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!

[Jim Hargrove]

Thanks, Cliff. It's an interesting post, and I'd like to see some of the evidence behind several of the points, but even if every single thing checks out, I'd still say it is essentially irrelevant.

First, the news stories at the top of this thread have Administration officials accusing the CIA only, not State, not the Joint Chiefs or the Pentagon. Remember the language in the Starnes piece:
.

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.

.....

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."

Even more significantly, it seems pretty clear that the purpose of the assassination was to provoke an invasion of Cuba. That's why a man identifying himself as LHO tried to buy rifles from Robert McKeown, Castro's personal friend and gun-runner. Had McKeown not smelled a rat, especially when an unusually high price was offered for the guns, you can bet one of those rifles would have become the murder weapon. And, of course, the FPCC charade fit right into the Castro-did-it scenario.

Jim

[Cliff Varnell]

Thanks, Cliff. It's an interesting post, and I'd like to see some of the evidence behind several of the points, but even if every single thing checks out, I'd still say it is essentially irrelevant.

,,,

Even more significantly, it seems pretty clear that the purpose of the assassination was to provoke an invasion of Cuba.

And there is the relevance!

Oswald/s (mileage varies) was elaborately set-up as the Killer from Castro and yet the White House Situation Room had, within a couple hours of his capture, determined that this Oswald fellow acted alone.

Lyndon Johnson was met at the airport by Harriman & Ball. Ball flew in the helicopter with LBJ over to the White House. Harriman picked up top Democratic foreign policy man J. William Fulbright and the two of them high-tailed it over to the WH to see ol' Lyndon about ten minutes after LBJ and Ball arrived.

Max Holland's The Assassination Tapes, pg 57:

At 6:55 p.m. Johnson has a ten minute meeting with Senator J. William Fulbright
and diplomat W. Averell Harriman to discuss possible foreign involvement in the
assassination, especially in light of the two-and-a-half-year sojourn of Lee Harvey
Oswald [in Russia]...Harriman, a U.S. ambassador to Moscow during WWII, is an
experienced interpreter of Soviet machinations and offers the president the
unanimous view of the U.S. government's top Kremlinologists. None of them
believe the Soviets have a hand in the assassination, despite the Oswald association.

That's probably what Ball told LBJ on the chopper ride over.

Harriman, Bundy and Ball were the winners of the JFK Murder Cover-up -- Oswald as lone nut.

It was a zero-sum game. Oswald/s' handlers were the losers. Oswald as Red Agent was reduced to a rumor.

That's why Oswald's CIA handlers always take the fall for the murder in a lot of people's eyes.

Not mine. Oswald and Mexico City are NOT the keys to the case.

JFK's body and the machinations in Washington DC the afternoon of 11/22/63 are the keys to the case.

It's a collegial disagreement between us, Jim. A bracing discussion!

I don't think charging CIA guys with treason and accessory to murder lets them off the hook.

The plot went a lot higher than Harvey et al.

[Jim Hargrove]

It was a zero-sum game. Oswald/s' handlers were the losers. Oswald as Red Agent was reduced to a rumor.

That's why Oswald's CIA handlers always take the fall for the murder in a lot of people's eyes.

Not mine. Oswald and Mexico City are NOT the keys to the case.

You're at least half right here. The poor schmuck arrested in the Texas Theater was not a key to the case; he wasn't even a luggage tag on the case, BUT ....

You no doubt recall there was ANOTHER guy, apparently pretending to be Oswald, who was running around the Dallas area in the weeks leading up to the assassination making all kinds of scenes, ordering scopes for rifles, talking about high buildings, acting weird at a rifle range, talking about coming into money soon. THIS GUY, or his puppet master, knew Kennedy would soon be assassinated in or near Dallas from a high building with a rifle. Isn't that all you need to win the game of CLUE?

This is where the assassins met the flim-flam squad. Who was that guy framing "Lee Harvey Oswald" for the hit? I'll call him the birth Oswald, but, for simplicity's sake, you can just call him "that guy played by Burt Lancaster in Executive Action."

JFK's body and the machinations in Washington DC the afternoon of 11/22/63 are the keys to the case.

The medical evidence is awfully controversial, but it wouldn't surprise me a bit if others in the USG were involved, but I just think the CIA played the starring role. On top of all the direct and indirect evidence, the whole thing just smells like an intelligence operation, doesn't it?

It's a collegial disagreement between us, Jim. A bracing discussion!

I don't think charging CIA guys with treason and accessory to murder lets them off the hook.

The plot went a lot higher than Harvey et al.

Perhaps so, but if we can prove the involvement of agents like Harvey, I'll bet the CIA, even today, would help us find the higher-ups. <g> I'm enjoying the conversation also.

Jim

[LR Trotter]

I'm confused regarding "that guy played by Burt Lancaster in Executive Action". If his character was supposed to be Lee H Oswald, I guess I missed it.

[Anthony DeFiore]

Don't worry, he's not LHO. Burt is either assassins and plotters that died in the plane flight out of the country via Mexico, or he's a composite of DA Phillips and EH Hunt.

I'm confused regarding "that guy played by Burt Lancaster in Executive Action". If his character was supposed to be Lee H Oswald, I guess I missed it.

[Albert Doyle]

I can't find the reference on Google. Was it Bundy who watched Kennedy's blood red carpet pulled out for Johnson at the White House?

[Cliff Varnell]

Timelines are always fun...Short and sweet...

11/22/63

Circa 4pm EST
Yale blue-blood (Skull & Bones '40) McGeorge Bundy calls AF1 from the White House Situation Room to inform LBJ that the lone assassin was in custody.

Circa 7pm EST
Yale blue-blood (Skull & Bones '13) W. Averell Harriman mets with Lyndon Johnson right after LBJ arrived at the White House, tells Johnson that the US government's top Soviet hands are unanimous in their conviction that the Soviets had nothing to do with it. Harriman's biography makes no reference to any meetings Harriman had with "top Kremlinologists," only that Harriman was helping George Ball run the government that afternoon.

Circa 8 pm EST
Yale blue-blood (Scroll & Key '26) Jock Whitney dashes into his office at the New York Herald Tribune to write an editorial for the morning edition denouncing Oswald as a "crazed individual" who acted out of "homicidal fantasies."

11/23/63

"[We] decided that if Oswald was the killer, and if the U.S. government were innocent of any complicity in the assassination, Oswald would live through the weekend. But if he was killed, then we would know that the assassination was a consequence of a high level U.S. government plot. Harold Feldman and I also concluded that if Oswald was killed by a Jew, it would indicate a high level WASP plot."
-- Vincent Salandria, on the conversation he had with his "then brother-in-law Harold Feldman."

Did the private-citizen investigation into the Kennedy assassination reach it's greatest insight the day after?

[LR Trotter]

Don't worry, he's not LHO. Burt is either assassins and plotters that died in the plane flight out of the country via Mexico, or he's a composite of DA Phillips and EH Hunt.

I'm confused regarding "that guy played by Burt Lancaster in Executive Action". If his character was supposed to be Lee H Oswald, I guess I missed it.

My take is BL's character was possibly a composit, like you said. As I recall, his character died of a heart attack shortly after the event. I was then, and now, impressed with that movie, which was made less than 10 years after the JFK Assassination. Even then, the storyline included a LHO double/impersonator.
::thumbsup::

[Jim Hargrove]

Timelines are always fun...Short and sweet...

11/22/63

Circa 4pm EST
Yale blue-blood (Skull & Bones '40) McGeorge Bundy calls AF1 from the White House Situation Room to inform LBJ that the lone assassin was in custody.

Circa 7pm EST
Yale blue-blood (Skull & Bones '13) W. Averell Harriman mets with Lyndon Johnson right after LBJ arrived at the White House
....

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

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.