19-06-2014, 04:56 AM
(This post was last modified: 20-06-2014, 05:30 AM by Joseph McBride.)
After a wait of many years, Sylvia Jukes Morris's second and concluding volume of her biography of Clare Boothe Luce (the Republican congresswoman, playwright, prominent anti-communist, and wife of Time-Life publisher Henry Luce) has been published, PRICE OF FAME: THE HONORABLE CLARE BOOTHE LUCE (Random House, New York). I wanted to see if Morris would supply more information on CBL's support of anti-Castro Cubans and their illicit raids against Cuba and the possible relation of these events to the Kennedy assassination. The June 1963 Bayo-Pawley Raid supported in part by Henry Luce's Time-Life was a provocation that, according to Peter Dale Scott in his book DEEP POLITICS AND THE DEATH OF JFK, could have been a CIA plot against Castro and may also have been designed to compromise the powerful Luce news organization, influencing its role in the assassination coverup.
Scott writes that Life magazine publisher C. D. Jackson, "a veteran of CIA propaganda activities with Allen Dulles . . . who had Life buy the rights to the Zapruder film and to Marina [Oswald]'s story, and who allegedly stopped Life's presses to alter the selection of frames of the President's fatal head-snap . . . may have coordinated [Henry] Luce's subsidy through Life of Cuban exile raids on Castro's Cuba which were explicitly designed to challenge Kennedy's steps towards detente with the Soviet Union. In that case, it would have been Jackson who arranged for Richard Billings, then one of his in-laws, to represent Life on board a joint Life- and mob-backed raid, the Bayo-Pawley mission, whose later involvement in phase one' [international communist] conspiracy allegations may have impelled both the CIA and Life itself into the ranks of phase-two' [lone-gunman theory] supporters. . . . On November 22, Life, hearing of the assassination, dispatched Billings to coordinate the hyperactive Life team in Dallas that swiftly bought up the Zapruder film and the rights to Marina's story."
As has been reported by Scott and others, Clare Boothe Luce was one of the backers of the anti-Castro DRE (Directorio Revolucionario Estudiantil), along with the CIA-connected William Pawley of World War II "Flying Tigers" fame. Dallas FBI Special Agent James P. Hosty Jr. told John Newman, "H. L. Hunt was backing Pawley's people, and they were also getting support from Henry Luce" (OSWALD AND THE CIA, p. 350). The DRE was one of the groups Lee Harvey Oswald associated with or infiltrated in New Orleans in 1963 -- including his "street fight" in August 1963 with the DRE's Carlos Bringuier -- and Bringuier, like others, has suspected that Oswald was infiltrating the group for the FBI and the CIA. My book INTO THE NIGHTMARE: MY SEARCH FOR THE KILLERS OF PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY AND OFFICER J. D. TIPPIT argues that Oswald was a patriotic American who was serving as an FBI informant, including possibly on the assassination plot itself as it took shape in New Orleans and Dallas, and did not realize he was being set up to take the fall for the assassination.
Morris supplies some fresh documentation about Clare Boothe Luce's anti-Castro activities and Oswald in the form of a memo by CBL to her files. Written shortly after the assassination, this quite likely is a CYA document and contains some obvious disinformation, with the intent of trying to put a less sinister possible spin on her involvement with these events (a clumsy attempt at best, since it also contains suggestive leads). However incomplete or evasive, the memo adds a missing piece that, when placed in context by researchers, may help clarify some of CBL's role and help explain the extent to which Time-Life was compromised. The memo also contains suggestive information about how the FBI was engaged in frantically covering up possible involvement of anti-Castro activists in the assassination. And the Morris book sheds further light on how hostile Clare Boothe Luce was to JFK in 1963. (Morris herself was close to CBL in her later years and is the wife of Edmund Morris, the biographer of Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan.)
Sylvia Jukes Morris includes this footnote on pp. 695-96 of PRICE OF FAME, partly derived from a document in CBL's papers:
Lee Harvey Oswald was charged with the assassination of President Kennedy, and two days later was shot dead by Jack Ruby in the basement of the Dallas police headquarters. Back in Phoenix on the morning of Wednesday, Nov. 27, CBL received a telephone call from Justin McCarthy, public relations coordinator for the anti-Castro DRE (Directorio Revolucionario Estudiantil), whose young members had run the "Flying Tigers'" Cuba surveillance operation before the CIA discontinued it. It had been he, a devout Catholic, and Bill Pawley who originally involved CBL, in supporting a motorboat run by three particularly idealistic youths. McCarthy, calling from Washington, was highly excited and said he was in a state of "despair." According to notes that CBL took at the time, he gave her astonishing news. "'My boys -- the 3 young men who are the moving spirits of the DRE -- know all about Mr. Oswald.' He said that Oswald returned from Moscow and tried to infiltrate (in New Orleans? or Miami?) the DRE. They were right away suspicious of him. They said he was not a fanatic at all. He was highly intelligent and full of zeal. What they were suspicious of was that he spoke no Spanish. They could not understand why he would then want to join the DRE. They . . . did not take him . . . but they were so suspicious that they followed his movements." The next thing they discovered was that Oswald, inexplicably, had started a chapter in New Orleans of the pro-Castro "Fair Play for Cuba Committee," a national group providing grassroots support for the Cuban Revolution. Apparently he had boasted to chapter recruits that he had gone to Russia with the hope of becoming a Soviet citizen, and "after having spent a week with Mikoyan's group in the south," he had been told that he "could do more for Russia by going back to the United States." He claimed that for a year he had trained in techniques of subversion and assassination. McCarthy said that he believed this story, since the authorities had subsequently allowed Oswald to leave with a Russian wife. The most dramatic information that the DRE boys had gathered during their counnter-infiltration of his chapter consisted of tape recordings of an ideological debate in which Oswald had participated, and photographs of him passing out pro-Castro handbills on the streets of New Orleans. "They have the tapes and the handbills," CBL noted. "After Oswald's move to Texas, members of the Dallas DRE had warned the FBI about him. When the President was assassinated, [the DRE] began to track Oswald's movements down, and [found] that he was in communication with Rubinstein [the birth name of Jack Ruby] [he actually was born Jacob Rubenstein -- JM] and that undoubtedly he was silenced by Rubinstein. He was seen by the DRE boys in Rubinstein's night club two nights before the assassination. McCarthy said that the GOP approached the DRE boys, asking them for their tapes and that then the FBI called on them last night to tell them that if they talked they would all be jailed, and that they mustn't tell what they know. He said that the FBI demanded the tapes, demanded the photostatic copies of the handbills, (which they had saved) and said that if they (the DRE) contacted anyone they would be put in jail. The DRE boys said that there was a 'piece of paper' -- a letter or document which showed that Oswald and Rubinstein had been in touch and that the police of Dallas has been told to pass this over to the FBI and to shut up about it!" CBL, "Memorandum of a telephone conversation with Justin McCarthy and Clare Boothe Luce -- [Tuesday,] November 26, 1963," CBLP [Clare Boothe Luce Papers, Library of Congress Manuscript Division, Washington, D.C.].
Here is what John Armstrong writes about CBL in HARVEY & LEE: HOW THE CIA FRAMED OSWALD:
"in 1961 Pawley contacted Claire Booth [sic] Luce, a former Congresswoman (R-Connecticut), former Ambassador to Italy and the widow of Life Magazine publisher Henry Luce [Henry Luce actually died in 1967 -- JM]. Pawley asked [Clare] Luce to finance one of the boats which were used by the Cuban exiles for raids and intelligence gathering missions. Luce agreed and provided a boat to three young Cubans (a doctor and two lawyers-one of whom was Jose Antonio Lanusa) to conduct operations. The captain of one of the boats told Mrs. Luce that Lee Harvey Oswald and others were involved in the infiltration of a communist cell group in the area and had discussed assassination plans, without identifying a specific target.
"During 1961 and 1962, Luce reportedly spent $250,000 to finance the operations of Florida based 'fishing boats' used to conduct raids against Cuba. Life magazine ran articles which supported the Cuban exiles and criticized President Kennedy and his timidity in supporting the CIA. After the Bay of Pigs failure Life's sister publication, Fortune Magazine, ran articles that blamed the failed operation on President Kennedy's refusal to support the CIA." (p. 359)
The Morris book also contains a long account of an evidently acrimonious private meeting between JFK and Clare Boothe Luce at the White House on September 26, 1962. This story has its "main source" in a memo in CBL's papers. The account shows CBL prodding Kennedy to take aggressive action in Cuba (an invasion or a blockade) because of the reports of the Soviet buildup there (reports then being pushed by Republican sources to pressure Kennedy). The Luce account shows Kennedy resisting her pressure: "I do not wish, or intend to be, the President who goes down in history as having unleashed nuclear war."
Morris claims, "In the aftermath of the Cuban missile crisis, Allen Dulles called Clare and told her that in view of the President's pledge to desist from Cuba-Libre operations, she must end her support of a 'Flying Tigers' motorboat." This seems hard to believe and is sourced to an account from CBL herself to Betty Beale of the CIA-friendly Washington Post on November 16, 1975. Morris writes, "Allen Dulles had been succeeded at this time as Director of the CIA by John McCone, but remained clandestinely active in agency affairs."
And Morris quotes what she calls, without apparent irony, an evidently unpublished "tribute" to the slain President Kennedy that CBL wrote on Nov. 24, 1963, and which seems suggestive in this context: "The President's death was not senseless. It contained the elements of both Greek tragedy and Christian tragedy. . . . His life may have been the price he paid for the Bay of Pigs."
The Morris book also quotes the well-known exchange between CBL and LBJ on the night of the 1961 inauguration. They were riding in an Inaugural Ball bus together when "She reminded him that when they last met, just before the Democratic convention, he had been confident of getting the presidential nomination, and had profanely vowed that even if he lost, there was no way' he would take the second spot under JFK.
"Come clean, Lyndon," she teased him.
"He leaned close and whispered, Clare, I looked it up. One out of every four presidents has died in office. I'm a gamblin' man darlin', and this is the only one chance I got.'"
As I note in INTO THE NIGHTMARE, assassination researcher Bill Kelly observes, "Although the true odds were one in five presidents, or twenty percent, died in office, perhaps LBJ knew he could improve those odds, and it wasn't such a gamble at all."
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Scott writes that Life magazine publisher C. D. Jackson, "a veteran of CIA propaganda activities with Allen Dulles . . . who had Life buy the rights to the Zapruder film and to Marina [Oswald]'s story, and who allegedly stopped Life's presses to alter the selection of frames of the President's fatal head-snap . . . may have coordinated [Henry] Luce's subsidy through Life of Cuban exile raids on Castro's Cuba which were explicitly designed to challenge Kennedy's steps towards detente with the Soviet Union. In that case, it would have been Jackson who arranged for Richard Billings, then one of his in-laws, to represent Life on board a joint Life- and mob-backed raid, the Bayo-Pawley mission, whose later involvement in phase one' [international communist] conspiracy allegations may have impelled both the CIA and Life itself into the ranks of phase-two' [lone-gunman theory] supporters. . . . On November 22, Life, hearing of the assassination, dispatched Billings to coordinate the hyperactive Life team in Dallas that swiftly bought up the Zapruder film and the rights to Marina's story."
As has been reported by Scott and others, Clare Boothe Luce was one of the backers of the anti-Castro DRE (Directorio Revolucionario Estudiantil), along with the CIA-connected William Pawley of World War II "Flying Tigers" fame. Dallas FBI Special Agent James P. Hosty Jr. told John Newman, "H. L. Hunt was backing Pawley's people, and they were also getting support from Henry Luce" (OSWALD AND THE CIA, p. 350). The DRE was one of the groups Lee Harvey Oswald associated with or infiltrated in New Orleans in 1963 -- including his "street fight" in August 1963 with the DRE's Carlos Bringuier -- and Bringuier, like others, has suspected that Oswald was infiltrating the group for the FBI and the CIA. My book INTO THE NIGHTMARE: MY SEARCH FOR THE KILLERS OF PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY AND OFFICER J. D. TIPPIT argues that Oswald was a patriotic American who was serving as an FBI informant, including possibly on the assassination plot itself as it took shape in New Orleans and Dallas, and did not realize he was being set up to take the fall for the assassination.
Morris supplies some fresh documentation about Clare Boothe Luce's anti-Castro activities and Oswald in the form of a memo by CBL to her files. Written shortly after the assassination, this quite likely is a CYA document and contains some obvious disinformation, with the intent of trying to put a less sinister possible spin on her involvement with these events (a clumsy attempt at best, since it also contains suggestive leads). However incomplete or evasive, the memo adds a missing piece that, when placed in context by researchers, may help clarify some of CBL's role and help explain the extent to which Time-Life was compromised. The memo also contains suggestive information about how the FBI was engaged in frantically covering up possible involvement of anti-Castro activists in the assassination. And the Morris book sheds further light on how hostile Clare Boothe Luce was to JFK in 1963. (Morris herself was close to CBL in her later years and is the wife of Edmund Morris, the biographer of Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan.)
Sylvia Jukes Morris includes this footnote on pp. 695-96 of PRICE OF FAME, partly derived from a document in CBL's papers:
Lee Harvey Oswald was charged with the assassination of President Kennedy, and two days later was shot dead by Jack Ruby in the basement of the Dallas police headquarters. Back in Phoenix on the morning of Wednesday, Nov. 27, CBL received a telephone call from Justin McCarthy, public relations coordinator for the anti-Castro DRE (Directorio Revolucionario Estudiantil), whose young members had run the "Flying Tigers'" Cuba surveillance operation before the CIA discontinued it. It had been he, a devout Catholic, and Bill Pawley who originally involved CBL, in supporting a motorboat run by three particularly idealistic youths. McCarthy, calling from Washington, was highly excited and said he was in a state of "despair." According to notes that CBL took at the time, he gave her astonishing news. "'My boys -- the 3 young men who are the moving spirits of the DRE -- know all about Mr. Oswald.' He said that Oswald returned from Moscow and tried to infiltrate (in New Orleans? or Miami?) the DRE. They were right away suspicious of him. They said he was not a fanatic at all. He was highly intelligent and full of zeal. What they were suspicious of was that he spoke no Spanish. They could not understand why he would then want to join the DRE. They . . . did not take him . . . but they were so suspicious that they followed his movements." The next thing they discovered was that Oswald, inexplicably, had started a chapter in New Orleans of the pro-Castro "Fair Play for Cuba Committee," a national group providing grassroots support for the Cuban Revolution. Apparently he had boasted to chapter recruits that he had gone to Russia with the hope of becoming a Soviet citizen, and "after having spent a week with Mikoyan's group in the south," he had been told that he "could do more for Russia by going back to the United States." He claimed that for a year he had trained in techniques of subversion and assassination. McCarthy said that he believed this story, since the authorities had subsequently allowed Oswald to leave with a Russian wife. The most dramatic information that the DRE boys had gathered during their counnter-infiltration of his chapter consisted of tape recordings of an ideological debate in which Oswald had participated, and photographs of him passing out pro-Castro handbills on the streets of New Orleans. "They have the tapes and the handbills," CBL noted. "After Oswald's move to Texas, members of the Dallas DRE had warned the FBI about him. When the President was assassinated, [the DRE] began to track Oswald's movements down, and [found] that he was in communication with Rubinstein [the birth name of Jack Ruby] [he actually was born Jacob Rubenstein -- JM] and that undoubtedly he was silenced by Rubinstein. He was seen by the DRE boys in Rubinstein's night club two nights before the assassination. McCarthy said that the GOP approached the DRE boys, asking them for their tapes and that then the FBI called on them last night to tell them that if they talked they would all be jailed, and that they mustn't tell what they know. He said that the FBI demanded the tapes, demanded the photostatic copies of the handbills, (which they had saved) and said that if they (the DRE) contacted anyone they would be put in jail. The DRE boys said that there was a 'piece of paper' -- a letter or document which showed that Oswald and Rubinstein had been in touch and that the police of Dallas has been told to pass this over to the FBI and to shut up about it!" CBL, "Memorandum of a telephone conversation with Justin McCarthy and Clare Boothe Luce -- [Tuesday,] November 26, 1963," CBLP [Clare Boothe Luce Papers, Library of Congress Manuscript Division, Washington, D.C.].
Here is what John Armstrong writes about CBL in HARVEY & LEE: HOW THE CIA FRAMED OSWALD:
"in 1961 Pawley contacted Claire Booth [sic] Luce, a former Congresswoman (R-Connecticut), former Ambassador to Italy and the widow of Life Magazine publisher Henry Luce [Henry Luce actually died in 1967 -- JM]. Pawley asked [Clare] Luce to finance one of the boats which were used by the Cuban exiles for raids and intelligence gathering missions. Luce agreed and provided a boat to three young Cubans (a doctor and two lawyers-one of whom was Jose Antonio Lanusa) to conduct operations. The captain of one of the boats told Mrs. Luce that Lee Harvey Oswald and others were involved in the infiltration of a communist cell group in the area and had discussed assassination plans, without identifying a specific target.
"During 1961 and 1962, Luce reportedly spent $250,000 to finance the operations of Florida based 'fishing boats' used to conduct raids against Cuba. Life magazine ran articles which supported the Cuban exiles and criticized President Kennedy and his timidity in supporting the CIA. After the Bay of Pigs failure Life's sister publication, Fortune Magazine, ran articles that blamed the failed operation on President Kennedy's refusal to support the CIA." (p. 359)
The Morris book also contains a long account of an evidently acrimonious private meeting between JFK and Clare Boothe Luce at the White House on September 26, 1962. This story has its "main source" in a memo in CBL's papers. The account shows CBL prodding Kennedy to take aggressive action in Cuba (an invasion or a blockade) because of the reports of the Soviet buildup there (reports then being pushed by Republican sources to pressure Kennedy). The Luce account shows Kennedy resisting her pressure: "I do not wish, or intend to be, the President who goes down in history as having unleashed nuclear war."
Morris claims, "In the aftermath of the Cuban missile crisis, Allen Dulles called Clare and told her that in view of the President's pledge to desist from Cuba-Libre operations, she must end her support of a 'Flying Tigers' motorboat." This seems hard to believe and is sourced to an account from CBL herself to Betty Beale of the CIA-friendly Washington Post on November 16, 1975. Morris writes, "Allen Dulles had been succeeded at this time as Director of the CIA by John McCone, but remained clandestinely active in agency affairs."
And Morris quotes what she calls, without apparent irony, an evidently unpublished "tribute" to the slain President Kennedy that CBL wrote on Nov. 24, 1963, and which seems suggestive in this context: "The President's death was not senseless. It contained the elements of both Greek tragedy and Christian tragedy. . . . His life may have been the price he paid for the Bay of Pigs."
The Morris book also quotes the well-known exchange between CBL and LBJ on the night of the 1961 inauguration. They were riding in an Inaugural Ball bus together when "She reminded him that when they last met, just before the Democratic convention, he had been confident of getting the presidential nomination, and had profanely vowed that even if he lost, there was no way' he would take the second spot under JFK.
"Come clean, Lyndon," she teased him.
"He leaned close and whispered, Clare, I looked it up. One out of every four presidents has died in office. I'm a gamblin' man darlin', and this is the only one chance I got.'"
As I note in INTO THE NIGHTMARE, assassination researcher Bill Kelly observes, "Although the true odds were one in five presidents, or twenty percent, died in office, perhaps LBJ knew he could improve those odds, and it wasn't such a gamble at all."
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