CAPA NPC Sunshine Week 2017

                    CAPA

                                           Citizens Against Political Assassinations

Washington, DC

Leaders in the JFK research community will convene at the National Press Club during “Sunshine Week” in March to underscore the historical importance of the scheduled release next October by the National Archives of the final batch of declassified documents about the 1963 assassination of President Kennedy.  

CAPA has reserved a room from noon to 5 p.m. on Thursday, March 16, with the flexibility to adjust according to schedules of the VIP participants.

The projected panels below can be adjusted, including to create stand-alone keynotes. Sunshine Week extends from March 13 to March 17, 2017 nationally and in Washington, DC.  Sunshine Week was created by the American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE) and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press (RCFP) to foster open government. 

Keynote Dialog: NARA Progress In Releasing Final JFK Assassination Papers By October, 2017 Deadline

·         Keynote: The Hon. John R. Tunheim, J.D., Chief U.S. District Judge, Minnesota, and former chairman, Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB)

·         Discussants:

·         David S. Ferriero, Ph.D., Archivist of the United States, National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) or Martha W. Murphy, FOIA Public Liaison, Executive Branch, NARA (invited)

·         John M. Newman, Ph.D., author of “Oswald and the CIA”  and other books, former Army intelligence officer and assistant to the National Security Agency director, and former University of Maryland professor

·         Cyril H. Wecht, J.D., M.D., forensic pathologist, medical school professor, leader or former leader multiple professional societies, author or co-author of nearly 50 books, CAPA chairman and former Allegheny County coroner for 20 years

What Might We Find In 3,600 New Documents Based On Recent Revelations?

·         James H. Lesar, J.D., FOIA expert and president, Assassination Archives & Research Center (AARC)

·         Nate Jones, M.A., Director of the Freedom of Information Act Project, National Security Archive, George Washington University

·         David Talbot, “The Devil’s Chessboard” and “Brothers” author, San Francisco Chronicle columnist, CAPA advisory board member and Salon founder and former editor-in-chief

·        

          Jefferson Morley, author of “Our Man In Mexico City” and other books, AlterNet Washington correspondent,  JFKFacts.org editor litigating JFK FOIA cases and former Washington Post reporter

·          

          Russ Baker, WhoWhatWhy founder and editor, media  commentator, and author of best-selling “Family of Secrets” and a forthcoming JFK book

·          

          Adam A. Marshall, J.D., Knight Foundation Litigation Attorney, Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press (RCFP)

·         

         Andrew Kreig, J.D., M.S.L., Justice Integrity Project director, author, and Citizens Against Political Assassination Board (CAPA) board , ASNE, SPJ and National Press Club member, moderator

Next Steps In Fact Finding

·         Lawrence Schnapf, J.D., attorney and Citizens Against Political Assassination Board (CAPA) board member, moderator

Meet the Authors - Attendees can meet the prominent authors /speakers and buy books for signing. 

Also, a special tutorial session will be held on “How To Study the Kennedy Assassination.”  

Finally, CAPA will hold a reception at the close of the program for speakers and CAPA members.

CAPA is a non-partisan research organization (www.capa-hq.com), is taking the lead in organizing this event to assemble a broad coalition of media and research groups to co-sponsor and thereby underscore the importance of the forthcoming disclosures. C-SPAN and other wide news coverage is planned.  # # #

Assassination Attempt on de Gaulle

COMMISSION No. 285

Office of Security, Washington D.C.

September 27, 1962

Regional Security Office, Amembassy Paris

Attempted Assassination of President de GAULLE – August 22, 1962

Ref: Our Office Memorandum dated September 18, 1962

On September 21, 1962, Mr. E. A. STOCCANE, Chief, Local Investigation Unit, of this office, interviewed M. Andre DUCRET, Commissaire Divisionnaire de Police, Chief of the Security Services of the President of the Republic, for details concerning the attempted assassination of President Charles de Gaulle on August 22, 1962. Mr. Stoccane obtained the following:

The automobile in which the President was riding was a current model CITROEN DE without any protective devices. The tires were identified as Michelin “X”. An older model car but armored has been available for the President’s use but he had repeatedly declined to use it. His car was identified as a CITROEN (traction avant 13 CV) and has been stored for several years in the garage of the Prefecture de Police.

Until lately, President De Gaulle had proved to be a very difficult person to protect because of his aversion to security arrangements to ensure his personal safety. In fact, he actually dislikes being protected. In his private moves, he does not wish to see any policeman, in or out of uniform; nor does he want any motorcycle escorts. This was his attitude and the situation on August 22, 1962 when the latest attempt on his life was made.

There was no protection in front of his car and only a single police car was following the President’s vehicle at a discreet distance. Without the President’s knowledge M. DUCRET, as was his usual practice, had detailed two motorcycle policeman to follow the convoy at even a more discreet distance. They were to intervene only in case of a serious incident. Meanwhile, they had to maintain the appearance of traffic policeman who were not involved in the President’s movement. Thus the President’s vehicle was traveling in the same manner as any other on the highway, stopping at traffic signals and moving with the traffic flow. This was the manner in which President de Gaulle had been proceeding between the Elysee Palace and his private residence at Colombey-les-Deux-Eglises on August 22, 1962.

It was only after the first attempt against his life at Pont-sur-Seine that the President made one concession to the staff in charge of his security: he agreed to use an aircraft as transport from Villacoublay to St. Dizier.

                                                                       2.

He had also been advised to vary the vehicles in which he rode, even to the extent of utilizing cars painted in colors other than black. However he refused, declaring that he always wanted to ride in the same black CITROEN DS.

The distance between the Elysee Palace and Villacoublay Airport is approximately twenty kilometers. While the route within Paris proper to the airport could have been varied, it was necessary once on the outskirts and in the vicinity of the airport to proceed via a crossing known as “Rond Point du Petit Clamart” or by a devious route using a road emerging from Versailles. The shortest route, however, is by way of the “Rond Point du Petit Clamart.”

Investigation of the August 22 attempt disclosed that the ambush had been organized and directed by a person with military experience and this was immediately noted. The tactics employed were similar to those used by the infantry in attacking convoys. One group comprising two men with machine guns had, it is believed, the mission of immobilizing the first vehicle in order to block the convoy. This was offered as an explanation why the assilants aimed low since it appeared that they had sought to neutralize the vehicle’s hydraulic system, and puncture the tires and gasoline tank. It further assumed that another group was to have attacked the President himself.

As it developed, the tires deflated slowly and the car was thus able to proceed to the airport in the vicinity.

M. Jean-Marie BASTIEN-THIRY, the aeronautical military engineer, who was recently apprehended and who admitted having organized the attempt revealed during the course of his interrogation that if the itinerary followed by the President had been known earlier and more important, the line-up of the vehicles, his tactics would have been different and more effective. He informed the authorities that the assailants three vehicles would have passed the President’s car and the last of these vehicles, a small delivery truck, would have had its rear door thrown own and fire directed at President de Gaulle.

On Sunday, September 16, 1962, President de Gaulle acceded to the request of his security staff and used a helicopter from the Ecole Militaire to his private residence at Colombay-les-Deux-Eglises. However, upon arriving at his destination, either because of wounded pride or because these measures ran counter to his usual attitude, he appeared to be extremely bad temper as a result of which he neglected to attend Mass on that day, an omission that astonished his associates.

M. DUCRET had subsequently forwarded to the President a list of security recommendations to ensure his safety. These were returned to him crossed with red crayon, indicating disapproval.

The combined security elements of the Ministre de L’Interier, Ministre des Armees and the Prefet de Police have agreed that henceforth all presidential moves, irrespective of what they might be, shall be considered as official movements.

Consequently, the itinerary will be carefully scrutinized, the convoy framed with motorcycles and the movement will be accompanied by suitable sound warnings to cause other traffic to halt. Further, a heavily armed car will precede the President’s vehicle and the entire convoy will travel at a rate of speed which, according to M. DUCRET, will be one of the most important security elements.

Since the foregoing and other material previously transmitted constitute the maximum data obtainable from the French authorities, the requirement levied on this office is considered as fulfilled. In the event of further specific request for additional information received from headquarters, efforts will be exerted to comply.

Honor MLK by Releasing the Records on his Assassination

Honor MLK by Releasing the Government Records on his Assassination - By Bill Kelly 

We honor MLK on Martin Luther King Day - Monday January 16 by taking a day off from work and making it a day of public service - volunteering to do an unpleasant task that will make for a better world. 

But this year 2017 is special because of the expected release of the remaining sealed government records on the assassination of President Kennedy. Among those records are the files of the House Select Committee on Assassinations that also investigated the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., documents that remain sealed.

The Congressional Black Caucus was instrumental in getting the HACA established by including the murder of MLK in its investigation.

When we began to lobby Congress to release the assassination records we started with the HSCA files, but after Oliver Stone's film "JFK" sparked such public outrage, the JFK Act was written so it included all government records on the JFK assassination, but didn't include the HSCA records on the King assassination. That prompted Oliver Stone at a public hearing to ask the Congressmen, "What do I have to do to get you to release these records, make a movie about the King assassination too?" 

Bills to release the HSCA MLK records have been introduced in past sessions of Congress but never got out of committee and now must be reintroduced in this new Congress.

A separate bill to release the investigation records of civil rights murders of the 1950s and 60s considered under the Emmett Till Bill is being prepared at the instigation of some New Jersey high school students and is being given serious consideration. 

But what can we individual citizens do to at least try to make this great unjustice right?

Getting JFK Act oversight hearings and obtaining the release of the MLK HSCA files will take as much public support and outrage as was expressed in 1992 - but now we have to generate that momentum without an Oliver Stone film.

While each person does his own day of service in the name of MLK you can do yours this year by spending a few hours writing letters to your representatives in Congress asking them to oversee and hold hearings on the JFK Act and release the MLK HSCA records, as well as open the investigative files on 50 year old civil rights murders considered under the Emmett Till Bill.

If you do write or contact your representatives please be polite and respectful, inquisitive and not demanding. Keep your letter short, sweet and to the point - please see to the oversight and enforcement of the JFK Act of 1992 as it reaches its sunset provision on October 26, 2017 and release the MLK HSCA records.

Here are the names and addresses of the Congressional oversight committee members - 

Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Ut3) 

2236 Rayburn House Office Building

Washington DC 20515 

(202) 225-7751  Jonathan Skladany - Staff Director 

Home office

Rep. Jason Chaffetz 

51 S. University Ave.,

Provo, Utah, 84601 

(801) 851-2500

Minority chair 

Elijah Cummings (D. Md7)

Committee on Oversight and Reform House of Representatives

2157 Rayburn House Office Building

Washington 20515-6143

     

Message to the White House: Full JFK Disclosure in 2017

Message to White House: Full JFK Disclosure in 2017

In an open letter to the White House, a diverse group of JFK authors and investigators are calling on the president's lawyer to endorse complete declassification of thousands of pages of still-secret government records related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963.

https://www.maryferrell.org/pages/Featured_Letter_on_2017_Records.html

November 18, 2016

The Hon. W. Neil Eggleston
Counsel to the President
The White House
Washington, D.C. 20502

Dear Mr. Eggleston,

October 26, 2017 will mark the 25th anniversary of the JFK Records Act, one of the most successful full disclosure measures in the annals of open government law. We write to ask your support for effective enforcement of the Act now and under the next administration.

The JFK Assassination Records Act was approved unanimously by Congress and signed into law by President George H.W. Bush on October 26, 1992. The Act resulted in the declassification of some 4 million pages of records related to the assassination of President Kennedy. The Act also serves as a model for other open government measures that have made public key chapters in the nation's history without compromising legitimate secrets. As President Obama said in August, "we have a responsibility to confront the past with honesty and transparency."

The JFK Records Collection is now the single most-requested body of records at National Archives II in College Park, Maryland. Scholars, journalists, historians, and students have found these records invaluable for writing the history of the Cold War, Kennedy's presidency, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Warren Commission, Vietnam, the counterculture, and Watergate.

The final test of the law will come on October 26, 2017. That's when all of the redacted documents in the collection, as well as nearly 3,600 JFK records still withheld in full, are scheduled to be declassified in their entirety. The staff of the National Archives is now preparing for the online release of all material before the statutory deadline, an ambitious goal that we hope will be fulfilled.

One provision of the Act gives federal agencies the right to request continued postponement of JFK records after 2017, if release would result in "identifiable harm" that outweighs the public interest. As authors, historians and investigators, we believe, withholding any portion of any JFK records would result in identifiable harm to the public interest. After 53 years, continuing JFK secrecy would provoke unnecessary suspicion and flout Congress's clear preference for full disclosure within 25 years of 1992. And it would deny the American people access to portions of our history.

We ask you, as White House Counsel, to affirm and uphold the spirit and language of the JFK Records Act, and to instruct all U.S. government agencies to fully release all assassination-related records on or before October 26, 2017.

Signed:

G. Robert Blakey, general counsel, House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA)
Russ Baker, author
Rex Bradford, president, Mary Ferrell Foundation
Deb Conway, publisher, JFK Lancer
Dan Hardway, HSCA investigator
Dan Ellsberg, author
Doug Horne, Assassination Records Review Board analyst
Brian Latell, former CIA Cuba analyst
Jim Lesar, president, Assassination Archives and Research Center
Ed Lopez, HSCA investigator
Joan Mellen, author
Jefferson Morley, author
John Newman, author
Gerald Posner, author
Dick Russell, author
Larry Sabato, author
Peter Dale Scott, author
Phil Shenon, author
Oliver Stone, filmmaker
Anthony Summers, author
Robbyn Swan, author
David Talbot , author
Howard Willens, Warren Commission assistant counsel

Response to American Scholar

AMERICAN SCHOLAR Magazine – In response to Howard Willens and Richard Mosk – “The Truth About Dallas” (Summer 2016) Dr. Cyril Wecht and Dr. Gary Aguilar wrote:

November 22nd marked the 53rd anniversary of JFK’s assassination. As usual, several mainstream outlets commemorated that dark day with reassurances that the Warren Commission was right that Lee Harvey Oswald, alone, had done it, and that the doubters, who have been in the majority since the mid 60s, can be dismissed as silly conspiracy theorists. That is the recent message of a featured authority who is still active on the case, attorney Howard Willens. One of the few still-living Warren Commission staffers, Willens followed up his 2013 anti-conspiracy book, “History Will Prove Us Right,” with a staunch defense of the Commission in the summer, 2016 issue of the journal, The American Scholar.[i] His article, co-written with another Commission staffer, attorney Richard Mosk, is modestly entitled “The Truth About Dallas.”[ii] It’s a self-congratulatory tribute of the work and conclusions of their original investigation. 

But Willens’ and Mosk’s defense of the Commission they served on is more notable for what they omit from the official record than what they include. “What the critics often forget or ignore,” they write, “is that since 1964, several government agencies have also looked at aspects of our work,”[iii] as if the Church Committee and the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) had reviewed and applauded the Commission’s work. Indeed, they did look at it. But rather than plaudits, they issued stinging rebukes, principally for the Commission’s having been rolled by J. Edgar Hoover, and to a lesser extent, by the CIA and the Secret Service. These later probes were unexpected, astonishing "admissions against interest," admissions by two independent teams of experienced, government investigators that the Warren Commission's work was shoddy, unreliable, and had perhaps been compromised.

“It must be said that the FBI generally exhausted its resources in confirming its case against Oswald as the lone assassin,” the HSCA concluded, “a case that Director J. Edgar Hoover, at least, seemed determined to make within 24 hoursof the of the assassination.”[iv] In essence, the experienced investigators concluded that Hoover had divined the solution to the crime before starting the inquiry, and then his agents confirmed the boss’s epiphany. The intimidated Commission went right along. And with good reason, only part of which Willens and Mosk tell.

They admit that the “FBI had originally opposed the creation of the Warren Commission” and that Hoover “ordered investigations of commission staff members.” But they don’t tell that Hoover deployed one of his favorite dirty tricks to deal not only with support staffers, such as Willens and Mosk, but also with the commissioners, including the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and sitting congressmen and senators. “[D]erogatory information pertaining to both Commission members and staff was brought to Mr. Hoover’s attention,” the Church Committee reported.[v] (emphasis added)

Willens and Mosk also forgot to mention that Hoover had a personal spy on the Warren Commission, former President, but then Reperesentative, Gerald Ford, who tattled on Commissioners who were (justifiably) skeptical of the Bureau’s work. "Ford indicated he would keep me thoroughly advised as to the activities of the Commission," FBI Agent Cartha DeLoach wrote in a once secret memo. "He stated this would have to be done on a confidential basis, however he thought it should be done."[vi] At the bottom of the memo, Hoover scrawled, “Well handled.”[vii] The success of Hoover’s machinations was obvious to subsequent government investigators.

The HSCA’s chief counsel, Notre Dame Law Professor Robert Blakey, a criminal investigator and prosecutor with vastly better credentials than either Willens or Mosk, was impressed with neither the Commission’s vigor nor its independence. “What was significant,” Blakey determined, “was the ability of the FBI to intimidate the Commission, in light of the Bureau’s predisposition on the questions of Oswald’s guilt and whether there had been a conspiracy. At a January 27 [1964] Commission meeting, there was another dialogue [among Warren Commissioners]:

“John McCloy: ‘… the time is almost overdue for us to have a better perspective of the FBI investigation than we now have … We are so dependent on them for our facts … .’

“Commission counsel J. Lee Rankin: ‘Part of our difficulty in regard to it is that they have no problem. They have decided that no one else is involved … .’

“Senator Richard Russell: ‘They have tried the case and reached a verdict on every aspect.’

“Senator Hale Boggs: ‘You have put your finger on it.’ (Closed Warren Commission meeting.)”[viii]

Testifying before the HSCA, the Commission’s chief counsel J. Lee Rankin shamefully admitted, “Who could protest against what Mr. Hoover did back in those days?”[ix] 

Apparently not the President’s commissioners. The HSCA’s Blakey also reported that “When asked if he was satisfied with the (Commission’s) investigation that led to the (no conspiracy) conclusion, Judge Burt Griffin said he was not.”[x] And author Gus Russo reported that Judge Griffin also admitted, “We spent virtually no time investigating the possibility of conspiracy. I wish we had.”[xi]

Thus, despite their clear misgivings, the Commissioners bowed to the imperious Bureau chief rather than investigate. Notably, the Commission never once employed one of the rudimentary investigative tools that are often essential in conducting any hard-hitting probe. “The Commission,”  the HSCA discovered, “failed to utilize the instruments of immunity from prosecution and prosecution for perjury with respect to witnesses whose veracity it doubted.”[xii] This policy had serious repercussions when the Commission confronted two key issues: published claims that Lee Harvey Oswald had been an FBI informant, and the possibility Jack Ruby was a mobbed up. 

“The Commission did not investigate Hoover or the FBI, and managed to avoid the appearance of doing so,” the HSCA determined. “It ended up doing what the members had agreed they would not do: Rely mainly on the FBI's denial of the allegations (that Oswald had been a Bureau informant).”[xiii] Hoover merely sent the Commission his signed affidavit declaring that Oswald was not an informant and also “sent over 10 additional affidavits from each FBI agent who had had contact with Oswald.”[xiv] And with that, the Commission blinked.

Re Jack Ruby, the FBI had his phone records, yet failed to spot Ruby’s obvious, and atypical, pattern of calls to known Mafiosi in the weeks leading up to the assassination. After performing the simple, obvious task of actually analyzing those calls, the HSCA determined that, if not a sworn member of La Cosa Nostra, Ruby had ongoing, close links to numerous Mafiosi.[xv] Thus the HSCA roundly rejected the Commission’s conclusion that, “the evidence does not establish a significant link between Ruby and organized crime.”[xvi] 

The list of Commission shortcomings that the HSCA assembled is not short. A brief summary of them runs some 47 pages in the Bantam Books version of the report (p. 289--336), which outlines what required much of the 500 pages of HSCA volume XI to cover (available on-line).[xvii] “The evidence indicates that facts which may have been relevant to, and would have substantially affected, the Warren Commission's investigation were not provided by the agencies (FBI and the CIA). Hence, the Warren Commission'sfindings may have been formulated without all of the relevant information.”[xviii] 

The Church Committee said that the problem was that “… the Commission was perceived as an adversary by both Hoover and senior FBI officials.”  “Such a relationship,” the Committee dryly observed, “was not conductive to the cooperation necessary for a thorough and exhaustive investigation.”[xix] 

But the FBI did more than just withhold evidence from the Commission. Although they admit that the FBI destroyed a note Oswald wrote to Agent Hosty, and withheld that information from the Commission, Willens and Mosk don’t mention that Agent Hosty reported that his own personnel file, and other FBI files, had been falsified.[xx]  

Nor that author Curt Gentry learned from assistant FBI director William Sullivan that there were other JFK documents at the Bureau that had been destroyed.[xxi]

Perhaps one of the reasons the public has remained skeptical of the government’s conclusions, and the mainstream media’s embrace of it, is the sort of selective presentation of evidence by ax grinders like Willens and Mosk who get heralded by the “responsible media.”

---

[i] Willens H, Mosk R., The Truth About Dallas. The American Scholar, summer, 2016. on-line at: Onhttp://howardwillens.com/hwil/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/052WillensMosk.pdf

[ii] Willens H, Mosk R., The Truth About Dallas. The American Scholar, summer, 2016. https://theamericanscholar.org/the-truth-about-dallas/#

[iii] Willens H, Mosk R., The Truth About Dallas. The American Scholar, summer, 2016, p. 59. on-line at: Onhttp://howardwillens.com/hwil/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/052WillensMosk.pdf

[v] In: Final Report of the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations, Book V, p. 47, on-lline at:https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=1161#relPageId=53&tab=page. Also cited by: Curt Gentry. J. Edgar Hoover--The Man and His Secrets. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1991, p. 549.

[vi] Ford Told FBI of Skeptics on Warren Commission

By Joe Stephens

Washington Post Staff Writer

Friday, August 8, 2008 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/07/AR2008080702757_pf.html

[vii] See copy of actual memo at Mary Ferrell: http://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=61488#relPageId=100

[viii] In: R. Blakey and R. Billings. Fatal Hour--The Assassination of President Kennedy by Organized Crime. New York, Berkley Books, 1992, p. 29. This testimony was also published in: Mark North. Act of Treason. New York, 1991, Carroll and Graf, p. 515--516.

[ix] House Select Committee on Assassinations, Vol. XI, p. 49, on-line at: http://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=83#relPageId=55&tab=page

[x] Blakey and R. Billings. Fatal Hour--The Assassination of President Kennedy by Organized Crime. New York, Berkley Books, 1992, p. 94.

[xi] Gus Russo. Live by the Sword. Baltimore: Bancroft Press, 1998,  p. 374.

[xii]  In: The Final Assassinations Report--Report of the Select Committee on Assassinations, U.S. House of Representatives. New York: Bantam Books edition, 1979, p. 334.

The Commission admitted it: “Immunity under these provisions (testifying under compulsion) was not granted to any witness during the Commission’s investigation.” (In: Report of the President’s Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1964, p. xi.)

[xiii] HSCA, Vol IX, p. 41. On-line at: http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/hsca/reportvols/vol11/pdf/HSCA_Vol11_WC_2_FBI_CIA.pdf

[xiv] HSCA, Vol IX, p. 41. On-line at: http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/hsca/reportvols/vol11/pdf/HSCA_Vol11_WC_2_FBI_CIA.pdf

[xv] See excellent discussion in: House Select Committee on Assassinations Final Report, p. 148-156, on-line at: http://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=800#relPageId=178&tab=page

[xvi] Warren Report, p. 801. On-line at: http://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report/appendix-16.html

[xvii] http://www.history-matters.com/archive/contents/hsca/contents_hsca_vol11.htm

[xviii] HSCA, Vol. XI, p. 59. On-line at: http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/hsca/reportvols/vol11/pdf/HSCA_Vol11_WC_2_FBI_CIA.pdf

[xix] In: Final Report of the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations (Church Committee) , Book V, p. 47, on-line at: https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=1161#relPageId=53&tab=page

[xx] James P. Hosty, Jr. Assignment: Oswald. New York: Arcade Publishing, 1996, pp. 178--180, 184--185, 243--244.

[xxi] Curt Gentry. J. Edgar Hoover--The Man and His Secrets. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1991, p. 546, footnote.

CAPA News 2 in Progress

CAPA NEWS - #2     [- 3y]

NEEDS –

Committee Reports

MLK Story –

Smoking Doc 1

Smoking Doc 2

Letters of Correspondence

CAPA News 1-Acoustics

CAPA News 2-Dallas

News 3 – Sunshine Week

News 4 – Houston

PHOTOS

LINKS

PAGE 1

1) CAPA Logo at top – left -

2) CAPA News Vol. 2 #1 January 2017

3) Table of Contents - on Left

4) Photo on Right – MLK – Lead in to MLK

5) Announcement at bottom - Andrew's Recruitment flyer ends with JOIN link

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page 1 – Link under photo to story on MLK – Announcement – Join CAPA

Page 2 - CAPA Mission Statement and Boards and Committees List

Page 3 – Memo From the Chair – Dr. Wecht

Page 4 – CAPA Calendar 2017

Page 5- CAPA Committee Reports

Page 6 – CAPA News

Page 7 – MLK Story link from Page 1 photo Cap.

Page 8 – Smoking Doc 1

Page 9 - Book Excerpt 1 – Bill Simpich – State Secrets Preview

Page 13– Smoking Doc 2

Page 14 - Book Excerpt 2 – David Talbot – JFK and DeGaul

Page 18 – CAPA Correspondence

Page 19 – In Memoriam – Join CAPA

Page 20 – JOIN CAPA – DVD photo and pitch to donors.

ANNOUNCEMENT

Washington, DC - Americans deserve prompt and thorough disclosure of the facts surrounding the nation’s major assassinations, according to a new research group CAPA – Citizens Against Political Assassinations.

As an initial goal the non-partisan umbrella group seeks withheld records pertaining to the assassinations of President Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and New York Senator Robert F. Kennedy in 1968.  

“CAPA seeks release of the remaining JFK records with a minimum of redactions, which can obscure vital information,” said CAPA Chairman Cyril H. Wecht, M.D., J.D., a prominent expert in forensic pathology for five decades. “We shall also file Freedom of Information Act requests and similar legal actions to enforce the law and undertake public education efforts to show the importance of disclosure to new generations.” Wecht is a consultant, medical school professor, author, and former county coroner for two decades in Pennsylvania.

The JFK Act of 1992 exemplifies one major CAPA initiative especially congruent with the goals of Sunshine Week this spring. The JFK Act requires release of all the records on the assassination of President Kennedy by October 2017. The president of the United States at that time will be responsible for enforcement.

“Especially after the 2016 presidential election cycle,” Dr. Wecht said, ”this is a key time to foster public confidence in government by building public support for release of the records. Time is running out to do something about the horrific JFK crime and cover-up. There is power in numbers. We hope you will join us in this worthy endeavor to bring truth to the American people.”

To join CAPA, visit  http://capa-hq.com/membership  

PAGE 2

MISSION STATEMENT – BOARDS & COMMITTEES

We Citizen Against Political Assassinations oppose the use of murder as a means to obtain and maintain power, and we are committed to supporting those who try to determine the truth, seek justice and educate people on the dangers assassination poses to all societies. Political assassination is the most serious threat to our leaders and government, often used as an expedient means of taking, maintaining and controlling power. It is important to support those who study the use of assassination as a political process that must be opposed because such murders occur around the globe on a daily basis.

“The very core of democracy is compromised when powerful organized interests conspire to remove those leaders who threaten them.” – Professor Philip H. Melanson, Ph.D.

BUILD A COMMUNITY – JOIN CAPA – Links to

CAPA Boards and Committee Co-Chairs

Board of Directors - Responsible for direction, governing and oversight of all CAPA activities, establishing goals, set strategies, missions, monitor committee work. Chairman Dr. Cyril Wecht, Larry Schnapf, Andrew Kreig, Mike Nurko, Jerry Policoff (treasurer) Bill Kelly (secretary), and Ben Wecht - conference call host. (Meets twice monthly).

Board of Advisors - Is appraised of all CAPA activities via meeting agendas and minutes and advises the Board of Directors on major issues and policies. Peter Dale Scott, John Newman, David Talbot, Dr. Gary Aguilar, Marie Fonzi, Bill Simpich, Esq., Alan Dale, Jerry McKnight. Is appraised of CAPA activities via Agendas and Meeting Minutes and advises the Board of Directors.

Fiscal - Responsible for membership drives, volunteer orientation, targeting potential supporters and donors, partnering with other organizations with common goals, oversight of CAPA finances and ensuring the committees have the resources to do their work. Michael Nurko, Jerry Policoff, Andrew Kreig, Larry Schnapf, Frank Caplet, Ben Wecht.

PR-Media - Responsible for all Media/ Public Relations work, developing an overall media strategy, creating logo, and editorial content for letters of correspondence, response to mainstream media reports, flyers, web site, social media and newsletter. Andrew Kreig, Jerry Policoff, Bill Kelly, Mike Nurko, Glinda DeVarey, Maggie Hasson, Frankie Vegas, David Talbot, William Paris, Tom Blackwell.

Legal Committee - (Attorneys only) Responsible for all CAPA legal matters and initiatives and advising other committees on legal matters. Two subcommittees - a) Mock Court/ Texas Court of Inquiry; b) FOIA Requests and Appeals. Dr. Wecht, Larry Schnapf, Bill Simpich, Andrew Kreig, Robert Tanenbaum, Patrick McCarthy, Anthony Bothwell, Dennis Bartholomew, Dawn Meredith, Ed Lopez, Dan Hardway.

Research - Responsible for assisting the Legal Committee in research and documents, liaison with NARA and Congressional staff via Correspondence (Sub) Committee and keeping track of release and with holdings of records. Bill Kelly, Larry Haapenen, Bill Simpich, Peter Dale Scott, William Paris, Dennis Bartholomew, Larry Hancock.

General Membership - Growing in numbers – will eventually be broken down into regions - East Coast, Dallas-Mid West - West Coast and International

Volunteers - Frankie Vegas - Facebook Maggie Hanson - Web sit/Twitter, Glinda DeVary (Minutes), Newsletter and Correspondence; William Paris – Outreach.

LINK TO JOIN

PAGE 3 –

1) Photo of Dr. Wecht

2) Memo from the Chair –

Memo From the Chair

From: Dr. Cyril Wecht CAPA Chairman

To: CAPA Boards, Committees and Members

Re: CAPA Membership

CAPA is now a firmly rooted national organization that should continue to expand in every respect over the next several months and years and have a major impact on the issues we are concerned with - political assassinations, government secrecy and accountability. 

Since this is the first newsletter directed to those who have joined CAPA we welcome you and hope to provide you with specific information about our structure, current endeavors and ultimate objectives.

We are deeply appreciative of your support in this great cause we began many years ago that should culminate in 2017 with either the release of the remaining secret records on the assassination of President Kennedy or the continued concealment of the total truth.

Which way that goes could depend on you. To paraphrase Martin Luther King, the powers that seek truth and justice will not be successful until they are stronger and better organized than the powers of the national security and secrecy state. While we will never have their budget or bureaucracy, we have the truth, the law and the Constitution on our side, and we are the majority! Most people believe as we do, and those who oppose us are the radical, minority extremists.

To achieve our mutual goals we need to put up a united front, put our past disputes behind us, and do what needs to be done – get Congressional oversight hearings, pressure the NARA and other government agencies to adhere to the JFK Act, and get the President to release all of the remaining withheld records by October 26, 2017.

We need your input - knowledge, expertise and experience as dedicated professionals to do this. Committed individuals like you will supply the strength necessary for us to complete our mission successfully.

By joining our cause you have indicated your desire to be a part of CAPA’s overall structure, projects and programs, and even serve on a committee or board where your talents and experience can be put to good use.

If you haven't - join now at – LINK TO JOIN  - CAPA-HQ.com

Achievement of our 2017 objectives, and ultimately, disclosure of the true scenario involved in the assassination of JFK, will require ongoing input from people like you and groups like CAPA.

Thank you.

Best wishes in the New Year,

Dr. Cyril Wecht 

PAGE  4  CAPA CALENDAR 2017 

JANUARY 

3 - Tuesday - Congress convenes 

16 -Monday - Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Service. 

20 - Friday - Inauguration Day  

30 1835 - First Assassination attempt against an American president fails to kill Andrew Jackson 

FEBRUARY 

12 - Sunday - Lincoln's birthday 

15 1933 - Assassination attempt against President Franklin Roosevelt 

20 - Monday - Presidents Day 

22 - Wednesday - Washington's Birthday 

25 - 1965 - Malcolm X RIP

MARCH 

12 - Sunday - Sunshine Week begins and continues to 18th. 

14 - Tuesday - CAPA Sunshine Week Event at National Press Club Washington DC featuring Judge Tunheim, ARRB Chairman. 

17 - James Madison birthday 

16-17 - Congress State Work Period - not in session

17 - Friday - St. Patrick's Day 

18 - Saturday - Sunshine Week ends Congress lobby effort begins

30 1931 - Cyril Wecht born 

30 1980 - Assassination attempt on President Reagan 

APRIL 

14 - Friday - Good Friday

15 1865 - Lincoln Assassinated 

16 - Sunday - Easter Sunday

26 - Wednesday - Administrative Professionals Day 

MAY 

5 - Friday - Cinco de Mayo

14 - Sunday - Mothers Day 

15 1972 - George Wallace shot 

20 - Saturday - Armed Forces Day

29 1917 – JFK’s Birthday - 100 Years.

29 - Monday - Memorial Day 

30 1961 - Rafael Trujillo Assassinated - Dominican Republic

JUNE 

1 1926 – Marilyn Monroe’s birthday.

10 1963 - JFK Peace Speech at American U., Washington DC

12 1963 - Medgar Evers assassinated - Jackson MS 

14 - Wednesday - Flag Day 

18 - Sunday - Fathers Day

JULY 

4 - Tuesday - Independence Day

20 1944 - Valkyrie plot to kill Hitler

AUGUST 

2 1923 - President Harding RIP 

21 - Eclipse of the sun  

21 1983 - Assassination of Benigno Aquino - Manila, Philippines  

22 1962 - Assassination attempt against Charles de Gaulle 

25 1955 - Emmett Till murdered - Money, MS 

SEPTEMBER

4 - Monday - Labor Day

5 1975 - Assassination attempt against President Gerald Ford

10 - Sunday - Grandparents Day

11 - Monday - Patriots Day 

14 - President William McKinley RIP

18 1961 - UN Secretary Dag Hammersjold RIP

19 1881 - President James A. Garfield RIP 

21 1976 - Orlando Letelier assassinated in Washington DC 

OCTOBER

9 - Monday - Columbus Day

14 1912 - Teddy Roosevelt shot by disgruntled Milwaukee saloon keeper, but delivered speech before seeking medical attention.

16 1909 - Security prevents President Taft from being shot

24 - Tuesday - United Nations Day 

26 - Thursday - Sunset Provision of JFK Act releases records NARA at Archives II - College Park, Maryland

31 - Tuesday - Halloween - David Atlee Philips birthday

NOVEMBER

1 -Wednesday - All Saints Day

4 1995 - Yitzhak Rabin RIP Oslo 

7 - Tuesday - Election Day

11 - Saturday - Veterans Day 

16 - 17 - Thursday - Friday - CAPA Legal Committee Mock Court event - South Texas Law College - Houston, Texas

17 - 18 - Friday - Saturday - November in Dallas - Texas LANCER conference 

22 - Wednesday - Moment of Silence ceremony - Grassy Knoll, Dallas Texas 

23 - Thanksgiving Day 

25 2016 - Fidel Castro RIP

DECEMBER 

7 - Thursday - Pearl Harbor Day 

8 - Friday - John Lennon RIP

24 - Sunday - Christmas Eve

25 - Monday - Christmas Day

30 - Saturday - New Years Eve

PAGE 5 -

COMMITTEE REPORTS  

Fiscal -  Michael Nurko and Jerry Policoff report on membership, dues, and donations.

PR  - Andrew Kreig and Jerry Policoff report on media events, Public Relations and Social Media platforms.

Legal - Larry Schnapf and Bill Simpich report on legal projects and programs

Research - Bill Kelly and Larry Haapanen report on Research Activities

International (Proposed) Committee being nominated and organized.

PAGE 6 – CAPA NEWS

1)      Wecht Acoustics Symposium

2)      Dallas Conferences

3)      Sunshine Week

4)      Mock Court 

PAGE 7 – Smoking Doc #1 – Re: Oswald as agent -

BOOK EXCEPRTS

Book Excerpt #1

Bill Simpich - State Secret

Wiretapping in Mexico City, Double Agents, and the Framing of Lee Oswald

STATE SECRET Preface

By Bill Simpich

This book is about the counterintelligence activity behind the JFK story and its role in the death of President Kennedy. It examines how the existence of tapes of a man in Mexico City, identifying himself as Oswald, were discovered before the Kennedy assassination and hidden after the assassination. On November 23, 1963, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover wrote President Lyndon Johnson and the Secret Service chief, telling both of them that the caller was not Lee Harvey Oswald. These tapes showed that the supposed “lone gunman” had been impersonated just weeks before the killing of JFK, tying him to Cuban and Soviet employees in a manner that would cause great consternation in the halls of power on November 22.

The other aspect of this book is about how the importance of the Mexico City tapes collided with the national security imperative of hiding American abilities in the field of wiretapping. These tapes were created by wiretapping the Soviet consulate. World leaders prize wiretapping because it enables them to find out the true motives of their friends and adversaries. It's no wonder that Edward Snowden was castigated for daring to reveal the nature of these jewels. Back in 1963, wiretapping was the domain of the CIA's Staff D, the super-secret division that did the legwork for much of the signals intelligence or 'sigint' that was provided to the National Security Agency.

The hiding of the tapes paralyzed any effort to conduct an honest investigation into what happened. Within days of the assassination, the agencies were flooded with phony evidence tying Oswald to a Soviet assassination team and Red Cuban plots. Lyndon Johnson and Robert Kennedy probably knew little about the tapes, but acquiesced to the cover-up rather than run the risk of a war on Cuba which might include the USSR. This story explains why LBJ was so insistent that Chief Justice Earl Warren chair the investigating commission and prevent the possibility of "40 million dead Americans", and why the Warren Commission was denied access to the investigators,  witnesses and documents needed to solve the case.

To win over Warren, LBJ said that “I just pulled out what Hoover told me about a little incident in Mexico City.” The purpose of this book is to bring this state secret into the sunlight. Sunlight on this secret dissipates idle talk of mystery. The more facts we can expose to the cold light of day, the less time is spent feeling our way through the dark.

Counterintelligence is the hidden heart of the story about this era

By counterintelligence, I initially mean the attempts by the CIA to induce defectors from Communist countries, and Communist efforts to induce Americans to defect. Counterintelligence also includes CIA and FBI efforts to penetrate other intelligence services, while other nations tried to penetrate the CIA and FBI. A formal definition of counterintelligence can be found in a US executive order: "Information gathered and activities conducted to protect against espionage, other intelligence activities, sabotage, or assassinations conducted for or on behalf of foreign powers, organizations or persons, or international terrorist activities...".

The counterintelligence game is about penetrating the defenses of the other side, and to prevent the other side from penetrating yours. Penetration is the role of the double agent, which is often the secret role of the defector. For example, high ranking CIA officers placed their trust in a Cuban named Rolando Cubela, who said in 1963 that he was willing to defect to the United States and assassinate Castro. The odds are very good that Cubela was reporting to Fidel the entire time.

If there was anything of greater value than a defector, it was a re-defector such as Oswald. Even if a re-defector had nothing to do with intelligence, such a person was the functional equivalent of a double agent.

This book tells the story of a Soviet defector named Lee Harvey Oswald who returned to the United States, and how he was closely watched over the last four years of his life; the plans to kill Castro during this era; the operations surrounding the Cuban consulate in Mexico City in 1963; and how everything went haywire when Oswald came to Mexico City two months before the assassination.

During his visit, wiretap tapes were created of a man calling himself Oswald and a woman identified as Cuban consulate secretary Sylvia Duran calling the Soviet consulate. After the JFK assassination, the CIA insisted that these tapes had been destroyed prior to the assassination. However, during the 1990s, two Warren Commission staffers admitted that these tapes were played for them during their Mexico City visit in April 1964. After this admission, Mexico City case officer Anne Goodpasture changed her story and admitted her role in disseminating the tapes after the assassination.

Strong evidence is provided in this book that both Oswald and Duran were impersonated on these tapes. Furthermore, I believe that Goodpasture realized during September 1963 that someone had found out about the CIA’s Mexico City wiretap operation. The impersonation of Oswald and Duran meant that the Agency had to take action to ensure its security. Goodpasture got together with the offices of covert action chief Dick Helms and CI chief Jim Angleton and launched an operation to try to figure out who had done it and why. It all blew up in their faces on 11/22/63, when the man who had been impersonated was named as JFK’s assassin.

When President Kennedy was shot down in Dallas, the CIA and their colleagues at the FBI were effectively blackmailed. If their Oswald memos written prior to the assassination had been made public in the wake of JFK’s death, public reaction would have been furious. If the word got out that CIA officers knew that Oswald had been impersonated prior to the assassination, this would imply both that Oswald had been set up for the assassination (which was presumably carried out by others), and that the CIA could have prevented JFK's death if it had reacted differently. The response would have been tectonic.

Prior to the assassination, the CIA Mexico City station concealed from its own headquarters that Oswald had visited the Cuban consulate, while reporting that Oswald had contacted the Soviet consulate. HQ responded in a similar manner by concealing from Mexico City Oswald’s history as a pro-Castro activist. The reason why has been a state secret. Similarly, the tapes had to be buried to hide the fact that the man introduced himself to the Soviets as “Lee Oswald”, but it was not Oswald’s voice. This has also been a state secret.

What it means to be a defector

The heart of the mystery surrounding Lee Harvey Oswald can be dispelled by a meditation on what it means to be a defector. For a spy, a defector is a potential treasure who was worthy of the closest scrutiny. Many things can be learned from the secrets that a defector provides about their former country, as well as one’s reaction to their new home. Most people do not simply renounce their original country, even if they move away.

When Oswald defected to the Soviet Union in 1959, it was a closed society behind an Iron Curtain. One estimate was that there were maybe twenty Americans residing in the entire USSR. American intelligence wanted to know everything that there was to know about the Soviet Union.

A re-defector is an extremely rare bird. To defect is an enormous upheaval. Many personal bonds are strained or broken. Most people think long and hard before defecting to another country. Very few people go back on their decision.

In the words of CIA Counterintelligence chief James Angleton, whose office followed Oswald throughout the Soviet Union and the last four years of his life, the re-defection of Oswald should have been “the highest priority for the intelligence community.” Although Angleton tried to deny that he had any serious interest in Oswald, his office tracked a lot of paper regarding the man before the assassination.

After Oswald returned, he was surrounded by spooky people with intelligence backgrounds for the rest of his life. He had a lot to offer. Even his casual conversation provided new insights to sift through and ponder.

His time in the Soviet Union also could be used to provide protective coloration if he wanted to impress left-wingers with his knowledge, or impress right-wingers by realizing the error of his ways.

Previous studies of the JFK case

Several governmental agencies studied the JFK case. The investigation of the Warren Commission was limited and hampered in 1964, with Angleton saying that he would simply “wait out the Commission”. The Church Committee and the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) during the 1970s did more thorough investigations, but they were also denied the essential time, documents and resources needed to get to the bottom of it. Many of the problems were alleviated by the Assassinations Records Review Board (ARRB) in the 1990s, which focused on getting the documents to the public (but not reinvestigating the murder). The big problem – the passage of time – was bigger than ever.

Although we still don’t have everything, we have the documents denied to these previous investigations. We now have the ability to conduct a far more complete review, and unprecedented access to the actual operational material that contains the “sources and methods” guarded so jealously by the CIA. These sources and methods provide important information into how and why JFK died and why the initial investigations by the agencies were so badly flawed. These documents provide a meticulous view into the American secret war on Cuba in the early 1960s.

Oswald’s legend

People who have studied the case are familiar with Oswald’s return to the Dallas area, where he spent a lot of time causing consternation in the White Russian community. Also carefully studied has been Oswald's time in New Orleans, where he had started a one-man chapter of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. Oswald managed to get himself on the radio, television and the newspapers as a pro-Castro advocate, while making less publicized statements in his diary and in private talks that his sympathies were actually with the United States government.

Meanwhile, Oswald and his wife were asking the Soviet embassy in Washington DC to provide them with visas so they could travel to the Soviet Union. Wittingly or unwittingly, Oswald was creating a legend so confusing that it was difficult to tell where his loyalties actually lay. I am less concerned about his loyalties and more interested in his legend. In intelligence circles, a “legend” refers to a story that has been made up about an individual.

We have a legend about Oswald’s visit to Mexico City. The legend goes like this: In late September of 1963, Oswald took a bus to Mexico City in order to obtain visas to visit Cuba and the Soviet Union. His wife was seeking to return to the USSR as a permanent resident. He had written during the summer and asked for her visa to be expedited ahead of his own because she was having a baby in October, but with no success.

On Friday, September 27, he visited the Cuban consulate three times and the Soviet consulate once. He told both of them that he had received visas from the other consulate. Members of the two consulates talked on the phone, and learned that he had lied to both of them. On Oswald’s final visit to the Cuban consulate, he started shouting and caused a scene when consul Eusebio Azcue told him that he would not be granted a visa.

On Saturday, September 28, he appeared at the Soviet consulate and caused a similar scene, laying a loaded pistol on the table and starting weeping tears of frustration due to FBI harassment. He was told that he would have to wait several months for a visa, and left the consulate with his now unloaded weapon.

An hour later, Cuban consulate secretary Sylvia Duran telephoned the Soviet consulate, stating that a man wanted to talk to them. The man got on the phone and said that he had just recently been at the Soviet consulate and had given them the wrong address, he had returned to the Cuban consulate where he had left his proper address, and wanted to know if he could return to the Soviet consulate and correct his error. After receiving an assurance that he could return, the phone call ended.

On Tuesday, October 1, two phone calls were placed to the Soviet consulate by a man trying to follow up on his call from September 28. He was asking about the status of his visa request. In the second call, he specifically identified himself as Lee Oswald.

This is the Oswald legend in Mexico City. Records indicate that he left Mexico City the next morning.

A week later, the Mexico City station reported to Headquarters that Lee Oswald contacted the Soviet consulate, while omitting any reference to his Cuban consulate visits. The cable described him as a balding 35 year old man with an athletic build. This “mystery man” was clearly not Oswald, who was a slender 24 year old.

Headquarters then responded with two different memos, to two different sets of readers, with two different descriptions of Oswald, both of them inaccurate. To top it off, Headquarters omitted any reference to Oswald’s pro-Castro background. What kind of game was going on here?

My conclusions

I wrote this book after studying Oswald’s biography, and what I learned along the way can be read in a serialized chronicle archived at OpEd News. Oswald was clearly a spy in his own mind, but I have concluded that what he meant to do and whether he worked for anyone else is relatively unimportant. What is more important is how his biography was manipulated by the people who filed reports involving Oswald in the Soviet Union, after his visit to Mexico City, and after the assassination.

Four CIA officers and their aides get the spotlight in this book. Jim Angleton, the counterintelligence chief whose desire to beat back the Soviets whipped up a wave of paranoia that eventually tore the Agency in two; Bill Harvey, who never recovered from being taken down by the Kennedys as the head of Cuban operations before he could take out Fidel Castro; Anne Goodpasture, the Mexico City case officer who did her best to safeguard the secrets and surrendered them reluctantly over the years; and David Morales, a triple-threat hitman, paramilitary trainer and CI chief who may have got the last laugh of all.

I focus on these officers because I have never been able to get over the tale of the tapes. I believe that they are right in the middle of it. The CIA said that the tapes of the Mexico City wiretaps were destroyed by the time of the assassination. But two Warren Commission staffers admit that wiretap tapes with Oswald’s voice supposedly on them were played for them months after the assassination. Hoover told President Johnson that his agents listened to the tapes after the assassination and it wasn’t Oswald’s voice.

Why was such an incredible lie told about these tapes no longer existing by the time of the assassination?

If it wasn’t Oswald’s voice, whose voice was it?

Was Oswald seriously seeking visas to the USSR and Cuba, or did he have another agenda?

Did Oswald even go to Mexico City? Who saw him there? Can they be trusted?

For me, all these questions boiled down to one central question, “Did Oswald visit the Cuban consulate on September 28 or not?” Once I was satisfied that the answer to that question was “no”, it led me into a prolonged exploration of why someone would impersonate Oswald.  

I came to the conclusion that the official account of September 27 was essentially accurate, as well as the Oswald visit to the Soviet consulate during the morning of September 28. The Soviet officers made it clear to Oswald that they would not change their earlier decision to refuse any attempt to speed up his visa request. The Cubans had firmly closed the door on Oswald the previous day. The purpose of his visit – to obtain instant visas to visit both Cuba and the USSR – appeared to be at an end.

The problems seemed to begin with Duran’s subsequent phone call from the Cuban consulate to the Soviet consulate, where she put Oswald on the line and he chatted with a Soviet officer for a minute. Duran was adamant that Oswald did not visit the Cuban consulate that day, nor did she make any such call. I concluded that she was telling the truth. Where did that lead me?

I decided that the best way to analyze this story was to approach it as if I was a competent and honest CIA case officer and found out that someone had impersonated an American on a line that I was tapping. I assumed that the officer had spent a lot of time trying to ensure that the wiretap operation was secure and that political adversaries did not know about it. I assumed that the officer would be shaken by the belief that someone was trying to “spoof” the wiretap operation with contrived information. I assumed that the officer - Anne Goodpasture - would report this to her superiors and come up with a plan of how to respond.

Once I reached that point in my thinking, the memos that were written about Oswald in early October 1963 made sense for the first time. Previously, I could never understand why a description of Oswald as a “mystery man” who had visited the Soviet consulate was provided to CIA headquarters. It was very odd, especially when it turned out the Mexico City station had the date wrong for the mystery man’s visit. It was even stranger for Angleton's people to provide the key information contained in two different memos to two different audiences, telling one that Oswald was 35 years old with an athletic build and then telling the other that he was 5 foot 10 and 165 pounds. Neither description was right. Oswald was 24 years old, slightly built, and generally weighed 140 or less. At the time of his death, his weight was 131.

However, when I learned that the description of Oswald as “5 foot 10, 165” had been provided three years earlier in the Soviet Union, it started falling into place for me. When I read Peter Dale Scott’s The Hunt for Popov’s Mole, I learned that Oswald’s file had been used in the Soviet Union as bait to capture enemy spies in what is called a “molehunt”. If the story of Oswald had been used in the Soviet Union to catch spies, it makes sense that it would be used in the same way in Mexico City. What surprised me was to yet again see this “5 foot 10, 165” description provided by an unknown witness in Dealey Plaza minutes after the shooting. The witness could somehow determine the person’s height and weight from a sixth floor window, but couldn’t describe his clothing. The witness then disappeared, and remains unidentified.

The reason I wrote this book was to study the cover-up of the assassination and the tale of the Mexico City tapes, but I learned a few things along the way. After looking at the evidence, I felt that it wasn’t right to write about it without sharing my conclusions. I point the finger at what I think happened and who I think was responsible, while leaving room for other possibilities.

I offer the hypothesis that David Morales ran a piggy-backed operation on top of an anti-Fair Play for Cuba Committee operation run by CIA officer John Tilton and FBI agent Lambert Anderson, outwitted both Angleton and Goodpasture, brought down the President, and got away with it. Whether or not Bill Harvey was part of this operation, his people were all over it and merit further scrutiny.

My essential point is that Harvey brought together a nest of trained assassins within the CIA who hated JFK for two related reasons. One was because of Kennedy’s repeated refusal to order a military invasion of Cuba, even after the humiliation at the Bay of Pigs and the horror of the Cuban missile crisis. Two was because Bobby Kennedy directly meddled in Agency operations in an insecure manner. That nest is the most likely place to find the people that were part of the impersonation of Oswald and the killing of JFK.

Others have argued to me that Angleton and covert action chief David Phillips were part of a plan to kill Kennedy, but my present perspective is that both of them – like Goodpasture and operations chief Richard Helms, who I believe were in on the molehunt - were entrapped by the impersonation.

Angleton and Phillips drove the cover-up for their own protection. Otherwise, their careers and reputations would have been ruined, to say nothing of the future of the CIA. Phillips told investigator Kevin Walsh shortly before he died that he believed American intelligence officers were involved in the assassination. Angleton’s last words were filled with regret and sorrow. “I’ve made so many mistakes.”

The evidence I present here does not rule out the possibility that the Soviets or the Cubans ran the Oswald impersonation, or that Oswald killed JFK while acting alone. However, I am persuaded by the sheer weight of the evidence and the analyses by other researchers that these scenarios are very unlikely.

Whether you agree with my Mexico City solution or not, the important thing is to take on this case and other cases like it. We need more historians and researchers that are willing to roll up their sleeves instead of rolling over for another paycheck. This is a live case here, with people still alive who can talk. Thanks to public pressure, the JFK case is one of the only cases that bring CIA operations, their sources, and their methods, into the sunlight.

The cover-up of the President’s death is a state secret. The tale of the Mexico City tapes is a state secret. Much of the history of the United States is hidden from us, behind a wall of over classifications and redactions. By comparison, we know more about the JFK case than I ever thought was possible. Much more of it sits in the National Archives and on the websites of the Mary Ferrell Foundation, the Poage Legislative Library at Baylor, the Harold Weisberg Archive at Hood College, the National Security Archive, the presidential libraries, and many more locations, waiting for us to read it, sift through it, and analyze it. The hyperlinks in this story enable the reader to view the original documents and engage in the hunt. Are we interested in serious work, or would we rather argue about it as a form of entertainment?

The JFK case is not an insoluble mystery, but more of a steeplechase. What we need is access to our history and a passion for tough-minded analysis. It’s not a lot different than a clear-eyed examination of the roots of war, or what it will take to end world hunger or global warming. Errico Malatesta was a well-known Spanish agitator who spoke throughout Europe about his vision for a better world. Malatesta would often suggest that “everything depends on what the people are capable of wanting.

SMOKING DOCUMENT #2   Re: Attack on deGaul

Book Excerpt 2

David Talbot - Devil’s Chessboard - on Kennedy and deGaul        

In The Devil’s Chessboard – Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government (Harper/Collins, 2015, p. 412) David Talbot writes:

It was Cuba that created the first fracture between Kennedy and his national security chain of command. But while the Bay of Pigs was still dominating the front pages, the CIA mucked its way into another international crisis that required the president’s urgent attention. The Cuba invasion has all but erased this second crisis from history. But the strange events that occurred in Paris in April 1961 reinforced the disturbing feeling that President Kennedy was not in control of his own government.

Paris was in turmoil. At dawn on Saturday morning, April 22 (1961), a group of retired French generals had seized power in Algiers to block President Charles de Gaulle from settling the long, bloody war for Algerian Independence. Rumors quickly spread that the coup plotters were coming next for de Gaulle himself, and that the skies over Paris would soon be filled with battle-hardened paratroopers and French Foreign Legionnaires from Algeria. Gripped by the dying convulsions of his colonial reign, France braced for a calamitous showdown.

The threat to French democracy was actually even more immediate than feared. On Saturday evening, two units of paratroopers totaling over two thousand men huddled in the Forest of Orleans and the Forest of Rambouillet, not much more than an hour outside Paris. The rebellious paratroopers were poised for the final command to join up with tank units from Rambouillet and converge on the capitol, with the aim of seizing the Elysee Palace and other key government posts. By Sunday panic was sweeping through Paris. All air traffic was halted over the area, the Metro was shut down, and cinemas were dark. Only the cafes remained open, where Parisians crowded anxiously to swap the latest gossip.

News that the coup was being led by the widely admired Maurice Challe, a former air force chief and commander of French forces in Algeria, stunned the government in Paris, from de Gaulle down.

DeGaulle quickly concluded that Challe must be acting with the support of U.S. intelligence, and Elysee officials began spreading this word to the press. Shortly before his resignation from the French military Challe had served as NATO commander in chief, and he had developed close relations with a number of high-ranking U.S. officers stationed in the military alliance’s Fontainebleau headquarters….In panic-gripped Paris, reports of U.S. involvement in the coup filled newspapers across the political spectrum.

Dulles was forced to issue a strong denial of CIA involvement in the putsch…C.I. Sulzberger, the CIA-friendly New York Times columnist, took up the agency’s defense, echoing Dulles’ indignant denial….The New York Times’s Scotty Reston was more aligned with the sentiments of the Kennedy White House. Echoing the charges circulating in the French press, Reston reported that the CIA was indeed ‘involved in an embarrassing liaison with the anti-Gaullist officers.’ Reston communicated the rising fury in JFK’s inner circle over the CIA’s rogue behavior, in the wake of the Bay of Pigs fiasco and the French escapade: “All this has increased the feeling in the White House that the CIA has gone beyond the bounds of an objective intelligence-gathering agency and has become the advocate of men and policies that have embarrassed the Administration.”

Allen Dulles was once again making his own policy, this time in France.

In his war memoirs, de Gaulle accused Dulles of being part of “a scheme’ that was determined to “silence or set aside” the French general.

As he continued to wrestle with fallout from the Bay of Pigs crisis, JFK was suddenly besieged with howls of outrage from a major ally, accusing his own security services of seditious activity. It was a stinging embarrassment for the new American president, who was scheduled to fly to Paris for a state visit the following month. To add to the insult, the coup had been triggered by de Gaulle’s efforts to bring French colonial rule in Algeria to an end – a goal that JFK himself had ardently championed.

JFK took pains to assure Paris that he strongly supported de Gaulle’s presidency, phoning Herve Alphand, the French ambassador in Washington, to directly communicate these assurances. But, according to Alphand, Kennedy’s disavowal of official U.S

involvement in the coup came with a disturbing addendum – the American president could not vouch for his own intelligence agency. Kennedy told Alphand that “the CIA is such a vast and poorly controlled machine that the most unlikely unlikely maneuvers might be true.”

Kennedy’s strong show of support for de Gaulle undoubtedly helped fortify French resolve against the rebellious generals. In the midst of the crisis, the American president issued a public message to de Gaulle, telling him, “In this grave hour for France, I want you to know of my continuing friendship and support as well as that of the American people.”

But it was de Gaulle himself, and the French people, who turned the tide against the coup.

By Sunday, the second day of the coup, a dark foreboding had settled over Paris.

But at eight o’clock that evening, a defiant de Gaulle went on the air as nearly all of France gathered around the TV, and rallied his nation with the most inspiring address of his long public career…The nation had been betrayed “by men whose duty, honor and reason d’etre it was to serve and obey.” Now it was the duty of every French citizen to protect the nation from these military traitors. “In the name of France,” de Gaulle shouted, thumping the table in front of him, “I order that all means – I repeat all means – be employed to block the road everywhere to those men!”

De Gaulle’s final words were a battle cry. “francaises, Francaises! Aidez-moi!” And all over France, millions of people did rush to the aid of their nation. The following day, a general strike was organized to protest the putsch….Even police officers associations expressed “complete solidarity” with the protests….Hundreds of people rushed to the nation’s airfields and prepared to block the runways with their vehicles if Challe’s plotters tried to land. Others gathered outside government ministries in Paris to guard them against attack.

“In many ways, France, and particularly Paris, relieved its great revolutionary past Sunday night and Monday- the past of the revolutionary barricades, of vigilance committees and workers’ councils,” reported the New York Times.

Meanwhile, de Gaulle moved quickly to arrest military officers in France who were involved in the coup.

By Tuesday night, Challe knew that the coup had failed. The next day he surrendered and was flown to Paris.

Challe expected to face a firing squad, but de Gaulle’s military tribunal proved surprisingly merciful, sentencing the fifty-five year-old general to fifteen years in prison.

Following the Algiers putsch, de Gaulle remained an assassination target – particularly during the explosive months before and after he finally recognized Algerian independence in July 1962. The most dramatic attempt on his life was staged the next month by the OAS – an ambush made famous in the Frederick Forsyth novel and movie The Day of the Jackal. As de Gaulle’s black Citroen sped along the Avenue de la Liberation in Paris, with the president and his wife in the rear seat, a dozen OAS snipers opened fire on the vehicle. Two of the president’s motorcycle bodyguards were killed – and the bullet-riddled Citroen skidded sharply. But de Gaulle was fortunate to have a skilled and loyal security team, and his chauffeur was able to pull the car out of its spin and speed to safety, despite all four tires’ being shot out. The president and his wife, who kept their heads down throughout the fusillade, escaped unharmed.

Because of the security measures he took, Charles de Gaulle survived his tumultuous presidency. He died of a heart attack the year after he left office, just short of his eightieth birthday, slumping over quietly in his armchair after watching the evening news.

President Kennedy only met once with de Gaulle, on his state visit to Paris at the end of May 1961, a month after the failed coup. The president and First Lady were feted at a banquet in Elysee Palace, where the old general – dazzled by Jackie – leaned down closely to hear every breathy word she spoke to him, in fluent French. During the three-day visit, the two heads of state discussed many pressing issues, from Laos to Berlin to Cuba. But Kennedy and de Gaulle never broached the touchy subject of the coup, much less the CIA’s involvement in it. As French journalist Vincent Jauvert later observed, “Why wake up old demons who had barely fallen asleep?”

Kennedy knew that he would have to resume wrestling with those demons as soon as he returned home. He would have to decide how deeply to purge his own security agencies, as de Gaulle had already begun to do in France. Kennedy knew there would be steep political costs involved in taking on the CIA and Pentagon….Shaken by the traumatic events in Cuba and France, JFK was ready to remake his government….

Overseas, the speculation about Kennedy’s murder – and the suspicious shooting of his alleged assassin – was even more rampant.

Suspicions of a conspiracy were particularly strong in France, where President de Gaulle himself had been the target of CIA machinations and had survived a barrage of gunfire in his own limousine. After returning from Kennedy's November 24 funeral in Washington, de Gaulle gave a remarkably candid assessment of the assassination to his information minister, Alain Peyrefitte. “What happened to Kennedy is what nearly happened to me,” confided the French president. “His story is the same as mine…It looks like a cowboy story, but it’s only an OAS (Secret Army Organization) story. The security forces were in cahoots with the extremists.”

“Do you think Oswald was a front?” Peyrefitte asked de Gaulle.

“Everything leads me to believe it,” he replied. “They got their hands on this communists who wasn’t one, while still being one. He had a subpar intellect and was an exalted fanatic – just the man they needed, the perfect one to be accused. ..The guy ran away, because he probably became suspicious. They wanted to kill him on the spot before he could be grabbed by the judicial system. Unfortunately, it didn’t happen exactly the way they had probably planned it would…But a trial, you realize, is just terrible. People would have talked. They would have dug up so much! They would have unearthed everything. Then the security forces went looking for [a clean-up man] they totally controlled, and who couldn’t refuse their offer, and that guy sacrificed himself to kill the fake assassin – supposedly in defense of Kennedy’s memory!

“Baloney! Security forces all over the world are the same when they do this kind of dirty work. As soon as they succeed in wiping out the false assassin, they declare that the justice system no longer need be concerned, that no further public action was needed now that the guilty perpetrator was dead. Better to assassinate an innocent man than to let a civil war break out. Better an injustice than disorder.

“America is in danger of upheavals. But you’ll see. All of them together will observe the law of silence. They will close ranks. They'll d’ everything to stifle any scandal. They will throw Noah’s cloak over these shameful deeds. In order to not lose face in front of the whole world. In order to not risk unleashing riots in the United States. In order to preserve the union and to avoid a new civil war. In order to now ask themselves questions. They don’t want to know. They don’t want to find out. They won’t allow themselves to find out.”

A half  century later, this extraordinary commentary by the French leader – a political colossus of the twentieth century – remains one of the most disturbing and insightful perspectives on this traumatic American event.

They don’t want to find out. They won’t allow themselves to find out.

PAGE 18 - CORRESPONDENCE -

Correspondence Committee letters out

1. Wecht and Aguilar to Editor of American Scholar
2. Kelly to AOTUS - 
3. Larry to Tunheim
4. Mary Ferrell Group to Obama Attorney

PAGE 19 - IN MEMORIAM- List - photo Fidel Castro

Many of those who originally started this fight are no longer with us, but as JFK so aptly put it – “Nations rise and fall, men live and die, but ideas live on,” so we must follow thm and fight for the ideals they lived for and instilled in us.   “The tourch is passed….”

Mae Brussell

Mary Ferrell

Roger Feinman

Gaeton Fonzi

Penn Jones

John Judge

Mark Lane

Sylvia Meagher

Phil Melanson

Fletcher Prouty

Bill Turner

Harold Weisberg

Jack White

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