The WAR between JFK and CIA

[Cliff Varnell]

That's fast, Cliff, but not as fast as J. Edgar, who was probably the source of this early info for Kennedy aides.

Dueling cover-ups!

"The real history of the world is a history of competing conspiracies." Ishmael Reed.

Yes, the early info Hoover was pushing was that Oswald was part of "the pro-Castro" crowd and had been to Cuba -- consistent with Dallas Ass. DA Alexander writing up charges on Oswald as part of an international communist conspiracy.

Hoover sure wasn't pushing Oswald as a lone nut. Hoover wanted to see Castro over-thrown as much as anyone.

Bundy told Johnson the lone assassin was in custody.

3pm CST = 4pm EST. Hoover and Bundy were pushing competing cover-ups almost simultaneously.

The winners and losers here are obvious, no?

November 22, 1963-at 3:01 pm (CST), Hoover wrote, "I called the Attorney

General at his home and told him I thought we had the man who killed the

President down in Dallas . .. .I related that Oswald went to Russia and stayed

three years; came back to the United States in June, 1962, and went to Cuba

on several occasions but would not tell us what he went to Cuba for.179 Harvey

Oswald was never in Cuba, yet Hoover made this announcement only one hour after

Oswald's arrest!

November 22, 1963-at 4:15 (CST), Hoover wrote, "I told Mr. Schlei I thought

very probably we had in custody the man who killed the President .... I stated

he was born an American but tried unsuccessfully to lose his American

citizenship .... I stated he would be in the category of a nut and the extremist

pro-Castro crowd ..... Oswald made several trips to Cuba: upon his return each

time we interviewed him about what he went to Cuba for and he answered

that it was none of our business .... .I stated our Agents view him as a nut as he

freezes up and withdraws into himself when he is being questioned as he did

this afternoon down in Dallas." 180 Not a single one of the people who sat in during

Oswald's interrogation said he froze up or withdrew into himself during questioning.

If Hoover was truthful when he wrote, "Upon his return each time we interviewed him

about what he went to Cuba for. .... ," then Hoover knew that Lee Oswald had been to

Cuba.

November 22, 1963-after sitting in on Harvey Oswald's first interrogation, SA

James Hosty was ordered by an unidentified FBI counterintelligence officer

to have no further discussions with Oswald and not to investigate his back*

wound.181

Notes:
179. FBI memorandum from Hoover to Tolson, Belmont, Mohr, DeLoach, Evans, Rosen, Sullivan, 11/22/63,4:01 pm.
180. FBI memorandum from Hoover to Tolson, Belmont, Mohr, DeLoach, Evans, Rosen, Sullivan, 11/22/63, 5:15 pm.
181. Nigel Turner, "The Men Who Killed Kennedy," interview of James Hosty.

Above from Harvey and Lee by John Armstrong, page 913.

[Jim Hargrove]

Dueling cover-ups!

"The real history of the world is a history of competing conspiracies." Ishmael Reed.

Yes, the early info Hoover was pushing was that Oswald was part of "the pro-Castro" crowd and had been to Cuba -- consistent with Dallas Ass. DA Alexander writing up charges on Oswald as part of an international communist conspiracy.

Hoover sure wasn't pushing Oswald as a lone nut. Hoover wanted to see Castro over-thrown as much as anyone.

Bundy told Johnson the lone assassin was in custody.

3pm CST = 4pm EST. Hoover and Bundy were pushing competing cover-ups almost simultaneously.

The winners and losers here are obvious, no?

Maybe you're onto something here. I'm certainly enjoying this dialog, and don't mean to categorically deny your accusations; but otoh, you may be parsing these times and facts a little too closely. At the Federal level, Hoover would obviously be the point man here, and for someone without info from the FBI or the Secret Service to say the sole assassin had already been identified, captured, and all his contacts cleared two or three hours after the hit would surely have sounded more stupid in 1963 than it does now. I'm pretty sure people like Bundy and Harriman were not fools.

Since his infamous 1960 memo to State's Office of Security ("there is a possibility an imposter is using Oswald's birth certificate"), Hoover knew, or soon knew, there were two Oswalds. There is quite a bit of evidence that the American-born Oswald made several trips to Cuba, including, if memory serves, when Russian-speaking Oswald was in Minsk, and that the birth Oswald was interviewed by the FBI about these trip(s). The most logical assumption, to me, is that Hoover confused the biographies in these early hours after the assassination.

[Cliff Varnell]

Looks to me like two separate operations co-ordinated from on high.

One team was tasked with killing Kennedy.

The other team was tasked with sheep-dipping/killing Oswald the Red Agent.

We hear a lot about the latter, they who screwed the pooch.

I doubt if we've ever heard one word about the guys who actually killed Kennedy.

I apply a negative template to Oswald -- anyone who had anything to do with the guy had nothing to do with the actual murder of JFK.

Back-up patsies, the lot of them.

Kudos Cliff... well said.

What remains the key aspect of magic and illusion? Keep them looking over here, while reality is over there.

::fortuneteller::

Thank you, David.

Before I continue I just want to make clear I'm not "married' to any scenario, tho I have a couple I like to argue for.

I'm not married to Flechette (high-tech strike back/throat wounds) or WASPS Attack! (Harriman-did-it-w/Rockefeller-blessing). These are not my scenarios, both are almost as old as the murder.

It was the autopsists who, with the body in front of them, speculated to a high-tech explanation for two wounds of entrance/no exits/no bullets.

It was Salandria/Feldman who predicted the circumstances of Oswald's demise.

I'm not married to either Flechette or WASPS Attack! -- I'm just going steady.

[Jim Hargrove]

The Washington Daily News, Wednesday, October 2, 1963, p.3


'SPOOKS' MAKE LIFE MISERABLE FOR AMBASSADOR LODGE


'Arrogant' CIA Disobeys Orders in Viet Nam


By Richard T. Starnes


SAIGON, Oct.2 - The story of the Central Intelligence Agency's role in South Viet Nam is a dismal chronicle of bureaucratic arrogance, obstinate disregard of orders, and unrestrained thirst for power.


Twice the CIA flatly refused to carry out instructions from Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, according to a high United States source here.


In one of these instances the CIA frustrated a plan of action Mr. Lodge brought with him from Washington because the agency disagreed with it.


This led to a dramatic confrontation between Mr. Lodge and John Richardson, chief of the huge CIA apparatus here. Mr. Lodge failed to move Mr. Richardson, and the dispute was bucked back to Washington. Secretary of State Dean Rusk and CIA Chief John A. McCone were unable to resolve the conflict, and the matter is now reported to be awaiting settlement by President Kennedy.


It is one of the developments expected to be covered in Defense Secretary Robert McNamara's report to Mr. Kennedy.


Others Critical, Too


Other American agencies here are incredibly bitter about the CIA.


"If the United States ever experiences a 'Seven Days in May' it will come from the CIA, and not from the Pentagon," one U.S. official commented caustically.


("Seven Days in May" is a fictional account of an attempted military coup to take over the U.S. Government.)


CIA "spooks" (a universal term for secret agents here) have penetrated every branch of the American community in Saigon, until non-spook Americans here almost seem to be suffering a CIA psychosis.


An American field officer with a distinguished combat career speaks angrily about "that man at headquarters in Saigon wearing a colonel's uniform." He means the man is a CIA agent, and he can't understand what he is doing at U.S. military headquarters here, unless it is spying on other Americans.


Another American officer, talking about the CIA, acidly commented: "You'd think they'd have learned something from Cuba but apparently they didn't."


Few Know CIA Strength


Few people other than Mr. Richardson and his close aides know the actual CIA strength here, but a widely used figure is 600. Many are clandestine agents known only to a few of their fellow spooks.


Even Mr. Richardson is a man about whom it is difficult to learn much in Saigon. He is said to be a former OSS officer, and to have served with distinction in the CIA in the Philippines.


A surprising number of the spooks are known to be involved in their ghostly trade and some make no secret of it.


"There are a number of spooks in the U.S. Information Service, in the U.S. Operations mission, in every aspect of American official and commercial life here, " one official - presumably a non-spook - said.


"They represent a tremendous power and total unaccountability to anyone," he added.


Coupled with the ubiquitous secret police of Ngo Dinh Nhu, a surfeit of spooks has given Saigon an oppressive police state atmosphere.


The Nhu-Richardson relationship is a subject of lively speculation. The CIA continues to pay the special forces which conducted brutal raids on Buddhist temples last Aug. 21, altho in fairness it should be pointed out that the CIA is paying these goons for the war against communist guerillas, not Buddhist bonzes (priests).


Hand Over Millions


Nevertheless, on the first of every month, the CIA dutifully hands over a quarter million American dollars to pay these special forces.


Whatever else it buys, it doesn't buy any solid information on what the special forces are up to. The Aug. 21 raids caught top U.S. officials here and in Washington flat-footed.


Nhu ordered the special forces to crush the Buddhist priests, but the CIA wasn't let in on the secret. (Some CIA button men now say they warned their superiors what was coming up, but in any event the warning of harsh repression was never passed to top officials here or in Washington.)


Consequently, Washington reacted unsurely to the crisis. Top officials here and at home were outraged at the news the CIA was paying the temple raiders, but the CIA continued the payments.


It may not be a direct subsidy for a religious war against the country's Buddhist majority, but it comes close to that.


And for every State Department aide here who will tell you, "Dammit, the CIA is supposed to gather information, not make policy, but policy-making is what they're doing here," there are military officers who scream over the way the spooks dabble in military operations.


A Typical Example


For example, highly trained trail watchers are an important part of the effort to end Viet Cong infiltration from across the Laos and Cambodia borders. But if the trailer watchers spot incoming Viet Congs, they report it to the CIA in Saigon, and in the fullness of time, the spooks may tell the military.


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.


Unquestionably Mr. McNamara and Gen. Maxwell Taylor both got an earful from people who are beginning to fear the CIA is becoming a Third Force co-equal with President Diem's regime and the U.S. Government - and answerable to neither.


There is naturally the highest interest here as to whether Mr. McNamara will persuade Mr. Kennedy something ought to be done about it.
The following editorial accompanied Starnes' prophetic bombshell and points to a curious feature of the entire pre-coup period - most of the objections to the Agency's grotesque power were coming from the the GOP's establishment, a group far to the left of today's post-Clinton Democrats.


To illustrate the point, Starnes went to Vietnam, in September 1963, bearing a letter of introduction from Roy Howard, the Scripps-Howard's effective head (despite nominal retirement a decade before) and most definitely no Democrat, testifying to Starnes' bona fides. Howard and Walker Stone stood by Starnes - and his despatch - in the face of John McCone's angry demand, made in the course of face-to-face meeting with Stone, that the reporter be sacked.


At much the same time, Rep. John V. Lindsay of New York was being commissioned by Esquire's editor, Harold Hayes, to write a no-holds-barred attack on the Agency, based upon the resolution, seeking to curtail CIA power, that Lindsay had put before the House of Representatives in August 1963. It duly appeared in March 1964. But that's another story.

The Washington Daily News, 2 October 1963, p.32


Editorial: What's Wrong in South Viet Nam?


It is a brutally messed up state of affairs that our man, Richard Starnes, reports from South Viet Nam in his article on Page 3 today.


And the mess he has found isn't Viet Namese. It is American, involving bitter strife among U.S. agencies which may help explain the vast cost and lack of satisfactory progress in this operation to contain communist aggression.


The whole situation, as described by Mr. Starnes, must be shocking to Americans who believe we are engaged in a selfless crusade to protect democracy in this far-off land.


He has been told that:


The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has flatly refused to carry out instructions from Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, frustrating a plan of action he took from Washington.


Secret agents, or "spooks," from CIA "have penetrated every branch of the American community in Saigon." Who are we fighting there anyhow? The communists, or our own people?


The CIA agents represent a tremendous power and are totally unaccountable to anyone. They dabble and interfere in military operations, to the frustration of our military officials.


The bitterness of other American agencies in Saigon toward the CIA, Starnes found, is "almost unbelievable."


On the basis of this last statement alone, there is something terribly wrong with our system out there.


Defense Secretary McNamara, just back from an inspection trip to Viet Nam, gave the President a preliminary report on his findings at the White House this morning. Mr. McNamara is a tough man of decisive action. It may be assumed he now is in a position to assess the blame for this quarreling and back-biting inside the American family whether it falls on the CIA or other agencies which accuse the CIA.


One way or the other, some official heads should roll.

Joseph Fouche

[David Josephs]

Looks to me like two separate operations co-ordinated from on high.

One team was tasked with killing Kennedy.

The other team was tasked with sheep-dipping/killing Oswald the Red Agent.

We hear a lot about the latter, they who screwed the pooch.

I doubt if we've ever heard one word about the guys who actually killed Kennedy.

I apply a negative template to Oswald -- anyone who had anything to do with the guy had nothing to do with the actual murder of JFK.

Back-up patsies, the lot of them.

Kudos Cliff... well said.

What remains the key aspect of magic and illusion? Keep them looking over here, while reality is over there.

::fortuneteller::

Thank you, David.

Before I continue I just want to make clear I'm not "married' to any scenario, tho I have a couple I like to argue for.

I'm not married to Flechette (high-tech strike back/throat wounds) or WASPS Attack! (Harriman-did-it-w/Rockefeller-blessing). These are not my scenarios, both are almost as old as the murder.

It was the autopsists who, with the body in front of them, speculated to a high-tech explanation for two wounds of entrance/no exits/no bullets.

It was Salandria/Feldman who predicted the circumstances of Oswald's demise.

I'm not married to either Flechette or WASPS Attack! -- I'm just going steady.

Most welcome...

And for the record as well... It is not the scenario or theories I am tied to either... it is the EVIDENCE itself which betrays the scenario... John didn't go looking for H&L just as Lifton did not start out telling himself that there were three casket entries... the EVIDENCE took him there... the EVIDENCE took me there... the EVIDENCE took John there.

John and I discussed, debated, argued, yelled, agreed and disagreed for a year as I went thru each and every page, each and every footnote, each and every applicable Baylor notebook to try and poke holes in the EVIDENCE... I made it to March of 1963 when I jumped forward to Nov 22.... if you'd send me your email address I'd gladly send you my H&L timeline spreadsheet... which condenses the 1000 pages book and tens of thousand of pages of notes into a side by side timeline which helped me pinpoint the conflicts and raise the right questions. It is about 350 rows long with direct quotes from the evidence...

A small part of it I did dismiss as being a bit too speculative or questionable, yet the overwhelming majority I could not... What most who don't read the book don't understand - it was the 10 years of follow-up that makes the case... the interviews and records not pursued by the "official" investigations... which as we read the vast majority of the best books on the subject were the KEYS to the truths involved...

(i.e. It was John who told me that the microfilm of the Kleins orders placed into the archives was empty... and there was no info as to what happened to it... so it is impossible to know if the COPIES that the FBI provided are authentic)

It is with that understanding that I cannot accept the CIA-focused self-evident evidence as the last line in the sand (Sorry Jim) but as the first line of defense with the Military and all its acronyms pulling the operational strings...
With the likes of the Cravath, Swaine and Moore crowd reaping the benefits... and providing the necessary cover

Cheers
DJ

[Jim Hargrove]

It is with that understanding that I cannot accept the CIA-focused self-evident evidence as the last line in the sand (Sorry Jim) but as the first line of defense with the Military and all its acronyms pulling the operational strings...
With the likes of the Cravath, Swaine and Moore crowd reaping the benefits... and providing the necessary cover

DJ

David,

It wouldn't surprise me one bit if the plot involved people in the military or even the Administration itself. The problem is the lack of solid evidence. James Douglass painted a fantastic portrait of just how many enemies Kennedy must have made in the military and elsewhere in the MIC, but that doesn't mean soldiers plotted to kill him.

Compare that to the evidence against the Agency: contemporary news accounts of the war gone public between the Administration and the Agency, the fact that an unnamed Administration official publicly predicted the possibility of a CIA coup six weeks before the coup actually happened, the sworn testimony of the CIA accountant that he was told money he disbursed to an encrypted account as late as a few weeks before the assassination was for "Oswald or the Oswald project," Mark Lane's jury victory in the E. Howard Hunt libel trial, the comments implying CIA involvement made by various government attorneys after their various published whitewashes were completed, and on and on.

If you accuse soldiers and others of being involved in the assassination, but have no direct evidence to back up the claim, you leave yourself and our cause open to criticism that is tough to deflect. Maybe the plotters weren't quite as crafty as you think. My assumption is that the plot came out of the Miami CIA station and used pissed-off Cubans who hated Kennedy as shooters, used "the Oswald Project" as cover, and they got away with it. If you have real evidence that the Agency was a secondary patsy, I'd love to hear it. Mostly what I hear though, is speculation.

Jim

[David Josephs]

It is with that understanding that I cannot accept the CIA-focused self-evident evidence as the last line in the sand (Sorry Jim) but as the first line of defense with the Military and all its acronyms pulling the operational strings...
With the likes of the Cravath, Swaine and Moore crowd reaping the benefits... and providing the necessary cover

DJ

David,

It wouldn't surprise me one bit if the plot involved people in the military or even the Administration itself. The problem is the lack of solid evidence. James Douglass painted a fantastic portrait of just how many enemies Kennedy must have made in the military and elsewhere in the MIC, but that doesn't mean soldiers plotted to kill him.

Compare that to the evidence against the Agency: contemporary news accounts of the war gone public between the Administration and the Agency, the fact that an unnamed Administration official publicly predicted the possibility of a CIA coup six weeks before the coup actually happened, the sworn testimony of the CIA accountant that he was told money he disbursed to an encrypted account as late as a few weeks before the assassination was for "Oswald or the Oswald project," Mark Lane's jury victory in the E. Howard Hunt libel trial, the comments implying CIA involvement made by various government attorneys after their various published whitewashes were completed, and on and on.

If you accuse soldiers and others of being involved in the assassination, but have no direct evidence to back up the claim, you leave yourself and our cause open to criticism that is tough to deflect. Maybe the plotters weren't quite as crafty as you think. My assumption is that the plot came out of the Miami CIA station and used pissed-off Cubans who hated Kennedy as shooters, used "the Oswald Project" as cover, and they got away with it. If you have real evidence that the Agency was a secondary patsy, I'd love to hear it. Mostly what I hear though, is speculation.

Jim

Jim... I respect your asking for the evidence... I would advise you read John's ONI notebook... and ONI Enclosures A (100 pages) and C (81 pages)....

What you seem to dismiss is that by definition, what I propose would lead to there not being any ONI evidence... or to it so blatantly and obviously NOT being there...

Who was it that ordered Galloway, Burkley and Kinney to oversee the alteration of the wounds at Bethesda Jim?
Which CIA officers where in the room to insure it was done?
What is LeMay's connection to the CIA?
Which CIA members were on AF-1 on the return trip? or in the Situation room in DC at the time?
Please connect Bundy to the CIA for me..

....to get a better picture of Navy Rear Adm Rufus Taylor who is at the head of the list within the first few pages of that notebook... if you can read thru all those materials and follow some of the hard work already done by top notch researchers, I hope you can come to find that this theory is not so far-fetched. If you honestly believe that the Military did not oversee and direct the CIA from its inception to be this wall of protection, this easily identifyable Bad Guy which would defelct attention from the military and its Intelligence Ops with easy and obviousness... I'd ask that you illustrate what the CIA was able to do without the oversight and support of the Military... Fletcher Prouty, the Military/CIA liason who did the job we are talking about would disagree...

Born in St. Louis, Missouri, Taylor graduated from the United States Naval Academyin 1933. Taylor became Director of Naval Intelligence, 1963-1966. Then in June 1966, he was made Vice Admiral and Deputy Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. That September President Lyndon Baines Johnson appointed him Deputy Director of Central Intelligence at CIA; he was quickly confirmed by the United States Senate. He served at CIA under DCIRichard Helms. Taylor later resigned as DDCI effective February 1969.[SUP][1][/SUP]


I also suggest you re-read The Secret Team. It took a Military man to serve the CIA up on a platter.... and a Military man to expose what the Pentagon Papers really were...
It's all a smoke-screen Jim... and one of the greatest never-ending hoaxes ever perpetrated...

The man who must depend upon
research and investigation inevitably falls victim to the many pitfalls of the secret world
and of the "cover story" world with its lies and counter-lies. - Prouty 1972

And this excellent essay from Bill Kelly explaining how the ONI was much more thorough at destroying any connection between it and 11/22, while we repeatedly find "obvious" signs of the CIA's fingerprints leading us nowhere.

http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2011/...-gone.html
"In its Final Declaration of Compliance, ONI stated that it conducted an extensive review of ONI records held at Federal Records Centers throughout the country. ONI did not identify any additional assassination records. ONI was unable to find any relevant files for the Director of ONI from 1959 to 1964." - Final Report ARRB

Are you of the position that this all powerful and mighty CIA was so inept as to leave such an obvious trail of breadcrumbs - rather than feeding us these crumbs, these mountains of minutia that resulted in Salandria's unheeded warning? While at the same time created the cottage JFK Conspiracy industry... just enough to keep the micro-analysis going, but never enough to make our case against anyone else.

"We must face that fact -- and not waste any more time micro-analyzing the
evidence. That's exactly what they want us to do. They have kept us
busy for so long. And I will bet, buddy, that is what will happen to
you. They'll keep you very, very busy and, eventually, they'll wear you
down."

[David Josephs]

These are the words which were at the core of counter-intelligence and what drove Jesus Angleton to such perfection and paranoia, according to David Martin as written in Wilderness of Mirrors.

"The more valuable an agent's service, the more reason to fear a deception" p.16

I would extend that to include "an Agency's service"... in defense of the notion that the CIA's most valuable service was to deceive the world as to who was responsible for JFK and the many other worldly atrocities for which they are blamed...

I intend, over the course of time, to expand this into a full-blown, and fully-supported theory centered on the notion that the CIA was 1 or both of 2 things:

- The wall protecting the core of Sponsor controlled Military intelligence and activity

and

- The workings of Eastern and Western Sponsors to avert nuclear war in favor of ongoing Cold War.

... the muscle doing the dirty work and taking the heat while the undetected bosses sit in back rooms deciding the fate of others.

JFK handing the keys of clandestine operations to the Joint Chiefs... appears to have been the goal all along...
but I have a lot of work yet to do in compiling my arguments...

If you feel you can be of any help ::
Please feel free to contact me directly....

Thanks
DJ

[Paul Rigby]

JFK handing the keys of clandestine operations to the Joint Chiefs... appears to have been the goal all along...

Kennedy's assassination had quite the opposite effect: the proposed transfer of control over such ops from the CIA to the DIA didn't happen.

...but I have a lot of work yet to do in compiling my arguments...

You're not kidding, not least on the question of who Angleton targeted in ostensible retirement: Yale's Skull and Bones. Presumably this, too, is to be dismissed as an elaborate ruse to deflect attention from ONI?

[Jim Hargrove]