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The Warren Commission


John Simkin

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I thought it might be a good idea to start a thread on the Warren Commission. I am especially interested in why LBJ selected the different members and how they reacted to the evidence that they looked at during the investigation. The first person I want to look at is John McCloy.

Lyndon Johnson discussed the possibility of appointing John McCloy to the Warren Commission in a telephone conversation with Abe Fortas on 29th November, 1963. When Johnson mentioned his name Fortas replied: “I think that’d be great. He’s a wonderful man and a very dear friend of mine. I’m devoted to him.”

The relationship between McCloy and Fortas dates back to 1946. During the war McCloy served under Henry L. Stimson as assistant secretary of war. In this role he was involved in the internment of 120,000 Japanese-Americans. He was later criticized for opposing the plan to bomb the railroads leading to Auschwitz.

In 1945 McCloy was invited by Nelson Rockefeller to join the family law firm, Milbank, Tweed, Hope & Hadley. He accepted the offer and the firm became known as Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy. The law firm's most important client was the Rockefeller family's bank, Chase National. As John D. Rockefeller Jr. told his personal lawyer, Thomas M. Debevoise, "McCloy knows so many people in government circles... that he might be in the way to get information in various quarters about the matter without seeking it, or revealing his hand."

The family's main concern was the threat posed against their interests in Standard Oil of California. John D. Rockefeller Jr. owned almost 6 per cent of the stock of the company, making him the single largest shareholder. In 1946 Harold Ickes claimed that Rockefeller was violating the terms of the 1911 dissolution decree. Two other anti-trust lawyers, Abe Fortas and Thurman Arnold, joined forces with Ickes to petition the Justice Department to investigate the matter. John McCloy, was asked to sort the matter out and by the autumn of 1946, he had persuaded Ickes, Fortas and Arnold to drop the matter. No doubt Fortas and the other two men were paid off by the Rockefellers. Therefore, Fortas knew that McCloy was corruptible. He could also be blackmailed. See for example, the cases of Klaus Barbie, René Hardy, Alfried Krupp and Friedrich Flick.

Interestingly, McCloy was an early opponent of the Oswald as the lone-gunman theory. At the Warren Commission meeting on 16th December, 1963, Allen Dulles gave out copies of a ten-year old book that looked at the seven previous attempts on the lives of various presidents. The author argued that presidential assassins typically are misfits and loners. Dulles told his colleagues, “…you’ll find a pattern running through here that I think we’ll find in this present case.” McCloy rightly replied: “The Lincoln assassination was a plot”.

McCloy also told his wife he was having difficulty with the lone-gunman theory. He also informed her that he thought Oswald was having a relationship with the intelligence services before the assassination. McCloy commented that he thought it was “pretty suspicious” that Oswald had found it so easy to obtain an exit visa from the Soviets for his Russian wife. McCloy told his wife that he had heard “a very realistic rumor” that Oswald was not a genuine defector and that he was sent to the Soviet Union by the CIA.

McCloy was also concerned about the workings on the WC. They met only twice in December, 1963. The third meeting did not take place until the third week of January. John McCone reported to Lyndon Johnson on 9th January that McCloy had complained the previous day about this lack of urgency. McCloy told McCone that he feared the “trails of evidence will be lost” and that they have been interviewing witnesses soon after the assassination. In fact, the WC did not get the chance to question witnesses until nearly six months after the event.

McCloy became concerned about the nature of JFK’s wounds. At one meeting he said: “Let’s find out about these wounds, it is just as confusing now as could be. It left my mind muddy as to what really did happen… Why did the FBI report come out with something which isn’t consistent with the autopsy.” At this stage McCloy suspected that at least two men fired at JFK. He said he wanted to visit Dealey Plaza “to see if it is humanly possible for him (JFK) to have been hit in the front.”

It also emerged that McCloy was highly critical of the FBI report on the assassination. He blamed it on the report being “put together very fast”. What McCloy did not know was that Hoover was withholding evidence from the WC. Nor was he aware of the Hoover telephone call to LBJ on 24th November, 1963, when he said: “The thing I am most concerned about… is having something issued so we can convince the public that Oswald is the real assassination.”

At a meeting with J. Lee Rankin on 22nd January, 1964, McCloy was told that according to the Texas attorney general, Oswald had been an undercover agent of the FBI since September 1962. According to Rankin, his agent number was 179 and was being paid $200 a month.

McCloy was also in communication with the Time-Life executive, C. D. Jackson, about the Zapruder film. Jackson sent McCloy blown-up transparencies of the film that revealed that JFK and Connally had been hit by different bullets. McCloy also questioned Connally’s doctor at the hospital, who was also of the opinion that he had been hit by a separate bullet from JFK.

In an interview he gave on 3rd July, 1967, McCloy said: “I think there’s one thing I would do over again. I would insist on those photographs and the X-rays having being produced before us.” During the investigation members of the WC were told by Earl Warren that the Kennedy family was blocking access to these photographs and X-rays.

McCloy initially dismissed the idea of the magic bullet but he was persuaded to change his mind. So much so, when Russell, Boggs and Cooper said that they had “strong doubts” about the lone gunman theory, McCloy took the side of Ford and Dulles. In fact, McCloy played the main role in persuading the three men to sign the WC report that they did not believe in.

What changed? Was McCloy blackmailed into taking this position? Maybe, but I think he was most likely bribed. It has to be understood that McCloy attended less than half of all WC meetings. The reason was that he was busy working for Rockefeller’s Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy law firm.

During 1964 McCloy was working for one of Milbank’s most important clients, M. A. Hanna Mining Company. McCloy had several meetings with Hanna’s chief executive officer, George Humphrey. The two men had been close friends since Humphrey was Eisenhower’s Treasury Secretary. Humphrey was very concerned about the company’s investment in Brazil. Hanna Mining was the largest producer of iron ore in the country. However, after João Goulart had become president in 1961, he began to talk about nationalizing the iron ore industry.

Goulart was a wealthy landowner who was opposed to communism. However, he was in favour of the redistribution of wealth in Brazil. As minister of labour he had increased the minimum wage by 100%. Colonenel Vernon Walters, the US military attaché in Brazil, described Goulart as “basically a good man with a guilty conscience for being rich.”

The CIA began to make plans for overthrowing Goulart. A psychological warfare program approved by Henry Kissinger, at the request of telecom giant ITT during his chair of the 40 Committee, sent U.S. PSYOPS disinformation teams to spread fabricated rumors concerning Goulart.

McCloy was asked to set up a channel of communication between the CIA and Jack W. Burford, one of the senior executives of the Hanna Mining Company. In February, 1964, McCloy went to Brazil to hold secret negotiations with Goulart. However, Goulart rejected the deal offered by Hanna Mining.

The following month LBJ gave the go-ahead for the overthrow of Goulart (operation Brother Sam). Colonel Walters arranged for General Castello Branco to lead the coup. A US naval-carrier task force was ordered to station itself off the Brazilian coast. As it happens, the Brazilian generals did not need the help of the task force. Goulart’s forces were unwilling to defend the democratically elected government and he was forced to go into exile.

In his book, American Tragedy, David Kaiser points out that LBJ’s actions was a return to Eisenhower’s foreign policy where democratically elected leaders in the third world were removed on behalf of American industrialists. As Kai Bird commented in The Chairman: John J. McCloy: “The Johnson administration had made clear its willingness to use its muscle to support any regime whose anti-communist credentials were in good order.”

Was Brazil the reason that John McCloy became an ardent advocate of the lone-gunman theory?

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

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Personally, I would assume that John McCloy became an ardent advocate of the "lone-gunman theory" due to the fact that there was not a single iota of forensic; ballistic; pathological; and/or physical evidence to support any other conclusion.

All of which, when compared with the great majority of the witness testimony, also demonstrates that the "theory" is in fact what occurred.

And, since Mr. McCloy, as well as numerous others of the Commission were in fact fully aware of exactly how the assassination actual transpired, then there is little left in doubt as to the facts of the "Lone-Assassin".

Now, if one wishes to get into the factual evidence of exactly why John McCloy was chosen for the WC, as well as the WHY's that he could be counted on to help obscure the simple facts, then the discussion can turn to the political blackmail aspects of the WC and it's members.

Lastly, since it would appear that Earl Warren would have nothing to do with the "slight" sleight-of-hand maneuvers of how the altered survey data was admitted into evidence by Specter & Company, and this was done with John McCloy and Gerald Ford, then there is little left to doubt their cooperation in the obfuscation of the factual evidence.

http://jfkassassination.net/russ/testimony/gauthier.htm

John;

If and when you and others manage to escape from the "rabbit hole" of multiple assassins, you just may discover that there are other reasons for politicians to lie.

Besides being blackmailed to do so, that is!

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John

If Brazil was the reason McCloy defended the WC conclusions, there was reason for him to return to his doubts about the lone assassin theory.

In 1978 McCloy told the House Select Committee that, "I no longer feel we had no credible or reliable evidence in regard to a conspiracy." (HSCA, vol. XI, supra note 11, at 14, referenced in "President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Act of 1992" by Charles J. Sanders and Mark S. Zaid, p. 413 footnote # 11).

According to the above mentioned reference, The Records Act, WC members Russell, Boggs, and Cooper also publicly declared doubts about the WC conclusions.

Bill C

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Personally, I would assume that John McCloy became an ardent advocate of the "lone-gunman theory" due to the fact that there was not a single iota of forensic; ballistic; pathological; and/or physical evidence to support any other conclusion.

?????

If Brazil was the reason McCloy defended the WC conclusions, there was reason for him to return to his doubts about the lone assassin theory.

In 1978 McCloy told the House Select Committee that, "I no longer feel we had no credible or reliable evidence in regard to a conspiracy." (HSCA, vol. XI, supra note 11, at 14, referenced in "President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Act of 1992" by Charles J. Sanders and Mark S. Zaid, p. 413 footnote # 11).

According to the above mentioned reference, The Records Act, WC members Russell, Boggs, and Cooper also publicly declared doubts about the WC conclusions.

Thank you for that. I was not aware of that quote. There is another possible reason for McCloy arguing that Oswald was the lone-gunman - Clint Murchison. I will explain later.

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In 1978 McCloy told the House Select Committee that, "I no longer feel we had no credible or reliable evidence in regard to a conspiracy." (HSCA, vol. XI, supra note 11, at 14, referenced in "President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Act of 1992" by Charles J. Sanders and Mark S. Zaid, p. 413 footnote # 11).

The quote in full was:

"Insofar as the conspiracy issue is concerned, there has been so much talk about that. I don't think I need to dwell on it any longer. I no longer feel we had no credible evidence or reliable evidence in regard to a conspiracy, but I rather think the weight of the evidence was against the existence of a conspiracy."

Edited by Michael Hogan
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HSCA Appendix to Hearings

Volume XI

Page 43

(150) Burt Griffin brought a very skeptical opinion of the abilities of the FBI to the Warren Commission Staff:

I had worked with the FBI for two years when I was an assistant U.S. attorney. I didn't have a political view of them but I frankly didn't think they were very competent. I felt then, and I still feel, that they have a great myth about their capability but that
they are not capable by their investigative means of ever uncovering a serious and well planned conspiracy.
(Emphasis added) They would stumble upon it. I think their investigative means themselves may be self-defeating. I never found them very creative, very imaginative.

My attitude toward them was that I thought they were honest. I didn't think that in a sticky situation that I would have much faith in them.

Griffin also told the HSCA:

I think it is fair to say, and certainly reflects my feeling, and it was certainly the feeling I had of all my colleagues, that we were determined, if we could, to prove that the FBI was wrong, to find a conspiracy if we possibly could.

I think we thought we would be national heroes in a sense if we could find something that showed that there had been something sinister beyond what appeared to have gone on.

I wonder if Griffin really believed what he told the HSCA.

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After the war McCloy was invited by Nelson Rockefeller to join the family law firm, Milbank, Tweed, Hope & Hadley. He accepted the offer and the firm became known as Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy. The law firm's most important client was the Rockefeller family's bank, Chase National. As John D. Rockefeller Jr. told his personal lawyer, Thomas M. Debevoise, "McCloy knows so many people in government circles... that he might be in the way to get information in various quarters about the matter without seeking it, or revealing his hand."

The family's main concern was the threat posed against their interests in Standard Oil of California. John D. Rockefeller Jr. owned almost 6 per cent of the stock of the company, making him the single largest shareholder. In 1946 Harold Ickes claimed that Rockefeller was violating the terms of the 1911 dissolution decree. Two other anti-trust lawyers, Abe Fortas and Thurman Arnold, joined forces with Ickes to petition the Justice Department to investigate the matter. John McCloy, was asked to sort the matter out and by the autumn of 1946, he had persuaded Ickes, Fortas and Arnold to drop the matter.

After leaving Germany in 1953 McCloy became chairman of the Chase Manhattan Bank (1953-60) and the Ford Foundation (1958-65). He also continued to work for Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy. The company was owned by the Rockefeller family and therefore McCloy became involved in lobbying for the gas and oil industry.

McCloy remained close to Dwight D. Eisenhower and according to Kai Bird (The Chairman: John J. McCloy: The Making of the American Establishment): "On at least one occasion, in February 1954, he (McCloy) used a Chase National Bank plane to ferry himself and the rest of Ike's gang down from New York in order to keep a golf date with the president at the Augusta National range."

It was Eisenhower who first introduced McCloy to Sid Richardson and Clint Murchison. Soon afterwards, Chase Manhattan Bank began providing the men with low-interest loans. In 1954 McCloy worked with Richardson, Murchison and Robert R. Young in order to take control of the New York Central Railroad Company. The activities of these men caused a great deal of concern and the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) eventually held hearings about what was described as "highly improper" behaviour. The takeover was a disaster and Young committed suicide and New York Central eventually went bankrupt.

In 1950 Eisenhower had purchased a small farm for $24,000. According to Drew Pearson and Jack Anderson (The Case Against Congress), several oil millionaires, including W. Alton Jones, B. B. Byers and George E. Allen, began acquiring neighbouring land for Eisenhower. Jonathan Kwitny (Endless Enemies) has argued that over the next few years Eisenhower's land became worth over $1 million: "Most of the difference represented the gifts of Texas oil executives connected to Rockefeller oil interests. The oilmen acquired surrounding land for Eisenhower under dummy names, filled it with livestock and big, modern barns, paid for extensive renovations to the Eisenhower house, and even wrote out checks to pay the hired help."

In 1956 there was an attempt to end all federal price control over natural gas. Sam Rayburn played an important role in getting it through the House of Representatives. This is not surprising as according to John Connally, he alone had been responsible for a million and a half dollars of lobbying.

Paul Douglas and William Langer led the fight against the bill. Their campaigned was helped by a speech by Francis Case of South Dakota. Up until this time Case had been a supporter of the bill. However, he announced that he had been offered a $25,000 bribe by the Superior Oil Company to guarantee his vote. As a man of principal, he thought he should announce this fact to the Senate.

Lyndon B. Johnson responded by claiming that Case had himself come under pressure to make this statement by people who wanted to retain federal price controls. Johnson argued: “In all my twenty-five years in Washington I have never seen a campaign of intimidation equal to the campaign put on by the opponents of this bill.” Johnson pushed on with the bill and it was eventually passed by 53 votes to 38. However, three days later, Dwight D. Eisenhower, vetoed the bill on grounds of immoral lobbying. Eisenhower confided in his diary that this had been “the most flagrant kind of lobbying that has been brought to my attention”. He added that there was a “great stench around the passing of this bill” and the people involved were “so arrogant and so much in defiance of acceptable standards of propriety as to risk creating doubt among the American people concerning the integrity of governmental processes”.

The decision by Dwight D. Eisenhower to veto this bill angered the oil industry. Once again Sid Richardson and Clint Murchison began negotiations with Eisenhower. In June, 1957, Eisenhower agreed to appoint their man, Robert Anderson, as his Secretary of the Treasury. According to Robert Sherrill in his book, The Accidental President: "A few weeks later Anderson was appointed to a cabinet committee to "study" the oil import situation; out of this study came the present-day program which benefits the major oil companies, the international oil giants primarily, by about one billion dollars a year."

According to Jonathan Kwitny (Endless Enemies) from 1955 to 1963, the Richardson, Murchison, and Rockefeller interests (arranged by John McCloy) and the International Basic Economy Corporation (100% owned by the Rockefeller family) gave "away a $900,000 slice of their Texas-Louisiana oil property" to Robert B. Anderson, Eisenhower's Secretary of the Treasury.

One can now see why LBJ was so keen for McCloy to be a member of the Warren Commission.

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John J. McCloy was interviewed on The Warren Report: Part 4, CBS Television (28th June, 1967):

There have been a number of suggestions that the Commission, for example, was only motivated by a desire to put - to make things quiet, so as to give comfort to the Administration, or give comfort to the people of the country, that there was nothing vicious about this. Well, that wasn't the attitude that we had at all.

I know what my attitude, when I first went down, I was convinced that there was something phony between the Ruby and the Oswald affair, that forty-eight hours after the assassination, here's this man shot in the police station. I was pretty skeptical about that. But as time went on and we heard witnesses and weighed the witnesses - but just think how silly this charge is.

Here we were seven men, I think five of us were Republicans. We weren't beholden to any Administration. Besides that, we - we had our own integrity to think of. A lot of people have said that you can rely upon the distinguished character of the Commission. You don't need to rely on the distinguished character of the Commission. Maybe it was distinguished, and maybe it wasn't. But you can rely on common sense. And you know that seven men aren't going to get together, of that character, and concoct a conspiracy, with all of the members of the staff we had, with all of the investigative agencies - it would have been a conspiracy of a character so mammoth and so vast that it transcends any - even some of the distorted charges of conspiracy on the part of Oswald.

I think that if there's one thing I would do over again, I would insist on those photographs and the X-rays having been produced before us. In the one respect, and only one respect there, I think we were perhaps a little oversensitive to what we understand was the sensitivities of the Kennedy family against the production of colored photographs of the body, and so forth.

But those exist. They're there. We had the best evidence in regard to that the pathology in respect to the President's wounds. It was our own choice that we didn't subpoena these photographs, which were then in the hands of the Kennedy family. I say, I wish - I don't think we'd have subpoenaed them. We could have gotten - Mr. Justice Warren was talking to the Kennedy family about that at that time. I thought that he was really going to see them, but it turned out that he hadn't.

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Thomas Hale Boggs was a member of the Warren Commission. Boggs signed the original Warren Report. However, later he began to have doubts claiming that "Hoover lied his eyes out on Oswald, on Ruby, on their friends, you name it."

Thomas Hale Boggs disappeared while on a campaign flight from Anchorage to Juneau, Alaska, on 16th October, 1972. No bodies were ever found.

The Los Angeles Star, on November 22, 1973, reported that before his death Boggs claimed he had "startling revelations" on Watergate and the assassination of JFK.

Barnard Fensterwald provides an interesting commentary on Thomas Hale Boggs in Assassination of JFK: Coincidence or Conspiracy (1974) pages 96-105

"You have got to do everything on earth to establish the facts one way or the other. And without doing that, why everything concerned, including every one of us is doing a very grave disservice. Thus House Majority Leader Hale Boggs delivered an admonishment of sorts to his Warren Commission colleagues on January 27, 1964. Along with Senator Richard Russell, and to a lesser degree, Senator John Sherman Cooper, Congressman Boggs served as a beacon of skepticism and probity in trying to fend off the FBI and CIA's efforts to "shade" and indeed manipulate the findings of the Warren Commission.

Like Russell, Boggs was, very simply, a strong doubter. Several years after his death in 1972, a colleague of his wife Lindy (who was elected to fill her late husband's seat in the Congress) recalled Mrs. Boggs remarking, "Hale felt very, very torn during his work [on the Commission] ... he wished he had never been on it and wished he'd never signed it [the Warren Report]." A former aide to the late House Majority Leader has recently recalled, "Hale always returned to one thing: Hoover lied his eyes out to the Commission - on Oswald, on Ruby, on their friends, the bullets, the gun, you name it... "

Almost from the beginning, Congressman Boggs had been suspicious over the FBI and CIA's reluctance to provide hard information when the Commission's probe turned to certain areas, such as allegations that Oswald may have been an undercover operative of some sort. When the Commission sought to disprove the growing suspicion that Oswald had once worked for the FBI, Boggs was outraged that the only proof of denial that the FBI offered was a brief statement of disclaimer by J. Edgar Hoover. It was Hale Boggs who drew an admission from Allen Dulles that the CIA's record of employing someone like Oswald might be so heavily coded that the verification of his service would be almost impossible for outside investigators to establish. Boggs and Dulles had the following exchange:

"Thomas Boggs: So I will ask you. Did you have agents about whom you had no record whatsoever?

Allen Dulles: The record might not be on paper. But on paper [we] would have hieroglyphics that only two people knew what they meant, and nobody outside of the Agency would know and you could say this meant the agent and someone else could say it meant another agent."

Congressman Boggs had been the Commission's leading proponent for devoting more investigative resources to probing the connections of Jack Ruby. With an early recognition that "the most difficult aspect of this is the Ruby aspect," Boggs had wanted an increased effort made to investigate the accused assassin's murderer.

Boggs was perhaps the first person to recognize something which numerous Warren Commission critics would write about in future years: the strange variations and dissimilarities to be found in Lee Harvey Oswald's correspondence during 1960 to 1963. Some critics have advanced the theory that some of Oswald's letters - particularly correspondence to the American Embassy in Moscow, and later, to the Fair Play for Cuba Committee - may have been "planted" documents written by someone else. In 1975 and 1976, the investigations of the Senate Intelligence Committee and other Congressional groups disclosed that such uses of fabricated correspondence had been a recurring tool of the FBI's secret domestic COINTELPRO [Counter Intelligence] program as well as other intelligence operations. In any event, Warren Commission member Boggs and Commission General Counsel Lee Rankin had early on discussed such an idea:

"Rankin: They [the Fair Play For Cuba Committee] denied he was a member and also he wrote to them and tried to establish as one of the letters indicate, a new branch there in New Orleans, the Fair Play For Cuba.

Boggs: That letter has caused me a lot of trouble. It is a much more literate and polished communication than any of his other writing."

It is also known Boggs felt that because of the lack of adequate material from the FBI and CIA the Commission members were poorly prepared for the examination of witnesses. According to a former Boggs staffer, the Congressman felt that lack of adequate file preparation and the sometimes erratic scheduling of Commission sessions served to prevent those same sessions from being adequately substantive. Consequently, Boggs cut down his participation in these sessions as the investigation stretched on through 1964.

Author Sylvia Meagher has cited one of the more telling examples of the frequent inability of the Warren Commission to coordinate its members' involvement in these sessions, as illustrated by the following exchange in Warren Commission Volume 3:

"Chairman Warren: Senator Cooper, at this time I am obliged to leave for our all-day conference on Friday at the Supreme Court, and I may be back later in the day, but if I don't, you continue, of course.

Sen. Cooper: I will this morning. If I can't be here this afternoon whom do you want ' to preside?

Chairman Warren: Congressman Ford, would you be here this afternoon at all?

Rep. Ford: Unfortunately, Mr. McCloy and I have to go to a conference out of town.

Chairman Warren: You are both going out of town, aren't you?

Sen. Cooper: I can go and come back if it is necessary.

Chairman Warren: I will try to be here myself. Will Mr. Dulles be here?

Mr. McCloy: He is out of town."

On April 5, 1971, House Majority Leader Hale Boggs took the floor of the House to deliver a speech that created a major stir in Washington for several weeks. Declaring that FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was incompetent and senile, and charging that the FBI had, under Hoover's most recent years adopted "the tactics of the Soviet Union and Hitler's Gestapo"; Boggs demanded Hoover's immediate resignation. Boggs also charged that he had discovered that certain FBI agents had tapped his own telephone as well as the phones of certain other members of the House and Senate. In his emotional House speech, Boggs went on to say Attorney General Mitchell says he is a law and order man. If law and order means the suppression of the Bill of Rights . . . then I say "God help us." As the Washington Post noted, "The Louisiana Democrat's speech was the harshest criticism of Hoover ever heard in the House . . . It was the first attack on Hoover by any member of the House leadership."

At the time, Boggs' startling speech created a sensation in Washington. Observers were uncertain as to his exact motivations in demanding Hoover's resignation, and there was an immediate critical reaction from Hoover's various defenders. It has been reported that sources within the FBI and the Attorney General's office began spreading stories that Boggs was a hopeless alcoholic. However, it was not until almost four years later that the motivation behind Boggs' outburst came into clearer focus.

On January 20, 1975, the Washington Post and other news organizations reported that solid evidence had been uncovered about the existence of what Hoover and the FBI had long denied they possessed: secret damaging dossiers on various members of the House and Senate, compiled through various forms of surveillance. On the following day, January 21,1975, Washington Post reporter Ron Kessler made a further disclosure:

"The son of the late House Majority Leader Boggs has told The Post that the FBI leaked to his father damaging material on the personal lives of critics of its investigation into John F. Kennedy's assassination. Thomas Hale Boggs, Jr. said his father, who was a member of the Warren Commission, which investigated the assassination and its handling by the FBI, was given the material in an apparent attempt to discredit the critics [of the Warren Commission].

The material, which Thomas Boggs made available, includes photographs of sexual activity and reports on alleged communist affiliations of some authors of articles and books on the assassination.

Boggs, a Washington lawyer, said the experience played a large role in his father's decision to publicly charge the FBI with Gestapo tactics in a 1971 speech alleging the Bureau had wiretapped his telephone and that of other Congressmen."

As will be seen, the details about the FBI's secret surveillance of the leading critics of the Warren Commission were later reviewed by the Senate Intelligence Committee in 1975. The Senate investigators finally established that FBI Director Hoover not only had prepared secret "derogatory dossiers" on the critics of the Warren Commission over the years, but had even ordered the preparation of similar "damaging" reports about staff members of the Warren Commission. Whether FBI Director Hoover intended to use these dossiers for purposes of blackmail has never been determined.

Although it was not until eleven years after the murder of John F. Kennedy that the FBI's crude harassment and surveillance of various assassination researchers and investigators became officially documented, other information about it had previously surfaced.

Mark Lane, the long time critic of the Warren Report has often spoken of FBI harassment and surveillance directed against him. While many observers were at first skeptical about Lane's characteristically vocal allegations against the FBI, the list of classified Warren Commission documents that was later released substantiated Lane's charges, as it contained several FBI files about him. Lane had earlier uncovered a February 24, 1964 Warren Commission memorandum from staff counsel Harold Willens to General Counsel J. Lee Rankin. The memorandum revealed that FBI agents had Lane's movements and lectures under surveillance, and were forwarding their reports to the Warren Commission.

In March, 1967, the official list of secret Commission documents then being held in a National Archives vault included at least seven FBI files on Lane, which were classified on supposed grounds of "national security." Among these secret Bureau reports were the following: Warren Commission Document 489, "Mark Lane, Buffalo appearances;" Warren Commission Document 694, "Various Mark Lane appearances;" Warren Commission Document 763, "Mark Lane appearances;" and Warren Commission Document 1457, "Mark Lane and his trip to Europe."

In at least one documented instance, the CIA had been equally avid in "compiling" information on another critic, the noted European writer Joachim Joesten, who had written an early "conspiracy theory" book, titled Oswald: Assassin or Fall Guy (Marzani and Munsell Publishers, Inc., 1964, West Germany). A Warren Commission file (Document 1532), declassified years later, revealed that the CIA had turned to an unusual source in their effort to investigate Joesten. According to the document, which consists of a CIA memorandum of October 1, 1964, written by Richard Helms' staff, the CIA conducted a search of some of Adolph Hitler's Gestapo files for information on Joesten.

Joachim Joesten, an opponent of the Hitler regime in Germany, was a survivor of one of the more infamous concentration camps. The Helms memorandum reveals that Helms' CIA aides had compiled information on Joesten's alleged political instability - information taken from Gestapo security files of the Third Reich, dated 1936 and 1937. In one instance, Helms' aides had used data on Joesten which had been gathered by Hitler's Chief of S.S. on November 8, 1937. While the CIA memorandum did not mention it, there was good reason for the Third Reich's efforts to compile a dossier on Joesten. Three days earlier, on November 5, 1937, at the infamous "Hossbach Conference," Adolph Hitler had informed Hermann Goering and his other top lieutenants of his plan to launch a world war by invading Europe."

In late 1975, during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing that featured the questioning of top FBI officials, Senator Richard Schweiker disclosed other secret FBI surveillance of Warren Commission critics. Senator Schweiker disclosed new information from a November 8, 1966 memorandum by J. Edgar Hoover, relating to other dossiers on the critics. According to Schweiker, "Seven individuals [were] listed, some of their files... not only included derogatory information, but sex pictures to boot.

During the Senate Committee session, Schweiker also disclosed that "we came across another FBI letter several months later on another of the critic's personal files. I think it is January 30, 1967. Here, almost three months apart, is an ongoing campaign to personally derogate people who differed politically. In this case it was the Warren Commission [critics].

As will be seen in the chapter on "Links to Watergate," copies - of the FBI's "derogatory dossier" on another leading Warren Commission critic, associated with Mark Lane, were later distributed through the Nixon White House by secret Nixon investigator John Caulfield, John Dean, and H. R. Haldeman's top aides.

Still further information relating to FBI-CIA surveillance of the Warren Commission critics was disclosed in January, 1975 by Senator Howard Baker and the New York Times. On January 17, 1975, the Times disclosed that Senator Baker had come across an extensive CIA dossier on Bernard Fensterwald, Jr., the Director of the Committee to Investigate Assassinations, during the course of Baker's service on the Senate Watergate Committee. Senator Baker was then probing various areas of CIA involvement in the Watergate conspiracy. The New York Times reported that Baker believed the dossier on Fensterwald indicated that the Agency was conducting domestic activities or surveillances - prohibited by the Agency charter's ban on domestic involvement.

Among the items contained in the CIA dossier on Fensterwald was an Agency report of May 12, 1972 titled "#553 989." The CIA report indicated that this detailed surveillance was conducted under the joint auspices of the CIA and the Washington, D. C. Metropolitan Police Intelligence Unit. D. C. Police involvement with the CIA, which in some cases was illegal, subsequently erupted into a scandal which resulted in an internal police investigation in 1975 and 1976, as well as a Congressional investigation.

The May 12, 1972 CIA report on Fensterwald states:

"On 10 May 1972, a check was made at the Metropolitan Police Department Intelligence , Unit concerning an organization called The Committee To Investigate Assassinations located at 927 15th Street, N.W., Washington, D. C. . . .

On 10 May 1972, a check was made (DELETION)

On 11 May 1972, a physical check was made of 927 15th Street .... to verify the location of the above-mentioned organization. This check disclosed that the Committee To Investigate Assassinations is located in room 409 and 414 of the Carry Building."

After setting forth a room by room analysis of the offices and businesses located on the same floor as the Committee, the report went on:

"A discreet inquiry was made with (DELETION) of this building showing no government interest concerning the Committee To Investigate Assassinations. This source stated that on a daily basis that traffic coming and going from this office is very busy. This source stated that on a daily basis the office is operated by two individuals one of whose name is Jim."

Former Warren Commission member Hale Boggs would no doubt have been pleased that these activities of the FBI and CIA were finally brought to light. As his son has pointed out, Boggs' denunciation of J. Edgar Hoover in April of 1971 was based in part on his knowledge of the FBI's murky surveillance of Warren Commission critics. Whether Boggs believed the FBI's surveillance of him was based on the fact that he himself had privately become a fierce critic of Commission's conclusions is not known.

On October 16, 1972, Hale Boggs vanished during a flight in Alaska from Anchorage to Juneau. Despite a thirty-nine-day search by the Air Force, Navy, and Coast Guard, no trace of the twin-engine plane on which Boggs was traveling has ever been found.

Had he been alive today, Boggs would probably have become Speaker of the House, having held the number two leadership post in the Congress at the time of his disappearance. There is no doubt Boggs would have been a singularly important figure in any re-opening of the Kennedy case.

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  • 1 year later...

We know via the LBJ tapes that the president, with the help of J. Edgar Hoover, took a great deal of care about who should serve on the Warren Commission. Both LBJ and Hoover kept files on all members of Congress. This information was used to pressurize politicians into doing as they were told. Hoover did it to keep himself in power. It was the main reason why all presidents, including JFK and LBJ, refused to sack Hoover. LBJ used these blackmail tactics to control the votes in Congress when he was majority leader.

LBJ could not afford one member of the Warren Commission to state openly that they thought there had been a conspiracy to kill JFK. He had to be sure that every member would do as they were told. LBJ used Russell and Hoover used Ford to spy on the Warren Commission. It was clear from the start that Dulles and McCloy could be relied on to argue that JFK had been killed by Oswald. The same could be said for Russell and Ford. I wonder what LBJ had on John S. Cooper and Thomas H. Boggs?

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We know via the LBJ tapes that the president, with the help of J. Edgar Hoover, took a great deal of care about who should serve on the Warren Commission. Both LBJ and Hoover kept files on all members of Congress. This information was used to pressurize politicians into doing as they were told. Hoover did it to keep himself in power. It was the main reason why all presidents, including JFK and LBJ, refused to sack Hoover. LBJ used these blackmail tactics to control the votes in Congress when he was majority leader.

LBJ could not afford one member of the Warren Commission to state openly that they thought there had been a conspiracy to kill JFK. He had to be sure that every member would do as they were told. LBJ used Russell and Hoover used Ford to spy on the Warren Commission. It was clear from the start that Dulles and McCloy could be relied on to argue that JFK had been killed by Oswald. The same could be said for Russell and Ford. I wonder what LBJ had on John S. Cooper and Thomas H. Boggs?

"I wonder what LBJ had on John S. Cooper"

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.ph...&hl=Shevlin

Probably not that much, other than the fact that his wife, Lorraine Shevlin, was a former "McAdoo" (by marriage), and was thus related (by marriage) to the DeMohrenschildt's.

As well as the fact that the McAdoo's were from the Marrietta, GA area, home of William D. Pawley who oversaw construction of the Hindustan Aircraft Plant in India, and John S. Cooper was also the Ambassador to India during a part of this period as well.

SO!

Connections to William D. Pawley (by way of India)

Connections to Annie Hahr Dobbs Pawley (wife of William D. Pawley) by way of Marrieta, GA (her home)

Connections to the William Gibbs McAdoo family through the marriage to former wife of McAdoo's son.

Connections to the DeMohrenschildt family through marriage of the former wife of a McDoo.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Name: Ferdinand DEMOHRENSCHILDT 1

Sex: M

Death: 1919 in NY 1

LDS Baptism: LIVE 1

Marriage 1 Nona Hazlehurst MCADOO b: 8 JUN 1893 in New York, NY

Married: MAY 1917

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Name: Nona Hazlehurst MCADOO 1

Sex: F

Birth: 8 JUN 1893 in New York, NY 1

Death: 17 OCT 1971 in New York, NY 1

LDS Baptism: LIVE 1

Father: William Gibbs MCADOO , Jr. b: 31 OCT 1863 in near Marietta, GA

Mother: Sarah Houstoun Sally FLEMING b: 1867

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Name: William Gibbs MCADOO , Jr. 1

Sex: M

Birth: 31 OCT 1863 in near Marietta, GA 2

Death: 1 FEB 1941 in Washington, D.C. 2

Event: Fact Secretary of the U. S. Treasury under Wilson

Burial: UNKNOWN Arlington National Cemetery

Children:

Nona Hazlehurst MCADOO b: 8 JUN 1893 in New York, NY

Robert Hazlehurst MCADOO b: 23 NOV 1900 in Yonkers, NY

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Name: Robert Hazelhurst MCADOO

Given Name: Robert Hazelhurst

Surname: McADOO 1

Sex: M

Birth: 23 Nov 1900 in Yonkers, Westchester Co., NY 1

Death: 10 Jan 1937 in New York, New York Co., NY 1

_UID: BECBA2A1926347CFB84CD7778DC6EDA60F2B

Change Date: 25 Jan 2002

Note: Ensign, Naval Flying Corps., WWI

Father: William Gibbs MCADOO b: 31 Oct 1863 in Marietta, Cobb Co., GA

Mother: Sarah Houstoun FLEMING

Marriage 1 Lorraine Arnold ROWAN

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

NOTE: Robert Hazelhurst McAdoo was a Naval Pilot.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Name: William Douglas PAWLEY

Sex: M

Birth: 17 SEP 1896 in Florence, SC

Death: 7 JUN 1977 in Miami Beach, Dade, FL

_UID: 89B289EBEC1946BABF5BE49870B193A3A135

Marriage 1 Annie Hahr DOBBS b: 20 JAN 1898 in Marietta, Cobb, GA

Married: 25 JUL 1918 in Marietta, Cobb, GA

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_D._Pawley

May 1942, Pawley moved his operation to India as a partner in Hindustan Aircraft Limited.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

P.S. One would not want to forget that John Birch was raised in India, died as a "spy" in China (home of "Pawley's" Flying Tigers), and was also a distant cousin of Annie Hahr Dobbs Pawley.

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Share on other sites

We know via the LBJ tapes that the president, with the help of J. Edgar Hoover, took a great deal of care about who should serve on the Warren Commission. Both LBJ and Hoover kept files on all members of Congress. This information was used to pressurize politicians into doing as they were told. Hoover did it to keep himself in power. It was the main reason why all presidents, including JFK and LBJ, refused to sack Hoover. LBJ used these blackmail tactics to control the votes in Congress when he was majority leader.

LBJ could not afford one member of the Warren Commission to state openly that they thought there had been a conspiracy to kill JFK. He had to be sure that every member would do as they were told. LBJ used Russell and Hoover used Ford to spy on the Warren Commission. It was clear from the start that Dulles and McCloy could be relied on to argue that JFK had been killed by Oswald. The same could be said for Russell and Ford. I wonder what LBJ had on John S. Cooper and Thomas H. Boggs?

"I wonder what LBJ had on John S. Cooper"

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.ph...&hl=Shevlin

Probably not that much, other than the fact that his wife, Lorraine Shevlin, was a former "McAdoo" (by marriage), and was thus related (by marriage) to the DeMohrenschildt's.

As well as the fact that the McAdoo's were from the Marrietta, GA area, home of William D. Pawley who oversaw construction of the Hindustan Aircraft Plant in India, and John S. Cooper was also the Ambassador to India during a part of this period as well.

SO!

Connections to William D. Pawley (by way of India)

Connections to Annie Hahr Dobbs Pawley (wife of William D. Pawley) by way of Marrieta, GA (her home)

Connections to the William Gibbs McAdoo family through the marriage to former wife of McAdoo's son.

Connections to the DeMohrenschildt family through marriage of the former wife of a McDoo.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Name: Ferdinand DEMOHRENSCHILDT 1

Sex: M

Death: 1919 in NY 1

LDS Baptism: LIVE 1

Marriage 1 Nona Hazlehurst MCADOO b: 8 JUN 1893 in New York, NY

Married: MAY 1917

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Name: Nona Hazlehurst MCADOO 1

Sex: F

Birth: 8 JUN 1893 in New York, NY 1

Death: 17 OCT 1971 in New York, NY 1

LDS Baptism: LIVE 1

Father: William Gibbs MCADOO , Jr. b: 31 OCT 1863 in near Marietta, GA

Mother: Sarah Houstoun Sally FLEMING b: 1867

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Name: William Gibbs MCADOO , Jr. 1

Sex: M

Birth: 31 OCT 1863 in near Marietta, GA 2

Death: 1 FEB 1941 in Washington, D.C. 2

Event: Fact Secretary of the U. S. Treasury under Wilson

Burial: UNKNOWN Arlington National Cemetery

Children:

Nona Hazlehurst MCADOO b: 8 JUN 1893 in New York, NY

Robert Hazlehurst MCADOO b: 23 NOV 1900 in Yonkers, NY

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Name: Robert Hazelhurst MCADOO

Given Name: Robert Hazelhurst

Surname: McADOO 1

Sex: M

Birth: 23 Nov 1900 in Yonkers, Westchester Co., NY 1

Death: 10 Jan 1937 in New York, New York Co., NY 1

_UID: BECBA2A1926347CFB84CD7778DC6EDA60F2B

Change Date: 25 Jan 2002

Note: Ensign, Naval Flying Corps., WWI

Father: William Gibbs MCADOO b: 31 Oct 1863 in Marietta, Cobb Co., GA

Mother: Sarah Houstoun FLEMING

Marriage 1 Lorraine Arnold ROWAN

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

NOTE: Robert Hazelhurst McAdoo was a Naval Pilot.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Name: William Douglas PAWLEY

Sex: M

Birth: 17 SEP 1896 in Florence, SC

Death: 7 JUN 1977 in Miami Beach, Dade, FL

_UID: 89B289EBEC1946BABF5BE49870B193A3A135

Marriage 1 Annie Hahr DOBBS b: 20 JAN 1898 in Marietta, Cobb, GA

Married: 25 JUL 1918 in Marietta, Cobb, GA

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_D._Pawley

May 1942, Pawley moved his operation to India as a partner in Hindustan Aircraft Limited.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

P.S. One would not want to forget that John Birch was raised in India, died as a "spy" in China (home of "Pawley's" Flying Tigers), and was also a distant cousin of Annie Hahr Dobbs Pawley.

BUMP

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We know from the transcripts is that LBJ used emotional blackmail with Earl Warren and Richard Russell when they initially refused to serve on the commission. LBJ seems to be saying that if you don't cover this up, then I will have to start a nuclear war with the Soviet Union over Cuba. What are your views on why he used this strategy? Do you think Warren and Russell believed him?

I think the documentary evidence is there to make the case for LBJ's authentic fear that possible nuclear war was a close thing. The info he was getting from Hoover and from the CIA over the assassination weekend was that Oswald or an impostor had been in touch with the KGB's wet acts expert in Mexico City. LBJ was increasingly aware that elements in the government, especially the CIA, were pushing hard for Oswald as a Castro-Soviet asset who just killed JFK. This was then to serve as the opportunity for the US to launch an attack on Cuba and if the Soviets wanted a piece of the action SAC was ready to exercise its long-planed all-out pre-emptive nuclear attack on Russia and everything Red. I touch on this a little in BOT. But when LBJ pressured Warren and Russell to join the commission he wasn't just blowing smoke, he really believed that he had two alternatives: to go along with the military/CIA campaign to settle the Cuban problem (and the Cold War) in one fell swoop; or to move quickly with Hoover's help to cover up the truth of Dallas with the mythology of a lone nut explanation.

When ole Lyndon threatened Warren that 40,000,000 American deaths were at stake I don't think he was whistling Dixie.

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I think the documentary evidence is there to make the case for LBJ's authentic fear that possible nuclear war was a close thing. The info he was getting from Hoover and from the CIA over the assassination weekend was that Oswald or an impostor had been in touch with the KGB's wet acts expert in Mexico City. LBJ was increasingly aware that elements in the government, especially the CIA, were pushing hard for Oswald as a Castro-Soviet asset who just killed JFK. This was then to serve as the opportunity for the US to launch an attack on Cuba and if the Soviets wanted a piece of the action SAC was ready to exercise its long-planed all-out pre-emptive nuclear attack on Russia and everything Red. I touch on this a little in BOT. But when LBJ pressured Warren and Russell to join the commission he wasn't just blowing smoke, he really believed that he had two alternatives: to go along with the military/CIA campaign to settle the Cuban problem (and the Cold War) in one fell swoop; or to move quickly with Hoover's help to cover up the truth of Dallas with the mythology of a lone nut explanation.

When ole Lyndon threatened Warren that 40,000,000 American deaths were at stake I don't think he was whistling Dixie.

Isn't it possible that LBJ was providing an alibi for the cover-up? He probably feared that the story of the cover-up would eventually get out. What better motive could he have that he saved the world from a nuclear war? However, it is based on the idea that the Soviets would launch a nuclear attack if the US invaded Cuba. The Soviet Union would never have done that and LBJ knew it. LBJ knew that if he blamed Castro for the assassination and launched an attack on Cuba, the international community would have demanded to see the evidence. Any full investigation would have exposed the role that the CIA had played in the assassination. I suspect information about LBJ's corruption would also have come out during any real investigation. It was therefore in LBJ's interest for the lone-gunman theory to be accepted.

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