What Maddow Left Out In Her Segment On The Kennedy- Castro Rapprochement

Actress and TV reporter Lisa Howard had a major role in energizing the move to rapprochement between Kennedy and Fidel Castro's Cuba in the Spring of 1963. Rachel Maddow's segment last night did not deal with her role at all - perhaps because she was one of those mysteriously claimed by sudden death some two years later.

Very few Americans seem to be aware of recent American history especially to do with the last days of the Kennedy administration. In multiple blog posts I have tried my best to fill in these earlier blanks  (many due to our myopic media, mostly into sensationalism now) and another opportunity presents itself as we celebrate the first visit of an American President to Cuba in nearly 90 years.

 Rachel Maddow (last night) deserves kudos for finally bringing the long hidden initiative for JFK's Cuban rapprochement to light in a segment 'Everything Is Possible' - a phrase Kennedy used in a speech in Miami in 1963, otherwise noted for its Cold War tone. But always the consummate strategist, Kennedy knew he absolutely had to keep up the pose of Cold Warrior despite having changed nearly a year earlier after the horrific Cuban Missile Crisis which brought the world to the brink of nuclear extinction. (See James Douglas' section 'A Cold Warrior Turns' in his book, JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died And Why It Matters)

In her segment Maddow presented letters from an autobiographical work by Attwood which clearly showed Kennedy intended to use him as an emissary to Castro, in an effort to normalize relations with Cuba. This was further reinforced from tapes Maddow re-played based on JFK's then conversations with McGeorge Bundy on Nov. 5, 1963. Kennedy later required Attwood to obtain  confirmation from Castro about his agenda, after which the actual secret talks could start. Castro's response was received Nov. 23, 1963, one day after Kennedy was killed in Dallas and there ended the rapprochement efforts.

But, in fact, the wheels had been spinning since April, 1963. Former actress and ABC News reporter Lisa Howard had offered herself as an intermediary for the first bilateral talks between U.S. and Cuban officials, in April, 1963, soon after doing a fairly sympathetic TV special on Castro the same month.  She also offered her 5th Avenue New York apartment as a venue for meeting with the Cuban Ambassador to the UN. This was already accepted by the Kennedy administration as a report in the UK Guardian notes, e.g.

The administration gave a nod to Ms Howard, who set up a chance meeting between Mr Attwood and the Cuban ambassador to the UN, Carlos Lechuga, at a cocktail party in her Park Avenue apartment.
The apartment then became a communications centre between Mr Attwood and the Castro regime. Castro's aide, Dr Rene Vallejo, called at pre-arranged times to talk to Mr Attwood, and in the autumn of 1963 suggested that Mr Attwood fly to Mexico from where he would be picked up by a plane sent by Castro.

See :
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/nov/26/cuba.julianborger

And it was at that end point that Maddow's piece picks up, basically around November 5, 1963, to Nov. 23, 1963. But left out is that the movement for rapprochement had been going on for months sub rosa.  Note also that Attwood was also involved in these early talks, i.e. with Castro's aide Vallejo. (Who also is not mentioned in Maddow's piece).  Did Maddow omit all this because many in the JFK research community believe that Lisa Howard was one of the de facto victims of the assassination, after she  continued efforts at formalizing Cuban-American relations after JFK was killed?  This is relevant given, as the Guardian put it:  "Howard continued to bring messages back to Washington from Castro."

But LBJ, especially after orchestrating Kennedy's killing to save his own political skin, was in no mood, though Castro couldn't have known that - so made his pleas to "turn the other cheek" in vain. LBJ may also have very well frowned on Howard's efforts to keep the Castro ties alive, even as he later frowned on Martin Luther King Jr. going against him on the Vietnam War. One thing we do know about "that polecat Lyndon" (Russell Long's famous onetime description) is he didn't abide anyone crossing him.

As I also wrote before, it seems highly plausible that the efforts at early rapprochement got out and found their way to the CIA teams running anti-Castro Cubans and moving the pieces in place for Kennedy's assassination. This is relevant because in the spring of 1963 we know that the Chief of Psychological Warfare branch of the CIA's JM/WAVE station in Miami (George Johannides,),  was busy “guiding and financing” members of the Revolutionary Cuban Student Directorate or DRE, one of the largest anti-Castro groups in the United States[1].  This attention included providing the DRE with up to $25,000 a month, so long as they submitted to CIA discipline[2].

At the same time it was known that Operation ZR-Rifle, an Agency project to assassinate Castro, was well underway and quite plausibly without JFK’s knowledge or approval. (Since it’s incomprehensible that Kennedy would’ve approved any Castro assassination plan while also pursuing rapprochement. He’d have to be schizoid- and hence dysfunctional. Further it would flout all the arguments to do with his “moral compass” shown by James Douglass in his book, JFK and the Unspeakable).

Thus, given Johannides’ band of DRE reprobates, it’s plausible that any debriefings done by the CIA (of Attwood- in the course of his talks in Cuba) would find their way back to those running the Johannides’ and ZR-Rifle operations. It doesn’t take a whole lot here to conjecture that – if such a leak transpired (say from the de-briefers to Johannides, or ZR-Rifle) -  the plan to assassinate Fidel Castro might be altered to target Kennedy instead. Surely, the rage would be there, make no mistake. The DRE members especially would feel betrayed, as well as the 2506 Brigade imprisoned after their capture in the wake of the Bahia de Cochinos episode.

Further probability of cross-Agency leakage would’ve occurred when Lisa Howard offered herself as an intermediary, and her apartment in New York as the venue, for the first bilateral talks between U.S. and Cuban officials. When she continued the efforts on her own, she put herself in the crosshairs and her life was suddenly ended on July 4, 1965.

All this was left out of Maddow's piece, but perhaps it shouldn't have been.
-------------------


[1]Jefferson Morley, ‘The George Johannides Cover-up’, in JFK LANCER, May 19, 2005.

[2] Morley, ibid.

Convergence of Two Important Books Shows Kennedy Was Victim of the Deep State

Outside of the deep politics research community, there are few Americans who appreciate the import and magnitude of John F. Kennedy's assassination 52 years ago. It could all be as much a historical 'black hole' as the nature of the interiors of those celestial objects constitutes a physical hole for astrophysics.  Indeed, if one isn't part of the deep politics research constellation he or she will likely not be aware of what the 'deep state' means, far less what all the fuss is about over one dead president from over a half century ago. The person may even mistake the low political value of JFK himself (as a personality) for the high value of the assassination. (A danger author Michael Parenti first warned about).

The point is that the assassination was the primary event, not John F. Kennedy per se. It was the assassination that altered the arc of American history for the worst. It was the assassination  that had the high political value, since with Kennedy out of the way, many more nefarious initiatives could be undertaken, including assassinations and launching an 8-plus year undeclared war in Vietnam. Hence Parenti's articulation of the basis for assassination research ('The Dirty Truth'. p. 186), we:

"are raising grave questions about the nature of state power in what is supposed to be a democracy."

 

  That  Kennedy crossed thresholds with the deep state that made him a target is something exposed in more than one book, including Peter Dale Scott's 'War Conspiracy' and more recently David Talbot's new work, “The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government,”  which extends out from JFK’s murder to investigate the rise of the shadowy network that Talbot holds ultimately responsible for the president’s assassination.

Before Talbot's book,  there was James Douglass' 'JFK and he Unspeakable: Why He Died And Why It Matters', which showed:


-  Gen. Curtis LeMay and others pushing JFK towards attacking Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis

-  JFK’s efforts and strategies to make peace with the Soviets, including 21 secret correspondences with Khrushchev

-   Kennedy’s secret efforts to establish normal relations with Cuba and the fury that this [it] caused within the CIA and amongst Cuban exiles

-  JFK’s determined efforts to get U.S. troops out of Vietnam and the forces within his administration that resisted and ultimately prevented this effort

-  Kennedy standing up to U.S. steel interests and the bitterness that this lead to among U.S. business leaders, including Henry Luce, publisher of Fortune

-  The overwhelming evidence that Lee Harvey Oswald was on the CIA payroll and had an assortment of handlers

-  The CIA plot that painted Oswald as a communist sympathizer and lunatic with ties to the Soviet Union and Cuba

-  How power brokers convinced the official investigators (Warren Report) to pin the assassination on Oswald

-   The underreported plot to kill JFK in Chicago, stopped and bungled by the Secret Service one month before Kennedy was killed in November of ’63.

-  The latest forensic evidence that shows beyond any reasonable doubt that the published autopsy x-rays are composite fakes.

-  The stories of many witnesses who saw things differently than the official story, who were sometimes killed, died of mysterious causes, or had their stories changed or their lives threatened.

Interwoven with Talbot's book, the deep politics researcher sees clearly for the first time what drove those like Allen Dulles  - then CIA Chief and de facto head of the deep state -  to take Kennedy out. In short, JFK had gotten too big for his political-policy breeches and challenged Dulles' hegemony on too many fronts.

Smirkingchimp.com blogger David Swanson offers one of the best summary takes:

"Talbot's book is still one of the best I've seen on the Dulles brothers and one of the best I've seen on the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Where it differs from Douglass' book, I think, is not so much in the evidence it relates or the conclusions it draws, but in providing an additional motivation for the crime.

JFK and the Unspeakable depicts Kennedy as getting in the way of the violence that Allen Dulles and gang wished to engage in abroad. He wouldn't fight Cuba or the Soviet Union or Vietnam or East Germany or independence movements in Africa. He wanted disarmament and peace. He was talking cooperatively with Khrushchev, as Eisenhower had tried prior to the U2-shootdown sabotage. The CIA was overthrowing governments in Iran, Guatemala, the Congo, Vietnam, and around the world. Kennedy was getting in the way.

The Devil's Chessboard depicts Kennedy, in addition, as himself being the sort of leader the CIA was in the habit of overthrowing in those foreign capitals. Kennedy had made enemies of bankers and industrialists. He was working to shrink oil profits by closing tax loopholes, including the "oil depletion allowance."

JFK was also determined to rein the CIA in after the Bay of Pigs, firing Dulles and his deputy Charles Cabell, and then setting up  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, and a 'Special Group' that had no less than 17 recommendations for the "reorganization and redirection of the CIA".

This Dulles could not abide.

Talbot places these justifications in a Cold War context, by showing how Dulles shrugged off countless atrocities using the threat of communism. By late 1962 Kennedy was already seen as at least a commie sympathizer by virtue of his back channel rapprochement efforts with Fidel Castro- even dispatching medical aid to the Communist island nation (via emissary William Atwood)  to show good faith.

This alone would have enraged the CIA -led anti-Castro Cubans, not only the vets from the Bay of Pigs disaster (who still blamed Kennedy for not providing air support) but the  members of the Revolutionary Cuban Student Directorate or DRE, one of the largest anti-Castro groups in the United States.  In the spring of 1963 we know that the Chief of Psychological Warfare branch of the CIA's JM/WAVE station in Miami (George Johannides,),  was “guiding and financing” the DRE.   This  included providing the DRE with up to $25,000 a month, so long as they submitted to CIA discipline.

The mere leak to the group that Kennedy was making nice with Fidel would have had any number of these right wing Cuban exiles volunteering to help make a CIA executive action a reality. (Look how little it took to provoke members of the same anti-Castro axis to take down a Cuban plane with 73 on board off Barbados coast  on Oct. 6, 1976)

Talbot further shows that Dulles  was a psychopath given how he is shown covering up the Holocaust prior to America’s intervention into World War II by keeping crucial information exposing the horrors of concentration camps from reaching President Roosevelt. Dulles and his fellow CIA Cold Warriors saw Russia, a U.S. ally during World War II – not Nazi Germany – as the real enemy. Given the extent to which Kennedy was seen supportive of Castro (via rapprochement) or Nikita Khrushchev, e.g. signing the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in August, 1963   - which also severely limited all anti-missile defense systems - they 'd have justified Kennedy's violent  removal.

In fact, by the time of Kennedy's rapprochement efforts, Dulles - who had surreptitiously set up an anti-Kennedy government in exile after his firing-  would have treated JFK as just another head of state to be earmarked for assassination like previous ones. Such was laid out in their earlier assassination manuals as far back as 1954 with the PBSUCCESS program, e.g.

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

The immediate enabler and architect would have been William Harvey. The key clue was 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. And Harvey would have been the mastermind, following Dulles' order or in conjunction with them as part of an NSA coordinated operation.

Indeed, Talbot, in a recent interview on salon.com notes:

" I have an eye-witness that pinpoints one of these men, William Harvey, on a plane to Dallas, shortly before the assassination. He was spotted by his own deputy. And his deputy told his children years later that was convinced that William Harvey was involved in the assassination of Kennedy. This was the guy who was responsible for the assassination operation aimed at Fidel Castro. He was working with the mafia to kill Castro. He was a notorious figure in the CIA. So, for him to be flying to Dallas, shortly before the assassination, at least raises some serious questions."

But one of the most reprehensible facts Talbot details is the extent to which Dulles and cronies were very socially comfortable with many members of the Nazi elite, including bankers, security and intelligence people. To them, the whole question about war crimes and the horrors the Nazis had committed during the war were secondary to the more important geo-political questions [such as] who will rebuild Germany after the war and how to make sure the Soviet Union does not overrun Europe.

To them also, Kennedy -  by his willingness to stand up to the Nazi-nexus of spooks  -would have shown himself a prime and urgent target. That the deep state was protecting its associations with Nazi spies is well known by deep politics researchers.  Readers can also find more information on the Nazi- CIA ties here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/27/us/in-cold-war-us-spy-agencies-used-1000-nazis.html

Excerpt:

In 1968, Mr. Hoover authorized the F.B.I. to wiretap a left-wing journalist who wrote critical stories about Nazis in America, internal records show. Mr. Hoover declared the journalist, Charles Allen, a potential threat to national security.

Thus we see Hoover, head of the FBI, was protective of the Nazi links, and invoked "national security" to protect them.   One wonders what the immediate consequences might have been had Kennedy learned of them - the full extent  -  which wasn't revealed in files until decades later. Might not this have speeded up the need for action? The CIA, as Talbot notes,  is still withholding 15,000 key documents related to the Kennedy assassination including [documents related to] people in the Dulles assassination group. Talbot adds, in his salon.com interview:

"It is vital that we get those 15,000 documents that the CIA is still withholding in defiance of that (JFK Records Act)  law. There are a lot of clues in those [released] documents and I have used a lot of them."

Talbot also makes mention of the Nazi Wartime Disclosure Act.  It may well be, as we gradually uncover more of the deep state connections to the Kennedy assassination, we also see the extent to which the CIA's use and coddling of high profile Nazis played a direct role - perhaps even in the strategy and mechanics of taking Kennedy out.

We will see.

See also:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/bob-burnett/54660/the-war-on-democracy-the-deep-state
 

JFK Would Have Welcomed Re-Opening of Cuban Embassy Today

John Fitzgerald Kennedy would be jubilant today about the Cuban Embassy reopening in Washington. His rapprochement efforts with Castro would have culminated in this earlier - had he lived.

This morning, in a ceremony marking the end of 54 years of hostility, Cuba will raise its flag over a limestone  mansion to officially reopen its U.S. Embassy.  There will be hundreds present, including U.S. congressmen, diplomats and others who are expected to join visiting Cuba Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez and 30 official from Havana.

Make no mistake JFK would be overjoyed to see this milestone.

Very few Americans seem to be aware of recent history especially to do with the last days of the Kennedy administration. In multiple blog posts I have tried my best to fill in what may have been earlier blanks and another opportunity presents itself today as we celebrate this historic restoration of Cuban-U.S. relations (which 58 percent of Americans support).

While some hysterical right wing Cubans such as Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R, FLA) and posturing American Reepos (e.g. John Boehner)-  are beside themselves with  rage,   even planning a news conference to denounce the event -  there is no doubt President John F. Kennedy would have welcomed it.

Why would he not given he had, in fact, initiated a rapprochement with Fidel Castro from late 1962. Let me try to unpack this for those whose history books totally avoided the issue, which is understandable, given it would have provided yet another clear motive for the CIA and security state to snuff out JFK's life.

Even as the Cuban Missile Crisis had wound down, we know that by the late fall of 1962 – unknown to all but Robert Kennedy and a handful of advisors – a mission had gotten under way toward secret dialogue and rapprochement with Fidel Castro[1]. To get some remote idea of how this might be perceived today (by the entrenched national security state) it would be somewhat similar to President Obama trying to engage in a secret dialogue or rapprochement with the Iranian President, Hassan Rouhani. Imagine how well that would be received!

 

 This is not to say that the latter is on the same geopolitical plane as rapprochement with Castro, only that the emotional baggage and extent of reaction would be relatively equal,  taking into account both eras and circumstances. The shadow government and intelligence collective that would be enraged at Obama for such an effort as they were at JFK then.

But Kennedy was vastly more at risk given the rapprochement would have been seen in concert with his other momentous moves including:

-         Signing Executive Order 11,110,  issued on June 4, 1963 - to challenge Federal Reserve control of the money supply, by printing and circulating U.S. Notes

-         Signing the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty with Nikita Khrushchev in August, 1963 – which also severely limited all anti-missile defense systems

-         Federalized National Guard troops in Alabama to assist in school integration

-           Signing NSAM 263 to remove all U.S. personnel from Vietnam by 1965
 

Any one of these would have been ample reason for most of the hate mongers or power elites to want him dead. But these in concert with the rapprochement to Castro would have sealed the deal.

As National Security Archivist Peter Kornbluh shows (by reference to documents he has accessed), it was William Attwood, a Washington lawyer, who had negotiated the release of the Bay of Pigs prisoners who was to be instrumental. Attwood was then charged by JFK with becoming the first American emissary to secure Castro’s ear and trust. In particular, to show good will and good faith, Attwood arranged for $62 million in medicines and food aid as part of the prisoner deal.

 Attwood was also continually active in the spring of 1963, securing the release of other prisoners, including three CIA operatives held in Cuban jails[2] .  Following each trip Attwood was debriefed by U.S. Intelligence officials, and he always described each meeting as “most cordial and intimate”.

 

At this stage, one is led to ask: To what extent did those debriefings remain in closed, confined circles or were they bruited about beyond JFK's  immediate circles?

The question is germane and relevant because in the spring of 1963 we know that the Chief of Psychological Warfare branch of the CIA's JM/WAVE station in Miami (George Johannides,),  was busy “guiding and financing” members of the Revolutionary Cuban Student Directorate or DRE, one of the largest anti-Castro groups in the United States[3].  This attention included providing the DRE with up to $25,000 a month, so long as they submitted to CIA discipline[4].   (Not surprisingly many of the Cubans screaming loudest today probably have affiliations to those in the DRE then.)

 At the same time it was known that Operation ZR-Rifle, an Agency project to assassinate Castro, was well underway and quite plausibly without JFK’s knowledge or approval. (Since it’s incomprehensible that Kennedy would’ve approved any Castro assassination plan while also pursuing rapprochement. He’d have to be schizoid- and hence dysfunctional. Further it would flout all the arguments to do with his “moral compass” shown by James Douglass in his book, JFK and the Unspeakable).

 

Thus, given Johannides’ band of DRE reprobates, it’s plausible that any debriefings done by the CIA (of Attwood- in the course of his talks in Cuba) would find their way back to those running the Johannides’ and ZR-Rifle operations. It doesn’t take a whole lot here to conjecture that – if such a leak transpired (say from the de-briefers to Johannides, or ZR-Rifle) -  the plan to assassinate Fidel Castro might be altered to target Kennedy instead. Surely, the rage would be there, make no mistake. The DRE members especially would feel betrayed, as well as the 2506 Brigade imprisoned after their capture. 

Further probability of cross-Agency leakage would’ve occurred when ABC News reporter Lisa Howard offered herself as an intermediary, and her apartment in New York as the venue, for the first bilateral talks between U.S. and Cuban officials[5].  Certainly, the Agency’s eyes and ears would’ve been turned (tuned?) toward Howard after she did a fairly sympathetic TV special on Castro in April, 1963.   Might they have bugged her apartment and listened in? Possible, but they may not have had to – since a “high society” crowd attended and these may well have provided all the extra source leaks the Agency needed to plan ahead for what it wanted to do.

By September 24, 1963, Robert Kennedy had informed Deputy U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. William Atwood, that Jack might be able to meet Castro, but not in Cuba. Mexico may have been suggested as an alternative. By then many of us suspected that the conspirators had a plan afoot to possibly take out Kennedy in September. That plan was scrapped after an incident involving double agent Richard Case Nagell.

 

Sadly, Nagell's actions merely postponed Kennedy's assassination and he never lived to see the fruits born out by his rapprochement. Today, he'd be looking on and smiling that his efforts ultimately resulted in re-establishing relations.

Meanwhile, the U.S. will wait to raise an American flag at its own Embassy in Havana until Secretary of State John Kerry travels there to do the honors later this summer. But Kerry will meet Mr. Rodriguez at the State Dept. today.

 
Let the right wing Cubans scream and shout. All they can deliver is sound and fury signifying nothing. JFK's vision finally won out!

---

[1] 'Kennedy and Castro: What Might Have Been', by Peter Kornbluh, in The Baltimore Sun, Aug. 22, 1999, p. 1C. Kornbluh is the head of The National Security Archives and he compiled the attendant documents that support the Kennedy-Castro rapprochement efforts.

[2] Kornbluh, ibid.

[3] Jefferson Morley, ‘The George Johannides Cover-up’, in JFK LANCER, May 19, 2005.

[4] Morley, ibid.

[5] Kornbluh, ibid.

The Pre-Assassination Framing of Lee Harvey Oswald (2)

David Atlee Phillips, who conducted the main operation to frame Oswald - from Mexico City and the Miami JM/Wave CIA station.

“Put together, we see how those in power suppressed false evidence that Oswald was a Communist or a KGB or Cuban agent in order to arrive at the least disturbing alternative: that he acted alone.” –   Peter Dale Scott, Deep Politics Quarterly, Sept. 1994

Between the resourceful work of John Newman and Peter Dale Scott, among others, 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”.. However, this makes no sense in the light of the  delay of more than one year (Oct. '59 to Dec, '60) to get the job done.

The actual fact,  in light of what I noted in the previous post, is that the file had been opened by the CI/SIG (Counterintelligence Special Investigations Group) of the CIA to paint a trail of fictitious suspicion on Oswald and especially have it 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.”

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"[2], 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[3], 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)[4]:

"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.)

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.

Those lone nut mythologists who maintain (in the face of the above facts) that Oswald was there, are obligated to provide us with first order evidence to substantiate that. (Hotel records don't cut it since they can easily be based on forged signatures. "Witnesses", i.e. on alleged buses, are only useful if they're able to compare the one they claim to have observed with images of the Lee Oswald arrested in Dallas. Sylvia Duran was such a witness, but she was tortured to recant - see below- when she denied that the Oswald encountered in the Cuban Embassy was the same as the one arrested in Big D) At the very least then, we need a verifiable photograph that can unimpeachably be used to put Oswald there. Until that time, the entire 'Oswald in Mexico City' episode must be regarded as specious and a probable concoction of the CIA and their many 'assets' deployed in Mexico City at the time. Or to use the words of John Newman in reference to a 'cable' that surfaced within that episode, “a whole cloth fabrication”[5]

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.

By the spring of 1963 we know that the Psychological Warfare branch of the CIA's JM/WAVE station in Miami was being led by one George Johannides- who  was busy “guiding and financing” members of the Revolutionary Cuban Student Directorate or DRE, one of the largest anti-Castro groups in the United States[6].  This attention included providing the DRE with up to $25,000 a month, so long as they submitted to CIA discipline (Jefferson Morley, ‘The George Johannides Cover-up’, in JFK LANCER, May 19, 2005.)

At the same time, as documented by Peter Dale Scott,  CIA spin meister David Atlee Phillips- having been cross-posted to both stations.  was shuttling between Mexico City and Miami (the CIA’s JM/Wave station based at Zenith Technical Enterprises near Crandon Park) and helping Joannides confect and consolidate the “Oswald as commie perp” narrative, including using DRE assets to play Oswald in New Orleans. (See the previous quote from Newman on the May-Sept. Oswald story). They also were alternating between a “phase one” and “phase two” narrative, with the first linking Oswald to Soviet or Cuban Intelligence, and the second painting him as just a deranged lone nut. Most of the “phase one” stories originated as Scott notes from “ a single milieu of anti-Castro Cubans in Miami, close to, and in some cases supported by the CIA’s JM/Wave station there.”

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.

So be it. Now ask yourselves this: If Oswald was indeed “guilty” why did the CIA go to such inordinate lengths to distort, hide and obfuscate the truth (i.e. Oswald’s CIA files, fake cables etc.) as well as engage in such a complex plan to paint Oswald the bad guy (using Oswald impersonators in Mexico City)  – not to mention- recruiting Mexican police to torture a woman for 8 hours merely for telling the truth – to make it presentable for the Warren Commission’s (“phase two” or lone nut) narrative?

Mayhap Mr. Tom Hanks finally  asked himself those questions - before his “Bugliosi Bunkum Binge” next month on HBO –  which is why he cancelled it. Or perhaps HBO thankfully cancelled it realizing that all the money invested would be a waste. Poor Tom, guess he will have to wait a bit before “preventing the American people from being snookered”.   But as my German friend Reinhardt put it, we - the American people - can be thankful that HBO didn't expend millions to allow Hanks to try to snooker US!

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

[2] Newman, op. cit., p. 169.

[3] I am referring, of course, 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.

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

[5] Newman, op. cit. p. 408.

[6] Jefferson Morley, ‘The George Johannides Cover-up’, in JFK LANCER, May 19, 2005.