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September 26, 2014


Kennedy Assassination and the CIA


John Newman talked about declassified documents and codenames related to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Cuba, and the assassination… read more


John Newman talked about declassified documents and codenames related to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Cuba, and the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. 


This was part of “The Warren Report and the JFK Assassination: A Half Century of Significant Disclosures,” a conference marking the 50th anniversary of the release of the Warren Report.


http://www.c-span.org/video/?321703-3/kennedy-assassination-cia



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Such an interesting presentation. Of course I completely forgot to record span 3 on Sunday. Were there more presentations, and are they available?

I might have lost concentration listening to this, and missed something. Did Newman reveal Tony Sforza's birth name?

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Paul: John Newman's presentation was masterful but it required intense concentration to keep track of all the names involved. So many of the names were those used by one person - David Atlee Phillips - that I am inclined to think Tony Sforza was Phillips. Maybe another forum member can provide the definitive answer.

I was most interested in Newman wanting to talk about the PP section of the CIA, which apparently played the key role as its staff members went back to the OSS. Newman mentioned Howard Hunt as being a staff member and at the end of his presentation he asked for the slide about PP to be put up but the moderator unfortunately adjourned the presentation at that key point. One audience member wanted to dominate the Q&A and that wasted valuable time.

I agree with Newman's methodology, which is to build brick by brick the case for proving beyond a reasonable doubt the assassination of JFK was a CIA dark operation. His analytical skills may make this possible. I cannot praise him enough.

Newman's description of LBJ's role in the cover-up confirmed what many of us always believed and laid the groundwork for asking the question: Was LBJ at the top of the pyramid of conspirators, as Howard Hunt alleged in his deathbed confession?

http://spartacus-educational.com/JFKphillips.htm

Edited by Douglas Caddy
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I thought it was maybe Frank Sturgis. In any case, even re listening to part of the presentation did not clear this up for me. He mentions at one point that there will be a tape of his talk with the slides he kept referring to. Maybe the answer is in the slides which were not shown during his talk. Was this from the C-Span program last Sunday?

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Tony Sforza was most definitely not David Phillips and certainly not Frank Sturgis...I talk about Sforza at some length in SWHT and again in Shadow Warfare where I got into the PP staff and differentiate the paramilitary, propaganda, and political elements and personnel. Sforza operated in Cuba well after Phillips had come out, was working with Castro's sister in an exfiltration in the fall of 63 and that plan separately involved Sforza inside Cuba, Morales at JMWAVE and Phillips in Mexico City. After Sforza came out he headed the AMMOTS out of JMWAVE and was quite close to Morales. Sforza also operated independently in Latin America, in particular in Chile.

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Larry - if you have an hour to spare would you watch Newman's presentation and see if I just nodded off or something? He spent considerable time leading up to the punchline. His methodology is really fascinating. He claimed, for instance, that Phillips, and others, used many aliases, and that sometimes CIA memos concerned communications between two people who were in fact the same person, and were created to confuse. He was very convinced and convincing.

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I have watched most of it Paul and certainly enjoyed it. Actually I write about many of the same elements of trade-craft in Shadow Warfare - trying to differentiate between pseudonyms, aliases and crypts. I have also spent some time talking about how individuals such as Phillips used multiple names under those guidelines but also appear to have adopted some names for their own personal use, very possibly in unsanctioned activities. Certainly you do find multiple names used - I've even seen documents where true names are written in to help the reader figure it all our - or in other cases a pseudo by a crypt for the same reason. The authorized ones often changed as the individual moved into different officers or into major operations. My notes often include three or more names that we know of for our familiar characters, changing over time.

John's techniques are super, of course he is a trained professional, but in reason years Bill Simpich and I have been attempted much the same thing in going through JMWAVE and Mexico City files where things get terribly confusing as people are assigned to Counter Intelligence operations. At the moment I know Bill has newly cracked several crypts, hopefully John as also. Newman mentioned that much of the practice of multiple names was in regard to Counter Intelligence and that is certainly accurate, first you want to deny the opposing intel groups true names but then you want to find out if they have inside access to your communications. This stuff was not really to fool us but certainly to fool the KGB, etc. On the other hand, I'm convinced that people like Morales and Phillips adopted such techniques for their own agendas.

I'll go back to the video and take a look at the punchline as you ask, I may have missed something at the end.

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Paul, I did listen to it all again and also read through the scrollable transcript which was very helpful. John's tracing of the Sloman names was fascinating although not totally new. I thought it sounded familiar and on page 343-342 of the 2010 edition of SWHT I find that I described Sloman as using the name Frank Stevens inside Cuba as well as the alias Enrique. For reference, Frank's cover was as a gambler. I got that out of a RIF document, vague now but it may have been one of the follow up documents where Jenkins is doing a debrief of people coming out of Cuba and they get into the various contacts with Castro's sister and one generally described assassination effort against Castro. Sloman appears to have been somehow involved with both. I can almost picture the document but to put my hands on it at this point...sigh. Anyway, those names are in SWHT as well as the point about Sloman/Sforza going on to take over the AMOTS and being close to Morales.

As to John's presentation, I don't know if I'm lost or not. The major portion was about his derivation of the related Sloman names but then there seemed to be a huge jump to discussing the conspiracy, the poison pill in Mexico City and the things he added to his latest book. I did not see any obvious link between the two nor anything he had not mentioned in that book. Then again maybe I'm missing it.

Interestingly enough, I'm told there were Sforza family members in attendance at the conference.

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Could Sloman/Sforza be David Morales? If not, were the names Sloman and Sforza aliases for someone? I thought that is where Newman was going with that. I am not sure which edition of SWHT I have. I'll check.

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Could Sloman/Sforza be David Morales? If not, were the names Sloman and Sforza aliases for someone? I thought that is where Newman was going with that. I am not sure which edition of SWHT I have. I'll check.

......Sloman was the internal CIA crypt used for the true CIA employee name Tony Sforza (Newman maintains that was not his true family name). While in Cuba Sforza used the cover name Frank Stevens and the cover of a gambler, in covert contacts inside Cuba he used the alias Enrique. All that continued after Morales had returned to the US and was assigned first to the JMARC project, moving to JMWAVE headquarters in Miami. Morales and Sforza may have known each other in Cuba, certainly they did know each other circa 1963 and became trusted associates. At that point Morales was in charge of JMWAVE operations and Sforza was doing a variety of things including having responsibility for the AMOT Cuban exile intelligence group.

The most recent 2010 version of SWHT is the softcover/paperback version

Edited by Larry Hancock
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