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Lucius Conien


Tim Gratz

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Guest David Guyatt

On the narcotics connection, McCoy’s “The Politics of Opium” is of importance.

Page 203 of 1991 Lawrence Hill Books imprint, McCoy writes:

“But Nhu was determined to go ahead and decided to revive the opium traffic to provide the necessary funding. Although most of Saigon’s opium dens had been shut for three years, the City’s thousands of Chinese and Vietnamese addicts were willing to resume or expand their habits. Nhu used his contacts with the powerful Cholon Chinese syndicate leaders to reopen the dens and set up a distribution network for smuggled opium. Within months hundreds of opium dens had been re-opened, and five years later one Time-Life correspondent estimated that there were 2,500 dens operating openly in Saigon’s sister city, Cholon.

“To keep these outlets supplied, Nhu established two pipelines from the Laotian poppy fields to South Vietnam. The major pipeline was a small charter airline, Air Laos Commerciale, managed by Indochina’s most flamboyant Corsican gangster, Bonadventure “Rock” Francisci. Although there were at least four small Corsican airlines smuggling between Laos and South Vietnam, only Francisci’s dealt directly with Nhu. According to Lucien Conein, a former high-ranking CIA officer in Saigon, their relationship began in 1958 when Francisci made a deal with Nhu to smuggle Laotian opium into South Vietnam.”

Page 131:

“By 1951, [French] intelligence controlled most of the opium trade – from mountain poppy fields to urban dens. Dubbed Operation X by insiders, this clandestine opium traffic produced a cast of Corsican narcotics syndicates and corrupt French intelligence officers who became key figures in the international drug trade.”

Page 195:

“Given the similarities between the French and American war machines, it is hardly surprising that the broad outlines of Operation X re-emerged after US intervention. As the CIA became involved in Laos in the early 1960’s it became aware of the truth of Colonel Trinquier’s axiom “To have the Meo, one must buy their opium”. At a time when there was no ground or air transport to and from the mountains of Laos except CIA aircraft, opium continued to flow out of the villages of Laos to transit points such as Long Tieng.”

Page 250:

“When Conein left Vietnam several years later, the Corsicans presented him with a heavy gold medallion embossed with the Napoleonic eagle and the Corsican crest. Engraved on the back of it is Per Tu Amicu Conein (For your friendship, Conein). Conein proudly explained that this medallion was worn by powerful Corsican syndicate leaders around the world and served as an identification badge for secret meetings, narcotics drops, and the like.”

David

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  • 3 weeks later...
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Isn't one of 3-finger Lou's renowned trademarks the subterfuge associated with highly contrived "plays" (assasinations, misdirections, operations) with actors and distractions? The complex multi-layered event that was played out in Dallas appears to be his specialty. His fingerprints are all over the plot.

hi Shanet,many thanks for the info.I only came across the witnesses photo recently but that one guy stood out & seemed so familar to me.

regards jim.

Hi Jim,

Here is the McCord comparison I did.

That photo you posted of the crowd gathering on the knoll is a very interesting one. Amongst many different aspects, you will find present Alfredo Duran, Billie Sol Estes and a known associate of Bernardo De Torres look-a-likes.

If you look over toward the right of frame behind the little wall, there is a guy (2 guys actually), one who in some circles is considered to be Lee Oswald leaving the TSBD. I believe this was the Oswald impersonator.

James

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Isn't one of 3-finger Lou's renowned trademarks the subterfuge associated with highly contrived "plays" (assasinations, misdirections, operations) with actors and distractions? The complex multi-layered event that was played out in Dallas appears to be his specialty. His fingerprints are all over the plot.

"Fingerprints"? Utter nonsense.

If the plot was as well-contrived as many of us think, there was obviously an intelligent person (probably persons) behind the plot. But from that to infer involvement by Conein is indeed nonsense.

It is fodder for the paperback version of "Reclaiming History".

Edited by Tim Gratz
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Tim:

Somewhere I read that Conein was especially known for these kinds of operations (but I don't recall where or by whom... maybe it was in the works of Prouty). Fingerprints was a play on words, since I believe he was missing several fingers as well. He was intrically and actively engaged in the CIA's Viet Nam activities, plus a close colleague of Ed Lansdale. so he certaintly seems to be in the "right" Company (pun intended). Didn't James Richards identify a figure in the Plaza (familiar faces) that closely resembled Conein? In any case, that's the basis of my question. - gene

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Should be Lucien Conein, right?

You might be thinking of Lucius Malfoy from Harry Potter....

Lucius Malfoy is a Death Eater and head of a pure-blood wizarding family; he lives with his wife Narcissa Malfoy (née Black) and their son Draco at the Malfoy Manor in Wiltshire. He was educated at Hogwarts, where he was in Slytherin House. He was also a prefect by the time Severus Snape had entered Hogwarts.

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"James Jesus Angleton, a man I respect, believed that the assassinations were in fact planned to throw American policy into chaos."

Well, of course it was. Angleton helped plan the JFK hit, he helped to cover it up, and then appointed himself as liaison between

the WC and the CIA. Angleton's plan for the Honetel Seven was to throw CIA policy making and operations into chaos and to cause

the resulting paranoia which became rampant in the CIA to seriously hinder its ability to conduct any business while it turned its

increasingly paranoid gaze internally upon itself. Angleton was the Master of Chaos, Confusion and Destruction. He only wanted to bring the CIA and the US Gov to a complete halt and he almost succeeded. He was a Fascist Anarchist who truly believed that if Democracy would fall, a Fascist Totalitarian Dictatorship would rule. I can not respect Angleton for anything he did. How can anyone respect this man unless they just do not understand the man or his motives and his history in Italy during WW-II and thereafter? He was the absolute personification of Evil Incarnate and was finally ignominiously vetted from the CIA when his cover was blown. Wow.

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Shanet:

Can you elaborate on the concept of "sweeps"? If the photographed individuals are conducting a known post-op surveillance, that's very telling. Not only the ways and means, but the actual faces identified, would give much more substance to the plot. I don't know much about what "sweepers" are or do, but have read fictionalized accounts. Obviously they're a very real technique. - gene

Jim hamilton,

That character is a ringer for Watergate Burglar and CIA agent

James McCord....great photo of the crowd control....

notice "McCord" making eye contact with the man in the grey suit (left)

This photo shows the SWEEPS that James Richards and I discussed relative

to the SPARTACUS 'Aftermath at Dealey Plaza' photos.

Men in suits, a few paces apart systematically combing the grounds,

rounding up witnesses (note the five African Americans talking with the

man in a suit (upper right)

The same thing was happening across Elm. These gentlemen, including

the ringer for McCord, appeared out of no where, acted in a co-ordinated

manner, presented false (or uncorroborrated) "flash" Identification to witnesses,

then disappeared into thin air. Some may have come from the Motorcade

but most just seem to be there, taking charge of the evidentiary moment...

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  • 1 year later...

My Father, The Spy

http://www.esquire.com/features/father-spy-0399

Then Dad received a fateful cable from his superiors at the CIA. On orders from "the highest authority"--which Dad took to mean President Kennedy--he was instructed that unless he had "overwhelming objections," he was to support Ambassador Lodge and take the actions necessary to mount a coup. Reluctantly, Dad obeyed, sending the legendary CIA agent Lucien Conein (always "Lou" at my house) to encourage General Duong Van "Big" Minh, the primary coup plotter. On August 28, Dad sent a cable to CIA headquarters that later appeared in the Pentagon Papers, a cable he would come to regret: situation here has reached point of no return . . . we all understand that the effort must succeed and that whatever needs to be done on our part must be done.

The coup fizzled, and the Times of Vietnam ran a front-page story accusing Dad of trying to overthrow the government, which got him a place on the hotly rumored assassination lists. Meanwhile, someone began a behind-the-scenes campaign to get Dad fired. On October 2, The Washington Daily News ran a story by a Scripps Howard correspondent named Richard Starnes that accused Dad twice by name of disobeying direct orders from Lodge. The headline was "arrogant" cia disobeying orders in so. viet nam. Citing a "very high United States source," Starnes called Dad's career in Vietnam "a dismal chronicle of bureaucratic arrogance, obstinate disregard of orders, and unrestrained thirst for power." Two days later, Halberstam corrected Starnes on the front page of The New York Times, writing that there was "no evidence that the CIA chief has directly countermanded any orders by the ambassador," but he also used Dad's name. "Outed" as a CIA agent, Dad was finished. A day later, he flew back to Washington, where the CIA hid him away for two weeks while newspapers all over the world ran stories about his ouster. The Washington Evening Star ran one of the few sympathetic takes: "The crime Mr. Richardson is said to have committed is truly fascinating. He is being charged in the bars of Saigon with declining to overthrow the government of South Viet Nam--incredibobble, as Pogo would say."

One month later, Diem and Nhu were deposed and shot to death, leaving my father with plenty of time to brood on the caveat the CIA chiefs had slipped into that fatal cable: "unless you have overwhelming objections." In retrospect, it seems to have been put there just to give him something to torture himself with for the rest of his life.

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  • 10 months later...

Researchers of things Conien might be interested in a new book by Douglass Valentine about the formation of the DEA from the embers of the FBN and BNDD. Lots in here about drug ties and CIA operation going back to the Kennedy years. Some very interesting material on drug related tangents of assassination research. Lots of Conien and CIA-DEA-Plumers connections that is based on original research and interviews with participants. It is proving fascinating reading for me.

http://www.amazon.com/Strength-Pack-Person...s/dp/0979988659

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Just a thought regarding historical analog or precedent for the Main-Houston corner resemblances. Lincoln's second inaugural was reputed (from statements by J. W. Booth and other conspirators and a federal witness) to have been attended by Booth and three of his confederates, including hired muscle Lewis Paine (or Powell) and artful dodger sans elan David Herold.

A classic plate photo of the inaugural speech shows a mustachioed man in top hat standing arguably where Booth bragged that he had stood, close enough above Lincoln to have fired at him. In the crowd a dozen feet below Lincoln's boots, before a temporary security wall erected before the stage built over the Capitol steps, are two men looking very much like the imposing Paine and the shrinking Herold. A third man looks like co-conspirator George Atzerodt, a man who appeared permanently stricken by having been bested by others long ago.

Booth claimed that his attendance had been a dry run at assassination, downgraded due to the difficulty of escape. He boasted that he had been so close to "old Abe" as to have shot him. His three co-conspirators look like they're facing the crowd and not the stage because they may be there as crowd control, to assist Booth's escape.

One wonders if the defense team is on the ground because Booth contemplates firing at Lincoln from above, and then escaping by jumping from his place above Lincoln onto the speakers' platform (similar to his dramatic leap at Ford's Theater); it might be the groundlings he fears, rather than the VIPs onstage and around him, which is why the figures identified as Paine, Herold, Atzerodt, seem to be taking the measure of individuals in the crowd who might try to climb the wall while the assassin is briefly on stage.

This could argue that presidents permitting themselves to be public captives under their official duties do draw familiar faces from among their enemies when plots are operational. On the other hand, given the resolution of the plate photo, and the anecdotal reporting of the Booth claim, it could prove nothing at all.

Edited by David Andrews
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I think to completely understand what Lucien Conein was doing in SE Asia in 1963 one must study a project called ZRJEWEL and figure out exactly what it was.

Covert Security Clearance

Reassignment

Can anyone make out what the pseudo is for Conein in the second document? It looks like Arthur R. Schwigmrath?

With a ZR crypt, one would be tempted to believe it had something to do with assassinations. These are the only 2 documents I have found mentioning JEWEL. Conein’s file has been sanitized – virtually all of his documents concern the establishment, maintenance and use of cover during his career with the Agency as a military detailee and Career Agent from 1954-1968.

For further research into Agency activity in Indo China, I think it would be beneficial to look into something called MAAG - Military Assistance Advisory Group - and the people who worked there. Prior to the ‘Americanization’ of the Vietnam conflict, all US Forces in Vietnam at this time [early 1960s] were under command / Employ of MAAG – MAAG, in turn, was run by the CIA.

In my opinion, this would be a good place to start when looking for individuals who had military/special forces training who were capable of performing ‘off the books’ black ops within a project such as JEWEL.

Zach

Edited by Zach Robertson
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The Esquire story above has a real stench to it today.

Both Debra Conway and Jim Douglass have done fine work on the coup. Combined with John Newman's excellent chapter on how the coup cable was sent--around Kennedy and McCone--it puts these myths to death.

I find it interesting that Halberstam denied RIchardson disobeyed the ambassador. Everyone knows today that from the instant he got the cable, Lodge was determined to get rid of Diem. This is why he showed it to the generals on Sunday night, before Kennedy got back from Boston, and he bypassed Diem by going to them immediately.

Lodge and Luce had decided they would be against Kennedy's soft approach to Diem and Nhu. On the other hand, RIchardson favored Diem. And I have little doubt that Lodge used the cable to try and influence him. When RIchardson resisted, Lodge had him rotated out. But there was no immediate replacement named.

This allowed Conein to fill the vacuum. And this is when they struck. For Conein had been working with the generals before Lodge got there.

Kennedy was furious the cable was sent out behind his back. He then told Mike Forrestal right before he went to Dallas, that he would begin a full investigation of how the cable was sent once he returned. The first step he was going to take was to fire Lodge.

Well, we all know what happened. LBJ did not fire Lodge. There was no investigation. And LBJ convened a meeting in which he not only retained Lodge, he reversed the whole tone and tenor on Vietnam.

Gad, Halberstam was such a skunk. What a cover up artist this guy was.

The link Zach provided to Conein's interview also leads to in-depth interviews with Halberstam, Lodge, Lansdale, Maxwell Taylor,

Harriman, McNamara, Hilsman, Colby, Westmoreland, Holbrooke, Valenti, Rostow, Moyers, and many many more.

There are printed transcripts of the video interviews to make things easier. It's really an indispensable resource.

The Diem Coup: http://openvault.wgbh.org/catalog?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=diem+coup&search_field=all_fields&x=3&y=7

Zach has been posting some important information here, sometimes under the radar, in my opinion.

Edited by Michael Hogan
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I think this is from the PBS series, Vietnam: A Television History.

Which was actually a pretty good series.

Yes. These interviews include the outtakes, which are interesting. For example, Conein was talking about what they did when they heard of Diem's death when the interviewer stopped him:

Conein: At this time Big Minh asked for his sedan and escort of two MP jeeps, Vietnamese MPs, and he took off the back way toward the palace and four or six armored cars were dispatched to the palace itself. After Big Minh left, everybody started cleaning up the place because we had been drinking big oranges...ah

Interviewer: Could we stop? You are going into too much detail. It's too much.

Conein: All right

All right

Mark 556

Clapstick. Stand by just a moment.

Conein: After Big Minh left JACS I went toward the palace through the back way...I noticed that we had to clean up everything we had to leave so they were preparing for Diem’s arrival. They had a table with green cloth on it, they had the Vice President there to take his, er...dismissal and they were going to bring in the cameras. At this point, I knew when they were going to bring in the cameras I’d better get out so I went home and while at home I received a telephone call from the Embassy and they said that they wanted me, this was on direct instructions from the highest authority, to locate Diem and Nhu, took a shower, went back out to the Joint General Staff and they were all in the officers’ club where they interrogating the uh ministers of the former government.

At this time I asked about Diem and Nhu. I talked to Big Minh personally and he told me that they were, they had committed suicide and that they were behind the Joint General Staff—did I want to see them? I said, No, I didn’t want to see them and felt very disappointed that they had gotten off on that type of start because original plan was that Diem would go out of the country.

Interviewer: Did you believe this story that they committed suicide?

Conein: Of course I—d....I never for a moment.....

Interviewer: Could you say, This.....

Conein: I never uh for a moment believed that they committed suicide because I asked where it happened and Big Minh saying well they committed suicide the Catholic Church of Cholon. Being a Catholic I knew that if anybody had committed suicide in a Catholic Church and a priest held services that night that that story wouldn't hold water and I so stated...And that’s it.

Conein: Stop please.

Conein: Stop. Good.

Conein: Am I through?

Interviewer: Yes

Edited by Michael Hogan
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The link Zach provided to Conein's interview also leads to in-depth interviews with Halberstam, Lodge, Lansdale, Maxwell Taylor,

Harriman, McNamara, Hilsman, Colby, Westmoreland, Holbrooke, Valenti, Rostow, Moyers, and many many more.

There are printed transcripts of the video interviews to make things easier. It's really an indispensable resource.

The Diem Coup: http://openvault.wgbh.org/catalog?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=diem+coup&search_field=all_fields&x=3&y=7

Zach has been posting some important information here, sometimes under the radar, in my opinion.

Thank you Michael!

I think the ZRJEWEL Project [Document 1 and Document 2] and researching the MAAG in both Laos and Vietnam in the early 1960s is very important. That is also a great interview of Conein - thanks for posting up that transcript snippet and the link to the Vietnam: A Television History 'master' page on the Diem Coup.

Speaking of Lansdale, here is his 6 part interview and the transcripts: General Edward Geary Lansdale

A couple other things should be mentioned here:

Lansdale and Conein were best of friends for a long time. In Conein's 1961 Personal History Statement, Lansdale is listed as his top character reference. It also is interesting to see who Conein lists as his references in his 1968 Resume.

Also, I find it very curious that Conein was recommended for a Honor and Merit Award just one month after both Diem's and Kennedy's assassinations. Perhaps Henry Cabot Lodge was responsible for this?

Lansdale and Conein are also both buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

Although I do not think Vietnam had anything to do with JFK's death, I believe that a small aspect of the conspiracy had an eye toward war in SE Asia and this included Conein and Lansdale.

Below is a photo of Lansdale and Conein:

Lansdale_Conein2.jpg

Here is a photo of Lansdale and Oliver North. The man on North's right is John Singlaub.

Lansdale_North1.jpg

(photo credits: Mr. James Richards)

Last but certainly not least, according to Conein's 1947 Personal History Statement, I am pleased to see that he lists himself as a "Good" basketball player. I can definitely see him as a strong defender/rebounder. Perhaps Conein's basketball statistics can also be dug up through future research? :lol:

Zach

Edited by Zach Robertson
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