News and Views

AARC President Dan Alcorn: JFK’s PFIAB (President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board) and the CIA

PFIAB Summary 1961-1963 RIF# 206-10001-10002; 68 pages DOWNLOAD HERE

17 April, 2025

Perhaps the most significant new information from the recent releases of JFK assassination records are Top Secret memos concerning the activities of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB) during Kennedy’s Presidency. Review of these records leads one to conclude that JFK used his PFIAB to pursue reorganization of the CIA following the failed Bay of Pigs operation.

JFK assassination researchers have long suspected that failure of the Bay of Pigs operation led to Kennedy’s decision to dramatically reorganize an overgrown CIA. What has not been known until now is that Kennedy pursued this objective through his PFIAB. Kennedy’s effort to reorganize CIA ended with his assassination in November 1963.

Although the broad outlines of Kennedy’s plan have been known, the newly released documents contain proposals previously unknown. For example, PFIAB recommended that the Director of Central Intelligence (Allen Dulles) be shifted into the Executive Office of the President, not just on paper, but that his workplace be moved as well. An idea was floated to change the name of the CIA. Another recommendation was that consideration be given to not moving key CIA components into its new headquarters building at Langley, Virginia and that offices be scattered. Or at a minimum that covert functions not be housed at the new headquarters and moved to another city. None of these changes were implemented, revealing that CIA won the bureaucratic war.

Upon taking office JFK kept Eisenhower’s PFIAB in place. JFK’s father had served on the PFIAB in 1956, so there was some family knowledge of the body. Vice-President Johnson may not have known of the actions of the PFIAB. Among the PFIAB members JFK inherited was General Jimmy Doolittle, World War II Medal of Honor winner and intelligence adviser to Eisenhower. Doolittle served on PFIAB during the entire Kennedy Presidency, with expertise in the U-2 and A-12 spy plane programs as well as the TAGBOARD drone.

Byrd-and-Doolittle AARC President Dan Alcorn: JFK's PFIAB (President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board) and the CIA

TSBD building owner David Harold Byrd and General Jimmy Doolittle

AARC’s research had uncovered that Doolittle was a “substantial friend” and “hunting buddy” of Texas School Book Depository building owner David Harold Byrd. Byrd was a successful oil wildcatter who invested his new wealth in defense industries involving aviation and intelligence, focused on aerial reconnaissance, a priority concern of JFK’s PFIAB. Byrd and Doolittle hunted together in South Africa, according to a photograph in Byrd’s autobiography.

It is likely that Doolittle through his PFIAB membership had access to the secrets of the Kennedy administration related to forced reorganization of the CIA and all other intelligence matters. Bill Simpich found an excerpt from a PFIAB meeting in June 1963 in which Doolittle is described as head of PFIAB’s CIA Panel and Doolittle is asked to brief the board on the status of JFK’s requests for changes at CIA that were not being carried out by CIA. RIF # 206-1001-10017

It is reasonable to wonder if Doolittle discussed these issues with his substantial friend and “hunting buddy” Byrd. The author is reminded of the oft repeated refrain of criminal investigators, ‘I don’t believe in coincidences.’

Dan Alcorn

President, Assassination Archives and Research Center

Malcolm Blunt: Project Files, Notional Companies, and Special Crypts

The CIA’s Historical Review Group (HRG) during the tenure of the ARRB responded to Review Board requests and communicated internally with various CIA components. These internal administrative files were released by CIA in a somewhat redacted form following pressure from the ARRB. They were called the “Project Files” by the HRG and are an interesting set of records. In one internal memo the term “notional companies” appears in which CIA HRG describe “notional companies” as companies which have never surfaced, thus differentiating them from “proprietary companies” many of which HAVE surfaced over the years. It is clear that “notional companies” are an internal CIA substructure and for the first time an example is laid bare for all to see.

Mr. (Lawrence) Houston’s MH/MUTUAL surfaces as a super-secret covert funding vehicle with the power to spawn connected entities in order to fund sensitive CIA operations. This is pure genius, really. What better outfit than the Office of General Counsel to manage such a task? When a problem surfaces or when an operation is blown, then you have the legal arm of the Agency clamping down immediately before a situation gets out of control; and with the master of deception, Mr. Houston at the helm, any political concerns can be smoothed over for additional document support on the status of “notional companies.” (See William Broe’s letter to Lawrence Houston dated 4th May 1971, CIA 104-10104-10029.)

In the midst of my struggles to unravel this conundrum I had a lucky break; sometimes serendipity can unexpectedly fall upon us. Recently, my friend, Bart Kamp, sent me an SSCI (Church Committee) document which I recognized from many years ago and in which I had a long time interest. Disaffected former CIA officer Victor Marchetti met with Senator Richard Schweiker and Elliot Maxwell on June 6th 1975 for an hour and a half. A few notes were taken and, following the ARCA legislation, a little over a single page write-up was released with some deletions. The document I received from Bart differed from the document I had long pondered in one very significant way: a redaction on my document was not present on the one sent to me by Bart! Victor Marchetti discusses MH/MUTUAL and he mentions CIA funding in that context: He asks, “Where did the money come from….the retirement fund, the loan fund, credit union or escrow funds?” “On what basis were decisions made to invest it?” Please note the euphemistic use of the word “invest.” This is a crucial document in my opinion because it presents a snapshot of internal CIA systems and methodology, but what does all this mean?

Marchetti, in an extraordinary admission, names John Clark as sitting on the board and Larry Houston as “Chairman of the Board.” In the context of his previous statement within the document, the “Board” discussed must apply to the entity MH/MUTUAL which ties other documents to the Office of General Counsel. We have therefore confirmation of a “notional company” under the stewardship of Lawrence Houston.

To recap: JM/SPUR is the Office of General Counsel which controls the “notional company” together with an entity, MH/MUTUAL, which manages large amounts of CIA money. The “PL” digraph (Proscribed and Limited, much used by OGC and others to emphasize very close control of subject content and dissemination) used in conjunction with “VW/CADET” seems to be funding linked to Cubans as suggested by my friend, Peter Dale Scott (See PDS on Watergate and the use of Cuban exiles in money laundering activities in Mexico and elsewhere such as the Bahamas). Further corroboration of the Office of General Counsel as a covert funding vehicle may be found in CIA 104-10119-10404 from the Deputy Chief of the Security Analysis Group in August 1976. He discusses the usage of serial fraudster Wallace Groves by CIA as follows: “From April 1966 to April 1972 Groves was an advisor or possible officer of one of Project WU/MUTUAL (later MH/MUTUAL) entities. Additional information in this file suggest that Groves was connected to Meyer Lansky.” So, Lawrence Houston’s “notional company,” MH/MUTUAL, spawns entities connected to organized crime figures like Lansky via Wallace Groves.

On page 164 of Jonathon Kwitny’s book “Crime of the Patriots,” he writes that, “one client entity of the Castle Bank was tied to money laundering of $5 million between 1970 and 1976. That company was run by Wallace Groves who had served two years in prison for one of the biggest stock frauds of the era and had then gone into Caribbean Casino operations with Meyer Lansky.” The CIA knew all this when it hired Groves as an advisor (or possible officer) when it hired Groves for one of it’s MH/MUTUAL entities, so the Houston “notional board” sanctioned the use of Groves to manage a Castle Bank “client entity” spawned by the Houston notional company (as per Kwitny). The Groves Counsel in the operation was a Paul Helliwell law partner.

When the IRS and the Department of Justice started to investigate Castle Bank, alarm bells rang at CIA and Houston’s right hand man, John Greaney at the Office of General Counsel, got the investigation closed down on the grounds that further investigation would compromise sensitive and significant CIA operations. Recent document releases mention a project, MH/FLUFF, in which Meyer Lansky is mentioned briefly. The document appears to have emanated from the NSA. The MH/FLUFF crypt reappears on some documents which mention Cubans in Mexico City. Interestingly, this information is on Restricted Handling Forms which we hardly ever see released. It may be useful to do some additional research on MH/FLUFF, MH/CURB, and MH/SPAWN.

In closing, I invite readers of this article to look at the PL/VWCADET crypt and see whether or not they can make progress in cracking it. Also notable: Philip Agee’s disclosures and the massive CIA crypt change in 1972 when the Agency had purloined Agee’s manuscript of Inside the Company: CIA Diary, and Victor Marchetti and John D. Marks, The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence (1975). Marchetti is especially important, his significance being reflected by the fact that of 86 pages of testimony to SSCI (Church Committee) I can find only seven pages.

RELATED: SHELL GAMES by Malcolm Blunt

[Tags: Documents; Bart Kamp discovery of Marchetti document; Blunt discovered version of the same document; Broe letter, and an untitled CIA memo]

Gabbard: ‘100 people’ working ‘around the clock’ on RFK, MLK assassination files

Story by Elizabeth Crisp|April 11, 2025

Gabbard: ‘100 people’ working ‘around the clock’ on RFK, MLK assassination files

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said Thursday she has a large team working overtime to archive government documents related to the 1968 assassinations of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. ahead of their release to the public.

“I’ve had over 100 people working around the clock to scan the paper,” Gabbard told President Trump during a Cabinet meeting at the White House. “These have been sitting in boxes in storage for decades — they have never been scanned or seen before.”

“We’ll have those ready to release here within the next few days,” she added.

Kennedy, who was the brother of assassinated President John F. Kennedy and also served as his attorney general, was running for the Democratic presidential nomination when he was shot after a campaign event in California.

King, who was one of the most prominent leaders of the Civil Rights Movement at the time of his death, was shot at a hotel in Memphis, Tenn.

Their assassins were convicted in both murders, but conspiracy theories have continued to thrive about the circumstances of their deaths decades later.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the son of the late senator, was in the Cabinet meeting when Gabbard provided the update on the status of the document review.

He said it was “very gratifying” to hear the news, as Trump acknowledged his presence at the meeting.

Upon taking office in January, Trump signed an executive order directing his administration to release troves of previously undisclosed records related to the assassinations, as well as other high-profile cases that the government has overseen, including documents related to President Kennedy’s assassination in 1963 and records about disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who died by suicide in 2019 while in federal custody awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.

The National Archives released more than 2,000 pages of documents last month on President Kennedy’s assassination, though experts said many of the pages were already public.

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AARC President Dan Alcorn: New Findings About Texas School Book Depository Building Owner David Harold Byrd

This video records the presentation of AARC President Dan Alcorn at the 2023 Wecht Institute Conference in Pittsburgh on the subject of Texas School Book Depository building owner D. Harold Byrd. Alcorn unveils results of his extensive research on Byrd, which found that Byrd was a highly placed military and intelligence contractor, with connections to the highest political levels. The recent 2025 release of secret Kennedy assassination files by the Trump administration adds to the mystery surrounding Byrd. Newly released files reveal that Byrd’s close friend General Jimmy Doolittle served on President Kennedy’s President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB) from 1961-63 and advised Kennedy on his desire to reorganize the CIA. Doolittle had previously served on President Eisenhower’s PFIAB, and had served on that body with President Kennedy’s father Joseph P. Kennedy in 1956. Eisenhower tapped Doolittle in 1954 to examine the operations of the CIA, which resulted in the deep Cold War Doolittle Report which called for no-holds-barred CIA activity not limited by norms of civilized human conduct.

You are invited to view this video and try to unravel the mystery of how President Kennedy was murdered from shots said to have been fired from a building owned by a top military and intelligence contractor who was a close friend of one of President Kennedy’s top intelligence advisers.

PRESENTATION SLIDES (Left click on images to expand)