John Heinz and John Tower

[John Simkin]

I have recently become interested in exploring the links between the deaths of John Heinz, John Tower and the assassination of JFK. Here is an interesting passage from an article written by Victor Thorn, George Bush & John Kerry: Blood Brothers, World Independent News Group (2004).

http://69.28.73.17/thornarticles/bloodbrothers.html

According to researcher Rodney Stich in Defrauding America, when George Bush Sr. and CIA Director William Casey engineered the October Surprise to bribe Iranian officials into retaining U.S. hostages until after the 1980 elections, two of the passengers on Bush’s BAC 111 flight to Paris were Senator John Heinz, along with Senator John Tower from Texas.

Even more intriguing is the fact that John Heinz chaired a three-man presidential review board that probed the Iran-Contra affair and had in his possession all the damning documents from that sordid affair, while John Tower led the infamous Tower Commission that investigated a variety of different CIA criminal activities and dirty dealings. Coincidentally, both John Heinz and John Tower died in plane wrecks on successive days in 1991 – Tower in Georgia, and Heinz in Montgomery County, Pa. Once again I must ask: what are the odds of such an occurrence, especially when both men had close ties to George Bush Sr., who was a former CIA director in the mid-1970s? Did both of these men uncover information that they refused to keep silent about any longer?

Before you answer, consider that after Senator John Heinz died, his wife married Senator John Kerry, who was chairman of the 1988 Kerry Commission, described in the Senate Committee Report on Drugs, Law Enforcement and Foreign Policy as “focusing on allegations of illegal gun-running and narcotics trafficking associated with the Contra war against Nicaragua” in relation to the CIA, Department of Justice, the U.S. State Department, and the office of the President and Vice President. The testimony that took place during these trials (both in open and closed door sessions) was quite possibly the most damning ever against our federal government, yet mysteriously, nearly all of it was suppressed and not widely reported in the mainstream media. Why? Senator Kerry as a Democrat, had every opportunity to blast a Republican administration out of the water, yet he inexplicably remained silent and the status quo prevailed. Could it be that someone tapped him on the shoulder and told him that if he played his cards right and kept these sordid matters hush-hush, he would be rewarded sometime in the future?

[John Ritchson]

I have recently become interested in exploring the links between the deaths of John Heinz, John Tower and the assassination of JFK. Here is an interesting passage from an article written by Victor Thorn, George Bush & John Kerry: Blood Brothers, World Independent News Group (2004).

http://69.28.73.17/thornarticles/bloodbrothers.html

According to researcher Rodney Stich in Defrauding America, when George Bush Sr. and CIA Director William Casey engineered the October Surprise to bribe Iranian officials into retaining U.S. hostages until after the 1980 elections, two of the passengers on Bush’s BAC 111 flight to Paris were Senator John Heinz, along with Senator John Tower from Texas.

Even more intriguing is the fact that John Heinz chaired a three-man presidential review board that probed the Iran-Contra affair and had in his possession all the damning documents from that sordid affair, while John Tower led the infamous Tower Commission that investigated a variety of different CIA criminal activities and dirty dealings. Coincidentally, both John Heinz and John Tower died in plane wrecks on successive days in 1991 – Tower in Georgia, and Heinz in Montgomery County, Pa. Once again I must ask: what are the odds of such an occurrence, especially when both men had close ties to George Bush Sr., who was a former CIA director in the mid-1970s? Did both of these men uncover information that they refused to keep silent about any longer?

Before you answer, consider that after Senator John Heinz died, his wife married Senator John Kerry, who was chairman of the 1988 Kerry Commission, described in the Senate Committee Report on Drugs, Law Enforcement and Foreign Policy as “focusing on allegations of illegal gun-running and narcotics trafficking associated with the Contra war against Nicaragua” in relation to the CIA, Department of Justice, the U.S. State Department, and the office of the President and Vice President. The testimony that took place during these trials (both in open and closed door sessions) was quite possibly the most damning ever against our federal government, yet mysteriously, nearly all of it was suppressed and not widely reported in the mainstream media. Why? Senator Kerry as a Democrat, had every opportunity to blast a Republican administration out of the water, yet he inexplicably remained silent and the status quo prevailed. Could it be that someone tapped him on the shoulder and told him that if he played his cards right and kept these sordid matters hush-hush, he would be rewarded sometime in the future?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

John, I don't know if you've had an opportunity to puruse the following story but

I think it lays some important groundwork with respect to the issues you've raised in this thread.

Publisher's Word

Introduction

1. The Overview and the 1976 Election

2. The Power Control Group

3. You Can Fool the People

4. How It All Began--The U-2 and the Bay of Pigs

5. The Assassination of John Kennedy

6. The Assassinations of Robert Kennedy and

Dr. Martin Luther King and

Lyndon B. Johnson's Withdrawal in 1968

7. The Control of the Kennedys--Threats & Chappaquiddick

8. 1972--Muskie, Wallace and McGovern

9. Control of the Media--1967 to 1976

10. Techniques and Weapons and 100 Dead Conspirators

and Witnesses

11. Nixon and Ford - The Pardon and the Tapes

12. The Second Line of Defense and Cover-Ups in 1975-1976

13. The 1976 Election and Conspiracy Fever

14. Congress and the People

15. The Select Committee on Assassinations, The Intelligence

Community and The News Media

16. 1984 Here We Come--

17. The Final Cover-Up: How The CIA Controlled

The House Select Committee on Assassinations

Appendix

* * * * * * *

About the Author

Richard E. Sprague is a pioneer in the field of electronic

computers and a leading American authority on Electronic Funds

Transfer Systems (EFTS). Receiving his BSEE degreee from Purdue

University in 1942, his computing career began when he was

employed as an engineer for the computer group at Northrup

Aircraft. He co-founded the Computer Research Corporation of

Hawthorne, California in 1950, and by 1953, serving as Vice

President of Sales, the company had sold more computers than any

competitor. In 1960, he became the Director of Computer Systems

Consulting for Touche, Ross, Bailey, and Smart. He became a

partner in that company in 1963, and started its Advanced Business

Systems Department in 1964 where he stayed until 1968. In 1968 he

established Sprague Research and Consulting for Computer

Information Systems Consultation. He is currently also Consultant

to the President's Commission on EFTS and full time consultant to

Battelle Memorial Institute of Frankfurt, Germany.

In 1966, Mr. Sprague commenced an intensive program of research

into the photographic evidence associated with the assassination of

John Kennedy. He served a year as photographic expert advisor in

the investigations conducted by New Orleans District Attorney Jim

Garrison and had amassed and analyzed a majority of the known

evidence on film by 1968 when he co-founded the Committee to

Investigate Assassinations. He served with CTIA as an active

researcher, board member and Secretary from 1968 to 1974.

Following numerous radio and television appearances and

extensive lecture tours of the United States and Canada (where

slides and films were used to demonstrate the basic evidence of

conspiracy), he began, in 1974, working toward a Congressional

investigation of all four major political assassinations and the

cover-ups and links among these interrelated events. He was an

advisor to Representative Henry B. Gonzales (D-Texas) on House

Resolution 203 which proposed the appointment of a committee to

investigate the circumstances surrounding the deaths of JFK, RFK,

Martin Luther King and the attempt upon the life of Presidential

Candidate George Wallace. He served as a consultant to Richard

A. Sprague and G. Robert Blakey, the first and second General

Counsels of the House Select Committee on Assassinations, and

served through the end of the Committee's existence.

He is author of "Electronic Business Systems" (Ronald Press)

1962, "Information Utilities" (Prentice Hall) 1969, and a

celebrated series of articles which appeared in "Computers &

Automation" Magazine beginning in 1970. He is also co-author with

Dick Russell of "In Search of the Assassins" which is scheduled for

publication by the Dial Press in 1977.

The materials presented in this book are drawn from an analysis

of the photographic evidence, personal knowledge and records of the

Garrison investigation, research files of the Committee to

Investigate Assassinations and Congressional Committees.

* * * * * * *

Introduction

This book is not about assassinations, at least not solely about

assassinations. It is not just another book about who murdered

President Kennedy or how or why. It is a book about power, about

who really controls the United States policies, especially foreign

policies. It is a book about the process of control through the

manipulation of the American presidency and the presidential

election process. The objective of the book is to expose the

clandestine, secret, tricky methods and weapons used for this

manipulation, and to reveal the degree to which these have been

hidden from the American public.

Assassinations are only one of many techniques used in this

control process. They have been important only in the sense that

they are the ultimate method used in the control of the election

process. Viewed in this way, an understanding of what happened to

John or Robert Kennedy becomes more important because it leads to a

total understanding of what has happened to our country, and to us,

since 1960. But the important thing to understand is the control

and the power and all of the clandestine methods put together.

Much of the information in the book has been published before in

the magazines "Computer and Automation" and "People and the Pursuit

of Truth," both edited and published by Edmund C. Berkeley,

Newtonville, Mass. The material on assassination and other events

covered is based on evidence collected by the author individually

or through the Committee to Investigate Assassinations. References

to documentation of this evidence are given throughout the book.

I am indebted to the following people for assistance in the

research work involved and the preparation of the book itself:

Special thanks go to Mary Ferrell who typed the original of the

book.

Jerry Policoff, Mark Lane, Ed Berkeley, Bob Cutler, Jim

Garrison, Bill Turner, Wayne Chastain, Bob Richter, Gary Shaw,

Fletcher Prouty, Rush Harp, Jones Harris, Bob Saltzman, Penn Jones,

Larry Harris, Sylvia Meagher, Ray Marcus, Harold Weisberg, Hal

Dorland, Paris Flammonde, Tink Thompson, Bob Katz, Joachim Joesten,

Peter Downay, Harry Irwin, Dick Billings, Jim Lesar, Fred Newcomb,

Lillian Castellano, Dick Russell, Tris Coffin, Mae Brussell, Bill

Barry, Gary Roberts and most of all to my wife Gloria whose hard

work and infinite patience made it all possible.

The book is dedicated to Representative Henry B. Gonzalez for

his singular courage in standing against the forces of evil.

Richard E. Sprague

Hartsdale, New York

July 4, 1976

* * * * * * *

Publisher's Word

We published "The Taking Of America 1 2 3" during the winter of

1976-77. It was typed under the guns in Dallas, Texas, and offset

printed in Woodstock, N.Y. A few weeks later--five hundred copies

in all, 24 of which were fired off to the two House Committees

involved in the investigation of the assassinations. Our elation

with this `coup-de-truth' evaporated as we saw the committee

destroyed at the starting line.

The following summer, while motoring across our sadly taken

America, I experienced a tremendous synchroneity of events which

lead to my discovering the Power Control Group's secret team of

murderer's and their patsies. This knowledge caused me to come out

in the open even further and place a sign on route 28 enroute to

Woodstock. "Who Killed J.F.K., R.F.K., M.L.K., M.J.K.?" in

reflecting letters on a blood-red field. The Modjeska Sign Studios

estimated 1.2 million sightings per month. And we then watched the

committee suppress and muddle the evidence while chanting the

Katydid like cry, of the tremendous big lie--Oswald did it, Oswald

did it, Oswald did it, did it, did it.

So we are bringing our knowledge up to date with the closing of

the new "Warren Report" which now, due to The Witness They Could

Not Kill (the sound tape that proved conclusively that more than

one gun was involved in the president's assassination), at last

admits conspiracy. Where do we go from here? We reach out now for

a courageous commercial publisher to spread these truths that we

hold self-evident out to our duped, betrayed, and steadily lied-to

Americans.

Rush Harp

Barbara Black

* * * * * * *

THE TAKING OF AMERICA, 1-2-3

Chapter 1

The Overview and the the 1976 Election

The taking of America has been both a simple and a very complex

process. It has not been the result of a coup d'etat, although

some aspects of the process resemble a coup. It has not been a

process similar to the dictatorship takeovers in Germany, Italy and

other fascist regimes. It has not been a process like the

Communist "uprisings" in Russia, Hungary and other Eastern European

countries.

The taking of America has been a process unique in the history

of the world. The one feature that makes it unique is that what

was once the greatest democracy in the world has been taken over by

a power control group without the knowledge of most of the American

people, their congressional representatives, or the rest of the

world.

The group has taken America in this fashion because manipulation

of the American presidency and the presidential electoral procedure

is enough to control America. Two fiendishly clever stratagems

were used to keep the fact that control had been seized from being

obvious to the people. The first of these was control of the

established media in the dissemination of both true (blocking) and

false (flooding) information. The second was the use of

clandestine and secret weapons and techniques developed during

World War Two and perfected during the Korean and Viet Nam wars.

These techniques are so new and unusual as to be unbelievable to

most citizens. Thus, the incredibility of such weapons as

hypnosis, brainwashing and "programming" of patsies as assassins

became a psychological tool in the bag of techniques of the power

control group. The average American has shrugged off the

possibility of the takeover with the belief that, "That's not

possible here."

The use of such weapons, coupled with a tremendous campaign

through the controlled media that both whitewashes any signs of

conspiracies and spreads disinformation throughout the country, has

successfully blocked any serious or official attempts to get at the

truth. Unofficial investigators, private researchers, and even

Congressional representatives have been ridiculed and completely

blocked by both the power control group and their media allies.

To take over a real democracy without letting the people know it

has been taken over is a fantastic achievement. A list of the

accomplishments of the power control group illustrates the point.

Since 1963, they have:

1. Assassinated John F. Kennedy;

2. Controlled Lyndon B. Johnson as president;

3. Forced LBJ out of the presidency;

4. Assassinated Robert F. Kennedy, assuring Nixon's

election in 1968;

5. Assassinated Dr. Martin Luther King;

6. Eliminated Ted Kennedy as a contender in the 1972

elections by framing him at Chappaquiddick and

threatening his children;

7. Stopped George Wallace's campaign, assuring Nixon's

election in 1972;

8. Knocked Edmund Muskie out of the 1972 election campaign

by using dirty tricks;

9. Covered up all of the above;

10. Controlled the 15 major news media organizations;

11. Made Gerald Ford vice president and then president;

12. Insured continuity of the cover-ups by forcing Ford to

pardon Nixon;

13. Murdered about 100 witnesses and participants in the

three assassinations and one attempted assassination;

14. Blocked efforts by private citizens and organizations

to reveal the take-over; discredited, ruined or

infiltrated these individuals or groups; murdered or

were accomplices to the murders of the operating

assassins;

15. Blocked efforts by members of the Senate and House to

initiate investigations of the assassinations and

attempted to whitewash, ridicule or eliminate these

efforts (their influence and infiltration has been

particularly effective in the Church Committee and in

the House Rules Committee);

16. Controlled the presidential election procedure since

1964 by eliminating the candidates who might expose the

truth and insuring the election or appointment of

candidates already committed to covering up the truth

about the take-over.

The question for 1976 was: Could the power control group

continue the take-over during that year's elections? Would they be

successful in blocking efforts to expose the take-over by congress?

Would they be able to fool the American public again, control the

media, and eliminate the contenders for the presidency in 1976 who

might have threatened their secure position? The answer to these

questions was "Yes."

The candidates on the scene during the 1976 primaries fell into

three categories according to the control group's point of view.

Category 1 included candidates that would continue the cover-up of

the take-over. Gerald Ford led this group with Ronald Reagan not

far behind him. Henry Jackson was a probable ally because of his

backing of the CIA, an important organization in the cover-ups and

the takeover. Category 2 included those candidates who would

probably try to expose the take-over and the power control group if

elected. Morris Udall, Fred Harris and George Wallace fell into

this category. The third category included candidates whose

intentions were not clear, or unknown at the time. Jimmy Carter,

Franck Church and Hubert Humphrey remained in this group, and

Sergeant Shriver and Birch Bayh were also in this category before

they dropped out of the race.

Efforts would have been made to eliminate Udall, Harris or

Wallace if any one of them was nominated at the Democratic

convention. Carter must certainly have been put to some kind of

loyalty test before being permitted to continue as the Democratic

nominee. Reagan and Ford were, no doubt, already "safe" candidates

for the control group because of their demonstrated cover-up

performances.

Ford had cooperated fully in at least four ways. He was on the

Warren Commission and played a leading role in the cover-up. He

wrote the cover-up book "Portrait of the Assassin." He pardoned

Nixon and protected the Nixon tapes. And he formed the Rockefeller

Commission, appointing David Belin as head of the staff to continue

the cover-up of the JFK conspiracy.

End of Part 1.

[John Ritchson]

Part 2.

Reagon covered up important allegations raised (about the

assassinations of JFK, RFK, MLK and the Wallace attempt), as well

as those many others have raised, will the truth make us free?

Yes, it will, for the truth will make us free to pursue democracy-

-our system of government--through the ballot box, and we will not

be subject to government by bullets. The truth will enable us to

prevent such a series of events from happening again. Some of the

supporters of the investigation have written to me recently of

their hope that the investigation will get underway right away

(March 1976) because they are concerned that there is great danger

in store for the Democratic nominee for the President, whoever he

turns out to be. I hope very much that these fears do not turn out

to have a basis in fact."

* * * * * * *

Chapter 2

The Power Control Group

Just who and what is the Power Control Group? Some have said

it's the military industrial complex. Some prefer to put the blame

on the Rockefellers and the Council on Foreign Relation. Others

have talked about control shifting from the "Yankees" to the

"Cowboys" and back again. The term "The Cabal," first used in an

obscure paper by an unknown author in 1968,[1] described a high

level conspiracy group that planned, financed and carried out the

assassination of John F. Kennedy. The word Cabal has been used

since then by some authors and researchers and applied to all of

the major domestic assassinations.

The idea of a Cabal raises more questions than it answers. Who

is in the Cabal? Was the same Cabal behind the planning and

financing of all five (Chappaquiddick being the fifth) major

eliminations? Or are there several interlocking Cabals? What

about the Warren and Rockefeller Commissions? Were they part of

the Cabal? Which Cabal controls and infiltrated the media and

organized the disinformation that poured forth in 1975 and 1976?

Was Ford a Cabal member? Was Nixon? How about Johnson and

Kissinger? Has one Cabal commanded the executions of the 100

witnesses and lower level participants?

The mistake made by researchers in postulating higher level

groups is that they simplify a very complex situation. To draw a

distinct line between those involved in an overt conspiracy to

assassinate a leader and those involved afterward in covering up

the first group's actions is a mistake. The cover-ups are far more

important than the original assassinations. Each assassination or

attempted assassination, or other form of elimination of a leader,

is only part of a greater whole. The 16 accomplishments of the

power control group listed in Chapter 1, plus those now taking

place and those scheduled for the future, should be considered as a

continuum. The control group membership may contain individuals in

various categories, some of whom planned assassinations, some of

whom knew about the assassinations, and some of whom did not know

about assassinations in advance. Some may have been on the firing

line but have had nothing to do with the cover-ups. Some of them

are victims of later eliminations. Somewhere in the power control

group's hierarchy is a sub-group or perhaps several sub-groups that

have been responsible for the attempted assassinations of

presidential candidates, earlier assassins, witnesses, and earlier

middle-to-higher level members in the power control group. These

sub-groups might be thought of as intelligence-style task forces or

mini-Cabals. There is little question that many of the individuals

in these task forces are from organized crime and from the

intelligence community, or both. They have had access to

intelligence techniques and weapons that have frequently been used

in the the elimination process.

A second mistake made by some researchers is to assume that the

Cabal's shape remains static through time. Evidence shows that the

Power Control Group has been a living organism that both shrinks

and grows as a function of time. The shrinkages take place through

eliminations and a few natural deaths. The growth takes place for

several reasons. It is necessary to use new techniques and new

people for the group's activities as time passes in order to

continue effective control of the media and to continue to fool the

people and Congress. It's also necessary to bring new high level

people into the group from time to time. Candidates for president

acceptable to the group must be sworn in and must agree to continue

the cover-ups. New media lackeys or new special committees or

commissions are also needed. Once in a while an individual

blackmails his way in. Some come in on a de facto basis.

(Protectors of the Kennedys and their children fall into this

category.)

The very nature of the cover-up procedure has made it necessary

to expose at least some of the truth to vice presidents and vice

presidential candidates, in addition to presidents Johnson, Nixon,

and Ford. Each vice president elected or appointed since 1963 has

had to know the truth about the cover-ups in the event he became

president (Humphrey under Johnson, Agnew under Nixon, and then Ford

and Rockefeller). Ford was the most important of these since he

had to agree to pardon Nixon and to protect the tapes.

The heads of the FBI and CIA, selected trusted second-level men,

and the deputy director of plans (DDP) in the CIA have all had to

know some of the truth. The members of the 40 group and their

successors who presumably know all intelligence secrets of the

country are, no doubt, brought into this "inner circle" of

knowledgeable people.

The Warren Commissioners were split. Warren, Dulles McCloy and

Ford all knew the truth; Cooper, Boggs and Russell did not. The

Rockefeller Commission was also split. Rockefeller certainly knows

and so does Ford's man on that Commission, David Belin. Kissinger

must have known the truth; so must have the officers in the

Department of Defense. Then there are the Secret Team members,

planted in the various media organizations, who know the truth. A

later chapter will describe who they are and how they lead the

media cover-up and disinformation mill.

This living organism view of the Power Control Group can best be

constructed and proven by starting with the cover-up efforts and

the control of the media, as opposed to examining the conspiracies

to assassinate each leader. It is much easier to show how Gerald

Ford, for example, led the cover-up in the JFK conspiracy than it

is to determine who the members of the Power Control Group were who

planned and financed the assassination.

It is difficult to show evidence of higher level participation

in the assassinations of Robert Kennedy, Dr. King and in the

attempted assassination of George Wallace. It is not difficult to

prove that many high level individuals conspired to cover-up the

conspiracies in each of the three cases. It is not difficult to

prove that they helped frame at least one of the patsies (James

Earl Ray).

Much of the content of this book will show evidence of the

cover-ups and discuss the actions that are still taking place that

protect the Power Control Group. Only summary information is

included on the original conspiracies, except where there is a lack

of published data.

____________________

[1] "Nomenclature of an Assassination Cabal", Torbett, 1968 (Copeland

Document)

* * * * * * *

* * * * * * *

Chapter 3

You Can Fool the People

One of the questions always asked by the beginning student of

America's political assassinations is, "How is it possible that all

of this could be happening in our country without our knowing about

it?" The "It couldn't happen here" belief has been extended to,

"It couldn't happen here without our knowing about it." This is

usually buttressed by such arguments as, "The Kennedys would have

done something about it, if it were true", or "Such a giant

conspiracy would have been exposed by someone within the

conspiratorial group", or "The news media would have found out

about it and told all of us by now."

The fact that it is possible to fool a majority of the American

people for a long period of time and to cover-up a high level

conspiracy involving many, many individuals, can easily be

demonstrated by using Watergate as an example. In fact, some

published articles[1] show that the entire truth about Watergate

has yet to be revealed.

We do know now about the cover-up of the original crimes in

Watergate and the cover-up of the cover-up. We tend to forget the

attitude of the majority of the American people, the Congress and

the media, toward Richard Nixon and the Nixon administration during

the period between the June 1972 Watergate break-in and the

November 1972 election and beyond into 1973. Long before Woodward

and Bernstein and others began the Watergate expose, a few

researchers were calling the Watergate conspiracies to the

attention of a small portion of the public.[2] It was not until

late 1973 that the research done by these researchers and their

hypotheses about high-level conspiracies were proven correct and

were generally accepted. How did it happen that for more than a

year a majority of the American people were not only fooled by Mr.

Nixon and his friends, but also re-elected him? Some of the same

ingredients present in that situation were like those used in the

taking of America. We can all learn a lot by observing what they

were.

What follows is a reproduction of an article by the author.

(Because the article was written in l972, some of the material in

it is now obsolete. However, it is reproduced here without changes

to illustrate the situation and attitudes of the pre-Watergate

revelation era.) It was originally written during the Watergate

cover-up era (late 1972), after Nixon was re-elected and before

Bernstein and Woodward were noticed by anyone. It should be noted

that even in 1976, Mr. Nixon still had his vehement supporters who

were blind to the ingredients required to fool the people.

You Can Fool the People

You can fool all of the people some of the time

You can fool some of the people all of the time

But you can't fool all of the people all of the time.

Abraham Lincoln, 1864

The decade of 1963 to 1973 in the United State of America

will go down in history for many things. In the long run

it will be known through the world as the period which

demonstrated that it is possible to fool most of the

people all of the time.

Adolph Hitler didn't fool very many people. He cowed

them, frightened them, and killed them. But most Germans

knew what was happening even though they chose to do

nothing about it until it was too late.

The exercise of power to control what happens and to

restrict liberties is much more difficult in a Democracy

or a Republic. The United States is always held up as the

model case in which the guaranteed election of the

president every four years and the two-party system, will

prevent the country from being run by dictators. The

people are represented by the Congress and also elect the

President.

A person or a group planning a coup d'etat in the U.S.

would have a completely different job on their hands than

Germany in the 1930's, South American or African countries

in the twentieth century, or France in the 1890's or

Russia in 1918.

It would be necessary to fool a majority of the

American people into believing that they were well

represented, and that a democracy still existed, while at

the same time the coup group were in reality changing the

country to suit their own tastes.

It is the contention of the writer that this is exactly

what has happened over a period of time following World

War II. The methods used to fool the American people,

certainly since 1963 and to some extent also since the end

of World War I, have varied slightly as administrations

changed. The main thrust however has been a constant

erosion of civil rights, and a swing of government away

from the best interests of the people and toward big

companies, banks, the military and rich individuals and

families. The trend was slowed down only briefly between

1960 and 1963 when Jack Kennedy attempted to alter the

situation. He was assassinated because he did so.

To fool the American people is not easy. It requires

immense capabilities, tricky, secret methods, hidden

resources, great wealth and the equivalent of brainwashing

or mind control on a grand scale. Yet that type of

resource is precisely what has accomplished the deed. It

is probable that, like Germany, the American people will

awaken to what has been happening to them and to who has

been doing it. It is also very likely, now that the Nixon

administration has been restored for four more years, that

by 1976 it will be too late, in spite of Watergate.

George McGovern's speech on ABC Television, the evening

of October 25, 1972, was a warning for those citizens who

were awake, that "it can happen here." It's happening

here, was his basic message. Yet, unlike Germany, the

people were silent, and fooled. They didn't believe him

when he said, "Your liberties are being removed, one by

one." The Supreme Court by 1976 will be so packed with

Nixon appointees that we will never get our liberties

back. McGovern covered most of the areas in which the

people have been fooled. The major area he didn't cover

was that of assassination. This tool represents only the

end of the spectrum of techniques used by those in control

to remain in control. It has been used four times very

effectively, on both Kennedys, on Martin Luther King, and

in the attempt on George Wallace. In the case of Wallace,

crippling was sufficient to change the political outcome

in 1972.

More important than the use of assassinations has been the

ability to fool the American people into believing there were four

lone madmen involved--and no conspiracies. The techniques involved

in fooling people are more complex and subtle than those involved

in the crime itself. In the Watergate case, the original crime was

the use of every trick and technique necessary to re-elect Nixon.

The people had to be fooled into believing that Nixon and the CIA

had nothing to do with Watergate and the broader plan of which it

was part.

That the fooling part turned out to be so easy is due to a long

series of conditioning steps taken with the American news media and

the people over the preceding years. The Pentagon Papers case

reveals how the people were fooled by several (successive CIA)

administrations over a long period of time. Efforts against

Ellsberg and the press continued in order to prevent further decay

of the fooling process.

How is it possible in the 20th century USA--with TV and high

levels of communication, with freedom of the press, freedom of

speech--to fool most of the people all of the time? Here is how it

is done. Five ingredients are required.

INGREDIENT 1. A PATRIOTIC ISSUE. A fundamental issue

permeating nearly all conditions of life in the U.S. is needed,

around which the rest of the fooling can be constructed. The

perfect issue since 1947 has been "The Red Menace," or "Communism"

or "The Radical Communist Left Conspiracy." No one is more adept

at using this issue than Richard Nixon.

The people, to be fooled, have to really believe in the issue,

from the heart, from the gut. In a democracy this is the most

essential ingredient. In the U.S. many, many people believe it.

Some believe it because they have never heard or read anything

other than "The Communists are going to take over." Others believe

it because they or their parents or relatives came from Europe and

"know what it's like to live under Naziism or Communism." (They

don't distinguish.)

Some believe because they are religious, and somehow religion is

always linked to anti-communism. Others aren't sure, but they

think "radical" groups might be Communist controlled. The flag

waving, the national anthem, the American Legion, our prisoners of

war, the draft of the past--all of these symbols are linked to the

one big issue of "Communism."

There can be several sub-issues of lesser significance than the

fundamental issue. Some of these might be related to the main

issue. Others may be unrelated. Some are used to appeal to

certain segments of the population. They can be carefully

exploited and added together with the main issue in a way which

enhances it. Some are useful with low-intelligence-level people.

Others appeal to bigots. Some are fearful issues which people

would rather avoid. Others hit the individual right in his

pocketbook or his security.

If played one against the other, very carefully, many of these

sub-issues can be blamed on Communism. Archie Bunker, of the TV

series, "All In The Family", was not exaggerating when he blamed

his white niece's dancing with a black neighbor boy on "a Communist

plot."

Examples of sub-issues used by those controlling Nixon

administration to fool the people include:

The black-white issue

The busing issue

The young radical issue

The law and order issue

The national security issue

The old-fashioned American work ethic versus

poverty and welfare issue

End Part2.

[John Ritchson]

Part3.

INGREDIENT 2. REACHING THE MINDS OF THE PEOPLE. To fool a

majority of the people all of the time it is necessary to reach

into their minds over a relatively long period of time. Make an

analysis of what you, the reader, believe today or disbelieve,

along with the mental condition you are in when you enter a polling

booth, or write a letter to your Congressman. After some thought

list all of the ways in which information might reach you today.

You will list all of the environmental factors, self images,

motivations, ego factors and acquired beliefs that make you do what

you do, and make you think what you think.

You will realize that your heritage, your schooling, your life's

experience, and the present bombardment of information have an

impact on how you vote. If your father and grandfather before you

were strong Republicans or Democrats, you may well vote the same

"pull one lever" way. You might close your mind to any messages of

imminent disaster, and think, "I'm better off not knowing and just

voting straight Republican." (In 1972)

You might have strong faith in the "American way of life" and

pay no attention to the people who go around claiming that John

Kennedy, Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy were all murdered by

elements of an invisible government to keep the U.S. on the

military, wealthy, conservative track.

You might ignore solid evidence regarding Lee Harvey Osward's,

James Earl Ray's or Sirhan Sirhan's actions and instead rely on a

long-term, well engineered faith that something like that "couldn't

happen here."

Go back in time to 1935, if you are over 50, or go back to 1945,

if you are over 40, or back to 1955, if you are over 30. Examine

your general overall attitudes, beliefs and prejudices as developed

over that period of time between then and now. You will discover

that your political beliefs about the U.S., the Presidency, foreign

policy, wage and price controls, and your own economic conditions,

etc., have been strongly influenced by the various news media.

INGREDIENT 3. CONTROLLING THE NEWS MEDIA. In Chapter 9, the

author proves that it has been possible for a very small group of

people in power to control or fool nearly all of the major news

media in the U.S. about the assassination of John F. Kennedy and

subsequent investigations conducted by groups other than the

sources of power (Warren Commission, FBI, Secret Service, CIA,

Justice Department, the President).

According to polls taken between 1963 and 1970, 50% to 80% of

the public at one time or another during this period believed there

was a conspiracy. Nevertheless, the major news media took the

opposite position. A poll conducted today would, no doubt, show

about one-half of the people believing there was no conspiracy.

How did this happen? Is it conceivable that the power sources of

two succeeding administrations (Johnson and Nixon) fooled or

controlled the news media to that extent?

The problem is not so difficult as it seems. Only sixteen media

organizations are involved. These sixteen provide each of us with

nearly all of the news we either read, see or hear. It is only

necessary to control the sixteen men at the very top and that is

exactly what happened. The proof contained in Chapter 9 contains

specific facts about what happened inside of eleven of the sixteen

organizations.

Some of them maintained an editorial position oriented toward

the possibility of conspiracy for several years. The last ones to

convert because of high level command decisions (at the *owner*

level--not the editorial level) did not do so until 1969, 5 1/2

years after the assassination. Several of the eleven conducted

their own independent investigations and discovered conspiracy

evidence sufficient to take that stand. Among these were CBS,

Life Magazine, and "The New York Times."

The sixteen media organizations are:

1. NBC-TV and Radio

2. CBS-TV and Radio

3. ABC-TV and Radio

4. Associated Press

5. United Press International

6. Time-Life

7. McGraw Hill - Business Week

8. Newsweek

9. U.S. News and World Report

10. New York Times and their news service

11. Washington Post and their news service

12. Metromedia News Network TV and Radio

13. Westinghouse Radio News Network

14. Capital City Broadcasting Radio Network

15. North American Newspaper Alliance

16. Gannett News Service

Controlling the news media to that extent in order to fool the

people is an extreme act. It is a last resort in an extremely

serious situation. Such a situation arose when it became obvious

to those in power that Jim Garrison was going to expose the truth

about the assassination in court. He had to be destroyed, and he

was, by fooling the news media as well as the people.

Control of the press by the power group slipped a little with

the Pentagon Papers, the Mylai episode, the Green Berets, the FBI

use of spying, and the Watergate caper. But effective control over

the fooling of the people nevertheless remains. With Watergate,

people fooling shifted from controlling the news media, which

suddenly awakened a little too late, to the control of the the

legal system.

INGREDIENT 4. CONTROLLING THE LEGAL SYSTEM. Perhaps the most

important long-range ingredient in fooling the people of America is

the control and influence over the legal system. The U.S. in the

post-war era has reached the stage where, in case of doubt on a

major issue, the people will wait to see how it is resolved by the

courts. The American people in general have always had tremendous

faith in their own legal system.

With the exception of the South taking issue with the Warren

court over black rights, the American people tend to believe that

the Supreme Court will eventually right any wrongs. The faith goes

much further than adjudication of crimes or disputes. People have

come to rely on the legal system to tell them where the truth lies

on a major issue when two sides differ completely on the facts.

They believe that the adversary procedure and the perjury penalty

system will ferret out the truth.

Thus, to fool the people, and make them believe lies, it is

essential to control the legal system. The Nixon and Johnson

administrations and the Invisible Government lying underneath or

off to one side of both administrations became very adept at

controlling the legal system. It can be done, and has been done in

several ways. Nixon, of course, loaded the Supreme Court. That is

important. The complete control of the Justice Department and the

FBI is also obvious. Not so obvious is the need to control Federal

judges throughout the land. Truth might leak out in a trial at a

local level, so U.S. courts in each area must be controlled.

The Federal grand jury scheme worked out by Nixon, Mitchell and

Robert Mardian is a beautiful way to guide, direct and control the

legal system. It more than proved its worth in fooling the people

in cases involving classified documents, the Black Panthers and

other situations where the truth had to be obscured.

Control over the American Bar Association and individual lawyers

and district attorneys is another method used. And finally, it is

often useful to control local and state police, either individually

or in groups.

The exercise of control is important. It may be desirable to

suppress truth in a court situation during a trial or hearings.

The judge can do this very effectively. It may also be desirable

to delay a trial or a hearing in which the truth might be exposed.

Judges and lawyers can do this quite easily. It may be desirable

to entirely shut off a trial or an appeal where truth could be

exposed. Nixon was able to do this to perfection.

Lies and fake cases may be presented as truth in court while

truth is attacked as being falsehood. This technique has been very

successful.

All of this takes both money and power. Judges and lawyers,

must either be paid a lot of money, or frightened about their

career and health. The CIA conduits used for espionage financing

have been used extensively in controlling the legal system. Power

has been used to control lower courts and local police or district

attorneys from the highest source of power in America, the

invisible government.

A few examples will suffice to demonstrate how the legal system

is used to fool the people.

The 1972 election demonstrated that two-thirds of the people

either did not associate Mr. Nixon with the Watergate affair and

the Chapin-Segretti sabotage project, or else they didn't know

about it or didn't care.

Surely, you say, a traditional American patriot would not vote

for a man who did all of the things the Watergate 7 and Chapin-

Segretti and company did. But wait! The situation as of January

1973 had not yet reached the courts. Except for Bernard Barker's

conviction for falsely using his notary public seal to stamp a

check from Kenneth Dahlberg in Florida, no court actions had taken

place.

Wasn't that lucky for the Republicans, you say. It wasn't luck.

The Watergate arrests took place in June 1972. By successfully

delaying a whole series of trials and court actions, Mr. Nixon,

through control of the courts, kept the truth away from the people

until after the election on November 7. Perhaps some of the people

who voted for him had doubts, but if court cases had been conducted

before November 7, and conducted fairly by uncontrolled judges, the

truth would have been exposed in all of its glory.

Now that he had a powerful mandate from the people, it was

likely that other forms of control would be used to continue

fooling the people about Watergate. Some of these were covered in

the prior chapters. Executive privilege has been used to a major

extent.

Clay Shaw was actually defended and Garrison, in effect, was put

on trial, through CIA money and CIA lawyers. Garrison's attempts

to bring Shaw to trial for perjury were successfully blocked by

Federal courts and judges.

Sirhan Sirhan's trial for the murder of Robert Kennedy was

controlled by the Nixon administration in order to hide the truth

from the people. The case involved controlling the judge at the

trial, the district attorney, the lawyers for Sirhan, the Los

Angeles police, the FBI, and some of the officials of the state of

California. The control exercised has continued to prevent Sirhan

from receiving a new trial based on new evidence of what happened

in the assassination.

THE FIVE BIG EVENTS. The five events since World War II about

which the power control group must continue to fool the American

people about are the assassinations of John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy

and Martin Luther King; the attempted assassination of George

Wallace; and the Watergate episode. (In 1973, the truth about

Chappaquiddick and its importance, together with the threats

against Jackie Kennedy, Ethel Kennedy, Ted Kennedy and all of the

Kennedy children, had not been exposed. Chappaquiddick is the

sixth big event.)

All other things this group has done since 1947 fade into

insignificance compared to these five. The reason is that the

American people may accept such things as the Pueblo incident, the

Gulf of Tonkin fake, the Mylai incident, the Pentagon Papers, the

Kent State killings, the frame-ups of the Black Panthers and their

murders, and even the whole Viet Nam war, but they would rise up in

wrath if the truth about any one or all of those five events were

exposed.

Thus, Mr. Hanson for Sirhan, Mr. Fensterwald for James Earl Ray,

Mr. Lawrence O'Brien and the Watergate suit--anyone opposing the

findings of the Warren Commission with national prominence and

success--and anyone who begins to pry too much into George

Wallace's brush with death will be opposed with all the power those

in control can muster. Each will be dealt with if he comes too

close, just as Jim Garrison was dealt with by both the Johnson and

Nixon administrations. Garrison managed to beat out the Nixon-

controlled Justice Department in his own trial in September 1973.

The jury in New Orleans found him innocent in spite of the fact

that the prosecuting attorney, the judge, the key witness, Pershing

Gervais, and the news media were all controlled by Nixon and

Mitchell. By late 1973 it was becoming a little more difficult to

fool the people.

INGREDIENT 5. PAID COLUMNISTS OR LACKEYS. Control of the news

media includes controlling or hiring selected columnists, newsmen,

commentators, and lackeys. Sometimes these people are called

"spokesmen for the administration." Many of them are supposedly

independent. Their importance in the process of fooling the people

has increased as the number of independent news media organizations

has decreased and the number of organizations relying on

syndicated, national columnists or commentators has increased.

The Nixon administration managed to corral a great many more of

these types than did the administrations of Johnson, Kennedy, or

Eisenhower. In the newspaper field, there were four to five times

as many columnists writing "fool the people" type news for Nixon as

against Nixon. Alsop was at one extreme. More subtle were writers

like C.L. Sulzberger in the "New York Times" and Gary Wills in

various conservative papers. On radio, the Westinghouse network

used four commentators who appeared to be liberal at first glance,

but who adhered to the party line when the time came to get at the

truth about the five key events mentioned earlier. These four were

Peter Lisagor, Rod McCleish, Simeon Booker and Irwin Cannon.

William Safire, Evans and Novak, Mary McCarthy, and occasionally

Jack Anderson also fall into the "fool the people" column. The

impact of these columnists on the American people has not really

been measured. Alsop's and Evans and Novak's columns appear in

Republican and right-wing newspapers all across the U.S. The

election poll that indicated over 700 newspapers supported Nixon

while fewer than 50 supported McGovern provides some estimate of

how influential these papers and columnists can be. With the

exception of two or three stories by Jack Anderson about Robert

Kennedy and plots to assassinate Castro, none of the evidence about

the truth pertaining to the assassinations has ever appeared in any

of these columns. Yet the American people read these columns more

faithfully than they read the front page.

HOW THE PEOPLE HAVE BEEN FOOLED. Now that the ingredients for

fooling the people have been discussed, let's examine the net

results over the past twenty-five years. Between 1957 and 1972,

there was a culmination in the use of these ingredients, many of

which were developed with the end of World War II.

Through a succession of presidencies and political party

administrations from Truman to Nixon a mixture of wealthy, military

and espionage individuals developed a power base and used the five

ingredients to fool the people. Except for John Kennedy, none of

the presidents tried very hard to resist this power. The book

"Farewell America" (by James Hepburn--a pseudonym--Frontiers

Press), which has been reprinted in sections in "Computers and

Automation" (1973) shows clearly what kind of power JFK tried to

resist and how it resulted in his death.

The American people aren't familiar with this book any more than

they are familiar with a movie made from the book, with the same

title. And as long as the group remains in power, the book and

movie will be banned from the United States, just as "Z" was banned

in Greece.

The people of America were fooled into believing each of the

following untruths:

Kent State:

The National Guard fired under intense pressure and attack

by a bunch of hoodlums at Kent State University. The

various grand juries have vindicated the Guard. There was

no White House influence involved in the killings, or in

the aftermath.

Mylai:

Calley was justified in shooting the civilians at Mylai

because those were his orders. You can't tell a "gook"

from a Viet Cong and, after all, war is war.

Communism:

The greatest threat to American freedom is still a world-

wide Communist take-over. The domino theory may or may not

be correct, but we must never give up a fight. "Peace

with honor" was essential in Viet Nam.

Pentagon Papers:

Few people have taken the time to read the Pentagon Papers

and have understood their significance. The two-thirds

majority who elected Nixon in 1972 may have been puzzled

by the papers or they may not have cared. No doubt, most

of them believed Ellsberg a traitor and worthy of jail.

It is very unlikely they will ever believe they were duped

by Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon and most

particularly by the CIA and allies in matters pertaining

to the cold war and Communism. The fundamental, gut issue

of the Communist conspiracy overrides any other revelation

in this field.

Assassinations:

In spite of polls and uneasy feelings, at least half and

perhaps a majority of the American people still believe

that John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King

were assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald, Sirhan Sirhan and

James Earl Ray, respectively, and that the assassination

attempt on George Wallace was solely Arthur Bremer's

doing. They believe these men acted alone and that they

were madmen. (This statement pertains to the period of

1972-73.)

Watergate:

Prior to the election in November 1972, a majority of the

American people believed that Richard Nixon, John

Mitchell, Maurice Stans and everyone else of importance in

the White House had nothing to do with the Watergate

affair or the activities of Donald Segretti and others

prior to the election. Almost no one believed that the

CIA was involved in setting up Nixon so as to capture and

control the executive to an even greater degree.

Democracy and Freedom:

By the end of 1973 a relatively large percentage of the

American people still did not relate any of the foregoing

incidents or situations to their own individual liberties.

They believed patriotically in America; they believed we

still had a democracy; they believed that President

Nixon, with his wise ways and business experience would

pull us out of whatever problems we had. From the time he

nailed Alger Hiss and the day he won the great kitchen

debate with Kruschev, Nixon was believed to be the leader

who would secure our eventual victory over Communism. The

people refuse to consider the possibility that unknown

forces have seized control over the U.S. for the last

fifteen years and that our liberties and democracy are

fading away.

____________________

[1] "Nixon and the Mafia" -- Jeff Gerth, "Sundance Magazine," December

1972. Charles Colson Interview, by Dick Russell - "Argosy Magazine,"

March 1976

[2] "Why Was Martha Mitchell Kidnapped?" -- Mae Brussell, "The Realist,"

August 1972

"The June 1972 Raid on Democratic Party Headquarters -- Part 1" --

R.E. Sprague, "Computers & Automation," August 1972

"The Raid on Democratic Party Headquarters -- The Watergate

Incident -- Part 2", Ibid.

* * * * * * *

End Part3.

[John Ritchson]

Part4.

Chapter 4

How It All Began - The U-2 and the Bay of Pigs

To understand the origins of the Power Control Group, it is

necessary to return to the last years of the Eisenhower

administration and examine what was going on in the Cold War.

Eisenhower had suffered several strokes and a heart attack. He

was partially immobilized, and entrusted a major share of the

coordination of clandestine activities being conducted by the CIA

against the "Red Menace" to Richard Nixon, his vice president.

While Ike was warning against the military-industrial-complex's

domestic influence, and attempting to move toward detente with the

Soviets through a summit meeting, he was being sabotaged by the

plans section of the CIA and by Richard Nixon.

A part of the CIA arranged for a U-2 with Gary Powers as pilot

to go down over Russia, thus giving Khrushchev a chance to expose

American spying and to cancel the summit meeting. This was one of

the earliest moves of the nucleus of what later evolved into the

Power Control Group. In the spring of 1960, with Ike nearly senile

and pressured by Nixon, he approved the plan for the invasion of

Cuba and the assassination of Castro. Nixon was the chief White

House action officer for what later became the Bay of Pigs

invasion.

The Power Control Group was beginning to organize itself with

Nixon as part of it. The cold warriors and strong anti-Communist

"patriots" in the Plans or Operations part of the CIA formed the

original nucleus.

Their plan was to make Nixon president in 1961 and to launch a

successful takeover of Cuba. John Kennedy came along to upset the

plan. Not only did he make the takeover impossible but he soon

discovered the evils lurking in the hearts and minds of the CIA

clandestine operators and laid his own plans to destroy them. The

assassination of John Kennedy essentially became an act of survival

for some of these individuals.

Many citizens of America have forgotten that Richard Nixon was

Vice President of the United States in 1959 and 1960. As an old

anti-communist from the Alger Hiss and Khrushchev debating days,

Nixon was in the forefront of pressure for the Bay of Pigs invasion

of Cuba. What is also forgotten is that Nixon was largely

responsible for the covert training of Cuban exiles by the CIA in

preparation for the Bay of Pigs. (He stated this in his book, "Six

Crises".)

NIXON'S LIES--OCTOBER 1960. Mr. Nixon's capacity for truth is

nowhere more clearly demonstrated than by the deliberate lies he

told during the election campaign on national TV on October 21,

1960. He said in his book that the lies were told for a patriotic

reason--to protect the covert operations planned for the Bay of

Pigs at all costs. The significance of this is that Mr. Nixon

considers patriotism to be, in part, the protection of plans and

actions of individuals that he considered to be working for the

United States' best interests.

The similarities between the actions of Everette Howard Hunt,

Jr., James McCord, Bernard Barker, Frank Sturgis, and others in the

1960 planning for the Bay of Pigs invasion and in the 1972 planning

for the re-election of Richard M. Nixon are very striking. In both

cases, what the plotters themselves considered to be patriotic,

anti-Communist actions were involved. In 1960 the actions were

directed against Fidel Castro, a man they hated as a Communist. In

1972 the actions were directed against Edward Kennedy, Edmund

Muskie and George McGovern. Bernard Barker stated the group's

collective belief when he said after his arrest that, "We believe

that an election of McGovern would be the beginning of a trend that

would lead to socialism and communism, or whatever you want to call

it."

Nixon admitted lying to the American people to protect Hunt,

Barker, Sturgis, and McCord in 1960. The likelihood that he lied

to protect them again in 1972 seems to be quite good. There is

some likelihood that he actually hired the same old crew he trusted

from the Bay of Pigs days for the 1972 Watergate and other

espionage activities.

Here are the facts:

Nixon's Statements in "Six Crises"

Richard Nixon stated in "Six Crises": "The covert training of

Cuban exiles by the CIA was due in substantial part, at least, to

my efforts. This had been adopted as a policy as a result of my

direct support."[1] "President Eisenhower had ordered the CIA to

arm and train the exiles in May of 1960. Nixon and his advisors

wanted the CIA invasion to take place before the voters went to the

polls on November 8, 1960."[2]

While the Bay of Pigs operation was under the overall CIA

direction of Allen Dulles, Richard M. Bissell, Jr. was the CIA man

in charge, according to Ross & Wise.[3] Charles Cabell,[4] the

deputy director of the CIA, and a man with the code name Frank

Bender, were also near the top of the operational planning.[5]

E. Howard Hunt

Everette Howard Hunt, Jr. was in charge of the actual invasion.

He used the code name, "Eduardo." Bernard L. Barker, using the code

name "Macho," worked for Hunt in the CIA Bay of Pigs planning.

James McCord was an organizer for the invasion and was one of the

highest ranking officials in the CIA. Frank Sturgis, alias Frank

Fiorini, was also involved in the Bay of Pigs operations. Virgilio

Gonzales was a CIA agent active in the Bay of Pigs. So was Eugenio

Martinez. Charles Colson was a former CIA official who knew McCord

and Hunt during the Bay of Pigs period.[6]

Hunt, Barker, McCord, Sturgis, Gonzales, and Martinez were under

indictment for the Watergate affair. Colson was Nixon's special

counsel who handled "touchy" political assignments. According to

"Time" magazine, Colson brought all of the others into the re-

election committee espionage project at the request of Nixon.[7]

In other words, it was basically the same group who worked for

Nixon, Bissell and Co. in 1960 and who worked for Nixon, Colson and

Co. in 1972. They were all loyal, patriotic, anti-Communist, and

anti-Castro CIA agents with covert (black) espionage training.

They needed Nixon's protection in 1960 and 1972, and they received

it both times.

Here is how Nixon protected them in 1960.[8]

Kennedy-Nixon Debates, 1960

John Kennedy and Richard Nixon engaged in a series of national

TV debates during the 1960 campaign. Kennedy was briefed by Allen

Dulles, head of the CIA at Eisenhower's request, on secret CIA

activities and international problems on July 23, 1960. Nixon was

not aware of the briefing contents and was not sure whether Dulles

told Kennedy about the Bay of Pigs plans. As it turned out Dulles

had not mentioned the plans but had kept his remarks about Cuba

rather general.

On October 6, 1960, Kennedy gave his major speech on Cuba. He

said that events might create an opportunity for the U.S. to bring

influence on behalf of the cause of freedom in Cuba. He called for

encouraging those liberty-loving Cubans who were leading the

resistance against Castro.

Nixon became very disturbed about this because he felt Kennedy

was trying to pre-empt a policy which he claimed as his own. Nixon

ordered Fred Seaton, Secretary of the Interior, to call the White

House and find out whether Dulles had briefed Kennedy on the Cuban

invasion plans. Seaton talked to General Andrew Goodpaster,

Eisenhower's link to the CIA, who told Seaton that Kennedy did know

about the Bay of Pigs plans.

Attack on Kennedy by Lying

Nixon became incensed. He said, "There was only one thing I

could do. The covert operation had to be protected at all costs.

I must not even suggest by implication that the U.S. was rendering

aid to rebel forces in and out of Cuba. In fact, I must go to the

other extreme: I must attack the Kennedy proposal to provide such

aid as wrong and irresponsible because it would violate our treaty

commitments."[9]

So Richard M. Nixon actually went on national TV (ABC) on

October 21, 1960, knowing we were going to invade Cuba, and lied.

During the fourth TV debate, Nixon attacked Kennedy's proposal as

dangerously irresponsible and in violation of five treaties between

the U.S. and Latin America, as well as the United Nations'

Charter.[10]

On October 22 at Muhlenberg College, Nixon really turned on the

fabrication steam. He said, "Kennedy called for--and get this--the

U.S. Government to support a revolution in Cuba, and I say that

this is the most shockingly reckless proposal ever made in our

history by a presidential candidate during a campaign--and I'll

tell you why . . ."

The reason we should have taken with a grain of salt whatever

words Nixon uttered about Watergate and Donald Segretti's espionage

is clearly demonstrated in that October 22, 1960 speech. He

fiercely attacked John Kennedy for advocating a plan that he,

Richard Nixon, secretly advocated and claimed as his own creation.

He later had the sheer gall to brag about it in his own book as a

very patriotic act.

Protection of Hunt and Co.

How was Nixon protecting Hunt and company in 1972? He was using

the Justice Department and the Republican Congressmen, among

others, to delay and dilute the prosecution of the Watergate seven.

He had slowed down, suppressed, and all but stopped six separate

investigations, suits, and trials of the affair. Included were

Wright Patman's House Banking Committee investigation, the FBI-

Justice Department investigation, a White House investigation by

John Dean, a General Accounting Office investigation, a suit by the

Democratic Party, and a trial in criminal court of the seven

invaders. Only two trials or investigations had a chance of

exposing the truth at that time. One of these, a trial of Bernard

Barker in Florida was not much help. The other was an

investigation promised by Senator Edward Kennedy and his Senate

subcommittee. It never occurred. The action for impeachment came

much later.

Thus, the stage was set in 1961 for the group of powerful

individuals who had planned the Bay of Pigs to gain revenge on John

Kennedy who tried to change the overall direction of the U.S.

battle against Communism. After JFK refused to approve overt U.S.

backing of the Bay of Pigs invasion, various individuals in the

clandestine CIA forces vowed their revenge.

In the spring of 1961, evidence had appeared indicating that

Helms, Hunt, Sturgis and Barker tried to have JFK assassinated in

Paris.[11] When the attempt failed, a number of other plots and

sub-plots developed through the next two years. After JFK's

blockade strategy against Castro during the missile crisis in 1962

was implemented, some of the high-level CIA and armed forces people

wanted even more to get him out of the White House. They had

favored a direct invasion or bombing of Cuba.

And finally, when JFK found out about the CIA's plans for

another invasion of Cuba in the spring and summer of 1963 and

stopped them, they began in earnest to plan his death.

____________________

[1] "Six Crises," Richard M. Nixon, Doubleday, 1962.

[2] "The Invisible Government," Wise & Ross, Random House, 1964.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Brother of Earl Cabell, mayor of Dallas when Kennedy was assassinated.

[5] Ibid.

[6] "New York Times" articles on Watergate, June 18 to July 2, 1972.

[7] "Time" magazine, September 8, 1972.

[8] This episode is related in detail in "The Invisible Government."

[9] "Six Crises".

[10] "The Invisible Government."

[11] "400,000 Dollars Pour Abattre Kennedy a Paris," Camille Giles, Julliard

Press, Paris 1973.

* * * * * * *

End Part4.

[John Ritchson]

Part5.

Chapter 5

The Assassination of John Kennedy

The assassination of President Kennedy can be considered one of

a series of acts by the Power Control Group to regain the control

they had lost when Nixon was defeated in 1960 and Kennedy

threatened their existence. The evidence pointing toward

intelligence involvement and the use of a variety of intelligence

techniques in the assassination is substantial. Until and unless

an investigation is conducted by a group with power and money

equivalent to that of the Power Control Group, with the power to

issue subpoenas and to protect witnesses, it will be very difficult

to draw a completely accurate picture of the conspiracy to

assassinate JFK.

As a substitute, this chapter is a "probable reconstruction"--a

scenario--about who killed John F. Kennedy. Unlike the Warren

Commission Report (another scenario), this report does not contain

any physically impossible events, such as those connected with

Commission Exhibit 399, the so-called "magic bullet."

This scenario is based on (1) evidence gathered between 1968 and

1975 by the Committee to Investigate Assassinations, Washington,

D.C. and (2) evidence gathered between 1962 and 1975 by the author.

The purpose of this scenario is as a starting point for study

and verification by researchers, by Congressional Committees, and

by their members and staffs. This should be considered as a

beginning hypothesis and scenario in contrast to the Warren and

Rockefeller Commission scenarios.

The best evidence available indicates the following events

occurred in the summer and fall of 1963 and culminated in the

assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The basic evidence has

been summarized in various articles published in "Computers and

People" (formerly "Computers and Automation") since May 1970.[1]

This can be considered as a guideline scenario which adheres to and

explains all of the known factual evidence.

How It Began

The conspiracy to assassinate John Kennedy began in a series of

discussions held in New Orleans in the summer of 1963. The men in

the discussions were extremely angry that Kennedy had stopped plans

and preparations for another invasion of Cuba (scheduled for the

latter part of 1963.) One of the instigators was David Ferrie, a

CIA contract agent who had been training pilots in Guatemala for

the invasion. Meetings held in Ferrie's apartment in New Orleans

were attended by Clay Shaw, William Seymour and several Cubans.

Plans for assassinating President Kennedy developed out of those

early meetings. Others whose support was sought by the group

included Guy Banister, Major L. M. Bloomfield, Loran Hall,

Lawrence Howard, Sergio Arcacha Smith and Carlos Prio Socarras.

Oswald's Role

During this period in the summer of 1963 Lee Harvey Oswald was

working for Guy Banister on some anti-Castro projects and used the

Communist cover of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. Oswald

attended some of the meetings where JFK's assassination was

discussed.

Oswald either approached the FBI or they approached him in the

later summer of 1963, and he began to tell the FBI about the plans

of the group to assassinate JFK. Oswald had been a secret

informant for the FBI since mid-1962.

Mexico City

In September, the group moved the scene of their planning to

Mexico City. There they solicited the assistance of Guy Gabaldin,

a CIA agent. Meetings were held in the apartment of Gabaldin,

attended by Shaw, Ferrie, Seymour, Gabaldin and Oswald on at least

three occasions. Others were brought into the conspiracy at this

point. These included John Howard Bowen (alias Albert Osborne),

Ronald Augustinovich, Mary Hope, Emilio Santana, Harry Dean,

Richard Case Nagell, and "Frenchy" (an adventurer who had been

working with Seymour, Santana, Ferrie, Howard and others on the

Cuban invasion projects in the Florida Keys). Fred Lee Crisman,

Jim Hicks and Jim Braden (alias Eugene Hale Brading) were also

recruited at this point.

Oswald, the Patsy

Oswald continued to inform on the group to the FBI in Dallas.

In mid- to late September the assassination group decided to make

Oswald the patsy in the murder. They had discussed the need for a

patsy in the earliest meetings in New Orleans. Billy Seymour, who

resembled Oswald, was selected to use Oswald's name and to plant

evidence in New Orleans, Dallas and Mexico, which could later be

used to frame him. In addition, another man under CIA surveillance

in Mexico City also used Oswald's name in a probable attempt to

make it appear that Oswald was headed for Cuba. His name may have

been Johnny Mitchell Deveraux. His picture appears in the Warren

Commission Volumes as CE 237.

Financial Support

The team needed financial support for the assassination. They

received it from Carlos Prio Socarras in Miami, who brought more

than 50 million dollars out of Cuba. They also received money from

Banister, and from three Texas millionaires who hated Kennedy:

Sid Richardson, Clint Murchison, and Jean DeMenil (of the

Schlumberger Co.). The Murchison-Richardson contribution also

included soliciting the assistance of high-level men in the Dallas

police force. They were powerful members of the Dallas Citizens

Council that controlled the city at that time.

Plans for Three Cities

The group in Mexico City planned to assassinate JFK in Miami,

Chicago or Dallas, using different gunmen in each case. The Miami

plan failed because the Secret Service found out about it in

advance and kept JFK out of the open. The Chicago plan backfired

when JFK cancelled his plans to attend the Army-Navy game at

Soldiers Field in early November. The group set up two

assassination teams for Dallas. One was in Dealey Plaza; the

second was near the International Trade Mart where JFK's luncheon

speech was to be delivered.

CIA Support

The best evidence of CIA (Deputy-Director of Plans) involvement

is the fact that the majority of the known participants were

contract agents or direct agents of the CIA. In Mexico City, the

meetings were held in the apartment of Guy Gabaldin, a CIA (DDP)

agent, working for the Mexico City station chief. Others attending

the meetings who were CIA (DDP) contract or direct agents included

Clay Shaw, David Ferrie, Albert Osborne, Harry Dean, Richard Case

Nagell, Ronald Augustinovich, William Seymour, Emilio Santana and

Fred Lee Crisman. It is likely (but not yet provable by direct

evidence) that the group sought and obtained from the acting or

permanent CIA station chief in Mexico, assistance or approval to go

ahead with assassination plans. Tad Szulc claims that a CIA source

can prove that E. Howard Hunt was acting station chief in Mexico

City at the time of the Gabaldin apartment meetings (August and

September 1963). Hunt has denied under oath before the Rockefeller

Commission that he was in Mexico.

In 1967 Richard Helms told a group of CIA officials, including

Victor Marchetti, that both Clay Shaw and David Ferrie were CIA

(DDP) contract agents and that Shaw had to be given CIA protection

and assistance in his New Orleans trial. This is a strong

indication that Hunt and Helms gave "turn of the head" approval to

the Shaw-Ferrie assassination plan as a minimum form of support.

Dallas

The assassination group, having failed in Miami and Chicago,

moved an operational team into Dallas during the second week in

November of 1963. Shaw, Ferrie, Gabaldin and other high-level

plotters travelled in other directions, establishing alibis as

planned. On November 22, Gabaldin was in Mexico City, Shaw was in

San Francisco, and Ferrie was in New Orleans. The team moving into

Dallas included Albert Osborne, William Seymour, Emilio Santana,

Frenchy, Fred Crisman, Jim Hicks, Jim Braden, and a new recruit

from Los Angeles, Jack Lawrence. There was also a back-up rifle

team of Cubans to be used at a location near the International

Trade Mart in the event something went wrong at Dealey Plaza.

Where the Teams Stayed

The teams stayed at two locations in Dallas for two weeks. One

was a rooming house run by a woman named Tammie True. During this

period final preparations for the assassination in Dealey Plaza

were made. These included the collecting of and planting of

evidence used to frame Oswald, the recruiting of the Dallas police

participants, and the plans for the escape of the team members by

car and by train. The riflemen selected were William Seymour in

the Depository Building, Jack Lawrence and Frenchy on the grassy

knoll, and Emilio Santana in the Dal Tex building. Jim Hicks was

set up as radio coordinator and a man with each of the riflemen had

a two-way radio. They were Jim Braden, Dal Tex; Fred Crisman,

knoll; unidentified American (tall tramp), knoll; and a man in the

TSBD Building. Osborne was in overall charge of the Dallas teams,

but he did not go to Dealey Plaza. A fifth gunman, known to

researchers as the umbrella man, was stationed on the street with

an umbrella weapon furnished by the CIA. He was accompanied by

another Cuban acting as a radio man.

Framing Oswald

The people involved in framing Oswald included Seymour (who used

his identity), someone who posed for two pictures holding a rifle,

a photographer who took the pictures and someone who superimposed

Oswald's head on the two negatives. Also, someone who took

Oswald's rifle from his garage and his pistol from his room, taking

several bullets and shells with the pistol, fired three shells and

one bullet through the rifle, and planted the rifle and rifle

shells on the sixth floor of the TSBD and a rifle bullet at

Parkland Hospital. The pistol shells were given to William Seymour

for planting later on. The photographers also planted photos of

General Walker's house and driveway to implicate Oswald in the

Walker shooting.

Dallas Policemen Involved

The policemen involved were J. D. Tippit, who was to drive two

of the assassins, Seymour and his radio man, away in his police

car; Bill Alexander; Jerry Hill; Sergeant McDonald; Lieutenant

Montgomery; Lieutenant Johnson; and Lieutenant Batchelor, who

escorted Jack Ruby into the jail to murder Oswald.

McDonald was assigned to kill Oswald upon his arrest in the

Texas Theatre. Jerry Hill was involved in that event as well as in

the planting of evidence against Oswald in the TSBD Building.

Montgomery and Johnson were involved in planting the paper bag as

evidence against Oswald. Alexander and Batchelor were primarily

responsible for making sure that Jack Ruby assassinated Oswald and

that he didn't talk about it afterward. Alexander was present on

every occasion when Ruby was questioned or interviewed in the jail,

in spite of Ruby's efforts to have him removed.

Other Persons Involved in Framing Oswald

Also involved in framing Oswald were Marina Oswald; her lawyer,

James Martin; and someone in the Dallas police force. She was

talked into three points of false testimony: she said she took the

two fake photos of Oswald with a camera she claimed was his. She

fabricated, or was handed, the false story about Oswald's attempt

to shoot General Walker and taking two pictures of Walker's house

with the same camera. (Oswald did neither.) She told a false

story about a falling out she and Oswald supposedly had and

exaggerated his mean treatment of their children. There are good

indications that these moves were made by the CIA operatives in the

group who threatened to send Marina back to Russia. (Marina's

uncle was a high-level officer in the KGB.)

Dealey Plaza

On the day of the assassination four men with rifles,

accompanied by their radio men and several other team members,

moved into Dealey Plaza. Seymour and a radio man entered the TSBD

Building through the freight entrance and worked their way to the

roof. Santana and Braden went into the Dal Tex building through

the freight entrance on Houston St. and up a back staircase to the

second floor. Lawrence, Frenchy, Crisman and the tall tramp took

up two positions on the grassy knoll. Lawrence was inside the

westernmost cupola after parking his car in the parking lot behind

the knoll. Frenchy, Crisman and the tall tramp were near the

fence. Jim Hicks was in the Adolphus Hotel a few blocks away,

testing the two-way radio communication with the four radio men,

until he proceeded to the Plaza and mingled with a large crowd

(near the corner of Houston and Elm Streets). The umbrella man

stood near the Stemmons Freeway sign on Elm Street accompanied by

his radio man.

The other team members stationed themselves in the crowd (along

Elm Street). After the shots were fired, they circulated through

the crowd in front of the TSBD on Elm Street, on the grassy knoll,

and behind the TSBD Building, identifying themselves as Secret

Service agents and asking witnesses and officials questions to find

out whether the assassins had been detected. There are clear

photos of one of these men. One other man was at the corner of the

wall on the grassy knoll.

The Shots

Upon a visual and oral signal from the man at the wall and upon

a radio command from Hicks, the team fired its first round of

shots. Crisman received the command from Hicks and caused Frenchy

to fire a shot from a position behind the fence on the knoll, about

twenty feet west of the corner of the fence. This shot missed.

The umbrella man fired a shot using his small-bore umbrella gun.

When this shot struck JFK in the throat, the dart paralyzed JFK and

later presented by Commander Humes to the FBI.[2] The shot was

fired at Zapruder frame 189: JFK was behind a large oak tree,

hidden from the sixth floor window of the TSBD Building. On

command from Braden, Emilio Santana fired his first shot two

seconds later from the second floor window of the Dal Tex building

at Z 225 after JFK came out from behind the sign in Zapruder's

film. The shot struck JFK in the back about 5 3/4" down from the

collar line, penetrated to a depth of about two inches and stopped.

The bullet fell out of JFK's back somewhere in or at the Parkland

Hospital, or perhaps travelled down inside the body of the

President, and was never recovered.

William Seymour fired his shot from the west end of the TSBD

Building upon command from his radio man between Z 230 and Z 237,

after Santana's shot. He used a Mauser rifle with no telescopic

sight. While he was aiming at JFK, he fired high and to the right,

hitting John Connally in the back. The bullet travelled through

Connally's chest and then entered his left thigh. The bullet fell

out of his thigh in or near Parkland Hospital and was never

recovered. Governor Connally's wrist was not hit at that time.

Jack Lawrence did not fire a shot in the first round because

from his cupola position he did not have a clear shot.

Hicks gave a second radio command for another round of shots as

JFK passed the Stemmons Freeway sign.

Emilio Santana fired his second shot between Z 265 and Z 275.

The bullet narrowly missed JFK, passed over the top of his head and

over the top of the limousine's windshield. It travelled on to

strike the south curb of Main Street, breaking off a piece of

concrete which flew up and hit James Tague. The bullet either

disintegrated or flew into the area beyond the overpass. It was

not found.

William Seymour may have fired a second shot which may have

struck JFK in the upper right part of his head at Z 312. That

bullet disintegrated.

Upon command from his radio man, Jack Lawrence fired his first

shot from a pedestal on the west side of the south entrance to the

western cupola on the grassy knoll. The shot may have hit

Connally's wrist.

Frenchy fired the fatal shot through the trees from his position

behind the fence.

The Lawrence shot or possibly the second Seymour shot produced a

bullet fragment that passed through Connally's right wrist at Z

313. At that time his wrist was elevated and nearly directly in

front of JFK's head, in such a position that Connally's right palm

was facing JFK as the governor fell into his wife's arms. The

fragment entered the front of his wrist and exited from the back.

Oswald's Actions

Lee Harvey Oswald started November 22, 1963 with the knowledge

that there might be an attempt on JFK's life during the day. He

had reported this possibility to the FBI in his informer's role

five days earlier; he undoubtedly thought the FBI and Secret

Service would be protecting the President. His communications with

the assassination team had prepared him to meet with them in the

Texas Theatre if anything happened that day. There is also a

possibility he received a telephone call immediately after the

shots, telling him to go to the theatre.

He had gone to his and Marina's rooms in Irving to pick up

curtain rods for his bare windows in his Oak Cliff room. He

carried the curtain rods in a paper bag on his way to work that

morning with Wesley Frazier. He worked on the sixth floor of the

TSBD as well as on the other floors that morning. He helped a crew

of men lay a new floor on the sixth floor, move a large number of

book cartons and school supplies over to the eastern side of the

floor, including some cartons near the southeastern window that

faced Elm Street.

Oswald went to the first floor of the building at approximately

12:15 p.m. and returned to the second floor lunchroom just before

12:30. He was drinking a coke there at 12:31 when Officer Baker

and Mr. Truly, the building manager, encountered him while rushing

up the stairs from the first floor. At the sight of Baker's gun

drawn and seeing the commotion outside, he no doubt realized what

had happened.[3] He immediately left the building via the freight

platform entrance on the northeast side and travelled to his

rooming house via bus and taxi. He picked up his pistol there and

went directly to the Texas Theater where he met two of the

assassination team and was sitting with them in the theatre when

the police arrived. One of these men may have been William

Seymour.

The Dallas police members of the team planned to shoot Oswald in

the theatre while arresting him. When he was arrested he did not

realize at first that he had been framed. When this began to

become clear to him on Saturday, November 23, he remained confident

that the FBI would get him out of the situation. After all, he

worked for them!

Jack Ruby

Jack Ruby, in addition to his Mafia involvements and other

criminal activities, was also running guns to Cuba and carrying

payoff money to other anti-Castro groups on behalf of various CIA-

backed projects. His involvement in the assassination of JFK

appears to have been minor, even though he knew about it in

advance. In his night club Ruby met on several occasions with Clay

Shaw, David Ferrie, and William Seymour.

The group decided to assassinate Oswald in jail after the police

failed to kill him in the Texas Theatre. Alexander made

arrangements to have Batchelor escort Ruby into the jail when it

was known Oswald was being moved. They arranged an audible signal

(an auto horn) to let Batchelor and Ruby know when Oswald was

coming down an elevator into the garage. They came down an

elevator opposite the one carrying Oswald.

Clay Shaw gave Ruby his instructions to shoot Oswald through

Breck Wall. Shaw telephoned Wall from San Francisco and Wall

called Ruby. He was told it was an official CIA-sponsored act, in

the best interests of the United States, and that he would be out

of jail in a few days after his capture.

Planted Evidence

The planting of the evidence against Oswald first began with

William Seymour, who used Oswald's identity during September and

October, 1963. Next, the faked photographs of Oswald were created.

Two of the team members used a camera of their own to take the two

pictures of General Walker's house and the two shots of one of the

men supposedly in Oswald's back yard. They planted the pictures in

Oswald's garage. Next, they stole Oswald's rifle from the garage

prior to November 22, fired several shots from it, and preserved

three shells, one bullet, and several bullet fragments.

They planted the rifle, the three shells, the bullet (399) and

the bullet fragments in the TSBD, the hospital and the JFK

limousine on November 22. They also took Oswald's pistol at some

time prior to November 22, fired several shots from it and saved

the shells. William Seymour, after shooting policeman Tippit, ran

away in such a manner as to attract attention, throwing the shells

from Oswald's gun into the air as he ran so that witnesses would

see them. (The shells matched Oswald's pistol. None of the

bullets matched.)

All of the work with Oswald's rifle, pistol, and the fake photos

was probably done at the same time. The rifle, pistol and

Communist newspapers had to be available together for the backyard

photos. The faking of the photographs, the firing of rifle and

pistol, the retrieval of the shells from rifle and pistol and of

bullet 399 and the bullet fragments from the rifle all required

enough time that the event occurred well in advance of the

assassination .

Escape Plans

As mentioned before, plans were made for the team to escape by

car, train, and airplane. Evidence shows:

1. A white car was parked straddling a log barrier behind

the western cupola on the grassy knoll. It left that

spot one minute after the shots were fired and drove

eastward on the Elm Street extension in front of the

TSBD.

2. A white station wagon driving west on Elm Street

stopped at the foot of the grassy knoll at 12:40 p.m.,

ten minutes after the shots were fired. It picked up a

man who looked like Oswald and drove under the triple

overpass.

3. A railroad train carrying three "tramps" began to leave

the freight train area west and north of the TSBD at

around one o'clock, thirty minutes after the shots.

The train was under the tower control of Lee Bowers and

was stopped by him. The tramps were arrested.

4. A police car stopped in front of Oswald's rooming house

and honked twice around 1:10 p.m.

5. Policeman Tippit's patrol car was far out of position

in the Oak Cliff area near Ruby and Oswald's rooming

houses. Tippit was shot by two men, one of whom was

Billy Seymour.

6. A small airplane was sitting at the Redbird Airport, a

location in the same direction as Oak Cliff, a little

further out from Dealey Plaza. Its engines were

running. It was ready for takeoff at 1 p.m.

7. David Ferrie went to Houston, Texas on the afternoon of

November 22, driving at high speed through bad

thunderstorms to get there. He was positioned at a pay

telephone at an ice skating rink near the Houston

airport, until receiving a phone call there. After

that he returned to New Orleans.

Escape Routes

These escape plans were modified after the assassination. It

became unnecessary for any of the Dealey Plaza participants to

escape by airplane. The framing of Oswald and the failure of the

Secret Service or FBI to detect any of the escaping gunmen or their

assistants permitted these changes. One of the men in the Dealey

Plaza--probably pretending to be a Secret Service agent--reported

an "all clear" situation to Shaw in San Francisco. Shaw notified

Ferrie that they didn't need an airplane to escape with while

Ferrie was waiting in Houston. Ferrie changed his plans and drove

back to New Orleans.

The gunmen who did escape followed these routes: Jack Lawrence

got into his car parked behind the cupola and either drove or was

driven back to his cover job location at the automobile agency. He

left almost immediately afterward and travelled to North Carolina.

Frenchy ran back to the freight car area and climbed into one of

the box cars sitting on a siding northwest of the TSBD. He was

arrested at 1 p.m. by Officers Harkness, Bass and Wise, but was

released by Sheriff Elkins later in the afternoon. Santana walked

out the back entrance of the Dal Tex building and may have joined

Seymour in a white station wagon on Elm Street at 12:40 p.m.

Seymour left the roof of the TSBD via a back stairway, exited from

the freight entrance in the rear of the building, and walked on

Houston Street past the Elm Street extension. He walked down the

grassy knoll to Elm Street where he was picked up at 12:40 p.m. by

the white station wagon.

The other Dealey Plaza participants, Crisman, a tall tramp,

Braden and Hicks escaped by various means. Braden was arrested and

released. Hicks drove home. Crisman and the tall tramp followed

Frenchy's route into the box cars.

Tippit Shooting

David Belin of the Warren and Rockefeller Commission is fond of

saying, "Lee Harvey Oswald killed policeman Tippit. Since the

case against Oswald for the Tippit slaying is so strong, it

follows that Oswald also shot the President." The case against

Oswald in the Tippit murder is as weak as the case against him in

the JFK assassination. The most important evidence showing that

Seymour and another one of the assassination team shot Tippit is

the fact that six witnesses, ignored by the Warren Commission, saw

two men shoot Tippit. One of them resembled Oswald. They ran

away from the scene in opposite directions. Seymour ran toward the

Texas Theater, throwing the planted shells up in the air so that

witnesses would see and recover them. (This act would convince

most people that Oswald did not shoot Tippit.) The other assassin

ran in the opposite direction. There is some indication that

Seymour entered the theater in a manner to draw attention and then

left before the Oswald arrest. While the shells recovered were

found to match Oswald's pistol, none of the bullets recovered from

Tippit's body matched.

Comments and Congressional Actions Needed

The above scenario comes much closer to explaining what happened

to John Kennedy than either the Warren Commission Report or the

Rockefeller Commission report. It matches the known evidence from

the two prime sources, the Warren Commission files in the National

Archives, and the evidence produced by the Garrison investigation

(most of which was turned over the the Committee to Investigate

Assassinations, Washington, D.C.).

However, without subpoena power, and with extremely limited

resources, no group of citizens such as the Committee or Mark

Lane's Citizens Commission can determine the ultimate truth about

the assassination.

Only a properly constituted Congressional committee or group

with resources and subpoena power, and with the power and courage

to combat the Power Control Group involved in the assassination and

its cover-up, whoever they may be, can reach the truth.

This chapter has been prepared as a guideline for such a

committee, rather than as the ultimate solution.

It should be utilized in conjunction with two other documents

already submitted to the four Congressional groups interested in

the case. The groups are:

(1) The Senate;

(2) The House Special Committee on Intelligence;

(3) Thomas Downing, Representative from Virginia, who

introduced House Resolution 498 to reopen the JFK

assassination investigation;

(4) Henry Gonzalez, Representative from Texas, who

introduced House Resolution 204 to reopen the

assassination inquiries on John and Robert Kennedy,

Martin Luther King, and George Wallace.

The Two Documents

1. "Recommendations for the Senate and House Committee's

Investigations of Illegal and Subversive Domestic Activities of

the CIA and FBI," memorandum by Richard E. Sprague (submitted

to them).

2. "The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy: the

Involvement of the Central Intelligence Agency in the Plans and

the Cover-Up," by Richard E. Sprague, in "People and the

Pursuit of Truth," May, 1975.

Dramatis Personae

Bill Alexander - Assistant to District Attorney Wade, Dallas

County.

Ronald Augustinovich - CIA agent. Participated in Mexico City

meetings.

Officer Marion Baker- Dallas motorcycle police officer entering

Texas School Book Depository after shots.

Guy Banister - Head of clandestine CIA station in New Orleans -

ran Banister Detective Agency. Front for anti-Castro Cuban

groups. Former FBI agent and member of New Orleans police.

Died of "heart attack" June 1964. David Ferrie worked for

him. Oswald used his office and address.

Officer Billy Bass - Dallas police officer; arrested "tramps" in

Dealey Plaza.

Lt. Batchelor - Dallas police lieutenant.

David Belin - Warren Commission lawyer.

Major L. M. Bloomfield - Resident of Montreal, Canada. Member of

board of Centro Mondiale Commerciale, CIA front-organization

in Rome. Visited by Ferrie and Shaw in fall 1963.

John Howard Bowen - CIA agent. Alias Albert Osborne. Long

clandestine record. On bus to Mexico with Oswald.

Participated in Mexico City meetings.

Lee Bowers - Railroad tower control operator, Dealey Plaza. Died

in curious accident.

Jim Braden - Alias Eugene Hale Brading. Mafia hoodlum and CIA

contract agent. Acted as radio man in Dealey Plaza.

CIA - Central Intelligence Agency.

Fred Lee Crisman - OSS and CIA domestic agent from Tacoma,

Washington. Participated with Frenchy and others as radio

man in Dealey Plaza.

Harry Dean - CIA operative in Mexico City.

Jean DeMenil - Louisiana and Texas industrialist.

Johnny Mitchell Deveraux - CIA agent, Mexico City. May have

impersonated Oswald in Mexico.

Sheriff Harold Elkins - Dallas County Deputy Chief.

FBI - Federal Bureau of Investigation, then headed by J. Edgar

Hoover.

David Ferrie - Resident of New Orleans French Quarter. Pilot for

Eastern Airlines. Bay of Pigs, CIA contractor for pilot

training and clandestine flights. Associate of Clay Shaw,

Lee Harvey Oswald, Jack Ruby; murdered Feb. 1967; death

termed "suicide" by officials.

"Frenchy" - Real name(s) not yet determined. French Canadian

adventurer. CIA contract agent. Training for second

invasion of Cuba in Florida Keys. Knew Howard, Hall,

Seymour, Hemming, and Santana. Fired shots. Also involved

in King assassination.

Guy Gabaldin - Former OSS operative and CIA agent in Mexico City.

Movie made about his World War II exploits, Jeffrey Hunter

played Gabaldin role. Assassination planning done in his

Mexico City apartment.

Loran Hall - Anti-Castro adventurer from southern California. One

of three men who visited Sylvia Odio and said JFK would be

assassinated. Close friend of Lawrence Howard, William

Seymour and other no-name key adventurers. Raising funds for

them in 1963.

Sgt. Harkness - Dallas police sergeant.

Richard Helms - Deputy Director - Plans, CIA, in 1963.

Jerry Patrick Hemming - CIA agent and trainer of mercenaries at

no-name key.

Jim Hicks - Radio specialist from Dallas. Was radio communications

coordinator in Dealey Plaza. Placed in mental hospital run by

the military.

Jerry Hill - Police sergeant, Dallas.

Mary Hope - Friend of Augustinovich. Participated in Mexico City

meetings on the assassination.

Lawrence Howard - Anti-Castro adventurer. No-name key group.

Friend of Loran Hall and William Seymour. Visited Sylvia Odio.

Kept no-name key photo album. Provided Garrison with pictures.

E. Howard Hunt - CIA agent. Acting station chief CIA clandestine

station in Mexico City in 1963.

Lt. Johnson - Dallas police lieutenant.

Jack Lawrence - Resident of West Virginia and southern California.

Minuteman and adventurer. Fired shots.

James Martin - Marina Oswald's business manager.

Sgt. McDonald - Police sergeant, Dallas.

Lt. Montgomery - Dallas police lieutenant; helped frame Oswald .

Clint Murchison - Texas oil millionaire.

Richard Case Nagell - CIA operative in Mexico City; testified

before Congressional Committees.

OSS - Office of Strategic Services.

Lee Harvey Oswald - Dallas and New Orleans resident. CIA and FBI

agent and informer. Patsy in assassination.

Marina Oswald - Wife of Lee Harvey Oswald. Helped to frame her

husband.

Sid Richardson - Texas oil millionaire.

Jack Ruby - Mafia connections. Anti-Castro CIA contracts. Owner

of Dallas night club. Recruited to shoot Oswald.

Emilio Santana - Cuban adventurer. Anti-Castro, in no-name key

group. Was in Dealey Plaza firing shots.

William Seymour - Mexican-American adventurer and hired killer. On

no-name key training for second invasion of Cuba in 1963.

Impersonated Lee Harvey Oswald and resembled Oswald. Fired

shots in Dealey Plaza. Killed Officer Tippit.

Clay Shaw - New Orleans French Quarter resident. Manager

International Trade Mart, CIA contract agent, member board of

directors of CIA organization, Centro Mondiale Commericale.

Murdered in 1974. Living double life as Clay Bertrand, friend

of David Ferrie.

Sergio Arcacha Smith - Anti-Castro Cuban. Devoted to overthrowing

Castro. CIA contract agent. Close to Guy Banister, Ferrie,

and New Orleans CIA operations. Fled to Texas, escaped

Garrison subpoena. Protected by Governor John Connally from

extradition.

Carlos Prio Socarras - Former premier of Cuba. Violent Anti-Castro

millionaire. Backed Cuban invasion plans and CIA efforts.

Lived in Miami area. Murdered in 1977.

James Tague - Spectator in Dealey Plaza, hit by piece of curbing

thrown up by bullet striking near him.

J. D. Tippit - Dallas policeman, shot on November 22, 1963. Co-

conspirator in assassination, Mafia and CIA functionary.

Tammie True - Owner of CIA safe house in Dallas.

Roy Truly - Manager of Texas School Book Depository.

TSBD - Texas School Book Depository Building in Dealey Plaza,

Dallas, from which Oswald was supposed to have fired shots at

President John F. Kennedy.

General Walker - Right-wing former Army General. Resident of

Dallas. Supposedly shot at by Oswald.

Breck Wall - Friend of Clay Shaw and Jack Ruby.

Marvin Wise - Dallas police officer, arrested "tramps" in Dealey

Plaza.

____________________

[1] For a complete listing of articles on political assassinations in the

United States, published in "Computers and People" (formerly

"Computers and Automation"), see the issues of "People and the Pursuit

of Truth," May 1975, p. 6, and June, 1975, p. 5, published by Berkeley

Enterprises, Inc., 815 Washington St., Newtonville, Mass. 02160.

[2] "1978 Los Angeles Free Press" - Special Report No 1, page 16, copy of

receipt given to Commander James J. Humes MC, USN "for Missile removed

on this date (Nov. 22, 1963)," signed by Francis X. O'Neill, Jr.,

James W. Sibert, FBI Agents.

Also "Postmortem," by Harold Weisberg, page 266, the missile receipt.

[3] As mentioned earlier, it is also possible that one of the team called

him from a telephone inside the TSBD.

* * * * * * *

End Part5

[John Ritchson]

Part6.

Chapter 6

The Assassinations of Robert Kennedy and

Dr. Martin Luther King and

Lyndon B. Johnson's Withdrawal in 1968

The Power Control Group faced several dangers in 1968. While

President Johnson had cooperated fully with their desires in Viet

Nam and in other parts of the world, he had not met their

requirements in other areas. He had gone too far in appeasing the

blacks and had shown some signs of giving in to the young people in

America in early 1968. Through threats to expose his role in

covering up the truth about the JFK assassination or personal

threats to the safety of his family, the Group forced his

withdrawal from the 1968 election race. Their plan now was to

install Richard Nixon as president at all costs.

Robert Kennedy and Dr. King posed real threats to this plan.

Dr. King was beginning a movement in the direction of a coalition

with Malcom X followers and other black militant groups. He was

speaking out against the Viet Nam war. His influence might help

defeat Nixon at the polls. So the Power Control Group created an

environment in which he could be assassinated by his arch enemies.

The FBI and J. Edgar Hoover had become a vital part of the Power

Control Group by 1968. Hoover had no love for King and was

harrassing him in several ways. The Power Control Group

undoubtedly let Hoover know that it wouldn't be a bad idea to have

King out of the way before the election campaigns really warmed up.

They also passed the word along to some of the groups who were out

to murder King that the crime would probably not be stopped.

Fletcher Prouty has described this approach in some detail.[1] The

net result of these actions was the assassination of Dr. King by a

group of wealthy white bigots who employed two of the intelligence

community's own expert assassins. One of these men, Frenchy, had

fired shots at JFK. The other, Jack Youngblood, was a soldier of

fortune and CIA contract killer. They recruited James Earl Ray and

set him up as a patsy.

The FBI removed King's protection in Memphis and after the

assassination they took the case out of the hands of the local

police to control and suppress the evidence of conspiracy. Hoover

did not know exactly who was going to assassinate King or where.

He did not know in advance who the patsy was supposed to be. The

best evidence in support of this is that from April to June 1968

the identity of the patsy was a mystery, first unidentified, then

identified as Eric Starvo Galt, then as Raymond Sneyd, and finally

as James Earl Ray. If Hoover had been in on the plan, Ray's

identity would probably have been revealed immediately. In fact,

the scenario might have been similar to the JFK case, with Ray

being killed in a shoot-out.

After Ray was identified and arrested in London, Hoover and the

Justice Department had to manufacture some evidence to get Ray back

to the U.S. They had no qualms about bribing one witness, Charlie

Stevens, to do this. They forced him to say he had seen Ray. Then

a new problem arose. Ray began telling the truth to his lawyer and

a writer, William Bradford Huie. He almost revealed Frenchy's true

identity. The Power Control Group, led by J. Edgar Hoover, solved

this problem by getting rid of Ray's lawyer, Arthur Hanes, and they

hired Percy Foreman to keep Ray quiet. They also were forced to

pay off or frighten off author Huie who had by then become

convinced Ray was telling him the truth. Huie had found several

witnesses who had seen Ray and Frenchy together.

The group got Foreman to talk Ray into pleading guilty and Huie

to retract his conspiracy talk and publish an article and a book

claiming Ray was the lone assassin. Ever since Ray was put away

for 99 years, the FBI and the Power Control Group have been hard at

work covering up the truth, bribing or influencing judges who have

heard Ray's appeals for a trial, publishing disinformation like

Gerold Franck's book, "An American Assassin," suppressing evidence,

and placing key witnesses in psychiatric wards. It is still going

on. They have killed at least one reporter--Louis Lomax--who was

getting too close to the truth. The local D.A., Phil Canale, was

brought into the conspiracy along with Percy Foreman, Judge Battle,

Fred Vinson (who extradited Ray, using Stevens' false affidavit),

and local authorities who committed Grace Walden Stevens to a

mental institution because she knew Charlie had been dead drunk and

saw nothing.

The mechanics of the assassination are as follows: Youngblood

and Frenchy recruited Ray in Montreal for smuggling drugs into the

U.S. from Mexico and Canada. They recruited him in the

assassination plan in such a way as to make him believe they were

smuggling guns to Cuba.

Frenchy (Ray knew him as Raoul) set up Ray as a patsy by

planting evidence with Ray's prints on it near the fake firing

point. He persuaded Ray to rent a room opposite Dr. King's motel,

to buy a rifle with telescopic sight, and a white Mustang, and park

the Mustang outside the rooming house to wait for Frenchy to come

out. Youngblood stationed himself on a grassy knoll beneath the

rooming house where Frenchy was located. When King came out on his

balcony, Youngblood killed him with one shot fired at an upward

angle. Frenchy ran from his perch overlooking King's balcony. He

made plenty of noise to attract attention, and dropped a bag full

of items with Ray's prints on them in front of an amusement parlor

next door to the rooming house.

Frenchy must have had some anxious moments then because Ray had

driven the Mustang to a gas station a few blocks away to have a low

tire pumped up. Three witnesses remember his being there. When

Ray returned, not yet knowing what had happened, Frenchy told him

to drive away toward the edge of town where Frenchy got out of the

back seat. Ray drove on to Atlanta with the intention of meeting

Frenchy there.

Meanwhile, Youngblood mingled with the crowd under King's

balcony and then faded away. A false trail was created by another

member of the team who drove away in a second white Mustang and

then created a fake auto chase on the police band radio.

Youngblood was tracked down by various reporters in early 1976 and

began negotiating to tell his story for a very high price.

Meanwhile, judge after judge and court after court keep turning

down Bernard Fensterwald and James Cesar, Ray's new lawyers, who

appealed for a new trial.

All of the information above has been reported with factual

evidence backing it up in several articles, one book, and at Ray's

legal hearing for a new trial in Memphis in 1975.[2]

After Dr. King was eliminated, the Power Control Group faced a

much greater threat. Robert Kennedy began his quest for the

presidency. There was little doubt in the minds of anyone in the

Group that Kennedy would be nominated as Democratic candidate at

the convention, and would have a very good chance of defeating

Richard Nixon. This would be a near certainty if Eugene McCarthy

decided to drop out and support Senator Kennedy. Robert Kennedy

represented a double threat to the Group in that he would

undoubtedly expose them after becoming president and seize control.

The plan they adopted was again to create an environment in

which it would be easy for an enemy like the Minutemen or the Mafia

or certain local hate groups in California to assassinate RFK and

get away with it by setting up another patsy. Available at the

time was a CIA agent planted inside the Los Angeles police

department. Strong influence was brought to bear on chief of

police, Ed Davis, to remove all official protection for Senator

Kennedy in the Ambassador Hotel. Arrangements were made for the

Ace Guard Service to supply three extreme right wing, militant

guards at the hotel to guard the Senator after his victory speech.

One of these was Thane Eugene Cesar, a known Kennedy hater and

friend of a group of Southern California Minutemen. He was also

almost certainly a CIA contract agent or "blind" assassin. At the

same time another group was recruited to hypnotize Sirhan Sirhan

and to program him for firing some shots in Robert Kennedy's

direction. Two hypnotists and at least three other people were

involved in the framing of Sirhan.

Cesar killed Robert Kennedy from behind while Sirhan was firing

under hypnosis from in front of the Senator. His programmed signal

was given by a girl in a polka dot dress and another young Arabic

man with them in the pantry.

After the crime, the FBI, the CIA agent (Manny Pena), the

District Attorney's office (Evelle Younger and Joseph Busch) and

the Los Angeles Police Department (Ed Davis, Robert Houghton and

others), knowing the truth, all teamed up to suppress all other

evidence except that which was aimed at framing Sirhan. The Power

Control Group has since wielded its influence to keep the RFK case

under wraps. They pushed legislation through the California

legislature to lock up the evidence. They put Thomas Noguchi, the

L.A. County Coroner who wouldn't keep quiet about the autopsy

evidence which proved conspiracy, in an insane asylum. They

arranged for the FBI report on the assassination to be classified

and locked up. They killed at least one person who knew what had

happened. They controlled the media on the subject, especially the

"Los Angeles Times" through its owner, Norman Chandler, and his

friend Evelle Younger, who became California State Attorney

General.

After Al Lowenstein, Jerry Brown, Paul Schrade, Vincent

Bugliosi, Robert Vaughn, Tom Bradley and others began to try to

expose the truth, the Group fought back by setting up their own

expert ballistics panel and buying or frightening them into

distorting the evidence proving there were two guns fired. The

Group is certainly not through yet. More planted disinformation

can be expected and more bribing of judges and expert witnesses.

There may be more killings. Cesar's life and the lives of the two

hypnotists won't be worth much if they ever start talking.[3]

____________________

[1] "The Fourth Force" -- L. Fletcher Prouty -- "Gallery Magazine" --

December, 1975

[2] "Frame Up: The Martin Luther King/James Earl Ray Case" -- Harold

Weisberg -- E.P. Dutton -- 1971

"The Assassination of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr." -- R.E.

Sprague -- "Computers & Automation," December 1970

"The Assassination of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. -- Parts I to

II" -- Wayne Chastain -- "Computers & Automation," December 1974.

[3] Most of the above information has been published in a series of

articles and in two books and one movie.

"The Assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy" -- R.E. Sprague --

"Computers & Automation" -- September 1972 and October 1970

"RFK Must Die" -- Robert Blair Kaiser -- 1970

"The Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, A Searching Look at the

Conspiracy and Cover-Up 1968-1978" -- William Turner and John

Christian -- 1978

"The Second Gun" -- Documentary Movie -- Ted Charach -- American

Films -- Beverly Hills

* * * * * * *

End Part6.

[John Ritchson]

Part7.

Chapter 7

The Control of the Kennedys - Threats & Chappaquiddick

Through the years the most common question of all has been: "If

there was a conspiracy in the JFK assassination, why didn't Robert

Kennedy find out about it and take some action? And if there was a

conspiracy in the RFK assassination why haven't Ted Kennedy and

Ethel Kennedy done something about it?" No one except the Kennedys

know the answers to these questions for sure. However, there are

plenty of clues and some other Power Control Group actions to

provide the answers to us.

First of all, thanks to Jackie Kennedy Onassis' butler in

Athens, Greece, Christain Cafarakis, we know why Jackie did nothing

after her husband's death. In a book published in 1972, Cafarakis

tells about an investigation Jackie had conducted by a famous New

York City detective agency into the assassination of JFK in 1964

and 1965.[1] It was financed by Aristotle Onassis and resulted in

a report in the spring of 1965 telling who the four gunmen were and

who was behind them. Jackie planned to give the report to LBJ but

was stopped by a threat from the Power Control Group to kill her

and her children. Ted, Bobby and other family members knew about

the report and the threat.

The second clue is Chappaquiddick. A careful examination of the

real evidence in this event shows that Ted Kennedy was framed in

the killing of Mary Joe Kopechne and then his life and his

children's lives threatened if he ever told the truth about what

happened. The facts in the case and the conclusions that can be

drawn from them are contained in a book by Boston researcher Robert

Cutler.[2]

The third clue is Ted's withdrawal from the presidential race in

November 1975. It is a fact that all of his and Robert's children

were being protected by the Secret Service for five days in

November 1975. A threat had been made against the children's lives

unless he officially announced his withdrawal. He made the

announcement and has stuck to it ever since. The Secret Service

protection ended the day after he made the announcement.

It does not seem likely that Senator Kennedy would withdraw from

the race because of a threat from a lone nut or from some obscure

group. He remembers the 1965 threat and Chappaquiddick very well.

He knows about the Power Control Group and he knows their enormous

capability. He knows what they did to his brothers. He has no

choice but to hope that somehow, sometime, the Group will be

exposed. But he dares not let them believe he would ever have

anything to do with it. Publicly he will always have to support

the Warren Commission and continue to state that he will not run

for president. Privately he is forced to ask his closest friends

and his relatives not to get involved with new investigations, and

to help protect his children. Some of them know the truth. Others

do not, and are puzzled by his behavior. They go along with it

under the assumption that he has good and sufficient reasons not to

open the can of worms represented by the conspiracies in his

brother's deaths.

The Power Control Group faced up to the Ted Kennedy and Kennedy

family problem very early. They used the threat against the

Kennedy children's lives very effectively between 1963 and 1968 to

silence Bobby and the rest of the family and friends who knew the

truth. It was necessary to assassinate Bobby in 1968 because with

the power of the presidency he could have prevented the Group from

harming the children. When Teddy began making moves to run for

president in 1969 for the 1972 election, the Group decided to put

some real action behind their threats. Killing Teddy in 1969 would

have been too much. They selected a new way of eliminating him as

a candidate. They framed him with the death of a young girl, and

threw sexual overtones in for good measure.

Here is what happened according to Cutler's analysis of the

evidence. The Group hired several men and at least one woman to be

at Chappaquiddick during the weekend of the yacht race and the

planned party on the island. They ambushed Ted and Mary Jo after

they left the cottage and knocked Ted out with blows to his head

and body. They took the unconscious or semi-conscious Kennedy to

Martha's Vineyard and deposited him in his hotel room. Another

group took Mary Jo to the bridge in Ted's car, force fed her with a

knock out potion of alcoholic beverage, placed her in the back

seat, and caused the car to accelerate off the side of the bridge

into the water. They broke the windows on one side of the car to

insure the entry of water; then they watched the car until they

were sure Mary Jo would not escape.

Mary Jo actually regained consciousness and pushed her way to

the top of the car (which was actually the bottom of the car--it

had landed on its roof) and died from asphyxiation. The group with

Teddy revived him early in the morning and let him know he had a

problem. Possibly they told him that Mary Jo had been kidnapped.

They told him his children would be killed if he told anyone what

had happened and that he would hear from them. On Chappaquiddick,

the other group made contact with Markham and Gargan, Ted's cousin

and lawyer. They told both men that Mary Jo was at the bottom of

the river and that Ted would have to make up a story about it, not

revealing the existence of the group. One of the men resembled Ted

and his voice sounded something like Ted's. Markham and Gargan

were instructed to go the the Vineyard on the morning ferry, tell

Ted where Mary Jo was, and come back to the island to wait for a

phone call at a pay station near the ferry on the Chappaquiddick

side.

The two men did as they were told and Ted found out what had

happened to Mary Jo that morning. The three men returned to the

pay phone and received their instructions to concoct a story about

the "accident" and to report it to the police. The threat against

Ted's children was repeated at that time.

Ted, Markham and Gargan went right away to police chief Arena's

office on the Vineyard where Ted reported the so-called "accident."

Almost at the same time scuba diver John Farror was pulling Mary Jo

out of the water, since two boys who had gone fishing earlier that

morning had spotted the car and reported it.

Ted called together a small coterie of friends and advisors

including family lawyer Burke Marshall, Robert MacNamara, Ted

Sorenson, and others. They met on Squaw Island near the Kennedy

compound at Hyannisport for three days. At the end of that time

they had manufactured the story which Ted told on TV, and later at

the inquest. Bob Cutler calls the story, "the shroud." Even the

most cursory examination of the story shows it was full of holes

and an impossible explanation of what happened. Ted's claim that

he made the wrong turn down the dirt road toward the bridge by

mistake is an obvious lie. His claim that he swam the channel back

to Martha's Vineyard is not believable. His description of how he

got out of the car under water and then dove down to try to rescue

Mary Jo is impossible. Markham and Gargan's claims that they kept

diving after Mary Jo are also unbelievable.

The evidence for the Cutler scenario is substantial. It begins

with the marks on the bridge and the position of the car in the

water. The marks show that the car was standing still on the

bridge and then accelerated off the edge, moving at a much higher

speed than Kennedy claimed. The distance the car travelled in the

air also confirms this. The damage to the car on two sides and on

top plus the damage to the windshield and the rear view mirror

stanchion[3] prove that some of the damage had to have been

inflicted before the car left the bridge.

The blood on the back and on the sleeves of Mary Jo's blouse

proves that a wound was inflicted before she left the bridge.[4]

The alcohol in her bloodstream proves she was drugged, since all

witnesses testified she never drank and did not drink that night.

The fact that she was in the back seat when her body was recovered

indicates that is where she was when the car hit the water. There

was no way she could have dived downward against the inrushing

water and moved from the front to the back seat underneath the

upside-down seat back.

The wounds on the back of Ted Kennedy's skull, those just above

his ear and the large bump on the top indicate he was knocked out.

His actions at the hotel the next morning show he was not aware of

Mary Jo's death until Markham and Gargan arrived. The trip to the

pay phone on Chappaquiddick can only be explained by his receiving

a call there, not making one. There were plenty of pay phones in

or near Ted's hotel if he needed to make a private call. The tides

in the channel and the direction in which Ted claimed he swam do

not match. In addition it would have been a superhuman feat to

have made it across the channel (as proven by several professionals

who subsequently tried it).

Deputy Sheriff Christopher Look's testimony, coupled with the

testimony of Ray LaRosa and two Lyons girls, proves that there were

two people in Ted's car with Mary Jo at 12:45 PM. The three party

members walking along the road south toward the cottage confirmed

the time that Mr. Look drove by. He stopped to ask if they needed

a ride. Look says that just prior to that he encountered Ted's car

parked facing north at the juncture of the main road and the dirt

road. It was on a short extension of the north-south section of

the road junction to the north of the "T". He says he saw a man

driving, a woman in the seat beside him, and what he thought was

another woman lying on the back seat. He remembered a portion of

the license plate which matched Ted's car, as did the description

of the car. Markham, Gargan and Ted's driver's testimony show that

someone they talked to in the pitch black night sounded like Ted

and was about his height and build.

None of the above evidence was ever explained by Ted or by

anyone else at the inquest or at the hearing on the case demanded

by district attorney Edward Dinis. No autopsy was ever allowed on

Mary Jo's body (her family objected), and Ted made it possible to

fly her body home for burial rather quickly. Kennedy haters have

seized upon Chappaquiddick to enlarge the sexual image now being

promoted of both Ted and Jack Kennedy. Books like "Teddy Bare"

take full advantage of the situation.

Just which operatives in the Power Control Group at the high

levels or the lower levels were on Chappaquiddick Island? No

definite evidence has surfaced as yet, except for an indication

that there was at least one woman and at least three men, one of

whom resembled Ted Kennedy and who sounded like him in the

darkness. However, two pieces of testimony in the Watergate

hearings provide significant clues as to which of the known JFK

case conspirators may have been there.

E. Howard Hunt told of a strange trip to Hyannisport to see a

local citizen there about the Chappaquiddick incident. Hunt's

cover story on this trip was that he was digging up dirt on Ted

Kennedy for use in the 1972 campaign. The story does not make much

sense if one questions why Hunt would have to wear a disguise,

including his famous red wig, and to use a voice-alteration device

to make himself sound like someone else. If, on the other hand,

Hunt's purpose was to return to the scene of his crime just to make

sure that no one who might have seen his group at the bridge or

elsewhere would talk, then the disguise and the voice box make

sense.

The other important testimony came from Tony Ulasewicz who said

he was ordered by the Plumbers to fly immediately to Chappaquiddick

and dig up dirt on Ted. The only problem Tony has is that,

according to his testimony, he arrived early on the morning of the

"accident", before the whole incident had been made public.

Ulasewicz is the right height and weight to resemble Kennedy and

with a CIA voice-alteration device he presumably could be made to

sound like him. There is a distinct possibility that Hunt and Tony

were there when it happened.

The threats by the Power Control Group, the frame-up at

Chappaquiddick, and the murders of Jack and Bobby Kennedy cannot

have failed to take their toll on all of the Kennedys. Rose, Ted,

Jackie, Ethel and the other close family members must be very tired

of it all by now. They can certainly not be blamed for hoping it

will all go away. Investigations like those proposed by Henry

Gonzalez and Thomas Downing only raised the spectre of the powerful

Control Group taking revenge by kidnapping some of the seventeen

children.

It was no wonder that a close Kennedy friend and ally in

California, Representative Burton, said that he would oppose the

Downing and Gonzalez resolutions unless Ted Kennedy put his stamp

of approval on them. While the sympathies of every decent American

go out to them, the future of our country and the freedom of the

people to control their own destiny through the election process

mean more than the lives of all the Kennedys put together. If John

Kennedy were alive today he would probably make the same statement.

John Dean summed it up when he said to Richard Nixon as recorded

on the White House tapes in 1973: "If Teddy knew the bear trap he

was walking into at Chappaquiddick. . . ."[5]

____________________

[1] "The fabulous Jackie" -- Christian Cafarakis -- Productions de Paris

-- 1972

[2] "You the Jury" -- Robert Cutler -- Self Published -- 1974

[3] A rope attached to the stick which held the Oldsmobile throttle wide

open caught the drivers rear view mirror and tore it loose so that

it was hanging by the rear bolt. There was no other mark on the

left side of the car.

[4] A sliver of glass from two broken windows no doubt caused this

bleeding since Mary Jo was already face down and unconscious in the

rear seat. Since there was no autopsy this clean cut went

unnoticed by the embalmers.

[5] On page 121, "White House Tapes," Paperback Edition, published by New

York Times

* * * * * * *

End Part7.

[John Ritchson]

Part8.

Chapter 8

1972 - Muskie, Wallace and McGovern

In 1972 the Power Control Group was faced with another set of

problems. Again the objective was to insure Nixon's election at

all costs and to continue the cover-ups. Nixon might have made it

on his own. We'll never know because the Group guaranteed his

election by eliminating two strong candidates and completely

swamping another with tainted leftist images and a psychiatric case

for the vice presidential nominee. The impression that Nixon had

in early 1972 was that he stood a good chance of losing. He

imagined enemies everywhere and a press he was sure was out to get

him.

The Power Control Group realized this too. They began laying

out a strategy that would encourage the real nuts in the Nixon

administration like E. Howard Hunt, G. Gordon Liddy and Donald

Segretti to eliminate any serious opposition. The dirty tricks

campaign worked perfectly against the strongest early Democratic

candidate, Edmund Muskie. He withdrew in tears, later to discover

he had been sabotaged by Nixon, Liddy and company.

George Wallace was another matter. At the time he was shot, he

was drawing 18% of the vote according to the polls, and most of

that was in Nixon territory. The conservative states such as

Indiana were going for Wallace. He was eating into Nixon's

southern strength. In April the polls showed McGovern pulling a

41%, Nixon 41% and Wallace 18%. It was going to be too close for

comfort, and it might be thrown into the House - in which case

Nixon would surely lose. There was the option available of

eliminating George McGovern, but then the Democrats might come up

with Hubert Humphrey or someone else even more dangerous than

McGovern. Nixon's best chance was a head-on contest with McGovern.

Wallace had to go. Once the group made that decision, the Liddy

team seemed to be the obvious group to carry it out. But how could

it be done this time and still fool the people? Another patsy this

time? O.K., but how about having him actually kill the Governor?

The answer to that was an even deeper programming job than that

done on Sirhan. This time they selected a man with a lower I.Q.

level who could be hypnotized to really shoot someone, realize it

later, and not know that he had been programmed. He would have to

be a little wacky, unlike Oswald, Ruby or Ray.

Arthur Bremer was selected. The first contacts were made by

people who knew both Bremer and Segretti in Milwaukee. They were

members of a leftist organization planted there as provocateurs by

the intelligence forces within the Power Control Group. One of

them was a man named Dennis Cossini.

Bremer was programmed over a period of months. He was first set

to track Nixon and then Wallace. When his hand held the gun in

Laurel, Maryland, it might just as well have been in the hand of

Donald Segretti, E. Howard Hunt, G. Gordon Liddy, Richard Helms, or

Richard Nixon.

With Wallace's elimination from the race and McGovern's

increasing popularity in the primaries, the only question remaining

for the Power Control Group was whether McGovern had any real

chance of winning. The polls all showed Wallace's vote going to

Nixon and a resultant landslide victory. That, of course, is

exactly what happened. It was never close enough to worry the

Group very much. McGovern, on the other hand, was worried. By the

time of the California primary he and his staff had learned enough

about the conspiracies in the assassinations of John and Robert

Kennedy and Martin Luther King that they asked for increased Secret

Service protection in Los Angeles.

If the Power Control Group had decided to kill Mr. McGovern the

Secret Service would not have been able to stop it. However, they

did not, because the election was a sure thing. They did try one

more dirty trick. They revealed Thomas Eagleton's psychiatric

problems, which reduced McGovern's odds considerably.

What evidence is there that Bremer's attempt on Wallace was a

directed attempt by a conspiratorial group?

Bremer himself has told his brother that others were involved

and that he was paid by them. Researcher William Turner has turned

up evidence in Milwaukee and surrounding towns in Wisconsin that

Bremer received money from a group associated with Dennis Cossini,

Donald Segretti and J. Timothy Gratz. Several other young

"leftists" were seen with Bremer on several occasions in Milwaukee

and on the ferry crossing at Lake Michigan.

The evidence shows that Bremer had a hidden source of income.

He spent several times more than he earned or saved in the year

before he shot at Wallace. Bremer's appearance on TV, in court and

before witnesses resembled those of a man under hypnosis.[1]

There is some evidence that more than one gun may have been

fired with the second gun being located in the direction opposite

to Bremer. Eleven wounds in the four victims that day exceeds the

number that could have been caused by the five bullets Bremer

fired. There is a problem in identifying all of the bullets found

as having been fired from Bremer's gun. The trajectories of the

wounds seem to be from two opposite directions. All of this--the

hypnotic-like trance, the possibility of two guns being fired from

in front and from behind, and the immediate conclusion that Bremer

acted alone--sounds very much like the arrangement made for the

Robert Kennedy assassination.

Another part of the evidence sounds like the King case. A lone

blue Cadillac was seen speeding away from the scene of the shooting

immediately afterward. It was reported on the police band radio

and the police unsuccessfully chased it. The car had two men in

it. The police and the FBI immediately shut off all accounts of

that incident.

E. Howard Hunt testified before the Ervin Committee that Charles

Colson had asked him to go to Bremer's apartment in Milwaukee as

soon as the news about Bremer was available at the White House.

Hunt never did say why he was supposed to go. Colson then said

that he didn't tell Hunt to go, but that Hunt told him he was

going. Colson's theory is that Hunt was part of a CIA conspiracy

to get rid of Nixon and to do other dirty tricks.

Could Hunt and the Power Control Group have had in mind placing

something in Bremer's apartment rather than taking something out?

The "something" could have been Bremer's diary, which was later

found in his car parked near the Laurel, Maryland parking lot.

Hunt did not go to Milwaukee, because the FBI already had agents at

the apartment. Perhaps Hunt or someone else went instead to

Maryland and planted the diary in Bremer's car. One thing seems

certain after a careful analysis of Bremer's diary in comparison to

his grammar, spelling, etc., in his high school performances in

English. Bremer didn't write the diary. Someone forged it, trying

to make it sound like they thought Bremer would sound given his low

I.Q.

One last item would clinch the conspiracy case if it were true.

A rumor spread among researchers and the media that CBS-TV had

discovered Bremer and G. Gordon Liddy together on two separate

occasions in TV footage of Wallace rallies. In one TV sequence

they were said to be walking together toward a camera in the

background. CBS completely closed the lid on the subject.

The best source is obviously Bremer himself. However, no

private citizen can get anywhere near him. Even if they could he

might not talk if he had been programmed. Unless an expert

deprogrammed him, his secret could be locked away in his brain,

just like Sirhan's secret is locked within his mind.

____________________

[1] "Report of an Investigation" by William Turner for the Committee

on Government Intelligence.

References:

"Bremer Wallace and Hunt", The New York Review of Books -- Gore

Vidal -- December 13, 1973.

"The Wallace Shooting" -- Alan Stang -- "American Opinion" --

October, 1972.

"Why Was Wallace Shot?" -- R.F. Salant -- Self Published --

Monsey, N.Y.

"Interview With Charles Colson" -- Dick Russell -- "Argosy" --

March, 1976.

End Part8.

[John Ritchson]

Part9.

Chapter 9

Control of the Media

As mentioned in Chapter 1, one of the two clever strategies used

by the Power Control Group in the taking of America has been the

control of the news media.

For those American citizens who steadfastly refuse to believe

that all of the American establishment news media could be

controlled by the CIA and its friends in the White House, the

continuing support of the Warren Commission's lone assassin

conclusion by virtually all of the major news media organizations

in November, 1975, twelve years after the event, must have been

very puzzling indeed. Since 78% of the public believe that there

was a conspiracy in the case, there must be a series of questions

in the minds of the most intelligent of the 78% about the media's

position on the subject.[1]

This Chapter is intended to enlighten readers and to remind them

of the control exercised by the intelligence community and the

White House over the 15 organizations from whom the public gets the

vast majority of its news and opinions.

Let's begin with 1968-1969. By 1973 the American public had

begun to develop a skepticism toward information they received on

television or radio. Various news stories appearing in our

national news media through those years had brought about this

attitude. Some examples are: the Songmy-Mylai incident, the

Pueblo story, the murder of Black Panther Fred Hampton, the

Pentagon Papers, the Clifford Irving hoax, the Bangladesh tragedy

and the India-Pakistan war, Hoover & FBI antics, the Jack Anderson

papers, and IT&T and the Republican National Convention.

The general reaction was bound to be, "Don't believe everything

you read, see or hear, especially the first time around, and more

especially if the story comes from Washington." In the case of the

Pentagon Papers, things we all had taken as gospel for nearly two

decades suddenly seemed to crumble.

To what extent can the national news media be held responsible

for this situation? What has happened to the inquiring reporter

and the crusading editor who are both searching for and printing

the truth? If a government or a president lies or keeps secrets,

can the American news media really find out about it? And if they

do, what moral, ethical, political or other criteria should they

use in uncovering the lies and presenting them to the public?

Vice President Agnew would have said, "The press is already

going too far." Members of the press would have said, "We must

remain independent and maintain the freedom of speech." Just how

independent is the news media? Is it controlled to some extent by

Washington?

The answer to some of these questions can be found by taking an

inside look at the major national news media organizations during

1968 and 1969 and how they treated the most controversial news

subject since World War II. The assassination of John F. Kennedy

and its aftermath is an all-pervading, endless topic. It has yet

to reach the Pentagon Papers, Anderston papers, or Mylai stage of

revelation. Precisely because it is still such a controversial

subject, verboten for discussion among all major news media (unless

the discussant supports the Warren Commission), it serves as an

excellent case study.

A categorical statement can be made that management and

editorial policy, measured by what is printed and broadcast in all

major American news media organizations, supports the findings of

the Warren Commission. This has been true since 1969, but it was

not true between 1964 and 1969.

Of significance in this analysis and what it implies about the

American public's knowledge about the assassination and its

aftermath is a definition of "major American national news media."

It can be demonstrated that an overwhelming mass of news

information reaching the eyes and ears of Americans comes from

about fifteen organizations. They are, in general order of

significance: NBC-TV & Radio CBS-TV & Radio, ABC-TV & Radio,

Associated Press, United Press, "Time-Life-Fortune-Sports

Illustrated," McGraw Hill "Business Week," "Newsweek," "U.S. News

& World Report," "New York Times" News Service, "Washington Post"

News Service, Metromedia News Network, Westinghouse Radio News

Network, Capital City Broadcasting Radio Network, the North

American Newspaper Alliance, and the "Saturday Evening Post" (the

"Post" is, of course, now defunct.)

There are some subtle reasons for this, not generally

appreciated by the average citizen. Television has, of course,

become the primary source of information. For any nationally

circulated news story, local stations rely heavily on film,

videotape and written script material prepared and edited by the

three networks. Once in a while Metromedia may also send out TV

material. In effect, this means that editorial content for a vast

majority of the television information seen by American citizens

everywhere originates not only with three or four organizations but

also with a very small number of producers, editors and

commentators in those networks.

A large majority of any national news items printed by local

newspapers originates in a small number of press-wire services. AP

and UP dominate this area, with selected chains of papers

subscribing to a lesser extent to new services of the "New York

Times," "Washington Post," North American Newspaper Alliance, and a

very small percentage receiving information from papers in Los

Angeles, Chicago and St. Louis.

In a national news story of major significance such as the

assassination of John Kennedy, the smaller local papers rely almost

exclusively on their affiliated news services. Economic reasons

dictate this situation. The small paper can't afford to have

reporters everywhere. The major newspapers might send a man to

Dallas for a few days to cover the assassination, or they might

send a man to New Orleans to cover the Clay Shaw trial. But even

the major papers can't afford to cover every part of a continuing

story anywhere around the world. So they too rely on UP and AP for

much of their material. They also rely on AP, UP and Black Star[2]

for most of their photographic material.

In the case of news magazines, the holding corporations become

important in forming editorial policy in a situation as

controversial as the assassination of JFK. Time Inc. and "Life,"

"Newsweek" and the "Washington Post," "U.S. News," and McGraw Hill

managements all became involved.

Fifteen organizations is a surprisingly small number, and one is

led to conjecture about how easy or difficult it might be to

control or dictate editorial policy for all of them or some

appreciable majority of them. An article in "Computers and

Automation"[3] reprinted a statement by John R. Rarick, Louisiana

Congressman and an entry made in the "Congressional Record" bearing

on this subject. In the reprint, the "Government Employees

Exchange" publication is quoted as stating that the CIA New Team

used secret cooperating and liaison groups after the Bay of Pigs in

the large foundations, banks and newspapers to change U.S. domestic

and foreign relations through the infiltration of these

organizations. The coordinating role at "The New York Times" was

in the custody of Harding Bancroft, Executive Vice President.

A useful analysis consists of examining what happened

organizationally and editorially inside each of the fifteen

companies following the assassination of President Kennedy. My

personal knowledge, plus information available from a few sources

connected with the major news media, permits such an analysis to be

made for eleven of the fifteen. They are: NBC, CBS, ABC, Time-

Life, "The New York Times," "Newsweek," Associated Press, United

Press, "Saturday Evening Post," Capital City Broadcasting, and

North American Newspaper Alliance. In addition, the performance of

nine local newspapers and TV stations directly involved in the

events in Dallas and New Orleans will be analyzed. These include:

"Dallas Times Herald," "Dallas Morning News," Fort Worth "Star

Telegram," Dallas CBS-Affiliate WBAP, "New Orleans Times Picayune,"

"New Orleans Times Herald," and New Orleans NBC-Affiliate WDSU-TV.

Most of these organizations had reporters and photographers in

Dallas at the time of the assassination or within a few hours

thereafter. Most of them had direct coverage available when Jim

Garrison's investigation broke into the news in 1967 and during the

trial of Clay Shaw in New Orleans in 1969. For many of them the

Shaw trial became the running point in the changing of editorial

policy toward the assassination. For a few, the Garrison

investigation and the Shaw trial took on the aspect of waving a

red flag in front of a bull. They became directly involved in a

negative way and thus not only reported the news, but also biased

it.

Immediately following the assassination the media reported

nearly everything that had obviously happened. All was confused

for the first few days. The killing of Oswald by Ruby on live

television produced even greater confusion.

For one year the major media reported everything, from probable

Communist conspiracies to the lone assassin theory. The media

waited for the Warren Report, and when it was issued in October of

1964 many of the major media fell into line and editorially backed

the Commission's findings. Some questioned the findings and

continued to question them until 1968 or 1969. "The New York

Times" and "Life" magazine fell into this category. But by the

time the Shaw trial ended in March 1969, every one of the fifteen

major news media organizations was backing the Warren Commission

and they have continued to maintain this editorial position since.

The situation would perhaps not be so surprising had not the

internal assassination research teams in several of these

organizations discovered the truth about the Kennedy killing

between 1964 and 1968. These teams examined the evidence and

thoroughly analyzed it. No one who has ever taken the trouble to

objectively do just that has reached any conclusion other than

conspiracy.

In each and every case the internal findings were overruled,

suppressed, locked up, edited and otherwise altered to back up the

Warren Commission. Management at the highest editorial and

corporate level took the action in every instance. Before drawing

any further generalization about the performance of the media in

the JFK case, it will be revealing to examine what happened and

specifically who took what actions in the case of the eleven

national organizations and the nine local ones listed earlier.

Time-Life

The Time Inc. organization let "Life Magazine" establish its

editorial policy while "Time" published more or less standard

"Time-Life" stories. "Life" became directly involved in the

assassination action and evidence suppression from the very

beginning, on November 22, 1963.

"Life" purchased the famous Zapruder movie from Abraham Zapruder

on the afternoon of the assassination for about $500,000. The

first negative action took place when "Life" and Zapruder began

telling the lie that the price was $25,000 (which Zapruder donated

to the fund raised for the widow of Dallas policeman, J. D.

Tippit, who had also been murdered that day). Apparently, both

"Life" and Zapruder were ashamed that he profited by the event. He

lived in fear that the true price would be revealed until the day

he died.

As many readers know, the Zapruder film (viewed in slow motion)

proves there was a conspiracy because of the backward motion of the

President's head immediately following the fatal shot. It proves

the shot came from the grassy knoll to the right and in front of

the president while Oswald's purported position was very nearly

directly behind him. The film also helps establish that five, and

not three shots, were fired, and that one of them could not have

been fired from Oswald's supposed sniper's nest because of the

large oak tree blocking his view.

"Life" magazine never permitted the Zapruder film to be seen

publicly and locked it up in November 1968 so that no one inside or

outside "Life" could have access to it, automatically becoming an

"accessory after the fact". "Life" helped protect the real

assassins and committed a worse crime than the Warren Commission.

In answer to those defenders of "Life" who will say, "But `Life'

turned over a copy of the Zapruder film to the Warren Commission,

and it is available in the National Archives," let's look at the

facts. "Life" did not supply the copy of the film now resting in

the Archives. That copy came from Zapruder's original to the

Secret Service to the Warren Commission to the Archives. It is

available for viewing by the few people fortunate enough to visit

the Archives. It can not be duplicated by anyone, and copies can

not be taken out of the Archives or viewed publicly in any way.

The Archive management responsible for the Kennedy assassination

records state that the "Life" magazine ownership of the Zapruder

film is what prevents copies from being made available outside the

Archives.

The Warren Commission did not see the film in slow motion. Nor

does the average Archives' visitor get to see it in slow motion or

stop-action. Yet the most casual analysis of the film in slow

motion convinces anyone to conclude there was a conspiracy.

Thus "Life" magazine is an important part of the efforts to

suppress evidence of conspiracy.

"Life" was involved in several other ways as an accessory after

the fact. The organization began its efforts to discover the truth

about the assassination in 1964 when it assigned Ed Kern, an

associate editor, to investigate. By the fall of 1966, Kern had

become convinced that the basic evidence pointed to conspiracy.

"Life" management was also apparently convinced; they published

articles in November 1965 and November 1966 questioning the Warren

Commission's conclusions.

In the fall of 1966 "Life" transferred Richard Billings from

their Miami office to headquarters in New York. His assignment was

to take over the investigation of the Kennedy assassination, and to

head a team of several people working full time on it. One of Dick

Billings' objectives was to search for and acquire as much of the

missing photographic evidence as possible.

This author initiated a similar search, independent from "Life"

magazine, in September 1966. As often happens, people with common

objectives decided to work together. Billings and the author

arrived at a tacit understanding that any JFK assassination

photographs, including TV films or private movies, found by either

would be brought to the other's attention. In exchange for access

to "Life"'s photographic collection (including the Zapruder film

and slides), the author agreed to give "Life" the results of any

analyses of the photographic evidence. In cases where the author

could not afford to acquire some new piece of evidence, "Life"

would offer to purchase the materials from the owners and supply

copies to the author.

In this manner the author discovered and helped "Life" magazine

acquire the largest collection of photographic evidence of the JFK

assassination, outside of the author's personal collection and the

collection now located at the headquarters of the Committee to

Investigate Assassinations in Washington, D.C. Among the photos

discovered were:

The Dorman movie Private

The Wilma Bond photos Private

The Robert Hughes movie Private

The David Weigman TV footage NBC

The Malcolm Couch TV footage ABC

The Jack Beers photos "Dallas Morning News"

The William Allen photos "Dallas Times Herald"

The George Smith photos Ft. Worth "Star Telegram"

The John Martin movie Private

Hugh Betzen's photo Private

(See "Computers and Automation," May 1970)

Many of these were important in proving conspiracy and some

showed pictures of the real assassins.

The "Life" team headed by Billings was in the process of

discovering a great deal about the conspiracy during the 1966-1968

period. While editorially not taking a strong position favoring

conspiracy, "Life" did take a position that favored a new

investigation by the government. This was editorially summed up in

a lead cover story on the fourth anniversary of Kennedy's death in

November 1967 with the title, "A Matter of Reasonable Doubt". In

that issue, John Connally and his wife were shown examining the

Zapruder film's frames and concluding that he had been hit much

later in the film than the Warren Commission claimed. This meant

that two bullets struck the two men and, by the Commission's own

admission, pointed automatically to the conspiracy.

The government naturally did not respond to "Life"'s suggestion

for a new investigation, so nothing ever came of that editorial

policy. Billings, however, continued his team's efforts and in

October 1968 was preparing a comprehensive article for the November

anniversary issue. The author continued to work with him and

continued being given access to the photos right up to October

1968.

It was at that point in time that a drastic change in management

policy occurred at "Life" magazine. Dick Billings was told to stop

all work on the assassination; his entire team was stopped. All

of the research files, including the Zapruder film and slides and

thousands of other film frames and photographs, were locked up. No

one at the magazine was permitted access to these materials and no

one (including the author) was ever allowed to see them again.

Simultaneously, editorial and management policy toward the

assassination changed to complete silence. Billings and crew were

not allowed to discuss the subject at "Life," let alone work on it.

In November 1968 the article Billings had been working on was

turned into a non-entity. A few of the hundreds of photographs

collected by the author and purchased by "Life" were published in

the article, along with an innocuous commentary. Credit for

discovering the photos was given to a number of people at "Life"

magazine in New York and Dallas, not to the individuals who

actually found them.

That article, published nearly nine years ago, was the last word

"Life" has ever uttered about their extensive research probe and

their feelings about a conspiracy. Dick Billings moved to

Washington, D.C. to become editor of the Congressional Quarterly

and is a member on the board of directors of the Committee to

Investigate Assassinations (CTIA).

Who made the policy change decision at "Life" and why? Various

high-level conspiracy enthusiasts claim that the cabal behind the

assassination of the President brought extreme pressure to bear

upon the owners and management of Time Inc. to silence all

opposition to the Warren Commission findings. Others conclude it

had something to do with the CIA's control of "Life"'s editorial

policy from inside. This author takes no position on why. Dick

Billings knows only that the decision was made at high levels and

passed downward and that it was irrevocable.

Repeated attempts by the CTIA and several independent

assassination researchers to break loose the basic evidence in

"Life"'s possession, such as the Zapruder film, the Hughes film,

and the Mark Bell Film, met with total opposition and a stone wall.

Attempts to break loose the Archives' copy of the Zapruder film or

slides met the same stiff opposition. In 1971 "Life"

representatives indicated they might be interested in selling

rights to the Zapruder film for a sum in the neighborhood of a

million dollars.

CBS

The American public is aware of the editorial policy adopted by

the Columbia Broadcasting System toward the Kennedy assassination

because of a special four-part series with Walter Cronkite which

was broadcast on network TV in prime time in the summer of 1967.[4]

That series, while taking issue with some of the work of the Warren

Commission *and criticizing the Dallas police*, the FBI and the

Secret Service, nevertheless backed all of the basic Warren

Commission conclusions.

Anyone watching the Cronkite series might have wondered why the

basic evidence presented by CBS in an itemized format for each of

several areas in the case, did not always seem to point to the

conclusion reached at the end of each section. The conclusion

always agreed with the Warren Commission's comparable conclusion.

Some viewers may even have noticed Cronkite's double-take after

reading through the basic evidence and then reading the phrase,

"and the conclusion is!" It seemed as though he didn't believe the

conclusion and hadn't seen it until he came to it in the script.

Actually, that is exactly what happened. CBS management caused

the entire script to be changed from one concluding conspiracy to a

script supporting the Warren Commission in the last week before the

first part of the series went on the air. Cronkite had not seen

the entire script until the program went on. Time had not

permitted changing all of the points of evidence, so in most cases

they were unchanged and only the conclusion was changed.

How did this come about? Who decided to change the script at

the last moment and why? Again there are control theories extant,

but the author's personal relationships to CBS people might help to

shed a little light on the subject.

The discussion with all of the CBS people always centered on

evidence of conspiracy and the CBS-TV film footage taken at the

assassination site. Bob Richter was the most knowledgeable of all

the aforementioned people on the basic evidence and he was firmly

convinced there was a conspiracy. Bernie Birnbaum was convinced

that a new investigation was desirable and his wife was convinced

there had been a conspiracy. Dan Rather believed there was a

conspiracy and so did Wes Wise.

CBS photographers Sandy Sanderson, Tom Craven, and Jim Underwood

had taken movie-TV footages showing evidence of conspiracy.

Craven's footage, for example, showed the assassin's get-away car

driving away from the parking lot area behind the grassy knoll

about one minute after the shots were fired. Sanderson filmed one

of the assassins being arrested in front of the Depository building

about 30 minutes after the shots. Most of this footage was either

lost or locked up in the CBS archives vaults in New Jersey.

Wes Wise so strongly maintained his opinion about conspiracy

that he broadcast appeals for new photographic evidence over the

KRLD local TV shows. This was done against the orders of Eddie

Barker. Wes became Mayor of Dallas, elected in 1971 and defeated

the Dallas-established oligarchy. He actually received a new piece

of photographic evidence based on his TV appeal from a Dallas

citizen named Bothun, who had taken a picture of the grassy knoll a

few moments after the shots.

The script for the Cronkite series was being edited and was

going through its final preparation stages in May and early June.

The author was in constant touch with Wise, Birnbaum and Richter

during this period and was informed about the basic thrust of the

script toward conspiracy and recommendations for a new

investigation.

On May 8 a dinner meeting took place at the author's New York

club with Mr. and Mrs. Birnbaum. There, Mrs. Birnbaum and the

author tried to convince Bernie that he should take a stronger

position on a new investigation.

On May 18, Bob Richter and one of Jim Garrison's investigators

met in the National Archives with the author and reviewed the

evidence of conspiracy. On June 2, 3 and 4 in Dallas, the author

showed Bernie Birnbaum and Wes Wise a film taken by Johnny Martin

that showed three of the assassins and their cohorts on the grassy

knoll running toward the parking lot a few seconds after firing two

shots. Wise and Birnbaum tried to interest Barker and others in

taking a look at the film.

On June 14 Bob Richter invited the author to meet Midgely,

Lister and Wallace at CBS in New York where an interview was being

taped with Jim Garrison for use in the series. At that time

Garrison, Richter and the author spent some time with the producer

and his assistant discussing the evidence of conspiracy.

Finally, on June 20, just five days before the program was to go

on the air, the author met with Richter and Dan Rather in the

Washington, D.C. CBS studios. The script was reviewed by Richter

and Rather in the author's presence. The gist of the conversation

was that Rather and Richter agreed that the conclusions stating

conspiracy had to be made even stronger than they were at that

time.

The day before the program was aired, Bob Richter assured the

author that the theme would point to conspiracy and demand a new

investigation. The author telephoned Richter immediately after the

first broadcast and asked what had happened. Richter was

devastated. He could not understand what had happened. From that

time forward his course paralleled that of Dick Billings. He

resigned from CBS in disgust and formed his own company, Richter-

McBride, in New York. It was his original intent to make a film

about the JFK assassination based on his own research and the films

he could obtain. However, the massive suppression of the

assassination, especially the suppression of the Zapruder film by

Time-Life films, cancelled Richter's plans for a film.

Correspondence with Cronkite and others determined that the

decision to change the script, distort and hide CBS's own findings

and back up the Warren Commission to the hilt came from Midgely and

Lister. How much higher did the decision go? Richard Salant was

head of the CBS News Division then and, of course, William C. Paley

was (and still is) chairman of the board.

By an odd coincidence, in a sequel to the above CBS story, the

author had an opportunity to learn a little more about Mr. Paley's

knowledge. Jeff Paley, William Paley's son, returned to the United

States from Paris in the winter of 1967-1968, where he had been

writing news stories and a news column for "L'Express" and for the

North American Newspaper Alliance, a group serving small papers in

the United States. Jeff had become convinced there was a

conspiracy in the JFK case and came to interview Garrison and

others and to do a story for French papers. (European papers and

magazines always believed and still do believe in the JFK

assassination conspiracy.) He met at length with Richter and the

author and became quite disturbed at what CBS had done. He

approached his father with the idea that CBS had been wrong in the

Cronkite series and that something should be done to rectify the

situation.

Bill Paley told his son that he knew nothing about the details

of the programs or the work lying behind the conclusions. He said

Midgely had been responsible for the entire production. He told

Jeff that if he could show proof that the CBS conclusions were

wrong and there had been a conspiracy, that he would fire Midgely

and all the rest of the team and do the whole thing all over again

under new management.

Needless to say, this did not happen and the mystery about where

the decision to suppress the truth came from within CBS is as deep

as it ever was.

Since June 1967, CBS has remained editorially silent on the

subject of the JFK assassination. The photographic evidence of

conspiracy in their possession remains locked up and suppressed.

The Craven sequence--film footage by the CBS photographer (who had

been in the parade's camera car # 1) of a car driving out of the

Elm Street extension (left-to right in front of the Texas School

Book Depository) within 20 seconds of the assassination--was seen

by the author and Jones Harris in New York, but was cut out of the

film where it appeared prior to the time the author and Richter

began searching for it. There is little question that CBS is an

accessory after the fact.

CBS edited out one other important piece of TV film. In

November 1969, Walter Cronkite conducted a three-part interview

with Lyndon B. Johnson at his ranch in Texas. The series was

broadcast in the spring of 1970 and on the first program an

announcement was made that portions of the taped interview had been

deleted at Lyndon Johnson's request, "for reasons of national

security."

What actually happened and what Johnson had said six months

earlier was made public due to a leak at CBS. The story appeared

in newspapers all over the U.S. several days before the broadcast.

Johnson told Cronkite that there had been a conspiracy in the

assassination of President Kennedy, that Oswald was not a lone

madman assassin, and that he, Johnson, had known it all along.

Johnson reviewed the tapes a week or so before the program was to

go on the air and then called up the CBS management, asking that

his remarks be deleted.

Someone at CBS who was very disturbed by this called a member of

the Committee to Investigate Assassinations and told him what had

been deleted. This led to the story being printed in the

newspapers.

"The New York Times"

The record of the "Times" through the 1969-1971 period follows

the same pattern as CBS and "Life" magazine editorial policies.

The early editorials following the Warren Report supported the

Commission. The "Times" cooperated by publishing much of the

report in advance. In 1965, however, editorials began to appear

that questioned the Commission's findings and suggested a new

investigation. In 1964 the "Times" formed a research team headed

by Harrison Salisbury to investigate the assassination. The team

of six included Peter Khiss and Gene Roberts. Their conclusions

were never made public by the "Times" but indications point to

their finding evidence of conspiracy.

Khiss, in particular, through the 1966-1968 period in several

meetings and discussions with the author, expressed doubts about

the Warren Report and questioned the lone madman assassin theme.

When the Garrison investigation made the news, the "Times" began a

regular campaign to undermine Garrison's case, to support the

Warren Commission, and finally (during the Clay Shaw trial) to

completely distort the news and the testimony presented. Martin

Waldron was the reporter sending in the stories from the Shaw

trial, but someone in New York edited them to completely change

their content. The author saw the story written by Waldron on the

first day of the trial and the final version appearing in the

"Times." The two were completely different, with Waldon's original

following the actual trial proceedings very closely.

The author, writing under the pen name of Samuel B. Thurston,

postulated the possibility that "The New York Times," on selected

subjects, including the JFK assassination, was controlled by the

CIA through their representative among top management, Mr. Harding

Bancroft.[5]

In the summer of 1968, the author discovered a remarkable

similarity between the sketch of the assassin of Dr. Martin Luther

King and one of the three tramps arrested in Dealey Plaza following

the assassination of President Kennedy. Peter Khiss wrote a story

about this and it was published by the "Times" in June, 1968.

Apparently that was the final straw for the "Times" management as

far as Khiss was concerned. He was not allowed to do any more

research on assassinations or to discuss the subject at the

"Times." As he told the author in 1969, he doesn't attend any

press conferences about assassinations because he doesn't like it

when people in "Times" management say, "Here comes crazy old Pete

Khiss again with his conspiracy talk."

The apex of "The New York Times" actions and editorial positions

on the JFK assassination came in November and December 1971. They

published three items supporting the Warren Commission eight years

after the assassination, at a time when it seemed on the surface to

be a dead issue.

The first was a story about Dallas eight years later by an

author from Texas who wrote his entire story as though it were an

established fact that Oswald was the lone madman assassin firing

three shots from the sixth floor window of the Depository building

and later killing police officer Tippit.

The second was an Op-Ed page guest editorial by none other than

David Belin, a Warren Commission lawyer. He defended the

Commission and attacked the researchers. The third was a story by

Fred Graham about the findings of Dr. Lattimer, who was allowed to

see the autopsy photographs and x-rays of John Kennedy. Graham

actually wrote most of his story, which solidly backed up the

Warren Commission due to Lattimer's claims that the autopsy

materials proved no conspiracy, before Lattimer ever entered the

Archives.

In other words, it appears that Graham knew what Lattimer was

going to find and say in advance. Either that or someone in

Washington, D.C. gave someone at the "Times" orders in advance to

prepare the story for the first page, upper left-hand corner, of

the paper. It really didn't make any difference whether Dr.

Lattimer ever saw the x-rays and photographs.

The concerted campaign on the part of the "Times" management

could have been timed to prevent a discovery of new evidence of

conspiracy in the autopsy materials. The reason for this

possibility developing in the November 1971 period is that the

five-year restriction placed on the autopsy evidence by Burke

Marshall, a Kennedy family lawyer, expired in November of 1971.

Four well-known and highly reputable forensic pathologists, Dr.

Cyril Wecht of Pittsburgh, Dr. John Nichols of the University of

Kansas, Dr. Milton Helpern of New York City and Dr. John Chapman of

Detroit had already asked permission to examine the x-rays and

photos upon the expiration of the five-year period. All four were

known to question the Warren Commission's findings. What better

way to freeze them out of the Archives than to select a doctor who

could be trusted to back up the Commission (Lattimer had published

several articles doing just that), commission him to go into the

Archives, and then persuade "The New York Times" to publish a front

page story in its Sunday issue demonstrating that no one else need

look at the materials because they supported the Warren

Commission's findings.

All attempts by researchers to convince "Times" management that

the other side of the story should be told have been completely

ignored. Lattimer's findings, if correct, actually prove

conspiracy. The "Times" has been informed of this but they have

shut off all discussion of the subject. The complete story of the

complicity of the "New York Times" in the crimes to which they have

become an accessory would take up an entire volume.[6]

NBC

The National Broadcasting Company became an active participant

in the government's efforts to protect Clay Shaw and to ruin Jim

Garrison.

Two of NBC's high-level management people, Richard Townley of

NBC's affiliate in New Orleans, WDSU, and Walter Sheridan,

executive producer, became personally and directly involved in the

Shaw trial. They were indicted by a grand jury in New Orleans for

bribing witnesses, suppressing evidence and interfering with trial

proceedings. NBC top-level management backed Sheridan and Townley.

NBC produced a highly biased, provably dishonest program

personally attacking Garrison and defending Shaw prior to the

trial. Frank McGee, who acted as moderator, later had to publicly

apologize for lies told on the program by two "witnesses" whom NBC

paid to give statements against Garrison. The FCC ruled that NBC

had to give Garrison equal time because the program was not a news

program but a vendetta by NBC against Garrison. NBC did give

Garrison 30 minutes (compared to their one-hour attack) to respond

at a later date. Sheridan was the producer of the one-hour show.

With Sheridan and Townley so deeply involved, and with such an

extremely strong editorial position favoring the Justice

Department, the Warren Commission, and the lone assassin stance,

suspicions were raised about NBC's and RCA's independence.[7] At

one point in 1967 the president of NBC, according to Walter

Sheridan, helped in the bribery efforts by calling Mr. Gherlock,

head of Equitable Life Insurance Company's New York office, and

asked for assurance that Perry Russo, who worked for Equitable,

would cooperate with NBC.

NBC is also the owner of several important pieces of

photographic evidence. A TV film taken by NBC photographer David

Weigman was suppressed by NBC and not made available to

researchers. It shows the grassy knoll in the background just a

fraction of a minute after the shots. Some of the assassination

participants can be seen on the knoll.

Fortunately for researchers, NBC sold the Weigman film to the

other networks and to the news film agencies before realizing its

importance. The author was able to purchase a copy from Hearst

Metrotone News.

NBC's affiliate, WBAP in Fort Worth, has several important film

sequences. James Darnell took several sequences on the grassy

knoll and in the parking lot which should contain important

evidence. Dan Owens took TV movies in and around the Depository

building which should show how the snipers' nest was faked on the

sixth floor, and one of the assassins in front of the building.

ABC

Of the three major television networks, ABC has remained more

objective and appears to be less under the thumb of the government

than the other two. For example, when NBC was busy defending the

Warren Commission and Clay Shaw and attacking Jim Garrison, ABC was

giving Garrison a free chance to express his views without

interruption on their Sunday program, "Issues and Answers." They

have never taken an editorial position one way or another on

conspiracy. However, in the Robert Kennedy assassination case, the

investigation was suppressed at ABC. The man heading the brief

investigation was stopped and sent to Vietnam. The man at ABC who

called the shots in stopping the investigation and in suppressing

evidence in ABC's possession was a lawyer named Lewis Powell.

The evidence owned by ABC is a video tape of the crowd in the

Ambassador Hotel ballroom before, during and after the shots were

fired in the kitchen. The ballroom microphones, including ABC's,

picked up the sound of only three shots above the crowd noise.

Since Sirhan fired eight shots, or certainly more than three, and

since Los Angeles police tests proved that Sirhan's gun could not

be heard in the position of the microphones in the ballroom, the

ABC film and soundtrack is important evidence of three other shots.

The sequence was originally included in the TV film of Robert

Kennedy's 1968 campaign and assassination entitled, "The Last

Journey." Following a meeting at ABC when the management learned

what the film showed, the next TV broadcast of "The Last Journey"

(scheduled for the following week) was cancelled without any

logical explanation. The next time the film appeared on ABC (late

1971), the three-shot ballroom sequence had been cut.

United Press International

Of all the fifteen major news organizations included herein, UPI

has come closest to really pursuing the truth about the JFK

assassination. Yet they, too, have suppressed evidence, have not

had the courage of their convictions in analyzing conspiratorial

evidence, and by default have become accessories after the fact.

Two different departments at UPI became involved in the

photographic evidence of the JFK assassination. The regular photo

news service department, which receives wire photos and negatives

from many sources all over the world, accumulated a large

collection of basic evidence both from UPI photographers and by

purchasing wire service photos from newspapers, Black Star, AP and

other sources. This department has made all of its photographs

available to anyone at reasonable prices ($1.50 to $3.00 per

print).

UPI photographer Frank Cancellare was in the motorcade and

snapped several important photographs. In addition, five other

photographs at UPI, taken by three unknown photographers, are

significant. All of these were purchased by the author from UPI.

The other department has not been as cooperative. Within the

news department at UPI, Burt Reinhardt and Rees Schonfeld have

varied in their attitude and performance. UPI news purchased the

commercial rights to two very important films shortly after the

assassination. These were color movies taken by Orville Nix and

Marie Muchmore (private citizens). Both show the fatal shot

striking the President, and both show evidence of conspiracy. In

the Nix film, certain frames (when enlarged) show one of the

assassins on the grassy knoll with a rifle. Both movies show a

puff of smoke generated by another one of the men involved in the

assassination.

UPI, under the direction of Burt Reinhardt, did several things

with the Nix and Muchmore films. They produced a book, "Four

Days," including several color frames from the movies. They made a

composite movie in 35mm from the original 8mm movies. The

composite used the technique of repeating a frame several times to

give the appearance of slow motion or stop action during key

sections of the films. Reinhardt, Schonfeld and Mr. Fox, a UPI

writer, made the composite movie available to researchers at their

projection studio in New York in 1964 and 1965.

Fox and Schonfeld wrote an article for "Esquire" in 1965 which

portrayed the Nix film as proving the conspiracy theories about

assassins on the grassy knoll to be false. This was deemed

necessary by UPI management because a New York researcher and a

photographic expert, after seeing the Nix film at UPI, claimed it

showed an assassin with a rifle standing on the hood of a car

parked behind the knoll.

The research team had used a few frames from the film in color

transparencies and enlarged them in black and white to show the

gunman.

In 1964, UPI gave the Warren Commission copies of both the Nix

and Muchmore films for analysis. The films were later turned over

to the National Archives under a special agreement between UPI and

the Archives. This agreement reminds one of the agreements between

the Archives and the Kennedy family on the autopsy materials, and

the obscure one between "Life" magazine, the Commission, the Secret

Service and the Archives on the Zapruder film.

The UPI agreement prevents anyone from obtaining copies of the

Nix and Muchmore films or slides of individual frames for any

purpose. The agreement is just as illegal as the other two, yet it

has been just as effective in suppressing the basic evidence of

conspiracy.

In 1967, UPI, apparently still not sure they would not be

attacked by researchers on what the Nix film revealed, employed

Itek Corporation to analyze the film. (At least it would appear on

the surface that UPI did the hiring.) Itek Corporation, a major

defense contractor, did an excellent job of obscuring the truth.

In an apparently highly scientific analysis using computer-based

image enhancement, they "proved" that not only was there no gunman

on the grassy knoll, but there was no person on the knoll at all

during the shooting.

The final Itek report was made public and highly publicized by

UPI. It looked as though the UPI earlier claim of no gunman had

been scientifically substantiated. As a by-product, Itek got some

great publicity for their commercially available photo-computer

image enhancement system.

What the public did not know was that UPI gave Itek only 35mm

enlarged black and white copies of selected frames from the Nix

film. The great amount of detail is lost in going from 8mm color

to 35mm black and white. And UPI gave Itek carefully chosen frames

from the Nix film that did not show the gunman on the knoll.

UPI and Itek defined "the grassy knoll" in a very limited and

carefully chosen way so as to exclude five people (in addition to

the fatal-shot gunman) on the knoll who appear in the Nix film as

well as in every other photograph and movie taken of the knoll at

the time the shots were fired.[8] In addition, man No. 2, who had

ducked down behind the stone wall during the Nix film, could not be

detected by Itek because they only had the Nix film.

Three men standing on the steps of the knoll, and two men behind

the picket fence, were completely ignored or overlooked.

The author began to contact Schonfeld and Reinhardt in early

1967, viewed the two films both at UPI and in the Archives, and

requested copies of the original 8mm color films or color copies of

individual frames. The response to the requests were negative for

more than four years. During this time, however, the author, a New

York researcher, and a photographic specialist, enlarged in color

the correct frames from the Nix film. The enlargements clearly

show the gunman, not on top of a car but in front of a car, with

his rifle poised. He is standing on a pedestal protruding from the

eight-sided cupola behind the stone wall on the knoll. The car is

parked behind the cupola and can be seen in several other

photographs and movies.

Unfortunately, UPI's agreement with the researcher prevents

making public the color enlargements. UPI has consistently

suppressed this evidence. In 1971, they offered to make the film

available for a very large sum of money, but they have never agreed

that it shows anyone on the knoll and they will not make copies

available for research.

The UPI editorial position (in articles, the book "Four Days,"

letters and news releases) has supported the Warren Commission

through the years. The major difference between UPI and "Life" or

CBS is that no drastic reversal of management policy took place at

UPI.

AP

Associated Press became an accessory after the fact by taking an

action unprecedented for a news wire service. It published a

three-part report by three AP writers in 1967, completely

supporting the Warren Commission. The report was transmitted by

wire to all AP subscribers over a three-day period and it occupied

a total of nine to ten full pages of the average newspaper. It was

not news, but editorial policy and took a position supporting the

Warren Commission and the official government propaganda about the

assassination of John Kennedy.

Most small newspapers rely on UP and AP for their news stories.

The three-part AP report ran in hundreds of papers across the

United States without opposition commentary. For many this was the

gospel at the time. What more could the conspirators and their

government protectors have asked?

AP photographers were on the scene in Dallas during the

assassination. James Altgens, one of AP's men assigned to Dallas,

took seven important photographs in Dealey Plaza. Henry Burrows,

an AP photographer from Washington, D.C., was in the motorcade and

snapped two pictures. Four other AP photographers took ten

important photographs. AP's photo department and Wide World Photos

in New York purchased many other photographs taken in Dealey Plaza.

Meyer Goldberg, manager of Wide World Photos, set a policy early

in the 1966-1967 period which placed AP in the position of

partially suppressing basic photographic evidence. The policy

contained several parts. First, Goldberg made it extremely

difficult for anyone to obtain access to the photographic evidence,

particularly the negatives. Second, he set a high enough price on

copies of photographs ($17.50 for one 8x10 black and white print)

to freeze out all but commercially-financed interests. Third, when

an original negative was discovered, the print order, when cleared

by Wide World, was always cropped. (Full negative prints showing

important details in the Altgens photographs were nearly impossible

to purchase.) Whenever any suggestion was made to Wide World that

their photographs contained basic evidence of conspiracy, Goldberg

and AP management turned blue with anger and literally refused to

discuss the subject or permit research in their files.

Various researchers, including Josiah Thompson, Raymond Marcus

and the author met this type of stiff opposition, but after many

visits discovered ways around it. The staff at Wide World in

charge of the photographic files was more cooperative, and at least

one staff member was completely convinced there was a conspiracy in

the JFK assassination.

Nevertheless, the broadly announced editorial policy and stance

of Associated Press between 1964 and 1972 fully supported the

Warren Commission and the lone assassin fable.

"Newsweek"

"Newsweek"'s editorial policy and coverage of the assassination

and its aftermath was largely the doing of one man, Hugh

Aynesworth. Aynesworth was the Dallas-Houston correspondent for

"Newsweek" following the assassination. He was in Dealey Plaza

when Kennedy was killed, and he turned in several stories during

the days and weeks following November 22, 1963. His point of view

was always closely allied with that of the Dallas police, the

district attorney and the FBI. He wholeheartedly supported the

Warren Report.

However, in May of 1967, after Garrison's investigation hit the

news, Aynesworth wrote a violent attack on Garrison's

investigation, and it was published in "Newsweek." Aynesworth

accused Lynn Loisel, a Garrison staff member, of bribing Al

Beaubolf to testify about a meeting to plot the assassination.

Beaubolf later denied this accusation in a sworn affidavit and

proved Aynesworth and "Newsweek" to be fabricators of information.

"Saturday Evening Post"

The position of the "Saturday Evening Post" solidified after the

Garrison probe became public. It was based in large part on the

reporting of one man, James Phelan. Phelan wrote a blistering

article for the "Post" published on May 6, 1967. He attacked

Garrison and Russo, and claimed that Russo's original statement to

Assistant D.A. Andrew Sciambra differed from his later testimony.

In view of the earlier editorial position of the "Post" when Lyron

Land and his wife questioned the Warren Commission findings, the

Phelan article came as somewhat of a surprise. In fact, the "Post"

had taken a strong conspiracy stand when in 1967 it published a

long article excerpted from Josiah Thompson's book, "Six Seconds in

Dallas," and featured it on the magazine's cover.

The Garrison investigation, however, turned the "Post" around.

Phelan became directly involved in the case, and in a sense was

more of an accessory than Walter Sheridan or Richard Townley. He

travelled to Louisiana from Texas, spent many hours with Perry

Russo and other witnesses, and generally obfuscated the Shaw trial

picture.

Phelan joined the efforts to persuade Russo to desert Garrison

and to help destroy Garrison and his case. According to a sworn

Russo statement, Phelan visited his house four times within a few

weeks. Phelan told Russo he was working hand-in-hand with Townley

and Sheridan, that they were in constant contact, and that they

were going to destroy Garrison and the probe. Phelan warned Russo

that he should abandon his position and that Russo would be the

only one hurt as a result of the trial. Phelan claimed Garrison

would leave Russo alone, standing in the cold.

Phelan offered to hire a $200,000-a-year lawyer from New York

for Russo if he would cooperate against Garrison. He asked Russo

how he would feel about sending an innocent man (Clay Shaw) to the

penitentiary. Phelan left New Orleans and Baton Rouge and returned

to New York, only to telephone Russo several times and offer to pay

Russo's plane fare to New York to meet with him and discuss going

over to Clay Shaw's side.

Phelan was subpoenaed by Shaw's lawyers during a hearing in 1967

because his article attacked Garrison. Sciambra welcomed the

opportunity to cross-examine Phelan on the stand. He described the

article as being incomplete, distorted and tantamount to lying.

Sciambra said, "I guarantee that he (Phelan) will be exposed for

having twisted the facts in order to build up a scoop for himself

and the `Saturday Evening Post.'"

Sciambra went on to say that Phelan had neglected the most

important fact of all in his article. It was that Phelan had been

told by Russo in Baton Rouge that Russo and Sciambra had discussed

the plot dialogue (to assassinate JFK) at their initial meeting.

Capital City Broadcasting

This organization owns several radio stations in the capitol

cities of various states and in Washington, D.C. Their interests

in the JFK assassination increased in 1967 and 1968 when the

Garrison-Shaw case made headlines. A producer at Capital City,

Erik Lindquist, decided to do a series of programs designed to

ferret out the truth. The author furnished various evidence for

scripts to be used in the programs. After several months of work

the project was cancelled, presumably by top management, and the

broadcasts never took place.

North American Newspaper Alliance

This newspaper chain, with papers affiliated in small

communities through the northern and eastern U.S., supported the

Warren Commission findings as did all the other major newspaper

services and chains.

The Alliance also became involved in the Martin Luther King case

and it circulated the syndicated column by the black writer and

reporter, Louis Lomax, who had taken an interest in finding out

what really happened in the King assassination.

Lomax located a man named Stein who had taken a trip with James

Earl Ray from Los Angeles to New Orleans. The two retraced the

autom

[John Ritchson]

Part10.

Chapter 10

Techniques and Weapons and 100 Dead Conspirators and Witnesses

As Chapter 1 made clear, one of the two fiendish stratagems used

by the Power Control Group to cover-up the truth and to fool the

people was the use of various intelligence techniques and weapons.

The use of such techniques in assassination and murder completely

conceals the real killer's presence or the real cause of death.

From the moment the crime occurs the public is led to believe that

there is either one lone madman assassin or that the death was

accidental, due to natural causes, or committed by natural enemies

of the victim. Some of the techniques are so unique that they are

nearly impossible for the average American to believe.

The intelligence forces of the United States as well as those of

other countries have out-Bonded James Bond. The development of

sophisticated murder methods and the control of humans for warfare

and spying in other countries came home to the United States,

effectively used by the Power Control Group. Penn Jones, Jr.

published a list of "mysterious deaths" in his series of four

volumes, "Forgive My Grief."[1] Sylvia Meagher published facts

about the first eighteen witnesses at Dealey Plaza murdered through

the use of these techniques in the book, "Accessories After the

Fact."[2] Very few people other than researchers pay any

attention. Two movies with somewhat wider circulation, "Executive

Action" and "The Parallax View," covered the techniques fairly

well, but they were considered to be fiction by most viewers. So

the PCG goes on murdering where and when it is necessary, and it

covers up the murders where necessary.

In 1974 and 1976, two murders became necessary. Rolando

Masferrer, mentioned as a JFK conspirator, became dangerous to the

PCG, and he was eliminated in early 1976 with a non-sophisticated

weapon. A bomb was planted in his car in Miami. The cover-up in

this case merely involved planting an informer who claimed

Masferrer was killed by a rival anti-Castro Cuban faction in

Florida.[3]

Clay Shaw became quite nervous in 1974 after Victor Marchetti's

statements to the press earlier that year made it known that Shaw

was a CIA contract employee and that the CIA gave him assistance

and protection before his trial in New Orleans and after Jim

Garrison arrested him. Shaw was murdered in New Orleans by the PCG

and the murder covered-up by simply controlling his embalming and

burial and blocking any local investigation.[4] The reason for his

murder was to keep him from talking and from returning to the

public eye.

The techniques and weapons fall into several classes. First,

there are sophisticated weapons developed by the CIA. An example

of this is the umbrella poison dart gun used in Dealey Plaza to

shoot JFK in the throat. Such a weapon was postulated by Robert

Cutler and the author in mid-1975 as the one that fired the first

shot from near the Stemmons Freeway sign.[5] This seemed

incredulous to most observers and so wild an idea that the author

and Cutler did not discuss it with many researchers. Then Mr.

Charles Senseney, a CIA weapon developer at Fort Detrick, Maryland,

testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee in September

1975 and described an umbrella poison dart gun he had made.[6] He

said it was always used in crowds with the umbrella open, firing

through the webing so it would not attract attention. Since it was

silent, no one in the crowd could hear it and the assassin merely

would fold up the umbrella and saunter away with the crowd. (That

is almost exactly what happened in Dealey Plaza. The first shot

had always seemed to have had a paralytic effect on Kennedy. His

fists were clenched and his head, shoulders and arms seemed to

stiffen. There was a small entrance wound in his neck but no

evidence of a bullet path through his neck and no bullet was ever

recovered that matched that small size.)

Senseney testified that his Special Operations Division at Fort

Detrick had received assignments from the CIA to develop exotic

weaponry. One of the weapons was a hand-held dart gun that could

shoot a poison dart into a guard dog to put it out of action for

several hours. The dart and the poison left no trace so that

examination would not reveal that the dogs had been put out of

action. The CIA ordered about 50 of these weapons and used them

operationally. Senseney said that the darts could have been used

to kill human beings and he could not rule out the possibility that

this had been done by the CIA. He said he had developed a dart-

launching device that looked like an umbrella.

A special type of poison developed induces a heart attack and

leaves no trace of any external influence unless an autopsy is

conducted to check for this particular poison. The CIA revealed

this poison in various accounts in the early 1970s.

Among the witnesses, important people and conspirators who might

have been eliminated this way are: Clay Shaw, J. Edgar Hoover,

Earlene Roberts (Oswald's land-lady) and Adlai Stevenson.

A second category, already discussed in the Robert Kennedy and

George Wallace shootings, is the use of a "programmed" assassin.

The Manchurian Candidate always seemed to be a science fiction

story. It is now well known that the CIA has used hypnosis and

"programming" to achieve a number of objectives, including murder.

Certainly there is little doubt that Sirhan Sirhan was under

hypnosis when he wrote in his diary and when he fired the shots in

the general direction of Robert Kennedy.[7] There is also

evidence that Arthur Bremer was "programmed" to shoot at George

Wallace. It is conceivable that one of the assassins in Dealey

Plaza could have been "programmed". A man surfaced after 1975

who--under deprogramming--remembered a firing situation resembling

Dealey Plaza. However, it is much less likely that the PCG had to

use hypnosis in the JFK murder.

It is completely untrue that Oswald was programmed, as the book

"Were We Controlled?" by Lincoln Lawrence (an alias for radio

commentator Art Ford) postulates. The evidence shows Oswald

didn't fire a shot, that he was on the second floor of the TSBD

Building at the time of the shots, and that he was very calm until

Patrolman Baker pointed a gun at him. Strangely enough, Ford's

thesis is true. We were controlled by the PCG, although he had the

details wrong.

A third popular technique is, of course, the patsy. The PCG has

developed this to the level of a real science. The assassination

is allowed to be obvious, but the assassin is presented as a single

madman or criminal who acts alone. Lee Harvey Oswald, Jack Ruby,

James Earl Ray, Sirhan Sirhan and Arthur Bremer have all been

patsies. They are not all exactly alike, nor is the way in which

they were used the same in each case. For example, Oswald and Ray

did not fire any shots, while Sirhan, Ruby and Bremer did. Sirhan

and Bremer were "programmed", whereas Ruby was talked into killing

Oswald by his friends in the PCG. Four of the five men were

framed; a lot of evidence was manufactured and planted to

implicate them, including fake diaries, fake photographs, planted

guns, bullets and shells, and men using their identities. The one

who did not fit this category was Ruby. It was not needed in his

case because he killed Oswald before live television and believed

until the day he died of cancer that his friends were going to get

him out of jail in exchange for his "patriotic" act.

The use of "seconds", men who looked like the patsy and who used

his name (true of Oswald, Ray and Sirhan) is a common intelligence

technique. The planting of fake photos in the case of Oswald

required some relatively special photographic facilities, but the

job was not done well enough to avoid detection.

A fourth technique is the "accidental" death. Many witnesses

and conspirators have been murdered in this way. Lee Bowers, the

railroad yard control tower man who saw the real assassins behind

the picket fence in Dealey Plaza, was killed when his car rammed

into a concrete abutment in Dallas (it was traveling at high

speed). The doctor who examined Bowers prior to his removal from

the car, stated that he probably received an injection of some

kind prior to the crash. Louis Lomax, the black author who was

getting close to the truth in the Martin Luther King case, was

killed in Arizona when his car was forced off the road after he

was made to drive at high speed. Hale Boggs disappeared in an

airplane crash that left no trace of the plane. And of course the

classic "accident" occurred at Chappaquiddick.

A fifth technique is an induced death that produces another

finding of the cause either by disguising the true cause or by

controlling the coroner or those in charge of burial. Examples

are: David Ferrie's murder by means of a karate chop to the back

of his head, disguised as an embolism of the brain, Clay Shaw's

murder by means unknown because there was no autopsy and complete

control of his removal and burial; Jack Ruby's supposed death by

cancer in jail (real cause unknown because he was never out of the

PCG's hands until he was under ground).

Then there is a favorite sixth technique: mock suicide.

Examples of PCG murders that somehow became suicides are: Hank

Killam, a husband of one of Ruby's dancers, who committed suicide

by throwing himself through a plate glass window off the street in

Miami; Betty Mooney, one of Ruby's girls who hung herself in her

jail cell by using her leopard-skin tights; Roger Craig, who shot

himself; Jesus Crispin, who knew Sirhan, supposedly killed himself

in his jail cell; Grant Stockdale, who threw himself off the top

of a tall building in Miami.

There are some on the list who were admittedly murdered, but

supposedly not by the PCG. These include Robert Perrin, Nancy

Perrin's husband; Buddy Walters, deputy sheriff under Sheriff

Decker, shot by a man he was trying to arrest; Eladio Del Valle, a

cohort of Ferrie, killed in Miami by an axe on the same day Ferrie

was murdered; Rolando Masferrer, blown up in his car; Eddy

Benevides, shot by an unknown assailant (he recovered). The

cover-ups in each of these cases were put into effect by

controlling the investigation or simply by not having one.

The complete list of deaths, including the eight major ones

(JFK, RFK, MLK, Mary Jo Kopechne, Lee Harvey Oswald, David Ferrie,

Ruby and Clay Shaw) numbers over a hundred. Here is a partial

list:

1. John Kennedy

2. Robert Kennedy

3. Martin Luther King

4. Mary Jo Kopechne

5. Lee Harvey Oswald

Note: Lost Data

19. Jesus Crispin

20. Jim Koethe

21. Bill Hunter

22. Tom Howard

23. Earlene Roberts

24. Betty McDonald

25. Eddy Benevides

26. Robert Perrin

27. Gary Underhill

28. Bill Chesher

29. Dorothy Kilgallen

30. David Goldstein

31. Levens (first name unknown)

32. Teresa Norton

33. Warren Reynolds

34. Harold Russell

35. Marilyn Moore Walle

36. William Whaley

37. James Worrell, Jr.

38. Captain Frank Martin

39. Mrs. Earl T. Smith

40. Karyn Kupcinet

41. Albert Guy Bogard

42. Hiram Ingram

43. Nicholas Chetta

44. Mary Bledsoe

45. Jude Preston Battle

46. John M. Crawford

47. Richard Carr

48. Kathy Fullmer

49. Clyde Johnson

50. Reverend A. D. W. King

51. Carole Tyler

52. Dr. Mary Sherman

53. Grant Stockdale

54. J. A. Milteer

55. Hugh Ward

56. Perry Russo

57. Maurice Gatlin, Sr.

58. W. Guy Banister

59. Charles P. Cabell

60. Dorothy Hunt

61. Michelle Clark

62. John Roselli

63. Sam Giancana

64. Fred Lee Crisman

65. Carlos Prio Socarras

66. Charles Nicoletti

67. Jimmy Hoffa

68. George De Mohrenschildt

69. General Donald Donaldson

70. Lou Staples

71. William C. Sullivan

72. James Chaney

The large majority of these murders eliminated witnesses to,

participants in, or investigators of one of the assassinations.

People involved with the participants in one of the assassinations

or cover-ups were also listed above. The participants were: Jack

Ruby, David Ferrie, Clay Shaw, Rolando Masferrer, J. Edgar Hoover

(in the cover-up), and Robert Perrin. There were four

investigators: Jim Koethe, Louis Lomax, Dorothy Kilgallen and Hale

Boggs. The rest were witnesses or associates.

Two articles[8] written in 1976 analyzed some of these deaths

and concluded that they were not accidents unconnected with the

assassinations of our leaders. Another analysis by the authors

demonstrated that fifty of the first seventy murders met three

criteria for proving death by foul means. All involved people

directly or indirectly linked to the major assassinations. All met

death under violent or very strange circumstances. No autopsies

were performed in any of these murders.

The Charles Senseney dart weapon might have been used in some of

the murders. The injection given Lee Bowers produced such a

paralytic and terrorized expression on Bowers' face that the doctor

examining his body exclaimed he had never seen such before. Grant

Stockdale was found to have died of a heart attack on his way to

the street from the top of a building (a dart might have killed

him).

____________________

[1] "Forgive My Grief" Volumes I, II, III, IV, Penn Jones, Jr., Self

Published, Midlothian, Texas.

[2] "Accessories After the Fact," Sylvia Meagher, Scarecrow Press,

N.Y., 1976

[3] "Miami Herald," March, 1976.

[4] "The Mysterious Death of Clay Shaw," Richard Russell, "True

Magazine."

[5] "The Umbrella Man," R.B. Cutler, & R.E. Sprague, "Gallery

Magazine," June, 1978.

[6] "New York Times," September 19, 1975.

[7] "RFK Must Die!," Robert Kaiser, E.P. Dutton & Co. Inc., N.Y.C.,

1970.

[8] (a) Self published article by Gary Schoener -- Minneapolis,

Minn. Researcher.

( Assassination Information Bureau (AIB), Cambridge, Mass,

Research project and article.

* * * * * * *

End Part10.

[John Ritchson]

Part11.

Chapter 11

Nixon and Ford -- The Pardon and the Tapes

As the Power Control Group grew larger and the number of murders

increased through the years, it became more and more difficult to

keep the veil of secrecy surrounding the takeover intact. As

Nixon's instability increased, the danger of revealing the secret

superstructure to the American people increased.

Watergate and Nixon's resignation from office nearly ruined

everything for the Power Control Group. A splinter faction in the

CIA began showing strength and all of the dirt might have been

leaked to the press and to the people. Nixon himself had pulled

the most dangerous boner in the history of the PCG. He installed a

secret tape recording system that recorded a number of

conversations about the PCG's murders, assassinations and dirty

tricks. Even worse, Nixon did not destroy the tapes before the

Congress found out about them and went after them. As soon as it

became obvious that Nixon would be forced to resign, the PCG had to

use a desperation strategy.

Gerald R. Ford pardoned Richard M. Nixon on September 8, 1974:

such was the PCG's strategy. Many skeptical U.S. citizens nodded

their heads knowingly and assumed Nixon had made his "deal" with

Ford when he nominated him for the vice presidency. Evans and

Novak[1] assumed that Julie Nixon Eisenhower talked Ford into the

pardon on grounds that Nixon's health was poor. The Ford's fears

for Nixon's health didn't seem to convince very many news media

people who saw a rosy-cheeked, apparently robust ex-president in

San Clemente.[2]

The pardon seemed to most Americans and news editors a gross

error in judgment and a miscarriage of justice. But once again the

United States was fooled. This time, the PCG, Nixon and Ford

managed to pull the wool over the eyes of the public and to

narrowly escape revealing what can be called "the entire rotten

crust at the top of American power." Any reasonable hypothesis

about what actually happened, based on the evidence at hand, had

not been even remotely suggested by either Congress or the media by

1976.

Any explanation of the situation leading to the pardon begins

with the relationship between Gerald Ford and Richard Nixon. It

goes back to 1960, the year Mr. Nixon planned the overthrow of

Castro's Cuba. As earlier chapters have made clear, the U2

incident and the Bay of Pigs was the beginning.

In 1960, Nixon and the White House action officer worked on the

plans for what was later called the Bay of Pigs invasion.[3] Prior

to that time the PCG and Nixon had accumulated plenty of reasons to

want Castro overthrown. The anti-Communist attitude was the

superficial reason. Beneath it were Nixon's connections with the

Mafia and his friendships and financial holdings that were greatly

damaged when Castro closed the casinos run by the mob in Havana.[4]

When Nixon and Kennedy debated about the Cuban situation in the

1960 campaign, Nixon purposefully lied to the American people about

U.S. plans for an invasion.[5] When he narrowly lost to Kennedy,

it created a deep wound, and he and the PCG spent much of the next

three years planning revenge.

Nixon became a tool of a number of Cubans and Americans, both

inside the CIA and outside, who agreed with him that casting out

Castro was highly desirable. One of these men was E. Howard

Hunt.[6] Another was Bernard Barker.[7] A third was Carlos Prio

Socarras.[8] Richard Bissell, Richard Helms and Allen Dulles were

the three higher level men in the PCG.

These Nixon cronies and financial partners became involved with

the PCG. They murdered John Kennedy.[9] Whether Nixon was

directly involved in the PCG's planning for the assassination is

still open to question, although one researcher believes that he

was.[10] There certainly is substantial evidence that Nixon was

out to at least politically sink Kennedy and Johnson, and aimed to

do so in Dallas immediately before Kennedy was killed. (See section

on evidence).[11]

Whether Nixon was directly involved in planning the

assassination of President John F. Kennedy does not have to be

settled here. What is important is that Nixon was directly

involved in covering up the truth about who did kill Kennedy.

Evidence from the Nixon-Haldeman tapes of June 1972 indicated that

Nixon knew the truth about the assassination when he suggested

Gerald Ford be part of the Warren Commission.[12]

A close personal friendship had developed between Ford and Nixon

during their days together in the Congress, when both were strong,

ultra-conservative, "red, white and blue", anti-Communist,

"religious" members who thought and talked alike.

When Nixon realized that John Kennedy had been killed almost

under his nose in Dallas by some of his Bay of Pigs friends, the

PCG convinced him he had to do everything in his power to cover it

up and to bide his time until his powerful military and

intelligence friends could place him in the White House. It took

one more murder by the PCG (Robert Kennedy) to get him there, and

still another attempted murder to keep him there (George Wallace).

Control over the investigations of these murders was essential

for Nixon and the PCG. In order to guide a presidential commission

away from the truth, the closed small circle of people in the PCG

who knew what had happened to John Kennedy had to be enlarged.

Allen Dulles was no problem. He knew the cause was an

intelligence/military one from the day it happened. Earl Warren

was a different matter. He had to be fooled and later talked into

remaining silent "for the good of the country."

A ringleader inside the Warren Commission was crucial. It had

to be someone the PCG and Nixon could trust, one who had an honest

and trustworthy appearance. Nixon called on Gerry Ford, and he

convinced LBJ that Ford should be on the Commission.[13]

Nixon told Ford at some point prior to January, 1964 who killed

JFK and why. He convinced Ford that every effort should be made to

make sure Oswald was found to be the lone assassin. Ford did an

excellent job. He not only steered the Commission away from the

facts[14] whenever a key witness was interviewed or an embarrassing

situation developed, but he also nailed Oswald's coffin shut

personally by publishing his own book on Oswald.[15] This, coming

from the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, served to

firmly plant in the American mind the idea that there was no

conspiracy, that Oswald was the lone assassin, and that the Warren

Commission had done a good job.

From the day Ford's book was published, Nixon and Ford became

totally beholden to each other. They also both became totally

beholden to the members of the PCG who were at or near the top of

things and who were part of the small knowledgeable circle. Other

members of the PCG's inner circle included J. Edgar Hoover and

Richard Helms.

No one could be permitted by the PCG to come into power in the

White House, the CIA, the Justice Department or the FBI unless they

were part of the PCG and willing to keep quiet and help suppress

the truth about the JFK assassination. The PCG's membership

widened, of necessity, when Robert Kennedy was killed and Nixon

became president. The people involved in killing Robert Kennedy

and Nixon's top aides had to be told the truth. This included

Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Kissinger, Mitchell (who had the job of

controlling Hoover's successors in continuing the cover-ups) and

possibly others. Mitchell was instrumental in stopping Jim

Garrison's investigation of Clay Shaw and other PCG members and in

totally discrediting Garrison.[16] He was aided by Richard Helms

and others in the PCG through CIA support in the Clay Shaw trial

cover-up efforts.[17]

The White House plumber section of the PCG decided in 1972, with

or without Nixon's knowledge and approval, to assassinate George

Wallace, so that Nixon would be assured of the conservative vote.

The PCG and its debts once again grew. E. Howard Hunt and Charles

Colson, along with Tony Ulasewicz, Donald Segretti and others, were

in a position to make demands in exchange for their silence. The

Hunt million-dollar blackmail threat to reveal "seedy things" or

"hankypanky" was never explainable in terms of Watergate or the

Ellsberg break-ins. But three assassinations would certainly be

worth a cool million to keep Hunt silent. Again, the Haldeman-

Nixon June 23, 1972 tapes are revealing.[18]

When the Watergate crisis occurred, Nixon was trapped by his own

tapes, and the PCG was in grave danger. Discussions with Haldeman,

Mitchell and others mention the Kennedy assassination conspiracy

and the Wallace murder attempt on tape. The PCG was suddenly

threatened as a group. The tapes couldn't all be destroyed because

too many Secret Service people knew about them. Haldeman and Nixon

managed to erase one revealing 18 1/2 minute section about the

assassinations, but who could remember exactly what telephone calls

or Oval Office conversations might have mentioned the truth about

the three murders?

The PCG and Nixon again sensed the need for a successor who

would keep quiet. They called on Gerry Ford when Agnew was forced

out. Ford and Nixon, bound inextricably together by their mutual

cover-up of the assassinations, worked out a deal. Nixon nominated

Ford to be his Vice President. The Senate, completely bamboozled

by Nixon and Ford, never asked Ford any important questions about

the assassinations nor his performance on the Warren Commission.

When they asked Ford about his book, he committed perjury twice

before the Senate (see item # 15 in the list ennumerated below).

Nixon and Ford agreed that Ford would keep quiet if Nixon

remained silent and that Ford would succeed Nixon if he were forced

to resign or be impeached. They agreed to a pardon afterward. But

the most critical part of the arrangement was that those tapes

revealing the truth about the assassinations be kept out of

circulation. When the Supreme Court ruled that the tapes must be

turned over, it was then time to implement their agreed-upon

strategy.

In addition, Jaworski, Colson, Mitchell, Kissinger, Haldeman,

Ehrlichman, the Warren Commission, Hunt, Helms, Shaw and anyone

else in the PCG had to be bought off, pardoned, protected or killed

to insure their silences.

Leon Jaworski resigned. People asked why. The real answer was

buried in the fact that Jaworski knew what had been going on. He

knew because of information passed on to him by the Ervin Committee

and Cox regarding the assassination and the cover-up. He was also

personally involved in 1964 in the JFK cover-up.

Jaworski could have been a problem, even though he helped with

the JFK cover-up from the beginning.[19] Hunt was taken care of by

getting him out of jail, buying him a large estate in Florida and

paying him a lot of money.[20] Helms could be counted on.

Kissinger may have been a problem, but he finally agreed. His

wiretaps were ordered to find out who knew about the

assassinations. Hoover was dead. Clay Shaw was murdered.[21]

Warren was dead. Richard Russell was dead. John Sherman Cooper

was bought off (he received an important ambassadorship). John J.

McCloy was too old to worry about.

That left Colson, Mitchell, Haldeman, and Ehrlichman, plus some

other small fry. The PCG strategy as planned with these men

involved pardons for all of them in exchange for their silence,

especially Haldeman and Mitchell, who not only knew what happened

to JFK, but who also took overt actions to cover-up. (Haldeman

erased the 18 1/2 minutes of tape and Mitchell nailed Jim

Garrison.)

Newer members of the PCG may cause some problems. They all have

to know the truth by now. Rockefeller and Alex Haig must know.

George Bush, William Colby, Edward Levi and Clarence Kelly knew

because of their access to the records, and they must have agreed

to cover-up continuance. Ford and his cronies in the House had to

continue to knock out any efforts by Henry B. Gonzalez of Texas to

start a new House Committee investigation of the JFK assassination.

They were very successful in their control of the House Rules

Committee. Haig seemed to have been bought off with the promise of

a top NATO post in exchange for his silence. And control over

Frank Church and the Senate Intelligence Committee was necessary.

Gerald Ford remained committed to the PCG and to Nixon.

The tapes had to be controlled and edited at all costs. Nixon

no doubt required help in listening to the tapes after Haldeman

left and in sorting out those in which assassinations and cover-ups

were discussed. General Haig was undoubtedly the man he selected

to do the dirty work. It was almost certain that no tapes would be

turned over to Judge Sirica or to Jaworski with any assassination

references left on them. One of the tapes demanded by Jaworski had

such references. This is the recording made on June 23, 1972 in

which Nixon and Haldeman are discussing Watergate just six days

after the break-in.

The Nixon transcript of that tape turned over to Judge Sirica

upon orders of the Supreme Court showed many sections labelled

"unintelligible." It is a near certainty that the critical

sections were edited out by Nixon and General Haig before they were

turned over to Sirica and prior to their transcription. Judge

Sirica was the only person in the chain of possession of that tape

who could have been counted on to make a scientific analysis of the

tape to see whether it was tampered with before he received it.

His near brush with death in 1975 must be viewed in that light and

in the light of the PCG's use of weapon-induced heart attacks.

The rest of Nixon's tapes that were still in Gerald Ford's

possession and control might have contained many references to

assassinations and cover-ups. Rather than go through all of them

and edit or erase the critical material, it was more likely that

Ford would either turn them over to Nixon for total destruction or

sit on them as long as he was president.

The evidence for the Power Control Group's and Ford/Nixon's

strategy is as follows:

1. Nixon was White House action officer on Cuban invasion

plans in 1960.

2. Nixon was in contact with Hunt and others during the

Bay of Pigs planning.

3. Nixon lied to the American people by his own admission

about the Bay of Pigs during his TV debates with

Kennedy in 1960.

4. Nixon was financially linked to the Mafia and to Cuban

casino operations before Castro took over.

5. Nixon was acquainted with Hunt, Baker, Martinez,

Sturgis, Carlos Prio Socarras, and other Watergate

people and anti-Castro people in Florida, and he was

financially linked to Baker, Martinez and Socarras.

6. Hunt, Baker, Sturgis and Socarras were connected with

the assassination group in the murder of JFK.

7. Nixon was in Dallas for three days, including the

morning of the JFK assassination. He was trying to

stir up trouble for Kennedy.

8. Nixon went to Dallas under false pretenses. There was

no board meeting of the Pepsi Cola Company as he

announced his law firm had had to attend.

9. Nixon did not admit being in Dallas on the day Kennedy

was shot and did not reveal the true reason for his

trip. He held two press conferences on the two days

before the assassination, attacking both Kennedy and

Johnson and emphasizing the Democratic political

problems in Texas.

10. Research indicates that Nixon either knew in advance

about assassination plans, or learned about them soon

after the assassination.

11. Nixon proposed to Lyndon Johnson that Gerald Ford serve

on the Warren Commission.

12. Ford led the Commission cover-up by controlling the

questioning of key witnesses and by several other

means.

13. Ford helped firmly plant the idea that Oswald was the

only assassin and that there was no conspiracy by

publishing his own book, "Lee Harvey Oswald: Portrait

of the Assassin."

14. Ford purposefully covered up the conspiracy of the PCG

in the JFK assassination and also covered up the fact

that Oswald was a paid informer for the FBI. He did

this by dismissing the subject in his book as worthless

rumor and by keeping the executive sessions of the

Commission (where Oswald's FBI informer status was

discussed) classified Top Secret.

15. Ford continued the cover-up when he was questioned

before being confirmed by the Senate as Vice President.

He lied under oath twice to the Senate Committee. He

stated that he had written his book about Oswald with

no access to classified documents. He lied about this

because his book used classified documents about

Oswald's FBI informer status. He lied when he said

that the book was entitled, "Lee Harvey Oswald:

Portrait of *an* Assassin." This was significant in

1973 because the public by then had become very

skeptical about a lone assassin. By changing one word

in the title, Ford made the book seem a little less

like what it actually was--an effort to make Oswald the

assassin.

16. Jaworski aided in the JFK cover-up by sitting on

evidence of conspiracy accumulated by Waggoner Carr,

Texas Attorney General, who he represented in liaison

with the Warren Commission. He also stopped the

critical testimony of Jack Ruby when he testified

before the Warren Commission, and diverted attention

away from Ruby's intent to reveal the conspiracy to

kill both Kennedy and Oswald.

17. Nixon became president in 1968 only because Robert

Kennedy was killed by a conspiracy. Nixon was well

aware of the conspiracy whether or not he approved of

it in advance.

18. John Mitchell and J. Edgar Hoover joined Nixon and the

lower level members of the PCG in covering up the RFK

murder conspiracy. They classified the evidence "Top

Secret" and murdered several witnesses, controlled the

judge in the Sirhan trial and the district attorney and

the chief of police in Los Angeles during and after the

trial. They still control these people and the Los

Angeles County Board of Supervisors. Clarence Kelly

also became involved.

19. The plumbers group ordered the assassination of George

Wallace in 1972 to insure Nixon's election by picking

up Wallace's vote (about 18%, according to polls).

20. J. Edgar Hoover and Richard Helms were aware of who

killed John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy. They helped

cover-up both conspiracies.

21. John Mitchell controlled the trial of Clay Shaw and the

Garrison investigation and discredited Garrison by

framing him in a New Orleans gambling case.

22. Nixon and Haldeman discussed the assassination of John

Kennedy, the conspiracy, Hunt's involvement, the

possibility that Hunt might talk, the cover-up, the Bay

of Pigs relationship between Nixon, Hunt and the other

PCG members, and the briefing Nixon might have had to

give anyone running against him in 1972, on matters of

"national security".

23. Nixon and Mitchell discussed the assassinations and the

attempt to assassinate George Wallace. Mitchell

executed orders to suppress the truth about these

events.

24. Gerald Ford had possession of the most critical tapes

on which assassinations and cover-ups were discussed.

25. Jaworski could be counted on to keep the assassination

material under wraps even after his resignation. He

was aware of the conspiracy evidence and cover-up in

all three cases (JFK, RFK, George Wallace).

26. Hunt was taken care of and will keep silent. He had

been out of jail and living on a beautiful $100,000

estate in Florida with plenty of money, across the

street from his Bay of Pigs friend, Manuel Artime.

27. Clay Shaw was murdered by the PCG, undoubtedly to keep

him from talking once the truth about his CIA position

was revealed by Victor Marchetti. He was embalmed

before the coroner could determine the cause of death.

Evidence indicates he was killed somewhere and then

brought back to his apartment.

28. Hale Boggs, a Warren, Commission member, was possibly

killed by the PCG. Bogg's airplane disappeared in

Alaska. No trace of it was ever found and no

explanation of how the plane could have crashed has

ever been given. Mrs. Boggs has expressed doubts about

it being an accident.

29. Four of the seven Warren Commission members are dead:

Warren, Dulles, Russell and Boggs. Of the remaining

members, Ford was President, John McCloy is retired and

living in Connecticut, and John Sherman Cooper was made

ambassador to East Germany.

30. Richard Russell, Hale Boggs and Cooper believed there

was a conspiracy in the JFK assassination. Russell and

Boggs both said so publicly.

31. Haldeman erased 18 1/2 minutes of a taped discussion

with Nixon. This tape undoubtedly contained "national

security" matters. The fact that Haldeman did the

erasing can easily be determined by tracing the trail

of possession of the tape from the day it was taken out

of the vault to the day the gap was discovered.

Haldeman had the tape with the recorder alone for

nearly 48 hours. No one else had the tape alone long

enough to do the erasing.

32. Ford and the PCG contemplated pardons for Mitchell,

Haldeman, Ehrlichman and possibly others who know the

number one secret.

33. Ford's statements to the sub-committee of the House

Judiciary Committee concerning his pardon of Nixon

dodged the real issue. Only Elizabeth Holtzman asked

questions coming close to the number one secret. When

she asked about a prior agreement, Ford said, "I have

made no deal, there was no deal, *since I became Vice

President*." Those last few words were not reported by

the press, but a large number of Americans watched and

heard him say them. Of course he spoke truthfully

because the "deal" was made *before* he became Vice

President.

____________________

[1] Evans & Novak column -- September 12. 1974.

[2] "Paris Herald Tribune" -- September 12, 1974.

[3] "Compulsive Spy," Tad Szulc, Viking Press, 1974.

[4] "Nixon and the Mafia," Jeff Gerth, "Sundance," December, 1972.

[5] "My Six Crises," Richard M. Nixon.

[6] "Compulsive Spy."

[7] "Nixon and the Mafia."

[8] "Nixon, Bay of Pigs & Watergate," -- R.E. Sprague, "Computers and

Automation," January, 1973.

[9] "Nixon, Bay of Pigs & Watergate."

[10] Trowbridge Ford, Holy Cross College, Boston, MA, Several papers and

articles.

[11] Warren Commission Hearings & Exhibits -- Vol. 23, Pages 941-943.

[12] Nixon Transcript of June 23 1972 tape -- "New York Times," August

6, 1974.

[13] Trowbridge Ford -- Article on Gerald Ford & Warren Commission.

[14] Ibid.

[15] Gerald Ford "Lee Harvey Oswald: Portrait of the Assassin."

[16] "The Framing of Jim Garrison", R.E. Sprague, "Computers and

Automation," December, 1973.

[17] "The CIA and the Kennedy Assassination" -- Unpublished article by

R.E. Sprague.

[18] Nixon tape, June 23, 1972.

[19] Warren Commission Exhibits -- Testimony of Jack Ruby, Vol. V,

Pages 181-213 and Vol. XIV, pages 504-571. Also Trowbridge Ford

article on Jaworski.

[20] "Washington Watch" and Triss Coffin newsletter, August 10, 1974.

[21] Zodiac News Service release -- August 20, 1974.

* * * * * * *

[John Ritchson]

Part12.

Chapter 12

The Second Line of Defense and Cover-Ups in 1975 and 1976

The mini-war waged by assassination researchers and a few

Congressmen from 1964 to 1976 to reopen the major assassination

inquiries never really disturbed the Power Control Group. But in

1975, simultaneous with the revelations about all of the terrible

things the CIA and the FBI did, the researchers and a few of their

friends in the media and in Congress began to draw more attention

than was comfortable for the PCG.

A special renewed effort became necessary to extend the cover-

ups. Part of this effort was a program to bring the media back

under control and to reinforce media support of the cover-ups.

This has been discussed in some detail in Chapter 9. Another part

of this effort was the expansion of the Rockefeller Commission's

assignment to reinforce the cover-up of the JFK assassination

conspiracy. Separate new efforts were necessary to control the

courts and lawyers and other public officials in the King and

Robert Kennedy assassination conspiracies. These were brought

about by appeals for new trials by James Earl Ray and Sirhan B.

Sirhan. The appeals were accompanied by new revelations. New

publicity was given to demands for an investigation into the

Wallace shooting by prominent people, including Wallace himself.

A minor success in the JFK case was scored by researchers with

the assistance of Dick Gregory, Geraldo Rivera of ABC, Tom Snyder

of NBC, Mort Sahl and others. They managed to have the Zapruder

film and other photographic evidence of conspiracy shown on local

and national television. No one of any intelligence outside the

PCG who has even seen the Zapruder film questions the fact that

shots came from two different directions in Dealey Plaza. This

breakthrough after eleven years of effort put new public and

Congressional pressures on the PCG. It was closely followed by a

grass roots campaign conducted by Mark Lane's Citizens Commission

of Inquiry to reopen the JFK case. Pressure was brought to bear on

Congressmen by their local constituents as a result of this

campaign. Henry Gonzalez from Texas and Thomas Downing from

Virginia introduced resolutions in the House of Representatives

calling for the reopening of all four cases and the JFK case, so

the public and Congress had a formal base to work with and a goal

to reach.

New revelations were made in 1975 about the FBI's and the CIA's

information withheld from the Warren Commission. From Dallas came

the admission that Oswald had been in closer contact with the FBI

than believed and that Jack Ruby had been an FBI informer.

Perhaps the most dangerous development for the PCG was the

creation of a sub-committee under the Church committee to

investigate the JFK assassination. This two-man subcommittee

formed by Senator Gary Hart of Colorado and Senator Schweiker of

Pennsylvania became a real threat when it was given authority by

the full Senate Committee on Intelligence to conduct their own

independent investigation with a staff of nine people. It would be

harder to control their efforts than to control the Church

committee, where the PCG had several strong allies, including

Senators Goldwater and Tower.

Gerald Ford, William Colby, Richard Helms (from his faraway post

in Asia) and the other PCG members developed a three-prong strategy

for the JFK case in order to cope with all of these new problems.

First came the reinforcement of the lone-assassin Warren

Commission scenario. Ford selected David Belin to be chief of

staff of the Rockefeller Commission. Ford admitted that Belin in

his Rockefeller Commission role--as well as in his advocacy to

reopen the JFK case in order to prove the Warren Commission

findings correct--was acting as "one of our best staff members."

This was necessary so that the Rockefeller Commission could add a

new assignment to its original charter and investigate the CIA and

FBI. The new assignment was to prove that all of the new questions

about the Zapruder film and the evidence for assassins on the

grassy knoll were answerable in support of Warren Commission

conclusions.

The former Warren commissioner now President, who led the

cover-up and pardoned Nixon, nominated the Warren Commission staff

lawyer who led the cover-up at the working level as the new

Rockefeller Commission chief of staff.

Belin did his job like a faithful dog. He personally called in

the most dangerous researchers, including Cyril Wecht and Dick

Gregory's cohorts, Ralph Schoenman and Robert Groden, who had been

making all of the noise on television. With the help (and possibly

the knowledge) of only one other staff man, Belin interviewed these

witnesses briefly, almost casually: then he misquoted them, edited

their statements, or left them out of the Rockefeller Report. He

purposefully did not call any researchers other than Wecht who

might have presented some embarrassing evidence of conspiracy. He

instead called a number of "experts" from the stable of PCG people,

including some of the Ramsey Clark doctors panel that had examined

the medical evidence in 1968 to back up the Warren Commission

during the Garrison investigation and the Clay Shaw trial. He also

called on reliable Dr. Lattimer, the urologist, to testify again

about the bullet wounds above the navel.

Belin wrote the chapter of the Rockefeller Commission Report

himself. It formed a base for controlled media presentations of

the lone assassin scenario. CBS used much of the basic material in

its series in 1975. Others quoted liberally from the favorite

misquotes of Cyril Wecht and the statements of the CIA doctors

concerning the fatal shot at frame 313 of the Zapruder film. That

had always been a sticky point with Belin and the other Warren

Commission defenders and technical cover-up artists in the PCG.

Belin was nearly driven to distraction at times, trying to avoid

any discussion of the back-to-the-left acceleration of JFK's head

following the Z313 shot.

He was therefore delighted to be able to produce a medical

opinion that the back-to-the-left motion was consistent with a shot

directly from the rear. The fact that no ballistics experts or

physics experts were called to testify about Newton's second law of

motion and what happens to an object when struck by a rifle bullet

traveling at twice to three times the speed of sound was never

questioned by the Rockefeller panel or the media. Belin easily

eliminated the assassins on the grassy knoll simply by persuading

the FBI to say the assassins weren't there at all.

Over a period of several months in the second half of 1975, the

PCG (through its control agents in the 15 media organizations, and

by using Belin's creation) hammered away again at the lone assassin

thesis. They caused the wave of excitement and furor created by

Gregory, Lane, Groden, Schoenman and their friends to die out.

Lectures on university campuses, discussions on FM radio talk shows

late at night, and conspiracy books and articles in underground

newspapers appeared as always. But there was no more showing of

the Zapruder film on ABC, NBC or CBS; nor was there any talk of

conspiracy in any of the major fifteen national news media

organizations.

The second part of the strategy was to create a fall-back, or

second line of defense in the JFK case. If necessary the same idea

could also be applied in the other three cases when the situation

became too dangerous. There was less danger in 1975 in the RFK,

MLK and Wallace cases because the researchers and the media had not

yet consistently begun to tie in the CIA, FBI and other PCG high

level people. In 1976 a danger emerged in the MLK case when it was

revealed that J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI might be linked and that

Hoover attempted to get King to commit suicide. However, that

development occurred several months after the implementation of the

strategy began in the JFK case. Of course there had never been any

danger with the Chappaquiddick crime, because few researchers

realized what the PCG had accomplished in that event. No

suspicions existed in Congress either, beyond some curiosity about

Tony Ulasewicz and E. Howard Hunt's strange visits to the island

and to Hyannisport.

There may be several second lines of defense positions already

prepared for the JFK case. The one that has been implemented in

1975 and 1976 is the "Castro did it in revenge" position. The PCG

realizes that while the media will behave like slaves to present

the first line of defense (Oswald did it alone), the public isn't

buying it any more. In 1969, shortly after the Clay Shaw trial

ended, the percent of people disbelieving the lone assassin theory

fell to its all-time low of just over 50%. By 1976 it had risen to

80%, despite the faithful efforts of CBS, "Time," "Newsweek," et

al. More importantly, Richard Schweiker, Gary Hart, Henry

Gonzalez, Thomas Downing, and a very large part of the House and

Senate weren't buying the lone assassin story any more either.

So, a good second line of defense story was needed. It had to

be one that the House and Senate and Schweiker, Church, Downing and

hopefully Gonzalez would buy. It had to be one which could be

created out of existing facts and then shored up by planted

evidence, faked records, dependable witnesses lying under oath, and

once again, the control and use of the media. The "Castro did it

in revenge" story met these requirements. The media had already

helped to some extent by publishing information from Jack Anderson,

Lyndon B. Johnson and others about Castro's turning around various

CIA agents or sending agents of his own, including Oswald, to

assassinate JFK. Perhaps even more importantly, Senator Schweiker

said he believed Castro might have been behind the assassination

and that this possibility should be investigated.

The Castro story strategy was implemented in 1975. Gradually at

first, a story appeared here or there in the press about the

assassins assigned to kill Castro. Then the media began to reprint

the Jack Anderson story about Castro's turning around of some of

these agents. New authors of the story appeared. Anderson's

original story seemed to be forgotten. These articles never seemed

to have an identifiable source or any proof. Hank Greenspun of the

Las Vegas newspaper circuit and the man involved with Howard

Hughes, Larry O'Brien, released a story to the "Chicago Tribune."

He said his information came from reliable sources.

The momentum began to build. More and more "leaked" information

about Castro and assassins and Oswald being a pro-Castroite hit the

establishment media. The stories and the sequence of events began

to be predictable, if a researcher had understood the PCG and their

fight for survival in 1975 and 1976. Then the Church committee and

the Schweiker sub-committee issued statements that they were going

to investigate the "Castro did it" theory. The PCG began feeding

them information in various forms and various ways that would back

up the idea. The JFK sex scandal was released by Judith Exner.

The PCG provided her with an incentive to spice up the "Castro did

it" theory with a little sex involving JFK and one of the assassins

assigned to Castro, John Roselli.

The PCG realized they had the double advantage of drawing

attention to Roselli and Castro and the turn-around assassin idea,

while at the same time gnawing away at JFK's image. There was

press speculation that Exner was a Mafia plant in the White House

to find out how much JFK knew about the Castro assassination plans.

Since Frank Sinatra had introduced Judith to both JFK and Roselli,

there was speculation about Sinatra's Mafia friends linked to the

rat pack, to Peter Lawford, to JFK's sister and to JFK himself.

All of this was meat for the PCG's grinder. It certainly drew

Schweiker's attention away from Helms, Hunt, Gabaldin, Shaw,

Ferrie, Seymour and all of the other operatives involved in JFK's

murder. In fact, the Schweiker staff, which had the names and

locations of several participants and witnesses that could pinpoint

the Helms-Hunt-Shaw-Gabaldin group as the real assassins as early

as September, 1975 did not interview more than one or two of them

and did not follow up on the rest at all. Their attention was

diverted by the second line of defense strategy and they were also

influenced by infiltration by the PCG.

Part three of the strategy was the control of the Congress and

the committees in the House and the Senate concerned with

investigations of the intelligence community and the JFK

assassination. This subject will be covered in depth in Chapter

14. Suffice it to say here that the PCG planted people on the

staffs of the Church committee and the Schweiker sub-committee.

They exercised control over the other committees in the House and

Senate (Abzug, Don Edwards, Pike committees) and they controlled

the House Rules committee, which effectively blocked the Gonzalez

and Downing resolutions for over a year.

The CIA has always had its supporters in both House and Senate.

So has the FBI. So did J. Edgar Hoover (sometimes through

blackmail) and Richard Helms. There was a story published in the

"Washington Post" about a dinner party given by Tom Braden, former

CIA man, at which all of Richard Helms' old buddies rallied to his

defense. Several well-known Congressmen were there and Senator

Symington gave a rousing speech supporting Helms in his hour of

need.

Gerald Ford, of course, as then titular leader of the PCG, had

many old friends in the House. Nixon had many supporters in both

House and Senate and still has to this day. Thus, control by the

PCG over Congress and committees is not all that difficult.

Specific examples will be given in Chapter 14 of how this really

works. So the cover-ups continue. The PCG is still in the

driver's seat. The three parts of their strategy work very well.

The lone assassin story is repeated at least once a month in some

media source or other. The "Castro did it" story will no doubt

make its official appearance again.

The Congress is under control. Gonzalez was not under control,

nor was Downing. But they couldn't do much without the Rules

Committee, which was controlled.

The people are left with no effective way of doing anything

about the PCG and their crimes. What is worse, there is no way the

people can elect the man of their choice.

* * * * * * *

[John Ritchson]

Part13.

Chapter 13

The 1976 Election and Conspiracy Fever

To dramatize what might happen and probably did happen in 1976,

this chapter has been prepared by assuming the attitude typical of

today's innocent Americans. A new disease is sweeping America.

No, it's not the flu; it's conspiracy fever.[1]

People afflicted by the disease imagine conspiracies everywhere.

They believe, for example, that the CIA arranged for the takeover

in Chile and the assassination of Salvador Allende. They even

think Henry Kissinger had something to do with it. These poor

feverish devils have the strange idea that J. Edgar Hoover was a

fiend rather than a public hero. They imagine that he ordered a

vicious campaign against Dr. Martin Luther King and a conspiracy

against most of young America called Cointelpro. Some even think

Hoover had King killed. There are some Californians with the west

coast strain of this bug who imagine that the FBI and the

California authorities created a conspiracy in San Diego and Los

Angeles against black citizens. The California group also think

there was something strange about Donald DeFreeze and the

Symbionese Liberation Army. They suspect an FBI or California

state authority conspiracy, complete with police provocateurs,

double agents, faked prison breaks, and a Patty Hearst, alias

Tania, all thrown in by our own government to create a climate that

would make the public accept the prevalence of terrorism and demand

a police state.

The disease spread to Congressmen as well. It does not seem to

be limited, as it was before Watergate, to people under the age of

30. There are even Congressmen with a more virulent form of the

malady who are convinced their telephones are still being tapped.

They, along with thousands of others who suffer, no doubt reached

this conclusion just because they were told by a CIA-controlled

media that hundreds of telephones were tapped a few years ago.

Early forms of conspiracy fever are no longer considered to be

dangerous. For example, all those sick citizens who imagined

conspiracies in the incidents at Tonkin Gulf, Songmy, Mylai, the

Pueblo and the Black Panther murders are now considered to be more

or less recovered, since it turns out it was not their imaginations

working overtime after all. Even the special variety of the fever

which caused the impression that the CIA murdered a series of

foreign heads-of-state is no longer on the danger list.

There is still one form of the illness, however, that is

officially considered to be very dangerous, virulent, and to be

stamped out at all costs. It is the version producing the illusion

that all of America's domestic assassinations were conspiracies.

Those infected believe the conspiracies are interlinked in a giant

conspiracy to take over the electoral process in the United States

and to conceal this from the American people. Some citizens are

known to have this worst form of the fever. They include a

Congressman or two. Others have come down with a milder form in

which they imagine separate conspiracies in four assassination

cases (John and Robert Kennedy, Dr. King, and the attempted

assassination of George Wallace).

Members of the Ford Administration, particularly David Belin,

Mr. Ford's staff member on the Rockefeller Commission, went along

with an analysis made by Dr. Jacob Cohen, a professional fever

analyst, that the disease has been spreading rapidly because of a

small group of "carriers" traveling around the country who are

infecting everyone else. Some of these carriers, called

assassination "buffs", were thought to have contracted the fever as

many as twelve years ago.

In the disease's worst form, the patient imagines that there

exists a powerful, high level group of individuals, some of whom

have intelligence experience. The highest level of fever in these

patients produces the idea that this high level group, usually

called the PCG, will eliminate presidential candidates not in their

favor or under their control. Others imagine that Jimmy Carter has

been brought into the PCG by threats against his children and

careful briefings by George Bush.

It is worth analyzing the sick people with this domestic

assassination conspiracy fever to see how far their imaginations

take them. They calculate that the PCG, fearing exposure if any

president is not under their control and influence, will go to

whatever lengths are required to insure the election of the man

they do control. The idea is that Gerald Ford was nicely in the

PCG's pocket because he has been covering up for them ever since

1964. He has continued to help them through 1975 and 1976 by

maintaining a steady cover-up effort on all four cases. Jimmy

Carter was perhaps brought under control. The feverish "buffs"

figure that the PCG would have been sure to eliminate Jimmy Carter

unless he could be controlled.

The scenario continues into the future. The more control

exercised by the PCG, the stronger they become and the more people

in the executive branch become beholden to them to continue

covering up the cover-ups.

So, wake up America. Wipe out this disease. It's just as

dangerous as Communism, if not more so. Like the general in "Z",

Americans must realize that such a disease has to be eliminated

whenever and wherever it appears.

____________________

[1] "Conspiracy Fever" is derived from an article with that title by

Jacob Cohen, a psychologist, in "Commentary" magazine, October,

1975.

* * * * * * *

End Part13.

[John Ritchson]

Part14.

Chapter 14

Congress and the People

The last hope of the people to take back their government from

the PCG is through Congress. The executive branch is a captive of

the PCG. The legislative branch has no power in the situation.

Where courts or judges do have some small measure of power, as in

the hearings and appeals for a new trial for James Earl Ray, they

have been controlled by the PCG. The ruling of the judge in the

Ray appeals case, for example, was obviously a decision made for

him by someone higher up. He ruled that Ray could not have a new

trial after hearing a vast amount of evidence of conspiracy and

solid evidence that Percy Foreman had duped Ray into pleading

guilty.

Unless a people's revolution comes along, and that hardly seems

likely, the only possibility left is to hope that Congress can do

it. What are the odds? From what has been pointed out so far, it

is obvious that if Congress is to expose the PCG, throw the rascals

in jail, and wipe the slate clean to seize the country back for the

people, a tremendous battle will be required. All of the forces of

the PCG, including their friends in the House and Senate, will be

focussed on preventing this from happening. A power base within

both houses would have to be created that could not only do battle

with the PCG but that would not be fooled by their myriad of

fiendishly clever techniques, methods and stratagems. It would

have to be a power base that protected itself from infiltration and

usurpation of its own resources. It would have to somehow conquer

the media control problem; otherwise, no American citizen would

know what it was doing or what the battle was about.

How would such a battle start and such a power base be

constructed? An important step would be to purify the special

committee created by either resolution and to purify the staff.

Preventing infiltration of staff by the PCG is especially

important. As mentioned in Chapter 12, the Church Committee staff

and the Schweiker sub-committee staff were infiltrated by the PCG,

and specifically the CIA. A leading assassination researcher and

former intelligence officer in the Defense Intelligence Agency who

knew many, many CIA agents discovered two of them in the Church

Committee staff offices in the fall of 1975. The other staff

members had not been aware that these two men were CIA agents

because they were "deep cover" agents.

This problem is rather complex because there is always great

pressure from the House or Senate to create a balance on any

appointed committee. Thus the Church committee was hamstrung by

several of the Senators appointed to be on it: they were close

friends and supporters of the CIA and FBI. Senators Goldwater and

Tower, for example, fought very hard to block any efforts to have

the entire committee investigate potential CIA or FBI involvement

in domestic assassinations. This does not necessarily mean that

Goldwater and Tower are members of the inner circle of the PCG.

But it does mean that PCG members who know who killed John Kennedy

and why can influence Goldwater and Tower to block such efforts.

The first step in the House or Senate might be floor voting

because of the tight control exercised by the PCG over the

committee procedure on resolutions. In the House, for example, the

Rules Committee is all-powerful in determining which resolutions

are brought to the floor.

Henry Gonzalez introduced his resolution HR204 in 1975 and sent

it to the rules committee. Nearly a year passed. On March 18,

1976 Mr. Gonzalez, together with Mr. Downing, was tired of waiting

for some action by Chairman Madden and they took the issue to the

floor of the House for discussion.[1] By this time the two

representatives had 125 co-sponsors for their two resolutions (an

unusually large number). Gonzalez and Downing had taken over the

floor of the House for two hours and had several supporting

speakers. No one rose in opposition. Prior to that time,

Representative Sisk from California and Representative Bolling from

West Virginia had been vehemently outspoken in the Rules Committee

against both resolutions. Madden, Sisk and Bolling all left the

House before Downing and Gonzalez started speaking.

As a result of Gonzalez's and Downing's efforts, Madden was

forced by Speaker Albert and other members of the House and by some

of his own constituents to hold a formal hearing on the two

resolutions on March 31, 1976. The PCG controlled the hearing

through Sisk, Bolling and Lott. The resolutions were tabled,

subject to future recall by the chairman. The vote was nine to

six. Representative Bolling was called into the hearing from the

House floor to cast the ninth vote at the last minute. He heard

none of the arguments. He didn't have to. The PCG had instructed

him on how to vote.

This event is described to illustrate how difficult it would be

to overcome the control advantages on the side of the PCG. Only on

the Senate or House floor might it be possible to equalize things.

The two events, the two hour discussion on the House floor on March

18, reported by the "Congressional Record," and the hearing by the

rules committee on March 31 illustrate another problem Congress has

combatting the PCG. Not one of the major news media organizations

reported either event. Two hours on the House floor is an

incredibly long time for any subject. There were many reporters

present from television, radio, newspapers and press services. Mark

Lane saw to that. But nothing appeared on CBS, NBC, ABC, or in

"Time," "Newsweek," or the "New York Times." Why? The answer is

obvious. Very tight control over the news from the House is

exercised by the PCG.

The larger implication is there for all to see who want to open

their eyes. Seeing it and believing it are two different things.

For nearly all Congressmen who still have faith in America, the

whole point of this book, and the existence of a Power Control

Group which included Ford, Nixon, Kissinger, the CIA, the FBI, the

fifteen major news media management level people, plus nearly

anyone else of importance in the executive branch and many

Congressmen, is too much to swallow. They would rather have the

whole thing go quietly away than face up to something that

gigantic. And that is the real source of the PCG's strength, the

unbelievability of it all.

Addendum to Chapter 14

Several truly historic and highly encouraging events occurred in

the months of September and October, 1976 that could indicate a

change in the tide and power and control described in earlier

chapters.

First, on September 15, a coalition of representatives from the

Black Caucus, Henry Gonzalez and Thomas Downing managed to get

Resolution H1540 through the House Rules Committee. Mark Lane,

Coretta King and others were responsible for creating pressures

that finally convinced Speaker Carl Albert, Chairman Tom Madden of

the Rules Committee and others that this was necessary and

desirable. The new resolution, made up of parts of the Downing and

Gonzalez resolutions plus input from Representative Walter Fauntroy

from the Black Caucus called for a special 12-person committee to

reopen the JFK and Dr. King cases and any other deaths that the

committee might decide to investigate.

The Rules Committee voted nine to four in favor. Representative

Bolling, who perhaps unknowingly had lent his support to the

opposition in the earlier vote, was an important swing vote and

actually introduced the resolution in the meeting. The position of

the nine who voted for the resolution was more than vindicated two

days later, when the House, by the extraordinary vote of 280 to 64,

passed the resolution. History was made. On that day cheers

should have gone up from several hundred dedicated researchers

around the world, and the Power Control Group should have begun

looking for rocks to crawl under.

The real war was only beginning, however. The "New York Times"

barely reported the event, did not mention the vote, and buried the

story in the middle of another story with one-half inch in one

column. The "Washington Star" and "Post" carried larger stories

and the "White Plains Reporter Dispatch" made it a first page

headline story. The PCG's media control slipped a bit.

The next hurdle was for Downing, Gonzalez and Fauntroy to

convince Albert that the chairman of the new committee for 1977

should be Mr. Gonzalez since Mr. Downing had announced his

retirement. Because elections were being held in November, Mr.

Albert named Mr. Downing as chairman for the balance of 1976, with

Mr. Gonzalez as next in line. He also let it be known to the press

that Mr. Gonzalez would be the best choice to head the committee

next year.

Mr. Albert then named ten other members of the committee for the

1976 period. Four of them, Fauntroy, Burke, Stokes and Ford, were

members of the Black Caucus. Stewart McKinney, Representative from

Connecticut, is a well known supporter of the truth. Those five,

together with Downing and Gonzalez, could probably be counted on to

try to arrive at the truth. The other five representatives--Dodd

from Connecticut, Preyer from Tennessee, Devine from Ohio, Thone

from Nebraska and Talcott from California--were unknown quantities.

If the PCG theory holds up, at least one of them, and perhaps two,

will turn out to be PCG representatives.

The next event of significance occurred on October 4 when Mr.

Downing named Richard A. Sprague, former district attorney from

Philadelphia and fearless prosecutor of the Yablonski murderers, as

executive director of the committee's staff. The main significance

of this event was who was not named. Bernard Fensterwald, Jr., was

in strong contention, but he was not selected because of suspicions

that he might be a CIA agent and also because of conflicts of

interests among his clientele. Fensterwald represented Otto

Otepka, James McCord, James Earl Ray and Andrew St. George, among

others. There is certainly a strong CIA flavor and PCG influence

among his clients. Whether or not Bud Fensterwald himself works

for the CIA or the PCG, his rejection as executive director was a

healthy sign that the committee might be able to go through the

purification process described as essential in Chapter 14.

Richard A. Sprague had his hands full attempting to separate PCG

applicants for staff positions from non-PCG members. The PCG,

during the same time period (September and October) these historic

events were taking place, was very active in spreading its second

line of defense information. "Castro did it in revenge" stories

began popping up everywhere. Jack Anderson was revived to back up

the strategy by publishing another of his "Castro did it" columns.

____________________

[1] House Resolution 204 -- Henry Gonzalez

House Resolution 498 -- Thomas Downing

* * * * * * *

End Part14.