Rest In Peace, Heartfelt Thanks and Admiration: Peggy and Sterling Seagrave

In FTR #446, we high­light­ed the seri­ous death threats, harass­ment, and covert dis­rup­tion expe­ri­enced by Peg­gy and Ster­ling Sea­grave in con­nec­tion with their writ­ing. In 509, we also not­ed the sus­pi­cious cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the death of the hero­ic Iris Chang, who aid­ed the Sea­graves in their “Gold War­riors” project. Hav­ing authored a book on the Rape of Nanking and work­ing on anoth­er about the Bataan Death March, Ms. Chang had crossed the very pow­er struc­ture delin­eat­ed at length, depth and detail in the Sea­graves’ vol­ume. In our last vis­it with the Sea­graves, a 2009 inter­view that was the focus of FTR #689, Ster­ling expressed anx­i­ety about the prox­im­i­ty of their res­i­dence in South­ern France to the Span­ish bor­der and the for­mi­da­ble pres­ence of Opus Dei in Fran­co’s for­mer domain. His fear turned out to be pre­scient. On Christ­mas Day of 2011, he nar­row­ly escaped assas­si­na­tion while return­ing home. He felt that the attempt on his life may well have been moti­vat­ed by the pub­li­ca­tion of the Span­ish lan­guage edi­tion of “Gold War­riors.” Peg­gy passed in 2016 and Ster­ling in the spring of 2017. Listeners/readers may hon­or these heroes by read­ing their con­sum­mate­ly impor­tant books.

FTR #1095 The Destabilization of China, Part 6: Asian Deep Politics

In this pro­gram we present some of the deep polit­i­cal Asian his­to­ry that bears on Chi­nese his­to­ry and pol­i­tics. In par­tic­u­lar, the harm done to Chi­na by Gen­er­alis­si­mo Chi­ang Kai-shek’s drug-deal­ing Kuom­intang gov­ern­ment, its col­lab­o­ra­tion with the bru­tal Japan­ese occu­piers of Manchuria, as well as the Unit­ed States is impor­tant in under­stand­ing the Chi­nese polit­i­cal and his­tor­i­cal out­look.

In turn, the deep eco­nom­ic, polit­i­cal and mil­i­tary rela­tion­ship between the Japan­ese fas­cists and the U.S. is to be fac­tored in to any under­stand­ing of how the Chi­nese view this coun­try and the West.

In that con­text, we do NOT think Chi­na’s present gov­ern­ment will go down eas­i­ly in the face of an obvi­ous desta­bi­liza­tion effort by the U.S. and the West.

In addi­tion to the Euro­pean col­o­niza­tion of Chi­na and Britain’s vio­lent impo­si­tion of the opi­um drug trade through the Opi­um Wars, Chi­na’s polit­i­cal and his­tor­i­cal mem­o­ry is vivid­ly ani­mat­ed by the drug-financed fas­cist dic­ta­tor­ship of Nation­al­ist Chi­nese Gen­er­alis­si­mo Chi­ang Kai-shek. Dubbed “the Peanut” by Gen­er­al Joseph Stil­well dur­ing World War II, Chi­ang was com­pared by Stil­well (the chief Amer­i­can mil­i­tary advis­er and liai­son to the Kuom­intang forces dur­ing World War II) to Mus­soli­ni.

Chi­ang’s entire gov­ern­ment and bru­tal nation­al secu­ri­ty appa­ra­tus rest­ed on the foun­da­tion of the nar­cotics traf­fic, as was well known by the US Com­mis­sion­er Bureau of Nar­cotics, Har­ry Anslinger.

Key points of dis­cus­sion and analy­sis of this rela­tion­ship include: The deci­sive role of the Green Gang of Shang­hai crime lord Du (some­times ‘Tu”) Yue-sheng in both financ­ing Chi­ang’s forces and sup­ply­ing mus­cle and intel­li­gence to Tai Li, Chi­ang’s intel­li­gence chief and inte­ri­or min­is­ter, nick­named “The Himm­ler of Chi­na;” the impor­tant role of Chi­ang’s drug traf­fic in sup­ply­ing Amer­i­can t’ongs who, in turned, sup­plied the Mafia with their nar­cotics; the role of Chi­ang’s finance min­is­ter as Du Yue-sheng’s pro­tec­tor; the col­lab­o­ra­tion of Du and Chaing Kai-shek’s Kuom­intang appa­ra­tus with the Japan­ese occu­pa­tion gov­ern­ment of Manchuria in the nar­cotics traf­fic; the role of Chaing’s head of Nar­cotics Con­trol in sup­ply­ing Chi­nese offi­cials with drugs; the role of the Super­in­ten­dent of Mar­itime Cus­toms in Shang­hai in super­vis­ing the traf­fick­ing of drugs to the U.S.; Du Yueh-sheng’s flight to Hong Kong after the Japan­ese occu­pa­tion of Shang­hai; Du’s col­lab­o­ra­tion with Hong Kong-based British financiers in sell­ing drugs to the Chi­nese pop­u­la­tion; the delib­er­ate decep­tion on the part of Anslinger and king­pins in the US Chi­na Lob­by, who know­ing­ly mis­led the Amer­i­can pub­lic by blam­ing the U.S. drug traf­fic on the Com­mu­nist Chi­nese; the nar­cotics kick­backs to U.S. Chi­na Lob­by fig­ures by Chi­ang’s dope traf­fick­ing infra­struc­ture; the over­lap of the Kuom­intang dope trade with arms sales by Chi­na Lob­by lumi­nar­ies; the sup­port of the CIA for Chi­ang’s nar­cotics traf­fic; the destruc­tion of the career of For­eign Ser­vice offi­cer John Ser­vice, who not­ed that “the Nation­al­ists were total­ly depen­dent on opi­um and ‘inca­pable of solv­ing Chi­na’s prob­lems;’ ” the cen­tral role of Tai Li’s agents in the U.S. in fram­ing John Ser­vice.

Sup­ple­men­tal infor­ma­tion about these top­ics is con­tained in AFA #11 and AFA #24.

It is impos­si­ble to under­stand World War II and the glob­al and eco­nom­ic polit­i­cal land­scape that emerged from it with­out digest­ing the vital­ly impor­tant book Gold War­riors by Ster­ling and Peg­gy Sea­grave.

Cov­er­ing the Japan­ese equiv­a­lent of the Bor­mann flight cap­i­tal net­work, the vol­ume is a hero­ic, mas­ter­ful analy­sis and pen­e­tra­tion of the Asian wing of the car­tel sys­tem that spawned fas­cism, as well as the real­i­ties of the post-World War II eco­nom­ic land­scape. (FTR #‘s 427, 428, 446, 451, 501, 509, 688, 689 deal with the sub­ject of the Gold­en Lily pro­gram suc­cess­ful­ly imple­ment­ed by the Japan­ese to loot Asia.)

An inci­sive, elo­quent review and encap­su­la­tion of the book is pro­vid­ed by Doug Valen­tine, pro­vid­ing fur­ther insight into the polit­i­cal and his­tor­i­cal mem­o­ry of the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment and result­ing stance toward any pres­sure to be mount­ed against that nation by the U.S. and the West.

Of par­tic­u­lar note is the detailed analy­sis of the Japan­ese devel­op­ment of occu­pied Manchuria as an epi­cen­ter of the opi­um traf­fic with which to enrich their oper­a­tions and to help sub­ju­gate the Chi­nese. Chi­nese sen­si­tiv­i­ty to the Japan­ese, Kuom­intang, Amer­i­can and British roles in using drugs to enslave the Chi­nese peo­ple is very much in the fore­front of Japan­ese polit­i­cal con­scious­ness.

” . . . . .They [the Japan­ese] build roads and cre­ate indus­tries and, more impor­tant­ly, they work with cor­rupt war­lords and Chi­nese gang­sters asso­ci­at­ed with Chi­ang Kai-shek’s Kuom­intang Par­ty to trans­form Manchuria into a vast pop­py field. By 1937 the Japan­ese and their gang­ster and Kuom­intang asso­ciates are respon­si­ble for 90% of the world’s illic­it nar­cotics. They turn Manchu emper­or Pu Yi into an addict, and open thou­sands of opi­um dens as a way of sup­press­ing the Chi­nese. . . .”

Far from being a periph­er­al polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic con­sid­er­a­tion; the Gold­en Lily plun­der is fun­da­men­tal to post­war West­ern real­i­ty.

” . . . . The Sea­graves con­clude their excit­ing and excel­lent book by tak­ing us down the Mon­ey Trail, and explain­ing, in layman’s terms, how the Gold War­riors have been able to cov­er their tracks. Emper­or Hiro­hi­to, for exam­ple, worked direct­ly with Pope Pius XII to laun­der mon­ey through the Vat­i­can bank. In anoth­er instance, Japan’s Min­istry of Finance pro­duced gold cer­tifi­cates that were slight­ly dif­fer­ent than ordi­nary Japan­ese bonds. The Sea­graves inter­view per­sons defraud­ed in this scam, and oth­er scams involv­ing the Union Bank of Switzer­land and Citibank. . . . ”

” . . . . the banks that main­tain the US government’s stolen gold are above the law, and if they stonewall long enough, any­one try­ing to sue them will even­tu­al­ly fade away. The Sea­graves asked the Trea­sury Depart­ment, Defense Depart­ment, and the CIA for records on Yamashita’s gold in 1987, but were told the records were exempt from release. Dur­ing the 1990s, the records mys­te­ri­ous­ly went miss­ing. Oth­er records were destroyed in what the Sea­graves caus­ti­cal­ly call ‘his­to­ry laun­der­ing.’ . . . . .”

Key Points of Analy­sis and Dis­cus­sion Include: Dis­cus­sion of the war crimes com­mit­ted by the Japan­ese against the Chi­nese; the roles of the Japan­ese army, the Japan­ese roy­al fam­i­ly and yakuza gang­ster Kodama Yoshio (lat­er the CIA’s top con­tact in Japan and a key offi­cial with the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church) in extract­ing the liq­uid wealth of Chi­na; the restora­tion of the Japan­ese fas­cists in the “new,” post­war Japan­ese gov­ern­ment by Dou­glas MacArthur’s occu­pa­tion forces; the fusion of the Gold­en Lily loot with Nazi World War II plun­der to form the Black Eagle Trust; the use of the Gold­en Lily plun­der to finance funds to rein­force the renascent fas­cists in Japan, to finance U.S. covert oper­a­tions in the post­war peri­od and to sup­press polit­i­cal dis­si­dence in Japan; the use of the M‑Fund to finance the Japan­ese Lib­er­al Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty and Richard Nixon’s trans­fer of con­trol of that fund to the Japan­ese gov­ern­ment in exchange for clan­des­tine finan­cial help in his 1960 elec­tion cam­paign; the use of Gold­en Lily loot by the U.S. to pur­chase the sup­port of Pacif­ic ally nations for the Viet­nam War; the use of Gold­en Lily trea­sure by Philip­pine dic­ta­tor Fer­di­nand Mar­cos; the sup­pres­sion and crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion of indi­vid­u­als attempt­ing to pen­e­trate the elite, selec­tive use of Gold­en Lily gold by the world’s large banks.

We con­clude by high­light­ing Fred J. Cook’s ana­lyt­i­cal account of the McCarthy peri­od, The Night­mare Decade. One of the focal points of Cook’s book is McCarthy’s theme that State Depart­ment [Com­mu­nist] treach­ery had “lost” Chi­na to Mao and his forces.

Exploit­ing the meme that “pinko” State Depart­ment offi­cials were respon­si­ble for Mao’s ascen­dance, McCarthy and his team suc­cess­ful­ly purged the State Depart­ment of offi­cials whose out­look on Chi­ang Kai-shek was real­is­tic.

The fate of John Service–described in the excerpt of The CIA as Orga­nized Crime–illus­trates this kind of activ­i­ty.

In FTR #s 932 and 933 (among oth­er pro­grams), we not­ed the piv­otal influ­ence of Joe McCarthy’s right-hand man Roy Cohn on the pro­fes­sion­al devel­op­ment of Don­ald Trump. We won­der what influ­ence Cohn and the McCarthy lega­cy may have had on Trump’s pol­i­cy toward Chi­na.

Aside from the airy pre­sump­tion that Chi­na was “ours” to “lose,” McCarthy’s the­sis ignored the effects of U.S. pol­i­cy in that coun­try before, dur­ing and after, World War II. (This trans­gres­sion is, of course, sup­ple­men­tal to Tail­gun­ner Joe’s fab­ri­ca­tion of evi­dence against those he tar­get­ed.)

In addi­tion to sup­port for Chi­ang Kai-Shek, whom Gen­er­al Joseph Stil­well com­pared to Mus­soli­ni, U.S. pol­i­cy of using scores of thou­sands of Japan­ese sol­diers as anti-Com­mu­nist com­bat­ants was loath­some to the Chi­nese pop­u­la­tion, who had felt the full mea­sure of Japan­ese atroc­i­ty dur­ing years of war­fare.

Leaf­ing through Night­mare Decade for the first time in years, we came across a pas­sage read into the record in AFA #11.

More than 16 months after V‑J Day (the offi­cial con­clu­sion of the hos­til­i­ties of World War II in Asia) the U.S. was coun­te­nanc­ing the use of 80,000 Japan­ese troops (rough­ly eight divi­sions) as anti-Com­mu­nist com­bat­ants in east­ern and north­west­ern Manchuria alone!

Hav­ing been raised on Vic­to­ry at Sea and sim­i­lar fare, this pas­sage is yet anoth­er reminder that–70 + years or so after V‑J Day–“we’re not in Kansas any more, Toto.”

In ret­ro­spect, we nev­er were.

For more on the sub­ject of the Japan­ese fas­cism, see–among oth­er pro­grams–FTR #‘s 905, 969, 970.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Brief dis­cus­sion and overview of an arti­cle read in our pre­vi­ous pro­gram con­cern­ing HSBC and the bank’s his­tor­i­cal links to laun­der­ing nar­cotics mon­ey and jihadist financ­ing; the use of the racist term “shi­na” by the Hong Kong protesters–a term that had its gen­e­sis in the Sino-Japan­ese war.

FTR #1092 The Destabilization of China, Part 3

We begin with review of an arti­cle that was promi­nent­ly fea­tured in our last pro­gram.

In this arti­cle we note: the involve­ment of the NED with the lead­ing indi­vid­u­als and insti­tu­tions involved with the tur­moil in Hong Kong; the net­work­ing between oth­er U.S. “soft-pow­er” intel­li­gence fronts with the Hong Kong activists; the net­work­ing between top Trump admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials and the Hong Kong activists; the use of anti-Chi­nese slurs dat­ing to the fight­ing between Japan and Chi­na pri­or to, and dur­ing, World War II; U.S. “Alt-right” involve­ment with the Hong Kong unrest; the meet­ing of a U.S. diplo­mat with Hong Kong activists; the use of what–if it were used by peo­ple act­ing in the U.S.–rioting and ter­ror­ism by the crowds in Hong Kong; the vio­lence used in Hong Kong includes throw­ing gaso­line bombs at the police, set­ting fire to sub­way sta­tions, attack­ing passers-by and assault­ing counter-pro­test­ers.

Under­ly­ing the tur­moil in Hong Kong, the pro­gram sets forth the con­flict between the finan­cial­ized, lais­sez-faire econ­o­my of Hong Kong with the “state cap­i­tal­ist” sys­tem of Chi­na.

The for­mer has led to an rent increase of rough­ly 300% over the last ten years, while wages stag­nat­ed. This has made Hong Kong the most expen­sive city in the world and led to a pover­ty rate of 20% of the island’s rough­ly 7 mil­lion cit­i­zens.

For all of its short­com­ings, the “state cap­i­tal­ist” sys­tem of Chi­na has led to a decrease in the pover­ty rate from 88% in 1981 to 0.7% in 2015. (The fig­ure comes from the World Bank, hard­ly a bas­tion of inter­na­tion­al Com­mu­nist ide­ol­o­gy.)

In that same con­text, the per­cent­age of Chi­nese in the mid­dle class has gone from 4% in 2002 to 31% today. (Again, the fig­ures come from the World Bank, as well as the IMF and that well-known bas­tion of Marx­ist ide­ol­o­gy and promulgation–the CIA’s analy­sis divi­sion.)

The eco­nom­ic plight of many in Hong Kong–the young in particular–has made them easy tar­gets for regime-change tac­tics.

Of para­mount sig­nif­i­cance in under­stand­ing the unrest in Hong Kong is the island’s role as an epi­cen­ter of eco­nom­ic crime. The extra­di­tion law which was the ini­tial focus of the unrest would have enabled the extra­di­tion of male­fac­tors for eco­nom­ic crim­i­nal activ­i­ty. For that rea­son, it was vig­or­ous­ly opposed by the Hong Kong busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty and its U.S. allies.

FTR #1091 The Destabilization of China, Part 2

The pro­gram begins with an excerpt of AFA #37 (from the fall of 1992), deal­ing with the desta­bi­liza­tion of the U.S.S.R. Rely­ing on arti­cles from Covert Action Infor­ma­tion Bul­letin #35, by Doug Hen­wood and Sean Ger­vasi, the pro­gram reviews both NSC 68 and what Ger­vasi terms “the full court press” strat­e­gy that was its ulti­mate ful­fill­ment.

Using polit­i­cal action focused on pro­mot­ing frac­tious nation­al­ism among tar­get­ed eth­nic­i­ties with­in the tar­get­ed nation and eco­nom­ic and diplo­mat­ic pres­sure to weak­en that coun­try, the strat­e­gy worked very well with the Sovi­et Union.

It is Mr. Emory’s con­sid­ered opin­ion that the same strat­e­gy is being applied to Chi­na. Whether that strat­e­gy will be suc­cess­ful remains to be seen.

Next, we note the role of the Nation­al Endow­ment for Democ­ra­cy (an exam­ple of Orwellian Newspeak if ever there was one) in con­tin­u­ing our exam­i­na­tion of the tur­moil in Hong Kong. NED was deeply involved in the desta­bi­liza­tion of the U.S.S.R. We exam­ined NED’s role in pro­ject­ing Nazi and fas­cist ele­ments back into Lithua­nia in AFA #37, as well as FTR #858.

In this arti­cle we note: the involve­ment of the NED with the lead­ing indi­vid­u­als and insti­tu­tions involved with the tur­moil in Hong Kong; the net­work­ing between oth­er U.S. “soft-pow­er” intel­li­gence fronts with the Hong Kong activists; U.S. “Alt-right” involve­ment with the Hong Kong unrest; the meet­ing of a U.S. diplo­mat with Hong Kong activists; the net­work­ing between top Trump admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials and the Hong Kong activists; the use of anti-Chi­nese slurs dat­ing to the fight­ing between Japan and Chi­na pri­or to, and dur­ing, World War II; the use of what–if it were used by peo­ple act­ing in the U.S.–rioting and ter­ror­ism by the crowds in Hong Kong; the vio­lence used in Hong Kong includes throw­ing gaso­line bombs at the police, set­ting fire to sub­way sta­tions, attack­ing passers-by and assault­ing counter-pro­test­ers.

FTR #1090 Fascism: 2019 World Tour, Part 5 (Destabilizing China)

We begin with brief review of the Falun Gong cult and its con­nec­tions. Part of a con­stel­la­tion of orga­ni­za­tions and indi­vid­u­als work­ing with for­mer Trump chief of staff Steve Ban­non to neu­tral­ize Chi­na, Falun Gong has gar­nered the sup­port of CIA deriv­a­tive Broad­cast­ing Board of Gov­er­nors in the effort.

The Falun Gong teach­es that: post menopausal women can regain men­stru­a­tion, con­sid­ered manda­to­ry for spir­i­tu­al evo­lu­tion; gays are demo­nized; mixed race peo­ple are demo­nized; cult mem­bers are dis­cour­aged from seek­ing mod­ern med­ical treat­ment; space aliens are inhab­it­ing human bod­ies and are respon­si­ble for mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy such as air­planes and com­put­ers; tiny beings are said to be invad­ing human bod­ies and caus­ing “bad kar­ma;” mas­ter Li Hongzhi knows the secrets of the uni­verse; mas­ter Li Hongzhi can lev­i­tate and walk through walls; mas­ter Li Hongzhi can install a phys­i­cal “Falun”–swastika–in the abdomen of fol­low­ers which revolves in var­i­ous direc­tions; Falun Gong teach­ing demo­nizes fem­i­nists and pop­u­lar music; there will be a “Judge­ment Day” on which com­mu­nists and oth­ers deemed unwor­thy by mas­ter Li Hongzhi will be neu­tral­ized.

Falun Gong–largely through its Epoch Times newspaper–has estab­lished a major social media pres­ence and is a key ally of Pres­i­dent Trump’s re-elec­tion effort: “. . . . In April, at the height of its ad spend­ing, videos from the Epoch Media Group, which includes The Epoch Times and dig­i­tal video out­let New Tang Dynasty, or NTD, com­bined for around 3 bil­lion views on Face­book, YouTube and Twit­ter, rank­ing 11th among all video cre­ators across plat­forms and out­rank­ing every oth­er tra­di­tion­al news pub­lish­er, accord­ing to data from the social media ana­lyt­ics com­pa­ny Tubular.That engage­ment has made The Epoch Times a favorite of the Trump fam­i­ly and a key com­po­nent of the president’s re-elec­tion cam­paign.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: The enor­mous amount of mon­ey under con­trol of Falun Gong; sim­i­lar­i­ties to the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church; the anti-com­mu­nist dog­ma of the cult (again, not unlike the Uni­fi­ca­tion Church); the role of the inter­net and social media–Facebook, in particular–in the growth of Falun Gong’s oper­a­tions; the spin put by NBC on Falun Gong’s beliefs.

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 #1043 Interview #12 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 twelfth of a planned long series of inter­views with Jim DiEu­ge­nio about his tri­umphal analy­sis of Pres­i­dent Kennedy’s assas­si­na­tion and New Orleans Dis­trict Attor­ney Jim Gar­rison’s hero­ic inves­ti­ga­tion of the killing.

In this pro­gram, we con­tin­ue with analy­sis of Clay Shaw’s intel­li­gence con­nec­tion, begin­ning with review of his work for the Domes­tic Oper­a­tions Divi­sion.

A fas­ci­nat­ing intel­li­gence involve­ment of Shaw’s is his work with Per­min­dex.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; pp. 385–386.

. . . . The next step in the CIA lad­der after his high-lev­el over­seas infor­mant ser­vice was his work with the strange com­pa­ny called Per­min­dex. When the announce­ment for Per­min­dex was first made in Switzer­land in late 1956, its prin­ci­pal back­ing was to come from a local banker named Hans Selig­man. But as more inves­ti­ga­tion by the local papers was done, it became clear that the real backer was J. Hen­ry Schroder Cor­po­ra­tion. This infor­ma­tion was quite reveal­ing. Schroder’s had been close­ly asso­ci­at­ed with Allen Dulles and the CIA for years. Allen Dulles’s con­nec­tions to the Schroder bank­ing fam­i­ly went back to the thir­ties when his law firm, Sul­li­van and Cromwell, first began rep­re­sent­ing them through him. Lat­er, Dulles was the bank’s Gen­er­al Coun­sel. In fact, when Dulles became CIA direc­tor, Schroder’s was a repos­i­to­ry for a fifty mil­lion dol­lar con­tin­gency fund that Dulles per­son­al­ly con­trolled. Schroder’s was a wel­come con­duit because the bank ben­e­fit­ed from pre­vi­ous CIA over­throws in Guatemala and Iran. Anoth­er rea­son that there began to be a furor over Per­min­dex in Switzer­land was the fact that the bank’s founder, Baron Kurt von Schroder, was asso­ci­at­ed with the Third Reich, specif­i­cal­ly Hein­rich Himm­ler. The project now became stalled in Switzer­land. It now moved to Rome. In a Sep­tem­ber 1069 inter­view Shaw did for Pent­house Mag­a­zine, he told James Phe­lan that he only grew inter­est­ed in the project when it moved to Italy. Which was in Octo­ber 1958. Yet a State Depart­ment cable dat­ed April 9 of that year says that Shaw showed great inter­est in Per­min­dex from the out­set.

One can see why. The board of direc­tors as made up of bankers who had been tied up with fas­cist gov­ern­ments, peo­ple who worked the Jew­ish refugee rack­et dur­ing World War II, a for­mer mem­ber of Mus­solin­i’s cab­i­net, and the son-in-law of Hjal­mar Schacht, the eco­nom­ic wiz­ard behind the Third Reich, who was a friend of Shaw’s. These peo­ple would all appeal to the con­ser­v­a­tive Shaw. There were at least four inter­na­tion­al news­pa­pers that exposed the bizarre activ­i­ties of Per­min­dex when it was in Rome. One prob­lem was the mys­te­ri­ous source of fund­ing: no one knew where it was com­ing from. Anoth­er was that its activ­i­ties report­ed­ly includ­ed assas­si­na­tion attempts on French Pre­mier Charles De Gaulle. Which would make sense since the found­ing mem­ber of Per­min­dex, Fer­enc Nagy, was a close friend of Jacques Soustelle. Soustelle was a leader of the OAS, a group of for­mer French offi­cers who broke with De Gaulle over his Alger­ian pol­i­cy. They lat­er made sev­er­al attempts on De Gaulle’s life, which the CIA was privy to. Again, this mys­te­ri­ous source of fund­ing, plus the rightwing, neo-Fas­cist direc­tors cre­at­ed anoth­er wave of con­tro­ver­sy. One news­pa­per wrote that the orga­ni­za­tion may have been “a crea­ture of the CIA . . . set up as a cove for the trans­fer of CIA . . . funds in Italy for legal polit­i­cal-espi­onage activ­i­ties.” The Schroder con­nec­tion would cer­tain­ly sug­gest that. . . .

His involve­ment with Per­min­dex places him in the transna­tion­al cor­po­rate milieu that spawned fas­cism and Nazism. Key obser­va­tions about Per­min­dex and Shaw’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in it:

1.–Shaw was part of the deep polit­i­cal orbit of the Dulles broth­ers and Sul­li­van & Cromwell.
2.–The Per­min­dex oper­a­tional link to the Schroder Bank places it in the same milieu as the Himm­ler Kreis, the indus­tri­al­ists and financiers who financed the work­ings of the SS through an account in the Schroder Bank.
3.–Shaw was a friend of Hjal­mar Horace Gree­ley Schacht, who became the finance min­is­ter of the Third Reich and was very close to the Dulles broth­ers.
4.–Permindex was appar­ent­ly involved with the OAS efforts to assas­si­nate De Gaulle. This places Shaw in a net­work includ­ing: Ban­is­ter inves­ti­ga­tor Mau­rice Brooks Gatlin, who boast­ed of hav­ing trans­ferred mon­ey to the OAS from the CIA; Rene Souetre–an OAS oper­a­tive who was expelled from Dallas/Ft. Worth the day of the assas­si­na­tion of JFK.
5.–As dis­cussed in FTR #‘s 1031 and 1032, JFK was an ear­ly crit­ic of the French pol­i­cy in Alge­ria, crit­i­ciz­ing it on the floor of the Sen­ate in 1957.

The con­clu­sion of the broad­cast focus­es large­ly on the CIA’s intense inter­est in the Gar­ri­son inves­ti­ga­tion. This inter­est was man­i­fest­ed through an agency con­clave infor­mal­ly named “The Gar­ri­son Group.”

“Des­tiny Betrayed” by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 270.

. . . . Helms want­ed the group to “con­sid­er the pos­si­ble impli­ca­tions for the Agency” of what Gar­ri­son was doing in “New Orleans before, dur­ing, and after the tri­al of Clay Shaw. It is cru­cial to keep in mind the phrase: before, dur­ing, and after. As we will see, the effec­tive admin­is­tra­tor Helms was think­ing not just of some short term fix, but of for­mu­lat­ing a strat­e­gy for the long haul. Accord­ing to the very sketchy memo about this meet­ing, [CIA Gen­er­al Coun­sel Lawrence] Hous­ton dis­cussed his deal­ings with the Jus­tice Depart­ment and the desire of Shaw’s defense to meet with the CIA direct­ly. [Ray] Roc­ca then said some­thing quite omi­nous. He said that he felt “that Gar­ri­son would indeed obtain a con­vic­tion of Shaw for con­spir­ing to assas­si­nate Pres­i­dent Kennedy.” This must have had some impact on the meet­ing. Since every­one must have known that Roc­ca had devel­oped, by bar, the largest data­base on Gar­rison’s inquiry at CIA. . . .

We note that House Select Com­mit­tee on Assas­si­na­tions assis­tant coun­sel Jonathan Black­mer wrote the fol­low­ing:

“Des­tiny Betrayed” by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 332.

. . . . “We have rea­son to believe Shaw was heav­i­ly involved in the Anti-Cas­tro efforts in New Orleans in the 1960s and [was] pos­si­bly one of the high lev­el plan­ners or ‘cut out’ to the plan­ners of the assas­si­na­tion.” . . . .

The pro­gram con­cludes with analy­sis of Clay Shaw’s close rela­tion­ship to the Stern fam­i­ly of WDSU. In addi­tion to car­ry­ing staged inter­views between Oswald and Car­los Bringuier, the broad­cast out­let pil­lo­ried Jim Gar­ri­son and his tri­al of Clay Shaw.

FTR #1042 Interview #11 with Jim DiEugenio about “Destiny Betrayed”

This is the eleventh of a planned long series of inter­views with Jim DiEu­ge­nio about his tri­umphal analy­sis of Pres­i­dent Kennedy’s assas­si­na­tion and New Orleans Dis­trict Attor­ney Jim Gar­rison’s hero­ic inves­ti­ga­tion of the killing.

In this broad­cast, we explore the asso­ci­a­tion of David Fer­rie and Clay Shaw in the con­text of the plan­ning of assas­si­na­tion plots against JFK, as well as Shaw’s involve­ment with the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty.

NB: In our pre­vi­ous inter­view, Mr. Emory mis­tak­en­ly linked “The Bomb” to Clay Shaw and to a plot to assas­si­nate JFK. Shaw was, accord­ing to cred­i­ble tes­ti­mo­ny involved with Fer­rie in anoth­er, prob­a­bly con­nect­ed, asso­ci­a­tion to dis­cuss killing Kennedy.

David Fer­rie had a desk in the  office of C. Wray Gill, a lawyer for Car­los Mar­cel­lo. When anoth­er of Gill’s clients–a woman named Clara Gay–was in the office, she wit­nessed anoth­er Fer­rie assas­si­na­tion schemat­ic on Novem­ber 26, 1963:

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 217.

. . . . Clara looked  over at Fer­rie’s desk and she saw what looked like a dia­gram of Dealey Plaza: it was a draw­ing of a car from the per­spec­tive of an angle from above, the car was sur­round­ed by high build­ings, rem­i­nis­cent of Dealey Plaza. After the sec­re­tary threw it out, Clara  retrieved it. She said it should be giv­en to the FBI or Secret Ser­vice. The sec­re­tary took it back and a pulling con­test ensued. The sec­re­tary even­tu­al­ly won, but not before Clara saw the words “Elm Street” on the dia­gram. She lat­er recon­struct­ed this expe­ri­ence for Gar­ri­son. She said she came for­ward because she con­sid­ered her­self a good cit­i­zen, and Fer­rie must  have been  some­thing evil . . . .

After dis­cus­sion of the Fer­rie Dealey Plaza assas­si­na­tion schemat­ic, the dis­cus­sion turns to a con­ver­sa­tion wit­nessed by Per­ry Rus­so, one of Gar­rison’s most impor­tant wit­ness­es.

Key points of infor­ma­tion about what Rus­so wit­nessed:

1.–Present at the meet­ing where the dis­cus­sion took place were: Clay Shaw, David Fer­rie, Lee Har­vey Oswald and sev­er­al Cubans.
2.–Shaw was using one of his most com­mon aliases–“Clay Bertrand.”
3.–Ferrie became increas­ing­ly agi­tat­ed and high­light­ed “tri­an­gu­la­tion of cross­fire” as nec­es­sary to assure a kill shot on Kennedy.
4.–Ferrie and Shaw dis­cussed the neces­si­ty of being some­where else, to give them­selves “cov­er.” This led Rus­so to con­clude that the plans were con­crete not the­o­ret­i­cal.
5.–Ferrie said he would be in Ham­mond, LA., on the cam­pus of South­east­ern Louisiana. He was, in fact, there on the day of the assas­si­na­tion.
6.–Shaw said that he would be on the West Coast. He was, in fact, at the San Fran­cis­co Trade Mart, where he was to give a talk. When news of of the assas­si­na­tion reached Shaw and his host, Shaw seemed remark­ably detached. When asked if he thought the talk should go for­ward in light of the news, Shaw said yes. This struck those around him at that time  as  curi­ous.

The issue of Shaw’s alias­es is an impor­tant one. The day after the assas­si­na­tion of JFK, New Orleans attor­ney Dean Andrews got a call from “Clay Bertrand,” request­ing that he rep­re­sent Lee Har­vey Oswald in Dal­las. Andrews had pre­vi­ous­ly encoun­tered Shaw using the same alias when seek­ing legal rep­re­sen­ta­tion for some gay Lati­nos.

Key aspects of Andrews’ con­tact with Shaw/Bertrand:

1.–Andrews feared for his life if this came to light. He claimed to have been told, after call­ing Wash­ing­ton D.C., that he might get a bul­let in the head if he talked.
2.–After Andrews changed his tes­ti­mo­ny, Gar­ri­son charged him with per­jury, even­tu­al­ly gain­ing a con­vic­tion.
3.–Andrews’ state­ments about Shaw/Bertrand were bol­stered by some­one at the VIP lounge at the East­ern Air­lines ter­mi­nal at New Orleans air­port, who knew Shaw to sign in under that alias.
4.–Numerous peo­ple in bars and bistros–particularly in the French Quarter–knew that Shaw used that alias. Because of Gar­rison’s crack­down on orga­nized crime-relat­ed oper­a­tions in New Orleans, his poten­tial infor­mants remained silent.

When being booked, Shaw actu­al­ly stat­ed that he used the alias “Clay Bertrand.”

Shaw was booked by a New Orleans police offi­cer named Aloy­sius Habighorst–who had an excel­lent record. When being booked, Shaw stat­ed that he used the alias “Clay Shaw.” Before tes­ti­fy­ing at Shaw’s tri­al, Habighorst’s car was rammed by a yel­low truck, and he was injured.

At Shaw’s tri­al, Judge Hag­ger­ty refused to admit Shaw’s admit­ted alias as evi­dence.

The con­clud­ing por­tion of the broad­cast deals with Clay Shaw’s intel­li­gence con­nec­tions. Key points of infor­ma­tion in that regard:

1.–Shaw’s intel­li­gence con­nec­tions date to World War II, when he worked as a aide-de-camp to Gen­er­al Charles Thrash­er. This placed him in the Spe­cial Oper­a­tions Sec­tion, a branch of mil­i­tary intel­li­gence and one which was involved with recruit­ing some of the Paper­clip per­son­nel to work for the U.S.
2.–After the war, he became involved with Inter­na­tion­al House, a Rock­e­feller-linked oper­a­tion deeply involved with the transna­tion­al cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ty.
3.–His work for the Inter­na­tion­al Trade Mart fol­lowed log­i­cal­ly on the heels of his work for Inter­na­tion­al House.
4.–Shaw also worked with the  Mis­sis­sip­pi Ship­ping Com­pa­ny, which did a lot of work with the CIA.
5.–His “Y” file indi­cat­ed that Shaw’s work for CIA involved con­fer­ring with the agency before trav­el­ing to Latin Amer­i­ca, not after he returned as was the case for most infor­mants.
6.–At least one of Shaw’s files with the CIA was destroyed.

One of the most impor­tant ele­ments of Shaw’s intel­li­gence career was uncov­ered by researcher Peter Vea, whose dis­clo­sures were sup­ple­ment­ed by some inter­est­ing com­men­tary by Vic­tor Mar­che­t­ti.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 385.

. . . . Peter Vea dis­cov­ered a very impor­tant doc­u­ment while at the Nation­al Archives in 1994. Attached to a list­ing of Shaw’s numer­ous con­tacts with the Domes­tic Con­tact ser­vice, a list­ing was attached which stat­ed that Shaw had a covert secu­ri­ty approval in the Project QKENCHANT. This was in 1967 and the present tense was used, mean­ing that Shaw  was an active covert oper­a­tor for the CIA while Gar­ri­son was inves­ti­gat­ing him. When William Davy took this doc­u­ment to for­mer CIA offi­cer Vic­tor Mar­che­t­ti, an inter­est­ing con­ver­sa­tion ensued. As Mar­che­t­ti looked at the doc­u­ment, he said, “That’s inter­est­ing . . . . He was . . . He was doing some­thing there.” He then said that Shaw would not need a covert secu­ri­ty clear­ance for domes­tic con­tacts ser­vice. He then added, “This was some­thing else. This would imply that he was doing some kind of work for the  Clan­des­tine Ser­vices.” When Davy asked what branch of Clan­des­tine Ser­vices would that be, Mar­che­t­ti replied, “The DOD (Domes­tic Oper­a­tions Divi­sion). It was one of the most secret divi­sions with­in the Clan­des­tine Ser­vices. This was Tracey Bar­nes’s old out­fit. They were get­ting into things . . . Uh . . . exact­ly what, I don’t know. But they were get­ting into some pret­ty risky areas. And this is what E. Howard Hunt was work­ing for at the time.” And in fact, Howard Hunt did have such a covert clear­ance issued to him in 1970 while he was work­ing at the White House. . . .

FTR #1041 Interview #10 with Jim DiEugenio about “Destiny Betrayed”

The tenth of a planned long series of inter­views with Jim DiEu­ge­nio about his tri­umphal analy­sis of Pres­i­dent Kennedy’s assas­si­na­tion and New Orleans Dis­trict Attor­ney Jim Gar­rison’s hero­ic inves­ti­ga­tion of the killing.

In this broad­cast, we delve into oper­a­tional links between U.S. intel­li­gence agent David Ferrie–the first tar­get of Gar­rison’s investigation–and Clay Shaw, who was tried by Gar­ri­son.

One of the oper­a­tions in which Fer­rie and Shaw par­tic­i­pat­ed was an effort to bol­ster Freeport Sul­phur.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; pp. 208–209.

. . . . In Chap­ter 1, the author intro­duced Freeport Sul­phur and its sub­sidiaries Moa Bay Min­ing and Nicaro Nick­el. These com­pa­nies all had large invest­ments in Cuba pri­or to Castro’s rev­o­lu­tion. And this end­ed up being one of the ways that Gar­ri­son con­nect­ed Clay Shaw and David Fer­rie. This came about for two rea­sons. First, with Cas­tro tak­ing over their oper­a­tions in Cuba, Freeport was attempt­ing to inves­ti­gate bring­ing in nick­el ore from Cuba, through Cana­da, which still had trade rela­tions with Cuba. The ore would then be refined in Louisiana, either at a plant already in New Orleans or at anoth­er plant in Braith­waite. Shaw, an impres­sario of inter­na­tion­al trade, was on this explorato­ry team for Freeport. And he and two oth­er men had been flown to Cana­da by Fer­rie as part of this effort. More evi­dence of this con­nec­tion through Freeport was found dur­ing their inves­ti­ga­tion of Guy Ban­is­ter. Ban­is­ter appar­ent­ly knew about anoth­er flight tak­en by Shaw with an offi­cial of Freeport, like­ly Charles Wight, to Cuba. Again the pilot was David Fer­rie. Anoth­er rea­son this Freeport con­nec­tion was impor­tant to Gar­ri­son is that he found a wit­ness named James Plaine in Hous­ton who said that Mr. Wight of Freeport Sul­phur had con­tact­ed him in regards to an assas­si­na­tion plot against Cas­tro. Con­sid­er­ing the amount of mon­ey Freeport was about to lose in Cuba, plus the num­ber of East­ern Estab­lish­ment lumi­nar­ies asso­ci­at­ed with the company–such as Jock Whit­ney, Jean Mauze and God­frey Rockefeller–it is not sur­pris­ing that such a thing was con­tem­plat­ed with­in their ranks. . . .

One of the most impor­tant, com­pelling links between Fer­rie and Shaw was their appear­ance with Lee Har­vey Oswald in Clin­ton, Louisiana. Key points of infor­ma­tion about this event:

1.–The three men–Ferrie, Shaw and Oswald–were in Clin­ton to reg­is­ter Oswald to vote.
2.–In the event, their arrival placed them in the mid­dle of a large vot­er-reg­is­tra­tion dri­ve for local African-Amer­i­cans, part of the civ­il rights move­ment of the ear­ly ’60’s.
3.–The three men were very con­spic­u­ous at this event, not only because of their race, but because the large, black Cadil­lac dri­ven by Shaw attract­ed con­sid­er­able atten­tion.
4.–Many of those in atten­dance at the vot­er reg­is­tra­tion dri­ve, as well as the local sher­iff, iden­ti­fied the three men.
5.–Ferrie, in par­tic­u­lar, man­i­fest­ed a strik­ing appear­ance. He was afflict­ed with an ail­ment that caused all of the hair on his body that to fall out. To cov­er up his afflic­tion, Fer­rie wore a gar­ish red wig and match­ing, pen­ciled-on eye­brows.
6.–Oswald was appar­ent­ly at the vot­er reg­is­tra­tion event to reg­is­ter to vote in that area, in order to gain employ­ment at the near­by East Louisiana State Hos­pi­tal, an insti­tu­tion with strong links to Tulane Med­ical Cen­ter and Alton Ochsner, as well as to the MK Ultra exper­i­ments going on at that time.
7.–Two peo­ple Oswald appar­ent­ly cit­ed as ref­er­ences were Mal­colm Pier­son and Frank Sil­va. Not only did both men work at the hos­pi­tal, but they both had inter­est­ing CV’s.

Of the back grounds of Pier­son and Sil­va, Jim writes:

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 93.

. . . . The obvi­ous ques­tion then becomes: How did Oswald know the names of these men? Or if he did not, how did Shaw or Fer­rie know them? One pos­si­bil­i­ty is this: Accord­ing to Cuban intel­li­gence, Sil­va was active in the anti-Cas­tro cause in the New Orleans area. Sil­va was Cuban-born and from an upper-class fam­i­ly. He was actu­al­ly asso­ci­at­ed with Tulane Med­ical Cen­ter at the time. Tulane was locat­ed in New Orleans. Dr. Alton Ochsner, who was on the board of, and Chief of Surgery at, Tulane Med­ical School, was a friend of both Shaw and Ban­is­ter. In fact, at the New Orleans Pub­lic Library, there is a pho­to of Shaw sit­ting at a small table with Ochsner.

Anoth­er way that Oswald could have known these names was through a mutu­al acquain­tance of Shaw and Fer­rie, Ser­gio Arcacha Smith. Both Cuban intel­li­gence and Garrison’s inves­ti­ga­tors dis­cov­ered that there was a con­nec­tion between the two Cuban refugees. Dr. Robert Heath, Chair­man of Tulane Uni­ver­si­ty Med­ical School’s Depart­ment of Neu­rol­o­gy and Psy­chi­a­try, became infa­mous for using LSD and elec­trode implan­ta­tion in his research. Many of the peo­ple he worked on came from East Louisiana State Hos­pi­tal, where an entire ward was ded­i­cat­ed to his work. East doc­tor Alfred But­ter­worth (whom this author inter­viewed short­ly before his death) told the author that he had seen both Ochsner and Sil­va while he was there. But­ter­worth also revealed that Tulane Uni­ver­si­ty had a spe­cial psy­chi­atric unit at the hos­pi­tal, where they secret­ly admin­is­tered LSD. This is impor­tant back­ground to the fol­low­ing infor­ma­tion. Dur­ing his inquiry, Jim Gar­ri­son came across a wit­ness who had attend­ed a gath­er­ing at Dr. Heath’s home. Thee, the fol­low­ing event occurred: Dr. Sil­va intro­duced the man to the for­mer local rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Howard Hunt’s CRC, Ser­gio Arcacha Smith. Pier­son was a for­mer nar­cotics offend­er, who, accord­ing to HSCA sub­poe­naed records, list­ed Sil­va as a ref­er­ence in his job appli­ca­tion. It is hard to believe that, left to his own devices, Oswald would have known that either of these men worked at the hos­pi­tal. If either of these more log­i­cal options is accu­rate, it gives the inci­dent even more scope and depth. . . .

The pro­gram con­cludes with dis­cus­sion of what a Gar­ri­son inves­ti­ga­tor called “The Bomb”–an appar­ent plan, with detailed schemat­ics, to assas­si­nate JFK. NB: Mr. Emory mis­tak­en­ly links Clay Shaw to “The Bomb.” Shaw was, accord­ing to cred­i­ble tes­ti­mo­ny involved with Fer­rie in anoth­er, prob­a­bly con­nect­ed, asso­ci­a­tion to dis­cuss killing Kennedy.

“The Bomb” will be ana­lyzed at the begin­ning of our next inter­view.

FTR #1040 Interview #9 with Jim DiEugenio about “Destiny Betrayed”

The ninth of a planned long series of inter­views with Jim DiEu­ge­nio about his tri­umphal analy­sis of Pres­i­dent Kennedy’s assas­si­na­tion and New Orleans DA Jim Gar­rison’s hero­ic inves­ti­ga­tion of the killing.

In this inter­view, we pro­ceed into the sub­stance of New Orleans Dis­trict Attor­ney Jim Gar­rison’s inves­ti­ga­tion into the JFK assas­si­na­tion. Gar­rison’s inquiry began imme­di­ate­ly after the assas­si­na­tion when for­mer Guy Ban­is­ter inves­ti­ga­tor Jack Mar­tin gave infor­ma­tion to him about one of his cronies in the “detec­tive agency.”

David Fer­rie was a vet­er­an intel­li­gence offi­cer with a long CV. Fer­rie’s intel­li­gence resume and behav­ior with regard the JFK assas­si­na­tion includes:

1.–His work with a Civ­il Air Patrol unit that includ­ed Lee Har­vey Oswald, as well as Bar­ry Seal, anoth­er future CIA oper­a­tive who became a major play­er in the Iran-Con­tra drug traf­fic.
2.–Ferrie’s CAP unit’s pro­found rela­tion­ship with the mil­i­tary, per­mit­ting his unit to oper­ate at Keesler Air Force Base in Mis­sis­sip­pi and to fly on mil­i­tary air­craft. This indi­cates strong grav­i­tas on Fer­rie’s part with­in the nation­al secu­ri­ty estab­lish­ment.
3.–His strange trip to Texas on the day of the assas­si­na­tion, dri­ving all night through a heavy rain­storm to–take your pick–go ice skat­ing and/or go goose hunt­ing. The man­ag­er of the skat­ing rink stat­ed that Fer­rie did not go ice skat­ing but stayed by a pay phone all of the time he spent there. His com­pan­ions stat­ed that they did not bring guns on the trip. Fer­rie spent his time in Galve­ston (a Texas port city) in a hotel over­look­ing the sea.
4.–Ferrie mar­ket­ing his unten­able ice skating/goose hunt­ing sto­ry to the FBI–an act of per­jury on his part.
5.–Ferrie also stat­ed that he did­n’t know how to fire a rifle, a claim fun­da­men­tal­ly at odds with Fer­rie’s work as a para­mil­i­tary com­man­do train­er at the CIA camps at LaCombe, Louisiana.
6.–Immediately after the assas­si­na­tion, Fer­rie fran­ti­cal­ly sought to recov­er any pho­tographs of him with Lee Har­vey Oswald in his CAP unit.
7.–Immediately after the assas­si­na­tion, Fer­rie wor­ried that his library card might be in Oswald’s pos­ses­sion. Oswald knew about “microdots,” a tech­nique devel­oped by Ger­man intel­li­gence in World War II per­mit­ting the reduc­tion of an intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ca­tion to micro­scop­ic size, thus enabling its inser­tion into a peri­od or com­ma in a sen­tence. Some researchers have opined that the library card may have involved some use of microdot tech­nol­o­gy in the Ferrie/Oswald intel­li­gence rela­tion­ship.
8.–Ferrie, Oswald and Guy Ban­is­ter were all deeply involved with the CIA’s anti-Cas­tro Cuban effort in New Orleans. Ban­is­ter’s office was a front for many of the weapons used by Fer­rie and com­pa­ny at the LaCombe camp and oth­er facil­i­ties. As dis­cussed pre­vi­ous­ly, Oswald’s one man Fair Play For Cuba Com­mit­tee (New Orleans chap­ter) was housed in the same New­man build­ing that housed Ban­is­ter’s oper­a­tion.
9.–Ferrie had oper­a­tional con­nec­tions with both Ela­dio Del Valle and Ser­gio Arcacha Smith, two of the CIA’s pri­ma­ry anti-Cas­tro Cuban oper­a­tives.
10.–Against the back­ground of JFK’s Cuban pol­i­cy, includ­ing JFK’s actions vis a vis the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban Mis­sile Cri­sis, his impend­ing diplo­mat­ic rap­proche­ment with Cas­tro and the Jus­tice Depart­men­t’s clos­ing down of the LaCombe camp and oth­ers like it, Fer­rie began mak­ing increas­ing­ly vio­lent state­ments about JFK.
11.–Ferrie began open­ly talk­ing about killing Kennedy. His vio­lent anti-JFK state­ments were one of the rea­sons he was dis­missed from East­ern Air­lines, for whom he worked as a pilot.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 116.

. . . . As Mon­goose began to dwin­dle down, Fer­rie, and oth­ers, now grew even more resent­ful of Kennedy. For the first time, Fer­rie men­tioned to a young pro­tege a design to do away with JFK. But he nev­er includ­ed him­self in the plans. He talked about it in the sec­ond or third per­son. Some­times, he went fur­ther and said that Kennedy “ought to be shot.” This was also echoed by Guy Ban­is­ter who had been a CIA con­duit of funds for the train­ing camps. In 1963, Ban­is­ter bit­ter­ly com­plained to a col­league that “some­one should do away with Kennedy.” Ban­is­ter’s fas­cist ide­ol­o­gy was con­ducive  to such things. . . .

After Gar­ri­son indict­ed him, Fer­rie began pub­licly attack­ing Gar­rison’s cred­i­bil­i­ty, ridi­cul­ing any notion of his own guilt in the assas­si­na­tion. In pri­vate, Fer­rie began express­ing fear for his life. As it devel­oped, Fer­rie’s fears were well found­ed. His naked corpse was found in his apart­ment, alleged­ly felled by a berry aneurism at the base of his brain. A sheet was pulled up over his face, and there were two typed sui­cide notes, with his name typed, not signed.

There are a num­ber of con­sid­er­a­tions in con­nec­tion with Fer­rie’s death:

1.–If his death was nat­ur­al, why were there two typed sui­cide notes?
2.–If it was sui­cide, how did he die?
3.–There were marks in Fer­rie’s mouth, clear­ly revealed in autop­sy pho­tos. Might they have indi­cat­ed that drugs been forced down his throat? Fer­rie had been tak­ing pro­loid, which might well have pro­duced the lethal reac­tion Fer­rie expe­ri­enced in the event of an over­dose. He had ordered thy­roid pills, which were gone when his body was dis­cov­ered.
4.–Journalist George Lard­ner had inter­viewed Fer­rie, and claims he was with Fer­rie until 4am, the last pos­si­ble time that Fer­rie’s death could have occurred. If Lard­ner was right, the killers must have entered with­in min­utes of his depar­ture.
5.–Decades lat­er, Lard­ner, work­ing for the CIA-linked Wash­ing­ton Post, went to Dal­las to shad­ow Oliv­er Stone’s film­ing of “JFK,” based on Gar­rison’s book On the Trail of the Assas­sins. Lard­ner then wrote a hit piece on Stone’s film before it was released.

The con­tents of Fer­rie’s apart­ment were unusu­al. Recall that he had stat­ed that he did­n’t know how to fire a rifle.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 225.

. . . . The con­tents of Fer­rie’s apart­ment at the time of his death were unusu­al for a pri­vate inves­ti­ga­tor. They includ­ed a blue, 100-pound aer­i­al bomb, a Spring­field pri­vate inves­ti­ga­tor. They includ­ed a blue, 100-pound aer­i­al bomb, a Spring­field rifle, a Rem­ing­ton rifle, an altered-stock, .22 rifle, 20 shot­gun shells, two Army Sig­nal Corps tele­phones, one bay­o­net, one flare gun, a radio trans­mit­ter unit, a radio receiv­er unit, 32 rifle car­tridges, 22 blanks, sev­er­al cam­eras, and three rolls of film. . . . 

Short­ly after Fer­rie’s death, his close asso­ciate Ela­dio Del Valle was found mur­dered, near the apart­ment of Bernar­do De Tor­res, Bay of Pigs vet­er­an and U.S. intel­li­gence vet­er­an. Del Valle had been tor­tured, shot through the heart and his head had been split open with a machete.