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Was Khruschev Behind the Assassination of JFK? by Bill Kelly – 5 March, 2021

JFK and Kruschev • Cuban Missile CrisisCuban Missile CrisisJohn F Kennedy wanted Moon mission to be joint venture with Soviet Union

NO. An emphatic No!

And for many reasons.

For starters, Lee Harvey Oswald was not the sixth floor assassin, was not on the sixth floor of the TSBD at the time of the assassination and therefore the false assumption made by former CIA director James Woolsey, is untrue, so his accusation that Khrushchev told Oswald to kill Kennedy is just as absurd as the on-going CIA disinformation campaign to blame the Dealey Plaza Operation on Fidel Castro.

Every covert intelligence operation has a cover-story, a believable but untrue distraction that is part of the deception aspect of every operation. The original cover-story for the Dealey Plaza Operation, as Peter Dale Scott has pointed out, was what he called the Phase One cover-story to blame the assassination of JFK on Castro Cuban Commies. Evidence of this not only comes from the “so-called evidence” – ie. rifle, that implicated Castro loving Oswald, but by the backgrounds of those who make this claim.

When HSCA investigator Dan Hardway compiled a list of dozens of people who tried to pin the tail on Castro’s donkey in the immediate aftermath of the assassination, he noticed that many if not most of them were friends, associates, agents, operatives or media assets of David Atlee Phillips, the CIA spymaster who specialized in psychological warfare and was the psych war director for Operation Success (Guatemala) and the Bay of Pigs. When Hardway asked Phillips about this when he testified under oath before the HSCA, Phillips acknowledged he knew those people but couldn’t  understand why they did what they did.

The Phase One Cuban Castro Commie cover-story was squelched by LBJ himself on Friday evening, between 7 pm and 9 pm, from his Vice President suite in the Executive Office  Building next door to the White House. That’s where he learned that the radio news was broadcasting the fact that Dallas D.A. Henry Wade was going to charge Oswald with being part of communist conspiracy, so he had his top aide call around Texas, beginning with Texas Attorney General and order them not to charge Oswald with anything to do with conspiracy. “It could lead to war,” was the excuse not to do it.

As Vincent Bugliosi describes in detail in his book Reclaiming History, Assistant Dallas D.A. William Alexander was being persuaded by Philadelphia Inquirer reporter and editor Joseph Goulden to charge Oswald with “furthering a communist conspiracy,” and Alexander told Goulden he was considering just that.

By the Way, Joe Goulden was not only a media asset of David A. Phillips, he is now responsible for Phillips’ private papers.

Henry Wade was tracked down at a Dallas restaurant and he returned to his office immediately and confronted Alexander about the allegation and Alexander got the message and denied he was going to do that. So then the Phase Two and equally wrong cover-story of the assassination being arranged by a deranged lone nut case began to take shape.

Visit Bill Kelly online at JFK Countercoup to read the entire article

JFKcountercoup: The Tipping Point

JFKcountercoup: The Tipping Point – Revived

JFKcountercoup: Disinformation at Dealey Plaza

Black Propaganda & the JFK Assassination | JFKCountercoup

Now, as this silly game continues, we have former CIA director R. James Woolsey and a former Communist intelligence official Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa, write a book that tries to blame Nikita Khrushchev for the assassination.

What this is proof of is that the CIA still continues to believe the real and total truth of the assassination is so important that it has to continue to deceive today.

While I have yet to read the book “Operation Dragon: Inside The Kremlin’s War on America”, and will review it in full ASAP, there were two mainstream newspapers that wrote sensational news reports with headlines like –  “Lee Harvey Oswald was told by Soviet Leader to Kill JFK” and “Le Harvey Oswald ordered to kill JFK by Soviets, ex-CIA chief claims.”

For those seriously interested in such disinformation tactics I have posted both UK Daily Mail and the NY Post articles at my alternate blog, JFKCountercoup2:

JFKCountercoup2: Khrushchev and the JFK Assassination – CIA Disinformation Campaign Continues

As I point out in my list of the Top Ten Newly Released Records on the assassination, Khrushchev’s true feelings about the assassination were to ridicule investigative journalist Drew Pearson for believing the silly Phase-Two cover-story that a deranged lone nut case killed the President.

JFKCountercoup2: Kelly’s Top Ten Newly Released Records

3) Drew Pearson’s interview with Khrushchev – 104-10003-10064 DOCID-32105956.PDF. Khrushchev disbelieves the Warren Report and criticized American intelligence agencies.  “Pearson repeated that the reaction of Chairman Khrushchev and his wife was one of flat disbelief and archetypical of the universal European belief that there was some kind of American conspiracy behind the assassination of President Kennedy and the murder of Oswald….could not believe that the affair had happened as it apparently did and Mr. Pearson made no headway whatsoever in trying to change their belief that something was not on the level. Chairman Khrushchev greeted Mr. and Mrs. Pearson’s efforts with a tolerant smile…”

And thanks to Jeff Morley for promoting this entry in my list at JFK Facts – JFK Facts » #NewJFKfiles: In 1964 Nikita Khrushchev schooled Drew Pearson on the JFK conspiracy question

It is ironic and sad that Pearson would share the details of his dinner with Mr. and Mrs. Khrushchev with the FBI, but not with the readers of his Washington-Merry-Go-Round column, that was eventually taken over by his assistant Jack Anderson. And Anderson is not a disinterested party in all of this either, as he broke the story of mobster John Rosselli’s involvement in the CIA-Mafia plots to kill Castro run out of JMWAVE.

JFK Facts » #NewJFKfiles: In 1964 Nikita Khrushchev schooled Drew Pearson on the JFK conspiracy question

The original docs thanks to the Blackvault.com

READ Drew Pearson’s report on Nikita Khrushchev‘s thinking about JFK: 5-27-64 Drew Pearson NK DOCID-32105956

RELATED:

Ex-CIA Chief Gives JFK Assassination Some QAnon-Style Spin

WHAT GIVES?

Something fishy is going on here. Any former CIA director knows better.

SpyTalk

Updated Feb. 25, 2021 10:32PM ET / Published Feb. 25, 2021 10:28PM ET 

Karen Bleier/AFP via Getty

By Gus Russo

Over the last four decades I have navigated the murky shoals of the JFK assassination, seeking to ascertain the truth with an open mind to all possibilities. The multitude of theories that have crossed my transom over all these years range from the ludicrous (Jackie did it) to the most plausible (Oswald did it.) On these treks, and in literally thousands of interviews, I have come to admire—with some exceptions—the men and women of our intelligence services.

So it was with a degree of shock that I recently learned that former CIA Director R. James Woolsey had co-authored a new book that posits a conspiracy theory that resides much closer to the ludicrous side of the JFK spectrum than the plausible, i.e. Khrushchev did it.

In Operation Dragon, co-authored with a former head of Romanian intelligence, the writers channel Qanon-style nonsense by contending that the Warren Commission concluded that Khrushchev hired Lee Harvey Oswald to kill Kennedy, and the proof is in the secret “code words” embedded in the report.

Seriously? Please, Mr. Woolsey, say it ain’t so.

Now, I have to confess I’m relying only on a detailed New York Post review of the book. (I’m busy on Earth.) But according to the Post reportage, the “decoded” Warren Report says the following:

US Marine Oswald was recruited by the KGB when he was stationed in Japan in 1957, whereupon he gave his KGB case officers vital technical details on the CIA’s super-secret U-2 spy plane, info that would help the Sovs shoot down a U-2 flight in May 1960. After Japan, Oswald defected to Moscow, where he became a KGB assassin chosen by Nikita to murder Kennedy. In June 1962, Oswald and his KGB-assigned wife exfiltrated to the US in order to murder Kennedy. In September 1963, two months before doing the deed, Oswald went to Mexico to meet with his Soviet case officer to finalize details.

Note: There is zero evidence for the paragraph you just read.

As Carl Sagan famously said: “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” Without even reading the book I feel safe in predicting that Woolsey and his co-author, defector and former Romanian spy chief Gen. Ion Pacepa, not only have no extraordinary evidence, they don’t even have mediocre evidence—that is unless you reside in the “everything is fake news” world, in which case I recommend the Jackie-did-it-with-help-from-aliens theory. It’s the most entertaining. However, if you believe that the Earth is round, let me throw out some actual historical facts.

First, this is not new territory for Gen. Pacepa, who authored a 2007 book, Programmed to Kill, which also named Nikita K. as the bad guy. I did read that book, whose publication was said to have sent Sagan’s poor corpse spinning so fast that there was some belief that it caused a rash of earthquakes that year. In that book, it is clear that Pacepa so desperately wanted Khrushchev to be the bad guy that he piled innuendo upon suspicion upon unfounded allegation upon hearsay in order to convict a man who by all actual accounts respected and admired President Kennedy. To wit:

• At the height of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, Khrushchev read JFK’s critical settlement proposal letter aloud to his advisers, then appealed to them for over an hour to trust the American president. Thankfully, they did. Khrushchev later wrote of the crisis: “I’ll always remember the late President with deep respect…he showed himself to be sober-minded…He showed real wisdom and statesmanship…”

• After Kennedy gave his landmark “Peace Speech” at American University in June 1963, Khrushchev called it “the greatest speech by an American President since Roosevelt.”

• Khrushchev’s son Sergei, who later became an American citizen and scholar at Brown University, said in a 2003 interview that his father trusted JFK much more than Nixon or Johnson, whom he considered more of a hawk.

• Sergei, a 28-year-old when Kennedy was killed, was with his father when the news came. He said that his father was so shaken that he wanted to attend the funeral himself, but decided that he didn’t know how the Americans would take it. So he and his wife sent a letter of condolence to Jackie, then he sent his top aide Anastas Mikoyan in his place. In the receiving line, Mikoyan was one of only two men who broke down weeping, so much so that Jackie had to console him as he cradled his head in both his hands. When Khrushchev learned that Kennedy’s killer Oswald had lived in the Soviet Union for two years, Sergei watched as his father immediately picked up the phone and called the KGB to find who this man was and what they knew about him.

• Regarding Oswald, where to begin? Let’s start with the fact that Oswald’s radar assignment in Japan gave him zero information on the U-2 spy planes. His Marine Air Control Squadron-1 unit had nothing to do with them. That was also the conclusion of Soviet defector Yuri Nosenko, KGB Chief Vladimir Semichastny and numerous others.

• Why would the Soviets hire an unstable man such as Oswald for the murder of the century? Oswald slashed his wrists just five days after arriving in Russia; he had a horrible work record at a radio factory. When he returned to the U.S., Oswald did everything he could to draw attention to himself by going on the radio and television in New Orleans, preaching the gospel of Fidel—just what Nikita would want.

Lee Harvey Oswald during a press conference after his arrest in Dallas. Getty

 

• And why would Oswald kill Kennedy for a country he had grown to despise? He left Russia because he hated Soviet Communism once he came into the thrall of Cuban Marxism. One of the biggest arguments he had with his pregnant Russian wife Marina was when he dictated that their child would be named Fidel if it were a boy. Fidel Oswald, there’s something to chew on. Later, when Marina tried to hang herself, Oswald caught her and beat her with his fists. Jason Bourne and James Bond had nothing on this assassin.

Oswald only went to the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City because he was told they had to approve his travel to Cuba. There is zero evidence that the Soviet agents he met there were his “case officers.” Like everybody else, they thought he was nuts.

Woolsey and Pacepa seem to have no idea who Lee Oswald really was, a damaged 24 year old who had reached the end of his rope, so he thought he’d go out in a flash and do a simultaneous favor for his hero, Fidel Castro. I could go on for another 5,000 words on the errors just alluded to in the Post treatment of their book.

But here’s the thing: Woolsey has to know all this, and more. He’s no fool. He was a defense policy lifer with a specialty in arms control before Bill Clinton named him to the CIA. Some online critics assert that he is a Russophobe. Others say he just wants to make a buck. Then there’s that Turkey mess. I’ll let the Internet parse that out, but something fishy is going on here. Any former CIA director knows better.

Read more at Daily Beast

Filed Under: News and Views Tagged With: JFK, John F. Kennedy, Kennedy assassination, Khrushchev, Lee Harvey Oswald

LEE OSWALD & THE RUSSIAN LANGUAGE by Greg R. Parker & Jim Purtell

22 October, 2020 | Following is a new article co-written by Greg R. Parker and Jim Purtell. Greg is the author of Lee Harvey Oswald’s Cold War; he is the founder and editor of https://reopenkennedycase.forumotion.net/

___________________________________________________

Lee Harvey Oswald served in the United States Marine Corps 24 October, 1956 – 11 September, 1959.

Past speculation and claims

One of the many enduring mysteries surrounding Lee Oswald is where and how he learned to speak Russian.

It is often cited that the Warren Commission wondered out loud (though behind locked doors) if Oswald had attended the Defense Language Institute at Monterey after returning from a tour of duty in South East Asia with the Marines. Rumors had circulated to that effect. However, the commissioner’s own musings on the subject were not even in regard to Russian, but Spanish (Warren Commission Executive Session of 27 Jan 1964).  In any case, there has never been any foundation for such rumors, except his proficiency itself.

According to the Warren Commission testimony of Patricia Johnson McMillan, Oswald had told her he learned from a Berlitz Russian language book.

McMillan had written a story on his defection in 1959, allegedly based on notes from personal interviews with Oswald. In 1964, she wrote another story giving additional details.

However, she admitted to the Warren Commission that she had not included the Berlitz information in her contemporaneous notes (and it was not mentioned either, in her 1959 story).  McMillan was always eager to please the authorities when it came to Oswald and this seems to be another case in point. There are no other sources for Oswald telling anyone this and no sources for any of his Marine buddies seeing him with such a book

But then in 1994, a funny thing happened. A person claiming to be an ex-Marine stationed at El Toro in 1964, sold a library index card at auction showing a person named “Oswald” (no first name given) borrowed a book titled “The Berlitz Self-Teacher: Russian”.  According to the provenance provided by the seller, he worked in the base library and obtained the card while there. It sold for $12,500.00 – the type of money that makes fraud in the memorabilia industry so rife.  Even if true, borrowing a library book for a few weeks is hardly going to gain you much proficiency in Russian.  It must be remembered too, that Oswald had a date with an aunt of a fellow Marine while stationed at that base. Her name was Rosaleen Quinn and she had completed a Berlitz Russian language course. Ms. Quinn was interviewed by the FBI on December 13, 1963 (Commission Document 187, p8). If Oswald had taught himself via a Berlitz self-teacher book, Ms. Quinn would have been the one person he would have mentioned this to, as the subject of how each of them had learned the language would have been brought up in relation, and Berlitz would have been the common denominator.

Note that Ms. Quinn learned Russian for entry into the Foreign Service, and that she seems to have flown to California from New York for the sole purpose of dating Oswald and his commanding officer, John Donovan. Donovan too, was headed for a career in the Foreign Service. The whole episode seems like a test of Oswald by Ms. Quinn followed by her debriefing with Donovan who had been an employee of the FBI before joining the Marines.

Finally, there is the claim that the CIA took a 12 years old Hungarian refugee and gradually merged his life and his records with those of the historical Lee Oswald with the aim of eventually sending him to Russia as a spy. The idea behind this was to have a native speaker who could pretend a lack of ability in Russian in order to obtain information from those speaking to or near him.

The CIA did have a program of infiltrating emigres behind the Iron Curtain. But they were sent there to blend in as a “local” while gathering information and forming cells. They also had a program of sending over US citizens under cover as businessmen, students, teachers, tourists, etc. to gather information legally. It makes no sense at all for the CIA to send a Hungarian refugee (who allegedly learned flawless Russian and English prior to coming to America) to defect to the Soviet Union as a disaffected Marine from the Deep South.

Innate ability

Most who study this case have trouble understanding how a high school dropout could learn a difficult language like Russian. This is the space where the speculation about the Defense Language Institute finds a home.

What is rarely considered is the possibility of Oswald having had an innate ability – a “gift” for learning languages, despite his own problems with writing in English. In fact, those seemingly opposing traits could spring from the same well.

In 1953, Oswald was diagnosed with a schizoid personality disorder while being assessed at Youth House. This disorder has nothing to do with schizophrenia, but is one characterized by a lack of interest in social relationships, a tendency toward a solitary or sheltered lifestyle, secretiveness, emotional coldness, detachment, and apathy. Asperger’s Syndrome was not recognized in the US at that time, and indeed, is now said to be a part of the Autism Spectrum. Certain types of personality disorders can look very much like a spectrum disorder and there is no doubt that had Oswald been a 13-year-old in more modern times, he would have been assessed for Asperger’s.

Although one should not generalize regarding common traits of those on the Spectrum any more than you should in any other demographic, it is well-known some do learn foreign languages easily. According to renowned expert, Tony Attwood,

“sometimes the person with Asperger’s syndrome can have a natural talent and a special interest in foreign languages. The person can acquire the ability to speak many languages without the pronunciation errors expected when a typical person from a specific home country learns that language.” (The Complete Guide to Asperger’s Syndrome – Page 225 Tony Attwood – 2007)

There is evidence that apart from Russian, Oswald was also learning Spanish and German.

Regarding writing skills, it is noted that

…children with high-functioning autism spectrum disorder integrated in regular schools find it difficult to perform writing tasks. This can impair their academic achievements, social availability, and self-confidence, say experts…the handwriting performances of the two groups showed statistically significant differences. The children with high-functioning autism produced taller and broader letters; waiting times on paper and in the air were longer; and the degree of slant of the pen was smaller. (Science Daily, June 1, 2016)

Dr Hans Asperger, after whom the syndrome was named, noted time and again, the issue of messy writing and spelling errors among the children he studied; this, despite the fact that he called the children his “Little Professors” due to their specialized and highly tuned abilities in disparate areas. For example, of a child named Harro, Asperger noted,

He carried on writing carelessly, and messily, crossing out words, lines going up and down, the slant changing. His spelling, however, was reasonably accurate. As long as his attention was focused on one word, he knew how to spell it. It was very significant then that he made more spelling errors when copying that at dictation. Really, one would expect that copying should not present any problems at all since the words were in front of him; but this very simple and straightforward task simply did not interest him”.

The above description of Harro’s writing style could just as easily have been describing the manner in which Oswald wrote.

Now skip forward to Oswald’s career in the Marines with radar which required the ability to “mirror write”. From the Mentalthlete Blogspot:

Much like a muscle, the brain needs to be used and exposed to exercises that help build it up and stay healthy and functional. And mirror-writing is a great exercise to use. You see, mirror-writing tends to correlate with having a thicker corpus callosum, and that is the part of the brain that enables the right and left hemisphere to communicate with each other.  Furthermore, there is some evidence that mirror-writers have bilateral language centers.  With the brain, two isn’t always better than one, but in the case of language centers it is. Second-language acquisition comes easier to those with two active language centers, and word play probably does as well.

There can be little doubt that Oswald had an innate ability to learn other languages.

Russian Language Tests

There are two tests you can take in the US military regarding foreign languages. The first is the Defense Language Aptitude Battery (DLAB). This test is typically given to new recruits, and prospective recruits from for example ROTC and the Civil Air Patrol. The purpose of the test is not to assess fluency in a second language but to test, as the name suggests, an aptitude for learning one. If you do well in this test, you may study a language and then undertake the Defense Language Proficiency Test (DLPT) and depending on your score, you may qualify for a monthly allowance. This test can also be requested if you already have a second language ability.  These tests are meant to measure how well a person can function in real-life situations in a foreign language according to well-defined linguistic tasks and assessment criteria.  (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_Language_Proficiency_Tests), This was the very test that Oswald took on February 25, 1959 – about a month before applying to attend the Albert Schweitzer College in Switzerland. Oswald stated on the application form that he spoke Russian with fluency equal to one year of college. Note that this is not the same as stating he actually had one year of study.

Colonel Folsom was called before the Warren Commission to explain Oswald’s military records. Following is the Q & A from that part of his testimony dealing with the Russian test Oswald had undertaken:

Mr. ELY – All right. Now, moving further down page 7, we have the record of a Russian examination taken by Oswald on February 25, 1959. Could you explain to us what sort of test this was, and what the scores achieved by Oswald mean?

Colonel FOLSOM – The test form was Department of the Army, Adjutant General’s Office, PRT-157. This is merely the test series designation. Now, under “understands” the scoring was minus 5, which means that he got five more wrong than right. The “P” in parentheses indicates “poor.” Under reading he achieved a score of 4, which is low. This, again, is shown by the “P” in parentheses for “poor.”

Mr. ELY – This 4 means he got four more questions right than wrong?

Colonel FOLSOM – This is correct. And under “writes” he achieved a score of 3, with “P” in parentheses, and this indicates he got three more right than he did wrong. His total score was 2, with a “P” in parentheses meaning that overall, he got two more right than wrong, and his rating was poor throughout.

To summarize, Oswald scored

-5 for “understanding” (listening)

+4 for “reading”

+3 for “writing”

Folsom stated that his rating was “P” for poor in each category. But was he really that bad?

This is one of three schedules of monthly additional pay for proficiency in a foreign language in the Marines as at 2006.

Diagram insert 1.png

Assuming similar scores were needed in 1959 to qualify for FLPP, Oswald’s alleged rating of “poor” throughout does not seem to be justified – at least not insofar as reading and writing was concerned.

And there may well be a valid reason Oswald scored noticeably worse in “understanding” (listening) than in reading and writing. He had problems his entire life with Otitis Media with his medical records showing he had periodic hearing loss in one ear as a result. If it had been taken on reading/writing alone, Oswald would appear to have done quite well, insofar as the military was concerned.

As at 2014, the following applied:

For example, a Marine who qualifies for schedule 1 pay with a 1+/1+ score — an elementary proficiency “plus” in at least two categories — will receive $150, or $50 more than in the past. Those scores are set by the Interagency Language Roundtable scale, which measures foreign language aptitude ranging from zero, or no proficiency, to five, for native proficiency. The categories include reading, listening, speaking and writing.

Marines with scores of 1/1 in a language for schedule 2 will receive half the amount they used to receive, now taking home just $25 extra per month.

Top qualifiers on schedule 2, however, will take home more money. A Marine with a 4/4 score, for example, will now receive the maximum allowed under Corps regulations, taking home an extra $500 per month compared to $400 in years past. Marines can earn the maximum bonus for up to two languages.

The changes do not alter current eligibility requirements last revised in August 2013. Requirements were tightened then to the current standards, which require more testing. There are three Defense Language Institute tests with one for listening, reading and speaking. Marines must qualify in at least two of those areas to receive extra language pay. In the few languages where there is only a single test, Marines must also undergo an oral exam.

(https://www.marinecorpstimes.com/education-transition/jobs/2014/11/22/new-bonus-rules-for-marines-who-speak-foreign-languages/)

All of which brings us to the question of whether he had tuition at all or was completely self-taught.

CONTINUE READING AT JFKCONVERSATIONS.COM


Filed Under: News and Views Tagged With: JFK, Kennedy assassination, Lee Harvey Oswald, President John F. Kennedy. Oswald, Russian language

Professor Peter Dale Scott speaks with Alan Dale about Robert Ronstadt, Industrial Security, and LHO

“…there are different ways of thinking of Oswald as an asset.”

A timely reminder from our ultimate scholar. Following is a 5 minute audio excerpt from Alan Dale’s telephone conversation with Professor Scott recorded December 2017:

LISTEN

We are well advised to keep our minds open, to expand our awareness, to question what we think we know, and to practice humility in the face of bewildering complexities. Progress is possible when we admit that we don’t know.

Professor Scott’s works must be read.

Deep Politics and the Death of JFK

Amazon Author’s Page

peterdalescott.net

Transcript:

PDS: I’d like to make a comment on what you’ve been saying so far. At the very beginning you and I agreed that Oswald was an asset.

AD: Yes.

PDS: And then you went to the next step, where I don’t, and that was that he was an Agency asset.

AD: Mmhmm.

PDS: I’m not sure of that at all. In fact, sometimes I think he wasn’t.

AD: Mmhmm.

PDS: If you know my book, Deep Politics and the Death of JFK, I lay out… I think he worked primarily with ONI and Marine G2. No one ever talks about Marine G2, but there is a Marine G2; they did have files on Oswald; we’ve never seen them, and they’re probably the biggest gap in the record that we have. He was that kind of asset at the beginning. The Agency knew what was happening, I think, and that Angleton did.

AD: Uh-huh.

PDS: You know that Jeff Morley says in The Ghost,  and I think he’s probably right, it was Angleton who was responsible for parking the Oswald material over in the Office of Security and not opening the 201, by the way. [See The Ghost: The Secret Life of CIA Spymaster James Jesus Angleton, St. Martin’s Griffin, 2018] And then, later on, there’s a long period there he’s not in touch with American agencies when he’s in Russia; and it’s not clear that he was doing much with them when he first comes back; but I think he was, like Robert Ronstadt – R-O-N-S-T-A-D-T – you can look him up in my index, [See p. 244, Deep Politics and the Death of JFK, University of California Press, 1996 paperback edition] I think he was working for a private agency which was then reporting to the FBI on what we call Industrial Security. I think that’s what he was doing when he came back and that’s why he was at Jaggars, Chiles, Stovall which was doing work for the Army Security Agency, and that’s why he was at the Riley Coffee Company where people were being assembled to go and work in the NASA operation down in New Orleans.

AD: Mmhm.

PDS: I don’t think any of that was CIA. But I do think that whatever happened in Mexico City was certainly a CIA operation or with links to the CIA, because this man down there is a very odd figure but, I don’t think that was Oswald.

AD: Mmhm. Yeah.

PDS: I think that was somebody using Oswald’s I.D. but wasn’t Oswald.

AD: Well, thank you very much for all of that; I wrote down everything.

PDS: So, all I’m asking you to do is not back away from what you believe, but to enlarge it to see that there are different ways of thinking about Oswald as an asset.

AD: And to resist coming to conclusions prematurely based upon my own incomplete information, having incomplete, insufficient information to draw ultimate conclusions.

PDS: I think it’s very, very clear, by the way, when he first makes contact with the DRE in New Orleans, Carlos Bringuier, that’s a hostile action he’s doing. He’s behaving like somebody who wants to learn more about Bringuier; Bringuier was a CIA asset so that’s, to me, the evidence that Oswald was working for someone else. And I think he was working for the FBI, directly or indirectly; his paycheck, as I say, may have come from a private agency.

AD: Mmhm.

PDS: But I think the FBI had been charged with finding out more about the Lake Pontchartrain training camp; that was a high-priority for them because Bobby Kennedy had targeted people like Frank Sturgis as trouble-makers in that delicate year of 1963, and Sturgis – Fiorini, Frank Fiorini – has a link to that camp.

AD: Yes.

PDS: So, I feel quite strongly that at that moment Oswald was not working for the Agency but for some other agency. The most obvious candidate would be the FBI.

AD: Oh, boy. Thank you very much, Professor.

PDS: Does that make sense to you?

AD: It does indeed. What I’m always conscientious about, even as I’m addressing some of these complex areas, I’m aware that at no point have I had a complete understanding and that all of whatever my thinking, if not conclusions, whatever I’m thinking at any given moment is based absolutely and unquestionably upon insufficient information. We don’t have everything we need to come to conclusions.

PDS: All of us, all of us have to feel that way, Alan. Not just you.

AD: Yeah.

PDS: I mean, I too have to be aware that I’m working from very incomplete information.

Edited for length and clarity.

 

 

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Alan Dale, JFK, Kennedy assassination, Lee Harvey Oswald, Peter Dale Scott, PRESIDENT KENNEDY

Bill Simpich: Analyzing the New JFK Revelations

Review of New CIA and FBI Documents That Change Cold War History

CIA

It’s important to focus on the CIA — while the other agencies involved in the war on Cuba during JFK’s administration need similar scrutiny. Photo credit: Adapted by WhoWhatWhy from Tullio Saba / Flickr and CIA / Wikimedia.

Bill Simpich is a civil rights attorney in the San Francisco Bay Area. He is on the board of directors of the Mary Ferrell Foundation, an organization focused on the study of documents related to the 1960s assassinations, Watergate, and Iran-Contra.

In the following essay, he offers a look at some of the gems found in the new JFK document releases and how to speed up the discovery of future finds.

More than 50 years after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, thousands of government documents related to his death are still under classified lock and key.

By law, all of the remaining secret documents were supposed to have been released last year. President Donald Trump approved the release of approximately 35,000 files in 2017. But he delayed the publication of many other documents in full or in part until 2021 — when the winner of the 2020 presidential election will have another chance to review them for possible declassification.

Researchers have been digging through the released documents in search of a “smoking gun” file which neatly explains to skeptics what really happened that dark day in Dallas. While it’s possible such a document exists, it’s unlikely.

The difficult job of understanding why a president was murdered, and unpacking the Cold War path that America was treading, involves working through the minutiae — the “boring” material — so that the little puzzle pieces can fit together to form a coherent bigger picture.


One year ago this week, the National Archives and Records Administration released the first of what were to be seven batches of newly declassified documents. Some of those documents had actually been released in past decades, albeit with extensive redactions. Others had never been seen before.

Analysis of the newly available documents, including those released in the 1990s — most of which still remain undigitized — are already shedding light on the murky background of President Kennedy’s murder.

Among other things, the findings offer a golden opportunity to unpack more of the hidden history of the Cold War, revise our assumptions about that fraught era, and — finally — get the story right.

There will be no new document releases until 2021. That gives us three years to digest what we already have, and to create some stronger tools for analysis.

But the work of researchers and interested citizens is already paying off.

Intriguing Revelations From the New Documents

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Take the ongoing research on cryptonyms, or crypts — government codewords for people, places, and things that the intelligence community meant to keep hidden.

As someone who has spent a lot of time solving CIA cryptonyms for the Mary Ferrell Foundation (MFF) website, one of the premier online digital archives of JFK documents, let me say a brief word on why decoding the cryptonyms is important. When you know the names of the CIA programs, officers, and agents whose names are hidden, a whole new way of seeing the world opens up to you.

Cryptonyms usually begin with a two-letter prefix that identifies the country of origin (e.g., “AM” for Cuba or “LI” for Mexico), and then the remainder of the word reveals the program (e.g., AMCANOE refers to a project to unify exiles, many of whom had traveled by water from Cuba into the US).

It becomes particularly important when you see memos like this, saying that “we cannot give wholesale approval for their release [cryptonyms], but if the crypts have been previously blown or exposed they can be released.”

Lee Harvey Oswald

The JFK case is a jigsaw puzzle the size of a football field. Photo credit: Adapted by WhoWhatWhy from Jolene Faber / Flickr (CC BY 2.0) and ARCHIVES.GOV.

Many new crypts have been revealed in the new release. Just two of the recent examples:

CONTINUE READING at WhoWhatWhy

Filed Under: News and Views Tagged With: Bill Simpich, CIA, JFK, JFK records, Kennedy assassination, Lee Harvey Oswald, NARA

Playboy Magazine Founder Hugh Hefner Published News Making Interviews

He commissioned articles by some of the world’s most celebrated writers — Saul Bellow, Norman Mailer, James Baldwin and Joyce Carol Oates, to name a few. . .

The magazine’s in-depth interviews with leading figures from politics, sports and entertainment — including Muhammad Ali, Fidel Castro and Steve Jobs — often made news. One of the magazine’s most newsworthy revelations came in 1976, when presidential nominee Jimmy Carter admitted in a Playboy interview, “I’ve looked on a lot of women with lust. I’ve committed adultery in my heart many times.” — The Washington Post, Matt Schudel,  September 27

Playboy interviews were already established as news making and unafraid of controversy when an in-depth conversation with New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison was published in the October 1967 edition:

Playboy founder Hugh M. Hefner

Judge Jim Garrison

Jim Garrison: Interview with Playboy:
Introduction

On February 17, 1967, the New Orleans States–Item broke a story that would electrify the world — and hurl district attorney Jim Garrison into a bitter fight for his political life. An enterprising reporter, checking vouchers filed with the city by the district attorney’s office, discovered that Garrison had spent over $8000 investigating the assassination of President Kennedy.

“Has the district attorney discovered valuable additional evidence,” the States–Item asked editorially, “or is he merely saving some interesting new information that will gain for him exposure in a national magazine?” Stung, Garrison counter–attacked, confirming that an inquiry into Kennedy’s assassination was under way and charging that the States–Item’s “irresponsible” revelation “has now created a problem for us in finding witnesses and getting cooperation from other witnesses and in at least one case has endangered the life of a witness.”

New Orleans and the JFK Assassination

On February 18, newsmen from all over the world converged on New Orleans to hear Garrison announce at a press conference: “We have been investigating the role of the city of New Orleans in the assassination of President Kennedy, and we have made some progress — I think substantial progress.… What’s more, there will be arrests.”

As reporters flashed news of Garrison’s statement across the world, a 49–year–old New Orleans pilot, David Ferrie, told newsmen that the district attorney had him “pegged as the getaway pilot in an elaborate plot to kill Kennedy.” Ferrie, a bizarre figure who wore a flaming–red wig, false eyebrows and make–up to conceal burns he had suffered years before, denied any involvement in a conspiracy to kill the President. Garrison, he said, was out to frame him.

Four days later, Ferrie was found dead in his shabby three–room apartment in New Orleans, ostensibly of natural causes — though he left behind two suicide notes.

The press had greeted Garrison’s initial claims about a conspiracy with a measure of skepticism, but Ferrie’s death was front–page news around the world. Garrison broke his self–imposed silence to charge that Ferrie was “a man who, in my judgment, was one of history’s most important individuals.” According to Garrison, “Mr. Ferrie was one of those individuals I had in mind when I said there would be arrests shortly. We had reached a decision to arrest him early next week. Apparently we waited too long.”

But Garrison vowed that Ferrie’s death would not halt his investigation, and added, “My staff and I solved the assassination weeks ago. I wouldn’t say this if we didn’t have the evidence beyond a shadow of a doubt. We know the key individuals, the cities involved and how it was done.”

The Arrest of Clay Shaw

On March 1, Garrison eclipsed even the headlines from his previous press conference by announcing the arrest of Clay Shaw, a wealthy New Orleans businessman and real–estate developer, on charges of conspiring to assassinate John F. Kennedy. One of New Orleans’ most prominent citizens, Shaw was a founder and director of the city’s prestigious International Trade Mart from 1947 to 1962, when he retired to devote his time to playwriting and restoring historic homes in the old French Quarter.

The day after Shaw’s arrest, Garrison declared that “Shaw was none other than Clay Bertrand,” the shadowy queen bee of the New Orleans homosexual underworld, who, according to attorney Dean Andrews’ testimony before the Warren Commission, called him the day after the assassination and asked him to rush to Dallas to defend Oswald.

Shaw heatedly denied his guilt: “I never heard of any plot and I never used any alias in my life.” But New Orleans society, which had long counted Shaw one of its own, was stunned.

On March 14, a panel of three judges heard Garrison’s case in a preliminary hearing to determine if there was enough evidence against Shaw to bring him to trial. Perry Raymond Russo, a 25–year–old life–insurance salesman from Baton Rouge who had once been Ferrie’s “roommate,” testified that in mid–September of 1963, he had attended a meeting at Ferrie’s apartment where Shaw, Lee Harvey Oswald and Ferrie discussed means of assassinating the President in a “triangulation of cross fire.”

Garrison’s second witness, Vernon Bundy, a 29–year–old former narcotics addict, testified that in the summer of 1963, he saw Shaw pass a sum of money to Lee Harvey Oswald on the shore of Lake Pontchartrain. On March 17, after a four–day hearing, Judges Malcolm V. O’Hara, Bernard J. Bagert and Matthew S. Braniff ruled there was sufficient evidence to hold Clay Shaw for trial.

Garrison’s hand was further strengthened on March 22, when a 12–member grand jury of prominent New Orleans citizens, empaneled to hear Garrison’s case, also ruled there were sufficient grounds to bring Shaw to court. Pending trial — which is scheduled to begin sometime this month — Shaw was allowed to go free on $10,000 bail.

Support for Garrison’s Investigation

The American press remained dubious about Garrison’s ability to prove his charges in court, and domestic coverage of and commentary on the district attorney’s case thereafter was, at best, low–key — at worst, contemptuous. But as Newsweek reported on March 20, “In Europe, where thousands still cling to the conspiracy theory in spite of the Warren Commission’s conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone Garrison and his investigation have been the stuff of page–one headlines.”

“I’m encouraged by the support Europe is bringing me,” he told a Paris–Match reporter. “Every day, I receive letters and telegrams from all the capitals. I’ve even had six telephone calls from Moscow.” One was from Literaturnaya Gazeta, a Prestigious Moscow literary magazine, which ran an interview with Garrison concluding that there was a conspiracy to kill Kennedy but that Oswald “definitely wasn’t the key figure in it.”

Garrison also had his supporters in the U. S. Boston’s Richard Cardinal Cushing, father–confessor to the Kennedy family, said of the New Orleans probe on March 16: “I think they should follow it through. I never believed that the assassination was the work of one man.” And Representative Roman Pucinski, an Illinois Democrat, said: “I’m surprised more attention hasn’t been paid to the ruling that Clay Shaw go on trial for participating in a plot to assassinate President Kennedy. These aren’t nuts but three judges talking. It’s a new ball game.”

Senator Russell Long of Louisiana also backed up Garrison — an old political ally — contending that he was only doing “what a district attorney should do.” And perennial Warren Report critic Mark Lane (himself a Playboy interviewee last February), whose best–selling Rush to Judgment helped persuade Garrison to launch his investigation, said after a conference with Garrison in New Orleans that the D.A.’s probe would “break the entire case wide open.”

If nothing else, Garrison was certainly affecting public opinion. A Louis Harris poll of May 29 revealed that 66 percent of the American public now believes there was a conspiracy to assassinate Kennedy, and “a major contributor to this swelling doubt is the investigation into the assassination by New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison.”

Even with public opinion on his side, Garrison was running into difficulties on several fronts by early summer. Three witnesses he wished to question about their complicity in the assassination had fled Louisiana, and he was unable to obtain their extradition to New Orleans — a seldom–encountered roadblock he credits to the CIA, “which knows that some of its former employees were involved in the Kennedy assassination and is doing everything possible to frustrate my investigation in order to preserve the Agency’s good name.” The CIA refuses to comment on Garrison’s charges.

CONTINUE READING AT 22NOVEMBER1963.ORG

Filed Under: News and Views Tagged With: CIA, Hugh Hefner, JFK, Jim Garrison, Kennedy assassination, Lee Harvey Oswald, New Orleans, Oliver Stone, Playboy interview

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