Operation Mockingbird

John Simkin · July 11, 2007

This article is a Mockingbird Must! Contains great stuff on Fairfield Foundation and varied and sundry Foundations of Left-Gatekeeping! Its not realy about Cindy Sheehan, but about the fuction of The Nation.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/jun2007/nati-j19.shtml

It could be argued that the Guardian plays this role in the UK. (It is considered to be the most left-wing of all our daily newspapers). I was told my someone at the Guardian that it was seriously considering serializing David Talbot's Brothers. It never happened. In fact, the paper has yet to review the book. I cannot remember the last time the Guardian tackled the assassination of JFK.

Greg Parker · July 11, 2007

I received my copy of E. Howard Hunt’s American Spy this morning. Much to my surprise he admits to the existence of Operation Mockingbird (I believe he is the first CIA operative to admit that this highly secret operation existed). He defines it as “a highly successful project with the objective of having direct influence over the American media”.
He also explains the role played by Frank Wisner and Cord Meyer in Operation Mockingbird. He also admits that the killing of Mary Pinchot Meyer was a “professional hit”.

Hunt admits that Henry Luce and Philip Graham played an important role in Operation Mockingbird. However, he rejects that they were in the pay of the CIA and acted in the way that they did because they were “extreme patriots who saw themselves as soldiers in America’s war against the spread of global Communism”.

John, does he actually say the operation was named Mockingbird?

Our friends at wiki say "The word Mockingbird was first used by Deborah Davis in Katharine the Great (1979). There is no evidence that the CIA called it this. Cord Meyer said that when he joined the operation in 1951 it was so secret that it did not have a name."

This was something I'd long suspected. When the "Family Jewels" were released detailing Operation Mockingbird, it was obviously not the same operation - or even part of - the only commonality being that it involved journalists.

Maybe Davis heard of the operation, and because it did involve journalists, thought that it must be the operation she was describing?

Not that it matters too much. Even if it had no name, the name Mockingbird should probably stick for convenience sake.

John Simkin · July 11, 2007

John, does he actually say the operation was named Mockingbird?
Our friends at wiki say "The word Mockingbird was first used by Deborah Davis in Katharine the Great (1979). There is no evidence that the CIA called it this. Cord Meyer said that when he joined the operation in 1951 it was so secret that it did not have a name."

Yes, on pages 133 and 148-53.

I wrote the Wiki entry for Operation Mockingbird (it originally said it was an urban myth). It is true that Deborah Davis was the first person to use the term Mockingbird. She told me that the information came from a senior figure in the CIA. It was the same source who told her that Richard Ober was Deep Throat.

However, it is possible that E. Howard Hunt got his information on Mockingbird from my website. The passages in his book is very similiar to what I wrote about Frank Wisner/Cord Meyer and Mockingbird.

Greg Parker · July 11, 2007

John, does he actually say the operation was named Mockingbird?
Our friends at wiki say "The word Mockingbird was first used by Deborah Davis in Katharine the Great (1979). There is no evidence that the CIA called it this. Cord Meyer said that when he joined the operation in 1951 it was so secret that it did not have a name."

Yes, on pages 133 and 148-53.

I wrote the Wiki entry for Operation Mockingbird (it originally said it was an urban myth). It is true that Deborah Davis was the first person to use the term Mockingbird. She told me that the information came from a senior figure in the CIA. It was the same source who told her that Richard Ober was Deep Throat.

However, it is possible that E. Howard Hunt got his information on Mockingbird from my website. The passages in his book is very similiar to what I wrote about Frank Wisner/Cord Meyer and Mockingbird.

Thanks John. That clears it up for me, as far as it probably can be.

Nathaniel Heidenheimer · July 11, 2007

Bill: I guess its Farfield Foundation

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title...ield_Foundation

turns out my wife's friend didn't know of the F.F. Perhaps I mixed it up with the Catherwood Foundation, when talking about it last summer.

Shanet Clark · July 12, 2007

John Simkins:

Did you notice the MOCKINGBIRD reference in the family jewels that were

recently de-classified? The CIA made it appear that the term project mockingbird

only applied to a narrow pair of CIA investigations of journalists as ordered

by President Kennedy in 1963..................

a limited hang out and spin doctored

english, to de classify only that fleeting element in the program

called MOCKINGBIRD

William Plumlee · July 16, 2007

[quote

Edited December 25, 2007 by William Plumlee

Thomas Graves · July 16, 2007

John Simkins:
Did you notice the MOCKINGBIRD reference in the family jewels that were

recently de-classified? The CIA made it appear that the term project mockingbird

only applied to a narrow pair of CIA investigations of journalists as ordered

by President Kennedy in 1963..................

a limited hang out and spin doctored

english, to de classify only that fleeting element in the program

called MOCKINGBIRD

FWIW: KEN-COM was the secret committee which JFK and RFK set up and one of the operations used the cut out code word "Mockingbird". It was reference in secret reports to JFK and the NSC's staff from the CIA. Mockingbird was inserted as a coded reference by the CIA when the Church Committee first found out about an alleged secret team operating within the affairs of the White House and the WH Situation Room. This was a specialized ultra secret covert team attached to KEN-COM by US military through the Pentagon.

Ken-Com was JFK's and RFK's little private secret. Perhaps they launched a few private and secret wars, a " Paturian (sp) Guard" type operation. Most elements within the CIA sections did not know about this Ken-COM Committee until some years after Watergate. Point being Mockingbird was part of KenCom. Its true operational connection to the WH is still a tightly held secret. The CIA acted as support for the Ken-Com operations and worked closely with Task Force W and other OMC operations embedded within CIA's secret "specialized" operational teams.

Ask Ask Jim Marrs, Peter Lemkin, and John Stockwell, about what they remember about Ken Com,why and how it came into being. Perhaps they would care to give their views and thoughts on this to the forum members.

_____________

Hi Tosh,

Interesting and, I think, important post. Thanks for the input.

BTW, I think the word you are trying to spell is Praetorian ("Of, being, or belonging to the elite bodyguard of the Roman emperors"). Difficult Latin word to spell-- in fact, the Latin language in general is "all 'Greek' to me." lol

Good to see you back on the Forum.

--Thomas

_____________

Edited July 16, 2007 by Thomas Graves

William Kelly · July 23, 2007

https://www.cia.gov/news-information/press-...nt-liaison.html<H1 class=documentFirstHeading>CIA Names New Entertainment Liaison</H1> June 4, 2007

The Central Intelligence Agency has chosen Paul Barry, a veteran officer, as its new liaison to the entertainment industry. "For more than two decades, Paul Barry has worked with every part of the Agency, in the United States and overseas," said CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano. "He not only understands how the organization protects America, he has devoted his professional life to supporting and improving its operations."

The CIA's Entertainment Industry Liaison, within the Office of Public Affairs, plays a vital role in explaining the Agency's national security mission to the American people. For years, the CIA has worked with creative talents on films, publications, and other media to give their projects a greater sense of authenticity. That program, which continues under Director Michael V. Hayden, seeks to convey the dedication, skill, and daring that define Agency officers.

Now, when the CIA cooperates on a promising venture, fiction or nonfiction, Mr. Barry is the gateway to the Agency. He can advise on scripts and stories, arrange interviews with the men and women who each day accomplish the tasks of intelligence and espionage, and facilitate visits to CIA Headquarters, either to build background knowledge or to film at the most important location in the world of clandestine service.

The process of selecting the Entertainment Industry Liaison was rigorous. "In an agency filled with exciting, rewarding assignments, this job is unique," said CIA spokesman Gimigliano. "We had a large pool of outstanding candidates. We wanted someone who knows the CIA top to bottom, has contacts throughout the Intelligence Community, and has the vision, energy, and powers of explanation that the post demands. Paul Barry has all those qualifications, and we are glad to have him on the team in the Office of Public Affairs."

To contact the Entertainment Industry Liaison, click here.

William Kelly · July 23, 2007

https://www.cia.gov/news-information/press-...nt-liaison.html<H1 class=documentFirstHeading>CIA Names New Entertainment Liaison</H1> June 4, 2007

The Central Intelligence Agency has chosen Paul Barry, a veteran officer, as its new liaison to the entertainment industry...

Now, when the CIA cooperates on a promising venture, fiction or nonfiction, Mr. Barry is the gateway to the Agency. He can advise on scripts and stories, arrange interviews with the men and women who each day accomplish the tasks of intelligence and espionage, and facilitate visits to CIA Headquarters, either to build background knowledge or to film at the most important location in the world of clandestine service.

To contact the Entertainment Industry Liaison, click here.

Hey, If the "CIA cooperates on a promising venture, fiction or nonficiton, Mr. Barry is the gateway to the Agency. He can advise on scripts and stoires, arrange interviews....and build background knowledge...." then he should be able to help SOS's promising nonficiton documentary - and provide files and photos of Gordon Campbell, David Moralles and George Joannides.

Shawn should contact Mr. Barry, the new CIA EIL for some deep background.

I'm sure he could set him straight.

BK

William Kelly · July 31, 2007

John Simkins:
Did you notice the MOCKINGBIRD reference in the family jewels that were

recently de-classified? The CIA made it appear that the term project mockingbird

only applied to a narrow pair of CIA investigations of journalists as ordered

by President Kennedy in 1963..................

a limited hang out and spin doctored

english, to de classify only that fleeting element in the program

called MOCKINGBIRD

FWIW: KEN-COM was the secret committee which JFK and RFK set up and one of the operations used the cut out code word "Mockingbird". It was reference in secret reports to JFK and the NSC's staff from the CIA. Mockingbird was inserted as a coded reference by the CIA when the Church Committee first found out about an alleged secret team operating within the affairs of the White House and the WH Situation Room. This was a specialized ultra secret covert team attached to KEN-COM by US military through the Pentagon.

Ken-Com was JFK's and RFK's little private secret. Perhaps they launched a few private and secret wars, a " Paturian (sp) Guard" type operation. Most elements within the CIA sections did not know about this Ken-COM Committee until some years after Watergate. Point being Mockingbird was part of KenCom. Its true operational connection to the WH is still a tightly held secret. The CIA acted as support for the Ken-Com operations and worked closely with Task Force W and other OMC operations embedded within CIA's secret "specialized" operational teams.

Ask Ask Jim Marrs, Peter Lemkin, and John Stockwell, about what they remember about Ken Com,why and how it came into being. Perhaps they would care to give their views and thoughts on this to the forum members.

_____________

Hi Tosh,

Interesting and, I think, important post. Thanks for the input.

BTW, I think the word you are trying to spell is Praetorian ("Of, being, or belonging to the elite bodyguard of the Roman emperors"). Difficult Latin word to spell-- in fact, the Latin language in general is "all 'Greek' to me." lol

Good to see you back on the Forum.

--Thomas

_____________

John Simkin · August 1, 2007

Has anyone read Secrets: The CIA's War at Home. The author, Angus Mackenzie worked as an investigative journalist and had articles published in Rolling Stone, Mother Jones, Washington Post, San Francisco Examiner and the Columbia Journalism Review. During his short career he won or shared over two dozen journalism awards, including the National Magazine Award.

Mackenzie also taught at the School of Journalism at the University of California. Along with David Weir he was a co-founder of the Center for Investigative Reporting, where he managed contracts with 60 Minutes, 20/20, CNN, CBS News, ABC News, and many other outlets.

Mackenzie was particularly interested in the covert activities of the Central Intelligence Agency. Over many years he accumulated evidence of the CIA's systematic efforts to suppress and censor information. Mackenzie discovered that this covert operations originated during the Cold War as the CIA instituted programs of domestic surveillance and agent provocateur activities. This included infiltrating organizations to setting up CIA-front student groups.

Angus Mackenzie died on 13th May, 1994, of brain cancer. The manuscript he had been working on for fifteen years was completed and edited by his friends. Secrets: The CIA's War at Home, was published in 1998. The book provides some good information about Operation Mockingbird.

First Extract

In March 1972, a typescript of an article and a related book proposal were purloined by a CIA agent from a New York publisher and forwarded to Langley. For Richard Ober, the manuscript was right out of a bad dream. A former senior CIA official, Victor Marchetti, was planning to write a book exposing CIA deceptions. Marchetti had been the executive assistant to the deputy director of Central Intelligence and had attended regular planning and intelligence meetings attended by Richard Helms. He had also been a courier for the Agency group that approves covert operations. The most carefully guarded CIA information was called Sensitive Compartmented Information, or SCI, and was distributed to officials strictly on a need-to-know basis. But his position had allowed Marchetti an overview of the Agency purposely denied to most CIA officers.

Over time, Marchetti had become troubled by the Agency's role in the overthrow of democracies on behalf of dictators and by CIA manipulation of other nations' internal policies. He saw evidence of corruption in overseas operations. Marchetti's intellectual honesty was also offended by intrigue inside CIA headquarters that disrupted the accuracy of intelligence estimates. Furthermore, the Vietnam War had disillusioned Marchetti, whose sons would soon reach draft age. And when Eagle Scouts from a troop he served as scoutmaster began dodging the draft, Marchetti began to feel his CIA job was isolating him.

Upon quitting the Agency at age thirty-nine, after a highly successful fourteen-year career, Marchetti wrote a novel called The Rope Dancer. Prior to its publication by Grosset and Dunlap in 1971, a CIA officer read a version of the manuscript at Marchetti's home, in keeping with the rules set out in the CIA secrecy contract Marchetti had signed. The CIA officer found no security breaches, and publication went forward.

What troubled Ober and Ober's immediate supervisor, Thomas Karamessines, was one particular line in the novel. Marchetti's central character is speaking with jaundiced anger about the fictional CIA: "Somebody should publicize the Agency's mistakes." Suppose Marchetti got it in his head to write about MHCHAOS? Concerned, Helms himself ordered Marchetti placed under surveillance beginning on March 23, I972.

Within days, an article written by Marchetti appeared in the April 3 Nation under the headline "CIA: The President's Loyal Tool." Marchetti wrote that the CIA was using the news media to create myths about the Agency and was fooling such influential publications as the New York Times and Newsweek. Additionally, he claimed, the CIA had continued to control youth, labor, and cultural organizations in the United States, notwithstanding the scandals triggered by the report in Ramparts. Marchetti also castigated Helms for spending too little time engaged with the intricacies of intelligence analysis, satirically calling him a "master spy" who conducted his most important weekly meetings in less than twenty minutes. Marchetti concluded: "Secrecy, like power, tends to corrupt, and it will not be easy to persuade those who rule in the United States to change their ways."

Even while MHCHAOS was surviving the Marchetti scare, the CIA inspector general, an internal cop, was the focal point of a second emergency. Worried that the inspector general might discover MHCHAOS and expose it, Helms called in Colby, Ober, and Karamessines for a meeting on December 5, I972. Helms emphasized the importance of running a cleaner, less dubious-looking operation. There was a need to proceed cautiously, he said, to avoid a showdown with "some CIA personnel." Nonetheless, Helms was adamant that MHCHAOS not be abandoned. It will not be "stopped simply because some members of the organization do not like this activity," he insisted.

Helms cautioned Ober against attending meetings of the Justice Department Intelligence Evaluation Committee, because security was lax and its role in domestic politics might lead investigative reporters to MHCHAOS. Helms had come up with a solution to the problem of CIA officers who doubted the legality of MHCHAOS. Henceforth, it would be described within the Agency as an operation against international terrorism. "To a [sic] maximum extent possible, Ober should become identified with the subject of terrorism inside the Agency as well as in the Intelligence Community," Helms ordered. Afterward, Colby sent Karamessines a summary of the meeting: "A clear priority is to be given in this general field to the subject of terrorism. This should bring about a reduction in the intensity of attention to political dissidents in the United States not apt to be involved in terrorism." The change in label was evidently intended to improve the Agency's image and cover, on the assumption that "terrorists" were more believable as a genuine threat than "dissidents."

But there was in fact to be little change in targets. MHCHAOS continued to hold radicals in its sights, specifically radical youths, Blacks, women, and antiwar militants. The label "international terrorist" was designed to replace "political dissident" as the ongoing justification for illegal domestic operations. And in the final move to clean up Ober's act, in December Helms put an end to the operation of the five-year-old MHCHAOS by formally transforming it into the International Terrorism Group-with Ober still in charge.

Only seventeen days later, Helms and Karamessines announced their resignations from the CIA. Nixon named James Schlesinger to replace Helms as director, and Schlesinger in turn replaced Karamessines with Colby as deputy director for plans. In a euphemistic change, Schlesinger and Colby renamed the Directorate for Plans as the Directorate for Operations, which was the CIA's way of saying, "Let's call domestic spying a response to terrorism."

Second Extract

The underground press was the spinal column of the antiwar movement. In California, Max Scheer had founded the Berkeley Barb on Friday, August I3, I965. The front page of the Barb's first issue had a report on antiwar demonstrators attempting to stop a troop train carrying soldiers to a deployment point for Vietnam. Subsequent issues contained regular reports from the front lines of the movement. Barb's staffers left their offices on Friday afternoons to hawk papers on street corners. Circulation grew to 85,000 copies a week. In Washington, D.C., the Washington Free Press distributed antiwar polemics on the streets outside the White House and the State Department. One of the Free Press editors was Frank Speltz, a white student at predominantly black Howard University. He had started the paper as a newsletter meant to carry civil rights news to nearby white campuses, but he then broadened its focus to include reporting on antiwar demonstrations. In Chicago, Los Angeles, Atlanta, San Francisco, and New York, similar papers sold for twenty-five cents a copy. By I967, there were hundreds of antiwar, counterculture newspapers-some of them in towns as small as Grinnell, Iowa, and Lubbock, Texas. They had their own news service, the equivalent of an underground Associated Press. Their combined circulation would peak at seven million a month. In conjunction with the campus press, the underground press was a mighty antiwar propaganda machine.

The CIA was not alone in its mission. Ober coordinated efforts with agents of the army, the local police, and the FBI. At the US Army Intelligence Command, Ralph Stein was assigned to a similar underground newspaper desk. Stein soon figured out that antiwar publications were being financed by change collected on the street, not by the KGB or the Chinese secret service. When Stein was called from his office to brief Ober's team at CIA headquarters, he was shocked to find that the CIA officers had knowledge about the lives of underground editors so intimate that it could only have come from infiltrators. Concerned that Ober's task force was operating in violation of the I947 National Security Act, Stein returned to his office and registered an official objection with his commanders. The next thing he knew, he had been relieved of his liaison duties with the CIA.

In some respects Ober was a fugitive within his own agency, but the very illegality of MHCHAOS gave him power. Because he had been ordered to carry out an illegal mission, he had certain leverage over his bosses, as long as he kept his operation secret. Indeed, he had leverage over not only Karamessines but also CIA Director Helms, as well as anyone at the White House and the National Security Council who received his domestic intelligence reports. In time these would include Henry Kissinger and Nixon's counsel, John Dean. Ober was a man walking on the edge of a razor. As long as everything remained secret, he was not only safe but powerful: he had the ear of presidents.

With Richard Nixon in the White House, the demands on Ober for more political espionage became louder and clearer. Ober's sixty agents became the Nixon administration's primary source of intelligence about the antiwar leadership.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKmackenzie.htm

David Talbot · August 6, 2007

This is what Don Bohning just said to me in a series of emails:
(1) Actually, your friends Hinckle and Turner identify Campbell as assistant station chief in their book Deadly Secrets. I should have known better than to rely on them.

(2) I might note also that Talbot identified Richard Bissell as head of the CIA operation that overthrew Arbenz when Bissell himself says in his memoirs that wasn't so. And your website also says Morales was in Bolivia when Guevara was killed in 1965 when it was really 1967 and when Larry Sternfield, the CIA station chief there at the time, says he wasn't even in Bolivia when Guevara was killed. Given the other errors in Talbot's book, I am not sure that he and Morley are correct about Campbell either.

(3) Just went back and looked at the Fish is Red, the earlier version of Deadly Secrets, by Hinckle and Turner, and Campbell is identified in there as the deputy station chief. And given the number of errors of fact in Talbot's book, I am not convinced that he and Morley are right about Campbell either.

Besides, Mel Ayton knocked down the JFK assassination story long before Talbot and Morley did. In fact, Morley called me before he and Talbot came to Miami and asked how to get in touch with Manny Chavez, well after Ayton's article on him already had appeared.. I put he and Tlbot in contact with Cavez.

I had given Chavez and Gayston Lynch's phone number to Ayton weeks before Talbot and Morley. Ayton had sent enhanced pictures of Morales to Chavez and to Lynch. Chavez didn't know Campbell but Lynch did and he said the pictures of neither Morales nor Campbell.

It is true that the Talbot and Morley piece took the thing a bit further but the story had been descredited well before the one they wrote, which was somewhat anti-climatic coming weeks later when the story already had been discredited by Ayton.

A couple more emails from Don Bohning:
(4) Having just looked through the two books by Bradley Ayers, the Zenith Secret and the War that Never Was, it would seem that Talbot and Morley have gotten mixed up on Gordon Campbell. Ayers, according to his books, did not join JMWAVE until 1963 and on page 39 of the Zenith Secret he identifies Campbell as the deputy chief of station. Morley and Talbot say Campbell died in 1962.

Who do you believe? Looks to me like another Talbot error. I would believe Ayers before I would believe Talbot. I think they identified the wrong Gordon Campbell.

(5) Talbot and Morley also say in a footnote that David Rabern was indentified as a CIA operations officer. No one around here ever heard of David Rabern and, according to Ayers, he was a private investigator in Arizona.

In his review of my book, Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years, Don Bohning asserts that I take a “starry-eyed” view of the Kennedys. But Bohning comes to this conclusion because he has chosen to view this historical chapter through his own prism – that of his CIA sources. In the interests of full disclosure, Bohning – or Washington Decoded editor Max Holland – had a duty to reveal that Bohning was named in declassified CIA documents as one of the Miami journalists whom the CIA regarded as an agency asset in the 1960s. But neither Bohning, nor Holland in his editor’s note, disclosed this pertinent information.

A CIA memo dated June 5, 1968 states that Bohning was known within the agency as AMCARBON 3 -- AMCARBON was the cryptonym that the CIA used to identify friendly reporters and editors who covered Cuba. (AMCARBON 1 was Bohning’s colleague at the Miami Herald, Latin America editor Al Burt.) According to the agency memo, which dealt with New Orleans prosecutor Jim Garrison’s investigation of the Kennedy assassination, Bohning passed along information about the Garrison probe to the CIA.

http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/...mp;relPageId=2)

A follow-up agency memo, dated June 14, revealed that “Bohning was granted a Provisional Security Approval on 21 August 1967 and a Covert Security Approval on 14 November 1967 for use as a confidential informant.”

http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/...amp;relPageId=1

A declassified CIA memo dated April 9, 1964 explained that the CIA’s covert media campaign in Miami aimed “to work out a relationship with [south Florida] news media which would insure that they did not turn the publicity spotlight on those [CIA] activities in South Florida which might come to their attention...and give [the CIA’s Miami station] an outlet into the press which could be used for surfacing certain select propaganda items.”

While researching my book, I contacted Bohning to ask him about his reported ties to the CIA. Was he indeed AMCARBON 3? “I still do not know but… it is possible,” Bohning replied in one of a series of amicable e-mails and phone calls we exchanged. “There were several people in the Herald newsroom during the 1960s who had contact with the CIA station chief in Miami.”

Bohning took pains to explain that he was not a paid functionary of the CIA, insisting he was simply a dutiful reporter working every source he could as he went about his job. And, as I wrote back to him, I’m fully aware that agency officials – looking to score bureaucratic points with their superiors – could sometimes make empty boasts that they had certain journalists in their pocket. I also told him that I understood that many journalists, particularly in those Cold War days, thought it was permissible to swap information with intelligence sources. But in evaluating a journalist’s credibility, it is important for readers to know of these cozy government relationships. The fact that Bohning was given a CIA code as an agency asset and was identified as an agency informant is a relevant piece of information that the readers of Washington Decoded have a right to know.

Even more relevant is that, over the years, Bohning’s journalism has consistently reflected his intelligence sources’ points of view, with little or no critical perspective. Bohning’s book, The Castro Obsession, is essentially the CIA’s one-dimensional view of that historical drama, pure and simple, down to the agency’s self-serving claim that it was the Kennedys’ fanaticism that drove the spy outfit to take extreme measures against the Castro regime. Bohning’s decision to invoke former CIA director and convicted xxxx Richard Helms’ conversation with Henry Kissinger, another master of deceit, as proof that Robert Kennedy was behind the Castro plots speaks for itself.

In Bohning’s eagerness to shine the best possible light on the CIA, he goes as far as to attempt to exonerate David Morales – a notorious CIA agent whose hard-drinking and violent ways alienated him not only from many of his colleagues but from his own family, as I discovered in my research. Among my “thin” sources on Morales were not only those who worked and lived with him, but his attorney, who told more than one reporter that Morales implicated himself in the assassinations of both Kennedy brothers.

In discussing my “tendentious” view of the CIA’s dissembling on the Bay of Pigs operation, Bohning seeks to exculpate disgraced covert operations chief Richard Bissell, the architect of the fiasco. Bohning writes that he doubts Bissell lied to JFK about the doomed plan’s chances for success. And yet this is precisely the way that the Miami Herald, Bohning’s own newspaper, covered the story when the CIA’s internal history of the Bay of Pigs was finally released in August 2005. “Bissell owed it to JFK to tell him” the truth about the Bay of Pigs plan, the newspaper quoted a historian who had studied the CIA documents. But “there is no evidence that he did.” Bohning too was quoted in the Herald article, and his view of Bissell was decidedly less trusting than it is in his review of my book. “Bissell seems to have had a habit of not telling people things they needed to know,” Bohning told the Herald.

Bohning’s pro-CIA bias also compels him to brush aside former Congressional investigator Gaeton Fonzi’ strong suspicions of a CIA involvement in the assassination. It is true that the House Select Committee on Assassinations, which found evidence of a conspiracy in its 1979 report, did not include the CIA in its list of suspects. But Bohning stops conveniently short of what has happened in ensuing years. After Washington Post journalist Jefferson Morley revealed that the CIA’s liaison with the committee, a veteran agent named George Joannides, had withheld information about his own connection to Lee Harvey Oswald from the committee and undermined its investigation in other ways, a furious G. Robert Blakey, former chief counsel of the committee, retracted his earlier statement that the agency had fully cooperated with the Congressional investigation. Instead, said Blakey, the CIA was guilty of obstruction of justice. Blakey told me, as I reported in my book, that he now believes that Mafia-linked “rogue” intelligence agents might have been involved in the assassination. In short, these developments have bolstered Fonzi’s earlier suspicions.

Bohning criticizes me for accepting the credibility of a source named Angelo Murgado, a Bay of Pigs veteran aligned with the Cuban exile leader Manuel Artime – and as Bohing concedes, a minor figure in my book. But Bohning provides no evidence that Murgado’s story about investigating suspicious activity in the Cuban exile world for Bobby Kennedy is false. The exile community is known for its flamboyant internal disputes. Bohning solicits comments about Murgado from his own corners of this world and chooses to accept their validity. But many of the sources in the anti-Castro movement that Bohning has cultivated over the years have their own dubious pasts and shady agendas. I was forthright with my readers about Murgado’s drawbacks as a source, including his criminal record, which Bohning presents as if he’s revealing it for the first time. I tried to put Murgado’s statements in their proper context and allow readers to make their own conclusion. But Bohning is rarely as transparent about his sources and their motivations in his Cuba reporting.

Bohning is equally selective in rejecting Howard Hunt’s late-hour confessions about Dallas. Until the final years of his life, Hunt – a CIA veteran of the anti-Castro wars and the notorious ringleader of the Watergate burglary team – took a view of the Kennedy assassination that was espoused within agency circles in his day, i.e., that JFK was the victim of a Havana and Moscow-connected plot. This Communist plot theory of the assassination was rejected by the Warren Commission (whose work Bohning continues to find persuasive), as well as investigators for the Church Committee and the House Assassinations Committee, as well as most reputable researchers. But Hunt’s unfounded charges about a Communist conspiracy never landed him in hot water with critics like Bohning. It was only when Hunt broke ranks to implicate members of the CIA – and himself – in the crime that Bohning felt compelled to heatedly question his credibility.

Unlike his earlier charges, Hunt’s allegations of a CIA connection to Dallas were based on what he claimed was first-hand, eyewitness evidence. Hunt told his son, St. John, that he was invited to a meeting at a CIA safe house in Miami where the plot to kill Kennedy was discussed, and he implicated himself in the plot as a “benchwarmer.” It is true that during his career, Hunt did indeed act as a CIA disinformation specialist, and he might have had inexplicably devious reasons for fingering former colleagues like Morales, as well as himself, in the crime. And his son, St. John, did indeed once lead a roguish, drug-fueled life, as he has freely told the press and as I reported in my book. But I have seen the confessional notes written in the senior Hunt’s own hand, and have heard his guarded confessions on tape – as have other journalists. The authenticity of this material is undisputed. So, despite his colorful past, St. John’s character is not the central issue here. It’s the material that his father himself left behind as his last will and testament. Bohning has no reason to dismiss Howard Hunt’s sensational allegations out of hand – other than his blind faith in CIA sources who still stick to the party line on Dallas. While Hunt’s confessions are clearly not the definitive word on the subject, they are at least worthy of further investigation on the part of serious, independent journalists and researchers.

But when it comes to the subject of the CIA’s secret war on Cuba – an operation that Robert Kennedy, among other knowledgeable insiders, believed was the source of the assassination plot against his brother – Don Bohning is an obviously partisan chronicler. Again and again Bohning has chosen to present the CIA in the most flattering light and its critics in the most negative. I accept Bohning’s insistence that he was not a CIA stooge. But he should stop acting like one.

Nathaniel Heidenheimer · August 6, 2007

QUOTE(John Simkin @ Jul 24 2007, 06:56 PM)

This is what Don Bohning just said to me in a series of emails:

(1) Actually, your friends Hinckle and Turner identify Campbell as assistant station chief in their book Deadly Secrets. I should have known better than to rely on them.

(2) I might note also that Talbot identified Richard Bissell as head of the CIA operation that overthrew Arbenz when Bissell himself says in his memoirs that wasn't so. And your website also says Morales was in Bolivia when Guevara was killed in 1965 when it was really 1967 and when Larry Sternfield, the CIA station chief there at the time, says he wasn't even in Bolivia when Guevara was killed. Given the other errors in Talbot's book, I am not sure that he and Morley are correct about Campbell either.

(3) Just went back and looked at the Fish is Red, the earlier version of Deadly Secrets, by Hinckle and Turner, and Campbell is identified in there as the deputy station chief. And given the number of errors of fact in Talbot's book, I am not convinced that he and Morley are right about Campbell either.

Besides, Mel Ayton knocked down the JFK assassination story long before Talbot and Morley did. In fact, Morley called me before he and Talbot came to Miami and asked how to get in touch with Manny Chavez, well after Ayton's article on him already had appeared.. I put he and Tlbot in contact with Cavez.

I had given Chavez and Gayston Lynch's phone number to Ayton weeks before Talbot and Morley. Ayton had sent enhanced pictures of Morales to Chavez and to Lynch. Chavez didn't know Campbell but Lynch did and he said the pictures of neither Morales nor Campbell.

It is true that the Talbot and Morley piece took the thing a bit further but the story had been descredited well before the one they wrote, which was somewhat anti-climatic coming weeks later when the story already had been discredited by Ayton.

QUOTE(John Simkin @ Jul 24 2007, 10:05 PM)

A couple more emails from Don Bohning:

(4) Having just looked through the two books by Bradley Ayers, the Zenith Secret and the War that Never Was, it would seem that Talbot and Morley have gotten mixed up on Gordon Campbell. Ayers, according to his books, did not join JMWAVE until 1963 and on page 39 of the Zenith Secret he identifies Campbell as the deputy chief of station. Morley and Talbot say Campbell died in 1962.

Who do you believe? Looks to me like another Talbot error. I would believe Ayers before I would believe Talbot. I think they identified the wrong Gordon Campbell.

(5) Talbot and Morley also say in a footnote that David Rabern was indentified as a CIA operations officer. No one around here ever heard of David Rabern and, according to Ayers, he was a private investigator in Arizona.