CBS' Nancy Cordes Proves She's A Gullible Idiot By Comparing QAnon Conspiracy Manure to Oliver Stone's 'JFK'

Jackie lurches over the rear of the limo trying to snatch a dislodged fragment of JFK's skull. As Oliver Stone showed in his film 'JFK' the kill shot clearly came from the front, not the rear (where Oswald was alleged to be.)  Thus, one expects the momentum from GK rifle shot to propel blood, skull fragments backwards over trunk, which Jackie's motion supports.

Many in the Beltway- New York Media axis still harbor a grudge at Oliver Stone for his movie 'JFK'. They hysterically assert he "defiled history", "lied about the assassination" and "misled moviegovers".   If any of these clueless morons actually had clue one, they'd see Stone was closer to the truth of what happened that day in November, 1963, than anything the Warren Commission's puppets and tools claim today.

But when I saw and heard CBS' correspondent Nancy Cordes  this morning,  parroting a "professor's" words analogizing  'JFK' to the QAnon conspiracy,  it left me speechless, and dumbfounded.  It also signaled again the corporate media's inability to do critical thinking on the fly, which is worrisome given their inability to cover Trump in the 2016 fiasco election.

Cordes spouted:

"The QAnon conspiracy theories -  as nutty as they sound -  are not even that new.  Some of the theories resemble the plot of Oliver Stone's movie 'JFK' thirty years ago."

Of course, Cordes didn't expatiate on this balderdash. Why? Because there are NO points of comparison, analogy or likeness!    She proves it in her next remark, i.e.

"And yet the professor's polling finds that five to ten percent of Americans actually believe this stuff. That President Trump is this secret crusader working to take down a cannibalistic cabal within government"

But Stone made no reference   to any "cannibalistic" cabal or conspiracy, i.e. which accuses one party of worshipping Satan,  eating babies and committing sex acts on children - as the loopy QAnon nuts believe.  So where is Cordes and her prof getting this baloney? 

Let's also get it very clear from the get go that the assorted horse shit being peddled by these ignoramuses do not qualify as conspiracy theories, they are conspiracy ideations, claptrap or refuse. In  previous blog posts I noted Barbadian psychologist Pat Bannister's categorization of those who invoke conspiracies and how she differentiated them. As part of her construction of a theory of mind, specifically showing the role of lying in young children, she also noted adeptness at detecting lies was linked to accurate detection of real conspiracies.

Dr. Bannister's classification was simple:

1- Conspiracy analysts

2- Conspiracy theorists

3- Conspiracy crackpots or cultists


At the top of the hierarchy were conspiracy analysts, such as Mark Lane, Peter Dale Scott, Harold Weisberg, Richard Charnin and others (like yours truly).  These comprised serious people possessing some measure of intellect who brought their scientific, mathematical and other aptitudes to the investigation of multiple aspects of a putative real conspiracies like Iran-Contra and the JFK assassination.  These people put in real man hours and actually published their work in authoritative media (e.g. BOOKS - real books!) and respected forums as opposed to spreading bunkum through half-assed posts in the lowest dreg regions of the net, like 4chan and 8chan.

All of which latter garbage spawned the nascent QAnon conspiracy psychosis some three years ago, which mind virus left the dregs of 4chan for Youtube, and Facebook, where the virus infected millions more febrile brains.

By contrast, Stone was spot on in his presentation of 'JFK',  for example, the portrayal of the frontal head shot that actually killed the 35th president, which had to come from the grassy knoll.  The proof of the frontal shot was delivered by Parkland surgeon Charles Crenshaw in his book,  Conspiracy of Silence', a pdf version of which is given below.  

http://www.krusch.com/books/kennedy/Conspiracy_Of_Silence.pdf

Excerpt from Preface:

'"Through the years, there have been a thousand instances when I have wanted to shout to the world that the wounds to Kennedy's head and throat that I examined were caused by bullets that struck him from the front, not the back, as the public has been led to believe. Instinctively, I have reached for the telephone many times to call a television station to set the story straight when I heard someone confidently claim that Oswald was the lone gunman from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book De­pository, only to restrain myself-until now."

Stone's depiction of a clandestine CIA operation mounted against Kennedy was also spot on.   What most infuriated the CIA was Kennedy's willingness - after the Bay of Pigs debacle  (planned and orchestrated by the CIA) -  to exclude them from critical roles,  oversight and assignments as well as reorganizing the agency, e.g.  from the available archive files on Kennedy's response:

"Kennedy went further, creating a Defense Intelligence Agency, responsible to him, and soon mandating all overflights of Cuba be done by the Strategic Air Command, not the CIA. He also defined a list of directives on what the CIA could and could not, do. By the end of 1961, JFK's 'Special Group' had no less than 17 recommendations for the "reorganization and redirection of the CIA"."

Stone's portrayal of Oswald as the patsy in the conspiracy was also spot on.  Most researchers who've delved into this in much more depth than superficial 'buffs' come away with the conviction Oswald was set up as part of ZR/Rifle. A classic decoy.  However,  with the plot now turned against Kennedy. Oswald was likely used as the dupe or decoy so the actual perps (likely Cuban exiles, and trained assassins - from the Army's Ft. Benning Assassin school) could escape .   We also know these assigned mechanics would have used the CIA Assassinations Handbook, available since Operation PBSuccess in 1954, see e.g.

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB4/

As noted in Document 1:

"The idea of forming assassination teams ('K' groups) apparently originated with Castillo Arenas in 1952.  Adopting Castillo Arenas' concept the [  ] chief routinely included two assassination specialists in his training plans.  CIA training for sabotage teams in early 1954 also included creating a 'K' group trained to perform assassinations."

There is no doubt such a 'K' group was set to target Castro under ZR/Rifle (in 1962), but could easily be redirected to target Kennedy in late 1963.  The proof in the pudding was the letter ‘D’ – on the cover sheet of Oswald’s 201 file – indicating a  CIA Staff D  SIGINT or signals intelligence operation run in concert with the National Security Agency or NSA. As pointed out by Peter Dale Scott (Deep Politics Quarterly, Jan. 1994): 

“In 1961, when William Harvey headed Staff D, he was assigned the task of developing the CIA Assassinations Project, ZR/Rifle.”

When ZR/Rifle was turned from targeting Castro to JFK- probably in late 1962 or mid 1963 -  it was all over except for the triangulation of gunfire that took the 35th president out.  Far from being a case of: 'Oh the JFK conspiracy theorists just couldn't handle a nobody taking out Kennedy' - it was instead a case of  'My God! What have we come to as a nation when a sitting president can be dispatched in a veritable coup d'etat?'  The latter was based on intelligent, energized researchers having the guts and will to dig deep into those earlier assassination templates and files. 

For example, the (1975) Church Committee hearings and testimony were critical in establishing the existence of ZR/ Rifle.  Former CIA Director Richard Helms -in one session - spoke to the Committee at length about ZR/Rifle.  When pressed he even identified two hit team members by their code names: WI/ROGUE and QJ/WIN.  He described the former as "a stateless soldier of fortune and a criminal" (Church Committee Report, pp. 43-44) .

He summarized the second in these terse terms (ibid.):

"If you need somebody to carry out murder I guess you had a man who might be prepared to carry it out.”

More compelling still, a direct link of Richards Helms to William Harvey and QJ/WIN appears in a February 19, 1962 memorandum from Helms to Harvey obtained from the Assassination Archives in Washington, D.C.

Since the Assassination "K-Group" for ZR/Rifle would have had multiple members ('mechanics') it would perfectly fit Oliver Stone's portrayal of assassination using three teams in a triangulated crossfire. 

Further,  Stone's  key Pentagon character (played by Donald Sutherland) telling Jim Garrison (played by Kevin Costner) that the origin of the Vietnam War lay in LBJ's National Security Action Memorandum 273 is also dead on.    

Again, for more on the backstory of LBJ's NSAM -273 check out the information in the link below:

http://www.jfklancer.com/NSAM273.html 

 As Michael Parenti aptly put it (Dirty Truths, p. 156):

“To know the truth about the assassination of John Kennedy is to call into question the state security system and the entire politico-economic order it protects. This is why for over thirty years the corporate-owned press and numerous political leaders have suppressed or attacked the many revelations about the murder unearthed by independent investigators like Mark Lane, Peter Dale Scott, Carl Oglesby, Harold Weisberg, Anthony Summers."

None of the backup docs and sources (including Dr. Charles Crenshaw's book)  I've provided here, i.e. showing Stone's 'JFK' was on target in outlining  that conspiracy's major aspects,  has any remote resemblance to the QAnon horse manure.   Why?  Because there are NO legitimate documents that exist to support QAnon's wild, psychotic claims.  Something Nancy Cordes ought to have known before mindlessly parroting nonsense in her opening CBS News segment.  

See Also:

Bannon’s indictment confirms that the American right is made up of con artists


And:

• Let's Get This Straight: QAnon Are Conspiracy Cra...

And:

The GOP is a refuge for bigots and wackos

And:

‘They like Me Very Much’: Trump Gives a Horrifying Answer When Pressed on QAnon

Excerpt:

"The conspiracy theory behind the QAnon movement holds that Trump is secretly working to dismantle a satanic child trafficking ring at the upper echelons of society. It is completely out of touch reality,"

Why Wouldn't The CIA Release All The Remaining JFK Files This Thursday?

After Trump announced Saturday that he planned to release the remaining JFK files, let's first understand Dotard isn't doing this out of the generosity of his heart. Oh no. In fact, a congtessional law dating from 1992 mandated all files related to the JFK assassination be released in 25 years. That deadline arrives this Thursday, the 26th.

What do we mean by unreleased files?  This refers to about 3,100 previously unreleased files that hold tens of thousands of pages of new material. The National Archives has another 30,000 pages of documents that had been disclosed before but only partially and with redactions.

Other partial files have been released without explanation. One of these is the incriminating notes written by Warren Commissioner Gerald Ford which altered the position of the upper back wound to a base of neck wound in order to make the single bullet theory of Arlen Specter work, e.g.

The report of the change also appeared in the NY Times.

Researcher Jefferson Morley has expressed particular interest in the redacted files especially those to do with  William Harvey and David Atlee Phillips,   e.g.

Phillips ran all the cut outs (fake personae, duplicate Oswalds, etc.) to implicate Oswald as a commie nut in league with the KGB and Soviets – all the better to paint him as the one "lone nut"  assassin in Dallas, on Nov. 22, 1963.  It was also Phillips who used forged cables from the Mexico City station he ran to frame Oswald. As noted by Peter Dale Scott (‘Oswald, Mexico and Deep Politics’, 2013, p. 25) : "At least three show signs of CIA doctoring and the first, which does not, was nevertheless so misleading as to be possibly dishonest.” This was the October 8th cable that claimed Oswald had appeared at the Soviet Embassy on Oct. 1, and that  he had spoken with Valeriy Kostikov three days earlier. (Kostikov was top man in the KGB's "Department Thirteen" - responsible for assassinations.)

Harvey, for his part, led the agency's assassination operations, and likely had even expanded the CIA's  original basic handbook for foreign hits based on a 1954 operation ("PBSuccess") in Guatemala, e.g.

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB4/

Harvey  feuded constantly with JFK's brother Robert, over the administration's crisis with Cuba. Morley in a 2008 book on Phillips wrote "there might be stuff on why we were interested in the Cuban consulate, how we surveilled the consulate."  Of course, many of these questions were answered more than 15 years earlier by John Newman in his book 'Oswald and the CIA' which also for the first time disclosed Oswald's CIA files, including: the OS-351-164 (office of security), the 201-289248 CI/SIG, and the 74-500.  All of these, in the words of Newman, the Warren Commission was "suspiciously quiet about".

In addition, when the agency did submit Oswald’s 201-file to the Warren Commission (under the header of Commission Document 692) they did not indicate it clearly or mark it as such. Instead, as Dale Scott (and also John Newman) observed the CIA buried it in a  Sept. 24 “memorandum”  relocated to a much later position in the file , making it appear as if it had been falsely drafted after the culpable Oct. 10 fake cables.

Despite all of this,  we are informed that Trump's CIA head - Pompeo- like previous CIA chiefs,  is cautioning against releasing all. The skinny is that certain files - like those concerning former CIA boss William Harvey- and Miami -based CIA spook George Joannides, may undermine national security by revealing secret methods.  Let's call bullshit on this one time, and emphasize the only thing that would be revealed is the CIA's (and NSA's) own hands in the assassination - with Lee Oswald the set up decoy - to hide the real perpetrators.

This isn't conspiracy "theory" but fact, and it boggles the mind so many who claim to be serious researchers haven't even been able to find the actual autopsy photos, which first appeared in David Lifton's book, Best Evidence (opposite page 382).

Then there was former Secret Service agent Clint Hill who  appeared for a couple of soundbites on CBS this morning as he sought  to further muddy the waters,  insisting baldly that "Oswald was the lone assassin". This clueless dolt, totally  immersed  in boundless ignorance,  also added:

"There will always be conspiracy theories no matter what. But everybody should remember that's what they are, not fact."

After hearing Hill babbling this bunkum, I was certain he'd never once examined the actual autopsy photos of the rear exit wound. Instead he remains captivated by Warrenite bunkum and the fake photo (see below) created at the behest of the Commission. .

Let's bear in mind then that Clint Hill  wouldn't be able to distinguish a JFK conspiracy fact from theory anyway. This is  because he's done no genuine investigation into the deed, or even examined the detailed files.(Including, I warrant, Oswald's CIA files - see the cited list earlier.)  He's basically a hack and stooge like Gerald Posner who appeared on the ABC News last night to try to argue there is nothing more there - only bland omissions of known info.  Posner's many oversights, lies, distortions and "fake facts" are revealed in an issue of The Electronic Assassination Newsletter. Several dedicated actual researchers  collated these assorted "Posnerisms"  mainly from his propaganda book, 'Case Closed' (1993).

http://assassinationweb.com/twpos.htm

Posner's role, like Hill's, is clearly as a media tool  to try to uphold the Warrenite lone nut  fantasy. As for the assumption of a rear head shot,  that was obliterated via the actual autopsy photos showing the rear of JFK's skull blown out. This could only have come from a frontal shot, e.g.

Any actual rear head wound would have been obliterated by the frontal shot's cavitation path backward. In effect, anyone subscribing to such a rear head shot is more than likely misdirected  by the bogus mortician's plaster reconstruction which was used to sell the TSBD shooter location (see left image).

The actual autopsy image which neither Posner or Hill appear to know about is also confirmed by Bethesda Naval Hospital lab tech Paul O'Connor's sketch of JFK's head at the autopsy , e.g.


The massive rear cavitation end path shows just how much of the skull had to be reconstructed using mortician's plaster to give the illusion of an intact back of head. 

. He further indicated it displayed more damage than could possibly be done by a military jacketed bullet. The bullet was more likely the explosive or frangible type.  Parkland surgeon Charles Crenshaw also validated that the rear of the head had been blown out and readers interested can obtain his excellent book, 'JFK - Conspiracy of Silence' .  This link to a .pdf version of Dr. Crenshaw's book can be found below:

http://www.krusch.com/books/kennedy/Conspiracy_Of_Silence.pdf

Most interesting (page 10) is when Dr. Crenshaw was shown one of the Warren autopsy photos and asked by Gary Shaw (of the Sixth Floor Museum)  whether it matched what he observed when attending to JFK,  Dr. Crenshaw was incredulous. He immediately spotted the fake and ascertained  that the head had been "manipulated".  It was immediately evident to him that a conspiracy was at work, else why alter the massive frontal head wound to a rear one?

Dr. Crenshaw also noted the aberrant behavior of Secret Service Agent Clint Hill (pp. 80-81) running around Trauma Room 1 like a mad chicken with its head cut off, and gun out. Crenshaw also referenced Hill's later hospitalization for a nervous breakdown, and one certainly wonders if this retired agent isn't still affected.  I won't go so far as to say addled in the head, but hearing him babble so assuredly this morning about "conspiracy  theory" nonsense, one wonders.

What CBS should be commended for in its reporting this morning is the cautionary note that we may still all be played by Trump and his cronies again. First, we learned of this released CIA statement:

"The CIA continues to engage in the process to determine the appropriate next steps with respect to any previously  unreleased CIA information."

Then we learned, based on a White House release this a.m., read by CBS correspondent Chip Reed:

"The President wants to release the documents in the interest of transparency but the President also said that's unless agencies provide a compelling and clear national security or law enforcement  justification."

As Reed put it:

"That is a loophole or exception you could drive a truck through."

In other words we may actually see very few of the key files released. Which are most suspect that we'd be interested in? 

1) All those to do with the operations of William Harvey

As pointed out by Peter Dale Scott (Deep Politics Quarterly, Jan. 1994): “In 1961, when William Harvey headed Staff D, he was assigned the task of developing the CIA Assassinations Project, ZR/Rifle”

Harvey would have authorized the mutation of the original Staff D plan - to take out Castro to one with JFK the prime target.   We also know  no one informed the Warren Commission that the letter ‘D’ – on the cover sheet of Oswald’s 201 file – indicated CIA Staff D, a SIGINT or signals intelligence operation run in concert with the National Security  Agency or NSA.

2) The role of George Joannides

George Joannides - whose files the CIA is bent on most protecting

In mid-1963, one of the main responsibilities of Joannides was the handling of the DRE (Directorio Revolucionario Estudantil ) whose members were all at forefront of the fight to eliminate Fidel Castro. A once-secret memo with portion noting the use of the DRE originally came under control and oversight of Gen. Edward Lansdale and described how the DRE operatives were to be deployed in Miami and New Orleans. (Not long after, Oswald was filmed on Canal Street in New Orleans in an altercation with Bringuier.)

Here’s what we do know: According to declassified CIA records corroborated by interviews, Joannides served as chief of the CIA's anti-Castro psychological warfare operation in Miami in 1963. The operation was run out of the largest CIA station outside of Langley, called JM/WAVE. More than 300 CIA agents directed over 3,000 Cuban agents and subagents, out of a front corporation called 'Zenith Technical Enterprises, Inc.' near (the then)  Crandon Park.  (My family used to often visit Crandon Park, especially its popular zoo.)   More than 50 other dummy fronts and organizations were also used for the employment of the anti-Castro (exile) Cubans, such as Carlos Bringuier.

Bringuier himself was also likely a member of the DRE, given it was one of the biggest and most active CIA-backed groups in Miami. In mid-1963, one of the main responsibilities of Joannides was the handling of the DRE whose members were all at forefront of the fight to eliminate Fidel Castro, first via Operation Mongoose, later through the CIA’s own covert assassination program, ZR Rifle.  But their use in mid -1963 was to assist in painting Oswald as a fellow-traveler and communist sympathizer. In fact, the evidence from Oswald's CIA files suggests he was trying to infiltrate the group.

According to a CIA memo found at the JFK Library, Joannides was giving $25,000 a month (about $147,000 in today's dollars) to the DRE at the time when the group's New Orleans delegation decided to collect intelligence on and publish propaganda about Oswald.

Clearly, the only reason to withhold the Joannides files - like the ones on Harvey - would be the agencies' refusal to confirm what most of us already know.  In other words, keeping the loop of "ambiguity" open so the conspiracy deniers (like .John McAdams) can keep their little websites churning out denials much like the Reich wing climate denial sites deny the links of the recent monster storms to climate change.

The bottom line is that most of the salient information and key files have already been released and have been sitting under people's noses for two decades or more. The fact is additional files, with the possible exception of the Joannides   ones, will add very little to our insights.  This is something to keep in mind as more and more media mouthpieces start exaggerating the importance of remaining files  or the impact if Trump declines to release them based on agency demands.

As for Charlie Rose's brief burp at the end of the CBS segment: "We always come back to the same conclusion".

Well, of course, because the media especially refuses to parse the detailed files that unequivocally disclose conspiracy, such as the autopsy photos in Lifton's book, or the basic physics of the head shot.  But what can we expect in a nation where PR and propaganda reign. Even Michael Beschloss, a presumed eminent historian - appearing on 'Hardball' this evening,  believes Oswald showed up in Mexico City - an unforgiveable misstep for anyone with his name cachet.

Another example of media codswallop is this refuse from the WSJ today (p. A4):

“Among insights scholars hope to gain from documents is why assassin Lee Harvey Oswald traveled to Mexico City before the killing.”

Which begs the question of whether such “scholars” are blind, woefully ignorant or plain stupid. First, Oswald was not the assassin, given he was used under Harvey's Staff D as the patsy or decoy. All the evidence points to that. Second, Oswald – the real one – never went to Mexico City.

The image (right) taken by the CIA Mexico City station ('Oswald and the CIA', 1993, John Newman) was not of Oswald at all, e.g.

Thus, any scholar's claim that the Cuban Consulate in Mexico City is where "Oswald showed up weeks before Kennedy's death" is pure hogwash. Oswald never went to Mexico City, period, and this is one of the litmus tests to distinguish a serious JFK researcher from a pretender.  The photo at right above, taken by actual cameras mounted outside the Mexico City station (and appearing originally in John Newman's 'Oswald and the CIA') show incontrovertibly that the person who showed up was an impostor. A heavy set guy bearing no resemblance to Lee.

Scholars? Now we have to ask if real or a pseudo. scholar like Gerald Posner.  What we need is for the government to come clean, no excuses and release all the hitherto unseen files and also non-redacted versions of earlier files. 

Yet Another History Prof Misfires On Oswald And The JFK Assassination

Adjunct history prof ( from Northeastern University in Boston) Edward H. Miller's salon.com essay was superb, until I got to the part where he totally blew it on Lee Oswald's role in the Kennedy assassination. All was going well reading Miller's 'When Texas Fell To The Wingnuts: The Secret History of the Southern Strategy, Modern Conservatism and the Lone Star State', until I got to this sentence which blew all Miller's supposed history competence to smithereens:

"Although President Kennedy's killer was a Marxist who lived in Dallas for only two months, many columnists had concluded the city and its right wing had created an environment which contributed to the assassination".

And at that juncture, the perception of original quality was spoiled,  analogous to a fine punch ruined by a bird's droppings, dumped in flight. 

The reason is that as diligent as Miller was in laying out the travails of  Dallas, the Lone Star state and their inherent image and political problems, he totally messed up on the key event that "slandered" the state: JFK's assassination. Fortuitously, serious reporters existed at the time who got it right, that the fingering of Oswald simply didn't fit what was already known. Kenneth Crawford, for example, in his Newsweek piece ('The Enemies He Made’,  Dec. 2, 1963, p. 35) accurately noted the real culprits: the radical right wing and its ‘better circles’ and their elitist enclaves.  Enclaves replete with extremists like oil billionaire H.L. Hunt, responsible for putting up the 'Wanted for Treason' posters on the day of the assassination, e.g.

At the time, however, most reporters couldn’t or wouldn’t see, as Crawford put it,  "the suspicious irony inherent in a lone-pro-Castro gunman being fingered in a city (Dallas) regarded as a citadel of right wing strength". (ibid.)

Indeed, merely four weeks earlier Adlai Stevenson had gone to Dallas for a UN Day meeting, and was attacked – spit upon, and smashed over the head with placards - by fulminating,  reactionary right wing pickets (Newsweek, Dec. 2., 1963, p. 21). It was after that encounter that he warned JFK to reconsider his forthcoming trip.

 Kennedy mulled it over, but LBJ had boxed him in, playing to his machismo instincts. 'What would it look like for a feller like y'erself to be frightened of goin' to Big D and settlin'  party issues,  huh?"

He was referring to the (then) feud between John Connally and Ralph Yarborough. Kennedy, placed in a no-win, no bailout position had no choice but to put himself right in the middle of this cauldron of hate  - where numerous actors - from LBJ and his Texas cohort, to the Dallas PD (full of white extremists who hated JFK for his integration stand) cooperated to get rid of a "traitor" - who negotiated with communists. It wasn't a "Marxist" that killed Kennedy, but extremist Marxist haters (about whom I will have more to post in a future blog, along with links to the CIA).

 But given Miller's evident commitment to the lone nut myth it's no surprise he makes no mention of how the CIA had compiled a compelling false narrative and guilt trail using phony cables, photos  phone calls etc. that the Warren Commission (a creature of LBJ)  bit into it hook, line and sinker and never remotely considered (or seriously considered) the alternative: that a right wing based- military- intelligence operation had targeted Kennedy in Big D using affiliates in that city - most of whom hated Kennedy's guts. They also included powerful forces enraged at his backing down (from invasion) during the Cuban Missile Crisis, his removal of Gen. Edwin Walker from command, his intent to pull out of Vietnam and his efforts at rapprochement with Fidel Castro.

Most of this was due to the resourceful work of John Newman and Peter Dale Scott, among others, from whom we’ve learned that Lee Oswald actually had a CIA file : 201-289248 CI/SIG[1], opened on December 9, 1960, more than one year after his defection to the USSR (Oct, 1959) The ostensible reason given for opening the file in the first place was Oswald's defection, and possible “continuing intelligence interest”.

To Prof. Newman (a REAL historian, at least on this issue) we owe the exposure of the Oswald CIA files, i.e. in his monumental book, 'Oswald and the CIA'. To Scott, we owe using the files to making the connections to the CIA setting up Oswald as the decoy or pawn.  Scott was the one who pointed out that no one had informed the Warren Commission that the letter ‘D’ – on the cover sheet of Oswald’s 201 file – indicated CIA Staff D, a SIGINT or signals intelligence operation run in concert with the National Security  Agency or NSA. As he observes (Deep Politics Quarterly, Jan. 1994):

“In 1961, when William Harvey headed Staff D, he was assigned the task of developing the CIA Assassinations Project, ZR/Rifle”

Thus, it was William Harvey - in conjunction with fired (by JFK) former CIA Director Allen Dulles - who decided to use Oswald as the dupe to set up the assassination and cover the identities of the actual mechanics. We also have to thank Scott for exposing the fake cables concocted by the CIA to frame Lee Oswald.  If Miller is such a grand historian why didn't he gain access to this material - which has been available since its release under the JFK Records Act? Is he just plain lazy, or incompetent?

As noted by Scott (‘Oswald, Mexico and Deep Politics’, 2013, p. 25) : “at least three show signs of CIA doctoring and the first, which does not, was nevertheless so misleading as to be possibly dishonest.” This was the cable from the Mexico City Station on Oct. 8 that claimed Oswald had appeared at the Soviet Embassy on Oct. 1, claiming  he had spoken with Valeriy Kostikov three days earlier. (Kostikov was top man in the KGB's "Department Thirteen" - responsible for assassinations. As Scott notes, ibid., this is why American Rightists made use of any sources they could to try to parlay this into something to force the WC's hand into a "phase one" conclusion. That included using Oswald's brother, Robert.

More sobering is Newman’s apt reflection on Oswald’s activities in New Orleans from May –Sept, 1963 (Oswald and the CIA, p. 292):

"The record of Oswald's stay in New Orleans, May to September 1963, is replete with mistakes, coincidences, and other anomalies. As Oswald engaged in pro-Castro and anti-Castro activities, the FBI says they lost track of him. The Army was monitoring his activities and says it destroyed their reports. The record of his propaganda operations in New Orleans published by the Warren Commission turned out to have been deliberately falsified."

Even more vexing and worrisome, is that the CIA had spies squirreled away inside the Cuban Consulate in Mexico City  who could have pulled off all manner of chicanery, including altering the impostor Oswald's documents (substituting the real Oswald's photo, signature, etc.). As HSCA Investigator Fonzi  notes (using research by two staffers, Dan Hardaway, and Eddie Lopez - whose work led to the  Lopez Report, still in CIA files)[2]:

"In questioning (David Atlee)Phillips, Hardway was also working from information that had been dug up on a couple of secret trips to Mexico City made by Lopez, and investigator Harold Leap. Without the Agency's permission, they had located and interviewed a couple of CIA assets who had worked inside the Cuban Consulate at the time. The Agency never revealed this to the Warren Commission, but it actually had planted spies within the Cuban compound. That may be relevant to the fact that, in the end, the only 'proof' that the real Oswald was inside the Cuban Consulate were his photographs and his signature on his visa application.”

David Atlee Phillips - responsible for framing Oswald with phony CIA cables.

 

Fonzi noted that Lopez and Hardway observed that David Atlee  Phillips seemed to be especially nervous when Hardway began questioning him about the lack of photographs of Oswald. He maintained that the surveillance cameras at both Soviet and Cuban Embassies were “not functioning at the time of Oswald's visits” . Phillips stuck to the story that the Agency didn't maintain an around-the-clock  and weekend surveillance of the Soviet Embassy. He also said the Cuban Embassy camera “happened to be malfunctioning”  during the time of Oswald's visit.

So, despite the fact that Oswald had allegedly made five visits to the Cuban Consulate and Soviet Embassy, there were no photographs to substantiate it.

As Gaeton Fonzi observes (p. 295)

"In the end, Phillips couldn't explain the contradictions in his testimony about the Agency's surveillance capabilities or why, if the cameras at the Soviet Embassy were working on October 1^st -when it photographed the unidentified man passed off as Oswald, there was no photograph of the real Oswald."
 

The 'Oswald in Mexico City' caper, like so much else, also provides a cautionary tale about accepting anything in this case at face value, especially if it emanates from 'official sources', departments, or agents- who have a vested interest in keeping the “lone nut” myth alive and well.

Neither does Miller tell us anything about the top man, George de Mohrenschildt, linked to the CIA and known to be Oswald's "handler" in Dallas. Why this huge gap? Didn't Miller consider it important enough?
 

Gaeton Fonzi, affiliated with the HSCA investigation, and author of 'The Last Investigation" notes this concerning de Mohrenschildt:
 

The Assassinations Committee discovered  that George de Mohrenschildt, a prominent Dallas social figure who mysteriously befriended a working class ex-Russian defector, had been asked by the CIA's resident Domestic Contact Agent to debrief Oswald. When Committee investigator Fonzi tracked down De Mohrenschildt in South Florida, the longtime CIA asset was found dead before he could be questioned. However, in the skewered world of Washington politics, De Mohrenschildt's sudden death was a factor in keeping the Assassination Committee alive"

George de Mohrenschildt - murdered at his home before he was to testify before the HSCA about his connections to Oswald in Dallas

 How so? The answer emerges in a post-script addendum authored by Gaeton Fonzi, referencing the date (March 29, 1977)  of de Mohrenschildt's killing (by CIA contract killers) and what else transpired, after he was notified by Fonzi that he was being sought to testify in the HSCA hearings:

"That evening in Washington,  with the Committee on the verge of losing a House vote for its reconstitution and funding Chief Counsel Sprague resigns. The next morning the news of de Mohrenschildt's death and Sprague's resignation produce a victory for the Committee's continuation."

Be assured this was no coincidence. While de Mohrenschildt was a key witness (who would have disclosed how Oswald was being manipulated or "sheep dipped" in Agency parlance) Richard Sprague - the original HSCA head - vowed to "dig deeply into the methods of the FBI and CIA" and also hold them to account. But as per its usual wont, the CIA began a smear campaign in the media against him  - and also rounded up useful collaborating 'whores' in the House (like Henry Gonzalez- who told the spooks to "ignore all Sprague's subpoenas") to ensure Sprague had to depart. That it occurred simultaneously (the same night) as de Mohrenschildt's death probably led Sprague to see what would also happen to him if he didn't leave. The CIA takes no prisoners, as we've beheld with their torture routines- and how their henchmen solved the Roselli problem (recall Roselli had flapped his gums and blabbed that Ruby had actually killed Oswald to silence him.)

 

All of this is pertinent to what transpired before and after Kennedy's assassination, and Oswald's role - which was no more or less than a dupe, a patsy - just as he said.
 

It is understandable, of course,  if an adjunct history prof author is averse to "getting in the weeds" on such issues, especially when he may not have done much relevant research on the assassination itself. But in that case it is his responsibility to avoid making bald statements about principals in a way that portrays the statements as factual. This is the major mistake Prof. Miller commits in his essay.  It may mean little or nothing to lone nuts but it makes a big difference to the rest of us.

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[1] CI/SIG =  'Counter Intelligence/ Special Interest Group'

 

[2] Fonzi. op. cit., pp. 293-94.