The Latest NSA Outrage - And What Snowden Sought to Protect

Even as another militarist (Michael Rogers) is named by Obama to head the NSA, we've learned about the latest NSA outrage: that NSA and its Brit sidekick GCHQ are grabbing up data from smart phone apps, and even games like 'Angry Birds'. Enjoy  'Angry Birds?  Then you're likely now compiled into the NSA's "Main Core" program, along with proven "enemies of the state" and others (e.g. fracking protestors, and OWS folks) deemed such.

We know that with each new generation of mobile phone technology, ever greater amounts of personal data pour onto networks where spies like those ensconced in NSA can pick it up.   According to dozens of previously undisclosed classified documents, as reported by the NY Times yesterday, among the most valuable of those unintended intelligence tools are so-called leaky apps that spew everything from users’ smartphone identification codes to where they have been that day.

As The Times observes:

The N.S.A. and Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters were working together on how to collect and store data from dozens of smartphone apps by 2007, according to the documents, provided by Edward J. Snowden, the former N.S.A. contractor. Since then, the agencies have traded recipes for grabbing location and planning data when a target uses Google Maps, and for vacuuming up address books, buddy lists, phone logs and the geographic data embedded in photos when someone sends a post to the mobile versions of Facebook, Flickr, LinkedIn, Twitter and other services.

Of course, WH tool Jay Carney denied it all, but what would you expect when the snoops probably have all sorts of stuff on him, as well the Obama WH - likely making subtle threats to undermine Obama's legacy and programs (the ACA)  if he doesn't "play ball".  Bear in mind the snoops also had JFK under the gun (literally), as they laid out an assassination program against Fidel (ZR/Rifle) which was then turned on Kennedy. As Peter Dale Scott has reported (Deep Politics Quarterly, Jan. 1994)  this was operated under the NSA and the CIA's  William Harvey with the 'Staff D' connection betrayed on the front cover of Oswald's 201 file. (This indicated a SIGINT or signals intelligence operation run in concert with the National Security Agency or NSA.)

The Times went on to note:

The eavesdroppers’ pursuit of mobile networks has been outlined in earlier reports, but the secret documents, shared by The New York Times, The Guardian and ProPublica, offer far more details of their ambitions for smartphones and the apps that run on them. The efforts were part of an initiative called “the mobile surge,” according to a 2011 British document, an analogy to the troop surges in Iraq and Afghanistan. One N.S.A. analyst’s enthusiasm was evident in the breathless title — “Golden Nugget!” — given to one slide for a top-secret 2010 talk describing iPhones and Android phones as rich resources, one document notes.

Can anyone believe this? And also the arrogance to outright deny it when the evidence is clear?

The Times again:

Two top-secret flow charts produced by the British agency in 2012 show incoming streams of information skimmed from smartphone traffic by the Americans and the British. The streams are divided into “traditional telephony” — metadata — and others marked “social apps,” “geo apps,” “http linking,” webmail, MMS and traffic associated with mobile ads, among others. (MMS refers to the mobile system for sending pictures and other multimedia, and http is the protocol for linking to websites.)

You want to know why the congress can't support food stamps for our millions of hungry kids, or unemployment benefits for  out of luck long term unemployed? Look no further than this nugget from the Times:

As the program accelerated, the N.S.A. nearly quadrupled its budget in a single year, to $767 million in 2007 from $204 million, according to a top-secret Canadian analysis written around the same time.
 

Got that? Over three fourths of a billion for these snoops. For what? Well to keep the national security state expanding! And they know millions are dumb enough to believe the transparent bilge of "protecting us from terrorists" when the real terrorists are the random mass killers that can open up on innocent kids in a school, a mall, or a movie theater. But the NSA doesn't want to face down the likes of the NRA, oh no! Nor does a cowardly congress. It's easier to confect bogeyman terrorists than to challenge the real enablers. As Baltimore Sun columnist Dan Rodricks wrote after the mass shooting in the Columbia Mall:
 

"We have spent billions of dollars in the fight against terrorism — the National Security Agency is maybe 10 miles from the Columbia Mall — when the real terror is right here in our midst, accounting for thousands upon thousands of premature deaths by homicide and suicide, most often impulsive acts made possible by access to guns."

 The Times went on to point out:

Smartphones almost seem to make things too easy. Functioning as phones — making calls and sending texts — and as computers — surfing the web and sending emails — they generate and also rely on data. One secret report shows that just by updating Android software, a user sent nearly 500 lines of data about the phone’s history and use onto the network.
 

Meanwhile, there remain millions of pretend Americans - those who don't deserve liberty because they overvalue a phony security - who will blow these revelations off and still call for Edward Snowden's head. (That he be "brought to trial" - when the format would not even allow him to call public witnesses on his behalf).  I have nothing but contempt for these Americans when my own ancestor, Conrad Brumbaugh, fought in the Revolutionary War for the liberties now being trampled under.

So what did Snowden seek to protect by his disclosures? None other than privacy! As I noted in my June 8 blog post from 2013, secure in one’s person, house, papers, effects” the Fourth amendment implies PRIVACY! These are after all MY private papers, my private effects, my house, etc. If an inherent right to privacy was a myth then by all accounts being secure in one’s person, papers, effects wouldn’t matter.  Beyond that, privacy encapsulate an affirmation of our worth as autonomous humans as opposed to being slaves and pawns of the state.

The cornerstones can be said to be:

-  Personal autonomy (the ability to make personal decisions)

- Individuality  
-  Respect
- Dignity

 -Worth as human beings
 

As one privacy source puts it:

Privacy allows us to make our own decisions free from coercion, to totally be oneself and potentially engage in behavior that might deviate from social norms. It allows us the time and space for self-evaluation. Informational privacy is seen as enhancing individual autonomy by allowing individuals control over who may access different parts of their personal information. It also allows people to maintain their dignity, to keep some aspect of their life or behavior to themselves simply because it would be embarrassing for other people to know about it.

Privacy also allows people to protect their assets or to avoid sharing information with others who would use it against them, such as discrimination by employers, educators, or insurers. The ability to control one’s information has value even in the absence of any shameful or embarrassing or other tangibly harmful circumstances.

Privacy is also required for developing interpersonal relationships with others. While some emphasize the need for privacy to establish intimate relationships, others take a broader view of privacy as being necessary to maintain a variety of social relationships.

By giving us the ability to control who knows what about us and who has access to us, privacy allows us to alter our behavior with different people so that we may maintain and control our various social relationships. For example, people may share different information with their boss than they would with their doctor, as appropriate with their different relationships.

Most discussions on the value of privacy focus on its importance to the individual. Privacy can be seen, however, as also having value to society as a whole. Privacy furthers the existence of a free society. Large databases, potential national identifiers and wide-scale surveillance, can be seen as threatening not only individual rights or interests but also the nature of our society. For example, preserving privacy from wide-spread surveillance can be seen as protecting not only the individual’s private sphere, but also society as a whole: privacy contributes to the maintenance of the type of society in which we want to live.

------

Minus privacy and its inherent defense via the 4th amendment, we thereby become like  "Winston" the pathetic character from Orwell's '1984' whose flat is riddled with two-way monitors with the image of 'Big Brother'. Winston can't even take a crap without Big Brother's beady, baleful eyes staring down at him. THINK about THAT! When he has sex Big Brother is in the room, and the first thing in the morning Winston's ordered by the Oceania Officer on the screen to do his calisthenics and if he loses tempo for an instant he must repeat them.

This is the world we effectively have now via NSA mass snoop technology, and the only reason over three fifths of my countrymen want Snowden taken to a trial is they can't see the value of what he's done. They can't see that had he not done it there'd have been NO scrutiny at all on this secretive agency which Sen. Frank Church once warned us about in frightening terms:

 "I know the capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America. And we must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision so that we never cross that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return"- 

 

To me, this makes the mock Americans who want Snowden tried no better than the good Germans of the Nazi era.  Those degenerates sided with Hitler, praised him and embraced his ideology while turning a blind eye to the multifold wrongs. The last straw was the Enabling Act (1933) which essentially obliterated the last vestiges of the Weimar Republic. These "good Germans" - state loyalists to a fault-  lost the last vestiges of their democracy from right under their miserable noses because they were too dismissive of the clear warning signs all around them. They had it nice and comfy thanks to Herr Hitler, so why rock the boat?

After our military dragged these “good Germans”  into the remnant concentration camps-  to see first hand what their Fuhrer and his minions did- they wished to hell they had rocked the boat. They were marched in and forced to look at the naked, gassed bodies stacked like cordwood until they puked.

Meanwhile, our then military leaders rounded up the remaining high profile Nazis, including Hermann Goering (see photo below) ,


 and dragged them before a Tribunal to be accountable for their actions. "Following orders" was not an acceptable defense! Under the Nuremberg laws and specifically its Principle IV,  the defendants had to have operated under a higher moral order or conscience, damned the "orders", "oaths" or any other contrived legalistic mumbo-jumbo designed to maintain silence in the face of atrocity.

If a person dismisses the NSA's latest outrages, namely the smart phone metadata seizures, or doesn't believe privacy ought to exist anymore anyway because "someone can always find out about you" then whether they know it or not they're like the good Germans. I'd even go further, and say they're no different from Martin Borman or Hermann Goering.
 

What would my Revolutionary War ancestor  think about these "Americans" now,  nearly 240 years after the War of Independence? He’d likely barf nonstop at the spectacle of what too many of the current crop have devolved to: arrant, ignorant, whiny, weak, sissy consumers,  who’d rather calumniate someone trying to preserve their liberties than recognize the real threat to their existence. He’d then likely crawl back into his grave shaking his head but echoing Benjamin Franklin’s famous quote:

"Those who would sacrifice liberty for a temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety"

 Am I a civil liberties “extremist”? Damned right if that means a citizen who understands that the Constitution is not just “a piece of paper” (as Bush once called it) and that the rights inherent in the Bill of Rights are real, apply to individuals, and not mere “compromise abstractions” but rather hold the key to American identity – what truly sets us apart. And once those rights are gone, believe me they won’t be coming back!

Those quaking in their boots at Snowden's continued disclosures would do well to bear in mind the words of Bruce Schneier, a security specialist, who wrote in The New York Times last July 3rd:


"The argument that exposing these documents helps the terrorists doesn't even pass the laugh test; there's nothing here that changes anything any potential terrorist would do or not do."

BINGO!

See also:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/robert-scheer/53895/who-needs-the-gestapo-when-you-have-angry-birds

 

 

 

 

'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.)

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.