The Anatomy of Assassination – By
L. Fletcher Prouty – From Uncloaking The CIA (Edited by Howard Frazier, The
Free Press, Macmillan, 1978, p. 196-209)
Assassination
is big business. In fact, assassination is the business of big business and of
the CIA and of any other power center that
can pay for the “hit” and control the assured getaway. Rare is the
individual “nut” who even gets a chance to shoot a chief of state or other big
figure. The CIA brags that its operations in Iran in 1953 led to the pro-Western
alignment of that important country. It takes credit for what it calls the
“perfect job” in Guatemala. Both were achieved by assassination. In the
Dominican Republic, Trujillo was removed by assassination . In Vietnam, Ngo
Dinh Diem was removed by assassination. In both countries the hand of the CIA
was evident. But what is this assassination business? How does it really work?
How is it set up?
In
all but a handful of countries around the world, power simply rests in the
hands of those who have it until someone else is strong enough to take it away.
There is little or no provision for change. The strongman stays in power until
he dies or is removed by a coup d’etat, which often mean by assassination…
What,
then, are the actual mechanics of an assassination? (In the business, the
assassin – the professional secret murderer – is in fact, called a “mechanic.”
) How is an assassination made? If the CIA is involved, how does the CIA lay it
on? The reality is much different from the usual picture. There is not some
young character – an Oswald, a Ray, a Sirhan, or a Bremer – who broods over
things for months, who writes a queer diary, who sends away for a mail-order
gun and then draws attention to himself by all manner of strange activities.
These are the characteristics of the “patsy” and the cover story. The real
assassination scenario is quite different.
Foreign
assassination, and to a degree domestic murders of that kind, are set in motion
not so much by a definite plan to kill the intended victim as by a sinister
plan to remove or relax the protective organization that is absolutely
essential to keep the victim/leader alive. If the CIA lets it be known, ever so
secretly, that it is displeased with a certain ruler and that it would not
raise a finger against a new regime, you may be sure that some cabal will move
against that ruler…..
Murder
is the violent and unlawful killing of one human being by another.
Assassination is murder, but the motivation and sometimes the method is
different. Historically assassination is the murder of the enemies of a
religious sect as a sacred religious duty. The assassin is a professional
secret murderer who kills for someone else or for a great cause. In many cases
today, the religious called “anti-communism” is such a greater cause….
We
re now finally beginning to hear much about the CIA and the subject of
assassinations, both domestic and foreign…
….By
the summer of 1963 ( a summer that we should write about and research a lot
more because it was a very important period),…By August of 1963 memoranda were
being circulated in the highest offices of the U.S. government. (At the time I
was working in the office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.) These papers were so
secret that they were unmarked, with no classification, and hand-carried from
“need-to-know” person to “need-to-know” person. If papers are really that
secret, you don’t put “top secret” stamps on them, or “eyes only” stamps on
them, or registered numbers on them. You don’t put anything on them….
The
actual killing was a simple thing, “for the good of the cause.” The USA and the
CIA could wash their hands of it. They had nothing to do with it. Like all
assassinations, it had just happened….
Since
World War II there have been hundreds of coup d’etats, a common euphemism for
assassination. The list will grow for as long as the United States chooses to
do its diplomatic work clandestinely….
Practitioners
of the profession of assassination by the removal of power reach the point
where they see that the technique as one fit for the removal of any opposition
anywhere. Thus it was that President Kennedy was killed – not by some lone
gunman, not by some limited conspiracy, but by the breakdown of the very system
that should have functioned to make an assassination impossible. Once insiders
knew that he would not be protected, it was easy to pick the day and the place.
In fact, those responsible for luring him to that place on that day were not
even in on the plan itself.
The
President went to Texas innocuously enough to dedicate a hospital facility at
Brooks Air Force Base in San Antonio. That simple event brought him to the
state. It was not too difficult then to get him to stop at Fort Worth “to mend
political fences” and accept the plaudits and the backslaps and thee promises
of votes from the millionaires and the billionaires at General Dynamics who had
just bought off the tremendous $6.5 billion contract for the TFX, a plane that
hasn’t flown very well even yet. And, of course, no good politician would go to
Fort Worth and skip Dallas. All the conspirators had to do after that was to
let the right “mechanics” know that the President would be there, when he would
be there, what time he would be there and, most importantly, that the usual
precautions would not have been made and that escape would be facilitated.
This
is the greatest single key to that assassination: Who had the power to call off
or drastically reduce the usual security precautions that are always in effect
– by law – whenever a President travels? The answer to this question is more
important to me than a genealogy of Lee Harvey Oswald or the people on the
grassy knoll.
