FTR#1216 The Dealey Plaza Blues

Revis­it­ing the event that pro­pelled Mr. Emory into this field of endeav­or, this pro­gram reflects on the assas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent Kennedy on the 58th anniver­sary of his killing.

One source of Mr. Emory’s “Dealey Plaza Blues” is a depress­ing piece in Rolling Stone mag­a­zine from 11/22/2021.

In addi­tion to the minor styl­is­tic sin of end­ing a sen­tence with a prepo­si­tion, Tim Wein­er tars those who have grasped the doc­u­men­tary truth of the JFK assas­si­na­tion as vic­tims of Soviet/Russian pro­pa­gan­da.

In the midst of the red-bait­ing, Wein­er does offer one unin­ten­tion­al­ly iron­ic, true state­ment: “ . . . . Our body politic is being poi­soned by lies. . . .”

Iron­ic arti­cle selec­tion by The New York Times fea­tured a mul­ti-page sto­ry on the Chi­nese pur­chase of a Freeport McMoRan cobalt mine in the Con­go.

This sto­ry, too, was pub­lished by Times on the anniver­sary of the assas­si­na­tion.

Pre­sent­ing the pre­dictable ide­o­log­i­cal fram­ing of the pur­chase as part of Chi­na’s grab of min­er­als that are key to the devel­op­ment of “Green” tech­nolo­gies, the arti­cle com­pris­es a syn­op­sized, slant­ed Cold War reca­pit­u­la­tion of U.S. min­er­al devel­op­ment in the Con­go, with par­tic­u­lar empha­sis on the reign of Joseph Mobu­tu.

(What does not occur to U.S. media out­lets, is that Chi­na’s pro­pri­etary advances in this area are an alto­geth­er com­pre­hen­si­ble strat­e­gy for con­tin­ued indus­tri­al expan­sion in the cen­tu­ry to come, while mov­ing to reduce green­house gas­es and pol­lu­tion in keep­ing with the inter­na­tion­al legal and diplo­mat­ic tar­gets for envi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­i­ty.)

Below, we present infor­ma­tion fea­tured in FTR#‘s 1054, 1055 and 1056.

The arti­cle has his­tor­i­cal res­o­nance on this 58th anniver­sary of JFK’s assas­si­na­tion in sev­er­al respects:

1.–Freeport Sul­phur (part of the com­pa­ny involved with the Con­go) was one of the insti­tu­tions in which Clay Shaw and David Fer­rie’s maneu­ver­ing per­mit­ted Jim Gar­ri­son to con­nect them with the milieu of the JFK assas­si­na­tion.
2.–Freeport also ben­e­fit­ted enor­mous­ly from JFK’s assas­si­na­tion. The events of 11/22/1963 reversed JFK’s pol­i­cy of engage­ment with Indone­si­a’s Sukarno. The bloody 1965 coup–highlighted in FTR#1212–permitted Freeport to ben­e­fit enor­mous­ly by devel­op­ing Indone­si­a’s min­er­al resources.
3.–Kennedy’s killing dra­mat­i­cal­ly altered U.S. pol­i­cy vis a vis what was the Bel­gian Con­go at the time. Fol­low­ing the assas­si­na­tion, the U.S. threw its weight behind the forces pro­mot­ing Joseph Mobu­tu and Moi­se Tshombe in the Con­go. Iron­i­cal­ly, Tshombe char­ac­ter­ized the unrest in the Con­go as “Chi­nese inspired.” (In the Con­go, as in so many coun­tries, the World War II Allies reneg­ing on their ini­tial pledge to grant inde­pen­dence to Euro­pean colo­nial ter­ri­to­ries that had been occu­pied by Axis coun­tries, pro­pelled colo­nial prop­er­ties into the Cold War meat-grinder in an attempt to gain inde­pen­dence.)

Per­spec­tive on this unhap­py anniver­sary comes from The New York Times’ use of a Third Reich alum­nus named Paul Hof­mann as a for­eign cor­re­spon­dent, begin­ning with the Gray Lady’s cov­er­age of the CIA’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in the over­throw of Patrice Lumum­ba.

” . . . . Dur­ing the war, he served in Rome as a top aide to the noto­ri­ous Nazi gen­er­al Kurt Malz­er, who was lat­er con­vict­ed of the mass mur­der of Ital­ian par­ti­sans. At some point, Hof­mann became an informer for the Allies, and after the war he became close­ly asso­ci­at­ed with Jim Angle­ton. . . .”

The Times pub­lished the his­tor­i­cal fic­tion enshrined as the War­ren Report.

Next, the pro­gram high­lights parts of the HSCA’s inves­ti­ga­tion that sup­port Gar­rison’s the­sis.

” . . . . On Sep­tem­ber 1, 1977, staff coun­sel Jonathan Black­mer, authored a 15-page mem­o­ran­dum addressed to Blakey, as well as staff mem­bers, Gary Corn­well, Ken Klein, and Cliff Fen­ton. Black­mer was the lead coun­sel for team 3, the HSCA team respon­si­ble for the New Orleans and Cuban angles of the inves­ti­ga­tion. After an inves­tiga­tive trip to New Orleans, Black­mer con­clud­ed in his memo: ‘We have rea­son to believe Shaw was heav­i­ly involved in the anti-Cas­tro efforts in New Orleans in the 1960’s and [was] pos­si­bly one of the high lev­el plan­ners or ‘cut out’ to the plan­ners of the assas­si­na­tion.’ . . . .” 

The excerpt comes from anoth­er mag­nif­i­cent book on the Gar­ri­son investigation–Let Jus­tice Be Done by Bill Davy. The book was the focus of FTR#190.

The lat­ter por­tion of the broad­cast high­lights the CIA’s intense inter­est in the Gar­ri­son inves­ti­ga­tion. This inter­est was man­i­fest­ed through an agency con­clave infor­mal­ly named “The Gar­ri­son Group.”

” . . . .  [CIA Direc­tor Richard] 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.’. . . [CIA offi­cial 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 con­clude with a sto­ry that gauges the degree of psy­cho­log­i­cal dys­func­tion grip­ping much of this soci­ety becomes more iron­ic as the date Novem­ber 22nd approaches–this is anoth­er gen­er­at­ing force behind “The Dealey Plaza Blues.”

The QAnon milieu is embrac­ing the notion the JFK, Jr. will re-appear in Dealey Plaza and all sorts of things will then tran­spire.

For a nation that has cho­sen to ignore what is per­haps the deci­sive event in Amer­i­can history–the assas­si­na­tion of JFK (Sr.) in Dal­las, Texas–the goth­ic fan­ta­sy dri­ving a dis­turbing­ly sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of peo­ple is, per­haps, a fas­cist after-din­ner drink.

Kool-Aid?

A Blast From The Past–Literally

Iron­ic arti­cle selec­tion by The New York Times fea­tured a mul­ti-page sto­ry on the Chi­nese pur­chase of a Freeport McMoRan cobalt mine in the Con­go. Pre­sent­ing ide­o­log­i­cal fram­ing of the pur­chase as part of Chi­na’s grab of min­er­als that are key to the devel­op­ment of “Green” tech­nolo­gies, the arti­cle com­pris­es a syn­op­sized, slant­ed Cold War reca­pit­u­la­tion of U.S. min­er­al devel­op­ment in the Con­go, with par­tic­u­lar empha­sis on the reign of Joseph Mobu­tu.The arti­cle has his­tor­i­cal res­o­nance on this 58th anniver­sary of JFK’s assas­si­na­tion in sev­er­al respects; we present infor­ma­tion from FTR#‘s 1054, 1055 and 1056.) Freeport Sul­phur (part of the com­pa­ny involved with the Con­go) was one of the insti­tu­tions in which Clay Shaw and David Fer­rie’s maneu­ver­ing per­mit­ted Jim Gar­ri­son to con­nect them with the milieu of the JFK assas­si­na­tion. 2) Freeport also ben­e­fit­ted enor­mous­ly from JFK’s assas­si­na­tion. The events of 11/22/1963 reversed JFK’s pol­i­cy of engage­ment with Indone­si­a’s Sukarno. The bloody 1965 coup–highlighted in FTR#1212–permitted Freeport to ben­e­fit enor­mous­ly by devel­op­ing Indone­si­a’s min­er­al resources. 3) Kennedy’s killing dra­mat­i­cal­ly altered U.S. pol­i­cy vis a vis what was the Bel­gian Con­go at the time. Fol­low­ing the assas­si­na­tion, the U.S. threw its weight behind the forces pro­mot­ing Joseph Mobu­tu and Moi­se Tshombe in the Con­go. Iron­i­cal­ly, Tshombe char­ac­ter­ized the unrest in the Con­go as “Chi­nese inspired.” WFMU-FM is pod­cast­ing For The Record–You can sub­scribe to the pod­cast HERE.

FTR #1058, FTR #1059 and FTR #1060 The Christian West, Parts 1, 2 and 3: Contextual Foundation of the Jim DiEugenio Interviews

Review­ing past mate­r­i­al in order to refresh and rein­force under­stand­ing of the his­tor­i­cal con­text and foun­da­tion of the recent Jim DiEu­ge­nio inter­views, this pro­gram reviews infor­ma­tion rel­e­vant to the con­cept of the Chris­t­ian West. “The Chris­t­ian West” is explained in the descrip­tion for AFA #37: ” . . . . When it became clear that the armies of the Third Reich were going to be defeat­ed, it opened secret nego­ti­a­tions with rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the West­ern Allies. Rep­re­sen­ta­tives on both sides belonged to the transat­lantic finan­cial and indus­tri­al fra­ter­ni­ty that had active­ly sup­port­ed fas­cism. The thrust of these nego­ti­a­tions was the estab­lish­ment of The Chris­t­ian West. Viewed by the Nazis as a vehi­cle for sur­viv­ing mil­i­tary defeat, ‘The Chris­t­ian West’ involved a Hitler-less Reich join­ing with the U.S., Britain, France and oth­er Euro­pean nations in a transat­lantic, pan-Euro­pean anti-Sovi­et alliance. In fact, The Chris­t­ian West became a real­i­ty only after the ces­sa­tion of hos­til­i­ties. The de-Naz­i­fi­ca­tion of Ger­many was abort­ed. Although a few of the more obvi­ous and obnox­ious ele­ments of Nazism were removed, Nazis were returned to pow­er at vir­tu­al­ly every lev­el and in almost every capac­i­ty in the Fed­er­al Repub­lic of Ger­many. . . .”

Against the back­ground of Allen and John Fos­ter Dulles’ long, over­lap­ping careers as lawyers for Sul­li­van & Cromwell, as well as gov­ern­ment oper­a­tives, we note the deci­sive role of car­tels in pre­cip­i­tat­ing fas­cism and the posi­tion in the polit­i­cal and macro-eco­nom­ic land­scape of the events stem­ming from that.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Amer­i­can recruit­ment of Nazi East­ern Front intel­li­gence offi­cers in August of 1944 (far ear­li­er than gen­er­al­ly sup­posed); The Gehlen “Org“ ‘s incor­po­ra­tion into the CIA with the con­sent of a Nazi chain of com­mand that was still in exis­tence; the role in the Gehlen Org of East­ern Euro­pean fas­cist orga­ni­za­tions includ­ing the OUN/B, the Roman­ian Iron Guard, the Croa­t­ian Ustachi, the Bul­gar­i­an Nation­al Front and the SS Baltic Legion; the incor­po­ra­tion of those same Gehlen-con­trolled East­ern Euro­pean fas­cists into the GOP via the Cru­sade For Free­dom (CFF); the piv­otal role of Gehlen/Nazi/CFF per­son­nel in the post­war GOP (Richard Nixon, Ronald Rea­gan, William Casey and George H.W. Bush); the re-insti­tu­tion of Nazis in the “New” Fed­er­al Repub­lic of Ger­many; the con­trol of the “New” Fed­er­al Repub­lic of Ger­many by an under­ground Nazi fuehringsring and a com­mand cen­ter in Madrid; the role of Cana­di­an nick­el inter­ests in John Fos­ter Dulles’ cob­bling togeth­er of I.G. Far­ben; Gar­ri­son inves­tiga­tive tar­get Clay Shaw’s net­work­ing with Cana­di­an nick­el inter­ests; the role of both Dulles broth­ers in frus­trat­ing the inter­dic­tion of the Bor­mann flight cap­i­tal pro­gram; the [appar­ent­ly suc­cess­ful] nego­ti­a­tions between OSS chief William Dono­van, his aide Allen Dulles and rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the SS to real­ize the Chris­t­ian West con­cept; the role of Cru­sade For Free­dom per­son­nel in the assas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent Kennedy; Gar­ri­son inves­tiga­tive tar­get Clay Shaw’s friend­ship with Nazi Finance Min­is­ter Hjal­mar Schacht; Fos­ter Dulles’ pro­fes­sion­al inti­ma­cy with Schacht; Shaw’s links to Per­min­dex and the SS-linked Schroed­er bank­ing empire; the deci­sive role of Allen Dulles, George Her­bert Walk­er (W’s great grand­fa­ther and the grand­fa­ther of George H.W. Bush), Prescott Bush, Sr. (the father of George H.W. Bush and the grand­fa­ther of W) in laun­der­ing U.S. cap­i­tal invest­ment in Nazi Ger­many and the return of those Nazi monies to the U.S.; Nazi steel mag­nate Fritz Thyssen’s close rela­tion­ship to: Allen Dulles, Prescott Bush, Mar­tin Bor­mann and the Schroed­er bank­ing inter­ests; Allen Dulles’ “go-to” rela­tion­ship with Sen­a­tor Prescott Bush (senior) while serv­ing as head of the CIA.

FTR #1054, FTR #1055 and FTR #1056 Interviews #23, #24 and #25 with Jim DiEugenio about “Destiny Betrayed”

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.

FTR #1053 Interview #22 with Jim DiEugenio about “Destiny Betrayed”

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 twen­ty-sec­ond in 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.

This pro­gram con­tin­ues exam­i­na­tion of the House Select Com­mit­tee on Assas­si­na­tions.

Even­tu­al­ly, the col­lab­o­ra­tionist main­stream media began an assault on Richard Sprague and the work of the com­mit­tee. The New York Times, The Los Ange­les Times and The Wash­ing­ton Post began the assault, which quick­ly drew blood. . . .

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; pp. 333–334.

. . . . The only time he ever had his cre­den­tials ques­tioned was dur­ing the six months he agreed to swerve as coun­sel to the HSCA. And that is sim­ply because he was going to super­vise a real inves­ti­ga­tion of the JFK case. Yet, the same thing hap­pened to him as hap­pened to Jim Gar­ri­son. In fact, like Gar­ri­son, Sprague was also even accused of being in bed with the Mafia. When the first press attacks began. HSCA staffer Chris Shar­rett remem­bers think­ing, ‘It’s Gar­ri­son all over again.’ Or, as Joe Rauh, who knew Sprague from Philadel­phia and had a front row seat to the con­tro­ver­sy in Wash­ing­ton said, ‘You know, I nev­er thought the Kennedy case was a con­spir­a­cy until now. But if they can do that to Dick Sprague, it must have been.’ With Sprague’s res­ig­na­tion, the House Select Com­mit­tee sur­vived. The inter­im Chief Coun­sel was Tanen­baum with Al Lewis, a friend and col­league of Sprague’s as his deputy. . . .

In the inter­im, between Sprague’s res­ig­na­tion and the ascen­sion of G. Robert Blakey to the Chief Coun­sel posi­tion, George DeMohren­schildt died of a shot­gun wound to the head.

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.

DeMohren­schildt’s death was ruled a sui­cide, but the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing his demise are note­wor­thy.

At the time he died, DeMohren­schildt was net­work­ing with a Dutch jour­nal­ist named Willem Olt­mans, who began spread­ing dis­in­for­ma­tion after DeMohren­schildt’s demise. DeMohren­schildt was also net­work­ing with jour­nal­ist Edward Epstein, who pressed the “Sovi­ets did it” meme for a time and whose behav­ior vis a vis DeMohren­schildt is ques­tion­able.

Pri­or to his death, DeMohren­schildt was under­go­ing psy­chi­atric treat­ment, appar­ent­ly includ­ing elec­tro-shock ther­a­py, from a Dal­las physi­cian named Men­doza. DeMohren­schildt’s wid­ow thinks the treat­ments may have had some­thing to do with her hus­band’s death.

The phys­i­cal evi­dence in con­nec­tion with DeMohren­schildt’s death sug­gests the dis­tinct pos­si­bil­i­ty of foul play.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 337.

. . . . Even though a coro­ner’s inquest ruled his death as self-inflict­ed, there are some seri­ous ques­tions about DeMohren­schildt’s demise. First, accord­ing to the crime scene report and the autop­sy, there was not any exit wound to the rear of the skull. Yet DeMohren­schildt alleged­ly placed a shot­gun in his mouth and pulled the trig­ger. It’s true that shot­gun shells dis­perse more quick­ly than jack­et­ed bul­lets. But his shot was almost with­in con­tact dis­tance. Nei­ther the maid nor the cook heard the shot­gun blast, even though both women were right below the room that DeMohren­schildt was in at the time. The police also had prob­lems explain­ing the blood spat­ter on the wall. When a blood spurt hits a flat sur­face, it cre­ates a dif­fer­ent pat­tern than if it hits a sur­face that is per­pen­dic­u­lar to it. In look­ing at pho­tographs of the spat­ter pat­tern, it appears that the bath­room door was closed at the time the shoot­ing took place, because the blood pat­tern looked con­tin­u­ous. But the police said this was not the case. The bath­room door was open at the time. The tes­ti­fy­ing offi­cer demeaned the jurors for ask­ing this ques­tion and then jumped to a new top­ic. But it would appear that some­one altered the crime scene after­wards. The final odd­i­ty about the scene is the posi­tion of the weapon after death. It fell trig­ger side up, par­al­lel to the chair DeMohren­schildt was in, with the bar­rel rest­ing at his feet and the butt of the rifle away from him and to his left. The police had a prob­lem with this issue and so did the inquest jurors. As author Jer­ry Rose has not­ed, this strange posi­tion­ing of the rifle sug­gests it was “placed” by some­one.

Ms. Tilton was not at home at the time of DeMohren­schildt’s death. But she had left strict instruc­tions for the maid to record her favorite TV pro­grams. The home had an alarm sys­tem which caused a qui­et bell to ring, any­time an out­side door or win­dow was opened. Dur­ing the hear­ing, the tape of the pro­gram was played. When it was the alarm bell went off and then the gun blast was heard. . . .

Sub­se­quent­ly, writer Jer­ry Poli­coff felt that Olt­mans was threat­en­ing him and that the Dutch jour­nal­ist was a male­fac­tor.

An ini­tial can­di­date to replace Richard Sprague was for­mer Supreme Court Jus­tice Arthur Gold­berg, who had been JFK’s Sec­re­tary of Labor.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 339.

. . . . For­mer Jus­tice of the Supreme Court Arthur Gold­berg was one can­di­date who turned down the job. Al Lewis had talked Gold­berg into fill­ing the posi­tion. But Gold­berg had one reser­va­tion. He want­ed to know if the CIA would coop­er­ate with him. Lewis sug­gest­ed call­ing up Stans­field Turn­er, Pres­i­dent Carter’s CIA Direc­tor. So Lewis called him and told him Gold­berg want­ed to talk with him. He put Gold­berg on the line and the can­di­date asked Turn­er if he could guar­an­tee the Agency would coop­er­ate if he became Chief Coun­sel. A long silence ensued. It got so long and so qui­et that Gold­berg turned to Lewis and said, ‘I’m not sure if he’s there any­more.’ Lewis sug­gest­ed that he say some­thing. So Gold­berg asked if he was still on the line and Turn­er said he was.  Gold­berg asked him for an answer to his ques­tion. Turn­er said, ‘I though my silence was my answer.’ . . . .

Even­tu­al­ly, the HSCA set­tled on G. Robert Blakey as Chief Coun­sel and Richard (Dick) Billings as a key aide. Both had been involved with tar­ring Jim Gar­ri­son with the Mafia brush in a 1967 Life Mag­a­zine series.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 276.

. . . . But [David] Chandler’s most seri­ous blast against Gar­ri­son and his inquiry was a two-part arti­cle writ­ten for Life in the fall of 1967. This appeared in the Sep­tem­ber 1 and Sep­tem­ber 8 issues of the mag­a­zine. The pieces mas­quer­ad­ed as an expose of Mafia influ­ence in large cities in Amer­i­ca at the time. But the real tar­get of the piece was not the mob, but Gar­ri­son. The idea was to depict him as a cor­rupt New Orleans DA who had some kind of neb­u­lous ties to the Mafia and Car­los Mar­cel­lo. There were four prin­ci­pal par­tic­i­pants in the pieces: Chan­dler, Sandy Smith, Dick Billings, and Robert Blakey. Smith was the actu­al billed writer. And since Smith was a long-time asset of the FBI, it is very like­ly that the Bureau was the Bureau was the orig­i­nat­ing force behind the mag­a­zine run­ning the piece. . . .

. . . . It was the work of Chan­dler, a friend of both Clay Shaw and Ker­ry Thorn­ley, which was the basis of the com­plete­ly pho­ny con­cept that Gar­ri­son was some­how in bed with the Mafia and his func­tion was to steer atten­tion from their killing of Kennedy. . . .

Blakey:

1.–Effectively eclipsed the New Orleans leads devel­oped by Jim Gar­ri­son.
2.–Bought into the Mag­ic Bul­let The­o­ry.
3.–Eclipsed evi­dence about “Oswald’s” sniper’s nest in the Texas School Book Depos­i­to­ry.

Most impor­tant­ly, Blakey gave the intel­li­gence ser­vices the right to veto what infor­ma­tion would go into the com­mit­tee’s report.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 350.

” . . . . When Robert Blakey took charge of the House Select Com­mit­tee on Assas­si­na­tions, he agreed to do some­thing that Richard Sprague would not. In return for access to clas­si­fied mate­ri­als, mem­bers and employ­ees f the com­mit­tee signed agree­ments pledg­ing not to dis­close any infor­ma­tion they gar­nered while doing their work. Then, when Blakey, Gary Corn­well, and Dick Billings edit­ed the report and vol­umes, the agen­cies they made agree­ments that [the agen­cies] were allowed to veto what infor­ma­tion was includ­ed in the pub­lished vol­umes. This is the rea­son that the HSCA report on Mex­i­co City–assembled by two law stu­dents of Blakey’s from Cornell–was not part of the pub­lished vol­umes in 1979. For when it came time to vet the report for release, Blakey, Ed Lopez and Dan Hard­way met with the CIA rep­re­sen­ta­tives. The Agency made so many objec­tions, it took four hours to get through the first two para­graphs. The report is over 300 pages long. It was there­fore clas­si­fied until the ARRB was cre­at­ed. And then it had to go through sev­er­al reviews. But even today, an annex to the report, ‘Was Oswald an Agent of the CIA’ has not been released. This long clas­si­fied report con­firms that, as Gar­ri­son wrote in 1968, the Com­mis­sion ver­sion of what hap­pened in Mex­i­co City was delib­er­ate­ly cov­ered in mist. . . .

Near the end of his inves­ti­ga­tion, Blakey was on the receiv­ing end of some ques­tion­able behav­ior from CIA liai­son Reg­is Blahut:

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 340.

. . . . Toward the end, when CIA liai­son Reg­is Blahut was caught mis­han­dling Kennedy’s autop­sy pho­tos while they were secured in a safe, the Agency offered Blakey four ways to do an inquiry of what had hap­pened. The main object being to see if Blahut was part of  a larg­er oper­a­tion to under­mine the HSCA. One option was to do the inquiry through the D.C. police, anoth­er was through the FBI, and the third was an inter­nal HSCA inquiry. The last was to have the CIA do it. Even though the Agency offi­cers at this meet­ing strong­ly encour­aged Blakey not to choose them to do the inves­ti­ga­tion, he still did. The report­ing offi­cer, Hav­i­land Smith, made the only con­clu­sion he could from this meet­ing He wrote that his inter­pre­ta­tion of what Blakey want­ed was the Agency ‘to go ahead with the inves­ti­ga­tion of Blahut and that he expects us to come up with a clean bill of health for the CIA.’ Which, of course, they did despite the fact that Blahut flunked three poly­graph tests. When the author talked to HSCA staffer Eddie Lopez about this mat­ter, I told him that in read­ing these mem­o­ran­da, I was struck by  how friend­ly Blakey was with these CIA offi­cers. That is, what a  seem­ing­ly easy rap­port he had with them. I said, ‘You know, Eddie he talks to them . . . “Lopez inter­rupt­ed me in mid-sen­tence and com­plet­ed the thought for me: ‘He talks to them like he’s one of them.’ . . . .”

We note that, dur­ing the ear­ly phase of the HSCA’s inves­ti­ga­tion, George H.W. Bush was in charge of the CIA. George Joan­nides, who man­aged the DRE for CIA, was the Agen­cy’s main liai­son to the HSCA.

FTR #1050 Interview #19 with Jim DiEugenio about “Destiny Betrayed”

Guy Ban­is­ter employ­ee Tom­my Baum­ler: ” . . . . what­ev­er hap­pens, the Shaw case will end with­out pun­ish­ment for him [Shaw], because fed­er­al pow­er will see to that.”

This is the nine­teenth 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 the con­text of the then CIA direc­tor Richard Helms’ memo that Gar­rison’s should be neu­tral­ized before, dur­ing and after the Clay Shaw tri­al, we high­light the media attacks against Gar­ri­son that con­tin­ued after the tri­al.

The media hit pieces con­tin­ued dur­ing Gar­rison’s attempt at try­ing Clay Shaw for per­jury.  Look mag­a­zine did a hit piece on Gar­ri­son fea­tur­ing many of the “Usu­al Sus­pects,” includ­ing William  Gur­vich, one of the infil­tra­tors into Jim Gar­rison’s inves­tiga­tive tri­al who then col­lab­o­rat­ed with Shaw’s defense team.

Offi­cial­ly the piece was writ­ten by War­ren Rogers, whose insti­tu­tion­al affil­i­a­tions bear relat­ing:

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 313.

. . . . Rogers, like Phe­lan and Sandy Smith, was a reli­able asset of the FBI. That is, he could be con­tact­ed to do favors for them when called upon. The pub­lic did not know this until the 1979 posthu­mous pub­li­ca­tion of William Sul­li­van’s book about the FBI called The Bureau. Sul­li­van had beena top ech­e­lon offi­cer in the FBI for many years. In his book there is a chap­ter enti­tled “Flack­ing for the Bureau.” List­ed as one of the reporters who would often write arti­cles with infor­ma­tion fed to them by the FBI was War­ren Rogers. . . .

Hunter Leake–in charge of CIA oper­a­tions in New Orleans–kept the tele­type machine they had installed dur­ing Shaw’s crim­i­nal tri­al  in place until after the pro­posed per­jury tri­al.

An alto­geth­er remark­able change of venue occurred, after Shaw’s lawyers had received copies of Gar­rison’s inves­tiga­tive doc­u­ments for Shaw’s per­jury tri­al! 

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 313.

. . . . After hav­ing been in receipt of Gar­rison’s brief­ing papers for the per­jury tri­al, Shaw’s attor­neys final­ly tried for a tem­po­rary restrain­ing order to stop Gar­rison’s case from pro­ceed­ing. This was ini­tial­ly denied. But then, on Jan­u­ary 18, 1971, the day the state tri­al was to begin, a motion for emer­gency relief was grant­ed. This was unusu­al because the fed­er­al judi­cia­ry does not often inter­vene in state pros­e­cu­tions. But Shaw’s lawyers wrote that Shaw would suf­fer “grave and irrepara­ble injury” as the result of the state per­jury case which had been brought in “bad faith” and “in fur­ther­ance of Gar­rison’s scheme of harass­ment and intim­i­da­tion.” A hear­ing on whether or not to grant the pre­lim­i­nary injunc­tion was set for Jan­u­ary 25, 1971, just one week after the state tri­al was to begin. In oth­er words, Shaw’s lawyers need­ed almost no prepa­ra­tion time for the new venue and the new hear­ing, which they like­ly had been prepar­ing for in advance, since they had an inti­ma­tion that they would be suc­cess­ful in switch­ing the venue.

They were count­ing on Her­bert Chris­ten­ber­ry. Chris­ten­ber­ry was the fed­er­al judge who presided over this hear­ing. To under­stand what hap­pened thee, one must under­stand who Chris­ten­ber­ry was. . . .

In 1935, Louisiana gov­er­nor Huey Long was assas­si­nat­ed, and Her­bert Chris­ten­ber­ry cov­ered for the true con­spir­a­tors, who were a group of oper­a­tors from Stan­dard Oil, who were plot­ting to take over the reigns of the Louisiana state gov­ern­ment.

Chris­ten­ber­ry and his wife Car­o­line were friends and sup­port­ers of Clay Shaw!

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; pp. 315–316.

. . . . The oth­er piece of infor­ma­tion that helps elu­ci­date what Chris­ten­ber­ry did was found in the Nation­al Archives as part of Shaw’s per­son­al papers. It is a let­ter from Chris­ten­ber­ry’s  wife Car­o­line to Shaw which was sent a week after his acquit­tal. It begins like this: “Our most sin­cere con­grat­u­la­tions! We shared your anx­i­eties over the past two out­ra­geous years.” The read­er should note the wife’s sen­ti­ments. Te note goes on with: “Should your case have even­tu­al­ly found its way to Fed­er­al Court and been allot­ted to my hus­band you most cer­tain­ly would have had a fair tri­al. He felt we should not risk the pos­si­ble of being con­sid­ered ‘prej­u­diced’ in advance. This is our rea­son for not open­ly express­ing these sen­ti­ments ear­li­er.’ As if Shaw did not have a fair tri­al the first time around? The read­er should note the quotes around the word prej­u­diced. That usage and the sen­tence’s mean­ing clear­ly denotes that Chris­ten­ber­ry was fero­cious­ly biased for Shaw and against Gar­ri­son. But he did not want any­one to know that. . . . the fact that this was sent in 1969 clear­ly influ­enced his lawyers’ strat­e­gy for the per­jury case. . . . .

. . . . The three day hear­ing might have been script­ed by Hugh Aynesworth. . . . For exam­ple, William Gur­vich was allowed to tes­ti­fy as to the fraud­u­lence of Gar­rison’s inves­ti­ga­tion. . . . Gar­ri­son, not Shaw, was actu­al­ly placed on the wit­ness stand and asked to explain why he ever called in Shaw for ques­tion­ing in the first place. In oth­er words, at the Weg­manns’ request, Chris­ten­ber­ry was ask­ing the DA to give away his planned upcom­ing case against the defen­dant. . . .

After the fore­gone con­clu­sion of the Shaw per­jury tri­al, the Richard Helms/CIA direc­tive to neu­tral­ize Gar­ri­son after the Clay Shaw tri­al con­tin­ued to be man­i­fest­ed. Gar­ri­son was framed for alleged­ly tak­ing kick­backs from an ille­gal pay­off scheme from orga­nized-crime linked pin­ball machine oper­a­tors. Key points about this gam­bit:

1.–The recruit­ing by the gov­ern­ment of Per­sh­ing Ger­vais to con­coct pho­ny “evi­dence” against Gar­ri­son.
2.–Garrison’s cross-exam­i­na­tion of the pin­ball oper­a­tors and the deter­mi­na­tion that the evi­dence against him was nonex­is­tent. None of the oper­a­tors tes­ti­fied to pay­ing Gar­rri­son and/or his assis­tants any mon­ey or even know­ing him.
3.–Gervais was shipped to Cana­da and giv­en a job at Gen­er­al Motors, as well as an annu­al stipend from the Jus­tice Depart­ment!
4.–The tapes Ger­vais had alleged­ly made of Gar­ri­son while the for­mer was wear­ing a wire were deter­mined to be pho­ny.
5.–The sums Ger­vais claimed to have moved from Gar­ri­son were not even con­sis­tent with­in the var­i­ous accounts that he gave.
6.–Pershing even­tu­al­ly “rolled over” on the gov­ern­ment, admit­ting that he was recruit­ed in a crim­i­nal enter­prise by the gov­ern­ment to frame Gar­ri­son.

Per­haps the most effec­tive, long-last­ing ele­ment in the post-Shaw tri­al destruc­tion of Jim Gar­ri­son was the elec­tion of Jus­tice Depart­ment offi­cial Har­ry Con­nick to suc­ceed Gar­ri­son as DA.

Key points of dis­cus­sion and analy­sis about Con­nick:

1.–He was seem­ing­ly omnipresent in Clay Shaw’s crim­i­nal tri­al, oper­at­ing to obstruct Gar­ri­son and aid Clay Shaw and the Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment for which he  worked.
2.–Station WDSU–very close to Clay Shaw and the vehi­cle for both the Wal­ter Sheri­dan dis­in­for­ma­tion hit piece on Jim Gar­ri­son and the Ed Butler/Carlos Bringuier inter­view of the “Com­mu­nist” Oswald–was active on behalf of Con­nick.
3.–The Gur­vich broth­ers, who infil­trat­ed Gar­rison’s inves­ti­ga­tion and net­worked with Clay Shaw’s defense team (with William appear­ing as a wit­ness in the hear­ing on Shaw’s per­jury tri­al), were active on behalf of Har­ry Con­nick.
4.–Clay Shaw him­self, as well as DRE oper­a­tive Car­los Bringuier con­tributed to Con­nick­’s elec­tion cam­paign.
5.–In his sec­ond cam­paign to replace Gar­ri­son, Con­nick was suc­cess­ful.
6.–After becom­ing New Orleans DA, he burned many of Gar­rison’s files.

Even­tu­al­ly, the mon­ey Gar­ri­son sup­pos­ed­ly gar­nered from the pho­ny pin­ball oper­a­tor kick­back scheme led to an IRS charge of income tax eva­sion. Gar­ri­son was acquit­ted.

Clay Shaw filed a nui­sance law­suit against Gar­ri­son for slander/defamation, which was ter­mi­nat­ed by Clay Shaw’s death, despite the Weg­manns’ attempts at per­pet­u­at­ing it even after their client was deceased.

James Phe­lan’s pro­tege James Kirk­wood con­tin­ued the media assault on Gar­ri­son with the pub­li­ca­tion of his book Amer­i­can Grotesque, which mis­rep­re­sent­ed the Gar­ri­son inves­ti­ga­tion.

FTR #1049 Interview #18 with Jim DiEugenio about “Destiny Betrayed”

Guy Ban­is­ter employ­ee Tom­my Baum­ler: ” . . . . what­ev­er hap­pens, the Shaw case will end with­out pun­ish­ment for him [Shaw], because fed­er­al pow­er will see to that.”

This is the eigh­teenth 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.

This inter­view con­tin­ues with the analy­sis of Clay Shaw’s tri­al.

Exem­pli­fy­ing the pow­er that was mar­shaled on behalf of Clay Shaw was the treat­ment accord­ed FBI agent Reg­is Kennedy.

Not only did the Depart­ment of Jus­tice inter­cede ahead of time to lim­it Kennedy’s tes­ti­mo­ny, but Nixon’s Attor­ney Gen­er­al John Mitchell “severe­ly cur­tailed” his tes­ti­mo­ny “mid-tri­al.”

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 298.

. . . . The only wit­ness that Gar­ri­son was able to pro­duce to inquire into the offi­cial inves­ti­ga­tion of the assas­si­na­tion in New Orleans was FBI agent Reg­is Kennedy. And even then, by pri­or arrange­ment with the Jus­tice Depart­ment, Kennedy would only tes­ti­fy about a cer­tain area of his inquiry, name­ly his inter­view with Dean Andrews and his con­se­quent search for Clay Bertrand. This lim­i­ta­tion hurt the DA since Kennedy was a rel­e­vant wit­ness to oth­er aspects of the case. For instance, along with sev­er­al oth­ers, he had been a mem­ber of the Friends of Demo­c­ra­t­ic Cuba group set up by Guy Ban­is­ter and William Dalzell. Fur­ther, there were wit­ness­es who put Kennedy in Banister’s office. There­fore, what Kennedy could have told the court about Ban­is­ter, Fer­rie, their asso­ci­a­tion with the Cubans–especially Ser­gio Art­cacha Smith–and Oswald, was very like­ly con­sid­er­able. But he was not allowed to tes­ti­fy about any of those impor­tant mat­ters. Con­se­quent­ly, when Alcock asked him if he was involved with the inves­ti­ga­tion into Pres­i­dent Kennedy’s death pri­or to his inter­view with Andrews, Kennedy said he was not sure if he could answer that ques­tion. The dis­cus­sion then went inside the judge’s cham­bers. Con­nick then called Wash­ing­ton. After this, the jury was called back inside. Alcock then asked Kennedy if, pri­or to his inter­view with Andrews, had he been engaged in the inquiry into Pres­i­dent Kennedy’s assas­si­na­tion. Kennedy replied in the affir­ma­tive. Alcock then was allowed to ask the fol­low-op ques­tion, which relat­ed to the first: Was Kennedy seek­ing Clay Bertrand in con­nec­tion with his over­all inves­ti­ga­tion into the assas­si­na­tion. Kennedy said that he was.

There was a code to all this that Alcock could not have known about. But it was part of the rea­son that Attor­ney Gen­er­al John Mitchell severe­ly cur­tailed Reg­is Kennedy’s tes­ti­mo­ny in mid-tri­al. . . .

A major ele­ment in the tes­ti­mo­ny dur­ing Clay Shaw’s tri­al was the tes­ti­mo­ny of autop­sy sur­geon Army Lieu­tenant Colonel Pierre Finck. The autop­sy was being con­trolled by one of the high-rank­ing mil­i­tary offi­cers present at the pro­ce­dure.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 300.

. . . . Finck replied that he was not run­ning the autop­sy, it was Com­man­der James Humes. When Oser asked if Humes was actu­al­ly in charge, Finck made a dis­clo­sure which lit­er­al­ly changed the face of the autop­sy evi­dence for­ev­er. And it should have rocked the news media if [media hatch­et man James] Phe­lan had not been con­trol­ling it. Finck replied that Humes actu­al­ly stopped and asked, “Who is in charge here?” Finck then said he heard an Army Gen­er­al say, “I am.” Finck then added, “You must under­stand that in those cir­cum­stances, there were law enforce­ment offi­cials, mil­i­tary peo­ple with var­i­ous ranks, and you have to coor­di­nate the oper­a­tions accord­ing to direc­tions”. . . .

Then, Jim notes that Alvin Oser had to ask Finck eight times as to why Finck did not dis­sect the track of the neck wound. Finck­’s response–that he was ordered not to do so by one of the high-rank­ing offi­cers present, is proof of a con­spir­a­cy.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 302.

. . . . [Alvin] Oser then moved on to anoth­er key issue that exposed the pathol­o­gists as pawns. A very impor­tant point about the autop­sy is its fail­ure to con­vinc­ing­ly prove direc­tion­al­i­ty. That is, from which direc­tion did the bul­lets enter the body? There have always been seri­ous queries about whether the wound in Kennedy’s throat was an entrance or exit wound. If that wound was one of entrance, then Kennedy was shot at least once from the front. That shot could not have been from Oswald, there­fore the mur­der was a con­spir­a­cy. What makes this pos­si­bil­i­ty very real is that Mal­colm Per­ry said dur­ing a tele­vised press con­fer­ence on Novem­ber 22 that the throat wound was one of entrance. He repeat­ed this three times that day. Since he did the tra­cheoto­my right over that wound, he should cer­tain­ly know. The best way to have proven this point once and for all was to have dis­sect­ed the wound track. Amaz­ing­ly, this was not done. When Oser tried to find out why it was not done, Finck used every eva­sion he could to avoid answer­ing the ques­tion. Going over the tran­script of this exchange is a bit star­tling. The read­er will find that Oser had to pose the ques­tion eight sep­a­rate times. It got so bad that Oser even had to request that the judge direct the wit­ness to answer the ques­tion. Finck final­ly answered with, “As I recall I was told not to, but I don’t remem­ber by whom.” Again, some­one was con­trol­ling the pathol­o­gy team in a way that pre­vent­ed them from doing a full and cor­rect autop­sy. . . . Fur­ther, the fact that the doc­tors were ordered not to track the wound indi­cat­ed the mil­i­tary brass may have been try­ing to cov­er this point up. . . .

One of Gar­rison’s strongest weapons in his coun­ter­at­tack against the forces run­ning inter­fer­ence on behalf of Shaw and oth­ers involved in the assas­si­na­tion was the Zaprud­er film, which clear­ly shows Kennedy’s body being thrown back and to the left, indi­cat­ing a shot from the front.

Media hatch­et man James Phe­lan who, like Wal­ter Sheri­dan and Hugh Aynesworth worked with the intel­li­gence ser­vices, became a defense wit­ness for Clay Shaw and also played what was, in effect, a supervisory/PR role in pre­sid­ing over a con­sor­tium of jour­nal­ists cov­er­ing the Shaw tri­al.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; pp. 289–290.

. . . . That jour­nal­is­tic duo, Phe­lan and Ayneswoth, were both on the scene: Phe­lan as a wit­ness for the defense and Aynesworth to help Shaw’s attor­neys. An odd thing about this was that nei­ther man had any osten­si­ble writ­ing assign­ment at the time. But it turned out that Phe­lan had a very spe­cial func­tion for his back­ers. Most reporters in town to cov­er the pro­ceed­ings rent­ed a hotel room, but not Phe­lan. Phe­lan rent­ed a house. Why would he do such a thing if he was not there to write a sto­ry? because his was a much big­ger assign­ment. His job was to put the spin on each day’s tes­ti­mo­ny for the resid­ing press corps, there­by con­trol­ling the entire nation­al media reportage on the Shaw tri­al. How did he do such a thing? He would invite all the reporters over to his rent­ed house at the end of each day. He would then serve them refresh­ments and snacks. He then would spell out the next day’s sto­ry on a chalk­board. This is how some of the most inter­est­ing and impor­tant tes­ti­mo­ny pre­sent­ed dur­ing the pro­ceed­ings got cov­ered up by the media. On the day the Zaprud­er film was shown, Phe­lan had his work cut out for him. For the repeat­ed show­ing of the film was shown, Phe­lan had his work cut out for him. For the repeat­ed show­ing of the film—depicting Kennedy’s body being vio­lent­ly knocked back—really shook up the press. It appeared Gar­ri­son was right, it was a con­spir­a­cy. But when they arrived at Phe­lan’s rent­ed house, the reporter pulled a prover­bial rab­bit out of his hat. He took out his chalk­board, raised up his piece of chalk, and he began to out­line the dynam­ics of the so-called “jet-effect” expla­na­tion for the action of the film. That is, if Oswald was fir­ing from behind Kennedy, why does Kennedy’s body recoil with tremen­dous force to the rear of the car? What Phe­lan and the jet effect prof­fer is that some­how, the spurt­ing of blood and brains served as a jet that drove Kennedy’s head back­ward with over­pow­er­ing force. This is how deter­mined Phe­lan was to keep a lid on what came out of the tri­al. . . .

In our pre­vi­ous pro­gram, we high­light­ed the attempt on book­ing offi­cer Aloy­sius Habighorst’s life on the eve of his tes­ti­mo­ny in the Clay Shaw tri­al. When he tes­ti­fied, Judge Hag­ger­ty refused to allow his tes­ti­mo­ny into evi­dence.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; pp. 306–308.

. . . . When Shaw was first arrest­ed in March of 1967, Habighorst had han­dled the book­ing. Before hav­ing him sign the fin­ger­print card, the offi­cer had rou­tine­ly asked if the defen­dant had ever used an alias. Appar­ent­ly unset­tled by his arrest, Shaw had replied “Clay Bertrand.” Habighorst typed this on the card and Shaw signed it. Alcock now want­ed to admit both the card and the officer’s tes­ti­mo­ny as evi­dence into the tri­al. This seemed pow­er­ful, damn­ing evi­dence because it came right out of Shaw’s mouth and hand. . . .The prosecution’s protes­ta­tions fell on deaf ears. Judge Hag­ger­ty would not allow the evi­dence. . . .

Alcock leaped out of his chair. His face red and his voice cracked with emo­tion. “Your Hon­or. Are you rul­ing on the cred­i­bil­i­ty of offi­cer Habighorst?” . . . .

. . . . “The whole world can hear that I do not believe Offi­cer Habighorst. . . . .”

“I demand a mis­tri­al,” Alcock shout­ed. “A judge’s unso­licit­ed com­ment on evi­dence . . . .”

“Denied,” said Hag­ger­ty. . . .

The pro­gram con­cludes with dis­cus­sion of Har­ry Con­nick­’s destruc­tion of Gar­rison’s files and of the gov­ern­men­t’s efforts to dis­cred­it Gari­son. This will be tak­en up at greater length in our next pro­gram.

FTR #1048 Interview #17 with Jim DiEugenio about “Destiny Betrayed”

Guy Ban­is­ter employ­ee Tom­my Baum­ler: ” . . . . what­ev­er hap­pens, the Shaw case will end with­out pun­ish­ment for him [Shaw], because fed­er­al pow­er will see to that.”

This is the sev­en­teenth 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 pro­ceed into New Orleans’ DA Jim Gar­rison’s actu­al tri­al of Clay Shaw.

Before going into the tri­al, per se, we high­light the “turn­ing” of The New Orleans States-Item. This “turn­ing” fea­tures one of the prin­ci­pal infil­tra­tors into Gar­rison’s office, William Gur­vich.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 275.

. . . . From this inter­view [with Tom­my Baum­ler], what appears to have hap­pened is that the CIA sent some­one into New Orleans to impact pub­lic opin­ion about Gar­ri­son. This may have been occa­sioned by a let­ter for­ward­ed to CIA HQ to Lloyd Ray of the local New Orleans office. . . . William Gur­vich, now work­ing with Shaw’s lawyers, vis­it­ed the offices of The New Orleans States-Item. Ross Yock­ey and Hoke May had been seri­ous­ly inves­ti­gat­ing the Shaw case. And they had been doing that in a fair and judi­cious man­ner. They had uncov­ered some inter­est­ing facts about how Gor­don Novel’s lawyers were being paid. After Gurvich’s vis­it, the States-Item pulled Yock­ey and May from the Gar­ri­son beat. When this author inter­viewed Yock­ey in 1995, he said that after this, he was then assigned to cov­er­ing high school foot­ball games. With the States-Item now neu­tral­ized, the cov­er­age in New Orleans now became imbal­anced. . . .

Jim titled the chap­ter ded­i­cat­ed to the tri­al “Anti-Cli­max.” It was indeed an anti-cli­max after Gar­ri­son was sub­ject­ed to the irre­sistible engine of the syn­the­sis of: the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty, their lone-wolf oper­a­tors infil­trat­ing his office, those infil­tra­tors’ net­work­ing with the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty’s media hatch­et men ded­i­cat­ed to smear­ing Gar­ri­son pub­licly, Clay Shaw’s defense team and the Jus­tice Depart­ment.

Gar­rison’s inves­ti­ga­tion was sub­ject­ed to an onslaught, includ­ing out­right, state-spon­sored ter­ror direct­ed at wit­ness­es.

A syn­op­tic overview of the wit­ness­es and their sig­nif­i­cance:

1.–Richard Case Nagell–A U.S. intel­li­gence oper­a­tive infil­trat­ed into Sovi­et intel­li­gence, and then assigned by KGB to assas­si­nate Oswald, whom they knew was to be a pat­sy in an assas­si­na­tion plot against JFK for which they would be blamed.
2.–Reverend Clyde Johnson–A right-wing activist who was wit­ness to Clay Shaw and a “Jack Rubion” net­work­ing togeth­er against JFK.
3.–Aloysius Habighorst–A good New Orleans cop who was the book­ing offi­cer for Clay Shaw, when Shaw vol­un­teered that he used the alias “Clay Bertrand.”
4.–Edwin McGehee–One of the wit­ness­es con­nect­ing Clay Shaw to Oswald and David Fer­rie in Clin­ton, Louisiana.
5.–Reeves Morgan–Another of the wit­ness­es con­nect­ing Clay Shaw to Oswald and David Fer­rie in Clin­ton, Louisiana.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 294.

. . . . Before and dur­ing the tri­al, Garrison’s wit­ness­es were being sur­veilled, harassed, and phys­i­cal­ly attacked. For instance, Richard Case Nag­ell had a grenade thrown at him from a speed­ing car in New York. Nag­ell brought the remains of the grenade to Gar­ri­son and told him he did not think it wise for him to tes­ti­fy at Shaw’s tri­al. Even though Gar­ri­son had spir­it­ed Clyde John­son out of town and very few peo­ple knew where he was, the FBI’s total sur­veil­lance even­tu­al­ly paid off. He was bru­tal­ly beat­en on the eve of the tri­al and hos­pi­tal­ized. Aloy­sius Habighorst, the man who booked Shaw and heard him say his alias was Bertrand, was rammed by a truck the day before he tes­ti­fied. After he tes­ti­fied, Edwin McGe­hee found a prowler on his front lawn. he called the mar­shal, and the man was arrest­ed. At the sta­tion, the man asked to make one phone call. The call he made was to the Inter­na­tion­al Trade Mart. After he tes­ti­fied, Reeves Mor­gan had the win­dows shot out of his truck. What makes all this vio­lent intim­i­da­tion more star­tling is what Robert Tanen­baum stat­ed to the author in an inter­view for Probe Mag­a­zine. He said that he had seen a set of doc­u­ments that orig­i­nat­ed in the office of Richard Helms. They revealed that the CIA was mon­i­tor­ing and harass­ing Gar­rison’s wit­ness­es. . . .

The vio­lent harass­ment of the wit­ness­es may be viewed against the back­drop of Tom Bethell and Sal Panze­ca.

Shaw attor­ney Sal Panze­ca received a list of Gar­ri­son wit­ness­es from Gar­ri­son office infil­tra­tor Tom Bethell.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 290.

. . . . Tom Bethell had been one of the DA’s key inves­ti­ga­tors and researchers . . . . Since Gar­ri­son had des­ig­nat­ed him as his chief archivist, he had access to and con­trol of both Gar­rison’s files and his most recent wit­ness list. . . . Secret­ly, he met with Sal Panze­ca, one of Shaw’s attor­neys, and gave him a wit­ness list he had pre­pared, with sum­maries of each wit­ness’s expect­ed tes­ti­mo­ny for the pros­e­cu­tion. . . .

Exem­pli­fy­ing the effec­tive neu­tral­iz­ing of wit­ness­es is the drum­beat of dis­cred­i­ta­tion and intim­i­da­tion of Per­ry Rus­so, a wit­ness to Shaw and Fer­rie dis­cussing plans to assas­si­nate JFK. By the time of Clay Shaw’s tri­al, Rus­so relent­ed and assent­ed to the canard that the Shaw/Ferrie assas­si­na­tion plan­ning was just a “bull ses­sion.”

FTR #1047 Interview #16 with Jim DiEugenio about “Destiny Betrayed”

This is the six­teenth 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.

The pro­gram opens with con­tin­u­a­tion of dis­cus­sion of an unfor­tu­nate piece from The Huff­in­g­ton Post about Clay Shaw. In addi­tion to par­rot­ing canards about Gar­rison’s case being base­less, Clay Shaw being a “Wilsonian/FDR lib­er­al” and Gar­rison’s nonex­is­tent stance that the JFK assas­si­na­tion was a “homo­sex­u­al thrill killing” by Clay Shaw & com­pa­ny, the HP piece men­tioned an appear­ance by Jim Gar­ri­son on John­ny Car­son­’s “Tonight Show.”

The actu­al sto­ry of Gar­rison’s appear­ance on Car­son is impor­tant and inter­est­ing. When the bril­liant come­di­an Mort Sahl was on Car­son­’s show, the sub­ject of the Gar­ri­son inves­ti­ga­tion came up. Sahl asked the audi­ence if they would like to have Gar­ri­son come on the show, and they respond­ed with over­whelm­ing enthu­si­asm.

Even­tu­al­ly, Gar­ri­son did appear on the show and Car­son engaged in an open­ly con­fronta­tion­al dis­cus­sion. Car­son was so out­raged that he told Mort Sahl that he would nev­er appear on the pro­gram again. Mort did not appear on the “Tonight” show until Jay Leno suc­ceed­ed Car­son as the host.

In this regard, it is worth not­ing that NBC–the net­work that aired Wal­ter Sheri­dan’s hit piece on Garrison–has pro­found con­nec­tions to the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty, as dis­cussed in FTR #1045.

Jim also relates that, when in Los Ange­les, Robert Kennedy was query­ing Chi­na Lee–Mort’s wife at the time–about what Gar­ri­son was doing in New Orleans. As we have seen in past programs–including FTR #‘s 809, 892, 1005–Robert Kennedy was wait­ing until he got elect­ed Pres­i­dent before open­ing an inves­ti­ga­tion into his broth­er’s mur­der. Of course, he, too was killed before he could become Pres­i­dent.

The pro­gram then turns to James Kirk­wood, anoth­er of the des­ig­nat­ed media hatch­et men who pil­lo­ried Gar­ri­son. Net­worked with James Phe­lan, he helped mint the canard that Gar­ri­son pros­e­cut­ed Shaw in the con­text of what the DA sup­pos­ed­ly saw as a “homo­sex­u­al thrill killing.” Unfor­tu­nate­ly, this non­sense has endured, as a Huff­in­g­ton Post arti­cle makes clear.

Anoth­er of the media hit men who defamed Gar­ri­son was David Chan­dler:

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 276.

. . . . But Chandler’s most seri­ous blast against Gar­ri­son and his inquiry was a two-part arti­cle writ­ten for Life in the fall of 1967. This appeared in the Sep­tem­ber 1 and Sep­tem­ber 8 issues of the mag­a­zine. The pieces mas­quer­ad­ed as an expose of Mafia influ­ence in large cities in Amer­i­ca at the time. But the real tar­get of the piece was not the mob, but Gar­ri­son. The idea was to depict him as a cor­rupt New Orleans DA who had some kind of neb­u­lous ties to the Mafia and Car­los Mar­cel­lo. There were four prin­ci­pal par­tic­i­pants in the pieces: Chan­dler, Sandy Smith, Dick Billings, and Robert Blakey. Smith was the actu­al billed writer. And since Smith was a long-time asset of the FBI, it is very like­ly that the Bureau was the Bureau was the orig­i­nat­ing force behind the mag­a­zine run­ning the piece. . . .

. . . . It was the work of Chan­dler, a friend of both Clay Shaw and Ker­ry Thorn­ley, which was the basis of the com­plete­ly pho­ny con­cept that Gar­ri­son was some­how in bed with the Mafia and his func­tion was to steer atten­tion from their killing of Kennedy. . . .

The sub­ject then turns to Clay Shaw’s defense team. It should nev­er be for­got­ten that Shaw’s attor­neys net­worked with: the infil­tra­tors into Gar­rison’s office, the CIA and the media hatch­et men who helped destroy Gar­rison’s pub­lic image.

We return briefly to Guy John­son, ini­tial­ly a mem­ber of Shaw’s defense team. In this con­text, it is worth remem­ber­ing what Ban­is­ter inves­ti­ga­tor Tom­my Baum­ler said:

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 274.

. . . . In the spring of 1968, Harold Weis­berg inter­viewed Tom­my Baum­ler. Baum­ler had for­mer­ly worked for Guy Ban­is­ter as part of his corps of stu­dent infil­tra­tors in the New Orleans area. Because of that expe­ri­ence, Baum­ler knew a lot about Banister’s oper­a­tion. For instance, that Banister’s files were cod­ed, and that Ban­is­ter had black­mail mate­r­i­al on the sub­jects he kept files on. He also knew the intel­li­gence net­work in New Orleans was con­struct­ed through Ban­is­ter, Clay Shaw, and Guy John­son; how close Shaw and Ban­is­ter were; and that “Oswald worked for Ban­is­ter.” In Weisberg’s inter­view with Tom­my, he would occa­sion­al­ly ask to go off the record by telling him to turn the tape recorder off. Clear­ly, there were things going on in New Orleans that Baum­ler con­sid­ered too hot to be attrib­uted to him.

At this time, April of 1968, Weis­berg con­sid­ered Baum­ler to be an “unabashed fas­cist.” He explained this fur­ther by say­ing that Baum­ler was ‘aware of the mean­ing of his beliefs and con­sid­ers what he describes as his beliefs as prop­er.” He then explained to Weis­berg the fol­low­ing, “that what­ev­er hap­pens, the Shaw case will end with­out pun­ish­ment for him [Shaw], because fed­er­al pow­er will see to that.” He fur­ther said that this would also hap­pen to any­one else charged by Gar­ri­son. . . .

In addi­tion to John­son, Irv Dymond, anoth­er Shaw attor­ney, net­worked with the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty, Wal­ter Sheri­dan and the spook infil­tra­tors into Gar­rion’s office. In FTR #1045, we not­ed that Fred Lee­mans claimed he was coerced, in part, direct­ly by Irv Dymond in Dymond’s law office. Dymond worked direct­ly with Hunter Leake of the CIA’s New Orleans office.

Shaw attor­neys Edward and William Weg­mann also net­worked with the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty, employ­ing Wack­en­hut, for­mer­ly South­ern Research, an intel­li­gence-con­nect­ed pri­vate secu­ri­ty out­fit to mon­i­tor Gar­rison’s com­mu­ni­ca­tions.

Anoth­er Shaw attorney–Sal Panzeca–received a list of Gar­ri­son wit­ness­es from Gar­ri­son office infil­tra­tor Tom Bethell.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 290.

. . . . Tom Bethell had been one of the DA’s key inves­ti­ga­tors and researchers . . . . Since Gar­ri­son had des­ig­nat­ed him as his chief archivist, he had access to and con­trol of both Gar­rison’s files and his most recent wit­ness list. . . . Secret­ly, he met with Sal Panze­ca, one of Shaw’s attor­neys, and gave him a wit­ness list he had pre­pared, with sum­maries of each wit­ness’s expect­ed tes­ti­mo­ny for the pros­e­cu­tion. . . .

The pro­gram con­cludes with the obstruc­tive efforts of then Attor­ney Gen­er­al Ram­sey Clark.

Clark tried to dis­miss Clay Shaw’s involve­ment inthe assas­si­na­tion by claim­ing that the FBI had cleared him back in 1963.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 261.

. . . . One point man for the John­son Admin­is­tra­tion in dam­ag­ing Gar­rison’s case was Ram­sey Clark. In March of 1867, right after his con­fir­ma­tion as Attor­ney Gen­er­al by the Sen­ate Judi­cia­ry Com­mit­tee, Clark made an extra­or­di­nary inter­ven­tion into the case: he told a group of reporters Gar­rison’s case was base­less. The FBI, he said, had already inves­ti­gat­ed Shaw in 1963 and found no con­nec­tion between him and the events in Dal­las. . . .

Clark also assist­ed with the quash­ing of sub­poe­nas that Gar­ri­son served.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; pp. 272–273.

. . . . At around this time, Gar­ri­son issued sub­poe­nas for both Richard Helms and any pho­tographs of Oswald in Mex­i­co City that the CIA held. . . . [CIA Gen­er­al Coun­sel Lawrence] Hous­ton then wrote a let­ter to New Orleans judge Bernard Bagert who had signed the sub­poe­na. He denied there were pho­tos of Oswald in Mex­i­co City. This reply was run by Attor­ney Gen­er­al Ram­sey Clark and White House advis­er Har­ry MacPher­son. . . .

Final­ly, Clark denied Gar­ri­son prop­er access to autop­sy pho­tos and infor­ma­tion about the assas­si­na­tion.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 287.

. . . . After the Attor­ney Gen­er­al had bun­gled his first attempt to dis­cred­it Gar­rison’s case, he secret­ly tried anoth­er method. Gar­ri­son had been try­ing to secure the orig­i­nal JFK autop­sy pho­tos and X‑rays to exhib­it at the tri­al. They would form an impor­tant part of his case, since, to prove a con­spir­a­cy, he had to present evi­dence against the War­ren Report, which main­tained there was no con­spir­a­cy and that Oswald had act­ed alone. In 1968, Clark con­vened a pan­el of experts–which did not include any of the doc­tors who had per­formed the orig­i­nal examinations–to review the autop­sy pho­tos and X‑rays. In ear­ly 1969, just a few days before he left office and on the eve of the tri­al, Clark announced that this pan­el had endorsed the find­ings of the War­ren Report. The pan­el released its find­ings, but none of the orig­i­nal evi­dence on which it was based. This was clear­ly meant to influ­ence pub­lic opin­ion before Shaw’s tri­al began. . . .

FTR #1046 Interview #15 with Jim DiEugenio About “Destiny Betrayed”

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 fif­teenth 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.

This inter­view begins with an excerpt from the book that encap­su­lates the syn­the­sis of the intel­li­gence agen­cies, infil­tra­tors into Gar­rison’s inves­ti­ga­tion, media hatch­et men des­ig­nat­ed to destroy Gar­rison’s rep­u­ta­tion and Clay Shaw’s defense team.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; pp. 228–229.

. . . . About Oswald, [Bernar­do] DeTor­res said he knew he had not killed Kennedy because DeTor­res knew the peo­ple who were actu­al­ly involved–and they were talk­ing about it before it hap­pened.

I have detailed the DeTor­res pen­e­tra­tion at length since it is impor­tant in order to under­stand what real­ly hap­pened to Jim Gar­ri­son. And also to reveal just how much was at stake for sus­pects like Bernar­do DeTor­res and his allies. As [HSCA inves­ti­ga­tor Gae­ton] Fonzi notes in his book, as the author found out from an inter­view, when Vic­tor Mar­che­t­ti was exec­u­tive assis­tant to CIA Direc­tor Richard Helms, Helms would run staff meet­ings about Agency oper­a­tions. Dur­ing these meet­ings, Mar­che­t­ti would take the offi­cial notes. At times, Helms would indi­cate he want­ed cer­tain things not tak­en down. At oth­er times, some­thing would come up, and Helms would cut off any fol­low-up by wav­ing his hand. He then would add that this sub­ject would be pur­sued fur­ther in his office, with Mar­che­t­ti not there to take notes. Mar­che­t­ti said that the Gar­ri­son inquiry and the Shaw tri­al came up more than once. Each time, Helms would ask what they were doing to help the defense. Fonzi lat­er found out that DeTorres’s pen­e­tra­tion was only the incep­tion of the CIA’s effort to tor­pe­do Gar­ri­son. For the HSCA lat­er dis­cov­ered through CIA doc­u­ments that there were nine under­cov­er agents at one time or anoth­er in Garrrison’s office. So, in addi­tion to what Mr. King had warned Gar­ri­son about, that is the neg­a­tiv­i­ty of the media which would now plague him until the end, there was some­thing that King left unsaid. But after he left, assis­tant Andrew Sci­ambra not­ed it to Gar­ri­son. He said, “Well, they offered you the car­rot, and you turned it down. You know what’s com­ing next don’t you?”

What we are about to describe in this chap­ter and the next is some­thing that nei­ther Gar­ri­son nor Sci­ambra could have like­ly imag­ined at the time. But with the aid of exten­sive inter­views, plus declas­si­fied doc­u­ments, for the first time we will now out­line a three stage pro­gram to decon­struct Garrison’s case and to make sure Shaw would be acquit­ted. This first stage began very ear­ly with DeTor­res, a man who–while work­ing with Mitch Werbell–may have been involved with Kennedy’s mur­der. But it will con­tin­ue with cer­tain oth­er “sin­gle­ton” pen­e­tra­tions by peo­ple like William Gur­vich and Gor­don Nov­el. The sec­ond stage of the effort will cen­ter around the wider efforts of for­mer Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Agency offi­cer Wal­ter Sheri­dan in alliance with the CIA and NBC. That effort was cou­pled with the work of intel­li­gence assets/journalists James Phe­lan and Hugh Aynesworth. When Gar­ri­son would still not give up, a third phase set in with two prongs to it. James Angleton’s office took over in Sep­tem­ber of 1967, and, as we have pre­viewed, Angleton’s endeav­or was then allied to, and expand­ed all the way up to Direc­tor Richard Helms in 1968 and 1969. With oper­a­tions that could even be dis­cussed in pub­lic or for the record. But which, as we shall see, HSCA Deputy Coun­sel Bob Tanen­baum saw cer­tain doc­u­ments about. . . .

Con­tin­u­ing and over­lap­ping analy­sis from the last pro­gram, we return to the sub­ject of vet­er­an intel­li­gence oper­a­tive Gor­don Nov­el, whom we have spo­ken of in past inter­views. In FTR #1044, we syn­op­sized Nov­el­’s activ­i­ties as a spook and as an infil­tra­tor into Gar­rison’s inves­ti­ga­tion: “One of the most impor­tant infil­tra­tors was Gor­don Nov­el, a vet­er­an CIA offi­cer, bril­liant elec­tron­ics expert and oper­a­tional asso­ciate of many of the peo­ple involved in Gar­rison’s probe. Nov­el had been involved with the Bay of Pigs and an arms bur­glary at a Schlum­berg­er facil­i­ty, some of the loot from which was stored at a rac­ing busi­ness owned in part by Nov­el. Oper­at­ing at the direc­tion of Allen Dulles, he infil­trat­ed Gar­rison’s inves­ti­ga­tion and bugged his office for the Agency. He also net­worked with the FBI to mon­i­tor Gar­rison’s probe. Nov­el also used his posi­tion inside Gar­rison’s probe to smear Gar­ri­son in pub­lic state­ments to the media. Nov­el was able to draw on large finan­cial reserves, the source of which is–technically speaking–opaque. At one point, he had five attor­neys work­ing on his behalf. That, in and of itself, would have required more mon­ey than Nov­el appeared to have at his dis­pos­al. Most sig­nif­i­cant­ly, Nov­el worked in tan­dem with Wal­ter Sheri­dan, a vet­er­an intel­li­gence oper­a­tive who pro­duced an alto­geth­er “spe­cial” for NBC about the Gar­ri­son inves­ti­ga­tion. . . .”

In this pro­gram, we not­ed Nov­el­’s work with the FBI, as well as CIA. Not­ing a bunch of appar­ent “hang­ers-on” around his res­i­dence, Nov­el real­ized that they were FBI. They were inter­est­ed in hav­ing him mon­i­tor Gar­ri­son for the bureau, which he did. Jim notes that the Wack­en­hut Cor­po­ra­tion (for­mer­ly South­ern Research) was also mon­i­tor­ing Gar­rison’s com­mu­ni­ca­tions. It was an out­growth of the FBI.

Sup­ple­ment­ing analy­sis of CIA Gar­ri­son infil­tra­tor William Mar­tin (also high­light­ed in FTR #1044), we set forth Mar­t­in’s work for Guy Ban­is­ter.

An impor­tant part of the dis­cus­sion fea­tures expand­ed analy­sis of both Hugh Aynesworth and James Phe­lan, both of whom were promi­nent media hatch­et men who helped defame Gar­ri­son.  (They, too, were high­light­ed in FTR #1044.)

Key points of dis­cus­sion about Aynesworth.

1.–Prior to the assas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent Kennedy, Aynesworth had net­worked with J. Wal­ton Moore, in charge of CIA oper­a­tions in Dal­las, Texas. Aynesworth was apply­ing for mem­ber­ship in the assas­si­na­tion.
2.-He was involved with attempt­ed sale of Oswald’s “diary.”
3.–Was net­worked with Mari­na Oswald, help­ing to dis­sem­i­nate the offi­cial lie about the assas­si­na­tion, and con­coct­ing a pre­pos­ter­ous sto­ry about Mari­na say­ing Oswald had planned to kill Nixon.
4.–Worked with peo­ple asso­ci­at­ed with CIA’s anti-Cas­tro Cuban milieu in con­junc­tion with Life Mag­a­zine’s “re-inves­ti­ga­tion” of the JFK assas­si­na­tion. Hen­ry Luce’s Life and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions had a his­to­ry of work­ing with the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty.
5.–Disseminated dis­in­for­ma­tion about Garrison/JFK for “Newsweek.”
6.–He informed for both the FBI and Lyn­don John­son about Gar­rison’s inquest.
7.–Disseminated dis­in­for­ma­tion about David Fer­rie’s asso­ciate Alvin Beauboeuf. This dis­in­for­ma­tion ran par­al­lel to Wal­ter Sheri­dan’s dis­in­for­ma­tion efforts in this regard.
8.–Was instru­men­tal in frus­trat­ing Gar­rison’s attempts at inter­view­ing CIA Cuban oper­a­tive Ser­gio Arcacha Smith.
9.–Aynesworth net­worked with Clay Shaw’s defense team.

Key points of dis­cus­sion about Phe­lan include:

1.–Review of his hit piece on Gar­ri­son pub­lished by The Sat­ur­day Evening Post.
2.–His net­work­ing with intel­li­gence agen­cies in con­junc­tion with his jour­nal­is­tic activ­i­ties.
3.–His pro­fes­sion­al asso­ci­a­tion with Robert Loomis, who had a long career pub­lish­ing dis­in­for­ma­tion books cov­er­ing-up this coun­try’s major assas­si­na­tions. (Ger­ald Pos­ner’s noto­ri­ous “Case Closed” is a promi­nent exam­ple.
4.–Phelan also net­worked with Clay Shaw’s defense team, help­ing to intro­duce into the tri­al tes­ti­mo­ny the pre­pos­ter­ous “jet effect” syn­drome with regard to the head shot that sealed Kennedy’s fate. This pre­pos­ter­ous con­coc­tion main­tains that the vio­lent toss­ing of JFK’s body to the back and to the left by the fatal head shot was because the shot (sup­pos­ed­ly from behind) cre­at­ed a tun­nel in JFK’s head which, when it chan­neled the blood and flesh torn from Kennedy by the bul­let, cre­at­ed a “jet” that pro­pelled Kennedy back­ward.

The pro­gram con­cludes with a par­tial read­ing of a 2016 Huff­in­g­ton Post sto­ry based, in part on Phe­lan’s disin­gen­u­ous report­ing on the JFK assas­si­na­tion. One of the fea­tures of the arti­cle is that it casu­al­ly dis­miss­es Jim Gar­rison’s inves­ti­ga­tion as base­less, and sug­gests that Gar­ri­son felt the homo­sex­u­al Shaw was involved with the assas­si­na­tion as part of a “homo­sex­u­al thrill killing.”