FTR #1037 Interview #7 with Jim DiEugenio about “Destiny Betrayed”

The sev­enth 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, this pro­gram con­tin­ues analy­sis of the devel­op­ment of the leg­end (intel­li­gence cov­er) of Lee Har­vey Oswald.

(Lis­ten­ers can order Des­tiny Betrayed and Jim’s oth­er books, as well as sup­ple­ment­ing those vol­umes with arti­cles about this coun­try’s polit­i­cal assas­si­na­tions at his web­site Kennedys and King. Jim is also a reg­u­lar guest and expert com­men­ta­tor on Black Op Radio.)

The pro­gram begins with review and fur­ther devel­op­ment of some of “Com­mu­nist trai­tor” Lee Har­vey Oswald’s curi­ous asso­ci­a­tions upon his (appar­ent­ly unob­struct­ed) return to the Unit­ed States.

Hav­ing threat­ened to com­mit trea­son by dis­clos­ing clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion about U.S. air oper­a­tions, (the U‑2 being the salient item), Oswald is met not by the CIA, not by the FBI, but by Spas T. Raikin, the Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al of the Anti-Bol­she­vik Bloc of Nations. Orig­i­nal­ly called the Com­mit­tee of Sub­ju­gat­ed Nations when it was formed by Adolf Hitler in 1943, the Anti-Bol­she­vik Bloc of Nations became, in turn, an inte­gral part of the Rein­hard Gehlen spy out­fit, a key ele­ment of the for­mer World Anti-Com­mu­nist League, and an impor­tant part of the Repub­li­can Par­ty. It is unthink­able that he would not have been de-briefed by U.S. intel­li­gence and the FBI.

In fact, Jim men­tioned in our pre­vi­ous inter­view that a for­mer CIA offi­cer Don­ald Dene­selya told the House Select Com­mit­tee on Assas­si­na­tions that the CIA did, in all like­li­hood, debrief Oswald. The Agency, how­ev­er, sought to dis­tance itself from the JFK assas­si­na­tion fall guy.

When the sup­posed Marx­ist trai­tor returned to the U.S., he was embraced by the vir­u­lent­ly anti-Com­mu­nist White Russ­ian com­mu­ni­ty in the Dallas/Fort Worth, them­selves with close links to the Gehlen milieu.

Among the peo­ple with which the Oswalds net­worked in Texas were:

1. Max Clark and his wife, the for­mer Princess Sherba­tov, a mem­ber of the Romanov Roy­al fam­i­ly!
2. Peter Gre­go­ry.
3. Paul Raig­orod­sky.
4. George Bouhe.
5. George DeMohren­schildt. DeMohren­schildt was part of the fam­i­ly that man­aged the Nobel Oil Fields for the Czar; was the cousin of Baron Kon­stan­tin May­dell, in charge of Abwehr oper­a­tions in the Unit­ed States for a time (Abwehr was Ger­man mil­i­tary intel­li­gence); was a sus­pect­ed Nazi spy in World War II; was an asso­ciate of George H.W. Bush; was a long­time CIA asset; was a petro­le­um geol­o­gist.

DeMohren­schildt imple­ment­ed the Oswalds’ intro­duc­tion to the White Russ­ian milieu in Dal­las. Of par­tic­u­lar sig­nif­i­cance for our pur­pose is the fact that he made con­tact with the cou­ple at the sug­ges­tion of J. Wal­ton Moore, who was the pri­ma­ry CIA offi­cer in the Dal­las area!

The White Rus­sians appeared to be work­ing to sep­a­rate Mari­na and Lee, and were involved in han­dling Mari­na after the assas­si­na­tion.

A long-stand­ing CIA asset, DeMohren­schildt had worked with the agency on numer­ous projects in Yugoslavia, Haiti and else­where. Sus­pect­ed of hav­ing spied on the Aransas Pass Coast Guard Sta­tion (in Texas) for the Third Reich, DeMohren­schildt was the cousin of Baron Kon­tan­tin May­dell, who over­saw Abwehr oper­a­tions in the U.S. for a time. (The Abwehr was Ger­man mil­i­tary intel­li­gence.)

As dis­cussed in FTR #712, we high­light­ed DeMohren­schildt’s links to for­mer CIA direc­tor George H.W. Bush, for whom CIA head­quar­ters is named. In that same pro­gram, we cov­ered Bush’s involve­ment in the JFK assas­si­na­tion. Like DeMohren­schildt and many of the White Rus­sians who asso­ci­at­ed with the Oswalds in the Dal­las area, Bush had roots in the petro­le­um indus­try.

Note­wor­thy in the con­text of Oswald’s pres­ence in Dal­las, is that this alleged trai­tor was employed by Jag­gars, Chiles and Sto­vall, a firm that did clas­si­fied work for the mil­i­tary, includ­ing projects asso­ci­at­ed with the U‑2 spy plane! That the “trai­tor” Oswald, who offered to dis­close clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion about the U‑2 and U.S. avi­a­tion oper­a­tions to the Sovi­ets could be employed by such a firm is unthink­able, IF we are to take the offi­cial ver­sion of Oswald at face val­ue.

Ulti­mate­ly, DeMohren­schildt hand­ed the Oswalds–Lee and Marina–off to the “Quak­er lib­er­als” Michael and Ruth Paine.

In Des­tiny Betrayed, Jim details the remark­able pedi­gree of both Michael and Ruth Paine and their deep her­itage at the heart of the pow­er elite and the deriv­a­tive intel­li­gence estab­lish­ment:

1. Michael Paine was a Cabot and drew from trust funds bequeathed by both the Cabot and Forbes fam­i­lies, both mem­bers of the “Boston Brah­mins.” His moth­er was Ruth Forbes Young.
2. Michael’s cousin Thomas Cabot was a direc­tor Unit­ed Fruit.
3. Thomas’s broth­er John was–like Thomas–a State Depart­ment vet­er­an, who was exchang­ing infor­ma­tion with Guy Ban­is­ter employ­ee Mau­rice Brooks Gatlin about the impend­ing CIA over­throw of Guatemalan pres­i­dent Jacobo Arbenz, who was pur­su­ing poli­cies detri­men­tal to Unit­ed Fruit’s feu­dal monop­oly in that unfor­tu­nate nation.
4. Dur­ing the ear­ly six­ties, Thomas was pres­i­dent of the Gibral­tar Steamship Com­pa­ny, a Hon­duran-based front that owned no ships but oper­at­ed Radio Swan, a CIA radio sta­tion used in the Bay of Pigs, among oth­er oper­a­tions.
5. Before relo­cat­ing to the Dallas/Ft. Worth area, Michael Paine had worked for the Franklin Insti­tute, a CIA con­duit.
6. Michael Paine also was appar­ent­ly pos­ing as a left­ist to infil­trate and cat­a­log, Cas­tro sym­pa­thiz­ers, not unlike the work Guy Ban­is­ter was doing in New Orleans in con­junc­tion with, among oth­ers, Lee Har­vey Oswald.
7. His step father was Arthur Young, mar­ried to Ruth Forbes Young. Arthur Young was a devo­tee of “The Nine” and became a major fig­ure at Bell Heli­copter. Arthur got Michael a job at Bell.
8. Ruth Forbes Young was best friend with Mary Ban­croft, Allen Dulles’s sub­or­di­nate and long-time mis­tress while he worked for OSS, Amer­i­ca’s World War II intel­li­gence ser­vice.
9. Ruth Paine’s father was William Avery Hyde, an insur­ance exec­u­tive who had worked for the OSS in World War II and lat­er went to work for the Agency for Inter­na­tion­al Devel­op­ment, a fre­quent CIA cov­er.
10. Ruth’s father, like George De Mohren­schildt, worked for the Inter­na­tion­al Coop­er­a­tive Alliance.
11. In the sum­mer of 1963, Ruth trav­eled cross-coun­try and vis­it­ed her sis­ter Sylvia Hyde Hoke, who was a CIA psy­chol­o­gist.
12. Sylvi­a’s hus­band John Hoke also worked for the Agency for Inter­na­tion­al Devel­op­ment.
13. In the 1980s, Ruth Paine was appar­ent­ly infil­trat­ing and cat­a­loging anti-“Contra” activists with regard to the attempts at over­throw­ing the San­din­ista forces in Nicaragua.

FTR #1036 Interview #6 with Jim DiEugenio about “Destiny Betrayed”

The sixth 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, this pro­gram con­tin­ues analy­sis of the devel­op­ment of the leg­end (intel­li­gence cov­er) of Lee Har­vey Oswald.

(Lis­ten­ers can order Des­tiny Betrayed and Jim’s oth­er books, as well as sup­ple­ment­ing those vol­umes with arti­cles about this coun­try’s polit­i­cal assas­si­na­tions at his web­site Kennedys and King. Jim is also a reg­u­lar guest and expert com­men­ta­tor on Black Op Radio.)

In FTR #1035, we set forth the sus­pi­cious cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing Oswald’s “defec­tion” to the Sovi­et Union:

• A num­ber of aspects of his tenure the Sovi­et Union sug­gest that, not only was he there as a spook, but the Sovi­ets knew that he was there to spy. Among the note­wor­thy aspects of his Sovi­et sojourn that are set forth in this pro­gram:
• Oswald was giv­en a hard­ship dis­charge with just a few months remain­ing on his enlist­ment tour. He got this in an inor­di­nate­ly short amount of time. He was sup­posed to take care of his moth­er, and yet his broth­er Robert was there to care for her, mak­ing Lee’s pres­ence there unnec­es­sary.
• Oswald booked his steamship pas­sage from the Inter­na­tion­al Trade Mart in New Orleans, head­ed up by Clay Shaw, who was the focal point of Jim Gar­rison’s tri­al.
• Oswald osten­si­bly was going to Europe to attend Albert Schweitzer Col­lege, an obscure Swiss insti­tu­tion that the Swiss police required two months to locate.
• He defect­ed to the Sovi­et Union from Helsin­ki, Fin­land. His stay there rais­es sev­er­al ques­tions, includ­ing the fact that he stayed at the Torni Hotel, a five-star, lux­u­ry hotel.
• After leav­ing the Torni Hotel, he stayed at the Hotel Klaus Kur­ki, anoth­er high-end insti­tu­tion. How Oswald was able to pay for his stay at these insti­tu­tions is a mystery–he did not have enough mon­ey in his Marine Corps pay checks to do this.
• His selec­tion of Helsin­ki is sig­nif­i­cant, also, because the Sovi­et Embassy there was the only one that could issue a trav­el visa to the Sovi­et Union in a lit­tle more than a week. It was the only Embassy that could do this. How did Oswald come to know this?
After review­ing the curi­ous aspects of the begin­ning Oswald’s “defec­tion” to the Sovi­et Union, the pro­gram notes many aspects of his stay in the U.S.S.R. that strong­ly sug­gest he was there as an under­cov­er intel­li­gence oper­a­tive.
After leav­ing from the curi­ous­ly con­ve­nient depar­ture point of Helsin­ki, Fin­land, Oswald met an agent from Intourist, the Sovi­et state trav­el agency. Once again, the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing Oswald’s stay in the Sovi­et Union are sug­ges­tive of an intel­li­gence cov­er, a “leg­end.”

1. Meet­ing with his Intourist guide, Oswald indi­cat­ed that he had secret infor­ma­tion about U.S. air oper­a­tions that he wished to share with Sovi­et intel­li­gence.
2. After being denied res­i­dence in the U.S.S.R. Oswald was involved in an appar­ent­ly “pho­ny” sui­cide attempt, which was almost cer­tain­ly an attempt to remain in the U.S.S.R. longer than his trav­el visa would have per­mit­ted. Were the Sovi­ets on to him? It seems alto­geth­er prob­a­ble.
3. Oswald was housed at the Metro­pole Hotel, which Sovi­et intel­li­gence out­fit­ted with sophis­ti­cat­ed sur­veil­lance tech­nol­o­gy, indi­cat­ing sus­pi­cion on their part.
4. Oswald was inter­viewed by U.S. Embassy offi­cer Richard Sny­der, who had strong links to U.S. intel­li­gence, includ­ing a pro­gram at Har­vard to vet stu­dents for intel­li­gence-con­nect­ed trav­el to the U.S.S.R. One of the stu­dents he over­saw was Zbig­niew Brzezin­s­ki.
5. Sny­der appears to have “han­dled” Oswald in such a way that he would nev­er cease being a U.S. cit­i­zen. Once again, Oswald repeat­ed his intent to give secret intel­li­gence about U.S. air oper­a­tions to Sovi­et intel­li­gence, most like­ly a ref­er­ence to the U‑2 project.
6. Oswald was sent to Min­sk, where he was put to work in a radio fac­to­ry, after being afford­ed more-than-com­fort­able liv­ing cir­cum­stances by Sovi­et author­i­ties.
7. Oswald sub­mit­ted a detailed, 30-page paper on the radio fac­to­ry that appears to have been an intel­li­gence report on the instal­la­tion.
8. Also while in the U.S.S.R., Oswald gave inter­views to jour­nal­ists, includ­ing Priscil­la John­son MacMil­lan, who was a “will­ing CIA asset.” In that inter­view, Oswald gave a per­for­mance which could only be described as a hack­neyed man­i­fes­ta­tion of a stereo­typed Marxist/Communist.
9. The han­dling of Oswald’s files in the cor­ri­dors of U.S. intel­li­gence are more than a lit­tle strange. Despite hav­ing threat­ened to open a trea­so­nous breach in the secu­ri­ty of U.S. air oper­a­tions, no 201 file was opened on Oswald, and his doc­u­men­ta­tion at Lan­g­ley was rout­ed to James Angle­ton’s files on the false defec­tor pro­gram. This was unthink­able. As we will see in future dis­cus­sion, the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the FBI’s FLASH clas­si­fi­ca­tion on Oswald–which would have sound­ed an alert upon this osten­si­ble trai­tor­’s re-entry into the U.S.–is also out of the ordi­nary. Recall the unusu­al treat­ment afford­ed State Depart­ment offi­cer Otto Otep­ka in con­nec­tion with inquiries into Oswald and the false defec­tor pro­gram. This was high­light­ed in FTR #1035.
10. While in the U.S.S.R. he met Mari­na Prusako­va (lat­er Mari­na “Oswald”), who may very well have been a Sovi­et intel­li­gence agent.
11. Mari­na lived with her uncle, who was an offi­cer with the MVD, the Sovi­et equiv­a­lent of the FBI.
12. Mari­na inter­act­ed with Robert Web­ster, anoth­er appar­ent “pho­ny” defec­tor from the U.S. to the U.S.S.R. Web­ster had worked for the CIA-linked RAND cor­po­ra­tion. It is high­ly unlike­ly that she would have inter­act­ed with both Oswald and Web­ster as a mat­ter of coin­ci­dence.
13. Mari­na also dis­cussed hav­ing enter­tained Afghanistan’s ambas­sador to the Sovi­et Union, again, indica­tive of a prob­a­ble intel­li­gence link on Mari­na’s part.
14. Fur­ther bur­nish­ing Mari­na’s prob­a­ble intel­li­gence con­nec­tions is the fact that she was pro­fi­cient in the Eng­lish lan­guage, both spo­ken and writ­ten. The notion that she would have need­ed an inter­preter, as she is alleged to have required in post-assas­si­na­tion inquiries.
15. Mari­na’s prob­a­ble intel­li­gence con­nec­tion and the prob­a­bil­i­ty that she was assigned to Oswald dove­tails with the sit­u­a­tion of Richard Case Nag­ell. While in Japan, Oswald came in con­tact with Richard Case Nag­ell, a deep-cov­er intel­li­gence offi­cer assigned to play a dou­ble agent. Even­tu­al­ly, Nag­ell was assigned by his [osten­si­ble] Sovi­et han­dlers to kill Oswald, whom they felt was going to be a fall guy for a plot to kill JFK, and use that as pre­text for a war either against the U.S.S.R. and/or Cuba. Unable to talk Oswald out of engag­ing in the asso­ci­a­tions with which he was con­nect­ed, Nagell–who had infil­trat­ed the New Orleans anti-Cas­tro Cuban milieu in which Oswald was entrenched, shot up a Texas bank in order to get him­self put in prison, say­ing he did not want to become a trai­tor. Nag­ell is the focal point of the remark­able book The Man Who Knew Too Much by Dick Rus­sell, who was inter­viewed in FTR #54.
16. The rapid­i­ty and ease with which Oswald and Mari­na were grant­ed per­mis­sion to leave the Sovi­et Union togeth­er also sug­gests that she may have been per­form­ing an intel­li­gence func­tion. Nor­mal­ly, it might have tak­en some years for a Sovi­et woman who had mar­ried an Amer­i­can to obtain per­mis­sion to emi­grate.

After get­ting back to the Unit­ed States, the con­nec­tions and activ­i­ties of the Oswalds con­tin­ue to be “pass­ing strange,” IF one takes the leg­end of the so-called assas­sin at face val­ue.

Hav­ing threat­ened to com­mit trea­son by dis­clos­ing clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion about U.S. air oper­a­tions, (the U‑2 being the salient item), Oswald is met not by the CIA, not by the FBI, but by Spas T. Raikin, the Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al of the Anti-Bol­she­vik Bloc of Nations. Orig­i­nal­ly called the Com­mit­tee of Sub­ju­gat­ed Nations when it was formed by Adolf Hitler in 1943, the Anti-Bol­she­vik Bloc of Nations became, in turn, an inte­gral part of the Rein­hard Gehlen spy out­fit, a key ele­ment of the for­mer World Anti-Com­mu­nist League, and an impor­tant part of the Repub­li­can Par­ty. It is unthink­able that he would not have been de-briefed by U.S. intel­li­gence and the FBI. In fact, Jim men­tions that a for­mer CIA offi­cer Don­ald Dene­selya told the House Select Com­mit­tee on Assas­si­na­tions that the CIA did, in all like­li­hood, debrief Oswald. The Agency, how­ev­er, sought to dis­tance itself from the JFK assas­si­na­tion fall guy.

When the sup­posed Marx­ist trai­tor returned to the U.S., he was embraced by the vir­u­lent­ly anti-Com­mu­nist White Russ­ian com­mu­ni­ty in the Dallas/Fort Worth are, them­selves with close links to the Gehlen milieu.
Among the peo­ple with which the Oswalds net­worked in Texas were:

1. Max Clark and his Wife, the for­mer Princess Sherba­tov, a mem­ber of the Romanov Roy­al fam­i­ly!
2. Peter Gre­go­ry.
3. George Bouhe, who will fig­ure promi­nent­ly in our next pro­gram.
4. George de Mohren­schildt, who we will exam­ine at length in our next inter­view. De Mohren­schildt was part of the fam­i­ly that manged the Nobel Oil Fields for the Czar; was the cousin of Baron Kon­stan­tin May­dell, in charge of Abwehr oper­a­tions in the Unit­ed States for a time (Abwehr was Ger­man mil­i­tary intel­li­gence); an asso­ciate of George H.W. Bush; a long­time CIA asset; a petro­le­um geol­o­gist.

FTR #1035 Interview #5 with Jim DiEugenio about “Destiny Betrayed”

The fifth 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, this pro­gram begins analy­sis of the devel­op­ment of the leg­end (intel­li­gence cov­er) of Lee Har­vey Oswald.

(Lis­ten­ers can order Des­tiny Betrayed and Jim’s oth­er books, as well as sup­ple­ment­ing those vol­umes with arti­cles about this coun­try’s polit­i­cal assas­si­na­tions at his web­site Kennedys and King. Jim is also a reg­u­lar guest and expert com­men­ta­tor on Black Op Radio.)

This week’s dis­cus­sion begins with a syn­op­sis of the career of James Jesus Angle­ton, the long-time CIA chief of coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence. Long pre-occu­pied with the mat­ter of defec­tors from the Sovi­et Union, Angle­ton under­took a pro­gram of run­ning false defec­tors to the U.S.S.R. in order to gain bet­ter intel­li­gence about that nation.

The num­ber of “defec­tors” to the Sovi­et Union expand­ed expo­nen­tial­ly, lead­ing State Depart­ment offi­cer Otto Otep­ka to query the CIA as to which of them were gen­uine defec­tors, and which were actu­al­ly left-cov­er spooks. One of the defec­tors about which he inquired was Lee Har­vey Oswald, and a CIA reply about Oswald was marked “SECRET.”

Otep­ka’s career nose­dived after this.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; pp. 164–165.
. . . . He was first tak­en off of sen­si­tive cas­es. Sto­ries began to appear in the press that his job could be elim­i­nat­ed. He was asked to take anoth­er posi­tion in State but he declined. He was then called before a Sen­ate Com­mit­tee to explain his meth­ods for issu­ing secu­ri­ty clear­ances. This hap­pened four times in less than three years. He still would not resign or sus­pend his defec­tor inves­ti­ga­tion. Spies, phone taps, and lis­ten­ing devices were then plant­ed in his office. His office start­ed to be searched after hours and his trash was scoured for any of his notes. Even his house was being sur­veilled. Otep­ka could not under­stand what was hap­pen­ing to him. He could only con­clude that the sen­si­tive study of Amer­i­can defec­tors hid­den in his safe was behind it all. That safe was lat­er drilled into after he was thrown out of his orig­i­nal office and reas­signed. Who­ev­er drilled it then used a tiny mir­ror to deter­mine the com­bi­na­tion. The safe­crack­er then removed its con­tents. On Novem­ber 5, 1963 Otep­ka was for­mal­ly removed from his job at State. Lat­er on, author Jim Hougan asked him if he had been able to fig­ure out if Oswald was a real or false defec­tor. Otep­ka replied, “We had not made up our minds when my safe was drilled and we were thrown out of the office.” Just two and a half weeks after his forcible depar­ture from State, Oswald, the man he had stud­ied for months on end, was accused of killing Pres­i­dent Kennedy. . . .

Against the back­ground of the false defec­tor pro­gram, we begin analy­sis of Oswald, the Marx­ist Marine.

As we have dis­cussed in oth­er pro­grams and posts, in his teens, Oswald was part of a Civ­il Air Patrol unit com­mand­ed by David Fer­rie, the long-time intel­li­gence offi­cer and the first focal point of Jim Gar­rison’s inves­ti­ga­tion. (As chron­i­cled by Daniel Hop­sick­er, that same unit also con­tained Bar­ry Seal, the long­time CIA pilot and a key play­er in the Iran-Con­tra relat­ed drug traf­fick­ing.)

Inter­est­ing­ly and sig­nif­i­cant­ly, as Oswald and his fel­low CAP cadets were gain­ing oper­a­tional access to mil­i­tary bases–suggesting some sig­nif­i­cant con­nec­tions to mil­i­tary and CIA by leader Ferrie–Oswald began to express and pur­sue alleged Communist/Marxist/Soviet incli­na­tions to some high school peers. At the same time, he was also giv­ing voice to a desire to join the mil­i­tary.

Even­tu­al­ly, Oswald joined the Marines. Dur­ing his tenure in the Marine Corps, his pro-Marx­ist/pro-Sovi­et lean­ings and his secu­ri­ty sta­tus both esca­lat­ed:

1. Train­ing at Keesler Air Force Base in Mis­sis­sip­pi, Oswald got a Secu­ri­ty Clear­ance.
2. He even­tu­al­ly was sta­tioned at Atsu­gi Air Force Base in Japan, from which the CIA-con­nect­ed U‑2 spy plane flew. Bear in mind that Oswald’s Marxist/Communist pro­fes­sions con­tin­ued apace dur­ing this time.
3. Oswald was actu­al­ly in charge of phys­i­cal secu­ri­ty for the U‑2 at one point in his tour of duty at Atsugi–remarkable for a self-pro­fessed Marx­ist.
4. While in Japan, he came in con­tact with Richard Case Nag­ell, a deep-cov­er intel­li­gence offi­cer assigned to play a dou­ble agent. Even­tu­al­ly, Nag­ell was assigned by his [osten­si­ble] Sovi­et han­dlers to kill Oswald, whom they felt was going to be a fall guy for a plot to kill JFK, and use that as pre­text for a war either against the U.S.S.R. and/or Cuba. Nag­ell is the focal point of the remark­able book The Man Who Knew Too Much by Dick Rus­sell, who was inter­viewed in FTR #54.
5. CIA offi­cer, anti-Cas­tro lynch­pin and future Water­gate bur­glar E. Howard Hunt also turned up in Japan at the same time as Oswald, oper­at­ing in close prox­im­i­ty to the U‑2 oper­a­tions.
6. Dur­ing his Marine Corps tenure, Oswald stat­ed to asso­ciate David Buck­nell that he would go to the Sovi­et Union on an under­cov­er intel­li­gence oper­a­tion and return a hero. Buck­nell stat­ed that Oswald was no Com­mu­nist.
7. Anoth­er Marine asso­ciate of Oswald’s–Jim Botelho–also said Oswald was no Com­mu­nist and that, if he had been, Botel­ho would have tak­en vio­lent action against him.
8. Oswald had access to sen­si­tive radar infor­ma­tion per­tain­ing to the U‑2 project and also knew the radio codes for his base. After his “defec­tion” to the U.S.S.R., he was the talk of the base. Nonethe­less, the radio codes were not changed.
9. The lone asso­ciate of Oswald who cor­rob­o­rat­ed his dubi­ous Marx­ist credentials–Kerry Thornley–turned up lat­er in New Orleans, net­work­ing with Oswald and the oth­er play­ers in Oswald’s appar­ent pro-Cas­tro activ­i­ties. We will cov­er this in future broad­casts.
10. While in the Marines, Oswald devel­oped a pro­fi­cient com­mand of the Russ­ian language–a dif­fi­cult tongue to mas­ter. He appears to have attend­ed the Defense Lan­guage Insti­tute in Mon­terey, Cal­i­for­nia.
11. Oswald was a lousy shot in a branch of the service–the Marines–that placed a pre­mi­um on marks­man­ship. Labeled a “shit­bird” by his fel­low Marines for his lack of pro­fi­cien­cy with a rifle, Oswald lacked the extra­or­di­nary marks­man­ship required to do what he alleged­ly did in Dal­las.

The cir­cum­stances of Oswald’s “defec­tion” to the Sovi­et Union are sus­pi­cious as well:

1. Oswald was giv­en a hard­ship dis­charge with just a few months remain­ing on his enlist­ment tour. He got this in an inor­di­nate­ly short amount of time. He was sup­posed to take care of his moth­er, and yet his broth­er Robert was there to care for her, mak­ing Lee’s pres­ence there unnec­es­sary.
2. Oswald booked his steamship pas­sage from the Inter­na­tion­al Trade Mart in New Orleans, head­ed up by Clay Shaw, who was the focal point of Jim Gar­rison’s tri­al.
3. Oswald osten­si­bly was going to Europe to attend Albert Schweitzer Col­lege, an obscure Swiss insti­tu­tion that the Swiss police required two months to locate.
4. He defect­ed to the Sovi­et Union from Helsin­ki, Fin­land. His stay there rais­es sev­er­al ques­tions, includ­ing the fact that he stayed at the Torni Hotel, a five-star, lux­u­ry hotel.
5. After leav­ing the Torni Hotel, he stayed at the Hotel Klaus Kur­ki, anoth­er high-end insti­tu­tion. How Oswald was able to pay for his stay at these insti­tu­tions is a mystery–he did not have enough mon­ey in his Marine Corps pay checks to do this.
6. His selec­tion of Helsin­ki is sig­nif­i­cant, also, because the Sovi­et Embassy there was the only one that could issue a trav­el visa to the Sovi­et Union in a lit­tle more than a week. It was the only Embassy that could do this. How did Oswald come to know this?

FTR #1033 Interview #3 with Jim DiEugenio about “Destiny Betrayed”

The third 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, this pro­gram con­tin­ues with dis­cus­sion of Cuba and JFK’s pol­i­cy with regard to Cas­tro.

(Lis­ten­ers can order Des­tiny Betrayed and Jim’s oth­er books, as well as sup­ple­ment­ing those vol­umes with arti­cles about this coun­try’s polit­i­cal assas­si­na­tions at his web­site Kennedys and King. Jim is also a reg­u­lar guest and expert com­men­ta­tor on Black Op Radio.)

After review­ing dis­cus­sion from FTR #1032, the pro­gram high­lights the Cuban Mis­sile Cri­sis. The best known of JFK’s actions with regard to Cuba, the “Thir­teen Days” exem­pli­fies how Kennedy stood against the Cold War polit­i­cal estab­lish­ment and what Pres­i­dent Eisen­how­er called “The Mil­i­tary-Indus­tri­al Com­plex,” earn­ing the hatred of key play­ers on the U.S. polit­i­cal stage at the time.

Once it became clear that the Sovi­ets had placed offen­sive inter­me­di­ate range bal­lis­tic mis­siles in Cuba, plans were drawn up for both air strikes to take out the mis­siles and a mil­i­tary inva­sion of Cuba as a whole. Kennedy was exco­ri­at­ed for tak­ing a more thought­ful tack.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 63.

. . . . On Octo­ber 9, Kennedy had a meet­ing with the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Kennedy got into a back and forth with the hawk­ish Air Force Gen­er­al Cur­tis LeMay. . . . LeMay frowned upon the block­ade option. . . . “If we don’t do any­thing in Cuba, then they’re going to push on Berlin and push real hard because they’ve got us on the run.” LeMay, who was nev­er one to mince words, then went even fur­ther. To  show his utter  dis­dain for the block­ade con­cept, the World War II vet­er­an actu­al­ly brought up some­thing rather bizarre. He said, “The block­ade and polit­i­cal action, I see lead­ing into war. . . . This is almost as bad as the appease­ment at Munich.” LeMay was now com­par­ing Kennedy’s pref­er­ence for the block­ade with Neville Cham­ber­lain’s giv­ing away the Sude­ten­land to the Nazis, which encour­aged Hitler to invade Poland. Although not express­ing them­selves in such extreme fig­ures of speech, the rest of the chiefs of staff agreed with LeMay. . . .  

Think­ing that the Sovi­et buildup may have been a gam­bit to oblige the U.S. to for­go sup­port for West Berlin in exchange for with­draw­al of the nuclear forces in Cuba, Kennedy sought oth­er alter­na­tives. (Younger lis­ten­ers should bear in mind that West Berlin was the West­ern-aligned half of Berlin, which was itself locat­ed deep in East Ger­many.)

Ulti­mate­ly, Kennedy and Sovi­et pre­mier Niki­ta Khr­uschev drew down hos­til­i­ties, after Kennedy insti­tut­ed a naval block­ade of Sovi­et mar­itime ship­ments of mil­i­tary materiel to Cuba. Jim presents the alto­geth­er for­mi­da­ble order of bat­tle in Cuba, indi­cat­ing the strong pos­si­bil­i­ty that, had the more aggres­sive U.S. con­tin­gency plans been imple­ment­ed, it would have led to a Third World War and the end of our  civ­i­liza­tion.

As the elder Von Moltke observed: “No bat­tle plan sur­vives con­tact with the ene­my.” Some­thing would not have gone accord­ing to plan in the pro­posed mil­i­tary adven­tures against the Sovi­et pres­ence in Cuba. When that hap­pened, there would have been World War III.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 66.

. . . . The deploy­ment includ­ed 40 land based bal­lis­tic launch­ers, includ­ing 60 mis­siles in five mis­sile reg­i­ments. The medi­um range mis­siles had a range of 1,200 miles, the long-range ones, 2,400 miles. In addi­tion, there were to be 140 air-defense mis­sile launch­ers to pro­tect the sites. Accom­pa­ny­ing then would be a Russ­ian army of 45,000 men with four motor­ized rifle reg­i­ments and over 250 units of armor. There would also be a wing of MIG-21 fight­ers, with 40 nuclear armed IL-28 bombers. Final­ly, there was to be a sub­ma­rine mis­sile base with an ini­tial deploy­ment of eleven sub­marines, sev­en of them capa­ble of launch­ing one mega­ton nuclear war­heads. In addi­tion, there were low-yield tac­ti­cal nuclear weapons for coastal defense in case of an inva­sion. . . . 

Fol­low­ing the Cuban Mis­sile Cri­sis, Kennedy sought to woo Cas­tro away from the Sovi­et Union with a diplo­mat­ic rap­proche­ment between Cuba and the U.S.

Using U.S. diplo­mat William Atwood, French jour­nal­ist Jean Daniel and Amer­i­can jour­nal­ist Lisa Howard as inter­me­di­aries, JFK was seek­ing to nor­mal­ize U.S./Cuban rela­tions.

The CIA and its anti-Cas­tro Cuban con­tin­gent learned of the nego­ti­a­tions, and under­took a num­ber of covert oper­a­tions, such as the Pawley/Bayo/Martino raid to break up the nego­ti­a­tions.

Pro­gram High­lights Include:

The roles of many of the “Drama­tis Per­son­ae” who fig­ure in Jim Gar­rison’s inves­ti­ga­tion into the JFK assas­si­na­tion in anti-Cas­tro Cuban intrigue, includ­ing:

1.–David Fer­rie’s work as a para­mil­i­tary train­er at camps used to train anti-Cas­tro guer­ril­las and as a pilot on var­i­ous “ops” against Cas­tro.
2.–Clay Shaw’s work orga­niz­ing CIA anti-Cas­tro Cuban activ­i­ties, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the New Orleans area.
3.–Guy Ban­is­ter’s “detec­tive agency,” which served as a front for para­mil­i­tary oper­a­tions against Cas­tro’s Cuba and also as a cov­er for Lee Har­vey Oswald’s role as a faux Cas­tro sup­port­er and Fair Play For Cuba mem­ber.
4.–Bernardo de Tor­res’ par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Bay of Pigs and sub­se­quent anti-Cas­tro activ­i­ties, as well as his work with silenced weapons devel­op­er Mitchell Wer­Bell and as an infil­tra­tor into Gar­rison’s office.
5.–Eladio Del Valle’s work with David Fer­rie, among oth­ers, and his bru­tal mur­der.
6.-Sergio Arcacha Smith’s role as a key offi­cial of the CIA front orga­ni­za­tion CRC and his links to many oth­er fig­ures in Gar­rison’s inves­ti­ga­tion.
7.–CIA offi­cer David Atlee Phillips and his work against Cas­tro, as well as against the U.S. Cas­tro sup­port group Fair Play For Cuba. In a 1988 con­ver­sa­tion with his estranged broth­er short­ly before his death, Phillips admit­ted hav­ing been in Dal­las when Kennedy was killed.
8.–Future Water­gate bur­glar James McCord’s work with Phillips against the FPCC.
9.–Antonio Veciana’s work with Alpha 66, arguably the most mil­i­tant of the anti-Cas­tro exile groups and his mys­te­ri­ous con­trol offi­cer “Mau­rice Bish­op,” who appears to have been David Atlee Phillips.
10.–Future Water­gate Bur­glar E. Howard Hunt’s col­lab­o­ra­tion with Allen Dulles and Charles Mur­phy on the anti-Kennedy For­tune Mag­a­zine arti­cle, as well as his work on the Bay of Pigs oper­a­tion.

FTR #1032 Interview #2 with Jim DiEugenio about “Destiny Betrayed”

The sec­ond 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, this pro­gram begins with dis­cus­sion of Pres­i­dent Kennedy’s pre­co­cious polit­i­cal vision. Pos­sessed of a deep under­stand­ing of how the strug­gle for, and desire for, nation­al inde­pen­dence by colo­nial pos­ses­sions of Amer­i­ca’s World War II allies under­cut the cast­ing of these nations’ affairs in a stark “East vs. West” Cold War con­text, Kennedy put his polit­i­cal vision into play in many instances. It was his attempts at real­iz­ing his polit­i­cal vision through con­crete pol­i­cy that pre­cip­i­tat­ed his mur­der.

(Lis­ten­ers can order Des­tiny Betrayed and Jim’s oth­er books, as well as sup­ple­ment­ing those vol­umes with arti­cles about this coun­try’s polit­i­cal assas­si­na­tions at his web­site Kennedys and King. Jim is also a reg­u­lar guest and expert com­men­ta­tor on Black Op Radio.)

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.

The pro­gram con­cludes with review of Kennedy’s stance on Alge­ria. A French colony in North Africa, Alger­ian inde­pen­dence forces waged a fierce guer­ril­la war in an attempt at becom­ing free from France. Once again, Kennedy opposed the West­ern con­sen­sus on Alge­ria, which sought to retain that prop­er­ty as a French pos­ses­sion.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; pp. 25–26.

. . . . On July 2, 1957, Sen­a­tor Kennedy rose to speak in the Sen­ate cham­ber and deliv­ered what the New York Times was to call the next day, “the most com­pre­hen­sive and out­spo­ken arraign­ment of West­ern pol­i­cy toward Alge­ria yet pre­sent­ed by an Amer­i­can in pub­lic office.” As his­to­ri­an Alan Nevins lat­er wrote, “No speech on for­eign affairs by Mr. Kennedy attract­ed more atten­tion at home and abroad.” It was the mature fruition of all the ideas that Kennedy had been col­lect­ing and refin­ing since his 1951 trip into the nooks and cor­ners of Saigon, It was pas­sion­ate yet sophis­ti­cat­ed, hard-hit­ting but con­trolled, ide­al­is­tic yet, in a fresh and unique way, also prag­mat­ic. Kennedy assailed the admin­is­tra­tion, espe­cial­ly John Fos­ter Dulles and Nixon, for not urg­ing France into nego­ti­a­tions, and there­fore not being its true friend. He began the speech by say­ing that the most pow­er­ful force inter­na­tion­al affairs at the time was not the H‑bomb, but the desire for inde­pen­dence from impe­ri­al­ism. He then said it was a test of Amer­i­can for­eign pol­i­cy to meet the chal­lenge of impe­ri­al­ism. If not, Amer­i­ca would lose the trust of mil­lions in Asia and Africa. . . . He lat­er added that, “The time has come for the Unit­ed States to face the harsh real­i­ties of the sit­u­a­tion and to ful­fill its respon­si­bil­i­ties as leader of the free world . . . in shap­ing a course toward polit­i­cal inde­pen­dence for Alge­ria.” He con­clud­ed by say­ing that Amer­i­ca could not win in the Third World by sim­ply dol­ing out for­eign aid dol­lars, or sell­ing free enter­prise, or describ­ing the evils of com­mu­nism, or lim­it­ing its approach to mil­i­tary pacts. . . .”

The French peo­ple were divid­ed over the Alger­ian strug­gle, and those divi­sions led to the fall of the Fourth Repub­lic and the rise of Charles De Gaulle. De Gaulle grant­ed Alge­ria its inde­pen­dence and then faced down the lethal oppo­si­tion of the OAS, a group of mil­i­tary offi­cers ground­ed in the fas­cist col­lab­o­ra­tionist pol­i­tics of Vichy France. De Gaulle sur­vived sev­er­al assas­si­na­tion attempts against him and there are a num­ber of evi­den­tiary trib­u­taries lead­ing between those attempts and the forces that killed Kennedy.

Mau­rice Brooks Gatlin–one of Guy Ban­is­ter’s investigators–boasted of hav­ing trans­ferred a large sum of mon­ey from the CIA to the OAS offi­cers plot­ting against De Gaulle. In addi­tion, Rene Souetre–a French OAS-linked assas­sin was in the Dal­las Fort Worth area on 11/22/1963.

After dis­cus­sion of Alge­ria, the pro­gram begins analy­sis of Cuba, a major focal point of Jim’s book and one of the deci­sive fac­tors in pre­cip­i­tat­ing JFK’s assas­si­na­tion and one of the prin­ci­pal inves­tiga­tive ele­ments in Jim Gar­rison’s pros­e­cu­tion of the mur­der.

A for­mer Span­ish colony, Cuba was drawn into the Amer­i­can sphere of influ­ence after the Span­ish-Amer­i­can war. Cuba bore the yoke of a suc­ces­sion of dic­ta­tors in the 1920’s and 1930’s, ulti­mate­ly giv­ing way to the dic­ta­to­r­i­al reigns of Ful­gen­cio Batista. As Batista cement­ed his domin­ion over the island nation, he insti­tu­tion­al­ized the sup­pres­sion of pro-labor and pro-democ­ra­cy forces, as well as cre­at­ing the BRAC, an explic­it­ly anti-com­mu­nist secret police–a Cuban gestapo if you will.

Of par­tic­u­lar sig­nif­i­cance is Batis­ta’s role as a cor­po­rate satrap for U.S. com­mer­cial inter­ests. Cuba’s agri­cul­tur­al wealth, cof­fee, tobac­co and sug­ar in par­tic­u­lar, as well as the coun­try’s min­er­al resources were dom­i­nat­ed by Amer­i­can cor­po­rate inter­ests, who enjoyed what was, in essence, a cor­po­rate state under Batista. For all intents and pur­pos­es, Cuba was free of any sub­stan­tive imped­i­ments to U.S. invest­ment. In turn, Bat­tista prof­it­ed enor­mous­ly from his role as point man for U.S. cor­po­rate devel­op­ment of Cuba.

In addi­tion, Amer­i­can orga­nized crime inter­ests were deeply involved in Cuba, deriv­ing great wealth from dom­i­na­tion of the coun­try’s gam­bling, hotel and pros­ti­tu­tion indus­tries. Ulti­mate­ly, both cor­po­rate inter­ests, man­i­fest­ing through the CIA and the Mafia would join forces in an effort to oust Fidel Cas­tro.

Inter­est­ing­ly, as Batis­ta’s dic­ta­tor­ship was top­pling amidst grow­ing crit­i­cism from U.S. politi­cians and the forces sup­port­ive of Fidel Cas­tro’s guer­ril­las, CIA offi­cer and even­tu­al Water­gate bur­glar E. Howard Hunt was among those who attempt­ed to ease him from pow­er.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 11.

. . . . In the face of this obsti­na­cy, the CIA began to devise des­per­ate tac­tics to save off a Cas­tro vic­to­ry. One alter­na­tive was to arrange a meet­ing between wealthy U.S. indus­tri­al­ist William Paw­ley and Batista. The goal, with Howard Hunt as the medi­a­tor, was to release from jail a for­mer Batista oppo­nent, Gen­er­al Ramon Bar­quin, in hopes that he could dis­place Batista and pro­vide a viable pop­u­lar alter­na­tive to Cas­tro. Nei­ther of these tac­tics came off as planned. After Ambas­sador Smith informed him that the U.S. could no longer sup­port his gov­ern­ment, Batista decid­ed to leave the coun­try on New Year’s Eve, 1958. No one knows how much mon­ey Batista embez­zled and took with him. But esti­mates range well into the nine fig­ures. On Jan­u­ary 8, 1959, Cas­tro and Che Gue­vara rolled their army into a jubi­lant Havana. . . .

Cas­tro reversed the cor­po­ratist dynam­ic that had obtained under Batista, with the nation­al­iza­tion of key indus­tries (includ­ing Amer­i­can-owned cor­po­rate inter­ests). Cas­tro and Che Gue­vara also liq­ui­dat­ed BARC, exe­cut­ing key oper­a­tives, includ­ing some who had been trained in the Unit­ed States.

This pre­cip­i­tat­ed the CIA’s well known attempts to remove him from pow­er, the best known episode of which is the Bay of Pigs inva­sion.

Begun under the Eisen­how­er admin­is­tra­tion and with then Vice-Pres­i­dent Richard Nixon in charge of the devel­op­ment of the oper­a­tion, the evolv­ing plans for the inva­sion were nev­er to Kennedy’s lik­ing. JFK’s atti­tude toward the plans was described as the atti­tude a par­ent might have to an adopt­ed orphan.

The inva­sion plan went through a num­ber of iter­a­tions, cul­mi­nat­ing in a blue­print that called for some 1,400 Cuban exile invaders to “go gueril­la” by mak­ing their way to the hills where, sup­pos­ed­ly, a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of the Cuban pop­u­lace would rise up to join them against Cas­tro.

There were many fun­da­men­tal and, ulti­mate­ly, fatal, flaws in the oper­a­tional plan, includ­ing:

1.–The inva­sion force would have had to cross 70 miles of swamp to make it to the moun­tains from which they were sup­posed to mount their vic­to­ri­ous resis­tance.
2.–The bulk of the Cuban pop­u­lace was sup­port­ive of Cas­tro and would not have joined an attempt to oust him.
3.–The one Anti-Cas­tro Cuban polit­i­cal ele­ment that had sup­port among por­tions of the Cuban pop­u­la­tion were the back­ers of Manolo Ray. Favored by JFK, Ray was viewed with dis­dain by Allen Dulles and the Bay of Pigs plan­ners, who mar­gin­al­ized Ray and may well have been prepar­ing to assas­si­nate his fol­low­ers in Cuba had the inva­sion plan been suc­cess­ful.
4.–There was no way that the inva­sion force, as con­sti­tut­ed, could have pos­si­bly defeat­ed the Cas­tro mil­i­tary and mili­tia, who out­num­bered the invaders by rough­ly 100 to 1.
5.–Any pos­si­ble suc­cess for the inva­sion would have depend­ed on autho­riza­tion of the use of Amer­i­can air pow­er by Pres­i­dent Kennedy. Such autho­riza­tion was not forth­com­ing and the blame for the oper­a­tion’s fail­ure was laid at Kennedy’s doorstep.

Bit­ter­ness over the fail­ure of the Bay of Pigs oper­a­tion con­tributed sig­nif­i­cant­ly to the ani­mos­i­ty toward Kennedy on the part of CIA, their anti-Cas­tro Cuban pro­teges and the Amer­i­can right. This ani­mos­i­ty ulti­mate­ly con­tributed to the momen­tum to kill Kennedy.

An ana­lyt­i­cal report on the inva­sion by Gen­er­al Maxwell Tay­lor high­light­ed the fun­da­men­tal flaws in the inva­sion plan.

Fol­low­ing the Bay of Pigs dis­as­ter, JFK pub­licly took respon­si­bil­i­ty for the oper­a­tion’s fail­ure, while pri­vate­ly tak­ing steps to fun­da­men­tal­ly alter the covert oper­a­tion oper­a­tional tem­plate for the future.

This alter­ation crys­tal­lized in the form of three Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Action Mem­o­ran­da, NSAM’s 55, 56, and 57:

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; pp. 52–53.

. . . . NSAM 55 was direct­ly deliv­ered to Chair­man of the Joint Chiefs Lyman Lem­nitzer. JFK was angry that the Pen­ta­gon had not deliv­ered a tren­chant cri­tique of the Dulles-Bis­sell inva­sion plan. So from here on in he want­ed their input into mil­i­tary and para­mil­i­tary oper­a­tions of the Cold War. As both John New­man and Fletch­er Prouty have not­ed, this was a real can­non shot across the bow of the CIA. Allen Dulles had insti­tut­ed these types of para­mil­i­tary oper­a­tions pre­vi­ous­ly, and the CIA had run them almost exclu­sive­ly. As New­man describes it, NSAM 55 was “The open­ing shot in Kennedy’s cam­paign to cur­tail the CIA’s con­trol over covert para­mil­i­tary oper­a­tions.” The oth­er two nation­al secu­ri­ty mem­o­ran­da flowed form the first one. NSAM 56 was an order to make an inven­to­ry of para­mil­i­tary assets and equip­ment the Pen­ta­gon had on hand and then to mea­sure that against the pro­ject­ed require­ments across the world and make up any deficit. NSAM 57 stat­ed that all para­mil­i­tary oper­a­tions were to be pre­sent­ed to the Strate­gic Resources Group. that group would then assign a per­son and depart­ment to run it. The CIA was only to be involved in para­mil­i­tary oper­a­tions “whol­ly covert or dis­avow­able,” and then only with­in the Agen­cy’s “nor­mal capa­bil­i­ties.” . . . . The con­se­quence of these pres­i­den­tial direc­tives was the first sig­nif­i­cant chink in the CIA’s covert armor since its cre­ation. . . .

In stark con­trast to the Tay­lor report is a For­tune mag­a­zine arti­cle writ­ten by Charles Mur­phy, act­ing in tan­dem with Allen Dulles and future Water­gate bur­glar E. Howard Hunt. This piece laid the blame for the Bay of Pigs fail­ure on JFK, feed­ing the vir­u­lent hatred of Kennedy in the cor­ri­dors of pow­er and the pub­lic at large.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; pp. 54–55.

. . . . Hunt went so far as to admit that he and Dulles reviewed the proofs of the above men­tioned For­tune arti­cle by Charles Mur­phy on the Bay of Pigs before it was pub­lished. And fur­ther, that Hunt actu­al­ly worked on the arti­cle for two days and fur­nished Mur­phy with clas­si­fied back­ground infor­ma­tion for the piece. And what an arti­cle it was.

The Murphy/Hunt/Dulles piece begins by stat­ing that Kennedy has been an inef­fec­tive pres­i­dent so far. The rea­son being because, unlike Eisen­how­er, he did not know how to manip­u­late the levers of pow­er. Although the arti­cle is sup­posed to be about the Bay of Pigs, Mur­phy and his (secret) co-authors spend the first few pages dis­cussing Laos. . . . The arti­cle now goes on to strike at two tar­gets. First, quite nat­u­ral­ly, it states that Kennedy reneged on the D‑Day air strikes. . . .

. . . . The sec­ond tar­get of the piece is the lib­er­al coterie around Kennedy–Richard Good­win, William Ful­bright, Adlai Steven­son, and Arthur Schlesinger. In oth­er words, the bunch that made Hunt swal­low Manolo Ray. In fact, what the trio does here is insin­u­ate that the orig­i­nal Dulles-Bis­sell plan was tac­ti­cal­ly sound and approved by the Pen­ta­gon. . . . . And at the very end, when they quote Kennedy say­ing that there were sober­ing lessons to be learned from the episode, they clear­ly insin­u­ate that the pres­i­dent should not have let his “polit­i­cal advis­ers” influ­ence oper­a­tional deci­sions. Since Dulles lat­er con­fessed that he nev­er thought theop0eration could suc­ceed on its own, but he thought Kennedy would save it when he saw it fail­ing, this appears to be noth­ing but pure decep­tion on his part, deliv­ered his instru­ments Mur­phy and Hunt. . . .

After the Bay of Pigs, JFK fired Allen Dulles (who lat­er served on the War­ren Com­mis­sion), Richard Bis­sell and Charles Cabell, whose broth­er Earl Cabell was the may­or of Dal­las when Kennedy was killed and, as Jim reveals, a CIA asset.

FTR #809 Days of Future Passed: All in the [Manson] Family?

It has been dis­closed that phone taps on con­vict­ed Man­son Fam­i­ly killer Tex Wat­son have infor­ma­tion that may relate to 12 addi­tion­al mur­ders. Por­trayed by the media as a bunch of way­ward hip­pies, the Man­son group, in fact, had par­tic­i­pa­tion by neo-Nazi ele­ments, as well as links to the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty. One won­ders who the oth­er vic­tims might have been? Might one of them have been Mari­na Habe, daugh­ter of Hans Habe, an anti-fas­cist activist and jour­nal­ist who worked for U.S. intel­li­gence dur­ing World War II and afterward–something that would not have sat well with the Under­ground Reich. One case that has more to it than reach­es the eye is the mur­der of Sharon Tate. Deeply involved with Robert F. Kennedy’s pres­i­den­tial cam­paign in the Los Ange­les area, Tate had been present at a din­ner short­ly before Kennedy’s assas­si­na­tion at which he report­ed­ly said that he would re-open the inves­ti­ga­tion into his broth­er’s mur­der after get­ting into the White House.

Billie Sol Estes Checks Out; Rest in Peace, Gaeton Fonzi

Mr. Emory’s polit­i­cal odyssey began with inves­ti­ga­tion of the assas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent Kennedy. We note the pass­ing of two peo­ple who link to the milieu sur­round­ing the inves­ti­ga­tion. Gae­ton Fonzi was a dogged inves­ti­ga­tor for the House Select Com­mit­tee on Assas­si­na­tions. One of many crooked asso­ciates of LBJ, Bil­lie Sol Estes was the focal point of some very “inter­est­ing” inves­ti­ga­tions him­self.

The Iran-Contra Scandal, the Killing of Judge Vance and the Don Siegelman Case

The vic­tim of a GOP polit­i­cal frame-up cour­tesy of Karl Rove and com­pa­ny, for­mer Alaba­ma gov­er­nor Don Siegel­man’s legal trou­bles actu­al­ly had their gen­e­sis with the cov­er-up of the Iran-Con­tra scan­dal and the Chris­tic Insti­tute’s suit against some of the con­spir­a­tors. Accord­ing to Way Mad­sen Report and the Leg­tal Schnau­zer blog, Siegel­man began inves­ti­gat­ing some of the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty’s drug and arms smug­gling air­lines in the ear­ly 1980’s while serv­ing as Alaba­ma Attor­ney Gen­er­al. A cur­rent fed­er­al fed­er­al judge, Mark Fuller, was alleged­ly hired to keep the lid on the oper­a­tion.
Cen­tral to this analy­sis is the mail-bomb assas­si­na­tion of Judge Robert Vance, Siegel­man’s for­mer law part­ner.

Swedish Nazi Background of Assange Accuser’s Accuser

Com­ment: The web has been abuzz with a sto­ry about con­nec­tions between Julian Assange’s accuser and the Anti-Cas­tro Cuban milieu har­nessed by Oliv­er North to effect the Iran-Con­­tra machi­na­tions. (Assange has been charged with rape in Sweden–a coun­try who’s rape laws are con­sid­er­ably dif­fer­ent from those in the U.S.) What has been absent from the […]

AFA 10–13: The Aryan Nations

U.S. far-right, extrem­ist and main­stream over­lap; past U.S. coup attempts; fifth col­umn sub­ver­sion; col­lu­sion with U.S. and for­eign gov­ern­ments and busi­ness.