The Signifiance of the Higgins Memo

 The Signifiance of the Higgins Memo.

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=10246 - relPageId=1&tab=page

http://documents.theblackvault.com/documents/jfk/NARA-July2017/jfk-july_2017_release-formerly_withheld_in_full-3of9/DOCID-32358065.PDF

1) The Higgins Memo - is the Number One Smoking Document released under the JFK Act for the following reasons:

THE KEY paragraph is (13) "He commented that there was nothing new in the propaganda field. However, he felt that there had been great success in getting closer to the military personnel who might break with Castro, and stated that there were at least ten high-level military personnel who are talking with CIA but as yet are not talking to each other, since that degree of confidence has not yet developed. He considers it as a parallel in history, i.e., the plot to kill Hitler, and this plot is being studied in detail to develop an approach.' 

D.C. attorney Jim Lesar, head of the Assassinations Archives and Research Center (AARC) and Dan Alcorn filed an FOIA request for that "detailed study" and the CIA apparently have lost it  

Other items of relevance include: 

a) It concerns a Joint Chiefs of Staff meeting at the Pentagon on a significant date - Sept. 25, 1963 a key time in the JFK Assassination Chronology as it occurs around the same time as some other key events, including:

1- the day Oswald left New Orleans for Mexico City,
2-  the estimated timing of the Odio incident, and
3- Michael Paine's wife Ruth Hyde Paine picks up Marina, the daughter and their belongings - including the rifle, and took them to Texas
4- after visiting Michael's mom - Ruth Forbes Paine Young - Mary Bancroft's close friend.
5-  It is also the day President Kennedy signs NSAM - National Security Action Memorandum on the advice of National Security advisor McGeorge Bundy approving "Four Leaves," - a secret military communications project.
6-  JFK then left on his "Conservation Tour," the first stop being the Northeast Pennsylvania home of the mother of Mary Pinchot Meyer, JFK's paramour who accompanied him.
7-  Oswald's name turns up on the list of those who visited the Tenn. nuclear museum and news cliips of the tour are found in a box at Oswald's rooming house.

8- Richard Case Nagel shot a gun in a bank in El Paso, Texas and waited to get arrested, ostensibly to be in federal custody at the time of the assassination.

So a lot of significant chronological events occurred in that 24 hour span.

b) Because Chef of Staff Gen. Maxwell Taylor was on a special mission to Vietnam, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Curtis LeMay chaired the meeting.

c) The author of the memo - Colonel Walter Higgins was the adjunct of Gen. Victor Krulak (USMC), the director of the military detachment responsible for providing any assistance requested by the CIA in the course of their covert intelligence operations.

d) Desmond FitzGerald, the CIA officer who briefed the Chiefs on CIA covert operations against Cuba, had replaced William Harvey as chief of Task Force W - the Cuban project based in the basement of CIA HQ, and was the case officer for Dr. Rolando Cubella (AMLASH), a founder of the DRE who the CIA considered their  best bet to fit the disenchanted Cuban military officer who would lead the assassination attempt and coup.

e) Fitzgerald said this adaption of the plot to kill Hitler was considered a part of the Psychological Warfare area, which included David Atlee Phillips, George Joannides and the DRE agents who were arrested with Oswald in New Orleans.

f) LeMay also introduces an Air Force communications officer who had devised a way to influence radio communications that were to be adapted for use against Cuba.

g) The PENDELUM project is mentioned - and described as the code name of the Security net that surrounded the covert Cuban projects they were operating.

h) The NSAM that JFK signed approving "Project Four Leaves" - a military communications system, is only mentioned once - in JFK's daily desk diary at the JFK Presidential Library.

i) There is also mention of a textual letter that it so secret it could only be read and immediately returned to the messenger. This could possibly be a message from McGeorge Bundy regarding security for the Cuban operations then underway or being considered. 

Article from newspaper about Lipka

 Article from the paper about Lipka

Richard Booth writes: Here is the text of a newspaper article about Lipka's bail hearing. You will note that everything from the bail hearing is covered in the Lipka book written by the FBI agent, whose attorney is Mark Zaid, except what he said about JFK and Castillo. 

Lipka says he knows name of JFK's killer

Spy suspect's attorney portrays him to be a braggart

March 22, 1996 | Patriot-News, The (Harrisburg, PA)

Author: Jack Sherzer | Page: A1 | Section: A SECTION

PHILADELPHIA - Wearing a prison-issued orange sweat suit, Robert Stephen

Lipka, accused of being a Soviet spy, calmly testified yesterday during a bail hearing that he had seen a classified file identifying John F. Kennedy's actual killer.

The Millersville resident also said he had seen a file identifying then Vice President Richard M. Nixon as a Russian spy while working for the Defense Department's National Security Agency in the late 1960s.

Lipka said he inadvertently saw an NSA teletype message carrying the identity of what he believed was Kennedy's true assassin: someone named Luis Angel Castillio. The message was cut off in mid-sentence and "I was talked to about it," he said. But Lipka claimed he lied when he told an undercover federal agent posing as a Russian spy that he had given Oliver North, an Iran-Contra figure, a briefcase full of gold in return for $500,000 in the middle of the Preakness horse race in Baltimore.

Two weeks ago, prosecutors used snippets of four taped 1993 conversations between Lipka and the undercover agent as further reason to deny him bail pending a trial. But in federal court yesterday, Lipka's attorney tried to use the government's own evidence against it.

Having Lipka testify about some of the outlandish-sounding claims he made to the agent, attorney Ronald Kidd Sr. portrayed his client as a braggart who "made up stories" to inflate his self-importance.

"These transcripts will demonstrate that he has made statements that are totally unbelievable," Kidd told Senior Judge Charles R. Weiner. "That includes being a Russian spy."

Weiner held off on deciding whether to release Lipka on bail, but did grant the government's motion for a 30-day psychiatric evaluation to determine if Lipka could stand trial. Prosecutors said they made the request because Lipka claimed to be suffering from memory loss and has recently accused undercover agents of hiding drugs in his jail cell.

Prosecutors claimed Lipka was a flight risk and potential danger to witnesses, pointing to one conversation in which he expressed a willingness to kill with a KGB cyanide spray gun to prevent someone from informing against him.

While prosecutors insisted they had other evidence that had not yet been declassified, Kidd succeeded in getting the FBI agent running the case to admit there was no independent verification that Lipka ever had a Russian radio or laundered money through his coin business as he claimed in the conversations.

Lipka, 50, faces a possible life sentence if convicted of stealing classified documents from the NSA, where he worked between 1964 and 1967 as a sergeant in a Fort Meade, Md., mailroom. Authorities say he was paid $27,000 by the Russians, to whom he continued selling material until 1974.

Jailed since his arrest last month, Lipka appeared upbeat in court, smiling often and giving a thumbs up to his second wife, Deborah.

On the stand, Lipka claimed to have realized the undercover FBI agent wasn't a real Russian agent almost immediately, but said he played along in part to get two payments of $5,000 from the agent.

Lipka blamed some of his penchant for telling tales on an accident he said he had in 1990, when a table fell on him and broke his back. While he collected more than $250,000 in a lawsuit, Lipka said the injury left him permanently disabled.

"When you're disabled, something happens to you, your ego gets destroyed alongwith your physicality," Lipka said. "People ask how you're doing, and instead of going through all your problems, you begin telling little fibs."