I had one of those fitful sleeps. I kept waking up with a start only to discover that I wasn’t ready to get out of bed. But each time I came to, I had a different article partially composed in my head.
The last one was entitled “Don’t make me connect the dots”, and I know why my subconscious was thinking about dot connection. It’s because I spent a good part of last night re-reading jpol’s classic media exposes How All the News About Political Assassinations In the United States
Has Not Been Fit to Print in The New York Times and JFK: How the Media Assassinated the Real Story.
I also read a good chunk of Real History Lisa’s two part article David Atlee Phillips,
Clay Shaw
and Freeport Sulphur and JFK, Indonesia, CIA & Freeport Sulphur. The NY Times recently did an expose on Freeport Sulphur, now known as Freeport McMoRan.
I don’t know how many of you come to blogs to read thirty-three year old articles about how the New York Times is running interference for the Warren Commission. But if you take the time to read these types of articles, a lot of scales will fall from your eyes. You may not suddenly realize that you are married to your mother after having killed your father, but you will understand that Judy Miller and Bob Woodward are not aberrations in the history of this country.
If there is a similarity between the JFK assassination and 9/11 it is in the race to provide a definitive explanation for what happened and who was responsible, followed by a pliant media failing to question the official line, followed by a commission that did not do an honest job of investigating. And then everyone fell in line to marginalize anyone who didn’t accept the commission reports as the gospel.
Regardless of who killed JFK, the lesson was obvious: provide future Presidents with better Secret Service protection. But in the case of 9/11, the lessons are still obscure. On the one hand, we know to improve airline security. But, on the other hand, we still do not know what to do to prevent people from wanting to carry out such attacks. And that is largely why we somehow found ourselves in Iraq. Without an honest discussion of why we were attacked (and it wasn’t because Saddam Hussein hates our freedoms) it was easy for BushCo. to sidetrack the entire Establishment into one big year-long bloodthirsty bout of cheerleading for an ill-conceived invasion of a country that had nothing to do with 9/11.
The New York Times and Washington Post were at the forefront of the cheerleading and they are not too keen to revisit their performance now. The only people that are really pursuing this story are the leakers at the CIA, State Department, Pentagon, and NSA, and the independent journalists and bloggers that are unafraid to pursue the truth.
If we get out too far on a limb we are knocked down as conspiracy theorists. But the invasion of Iraq was the biggest conspiracy of all time. And we can’t be expected to be able to connect all the dots. Only the corporate media has the contacts and assets needed to unravel this travesty.
If history is any guide, they will fail to do their job.
Thank you, Booman.
we need more people just like you. People who will dig deep into the fetid swamp and start the sad task of connecting some damn ugly dots.
i just read Susan’s article and it looks like we, an Peter Daou, all woke up on the same side of the bed.
Booman, just curious, what would be the response to a diary such as this at Kos?
You’re Booman so you can write and say things that we mere mortals can’t, but still I’d be interested to know what you think.
I don’t consider what you wrote one bit tin foily, I consider it somber and right on target. So, as I said, just wondering.
there is an easy way to find out, and that is for me to cross-post this.
I don’t expect too many comments though because the linked articles are very long. It’s a good way to kill my traffic. Heh.
And I assure you that I am mortal and extremely fallible.
Yep. That’s partly why the media fails to do their job. Because we fail (not you and me, personally – we as in the collective) fail to read long, in-depth pieces. We don’t pay for those. We come to blogs for quick hits, when the truth cannot be told in small sound bites.
I’m honored that YOU took time to read at least large parts of my long articles on Freeport. It’s sad to put all that time into writing something and find so few (outside the JFK research community) have an interest in that part of our collective history.
Thanks for all you do, and for providing a forum where people who care can more readily find the info the mainstream will NEVER, EVER tell us because frankly, it’s not profitable on many levels. But we need to bear down and do our research, because the truth and our real history ALWAYS matter.
You’re a gem. I’m so glad SusanHu pointed me here!
Lisa, I appreciated your work as well.
By the way, if you or Booman want one more dot to connect for the next time you revisit the Freeport story, note that the current board includes one Stapleton Roy.
Roy is also on the board of Kissinger Associates.
He was Clinton’s Ambassador to Indonesia – notably during the crisis of the mid-90’s.
Previously, he served as Bush’s post-Tiananmen Ambassador to China, and as Ambassador to Singapore under Reagan.
Plus ca change …
cross-posted
You also have balls of steel.
I just recommended!
That must be uncomfortable in tight pants.
Rec’d too.
This is why I have yet to watch Fahrenheit 911. I just finished reading Franken’s new book and I am beginning to wonder about 9/11 and our eventual invasion of Iraq. Yet my brain and my soul can’t stand the type of rage that will fill my body if I think about it too long.
The result of not looking at 9/11 with honest eyes is the difference in the future we leave to our children.
I’m hardly convinced of the Moore thesis – that the problem is that our Saudi allies themselves turned on us. That the larger Bin Laden family and the Saudi monarch were part of the 9/11 plot.
I tend to see it as pretty straightforward – our Saudi allies are thugs, and they inspired enemies, who eventually recognized our role, and became our enemies as well.
If we jettisoned the Saudi monarch and the Egyptian dictator, we’d do a hell of a lot to improve our relations with the Arab street. We won’t, because of the close, corrupt economic ties between this country and the Saudis. But Moore had it backwards.
I couldn’t honestly say I know exactly what Moore’s thesis is. I agree with the influences you mention. The blindspot comes from not looking at the internal political machinery of our intelligence and justice departments for misplaced alliances with other groups.
I haven’t been sleeping well either. Must be that time of year when we reflect back at look at all the death and destruction, lies and corruption and say to ourselves…WTF is wrong with this country? Why are we not all out there banging on the White House doors or Congresses doors demanding to be seen? We MUST do all we can within our power to IMPEACH the Cabal of Fascists that taken over our country. Thank you Booman for doing so much to keep us informed and thinking. Thank you SusanHu for all the time you spend digging deep and trying to keep a sense of humor about it all. It must be hard on your soul. Thank you to each and every person that participates at this blog, that writes diaries, makes comments, takes actions to make our country a better place. I love and admire you all. It is a privelage to call Booman Tribune my blog home!
I’m not sleeping particularly well for a variety of reasons, but one of them is clearly because the trajectory the Bush regime is on virtually guarantees that next year will be worse than this year, just as this year has been worse than last year, etc.
Whether it’s foreign policy in general or Iraq and the Middle East in particular, domestic policy in general or the specifics of the economic imbalances threatenng to destroy the economy in toto, whether the environment, the starvation of social programs, the hijacking of the judiciary and the rollback of civil liberties, the more BushCo does the further from constitutional democracy our country becomes.
Even if there was some weird neocon version of “The Rapture” which lifted Cheney and his cronies off this earth and placed them in some alternative universe, the damage they’ve wrought will continue to metastasize for many many years. even if the unlikely happenned and a group of *principled, honest and determined Democrats gained control of the Dem Party and managed to achieve a majority inone congressional house in 06, stopping the infectious spread of the BushCo insanity will take decades.
I just don’t see any way around this ugly fact. We must fight against the bums on all fronts all the time, but let’s not delude ourselves into expecting easy and comprehensive solutions yeilding unrealistically promising results in the short term.
You write:
“Regardless of who killed JFK, the lesson was obvious: provide future Presidents with better Secret Service protection.”
“Secret Services” DID kill him.
You also write:
“…the invasion of Iraq was the biggest conspiracy of all time.”
Don’t be too sure of THAT one, either.
Part of a larger conspiracy that has lasted over 45 years here in the U.S.?
Most likely…
(Ike knew…read his farewell speech.)
And…don’t wait up for it to end, either.
It will have to crash and burn first. And NONE of us want to have to live through that one.
Trust me.
AG
“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
“We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.”
Yup.
Nothing new, here…
Except that we forgot what he said.
AG
“right” the US is, ponder the frequency with which those who constitute what passes for a “left” in America quote a conservative Republican president of the 1950s.
Yes, they will fail to do their job. From time to time, for whatever reason, there will be a few flashes of light in the darkness from the of the MSM, but the overall direction will continue as it always has.
One thing that gives me hope is that there have also always been the radicals crying in the wilderness, the publishers of samizdat cranking mimeo machines in basements, but however hard they tried, they could reach only a tiny fraction of the public. Now the internet is our samizdat and has the potential to reach enough people for a critical mass.
But, but, but . . . I despair that so many take this tool for granted. How are you reading this? Who brings it to you? What makes it possible is the same corporatochracy Real Lisa was talking about. What Time-Warner, SBC, Verizon giveth, they can taketh away.
The most enlightening thing I ever did in terms of my political education was to go to the National Conference on Media Reform last May. What FreePress is doing may be more important than anything. BooMan, if you can’t afford to go to the next one – whenever and wherever it is – I will personally buy you a plane ticket. (Offer good in the continental U.S. only. Some restrictions may apply.)
Feel free to pet the sig.
And keep that pencil moving, BooMan, but do not neglect to lay in a generous store of Prozac.
Operation Mockingbird set the pattern for MSM collusion with government way back in the immediate aftermath of WW2 and there’s little reason to believe this very template of governmental influence and control over major media is not still going full force.
let’s hear what you think. Who did it? Lyndon Johnson? J. Edgar Hoover? Fidel Castro? The CIA? Nikita Kruschev? The Mafia? Joe DiMaggio? Or did they all get together in a smoke filled room to plan the deed and then bury the evidence in Area 51 along with the shiny metallic aliens?
I’ll start the ball rolling with my opinion – Lee Harvey Oswald acting alone.
It is unbelievably simple to pick apart an investigation by casting doubt on little pieces of it. The “creationists” do it with Darwin all the time. Johnny Cochran did it with the OJ Simpson jury. If you find proof that the universe is 6,000 years old or that Columbinan drug lords killed Nicole and Ron, let me know. In the meantime, Oswald had the rifle, the bullets, the opportunity, and a history of shooting at people.
.
Geez, it’s that simple ::
Oswald had the rifle, the bullets, the opportunity, and a history of shooting at people.
I guess it wasn’t necessary to make Marina a widow by an assassin’s hand in the Dallas Police Department. Lee Harvey Oswald could have stood trial and get a sentencing by an U.S. Court of Justice and a jury. Problem is, history was made by man’s interference and didn’t happen by nature of events.
Warren Commission wrote a lot of papers, but didn’t bother to fill the gaps.
If you have a reasonable doubt as to whether the State has proved any one or more of the elements of the crime charged, you must find the defendant not guilty.
“Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason?
For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.”
▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
Here is what one prime suspects had to say:
David Atlee Phillips:
David Atlee Phillips died of cancer on 7th July, 1988. He left behind an unpublished manuscript. The novel is about a CIA officer who lived in Mexico City. In the novel the character states: “I was one of those officers who handled Lee Harvey Oswald… We gave him the mission of killing Fidel Castro in Cuba… I don’t know why he killed Kennedy. But I do know he used precisely the plan we had devised against Castro. Thus the CIA did not anticipate the president’s assassination, but it was responsible for it. I share that guilt.”
……………………..
The “Confession”, you refer to was not in so many words as such. I cannot remember the time frames involved, but this was what was told to me by my father, James Atlee Phillips, who is deceased. He said that David had called him with reference to his (Davids), invitation to a dinner, by a man who was purportedly writing a book on the CIA. At this dinner, was also present a man who was identified only as the “Driver”. David told Jim that he knew the man was there to identify him as Raul Salcedo, whose name you should be familiar with, if your research is accurate in this matter. David then told Jim that he had written a letter to the various media, as a “Preemptive Strike” , against any and all allegations about his involvement in the JFK assassination. Jim knew that David was the head of the “Retired Intelligence Officers of the CIA”, or some such organization, and that he was extremely critical of JFK, and his policies. Jim knew at that point, that David was in some way, seriously involved in this matter and he and David argued rather vehemently, resulting in a silent hiatus between them that lasted almost six years according to Jim. Finally, as David was dying of irreversible lung cancer, he called Jim and there was apparently no reconciliation between them, as Jim asked David pointedly, “Were you in Dallas on that day”? David said, “Yes”, and Jim hung the phone up.
conversation? Is Mr. Hancock trying to sell books? How are we to know the truth of any of this with no actual evidence?
With all due respect, Booman, this sounds like a lot of “he said, she said”.
I believe Walsh is the source of the conversation.
The other part is relayed from Atlee Phillips’s nephew.
You can believe these events took place or not.
Another prime suspect was James Jesus Angleton, who was reportedly convinced that the KGB did it. Of course, a recently declassified internal cia investigation reveals that many in the CIA, including Angleton’s assistant, believed he was a double agent.
I don’t believe Oswald was the only shooter. But I have no idea what happened. I do find it interesting that many people close to the Kennedys and/or the CIA think it was an inside job.
I’d be interested in your perspective regarding the “magic bullet”.
wasn’t magical at all. It followed the same laws of physics followed by all matter.
Did you read the report of this bullet’s presumed trajectory?
I don’t mean to be patronizing, but you can’t believe that if you’ve delved into the critical literature. There is no way to even place Oswald on the sixth floor. He claimed he was on the second floor, and six alibi witnesses back him up. It is also inconceiveable that he could have gone down those stairs after the assassination without being seen (the elevator was on the first floor), yet no one saw him.
Apologists have labored mightily to build a case for Oswald as the lone assassin, but they inevitably rely on tainted evidence, perjured testimony, obfuscation, and outright lies.
Gerald Posner’s “Case Closed” is one of the most dishonest books ever written.
and the house select committee determined that the acoustical evidence suggested at least two shooters. Correct?
So, that means we didn’t solve the crime.
The acoustic “evidence” has been discredited:
Imagine what he could have accomplished with a scratch-n-sniff freebie instead of a cheap, mass produced, low quality record.
.pdf
Sorry to disappoint you, but it is the supposed rebuttal to the accoustics evidence that has been discredited, not the original study.
The panel you allude to was made up of a team of government connected “scientists,” every one of which has ties to the CIA, which Richard Garwin, head of the panel, admitted to at a recent conference in Washington, D.C. This panel never even examined the accoustical evidence (because it cannot be refuted). Instead they relied on sounds on a second police channel that can be heard in the background on the tape which would appear not to line up with the timing of the assassination.
First of all, the tape is not an original, contrary to what they would have you believe. It bears a totally different Dallas Police evidence number than the original. That in itself blows this line of reasoning out of the water because if it is a copy it very likely was recording the original channel 1 dictabelt while another machine was playing channel 2 in the background, thus any misalignment of timing would be irrelevent. Aside from that, the two channels were being recorded at different speeds and frequencies which would also account for these anomolies.
The bottom line is that the accoustice tests, conducted by the top experts in the world and validated by a second set of experts at Queens College, identified at least 5 shots (not 4) to a better than 95% certainty. The accoustical pattern of Dealey Plaza is like a fingerprint. No other location in the world would produce the same pattern. The location of the mike can be determined, and the police officer whose mike was open was exactly where he had to be to record these patterns. The patterns align exactly with timing indicated by other evidence including frame 313 of the Zapruder film where the president’s head is seen to explode from the impact of a bullet.
Garwin was set to debate Donald Thomas at a conference in Washington D.C. last month. He admitted that his group had not made any attempt to analyze the work of the original accoustic s experts — an admission that totally discredits their work. The very fact that the sounds of the tape so perfectly align with known shots and the Dealey Plaza fingerprint requires that any effort to debunk the results explain how these patterns got there if they are not gunshots fired in Dealey Plaza at 1230pm on November 22, 1963. This was but an other example of a bunch of professional whores using junk science to try to prop up the Warren Report on behalf of their government benefactors.
Garwin gave his very flawed presentation which fooled no one. Donald Thomas then presented his extremely persuasive rebuttal showing that the accoustics evidence was stronger than ever. Garwin suddenly recalled a previous engagement and fled the hall before the Q&A session began. He was in such a hurry he left his cell phone behind.
One wonders why they have to keep coming up with this shabby junk science to prop up the Warren Report if it happened the way they say it did.
but, what I can believe are facts. There is zero physical evidence pointing to anyone but Oswald – zero.
When you say:
You’re probably right, when the President of the United States has just been shot dead in the street, people would naturally turn their attention to the stairwell.
It is very easy for you to say that but, pardon my french, you haven’t a clue what you are talking about. The fact is that there is absolutely no evidence pointing to Oswald unless you close your eyes to the fact that a) he was on the second floor; b) the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle was almost certainly not used in the assassination, and was almost certainly planted; that the pristine bullet found on a stretcher in Parkland Hospital (also almost certainly planted) could not possibly have caused the seven wounds attributed to it while shattering two thick bones; c) that if it didn’t there had to be two assassins because that rifle could not fire two shots in less than 2.3 seconds (not counting the time it would take to aim)…
It goes on and on.
I cannot argue this with you when you make statements like “There is zero physical evidence pointing to anyone but Oswald – zero,” because this proves you either know nothing about the evidence; or: are very easliy persuaded by liars like Gerald Posner who lie shamelessly; or c) simply don’t care what the facts are.
The fact are the opposite of what you suggest so unequivocally. There is zero evidence of Oswald’s guilt and plenty that he never fired a shot.
of before is being “easily persuaded” by anyone.
Here’s the acid test. And I know nothing of your views on this so I’m taking a chance here:
Did James Earl Ray kill Martin Luther King? Did Sirhan Sirhan kill Robert Kennedy?
If your answer is “yes” to these questions, I’ll take the time to answer your JFK theory point by point.
If your answer is “no”, I’m pretty sure I’d be wasting my time.
The answer to both questions is no. The bullet that killed RFK was fired from pointy blank range from just behind his right ear. There is no way Sirhan could have fired that shot.
It is extremely unlikely that the bullet that killed Dr. King was fired from the rooming house where James Earl Ray had rented a room. It is highly doubtful that Ray was there at the time.
That being said, I don’t really care whether you respond or not. I responded to you out of courtesy. If you don’t like my answers, I don’t really give two shits. I don’t plan to waste my time debating you.
Would these crimes be accepted as a type of contract killing hit if it weren’t for the political fame of the victims? If the emotional reaction and involvement is removed, does the evidence look different?
Ok. Try this.
The back wound did not go through. Fact. The doctors tried hard to find the bullet and were puzzled that it wasn’t in the wound, so puzzled that the FBI agents at the autopsy wrote a memo about the possibility of the use of ice bullets.
So there’s no way the single bullet works, and therefore more than one person was shooting at Kennedy.
Yes. It really is amazing how a little piece of info brings everything crashing down.
your “little piece of info” is absolutely wrong:
Further down the page is a link to the autopsy photograph which clearly shows the wound high in the President’s back.
But I suppose you’re going to tell me that the photo is a fake and just another part of this “conspiracy”.
I assume Lisa is referring to the testimony of several witnesses that the back wound was only a few inches deep. here.
the back wound was an entrance wound with its exit in the neck. One can only imagine how stressful and chaotic the scene was that afternoon in the emergency room. I hesitate to link to this, but it’s an autopsy photograph which shows clearly the correlation between the location of the back wound and the exit wound very low in the throat. My recommendation is not to look – it’s put me in a somber mood.
“Let the great world spin forever down the ringing grooves of change.”
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Locksley Hall, 1842, l. 182
Been on the Internet for one+ year now, love the availability of real historic info and hate the desinformation campaigns to spread lies and false leads. Need to thread carefully sometimes, but need to focus on the sensible political campaign that lies ahead in 2006!
I would love to hear a timeline of political activities or agenda for BooMan’s Place in 2006. I hope BooMan, you could provide some leadership so a path can become visible and all effort gets extra cachet towards a unified goal.
The Democrats should be party of inclusion of minority groups and not of exclusion and division.
On Washington politics and corporate money buying favors in Congress and the White House, the Democrats need a presidential candidate in 2008 who can clean house, and bring the congressional candidates to represent We The People!
● BREAKING NEWS ::
DoJ – Investigation started on NSA publication in the NYT!
“Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason?
For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.”
▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
One only has to read “The Assassinations” a collection
of articles by “Probe ” edited by J. DiEugenio and Lisa Pease.
It’s scary that today you still can’t get Oswald’s or his wife and mother’s W2 forms…..national security bullshit.
“Into The Buzzsaw” is another book showing the press’s complicity with the government in shoveling shit on us.
peace
I came into all of this political thinking in 2002 without many preconceived beliefs in trusting history. I only started looking closer at the inner workings when the Bush/MSM case for war made little sense. I read as much as I could find on both sides and followed each detail with my own searches in a type of flow chart of dids and what-ifs
I can’t really describe the immediate, overwhelming dread I felt when I first saw the PNAC website. Back at that time it wasn’t dared mentioned in the media. There was actually little dissent allowed then and I was stuck wondering if it was a hoax, horrible secret or if my discovery could help save lives. The few people around me I shared it with wrote me off as crazy, but I noticed one or two brave souls mention it on the news. When they did, just the mention of the name, it was met with a look of shock from thye anchor and a quick cut to commercial. The return from break always had a new guest. I could forcast the next development, outrageous act or manipulation by following what I and others saw in the neocons plans.
The current events would play out as the agenda was followed but still, no one would dare utter PNAC. Eventually, it came to be discussed and even then it was ‘tin-foil’ fodder as claimed by those who didn’t want it exposed. I only believe the conspiracy theories that deal in facts. It’s odd that to discount the c/t one must accept the official story that is short on facts and long on unbelievable coincidences.
The only reason I looked in the first place is because I didn’t think the Iraq war would be justified and I didn’t want my kids forced into fighting an unjust generational war. Finding the facts to make an informed decision hasn’t seemed to help much either.
One most remarkable coincidence is the same group of players that have key roles in these events over the last 30-40 years of our history. The same ‘perception management’ factors also surround the controversies.
Nice piece. This has gone for a long time & there’s no end in sight. Their strength is in our denial. Fortunately we’ve now got better weapons with which to fight back.
I tend to think of Hearst & “yellow journalism” as the start of this, but that’s probably because I don’t have the history down to go further back.
One prominent, early example of gov’t paid journalism would be the NYT science reporter, writing about the radiation & the bomb, while on the Pentagon’s payroll.
Norman Solomon’s book on the media & Iraq war is worth a looksie.
Chomsky beat this horse.
Has anyone else heard Flashpoints’ report about Regina Alexandre, an AP byliner in Haiti & sometimes NYT stringer, who is taking money from the State Dept. funded NED? Part of her job there appears to be teaching Haitians all about the ‘free press.” urrgh . . .
I am deeply flattered.
I was still a teenager when JFK was assassinated, and I was naive enough to believe it when the media told me that Oswald did it all by his lonesome. Those were simpler more naive times — before Watergate; before the CIA assassination plots were common knowledge; before Iran-Contra. It was much easier to believe the government back then.
It wasn’t until 1966 that I bothered to look into the Warren Report (mostly out of curiosity, not suspicion), and the world changed for me. There is no way to believe that horseshit once you examine the evidence, yet the more the critics pecked away at the official story the more the media tried to demonize them and reconstruct the Warren Report.
Clearly the media feels threatened when people come to distrust the basic institutions of government. They and the corporations that own them are, after all, the Establishment, and they have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. That is why we ought not be surprised when they trivialize the “news” and carefully avoid those stories they prefer we don’t know too much about.
One thing has changed though. The internet has created a major new venue for the exchange of information. We now have the power to force the media to pay attention and occasionally actually report the news, as was powerfully demonstrated by the Downing Street Minutes. The mainstream U.S. media virtually ignored that story even as it was front-page news throughout the rest of the world (that was also the case when conspiracy theories about the JFK assassination first began to take hold back in the mid-60’s. It was the blogosphere that forced the msm to finally acknowledge that this was a major news story. The same can be said to varying degrees about Plamegate, White Phosphorous, Judy Miller’s fall from grace, et al. We really do have the power now.
I am no longer confident that the Central Intelligence Agency co-operated with the committee. My reasons follow:
The committee focused, among other things, on (1) Oswald, (2) in New Orleans, (3) in the months before he went to Dallas, and, in particular, (4) his attempt to infiltrate an anti-Castro group, the Directorio Revolucionario Estudiantil or DRE.
These were crucial issues in the Warren Commission’s investigation; they were crucial issues in the committee’s investigation. The Agency knew it full well in 1964; the Agency knew it full well in 1976-79. Outrageously, the Agency did not tell the Warren Commission or our committee that it had financial and other connections with the DRE, a group that Oswald had direct dealings with!
What contemporaneous reporting is or was in the Agency’s DRE files? We will never know, for the Agency now says that no reporting is in the existing files. Are we to believe that its files were silent in 1964 or during our investigation?
I don’t believe it for a minute. Money was involved; it had to be documented. Period. End of story. The files and the Agency agents connected to the DRE should have been made available to the commission and the committee. That the information in the files and the agents who could have supplemented it were not made available to the commission and the committee amounts to willful obstruction of justice.
Obviously, too, it did not identify the agent who was its contact with the DRE at the crucial time that Oswald was in contact with it: George Joannides.
During the relevant period, the committee’s chief contact with the Agency on a day-to-day basis was Scott Breckinridge. (I put aside our point of contact with the office of chief counsel, Lyle Miller) We sent researchers to the Agency to request and read documents. The relationship between our young researchers, law students who came with me from Cornell, was anything but “happy.” Nevertheless, we were getting and reviewing documents. Breckinridge, however, suggested that he create a new point of contact person who might “facilitate” the process of obtaining and reviewing materials. He introduced me to Joannides, who, he said, he had arranged to bring out of retirement to help us. He told me that he had experience in finding documents; he thought he would be of help to us.
I was not told of Joannides’ background with the DRE, a focal point of the investigation. Had I known who he was, he would have been a witness who would have been interrogated under oath by the staff or by the committee. He would never have been acceptable as a point of contact with us to retrieve documents. In fact, I have now learned, as I note above, that Joannides was the point of contact between the Agency and DRE during the period Oswald was in contact with DRE.
That the Agency would put a “material witness” in as a “filter” between the committee and its quests for documents was a flat out breach of the understanding the committee had with the Agency that it would co-operate with the investigation.
The committee’s researchers immediately complained to me that Joannides was, in fact, not facilitating but obstructing our obtaining of documents. I contacted Breckinridge and Joannides. Their side of the story wrote off the complaints to the young age and attitude of the people.
They were certainly right about one question: the committee’s researchers did not trust the Agency. Indeed, that is precisely why they were in their positions. We wanted to test the Agency’s integrity. I wrote off the complaints. I was wrong; the researchers were right. I now believe the process lacked integrity precisely because of Joannides.
For these reasons, I no longer believe that we were able to conduct an appropriate investigation of the Agency and its relationship to Oswald. Anything that the Agency told us that incriminated, in some fashion, the Agency may well be reliable as far as it goes, but the truth could well be that it materially understates the matter.
What the Agency did not give us none but those involved in the Agency can know for sure. I do not believe any denial offered by the Agency on any point. The law has long followed the rule that if a person lies to you on one point, you may reject all of his testimony.
I now no longer believe anything the Agency told the committee any further than I can obtain substantial corroboration for it from outside the Agency for its veracity. We now know that the Agency withheld from the Warren Commission the CIA-Mafia plots to kill Castro. Had the commission known of the plots, it would have followed a different path in its investigation. The Agency unilaterally deprived the commission of a chance to obtain the full truth, which will now never be known.
Significantly, the Warren Commission’s conclusion that the agencies of the government co-operated with it is, in retrospect, not the truth.
We also now know that the Agency set up a process that could only have been designed to frustrate the ability of the committee in 1976-79 to obtain any information that might adversely affect the Agency.
Many have told me that the culture of the Agency is one of prevarication and dissimulation and that you cannot trust it or its people. Period. End of story.
I am now in that camp.
Anyone interested in pursuing this story further should consult the reporting by Jefferson Morley of the Washington Post. See, e.g., Jefferson Morley, “Revelation 19.63” Miami New Times (April 2001).