I recently read Madeline Duncan Brown’s autobiography, Texas in the Morning, about being Lyndon Baines Johnson’s mistress. Published in 1997, this book has been difficult to get and yet there is a high demand for it; it is a collectible and a good copy goes for $200, a reading copy for $100. I had a hard time finding the book; there was only one on Cal Poly’s entire intra-library loan network and it was checked out when I first found it. She had help writing it and so the prose is well done; she comes across as a credible witness regarding the inner workings of high Texas society, but she makes factual errors when she comments on national history or politics. There is also an hour and a half interview with Brown on the Internet at http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6962062879996612313
I am still looking into whether or not Lyndon Baines Johnson ordered the plot to assassinate John F. Kennedy and so I was interested to read that Madeline Brown “attended a social” at rich oilman Clint Murchison’s home on November 21, 1963, the night before the assassination. It was a tribute to honor the long time head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, J. Edgar Hoover who was present along with his companion and assistant Clyde Tolson and many other elites including Richard Nixon, John McCloy, H.L. Hunt and of course Lyndon Johnson.
As soon as Johnson arrived he went “behind closed doors” with many of the important men. “A short time later Lyndon, anxious and red-faced, reappeared…Squeezing my hand so hard it felt crushed from the pressure, he spoke with a grating whisper—a quiet growl into my ear not a love message, but one I’ll always remember: ‘After tomorrow those goddamn Kennedys will never embarrass me again—that’s no threat—that’s a promise.”[1]
Johnson was too busy to meet privately with Brown for one of their regular intimate sessions but he called her the next morning.
"It was evident that the tone of fury in his voice from last night had not dissipated. I had barely eked out the words, “About last night…” when his rage virtually went ballistic. His snarling voice jolted me as never before—“That son-of-a-bitch crazy Yarborough and that goddamn fucking Irish mafia bastard, Kennedy, will never embarrass me again!”[2]
A little while later she was on the phone with Jesse Kellam the manager of the Johnson family’s TV and radio station and also close confidant of Lyndon. Another of Kellam’s functions was to arrange meetings between Brown and Johnson. After making arrangements with Brown for a very brief sexual liaison with her lover she said, “Jesse, for any time I have with Lyndon, I’m grateful.’ Jesse added, ‘Lyndon is in a terrible mood, screaming about the Kennedys. All he can say is, ‘Those goddamn Kennedys will never embarrass me again after today.’” Brown assured Kellam that she knew this but that “after my fifteen minutes with him, he’ll love the world!”[3]
This account of Johnson before the assassination shows that he was quite animated with the foreknowledge of President Kennedy’s imminent demise. Johnson obviously knew about the assassination ahead of time and he worked himself up in anger over his previous humiliations to help himself rationalize his part in the crime. What exactly was said at the closed meeting at Murchison’s house the night before? It seems implausible that the upcoming assassination was talked openly of in this meeting because in her Internet interview Brown lists many people who were in the meeting room: George W. Owens, John Currington, John J. McCloy, P. Charles Cabal, J. Edgar Hoover, George Brown, Richard Nixon, Amin Carter Jr., Earl Cabal, John Connolly, R. L. Thornton, Joe Yarlborough, W. O. Bangston, Clint Peoples, Bill Decker, Cliff Carter, Mac Wallace, Carlos Marcello, Joe Civello, Jack Ruby, Larry Campbell, Clint Murchison, H. L. Hunt, R. L. Sheffield.[4]
It makes the most sense to me that nothing was said openly about the assassination in that room. I find it hard to believe that both John Connolly, wounded in the front seat of Kennedy’s car, and Joe Yarlborough were also told of the impending assassination, and much less all these people. Remember, all we know is what Johnson said to Brown and Kellam after the meeting. Maybe Johnson found out about the assassination before the meeting, but something said in the meeting or shortly before put it on his mind. Maybe he ordered the plot and was just getting worked up as the time neared. Robert D. Morrow, former contract agent for the CIA wrote:
"It was from his good friend Hoover that Richard Nixon learned of the pending assassination. Interestingly, on the eve of the assassination, Hoover and Nixon attended a meeting together at the Dallas home of oil-baron Clint Murchison. Among the subjects discussed at this meeting were the political futures of Hoover and Nixon in the event President Kennedy was assassinated."[5]
So, perhaps there was a smaller meeting inside the room including Nixon, Hoover and Johnson. Morrow is not clear and he does not give his source for this information, but in his book he confesses to his part in the assassination and gives many details from first hand knowledge. I will source him more when I finally deliver my promised post where I will detail all the names of the involved in the plot and what their roles were.
Did Johnson order the plot or was he just privy to the plan? Even if he did not order it, he is guilty of knowing about it and not stopping it, even looking forward to it with relish. There is evidence that he did order the plot. Jack Ruby wrote while in prison that Johnson ordered the assassination.[6] E. Howard Hunt of Watergate fame made death-bed confessions to his son Saint John Hunt in 2007, in which he admitted his part in the plot and said that Johnson ordered the plot through long time CIA Cord Meyer.[7] Another man of Watergate fame, the attorney Douglass Caddy became the lawyer of Bille Sol Estes (Johnson’s business crony who made him illegal money) and wrote the Justice Department in 1984, in which he said that his client (Estes) was willing to testify that Johnson ordered the murder of JFK as well as many other people investigating Estes’ misdeeds.[8] Many people who threatened Johnson’s political career in Texas were murdered over the years, especially relating to the Estes scandal. Madeline Duncan Brown puts the count at 17 or 18.[9]
She relates one incident when her long time African-American nanny Dale Turner caught a glimpse of she and Johnson hugging in a hotel room with the door open. Johnson saw Dale see them and told Brown, “I’ll have Ragsdale replace her on Monday.” Despite Brown’s pleading Turner left work a few days later and never returned. Brown wrote that Turner, “disappeared without a trace. The boys cried for days. I notified the police, telephoned her family and friends—all to no avail. To this day, I have not seen or heard from Dale Turner. Never.”[10] In her 2006 interview she said that she believed Johnson had had her killed.
Shortly after the assassination, Madeleine Brown asked Lyndon Johnson why he sealed the records for 75 years. “He smiled his little boy smile and said humorously, ‘Remember Box 13?”[11] This of course was a reference to the 1948 senatorial election in Texas that was stolen for Johnson. It is interesting that Johnson compared the Kennedy Assassination to the stolen election of 1948. In the 1948 senate election, the vote was close and Johnson made frantic phone calls to the powerful South Texas political boss George Parr. Parr ordered the local election judge to make a vote “correction,” which threw the election to Johnson by only 87 votes. There was a long legal battle and the facts remained murky until the election judge, Luis Salas, confessed to doing it in court in 1977.[12] In this case, Johnson did not himself do the dirty deed, but he certainly pressured for it and in effect ordered it down through a political chain of command. So when Johnson answered Brown, “Remember Box 13,” was he saying to her that he ordered the Kennedy Assassination, but it was done by people way down below him in the authority chain?
Johnson was working against the Kennedys and in cooperation with the CIA from early in the Kennedy administration. Robert Morrow relates an incident in which he was shown a memo from Johnson to top CIA official Charles Cabal warning the CIA about Kennedy’s plan to replace them with the Defense Intelligence Agency after the Bay of Pigs disaster in April of 1961.[13] All through his vice presidential days, Johnson made regular reports to the CIA after his daily trips to the White House on the way to his office.
The threats to Kennedy’s life were well known to many people. All the democrats from Texas warned him against going to Dallas. Johnson was the only exception. He pushed hard for it.[14] Johnson had the most to gain from Kennedy’s death. In addition to retaining the presidency he could head off the Bobby Baker investigation that was on going in the Senate, which was sure to implicate him in corruption scandals with the mafia. It was a well known fact that the Kennedys were going to use this scandal as an excuse to drop him from the vice president position on the 1964 election ticket.[15]
Did Lyndon Baines Johnson order the assassination of President John F. Kennedy? You have read the evidence I have found. You decide. I would very much appreciate more evidence about this if any of you have it. My next post will be about who was part of the plot and what were their roles.
[1] Madeleine Duncan Brown, Texas in the Morning: The Love Story of Madeleine Brown and President Lyndon Baines Johnson, (Baltimore: The Conservatory Press, 1997), 166.
[2] Ibid, 167.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Robert Gaylon Ross Sr. interview with Madeleine Duncan Brown, August 31, 2006 at http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6962062879996612313.
[5] Robert D. Morrow, First Hand Knowledge: How I Participated in the CIA-Mafia Murder of President Kennedy, (New York: S.P.I. Books, 1992), 195n.
[6] Jim Marrs, Crossfire: The Plot that Killed Kennedy, (New York: Carroll & Graff Publishers, 1989), 430-431.
[7] Saint John Hunt, Bond of Secrecy, (Self Published, 2008), 51-54. Available on the web at http://www.saintjohnhunt.com/.
[8] Glen Sample and Mark Collom, The Men on the Sixth Floor, (Garden Grove, CA: Sample Graphics, 2003), 165-170.
[9] Gaylon interview with Brown.
[10] Brown, 133-134, 136-137.
[11] Ibid, 186.
[12] Marrs, 291-292.
[13] Morrow, 76-77.
[14] Joachim Joesten, The Case Against Lyndon B. Johnson in the Assassination of President Kennedy, (Europe: Self Published,1967), 33-48.
[15] See Joesten, 22-27 for details Johnson’s vulnerability in the Bobby Baker scandal.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Saturday, January 31, 2009
WHO?? Killed President Kennedy
Still working on this topic of exactly who ordered and plotted the death of John F. Kennedy, I recently read JFK: The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy by retired army Colonel Fletcher Prouty. You may know him from the Oliver Stone movie, "JFK." He was played by Donald Sutherland as the unnamed man from army "Black Operations" that briefed Jim Garrison played by Kevin Costner and challenged him with the question of "why" Kennedy was killed.
Prouty includes in his book some of his experiences at and around the time of the JFK assassination and as such he is a valuable primary source. He was in New Zealand at the time of the killing and testifies that the local paper there ran a story within 8 hours of the shooting naming Lee Harvey Oswald as the lone gunman and providing a detailed biographical account of his life.[1] This is primary source evidence that the plotters of the assassination had access to the worldwide press and were able to plant this story ahead of time because it was released before the Dallas police had even charged Oswald with the crime. Congressional investigations and many books have detailed the CIA's ability to manipulate public opinion with the press, so this is further evidence that the plot was a covert operation of the CIA.
Prouty also provides primary source evidence that someone in command of the Secret Service was part of the plot. Prouty relates a phone call he made after the assassination to a member of the army unit in San Antonio specifically trained for protection of the president. The commander was told to "stand down," he was "point blank and categorically refused by the Secret Service." The army has groups like this all over the country that assist the Secret Service by doing lots of the preparatory work in an area when the president is to come. There are many things the Secret Service must do when a president tours in a car at slow speeds. On November 22, 1963 when Kennedy was killed, many of these things were not done: no men were stationed on top of all the buildings, no men were detached to close all the windows in all the nearby buildings, and the sewers were not sealed. As I have written before the route was not standard protocol. Prouty adds to this list of omissions with his story about the instructions to the army unit. The commander “knew Dallas was dangerous” and this is why he had argued with the Secret Service and had to be told to “stand down.” [2]
Prouty is good when he sticks to relating his own experiences, but goes awry with some of his interpretations. He writes extensively about the “nameless High Cabal” that was behind not only the Kennedy’s assassination, but planning the Vietnam War ahead of time, the 1973 Arab Israeli War with the subsequent increase in oil prices, and the 1990 fall of communism among other things. His proof for the 1973 and 1990 events is that he heard them predicted at business conferences. Therefore they were planned? He presents much more information on Vietnam, but still fails to convince me of the theory that the people who ordered the plot also said, “we must kill Kennedy because he will not launch a war in Vietnam.” This was doubtless on a list of many crimes Kennedy had committed in his reluctance to prosecute the Cold War vigorously enough, but I think both Oliver Stone and Fletcher Prouty assign too much causality to Vietnam because they write after the fact of such a traumatic event for our country. Their pie-eyed description of the Kennedy assassination being quietly ordered by a group of powerful bankers meeting for martinis as we read in Prouty[3] or oilmen meeting in a smoke filled room as we see in Stone’s movie does more harm than good for getting the truth out. It allows the suppressors of truth to point at these guys and call them kooks and discount all the rest of the solid evidence they present. If bankers or an oilmen were behind the plot then lets have their names and evidence to prove it.
I want to start doing this in my next posts. I have about five names of Secret Service men that I can document lying, negligence, or other suspicious behavior too in the Kennedy assassination. This may be the topic of my next post.
[1] [1] L. Fletcher Prouty, JFK: The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy, New York: Birch Land Press, 1992, page 306.
[2] Ibid, page 294.
[3] Ibid, pages 344-345.
Prouty includes in his book some of his experiences at and around the time of the JFK assassination and as such he is a valuable primary source. He was in New Zealand at the time of the killing and testifies that the local paper there ran a story within 8 hours of the shooting naming Lee Harvey Oswald as the lone gunman and providing a detailed biographical account of his life.[1] This is primary source evidence that the plotters of the assassination had access to the worldwide press and were able to plant this story ahead of time because it was released before the Dallas police had even charged Oswald with the crime. Congressional investigations and many books have detailed the CIA's ability to manipulate public opinion with the press, so this is further evidence that the plot was a covert operation of the CIA.
Prouty also provides primary source evidence that someone in command of the Secret Service was part of the plot. Prouty relates a phone call he made after the assassination to a member of the army unit in San Antonio specifically trained for protection of the president. The commander was told to "stand down," he was "point blank and categorically refused by the Secret Service." The army has groups like this all over the country that assist the Secret Service by doing lots of the preparatory work in an area when the president is to come. There are many things the Secret Service must do when a president tours in a car at slow speeds. On November 22, 1963 when Kennedy was killed, many of these things were not done: no men were stationed on top of all the buildings, no men were detached to close all the windows in all the nearby buildings, and the sewers were not sealed. As I have written before the route was not standard protocol. Prouty adds to this list of omissions with his story about the instructions to the army unit. The commander “knew Dallas was dangerous” and this is why he had argued with the Secret Service and had to be told to “stand down.” [2]
Prouty is good when he sticks to relating his own experiences, but goes awry with some of his interpretations. He writes extensively about the “nameless High Cabal” that was behind not only the Kennedy’s assassination, but planning the Vietnam War ahead of time, the 1973 Arab Israeli War with the subsequent increase in oil prices, and the 1990 fall of communism among other things. His proof for the 1973 and 1990 events is that he heard them predicted at business conferences. Therefore they were planned? He presents much more information on Vietnam, but still fails to convince me of the theory that the people who ordered the plot also said, “we must kill Kennedy because he will not launch a war in Vietnam.” This was doubtless on a list of many crimes Kennedy had committed in his reluctance to prosecute the Cold War vigorously enough, but I think both Oliver Stone and Fletcher Prouty assign too much causality to Vietnam because they write after the fact of such a traumatic event for our country. Their pie-eyed description of the Kennedy assassination being quietly ordered by a group of powerful bankers meeting for martinis as we read in Prouty[3] or oilmen meeting in a smoke filled room as we see in Stone’s movie does more harm than good for getting the truth out. It allows the suppressors of truth to point at these guys and call them kooks and discount all the rest of the solid evidence they present. If bankers or an oilmen were behind the plot then lets have their names and evidence to prove it.
I want to start doing this in my next posts. I have about five names of Secret Service men that I can document lying, negligence, or other suspicious behavior too in the Kennedy assassination. This may be the topic of my next post.
[1] [1] L. Fletcher Prouty, JFK: The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy, New York: Birch Land Press, 1992, page 306.
[2] Ibid, page 294.
[3] Ibid, pages 344-345.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Short History of the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy (JFK)
I have now completed alot of reading and per the request of a student of mine, I wanted to post a very short story of the plot to kill JFK. Read my previous post about "CIA Motivation for the Kennedy Assassination," to find out why they wanted to do it. It is clear that the plot was a covert operation of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). It may not have been official, but may have been ordered by the unemployed former Godfather of the CIA, Allen Dulles. That he was involved seems clear and it is probable that under him the men who planned and coordinated the plot were at least Clay Shaw, David Atlee Phillips and maybe some others.[1]
The basics of the plot were to ambush Kennedy while he was touring a southern city in a motorcade. The south was the bedrock of anti-communism and many prominent men in the south openly hated Kennedy; several shady characters predicted his death. The Kennedy team cancelled a motorcade in Miami before the Texas trip because of these security concerns and the plotters may indeed have tried to kill him in Miami earlier if the opportunity had presented itself. After the motorcade in Dallas was planned, for reasons not entirely clear the Secret Service changed the route of the caravan so that it would pass right by Lee Harvey Oswald's place of work at the Texas School Book Depository Building in Dealey Plaza of downtown Dallas. The roads in the plaza were perfect for an ambush because the sharp curves provided many places for snipers to set up easy shots. It was against security protocol to route a presidential motorcade on roads that would cause it to slow down this much and therefore it seems clear that people within the Secret Service were part of the plot.
Lee Harvey Oswald was a intelligence agent who worked for the CIA as well as Navy Intelligence. Oswald had a long-time deep cover pretending to be a communist, but he was actually an anti-communist CIA agent. He was one of about 40 men that Navy Intelligence instructed to do this in the 1950s. He knew many of the CIA in the south wanted to kill Kennedy and knew of the plot, but he did not know that they set him up to be the fall guy and to be framed as the lone crazed communist killer of the president. He was perfect for it because he worked in downtown Dallas and he had done much work to present himself as a communist in the past. The CIA went even further to show him as a communist and sent fake Oswalds to public places using his name and loudly proclaiming communist views.
The killing shots came after the president's car slowed down to make a dog-leg turn in front of the Depository building. The shots came at him from behind a fence past the Depository building atop a grassy knoll. Dozens of witnesses heard the shots come from the fence and many people including police rushed toward it after the shooting with smoke drifting across the knoll from the discharge of the rifle(s) behind. When they got there the plotters had fake Secret Service agents there to present credentials and distract the searchers from themselves. One person took a picture of a shooter dressed as a policeman aiming a gun behind the fence at the time of the shooting. Another witness saw a man rush a rifle to another man dressed as a railroad worker who quickly dismantled the gun and put it in a railroad tool bag and then they both moved rapidly away. (There was a railroad yard behind the fence). The first shot hit Kennedy in the throat and then one hit him in the head blowing his brains out from front to back. There were other shooters hidden around the area. People saw two men through the windows of the sixth floor of the book depository and a couple of witnesses saw one with a gun. Other suspicious people were seen on top of other buildings. People heard 3 to 6 shots and initially there was evidence of all these, but later it was covered up so that the official story only includes three shots all supposedly from the Texas School Book Depository that was behind the president where Oswald worked.
Right after the shooting, plotters planted a gun, a sniper's nest, and spent bullet casings on the sixth floor of the book depository and plotters directed police to the area by reporting that they had seen the assassin up there, but then the "witnesses" disappeared. Lee Harvey Oswald's name was put forth by these plotters as a prime suspect very early and the Dallas police converged on the sixth floor and put out a notice to arrest him very quickly. Some in the Dallas police department may have been part of the plot. Oswald was arrested a few hours later in a movie theatre. Oswald was seen calmly drinking a coke on the second floor of the book depository by a police officer and his boss less than 2 minutes after the shooting . Then he went and took in a movie; clearly not the behavior of a man who had just killed the president.
The vast majority of the people who were there heard and saw evidence that the shooting did not only come from the building where Oswald was working, but they heard shots from the fence by the grassy knoll and saw smoke there. Very quickly though the official story became that Oswald had done it and the plotters altered evidence to make it look as though this was true. Oswald himself denied it, but quickly figured out that his CIA masters had set him up to be the fall guy and stated that "he was a patsy." It was becoming clear that Oswald was going to talk and so CIA agent and mafioso Jack Ruby killed him two days later even while he was being escorted in the basement of the police station by 30 policemen. This has puzzled people and made them suspicious ever since. In the years that Ruby spent in jail after this, he admitted that there was a plot, but never provided much evidence of it. He was CIA and was part of the plot; he was present in Dealey Plaza the day of the shooting. It is unknown why Ruby sacrificed himself to keep the plot quiet; we can only speculate. He said he did it because he loved Kennedy, but he was a known anti-communist and Kennedy hater.
In David Lifton's book Best Evidence, he proves that the plotters shot JFK from the front as well as behind and that Kennedy's body was surgically altered under the control of the Secret Service and/or FBI to make it look like he had been shot only from behind.[2] This fact would seem to indicate to some that the highest levels of the U.S. government would have had to be involved, but it does not prove it nor does Lifton make this claim.
President Lyndon B. Johnson ordered the FBI to make a complete investigation and appointed the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Earl Warren to head up a special commission to investigate the slaying. Many anti-communist enemies of Kennedy were appointed to the commission including Allen Dulles and the commission did a large investigation and published a 26 book report that concluded Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated President Kennedy all by himself. The vast amount of evidence that showed this to be impossible was ignored and surpressed and this has caused many people to conclude that the commission purposely covered up the plot from Earl Warren on down. This is not entirely true of every person on the commission, but the most important evidence of the murder (Kennedy's body and the bullets that killed him) were altered so that it appeared that the only weapon that hit him was the one planted on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository. This caused even some objective members of the commission to ignore other contrary evidence like the many witnesses that heard shots and saw smoke come from the grassy knoll.
There is speculation as to how high the plot went in American government. Vice President Johnson stood the most to gain from the assassination. He is clearly guilty of destroying evidence and concealing the plot. Johnson ordered the presidential limousine to be completely cleaned and refurbished in the first three days after the assassination completely destroying evidence including bullet marks in the car. He sent his aid to retrieve and clean the suit of another man who was wounded in Kennedy's car, Texas governor John Connally, making this item useless as evidence. But worst of all, he issued "Executive Order 11652, which locked an immense amount of assassination evidence and documents in the National Archives away from the American public until the year 2039."[3] Johnson's career involved at least two cases where people were murdered who were investigating his corrupt dealings in politics, so it is not hard to speculate that he could have known and approved of the plot; it would have been consistent with his political career.[4]
I will now name some more people involved in the plot and what their functions were. CIA agent and pilot David Ferrie was to provide transportation for the assassins.[5] One of the many men that the plotters had stationed all around Dealey plaza for a multitude of duties to assist the plot was CIA agent Gordon Novel who may have been part of a signal team stationed right on the street.[6] The shooters were almost assuredly selected from the top secret CIA Assassination squad codenamed ZR/RIFLE. CIA Officer William Harvey was the head of the group and so he is probably part of the plot. There is evidence to show that one of the gunmen was long-time French intelligence and ZR/RIFLE team member Michel Roux, codenamed QJ/WIN. Author Steve J. Rivele has written a book called The Murderers of John F. Kennedy, 1988, detailing a "French Connection" of the plotters and naming mafiosos Sauver Pironti, Lucien Sarti, and one Bocognoni as gunmen.[7] This may be my next read. It is well known that the CIA used mafia men for many missions and especially assassanations. Convicted hitman and mafia connected Charles V. Harrelson admitted that he assisted with the shooting and there is evidence to back up his claim.[8] There is abundant evidence naming many more involved in the plot, but they can not all be listed here in a brief history.
The case was tried by New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison from 1967 to 1969; he attempted to convict CIA agent Clay Shaw of Conspiracy to murder President Kennedy, but failed because the public was firmly convinced that the Warren Report was the truth and Shaw had many allies that helped him keep his cover. Also dozens of key witnesses have been murdered or died mysteriously since the plot, including David Ferrie; if Garrison had just some of them he could have won. In 1977 the tireless work of the assassination researchers succeeded in reopening the case in a U.S. House of Representatives investigation called the House Select Committee on Assassinations. Unfortunately, the details of the actual conspiracy are so fantastic that the members of the committee simply did not follow through on the abundant evidence that could have proved it and could have began to bring people to justice. The House investigation did do some very detailed sound tape analysis of the police radio recordings from Dealey Plaza on the day of the assassination and proved that there were multiple shooters and that it could not have been just Lee Harvey Oswald. Therefore the House Committee concluded that there was a conspiracy to kill President Kennedy, but said that there was not enough evidence to prove the details of it - this last part was clearly a cop out. Until this day the facts have not been well publicized and much of the public still believes the false official story of the Warren Report.
All of what I have written is thoroughly documented by numerous assassination researchers who use court room reliable evidence. I have gone light on the footnotes to expedite this to the blog. I will supply any documentation you need if you just ask me; I am big on documentation. If any of you think I missed some important details that should be in a BRIEF history, please post them in the comments. Also please post any disagreements or corrections, especially if you can post direct evidence of high government participation in the plot such as by President Johnson or the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
[1] James DiEugenio, Destiny Betrayed: JFK, Cuba, and the Garrison Case (New York: Sheridan Press, 1992), pages 220-222, 237-238 .
[2]David Lifton, Best Evidence, Disguise and Deception in the Assassination of John F. Kennedy (New York, 1980), passim.
[3] Jim Marrs, Crossfire: The Plot that Killed Kennedy (New York: Carroll & Graf, 1989), page 297.
[4] Ibid, pages 291-295.
[5] DiEugenio, pages 144-145, 27.
[6] Ibid, 135-138
[7] Marrs, pages 202-209.
[8] Ibid, pages 85, 333-337.
The basics of the plot were to ambush Kennedy while he was touring a southern city in a motorcade. The south was the bedrock of anti-communism and many prominent men in the south openly hated Kennedy; several shady characters predicted his death. The Kennedy team cancelled a motorcade in Miami before the Texas trip because of these security concerns and the plotters may indeed have tried to kill him in Miami earlier if the opportunity had presented itself. After the motorcade in Dallas was planned, for reasons not entirely clear the Secret Service changed the route of the caravan so that it would pass right by Lee Harvey Oswald's place of work at the Texas School Book Depository Building in Dealey Plaza of downtown Dallas. The roads in the plaza were perfect for an ambush because the sharp curves provided many places for snipers to set up easy shots. It was against security protocol to route a presidential motorcade on roads that would cause it to slow down this much and therefore it seems clear that people within the Secret Service were part of the plot.
Lee Harvey Oswald was a intelligence agent who worked for the CIA as well as Navy Intelligence. Oswald had a long-time deep cover pretending to be a communist, but he was actually an anti-communist CIA agent. He was one of about 40 men that Navy Intelligence instructed to do this in the 1950s. He knew many of the CIA in the south wanted to kill Kennedy and knew of the plot, but he did not know that they set him up to be the fall guy and to be framed as the lone crazed communist killer of the president. He was perfect for it because he worked in downtown Dallas and he had done much work to present himself as a communist in the past. The CIA went even further to show him as a communist and sent fake Oswalds to public places using his name and loudly proclaiming communist views.
The killing shots came after the president's car slowed down to make a dog-leg turn in front of the Depository building. The shots came at him from behind a fence past the Depository building atop a grassy knoll. Dozens of witnesses heard the shots come from the fence and many people including police rushed toward it after the shooting with smoke drifting across the knoll from the discharge of the rifle(s) behind. When they got there the plotters had fake Secret Service agents there to present credentials and distract the searchers from themselves. One person took a picture of a shooter dressed as a policeman aiming a gun behind the fence at the time of the shooting. Another witness saw a man rush a rifle to another man dressed as a railroad worker who quickly dismantled the gun and put it in a railroad tool bag and then they both moved rapidly away. (There was a railroad yard behind the fence). The first shot hit Kennedy in the throat and then one hit him in the head blowing his brains out from front to back. There were other shooters hidden around the area. People saw two men through the windows of the sixth floor of the book depository and a couple of witnesses saw one with a gun. Other suspicious people were seen on top of other buildings. People heard 3 to 6 shots and initially there was evidence of all these, but later it was covered up so that the official story only includes three shots all supposedly from the Texas School Book Depository that was behind the president where Oswald worked.
Right after the shooting, plotters planted a gun, a sniper's nest, and spent bullet casings on the sixth floor of the book depository and plotters directed police to the area by reporting that they had seen the assassin up there, but then the "witnesses" disappeared. Lee Harvey Oswald's name was put forth by these plotters as a prime suspect very early and the Dallas police converged on the sixth floor and put out a notice to arrest him very quickly. Some in the Dallas police department may have been part of the plot. Oswald was arrested a few hours later in a movie theatre. Oswald was seen calmly drinking a coke on the second floor of the book depository by a police officer and his boss less than 2 minutes after the shooting . Then he went and took in a movie; clearly not the behavior of a man who had just killed the president.
The vast majority of the people who were there heard and saw evidence that the shooting did not only come from the building where Oswald was working, but they heard shots from the fence by the grassy knoll and saw smoke there. Very quickly though the official story became that Oswald had done it and the plotters altered evidence to make it look as though this was true. Oswald himself denied it, but quickly figured out that his CIA masters had set him up to be the fall guy and stated that "he was a patsy." It was becoming clear that Oswald was going to talk and so CIA agent and mafioso Jack Ruby killed him two days later even while he was being escorted in the basement of the police station by 30 policemen. This has puzzled people and made them suspicious ever since. In the years that Ruby spent in jail after this, he admitted that there was a plot, but never provided much evidence of it. He was CIA and was part of the plot; he was present in Dealey Plaza the day of the shooting. It is unknown why Ruby sacrificed himself to keep the plot quiet; we can only speculate. He said he did it because he loved Kennedy, but he was a known anti-communist and Kennedy hater.
In David Lifton's book Best Evidence, he proves that the plotters shot JFK from the front as well as behind and that Kennedy's body was surgically altered under the control of the Secret Service and/or FBI to make it look like he had been shot only from behind.[2] This fact would seem to indicate to some that the highest levels of the U.S. government would have had to be involved, but it does not prove it nor does Lifton make this claim.
President Lyndon B. Johnson ordered the FBI to make a complete investigation and appointed the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Earl Warren to head up a special commission to investigate the slaying. Many anti-communist enemies of Kennedy were appointed to the commission including Allen Dulles and the commission did a large investigation and published a 26 book report that concluded Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated President Kennedy all by himself. The vast amount of evidence that showed this to be impossible was ignored and surpressed and this has caused many people to conclude that the commission purposely covered up the plot from Earl Warren on down. This is not entirely true of every person on the commission, but the most important evidence of the murder (Kennedy's body and the bullets that killed him) were altered so that it appeared that the only weapon that hit him was the one planted on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository. This caused even some objective members of the commission to ignore other contrary evidence like the many witnesses that heard shots and saw smoke come from the grassy knoll.
There is speculation as to how high the plot went in American government. Vice President Johnson stood the most to gain from the assassination. He is clearly guilty of destroying evidence and concealing the plot. Johnson ordered the presidential limousine to be completely cleaned and refurbished in the first three days after the assassination completely destroying evidence including bullet marks in the car. He sent his aid to retrieve and clean the suit of another man who was wounded in Kennedy's car, Texas governor John Connally, making this item useless as evidence. But worst of all, he issued "Executive Order 11652, which locked an immense amount of assassination evidence and documents in the National Archives away from the American public until the year 2039."[3] Johnson's career involved at least two cases where people were murdered who were investigating his corrupt dealings in politics, so it is not hard to speculate that he could have known and approved of the plot; it would have been consistent with his political career.[4]
I will now name some more people involved in the plot and what their functions were. CIA agent and pilot David Ferrie was to provide transportation for the assassins.[5] One of the many men that the plotters had stationed all around Dealey plaza for a multitude of duties to assist the plot was CIA agent Gordon Novel who may have been part of a signal team stationed right on the street.[6] The shooters were almost assuredly selected from the top secret CIA Assassination squad codenamed ZR/RIFLE. CIA Officer William Harvey was the head of the group and so he is probably part of the plot. There is evidence to show that one of the gunmen was long-time French intelligence and ZR/RIFLE team member Michel Roux, codenamed QJ/WIN. Author Steve J. Rivele has written a book called The Murderers of John F. Kennedy, 1988, detailing a "French Connection" of the plotters and naming mafiosos Sauver Pironti, Lucien Sarti, and one Bocognoni as gunmen.[7] This may be my next read. It is well known that the CIA used mafia men for many missions and especially assassanations. Convicted hitman and mafia connected Charles V. Harrelson admitted that he assisted with the shooting and there is evidence to back up his claim.[8] There is abundant evidence naming many more involved in the plot, but they can not all be listed here in a brief history.
The case was tried by New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison from 1967 to 1969; he attempted to convict CIA agent Clay Shaw of Conspiracy to murder President Kennedy, but failed because the public was firmly convinced that the Warren Report was the truth and Shaw had many allies that helped him keep his cover. Also dozens of key witnesses have been murdered or died mysteriously since the plot, including David Ferrie; if Garrison had just some of them he could have won. In 1977 the tireless work of the assassination researchers succeeded in reopening the case in a U.S. House of Representatives investigation called the House Select Committee on Assassinations. Unfortunately, the details of the actual conspiracy are so fantastic that the members of the committee simply did not follow through on the abundant evidence that could have proved it and could have began to bring people to justice. The House investigation did do some very detailed sound tape analysis of the police radio recordings from Dealey Plaza on the day of the assassination and proved that there were multiple shooters and that it could not have been just Lee Harvey Oswald. Therefore the House Committee concluded that there was a conspiracy to kill President Kennedy, but said that there was not enough evidence to prove the details of it - this last part was clearly a cop out. Until this day the facts have not been well publicized and much of the public still believes the false official story of the Warren Report.
All of what I have written is thoroughly documented by numerous assassination researchers who use court room reliable evidence. I have gone light on the footnotes to expedite this to the blog. I will supply any documentation you need if you just ask me; I am big on documentation. If any of you think I missed some important details that should be in a BRIEF history, please post them in the comments. Also please post any disagreements or corrections, especially if you can post direct evidence of high government participation in the plot such as by President Johnson or the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
[1] James DiEugenio, Destiny Betrayed: JFK, Cuba, and the Garrison Case (New York: Sheridan Press, 1992), pages 220-222, 237-238 .
[2]David Lifton, Best Evidence, Disguise and Deception in the Assassination of John F. Kennedy (New York, 1980), passim.
[3] Jim Marrs, Crossfire: The Plot that Killed Kennedy (New York: Carroll & Graf, 1989), page 297.
[4] Ibid, pages 291-295.
[5] DiEugenio, pages 144-145, 27.
[6] Ibid, 135-138
[7] Marrs, pages 202-209.
[8] Ibid, pages 85, 333-337.
Thursday, January 8, 2009
How to tell when the CIA are Lying
I have been reading David Lifton's book Best Evidence with great interest. The book details Lifton's 15 year preoccupation with the evidence of the Zapruder film and President Kennedy's body. He basically proved with this that there were other assassins in front of Kennedy and that the plotters altered Kennedy's body to make it look like he was struck only from behind where Oswald worked in the Book Depository. The part where he confronted former CIA chief Allen Dulles at a public lecture at UCLA struck a chord with me. At this meeting Lifton presented to Dulles the frames of the Zapruder film which show Kennedy's head snapping backward when he received the fatal wound.
Everybody can see this in the Zapruder film, but not Allen Dulles. After much evasion Dulles was finally forced to look at the films and got very angry and said, "You have nothing! Absouluetly NOTHING! The head could be going around in circles for all I can see. You can't see a thing here! I have examined the film in the Archives many times. THIS proves nothing!"
After Dulles got to see the pictures Lifton passed them around to the 40 or so students present and meanwhile Dulles waved his hands saying, "I can't see a blasted thing here. You can't say the head goes back....I can't see it going back...it does not go back...you can't say that...you haven't shown it...."[1]
When people are presented with direct evidence of something and they refuse to even try to account for it and rather simply deny it, it is clear they are lying. I had this experience with former CIA Officer Ed Kane interviewing him for my master's thesis "U.S. Covert Intervention in Iraq, 1958-1963."
Kane vehemently denied that the CIA had anything to do with it.[1] In a letter to the Public Relations Director of the CIA, he stated “that the coup of February 8th, 1963 was a complete surprise to the agency and, I am certain, to the entire US government.”[2] In 2005, I presented the document “Komer to Kennedy” to Kane via FAX. When I asked him, “who is the "they" Komer is referring to?” He replied,
"I have ABSOLUTELY no idea. I saw NO reporting, from any source, including overhead and communications intercepts, while I was Iraqi desk officer even HINTING at a coup in the making. Neither did anybody in State. When I phoned my Agency superiors from HQS about midnight on February 8th, they all expressed astonishment that a coup had taken place."[3]
On the phone, I asked him for clarification. What then was Komer talking about? “I think he was talking through his hat,” Kane replied.[4] Kane would have us believe that he is telling the truth, but Bob Komer was lying to the President of the United States in a Top Secret memo. Kane and Dulles were actively promoting what the agency calls “white propaganda:” lies are told to the public to make your side look good. This is a part of what they euphemistically title “tradecraft.”
If you are interested in reading more about this I can email you the microsoft Word copy of my paper and you can read Appendix 1, The Secrecy of U.S. Covert Intervention. Appendix 3 contains copies of all the documents I keep referencing.
[1] David Lifton, Best Evidence, Disguise and Deception in the Assassination of John F. Kennedy, New York, 1980, page 41.
[2] Interview with Retired CIA Case Officer, Ed Kane, June 2005.
[3] Letter from Ed Kane to CIA Director of Public Relations in William Zeman, "U.S. Covert Intervention in Iraq, 1958-1963," page 98.
[4] Correspondence with Retired CIA Case Officer, Ed Kane, June 2006.
[5] Interview with Kane, June 2005.
Everybody can see this in the Zapruder film, but not Allen Dulles. After much evasion Dulles was finally forced to look at the films and got very angry and said, "You have nothing! Absouluetly NOTHING! The head could be going around in circles for all I can see. You can't see a thing here! I have examined the film in the Archives many times. THIS proves nothing!"
After Dulles got to see the pictures Lifton passed them around to the 40 or so students present and meanwhile Dulles waved his hands saying, "I can't see a blasted thing here. You can't say the head goes back....I can't see it going back...it does not go back...you can't say that...you haven't shown it...."[1]
When people are presented with direct evidence of something and they refuse to even try to account for it and rather simply deny it, it is clear they are lying. I had this experience with former CIA Officer Ed Kane interviewing him for my master's thesis "U.S. Covert Intervention in Iraq, 1958-1963."
Kane vehemently denied that the CIA had anything to do with it.[1] In a letter to the Public Relations Director of the CIA, he stated “that the coup of February 8th, 1963 was a complete surprise to the agency and, I am certain, to the entire US government.”[2] In 2005, I presented the document “Komer to Kennedy” to Kane via FAX. When I asked him, “who is the "they" Komer is referring to?” He replied,
"I have ABSOLUTELY no idea. I saw NO reporting, from any source, including overhead and communications intercepts, while I was Iraqi desk officer even HINTING at a coup in the making. Neither did anybody in State. When I phoned my Agency superiors from HQS about midnight on February 8th, they all expressed astonishment that a coup had taken place."[3]
On the phone, I asked him for clarification. What then was Komer talking about? “I think he was talking through his hat,” Kane replied.[4] Kane would have us believe that he is telling the truth, but Bob Komer was lying to the President of the United States in a Top Secret memo. Kane and Dulles were actively promoting what the agency calls “white propaganda:” lies are told to the public to make your side look good. This is a part of what they euphemistically title “tradecraft.”
If you are interested in reading more about this I can email you the microsoft Word copy of my paper and you can read Appendix 1, The Secrecy of U.S. Covert Intervention. Appendix 3 contains copies of all the documents I keep referencing.
[1] David Lifton, Best Evidence, Disguise and Deception in the Assassination of John F. Kennedy, New York, 1980, page 41.
[2] Interview with Retired CIA Case Officer, Ed Kane, June 2005.
[3] Letter from Ed Kane to CIA Director of Public Relations in William Zeman, "U.S. Covert Intervention in Iraq, 1958-1963," page 98.
[4] Correspondence with Retired CIA Case Officer, Ed Kane, June 2006.
[5] Interview with Kane, June 2005.
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