Serendipity

[Tim Gratz]

Tim

I will take a different position from your comment:

"Unless you take the position that LBJ plotted JFK's murder, how, pray tell, did LBJ know, immediately after the assassination, that Castro was not behind it?"

If Oswald was an intelligence asset of the US (my thought is that he had been an unknowing agent along the lines of Angleton's "orchid man"), the CIA or others in the government (McCloy and Dulles types) would have known a great deal about Oswald and when he was captured, would have to cover the trail wihtout creating an international conflict.

Their greatest fears may have been realized....a person who had been used by the US to penetrate a Soviet intelligence cell....who may in fact be well known to Soviet intelligence....shoots first at his contact (Edwin Walker)....then kills the President.  If allowed to speak freely in a trial the Cold War covert methods employed by the US and the Soviets would be exposed to the world.  Everyone is involved without being involved.  Everyone has motive to cover up the crime because the truth is more unbelivable than the fiction.

LBJ was in an unwinable position....especially if the truth was similar to what I suggest.  The whole mess could be pinned on Johnson just as easily as anyone else and the public would buy it.

The only thing that the CIA types would not want you to believe is that Oswald did it and had a motive.  That could unravel everything.  Negligence that leads to murder is, I believe, what brings a charge of manslaughter.  And there was plenty of guilt to go around in this case.

Jim Root

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I agree with a most if not all of your comments here.

It would have been devestating to America had it been determined that LHO had links to either American intelligence or Soviet intelligence.

If LBJ did not do it (John is making a convincing case LBJ did it to save himself a jail sentence but had LBJ wanted to do it I think he could have arranged an assassination that did not put his good friend Connally in harm's way) perhaps, after Hoover's 11/23/63 call to him he started to suspect possible CIA involvement and that would motivate his cover-up as much as his fear of possible foreign involvement.

I think there are numerous reasons why RFK consented to the cover-up. One would be a fear that one of his anti-Cuban plots backfired. A second would be fear of the exposure of some of JFK's risky sexual alliances.

Edited December 25, 2004 by Tim Gratz

[Jim Root]

Tim

When we say "the cover-up" are we making a statement that may mean different things to different people.

When the CIA responded to the Warren Commissions question reguarding Oswald's flight from London to Helsinki with the statement that, There were no direct flights from London to Helsinki, Finland that would have allowed Oswald to arrive in Helsinki, Finland in time to register at the Torni Hotel by midnight on October 10, 1959 when he did in fact register. " We have a truthful statement of fact.

Is it a cover-up when a truthful statemnt is made in answer to a legitimate question? At a minimum I would have to answer perhaps and I lean toward the belief that this is a provable example of an attempt to "cover-up" information that the CIA wished to withold from the Commission/public. Why?

We now know that there were two flights, neither "direct" since each made one stop, that would have allowed Oswald to arrive in Helsinki in time to check into the Torni Hotel. The Commission report goes on to state that Oswald's flight cost him exactly $111.90. This seems to indicate that the flight Oswald took was known to someone but that there was a desire to keep the information about exactly which flight a secrete. The report succeeded in this untill 1994 when the two available flights were uncovered and the records of who was on the available flights had long since been discarded, lost to historians.

My point is that without telling a lie there was the ability to withhold information from the public. If Oswald were, in fact, involved in an intelligence stratagem National Security Council 10/2 and NSC 5412 would mandate a "cover-up" (plausible deniablity).

Nothing more sinister (although very sinister) than that! And those at the highest levels of government could be compelled to accept this logic in the name of "National Security."

The perfect crime?

Jim Root

Edited January 3, 2005 by Jim Root

[Robert Howard]

Tim

When we say "the cover-up" are we making a statement that may mean different things to different people.

When the CIA responded to the Warren Commissions question reguarding Oswald's flight from London to Helsinki with the statement that, There were no direct flights from London to Helsinki, Finland that would have allowed Oswald to arrive in Helsinki, Finland in time to register at the Torni Hotel by midnight on October 10, 1959 when he did in fact register. " We have a truthful statement of fact.

Is it a cover-up when a truthful statemnt is made in answer to a legitimate question? At a minimum I would have to answer perhaps and I lean toward the belief that this is a provable example of an attempt to "cover-up" information that the CIA wished to withold from the Commission/public. Why?

We now know that there were two flights, neither "direct" since each made one stop, that would have allowed Oswald to arrive in Helsinki in time to check into the Torni Hotel. The Commission report goes on to state that Oswald's flight cost him exactly $111.90. This seems to indicate that the flight Oswald took was known to someone but that there was a desire to keep the information about exactly which flight a secrete. The report succeeded in this untill 1994 when the two available flights were uncovered and the records of who was on the available flights had long since been discarded, lost to historians.

My point is that without telling a lie there was the ability to withhold information from the public. If Oswald were, in fact, involved in an intelligence stratagem National Security Council 10/2 and NSC 5412 would mandate a "cover-up" (plausible deniablity).

Nothing more sinister (although very sinister) than that! And those at the highest levels of government could be compelled to accept this logic in the name of "National Security."

The perfect crime?

Jim Root

I have a few serendipitous comments to make myself, and they are all, in one way or another related to information and analysis that has been posted on this thread.....

One of the truly obscure items regarding the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff is that while General Lansdale is seen as being a key person by those who believe that the JFK assassination was a conspiracy, J.F.K. himself seemed to warm up to Lansdale, ironically President Kennedy also wanted to, [and did] meet William Harvey

who was fighting with everyone on a quicker manner of disposing of Castro. Declassified document that mention William Harvey primarily depos of other persons are emphatic that William Harvey was very frustrated at the slow pace that SGA and Maxwell Taylor went with regards to proceeding with more intensity than the pinprick raids that had taken place until the summer of 1963, and President Kennedy definitely felt the same way.

But I definitely feel there is good reason to believe that Harvey was involved in the assassination as well as Lansdale......Regarding Maxwell Taylor, even if he were involved I believe that whatever evidence proving such will not be found in any declassified documents, as they are probably already destroyed.

But the last comment of mine is strictly an opinion.

Some other interesting comments......Whatever the agenda, Harvey soon found himself mired in two colossal messes: the failed Bay of Pigs operation, and then the bungling attempts by the Kennedy Brothers to overthrow the Castro regime, Operation MONGOOSE. Harvey's own tortured niche was described in hearings of the Church committee in 1976: an attempt to use the Chicago gangster Johnny Rosselli to assassinate Castro. This plot, among many others, failed. (The best MONGOOSE read I've encountered is Don Bohning's "The Castro Obsession.")

The last item alone had earmarks of a career-ender. But more painful to Harvey, a veteran field man, was the attempt by Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy to act as grand marshal of MONGOOSE, despite his utter ignorance of covert activities. Old-timers dined out for years on stories of the verbal clashes between the young Kennedy and the rough-hewn Harvey. Dave Murphy, Harvey's long-time colleague in the Berlin Operations Base, quoted his friend as calling the younger Kennedy and his aides "Fifth Avenue cowboys."

Months of bitterness climaxed in October 1962. A MONGOOSE colleague related to Stockton several exchanges in October 1962 -- the day of Harvey's final fall from grace -- in the White House, as the missile crisis simmered. Whether both Kennedys were present, or the attorney general alone, is disputed. But the remarks seem an accurate rendition of Harvey's anger: "We heard that Bobby said to Harvey, 'I could train agents at my house in Virginia!' . . . Harvey retorted, 'as baby-sitters?'"

Harvey was incensed to learn that Bob Kennedy ordered three boats of operatives already enroute to Cuba be recalled. Harvey's view was that they could add valuable intelligence on the Soviet missile sites.

Robert.......While Harvey may have really felt that way, JFK and Bobby certainly had cause to worry about how ALPHA-66, the CRC, JMWAVE operatives and Interpen's actions against Cuba could effect what the "Soviets might do in Berlin," a fact that was seemingly of little or no interest to Kennedy's ideological enemies

And, as was previously written on this thread, while LBJ's rhetoric about a nuclear exchange causing 30 to 40 million casualties, may seem hollow with 45 years of retrospect, that wouldn't have been the case, then or now if there had been a real life version of Seven Day's In May.

Nevertheless, and more to the point, this post concerns something that has not been covered on this thread and that is in relation to the CIA people responsible for Western Hemisphere Station Operations out of Mexico City.......

At what could be considered the nexus of the KGB/CIA interactions prior to the assassination, you will find the acronyms TUMBLEWEED, which was a FBI acronym, if I am not mistaken and AEBURBLE.

John Newman [Oswald and the CIA] certainly is an authority on this area, and in one of his presentations on the OSWALD/CIA book he, at one point mentioned AE/DURBILL as a new acronym. Someone at maryferrell.org posted on the comments section a correction of sorts stating, in effect, that it was really AE/BURBLE and accoring to more than one document, AE BURBLE was someone named Guenther Schulz, although personally I believe it will be proven that the name is actually Guenther Schultz......

Guenther Schulz, is a name that everyone interested in nailing down the rest of the story of 1963, should, at a minimum be aware of, if not trying to ascertain what his job description was, as well as what his title was .

I would suggest possibilities as to variants of his name, and the use of a ü instead of the generic u.......

See

http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/...o?startIndex=60

Also there is more on this issue here.

more here

The day after the assassination of President Kennedy document 104-10419-10021 noted the following information “Bagley stated that he wished to point out that Kostikov, known KGB agent is the same person who was been in touch with the bureau double-agent Guenther Schulz in the case referred to as TUMBLEWEED provided by Guenther Schulz who is being operated by us against the Soviets."

http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/...bsPageId=235964

Edited March 7, 2009 by Robert Howard

[Jim Root]

Tim

When we say "the cover-up" are we making a statement that may mean different things to different people.

When the CIA responded to the Warren Commissions question reguarding Oswald's flight from London to Helsinki with the statement that, There were no direct flights from London to Helsinki, Finland that would have allowed Oswald to arrive in Helsinki, Finland in time to register at the Torni Hotel by midnight on October 10, 1959 when he did in fact register. " We have a truthful statement of fact.

Is it a cover-up when a truthful statemnt is made in answer to a legitimate question? At a minimum I would have to answer perhaps and I lean toward the belief that this is a provable example of an attempt to "cover-up" information that the CIA wished to withold from the Commission/public. Why?

We now know that there were two flights, neither "direct" since each made one stop, that would have allowed Oswald to arrive in Helsinki in time to check into the Torni Hotel. The Commission report goes on to state that Oswald's flight cost him exactly $111.90. This seems to indicate that the flight Oswald took was known to someone but that there was a desire to keep the information about exactly which flight a secrete. The report succeeded in this untill 1994 when the two available flights were uncovered and the records of who was on the available flights had long since been discarded, lost to historians.

My point is that without telling a lie there was the ability to withhold information from the public. If Oswald were, in fact, involved in an intelligence stratagem National Security Council 10/2 and NSC 5412 would mandate a "cover-up" (plausible deniablity).

Nothing more sinister (although very sinister) than that! And those at the highest levels of government could be compelled to accept this logic in the name of "National Security."

The perfect crime?

Jim Root

I have a few serendipitous comments to make myself, and they are all, in one way or another related to information and analysis that has been posted on this thread.....

One of the truly obscure items regarding the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff is that while General Lansdale is seen as being a key person by those who believe that the JFK assassination was a conspiracy, J.F.K. himself seemed to warm up to Lansdale, ironically President Kennedy also wanted to, [and did] meet William Harvey

who was fighting with everyone on a quicker manner of disposing of Castro. Declassified document that mention William Harvey primarily depos of other persons are emphatic that William Harvey was very frustrated at the slow pace that SGA and Maxwell Taylor went with regards to proceeding with more intensity than the pinprick raids that had taken place until the summer of 1963, and President Kennedy definitely felt the same way.

But I definitely feel there is good reason to believe that Harvey was involved in the assassination as well as Lansdale......Regarding Maxwell Taylor, even if he were involved I believe that whatever evidence proving such will not be found in any declassified documents, as they are probably already destroyed.

But the last comment of mine is strictly an opinion.

Some other interesting comments......Whatever the agenda, Harvey soon found himself mired in two colossal messes: the failed Bay of Pigs operation, and then the bungling attempts by the Kennedy Brothers to overthrow the Castro regime, Operation MONGOOSE. Harvey's own tortured niche was described in hearings of the Church committee in 1976: an attempt to use the Chicago gangster Johnny Rosselli to assassinate Castro. This plot, among many others, failed. (The best MONGOOSE read I've encountered is Don Bohning's "The Castro Obsession.")

The last item alone had earmarks of a career-ender. But more painful to Harvey, a veteran field man, was the attempt by Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy to act as grand marshal of MONGOOSE, despite his utter ignorance of covert activities. Old-timers dined out for years on stories of the verbal clashes between the young Kennedy and the rough-hewn Harvey. Dave Murphy, Harvey's long-time colleague in the Berlin Operations Base, quoted his friend as calling the younger Kennedy and his aides "Fifth Avenue cowboys."

Months of bitterness climaxed in October 1962. A MONGOOSE colleague related to Stockton several exchanges in October 1962 -- the day of Harvey's final fall from grace -- in the White House, as the missile crisis simmered. Whether both Kennedys were present, or the attorney general alone, is disputed. But the remarks seem an accurate rendition of Harvey's anger: "We heard that Bobby said to Harvey, 'I could train agents at my house in Virginia!' . . . Harvey retorted, 'as baby-sitters?'"

Harvey was incensed to learn that Bob Kennedy ordered three boats of operatives already enroute to Cuba be recalled. Harvey's view was that they could add valuable intelligence on the Soviet missile sites.

Robert.......While Harvey may have really felt that way, JFK and Bobby certainly had cause to worry about how ALPHA-66, the CRC, JMWAVE operatives and Interpen's actions against Cuba could effect what the "Soviets might do in Berlin," a fact that was seemingly of little or no interest to Kennedy's ideological enemies

And, as was previously written on this thread, while LBJ's rhetoric about a nuclear exchange causing 30 to 40 million casualties, may seem hollow with 45 years of retrospect, that wouldn't have been the case, then or now if there had been a real life version of Seven Day's In May.

Nevertheless, and more to the point, this post concerns something that has not been covered on this thread and that is in relation to the CIA people responsible for Western Hemisphere Station Operations out of Mexico City.......

At what could be considered the nexus of the KGB/CIA interactions prior to the assassination, you will find the acronyms TUMBLEWEED, which was a FBI acronym, if I am not mistaken and AEBURBLE.

John Newman [Oswald and the CIA] certainly is an authority on this area, and in one of his presentations on the OSWALD/CIA book he, at one point mentioned AE/DURBILL as a new acronym. Someone at maryferrell.org posted on the comments section a correction of sorts stating, in effect, that it was really AE/BURBLE and accoring to more than one document, AE BURBLE was someone named Guenther Schulz, although personally I believe it will be proven that the name is actually Guenther Schultz......

Guenther Schulz, is a name that everyone interested in nailing down the rest of the story of 1963, should, at a minimum be aware of, if not trying to ascertain what his job description was, as well as what his title was .

I would suggest possibilities as to variants of his name, and the use of a ü instead of the generic u.......

See

http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/...o?startIndex=60

Also there is more on this issue here.

more here

The day after the assassination of President Kennedy document 104-10419-10021 noted the following information “Bagley stated that he wished to point out that Kostikov, known KGB agent is the same person who was been in touch with the bureau double-agent Guenther Schulz in the case referred to as TUMBLEWEED provided by Guenther Schulz who is being operated by us against the Soviets."

http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/...bsPageId=235964

Robert

One of the lead negotiators in the Cuban Missle affair was John J. McCloy and part of McCloy's displeasure with Kennedy after the successful negotiations with the Soviets was that Kennedy did not use that time to complete a Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, instead settleing for a Limited Test Ban Treaty. I have read that part of the negotiations with the Soviets included a guarentee of security to Castro's Cuba, i.e. no invasion. The continuation and control of MONGOOSED given to Robert Kennedy could have been interpreted by McCloy as a violation of the agreement that had been reached with the Soviets. McCloy had been involved for since before the end of WWII in a "special arrangement" with the Soviets to insure that the world would never engage in a WWIII or nuclear holocaust. I might suggest that a violation of this singular arrangement may have set the course/ball moving toward the elimination of Kennedy.

June 1963!

Jim Root

[Robert Howard]

Robert

One of the lead negotiators in the Cuban Missle affair was John J. McCloy and part of McCloy's displeasure with Kennedy after the successful negotiations with the Soviets was that Kennedy did not use that time to complete a Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, instead settleing for a Limited Test Ban Treaty. I have read that part of the negotiations with the Soviets included a guarentee of security to Castro's Cuba, i.e. no invasion. The continuation and control of MONGOOSED given to Robert Kennedy could have been interpreted by McCloy as a violation of the agreement that had been reached with the Soviets. McCloy had been involved for since before the end of WWII in a "special arrangement" with the Soviets to insure that the world would never engage in a WWIII or nuclear holocaust. I might suggest that a violation of this singular arrangement may have set the course/ball moving toward the elimination of Kennedy.

June 1963!

Jim Root

Point well taken Jim. TUMBLEWEED is definitely the kind of area that screams out as being part of the "Oswald traces back to Cuba," "wet affairs" "Alvarado," "KGB assassin" the CIA was predicating would lead to public demand for a Cuban invasion. To quote a line from the movie JFK maybe Lyndon had his hand on the "chicken switch" and just couldn't pull the trigger on that one, and wound up being content to be POTUS.

One of the little known secrets of the assassination, however goes off into another area that we are both well versed in. And that is the cryptological linkages, that are laid bare in the John Hurt/Lee Oswald phone call of November 23, 1963.

I have a list here of the names of persons who in one way or another connect into the NSA, Army Signal Corp., O.N.I., Air Force Security agency area, with linkages from everything from Pearl Harbor cryptology to Bletchley Park, but cryptology is the common thread.

John Hurt, Joe Shaffer's nephew and Lee Harvey Oswald pages 50-51 - Bamford-Puzzle Palace]

William Freidman, Solomon Kullback, Abraham Sinkov and Frank B Rowlett.

Alfred McCormack and Col Carter W.Clarke, the latter was a Signal Corps officer; World War II COMINT Investigation. pages 63 - Bamford-Puzzle Palace]

Harvey Bundy, William P. and McGeorge Bundy; everything from Skull & Bones to William being stationed at Bletchley Park to McGeorge Bundy's TOP SECRET DINAR gaffe; pages 161-62 - Bamford-Puzzle Palace]

Harrod G. Miller - Signal Corp Trainee stationed at one time at Fort Monmouth, N.J. and possible links to Willow Run Laboratories, in Michigan, circa 1962.

William Harvey of ZR RIFLE fame, recruited Clarence Berry to the AFSA while Berry was with ONI at the time in Berlin, and Frank Rowlett wrote his letter of recommendation [see Flawed Patriot page 83]

Charles Frederick Rogers - according to Warren Commission Documents and the September 28, 1991, Houston Chronicle, as well as the Craig Roberts/John Armstrong book The Man On The Grassy Knoll, Rogers served in Naval Intelligence during World War II, as a cryptographer. Irrespective of whether he was a tramp in Dealey Plaza, the fact that he basically disappeared off the face of the earth, after his parents murder, and later is believed to have surfaced as an operative in the CIA/Vietnam Phoenix Program, makes him a very captivating individual, and Craig Roberts attests that Charles Voyd Harrellson and Charles Rogers knew each other growing up. See page 110 The Man On The Grassy Knoll.*

Colonel William Stephenson - member Great Britain's SOE, was to Wild Bill Donovan, what Churchill was to FDR, and was deeply involved in cryptology in World War II.

Add certain persons in the White House Communications Agency and you have a pretty interesting cast of characters....

Rowlett, Friedman and Kullback, IMO are not suspect in any way re JFK's death, Rowlett died in 1962.

Although the defectors Martin and Mitchell of the Naval Security Group in Kamiseya, Japan, worked under Solomon Kullback, pages 177 Bamford-Puzzle Palace]

The idea of the above is not an implication re complicity in the JFK assassination per se, inasmuch as the framework of where the weak links re where conspiracy in JFK's assassination are most apparent.

* One of the most ignored JFK Assassination books ever written, probably due to lack of supporting citations/footnotes; But still a very, very important book.

Always nice to chat....

Edited May 19, 2010 by Robert Howard

[Jim Root]

Robert

Frank Rowlett died June 29, 1998. He was involved in the writting of the report on Lee Harvey Oswald's potential intelligence connections for the Warren Commission in 1964.

Jim Root