9) Guest Book Excerpt 1.
Peter
Dale Scott – Deep Politics 3 – The American Dream of
Enlightenment Itself
CIA, the Mafia, and Oswald in
Mexico
[Chapter 2]
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 Alexander Cockburn 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.
