In FTR #446, we highlighted the serious death threats, harassment, and covert disruption experienced by Peggy and Sterling Seagrave in connection with their writing. In 509, we also noted the suspicious circumstances surrounding the death of the heroic Iris Chang, who aided the Seagraves in their “Gold Warriors” project. Having authored a book on the Rape of Nanking and working on another about the Bataan Death March, Ms. Chang had crossed the very power structure delineated at length, depth and detail in the Seagraves’ volume. In our last visit with the Seagraves, a 2009 interview that was the focus of FTR #689, Sterling expressed anxiety about the proximity of their residence in Southern France to the Spanish border and the formidable presence of Opus Dei in Franco’s former domain. His fear turned out to be prescient. On Christmas Day of 2011, he narrowly escaped assassination while returning home. He felt that the attempt on his life may well have been motivated by the publication of the Spanish language edition of “Gold Warriors.” Peggy passed in 2016 and Sterling in the spring of 2017. Listeners/readers may honor these heroes by reading their consummately important books.
In this program we present some of the deep political Asian history that bears on Chinese history and politics. In particular, the harm done to China by Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek’s drug-dealing Kuomintang government, its collaboration with the brutal Japanese occupiers of Manchuria, as well as the United States is important in understanding the Chinese political and historical outlook.
In turn, the deep economic, political and military relationship between the Japanese fascists and the U.S. is to be factored in to any understanding of how the Chinese view this country and the West.
In that context, we do NOT think China’s present government will go down easily in the face of an obvious destabilization effort by the U.S. and the West.
In addition to the European colonization of China and Britain’s violent imposition of the opium drug trade through the Opium Wars, China’s political and historical memory is vividly animated by the drug-financed fascist dictatorship of Nationalist Chinese Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek. Dubbed “the Peanut” by General Joseph Stilwell during World War II, Chiang was compared by Stilwell (the chief American military adviser and liaison to the Kuomintang forces during World War II) to Mussolini.
Chiang’s entire government and brutal national security apparatus rested on the foundation of the narcotics traffic, as was well known by the US Commissioner Bureau of Narcotics, Harry Anslinger.
Key points of discussion and analysis of this relationship include: The decisive role of the Green Gang of Shanghai crime lord Du (sometimes ‘Tu”) Yue-sheng in both financing Chiang’s forces and supplying muscle and intelligence to Tai Li, Chiang’s intelligence chief and interior minister, nicknamed “The Himmler of China;” the important role of Chiang’s drug traffic in supplying American t’ongs who, in turned, supplied the Mafia with their narcotics; the role of Chiang’s finance minister as Du Yue-sheng’s protector; the collaboration of Du and Chaing Kai-shek’s Kuomintang apparatus with the Japanese occupation government of Manchuria in the narcotics traffic; the role of Chaing’s head of Narcotics Control in supplying Chinese officials with drugs; the role of the Superintendent of Maritime Customs in Shanghai in supervising the trafficking of drugs to the U.S.; Du Yueh-sheng’s flight to Hong Kong after the Japanese occupation of Shanghai; Du’s collaboration with Hong Kong-based British financiers in selling drugs to the Chinese population; the deliberate deception on the part of Anslinger and kingpins in the US China Lobby, who knowingly misled the American public by blaming the U.S. drug traffic on the Communist Chinese; the narcotics kickbacks to U.S. China Lobby figures by Chiang’s dope trafficking infrastructure; the overlap of the Kuomintang dope trade with arms sales by China Lobby luminaries; the support of the CIA for Chiang’s narcotics traffic; the destruction of the career of Foreign Service officer John Service, who noted that “the Nationalists were totally dependent on opium and ‘incapable of solving China’s problems;’ ” the central role of Tai Li’s agents in the U.S. in framing John Service.
Supplemental information about these topics is contained in AFA #11 and AFA #24.
It is impossible to understand World War II and the global and economic political landscape that emerged from it without digesting the vitally important book Gold Warriors by Sterling and Peggy Seagrave.
Covering the Japanese equivalent of the Bormann flight capital network, the volume is a heroic, masterful analysis and penetration of the Asian wing of the cartel system that spawned fascism, as well as the realities of the post-World War II economic landscape. (FTR #‘s 427, 428, 446, 451, 501, 509, 688, 689 deal with the subject of the Golden Lily program successfully implemented by the Japanese to loot Asia.)
An incisive, eloquent review and encapsulation of the book is provided by Doug Valentine, providing further insight into the political and historical memory of the Chinese government and resulting stance toward any pressure to be mounted against that nation by the U.S. and the West.
Of particular note is the detailed analysis of the Japanese development of occupied Manchuria as an epicenter of the opium traffic with which to enrich their operations and to help subjugate the Chinese. Chinese sensitivity to the Japanese, Kuomintang, American and British roles in using drugs to enslave the Chinese people is very much in the forefront of Japanese political consciousness.
” . . . . .They [the Japanese] build roads and create industries and, more importantly, they work with corrupt warlords and Chinese gangsters associated with Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang Party to transform Manchuria into a vast poppy field. By 1937 the Japanese and their gangster and Kuomintang associates are responsible for 90% of the world’s illicit narcotics. They turn Manchu emperor Pu Yi into an addict, and open thousands of opium dens as a way of suppressing the Chinese. . . .”
Far from being a peripheral political and economic consideration; the Golden Lily plunder is fundamental to postwar Western reality.
” . . . . The Seagraves conclude their exciting and excellent book by taking us down the Money Trail, and explaining, in layman’s terms, how the Gold Warriors have been able to cover their tracks. Emperor Hirohito, for example, worked directly with Pope Pius XII to launder money through the Vatican bank. In another instance, Japan’s Ministry of Finance produced gold certificates that were slightly different than ordinary Japanese bonds. The Seagraves interview persons defrauded in this scam, and other scams involving the Union Bank of Switzerland and Citibank. . . . ”
” . . . . the banks that maintain the US government’s stolen gold are above the law, and if they stonewall long enough, anyone trying to sue them will eventually fade away. The Seagraves asked the Treasury Department, Defense Department, and the CIA for records on Yamashita’s gold in 1987, but were told the records were exempt from release. During the 1990s, the records mysteriously went missing. Other records were destroyed in what the Seagraves caustically call ‘history laundering.’ . . . . .”
Key Points of Analysis and Discussion Include: Discussion of the war crimes committed by the Japanese against the Chinese; the roles of the Japanese army, the Japanese royal family and yakuza gangster Kodama Yoshio (later the CIA’s top contact in Japan and a key official with the Unification Church) in extracting the liquid wealth of China; the restoration of the Japanese fascists in the “new,” postwar Japanese government by Douglas MacArthur’s occupation forces; the fusion of the Golden Lily loot with Nazi World War II plunder to form the Black Eagle Trust; the use of the Golden Lily plunder to finance funds to reinforce the renascent fascists in Japan, to finance U.S. covert operations in the postwar period and to suppress political dissidence in Japan; the use of the M‑Fund to finance the Japanese Liberal Democratic Party and Richard Nixon’s transfer of control of that fund to the Japanese government in exchange for clandestine financial help in his 1960 election campaign; the use of Golden Lily loot by the U.S. to purchase the support of Pacific ally nations for the Vietnam War; the use of Golden Lily treasure by Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos; the suppression and criminal prosecution of individuals attempting to penetrate the elite, selective use of Golden Lily gold by the world’s large banks.
We conclude by highlighting Fred J. Cook’s analytical account of the McCarthy period, The Nightmare Decade. One of the focal points of Cook’s book is McCarthy’s theme that State Department [Communist] treachery had “lost” China to Mao and his forces.
Exploiting the meme that “pinko” State Department officials were responsible for Mao’s ascendance, McCarthy and his team successfully purged the State Department of officials whose outlook on Chiang Kai-shek was realistic.
The fate of John Service–described in the excerpt of The CIA as Organized Crime–illustrates this kind of activity.
In FTR #s 932 and 933 (among other programs), we noted the pivotal influence of Joe McCarthy’s right-hand man Roy Cohn on the professional development of Donald Trump. We wonder what influence Cohn and the McCarthy legacy may have had on Trump’s policy toward China.
Aside from the airy presumption that China was “ours” to “lose,” McCarthy’s thesis ignored the effects of U.S. policy in that country before, during and after, World War II. (This transgression is, of course, supplemental to Tailgunner Joe’s fabrication of evidence against those he targeted.)
In addition to support for Chiang Kai-Shek, whom General Joseph Stilwell compared to Mussolini, U.S. policy of using scores of thousands of Japanese soldiers as anti-Communist combatants was loathsome to the Chinese population, who had felt the full measure of Japanese atrocity during years of warfare.
Leafing through Nightmare Decade for the first time in years, we came across a passage read into the record in AFA #11.
More than 16 months after V‑J Day (the official conclusion of the hostilities of World War II in Asia) the U.S. was countenancing the use of 80,000 Japanese troops (roughly eight divisions) as anti-Communist combatants in eastern and northwestern Manchuria alone!
Having been raised on Victory at Sea and similar fare, this passage is yet another reminder that–70 + years or so after V‑J Day–“we’re not in Kansas any more, Toto.”
In retrospect, we never were.
For more on the subject of the Japanese fascism, see–among other programs–FTR #‘s 905, 969, 970.
Program Highlights Include: Brief discussion and overview of an article read in our previous program concerning HSBC and the bank’s historical links to laundering narcotics money and jihadist financing; the use of the racist term “shina” by the Hong Kong protesters–a term that had its genesis in the Sino-Japanese war.
We begin with review of an article that was prominently featured in our last program.
In this article we note: the involvement of the NED with the leading individuals and institutions involved with the turmoil in Hong Kong; the networking between other U.S. “soft-power” intelligence fronts with the Hong Kong activists; the networking between top Trump administration officials and the Hong Kong activists; the use of anti-Chinese slurs dating to the fighting between Japan and China prior to, and during, World War II; U.S. “Alt-right” involvement with the Hong Kong unrest; the meeting of a U.S. diplomat with Hong Kong activists; the use of what–if it were used by people acting in the U.S.–rioting and terrorism by the crowds in Hong Kong; the violence used in Hong Kong includes throwing gasoline bombs at the police, setting fire to subway stations, attacking passers-by and assaulting counter-protesters.
Underlying the turmoil in Hong Kong, the program sets forth the conflict between the financialized, laissez-faire economy of Hong Kong with the “state capitalist” system of China.
The former has led to an rent increase of roughly 300% over the last ten years, while wages stagnated. This has made Hong Kong the most expensive city in the world and led to a poverty rate of 20% of the island’s roughly 7 million citizens.
For all of its shortcomings, the “state capitalist” system of China has led to a decrease in the poverty rate from 88% in 1981 to 0.7% in 2015. (The figure comes from the World Bank, hardly a bastion of international Communist ideology.)
In that same context, the percentage of Chinese in the middle class has gone from 4% in 2002 to 31% today. (Again, the figures come from the World Bank, as well as the IMF and that well-known bastion of Marxist ideology and promulgation–the CIA’s analysis division.)
The economic plight of many in Hong Kong–the young in particular–has made them easy targets for regime-change tactics.
Of paramount significance in understanding the unrest in Hong Kong is the island’s role as an epicenter of economic crime. The extradition law which was the initial focus of the unrest would have enabled the extradition of malefactors for economic criminal activity. For that reason, it was vigorously opposed by the Hong Kong business community and its U.S. allies.
The program begins with an excerpt of AFA #37 (from the fall of 1992), dealing with the destabilization of the U.S.S.R. Relying on articles from Covert Action Information Bulletin #35, by Doug Henwood and Sean Gervasi, the program reviews both NSC 68 and what Gervasi terms “the full court press” strategy that was its ultimate fulfillment.
Using political action focused on promoting fractious nationalism among targeted ethnicities within the targeted nation and economic and diplomatic pressure to weaken that country, the strategy worked very well with the Soviet Union.
It is Mr. Emory’s considered opinion that the same strategy is being applied to China. Whether that strategy will be successful remains to be seen.
Next, we note the role of the National Endowment for Democracy (an example of Orwellian Newspeak if ever there was one) in continuing our examination of the turmoil in Hong Kong. NED was deeply involved in the destabilization of the U.S.S.R. We examined NED’s role in projecting Nazi and fascist elements back into Lithuania in AFA #37, as well as FTR #858.
In this article we note: the involvement of the NED with the leading individuals and institutions involved with the turmoil in Hong Kong; the networking between other U.S. “soft-power” intelligence fronts with the Hong Kong activists; U.S. “Alt-right” involvement with the Hong Kong unrest; the meeting of a U.S. diplomat with Hong Kong activists; the networking between top Trump administration officials and the Hong Kong activists; the use of anti-Chinese slurs dating to the fighting between Japan and China prior to, and during, World War II; the use of what–if it were used by people acting in the U.S.–rioting and terrorism by the crowds in Hong Kong; the violence used in Hong Kong includes throwing gasoline bombs at the police, setting fire to subway stations, attacking passers-by and assaulting counter-protesters.
We begin with brief review of the Falun Gong cult and its connections. Part of a constellation of organizations and individuals working with former Trump chief of staff Steve Bannon to neutralize China, Falun Gong has garnered the support of CIA derivative Broadcasting Board of Governors in the effort.
The Falun Gong teaches that: post menopausal women can regain menstruation, considered mandatory for spiritual evolution; gays are demonized; mixed race people are demonized; cult members are discouraged from seeking modern medical treatment; space aliens are inhabiting human bodies and are responsible for modern technology such as airplanes and computers; tiny beings are said to be invading human bodies and causing “bad karma;” master Li Hongzhi knows the secrets of the universe; master Li Hongzhi can levitate and walk through walls; master Li Hongzhi can install a physical “Falun”–swastika–in the abdomen of followers which revolves in various directions; Falun Gong teaching demonizes feminists and popular music; there will be a “Judgement Day” on which communists and others deemed unworthy by master Li Hongzhi will be neutralized.
Falun Gong–largely through its Epoch Times newspaper–has established a major social media presence and is a key ally of President Trump’s re-election effort: “. . . . In April, at the height of its ad spending, videos from the Epoch Media Group, which includes The Epoch Times and digital video outlet New Tang Dynasty, or NTD, combined for around 3 billion views on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, ranking 11th among all video creators across platforms and outranking every other traditional news publisher, according to data from the social media analytics company Tubular.That engagement has made The Epoch Times a favorite of the Trump family and a key component of the president’s re-election campaign.
Program Highlights Include: The enormous amount of money under control of Falun Gong; similarities to the Unification Church; the anti-communist dogma of the cult (again, not unlike the Unification Church); the role of the internet and social media–Facebook, in particular–in the growth of Falun Gong’s operations; the spin put by NBC on Falun Gong’s beliefs.
These are the twenty-third, twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth (and concluding program) in a long series of interviews with Jim DiEugenio about his triumphal analysis of President Kennedy’s assassination and New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison’s heroic investigation of the killing.
The first interview begins with a telling editorial written for “The Washington Post” by former President Harry Truman.
Destiny Betrayed by Jim DiEugenio; Skyhorse Publishing [SC]; Copyright 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEugenio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; pp. 378–379.
. . . . On December 22, 1963, Harry Truman wrote an editorial that was published in the Washington Post. The former President wrote that he had become “disturbed by the way the CIA had become diverted from its original assignment. It has become an operational and at times a policy-making arm of government.” He wrote that he never dreamed that this would happen when he signed the National Security Act. he thought it would be used for intelligence analysis, not “peacetime cloak and dagger operations.” He complained that the CIA had now become “so removed from its intended role that it is being interpreted as a symbol of sinister and mysterious foreign intrigue–and a subject for Cold War enemy propaganda.” Truman went as far as suggesting its operational arm be eliminated. He concluded with the warning that Americans have grown up learning respect for “our free institutions and for our ability to maintain a free and open society. There is something about the way the CIA has been functioning that is casting a shadow over out historic position and I feel hat we need to correct it.” . . . .
Former CIA Director (and then Warren Commission member) Allen Dulles visited Truman and attempted to get him to retract the statement. He dissembled about then CIA chief John McCone’s view of the editorial.
The focal point of the first two programs is the dramatic changes in U.S. foreign policy that occurred because of JFK’s assassination. Analysis in FTR #1056 continues the analysis of Kennedy’s foreign policy and concludes with riveting discussion of the striking policy undertakings of the Kennedy administration in the area of civil rights. Jim has written a marvelous, 4‑part analysis of JFK’s civil rights policy.
Discussion of JFK’s foreign policy and how his murder changed that builds on, and supplements analysis of this in FTR #1031, FTR #1032 and FTR #1033.
Lyndon Baines Johnson reversed JFK’s foreign policy initiatives in a number of important ways.
When the United States reneged on its commitment to pursue independence for the colonial territories of its European allies at the end of the Second World War, the stage was set for those nations’ desire for freedom to be cast as incipient Marxists/Communists. This development was the foundation for epic bloodshed and calamity.
Jim details then Congressman John F. Kennedy’s 1951 fact-finding trip to Saigon to gain an understanding of the French war to retain their colony of Indochina. (Vietnam was part of that colony.)
In speaking with career diplomat Edmund Gullion, Kennedy came to the realization that not only would the French lose the war, but that Ho Chi Minh and the Viet Minh guerrillas enjoyed great popular support among the Vietnamese people.
This awareness guided JFK’s Vietnam policy, in which he not only resisted tremendous pressure to commit U.S. combat troops to Vietnam, but planned a withdrawal of U.S. forces from Vietnam.
Perhaps the most important change made after JFK’s assassination was Johnson’s negation of Kennedy’s plans to withdraw from Vietnam.
LBJ cancelled Kennedy’s scheduled troop withdrawal, scheduled personnel increases and implemented the 34A program of covert operations against North Vietnam. Executed by South Vietnamese naval commandos using small, American-made patrol boats, these raids were supported by U.S. destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin, which were electronically “fingerprinting” North Vietnamese radar installations.
The electronic fingerprinting of North Vietnamese radar was in anticipation of a pre-planned air war, a fundamental part of a plan by LBJ to involve the United States in a full-scale war in Southeast Asia.
Destiny Betrayed by Jim DiEugenio; Skyhorse Publishing [SC]; Copyright 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEugenio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; pp. 368–371.
. . . . Clearly now that the withdrawal was imminent, Kennedy was going to try and get the rest of his administration on board to his way of thinking. Not only did this not happen once Kennedy was dead, but the first meeting on Vietnam afterwards was a strong indication that things were now going to be cast in a sharply different tone. This meeting took place at 3:00 p.m. on November 24. . . . Johnson’s intent was clear to McNamara. He was breaking with the previous policy. The goal now was to win the war. LBJ then issued a strong warning: He wanted no more dissension or division over policy. Any person who did not conform would be removed. (This would later be demonstrated by his banning of Hubert Humphrey from Vietnam meetings when Humphrey advised Johnson to rethink his policy of military commitment to Vietnam.) . . . . The reader should recall, this meeting took place just forty-eight hours after Kennedy was killed. . . .
. . . . Therefore, on March 2, 1964, the Joint Chiefs passed a new war proposal to the White House. This was even more ambitious than the January version. It included bombing, the mining of North Vietnamese harbors, a naval blockade, and possible use of tactical atomic weapons in case China intervened. Johnson was now drawing up a full scale battle plan for Vietnam. In other words, what Kennedy did not do in three years, LBJ had done in three months.
Johnson said he was not ready for this proposal since he did not have congress yet as a partner and trustee. But he did order the preparation of NSAM 288, which was based on this proposal. It was essentially a target list of bombing sites that eventually reached 94 possibilities. By May 25, with Richard Nixon and Barry Goldwater clamoring for bombing of the north, LBJ had made the decision that the U.S. would directly attack North Vietnam at an unspecified point in the future. But it is important to note that even before the Tonkin Gulf incident, Johnson had ordered the drawing up of a congressional resolution. This had been finalized by William Bundy, McGeorge Bundy’s brother. Therefore in June of 1964, Johnson began lobbying certain people for its passage in congress. . . .
National Security Memorandum 263
. . . . Johnson seized upon the hazy and controversial events in the Gulf of Tonkin during the first week of August to begin he air war planned in NSAM 288. Yet the Tonkin Gulf incident had been prepared by Johnson himself. After Kennedy’s death, President Johnson made a few alterations in the draft of NSAM 273. An order which Kennedy had never seen but was drafted by McGeorge Bundy after a meeting in Honolulu, a meeting which took place while Kennedy was visiting Texas. . . .
. . . . On August 2, the destroyer Maddox was attacked by three North Vietnamese torpedo boats. Although torpedoes were launched, none hit. The total damage to the Maddox
was one bullet through the hull. Both Johnson and the Defense Department misrepresented this incident to congress and the press. They said the North Vietnamese fired first, that the USA had no role in the patrol boat raids, that the ships were in international waters, and there was no hot pursuit by the Maddox. These were all wrong. Yet Johnson used this overblown reporting, plus a non-existent attack two nights later on the destroyer Turner Joy to begin to push his war resolution through Congress. He then took out the target list assembled for NSAM 288 [from March of 1964–D.E] and ordered air strikes that very day. . . .
. . . . For on August 7, Johnson sent a message to General Maxwell Taylor. He wanted a whole gamut of possible operations presented to him for direct American attacks against the North. The target date for the systematic air war was set for January 1965. This was called operation Rolling Thunder and it ended up being the largest bombing campaign in military history. The reader should note: the January target date was the month Johnson would be inaugurated after his re-election. As John Newman noted in his masterful book JFK and Vietnam, Kennedy was disguising his withdrawal plan around his re-election; Johnson was disguising his escalation plan around his re-election. . . .
In addition to noting that Hubert Humphrey, contrary to popular misconception, was an opponent of Johnson’s war strategy, we note that Robert McNamara was also opposed to it, although he went along with the Commander in Chief’s policies.
After detailed discussion of the human and environmental damage inflicted on Vietnam and the strategy implemented by LBJ after Kennedy’s assassination, the discussion turns to Johnson’s reversal of Kennedy’s policy with regard to Laos.
The fledgling nation of Laos was also part of French Indochina, and Jim notes how outgoing President Eisenhower coached President-Elect Kennedy on the necessity of committing U.S. combat forces to Laos.
Again, Kennedy refused to commit U.S. ground forces and engineered a policy of neutrality for Laos.
Destiny Betrayed by Jim DiEugenio; Skyhorse publishing [SC]; Copyright 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEugenio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 54.
. . . . At his first press conference, Kennedy said that he hoped to establish Laos as a “peaceful country–an independent country not dominated by either side.” He appointed a task force to study the problem, was in regular communication with it and the Laotian ambassador, and decided by February that Laos must have a coalition government, the likes of which Eisenhower had rejected out of hand. Kennedy also had little interest in a military solution. He could not understand sending American troops to fight for a country whose people did not care to fight for themselves. . . . He therefore worked to get the Russians to push the Pathet Lao into a cease-fire agreement. This included a maneuver on Kennedy’s part to indicate military pressure if the Russians did not intervene strongly enough with the Pathet Lao. The maneuver worked, and in May of 1961, a truce was called. A few days later, a conference convened in Geneva to hammer out conditions for a neutral Laos. By July of 1962, a new government, which included the Pathet Lao, had been hammered out. . . .
Whereas JFK had implemented a policy affording neutrality to Laos–against the wishes of the Joint Chiefs, CIA and many of his own cabinet, LBJ scrapped the neutralist policy in favor of a CIA-implemented strategy of employing “narco-militias” such as the Hmong tribesmen as combatants against the Pathet Lao. This counter-insurgency warfare was complemented by a massive aerial bombing campaign.
One of the many outgrowths of LBJ’s reversal of JFK’s Southeast policy was a wave of CIA-assisted heroin addicting both GI’s in Vietnam and American civilians at home.
LBJ also reversed JFK’s policy toward Indonesia.
In 1955, Sukarno hosted a conference of non-aligned nations that formalized and concretized a “Third Way” between East and West. This, along with Sukarno’s nationalism of some Dutch industrial properties, led the U.S. to try and overthrow Sukharno, which was attempted in 1958.
Kennedy understood Sukarno’s point of view, and had planned a trip to Indonesia in 1964 to forge a more constructive relationship with Sukharno. Obviously, his murder in 1963 precluded the trip.
In 1965, Sukarno was deposed in a bloody, CIA-aided coup in which as many as a million people were killed.
Of particular interest in connection with Indonesia, is the disposition of Freeport Sulphur, a company that had enlisted the services of both Clay Shaw and David Ferrie in an effort to circumvent limitations on its operations imposed by Castro’s Cuba:
Destiny Betrayed by Jim DiEugenio; Skyhorse publishing [SC]; Copyright 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEugenio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; pp. 208–209.
. . . . In Chapter 1, the author introduced Freeport Sulphur and its subsidiaries Moa Bay Mining and Nicaro Nickel. These companies all had large investments in Cuba prior to Castro’s revolution. And this ended up being one of the ways that Garrison connected Clay Shaw and David Ferrie. This came about for two reasons. First, with Castro taking over their operations in Cuba, Freeport was attempting to investigate bringing in nickel ore from Cuba, through Canada, which still had trade relations with Cuba. The ore would then be refined in Louisiana, either at a plant already in New Orleans or at another plant in Braithwaite. Shaw, an impressario of international trade, was on this exploratory team for Freeport. And he and two other men had been flown to Canada by Ferrie as part of this effort. More evidence of this connection through Freeport was found during their investigation of Guy Banister. Banister apparently knew about another flight taken by Shaw with an official of Freeport, likely Charles Wight, to Cuba. Again the pilot was David Ferrie. Another reason this Freeport connection was important to Garrison is that he found a witness named James Plaine in Houston who said that Mr. Wight of Freeport Sulphur had contacted him in regards to an assassination plot against Castro. Considering the amount of money Freeport was about to lose in Cuba, plus the number of Eastern Establishment luminaries associated with the company–such as Jock Whitney, Jean Mauze and Godfrey Rockefeller–it is not surprising that such a thing was contemplated within their ranks. . . .
LBJ reversed Kennedy’s policy vis a vis Sukarno. It should be noted that Freeport had set its corporate sights on a very lucrative pair of mountains in Indonesia, both of which had enormous deposits of minerals, iron, copper, silver and gold in particular.
Destiny Betrayed by Jim DiEugenio; Skyhorse publishing [SC]; Copyright 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEugenio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; pp. 374–375.
. . . . Shortly after, his aid bill landed on Johnson’s desk. The new president refused to sign it. . . .
. . . . In return for not signing the aid bill, in 1964, LBJ received support from Both Augustus Long and Jock Whitney of Freeport Sulphur in his race against Barry Goldwater. In fact, Long established a group called the National Independent Committee for Johnson. This group of wealthy businessmen included Robert Lehman of Lehman Brothers and Thomas Cabot, Michael Paine’s cousin. . . . Then, in early 1965, Augustus Long was rewarded for helping Johnson get elected. LBJ app[ointed him to the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. This is a small group of wealthy private citizens who advises the president on intelligence matters. The members of this group can approve and suggest covert activities abroad. This appointment is notable for what was about to occur. For with Sukarno now unprotected by President Kennedy, the writing was on the wall. The Central Intelligence Agency now bean to send into Indonesia its so called “first team.” . . . .
. . . . Suharto now began to sell off Indonesia’s riches to the highest bidder. Including Freeport Sulphur, which opened what were perhaps the largest copper and gold mines in the world there. . . . Freeport, along with several other companies, now harvested billions from the Suharto regime. . . .
Yet another area in which JFK’s policy outlook ran afoul of the prevailing wisdom of the Cold War was with regard to the Congo. A Belgian colony which was the victim of genocidal policies of King Leopold (estimates of the dead run as high as 8 million), the diamond and mineral-rich Congo gained a fragile independence.
In Africa, as well, Kennedy understood the struggle of emerging nations seeking freedom from colonial domination as falling outside of and transcending stereotyped Cold War dynamics.
In the Congo, the brutally administered Belgian rule had spawned a vigorous independence movement crystallized around the charismatic Patrice Lumumba. Understanding of, and sympathetic to Lumumba and the ideology and political forces embodied in him, Kennedy opposed the reactionary status quo favored by both European allies like the United Kingdom and Belgium, as well as the Eisenhower/Dulles axis in the United States.
Destiny Betrayed by Jim DiEugenio; Skyhorse publishing [SC]; Copyright 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEugenio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; pp. 28–29.
. . . . By 1960, a native revolutionary leader named Patrice Lumumba had galvanized the nationalist feeling of the country. Belgium decided to pull out. But they did so rapidly, knowing that tumult would ensue and they could return to colonize the country again. After Lumumba was appointed prime minister, tumult did ensue. The Belgians and the British backed a rival who had Lumumba dismissed. They then urged the breaking away of the Katanga province because of its enormous mineral wealth. Lumumba looked to the United Nations for help, and also the USA. The former decided to help, . The United States did not. In fact, when Lumumba visited Washington July of 1960, Eisenhower deliberately fled to Rhode Island. Rebuffed by Eisenhower, Lumumba now turned to the Russians for help in expelling the Belgians from Katanga. This sealed his fate in the eyes of Eisenhower and Allen Dulles. The president now authorized a series of assassination plots by the CIA to kill Lumumba. These plots finally succeeded on January 17, 1961, three days before Kennedy was inaugurated.
His first week in office, Kennedy requested a full review of the Eisenhower/Dulles policy in Congo. The American ambassador to that important African nation heard of this review and phoned Allen Dulles to alert him that President Kennedy was about to overturn previous policy there. Kennedy did overturn this policy on February 2, 1961. Unlike Eisenhower and Allen Dulles, Kennedy announced he would begin full cooperation with Secretary Dag Hammarskjold at the United Nations on this thorny issue in order to bring all the armies in that war-torn nation under control. He would also attempt top neutralize the country so there would be no East/West Cold War competition. Third, all political prisoners being held should be freed. Not knowing he was dead, this part was aimed at former prime minister Lumumba, who had been captured by his enemies. (There is evidence that, knowing Kennedy would favor Lumumba, Dulles had him killed before JFK was inaugurated.) Finally, Kennedy opposed the secession of mineral-rich Katanga province. . . . Thus began Kennedy’s nearly three year long struggle to see Congo not fall back under the claw of European imperialism. . . . ”
In the Congo, as in Indonesia, LBJ reversed JFK’s policy stance, and the corporate looting of the Congo resulted under General Joseph Mobutu, himself a beneficiary of the piracy.
Destiny Betrayed by Jim DiEugenio; Skyhorse Publishing [SC]; Copyright 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEugenio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; pp. 372–373.
. . . . But in October and November [of 1963], things began to fall apart. Kennedy wanted Colonel Michael Greene, an African expert, to train the Congolese army in order
to subdue a leftist rebellion. But General Joseph Mobutu, with the backing of the Pentagon, managed to resist this training, which the United Nations backed. In 1964, the communist rebellion picked up steam and began taking whole provinces. The White House did something Kennedy never seriously contemplated: unilateral action by the USA. Johnson and McGeorge Bundy had the CIA fly sorties with Cuban pilots to halt the communist advance. Without Kennedy, the UN now withdrew. America now became an ally of Belgium and intervened with arms, airplanes and advisers. Mobutu now invited Tshombe back into the government. Tshombe, perhaps at the request of the CIA, now said that the rebellion was part of a Chinese plot to take over Congo. Kennedy had called in Edmund Gullion to supervise the attempt to make the Congo government into a moderate coalition, avoiding the extremes of left and right. But with the Tshombe/Mobutu alliance, that was now dashed. Rightwing South Africans and Rhodesians were now allowed to join the Congolese army in a war on the “Chinese-inspired left.” And with the United Nations gone, this was all done under the auspices of the United States. The rightward tilt now continued unabated. By 1965, Mobutu had gained complete power. And in 1966, he installed himself as military dictator. . . . Mobutu now allowed his country to be opened up to loads of outside investment. The riches of the Congo were mined by huge Western corporations. Their owners and officers grew wealthy while Mobutu’s subjects were mired in poverty. Mobutu also stifled political dissent. And he now became one of the richest men in Africa, perhaps the world. . . .
In FTR #1033, we examined JFK’s attempts at normalizing relations with Cuba. That, of course, vanished with his assassination and the deepening of Cold War hostility between the U.S. and the Island nation, with a thaw of sorts coming under Barack Obama a few years ago.
There is no more striking area in which JFK’s murder reversed what would have been historic changes in America’s foreign policy than U.S.-Soviet relations.
JFK had implemented a ban on atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons, bitterly opposed by the Pentagon, In a June, 1963 speech at American University, JFK called for re-evaluating America’s relationship to the Soviet Union, and cited the U.S.S.R’s decisive role in defeating Nazi Germany during World War II.
JFK was also proposing joint space exploration with the Soviet Union, which would have appeared to be nothing less than treasonous to the Pentagon and NASA at the time. After JFK’s assassination, the Kennedy family used a backchannel diplomatic conduit to the Soviet leadership to communicate their view that the Soviet Union, and its Cuban ally, had been blameless in the assassination and that powerful right-wing forces in the United States had been behind the assassination.
Perhaps JFK’s greatest contribution was one that has received scant notice. In 1961, the Joint Chiefs were pushing for a first strike on the Soviet Union–a decision to initiate nuclear war. JFK refused, walking out of the discussion with the disgusted observation that “We call ourselves the human race.”
In FTR #‘s 876, 926 and 1051, we examined the creation of the meme that Oswald had been networking with the Cubans and Soviets in the run-up to the assassination. In particular, Oswald was supposedly meeting with Valery Kostikov, a KGB official in charge of assassinations in the Western Hemisphere.
This created the pretext for blaming JFK’s assassination on the Soviet Union and/or Cuba. There are indications that JFK’s assassination may well have been intended as a pretext for a nuclear first strike on the Soviet Union.
JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters by James W. Douglass; Touchstone Books [SC]; Copyright 2008 by James W. Douglas; ISBN 978–1‑4391–9388‑4; pp. 242–243.
. . . . As JFK may have recalled from the National Security Council meeting he walked out of in July 1961, the first Net Evaluation Subcommittee report had focused precisely on “a surprise attack in late 1963, preceded by a period of heightened tensions.” Kennedy was a keen reader and listener. In the second preemptive-war report, he may also have noticed the slight but significant discrepancy between its overall time frame, 1963–1968, and the extent of its relatively reassuring conclusion, which covered only 1964 through 1968. . . .
. . . . In his cat-and-mouse questioning of his military chiefs, President Kennedy had built upon the report’s apparently reassuring conclusion in such a way as to discourage preemptive-war ambitions. However, given the “late 1963” focus in the first Net Report that that was the most threatening time for a preemptive strike, Kennedy had little reason to be reassured by a second report that implicitly confirmed that time as the one of maximum danger. The personally fatal fall JFK was about to enter, in late 1963, was the same time his military commanders may have considered their last chance to “win” (in their terms) a preemptive war against the Soviet Union. In terms of their second Net Report to the President, which passed over the perilous meaning of late 1963, the cat-and-mouse game had been reversed. It was the generals who were the cats, and JFK the mouse in their midst.
The explicit assumption of the first Net Report was “a surprise attack in late 1963, preceded by a period of heightened tensions.” The focus of that first-strike scenario corresponded to the Kennedy assassination scenario. When President Kennedy was murdered in late 1963, the Soviet Union had been set up as the major scapegoat in the plot. If the tactic had been successful in scapegoating the Russians for the crime of the century, there is little doubt that it would have resulted in “a period of heightened tensions” between the United States and the Soviet Union.
Those who designed the plot to kill Kennedy were familiar with the inner sanctum of our national security state. Their attempt to scapegoat the Soviets for the President’s murder reflected one side of the secret struggle between JFK and his military leaders over a preemptive strike against the Soviet Union. The assassins’ purpose seems to have encompassed not only killing a President determined to make peace with the enemy, but also using his murder as the impetus for a possible nuclear first strike against that same enemy. . . .
With the GOP and Trump administration openly suppressing voting rights of minorities, African-Americans in particular, the stellar efforts of JFK and the Justice Department in the area of civil rights is striking. JFK’s civil rights policy was exponentially greater than what had preceded him, and much of what followed.
The conclusion of the discussion in FTR #1056 consists of Jim’s discussion of his marvelous, 4‑part analysis of JFK’s civil rights policy.
CIA’s Expert on the JFK Assassination Ray Rocca: ” . . . . Garrison would indeed obtain a conviction of Shaw for conspiring to assassinate President Kennedy. . . .”
House Select Committee on Assassinations Assistant Counsel Jonathan Blackmer: “. . . . ‘We have reason to believe Shaw was heavily involved in the Anti-Castro efforts in New Orleans in the 1960s and [was] possibly one of the high level planners or ‘cut out’ to the planners of the assassination.’ . . . .”
This is the twelfth of a planned long series of interviews with Jim DiEugenio about his triumphal analysis of President Kennedy’s assassination and New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison’s heroic investigation of the killing.
In this program, we continue with analysis of Clay Shaw’s intelligence connection, beginning with review of his work for the Domestic Operations Division.
A fascinating intelligence involvement of Shaw’s is his work with Permindex.
Destiny Betrayed by Jim DiEugenio; Skyhorse Publishing [SC]; Copyright 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEugenio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; pp. 385–386.
. . . . The next step in the CIA ladder after his high-level overseas informant service was his work with the strange company called Permindex. When the announcement for Permindex was first made in Switzerland in late 1956, its principal backing was to come from a local banker named Hans Seligman. But as more investigation by the local papers was done, it became clear that the real backer was J. Henry Schroder Corporation. This information was quite revealing. Schroder’s had been closely associated with Allen Dulles and the CIA for years. Allen Dulles’s connections to the Schroder banking family went back to the thirties when his law firm, Sullivan and Cromwell, first began representing them through him. Later, Dulles was the bank’s General Counsel. In fact, when Dulles became CIA director, Schroder’s was a repository for a fifty million dollar contingency fund that Dulles personally controlled. Schroder’s was a welcome conduit because the bank benefited from previous CIA overthrows in Guatemala and Iran. Another reason that there began to be a furor over Permindex in Switzerland was the fact that the bank’s founder, Baron Kurt von Schroder, was associated with the Third Reich, specifically Heinrich Himmler. The project now became stalled in Switzerland. It now moved to Rome. In a September 1069 interview Shaw did for Penthouse Magazine, he told James Phelan that he only grew interested in the project when it moved to Italy. Which was in October 1958. Yet a State Department cable dated April 9 of that year says that Shaw showed great interest in Permindex from the outset.
One can see why. The board of directors as made up of bankers who had been tied up with fascist governments, people who worked the Jewish refugee racket during World War II, a former member of Mussolini’s cabinet, and the son-in-law of Hjalmar Schacht, the economic wizard behind the Third Reich, who was a friend of Shaw’s. These people would all appeal to the conservative Shaw. There were at least four international newspapers that exposed the bizarre activities of Permindex when it was in Rome. One problem was the mysterious source of funding: no one knew where it was coming from. Another was that its activities reportedly included assassination attempts on French Premier Charles De Gaulle. Which would make sense since the founding member of Permindex, Ferenc Nagy, was a close friend of Jacques Soustelle. Soustelle was a leader of the OAS, a group of former French officers who broke with De Gaulle over his Algerian policy. They later made several attempts on De Gaulle’s life, which the CIA was privy to. Again, this mysterious source of funding, plus the rightwing, neo-Fascist directors created another wave of controversy. One newspaper wrote that the organization may have been “a creature of the CIA . . . set up as a cove for the transfer of CIA . . . funds in Italy for legal political-espionage activities.” The Schroder connection would certainly suggest that. . . .
His involvement with Permindex places him in the transnational corporate milieu that spawned fascism and Nazism. Key observations about Permindex and Shaw’s participation in it:
1.–Shaw was part of the deep political orbit of the Dulles brothers and Sullivan & Cromwell.
2.–The Permindex operational link to the Schroder Bank places it in the same milieu as the Himmler Kreis, the industrialists and financiers who financed the workings of the SS through an account in the Schroder Bank.
3.–Shaw was a friend of Hjalmar Horace Greeley Schacht, who became the finance minister of the Third Reich and was very close to the Dulles brothers.
4.–Permindex was apparently involved with the OAS efforts to assassinate De Gaulle. This places Shaw in a network including: Banister investigator Maurice Brooks Gatlin, who boasted of having transferred money to the OAS from the CIA; Rene Souetre–an OAS operative who was expelled from Dallas/Ft. Worth the day of the assassination of JFK.
5.–As discussed in FTR #‘s 1031 and 1032, JFK was an early critic of the French policy in Algeria, criticizing it on the floor of the Senate in 1957.
The conclusion of the broadcast focuses largely on the CIA’s intense interest in the Garrison investigation. This interest was manifested through an agency conclave informally named “The Garrison Group.”
“Destiny Betrayed” by Jim DiEugenio; Skyhorse Publishing [SC]; Copyright 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEugenio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 270.
. . . . Helms wanted the group to “consider the possible implications for the Agency” of what Garrison was doing in “New Orleans before, during, and after the trial of Clay Shaw. It is crucial to keep in mind the phrase: before, during, and after. As we will see, the effective administrator Helms was thinking not just of some short term fix, but of formulating a strategy for the long haul. According to the very sketchy memo about this meeting, [CIA General Counsel Lawrence] Houston discussed his dealings with the Justice Department and the desire of Shaw’s defense to meet with the CIA directly. [Ray] Rocca then said something quite ominous. He said that he felt “that Garrison would indeed obtain a conviction of Shaw for conspiring to assassinate President Kennedy.” This must have had some impact on the meeting. Since everyone must have known that Rocca had developed, by bar, the largest database on Garrison’s inquiry at CIA. . . .
We note that House Select Committee on Assassinations assistant counsel Jonathan Blackmer wrote the following:
“Destiny Betrayed” by Jim DiEugenio; Skyhorse Publishing [SC]; Copyright 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEugenio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 332.
. . . . “We have reason to believe Shaw was heavily involved in the Anti-Castro efforts in New Orleans in the 1960s and [was] possibly one of the high level planners or ‘cut out’ to the planners of the assassination.” . . . .
The program concludes with analysis of Clay Shaw’s close relationship to the Stern family of WDSU. In addition to carrying staged interviews between Oswald and Carlos Bringuier, the broadcast outlet pilloried Jim Garrison and his trial of Clay Shaw.
This is the eleventh of a planned long series of interviews with Jim DiEugenio about his triumphal analysis of President Kennedy’s assassination and New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison’s heroic investigation of the killing.
In this broadcast, we explore the association of David Ferrie and Clay Shaw in the context of the planning of assassination plots against JFK, as well as Shaw’s involvement with the intelligence community.
NB: In our previous interview, Mr. Emory mistakenly linked “The Bomb” to Clay Shaw and to a plot to assassinate JFK. Shaw was, according to credible testimony involved with Ferrie in another, probably connected, association to discuss killing Kennedy.
David Ferrie had a desk in the office of C. Wray Gill, a lawyer for Carlos Marcello. When another of Gill’s clients–a woman named Clara Gay–was in the office, she witnessed another Ferrie assassination schematic on November 26, 1963:
Destiny Betrayed by Jim DiEugenio; Skyhorse publishing [SC]; Copyright 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEugenio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 217.
. . . . Clara looked over at Ferrie’s desk and she saw what looked like a diagram of Dealey Plaza: it was a drawing of a car from the perspective of an angle from above, the car was surrounded by high buildings, reminiscent of Dealey Plaza. After the secretary threw it out, Clara retrieved it. She said it should be given to the FBI or Secret Service. The secretary took it back and a pulling contest ensued. The secretary eventually won, but not before Clara saw the words “Elm Street” on the diagram. She later reconstructed this experience for Garrison. She said she came forward because she considered herself a good citizen, and Ferrie must have been something evil . . . .
After discussion of the Ferrie Dealey Plaza assassination schematic, the discussion turns to a conversation witnessed by Perry Russo, one of Garrison’s most important witnesses.
Key points of information about what Russo witnessed:
1.–Present at the meeting where the discussion took place were: Clay Shaw, David Ferrie, Lee Harvey Oswald and several Cubans.
2.–Shaw was using one of his most common aliases–“Clay Bertrand.”
3.–Ferrie became increasingly agitated and highlighted “triangulation of crossfire” as necessary to assure a kill shot on Kennedy.
4.–Ferrie and Shaw discussed the necessity of being somewhere else, to give themselves “cover.” This led Russo to conclude that the plans were concrete not theoretical.
5.–Ferrie said he would be in Hammond, LA., on the campus of Southeastern Louisiana. He was, in fact, there on the day of the assassination.
6.–Shaw said that he would be on the West Coast. He was, in fact, at the San Francisco Trade Mart, where he was to give a talk. When news of of the assassination reached Shaw and his host, Shaw seemed remarkably detached. When asked if he thought the talk should go forward in light of the news, Shaw said yes. This struck those around him at that time as curious.
The issue of Shaw’s aliases is an important one. The day after the assassination of JFK, New Orleans attorney Dean Andrews got a call from “Clay Bertrand,” requesting that he represent Lee Harvey Oswald in Dallas. Andrews had previously encountered Shaw using the same alias when seeking legal representation for some gay Latinos.
Key aspects of Andrews’ contact with Shaw/Bertrand:
1.–Andrews feared for his life if this came to light. He claimed to have been told, after calling Washington D.C., that he might get a bullet in the head if he talked.
2.–After Andrews changed his testimony, Garrison charged him with perjury, eventually gaining a conviction.
3.–Andrews’ statements about Shaw/Bertrand were bolstered by someone at the VIP lounge at the Eastern Airlines terminal at New Orleans airport, who knew Shaw to sign in under that alias.
4.–Numerous people in bars and bistros–particularly in the French Quarter–knew that Shaw used that alias. Because of Garrison’s crackdown on organized crime-related operations in New Orleans, his potential informants remained silent.
When being booked, Shaw actually stated that he used the alias “Clay Bertrand.”
Shaw was booked by a New Orleans police officer named Aloysius Habighorst–who had an excellent record. When being booked, Shaw stated that he used the alias “Clay Shaw.” Before testifying at Shaw’s trial, Habighorst’s car was rammed by a yellow truck, and he was injured.
At Shaw’s trial, Judge Haggerty refused to admit Shaw’s admitted alias as evidence.
The concluding portion of the broadcast deals with Clay Shaw’s intelligence connections. Key points of information in that regard:
1.–Shaw’s intelligence connections date to World War II, when he worked as a aide-de-camp to General Charles Thrasher. This placed him in the Special Operations Section, a branch of military intelligence and one which was involved with recruiting some of the Paperclip personnel to work for the U.S.
2.–After the war, he became involved with International House, a Rockefeller-linked operation deeply involved with the transnational corporate community.
3.–His work for the International Trade Mart followed logically on the heels of his work for International House.
4.–Shaw also worked with the Mississippi Shipping Company, which did a lot of work with the CIA.
5.–His “Y” file indicated that Shaw’s work for CIA involved conferring with the agency before traveling to Latin America, not after he returned as was the case for most informants.
6.–At least one of Shaw’s files with the CIA was destroyed.
One of the most important elements of Shaw’s intelligence career was uncovered by researcher Peter Vea, whose disclosures were supplemented by some interesting commentary by Victor Marchetti.
Destiny Betrayed by Jim DiEugenio; Skyhorse publishing [SC]; Copyright 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEugenio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 385.
. . . . Peter Vea discovered a very important document while at the National Archives in 1994. Attached to a listing of Shaw’s numerous contacts with the Domestic Contact service, a listing was attached which stated that Shaw had a covert security approval in the Project QKENCHANT. This was in 1967 and the present tense was used, meaning that Shaw was an active covert operator for the CIA while Garrison was investigating him. When William Davy took this document to former CIA officer Victor Marchetti, an interesting conversation ensued. As Marchetti looked at the document, he said, “That’s interesting . . . . He was . . . He was doing something there.” He then said that Shaw would not need a covert security clearance for domestic contacts service. He then added, “This was something else. This would imply that he was doing some kind of work for the Clandestine Services.” When Davy asked what branch of Clandestine Services would that be, Marchetti replied, “The DOD (Domestic Operations Division). It was one of the most secret divisions within the Clandestine Services. This was Tracey Barnes’s old outfit. They were getting into things . . . Uh . . . exactly what, I don’t know. But they were getting into some pretty risky areas. And this is what E. Howard Hunt was working for at the time.” And in fact, Howard Hunt did have such a covert clearance issued to him in 1970 while he was working at the White House. . . .
The tenth of a planned long series of interviews with Jim DiEugenio about his triumphal analysis of President Kennedy’s assassination and New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison’s heroic investigation of the killing.
In this broadcast, we delve into operational links between U.S. intelligence agent David Ferrie–the first target of Garrison’s investigation–and Clay Shaw, who was tried by Garrison.
One of the operations in which Ferrie and Shaw participated was an effort to bolster Freeport Sulphur.
Destiny Betrayed by Jim DiEugenio; Skyhorse publishing [SC]; Copyright 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEugenio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; pp. 208–209.
. . . . In Chapter 1, the author introduced Freeport Sulphur and its subsidiaries Moa Bay Mining and Nicaro Nickel. These companies all had large investments in Cuba prior to Castro’s revolution. And this ended up being one of the ways that Garrison connected Clay Shaw and David Ferrie. This came about for two reasons. First, with Castro taking over their operations in Cuba, Freeport was attempting to investigate bringing in nickel ore from Cuba, through Canada, which still had trade relations with Cuba. The ore would then be refined in Louisiana, either at a plant already in New Orleans or at another plant in Braithwaite. Shaw, an impressario of international trade, was on this exploratory team for Freeport. And he and two other men had been flown to Canada by Ferrie as part of this effort. More evidence of this connection through Freeport was found during their investigation of Guy Banister. Banister apparently knew about another flight taken by Shaw with an official of Freeport, likely Charles Wight, to Cuba. Again the pilot was David Ferrie. Another reason this Freeport connection was important to Garrison is that he found a witness named James Plaine in Houston who said that Mr. Wight of Freeport Sulphur had contacted him in regards to an assassination plot against Castro. Considering the amount of money Freeport was about to lose in Cuba, plus the number of Eastern Establishment luminaries associated with the company–such as Jock Whitney, Jean Mauze and Godfrey Rockefeller–it is not surprising that such a thing was contemplated within their ranks. . . .
One of the most important, compelling links between Ferrie and Shaw was their appearance with Lee Harvey Oswald in Clinton, Louisiana. Key points of information about this event:
1.–The three men–Ferrie, Shaw and Oswald–were in Clinton to register Oswald to vote.
2.–In the event, their arrival placed them in the middle of a large voter-registration drive for local African-Americans, part of the civil rights movement of the early ’60’s.
3.–The three men were very conspicuous at this event, not only because of their race, but because the large, black Cadillac driven by Shaw attracted considerable attention.
4.–Many of those in attendance at the voter registration drive, as well as the local sheriff, identified the three men.
5.–Ferrie, in particular, manifested a striking appearance. He was afflicted with an ailment that caused all of the hair on his body that to fall out. To cover up his affliction, Ferrie wore a garish red wig and matching, penciled-on eyebrows.
6.–Oswald was apparently at the voter registration event to register to vote in that area, in order to gain employment at the nearby East Louisiana State Hospital, an institution with strong links to Tulane Medical Center and Alton Ochsner, as well as to the MK Ultra experiments going on at that time.
7.–Two people Oswald apparently cited as references were Malcolm Pierson and Frank Silva. Not only did both men work at the hospital, but they both had interesting CV’s.
Of the back grounds of Pierson and Silva, Jim writes:
Destiny Betrayed by Jim DiEugenio; Skyhorse publishing [SC]; Copyright 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEugenio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 93.
. . . . The obvious question then becomes: How did Oswald know the names of these men? Or if he did not, how did Shaw or Ferrie know them? One possibility is this: According to Cuban intelligence, Silva was active in the anti-Castro cause in the New Orleans area. Silva was Cuban-born and from an upper-class family. He was actually associated with Tulane Medical Center at the time. Tulane was located in New Orleans. Dr. Alton Ochsner, who was on the board of, and Chief of Surgery at, Tulane Medical School, was a friend of both Shaw and Banister. In fact, at the New Orleans Public Library, there is a photo of Shaw sitting at a small table with Ochsner.
Another way that Oswald could have known these names was through a mutual acquaintance of Shaw and Ferrie, Sergio Arcacha Smith. Both Cuban intelligence and Garrison’s investigators discovered that there was a connection between the two Cuban refugees. Dr. Robert Heath, Chairman of Tulane University Medical School’s Department of Neurology and Psychiatry, became infamous for using LSD and electrode implantation in his research. Many of the people he worked on came from East Louisiana State Hospital, where an entire ward was dedicated to his work. East doctor Alfred Butterworth (whom this author interviewed shortly before his death) told the author that he had seen both Ochsner and Silva while he was there. Butterworth also revealed that Tulane University had a special psychiatric unit at the hospital, where they secretly administered LSD. This is important background to the following information. During his inquiry, Jim Garrison came across a witness who had attended a gathering at Dr. Heath’s home. Thee, the following event occurred: Dr. Silva introduced the man to the former local representative of Howard Hunt’s CRC, Sergio Arcacha Smith. Pierson was a former narcotics offender, who, according to HSCA subpoenaed records, listed Silva as a reference in his job application. It is hard to believe that, left to his own devices, Oswald would have known that either of these men worked at the hospital. If either of these more logical options is accurate, it gives the incident even more scope and depth. . . .
The program concludes with discussion of what a Garrison investigator called “The Bomb”–an apparent plan, with detailed schematics, to assassinate JFK. NB: Mr. Emory mistakenly links Clay Shaw to “The Bomb.” Shaw was, according to credible testimony involved with Ferrie in another, probably connected, association to discuss killing Kennedy.
“The Bomb” will be analyzed at the beginning of our next interview.
The ninth of a planned long series of interviews with Jim DiEugenio about his triumphal analysis of President Kennedy’s assassination and New Orleans DA Jim Garrison’s heroic investigation of the killing.
In this interview, we proceed into the substance of New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison’s investigation into the JFK assassination. Garrison’s inquiry began immediately after the assassination when former Guy Banister investigator Jack Martin gave information to him about one of his cronies in the “detective agency.”
David Ferrie was a veteran intelligence officer with a long CV. Ferrie’s intelligence resume and behavior with regard the JFK assassination includes:
1.–His work with a Civil Air Patrol unit that included Lee Harvey Oswald, as well as Barry Seal, another future CIA operative who became a major player in the Iran-Contra drug traffic.
2.–Ferrie’s CAP unit’s profound relationship with the military, permitting his unit to operate at Keesler Air Force Base in Mississippi and to fly on military aircraft. This indicates strong gravitas on Ferrie’s part within the national security establishment.
3.–His strange trip to Texas on the day of the assassination, driving all night through a heavy rainstorm to–take your pick–go ice skating and/or go goose hunting. The manager of the skating rink stated that Ferrie did not go ice skating but stayed by a pay phone all of the time he spent there. His companions stated that they did not bring guns on the trip. Ferrie spent his time in Galveston (a Texas port city) in a hotel overlooking the sea.
4.–Ferrie marketing his untenable ice skating/goose hunting story to the FBI–an act of perjury on his part.
5.–Ferrie also stated that he didn’t know how to fire a rifle, a claim fundamentally at odds with Ferrie’s work as a paramilitary commando trainer at the CIA camps at LaCombe, Louisiana.
6.–Immediately after the assassination, Ferrie frantically sought to recover any photographs of him with Lee Harvey Oswald in his CAP unit.
7.–Immediately after the assassination, Ferrie worried that his library card might be in Oswald’s possession. Oswald knew about “microdots,” a technique developed by German intelligence in World War II permitting the reduction of an intelligence communication to microscopic size, thus enabling its insertion into a period or comma in a sentence. Some researchers have opined that the library card may have involved some use of microdot technology in the Ferrie/Oswald intelligence relationship.
8.–Ferrie, Oswald and Guy Banister were all deeply involved with the CIA’s anti-Castro Cuban effort in New Orleans. Banister’s office was a front for many of the weapons used by Ferrie and company at the LaCombe camp and other facilities. As discussed previously, Oswald’s one man Fair Play For Cuba Committee (New Orleans chapter) was housed in the same Newman building that housed Banister’s operation.
9.–Ferrie had operational connections with both Eladio Del Valle and Sergio Arcacha Smith, two of the CIA’s primary anti-Castro Cuban operatives.
10.–Against the background of JFK’s Cuban policy, including JFK’s actions vis a vis the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban Missile Crisis, his impending diplomatic rapprochement with Castro and the Justice Department’s closing down of the LaCombe camp and others like it, Ferrie began making increasingly violent statements about JFK.
11.–Ferrie began openly talking about killing Kennedy. His violent anti-JFK statements were one of the reasons he was dismissed from Eastern Airlines, for whom he worked as a pilot.
Destiny Betrayed by Jim DiEugenio; Skyhorse publishing [SC]; Copyright 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEugenio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 116.
. . . . As Mongoose began to dwindle down, Ferrie, and others, now grew even more resentful of Kennedy. For the first time, Ferrie mentioned to a young protege a design to do away with JFK. But he never included himself in the plans. He talked about it in the second or third person. Sometimes, he went further and said that Kennedy “ought to be shot.” This was also echoed by Guy Banister who had been a CIA conduit of funds for the training camps. In 1963, Banister bitterly complained to a colleague that “someone should do away with Kennedy.” Banister’s fascist ideology was conducive to such things. . . .
After Garrison indicted him, Ferrie began publicly attacking Garrison’s credibility, ridiculing any notion of his own guilt in the assassination. In private, Ferrie began expressing fear for his life. As it developed, Ferrie’s fears were well founded. His naked corpse was found in his apartment, allegedly felled by a berry aneurism at the base of his brain. A sheet was pulled up over his face, and there were two typed suicide notes, with his name typed, not signed.
There are a number of considerations in connection with Ferrie’s death:
1.–If his death was natural, why were there two typed suicide notes?
2.–If it was suicide, how did he die?
3.–There were marks in Ferrie’s mouth, clearly revealed in autopsy photos. Might they have indicated that drugs been forced down his throat? Ferrie had been taking proloid, which might well have produced the lethal reaction Ferrie experienced in the event of an overdose. He had ordered thyroid pills, which were gone when his body was discovered.
4.–Journalist George Lardner had interviewed Ferrie, and claims he was with Ferrie until 4am, the last possible time that Ferrie’s death could have occurred. If Lardner was right, the killers must have entered within minutes of his departure.
5.–Decades later, Lardner, working for the CIA-linked Washington Post, went to Dallas to shadow Oliver Stone’s filming of “JFK,” based on Garrison’s book On the Trail of the Assassins. Lardner then wrote a hit piece on Stone’s film before it was released.
The contents of Ferrie’s apartment were unusual. Recall that he had stated that he didn’t know how to fire a rifle.
Destiny Betrayed by Jim DiEugenio; Skyhorse publishing [SC]; Copyright 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEugenio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 225.
. . . . The contents of Ferrie’s apartment at the time of his death were unusual for a private investigator. They included a blue, 100-pound aerial bomb, a Springfield private investigator. They included a blue, 100-pound aerial bomb, a Springfield rifle, a Remington rifle, an altered-stock, .22 rifle, 20 shotgun shells, two Army Signal Corps telephones, one bayonet, one flare gun, a radio transmitter unit, a radio receiver unit, 32 rifle cartridges, 22 blanks, several cameras, and three rolls of film. . . .
Shortly after Ferrie’s death, his close associate Eladio Del Valle was found murdered, near the apartment of Bernardo De Torres, Bay of Pigs veteran and U.S. intelligence veteran. Del Valle had been tortured, shot through the heart and his head had been split open with a machete.
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