CAPA News Vol. 1 No. 1 - X-10
Contents
1) Announcement of our Arrival – Mission Statement
2) Press Release -
3) Links -
4) Prologue -
5) CAPA Calendar 2015-2018
6) Memo from the Chair
7) Endorsements – David Talbot
8) Bill Simpich – One – Three Year Plans
9) Excerpt 1 – Peter Dale Scott - Deep Politics 3
10) Excerpt 2 – John Newman – Where Angels Tread Lightly
11) Unredacted - Smoking Docs
12) Books - Films Reviews - Previews
13) Recent Articles of interest
14) Interviews - Links to audio
15) Committee Reports
16) In Memoriam
17) Political Cartoon – Richard Bartholomew – Confidence in Government – Dead
19) Parting Shot – Gandhi – The Hand Mantra
20) What We Are Doing – Become A Member – Join CAPA
1) - Announce our Arrival – Mission Statement
CAPA - Citizens Against Political Assassinations is an alliance of individual citizens who agree on certain principals and goals and unite in an effort to obtain them.
We oppose the use of political assassination as a means to obtain or maintain power and are committed to supporting those who try to determine the truth, seek justice and educate the people on the danger that assassination poses to all societies.
Political assassination is a most serious threat to democratic government and often used as an expedient means of maintaining and controlling power. It occurs around the globe on a too-frequent basis. Therefore, it is important to support those who focus on and study political assassination as a tactic that must be opposed.
“When powerful organized interests conspire to remove those leaders who
threaten them then the very core of democracy is compromised.”
- Philip H. Melanson, Ph.D.
World peace
Can be achieved
When the powers of love
Replaces
The love of power.
- Sri Chinmoy
2) - Press Release 001 – June 2015
CAPA - To Take on Political Assassinations and Free the JFK Files
The newly formed political action committee CAPA - Citizens Against Political Assassinations - announced its arrival this week with the filing of a series of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests and its support of a number of appeals for records that have been denied.
The full enforcement of the JFK Records Act and the release of all assassination records are some of the goals of CAPA, which also intends to file FOIA suits against the government and make public access to unreasonably classified records an issue in the current presidential campaign issue.
“We opposed political assassinations as a means of obtaining and maintain power,” said Dr. Cyril Wecht, CAPA chairman, “and we are determined to seek truth and justice and to educate people as to the dangers political assassinations pose to all societies.”
“We already won the hearts and minds of the American people on the need for full disclosure and accountability,” said San Francisco attorney Bill Simpich, “now we have to win the political battle to see that the laws are enforced and the Constitution is upheld.”
“We have two more years to obtain the full disclosure of records in the JFK case,” Simpich said, “and if we want to succeed we have to make full disclosure of our nation’s secret history a central issue in the presidential election.”
According to the JFK Records Act of 1992, the next president of the United States will decide - in October 2017 - whether to release the remaining records or to continue to withhold them for reasons of national security.
As an association of concerned citizens, we believe it is now in the best interest of our national security to release all of the remaining sealed assassination records so the people can make up their own minds as to what happened and what to do about it.
3) Links:
- Facebook
- Twitter
- CAPAHQ blog
- Web site with posted newsletter
4) - Prologue – What is Past is Prologue
In a postscript to his film “JFK” Oliver Stone quotes a line from Shakespeare - “What is past is prologue,” which is also inscribed on the base of the statue Future (1935, Robert Alken) at the side of the front steps to the National Archives building in downtown Washington D.C.
The quote “What is Past is Prologue” is generally thought to mean that our history is a prologue of the future, that history influences and sets the context for the present. As Peter Pan said: “We’ve been here before and will be again,” or as George Santayana put it: “Those who are ignorant of the past are doomed to repeat it.”
But as the phrase was originally used by Shakespeare in The Tempest (Act 2, Scene I), it means that all that has happened in the "past" has led Antonio and Sebastian to commit murder.
Antonio : “…..We all were sea-swallow'd, though some cast again,
And by that destiny to perform an act
Whereof what's past is prologue, what to come...”
Antonio is rationalizing that he is fated to act by all that has led up to that moment, so the past has set the stage for their next act, that everything that has happened has led them to commit murder, giving it reason, motive and meaning.
In this context, the government’s records give reason and meaning to the murder of President Kennedy, and perhaps, as John Newman has suggested, we should consider the JFK Records Collection at the Archives II at College Park a crime scene - because those records for the basis of the Prologue – the prelude to his murder, and give his assassination reason, motive and meaning.
In the speech President Kennedy was scheduled to deliver in Austin, Texas on November 22, 1963, he noted: “Civilization, it was once said, is a race between education and catastrophe.”
In this context, CAPA seeks education from the events of our past to avoid a future catastrophe. The release of the government’s records may provide cautionary context for the murder of President Kennedy, whether or not the records show the final answer.
4) - Concurrent or Sequential? CAPA Calendar 2015 - 2018
Concurrent or sequential? When one CAPA lawyer asked the other if we should act concurrent or sequential, the answer is sequential, in an orderly sequence. It is clear that a strategically planned approach is needed. The full release of the records may require Congressional oversight hearings and a media campaign based on a solid strategy that educates the public could be the prologue needed to prod congress to action.
Towards that end we have reorganized under the CAPA banner. Our work is a continuation of efforts by such predecessors such as the Assassination Information Bureau, the Committee to Investigate Assassinations, the Assassination Archives and Research Center, the Committee for an Open Archives and COPA – the Coalition on Political Assassinations.
While Oliver Stone’s motion picture may have contributed to the momentum to have the JFK Records Act passed, it was the tireless work of many hundreds of independent researchers who lobbied behind the scenes to get that law passed. Now we have to see it through. This isn’t a sprint, but we are now coming into the final stretch of a marathon and need to persevere as we approach the October 2017 end game.
CAPA Calendar
2015
May 29 - JFKs birthday
May 31 – NYC Left Forum
June 5 - RFK killed
June 10 - JFK at American University
June 12 – MLK at Mary’s Café, Maple Shade, N.J.
July 29 – 30 - Whistleblower’s Summit – Mott House, Washington D.C.
Sept 11 - Patriots Day
Sept. 17 - Constitution Day
Sept. 21-22 - Australian JFK Assassination Symposium
Nov. 22 - Dallas
2016
Jan 18 - MLK Day
March - Sunshine Week
April 4 - MLK killed
June 5 - RFK killed
June 10 - JFK at AU
November - Presidential election
Nov. 22 - Dallas
2017
October 26 - NARA - Archives II - Last withheld JFK Assassinations Records Released – unles the president orders them to be withheld -
2018
Jan - MLK Day
April - MLK killed - 50 Years
June - RFK killed - 50 Years
6) Memo from the Chair – Dr. Wecht
Memo from the Chairman of the CAPA Executive Committee Dr. Cyril Wecht:
Over 50 years have passed since the Warren Commission declared Lee Harvey Oswald the lone assassin in the murder of President John F. Kennedy. During those decades, independent researches, authors, medical and ballistic experts continue to expose the hard evidence that proves the official government conclusion is invalid.
We want to live in a country where murders will not go unpunished and where the democratic processes cannot be frustrated by individuals, agencies or organizations who oppose the popular will and violate the Constitution.
It has been over 35 years since Congress was convinced to reinvestigate the JFK assassination as well as the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., an investigation that was totally compromised by the government itself. The result of those compromised investigations is an ongoing decline in confidence in government, in both the American legal process and the credibility of the institutions involved. Until this nation moves to honestly deal with such crimes and their implications, that loss of faith will continue to undermine the nation’s faith in its own character.
Five decades of independent research has demonstrated that the American system is unable to effectively address crimes which have the potential of exposing groups with radical and socially explosive motives. There is strong evidence that lead key decision makers compromised investigations and manipulated official conclusions on political assassinations at both the state and national level.
It has been nearly 25 years since Congress was convinced to release the government records on the assassination of President Kennedy, including those of the House Select Committee on Assassinations, but neglecting to order the release of the MLK records of the same committee. We want to pursue the release of these records that continue to be withheld at the National Archives and work closely with Congress to suggest a process similar to the JFK Act for release of the Martin Luther King files. We will analyze the JFK and MLK records as they are released and attempt to educate people as to their contents.
We now know that the official investigations were flawed and important leads never properly pursued, that significant unanswered questions remain in other political assassinations, that most people believe – and with good reason, - that one man alone could not be responsible for these crimes, and that the truth remains hidden as long as the government records regarding these assassinations remain sealed from the public.
Some people may feel that there is no purpose in working to solve murders that date back fifty years, but we know there‘s no statute of limitations in a murder case, and no time limit on determining the truth. And until we face the truth about the assassinations of our political leaders, we cannot hope to move toward a viable democracy in this country, nor prevent such assassinations from happening in the future.
I put the cap on this when I talk to groups. I say to folks – “what does it mean today, these 52 years later?” I say it means this is not the way governments are supposed to run in a democracy. You go to the polls and you vote. You could be left wing, you could be Tea Party, right wing, liberal or conservative, Democratic or Republican - this is one issue that transcends traditional political lines.
You do not accomplish your objectives because you are unhappy and frustrated and unable to prevail in the polls, then go and physically eliminate the leader of the other side. I say to them, let's label this and understand it for what it is: the physical elimination, by murder, of the president whom they could not beat. There was only one way, and that is what they chose: To kill John Kennedy. I say that in any other country in the world, when this happens it is labeled for what it was, the overthrow of the government. It was coup d' etat in America. That's what it was.
In the year 2015 people still are interested in the JFK assassination. When I am asked to speak to a civic group I don't choose the subject. They call me, and I ask what do you want me to talk about? Most of them choose John F. Kennedy. They are still fascinated by the mystery.
And now, after this many years, with so many people gone who remember when he was alive, it's become more of a suspicion, a haunting suspicion that something went wrong, and we trace it back to that moment. No other event has changed the shape of the future in the same way as the assassination of President Kennedy and we can wait no longer for a solution. We must act now.
Political assassination is the most serious threat to democratic government and occurs somewhere every day, usually as a convenient means of obtaining, maintaining or controlling power. That’s why it is important to support those who focus on research and study political assassinations from medico legal, forensic science, investigative and political perspectives.
Towards that end we have reorganized our efforts under the banner of a new organization – Citizens Against Political Assassinations – CAPA – with the mission of establishing the truth about political assassinations and major crimes of social significance.
We oppose the use of political assassination as a means to obtain or maintain power. We are committed to support those researchers, investigators and attorneys who attempt to determine the truth, seek justice and educate people on the dangers that political assassinations pose to our society.
Well, how do you deal with it? This is how we are dealing with it. In order to achieve our goals, CAPA will:
- Pursue the release of records with both the National Archives and Congress to identify and obtain the release of missing, lost, allegedly destroyed and currently withheld records and make them as widely available as possible.
- File FOIA and legal action suits against government agencies to obtain the release of records related to political assassinations.
- Ensure that the JFK Act is fulfilled and make the release of the remaining withheld records a campaign issue in the next presidential election.
- Work closely with the NARA and get Congress to fulfill their oversight mandate by holding public hearings and ensure the full disclosure of the remaining sealed records.
- Initiate a similar process to release the records in other assassinations, especially the HSCA MLK files that remain sealed and weren’t covered by the JFK Act.
- Analyze the new records and educate the American people about who commits political assassinations, who covered up the conspiracies and why.
- Establish investigative teams to thoroughly review and critique the evidence now available and identify any potential political conspiracies associated with the crimes.
- Engage in a public/media effort to correct the impression that the previous inquires and official verdicts are necessarily correct and can be taken to represent the historical truth of the crimes.
- Correct the media spin that says there is nothing new in these records, answer the outstanding questions that can be answered, determine the truth and seek justice.
The ultimate goal of this work will be an effort to seek both truth and justice in regard to any crime which can be shown to have been an act of political assassination anywhere in the world.
There are hundreds of non-profits organizations and think tanks that study war and peace and promote democracy but only a few that focus on political assassination as the biggest threat to the legitimacy of government - and that is what CAPA is doing.
Recent polls show that 85% of the American people agree with us about the evidence of conspiracy in this case and the need to release all of the remaining withheld records. They know they have never been told the full story by the official investigations. We need your help to reach them and to let them know that something can and must be done. Help us reveal the truth and tell the American public that there is something new in these files and something can be done about it.
With the amount of potential support we can generate, we can become the NRA of political assassinations – opposing the hunting of human beings as a popular sport – and with your help we can become a powerful lobby that can support candidates, make and break politicians and ensure that Congress enforces the JFK Act and all of the laws it makes.
Now there is an organization that supports the latest research, uses grassroots outreach and social media, is lobbying Congress for oversight hearings and is using the courts to free secret files and enforce the rule of law in regards to political assassinations. We shall make a focused, highly responsible inquiry and not coming out with wild statements and allegations. We will be doing it in a responsible, objective fashion, with the basic philosophy - the raison d'etre - to look into assassinations as many people believe they are: politically motivated murders.
We are standing upon past achievements, gradually improving and coming to a deeper understanding based upon solid ground and from pursuit of appropriate legal protocol.
CAPA is intent upon keeping the best aspects of the JFK research processes in the news, bringing them to average Americans, and making it a topic that is especially relevant during an era where political assassinations are being authorized daily using gadgetry, technology, drones and other government strategies that are completely different from anything we've ever known.
As we formally launch our mission, announce our intentions and reach out to those who support us, we ask you to join us in this great effort because one person can make a difference in small ways. United we can achieve goals that one person cannot do alone.
7) - Endorsements –
David Talbot: Americans like to think that violence only plays an important role in the politics of foreign countries. But assassinations and other forms of political violence have all too often changed the course of U.S. history. The assassinations of leaders such as John and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X remain unsolved cases -- nightmares that continue to haunt the national psyche. I join with CAPA to shed a light on the dark corners of power in the United States and to reveal its secrets. As long as high crimes such as this remain a mystery and government continues to block the release of material that belongs to the American people, our democracy will always be under a shadow.
8) Bill Simpich - Here’s a Possible One Year Plan – We Need a Three Year Strategy for CAPA
By Bill Simpich
On the evening before the first CAPA Executive Committee Conference call, I ran into David Talbot while we were both walking our dogs in the park. We both enthusiastically agreed that CAPA has great potential. It needs a comprehensive media strategy, as well as a 3 year plan.
If we don't firm up our historical memory of the response to prior assassinations and their impact on society, important aspects of our history will slip away from us. My understanding is that CAPA’s priorities will be to free the JFK files by 2017, the release of the MLK HSCA files, and to reopen the RFK case. We will have to work on cases "other than JFK" - including present-day cases as they arise - in order to maintain our momentum.
If the goal of CAPA is to free the files and resolve the JFK case and other hotly-contested cases like it, the best strategy to achieve that goal is to wage a political campaign designed to make sure that 1) the files are freed with no redactions by October 2017; 2) to free as many additional files as possible; and 3) to promote a climate that combats secrecy and promotes transparency.
What tactics will advance that strategy? I would suggest that our tactics should be informed by some good news from Martha Murphy at NARA.
Murphy announced that a team was formed last year to assure that the estimated 3500 documents withheld in full and the 35,000 withheld in part will be released by 2017. She says that these documents will be scanned and posted online! We want the NARA archivist to stand firm to this commitment.
Murphy said that the default position will be to release the documents, as only the President of the United States can authorize continued withholding of documents and continued redactions.
Given that information, putting pressure on the next President is an important ingredient in the mix. I would propose tactics that will propel our strategy - something like this:
July 2015: Coming-out party for CAPA. Announce our action plan, seek members, and start at-tending conferences.
July-August 2015: If we get the next four items right, we are off to a great start.
1. Pinpoint who our natural allies are. For starters, I would urge outreach and establishing a working relationships with the National Security Archive, the Center for Democracy and Tech-nology and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. I assume that several of us have worked with these groups in the past.
2. What commitments do we want from the 2016 candidates? Is "will you release all the records in 2017" sufficient - or do we want more? We should encourage internal dialogue within CAPA to define the specific questions that should be asked to the 2016 presidential candidates, since the next President will be the final arbiter of what is redacted from the 2017 JFK records release.
3. The all-important PR/media plan? We already have a strong team of people at work on this, crafting and vetting a PR/media plan which is essential to our success. Stories on lost and de-stroyed records are often newsworthy, as well as narratives that have been revealed by docu-ments released pursuant to the JFK Records Act. The CAPA newsletter and website-in-formation can be powerful tools. We are already seeing the value of social media in the JFK case on a daily basis - how can CAPA advance its goals in that arena?
4. How to improve the accessibility of documents? We can engage the NARA staff to find out if and how the release of the records can be expedited. There is no reason for them to wait until the October 2017 deadline. They can start the rollout right now by posting the noncontroversial re-quested documents on line as they have promised, to update their public index and make their private index available to researchers. It sounds like they may also be scanning earlier-released documents at some point- if they do, these documents should be put online as well.
In general, NARA should work more efficiently with researchers and to see that Congress properly oversees the JFK Act so that it is properly enforced. NARA never engaged with the FBI and CIA as agreed in a Memorandum of Understanding back in the 1990s. Congress never engaged in its oversight function under the JFK Records Act. NARA should join researchers in pushing them to change that.
September-December 2015: Begin a new Super PAC to accept donations to be used to promote our issues in the media during the election.
Public hearings would be useful for media impact. One option would be to hold congressional briefings on the current status of the JFK and MLK records. Such briefings would provide a platform for witnesses and whistle blowers as well as analysts reporting on documents lost, de-stroyed, or newly-discovered.
We want the relevant Congressional committees to conduct proper oversight of the JFK Act, as they are required to do but haven’t done. When Congress resumes after the summer holiday, we should hold a Congressional briefing where we decide who testifies. We want to make sure that Congress and NARA and their staff as well as the mainstream media listen to these witnesses.
January-June 2016: Roll out a media campaign designed to ensure the documents are released in full by October 2017 as mandated in the JFK Records Act.
Make political assassinations and secret records a campaign issue and seriously and regularly covered by the mainstream media.
Public relations and media advocacy is shaping up in our discussions as the number one priority. The 50th anniversary of the JFK assassination made clear the location of the battleground.
The media campaign should include "bird dog" teams that follow the presidential candidates at every whistle stop in the build-up to the Iowa and New Hampshire primaries, asking them to commit to full enforcement of the JFK Records Act, to combat secrecy, and to promote transpar-ency. We can broaden this campaign in later months if we make a heavy impact in those initial two primaries.
I am no fan of Bill Clinton, but he sided with the ARRB in favor of more openness in every in-stance when the intelligence agencies appealed to him. Under the JFK Records Act, the Presi-dent is the final arbiter when NARA and the agencies don’t agree on a classification issue. We want the next President to go our way.
Please weigh in with suggestions on how to improve this one year plan and build on it with a comprehensive strategy for the next three years. Next time, I will offer a proposal for a new JFK Records Act as part of a three year strategy.
9) Guest Book Excerpt 1.
Peter Dale Scott – Deep Politics 3 – The American Dream of Enlightenment Itself
CIA, the Mafia, and Oswald in Mexico
Overview: The Mexican CIA-Mob Nexus
Those who have spent years trying to assess the role of the Kennedy assassination in US history are accustomed to the debate between structuralists and conspiratorialists. In the first camp are those who argue, in the spirit of Marx and Weber, that the history of a major power is determined by large social forces; thus the accident of an assassination, even if conspiratorial, is not an event altering history. (On this point Noam Chomsky and Alex Coxburn agree with the mainstream US media they normally criticize.)
At the other end of the spectrum are those who talk of an Invisible Government or Secret Team, who believe that surface events and institutions are continuously manipulated by unseen forces. For these people the assassination exemplifies the operation of fundamental historical forces, not a disruption of them.
For years I have attempted to formulate a third or middle position. To do so I have relied on distinctions formulated partly in neologisms or invented terms. Over forty years ago I postulated that our overt political processes were at times seriously contaminated by manipulative covert politics or parapolitics, which I then defined as “a system or practice of politics in which accountability is consciously diminished.” 1 Peter Dale Scott, The War Conspiracy: JFK, 9/11, and The Deep Politics of War (New York: Skyhorse, 2013), 171.
In Deep Politics and the Death of JFK, I moved towards a less conspiratorial middle alternative. I discussed instead the interactions of what I called deep political processes, emanating from plural power sources and all only occasionally visible, all usually repressed rather than recognized. In contrast to parapolitical processes, those of deep politics are open-ended, not securely within anyone's power or intentions.
In 1995 I brought out Deep Politics II (since reissued as Oswald, Mexico, and Deep Politics), 2
Peter Dale Scott, Oswald, Mexico, and Deep Politics (New York; Skyhorse, 2013) which I thought of at the time as a case study in deep politics: how secret U.S. Government reports on Oswald in Mexico became a reason to cover up the facts about the assassination of JFK. But it was also a specialized study, since in this case most of the repressed records of events, now declassified, occurred within the workings of the CIA, FBI, military intelligence, or their zones of influence. It was hence largely a study in parapolitics. It verged into true deep politics only near the end, when it described how a collaborating Mexican agency, the DFS (Direccion Federal de Seguridad) was deeply involved in the international drug traffic. Deep Politics, in contrast, looked continuously at the interaction between government and other social forces, such as the drug traffic.
Both books represented an alternative kind of history, or what I call deep history. Deep history differs from history in two respects. First, it is an account of suppressed events, at odds with the publicly accepted history of this country. (One might say that history is the record of politics; deep history, the record of deep politics.) Second, deep history is often restored from records which were themselves once repressed. In short, deep history is a reconstructed account of events denied by the public records from which history is normally composed. 3. There are previous examples where the actual events of American history are at odds with the public record. Allen Dulles represented the conventional view of John Wilkes Booth when he represented Booth to the Warren Commission as a loner, ignoring both the facts of the case and what is known now of Booth's secret links to the Confederate Secret Service (Scott, Deep Politics, 295; cf. Tidwell, William A., with James O. Hall and David Winfred Gaddy, Come Retribution: the Confederate Secret Service and the Assassination of Lincoln (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1988).
A key example concerns a tape of someone calling himself “Lee Oswald,” claiming in a Soviet Embassy phone call about having met a consul there by the name of Kostikov, a KBG agent. As we shall see, this tape should have been preserved and investigated as a prime piece of evidence to frame Oswald as an assassin. We have documentary evidence, initially suppressed, that one day after the President's murder this tape was listened to by FBI agents in Dallas, who determined that the speaker was in fact not Lee Harvey Oswald. Yet almost immediately this event was denied by other reports, including cables claiming – falsely – that the tape had already been destroyed before the assassination.
A brief but important digression here about history. Most people assume that “history “simply refers to what has happened but is now gone. In fact the dictionary reminds us that the first meaning of the word (cognate to the word “story”) is to a narrative or record of events, and only after that to “the events forming the subject matter of history.” 4. American Heritage Dictionary, s.v. “history,” emphases added....
...What of events whose records are destroyed or falsified? These dictionary definitions seem to assume that what is true is also what is recorded.
There is thus a latent bias in the evolution of the word “history” that is related to structuralists, rationalist assumptions referred to in my first paragraph. History (or at least what I like to call archival history) has always been the way a culture chooses to record and remember itself; and it tends to treat official records with a respect they do not always deserve.
Managed Oswald Stories
In the days after the murders in Dallas, the U.S. Was flooded with dubious stories, most of them swiftly discredited, linking Oswald to either a Cuban or Soviet conspiracy. Those which most preoccupied the FBI and CIA all came out of Mexico. These stories exhibited certain common characteristics.
1. They all came from either directly from an intelligence source, or from someone in the hands of an intelligence agency. Nearly always the agency involved was the Mexican DFS or secret police. The DFS, along with the Nicaraguan intelligence service, which was also a source, were under CIA tutelage.
2. The Stories changed over time, to support either a pro-conspiratorial hypothesis (“Phase One”) or a rebuttal of this (“Phase Two”).
3. The Warren Commission was led to believe that the “Phase One” stories were without basis. In fact a number of unresolved anomalies suggest that behind them was some deeper truth, still not revealed.
4. As just noted, the two main sources, Silvia Duran and Gilberto Alvarado, gave varying stories while detained by the DFS. Of the two, Duran was actually tortured, and Alvarado reportedly threatened with torture... In retrospect, these stories should not have been taken seriously. In fact the CIA was able to rely on them, not as a source of truth, but as a source of coercive influence over the rest of the government. It will help us to understand what was going on if we refer to the stories, not as 'information' or even as 'allegations,' but as MANAGED STORIES. To say this leaves open the question of who were the ultimate managers – the DFS, U.S. Officers in Mexico, or higher authorities in Washington.
The full history is complex and confused, with many unanswered questions. But nearly all of these managed stories, along with others outside Mexico.....resolve into this simple pattern of a Phase One/Phase Two evolution.
I do wish to argue that these managed stories, fleeting and insubstantial though they are, were of central importance in determining the outcome of the Kennedy assassination investigation. In succeeding years, furthermore, the discredited 'Phase-One' stories have been revived to manipulate public opinion, even after the CIA and FBI had agreed on a 'Phase-Two' interpretation of Oswald's movements in Mexico City. In 2013, for example, the discredited Garro story of the twist party was revived in a mainstream book by Philip Shenon.
To this day both 'Phase-One' and 'Phase-Two' versions are trotted out from time to time. These control public perceptions of the Kennedy assassination seize the debate from genuine critics who have less access to the media.
The Importance of the Managed Oswald Stories
Most critics have given only passing attention to the role of the Oswald Mexico stories in the aftermath of the Kennedy assassination.
The “Phase-Two” accounts of his visit to the Embassies (to obtain a visa), because of their abundant corroboration, are almost universally accepted, even by severe critics of the Warren Commission narrative. 4. Among those who accept the “Phase-Two” version as real are Newman (pp. 356-57) and Russell (pp. 492-94).
It is not my intention at this point to challenge the “Phase-Two” version, except to urge caution in accepting it. As noted in Deep Politics II (pp.117-30), the CIA and FBI have also managed the visa story told by Silvia Duran on November 23, editing and re-editing this story on at least four different occasions.
I do wish to argue that these managed stories, fleeting and insubstantial though they are, were of central importance in determining the outcome of the Kennedy assassination investigation. In succeeding years, furthermore, the discredited “Phase-One” stories have been revived to manipulate public opinion, even after the CIA and FBI had agreed on a “Phase-Two” interpretation of Oswald's movements in Mexico City. In 2013, for example, the discredited Garro story of the twist party was revived in a mainstream book by Philip Shenon. 4 Philip Shenon, A Cruel and Shocking Act: The Secret History of the Kennedy Assassination (New York: Henry Hold and Company, 2013), 496-98 etc.
Even Gus Russo, whose book is throughout a defense of CIA integrity, concedes that the CIA withheld information that “could have given the public the misperception that the agency had a relationship with Oswald.” 5. Russo, Live By the Sword, 218
But according to Russo, Dulles' cover-up activities on the Warren Commission were intended chiefly to protect Bobby Kennedy, rather than the CIA. 6 Russo, Live By the Sword, 363.
“A full disclosure of Mexico City matters,” Russo argues, “would have bared the Kennedys' plans to murder Fidel Castro....Such disclosure would certainly have diminished JFK's mystique as an innocent martyr.” 7. Russo, Live By the Sword, 218. (In other words, what I shall call in Chapter 6 a “Phase-Three” story.)
David Phillips is the one man who seems to cover all aspects of the CIA-Oswald operation and cover-up in 1963. David Phillips even had one friend, Gordon McLendon, in common with Jack Ruby. McLendon, a sometimes intelligence officer and Dallas owner of radio stations, had known Phillips since both men were in their teens. (The two men would in the 1970s join in forming the Association of Former Intelligence Officers.) 7
McLendon was close to two other wealthy men in Dallas who have attracted the attention of JFK researchers, Clint Murchison and Bedford Wynne. 7
What is not yet known is why McLendon, whom Ruby described as one of his six closest friends, embarked on a sudden and surprising trip with his family to Mexico City in the fall of 1963. 7
This situation, an interaction between what is documented and what is not, also forces us to enlarge our thinking about history. As we have seen, history is defined in dictionary terms as a narrative or record of what is known. A successful assassination plot, by contrast, represents an interruption of this record by the unrecorded, the unknown.
Thus the defense of succeeding political legitimacy becomes undistinguishable from a defense of the integrity and dominance of the public historical record. This defense propels people to trivialize the assassination as an accident, the work of a “lone nut.”
But of these two variant explanations focus on a cover-up designed to cover up anti-Castro assassination plotting in 1963: plotting in which both CIA personnel (certainly) and Bobby Kennedy (possibly) were involved. But neither Mahoney [1. Richard D. Mahoney, Sons & Brothers: the Days of Jack and Bobby Kennedy (New York: Aracde, 1999), 303;] nor Russo point out the degree to which the 1963 post-Mongoose plotting involved the sources and managers of the Oswald Mexico City stories.
Those of us who genuinely wish to see overt, rational forces prevail in the world must reject a superficial and spurious defense of our institutions. The ideal embraced by our society, that it be based on truth and openness, is not a cynical cliché, but a real condition for our institutional health.
The pursuit of leads hinted at in this essay may seem frustratingly difficult, esoteric, and above all slow. But to abandon this pursuit is to break faith with the American dream of enlightenment itself.
10) Book Excerpt 2 - John Newman - Where Angels Tread Lightly
John Newman - from Where Angles Tread Lightly
PRELUDE: WHERE ANGELS TREAD LIGHTLY
April 24, 1961: New York City
“My dear Mr. Kennedy,” the type written letter began. It had been placed in a plain white envelope and addressed, “Mr. Robert Kennedy, Attorney-General of U.S., Department of Justice, Washington D.C., (Personal Correspondence).” Writing exactly seven days after the disastrous failure of the CIA’s Bay of Pigs operation, the author of this letter used what may have been a pseudonym. Whether or not it was her true name, it had, with very few exceptions, vanished from U.S. intelligence files since the summer of 1960. The name was “Catherine Taaffe.” This name appeared often in the government’s files as far back as the Korean War. It had disappeared in the wake of its association with a murder and kidnapping plot of a former Cuban Senator from the Batista regime in Cuba.
Taaffe was unhappy with U.S. policy in Cuba and the Bay of Pigs failure had lit her fuse. She intended to blast her message to the top of the U.S. government. Taaffe knew full well that letters arriving at the Department of Justice (DOJ) addressed to the Attorney General (AG) did not arrive on the chief’s desk unopened. She had anticipated that the AG’s staff would check the name Taaffe against the DOJ’s files, and she knew what they would find. She understood that this would ensure that her letter would be read by Robert Kennedy, along with many of her voluminous FBI files. By April 1961, those files were bursting at the seams. Much of them remain classified in 2015 but what has been released so far exceeds a thousand pages.
“My letter may be presumptive,” Taaffe told Kennedy, “but I have heard of women being forgiven for tramping where angels tread lightly.” This turn of phrase was her adaptation of the phrase Where Angels Fear to Tread, a line originally from An Essay on Criticism, written by the British poet Alexander Pope (1688-1744)—the third-most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, after Shakespeare and Tennyson. Two hundred years later it became the title of E. M. Forster’s novel Where Angels Fear to Tread.
Taaffe’s use of the adjective “presumptive” to describe her letter to Kennedy was an understatement. To tell the Attorney General that where she was “tramping” would, by inference, strike the fear of God in men, was outrageously immodest. But it was also true. The President’s brother would understand this once he began to leaf through her files.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN: THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
INVASION OF CUBA
[Excerpt:]
A CLOSE CALL FOR DAVE PHILLIPS
Toward the end of July 1959, the CIA Station in Havana instructed Dave Phillips to contact Michael P. Malone, Vice President of the Czarnikow Rionda firm, which controlled four of the major sugar companies in Cuba, and manager of Robert Kleberg’s (King Ranch) $5.7 million 40,000 acre cattle ranch in Camaguey Province, Cuba. Phillips wrote down what happened as a result in a 6 August memo.[1]
On 29 July, Phillips, as instructed, met Malone in his room at the Hotel Nacional in Havana. Malone said he had talked with several people at CIA HQS about his association with a group of Cuban landowners anxious to do something about Castro’s Agrarian Reform program. CIA HQS had told Malone that Phillips would be able to act as an advisor in a public relations program. Malone told Phillips that the Cubans had approached him in the hope that he and the interests he represented would contribute to a fund being generated to prepare “a plan of action.”
Malone then contacted the Cuban group and told them he would introduce them to a representative of a large, unnamed public relations firm in the U.S. who was experienced in “unconventional” propaganda techniques. The Cubans asked to meet Phillips that same day. Hours later, Phillips returned to the hotel room to meet Malone. Malone said that one of the Cubans, Martinez Conhill, was on his way to the room and that they would then go to meet Caines Milanes, President of the Cuban Cattleman’s Association. Conhill told Phillips that Cainas was “the absolute leader of the group, and that the only thing to remember in talking with him was that he had strong political ideas.” In the memo he wrote afterward, Phillips said he took “ideas” to mean ambitions.
Phillips had guessed right about Caines. But Phillips did not know at the time that Caines’ group was one of two nuclei working inside of Cuba with the Trujillo plot and that Caines would become the new Vice President of Cuba if the plot succeeded in overthrowing Castro. The three men drove to meet Caines at a large home in Miramar. Phillips assumed that the home belonged to Caines, but in fact it was the home of another Cuban, Gustavo de Los Reyes. An attorney for the Cuban Cattleman’s Association also joined the meeting. In his memo, Phillips said that in view of being in this “sudden crowd” he was inclined to be “as discreet as possible.”
Caines dominated the two-hour meeting from the beginning. The first thing Phillips told the group was that he would have to consult his “home office” before making any definite commitment. At length, this exchange took place between Caines and Phillips:
After about an hour Caines said to me directly: “Look here—we were told you were an expert on this sort of thing. But so far you have contributed nothing. Can’t you give us one concrete idea of the sort of program you might provide? …I suggested, that if they wanted to move at once and really do something, they should purchase a newspaper (or at least promise the owner of a paper complete financial repayment in the event of loss or closure), and that this newspaper should begin daily editorial attacks against the drastic aspects of the Agrarian Reform program and equally strong attacks against the growing communist activity in Cuba. Such a paper, I pointed out, would draw the immediate interest from the Cuban readers. One of three things would happen:
a. Castro would close the paper and if so all the world would see that freedom of the press did not exist in Cuba.
b. The mob would burn the paper—[meaning] even worse international propaganda against Castro’s government.
c. Or nothing would happen—in which case the full story would be carried to the Cuban public in heavy doses, and other newspapers would find the courage to speak out against communism.
Caines and his group liked Phillips’ idea. In fact, they liked it so much that they talked about which newspaper they might use. They spoke of starting their own weekly newspaper only to destroy it later. And they even said they would provide “the mob” if Castro did not.
At this point in the meeting it dawned on Phillips that this particular group of Cubans was less interested in publicity work than in direct militant action to overthrow the Castro government. They spoke of many other Cubans who were with them and discussed possible paramilitary activities—what would happen if there was an invasion of Cuba from the Dominican Republic; the possible effect of bomb throwing, and what would happen if Castro were assassinated. In his memo, Phillips wrote, Things really became conspiratorial. Malone was an enthusiastic supporter of the most militant ideas. Generally, he exuded a “give ‘em hell” attitude. I felt it was time to leave. I promised to report back to the group two days later with a plan of some kind. But I made it clear that I would have to consult with my home office. [Emphasis added]
In his memo, Phillips wrote that the group was “undisciplined security-wise,” and did not know exactly what they wanted except “Castro’s head.” Phillips concluded, they would be willing to do almost anything — even supporting a Dominican invasion. They want to get out on the streets and fight, they claim, and they are having a hard time holding their people back. With the new death penalty in Cuba for anti-revolutionary activity, it is not hard to imagine that at least one member of this group might inform to the government.
Phillips was quite right that there was an informant in the Trujillo plot—and he might even have been thinking of Morgan.
Phillips was traveling to CIA HQS and to New York when the American Embassy in Havana learned that a Cuban government tape recorder in the home of Gustavo de Los Reyes had taped a prior conversation between Caines and a “non-Kubark [CIA] American Embassy official.”[2] After much handwringing and exchanges of cables, the CIA eventually concluded that Phillips’ meeting with Caines had not been recorded, and Phillips returned to Havana on 27 August.[3]
AFTERWORD
Seven years have passed since the sequel to Oswald and the CIA was published in 2008. The boundaries were much narrower in the original 1995 edition, but even in that book, the pre-assassination movements of Oswald and manipulation of his CIA files foreshadowed what came at the end of the 2008 sequel: conspiracy. I argued in the sequel, and I am still convinced today, that the gloves of the person most likely behind that part[4] of the plot fit best on the hands of James Jesus Angleton, the Agency’s counterintelligence chief.
As I waded into these dark waters then, my instincts told me to step back. With millions of new records released and tens of thousands still withheld, I needed a lot more time to investigate—and some time off. And so, I turned to an investigation of parallel paradigms in ancient mysticism. I returned to the JFK case in 2012.
It is not uncommon to view Dealey Plaza as the crime scene in the assassination of President Kennedy. Of course, it is. But I believe that the crime scene in this case extends beyond Dealey Plaza, where the president was shot; and Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas, where the president is said to have expired; and Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland, where the president’s autopsy took place. I am convinced that the “crime scene” includes the millions of records at the National Archives and Research Administration (NARA) facility, now located in College Park, Maryland. The “crime scene tape” was eventually extended to this facility, so to speak, by the passage of the JFK Assassination Records act in 1993. The records at NARA can also help us to find the criminals.
[2] 8/18/59, HAVA 2573 to DIR CIA. 104-10267-10166.
[3] See 8/21/59, HAVA 25898 to DIR CIA. 104-10128-10335; and 8/22/59, DIR 41198 to HAVA. 104-10177-10088; and HAVA 2603 to DIR CIA. 104-10267-10161.
[4] Jefferson Morley, “The Oswald File: Tales of the Routing Slips; Six Weeks before the President’s Murder, the CIA Didn’t Tell All That it Knew,” Washington Post, 2 April 1995. “The routing slips that shed new light on the CIA’s handling of information about Oswald before the assassination were found by John Newman, a 20-year veteran of U.S. Army Intelligence…
When I returned to active investigation of this case I knew straight away that I had to make a critical decision: all in or stay out. I also knew that all in meant to do more than a new book. It meant perhaps three, four or even more volumes. It also meant testing hypotheses, making mistakes, and readjusting the investigation to follow the evidentiary trail. That is what is supposed to happen in murder investigations.
In this investigation, however, we are attempting to look inside a very dark box. The people involved in the design of the plot, even if they were only a few, were very sophisticated in propaganda and deception operations. In his book, The Craft of Intelligence, former Director of Central Intelligence Allen Dulles wrote about the “collateral effect” of a successful deception operation. Dulles often used the term “black operation,” which is similar to the term used in this volume, “dark operation.”
Dulles explained the “collateral effect” this way: once a “single piece” of the enemy’s deception has succeeded in its purpose, “then almost anything that happens can be taken as one of his tricks.”[5] This is what happened when British and French intelligence failed to believe some half-burned documents “from the complete plans of the German invasion of France through Belgium, for which Hitler had already given marching orders.” British and French officials felt that “the whole thing was a German deception operation.”
The point that Dulles was driving at was this: “Often the very fear of deception has blinded an opponent to the real value of the information which accidents or intelligence operations have placed in his hands.” The burned documents had fallen into British and French hands by accident, when a German plane landed in the wrong place.
It is worthwhile pondering how Dulles’ point might apply to the Kennedy assassination. As stated in the Introduction to this work, in this case a very significant “single piece” of deception succeeded in its purpose:
The plot to assassinate President Kennedy was designed to deceive both people in the government and the public at large. A convincing trail of evidence was established to make it appear that the Kennedy brothers’ plan to overthrow Castro had been turned around and used against them by Fidel himself, resulting in the assassination of President Kennedy.[6]
We should heed Dulles’ advice and not fear that “almost everything” is a successful deception operation. We should, as Dulles advises us, realize that accidents in intelligence operations happen. Such accidents have occurred in this case too. They have placed important clues into our hands.
There is an unstated corollary principal in the game of deception that Allen Dulles was kind enough to give us. Once a “single piece” of a black operation has been compromised, the entire fabric of that operation can potentially unravel.
[5] Allen W. Dulles, Craft of Intelligence: America’s Legendary Spy Master On the Fundamentals of Intelligence Gathering For a Free World (Guilford, Connecticut: The Lyons Press, 2006), p. 147.
[6] For more on this, see Peter Dale Scott, Deep Politics II: Essays Oswald, Mexico, and Cuba (Skokie, Illinois: Green Archive Publications, 1995), p. 64. Scott also proposed (see p. 69), a hypothetical “turn around” scenario. According to this hypothesis, the trigger event was originally a shooter team, “in effect licensed by the CIA to kill Castro,” that might then have returned from Cuba and killed the president instead.”
11) UNREDACTED –
A – Smoking Records - Documents – the Higgins Memo
12) Books – Films –
13) Recent Articles of Interest – Links
14) Interviews – Links
15) Committee Reports –
a) Executive Committee – Our chairman Dr. Wecht hosted the first conference call meeting of the twelve-person Executive Committee in March and officially formalized CAPA as a not-for-profit Political Action Committee.
b) Public Relations – Media held a conference call in May to prepare for a presentation at the Left Forum in New York City, began Facebook page, Twitter account, blog and web site that will host this newsletter. Now preparing for the Whistleblower Summit at Mott House in July and Congressional Briefing in Washington DC in September.
c) Legal – Is preparing official CAPA 501.3c tax status papers and is filing a number of FOIA requests under the CAPA name and preparing to support researchers in filing FOIA requests, appeals and civil suits.
d) Membership – Fiscal – Fundraising – Will meet soon to prepare membership drive and fundraising events for fall.
e) Advisory Board – is being apprised of all proposals and committee work before it is presented to the Executive Board for approval and will assist in promotions and fundraising events.
16) IN MEMORIUM
Many of those who originally picked 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 them and fight for the ideas they lived for and instilled in us.
Penn Jones
Seth Kantor
Sylvia Meagher
Jacob Joestein
Mae Brussell
Larry Howard
Larry Ray Harris
Mary Ferrell
Harold Weisberg
Jack McKinney
Norman Mailer
John Davis
Sarah McLendon
Phil Melanson
George Michael Evica
Rich DelaRosa
Fletcher Prouty
Jack White
Gene Case
Roger Feinman, Esq.
Tim Carroll
Kevin Walsh
Hal Verb
Carl Oglesby
Gaeton Fonzi
Earl Golz
John Judge
Ed Tree Frog
Vincent Bugliosi
To paraphrase Robert the Bruce - You fought with them, now continue the fight with us.
There's plenty of work to do.
17) Political Cartoon – Richard Batholomew
Polls show there has been a steady decline in the American public’s confidence in their government since the release of the Warren Report. Dr. Cyril Wecht: “The result of those compromised investigations is an ongoing decline in confidence in government, in both the American legal process and the credibility of the institutions involved. Until this nation moves to honestly deal with such crimes and their implications, that loss of faith will continue to undermine the nation’s faith in its own character.”
18) PARTING SHOT - Graphic of Gandi in mediation or being shot –
[See: JFKCountercoup2.blogspot.com ]
When Gandi was assassinated at point blank range
When Gandi was assassinated at point blank range, he put his palms together towards his attacker, uttered his mantra and died. It allowed him to choose the attitude he would take in that very moment he was being robbed of his life. He didn't die angry or even surprised. But he had trained himself to march to the drumbeat of his own growing vision of what constituted wise action.
The Hand Mantra
All hand positions are mantras in that they are associated with subtle or not-so-subtle energies. When we get angry our hands tend to close into fists, watering the seeds of anger and violence within you and they respond by sprouting and growing stronger.
The next time you find yourself making fists out of anger try to bring mindfulness to the inner attitude embodied in the fist - feel the tension, the hatred, the anger, the aggression and fear it contains. Then, in the midst of your anger, try opening your fists and placing your palms together over your heart in the prayer position as Gandi had done. Notice what happens to the anger and hurt as you hold this position for only a few moments…It's not that the anger may not be justified, it's just that all sorts of other feelings come into play, which frames the anger and tempers it - feelings like sympathy and compassion for the other person and perhaps a greater understanding of the dance we are both in. The dance of one thing leading to another, of the consequences set into motion - the end result can lead to ignorance compounding ignorance, aggression compounding aggression, with no wisdom anywhere or –
- Jon Kabat-Zinn p. 114 - Wherever You Go There You Are - Mindfullness Meditayions 1994.
19) What We Are Doing
Here's what we're doing:
- Suing the government to locate and obtain the release of all assassination records - including the records of the CIA, Secret Service, ONI, NSA and WHCA.
- Petitioning Congress and the National Archives to see to the enforcement of the JFK Act, What hold public hearings on missing and destroyed records and ensure the October 2017 date for release of the last records is met.
- Make the release of the JFK records, secrecy and transparency a campaign issue in the coming presidential election and endorse and support agreeable candidates with a Super Pac fund - we want to become the NRA for those opposed to human hunters and government secrecy.
- Hold Congressional Briefings on the current status of the JFK and MLK records and provide a platform for witnesses and whistle blowers who want to publicly testify of what they know.
- Review and analyze the recently released records and point out their news-worthy significance.
- Peacefully Protest the continued secrecy at selected sites and circumstances -
- Work close and directly with NARA and Congressional staff to facilitate the release of records, identify specific documents and ensure all of the appropriate records are part of the JFK Collection at NARA and available to the public.
- Develop a media strategy to make political assassinations and secret records valid issues that are seriously and regularly covered by the mainstream media.
- Create a speaker’s bureau, a video and traveling road show of exhibits that can visit college campuses, high schools and old folk’s homes.
- Respond to and correct false and misleading news and feature articles, books, radio and TV programs and expose propaganda and disinformation as it relates to political assassination and secrecy.
- Be prepared for future political assassinations that have yet to occur and ensure they are properly investigated and justice is served.
- Build a permanent Think Tank - Center for the Study of Political Assassination and Secrecy (CSPAS) in Washington DC that will carry on this work after 2017.
Now what are you doing? Enlist in CAPA
If you have the time, the interest, talent and resources to help then join us in our multi-faceted effort to correct history, free the files, prevent politically motivated murders from happening and enforce the laws of the land and constitution.
Become a CAPA Member by donating or volunteering your time. You can join CAPA for free for free right now just by signing on and volunteering to do something, and there’s plenty to do. We need social media savvy students to man the internet exchanges and post items, we need researchers to file FOIA requests and we could use a few lawyers or law students to review FOIA requests and follow up on appeals.
Most of all we need people with a few bucks to spare who want to support us by helping to pay filing fees, court costs and travel expenses for our researchers and attorneys. In about a month we will be taking on national and international members who agree with our mission statement and want to contribute in some way.
$25 – Student – Teacher
$50 - $100 – Donor
$100+ - Patron
$500+ - Sponsor - can earmark a specific program, researcher or committee
$1,000+ Benefactor
$5,000+ Foundation Founder
Anonymous donations are also accepted.
Please note that there are no administrative fees or office expenses as all our work is done by volunteers and all donations and contributions - that's 100% of all funds are used for legal filing costs, court fees, dedicated research and publicity.
CAPAS – A proposed Super PAC will soon be able to take large and small donations and use it to support agreeable candidates and open government issues in the next election.
Large donations can be tax deductible if ear marked for educational and research purposes and funneled through the CSPAA - Center for the Study of Political Assassinations and Secrecy that should be established in DC before 2017.
Questionnaire
1) Where do you live – Town, City, State, Country?
2) How did you learn about CAPA?
3) Would you be willing to organize or attend a regional CAPA meeting?
4) Which CAPA Committee would you like to assist or contribute to?
5) Is there a specific area of research you are interested in?
