Glenn Garvin: "Facts Don't Matter in JFK Conspiracies" - Maybe Not To A Warrenite Dupe!

My impatience with certifiable hacks and know-nothings in the media grows daily as we approach the 50th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination tomorrow. I don't mind, or wouldn't, if these ignorant tools would keep their unsupported (except by the now defamed Warren Commission Report) hogswill  to themselves but they never do. They present it as "gospel" and also cite the top Warren apologists such as Gerald Posner and Vince Bugliosi.

No surprise as a result, way too many incompetent commenters - like on the WaPo  NY Times and UK Guardian forums- parrot this BS, including that "Occam's razor applies". Uh, no, it doesn't! (See the last Mail Brane blog.).  Another dope on The Guardian site actually insisted:  "The Edward Snowden revelations show conspiracy can't work!"  Huh! Have you lost all your neurons? Or is it too much nose candy that blew them out?  Here's a clue: if a person is going to wax forcefully on the JFK case, at least make sure you know some basic facts, i.e. like Oswald's Mannlicher- Carcano didn't even work properly and the telescopic sight shims had to be rebuilt for the Warren Commission test trials! (See my FAQ,  Part 6)


Sadly - and possibly partly to do with the raft of ignorant comments in so many online news forums-  the pro-Warren malarkey is being recycled with revived intensity, especially as the current polling shows those who accept conspiracy has plummeted to 61% - from 81% in 1988. So the media brainwashers are feeling powerful and like they're making headway.  For example, Miami Herald hack Glenn Garvin in his recent piece: "The JFK Conspiracies: Facts Don't Matter" - which I happened to spy in today's online Denver Post. As I read through Garvin's tripe it immediately became evident to me the guy isn't qualified to write about the minerals in dog poop far less the JFK assassination.

What got my dander up? Let's see some of the codswallop on offer from this Mockingbird imitator:

He begins by citing the master disinfo hotshot Vince Bugliosi (who I will have a separate FAQ on) from a History Channel documentary to be shown tomorrow who cites "42 different conspiracy theories involving 82 assassins and 214 accomplices".  This, of course, is intended to make heads explode and sneer instantly at any suggestion of conspiracy. But note, this is coming from a liar who couldn't even get basic facts straight in his brick-sized tome 'Reclaiming History' - including insisting that some guy named "Miller" succeeded in duplicating Oswald's rifle feat, when the Warren Commission's own sharpshooter team couldn't do it! (which I elaborated in FAQ, Part 6) .

I also noted already the reason for a disjunctive plurality of theories which mainly arose during the three decades or so when no critical files on Oswald were available  I noted in my Nov 20 post (to do with TIME's nonsense)  how this changed after the JFK Records Act was passed to make available millions of files by 1993. These included Oswald's CIA file : 201-289248 CI/SIG, as well as others, which finally opened the window on Oswald to serious researchers - showing he wasn't the "lone commie nut" portrayed by the Warrenites and their apologists and enablers.  This was the first breakthrough paving the way to the CIA as the primary culprit.

Thus, the Oswald focus became much clearer with the HSCA's exposure (mainly thanks to brave investigators like Gaeton Fonzi, Danny Hardway, Ed Lopez (author of the Lopez Report) and others, when we finally saw how David Atlee Phillips used forged cable to frame Oswald for the hit. With the actual released photos of an Oswald impostor in Mexico City the framing became more evident, and the path led to assets of the Mexico City Station’s Chief of Covert Action and Cuban Operations, David Atlee Phillips.  Has Garvin done any research into this area? Not bloody likely!

My point is that the serious researchers have pinpointed the CIA as the top culprit. But let's examine some of Garvin's further bollocks, in fact to do with the CIA:

"The CIA did it because Kennedy was going to end the Vietnam War and cost the military-industrial complex a lot of potential profits! (No word yet on why the CIA didn't kill President Eisenhower a decade earlier for ending the Korean war. Maybe its profit margins were smaller?"


How do we teach this little twerp how to approach the document base? Is it even possible? Though the guy mocks the Kennedy intent to end the Vietnam War, he's blinded by his own arrogance and egoism. Does he even know where to look for the FACTS?  What we are referencing here is National Security Action Memorandum 263 - but alas, it is presented in a manner that is not amenable to lazy wannabe journalists, or dimwits.

What is often actually cited as the NSAM, i.e.
http://www.jfklibrary.org/Asset-Viewer/w6LJoSnW4UehkaH9Ip5IAA.aspx


Is in fact only the cover letter by McGeorge Bundy. It has only passing relevance to the actual content of the NSAM, but it does clearly state “the President approved sections IB(1-3) of the report". Which report? To find these, the researcher must turn to Document 142 in The Pentagon Papers: ‘Report of McNamara Taylor Mission to South Vietnam'. Then the serious researcher will read:

IB(2) A program be established to train Vietnamese so that essential functions now performed by U.S. military personnel can be carried out by the Vietnamese by the end of 1965. It should be possible to withdraw the bulk of U.S. military personnel by that time.

IB(3): In accordance with the program to train progressively Vietnamese to take over military functions, the Defense Department should announce in the very near future presently prepared plans to withdraw 1,000 U.S. military personnel by the end of 1963.

Note the wording and that a partial drawdown of 1,000 was due for the end of 1963 and the bulk by 1965. Most lazy wannabes never get this far while some others that do mistake the "1,000" total for the entire intended lot. I dispute that Garvin even got beyond the cover letter. If he did he'd never spout the ignorance he does.

Then there is the snide remark on 'why the CIA didn't kill Ike a decade earlier for ending the Korean War'. In fact, this idiot doesn't even know history since technically that war NEVER ended!  Instead a temporary truce was signed (never mind its duration) that was never considered as final or total, certainly not by Ike.

In addition, there were things JFK did to piss the Agency off, that Ike didn't do. One of them was firing its Director, Allen Dulles, after the Bay of Pigs debacle.  Dulles had virtually become the Company's identity since its early (post WWII) days as the O.S.S. (Office of Strategic Services) Another was firing the deputy director, Charles Cabell. The Agency also wasn't exactly thrilled when Kennedy vowed to "smash the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds". Unlike today's blow dried morons in media, the spooks took those words very seriously, not just as beer talk, or hyperbole.

While Ike was irritated at the CIA for its  overthrow of Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala (1954) leading him to regard the Agency as "dangerously out of control"- and thus establishing  'The President's Board of Consultants on Foreign Intelligence Activity' - JFK went much further.  He created the Defense Intelligence Agency, responsible only to him, and mandated all over flights 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.

The CIA, however, retaliated by withholding intelligence from Kennedy. By June, 7, 1961, Kennedy was complaining that he was receiving "inadequate developments" concerning events in a number of countries. As his ally, Gen. James H. Doolittle had put it, it was a case of the  "covert operations dog wagging the intelligence tail".

Does Garvin know any of this? Evidently not. It's far easier to shoot from the hip for a callow wannabe than to dig up FACTS.

But let's continue since having wallowed in initial foolishness, Garvin clearly isn't about to stop - as when he writes:

The Vietnam War theory is a good example of how conspiracy-itis is immune from either evidence or rational argument. Kennedy was elected president as a militant Cold War hawk who pledged an America that would "pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe" in the fight against communism

So let's see. Garvin is too dumb to acknowledge or perceive  that Kennedy, realizing he'd never be elected going against 'Tricky Dick' as a peacenik,  chose to portray himself as "Cold warrior" - could change stripes? And yet we know this happened - again because the document base supports it. The pivotal event was the October 1962 Cuban Missile crisis. Of course, one would need to get up off his lazy ass and consult a book with the transcripts of the tapes from the time: The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis’, by Ernest R. May and Philip K. Zelikow (1997, President and Fellows of Harvard College).

On p. 183 one sees LeMay saying that "we have got to do more than take out the missiles" and he demands a massive air strike as well. Afterward,  we see  JFK choosing a naval blockade option.This leads  LeMay to actually compare JFK to Neville Chamberlain, and referring to his actions as “appeasement”.  According to one of the first major mainstream news releases after the tapes in the WH situation room were released (The Baltimore Sun, Oct. 26, 1996, 'Bomb Cuba!Le May Urged JFK', p. 2A):

"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......"

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...'"

The upshot is that the close approach to the precipice of nuclear war had changed Kennedy to a confirmed fighter for peace, who was all about disarmament. (Noted and mentioned in his famous "Pax Americana" speech at American University in June, 1963).  Could Garvin even have gotten himself to a newspaper archives to check this out? Clearly not!

Garvin bloviates onward:

Just three weeks before his assassination, Kennedy's administration helped to instigate a coup in South Vietnam in hope of installing a government that would press the war against the communist North more aggressively. The idea that he was killed because he was soft on communism is preposterous.


Well, what's really preposterous, Glenn, is your abysmal ability to track down files, documents and check facts. Can we say you are incompetent? Yes, I believe so. In fact, it was the CIA that instigated the coup and murder of the Diem brothers and this also has been made known in sundry released files,  Some of the key ones are located in the book, JFK and the Unspeakable by James Douglass.

As Douglass notes (op. cit. p. 192): Kennedy got his  final 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. The Diems were killed on Nov. 2, 1963 and the CIA had planned for Kennedy to be taken out the same day in Chicago, except that trip was cancelled. The lone assassin set up for that hit was Thomas Arthur Vallee. (About whom details more will be provided in the next FAQ, Part 9)

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 himself or his decision-making authority.  If they felt that way, there is nothing that they wouldn’t do to prevent the President from getting in their way.  The incident was confirmed by New York Times journalist Arthur Krock  in his piece  ‘The Inter-Administration War in Vietnam’, The New York Times, Oct. 3, 1963). wherein he wrote:


"If the United States ever experiences an attempt at a coup to overthrow the government, it will come from the CIA”
 
This followed his observation  that:  "the CIA had flatly refused to carry out instructions from Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge.”

This in regard to disbursing the funds from the Commodity Import Aid Program . So what do we know now? We know Garvin is full of shit, has no ability to probe documents to any depth and is hostage to slipshod journalism. I would call it "yellow" but don't wish to insult the real  yellow journalists

Not prepared to quit while he's ahead Garvin babbles on:

Even more outrageous is the belief that a lifelong Marxist like Lee Harvey Oswald would be the trigger man in a plot supposedly aimed at making America more anti-communist.

But if Garvin had taken the time and trouble to examine Oswald's 201 CI/ SIG files as well as the HSCA findings on David Atlee Phillips and his band of CIA renegades,  he'd see this is tommyrot and that Oswald  been actually sheep-dipped by the CIA to present this fictitious front. See e.g. http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2013/11/frequently-asked-questions-on-jfk_10.html


Let's take one more hit on this character, given he opens the way:

What's been largely lost in all the conspiracy hoo-hah over motives is that the forensic evidence tying Oswald to the assassination is mountainous and indisputable. The murder weapon was purchased by Oswald through the mail with an order-form filled out in his handwriting and his wife took photos of Oswald posing with it months before the assassination. It bore his palm print and was found in a room in the building in which he worked.


Now, in the first case, the forensic evidence is certainly not "indisputable"   - though I do concede the false evidence is mountainous. For a rundown of the crap trotted out by the Warrenites  including altering the original autopsy notes, faking the autopsy photos, see my FAQ - Part 5. As to the alleged "murder weapon" - I already showed (in FAQ, Part 6) it couldn't have hit the broad side of a barn since the crack team of sharpshooters recruited by the Warren Commission couldn't even begin to USE the weapon for their trials until they had "rebuilt the shims" since the sighting was so far off!

As for the backyard photos, I already dealt with those including the use of the Oswald "ghost" photo which good ol' Glenn appears never to have heard of, e.g.

This had been  recovered at Dallas PD headquarters some time after the assassination. As one can discern, the “ghost” is a cutout into which another image can be pasted-superposed. The cutout image, many of us conclude, was obtained using a Dallas cop stand –in, which photo was also found in Dallas Police files, along with the ghost image.

Photo specialist Robert Hester was called on 22 November, 1963 to help process assassination -related photos for the FBI and Dallas police. Hester reported (and his wife Patricia confirmed) that he saw an FBI agent with a color transparency of one of the backyard photos with NO figure in the picture.  Hester has surmised and many researchers agree, that the blank photo was intended to deliberately set up Oswald.

Finally, Glenn proclaims:

But conspiracy theories never expire at the hands of evidence and logical refutation. Mostly, they don't expire at all. Thirty years ago, the theory that Oswald wasn't really Oswald at all, that he'd been bodysnatched (by the KGB or the CIA, take your pick) and replaced with a trained-assassin imposter

Well, first he conflates the Oswald imposter with the Oswald double.  Maybe a couple of pictures - since they're worth a thousand words each- can assist. The imposter, Glenn, is the one shown entering the Cuban Consulate in Mexico City - a heavy set guy who claimed he was Lee Harvey Oswald and the one Philip Shenon insists threatened the life of Kennedy openly. Below I show the actual Oswald at left and the one who claimed to be him approaching the Cuban Consulate in Mexico City:

Now, the Oswald double - who went around Big D making all kinds of outrageous statements (and which I will detail in the next FAQ) was actually photographically exposed through the efforts of Jack White by taking two separate Oswald photos- claimed to be the same person- and overlaying them at the chin line so that they match, or are perfectly integrated.

The result is shown below which clearly displays the difference in height that the witnesses cited in James Douglass book allude to:




Never mind! With brainwashed, conspiracy phobic media hacks like Garvin, one can't expect a changeling. All we can expect, and have seen this whole past week, is lying babble out of the mouths of the whole constellation of corporatized media - whose main job is now propaganda.

'Killing Kennedy' - What It Gets Wrong (Pt. 1)

Who would have believed Bill O'Reilly's book 'Killing Kennedy' would also become a made for TV movie. But it did. I watched it last night on the 'NatGEO' channel, infamous already for propounding the absurd Max Holland theory of the "lost bullet" , see e.g.
http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2011/11/nat-geo-continues-with-elites-kennedy.html

Holland is recognized by many in the deep politics research community as a  CIA asset, seeking to spin attention away from conspiracy and back to Warren Commission bollocks( as per the mandate of CIA doc. 1035-960). Recall this document strongly advises for use of "propaganda assets" to protect the Warren Commission from critics.  Interestingly, most of what viewers will see on the tube this next week, concerning the assassination, will conform to this document's objectives.

So what did the flick get wrong?

1) Oswald as Defector Looneytune Marxist Defecting to Russia:

The opening scenes are choice and play directly into the caricature of Oswald as an insolent loose cannon, pissed off at U.S. imperialism, who wants to defect to the Soviet Union. He's also called a "traitor" by some bureaucrat despite the fact that renouncing one's citizenship and moving to another country is not against the law.  But I digress a bit, the point is that Oswald is being steered to do this, he isn't acting on his own. Most of us wouldn't have been aware of this until release of key CIA files: the OS-351-164 (office of security), the 201-289248 CI/SIG (Counter Intelligence Special Investigation Group), and the 74-500 (applicable to the Soviet Union).

The first two are of greatest import. Especially given that no one informed the Warren Commission (least of all Dulles - one of the Commissioners, or his CIA) 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 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.”


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. 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 . Scott and others believe he was told he'd help to expose the plot but he needed to be at the Texas School Book Depository to do so. No surprise that Ruth Paine, another asset, steered him into the job at the TSBD. The rifle was likely already planted at the 6th floor window bearing the phony "sniper's nest" despite the fact only a half idiot or fool would've attempted a shot from there - given the view was partially blocked by branches from an oak tree at the time. See e.g. the photos taken in the book, 'Crossfire'. By contrast, a genuine LONE assassin - placed in the TSBD- would have fired out of the window overlooking Houston St. which provided a totally clear, unobstructed view and hence maximal chance of success..


The CI/SIG had been opened since 1960 when Oswald was at Atsugi Naval Station and had control of critical information. Oswald was entrusted with one of the most security-sensitive positions of all. He knew the locations of all bases on the west coast, all radio frequencies for all squadrons, all tactical call signs, strength of all squadrons, the number and type of aircraft in each, names of commanding officers, and authentic codes of entering and exiting all ADIZ radar ranges. If Oswald was as lame as the CIA claims, he’d never have been entrusted with any of these, period! Moreover, he'd never ever have been let out of the States, and with the ease of dispatch the document trails disclose. The bottom line is the guy was being deployed as a false defector.


People first became aware of the CIA-ONI false defector program after the publication of 'The Cult of Intelligence' by Former CIA Agent Victor Marchetti- who  actually informed researcher Anthony Summers about this program as well, noting:

“At the time, in 1959, the United States was having real difficulty in acquiring information out of the Soviet Union. The technical systems had, of course, not developed to the point they are at today, and we were resorting to all sorts of activities. One of these activities was an ONI (Office of Naval Intelligence) program which involved three dozen, maybe forty, young men who were made to appear disenchanted, poor American youths who had become turned off and wanted to see what communism was all about.

Some of these people lasted only a few weeks. They were sent into the Soviet Union or into eastern Europe with the specific intention the Soviets would pick them up and ‘double’ them if they suspected them of being U.S. agents, or recruit them as KGB agents. They were trained at various naval installations both here and abroad , but the operation was being run out of Nag’s Head North Carolina.”

 This was confirmed by a CIA accountant with top secret clearance named James Wilcott, who had been with Oswald at Atsugi and retired in 1966.  (Farewell to Justice, p. 178) Wilcott revealed that Oswald had indeed been debriefed at Atsugi after he returned from the Soviet Union. Wilcott testified that the murder of Kennedy was at the level of the DDP (Richard Helms' division) with Oswald "having been recruited from the military with the express purpose of becoming a double agent'"

Furthermore, Wilcott expressed certainty that Oswald (who had drawn an advance on his salary) was "an employee of the agency and was an agent" and noted Oswald also "received a full time salary for operational work." Wilcott further concluded Ruby was paid by the CIA to eliminate Oswald, since the Agency wanted no loose strings after the deed was done, and only it's own framing setup to prevail in the media.


The original plan was to "kill Kennedy, link Oswald to Castro, and use this as a pretext to invade Cuba". (ibid. ) Note the parallels here to the October, 1962 Missile crisis- when the Joint Chiefs tried to get Kennedy to invade Cuba on the basis of the Soviet missiles there. JFK refused, and in so doing put another nail in his coffin, while his enemies looked for other ways to achieve their goal- ending up at assassination of Kennedy - by a Castro dupe. Or so the CIA hoped people would believe. Wilcott, however, noted the phony link to Castro could not be established firmly enough to hold and hence the need to brand Oswald as the lone assassin. (ibid.)

In other words, the CIA aimed for a 'trifecta' - blaming the USSR as an accomplice, invading Cuba and killing Kennedy, but they ended up with only one of the three - but to be sure a huge one - as it's distorted this nation's history ever since. (Along with shattering all confidence and trust in gov't - given the government still holds to the phony Warrenite story.)

Interestingly, Wilcott's narrative was also confirmed by a former Military Affairs editor at LIFE, J. Garrett Underhill, a CIA informant. Underhill related that a "small clique in the CIA" killed Kennedy and he was prepared to 'blow the whistle" on them. Alas, it didn't happen. He was found with a bullet wound behind his left ear on May 8, 1964. He thereby became one of the numerous witnesses dead under suspicious circumstances - which Richard Charnin has shown proves a conspiracy. See:
http://richardcharnin.wordpress.com/2013/10/14/jfk-witness-deaths-graphical-proof-of-a-conspiracy/



2) The Shooting at Gen. Edwin Walker:

The flick depicts Lee aiming through a fence  at Walker (sitting at a table - visible through a front window) with his worthless Mannlicher Carcano rifle  He fires the shot then runs away.

But it's all fantasy. NO evidence points to it, and what evidence is available discloses a Latino character and short Caucasian in a 1957 Chevy. The car is in a photograph presented as an “exhibit” by the Warren Commission, but the license plate area is effaced. Why? The Latino character is almost certainly Sergio Archacha Smith, and the short Caucasian is the Oswald double that James Douglass documents so meticulously – including multiple witness statements, in his book ‘JFK and the Unspeakable'. It is worthwhile to note that not even Walker himself, in a deposition, believed Oswald made the shot.

This evidence was supported by Robert Surrey, one of Walker’s aides who spotted two men prowling around the residence days before the shooting.  The car was described as a 1957 Chevrolet and one of the man as dark-complexioned.  This description of two men and the car exactly fits the description given by James Douglass (op. cit.)  of Sergio Archacha Smith and an Oswald double who drove with him out to the Trinity River after the assassination.

The fact that Oswald never learned to drive is also critical here. Given a Warren Commission file photo showing the (actual ’57) Chevy parked next to Walker’s home – but with the drivers’ license cut out from the image, why would anyone want to protect Oswald if he really was the perp? It makes no sense. The only reason anyone – likely the Dallas PD or FBI – cut out the plate identification is to protect someone else other than Oswald!

Another salient point: the slug found at the scene was from a 30.06 as reported from the FBI files cited in Mark North’s excellent book Act of Treason (page 255). So how did a 30.06 rifle mutate into Oswald’s alleged 6.5 mm Mannlicher –Carcano some months later, when all the evidence is Oswald never fired such or was ever photographed with such?  Why would Hoover, the FBI, the Warren Commission and the Dallas Police be so eager to hang this shooting on Oswald, to later implicate him in the JFK assassination? North again has the answer:  to be able to link Oswald's putative  erratic and violent behavior to the killing of Kennedy - since on paper he was merely a pacifist protestor. Thereby, the Walker shooting made Oswald the perfect suspect. (It also took Hoover off the hook for not reporting the threats made against JFK in 1962, by the Marcello organization in New Orleans.)

Frequently Asked Questions On the JFK Assassination (2): Oswald's Sheep-Dipping

What exactly is sheepdipping? Was Oswald sheepdipped, as I've heard some say?

'Sheep-dipping' is a code word employed by the CIA to refer to the manipulation of a 'sponsor'(decoy) to be used in one or more operations. The goal of the manipulation is generally to associate with the 'sponsor' some image, to enable the more ready belief later, that the decoy-patsy is solely responsible for a given course of action  Even one  leading to executive action (assassination of a head of state).  In Oswald’s case, the sheep-dipping would have been initiated years in advance from the time of his fake defection (in the CIA’s Fake Defector Program).


Thereafter, bogus communications and even body doubles would have been employed to advance and consolidate the ruse. Fake communications such as the letter to the Soviet Embassy alleging a meeting with the KGB’s top assassination operative (Valery Kostikov) in the Western Hemisphere, and Oswald doubles such as the one documented by James Douglass and seen by Sgt. Robert Vinson near Red Bird Air Field hours after the assassination would all have a role in driving later perceptions, media accounts.

This would be critical (especially) to have ready after Kennedy was assassinated on Nov. 22, 1963, in order to drive an investigation that would find him guilty of being the lone assassin.  Peter Dale Scott, invoking the resources of HSCA investigator Dan Hardway and as also reported by HSCA investigator Gaeton Fonzi (The Last Investigation,  p. 292 ) discerned that  “most of the individuals originating the false reports (in cables etc.) were assets of the Mexico City Station’s Chief of Covert Action and Cuban Operations, David Atlee Phillips.”   Phillips is shown below:


It had been Phillips who ran all the cut outs (fake personae, duplicate Oswalds, fake files 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.   The Warren Commission was "suspiciously 'quiet' on the subject of Oswald's CIA files"[1], the OS-351-164 (office of security), the 201-289248 CI/SIG, and the 74-500. However, this should not astound anyone aware of the fact that a former CIA Director (Allen Dulles) sat on the Commission. Logically, therefore, if his latter day descendants are so reluctant to divulge the truth[2], he would have been no different. Moreover, as primary liaison between Commission members and the Agency, he could easily determine in advance what would be advisable for them to see, and what wouldn't. 


What is more astounding is the level of machinations the CIA used to conceal the files and their import from the Warren Commission. For example, no one informed the 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 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”

 In addition, when they submitted 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.  (Scott writes that technically this subterfuge and dodge was a “felony under Section 1001 of the U.S. Criminal Code".)

All this needs to be seen in the context of the five documents the CIA released on Oswald in October of 1963.  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 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 (Gaeton Fonzi, The Last Investigation, pp. 293-94)

 
"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.”

While in Mexico City, Lopez and Leap also spoke with the agency personnel who had listened to and were involved in translating and transcribing the tape of the man who called the Soviet Embassy. They said that after Oswald's Dallas arrest, when they heard his voice on radio and telecasts, it wasn't the same voice they remembered from the tape. The man who called the Embassy had a “huskier voice and didn't speak as fast as Oswald” , and perhaps most revealing, spoke in very poor, broken Russian  (Oswald's Russian wasn't excellent, but Marina Oswald later  said that when she first met Oswald in Minsk she thought his accent was from another part of the Soviet Union.) The Oswald arrested and the impostor headed to the Cuban Embassy are shown below:

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."

It seems more than evident that the reason Propaganda meister Phillips 'couldn't explain' the contradictions in his testimony, is because the real Lee Harvey Oswald was never in Mexico City. Like so many other smoke and mirrors tactics invoked by the Agency, this was no different. It is merely another layer/level of sheep-dipping to target the unwary Oswald for his pre-determined patsyhood role in Dallas 7 weeks later.

Sadly, another casualty of the CIA sheepdip, dodge and spin hijinks was an innocent woman, the consulate officer Silvia Duran. As Scott reports, as well as Gaeton Fonzi (op. cit., p. 409)  she was forced to undergo brutal torture for eight hours at the hands of Mexican police to get her to recant her original testimony that the “Oswald” encountered at the Cuban Embassy in Medico City was not the Oswald arrested in Dallas.(She had insisted in her original testimony- account that the Oswald she encountered “was blonde and short” – The Lopez Report, p. 190).

 

Ed Lopez,  who’d sought to interview Duran again in the wake of her torture,  found she was unable, and broke down and wept merely at the thought of it. She also feared reprisals as a citizen of Mexico.

Why is it so hard to accept this, as opposed to asserting the person himself is responsible?

Unfortunately, most people are not aware (or if they are, are in denial) of how clandestine services like the CIA really work. Their (disbelievers') mindset and thought processes are simply unable (or unwilling) to comprehend the Machiavellian minds and strategies at work. They do not understand that such tactics – as well as assassinations of heads of state-  are viewed as a valid means to an end. In addition, they fail to process that  concatenating these misdirection tactics is all they have to do! 

With ample time and resources, therefore - it is not at all unthinkable or 'incredible' that they could engage in things such as 'double agents', setting up corporate fronts as 'dummies' for agency activities (i.e. the JM/WAVE station in Miami to run 'Operation Mongoose' ; the use of impostors to stage 'scenes' - as the actors used to pose as Silvia Duran and Oswald in Mexico City ; or manipulating a particular profile person into being a 'decoy' (sponsor) for an agency operation. That one can't  or won't believe this, doesn't mean it doesn't occur.

How would one know - say from documents- that sheep-dipping was  taking place?

One thing we do know, is that the Agency is not going to stamp all salient records and documents (that pertain to covert manipulation of a sponsor toward a directed goal) with a big 'S' for sheep-dipping! So no, it’s not likely to be a 'gimme'. One needs to exercise a critical mind, and look at information disclosed (e.g. through FOIA, or the latest initiative to declassify) records, with a cold, dispassionate view- rigorously applying logic all time. One also needs to accept the conclusions of that logic - no matter where it leads  and  no matter how much the conclusion may violate one's subjective temperament or emotional or other affiliations. Too often, in this respect, people who assert such evidence 'does not exist' - are either allowing their emotions to rule their logic, or have some other agenda, which is probably not beneficent.

In terms of specifics  and applied strategies for ferreting out clues, one would look for files, and ancillary evidence, including Agency actions, cables and what is covered here, is mainly based on those which have been released - which are significant. As Newman notes, of all  the quarter million pages released up to the time he wrote his book (Newman, op. cit., p. 168):

"no single page ...so far released by the CIA can compare in significance to the piece of paper that opened his 201 file."

As for 'easy' - no one who has pursued this case any length of time would ever arrive at such a naive conclusion. The labyrinth of files by itself is enough to deter many from sorting through them to extract or deduce cause and effect relationships. 

This  is at the core of the difference between the official (lone nut) and conspiracy viewpoints. The first believes that all the truth has essentially been told, and one single person is guilty with no external involvement. The latter believe the whole truth has not been told, and that there is clear evidence of duplicity permeating the files that have so far been released.

If one single person were indeed guilty, this degree of duplicity and outright lying would not be necessary. Nor is it adequate for the official adherents, to claim that the duplicitous sources, agencies are merely 'covering their tracks' to hide errors. To such a claim, the conspiracy theorist has but one rejoinder:  What is the cut off point for errors and 'coincidences'? Ten thousand coincidences?  Ten million?  One hundred billion? At what threshold does mischief begin and honest error  or 'honest defense of honest error- end? When do the probabilities for 'coincidence' or multiple errors become too vanishingly small to accept? When?

 This is the pivot point about which most of the discussion occurs, and into which sheep dipping figures. Indeed, one could argue that the successful basis of the fact that the real architects and perpetrators got away with Kennedy’s murder, was precisely Oswald’s meticulous sheep dipping.

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[1] John Newman, Oswald and CIA, p. 169.

[2]  I refer to  the files on CIA Station Chief George Joannides, who single handedly funded and orchestrated the Cuban elements in New Orleans, and orchestrated Oswald’s associations with them.