Proof CIA did not plan or execute the JFK assassination

[Cliff Varnell]

Looks to me like Kennedy's likely killers were part of a supra-institutional clique comprised of individuals with wide-ranging backgrounds.

CIA/military/FBN/State Department/organized crime.

I think the CIA ran Oswald and was tasked with killing the patsy and framing Fidel.

And their failure put them in line to take the blame for Kennedy.

[David Andrews]

James Files is a non-starter as an assassination participant.  Go down that road, and you're being directed away from the real authority. 

[George Sawtelle]

David

I believe James Files.

1) He never thought he would come out but a mafia made man put his name "out on front street" so that in his mind allowed him to talk about the Kennedy assassination.

2) The grassy knoll shooter was still alive when he came out. So to cover for him, he said he shot Kennedy in the head. He said he would never give anybody up.

3) He slipped when in an interview he said he had to fire in a hurry because the limo was approaching the freeway sign. That means he was the shooter who shot Kennedy in the throat.

4) Nicoletti left the getaway vehicle at a gas station and Files proceeded alone in the vehicle until he reached his hotel. A little while later a friend visited and tried to get Files to hide a pistol, which the man said was used to shoot Tippit. Someone was`trying to set him up at that point. Now it makes sense why the mafia wanted him to be a shooter in the assassination. I could't believe that the mafia, Giancano no less, would allow a man in his early twenties, who had little or no history of being a hitman, participate. The mafia and the plotters were setting him up and they could careless about him being killed. When Oswald was captured, killed and railroaded Files was`off the hook. To this day I don't think he realizes he came close to becoming a patsy.

5) Although the FBI said Files was not credible, a mafia lawyer visited him in prison, according to Files, and told him " to lay down by his doggie bone and keep quiet". Why would anyone knowing the danger come out and say what he said about the assassination.

Those are some of he reasons why I believe Files.

Files, like Baker, can't be expected to remember every little detail about what happened 35 years ago. It's remarkable that they remember what they do remember and what they remember is significant. The older one gets the more they forget. But some folks are waiting with anxiety and happiness knowing those two are bound to slip up. They wait and then they get on the internet and say ... well so and so said this and that and they conclude he or she is not credible. It's ridiculous.

[Paul Trejo]

I don't believe James Files.  He had some knowledge about others, and then he applied it to himself to obtain status.   That's his story.

As for Tosh Plumlee -- I believe him.  Larry Hancock suggests that General Edward Lansdale was indeed at Dealey Plaza on 11/22/1963, photographed with the three tramps, but that Lansdale was there in order to COUNTER a plot to kill JFK.

If Hancock is right (as he usually is) then Plumlee's story is viable as well -- as part of the same COUNTER move (or ABORT mission).

It's interesting that Plumlee claimed that 11/21/1963 he and his co-pilot, Emmanuel Rojas and others like Johnny Roselli. flew to Dallas from Miami, landing at Red Bird Airport and that they were looking for at least 20 assassins in Dealey Plaza.  They were too late. 

Why were they too late?  Because they didn't recognize any shooters.   Why didn't they?  Because all the shooters were wearing Dallas Police uniforms.

It was the perfect disguise -- except that it wasn't really a disguise.  Rogues in the Dallas Police were front and center (Walt Brown, 1995).

That's why any CIA guys involved in this plot were rogues -- it was ultimately a CIVILIAN plot, and even the CIA couldn't figure it out.

I believe Tosh Plumlee when he says that the CIA (high-command) had nothing to do with the assassination.

Nor did the Mafia.  If the Mafia were on the front lines, the CIA would have spotted them.  Again -- it was an Underground Radical Right Group, spearheaded by the Dallas Minutemen, led by General Walker, and supported by high officials in Dallas.

Ron Ecker is right -- the CIA would have no reason whatsoever to ABORT their own mission.  But Plumlee didn't say he was going to ABORT a CIA mission.  Plumlee was going to ABORT somebody else's mission.

Regards,
--Paul Trejo

Edited May 4, 2017 by Paul Trejo

[David Andrews]

I believe Tosh Plumlee when he says that the CIA (high-command) had nothing to do with the assassination.

If JFK was a compartmentalized op run by ex-Director Dulles from his home and his office at The Farm (as David Talbot suggests), managed by Helms and Phillips, using Angleton's patsy (Oswald) and executed on the ground by the likes of David Morales, how the heck would Tosh the pilot have privy knowledge of high command intentions?  Because somebody made him assurances?  Somebody made Oswald assurances, too.

Persons who try to make distinctions between official CIA ops and rogue ops, and former and current personnel, haven't been reading enough about CIA, and aren't taking into account the establishment that Dulles - with Harriman and Lodge on the diplomatic side - were accountable to.  Anyone at CIA selected to manage or execute the assassination would have been of like mind with Dulles and his backers, and either accountable to or cooperative with the others in the op chain.

Was the drug-fueled Contra war run by rogue operatives?  Was the 1960s-1970s opium trade out of Vientiane a rogue op?

Edited May 4, 2017 by David Andrews

[Michael Clark]

Regarding Landsdale being in place for an abort op.

I find it hard to believe that a guy as high-up as the 2-star General-and-Spook, Landsdale, could fail at an abort mission.

**edit 4-star to 2-star

Edited May 5, 2017 by Michael Clark

[Ron Ecker]

I guess I missed it, but if the CIA had foreknowledge and went to Dallas to try to abort the assassination, why didn't it just tell JFK or the Secret Service and save them all a lot of trouble?

 

 

[Martin Blank]

10 minutes ago, Ron Ecker said:

I guess I missed it, but if the CIA had foreknowledge and went to Dallas to try to abort the assassination, why didn't it just tell JFK or the Secret Service and save them all a lot of trouble?

i was just thinking the same thing myself. although jfk might have asked "why did you wait so long to tell me."

[Paul Brancato]

1 hour ago, David Andrews said:

I believe Tosh Plumlee when he says that the CIA (high-command) had nothing to do with the assassination.

If JFK was a compartmentalized op run by ex-Director Dulles from his home and his office at The Farm (as David Talbot suggests), managed by Helms and Phillips, using Angleton's patsy (Oswald) and executed on the ground by the likes of David Morales, how the heck would Tosh the pilot have privy knowledge of high command intentions?  Because somebody made him assurances?  Somebody made Oswald assurances, too.

Persons who try to make distinctions between official CIA ops and rogue ops, and former and current personnel, haven't been reading enough about CIA, and aren't taking into account the establishment that Dulles - with Harriman and Lodge on the diplomatic side - were accountable to.  Anyone at CIA selected to manage or execute the assassination would have been of like mind with Dulles and his backers, and either accountable to or cooperative with the others in the op chain.

Was the drug-fueled Contra war run by rogue operatives?  Was the 1960s-1970s opium trade out of Vientiane a rogue op?

David - your point of view is very sane, one that I agree with. Compartmentalization, deniability, misdirection, all standard operating procedure. I have studied the Contra war, enough to know what a sham the hearings were. In addition to downplaying the drug connection, the main piece that was missing was George Bush and his army of Cuban exiles, relationships that date back to at least 1960. The lack of real investigation leads to only one conclusion, which you correctly allude to by including the guys at the top to whom Dulles answered (I would include Bundy) - JFK was an existential threat to the top levels of the establishment and had to be eliminated to protect their privilege and their lucrative businesses, legal and otherwise. The Cubans were enlisted, but eliminating Castro was not the goal, as history suggests, of this top level management. Of course it's likely that that at the mid level - Phillips and Morales, Harvey and Roselli for instance, Castro was the goal. There is much evidence suggesting a real attempt to lay the blame on Castro by the operatives and their handlers, and by the Mafia. But the machinery of war, and the global drug trade that accompanies wars, is huge by comparison to small fry like Castro. I don't buy the argument put forth by many here that the coverup was hastily organized to prevent nuclear conflict or civil war with the extreme right in Dallas. The paper trail by LBJ, the taped phone calls etc., are a cover story to distance the establishment from the assassination and make it look like they were caught off guard. The lone nut scenario was part of that plan, and was in place before the act. 

[Roger DeLaria]

1 hour ago, Michael Clark said:

Regarding Landsdale being in place for an abort op.

I find it hard to believe that a guy as high-up as the 4-star General-and-Spook, Landsdale, could fail at an abort mission.

Good point, Michael. Looking at Lansdale, an expert at organizing regime change, no failure there. He did a lot of successful work for John Foster Dulles and Allen. They wouldn't send him over to Asia to do things if he wasn't capable. Looking at who Lansdale was, what he did, and who he worked for, I don't assign any benevolent reasons for him being there. Not for a moment. I tend to lean on the side side of what Prouty said, that he believed Lansdale was given orders to manage Dallas. Just like this letter to Garrison:

March 6, 1990 

Dear Jim, 

It is amazing how things work, I am at home recuperating from a major back operation (to regain my ability to walk); so I was tossing around in bed last night...not too comfortable...and I began to think of Garrison. I thought, "I have got to write Jim a letter detailing how I believe the whole job was done." 

By another coincidence I had received a fine set of twenty photos from the Sprague collection in Springfield, Mass. As the odds would have it, he is now living just around the corner here in Alexandria. Why not? Lansdale lived here, Fensterwald lives here, Ford used to live here. Quite a community. 

I was studying those photos. One of them is the "Tramps" picture that appears in your book. It is glossy and clear. Lansdale is so clearly identifiable. Why, Lansdale in Dallas? The others don't matter, they are nothing but actors and not gunmen but they are interesting. Others who knew Lansdale as well as I did, have said the same thing, "That's him and what's he doing there?" 

As I was reading the paper the Federal Express man came with a book from Jim, that unusual "Lansdale" book. A terrible biography. There could be a great biography about Lansdale. He's no angel; but he is worth a good biography. Currey, a paid hack, did the job. His employers ought to have let him do it right. 

I had known Ed since 1952 in the Philippines. I used to fly there regularly with my MATS Heavy Transport Squadron. As a matter of fact, in those days we used to fly wounded men, who were recuperating, from hospitals in Japan to Saigon for R&R on the beaches of Cap St Jacque. That was 1952-1953. Saigon was the Paris of the Orient. And Lansdale was "King Maker" of the Philippines. We always went by way of Manila. I met his team. 

He had arrived in Manila in Sept 1945, after the war was over, for a while. He had been sent back there in 1950 by the CIA(OPC) to create a new leader of the Philippines and to get rid of Querino. Sort of like the Marcos deal, or the Noriega operation. Lansdale did it better. I have overthrown a government but I didn't splash it all around like Reagan and Bush have done. Now, who sent him there? 

Who sent him there in 1950 (Truman era) to do a job that was not done until 1953 (Ike era)? From 1950 to Feb. 1953 the Director of Central Intelligence was Eisenhower's old Chief of Staff, Gen Walter Bedell Smith. Smith had been Ambassador to Moscow from 1946 to 1949. The lesser guys in the CIA at the time were Allen Dulles, who was Deputy Director Central Intelligence from Aug. 1951 to Feb. 1953. Frank Wisner became the Deputy Director, Plans (Clandestine Activities) when Dulles became DDCI. Lansdale had to have received his orders from among these four men: Truman, Smith, Dulles, and Wisner. Of course the Sec State could have had some input...i.e. Acheson. Who wanted Querino out, that badly? Who wanted HUKS there? 

In Jan 1953 Eisenhower arrived. John Foster Dulles was at State and Gen Smith his Deputy. Allen Dulles was the DCI and General Cabel his deputy. None of them changed Lansdale's prior orders to "get" Querino. Lansdale operated with abandon in the Philippines. The Ambassador and the CIA Station Chief, George Aurell, did not know what he was doing. They believed he was some sort of kook Air Force Officer there...a role Lansdale played to the hilt. Magsaysay became President, Dec 30, 1953. 

With all of this on the record, and a lot more, this guy Currey comes out of the blue with this purported "Biography". I knew Ed well enough and long enough to know that he was a classic chameleon. He would tell the truth sparingly and he would fabricate a lot. Still, I can not believe that he told Currey the things Currey writes. Why would Lansdale want Currey to perpetuate such out and out bullxxxx about him? Can't be. This is a terribly fabricated book. It's not even true about me. I believe that this book was ordered and delineated by the CIA. 

At least I know the truth about myself and about Gen. Krulak. Currey libels us terribly. In fact it may be Krulak who caused the book to be taken off the shelves. Krulak and his Copley Press cohorts have the power to get that done, and I encouraged them to do just that when it first came out. Krulak was mad! 

Ed told me many a time how he operated in the Philippines. He said, "All I had was a blank checkbook signed by the U.S. government". He made friends with many influential Filipinos. I have met Johnny Orendain and Col Valeriano, among others, in Manila with Lansdale. He became acquainted with the wealthiest Filipino of them all, Soriano. Currey never even mentions him. Soriano set up Philippine Airlines and owned the big San Miguel beer company, among other things. Key man in Asia. 

Lansdale's greatest strategy was to create the "HUKS" as the enemy and to make Magsaysay the "Huk Killer." He would take Magsaysay's battalion out into a "Huk" infested area. He would use movies and "battlefield" sound systems, i.e. fireworks to scare the poor natives. Then one-half of Magsaysay's battalion, dressed as natives, would "attack" the village at night. They'd fire into the air and burn some shacks. In the morning the other half, in uniform, would attack and "capture" the "Huks". They would bind them up in front of the natives who crept back from the forests, and even have a "firing" squad "kill" some of them. Then they would have Magsaysay make a big speech to the people and the whole battalion would roll down the road to have breakfast together somewhere...ready for the next "show". 

Ed would always see that someone had arranged to have newsmen and camera men there and Magsaysay soon became a national hero. This was a tough game and Ed bragged that a lot of people were killed; but in the end Magsaysay became the "elected" President and Querino was ousted "legally." 

This formula endeared Ed to Allen Dulles. In 1954 Dulles established the Saigon Military Mission in Vietnam...counter to Eisenhower's orders. He had the French accept Lansdale as its chief. This mission was not in Saigon. It was not military, and its job was subversion in Vietnam. Its biggest job was that it got more than 1,100,000 northern Vietnamese to move south. 660,000 by U.S.Navy ships and the rest by CIA airline planes. These 1,100,000 north Vietnamese became the "subversive" element in South Vietnam and the principal cause of the warmaking. Lansdale and his cronies (Bohanon, Arundel, Phillips, Hand, Conein and many others) did all that using the same check book. I was with them many times during 1954. All Malthuseanism. 

I have heard him brag about capturing random Vietnamese and putting them in a Helicopter. Then they would work on them to make them "confess" to being Viet Minh. When they would not, they would toss them out of the chopper, one after the other, until the last ones talked. This was Ed's idea of fun...as related to me many times. Then Dulles, Adm. Radford and Cardinal Spellman set up Ngo Dinh Diem. He and his brother, Nhu, became Lansdale proteges. 

At about 1957 Lansdale was brought back to Washington and assigned to Air Force Headquarters in a Plans office near mine. He was a fish out of water. He didn't know Air Force people and Air Force ways. After about six months of that, Dulles got the Office of Special Operations under General Erskine to ask for Lansdale to work for the Secretary of Defense. Erskine was man enough to control him. 

By 1960 Erskine had me head the Air Force shop there. He had an Army shop and a Navy shop and we were responsible for all CIA relationships as well as for the National Security Agency. Ed was still out of his element because he did not know the services; but the CIA sent work his way. 

Then in the Fall of 1960 something happened that fired him up. Kennedy was elected over Nixon. Right away Lansdale figured out what he was going to do with the new President. Overnight he left for Saigon to see Diem and to set up a deal that would make him, Lansdale, Ambassador to Vietnam. He had me buy a "Father of his Country" gift for Diem...$700.00. 

I can't repeat all of this but you should get a copy of the Gravel edition, 5 Vol.'s, of the Pentagon Papers and read it. The Lansdale accounts are quite good and reasonably accurate. 

Ed came back just before the Inauguration and was brought into the White House for a long presentation to Kennedy about Vietnam. Kennedy was taken by it and promised he would have Lansdale back in Vietnam "in a high office". Ed told us in OSO he had the Ambassadorship sewed up. He lived for that job. 

He had not reckoned with some of JFK's inner staff, George Ball, etc. Finally the whole thing turned around and month by month Lansdale's star sank over the horizon. Erskine retired and his whole shop was scattered. The Navy men went back to the navy as did the Army folks. Gen Wheeler in the JCS asked to have me assigned to the Joint Staff. This wiped out the whole Erskine (Office of Special Operations) office. It was comical. There was Lansdale up there all by himself with no office and no one else. He boiled and he blamed it on Kennedy for not giving him the "promised" Ambassadorship to let him "save" Vietnam. 

Then with the failure of the Bay of Pigs, caused by that phone call to cancel the air strikes by McGeorge Bundy, the military was given the job of reconstituting some sort of Anti-Castro operation. It was headed by an Army Colonel; but somehow Lansdale (most likely CIA influence) got put into the plans for Operation Mongoose...to get Castro...ostensibly. 

The U.S. Army has a think-tank at American University. It was called "Operation Camelot". This is where the "Camelot" concept came from. It was anti-JFK's Vietnam strategy. The men running it were Lansdale types, Special Forces background. "Camelot" was King Arthur and Knights of the Round Table: not JFK...then. 

Through 1962 and 1963 Mongoose and "Camelot" became strong and silent organizations dedicated to countering JFK. Mongoose had access to the CIA's best "hit men" in the business and a lot of "strike" capability. Lansdale had many old friends in the media business such as Joe Alsop, Henry Luce among others. With this background and with his poisoned motivation I am positive that he got collateral orders to manage the Dallas event under the guise of "getting" Castro. It is so simple at that level. A nod from the right place, source immaterial, and the job's done. 

The "hit" is the easy part. The "escape" must be quick and professional. The cover-up and the scenario are the big jobs. They more than anything else prove the Lansdale mastery. 

Lansdale was a master writer and planner. He was a great "scenario" guy. It still have a lot of his personally typed material in my files. I am certain that he was behind the elaborate plan and mostly the intricate and enduring cover-up. Given a little help from friends at PEPSICO he could easily have gotten Nixon into Dallas, for "orientation': and LBJ in the cavalcade at the same time, contrary to Secret Service policy. 

He knew the "Protection" units and the "Secret Service", who was needed and who wasn't. Those were routine calls for him, and they would have believed him. Cabell could handle the police. 

The "hit men" were from CIA overseas sources, for instance, from the "Camp near Athena, Greece. They are trained, stateless, and ready to go at any time. They ask no questions: speak to no one. They are simply told what to do, when and where. Then they are told how they will be removed and protected. After all, they work for the U.S. Government. The "Tramps" were actors doing the job of cover-up. The hit men are just pros. They do the job for the CIA anywhere. They are impersonal. They get paid. They get protected, and they have enough experience to "blackmail" anyone, if anyone ever turns on them...just like Drug agents. The job was clean, quick and neat. No ripples. 

The whole story of the POWER of the Cover-up comes down to a few points. There has never been a Grand Jury and trial in Texas. Without a trial there can be nothing. Without a trial it does no good for researchers to dig up data. It has no place to go and what the researchers reveal just helps make the cover-up tighter, or they eliminate that evidence and the researcher. 

The first man LBJ met with on Nov 29th, after he had cleared the foreign dignitaries out of Washington was Waggoner Carr, Atty Gen'l, Texas to tell him, "No trial in Texas...ever." 

The next man he met, also on Nov 29th, was J. Edgar Hoover. The first question LBJ asked his old "19 year" neighbor in DC was "Were THEY shooting at me?" LBJ thought that THEY had been shooting at him also as they shot at his friend John Connally. Note that he asked, "Were THEY shooting at me?" LBJ knew there were several hitmen. That's the ultimate clue...THEY. 

The Connallys said the same thing...THEY. Not Oswald. 

Then came the heavily loaded press releases about Oswald all written before the deal and released actually before LHO had ever been charged with the crime. I bought the first newspaper EXTRA on the streets of Christchurch, New Zealand with the whole LHO story in that first news...photos and columns of it before the police in Dallas had yet to charge him with that crime. All this canned material about LHO was flashed around the world. 

Lansdale and his Time-Life and other media friends, with Valenti in Hollywood, have been doing that cover-up since Nov 1963. Even the deMorenschildt story enhances all of this. In deM's personal telephone/address notebook he had the name of an Air Force Colonel friend of mine, Howard Burrus. Burrus was always deep in intelligence. He had been in one of the most sensitive Attache spots in Europe...Switzerland. He was a close friend of another Air Force Colonel and Attache, Godfrey McHugh, who used to date Jackie Bouvier. DeM had Burrus listed under a DC telephone number and on that same telephone number he had "L.B.Johnson, Congressman." Quite a connection. Why...from the Fifties yet.? 

Godfrey McHugh was the Air Force Attache in Paris. Another most important job. I knew him well, and I transferred his former Ass't Attache to my office in the Pentagon. This gave me access to a lot of information I wanted in the Fifties. This is how I learned that McHugh's long-time special "date" was the fair Jacqueline...yes, the same Jackie Bouvier. Sen. Kennedy met Jackie in Paris when he was on a trip. At that time JFK was dating a beautiful SAS Airline Stewardess who was the date of that Ass't Attache who came to my office. JFK dumped her and stole Jackie away from McHugh. Leaves McHugh happy???? 

At the JFK Inaugural Ball who should be there but the SAS stewardess, Jackie--of course, and Col Godfrey McHugh. JFK made McHugh a General and made him his "Military Advisor" in the White House where he was near Jackie while JFK was doing all that official travelling connected with his office AND other special interests. Who recommended McHugh for the job? 

General McHugh was in Dallas and was on Air Force One, with Jackie, on the flight back to Washington..as was Jack Valenti. Why was LBJ's old cohort there at that time and why was he on Air Force One? He is now the Movie Czar. Why in Dallas? 

See how carefully all of this is interwoven. Burrus is now a very wealthy man in Washington. I have lost track of McHugh. And Jackie is doing well. All in the Lansdale--deM shadows. 

One of Lansdale's special "black" intelligence associates in the Pentagon was Dorothy Matlack of U.S. Army Intelligence. How does it happen that when deM. flew from Haiti to testify, he was met at the National Airport by Dorothy? 

The Lansdale story is endless. What people do not do is study the entire environment of his strange career. For example: the most important part of my book, "The Secret Team", is not something that I wrote. It is Appendix III under the title, "Training Under The Mutual Security Program". This is a most important bit of material. It tells more about the period 1963 to 1990 than anything. I fought to have it included verbatim in the book. This material was the work of Lansdale and his crony General Dick Stillwell. Anyone interested in the "JFK Coup d'Etat" ought to know it by heart. 

I believe this document tells why the Coup took place. It was to reverse the sudden JFK re-orientation of the U.S. Government from Asia to Europe, in keeping with plans made in 1943 at Cairo and Teheran by T.V. Soong and his Asian masterminds. Lansdale and Stillwell were long-time "Asia hands" as were Gen Erskine, Adm Radford, Cardinal Spellman, Henry Luce and so many others. 

In October 1963, JFK had just signalled this reversal, to Europe, when he published National Security Action Memorandum #263 saying...among other things...that he was taking 1000 troops home from Vietnam by Christmas 1963 and ALL AMERICANS out of Vietnam by the end of 1965. That cost him his life. 

JFK came to that "Pro-Europe" conclusion in the Summer of 1963 and sent Gen Krulak to Vietnam for advance work. Kurlak and I (with others) wrote that long "Taylor-McNamara" Report of their "Visit to Vietnam" (obviously they did not write, illustrate and bind it as they traveled). Krulak got his information daily in the White House. We simply wrote it. That led to NSAM #263. This same Trip Report is Document #142 and appears on page 751 to 766 of Vol. II of the Gravel Edition of the Pentagon Papers. NSAM #263 appears on pages 769-770 (It makes the Report official). This major Report and NSAM indicated an enormous shift in the orientation of U.S. Foreign Policy from Asia back to Europe. JFK was much more Europe- oriented, as was his father, than pro-Asia. This position was anathema to the Asia-born Luces, etc. 

There is the story from an insider. I sat in the same office with Lansdale, (OSO of OSD) for years. I listened to him in Manila and read his flurry of notes from 1952 to 1964. I know all this stuff, and much more. I could write ten books. I send this to you because I believe you are one of the most sincere of the "true researchers". You may do with it as you please. I know you will do it right. I may give copies of this to certain other people of our persuasion. (Years ago I told this to Mae Brussell on the promise she would hold it. She did.) 

Now you can see why I have always said that identification of the "Tramps" was unnecessary, i.e. they are actors. The first time I saw that picture I saw the man I knew and I realized why he was there. He caused the political world to spin on its axis. Now, back to recuperating. 

L. Fletcher Prouty 
 

[Cliff Varnell]

Emphasis added:

1 hour ago, Paul Brancato said:

The lack of real investigation leads to only one conclusion, which you correctly allude to by including the guys at the top to whom Dulles answered (I would include Bundy) - JFK was an existential threat to the top levels of the establishment and had to be eliminated to protect their privilege and their lucrative businesses, legal and otherwise. The Cubans were enlisted, but eliminating Castro was not the goal, as history suggests, of this top level management. Of course it's likely that that at the mid level - Phillips and Morales, Harvey and Roselli for instance, Castro was the goal. There is much evidence suggesting a real attempt to lay the blame on Castro by the operatives and their handlers, and by the Mafia. But the machinery of war, and the global drug trade that accompanies wars, is huge by comparison to small fry like Castro.

So Allen Dulles answered to McGeorge Bundy?

How did McGeorge Bundy get his National Security Adviser gig?

He was recommended by Robert A. Lovett, co-author of the anti-Dulles Bruce-Lovett Report on the CIA.

https://cryptome.org/ic-black5602.htm

<quote on>

The 1956 report, written in Bruce's spirited style, condemned

the increased mingling in the internal affairs of other nations of bright, highly graded young men who must be doing something all the time to justify their reason for being. . . . Busy, moneyed, and privileged [the CIA] likes its "King Making" responsibility (the intrigue is fascinating -- considerable self-satisfaction, sometimes with applause, derives from "successes" -- no charge is made for "failures" -- and the whole business is very much simpler than collecting covert intelligence on the USSR through the usual CIA methods!

Bruce and Lovett could discover no reliable system of control. "there are always, of course, on record the twin, well-born purpose of 'frustrating the Soviets' and keeping others 'pro-western' oriented. Under these almost any [covert] action can be and is being justified. . . . Once having been conceived, the final approval given to any project (at informal lunch meetings of the OCB [Operations Coordinating Board] inner group) can, at best, be described as pro forma." One consequence was that "no one, other than those in the CIA immediately concerned with their day to day operation, has any detailed knowledge of what is going on." With "a horde of CIA representatives" swarming around the planet, CIA covert action was exerting "signficant, almost unilateral influences . . . on the actual formulation of our foreign policies . . . sometimes completely unknown" to the local American ambassador. "We are sure," the report added, "that the supporters of the 1948 decision to launch this government on a positive [covert] program could not possibly have foreseen the ramifications of the operations which have resulted from it." Bruce and Lovett concluded with an exasperated plea:

Should not someone, somewhere in an authoritative position in our government, on a continuing basis, be . . . calculating . . . the long-range wisdom of activities which have entailed a virtual abandonment of the international "golden rule," and which, if successful to the degree claimed for them, are responsible in a great measure for stirring up the turmoil and raising the doubts about us that exist in many countries of the world today? . . . Where will we be tomorrow?³⁹

39 David Bruce and Robert Lovett, "Covert Operations," report to President's Board of Consultants on Foreign Intelligence Activities [1956], RFK Papers.

____________________

In December 1956 the full board passed onto Eisenhower its concern about "the extremely informal and somewhat exclusive methods" used in the handling of clandestine projects.⁴⁰ (Among those signing this statement was another board member, Joseph P. Kennedy. "I know that outfit," the ambassador said after the Bay of Pigs, "and I wouldn't pay them a hundred bucks a week. It's a lucky thing they were found out early.")⁴¹ In February 1957 the board pointed out to the White House that clandestine operations absorbed more than 80 percent of the CIA budget and that few of the projects received the formal approval of the so-called 5412 Special Group, the National Security Council's review mechanism. The CIA's Directorate of Plans (i.e., covert action), the board said, "is operating for the most part on an autonomous and free-wheeling basis in highly critical area." All too often the State Department knew "little or nothing" of what the CIA was doing. "In some qurgters this leads to situations which are almost unbelievable because the operations being carried out by the Deputy Director of Plans are sometimes in direct conflict with the normal operations being carried out by the Department of State." ⁴²

40 President's Board of Consultants on Foreign Intelligence Activities (hereafter cited as PBCFIA), report to President Eisenhowe, December 20, 1956, RFK Papers.

41 William Manchester, Portrait of a President (Boston, 1962), 35.

42 PBCFIA, report to the Special Assistnat for National Security, February 12, 1957, RFK Papers.

<quote off>

Lovett talked Kennedy into appointing Dean Rusk at State and Bundy as the National Security Adviser.

Do you think he recommended guys who were sympathetic to Allen Dulles?

Dulles sleep-walked thru the Bay of Pigs and took the fall for a failure largely engineered by Dean Rusk and McGeorge Bundy.

The elites who grew to loathe Allen Dulles and his onset Alzheimers recruited him to whack Kennedy?

In regards to Castro, Cuba had been developed into the world's central hub for narcotics trafficking in the 50's.  90 miles off the coast of an enormous drug market, Cuba was a smuggler's paradise.

The elites wanted Cuba back for that very reason.

 

 

 

Edited May 4, 2017 by Cliff Varnell

[Paul Trejo]

5 hours ago, David Andrews said:

If JFK was a compartmentalized op run by ex-Director Dulles from his home and his office at The Farm (as David Talbot suggests), managed by Helms and Phillips, using Angleton's patsy (Oswald) and executed on the ground by the likes of David Morales, how the heck would Tosh the pilot have privy knowledge of high command intentions?  ...

David,

The answer was that Plumlee wasn't going to ABORT a CIA mission, but to ABORT somebody else's mission.

Regards,
--Paul Trejo

[Paul Trejo]

3 hours ago, Ron Ecker said:

I guess I missed it, but if the CIA had foreknowledge and went to Dallas to try to abort the assassination, why didn't it just tell JFK or the Secret Service and save them all a lot of trouble?

Ron,

Well, that's the right question for Larry Hancock.   It was Larry's remark that if Lansdale was indeed photographed with the three tramps (as Fletcher Prouty insists) then Lansdale must have been there to investigate rumors about a plot to kill JFK.

It's a good question.   If Lansdale had good information that there was a Kill Plot in Dallas, then why not tell JFK and cancel the whole trip?

Otherwise -- we're left with Fletcher Prouty insisting that General Edward Lansdale was without any question of a doubt the guy with his back to the camera with the three tramps.  Prouty worked with Lansdale, and knew every detail about his appearance, backward and forward.

Regards,
--Paul Trejo

[George Sawtelle]

Ron E

The CIA had information that Kennedy was to be hit in Dallas. It was credible so they gathered together several abort teams. But the CIA was not 100% sure that there would be an attempt on Kennedy's life. Kennedy had been threatened many times in the past and nothing had happened.

Roselli was made part of an abort team however the CIA did not know he was also part of an assassination team. Roselli could't divulge that he was part of an assassination team since his mafia associates might be arrested. 

So when Roselli arrived in Dallas the morning of the assassination he told Nicoletti to call off the assassination. Nicoletti told him he would call it off if his boss informed him to call it off.

Roselli didn't know who was managing the assassination. All he knew was he was to be part of Nicoletti's assassination team.

 

[George Sawtelle]

Ron E

No one had the entire story about the assassination on the day of the assassination. The only individual who knew who was in the briefing room when the CIA briefed the abort teams that an attempt on Kennedy's was a 100% possibility was Roselli.

But Roselli didn't know who was managing the assassination or how many assassination teams were involved and their locations.