Nuremberg Redux: The Deep Political Context of the Texas Court of Inquiry

In Mis­cel­la­neous Archive Show M31, we exam­ined the mil­i­tary inquiry into the killing of Wehrma­cht Cor­po­ral Johannes Kun­ze, whose anti-Nazi sen­ti­ments were pun­ished by his fel­low pris­on­ers with mur­der. In the inquest, it became clear that Amer­i­can offi­cers had per­mit­ted their Ger­man POW coun­ter­parts to screen the mail of their fel­low pris­on­ers, which pro­vid­ed them the means to iden­ti­fy and kill cor­po­ral Kun­ze. The mil­i­tary pros­e­cu­tor in the case–future Water­gate and Kore­a­gate “Spe­cial Pros­e­cu­tor” Leon Jaworski–exercised what was polite­ly termed judi­cial restraint, and did not inves­ti­gate the U.S. offi­cers whose con­duct led direct­ly to the mur­der of Kun­ze. Jawors­ki lat­er par­tic­i­pat­ed in tri­als of Third Reich alum­ni accused of war crimes, includ­ing the tri­al of Dachau med­ical per­son­nel. “. . . . Col. Leon Jawors­ki, who will be in charge of the tri­al, esti­mates that at least 5,000 Jews died at Dachau from ordi­nary mis­treat­ment and tor­ture, while any­where between 1,000 and 3,000 died as a result of med­ical exper­i­ments per­formed upon them. . . .” The grue­some Dachau med­ical exper­i­ments: 1) Were per­formed by five doc­tors who were on the Project Paper­clip pay­roll by the time Jawors­ki again man­i­fest­ed judi­cial restraint: ” . . . . Five doc­tors work­ing at the cen­ter start­ing in the fall of 1945 were on the list: Theodor Ben­zinger, Siegried Ruff, Kon­rad Schafer, Her­mann Beck­er-Frey­seng, and Oskar Schroder. Instead of fir­ing these physi­cians sus­pect­ed of heinous war crimes, the cen­ter kept the doc­tors in its employ and the list was clas­si­fied. . . .” 2) Involved tri­als by four of the Paper­clip recruits of two process­es aimed at puri­fy­ing sea­wa­ter for drink­ing, with grue­some results for the Dachau “Unter­men­schen”: “. . . . Dr. Oskar Schroder, head of the Luft­waffe Med­ical Corps, was thrilled. Kon­rad Schafer had ‘devel­oped a process which actu­al­ly pre­cip­i­tat­ed the salts from the sea water,’ Schroder lat­er tes­ti­fied. . . . The effec­tive­ness of both the Schafer process and the Berka method would be test­ed on the Unter­men­schen at Dachau. A Luft­waffe physi­cian named Her­mann Beck­er-Frey­seng was assigned to assist Dr. Schafer, and to coau­thor with him a paper doc­u­ment­ing the results of the con­test. The senior doc­tor advis­ing Beck­er-Frey­seng and Schafer in their work was Dr. Siegfried Ruff. . . .” 3) Were filmed and screened for SS chief Hein­rich Himm­ler by the fifth Paper­clip recruit, Dr. Theodor Ben­zinger: ” . . . .This was the same Dr. Ben­zinger who had over­seen for Himm­ler the film screen­ing at the Reich Air Min­istry, in Berlin, of Dachau pris­on­ers being mur­dered in med­ical exper­i­ments. . . .” 4) Became part of an exper­i­men­tal con­tin­u­um, in which the Nazi research on Aeromed­ical Med­i­cine per­formed at the Kaiser Wil­helm Insti­tute pro­ceed­ed unin­ter­rupt­ed under U.S. Army Air Force com­mand: ” . . . . The Army Air Forces Aero Med­ical Cen­ter in Hei­del­berg  . . . only a few months pri­or . . .  had been the Kaiser Wil­helm Insti­tute for Med­ical Research, a bas­tion of Nazi sci­ence where chemists and physi­cists worked on projects for the Reich’s war machine. At its front entrance, the Reich’s flag came down and the U.S. Flag went up. Pho­tographs of Hitler were pulled from the walls and replaced by framed pho­tographs of Army Air Forces gen­er­als in mil­i­tary pose. Most of the fur­ni­ture stayed the same. In the din­ing room, Ger­man wait­ers in white servers’ coats pro­vid­ed table ser­vice at meal­times. A sin­gle 5” X 8” req­ui­si­tion receipt, dat­ed Sep­tem­ber 14, 1945, made the tran­si­tion offi­cial: ‘This prop­er­ty is need­ed by U.S. Forces, and the req­ui­si­tion is in pro­por­tion to the resources of the coun­try.’ Again, then Colonel Jawors­ki appar­ent­ly exer­cised “judi­cial restraint.” Fol­low­ing Pres­i­dent Kennedy’s assas­si­na­tion, Jawors­ki became both a War­ren Com­mis­sion coun­sel and, with Judge Robert Storey, head­ed the Texas Court of Inquiry, the Texas judi­cial body charged with inves­ti­gat­ing JFK’s mur­der. As dis­cussed in the linked Guns of Novem­ber, Part 3, Jawors­ki sat on the board of direc­tors of the M.D. Ander­son Fund, a doc­u­ment­ed CIA domes­tic fund­ing con­duit. In an ear­li­er pro­fes­sion­al incar­na­tion, Storey–as Colonel Robert Storey (above, right)–passed along the word that the de-Naz­i­fi­ca­tion edict was to be “relaxed” dur­ing the Nurem­berg tri­als. ” . . . . Colonel Robert Storey, the U.S. exec­u­tive tri­al coun­sel at the Inter­na­tion­al Mil­i­tary Tri­bunal and a senior aide to Robert Jack­son, has ‘passed the word down that the denaz­i­fi­ca­tion direc­tive was to be relaxed,’ . . . .” It seems prob­a­ble that the selec­tion of the com­po­si­tion of both the War­ren Com­mis­sion and the Texas Court of Inquiry was shaped, in part, by the per­ceived neces­si­ty of con­ceal­ing the many Nazis under the Amer­i­can bed.

David Sarnoff’s Axis Connection: Background to NBC and the Walter Sheridan Broadcast

In our long series of inter­views with Jim DiEu­ge­nio about his mas­ter­work “Des­tiny Betrayed,” we high­light­ed vet­er­an intel­li­gence offi­cer Wal­ter Sheri­dan’s broad­cast hatch­et job on New Orleans D.A. Jim Gar­rison’s inves­ti­ga­tion of the JFK assas­si­na­tion. The TV hit piece was broad­cast on the NBC net­work. In our dis­cus­sion of the Sheri­dan broad­cast, we not­ed the efforts of RCA chief David Sarnoff in res­ur­rect­ing the Nazi Radio France sta­tion and pre­sid­ing over its con­ver­sion to Radio Free Europe. (RCA is the par­ent com­pa­ny of NBC, which aired the Sheri­dan broad­cast.) In res­ur­rect­ing Radio France and mid­wiv­ing its con­ver­sion to Radio Free Europe, Sarnoff, who is Jew­ish, was build­ing on pro­found and trea­so­nous Axis con­nec­tions he main­tained dur­ing the war. In “Trad­ing with the Ene­my,” Charles High­am chron­i­cled the deep involve­ment of David Sarnoff with the Tran­sra­dio Con­sor­tium, which joined the Axis nations with the West­ern Allies in a telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions car­tel that pro­vid­ed vital–and lethal–intelligence to the Axis dur­ing the war. Key points of analy­sis and dis­cus­sion include: 1.–David Sarnof­f’s suc­cess­ful efforts to restore and expand the Nazi Radio France Sta­tion and re-brand it as “Radio Free Europe.” ” . . . . In 1944, Sarnoff worked for the com­plete restora­tion of the Nazi destroyed Radio France sta­tion in Paris until its sig­nal was able to reach through­out Europe. It was then reti­tled Radio Free Europe. He lat­er lob­bied the White House to expand the range and reach of Radio Free Europe. At about this point, Radio Free Europe became a pet project of Allen Dulles. Sarnoff’s com­pa­ny, Radio Cor­po­ra­tion of Amer­i­ca, became a large part of the tech­no­log­i­cal core of the NSA. . . . Robert was pres­i­dent of RCA, NBC’s par­ent com­pa­ny, at the time Sheridan’s spe­cial aired. David was chair­man. . . .” 2.–Sarnoff’s RCA was part of the Tran­sra­dio Con­sor­tium, some­thing of a broad­cast car­tel meld­ing Axis and West­ern Allied broad­cast estab­lish­ments: ” . . . . RCA was in part­ner­ship before and after Pearl Har­bor with British Cable and Wire­less; with Tele­funken, the Nazi com­pa­ny; with Ital­ca­ble, whol­ly owned by the Mus­soli­ni gov­ern­ment; and with Vichy’s Com­pag­nie Gen­erale, in an orga­ni­za­tion known as the Tran­sra­dio Con­sor­tium, with Gen­er­al Robert C. Davis, head of the New York Chap­ter of the Amer­i­can Red Cross, as its chair­man. In turn, RCA, British Cable and Wire­less, and the Ger­man and Ital­ian com­pa­nies had a share with ITT in TTP (Telegrafi­ca y Tele­fon­i­ca del Pla­ta), an Axis-con­trolled com­pa­ny pro­vid­ing tele­graph and tele­phone ser­vice between Buenos Aires and Mon­te­v­ideo. Nazis in Mon­te­v­ideo could tele­phone Buenos Aires through TTP with­out com­ing under the con­trol of either the state-owned sys­tem in Uruguay or the ITT sys­tem in Argenti­na. Mes­sages, often dan­ger­ous to Amer­i­can secu­ri­ty, were trans­mit­ted direct­ly to Berlin and Rome by Tran­sra­dio. Anoth­er share­hold­er was ITT’s Ger­man “rival,” Siemens, which linked cables and net­works with Behn south of Pana­ma. . . .” 3.–Transradio Con­sor­tium was the vehi­cle for lethal­ly trea­so­nous com­mu­ni­ca­tions dur­ing the war: ” . . . . But the pub­lic, which thought of Sarnoff as a pil­lar of patri­o­tism, would have been aston­ished to learn of his part­ner­ship with the ene­my through Tran­sra­dio and TTP. The British pub­lic, belea­guered and bombed, would have been equal­ly shocked to learn that British Cable and Wire­less, 10 per­cent owned by the British gov­ern­ment, and under vir­tu­al gov­ern­ment con­trol in wartime, was in fact also in part­ner­ship with the Ger­mans and Ital­ians through the same com­pa­nies and prox­ies. . . . Simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, the Tran­sra­dio sta­tions, accord­ing to State Depart­ment reports with the full knowl­edge of David Sarnoff, kept up a direct line to Berlin. The amount of intel­li­gence passed along the lines can scarce­ly be cal­cu­lat­ed. The Lon­don office was in con­stant touch with New York through­out the war, sift­ing through reports from Argenti­na, Brazil, and Chile and send­ing com­pa­ny reports to the Ital­ian and Ger­man inter­ests. . . .”

Memorial Day Weekend Broadcast: Sunday, May 26th and Monday, May 27th

On Sun­day 5/26/2019 from 11 a.m. (Pacif­ic Time) until 7pm, and on Mon­day, 5/27/2019 from 10am until 7pm, KFJC-FM will fea­ture hours of pro­gram­ming doc­u­ment­ing the pro­found con­nec­tions of U.S. indus­try and finance to the fas­cist pow­ers of World War II. In the decades since the end of the Sec­ond World War, much has been writ­ten about the war and fas­cism, the dri­ving force behind the aggres­sion that pre­cip­i­tat­ed that con­flict. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, much of what has been said and writ­ten has failed to iden­ti­fy and ana­lyze the caus­es, nature and method­ol­o­gy of fascism—German Nation­al Social­ism or “Nazism” in par­tic­u­lar. A deep­er, more accu­rate analy­sis was pre­sent­ed in pub­lished lit­er­a­ture, par­tic­u­lar­ly vol­umes pub­lished dur­ing, or in the imme­di­ate after­math of, the Sec­ond World War. . . . . Fas­cism (Nazism in par­tic­u­lar) was an out­growth of glob­al­iza­tion and the con­struc­tion of inter­na­tion­al monop­o­lies (car­tels). Key to under­stand­ing this phe­nom­e­non is analy­sis of the Webb-Pomerene act, leg­is­lat­ed near the end of the First World War. A loop­hole in the Anti-trust leg­is­la­tion of 1914, it effec­tive­ly legal­ized the for­ma­tion of cartels—international monopolies—for firms that were barred from domes­tic monop­o­lis­tic prac­tices. Decry­ing what they viewed as exces­sive and restric­tive “reg­u­la­tion” here in the Unit­ed States, U.S.-based transna­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions invest­ed their prof­its from the indus­tri­al boom of the 1920’s abroad, pri­mar­i­ly in Japan and Ger­many. This process might well be viewed as the real begin­ning of what is now known as “glob­al­iza­tion.” This rein­vest­ment of the prof­its of the Amer­i­can indus­tri­al boom of the 1920’s in Japan­ese and Ger­man strate­gic heavy indus­try was the cap­i­tal that drove the engines of con­quest that sub­dued both Europe and Asia dur­ing World War II. On Sun­day, we will high­light the Amer­i­can-Ger­man indus­tri­al axis and its var­i­ous man­i­fes­ta­tions. On Mon­day, we will explore the Amer­i­can-Japan­ese indus­tri­al axis.

Supplemental Documentation about “The Christian West”

In FTR #1009, we reviewed and updat­ed “Chris­t­ian West” nego­ti­a­tions to have a Hitler-less Third Reich join with the West­ern Allies, under­tak­en by OSS rep­re­sen­ta­tives Allen Dulles and William Dono­van, net­work­ing with Prince Max Egon von Hohen­lo­he, a proxy for SD offi­cer Wal­ter Schel­len­berg. In in his 1985 vol­ume Amer­i­can Swasti­ka, the late author Charles High­am pro­vides us with insight into the Chris­t­ian West con­cept, reveal­ing the extent to which these SS/OSS nego­ti­a­tions set the tem­plate for the post-World War II world, as well as the degree of res­o­nance that key Amer­i­cans, such as Allen Dulles, had with Nazi ide­ol­o­gy, anti-Semi­tism in par­tic­u­lar. The post­war polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic real­i­ties of the Dulles, Hohen­lo­he, Schel­len­berg meet­ings were fur­ther solid­i­fied when William (Wild Bill) Dono­van entered into his “M” Project. Impor­tant to note in this con­text, is the dom­i­nant role in world affairs played by car­tels, the fun­da­men­tal ele­ment in the indus­tri­al and finan­cial axis that was essen­tial to the cre­ation and per­pet­u­a­tion of fas­cism. Much of the Third Reich’s mil­i­tary indus­tri­al com­plex, the pri­ma­cy of Ger­many in the post­war EU, as well as the cor­re­la­tion between post­war Europe as con­struct­ed in the Chris­t­ian West nego­ti­a­tions and long-stand­ing Ger­man plans for Euro­pean dom­i­na­tion are deriv­a­tive of the pow­er of car­tels. The Chris­t­ian West and “M” Projects: 1) Revealed that Allen Dulles’ views res­onat­ed with Third Reich anti-Semi­tism, and that his opin­ions were shared by oth­er, like-mind­ed Amer­i­can pow­er bro­kers: ” . . . . He said that it would be unbear­able for any decent Euro­pean to think that the Jews might return some­day, and that there must be no tol­er­a­tion of a return of the Jew­ish pow­er posi­tions. . . . He made the curi­ous asser­tion that the Amer­i­cans were only con­tin­u­ing the war to get rid of the Jews and that there were peo­ple in Amer­i­ca who were intend­ing to send the Jews to Africa. . . .” 2) Set the tem­plate for the post­war Fed­er­al Repub­lic of Ger­many and the EU: ” . . . . He [Dulles] reit­er­at­ed his desire for a greater Euro­pean polit­i­cal federation–and fore­saw the fed­er­al Ger­many that in fact took place. . . . Ger­many would be set up as the dom­i­nat­ing force in indus­try and agri­cul­ture in con­ti­nen­tal Europe, at the heart of a con­ti­nen­tal state run by Ger­many, the U.S.A., and Great Britain as a focus of trade. . . .” 3) Were the vehi­cle for Allen Dulles to betray much of the Allied mil­i­tary plans for South­ern Europe to the Third Reich: “. . . . Dulles now pro­ceed­ed to sup­ply Hohen­lo­he with dol­lops of secret intel­li­gence, announc­ing that the U.S. Army would not land in Spain but, after con­quer­ing Tunisia, would advance from Africa toward the Ploesti oil fields to cut off the Ger­man oil sup­plies. He said it was like­ly the Allies would land in Sici­ly to cut off Rom­mel and con­trol Italy from there, and thus secure the advance in the Balka­ns. Hav­ing giv­en vir­tu­al­ly the entire bat­tle plan for Europe, top secret at the time, to one of Ger­many’s agents, Allen Dulles pro­ceed­ed to the almost unnec­es­sary rid­er that he had very good rela­tions with the Vat­i­can. . . .” 4) Direct­ly fore­shad­owed the con­fronta­tion between the U.S. and the Sovi­et Union, which became the Cold War. “. . . . In oth­er meet­ings, Dulles . . . . pre­dict­ed that ‘the next world war would be between the U.S.A. and the Sovi­et Union.’ . . . .” 5) Were the occa­sion for Dulles to laud the “genius” of Nazi pro­pa­gan­da min­is­ter Joseph Goebbels: “He . . . . described a recent speech by Dr. Goebbels as ‘a work of genius; I have rarely read a speech with such ratio­nal plea­sure.’ . . . .”

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.

Fascism, Globalization and Money Laundering: Review of the Bush Family Tree

In FTR #370, we dis­cussed the Bor­mann flight cap­i­tal orga­ni­za­tion and its links to the Bush and Thyssen fam­i­lies. In the after­math of the Jim DiEu­ge­nio inter­views, we were impressed by the nature of Clay Shaw’s con­nec­tions to the same milieu. ” . . . . But what did the Bush fam­i­ly know about their Nazi con­nec­tion and when did they know it? As senior man­agers of Brown Broth­ers Har­ri­man, they had to have known that their Amer­i­can clients, such as the Rock­e­fellers, were invest­ing heav­i­ly in Ger­man cor­po­ra­tions, includ­ing Thyssen’s giant Vere­inigte Stahlw­erke. . . . It should be recalled that in Jan­u­ary 1937, he hired Allen Dulles to ‘cloak’ his accounts. But cloak from whom? . . . . The cloak­ing oper­a­tion only makes sense in antic­i­pa­tion of a pos­si­ble war with Nazi Ger­many. If Union Bank was not the con­duit for laun­der­ing the Rockefeller’s Nazi invest­ments back to Amer­i­ca, then how could the Rock­e­feller-con­trolled Chase Man­hat­tan Bank end up own­ing 31% of the Thyssen group after the war? It should be not­ed that the Thyssen group (TBG) is now the largest indus­tri­al con­glom­er­ate in Ger­many, and with a net worth of more than $50 bil­lion dol­lars, one of the wealth­i­est cor­po­ra­tions in the world. TBG is so rich it even bought out the Krupp fam­i­ly, famous arms mak­ers for Hitler, leav­ing the Thyssens as the undis­put­ed cham­pi­on sur­vivors of the Third Reich. Where did the Thyssens get the start-up mon­ey to rebuild their empire with such speed after World War II? The enor­mous sums of mon­ey deposit­ed into the Union Bank pri­or to 1942 are the best evi­dence that Prescott Bush know­ing­ly served as a mon­ey laun­der­er for the Nazis. Remem­ber that Union Banks’ books and accounts were frozen by the U.S. Alien Prop­er­ty Cus­to­di­an in 1942 and not released back to the Bush fam­i­ly until 1951. At that time, Union Bank shares rep­re­sent­ing hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars’ worth of indus­tri­al stocks and bonds were unblocked for dis­tri­b­u­tion. Did the Bush fam­i­ly real­ly believe that such enor­mous sums came from Dutch enter­pris­es? . . . . A for­tune this size could only have come from the Thyssen prof­its made from rearm­ing the Third Reich, and then hid­den, first from the Nazi tax audi­tors, and then from the Allies. The Bush­es knew per­fect­ly well that Brown Broth­ers was the Amer­i­can mon­ey chan­nel into Nazi Ger­many, and that Union Bank was the secret pipeline to bring the Nazi mon­ey back to Amer­i­ca from Hol­land. The Bush­es had to have known how the secret mon­ey cir­cuit worked because they were on the board of direc­tors in both direc­tions: Brown Broth­ers out, Union Bank in. . . .”

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 #1052 Interview #21 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-first 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 under­takes exam­i­na­tion of the House Select Com­mit­tee on Assas­si­na­tions.

The HSCA coa­lesced after a show­ing of the Zaprud­er film on tele­vi­sion cued a dra­mat­ic increase in peo­ple who were inter­est­ed in the JFK assas­si­na­tion. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Tom Down­ing of Vir­ginia was instru­men­tal in real­iz­ing the project.

Ulti­mate­ly, respect­ed Penn­syl­va­nia pros­e­cu­tor Richard Sprague became the com­mit­tee’s Chief Coun­sel, recruit­ing skilled aides like the late Gae­ton Fonzi and Robert Tanen­baum. Net­work­ing with, among oth­ers, Penn­syl­va­nia Sen­a­tor Richard Schweik­er, Sprague, Tanen­baum, Fonzi et al quick­ly con­clud­ed that the War­ren Com­mis­sion was cov­er­ing up the assas­si­na­tion and high­light­ed the ridicu­lous nature of CE399–the so-called “Mag­ic Bul­let,” which is the evi­den­tiary core of the War­ren Com­mis­sion’s the­sis.

Ini­tial­ly, the HSCA began doing some seri­ous work, inves­ti­gat­ing and ana­lyz­ing the New Orleans con­nec­tions that Gar­ri­son inves­ti­gat­ed. In addi­tion to the Shaw, Ban­is­ter, Fer­rie Oswald rela­tion­ships, the role of David Phillips, aka “Mau­rice Bish­op,” became a sub­stan­tive focal point of their work.

Gae­ton Fonz­i’s work for the com­mit­tee focused on:

1.–CIA offi­cer Bernar­do DeTor­res’ pro­fes­sion­al career, includ­ing his work with Mitchell Wer­bell.
2.–David Phillips/“Maurice Bish­op.”
3.–The Rose Cheramie fore­shad­ow­ing of the assas­si­na­tion.
4.–Sergio Arcacha Smith’s numer­ous links to the assas­si­na­tion, includ­ing his pos­si­ble work run­ning guns with Jack Ruby and CIA con­tract agent Tomas Eli Davis.
5.–Freeport Sul­phur, its net­work­ing with both Clay Shaw and David Fer­rie and its own­er­ship by the East­ern Elite.
6.–The role of Jock Whit­ney in Freeport Sul­phur.
The pub­lish­er of The New York Her­ald Tri­bune, Whit­ney worked late into the evening of 11/22/1963, appar­ent­ly on an edi­to­r­i­al that fea­tured the book The Assas­sins, which claimed that Amer­i­ca’s assas­si­na­tions were the work of “crazed indi­vid­u­als.” The book was lat­er dis­trib­uted to mem­bers of the War­ren Com­mis­sion by none oth­er than Allen Dulles.

The pro­gram goes into the dis­cov­ery made by researcher John Hunt of the han­dling of the Mag­ic Bul­let, CE399.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 345.

. . . . And the proof is that both the War­ren Com­mis­sion and the HSCA  signed onto the ludi­crous Sin­gle Bul­let The­o­ry. A the­o­ry that has been ren­dered even more ris­i­ble today than it was in the six­ties and sev­en­ties. For researcher John Hunt has proven with declas­si­fied doc­u­ments that the so-called Mag­ic Bul­let was at the FBI lab in Wash­ing­ton at 7:30 p.m. on the night of the twen­ty-sec­ond. But how could this be if that bul­let was not turned over by the Secret Ser­vice to FBI agent Elmer Lee Todd until 8:50 p.m.? In oth­er words, lab tech­ni­cian Robert Fra­zier had booked CE399 into his reords one hour and twen­ty min­utes before it was giv­en to him by agent Todd. But fur­ther, Tod­d’s ini­tials were said by the FBI to be on this bul­let he dropped off with Fra­zier that night. Hunt saw the blow up pho­tos of the entire cir­cum­fer­ence of CE 399 at the Nation­al Archives. The FBI lied on this key issue. For Tod­d’s ini­tials are not on the bul­let.

All one needs to know about the effi­ca­cy of the HSCA is that it nev­er took the time to do what John Hunt did. . . .

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. . . .

FTR #1051 Interview #20 with Jim DiEugenio about “Destiny Betrayed”

This is the twen­ti­eth 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 deals with Oswald in Mex­i­co City, one of the most impor­tant ele­ments in con­struct­ing the cov­er-up of the assas­si­na­tion.

The Mex­i­co City gam­bit entails “Oswald” osten­si­bly trav­el­ing to Mex­i­co City to vis­it the Cuban and Sovi­et embassies, the lat­ter involv­ing “Oswald’s” alleged con­tacts with Valery Kostikov, the KGB’s agent in charge of assas­si­na­tions in the West­ern Hemi­sphere. When reports of this were cir­cu­lat­ed in the Amer­i­can media on the week­end of JFK’s assas­si­na­tion, it appeared to many that the Sovi­et Union and/or Cuba was behind the assas­si­na­tion.

Ulti­mate­ly, the pos­si­bil­i­ty of World War III and a nuclear holo­caust break­ing out as a result of the assas­si­na­tion were used by Lyn­don Baines John­son to engi­neer a cov­er-up.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 359.

. . . . To say this decep­tion about Oswald in Mex­i­co worked well does not begin to do it jus­tice. For at the first meet­ing of the War­ren Com­mis­sion, the for­mer DA of Alame­da Coun­ty Cal­i­for­nia, Earl War­ren, came out meek as a lamb:

1.–He did not want the Com­mis­sion to employ any of their own inves­ti­ga­tors.
2.–He did not want the Com­mis­sion to gath­er evi­dence. Instead he wished for them to rely on reports made by oth­er agen­cies like the FBI and Secret Ser­vice.
3.–He did not want their hear­ings to be pub­lic. He did not want to employ the pow­er of sub­poe­na.
4.–Incredibly, he did not even want to call any wit­ness­es. He want­ed to rely on inter­views done by oth­er agen­cies.
5.–He then made a very curi­ous com­ment, “Meet­ings where wit­ness­es would be brought in would retard rather than help our inves­ti­ga­tion.

In oth­er words, as John­son told [then Sen­a­tor Richard] Rus­sell, they were to rat­i­fy the FBI’s inquiry. There was to be no real inves­ti­ga­tion by any­one. The Mex­i­co City cha­rade, with its threat of atom­ic holo­caust, had secured the cov­er up of Kennedy’s mur­der. . . .

Key ele­ments of dis­cus­sion and analy­sis on this top­ic include:

1.–Warren Com­mis­sion coun­sels David Slaw­son and William Cole­man relied on CIA and FBI liai­son for their infor­ma­tion. Specif­i­cal­ly, they relied on coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence chief James Jesus Angle­ton and and his aide Ray Roc­ca for their infor­ma­tion. NB: Mr. Emory erred at one point in this inter­view, iden­ti­fy­ing Richard Helms a head of the CIA, he was Deputy Direc­tor of the Agency at this point in time.
2.–Slawson even con­sid­ered join­ing the CIA at this point. We can but won­der if, in fact, he did just that.
3.–Richard Helms appoint­ed Angle­ton to be the main liai­son for the Agency to the War­ren Com­mis­sion. Recall that Angle­ton and Ray Roc­ca were in charge of the Oswald pre-assas­si­na­tion files.
4.–Angleton and the FBI’s William Sul­li­van coor­di­nat­ed their response con­cern­ing Oswald hav­ing ties to U.S. intel­li­gence agen­cies, deny­ing that that was, in fact, the case.
5.–A hand­ful of CIA offi­cers known as the SAS (not to be con­fused with the British com­man­do orga­ni­za­tion with the same ini­tials) devel­oped an inter­est in Oswald weeks before the assas­si­na­tion.
6.–Slawson and Cole­man relied on CIA sta­tion chief Win­ston Scott when in Mex­i­co City.
7.–Sylvia Duran, employed at the Cuban embassy in Mex­i­co City, report­ed the “Lee Har­vey Oswald” with whom she met as ” . . . being short, about five foot, six inch­es, blond and over thir­ty years old. Oswald was five foot, nine inch­es, dark haired, and twen­ty-four years old. . . .” (p. 349.)
8.–Duran not­ed that the pro­ce­dure used by the Oswald impos­tor to obtain a visa was sus­pi­cious: ” . . . . “They [U.S. com­mu­nists, which “Oswald” alleged­ly was] usu­al­ly fol­lowed a pro­ce­dure, arranged for by the Amer­i­can Com­mu­nist Par­ty, which allowed them to obtain a visa in advance through the Cuban Com­mu­nist Par­ty. . . The fact that Oswald did not do this was reveal­ing. It seemed to sug­gest that either Oswald was not a real com­mu­nist, or that peo­ple inside the com­mu­nist cir­cles in Amer­i­ca thought he was an agent provo­ca­teur. They there­fore did not trust him. . . .” (pp. 349–350.)
9.–The phone calls made to Sylvia Duran at the Cuban embassy con­tain sig­nif­i­cant dis­crep­an­cies: ” . . . . Duran stat­ed firm­ly that after the twen­ty-sev­enth, when Oswald had failed to secure his spe­cial visa, he did not call her back. Again, some­one embroi­dered this for the Com­mis­sion. For in the War­ren Report, she is quot­ed as say­ing ” . . . . she does not recall whether or not Oswald lat­er tele­phoned her at the Con­sulate num­ber she gave him.” This was an impor­tant dis­crep­an­cy in tes­ti­mo­ny. Because, as we shall see, there was anoth­er call to the Russ­ian con­sulate on Sat­ur­day the twen­ty-eighth [of Sep­tem­ber, 1963]. The CIA claims this call was by Duran, with Oswald also on the line. But if Duran’s recall is cor­rect, then the CIA evi­dence is spu­ri­ous. . . .” (p. 350.)
10.–When G. Robert Blakey and his asso­ciate Richard Billings assumed con­trol over the HSCA, they made a sig­nif­i­cant con­ces­sion: ” . . . . 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. The, 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. . ..” (p. 350.)
11.–While “Oswald” was sup­pos­ed­ly in Mex­i­co City, Sylvia Odio was vis­it­ed by three men, one whom was iden­ti­fied as “Leon Oswald,” an ex-Marine, an excel­lent shot, and some­one who felt that JFK should be assas­si­nat­ed for fail­ing to sup­port the Bay of Pigs inva­sion. ” . . . . After read­ing the War­ren Report, [HSCA’s first Chief Coun­sel Richard] Sprague won­dered why the com­mis­sion chose to dis­count the tes­ti­mo­ny of Sil­via Odio. . . . When she first heard of Oswald’s involve­ment with the Kennedy assas­si­na­tion, she imme­di­ate­ly recalled the vis­it of the three men. That after­noon she became very fear­ful, so much so that she faint­ed. She then met with her sis­ter, ans and they had both been watch­ing tele­vi­sion with Oswald’s pho­to on the screen, they both real­ized he was the man who thought the Cubans should have killed Kennedy after the Bay of Pigs. . . .” (pp. 350–351.)
12.–The Odio inci­dent cre­at­ed prob­lems for the War­ren Com­mi­sion: ” . . . . The third prob­lem, the one that both­ered Sprague, was that the dates of the vis­it clashed with the dates that Oswald was sup­posed to be going to Mex­i­co. . . .” (p. 352.)
13.–To dis­cred­it Sylvia Odio, War­ren Com­mis­sion coun­sel Wes­ley Liebler impugned her sex­u­al mores: ” . . . . Odio described what hap­pened next to Fonzi and the Church Com­mit­tee: ‘Not only that, he invit­ed me to his room upstairs to see some pic­tures. I did go, I went to his room. I want­ed to see how far a gov­ern­ment inves­ti­ga­tor would go and what they were try­ing to do to a wit­ness. . . . He showed me pic­tures, he made advances, yes, but I told him he was crazy.’ Liebler was­n’t through. To show her what kind of oper­a­tion the Com­mis­sion real­ly was, he told her that they had seen her pic­ture and joked about it at the War­ren Com­mis­sion. They said things like what a pret­ty girl you are going to see Jim. . . . For HSCA staff lawyer Bill Triplett told this author that the rea­son that chair­man Earl War­ren did not believe Sylvia Odio is that she was some kind of a ‘loose woman.’ . . .” (pp. 352–353.)
14.–The lin­guis­tic capa­bil­i­ties of the “Oswald” who alleged­ly was con­tact­ing the Cuban and Sovi­et embassies in Mex­i­co City are con­tra­dic­to­ry: ” . . . . it has Oswald speak­ing flu­ent Span­ish, which no one has ever said Oswald did. Fur­ther, the HSCA report says that Oswald spoke poor, bro­ken Russ­ian. Yet both Mari­na Oswald and George DeMohren­schildt said Oswald spoke Russ­ian quite well upon his return to the Unit­ed States. Fur­ther, pro­fes­sion­al trans­la­tor Peter Gre­go­ry thought Oswald was flu­ent enough to give him a let­ter cer­ti­fy­ing Oswald’s abil­i­ty to serve as a trans­la­tor. . . .” (p. 353.)
15.–The “Oswald” pho­tographed in Mex­i­co City was obvi­ous­ly an impos­tor: ” . . . . The CIA had mul­ti­ple still cam­eras set up out­side the Cuban embassy in Mex­i­co City to catch every­one com­ing out of and going inside in order to secure a visa to Cuba. When, at the request of the Com­mis­sion, the FBI asked the CIA for a pho­to of Oswald enter­ing the con­sulate, they got Com­missin Exhib­it 237. This is a pic­ture of a husky six foot­er with a crew-cut. Obvi­ous­ly not Oswald. . . . In Owald’s com­bined five vis­its to the Cuban con­sulate and Sovi­et con­sulate, the bat­tery of CIA cam­eras failed to get even one pic­ture of him enter­ing or leav­ing. In oth­er words, they were zero for ten. And the cam­era right out­side the Cuban con­sulate was pulse acti­vat­ed. . . . ” (pp. 353–354.)
16.–Both David Phillips and his assis­tant Anne Good­pas­ture were involved in mul­ti­ple obfus­ca­tions of the facts: ” . . . . Anne Good­pas­ture was in charge of the ‘dai­ly take’ from both tar­get embassies. That is the pho­tographs tak­en from out­side and the clan­des­tine tape record­ings made from inside the com­pounds. This is impor­tant because she then would have been the first per­son to see a pho­to of Oswald. There­fore, she should have sent for a pho­to of Oswald from Lan­g­ley in a time­ly man­ner while Oswald was still in Mex­i­co City. She did not. . . .” (p. 354.)
17.–Next, we high­light more of Phillip­s’s obstruc­tion of the inves­ti­ga­tion: ” . . . . Phillips said that they had no audio tapes because they ‘recy­cled their tapes every sev­en or eight days.’ The tapes were actu­al­ly recy­cled every ten days. But they were held for a longer time if so request­ed. Fur­ther, if any Amer­i­can cit­i­zen spoke bro­ken Russ­ian inside the Sovi­et con­sulate, the tape would be sent to Wash­ing­ton. Because he would be con­sid­ered of pos­si­ble oper­a­tional inter­est to the Sovi­ets. . . . Phillips also told [HSCA coun­sel Robert] Tanen­baum that the rea­son the CIA did not have a pho­to of Oswald was because their cam­era was out that day. This appears to be anoth­er lie. First of all, Oswald went to the Sovi­et con­sulate on two dif­fer­ent days, the twen­ty-sev­enth and twen­ty-eighth. So all three of the cam­eras cov­er­ing the site would have had to have been out on both days. . . .” (p. 354.)
18.–Phillips also dis­sem­bled con­cern­ing a cable sent to CIA head­quar­ters: ” . . . . The sur­veil­lance of the Russ­ian con­sulate revealed that by Octo­ber 1, the CIA knew that “Oswald” was in direct con­tact with those who worked there, such as Valery Kostikov of the KGB. But yet, the cable alert­ing head­quar­ters to this fact did not arrive until a week lat­er, Octo­ber 8, Phillips tried to explain this delay by blam­ing the trans­la­tors. He then said he knew that this was the case since he signed off on the cable. Hard­way and Lopez found out that Phillips did not sign off on the cable, since it did not deal in any way with Cuban mat­ters. But even worse, he could not have signed off on it because he was not in Mex­i­co City at the time. The like­ly rea­son the cable was sent out so late was to keep Oswald’s pro­file low while he was alleged­ly in Mex­i­co City. . . .” (pp. 354–355.)
19.–Oswald’s file at CIA began to be bifur­cat­ed: ” . . . . On or about Sep­tem­ber 23, Angle­ton began to bifur­cate Oswald’s file. the FBI reports on Oswald’s Fair Play for Cuba Com­mit­tee activ­i­ties in New Orleans went into a new oper­a­tional file, sep­a­rate from his 201 file. There­fore, the bizarre things Oswald was doing in New Orleans . . . .were all kept out of his 201 file. So when the late arriv­ing cable final­ly did come into CIA HQ from Mex­i­co City about Oswald in the Sovi­et con­sulate, this was kept sep­a­rate from his New Orleans activ­i­ties. Then two dif­fer­ent cables were sent out on Octo­ber 10. One was sent to the Bureau, the State Depart­ment, and the Navy, describ­ing a man who does­n’t fit Oswald’s descrip­tion: he is thir­ty-five years old, has an ath­let­ic build, and stands six feet tall. This descrip­tion resem­bles the Mys­tery Man pho­to. . . .” (pp. 355–356.)
20.–An alto­geth­er remark­able and reveal­ing aspect of the “Oswald” in Mex­i­co City gam­bit con­cerns the FBI’s “FLASH” notice on Oswald: ” . . . . Oswald was not placed on the FBI’s Secu­ri­ty Index list which was passed on to the Secret Ser­vice in advance of Kennedy’s vis­it to Dal­las. If he had been on that list, the Secret Ser­vice would have made sure he was not on the motor­cade route, since he con­sti­tut­ed a clear risk to Pres­i­dent Kennedy. One rea­son he was not on the list is because the FBI “FLASH” on Oswald, which had been in effect since his defec­tion in 1959 was removed. This warn­ing required any infor­ma­tion or inquiry on the sub­ject to e imme­di­ate­ly for­ward­ed to the Espi­onage Sec­tion of Divi­sion Five, the Domes­tic Intel­li­gence unit. Incred­i­bly, the “FLASH” was can­celed on Octo­ber 9, 1963. In oth­er words, after being attached to Oswald’s file for four years, it was removed just hours after he cable from Mex­i­co City arrived in Wash­ing­ton report­ing Oswald’s vis­it to the Sovi­et com­pound and meet­ing with Kostikov . . . .” (p. 356.)
21.–In light of Valery Kostikov’s iden­ti­ty, the FBI’s behav­ior is more than a lit­tle inter­est­ing: ” . . . . Kostikov’s true iden­ti­ty was revealed. His was the KGB unit respon­si­ble for assas­si­na­tions in the West­ern Hemi­sphere. After being method­i­cal­ly lulled to sleep . . . this infor­ma­tion must have felt like a hard punch to the jaw. Oswald had met with the KGB rep­re­sen­ta­tive for assas­si­na­tion sev­en weeks before Kennedy arrived in Dal­las. Yet, he was allowed to be in the build­ing behind where the Pres­i­den­t’s lim­ou­sine would be dri­ving. And no one in the FBI or Secret Ser­vice did any­thing for near­ly two months. The dia­bol­i­cal trap had been sprung. Hoover had no choice. He went into CYA over­drive. . . .” (p. 357.)
22.–In response to a tele­phoned ques­tion from Lyn­don Baines John­son, Hoover revealed that his agents had heard the tapes of “Oswald” speak­ing and seen the pho­tographs of “Oswald” vis­it­ing the Mex­i­co City diplo­mat­ic posts, but that nei­ther the calls, nor the pic­ture was the real Lee Har­vey Oswald. ” . . . . Hoover replied that this was all very con­fus­ing. He said that they had a tape and a pho­to of a man who was at the Sovi­et con­sulate using Oswald’s name. But, ‘That pic­ture and the tape do not cor­re­spond to this man’s voice, nor to his appear­ance. In oth­er words, it appears that there is a sec­ond per­son who was at the Sovi­et Embassy down there.’ On that same day, Hoover wrote a mem­o­ran­dum in which he said that two FBI agents who had been ques­tion­ing Oswald heard this tape and con­clud­ed that the voice on the tape was not Oswald’s. . . .” (p. 357.)
23.–In order to resolve the con­tra­dic­tions that the FBI had high­light­ed about “Oswald” in Mex­i­co City, the lie was gen­er­at­ed that the tapes had been destroyed before the assas­si­na­tion. Yet, Stan­ley Wat­son demon­strat­ed oth­er­wise: ” . . . . CIA offi­cer and Deputy Sta­tion Chief Stan­ley Wat­son tes­ti­fied to the HSCA that at least one record­ing exist­ed after the assas­si­na­tion. Fur­ther, the man who was first in charge of the CIA’s inquiry for the War­ren Com­mis­sion, John Whit­ten, wrote that while some tapes had been erased, some of ‘the actu­al tapes were also reviewed,’ and that anoth­er copy of the Octo­ber 1 ‘inter­cept on Lee Oswald’ had been ‘dis­cov­ered after the assas­si­na­tion. . . .” (p. 358.)
24.–In 1971, after the death of for­mer Mex­i­co City sta­tion chief Win­ston Scott, his wid­ow was threat­ened with removal of her sur­vivor ben­e­fits if she did not per­mit CIA coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence chief James Angle­ton access to her late hus­band’s safe: ” . . . . April 28, 1971 was the day after Janet Scott buried her hus­band Win­ston Scott. When she heard of Scot­t’s death, Anne Good­pas­ture told James Angle­ton about the con­tents of the for­mer Mex­i­co City sta­tion chief’s safe. On that day, on a mis­sion approved by Richard Helms, James Angle­ton flew to Mex­i­co City. He was in such a hur­ry that he for­got his pass­port. And if the record­ings were of the same false Oswald’s voice on tape, it would endan­ger the cov­er sto­ry about those tapes being destroyed pri­or to the assas­si­na­tion. After enter­ing the house, Angle­ton vague­ly threat­ened Janet’s wid­ow’s ben­e­fits. He then had scot­t’s safe emp­tied. The con­tents were shipped by plane to Lan­g­ley, Vir­ginia. The man most respon­si­ble for cre­at­ing first, the Oswald leg­end, then the design of the dooms­day sce­nario to the plot had now dis­posed of a last obstruc­tion to his hand­i­work. . . .” (p. 361.)