Rachel Maddow Again LIES About Lee Harvey Oswald and His Rifle

Rachel Maddow appears to be a compulsive liar, at least where Lee Harvey Oswald is concerned. But this ought not be too surprising, given that non-serious, superficial researchers and talking heads (who may only deal with the assassination once or twice a year) are often bound to insert their feet into their foolish mouths. And so Rachel did it again last night, as she did back in March last year,

This was in conjunction with a segment last night on a gun reform law (S. 3714) that JFK had proposed: “to exclude from importation or re-importation into the United States arms or ammunition originally manufactured for military purposes.”

In this context she specifically mentioned the Italian made 6.5 mm Mannlicher-Carcano, and showed an ad for it in the "American Rifleman" magazine along with photostat copies of receipts proving Lee Oswald purchased it. She then added, emulating a Neoliberal know-nothing:

"Lee Harvey Oswald bought the gun in March, 1963. He killed President Kennedy with it that November."

No, Rachel, sorry to disabuse you, but he did not. In your piece, obviously intended to target the NRA, you instead have offended and outraged serious JFK assassination researchers while also disclosing yourself to be one more part of the "unspeakable" described by author James Douglass (JFK and the Unspeakable) . You'd have done better to keep your focus on the NRA defeating JFK's bill proposal rather than dragging in Oswald as the alleged killer of Kennedy!

But it was clearly way too much arduous work for Rachel and her staff to note the real killers, as well as the JFK assassination mastermind (LBJ, see previous blog) and the FACT that Oswald's rifle was basically useless.  To briefly recap the facts:

 A trained team of expert marksmen (assigned by the Warren Commission)  was unable to replicate Oswald's alleged feat! Oswald was presumed to have fired from the 6th floor of the Texas School Book Depository, so effectively six stories up or 60’ in altitude. However, the experts were allowed to fire from a tower only half this altitude (30’). In addition, while Oswald had to have fired at a limousine moving at 11 mile per hour, the experts fired at stationary targets. (The Warren Commission Report, p. 137.)

The target area was also magnified for the experts, to the whole upper torso of the target prop’s body – while Oswald was limited to the head and neck. More to the point, the rifle was altered away from the one Oswald used. The rifle sight itself was rebuilt and “metal shims were fitted to provide a degree of accuracy previously absent’. When Ronald Simmons, the Chief of the Infantry Weapons Evaluation Branch of the Army’s Ballistics Research Division was asked about this he replied: “Well, they could not sight the weapon in using the telescope" (Op. cit. ,Vol. II, p. 250.)

 He added that the aiming apparatus had to be rebuilt by a machinist with two shims added, one to adjust for the elevation, the other for the azimuth. In other words, had they actually used the rifle in the same condition Oswald was alleged to have had it, then they’d likely not have hit the side of a barn. (Maybe one reason the Italians dubbed their Norma Mannlicher-Carcano 6.5 mm bolt action rifle that Oswald was supposed to have used as "the rifle that never killed anyone").

At the end of the test trials, these Master Marksmen each fired two series of three shots each (18 rounds in all) at 3 stationary targets placed at distances of 175’, 240’ and 265’ (the last coming nearest to the distance from the Texas School Book Depository to the head shot). Even Chief Simmons admitted that the targets were not placed where they ought to have been to emulate conditions on November 22, 1963.

Just one of the three expert riflemen was able to get off three shots in under 5.6 seconds – the designated time interval for total shots declared by the Warren Commission. And most to the point: none of the total 18 shots fired struck the targets in the head or the neck. In other words, from a technical standpoint of duplicating Oswald’s alleged shots- this trio of experts failed. Another key aspect: for the duration of the 18 rounds, two of the master riflemen were unable to reload and fire at the stationary target as rapidly as Oswald purportedly did for the moving limo.


So why did Rachel make such a big deal out of this rifle?  Perhaps she is just lazy or ignorant. More likely  (I'm willing to give her a minor pass for ignorance) because she believed that by linking it, egregiously, to the Kennedy assassination and Oswald, she'd get more eyeballs and buzz for her show. But believe me, it backfired.

More interesting to me (and many others) is that in the immediate wake of the assassination, the actual rifle reported found at the Book Depository (i.e. by  three Sheriff's deputies and deputy Constable Seymour Weitzmann as well as reported on NBC News, in real time tapes) was a MAUSER. Now, THAT is a weapon that could have been used in an assassination, as opposed to the ridiculous Mannlicher-Carcano (which National Archives personnel won't even let researchers touch for fear it will far apart - as per a letter to Patricia Dumais who asked them to check the serial no. - as pointed out by H. E. Livingstone in his 'Killing Kennedy'.)

Ok, as for the photo shots of Oswald holding said weapon, i.e. the photos that appeared in LIFE magazine, I have already exposed those as fakes, frauds --- likely put together by a team of CIA specialists using a splicing technique to superimpose Oswald’s head onto the body of another actually holding the weapon.The full blog on the techniques can be read here: http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2009/11/hany-farids-pixelated-illusions.html

In 1977, a Canadian Defense Dept. Photographic specialist: Maj. John Pickard,  noted a 99% probability the LIFE cover photo was a fake and that each photo was taken from a slightly different angle. When superpositions of the images are performed, e.g. one photo laid atop another in succession, it is found that nothing matches exactly. As Pickard observed:  "Yet, impossibly, while one body is bigger - the heads match perfectly."

Adding to the weight for this claim was the discovery of what has come to be known as "the Oswald ghost photo" (see  image below). 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. The mistake of the Dallas PD (which former Justice Dept. special agent Walt Brown ties into the plot as accessories, see his book, 'Treachery in Dallas' - Chapter 'Blue Death') was leaving incriminating evidence for their frame- up lying around. If they'd had any sense, they'd have burned it.

Obviously, the question remains of why Oswald would have purchased such a weapon, even if the photos etc. were fakes. We believe the rational answer inheres in the appearance of the letter ‘D’ – on the cover sheet of Oswald’s 201 file – indicating 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 other words, the purchase of the dummy rifle was part and parcel of a subplot in ZR/Rifle to simulate an assassination of Kennedy - at least this was the cover story fed to Oswald. He would then have exposed the real dangers facing the president when security wasn't at full strength (as it wasn't that day in Dallas, as the usual snipers that would have been there for protection were ordered to 'stand down' - likely also part of the subplot).

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.

Much of this has been 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 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.)
See also:

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-pre-assassination-framing-of-lee.html

and

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-pre-assassination-framing-of-lee_1807.html

Maybe Rachel  or her staff need to scan my blog posts on the JFK hit a bit first before she next shoots from the hip, and ends up boffing her set piece by deploying unnecessary and obvious canards that merely detract from the content and focus.

Frequently Asked Questions on the JFK Assassination (Pt. 9): Earlier Plots, Designated Assassins, Oswald Double

1. I understand there were earlier plans afoot to kill JFK? Where and anyone identified in them?

There were at least two earlier plots for assassinating JFK – one in Chicago, timed for November 2, to coincide with the assassination of the Diem brothers in Vietnam, and one on Nov. 18^th in Miami.   The latter fell apart after an FBI informant, William Somerset, used a wire to record the words of one Joseph Milteer who calmly forecast that Kennedy would be shot and killed from a tall building using a rifle with telescope sight. Kennedy was in Miami at the time to give a speech, and his motorcade was cancelled.

The Chicago threat was the more serious of the two, as a warning had been phoned in (by an FBI informant named “Lee”)   that a team of snipers planned to shoot Kennedy in a motorcade while on the then Northwest (now Kennedy) Expressway, en route to Soldier Field for a football game (JFK ended up cancelling these plans). Author James Douglass has noted the eerie resemblance of the motorcade route to that in Dallas, starting with the site of the original building at 625 West Jackson,  “an old eight story building that had been remodeled for apartment dwellers”. As he notes[1]:

 

“From its roof I could look down and over to where JFK’s presidential limousine had been scheduled to make a slow turn up from the Northwest Expressway exit ramp onto west Jackson on November 2, 1963. It was analogous to the slow curve the limousine would make in Dallas in front of the Texas School Book Depository three weeks later.”

2. Was Oswald one of the assassins then, or was it some one else?

In fact, Lee Oswald is believed (certainly by James Douglass, and myself) to have been the FBI informant “Lee” who warned of the hit, or more exactly the real threat in a phone call to the Chicago FBI office[2].  The latter issued from a team of four Cubans who were the actual direct threat to Kennedy while a chosen patsy (Thomas Arthur Vallee) was designated to be arrested as the lone assassin in the IPP-Litho Plate building on West Jackson. (Similar to Lee Oswald at the Texas Book Depository)

 

A separate tip (warning) on Vallee came from Chicago Police Lt. Berkeley Moyland, who observed Vallee in a cafeteria and sized him up as “damaged unbalanced personality”. Evidently, it was remarks of Vallee concerning Kennedy that caused Moyland to phone in a tip to the Treasury Department (under which the Secret Service operates). Moyland received a call back from a Treasury official who committed him to absolute silence and was told: “Don’t write anything else about it. Don’t tell anybody about it. Just forget about it”.[3]

 

Thanks to Moyland’s alertness and “Lee’s” willingness to give a timely heads up, JFK got an extension of nearly two more weeks to live. The latter’s tip busted the main threat, with rifles recovered from a Chicago boarding house. The perpetrators, or planners, escaped. Thomas Arthur Vallee was arrested on a pretext just 2 ½ hours before JFK’s plane was to touch down at O’Hare. The main blessing, is that Vallee was spared the stigma of being identified as JFK’s assassin.

 

3.     What was the skinny on Vallee? Was his background similar to Oswald’s?

It was, and we can thank author James Douglass for his diligent work here, including interviewing Vallee’s sister.  Like Oswald, Vallee enlisted in the Marines, and for a 2^nd term starting in February, 1955. Also, like Oswald, he’d been assigned to a U-2 base, this one in Camp Otsu, Japan.  An extensive psychiatric evaluation by the Marines for his re-enlistment led to a diagnosis as exhibiting “schizophrenic reaction, paranoid type #3003”.[4]

 

While at Camp Otsu, Japan,  Vallee came under the control and manipulation of the CIA just as Oswald had while in the capacity of a radar operator at Atsugi, Japan. Also like Oswald, Vallee had trained with Cuban exiles,  in his case at Levittown, Long Island, while Oswald trained near Lake Pontchartrain, La.  In August, ’63, as Lee Oswald was preparing to move from New Orleans to Dallas, Vallee was preparing to move from New York to Chicago.[5]

 

Another salient fact: the New York license plate on Vallee’s 1962 Ford Falcon: 31-10RF, was later found to be restricted to U.S. intelligence agencies. This was learned after a relative of a Chicago NBC employee attempted to trace it and was told it was “frozen” and “only the FBI could obtain this information”.[6]

The single fact here is that, had  the informant “Lee” not called in a warning, we’d likely never have heard the name “Lee Harvey Oswald” – it would only have been Thomas Arthur Vallee. Reams and reams of words would be written about this “lone assassin” and the (earlier) Warren Commission set up would have found him the only assassin, despite the fact that he never had a chance to talk. (Likely eliminated just like Oswald). In which case the followup historical impetus wouldn’t be about the vindication of Lee Oswald, but of Thomas Vallee.

4.    With all the parallels in place it sounds suspiciously like the CIA had a program in place to churn out patsy lone assassins. True or not?

Your insights are spot –on. Former CIA Agent Victor Marchetti actually informed author Anthony Summers about this program[7]:

 

“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.”

 

Marchetti’s insights here help to explain a lot to do with the apparent quixotic behavior of Oswald. In this light, we see that Oswald’s entire defection to Russia was merely an intelligence ploy cooked up by the CIA or ONI. The overindulgence of Oswald while based at Atsugi is also now more understandable. Why else give him only six weeks or so in the brig for striking an enlisted officer, when normally it would be a court martial? Well, because they’d invested too much in him to have him meet that untimely and useless end!

5.     Would an Oswald “double” also factor into this? Help explain some of the strange behavior – like bragging about Russian cars to a Dallas auto dealer?

This is absolutely the case. The fact is there were just too many different sightings of Oswald, in too many different places to be attributed to one persona, or individual. The most critical and key sighting was made by Sgt. Robert Vinson who observed the Oswald double while on a flight back to Colorado Springs (to Ent AFB, while on the staff of NORAD), from Washington, D.C.[8]  Vinson “served as administrative supervisor of the electronics division and held a crypto-security clearance”, so he definitely was no derelict, loony, goofball or nut. Those nattering media nabobs today who blithely dismiss the whole notion of an Oswald double need to look carefully at Vinson's testimony instead of emulating ostriches.

 

 On November 22, Vinson took a bus to Andrews AFB to try to hitch a ride home on the first flight back to Colorado Springs (ibid.). He managed to secure space on a C-54 cargo plane, which bore no military markings or insignia.  On boarding, Vinson found the inside of the plane empty and then observed two men enter the plane via the cockpit door.

Most suspicious to Sgt. Vinson it that he wasn’t asked to sign a manifest (log), which was standard operating procedure whenever he hitched a ride with the Air Force.  En route, Vinson heard an unemotional voice simply report that “the president was shot at 12.29 p.m.”  By 3.30 p.m. Vinson saw the skyline he recognized as that of Dallas, and the plane turned and came in via a southeast direction, landing abruptly on a sandy flat near the Trinity River.  Two males, one Latino or Cuban and 6’ – 6’1” in height, the other Caucasian and 5’7” or so in height, boarded.

It was only after the fact, on landing and then accessing newspapers and TV coverage, that Vinson recognized the shorter male as the spitting image of Lee Oswald.  If not for Sgt. Vinson, the idea of an Oswald “double” might have remained forever in the realm of speculation or media claimed craziness, but as I showed earlier, others also made the observation at different times. It is also my contention that the real Lee Oswald never set foot in Mexico City. It was a totally different, heavyset male  mistaken for Oswald.

 

Meanwhile, the actual double was dispatched to conduct a host of outrageous behaviors to make the name ‘Oswald’ unforgettable: from going to a rifle range and firing at other users’ targets, to arriving at a Dallas gun shop and ordering a telescopic rifle sight while adding “I may be needing it in a few days” to firing rifle shots at General Walker and making a getaway (with a Latin or Cuban character) in a ’57 Chevrolet whose license plate was later rubbed out in a Warren Exhibit. (Bear in mind here, the real Lee Oswald didn’t drive, had no license.) To going to a Dallas car dealership and announcing that "if anyone wanted to give America an enema all he'd have to do is stick the nozzle right here in Dallas!"

 

The best optical-photographic evidence was prepared by specialist Jack White who spliced together two claimed "identical" photos of Oswald together at the chin interface.

It doesn't take any technical specialist ability to see how well all the features match except for the height differential.

 

 

Sec. B  E. Howard Hunt’s deathbed confession to Saint John Hunt

Note: E. Howard Hunt was one of the Watergate burglars with CIA affiliations, and also was in Dallas the day of the assassination. This section deals with his role in Dallas, confessed to his son, Saint John Hunt. 

 

 

1. Do you place any stock in the deathbed revelations of E. Howard Hunt regarding the assassination of JFK?

 

Actually, I do. Hunt in the context of both his NPR, and later literal (deathbed) revelations to his son (Saint John Hunt), noted that the closest book to describe the mechanics involved in the assassination was Weberman and Canfield’s Coup d’Etat in America. Having read it and studied the photos and documents therein, I am 99%  confident the photos shown (including one that is almost certainly Hunt in 1963) are legitimate and reveal at least some of the background mechanics.

 

Were these people capable of committing an assassination? Well, Frank Sturgis, as the authors document, had already murdered 61 pro-Batista supporters in cold blood, in Cuba in 1959. Castro ordered the killings as a pretext for Sturgis to openly demonstrate his loyalty to the revolution – since Castro plausibly figured he might be playing both sides of the table. Without hesitation, Sturgis aimed his weapon at the assembled supporters and mowed them down. If he had no compunction about slaughtering 61 people to prove a point,  he’d have none in eliminating one U.S. president, or at least playing a major role in it.

Interestingly, the sequence of photos of the “tramps” shown in the book, shows Sturgis, Hunt and one person identified to be a near-look alike of Lee Oswald’s. The trio were moving in the direction away from the Book depository and toward the railroad tracks. I’ve studied the photos with magnifiers and compared them to later photos of Hunt and Sturgis and both appear to be the same men, in their earlier years.

 

2. How would you confirm the two identities with an even higher probability?

This would require obtaining photos of the 1963 tramps, including the close-ups of their faces, and comparing them with later images – for example when both Sturgis and Hunt were apprehended in the Watergate break-in. Then, subjecting regions of the suspected same faces to a segmentation, pixel grid analysis of the described here:

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2013/11/analysis-of-pixel-diffusion-in-oswald.html

 

One would then obtain the coefficient of variation  to show the faces were not statistically different.

 

3. Did Hunt in his deathbed revelations indicate anything astounding or not otherwise known?
 

Well, perhaps not otherwise widely suspected. He indicated that LBJ was involved (which many already believed) and also CIA agent Cord Meyer – whose wife had had an affair with JFK.  Virtually none of this, zero, came out at the time or in the wake, but we have to remember that Cord Meyer was Washington Post Editor Ben Bradlee’s brother –in-law and that’s one likely reason The Washington Post has been amongst the least willing sources to accept the conspiracy thesis or even publish any disclosures that might point to such.

 

In the course of his deathbed disclosures, Hunt also connected Cord Meyer’s name to two other CIA Agents, David Morales (a vicious black op specialist)  and Bill Harvey. Recall that Harvey "headed Staff D, assigned the task of developing the CIA Assassinations Project, ZR/Rifle”. ( Peter Dale Scott (Deep Politics Quarterly, Jan. 1994).  CIA Staff D, a SIGINT or signals intelligence operation run in concert with the National Security  Agency or NSA.   In addition, as noted by Peter Dale Scott (op. cit.) Oswald’s 201 file – indicated the letter 'D' on the cover page - showing that Oswald was involved in this operation.

 

Most researchers who've delved into this in much more depth than superficial 'buffs' (unlike some, I distinguish 'buffs' - who approach the subject like dilettantes from serious researchers) 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 CIA asset, steered him into the job at the Book Depository.

 

 

A CIA accountant with top secret clearance named James Wilcott, testified  the original plan was to "kill Kennedy, link Oswald to Castro, and use this as a pretext to invade Cuba". (Mellen, Farewell to Justice, p. 178) Wilcott had passed three successive lie detector tests to this in preliminary questioning by HSCA investigators. (ibid.)   Wilcott further 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.).

 

Amazingly, however, historically befuddled idiots like John Kerry continue to regurgitate it - as Kerry did based on a UK Guardian report a week ago.

 

Lastly, Hunt also indicated a connection between Morales and a “French gunman on the grassy knoll” which most of the recent assassination researchers have taken to be Lucien Sarte, though some (e.g. Walt Brown) believe was Jean Soutre,  hired out of the Corsican Mafia. (As disclosed in the BBC series, ‘The Men Who Killed Kennedy’ via interview in France with Christian David). It therefore seems that Morales made connections with the Corsicans to hire Soutre, and this was probably at Cord Meyer’s behest.

 

4. Any connections with David Atlee Phillips?

Hunt indicated in a later, more exhaustive exchange that Meyer discussed the plot with Phillips, and also William Harvey and Antonio Veciana.  Veciana apparently then met with Frank Sturgis to hatch an initial plan to eliminate JFK in Miami (when he went on Nov. 18 ) and also recruited Morales for the purpose.  LBJ then altered the itinerary to Dallas.

 

Likely the last occurred (I am conjecturing here- since this wasn’t part of Hunt’s disclosures) after J. Edgar Hoover (Johnson’s dear friend as revealed in numerous “Dear Edgar” letters) learned from an FBI informant (William Sommerset) in Miami that a plan was afoot to shoot Kennedy with a high powered rifle from a tall building. So, the stage was changed to Dallas, which was actually much more advantageous since given Johnson’s connections he’d be able to enlist the support of the Dallas Police, as well as ensure evidence could be “managed” wherever it appeared.

 

 

5. Isn’t that going a bit far? That Johnson would even think he could manage or manipulate whole chains of evidence?

 
 

Not really. Bear in mind this is the same character that went to extraordinary lengths to either remove or destroy all negative references and images of him appearing in college yearbooks, college newspaper articles available at Southwestern State Teacher College in San Marcos, Texas.   Evidently, while still an undergrad, Johnson arranged through the president of the college to have excised from all copies of the college yearbook any material that would give clues to his years there. Presumably in case they might prove detrimental to fully attaining any future ambitions.  This, in fact, is the template for how he managed evidence (not to mention the pseudo- investigation) in the wake of the Kennedy hit. As Author Robert A. Caro has put it ( The Path to Power: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Vol. I, pp. xviii-xix  )

 

“Lyndon Johnson not only attempted to create and leave for history his own legend, but to ensure that it could never be disproven.”

6. Was anything about Hunt’s confession reported anywhere in the media?

 

 

Not by the corporate mainstream, but in Rolling Stone, Apr. 5, 2007, ‘The Last Confessions of E. Howard Hunt’, in an article by Erik Hedegard. As the author specifically noted:

“The "deathbed confession" audio tape in which former CIA agent and Watergate conspirator E. Howard Hunt admits he was approached to be part of a CIA assassination team to kill JFK was aired this weekend - an astounding development that has gone completely ignored by the establishment media.

 

Saint John Hunt, son of E. Howard Hunt, appeared on the nationally syndicated Coast to Coast Live radio show on Saturday night to discuss the revelations contained in the tape.

 

Hunt said that his father had mailed cassette the tape to him alone in January 2004 and asked that it be released after his death. The tape was originally 20 minutes long but was edited down to four and a half minutes for the Coast to Coast broadcast. Hunt promises that the whole tape will be uploaded soon at his website.”
 

He goes on, especially key aspects:

 

“E. Howard Hunt names numerous individuals with both direct and indirect CIA connections as having played a role in the assassination of Kennedy, while describing himself as a "bench warmer" in the plot. Saint John Hunt agreed that the use of this term indicates that Hunt was willing to play a larger role in the murder conspiracy had he been required.

Hunt alleges on the tape that then Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson was involved in the planning of the assassination and in the cover-up, stating that LBJ, "Had an almost maniacal urge to become president, he regarded JFK as an obstacle to achieving that."

In the end, like most critical pieces of evidence (including anecdotal) in the assassination, there will be those who have a basis to accept it and others to reject it. The tragedy is, in E. Howard Hunt’s case and given he had nothing to lose, we are basically seeing the first genuine honesty going forward in this horrific event – and gaining an insight into some of the actual players. Unfortunately, most Americans will likely ignore it, because they’ve been propagandized and conditioned to do so by the corporate press, which, despite its almost universal disdain for getting at the truth of the JFK assassination, yet has the time, money and energy to squander on “Balloon Boy” hoaxes.

 

 

 

---

[1] J. Douglass, op. cit. p. 206.

[2] Op. cit., p. 207.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Op. cit. p. 205.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Op. cit. p. 203.

[7] Op. cit. p. 40.

[8] Douglass, op. cit. pp. 299-300. All the details to do with Vinson’s encounter are from Douglass’ book.

'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.)