Unified Field Theory of Dealey Plaza
Bill Kelly (billkelly3@gmail.com)
It was a revelation to read Steven Hawkings “A Brief History of Time” and Bill O'Reilly's “Killing Kennedy” back-to-back as both try to make very complicated events easily understood by ordinary people by using basic English, common sense and reason.
Sort of like the early comic-current event paperback - “Cuba for Beginners,” and its subsequent off spring, Hawkings and O'Reilly try to easily explain complex subjects, and while Hawkings succeeds, O'Reilly just doesn't get it.
“Some are uncomfortable with issues like these because they so vividly expose the limitations of human understanding,” says Hawkings. “It turns out to be very difficult to devise a theory to describe the universe all in one go. Instead, we break the problem up into bits and invent a number of partial theories. Each of the partial theory describes and predicts a certain limited class of observations, neglecting the effects of the other quantities...”
Hawkings: “Today scientists describe the universe in terms of two basic partial theories – the general theory of relativity and quantum mechanics - the great intellectual achievements of the first half of the century. The general theory of relatively describes the force of gravity and the larger scale structure of the universe,....while quantum mechanics....deals with phenomena on extremely small scales....however, unfortunately, these two theories are known to be inconsistent with each other – they cannot both be correct.”
“These are questions of interest to us all. But modern science has become so technical that only a very small number of specialists are able to master the mathematics used to describe them. Yet the basic idea....can be stated in a form that people without a scientific education can understand. This is what I have attempted to do....”
And Hawkings does a splended job of describing the evolution of man's knowledge and understanding, from the belief in a flat earth to the round earth being the center of the Universe to the earth revolving around the sun and the sun being a part of the galaxy to the understanding that there are many millions of galaxies in the known, observable universe, and that if the Big Bang theory is true, then time began at that instant and hasn't stood still since.
In the same vein our understanding of what happened at Dealey Plaza should have gone through a similar evolution in accepted knowledge, and just as the two basic theories of relativity and quantum mechanics can't both be correct, JFK was either murdered by one man alone or he was killed in a more complicated conspiracy that we are still trying to figure out.
But instead of taking in all of the important research and investigations that have been held over the past fifty years, Bill O'Reilly stands till in time as if the Warren Commission Report got it right after all. It’s only a little bit better than Jim Bishop’s “The Day Kennedy Was Shot,” without bothering to mention all of what we’ve learned since then.
For starters, if Oswald was the lone assassin of JFK, wounded Governor Connally and James Tague and then killed Officer Tippit at another location, the crime is technically a spree killing, and if Oswald, the primary suspect did it all alone, he was either crazy or he was the best Lone Wolf assassin in history, and if true the facts of the case should indicate that. But they don't - Oswald wasn't crazy, did not have a clear motive, and claimed to be a patsy - someone framed for the crime he didn’t commit, as some of the evidence suggests.
Just as Hawking suggests breaking down the big issues into smaller parts that can be more easily studied, and some of the problems and issues that divide the Lone Nut and Conspiracy crowds can be mutually resolved.
JFK himself said that “problems caused by man can be solved by man,” and no matter how complex the issues are, we can figure them out if the attempt is made to do so.
For instance it should be easily determined if it was possible for one man alone could have done all of the things attributed to him, or whether he was what he said he was, framed as the patsy.
If one man alone did it all then all of the evidence should support that contention and fall into place, but it doesn't.
I think it can be determined to a certainty whether the fatal head shot originated from the front or behind, certainly something that science and physics can determine to a certainty.
If Oswald was the lone sniper the Dealey Plaza Kill Zone would revolve around him, the center of action in which everything else reacts to, but if can be proven that Oswald was not capable of doing the shooting let alone devising the plan and successfully executing it alone, and he was after all just what he said he was, - framed as the patsy, then JFK must have been shot by someone else, and suspects other than Oswald must exist – and they do. [See: Other Suspects]
If Oswald was the lone gunman and the assassination was the random act of a madman, then Oswald's personality profile would indicate that he was a paranoid skidzo with psycho tendencies, and his personality would be studied intently by psychologists, but it’s not.
Instead, Oswald fits the Covert Operational Personality (COP) profile – one that fits very defined and unique character traits – including training in foreign language and the crafts and techniques of intelligence, the use of aliases, post office boxes and keeping an apartment separate from the family.
[See: COP PP http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2013/12/assassination-psychology-and-cop-profile.htmlh / http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2009/08/covert-operational-profile.html ]
Just as Hawking says theories and models are used to try to determine the true state of universal affairs, theories and models can be used to better understand what happened at Dealey Plaza.
Hawkins: “A theory is a model, or a restricted part of it, and a set of rules that relate quantities in the model to observations that we make.”
A more general definition of a theory is “the analysis of a set of facts in their relation to one another; a belief, policy or procedure proposed or followed as a basis of action; a plausible or accepted general principles offered to explain a phenomena; a hypothesis assumed for the sake of argument or investigation; an unprovable assumption.”
Just as the flat earth was eventually replaced by the model of the solar system, the Lone Nut scenario that has been used to explain what happened at Dealey Plaza has been replaced by a slew of conspiracy theories, none of which take in all of the known facts, making both models unacceptable, so a new one must be created.
Doug Horne, in his five volume series of books “Inside the Assassination Records Review Board,” calls attention to a book that I recall as a college text book, “The Nature of Scientific Revolutions,” which describes how major scientific breakthroughs occurred, and as with Hawkings, he suggests that while some happened by accident or determination, taking a new and different approach to the problem often provided the new perspective to solve it.
Since we can't really develop a total and complete theory of what happened at Dealey Plaza until all of the evidence, records and documents are in and released to the public by October 2017, we can safely say that neither the Lone Nut nor the Conspiracy Theory works because neither fits all of the known facts.
Besides the Lone Nut and Conspiracy Theory approach to Dealey Plaza, both of which only utilize the facts that supports their basic contentions, there are two other investigative approaches – the Criminal Investigative and Counter-Intelligence CI investigative approach, both vastly different in goals.
The Criminal Investigation, like those usually conducted by the police and law enforcement officers, seeks to identify forensic evidence and preserve it so it can be used in a court of law, presented to a grand jury and used to indict those suspected of crimes so they can be tried before a judge and jury.
A Counter-Intelligence Investigation CII is an investigation commissioned to determine the truth that can be known, often operates in secret, and uses unconventional methods (wire taps and garbage search) and sometimes illegal (break and enter black bag jobs) as a means to learn the full truth.
Both “The Day of the Jackal” and David Atlee Phillips fictional “The Carlos Contract” show how CI - Counter-Intelligence investigations are properly conducted in attempting to track down a Lone Wolf assassin, “Carlos” being “Carlos the Jackal” who was involved in the German Olympics attack and is now in a French prison, while Frederick Forthsite's novel was made into a popular movie that depicts an attempted assassination on French President Charles deGaul by a clever OAS assassin.
In each case the suspects infiltrate the investigations as soon as they learn of them, and I'm sure the Dealey Plaza clean-up crew will be interested in what is learned about them from any CI investigation, and there have been a number of them – by the US Marine Corps, Hunt Oil and some wealthy individuals have conducted private investigations.
Just as Hawkins breaks down the complicated theories of relativity and quantum mechanics into smaller, more controlled sub models, we have studied the assassination in various parts – the Zapruder film, the acoustics, Oswald's movements, defection to USSR, summer in New Orleans, Mexico City, etc. and various specialist concentrate on just one aspect of the case.
The MO – Modus Operandi of Dealey Plaza – the sniper ambush – is a telling sign in itself.
[ http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2010/10/modus-operandi.html ]
Major General Llewellyn W. Atcheriey - Developed the Modus Operandi - MO - system of maintenance of records and files of classifications and types of crimes and criminals.
“The Policeman” (p. 191) By Cornelius Francis Cahalane:
“The policeman, upon investigation of a crime in which he found a familiar mode of operation, would look up the records of various thieves who usually committed the crime in a like manner. If such a person were at large, and he had no promising leads in another direction, he eliminated all other suspects and confined his efforts to a scrutiny of the thieves who he knew from past experience used methods of operation similar to those used by the thief who committed the crime under investigation.”
“Policeman who followed this system usually kept the information to themselves; some used a book, while others relied upon their memory. The need of spreading this information to all members of the Force, and of not confining it exclusively to the man making the investigation, prompted the compiling of a system by Major General Llewellyn W. Atcherley, Inspector of Constabulary, Office of the Home Secretary.”
“It is contended for this system that it tends to narrow the search by a process of elimination of those not known to the police, and of those who are known but who do not commit this certain crime, or, if so, have always committed it differently from the manner found in connection with the crime under investigation.”
“This system is helpful in many instances, but too much reliance cannot be placed upon it. There are some instances where thieves have committed the same crime in the same way for years, or until caught and convicted. This system is helpful, but not infallible….The big thing to be remembered is that the information he gathers is to be used as a comparison with other records on file.”
APPLYING THE MODUS OPERANDI SYSTEM TO DEALEY PLAZA
In applying Atcheriey's MO System to Dealey Plaza, the choice is pretty easy, and a very clear line in the sand - and that is whether the assassination of the President was the result of the impulsive, spontaneous actions of one Deranged Lone-Nut Case, whose individual psychosis can be classified in the realm of medical diagnosis, or was it a covert action, a pre-arranged plan that was meant be secret.
If the former, then we can all go home and let the psychiatrists and psychologists analysize the psychosis of a madman, and the assassination was disconnected to any of the political and historical activities of the day, while if the latter, they were all connected, and therefor can be figured out.
But all of the evidence taken together strongly indicates that whatever happened at Dealey Plaza, the Modus Operandi of the crime was that of a covert intelligence operation, a Black Op designed to remain secret, planned in advance as an illegal act, conducted on a need to know basis using standard covert operational tradecraft and acted out so it was plausibly denialable by the actual sponsors.
Even if Lee Harvey Oswald was the Lone Sniper in the Sixth Floor Window and killed the President in line with the Single-bullet Theory, especially if Oswald was involved in any way, rather than the act of a Lone Mad Man, the assassination must be considered a covert intelligence operation - and investigated as such.
The Modus Operandi behind the assassination of President Kennedy must be considered a covert intelligence operation because the facts of the case indicate that - 1) Those individuals who expressed foreknowledge of the murder; 2) Many if not most of the principle characters were trained in covert intelligence operations, utilized tradecraft and had direct intelligence agency/network associations; 3) deception and traceable disinformation was utilized; 4) There were, as former Senator Richard Schweiker (R.Pa.) put it, "fingerprints of intelligence" all over the place.
As detailed in the study of the use of the Modus Operandi System, it is not perfect, and is only a tool of investigation that eleminates some and narrows down the number of suspects that should be investigated.
The MO System, when applied to Dealey Plaza, does not tell you who was responsible for the crime, but does provide a method for approaching the crime in a way that can lead to its resolution
THE DEALEY PLAZA MO – Military Style Ambush with Psychwar Twist
On September 21, 1962 an American security agent interviewed M. Andre Ducret, a high ranking French detective and security officer about an assassination attempt on French President deGaul and reported that: “Investigation of the August 22 attempt disclosed that the ambush had been organized and directed by a person with military experience and this was immediately noted. The tactics employed were similar to those used by the infantry in attacking convoys.... Jean-Marie Bastien-Thiry, the aeronautical military engineer who was...apprehended and who admitted having organized the attempt revealed during the course of his interrogation that if the itinerary followed by the President had been known earlier and more important the line-up of the vehicles, his tactics would have been different and more effective.”
I believe that it was the same MO – Modus Operandi that was used at Dealey Plaza – “a military style ambush” that was “organized and directed by a person with military experience,” and the primary suspect, as former US Marine defector to the Soviet Union certainly supports that contention.
In the same vein, in breaking down what happened into smaller issues to study, I would like to take just one part of the Dealey Plaza puzzle – the Psychwar Twist - as I think that it cuts to the chase and leads directly to those actually responsible for whatever you believe happened.
Forget for a moment the details of the crime, and look at the case studies we've received that attempt to blame the assassination on Fidel Castro and Castro Cuban Communists.
The whole idea that there was a planned, coordinated and orchestrated effort to blame Castro is part of what Sen. Richard Schweiker (R. Pa.) called “the fingerprints of intelligence,” and belies that fact that one man alone could not have committed the crime and manipulated the media to consider such an allegation without foundation.
The whole idea that a psych-war black propaganda operation was conducted at the same time as the assassination, many including the alleged assassin, is evidence itself that the assassination was a well-planned and successfully executed plot, and one that can be understood even though it was designed with built in covert deceptions to shield the real sponsors of the assassination.
For beginners, such psych war, black propaganda and covert operational techniques are not generally known or utilized except by those who have been properly trained, and therefore the suspects are automatically limited to a small number of potential masterminds who could have pulled off such a feat, men like Ed Lansdale, David Atlee Phillips, E. Howard Hunt, James Jesus Angleton, David Morales, Jake Esterline and maybe a few others who have successfully kept their roles secret, as planned.
We know most about such operations when they fail – such as the Bay of Pigs and Watergate, while the successes – like Dealey Plaza, go without proper investigation.
Grand Universal Field Theory of DP
Stephen Hawkings in "A Brief History of Time," says that because the universe is so big the problems associated with understanding it are broken into smaller more manageable issues. "We break up problems into bits and invent a number of partial theories," Hawking says, an approach I want to apply to Dealey Plaza.
Just as the two basic theoretical enigmas - the general theory of relativity and quantum mechanics are incompatible and both can't be correct, the conclusions of the Warren Report or the HSCA Final Report are incompatible and one must be wrong.
Rather than taking either side of an uncompromising debate I suggest a different approach be taken and like scientists answering questions about the cosmos, we break up the Dealey Plaza issues - not only into more easily managed areas - acoustics, ballistics, graphics, medical, etc., but also try to answer more reasonable questions - such as:
1) The direction of the head shot -
2) The number of gunman
3) Oswald's role - Sniper or Patsy?
4) Was Oswald on missions to Moscow and Mexico City?
5) Dealey Plaza Modus Operandi - Military style ambush
6) What evidence and records have been destroyed? By who?
7) What evidence and records are missing?
8) How many documents are still being with held?
9) Are there any more records or witnesses out there?
10) Was a Psych-War Black Propaganda Program used?
Killing Bill O'Reilly
Just as Stephen Hawkings tried to present the story of the history of time and the universe in such a way that ordinary people could understand it, Bill O’Reilly said that was his goal in writing “Killing Kennedy,” and he had the opportunity to do that but just didn’t get it.
http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2015/03/killing-bill-oreilly.html
Bill O'Reilly's "Killing Kennedy" is the Archie Bunker version of history, as is O'Reilly's claim to be knocking on George deMohrenschildt's door when "he heard the blast that marked the suicide of the Russian, assuring that his relationship with Lee Harvey Oswald would never be fully understood."
Rest assured we know all about deMohrenschildt's relationship with Oswald, the designated patsy, and it can be fully understood.
While much of this book can be attributed to or blamed on O'Reilly's co-author Martibn Dugard, this part of the book is all O'Reilly, and the key element in the story isn't that he exagerated or fabricated his presence at the scene at the time of death and was an ear witness to the gun blast, the key element in the story is deMohrenschildt's relationship with Oswald, the accused assassin, and that can be fully understood, as more is known now and we will learn more about it as the still secret records are released.
The key element in this story and what is wrong about "Killing Kennedy" is that the president was not the victim of a deranged loner, as disgraced Gerald Posner, John McAdams, Hugh Aynesworth and Bill O'Reilly would have you believe, but the alternative is more likely and that Lee Harvey Oswald was an intelligence operative framed as the designated patsy, as he claimed, and JFK was the victim of a covert intelligence operation, as deMohrenschildt, Fonzi, Fonzi's boss Sen. Richard Schewiker and others believe.
George deMohrenschildt is a colorful character and the subject of many books, however for our purposes we only need to know a few pertinent facts - who he was, how he met Oswald, how he assisted Oswald, how he introduced them to the Paines and what he did in Haiti at the time of the assassination.
The equation changes when we ask who was Lee Harvey Oswald, because its one thing if George deMohrenschilt assisted the lone assassin of the president and quite another thing if he helped set up the designated patsy in a much more complicated conspiracy.
The Belorussian son of a Russian Czarist oil minister, deMohrenschildt attended a Polish military academy, studied oil geology, played polo and was an international playboy who was married three times - the first to a young model, the second time to a Philadelphia physician Dr. De De Sharples, whose father owned an oil company that employed deMohrenschildt, and a third time to Jean, whose father ran the Trans-Siberian Railroad in China.
Two children from his second marriage were born handicapped, so they established a non-profit research foundation that enjoyed the support of deMohrenschildt's old family friend Jackie Bouvier Kennedy and her husband, then Senator John F. Kennedy, but deMohrenschildt isn't the only person who knew both JFK and his accused assassin, as Priscilla Johnson McMillan and the Moscow Navy attache present when Oswald defected also knew both men.
To celebrate his third marriage deMohresnchildt and his wife took a walkabout Central America writing reports that later ended up in government files and a documentary film that details their arrival in Guatemala as the Cuban exiles were getting ready to invade Cuba at the Bay of Pigs.
In Texas deMohrenschildt worked for oil wildcat John Mecom, who established the San Jacinto fund, a CIA conduit, and sent deMohrenschildt to Europe, and when he returned deMohrenschildt was debriefed by J. Walton Moore, the head of the CIA's Domestic Contacts Division in Dallas. DeMohrenschildt would meet with Moore before and after he traveled overseas, and Moore became a friend and frequent dinner companion of the deMohrenschildt. A former OSS officer during World War II, Moore was sent on a mission to China with Charles Ford, an Atlantic City native and Princeton graduate who was a CIA training officer except for his one foray into CIA covert operations as a liason between the mobsters involved in CIA plots to kill Castro and RFK when he was head of the Cuban Task Force.
DeMohrenschildt also associated with others in government, defense industry security and the oil business, including Max Clark, who worked in security at General Dynamics, retired Admiral Chester Bruton, a Collins Radio executive, Jean deMenil, Sam Ballen and George Bouhe, "who kept the files on newcomers."
Among the "new comers" were Lee and Marina Oswald, who Moore encouraged deMohrenschildt to meet, and said Oswald was a "harmless lunatic."
White Russian Colonel Lawrence Orlov was with deMohrenschildt when he first visited Oswald and Orlov in turn, was a frequent racket ball partner of J. Walton Moore, the CIA's man in Dallas.
DeMohrenschildt tried to assist Oswald get a job, first with Sam Ballen, whose office Oswald visited at the Southland Center, the same high rise office building where Oswald was later seen in the lobby with the CIA spymaster David Atlee Phillips and anti-Castro Cuban terrorist Antonio Veciana. Ballen interviewed Oswald personally but declined to hire him, so deMohrenschildt introduced Oswald to retired Admiral Chester Bruton, an executive at Collins Radio, the Richardson, Texas company that supplied radios to the Air Force Strategic Air Command and Military Air Transport services - including Air Force one and the executive air fleet.
Bill O'Reilly credits deMohrenschildt with getting the job at Jaggers-Chiles-Stoval, a Dallas graphic arts company where Oswald was working when he ordered and allegedly received the pistol and rifle said to have been used to kill a Dallas police officer and the President. I say allegedly because on the day Oswald is said to have picked up the weapons and paid the balance he owned on delivery, no one at the Post Office recalls handing the weapons to him over the counter, and the J-C-S records indicate that Oswald worked that day from before the Post Office opened until after it was closed. These records also indicate that day Oswald worked on the account of a client - Sam Bloom Advertising agency, who handled the details of the President's motorcade.
At J-C-S in October 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis, Oswald placed arrows and captions on maps and U2 photos of Cuba and the Soviet Union, possibly on photos and maps that were used to brief the president and others about the Soviet missile in Cuba.
After deMohrenschildt got a job in Haiti, it was arranged for him to introduce Oswald to Ruth and Michael Paine, who would then pick up where deMohrenschildt left off as Oswald's "babysitter," so a party was arranged for the Oswalds to meet the Paines at the home of Volkmar Schmidt, a Magnolia Oil company employee from Germany who also met Oswald. Schmidt's roommates at this home and party include the son of Radio Free Europe executive and they all supported the Texas CIA front that funneled money to Radio Free Europe.
Schmidt had lived with a German doctor who was involved in the Valkyrie plot to assassinate Hitler, and acknowledged using reverse psychology techniques on Oswald that were taught to him by the doctor, and in their two hour beer drenched conversation, Schmidt also mentioned the Valkyrie plot and neo-Nazi General Edwin Walker, suggesting that he should be assassinated as Hitler should have been before taking power.
We are then led to believe that Oswald stalked, photographed his house and took a pot shot at Walker and missed, then flushed down a toilet the notebook of evidence he kept on the attack. The April 10, 1963 attack on Walker took place at the same time Admiral Bruton at Collins Radio was busy as the nuclear sub USS Thresher disappeared with all hands. Later a group Justice for the Crew of the Thresher (JFCOTT) would threaten the life of the President and attempt to link Oswald.
A few days later, shortly before leaving for Haiti, deMohrenschildt stopped by to say goodbye to Oswald and his wife, saw the rifle in the closet and jokingly remarked, "How did you miss Walker?"
Oswald then moved to New Orleans, where he engaged with both the anti-Castro DRE and the pro-Castro Fair Play for Cuba Committee, while deMohrenschildt went to Haiti, via New York City and Washington D.C.
In New York deMohrenschildt met CIA officers at the private Knickerbocker Club and the offices of Train-Cabot, where John Train handled CIA propriety companies. While the meeting was supposed to be about Haiti, did deMohrenschildt tell them the most significant piece of intelligence he had - that Oswald had a rifle and probably took the shot at Walker?
In Washington D.C. deMohrenschildt met with Military Intelligence officers Col. Sam Kail and Dorothie Matlack. Kail had previously served at the US Embassy in Havana where he associated closely with David Atlee Philips and other CIA offices, while Matlack worked for the same Pentagon office that the Texas Army Intelligence officers reported to including Col. Crichton, Col. Brandy and the Colonel who rode in the pilot car of the motorcade.
Oswald stayed in New Orleans until September 24, 1963, the day after Ruth Paine picked up Marina, the baby and their belongings, including the rifle, and drove them to Texas while Oswald went to Mexico. Ruth Paine had arrived in New Orleans from Philadelphia where she visited her husband's mother Ruth Forbes Paine Young and Arthur Young, the inventor of the Bell Helicopter. Michael Paine had lived with the Youngs in Philadelphia when he met Ruth Hyde and married her, and it was Art Young who arranged for Michael to work at the Bell Helicopter plant in Texas.
It is Michael Paine's mom - Ruth Forbes Paine Young who supplies the key link in the network, as she was close friends and traveling companion with Mary Bancroft, whose book "Autobiography of a Spy," chronicles her OSS work in Bonn with paramour Allen Dulles, as a chief contact with those involved in the Valkyrie plot to kill Hitler.
On September 24th, the same day Oswald left New Orleans for Mexico, Air Force Chief of Staff General Curtis LeMay chaired a meeting of the Joint Chiefs of Staff while General Maxwell Taylor was in Vietnam. This meeting, as detailed in the Higgins Memo, indicates that they were briefed on CIA Cuban operations by Desmond FitzGerald, who informed them of the CIA attempt to adapt the Valkyrie plot to Castro and Cuba. Except instead of a bomb, it appears that they intended to use a sniper with a high-powered rifle and shoot Castro as he drove along in an open jeep, and blame the assassination on communists, the plan that was used at Dealey Plaza.
[Higgins Memo: http://jfkcountercoup2.blogspot.com/2014/04/higgins-memo-numbered-w-bullet-points.html ]
We certainly have learned a lot of things since the death of deMohrenschildt, and his relationship to the designated patsy, and we will learn a lot more if the remaining sealed records are released, but we know that there were shennagans at the crossroads all along the way and the story doesn't end at deMohrenschildt's doorstep and death, nor with the suspicious death of Charles William Thomas.
Among the records we should expect are the June Cobb memo about the Oswald-Duran Twist Party, and the role Charles William Thomas played for the CIA as a Covert Action agent in Haiti at the time of the assassination as well as his association there with deMohrenschildt.
In the end, the key element in this story is not Bill O'Reilly's fabrications of being there at the time of deMohrenschildt's death, but that O'Reilly is wrong about Oswald being the lone assassin, that he was a covert intelligence operative who deMohrenschildt knowingly or unwittingly helped frame as the designated patsy in the assassination, which was a plan successfully executed and adapted from the failed Valkyrie plot to kill Hitler.
One part of the Valkyrie plan that was adapted to the Dealey Plaza operation was the psychwar black propaganda campaign to blame the assassination on Castro.
While Shenon is more sophisticated in his style and connected to the orchestrated Wurlitzer and O'Reilly appears not, he does join the Mockingbird choir when he falsely says:
"Unlike the majority of his peers, Oswald believed that the Soviets have every right to be on Cuba. From his perception, the Russians must protect Castro's people against terrorist backed by the United States. Oswald is firmly convinced that President Kennedy is putting the world on the brink of nuclear war by taking such an aggressive stance against the Soviets. To him, JFK is the villain." (“Killing Kennedy” p. 117)
Oswald never considered JFK a villain, was saddened at the death of JFK's son Patrick and always talked highly of the President as a man and a person, and had no motive to kill him.
A Cruel and Shocking Twist
[ http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2015/04/a-cruel-and-shocking-twist.html ]
Phillip Shenon's book A Cruel and Shocking Act (2013 Macmillan)
Audio version by Robert Petkoff.
Review by Bill Kelly
As a serious and respected journalist Phillip Shenon deserves a listen when he says the whole truth about the assassination of President Kennedy has yet to be told, that much of the evidence and many of the official records have been destroyed, and there are still some unquestioned witnesses who have been ignored or intimidated into silence.
Among the destroyed evidence, some incinerated, some flushed down toilets, others simply gone missing, include original autopsy notes and photos, Oswald's note to the FBI, backyard pictures, JFK's brain, Jackie's pink pill box hat - all gone. And Shenon doesn’t mention the missing Air Force One radio tapes, the Secret Service radio tapes, “Mary's box” of evidence lost by the Dallas PD, the ONI investigative reports on Oswald, the USMC report that concluded Oswald was not capable of committing the assassination alone, and private interviews with Oswald's USMC buddies – all gone missing.
So we are left with what Shenon calls a "Duel Curse," too little direct evidence has survived, yet thanks to the JFK Act - too much has been released - millions of pages of government documents, too much for any one person to read it all, yet Shenon doesn't mention that there are still so many records being withheld for reasons of national security that the National Archives can't even tell us how many.
Shenon says that no one person can read it all, but he himself reads the Prologue to the audio version of his book in which he tells us how he came to this story - while sitting at a desk of the New York Times Washington DC office when he got a phone call from a former Warren Commission attorney who wanted the truth to be told - "the best detective story you have never heard."
So you know right off the bat where this book is coming from.
The former Warren Commission staff attorney, who prefers to remain anonymous in fear of the wrath of his still living former Commission colleagues, now claims he is outraged by what "they did not see" and have learned over the years, critical and crucial facts that should have been provided the president's commission, especially the CIA plots to kill Castro, and Shenon calls attention to the mysterious and bizarre escapades in Mexico City.
This is the book that I thought Max Holland was writing as an apologist for the Warren Commission, but rather than the Commission getting it right, Shenon sees their failures as a reason to revisit the case, though he puts on blinders that keeps him from including anything except the facts that support the possibility the assassination plan was "hatched or encouraged" by Cuban Communists in Mexico City.
These blinders effectively shield Shenon from other aspects of the same story that point to a different conclusion, one that Oswald's mother and her lawyer Mark Lane make - the idea that Oswald was not the lone assassin, but an intelligence operative and designated patsy. But it is not the crazy concoction of a looney mother and her lawyer as Shenon makes them out to be, but it is a serious consideration that others, including George deMohrenschildet, Gaeton Fonzi, Sen. Richard Schweiker, Peter Dale Scott, John Newman and other more responsible analysts have also made.
Central to Shenon's thesis is a Mexico City Twist Party, which he learned about from some of the recently released records of State Department mid-level diplomat Charles William Thomas, whose suicide is said to be related to the failure of the government to act on the information he provided about the Twist Party and its possible association to the assassination.
Others have been down this alley before, as the Twist Party has been the subject of previous analysis, though you wouldn't know it from Shenon's book.
On the day after the assassination the wife of the CIA's Mexico City Station Chief Win Scott was the first to hear about and mention the Twist Party and it was brought up again by others, including CIA agent June Cobb, and the story was investigated and included in other published works - Anthony Summers Not In Your Lifetime, Peter Dale Scott’s "Deep Politics," John Newman's "Oswald and the CIA," Jeff Morley's "Our Man in Mexico"and Gus Russo's "Brothers in Arms."
All of the reports about the Twist Party can be traced back to one particular source - Elena Garro Paz, who recognized the accused assassin of President Kennedy - Lee Harvey Oswald, as having been in attendance at a Twist Party in Mexico City, a party that was hosted by the brother-in-law of Sylvia Duran, who was also in attendance at the party with another Cuban embassy officer, both of whom dealt with Oswald when he visited the embassy in an attempt to get a visa to Cuba.
Others at this party include Elena Garro Paz's daughter Elena, a communist writer Emilio Carballido, a General Jose Jeus Clark Flores, a red haired Latin negro and two American gringo beatniks, one of whom was a tall blond and the other a movie actor.
It was at this party that the communist Carballido and the Cuban embassy officials were allegedly overheard talking to Oswald about killing Kennedy, and where Shenon says the plan to kill the President was possibly "hatched or encouraged" by the communists there.
On the day after the day after the assassination - November 23, 1963, Elena Garro Paz - the primary source of the story, was whisked away to the Hotel Vermont by a Mexican security officer – Manuel Calvillo, who kept her incomunicato for a week “for her own protection,” while at the same time, Sylvia Duran was twice arrested and violently interrogated by Mexican security officers until she confessed to having a sexual affair with Oswald.
Syliva Duran is clearly the principle player in this drama and in subsequent interviews with Anthony Summers, Gus Russo and now Shenon, she denies ever meeting Oswald outside of the Cuban embassy, and she has been consistent in her denials, although others have reported that she privately admitting otherwise.
According to the other reliable sources, Sylvia Duran met with Oswald outside of the embassy on two occasions, other than the Twist Party, once at a fancy restaurant where she is said to have introduced Oswald to the Cuban Ambassador to Mexico, and then she met Oswald for lunch at Sanborns, a popular restaurant near the American Embassy where Oswald was also known to frequent.
Enhancing her credibility however, is Duran's acknowledgement of having an affair with someone at the American embassy and with Carlos Lechuga, the former Cuban Ambassador to Mexico. While Shenon reports on the Duran-Lechuga affair, he neglects to mention the key fact that Lechuga was the chief Cuban intermediary in the secret JFK-William Atwood-Lisa Howard-Lechuga-Castro backchannel negotiations that were on-going at the time of the assassination (See the Chase memo), what Arthur Schlesinger said would have been sufficient motive for anti-Castro Cubans to kill JFK - if they knew about it, and they apparently did.
These same CIA backed anti-Castro Cubans were also engaged with Oswald in New Orleans, (and possibly in Florida and Dallas), and were part of the failed black propaganda disinformation campaign to blame the assassination of JFK on Castro and the Cuban Communists. And there is not one, but over a dozen examples of the clearly false attempts to do this, including the now infamous Twist Party.
John Newman, as one of the best authorities on the released records concludes: "The anomalies in the story about Oswald's activities in Mexico City that proliferated in CIA channels do seem to fall into a pattern suggesting an extraordinary possibility: the story was invented....to falsely implicate the Cuban government in the assassination."
There are other case studies to support this contention, all of which have been explored elsewhere, but the Twist Party is a good example.
After Win Scott's wife, the government's files indicate that Clark Anderson was the second US embassy officer to officially call attention to the Twist Story, then June Cobb (Still secret report of October 5, 1964) and then CIA Covert Action officer Jim Flannery reported on it (October 12, 1964), so the story had made the rounds of the embassy before Charles W. Thomas first reported it on December 10, 1965. The Twist Party is also mentioned in the Lopez Report of the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA), and was followed up on by Summers, Newman, Russo and now Shenon.
Before we get to Charles Thomas, who brought Shenon into the story, something must be said for June Cobb, a voluptuous CIA operative and Mata Hari who slept her way into Castro's confidence and became his secretary and translator when he first came to power and set up his headquarters in the Havana Hilton. The hotel at the time was then managed by Col. Brandeister, a Military Intelligence officer who reported to the same Pentagon office as Col. Sam Kail, who was working out of the American embassy in Havana when Castro took power.
While working for Castro June Cobb translated a book, "The Shark & the Sardine," which Lee Harvey Oswald checked out of the Dallas library on November 7, 1963, two weeks before the assassination.
After leaving Castro Cobb went to Mexico City where she literally moved in with Elena Garro Paz, her sister Deba and teenage daughter Elena, all of whom attended the Twist Party, so it wasn't long before Cobb heard about it and reported it to the CIA in a memo that was still secret and withheld for reasons of national security when Newman first published his book Oswald and the CIA (though it might be available now). Since Newman has learned a lot more about June Cobb and mentioned her frequently in his presentation at the Bethesda conference in September, we can expect to read more about her in Newman's upcoming new book.
Whether true or not, the idea that the CIA files indicated that Sylvia Duran had sex with both Carlos Lechuga and Lee Harvey Oswald certainly merits a raised eyebrow, but not for the reasons Shenon gives - that it implicates the Cuban government with Oswald and thus the assassination. Actually the Duran-Oswald-Lechuga menage a tois and the Twist Party implicate the CIA and the anti-Castro Cubans in an apparently well planned and complex psych-war caper to implicate Castro and Cuban Communists in the assassination.
The problems with the Twist Party are many, as it is clear that the Durans hosted a number of such parties, the question being whether Lee Harvey Oswald - the historical accused assassin of President Kennedy, was in attendance at any of them - and if so, when was it?
Or is this a simple case of mistaken identity? Was it just an American who looked like Oswald?
Or was Oswald being intentionally impersonated, as he clearly was on other occasions?
Is the whole Twist Party story a ruse? Is it part of a planned and failed attempt to blame the assassination on Castro and Cuban Communists, as much of the evidence indicates?
One problem is the presence at the party of a red-haired Latin negro who was also seen twice with Oswald outside the Cuban embassy giving him money. One of these reports, by a Nicaraguan intelligence agent, had the wrong date, he later recanted and the story was proven false. This red-haired Latin negro who reportedly gave Oswald money outside the Cuban embassy has been positively identified as Oscar “Carlos” Morales Mesa. But one wonders why he hasn't been arrested as a collaborator with Oswald, the accused assassin? Why hasn't this guy been picked up off the street by Navy SEALS and delivered to the CIA and violently waterboarded as such terrorists are treated today?
Another problem is the identity of the two American beat nicks, who were at the Party and then seen walking down the street with Oswald the next morning, one of whom was an American movie actor who Shenon's sources refused to identify because he is alive in the USA today and they want to protect him.
Well CIA records reflect the fact that the American movie actor is Richard Beymer, of West Side Story fame, who played opposite Natalie Wood in the movie version of the Broadway musical that was scored by Leonard Bernstein, a friend and admirer of President Kennedy who said of the assassination: "We don't want to know the truth."
I quickly located Beymer in the mid-west and got him on the phone. He had not been previously questioned about this before, and was unaware that he was the subject of CIA files on the assassination of the president.
Beymer acknowledged that he went to Mexico in the fall of 1963 with a friend who owned a nightclub in New York City. They went to Mexico City and tried to get a visa to Cuba, and government files indicate they contacted Sylvia Duran, just as Oswald had done.
Beymer gave me the name of his old friend, fellow beat nick and traveling companion, now a Catholic priest in upstate New York, and I quickly located and talked with him on the phone as well.
Both men politely answered all my questions, but neither recalled attending a Twist Party with Duran or Oswald, although since they were both young, single Americans in Mexico looking for a good time, attending a Twist Party "was something we would have done," said Beymer.
From Mexico City they went to Acapulco to attend a film festival, and they were there on November 22, 1963 when they learned of the assassination as they got off the elevator in the hotel lobby.
Since they were in Mexico for only a few weeks, and were there on November 22nd, it is unlikely they were there in late September when Oswald was there.
Some participants have referred to the Twist Party as having taken place a few weeks before the assassination, when Beymer and his friend could have been there, but the historical Oswald could not have been. Duran estimated three possible dates for the party, but Oswald was in Mexico on only one of them.
Shenon comes to the Twist Party with Charles W. Thomas, the State Department officer who committed suicide when he was wrongfully released from his job, and he fails to mention the other sources for the Twist Party story.
Shenon begins his book with the story of Charles Thomas, and uses the Twist Party as a the key moment when Oswald is introduced to the cell of Cuban Communists who “encourage” him to kill the President.
"And what about Charles Thomas?" Newman asks.
Before going to Mexico City, Newman notes, "His previous assignment had been to Haiti; from Jan. 8, '61 to the 'summer' of '63. DeMohrenschildt arrived there on June 2, 1963 - and it seems likely that both men were there at the same time."
"In another interesting coincidence," Newman writes, "Thomas became involved in deMohrenschildt's business dealings with the Haitian government."
Shenon thinks is noteworthy that Manuel Calvillo, the Mexican security official who wisked Paz into a week’s seclusion after the assassination, “was also working for the CIA.” Shenon writes, “CIA records identified Calvillo as an ‘unwitting’ agent of the CIA, suggesting that he did not know that his handler worked for the agency. Investigators for the HSCA, working with the Mexican government, were unable to track down Calvillo in Mexico. He has since died.”
Well Shenon should be interested to know that the same thing can be said of Charles Thomas.
Newman: "In Mexico City in 1965 however, Charles Thomas was a CIA Covert Action operative, and a key player in the development of the Oswald-Duran story. That story gained credibility in CIA channels in a way that leaves open an unsavory possibility: the story has been invented...to falsely implicate the Cuban government in the assassination."
So Shenon, in writing about the Twist Party and making it a central part of his thesis, leaves out a lot of the previous analysis and fails to follow up on the ignored witnesses who are eager to talk.
While he is correct in that there are a lot of destroyed and missing evidence and records, there are many millions of recently released documents, and you don't have to read them all, just be familiar with the published works of those who have read many of them - Summers, Newman, Russo and Peter Dale Scott.
Shenon is correct in calling attention to the significance of the Twist Party story, but he is wrong to suggest that the only thing it could mean is that the Cuban Communists helped "plan" or "encouraged" Oswald to kill the President, when in fact it is one of a dozen case studies of the black propaganda effort that was launched to falsely blame Castro and Cuban Communists for the assassination.
Bill Kelly Notes: Since posting this I have heard from Dan Hardway, the HSCA investigator who went to Mexico City and co-authored the Lopez Report with Ed Lopez. Hardway told me that even though he is credited by Shenon and publicly thanked in the book, Shenon wasn’t interested in what Hardway had to say. Shenon wasn’t interested in the fact that there was a deception operation going on or in anything that Hardway had to say that didn’t support his false contention that Castro Cuban Communists inspired Oswald to kill JFK. So it’s not that Shenon was totally ignorant of Summers, Newman, Scott and Morely, he just ignored them.
So Shenon is not seeking the truth but merely making a hack job conspiracy theory that just so happens to coincide with the original cover-story.
This violates the basic tenant of the journalist and historian, as G. Kinston Clark, in his book “The Critical Historian,” writes:
“The distortion produced by bias are potentially present in any attempt to write history. Sometimes the danger is obvious and menacing, sometimes it is covert, coming from unexpected angles and in not easily detected forms. ….Any interpretation which makes use of facts which can be shown to be false, or accepts as certainty true facts which are dubious, or does not take into account facts which are known, are at best, potentially misleading, and possibly grossly, and dangerously deceptive. ….It is the first task of the historian to review any narrative to find what links are missing altogether…where what is defective cannot be supplied by further research, it is an historian’s duty to draw attention to the fact so that men can know where they stand.…Any historical conception which has not been adjusted to the most recent results will cease to be satisfactory.”
Also: I will be adding footnotes and additional notes and links to this as soon as I am able.
Also, some other errata in Shenon's book:
- the backyard photos were not taken in New Orleans but in Oak Cliff, Dallas.
- the Lifeline radio programs were found in Jack Ruby's car on the day he killed Oswald - not the day of the assassination, and btw - the author of the articles in those programs was a former CIA propaganda expert.
-Greer, the Secret Service driver, was indeed born in Ireland, but Northern Ireland, and didn't have an affinity with the Irish Catholic president as he was affiliated with the pro-British political associations.
- Joe Goulden, who Shenon mentions making up the FBI informant number with Hugh Aynesworth, was also trying to get the Dallas assistant DA to charge Oswald with a "Communist Conspiracy," something that LBJ personally squashed on the night of the assassination.
The Twist Party - just one of dozens of similar Psychwar Black Ops
List of Psychwar Black Prop Ops
The Twist Party story, as related by Shenon, Russo and others, is just one of dozens of similar type stories floated like a balloon to see if they would fly, and none of them did, as every single one has been shown and proven false, and its real origin can be actually determined, and most of them trace back to the CIA or some US intelligence source.
As Peter Dale Scott writes:
"In the days after the murders in Dallas, the U.S. Was flooded with dubious stories, most of them swiftly discredited, linking Oswald to either a Cuban or Soviet conspiracy. Those which most preoccupied the FBI and CIA all came out of Mexico. These stories exhibited certain common characteristics."
"1. They all came from either directly from an intelligence source, or from someone in the hands of an intelligence agency. Nearly always the agency involved was the Mexican DFS or secret police. The DFS, along with the Nicaraguan intelligence service, which was also a source, were under CIA tutelage."
"2. The Stories changed over time, to support either a pro-conspiratorial hypothesis (“Phase One”) or a rebuttal of this (“Phase Two”)."
"3. The Warren Commission was led to believe that the “Phase One” stories were without basis. In fact a number of unresolved anomalies suggest that behind them was some deeper truth, still not revealed."
"4. As just noted, the two main sources, Silvia Duran and Gilberto Alvarado, gave varying stories while detained by the DFS. Of the two, Duran was actually tortured, and Alvarado reportedly threatened with torture... In retrospect, these stories should not have been taken seriously. In fact the CIA was able to rely on them, not as a source of truth, but as a source of coercive influence over the rest of the government. It will help us to understand what was going on if we refer to the stories, not as 'information' or even as 'allegations,' but as MANAGED STORIES. To say this leaves open the question of who were the ultimate managers – the DFS, U.S. Officers in Mexico, or higher authorities in Washington."
"The full history is complex and confused, with many unanswered questions. But nearly all of these managed stories, along with others outside Mexico.....resolve into this simple pattern of a Phase One/Phase Two evolution."
"I do wish to argue that these managed stories, fleeting and insubstantial though they are, were of central importance in determining the outcome of the Kennedy assassination investigation. In succeeding years, furthermore, the discredited 'Phase-One' stories have been revived to manipulate public opinion, even after the CIA and FBI had agreed on a 'Phase-Two' interpretation of Oswald's movements in Mexico City. In 2013, for example, the discredited Garro story of the twist party was revived in a mainstream book by Philip Shenon."
"To this day both 'Phase-One' and 'Phase-Two' versions are trotted out from time to time. These control public perceptions of the Kennedy assassination seize the debate from genuine critics who have less access to the media."
END PDS QUOTE -
List of Psychwar Black Propaganda Stories Affiliated with the Assassination of JFK
This is not a complete list – merely the top 25 incidents that are capable of being studied closer -
1) Photographs of Oswald with rifle and pistol and communist magazines that contained articles on anti-Castro Cuban terrorist raids.
2) Oswald's activities with DRE Cubans in New Orleans in the summer of 1963.
3) Oswald's visit to Sylvia Odio.
4) Oswald's visit to the Cuban and Soviet embassies in Mexico City.
5) Oswald's alleged attendance at a Twist Party in Mexico City.
6) A pamphlet distributed in the Florida Cuban community in early November 1963 that predicted that “An Act of God” would put a “Texan in the White House.”
7) Cuban's visit to Parrot Jungle in Miami. [See: Parrot Jungle Incident]
8) Two of the last issues President Kennedy delt with before leaving for Texas were the backchannel UN negotiations with Fidel Castro and the discovery of a weapons cache on a Venezuelan beach that appeared to be Cuban support for terrorists in South America.
9) Seth Kantor, a Scripps-Howard News Service (SHNS) reporter in Dallas during the assassination couldn't understand why his telephone calls from Parkland hospital were being ssealed by the government because “disclosure would reveal confidential source of information.” The source, it turned out, was Hal Hendrix, aka “the Spook,” who fed information on the alleged assassin from Miami.
10) Joe Goulden egged Dallas Assistent DA Bill Alexander to say that he was going to charge Oswsald with murder “in furtherance of a Communist Conspiracy.”
11) Dallas PD Special Services Bureau officer Stringfellow sent repot to USAF Strike Command that Cuba may be behind the assassination and “Mary's Box” disappears from DPD.
12) On the night of the assassination Clare Booth Luce received a telephone call from Julio Fernandez, one of the anti-Castro Cuban commandos she financially supported, who reported to her of Oswald's contacts with the DRE in New Orleans.
13) In Miami, Dr. Jose Ignorzio, the chief of clinical psychology for the Catholic Welfare Service, contacted the White House to inform the new administration that Oswald had met directlly with Cuban ambassador Armas in Mexico.
14) In Florida Frank Sturgis is interviewed for the Pamparo Beach Sun Sentinel saying that Oswald had talked with Cuban G2 agents and had been with Cubans in Miami. Donald Freed and Jeff Cohen (in Liberation Magazine) later reported that “Back in Miami a high powered propaganda machine was cranking out stories that Oswald was a Cuban agent.”
15) Over the years Sturgis would revise this story to include Oswald and Jack Ruby and Castro
In 1976 Gaeton Fonzi interviewed Sturgis who then said he was reminded of a meeting in Havana two months before the assassination that included Raul Castro, Ramiro Valdez, chief of Cuban Intelligence, Che Guevara and his secretary Tanya, another Cuban officer, an American they called “El Mexicano,” and oh, yea, Jack Ruby.”
16) In Mexico City David Atlee Phillips promoted to CIA HQ the story of a Nicaraguan intelligence agent code named “D” who claimed to have seen Oswald take money from a red haired Cuban.
17) After “D” discredited a Mexican journalist reported the same things – having seen Oswald take money from a red haired negro Cuban outside the Cuban embassy.
18) The first time David Atlee Phillips met with Antonio Veciana after the assassination he tried to get Veciana to contact his brother, a pro-Castro Cuban government official, and try to bribe him into saying that Oswald was affiliated with the Castro Cubans.
19) According to Shenon, Gerald Ford was the only member of the Warren Commission to express the idea that Castro was behind the assassination.
20) LBJ privately expresses belief JFK after Castro but Castro got him first.
21) Former Assistant to Army Secretary Joe Califano expresses belief Castro killed JFK.
22) Sam Halpern expresses belief that Castro had JFK killed and adds the additional twist that RFK personally ran the CIA ops to kill Castro and Castro retaliated.
23) 1980 Scrips-Howard News Service report that Castro trying to kill Reagan as he did JFK. This is the most detailed and easily traced example of a black prop op. [See: SHNS Report]
24) Gus Russo wrote two books “Live By the Sword” and “Brothers in Arms” trying to blame the assassination on Castro and contributed to the documentary film by German producer who makes “documentary” that blames Castro for the assassination.
25) Former CIA officer Brian Lettrel writes a book that attempts to blame Castro for the assassination based on the reports of a defector who claimed Castro had him listen for Air Force One radio transmissions from Texas that day.
The Other Party with a Psychwar Twist
The idea that Oswald attended a party where he was encouraged to commit political assassination is not so far-fetched – as it really did happen, but since it doesn’t fit Shenon’s theory that Oswald was encouraged by Castro Cuban Commies, it doesn’t get a mention in his book.
The Other Party with a Psychwar Twist - Where It Was Suggested to Oswald that he Commit Assassination
Lee Harvey Oswald’s alleged Mexico City escapades should be placed in their proper context, not only in time – September 24 to October 3, 1963, but as it was a stepping stone to the assassination itself.
The promotion of the idea that Cuba’s Fidel Castro was behind the assassination at Dealey Plaza can be broken down into individual case studies that can be traced back to their original sources and provide a tangible guide or road map of the intelligence network that’s in play.
[See: List: http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2015/04/list-of-psychwar-black-prop-ops.html ]
In retrospect, Oswald’s Mexico odyssey was not as it was officially portrayed – the Lone Wolf’s failed attempt to get a visa to Cuba or the frequently recycled cover-story of the alleged assassin’s association with pro-Castro Cuban Communists who encouraged him or helped him plan the Dealey Plaza event.
Today we know Oswald’s Mexico City escapade was a “managed” and manipulated affair that resulted in the framing of Oswald as the designated Patsy and a failed attempt to pin the tail on Castro’s donkey.
This scenario fits more honestly with all of the known facts, including Oswald’s contention that he was a patsy, and Peter Dale Scott’s “Phase-One and Phase-Two” hypothesis that the original “Phase-one” Cuban Communist cover story was supplanted by the “Phase-two” Lone Nut scenario in order to avoid nuclear war if a foreign country, however superficially, was implicated in the assassination - as the original cover-story implies.
The idea that the accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald attended a party where he was encouraged to commit political assassination is not so far-fetched however, as it did indeed happen, though not at a twist party in Mexico City but a house party in Dallas in February of 1963.
That’s when a party was held especially for Oswald to meet Michael Paine, who didn’t make the party, but it was an important occasion because Oswald’s wife Marina met Michael Paine’s wife Ruth Hyde Paine, and Oswald met Volkmar Schmidt, who lived in the house where the party was held along with two other Magnolia Oil company engineers, one of whom was the son of a Radio Free Europe executive.
Schmidt was recruited for Magnolia from Germany, where he at one time lived with a doctor who specialized in psychosomatic psychology and Schmidt admitted that he used “reverse psychology” techniques on Oswald when they talked for over two hours at the party.
Volkmar Schmidt told me that he suggested to Oswald that Fascist General Edwin Walker should be assassinated as Hitler himself should have been - and Schmidt says he specifically mentioned the July 1944 Valkyrie plot that failed to kill Hitler.
[See: Volkmar Schmidt Interview: http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2008/01/volkmar-schmidt-interview.html ]
So while at this party Volkmar Schmidt encourages Oswald to commit a political assassination as he is accused of doing two months later by taking a shot at Walker, but it is even more significant that Oswald’s wife Marina met Ruth Hyde Paine, Michael Paine’s wife, at the same party, and they became fast friends.
Marina moved in with Ruth Hyde Paine while Oswald relocated to New Orleans shortly after the Walker shooting Mrs. Paine drove Marina and the baby and the rifle to New Orleans and then, five months later, returned to pick up Marina and the baby and the rifle and return them to her house in Irving, Texas while Oswald went to Mexico City.
On the same late September day that Mrs. Paine picked up Marina and the rifle and Oswald departed New Orleans for Mexico, President Kennedy issued an Executive Order approving “Operation Four Leaves” – a special military communications program that is still classified.
JFK then left Washington on what they called the “Conservation Tour” with the Secretary of Interior, the first stop on which was the Northeast Pennsylvania home of the mother of Mary Pinchot Meyer. She's the former wife of CIA officer Cord Meyer and a close JFK friend and paramour who he had met through his old school mate William Attwood.
JFK moved on to the mid-west from where it was officially announced from an obscure Wisconsin dateline that the President would ride in a motorcade through the streets of Dallas on November 22.
Shortly after the assassination another women named Mary delivered a box of papers, news clips of the President’s Conservation Tour to the Dallas Police, who examined them and later said the documents in the box linked Oswald with Jack Ruby and the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, all of which disappeared.
Other things were also going on that September 24th, as JFK left on his Conservation Tour and Oswald was crossing the border to Mexico, the Joint Chiefs of Staff met at the Pentagon, where Air Force chief of staff General Curtis LeMay was the temporary chairman of the Joint Chiefs while General Maxwell Taylor was in Vietnam.
According to the minutes of that meeting kept by General Krulak’s aide Col. Higgens, the Joint Chiefs were briefed by CIA officer Desmond FitzGerald on how the military could assist the CIA’s covert Cuban operations, specifically mentioning a plan being to adapt the Valkyrie plot to kill Hitler to be used against Castro.
It is interesting that this document comes from the records of Joe Califano, the former assistant to the Army Secretary who is one of those who still tries to promotes the idea that Castro was behind the assassination.
So on the day JFK leaves on his Conservation Tour, Ruth Paine picks up Marina and the rifle and delivers them to Texas and Oswald goes to Mexico City - the Joint Chiefs of Staff are briefed by the CIA on a plan to kill Castro using the Valkyrie plan that failed to kill Hitler.
A key element in the assassination at Dealey Plaza was getting the rifle from New Orleans to Texas, and Mrs. Ruth Paine does it.
Ironically, how ironic is it – that before picking up Marina and the rifle Mrs. Paine visited her husband’s mother – Ruth Forbes Paine Young?
Ruth Young is the wife of Arthur Young – the eccentric – and I don't use that word lightly - inventor of the Bell Helicopter who got Michael Paine the job at Bell Helicopter in Texas.
The irony is the undisputed fact that Michael’s mother was a close personal friend and traveling companion of Mary Bancroft, whose book “Autobiography of a Spy” details her role as Allen Dulles’ secretary, agent, paramour and important player in the Valkyrie plot to kill Hilter.
An important element in the Valkyrie plot was not only to assassinate Hitler, but to blame the murder on the Gestapo, and deflect attention from the generals, just as blaming the Castro Communists was an integral part of the Dealy Plaza plan.
So before driving to New Orleans to pick up Marina and the rifle and delivering them to Texas while Oswald went to New Orleans, Mrs. Paine stops by to visit Michael’s mom, a close friend and traveling companion of Mary Bancroft, a key participant in the Valkyrie plot to kill Hitler.
This is not a fact mentioned in the Warren Report, and I only learned about by reading Gerald Ford’s “Portrait of the Assassin,” which includes a number of documents that were not included in the Warren Report or released to the public, and it is interesting that (according to Shenon) Ford was the only member of the Commission who promoted the idea that Fidel Castro may have been behind the assassination.
[For more on Ruth Paine’s Summer Vacation see the report prepared by Carol Hewett, Steve Barber and Barbara Lamonica]
So after visiting Michael’s mom in Philadelphia, Ruth Paine drives to New Orleans and picks up Marina and the rifle and delivers them to Texas while Oswald goes to New Orleans, the President goes on his Conservation Tour, and the Joint Chiefs are briefed on CIA’s covert Cuban operations, including the plan to use the Valkyrie plot against Castro.
When Oswald returns to Dallas from Mexico City, he signs in to the YMCA using the same O.H. Lee alias he used at the hotel in Mexico City and at the Beckely Street rooming house – he's still operational – still on a mission, in his mission role.
Mrs. Paine then makes a phone call and arranges for Oswald to get the job at the Texas School Book Depository, and the rifle is kept in her garage until the night before the assassination.
It should also be noted for the record that at the time of the assassination the Joint Chiefs of Staff were in a meeting at the Pentagon with members of the West German general staff.
If what ever happened at Dealey Plaza was in fact a covert intelligence operation then the whole event was planned out in detail and every facet of it was controlled, especially what occurred inside the TSBD building at the time.
THE BIG CON STING AT DEALEY PLAZA
“President Kennedy's assassination was the work of magicians. It was a stage trick, complete with accessories and false mirrors, and when the curtain fell the actors and even the scenery, disappeared. But the magicians were not illusionist but professionals, artists in their own right.”
- Attributed to French Intelligence officers – Philippe de Vosjoli or M. Andre Ducret - p. 269 “Fairwell America” -
In his book “Intelligence Wars – American Secret History From Hitler to Al-Qaeda,” Thomas Powers relates a story of how at a birthday party for retired intelligence officer Haviland Smith he met Smith's mentor General William Odom, the former Army Chief of Staff for Intelligence (ACSI ) and director of the National Security Agency (NSA), who asked Powers, “Should the Army be trying to run agents at all?”
In the course of the party Powers asked Haviland another question - “What makes a good case officer?”
Haviland thought for a second and then answered the question with a question of his own: “Did you see that movie with Robert Redford and Paul Newman – The Sting?”
“That's it!” said Haviland, “ - the con!.”
And what happened at Dealey Plaza was not just a magic trick with disappearing props, but a very particular magic trick – The Big Con – the confidence trick used in the popular movie The Sting.
This is alluded to in much more detail by Joe Smith in his book “Portrait of a Cold Warrior – Second Thoughts of a Top CIA Agent” (Ballentine, 1976, p 75)
Considering the idea that if not the work of a deranged lone gunman, if what happened at Dealey Plaza was in fact a covert intelligence operation that utilized standard covert action techniques, including disinformation, disguises and black propaganda to cover them, then they are using very sophisticated psychological warfare weapons that only a few professional specialists - “artists in their own right,” who could have planned, been the mastermind and pulled off whatever happened at Dealey Plaza.
Allen Dulles, Ed Lansdale, James Jesus Angleton, E. Howard Hunt, David Atlee Phillips – what do they all have in common?
One thing they all have in common is their psych war professor who taught them what they call “the Black Arts,” meet Professor Paul Linebarger, author of the text book “Psychological Warfare.”
Joseph B. Smith in “Portrait of a Cold Warrior” (Ballantine 1976, p. 75) writes:
….In the early winter of 1952…I got the chance to attend Paul Linebarger’s seminar in psychological warfare. Linebarger had served as an Army psychological warfare officer in Chungking during the war. He had written a textbook on the subject in 1948. In 1951 he was serving as the Far East Division’s chief consultant. He also served as the Defense Department in the same capacity, giving advice on U.S. psychwar operations in Korea, and he was a professor of Asian politics at the School for Advanced International Studies of the John Hopkins University. His book by this time had gone through three American editions, two Argentine editions, and a Japanese edition.
He was far from a textbook warrior, however. He best described himself when he wrote in the introduction to his book, “Psychological warfare involves exciting wit-sharpening work. It tends to attract quick-minded people – men full of ideas.” His wits scarcely needed sharpening, and he was never at a loss for an idea.
The seminars were held for eight weeks, every Friday night at his home. Going to Paul Linebarger’s house on Friday evenings was not only an educational experience for those who attended the seminar, it was also an exercise in clandestinity. Learning covert operational conduct was considered part of the course. Each seminar was limited to no more than eight students. They were told to pose as students from the School of Advanced International Studies, to go to Paul’s house via different routes, and to say they were attending a seminar in Asian politics.....The School of Advanced International Studies had its campus in Washington, but over in Baltimore at the main campus of the John Hopkins University, Owen Lattimore, the expert on Asian geography, held sway…..
It would be difficult to say whether it was the political atmosphere in general, the office routine of the day just closed, or the drawn drapes in Linebarger’s living room, but students at the seminar met in an appropriately conspiratorial mood that raised the level of their appreciation of their subject.
The mood was fitting if not essential to an understanding of the material. The first point that Linebarger made was the purpose of all psychological warfare is the manipulation of people so that they are not able to detect they are being manipulated.
Wartime psychwar had been a matter of undermining the enemy civilian and military will to continue to fight. The audience, in brief, was very clearly defined. Determining just who it was they wanted to manipulate and for what ends was also pretty clear to the OPC personnel. Their targets were the Communists and their allies. Having this firmly in mind, any methods of manipulation could be used, especially “black propaganda.”
Black propaganda operations, by definition, are operations in which the source of the propaganda is disguised or misrepresented in one way or another so as not to be attributable to the people who really put it out. This distinguishes black from white propaganda, such as news bulletins and similar statements issued by one side in a conflict extolling its successes, of course, or other material just as clearly designed to serve the purposes of its identifiable authors….the United States was faced everywhere with an enemy that was using an untold array of black propaganda operations to undermine the nations of the world in order to present us with a fait accompli one fine morning when we would wake up to find all these countries under Communist control. Hence, it was vital to understand all about such operations from a defense standpoint if nothing else.
There was, however, something else. This was an attitude produced by the mixture of ancient wisdom that a good offense is the best defense, and the spirit of the times that made the existence of conspiracy seem so real. It was good to feel that we were learning how to beat the Communists at their own game.
Paul Linebarger’s was a seminar in black propaganda only. He loved black propaganda operations probably because they involved the wit-sharpening he loved to talk about. Also, he was so good at them that his was one of the inventive minds that refined the entire black operations field into shades of blackness. Linebarger and his disciples decided that propaganda that was merely not attributable to the United States was not really black, only gray. To be called black it had to be something more…This left the term black propaganda for a very special kind of propaganda activity. Black propaganda operations were operations done to look like, and carefully labeled to be, acts of the Communist enemy.
Not only was the attribution given the source of the propaganda activity used as a criterion for defining what kind of propaganda it was, but equally important was the kind of message used…Black propaganda operations, being attributed to the enemy, naturally did not (support US policies). In fact, black propaganda, to be believable, supported the enemy’s positions and openly opposed those of the United States….
Linebarger was always careful to point out that to have any chance of success, these black operations must be based on good solid information about how the Communist Party we proposed to imitate actually conducted its business. He also stressed we needed an equally solid basis of knowledge about the target audience and what it would really find offensive and objectionable if the Communists were to say or do it. This, he liked to emphasize, was why such operations belonged in an intelligence organization where sufficient expertise and specific knowledge of the kind required was most likely to be found. Intelligence information, especially the kind that is clandestinely collected, should serve more than as bits and pieces of the jigsaw puzzle known as enemy intentions. It should be used directly against the enemy while it is fresh. Otherwise, the distinction between intelligence reporting and historical writing tends to blur….
Linebarger undertook a kind of group therapy approach to try to show us that tricking someone into believing black is white comes naturally to everyone and is something that is practiced from childhood.
“Look,” he began, “can’t you remember how you fooled your brothers and sisters and your father and mother? Try to remember how old you were when you first tricked one of them.”
“I want you all to go out and get a copy of David Maurer’s classic on the confidence man. It’s called ‘The Big Con,’ and its available now in a paperback edition,” Paul continued. “That little book will teach you more about the art of covert operations than anything else I know.”
“Your job and the confidence man’s are almost identical…Of course, your motives and those of the confidence men are different. He wants to fleece his mark out of his money. You want to convince a Chinese, Filipino,…a Thai, that what you want him to believe or do for the good of the U.S. government is what he thinks he himself really believes and wants to do.”
“Maurer’s book will give you a lot of ideas on how to recruit agents, how to handle them and how to get rid of them peacefully when they’re no use to you any longer. Believe me, that last one is the toughest job of all.”
We were all soon reading “The Big Con.” The tales it told did, indeed, contain a lot of hints on how to do our jobs. For me one sentence seemed to sum it all up beautifully, “The big-time confidence games,” wrote Maurer, “are in reality only carefully rehearsed plays in which every member of the cast EXCEPT THE MARK knows his part perfectly.”
He had two leading operational heroes whose activities formed the basis for lessons he wished us to learn and whose examples he thought we should follow. One was Lt. Col. Edward G. Lansdale, the OPC station chief in Manila, and the other was E. Howard Hunt, the OPC station chief in Mexico City. Both of them had what is called “black minds,” and the daring to defy bureaucratic restraints in thinking up and executing operations. He had a number of stories to tell about the exploits of both…A note of caution that Linebarger added to these discussions of black operations sounds like a bell down the years. He would explain, after someone had come up with an especially clever plan for getting the Communists completely incriminated in an exceedingly offensive act, that there should be limits to black activities.
“I hate to think what would ever happen,” he once said with a prophet’s voice, “if any of you ever got out of this business and got involved in U.S. politics. These kinds of dirty tricks must never be used in internal U.S. politics. The whole system would come apart.”
David W. Maurer and the Big Con
David W. Maurer was a professor of linguistics at the University of Louisville Kentucky where he was devoted to a study of street slang, which allowed him to meet an assortment of pick pockets, card sharks, street gangsters and whores working his way up the criminal chain until he got to the confidence men who ran The Big Con, cataloging their unique vocabulary along the way.
The Big Con, as opposed to the short con, utilized elaborate props and actors who took their victims for hundreds of thousands of dollars. And when it was over they didn't even know how it was done.
When I first read an early edition of “The American Confidence Man” I called Professor Maurer at his school but he had just passed away. His assistant professor however confirmed what Luc Santi says in later paperback editions of “The Big Con” that the movie The Sting was based on Maurer's book.
But that's not the whole story. When Maurer saw The Sting when it first came out he too recognized his story was used in the screenplay without credit or attribution, and he felt stung.
The Hollywood screenwriters who stole his story denied ever reading Maurer's book - a non-fictional work, but they couldn't account for using the name Gondorf as a main character as played by Paul Newman.
Newman as Gondorf
Gondorf was a real person and his name does not appear in print anywhere but in Maurer's book, so Maurer won the judgement.
In applying the Big Con to what happened at Dealey Plaza a few things stand out:
1) The local cops are on the take - it's only a matter of identifying, paying off and working with the right ones - what the Con Artists call the Right Cop - while un-bribable cop was the Wrong Coper -
2) The Mark or victim must be from out of town - no locals involved - and must be successful - with money, and greedy and a player on the make for something.
3) Getting rid of the mark and other players, as Linebarger and Maurer allude to is a problem, as David Atlee Phillips discovered with his long time agent and operative Antonio Veciana, who desperately wanted to get back into covert ops against Cuba.
The most significant thing we learn from Maurer isn't how the Big Con works - like a magic trick secret - but that in order to apply it to Dealey Plaza you have to learn the lingo - the nomenclature that's used in the course of conducting covert intelligence operations.
Just as scientists, musicians and con artists all have their own stylized vocabulary, so do the covert intelligence officers who pulled off the Dealey Plaza caper, and some are the same terms as the con artists.
For instance in “The Big Con” the whole operation is run by the “inside man,” who runs the storefront and is the key to the action, while the “roper,” or “outside man” works the street and brings in the mark.
The top officers at Task Force W - the Cuban desk in the CIA HQ basement ran their operations in the same way, as Zenith Technological Services was the fake business front for JMWAVE station in Miami, where the “inside man” was Ted Shackley, who never met the Cubans, who were run by case officers or “outside men” like David Atlee Phillips.
Peter Dale Scott began a glossary of terms that he uses to describe some of these activities and I have added more terms, and also began to list ACRONMYS and CRYPTS.
[Scott: http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/GlossaryOfOpenPol.html / Kelly: http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2012/06/glossary-intelligence-terms-acronyms.html ]
PSYCHWAR BLACK PROP OPS AT DEALEY PLAZA
The very fact that such psych-war, black propaganda and disinformation were intentionally used at all in the reporting of what happened at Dealey Plaza is evidence itself that the murder was not just the work of a lone, deranged assassin, but part of a covert intelligence operation that used such specialized techniques and continues to use them today to protect the actual perpetrators of the assassination.
Any study of psychological warfare and disinformation would have to include the work of Paul Linebarger, a professor at the School for Advanced International Studies at John Hopkins University, who also taught the black arts of propaganda and psychological warfare operations to CIA agents and among his best students were E. Howard Hunt, Ed Lansdale and David Atlee Phillips.
According to Linebarger, “Psychological warfare consists of the application of parts of the science called psychology to the conduct of war; psychological warfare comprises the use of propaganda against the enemy, together with such military operational measures as may supplement the propaganda. Propaganda may be described in turn, as organized persuasion by non-violent means. War itself may be considered to be, among other things, a violent form of persuasion. War is waged against the minds, not the bodies of the enemy.”
“Specifically defined,” says Linebarger, “propaganda consists of the planned use of any form of public or mass produced communication designed to affect the minds and emotions of a given group for a specific public purpose, whether military, economic or political. Military propaganda consists of the planned use of any form of communications designed to affect the minds and emotions of a given enemy, neutral or friendly foreign group for a specific strategic or tactical purpose.”
Linebarger warned his students not to use such techniques against Americans. “I hate to think what would ever happen,” he once said with a prophet’s voice, “if any of you ever got out of this business and got involved in U.S. politics. These kinds of dirty tricks must never be used in internal U.S. politics. The whole system would come apart.” Well, they were used and are being used today, and the whole system did come apart.
Note that if the communication is not planned, it cannot be called propaganda, and if it does not originate from an intelligence agent, agency, service or network, it is not disinformation, as it is classically defined: Deliberately misleading information announced publicly or leaked by a government or especially by an intelligence agency in order to influence public opinion or the government in another nation.
Some of the information that real disinformation agents dish out is classified as “black.”
According to Ladislas Farago such, “Black Propaganda is a fundamental intelligence operation,…because it never identifies its real source and pretends to originate within or close to the enemy.”
Security is designed to keep useful information from reaching the enemy, while propaganda operations are designed to get information to him. The term propaganda stems from the name of the department of the Vatican which had the duty of propagating the faith. And Black Propaganda must clearly be labeled as an act of the enemy.
In his book on propaganda, Linebarger says that such disinformation, by its very nature, can be identified as such and traced back to its source, using his formula for doing so. Therefore, the real disinformation and propaganda on the assassination can be traced back to its source, which should be very close to those who were actually responsible for the assassination.
Linebarger developed the STASM formula for spot analysis, in which propaganda can be distinguished by the consideration of five elements:
1. Source
2. Time
3. Audience
4. Subject and
5. Mission.
According to Linebarger, “This formula works best in the treatment of monitored materials of which the source is known. First point to note is the character of the source — the true source (who really got it out?), the ostensible source (whose name is signed to it?); also the first use source (who used it the first time?) and the second source (who claims merely to be using it as a quotation?). It is soon evident that the mere attribution of source is a job of high magnitude.”
It is apparent that the roots to many of the black propaganda operations related to Dealey Plaza, especially those that try to falsely implicate Castro in the assassination, stem back to David Atlee Phillips, one of Linebarger’s protégés.
At the time of the assassination, David Phillips was working for the CIA in Mexico City, responsible for monitoring the Cuban and Russian embassies there, as well as keeping tabs on the activities of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee (FPCC) “in the hemisphere.” In August, 1963, the New Orleans representative of the FPCC, Lee Harvey Oswald, was seen with Phillips, aka “Maurice Bishop,” in the lobby of a Dallas office building, and shortly thereafter Oswald went on his mission to Mexico City.
In the immediate aftermath of the assassination, Phillips interrogated a Nicaraguan intelligence agent who said that he had seen Oswald with Cuban Communists in Mexico City, and though Phillips knew this information was wrong, he promoted it within CIA as plausibly possible, and tried to get other Cubans to confirm Oswald’s false Communist associations.
The idea that Fidel Castro was behind the assassination at Dealey Plaza was set up as part of the original cover-story for the operation, and was heavily promoted by CIA disinformation sources, as recounted in the book The Second Plot by Mathew Smith.
What if the second plot against JFK succeeded and a guilty-looking Oswald was connected to Havana? Matthew Smith, Jim Marrs and others suggest the failed second plot against JFK, if successful, would have been World War Three, and was used by LBJ to convince the Warren Commission to adopt the “deranged lone-nut” scenario for what happened at Dealey Plaza.
In the Progressive magazine article “Fidel on the Grassy Knoll,” Jeff Cohen and Donald Freed wrote, “Brothers Jerry and James Buchanan, CIA propaganda assets, began promoting the Castro-did-it theme immediately. The source of the Buchanan’s tales was the leader of the CIA supported International Anti-Communist Brigade (IAB).
“Back in Miami,” Cohen and Freed wrote, “a high powered propaganda machine was cranking out stories that Oswald was a Cuban agent…” Frank Sturgis is quoted in the Pompano Beach Sun-Sentinel as saying that Oswald had talked with Cuban G-2 agents and fracassed with IAB members in Miami in 1962. The same “propaganda machine” was still pumping out the same lines in 1976 when Gaeton Fonzi interviewed Sturgis, who said that he had recently ran into a friend who worked for the “company” who reminded him of an incident he had completely forgotten about. Sturgis suddenly recalled, “... he had heard about a meeting in Havana about two months before the Kennedy assassination. At the meeting there were a number of high-ranking men, including Castro, his brother Raul, Ramiro Valdez, the chief of Cuban intelligence, Che Guevara and his secretary Tanya, another Cuban officer, an American known as ‘El Mexicano,’ and, …oh, yeah; Jack Ruby. And the meeting dealt with plotting the assassination of President Kennedy.”
Peter Dale Scott calls blaming Castro and Communists for the assassination the Phase One part of the cover-story. Scott’s accuracy in labeling this a cover story has been borne out by Jean Daniel (See Jim Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable) who was with Castro at the time they received news of the assassination, as well as other sources (ie. NSA monitoring).For anyone who has read Daniel's description of Castro's reactikon to the news of Kennedy's death, the description renders any Phillips generated cover story as untenable.
This Phase One cover-story, although regurgitated and re-floated every few years, was eventually replaced by the Phase Two cover-story, that the assassination was the work of a deranged, lone-nut case. The Phase Two cover-story, while still the officially accepted version of events, is generally rejected by most people. Therefore a Phase Three cover-story has been propagated — that of the mob and renegade CIA/Cubans were responsible for the assassination, which I will deal with separately.
The original Castro-Cuban-Commie cover story occasionally resurfaces every once in a while, as it has with Gus Russo, who makes this case in “Live By the Sword” and a German film documentary based on his work.
Russo was one of those who attended early Congressional meetings in DC that resulted in the JFK Act. He was considered one of the independent researchers whose work was based on the release of the secret records being declassified and released. Russo worked as a researcher and investigator on a number of major projects, debunked and dismissed a number of suspects and witnesses, like Jean Aase, Chauncey Holt and the 3 Tramps. He also chummed up an acquaintance with some top CIA officials and began having lunch with them, and then decided that Oswald was Castro’s pawn after all.
That these black propaganda operations to blame Castro’s Communists for the assassination were conducted at all, indicates that the assassination was carried out by trained covert intelligence operatives, and not by a lone, deranged nut case, or the Mafia.
The idea that Fidel Castro was behind the assassination is traceable disinformation, a deception plan conducted in concert with the President’s murder that also leads back to those responsible for the Dealey Plaza operation. Over a dozen incidents, most if not all of which can be traced back to the same source, attempt to portray the assassination as the work of Castro.
Tracing the deceptive disinformation back to its exact source should also give us the mastermind(s) of the operation that resulted in what happened at Dealey Plaza. Since disinformation, propaganda and psychological warfare operations utilize explicit techniques, they can be identified, isolated and studied as to their content, intention and source, and thus provide a window into the network of the responsible party.
An Example of Continuing Black Prop Ops and the JFK Assassination.
Please note that the original source of this article is the Scripps-Howard News Service and based on a leaked National Security Agency (NSA) document. When the Assassination Records Review Board requested all NSA documents related to the assassination, this was not included.
Why weren’t the records of this incident released by the NSA under the JFK Act?
Scripps-Howard News Service – By R. H. Boyce
Thursday, March 12, 1981
Washington – The National Security Agency has alerted the CIA, the White House and State Department to a Latin American newspaper report saying Cuban President Fidel Castro is plotting the assassination of President Reagan, Scripps-Howard News Service has learned.
The NSA, which monitors published and broadcast information around the globe, does not makes such “alert” messages available to the press. But SHNS obtained a copy, which was marked “for official use only.” It included the text of the newspaper report as well as a garbled message about the news story directed to the head of Castro’s controlled news agency, Presna Latina.
Without revealing its sources, the news report, published yesterday in the Caracas, Venezuela, newspaper El Mundo, asserted the assassination plot called for the slaying to be carried out by Illich Ramirez Sancho, an international terrorists known as Carlos the Jackal. Carlos is said to have organized the massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, West Germany, and has been involved in dozens of terrorists acts.
U.S. officials said the NSA’s action in alerting the U.S. intelligence community “suggests that while they are not necessarily ready to believe the report of an assassination plot, nevertheless they (NSA) find it at least worthy of looking into.”
The Caracas newspaper story said the assassination plan, “was discussed in a meeting of the International Trust of Crime in Cojimar, an exclusive beach club east of Havana, with the participants of Montonero and Tupamaro thugs, Illich Ramirez, Ramiro Valdez, Cuban Police Minister Carlos Rafael Rodriguez and Fidel Castro.”
Presna Latina (Latin Press) often has been used by Castro for political ends. The Pressa Latina correspondent in Caracas, at 9:47 a.m. EST yesterday, began transmitting the El Mundo article by cable to Prensa Latina headquarters in Havana. NSA monitored it. At the close of the text, Prensa Latina Caracas began adding what appears to be commentary on the El Mundo report. It reads:
“Everything seems to indicate that Fidel Castro is planning the assassination of U.S. President Ronald Reagan in the same way that he previously ordered the assassination of John F. Kennedy and whose participation the high-ranking U.S. government circles hid…”
There the Prensa Latina cable transmission stopped. Had it been ordered broken off by the Venezuela government, say U.S. officials, NSA would have added the words: “transmission interrupted,” to show Venezuela’s action. There was no such NSA notation. Officials provided no explanation of why the transmission ended in mid-sentence.
END SHNS REPORT
IN CONCLUSION
In conclusion I think I have demonstrated that whatever you believe happened there, the Modus Operandi for what happened at Dealey Plaza was that of a Military Ambush and there was a psychological warfare operation - a very specific black propaganda program to blame the attack on Castro Cuban Communists that was attached to the ambush operation at Dealey Plaza as part of the plan.
This psychwar black prop op - in its many forms that continue to day - as presented by Shenon and others, is itself proof that the ambush was not the work of a lone nut assassin but a very detailed and expertly carried out plan that utilized the Valkyrie Plot as a basis, and took one of the ambush plans devised to kill Castro and used it at Dealey Plaza.
While the ambush was successful and JFK was killed, the cover story that Castro was behind it did not take because it was clearly not true - but by using the background provided by Professors Linebarger and Maurer, we can see how the Big Con was utilized not only to fool the mark - JFK, but the public, and that it is possible to trace the psych war black prop op cover stories back to their origin, which should be very close to those who masterminded the plan to kill JFK at Dealey Plaza.
Bill Kelly (billkelly3@gmail.com)
It was a revelation to read Steven Hawkings “A Brief History of Time” and Bill O'Reilly's “Killing Kennedy” back-to-back as both try to make very complicated events easily understood by ordinary people by using basic English, common sense and reason.
Sort of like the early comic-current event paperback - “Cuba for Beginners,” and its subsequent off spring, Hawkings and O'Reilly try to easily explain complex subjects, and while Hawkings succeeds, O'Reilly just doesn't get it.
“Some are uncomfortable with issues like these because they so vividly expose the limitations of human understanding,” says Hawkings. “It turns out to be very difficult to devise a theory to describe the universe all in one go. Instead, we break the problem up into bits and invent a number of partial theories. Each of the partial theory describes and predicts a certain limited class of observations, neglecting the effects of the other quantities...”
Hawkings: “Today scientists describe the universe in terms of two basic partial theories – the general theory of relativity and quantum mechanics - the great intellectual achievements of the first half of the century. The general theory of relatively describes the force of gravity and the larger scale structure of the universe,....while quantum mechanics....deals with phenomena on extremely small scales....however, unfortunately, these two theories are known to be inconsistent with each other – they cannot both be correct.”
“These are questions of interest to us all. But modern science has become so technical that only a very small number of specialists are able to master the mathematics used to describe them. Yet the basic idea....can be stated in a form that people without a scientific education can understand. This is what I have attempted to do....”
And Hawkings does a splended job of describing the evolution of man's knowledge and understanding, from the belief in a flat earth to the round earth being the center of the Universe to the earth revolving around the sun and the sun being a part of the galaxy to the understanding that there are many millions of galaxies in the known, observable universe, and that if the Big Bang theory is true, then time began at that instant and hasn't stood still since.
In the same vein our understanding of what happened at Dealey Plaza should have gone through a similar evolution in accepted knowledge, and just as the two basic theories of relativity and quantum mechanics can't both be correct, JFK was either murdered by one man alone or he was killed in a more complicated conspiracy that we are still trying to figure out.
But instead of taking in all of the important research and investigations that have been held over the past fifty years, Bill O'Reilly stands till in time as if the Warren Commission Report got it right after all. It’s only a little bit better than Jim Bishop’s “The Day Kennedy Was Shot,” without bothering to mention all of what we’ve learned since then.
For starters, if Oswald was the lone assassin of JFK, wounded Governor Connally and James Tague and then killed Officer Tippit at another location, the crime is technically a spree killing, and if Oswald, the primary suspect did it all alone, he was either crazy or he was the best Lone Wolf assassin in history, and if true the facts of the case should indicate that. But they don't - Oswald wasn't crazy, did not have a clear motive, and claimed to be a patsy - someone framed for the crime he didn’t commit, as some of the evidence suggests.
Just as Hawking suggests breaking down the big issues into smaller parts that can be more easily studied, and some of the problems and issues that divide the Lone Nut and Conspiracy crowds can be mutually resolved.
JFK himself said that “problems caused by man can be solved by man,” and no matter how complex the issues are, we can figure them out if the attempt is made to do so.
For instance it should be easily determined if it was possible for one man alone could have done all of the things attributed to him, or whether he was what he said he was, framed as the patsy.
If one man alone did it all then all of the evidence should support that contention and fall into place, but it doesn't.
I think it can be determined to a certainty whether the fatal head shot originated from the front or behind, certainly something that science and physics can determine to a certainty.
If Oswald was the lone sniper the Dealey Plaza Kill Zone would revolve around him, the center of action in which everything else reacts to, but if can be proven that Oswald was not capable of doing the shooting let alone devising the plan and successfully executing it alone, and he was after all just what he said he was, - framed as the patsy, then JFK must have been shot by someone else, and suspects other than Oswald must exist – and they do. [See: Other Suspects]
If Oswald was the lone gunman and the assassination was the random act of a madman, then Oswald's personality profile would indicate that he was a paranoid skidzo with psycho tendencies, and his personality would be studied intently by psychologists, but it’s not.
Instead, Oswald fits the Covert Operational Personality (COP) profile – one that fits very defined and unique character traits – including training in foreign language and the crafts and techniques of intelligence, the use of aliases, post office boxes and keeping an apartment separate from the family.
[See: COP PP http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2013/12/assassination-psychology-and-cop-profile.htmlh / http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2009/08/covert-operational-profile.html ]
Just as Hawking says theories and models are used to try to determine the true state of universal affairs, theories and models can be used to better understand what happened at Dealey Plaza.
Hawkins: “A theory is a model, or a restricted part of it, and a set of rules that relate quantities in the model to observations that we make.”
A more general definition of a theory is “the analysis of a set of facts in their relation to one another; a belief, policy or procedure proposed or followed as a basis of action; a plausible or accepted general principles offered to explain a phenomena; a hypothesis assumed for the sake of argument or investigation; an unprovable assumption.”
Just as the flat earth was eventually replaced by the model of the solar system, the Lone Nut scenario that has been used to explain what happened at Dealey Plaza has been replaced by a slew of conspiracy theories, none of which take in all of the known facts, making both models unacceptable, so a new one must be created.
Doug Horne, in his five volume series of books “Inside the Assassination Records Review Board,” calls attention to a book that I recall as a college text book, “The Nature of Scientific Revolutions,” which describes how major scientific breakthroughs occurred, and as with Hawkings, he suggests that while some happened by accident or determination, taking a new and different approach to the problem often provided the new perspective to solve it.
Since we can't really develop a total and complete theory of what happened at Dealey Plaza until all of the evidence, records and documents are in and released to the public by October 2017, we can safely say that neither the Lone Nut nor the Conspiracy Theory works because neither fits all of the known facts.
Besides the Lone Nut and Conspiracy Theory approach to Dealey Plaza, both of which only utilize the facts that supports their basic contentions, there are two other investigative approaches – the Criminal Investigative and Counter-Intelligence CI investigative approach, both vastly different in goals.
The Criminal Investigation, like those usually conducted by the police and law enforcement officers, seeks to identify forensic evidence and preserve it so it can be used in a court of law, presented to a grand jury and used to indict those suspected of crimes so they can be tried before a judge and jury.
A Counter-Intelligence Investigation CII is an investigation commissioned to determine the truth that can be known, often operates in secret, and uses unconventional methods (wire taps and garbage search) and sometimes illegal (break and enter black bag jobs) as a means to learn the full truth.
Both “The Day of the Jackal” and David Atlee Phillips fictional “The Carlos Contract” show how CI - Counter-Intelligence investigations are properly conducted in attempting to track down a Lone Wolf assassin, “Carlos” being “Carlos the Jackal” who was involved in the German Olympics attack and is now in a French prison, while Frederick Forthsite's novel was made into a popular movie that depicts an attempted assassination on French President Charles deGaul by a clever OAS assassin.
In each case the suspects infiltrate the investigations as soon as they learn of them, and I'm sure the Dealey Plaza clean-up crew will be interested in what is learned about them from any CI investigation, and there have been a number of them – by the US Marine Corps, Hunt Oil and some wealthy individuals have conducted private investigations.
Just as Hawkins breaks down the complicated theories of relativity and quantum mechanics into smaller, more controlled sub models, we have studied the assassination in various parts – the Zapruder film, the acoustics, Oswald's movements, defection to USSR, summer in New Orleans, Mexico City, etc. and various specialist concentrate on just one aspect of the case.
The MO – Modus Operandi of Dealey Plaza – the sniper ambush – is a telling sign in itself.
[ http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2010/10/modus-operandi.html ]
Major General Llewellyn W. Atcheriey - Developed the Modus Operandi - MO - system of maintenance of records and files of classifications and types of crimes and criminals.
“The Policeman” (p. 191) By Cornelius Francis Cahalane:
“The policeman, upon investigation of a crime in which he found a familiar mode of operation, would look up the records of various thieves who usually committed the crime in a like manner. If such a person were at large, and he had no promising leads in another direction, he eliminated all other suspects and confined his efforts to a scrutiny of the thieves who he knew from past experience used methods of operation similar to those used by the thief who committed the crime under investigation.”
“Policeman who followed this system usually kept the information to themselves; some used a book, while others relied upon their memory. The need of spreading this information to all members of the Force, and of not confining it exclusively to the man making the investigation, prompted the compiling of a system by Major General Llewellyn W. Atcherley, Inspector of Constabulary, Office of the Home Secretary.”
“It is contended for this system that it tends to narrow the search by a process of elimination of those not known to the police, and of those who are known but who do not commit this certain crime, or, if so, have always committed it differently from the manner found in connection with the crime under investigation.”
“This system is helpful in many instances, but too much reliance cannot be placed upon it. There are some instances where thieves have committed the same crime in the same way for years, or until caught and convicted. This system is helpful, but not infallible….The big thing to be remembered is that the information he gathers is to be used as a comparison with other records on file.”
APPLYING THE MODUS OPERANDI SYSTEM TO DEALEY PLAZA
In applying Atcheriey's MO System to Dealey Plaza, the choice is pretty easy, and a very clear line in the sand - and that is whether the assassination of the President was the result of the impulsive, spontaneous actions of one Deranged Lone-Nut Case, whose individual psychosis can be classified in the realm of medical diagnosis, or was it a covert action, a pre-arranged plan that was meant be secret.
If the former, then we can all go home and let the psychiatrists and psychologists analysize the psychosis of a madman, and the assassination was disconnected to any of the political and historical activities of the day, while if the latter, they were all connected, and therefor can be figured out.
But all of the evidence taken together strongly indicates that whatever happened at Dealey Plaza, the Modus Operandi of the crime was that of a covert intelligence operation, a Black Op designed to remain secret, planned in advance as an illegal act, conducted on a need to know basis using standard covert operational tradecraft and acted out so it was plausibly denialable by the actual sponsors.
Even if Lee Harvey Oswald was the Lone Sniper in the Sixth Floor Window and killed the President in line with the Single-bullet Theory, especially if Oswald was involved in any way, rather than the act of a Lone Mad Man, the assassination must be considered a covert intelligence operation - and investigated as such.
The Modus Operandi behind the assassination of President Kennedy must be considered a covert intelligence operation because the facts of the case indicate that - 1) Those individuals who expressed foreknowledge of the murder; 2) Many if not most of the principle characters were trained in covert intelligence operations, utilized tradecraft and had direct intelligence agency/network associations; 3) deception and traceable disinformation was utilized; 4) There were, as former Senator Richard Schweiker (R.Pa.) put it, "fingerprints of intelligence" all over the place.
As detailed in the study of the use of the Modus Operandi System, it is not perfect, and is only a tool of investigation that eleminates some and narrows down the number of suspects that should be investigated.
The MO System, when applied to Dealey Plaza, does not tell you who was responsible for the crime, but does provide a method for approaching the crime in a way that can lead to its resolution
THE DEALEY PLAZA MO – Military Style Ambush with Psychwar Twist
On September 21, 1962 an American security agent interviewed M. Andre Ducret, a high ranking French detective and security officer about an assassination attempt on French President deGaul and reported that: “Investigation of the August 22 attempt disclosed that the ambush had been organized and directed by a person with military experience and this was immediately noted. The tactics employed were similar to those used by the infantry in attacking convoys.... Jean-Marie Bastien-Thiry, the aeronautical military engineer who was...apprehended and who admitted having organized the attempt revealed during the course of his interrogation that if the itinerary followed by the President had been known earlier and more important the line-up of the vehicles, his tactics would have been different and more effective.”
I believe that it was the same MO – Modus Operandi that was used at Dealey Plaza – “a military style ambush” that was “organized and directed by a person with military experience,” and the primary suspect, as former US Marine defector to the Soviet Union certainly supports that contention.
In the same vein, in breaking down what happened into smaller issues to study, I would like to take just one part of the Dealey Plaza puzzle – the Psychwar Twist - as I think that it cuts to the chase and leads directly to those actually responsible for whatever you believe happened.
Forget for a moment the details of the crime, and look at the case studies we've received that attempt to blame the assassination on Fidel Castro and Castro Cuban Communists.
The whole idea that there was a planned, coordinated and orchestrated effort to blame Castro is part of what Sen. Richard Schweiker (R. Pa.) called “the fingerprints of intelligence,” and belies that fact that one man alone could not have committed the crime and manipulated the media to consider such an allegation without foundation.
The whole idea that a psych-war black propaganda operation was conducted at the same time as the assassination, many including the alleged assassin, is evidence itself that the assassination was a well-planned and successfully executed plot, and one that can be understood even though it was designed with built in covert deceptions to shield the real sponsors of the assassination.
For beginners, such psych war, black propaganda and covert operational techniques are not generally known or utilized except by those who have been properly trained, and therefore the suspects are automatically limited to a small number of potential masterminds who could have pulled off such a feat, men like Ed Lansdale, David Atlee Phillips, E. Howard Hunt, James Jesus Angleton, David Morales, Jake Esterline and maybe a few others who have successfully kept their roles secret, as planned.
We know most about such operations when they fail – such as the Bay of Pigs and Watergate, while the successes – like Dealey Plaza, go without proper investigation.
Grand Universal Field Theory of DP
Stephen Hawkings in "A Brief History of Time," says that because the universe is so big the problems associated with understanding it are broken into smaller more manageable issues. "We break up problems into bits and invent a number of partial theories," Hawking says, an approach I want to apply to Dealey Plaza.
Just as the two basic theoretical enigmas - the general theory of relativity and quantum mechanics are incompatible and both can't be correct, the conclusions of the Warren Report or the HSCA Final Report are incompatible and one must be wrong.
Rather than taking either side of an uncompromising debate I suggest a different approach be taken and like scientists answering questions about the cosmos, we break up the Dealey Plaza issues - not only into more easily managed areas - acoustics, ballistics, graphics, medical, etc., but also try to answer more reasonable questions - such as:
1) The direction of the head shot -
2) The number of gunman
3) Oswald's role - Sniper or Patsy?
4) Was Oswald on missions to Moscow and Mexico City?
5) Dealey Plaza Modus Operandi - Military style ambush
6) What evidence and records have been destroyed? By who?
7) What evidence and records are missing?
8) How many documents are still being with held?
9) Are there any more records or witnesses out there?
10) Was a Psych-War Black Propaganda Program used?
Killing Bill O'Reilly
Just as Stephen Hawkings tried to present the story of the history of time and the universe in such a way that ordinary people could understand it, Bill O’Reilly said that was his goal in writing “Killing Kennedy,” and he had the opportunity to do that but just didn’t get it.
http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2015/03/killing-bill-oreilly.html
Bill O'Reilly's "Killing Kennedy" is the Archie Bunker version of history, as is O'Reilly's claim to be knocking on George deMohrenschildt's door when "he heard the blast that marked the suicide of the Russian, assuring that his relationship with Lee Harvey Oswald would never be fully understood."
Rest assured we know all about deMohrenschildt's relationship with Oswald, the designated patsy, and it can be fully understood.
While much of this book can be attributed to or blamed on O'Reilly's co-author Martibn Dugard, this part of the book is all O'Reilly, and the key element in the story isn't that he exagerated or fabricated his presence at the scene at the time of death and was an ear witness to the gun blast, the key element in the story is deMohrenschildt's relationship with Oswald, the accused assassin, and that can be fully understood, as more is known now and we will learn more about it as the still secret records are released.
The key element in this story and what is wrong about "Killing Kennedy" is that the president was not the victim of a deranged loner, as disgraced Gerald Posner, John McAdams, Hugh Aynesworth and Bill O'Reilly would have you believe, but the alternative is more likely and that Lee Harvey Oswald was an intelligence operative framed as the designated patsy, as he claimed, and JFK was the victim of a covert intelligence operation, as deMohrenschildt, Fonzi, Fonzi's boss Sen. Richard Schewiker and others believe.
George deMohrenschildt is a colorful character and the subject of many books, however for our purposes we only need to know a few pertinent facts - who he was, how he met Oswald, how he assisted Oswald, how he introduced them to the Paines and what he did in Haiti at the time of the assassination.
The equation changes when we ask who was Lee Harvey Oswald, because its one thing if George deMohrenschilt assisted the lone assassin of the president and quite another thing if he helped set up the designated patsy in a much more complicated conspiracy.
The Belorussian son of a Russian Czarist oil minister, deMohrenschildt attended a Polish military academy, studied oil geology, played polo and was an international playboy who was married three times - the first to a young model, the second time to a Philadelphia physician Dr. De De Sharples, whose father owned an oil company that employed deMohrenschildt, and a third time to Jean, whose father ran the Trans-Siberian Railroad in China.
Two children from his second marriage were born handicapped, so they established a non-profit research foundation that enjoyed the support of deMohrenschildt's old family friend Jackie Bouvier Kennedy and her husband, then Senator John F. Kennedy, but deMohrenschildt isn't the only person who knew both JFK and his accused assassin, as Priscilla Johnson McMillan and the Moscow Navy attache present when Oswald defected also knew both men.
To celebrate his third marriage deMohresnchildt and his wife took a walkabout Central America writing reports that later ended up in government files and a documentary film that details their arrival in Guatemala as the Cuban exiles were getting ready to invade Cuba at the Bay of Pigs.
In Texas deMohrenschildt worked for oil wildcat John Mecom, who established the San Jacinto fund, a CIA conduit, and sent deMohrenschildt to Europe, and when he returned deMohrenschildt was debriefed by J. Walton Moore, the head of the CIA's Domestic Contacts Division in Dallas. DeMohrenschildt would meet with Moore before and after he traveled overseas, and Moore became a friend and frequent dinner companion of the deMohrenschildt. A former OSS officer during World War II, Moore was sent on a mission to China with Charles Ford, an Atlantic City native and Princeton graduate who was a CIA training officer except for his one foray into CIA covert operations as a liason between the mobsters involved in CIA plots to kill Castro and RFK when he was head of the Cuban Task Force.
DeMohrenschildt also associated with others in government, defense industry security and the oil business, including Max Clark, who worked in security at General Dynamics, retired Admiral Chester Bruton, a Collins Radio executive, Jean deMenil, Sam Ballen and George Bouhe, "who kept the files on newcomers."
Among the "new comers" were Lee and Marina Oswald, who Moore encouraged deMohrenschildt to meet, and said Oswald was a "harmless lunatic."
White Russian Colonel Lawrence Orlov was with deMohrenschildt when he first visited Oswald and Orlov in turn, was a frequent racket ball partner of J. Walton Moore, the CIA's man in Dallas.
DeMohrenschildt tried to assist Oswald get a job, first with Sam Ballen, whose office Oswald visited at the Southland Center, the same high rise office building where Oswald was later seen in the lobby with the CIA spymaster David Atlee Phillips and anti-Castro Cuban terrorist Antonio Veciana. Ballen interviewed Oswald personally but declined to hire him, so deMohrenschildt introduced Oswald to retired Admiral Chester Bruton, an executive at Collins Radio, the Richardson, Texas company that supplied radios to the Air Force Strategic Air Command and Military Air Transport services - including Air Force one and the executive air fleet.
Bill O'Reilly credits deMohrenschildt with getting the job at Jaggers-Chiles-Stoval, a Dallas graphic arts company where Oswald was working when he ordered and allegedly received the pistol and rifle said to have been used to kill a Dallas police officer and the President. I say allegedly because on the day Oswald is said to have picked up the weapons and paid the balance he owned on delivery, no one at the Post Office recalls handing the weapons to him over the counter, and the J-C-S records indicate that Oswald worked that day from before the Post Office opened until after it was closed. These records also indicate that day Oswald worked on the account of a client - Sam Bloom Advertising agency, who handled the details of the President's motorcade.
At J-C-S in October 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis, Oswald placed arrows and captions on maps and U2 photos of Cuba and the Soviet Union, possibly on photos and maps that were used to brief the president and others about the Soviet missile in Cuba.
After deMohrenschildt got a job in Haiti, it was arranged for him to introduce Oswald to Ruth and Michael Paine, who would then pick up where deMohrenschildt left off as Oswald's "babysitter," so a party was arranged for the Oswalds to meet the Paines at the home of Volkmar Schmidt, a Magnolia Oil company employee from Germany who also met Oswald. Schmidt's roommates at this home and party include the son of Radio Free Europe executive and they all supported the Texas CIA front that funneled money to Radio Free Europe.
Schmidt had lived with a German doctor who was involved in the Valkyrie plot to assassinate Hitler, and acknowledged using reverse psychology techniques on Oswald that were taught to him by the doctor, and in their two hour beer drenched conversation, Schmidt also mentioned the Valkyrie plot and neo-Nazi General Edwin Walker, suggesting that he should be assassinated as Hitler should have been before taking power.
We are then led to believe that Oswald stalked, photographed his house and took a pot shot at Walker and missed, then flushed down a toilet the notebook of evidence he kept on the attack. The April 10, 1963 attack on Walker took place at the same time Admiral Bruton at Collins Radio was busy as the nuclear sub USS Thresher disappeared with all hands. Later a group Justice for the Crew of the Thresher (JFCOTT) would threaten the life of the President and attempt to link Oswald.
A few days later, shortly before leaving for Haiti, deMohrenschildt stopped by to say goodbye to Oswald and his wife, saw the rifle in the closet and jokingly remarked, "How did you miss Walker?"
Oswald then moved to New Orleans, where he engaged with both the anti-Castro DRE and the pro-Castro Fair Play for Cuba Committee, while deMohrenschildt went to Haiti, via New York City and Washington D.C.
In New York deMohrenschildt met CIA officers at the private Knickerbocker Club and the offices of Train-Cabot, where John Train handled CIA propriety companies. While the meeting was supposed to be about Haiti, did deMohrenschildt tell them the most significant piece of intelligence he had - that Oswald had a rifle and probably took the shot at Walker?
In Washington D.C. deMohrenschildt met with Military Intelligence officers Col. Sam Kail and Dorothie Matlack. Kail had previously served at the US Embassy in Havana where he associated closely with David Atlee Philips and other CIA offices, while Matlack worked for the same Pentagon office that the Texas Army Intelligence officers reported to including Col. Crichton, Col. Brandy and the Colonel who rode in the pilot car of the motorcade.
Oswald stayed in New Orleans until September 24, 1963, the day after Ruth Paine picked up Marina, the baby and their belongings, including the rifle, and drove them to Texas while Oswald went to Mexico. Ruth Paine had arrived in New Orleans from Philadelphia where she visited her husband's mother Ruth Forbes Paine Young and Arthur Young, the inventor of the Bell Helicopter. Michael Paine had lived with the Youngs in Philadelphia when he met Ruth Hyde and married her, and it was Art Young who arranged for Michael to work at the Bell Helicopter plant in Texas.
It is Michael Paine's mom - Ruth Forbes Paine Young who supplies the key link in the network, as she was close friends and traveling companion with Mary Bancroft, whose book "Autobiography of a Spy," chronicles her OSS work in Bonn with paramour Allen Dulles, as a chief contact with those involved in the Valkyrie plot to kill Hitler.
On September 24th, the same day Oswald left New Orleans for Mexico, Air Force Chief of Staff General Curtis LeMay chaired a meeting of the Joint Chiefs of Staff while General Maxwell Taylor was in Vietnam. This meeting, as detailed in the Higgins Memo, indicates that they were briefed on CIA Cuban operations by Desmond FitzGerald, who informed them of the CIA attempt to adapt the Valkyrie plot to Castro and Cuba. Except instead of a bomb, it appears that they intended to use a sniper with a high-powered rifle and shoot Castro as he drove along in an open jeep, and blame the assassination on communists, the plan that was used at Dealey Plaza.
[Higgins Memo: http://jfkcountercoup2.blogspot.com/2014/04/higgins-memo-numbered-w-bullet-points.html ]
We certainly have learned a lot of things since the death of deMohrenschildt, and his relationship to the designated patsy, and we will learn a lot more if the remaining sealed records are released, but we know that there were shennagans at the crossroads all along the way and the story doesn't end at deMohrenschildt's doorstep and death, nor with the suspicious death of Charles William Thomas.
Among the records we should expect are the June Cobb memo about the Oswald-Duran Twist Party, and the role Charles William Thomas played for the CIA as a Covert Action agent in Haiti at the time of the assassination as well as his association there with deMohrenschildt.
In the end, the key element in this story is not Bill O'Reilly's fabrications of being there at the time of deMohrenschildt's death, but that O'Reilly is wrong about Oswald being the lone assassin, that he was a covert intelligence operative who deMohrenschildt knowingly or unwittingly helped frame as the designated patsy in the assassination, which was a plan successfully executed and adapted from the failed Valkyrie plot to kill Hitler.
One part of the Valkyrie plan that was adapted to the Dealey Plaza operation was the psychwar black propaganda campaign to blame the assassination on Castro.
While Shenon is more sophisticated in his style and connected to the orchestrated Wurlitzer and O'Reilly appears not, he does join the Mockingbird choir when he falsely says:
"Unlike the majority of his peers, Oswald believed that the Soviets have every right to be on Cuba. From his perception, the Russians must protect Castro's people against terrorist backed by the United States. Oswald is firmly convinced that President Kennedy is putting the world on the brink of nuclear war by taking such an aggressive stance against the Soviets. To him, JFK is the villain." (“Killing Kennedy” p. 117)
Oswald never considered JFK a villain, was saddened at the death of JFK's son Patrick and always talked highly of the President as a man and a person, and had no motive to kill him.
A Cruel and Shocking Twist
[ http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2015/04/a-cruel-and-shocking-twist.html ]
Phillip Shenon's book A Cruel and Shocking Act (2013 Macmillan)
Audio version by Robert Petkoff.
Review by Bill Kelly
As a serious and respected journalist Phillip Shenon deserves a listen when he says the whole truth about the assassination of President Kennedy has yet to be told, that much of the evidence and many of the official records have been destroyed, and there are still some unquestioned witnesses who have been ignored or intimidated into silence.
Among the destroyed evidence, some incinerated, some flushed down toilets, others simply gone missing, include original autopsy notes and photos, Oswald's note to the FBI, backyard pictures, JFK's brain, Jackie's pink pill box hat - all gone. And Shenon doesn’t mention the missing Air Force One radio tapes, the Secret Service radio tapes, “Mary's box” of evidence lost by the Dallas PD, the ONI investigative reports on Oswald, the USMC report that concluded Oswald was not capable of committing the assassination alone, and private interviews with Oswald's USMC buddies – all gone missing.
So we are left with what Shenon calls a "Duel Curse," too little direct evidence has survived, yet thanks to the JFK Act - too much has been released - millions of pages of government documents, too much for any one person to read it all, yet Shenon doesn't mention that there are still so many records being withheld for reasons of national security that the National Archives can't even tell us how many.
Shenon says that no one person can read it all, but he himself reads the Prologue to the audio version of his book in which he tells us how he came to this story - while sitting at a desk of the New York Times Washington DC office when he got a phone call from a former Warren Commission attorney who wanted the truth to be told - "the best detective story you have never heard."
So you know right off the bat where this book is coming from.
The former Warren Commission staff attorney, who prefers to remain anonymous in fear of the wrath of his still living former Commission colleagues, now claims he is outraged by what "they did not see" and have learned over the years, critical and crucial facts that should have been provided the president's commission, especially the CIA plots to kill Castro, and Shenon calls attention to the mysterious and bizarre escapades in Mexico City.
This is the book that I thought Max Holland was writing as an apologist for the Warren Commission, but rather than the Commission getting it right, Shenon sees their failures as a reason to revisit the case, though he puts on blinders that keeps him from including anything except the facts that support the possibility the assassination plan was "hatched or encouraged" by Cuban Communists in Mexico City.
These blinders effectively shield Shenon from other aspects of the same story that point to a different conclusion, one that Oswald's mother and her lawyer Mark Lane make - the idea that Oswald was not the lone assassin, but an intelligence operative and designated patsy. But it is not the crazy concoction of a looney mother and her lawyer as Shenon makes them out to be, but it is a serious consideration that others, including George deMohrenschildet, Gaeton Fonzi, Sen. Richard Schweiker, Peter Dale Scott, John Newman and other more responsible analysts have also made.
Central to Shenon's thesis is a Mexico City Twist Party, which he learned about from some of the recently released records of State Department mid-level diplomat Charles William Thomas, whose suicide is said to be related to the failure of the government to act on the information he provided about the Twist Party and its possible association to the assassination.
Others have been down this alley before, as the Twist Party has been the subject of previous analysis, though you wouldn't know it from Shenon's book.
On the day after the assassination the wife of the CIA's Mexico City Station Chief Win Scott was the first to hear about and mention the Twist Party and it was brought up again by others, including CIA agent June Cobb, and the story was investigated and included in other published works - Anthony Summers Not In Your Lifetime, Peter Dale Scott’s "Deep Politics," John Newman's "Oswald and the CIA," Jeff Morley's "Our Man in Mexico"and Gus Russo's "Brothers in Arms."
All of the reports about the Twist Party can be traced back to one particular source - Elena Garro Paz, who recognized the accused assassin of President Kennedy - Lee Harvey Oswald, as having been in attendance at a Twist Party in Mexico City, a party that was hosted by the brother-in-law of Sylvia Duran, who was also in attendance at the party with another Cuban embassy officer, both of whom dealt with Oswald when he visited the embassy in an attempt to get a visa to Cuba.
Others at this party include Elena Garro Paz's daughter Elena, a communist writer Emilio Carballido, a General Jose Jeus Clark Flores, a red haired Latin negro and two American gringo beatniks, one of whom was a tall blond and the other a movie actor.
It was at this party that the communist Carballido and the Cuban embassy officials were allegedly overheard talking to Oswald about killing Kennedy, and where Shenon says the plan to kill the President was possibly "hatched or encouraged" by the communists there.
On the day after the day after the assassination - November 23, 1963, Elena Garro Paz - the primary source of the story, was whisked away to the Hotel Vermont by a Mexican security officer – Manuel Calvillo, who kept her incomunicato for a week “for her own protection,” while at the same time, Sylvia Duran was twice arrested and violently interrogated by Mexican security officers until she confessed to having a sexual affair with Oswald.
Syliva Duran is clearly the principle player in this drama and in subsequent interviews with Anthony Summers, Gus Russo and now Shenon, she denies ever meeting Oswald outside of the Cuban embassy, and she has been consistent in her denials, although others have reported that she privately admitting otherwise.
According to the other reliable sources, Sylvia Duran met with Oswald outside of the embassy on two occasions, other than the Twist Party, once at a fancy restaurant where she is said to have introduced Oswald to the Cuban Ambassador to Mexico, and then she met Oswald for lunch at Sanborns, a popular restaurant near the American Embassy where Oswald was also known to frequent.
Enhancing her credibility however, is Duran's acknowledgement of having an affair with someone at the American embassy and with Carlos Lechuga, the former Cuban Ambassador to Mexico. While Shenon reports on the Duran-Lechuga affair, he neglects to mention the key fact that Lechuga was the chief Cuban intermediary in the secret JFK-William Atwood-Lisa Howard-Lechuga-Castro backchannel negotiations that were on-going at the time of the assassination (See the Chase memo), what Arthur Schlesinger said would have been sufficient motive for anti-Castro Cubans to kill JFK - if they knew about it, and they apparently did.
These same CIA backed anti-Castro Cubans were also engaged with Oswald in New Orleans, (and possibly in Florida and Dallas), and were part of the failed black propaganda disinformation campaign to blame the assassination of JFK on Castro and the Cuban Communists. And there is not one, but over a dozen examples of the clearly false attempts to do this, including the now infamous Twist Party.
John Newman, as one of the best authorities on the released records concludes: "The anomalies in the story about Oswald's activities in Mexico City that proliferated in CIA channels do seem to fall into a pattern suggesting an extraordinary possibility: the story was invented....to falsely implicate the Cuban government in the assassination."
There are other case studies to support this contention, all of which have been explored elsewhere, but the Twist Party is a good example.
After Win Scott's wife, the government's files indicate that Clark Anderson was the second US embassy officer to officially call attention to the Twist Story, then June Cobb (Still secret report of October 5, 1964) and then CIA Covert Action officer Jim Flannery reported on it (October 12, 1964), so the story had made the rounds of the embassy before Charles W. Thomas first reported it on December 10, 1965. The Twist Party is also mentioned in the Lopez Report of the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA), and was followed up on by Summers, Newman, Russo and now Shenon.
Before we get to Charles Thomas, who brought Shenon into the story, something must be said for June Cobb, a voluptuous CIA operative and Mata Hari who slept her way into Castro's confidence and became his secretary and translator when he first came to power and set up his headquarters in the Havana Hilton. The hotel at the time was then managed by Col. Brandeister, a Military Intelligence officer who reported to the same Pentagon office as Col. Sam Kail, who was working out of the American embassy in Havana when Castro took power.
While working for Castro June Cobb translated a book, "The Shark & the Sardine," which Lee Harvey Oswald checked out of the Dallas library on November 7, 1963, two weeks before the assassination.
After leaving Castro Cobb went to Mexico City where she literally moved in with Elena Garro Paz, her sister Deba and teenage daughter Elena, all of whom attended the Twist Party, so it wasn't long before Cobb heard about it and reported it to the CIA in a memo that was still secret and withheld for reasons of national security when Newman first published his book Oswald and the CIA (though it might be available now). Since Newman has learned a lot more about June Cobb and mentioned her frequently in his presentation at the Bethesda conference in September, we can expect to read more about her in Newman's upcoming new book.
Whether true or not, the idea that the CIA files indicated that Sylvia Duran had sex with both Carlos Lechuga and Lee Harvey Oswald certainly merits a raised eyebrow, but not for the reasons Shenon gives - that it implicates the Cuban government with Oswald and thus the assassination. Actually the Duran-Oswald-Lechuga menage a tois and the Twist Party implicate the CIA and the anti-Castro Cubans in an apparently well planned and complex psych-war caper to implicate Castro and Cuban Communists in the assassination.
The problems with the Twist Party are many, as it is clear that the Durans hosted a number of such parties, the question being whether Lee Harvey Oswald - the historical accused assassin of President Kennedy, was in attendance at any of them - and if so, when was it?
Or is this a simple case of mistaken identity? Was it just an American who looked like Oswald?
Or was Oswald being intentionally impersonated, as he clearly was on other occasions?
Is the whole Twist Party story a ruse? Is it part of a planned and failed attempt to blame the assassination on Castro and Cuban Communists, as much of the evidence indicates?
One problem is the presence at the party of a red-haired Latin negro who was also seen twice with Oswald outside the Cuban embassy giving him money. One of these reports, by a Nicaraguan intelligence agent, had the wrong date, he later recanted and the story was proven false. This red-haired Latin negro who reportedly gave Oswald money outside the Cuban embassy has been positively identified as Oscar “Carlos” Morales Mesa. But one wonders why he hasn't been arrested as a collaborator with Oswald, the accused assassin? Why hasn't this guy been picked up off the street by Navy SEALS and delivered to the CIA and violently waterboarded as such terrorists are treated today?
Another problem is the identity of the two American beat nicks, who were at the Party and then seen walking down the street with Oswald the next morning, one of whom was an American movie actor who Shenon's sources refused to identify because he is alive in the USA today and they want to protect him.
Well CIA records reflect the fact that the American movie actor is Richard Beymer, of West Side Story fame, who played opposite Natalie Wood in the movie version of the Broadway musical that was scored by Leonard Bernstein, a friend and admirer of President Kennedy who said of the assassination: "We don't want to know the truth."
I quickly located Beymer in the mid-west and got him on the phone. He had not been previously questioned about this before, and was unaware that he was the subject of CIA files on the assassination of the president.
Beymer acknowledged that he went to Mexico in the fall of 1963 with a friend who owned a nightclub in New York City. They went to Mexico City and tried to get a visa to Cuba, and government files indicate they contacted Sylvia Duran, just as Oswald had done.
Beymer gave me the name of his old friend, fellow beat nick and traveling companion, now a Catholic priest in upstate New York, and I quickly located and talked with him on the phone as well.
Both men politely answered all my questions, but neither recalled attending a Twist Party with Duran or Oswald, although since they were both young, single Americans in Mexico looking for a good time, attending a Twist Party "was something we would have done," said Beymer.
From Mexico City they went to Acapulco to attend a film festival, and they were there on November 22, 1963 when they learned of the assassination as they got off the elevator in the hotel lobby.
Since they were in Mexico for only a few weeks, and were there on November 22nd, it is unlikely they were there in late September when Oswald was there.
Some participants have referred to the Twist Party as having taken place a few weeks before the assassination, when Beymer and his friend could have been there, but the historical Oswald could not have been. Duran estimated three possible dates for the party, but Oswald was in Mexico on only one of them.
Shenon comes to the Twist Party with Charles W. Thomas, the State Department officer who committed suicide when he was wrongfully released from his job, and he fails to mention the other sources for the Twist Party story.
Shenon begins his book with the story of Charles Thomas, and uses the Twist Party as a the key moment when Oswald is introduced to the cell of Cuban Communists who “encourage” him to kill the President.
"And what about Charles Thomas?" Newman asks.
Before going to Mexico City, Newman notes, "His previous assignment had been to Haiti; from Jan. 8, '61 to the 'summer' of '63. DeMohrenschildt arrived there on June 2, 1963 - and it seems likely that both men were there at the same time."
"In another interesting coincidence," Newman writes, "Thomas became involved in deMohrenschildt's business dealings with the Haitian government."
Shenon thinks is noteworthy that Manuel Calvillo, the Mexican security official who wisked Paz into a week’s seclusion after the assassination, “was also working for the CIA.” Shenon writes, “CIA records identified Calvillo as an ‘unwitting’ agent of the CIA, suggesting that he did not know that his handler worked for the agency. Investigators for the HSCA, working with the Mexican government, were unable to track down Calvillo in Mexico. He has since died.”
Well Shenon should be interested to know that the same thing can be said of Charles Thomas.
Newman: "In Mexico City in 1965 however, Charles Thomas was a CIA Covert Action operative, and a key player in the development of the Oswald-Duran story. That story gained credibility in CIA channels in a way that leaves open an unsavory possibility: the story has been invented...to falsely implicate the Cuban government in the assassination."
So Shenon, in writing about the Twist Party and making it a central part of his thesis, leaves out a lot of the previous analysis and fails to follow up on the ignored witnesses who are eager to talk.
While he is correct in that there are a lot of destroyed and missing evidence and records, there are many millions of recently released documents, and you don't have to read them all, just be familiar with the published works of those who have read many of them - Summers, Newman, Russo and Peter Dale Scott.
Shenon is correct in calling attention to the significance of the Twist Party story, but he is wrong to suggest that the only thing it could mean is that the Cuban Communists helped "plan" or "encouraged" Oswald to kill the President, when in fact it is one of a dozen case studies of the black propaganda effort that was launched to falsely blame Castro and Cuban Communists for the assassination.
Bill Kelly Notes: Since posting this I have heard from Dan Hardway, the HSCA investigator who went to Mexico City and co-authored the Lopez Report with Ed Lopez. Hardway told me that even though he is credited by Shenon and publicly thanked in the book, Shenon wasn’t interested in what Hardway had to say. Shenon wasn’t interested in the fact that there was a deception operation going on or in anything that Hardway had to say that didn’t support his false contention that Castro Cuban Communists inspired Oswald to kill JFK. So it’s not that Shenon was totally ignorant of Summers, Newman, Scott and Morely, he just ignored them.
So Shenon is not seeking the truth but merely making a hack job conspiracy theory that just so happens to coincide with the original cover-story.
This violates the basic tenant of the journalist and historian, as G. Kinston Clark, in his book “The Critical Historian,” writes:
“The distortion produced by bias are potentially present in any attempt to write history. Sometimes the danger is obvious and menacing, sometimes it is covert, coming from unexpected angles and in not easily detected forms. ….Any interpretation which makes use of facts which can be shown to be false, or accepts as certainty true facts which are dubious, or does not take into account facts which are known, are at best, potentially misleading, and possibly grossly, and dangerously deceptive. ….It is the first task of the historian to review any narrative to find what links are missing altogether…where what is defective cannot be supplied by further research, it is an historian’s duty to draw attention to the fact so that men can know where they stand.…Any historical conception which has not been adjusted to the most recent results will cease to be satisfactory.”
Also: I will be adding footnotes and additional notes and links to this as soon as I am able.
Also, some other errata in Shenon's book:
- the backyard photos were not taken in New Orleans but in Oak Cliff, Dallas.
- the Lifeline radio programs were found in Jack Ruby's car on the day he killed Oswald - not the day of the assassination, and btw - the author of the articles in those programs was a former CIA propaganda expert.
-Greer, the Secret Service driver, was indeed born in Ireland, but Northern Ireland, and didn't have an affinity with the Irish Catholic president as he was affiliated with the pro-British political associations.
- Joe Goulden, who Shenon mentions making up the FBI informant number with Hugh Aynesworth, was also trying to get the Dallas assistant DA to charge Oswald with a "Communist Conspiracy," something that LBJ personally squashed on the night of the assassination.
The Twist Party - just one of dozens of similar Psychwar Black Ops
List of Psychwar Black Prop Ops
The Twist Party story, as related by Shenon, Russo and others, is just one of dozens of similar type stories floated like a balloon to see if they would fly, and none of them did, as every single one has been shown and proven false, and its real origin can be actually determined, and most of them trace back to the CIA or some US intelligence source.
As Peter Dale Scott writes:
"In the days after the murders in Dallas, the U.S. Was flooded with dubious stories, most of them swiftly discredited, linking Oswald to either a Cuban or Soviet conspiracy. Those which most preoccupied the FBI and CIA all came out of Mexico. These stories exhibited certain common characteristics."
"1. They all came from either directly from an intelligence source, or from someone in the hands of an intelligence agency. Nearly always the agency involved was the Mexican DFS or secret police. The DFS, along with the Nicaraguan intelligence service, which was also a source, were under CIA tutelage."
"2. The Stories changed over time, to support either a pro-conspiratorial hypothesis (“Phase One”) or a rebuttal of this (“Phase Two”)."
"3. The Warren Commission was led to believe that the “Phase One” stories were without basis. In fact a number of unresolved anomalies suggest that behind them was some deeper truth, still not revealed."
"4. As just noted, the two main sources, Silvia Duran and Gilberto Alvarado, gave varying stories while detained by the DFS. Of the two, Duran was actually tortured, and Alvarado reportedly threatened with torture... In retrospect, these stories should not have been taken seriously. In fact the CIA was able to rely on them, not as a source of truth, but as a source of coercive influence over the rest of the government. It will help us to understand what was going on if we refer to the stories, not as 'information' or even as 'allegations,' but as MANAGED STORIES. To say this leaves open the question of who were the ultimate managers – the DFS, U.S. Officers in Mexico, or higher authorities in Washington."
"The full history is complex and confused, with many unanswered questions. But nearly all of these managed stories, along with others outside Mexico.....resolve into this simple pattern of a Phase One/Phase Two evolution."
"I do wish to argue that these managed stories, fleeting and insubstantial though they are, were of central importance in determining the outcome of the Kennedy assassination investigation. In succeeding years, furthermore, the discredited 'Phase-One' stories have been revived to manipulate public opinion, even after the CIA and FBI had agreed on a 'Phase-Two' interpretation of Oswald's movements in Mexico City. In 2013, for example, the discredited Garro story of the twist party was revived in a mainstream book by Philip Shenon."
"To this day both 'Phase-One' and 'Phase-Two' versions are trotted out from time to time. These control public perceptions of the Kennedy assassination seize the debate from genuine critics who have less access to the media."
END PDS QUOTE -
List of Psychwar Black Propaganda Stories Affiliated with the Assassination of JFK
This is not a complete list – merely the top 25 incidents that are capable of being studied closer -
1) Photographs of Oswald with rifle and pistol and communist magazines that contained articles on anti-Castro Cuban terrorist raids.
2) Oswald's activities with DRE Cubans in New Orleans in the summer of 1963.
3) Oswald's visit to Sylvia Odio.
4) Oswald's visit to the Cuban and Soviet embassies in Mexico City.
5) Oswald's alleged attendance at a Twist Party in Mexico City.
6) A pamphlet distributed in the Florida Cuban community in early November 1963 that predicted that “An Act of God” would put a “Texan in the White House.”
7) Cuban's visit to Parrot Jungle in Miami. [See: Parrot Jungle Incident]
8) Two of the last issues President Kennedy delt with before leaving for Texas were the backchannel UN negotiations with Fidel Castro and the discovery of a weapons cache on a Venezuelan beach that appeared to be Cuban support for terrorists in South America.
9) Seth Kantor, a Scripps-Howard News Service (SHNS) reporter in Dallas during the assassination couldn't understand why his telephone calls from Parkland hospital were being ssealed by the government because “disclosure would reveal confidential source of information.” The source, it turned out, was Hal Hendrix, aka “the Spook,” who fed information on the alleged assassin from Miami.
10) Joe Goulden egged Dallas Assistent DA Bill Alexander to say that he was going to charge Oswsald with murder “in furtherance of a Communist Conspiracy.”
11) Dallas PD Special Services Bureau officer Stringfellow sent repot to USAF Strike Command that Cuba may be behind the assassination and “Mary's Box” disappears from DPD.
12) On the night of the assassination Clare Booth Luce received a telephone call from Julio Fernandez, one of the anti-Castro Cuban commandos she financially supported, who reported to her of Oswald's contacts with the DRE in New Orleans.
13) In Miami, Dr. Jose Ignorzio, the chief of clinical psychology for the Catholic Welfare Service, contacted the White House to inform the new administration that Oswald had met directlly with Cuban ambassador Armas in Mexico.
14) In Florida Frank Sturgis is interviewed for the Pamparo Beach Sun Sentinel saying that Oswald had talked with Cuban G2 agents and had been with Cubans in Miami. Donald Freed and Jeff Cohen (in Liberation Magazine) later reported that “Back in Miami a high powered propaganda machine was cranking out stories that Oswald was a Cuban agent.”
15) Over the years Sturgis would revise this story to include Oswald and Jack Ruby and Castro
In 1976 Gaeton Fonzi interviewed Sturgis who then said he was reminded of a meeting in Havana two months before the assassination that included Raul Castro, Ramiro Valdez, chief of Cuban Intelligence, Che Guevara and his secretary Tanya, another Cuban officer, an American they called “El Mexicano,” and oh, yea, Jack Ruby.”
16) In Mexico City David Atlee Phillips promoted to CIA HQ the story of a Nicaraguan intelligence agent code named “D” who claimed to have seen Oswald take money from a red haired Cuban.
17) After “D” discredited a Mexican journalist reported the same things – having seen Oswald take money from a red haired negro Cuban outside the Cuban embassy.
18) The first time David Atlee Phillips met with Antonio Veciana after the assassination he tried to get Veciana to contact his brother, a pro-Castro Cuban government official, and try to bribe him into saying that Oswald was affiliated with the Castro Cubans.
19) According to Shenon, Gerald Ford was the only member of the Warren Commission to express the idea that Castro was behind the assassination.
20) LBJ privately expresses belief JFK after Castro but Castro got him first.
21) Former Assistant to Army Secretary Joe Califano expresses belief Castro killed JFK.
22) Sam Halpern expresses belief that Castro had JFK killed and adds the additional twist that RFK personally ran the CIA ops to kill Castro and Castro retaliated.
23) 1980 Scrips-Howard News Service report that Castro trying to kill Reagan as he did JFK. This is the most detailed and easily traced example of a black prop op. [See: SHNS Report]
24) Gus Russo wrote two books “Live By the Sword” and “Brothers in Arms” trying to blame the assassination on Castro and contributed to the documentary film by German producer who makes “documentary” that blames Castro for the assassination.
25) Former CIA officer Brian Lettrel writes a book that attempts to blame Castro for the assassination based on the reports of a defector who claimed Castro had him listen for Air Force One radio transmissions from Texas that day.
The Other Party with a Psychwar Twist
The idea that Oswald attended a party where he was encouraged to commit political assassination is not so far-fetched – as it really did happen, but since it doesn’t fit Shenon’s theory that Oswald was encouraged by Castro Cuban Commies, it doesn’t get a mention in his book.
The Other Party with a Psychwar Twist - Where It Was Suggested to Oswald that he Commit Assassination
Lee Harvey Oswald’s alleged Mexico City escapades should be placed in their proper context, not only in time – September 24 to October 3, 1963, but as it was a stepping stone to the assassination itself.
The promotion of the idea that Cuba’s Fidel Castro was behind the assassination at Dealey Plaza can be broken down into individual case studies that can be traced back to their original sources and provide a tangible guide or road map of the intelligence network that’s in play.
[See: List: http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2015/04/list-of-psychwar-black-prop-ops.html ]
In retrospect, Oswald’s Mexico odyssey was not as it was officially portrayed – the Lone Wolf’s failed attempt to get a visa to Cuba or the frequently recycled cover-story of the alleged assassin’s association with pro-Castro Cuban Communists who encouraged him or helped him plan the Dealey Plaza event.
Today we know Oswald’s Mexico City escapade was a “managed” and manipulated affair that resulted in the framing of Oswald as the designated Patsy and a failed attempt to pin the tail on Castro’s donkey.
This scenario fits more honestly with all of the known facts, including Oswald’s contention that he was a patsy, and Peter Dale Scott’s “Phase-One and Phase-Two” hypothesis that the original “Phase-one” Cuban Communist cover story was supplanted by the “Phase-two” Lone Nut scenario in order to avoid nuclear war if a foreign country, however superficially, was implicated in the assassination - as the original cover-story implies.
The idea that the accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald attended a party where he was encouraged to commit political assassination is not so far-fetched however, as it did indeed happen, though not at a twist party in Mexico City but a house party in Dallas in February of 1963.
That’s when a party was held especially for Oswald to meet Michael Paine, who didn’t make the party, but it was an important occasion because Oswald’s wife Marina met Michael Paine’s wife Ruth Hyde Paine, and Oswald met Volkmar Schmidt, who lived in the house where the party was held along with two other Magnolia Oil company engineers, one of whom was the son of a Radio Free Europe executive.
Schmidt was recruited for Magnolia from Germany, where he at one time lived with a doctor who specialized in psychosomatic psychology and Schmidt admitted that he used “reverse psychology” techniques on Oswald when they talked for over two hours at the party.
Volkmar Schmidt told me that he suggested to Oswald that Fascist General Edwin Walker should be assassinated as Hitler himself should have been - and Schmidt says he specifically mentioned the July 1944 Valkyrie plot that failed to kill Hitler.
[See: Volkmar Schmidt Interview: http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2008/01/volkmar-schmidt-interview.html ]
So while at this party Volkmar Schmidt encourages Oswald to commit a political assassination as he is accused of doing two months later by taking a shot at Walker, but it is even more significant that Oswald’s wife Marina met Ruth Hyde Paine, Michael Paine’s wife, at the same party, and they became fast friends.
Marina moved in with Ruth Hyde Paine while Oswald relocated to New Orleans shortly after the Walker shooting Mrs. Paine drove Marina and the baby and the rifle to New Orleans and then, five months later, returned to pick up Marina and the baby and the rifle and return them to her house in Irving, Texas while Oswald went to Mexico City.
On the same late September day that Mrs. Paine picked up Marina and the rifle and Oswald departed New Orleans for Mexico, President Kennedy issued an Executive Order approving “Operation Four Leaves” – a special military communications program that is still classified.
JFK then left Washington on what they called the “Conservation Tour” with the Secretary of Interior, the first stop on which was the Northeast Pennsylvania home of the mother of Mary Pinchot Meyer. She's the former wife of CIA officer Cord Meyer and a close JFK friend and paramour who he had met through his old school mate William Attwood.
JFK moved on to the mid-west from where it was officially announced from an obscure Wisconsin dateline that the President would ride in a motorcade through the streets of Dallas on November 22.
Shortly after the assassination another women named Mary delivered a box of papers, news clips of the President’s Conservation Tour to the Dallas Police, who examined them and later said the documents in the box linked Oswald with Jack Ruby and the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, all of which disappeared.
Other things were also going on that September 24th, as JFK left on his Conservation Tour and Oswald was crossing the border to Mexico, the Joint Chiefs of Staff met at the Pentagon, where Air Force chief of staff General Curtis LeMay was the temporary chairman of the Joint Chiefs while General Maxwell Taylor was in Vietnam.
According to the minutes of that meeting kept by General Krulak’s aide Col. Higgens, the Joint Chiefs were briefed by CIA officer Desmond FitzGerald on how the military could assist the CIA’s covert Cuban operations, specifically mentioning a plan being to adapt the Valkyrie plot to kill Hitler to be used against Castro.
It is interesting that this document comes from the records of Joe Califano, the former assistant to the Army Secretary who is one of those who still tries to promotes the idea that Castro was behind the assassination.
So on the day JFK leaves on his Conservation Tour, Ruth Paine picks up Marina and the rifle and delivers them to Texas and Oswald goes to Mexico City - the Joint Chiefs of Staff are briefed by the CIA on a plan to kill Castro using the Valkyrie plan that failed to kill Hitler.
A key element in the assassination at Dealey Plaza was getting the rifle from New Orleans to Texas, and Mrs. Ruth Paine does it.
Ironically, how ironic is it – that before picking up Marina and the rifle Mrs. Paine visited her husband’s mother – Ruth Forbes Paine Young?
Ruth Young is the wife of Arthur Young – the eccentric – and I don't use that word lightly - inventor of the Bell Helicopter who got Michael Paine the job at Bell Helicopter in Texas.
The irony is the undisputed fact that Michael’s mother was a close personal friend and traveling companion of Mary Bancroft, whose book “Autobiography of a Spy” details her role as Allen Dulles’ secretary, agent, paramour and important player in the Valkyrie plot to kill Hilter.
An important element in the Valkyrie plot was not only to assassinate Hitler, but to blame the murder on the Gestapo, and deflect attention from the generals, just as blaming the Castro Communists was an integral part of the Dealy Plaza plan.
So before driving to New Orleans to pick up Marina and the rifle and delivering them to Texas while Oswald went to New Orleans, Mrs. Paine stops by to visit Michael’s mom, a close friend and traveling companion of Mary Bancroft, a key participant in the Valkyrie plot to kill Hitler.
This is not a fact mentioned in the Warren Report, and I only learned about by reading Gerald Ford’s “Portrait of the Assassin,” which includes a number of documents that were not included in the Warren Report or released to the public, and it is interesting that (according to Shenon) Ford was the only member of the Commission who promoted the idea that Fidel Castro may have been behind the assassination.
[For more on Ruth Paine’s Summer Vacation see the report prepared by Carol Hewett, Steve Barber and Barbara Lamonica]
So after visiting Michael’s mom in Philadelphia, Ruth Paine drives to New Orleans and picks up Marina and the rifle and delivers them to Texas while Oswald goes to New Orleans, the President goes on his Conservation Tour, and the Joint Chiefs are briefed on CIA’s covert Cuban operations, including the plan to use the Valkyrie plot against Castro.
When Oswald returns to Dallas from Mexico City, he signs in to the YMCA using the same O.H. Lee alias he used at the hotel in Mexico City and at the Beckely Street rooming house – he's still operational – still on a mission, in his mission role.
Mrs. Paine then makes a phone call and arranges for Oswald to get the job at the Texas School Book Depository, and the rifle is kept in her garage until the night before the assassination.
It should also be noted for the record that at the time of the assassination the Joint Chiefs of Staff were in a meeting at the Pentagon with members of the West German general staff.
If what ever happened at Dealey Plaza was in fact a covert intelligence operation then the whole event was planned out in detail and every facet of it was controlled, especially what occurred inside the TSBD building at the time.
THE BIG CON STING AT DEALEY PLAZA
“President Kennedy's assassination was the work of magicians. It was a stage trick, complete with accessories and false mirrors, and when the curtain fell the actors and even the scenery, disappeared. But the magicians were not illusionist but professionals, artists in their own right.”
- Attributed to French Intelligence officers – Philippe de Vosjoli or M. Andre Ducret - p. 269 “Fairwell America” -
In his book “Intelligence Wars – American Secret History From Hitler to Al-Qaeda,” Thomas Powers relates a story of how at a birthday party for retired intelligence officer Haviland Smith he met Smith's mentor General William Odom, the former Army Chief of Staff for Intelligence (ACSI ) and director of the National Security Agency (NSA), who asked Powers, “Should the Army be trying to run agents at all?”
In the course of the party Powers asked Haviland another question - “What makes a good case officer?”
Haviland thought for a second and then answered the question with a question of his own: “Did you see that movie with Robert Redford and Paul Newman – The Sting?”
“That's it!” said Haviland, “ - the con!.”
And what happened at Dealey Plaza was not just a magic trick with disappearing props, but a very particular magic trick – The Big Con – the confidence trick used in the popular movie The Sting.
This is alluded to in much more detail by Joe Smith in his book “Portrait of a Cold Warrior – Second Thoughts of a Top CIA Agent” (Ballentine, 1976, p 75)
Considering the idea that if not the work of a deranged lone gunman, if what happened at Dealey Plaza was in fact a covert intelligence operation that utilized standard covert action techniques, including disinformation, disguises and black propaganda to cover them, then they are using very sophisticated psychological warfare weapons that only a few professional specialists - “artists in their own right,” who could have planned, been the mastermind and pulled off whatever happened at Dealey Plaza.
Allen Dulles, Ed Lansdale, James Jesus Angleton, E. Howard Hunt, David Atlee Phillips – what do they all have in common?
One thing they all have in common is their psych war professor who taught them what they call “the Black Arts,” meet Professor Paul Linebarger, author of the text book “Psychological Warfare.”
Joseph B. Smith in “Portrait of a Cold Warrior” (Ballantine 1976, p. 75) writes:
….In the early winter of 1952…I got the chance to attend Paul Linebarger’s seminar in psychological warfare. Linebarger had served as an Army psychological warfare officer in Chungking during the war. He had written a textbook on the subject in 1948. In 1951 he was serving as the Far East Division’s chief consultant. He also served as the Defense Department in the same capacity, giving advice on U.S. psychwar operations in Korea, and he was a professor of Asian politics at the School for Advanced International Studies of the John Hopkins University. His book by this time had gone through three American editions, two Argentine editions, and a Japanese edition.
He was far from a textbook warrior, however. He best described himself when he wrote in the introduction to his book, “Psychological warfare involves exciting wit-sharpening work. It tends to attract quick-minded people – men full of ideas.” His wits scarcely needed sharpening, and he was never at a loss for an idea.
The seminars were held for eight weeks, every Friday night at his home. Going to Paul Linebarger’s house on Friday evenings was not only an educational experience for those who attended the seminar, it was also an exercise in clandestinity. Learning covert operational conduct was considered part of the course. Each seminar was limited to no more than eight students. They were told to pose as students from the School of Advanced International Studies, to go to Paul’s house via different routes, and to say they were attending a seminar in Asian politics.....The School of Advanced International Studies had its campus in Washington, but over in Baltimore at the main campus of the John Hopkins University, Owen Lattimore, the expert on Asian geography, held sway…..
It would be difficult to say whether it was the political atmosphere in general, the office routine of the day just closed, or the drawn drapes in Linebarger’s living room, but students at the seminar met in an appropriately conspiratorial mood that raised the level of their appreciation of their subject.
The mood was fitting if not essential to an understanding of the material. The first point that Linebarger made was the purpose of all psychological warfare is the manipulation of people so that they are not able to detect they are being manipulated.
Wartime psychwar had been a matter of undermining the enemy civilian and military will to continue to fight. The audience, in brief, was very clearly defined. Determining just who it was they wanted to manipulate and for what ends was also pretty clear to the OPC personnel. Their targets were the Communists and their allies. Having this firmly in mind, any methods of manipulation could be used, especially “black propaganda.”
Black propaganda operations, by definition, are operations in which the source of the propaganda is disguised or misrepresented in one way or another so as not to be attributable to the people who really put it out. This distinguishes black from white propaganda, such as news bulletins and similar statements issued by one side in a conflict extolling its successes, of course, or other material just as clearly designed to serve the purposes of its identifiable authors….the United States was faced everywhere with an enemy that was using an untold array of black propaganda operations to undermine the nations of the world in order to present us with a fait accompli one fine morning when we would wake up to find all these countries under Communist control. Hence, it was vital to understand all about such operations from a defense standpoint if nothing else.
There was, however, something else. This was an attitude produced by the mixture of ancient wisdom that a good offense is the best defense, and the spirit of the times that made the existence of conspiracy seem so real. It was good to feel that we were learning how to beat the Communists at their own game.
Paul Linebarger’s was a seminar in black propaganda only. He loved black propaganda operations probably because they involved the wit-sharpening he loved to talk about. Also, he was so good at them that his was one of the inventive minds that refined the entire black operations field into shades of blackness. Linebarger and his disciples decided that propaganda that was merely not attributable to the United States was not really black, only gray. To be called black it had to be something more…This left the term black propaganda for a very special kind of propaganda activity. Black propaganda operations were operations done to look like, and carefully labeled to be, acts of the Communist enemy.
Not only was the attribution given the source of the propaganda activity used as a criterion for defining what kind of propaganda it was, but equally important was the kind of message used…Black propaganda operations, being attributed to the enemy, naturally did not (support US policies). In fact, black propaganda, to be believable, supported the enemy’s positions and openly opposed those of the United States….
Linebarger was always careful to point out that to have any chance of success, these black operations must be based on good solid information about how the Communist Party we proposed to imitate actually conducted its business. He also stressed we needed an equally solid basis of knowledge about the target audience and what it would really find offensive and objectionable if the Communists were to say or do it. This, he liked to emphasize, was why such operations belonged in an intelligence organization where sufficient expertise and specific knowledge of the kind required was most likely to be found. Intelligence information, especially the kind that is clandestinely collected, should serve more than as bits and pieces of the jigsaw puzzle known as enemy intentions. It should be used directly against the enemy while it is fresh. Otherwise, the distinction between intelligence reporting and historical writing tends to blur….
Linebarger undertook a kind of group therapy approach to try to show us that tricking someone into believing black is white comes naturally to everyone and is something that is practiced from childhood.
“Look,” he began, “can’t you remember how you fooled your brothers and sisters and your father and mother? Try to remember how old you were when you first tricked one of them.”
“I want you all to go out and get a copy of David Maurer’s classic on the confidence man. It’s called ‘The Big Con,’ and its available now in a paperback edition,” Paul continued. “That little book will teach you more about the art of covert operations than anything else I know.”
“Your job and the confidence man’s are almost identical…Of course, your motives and those of the confidence men are different. He wants to fleece his mark out of his money. You want to convince a Chinese, Filipino,…a Thai, that what you want him to believe or do for the good of the U.S. government is what he thinks he himself really believes and wants to do.”
“Maurer’s book will give you a lot of ideas on how to recruit agents, how to handle them and how to get rid of them peacefully when they’re no use to you any longer. Believe me, that last one is the toughest job of all.”
We were all soon reading “The Big Con.” The tales it told did, indeed, contain a lot of hints on how to do our jobs. For me one sentence seemed to sum it all up beautifully, “The big-time confidence games,” wrote Maurer, “are in reality only carefully rehearsed plays in which every member of the cast EXCEPT THE MARK knows his part perfectly.”
He had two leading operational heroes whose activities formed the basis for lessons he wished us to learn and whose examples he thought we should follow. One was Lt. Col. Edward G. Lansdale, the OPC station chief in Manila, and the other was E. Howard Hunt, the OPC station chief in Mexico City. Both of them had what is called “black minds,” and the daring to defy bureaucratic restraints in thinking up and executing operations. He had a number of stories to tell about the exploits of both…A note of caution that Linebarger added to these discussions of black operations sounds like a bell down the years. He would explain, after someone had come up with an especially clever plan for getting the Communists completely incriminated in an exceedingly offensive act, that there should be limits to black activities.
“I hate to think what would ever happen,” he once said with a prophet’s voice, “if any of you ever got out of this business and got involved in U.S. politics. These kinds of dirty tricks must never be used in internal U.S. politics. The whole system would come apart.”
David W. Maurer and the Big Con
David W. Maurer was a professor of linguistics at the University of Louisville Kentucky where he was devoted to a study of street slang, which allowed him to meet an assortment of pick pockets, card sharks, street gangsters and whores working his way up the criminal chain until he got to the confidence men who ran The Big Con, cataloging their unique vocabulary along the way.
The Big Con, as opposed to the short con, utilized elaborate props and actors who took their victims for hundreds of thousands of dollars. And when it was over they didn't even know how it was done.
When I first read an early edition of “The American Confidence Man” I called Professor Maurer at his school but he had just passed away. His assistant professor however confirmed what Luc Santi says in later paperback editions of “The Big Con” that the movie The Sting was based on Maurer's book.
But that's not the whole story. When Maurer saw The Sting when it first came out he too recognized his story was used in the screenplay without credit or attribution, and he felt stung.
The Hollywood screenwriters who stole his story denied ever reading Maurer's book - a non-fictional work, but they couldn't account for using the name Gondorf as a main character as played by Paul Newman.
Newman as Gondorf
Gondorf was a real person and his name does not appear in print anywhere but in Maurer's book, so Maurer won the judgement.
In applying the Big Con to what happened at Dealey Plaza a few things stand out:
1) The local cops are on the take - it's only a matter of identifying, paying off and working with the right ones - what the Con Artists call the Right Cop - while un-bribable cop was the Wrong Coper -
2) The Mark or victim must be from out of town - no locals involved - and must be successful - with money, and greedy and a player on the make for something.
3) Getting rid of the mark and other players, as Linebarger and Maurer allude to is a problem, as David Atlee Phillips discovered with his long time agent and operative Antonio Veciana, who desperately wanted to get back into covert ops against Cuba.
The most significant thing we learn from Maurer isn't how the Big Con works - like a magic trick secret - but that in order to apply it to Dealey Plaza you have to learn the lingo - the nomenclature that's used in the course of conducting covert intelligence operations.
Just as scientists, musicians and con artists all have their own stylized vocabulary, so do the covert intelligence officers who pulled off the Dealey Plaza caper, and some are the same terms as the con artists.
For instance in “The Big Con” the whole operation is run by the “inside man,” who runs the storefront and is the key to the action, while the “roper,” or “outside man” works the street and brings in the mark.
The top officers at Task Force W - the Cuban desk in the CIA HQ basement ran their operations in the same way, as Zenith Technological Services was the fake business front for JMWAVE station in Miami, where the “inside man” was Ted Shackley, who never met the Cubans, who were run by case officers or “outside men” like David Atlee Phillips.
Peter Dale Scott began a glossary of terms that he uses to describe some of these activities and I have added more terms, and also began to list ACRONMYS and CRYPTS.
[Scott: http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/GlossaryOfOpenPol.html / Kelly: http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2012/06/glossary-intelligence-terms-acronyms.html ]
PSYCHWAR BLACK PROP OPS AT DEALEY PLAZA
The very fact that such psych-war, black propaganda and disinformation were intentionally used at all in the reporting of what happened at Dealey Plaza is evidence itself that the murder was not just the work of a lone, deranged assassin, but part of a covert intelligence operation that used such specialized techniques and continues to use them today to protect the actual perpetrators of the assassination.
Any study of psychological warfare and disinformation would have to include the work of Paul Linebarger, a professor at the School for Advanced International Studies at John Hopkins University, who also taught the black arts of propaganda and psychological warfare operations to CIA agents and among his best students were E. Howard Hunt, Ed Lansdale and David Atlee Phillips.
According to Linebarger, “Psychological warfare consists of the application of parts of the science called psychology to the conduct of war; psychological warfare comprises the use of propaganda against the enemy, together with such military operational measures as may supplement the propaganda. Propaganda may be described in turn, as organized persuasion by non-violent means. War itself may be considered to be, among other things, a violent form of persuasion. War is waged against the minds, not the bodies of the enemy.”
“Specifically defined,” says Linebarger, “propaganda consists of the planned use of any form of public or mass produced communication designed to affect the minds and emotions of a given group for a specific public purpose, whether military, economic or political. Military propaganda consists of the planned use of any form of communications designed to affect the minds and emotions of a given enemy, neutral or friendly foreign group for a specific strategic or tactical purpose.”
Linebarger warned his students not to use such techniques against Americans. “I hate to think what would ever happen,” he once said with a prophet’s voice, “if any of you ever got out of this business and got involved in U.S. politics. These kinds of dirty tricks must never be used in internal U.S. politics. The whole system would come apart.” Well, they were used and are being used today, and the whole system did come apart.
Note that if the communication is not planned, it cannot be called propaganda, and if it does not originate from an intelligence agent, agency, service or network, it is not disinformation, as it is classically defined: Deliberately misleading information announced publicly or leaked by a government or especially by an intelligence agency in order to influence public opinion or the government in another nation.
Some of the information that real disinformation agents dish out is classified as “black.”
According to Ladislas Farago such, “Black Propaganda is a fundamental intelligence operation,…because it never identifies its real source and pretends to originate within or close to the enemy.”
Security is designed to keep useful information from reaching the enemy, while propaganda operations are designed to get information to him. The term propaganda stems from the name of the department of the Vatican which had the duty of propagating the faith. And Black Propaganda must clearly be labeled as an act of the enemy.
In his book on propaganda, Linebarger says that such disinformation, by its very nature, can be identified as such and traced back to its source, using his formula for doing so. Therefore, the real disinformation and propaganda on the assassination can be traced back to its source, which should be very close to those who were actually responsible for the assassination.
Linebarger developed the STASM formula for spot analysis, in which propaganda can be distinguished by the consideration of five elements:
1. Source
2. Time
3. Audience
4. Subject and
5. Mission.
According to Linebarger, “This formula works best in the treatment of monitored materials of which the source is known. First point to note is the character of the source — the true source (who really got it out?), the ostensible source (whose name is signed to it?); also the first use source (who used it the first time?) and the second source (who claims merely to be using it as a quotation?). It is soon evident that the mere attribution of source is a job of high magnitude.”
It is apparent that the roots to many of the black propaganda operations related to Dealey Plaza, especially those that try to falsely implicate Castro in the assassination, stem back to David Atlee Phillips, one of Linebarger’s protégés.
At the time of the assassination, David Phillips was working for the CIA in Mexico City, responsible for monitoring the Cuban and Russian embassies there, as well as keeping tabs on the activities of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee (FPCC) “in the hemisphere.” In August, 1963, the New Orleans representative of the FPCC, Lee Harvey Oswald, was seen with Phillips, aka “Maurice Bishop,” in the lobby of a Dallas office building, and shortly thereafter Oswald went on his mission to Mexico City.
In the immediate aftermath of the assassination, Phillips interrogated a Nicaraguan intelligence agent who said that he had seen Oswald with Cuban Communists in Mexico City, and though Phillips knew this information was wrong, he promoted it within CIA as plausibly possible, and tried to get other Cubans to confirm Oswald’s false Communist associations.
The idea that Fidel Castro was behind the assassination at Dealey Plaza was set up as part of the original cover-story for the operation, and was heavily promoted by CIA disinformation sources, as recounted in the book The Second Plot by Mathew Smith.
What if the second plot against JFK succeeded and a guilty-looking Oswald was connected to Havana? Matthew Smith, Jim Marrs and others suggest the failed second plot against JFK, if successful, would have been World War Three, and was used by LBJ to convince the Warren Commission to adopt the “deranged lone-nut” scenario for what happened at Dealey Plaza.
In the Progressive magazine article “Fidel on the Grassy Knoll,” Jeff Cohen and Donald Freed wrote, “Brothers Jerry and James Buchanan, CIA propaganda assets, began promoting the Castro-did-it theme immediately. The source of the Buchanan’s tales was the leader of the CIA supported International Anti-Communist Brigade (IAB).
“Back in Miami,” Cohen and Freed wrote, “a high powered propaganda machine was cranking out stories that Oswald was a Cuban agent…” Frank Sturgis is quoted in the Pompano Beach Sun-Sentinel as saying that Oswald had talked with Cuban G-2 agents and fracassed with IAB members in Miami in 1962. The same “propaganda machine” was still pumping out the same lines in 1976 when Gaeton Fonzi interviewed Sturgis, who said that he had recently ran into a friend who worked for the “company” who reminded him of an incident he had completely forgotten about. Sturgis suddenly recalled, “... he had heard about a meeting in Havana about two months before the Kennedy assassination. At the meeting there were a number of high-ranking men, including Castro, his brother Raul, Ramiro Valdez, the chief of Cuban intelligence, Che Guevara and his secretary Tanya, another Cuban officer, an American known as ‘El Mexicano,’ and, …oh, yeah; Jack Ruby. And the meeting dealt with plotting the assassination of President Kennedy.”
Peter Dale Scott calls blaming Castro and Communists for the assassination the Phase One part of the cover-story. Scott’s accuracy in labeling this a cover story has been borne out by Jean Daniel (See Jim Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable) who was with Castro at the time they received news of the assassination, as well as other sources (ie. NSA monitoring).For anyone who has read Daniel's description of Castro's reactikon to the news of Kennedy's death, the description renders any Phillips generated cover story as untenable.
This Phase One cover-story, although regurgitated and re-floated every few years, was eventually replaced by the Phase Two cover-story, that the assassination was the work of a deranged, lone-nut case. The Phase Two cover-story, while still the officially accepted version of events, is generally rejected by most people. Therefore a Phase Three cover-story has been propagated — that of the mob and renegade CIA/Cubans were responsible for the assassination, which I will deal with separately.
The original Castro-Cuban-Commie cover story occasionally resurfaces every once in a while, as it has with Gus Russo, who makes this case in “Live By the Sword” and a German film documentary based on his work.
Russo was one of those who attended early Congressional meetings in DC that resulted in the JFK Act. He was considered one of the independent researchers whose work was based on the release of the secret records being declassified and released. Russo worked as a researcher and investigator on a number of major projects, debunked and dismissed a number of suspects and witnesses, like Jean Aase, Chauncey Holt and the 3 Tramps. He also chummed up an acquaintance with some top CIA officials and began having lunch with them, and then decided that Oswald was Castro’s pawn after all.
That these black propaganda operations to blame Castro’s Communists for the assassination were conducted at all, indicates that the assassination was carried out by trained covert intelligence operatives, and not by a lone, deranged nut case, or the Mafia.
The idea that Fidel Castro was behind the assassination is traceable disinformation, a deception plan conducted in concert with the President’s murder that also leads back to those responsible for the Dealey Plaza operation. Over a dozen incidents, most if not all of which can be traced back to the same source, attempt to portray the assassination as the work of Castro.
Tracing the deceptive disinformation back to its exact source should also give us the mastermind(s) of the operation that resulted in what happened at Dealey Plaza. Since disinformation, propaganda and psychological warfare operations utilize explicit techniques, they can be identified, isolated and studied as to their content, intention and source, and thus provide a window into the network of the responsible party.
An Example of Continuing Black Prop Ops and the JFK Assassination.
Please note that the original source of this article is the Scripps-Howard News Service and based on a leaked National Security Agency (NSA) document. When the Assassination Records Review Board requested all NSA documents related to the assassination, this was not included.
Why weren’t the records of this incident released by the NSA under the JFK Act?
Scripps-Howard News Service – By R. H. Boyce
Thursday, March 12, 1981
Washington – The National Security Agency has alerted the CIA, the White House and State Department to a Latin American newspaper report saying Cuban President Fidel Castro is plotting the assassination of President Reagan, Scripps-Howard News Service has learned.
The NSA, which monitors published and broadcast information around the globe, does not makes such “alert” messages available to the press. But SHNS obtained a copy, which was marked “for official use only.” It included the text of the newspaper report as well as a garbled message about the news story directed to the head of Castro’s controlled news agency, Presna Latina.
Without revealing its sources, the news report, published yesterday in the Caracas, Venezuela, newspaper El Mundo, asserted the assassination plot called for the slaying to be carried out by Illich Ramirez Sancho, an international terrorists known as Carlos the Jackal. Carlos is said to have organized the massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, West Germany, and has been involved in dozens of terrorists acts.
U.S. officials said the NSA’s action in alerting the U.S. intelligence community “suggests that while they are not necessarily ready to believe the report of an assassination plot, nevertheless they (NSA) find it at least worthy of looking into.”
The Caracas newspaper story said the assassination plan, “was discussed in a meeting of the International Trust of Crime in Cojimar, an exclusive beach club east of Havana, with the participants of Montonero and Tupamaro thugs, Illich Ramirez, Ramiro Valdez, Cuban Police Minister Carlos Rafael Rodriguez and Fidel Castro.”
Presna Latina (Latin Press) often has been used by Castro for political ends. The Pressa Latina correspondent in Caracas, at 9:47 a.m. EST yesterday, began transmitting the El Mundo article by cable to Prensa Latina headquarters in Havana. NSA monitored it. At the close of the text, Prensa Latina Caracas began adding what appears to be commentary on the El Mundo report. It reads:
“Everything seems to indicate that Fidel Castro is planning the assassination of U.S. President Ronald Reagan in the same way that he previously ordered the assassination of John F. Kennedy and whose participation the high-ranking U.S. government circles hid…”
There the Prensa Latina cable transmission stopped. Had it been ordered broken off by the Venezuela government, say U.S. officials, NSA would have added the words: “transmission interrupted,” to show Venezuela’s action. There was no such NSA notation. Officials provided no explanation of why the transmission ended in mid-sentence.
END SHNS REPORT
IN CONCLUSION
In conclusion I think I have demonstrated that whatever you believe happened there, the Modus Operandi for what happened at Dealey Plaza was that of a Military Ambush and there was a psychological warfare operation - a very specific black propaganda program to blame the attack on Castro Cuban Communists that was attached to the ambush operation at Dealey Plaza as part of the plan.
This psychwar black prop op - in its many forms that continue to day - as presented by Shenon and others, is itself proof that the ambush was not the work of a lone nut assassin but a very detailed and expertly carried out plan that utilized the Valkyrie Plot as a basis, and took one of the ambush plans devised to kill Castro and used it at Dealey Plaza.
While the ambush was successful and JFK was killed, the cover story that Castro was behind it did not take because it was clearly not true - but by using the background provided by Professors Linebarger and Maurer, we can see how the Big Con was utilized not only to fool the mark - JFK, but the public, and that it is possible to trace the psych war black prop op cover stories back to their origin, which should be very close to those who masterminded the plan to kill JFK at Dealey Plaza.
