William Pawley, the Kennedy Assassination, and.......... by Peter Dale Scott

[Jan Klimkowski]

Note that PDS categorises it a "phase three" cover story:

I like to think of the "plot that backfired" theory as a "phase three" story, because of my arguments elsewhere that it, and more specifically the Bayo-Pawley mission, was planned precisely to coerce the CIA, Life, and even the Kennedy family "into an assassination cover-up."[45] For many years I have suspected that the true target of the Bayo-Pawley mission was neither the mythical Soviet defectors, nor even to assassinate Castro, but President Kennedy, on a level even deeper than its avowed intention to sabotage Kennedy's policy of détente with Cuba and the Soviet Union. (As Robert K. Brown and Miguel Acoca wrote in their 1976 account, "The Bayo-Pawley Affair," "It was a plot to destroy President Kennedy politically, and the CIA played a major role. Without the CIA, in fact, the weird adventure could not have taken place."[46] It is indeed true that proof of missiles in Cuba would have completely discredited Kennedy's claim to have successfully resolved the Cuban Missile Crisis, and put an end to his efforts to develop a policy of détente towards the Soviet Union).

No Soviet defectors were actually obtained, so the plot might at first glance seem to have been ineffective. That however did not at all impede the use of the "phase three" retaliation story as post-assassination political blackmail. By enlisting both regular CIA personnel from Shackley's JM/WAVE station, and also Richard Billings from Life magazine, the plot may have helped ensure that the CIA, Life, and others would later engage in a post-assassination cover-up.[47]

The plot may also have blackmailed Robert Kennedy: Brown and Acoca report (as Kaiser and Carrozza do not) that the organizers of the raid had at the outset brought in a wealthy Kennedy supporter, Theodore Racoosin; Racoosin reported later that he had contacted "someone in the White House, who had authorized him to organize meetings of Cuban exile leaders, in order to obtain information on the CIA's Cuban operations."[48]

Such an authorization, if granted, would be enough to explain why Robert Kennedy "immediately moved to shut down" Roselli's "phase three" story when Jack Anderson published it in March 1967. According to David Talbot, Kennedy first requested "a copy of the FBI memo on the ... meeting when he was first informed by the CIA about the Mafia plots." and the arranged to have lunch, on March 4, 1967, with CIA Director Richard Helms. Three days later, on March 7, 1967, the Washington Post finally published a bowdlerized version of the March 3 Jack Anderson column. It no longer contained Anderson's reference to "a political H-bomb an unconfirmed report that Senator Robert Kennedy (Dem-N.Y.) may have approved an assassination plot which then possibly backfired against his late brother."[49]

One does not have to believe in the truth of the "plot that backfired" story to believe in the importance of it. Robert Kennedy was not the only major figure to feel threatened by Anderson's "political H-bomb;" so, four years later, did President Nixon. In January 1971 a Jack Anderson column reported again about CIA plots, this time naming mob figure John Roselli, ex-CIA officer William Harvey, and CIA contract agent Robert Maheu, their go-between in the CIA-mafia plots of 1960, (plots involving Nixon but not Kennedy). In 1971, "Could the plot against Castro have backfired against President Kennedy?"[50]

As I noted in 1976, the column "caused a flurry of investigative memos inside the Nixon White House," including a warning from one of the White House "dirty tricks" operatives, Jack Caulfield, that "Maheu's covert activities ... with CIA... might well shake loose republican skeletons from the closet."[51] According to Anthony Summers, Attorney General John Mitchell promptly phoned Maheu, who was currently "under pressure to appear before a grand jury in connection with a Las Vegas gambling prosecution," and arranged a deal whereby, in exchange for Maheu's silence on "the entire Castro story," Maheu would not have to testify.[52]

This was noted and investigated by two members of the staff of the Senate Watergate Committee, Terry Lenzner and Mark Lackritz, who concluded that White House concern about Anderson's phase-three story "could have been a possible motivation for the [Watergate] break-in to the office of the DNC."[53] The two staffers questioned Caulfield about his "skeletons" memo. Anthony Summers writes that "Caulfield first asked to go off the record. After discussion in private, he conceded that his reference to covert activities' related to [Anderson's] Castro plot revelations."[54]