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. 

JFK and the National Security State (2)

Part of document approved by Gen. Edward Lansdale to identify "pretexts for military intervention in Cuba". This led directly to the 'Operation Northwoods' plot.

Michael Parenti’s Dirty Truths hits closer than many authors as to the actual motivation to eliminate JFK.  To paraphrase in not too many words, JFK had transgressed mightily against an entrenched “Gangster state” comprised of a mix of government (national security, defense) and corporate interests. The assassination was the Gangster state’s way to remedy the situation since one man couldn’t be allowed to stand in the way of their hegemonic aspirations. Parenti, in a powerful blow for truth-telling[1]:

“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”

 At the time (1963-early 1964) one might have felt this to be poppycock, but seen in hindsight (with the current corporate stranglehold on the nation and as evinced in the NSA surveillance state )  it’s much less so. Parenti adds[2]:

“The media have been tireless in their efforts to suppress the truth about the Gangster state”.

In fact, Kennedy was going up against not only U.S. Steel but powerful banking interests. As James Douglass has pointed out, in connection with an unsigned editorial appearing in Fortune (a Luce Press magazine), betraying the extent of corporate hostility[3]:

“The editors of Fortune knew that the decision to raise steel prices had been made by the executive committee of U.S. Steel’s Board of Directors. It included top level officers from other huge financial institutions, such as Morgan Guaranty Trust Company, The First National City Bank of New York, the Prudential Insurance Company, the Ford Foundation, AT&T.”

 

Douglass goes on to note that the Fortune editors themselves answered the key question of why financial interests baited Kennedy into “a vitriolic and demagogic assault”[4]. It had to do with their perception of his prior appeal not to raise prices as “a threat of jawbone control” of prices.  In Douglass’ own words – which I can’t match:

 

“In plainer language, the president was acting too much like a president, rather than just another office holder beholden to the powers that be.”

Of course, since then, all presidents have acted exactly like pawns of higher powers, whether banks, oil companies, or Wall Street’s traders- especially bond traders. Three months after the Steel crisis, David Rockefeller (then associated with the CFR or Council on Foreign Relations) wrote to Kennedy and informed him how a president is expected to conduct himself in a free enterprise economy – which also mandates controlling spending, balancing the budget[5]. Kennedy ignored the advice, going his own way in the pursuit of growth and development for all.

 

Kennedy's Wake Up Call:

Kennedy got his wake up call on who was controlling his government when, in an early September, 1963 meeting he was informed by a David Bell of AID (a CIA cover organization) that the funds from the Commodity Import Aid program had “already been cut off”,  essentially assuring a coup would ensue with the Diem government in South Vietnam[6].

Kennedy was evidently livid and directly asked Bell who had told him to do that, to which Bell replied, “No one” (ibid.). The will to power disclosed here indicates the CIA felt it more powerful than Kennedy’s government or his decision-making. If they felt that way, there is nothing that they wouldn’t do to prevent the President from getting in their way.

 

Only months earlier, as author James Bamford has noted, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee issued a report on the problem of “right wing extremism in the military”  and warned of “considerable danger in the education and propaganda activities of military personnel”[7] Bamford  pointed out that the Senate study went so far as to warn of a military takeover of the country not dissimilar to that portrayed in ‘Seven Days in May’ (one of JFK’s favorite films, by the way).

The document is a report from an Army intelligence officer, Col. Jeff W. Boucher, to Brig. Gen. Edward Lansdale, assistant to secretary of defense Robert S. McNamara and a controversial figure in the Vietnam war."

 

On reading the story, many things simultaneously clicked, including that “Maurice Bishop” was indeed a pseudonym, for David Atlee Phillips, who also figured majorly in confecting the “Oswald in Mexico City” fabrication.   Lansdale’s name also clicked. Some four years after this story came out in the mainstream press James Bamford, in his book ‘Body of Secrets’, had already exposed Lansdale[8] as one of the right wing extremist generals jettisoned by Kennedy in the wake of a Senate Foreign Relations Committee Report warning about a military coup attempt.

Lansdale at the time was deputy director of the Pentagon’s Office of Special Operations which was the unit responsible for the relevant reporting to the NSA or National Security Agency.[9] Kennedy, in fact, shifted Operation Mongoose from the CIA to the Pentagon and into Lansdale’s OSO office (Room 3E114 at the Pentagon). The transfer was a blow to the CIA, one of many they felt at JFK’s hands since the Bay of Pigs debacle and the firing of CIA Director Allen Dulles (who later became a Warren Commissioner, thanks to LBJ) and his deputy, Charles Cabell, whose brother Earl was the Mayor of Dallas in November, of 1963.

 

Lansdale, who viewed Mongoose as a plum for the Pentagon to do what the CIA couldn’t, did stay to see it fulfilled. As Mongoose’s extremist actions became more and more a bane to the Kennedy Administration, things culminated at a White House meeting on February 26, 1962 when Lansdale was ordered to drop all anti-Castro activities.[10] His role was reduced to merely gathering intelligence, and it was a “humiliating defeat” for him. (ibid.)

 

Even before this, Gen. Lyman Lemnitzer. another rabid anti-communist, had(with other Joint Chiefs)  hatched the plan for ‘Operation Northwoods’. This fell machination, documented by Bamford, was intended to sow terror across major American cities, blow ships in Cuban and American harbors, and even attempt to blow up John Glenn’s Gemini craft then blame it all on Castro, to try to incite a war of aggression against Cuba[11].  Lemnitzer and the other Joint Chiefs had actually drafted a memo to Robert McNamara advocating “military intervention in Cuba” . Nor was this merely to “free” the Cuban people. According to the memo, they’d be imprisoned in a military-controlled police state.[12]

 

As the memo made its way to McNamara, the Defense Secretary lost confidence in Lemnitzer.  Subsequently, “Lem” was “denied a second term as chief of the JCS and dispatched to Europe as head of NATO”[13]    One can intelligently conjecture that with Lemnitzer’s departure,  in an event as humiliating as Lansdale’s earlier Mongoose demotion,  the Right wing of the military-intelligence axis that despised Kennedy (now even more) began to draw a bead on him. It would only take one more incident, interpreted as “treason” by the generals, to commit to something every bit as extreme as terrorizing American cities: the planned execution of Kennedy. The subsequent incident transpired in October of 1962 with Kennedy’s refusal to bomb and invade Cuba at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Released tapes and documents show just how heated things became.  According to a key article published just after the tape transcriptions were released[14]:

 

"Tapes of secretly recorded White House conversations released this week show that President John F. Kennedy's military advisers strongly pressured him to bomb and invade Cuba during the missile crisis 34 years ago this month. Indeed, they forecast that war would occur whether he invaded Cuba or not."

"Blasting Kennedy's cautious approach, the Air Force Chief, Gen. Curtis LeMay, told the President at a White House meeting on Oct. 19, 1962, "This is almost as bad as the appeasement at Munich."


--snip--


Through those days Kennedy was fending off strong pressure for an attack on Cuba from congressional and military leaders such as LeMay, who told him, 'We don't have any choice but direct military action...I see no other solution...'"

Of course, not only did JFK reject the Chiefs’ radical and aggressive solution (opting for a passive naval blockade of Soviet ships instead), but he agreed to disassemble all the Jupiter missile bases in Turkey six months later, in order to get the Soviets to remove theirs from Cuba.

 

Deep politics researchers are  convinced it was this agreement (unknown to LeMay or the other members of the JCS at the time) that brought the cross hairs of executive action to bear on John F. Kennedy.  Digging through Freedom of Information Act-released files to do with Operation Mongoose, it becomes evident that a Northwoods -like template already existed for disruption and fomenting of terror to blame on Cuba and justify an aggressive U.S. intervention. (See attached image)  The files describe the plans as “preliminary courses of action suitable only for planning purposes”. In other words, to be used only in the most general form to stimulate ideas.

Sadly, JFK never lived to see the neutralization of the national security state that would have been essential for realizing his ideal of global  disarmament.  Instead that state and its military appendage seized control of the country by eliminating the one primary threat to its global consolidation. In the wake, finding ever more reasons to meddle and attack other nations, the national security state has only deepened our descent into fascism - which we need to remember that when the same state glorifies the 9/11 meme to preserve its own hegemony.

---

[1] Michael Parenti: 1996, Dirty Truths, City light Books, p. 156.

[2] Michael, Parenti, op. cit., p. 159.

[3] James Douglass: 2007, JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters,  Maryknoll, p. 140.

[4] Douglas, ibid.

[5] Donald Gibson: 1994, Battling Wall Street: The Kennedy Presidency, Sheridan Square Press, p. 141.

[6] See: James Douglass, 2008,, JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters, Orbis Books, p. 192.

[7] Bamford, op. cit., p. 80.

[8] James Bamford: 2001, Body of Secrets, Doubleday Books, p. 80.

[9] Bamford, op. cit., pp. 78-79.

[10] Bamford, op. cit, p. 83.

[11] Bamford, op. cit. pp. 83-87.

[12] Bamford, op. cit. p. 87.

[13] Bamford, op. cit., p. 88.

[14] The Baltimore Sun, Oct. 26, 1996, 'Bomb Cuba! Le May Urged JFK', p. 2A