The WAR between JFK and CIA

[Cliff Varnell]

We'll probably just have to agree to disagree, again.

A pleasure to discuss the case with you again, Jim.

"Intra-Administration War over Vietnam" wasn't restricted to JFK v CIA.

It was also JFK v the State Department, specifically the #3 man at State W. Averell Harriman.

Harriman and the #2 at State George Ball worked with Roger Hilsman and Michael Forrestal to send off the August 24 '63 Cable 243 which gave the green-light for US Amb Lodge to organize a coup against Diem.

The eventual murders of Diem and his brother were the result of W. Averell Harriman's machinations. Kennedy man Galbraith sent a note to Harriman congratulating him on the Diem over-throw.

Now, let's take a look and see who were the top US government officials on the job in Washington DC the afternoon of the assassination.

Most of the cabinet was on a plane originally bound for Tokyo but re-routed after the assassination.

Ron Ecker has a great article -- "The Tokyo Flight - Co-incidence or Conspiracy?"

http://hobrad.angelfire.com/tokyo.html

The top cabinet level officials in the DC area the afternoon of 11/22/63 were Sec of Defense McNamara, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, the Sec of HEW and the Postmaster General.

The latter two guys were far from the levers of power. Bobby K spent the day at his Virginia home making phone calls.

So the top US civilian government official on the job in DC that afternoon was Robert McNamara.

From Ecker's article:

THE PENTAGON FAILS TO INFORM ITS BOSS

With the isolation over the Pacific Ocean of six Cabinet members at the time of the assassination, we need to consider the activity of Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, the most important Cabinet official besides Attorney General Robert Kennedy not on the Tokyo flight. (The other two were the HEW secretary and the Postmaster General.)

According to William Manchester's book The Death of a President, McNamara and Maxwell Taylor, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, received word at the Pentagon of the shooting in Dallas simultaneously, Taylor by a buzzer from the Pentagon's command center, and McNamara by being handed a UPI dispatch. Manchester says McNamara "acted quickly," conferring with Taylor and the other Joint Chiefs, and over the JCS signature "they dispatched a flash warning to every American military base in the world."

A slightly different story is told in a biography of General Taylor by his son. After Taylor was buzzed by the command center, according to this account, Taylor buzzed McNamara, "calling him out of a conference on the budget" to inform him of the shooting. No mention of McNamara first being handed a news dispatch.

McNamara himself should know how he was informed, and according to his own account, he was neither buzzed by Taylor nor handed any dispatch. As incredible as it may seem, the Pentagon left its boss, right there on the premises, totally unaware of what had happened. McNamara says that in the middle of a budget meeting, "at about 2:00 P.M" (1:00 P.M. Dallas time), his secretary told him of an urgent personal call. It was from Robert Kennedy, who told him that JFK had been shot. And can we say that McNamara, finally getting the news from the President's brother, "acted quickly," to use Manchester's words? No, McNamara says that since "we simply did not know what to do," he continued with his meeting on the budget. The meeting was adjourned about 45 minutes later when a second call came from Robert Kennedy, informing McNamara that JFK was dead.

In sum, the Secretary of Defense, by his own account, did not know that JFK had been shot till about half an hour after the fact (at which time he took no action whatsoever), and was not informed that the President was dead until about 45 minutes later. In neither instance did the information come from any Defense Department official inside or outside of the Pentagon, nor from any alleged copy of a news dispatch. The belated news came solely from outside calls from the President's brother. Who knows when McNamara might have learned what had happened that day in Dallas if Bobby Kennedy, who was at home in Hickory Hill, Virginia, hadn't eventually called him?

So although Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara was at his desk that day the military kept him in the dark and he didn't do anything.

With the entire top level of Kennedy's civilian government either out of town or sidelined, who did that leave at the pinnacle of civilian power?

We have it well confirmed that Kennedy National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy called AF1 from the White House Situation Room and informed LBJ that the lone assassin was in custody.

Where did Bundy get the idea that the man Dallas police arrested a couple of hours earlier with the pro-Soviet background was the lone assassin?

Who ranked above Bundy in the US government that day?

According to the line of succession the top US gov't department is State...so the top guys in the civilian US government that afternoon were the #2 and #3 men at the State Department -- George Ball and W. Averell Harriman.

From Spanning the Century, Harriman's biography by Rudy Abramson, pg 625:

Averell heard the shattering confirmation of Kennedy's death in George Ball's office...He spent the afternoon helping Ball, who was, if anyone truly was, running the United States government, since Rusk and several other Cabinet members were airborne, coming home after turning back from a flight to the Far East.

So the guys most responsible for sabotaging JFK's neutralization policy in Vietnam sat at the pinnacle of power the day JFK was murdered.

(McGeorge Bundy -- Skull & Bones 1940. W. Averell Harriman -- Skull & Bones 1913.)

Where did Bundy did the idea that Ozzie acted alone?

He didn't get that idea from William Harvey, tell ya that much!