulaziz Mutreb, a Saudi intelligence officer frequently seen in the company of Prince Mohammed, and Dr. Salah Mohammed Tubaigy, a forensic expert with the Saudi Interior Ministry, in which they appear to discuss dismembering Mr. Khashoggi. Dr. Tubaigy was on the team flown to Istanbul to deal with the dissident.

“Joints will be separated. It is not a problem. The body is heavy,” Dr. Tubaigy is quoted as saying. “If we take plastic bags and cut it into pieces, it will be finished. We will wrap each of them.”

Ms. Callamard said she did not have evidence pointing to the guilt of specific individuals, or indicating who ordered the crime. “What I do present is information that points to the potential responsibility of individuals and that is what needs to be investigated as a next step.”

Even if a high-level official did not order the murder, she added, “that did not mean that they are not responsible and do not have liability for the killing.”

She expressed concern about the possibility that Saudi Arabia might take similar actions in the future. Since Mr. Khashoggi’s killing, Ms. Callamard noted, there were credible reports of continuing rights violations, including torture and arbitrary detention, and threats against Saudi dissidents abroad.

Mona Boshnaq contributed reporting from London.