The John F. Kennedy assassination: Why he was killed and by whom

"Other American agencies here are incredibly bitter about the CIA. "If the United States ever experiences a 'Seven Days in May' [a coup] it will come from the CIA, and not from the Pentagon," one U.S. official commented caustically. … "They represent a tremendous power and total unaccountability to anyone," he added. … One very high American official here, a man who has spent much of his life in the service of democracy, likened the CIA's growth to a malignancy, and added he was not sure even the White House could control it any longer."

"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. … Exploding a few plastic bombs in carefully chosen spots, the arrest of Cuban agents and the release of prepared documents substantiating Cuban involvement, also would be helpful in projecting the idea of an irresponsible government. Hijacking attempts against civil air and surface craft should appear to continue as harassing measures condoned by the government of Cuba..."

"They couldn't control [Jack Kennedy] any more. He was changing too fast. He was learning too much. They'll cover everything up. I gotta come see you. I'm scared. I'm afraid. Be careful."

"Clinton had said, 'If I put you over at Justice I want you to find the answers to two questions for me. One, who killed JFK? And two, are there UFOs?'... Clinton was dead serious. I had looked into both, but wasn't satisfied with the answers I was getting."

"As the 50th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy's assassination approaches, a clear majority of Americans (61%) still believe others besides Lee Harvey Oswald were involved. But this percentage is the lowest found in nearly 50 years."

Intro

Ever tried to Google the Kennedy assassination? What you may have found out is that finding a decent, understandable summary of the event with proper discussion of the physical evidence - and who did it - cannot be found anywhere. All the most extensive and top-ranked JFK sites are elaborate debunking sites, automatically meaning they are disinformation. Most other sites are too complex with information spread out over hundreds of articles, are designed to sell a (usually very limited and very disinformative) book, focus on issues that are of little importance, or mix solid leads with disinformation. This article has been put together to remedy this problem.

Basic facts: evidence of a second shooter

On November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was shot. As with all alleged conspiracies, the first thing anyone would want to know about the assassination is if there is any reason to question the official version of events. This is quite simple to demonstrate in the Kennedy case. First, go to YouTube and watch a high quality, stabilized copy of the Zapruder film. Life magazine and the authorities never wanted it released, but so many bootleg copies were floating around by 1975 that it made its way to the public anyhow - and to great consternation. In this high quality version of the Zapruder film the final shot is very clearly visible: it's the moment when Kennedy's head violently moves to the back and to the left. An explosion is visible on the right side of his head, followed by his wife leaning over to the back of the car in an attempt to preserve some of Kennedy's brain matter (she later handed some of it to surgeons at Parkland Hospital). Ask yourself a simple question: where did this shot come from? If you assume it came from the front-right, at a slight upward angle, you would agree with many of the witnesses located in this area. Maybe you have heard of the term "grassy knoll". It is often used by the media to ridicule conspiracy advocates. Now, to the front-right of Kennedy's car is where the grassy knoll was located. On top of that knoll stood a wooden picket fence from which dozens of witnesses were convinced one or more shots had been fired. Most witnesses only heard the sound, but a few saw a flash or a bit of smoke. Others smelled gunpowder. These witnesses are all cited in a dedicated chapter of this article.

One would expect that this aspect of the Kennedy assassination is case closed. But it's not, because Oswald was not sitting on the grassy knoll behind the picket fence. In fact, he wasn't anywhere near it. He was on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository (TSBD) at a window that was located roughly 180 degrees behind Kennedy. According to the official story, three shots were fired from this window. This actually seems to be true. Plenty of witnesses heard or saw the shots being fired from this location with one them, who was located directly underneath this window, testifying how he heard three shell casings hit the floor above him. Three shell casings were also photographed lying on the floor of the "sniper's nest" right after the assassination. So at least there's one aspect we can all agree on.

Now let's take a slightly more detailed look at the witness testimonies. Of the more than 300 witnesses, up to 150 have claimed to know where the shots had come from. Depending on their location, roughly half of them thought the shots came from the Texas School Book Depository, where Lee Harvey Oswald was located. The other half pointed to the direction of the grassy knoll, to the right-front of Kennedy's limousine. Then there were half a dozen witnesses who claimed they heard shots from both of these locations. Another half dozen can safely be discarded, because they thought shots were coming from a variety of different places; but these constitute only 2% of all the witnesses. 1

Based on these witness testimonies, one would normally be quite confident to say that there had to have been two shooters: one at the supposed location of Lee Harvey Oswald, where quite clearly three shots were fired from, and another at the grassy knoll, from which one final shot was fired. In 1978 the rather thorough House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) reached the same conclusion. It also exposed massive cooperation between the CIA, mafia and the ties of Jack Ruby and Oswald to them, something which the Warren Commission never even looked into. And yet, the Warren Commission is always cited as the only authority in the field...

What additionally tipped the scales in favor of a second gunman for the HSCA was the analysis of a dictabelt audio recording from the time of the shooting. Based on all the evidence, they claimed to be 95% certain of this conclusion: three shots from the Texas School Book Depository and one from the grassy knoll. 2 This appears to make sense. Listening to the tape, one has to listen really well with a headphone to hear three of the four shots. But one of them, the third, sounds different and is much better audible, indicating it came from another location and/or involved a different rifle. That's basically a quick analysis for the lay person, because the on-site echolocation study of Bolt, Beranek & Newman (today part of Raytheon) and the Computer Sciences Department of the City University New York are extremely thorough.

Of course, by 1982 this analysis was disputed by the Committee on Ballistic Acoustics of the National Academy of Sciences, which conducted a study supported by the FBI and financed by the Justice Department. The Committee, in a rather brief report, tried to place the sounds of the shots a minute away from the actual shooting.

The question is what credibility the NAS Committee has when it comes to sensitive conspiracy matters, considering its chief operations officer throughout the 1990s was the wife of former CIA director James Woolsey, a top superclass member completely tied in with the group that this website suspects has killed both Kennedy and carried out 9/11. An even better indication of foul play is that three members of the Committee on Ballistic Acoustics were national security JASON Group scientists Paul Horowitz, Richard Garwin, and "Mr. JFK Assassination Cover Up" Luis Alvarez. One has to read their biographies in ISGP's JASON Group section to believe them, especially the one of Alvarez.

In 2001, a study published in Science and Justice, a quarterly publication of Britain's Forensic Science Society, claimed that the recording did indeed take place at the time of the shooting and that the NAS could have known this based on the voices of the policemen. And it must be said, having listened to the entire tape for quite a number of times, it's a pretty unusual sequence that appears to be sandwiched immediately between "[At the] Triple Underpass" (in front of which Kennedy was shot) and "Go to the hospital officers". In any case, Science and Justice calculated the probability of four shots and two locations at 96.3%. 3 In the few years hereafter it were Court TV, owned by NBC and Time Warner; ABC, and Reader's Digest who all tried to dispute the authenticity of the tape yet again. But I guess that is only to be expected.

I have to caution the reader that some time after this article had been written, a major problem turned up with the HSCA's echolocation study, a problem that is discussed in appendix E of this article. This, however, does not diminish the basic fact that there's very strong evidence of second shooter and that a major congressional study years after the Warren Commission stated with 95% certainty that a second shooter had to have been present at the grassy knoll.

In fact, I don't see how it can be denied that Governor John Connelly was hit a mere 0.22 seconds after Kennedy's headshot, immediately ruling out any possibility of a single shooter. It appears as if this is the biggest secret of the whole Zapruder film and really the JFK assassination in general. It literally is never mentioned, not even by alternative "researchers", and I had to discover it for myself. The reader can follow along with my reasoning, as this shooting sequence is discussed in detail in appendix D and compared to all existing ones.

Why a second shooter is unnecessary to prove a conspiracy

Despite the fact that we have very strong evidence for a second shooter in the Kennedy assassination, it is equally important to realize that we don't need this second shooter to have evidence of a major conspiracy involving government and superclass interests in this event. Far from it. As this article will make clear, JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald literally was guided from place to place by persons with mafia, CIA, FBI, and major superclass connections.

In other words, the idea that either Oswald killed Kennedy or there had to have been a conspiracy of sort, is as misleading as the idea that it had to be either the CIA, or the FBI, or the mob, or the anti-Castro Cubans, or LBJ who killed Kennedy. It's not a question of either-or. All these elements appear to have played a role and whether or not there was a conspiracy, Oswald will always be a major player in it. In the end, it was Oswald who:

1. told his wife that he had shot at General Walter Walker and that he was thinking of hijacking a plane and diverting it to Cuba;
2. was hired by the Texas School Book Depository a month before the assassination;
3. didn't talk much to colleagues;
4. took a package to work the morning of the assassination that contained his rifle;
5. disappeared 40 minutes before the assassination;
6. rather uniquely was not in the presence of any other colleague at the time of the assassination;
7. briefly was spotted on the 2nd floor of TSBD 2.5 minutes after assassination, being the only employee seemingly not interested in the parade outside;
8. was the only employee who disappeared from work after the assassination (without being seen), and;
9. fled throughout the city until he eventually was arrested.

These facts are impossible to dispute. They're well-established by Texas School Book Depository employees and related individuals who were interviewed by the FBI and Warren Commission. Then you combine these insights with other facts that include:

1. three shots were fired from the abandoned 6th floor of the Texas School Book Depository;
2. the shooter was spotted by several witnesses, and;
3. no strangers were seen entering or leaving the building.

Only realistic conclusion? Oswald did it. What we don't know is who Oswald exactly was; or who his apparent handlers David Ferrie, Guy Banister, George de Mohrenschildt, Ruth and Michael Paine, and seemingly others were. It's not an accident at all, for example, that Oswald was hired to the Texas School Book Depository or that this building and the store itself had some curious ultraright owners. But we'll get into that aspect soon enough.

Hopefully knowledge that the question of conspiracy is in no way diminished when somehow proof surfaces that Oswald carried out the assassination "all by himself" - due to Oswald's superclass and CIA grooming - will provide many confused readers with a little additional piece of mind. And with that we can take a break from any shooting sequences or potential grassy knoll shooters and just focus on the internal and external parapolitical and geopolitical situation of the time. Who wanted Kennedy gone? Why did they want him gone? Who of them could have recruited or manipulated Oswald? Basic questions like these. The whole grassy knoll shot by an anonymous individual is just a bonus, a major boost to our confidence that indeed a conspiracy took place. But the very much identified Lee Harvey Oswald may just lead us right to the conspirators.

14 foreign policy reasons why Kennedy was killed

Below are some of the reasons I came across over the years which likely played a role in the decision to kill President Kennedy. Many of these reasons have not been specifically tied to the Kennedy assassination, but all of them basically indicate that Kennedy was much too socialist-oriented for the CIA and even the State Department to allow him to remain in place. Considering that the CIA controls the conservative establishment and the State Department is an intricate part of the liberal establishment, along with the major banks and most news outlets, then it becomes rather easy to explain how the cover up could have taken place.

Foreign policy reasons that contributed or may have contributed to the death of JFK:

1. Kennedy did not conduct an acceptable policy towards Cuba, in contrast to Eisenhower. At the last moment he withdrew air support for the April 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion and he refused to commit U.S. ground troops in order to save the invading Cubans, a situation the CIA had tried to force him into. Kennedy's frustration with the CIA is clearest from a statement he made immediately after the April 1961 Bay of Pigs disaster to "one of the highest officials in his administration", namely that he was going "to splinter the CIA in a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds." 4 However, Kennedy did not carry out this threat and with John McCone even appointed a long-time friend of Allen Dulles. Much of this probably had to do with the fact that Kennedy and his brother, in contrast to overall CIA policy, actually were rather fond of Dulles. 5 And McCone was a Catholic, of course, not to mention a Knight of Malta. This also greatly appealed to the Catholic Kennedys.
   
   On June 28, 1961, weeks after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, Kennedy approved National Security Action Memorandum 55 6, 56 7 and 57 8 stripping the CIA of its responsibility for large-scale covert and overt paramilitary programs in such places as Vietnam or with the invasion of Cuba. Instead, he made this "the primary responsibility of the Department of Defense with the CIA in a supporting role." As a result, the different military branches all began to create their own paramilitary capabilities. The Navy, for example, set up its SEAL program as a result of NSAM 57. 9 Unfortunately almost nothing has been written about these NSAMs 10, but they appear to have been one of several measures JFK took to help restrain the CIA. 11
   
   Almost a year later, in March 1962, Kennedy rejected the Operation Northwoods paper which made recommendations on false flag operations in the United States to help sell to the American public an invasion of communist Cuba. Kennedy fired Joint Chiefs chairman General Lemnitzer for supporting the paper. Soon after, Lemnitzer joined the ultraright American Security Council. 12
   
   In October 1962, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy's authority and the safety of the world were undermined by JM/WAVE CIA station chief William Harvey, who was sending commando teams into Cuba. Kennedy had him banished to Rome, where Harvey got involved in the Strategy of Tension. Harvey's protege Ted Shackley took his place at the JM/WAVE station in Miami. 13 Questions would later arise about the role of Shackley in the Kennedy assassination.
   
   
2. Kennedy apologized for involvement of Eisenhower and the CIA in the 1957 and 1958 PRRI-Permesta rebellion in Indonesia. He became a supporter of the left-wing Sukarno government and provided Indonesia with billions of dollars in civilian and military aid. In 1965 Suharto shoved Sukarno aside and with CIA support began a mass extermination campaign against suspected communists. 14
   
   
3. Kennedy supported the failed April 1961 coup against the right-wing Portuguese dictator Antonio Salazar. 15 Salazar was supported by the CIA and the Cercle group. To illustrate, in 1975, after Salazar had died, the State Department, under the leadership of Henry Kissinger, and local ambassador/CIA officer Frank Carlucci, gave the go-ahead for a right-wing counter-coup of Cercle visitor and former Salazar loyalist Antonio de Spinola against moderate forces that had taken over the government. 16
   
   
4. Kennedy supported the 1961-1962 peace accords that put an end to the French-Algerian War. Kennedy had been speaking out against French imperialism in Algeria since his days as a senator in 1957. In contrast, the CIA was secretly backing the fascist-terrorist OAS that tried to reignite the French-Algerian War and assassinate the anti-NATO, anti-British and anti-U.S. French president Charles De Gaulle, who came out in support of peace in Algeria in the early 1960s. When Kennedy asked Allen Dulles and Richard Helms about their support for the OSS, both CIA chiefs denied this.
   
   Bizarrely, individuals as Clay Shaw, Guy Banister and Schlumberger executives, all of whom operated in the vicity of JFK assassin Lee Harvay Oswald, were used as CIA conduits for OAS support.
   
   
5. Kennedy forced Park Chung-hee of South Korea to restore civilian rule a year after his May 1961 coup against the left-wing government. 17 Chung-hee and his cousin Kim Jong-pil (a fellow-coup plotter) had just established the KCIA and were supported by the emerging anti-communist Moonie Cult. CIA support in the coup has been suspected and certainly in later years the KCIA, the Moonies, yakuza, the CIA and private groups as the American Security Council and International Security Council became close allies. 18
   
   
6. After giving it much thought, Kennedy allowed the November 1, 1963 coup against the repressive Catholic dictator Ngo Dinh Diem in South Vietnam, in opposition to CIA director John McCone, CIA Far East division chief William Colby, secretary of defense Robert McNamara, secretary of state Dean Rusk and key military commanders in Vietnam as MACV chief General Paul D. Harkins and counter-insurgency chief General Victor Krulak. Even his own brother, RFK, worried about the consequences of a coup against Diem.
   
   It must be said that Kennedy did have a number of elites and government officials on his side in the matter. The most important were his national security advisor McGeorge Bundy, Bundy's aide Michael Forrestal, ambassador-at-large Averell Harriman, and U.S. ambassador to South Vietnam Henry Cabot Lodge. 19
   
   Nevertheless, many persons within the CIA and military in particular saw JFK's sanctioning of the Diem coup as yet another move that weakened the U.S. in the battle against communism. For years, Lansdale, an American Security Council affiliate, and his CIA superiors had worked to bring Catholics to the south of Vietnam in order to form a strong anti-communist – but repressive – government. The North-Vietnamese could hardly believe that the United States had supported the coup and not surprisingly, the situation in South Vietnam deteriorated rapidly as the communists were convinced that Diem couldn't be replaced with a leader of equal strength. 20
   
   It must be emphasized that the coup against Diem, unlike most other coups, was a moral decision. Because Buddhist monks started to burn themselves in protest of Diem's treatment of the Buddhist community, the United States and Vatican faced more and more international criticism for their support of Diem. Removing Diem, however, meant a serious threat to the war effort and thus Kennedy's decision to overthrow him is further evidence that he was not a hardliner.
   
   Then there's the question whether or not Kennedy would have withdrawn from Vietnam had he not been assassinated instead of letting it escalate into what became the Vietnam War. In contrast to the many "rollback" strategy pushers in the CIA and military, Kennedy always favored diplomatic solutions with North Vietnam and the Soviet Union. And as an October 2, 1963 memo reveals, Kennedy had already initiated the withdrawal of 1,000 U.S. soldiers by late 1963 and planned a full withdrawal of all U.S. forces from South Vietnam by December 31, 1965, after South Vietnam's military (hopefully) had been trained sufficiently to resist the North. 21 According to McNamara, a public announcement of these aims would have followed if Kennedy hadn't been assassinated. 22 While McNamara himself supported this agenda 23 [23], the CIA and military greatly opposed it. 24 Of course, one major problem with this agenda was that no consensus could be found on the effectiveness and state of the U.S.-South Vietnamese effort to combat communist insurgion. 25 The fact was that support of the Vietcong was much greater than any U.S. agency was prepared to admit to 26, and thus Kennedy's agenda was doomed to fail.
   
   However, there are strong indications that JFK would have withdrawn from Vietnam anyway, leaving Diem or another South Vietnamese leader in place to resist the communists by themselves. In fact, tape recordings of Kennedy administration meetings over the Vietnam issue, which were only released in 1997, make it very clear that Kennedy and McNamara had already made the decision to fully withdraw from Vietnam whether or not victory could be achieved. 27 Unfortunately, any tapes after November 7, 1963 have gone missing without explanation, and so have many other key documents of this time period. 28
   
   The CIA and military wanted to know nothing about withdrawal. The day before Kennedy's death, the CIA and military were still pushing their OPLAN 34A plan that called for increased sabotage raids against the North Vietnamese, an escalation not approved by Kennedy or even McNamara, both of whom hadn't seen it at that point. 29 That same day McGeorge Bundy presented a draft of National Security Action Memorandum 273 which kept the president's objections in mind regarding escalation of the Vietnam conflict. Paragraph 7 of the document read:
   
   

   "With respect to action against North Vietnam, there should be a detailed plan for the development of additional Government of Vietnam resources..."

   
   On November 26, four days after Kennedy's death, LBJ approved the final version of NSAM 273. Paragraph 7 had been crossed out and replaced with the following text:
   
   

   "Planning should include different levels of possible increased activity, and in each instance there be estimates such factors as: A. Resulting damage to North Vietnam; B. The plausibility denial; C. Vietnamese retaliation; D. Other international reaction. Plans submitted promptly for approval by authority."

   
   For obvious reasons establishment and even "alternative" scholars have dismissed this change in language as insignificant. 30 It clearly isn't and represents a total coup in Vietnam policy from JFK to LBJ. Where JFK completely restricted military action against North Vietnam and called for the training and mobilization of South Vietnam's military, LBJ gave the go-ahead to the CIA and U.S. military to start preparing for a full-scale war without relying in any way on the South Vietnamese. The differences are day and night.
   
   If we look, in addition, to Kennedy's opposition to Operation Northwoods, it is doubtful he would have gone along with a Gulf of Tonkin-like incident that LBJ used to escalate the Vietnam War. That incident actually was a direct result of the OPLAN 34A plan which Kennedy opposed but was signed into action by LBJ days after Kennedy was assassinated. Meanwhile, while this escalation took place, LBJ friend David Rockefeller and a good number of elite friends were organizing the Committee for an Effective and Durable Peace in Asia (CEDPA) to help sell the war to the public. Warren Commission member and Rockefeller agent John McCloy was among these friends. 31
   
   At the very least there has been a general concensus since 2003 since an admission by LBJ's deputy national security advisor Francis Bator that Kennedy (and McNarama) most certainly had implemented an agenda to withdraw in full from Vietnam 32, a basic conclusion that has been fought for decades by an army of prominent scholars 33 and supported by only a handful. 34 That by itself set off the military and the CIA. The second aspect, that JFK would have withdrawn even when South Vietnam would have fallen, still is controversial, but that is most certainly what it looks like. And that would not have been even remotely acceptable to the CIA and the military.
   
   
7. In Italy Kennedy sympathized with the Partito Socialista Italiano. After the April 1963 election the party received a number of cabinet posts under the moderate Christian Democrat Aldo Moro. The leader of the PSI, Pietro Nenni, became Moro's vice prime minister. When Kennedy visited Italy in July 1963 he was wary about the communists, but embraced Nenni. CIA director John McCone and many of the top Cold warriors greatly opposed these developments. Even secretary of state Dean Rusk harshly criticized Kennedy on the matter.
   
   Ironically, the CIA station chief in Italy, William Harvey, who was banished to Rome for undermining Kennedy’s policy towards Cuba two years before, was running secret Gladio armies that tried to discredit both the communists and socialists through psychological warfare and even outright terrorism. His deputy was Vernon Walters, who was involved with the American Security Council. 35
   
   A decade later Aldo Moro would be kidnapped and murdered, almost certainly as part of another U.S.-sanctioned purge of leftist elements in the Italian government.
   
   
8. Kennedy was an ally of United Nations secretary general Dag Hammarskjold and prime ministers Patrice Lumumba and Cyrille Adoula in Belgian Congo. Kennedy opposed the CIA and Belgian colonialists in their support of Moishe Tshombe, leader of the breakaway province of Katanga, where the important minerals were located. 36 Incredibly, Lumumba, who was in the custody of Mobutu and then Tshombe, was illegally executed in January 1961 (days before Kennedy's inauguration) after Eisenhower had given the order for his assassination 37; the U.N. secretary general died in an extremely suspicious plane crash in September 1961 38; and Kennedy was assassinated under equally strange circumstances in November 1963.
   
   After Kennedy's death, the CIA played a role in bringing Tshombe to power over all of Congo. Soon thereafter it backed Mobutu 39, who would plunder the country for over three decades while keeping close ties with the CIA and the Belgian establishment. Mobutu even was a member of the elite 1001 Club of Prince Bernhard, together with the Rockefellers, Rothschilds and Robert McNamara.
   
   
9. In contrast to Eisenhower and LBJ, Kennedy supported Kwame Nkrumah of Kenya. 40 Nkrumah was overthrown in 1966 with support from the CIA for being too close to the Soviet camp.
   
   
10. In contrast to Eisenhower and LBJ, Kennedy maintained friendly relations with Gamal Abdul Nasser in Egypt 41, at the same time that Cercle elements in Great Britain were fighting a privately-funded covert war against Nasser over control of Yemen. The Cercle elements were supported by the Mossad and the CIA. 42
    
    
11. In contrast to Eisenhower and LBJ, Kennedy supported the independence of Guinea, which was thought to have drifted into the Soviet orbit. 43
    
    
12. In contrast to Eisenhower and LBJ, Kennedy supported the anti-French socialist Ben Bella in Algeria. 44
    
    
13. By early 1963 Kennedy was suspected of trying to cool down the Cold War with a policy of rapprochement towards the Soviet Union and Cuba. In opposition to generals Lemay, Powers and Lemnitzer, all soon leaders of the American Security Council, he ordered the Single Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP) to be revised. At the time SIOP consisted of only one strategy: a full nuclear counter-strike with 3,423 nuclear weapons against all communist countries - even in case only Russia attacked and even if only one nuclear weapon was launched against a U.S. target. However, the plan to revise this strategy came to Kennedy's ears from then National Security Council consultant Henry Kissinger through national security advisor McGeorge Bundy, so Kennedy certainly wasn't alone on this issue. 45
    
    Then, in October 1963, Kennedy signed the Limited Test Ban Treaty, limiting the United States, Great Britain and the Soviet Union to underground nuclear testing. General Curtis LeMay et al. obviously opposed the measure. 46 Interestingly, in this same period Kennedy was warning the public for men as LeMay and Barry Goldwater by supporting the making of the movie Seven Days In May. He even offered the director to shoot scenes at the White House. 47 In this movie the military attempts a coup after the president initiates nuclear disarmament talks with the Soviet Union. Starting in 1969, the American Security Council club of LeMay and Goldwater would spend two decades fighting détente and the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) of Henry Kissinger.
    
    While it's hard to believe that Kennedy's anti-nuclear war stance would be reason enough to assassinate him, especially because he had powerful supporters on this issue, until we know exactly who plotted the hit, it shouldn't be scrapped from a list of potential reasons. It also shouldn't be overlooked that CIA counterintelligence chief James Angleton and a number of other ultraright CIA officers and assets joined the same American Security Council as generals LeMay, Lemnitzer and Power.
    
    
14. Kennedy pushed Israeli prime ministers David Ben Gurion and Levi Eshkol very hard for inspections of the Dimona reactor in order to make sure that Israel was not trying to build nuclear weapons. 48 LBJ and later Nixon backed off from the idea of seriously inspecting Dimona and came to terms with the fact that Israel had become a nuclear power. 49
    
    The Israeli connection might not be all that relevant were it not for the tie of the Permindex corporation to the Kennedy assassination. Clay Shaw, the central figure in Jim Garrison's questionable JFK assassination trial, was a director of this company, which served as a rather obvious CIA front. Permindex was founded by the Zionist Louis Mortimer Bloomfield, who could be found in Prince Bernhard's elite 1001 Club, has been photographed talking to David Ben Gurion and has been linked to the SOE, OSS, CIA, FBI and Haganah network. Permindex is discussed later on in this article.
    
    For those interested in the subject, Israel's nuclear program came about in the 1950s and early 1960s through an overt cooperation with France and a covert one with Great Britain, rewards for Israel's role on behalf of France and Britain in the Suez Crisis of 1956-1957. Israel also acquired materials from the Congo, Argentina and even, through a covert operation, from the U.S.-based Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation (NUMEC) plant. It was also widely suspected that key information on bomb designs was acquired through the strong Jewish presence at universities and nuclear laboratories as Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermoore in the United States.
    
    NUMEC is particularly relevant here, because to this day the CIA has refused to release much of what it knew about the siphoning off of highly enriched uranium (HEU) from NUMEC to Israel's Dimona reactor in the mid 1960s. Then in the 1970s it was Ted Shackley, suspected of having played a role in the Kennedy assassination here, who kept a lid on this information. 50 Then there's that other ever-present CIA official: CIA counter-intelligence chief James Angleton, who also was the Agency's Israel liaison. Among Angleton's numerous high-level Mossad connections was Meir Deshalit, whose brother, Amos Deshalit, played a key role in Israel's nuclear bomb program. 51
    
    While it remains pure speculation whether or not anyone in the CIA knew what was happening at the NUMEC plant, it would be nice to rule out if that wasn't a quid pro quo of some sort, similar to the British and French aiding the Israelis in return for the Suez Crisis conspiracy.
    
    

7 more domestic policy reasons why Kennedy was killed

It wasn't only with foreign policy that Kennedy found resistance from ultraright or even State Department corners. Jack and Bobby Kennedy made enemies in many different places: big business, Texas oil men, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover and the mafia all came to loathe the name Kennedy. Most certainly the FBI was involved in covering up the assassination, while it also has to be said that an awful lot of mafia bosses died under strange circumstances during the House Select Committee of Assassination (HSCA) that was looking into the JFK assassination in the late 1970s. Let's summarize these domestic forces that opposed the Kennedy brothers:

1. The relationship between FBI head J. Edgar Hoover, who occupied this position from 1935 to 1972, and the Kennedy brothers was notoriously bad. As Truman had also complained about 52, Hoover's "Gestapo" was always spying on the Kennedy brothers and their relatives, trying to find things to blackmail them with. The brothers responsed in kind, however, and over the course of 1961-1963 Hoover developed many reasons to absolutely despise the Kennedys.
   
   For starters, Hoover was a rabid, racist, conservative anti-communist who put no less than 1,500 of his agents in the U.S. Communist Party. 53 The Kennedy brothers, on the other hand, were rather socialist and focused on civil rights and race equality. Far worse was the fact that Bobby, as attorney general, completely harassed and humiliated Hoover at every turn, even allowing his children to prank call him on a direct phone he forced Hoover to place on his desk. Meanwhile, assistants of Jack Kennedy blocked him from ever directly speaking over the phone to the president. 54 Nothing of that sort ever happened before or after the Kennedys.
   
   Then there was the issue that Hoover was frustrated with the Kennedy brothers, because Bobby had forced him to admit the existence of the mafia. 55 Until Bobby did that, Hoover literally paid zero attention to the Cosa Nostra and, stunningly as it may sound, even claimed organized crime was a myth. 56 Unsurprisingly, Hoover's ties to Texas oil also brought him in close contact with a number of leading mobsters. 57
   
   Bobby later explained that Hoover didn't seem to be particularly concerned that his brother had been shot and referred to the FBI head as "rather a psycho". 58 [58] Letters from Hoover to Martin Luther King that were later unearthed pretty much confirm this statement of Bobby, whose own funeral on live television in 1968 was rudely interrupted by a press release of Hoover who announced that his Bureau had arrested the alleged killer of King. 59
   
   Hoover at the very least played a key role in covering up the 1963 John F. Kennedy assassination and may well have done the same with the 1968 assassinations of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King. He had all the means, motives and the opportunities in the world for it.
   
   
2. Hoover was a very good friend of vice president Lyndon Baines Johnson. The men had lived across the street from each other for more than a decade before Johnson became Kennedy's vice president in 1961. Johnson actually hated the Kennedys as much as Hoover did, especially Bobby, who went around the Washington party circuit referring to Johnson and his wife Lady Bird as "Uncle Corn Pone and his little pork chop." The president went along with the ridicule, as did many others. 60 Later on, after the death of his brother, Bobby described LBJ as being a "mean, bitter, vicious animal in many ways ... unless you want to kiss his behind all the time." 61
   
   Why Kennedy picked Johnson as his running mate and vice president has never been fully cleared up. Most commonly it is thought that Kennedy offered him the vice presidency as a rather commonly-practiced gesture, but never anticipated that LBJ would accept. All of Kennedy's aides opposed the pick and so did Johnson's aides and friends. But in the end LBJ became Kennedy's vice president, with Jack cryptically explaining to an aid that "the whole story will never be known" 62 and Bobby that, "The only people who were involved in the discussions were Jack and myself. We both promised each other that we'd never tell what happened." 63 And they didn't. LBJ stepped down from a very powerful position as senate majority leader - where Kennedy definitely didn't want him as an opponent - to become Kennedy's ridiculed and marginalized vice president.
   
   It appears Johnson's primary motivation was a chance for the presidency, either because Kennedy had to step down due to his potentially fatal Addison's disease, or because as vice president it would be easier for him to again run as a presidential candidate. As he stated to Claire Booth Luce, "I looked it up. One out of every four presidents has died in office. I'm a gamblin' man, darlin', and this is the only chance I got." 64
   
   Still, there are aspects of Kennedy's choice of LBJ as vice president that have not been cleared up. According to Evelyn Lincoln, Kennedy's personal secretary over a period of 12 years, the oppointment of LBJ came down to simple blackmail with information provided to LBJ by Hoover. If Kennedy didn't pick LBJ, Hoover would make sure that leaks started floating around about his womanizing, including a fling during World War II with a suspected Nazi spy; about his father's Nazi sympathies, about the mob aiding his election (due to his father's connections), or maybe other information that could quash his presidential ambitions. Apparently, LBJ had a knack of doing this all over parliament due to his lucrative friendship with Hoover. Columnist Igor Cassini, Ben Bradlee, Jack Anderson and Gore Vidal have also alleged that Kennedy was either blackmailed into picking LBJ or at the very least that he was afraid of LBJ's pal J. Edgar Hoover. It also surprised more than a few friends and political insiders that Kennedy was so adament about keeping Hoover in place in case he was elected president, knowing that the two men weren't too fond of each other. 65
   
   So, could Johnson have been involved in the Kennedy assassination? Looking at his crucial political position, his ambitions, some his friends back in Texas, and his frustrations with the Kennedys, it most certainly is possible. What is certain is that he played a role in the cover up. A recorded telephone conversation between Johnson and Senator Richard Russell, a mentor of Johnson who he basically forced to be on the Warren Commission, reveals that Johnson didn't want a real investigation of the event. The only purpose of the commission was to quell rumors that Kruschev or Castro was behind the assassination:
   
   

   "I'm a Russell protege and I don't forget my friends and I want you to stand up and be counted... Your future is your country and you're gonna do anything to serve America. ... We've got to take this out of the arena where they're testifying that it is Kruschev and Castro did this and did that and kicking us into a war that can kill 40 million Americans in an hour. ...
   
   "Now, I've got Allen Dulles and John McCloy, but you are my man on that commission and you're gonna do it. And don't tell me what you can do and what you can't, because I can't arrest ye and I'm not gonna put the FBI on ye, but you're goddamned sure gonna serve. I'll tell ye that. And A.W. Morrison is here and he wants to tell ye how much all of us love you. ...
   
   "Well, [you]'ll just make the time. There's not going to be any time to begin with. All you gonna do is reevaluate the Hoover report he has already made. ...
   
   "You're gonna lend your name to this thing, because you are head of the CIA committee in the senate [and] because this thing is breaking faster than you think." 66

   
   Hoover was kind enough to leak the essential conclusions of the Kennedy assassination investigation to the press days before providing the full report to the Warren Commission members for "evaluation", just so the entire country knew the conclusions to expect from the commission. The FBI and the CIA also refused to provide any documentation to the commission that would in any way challenge the foregone conclusion that Oswald had acted alone. 67
   
   It must be said though that in the afore-mentioned phone conversation Senator Richard Russell opposed LBJ a little in the sense that he wasn't certain at all that Castro hadn't been involved in the Kennedy assassination. Considering the holes in the Warren Commission report, that seems to tell us just how compliant even men in positions of power are, or maybe just how disinterested and time-restrained they generally are to voice any kind of proper criticism.
   
   
3. Both Hoover and LBJ were annual guests of the Texas oil men Clint Murchison, Sr. and Sid Richardson at Hotel del Charro in California and the nearby racetracks. Senator McCarthy, Eisenhower and Nixon were among the other guests. 68
   
   These Texas oil men are often brought into the JFK assassination discussion because the Kennedy brothers were interested in banning the Oil Depletion Allowance 69, which would have forced the oil sector to pay its fair share of taxes, similar to every other American business. Incredibly, this tax cut, despite the controversy surrounding it, remains in place today. 70 Of course, this could never be the sole reason behind the assassination, because these men simply did not have the power to pull off something of that magnitude. However, there is plenty of evidence that these men were supportive of a plot against Kennedy and that they allowed themselves to be used as assets of the CIA and FBI, much like the Rockefellers and various other members of the Eastern Establishment.
   
   To start with, reportedly also a visitor of Hotel del Charro meetings was D. Harold Byrd 71, another major Dallas-based oil multi-millionaire 72 who maintained business partnerships with oil companies of the Rockefellers and Mellons 73 while his cousin, Admiral Richard Byrd, not only was close to FDR and his wife Eleanor Roosevelt, but also was best friends with Pilgrims Society banking and industry titans as John D. Rockefeller, Jr., Thomas Watson of IBM, Arthur Sulzberger of the New York Times, chief justice Charles Evens Hughes and Owen Young of General Electric. Another close friend was Edsel Ford, the son of Henry Ford. These men helped finance Admiral Byrd's National Economy League, which successfully lobbied for cutting payments and bonuses to war veterans. 74 Rockefeller, Sulzberger and Harold Byrd also financed Admiral Byrd's expeditions to Antarctica and the North Pole in the 1920s and 1930s. 75 Ever heard of such Antarctica locations as the Harold Byrd Mountains, Marie Byrd Land, the Rockefeller Plateau, the Ford Ranges, or the Sulzberger Bay? Which happen to be sitting right around the Executive Committee Mountain Range? Care to make a guess how these locations got their names?
   
   Harold Byrd himself was a close personal friend of vice president Lyndon Johnson and Texas governor John Connally 76, who, as we shall see, changed his initial testimony of the JFK assassination shooting sequence to fit the version preferred by the FBI and Warren Commission. He also was a friend of General Jimmy Doolittle 77, the chairman of leading defense contractor Space Technology Laboratories (STL); and, reportedly, top CIA officers Allen Dulles and Charles Cabell. 78 Byrd had just left for a two month hunting safari in Africa when Oswald shot Kennedy, a trip he often made in the company of Doolittle. Not the one in late 1963, however. 79
   
   Why is all this important you ask? Well, Harold Byrd was a founder of the Civil Air Patrol 80, where Lee Harvey Oswald operated under bizarre CIA asset David Ferrie; and was the owner of the Texas School Book Depository building 81, where Oswald was employed in the weeks before he shot Kennedy from this location. An additionally interesting detail is that the TSBD had been opened only six months before in the nearly vacant Sexton Building (as it was then called) and was headed by a local commander of the CIA-linked American Legion who, reportedly, at a party a few years earlier had stated "It would be a good thing if President Kennedy got shot." 82 There's quite a bit of evidence that Oswald was moved around from CIA asset to CIA asset (or FBI) not just in New Orleans, but that the same thing happened in Dallas and even with his job at the TSBD. 83 Then there's the fact that Harold Byrd also employed Oswald's primary Dallas-based patron, the well-to-do George de Mohrenschildt, who also was Byrd's friend. 84 The coincidences keep stacking up.
   
   This last aspect is hardly unique though. Upon his arrival in the area in 1952, de Mohrenschildt had become a member of the elite Dallas Petroleum Club 85 through which he became friends with the Murchisons, H.L. Hunt, Sid Richardson, Harold Byrd, John Mecom, Paul Raigorodsky (reportedly also of Clay Shaw's CIA front Permindex), Jean de Menil (reportedly also of Permindex 86), George Brown and others 87, many of whom employed him at one point ot another. Many of these jobs involved overseas travel and appear to have been CIA assignments. 88 Reportedly George H. W. Bush and key CIA officer David Atlee Phillips were also involved with the Dallas Petroleum Club. 89 Unfortunately, to this day, solid documentation on past membership is lacking.
   
   There's actually quite a bit of evidence that oil men as Murchison, H. L. Hunt, Harold Byrd (not to mention George H. W. Bush) and a number of their allies all were working for the CIA, including their lackey George de Mohrenschildt. They had too many ties to leading CIA officers, either personal, or through groups as the Dallas Petroleum Club, the Suite 8F Group 90, the American Legion, or the Texas Crusade for Freedom. The national branch of the latter was operated by the CIA leadership and its closest Eastern Establishment friends, which alone tells us that Murchison, Byrd and other members of its Texas branch were favorite conduits of the CIA. 91
   
   ISGP has actually stumbled into additional CIA ties over the years than has been discussed by JFK assassination authors. Sid Richardson, for example, was involved with the American Security Council, together with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a number of CIA officers Kennedy experienced so much opposition from. Murchison's son, Clint, Jr., later sat on the board of FIDCO, a rather sinister CIA front with ties to the mafia and yakuza. 92 Another son, John Murchison, later joined the elite and also somewhat sinister 1001 Club of Prince Bernhard, together with the Rockefellers, Rothschilds, Schlumbergers, Henry Ford II, Robert McNamara, and Nelson Bunker Hunt, a son of ultraright oil baron H.L. Hunt, who was a financier of the John Birch Society and anti-Federal Reserve conspiracy author Eustace Mullins.
   
   What might also be interesting to know is that super-conspiracy disinformer and former FBI special agent in charge Ted Gunderson at one point was employed by the Murchison family and attended the family's parties. One of Gunderson's closest associates at the time was sinister CIA man Robert Booth Nichols 93, a director of FIDCO and allegedly a leading yakuza/mafia liaison who ordered the death of journalist Danny Casolaro in 1991. Gunderson, who in the 1960s checked the backgrounds of officials who came into the LBJ administration, was part of a dark network of insiders, and with that it appears that the Murchisons and some of the other Texas oil men were part the same network.
   
   Then there's the case of Louisiana mafia boss Carlos Marcello, who is also said to have been a visitor of Murchison and Richardson's Hotel del Charro. Marcello can be linked to Clay Shaw and David Ferrie in New Orleans and Jack Ruby, Oswald's assassin, in Dallas. At the Hotel del Charro, Hoover reportedly sat at the breakfast table each morning with an agent of Marcello. 94 More on Marcello later.
   
   
   
4. The mafia began to despise Bobby Kennedy, as mafia arrest had increased 700 percent under his term as attorney general. 95 Possibly the only reason that men as Johnny Roselli, Sam Giancana and Santo Trafficante were not thrown in jail is because they were employed by the CIA in operations against Cuba. 96 As already mentioned, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover denied the mafia existed until forced to admit to it by Bobby Kennedy.
   
   
5. The anti-Castro Cubans hated Kennedy after the Bay of Pigs fiasco and many wanted him dead for what they - somewhat justified - saw as betrayal. Kennedy withdrew air support and most of their friends were either killed or captured as a result. As the House Select Committee on Assassinations noted in 1978, the FBI, CIA and Warren Commission had never interviewed Cuban exile sources in relation to the Kennedy assassination. 97
   
   
6. The ultraright, which generally organized itself at the American Security Council and various lower level groups, hated Kennedy. They thought that he was too soft on both communism and socialism. Many also loathed his support of Martin Luther King.
   
   
7. The core of the big business establishment is unlikely to have approved of Kennedy. Many corporations had seen their assets confiscated by Fidel Castro or otherwise worried about Kennedy's embracement of socialist and nationalist movements. In addition Kennedy was forcefully breaking up the steel monopoly of U.S. Steel 98, a corporation with major Pilgrims Society ties.
   
   

The CIA's Miami station was known as JM/WAVE, which we already discussed to a degree in the previous sections. It ran the CIA's operation to overthrow Castro and had both the mafia and Cuban exiles working for them. William Harvey ran the project from its inception in November 1961, but was exiled to Rome after attempting to undermine the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962. His protege, Ted Shackley, took over at that point and headed the station until 1965. Important names under Shackley at JM/WAVE included: David Morales, chief of covert operations; Felix Rodriguez, Rafael Quintero, George Joannides, David Atlee Phillips, Carl E. Jenkins, Rudi Enders, Thomas Clines, Edwin Wilson, Frank Sturgis, E. Howard Hunt, Rip Robertson, and, briefly, future CIA director Porter Goss. These men had the mafia working alongside them, as well as the entire network of anti-Castro Cuban exile groups - in which Oswald was involved. In later decades some of the names resurfaced in Vietnam, Laos, drug trafficking accusations and Iran Contra. Ted Shackley himself turned out to be running the secretive and rather sinister Cercle group in the years prior to his death, giving a great deal of credence to claims that he was one of the overseers of the anti-communist P2 Lodge, along with Alexander Haig (Pilgrims). 99 The Cercle network, which included the P2, was deeply involved in pedophile entrapment, assassinations and false flag terrorist attacks. These links are in line with another claim about Shackley, namely that by the 1980s he was running a private assassination team referred to by insiders as the "Fish Farm", along with his former JM/WAVE employee Rudi Enders. 100

Deputy director of operations Richard Helms was Shackley's boss at the time of the Kennedy assassination and would act as his mentor until at least the 1970s. 101 John McCone, a Bechtel partner who had become a good friend of Allen Dulles - the CIA director fired by Kennedy - in the late 1940s 102, was CIA director during the Kennedy assassination. All these men were close to the Rockefeller/Pilgrims Society group in New York, which represents the State Department and most of the major media outlets in the United States. Helms came from an elite Pilgrims Society family 103, was close to the aristocratic Mellon family (Pilgrims; close to the Rothschilds and British royal family) during his term as director of the CIA 104, joined Bechtel as a consultant in 1978 105 and is known to have visited Henry Kissinger's birthday party in 1983, along with David Rockefeller (Pilgrims), Peter Peterson (Pilgrims), George Shultz (Pilgrims), Walter Cronkite (Pilgrims), LBJ's widow and Helmut Schmidt. 106 Allen Dulles became an executive member of the Pilgrims Society and was a youth friend of the Rockefellers. John McCloy, who was appointed to the Warren Commission along with Allen Dulles, was another Pilgrim and major Rockefeller representative.

In other words, the assassination of John F. Kennedy and its subsequent cover up can only be laid at the doorstep of the CIA and the core of the CFR/Pilgrims group surrounding the Rockefellers, who had to agree with the assassination in order for their friends all over the State Department and the media to go along with the cover up. Time Life of Henry Luce (Pilgrims member, with his wife at the American Security Council), which bought the Zapruder film, was deeply tied to this network, for example. However, the operation itself appears to have been overseen by Shackley, as his JM/WAVE station is where all the leads point to. What follows is a list of these leads:

1. Iran Contra insider Gene Wheaton claimed that Shackley and his team ran the operation to kill Kennedy. He had received this information from his friend, Carl Jenkins, one of Shackley's closest covert operations experts since the early 1960s. 107 Already back in 1986, Wheaton and Jenkins were informing the rather questionable Daniel Sheehan and his Christic Institute about this. 108 Sheehan used the information to help expose Iran Contra, but always kept quiet about the involvement of Shackley's team in the assassination. Interesting detail: Jenkins was a member of the Assiociation of Former Intelligence Officers in the 2000-2001 period, when Shackley was still largely running it. 109
   
   
2. According to this very same questionable Daniel Sheehan, it was William Pawley who said on June 10, 1963: "Don't you worry, John [Martino]. We're gonna kill that motherfucker [JFK]." 110 Pawley was involved with the American Security Council and was in contact with Allen Dulles and Ted Shackley over Operation Tilt around the time of the assassination. Shackley had assigned one of his CIA officers, Rip Robertson, to oversee the operation. For decades Martino is said to have been involved in the Kennedy assassination at a lower level. 111 Rip Robertson may have been identified on a photograph taken during the Kennedy assassination, primarily because of his huge nose. Sheehan seems to be certain that the picture depicts Robertson and Grayston Lynch, another one of Shackley's special operations experts. Sheehan's claims need to be taken with a grain of salt, however. This also goes for his claim that David Morales was the shooter on the grassy knoll and was seen at the Ambassador Hotel. 112 Unsurprisingly, Sheehan claimed that the conspiracy to assassinate Kennedy was a relatively low level one, which did not have the backing of the CIA or State Department leadership.
   
   
3. Bradley Ayers was a junior CIA operative based at JM/WAVE in the early 1960s. He was less of a hardliner then his superiors and became an opponent of the Vietnam War. In the 1994/1995 period he claimed to Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) investigators that Ted Shackley, David Morales, Felix Rodriguez, Thomas Clines, Gordon Campbell, Grayston Lynch and Rip Robertson - all stationed at JM/WAVE in the early 1960s with him - were among the individuals he believed had "intimate operational knowledge of the circumstances surrounding the assassination". 113
   
   On the other hand, in 1995 Ayers spread disinformation to the ARRB, which recorded that "Ayers claims to have found in the course of his private investigative work, a credible witness who can put David Morales inside the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles on the night of June 5, 1968." 114 The 2007 documentary 'RFK Must Die' became the vehicle to bring this disinformation to the public at large. Literally all conspiracy evidence brought up in relation to the 1968 Bobby Kennedy assassination involves disinformation.
   
   
4. Good friends of David Morales, Robert Walton and Ruben Carbajal, claimed that David Morales said to them one night in 1973 that he had been involved in the murders on both John and Bobby Kennedy. 115 Morales had been working for Shackley since his JM/WAVE days and was one of his most trusted aides. He died from a heart attack at the time of the HSCA hearings. Carbajal assumes he was murdered by his CIA superiors for knowing too much about the agency's activities. However, Carbajal strenuously denied the Bradley Ayers and 'RFK Must Die' documentary's disinformation that David Morales was present inside the Ambassador Hotel when Bobby Kennedy was shot by Sirhan Sirhan. 116
   
   
5. There's evidence to show that in New Orleans Lee Harvey Oswald 117, Guy Banister and Sergio Arcacha Smith 118 were ran by David Atlee Phillips, a high level CIA officer who worked for Shackley at JM/WAVE. Phillips later established the AFIO, in which Shackley also became deeply involved. The person who tied Oswald and Phillips together (but apparently soon realized his mistake), Antonio Veciana, was shot in the head in September 1979. 119 HSCA commissioner Gaeton Fonzi was convinced that Maurice Bishop was indeed Phillips and found more evidence of that in later years. 120 And based on Fonzi's investigation, it's almost irrational not to assume that Phillips was Bishop. As for Banister and Arcacha, together with David Ferrie they formed the core of the anti-Castro CIA underground in New Orleans in which Oswald was involved for some time. Banister was the one who ran Oswald as pro-Castro activist in the months prior to Kennedy's death.
   
   
6. George Joannides, formerly chief of psychological operations at Shackley's JM/WAVE station, was the CIA's liaison to the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA). According to HSCA investigator Ed Lopez in 'RFK Must Die', Joannides was "the gatekeeper. He was the guy who stonewalled us." Unbeknownst to commission members, Joannides controlled the CIA-funded student directorate Oswald clashed with in New Orleans. 121 George Joannides may have also been present in the hotel where Robert Kennedy was killed in 1968, along with David Morales and Gordon Campbell. Former associates of his identified Joannides with above 90 percent certainty.
   
   
7. Mafia bosses most frequently implicated in the Kennedy assassination are Sam Giancana, Johnny Roselli, Santo Trafficante and Carlos Marcello. 122 The fact is that Roselli, Giancana and Trafficante were recruited by the CIA in 1960 to help in the effort to assassinate Fidel Castro. These men subsequently came to work with Bill Harvey and Shackley at JM/WAVE. Jack Ruby, as an agent of Giancana, was aiding these mobsters in their anti-Castro efforts. 123 Trafficante continued his association with Shackley in the Far East opium trafficking business. 124 Carlos Marcello, the major crime boss in Louisiana and Texas, had his own peculiar connections to the assassination. David Ferrie, one of Oswald's CIA-affiliated handlers, was an investigator for Marcello's lawyer, G. Wray Gill, and had acted as his pilot on at least one occasion. Oswald's uncle, Dutz Murret, with whom Oswald briefly stayed for some time in 1963, worked in Marcello's gambling network. Both Murret and the Dallas-based Jack Ruby in contact with Marcello lieutenant Nofio Pecora. 125 Obviously the FBI and Warren Commission ignored these leads, but how much more obvious do these ties need to get? And we haven't even mentioned the earlier discussed ties of Marcello and an unnamed top lieutenant to Hoover, Murchison and Sid Richardson through Hotel del Charro.
   
   
8. Besides David Ferrie and Guy Banister, oil man George de Mohrenschildt acted as another patron of Lee Harvey Oswald in the Dallas area in the period running up to the assassination. De Mohrenschildt, a friend of the earlier-discussed CIA-linked, ultraright Texas oil barons Clint Murchison, Sr., Sid Richardson, H.L. Hunt and Texas School Book Depository building owner and Civil Air Patrol co-founder D. Harold Byrd, himself also had numorous ties to the CIA. We already discussed this elite Dallas network, which largely operated around the Dallas Petroleum Club in which all these men maintained membership.
   
   What is also certain is that de Mohrenschildt was acquainted with George H. W. Bush, based on an address listed in his phone book apparently pre-1959, when Bush moved his family and business from Midland, Texas to Houston. Like de Mohrenschildt, Bush almost certainly also was an oil man freelancing for the CIA at the time of the Kennedy assassination. It even appears he himself has ties to the assassination, ties that closely overlap with those of de Mohrenschildt. 126 By the late 1970s Bush is known to have become a close associate of Ted Shackley. 127 Richard Helms claimed not to be familiar with Bush having been a CIA agent since the late 1950s, but certainly knew who de Mohrenschildt was. 128
   
   De Mohrenschildt's exact ties to Shackley's JM/WAVE group, or to Helms, are not entirely clear. Reportedly George H. W. Bush and even CIA officer David Atlee Phillips, who worked under Shackley at JM/WAVE, were also involved in de Mohrenschildt's Dallas Petroleum Club. 129 That would provide a clear and very obvious tie, which most likely also is correct. However, to this day, solid documentation on past membership of the Dallas Petroleum Club is lacking. Despite that, we know for certain that members as De Mohrenschildt and his oil baron friends maintained top level CIA connections and it is very clear that this network played a key role in managing the activities of Oswald in Dallas in the period before the assassination.
   
   

The Allen Dulles and "liberal CIA" connections to Oswald

The following CIA connection to Lee Harvey Oswald can be tied to Ted Shackley, as we shall see near the end of this section, but instead it might be more practical to discuss this information on its own and look at the connection to Allen Dulles, head of the CIA from 1953 to 1961. As already mentioned, Dulles should already be considered a suspect in the Kennedy assassination, as he was forced to pay the price for Kennedy's refusal to provide air support and eventually full-scale military support to the CIA-backed Bay of Pigs invaders. Also, his long-time subordinates and proteges (Helms, McCone) were running the CIA after he left and in case of Helms can be tied to the assassination. Therefore his presence on the Warren Commission is extremely suspect, of course. The information discussed here is in addition to this.

As is well-known, in Dallas in mid 1963 Lee Harvey Oswald's wife Marina hired a room from Ruth Hyde Paine, the wife of a certain Michael Paine. The Oswalds and Paines had been introduced to each other at a party on February 22, 1963, exactly nine months before Oswald assassinated Kennedy. The conduit for this introduction had been none other that Dallas oil man and elitist CIA asset George de Mohrenschildt.

In May 1963 Ruth Paine drove the Oswalds to New Orleans, where he became involved in both pro-Castro and anti-Castro activism 130, almost certainly on behalf of the CIA and FBI. 131 Years before Oswald had already served here in the Civil Air Patrol under bizarre CIA asset David Ferrie. In September she drove Marina back to Dallas again. Marina and their daughter June resided with Paine while Oswald soon after came to live at a boarding house because he had trouble finding a job. 132 Paine, however, soon found him a job at the Texas School Book Depository (TSBD), the building itself owned by the de Mohrenschildt friend and the Rockefeller/Dulles-tied D. Harold Byrd. A neighbor had suggested the job to Paine and she even phoned up TSBD manager Roy S. Truly to ask if he would interview Oswald. Oswald was hired the next day, on October 20 and proceeded to kill President Kennedy from this building a month later. The night before the assassination, Oswald stopped by unannounced at Paine's house, where his wife and two kids were living (one had just been born). It is here that he stored the rifle that he assassinated Kennedy with. 133

Here's where things really get interesting: Ruth Paine was married to Michael Paine 134, who was a son of Lyman Paine and Ruth Forbes Paine. 135 Both were close friends of Mary Bancroft, with whom they revolved in New York City's high society party circuit. 136 Ruth Paine and Bancroft together went on a trip to France in 1933. 137 During World War II, Bancroft was an intelligence officer who worked for OSS station chief in Switzerland Allen Dulles (a future Pilgrims Society executive). She also became Dulles' girlfriend, claiming he was the biggest love of her life until that point and that Dulles also was in love with her. Dulles' wife knew about the relationship, approved, with Bancroft explaining that she "remained close to them both until their deaths many years later, Allen in 1969 and Clover in 1974." Clover and Bancroft referred to themselves as the "killer whales", the only ones who could go against "sharks" as the Dulles brothers. 138 Bancroft was solid Eastern Establishment. Her daughter later married a son of Senator Robert Taft, a member of a Pilgrims Society family, with Allen Dulles giving the bride away. Bancroft also was very close to Henry Luce, the Pilgrims Society member and Time-Life owner who bought the Zapruder film of the Kennedy assassination.

To maybe put this into a better perspective: when Allen Dulles interviewed Lee Harvey Oswald friend Michael Paine for the Warren Commission in March 1964, no one knew that Paine's father and mother were close friends of his long-time lover Mary Bancroft, who also was besties with his wife. Of course, they weren't just lovers and friends, as Bancroft and Dulles were OSS/CIA. It makes one wonder to what extent Ruth Forbes Paine (who became Ruth Forbes Young in 1948) and her family as a whole also were recruited or used as assets by the Agency. After all, Michael Paine and wife Ruth were brought in touch with the Oswalds by George de Mohrenschildt, a first-rate, elitist CIA asset. When Ruth Paine contacted the Texas School Book Depository to inquire for a job, she essentially put Oswald under the wing of elite CIA asset D. Harold Byrd and American Legion commander Jack Charles Cason. And we're not even talking about Oswald's New Orleans network.

But as the above oversight demonstrates, there's more. Ruth Forbes Young, the close friend of Dulles lover Mary Bancroft and mother of crucial Oswald friend Michael Paine, divorced from Lyman Paine and in 1948 remarried to Arthur M. Young, a person who has already been discussed in some detail in ISGP's "liberal CIA" article. Why? Because in 1952 he, along with his new wife Ruth Forbes Young, set up the Foundation for the Study of Consciousness. 21 years later, in 1973, this couple founded the overlapping Institute for the Study of Consciousness at Berkeley. 139 While Ruth Paine (not to be confused with her mother-in-law Ruth Forbes Paine / Young) divorced from Michael Paine some time after they met the Oswalds, they remained friends and Michael Paine, who also was close to Oswald, worked for Ruth's new husband Arthur Young in the years when he met Oswald and even after continued to work at the same firm as Young: Bell Labs. 140

Key here is that for some time now ISGP has been making the case that Young's Foundation for the Study of Consciousness and closely overlapping groups as the Esalen Institute, in which Young was involved, and SRI International were controlled by "liberal CIA" assets whose expertise have been to create organized, systematic disinformation on topics as spirituality, UFOs and ancient history. CIA asset Laurance Rockefeller was deeply involved in Esalen from the beginning; the equally CIA-tied Bechtel family and many of their Bohemian Grove friends were patrons of SRI; and the Foundation for Consciousness Studies apparently had Arthur Young and a member of the Forbes family as wealthy patrons. As discussed many times by ISGP, the "researchers" in this network, many of whom appear on super-disinformative shows as Coast to Coast AM, are a bizarre bunch, to the point no one can tell if they are role-playing, possessed, or mind-controlled. In case of the Young-Forbes-controlled Institute for the Study of Consciousness, it was the chief inspiration behind Robert Temple's bogus theory that the Dogon tribe was visited by space aliens from the Sirius Star System.

Equally important, in the early 1950s Young had been vice chairman of Colonel Andrija Puharich's peculiar Round Table Foundation, which this author has to agree most likely was a tentacle of a CIA mind control experiment. Puharich, the Young couple, and even Alice Astor - whose brothers, father and cousins all belonged to the Pilgrims Society and whose brother Vincent had deep ties to the Rockefellers and top-level private intelligence networks 141 - were present at the initial December 31, 1952 channeling of "The Nine" Ennead gods of Ancient Egypt, an disinformative effort around which a minor cult was formed in the following decades, a cult that to an extent operated through the Esalen Institute. Puharich, however, is primarily known for having brought over Uri Geller, a con artist with highest level Mossad and CIA ties, from Israel to the Bechtel's SRI in 1971. Initially Geller was part of Puharich's Ennead channeling schemes as well. None of it should be believed. All of it appears to be very deliberately created disinformation for the masses.

To draw things back a little bit to Ted Shackley - if that is even necessary at this point - a certain Harold Chipman, allegedly a San Francisco Bay Area CIA station chief, was funding remote viewing work at SRI and later also put money into endeavors of Jack Sarfatti. 142 Both Sarfatti and (other) key members of SRI's remote viewing program were deeply involved with Arthur Young and his consciousness research foundation and overlapping groups. 143 Looking up what little information exists about Chipman, he actually served under Ted Shackley at the Lee Harvey Oswald-linked JM/WAVE CIA station in Miami. Not only that, he has been a protege of Shackley since the 1950s in Berlin (where Shackley in turn was a protege of Kennedy enemy Bill Harvey) and later served under Shackley in Vietnam as an insider to the murderous Phoenix Program. 144 All this, of course, makes the connection of Young and his wife to the Oswalds - and Allen Dulles - even more intriguing. I think it's pretty clear at this point who the main suspects are behind the Kennedy assassination.

Key plotters: LBJ, McCone, Helms, Hoover, Rockefeller?

The previous chapter on the close ties of former CIA director Allen Dulles and elitist "liberal CIA" assets to apparent handlers of the Oswald family in Dallas may already have given us some clues about who above Miami CIA station chief Ted Shackley and CIA deputy director of operations Richard Helms may have been involved in the operation to kill President Kennedy. Despite that, it might still be productive to philosophize a little about potential involvement of sitting government officials at the time of the Kennedy assassination. After all, it is only these officials who had the power to derail investigations or stop them from being carried out altogether.

Going through the list, we end up, first, with vice president Lyndon Baines Johnson. It makes sense that LBJ would have been on-board, because in case of Kennedy's death, he would become the most powerful man in the country. And while it is known that he pretty much despised Bobby Kennedy in particular, how would he react to a sudden assassination of President Kennedy without any foreknowledge of the plot? Maybe he gets scared for his own life and forces the FBI - ran by his friend, neighbor and fellow Kennedy hater J. Edgar Hoover - to figure out who is behind the assassination. That would be catastrophic to the conspirators. It's not even remotely credible that individuals as Shackley and Helms would have acted on their own without top-level backing.

So, LBJ at the very least had to have had a clue that the CIA was working to kill Kennedy. He may not have been told any details, but everybody knows how these things can go. Those around him knew his opinions. They were fully aware that LBJ, as well as close friend J. Edgar Hoover, hated Bobby Kennedy and also weren't too pleased with his brother, the president. It would have been rather easy for anyone to gauge whether or not LBJ and Hoover would go along with an assassination plot against the president. It could be as simple as describing a "hypothetically" successful communist plot against the president and have LBJ and Hoover explain how they would react to it. From there it's possible to get additional assurances. What would make these scenarios even more easy to discuss is the fact that the pacifist Kennedy was increasingly considered a problem to not just LBJ personally and Hoover's FBI, but also the CIA, Defense Department, and even the State Department. Even at the international level, many NATO allies would have been worried about Kennedy's embracement of Italian socialism and the like.

Sticking to LBJ, who would have approached him with such a question? It could have been anyone in the top tiers of government. It could have been Helms' boss, for example, CIA director John McCone. How would it be possible for Helms and Shackley to devise and mount a complex operation against Kennedy without the CIA director approving or authorizing it? There's no way, especially considering McCone was one of the Bechtel-Rockefeller boys - and both Bechtel and Rockefeller maintained deep ties to the CIA, CIA director Allen Dulles in particular, the presidential administrations on top of the CIA, and even some of the CIA assets with close ties to the Oswald couple. The Allen Dulles-linked Paine-Young couple, George de Mohrenschildt through the Dallas oil clique, Civil Air Patrol founder and TSBD building owner D. Harold Byrd and his cousin; future CIA director and U.S. president George H. W. Bush and others all come to mind. At the very least McCone's complete loyalty to the establishment had to be guaranteed for any major CIA operation against Kennedy to have taken place. Allen Dulles, of course, ended up on the shameful Warren Commission, which took over the conclusions of Hoover's FBI regarding the death of Kennedy without any further checking of the facts. Rockefeller man John McCloy and Rockefeller friend Gerald Ford were sitting right beside him on the commission.

Besides McCone and Dulles, national security advisor McGeorge Bundy, secretary of state Dean Rusk, and secretary of defense Robert McNamara should all be suspects of at the very least having had foreknowledge of the plot. Rusk and McNamara in particular would have considered many of JFK's pro-socialist and pro-nationalist policies an existential threat to the United States. In addition, because all of them stayed on under LBJ, all of them were pushing the Vietnam War, and all them were employed by the Rockefeller and Ford Foundation interests - the same top level interests that could be found on the Warren Commission. In 1965 David Rockefeller, a very close friend of Allen Dulles since at least the early 1950s and also a friend of Richard Helms, aided LBJ in the promotion of the Vietnam War through the elite lobby group Committee for an Effective and Durable Peace in Asia (CEDPA). Two years later LBJ tried to get Nelson Rockefeller, who also operated at the CIA oversight level, to run for president as his follow-up, against Nixon, Bobby Kennedy and even his own vice president Hubert Humphrey.

All the above ties are discussed in detail and with sources in ISGP's Pilgrims Society article, primarily in the chapters Early CIA ties, "the Company" and corporate coups, the The above-CIA network and The Cold War Rockefeller CIA network.

Below an oversight can be seen of the most important individuals tied to the 1963 JFK assassination. It was created years before this section was written and will undoubtedly be a little bit confusing, but it does list all the key names that the reader can investigate separately. The oversight basically makes the point that evidence for the assassination points to the Shackley group within the CIA and that at a higher level JFK administration officials with links to the Bechtel and Rockefeller interests should be regarded as the chief plotters behind the JFK assassination. And let's face it, who else could pull of a conspiracy of this magnitude and get away with it? Most likely no one.

What readers maybe should not forget is that Bobby Kennedy himself suspected that CIA director John McCone and vice president Lyndon Johnson had played a role in the assassination. A photo and testimony exists of Bobby holding something in his hand and allegedly confronting a startled LBJ right after the assassination with the question "Why did you have my brother killed?" 145 [145] While there's no absolute proof this confrontation took place, Bobby did acknowledge that he "asked McCone point blank if the CIA "had killed my brother, and I asked him in a way that he couldn't lie to me, and they hadn't."" 146 [146] The cryptic "asked him in a way he couldn't lie to me" possibly means he confronted McCone in a similar manner as LBJ in which he seems to have made it look like he had evidence of a conspiracy. What is certainly clear is that in private - and only in private - Bobby always questioned the official version of events. And not just Bobby. Aides to JFK and RFK, Kennedy's wife, Jackie; Senator Gary Hart and even LBJ himself, no one believed the Warren Commission's conclusion of a lone gunman. Kennedy's widow, Jackie, even warned Bobby not to run for president in 1968 because "the same thing would happen to him that had happened to her husband." Bobby did so anyway, told aides that he was going to reopen the Warren Commission's investigation if elected, and was promptly assassinated himself under strange circumstances. Tellingly, LBJ and Richard Helms had earlier opposed Bobby's efforts to get to the bottom of the conspiracy behind his brother. Hart also suspected Helms of involvement in the first Kennedy assassination. 147 And earlier we discussed that the Helms-Shackley clique also appears to have been involved in the murder of Bobby Kennedy.

JIM GARRISON'S TRIAL OF CLAY SHAW

Oliver Stone is the famous director of the pro-conspiracy movie JFK (1991). What is far less known is that certainly by 1998 Oliver Stone was a close associate of David Rockefeller, Paul Volcker, John Whitehead; CIA men Frank Carlucci (close to Ted Shackley) and James Schlesinger, and Marine Corps covert operations specialist and Bechtel partner General Jack Sheehan through the Americans for Humanitarian Trade With Cuba. 148 In 2006 Stone directed the anti-conspiracy movie World Trade Center, a decade later followed by a movie on Edward Snowden. By that time it was perfectly obvious that Stone is a total "liberal CIA" controlled opposition asset. 149

Oliver Stone's JFK movie was based on the equally enigmatic Jim Garrison trial. It started out interesting and did bring out a lot of new information, but ultimately Garrison ended up trying to prove involvement of Clay Shaw in the assassination with the most bizarre set of witnesses, among them a person he had shot up with sodium pentothal and exposed to hypnosis (the coroner who aided Garrison in this, Nicholas J. Chetta, soon died, along with two relatives); a convicted felon trying to get high on heroin at the time he made his observation; a person who claimed he was being mind controlled by the New York City police and was fingerprinting his daughter every day to make sure she was still the same person; etc. - all with the same overly convenient testimony that implicated Shaw and Ferrie together. Meanwhile, more interesting leads pointing to a link between Shaw and Ferrie, like the testimony of Herbert R. Wagner, Jr., were not followed up upon.

Because of this article's chapter The real sequence of shots and all variations, Garrison's conclusion that no less than 7 shots (!) were taken at the president, including from a sewer drain and the Dal-Tex building, are most easily to spot as pure disinformation. Based on witnesses and all other evidence, it appears there were 4 shots: 3 from Lee Harvey Oswald's position and 1 from the grassy knoll. The Warren Commission was forced to stick to 3 shots to keep the lone gunman theory alive. Any speculation on less than 3 or more than 4 shots, or from any other position as just indicated, absolutely makes zero sense and can safely be discarded as disinformation.

Even apart from these conclusions on the number of shots and the locations they came from, reading Garrison's papers it becomes very clear that he absolutely destroyed his own investigation. For instance, why are we still guessing about some of Banister's CIA and FBI ties, including to Shaw? Why didn't Garrison focus more on Shaw's directorship of the CIA's Permindex and Centro Mondiale Commerciale? 150 Why didn't Garrison focus on Shaw's long-time bosses at International House and the International Trade Mart? Besides the local newspaper barons, at least two important CIA-linked persons could be found here:

1. Theodore Brent, Shaw's patron and a director of the Ochsner Foundation 151, and;
2. Dr. Alton Ochsner of INCA, the Ochsner Clinic and Tulane University. 152

Ochsner was a friend of the Murchisons 153 and all groups he was involved with were linked to the darkest aspects of the CIA, including rumors of MK-ULTRA type child abuse. 154

Another bizarre coincidence is that the primary fundraiser for Garrison's private investigation was local oil man Joseph Rault, Jr., whose father, Rault, Sr., was a board member of International House. 155 As can be seen below, big CIA-linked New Orleans business was financing Jim Garrison's investigation. All this having been said, the overall conclusion of Garrison and the JFK movie that the CIA was behind the assassination is not at all bad. But the devil is in the details.

NOFPA: New Orleans Foreign Policy Association | IH/ITM: International House and International Trade Mart 156 | MVWTC: Mississippi Valley World Trade Council 157 | INCA: the American Security Council and Cercle-linked Information Council of the Americas* 158 | T & C: Truth and Consequences (financing committee for Garrison's investigation) 159 | Red color: linked to child abuse * | Blue color: Garrison's influential law partner and political mentor. So close that Garrison named one of his children after him. 160 Eustis Reily: employer of Oswald in New Orleans.

* Fenner was a big name at New Orleans Tulane University and named here as a central player in an MKULTRA-type child abuse network. On the Tulane board he was surrounded by several elite Rockefeller scientists and United Fruit executives (linked to the Rockefeller group). 161 There's every indication that Jim Garrison was a raging pedophile 162, which may explain why he torpedoed his own investigation with some of the incredible witnesses he could get his hand on.

There's absolutely no doubt that Clay Shaw was an important CIA operative, deeply involved in anti-communist fascist networks of the likes that have already been discussed at length on this site. It's surprising that Clay Shaw was not deeper involved with INCA. However, as should be clear from the previous chapter, his International House/International Trade Mart, including its New Orleans Foreign Policy Association, was a den of spooks. This was even more the case with two CIA front corporations he became involved with in 1958 through the International House/International Trade Mart: the secretive Swiss-based Permindex corporation and the Italy-based Centro Mondiale Commercial, which were exposed for having deep ties to the Mossad and European fascism, including the terrorist OAS that tried to assassinate President Charles de Gaulle on numerous occasions. 163

Shaw's personal notebook similarly reveals these "fascist international" ties, a network that is primarily explained in ISGP's articles on the American Security Council, Le Cercle and Opus Dei. His ties expanded to two members of the Borghese family, a family linked to an attempted fascist CIA coup in Italy through Prince Valerio Borghese and to America's UFO disinformation network through Princess Amanda Borghese. They also included Princess Jacqueline de Riquet de Caraman-Chimay, whose family is fingered in the Dutroux X-Dossiers as having organized elite child hunts, protected by CIA-linked Nazi militias, at their domain in southern Belgium. Coincidentally, during a search of Shaw's home, Garrison found hooks suspended from the ceiling with bloody palm prints all around. According to the maid, at least one person had died in the home. 164

The whole network around Clay Shaw and Permindex was super-elite. His Permindex firm was founded by Major Louis Bloomfield, a major Zionist linked to the Mossad and CIA who was a member of the elite 1001 Club, together with the British and French Rothschilds, the Rockefellers, Bechtels and royal houses of Europe.

Another 1001 Club member and Mossad agent was Tibor Rosembaum, who was the founder of the equally Swiss-based Banque de Credit Internationale (BCI). Although they later parted ways due to Rosenbaum's notoriety, he founded the BCI in 1958 - right after Permindex was founded - with fellow future 1001 Club member Edmond de Rothschild. The BCI is said to have held accounts of Permindex through which funds passed that were used in one of the OAS assassination attempts on French president Charles de Gaulle. 165 Much more widespread accusations have included that BCI was laundering funds for the Mossad and the Jewish-Italian mafia in the United States. Meanwhile, Rosenbaum held top positions in the Jewish Agency, the World Zionist Organisation and the World Mizrachi Movement.

Ignoring earlier-mentioned ties of the Murchison and Hunt families, other 1001 Club links to Permindex, the OAS, CIA and the Kennedy assassination run through 1001 Club members Mrs. Pierre Schlumberger and Schlumberger president Jean Riboud. The latter served as president and CEO of Schlumberger from 1965 to 1985, working alongside the chairman and overseas president (until 1969) Jean/John de Menil. Jean de Menil has been fingered as board member of Permindex and CMC, but sources are not rock-solid. 166 Quite bizarre, considering the importance of the information. The Agency has at least one file on Permindex, but refused to release it back in 1983 on grounds of "national security". 167 De Menil connection to Permindex and/or CMC only partly matters, because it was a Schlumberger weapons cache that Lee Harvey Oswald handlers David Ferrie and Guy Banister raided in early 1961. "Raided" might not be the best word, as the CIA simply handed them the key. 168 The weapons were originally meant for the OAS, which Schlumberger was supporting 169, but when were removed again to be used in the Bay of Pigs invasion. Thus it should be clear that Schlumberger served as yet another front for the CIA. In addition, Oswald handler Georges de Mohrenschildt was a friend of John de Menil 170, once again linking the Schlumberger's to the Kennedy assassination. Meanwhile, Mrs. Pierre Schlumberger was partying with de Rothschilds and Weils (also 1001 Club) in France 171, so we keep going in circles.

In 1962 the Frech government proved to Swiss authorities that Permindex was involved in financing the OAS, which had targeted De Gaulle for assassination. As a result, Permindex was expelled and moved to fascist-friendly South Africa. The only firm it subsequently listed in its internal phone book belonged to John S. Schlesinger, a Harvard-educated big business magnate who, coincidentally, would soon be invited to the 1001 Club as well. 172

Similiar to Clay Shaw, Oswald handler Guy Banister was situated in New Orleans, was working for the CIA 173, was linked to the Kennedy assassination, and was linked to the fascist-terrorist OAS. Apart from the Schlumberger heist, Guy Banister had a number of close associates, among them Maurice Brooks Gatlin, Sr. To Ramparts magazine in 1969 a confidente of Gatlin stated that at one point he was informed by Gatlin that he was about to transport $100,000 of CIA money to an OAS team involved in planning yet another assassination on French president Charles de Gaulle. Gatlin was among a number of individuals linked to the Kennedy assassination to die under strange circumstances. 174

It should be clear at this point that Clay Shaw was taking orders from the CIA's covert operations department under Shackley mentor Richard Helms. Guy Banister, David Ferrie and others around them were similarly taking orders. The details of the Houma heist appear to make clear how this CIA connection worked: these individuals would just receive a call from a CIA handler who would tell when where to go, who to meet, or what to pick up. Reportedly in Banister's case it was David Atlee Phillips, who has also been linked to Lee Harvey Oswald 175 and who served under Ted Shackley at JM/Wave.

Clay Shaw, Guy Banister, David Ferrie, Lee Harvey Oswald, Georges de Mohrenschildt and the Schlumbergers all operating as assets for the same small group of CIA covert operations clique under Helms and Shackley, with apparent CIA asset Jim Garrison zooming in on these genuine ties, only to distort them... maybe finally the JFK assassination starts to make sense...

What follows is an extensive list Grassy Knoll and some key Texas School Book Depository witness testimony. I disagree to an extent with the overall conclusions of the eyewitness studies referenced in note one of this article. It is often thought that scores of people fingered the grassy knoll as the location of the final shot, after which everybody ran over there. As far as I can see, events didn't progress in that manner on November 22. A lot of conclusions drawn by witnesses seems to involve mass psychology. Most people didn't know where the shots came from, as evidenced by the fact that only about 2 percent pointed in two different directions. What they did see was people close to the knoll react to what appeared to be one or more shots from behind the picket fence. This is the location almost everyone was looking at, as the presidential car had just passed the Texas School Book Depository when the shooting began. However, it is this small handful of witnesses close to the knoll that is very important.

Who are these witnesses? By far the most important were the Union Railroad workers on the triple underpass: Sam Holland, Walter Winborn, Richard Dodd, Frank Reilly, James Simmons, Thomas Murphy and Nolan Potter. Virtually every known person here reported seeing a burst of smoke come from underneath the trees, above the picket fence, when shots were fired at the president. This burst appears to have been confirmed by Lee Bowers, the only person situated behind the picket fence. Half of these persons were not invited to testify before the Warren Commission and half of those that were, were not asked about the smoke puffs. In three cases, those of triple underpass witnesses Austin Miller, Walter Winborn, Nolan Potter, it is more than clear that the FBI wanted nothing to do with testimonies about these smoke puffs.

While no more reports of smoke, at least five Secret Service agents traveling immediately behind Kennedy's car were of the opinion that the final shot or multiple shots had come from the grassy knoll. Their names are Paul Landis, Forrest Sorrels, David Powers, Tip O'Neill and Kenny O'Donnell. Publicly all of them surrendered to the official story, as would be expected of Secret Service agents and police officers, but in front of the Warren Commission they did explain their thoughts of the moment. Others privately criticized the Warren Commission's conclusions on this aspect.

Three other witnesses quite essential in establishing a grassy knoll shot were Bill Newman, Charles Brehm and Jean Hill, all located just a few feet from the president's limousine at the time of the final headshot. All three fingered the knoll. Especially Newman and Brehm were really specific about what they saw when interviewed by the media right after the incident. Newman stated on television that "a gunshot from apparently behind us hit the president in the side of the temple. ... Apparently from back up on the Hill." Brehm's account appeared in the Dallas Times Herald the same day of the assassination:

The railroad workers on the triple underpass actually ran toward the knoll where they thought the shooter was, along with two police officers. They appear to have had a view on the back of the picket fence within about 60-70 seconds. They didn't find any suspects, but what they did find was two sets of footprints in the mud right at the location where the smoke had emanated from. At this exact same spot they noticed mud on the bumper of a car, where obviously someone had been looking over the fence. They also found a collection of cigarette buts. Police officer Seymour Weitzman confirmed these findings.

Combine all these statements with the Zapruder Film and there's a pretty decent body of evidence that there was a second shooter located behind the picket fence. My primary question that remains is how the shooter got away. One would think that the FBI and Warren Commission would have been interested in talking to witness J.C. Price, who was looking from high up on the other side of Dealey Plaza. Immediately after the shooting, Price explained to the Sheriff's Office: "I saw one man [behind the picket fence] run towards the passenger cars on the railroad siding after the volley of shots." The FBI and Warren Commission never spoke to Price.

The strangest part, perhaps, is that Lee Bowers, located in a tower behind the fence, claimed to have never seen anybody run away. Apparently he didn't see the man reported by J.C. Price, but he also didn't see the peculiar "Secret Service" agent with his "sports shirt, sport pants, auto mechanic's hands [and] dirty fingernails" encountered by police officer Joe Smith immediately after he moved into the area. That hardly makes sense, looking at the view Bowers had from his office:

In fact, it doesn't make sense that Bowers was never asked in detail what exactly he had seen behind the picket fence. Apparently he didn't see anyone; just two persons in front of the fence. He vividly described cars with stickers of Barry Goldwater, an ultraright American Security Council-linked political candidate and enemy of Kennedy, enter the area in the half hour before the shooting. But when the shooting itself occurs it is all vagueness, certainly at the Warren Commission. Only to Mark Lane he claimed to have seen "a flash of light or smoke or something which caused me to realize that something out of the ordinary had occurred there." But Lane manipulated the testimony, making it seem as if Bowers saw two persons behind the picket fence, while in a previously unreleased segment of Lane's transcript, Bowers appears to say he saw no one behind the picket fence. Anyone located there would be pretty well tucked away underneath the trees and behind a car, but at some point would have had to come out.

Unfortunately, Lee Bowers died three years after the Kennedy assassination after he drove into a concrete bridge pillar. Because there was one car with him in an otherwise deserted road when the accident happened, and because this car ignored the crash, I keep open the possibility that Bowers may have been assassinated. I actually consider many possibilities, but in the end, who can really tell. Researchers (other than CIA asset Lane) should have carefully compared the accounts of J.C. Price, police officer Joe Smith, the railroad workers and other witnesses moving into the area. This has not been done, and at this point it is half a century too late.

In a sense, the same thing is true for the Texas School Book Depository. There are a dozen reasons to assume that Oswald did it: his CIA background, his employment since a month, him knowing the building and routines of the workers, his indifference towards the Kennedy parade, his absence before and during the shooting, him running, him last being seen less than 3 minutes after the shooting, and more. And the only witness who may have seen him run out of the back of the building, James Worrell, dies in a motorcycle crash two months after Bowers. Two other witnesses claim to have never seen anyone run out of the back of the building. But... In the testimony of Amos Euins we find another reference to a person who saw someone run out of the back of the building. So who is right? How did Oswald get out of the building? The packed front door? Nobody saw him here. How bizarre is that? Even stranger is the fact that key witnesses as Sam Holland, Bill Newman and Jean Hill have been changing their testimonies a little on key issues. But that is for another segment.

Conclusion: The theory of a grassy knoll shooter seems to be an open and shut case until one takes a look at the testimony of Lee Bowers. If he would have seen someone walk or run away from the location where a burst of smoke was spotted, we basically would have nailed the case. But now doubt will linger. We cannot fully explain how the grassy knoll shooter got away without being seen. The testimonies don't match on this crucial issue.

In addition, photos of the triple underpass at the moment Kennedy is shot reveal about half a dozen individuals that were closer to the parking lot than Sam Holland and his railroad men. We don't know who these persons are; not even Craig Ciccone has listed them on his detailed map with witness locations. They have never been identified. And that's strange, because it appears they were in a position to see a second shooter run away. Add to this Lee Bowers' vague account and Sam Holland seeing a shooting sequence in Mark Lane's video that couldn't possibly have happened and I'm quite certain: this is what my follow-up research would have focused on. That is, if this was half a century ago.

WITNESSES TO TSBD SHOT

1. James Worrell, Jr., in front of the TSBD, to the Warren Commission: "Well, when I heard the first shot it was too loud to be a firecracker, I knew that, because there was quite a big boom, and I don't know, just out of nowhere, I looked up like that, just straight up. ... I saw about 6 inches of the gun, the rifle. It had - well it had a regular long barrel but it had a long stock and you can only see maybe 4 inches of the barrel, and I could see -- ... I looked to see where he was aiming and after the second shot and I have seen the President slumping down in the seat... I looked up again and turned around and started running and saw it fire a third time, and then... Oh, yes. Just as I got to the corner of Exhibit 360, I heard the fourth shot."
2. Howard Leslie Brennan, looking towards the TSBD, Warren Commission: "[I looked at] the Texas Book Store Building windows. I observed quite a few people in different windows. In particular, I saw this one man on the sixth floor which left the window to my knowledge a couple of times. ... Not on that floor [did I see anybody else]. There was no other person on that floor that ever came to the window that I noticed. There were people on the next floor down, which is the fifth floor, colored guys. ... Well, then something, just right after this explosion, made me think that it was a firecracker being thrown from the Texas Book Store. And I glanced up. And this man that I saw previous was aiming for his last shot. ... Well, as it appeared to me he was standing up and resting against the left window sill, with gun shouldered to his right shoulder, holding the gun with his left hand and taking positive aim and fired his last shot. As I calculate a couple of seconds. He drew the gun back from the window as though he was drawing it back to his side and maybe paused for another second as though to assure hisself that he hit his mark, and then he disappeared. ... I am not an expert on guns. It was, as I could observe, some type of a high-powered rifle. ... I do not know if it had a scope or not. ... To my best description, a man in his early thirties, fair complexion, slender but neat, neat slender, possibly 5-foot 10. ... Oh, at--I calculated, I think, from 160 to 170 pounds. ... Light colored clothes, more of a khaki color."
3. Amos Lee Euins, immediately below the "sniper's nest", across the TSBD, Warren Commission: "Then I was standing here, and as the motorcade turned the corner, I was facing, looking dead at the building. And so I seen this pipe thing sticking out the window. I wasn't paying too much attention to it. Then when the first shot was fired, I started looking around, thinking it was a backfire. Everybody else started looking around. Then I looked up at the window, and he shot again. So--you know this fountain bench here, right around here. Well, anyway, there is a little fountain right here. I got behind this little fountain, and then he shot again. ... The man in the window. I could see his hand, and I could see his other hand on the trigger, and one hand was on the barrel thing. ... I believe there was four [shots], to be exact. ... After he shot the first two times, I was just standing back here. And then after he shot again, he pulled the gun back in the window. And then all the police ran back over here in the track vicinity. ... I seen a bald spot on this man's head, trying to look out the window. He had a bald spot on his head. I was looking at the bald spot. ... [The police] got all the way around the building. And then after that, well, he seen another man. Another man told him he seen a man run out the back. No, sir [don't know who he was]. He was a construction man working back there."
4. Arnold Rowland, Warren Commission: "We looked and at that time I noticed on the sixth floor of the building that there was a man back from the window, not hanging out the window. He was standing and holding a rifle. This appeared to me to be a fairly high-powered rifle because of the scope and the relative proportion of the scope to the rifle, you can tell about what type of rifle it is. You can tell it isn't a .22, you know, and we thought momentarily that maybe we should tell someone but then the thought came to us that it is a security agent. We had seen in the movies before where they have security men up in windows and places like that with rifles to watch the crowds, and we brushed it aside as that, at that time, and thought nothing else about it until after the event happened. ... Yet this was on the west corner of the building, the sixth floor, the first floor--second floor down from the top... He was rather slender in proportion to his size. ... light complexioned, but dark hair. ... He had on a light shirt, a very light-colored shirt, white or a light blue or a color such as that. This was open at the collar. I think it was unbuttoned about halfway, and then he had a regular T-shirt, a polo shirt under this, at least this is what it appeared to be. He had on dark slacks or blue jeans... I would say about 140 to 150 pounds. ... Then approximately 5 seconds, 5 or 6 seconds, the second report was heard, 2 seconds the third report. After the second report, I knew what it was... No; I did not [look back at the window after the shots]. In fact, I went over toward the scene of the railroad yards myself. "
5. Harold Norman, one of black guys immediately below the "sniper's nest", Warren Commission: "I believe it was his right arm, and I can't remember what the exact time was but I know I heard a shot, and then after I heard the shot, well, it seems as though the President, you know, slumped or something, and then another shot and I believe Jarman or someone told me, he said, "I believe someone is shooting at the President," and I think I made a statement "It is someone shooting at the President, and I believe it came from up above us." Well, I couldn't see at all during the time but I know I heard a third shot fired, and I could also hear something sounded like the shell hulls hitting the floor and the ejecting of the rifle, it sounded as though it was to me. ... Yes; I believe the first [shot hit the president]. ... I didn't see any falling but I saw some in Bonnie Ray Williams hair. ... I believe Jarman told him that it was in his hair first. Then I, you know, told him it was and I believe Jarman told him not to brush it out his hair but I think he did anyway. ... merely told him that I heard three shots because I didn't have any idea what time it was."
6. Norman Williams, one of black guys immediately below the "sniper's nest", Warren Commission: Backs up Harold Norman.
7. Bonnie Ray Williams, one of black guys immediately below the "sniper's nest", Warren Commission: Backs up Harold Norman.
8. James Jarman, one of black guys immediately below the "sniper's nest", Warren Commission: "A backfire or an officer giving a salute to the President. And then at that time I didn't, you know, think too much about it. And then the second shot was fired, and that is when the people started falling on the ground and the motorcade car jumped forward, and then the third shot was fired right behind the second one. Well, after the third shot was fired, I think I got up and I run over to Harold Norman and Bonnie Ray Williams, and told them, I said, I told them that it wasn't a backfire or anything, that somebody was shooting at the President. ... Hank said, Harold Norman, rather, said that he thought the shots had came from above us, and I noticed that Bonnie Ray had a few debris in his head. It was sort of white stuff, or something, and I told him not to brush it out, but he did anyway. ... Yes, sir [3 shots].".

WITNESSES AT THE PARKING LOT, TRIPLE UNDERPASS AND TERMINAL ANNEX BUILDING:

MOTORCADE WITNESSES TO KNOLL SHOT:

WITNESSES LOCATED ON THE OPPOSITE SIDE OF THE STREET, FACE TOWARDS KNOLL (30-70 YARDS AWAY):

WITNESSES WITH BACK AND RIGHT SIDE TOWARDS THE KNOLL AND PARKING LOT (ONLY THE CLOSEST ONES):

WITNESSES LOCATED MORE TOWARDS THE WEST, BETWEEN TSBD AND KNOLL, WITH BACK AND RIGHT SIDE TO KNOLL:

TSBD KNOLL "WITNESSES":

UNEXPLAINED SECRET SERVICE AGENT

Excludes claims that were made in later decades.

The real sequence of shots and all variations

While it's hardly important to understand the big picture, maybe anno 2014 it's about time that someone points out that every offical investigative body and prominent "independent" researcher appears to be wrong about the sequence of shots fired on November 22, 1963.

The first thing the reader needs to do is to watch various online copies of the Zapruder film: frame count, full speed, slowed down, stabilized, non-stabilized, zoomed in, panoramic, etc. - a luxury the public didn't have from 1973, when the Zapruder film first became public, until well into the Youtube era of the 2000s. Watch it a hundred times. Write down what you see. Most likely you will quickly agree with Z222 and Z313 as clear bullet impacts, give or take a frame. That's two out of four shots that we can explain without needing the FBI or any outside government agency with multi-million dollar equipment.

Now, someone else was wounded that day: Texas governor John B. Connally, sitting immediately in front of Kennedy. Look again at the Zapruder film and try to figure out when he was shot. To make it a bit easier, here's what Connally said in his first interview from the hospital on November 27, 1963:

Clearly Connally forgets to mention that he first turned over his right shoulder. He does explain that he saw the president hit by the first shot, before he was hit. April 21, 1964, six months later, he told the Warren Commission:

While the Zapruder film reveals that Connally was looking straight at Kennedy after turning over his right shoulder, once again Connally explains he is hit by the second bullet. Connally's wife stated that same day that Kennedy was hit by the first bullet and her husband by the second:

Witnesses standing right next to the president's car when the first shot was fired also strongly indicate that Kennedy was hit by the first bullet. Some examples:

1. Philip Willis, right next to president's car when shot in the neck, Warren Commission: "I having been in World War II, and being a deer hunter hobbyist, I would recognize a high-powered rifle immediately. ... Three shots. No, sir [no doubt at all]. ... The three shots were fired approximately about 2 seconds apart... I knew something tragic had happened, and the shots didn't ring out long like a rifle shot that is fired into midair in a distance. I knew it hit something... I was more concerned about the shots coming from that building [TSBD]. The minute the third shot was fired, I screamed, hoping the policeman would hear me, to ring that building because it had to come from there. Being directly across the street from the building, made it much more clear to those standing there than the people who were on the side of the street where the building was. ... I felt certain. I even looked for smoke, and I knew it came from high up. ... I even observed the clock on top of the building, it was 12:33 when I looked up there. ... When I took slide No. 4, the President was smiling and waving and looking straight ahead, and Mrs. Kennedy was likewise smiling and facing more to my side of the street. When the first shot was fired, her head seemed to just snap in that direction, and he more or less faced the other side of the street and leaned forward, which caused me to wonder, although I could not see anything positively. It did cause me to wonder. ... Across the street from Elm Street on the same side as the School Book Depository, which goes down the hill toward the underpass, and the policemen started going over there, called to see if someone, evidently thinking it came from that direction, and then is when I started to ring this building. I knew it came from high above directly across the street from me, and that is the one thing I was absolutely positive about."
2. Linda K. Willis, right next to president's car when shot in the neck, Warren Commission, July 22, 1964: "When the first one hit, well, the President turned from waving to the people, and he grabbed his throat, and he kind of slumped forward, and then I couldn't tell where the second shot went. ... I was right across from the sign that points to where Stemmons Expressway is [that briefly obscures JFK until he is hit in the throat at Z-225]. I was directly across when the first shot hit him. ... I was right in line with the sign and the car, and I wasn't very far away from him, but I couldn't tell from where the shot came. ... Yes [I heard more shots after the president was hit]; the first one, I heard the first shot come and then he slumped forward, and then I couldn't tell where the second shot went, and then the third one, and that was the last one that hit him in the head. ... No [I didn't instantly know it was a rifle shot]; when the first shot rang out, I thought, well, it's probably fireworks, because everybody is glad the President is in town. Then I realized it was too loud and too close to be fireworks, and then when I saw, when I realized that the President was falling over, I knew he had been hit. But I didn't know how badly."
3. Jack Franzen, statement to the FBI on November 24, 1963 (wife testified a day later, stating virtually the same): "Mr. FRANZEN advised he and his wife and small son were standing in the grass area west of Houston Street and south of Elm Street at the time the President's motorcade arrived at that location at approximately 12:30 PM on November 22, 1963. He said he heard the sound of an explosion which appeared to him to come from the President's car and noticed small fragments flying inside the President's car and immediately assumed that someone had tossed a firecracker inside the automobile. He heard a second and third and possibly a fourth explosion and recognized these sounds as being shots fired from some firearm. At the same time he noticed blood appearing at the top and sides of the head of President Kennedy. He noticed a colored family consisting of a man, woman and small child nearby and at the sound of these shots the man picked up the small boy and ran with the woman west on Elm Street toward the overpass [thus seemingly not expecting a shooter at the knoll]. During the ensuing confusion he remembers looking at the side of the building occupied by the Texas School Book Depository, located across Elm Street from his position but does not remember seeing anything of a suspicious nature with regard to that building. He noticed the men, who were presumed to be Secret Service Agents, riding in the car directly behind the President's car, unloading from the car, some with firearms in their hands, and noticed police officers and these plain clothesmen [sic] running up the grassy slope across Elm Street from his location and toward a wooded and bushy area located across Elm Street from him. Because of this activity he presumed the shots which were fired came from the shrubbery or bushes toward which these officers appeared to be running."
4. Mrs. Jack Franzen, statement to the FBI on November 24, 1963 (wife testified a day later, stating virtually the same): "She advised shortly after the President's automobile passed by on Elm Street near where she and her family were standing, she heard a noise which sounded to her as if someone had thrown a firecracker into the President's automobile. She advised at approximately the same time she noticed dust or small pieces of debris flying from the President's automobile. She advised she heard two other sounds which sounded like shots from a firearm and noticed blood appearing on the side of President KENNEDY's head. She does not remember looking at the building housing the Texas School Book Depository (TSBD); however, she stated this building was across Elm Street from the position where she was standing, and she may have looked toward the building. She advised the President's automobile continued on down Elm Street at a higher rate of speed, and she observed police officers and plain-clothes men, whom she assumed were Secret Service Agents, searching an area adjacent to the TSBD building, from which area she assumed the shots which she heard had come."
5. Harold Norman, one of black guys immediately below the "sniper's nest", Warren Commission: "I believe it was his right arm, and I can't remember what the exact time was but I know I heard a shot, and then after I heard the shot, well, it seems as though the President, you know, slumped or something, and then another shot and I believe Jarman or someone told me, he said, "I believe someone is shooting at the President," and I think I made a statement "It is someone shooting at the President, and I believe it came from up above us." Well, I couldn't see at all during the time but I know I heard a third shot fired, and I could also hear something sounded like the shell hulls hitting the floor and the ejecting of the rifle, it sounded as though it was to me. ... Yes; I believe the first [shot hit the president]."
6. Jean Newman, standing with her back and right side about 40 yards away from the knoll, on November 22, 1963: "I was standing right on this side of the Stemmons Freeway sign, about half-way between the sign and the edge of the building on the corner. I was by myself, there were other people around watching the motorcade. The motorcade had just passed me when I heard that I thought was a firecracker at first, and the President had just passed me, because after he had just passed, there was a loud report, it just scared me, and I noticed that the President jumped, he sort of ducked his head down and I thought at the time that it probably scared him, too, just like it did me, because he flinched, like he jumped. I saw him put his elbows like this, with his hands on his chest."

Back in April 1964 these testimonies were not much of a problem. The initial sequence of shots as determined by the FBI and Warren Commission was very straightforward: the first shot hit President Kennedy around Z222, the second shot hit Governor Connally, and the third hit Kennedy in the head. All three shots came from behind and were fired by Oswald.

Things soon became more complicated for the FBI and Warren Commission. On July 28, 1964 James Tague testified to the Warren Commission about haven been hit by debris from a curb struck by a bullet. A major problem arose: now the FBI and Warren Commission had to figure out how to explain four bullet impacts with Oswald only having fired a maximum of three shots.

The solution: the Magic Bullet. Instead of acknowledging the obvious implication that four shots were fired, Warren Commission counselor Arlen Specter, later of the influential Senate Intelligence Committee, proposed the idea of one bullet causing a total of seven wounds in Kennedy and Connally. For rather obvious reasons it has always been controversial, but the fact that the Zapruder film, as well as the Connallys and a number of witnesses, clearly demonstrate that Kennedy and Connally were NOT hit by the same bullet, as has just been demonstrated, makes it rather unproductive to give the theory any further attention here.

In any case, this time around the Warren Commission decided that the first shot missed, the second shot hit both Kennedy and Connally, and the third and still final shot hit Kennedy in the head. The first shot had to miss, because the angle would be so steep that even the Warren Commission wouldn't be able to sell this magic bullet. From the report it is clear that the commission was grasping at straws. To calculate trajectories it still had to make use of several witnesses whose testimonies otherwise indicated that the President was hit by the first shot.

Whether or not Connally had foreknowlegde of the information ultimately relayed by James Tague, what has always certainly been very convenient to the Warren Commission is that Connally, in contrast to his wife and his earliest testimony, didn't recall seeing Kennedy hit by the first shot. He tried to see Kennedy, couldn't, and was then shot himself, followed by another shot that hit Kennedy in the head. Because of the change in Connally's testimony, the Warren Commission was able to conclude:

What about Connally's initial statement? What about his wife? What about a variety of witnesses? What about the Zapruder Film? Which had obviously been locked away for good reason. Look at the Zapruder film again. It shows:

1. Connally hears a shot (Z224).
2. Begins to turn over his right shoulder (Z238).
3. Clearly sees Kennedy is hit in the throat, as does his wife (Z273).
4. Turns the other way to see Kennedy better (Z294).
5. Misses Kennedy's headshot while turning (Z313).
6. Is hit in the back during the middle of his turn when he is looking to front and slightly to the left (Z317).
7. Gets trusted forward when hit (Z317).
8. His wife almost immediately pulls him onto her lap (Z337).

Clearly the Magic Bullet is dead wrong. At Z310 and even a little beyond that Connally is still in the process of turning without being hit. Kennedy has been hit 4.8 seconds ago. But Connally is also wrong. He always claimed he was hit by the second bullet, pushed forward, and fell onto his wife's lap. This doesn't happen at all until Z317, 0.22 ms after Kennedy gets shot in the head. Quite possibly Oswald, assuming he was the shooter, would have hit Kennedy in the back, if a knoll shot hadn't pushed the president's head and body to the left. Kennedy was pushed aside and as a result of a bullet that was pretty much already traveling Connally was hit.

It should be very clear why Connally testified he was hit before Kennedy's final headshot. If he would have disclosed, or if the Zapruder Film would have disclosed, that he was hit at virtually the same moment as Kennedy, the FBI and the Warren Commission would have had to acknowledge that a second shooter was present at Dealey Plaza. Oswald can't fire two bullets within 0.22 ms. Without question, someone else would have had to be blamed, whether it be a friend of Oswald, the mafia, or Castro.

Whatever Connally's reasons, he wasn't honest about the moment he was hit. And neither was his wife. Well, in a sense they were right that Kennedy was hit first, followed by Connally during the exact moment in his turn back that he described, but the process of turning lasted longer. The hilarious thing is that I recently saw a documentary (don't remember which channel anymore, but very mainstream) in which Connally describes the moment he was hit, how he was trust forward. What aspect of the Zapruder film does documentary show its audience? Z317 and further. The makers did make sure to zoom in on Connally in order to hide the fact that Kennedy as already shot in the head. Smart.

We are actually not entirely done. At this point we have explained shots 1, 3 and 4. Shot 1 hit Kennedy in the neck, as the Connallys and others observed. Shot 3, which hit Kennedy in the head, is the least controversial. Then there's shot 4 (no. 3 from the TSBD) hitting Connally in the back. That leaves shot 2 as the one that missed, coincidentally the exact shot James Tague said hit him. In the oversight of witnesses I have drawn in my estimated trajectory of the second bullet. My guess is it ricocheted from the presidential vehicle and hit two curbs, actually located perfectly in line with the approximate time of the second shot.

To me, this is the only sequence that fits all the evidence.

The only other official investigation into the Kennedy Assassination is the the House Select Committee on Assassinations in the 1976-1979 period. It was set up after growing criticism on the Warren Commission, the CIA and FBI about its conduct against anti-Vietnam War activists, and, very important, the first public showing of the Zapruder film in 1975.

In almost every instance the HSCA did a much more thorough job than the Warren Commission. It especially revealed a lot of mafia ties of Jack Ruby that the Warren Commission had ignored. No surprise there that most of Ruby's mafia bosses and associates were offed shortly before they made it in front of the committee. The committee also harshly criticized the FBI's handling of Jack Ruby's polygraph test.

Probably the biggest coup of the HSCA was its eventual conclusion that there is a greater than 95 percent probability that a second shooter was located at the knoll who fired the third of four shots. But their bizarre conclusions regarding the exact moments of the shots or the length of the entire sequence make no sense, as well as their conclusion that the knoll shot most likely missed. It is well known, however, that there was major political pressure and the conclusion of a second shooter is already a miracle.

Of course, we also have "independent" investigators as Mark Lane and Jim Garrison. Lane simply kept backing the original non-Magic Bullet Warren Commission sequence, but added a fourth shot that missed. The Warren Commission itself, of course, couldn't admit to a 4th shot and went the Magic Bullet way. This caused a lot of debate, but in the end both were manipulations as John Connally was hit only after JFK's final headshot. Bizarrely, Lane got key triple overpass witness Sam Holland to testify that Connally was hit much earlier than he really was. Something similar seems to have happened with Bill Newman during the Jim Garrison trial.

The Jim Garrison investigation and subsequent trial was really a joke. And so is his proposed sequence of shots. They came from the Dal-Tex Building shots, from the sewer and there where up to six of them. It's pure disinformation. Many of his witnesses were completely fake. His only accurate conclusion is that the CIA most likely was involved.

Despite second shooter conclusion, HSCA's echolocation study is unreliable

It's quite unfortunate that due to time constraints while writing the initial article, that in the introduction section of this article I partly relied on the HSCA echo-location study. It's a very strange happening. While the study appears to be accurate and certainly very thorough - in complete contrast to skeptical arguments - there also appears to be something very wrong with it. When I load the shooting sequence in Adobe Audition, it's impossible to match the tape with the Zapruder film. At 8.5 seconds it's about 3 seconds too long. There's 6.5 seconds between the second and third shot. That's ridiculous. The HSCA should have known this, because they calculated the same frames as I did, Z168 and Z195, when the first two shots should have taken place if the dictabelt is relied on. But, as will be discussed in The real sequence of shots and all variations, that's a completely impossible. Kennedy was hit with the first shot at Z222, which is clear as day with modern, high quality, stabilized, slow motion, frame-counting copies of the Zapruder film. The really bizarre aspect is actually that the approximate sequence is very, very correct. It's as if someone just stretched the tape a little bit. It's really strange. All these national security interests had to do was point out that the shooting sequence could never have been 8.5 seconds and that would have been it. But they didn't. Why is that?

Who really knows what's going on. Clearly the HSCA was under great pressure when its investigators under Robert Grodon reached the conclusion that the knoll shot actually was the one that missed! A first shot at Z168 and a missed knoll shot... try and figure that one out.

Luckily, the HSCA did bring out a lot of additional information on Lee Harvey Oswald, Jack Ruby, mafia connections, the CIA and the overall Cold War geopolitical situation in the United States at the time.

Notes

1. It's possible to find at least 50 or 60 witness testimonies on the internet at various locations (which are collected here). Major analyses of witness testimonies:
   *) history-matters.com/analysis/Witness/Sort216Witness.htm: "216 Witnesses to the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Sorted by Source of Shots. 216 Witnesses. 52 Knoll 24%. 48 Depository 22%. 5 Knoll & Depository 4%. 4 Elsewhere 2%. 37 Could Not Tell 17%. 70 Not Asked 32%." (Also explains that non-government employees showed a much higher ratio of witnesses who heard shots at the grassy knoll (twice as high instead of three times lower). In many cases extensive testimonies of the witnesses here can be found freely on the net.
   *) Craig Ciccone, 'Master List of Witnesses in Dealey Plaza' (the most extensive): "Ciccone's study concluded that, out of 326 total identified witnesses, 90 [28%] were for the Grassy Knoll, 46 [14%] were for the Depository and 6 [2%] felt shots came from both locations."
   *) 1968, Josiah Thompson, 'Six Seconds in Dallas': 64 total witnesses who pointed out the location of shots. Knoll: 33 witnesses (51.6%). Depository: 25 witnesses (39.1%). Two directions: 4 witnesses (6.3%). Other: 2 witnesses (3.1%).
2. March 26, 2001, Washington Post, 'Study Backs Theory of 'Grassy Knoll': New Report Says Second Gunman Fired at Kennedy': "The House Assassinations Committee may have been right after all: There was a shot from the grassy knoll. That was the key finding of the congressional investigation that concluded 22 years ago that President John F. Kennedy's murder in Dallas in 1963 was "probably . . . the result of a conspiracy." A shot from the grassy knoll meant that two gunmen must have fired at the president within a split-second sequence. Lee Harvey Oswald, accused of firing three shots at Kennedy from a perch at the Texas School Book Depository, could not have been in two places at once. A special panel of the National Academy of Sciences subsequently disputed the evidence of a fourth shot, contained on a police dictabelt of the sounds in Dealey Plaza that day. The panel insisted it was simply random noise, perhaps static, recorded about a minute after the shooting while Kennedy's motorcade was en route to Parkland Hospital. A new, peer-reviewed article in Science and Justice, a quarterly publication of Britain's Forensic Science Society, says the NAS panel's study was seriously flawed. It says the panel failed to take into account the words of a Dallas patrolman that show the gunshot-like noises occurred "at the exact instant that John F. Kennedy was assassinated." In fact, the author of the article, D.B. Thomas, a government scientist and JFK assassination researcher, said it was more than 96 percent certain that there was a shot from the grassy knoll to the right of the president's limousine, in addition to the three shots from a book depository window above and behind the president's limousine. G. Robert Blakey, former chief counsel to the House Assassinations Committee, said the NAS panel's study always bothered him because it dismissed all four putative shots as random noise -- even though the three soundbursts from the book depository matched up precisely with film of the assassination and other evidence such as the echo patterns in Dealey Plaza and the speed of Kennedy's motorcade. "This is an honest, careful scientific examination of everything we did, with all the appropriate statistical checks," Blakey said of Thomas's work. "It shows that we made mistakes, too, but minor mistakes. The main thing is when push comes to shove, he increased the degree of confidence that the shot from the grassy knoll was real, not static. We thought there was a 95 percent chance it was a shot. He puts it at 96.3 percent. Either way, that's 'beyond a reasonable doubt.' " The sounds of assassination were recorded at Dallas police headquarters when a motorcycle patrolman inadvertently left his microphone switch in the "on" position, deluging his transmitting channel with what seemed to be motorcycle noise. Using sophisticated techniques, a team of scientists enlisted by the House committee filtered out the noise and came up with "audible events" within a 10-second time frame that it believed might be gunfire. The Warren Commission had concluded in 1964 that only three shots, all from behind, all from Oswald's rifle, were fired in Dealey Plaza as the motorcade passed through. But the House experts, after extensive tests, found 10 echo patterns that matched sounds emanating from the grassy knoll, traveling carefully measured distances to nearby buildings and then bouncing off them to hit the open motorcycle transmitter. They also placed the unknown gunman behind a picket fence at the top of the grassy knoll, in front of and to the right of the presidential limousine. The House committee concluded that this shot missed, and that Kennedy was killed by a final bullet from Oswald's rifle. Thomas, by contrast, believes it was the shot from the knoll, seven-tenths of a second earlier, that killed the president. The NAS panel, assigned to conduct further studies after the committee closed down, said in 1982 that the noises on the tape previously identified as gunshots "were recorded about one minute after the president was shot." The NAS experts, headed by physicist Norman F. Ramsey of Harvard, reached that conclusion after studying the sounds on the two radio channels Dallas police were using that day. Routine transmissions were made on Channel One and recorded on a dictabelt at police headquarters. An auxiliary frequency, Channel Two, was dedicated to the president's motorcade and used primarily by Dallas Police Chief Jesse Curry; its transmissions were recorded on a separate Gray Audograph disc machine. The shooting took place within an 18-second interval that began with Curry in the lead car announcing on Channel Two that the motorcade was approaching a triple underpass and ended with the chief stating urgently: "Go to the hospital." What seemed to be the gunshots were picked up on Channel One during that interval. The NAS panel pointed out that Dallas County Sheriff Bill Decker could be heard on both channels saying, ". . . Hold everything secure . . ." seemingly about a half-second after the last gunshot on Channel One. Curry had already told everyone on Channel Two a minute earlier to go to the hospital. As a result, the Ramsey panel concluded that the supposed gunshot noises came "too late to be attributed to assassination shots." What actually happened was that Curry issued his "go to the hospital" order right after the first shots were fired, wounding Kennedy and Texas Gov. John Connally. The final bullet was fired in almost the same instant that Curry uttered his command. A minute later, Decker, riding in the same car with Curry, grabbed the mike and issued his orders to "hold everything secure." The NAS experts made several errors, Thomas said, but their biggest mistake was in using Decker's words to line up the two channels. They ignored a much clearer instance of cross talk when Dallas police Sgt. S. Q. Bellah can be heard on both channels, asking: "You want me to hold this traffic on Stemmons until we find out something, or let it go?" Those remarks come 179 seconds after the last gunshot on Channel One and 180 seconds after Curry's order to "go to the hospital" on Channel Two. When Bellah's words are used to line up the two channels, Thomas found, the gunshot sounds "occur at the exact instant that John F. Kennedy was assassinated." How is it, then, that Decker's remarks on Channel One come a full minute after Curry's on Channel Two and yet a half-second after the last gunshot on Channel One? "It's a misplaced bit of speech," Thomas said in an interview. "An overdub. The recording needle for Channel One probably jumped. You can hear Decker giving a whole set of instructions on Channel Two, but on Channel One, you get only a fragment, '. . . hold everything secure. . . .' " According to Thomas, the NAS panel made other mistakes: in calculating the position of the grassy knoll shooter, in fixing the time of that shot and in stating the Channel Two recorder had stopped when it hadn't. In all, Thomas said, the chances of the NAS panel having been right were 1 in 100,000. House committee experts James Barger, Mark Weiss and Eric Aschkenasy, have always held firm to their findings of a shot from the knoll. Similarly, Ramsey, as chairman of the NAS panel, said last weekend that he was "still fairly confident" of his group's work, but he said he wanted to study the Science and Justice article before making further comment. He said he did not recall the Bellah cross talk."
3. Ibid.
4. April 25, 1966, New York Times, 'CIA: Maker of Policy, or Tool?' Survey Finds Widely Feared Agency Is Tightly Controlled' (PDF)
5. 1998, Gus Russo, Live by the Sword, pp. 31- 36: "The Kennedy brothers had also preserved a long-lasting association with Allen Dulles, then CIA Director. Letters in both the Kennedy and Dulles collections reflect that John and Robert Kennedy maintained correspondence with both Dulles brothers from at least 1955. Traveling in the same social sphere, Allen Dulles and John Kennedy were "comfortable with one another and there was a lot of mutual respect," Richard Bissell said in an interview. In fact, Kennedy was known to regard Dulles as a legendary figure. Historian Herbert Parmet wrote, "Dulles often went to the Charles Wrightsman estate near Joe Kennedy's Palm Beach House. As far back as Jack's early days, they socialized down in Florida, much of the time swimming and playing golf." Dulles himself said, "I knew Joe quite well from the days when he was head of the Securities and Exchange Commission." . . .
   Dulles first met Jack Kennedy at the Kennedy Florida compound in 1955. They became fast friends. "Our contact was fairly continuous," Dulles later said. "When [JFK] was in Palm Beach, we always got together." Jack came to revere both Dulles' intellect and accomplishments.
   Robert Kennedy, too, was clearly impressed with Dulles. Regarding his performance at the time of the Bay of Pigs, Robert Kennedy later recalled, "Allen Dulles handled himself awfully well, with a great deal of dignity, and never attempted to shift the blame. The President was very fond of him, as I was." He elaborated to historian Arthur Schlesinger, "He [JFK] liked him [Dulles] -- thought he was a real gentleman, handled himself well. There were obviously so many mistakes made at the time of the Bay of Pigs that it wasn't appropriate that he should stay on. And he always took the blame. He was a real gentleman. JFK thought very highly of him.""
6. history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v08/d32 (accessed: November 19, 2016): "National Security Action Memorandum No. 55. Washington, June 28, 1961. TO: The Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff. SUBJECT: Relations of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to the President in Cold War Operations.
   a. I regard the Joint Chiefs of Staff as my principal military advisor responsible both for initiating advice to me and for responding to requests for advice. I expect their advice to come to me direct and unfiltered.
   b. The Joint Chiefs of Staff have a responsibility for the defense of the nation in the Cold War similar to that which they have in conventional hostilities. They should know the military and paramilitary forces and resources available to the Department of Defense..."
7. history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v08/d33 (accessed: November 19, 2016): "National Security Action Memorandum No. 56. Washington, June 28, 1961. TO: The Secretary of Defense. SUBJECT: Evaluation of Paramilitary Requirements.
   The President has approved the following paragraph: "It is important that we anticipate now our possible future requirements in the field of unconventional warfare and paramilitary operations. A first step would be to inventory the paramilitary assets we have in the United States Armed Forces, consider various areas in the world where the implementation of our policy may require indigenous para-military forces...""
8. history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v08/d34 (accessed: November 19, 2016): "National Security Action Memorandum No. 57. Washington, June 28, 1961. TO: The Secretary of State, The Secretary of Defense, The Director, CIA. The President has approved the attached recommendation:
   The Special Group (5412 Committee) will perform the functions assigned in the recommendation to the Strategic Resources Group.
   For the purpose of this study, a paramilitary operation is considered to be one which by its tactics and its requirements in military-type personnel, equipment and training approximates a conventional military operation. It may be undertaken in support of an existing government friendly to the U.S. or in support of a rebel group seeking to overthrow a government hostile to us. The U.S. may render assistance to such operations overtly, covertly or by a combination of both methods. In size these operations may vary from the infiltration of a squad of guerrillas to a military operation such as the Cuban invasion. The small operations will often fall completely within the normal capability of one [Page 113] agency; the large ones may affect State, Defense, CIA, USIA and possibly other departments and agencies.
   Under this principle, the Department of Defense will normally receive responsibility for overt paramilitary operations. Where such an operation is to be wholly covert or disavowable, it may be assigned to CIA, provided that it is within the normal capabilities of the agency. Any large paramilitary operation wholly or partly covert which requires significant numbers of militarily trained personnel, amounts of military equipment which exceed normal CIA-controlled stocks and/or military experiences of a kind and level peculiar to the Armed Services is properly the primary responsibility of the Department of Defense with the CIA in a supporting role."
9. 2013, Military.com, 'Navy SEALs: Missions': "Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Arleigh Burke recognized that future hostilities would involve guerrilla activities, and in March 1961 recommended forming naval special forces to counter the threat. In an address to Congress on 25 May 1961—shortly after the Bay of Pigs incident—President John F. Kennedy emphasized the need to "expand rapidly and substantially, in cooperation with our allies, the orientation of existing forces for the conduct of non-nuclear war, paramilitary operations and sub-limited or unconventional war."
   This led to the development of National Security Action Memorandum 57, "Responsibility for Paramilitary Operations" on 28 June 1961, which prompted each branch of the armed forces to form its own counter-insurgency force. The Navy utilized UDT personnel to form separated units called Sea-Air-Land (SEAL) teams. SEAL Teams 1 and 2 were commissioned in January 1962."
10. The primary person to draw attention to these NSAMs has been Colonel Fletcher Prouty, the Chief of Special Operations of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1962 and 1963 who earlier worked in the Office of the Secretary for Defense. Prouty claimed these memoranda reveal a move by Kennedy to undermine the hegenomy of the CIA in the covert operations fields. While they certainly make clear that the CIA has no business designing a Cuban invasion or South Vietnamese counter-insurgency operation all by itself, Prouty, a highly curious individual (Scientology, Liberty Lobby, etc.) who has been featured prominently in Oliver Stone's JFK movie, appears to have been making more of them than they really are. NSAM 57 specifies that most covert operations would still be assigned to the CIA and that the Department of Defense is primarily involved in overt warfare:
    "Under this principle, the Department of Defense will normally receive responsibility for overt paramilitary operations. Where such an operation is to be wholly covert or disavowable, it may be assigned to CIA, provided that it is within the normal capabilities of the agency."
    Also, already before the Bay of Pigs invasion, Admiral Arleigh Burke made the case that the Navy needed its own counter-insurgency force, which after these series of NSAMs became the SEAL teams. Other military branches began to develop and expand their own counter-insurgency forces as well. Only author John Prados has mentioned this fact.
11. 2003, John Prados, 'Lost Crusader: The Secret Wars of CIA Director William Colby', pp. 90-91: "The latter directive, NSAM-57, directly impacted CIA actions in Vietnam, forcing the agency to give over its montagnard program and others to the Green Berets. As if these fresh restrictions were not enough, sheer chaos ensued beginning in November 1961, when the agency moved from its buildings in downtown Washington, D.C., to a spanking new headquarters complex across the Potomac River in Langley, Virginia.
    With the CIA, for the first time in its history, in the news as an object of public criticism, the shakedown of the langley complex, and the jaundiced Kennedy administration attitude after the Bay of Pigs, not to mention sudden domination of the DDP by the spy clique, it must have seemed to Colby like a good time to let the dust settle before reaching Washington."
12. *) August 2013, The Atlantic, 'JFK vs. the Military': "To meet Kennedy's criteria, the Joint Chiefs endorsed a madcap plan called Operation Northwoods. It proposed carrying out terrorist acts against Cuban exiles in Miami and blaming them on Castro, including physically attacking the exiles and possibly destroying a boat loaded with Cubans escaping their homeland. The plan also contemplated terrorist strikes elsewhere in Florida, in hopes of boosting support domestically and around the world for a U.S. invasion. Kennedy said no. ...
    Lemnitzer promised, "If we are given the right to use nuclear weapons, we can guarantee victory." By Schlesinger's account, President Kennedy dismissed this sort of thinking as absurd..."
    *) May 1, 2001, ABC News, 'U.S. Military Wanted to Provoke War With Cuba': "The Joint Chiefs at the time were headed by Eisenhower appointee Army Gen. Lyman L. Lemnitzer, who, with the signed plans in hand made a pitch to McNamara on March 13, 1962, recommending Operation Northwoods be run by the military. Whether the Joint Chiefs' plans were rejected by McNamara in the meeting is not clear. But three days later, President Kennedy told Lemnitzer directly there was virtually no possibility of ever using overt force to take Cuba, Bamford reports. Within months, Lemnitzer would be denied another term as chairman and transferred to another job."
13. 2011, Richard D. Mahoney, 'The Kennedy Brothers: The Rise and Fall of Jack and Bobby': "During the height of the Cuban missile crisis, Bobby Kennedy had instructed CIA director John McCone to halt all covert operations aimed at Cuba. When Kennedy discovered a few days later that ZR/RIFLE chief Bill Harvey, with the approval of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had already dispatched three commando teams into Cuba to prepare for the invasion, he angrily summoned Harvey to the Pentagon and told him to countermand these sorties: "You're dealing with people's lives in a half-assed operation." When Harvey replied that some of his teams were beyond recall, Kennedy stormed out of the room. "Harvey has destroyed himself today," McCone observed. [221] Harvey was relieved of his command of ZR/RIFLE several weeks after the conclusion of the crisis. ...
    Suddenly, under Bobby Kennedy's own order, there was a crackdown on the training camps, guerilla bases, and commando sorties that had been the ramrod of the war against Castro. ...
    Some, like [new] JM/WAVE station chief Shackley, made the best of the bitter business of standing down. But other, like David Phillips, David Morales, and Frank Sturgis, now stripped of all legitimacy, surrounded by enraged Cubans, were moved to seditious resolve against the Kennedys."
14. May-June 1996, Lisa Pease for Probe Magazine, 'Indonesia, President Kennedy & Freeport Sulphur'. While "alternative", this is a lengthy and very well-sourced article. (PDF).
15. 2016, B. Vivekanandan, 'Global Visions of Olof Palme, Bruno Kreisky and Willy Brandt', p. 86: "The CIA had moved not only against leaders like Castro, but also against a US friend in NATO, Antonio de Oliveira Salazar, Prime Minister of Portugal. The US president who authorized the [CIA] initiative against Salazar was none other than John F. Kennedy. With the full knowledge of the US administration, the US embassy in Lisbon and the CIA, a military coup against Prime Minister Salazar was planned for 14 or 15 April 1961. But before the plan could be put into action Salazar got wind of it, took over the defence portfolio on the eve of the planned coup, dismissed the coup leaders, and foiled the attempt."
16. 1977, Phil Mailer, 'Portugal, the Impossible Revolution', chapter 8: "For three days the left and workers' group exercised total power. An article about Spinola in the Parisian paper Temoignage Chretien (March 6) had said that US ambassador Frank Carlucci (who had CIA connections) had given the go-ahead for a right-wing take-over in Portugal. Otelo's [head moderate MFA] remark on March 11 that 'Carlucci had better have plans to leave the country or face the con-sequences' was seen as related to the failed coup. Kissinger, according to a Sunday Times (London) report, had sanctioned the use of the CIA."
17. *) August 23, 1999, Donald Gregg (notorious CIA officer linked to CIA-Contra cocaine trafficking and the Craig Spence CIA pedophile entrapment affair) for Time magazine, 'Park Chung Hee': "When [South Korean President Park Chung Hee] seized power in 1961, he was virtually unknown to American officials. Trained in the Japanese Army and later suspected of leftist connections, he was not the man the U.S. would have chosen to lead the new Korea. ... Park gradually yielded to pressure from the Kennedy Administration and re-established civilian rule. In 1962, a national referendum restored a presidential system, under which Park was elected President in the following year."
    *) October 28, 1979, Associated Press, Dateline: Seoul, South Korea: "The two other most powerful figures after Park are Kim Jong-pil, 53, and Chung Il-kwon, 61. Both are military men, former prime ministers and were close advisers of Park. Kim Jong-pil organized the coup that put Park in power in 1961 and has remained a powerful member of government. Chung has been prominent in the army and political life, holding major posts in both."
    *) October 31, 1978, Fraser Report, Investigation of Korean-American relations: "Moon's relations with ROK Governments prior to the 1961 coup were not as mutually supportive as his relationship with that of Park Chung Hee; later Moon speeches often referred to the persecution suffered in the pre-1961 period. In 1955, Moon and several followers, including Kim Won Pil, were arrested by the South Korean authorities. ... Even in later years, when Moon and the UC were receiving a great deal of media attention, the UC as a mass religious movement was far less successful in Korea than it was in Japan and elsewhere. ... In the late 1950's, Moon's message was favorably received by four young, English-speaking Korean Army officers, all of whom were later to provide important contacts with the post-1961 Korean Government. One was Pak Bo Hi [later head of the International Security Council], who had joined the ROK Army in 1950. (436) Han Sang Keuk (aka Bud Han), a follower of Moon's since the late 1950's, became a personal assistant to Kim Jong Pil, the architect of the 1961 coup and founder of the KCIA. Kim Sang In (Steve Kim) retired from the ROK Army in May 1961, joined the KCIA and became an interpreter for Kim Jong Pil]. He continued as a close personal aide to Kim Jong Pil until 1966. At that time, Steve Kim returned to his position as KCIA officer, later to become the KCIA's chief of station in Mexico City. He was a close friend of Pak Bo Hi and a supporter of the UC. ...
    The Subcommittee obtained a copy of Kim Jong Pil's itinerary for that 1962 trip, which showed that Steve Kim was part of the entourage which toured the United States, meeting numerous U.S. officials. While in San Francisco, Kim Jong Pil stayed at the St. Francis Hotel. There he met secretly with a small group of UC members, who were among Moon's earliest followers in the United States. ...
    Another Kim Jong Pil aide during the early 1960's was Mickey Kim (Kim Un Yong), who was later a counselor at the Korean Embassy in Washington. Several references to Mickey Kim were made in early KCFF correspondence; a March 1964 letter recounted a briefing Pak Bo Hi gave the Korean Ambassador about the plans for the KCFF. Mickey Kim had been appointed Embassy Project Officer for cultural activities "with particular emphasis on the Freedom Center." (448) The Freedom Center, (449) was a project of Asian People's Anti-Communist League (APACL) and was promoted and subsidized by the Korean Government. ...
    The three Kim Jong Pil aides who were active in the early days of the KCFF--Bud Han, Steve Kim and Mickey Kim--all went on to assume more prominent roles in the Government. Steve Kim joined the KCIA, where he served for a time as liaison to the U.S. CIA. (491) While KCIA station chief in Mexico City, he made frequent trips to Washington, and there was reason to believe that Steve Kim was Tongsun Park's "control officer" in the KCIA. (492)"
    *) causafoundation.org/giveforget4.html#chap2n (accessed: November 13, 2016): "In 1984 the International Security Council (ISC) was founded under the CAUSA umbrella to conduct research and develop studies aimed at more accurately assessing the military and geopolitical threat posed by the Soviet Union and its ideological and military allies."
    *) April 24, 1988, St. Petersburg Times (Florida) , 'The TV campaign to sell Florida on the Contras': "In 1984, CAUSA Int., the political arm of Moon's Unification Church, gave Dolan $ 775,000 to help form the Conservative Alliance (CALL). Later that year, the American Security Council, an organizational member of CALL, produced a major TV advertising blitz on the "communist menace" in Central America."
    *) See American Security Council article for more details on the U.S. ultraright and Moonie Cult connection.
18. February 24, 1987, New York Times, 'Edward Lansdale dies at 79; advisor on guerrilla warfare': "After the Philippines victory, by then an Air Force Colonel, he went to Vietnam in 1954 as a Central Intelligence Agency operative and helped in setting up the South Vietnamese Government of President Ngo Dinh Diem, who was overthrown and killed in a coup in 1963. ... With advice from General Lansdale, South Vietnam's Premier, Air Vice Marshal Nguyen Cao Ky, declared early in 1966 that his Government would concentrate on a ''rural reconstruction'' program to pacify the countryside, putting thousands of newly trained ''cadres'' into the field to attempt to reassert Government control, enhance the peasants' life and extirpate the Vietcong. He also served as the director of the Central Intelligence Agency's undercover operations in Indochina."
19. *) October 24, 1999, Boston Globe, 'JFK and the fall of Diem': "Lodge believed the United States not only had the right to overthrow Diem but the duty... Masterfully, the ambassador managed to convince the pro-Diem press that he opposed the coup plot - even as he became its most fervent supporter. ...
    The star of McCone's new disaster scenario is General Paul Harkins, the highest-ranking US military official in Vietnam. Three days earlier, Harkins told one of Big Minh's co-conspirators, General Tran Van Don, that it was the wrong time for a coup: The war was going too well. ... Afterward, Harkins denied having divulged the president's personal involvement in the coup plot. Too late. ... McCone doesn't criticize Harkins, who may have irreparably compromised the president. He makes no mention of the suspicion among some of the generals that Harkins has betrayed them to Diem. The coup opponents stick together. McCone, with McNamara's help, takes this opportunity to blast the two men carrying out the president's [coup] orders, Ambassador Lodge and CIA agent Conein [who was in liaison with the anti-Diem generals]. ...
    McGeorge Bundy [is] JFK's national security adviser and a coup supporter...
    When McCone and McNamara finish denigrating JFK's coup operation, the president appears to give ground [but doesn't back down from his coup support]. ... The president remains open to criticism and willing to change course. After the coup. ...
    Now it is brother against brother. "I may be in the minority," Bobby [Kennedy] says. "I just don't see that this makes any sense, on the face of it. We're putting the whole future of the country - and, really, Southeast Asia - in the hands of somebody we don't know very well [after we remove Diem]." ...
    Secretary of State Dean Rusk says, "I ... share this concern with the attorney general."
    General Taylor says, "I must say that I agree with the attorney general, Mr. President."
    CIA director McCone says, "I think our opinion is somewhat the same as General Taylor's, Mr. President." McCone can't say he agrees with the attorney general, since Bobby Kennedy merely repeated what McCone had told him the last time they had lunch."
    *) 2008, Tim Weiner, 'Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA', p. 249: "Shortly after 9 p.m., the president took a call from his national-security aide Michael Forrestal, and without preamble approved an eyes-only cable for the newly arrived Ambassador Lodge drafted by Roger Hilsman at the State Department. "We must face the possibility that Diem himself cannot be preserved," it told Lodge, and it urged him to "make detailed plans as to how we might bring about Diem's replacement." The secretary of state [Dean Rusk], the secretary of defense [Robert McNamara], and the director of central intelligence [John McCone] had not been consulted. All three were dubious about a coup against Diem.
    "I should not have given my consent to it," the president told himself after the consequences became clear. Yet the order went forward.
    Hilsman told Helms that the president had ordered Diem ousted.
    Helms handed the assignment to Bill Colby, the new chief of the CIA's Far East division. Colby passed it on to John Richardson, his choice to replace him as the station chief in Saigon: "In circumstance believe CIA must fully accept directives of policy makers and seek ways to accomplish objectives they seek," he instructed Richardson, though the order, "appears to be throwing away bird in hand before we have adequately identified birds in bush, or songs they may sing."
    On August 29, his sixth day in Saigon, Lodge cabled Washington: "We are launched on a course from which there is no turning back: the overthrow of the Diem government." At the White House, Helms listened as the president received that message, approved it, and ordered Lodge to make sure above all that the American role in the coup — Conein's role — would be concealed."
    *) 2015, Geoffrey Shaw, 'The Lost Mandate of Heaven: The American Betrayal of Ngo Dinh Diem': "Owing to his continual defence of Diem, Nolting became a persona non grata within the Kennedy administration and was invited to fewer and fewer meetings. He was conspicuously absent at an important September 10 meeting at DOS, which was attended by Secretary McNamara, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, CIA Director John McCone, Undersecretary Harriman, General Taylor, General Krulak, Deputy Secretary Gilpatric, Assistant Secretary Hilsman, Colby, Phillips, and several others.53 This meeting revealed the chasm that had grown between the Harriman faction and Diem's remaining supporters within the Kennedy administration. The divide became apparent when Robert Kennedy said they all agreed the war would go better without Diem and Secretary McNamara immediately disagreed: "He believed our present policy was not viable. He thought that we had been trying to overthrow Diem, but we had no alternative to Diem that we knew about. Therefore, we were making it impossible to continue to work with Diem on the one hand and, on the other, not developing an alternative solution. He felt that we should go back to what we were doing three weeks ago."54 Harriman defended the change, claimed it was the president's policy, and stated it should therefore not be discussed any further. He said Diem, by persecuting the Buddhists, had made it impossible for the United States to back him. Diem had to be removed, he added, because he had "gravely offended the world community". [55]
    The military men in the room did not buy Harriman's lofty logic. As can be seen in this message General Harkins sent the Joint Chiefs of Staff two days after the meeting with Harriman, they had come to believe that the Communist enemy, not President Diem, was to blame for the Buddhist uprising... [General Victor] Krulak added that in a choice between Harkins and [the anti-Diem CIA officer Rufus] Phillips, he would go with the general."
20. Good summary of viewpoints, complete with sources, at:
    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Reaction_to_the_1963_South_Vietnamese_coup
21. history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v04/d167 (accessed: November 19, 2016): "Memorandum From the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (Taylor) and the Secretary of Defense (McNamara) to the President. Washington, October 2, 1963. SUBJECT: Report of McNamara-Taylor Mission to South Vietnam.
    Your memorandum of 21 September 1963 directed that General Taylor and Secretary McNamara proceed to South Vietnam to appraise the military and para-military effort to defeat the Viet Cong and to consider, in consultation with Ambassador Lodge, related political and social questions. ...
    2. A program be established to train Vietnamese so that essential functions now performed by U.S. military personnel can be carried out by Vietnamese by the end of 1965. It should be possible to withdraw the bulk of U.S. personnel by that time.
    3. In accordance with the program to train progressively Vietnamese to take over military functions, the Defense Department should announce in the very near future presently prepared plans to withdraw 1000 U.S. military personnel by the end of 1963. This action should be explained in low key as an initial step in a long-term program to replace U.S. personnel with trained Vietnamese without impairment of the war effort.
    4. The following actions be taken to impress upon Diem our disapproval of his political program."
22. September 1, 2003, Boston Review, 'Exit Strategy: In 1963, JFK ordered a complete withdrawal from Vietnam': "Some key source materials, including the texts of the McNamara-Taylor report and those of NSAM 263 and 273, have been in the public domain for years. ... Before a large audience at the LBJ Library on May 1, 1995, McNamara restated his account of this meeting and stressed its importance. He confirmed that President Kennedy's action had three elements: (1) complete withdrawal "by December 31, 1965," (2) the first 1,000 out by the end of 1963, and (3) a public announcement, to set these decisions "in concrete," which was made."
23. Ibid.: ""A second faction did not see the war as progressing well and did not see the South Vietnamese showing evidence of successful training. But they, too, agreed that we should begin to withdraw." ... As McNamara's 1986 oral history, on deposit at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library, makes clear (but his book does not), he was himself in the second group, who favored withdrawal without victory—not necessarily admitting or even predicting defeat, but accepting uncertainty as to what would follow."
24. Ibid.: "If the troops could be pulled while the South Vietnamese were still standing, so much the better [JFK thought]. [4] But from October 11 onward the CIA's reporting changed drastically. Official optimism was replaced by a searching and comparatively realistic pessimism. Newman believes this pessimism, which involved rewriting assessments as far back as the previous July, was a response to NSAM 263 [in which it was agreed by Kennedy that the first 1,000 troops would be pulled from Vietnam by late 1963]. It represented an effort by the CIA to undermine the ostensible rationale of withdrawal with success, and therefore to obstruct implementation of the plan for withdrawal. Kennedy, needless to say, did not share his full reasoning with the CIA. ...
    (5) The Honolulu Conference of senior cabinet and military officials on November 20–21 [1963] was called to review plans in the wake of the Saigon coup. The military and the CIA, however, planned to use that meeting to pull the rug from under the false optimism which some had used to rationalize NSAM 263. However, Kennedy did not himself believe that we were withdrawing with victory. It follows that the changing image of the military situation would not have changed JFK's decision. ...
    the withdrawal ordered by Kennedy in October was already being gutted [by the CIA and military], by the device of substituting for the withdrawal of full units that of individual soldiers who were being rotated out of Vietnam in any event."
25. Ibid.: "The reason for the ambiguity over the military situation, as well as the vague "it should be possible" wording of the second recommendation, becomes clearer when McNamara describes the National Security Council meeting of October 2, 1963, which revealed a "total lack of consensus" over the battlefield situation:
    "One faction believed military progress had been good and training had progressed to the point where we could begin to withdraw. A second faction did not see the war as progressing well and did not see the South Vietnamese showing evidence of successful training. But they, too, agreed that we should begin to withdraw. . . . The third faction, representing the majority, considered the South Vietnamese trainable but believed our training had not been in place long enough to achieve results and, therefore, should continue at current levels."
    As McNamara's 1986 oral history, on deposit at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library, makes clear (but his book does not), he was himself in the second group, who favored withdrawal without victory—not necessarily admitting or even predicting defeat, but accepting uncertainty as to what would follow.
26. See Anthony Russo and his involvement in RAND's so-called Vietcong Motivation and Morale Project.
27. September 1, 2003, Boston Review, 'Exit Strategy: In 1963, JFK ordered a complete withdrawal from Vietnam': "Newman's argument was not a case of "counterfactual historical reasoning," as Larry Berman described it in an early response.2 It was not about what might have happened had Kennedy lived. Newman's argument was stronger: Kennedy, he claims, had decided to begin a phased withdrawal from Vietnam, that he had ordered this withdrawal to begin. Here is the chronology, according to Newman: ...
    (4) On November 1 there came the coup in Saigon and the assassination of Diem and Nhu. At a press conference on November 12, Kennedy publicly restated his Vietnam goals. They were "to intensify the struggle" and "to bring Americans out of there." Victory, which had figured prominently in a similar statement on September 12, was no longer on the list. ...
    Kennedy did not himself believe that we were withdrawing with victory. It follows that the changing image of the military situation would not have changed JFK's decision. ...
    In 1997, however, this situation changed. The Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) ... ruled that his tapes relating to Vietnam decision-making should be released. In July the JFK Library began releasing key tapes, including those of the withdrawal meetings on October 2 and 5, 1963.
    A careful review of the October 2 meeting makes clear that McNamara's account is essentially accurate and even to some degree understated. One can hear McNamara—the voice is unmistakable—arguing for a firm timetable to withdraw all U.S. forces from Vietnam, whether the war can be won in 1964, which he doubts, or not. McNamara is emphatic: "We need a way to get out of Vietnam, and this is a way of doing it."
    In Retrospect's discussion of Kennedy's decision to withdraw ends at this point. ...
    There is much more in the JCS documents to show that Kennedy was well aware of the evidence that South Vietnam was, in fact, losing the war. But it hardly matters. The withdrawal decided on was unconditional, and did not depend on military progress or lack of it. ...
    Conclusion: John F. Kennedy had formally decided to withdraw from Vietnam, whether we were winning or not. Robert McNamara, who did not believe we were winning, supported this decision.10 The first stage of withdrawal had been ordered. The final date, two years later, had been specified. These decisions were taken, and even placed, in an oblique and carefully limited way, before the public."
28. Ibid.: "Unfortunately, the last White House tape from the Kennedy administration is dated November 7, 1963. The archivists at the JFK Library have no information on why the tapings either ended or are unavailable for later dates. McNamara states that he has "no specific memory" of the Honolulu Conference that he was sent to chair on November 20, 1963. ...
    But as Scott already pointed out to Chomsky in 1993, the primary record available to date has been heavily edited. Documents from November 1, 1963, through early December are conspicuously missing. So, we now learn, are many others.
29. Ibid. "(7) At Honolulu, a preliminary plan, known as CINCPAC OPLAN 34-63 and later implemented as OPLAN 34A, was prepared for presentation. This plan called for intensified sabotage raids against the North, employing Vietnamese commandos under U.S. control—a significant escalation. While JCS chief Taylor had approved preparation of this plan, it had not been shown to McNamara. Tab E of the meeting's briefing book, also approved by Taylor and also not sent in advance to McNamara, showed that the withdrawal ordered by Kennedy in October was already being gutted, by the device of substituting for the withdrawal of full units that of individual soldiers who were being rotated out of Vietnam in any event."
30. Ibid.: "As for the changes to NSAM 273 [Noam Chomsky wrote]: "There is no relevant difference between the two documents [draft and final], except that the LBJ version is weaker and more evasive.""
31. 1995, William Conrad Gibbons, The U. S. Government and the Vietnam War: Executive and Legislative Roles, p. 30: "On September 9, [1965] announcement was made of a new public group, the Committee for an Effective and Durable Peace in Asia, chaired by Arthur Dean, one of the Wise Men, the purpose of which was to help promote the administration's case. [92] In its statement, the committee, which had been organized at the initiative of the White House, declared:
    "In order to meet the increased aggression against South Vietnam and to convince the Government of North Vietnam that such aggression cannot be successful, it has become necessary for the President of the United States to increase defense expenditures and to commit large American forces to supplement the forces of the South Vietnamese. At the same time the President has given ample evidence of his willingness to commit the United States to serious negotiations designed to bring about a cessation of bloodshed and Communist aggression. The Committee believes the President has acted rightly and in the national interest in taking these steps and that he is entitled to the support of the responsible citizens of this country. The Committee intends to do what it can to assist the the President to achieve his objectives of peace and the ending of aggression."
    The President's assistants, primarily Douglas Cater and Chester L. Cooper, Bundy's deputy for Vietnam on the NSC staff, as well as Press Secretary Bill D. Moyers, and Special Assistant Jack J. Valenti, were also working with the State and Defense Department to develop ways of promoting public support.
    [92] Of the 48 members listed in the initial announcement, 6 — Dean Acheson, Eugene Black, John Cowles, Arthur Dean, Roswell Gilpatric, and John McCloy — were Wise Men. The other were also prominent persons in American life, both Democrats and Republicans, including James B. Conant, C. Douglas Dillon, Oveta Culp Hobby, James R. Killian, Jr., Benjamin E. Mays, Lewis F. Powell, David Rockefeller.
    McCloy at first opjected to the establishment of the committee, saying that the President was doing well and did not need that kind of support, and that it might lead to formation of an opposing group. He relented, however, after conferring with McGeorge Bundy and others."
32. November 22, 2013, The Nation, 'JFK's Vietnam Withdrawal Plan Is a Fact, Not Speculation: A response to Rick Perlstein'.
33. September 1, 2003, Boston Review, 'Exit Strategy: In 1963, JFK ordered a complete withdrawal from Vietnam'. Mentioned scholars fighting or ignoring the Vietnam withdrawal theory (especially the "without victory" aspect): David Halberstam, Leslie Gelb, Howard Jones, Noam Chomsky, Kai Bird, William Gibbons, Patrick Lloyd Hatcher and Gary Hess.
34. November 22, 2013,  The Nation, 'JFK's Vietnam Withdrawal Plan Is a Fact, Not Speculation: A response to Rick Perlstein': "My essays in Boston Review and Salon established that the plan to withdraw US forces from Vietnam by the end of 1965 existed. And that President Kennedy had decided to implement that plan. In 2003, this was controversial. Many historians had denied it. Peter Dale Scott, John Newman, and Arthur Schlesinger were exceptions. They were right, and documents and tapes released under the JFK Records Act proved them right. The issue was resolved by early 2008 when Francis Bator, who had been President Johnson's Deputy National Security Adviser, opened his reply to my letter in the New York Review of Books with these words..."
35. 2005, Daniele Ganser, 'Nato's Secret Armies', pp. 70-71: "When John F. Kennedy became president in January 1961 the policy of the United States towards Italy changed because Kennedy unlike his predecessors Truman and Eisenhower sympathized with the PSI. He agreed with a [low level] CIA analysis that in Italy the 'strength of the socialists, even without aid from the outside, means that left-wing sentiment looked forward to a democratic form of socialism'. [40] Yet Kennedy's plans for reform met with stiff resistance from both the US State Department and the CIA. Secretary of State Dean Rusk with horror related to Kennedy that for instance Riccardo Lombardi of the PSI had publicly asked for the recognition of Communist China, had asked for the withdrawal of the American military bases in Italy including the important naval NATO base in Naples and had declared capitalism and imperialism must be fought. 'Should this be the party with which the United States should deal?' [41]
    Ambassador Frederick Reinhardt at the US embassy in Rome together with COS [CIA chief of station in Rome 1959-1963] Thomas Karamessines [and eventually the CIA's deputy director of operations] debated how Kennedy could be stopped. Vernon Walters advised them, a notorious CIA Cold Warrior 'who has been involved directly or indirectly in the overthrow of more governments than any other official of the US government'.[42] Walters declared that if Kennedy allowed the PSI [Partito Socialisto Italiano] to win the elections the US should invade the country. Karamessines, more subtly, suggested that forces within Italy that opposed the opening to the left should be strengthened. [43] 'The absurb situation developed in which President Kennedy found himself up against the Secretary of State and the Director of the CIA.' [44]
    On election day in April 1963 the CIA nightmare materialised: The Communists gained strength while all other parties lost seats. The US-supported DCI fell to 38 per cent... The PCI polled 25 per cent and together with the 14 per cent of the triumphant PSI secured an overwhelming victory as for the first time in the First Republic the united left dominated parliament. The supporters of the Italian left celebrated in the streets the novelty that the Socialists were also given cabinet posts in the Italian governmen under Prime Minister Aldo Moro of the left-wing of the DCI. President Kennedy was immensely pleased and in July 1963 decided to visit Rome to the great delight of many Italians. The airport was crowded and once again the Americans were greeted with flags and cheers. 'He is a wonderful person. ... He invited me to visit the United States'', Pietro Nenni, the leader of the PSI with much enthusiasm declared. [45] ...
    Kennedy had allowed Italy to shift to the left. As the Socialists were given cabinet posts the Italian Communists, due to their performance at the polls, also demanded to be rewarded with posts in the cabinet and in May 1963 the large union of the construction workers demonstrated in Rome. The CIA was alarmed and members of the secret Gladio army disguised as police and civilians smashed the demonstration leaving more than 200 demonstrators injured. [46] But for Italy the worst was yet to come. In November 1963, US President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, under mysterious circumstances. And five months later the CIA with the SIFAR, the Gladio secret army and the paramilitary police carried out a right-wing coup d'etat which forced the Italian Socialists to leave their cabinet posts they had held only for such a short period.
    Code-named 'Piano Solo' the coup was directed by General Giovanni De Lorenzo whom Defence Minister Giulio Andreotti [Le Cercle] of the DCI [hard-right Democrazia Christiana Italiana] had transferred from chief of SIFAR to chief of the Italian paramilitary police, the Carabinieri. In close cooperation with CIA secret warfare expert Vernon Walters, William Harvey, chief of the CIA station in Rome, and Renzo Rocca, Director of the Gladio units within the military secret service SID, De Lorenzo escalated the secret war."
36. *) Jan.-Feb. 1999 issue, Probe Magazine, Jim DiEugenio, 'Dodd and Dulles vs. Kennedy in Africa': "In 1962, Kennedy decided to hit Tshombe where it hurt. A joint British-Belgian company named Union Miniere had been bankrolling the Katangan war effort in return for mineral rights there. Kennedy, through some British contacts now attempted to get the company to stop paying those fees to Tshombe. Union Miniere refused. [After Kennedy applied pressure] the revenues going to Tshombe were significantly curtailed. The cutback came at an important time since Tshombe had already run up a multimillion dollar debt in resisting the UN effort. To counter these moves, Dodd forged an alliance with Senator Barry Goldwater, the ultraconservative senator from Arizona. Their clear message to Tshombe was that he should hold out until the 1964 presidential election in which Goldwater had already expressed an interest in running. ...
    In spite of the Belgian plotting and Tshombe's opportunistic betrayal, Allen Dulles blamed Lumumba for the impending chaos. His familiar plaint to the National Security Council was that Lumumba had now enlisted in the Communist cause. ... Dulles, apparently with Eisenhower's approval, set in motion a series of assassination plots that would eventually result in Lumumba's death.
    As author John Morton Blum writes in his Years of Discord, the CIA cable traffic suggests that Dulles and Devlin feared what Kennedy would do if he took office before Lumumba was gone (p. 23). Kwitny also notes that the new regime may have suspected Kennedy would be less partial to them than Eisenhower was (p. 69). ...
    1964: LBJ reverses Kennedy's policies..."
    ctka.net/pr199-africa.html (accesed: December 5, 2016)
    *) 2004, Philip E. Muehlenbeck for the Madison Historical Review (James Madison University), Vol. 2, Article 1, 'John F. Kennedy's Courting of African Nationalism' (PDF)
37. August 14, 2000, The Independent, 'Eisenhower ordered Congo killing'.
38. August 17, 2011, The Guardian, 'Dag Hammarskjöld: evidence suggests UN chief's plane was shot down'.
39. Jan.-Feb. 1999 issue, Probe Magazine, Jim DiEugenio, 'Dodd and Dulles vs. Kennedy in Africa'.
    ctka.net/pr199-africa.html (accessed: December 12, 2016)
40. 2004, Philip E. Muehlenbeck for the Madison Historical Review (James Madison University), Vol. 2, Article 1, ''John F. Kennedy's Courting of African Nationalism' (PDF): "Throughout his term in office Kennedy continued this policy of courting African nationalism. Prior to his inauguration the Eisenhower administration had already written off countries such as Guinea, Egypt, and Ghana as hopelessly lost to the Soviet orbit. But by late 1962 Kwame Nkrumah and Gamal Abdul Nasser felt that Kennedy was the only western leader that they could trust. Guinea's Sékou Touré referred to Kennedy as his "best friend in the outside world" and said that the, "Guinean people now regard America as their best friend."68 In Algeria, a country whose independence from France Eisenhower had tried to prevent, Kennedy had attained an almost folk hero stature for the way in which he had supported Algerian self-determination. Ben Bella and the rest of the Algerian government could not help but be eternally grateful for Kennedy's 1957 stand in support of their cause. These were not isolated incidents, for such success stories were replicated all across the African continent..."
41. Ibid.
42. The MI6-Mossad covert war against Nasser is discussed in ISGP's 1001 Club article.
43. See two notes back.
44. See three notes back.
45. *) October 2001, The Atlantic, 'JFK's First-Strike Plan': "SIOP-62, as the plan was known, called for sending in the full arsenal of the Strategic Air Command—2,258 missiles and bombers carrying a total of 3,423 nuclear weapons—against 1,077 "military and urban-industrial targets" throughout the "Sino-Soviet Bloc." Kaysen reported that if the SIOP were executed, the attack would kill 54 percent of the USSR's population and destroy 82 percent of its buildings. ...
    [General Thomas] Power, a flamboyant commander who never warmed to the notion of "limited nuclear strikes," told the President that "the time of our greatest danger of a Soviet surprise attack is now" and advised that "if a general atomic war is inevitable, the U.S. should strike first." Kennedy seems to have ignored this rant..."
    *) August 2013, The Atlantic, 'JFK vs. the Military': "The NATO commander, General Lauris Norstad, and two Air Force generals, Curtis LeMay and Thomas Power, stubbornly opposed White House directives that reduced their authority to decide when to go nuclear. ... They regarded Kennedy as reluctant to put the nation's nuclear advantage to use and thus resisted ceding him exclusive control over decisions about a first strike."
    *) Summer 1987, Vol. 12, No. 1, International Security, Scott D. Sagan, 'SIOP-62: The Nuclear War Plan Briefing to President Kennedy', p. 39: "General Lemnitzer's argument against adding further flexibility to the SIOP was fivefold. ... Third, while he acknowledged that enemy casualties could be "somewhat reduced" if only military targets were attacked, he maintained that such limits had "little practical meaning as a humanitarian measure" since enemy casualties would still be "many millions in number.""
46. 2009, Michael Krepon, 'Better Safe Than Sorry: The Ironies of Living with the Bomb', p. 222: "LeMay opposed President Kennedy's 1963 Limited Test Ban Treat..."
47. 1978, Arthur Schlesinger, 'Robert Kennedy and His Times', pp. 449-450: "Of the inherited Joint Chiefs [from the Eisenhower presidency], they liked best David Schoup, the commandant of the Marine Corps, who believed that the job of the Marines was "to teach fighting, but not hate." [18] They liked least Curtis LeMay of the Air Force. Every time the President had to see LeMay, said Gilpatric, "he ended up in a sort of fit. I mean he would just be frantic at the end of a session with LeMay because, you know, LeMay couldn't listen or wouldn't take in, and he would make what Kennedy considered ... outrageous proposals that bore no relation to the state of affairs in the 1960s." But LeMay's popularity in the ranks and on the Hill gave him immunity. "We would have had a major revolt on our hands," said Gilpatric, "if we hadn't promoted LeMay." [19]
    Except for Shoup, the military leaders were Cold War zealots. They had sedulously cultivated relations with powerful conservative legislators -- JohnStennis, Mendel Rivers, Strom Thurmond, Barry Goldwater. They hunted and fished with right-wing politicians, supplied them aircraft for trips home and showed up at receptions. The alliance between the military and the right disturbed Kennedy. This was why the President backed McNamara so vigorously in the effort to stop warmongering speeches by generals and admirals.
    When the popular thriller Seven Days in May depicted a Pentagon attempt to take over the government, the President remarked, "It's possible. It could happen in this country, but the conditions would have to be just right. If, for example, the country had a young President, and he had a Bay of Pigs, there would be a certain uneasiness." If there were a second Bay of Pigs, the military would begin to feel if their patriotic obligation to preserve the nation. "Then, if there were a third Bay of Pigs, it could happen. ... But it won't happen on my watch." [20] Still, he took no chances and, to the dismay of the Pentagon, encouraged John Frankenheimer to film the novel as a warning to the republic. ...
    * Frankenheimer: "Those were the days of General Walker and so on. ... President Kennedy wanted Seven Days in May made. Pierre Salinger conveyed this to us. The Pentagon didn't want it done. Kennedy said that when we wanted to shoot at the White House he would conveniently go to Hyannis Port that weekend."
48. March 28, 2010, Jerusalem Post, 'When Ben-Gurion said no to JFK': "The clash began in 1960, when the outgoing Eisenhower administration sought an explanation for the mysterious construction near Dimona. ...
    When president Kennedy took office in 1961, the disagreement became a full-blown crisis. Like Obama, Kennedy was not inherently hostile (unlike Jimmy Carter), but he did not have a special sympathy for the Jewish people. His advisers urged continuous pressure, assuming that Israel would have no choice but to accept US demands. Every high-level meeting or communication repeated the demand for inspection of Dimona. One form of pressure was to deny Ben-Gurion an invitation to the White House...
    Finally, Kennedy had enough, and in a personal letter dated May 18, 1963, the president warned that unless American inspectors were allowed into Dimona (meaning the end of any military activities), Israel would find itself totally isolated. ...
    Ben-Gurion's successor, Levi Eshkol received Kennedy's next letter, which upped the pressure, warning that the American commitment and support of Israel "could be seriously jeopardized.""
49. January 25, 2003, New York Times, 'The Frustrations of Inspections': "Then Lyndon Johnson became president. He proved less resolute than Kennedy, and Eshkol kept stalling. Johnson ended up settling for one daylong visit per year, under watchful Israeli eyes. By 1969, the Nixon administration had concluded that Israel had some nuclear weapons capacity and gave up on inspections. ...
    As the Federation of American Scientists later reported, Israel installed false control-room panels and bricked over passages leading to Dimona's innards."
50. nsarchive.gwu.edu/nukevault/ebb565-Was-U.S.-Nuclear-Weapons-Fuel-Diverted-to-Israel/ (accessed: November 20, 2016): "In 1977, veteran CIA operative Theodore Shackley led interagency briefings about the agency's evidence of a diversion. He briefed representatives of ERDA, NSC, FBI, NRC and congressional committees as concerns arose in the Ford Administration over ERDA and NRC statements that there was no evidence of diversion from U.S. HEU inventories. In this period, the CIA attached unusually high significance to preventing public disclosure of NUMEC information. (Documents 22, 23, 25 to 33) ...
    The CIA is still redacting large portions of memoranda and letters written by NSC staffers and CIA employees (e.g., Shackley, Hadden and Duckett) [about NUMEC]...
    The FBI and CIA have suppressed information about the role of the late David Lowenthal and his relations with the other investors in Apollo Industries and NUMEC."
51. 1991, Seymour Hersch, 'The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy', pp. 144-145: "James Jesus Angleton, the CIA's director of counter- intelligence, who also was responsible for liaison with Israel...
    Angleton had worked closely with members of the Jewish resistance in Italy while serving with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) at the end of World War II; it was a dramatic period when thousands of Jewish refugees and concentration camp survivors were be- ing illicitly funneled from Europe into Palestine, then under British control.
    One of Angleton's closest colleagues was Meir (Meme) Deshalit, a resistance leader and Israeli intelligence official who had been posted to Washington in 1948. Deshalit was the older brother of Amos Deshalit, the physicist who had done much to develop Israel's nuclear arsenal before dying of cancer in 1969. Angleton shared Meir Deshalit's view of the Soviet and Arab threat to Israel; his personal contacts and strong feelings made him the logical choice to handle liaison between the CIA and the Israeli government. His was one of the most important assignments in the 1950s and early 1960s, the height of the Cold War, because of the continuing flow of Soviet and Eastern European refugees into Israel. Angleton and his Israeli counterparts ran the "rat lines," as the Jewish refugee link became known. It was the Jewish refugee operations, as many in the CIA understood, that provided the West in the early postwar years with its most important insights into the Soviet bloc. Some of the programs were financed off the shelf by CIA con- tingency funds, as part of KK Mountain. ...
    A former American nuclear intelligence official recalled that he and his colleagues "were driven crazy" by the suspicion that Israel's quid pro quo for the French help at Dimona included access to design information purloined from the government's nuclear laboratories at Los Alamos and Livermore, California.
    No evidence of such a link was found, but intelligence community investigators were surprised to discover at the end of the chaos inquiry a cache of Angleton's personal files, secured with black tape, that revealed what obviously had been a long- running — and highly questionable — study of American Jews in the government. The files showed that Angleton had constructed what amounted to a matrix of the position and Jewishness of senior officials in the CIA and elsewhere who had access to classified information of use to Israel."
52. May 12, 1945, memorandum of President Truman (1980, Harry S. Truman, Robert H. Ferrell, 'Off the record: the private papers of Harry S. Truman', p. 22): "We want no Gestapo or Secret Police. F.B.I. is tending in that direction. They are dabbling in sex life scandals and plain blackmail when they should be catching criminals. They also have a habit of sneering at local law enforcement officers. This must stop."
53. October 30, 1988, Washington Post Magazine, 'If John F. Kennedy hadn't been such a lover, J. Edgar Hoover would have had a lot more trouble blackmailing the president, holding the attorney general political hostage and branding Martin Luther King Jr. a communist': "Kennedy wanted to shift the bureau's priorities drastically from domestic intelligence to organized crime. Citing the FBI's own private figures that the U.S. Communist Party had shriveled further since its collapse in 1956 -- until some 1,500 FBI informants within the party supplied a hefty part of its budget and membership -- he insisted that the bureau's vast domestic security network was a wasteful bureaucratic appendix of the McCarthy era. Kennedy was appalled to learn that there were only a dozen FBI agents targeted against organized crime, and it annoyed him almost beyond endurance that the FBI still denied the very existence of organized crime."
54. 1993, Anthony Summers, 'Official and Confidential: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover': "Even the Labrador made its contribution to Edgar's discomfort - on the floor outside his office. Kennedy had a tendency to appear without notice in the Director's office, something no one in government had ever presumed to do. On eafternoon he pushed past a horrified Miss Gandy to find the Director taking a nap.
    Kennedy insisted on instant communication with Edgar and began by ordering the installation of a buzzer with which to summon the Director at will. Edgar had it removed, only to be confronted by telephone engineers putting in a hot line. [When Hoover's secretary answered the first time] Kennedy snapped impatiently, "there's only one man I want to talk to. Get this phone on the Director's desk immediately." ...
    [Hoover] would sometimes pick it up only to hear one of Kennedy's children giggling on the other end. 'Shall I get Hoover over here?' former Justice Department attorney William Hundley recalled Kennedy saying. 'And he would hit that goddamn button, and the Old Man would come in all red-faced. They'd start fighting with each other right there in front of me. No other Attorney general had ever done that to Hoover. I couldn't believe it.'
    [Bobby] was asserting the authority of the Attorney General, which Edgar had eroded, and he was severing Edgar's most treasured link of all, his one-to-one contact with the President himself. John Kennedy's secretary, Evelyn Lincoln, cannot recall a single phone call between the President and Edgar during the entire administration. ... [Kenny] O'Donnell made it clear this was deliberate policy."
55. *) October 30, 1988, Washington Post Magazine, 'If John F. Kennedy hadn't been such a lover, J. Edgar Hoover would have had a lot more trouble blackmailing the president, holding the attorney general political hostage and branding Martin Luther King Jr. a communist': "Mistrust and miscommunication [between the Kennedy brothers and the FBI] were most pronounced over [Martin Luther] King, but they also intensified along at least two parallel tracks. One was organized crime. That fall, differences were personified in a crew-cut contract killer named Joe Valachi, who for his own reasons was willing to testify publicly about the inner workings of crime syndicates. For Kennedy, Valachi's proposed firsthand revelations about "capos" and "consiglieres" would prove that the old legends of Capone were alive, enlarged and modernized into an established criminal conspiracy of enormous power. However, such revelations contradicted Hoover's public position that organized crime theories were "baloney." If Valachi publicly described the vast operations of the five New York crime families, Hoover could not long hold out against Kennedy's demand for new priorities. When by adroit news leaks and prearranged congressional demands Robert Kennedy assured that Valachi would deliver his confessions in public, Hoover tried to cover his retreat. Two days after the march on Washington, he issued an "FBI Bulletin" to law-enforcement officers across the country, claiming that the FBI had long since established "a successful penetration . . . into the innermost sanctum of the criminal deity." Because of Valachi, Kennedy said privately, "the FBI changed their whole concept of crime in the United States." But Kennedy had special reason to be gentle in victory over Hoover: He knew the director held the balance in a quivering scandal that might well ruin President Kennedy."
    *) January 16, 1997, CNN Morning News, 'FBI Releases Documents Detailing Surveillance of Alleged Mafia Mobsters During The Kennedy Era' [Bruce Norton voice over] "And we learn about FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover's feud with the Justice Department headed by Robert Kennedy. I have been told by FBI people that J. Edgar Hoover was the only person at the time allowed to use blue ink. So below this newspaper column which says the FBI cleared mobster turned informer Joseph Valachi to testify in public, the blue ink says: "This is absolutely incorrect. I never cleared anything, and in fact opposed the release of information from Valachi and the disclosure of his identity." Or, on an FBI memo criticizing the Kennedys' use of Valachi: "I concur. I never saw so much skullduggery.""
56. 1978, Arthur Schlesinger, 'Robert Kennedy and His Times', pp. 263-264: "The much advertised lists of Public Enemies, Top Fugitives and Most Wanted Men kept up the illusion that the FBI was unrelenting in its war on criminals. In fact, of the hundreds of crooks thus honored, very few had any connection with orgazined crime. While the bureau had chased Bonnie and Clyde, it left Vito Genovese and Meyer Lansky of the syndicates to flourish in peace. In the meantime, Elmer Irey, chief of the Treasury Department's Intelligence Unit, quietly brought down Al Capone, Johnny Torrio, Waxie Gordon and Willy Bioff. Thomas E. Dewey in New York broke up the Lucky Luciano ring. Harry Anslicher of the Bureau of Narcotics was spinning tales about the mafia. Organized crime was not precisely a secret, even in the 1930s, except evidently to J. Edgar Hoover. None of the mobsters above, save for passing reference to Capone, was even mentioned in Don Whitehead's authorized history, The FBI Story, written with Hoover's cooperation in 1956. Robert Kennedy had discovered Hoover's indifference to organized crime when he requested FBI dossiers on the Apalachin conferees in 1957. ... In 1959 the FBI New York office had over four hundred agents working on communism, four on organized crime. ... In Internal Security [William] Hundley had found "cooperation from the FBI that was unbelievable." In Organized Crime, Hundley found the FBI's noncooperation equally unbelievable. "It was like pulling teeth to get anything done in this field at all. ... I had come out of Internal Security where you had agents coming out of your ears, and get over into Organized Crime and you couldn't find an agent." ... Why did Hoover veer away from organized crime? His own favorite explanation was legalistic. "The truth of the matter," he said in 1964 (and on many other occasions), "is the FBI had very little jurisdiction in the field of organized crime prior to September 1961." This proposition was a transparent fraud. The 1934 legislation had given the FBI ample jurisdiction."
57. *) August 3, 2008, Dallas Morning News, 'Celebrity sun birds fly the coop': "The annual migration of Dallasites to La Jolla, Calif., began in 1951 when Clint Murchison Sr., father of Vail's John Murchison, built the Hotel Del Charro in the seaside town. Three years later, he and his best friend, Fort Worth oilman Sid Richardson (great-uncle of the billionaire Bass brothers), bought control of the nearby Del Mar Race Track. Their guests not only included the Dallas aristocracy, but also summer regular J. Edgar Hoover and movie stars..."
    *) October 25 1989, The Independent, 'BOOK REVIEW / A creep's suspicions: 'The Boss' - Athan G Theoharis & John Stuart Cox: Harrap, 14.95 pounds': "IN THE 1950s, when he was at the height of his reputation as the defender of the United States against the enemy within, J Edgar Hoover, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, used to take a long summer vacation at the Hotel del Charro in La Jolla, California. He went accompanied by his intimate friend and FBI associate, Clyde Tolson. The two men had separate bedrooms - in spite of years of rumour, the authors of the latest biography agree with other recent researchers that Hoover's sexuality was wholly repressed - from which they would emerge to nap by the pool and to visit the Del Mar race track. From time to time Hoover, a man so terrified of germs that he had the lavatory in his house built up on a plinth, would go for a medical check-up. In the evening he would unbend with the hotel's owner and other guests. All were remarkable choices for America's top policeman. The del Charro belonged to Clint Murchison, the Texas oilman whose business ways are usually described as 'controversial'. Other guests included Richard Nixon, then Vice-President; film stars such as Clark Gable; big Texas wheeler-dealers like Big John Connally, the Governor shot at President Kennedy's side in Dallas in 1963; and Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin, the alcoholic and homosexual senator whose wild accusations of Communism gave a new word to the language. There were also figures from the world of high crime, such as Carlos Marcello, once described as 'the most powerful single organised crime figure in the southern United States'. The hotel had only two rules. One was that nobody paid their hotel bill. That was picked up by Murchison. The other was that no Jews were allowed."
    *) January 5, 2011, San Diego Reader, 'Oil and Politics in La Jolla': ""Murchison and Richardson were not only turned down by Al Hart [an ex-bootlegger and powerful mob-linked Hollywood figure] and his directors, they were practically thrown out of the office," Witwer told Summers. "And Murchison said, 'If those fellas won't deal with me, we'll sic old J. Edgar on them.' And Hoover sent two FBI agents to call on Hart. I heard this from the agents themselves afterwards. And then Hart sold." Summers also quotes Witwer regarding other mobsters Hoover associated with during racing season at Del Charro. They included Art Samish, a notorious Sacramento lobbyist who worked for California's mobbed-up liquor industry. One racketeer left Hoover a bottle of pre-Prohibition whiskey as a present, according to Summers. Another guest with mob ties was a wildcatter and fellow gambler from Houston. "My office faced the swimming pool, and one of the agents was in there with me one evening," Witwer told Summers. "He looked out the window — we had torches by the pool at night — and he saw the wildcatter, and he said, 'Allan, what's he doing here? D'you know who he is?' And I said, ‘Sure.' And he said, 'I bet you don't know. He's a partner of New Orleans Mafia boss Carlos Marcello. And I said, 'Well, tell Hoover that! He has breakfast with him every morning.' I got a kind of shock that Hoover would allow [the wildcatter] to be with him at all." Some said they had even seen Marcello himself, whose various enterprises included a West Coast racing wire and California call-girl operations, hanging around the pool at Del Charro."
    *) February 4, 1993, Business Wire, 'Frontline uncovers the secrets of J. Edgar Hoover': "''The Secret File on J. Edgar Hoover,'' also reveals how Hoover was compromised by his wide-ranging personal contacts with the Mafia, many of them fostered by the FBI director's obsession with racetrack betting. ''He used to place bets through (columnist Walter) Winchell,'' said Seymour Pollack, an associate of the mobster Meyer Lansky. ''And those bets used to be placed with Frank Costello and they were no two-dollar bets. They ran into the hundreds and into the thousands.'' ''This was one of the reasons why Hoover never wanted to get into investigating organized crime because organized crime controlled the gambling industry, the bookmakers,'' said Bill Gallinaro, former senior investigator for the New York State Crime Commission."
58. December 1964, Anthony Lewis interview with Robert Kennedy, interview appeared in 'Robert Kennedy: His Own Words' (1988) and audio can be heard in the documentary 'Evidence of Revision: The Assassination of America': "No, I think he is dangerous. ... I suppose every month or so he'd send somebody around to give information on somebody I knew or a member of my family or allegations in connection with myself. So that it would be clear whether it was right or wrong-that he was on top of all of these things and received all of this information. He would do this also, I think, to find out what my reaction to it would be. ... I knew he didn't like me. He is rather a psycho and I used to keep his ego up. We used to arrange for him every two or three months to have lunch along with the president."
59. *) December 25, 2008, Atlantic Free Press, 'Time To Strike Hoover's Name Off FBI Headquarters': "That Hoover was put in charge of the investigation into the murder of Rev. King is incredible as he must be regarded as one of the prime suspects for Kings assassination. Hoover despised King to the point of madness. Along with a tape recording made from bugging his hotel room, Hoover sent King a letter that called King a dissolute, abnormal moral imbecile and warned, King, like all frauds, your end is approaching. The letter repeated the phrase you are done over and over and urged King to commit suicide: There is but one way out for you. You better take it before your filthy, abnormal fraudulent self is bared to the nation. Hoover even sent a copy of a hotel room tape recording to Kings office, where it was read by his wife. The day after Kings murder, Hoover enjoyed himself at the race track, just as he did on the days immediately following the assassinations of President Kennedy and his brother, Robert, the Democratic Senator from New York. His hatred for RFK, the former Attorney General and his one-time boss, was such that, according to Hack, Hoover timed a press release announcing the capture of James Earl Ray for the King murder to be issued during Kennedys funeral!"
    *) June 8, 1968, New York Times, 'Suspect in Assassination of Dr. King Is Seized in London': "James Earl Ray, accused of the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., was arrested this morning at London Airport, Attorney General Ramsey Clark announced here today. ... The fugitive's arrest was announced as Americans watched on television the funeral services in New York for Senator Robert F. Kennedy, who was fatally shot Wednesday morning in Los Angeles."
60. May 13, 2013, NPR, 'In 'Passage,' Caro Mines LBJ's Changing Political Roles': "[Lyndon Johnson biographer Robert Caro:] The crucial thing with Lyndon Johnson and the Kennedys was his relationship with Robert Kennedy. There was a real hatred there. You know, as a writer you hate certain words because they sound too loaded, and one of them is 'hate.' But hate isn't too strong of a word to describe the relationship between Lyndon Johnson and Robert Kennedy. So, when Johnson is Jack Kennedy's vice president — which is a powerless position — Robert Kennedy makes sure that he doesn't have any power and, in fact, he systematically sets out to humiliate Johnson and does during the three years of his vice presidency. ... And [Johnson's] really reduced for three years to being a powerless figure, a ridiculed figure. You know, they used to call him — the Kennedys mocked him — they called him 'Rufus Corn Pone' or 'Uncle Corn Pone.' They even had a nickname for him and Lady Bird. They said, 'Uncle Corn Pone and his little pork chop.'"
61. 2006, 'Evidence of Revision' documentary, unidentified Robert Kennedy audio clip: "Our President was this gentleman and a human being. This man is just not. He's mean, bitter, a vicious animal in many ways. He's got this other side of him in this relationship with human beings which it very difficult unless you want to kiss his behind all the time. He's able to eat people up."
62. 1966, Pierre Salinger, 'With Kennedy', p. 46.
63. 1993, Anthony Summers, 'Official and Confidential: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover'.
64. August 13, 2004, Texas Observer, 'More Power, Less Grace'.
65. 1993, Anthony Summers, 'Official and Confidential: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover'.
66. 1998, Michael R. Beschloss, 'Taking Charge: The Johnson White House Tapes 1963-1964', pp. 66-72.
67. *) 2015, Paul Moke, 'Earl Warren and the Struggle for Justice', p. 253: "Shortly before the FBI presented the report to the Warren Commission and the President, FBI Headquarters leaked its essential findings to the press. This assured that the public already had a detailed picture of the assassination as seen through the lens of FBI Headquarters before the Warren Commission had a meaning ful opportunity to meet. ...
    Hoover refused to volunteer information known to him that may have altered the Commission's substantive conclusions. ... FBI Headquaters determined which pieces of evidence technicians would examine ... and which items they would not."
    *) November 8, 2013, Huffington Post, 'The 50th Anniversary of the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy (Part One)': "Moreover, the Commissioners were totally dependent on whatever evidence the FBI and CIA wanted them to see or not to see. According to one of the staff lawyers assigned to look into Jack Ruby's background, Burt Griffin, staff director Rankin, "was fearful that our own investigation of the assassination could be interpreted by the FBI or CIA as an attempt to investigate them." (Kantor The Ruby Cover-Up 1978, 174)"
68. See note 57.
69. *) 2004, Robert Bryce, 'Cronies: Oil, Bushes, and the Rise of Texas, America's Superstate': "Numerous studies showed that the oilmen were getting a tax break that was unprecedented in American business. While other businessmen had to pay taxes on their income regardless of what they sold, the oilmen got special treatment."
    *) 2009, Russ Baker, 'Family of Secrets', p. 91: "Kennedy's gutsiest—and arguably his most dangerous—domestic initiative was his administration's crusade against the oil depletion allowance, the tax break that swelled uncounted oil fortunes. It gave oil companies a large and automatic deduction, regardless of their actual costs, as compensation for dwindling assets in the ground.
    Robert Kennedy instructed the FBI to issue questionnaires, asking the oil companies for specific production and sales data. "The oil industry—in particular, the more financially vulnerable Dallas-based independents—did not welcome this intrusion. The trade publication Oil and Gas Journal charged that RFK was setting up a "battleground [on which] business and government will collide."
    FBI director Hoover expressed his own reservations, especially about the use of his agents to gather information in the matter. Hoover's close relationship with the oil industry was part of the oil-intelligence link he shared with [CIA director Allen]Dulles and the CIA. Industry big shots weren't just sources; they were clients and friends. And Hoover's FBI was known for returning favors.
    One of Hoover's good friends, the ultrarich Texas oilman Clint Murchison Sr., was among the most aggressive players in the depletion allowance dispute. Murchison had been exposed as far back as the early 1950s—in Luce's Time magazine no less—as epitomizing the absurdity of this giveaway to the rich and powerful."
70. *) May 17, 2011, New York Times, 'Senate Refuses to End Tax Breaks for Big Oil': "The Senate on Tuesday blocked a Democratic proposal to strip the five leading oil companies of tax breaks... The bill would have applied to BP, Exxon Mobil, Shell, Chevron and ConocoPhillips. ...
    In the 52-to-48 vote, 3 Democrats joined 45 Republicans in opposing the bill, which was supported by the Obama administration and fiscal watchdog groups that saw the tax help for the oil industry as wasteful. ...
    Under the proposal, Democrats would have eliminated five different tax breaks enjoyed by the multinational oil companies, producing an estimated $21 billion over 10 years."
    *) May 23, 2011, Russ Baker for BusinessInsider.com, 'What They Don't Tell You About Oil Industry Tax Breaks': "I was reading this New York Times explainer on yet another failure to take the oil industry off the sweet, sweet gravy train. ... It's not that it is wasteful. It's that it is welfare for the rich—giving an unnecessary advantage to those who already have every advantage. ...
    So—get this: all the Senate dems were doing in the area of the depletion allowance was trying to keep just the five biggest companies from deducting more than their actual capital investment. They weren't trying to get rid of this long-controversial depletion allowance, and weren't trying to prevent any other oil companies from deducting more than they spent. Amazing! And this tepid measure still didn't pass. (Of course, there were other provisions...)..."
71. 2006, 'Evidence of Revision' documentary, Edgar F. Tatro interview: "D. H. Byrd was an underboss for Murchison. He was a Del Charro regular. He owned the Texas School Book Depository. He also founded the Civil Air Patrol, which was a kind of military organization, and Lee Harvey Oswald was a member of the Civil Air Patrol [under David Ferrie]. nother associate of Murchison at the time was Bobby Baker. Bobby Baker was in trouble with the scandals and he was in all kinds of business deals with Murchison and many of them were illegal."
72. January 1997, D. Magazine, 'Heritage the Art of the (Handshake) Deal': "Dallas' reputation as the land of the hand-shake deal was given a Texas-size boost by oil tycoons H.L. Hunt. Toddie Lee Wynne. D.H. "Dry Hole'" Byrd and Clint Murchison, Sr. At the turn of the century."
73. tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fby13 (accessed: November 22, 2016): ""At one time I owned 34,000 acres, but . . . ended up owning 15,000 in partnership with Gulf [of the Mellon family], Humble [bought by the Rockefeller's Standard Oil in 1959], and Atlantic Oil [broke off from the Rockefeller's Standard Oil after anti-trust laws to become ARCO in 1966, owned by close David Rockefeller friend Robert O. Anderson] Companies, with whom I drilled about 5,000 wells. . . . Needless to say I became an overnight millionaire.""
74. 2008, Lisle A. Rose, 'Explorer: The Life of Richard E. Byrd', pp. 3, 178, 302, 304, 396, 397, 447: "Among [Richard Byrd's] closest friends were the titans of American enterprise Edsel Ford [son of Henry Ford], John D. Rockefeller Jr. ... and Thomas Watson of IBM. They, in turn, revered him for his organizationsl skills and fiscal integrity...
    The following spring Richard unburdened himself to John D. Rockefeller, Jr. For nearly a year, he wrote, "I was the target for all the veteran's organizations and a million or so veterans." ...
    Byrd had become a political force in the country, and he was elated, writing exultantly to young Rockefeller on the day of FDR's inauguration that the "federal objectives" of the National Economy League had been achieved. The immediate payments of the veterans' bonus had been prevented, payments to veterans for injuries in civil life had been cut... Byrd wrote another letter to his wealthy young patron later that same day. ...
    Byrd also owed an enormous debt to Rockefeller himself, and, characteristically whenever and wherever money was concerned, he spelled it out in detail to Arthur Packard, the young philanthropist's financial counselor. The bulk of Rockefeller's sizable donation, Byrd said, was expended by the Coalition Committee...
    He told Watson that he needed a "group of prominent men behind me ... some of my best friends who are leaders in industry," adding that he "sincerely and earnestly" hoped Watson would head it. ... Byrd reminded his friend that he had gotten Charles Evens Hughes to head a similarly titled group back in 1927.... ... The committee should include Rockefeller, Ford, Clarence Francis (president of General Foods), Owne Young of General Electric, and other unmentioned. Watson found Nazi Germany "a delightful country,"filled with "interesting people"...
    Edsel [Ford] came up here completely worn out," Richard told cousin Harold in Texas. "You know what he and his father are going through with the labor situation." ...
    Harold Byrd, a distant relative with whom Richard became acquainted during one of his early lecture swings through Texas, soon served the same functions in the Dallas area and southwestern region that Breyer did in California [an agent for Richard]. In all the rush and bustle Byrd kept in touch with his old friend Franklin Roosevelt. The two were close enough that Byrd did not feel embarrassed in asking FDR about his progress in fighting polio ... and the explorer was eager to accept a speaking engagement in Poughkeepsie, close by Hyde Park, that Eleanor [Roosevelt] had arranged.
    "Martin went so far in the summer of 1955 as to propose to cousin Harold that he bring together "20 to 50 leading Texans" at a Dallas dinner to present Richard "with a purse of 25 or 25 thousand dollars" prior to the admiral's impending departure for the ice."
75. *) 1991, John Davison Rockefeller, Horace Marden Albright, 'Worthwhile Places: Correspondence of John D. Rockefeller, Jr. and Horace M. Albright', p. 136 (extra information for a February 11, 1933 letter of John D. Rockefeller, Jr. in which he states): "I saw Admiral Byrd in New York on Wednesday..."): "Admiral Richard E. Byrd. A friend of Rockefeller's. Rockefeller contributed to Byrd's expeditions to the North and South Poles. Byrd became a president of the National Economy League... Byrd resigned from the League in April 1933."
    *) geonames.usgs.gov/apex/f?p =gnispq:5:0::NO::P5_ANTAR_ID:6398 (accessed: November 22, 2016): "Name: Harold Byrd Mountains. ... A group of exposed mountains and nunataks which extend in an E-W direction between the lower part of Leverett Glacier and the head of the Ross Ice Shelf Discovered in December 1929 by the Byrd Antarctic Expedition (ByrdAE) geological party under Laurence Gould, and named by R. Admiral Byrd for D. Harold Byrd, a cousin and a contributor towards the purchase of furs for the expedition."
76. 1978, D. Harold Byrd, 'I'm an endangered species: The autobiography of a free enterpriser', pp. 37-40: "Another goal was to reach a rapport with the politicians who ran things, especially at the seat of state government in Austin....Sam Rayburn, Morrie Sheppard, John Connally, and Lyndon Johnson on the national scene were to become men I could go to any time that I wanted action, and so were a succession of Texas governors. Among the ablest was John Connally...who says he's in my debt for pleading his cause... with...Ida Nell (Nellie) Brill, Sweetheart of The University of Texas in 1940..."
77. 1978, D. Harold Byrd, 'I'm an endangered species: The autobiography of a free enterpriser', p. 41: "Having a fondness for being Number One in all my undertakings, it doesn't come naturally for me to confess that Doolittle is the one man whom I would gladly serve in any venture as Number Two."
    In the book Byrd mentions his hunting trips in Africa with Doolittle. A picture of the two exists of the two having shot a female lion.
78. 2009, Russ Baker, 'Family of Secrets', p. 111: "On May 24, 1963, in Dallas, the U.S. Air Force presented to D. Harold Byrd its Scroll of Appreciation for his work with the Civil Air Patrol (where Oswald was a cadet). Among the Air Force generals he counted as friends was Charles Cabell, Allen Dulles’s CIA deputy director, key Bay of Pigs figure, and brother of Dallas mayor Earle Cabell, also a good friend of Byrd’s."
79. July-August 1997, Richard Bartholomew for Fair Play magazine, 'Byrds, Planes, and an Automobile' (webarchive): "Byrd then left the country to go on his two-month safari in central Africa. He returned in January to find his good friend Lyndon Johnson president of the United States. ... On one intriguing trip without Doolittle, Byrd went hunting in central Africa in November and December 1963. It was his first such trip of five during his lifetime outside of the U.S., Mexico, and Canada.324."
    Original source listed: 1978, D. Harold Byrd, 'I'm an endangered species: The autobiography of a free enterpriser', pp. 105-106.
80. tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fby13 (accessed: November 22, 2016): "D. Harold (Dry Hole) Byrd, oilman... In September 1941 Byrd and Gill Robb Wilson formed the Civil Air Patrol. During World War II Byrd commanded an antisubmarine base for the Civil Air Patrol at Beaumont."
81. tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/jdt01 (accessed: November 22, 2016): "In 1937 the Carraway-Byrd Corporation bought the [The Texas School Book Depository] property but defaulted on the loan, and the property was bought by Col. D. Harold Byrd. By 1963 Byrd had leased the building to the Texas School Book Depository Company. It was while this company leased the property that Oswald shot President Kennedy from the southeast corner of the sixth floor of the depository on November 22, 1963. Following this infamous incident the sixth floor was closed to the public for twenty-five years. In 1970 Byrd put the building up for sale and shortly afterwards the School Book Depository Company moved out of the building."
82. June 11, 1964, FBI document on Texas School Book Depository (TSBD) president Jack Charles Cason. (PDF)
83. 2009, Russ Baker, 'Family of Secrets', pp. 106, 111-112: "That Paine's mother-in-law, Ruth Forbes Paine, was a close friend of one Mary Bancroft, former OSS spy and the mistress at varying times of both Allen Dulles and Henry Luce, was probably not known to Dulles's fellow Warren Commission members. ...
    So how did Oswald end up working at this building that belonged to a friend of de Mohrenschildt’s? The most widely accepted explanation is that Oswald got the job indirectly - via Ruth Paine, the new "friend" who had come to him through the efforts of the de Mohrenschildts, and who was providing a home for Oswald’s wife, Marina, and their daughter. Paine purportedly heard about the Book Depository from a neighbor, one Linnie Mae Randle, whose brother already worked there. But missing from these accounts is that the neighbor’s brother had obtained his job there just slightly ahead of Oswald. Moreover, the brother had moved from a small Texas town to Dallas shortly beforehand. Given what we now know about George de Mohrenschildt’s close relationship with Byrd, owner of the Book Depository building, and the chain of events that followed, it is plausible that Oswald’s hiring could have been deliberately orchestrated through this chain to obscure the underlying direct connection.
    Then there is the intelligence background of Paine’s family, which was in addition to her mother-in-law’s ties to Dulles’s girlfriend. There was more to this simple Quaker housewife than meets the eye. When Marina Oswald was asked by the Orleans Parish grand jury why she had cut off contact with Ruth Paine after the assassination, she said: "I was advised by the Secret Service not to be connected with her, seems like she was... not connected... she was sympathizing with the CIA." She wrote letters over there and they told me for my own reputation, to stay away. Is it possible that the brother was hired as a player - or in spycraft parlance, a "cut-out" - who could "refer" Oswald to a job in this particular building? This might seem speculative, but other pieces of the puzzle do point in that direction."
84. *) 2009, Russ Baker, 'Family of Secrets', p. 111: "I found further that not only had Byrd employed de Mohrenschildt at his Three States Oil and Gas Co. during the 1950s, but that the connection went deeper still. Documents I studied show that in September 1962, just weeks before he began to squire Oswald, George de Mohrenschildt incorporated a charity ostensibly devoted to the study of cystic fibrosis - and put D. Harold Byrd’s wife on the board. Mrs. Byrd’s role on the charity board would have created a convenient excuse for de Mohrenschildt to have been interacting with her husband during this period. Other board members included Paul Raigorodsky, J. Edgar Hoover’s good friend and the White Russian community’s godfather. ... Recall that the owner of the building was one D. Harold Byrd, a right-wing oilman, founder of the Civil Air Patrol, avid Kennedy hater - and a friend of both Clint Murchison and George de Mohrenschildt."
    *) April 22, 1964, testimony of George S. De Mohrenschildt to the Warren Commission: "Now, my ex-wife and I started a foundation. National Foundation for Cystic Fibrosis in Dallas, of which Jacqueline Kennedy was the honorary chairman. Now, my ex-wife says that I didn't have much to do with this foundation, this Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, but actually I did. because I collected most of the money from my Dallas friends. It started with very little — we started with $10,000 or $20,000, and now it is a $2 million foundation, with headquarters in New York. Last year I was chairman of this foundation in Dallas for the first public subscription to our Cystic Fibrosis Fund for the Dallas children, and we got $25,000."
85. April 22, 1964, testimony of George S. De Mohrenschildt to the Warren Commission: "Mr. JENNER. You are a member of the Petroleum Club in Dallas? Mr. De MOHRENSCHILDT. If you call that a group; yes. Mr. JENNER. It is a group. Mr. De MOHRENSCHILDT. Yes; a member of the Dallas Petroleum Club. Mr. JENNER. Tell me all the societies or groups, whether you call them political or otherwise, of which you have been a member. Mr. De MOHRENSCHILDT. None political. You call the Dallas Petroleum Club political? Mr. JENNER. No."
86. See note 150 for details on PERMINDEX. Unfortunately, primarily for alleged PERMINDEX directors Jean de Menil and Paul Raigorodsky no first-hand sources exist.
87. What we can piece together from independent non-conspiracy sources with regard to historical Dallas Petroleum Club membership isn't much, but some of the key names can be confirmed with virtual certainty:
    *) January 7, 2014, DallasNews.com, '1401 Elm was nexus of Dallas power as First National Bank Tower': "One building in that skyline view that might be lit again is the former First National Bank Tower... In January 1965, tenants began moving in and for the next two decades, the buildings elevators were the common meeting are of some of the biggest names in Dallas. On the southeast corner of the 29th floor, billionaire H.L. Hunt ran his oil empire. At the Hunt family's peak of occupancy, it occupied 19 floors of the tower with enterprises like Hunt Oil, Penrod Drilling and Placid Oil. A few floor below Hunt, John D. Murchison and Clint Murchison Jr. presided over the vast Murchison Brothers holdings that included the Dallas Cowboys, Daisy Manufacturing (the air rifle folks) and Henry Holt publishing. John Murchison sat on the board of the building's owner and lead tenant, First National Bank. At noon, the elevators filled and tenants rode to the 48th floor for lunch at the Dallas Petroleum Club."
    *) March 31, 1964, Warren Commission, Paul M. Raigorodsky testimony: "[INTRO: The testimony of Paul M. Raigorodsky was taken at 11:15 a.m., on March 31, 1964, in his office, First National Bank Building, Dallas, Tex. ... [RAIGORODSKY:] first of all, I've got George De Mohrenschildt to become a member of the Petroleum Club."
    *) 2009, Bryan Burrough, 'The Big Rich: The Rise and Fall of the Greatest Texas Oil Fortunes': "McCarthy joined [Clint] Murchison [Sr.] at his Mexican ranch for a weekend of hunting, then accompanied the oilman to a speech at the Dallas Petroleum Club."
    *) October 2014, D CEO magazine, 'Inside the Dallas Petroleum Club': "In 1965, it took occupancy of the 48th and 49th floors of the new First National Bank Tower at 1401 Elm. Twenty-one years later, in 1986, the club struck a deal with Trammell Crow to move to the 39th and 40th floors of his newly constructed Texas Commerce Tower at 2200 Ross Avenue (now called Chase Tower). “Trammell Crow gave the club a $2 million finish-out allowance and guest lease,” Parchment says. “He was here every day.”"
    *) November 13, 1987, U.S. Senate, Iran Contra Report, p. 389, Nelson Bunker Hunt testimony: "He reminded me that the FBI guy told me that I did have dinner at the Dallas Petroleum Club with Channell and [Colonel Oliver] North at one time. I didn't remember it, and I still don't remember it... Well, you know, I faintly do, but I am not positive."
88. *) April 22, 1964, testimony of George S. De Mohrenschildt to the Warren Commission: "Mr. JENNER. All right. Now, you spent 2 months in Haiti. Mr. De MOHRENSCHILDT. Yes. ... We landed in--we came [back] by Lykes--Lykes Line ship directly from Haiti to Louisiana, I think Port Arthur, La. ... Lake Charles. And the friends met us there and drove us back to Houston and then to Dallas. ... The friends there were two employees of Kerr-McGee Oil Co., by the name of George Kitchel, vice president, and Jim Savage, engineer."
    *) 2009, Russ Baker, 'Family of Secrets', pp. 84, 107-109, 243, 508: "18. Other members [of the Texas Crusade for Freedom] included Clint Murchison (employer of George de Mohrenschildt... Many had also been employers or sponsors of George de Mohrenschildt. The list included the son of oil depletion king Clint Murchison, Sr. ...
    By the fall of 1962, when de Mohrenschildt was devoting much of his time to squiring Lee Harvey Oswald, he had gained entree to the creme de la creme of the petroleum world. One longtime buddy of his and of Poppy Bush's, offshore drilling expert George Kitchel, would tell the FBI in 1964 that de Mohrenschildt counted among his good friends the oil tycoons Clint Murchison, H. L. Hunt, John Mecom, and Sid Richardson. Other Commission testimony revealed that in the couple of years prior to the Kennedy assassination, de Mohrenschildt had traveled frequently from Dallas to Houston, where he visited with figures such as George Brown of Brown and Root, the construction and military contracting giant that helped launch LBJ's career, and Jean de Menil of Schlumberger, the huge oil services firm.
    Several of these men had even sent de Mohrenschildt abroad on business; one could be forgiven for wondering if these trips were in fact what the CIA calls "commercial cover." George Brown had dispatched him to Mexico, where his mission seemed to be heading off a Mexican government oil deal with the Soviet deputy premier Anastas Mikoyan, who arrived at the same time. Murchison dispatched him to Haiti on several occasions. In 1958, he went to Yugoslavia on what was said to be business for Mecom - whose foundation, the San Jacinto Fund, was later identified as a CIA funding conduit.
    The Warren Commission knew at least pieces of all this. Yet in 1964, after two and a half days of testimony by George de Mohrenschildt and his wife Jeanne, the Commission would conclude that George was essentially an eccentric if well-connected figure whose life encompassed a series of strange coincidences. ...
    Here the story gains a more intriguing layer - namely, the suggestion that de Mohrenschildt’s real purpose was to secure U.S. government backing for a coup d’état against the Haitian dictator François "Papa Doc" Duvalier. De Mohrenschildt and Charles appear to have obtained an audience with none other than Howard Burris, military adviser to Vice President Lyndon Johnson, with the prospect of meeting LBJ himself. As noted in correspondence [of LBJ administrative assistant Walter Jenkins to de Mohrenschildt] dated April 18, 1963... The Haitian coup therefore could have been intended as the operative story to explain why Oswald’s mentor de Mohrenschildt was interacting with powerful U.S. government figures in the period prior to the JFK assassination. ... The new story was introduced in 1978 testimony to the House Select Committee on Assassinations. The witness was Dorothe Matlack, assistant director of the Army Office of Intelligence, who explained that she had also met with de Mohrenschildt and that he raised the idea of the U.S. government playing a role in the coup. "I knew the Texan [de Mohrenschildt] wasn’t there to sell hemp," Matlack said. ... What passed for the feeble beginnings of a coup did in fact occur in Haiti, soon after de Mohrenschildt arrived on the island. But it didn’t succeed, and perhaps wasn’t intended to. De Mohrenschildt and his circle had no apparent problem with Papa Doc, even if the Kennedys did. ...
    They even provided cover for the powerful oilmen who sponsored de Mohrenschildt’s travels to hot spots, ostensibly to represent their business interests. The Warren Commission reviewed some correspondence that shows meetings between de Mohrenschildt and these oilmen. ... For example, one 1962 letter, to de Mohrenschildt’s Dallas White Russian community "godfather" Paul Raigorodsky from the oilman Jean de Menil, who himself provided weapons to Cuban exiles, thanks the Russian for sending de Mohrenschildt around, and refers to some idea of de Mohrenschildt’s as not being "very well cooked" but does find it "slightly visionary.""
    *) July-August 1997, Richard Bartholomew for Fair Play magazine, 'Byrds, Planes, and an Automobile' (webarchive): "George Brown, George de Mohrenschildt's mutual friend with Howard Burris and Lyndon Johnson, was president of the CIA-conduit Brown Foundation. A director of Brown's firm Texas Eastern Transmission, George A. Butler, was trustee of the CIA-conduit Hobby Foundation with Mrs. Hobby. Hobby also sat on the CIA's Cuban Freedom Committee, which was set up for the CIA..."
89. July-August 1997, Richard Bartholomew for Fair Play magazine, 'Byrds, Planes, and an Automobile' (webarchive): "Byrd probably also knew George de Mohrenschildt, David Atlee Phillips and George Bush through the Dallas Petroleum Club. [312] ... [312] ... Jim Garrison, On the Trail of the Assassins, (NY: Sheridan Square Press, 1989), pp. 51, 53, 286."
90. Tommy Corcoran is an example of a Suite 8F member who was deeply involved in (illegal) CIA operations. See ISGP's article A History of CIA Drug Trafficking as an example. In ISGP's American Security Council article he is described as an Opus Dei member and director of the notorious George Town Club. The Brown Brothers of Brown & Root, who hired the F8 suite on a permanent basis, also reportedly were CIA assets.
91. Founders/managers of the CIA's American Committee on United Europe (ACUE) overlapped those of with the Crusade for Freedom in the form of Allen Dulles, General Lucius Clay, Frederick Osborn and Herbert Lehman:
    *) June 19, 1956, American Committee on United Europe letter (PDF): "- William J. Donovan, Chairman. - Paul G. Hoffman, Vice-Chairman [and Ford Foundation chair and Pilgrim]... - George S. Franklin, Jr., Secretary [and David Rockefeller roommate and Trilateral Commission co-founder]... Directors: ... - [Gen.] Lucius D. Clay [senior partner Lehman Brothers 1962-1973] ... - [David Rockefeller mentor at the CFR and Chase Manhattan] John J. McCloy. - Frederick Osborn [Pilgrims family; close to Rockefellers] ... Dear Senator [Herbert] Lehman [director as well at some point] ... You have stood with our Committee for a long time. ..."
    *) March 1997, Richard J. Aldrich (Fulbright Fellow at Georgetown University; University of Nottingham; Professor of International Security at the University of Warwick) for the Diplomacy & Statecraft journal, pp. 187-224, 'OSS, CIA and European unity: The American Committee on United Europe, 1948-60' "The conduit for American assistance was the American Committee on United Europe (ACUE), directed by senior figures from the American intelligence community. This body was organized in the early Summer of 1948 by [CIA founder, upcoming CIA head, past CFR president and Pilgrims executive] Allen Welsh Dulles [and] William J. Donovan... the ACUE Board of Directors was drawn from four main groups: senior figures from government, such as [General Lucius] Clay, [CIA director Walter] Bedell Smith [Pilgrims executive] ... Paul Hoffman [Ford Foundation; Pilgrims] ... Herbert H. Lehman ..."
    *) January 7, 1981, New York Times, 'Frederick Osborn, a General, 91, Dies': "Mr. Osborn, a native New Yorker, who was said to have made a fortune in railroads and investment banking... He later joined a national Crusade for Freedom headed by Gen. Lucius D. Clay, which staged rallies and marches in support of free governments for Eastern Europe. Mr. Osborn's wife, Margaret Schieffelin, is a descendant of John Jay, the first Chief Justice of the United States."
    *) 2009, Russ Baker, 'Family of Secrets', pp. 77-78, 508: "George de Mohrenschildt moved to Dallas in 1952, established himself as a consulting geologist, and was quickly accepted into the city's ruling elite. He joined the powerful Dallas Petroleum Club and became a regular at Council on World Affairs meetings. [17] Many of the figures involved in those two entities also showed on the board of other influential local groups. One was the Texas chapter of the Crusade for Freedom, a private conduit for laundered money to be sent to "freedom fighters."
    The roots of the Crusade for Freedom date to 1949. Senator Herbert Lehman of New York, a son of a founder of Lehman Brothers, together with a group of associates established the National Committee for a Free Europe Inc. Backed by Secretary Dean Acheson (Yale '43, Scroll & Key [Pilgrims]), this group spawned a subsidiary, the Crusade for Freedom, with General Lucius Clay, which proceeded to launch a series of gigantic annual fund-raising campaigns. ...
    Members of the Texas Crusade for Freedom would become a who's who of Texans connected to [CIA and U.S. government anti-communist money laundering and] the events surrounding the assassination of John F. Kennedy. In addition to Neil Mallon, members included Raigorodsky, MacNaughton, Everette DeGolyer, and Dallas mayor Earle Cabell, brother of Charles Cabell, who was Allen Dulles's deputy CIA director. Another member was D. Harold Byrd, who owned the building in downtown Dallas that would become known as the Texas School Book Depository. ... [18]
    18. Other members [of the Texas Crusade for Freedom] included Clint Murchison (employer of George de Mohrenschildt and friend of J. Edgar Hoover), Fred Florence (executive of the CIA-controlled Republic National Bank), oilman H. L. Hunt (business associate and friend of Murchison and a staunch anti-communist), Bernard L. Gold (owner of Nardis Sportswear, which employed both Abraham Zapruder and Mrs. George de Mohrenschildt(, and R. Gerald Storey (later chief of the JFK assassination investigation in Texas). ...
    Neil Mallon had a direct pipeline to Allen Dulles. Prescott Bush noted in a [March 26, 19530 letter [to C.D. Jackson] around this time that Mallon was "well known to Allen Dulles, and has tried to be helpful to him in the CIA, especially in the procurement of individuals to serve in that important agency. [19]"
92. *) February 5, 2001, Insight on the News, 'The Plot Thickens in PROMIS Affair': "[Robert] Booth Nichols also served on the board of First Intercontinental Development Corp. (FIDCO), a building/construction company. Among Nichols' corporate partners at FIDCO in the 1980s were Michael McManus, then an aide to President Reagan; Robert Maheu, former chief executive officer of Howard Hughes Enterprises; and Clint Murchison Jr. of the Murchison empire based in Dallas. Riconosciuto long has maintained that Booth Nichols and FIDCO were associated with U.S. intelligence agencies and used as a cutout. Again, whereas others summarily had dismissed this claim, the RCMP investigators pursued the lead, poring over documents from the long-abandoned Riconosciuto storage and in the files of U.S. law-enforcement agencies. For example, RCMP obtained FBI wiretap summaries of telephone conversations between Nichols and another of his then-partners in FIDCO, Eugene Giaquinto, who at the same time also was president of MCA Home Entertainment Division. The wiretap summaries reads like a who's who of alleged mob figures with close ties to the motion-picture industry. The Mounties also received substantial related information from classified internal FBI files."
    *) See note 122 in ISGP's article Alex Jones of Infowars Admits to CIA and "Army Special Forces" Family for more info.
93. *) 1994, Carol Marshall, 'The Last Circle': "Ted Gunderson was one of the few "cooperating" witnesses at Michael [Riconosciuto]'s trial. ... Unfortunately for Michael, Ted could not disclose numerous activities which had included Robert Booth Nichols. At one time Gunderson, Nichols and Riconosciuto had been inseparable, like the three musketeers. ... Interestingly, amongst a prestigious list of positions nationwide, he was also SAC from 1973 to 1977 in Dallas, Texas (where he became friends with Clint Murchison, Jr., according to his livein partner, J.M.. J.M. stated in phone interviews that she and Gunderson attended parties with Murchison in Dallas, and Gunderson phoned him often from their Manhattan Beach home)."
    *) See note 122 in ISGP's article Alex Jones of Infowars Admits to CIA and "Army Special Forces" Family for more info.
94. See note 57.
95. *) August 21, 2009, Crime magazine, 'J. Edgar Hoover: Blackmailed by the Mafia?': "There was evidence of massive voter fraud by mobsters in Illinois and Texas. Those states threw the election to JFK. The Mafia was now looking for major favors, or at least leniency, from the Kennedys. But, under Bobby, by 1964 the Justice Department had increased Cosa Nostra convictions by 700 percent over 1960—according to Burton Hersh in Bobby and J. Edgar.
    Bobby had federal agents arrest New Orleans godfather Carlos Marcello and physically deport him to Guatemala. And he initiated action that landed mobbed-up Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa in a prison cell.
    As historian Anthony Summers notes: "If top Mafia bosses felt double-crossed, their law—the law of the Mob—might demand vengeance.""
    *) 2009, Burton Hersh, 'Bobby and J. Edgar'.
96. November 19, 1970, CIA document, Memorandum for: Director of Central Intelligence, Subject: Roselli, John (located on New York Times website as a PDF): "In August 1960, Mr. Richard Bisell approached Colonel Sheffield Edwards to determine if the Office of Security had assets that may assist in a sensitive mission requiring gangster-type action. The mission target was Fidel Castro. Robert A. Maheu was contacted, briefed generally on the project, and requested to ascertain if he could develop an entrée into the gangster elements as the first step toward accomplishing the desired goal. Mr. Maheu advised that he had met one Johnny Roselli on several occasions while visiting Las Vegas. … During the week of 25 September, was introduced to Sam [Giancana] who was staying at the Fontainblue Hotel, Miami Beach. It was several weeks after meeting with Sam and Joe [Santos Trafficante]… In May 1962, Mr. William Harvey took over as Case Officer, and it is not known by this Office whether Roselli was used operationally from that point on."
97. March 1979, House Select Committee on Assassination (HSCA) report, volume 10, chapter I, 'The ingredients of an anti-Castro Cuban conspiracy' (PDF).
98. *) March 18, 2010, Huffington Post, 'A Lesson for Obama: President Kennedy’s Stand Against the Steel Industry': "In April 1962, when U.S. Steel and five other steel corporations unilaterally decided to jack up their prices and squelch an intricate set of compromises that the Kennedy Administration had expended a great deal of effort in negotiating, President John F. Kennedy responded with an aggressive counter attack that shocked the Washington press establishment. He turned loose his younger brother, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, who subpoenaed the expense accounts of the top steel executives and dispatched F.B.I. agents to “interview” them. Robert Kennedy also sent the not-so-subtle message that the Justice Department and its Anti-Trust Division, along with the Internal Revenue Service, were about to make the executives’ lives miserable unless they honored their original agreement with the White House and the labor unions to maintain prices."
    *) November 20, 2013, Washington Post, 'Lead like John F. Kennedy': "Most of the time, Kennedy used his wit, charm and intelligence to get what he wanted, but he was not above bullying people and issuing threats. When Kennedy became convinced that some U.S. steel executives had reneged on a promise not to raise prices, he cancelled their contracts with the Defense Department, ordered the FBI to subpoena their corporate and personal records, and held press conferences denouncing their cupidity. He was widely criticized for these actions, but he held firm and the executives were forced to withdraw their price hikes."
99. *) November 18, 1990, The Observer: "Declassified secret service papers reveal that Ted Shackleton [sic], deputy chief of the CIA station in Rome in the 1970’s introduced the notorious Licio Gelli – head of the neo-fascist P2 masonic lodge and for years a fugitive in Argentina – to General Alexander Haig, then Nixon's chief of staff, and later, from 1974 to 1979, NATO Supreme Commander. P2 was a right-wing shadow government, ready to take over Italy, that included four Cabinet Ministers, all three intelligence chiefs, 48 MPs, 160 military officers, bankers, industrialists, top diplomats and the Army Chief of Staff. After meetings between Gelli, Italian military brass and CIA men in the embassy, Gladio was given renewed blessing – and more money – by Haig and the then head of the National Security Council, Henry Kissinger."
    *) 2005, Daniele Ganser, 'Nato's Secret Armies', p. 74: "Frank Gigliotti [one-time assistant to a hypnotist; Presbyterian clergyman; worked with teenaged boys, for whom he organized a social club named the Guiseppe Mazzini Club; recruited by the OSS; active in Italy] of the US Masonic Lodge personally recruited Gelli and instructed him to set up an anti-Communist parallel government in Italy in close cooperation with the CIA station in Rome. 'It was Ted Shackley, director of all covert operations of the CIA in Italy in the 1970s', an internal report of the Italian anti-terrorism unit confirmed, 'who presented the chief of the Masonic Lodge to Alexander Haig'. According to the document, Nixon's Military adviser General Haig [later Pilgrims Society executive and involved with the ASC], who had commanded US troops in vietnam and thereafter from 1974 to 1979 served as NATO's SACEUR, and Nixon's National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger [Pilgrims; Le Cercle] 'authorized Gelli in the fall of 1969 to recruit 400 high ranking Italian and NATO officers into his lodge'. (60)... the secretive anti-Communist P2 members list confiscated [in 1981] counted at least 962 members, with total leadership estimated at 2,500... 52 were high-ranking officers of the Carabinieri paramilitary police, 50 were high-ranking officers of the Italian Army, 37 were high-ranking officers of the Finance Police, 29 were high-ranking officers of the Italian Navy, 11 were Presidents of the police, 70 were influential and wealthy industrialists, 10 were Presidents of banks, 3 were acting Ministers, 2 were former Ministers, 1 was President of a political party, 38 were members of parliament and 14 were high-ranking judges. Others on lower levels of the social hierarchy were mayors, Directors of hospitals, lawyers, notaries and journalists."
100. *) 1992, Webster Griffin Tarpley and Anton Chaitkin, 'George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography - part 1', p. 394: "Rudy Enders, the head of the CIA's paramilitary section--and deployed by George Bush aide Donald Gregg--is a minority owner of Acta Non Verba (ANV). ANV's own tough-talking promotional literature says that it concentrates on "counter-terrorist activities in the maritime environment.'' A very high-level retired CIA officer [Gene Wheaton], whose private interview was used in preparation for this book, described this "Fish Farm" in the following more realistic terms: "Assassination operations and training company controlled by Ted Shackley, under the cover of a private corporation with a regular board of directors, stockholders, etc., located in Florida. They covertly bring in Haitian and Southeast Asian boat people as recruits, as well as Koreans, Cubans, and Americans. They hire out assassinations and intelligence services to governments, corporations, and individuals, and also use them for covering or implementing 'Fish Farm' projects/activities. '"
     *) 1994, David Corn, 'Blond Ghost: Ted Shackley and the CIA's crusades', p. 394: "He continued to claim Shackley was overseeing an assassination outfit called the Fish Farm. During the cross- examination, Wheaton refused to say which retired CIA official had told him about Shackley and the Fish Farm."
     *) 1994, David Corn, 'Blond Ghost: Ted Shackley and the CIA's crusades', p. 394: "Rudy Enders, a former JMWAVE officer and now Rodriguez's supervisor, investigated and discovered that the local PRU commander was a VC agent. The episode convinced Donald Gregg , the current ROIC, to all but give up on penetrations."
101. *) 1998, Gus Russo, 'Live by the sword: the secret war against Castro and the death of JFK', p. 251: "The day before placing the wager [of November 13, 1963] with [Michael] Forrestal, FitzGerald attended a Special Group meeting at the White House. In attendance were Robert Kennedy, his CCC leader Cy Vance, and the CIA’s Richard Helms and Ted Shackley, among others. FitzGerald took the occasion to apprise the group of Artime’s progress in Nicaragua and Costa Rica."
     *) 1994, David Corn, 'Blond Ghost: Ted Shackley and the CIA's crusades', p. 130: "Helms disclosed he was grooming Shackley to head the Directorate of Plans. There was one hitch. Shackley was not regarded as a team player, and Vientiane was a place where teamwork was essential. Placing Shackley there, Helms mused, might be good for him. The Director informed Sullivan that if the Ambassador ever gave the word, Helms would yank Shackley out of Vientiane. With such an escape clause, Sullivan accepted Shackley."
     *) 2006, Joseph J. Trento, 'Prelude to Terror', p. xiii: "The first head of this "private CIA" was Shackley's old friend and ally, Richard M. Helms, who had protected and promoted him for twenty years. In 1973, Helms, then the beloved CIA Director, was fired by President Nixon and banished to the ambassadorship in Iran as the Watergate scandal engulfed Washington. Shackley became Helms's inside man in Washington. For the first time, the CIA was under public Congressional scrutiny, and Helms and Shackley worked to protect the institution they had given their lives to. ... When legal problems caused Helms' ultimate downfall, Shackley inherited the leadership role."
     *) 2005, Ted Shackley and Richard Finney, 'Spymaster: my life in the CIA', p. 265: "In May 1972, as I entered on my new duties as chief of the Western Hemisphere (WH) Division, my "welcome home" interviews with Tom Karamessines and Richard Helms provided me with glimpses of what lay ahead."
     *) 1976, Pike Report, pp. 112-113: "Upon hearing testimony from Helms in February 1973, Senator Church's Multinational Corporations Subcommittee informed the CIA on 21 February 1973 that it had found “significant discrepancies” between Helms’s testimony and data ITT had supplied. On that same day, Theodore Shackley (Chief, Western Hemisphere Division, DP) took the first step to limit damage to the Agency. He recommended to DCI Schlesinger that the Agency should work [through Senators Stennis or Symington who "could be persuaded" to agree to a "controlled appearance" for the DCI before the Multinational Corporations Subcommitte] …  Two days later, on 23 February 1973, Agency officers began quiet efforts with the help of Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson, a close friend of the CIA, to blunt Senator Church's scrutiny of CIA, Chile, and Richard Helms. Jackson offered his protective assistance in a remarkable backstage meeting he had with Ted Shackley and CIA Congressional liaison chief John Maury the next day. … [Jackson made several suggestions on how to protect the CIA, as written down by Shackley] … Jackson pledged to work with CIA "to see that we got this protection." Shackley noted that Senator Jackson, who had been "extremely helpful," believed that it was "essential" to prevent the establishing of any procedure that could call upon CIA to testify before a wide variety of Congressional committees. Following that meeting, Shackley and Maury at once briefed Colby, who was then CIA's Executive Director, and Tom Keramessines, the DDP. DCI Schlesinger then asked Senator Jackson to set the wheels in motion for Senator McClellan to call a special meeting of his Oversight Committee. Three weeks later, on 13 March, CIA’s senatorial friends arranged to shield the Agency from unwanted scrutiny… McClellan, Symington, Jackson, John Pastore (D-RI), Strom Thurmond (R-SC, and Roman Hruska R-NE). Colby, Shackley, and Maury accompanied DCI Schlesinger." p. 173: "[CIA legal counsel Mitchell] Rogovin … accused Pike's staff of having stolen a copy of the [Ted Shackley] memorandum outlining the sensitive meeting of CIA officers with Senator "Scoop" Jackson in May 1973…"
102. *) 1989, Laton McCartney, 'Friends in high places: the Bechtel story', p. 98: "Dwight D. Eisenhower, whom McCone first met when Eisenhower returned to Washington to take up duties as Army chief of staff. Another important friendship made during this period was with Allen Dulles, later to be McCone’s predecessor as Director of Central Intelligence. The occasion that initially brought them together was a dinner party at the Dulles town house in New York, called to celebrate the expected victory of [Pilgrims Society member] Thomas E. Dewey as president [in 1947]. Taking a brief respite from his Washington duties, McCone had been staying as the houseguest of Grete and John Simpson, Steve Bechtel's chief confidant. When the Dulleses asked the Simpsons to dinner, Uncle John brought McCone along. During the party, McCone and Dulles chatted amiably, interrupting their conversation now and again to listen to the latest election bulletins. With each announcement, it became clearer that the biggest upset in American political history was in the making."
     *) June 1984, Mother Jones, 'The Bechtel/Reagan Axis': "In the spring of 1980, George Shultz, then president of Bechtel, and Caspar Weinberger, the firm’s vice president and general counsel, endorsed Reagan and quickly emerged as two of the chief architects of his campaign. They were joined by a number of Bechtel allies, notably Citicorp chairman Walter Wriston, who was later appointed to the Bechtel board of counselers. Standard Oil of California chairman Harold Haynes, who resigned from Socal after the election [of Reagan] to work for Bechtel; … William Casey, a longtime Bechtel friend. … W. Kenneth Davis, a Bechtel vice president, was appointed to the number two position in the Department of Energy… Casey, who had represented customers like Indonesian oil giant Pertamina when he was a partner in the law firm of Roger and Wells, became [DCI]… Philip Habib … was concurrently working as a Bechtel consultant. … As a result [of Shultz’s and Weinberger’s appointments] the super-secretive company was suddenly thrust into the limelight, an exposure it did not relish. … Ironically, at this time … Weinberger was arguing that the U.S. should sell AWACS planes to Saudi Arabia, where Bechtel does much of its business. Since Weinberger took over the Pentagon, Bechtel has also picked up a significant share of defense business, including a contract to research and develop new ways of housing missiles for the Pentagon’s ICBM Basing Technology Program. … Richard Helms, who became a Bechtel consultant after his tenure at the CIA ended [in 1978 he became "international consultant"]. … [John] Weiser [Harvard; director and general counsel Bechtel 1980–1996; trustee Stephen D. Bechtel Foundation anno 2013; partner Shearman & Stirling; Chair of the President’s Council of United Religions Initiative, and he is a member of the Board of Directors of the National Catholic Reporter. Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Graduate Theological Union. 1998-2007; director Fremont Group], Weinberger’s second in command, who succeeded Weinberger as general counsel at Bechtel. … "It was common knowledge among lawyers at Bechtel," said the FBI informant, "that anyone who didn’t keep Weinberger informed would be on the street the next day.""
103. Pilgrims Society members:
     *) Gates McGarrah Helms: Grandson of the influential Pilgrims banker Gates White McGarrah. Son of Mr. and Mrs. Herman H. Helms of South Orange New Jersey. Vice president of Bowne & Company. Younger brother of Richard McGarrah Helms, the CIA director.
     *) Gates White McGarrah: Executive chairman Chase National Bank 1926-1927. U.S. Member of the General Council of the German Reichsbank 1924-1927, as part of the German reparations for WWI. Chairman Federal Reserve Bank of New York 1927-1930. First president of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) 1930-1933. Director American Express Co., Bankers Trust Co., Delaware & Hudson Co., Delaware & Hudson Railroad Corp. Trustee of Mercantile Stores and the Greenwich Savings Bank. Director of the Astor Foundation, of the Pilgrims Society family which owned Newsweek from 1937 to 1961, when it was purchased by the Washington Post. CIA director Richard McGarrah Helms was his grandson.
104. *) 1994, Martin A. Lee and Bruce Schlain, 'Acid Dreams: The Complete Social History of LSD': "After the war certain influential members of the Mellon family maintained close ties with the CIA. The Mellon family foundations have been used repeatedly as conduits for Agency funds. Furthermore, Richard Helms was a frequent weekend guest of the Mellon patriarchs in Pittsburgh during his tenure as CIA director [1966-1973]."
     *) Paul Mellon has been a member of the 1001 Club, together with the Rockefellers and the Rothschilds, as well as the Pilgrims Society (with at least two relatives), also with the Rockefellers and the Rothschilds. In addition he was a member of the Roxburghe Club, together with the Marquises of Salisbury, the Earls of Arundel, the Dukes of Devonshire, the Dukes of Norfolk, Lord Rees-Mogg, the Morgans and the Rothschilds.
105. See 3 notes back.
106. May 27, 1983, Washington Post, 'Presents and Formers For Kissinger's Birthday': "It is not often that a fellow whose name is preceded by that dreadful appellative "former" can stir up a crowd to take note, but Henry Kissinger, former You Know What, brought out an international pack of political swells this evening, gathered together at a private dinner-dance at the Pierre Hotel to celebrate his day of birth. David Rockefeller was there. A host of other Formers, including Helmut Schmidt, Peter G. Peterson, Lady Bird Johnson, Happy Rockefeller, Jihan Sadat and Richard Helms were there. ... The highest ranking Present present, from the political point of view, was probably George Shultz. He was also the most visible, his car speeding up to the hotel entrance nearly an hour late, with a second escort car with flashing red lights behind. Former Walter Cronkite, rather more self-effacing, arrived quietly enough in his limo and, smiling and bemused, paused in the rain to chat. How did he know the former secretary of state? "I met him with Rockefeller, up at one of those Rockefeller dinners," Cronkite said. "The governor introduced him as the brightest young man around. That irritated me because I thought I was." ... The party this evening, estimated to cost upwards of $50,000, was given by Guido Goldman, 45, director of Harvard's Center for European Studies and a longtime friend of Kissinger's."
107. No photocopies, unfortunately, but generally Simkin's work is accurate:
     *) November 28, 2005, Education Forum post of John Simkin, author and founder of the Spartacus Educational website: "The most dramatic aspect of the JFK Lancer conference was the showing of the interview with Gene Wheaton. Talking to William Law and Mark Sobel, Wheaton, a former CIA freelancer, claimed that Carl Jenkins and Raphael Quintero were both involved in the assassination of JFK. ... According to Wheaton, the assassination team, that included Raphael Quintero, was redirected to kill JFK. My research of Wheaton suggests he is a credible witness. He is the man who first exposed the Iran-Contra scandal."
     *) December 10, 2005, Education Forum post of John Simkin, author and founder of the Spartacus Educational website: "According to the interview he gave in 2005 Gene Wheaton, it was Jenkins who redirected this team to kill JFK. However, it is unlikely that Shackley would have been unaware of this decision. In fact, when Wheaton and Jenkins were informing Daniel Sheehan about this in 1986 they were naming Shackley as the man in charge of the operation."
     Additional information:
     *) February 15, 1995, Gene Wheaton, letter to the Assassinations Records Review Board (ARRB): "I am faxing you one page of a CV prepared by a retired CIA officer who was a very close friend of mine in the mid-1980s [Carl Jenkins]. Our friendship was so close that I kept a bedroom in his home in Adington, Va, socialized with him and his wife (a high-level active CIA officer) and was virtually with them 24 hours a day. Through him I met many of the Bay of Pigs veterans, both Cuban and American. We had many intimate discussions about covert operations, Kennedy assassination, etc. He was totally in charge of infiltrating sabotage and assassination teams into Cuba from 1960 onward (see * on his bio). I had discussions with him and one of his key Cuban agents about obtaining immunity for them if they would come forward about their knowledge of involvement in the Kennedy assassination plots. This man's programs included JMWAVE, Mongoose, ZR-RIFLE, among others, operating out of the Miami Station. If you think I can help, we will have to meet. Dr. Tunheim has my bio. If you need another copy please let me know. Note: The USMC Reserve Unit that my associate established was in the New Orleans area to act as a cover for CIA Latin-American Operations. I have blanked out his I.D. until we can meet to discuss this further."
     *) July 12, 1995, report of Anne Buttimer, chief investigator for the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB), on telephone conversation with Gene Wheaton the day before: "Wheaton began by telling me he would only give me limited information over the telephone although he was willing to meet me face to face to provide as much information as he had. He said he had no physical proof of what he would eventually tell the Board; however he said he does have a number of documents which he will need to show me in order for me to believe what he has to say. By way of providing background on himself Wheaton explained he is a 59 year old retired military intelligence officer. He works as a consultant investigating terrorist attacks around the world and said he expects his telephone will ring in the next few days with an offer to work on the Oklahoma City federal building bombing. He said if this happens he will also probably be called to Washington DC and would meet with me here. If he does not he would still agree to meet with us but would have to do so on the West Coast. He lives in Riverside County, California near Palm Springs. Wheaton told me that from 1984 to 1987 he spent a lot of time in the Washington DC area and that starting in 1985 he was "recruited into Ollie North's network" by the CIA officer he has information about. He got to know this man and his wife, a "'super grade high level CIA officer" and kept a bedroom in their Virginia home. His friend [Carl Jenkins] was a Marine Corps liason in New Orleans and was the CIA contact with Carlos Marcello. He had been responsible for "running people into Cuba before the Bay of Pigs." His friend is now 68 or 69 years of age. Over the course of a year or a year and one-half his friend told him about his activities with training Cuban insurgency groups. Wheaton said he also got to know many of the Cubans who had been his friend's soldiers/operatives when the Cubans visited in Virginia from their homes in Miami. His friend and the Cubans confirmed to Wheaton they assassinated JFK. Wheaton's friend said he trained the Cubans who pulled the triggers. Wheaton said the street level Cubans felt JFK was a traitor after the Bay of Pigs and wanted to kill him. People "above the Cubans" wanted JFK killed for other reasons. Wheaton said we must look at his friend and his associates in order to know what really happened to JFK. One of those associates was I. Irving Davidson who was/is "the bag man for the intelligence community." Davidson runs a group called the Timber Center which handles payoffs and payments for the CIA, the NSA and the Pentagon. He is a friend of Jack Anderson's and was indicted with Carlos Marcello in the 1980's on a Teamster's kick-back charge. Davidson is a non-practicing attorney in Washington D.C. He is now about 70 years old. Wheaton said he would speak to the Board confidentially but would not allow his name to be used publicly because his friend and the friend's associates "said they would destroy me in the media with a blitz of disinformation to destroy my professional reputation. They will make me out to be a conspiracy nut. I'm not afraid of them, I've been a cop too long and besides, they only kill the people on the inner circle. The rest of us end up having our reputations destroyed." Wheaton concluded by saying "this matter is not complex but it is convoluted. I need to show you the paper trail to show the contacts of these people."
     *) Undated note of Gene Wheaton to the ARRB: "Carl (Jenkins) was my (National Air) Washington, D.C. rep. who connected me to Nestor Pino, Bill Bode, Rob Owen, Vaughn Forrest, Chi Chi Quintero, Nestor Sanchez, et al. I was V.P. of National Air in 1985-86 (see my Bio)."
     *) March 31, 1998, Gene Wheaton, letter to the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB): "Ref the attached letters from your former Chief Investigator Anne Buttimer, Edq dated 16 May 95, and 12 July 1995. Ms Buttimer and I had several contacts by phone/fax as well as the meeting on 11 July 95, in the Washington, D.C. area. At the July meeting I furnished her with rather sensitive documents, photos, and information related to the CIA covert connections to Cuba, Florida, Louisiana, Texas and Mexico during the months and years prior to, and after, the assassination in Dallas. During and after the July 95 meeting Ms. Buttimer stated she wanted to follow-up and expand on the data I provided. However, she shortly thereafter appears to have suddenly departed from the Board. I have never heard from her again, and no subsequent Board investigator has contacted me. The only thing I receive are the periodic news releases. I would appreciate it if you would advise me as to any action, research, or follow-up inquiry re the data I provided. I would also request you have Ms. Buttimer contact me, or provide a means for me to contact her."
108. 1994, David Corn, 'Blond Ghost: Ted Shackley and the CIA's crusades', p. 382: "Sheehan and Wheaton sat down in the kitchen of Hoven's house in early February of 1986. ... Sheehan was captivated. He had struck the mother lode."
109. 2002, Volume XXV, Number 1 and 2, AFIO magazine Periscope: "2001 donors [life members]: ... Inman, Bobby R. ... Gittinger, John W. ... Hugel, Max ... Jenkins, Carl E. ... Schlesinger, James R. ... Shackley, Theodore ... Spencer, Jr. Thomas R. ... Wannall, W. Raymond ... Webster, William H. ... Wedemeyer, Albert D. ... 26 Anonymous Donors... Special volunteers of time & talent: ... Shackley, Ted; Spencer, Jr., Thomas R. ... New Member Sponsors for 2001: ... Angleton, James ... Critchfield, James; Critchfield, Lois ... Spencer, Thomas ... Corporate partners 2001: Du Pont Investment Bankers, Hill & Associates, Institute of World Politics, ... Lockheed Martin (M&DS), ... Motorola, ... SAIC, ... TRW. ... Current Members of the AFIO Board of Directors: Honorary Board of Directors: Co-Chairmen: Hon. George H. W. Bush; Hon. Gerald R. Ford; Mr. John Barron; Hon. Shirley Temple Black; Hon. Frank C. Carlucci; Dr. Ruth M. Davis; Adm. Bobby R. Inman, USN (Ret); Professor Ernest R. May; Mr. John Anson Smith; Hon. William H. Webster; Hon. R. James Woolsey. ... Board Members: ... Mr. Theodore G. Shackley; Thomas R. Spencer Jr., Esq. ... Present Board Members Re-elected for Another Term in 2002: Ted Shackley (Ret)... Officers: President: Mr. S. Eugene Poteat [confirmed Gulf of Tonkin incident was used by White House as a false flag event.]"
110. 2010 (estimate), Harvard speech of Daniel Sheehan, 'Conspiracy Theories' (about 20/21 minutes into lecture): "When John Martino was griping about the Kennedies, what SOB's they were, and how rotten they were from trying to stop them from killing Castro, William Pawley turned directly to him that night on June 10th, 1963, in the presence of Dick Billings and the others, and said: "Don't you worry, John. We're gonna kill that motherfucker [JFK]." And these are the people who exactly know how to do that stuff."
111. For a summary of sources visit:
     spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKmartino.htm
112. 2010 (estimate), Harvard speech of Daniel Sheehan, 'Conspiracy Theories' (about 16/17 minutes into lecture): "There is as we speak an article being prepared by New Yorker magazine, a 12,000 word article, that is going to be published. ... What [it] is going to be revealing is that in June of 1968, when Bobby Kennedy was killed, at the Ambassador Hotel, there has now been discovered a photograph, that was taken within minutes of the killing of three men standing in the lobby of the Ambassador Hotel which included David Morales, Gordon Campbell and Jorge Johandez. This doesn't mean anything to you yet, but as it turns out, David Morales was, in fact, the shooter on the grassy knoll in Dealey Plaza on November 22 of 1963. And he was the lead shooter in the triangular fire team that was trained to assassinate Fidel Castro. And Jorge Johandez was the head of the DRE, which is the Cuban student group that Oswald got into the argument with on the street corner down in New Orleans - the famous incident that had occurred down there. But it turns out that these three men were actually standing in the Ambassador Hotel in the lobby within minutes after the killing of Bobby Kennedy. And a second revelation is in the process of being made very soon is going to be undertaken by Richard Billings. Richard Billings was the chief staff writer for the House Select Committee on Assassinations. There are a series of major intense meetings going on, today actually, that began yesterday and are continuing unto today, in which Dick Billings is participating, along with Gaeton Fonzi, who is the chief investigator for the House Select Committee on Assassinations, they're in communication with G. Robert Blakey, who is the staff chief. They're now in the process of getting ready to reveal a second photograph which shows in Dealey Plaza within seconds before the shooting a photograph of Rip Robertson and Grayston Lynch. ... You can see him [Robertson] tipping his hat just before the shots rang out." The theory that David Morales was present at the murder of Bobby Kennedy already stems from the documentary 'RFK Must Die'.
113. Cited from a 1994 letter to John R. Tunheim, chairman of the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB). Haven't seen any photocopies at this point yet, which is unfortunate.
114. Cited from a report based on a May 1995 interview of Bradley Ayers with Jeremy Gunn, an investigator for the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB). Haven't seen any photocopies at this point yet, which is unfortunate.
115. The documentary 'RFK Must Die' revolves around photos and video uncovered by Shane O'Sullivan that seems to show the presence of JM/WAVE veterans David Morales, George Joannides and Gordon Campbell at the Ambassador Hotel the night that Bobby Kennedy was murdered. This is total disinformation. However, some of the interviews might contain truth.
     *) 2007, Shane O'Sullivan, 'RFK Must Die' documentary: "Ruben [Carbajal] and Robert [Walton] were drinking with David in a Washington hotel-room one night in 1973 when talk turned to John Kennedy and Morales went into a rage. ... "[Robert Walton:] He was striding around the room and he was out of control. And I don't ever recall seeing him loose it like that before. Something like: "I was in Dallas when we got that motherfucker and I was in Los Angeles when we got the little bastard." What it said to me was that he was in some way implicated with the death of John Kennedy, and let's go one step further, also Bobby." "[Carbajal:] And as we're drinking, and then finally Diddy [Morales] said, well, he let 'em know in a roundabout way, "Well, we got that son of a bitch." That's what he said. ... You know what he [Morales] meant, because he [Kennedy] had caused all those [Cuban] deaths. Why did he go back on his word? Pull those damn airplanes [in the Bay of Pigs invasion]. ... No, I didn't ask no more. The more you ask the less chance you have of living. ... I don't have respect for that Robert. I'm just quoting what he put down in the newspaper. He says: "The blacks, take anything you want. It belongs to you." What kind of a goddamn asshole is that? All the ethnic groups around the United States, what about the rest of 'em? I say, that man is crazy. He wants to start a civil war right here in the United States with that stupid talk like that. Then he got knocked off in a hurry, didn't he? ... No, he wasn't in Los Angeles. He just said: "We got him". There's a difference, you know, the wording.""
     *) 2007, Shane O'Sullivan, 'RFK Must Die' documentary (Ruben "Rocky" Carbajal, best friend of Morales): ""They called him the man of a thousand faces. That's what he was called. He hated all communists, you know. ... You don't mess with him. He will blow your ass apart. That's when the terrorists took over for 3,5 years [in Uruguay]. They went from door to door. As soon as they opened the door you had to kill children, old men ... All these holy people think that by talking to people you're gonna get it done. You gotta kill 'em. From there he [Morales] had to go to Chile to overthrow Allende.""
116. 2007, Shane O'Sullivan, 'RFK Must Die' documentary (mainly disinformation): "In 1978, as Congress began reinvestigating the JFK assassination, Morales fell ill on the way back from a trip to Washington: "[Ruben:] Say, what's the matter with you, Diddy?" He said, "I don't feel too good." I said, "Why not?" He said, "I had a few drinks with my cronies up there before I left Washington, D.C. I said, "Really?" He said, "On the plane I hadn't been feeling good (unintelligible)." I said, "I was just waiting for you, cause I'm going to take off, and go to Wilcox." He used to leave his truck right there, and drive over there. ... "Okay, well then let me know soon as you get there. Let me know how you feel. You got me worried. You don't look the same no more." He was always happy go lucky." That night Morales had a massive heart attack. The ambulance took hours to arrive and didn't bring any oxygen. Within a week he was dead. "They wasted five hours to get him to the hospital... I guess they wanted him dead, I guess, real good, by orders, real good. ... [By who?] Do I have to draw you a picture? The same people he worked for. Yeah [the CIA]. Because he was going to go before the Senate. ... He only had two bosses, the President and the head of the CIA. ... Yeah, he wanted to go teach at Flagstaff, political science."
117. 1979, Gaeton Fonzi report for the HSCA on Antonio Veciana's Maurice Bishop: "During the course of that interview, Veciana revealed that from about mid-1960 through mid-1973 he had been directed and advised in his anti-Castro and anti-Communist activities by an American he knew as Maurice Bishop. (4) Veciana said that Bishop had guided him in planning assassination attempts on Premier Fidel Castro in Havana in 1961 and in Chile in 1971, that Bishop had directed him to organize Alpha 66 in 1962; and that Bishop, when breaking their relationship in 1973, had paid him $253,000 in cash for his services over the years. (5) ... Veciana revealed further that at one meeting with Bishop in Dallas in late-August or September 1963, he saw with him a young man he later recognized as Lee Harvey Oswald. (6) (116) Veciana told Senator Schweiker's investigator that he had not previously disclosed that information to anyone. (7) (117) The committee took an intense interest in the Veciana allegations. ... The committee conducted numerous interviews of other key anti-Castro associates or former associates of Veciana, not only as part of its efforts to locate Bishop but also to further aid in assessing Veciana' credibility. Generally Veciana's reputation for honesty and integrity was excellent. ... Immediately after receiving the Bishop sketch, Schweiker concluded that Phillips, who had earlier testified before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Activities, bore a strong resemblance to the sketch. ... When asked by the committee if he was familiar with anyone using the cover name of Bishop at the JM/WAVE station, Cross said he was "almost positive" that David Phillips had used the cover name of Maurice Bishop . (184) ... Cross said, however, that the reason he was certain that Phillips used the name of Bishop was because he recalled sometimes discussing field and agent problems with Phillips' assistant, Doug Gupton, and Gupton often saying, "Well, I guess Mr. Bishop will have to talk with him." Cross said: "And, of course, I knew he was referring to his boss, David Phillips." ... Gupton confirmed that he was in charge of a special operations staff at the Miami JM/WAVE station and that his immediate superior was David Phillips. (189) Gupton acknowledged that Ron Cross (cover name) was a case officer who worked for him and that he saw Cross on a daily basis. (190) ... He said he does not recall Phillips ever using the name of Maurice Bishop. (192) When told about Cross' recollection of him referring to Phillips as "Mr. Bishop," Gupton said: "Well, maybe I did. I don't remember." (193) He also said, however, that he never heard the name of Bishop while he was stationed in Miami. ... Gupton said, however, that there were two sets of operations, One set of operations was run out of Miami and he kept Phillips informed of them. Phillips ran another set of operations personally out of Washington and, Gupton said, Phillips did not keep him briefed about them. ... David Atlee Phillips testified before the committee in executive session on April 15, 1978 [claimed to have never seen Veciana before] ... Phillips was shown the sketch of Maurice Bishop but could not identify it as anyone he knew. He said, however, "It looks like me." ... On March 31, 1978, the CIA informed the committee that its Office of the Inspector General, its Office of the General Counsel, its Office of Personnel, and the Deputy Directorate of Operations had no record of a Maurice Bishop. (210) ... On August 10, 1978, B. H., a former covert operative of the CIA. was interviewed by the committee in a special closed session [claimed to have been aware of a mysterious "Bishop" in the CIA, but that it wasn't his friend Phillips] ... On August 17, 1978, the committee deposed John A. McCone, the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency from October 1961 until April 30, 1965. (222). (192) During the course of the deposition, the following questions and answers were recorded Q. Do you know or did you know Maurice Bishop? A. Yes. Q. Was he an agency employee? A. I believe so. Q. Do you know what his duties were in 1963? A. No. Q. For instance, do you know whether Maurice Bishop worked in the Western Hemisphere Division or whether he worked in some other division of the CIA? A. I do not know. I do not recall . I knew at that time but I do not recall. ... dditional efforts to locate Maurice Bishop were made by the committee in file requests to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. (228) and to the Department of Defense. (229) Both proved negative. (230)"
     *) Gaeton Fonzi, 'The Last Investigation' (digital): "As for David Atlee Phillips -- of all the people in the world -- it was incredible how the pieces of his character and career fit into the puzzle named Maurice Bishop. As first discovered by Senator Schweiker himself, the composite sketch of Bishop was a very close likeness of Phillips. In additional, a few specific details revealed by Veciana long before the name of David Phillips popped up made an impression on me. One was the very unusual physical characteristic that both Bishop and Phillips shared in the dark, weathered ellipses under his eyes. the other was Veciana's assumption that Bishop was a Texan. David Phillips grew up and still has family living in Fort Worth. ... Later, I mentioned by reaction to Chief Counsel Bob Blakey. "You know," I said, "David Phillips lied in his testimony." Blakey raised his brows. "Oh, really," he said. "What about?" I told him the details. He listened carefully, thought silently for a moment, gave me a "so what?" shrug and walked away. ... We talked for a few hours in detail about other points in that report and I slowly began to realize that Veciana was not an going to bring up the one key doubt I had expressed about his credibility. In the report, I said specifically that I had doubted his credibility when he told me that David Phillips was not Maurice Bishop. In our discussion now, Veciana was letting that pass. ... "I know that you feel you have a mission in life," I said, "and I want you to know that I respect that and all the things you must do to be faithful to that mission. Believe me, I do not want to interfere with it. "He nodded his head. "I understand," he said softly. "You know that I believe what you have told me," I went on. "I believe you about everything. Except when you told me that David Phillips is not Maurice Bishop." His eyes never moved, his expression never changed as I spoke. "Now," I said, "I would like you to tell me this one time very truthfully: Would you have told me if I had found Maurice Bishop?" A slow smile crossed Veciana's face as he let out his breath. He put his head down and scratched his forehead, obviously: taking time now to think carefully. Then he looked up with that half-smile still on his face. "Well, you know," he said, "I would like to talk with him first." That was his answer. I looked at him for a moment, then laughed. Veciana nodded his head and laughed with me."
118. *) November 1998, Vol. 2/3, The Dealey Plaza Echo, 'David Ferrie's Web of Intrigue': "In a suit against Playboy, for having published Jim Garrison's claim that Novel was with the CIA, Novel testified that Guy Banister and Sergio Arancha [Arcacha] Smith worked under CIA operative David Atlee Phillips. In the same testimony, Novel admitted that he had known Clay Shaw since 1959. HSCA investigator Gaeton Fonzi looked into a possible link between David Atlee Phillips and Lee Harvey Oswald. It is Fonzi's belief that Phillips and another CIA man, Maurice Bishop, are the same person."
     Until his death in 2012, Gordon Novel was one of many strange con men in the conspiracy community. But in the 1960s he was closely linked to the Kennedy assassination:
     *) August 23, 1967, New Orleans Parish Grand Jury, Goldie Naomi Moore, Clay Shaw's secretary at the New Orleans International Trade Mart from 1946 to 1965: "[Gordon Novel] was in our office occasionally. It either was employment or a wishing to make a contract for the restaurant facilities for the Trade Mart. I believe 1961. ... Yes, to my knowledge [Novel negotiated directly with Shaw], it was just Novel - he left a brochure and I had to check it. ... Yes [he actually went into Shaw's office.]"
     *) 1967, New Orleans States-Item, 'Novel Says Munitions Theft Set Up by Agency' (photocopy from Harold Weisberg archive): "[Novel] is accused of both conspiracy and burglery along with 44-year-old Sergio Arcacha Smith of Dalles, once the leader of a militant anti-Castro organization in New Orleans. Garrison charges they conspired with another key JFK probe figure, David W. Ferrie, to stage the [Houma] munitions theft."
     *) January 4, 1968, Midlothian Mirror, 'Editorial: He's just a sharp old geezer': "Shortly after Republican James Rhodes of Ohio refused Jim Garrison's request of extradition to Louisiana for ex-CIA agent Gordon Novel, billionaire Hunt came out in favor of Rhodes for Vice President on the Republican ticket. Hunt admitted he had never met Rhodes and knew very little about him. "I just heard he was a good man," Hunt mumbled on TV."
     *) February 27, 1969, New Orleans States-Item, 'Defense Winds After Shaw - Up Case Testifies': "Shaw also said he negotiated with Gordon Novel, a fugitive witness, for space in the ITM. Novel has refused to come to New Orleans to testify In Garrison's Investigation of the assassination."
     *) February 21, 1969, FBI document, Cincinnati, Ohio, 'Re: Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, November 22, 1963, Dallas, Texas': "On February 11, 1969, Mr. Jack Prentice, 470 Beaver Avenue, Whitehall, Columbus, Ohio, advised that he is the owner of the Columbus Antenna Company and is a close friend of Gordon Novel. He said that he first met Gordon Novel about five or six months ago... He said that during the time that he has known Novel, Novel has indicated that he is acquainted with Allen Dulles, the late former director of the Central Intelligence Agency; Walter Sheridan, who, according to Novel, is a close associate of the Kennedy family; with Clay Shaw, the defendant in the conspiracy trial now going on in New Orleans; with a man by the name David Ferrie, who is involved with Shaw; and with District Attorney Garrison of New Orleans. He said that from what Novel has told him,.he is convinced that Novel was involved in a conspiracy to assassinate President Kennedy and also as the trial of Shaw drew closer, he became more panicky. He said that Novel had not told him that he was involved in such a conspiracy and his opinion is based on his own interpretation of what Novel told him. He could not cite an example. ... Prentice said that Novel is supposed to have been involved, along with Shaw and Ferrie, in prostitution in New Orleans and also Jack Ruby is supposed to have been involved in some manner. Prentice said that Novel claims to have been the Chief Security Officer for District Attorney Garrison, and that Novel's first wife is now the mistress of Garrison. Novel claims to be the illegitimate son of Billy Rose, and claims that there is a $52,000,000 trust fund set up for Novel from the estate of Billy Rose. Prentice claimed that Novel has spent vast amounts of money to confuse District Attorney Garrison and he feels that Novel must be getting the money from people in New Orleans."
119. September 17, 2012, Independent, 'Gaeton Fonzi: Journalist who investigated the assassination of John F Kennedy': "The contacts between Oswald, purportedly a Castro supporter, and the violently anti-Castro Cuban exile community headquartered in Miami, became a natural point of Fonzi's investigations. His crucial discovery was the testimony of Antonio Veciana, leader of the exile group Alpha 66. Veciana's CIA contact was a man he knew as "Maurice Bishop", and in 1963, Veciana arrived in Dallas for a meeting with "Bishop", to find him conferring with a man he later identified as Oswald. Fonzi was able to show that "Bishop" was in reality David Atlee Phillips, who had also been the CIA's station chief in Mexico City when Oswald was purportedly filmed and recorded at the Soviet consulate there. Veciana would later survive an assassination attempt on him just at the time the HSCA report was released, but the question of why the supposedly communist Oswald would be meeting with a senior CIA agent was never answered by HSCA."
120. April 26, 1996 interview of Steve Bochan with HSCA investigator Gaeton Fonzi: "I was just down in Cuba in January working on a piece for Esquire, on Castro assassination attempts, and spent some time with General Escalante, the former Chief of Counter-Intelligence and former head of State Security. I was given a guided tour, as it were, of some of the places that were involved in Castro assassination attempts, including Veciana's - the one that Veciana organized in October of '61. From his files, it took place in a building from across the North Plaza of the old palace. That apartment was used as a CIA safe house, it appeared, before Veciana's mother-in-law leased it. And, Phillips was seen going in and out of it. He provided a number of other confirmations of Bishop as David Atlee Phillips, and Phillips as Bishop. ... There's no doubt in the Cuban Intelligence records that Bishop is David Atlee Phillips. ... Yeah, [Ron Cross] said basically that he remembered Phillips using the name Bishop. Interesting point about that because, after my article came out and I was using "Ron Cross" to cover-up Crosier's name, Phillips went on television and I think he gave a press interview to someone. And he said that you couldn't believe what this fellow Crosier had said because he had been a drunk, an alcoholic, which he admitted to us and I include that in the book. But I found it interesting that Phillips revealed his real name. In violation, I would think, of CIA protocol at least. ... At the time I was terribly confused, because I sat there for quite a long period of time watching him and watching Phillips shaking, literally shaking, avoiding Veciana's eyes while Veciana was staring at him from across the table. Phillips was re-lighting cigarettes, and then the encounter in the hallway, where he was a terribly shaken man, so much so to the point that when we asked him didn't he remember Veciana's name, he said 'no.' In fact, he asked Veciana again, 'what did you say your name was?' 'Veciana. You don't know me?' And he said, 'no.' Now the fact that Phillips himself, obviously had to explain that later in his testimony before the committee: how could the head of the CIA's Cuban operations not know the head of the largest anti-Castro organization? How could he not know the name of the head of that organization? Phillips testified, before the Committee, under sworn testimony, that he was not introduced to Veciana by name. When in fact, Veciana himself was there and, later, when I checked with him after Phillips testified and asked him, Do you remember when I introduced you to Phillips by name?' and he said, 'oh sure, you remember I asked him don't you know me, my name?' And I was there and another Schweiker assistant was there. So we had corroboration that Phillips was lying. But Phillips had to cover up his gut reaction to Veciana being there and why he denied knowing his name - he was so shaken by the sudden encounter. It was an interesting experience, and at the end of it, walking out of it, I was confused, and I asked Veciana, "Isn't he Bishop?" And Veciana didn't answer right away, didn't say "no," instead, he first said, "He knows." I remember walking back to the car, during this discussion, repeating, "He knows? What do you mean, 'he knows'?" "He knows." And I said, "He knows WHAT?" I asked, "You mean he knows who Bishop is?" And he said, "yeah." So it was a very interesting experience, and at the time I was confused, until I figured it out. ... And another interesting thing, before the Reston incident, we dug up a photo of Phillips that had appeared in a magazine somewhere, and we took Veciana down to the library to look at this photograph of Phillips. ... I kept looking back at the table where Veciana was and saw Veciana just staring at this photograph of Phillips, although all he kept telling me was "It's close." You know you would think that if it wasn't in fact Bishop, Veciana would've said, 'no this isn't him,' and he would've moved right on. But he stared at that picture for a long, long time. ... Yeah, what intrigues me most about him is how he's buried almost anonymously out there in Arizona under a tombstone that says, "Sgt. David Morales." And yet he was obviously a very, very important and eventually high ranking officer in the Agency. I think Morales needs a lot more looking into, his background and his associates and his involvement with David Phillips. We discovered, for instance, that he was involved with Phillips in the Chilean operation - the overthrow of Allende. He came away with a lot of money. ... I asked [Shackley] who was your 2nd in charge at JM/WAVE? And he said, "David Morales.""
121. *) September 11, 2012, New York Times, 'Gaeton Fonzi, Investigator of Kennedy Assassination, Dies at 76': "Mr. Blakey was criticized by Mr. Fonzi as overly deferential to the C.I.A., and he now concedes that Mr. Fonzi was probably right on that score. Mr. Blakey said he was shocked in 2003 when declassified C.I.A. documents revealed the full identity of the retired agent who had acted as the committee’s liaison to the C.I.A. The agency never told Mr. Blakey that the agent, George Joannides, had overseen a group of anti-Castro Cuban exiles [Directorio Revolucionario Estudantil (DRE), or Student Revolutionary Directorate] in Dallas in the months before the assassination, when Oswald had two well-publicized clashes with them [in the form of Carlos Bringuier]. At the time of the revelation, the C.I.A. said Mr. Joannides had withheld nothing relevant from the committee. Mr. Joannides died in 1990. "Mr. Joannides obstructed our investigation," Mr. Blakey said. Asked how that had affected the committee'’s work, he added: "We'll never know. But I can say that for a guy like Gaeton, a guy who really wanted to know what happened to Kennedy, it kind of tortured him.""
     *) October 16, 2009, New York Times, 'C.I.A. Is Still Cagey About Oswald Mystery': "On the Kennedy assassination, the deceptions began in 1964 with the Warren Commission. The C.I.A. hid its schemes to kill Fidel Castro and its ties to the anti-Castro Directorio Revolucionario Estudantil, or Cuban Student Directorate, which received $50,000 a month in C.I.A. support during 1963."
122. An article that summarizes many of the accusations: March 11, 1993, Houston Chronicle, 'Official and confidential: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover/ Sources imply FBI sat on leads about JFK's murder' (Anthony Summers): "After leaving the bureau, Banister became a private detective but kept up his FBI contacts at the highest level. "Guy was in touch with J. Edgar Hoover long after he left," said New Orleans Crime Commission Director Aaron Kohn, and the New Orleans office of the FBI was near Banister's detective agency. According to his secretary, Delphine Roberts, "Mr. Banister was still working for them. I know he and the FBI traded information." FBI records confirm this, and a CIA document identifies Banister as one of the "regular FBI contacts" of a Cuban exile leader. ... Had Edgar provided the full picture on Banister and Ferrie, the commission surely would have paid more attention to the possibility that the Mafia had a hand in the assassination. Years later, Congress' Assassinations Committee expressed suspicion that two specific Mafia bosses might have been involved -- Santos Trafficante of Florida and Carlos Marcello of New Orleans. Marcello, like Trafficante and Sam Giancana, had been targeted by the Justice Department on Robert Kennedy's orders. He also held a peculiarly personal grudge. Within weeks of taking office in 1961, the president's brother had arranged for his abrupt deportation to Guatemala as an undesirable alien. When the mobster slipped back into the United States, Kennedy renewed efforts to kick him out for good. Ferrie had worked for Marcello's attorney, Wray Gill, since early 1962 -- in parallel with his work for Banister. Ferrie and Banister had both helped prepare Marcello's defense against charges that he had used a phony birth certificate to avoid being deported. Had the Marcello angle been pursued, much else would have come out. Oswald's uncle and surrogate father, Dutz Murret, with whom the alleged assassin stayed in 1963, worked in Marcello's gambling network. Jack Ruby, who had many mob associations, was in touch with Nofio Pecora, a Marcello lieutenant, three weeks before the assassination. Pecora, in turn, was close to Oswald's uncle. After the assassination, witnesses claimed that one Marcello associate had been seen handing Oswald cash and that another had discussed the suitability of a foreign-made rifle to "get the president." The FBI dropped such leads. Marcello's name appears neither in the Warren Report nor in any of its 26 volumes of evidence. Nor do the names of Trafficante or Giancana. The CIA failed to tell the commission about its use of the Mafia in its plots to kill Castro, which had continued until early 1963. So did Edgar, who had known about them for a long time. Warren's investigators were thus denied a vital opening, a chance to make sense of the triple tracks confronting them: U.S. intelligence, the mob and the exiles. "Because we did not have those links," said commission attorney Burt Griffin, now a judge, "there was nothing to tie the underworld in with Cuba and thus nothing to tie them in with Oswald, nothing to tie them in with the assassination of the president." The CIA, and Edgar with his New Orleans leads, held the key to the labyrinth and withheld it from the commission. Information from numerous sources suggests the principal Mafia leaders were linked to the case. The secretary to Banister said he was visited before the killing by Giancana henchman Johnny Roselli. Giancana's half brother has claimed the Chicago Mafia boss plotted the assassination in concert with Marcello, Trafficante and CIA operatives. Frank Costello, the old Mafia overlord who helped Marcello build his criminal empire, said before he died that Oswald was "just the patsy" in the president's murder. Frank Ragano, the former attorney of Teamsters leader Jimmy Hoffa, said he was sent to discuss the president's murder with Trafficante and Marcello in early 1963. He gained the impression "they already had such a thought in their mind." Most compelling, perhaps, is what the new generation of FBI agents learned during surveillance of Trafficante and Marcello as late as 1975. "Now only two people are alive," FBI microphones overheard Trafficante say, "who know who killed Kennedy." Trafficante died of natural causes in 1987. Marcello died last week at the age of 83. Some years ago, according to Joseph Hauser, an FBI plant, he admitted that Oswald had worked as a runner in his betting operation in 1963. The most serious information pointing to Trafficante and Marcello raises the possibility that the FBI was gravely negligent before the assassination. According to Jose Aleman, a wealthy Cuban exile, Trafficante made ominous remarks about the president at a business meeting as early as September 1962. The Kennedys, said the mobster, were "not honest. They took graft and did not keep a bargain. ... Mark my word, this man Kennedy is in trouble, and he will get what is coming to him." When Aleman demurred, saying he thought the president would be re-elected, Trafficante said quietly, "You don't understand me. Kennedy's not going to make it to the election. He is going to be hit." In Louisiana that same month, Marcello and two close associates met to discuss an oil project with Ed Becker, an entrepreneur from California. As the whiskey flowed, the mobster talked angrily about his ordeal at the hands of Robert Kennedy. Finally, uttering a Sicilian oath, he exclaimed that the attorney general was "going to be taken care of." According to Becker, Marcello referred to Kennedy as a dog, with his brother Robert being the tail. "The dog," he said, "will keep biting you if you only cut off its tail." The more Marcello ranted on, the more serious he seemed. According to Becker, he "clearly stated that he was going to arrange to have President Kennedy murdered." He spoke of "setting up a nut to take the blame." The Marcello threat was first reported in a 1969 book by Pulitzer Prize winner Ed Reid; the Trafficante comments first appeared in the Washington Post in 1976. Congress' Assassinations Committee, however, inadequately probed the claim common to both of them: that the FBI was fully informed at the time. Aleman, a valued FBI contact, would later insist that he told bureau agents about Trafficante's remarks soon after they were made in 1962. Becker has said from the start that he, too, quickly informed the FBI. Available FBI files contain no reports showing that Trafficante's comments, or the Marcello threat, were reported as claimed. Edgar was required by law to warn the Secret Service of all threats to public officials. As a matter of routine, he did indeed pass on the sort of menaces uttered daily by drunks and maniacs across the country. There is no sign, however, that the FBI told the Secret Service of the many violent remarks about the Kennedy brothers picked up on wiretaps of top mobsters. Nor is there any evidence that the FBI passed on Marcello and Trafficante's talk of assassination."
123. *) For Guy Banister's involvement in the CIA-mafia business on Cuba, see his page in ISGP's death list.
     
     *) November 19, 1970, CIA document, Memorandum for: Director of Central Intelligence, Subject: Roselli, John (located on New York Times website as a PDF): "In August 1960, Mr. Richard Bisell approached Colonel Sheffield Edwards to determine if the Office of Security had assets that may assist in a sensitive mission requiring gangster-type action. The mission target was Fidel Castro. Robert A. Maheu was contacted, briefed generally on the project, and requested to ascertain if he could develop an entrée into the gangster elements as the first step toward accomplishing the desired goal. Mr. Maheu advised that he had met one Johnny Roselli on several occasions while visiting Las Vegas. … During the week of 25 September, was introduced to Sam [Giancana] who was staying at the Fontainblue Hotel, Miami Beach. It was several weeks after meeting with Sam and Joe [Santos Trafficante]… In May 1962, Mr. William Harvey took over as Case Officer, and it is not known by this Office whether Roselli was used operationally from that point on."
     *) December 13, 2002, The Times (London), 'Ted Shackley': "Shackley was also involved in a scheme to recruit the Mafia to provide hired assassins. The CIA turned to Johnny Rosselli, a former member of the Al Capone gang, who contacted Sam Giancana, the Mafia boss of Chicago and heir to Al Capone. On one occasion Shackley and his CIA boss Bill Harvey rented a U-Haul truck, filled with $ 5,000-worth of explosives and weapons, left the van in a parking lot, and handed the keys to Rosselli."
124. *) 1991, Bo Gritz (ISA and Delta Force commander), 'Called to Serve', p. 370. Khun Sa's interpreter, in the presence of all Khun Sa's top men, names Ted Shackley, Santos Trafficante (mafia boss), Richard Armitage, Daniel Arnold (CIA station chief in Thailand), and Jerry Daniels (CIA agent) as his former partners in the opium trade. This is recorded on video and audio tape.
     *) 2005, Joseph J. Trento, 'Prelude to Terror', pp. 44-45: "All the weaknesses Shackley had shown in his earlier assignments quickly resurfaced in Vietnam. He demanded voluminous intelligence reports that forced case officers to concentrate on numbers rather than quality. When case officers tried to question him, his cold responses earned him the nickname "Ice Man". Shackley turned to old associates from Berlin and Miami to help him run what was then the largest CIA station in the world. Among them were his loyal cadre of Cuban refugees, like the legendary Felix Rodriguez [ran drug-related CIA counterinsurgency program in El Salvador and surrounding countries in the 1980s], who followed him first to Laos and then to Vietnam... Back in Miami, former Cuban employees of Shackley's were showing up with embarrassing frequency in drug busts. When the old Bureau of Narcotics and Drugs (BNDD) launched Operation Eagle in 1968, it found itself arresting scores of CIA employees. ... many of these men were working directly for Santos Trafficante, who, the BNDD learned, now controlled significant heroin traffic in the United States. But although it arrested several of Trafficante's deputies, the BNDD could not get the Nixon administration to go after Trafficante directly. By this time, Trafficante was taking a serious interest in Vietnam. Not long after Shackley moved to Saigon Station, Trafficante made a tour of the Far East... Meanwhile, it was an open secret in Saigon Station that President Nguyen Van Thieu, who had replaced Ngo Dinh Diem after the 1963 coup, and Vice President Nguyen Cao Ky were participants in the heroin trade. Ky, one of Colby's most frequently cited intelligence sources, had been removed from Operation Haylift, which was flying commando units into Laos, when U.S. officers caught him loading opium onto his plane. Another frequently cited CIA asset and Shackley source, General Dang Van Quang, Thieu's security advisor, was a frequent point of friction between the CIA station and the U.S. military command. The military believed Quang was a major distributor of heroin to U.S. troops, according to Peter Kapusta, former CIA case officer to Saigon Police Chief General Nguyen Ngoc Loan. ... Shackley even interfered with the Army Criminal Investigation Division (CID) in its probe of Ky 's top aide, General Ngo Dzu, who the Army investigators charged with being a major purveyor of heroin in Vietnam. ... By 1971, Congress was getting so many complaints about GIs returning home addicted that the BNDD began to investigate. It, too, immediately ran into problems with CIA cooperation.
125. *) See note 26.
     *) December 15, 1966, interview of David Ferrie by John Volz at the District Attorney's Office of New Orleans at approximately 10:00 a.m.: "I used to work for G. Wray Gill. ... Gill would not have him because as Gill says, [Jack] Martin plays both sides of the fence. ... Remember the time of the first Marcello case in '63? Gill is the New Orleans lawyer for Marcello."
     *) May 13, 1975, interview of William Gaudet (anti-communist author supported by the CIA and once affiliated with Nelson Rockefeller) by Bernard Fensterwald and Allan Stone: "GAUDET: Well, [David Ferrie] became a private pilot... I mean, he used to give flying lessons and... or... he was a friend of a lot of the queers, including Clay Shaw... FENSTERWALD: He was a friend of Shaw's? GAUDET: Right... FENSTERWALD: Do you know if he knew Oswald? GAUDET: Yes, I think he did know Oswald... er... I think this is the link that Garrison was basing everything on... FENSTERWALD: You think that was a valid link, but the link between Oswald and Shaw was... GAUDET: ... was non-existent... FENSTERWALD: Yeah... but between Oswald and Ferrie you think was a valid link... GAUDET: That's right, but I don't think either one of them was capable of planning a conspiracy like this... FENSTERWALD: Well, there are records that [Ferrie] worked both for Guy Banister and for Carlos Marcello. He was actually in the courtroom - with Marcello when Kennedy was murdered. ... FENSTERWALD: They can't blame him and they can't blame Ferrie, because they were both sitting in the Federal Courthouse... GAUDET: Marcello? Yes, I've met him, but I don't know him... He's a... well, he's the number one whipping boy of the Federal Government in New Orleans... FENSTERWALD: Right... GAUDET: ... and they've never been able to really do anything to him... FENSTERWALD: Well, they kidnapped him and took him to Guatemala once and dumped him off... GAUDET: Yeah, and they claimed he did that... FENSTERWALD: ... and guess who flew him back... GAUDET: No... FENSTERWALD: David Ferrie ..."
126. *) 2009, Russ Baker, 'Family of Secrets', pp. 84, 276: "By the fall of 1962, when de Mohrenschildt was devoting much of time to squiring Lee Harvey Oswald, he had gained entree to the creme de la creme of the petroleum world. One longtime buddy of his and Poppy [George H. W.] Bush's, offshore drilling expert George Kitchel, would tell the FBI in 1964 that de Mohrenschildt counted among his good friends the oil tycoons Clint Murchison, H. L. Hunt, John Mecom, and Sid Richardson. Other commission testimony revealed that in the couple of years prior to the Kennedy assassination, de Mohrenschildt had traveled frequently from Dallas to Houston, where he visited with figures such as George Brown of Brown and Root, the construction and military construction giant that helped launch LBJ's career, and Jean de Menil of Schlumber, the huge oil services firm.
     Several of these men had even sent de Mohrenschildt abroad on business; one could be forgiven for wondering if these trips were in fact what the CIA calls "commercial cover." George Brown had dispatched him to Mexico... Murchison dispatched him to Haiti on several occasions. In 1958, he went to Yugoslavia on what was said to be business fro Mecom--whose foundation, the San Jacinto Fund, was later identified as a CIA funding conduit. ...
     His own brother was none other than Graham Kitchel--the FBI agent to whom Poppy Bush called in his Kennedy threat from Tyler, Texas, on November 22, 1963. Thus, the man who helped start Poppy Bush's political career shortly before the Kennedy assassination was at the same time a close friend of Lee Harvey Oswald's handler [de Mohrenschildt], while his own brother was the FBI agent who created an alibi paper trail for Poppy Bush."
     *) December 27, 1991, Austin Chronicle, 'Where was George? The Answer is Blowin' in the Wind': "The first appearance of the name George Bush in connection with the assassination is found in an FBI report made public in the late 1970s following a series of Freedom of Information (FOIA) lawsuits. The report, which lay buried among the 98,755 pages of documents released at the time, indicates that within hours of Kennedy's death, a man identifying himself as 'George H. W. Bush' telephoned the bureau's Houston office with information about a threat allegedly made against the President's life by a young, right-wing Republican. [turned out to be nothing] ... When questioned about the FBI report by the San Francisco Examiner in 1988, the then-Vice President's press office originally said Bush hadn't made the call and challenged the document's authenticity. Several days later, an aide told the Examiner Bush "does not recall" making the call. ... The so-called Parrott document' was not the last place the name George Bush would surface in connection to the assassination. On November 29, 1963, exactly one week after Kennedy was gunned down, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover sent a memorandum to the State Department concerning the reaction of Miami's anti-Castro Cuban community to the tragedy. In it Hoover reports that on the day after the assassination "Mr. George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency" was informed of the substance of the bureau's findings [Bush informed Hoover of the sentiment in the anti-Castro community]. ... Questioned about the memo by The Nation at the time [in 1988], then-Vice President (and Presidential candidate) George Bush responded through a spokesman "I was in Houston, Texas, as the time and involved in the independent oil drilling business. And I was running for Senate in late '63.' Dissatisfied with this seeming "non-dental denial," Joseph McBride, the author of The Nation article, asked whether Bush had worked for the CIA before becoming its director in 1976. "The answer is no," Vice Presidential spokesman Stephen Hart replied. ... Others questioned about the Vice President's possible involvement with the CIA in the early 1960s gave equally oblique responses. ... Former CA Director Richard Helms, who was the agency's deputy director for plans in 1963 and, according to Hoover's memo, was scheduled to receive a copy of the document, said, "I don't recall anyone by that name 'George Bush' working for the agency... He certainly never worked for me." McBride, however, cites an unnamed source, with close connections to the intelligence community" who "confirms that Bush started working for the agency in 1960 or 1961, using his oil business as a cover for clandestine activities." ... A globe-trotting socialite fluent in six languages, de Mohrenschildt's involvement with the CIA and is forerunner, the Office of Strategic Services, began during World War II when be worked for the French underground in the United States. ... Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, de Mohrenschildt developed close relations with some of the wealthiest and most powerful industrialists in the country, including oil tycoons H.L. Hunt, Clint Murchison Sr. and John W. Mecom. Another Texas oil man de Mohrenschildt apparently counted among his acquaintances was President Bush. De Mohrenschildt's phone book, now on file at the National Archives, contains the listing: Bush, George H. W. (Poppy) 1412 W. Ohio also Zapata Petroleum Midland 4-6355 [Bush moved from Midland to Houston in 1959 with his business and family]. 'Poppy' was President Bush's family nickname, one that stuck with him during his days at Yale. ... He was frequently seen, for example, on the tennis courts at the Long Island estate of Jack and janet Bouvier, the parents of the then Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy. The enormous irony of this association would not become clear until another of de Mohrenschildt's 'friends,' Lee Harvey Oswald, burst into notoriety."
127. Bush, Carlucci, Shackley were all working together since the 1970s:
     * Men working under deputy defense secretary Frank Carlucci all visited Ted Shackley's Cercle group.
     *) Gene Wheaton again (January 4, 2002, to Matt Ehling on Declassified Radio): "Ted Shackley and Vernon Walters and Frank Carlucci and Ving West and a group of these guys used to have park-bench meetings in the late 70s in McClean, Virginia so nobody could overhear their conversations. They basically said, "With our expertise at placing dictators in power," I’m almost quoting verbatim one of their comments, "why don’t we treat the United States like the world’s biggest banana republic and take it over?" And the first thing they had to do was to get their man in the White House, and that was George Bush."
     *) 2005, Joseph J. Trento, Prelude to Terror, pp. 124-125: "Turner's hiring of Frank Carlucci to replace Hank Knoche was manipulated by Shackley and Bush," William Corson said.3 Carlucci was close to Donald Rumsfeld, who had engineered Bush's appointment by President Ford. Carlucci also had total loyalty to General Richard Secord... and Erich von Marbod. ... According to Shirley Brill, Carlucci and Shackley were also very close friends. Shackley and Clines knew Carlucci from the Chile operations. ... Shackley, according to Soghanalian, had later worked with Calucci in setting up Portugal as a major arms transshipping point for the Middle East. "They played Turner like a violin to get Carlucci the job," Shirley Brill said. ... Weisz told him that "George Bush and James Angleton had been instrumental in putting Weisz where he was.""
     *) 2005, Joseph Trento, Prelude to Terror', p. 283: "In the early 1980s, George Bush helped Shackley get established in Kuwait and in the oil business as a consultant. Shackley started Theodore Shackley and Associates and several other companies, which he used as a cover for his work for Bush. For the first time in his life, he was making large amounts of money. … He even told friends that he still had hopes of becoming DCI someday in a future Bush administration. The admiration of Israel by the neocons was shared by Ted Shackley."
     *) George H. W. Bush was a senior counselor of the Carlyle Group 1993-2003, under the chairmanship during all this time of Frank Carlucci.
     *) 2002, Volume XXV, Number 1 and 2, AFIO magazine Periscope: "2001 donors [life members]: ... Inman, Bobby R. ... Gittinger, John W. ... Hugel, Max ... Jenkins, Carl E. ... Schlesinger, James R. ... Shackley, Theodore ... Spencer, Jr. Thomas R. ... Wannall, W. Raymond ... Webster, William H. ... Wedemeyer, Albert D. ... 26 Anonymous Donors... Special volunteers of time & talent: ... Shackley, Ted; Spencer, Jr., Thomas R. ... New Member Sponsors for 2001: ... Angleton, James ... Critchfield, James; Critchfield, Lois ... Spencer, Thomas ... Corporate partners 2001: Du Pont Investment Bankers, Hill & Associates, Institute of World Politics, ... Lockheed Martin (M&DS), ... Motorola, ... SAIC, ... TRW. ... Current Members of the AFIO Board of Directors: Honorary Board of Directors: Co-Chairmen: Hon. George H. W. Bush; Hon. Gerald R. Ford; Mr. John Barron; Hon. Shirley Temple Black; Hon. Frank C. Carlucci; Dr. Ruth M. Davis; Adm. Bobby R. Inman, USN (Ret); Professor Ernest R. May; Mr. John Anson Smith; Hon. William H. Webster; Hon. R. James Woolsey. ... Board Members: ... Mr. Theodore G. Shackley; Thomas R. Spencer Jr., Esq. ... Present Board Members Re-elected for Another Term in 2002: Ted Shackley (Ret)... Officers: President: Mr. S. Eugene Poteat [confirmed Gulf of Tonkin incident was used by White House as a false flag event.]"
128. January 27, 1978, Dallas Times, 'Oswald Friend Labeled CIA Informant in Memo': "CIA ties came in documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by Michael Levy, a 31-year-old freelance researcher. One memo by Richard Helms, then CIA deputy director for plans, said de Mohrenschildt, a Russian-born petroleum geologist, applied for a job with the CIA in 1942 but was rejected "because he was alleged to be a Nazi espionage agent." Helms, who later became CIA director also said de Mohrenschildt took a 1957 trip to Yugoslavia and provided the CIA with "foreign intelligence which was promptly disseminated to other federal agencies in 10 separate reports. A separate memo indicated de Mohrenschildt also furnished lengthy reports to the CIA on his 1958 travels through Mexico and Panama."
129. July-August 1997, Richard Bartholomew for Fair Play magazine, 'Byrds, Planes, and an Automobile' (webarchive): "Byrd probably also knew George de Mohrenschildt, David Atlee Phillips and George Bush through the Dallas Petroleum Club. [312] ... [312] ... Jim Garrison, On the Trail of the Assassins, (NY: Sheridan Square Press, 1989), pp. 51, 53, 286."
130. September 27, 1964, Warren Commission report, pp. 726, 728: "On May 9, responding to a newspaper advertisement, Oswald completed an application for employment with William B. Reilly Co., Inc. ... On his application form, Oswald listed as references in addition to John Murret, "Sgt. Robert Hidell" and "Lieut. J. Evans," both apparently fictitionous names. [1049] His application was approved and he began work on May 10... Oswald did not enjoy his work, [1051] and told his wife and Mrs. Paine that he was working in commercial photography. [1052] ...
     According to Marina's testimony, aside from Ruth Paine and Ruth Kloepfer and her daughters, the Murrets were the only social visitors the Oswalds had. ...
     On July 19, Oswald was dismissed by Reily because of inefficiency and inattention at his work. ...
     On July 6, Eugene Murret, a cousin of Oswald who was studying to be a Jesuit Priest in Mobile, Ala., wrote and asked if Oswald could come to Mobile and speak at the Jesuit House of Studies about "contemporary Russia and the practice of Communism there." Oswald accepted...
     In late May and early June, Oswald had apparently begun to formulate plans for creating a New Orleans branch of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. ...
     On August 5, he visited a store managed by Carlos Bringuier, a Cuban refugee and avid opponent of Castro and the New Orleans delegate of the Cuban student directorate. Oswald indicated an interest in joining the struggle against Castro. He told Bringuier that he had been a marine and was trained in guerrilla warfare... The next day Oswald returned to the store and left his "Guidebook for Marines" for Bringuier. [1079]
     On August 9, Bringuier saw Oswald passing out Fair Play for Cuba leaflets. Bringuier and his companions became angry and a dispute resulted. Oswald and the three Cuban exiles were arrested for disturbing the peace. [1080]
     On August 16, Oswald, assisted by at least one other person who was a hired helper, again passed Fair Play for Cuba literature, this time in front of the International Trade Mart. ...
     William Stuckey, a radio broadcaster with a program called Latin Listening Post, had long been looking for a member of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee to appear on the program. ... [After an interview] Stuckey arranged for a debate between Oswald and Bringuier on a 25-minute daily public affairs program..."
131. *) Carlos de Bringuier, the person Oswald clashed with over his Fair Play for Cuba leaflets, was head of the New Orleans CIA-backed Directorio Revolucionario Estudantil (DRE), or Student Revolutionary Directorate. Immediately before this, Oswald had tried to join Oswald the directorate through Bringuier. See note 118 for sources. Edward S. Butler, who appeared on air with Bringuier to debate Oswald was a member of the American Security Council's cold war victory committee in the 1966-1968 period
     *) In New Orleans Oswald was handing out Fair Play for Cuba leaflets with address 544 Camp Street on it, the office of former FBI chief and alleged CIA asset Guy Banister.
     1998, Anthony Summers, 'Not in Your Lifetime: The Defining Book on the J.F.K. Assassination': "Banister had been a star agent for the FBI... He had been commended by FBI Director Hoover... Banister supported the John Birch Society.. the paramilitary Minutemen, published a racist tract called the Louisiana Intelligence Digest...
     For both Banister and his Cuban proteges, the building was well located, close to the local offices of both the CIA and the FBI. For the agencies, Banister's intelligence background and independent status likely made him a convenient buffer, a circuit breaker for operations with which officialdom could not be openly associated. ...
     There, too, was Guy Banister Associates, a detective agency in a building that was a meeting place for Cuban exiles. The building was known as a haven for rightists extremists...
     Investigations by the Assassinations Committee, conducted years later on a cold trail, concluded that the FBI's effort [into Oswald's ties to 544 Camp Street and Guy Banister] was "not thorough." The Committee developed evidence "pointing to a different result," and it buttresses suspicion that the alleged assassin was involved in some covert operation. ... FBI agents did follow up on the Camp Street lead three days after the President's assassination, but only with superficial inquiries. They interviewed the building's owner, Sam Newman [who] gave oddly vague replies... On the basis of a few interviews like this, the FBI filed the reports on which the official inquiry was to rely. Their conclusion was: no FPCC office and no Oswald at Camp Street. End of story. ...
     The Crusade to Free Cuba Committee, the fund-raising group for the CIA-backed Cuban Revolutionary Council (CRC). In that capacity, he was almost certainly in touch with William Reily, Oswald's employer in New Orleans and a backer of the Crusade. [1] ... The CRC had theoretically ceased to use 544 Camp Street by the time Oswald got busy in New Orleans, but the reality was rather different. The CRC enjoyed a flexible business relationship with the landlord Sam Newman, who made no initialy charge for the office space... Anti-Castro militants were still using 544 Camp Street after Oswald's arrival in New Orleans, and came and went at will througout the summer of 1963. ...
     The exiles found a welcome in the offices of Guy Banister, the man who headed the detective agency at 544, and so apparently did Oswald. Leads from his former staff appear to confirm that Oswald, too, used that unlikely address--and may explain the devious purpose behind Oswald's pro-Castro campaign that summer. The information suggests Oswald was drawn into a U.S. intelligence scheme aimed at compromising the FPCC--and that Banister was deeply involved. ..
     An important development came when Assistant District Attorney Andrew Sciambra interviewed Banister's widow. After he husband's death, she said, she found among his effects a number of Fair Play for Cuba leaflets [which the FBI couldn't find apparently]. ... Banister used to hire young men as inquiry and infiltration agents. To help his Cuban exlie contacts, for example, Banister would send young men to mingle with students at New Orleans colleges, primed to report on budding pro-Castro sympathizers. Two such recruits were Allen and Daniel Campbell, bot--like Oswald-- former marines, and they had very relevant information.
     Shortly after Oswald's supposed street confrontation with Cuban exile Carlos Bringuier, Daniel Campbell told the author, a young man "with a marine haircut" came into his office at 544 Camp Street and used the desk phone for a few minutes. ... He had been, Campbell said he was certain, Lee Oswald. Allen Campbell, Daniel's brother, told the New Orleans authorities in 1969 that he had been at Camp Street on one of the two occasions on which Oswald passed out FPCC leaflets. [4] One might have expected his boss, Guy Banister, infamous for his enraged outbursts, to have reacted with fury when told of the pro-Castro leafleting. Instead, Allen Campbell said, Baniser merely laughed. Other former employees, meanwhile, recalled something that did make Banister angry--the use of the 544 Camp Street address on some of Oswald's FPCC propaganda.
     Banister's secretary at the time, Delphine Roberts, provided information that goes far toward explaining Banister's behavior. Roberts, described by a former FBI agent and Banister associate as the "number one" source on events at Camp Street, claimed that her boss knew Oswald personally. According to her, Banister encouraged him to mount his FPCC operation from Camp Street. The author interviewed her in 1978, before she had talked to the House Assassinations Committee, then again in 1993
     After the assassination, she said, Banister told her to discuss nothing with the FBI, and not to come to the office until the immediate uproar had blown over. A few months later, when Banister died, she distanced herself from the people she had known at 55 Camp Street and avoided interviews. She stalled questions from the District Attorney's office in 1967 and tried to elude Assassinations Committee staff in 1978. When the author first made contact with Roberts, she repeatedly denied having heard the name Lee Oswald until after assassination. Then she quietly began talking."
132. September 27, 1964, Warren Commission report, pp. 722-730: "Despite the Oswalds' break with the Russian community, De Mohrenschildt, knowing that they would be alone during the Christmas season, asked the Fords whether he could bring the Oswalds to a party celebrating the Russian Christmas at the Fords' home; the Fords assented. ...
     Marina visited the De Mohrenschildts several times after Christmas. [997] They invited both Lee and Marina to a small dinner party in February 1963; also present were Everett Glover, a chemist... [On February 22], Glover had a gathering at his house, one of the purposes of which was to permit his friends, many of whom were studying Russian, to meet the Oswalds. [999] They were the objects of much attention. [1000] Marina conversed at length with another guest named Ruth Paine, who had recently separated from her husband, Michael Paine, a research engineer at the Bell Helicopter plant in Fort Worth. Mrs. Paine, who was studying Russian, obtained Marina's address [1001] and shortly thereafter wrote Marina to see her. Marina responded by inviting Mrs. Paine to visit her. [1002] ...
     Ruth Paine and Marina started to exchange visits in March [1963]. Mrs. Paine invited the Oswalds for dinner, and on April 20 she took them on a picnic. When Oswald was not present, the two women frequently discussed their respective marital problems. ...
     He told Marina that he was sorry he had missed Walker and said that the shooting of Walker would have been analogous to an assassination of Hitler. [1021] Several days later, the De Mohrenschildts visited the Oswalds...
     Oswald was apparently still preventing Marina from learning English, [1032] and there is some indication that he continued to beat her. [1033] Since February, he had been urging her to return to Russia. [1034] ... When Ruth Paine visited the Oswalds at their apartment on April 24, she was surprised to learn that Oswald was packed and ready to leave for New Orleans by bus. ...
     Mrs. Paine offered to drive Marina to New Orleans at a later date, and also to have Marina and June stay with her rather than at the apartment in the meantime. ... When he arrived at the bus station in New Orleans, Oswald telephoned his aunt, Lillian Murret, to ask if he could stay at her home at 757 French Street while he looked for employment. ... Since he was alone he was welcome. [1040]
     Oswald wrote to Marina: "All is well. I am living with Aunt Lillian [Murrett]. She has very kindly taken us in. I am no looking for work." ... On May 3, he wrote to Marina and Ruth Paine: "Girls, I still have not found work, but I receive money from the unemployment office in the amount 15 to 20 dollars. They were mistaken in the Dallas office when they refused, but I straightened everything out. Uncle 'Dyuz' [Murret] offered me a loan of $200,00 if needed. Great, eh?" [1046] ...
     Ruth Paine arrived in New Orleans on September 20, and spent three nights with the Oswalds. During this stay, Mrs. Paine found relations between them much improved.
     Marina and Paine toured Bourbon Street while Oswald stayed and did some packing for Marina's return to Texas. [1097] On Sunday, September 22, Oswald and Mrs. Paine finished loading the station wagon...
     Marina Oswald testified that sometime in August her husband first told her of his plan to go to Mexico and from there to Cuba, where he planned to stay; he had given up a plan to hijack an airplane and fly directly to Cuba, which plan Marina consistently opposed. [1099] ...
     Oswald spent the weekend of October 12-13 at Mrs. Paine's home, during which time she gave him a driving lesson. [1224] ... Mrs. Paine testified that Oswald was extremely discouraged because his wife was expecting a baby, he had no job prospects in sight, and he no longer had any source of income."
133. September 27, 1964, Warren Commission report, p. 738: "On Monday [October 14], Mrs. Paine drove Oswald into Dallas... On that Monday, Mrs. Paine mentioned the Oswalds' financial and employment problems to neighbors whom she was visiting. Mrs. Linnie Mae Randle, who was also present, remarked that she thought that her younger brother, Buell Wesley Frazier, who worked at the Texas School Book Depository, had said that there was a job opening there. ... Mrs. Paine called Roy S. Truly, superindendent of the Depository, who indicated that he would talk to Oswald if he would apply in person [1234] ... On the next day, Oswald was interviewed by Truly and hired in a temporary capacity. ... Both the Oswalds were elated with the new job... He did a satisfactory job at the Depository, [1240] but he kept to himself and very few of his fellow employees got to know him. [1241] ... On Friday, October 18, [TSBD colleague] Frazier drove him from work to the Paine home; [1243] since it was his birthday, Marina and Ruth Paine had arranged a small celebration. [1244]"
134. September 27, 1964, Warren Commission report, p. 722: "Marina [Oswald] conversed at length with another guest named Ruth Paine, who had recently separated from her husband, Michael Paine, a research engineer at the Bell Helicopter plant in Fort Worth. Mrs. Paine, who was studying Russian, obtained Marina's address [1001]..."
135. March 18, 1964, Warren Commission interview with Michael Paine: "Present were Chief Justice Earl Warren, Chairman; Senator John Sherman Cooper, Representative Gerald R. Ford, John J. McCloy, and Allen W. Dulles, members.
     Mr. LIEBELER - You are presently married, are you not? Mr. PAINE - That is right. Mr. LIEBELER - Your wife's name is? Mr. PAINE - Ruth Hyde Paine. Mr. LIEBELER - You have two children? Mr. PAINE - Yes. Mr. LIEBELER - Tell us who your parents are. Mr. PAINE - Lyman Paine is my father and Ruth Forbes Paine Young, or Young is her present name. Mrs. Arthur Young now. She is my mother. ... Mr. LIEBELER - Where did you work prior to working for Bell Helicopter? Mr. PAINE - I worked in Pennsylvania for Arthur Young. ... Mr. DULLES - Is this Mr. Young your stepfather? Mr. PAINE - That is right. Mr. LIEBELER - And you worked for him immediately prior to your going to Bell Helicopter? Mr. PAINE - Yes, sir. ... Mr. LIEBELER - What is the nature of your work with Bell Helicopter at the present time? Mr. PAINE - I am called a research engineer. I work in a lab and design and build and test models of new concepts of helicopter configurations."
136. 1983, Mary Bancroft, 'Autobiography Of A Spy', p. 54: "Two of our Boston friends, Ruth and Lyman Paine, had moved to New York and gave wonderful parties in their West Side apartment. We met a lot of their friends, mostly in the arts. Ruth was a painter. Lyman, an architect..."
137. Ibid., pp. 55, 59: "Toward the end of the summer of 1930 I went up to spend a few days with Ruth Paine at her family's summer home on Naushon Island [on the East Coast]...
     In the summer of 1933 [I] sent the children to visit him and went abroad with Ruth Paine. We planned to spend the entire time at St. Jean-de-Luz in France, near the Spanish frontier, for neither of us could envisage a summer that didn’t encompass being by the sea. ... Early in July we sailed on one of the ships of the French Line bound for Bordeaux..."
138. Ibid., pp. 129, 138, 244: "In early December 1942, after I had been working with Gerry for several months, he phoned one morning to ask if I could join him that afternoon for a drink at the Baur au Lac hotel to meet the newly arrived special assistant to the American minister, Allen Dulles. ...
     I realized not only that he was in love with me, but that I was very much in love with him. He was the second man with whom I had ever fallen completely in love. Leopold, of course, being the first. However, my feeling for Allen was much deeper than my feeling for Leopold had been, partly because I was older and had spent so much time working with Professor Jung to learn about myself, but more importantly because of how perfectly Allen and I could work together. The speed with which he could think, the ingenuity with which he could find solutions to even the most complicated problems, were thrilling to me. I had never before found anyone who reacted as quickly to everything, and this was tremendously exhilarating to me. ...
     Throughout the war Allen called me every morning at exactly 9:20 and in very few words indicated what he wanted me to do, where I should go, whom I should see. ...
     It did not take Clover long to sense the tie between me and Allen. In fact, the second or third time we were alone together, she said, "I want you to know I can see how much you and Allen care for each other — and I approve! That was all that was said. I made no comment and the subject was never mentioned again, even though I remained close to them both until their deaths many years later, Allen in 1969 and Clover in 1974. One day Clover said to me, "If I could only make out what Allen's goal is, what he wants from life, I might find it easier to understand all this sound and fury." Someone once said, 'The Dulles brothers are like sharks.' And I do think they are. "I guess there's no solution but for you and me to be killer whales!" So from then on we referred to Allen as "the Shark" and to ourselves as the "Killer Whales". This little game once caused the Swiss a certain amount of alarm when Clover wired me from the Tessin what time she would arrive in Zurich and signed her telegram KILLER."
139. See ISGP's biography of Robert Temple in ISGP's Cult of National Security Trolls article.
140. See 5 notes back.
141. See ISGP's Pilgrims Society and the Rockefeller CIA and Astor bloodline and biographies list in it for details.
142. February 1997, Vol. 2, No. 2a, Jack Sarfatti in MindNet Journal, 'Sarfatti's Illuminati: In the thick of it!': "Harold Chipman believed that [remote viewing] worked and told me that he had used it successfully in his business. Indeed, he introduced me to a glamorous private detective, V, as one of his best performers in remote-viewing operations. V and I became lovers. She confirmed that she had participated in experiments with Chipman. V was like the Princess in Cocteau's 'Orfee' "une espionne chargee de surveiller un homme et qui le suave en se perdant," in Cocteau's words. ...
     His death was do to a sudden onset of bone cancer. This is the way Harold Chipman also died. I am told that radioactive poisoning has been used for murder by intelligence organizations. ...
     [68] Chipman started funding my work in 1985. He said he had secretly funded part of the SRI work in remote viewing. He also introduced me to V. He was involved with a Texas Company TLC and a man named Joe Peeple's who was indicted for selling arms to Iran in the mid-80's."
143. *) May 17, 1996, Dr. Victor J. Stenger of the University of Hawaii (conversation with Jack Sarfatti), 'Quantum Quackery', 7th revised draft version (words of Sarfatti): "I was then simply a young inexperienced naive 'useful idiot' in a very, very sophisticated and successful covert psychological warfare operation run by the late Brendan O'Regan of the Institute of Noetic Sciences, and the late Harold Chipman, who was the CIA station chief responsible for all mind-control research in the Bay Area in the 70s. Chipman (aka 'Orwell') funded me covertly before that, and told me much of the story. In fact, he even introduced me to a beautiful woman adventurer-agent who was one of his RV subjects who later became my live-in 'significant other.'"
     *) February 1997, Vol. 2, No. 2a, Jack Sarfatti in MindNet Journal, 'Sarfatti's Illuminati: In the thick of it!': "George Koopman arranged for [psychedelic pioneer Timothy] Leary and me to lecture together at the Arthur Young's Institute in Berkeley. ...
     Einhorn and [famous UFO researcher Jacques] Vallee were working together on a computer network project that anticipated the Internet. Einhorn originally introduced me to Hazel Henderson, Arthur Young, [psychedelic pioneer and computer tech/Edge Foundation guru] Stewart Brand and [Esalen Institute leader] Michael Murphy. ...
     We stayed with my literary agent Ira Einhorn and his doomed girl friend Holly Maddux [whom Einhorn murdered]. Ira took us to the mainline mansion of Arthur Young. Young was the inventor of the Bell Helicopter and was a close friend of Charles Lindbergh. Young's wife [Ruth Forbes Young] was an heiress of the Forbes Steel fortune. Young financed the Institute for the Study of Consciousness in Berkeley California. He invited me to stay there. Einhorn told me he would introduce me to Stewart Brand, Michael Murphy [14] and George Leonard [15] when I got to San Francisco. He was very concerned about what he called "Soviet breakthroughs in psychotronic weapons of mind control"... [which is BS, of course] ...
     Einhorn did his job as my literary agent and arranged a meeting at Arthur Young's Institute in Berkeley that included Michael Murphy, Hazel Henderson [19] and another physicist, Saul Paul Sirag [of Esalen] [20], who was Barbara Honegger's [21] lover."
144. *) 1994, David Corn, 'Blond Ghost: Ted Shackley and the CIA's Crusades', pp. 197, 200: "The Green Berets contacted the local CIA. Dean Almy, the ROIC for Region II [in Vietnam in the late 1960s], and his deputy were out of town. That left Harold Chipman, the operations chief, in charge. Having served with Shackley in Berlin [in the 1950s] and Miami [in the early 1960s], he was considered a protege of the chief.* ...
     On July 14, Crew was apprehended and taken to the military stockade in Long Binh. He was soon joined there by Brumley, Marasco, and Williams, as well as Major Tom Middleton, who had participated in the planning of the murder. On July 21, Colonel Rheault, the man in charge of the Army's most prestigious branch, was arrested for murder. The subsequent legal proceedings posed serious problems for Shackley. ...
     The next morning, Harold Chipman took the stand at the continuing pretrial hearing in Long Binh. Chipman testified that the CIA never assassinates. Defense attorney George Gregory asked Chipman what he knew of "a Phoenix operation." "It is a program," Chipman answered and dodged further questions about it. When Gregory ended his questioning, an exasperated Chipman declared,"You just don't shoot an agent." Chipman was right. The CIA was not in the habit of disposing of agents in that fashion. But the defense attorneys were eager to muddy waters. Phoenix did involve murders — even if (as CIA people asserted) only as unintended consequences of planned snatch operations. But the targets were Viet Cong suspects, not double agents. Toward the end of Chipman's testimony, Henry Rothblatt, another defense lawyer, asked if he had told Major Crew that Shackley had been responsible for 250 political killings in Laos. "I can't answer that," Chipman replied.
     Langley dispatched John Greaney, one of its lawyers, to Saigon. "Get this case off my back," Shackley demanded of him. The affair was consuming his days, and a terrible possibility loomed: Shackley in the witness chair in a public trial."
     *) 2001, Joseph Trento, 'The Secret History of the CIA', p. 123: "Sherwood heard what was obviously a sexual encounter upstairs. Using the alias "John Black," he announced himself, with his bewildered agent in tow, only to see CIA officer Harold Chipman, dressed in a Goering-style leather coat, descend the staircase in the company of a platinum blonde. Chipman's nickname at Berlin Base was the "Omaha Bull." [11]"
     *) 2006, John Prados, 'Safe for Democracy: The Secret Wars of the CIA', pp. xix, 397: "Harold Chipman: Covert operations specialist who worked on Cuban projects and Vietnam. ... The JM/Wave people reflected the trainees: Shackley's assistant Thomas Clines and CIA men like Rudy Enders, George French, Robert Wall, Edwin Wilson, and Harold Chipman were all paramilitary officers."
145. Audio interview of an unidentified woman (plus photo in question) can be heard in the 2006 documentary 'Evidence of Revision: The Assassination of America': "[Female voice]: There's a photograph that I published in Texas in the morning and the White House photographer told, "You can see that Lyndon lost composure at the time when Bobby hits a post and he has something in his hand and Lyndon is real shocked." And the photographer said that Robert Kennedy said to him, "Why did you have my brother killed?""
146. November 24, 2013, Boston Globe, 'Robert F. Kennedy saw conspiracy in JFK’s assassination': "When McCone arrived from CIA headquarters, Bobby paced the lawn of his estate with him. As Bobby later told historian and aide Arthur Schlesinger, he asked McCone point blank if the CIA “had killed my brother, and I asked him in a way that he couldn’t lie to me, and they hadn’t.” McCone was a devout Catholic, leading many to believe that their shared faith was behind Bobby’s confidence in the CIA director’s candor. McCone, according to Schlesinger’s biography, “Robert Kennedy and His Times,” would come to believe that there had been two shooters in Dallas, though he didn’t think the American intelligence agency was in any way involved. ...
     As he strode around Hickory Hill, reeling from the news of the assassination, Bobby couldn’t help but wonder if one of them had been behind it. An immediate focus, according to several of his aides with direct knowledge, was Hoffa. Bobby knew that a year earlier, according to a Teamster middle-manager turned FBI informant, Hoffa had complained, “I’ve got to do something about that son of a bitch Bobby Kennedy. He’s got to go.” Hoffa had also allegedly asked that informant if he knew anything about “plastic explosives” and suggested opportunities for getting Kennedy, when he was swimming alone in his pool at home or driving alone in his convertible, according to historian David Kaiser’s book, “The Road to Dallas.” Bobby knew he had given Hoffa and his heavyweight mob pals plenty of new reasons to want to cut him down. "
147. *) Ibid.
     *) 2007, David Talbot (of Salon.com), 'Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years'.
     *) August 3, 2007, James DiEugenio for his Probe magazine at ctka.net (now kennedysandking.com), 'David Talbot, Brothers' (book review): "Talbot quickly sketches in the fact that with his brother gone, Bobby was now under Hoover's thumb. ... In addition to Hoover now superceding him, LBJ cut him out of intelligence briefings while, at the same time, Allen Dulles lobbied to get on the Warren Commission. (pgs. 273-274) And when the Warren Report was issued in September of 1964, RFK coyly commented, "I have not read the report, nor do I intend to." (p. 280) Talbot quotes an aide whom Johnson had charged with reading the report that LBJ didn't believe it either. (p. 289) Furthering this point about people in power, the author adds to his non-believer list Larry O'Brien, Mayor Richard Daley, and Kennedy aides Fred Dutton and Richard Goodwin. Goodwin specifically pointed to a plot between the CIA and the Mafia. (p. 303) And to further accent the point that neither JFK's nor RFK's staff believed the Warren Report, Talbot writes at length about the sad fate of Kenny O'Donnell. Both he and Dave Powers heard shots from the front of the car. ...
     RFK delegated the reading of the critical literature to people like Adam Walinsky. (pgs 306-307). As criticism about the Warren Report picked up speed, various critics wanted to talk directly to Bobby. He only met with one, Penn Jones. As part of his own inquiry, Bobby went to Mexico City and did some work on Oswald's trip down there. (p. 301) As his investigation continued, his enemies began to spy on him. In addition to Hoover, Talbot mentions both Helms and LBJ. (According to Talbot, Johnson greatly feared being challenged by a ticket of Kennedy and King in 1964.) And clearly, the policy differences over places like the Dominican Republic, South Africa, Latin America, and especially Vietnam all begin to fan Johnson's fear and paranoia about an RFK run in 1968. ...
     Talbot posits that Kennedy's increasing estrangement from Johnson's foreign policy, especially on Vietnam, is what provoked his premature run for the White House, which he had originally scheduled for 1972. ... Its a campaign that Jackie did not want RFK to make since, as she told Schlesinger, the same thing would happen to him that had happened to her husband. (p. 352) In keeping with this main theme throughout, Talbot includes RFK telling campaign worker Richard Lubic in San Francisco, "Subject to me getting elected, I would like to reopen the Warren Commission." (p. 359) ...
     In the pantry of the Ambassador Hotel, where RFK was shot, Lubic recalled seeing Thane Eugene Cesar with his gun drawn. When investigators from the LA police department arrived at his home, Lubic tried to tell them about this. But they cut him off, "It's none of your business. Don't bring this up, don't be talking about this." (p. 374) ...
     The last chapter deals first with first the Church Committee and then the HSCA. In an interview with Gary Hart, the former senator told Talbot he thought that Helms was in on the cover-up. And further that he may have been set up with Donna Rice in 1987 so he could not become president, since he had voiced sentiments into reopening the JFK case if he had won. For his review of the HSCA, Talbot interviewed former Deputy Counsel Robert Tanenbaum who told him of his interest in and confrontation with David Phillips. He also talked to the co-author of the Mexico City report, Dan Hardway. Hardway also presents his suspicions about Phillips and relates how disappointed he was with the HSCA final volumes which cleared the CIA, even though Hardway believed some CIA officers were implicated. ...
     Despite its up and downs, overall this is a worthwhile and unique book. Its most important aspect, of course, is the proof of Robert Kennedy's secret quest for the truth about Dallas. That is an important contribution with which to rebut the opposition's argument of: "Well, why didn't Bobby do anything?" We can finally dispose of that question in a truthful and forceful way."
148. See Oliver Stone's biography in ISGP's "Liberal CIA" article.
149. Ibid.
150. *) January 1992, The Organizer, 'Who killed Kennedy and why?': "Clay Shaw of New Orleans listed his directorship of Permindex in Who's Who In The Southwest (1962). Shaw had been a top officer of the Office of Strategic Services."
     *) 1962, Who's Who in The Southeast: "Shaw, Clay, business exec.; b. Kentwood, La., Mar. 17, 1913; ... unmarried. Exec. Western Union Telegraph Co., N.Y. City, 1932-35; consultant pub. relations and advt., N.Y., 1935-40; organizer, became mng. dir. Intern. Trade Mart., New Orleans, La., 1946; mem. World Trade Development Com., Internat. House, New Orleans, La.; member of the board of directors Permindex. Served with U.S. Army, 1941-46, aide-de-camp to Gen. Charles O. Thrasher, 1943-44, dep. chief of staff, Oise Sect., European Theatre Operations, 1944-46; retired as maj. Gen. Staff Corps, 1946."
     *) CIA counterintelligence file to the HSCA: "Memo 3/24/67 Trace results on persons connected to Centro Mondiale Commercial ... In 1959 [Ferenc] Nagy [rumored asset of Frank Wisner, Allen Dulles' CIA deputy director for operations] asked if Permindex of Basel, Switzerland, could be used as cover for the CIA. File doesn't indicate whether it was used. Permindex operating in Rome in 1960."
     *) United States District Court for the District of Columbia, Civil Action No. 80-1056, signed July 2, 1982, Bernard Fensterwald, Jr., legal counsel to Gary Shaw, the co-director with Larry N. Howard of the JFK Assassination Information Center in Dallas: "Two inter-connected, right-wing organizations were established in Europe in the late 1950s and early 1960s: La Permanent Industrial Exposition (Permindex) in Switzerland and Centro Mondiale Commerciale (CMC) in Italy. Both groups were highly secret, dealt in arms, and were alleged to be conduits for the financing of Soustelle and the OAS. Clay Shaw joined the Board of Directors of Permindex in 1958, the only American on the Board. The only other North American closely connected to Permindex and CMC was L.M. Bloomfield, Montreal banker and former member of OSS during WW II. Permindex was founded in 1958 by Giorgio Mantello, and Ferenc Nagy was its President; Nagy eventually ended up living in Dallas. Permindex was dissolved by the Swiss government when it was proved to be a conduit for OAS financing. 42/ Clay Shaw, who was thought to be CIA, not only spoke fluent French but was also the recipient of a number of French decorations. Permindex and CMC were alleged to have financed a 1962 attempt at Petit Clamart on the life of de Gaulle by Colonel Bastien-Thiry, et al.12/ The financing is alleged to have been $200,000, part of which was transported by Maurice Gatlin. Permindex, though a Swiss corporation, was housed and operated out of Montreal in the law offices of Mortimer Bloomfield, the world banker and ex-OSS agent. It was a strange conglomeration of jews, white Russians, anti-Castro Cubans, the Mafia, U.S. intelligence, and the "militaryindustrial complex." The obvious common denominator was anti-communism. There is some question whether CMC was a subsidiary of Permindex or vice versa, but there is no question as to the closeness of their operation . they were inseparable; in fact, they both moved to South Africa in 1962 when General de Gaulle convinced both the Swiss and Italian Governments to shut them down, because they had financed OAS attempts on his life. CMC occupied an expensive palace in Rome but rarely held any trade exhibits. It is rumored to have fronted several CIA activities. Among its directors were Clay Shaw, L.M. Bloomfield [1001 Club], Ferenc Nagy (see below), Jean de Menil (President of pro-OAS Schlumberger Corp [flanked here by 1001 Club members]) and Paul Raigorodsky (Dallas, White Russian, acquaintance of Lee Harvey Oswald [testified to the Warren Commission that he knew George de Mohrenschildt, a handler of Oswald, for at least 15 years, but denied knowing Oswald]). CMC was closely connected to the Italo-American Hotel Corporation. CMC also had very close ties with Israel. Lastly, Clay Shaw's International Trade Mart in New Orleans was intimately connected with CMC in Rome and South Africa. ... Ferenc Nagy, who was a cabinet member in the fascist Horthy Government of Hungary during WW II, and who was Prime Minister of Hungary until he was forced out by a communist coup in 1947, took up residence in Herndon, Virginia, until he moved to Dallas." Unfortunately no first-hand sources listed for the names Jean de Menil and Paul Raigorodsky.
     *) March 18, 1967, National Guardian, Vol. 19, No. 24, 'New Orleans D.A. Charges Conspiracy: New Questions Raised on JFK Killing': "The Guardian has received reports from Rome linking Shaw with various right-wing organizations and individuals, and possibly with the CIA. The Guardian's Rome correspondent, Phyllis Rosner, quoting the Rome daily Paesa Serra, reported that from 1961 till 1965 Shaw was on the board of directors of the Centro Mondiale Commerciale, which the paper said was engaged in obscure dealings in Rome. Among the directors on the CMC board, said Paesa Serra, were several Swiss businessmen and bankers, the ex-Hungarian Peasant Party leader Ferenc Nagy, now living in the U.S.; Prince Guitere de Spadaforo, large Italian landowner and industrialist, who is related by marriage to Hitler's financial wizard Hjalmar Schacht; and Dr. Enrico Mantello, who represented himself and six other shareholders, the most important being former U.S. Army Major L.M. Bloomfield, now reportedly a banker in Montreal. Bloomfield is reported to have served in the OSS ... during World War II. French newspapers have charged, the Rome Daily said, that he was a generous contributor to neo-fascist groups in France, Italy and throughout Europe. Paesa Serra said it is believed that the CMC was set up by the CIA as a cover for channeling funds into Italy. It was also reported to the Guardian from a source in New Orleans that Shaw was instrumental in arranging trade with Batista's Cuba from 1949 to 1959. For 18 years until 1965 he has served as a director of the International Trade Mart in New Orleans, an organization which was reported recently to have arranged for the first visit of a trade delegation from U.S. Southern states to South Africa. Shaw reportedly played a part in arranging for Kennedy to speak at the Dallas Trade Mart on Nov. 22, 1963— the date of the assassination —a fact which to a degree determined the fatal motorcade route from the Dallas airport. ... There is much speculation as to what will be the eventual outcome of the Garrison investigation. A special Guardian correspondent writes from New Orleans: "Both federal officials and local papers, as well as Dallas officials, are trying to discredit Garrison. And to some degree, at least locally, they are successful. Garrison is a headstrong and determined individual and the feeling is he will not cave in. However, he might be pressured into taking the case to court prematurely before he has time to develop his evidence and implicate all the suspected parties. If the establishment is not successful in intimidating and pressuring Garrison, it is possible they will try to pressure the informants and witnesses. The question that remains is, how will Garrison hurdle the jurisdictional and other barriers which preyent him from carrying the investigation to Dallas and even further?""
151. *) September 24, 1996, Times Picayune, 'Foreign Trade Pioneer Alonzo Ensenat, 88, dies': "Mr. Ensenat was a member of the committee that organized International House in New Orleans in 1943 and was on its first board of directors. ... He was on the executive committee of the Mississippi Valley World Trade Council [along with another director of International House and the ITM; secretary was Clay Shaw], which sponsored annual conferences in New Orleans to promote American exports in the 1950s and '60s. He was president and general chairman of the conference in 1960 when it received the U.S. Department of Commerce's "E" Award for excellence in promoting exports."
     *) 1974, Alonzo G. Ensenat (see above), 'The story of International House and International Trade Mart': "[In 1944] The Directors elected Mr. Hecht Chairman of the Board, Mr. Zetzmann President and the other officers elected were: Adolph E. Hegewisch, First Vice-President Theodore Brent, Vice-President. ... The Directors' first meeting on Friday, January 28,1944 at 4:45 p.m followed a worldwide radio broadcast announcing the establishment of International House. This radio broadcast was famous because it was conspicuous by its presence in the middle of a war to have merited inclusion by the networks, and featured a Washington-hookup at which Nelson Rockefeller, then Coordinator of Latin American Affairs, spoke. He referred to International House as "Our Good Neighbor Policy in Action" ... In June 1945, a new board of Directors was elected. ... Adolph Hegewisch was the Second President, followed by: Lloyd Cobb, ... Joseph Rault Sr, ... Dr.. Alton Ochsner...
     So the idea of an International Trade Mart was conceived in late 1944 first by leaders of our YMBC and enlarged upon in 1945 by the same group of civic leaders headed by Mr. Hecht and Mr. Theodore Brent, a close associate of Mr. Hecht's in Mississippi Shipping Co. and head of his own Coastal Barge Line. Having the experience of organizing International House behind them, it did not take as long to finalize plans for International Trade Mart, as the former's sister organization was to be called. A Charter was signed on November 21, 1945 by eight leaders of this city In all 41 persons were named to its first Board of Directors, namely: ... Theodore Brent, ... Lloyd J. Cobb [Shaw's boss; received a CIa clearance around 1968], ... Joseph W Montgomery [Director and vice-president of United Fruit. Legel representative of Sam Zemurray, head of United Fruit. Ochsner Hospital. Trustee Tulane University since 1947 (with United Fruit head Sam Zemurray; Darwin S. Fenner joined in 1953). INCA. Member Boston Club with Crawford Ellis and Ochsner.] ... Leonard K Nicholson [Publisher Times Picayune. Died in 1952 and his son, Jerry, took over the newspaper. Boston Club.], Ralph Nicholson [Publisher Tampa Times who bought the New Orleans Item. In 1958 merged with the New Orleans States to form the News Orleans States Item, controlled by the Times Picayune.], ... Charles Nutter [New Orleans Associated Press bureau chief. Managing director of IH. Close to Shaw] ..."
     *) 1974, Alonzo G. Ensenat (see above), 'The story of international house and international trade mart': "Meanwhile, efforts were under way to rent the space to worthwhile tenants. At this point, on January 19, 1946, Mr. Brent recommended Major Clay Shaw to become Manager of International Trade Mart, then existing only in architect plans and designs. Mr. Shaw had just returned to civilian life after a noteworthy four years in the armed services after receiving many decorations and Paving been distinguished for scoring the secondhighest 10 rating of any inductee up to that time. A pamphlet was printed spelling out the advantages of renting space in the new Mart and Mr. Shaw traveled far and wide to obtain leases from prospects whose names were obtained from all subscribers. ... Meanwhile, Mr Shaw's efforts brought fine tangible results and projections could be made of rental income from space leased (96% of rental space was under lease by 1949). Annual expenses could confidently be covered. ... There would be interlocking Boards of Directors Mr. Hecht was Chairman of both Boards. Mr Brent, the Mart's President, would be on both the Boards and on the Executive Committee of the House. Close cooperation between the two was expected and planned. This cooperation continued for many years, as for example in 1961 when ML Charles Nutter left the Managing Directorship of the House vacant. Mr. Clay Shaw, then Managing Director of the Mart, stepped in and managed both the House and the Mart for over a year until Dr. Paul Fabry came to the House."
     *) June 16, 1953, Alton Ochsner Medical Foundation, Board of Trustees, Theodore Brent (1874-1953), In Memoriam: "Since Mr. Brent joined us as a Trustee January 1, 1944, he has become our close friend, valued adviser and generous supporter and his absence from our council fills our hearts with sorrow..."
152. *) Ibid.
     *) 1966 brochure, Information Council of the Americas (INCA), 'What Lies Ahead?': "INCA international advisory committee: Alton Ochsner, M.D., chairman; Edward Scannell Butler [ASC], director; George Albertini, publisher, Est & Quest Magazine (Paris) [member Le Cercle]; ... Juanita Castro, chairman, Marta Abru Foundation, anti-communist sister of Fidel Castro; ... Patrick J. Frawley, Jr. [ASC]; ... C. C. Too, director, Psychological Warfare Section, Malaysia." Ochsner worked closely with Clay Shaw (of the JFK assassination) at International House and the International Trade Mart.
153. *) Ochsner Clinic Foundation, All rights reserved. ('Dr. Alton'): "Ochsner was a professor of surgery when Meredith Mallory, Jr., attended Tulane Medical School. Dr. Mallory became acquainted with Dr. Ochsner just as he and his fellow co-founders were establishing Ochsner Clinic, Ochsner Foundation Hospital and Alton Ochsner Medical Foundation (now Ochsner Clinic Foundation). Dr. Mallory and his entire family have been longtime special friends of Ochsner. His late wife, Pat, was the daughter of John W. Murchison [1001 Club] of Texas who, as a member of the first Board of Governors, was instrumental in funding the landscaping of the campus on Jefferson Highway. John's brother, Clint Murchison [CIA linked through FIDCO], a Texas oil man whose wealth became legend in Texas, played a major part in the construction of the Ochsner Clinic building."
     www.plan.gs/Article.do?orgId=353&articleId=2554 (accessed: July 31, 2012)
     *) 2007, Edward Haslam, 'Dr. Mary's Monkey': "Murchison's involvement with Ochsner seems to me to have been as political as medical. Yes, he was a personal patient of Alton Ochsner and gave him a Cadillac as a "thank you" present, but he also donated $750,000 to the Alton Ochsner Medical Foundation as seed money for Ochsner's new hospital."
     *) Spartacus Schoolnet, Alton Ochsner biography: "In 1961 Ochsner, with the financial help of Clint Murchison, established the Information Council of the Americas (INCA). ... Edgar and Edith Stern, owners of WDSU radio and television, were members of INCA. Eustis Reily of the Reily Coffee Company personally donated thousands of dollars to INCA. However, it was Patrick J. Frawley, a Californian industrialist and close friend of Richard Nixon, who was INCA's largest financial contributor. The organization used some of this money to make a film about Fidel Castro entitled, Hitler in Havana. ... Ochsner told a friend that he feared Garrison would order his arrest and the seizure of INCA's corporate records. Ed Butler took these records to California where Patrick J. Frawley arranged for them to be hidden. Ronald Reagan, the governor of California refused all of Garrison's extradition requests."
154. *) See ISGP's article Beyond Dutroux ties to 1950s-era CIA covert operation. Darwin Fenner, of the Ochsner Clinic, Tulane and INCA, was named as a key person in the New Orleans child abuse ring.
     *) November 11, 2011, Quixotic Joust, 'An unbending anti-communism': "Also aiding INCA was the Reily family, owner of William B. Reily and Co., one of the city's largest coffee roasters. H. Eustis Reily was an INCA officer and director. In 1965 William B. Reily [employer Lee Harvey Oswald], an INCA member, gave $250. In 1971 he informed Ochsner that his company had decided to donate $5,000 through the Reily Foundation and that he had enclosed a personal check for $1,000 ... INCA also won backing from local businessmen and businesses that apparently lacked a direct stake in Latin America. Among these were some of New Orleans's most respected citizens and firms. In 1967 Ochsner thanked Mr. and Mrs. Darwin S. Fenner [linked to child abuse ring and MK-ULTRA type research at Tulane] for their $500 donation. Darwin Fenner, an INCA director, was a vice president of Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner and Beane and a board member of the Ochsner Foundation and of Tulane University's governing body. At least during the mid-1960s, New Orleans Public Service (NOPSI), the city's privately owned utility company, gave $1,000 each year. NOPSI President George S. Dinwiddie [president International House] was an INCA member. ... 29 M. W. Grundy to William B. Reily, June 16, 1965, folder 3, box 52, Ochsner Papers; William B. Reily to Ochsner, March 10, 1971, folder 5, box 165, Ochsner Papers. 30 Ochsner to Mr. and Mrs. Darwin S. Fenner, January 19, 1967, folder 6, box 105, Ochsner Papers; J. Mason Guillory to Ochsner, June 8, 1967, folder 6, box 105, Ochsner Papers; "INCA Membership List," folder 1, box 105, Ochsner Papers."
155. See 4 notes back.
156. *) September 24, 1996, Times Picayune, 'Foreign Trade Pioneer Alonzo Ensenat, 88, dies': "Mr. Ensenat was a member of the committee that organized International House in New Orleans in 1943 and was on its first board of directors. ... He was on the executive committee of the Mississippi Valley World Trade Council [along with another director of International House and the ITM; secretary was Clay Shaw], which sponsored annual conferences in New Orleans to promote American exports in the 1950s and '60s. He was president and general chairman of the conference in 1960 when it received the U.S. Department of Commerce's "E" Award for excellence in promoting exports."
     *) 1974, Alonzo G. Ensenat (see above), 'The story of International House and International Trade Mart': "[In 1944] The Directors elected Mr. Hecht Chairman of the Board, Mr. Zetzmann President and the other officers elected were: Adolph E. Hegewisch, First Vice-President Theodore Brent, Vice-President. ... The Directors' first meeting on Friday, January 28,1944 at 4:45 p.m followed a worldwide radio broadcast announcing the establishment of International House. This radio broadcast was famous because it was conspicuous by its presence in the middle of a war to have merited inclusion by the networks, and featured a Washington-hookup at which Nelson Rockefeller, then Coordinator of Latin American Affairs, spoke. He referred to International House as "Our Good Neighbor Policy in Action" ... In June 1945, a new board of Directors was elected. ... Adolph Hegewisch was the Second President, followed by: Lloyd Cobb, ... Joseph Rault Sr, ... Dr.. Alton Ochsner... So the idea of an International Trade Mart was conceived in late 1944 first by leaders of our YMBC and enlarged upon in 1945 by the same group of civic leaders headed by Mr. Hecht and Mr. Theodore Brent, a close associate of Mr. Hecht's in Mississippi Shipping Co. and head of his own Coastal Barge Line. Having the experience of organizing International House behind them, it did not take as long to finalize plans for International Trade Mart, as the former's sister organization was to be called. A Charter was signed on November 21, 1945 by eight leaders of this city In all 41 persons were named to its first Board of Directors, namely: ... Theodore Brent, ... Lloyd J. Cobb [Shaw's boss; received a CIa clearance around 1968], ... Joseph W. Montgomery [Director and vice-president of United Fruit. Legel representative of Sam Zemurray, head of United Fruit. Ochsner Hospital. Trustee Tulane University since 1947 (with United Fruit head Sam Zemurray; Darwin S. Fenner joined in 1953). INCA. Member Boston Club with Crawford Ellis and Ochsner.] ... Leonard K Nicholson [Publisher Times Picayune. Died in 1952 and his son, Jerry, took over the newspaper. Boston Club.], Ralph Nicholson [Publisher Tampa Times who bought the New Orleans Item. In 1958 merged with the New Orleans States to form the News Orleans States Item, controlled by the Times Picayune.], ... Charles Nutter [New Orleans Associated Press bureau chief. Managing director of IH. Close to Shaw] ..."
     *) 1974, Alonzo G. Ensenat (see above), 'The story of International House and International Trade Mart': "Meanwhile, efforts were under way to rent the space to worthwhile tenants. At this point, on January 19, 1946, Mr. Brent recommended Major Clay Shaw to become Manager of International Trade Mart, then existing only in architect plans and designs. Mr. Shaw had just returned to civilian life after a noteworthy four years in the armed services after receiving many decorations and Paving been distinguished for scoring the secondhighest 10 rating of any inductee up to that time. A pamphlet was printed spelling out the advantages of renting space in the new Mart and Mr. Shaw traveled far and wide to obtain leases from prospects whose names were obtained from all subscribers. ... Meanwhile, Mr Shaw's efforts brought fine tangible results and projections could be made of rental income from space leased (96% of rental space was under lease by 1949). Annual expenses could confidently be covered. ... There would be interlocking Boards of Directors Mr. Hecht was Chairman of both Boards. Mr Brent, the Mart's President, would be on both the Boards and on the Executive Committee of the House. Close cooperation between the two was expected and planned. This cooperation continued for many years, as for example in 1961 when ML Charles Nutter left the Managing Directorship of the House vacant. Mr. Clay Shaw, then Managing Director of the Mart, stepped in and managed both the House and the Mart for over a year until Dr. Paul Fabry came to the House."
     *) June 16, 1953, Alton Ochsner Medical Foundation, Board of Trustees, Theodore Brent (1874-1953), In Memoriam: "Since Mr. Brent joined us as a Trustee January 1, 1944, he has become our close friend, valued adviser and generous supporter and his absence from our council fills our hearts with sorrow..."
157. *) September 24, 1996, Times Picayune, 'Foreign Trade Pioneer Alonzo Ensenat, 88, dies': "Mr. Ensenat was a member of the committee that organized International House in New Orleans in 1943 and was on its first board of directors. ... He was on the executive committee of the Mississippi Valley World Trade Council [along with another director of International House and the ITM; secretary was Clay Shaw], which sponsored annual conferences in New Orleans to promote American exports in the 1950s and '60s. He was president and general chairman of the conference in 1960 when it received the U.S. Department of Commerce's "E" Award for excellence in promoting exports."
     *) Bizapedia.com/la/MISSISSIPPI-VALLEY-WORLD-TRADE-COUNCIL.html: "Company Name: MISSISSIPPI VALLEY WORLD TRADE COUNCIL Status: Inactive Filing Date: 09/05/1956 Entity Type: Non-Profit Corporation File Number: 02604680N ... Registered Agent: C. C. Walther ... PRESIDENT: C. C. Walther ... SECRETARY: Clay Shaw..."
158. *) 1966 brochure, Information Council of the Americas (INCA), 'What Lies Ahead?': "INCA international advisory committee: Alton Ochsner, M.D., chairman; Edward Scannell Butler [ASC], director; George Albertini, publisher, Est & Quest Magazine (Paris) [member Le Cercle]; ... Juanita Castro, chairman, Marta Abru Foundation, anti-communist sister of Fidel Castro; ... Patrick J. Frawley, Jr. [ASC]; ... C. C. Too, director, Psychological Warfare Section, Malaysia." Ochsner worked closely with Clay Shaw (of the JFK assassination) at International House and the International Trade Mart.
     *) *) November 11, 2011, Quixotic Joust, 'An unbending anti-communism': "Also aiding INCA was the Reily family, owner of William B. Reily and Co., one of the city's largest coffee roasters. H. Eustis Reily was an INCA officer and director. In 1965 William B. Reily [employer Lee Harvey Oswald], an INCA member, gave $250. In 1971 he informed Ochsner that his company had decided to donate $5,000 through the Reily Foundation and that he had enclosed a personal check for $1,000 ... INCA also won backing from local businessmen and businesses that apparently lacked a direct stake in Latin America. Among these were some of New Orleans's most respected citizens and firms. In 1967 Ochsner thanked Mr. and Mrs. Darwin S. Fenner [linked to child abuse ring and MK-ULTRA type research at Tulane] for their $500 donation. Darwin Fenner, an INCA director, was a vice president of Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner and Beane and a board member of the Ochsner Foundation and of Tulane University's governing body. At least during the mid-1960s, New Orleans Public Service (NOPSI), the city's privately owned utility company, gave $1,000 each year. NOPSI President George S. Dinwiddie [president International House] was an INCA member. ... 29 M. W. Grundy to William B. Reily, June 16, 1965, folder 3, box 52, Ochsner Papers; William B. Reily to Ochsner, March 10, 1971, folder 5, box 165, Ochsner Papers. 30 Ochsner to Mr. and Mrs. Darwin S. Fenner, January 19, 1967, folder 6, box 105, Ochsner Papers; J. Mason Guillory to Ochsner, June 8, 1967, folder 6, box 105, Ochsner Papers; "INCA Membership List," folder 1, box 105, Ochsner Papers."
     *) Spartacus Schoolnet, Alton Ochsner biography: "In 1961 Ochsner, with the financial help of Clint Murchison, established the Information Council of the Americas (INCA). ... Edgar and Edith Stern, owners of WDSU radio and television, were members of INCA. Eustis Reily of the Reily Coffee Company personally donated thousands of dollars to INCA. However, it was Patrick J. Frawley, a Californian industrialist and close friend of Richard Nixon, who was INCA's largest financial contributor. The organization used some of this money to make a film about Fidel Castro entitled, Hitler in Havana. ... Ochsner told a friend that he feared Garrison would order his arrest and the seizure of INCA's corporate records. Ed Butler took these records to California where Patrick J. Frawley arranged for them to be hidden. Ronald Reagan, the governor of California refused all of Garrison's extradition requests."
159. April 1967, New Orleans Magazine, 'The Garrison Investigation: How and why it began': "In November, 1966, three friends sat squeezed into tourist class seats of an Eastern Airlines jet six miles above the earth. ... [The men] were bound for an American Petroleum Institute convention in New York, where Mr. Rault and Henry Zac Carter, Sr., president of Avondale Shipyard, Inc., of New Orleans, were to host a luncheon in the senator's honor. ... Senator Long said he doubted the findings of the Warren Commission. It was about these doubts that Garrion questioned the senator on the flight to New York. ... Both Garrison and Rault felt that the senator's theories were quite parallal if not exactly the same, as their own. ... Throughout the convention in New York, the assassination and The Warren Report were the principal topics of conversation among the three. It was at this time that several national magazines carried feature stories on the assassination, and several newspapers and syndicates printed their own versions. ... Shortly after that trip. Jim was hard to find," said Rault. "We couldn't find him even for lunch..." ... Rault says that it was only after the local press broke the investigation story in mid-February that he had any direct knowledge of the probe. Three days after that, Rault went to the financial aid of Garrison. He explained why: "After the press released information about Mr. Garrison's then incomplete investigation and made such a point of scrutinizing the expenditure of the public fluids that had to be used, it became very obvious to me and a number of other businessmen that it would be very difficult, if not impossible, for him to continue his investigation in a goldfish bowl. I read in the newspapers over the weekend that he might have to resort to his own private funds, or even a bank loan, so I called him and offered offered help." The offer was accepted, and Rault, along with Willard Robertson and Cecil Shilstone, organized their now famous "Truth and Consequences" group. They invited over fifty of the top businessmen in the community to a private luncheon and explaine the problem. ... Rault has been supporting Garrison throughout a friendship spanning eighteen years since they were contemporaries at Tulane Law School [where Rault was a member of Kappa Delta Phi]."
160. *) October 22, 1992, New York Times, 'Jim Garrison, 70, Theorist on Kennedy Death, Dies': "He is survived by his wife, the former Leah Elizabeth Ziegler; three sons, two daughters, a sister and one grandchild."
     *) geni.com/people/Virginia-Garrison/6000000012900629319 (daughter of Jim Garrison): "Virginia Garrison ... Leah Elizabeth Ziegler, mother ... Jim [Garrison], father ... Jim, brother ... Lyon Harold, brother ... Eberhard, brother ... Elizabeth Garrison, sister... "
161. August 1983, Beatrice M. Field, Tulane University paper, 'Potpourri: An Assortment of Tulane's People and Places'(lists all historical presidents and trustees of Tulane) Names from ISGP's index of institutes, largely based on this paper:
     Various Whitney family members in the 19th century served as trustees | Charles Fenner (trustee since 1882, president 1893-1906; father of Darwin) | Esmond Phelps (trustee 1915-1950) | Ashton Phelps (trustee 1955-1972) | Sam Zemurray (trustee 1920-1961; United Fruit) | Joseph Montgomery (trustee 1947-1967; United Fruit) | Darwin Fenner (trustee 1953-1963, chair 1963-1968, member president's circle 1982-1996; accused of MKULTRA type involvement) | Langbourne Williams (board of visitors 1954-61; Freeport Minerals) | Caryl Haskins (board of visitors 1957-1982; elite Carnegie/Rockefeller national security scientist) | James Killian (board of visitors 1961-1969; Eisenhower/Rockefeller national security scientist) | Detlev Bronk (board of visitors 1961-1974; elite Rockefeller national security scientist). Also: Alton Ochsner (chair surgery department 1927-1961) | Dr. Robert G. Heath (chair Department of Psychiatry and Neurology 1949-1980; accused of MKULTRA type involvement) | Eberhard Deutsch (has the Chair of Public International Law named after him). Also: Jim Garrison was a student here, together with friend and later political backer Joseph Rault, Jr.
162. Garrison himself was prominently accused of sexually molesting a boy at the New Orleans Athletic Club. Jack Anderson did a piece on that. Reportedly that was only the tip of the iceberg. Judging bij Garrison's alleged behaviour the statement that he "basically a pedophile" might well be true.
     *) February 23, 1970, Jack Anderson column (in this case the title from the The Free Lance-Star), 'DA Accused of Molesting Boy': "The Orleans Parish Grand Jury is investigating a charge that New Orleans District Attorney, Jim Garrison, sexually molested a 13-year-old boy at the city's posh Athletic Club. The allegation, based on statements by the boy's father, was filed by the New Orleans Crime Commission with Grand Jury Foreman William J. Krummel Sr. A November 5, 1969, letter from Crime Commission Director Aaron Kohn to Krummel, detailing the charge, has now been obtained by this column. Garrison has denied the charge, an authoritive official said. Persistent efforts to reach Garrison for comment failed. The allegation was made by a prominent member of the New Orleans "Establishment" whose brother is one of the most respected men in the South. Kohn, as director of the privately financed Crime Commission, would confirm for the record only that the text of the letter obtained by this column was authentic. "On a Sunday in June, 1969," the Commission letter to the Grand Jury states, "at the New Orleans Athletic Club, District Attorney Jim Garrison conducted himself in a manner which, if true, would be in violation of Louisiana criminal laws." The laws in question punish "indecent behavior with juveniles" and "crime against nature. attempt," the letter went on. The letter then states that the father spoke to three men about the incident and all three had "separately and independently communicated" the father's accusation to Kohn. This column read the allegation to the father who confirmed it with a minor addition. "In brief," said the letter to the Grand Jury, the father "alleged that on a Sunday in June, 1969, he and his two teen-age sons were swimming in the nude at the New Orleans Athletic Club. "Garrison invited them to the slumber room to relax and take a nap. In that room, Garrison twice fondled the genitals of the younger son, 13 years old (name omitted by this column); The elder son (name omitted) then age 19, openly denounced Garrison at the (club). "It is hoped that your Grand Jury will see fit to call before it for testimony without the presence of any of Mr. Garrison's staff the three men spoken to by the father, the father himself and the sons," said the letter. UNDER Louisiana law, the "indecent behavior" count carries a maximum year in jail and $500 fine. A "crime against nature" carries a $2000 fine and five years in jail, but merely an "attempt" cuts the penalty in half. There is an irony in the charges. Garrison has frequently brought the element of perversion and sex into his own cases. In his most famous national case, the prosecution of Clay Shaw for conspiring to kill President Kennedy, Garrison's office made much of Shaw's alleged homosexuality."
     *) April 8, 2011 post of Mike Williams at the JFK-oriented Educationforum: "Journalist David Chandler, who had once been quite friendly with Garrison (the DA had been best man at Chandler's 1965 wedding) insisted to Patricia Lambert that the Slumber Room incident was merely the tip of the iceberg. Garrison was "basically a pedophile," Chandler alleged, claiming first-hand knowledge of Garrison's preferences for adolescent girls, "around sixteen and younger."(61) All the while, of course, the DA could be sure that the power of his office would protect him from suffering any consequences; none of his victims dared to risk a public confrontation with the man. For their part, the two brothers of the Slumber Room incident remain angry to this day about what happened, but all involved feel that they would have fared much worse had they pressed charges. In light of the tactics Garrison used in his assassination probe, it hardly seems far-fetched to expect him to have gone to similar lengths, or worse, should his own life and career become jeopardized by his actions. From: Jim Garrison's Investigator Bill Gurvich Speaks: Gurvitch also mentioned that he had been the investigator who had later obtained affidavits indicating that Garrison had sexually molested a 15 year old boy in the New Orleans Athletic club in about 1970. Gurvitch stated that his involvement in this episode came about because he was a member of the club and heard of the story from the father of the boy involved. Gurvitch stated that he secured affidavits from the boy, his father, and the boy's brother, and tried to get the city authorities to press charges against Garrison. He stated that the authorities wouldn't touch the case however, and the boy's father was reluctant to make the alleged incident public. For additional details, see Patricia Lambert's ground-breaking and highly regarded book analyzing the Garrison investigation which provides compelling evidence that establishes that Jim Garrison was undoubtedly a pedophile..."
163. *) See note 150. More important articles exposing the network of Permindex can be read below.
     *) CIA files made it clear that Shaw was in contact with the CIA no less than thirty times between 1949 and 1956. In 1958 he joined Permindex, a shady CIA and Mossad-linked company whose president, Ferenc Nagy, appears to have been a CIA asset of Frank Wisner.
     *) 1992, James DiEugenio, 'Destiny Betrayed: JFK, Cuba, and the Garrison Case', pp. 209-214. Relevant excerpt plus notes here:
     mail-archive.com/ctrl@listserv.aol.com/msg04277.html.
     *) 1967, Volume 19, The Current Digest of the Soviet Press, p. 9': "This [Rome World Trade] "center" dealt least of all with trade operations and the development of commercial ties. Its purpose was entirely different. It specialized, according to the newspapers, in subsidizing "implacably anticommunist groups." Clay Shaw and Maj. Bloomfield, an American agent who now plays the part of a businessman from Canada, established secret ties in Rome political circles, among deputies of the Christian-democratic, social-democratic and neo-fascist parties. They also infiltrated deep into Italy's business World. Shaw had the task of establishing contacts with extreme right-wing groupings in the capital, including representatives of neofacist organizations. "These were directives issued by the CIA," the newspapers write. The "center" established especially close relations with Signore Giuseppe Zigiotti, president of one of the largest fascist organizations; Prince Gutieres di Spadafora; Von Schacht, a relative of a Hitlerite banker; and others. In this connection, l'Unita stresses, it seems obvious that the "World Trade Center" handled much bigger matters than simply..."
     *) August 7, 1999 (newsgroup date), Paris Flammond article on "Permindex" (very well sourced, but almost forgotten): "The CMC was founded in 1961. ... The board of directors was interestingly assorted. Several respected Italians were present -- Christian Democrat Deputy Mario Ceravolo and former Social Democrat Deputy Corrado Bonfantini. Listed as president was Carlo D'Amelio, lawyer and administrator of the former royal family's interests [Savoy]. The remainder of the board consisted of non-Italian names. Swiss Minister Ernest Feisst; Swiss Professor Max Hagemann, owner-editor of the newspaper Nazional Zeitung (not to be confused with the neo-Nazi German Nazional und Soldaten Zeitung); Hans Seligman Schurch, Basel banker; Professor Edgar Salin, president of the Faculty of Economics at the University of Basel; Dr. Enrico Mantello, brother of George Mandel (Mantello), the power behind the Societa Italo-Americana; Ferenc Nagy, former Hungarian premier and erstwhile leader of anti-Communist Countryman's party, and president of Permindex (the head office of the CMC); Prince Gutierez di Spadafora, industrialist and landowner of oddly totalitarian turn of mind, related through his daughter-in-law to Adolf Hitler's notorious Minister of Finance, Hjalmar Schacht, tried as a war criminal at Nuremburg; and Clay L. Shaw, of New Orleans. ... according to Paesa Sera, been condemned for his "criminal ties" in Switzerland. This latter revelation was originally carried August 19, 1961, issue of the Basel newspaper A-Z, which featured a report about directors of government agencies, saying: "In many articles we have justly spoken of the criminal activities of Messrs. [Ferenc] Nagy and Mantello." Mantello initiated a suit against the Swiss journal, then abruptly abandoned it, causing A-Z to observe: "Too bad; we would have heard some great things at the trial."(15) Ferenc Nagy was closely associated with Mantello in his highly secret financial-political maneuverings. When Mantello founded Permindex, the head office and other face of the Centro Mondiale Commerciale, Nagy became its president. ... reports Paesa Sera, "[Nagy] was said by the French press to be a munificent contributor to the philo-fascistic movement of [Jacques] Soustelle, and [a] patron of far-right movements throughout including Italy." ... Prince Gutierez di Spadafora, Undersecretary of Agriculture in Mussolini's Fascist government, was another [associate of Shaw]. After his wartime achievements he turned his talents to his vast landholdings and commerce, especially the establishment of a corporation, with himself as president, which constructed a huge refinery at Milazzo, in Messina, Sicily. He is also president of the Sicilian Compagnia Armatrice Industriale Petrolifera which is involved with arms and oil. The prince also owns what is reputed to be the largest hothouse in the world, in Pachino, Syracuse. The more than a hundred employees were for some time supervised by "landsmen" from his feudal estates in Valle d'Olma and Mussomeli, in the province of Caltanissetta who rode about in velvet jackets and high black boots, with fancy revolvers flashing from their belts. According to Paesa Sera "the Syracusans, unaccustomed to these Mafia-like habits held a great general strike in protest, in December, 1962, and the Mafiosi of the Prince were forced to return" to his more feudal properties. The Centro Mondiale Commerciale boasted another interesting name in its background. He is Giuseppe Zigiotti, president of the Fascist National for Militia Arms. ... On July 21, 1961, Giorgio Mantello appeared at the Italian Assembly representing all the stockholders of the CMC. These included himself, his brother Enrico, another Hungarian refugee, Joseph Slifka and Fellender Erwin, banker Hans Seligman, and lawyer Carlo D'Amelio . . . holder of 500,000 lire worth of shares. And Major L. M. Bloomfield, who held half the shares or 250 million, for party parties unknown.(20) ... Shortly thereafter, while alluding to other directors, Le Devior reports: "Ferenc Nagy, exiled head of the Hungarian Peasants Party . . . maintains close ties with the CIA and which link him with the Miami Cuban colony." Also listed [as CMC directors] are the previously mentioned Fascist Giuseppe Zigiotti, Bloomfield, and an Egyptian, Faruk Churbagi. ... [Paese Sera:] "'D'Amelio did not speak of the activities of Ferenc Nagy who, through the CMC's head office, Permindex, had financed [Jacques] Soustelle and the OAS; he did not know that several Swiss newspapers had called the activities of Nagy and Mandel [Mantello] 'criminal'; and he did not speak of the completion of the CMC (nor could he, since [in terms of its publicly announced intentions]) this has turned out to be nothing but a tremendous failure."
164. 2005, Joan Mellen, 'A Farewell to Justice', pp. 118-119 (generally seems accurate and very well researched; praised by Oliver Stone): "The search of Clay Shaw's house produced [interesting things]. ... Downstairs, the walls were covered with pale green silk, the floors with Oriental carpets. Upstairs, it was as if an entirely different man here. Attached to the beams in the ceiling over the bed in the master bedroom, just as Dr. Lief's patient had described them, were huge hooks with chains fitted with wrist straps hanging free, hooks large enough to hang a human body. On the ceiling were bloody palm prints. Many hands had been suspended there, William Alford thought, and he wondered whether anyone had died or been seriously injured in this room. A black gown bore "whip marks," William Gurvich noticed. Five whips bore traces of blood. A cat-o'-nine-tails sat in the closet. "Let's dust and lift those prints," Alford said. Ivon refused. The boss [Jim Garrison] didn't want to make Shaw's sexuality an issue. At 11:15, [Jim] Garrison's investigators emerged from 1313 Dauphine Street with five cardboard boxes containing ropes, whips, chains, marble phalluses, the black cape, a black hood and black lacquer Asian-type sandals with white satin linings that had never thouched pavement, belying the later contention that hese were Mardi Gras costumes. Shaw's notebooks contained the names of European aristocrats. Jim Garrison sent the phalluses, whips and chains to Robert Heath, the head of psychiatry at Tulane [a MKULTRA center, with Heath being accused of involvement and experimenting on children]. Heath concluded that Shaw's motive for becoming involved in a conspiracy to murder President Kennedy "could very possibly have been rooted in his sadistic, homosexual abnormality," a thesis Jim Garrison rejected. "I don't want that factor to enter this case," Garrison reiterated, even as, privately, he called Shaw a "Phi Beta Kappa sadist." Nor would he investigate whether violent sex crimes had emanated from behind those red doors at 1313 Dauphine Street. He did not pursue complaints against Shaw stemming from sexual evenings when violent practices were rumored to have gotten out of hand. Alford's suspicions about those bloody handprints had been well founded. Shaw's maid, Virginia Johnson, would reveal that there had been a "mysterious death or killing of someone in the house," and although the coroner had come to pick up the body, there had been no police investigation. Al Oser discovered that only two weeks before Shaw's arrest, the police were called "because Clay Shaw, a white male, and two colored males were on the patio naked and using wine bottles on each other." Among the first people Shaw notified after his arrest was Fred Lee Crisman, Tommy Beckheam's mentor. He was in trouble, Shaw told fellow CIA operative Crisman. In addition to their political affiliations, Shaw and Crisman had sexual proclivities in common. Crisman would describe himself as "being sadistic in sexual practice preferences.""
165. *) Essentially there is next to nothing known about any kind of 1962-1967 French SDECE investigation into the OAS financing, leading to Permindex and the BCI.
     *) November 14, 1981, Executive Intelligence Review, 'Permindex: Britain's International Assassination Bureau': "In 1967, the French Intelligence Bureau SDECE released the results of a five-year investigation into the 1962 aborted assassination attempt against General de Gaulle, carried out by the far right-wing Secret Army Organization (OAS). While the SDECE report traced the origins of the assassination plot to the Brussels headquarters of NATO and to a specific group of disgruntled French and British generals as well as the remnant of the old Nazi intelligence apparatus, it also singled out Major Bloomfield's Perm index trading company as the agency responsible for conduiting $200,000 into the OAS to bankroll the attempt. The source of the funds was FBI Division Five, the secret counterespionage branch of Hoover's agency that was run out of the Montreal, Canada law offices of Major Bloomfield....
     As a result of the de Gaulle exposure of Permindex's role in the OAS hit squads, Permindex was forced to shut down its public operations in Western Europe and relocate its headquarters to Johannesburg, South Africa. ...
     According to the findings of the SDECE, $200,000 in black market revenues were channeled into the Banque de la Credit Internationale accounts maintained by Permindex."
     *) December 9, 1994, Executive Intelligence Review, 'Permindex ties revealed to JFK murder, 1001 Club', p. 58: "[John S.] Schlesinger was the owner of the only South African firm listed in the Permindex's internal phone directory (which is now in EIR's possession). In 1962, President Charles de Gaulle forced the Swiss and Italian governments to expel Permindex after it was caught orchestrating a failed attempt to kill him that year. Permindex moved to Johannesburg, South Africa."
     *) This source indicates there was at least some type of investigation into Permindex's financing of the OAS: January 1968, William W. Turner for Ramparts magazine, 'The Garrison Commission', p. 52: "The same group that incorporated CMC also set up a firm called Permidex Corporation in Switzerland, but that company was dissolved by the Swiss government when it was proved to be a conduit for funds destined for the Secret Army Organization (OAS)." *) 1992, James DiEugenio, 'Destiny Betrayed: JFK, Cuba, and the Garrison Case', pp. 209-214: "Third, in tracing the money used to finance the de Gaulle assassination plots, French intelligence discovered that about $200,000 in secret funds had been sent to Permindex accounts in the Banque de la Credit Internationale [no source, which probably means EIR]."
166. *) November 14, 1981, Executive Intelligence Review, 'Permindex: Britain's International Assassination Bureau', p. 7. Not sure if board of directors is based on material EIR has actually seen themselves. (PDF)
     *) July 7, 1982 deposition of Bernard Fensterwald, Jr., 'A possible French connection' p. 33: Jean de Menil and Paul Raigorodsky uniquely mentioned as directors of CMC (the Permindex parther in Italy). Only EIR has mentioned these two directors (as Permindex directors), plus a number of additional names. (PDF)
167. 1992, James DiEugenio, 'Destiny Betrayed: JFK, Cuba, and the Garrison Case', p. 372: "When Bud Fensterwald tried to obtain all Agency documents concerning Permindex, he was told that the CIA had only one Agency-originated document, relating to Permindex when it was in Basel. They would not release it for reasons of national security and to protect sources. CIA letter to Fensterwald, March 30, 1983."
168. April 25, 1967, New Orleans States-Item, 'Evidence Links CIA to DA Probe; Novel Says Munitions Theft 'Set Up' by Agency': "The key to the bunker, he says, was provided."
169. 1988, Jim Garrison, 'On the Trail of the Assassins', pp. 40, 53, 89-90. See 1001 Club biography of Mrs. Pierre Schlumberger for citations.
170. Ibid.
171. December 17, 1972, New York Times, 'In the Rothschild Manner, a Simple Dinner for 150 Close Friends'. Mrs. Pierre Schlumberger present at the Rothschild dinner outside Paris, just as Helene David-Weill, wife of 1001 Club member Michel David-Weill. Ms. Schlumberger and the Rothschilds also were 1001 Club members.
172. December 9, 1994, Executive Intelligence Review, 'Permindex ties revealed to JFK murder, 1001 Club', p. 58: "[John S.] Schlesinger was the owner of the only South African firm listed in the Permindex's internal phone directory (which is now in EIR's possession)."
173. Apart from Guy Banister's association with Lee Harvey Oswald, his involvement in the Schlumberger heist alone seems to make it quite clear he was a CIA asset.
     *) April 25, 1967, New Orleans States-Item, 'Evidence Links CIA to DA Probe; Novel Says Munitions Theft 'Set Up' by Agency'.
     *) January 1968, William W. Turner for Ramparts, 'The Garrison Commission', p. 47, 52 (PDF).
174. *) January 1968, William W. Turner for Ramparts, 'The Garrison Commission', p. 47, 52 (PDF).
     *) See ISGP's page on the death of Maurice Brooks Gatlin for a larger, relevant excerpt on his ties to the OAS and Guy Banister.
175. *) See note 173.
     *) November 1998, Vol. 2/3, The Dealey Plaza Echo, 'David Ferrie's Web of Intrigue': "In a suit against Playboy, for having published Jim Garrison's claim that Novel was with the CIA, Novel testified that Guy Banister and Sergio Arancha [Arcacha] Smith worked under CIA operative David Atlee Phillips. In the same testimony, Novel admitted that he had known Clay Shaw since 1959. HSCA investigator Gaeton Fonzi looked into a possible link between David Atlee Phillips and Lee Harvey Oswald. It is Fonzi's belief that Phillips and another CIA man, Maurice Bishop [Lee Harvey Oswald's reported handler], are the same person."