John Heinz and John Tower

[John Ritchson]

Part15.

Chapter 15

The Select Committee on Assassinations,

The Intelligence Community and the News Media

Part I

The Top Down vs. The Bottom Up Approach

To Assassination Investigations

Two vastly different views have been held by both assassination

researchers and members of Congress during the last three years

about the best way to arrive at the truth concerning political

assassinations in the United States. The conservative view

dictates we must build an investigative base from the ground

upward, beginning with the JFK assassination, and use "hard"

evidence in each assassination case. This view assumes that any

grand, overall conspiracy to cover up the cover-ups would be

detected and made public following exposure of the first layer of

cover-ups.

The less conservative view holds that the political processes

underlying the original assassinations and the massive cover-up

superstructure should be attacked and exposed simultaneously.

The resolutions to establish a Select Committee to Investigate

Assassinations, introduced by Thomas Downing and Henry Gonzalez in

the House of Representatives in 1975, were somewhat related to both

views. The conservative Downing resolution called for a sole

investigation of the JFK case. Gonzalez's resolution called for

the reopening of all four major cases--JFK, RFK, Dr. King and

George Wallace--and more importantly, it called for an

investigation of the possible links among all four. Gonzalez

stated that he believed the country might be experiencing an

assassination-controlled electoral process. His approach was

clearly allied with the less conservative view.

Research groups, such as Mark Lane's Citizen's Commission of

Inquiry (CCI), Bud Fensterwald's Committee to Investigate

Assassinations (CTIA), and Bob Katz's Assassination Information

Bureau (AIB) were also divided in their views. CCI and CTIA took

the bottom-up approach and tended to support Downing. AIB took the

overview political approach and tended to support Gonzalez. The

Black Caucus, Coretta King and others were primarily interested in

a broad overview of the King assassination.

The coalition formed by Downing, Gonzalez and the Black Caucus

finally brought about the creation of the Select Committee on

Assassinations in the House, which represents a mixture of these

views and approaches.

The work of the Select Committee will produce results if it is

recognized that the bottom-up approach alone cannot be used

successfully against the group of powerful individuals that

currently controls the environment in which any investigation

attempts are to be made. The best way the Select Committee can

succeed against this group is to use what will be labelled the "top

down" approach to investigating and exposing the truth as a

supplement to the bottom up approach.

The Power Control Group

The earlier part of this book described a group of individuals

in the United States and labelled them the "Power Control Group."

The PCG is that group of individuals or organizations that

knowingly participated in one or more of the assassination

conspiracies or related murders or attempted murders, plus the

individuals who knowingly participated or are still participating

in the cover-ups of those conspiracies or murders. The PCG

includes any people in the CIA, FBI, Justice Department, Secret

Service, local police departments or sheriffs offices in Los

Angeles, Memphis, Dallas, New Orleans or Florida, judges, district

attorneys, state attorneys general, other federal government

agencies, the House of Representatives, the Senate, the White

House, the Congress, or the Department of Defense as well as any

people in the media who are under the influence of any of the

above, who participated or are participating in the cover-ups or

the cover-ups of the cover-up. There are indications that people

in every one of the above organizations or groups belong to the

PCG.

Hard Evidence of Conspiracy

Anyone who has honestly and openly taken the time to examine a

few pieces of hard evidence in any one of the four major cases has

no trouble deciding there were individual conspiracies in each. In

the face of this situation, the layman wonders why the Congress

continually demands hard evidence of conspiracy. Statements

continue to appear in the media to the effect that, "I've seen no

evidence of conspiracy." Or, "We are not sure whether there were

others involved in addition to Lee Harvey Oswald, Sirhan Sirhan,

James Earl Ray or Arthur Bremer." These statements are made in

spite of the fact that even the most casual analysis clearly shows

that Oswald, Sirhan, and Ray did not fire any of the shots that

struck JFK, RFK and MLK, and that they were all patsies. Bremer

fired some of the shots in the Wallace case, but there is evidence

that another gun was fired.

The hard evidence is all old evidence. It goes back at least to

1967 and 1968 in the JFK case, and back to 1970 through 1972 in the

RFK and MLK cases. The Wallace evidence is a little fresher, but

nevertheless convincing. The people who demand new evidence are

either members of the PCG, or they are brainwashed by the media

members of the PCG into ignoring the old evidence. They do not

choose to see or to hear the old evidence, even when it is

literally placed before their very eyes and ears. Thus the words

"hard evidence" are merely substitutes for the words "no

conspiracy".

The Bottom Up Approach

The bottom up approach is doomed to failure no matter how the

Select Committee tries and no matter how much effort any official

body puts into attempts to offer that "bombshell" that Tip O'Neill

and others look for to prove conspiracy in the JFK and MLK cases.

The PCG is in complete control of the situation. It controls the

media and the media controls the minds of most citizens and the

Congress. The PCG is a living, dynamic body right now. They can

eliminate an investigation or investigators right now. They can

eliminate a member of the House or a member of the Select Committee

right now.

The bottom up approach will never get off the ground because the

PCG will not allow it. As long as the PCG controls all the sources

of evidence that might contain the hard evidence in the FBI, CIA

and local police files, as long as it controls the courts, and as

long as it controls the media, no one will be allowed to prove hard

evidence before the House, the Senate, the President, or any one in

the Executive Branch.

The Events of 1976 and 1977

That the PCG's control exists is more clearly evident now than

it has ever been before. The PCG is operating in an almost blatant

fashion. Any observer who keeps his eyes wide open and assumes

that such a group exists, can see it operate almost every day.

The prime objectives of the PCG in 1976 and 1977 were:

1. To block and eliminate the Select Committee on

Assassinations in the House of Representatives.

2. To firmly implant the idea that the JFK assassination

was a Castro plot.

3. To block any Congressional attempts to investigate the

four assassination cases.

4. To control the Carter Administration in such a way as

to permit only an executive branch investigation that

will conclude there was a Castro-based JFK conspiracy

and no conspiracy in the other cases.

The 1977 activities of the PCG lent themselves to a new

approach, the "top down" approach to exposing the truth.

Exposing the PCG

The top down approach obviously begins with exposing the PCG's

immediate, present activities. The following examples are

illustrative. The Select Committee is certainly in a better

position to know which individuals and actions taken by the PCG

since the formation of the Committee in September, 1976 would be

most easily attacked. The first example is the leaked Justice

Department report on the King case.

The Justice Department King Report

The PCG members' actions were leaked in the February 2, 1977

King report and released a few weeks later. To review the list of

PCG members involved in the cover-up of the King case: J. Edgar

Hoover, the Memphis FBI, Phil Canale (Memphis D.A.), Fred Vinson

(State Department), Judge Battle, Percy Foreman, William Bradford

Huie, Gerald Frank (author), Frank Holloman and other members of

the Memphis police and judges at the state and federal court

levels.

One of the judges who became a PCG member in later years was

Judge McCrea. He heard James Earl Ray's plea for a new trial.

Solid evidence of the conspiracy to frame Ray was introduced at

that hearing.

Everyone who read or heard the evidence, with the exception of

Judge McCrea and his law clerk, reached the conclusion that Ray was

framed and that his lawyer, Percy Foreman, deliberately mishandled

the case. Nevertheless, McCrea decided that Ray would not get a

new trial. The case was appealed all the way to the Supreme Court

with no reversals of the decision.

Leaking the Justice Department Report on the King Case

Attorney General Levi some years later ordered a review by the

Justice Department of the King assassination and the FBI's handling

of its investigation. A report was prepared by Michael J. Shaheen,

who did most of the Justice Department work. No public

announcement was made in 1976 upon completion of the report.

Suddenly, on the exact day that the House was debating whether to

reconstitute the Select Committee (February 2, 1977), the King

report was leaked to the Republican minority leader of the

opposition, Representative Quillen of Tennessee. He announced he

had a copy of the report. Representative Yvonne Burke from

California, a member of the Select Committee and also a member of

the House Committee responsible for oversight of the Justice

Department, took strong issue with Quillen over the leak. She said

she had unsuccessfully tried to obtain the report that day from the

Justice Department. Quillen stated at first he did not have the

report, but had an Associated Press release describing the report.

About an hour later, he said he had received a copy of the report.

Burke stated that was very strange; not even the proper committee

of the House had received a copy.

The report was quoted to say that the Justice Department had

closed the King case and concluded James Earl Ray was the lone

assassin. Placed in the hands of the opposition to the Select

Committee, the statement was strategically useful. Quillen argued

against continuing the Committee on the strength of the conclusions

reached in the report.

Releasing the Report

On February 19, 1977, the King report was released by the

Justice Department. Blaring headlines again emphasized no

conspiracy and exonerated the FBI's conduct in their investigation.

A showdown meeting was scheduled for February 21 between Henry

Gonzalez and Tip O'Neill, to be followed the same day by a meeting

of the Select Committee to determine whether they would continue

with Richard A. Sprague as chief counsel.

The absurd report was published in the "New York Times" on

February 19, 1977. The PCG 's tactics became somewhat obvious on

that date. Attorney General Griffin Bell, having inherited the

report from Mr. Levi, let slip an important opinion on the CBS

program, "Face the Nation" on the Sunday before the report was

described as "still secret" by the UPI news release quoting Mr.

Bell.

Bell said he believed there were questions the report did not

answer. Bell clarified his concerns after the February 19 release

of the report by stating on the 24th that he might want to

interview Ray to find out where Ray obtained all of the money he

had before and after King was shot, and whether anyone helped him

obtain false passports or make travel arrangements. Perhaps Bell

was troubled by one of the report's conclusions--that one of Ray's

motives in killing King was to make a "quick profit."

This indicates that Mr. Bell, and presumably Mr. Carter, are not

members of the PCG cover-up on the King case. It also seems

obvious that Mr. Levi and the people preparing the report and

conducting the review had become members of the PCG. The timed

release and leaking of that report and the total whitewash of the

King conspiracy are too patently obvious to be coincidental. This

is one area in which the Select Committee has an excellent chance

to expose a raw nerve of the PCG.

Michael Shaheen -- PCG Member

A key PCG member in the situation would appear to be Mr.

Shaheen, Judge McCrea's law clerk mentioned earlier in the PCG

cover-up in Memphis. Shaheen was deeply involved in the old

cover-up as well as the new cover-up. He is from Memphis and part

of that closed circle of people in Tennessee who know very well

what happened to Martin Luther King and how Ray was framed. Mr.

Shaheen is now planning to become a judge in Memphis with the help

of all his co-conspirators and PCG members.

Who called the shots in this Justice Department effort? Was it

Levi? Was it the PCG members left over from the Nixon-Ford

administration? Was it members of the PCG still in the FBI? Was

it the Tennessee wing of the PCG that includes Judge McCrea, Phil

Canale, Howard Baker, Mr. Quillen and Bernard Fensterwald, Jr.?

The Select Committee should find out. The report itself is easily

attacked. It quotes the fake Charlie Stevens testimony all over

again, as if no one knew he had been bought off by Hoover to

identify Ray. Stevens was dead drunk and saw nothing on the day of

the King assassination.

Ignoring or Suppressing Conspiracy and Framing Evidence

Shaheen's review did not touch upon any of the evidence

regarding the framing of Ray that was introduced at the hearing

that Judge McCrea and Shaheen knew so very well. The witnesses who

had seen Ray at a gas station several blocks from the assassination

site when the shot was fired were ignored. Grace Walden Stevens

saw Frenchy (Raoul) in the rooming house, identified Frenchy as the

man she saw, and knew Charlie had seen nothing. She had to be

ignored. The witnesses who saw Jack Youngblood move away from the

bushes from which he had fired the shot had to be ignored. Hoover

and Fred Vinson's use of Stevens's false testimony to extradite Ray

from London had to be ignored. The FBI's role in Memphis,

including its instructions to the witnesses who had seen Frenchy to

keep quiet was to be kept a dark secret. The similarity between

Frenchy's photograph and the sketch of Raoul and Ray's subsequent

identification of Frenchy as Raoul had to be kept quiet.

More ignored evidence was turned up by Huie. He found three

witnesses who had seen Ray and Frenchy-Raoul together both in

Atlanta and Montreal. They confirmed Ray's claim that he was

framed. All of the evidence involving Youngblood and Frenchy,

uncovered by Robert Livingston and Wayne Chastain and published in

"Computers and People" in 1974, was omitted.

Livingston was Ray's attorney in Tennessee. Chastain is a

Memphis reporter. Livingston and Chastain's sighting of Frenchy-

Raoul at the Detroit airport during a meeting between Livingston,

Chastain, Bud Fensterwald and the intermediary representing Frenchy

(in an attempt to obtain immunity for him in exchange for revealing

the identity of the Tennesseans and Louisianians who had hired him)

was ignored.

Exposure of this segment of the PCG would have done more to

bolster the 1977 efforts of the Select Committee than any

presentation of conspiracy evidence in the King case itself.

The PCG's Tactics With the Select Committee

In the early days of the formation of the Committee in September

1976, the PCG might have taken the Committee very lightly. The

PCG's efforts to stop an investigation from beginning in the spring

of 1976 through its control of the Rules Committee had been

successful. Downing and Gonzalez had given up. But when the

three-way coalition suddenly brought about a reversal of their

earlier Rules Committee vote, and the House quickly and

overwhelmingly passed a resolution to set up the Committee, the PCG

was forced to go back to the drawing boards for retaliation.

Before the PCG had time to react, Downing and Gonzalez hired

Dick Sprague as chief counsel. Sprague very rapidly hired the

equivalent of his own FBI. He sensed from the start that he might

be up against both the FBI and the CIA, so he carefully screened

his investigators, lawyers, researchers and other personnel to

prevent intelligence penetration of the staff. However, some

personnel were "handed" to him by both Gonzalez and Downing.

It goes almost without saying that the PCG would have tried to

infiltrate the staff. What they learned by their early

infiltration was that Sprague and his crack team were not only on

the right track in both the JFK and MLK investigations, but also

that the tactics used by the PCG in those weeks were making the

staff and some of the committee members suspicious about the PCG

itself.

PCG Control of Prior Investigations

It became imperative for the PCG to either eliminate the entire

Committee or to gain control of it and to rid it of Dick Sprague

and the senior staff people who were loyal to him. It was no

longer possible to turn the investigations around and bury the

information that had been gathered as the PCG had done with six

prior Congressional investigations. In each of the prior

investigations (five Senate investigations and one House

investigation of the JFK assassination) the PCG had controlled the

results, disbanded the staffs and buried the evidence. The six

groups were:

1. 1968--A Senate subcommittee under Senator Ed Long of

Missouri conducted a JFK investigation. Bernard

Fensterwald, Jr., was in charge of a six-person team.

2. 1974--The Ervin Committee investigated the JFK case

during the Watergate period. Samuel Dash headed a team

of four that included Terry Lenzer, Barry Schochet and

Wayne Bishop.

3. 1975--The Church Committee. A six-person team reported

to FAO Schwartz III. It included Bob Kelley, Dan

Dwyer, Ed Greissing, Paul Wallach, Pat Shea and David

Aaron.

4. 1975--The Schweiker-Hart subcommittee under the Church

Committee had a team headed by David Marston, that

included Troy Gustafson, Gaeton Fonzi, and Elliott

Maxwell.

5. 1975--Pike Committee in House. People unknown.

6. 1976--Senate Intelligence Committee under Daniel

Inouye.

In addition, both Howard Baker and Lowell Weicker conducted

their own investigations of the JFK case during the Watergate

period.

Sprague and his senior staff people are professionals compared

to the amateurs listed above. Wayne Bishop was the only

professional investigator in all of the staff groups. It was easy

for the PCG to cut off or alter the directions of the prior

investigations. Thus, the one with the greatest hope, the

Schweiker subcommittee, wound up not mentioning any of the

important evidence uncovered in Florida and elsewhere in their

final report. The Congress and the public were left with the

impression that there might have been a Castro conspiracy to

assassinate JFK.

PCG Strategy

Faced with the new committee and Sprague's staff, the PCG had

devise a strategy that included:

1. Attacking Dick Sprague to discredit him with dirt and

print it in the media.

2. Using the media to spread PCG propaganda and control

the sources of all stories concerning the Select

Committee.

3. Using PCG Congressmen to provide biased, distorted

quotes to the media for its use.

4. Trying to discredit the entire committee by making it

appear to be disorganized and unmanageable.

5. Controlling the voting and lobbying against the

continuation of the committee in January and February.

6. Influencing members of the House to vote against the

Committee through a massive letter and telegram

campaign.

7. Exaggerating the emphasis placed on the size of the

budget requested by Sprague without considering the

need for such a budget.

8. Demanding that the committee justify its existence by

producing new evidence.

9. Splitting the committee and attempting to create

dissension; creating a battle between Henry Gonzalez

and Richard Sprague and between Gonzalez and Downing.

10. Hamstringing the staff so they could not receive

salaries, could not travel, did not have subpoena

power, could not make long distance telephone calls;

blocking access to the key files at the FBI, Justice

Department, CIA and Secret Service.

11. Trying to insert their own man at the head of the

staff.

12. Brainwashing Henry Gonzalez into believing that Sprague

and others were agents.

13. Sacrificing Henry Gonzalez when it became obvious the

PCG could not control him as their chairman.

14. Leaking stories that seemed to make the committee's

efforts unnecessary.

Media Control

The primary technique used by the PCG is its nearly absolute

control of the media. This is not as difficult to achieve as one

might imagine. Since most of the stories about the committee

originate in Washington under rather tightly-knit conditions, it is

necessary to control only a small number of key reporters and their

bosses. The rest of the media follow along like sheep.

The PCG trotted out some of their old-timers in the media to

initiate the public and congressional brainwashing program against

the committee. They used the same tactic against Jim Garrison

between 1967 and 1969. The old-timers included Jeremiah O'Leary,

George Lardner, Jr., and David Burnham. Jeremiah O'Leary of the

"Washington Star" was on the CIA's list of reporters exposed the

year before. George Lardner Jr. had been in David Ferrie's

apartment until 4 AM on the morning he was murdered. Lardner was a

PCG member in 1967, while he worked as a reporter for the

"Washington Post" (he is still with the "Post"). David Burnham at

the "New York Times," one of the several reporters in Harrison

Salisbury's and Harding Bancroft, Jr.'s stable of PCG workers, was

called upon to carry the brunt of the "Times"' attack.

There were, of course, others. As in 1967 and at other times

during the first decade of media cover-ups, the major TV, radio,

wire service, magazine and newspaper media acted as a cover-up

unit. Ben Bradlee, the PCG chieftain at the "Washington Post,"

made sure that "Newsweek" did their hatchet jobs. Time, Inc., CBS

(with Eric Sevaried, Dick Salant and Leslie Midgeley), NBC (with

David Brinkley), and ABC (with Bob Clark and Howard K. Smith) all

went on the attack. The overall theme was that the committee would

soon die out.

Media Tactics

The tactics first used were to create the impression that the

Committee was not going to find anything of importance. Then Dick

Sprague became the chief target. One of the dirty tricks used

against him portrayed him as arrogant, flamboyant, power-mad, and

as a man who usurped the powers of the Committee. The writers and

editors of the PCG are very good at this sort of thing. The "New

York Times," with Burnham writing and Salisbury and Bancroft

directing, did a real hatchet job on Sprague. These techniques

convinced congressmen and much of the public. Sqrague was forced

to stay very quiet and away from reporters and cameras. That did

not deter the PCG people. Once an image of a man has been created

by the media, it is not necessary for him to appear in public. He

could even disappear for several weeks, but the flamboyant, noisy

image would go on uninterrupted. This technique is much less

obvious than murder, but it works nearly as well. When the time

comes to destroy or eliminate the man, all the PCG has to do is

create an image.

The Vote to Continue

The man chosen to eliminate Sprague was the new chairman of the

Select Committee, Henry Gonzalez. Before setting up a classic

"personality conflict" between Gonzalez and Sprague, the PCG used

another tactic. It attempted to kill the Committee with a vote not

to continue it in the 1977 Congress.

The House and media PCG members overemphasized the large budget

requested by Dick Sprague, the use of the polygraph, the use of the

psychological stress evaluator and the telephone monitoring

equipment. Rather than telling the truth about the budget,

describing how the money would be spent, and describing why and how

the equipment was going to be used, the media (aided and abetted by

PCG members in the House itself) made it seem as though the budget

was totally out of line and that citizen's rights would be violated

by the use of such equipment. The PCG planted false information

that led Don Edwards of California to play into their hands on the

equipment issue.

The year-end report of the Committee, which they and the staff

hoped would make these subjects clear, countered the media attacks.

*But*, of course, the PCG controls the media, and the report was

completely blacked out. Most citizens do not even know it exists.

Almost every U.S. citizen has heard and seen Dick Sprague called a

rattlesnake and an unscrupulous character. However, the PCG lost

the vote against continuing the Committee and used a new method to

try to kill it.

The New Tactic

The PCG decided to use Gonzalez to control the Committee. The

stage was set for the PCG to knock off Sprague and to install one

of their own men. The plan was to do this by brainwashing Henry

Gonzalez into distrusting Sprague and selected members of the

Committee and the staff.

The idea was to use Gonzalez in this way to install a PCG man

(the fact that he was a PCG man was unknown to Gonzalez) as chief

of staff. Gonzalez would fire Sprague and the key staff members,

first blocking their access to important files and witnesses. The

PCG would then have been in a position to either fold up the

Committee by March 31, or to direct its efforts toward finding a

Castro-did-it conspiracy in JFK's case and no conspiracy in the

King case.

Tactic Backfires

The PCG did not forecast one important effect their tactics

would have. By the time Henry Gonzalez became chairman, the other

eleven members of the Committee and its staff had begun to smell a

rat. They noted with curiosity all of the strange coincidences

that occurred. During the floor debate on February 2, 1977 over

continuing the Committee, Representatives Devine, Preyer, Burke and

Fauntroy let the rest of the House know that they believed

something peculiar was happening to them. The appearance of the

Justice Department report on that same day disturbed them very

much. The attacks on Sprague upset them also.

The staff were even more disturbed. Most of them had assumed

they were being asked to conduct a thorough and unbiased

investigation of two homicides. The power of the PCG became

obvious to them over a period of several weeks. The effect of this

on both the Committee and its staff was to drive all eighty-four

people (73 staff and 11 Committee members) into a solid block (the

only exceptions were Gonzalez's people on the staff), more

determined than ever to get at the truth. Some staffers began

using their own money for travel. All of them took pay cuts. Many

of them decided they would work for nothing if necessary to keep

going. The PCG's strategy had backfired. The eighty-four loyal

people were like one giant lion backed into a corner, spurred on to

greater heights to fight back.

For this reason, the PCG tactic to use a brainwashed Henry

Gonzalez failed. The eighty-four people resisted that manuever by

threatening to resign en masse. Tip O'Neill and others were forced

to go against Gonzalez. Gonzalez resigned. The House voted by a

large majority to accept his resignation and Tip O'Neill appointed

Louis Stokes as the new chairman. At this point, the PCG decided

to abandon Gonzalez and to try another tactic, signalled by an

article in the "Washington Star" on March 3, 1977. Written by

"Star" staff writer Lynn Rosellini, the article was entitled,

"Gonzalez' Action Stuns Panel but Not the Home Folks." It was

manufactured by the PCG to discredit Gonzalez and his final demise.

(It was the first anti-Gonzalez article to appear.) The PCG had

obviously decided to throw Gonzalez to the wolves. The significant

quote was supposedly from a "source familiar with Gonzalez' career"

that said "Henry focuses in on conspiracies, the weird angle of

things. Once he gets involved in something, he shakes it by the

throat until it's dead." That was a dead giveaway that the PCG no

longer wanted Henry around.

Next Tactic -- Death By Acclamation

The PCG's next tactic was to convince a majority of the House

that the Committee had had it because of the feuding as portrayed

in the press. They hoped to either eliminate the Committee

altogether or eliminate the JFK investigation or to force Sprague

to resign. (After all, the King conspiracy can always be blamed on

J. Edgar Hoover, if it comes down to that. There is no particular

spillover from the King case into JFK, RFK or Wallace, provided

Frenchy can be kept out of the limelight.) It might have been

possible for the PCG Congressmen to propose dropping the JFK case

or to propose postponing it in favor of continuing just the King

case with a reduced budget. Prior to March 31, a House floor vote

or a vote in the Rules Committee could have been proposed that

might have limited the investigations and the authority of the

Select Committee in this way. The rules under which the Select

Committee would operate were not passed by the Committee due to the

conflict between Henry Gonzalez and the rest of the members, so the

proposal could have included restrictive rules. The PCG media

could have boosted this idea with the PCG loyalists in the House.

Jim Wright appeared to be the new leader of the opposition to kill

the Select Committee. More ground was being laid every day for a

negative vote on continuation. The hint was that the Committee

must come up with a bombshell or that it will die.

The Committee fought off this tactic by diverting the attention

of the media through a series of very rapidly developing activities

and a substantial reduction in the proposed budget, which plummeted

to 2.8 million for the remainder of 1977. The House finally voted

to continue the Committee by a very narrow margin, with a swing of

25 votes determining the result.

The final weapon used to obtain a vote to continue the Committee

on March 30 was the resignation of Dick Sprague.

Exposing the PCG

The best way to expose the PCG is to demonstrate that it has

been influencing or controlling the media and attempting to control

Congress. How can this be done? It will be necessary to show who

the PCG members are in the House and the media and exactly what

they have been doing while they are doing it. Getting this kind of

information out to the public will be very difficult, since the

entire media group seems to be controlled. Live TV is not easily

controllable. If unannounced exposures of PCG members are made on

live TV there would be no way for the PCG to stop it. About the

only way to set up such a situation would be to hold public

hearings with live TV coverage.

Exposing the PCG to Congress might be accomplished on the floor

of the House. Evidence of the clandestine activities of PCG

members in the tactics described above could be introduced on the

floor without media coverage. This happened to a minor extent on

March 30 when some of the Committee members began to accuse the

media of improper influence.

Who Are The PCG Members

The PCG members presently attempting to control the Select

Committee must be clearly identified.[1] There are, no doubt, some

media people and Representatives who sincerely believe that there

were no conspiracies and who have been playing into the hands of

the PCG without realizing it. Other Representatives, and media

people by the definition of the term PCG, are purposefully

controlling the situation. It may be difficult to distinguish

between these two groups without tracing back some PCG connection

of the culprits. Any CIA or FBI clandestine relationship or any

direct connection with any of the assassination cases would be a

tip. An example of this is George Lardner, Jr.'s direct connection

with the JFK case ten years ago. (Lardner was in David Ferrie's

apartment for four hours after the midnight time of death estimated

by the New Orleans coroner. Ferrie was killed by a karate chop to

the back of his neck.) Jim Garrison interrogated Lardner at some

length, but he never received a satisfactory explanation of what he

had been doing there.

While it may be difficult to tell which congressmen are sincere

and which are knowingly trying to extend the cover-ups, the Select

Committee must turn its attention to any member of the House who

throws up roadblocks or who speaks out strongly against the

continuation of the investigations. On this basis, one must

suspect every one of the Representatives cited below.

Many questions should be asked of this group. For example, who

encouraged Mr. Bauman during that autumn and on March 30, Mr. Sisk

last spring and Mr. Quillen in February to suddenly become so

vehement about stopping investigations of the assassinations?

Their stated reasons were that the Kennedys were opposed, costs,

the lack of new evidence, the Warren Commission, etc. But these

reasons can no longer be their own true beliefs. On whose behalf

were they acting? How did Trent Lott find out that the Committee

staff made a telephone call to Cameroon, which he discussed on

March 28 at the Rules meeting?

Who talked Frank Thompson into a campaign to shut off the Select

Committee's financial resources? (The Thompson efforts cannot be

explained away by the ordinary controller's motivations.) Who

convinced Jim Wright that the Committee was doomed and that he

should personally intervene in the Gonzalez, Sprague and Committee

members' battle? And, most importantly, who brainwashed both Henry

Gonzalez and Gail Beagle into mistrusting the people they had

always trusted? Answer these questions and publicize the answers,

and the top-down approach to exposing the PCG and solving the

assassination conspiracies will be well along the path to success.

Part II

"Hard" and "Soft" Propaganda in 1977

When the time approached for the Select Committee on

Assassinations to ask the House of Representatives for its 1978

budget, it was interesting to once again examine the PCG's control

over the American news media and the Congress. To those who

observed the assassination scene with blinders removed, it was

patently obvious that the December 1977 date for the Select

Committee's budget approval was a target. The PCG attempted to

defeat the Committee's efforts to get at the truth underlying the

John Kennedy and Martin Luther King assassinations and the cover-up

crimes associated with them.

An all-out effort was mounted by the PCG to influence the

thinking of citizens and the votes of the members of the House.

This effort manifested itself in the major news media--over the

three TV networks, the "New York Times," "Washington Post,"

"Newsweek," "Time," book publishers, book reviewers, TV talk shows,

etc.

This massive campaign is a useful test to prove the validity of

contentions made by this author and others in 1976 and 1977

concerning the relationships between the Power Control Group and

the American news media, as utilized in the continuing cover-ups of

the domestic assassinations, and in the PCG's efforts to destroy

the reputations of assassination researchers[2] and the two

official investigations of the John Kennedy assassinations.[3]

New evidence surfaced in 1977 to support these contentions: a

CIA document released under the Freedom of Information Act and an

article by a new potential ally for assassination truth seekers,

Carl Bernstein. Both of these documents were provided to the

author by Ted Gandolfo in New York, who now has his own weekly

cable TV show on Friday nights on Manhattan TV entitled,

"Assassination USA."

Evidence of Media Control by the CIA

Carl Bernstein wrote an article exposing the CIA's methods of

controlling the news media.[4] The basic technique dictates

planting a Secret Team member at the top of each major media

organization, or obtaining tacit agreements from the top man to use

reporters working for the CIA, and to use CIA people, stories, and

policies on the inside of the organization. Bernstein named men

above the level named by this author as CIA people in certain

organizations. For example, the author's claim was that Harding

Bancroft, Jr. has been the CIA control point at the "New York

Times." Bernstein named Arthur Hays Sulzberger, the owner of the

"Times" and Bancroft's boss, as the CIA's man at the "Times." At

CBS, the author named Richard Salant. Bernstein names William C.

Paley. At the "Washington Post" and "Newsweek" Bernstein names

Philip Graham, Katherine Graham's husband, former owner of the

"Post" and "Newsweek," and by inference, Mrs. Graham since her

husband's death. The author named Ben Bradlee. But Bernstein's

information confirms the author's contention that the CIA controls

the 15 news media organizations in the U.S.

The other CIA top level individuals named by Bernstein are as

follows:

"Louisville Courier Journal"--Barry Bingham, Sr.

NBC--Richard Wald

ABC--Sam Jaffe

Time, Inc.--Henry Luce

Copley News Service--James Copley

Hearst--Seymour Freiden

The PCG, through their prime intelligence members, are today

still controlling what the media do and say about the subject of

assassinations and the Select Committee on Assassinations.[5] They

do this by influencing the heads of each organization who determine

media editorial policies that are carried out by their

subordinates. In some cases, however, lower level people are also

planted as reporters, editors or producers to execute the policies,

write the stories, produce the programs, review the books, or write

or publish the books. The CIA also owns and controls many

publishing houses, freelance writers or reviewers who can also be

used in this massive campaign.

However, the reader should not immediately jump to the

conclusion that all of the media people knowingly continue to

cover-up of the assassination conspiracies. It is only necessary

that they actually believe the CIA's stories and positions against

conspiracies. For example, Anthony Lewis at the "New York Times"

participates in this entire fraud, actually believing that Oswald

was the lone madman assassin.

It is inconceivable, however, that men intelligent enough to

rise to the top of CBS, NBC, ABC, the "New York Times et al." could

actually believe that Oswald was the lone assassin. Some or most

of them must be cooperating fully in the PCG cover-up efforts.

Proof of CIA Efforts to Discredit Researchers

A recently released CIA document[6] was a dispatch issued from

CIA headquarters in April 1967 to certain bases and stations to

mount a campaign through media contacts (called assets) against

certain assassination researchers. The targets included Mark Lane,

Joachim Joesten, Penn Jones, Edward Epstein and Bertrand Russell.

The document describes an entire program to be used to discredit

the "critics." Many of the exact expressions that were used by the

CIA-controlled media to attack the researchers can be found in this

document. One example is: "The CIA should use this argument in

general. Conspiracy on the large scale often suggested (by

critics) would be impossible to conceal in the United States,

especially since informants could expect to receive large

royalties, etc." Another argument suggested is: "Note that Robert

Kennedy, Attorney General at the time and John F. Kennedy's

brother, would be the last man to overlook or conceal any

conspiracy."

How many times did we hear that between 1967 and 1969?

The document also suggests using an article by Fletcher Knebel

to attack Ed Epstein's book and to attack it rather than Mark

Lane's book because "Lane's book is much more difficult to answer

as a whole, as one becomes lost in a morass of unrelated details."

The timing of this document is particularly important. April 1,

1967 was approximately two months after Jim Garrison's

investigation surfaced, and only shortly after Garrison found David

Ferrie murdered in his own apartment and had Clay Shaw arrested.

Since we now know that both men were contract agents for the CIA

and that the CIA went to great lengths under Richard Helms'

direction to protect Clay Shaw and to keep his true identity from

being revealed, the chances are good that this document was

triggered by Garrison's investigation.

The names of the authors of the document have been blacked out

of the copy that was released. Further research might reveal who

actually wrote it and "pulled it together" (as a note in hand print

at the top states).

The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald

The top level media control was demonstrated by the ABC-TV

program, "The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald", whose co-director,

Lawrence Schiller, had to have been selected at the suggestion of

the PCG. Schiller, one of the worst people in the PCG's stable of

freelancers, is best known for his book supporting the Warren

Commission and attacking the researchers, called "The

Scavengers."[7]

Schiller is perhaps the biggest scavenger ever created. He

supposedly obtained a "deathbed" statement from Jack Ruby by

illegally and unethically sneaking a tape recorder into his

hospital room. He then parlayed this into a wide-selling record

with distasteful and untruthful propaganda. More recently he

seized the opportunity to interview Gary Gilmore before his

execution, practically holding a mike to his mouth while the

commands were being given to the firing squad.

How, the reader may ask, could Schiller become a co-producer of

a major ABC television show? The answer is simple. He is

available to attack and ridicule the assassination researchers and

reinforce the no-conspiracy idea for the PCG.

The ABC production crew had the full cooperation of the Dallas

police in re-enacting the assassination event in Dealey Plaza.

There is no way that could have happened without PCG influence.

The Dallas police, quite guilty of cover-up in the case and having

some individual members on the assassination team, would not permit

anyone to film a reenactment of the assassination showing

conspiracy or the truth. The PCG had to assure them that the

program's editorial position would be anti-conspiracy.

The "Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald" was given extensive publicity

on TV, in magazines, in newspapers. In England, a special article

about it appeared in the Sunday magazine section of a London

newspaper complete with photographs from the shooting sequence as

filmed.[8] The PCG spent an enormous amount of money on the

program and a publicity campaign. There is no way ABC-TV could

have done that on their own. More than 80% of the people believe

there was a conspiracy: why wouldn't ABC go along with the 80% of

their viewers and portray the truth? The answer again is simple:

ABC is controlled from the very top, probably much higher than the

Sam Jaffe level, by the PCG and the CIA.

Other TV Shows

Both NBC and CBS are planning major TV specials on the

assassinations. CBS is planning a show on Ruby and Oswald. The

theme will be that the Warren Commission was right and that both

Oswald and Ruby were lone nuts. Mr. Paley and Mr. Salant are the

PCG people calling the shots. NBC is planning a show on Martin

Luther King which will have a section on the assassination. Even

though Abbey Mann is directing the show and he would like to bring

out some of the facts, it is certain that the PCG members of NBC,

including Richard Wald, will not permit any conclusions about Ray's

innocence or information about Frenchy-Raoul or Jack Youngblood

(the real assassins) to be included.

Priscilla McMillan--CIA Agent

One of the more remarkable things about the massive 1977

campaign of the CIA and the PCG is their blatant use of freelance

writers and news reporters who are well known CIA agents to nearly

anyone who has taken the time to pay attention. Three agents are

Priscilla McMillan and her husband, George McMillan, and Jeremiah

O'Leary of the "Washington Star." Priscilla (in particular) is so

obviously an agent that even Dick Cavett indirectly accused her of

being one when she appeared on his show with Marina Oswald to plug

her new book.

The CIA decided the perfect time to publish McMillan's book[9],

which had been completed for several years. A publisher under CIA

control was selected, and the book was published in time for the

December committee budget vote. The CIA arranged that Marina

appear with Pat on several national TV shows. Priscilla had Marina

well rehearsed for these shows--she even retold the old lies about

Oswald shooting at General Walker. The commentators selected to

interview both women, including Dick Cavett, David Hartmann (ABC),

and Tom Snyder (NBC) had their orders to deal delicately with them

and not to ask any embarrassing questions. Cavett came closest

with his essentially accusatory question about whether Priscilla

was a CIA agent.

No one asked Marina the one embarrassing question she would have

had the greatest difficulty answering regarding the picture of

Oswald holding the rifle and the communist newspaper that Marina

claimed she took of him: "How was it possible for you to have

taken a photograph that since has been demonstrated to be a

composite of three photographs, with your husband's head attached

to someone else's body at the chin line?" (flashing on the screen

Fred Newcomb's slide showing the chin level discontinuity). Cavett

actually flashed the fake photograph on the screen at the beginning

of his show, but he never mentioned it.

This monumental PCG effort that involved controlling at least

three TV networks, a CIA publisher, Marina Oswald, a CIA agent,

Priscilla McMillan, an enormous amount of time and money, and a

special book review by the "New York Times"[10] demonstrates how

much power the PCG has.

Some of those people who watched "Good Morning America" and the

"Tomorrow Show" and the "Dick Cavett Show" (three different types

of national viewing audiences) who believe the lone assassin theory

and the Warren Commission had those beliefs reinforced by Priscilla

McMillan and Marina Oswald. It is wise for researchers, the Select

Committee on Assassinations and others who know what is really

going on, not to underestimate this power of the PCG.

Fensterwald's Book

A book by Bud Fensterwald appeared in 1977 under the sponsorship

of the PCG.[11] This clever effort on the part of one of the CIA's

best agents was designed to throw people off the track who have a

somewhat deeper interest in the JFK assassination. It was meant to

divert attention away from the CIA by omitting at least twelve of

the CIA conspirators who were in the files of the Committee to

Investigate Assassinations (co-founded by Fensterwald and the

author in 1968).

No excuse can be given for leaving these key people out of the

book, because the CIA had extensive files on most of them. Bud

Fensterwald even had a personal correspondent relationship to the

key informant of the group, Richard Case Nagell. The twelve are:

William Seymour, Emilio Santana, Manuel Garcia Gonzalez, Guy

Gabaldin, Mary Hope, Richard Case Nagell, Harry Dean, Ronald

Augustinovich, Thomas Beckham, Fred Lee Crisman, Frenchy, and Jack

Lawrence. All of them were included in a description of the

details of the assassination team earlier in this book and in an

article by the author.[12]

Zebra Books, the publisher of Fensterwald's book, is a CIA-

controlled organization that has also published another

disinformation book, "Appointment in Dallas," by Hugh

MacDonald.[13] In both cases, the PCG intended to misdirect

attention away from the CIA participants while at the same time

admitting conspiracy. There is no way the story in MacDonald's

book can be true. It maintains that Oswald at least planned to

fire from the sixth floor window of the TSBD Building. As all good

researchers know, the photographs of the window, inside and

outside, prove there was no one firing from that window that day.

The de Mohrenschildt Murder

The Murder Inc. branch of the PCG killed George de Mohrenschildt

when he became too dangerous for them. The media branch of the PCG

then undertook a campaign to discredit Willem Oltmans and NOS-TV

(in Holland) who happened to be in possession of a series of video

and audio tapes of de Mohrenschildt that will be very damaging for

the PCG.

The de Mohrenschildt murder has so far been concealed by the PCG

with the help of the media and portrayed as the suicide of a man

who had become insane. As Willem Oltmans' book clearly

demonstrates[14] de Mohrenschildt was quite sane when he

disappeared from Belgium. He was in the process of giving Ed

Epstein a story about his involvement in the JFK assassination when

he was murdered in Florida.

Donald Donaldson's Disappearance

General Donald Donaldson, alias Dimitri Dimitrov alias Jim

Adams, was intimately acquainted with the CIA people who planned

JFK's assassination. He was in Holland to tell his story to NOS-TV

and Willem Oltmans. He told Oltmans that Allen Dulles was the key

CIA man in planning JFK's assassination. (Donaldson had been

brought to the U.S. as a double agent during World War II by

Franklin Roosevelt.) He held back his knowledge of the

assassination conspiracy until the Church Committee was formed. He

then took his information to Church, who brought him to President

Ford rather than having him questioned by the Church Committee or

the Schweiker sub-committee. Ford, Church and Donaldson had a

meeting in which Ford talked both of them into keeping Donaldson's

information under wraps.

When de Mohrenschildt was killed, Donaldson decided it was time

to make his information public and to offer it to the Select

Committee. He approached Oltmans, asked that his identity be kept

secret, told NOS his story, and then remained in Holland while

Oltmans attempted to tell the story to President Carter. Oltmans

revealed Donaldson's identity on American TV and to the Select

Committee when Carter refused to listen to the story. Donaldson

then moved to England, and subsequently disappeared from a London

hotel, leaving large unpaid bills at both his London and Amsterdam

hotels. The possibility is very good that he has gone the same

route as de Mohrenschildt, murdered by the PCG.

Attacks on the Select Committee

One of a series of attacks on the Select Committee in November

and December, leading up to the December vote on the 1978 budget,

took place in the form of an article by probable CIA agent George

Lardner, Jr., one of the Select Committee's biggest enemies. He is

one of the PCG's stable of reporters. Lardner wrote an article for

the Sunday "Washington Post" on November 6, 1977, portraying the

Committee as engaging in random, uncoordinated activity,

interrogating witnesses from the Garrison investigation (which

Lardner labelled, "the zany Garrison investigation", and "the

fruitless investigation"). The "New York Times," "Washington Star"

and other media can be expected to open up all barrels under PCG

direction. The general theme will no doubt be that the Committee

has done nothing at all and that Oswald acted alone.[15]

If Council Blakey or Chairman Stokes, or JFK subcommittee

Chairman Preyer try to respond to these attacks they will be ripped

to shreds by the PCG's media people. As the author pointed out in

part I of this chapter, the only chance the Committee and the House

have to keep the investigation going is to expose the PCG and their

media control, from the top down. Otherwise the Committee cannot

win the battle.

____________________

[1] Power Control Group (PCG) defined in prior articles and one book

by the author, as follows:

The PCG includes all organizations and individuals who

knowingly participated in any of the domestic political

assassinations or attempted assassinations, or in any of the

efforts to cover-up the truth about those assassinations. This

includes a large number of murders of witnesses and participants.

The assassinations involved include, but are not necessarily

limited to the following:

John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, George

Wallace and Mary Jo Kopechne.

The PCG is a much larger group than just the clandestine parts

of the CIA and the FBI, or the Secret Team as defined by L.

Fletcher Prouty. It would however, include all those members

[John Ritchson]

Part16.

1979: The House Select Committee (1)

Chapter 16

1984 Here We Come

George Orwell undoubtedly did not realize how accurate his 1984

scenario would be by the year 1979. As 1978 drew to a close,

events in America made Orwell's descriptions of such concepts as

Newspeak and a supposedly open but actually closed society, very

close to reality. By 1984, now only five short years away,

Orwell's scenario will apparently be right on the nose.

Any doubts about who is in charge of America and how effective

they have become in creating our actual version of Newspeak,

disappeared as the Carter administration, congress, the courts, and

the media, all combined their coordinated efforts to cover up and

distort our current history. The hopes of thousands of Americans

that their only true representatives in government, the members of

the House, would expose the fabric of lies about our recent history

and the Power Control Group's activities were dashed to smithereens

by the House of Representative's Select Committee on

Assassinations. The hopes that Carter might be on our side, faded

away in 1978 and the intentions of the executive branch were made

quite clear by the new directors of the FBI and the CIA.

The murder incorporated group within the Power Control Group

continued to murder people in 1978, with efficiency and dispatch.

The presidential race in 1980 has been foreclosed to Ted Kennedy

for a long time, but the chances that any candidate, not willing to

extend the assassination cover-ups, could be nominated and elected,

are close to zero.

The American people, by and large, do not understand or

appreciate very much of this. The Select Committee teamed with the

media and by holding public hearings with almost no live coverage

they convinced the majority of Americans that there was no

conspiracy in the JFK case and that James Earl Ray shot Martin

Luther King although he might have had help from his brothers. The

public has never heard of most of the eight men assassinated in

1977 and 1978 by the PCG, nor do they appreciate the fact that

future assassinations will be carried off by the same bunch.

How the hell did the PCG control Congress and the Select

Committee? It wasn't easy and they very nearly didn't.

There may also be another explanation about the committee's

actions in which the word "control" is too strong. Influence,

intimidation by throwing out implied warnings or threats, or just

plain making it obvious that personal danger could be involved,

might have been used. The process was very involved and it made

use of a number of techniques and approaches, including some we can

only guess at in 1979. However, a number of the PCG's methods are

known and will be described herein.

The executive branch control by the PCG was exposed even before

Carter's election by those whose eyes were open wide enough to see

it. This author frankly admits to partially closed eyes until

1978. The significance of the Bilderberg Society and the

Trilateral Commission was not obvious until Carter had been in

office for a couple of years. Now, it is very obvious that he is

under the complete domination of the men who really run the U.S.A.,

and that he will never do anything to expose the truth about the

political assassinations or their cover-ups.

The latest indication of where the Carter administration stands

was the testimony given by FBI director William H. Webster to the

Select Committee on December 11, 1978. He said that the FBI would

freeze the scene and take full immediate control of the

investigation of any future presidential assassination or that of

any other elected U.S. leader.

In case anyone has any doubt about what he meant by "freeze the

scene", Webster went on to say, "One purpose of the FBI

investigation would be to lay to rest untrue conspiratorial

questions that have a way of rising, and avoid the sort of mistakes

that followed the assassination of President Kennedy."[1] In other

words, the FBI will suppress or destroy any evidence of conspiracy

even if they were not involved in the assassination itself. One

such "mistake" in the Dallas murder surfaced in December 1978 when

Earl Golz of the "Dallas Morning News" found a movie that the FBI

failed to "freeze". It was taken by a man named Bronson and it

shows two men, not one, in the sixth floor window of the TSBD just

five minutes before the shots were fired. One of the men is

wearing a red shirt. That filmed evidence matches the still photo

taken by an unknown photographer earlier that morning, and

developed at a Dallas photo lab by Ed Foley, the lab owner. The

author found the photo and obtained a print of it in 1967. The

Foley photo, as it became known, shows two men in the sixth floor

window, one with a black shirt and one with a bright red shirt.

Mr. red shirt matches the description of the man in the Bronson

film. He is not Lee Harvey Oswald. Neither is the man in the

black shirt. He was most probably Buel Wesley Frazier, the man who

drove Oswald to work on November 22, 1963. The facial profile and

black shirt match photos of Frazier and another man entitled to be

on that sixth floor, were there around 10 AM and at 12:25, five

minutes before the shots were fired. Mr. Webster has in mind

rounding up all such evidence and destroying it right away in the

next assassination.

The evidence discussed in earlier chapters of this book, also

not "frozen" by the FBI, proves that the "snipers nest" was no

snipers nest at all, but just an area where workers on that floor

were piling cartons to allow the floor laying crew at the west end

of that floor to do their job.

Webster would like the FBI to grab such evidence the next time,

and destroy it before "conspiracy rumors" get started. The FBI

came much closer to doing this in Memphis, but after all, they were

involved directly in the planning and execution of the

assassination of Dr. King. They had a much greater incentive for

cover-up in that murder. William Sullivan's Division Five, at the

behest of J. Edgar Hoover, carried out the King assassination using

Raoul and Jack Youngblood plus others.

Returning to the Select Committee, I must switch over to a more

personal tone because of my direct involvement with the group from

its inception. I helped Henry Gonzalez in the early days of 1975

and 1976 when the committee was just a wild dream for most people.

I made a presentation to Thomas Downing's staff members who

eventually became part of the Select Committee staff. Mark Lane

arranged that in the summer of 1976. The photographic evidence of

conspiracy in the JFK case was as overwhelming to them and to Henry

as it was to anyone who has taken the five or six hours or so to

look at it. I then became an advisor to Richard A. Sprague and Bob

Tanenbaum when the committee was formed and spent the months from

November 1976 to July 1977 helping them with the photographic

evidence and with evidence collected by the Committee to

Investigate Assassinations including Jim Garrison's evidence.

If Henry Gonzalez or Richard A. Sprague, or Thomas Downing had

stayed with the committee their work would not have been

controlled. Sprague's loyal deputy counsels, Bob Tanenbaum, in

charge of the JFK investigation and Bob Lehner in charge of the MLK

investigation had already begun to get at the real evidence of the

Power Control Group and the FBI and CIA's involvement in the two

cases and in the cover-ups. The committee members were already

becoming very suspicious of the two agencies. Walter Fauntroy,

chairman of the MLK sub-committee, even dared to speak out about

the CIA's influence. He was beaten into the ground by the PCG's

members in the House.

So Gonzalez, Sprague, Tanenbaum, Lehner and others who dared

take on the intelligence portions of the PCG, had to go. They were

forced out by one of the ancient techniques employed by the Romans

known as divide and conquer. Once Henry Gonzalez became convinced

that Richard A. Sprague was working for the CIA and the PCG, he

attacked Sprague bitterly. Henry knew there was a PCG and he knew

who had murdered John Kennedy and why. Henry had to go. He was

made to look like a paranoid fool and forced out by the key PCG

members of the House. Two PCG agents, Mr. Z and Harry Livingstone,

helped convince him that Sprague was a CIA man.

Mr. Z was brought in by Henry as a lawyer for his committee and

worked on Henry's beliefs about Richard A. Sprague. Over some

weeks he convinced Henry that Richard A. Sprague was a CIA

operative. He was supported in this activity by Harry Livingstone

(later author of "High Treason"). Harry Livingstone engaged in

various plagiaristic activities and scams, and over quite a period

of time he worked on Henry to convince him that Richard A. Sprague

was a CIA operative. At the same time Henry was developing his

beliefs with the help of Mr. Z and Mr. Livingstone, Richard A.

Sprague and his staff were developing skepticism about Henry's

integrity. The net result was both men resigned. In the next

year, 1978, the author appeared with Richard A. Sprague on a cable

television broadcast hosted by Ted Gandolfo in New York City,

named "Assassionation USA," and the three of them had a detailed

discussion about Sprague's reasons for resigning from the

Committee. To some extent his thinking was influenced by his

skepticism about Henry Gonzalez's integrity.

Once Louis Stokes took over as chairman, Sprague's men were

gradually calmed down, and the so-called search for the right chief

counsel was underway. It is difficult to detect what was going on

during that spring of 1977. Suffice it to say that the PCG was

undoubtedly pulling out every stop to get their own chief counsel

into the committee and to build up the case for getting rid of

Tanenbaum, Lehner, Donovan Gaye, and others who knew too much or

who had the gall to go up against the agencies.

The result of all this hard work by the PCG was the installation

in July 1977 of Dr. Robert Blakey as chief counsel. Tanenbaum

resigned almost immediately, making Blakey's job a little easier,

but Lehner and Gaye had to be fired by Blakey. Many others were

also weeded out. We may never know exactly what they all knew or

how they were forced out, because of the use of one of the PCG's

cleverest techniques and one of the most insidious.

Each committee staff member, each consultant and each committee

member was required to sign, as a condition of continuing

employment or membership on the committee, a nondisclosure

agreement. Now, nondisclosure agreements are nothing new,

especially in classified situations or in sensitive or patent or

copyright situations. The committee's nondisclosure agreement was

however, very unusual. Many well-known attorneys have pronounced

it illegal. Richard A. Sprague saw it and said he would absolutely

never have required the staff to sign anything like it. He said it

was illegal and unenforcable in several of its clauses. The worst

thing about it, or the best thing, from the viewpoint of the PCG,

are the paragraphs giving control over the committee to the FBI and

the CIA.[2]

The committee, under Sprague, planned to investigate the FBI and

the CIA in regard to both assassinations and the cover-ups. In

fact, Sprague had put both agencies on notice to that effect.

Subpoenas were being prepared for access to all of their withheld

information. Investigations of the CIA's role in the Mexico City

part of the assassination conspiracy, as well as Oswald's and

Ruby's connections with both agencies were under way.

The Blakey agreement automatically put a stop to all of that.

Here is one excerpt from the agreement.

"I (the staff member, committee member, or consultant) hereby

agree never to divulge, publish or reveal by words, conduct or

otherwise, . . . any information pertaining to intelligence sources

or methods as designated by the Director of Central Intelligence,

or any confidential information that is received by the Select

Committee or that comes into my possession by virtue of my position

with the Select Committee, to any person not a member of the Select

Committee, or, after the Select Committee's termination, by such

manner as the House of Representatives may determine or, in the

absence of a determination by the House, in such manner as the

Agency or Department from which the information originated may

determine."

In other words if the committee or an individual staff member,

or a consultant discovered that the CIA or part of it, was involved

in the assassination of John Kennedy, or that the FBI was in part

or in whole responsible for the death of Martin Luther King, or

that either agency was guilty of covering up the conspiracies in

both cases, the CIA and the FBI would have the right to prevent

these findings from being revealed to anyone outside the committee.

Furthermore, those agencies are still in existence today while the

Select Committee is not, so that the nondisclosure agreement which

goes on in perpetuity, gives both the FBI and CIA continuing

complete control over the individuals who signed it.

Another excerpt reads as follows:

"The Chairman of the Select Committee shall consult with the

Director of Central Intelligence for the purpose of the Chairman's

determination as to whether or not the material (any material

obtained by the signer of the agreement) contains information that

I pledge not to disclose." If that sounds like Catch-22, it is.

The interpretation that could be placed on that clause is that the

CIA has the right to decide what evidence in the JFK and MLK

assassinations should be withheld on grounds that the CIA itself

determines.

How could the committee possibly have investigated the CIA under

those terms and conditions? The answer is, they could not and did

not.

Can anyone doubt that the PCG prepared the agreement, implanted

Blakey, and coerced or blackmailed or threatened the Chairman and

the rest of the committee until they agreed to have everyone sign

it!

The most insidious part of the agreement is the clause that

could be described as the threat, or blackmail clause. It is

perhaps this clause that has closed the mouths and pens of all the

ex-staff members who knew what was going on, but who signed the

agreement. That clause reads as follows:

"In addition to any rights for criminal prosecution or for

injunctive relief the United Stated Government may have for

violation of this agreement, the United States Government may file

a civil suit in an appropriate court for damages as a consequence

of a breach of this agreement. The costs of any civil suit brought

by the United States for breach of this agreement, including court

costs, investigative expenses, and reasonable attorney fees, shall

be borne by any defendant who loses such suit." . . . "I hereby

agree that in any suit by the United States Government for

injunctive or monetary relief pursuant to the terms of this

agreement, personal jurisdiction shall obtain and venue shall lie

in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia,

or in any other appropriate United States District Court in which

the United States may elect to bring suit. I further agree that

the law of the District of Columbia shall govern the interpretation

and construction of this agreement."

Those readers who have followed the performance of the U.S.

courts in the JFK and MLK cases through the years, will recognize

the trap in those last two sentences. Any ex-staffer or

consultant, or even a Congressman would have about as much chance

against a CIA/FBI-directed suit in a court of their choice, as the

man in the moon. The United States Government, in this clause, is

not your government or mine. It is the Power Control Group. You

can bet they would select a court already programmed for decision.

The clause is incredible on the face of it.

This was a mighty powerful weapon and the committee used it to a

maximum extent in carrying out a masterful job of continuing the

two cover-ups. It was masterful in the sense that they were not as

bold and bald about it as the Warren Commission or the Rockefeller

Commission or the Justice Department and the courts have been in

the MLK case. Their conclusions are inconclusive; sort of. They

say that to determine whether or not there really were conspiracies

in the two cases was beyond their means and the time they had

available. Nevertheless, the preponderant weight of the public

testimony before the committee was toward no conspiracy in the JFK

case and a, "Ray shot him, but might have been helped," conclusion

in the King case. But the hold they exercised over the staff and

consultants in directing their investigations away from conspiracy

was very smoothly done, with the nondisclosure agreement always

lurking in the background as a possible threat.

The agreement was used as an excuse by the committee to avoid

answering questions. For example, I wrote to Louis Stokes on April

5, October 30, and November 24, 1978 asking why the committee had

not called several important witnesses in the JFK case, including

Richard Case Nagell. Stokes had told me in a letter written on May

15, 1978, that the suggestion that Nagell be called was being

followed and that the staff was being alerted about him. Blakey

took no action and did not contact Nagell or Richard Russell, the

only person who knew where Nagell was to be found.[3]

Stokes sent me this reply to my inquiries about the witnesses on

December 4,1978.

"Dear Mr. Sprague:

Thank you for your letter of November 24, 1978. I am aware of

the amount of time you have spent analyzing the assassination of

President John F. Kennedy and your interest in the work of the

Select Committee on Assassinations since its inception. However, I

regret that *under our Rules*, it is impossible for us to respond

to your letter in a manner which would reveal the substance or

procedure of our investigation, or the names of those persons who

will be called to testify before the committee. The committee is,

of course, grateful for your suggestions and those of the many

other concerned citizens who have taken the time to write."

(Underlining for emphasis is the author's)

Sincerely,

Louis Stokes

Chairman

"The Rules" Stokes refers to include the nondisclosure

agreement. This letter implies that subsequent to December 4,

1978, the committee might be calling more JFK witnesses. Of

course, that didn't happen. Except for some high level FBI, Secret

Service and other government officials testifying about

Presidential safety and future assassination investigations, the

committee's show was already over, and Louis Stokes was well aware

of that. I'm sure Louis Stokes had his own personal reasons, not

necessarily sinister, for making that reply.

The committee had no intention of risking the appearance of any

of the more knowledgeable or involved witnesses whose names I had

given them in October 1978 as well as in May 1978 and November

1978. A list of these names appears later in this chapter.

The Warren Commission proved how easy it is to avoid finding a

conspiracy if you don't look for one, even one that seems to jump

up and smack you in the face. The Select Committee did this in

spades. The procedure was orchestrated by Robert Blakey by various

means. One of his methods was to split up the hard core Dealey

Plaza evidence and investigations into sections. He formed an

advisory panel of outside "experts", for each section; one on

medical evidence, photographic evidence, ballistics evidence,

trajectory evidence, etc. Then he made sure there was almost no

coordination, cross talk, or feedback among the panels or even

among the staff members assigned to each section, except at his

level.

There was a great amount of internal complaining about this, but

to no avail. Again, the nondisclosure agreement worked wonders.

An investigating team, in New Orleans and Dallas, headed by the JFK

task force leader Cliff Fenton, was never allowed to surface either

publicly or internally to other staff people or the committee.

Their findings alone would have blown Dr. Blakey and his CIA/FBI

friends right out of the water. They spent a lot of time with Jim

Garrison, and with many of the witnesses and the assassination

participants described in Chapter 5 of this book. The public does

not even know who these staffers are, and undoubtedly will not hear

or see what they discovered either in the committee's final report

or in the public hearings.

The separation of assignments worked wonders in explaining away

much of the hard evidence of conspiracy. Some of it during the

public hearings was like watching a magic show, for knowledgeable

researchers. For example, the medical panel and staff members

determined that the path of bullet 399 through JFK's body rear to

front was slightly upward, given that he was sitting erect. But

since the medical panel and the photographic panel were never

permitted coordination, the medical panel never realized that JFK

was sitting erect at the time bullet 399 supposedly struck.

Neither panel was allowed to communicate with the trajectory panel,

so that their representative Thomas Canning testified that bullet

399's trajectory backward from JFK's body, passed through the TSBD

sixth floor window. That erudite gentleman, a government employee

from NASA, was forced to make up his own medical evidence, which he

proceeded to do. He merely moved the exit wound in JFK's throat

down somewhat and the back of the neck wound up somewhat from where

Dr. Baden of the medical panel had placed them. He then tilted JFK

forward at about 17 or 18 degrees based on his personal observation

of one photograph, rather than on the photographic panel's

conclusions. Presto; the trajectory tilted upward and leftward

enough to pass through the sixth floor window.

Another bit of magic was presented by Canning to support the

single bullet theory. He drew a straight line between governor

Connally's back entry wound position and JFK's back entry wound

position and found that the line also passed through the sixth

floor window. To do this he moved Connally on the seat to his left

and JFK to his right, and lifted JFK up a bit on the rear seat.

Again he did this without consultation with the photographic panel.

Some hard evidence was not dealt with at all and other hard

evidence of conspiracy was presented without identifying it as such

and then just left dangling. An example of the former is all of

the photographic evidence cited earlier in this book and in my

"Computers and Automation" magazine articles, showing that the

sniper's nest was not a sniper's nest, that no one was in the

window, and that no one could have fired shots from that position

that day. I showed pictures of the nest from the inside and the

window from the outside to the JFK sub-committee in July 1977 and I

reviewed them at length for their evidenciary value with the JFK

staff, notably Ken Klein, Cliff Fenton, Bob Tanenbaum, Jackie Hess,

Donovan Gaye, Pat Orr, Chellie Mason, and Richard A. Sprague.

So the Committee cannot claim they didn't know about these

photos. They saw the Foley photo over a long period of time, and

were no doubt quite embarrassed by the unexpected appearance of the

Bronson film. Not one word about the sixth floor window, the

cartons, the planted shells, the planted rifle, and the extra rifle

found on the roof, the impossible shot, no one in the window when

the shots were fired; not one word was mentioned in the public

hearings about the photos and other evidence. Where was the

photographic panel? Asleep? Frightened by the agreement they

signed?

An example of evidence of conspiracy left dangling was the

testimony given by the photographic panel spokesman, Calvin S.

McCamy. The panel examined all of the photos of JFK during the

early part of the shot sequence, and took a vote on when the first

shot struck the President. It came out as around Z189 to Z196.

Perfect. That matches. But no one asked the trajectory panel or

the ballistics spokesman how Oswald was able to fire bullet 399

right through the center of that big oak tree at Z189-Z196. Not

even the Warren Commission would make that claim, preferring to put

the timing at Z210 or later after JFK came out from behind the

tree.

There were some anxious moments for the Select Committee, even

as well orchestrated as the whole farce was. Dr. Cyril Wecht was

his usual grand self. He blasted the committee. They said he was

part of the medical panel and therefore was asked to present a

minority view. Cyril said they weren't planning to call him until

he demanded to be allowed to testify. They tried to bamboozle him,

to discredit him (a tough assignment), to attack him and to knock

down his testimony. Lawyer Gary Cornwell was particularly

obnoxious in his questioning of Dr. Wecht. Favorable witnesses

testifying to no conspiracy were handled with kid gloves and

treated politely or dragged through an obviously rehearsed series

of questions. It was the Warren Commission revisited. Two

witnesses they couldn't mistreat were Governor and Mrs. Connally.

They politely and calmly presented believable testimony destroying

the single bullet theory. That didn't bother the committee any

more than it bothered the Warren Commission. They resurrected the

theory a few days later when the trajectory panel testified.

Dr. Barger of Bolt Baranek & Newman shook them up a little with

his acoustical analysis of the police radio tape that reveals the

sounds of four, not three, shots. If Dr. Barger had been given all

of the facts initially, he probably could have helped prove where

the shots came from. Except for the grassy knoll position behind

the fence and the sixth floor TSBD window, he was not told about

any other possible firing points. For example, he knew nothing

about the Dal Tex building, the west end roof or high floor of the

TSBD, or other positions on the grassy knoll. In fact, Barger did

not know the location of the motorcycle where the microphone had

been left open, picking up the sound of the shots. His assignment

included a determination of where the motorcycle was, from the

sounds on the tape and sounds made during a re-enactment of the

firing in Dealey Plaza. The only test shots Barger had fired were

from the TSBD sixth floor window and from behind the grassy knoll

fence. The net result was that he decided the motorcycle was

trailing the Presidential limousine by 120 feet. No one on the

committee or the photographic panel ever showed Barger the Altgens

photo, the Hughes film, the Martin, Nix, Couch, Weigman, Bell or

Muchmore films or any other pictures showing there was no

motorcycle anywhere near 120 feet behind the limousine.[4] Again,

Blakey divided and conquered. Barger told me that if he had known

about the motorcycle trailing the limousine by a few feet, driven

by policeman D.L. Jackson, who disappeared completely after the

assassination, he could have altered his analysis completely. The

sounds of the last two shots may well have been from the knoll

behind the wall, and from the TSBD roof or the Dal Tex second

floor. Barger's analysis shows that the last shot sound, made by a

rifle occurred just a faction of a second after the next to the

last shot, possibly made by pistol. This would fit a pistol shot

from behind the fence fired almost simultaneously with a rifle shot

from either the TSBD west end or Dal Tex. The delay of the sound

traveling from Dal Tex is about right so that the Dal Tex shot

would strike at Z312 and the pistol or rifle shot from the right

front would strike at Z313. Prof. Mark Weiss of Queens College and

Barger were called into an executive session on December 20 after

the hearings were finished. They testified that there were

definitely four shots fired, at least one of which was from the

knoll.

This new analysis was conducted by Weiss independently from the

one done by Bolt Baranek and Newman. Weiss said that his work

proved to a 95% certainty that the third shot was a rifle shot from

a position on the knoll. He said the data pinpointed the position

to within two feet. The position was behind the fence, which

eliminates man number two at the corner of the wall and also

eliminates a pistol. However, the photos show man number two did

make a puff of smoke, whether or not he fired a shot.

Congressman Sawyer broke the news about Weiss' testimony during

a radio broadcast in Michigan, his home state. A furor broke

loose. The committee went into an executive session Friday

December 22 to discuss what to do since there were only nine days

left to the end of their existence. The radio tape and the Bronson

film seemed to shake them up considerably. Or was it all rehearsed

and planned this way by the committee. It seems incredible that

the 12 members of the committee would be shaken by the sounds from

a tape when they weren't bothered at all by photos of the Oswald

window showing that no one was there when the shots were fired.

The committee members could see those photos with their own eyes.

They had to take the word of experts about the sounds on the tape,

which cannot be heard because of the noise of the engine of the

policeman's cycle where the microphone was stuck open.[4] This was

the most blatantly dishonest stunt pulled by the Committee during

the Blakey period. Yet, the research community cannot complain too

much because it did produce a conspiracy conclusion.

The committee's distortions and omission respecting the hard

Dealey Plaza evidence is overshadowed by the key witnesses that the

committee did not call. None of the players listed in Chapter 5

were called, nor ever mentioned. One key witness, James Hosty,

insisted that he testify about Oswald's FBI involvement, but was

turned down. Hosty told the "Dallas Morning News," "They don't

want to hear what I have to say."

He might have told them the same story he told the author,

through an intermediary in 1971. Namely, that Oswald was reporting

to Hosty on the assassination plans of the CIA group based in

Mexico City. FBI agent witness, Regis Kennedy might have given

private interview evidence, but he was killed the day before he was

to meet with the committee.

Gordon Novel, Ronald Augustinovich, Richard Case Nagell, Mary

Hope, Guy Gabaldin, Manuel Garcia Gonzalez, William Seymour, Emilio

Santana, Victor Marchetti, Jack Lawrence, Major L.M. Bloomfield,

Frenchy, Sergio Arcacha Smith, Harry Williams, James Hicks, Sylvia

Odio, Jim Braden, James Hosty, Warren Du Brueys, Louis Ivon, E.

Howard Hunt and Jim Garrison were not called and no interest was

shown in having them as witnesses. Some key witnesses who were

called were not asked any important questions, or cross examined at

all. Marina Oswald Porter was one of these. Another was Gerald

Ford. Richard Helms told his standard lies, and no one asked him

about Victor Marchetti's statement about Helms protecting Clay

Shaw, or about E. Howard Hunt and Guy Gabaldin in Mexico City in

October, 1963, or about Harry William's statement that he, Helms,

Hunt, and Lyman Kirkpatrick were reconsidering another Cuban

invasion at the moment JFK was shot, in a Washington, D.C., CIA

location.

With respect to the assassination of Dr. King, the committee

also performed admirably for the PCG, in this case, the FBI wing.

They failed to deal with the important evidence of conspiracy,

failed to call the prime witnesses, and distorted or omitted

evidence. They spent a great amount of time trying to prove,

rather unsuccessfully except for media accounts, that James Earl

Ray was guilty and that he had help from his family and was

possibly financed by some wealthy sountherners.

Briefly, here is the evidence they did not cover. The witnesses

who saw a man in the rooming house--all of whom said it was not

James Earl Ray--were not called. Charles Stephens, who was bribed

and coerced by the FBI into identifying the man as Ray, but who was

dead drunk, and saw nothing, was not put on the stand with his

common law wife Grace and a cab driver who saw how drunk he was.

Confronting his testimony by cross examination and by using counter

witnesses should have been done.

The three bar maids in Montreal and Atlanta who saw Ray and

Raoul together were not called. William Bradford Huie found them

and Ray knew where they were. The committee didn't look for them.

Huie and Foreman were not put on the stand and asked all of the key

questions about why Huie changed his entire approach toward Ray as

soon as I showed him the Raoul-Frenchy photos. Foreman's role was

never explored under fierce cross examination as it would be if

Mark Lane were able to get a new trial for Ray. He should have

been asked why he told Ray he got the Frenchy photos from the FBI

when he actually got them from me!

The Frenchy-Raoul sketch comparison, made by Bill Turner and I

in the summer of 1968, should have been produced and shown to

Foreman, Huie, Ray and other witnesses.

The complete list of witnesses who saw Ray and Raoul together,

as well as the complete list who saw Ray at the gasoline station a

few blocks away from the crime at the time the shot was fired, were

not called. The committee adopted the stance that it was up to

Mark Lane and Ray to produce those witnesses, as though the

investigation of the King killing was a trial instead. The

committee, not Ray, had the responsibility of investigating and

locating those witnesses. Bob Lehner wanted to do that, but he was

fired.

The evidence about the rooming house bathroom window as an

impossible firing point, presented so well in Harold Weisberg's

book "Frame-Up: The Martin Luther King/James Earl Ray Case," was

either ignored or distorted. The evidence about the trajectory of

the shot was completely distorted. The ballistics, medical and

trajectory panels discussed the vertical angle of difference

between the "grassy knoll" firing point and bathroom window firing

point trajectories to the Lorraine Motel balcony. They stated that

the differential angle between the two trajectories was too small

to determine, from the medical evidence, whether the shot came from

the window or the knoll.

But, they failed to discuss the horizontal differential angle

between the two trajectories which was much larger, large enough to

determine the firing point.

They also failed to present a number of witnesses who saw the

actual assassin, Jack Youngblood, both before and after he fired

from the knoll. Wayne Chastain should also have been called to

testify about this evidence and those witnesses.

The evidence concerning who Jack Youngblood and Frenchy-Raoul

worked for, and their involvement, was not dealt with at all. The

committee should have presented the photographic evidence showing

Raoul was Frenchy, and should have asked Ray and the witnesses who

saw Raoul to identify him from the Frenchy photos. Jeff Paley

actually showed Frenchy's photo to witnesses in 1968 while Raoul's

face was still fresh in their minds. They recognized the face.

They certainly should have since the sketch of Raoul was made from

their recollections. They should have called Frenchy as a witness

in both JFK & MLK cases. I know from an inside source on the

committee that they found Frenchy alive in 1978. They certainly

knew about Jack Youngblood because they read Wayne Chastain's

series of articles in "Computers and People."

In summary, the Select Committee performed reasonably well on

behalf of the PCG. There are no public outcrys over what they did

because the media wouldn't air them. Mark Lane held a number of

press conferences during the committee's life span, and no media

organization reported on any of them. The media, of course, were

quite willing servants of the PCG, as they always have been since

1963. The combination of the PCG, the CIA, the FBI, the Select

Committee, the House spokesmen for the PCG and the cooperative

media is really nearly unbeatable.

Some researchers hoped against hope that the Select Committee,

under Stokes, Blakey, Preyer and Fauntroy, would still unveil the

truth, as the public hearings began in August. The hopes

disappeared during the first week of hearings on the King case as

the committee demonstrated quite clearly that they were going to

continue the cover-ups and to get James Earl Ray and Mark Lane in

the bargain. Still, the hopes would not quite die. The letters I

wrote to Louis Stokes in the fall of 1978, expressed the last ditch

thought that maybe they were conducting a charade designed to fool

the FBI, CIA and the rest of the PCG into believing they were going

to cover-up the truth. It turned out be for real, no charade.

The eight people assassinated by the PCG in 1977-78 during the

Select Committee's life span are probably the best proof of who is

in charge of the U.S. and what their intentions are. The murders

are all part of the cover-up efforts and were all successfully

carried out, a la The Parallax View, with very few suspicions

raised on the part of the American media or the public. They

included William Sullivan, Regis Kennedy, George de Mohrenschildt,

Sam Giancana,[5] John Roselli, Carlos Prio Socarras, Thomas

Karamessines, Rolando Masferrer, and an attempt on the life of

Larry Flynt.

Each of these murders was carried out with great success and for

varying reasons. One common thread connects them all. Each man

knew too much about the assassinations of President Kennedy or

Martin Luther King and the subsequent cover-up conspiracies. All

but Flynt were witnesses to be called by the Select Committee or

ones that had given some information and were scheduled to give

more. Of the nine people including Flynt, the two most important

were William Sullivan and Regis Kennedy.

Regis Kennedy was one of two FBI agents in New Orleans assigned

as contact men for Lee Harvey Oswald in his role as FBI informer.

The other agent was Warren du Brueys. James Hosty was his contact

agent in Dallas. Kennedy knew a lot, but was under strict orders

from the FBI not to reveal any of it. He was called as a witness

at the trial of Clay Shaw and asked by Jim Garrison whether he

hadn't been searching for Clay Shaw under the name Clay Bertrand,

before it was known that Clay Bertrand wanted to hire a lawyer for

Lee Harvey Oswald. Kennedy took executive privilege, a popular

dodge at that time with the Nixon administration. When the judge

pressed him, he said he would have to check with the FBI and the

attorney general, John Mitchell, in Washington, D.C. Word came

through that he could answer that one question, so he said yes it

was true. He went no further however. The significance is that

the FBI knew all about Clay Shaw's involvement in the assassination

because Oswald was reporting back to them as a paid infiltrator of

Shaw's team. There is a distinct possibility that Kennedy was sent

by Hoover and Sullivan to Dallas immediately after the

assassination, to help coordinate the FBI/CIA cover-up. Beverly

Oliver, the Babushka lady, whose film was confiscated by three

government agents on Sunday November 24, 1963 at the Carousel Club

owned by Jack Ruby, made a tentative identification of Regis

Kennedy from his photograph as one of those three agents. The film

has never surfaced. It should show the assassins on the grassy

knoll quite clearly since Beverly was much closer than either

Orville Nix or Marie Muchmore and had her camera trained on JFK all

the way down Elm Street.

Kennedy died of a supposed heart attack the day before he was to

meet with the Select Committee staff. Heart attacks, as most

Americans know by now from watching the Church Committee hearings,

and seeing the Parallax View, are easily induced by a CIA-developed

pill, which leaves no trace in the autopsy, if there is one.

William Sullivan was eliminated by a clever, but simple

technique. The PCG agents who killed him knew about his hunting

haunts in New England. They also knew about a teenage son of a

state policeman living near Sullivan's country place who liked to

hunt in the same area. Two of them intercepted Sullivan early one

morning as he set out for a walk in the woods. They shot him with

a deer rifle and took his body to a spot in the woods where they

knew the boy would be. They carried a decoy inflated to the shape

resembling a deer and probably acted like one. The boy shot at him

and thought he hit a deer. The agents dropped Sullivan's body at

that spot and left. They accidentally left the pair of gloves one

of them was wearing. The boy went over to the spot in the early

morning semi-darkness, found Sullivan's body, and thought he had

killed him by mistake. He still thinks so. There was no

investigation and no questions asked.

Why was Sullivan killed? As mentioned before, William Sullivan

was J. Edgar Hoovers' right hand man in charge of Division Five,

the FBI's clandestine domestic operation that included an

assassination squad. Every likelihood exists that Hoover ordered

Sullivan's division to kill King and that Sullivan used

Frenchy/Raoul and Jack Youngblood to do the job. Sullivan was also

due to meet with the Select Committee within a day or two after the

day he was shot. Whether he would have talked or not probably

makes little difference. The PCG couldn't take the chance.

Thomas Karamessines died of an apparent heart attack at the age

of 61 on September 4, 1978 at his vacation home in Grand Lake,

Quebec. He headed the covert operations part of the CIA after

Richard Helms was promoted from that position to head of the CIA.

David Phillips, the CIA dirty tricks operative who is making public

speeches supporting the Deputy Director of Plans (dirty tricks)

function, worked for Karamessines. His knowledge of the JFK

assassination and the CIA's cover-up role was undoubtedly complete

since he inherited the whole thing from Helms.

The other dead people were bumped off figuratively, on the very

doorstep of the committee. Roselli was killed and dumped into

Miami Bay. Giancana was shot full of holes in his Chicago

residence. De Mohrenschildt was shot with a shotgun in his

daughter's friends house in Florida. All three were scheduled to

meet with the committee. Socarras was killed in a garage in

Florida. Masferrer was blown up in his car in Florida. Flynt was

shot on the street in Georgia.

Florida. Why does it keep popping up in these cases? Bay of

Pigs, No Name Key Group, anti-Castro forces, Mafia operations; it

all fits together somehow. Jim Garrison's first real breakthrough

came when he found Masferrer in Florida through Manuel Garcia

Gonzalez. That led him and the District Attorney in Dade County,

Florida, to William Seymour, Emilio Santana, Howard, Hall, Hemming

and Frenchy, all part of Socarras' and Banister's Florida-based, No

Name Key anti-Castro operations. It figured that some of them

would die in their own backyard when the committee was getting too

close. Gaeton Fonzi can personally vouch for that. He was the

committee's Florida investigator.

Why wouldn't men like Fonzi, Fenton, Fauntroy, Stokes, Preyer,

and a woman like Yvonne Burke, tell us the truth. I spent a lot of

time with all of them and got to know some of them very well. They

all impressed me as being very honest and dedicated people.

There may be another explanation, as I mentioned in the

beginning of this last chapter. A committee, is, after all, made

up of a bunch of individuals. So is a staff. Now, except for

Cliff Fenton, Ed Evans (MLK investigator) and one or two others,

these people were not professionals in the investigations and

certainly none of them had been involved in the really big game of

espionage and clandestine operations. They were, and still are,

ordinary mortals, like you and me, with fears and cautionary

attitudes toward personal safety and danger. They also have

families.

Not even Cliff Fenton had ever been involved with the kind of

monstrous game played by the spooks of the world. It is a game for

keeps, of life and death, mostly death. Let's look at it from the

viewpoint of Louis Stokes, just to take an example. He took over

the chairmanship of the committee with the following knowledge.

He suspected there was a conspiracy in the JFK case and at least

wanted to find out whether the CIA and FBI were involved in

covering it up. He may not have known all of the details, but he

was aware of the fact that many people had died. He knew that

Henry Gonzalez had nearly been killed by a rifleman while driving

through a Texas desert with his wife. This occurred just after

Henry made public statements about all four political

assassinations being related and the intelligence agencies possibly

being involved. Stokes saw how the PCG swung their weight around

in the Rules Committee and on the floor of the House when the

Select Committee in January and February 1977, asked for a new

budget and a reconstituted authority to subpoena records and

continue the investigation. He also knew that something strange

had happened to Henry Gonzalez. He told me so in a luncheon

meeting on May 10, 1977. He said Henry had cut off all

communications with him and other committee members just as he had

with me. I told Louis that I believed Henry had purposefully been

fed information by the PCG that I, Richard A. Sprague, and some of

the committee members were working for the CIA. Otherwise, why

would he have instructed the CIA and FBI to close access to their

files to the committee staff, just after he had won the fight he

fought so hard to get the subpoena power back.

Stokes agreed it must have been something like that. Stokes

also must have had a frightened reaction during 1977 and 1978 to

these eight bodies dumped on his doorstep. As in the scene in "The

Godfather", it only takes one horse's head in your bed to get the

idea you should keep your mouth closed and play it cool.

Given all of this, each committee member may have reached his or

her decision that this game was not for congressmen. In April 1977

it is possible that all of those executive sessions the committee

held were partially devoted to a discussion of the personal safety

of each member, each staffer, and all of their families. They may

have reached unanimous agreement that the only safe approach would

be to avoid sensitive areas, and not to attack the CIA or FBI, and

certainly to avoid going after any of the dangerous guys in both

assassination cases.

Yet, to keep an honest approach going they would have to listen

to any credible hard evidence of conspiracy, comment on it, but

refrain from taking a stronger course than just listening. As Dr.

Blakey told me more than once, "I'm just going to let the facts

speak for themselves." This is somewhat like the position the

Warren Commission took when Richard Russell, Hale Boggs and John

Sherman Cooper refused to sign the draft of the Warren Report until

a qualifying statement was inserted. The statement read, "Because

of the difficulty of proving negatives to a certainty the

possibility of others being involved with either Oswald or Ruby

cannot be established categorically but if there is any such

evidence it has been beyond the reach of all the investigative

agencies and resources of the United States and has not come to the

attention of this Commission."

The committee has, in its final report, taken a stronger

position than that by saying, in effect, that new evidence of

conspiracy has surfaced and that the Congress should turn the job

of pursuing that evidence and a continuing investigation over to

the executive branch. The recommendation is for the Justice

Department to determine whether further investigations are

warranted. Thus the Committee members would be off the hook and,

more importantly, still alive and safe. They can claim that the

funds they had and the time they had were not enough. Whose fault

was that? Certainly not the committee's, they can claim.

This scenario, if true, is really the only hope, though very

slim, any of us have left. All other avenues have been closed.

____________________

[1] "New York Daily News" -- Tuesday, December 12, 1979.

[2] See the letters in the Appendix for a copy of the nondisclosure

agreement itself as well as correspondence between the author

and Louis Stokes.

[3] See copies of this correspondence in the Appendix.

[4] Following the December 22 executive session a public hearing was

held on December 29, the last weekday of the Committee's

existence. Weiss and Barger presented the acoustical evidence

proving four shots, one from the knoll, thereby causing the

Committee to conclude there was a probable conspiracy.

But, the fact that the Couch and Weigman films prove the

acoustical analysis was incorrect because there is no motorcycle

where there was supposed to be one, was completely covered-up by

the Committee staff. Why? The answer obviously is that the

Committee wanted to close shop with a conspiracy conclusion but

one that wouldn't shake up the intelligence community and the PCG

too much. If the correct acoustical analysis had been presented,

with the motorcycle directly behind the presidential limousine,

the net result would have been the elimination of that 6th floor

window as the source of the shots. Eliminate that window and you

eliminate Oswald and open up a can of worms with a completely

different kind of conspiracy. One with a patsy and intelligence

ramifications, written all over it.

So Cornwell and Blakey, and perhaps the entire Committee decided

to prove by implication that the motorcycle was 120 feet behind

the JFK car at the time of the shot from the knoll. They showed

publicly frames from the Hughes film which shows the motorcycle

they fudged, somewhat more than 120 feet behind the limousine.

But the Hughes film ends with the cycle on Houston Street. The

cycle can be seen in the Hughes film trailing Couch's camera car.

Couch took film all the way down Houston and around the turn onto

Elm Street. The limo can be seen in all of this footage. The

cycle can not. The cycle finally catches up to Couch and passes

him after the limo is beyond the triple overpass. Couch is, at

all times including the time of the knoll shot, more than 200 feet

behind the limousine. Ergo, the cycle is more than 200 feet

behind at the critical point.

Cornwell presented the cop driving the Houston Street cycle and

attempted to elicit testimony from him that it was his microphone

that was open.

[5] Giancana actually died in 1975 before testifying to the Schweicker

JFK assassination subcommittee of the Church Committee.

* * * * * * *

End Part16.

[John Ritchson]

Part17.

Chapter 17

THE FINAL COVER UP: How The CIA Controlled

The House Select Committee On Assassinations

Introduction

The final report of the House Select Committee on Assassinations

(HSCA), issued in 1979, concluded that a conspiracy existed in the

assassination of President Kennedy. This news should have

delighted hundreds of researchers who had disagreed with the no-

conspiracy finding of the Warren Commission. The fact that it did

not, is due to the HSCA conspiracy being a simple one, with Lee

Harvey Oswald still firing all but one of the shots from the sixth

floor window of the Texas School Book Depository Building. The

existence of another shooter and another shot, from the grassy

knoll, was "proved" by the HSCA, based primarily on acoustical

evidence presented in the very last month of their public hearings.

Dr. Robert Blakey and Richard Billings, chief counsel and report

editor for the HSCA, co-authored, in 1981, a book, "The Plot to

Kill the President," following the publication of the HSCA's final

report. The book claimed that the other shooter and Oswald were

part of a Mafia plot to kill JFK.

To over simplify the current (1985) situation, most JFK

researchers feel that the American public had been deceived once

again. The HSCA reaffirmed all but one of the Warren Commission's

findings, including even the famed single bullet theory. The

simplified conspiracy finding is now subject to review by the

Justice Department and the FBI because it is based on very

questionable acoustical evidence. Justice commissioned the so-

called Ramsey Panel[1] to review this evidence, in 1981, under the

auspices of the National Academy of Sciences. It found no evidence

from the acoustics that a grassy knoll shot was fired. So, we are

back to no-conspiracy and Oswald being the lone assassin. And even

if there was a conspiracy, Blakey claims it involved the Mafia and

not the CIA. The HSCA report and all of its volumes of evidence

omitting any reference to CIA involvement, concluded that the CIA

was not involved, and did not reveal any evidence that the HSCA

staff had collected showing that CIA people murdered JFK, and that

the CIA has been covering up that fact ever since.

Any followers of CIA activities connected with the JFK

assassination, since 1963, must ask the question, how did they do

it? How did the CIA turn things completely around from the 1976

days when Henry Gonzalez, Thomas Downing, Richard A. Sprague,

Robert Tanenbaum, Cliff Fenton and others were pursuing the truth

about the assassination, to essentially the same status as when the

Warren Commission finished its work? How did they produce the

final cover-up? The answer is that the CIA controlled the HSCA and

its investigation and findings from the early part of 1977,

forward. The methods they used were as clever and devious as any

they had used previously to control the Warren Commission, the

Rockefeller Commission, the Garrison Investigation, the

Schweiker/Hart Committee[2] and the efforts of independent

researchers.

The Situation in 1976

In 1976, Henry Gonzalez, member of the House from Texas, and

Thomas Downing from Virginia, were both convinced there was a

massive conspiracy in the JFK assassination. They introduced a

joint bill in the House which resulted in the formation of the HSCA

and an investigation of the JFK and King assassinations. Gonzalez

believed there were at least four conspiracies in the

assassinations of JFK, MLK, Robert Kennedy and in the attempted

assassination of George Wallace. He introduced an original bill to

have the House investigate all four and the cover-ups and links

among them. Downing was primarily interested in the JFK case and

his original bill dealt only with that conspiracy. Mark Lane and

his committee members and supporters around the country joined

forces with Coretta King and the Black Caucus in the House to

pressure Congressmen and Tip O'Neill to investigate the King and

John Kennedy assassinations. The net result was a merging of the

Gonzalez and Downing bills into a Final HSCA bill dealing with only

two of the cases.

In the fall of 1976, with Downing as chairman, the HSCA selected

Richard A. Sprague, from the Philadelphia District Attorney's

office, to be chief counsel. Sprague hired four professional

investigators and criminal lawyers from New York City. They were

very good and completely independent of the CIA and FBI, having

been trained by one of the best professionals in the business, D.A.

Frank Hogan of New York.

Sprague and his JFK team, headed by Bob Tanenbaum, attorney, and

Cliff Fenton, chief detective, were going after the real assassins

and their bosses, whether this led them to the CIA or FBI or

anywhere else. Sprague had already made it clear to the HSCA that

he would investigate CIA involvement, and subpoena CIA people,

documents and other information, whether classified or not. He had

also had meetings with several researchers, including the author,

and made it known privately that he was going to use the talent and

knowledge of every reliable researcher on a consulting basis. He

had contacted Jim Garrison in New Orleans and informed him he would

be following up on all of his information and leads. He had

initiated an investigation of the CIA activities in Mexico City

connected with the JFK assassination, including information

supplied to Sprague by the author.[3]

R.A. Sprague and Tanenbaum were aware of the CIA connections of

the individuals involved in the JFK assassination in Dealey Plaza,

in Mexico City, in New Orleans and in the Florida Keys. They had,

in November 1976, exposed the entire HSCA staff to all of the

photographic evidence showing these people in Dealey Plaza and

elsewhere. They were aware of the assassination planning meetings

held by CIA people in Mexico City and knew who the higher level

conspirators were. They had initiated searches for the real

assassins; Frenchy, William Seymour, Emilio Santana, Jack

Lawrence, Fred Lee Crisman, Jim Braden, Jim Hicks, et al. They

were planning to interview CIA contract agents, Richard Case

Nagell, Harry Dean, Gordon Novel, Ronald Augustinovich, Mary Hope

and Guy Gabaldin. Cliff Fenton had been appointed head of a team

of investigators to follow up on the New Orleans part of the

conspiracy which had included CIA agents and people; Clay Shaw,

David Ferrie, Guy Banister, Manuel Garcia Gonzalez, Sergio Arcacha

Smith, Gordon Novel and others. They were going to contact people

who had attended assassination planning meetings in New Orleans.

From the photographic evidence surrounding the sixth floor

window, as well as the grassy knoll, Sprague, Tanenbaum and most of

the staff knew Oswald had not fired any shots, knew no shots came

from the sixth floor window, and knew there had been shots from the

Dal Tex Building and the knoll. They knew the single bullet theory

was not true, and knew there had been a well-planned crossfire in

Dealey Plaza. They were not planning to waste a lot of time

reviewing and rehashing the Dealey Plaza evidence, except as it

might lead to the real assassins.

They had set up an investigation in Florida and the Keys, of the

evidence and leads developed in 1967 by Garrison. Gaeton Fonzi was

in charge of that part of Sprague's team. They were going to check

out the people in the CIA that had been running and funding the No

Name Key group and other Anti-Castro groups. Seymour, Santana,

Manuel Garcia Gonzalez, Jerry Patrick Hemming, Loran Hall, Lawrence

Howard, Frenchy and Cubans Rolando Masferrer and Carlos Prio

Socarras were to be found and interrogated.

Tanenbaum and his research team had seen the photo collection of

Dick Billings from "Life Magazine" which was, by 1976, deposited in

the Georgetown University Library's JFK assassination collection.

The No Name Key people and others showing up in Garrison's

investigation appeared in these photos with high level CIA agents.

In 1977, Henry Gonzalez, who was far more supportive of a CIA

conspiracy idea than Tom Downing, was to become chairman of the

HSCA. Downing did not run for re-election in 1976 and was

retiring. At that point, December 1976, Gonzalez and Sprague were

of the same mind and getting along fine. Researchers were very

pleased with the way things were going and believed Sprague would

expose the CIA's involvement in the JFK cover up.

The CIA's problem

Given this background of the HSCA status in late 1976, it can

easily be seen that the CIA was up against much more serious

opposition than it ever had been before in the JFK murder and

cover-up. They had ruined Jim Garrison's reputation and curtailed

his investigation by various dirty trick means. They had been in

solid control of the Warren Commission by the simple expedient of

having four of the Commissioners belonging to them; Dulles, Ford,

McCloy and Russell. They were also able to kill enough people who

knew the truth, to slow down any truth-seeking that might have

taken place. They also hid documents, destroyed and altered

evidence, lied about other evidence, and bald facedly (Dulles)

admitted that they wouldn't tell the President or the Commission if

Lee Harvey Oswald had been a CIA agent (which he had been). In the

Rockefeller Commission situation they were in complete control of

that attempt to reinforce the Warren Commission's findings. And in

the Church Committee investigation, the Schweiker/Hart subcommittee

on the JFK case was very limited and controlled in what they could

do.

But in the new situation, in Richard A. Sprague and his

professionals with so much knowledge of the CIA's role in the

murder and the cover-up, they faced a crisis. They knew they had

to do several things to turn it around and to continue to keep the

American public from realizing what was happening. Here is what

they had to do:

1. Get rid of Richard A. Sprague.

2. Get rid of Henry Gonzalez.

3. Get rid of Sprague's key men or keep them away from CIA

evidence or keep them quiet.

4. Install their own chief counsel to control the

investigation.

5. Elect a new HSCA chairman who would go along, or who

could be fooled.

6. Cut off all Sprague's investigations of CIA people.

Make sure none of the people were found or bury any

testimony that had already been found, or murder CIA

people who might talk.

7. Keep the committee members from knowing what was

happening and segregate the investigation from them.

8. Create a new investigative environment whose purpose

would be to confirm all of the findings of the Warren

Commission and divert attention away from the who-did-

it-and-why approach.

9. Control the committee staff in such a way as to keep

any of them from revealing what they already knew about

CIA involvement.

10. Control committee consultants in the same way, and

staff members who might leave or who might be fired.

11. Continue to control the media in such a way as to

reinforce all of the above.

12. Continue to murder witnesses or assassins in emergency

situations if necessary.

The CIA successfully did all twelve of these things. The

techniques they used were much more subtle and devious than those

they had used before, although they did continue with murders of

potential HSCA witnesses and with media control.

How The CIA Did It

The first step taken by the CIA was to use the media they

control, along with some members of Congress they control, and two

planted agents on the staff of and consulting for, Henry Gonzalez,

to get rid of both Henry and Richard A. Sprague. In taking this

step, they used the old Roman approach of divide and conquer. They

made Gonzalez and his closest staff assistant, Gail Beagle, believe

that Sprague was a CIA agent and that Gonzalez must get rid of him.

They also made Gonzalez believe that some of his other associates,

both in the HSCA and outside, were CIA agents. At the same time,

they used the media to attack Sprague mercilessly. The key people

in doing this attack on Sprague were three CIA reporters, George

Lardner of the "Washington Post," Mr. Burnham of "The New York

Times," and Jeremiah O'Leary of the "Washington Star." In all HSCA

committee meetings and in Rules Committee and Finance Committee

meetings, these three reporters sat next to each other, passed

notes back and forth, and wrote articles continually attacking and

undermining both Sprague and Gonzalez, as well as the entire

committee. The CIA had the support of top management in all three

news organizations in doing this.

Gonzalez eventually tried to fire Sprague, was over-ruled by the

committee, and then resigned from the committee. Sprague

eventually resigned, because it became obvious that the CIA

controlled members of the Finance and Rules Committees and other

CIA allies in the House, were going to kill the committee unless he

resigned. There are many more details to this story, which

requires a book to describe. Suffice it to say, the CIA

accomplished their first two goals by March 1977. The next steps

were to install a CIA-controlled chief counsel and to get a

chairman elected who could be fooled or coerced into appointing

such a counsel. Lewis Stokes was a perfect choice for chairman.

He was, and probably still is, a good and honest man. But he was

completely bamboozled by what the CIA did and is still doing. The

selection and implementation of a CIA man as chief counsel had to

be done in an extremely subtle manner. It could not be obvious to

anyone that he was a CIA man. Stokes and the other committee

members had to be fooled into believing *they* had made the choice,

and had picked a good man. Professor Robert Blakey, an apparently

scientifically oriented, academic person, with a history of work

against organized crime, was the perfect CIA choice. Once Dr.

Blakey took over as chief counsel, he accomplished goals numbered

3, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 very nicely. The fourth and fifth goals

having been achieved, Blakey set about the other parts of his

assignment very rapidly after he arrived. For Goal 3, he fired Bob

Tanenbaum, Bob Lehner, and Donovan Gay, three loyal Sprague

supporters, quickly.

The Nondisclosure Agreement

The most important weapon used by the CIA and Blakey to pursue

goals 9 and 10 was instituted within one week after Blakely

arrived. It is by far the most subtle and far reaching technique

used by the CIA to date. It is called the "Nondisclosure

Agreement" and it was signed by all members of the committee, all

staff members including Blakey, all consultants to the committee,

and several independent researchers who met with Blakey in 1977.

Signing the agreement was a condition for continued employment on

the committee staff or for continuing consulting on a contract

basis. The choice was, sign or get out. The author signed the

agreement in July 1977, without realizing its implications at the

time, in order to continue as a consultant. The agreement is

reproduced in full in the Appendix and is labelled "Exhibit A."

The author's consulting help was never sought after that and the

obvious objective was to silence a consultant and not use his

services.

This CIA weapon has several parts. First, it binds the signer,

if a consultant, to never reveal that he is working for the

committee (see paragraph 13). Second, it prevents the signer from

ever revealing to anyone in perpetuity, any information he has

learned about the committee's work as a result of working for the

committee (see paragraphs 2 and 12). Third, it gives the committee

and the House, after the committee terminates, the power to take

legal action against the signer, *in a court named by the

committee* or the House, in case the committee believes the signer

has violated the agreement. Fourth, the signer agrees to pay the

court costs for such a suit in the event he loses the suit (see

paragraphs 14 and 15).

These four parts are enough to scare most researchers or staff

members who signed it into silence forever about what they learned.

The agreement is insidious in that the signer is, in effect, giving

away his constitutional rights. Some lawyers who have seen the

agreement, including Richard A. Sprague, have expressed the opinion

it is an illegal agreement in violation of the Constitution and

several Constitutional amendments. Whether it is illegal or not,

most staff members and all consultants who signed it *have*

remained silent, even after three and a half years beyond the life

of the committee. There are only two exceptions, the author and

Gaeton Fonzi, who published a lengthy article about the HSCA

cover-up in the "Washingtonian" magazine in 1981.

The most insidious parts of the agreement, however, are

paragraphs 2, 3 and 7, which give the CIA very effective control

over what the committee could and could not do with so-called

"classified" information. The director of the CIA is given

authority to determine, in effect, what information shall remain

classified and therefore unavailable to nearly everyone. The

signer of the agreement, and remember, this includes all of the

Congressman and women who were members of the committee, agrees not

to reveal or discuss any information that the CIA decides he should

not. The chairman of the committee supposedly has the final say on

what information is included, but in practice, even an intelligent

and gutsy chairman would not be likely to override the CIA. Lewis

Stokes did not attempt any final decisions. In fact, the CIA did

not have to do very much under these clauses. The fact that Blakey

was their man and kept nearly all of the CIA sensitive information,

evidence, and witnesses away from the committee members was all

that was necessary. Stokes never knew what he should have argued

about with the CIA director. It is this document which proves

beyond doubt that the CIA controlled the HSCA.

The author attempted to point out to Stokes in a letter dated

February 10, 1978, "Exhibit B," the type of control the agreement

gives the CIA over the HSCA. Stokes replied in a March 16, 1978

letter, "Exhibit C," that he retained ultimate authority and was

not bound by the opinion of the Central Intelligence Director. He

also claimed that paragraphs 12 and 14, on extending the agreement

in perpetuity and giving the government the right to file a civil

suit in which the signer will pay all costs, were legal. He said

in the letter that the purpose of the agreement was to give the

HSCA control over the conduct of the investigation including

*control over the ultimate disclosure of information to the

American public*. That is a key admission about what has actually

happened. The only question is, who is controlling the information

in the heads of the staff investigators who discovered CIA

involvement? Was Louis Stokes working for the public or for the

CIA?

Examples of CIA-Control

Some specific examples will serve to illustrate how well the CIA

techniques have worked and are still working.

Garrison Evidence and Witnesses Example

As mentioned earlier, when Blakey arrived, an investigating team

headed by Cliff Fenton, reporting to Bob Tanenbaum, had already

been hard at work tracking down leads to the CIA conspirators

generated by Jim Garrison's investigation in New Orleans. This

team eventually had four investigators, all professionals, and

their work led them to believe that the CIA people in New Orleans

had been involved in a large conspiracy to assassinate JFK. As

Garrison told Ted Gandolfo, a New York City researcher, the Fenton

team went much further than Garrison, in locating witnesses and

other evidence of assassination planning meetings held in New

Orleans, Mexico City and Dallas. In fact, they found a CIA man who

attended those meetings, and who was willing to testify before the

committee. The evidence was far more convincing than the testimony

presented at the trial of Clay Shaw. In the Shaw Trial, CIA people

were involved in meetings in addition to the one brought out in the

trial. Clay Shaw, David Ferrie, William Seymour and others were

involved. Fenton's team discovered a lot of other facts about how

the CIA people planned and carried out the assassination. Their

report about the conspiracy was solid and convincing and they were

convinced. The CIA, through Robert Blakey, buried the Fenton

report. Committee members were not told about the team's findings.

The evidence was not included in the HSCA report, nor was it even

referred to in the volumes. The witnesses in New Orleans were

never called to testify. That included the CIA man at the

meetings. Fenton and the other three members of his team, having

signed the nondisclosure agreement, were legally sworn to secrecy,

or at least they thought so. To this day they refuse to discuss

anything with anybody.

There may also have been threats of physical violence against

them. There is no way to determine this. However, Fenton and the

others are well aware of the witnesses that the CIA murdered just

before they were about to testify before the HSCA. These included:

William Sullivan, the FBI deputy under J. Edgar Hoover, who headed

Division V, the domestic intelligence division; George de

Mohrenschildt, Oswald's CIA contact in Dallas; John Roselli, the

Mafia man involved in the CIA plots to assassinate Castro; Regis

Kennedy, the FBI agent who knew a lot about Clay Shaw, alias Clay

Bertrand, in New Orleans and who was one of Lee Harvey Oswald's FBI

contacts; Rolando Masferrer, an anti-Castro Cuban murdered in

Miami; and Carlos Prio Socarras, former Cuban premier, killed in

his garage in Miami.

With the knowledge of these murders, Fenton and his team would

not have required any more than a gentle hint, to keep quiet.

Frenchy Example

The "tramp," Frenchy, who appears in seven photos taken in

Dealey Plaza, is one of the most important CIA individuals in the

JFK assassination. Researcher Bill Turner discovered that Frenchy

had been in the Florida Keys working with CIA sponsored anti-Castro

groups. Richard A. Sprague and Bob Tanenbaum knew about his role,

and intended to go after him when the HSCA restored its subpoena

power and obtained enough money. They were aware of the evidence

that Frenchy fired the fatal shot from the grassy knoll. They had

assigned a team of investigators to follow a lead to Frenchy

provided by the author in the early part of 1977.

Unfortunately, the CIA managed to keep both the subpoena power

and the funds away from the committee until after they had forced

the resignations of Gonzalez, Sprague and Tanenbaum. The power and

funds were restored after Stokes was elected and after they

installed their own man, Blakey. The investigative team remained,

however, and they did search for and find Frenchy. But Blakey and

the CIA suppressed that fact, and suppressed anything they may have

learned from Frenchy. He is not mentioned in the report and was

not called as a witness. The author dares not reveal the source of

the above information because of the danger to staff people from

the nondisclosure agreement.

Nagell, Dean, Novel, and Augustinovich

The Garrison investigation and a subsequent series of

investigations by the author and other members of the Committee to

Investigate Assassinations in 1967 to 1973, turned up several

witnesses who were willing to talk privately about the CIA

assassination team that murdered JFK. Harry Dean and Richard Case

Nagell had been Lee Harvey Oswald's CIA contacts while he was in

Mexico City and knew about assassination planning meetings held in

Guy Gabaldin's apartment. Dean knew about William Seymour, CIA

contract agent, attending those meetings and how Seymour had been

pretending to be Oswald on many occasions. Gordon Novel knew how

the CIA had covered up the truth about the assassination and how

they went to extreme lengths to ruin Jim Garrison and his

investigation. Novel had been employed by the CIA in this effort.

Ronald Augustinovich and his friend, Mary Hope, had attended some

of the Mexico City meetings.

Richard Russell and the author tracked down all four of these

witnesses prior to the arrival of Robert Blakey at the HSCA.

Russell interviewed them and knew they would be willing to talk,

given protection and some form of immunity. The author presented

their names and their involvement to Richard A. Sprague, Henry

Gonzalez, Lewis Stokes and Robert Tanenbaum in the fall of 1976.

This was done as part of the author's consulting assignment for the

HSCA. The names were in a memorandum to Sprague, which outlined

the overall JFK conspiracy and the CIA's role, along with a

recommendation of the sequence in which witnesses should be called.

The idea was to base each witness interrogation on what had been

established from interviewing prior witnesses, working slowly from

cooperative witnesses, to non-cooperative witnesses, to actual

assassins, to higher level CIA people.[4] The highest level

people, E. Howard Hunt and Richard Helms, would be faced with

accusers.

As indicated earlier, Sprague and Tanenbaum could do nothing and

did nothing up to the day they left. By early 1978 it became

obvious that Blakey had done nothing about calling these CIA

witnesses. The author initiated a series of letter exchanges with

Blakey and Stokes, reminding them of these witnesses, and the

possibility that their lives could be in danger prior to their

being interviewed by HSCA. Dick Russell had obtained an agreement

from Nagell to meet with the committee, but no contact had been

made up to April 5, 1978, the date of the author's first letter to

Stokes on this subject, "Exhibit D." Nagell was hiding in fear of

his children's lives, not so much his own life. He was a real CIA

agent and knew how they operated. Russell was the only person who

knew where Nagell was. In the April 5th letter, a recommendation

was given to Stokes that the committee contact Nagell through

Russell, and contact the other witnesses on the original list.

Stokes wrote on May 15, 1978, "Exhibit E," that the Nagell matter had

been referred to Blakey for follow-up. Blakey never mentioned it

by telephone or by letter.

By September 1978, when the public hearings had begun, there was

no indication that Blakey was going to call the CIA witnesses.

Nagell was standing by but had not been contacted. The published,

intended witness list did not contain any of these CIA names. The

author wrote to Stokes and Representative Yvonne Burke on September

22 and 23, 1978, "Exhibits F," expressing dissatisfaction with

the committee's failure to call the CIA witnesses, and suggesting

that if they did not not, history would eventually catch up with

them. The names were repeated in the letter to Burke, and specific

mention made that the committee had never contacted Richard Case

Nagell. Louis Stokes sent back a letter dated October 10, 1978,

"Exhibit G." It is what one might call a non-answer, stating "that

the committee will make every effort to tell the whole story to the

American people." Seven years later (1985) it can be said that the

committee did not make an effort to call the most important

witnesses and therefore did not tell the whole story. Nor did

their report even mention these witnesses or any of the evidence

exposed earlier by the CTIA or Jim Garrison. Louis Stokes was

either totally fooled or he is part of the CIA's cover-up.

The author responded to Stokes' non-answer letter of October

10th with two more letters, dated October 30, 1978 and November 24,

1978, "Exhibits H & I." Stokes finally answered them on December

4, 1978 with another non-answer letter, "Exhibit J." He says the

committee cannot reveal the procedure of the investigation or the

names of those persons who will be called to testify before the

committee. This implies they were planning to call more witnesses

in December 1978. The committee's life ended on January 1, 1979.

The CIA witnesses were never called nor ever mentioned right up to

the very end and the report was silent about them.

The Umbrella Man

One last example illustrates the way the CIA and Blakey worked

together to cancel-out any evidence linking the CIA people and/or

techniques used in the JFK assassination. For may years, various

researchers, including Josiah Thompson[5] and the author, had

speculated about the role of a man appearing in the photographs in

Dealey Plaza with an open umbrella. He became known as "The

Umbrella Man," or TUM for short. Thompson speculated that TUM had

been giving the various shooters in Dealey Plaza visual signals

with the umbrella, and the author agreed this could have been true.

In *1976*, the Church committee took the public testimony of

Charles Senseney, a CIA contract weapons employee at the Army

Chemical Center in Ft. Detrick, MD. Senseney described a system

used by the CIA in Vietnam and elsewhere, for killing or paralyzing

people with poisons carried in self-propelled Flechette darts. The

darts were self-propelled like solid fuel rockets and launched

silently and unobtrusively from a number of devices, including an

umbrella. A CIA catalog of available secret weapons shows a

photograph of the umbrella launching device and photos of the

Flechettes which were self-propelled from one of the hollow spokes

of the umbrella. They could even be launched through soda straws.

Researcher Robert Cutler, former Air Force Liason officer, L.

Fletcher Prouty, and the author did some additional research on the

photographic evidence and the weapon system, especially research on

the movements of JFK in the Zapruder film and various photos of TUM

and a friend he had with him in Dealey Plaza. The friend had a

two-way radio device. As a result of this research, an article was

published in "Gallery" magazine in June, 1978. The article

presented the hypothesis that TUM launched, from his umbrella, a

poison Flechette at JFK, which struck him in the throat at Zapruder

frame 189, causing complete paralysis of his upper body, hands,

arms, shoulders and head, in less than two seconds. The photos

show this paralysis and the timing matches the testimony given by

Senseney about how fast the CIA poison works and what its

paralyzing effects look like.

Whether one agrees with this hypothesis or not is incidental to

what Blakey and the HSCA did in reaction to it. Until the summer

of 1977, official investigators for the HSCA, or any of its

predecessors, had shown no more than passing curious interest in

TUM. They just paid no attention and did not take the researcher's

ideas seriously. On August 8, 1977, the author informed Robert

Blakey, in a letter of that date, about the TUM hypothesis. The

letter concerned a discussion the author and Blakey had on July 21,

1977, two days after the nondisclosure agreement had been signed.

Blakey had said that if there was a conspiracy it would not have

involved a very large number of people. He was probably already

laying the foundation for a small, Mafia type, conspiracy involving

Oswald and a Mafia friend, backed by a few Mafia Dons.

The August 8th letter maintained that the CIA had been involved

and that it had been a massive intelligence operation, rather than

a conspiracy in the sense Blakey was using the term. The CIA

Flechette, umbrella launching weapons system, if indeed it had been

used by TUM, the letter pointed out, would be solid proof of high

level CIA involvement, since that system would not have been

available to lower level agents or contract people.

Blakey did not respond right away to this letter and the author

decided to make the TUM hypothesis public by publishing it with

Cutler as co-author, in the spring of 1978, in "Gallery" magazine.

Contact was also made with Senator Richard Schweiker who had been

the member of the Church Committee responsible for interrogating

Charles Senseney. Schweiker agreed to try and find out from

Senseney what had happened to the umbrella launchers he had

constructed for the CIA; that is, who in the CIA had had access to

a launcher.

The information to be published in "Gallery" had been generated

by Bob Cutler and the author independently of any information

obtained from the HSCA, but the safest approach seemed to be an

application to them for permission to print the article under the

terms of the nondisclosure agreement. So, on January 9, 1978, the

author submitted a draft of the "Gallery" article to Blakey and, on

January 16, 1978, he wrote back stating that publishing the article

would not violate the terms of the nondisclosure agreement, "Exhibit

K." The article was published in the June 1978 issue of "Gallery"

which actually appeared in May 1978. Blakey knew in advance when

it would appear.

On August 3, 1978, the author wrote to Blakey stating that

photographic evidence showed a high probability that TUM was

actually Gordon Novel, the CIA contract agent from New Orleans, who

had been hired to ruin the Garrison investigation, "Exhibit L."

The reason that some new photo evidence was just then coming to

light was that the committee had discovered a never-before seen

film of TUM and had released a frame from this film to the press in

July 1978. Shortly after the TUM photo was released by the HSCA,

with an appeal to him to come forward, an unknown caller contacted

Penn Jones in Texas to tell him he knew who TUM was. Penn visited

Louis Witt, having been given his address, and upon seeing him,

jumped to the conclusion that he *was* TUM. This led to Mr. Witt

appearing before the committee in their televised hearings and

making the claim he was TUM. He showed the umbrella on TV that he

claimed he used.

It was immediately obvious to Bob Cutler and the author that

Witt was not TUM. He displayed the umbrella he said he had used in

Dealey Plaza and *it contained the wrong number of spokes*. His

height, weight and facial appearance did not match TUM's, and his

description of his actions did not match at all the actions TUM

took, as shown in the photos. On November 24, 1978, the author

wrote to Stokes telling him he had been fooled by a CIA plant, or

by his own staff, planting Mr. Witt, and that he should call Gordon

Novel as a witness because it was likely that Novel was TUM. HSCA

never did call Novel as a witness. Novel had visited the HSCA

during the days Richard A. Sprague was still there, but he had not

mentioned being in Dealey Plaza or that the CIA had hired him to

ruin Garrison. Blakey and Stokes avoided contacting Novel.

Now, the important thing to focus on, in this example, is the

sequence of events. The HSCA had done nothing about TUM until they

were faced with the possibility of a public article linking TUM to

the CIA through a CIA weapons system and through Gordon Novel.

They also found out that Senator Schweiker was looking into the CIA

end of it. At about the time the "Gallery" article was being

widely read, the HSCA suddenly released to the press a photo of TUM

and asked that people identify him or that he come forward. The

photo did not show his umbrella or where he was sitting in Dealey

Plaza, nor did the release mention the umbrella or the theories

about it. Just his photo. An earlier photo used by Cutler and the

author to identify Novel as TUM was not released.

In a surprisingly short time after the photo appeared, an

unknown person calls a well-known researcher and leads him to Louis

Witt. Witt in turn lies about who he was and where he was, by

claiming to be TUM. Blakey and the committee put Witt on center

stage as though it was a play, and eliminate the TUM problem by

pulling off a charade. The fine hand of the CIA can be seen in

this whole series of linked events. Blakey had to have known what

was going on, and he knows today that Witt was not TUM and the high

probability that TUM was Gordon Novel, CIA agent.

The extreme lengths that the CIA and Blakey went to in this

charade, made one believe that the umbrella probably *was* the

Charles Senseney weapon. Otherwise, why bother with TUM?

Goal Number Eight

What has been presented so far in this article represents direct

actions by the CIA to cover-up CIA involvement. Blakey played

another important role and that was to achieve the eighth goal on

the list, namely to change the public impression of HSCA's main

effort. Researchers who concentrated on attacking the Warren

Commission's Dealey Plaza or Tippit shooting findings had created

a big problem. If Oswald had fired no shots, then he must have

been framed. If Oswald was framed, the evidence against him was

planted, and multiple gunmen were involved. All of this line of

reasoning would point to a very well-organized and very well-

planned conspiracy, which would in turn point to an intelligence

style involvement.

So, Blakey set out from the beginning to create an investigative

environment and image that appeared to be based on a *highly

scientific, objective study of the Dealey Plaza evidence*. The

overall objective of this approach was to prove "scientifically"

that the Warren Commission was right, and that Lee Harvey Oswald

fired all the shots that had struck John Kennedy, Governor Connally

and policeman Tippit. That required scientific proof of the

single bullet theory, among other things. Blakey did just that.

Right up to the moment when the acoustical evidence on the Dallas

police tape reared its ugly head, only one month from the end of

the life of the committee, Blakey managed to control and manipulate

the Dealey Plaza evidence to back up the Warren Commission

completely. The author described how Blakey did this in chapter

16. One of his "magical" methods was to split up the scientific

work into subcommittees or panels of advisors, and various staff

groups, and keep them all from communicating with each other.

*Thus, even though the medical panel gave testimony showing an

upward trajectory of the single bullet (399) shot*, the trajectory

panel turned it into a downward trajectory. The photographic panel

was so isolated they never did see the most important evidence of

the sixth floor window, inside and outside.

The photo panel had a number of government and military people

on it, as did all of the other panels. Thus it was not surprising

that they testified that the fake photos of Oswald holding a rifle

were not fakes. Blakey rode roughshod over the evidence that these

photos were fakes, presenting only one witness, Jack White, to show

why they were fakes, and giving him a very rough time. Other

researchers, like Fred Newcomb and the author, who had done a lot

of work on the fake photos, were not called and not consulted by

the photo panel or Blakey and his staff. There are many more

examples of how Blakey managed this magic show on public TV, too

numerous to describe here.

One important result of this drastic change of investigative

environment compared to that existing under Richard A. Sprague, was

to draw the attention of the public during the hearings away from

the evidence and the witnesses pointing to the real assassins, and

to the fact that Oswald was framed and did not fire any shots. It

thus provided an additional shield for the CIA and in effect,

completed the cover-up.

Summary

Now, in the spring of 1985, the CIA appears to have under

control the final cover-up engineered by Robert Blakey with the

support of a few murders of key witnesses and the existence of the

insidious, illegal, nondisclosure agreement silencing the HSCA

staff, committee members, and consultants. The situation for the

American public appears to be hopeless. The CIA effectively

controlled all three branches of government when the chips were

down, and have had no problems controlling the fourth estate, the

media, or the independent researchers. By what means could the

American public combat this awesome power? It is hard to see that

there is any means available. And we have now reached and passed

1984. Would an election of Edward Kennedy to the presidency in

1988 change anything? If he lived through a presidency following

an election campaign, it probably would. Most Americans react to

that by saying, "he would be assassinated." Somehow they have

received the messages about what has gone wrong with the United

States.

____________________

[1] Chaired by Prof. Norman Ramsey of M.I.T.

[2] Senators Richard Schweiker of Penn. and Gary Hart of Colo. formed

a sub-committee of the Church Committee.

[3] The author became an advisor to Richard A. Sprague as soon as he

was appointed counsel to the HSCA.

[4] The names of the witnesses in the memo were:

Cooperative Witnesses:

Louis Ivon (Jim Garrison's chief investigator), Richard Case

Nagell, Harry Dean, James Hosty, Carver Gaten, Warren du Bruys,

Regis Kennedy, Victor Marchetti, Gordon Novel, Manuel Garcia

Gonzalez, Harry Williams, Jim Garrison, George de

Mohrenschildt, Charles Senseney, Mary Hope and Jim Hicks.

Non-Cooperative Witnesses or Assassins or Planners:

Ronald Augustinovich, Guy Gabaldin, Frenchy, William Seymour,

Emilio Santana, Jack Lawrence, Jim Braden, Sergio Arcacha

Smith, Fred Lee Crisman, William Sullivan, Carlos Prio

Socarras, Rolando Masferrer, Major L.M. Bloomfield, E. Howard

Hunt, and Richard Helms.

[5] In his book, "Six Seconds in Dallas," Thompson showed photos of

TUM.

* * * * * * *

End Part17.

[John Ritchson]

Part18.

Appendix

The Secrecy Oath the Author signed after Robert Blakey took over the HSCA,

and correspondence between the author and various committee members.

Exhibit A

____________________________________________________________

Select Committee on Assassinations Nondisclosure Agreement

[Richard E. Sprague]

I, ____________________, in consideration for being

employed by or engaged by contract or otherwise to perform

services for or at the request of the House Select Committee

on Assassinations, or any Member thereof, da hereby make the

representations and accept the obligations set forth below as

conditions precedent for my employment or engagement, or for

my continuing employment or engagement, with the Select Com-

mittee, the United States House of Representatives, or the

United States Congress.

1. I have read the Rules of the Select Committee, and I

hereby agree to be bound by them and by the Rules of the House

of Representatives.

2. I hereby agree never to divulge, publish or reveal by

words, conduct or otherwise, any testimony given before the

Select Committee in executive session (including the name of any

witness who appeared or was summoned to appear before the Select

Committee in executive session), any classifiable and properly

classified information (as defined in 5 U.S.C. Section 552((1)),

or any information pertaining to intelligence sources or methods

as designated by the Director of Central Intelligence, or any con-

fidential information that is received by the Select Committee

or that comes into my possession by virtue of my position with

the Select Committee, to any person not a member of the Select

Committee or its staff or the personal staff representative of

a Committee Member unless authorized in writing by the Select

Committee, or, after the Select Committee's termination, by

such manner as the House of Representatives may determine or,

in the absence of a determination by the House, in such manner

as the Agency or Department from which the information origin-

ated may determine. I further agree not to divulge, publish

or reveal by words, conduct or otherwise, any other information

which is received by the Select Committee or which comes into

my possession by virtue of my position with the Select Committee,

for the duration of the Select Committee's existence.

3. I hereby agree that any material that is based upon or

may include information that I hereby pledge not to disclose,

and that is contemplated for publication by me will, prior to

discussing it with or showing it to any publishers, editors or

literary agents, be submitted to the Select Committee to deter-

mine whether said material contains any information that I

hereby pledge not to disclose. The Chairman of the Select Com-

mittee shall consult with the Director of Central Intelligence

for the purpose of the Chairman's determination as to whether

or not the material contains information that I pledge not to

disclose. I further agree to take no steps toward publication

until authorized in writing by the Select Committee, or after

its termination, by such manner as the House of Representatives

may determine, or in the absence of a determination by the

House, in such manner as the Agency or Department from which

the information originated may determine.

4. I hereby agree to familiarize myself with the Select

Committee's security procedures, and provide at all times the

required degree of protection against unauthorized disclosure

for all information and materials that come into my possession

by virtue of my position with the Select Committee.

5. I hereby agree to immediately notify the Select Com-

mittee of any attempt by any person not a member of the Select

Committee staff to solicit information from me that I pledge

not to disclose.

6. I hereby agree to immediately notify the Select

Committee if I am called upon to testify or provide information

to the proper authorities that I pledge not to disclose. I

will request that my obligation to respond is established by

the Select Committee, or after its termination, by such manner

as the House of Representatives may determine, before I do so.

7. I hereby agree to surrender to the Select Committee

upon demand by the Chairman or upon my separation from the

Select Committee staff, any material, including any classified

information or information pertaining to intelligence sources

or methods as designated by the Director of Central Intelligence,

which comes into my possession by virtue of my position with the

Select Committee. I hereby acknowledge that all documents

acquired by me in the course of my employment are and remain the

property of the United States.

8. I understand that any violation of the Select Committee

Rules, security procedures or this agreement shall constitute

grounds for dismissal from my current employment.

9. I hereby assign to the United States Government all

rights, title and interest in any and all royalties, remunera-

tions and emoluments that have resulted or may result from any

divulgence, publication or revelation in violation of this

agreement.

10. I understand and agree that the United States Government

may choose to apply, prior to any unauthorized disclosure by

me, for a court order prohibiting disclosure. Nothing in this

agreement constitutes a waiver on the part of the United States

of the right to prosecute for any statutory violation. Nothing

in this agreement constitutes a waiver on my part of any defenses

I may otherwise have in any civil or criminal proceedings.

11. I have read the provisions of the Espionage Laws,

Sections 793, 794 and 798, Title 18, United States Code, and

of Section 783, Title 50, United States Code, and I am aware

that unauthorized disclosure of certain classified information

may subject me to prosecution. I have read Section 1001, Title

18, United States Code, and I am aware that the making of a

false statement herein is punishable as a felony. I have also

read Executive Order 11652, and the implementing National

Security Council directive of May 17, 1972, relating to the

protection of classified information.

12. Unless released in writing from this agreement or any

portion thereof by the Select Committee, I recognize that all

the conditions and obligations imposed on me by this agreement

apply during my Committee employment or engagement and continue

to apply after the relationship is terminated.

13. No consultant shall indicate, divulge or acknowledge,

without written permission of the Select Committee, the fact

that the Select Committee has engaged him or her by contract

as a consultant until after the Select Committee has terminated.

14. In addition to any rights for criminal prosecution or

for injunctive relief the United States Government may have for

violation of this agreement, the United States Government may

file a civil suit in an appropriate court for damages as a

consequence of a breach of this agreement. The costs of any

civil suit brought by the United States for breach of this

agreement, including court costs, investigative expenses, and

reasonable attorney fees, shall be borne by any defendant who

loses such suit. In any civil suit for damages successfully

brought by the United States Government for breach of this

agreement, actual damages may be recovered, or, in the event

that such actual damages may be impossible to calculate, liquidated

damages in an amount of $5,000 shall be awarded as a reasonable

estimate for damages to the credibility and effectiveness of the

investigation.

15. I hereby agree that in any suit by the United States

Government for injunctive or monetary relief pursuant to the

terms of this agreement, personal jurisdiction shall obtain and

venue shall lie in the United States District Court for the

District of Columbia, or in any other appropriate United States

District Court in which the United States may elect to bring

suit. I further agree that the law of the District of Columbia

shall govern the interpretation and construction of this

agreement.

16. Each provision of this agreement is severable. If a

court should find any part of this agreement to be unenforceable,

all other provisions of this agreement shall remain in full force

and effect.

I make this agreement without any mental reservation or

purpose of evasion, and I agree that it may be used by the

Select Committee in carrying out its duty to protect the security

of information provided to it.

[July 19, 1977] [Richard E., Sprague]

Date: _____________________ _________________________________

[ I am submitting a list of

material and information

which has already been _________________________________

given to the committee, LOUIS STOKES, Chariman

or which I intend to Select Committee on Assassinations

give to the committee in

the near future. I intend

to publish some of this

information.]

Exhibit B

____________________________________________________________

193 Pinewood Road

Hartsdale, NY 10530

February 10, 1978

Mr. Louis Stokes

Chairman, Select Committee on Assassinations

U.S. House of Representatives

Washington, D.C. 20515

Dear Louis:

As I am sure you know, I signed a non disclosure agreement for the

Select Committee, given to me on July 19, 1977 by Robert Blakey. Not

being a lawyer, I did not really appreciate some of the provisions of

that agreemont at the time I signed it, even though some things in it

seemed strange to me.

In the last fow months I have gone over the agreement several times,

with particular attention to those strange portions. The more I re-

read the agreement, the more puzzled I have become.

I was finally triggered into writing you this letter by a conversation

I had with Richard A. Sprague. As you may recall I helped him and Bob

Tanenbaum from November 1976 forward with the photographic evidence in

the JFK case, and several other areas derived from my relationship with

Jim Garrison and the Committee to Investigate Assassinations. I had no

written agreement with the Committee at that time and did not ask for

compensation for the work I had been doing. I had signed no non dis-

closure agreement and such an agreement had never been mentioned.

The first time I had any idea that the Committee would want to pay me

for my assistance was some time after Dick Sprague resigned, when Mr.

Blakey approached me about it through Bob Tanenbaum, shortly before

Bob resigned. My recent meeting with Dick Sprague naturally led to

discussion about my continuing work for the Committee. He raised the

subject of the non disclosure agreement signed by each staff member,

saying that he would never have enforced such a document while he was

chief counsel because he believes it gives the CIA and other agencies

too much power to control the activities of the Committee. It was

because of that statement that I read the agreement again in the

light of what he said.

I know that you had a lot of faith in Richard A. Sprague and did not

personally want him to resign. For that reason I'm writing to you

rather than Mr. Blakey, seeking answers to my questions.

Encloged is a copy of the agreement with my signature. I have circled

on it the paragraphs in question, and underlined the key words. My

questions, Mr. Stokes are as follows:

1. Are paragraphs 2, 3 and 7 inserted for the purpose of giving the

CIA power over the Select Committee to investigate the CIA's

role in the assassinations or the cover up crimes following the

assassinations of President Kennedy or Dr. King? I believe those

paragraphs could be so interpreted, especially if each committee

member and each staff member signed a similar agreement.

2. If the purposes of paragraphs 2, 3 and 7 are not as questioned

above, then how can the Select Committee, its staff or its con-

sultants, *ever* discover whether the CIA was involved in the

assassinations or whether the CIA, as I maintain, is *still*

involved in covering up the conspiracies?

For example, paragraph 3 states that you as chairman, shall con-

sult with the Director of Central Intelligence--to determine

whether or not the material I might receive contains information

that I pledge not to disclose.

Assuming that all committee staff people signed that paragraph,

it would seem to me that you would really be hamstrung in investi-

gating the CIA's possible role. Your staff could not be working

with any documents or other materials pointing toward CIA agents'

involvement in the assassinations, without you personally having

to show those documents to the Director of Central Intelligence

and to obtain his agreement to disclose the information to the

public.

The CIA Director has the power of judging what can be released.

Obviously, anything incriminating to the CIA, especially higher

level people who may have been involved, would be judged unreleas-

able.

None of this would take on the significance that it does, were it

not for my belief that the CIA itself has continued to cover up

the original conspiracy and that several CIA agents or contract

employees carried out the murder.

3. Is paragraph 12 really logical, or even legal? Can an agreement

with a body be extended ad infinitum after the body has dissolved?

4. Paragraph 14 bothers me. It seems to say that I agree to allow

the government to sue me and to bear the expenses of such a suit.

Is it really legal to ask me to agree to be sued as a condition

of my consulting contract? Couldn't the government sue me and

collect expenses anyway if I did something wrong, without such a

clause? Paragraph 16 seems to anticipate that Paragraph 14 may

not stand up in court. (Or some other paragraph.)

I want to make it clear that my concerns in this matter are not related

to any obligation I may have. Rather, I am concerned about the

purposes of those clauses in the agreement, as they affect the

investigations. I believe every staff member signed them.

I would appreciate hearing directly from you on these questions Mr.

Stokes, rather than referring this letter to Mr. Blakey.

Yours sincerely,

Richard E. Sprague

Exhibit C

____________________________________________________________

LOUIS STOKES, OHIO, CHAIRMAN

RICHARDSON PREYER, N.C. SAMUEL L. DEVINE, OHIO

WALTER E. FAUNTROY, D.C. STEWART B. MCKINNEY, CONN.

YVONNE BRATHWAITE BURKE, CALIF. CHARLES THONE, NEBR.

CHRISTOPHER J. DODD, CONN. HAROLD S. SAWYER, MICH.

HAROLD E. FORD, TENN.

FLOYD J. FITHIAN, IND.

ROBERT W. EDGAR, PA.

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

(202) 225-4624

Select Committee on Assassinations

U.S House of Representatives

3331 HOUSE OFFICE BUILDING, ANNEX 2

WASHINGTON, D.C. 20515

MAR 16 1978

Richard E. Sprague, Esq.

193 Pinewood Road

Hartsdale, New York 10530

Dear Mr. Sprague:

In response to your letter of February 10, 1978

concerning the non-disclosure agreement which you signed

with the Committee, I wish to first remind you that the

agreement was explicitly explained to you provision by

provision by Mr. Blakey, and that you were given the

opportunity to ask any questions that you desired prior

to your signing the agreement. I want to assure you that

the intent of the agreement is not to prevent information

from ultimately being disclosed to the American public.

The non-disclosure agreement only governs the timing of

disclosure of information to the public. In response to

your specific questions:

I. Paragraphs 2, 3 and 7 obviously are not for

the purpose of giving the CIA power over the Select Committee

to investigate the CIA's role in the assassination. If

you read these paragraphs carefully, they clearly provide

that the Select Committee, during its existence, will be in

full control and have access to all information. The paragraphs

do prevent you from disclosing the information, without the

authorization of the Select Committee.

Paragraph 3 does state that I, as Chairman, will

consult with the Director of Central Intelligence to determine

whether or not material contains information which you pledge

not to disclose. I, however, retain ultimate authority and

I only consult with the Director of Central Intelligence -

I am not bound by his opinion.

II. Paragraphs 12 and 14 are indeed legal. Should

you have any specific questions concerning the legality of

any of the provisions, I suggest you consult your own attorney.

I assure you that the very purpose of the non-

disclosure agreement is to give the Select Committee full

control over the conduct of the investigation, including

the ultimate disclosure of information to the American

public. In no manner should it be construed as the Committee

being restricted in its investigation by the CIA or any other

federal agency or department.

In closing, I remind you of paragraph 13 of the

non-disclosure agreement which provides that you may not

"indicate, divulge or acknowledge" the fact that you have

been retained as a consultant until after the Select Committee

has been terminated. I have seen a press release concerning

yourself issued by Mr. Altmans in conjunction with a new article

in Gallery magazine. I note that while you technically did

not violate the non-disclosure agreement which you signed,

by carefully wording the release to describe the work you

had done for the Committee in the past, this is the exact

kind of exploitation of a consultant relationship that the

Committee desires to avoid during its existence.

If you have any other questions or comments on the

non-disclosure agreement, they should be addressed to Mr.

Blakey as Chief Counsel.

Sincerely,

[Louis Stokes]

Louis Stokes

Chairman

LS:jwc

Exhibit D

____________________________________________________________

193 Pinewood Road

Hartsdale, NY 10530

April 5, 1978

Representative Louis Stokes

U.S. House of Representatives

Raybur House Office Building

Washington, D.C. 20515

Dear Louis,

Thank you for your most reassuring letter of March 16, 1978.

As you know I have great faith in your own personal integrity

and your goals as discussed with you at lunch nearly a year

ago. I understand the necessity for non disclosure and

sensitive discretion in the way the Select Committee is pro-

ceeding. I believe I understand it more than most researchers

because of my close working relationship with the staff and the

committee ever since it started.

You can rest assured that it is my intention to continue to

assist you and to support your efforts right up to the finish

line. I want to avoid as much as you do any exploitation of my

relationship to the committee that would cause problems for you

or for me, especially with the media.

There will be another article in the June 1978 issue using this

same statement. I believe I mentioned the article to you several

months ago. It is about the CIA weapon system developed by

Charles Senseney at Fort Detrick, Maryland using rocket propelled

flechettes carrying paralyzing poison launched by an umbrella.

I described in the article the evidence pointing toward the use

of this weapons system in Dealey Plaza. The article will appear

on May 2 on the newsstands.

I read your March 16 letter, on March 22, upon my return from a

trip to Japan and a vacation. I contacted Gallery asking them to

delete entirely the statement about me and the Select Committee.

They told me it was too late, that the issue had already gone to

press. However, they did agree to delete the statement from any

[the remainder of this letter was missing from the copy of the

edition used to make this on-line version. --Editor]

Exhibit E

____________________________________________________________

LOUIS STOKES, OHIO, CHAIRMAN

RICHARDSON PREYER, N.C. SAMUEL L. DEVINE, OHIO

WALTER E. FAUNTROY, D.C. STEWART B. MCKINNEY, CONN.

YVONNE BRATHWAITE BURKE, CALIF. CHARLES THONE, NEBR.

CHRISTOPHER J. DODD, CONN. HAROLD S. SAWYER, MICH.

HAROLD E. FORD, TENN.

FLOYD J. FITHIAN, IND.

ROBERT W. EDGAR, PA.

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

(202) 225-4624

Select Committee on Assassinations

U.S House of Representatives

3331 HOUSE OFFICE BUILDING, ANNEX 2

WASHINGTON, D.C. 20515

May 15, 1978

Mr. Richard Sprague

193 Pinewood Road

Hartsdale, NY 10530

Dear Mr. Sprague:

Thank you for your thoughtful letter of April 5

and I hope that you will excuse my delay in responding.

I appreciate your expression of confidence in me

and your reassurance of your continued support. With

regard to the matter of the press release, I understand

your situation and it was most thoughtful of you to

advise me in advance about the article in the June issue

of Gallery magazine.

Your letter has been sent on to the Committee staff

in order that they might share your recommendations about

Richard Case Nagell.

Thank you again for your continuing support.

Sincerely,

[Louis Stokes]

LOUIS STOKES

Chairman

LS:thn

Exhibit F

____________________________________________________________

193 Pinewood Road

Hartsdale, New York 10530

September 22, 1978

Representative Yvonne Burke

U.S. House of Representatives

Washington, D.C. 20515

Dear Mrs. Burke:

I don't know whether you recall our meeting on

July 21, 1977 when Jack White, Robert Groden and I

made presentations to the J.F.K. subcommittee of the

Select Committee on Assassinations. You may

remember my showing a summary of photographic evidence

of conspiracy in the Kennedy assassination. You asked

some very pertinent questions which I answered about

how to obtain films and photos from media organizations

that were stonewalling at the time.

I am truly sorry that you have missed the first

three weeks of the J.F.K. hearings because I feel that

your presence would have created at least a minority

of one against the carefully orchestrated cover up that

is now takinq place. I had great faith in the committee,

especially after a luncheon meeting with Louis Stokes

in 1977 and after the presentation to you.

I want you personally to know that I have now lost

all of that faith. The farce that is going on is really

almost unbelievable to an honest researcher. All

witnesses (except Cyril Wecht), all panels employed by

the committee, the staff and the committee members doing

the questioning, obviously made up their minds a long

time ago that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin,

that there was no conspiracy and that the Warren

Commission was right.

I cannot understand how this came about. As the

most likely committee member to still keep an open mind,

I would like to ask your opinion.

How did the committee staff ignore all of the

evidence of conspiracy. I am speaking not only

about the photographic evidence, but about the

information that Clifford Fenton and his team

uncovered in New Orleans. I know you know about

that from my conversations with Ted Gandolfo and

Jim Garrison.

Do you believe there was a conspiracy? If you

do, will you say so when you return to Washington?

Will you insist that the committee hear from the

important New Orleans witnesses as well as the

others I recommended long long ago. Specifically,

will you insist that the committee call as witnesses:

James Hosty, Warren du Bruys, Regis Kennedy, Richard

Case Nagell, Harry Dean, Ronald Augustinovich, Mary

Hope, Guy Gabaldin, Frenchy, William Seymour, Emilio

Santana, Jack Lawrence, Jim Braden, E. Howard Hunt,

Richard Helms and the others listed in the document

I gave Louis Stokes in 1977. If you can't or won't,

God help this country.

Yours sincerely,

Richard E. Sprague

P.S. In the case of key witness Richard Case Nagell,

Mr. Stokes assured me this spring that the committee

would contact him. As of this date, he has never

been contacted. He knows who killed President Kennedy.

Exhibit G

____________________________________________________________

LOUIS STOKES, OHIO, CHAIRMAN

RICHARDSON PREYER, N.C. SAMUEL L. DEVINE, OHIO

WALTER E. FAUNTROY, D.C. STEWART B. MCKINNEY, CONN.

YVONNE BRATHWAITE BURKE, CALIF. CHARLES THONE, NEBR.

CHRISTOPHER J. DODD, CONN. HAROLD S. SAWYER, MICH.

HAROLD E. FORD, TENN.

FLOYD J. FITHIAN, IND.

ROBERT W. EDGAR, PA.

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

(202) 225-4624

Select Committee on Assassinations

U.S House of Representatives

3331 HOUSE OFFICE BUILDING, ANNEX 2

WASHINGTON, D.C. 20515

October 10, 1978

Mr. Richard Sprague

193 Pinewood Road

Hartsdale, New York 10530

Dear Mr. Sprague:

I was greatly disturbed by your letter of September

23, 1978 in which you stated that, "I have one last hope

that what we are witnessing in your hearings is a charade

meant to fool the FBI and the CIA. If it is, you have fooled

me. If it is not, your statements to me over the past year

about getting at the truth were all meaningless. I have

lost all faith in you and the committee."

I must say that I deeply regret the fact that you

have lost faith in the performance of my committee. We

have attempted to do a thorough, competent and professional

job which would be a source of pride for you and other

concerned Americans.

I should state here for the record, Mr. Sprague, that

I find nothing inconsistent in my statements to you over the

year indicating that the committee would be seeking the truth

and nothing but the truth during the course of the investigation

and the testimony that the committee has received during its

public hearings. Perhaps you are confused because I did not

explicitly state that the truth the committee is seeking is

not your truth or my truth, but truth supported by the weight

of the evidence.

Thanks again for your past and current concerns. I

assure you that the committee will make every effort to tell

the whole story to the American people.

Sincerely,

[Louis Stokes]

Chairman

LS: icmj

Exhibit H

____________________________________________________________

193 Pinewood Road

Hartsdale, NY 10530

October 30, 1978

Representative Louis Stokes

Select Committee on Assassinations

U.S. House of Representatives

3369 House Office Building, Annex 2

Washington, D.C. 20515

Dear Louis:

I appreciate your responding to my September 23 letter.

I am truly sorry to be so disturbing to you concerning

the committee's hearings. I wish I could be more

complimentary and positive about your work.

I could not agree with you more that the "truth supported

by the weight of the evidence" is what we are all after.

I'm enclosing for your information one more copy of the

document I gave to Henry Gonzalez, Richard A. Sprague,

Bob Tannenbaum, and you in 1976 and 1977.

Unless you call the witnesses listed on pages 4-6 of this

document, Louis, you have not dealt with the most impor-

tant evidence of all. How can you possibly claim to have

unearthed anything approximating the truth, unless you

and the rest of the committee interrogate with strength,

the following important witnesses that you missed:

Richard Case Nagell, James P. Hosty, Louis Ivon, Victor

Marchetti, Gorden Novel, Ronald Augustinovich, Mary Hope,

Manuel Garcia Gonzalez, William Seymour, Emilio Santana,

Guy Gabaldin, Major L.M. Bloomfield, Harry Williams,

Sylvia Odio and Jim Garrison.

The document explains how each of these witnesses was

involved in the assassination of investigations of it.

It is based, not just on my research, but on painful

hours of investigative efforts of many, many people,

including Jim Garrison's professional staff, the

Committee to Investigate Assassinations and others.

I understand that James P. Hosty is finally ready to

tell his real story, at the risk of physical harm to

himself and his family. You have not called him.

Richard Case Nagell has been ready to testify for a

long time. Despite my requests to Dr. Blakey and to

you, he has not been called and no effort has been

made to locate him through the only person who knows

where he is, Dick Russell.

If you will pardon my saying so Louis, something about

just those two failures stinks, not to mention all of

the others.

It is not too late to save your reputations. You can

still call those witnesses in December. I hope you do.

Yours Sincerely,

Dick Sprague

Exhibit I

____________________________________________________________

193 Pinewood Road

Hartsdale, NY 10530

November 24, 1978

Representative Louis Stokes

Select Committee on Assassinations

U.S. House of Representatives

3369 House Office Building, Annex 2

Washington, D.C. 20515

Dear Louis:

I am still waiting for a reply to my letter of October 30,

1978. I thought I should write again to remind you that

the witnesses you should call in December are not going to

be around much longer. I'm afraid that Gorden Novel,

Richard Case Nagell, James Hosty and Warren de Brueys, in

particular may go the same way that Regis Kennedy, William

Sullivan, and George de Mohrenschildt went. You really

must call them before they die.

Regis Kennedy reportedly died of natural causes the day

before you were to talk with him. I do not believe that.

How many more key witnesses have to die before you would

be convinced? Kennedy, du Brueys and Hosty were Oswald's

points of contact in the FBI, receiving his reports on the

conspiratorial group planning JFK's assassination. I have

known this since 1971 directly from Hosty's own lips via

Carver Gaten and Jim Gochenaur. Regis Kennedy also knew

why the FBI was searching for Clay Shaw under his alias

Clay Bertrand in New Orleans, *before* Dean Andrews received

that phone call from him about defending Oswald. Kennedy

may also have been one of the three agents who took the

Babushka lady's film away from her. At least she told me

he was one of them from his photo.

So Regis Kennedy had to die. So do Warren du Brueys and

James Hosty. If they die of "natural causes" in the next

month or two, don't say I didn't warn you.

Nagell and Novel are in even greater danger. Nagell may

now be safe. He fled the country recently. However, the

CIA has tentacles everywhere, so he will not really be safe

wherever he is. Novel could easily be killed, since he is

in prison. That is one of the easiest places for the death

squad to catch up with him.

As I have had told you in previous letters, the reason you

*must* call Novel is that there is a very strong possibility

that he is the umbrella man. If you laugh at that and try

to tell me that you found the umbrella man, Mr. Witt, I'll

laugh right back at you and tell you that farce you put on

for the American public didn't fool anyone with his eyes

even half way open. In addition to the obviously planned

sequence of events and the way in which Mr. Witt surfaced,

his umbrella was certainly not the one used in Dealey Plaza.

It was the wrong size, had the wrong number of ribs, and was

missing the two round white bulbs on either end when folded

up.

No, Louis, Mr. Witt was either planted upon you or else

your staff planted him. I'll give you the benefit of the

doubt for the moment and assume that you do not know he

was a plant. If you let it go as is, you and Mr. Preyer

and the rest of the committee are going to look pretty

silly.

You absolutely must call as witnesses, Gorden Novel, and

at the other end, Charles Sensenay and the CIA people asso-

ciated with Fort Detrick, Maryland, where that umbrella

launching system was made. Incidentally, two Bulgarian

intelligence agents have recently been assassinated in

England with an umbrella weapon using poison flechettes,

very similar to the one used on JFK.

I would appreciate a response to this letter telling me

what you plan to do about those witnesses.

Best regards,

Dick Sprague

Exhibit J

____________________________________________________________

LOUIS STOKES, OHIO, CHAIRMAN

RICHARDSON PREYER, N.C. SAMUEL L. DEVINE, OHIO

WALTER E. FAUNTROY, D.C. STEWART B. MCKINNEY, CONN.

YVONNE BRATHWAITE BURKE, CALIF. CHARLES THONE, NEBR.

CHRISTOPHER J. DODD, CONN. HAROLD S. SAWYER, MICH.

HAROLD E. FORD, TENN.

FLOYD J. FITHIAN, IND.

ROBERT W. EDGAR, PA.

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

(202) 225-4624

Select Committee on Assassinations

U.S House of Representatives

3331 HOUSE OFFICE BUILDING, ANNEX 2

WASHINGTON, D.C. 20515

December 4, 1978

Mr. Dick Sprague

193 Pinewood Rqad

Hartsdale, New York 10530

Dear Mr. Sprague:

Thank you for your letter of November 24, 1978.

I am aware of the amount of time you have spent

analyzing the assassination of President John F. Kennedy

and your interest in the work of the Select Committee on

Assassinations since its inception.

However, I regret that under our Rules, it is

impossible for us to respond to your letter in a manner

which would reveal the substance or procedure of our

investigation, or the names of those persons who will be

called to testify before the committee.

The committee is, of course, grateful for your

suggestions and those of the many other concerned citizens

who have taken the time to write.

Sincerely,

[Louis Stokes]

LOUIS STOKES

Chairman

LS:jl

Exhibit K

____________________________________________________________

LOUIS STOKES, OHIO, CHAIRMAN

RICHARDSON PREYER, N.C. SAMUEL L. DEVINE, OHIO

WALTER E. FAUNTROY, D.C. STEWART B. MCKINNEY, CONN.

YVONNE BRATHWAITE BURKE, CALIF. CHARLES THONE, NEBR.

CHRISTOPHER J. DODD, CONN. HAROLD S. SAWYER, MICH.

HAROLD E. FORD, TENN.

FLOYD J. FITHIAN, IND.

ROBERT W. EDGAR, PA.

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

(202) 225-4624

Select Committee on Assassinations

U.S House of Representatives

3331 HOUSE OFFICE BUILDING, ANNEX 2

WASHINGTON, D.C. 20515

JAN 16 1978

Richard E. Sprague, Esq.

193 Pinewood Road

Hartsdale, New York 10530

Dear Mr. Sprague:

In response to your letter of January 9,

1978, I have reviewed your proposed article "The

CIA Weapon System Used in the Assassination of

President Kennedy." It is my opinion that the article

is derived from your own sources of information, and

contains no information that has come into your

possession by virtue of your consulting work with the

Committee. Accordingly, your proposed publication of

the article does not violate the terms of your non-

disclosure agreement. As I am sure you can appreciate,

further comment by myself upon the article or its

proposed publication would be inappropriate, and

consequently I decline to express any review or

comment upon it.

Thank you for your continuing cooperation

with the Select Committee.

Sincerely,

[G. Robert Blakey]

G. Robert Blakey

GRB:jwc

Exhibit L

____________________________________________________________

193 Pinewood Road

Hartsdale, NY 10530

August 3, 1978

Mr. Robert Blakey

Select Committee on Assassinations

U.S. House of Representatives

Washington, D.C. 20515

Dear Bob:

Following our telephone conversation on Tuesday August 1,

I checked with Bob Cutler, my co-author on the Umbrella

Weapon System article in Gallery June 1978. Bob told me

he left with Mr. Preyer and with you, photographic material

showing that The Umbrella Man (TUM) was quite probably

J. Gordon Novel.

Your news photo of him reinforces that belief for both of

us. I did not have that portion of the Couch film from

WFAA and so had never seen TUM's face as clearly as it

appears there. The Bothun photo of him has a light

reflection around his nose, as I'm sure you know.

We have a 1962-3 photo of Novel taken from the same angle

as the Couch, film of TUM and a photo comparison convinces

us more than ever that Novel is TUM. Mr. Preyer no doubt

told you back in April that Novel is in a jail in Georgia,

framed for a crime he and Jim Garrison, his former lawyer,

both claim he didn't commit.

Best regards,

Dick Sprague

DS/mc

P.S. I am still waiting for a response to my letters to

Louis Stokes about attending the hearings beginning

August 14.

cc: L. Stokes

R. Cutler

End Part18.

[Guest Stephen Turner]

In her article, The Nazi connection to the assassination of John f. Kennedy

(1983) Mae Brussell writes

"One of the most consistant conservatives among Buckley's Advisory Board

was Sen John Tower. Yet ,2 years after the YAF team Tower was passing all

waivers in order for Marina to get into the USA.Without his permission ,this trip

might never have taken place.

March 22, 1962, Tower cooperated"The sanctions imposed on Immigration &

Nationality are hereby waived in behalf of Mrs Oswald"(Volume XXIV,298

Warren Comission)

John Tower knew Marina was a safe bet.Otherwise why the hurry? The CIA &

Defense Dept knew all there was to know about both Oswalds.

Thats why Tower signed the papers FAST.

[Guest Stephen Turner]

Here's a report from the NY times about the crash that killed Sen Tower.

"Aviation officials said inquiries into the crash turned up no unusual radio

transmissions from the pilots beforehand.People who saw the debris,said

it appeared that the aircraft,fell straight down before crashing.Itfell into a

pine forrest about 150 yards off a hard-top road.

"I dont see how anyone could have got out of that plane", Said Donald

Kennedy who flew over the crash scene ."It was burning through the middle

of the fuselage".Mr Kennedy said the weather was good & that other planes

were experiencing no problems.

Bill Kitchem a reporter said,the scene did not look like the plane had skidded

in,there was no sign that it plowed in.It lookedlike it came straight down.All

that was left was the tail and a clump of metal, where the cockpit used to

be. Thank God it wasnt anywhere near the pentagon.

[Dawn Meredith]

Here's a report from the NY times about the crash that killed Sen Tower.

"Aviation officials said inquiries into the crash turned up no unusual radio

transmissions from the pilots beforehand.People who saw the debris,said

it appeared that the aircraft,fell straight down before crashing.Itfell into a

pine forrest about 150 yards off a hard-top road.

"I dont see how anyone could have got out of that plane", Said Donald

Kennedy who flew over the crash scene ."It was burning through the middle

of the fuselage".Mr Kennedy said the weather was good & that other planes

were experiencing no problems.

Bill Kitchem a reporter said,the scene did not look like the plane had skidded

in,there was no sign that it plowed in.It lookedlike it came straight down.All

that was left was the tail and a clump of metal, where the cockpit used to

be. Thank God it wasnt anywhere near the pentagon.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

______________________________________________

Great thread. Gets us back to connecting the dots, to why this is all so very relevent today. Thanks also to John R for reprinting here "The Taking of America". I hope everyone will take the time to (re)- read this remarkable book.

I would be most curious to have Tim Gratz' comments on this book, since he is so vocal here questioning posters as to what books we read, when posting his

" Castro did it" comments.

I have not checked in several hours, but I am also still waiting to see if he answers my question as to just what he and Gerry Hemming are up to. The sound of silence is suddenly deafening.

Dawn

[Ron Ecker]

Heinz was killed when his plane and a helicopter collided, the helicopter having gotten too close to check out a problem with the plane's landing gear. All aboard both aircraft were killed.

If this was an assassination, did the assassins somehow talk a helicopter pilot into committing suicide by crashing his chopper into the plane?

I agree that the back to back plane crash deaths of Tower and Heinz are suspicious, but can someone explain how this collision could have been deliberately made to occur?

Ron

[Tim Gratz]

Dawn wrote:

I have not checked in several hours, but I am also still waiting to see if he answers my question as to just what he and Gerry Hemming are up to.

Plotting a revolution in a small Central American country. What else would we be up to?

Kidding aside, Gerry is up to 6 foot 7 inches, while I am a mere 5 feet 9 inches.

Edited February 25, 2005 by Tim Gratz

[Guest Stephen Turner]

Ron

I don't draw any conclusions from Towers death, just posted what I found. The real question is, what did this man know that could have hurt the first Bush administration. He had recently chaired the Tower Commission Investigating the Iran-Contra crimes. In that position he had handed President Bush a major gift, virtually exonerating Bush of any criminal activity. Tower expected a quid pro quo, so Bush nominated him to be Secretary of Defense. How ever some Democratic Senators, charged him unfit for the post. He was a heavy drinker, womanizer & had pocketed a lot of cash from sweetheart deals with defense contractors.(sounds ideal to me). This leaves him mighty P****d off, he rages against his former colleagues. Drops hints that what he knows could hurt people (this may be bragging from wounded pride whilst in his cups). But this is certainly a guy with a head full of washington secrets, from way back was he wacked because of what he knew? Insuficiant data at this time.

[Dawn Meredith]

Dawn wrote:

I have not checked in several hours, but I am also still waiting to see if he answers my question as to just what he and Gerry Hemming are up to.

Plotting a revolution in a small Central American country.  What else would we be up to?

Kidding aside, Gerry is up to 6 foot 7 inches, while I am a mere 5 feet 9 inches.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

___________________________

Tim,

You may not know that the emails that Gerry Hemming recently sent out that you were cc'd on were sent to me. I did not ask for them, and was actually surprised that they ended up in my mailbox...so that is what I am curious about. But you're not going to tell me. Hemming is not someone I would ever trust, so to see eamils from him cc'd to you on this case at the same time as you are relentlessly and shamelessly writing such unsupportable themes blaming Castro for Kennedy's murder just struck me as ODD.

So I thought I would ask. As I noted elsewhere, you are not able to receive a PM on this forum (?? why I do not know) I asked via the post.

So neither of your humorous responses is a real "response", so I must conclude that you and Mr Hemming are doing some sort of business together ???

Again, strikes me as ODD.

Dawn

ps I have not forgotten your question re "Castro did it" and legal, "admissible" evidence to the contrary. Will respond.

[John Simkin]

Heinz was killed when his plane and a helicopter collided, the helicopter having gotten too close to check out a problem with the plane's landing gear. All aboard both aircraft were killed.

If this was an assassination, did the assassins somehow talk a helicopter pilot into committing suicide by crashing his chopper into the plane?

I agree that the back to back plane crash deaths of Tower and Heinz are suspicious, but can someone explain how this collision could have been deliberately made to occur?

Heinz’s aircraft was interfered with and that it would have crashed without the helicopter hitting it.

There is a strong connection between Heinz and JFK assassination (as there is with John Tower - I will be writing about that later). In March, 1964 Heinz became special assistant to Hugh Scott. At this time Scott was involved with John Williams in investigating the Bobby Baker scandal. Lyndon B. Johnson attempted to stop Scott by threatening disclosures about his relationship with lobbyist, Claude Wilde. Johnson also told Scott that he would use his influence to "close down the Philadelphia Navy Yard unless Senator Scott closed his critical mouth". Scott backed down. Heinz would have known what Scott had on LBJ.

Over the years Heinz had upset a lot of people in the oil industry because of his campaigns on environmental issues. In 1976 Heinz attempted to replace Hugh Scott as member of the Senate. His main opponent was Arlen Specter (the same Specter of the Warren Commission). During the campaign it was revealed that in an earlier election Heinz had accepted $6,000 in illegal corporate campaign money from Gulf Oil (probably leaked by Gulf Oil). This was an old LBJ trick in order to keep politicians quiet. Heinz called their bluff and went on to defeat Specter.

Heinz was in Texas when JFK was assassinated. He was a member of the U.S. Air Force Reserve and in November, 1963, was at the Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas. Completely irrelevant but interesting all the same.

Another interesting fact is that when Heinz was elected to Congress in 1971 he called on President Richard Nixon to normalize relations with Cuba. He also criticised the administration for deploying new weapons as a tactic in arms limitations talks with the Soviet Union.

There is no doubt at this stage of his career Heinz was seen as a "dangerous liberal" and was associated with a series of progressive campaigns.

[John Simkin]

Here is an interesting passage from an article by Sherman H. Skolnick (The Overthrow Of The American Republic)

Two U.S. Senators knew too much themselves about the murder of President Kennedy; about treason committed by Ronald Reagan and the Elder Bush in the Iran-Contra Affair; about how the American CIA and various foreign intelligence agencies used BCCI to launder funds for political assassinations, committed within the U.S. and overseas.

One such Senator was John Tower (R., Texas). He headed up what became known as the Tower Commission which whitewashed the criminality of Reagan and Daddy Bush as to Iran-Contra. The other one was Senator John Heinz (R., Penn.) Heinz knew too much about fellow U.S. Senator Arlen Specter (R., Penn.) Specter had previously been on the staff of the infamous Warren Commission. Specter formulated the big lie that a single pristine bullet, marked Warren Commission Exhibit 399, somehow wounded John Connally in the limousine with JFK, and blew out Kennedy's brains. Cynics contend the bullet still circles the planet and no doubt, under Specter's big lie, also killed Dr. King, Bobby Kennedy, and a host of other assassination victims.

In the spring of 1991, just as we were verifying the bribery list, Senators Tower and Heinz were both assassinated, a few days apart. Both, in separate sabotaged plane crashes. By October, 1991, our exclusive story about the bribery list ran in a populist newspaper, "Spotlight" (later defunct after publishing continuously for 25 years). They had from us the bribery list and ran the complete story, but at the last minute, deleted the list from my story.

[Ron Ecker]

Here is an interesting passage from an article by Sherman H. Skolnick (The Overthrow Of The American Republic)

The trouble with Skolnick's articles is that you never know what to believe. This is unfortunate because he was very instrumental years ago in uncovering the sabotage of Flight 533 that killed Dorothy Hunt. Unless one is very familiar with a subject, there is no way to separate nuggets of truth from nonsense in Skolnick's writing. A case in point is in the article you quote where he says that CE399 supposedly "blew out Kennedy's brains." That is of course a false and nonsensical statement, and for all we know Skolnick's writings are full of them. This is exactly the kind of thing that brings ridicule down on CTs.

Ron

[John Simkin]

I believe John Tower was a member of the Suite 8F Group.

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=2868

Tower was born in Houston (later moved to Dallas). The key members of the Suite 8F group were all active in the Democratic Party. That had to be the case as the Democrats controlled Texas. However, Tower was a leading figure in the Republican Party and represented the changes that were taking place in the political landscape.

In May, 1961, Tower became the first Republican senator elected in Texas since 1870. This marked the beginning of the end for the Democrats in Texas. The problem got even worse after the passing of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

The emergence of John Tower posed a serious threat to the Suite 8F Group. However, by 1965 this problem had obviously been solved as Richard Russell allowed Tower to join his Senate Armed Services Committee. He also became a member of the Joint Committee on Defense Production. The control of both these committees was vitally important to the Suite 8F Group.

In 1981 Tower became chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. By this time he had developed a reputation of someone who looked after the oil and armaments industries in Texas. Under Tower’s guidance defense spending rose to $211 billion a year.

In January, 1985, Tower retired from the Senate in order to become a highly-paid defense consultant (his company, Tower, Eggers, and Greene Consulting was based in Dallas and Washington). However, two weeks after leaving the Senate Ronald Reagan appointed him as chief United States negotiator at the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks in Geneva. I am sure he made a good job of bringing an end to the arms race.

In November 1986, Reagan persuaded Tower to chair the President's Special Review Board to study the actions of the National Security Council and its staff during the Iran-Contra affair. I am sure he made a good job of that as well.

In 1989 President George Bush selected Tower to become his Secretary of Defense. However, the Senate refused to confirm his nomination because of his known links with the arms industry. As Steven Waldman reported in the Washington Monthly: "There was no solid proof Tower did anything illegal when he was a defense consultant after leaving government, but his closeness to the industry makes it doubtful he would have been sufficiently critical of contractors' products and claims." This was the first rejection of a cabinet nominee in more than 30 years.

Tower knew where all the bodies were buried. Was Bush worried that Tower would talk unless he was given a top job like the Secretary of Defense? If that is so, when the Senate rejected him, did he become a man who might talk about what he knew about the CIA and corruption in the Senate.

John Tower was killed in a plane crash new New Brunswick, Georgia, on 5th April, 1991. According to the New York Times the “failure of a severely worn part in the plane’s propeller control unit caused the aircraft to spin out of control.”

I am interested in discovering the names of the oil and armaments companies that Tower was working with. I have ordered a copy of Tower’s autobiography, Consequences: A Personal and Political Memoir. I have also ordered a copy of Rodney Stich’s Defrauding America, that apparently looks at Tower relationship with the CIA and the armaments industry. Does anybody else have copies of these books or any other information that links Tower to the Suite 8F Group?

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