Joseph B. Smith Portrait of a Cold Warrior – Second Thoughts of a Top CIA
Agent (G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1976) P. 59.
When Smith was being prepared for training his recruiter told him:
..“As far as psychological warfare is concerned, it’s a brand new field. We
are all learning. You remember it was one of Hitler’s strongest weapons. The Communists
depend on it a lot to. We figure that if we analyze what they’re doing and
study the countries in our area closely, we can beat them at their own game.”
“Oh yes, another thing,” she added, “We won’t be able to spare you for any
clandestine tradecraft training. That would take another three months. We need
you now. You’ll have to learn the business on the job. I’m afraid.”
“Well,” she added as an afterthought, “we will be able to help you with
psychwar. Paul Linebarger, our consultant, is one of the few real experts and
he gives evening seminars for us. We’ll try to get you into one of them after
you’ve settled in.”
ASSASSINATION AS A CONTINGENCY
.......One important contingency to consider in case a situation worsened rapidly
and a take over by the Communist guerrilla armies appeared imminent was the
operational effectiveness of assassination of the leaders of these groups.
For example, in Indochina, would the Viet Minh fall apart if Ho Chi Minh were
assassinated? He appeared to be the soul of the movement. The evidence
indicated that he was the one man nearly all Vietnamese respected and his
efforts had provided the decisive cohesion that held the Communist cause
together. If he were removed, wouldn’t this one death perhaps save the lives of
many?
This was the key point on which discussions of assassination turned, the same
kind of reasoning that led to the dropping of the first atomic bomb. An
assassination meant the death of one person. If the situation is one of armed
combat, killing is an accepted activity. Maximum accomplishment via minimum
violence became a primary consideration.
Thus assassination was always a contingency action to be included in the plans,
though approval would have to come from the National Security Council before
any assassination was attempted. Another practical problem was where to find
the assassins. The reading of case studies of the successful assassinations by
Soviet secret service counterparts, such as the killing of Trotsky, wasn’t much
help because the Soviets service exercised a control over its agents we could
not impose, certainly not on Asians. That left only criminals and cranks to be
considered for recruitment to perform this service...P. 75...
LINEBARGER'S CLASS
All this was far in the future and far less important to me in the early winter
of 1952 than the fact that 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 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 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 in 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 via different routes, and to say they were attending a seminar on Asian politics. Senator McCarthy had alerted everyone to the possibility that Communist operators might be expected to turn up at almost any place in Washington. The School of Advanced International Studies had its campus in Washington, but over in Baltimore at the main campus of John Hopkins University, Owen Lattimore, the expert on Asian geography, held sway. McCarthy had called Lattimore the principal agent of Communist China in the United States.
Although no one called Paul Linebarger the principle agent of Chiang Kai-shek,
his father had been Sun Yat Sen’s legal advisor and Paul never hid his full
devotion to the Chinat cause. The feeling of the clash of mysterious powers was
abroad in the cold winter nights around Paul’s house. It could just be possible
that some Communist surveillant might follow one of the students up Rock Creek
Park to 29th Street. They might even be operating from the Shoreham hotel, a
few blocks away. We had been thoroughly indoctrinated in the fear of Communist
subversion....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 tht 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 that 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 the 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 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.
During World War II black propaganda operators had a field day. German black
operations against the French consisted of such enterprises as sending French
soldiers letters from their hometowns telling them their wives were committing
adultery, or were infected with venereal diseases, giving away mourning dresses
to women who would wear them on the streets of Paris, or intercepting telephone
communications in the field and giving confusing or contradictory orders.
Paul Linebarger’s was a seminar in black propaganda only. One reason for this
was that the United States already had an overt propaganda agency as part of
the cold war apparatus. In those days this was run directly by the State
Department, but in 1953 it would become formalized into the United States
Information Agency and become an independent government agency responsible for
worldwide United States propaganda operations. Furthermore, the view of the
state of affairs in the world was that was the fundamental assumption of all
OPC activities was that the United States was faced everywhere with an enemy
that was using an untold array of black psychwar 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 defensive
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 loved black propaganda operations probably because they
involved the wit-sharpening he liked to talk about. Also, he was so god 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 attributed to the United States was not
really black, only gray. To be called black it had to be something more.
Furthermore, they divided gray propaganda into shades of gray. So-called light gray
was defined as propaganda that was not attributed to the United States
government, but instead, for example, to a group that was known to be a
friendly source. Medium gray or “gray gray” was the term LInebarger used for
propaganda that was attributed to a neutral source or, in any case, to one that
was not suspected to be about to say anything friendly concerning the United
States or its national or international policies. Dark gray was the term for
propaganda attributed to a source usually hostile to the United States. 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. Gray activity involved statements or
actions that supported U.S. policies. Black propaganda operations, being
attributed to the enemy, naturally did not. In fact, black propaganda, to be
believable, supported the enemy’s positions and openly opposed those of the
United States.
Gray propaganda was considered to be useful because it added strength to our
side by putting praise of the United States or, at least a reasonably stated
understanding of U.S. positions, in the mouths of those whom the world at large
would not identify as U.S. spokesmen giving out the official line. In one
sense, gray propaganda is a close cousin of the endorsement in a commercial
advertising campaign. Where the Clandestine Services came in was in the role of
sponsor – but a sponsor that was not supposed to be known to anyone who heard
or read the endorsement of the U.S. government’s policy product...
Mostly however, we followed our mentor through a series of actions that were to
be attributed to various of our Communist enemies……Saying that the Communists
were evil was merely talk. Doing something evil, disguised as Communists, would
have real credibility.
Linebarger was always careful to point out that to have a chance of success,
these black operations must be based on good solid information about how the
Communists Party we proposed to imitate actually conducted its business...
[Communists Huks in the Phillipines used as an example BK Notes that Ed Lansdale had Linebarger flown to the Phillipines in order to train Napoleon Villanuve, who later helped Lansdale train the anti-Castro Cubans for the Bay of Pigs].
It may seem curious, but it did not bother anyone at the seminar to be blithely
engaged in planning a forgery, although no one there had ever been arrested for
any serious crime. Otherwise they would not have been there. They would not
have been granted the necessary security clearance to have gained employment by
the Clandestine Services. The finer points about forgery, however, were
actually the most fascinating to this group: how to obtain authentic paper, how
to be sure to use the same kind of typewriter that Huk orders were usually
written on, and of course, how to be certain to use the proper language that
would make our work indistinguishable from the real thing. These were the
topics examined with the most minute care.
Linebarger undertook a kind of group therapy approach to try to show us that
tricking someone into believing that black is white comes naturally to
everybody 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 them.”
This got the class confessional under way. Soon people began recalling how they
had stolen their brother’s and sister’s favorite toys…..As the stories
progressed from grade school to high school and college capers, the tales of
manipulation of parents and peers grew darker, if not black to the point of
Linebarger’s definition of black operations. Everyone had either forged the
time of return from when coming back to a dormitory after hours or forged
parents’ signatures to bad report cards, or used false credentials to buy a
drink when under age.
We found these exchanges so interesting that we decided to open each evening’s
session with twenty minutes of confessions. They undoubtedly helped us to study
the art of falsifying Communist documents with the high enthusiasm we all
developed.
After listening to these recitals for a couple of weeks, Linebarger asked, “Haven’t any of you done anything more exciting than figure out ways to have your drinking and sexual adventures? I know none of you as in a psychwar outfit during the war, but has anyone done anything more nearly operational?
To everyone’s surprise Boston Blackie, our group anti-hero and skeptic was the
one who replied....“...there was a referendum in Massachusetts on the question
of birth control information...Then one of the priests got an idea. He
suggested that we explain to the parishioners that if the voters approved the
change in the law and permitted birth control information to be legally
disseminated, this would mean that they would have to get a written permit from
the government if they wanted to have a baby...
Linebarger thought this was an excellent story. He beamed, “I wish we had
access to Church records for the past thousand years, we’d have so many case
histories that we would be sure to find something to fit all our needs in Asia
right now. The Catholic Church didn’t last this long as an unalternable
institution without giving God’s will some assistance.
DAVID MAURER AND THE BIG CON
“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 it’s 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. The point of our
little confessionals has been to show you what I mean by that statement. I’m
happy to say I think you’ve been getting it...”
“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, a
Filipino, and Indonesian, a Malay, a Burmese, 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 avidly 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.”
* [ David W. Maurer, The Big Con (New
York: Pocket Books, 1949), p. 102.]
Besides this course reading, exchanges of experiences, development of model
situations, study of Communist propaganda, especially its style and content
with an eye to copying them, Paul taught by the oldest method, precept. His
injunction was to follow the example of proven successful practitioners.
He had two leading operational heroes whose activities formed the basis for
lessons he wanted 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 he 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. He was particularly fond of Lansdale, whom
he claimed had “invented” the Philippine Secretary of Defense, Ramon Magsaysay,
around whom he built a plan of action that was slowly but surely bringing the
Huk uprising to an end. His esteem for Hunt lay in his admiration for what he
considered Hunt’s great ability to invent a clever way to thwart the Communists
in their efforts to achieve success in the everyday affairs of life. He had a
favorite Lansdale story and a favorite Hunt story to illustrate what he admired
in each, and to demonstrate two widely different kinds of black operations.
Lansdale’s was somewhat complex and required the support of a number of people
and pieces of equipment. Hunt’s was disarmingly simple.
Lansdale ordered a careful study of the superstitions of the Filipino peasants,
their lore their witch doctors, their taboos and myths. He then got hold of a
small aircraft and some air-to-ground communications gear. He would fly the
aircraft over areas where Huks were known to be hiding and broadcast in the
Tugalog language mysterious curses on any villagers who designed to give the
Huks food and shelter...
Linebarger’s Howard Hunt story was much less heavy. It also fitted better
Linebarger’s definition of a black operation. No one had quite the heart to ask
him whether the Filipino spirits to whom the curses were attributed were
Communists, as his definition of black propaganda would require, and, if so,
were they cursing their own team, the Huks.
Linebarger liked to stress that his Hunt story was a good example of how to
cause the Communists a lot of grief on a low budget. Hunt learned that a
Communist front in Mexico was planning a reception to honor some Soviet
visitors. Drinks, refreshments, and a lunch were planned for the event. Hunt
got hold of an invitation. He then went to work with a friendly printer and
printed up three thousand extra invitations, which he had widely distributed.
On the day of the reception, Hunt got the desired results. Before the reception
was a quarter underway, the Communists had run out of food and drink…..The
cause of the Soviet-Mexican friendship was definitely damaged, at least for a
while.
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.”
I remember there was a nodding of heads when Linebarger delivered this
admonition. I do not recall that anyone agreed in a loud, firm voice. Perhaps
his remark was thought to be really rather irrelevant. We had more serious
business to attend to.
We would say goodnight to Paul in the vestibule of his house, and slip, one by one, out into the night to our cars parked a discreetly different distances from his home. We had just completed another session in the act of confounding our enemies. We were inspired to go back to work the following week and look for fresh opportunities to devise new operations against the Communists.... (P. 86)
THE PROOF IN THE PROPAGANDA – Black Prop Ops and the Assassination of JFK
Actually there were two conspiracies associated with the assassination of President Kennedy – the first was the arrangement of his murder, the second concerns the cover-up and thwarting of justice. The second conspiracy continues today.
The evidence in both cases is in the form of fingerprints – the fingerprints of distinct intelligence techniques at work. Evidence of the first conspiracy comes in the form of foreknowledge, individuals who had knowledge of the assassination before it occurred and expressed this knowledge to others.
Foreknowledge & JFK Assassination | JFKCountercoup
Fifth century Chinese philosopher and author of the classic manual “The Art of War” said that foreknowledge cannot be elicited by spirits or obtained by magic but rather can only be acquired from an operational network of spies. “Foreknowledge,” he said, “is the reason the enlightened prince and the wise general conquer the enemy whenever they move.”
Proof of the second conspiracy stems from the fact that black propaganda operations were utilized before the assassination, and continue to operate today to maintain security and protect those responsible for the first conspiracy.
That people had foreknowledge of the assassination before it occurred and black propaganda operations were conducted in concert with the murder indicates that the assassination was carried out by trained covert intelligence operatives and not by a lone, deranged nut case or the Mafia. This does not preclude however, members of organized crime or crazy people from being involved in the operation.
That Fidel Castro and Cuba were behind the assassination is disinformation and the deception plan behind the black propaganda operation conducted in concert with the President’s murder. 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 or his G2. [See: List – B]
Tracing the deceptive disinformation back to its source should also give us the source 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 nest of the responsible party.
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.”
Paul Linebarger, a professor at the School for Advanced International Studies at John Hopkins University, also taught the black arts of propaganda and psychological warfare operations at his Washington D.C. home. Every Friday evening student spys would take round-a-bout means to unobtrusively get to his house where they learned the secret techniques of propaganda and deception.
One of his students, Joseph Burkholder Smith (“Portrait of a Cold Warrior” G. Putnam/s Sons, N.Y., 1976), relates how Linebarger explained that Black Propaganda is “carefully labeled to be acts of the enemy.”
Not a subject found in the curriculum of most colleges, the textbook is rare, Linebarger’s “Psychological Warfare – International Propaganda and Communications” (Arno Press, 1948, 1952, 1972, Duell, Sloan and Pearce, N.Y.) is a still used by today’s psychological warriors.
According to Linebarger, “Psychological warfare, in the broad sense, 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, 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.
Note that if the communication is not planned, it cannot be called propaganda, and that if does not originate from an intelligence agency or service, it is not disinformation.
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, 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. A systematic breakdown of the STASM formula produces the following analysis outline: applicable to any single propaganda item, civil or military, in war or peace, spoken, visual or printed. There are five kinds of propaganda: Defense – maintains an accepted form of social action; Offensive – interrupts social action not desired; Conversionary – change allegiance; Divisive – split apart enemy compoents; Consolidation – insure compliance of occupied civilians; Counterpropaganda – refutes.
Security is designed to deep useful information from reaching the enemy, while propaganda operations are designed to get information to him.
“Propaganda is directed to the subtle niceties of thought by which people maintain their personal orientation in an unstable interpersonal world,” wrote Linebarger. “Propaganda must use the language of the mother, the schoolteacher, the lover, the bully, the policeman, the actor, the ecclesiastic, the buddy, the newspaperman, all of them in turn. And propaganda analysis, in weighing and evaluating propaganda, must be even more discriminating whether the propaganda is apt to hit its mark or not.”
Black Propaganda Operations affiliated with the Assassination of JFK:
1) A leaflet was distributed to the Florida Cuban community in November, 1963 that warned of an “Act of God” that would put a “Texan in the White House.”
2) Lee Harvey Oswald’s Fair Play for Cuba Committee activities in New Orleans in the summer of 1963.
3) Oswald’s visit to the Cuban and Russian embassies in Mexico City in Sept., 1963.
4) The photographs of Oswald brandishing a rifle and pistol and copies of two leftest but contradictory magazines in his back yard.
5) The last two issues President Kennedy dealt with before leaving the White House for Texas concerned his backchannel negotiations with Fidel Castro at the UN and the discovery of a cache of weapons in Venezuela that appeared to have come from Cuba. The weapons story was later discovered to be over a year old and planted by the CIA to falsely implicate Cuba.
6) Julio Fernandez, one of three anti-Castro Cubans whose boat was financially supported by Clair Booth Luce, called Luce, wife of the publisher of Time-Life on the evening of the assassination to report information on Oswald’s activities in New Orleans. Fernandez, a former Cuban publisher, was married to an attorney who worked for Catholic Welfare Services in Miami.
7) In Miami, shortly after the assassination, Dr. Jose Ignorzio, the chief of clinical psychology for the Catholic Welfare Services, contacted the White House to inform the new administration that Oswald had met directly with Cuban ambassador Armas in Mexico.
8) In Mexico City, David Atlee Philips of the CIA debriefed a Nicaraguan intelligence officer, code named “D,” who claimed to have seen Oswald take money from a Cuban at the Cuban embassy.
9) In New Zealand, U.S.A.F. Col. Fletcher Prouty read complete biographies of Oswald in the local papers hours after the assassination, indicating to him that a bio of Oswald was pre-prepared.
10) Brothers Jerry and James Buchanan, CIA propaganda assets, began promoting the Castro-did-it theme immediately. According to Donald Freed and Jeff Cohen (in Liberation Magazine), the source of the Buchanan’s tales was the leader of the CIA supported International Anti-Communist Brigade (IAB). “Back in Miami,” they wrote, “a high powered propaganda machine was cranking out stories that Oswald was a Cuban agent…” Sturgis is quoted in the Pampara Beach Sun-Sentinel as saying that Oswald had talked with Cuban G-2 agents and fracassed with IAB members in Miami in 1962.
11) Jack Anderson used Sturgis and mobster John Rosselli to keep the Castro plot propaganda story going well into the 1970s.
12) 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, “that 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, hs 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, yea; Jack Ruby. And the meeting dealt with plotting the assassination of President Kennedy.”
13) Seith Kantor, a Scripps-Howard News Service Reporter in Dallas during the assassination, couldn’t understand why his telephone call records from Parkland Hospital were being withheld because “disclosure would reveal confidential source of information.” When Kantor checked his own records he discovered his editor had told him to call another reporter in Florida or some deep background on Oswald. The reporter in Florida had everything on Oswald, FPFCC, Russian defection, New Orleans radio debate, etc., but instead of using it himself, fed it to Kantor. The reporter was Hal “the Spook” Hendrix, who won the Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the Cuban Missile Crisis and earned his nickname when he “reported” on the Dominican Republic Coup on September 24, 1963, the day before it happened. His CIA affiliations became better known when he went to work for ITT in Chile and was found guilty of withholding information from a Congressional committee concerning his role in the Chilean coup.
14) While other major news organizations have been exposed as CIA media assets, such as CBS News, Life Magazine, the North American Newspaper Alliance and the Copley Newspaper chain, the Scripps-Howard News Service (SHNS) stands out not only because of the Kantor-Hendrix connection, but because of the March 12 news report out of Washington. An obvious black propaganda operation that stems from NSA intercepts (note that the NSA does not issue press releases), and continues to implicate Castro in not only the assassination of President Kennedy, but in the planning of an assassination on President Reagan. This story is remarkably similar to the one that Sturgis tells [in #12] and includes many of the same conspirators. [See: SHNS Story]. Also please note that two weeks after this obvious piece of black propaganda disinformation was published, President Reagan was shot in front of the Washington Hilton by John Hinkley.
Clear Example
of Black Prop Op and JFK Assassination.
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.
No identification was found of Ramiro Valdez. Montonero “thugs” are terrorists operating primarily in Argentina while Tupumaros thugs operate in Uruguay. The article said Palestine Liberation Organization chief Yasir Arafat also participated in the plan.
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.
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