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FTR #821 Continuity of Government, the JFK Assassination and Covert Operations

Dave Emory’s entire life­time of work is avail­able on a flash dri­ve that can be obtained here. [1] The new dri­ve is a 32-giga­byte dri­ve that is cur­rent as of the pro­grams and arti­cles post­ed by 10/02/2014. The new dri­ve (avail­able for a tax-deductible con­tri­bu­tion of $65.00 or more) con­tains FTR #812 [2].  (The pre­vi­ous flash dri­ve was cur­rent through the end of May of 2012 and con­tained FTR #748 [3].)

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Lis­ten: MP3

This broad­cast is in one, 60-minute seg­ment [7].  

Intro­duc­tion: With the 51st anniver­sary of the JFK assas­si­na­tion approach­ing, this show high­lights an essay by Peter Dale Scott in which he syn­op­sizes some key aspects of a forth­com­ing book. Quot­ing Scott: ” . . . . I have been ana­lyz­ing Amer­i­can his­to­ry in the light of what I have called struc­tur­al deep events: events, like the JFK assas­si­na­tion, the Water­gate break-in, Iran-Con­tra, or 9/11, which repeat­ed­ly involve law-break­ing or vio­lence, are mys­te­ri­ous to begin with, are embed­ded in ongo­ing covert process­es, have polit­i­cal con­se­quences that enlarge covert gov­ern­ment, and are sub­se­quent­ly cov­ered up by sys­tem­at­ic fal­si­fi­ca­tions in the main­stream media and inter­nal gov­ern­ment records.(1)

The more I study these deep events, the more I see sug­ges­tive sim­i­lar­i­ties between them, increas­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty that they are not unre­lat­ed exter­nal intru­sions on Amer­i­can his­to­ry, but parts of an endem­ic process, shar­ing to some degree or oth­er a com­mon source.(2)

For exam­ple, one fac­tor link­ing Dal­las, Water­gate, Iran-Con­tra, and 9/11, has been the involve­ment in all four deep events of per­son­nel involved in America’s high­est-lev­el emer­gency plan­ning, known since the 1950s as Con­ti­nu­ity of Gov­ern­ment (COG) plan­ning, or more col­lo­qui­al­ly inside the Pen­ta­gon as “the Dooms­day Project.” A few of these actors may have been locat­ed at the top, as over­seers of the secret COG sys­tem. Oth­ers – includ­ing some I shall talk about today – were locat­ed fur­ther down in its secret com­mu­ni­ca­tions net­work.

I see this plan­ning group as one among many in what I have cho­sen to call the Amer­i­can deep state, along with agen­cies like the CIA and NSA, the pri­vate groups like Booz Allen Hamil­ton to which more than half of the US intel­li­gence bud­get is outsourced,(3) and final­ly the pow­er­ful banks and cor­po­ra­tions whose views are well rep­re­sent­ed in the CIA and NSA. But if only one group among many, the COG plan­ning group is also spe­cial, because of its con­trol of and access to a com­mu­ni­ca­tions chan­nel, not under gov­ern­ment con­trol, that can reach deeply into the US social struc­ture. I dis­cuss these mat­ters at some length in my next book, The Amer­i­can Deep State, due out in Novem­ber.

COG plan­ning was orig­i­nal­ly autho­rized by Tru­man and Eisen­how­er as plan­ning for a response to a crip­pling atom­ic attack that had decap­i­tat­ed gov­ern­ment. In con­se­quence its plan­ning group con­tem­plat­ed extreme mea­sures, includ­ing what Alfon­so Chardy in 1987 called “sus­pen­sion of the Con­sti­tu­tion.” (4)And yet in Iran-Con­tra its asset of a secret com­mu­ni­ca­tions net­work, devel­oped for the cat­a­stro­phe of decap­i­ta­tion, was used instead to evade an offi­cial embar­go on arms sales to Iran that dat­ed back to 1979. My ques­tion today is whether the net­work could have been sim­i­lar­ly mis­used in Novem­ber 1963. . . .”

High­light­ing the role of Army Reserve Intel­li­gence units and oth­er per­son­nel asso­ci­at­ed with ele­ments of the COG, Scott notes their role in the Dal­las end of the JFK assas­si­na­tion and cov­er-up. (We dis­cussed this is in the August 2nd install­ment of AFA #37 [8].) Peo­ple asso­ci­at­ed with the 488th Army Reserve Intel­li­gence Unit han­dled Mari­na Oswald’s inter­ro­ga­tions and dis­tort­ed what Mari­na actu­al­ly said.

As dis­cussed in AFA #32 [9], plans to sus­pend the con­sti­tu­tion and estab­lish mar­tial law for­mal­ized by Oliv­er North had their gen­e­sis in COG net­work­ing and plan­ning.

One of the fac­tors run­ning through many of the deep polit­i­cal con­spir­a­cies and domes­tic covert oper­a­tions is the use of COG-relat­ed com­mu­ni­ca­tions net­works in order to cir­cum­vent the law. Per­son­nel who came into view in the last decade with the events of 9/11 and after­ward also have links to the COG nexus.

Of pri­ma­ry impor­tance in the COG nexus are Don­ald Rums­feld and Dick Cheney. Quot­ing Scott; ” . . . It is cer­tain that the COG emer­gency net­work pro­gram sur­vived North’s demise, and con­tin­ued to be secret­ly devel­oped for decades, at a cost of bil­lions, and over­seen by a team includ­ing Dick Cheney and Don­ald Rums­feld. It is rel­e­vant that the two men’s pres­ence on the com­mit­tee spanned three admin­is­tra­tions – those of Rea­gan, Bush I, and Clin­ton — even though at one point under Clin­ton nei­ther man held a posi­tion inside the U.S. gov­ern­ment. [Both were part of the Nixon/Ford admin­is­tra­tion as well.–D.E.] Such con­ti­nu­ity was essen­tial for a group so secret that few records exist­ed of its activ­i­ties. And on 9/11 COG plans were offi­cial­ly imple­ment­ed for the first time, by Vice Pres­i­dent Cheney and Defense Sec­re­tary Rums­feld, the two men who had planned them for so many years.(7) . . .”

Pro­gram High­lights Include: The promi­nent role played by George H.W. Bush in this con­cate­na­tion; Water­gate bur­glary team leader James McCord’s promi­nent role in the COG net­work; Jack Alston Chrich­ton’s role in the inter­ro­ga­tion of Mari­na Oswald; John Dean’s role in the same net­works; the role of Secret Ser­vice agent Win­ston Law­son in deploy­ing the motor­cade align­ment in Dal­las; the role of Law­son in con­trol­ling the com­mu­ni­ca­tions of JFK’s Dal­las motor­cade; the roles of Jack Alston Crich­ton and Deputy Dal­las Police Chief George Lump­kin of the 488th Army Reserve Intel­li­gence Unit in han­dling Mari­na Oswald fol­low­ing JFK’s assas­si­na­tion; the role of the Weath­er Moun­tain facil­i­ty in Vir­ginia in the COG net­work; the pow­er­ful posi­tions in the COG net­works of pri­vate cor­po­rate exec­u­tives; the sig­nif­i­cant role in the COG net­works of for­mer CIA direc­tors Richard Helms and James Schlesinger; the role of COG-con­nect­ed ele­ments in the “Octo­ber Sur­prise.”

“The Hid­den Gov­ern­ment Link­ing JFK, Water­gate, Iran-Con­tra and 9/11” by Peter Dale Scott; WhoWhatWhy.com; 10/05/2014. [10]

 For some time now, I have been ana­lyz­ing Amer­i­can his­to­ry in the light of what I have called struc­tur­al deep events: events, like the JFK assas­si­na­tion, the Water­gate break-in, Iran-Con­tra, or 9/11, which repeat­ed­ly involve law-break­ing or vio­lence, are mys­te­ri­ous to begin with, are embed­ded in ongo­ing covert process­es, have polit­i­cal con­se­quences that enlarge covert gov­ern­ment, and are sub­se­quent­ly cov­ered up by sys­tem­at­ic fal­si­fi­ca­tions in the main­stream media and inter­nal gov­ern­ment records.(1)

The more I study these deep events, the more I see sug­ges­tive sim­i­lar­i­ties between them, increas­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty that they are not unre­lat­ed exter­nal intru­sions on Amer­i­can his­to­ry, but parts of an endem­ic process, shar­ing to some degree or oth­er a com­mon source.(2)

For exam­ple, one fac­tor link­ing Dal­las, Water­gate, Iran-Con­tra, and 9/11, has been the involve­ment in all four deep events of per­son­nel involved in America’s high­est-lev­el emer­gency plan­ning, known since the 1950s as Con­ti­nu­ity of Gov­ern­ment (COG) plan­ning, or more col­lo­qui­al­ly inside the Pen­ta­gon as “the Dooms­day Project.” A few of these actors may have been locat­ed at the top, as over­seers of the secret COG sys­tem. Oth­ers – includ­ing some I shall talk about today – were locat­ed fur­ther down in its secret com­mu­ni­ca­tions net­work.

I see this plan­ning group as one among many in what I have cho­sen to call the Amer­i­can deep state, along with agen­cies like the CIA and NSA, the pri­vate groups like Booz Allen Hamil­ton to which more than half of the US intel­li­gence bud­get is outsourced,(3) and final­ly the pow­er­ful banks and cor­po­ra­tions whose views are well rep­re­sent­ed in the CIA and NSA. But if only one group among many, the COG plan­ning group is also spe­cial, because of its con­trol of and access to a com­mu­ni­ca­tions chan­nel, not under gov­ern­ment con­trol, that can reach deeply into the US social struc­ture. I dis­cuss these mat­ters at some length in my next book, The Amer­i­can Deep State, due out in Novem­ber.

COG plan­ning was orig­i­nal­ly autho­rized by Tru­man and Eisen­how­er as plan­ning for a response to a crip­pling atom­ic attack that had decap­i­tat­ed gov­ern­ment. In con­se­quence its plan­ning group con­tem­plat­ed extreme mea­sures, includ­ing what Alfon­so Chardy in 1987 called “sus­pen­sion of the Con­sti­tu­tion.” (4)And yet in Iran-Con­tra its asset of a secret com­mu­ni­ca­tions net­work, devel­oped for the cat­a­stro­phe of decap­i­ta­tion, was used instead to evade an offi­cial embar­go on arms sales to Iran that dat­ed back to 1979. My ques­tion today is whether the net­work could have been sim­i­lar­ly mis­used in Novem­ber 1963.

The Iran-con­tra mis­use has been well-doc­u­ment­ed. Oliv­er North super­vised the sale of arms to Iran by using his resources as the  Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil action offi­cer for COG plan­ning, under cov­er of a “Nation­al Pro­gram Office” that was over­seen by then Vice-Pres­i­dent George H. W.  Bush. (5)North and his supe­ri­ors could thus use the COG emer­gency net­work, known then as Flash­board, for the arms sales to Iran that had to be con­cealed from oth­er parts of the Wash­ing­ton bureau­cra­cy as well as the pub­lic. So when North had to send emer­gency instruc­tions for arms deliv­ery to the US Embassy in Lis­bon, instruc­tions that direct­ly con­tra­vened the embar­go pro­hibit­ing such sales, he used the Flash­board net­work to avoid alert­ing the Ambas­sador and oth­er unwit­ting per­son­nel

The doc­u­ment­ed exam­ple of Iran-Con­tra allows me to explain what I am say­ing about the users of the COG net­work, and also what I am not say­ing. To begin with, I am not say­ing that a sin­gle “Secret Team” has for decades been using the COG net­work to manip­u­late the US Gov­ern­ment from out­side it. . . . . The point is that a very small group had access to a high-lev­el secret net­work out­side gov­ern­ment review, in order to imple­ment a pro­gram in oppo­si­tion to gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy. They suc­cumbed to the temp­ta­tion to use this secure net­work that had been designed for oth­er pur­pos­es. I have argued else­where that this secure net­work was used again on 9/11, to imple­ment key orders for which the 9/11 Com­mis­sion could find no records. (6)Whether it was also used for illic­it pur­pos­es is not known.

It is cer­tain that the COG emer­gency net­work pro­gram sur­vived North’s demise, and con­tin­ued to be secret­ly devel­oped for decades, at a cost of bil­lions, and over­seen by a team includ­ing Dick Cheney and Don­ald Rums­feld. It is rel­e­vant that the two men’s pres­ence on the com­mit­tee spanned three admin­is­tra­tions – those of Rea­gan, Bush I, and Clin­ton — even though at one point under Clin­ton nei­ther man held a posi­tion inside the U.S. gov­ern­ment. Such con­ti­nu­ity was essen­tial for a group so secret that few records exist­ed of its activ­i­ties. And on 9/11 COG plans were offi­cial­ly imple­ment­ed for the first time, by Vice Pres­i­dent Cheney and Defense Sec­re­tary Rums­feld, the two men who had planned them for so many years.(7)

Whether or not they knew about Iran-Con­tra, Cheney and Rums­feld were on the COG plan­ning com­mit­tee at the time of Iran-Con­tra. There is no such obvi­ous link between COG plan­ning and Water­gate, but the involve­ment of COG per­son­nel in Water­gate is nonethe­less strik­ing. James McCord, one of the Water­gate bur­glars, was a mem­ber of a small Air Force Reserve unit in Wash­ing­ton attached to the Office of Emer­gency Pre­pared­ness (OEP) that was assigned “to draw up lists of rad­i­cals and to devel­op con­tin­gency plans for cen­sor­ship of the news media and U.S. mail in time of war.”(8) His unit was part of the Wartime Infor­ma­tion Secu­ri­ty Pro­gram (WISP), which had respon­si­bil­i­ty for acti­vat­ing “con­tin­gency plans for impos­ing cen­sor­ship on the press, the mails and all telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions (includ­ing gov­ern­ment com­mu­ni­ca­tions) [and] pre­ven­tive deten­tion of civil­ian ‘secu­ri­ty risks,’ who would be placed in mil­i­tary ‘camps.’”(9) In addi­tion, John Dean, per­haps the cen­tral Water­gate fig­ure, had over­seen secret COG activ­i­ties when serv­ing as the asso­ciate deputy attor­ney general.(10)

In the case of the JFK assas­si­na­tion, I wish to focus on two men who func­tioned as part of the com­mu­ni­ca­tions net­work of the Office of Emer­gency Plan­ning (OEP), the agency renamed in 1968 as the Office of Emer­gency Pre­pared­ness (to which McCord was attached), and renamed again in 1982 as the Nation­al Pro­gram Office (for which Oliv­er North was the action officer).(11)

These two men (there are oth­ers) are Win­ston Law­son, the Secret Ser­vice advance man who from the lead car of the motor­cade was in charge of the Secret Ser­vice radio chan­nels oper­at­ing in the motor­cade; and Jack Crich­ton, the army intel­li­gence reserve offi­cer who with Deputy Dal­las Police Chief George Lump­kin select­ed the Russ­ian inter­preter for Mari­na Oswald’s first (and fal­si­fied) FBI interview.(12)

Law­son has drawn the crit­i­cal atten­tion of JFK researchers, both for dubi­ous actions he took before and dur­ing the assas­si­na­tion, and also for false state­ments he made after it (some of them under oath). For exam­ple, Law­son report­ed after the assas­si­na­tion that motor­cy­cles were deployed on “the right and left flanks of the President’s car” (17 WH 605). On the morn­ing of Novem­ber 22, how­ev­er, the orders had been changed (3 WH 244), so that the motor­cy­cles rode instead, as Law­son him­self tes­ti­fied to the War­ren Com­mis­sion, “just back of the President’s car” (4 WH 338; cf. 21 WH 768–70). Cap­tain Lawrence of the Dal­las Police tes­ti­fied that that the pro­posed side escorts were rede­ployed to the rear on Lawson’s own instruc­tions (7 WH 580–81; cf. 18 WH 809, 21 WH 571). This would appear to have left the Pres­i­dent more vul­ner­a­ble to a pos­si­ble cross­fire.

Ear­ly on Novem­ber 22, at Love Field, Law­son installed, in what would become the lead car, the base radio whose fre­quen­cies were used by all Secret Ser­vice agents on the motor­cade. This radio chan­nel, oper­at­ed by the White House Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Agency (WHCA), was used for some key deci­sions before and after the assas­si­na­tion, yet its records, unlike those of the Dal­las Police Depart­ment (DPD) Chan­nels One and Two, were nev­er made avail­able to the War­ren Com­mis­sion, or any sub­se­quent inves­ti­ga­tion. The tape was not with­held because it was irrel­e­vant; on the con­trary, it con­tained very sig­nif­i­cant infor­ma­tion. . . . .

To read more, please go to the arti­cle link above . . . .