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Lisa Howard died at her home at East Hampton, Long Island, on 4th July, 1965. It was officially reported that she had committed suicide. Her name is rarely mentioned in list of suspicious deaths. The reason for this is that it is only recently been discovered that she was an important figure in the events of 1963.

Lisa Howard was born on 24th April, 1930. She became an actress and in 1950 appeared as a Soviet official in the anti-communist film, Guilty of Treason. She also appeared in Mr. & Mrs. North (1952), Donovan's Brain (1953) and Sabaka (1954). In the late 1950s she was a regular on CBS's Edge of Night.

In 1960 Howard became a correspondent for Mutual Radio Network. Covering the United Nations, she became the first journalist to secure an interview with Nikita Khrushchev. In 1963 she covered the Vienna summit between President John F. Kennedy and the Soviet leader. Later that year she became the anchor for ABC's noontime news broadcast, The News Hour with Lisa Howard.

In April 1963 McGeorge Bundy suggested to President John F. Kennedy that there should be a "gradual development of some form of accommodation with Castro". In an interview given in 1995, Bundy, said Kennedy needed "a target of opportunity" to talk to Fidel Castro. It seems that Kennedy selected Howard to act as an intermediary. In April 1963 Howard arrived in Cuba to make a documentary on the country. In an interview with Howard, Fidel Castro agreed that a rapprochement with Washington was desirable.

On her return Howard met with the Central Intelligence Agency. Deputy Director Richard Helms reported to John F. Kennedy on Howard's view that "Fidel Castro is looking for a way to reach a rapprochement with the United States." After detailing her observations about Castro's political power, disagreements with his colleagues and Soviet troops in Cuba, the memo concluded that "Howard definitely wants to impress the U.S. Government with two facts: Castro is ready to discuss rapprochement and she herself is ready to discuss it with him if asked to do so by the US Government."

CIA Director John McCone was strongly opposed to Howard being involved with these negotiations with Castro. He argued that it might "leak and compromise a number of CIA operations against Castro". In a memorandum to McGeorge Bundy, McCone commented that the "Lisa Howard report be handled in the most limited and sensitive manner," and "that no active steps be taken on the rapprochement matter at this time."

Howard decided to bypass the CIA and in May, 1963, published an article in the journal, War and Peace Report, Howard wrote that in eight hours of private conversations Castro had shown that he had a strong desire for negotiations with the United States: "In our conversations he made it quite clear that he was ready to discuss: the Soviet personnel and military hardware on Cuban soil; compensation for expropriated American lands and investments; the question of Cuba as a base for Communist subversion throughout the Hemisphere." Howard went on to urge the Kennedy administration to "send an American government official on a quiet mission to Havana to hear what Castro has to say." A country as powerful as the United States, she concluded, "has nothing to lose at a bargaining table with Fidel Castro."

William Attwood, an adviser to the US mission to the United Nations, read Howard's article and on 12th September, 1963, he had a long conversation with her on the phone. This apparently set in motion a plan to initiate secret talks between the United States and Cuba. Six days later Attwood sent a memorandum to Under Secretary of State Averell Harriman and U.N. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson. Attwood asked for permission to establish discreet, indirect contact with Fidel Castro.

On September 20, John F. Kennedy gave permission to authorize Attwood's direct contacts with Carlos Lechuga, the Cuban ambassador to the United Nations. According to Attwood: "I then told Miss Howard to set up the contact, that is to have a small reception at her house so that it could be done very casually, not as a formal approach by us." Howard met Lechuga at the UN on 23rd September 23. Howard invited Lechuga to come to a party at her Park Avenue apartment that night to meet Attwood.

The next day Attwood met with Robert Kennedy in Washington and reported on the talks with Lechuga. According to Attwood the attorney general believed that a trip to Cuba would be "rather risky." It was "bound to leak and... might result in some kind of Congressional investigation." Nevertheless, he thought the matter was "worth pursuing."

On 5th November 5, McGeorge Bundy recorded that "the President was more in favor of pushing towards an opening toward Cuba than was the State Department, the idea being - well, getting them out of the Soviet fold and perhaps wiping out the Bay of Pigs and maybe getting back into normal." Bundy designated his assistant, Gordon Chase, to be Attwood's direct contact at the White House.

Attwood continued to use Howard as his contact with Fidel Castro. In October 1963, Castro told Howard that he was very keen to open negotiations with Kennedy. Castro even offered to send a plane to Mexico to pick up Kennedy's representative and fly him to a private airport near Veradero where Castro would talk to him alone.

John F. Kennedy now decided to send Attwood to meet Castro. On 14th November, 1963, Lisa Howard conveyed this message to her Cuban contact. In an attempt to show his good will, Kennedy sent a coded message to Castro in a speech delivered on 19th November. The speech included the following passage: "Cuba had become a weapon in an effort dictated by external powers to subvert the other American republics. This and this alone divides us. As long as this is true, nothing is possible. Without it, everything is possible."

Kennedy also sent a message to Fidel Castro via the French journalist Jean Daniel. According to Daniel: "Kennedy expressed some empathy for Castro's anti-Americanism, acknowledging that the United States had committed a number of sins in pre-revolutionary Cuba." Kennedy told Daniel that the trade embargo against Cuba could be lifted if Castro ended his support for left-wing movements in the Americas.

Daniel delivered this message on 19th November. Castro told Daniel that Kennedy could become "the greatest president of the United States, the leader who may at last understand that there can be coexistence between capitalists and socialists, even in the Americas." Daniel was with Castro when news arrived that Kennedy had been assassinated Castro turned to Daniel and said:"This is an end to your mission of peace. Everything is changed."

President Lyndon B. Johnson was told about these negotiations in December, 1963. He refused to continue these talks and claimed that the reason for this was that he feared that Richard Nixon, the expected Republican candidate for the presidency, would accuse him of being soft on communism.

Howard refused to give up and in 1964 she resumed talks with Fidel Castro. On 12th February, 1964, she sent a message to President Lyndon B. Johnson from Fidel Castro asking for negotiations to be restarted. When Johnson did not respond to this message she contacted Adlai Stevenson at the United Nations. On 26th June 26, Stevenson sent a memo to Johnson saying that he felt that "all of our crises could be avoided if there was some way to communicate; that for want of anything better, he assumed that he could call (Lisa Howard) and she call me and I would advise you." In a memorandum marked top secret, Gordon Chase wrote that it was important "to remove Lisa from direct participation in the business of passing messages" from Cuba.

In December, 1964, Howard met with Che Guevara to the United Nations. Details of this meeting was sent to McGeorge Bundy. When Howard got no response she arranged for Eugene McCarthy to meet with Guevara in her apartment on 16th December.

This created panic in the White House and the following day Under Secretary George Ball told McCarthy that the meeting must remain a secret because there was "suspicion throughout Latin America that the U.S. might make a deal with Cuba behind the backs of the other American states."

Did Lisa Howard now give up in her attempts to get negotiations with Castro? Or did she try to pressurize LBJ in the same way that she did with JFK in May, 1963? If so, she was playing a dangerous game.

I think there are good reasons to believe that LBJ and the CIA wanted Howard dead in 1965.

For documents relating to this case see my page on Lisa Howard.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKhowardL2.htm

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John, I think there is little doubt that Lisa Howard tried to continue her work towards some sort of Cuban-US reconciliation although there is no doubt from the document trail that Johnson wanted nothing to do with it in 1964 - even when Castro offered Johnson the option of staging some threatening incident against Cuba to help ensure his re-election so a deal could be done later.

JFK and RFK had both been doubtful that a Cuba dialog would have been political disaster. I'm not sure that Lisa Howard going public with a "Johnson's not listening to Castro" message would not have been anything other than a huge political benefit to Johnson in 1964.

And we have the documents showing that CIA high level people opposed the JFK-Cuba diolog at ever step of the way - and State Department wanted Howard out of it as well.

I can see Lisa Howard as a good person with great intentions - totally frustrated by the Johnson administration and everyone else - and very depressed about it. I don't see any special threat she posed to Johnson and I (naive or not) draw the line at thinking that the CIA routinely killed U.S. citizens in 1964 just out of caution - or to protect JFK's image. Not that they would not take great steps to cover up the her activities after her death - as witness Angleton's personal involvement in cover-up relating to Mary Pinchot Meyer. Of course there was a lot more Agency family history there.

-- Larry

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Hello John!

My interest concerning Lisa Howard first arose when I came across the semi-fictionalized account of Mary Pinchot Meyer by Nan C. Druid, a.k.a. Maerian Morris.

http://www.sirbacon.org/jfk.htm

I have since learned that there is no credible established connection between the two women - however the story is facinating, and 75% accurate.

"A year later, Lisa Howard died under suspicious circumstances. Her death was attributed to suicide. Supposedly she took one hundred phenobarbitols at mid-day in a parking lot where she was found wandering in a daze. She had been fired because she had "chosen to participate publicly in partisan political activity contrary to long established established ABC news policy." 30 Suspicions about her death"..... if ever substantiated.....would make her the second female news reporter (after Dorothy Kilgallen) whom assassination critics suspect was silenced because of her knowledge of the assassination. " 31

Before her death, Lisa turned against Robert Kennedy, who was running for the U.S. Senate in New York. At a group meeting she organized with Gore Vidal in support of the incumbent Senator Keating, Bobby was described as " the very antithesis of his brother....ruthless, reactionary, and dangerously authoritarian." Explaining her reasons for forming the group she said, "if you feel strongly about something like this you can't remain silent. You have to show courage, and stand up and be counted." After ABC fired her she continued her "partisan political activity" remarking in a debate over Robert Kennedy that "Brothers are not necessarily the same....There was Cain and Abel."32 An interesting comparison."

Both of these references are documented as having come from 30. The Kennedy Conspiracy p. 259, 31. Ibid. p.260.

In any event - her obituary in the Washington Post has her collasping outside of a drug store, according to Police, where she had just purchased some pills. I don't have the reference cited by Druid, where she has Lisa Howard wandering around in a parking lot in the afternoon after taking 100 phenobarbitols.

The obituary cites a despondent condition since a recent miscarriage.

- What strikes me is the method of suicide. Too similar, and within the same basic timeframe, same modus operadi as Monroe and Killgallen. Killgallen's death is also very messy, and fraught with bizarre, unanswered questions also. It's possible that it's all just coincidence, but at the same time, this woman appears to have been extremely vocal, and could have been perceived as a threat for something that maybe only Gore Vidal could answer.

GoreVidal@wbai.org

I don't know if this is a valid address or not, but I'll send him this post.

- lee

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JFK and RFK had both been doubtful that a Cuba dialog would have been political disaster. I'm not sure that Lisa Howard going public with a "Johnson's not listening to Castro" message would not have been anything other than a huge political benefit to Johnson in 1964.

And we have the documents showing that CIA high level people opposed the JFK-Cuba diolog at ever step of the way - and State Department wanted Howard out of it as well.

I can see Lisa Howard as a good person with great intentions - totally frustrated by the Johnson administration and everyone else - and very depressed about it. I don't see any special threat she posed to Johnson and I (naive or not) draw the line at thinking that the CIA routinely killed U.S. citizens in 1964 just out of caution - or to protect JFK's image.

I think the crucial element in this concerns when Lisa Howard began working as a mediator between Kennedy and Castro. The released documents suggests that Kennedy first contemplated this in April 1963. This is when McGeorge Bundy suggested to Kennedy that there should be a "gradual development of some form of accommodation with Castro". In an interview given in 1995, Bundy, said Kennedy needed "a target of opportunity" to talk to Fidel Castro.

It has then been assumed that this was when Kennedy recruited Howard to act as an intermediary. However, I think this is unlikely. It is clear from the documents that Kennedy wanted this policy to remain a secret. However, Howard's trip to Cuba was well publicised (she was going to be the first American journalist to interview Castro since the Cuban Missile Crisis). Surely if Kennedy wanted to start negotiations he would have done this via Adlai Stevenson (someone who agreed with this policy) and Carlos Lechuga, the Cuban ambassador to the United Nations.

When Howard arrived back in the United States she was immediately interviewed by the CIA. As a result Deputy Director Richard Helms reports to JFK that "Howard definitely wants to impress the U.S. Government with two facts: Castro is ready to discuss rapprochement and she herself is ready to discuss it with him if asked to do so by the US Government."

CIA Director John McCone was strongly opposed to Howard being involved in any negotiations with Castro. Interestingly he argued that it might "leak and compromise a number of CIA operations against Castro". In a memorandum to Bundy, McCone commented that the "Lisa Howard report be handled in the most limited and sensitive manner," and "that no active steps be taken on the rapprochement matter at this time."

It is now clear that Kennedy and the CIA have different policies towards Cuba. As Arthur Schlesinger explained to Anthony Summers in 1978: "The CIA was reviving the assassination plots at the very time President Kennedy was considering the possibility of normalization of relations with Cuba - an extraordinary action. If it was not total incompetence - which in the case of the CIA cannot be excluded - it was a studied attempt to subvert national policy."

There is no evidence that Howard tries to make direct contact with the Kennedy administration at this point. The next thing that Howard does (May, 1963) is to publish an article on the subject in a left-wing journal, the War and Peace Report. This is hardly the behaviour of someone who is involved in secret negotiations with Castro on behalf of the government.

Howard wrote that: "In our conversations he made it quite clear that he was ready to discuss: the Soviet personnel and military hardware on Cuban soil; compensation for expropriated American lands and investments; the question of Cuba as a base for Communist subversion throughout the Hemisphere." Howard went on to urge the Kennedy administration to "send an American government official on a quiet mission to Havana to hear what Castro has to say." A country as powerful as the United States, she concluded, "has nothing to lose at a bargaining table with Fidel Castro."

Howard is not only describing what Castro said but explaining what JFK should be doing. You can imagine what JFK would have thought of this if she was acting as his secret negotiator.

The first known contact between the administration and Howard took place on 12th September, 1963. William Attwood, an adviser to the US mission to the United Nations, read Howard's article and had a long conversation with her on the phone. This apparently set in motion a plan to initiate secret talks between the United States and Cuba. Six days later Attwood sent a memorandum to Under Secretary of State Averell Harriman and U.N. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson. Attwood asked for permission to establish discreet, indirect contact with Fidel Castro.

This I assume is done without the knowledge of the CIA. According to Attwood by 20th September, 1963, Howard has been authorized to arrange a secret meeting with Carlos Lechuga, the Cuban ambassador to the United Nations. Given what we now know about spying in the UN the CIA would have soon discovered what was taking place.

JFK is assassinated in November. The following month Johnson is officially first told of these secret negotiations with Cuba. He orders them to be brought to an end. Attwood, Harriman and Stevenson seem to be willing to go along with this. However, that is not the case with Howard who is now clearly not working for the government.

Howard returns to Cuba and once again meets Fidel Castro. On 12th February, 1964, she sends a message to LBJ from Castro asking for negotiations to be restarted. When Johnson did not respond to this message she contacted Adlai Stevenson at the United Nations. Soon afterwards, in a memorandum marked top secret, Gordon Chase wrote that it was important "to remove Lisa from direct participation in the business of passing messages" from Cuba.

In December, 1964, Howard meets with Che Guevara to the United Nations. Details of this meeting was sent to McGeorge Bundy. When Howard got no response she arranged for Eugene McCarthy to meet with Guevara in her apartment on 16th December. McCarthy is then ordered to stop pursuing these negotiations.

Howard still does not give up. She now begins to work with left-wing liberals like Gore Vidal. She also campaigns against Robert Kennedy, who was running for the U.S. Senate in New York. This includes the comment: “Brothers are not necessarily the same....There was Cain and Abel."

The official story is that Howard commits suicide because she is fired by ABC. The psychology of this is all wrong. In 1964 and 1965 she willingly puts her career at risk in order to get a negotiated settlement between Cuba and the United States. Eventually she is fired by ABC. Would she at this stage give up by committing suicide? Has anyone every committed suicide after being sacked because of their willingness to fight for their political principles. No, people don’t act like that. Once in so far, they keep fighting. What is more, they raise the stakes. They feel they have nothing else to lose. Howard, in fact did have something to lose that was more important to her than her job.

Larry makes the point that Johnson was hardly likely to arrange the killing of Howard because she was threatening to expose JFK secret negotiations with Castro. Maybe, but this news would have caused problems for the CIA. For it would expose the fact that the CIA and JFK were pursuing different policies concerning Cuba. This is the point Arthur Schlesinger makes in 1978: “it was a studied attempt to subvert national policy." It also provides a motive for the CIA not to fully protect JFK from assassination.

It is also possible that Howard knew much more than the secret negotiations than had taken place with Cuba. Remember, Howard continued to have meeting with Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and Carlos Lechuga in 1964. Did they tell Howard anything about the assassination of JFK?

I have thought for a long time that if the CIA had been involved in the assassination of JFK the one group who would have known about it was the KGB. If so, did the KGB tell the Cuban government. If so, did one of the Cubans tell Howard.

Lee mentions that Dorothy Kilgallen died in similar circumstances in 1965. Does anyone know if these two women had been in contact with each other? I think there is a strong possibility that they did know each other. Kilgallen had been a Hollywood reporter when Lisa Howard was a film actress in the 1950s. Kilgallen also knew Marilyn Monroe. A CIA report (3rd August, 1962) claims that they were recording telephone conversation between Kilgallen, Howard Rothberg (a close friend of Kilgallen), Monroe and Robert Kennedy.

The report says: “Rothberg indicated in so many words, that she (Monroe) had secrets to tell, no doubt arising from her trists (sic) with the President and the Attorney General. One such (illegible) mentions the visit by the President at a secret air base for the purpose of inspecting things from outer space. Kilgallen replied that she knew what might be the source of the visit. In the mid-fifties Kilgallen learned of secret effort by US and UK governments to identify the origins of crashed spacecraft and dead bodies, from a British government official. Kilgallen believed the story may have come from the (illegible) in the late forties. Kilgallen said that if the story is true, it could cause terrible embarrassment to Jack and his plans to have NASA put men on the moon.”

Kilgallen was also very well informed about the CIA and Cuba. As early as July, 1959, Kilgallen was reporting: “US intelligence is virtually nonexistent if the government isn't aware that Russia already has bases in Cuba, and Russian pilots in uniform are strutting openly in Havana... Fidel Castro is the target for so many assassins they're apt to fall over each other in their efforts to get him. The Mafia want to knock him off. So do the Batista sympathizers, of course, and then there are his own disillusioned rebels, just for starters.”

Were Kilgallen and Howard exchanging information. Had the two women worked out the link between the deaths of Monroe and JFK? If so, Kilgallen and Howard could not have been allowed to live.

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John, your scenario certainly is an interesting one and actually it's been elaborated at some length over the years, especially in the 90's. In fact the very interesting book "A Very Private Woman", the Life and Unsolved Murder of Presidential Mistress Mary Meyer reviews some of the same speculation although the author - Nina Burleigh - says she could find no evidence that any of the three woman knew each other (page 290).

She points out that Mary Meyer had indeed become one of the most dreaded fears of any intlligence agency - the "runaway wife" of a long term and senior career officer. And she details Angleton's personal involvement in santitizing Meyer's recent past and gaining posession of her diaryl after her death (I even have a CIA report which mentions Angleton having to pass up on a critical meeting right after her death as he is busy dealing with the potential security problem of Meyer's death).

Certainly anyone really interested in this subject should try to contact Nina Burleigh and determine how diligently she investigated the possible connection between Kilgallen and Meyer or Lisa Howard for that matter.

I'd also encourage anyone interested to read Lee Israel's book on Dorthy Kilgallen, he also deals with "mysterous death" question at length. I think it's safe to say that either author would have loved to turn up something concrete.

In comparison of the three, I would have to say that Kilgallen perhaps comes closest to a true JFK mystery death given her private conversation with Jack Ruby, her expressed desire to crack the case and the timing of her death following a TV appearance in which she had only been persuaded at the last minute to postpone remarks about a conspiracy. Without a doubt she thought there was a conspiracy I personally belive that most of the real mystery deaths in this relate to Ruby and individuals who knew that i) he had crime and Cuba associations which could have lead in very dangerous directions and ii) he did indeed know Lee Oswald and could be shown to have been at least marginally associated with Oswald immediately before the assassination. A person with the media clout was truly a danger, not to the CIA but to those directly involved in the assassination. And to Johnson's drive to cover it up for that matter.

Anyone showing a connection between any two if not all three of these women would be breaking real ground - but for starters I'd suggest reading the work already done for background.

"A CIA report (3rd August, 1962) claims that they were recording telephone conversation between Kilgallen, Howard Rothberg (a close friend of Kilgallen), Monroe and Robert Kennedy."

-- By the way, could you give me a reference on the CIA report you mentioned,

I'd sure like to take a look at the document itself. As far as I know Matthew Smith has done most of the work on pulling together the "Marilyn story" and had a new book coming out on it in the U.K. late last year which I have not seen myself.

-- Larry

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By the way,  could you give me a reference on the CIA report you mentioned,

I'd sure like to take a look at the document itself.  As far as I know Matthew Smith has done most of the work on pulling together the "Marilyn story" and had a new book coming out on it in the U.K. late last year which I have not seen myself.

CIA document on Monroe.

http://pnahay.home.sprynet.com/ufomonro.htm

Of course a lot of what I have written is speculation. However, I think the point about suicide is important. Do you accept that it is highly unlikely that an investigative reporter/historian would commit suicide while writing their story/book?

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John, in the case of Kilgallen, no I don't and I think Lee Isreal presents a convincing case that it was most likely murder. As to the who and why and whether it had to to with JFK, it is significant that her husband appears to have destroyed her notes and working papers on the JFK conspiracy and that his final remark on the subject to Mark Lane as quoted by Isreal was that "I'm going to destroy that. It's done enough damage already." Apparently the FBI was still intersted in locating her papers up to four years after her death.

Kilgallen is definitely on my sort list of possible JFK conspiracy related deaths. I think the information Isreal presents in relation to her murder is very suggestive - and way to similar in comparison to the investigation of Robert Kennedy's murder for that matter.

I remind open minded but unconvinced in regard to Howard or Meyer.

-- Larry

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Just a few points:

John, in your pointing out the tapped conversation [i thought it was FBI] that Kilgallen had with Rothberg was on August 3rd, 1962 - and 2 days later, Marilyn Monroe is found dead. There's been a lot of speculation about what she may have said [Joe Dimaggio, Kennedy affair, UFOs, etc.], and we may never know, but the real threat appears to be the relationship of Marilyn Monroe to the Kennedy's, and JFKs disclosure concerning Area 51.

I have read about everything I could on Mary Pinchot Meyer. I have my own theories about her, which are not explicitly expressed by Nina Burleigh. I believe I can make a fairly good case that she was CIA. If not, she certainly had some very close connections [Cord being the most obvious], and her own mission in life.

- Her husband, Cord Meyer, was head of the Dirty Tricks department, and may have had a hand in the JFK cover-up.

- She also was intimate with Bill Bradley, who may have been 'DeepThroat,' and eventually sold out the mistress and drugs story to the Enquirer.

- She had a very close relationship with James Jesus Angleton, whose most well known quality was in his ability to supply disinformation so genuine and plausible as to confuse the facts. And yes, he tried to break in to get her diary [or sketchbook] - he finally got it, and according to sources, documented every page before returning it to Mary's friends, when it was burned. I also personally believe he played an extensive role in the JFK cover-up.

- The CIAs entirely redacted 10 page file on her is dated 1953.

- Her relationship with Timothy Leary, and her ability to score pure lab LSD is unbelievable. She experimented with LSD [supposedly with some other wives in the Georgetown area - but they never came forward] for the purpose of changing the behavior of high leading officials in the country - for good. It's quite possible that this was her own idea - granted, but sure smells funny.

- Her killer, Roy Crump Jr., has too many similarities to Sirhan Sirhan to go into on this Post. Following his acquittal, he went on to amass 'a rap sheet as long as your arm,' attempted murder, robberies, arson, etc. He doesn't recall the details of that day. He worked near a hospital that had some strange CIA ties if I remember correctly....I can dig this out if you'd like.

Where I'm going is MK/ULTRA. I don't think we've even scratched the surface on how deep the resources of this project went, and all it's various activities.

I think that topic deserves a separate post, but I'd like to make a few more points.

One - off topic, on subject: Lee Harvey's efforts at voter registration to get access to a job at that hospital [sorry - I don't have time to look it up]. Some have postulated that it was the job of his handlers to make him appear insane - I don't buy that. There are clear ties between the Doctor [sorry again] that he claimed to be living with, and MKULTRA and that this hospital was a major source for pure LSD. Clay Shaw - was he a business man? Yes, but what did he sell? The opportunity to jump in on the opportunity mass distribute the new drug, which was easily transportable, easy to conceal, small quantities for massive results, etc. I believe that was the motive to get Lee on the inside - LSD and $$$

Kilgallen

- She was found partially dressed in bed with a reading light on. Her false eyelashes were still on.

- She wasn't in her normal bedroom, but in a normally unused bedroom.

- The book open in her lap was one that she had already read.

- Various doctors claimed that the contents of her stomach revealed barbituates, but not a sufficient amount to kill someone.

- There are reports of a strange vial found beside her bed, and as I understand it, this also occurred for Marilyn Monroe [this is all lee Israel's stuff in her book 'Kilgallen'].

- Her notes on the JFK assassination were not lost - or at least, her husband, Richard Kollmar, claimed to have them, but said he was going to destroy them. He died 5 years later, in January, 1971 of another suicide.

- There some weird stuff about political infighting between the autospy doctors, and a report of a pink fluid, found in Killgallen's stomach, that never made it to the official report, as one of the Doctors wanted to hold on to it to use against someone else.

And on and on it goes.

Enough for now, but I'll elaborate on any of these points and would like to see what everyone else has to offer. I'd really like to see a separate post on MK/ULTRA.

- lee

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Larry has indicated to me that this document is probably a forgery. On reflection I agree with him. However, the document itself has no bearing on my overall judgement that Lisa Howard and Dorothy Kilgallen were murdered and that the people responsible were likely to have been involved in covering-up the assassination of JFK.

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  • 1 year later...

Great photographs James. Did they come from the Cuban archives?

The namebase entry for Lisa Howard can be found here:

http://www.namebase.org/xhon/Lisa-Howard.html

Bamford,J. Body of Secrets. 2001 (128-9, 136-7)

Burleigh,N. A Very Private Woman. 1999 (223-4, 291)

Colby,G. Dennett,C. Thy Will Be Done. 1995 (416)

DiEugenio,J. Destiny Betrayed. 1992 (253)

Furiati,C. ZR Rifle. 1994 (92)

Hepburn,J. Farewell America. 1968 (159)

Hinckle,W. Turner,W. The Fish is Red. 1981 (196)

Turner,W. Rearview Mirror. 2001 (213)

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Intiguingly, Howard died on the fourth of July, 1965. American Independence Day. Is this a clue? Even more intriguing, one of the other links in the peace chain, Adlai Stevenson, dropped dead on the streets of London only 10 days later, on the 14th of July. This is Bastille Day, French Independence Day. Is this just a coincidence?

Edited by Pat Speer
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Great photographs James. Did they come from the Cuban archives? (John Simkin)

The images came from a Latin American magazine published quite some time back. I can't remember off hand which one.

For anyone interested in Lisa Howard's film and televison appearances, you can check out this page on the Internet Movie Database website.

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0397467/

FWIW.

James

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Message given by Lisa Howard on February 12, 1964 in Havana, Cuba, by Fidel Castro. Howard was unable to deliver the message directly to President Lyndon B. Johnson and eventually she gives it to Adlai Stevenson at the United Nations. The document was eventually declassified on July 12, 1995

1. Please tell President Johnson that I earnestly desire his election to the Presidency in November… though that appears assured. But if there is anything I can do to add to his majority (aside from retiring from politics), I shall be happy to cooperate. Seriously, I observe how the Republicans use Cuba as a weapon against the Democrats. So tell President Johnson to let me know what I can do, if anything. Naturally, I know that my offer of assistance would be of immense value to the Republicans - so this would remain our secret. But if the President wishes to pass word to me he can do so through you (Lisa Howard). He must know that he can trust you; and I know that I can trust you to relay a message accurately.

2. If the President feels it necessary during the campaign to make bellicose statements about Cuba or even to take some hostile action - if he will inform me, unofficially, that a specific action is required because of domestic political considerations, I shall understand and not take any serious retaliatory action.

3. Tell the President that I understand quite well how much political courage it took for President Kennedy to instruct you (Lisa Howard) and Ambassador Attwood to phone my aide in Havana for the purpose of commencing a dialogue toward a settlement of our differences. Ambassador Attwood suggested that I prepare an agenda for such talks and send the agenda to my U.N. Ambassador. That was on November 18th. The agenda was being prepared when word arrived that President Kennedy was assassinated. I hope that we can soon continue where Ambassador Attwood's phone conversation to Havana left off… though I'm aware that pre-electoral political considerations may delay this approach until after November.

4. Tell the President (and I cannot stress this too strongly) that I seriously hope that Cuba and the United States can eventually respect and negotiate our differences. I believe that there are no areas of contention between us that cannot be discussed and settled within a climate of mutual understanding. But first, of course, it is necessary to discuss our differences. I now believe that this hostility between Cuba and the United States is both unnatural and unnecessary - and it can be eliminated.

5. Tell the President he should not interpret my conciliatory attitude, my desire for discussions as a sign of weakness. Such an interpretation would be a serious miscalculation. We are not weak… the Revolution is strong… very strong. Nothing, absolutely nothing that the Untied States can do will destroy the Revolution. Yes, we are strong. And it is from this position of strength that we wish to resolve our differences with the United States and to live in peace with all the nations of the world.

6. Tell the president I realize fully the need for absolute secrecy, if he should decide to continue the Kennedy approach. I revealed nothing at that time… I have revealed nothing since… I would reveal nothing now.

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