John Paisley, Was It A Suicide? Options

[Tim Gratz]

I am sure most members are familiar with the basic facts re the death of John Paisley.

I would be interested in members' comments re:

(i) whether he really committed suicide;

(ii) if not, was his murder related to the JFK assassination?

(iii) further comments on his signicance, if any, to the JFK case.

(John, of course, has a page on him.)

[John Simkin]

Namebase Entry for John Arthur Paisley:

http://www.namebase.org/main2/John-Arthur-Paisley.html

Agee,P. On the Run. 1987 (305-6)
Back Channels 1991-10 (12)
Back Channels 1995-05 (12-5)
Codevilla,A. Informing Statecraft. 1992 (157-8)
Corson,W. Trento,S.& J. Widows. 1989 (17-52, 76-150)
CounterSpy 1981-01 (31)
Covert Action Information Bulletin 1979-#3 (24)
Covert Action Information Bulletin 1979-#5 (20)
Covert Action Information Bulletin 1980-#11 (34)
Covert Action Information Bulletin 1982-#16 (53)
Epstein,E. Deception. 1989 (272)
Groden,R. Livingstone,H. High Treason. 1990 (189, 329-30)
Havill,A. Deep Truth. 1993 (105)
Hougan,J. Secret Agenda. 1984 (38-40, 205, 315-20)
Inquiry Magazine 1979-10-15 (11-6)
Kessler,R. Inside the CIA. 1994 (291)
Minnick,W. Spies and Provocateurs. 1992 (170-1)
New York Times 1979-05-21
Penthouse 1979-03 (53-9)
Russell,D. The Man Who Knew Too Much. 1992 (206-15, 222, 755)
San Francisco Examiner/Chronicle 1979-01-07 (2)
Spotlight Newspaper 1979-04-16 (43-4)
Tarpley,W.G. Chaitkin,A. George Bush. 1992 (251-2, 321-3)
Trento,J. The Secret History of the CIA. 2001 (429, 511)
Washington Times 1989-07-25 (F3)
Winks,R. Cloak and Gown. 1987 (552)

[John Simkin]

I also believe that an investigation of Jack Paisley is essential in understanding both the JFK assassination and Watergate. Ashton, have you done much research into Paisley? I will post what I have on him later today.

I know that John Paisley has been identified in one source as the very secretive CIA liaison to Hunt and Liddy during their stint as the most ineffective "plumbers" in history.

I also know he was an accomplished sailor who sailed out into Chesapeake Bay on his sloop "Brillig" on September 24, 1978, and that a man's body later was found floating in an advanced state of decomposition with a gunshot wound behind his left ear, weighted with two sets of diving belts. The body was four inches shorter than Paisley, and Paisley's wife said it wasn't him, but it was ruled to be Paisley, and a suicide, and the body was summarily cremated.

So I don't disagree with you at all that bringing Paisley out of the crowd of extras and into the spotlight is entirely justified, and anything at all you have on him I'd be very interested in seeing.

The John Paisley case is covered in some detail in Widows (William R. Corson, Susan B. Trento and Joseph Trento). It is extremely well researched but I totally reject their analysis. In their opinion, Paisley was a KGB spy who escaped back to the Soviet Union. I will later explain why I think Paisley was murdered. However, first an account of Paisley's life.

John Arthur Paisley, the son of Joseph and Clara Paisley, was born in Sand Springs, Oklahoma, on 25th August, 1923. His father, was a follower of Tom Mooney, the trade union leader in San Francisco, who in the 1920s led a campaign for a six-day, ten-hour-a-day work week. Joseph was arrested several times during this campaign and Clara, a deeply religious woman, eventualy left her husband and moved to Bellefonte, Arkansas. Later the family settled in Phoenix, Arizona.

In 1941 John Paisley enrolled at the Maritime Service Training and the following year he graduated as a radio officer. During the Second World War Paisley served as a radio operator in the Merchant Marine. Paisley spent time in Cuba and the Soviet Union where he learnt Spanish and Russian.

After the war Paisley returned to Arizona where he worked as a radio operator for the highway patrol in Phoenix. In September 1946, he enrolled at the University of Oregon. Six months later he was expelled after the authorities caught him in his dormitory room with a young woman.

In 1948 Paisley went to work as a radio operator for the United Nations. Employed as a radio operator with the Bunche-Bernadotte Peace Mission in Palestine. This included visiting Iraq, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria and Jordon.

On his return to the United States Paisley married Maryann McLeavy and enrolled in the University of Chicago and studied international relations. A fellow student, Leonard Masters described Paisley as "left idealistic" who was devoted to civil rights.

Paisley officially joined the Central Intelligence Agency in December, 1953. However, his friend, Leonard Masters, believes that Paisley was in fact recruited several years earlier at university by Richard Innes. Paisley joined the CIA's new Electronics Branch as an Economics Intelligence Officer. While based in Washington, Paisley became friends with Bernard Fensterwald.

In 1953 Paisley went to Washington where he was given the job of monitoring the development of electronics in the Soviet Union. Two years later the CIA loaned him out to the National Security Agency (NSA) where he analyzed the electronic data coming back from the Berlin Tunnel, an electronic listening post that William Harvey and his staff managed to establish in Germany.

Paisley returned to the United States in 1957 and was placed in charge of the CIA's Electronic Equipment Branch, Industrial Division. In 1959 Paisley spent a great deal of time in Eastern Europe where he analyzed developments being made in Soviet technology. According to Joseph Trento, Paisley joined the CIA's inner circle: "Using the new technology of spy satellites, evesdropping satellites and listening posts, Paisley combined that electronic data with information from agents in place to give startling new pictures of Soviet society."

Trento adds "like most of the early CIA recruits, Paisley shared the passionate liberalism that dominated the men recruited in the late forties and early fifties." Trento claims that Paisley's friends claim that he was a "liberal who was outraged by injustice." Another friend, Gladys Fishel, claims that Paisley did more than just talk about political philosophy and in his spare time taught "disadvantaged children in the District of Columbia".

Paisley was eventually appointed as deputy director of the Office of Strategic Research. According to Dick Russell, Paisley may have been linked to the decision of Lee Harvey Oswald to defect to the Soviet Union. One of Paisley's jobs was to interview Soviet defectors such as Anatolyi Golitsyn and Yuri Nosenko. Paisley also worked with Oleg Penkovsky, who was executed by the Soviets in 1963.

Edward Proctor, director of the Office of Strategic Research (OSR), and Paisley believed in supplying the president with accurate information about the estimates of Soviet military strength. For example, in the early 1960s the OSR rejected the idea that the Soviet Union had dramatically closed the "missle gap" and posed a serious nuclear threat to the United States.

However, in 1969, Richard Nixon and Henry Kissenger began putting the OSR under pressure to publish exaggerated estimates in order to justify increased military spending in the United States. It was also hoped that these high estimates would convince the Senate to give its support to the SALT 1 negotiations.

Paisley found these political pressures and began talking about leaving the CIA. It was agreed that Paisley should take a sabbatical studying at the Imperial Defence College in London. Paisley returned from England in January, 1971. One of his first tasks was to put together negotiating teams for the SALT 1 talks. An OSR colleague, Clarence Baier, claimed that Paisley came back a different person. "He just didn't speak out, he seldom stuck his neck out." Instead, he accepted the demands made by Nixon and Kissenger.

In 1971 Egil Krogh, gave a White House assignment to David R. Young, a member of the National Security Council Staff. His official job concerned the classification and declassification of documents. However, his real task was to discover the people "leaking" classified documents and secret information. G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt, were appointed as Young's assistants.

The White House then asked the CIA for help with this investigation. James Angleton suggested that the man they should approach was John Paisley. Joseph Trento suggests that Angleton was growing increasingly suspicious of Henry Kissenger and that he "wanted Paisley in Young's proximity was that Paisley may well have been working for Angleton all along." Trento adds that Kissenger was very interested in "how hundreds of pounds of enriched uranium were transferred illegally to Israel to seed their nuclear weapons program". Angleton had been the man responsible for this and feared that if this story was discovered, he would be sacked from the CIA.

Paisley agreed to help the White House to search for the source of these leaks. His first task was to investigate the activities of Daniel Ellsberg. By August 1971, the project to descredit the leakers of the Pentagon Papers became known as Operation Odessa. It is not known what role Paisley played in Watergate. He kept details of these activities from friends and family, including colleagues in the CIA. However, Joseph Trento has speculated that Paisley might have been Deep Throat.

In 1971 Paisley began organizing sex parties in Washington. Along with CIA colleague, Donald Burton, Paisley formed the Rush River Lodge Corporation. According to Trento, "Burton and Paisley staged several sex parties at the lodge." Those who attended these parties included politicians and journalists. Burton admitted that a "high-level Nixon appointeee enjoyed tying up women and beating them" at these parties. Another person who attended was the beautiful Hana Koecher, an agent with the Czech intelligence service.

Trento argues that another regular at these parties was Carl Bernstein. "In a December 1979 telephone interview, Bernstein denied having attended any such parties. A few days later he called back to say, 'I may have attended the parties, but I never met anyone named John Paisley'. Half a dozen Paisley intimates place Bernstein and Paisley at the same sex parties beginning as early as 1971."

Bernstein also denied that Paisley was Deep Throat. Trento does not believe him and claims that the sex parties was the reason why their main source on Watergate was given the name Deep Throat (a popular pornographic movie at the time these events took place). Trento poses the question: "Was the fact that Bernstein was attending sex parties with the CIA's liaison with the White House Plumbers just a coincidence, or was that how the source really obtained his name?"

In March 1973, James Schlesinger became director of the CIA. According to Donald Burton, Paisley "despised Schlesinger". Burton adds that "Schlesinger told Paisley that he did not like OSR's estimates and wanted them changed". Paisley ignored Schlesinger's orders and in less than six months he had been replaced by William Colby. According to Sam Wilson, Colby's Deputy Director, Paisley became very close to the new head of the CIA. It is therefore surprising that Paisley officially retired from the CIA in 1974. In reality Paisley continued to work for the CIA. He carried out several highly secret assignments where he reported directly to Colby.

In August 1975, the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB) wrote a letter to President Gerald Ford proposing that an outside group of experts be given access to the same intelligence as the CIA analysts and be allowed to prepare a competing National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) and then make an evaluation. The outside group would be called the B Team. The CIA and the intelligence community estimates would be the A Team.

William Colby, the director of the CIA, rejected the idea. On 30 January 1976, Ford sacked Colby and replaced him with George H. W. Bush. Soon afterwards Bush agreed to the setting up a B Team. As a result of this move, outsiders would now have access to all of America's classified knowledge about the Soviet Military. Hank Knoche, Bush's deputy, was ordered to organize this new system. Interestingly, Paisley was brought out of retirement to become the CIA 'coordinator' for the B Team. It was Paisley who would control the documents that they saw and the information they received.

Members of the B Team included Clare Boothe Luce, John Connally, Daniel Graham, Edward Teller, Paul Wolfowitz and Richard E. Pipes. One member of the A team, David S. Sullivan, of the CIA's Office of Strategic Research, came to the conclusion that Paisley had been put into place to prevent the B Team from seeing important classified material. As a result, Sullivan began leaking classified documents concerning the SALT 1 negotiations to Pipes and Graham. He also passed these documents to Richard Perle, who at that time was working for Senator Henry Jackson.

On 26th December, 1976, David Binder reported in the New York Times that the B Team had changed the National Intelligence Estimate around by 180 degrees. The CIA was furious claiming that right-wing members of the B Team had leaked classified documents to the New York Times and in doing so had compromised national security. Daniel Graham reacted to these charges by claiming that the leaks had come from John Paisley, who he described as a "weepy liberal who was too soft on the Soviets".

David S. Sullivan began telling friends that John Paisley and Henry Kissenger were working as Soviet agents. Sullivan told CIA security chief Robert Gambino that there were ten moles in the CIA. On 25th August, 1978, Sullivan informed Gambino that "John Arthur Paisley, the former Deputy Director of Strategic Research, was working for the KGB." Sullivan does not appear to have any evidence that Paisley was a spy: "I guess, in the end, I never trusted him... I never liked him. There was something that wasn't right. He seemed like some kind of burned-out old fart who had a beard and looked like a queer. I am convinced he was the mole."

When President Jimmy Carter took office he sacked George H. W. Bush and replaced him with his old friend, Stansfield Turner. Paisley continued to do work for the CIA and records show that Paisley briefed Turner in 1977 and 1978. Paisley's address book included both Turner's home and White House telephone numbers.

In May 1978 Paisley began working for the Washington accounting firm of Coopers & Lybrand. The job had been obtained for Paisley by Dr. K. Wayne Smith, who was a fellow member of the CIA's Military and Economic Advisory Panel. However, Joseph Trento discovered that the CIA was actually paying his $36,000 salary. As Trento points out: "It is clear that the Coopers position was needed as some sort of cover job for Paisley during the spring, quite possibly without the knowledge of Dr. Smith."

Dr. K. Wayne Smith's secretary, Kay Fulford, claims that Paisley rarely visited the Coopers & Lybrand office and most of the time she contacted him via his telephone number at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. As Trento points out: "four years after his retirement, Paisley still had an office at the CIA."

On 24th September, 1978, John Paisley, took a trip on his motorized sailboat on Chesapeake Bay. He anchored his boat at Hooper's Light and in a radio conversation with his friend, Mike Yohn, Paisley explained that he had an important report to write. Two days later his boat was found moored in Solomons, Maryland. Paisley's body was found in Maryland's Patuxent River. The body was fixed to diving weights. He had been shot in the head. Police investigators described it as "an execution-type murder". However, officially Paisley's death was recorded as a suicide.

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

[John Simkin]

In their book, Widows: The Explosive Truth Behind 25 Years of Western Intelligence Disasters, William R. Corson, Susan B. Trento and Joseph J. Trento, argue that John Paisley was a Soviet spy. They also argue that he was never murdered and that he was probably in hiding in the Soviet Union. (1)

Joseph Trento repeats the charge in his book, Prelude to Terror. He argues that “there was a suspicion that he had been recruited by the Russians during World War II, having been a radio operator on merchant vessels that visited Russia during the war.” He also confidently asserts that “a subsequent investigation revealed that a body later recovered and initially identified as Paisley’s was in fact not his.” (2) It turns out from the footnote to this sentence that this investigation was the one carried out by Trento for his earlier book, Widows. The authors argue that Dr. Stephen Adams “had no conclusive evidence that the body he examined was John Arthur Paisley.” (3) In doing so, they reject the claim made by Dr. Russell Fisher, that the identification of the corpse of Paisley’s came from the fingerprints the FBI had on file for the dead man. They also dismiss the claim that Paisley was identified by his dental records. (4)

Trento, and all other authors who have looked into this case, have all argued that Paisley did not commit suicide. As Jim Hougan pointed out in Secret Agenda, “according to the coroner who conducted the autopsy, death was caused by a gunshot wound behind the victim’s left ear.” Hougan add: “The site of the wound, behind the victim’s left ear, also militated against the suicide theory, since Paisley himself had been right-handed, and would presumably have fired the gun with his right into the right side of his head. Adding to the suspicion that murder had been committed was the fact that no blood, brain tissue, weapon or expended cartridge was found aboard the Brillig, which suggested that the victim had been killed in the water or perhaps murdered elsewhere and his body dumped at sea.” (5)

As the authors of Widows point out: “Although the physical evidence defies that conclusion, the police determined that Paisley had wrapped two nineteen-pound weight belts around himself, jumped from Brillig, and shot himself in the head in midair.” (6)

Clearly, the people who killed the man identified as Paisley did not want his body to be found. Once it had, a great deal of effort was needed to convince the world it was suicide. Who, therefore, wanted Paisley to die in 1978? Also, who had the power to cover-up the crime? Like the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Trento blames the KGB. He argues that Paisley was about to be exposed as a KGB agent and that they wanted him killed before he could reveal any information about the Soviet network of spies.

Richard Case Nagell told Dick Russell that he believed Paisley was a KGB agent. However, he was unwilling to explain how he knew this. Nagell also believed that Paisley was killed by the CIA rather than the KGB. (7)

There is no doubt that as soon as Paisley was killed some CIA officials began a campaign to discredit him as a Soviet spy. The main figure in this was David S. Sullivan, of the CIA's Office of Strategic Research. On 25th August, 1978, Sullivan informed CIA security chief, Robert Gambino that "John Arthur Paisley, the former Deputy Director of Strategic Research, was working for the KGB." Sullivan does not appear to have any evidence that Paisley was a spy. As he told Trento in an interview in 1988: "I guess, in the end, I never trusted him... I never liked him. There was something that wasn't right. He seemed like some kind of burned-out old fart who had a beard and looked like a queer. I am convinced he was the mole." (8)

This is not convincing evidence and appears to be nothing more than prejudice against someone who refused to give into pressure from right-wingers like George Bush to exaggerate the military threat being posed by the Soviet Union. This helps to explain why others, such as General Daniel O. Graham, attempted to portray Paisley as a Soviet agent. Graham described Paisley as a "weepy liberal who was too soft on the Soviets". (9)

To anyone who held such right-wing views as Graham, liberals like John Paisley were always strong candidates to be Soviet spies. In the world inhabited by Graham, liberals in the 1970s were the same as communists.

It is worth considering why people in America became Soviet spies. The main reason seemed to be money. I suppose that in itself says a lot about capitalism. However, all Paisley’s friends admit that he never showed any interest in accumulating wealth. If he was well-paid as a Soviet spy, there is no indication from a study of his life to show what he did with the money.

In some cases members of the intelligence agencies were blackmailed into becoming Soviet spies. James Speyer Kronthal, is an example of someone who was blackmailed into providing classified material to the Soviets. Kronthal, head of the CIA station in Switzerland, unfortunately liked to have sex with young boys. The Soviets used this information to force Kronthal to become an informer. This came to an end when Kronthal committed suicide on 1st April, 1953. There is no evidence that Paisley was a homosexual. In fact, the opposite is true. All the available information suggests a very keen interest in women.

Sullivan and Graham believed that Paisley was a spy for political reasons. It is true that some Marxists did infiltrate the intelligence services as sleepers in the 1930s. This was the time of the Great Depression and many university educated people thought that communism was the future. Kim Philby, is probably the best example of this and he did considerable damage to the intelligence services in both Britain and the United States in the 1940s and early 1950s.

This phenomenon came to an end as a result of the policies of Stalin in both the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and the invasion of Hungary in 1956 finally destroyed all belief amongst western intellectuals in the merits of Soviet communism. Liberals like Paisley were never attracted to communism. The same is true of other liberals in the CIA. They had a deep hatred of military dictatorships. This is why they objected to the policy of supporting such regimes in Africa, Asia and the Americas. As Paisley’s family and friends pointed out, he had a passion for civil rights. This is not the philosophy of someone who would work for the Soviet regime.

If we accept that Paisley remained a liberal throughout his time in the CIA, his behaviour makes more sense.

In 1957 Paisley was placed in charge of the CIA's Electronic Equipment Branch, Industrial Division. According to Joseph Trento, Paisley joined the CIA's inner circle: "Using the new technology of spy satellites, evesdropping satellites and listening posts, Paisley combined that electronic data with information from agents in place to give startling new pictures of Soviet society."

Paisley still held this position in 1963. It would have given him insights into the way the Soviet government interpreted the assassination of John F. Kennedy. He would definitely have seen the same information that was distributed to the very highest echelons of the FBI leadership on December 1, 1966. As Doug Horne pointed out on this forum: “The document is a history of the innermost private thinking of the KGB-not ' propaganda-both immediately after the assassination, and later in September of 1965. It was explained to me by Phil Golrick that the language used in the memo indicates the information was obtained by electronic surveillance, not human intelligence, and therefore should be considered a very reliable record of what the KGB was saying behind its own closed doors in New York City. Right after the assassination, per page one, the KGB blamed the assassination on an "ultraright conspiracy," but by September of 1965, per page 3, the KGB privately told its staff in NYC that President Lyndon B. Johnson was responsible for the assassination of John F. Kennedy.” (10)

It is therefore possible that Paisley obtained important insights into the assassination of Kennedy. As he himself held left-wing political opinions, he would have been appalled by the idea that Kennedy had been removed by some right-wing cabal. He would also have known that certain people in the CIA would have been involved in this conspiracy. The problem for Paisley was how would he get this information out in the public domain?

Paisley was eventually moved to the Office of Strategic Research (OSR). Edward Proctor, director of the OSR, and his deputy Paisley, believed in supplying the president with accurate information about the estimates of Soviet military strength. In 1969 this brought Proctor and Paisley into conflict with Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger when they began putting the OSR under pressure to publish exaggerated estimates in order to justify increased military spending in the United States. It was also hoped that these high estimates would convince the Senate to give its support to the SALT 1 negotiations. There is no evidence that Proctor or Paisley gave into this pressure.

However, according to OSR colleague, Clarence Baier, claimed that Paisley, after his year off in London, he was not so vocal in his opposition to the demands made by Nixon and Kissinger. (11) I suspect this was a strategy that had been agreed with those in the CIA trying to protect the intelligence services from Nixon. If the CIA could convince Nixon that he could trust Paisley, they could get him into his inner-circle.

Paisley was not the only CIA officer who was trying to get into a position to spy on Nixon. As Deborah Davis pointed out in her book, Katharine the Great: “The president also began to rely heavily upon the counsel of Richard Ober, Angleton’s deputy, the man in the CIA most concerned with domestic counterintelligence, and one of the few whom Nixon trusted. Ober was given a small office inside the White House, where he was known only to Nixon, Haldeman, Ehrlichman, and possibly Kissinger. He had unlimited access to the president, could pass Haldeman at any time without permission and without going on the record (his name was never recorded in White House logs), and was present at many of the meetings that took place after the publication of the Pentagon Papers, when Nixon’s obsession with his enemies pushed him to the limits to rational thought.” (12)

Davis goes on to argue that Richard Ober was Deep Throat (she got this information from a high-ranking CIA official). On the other hand, the authors of Widows argue that John Paisley might well have been Deep Throat. (13) It is almost certain that Deep Throat was several different sources and it is possible that both Ober and Paisley provided information to Bob Woodward.

If this is the case, it was part of the CIA strategy to portray Paisley as sympathetic to Richard Nixon. This helps to explain why in 1971 Paisley was chosen to work with Egil Krogh, David R. Young, G. Gordon Liddy and E. Howard Hunt, to investigate the people "leaking" classified documents and secret information.

The authors of Widows suggest that the initial idea came from James Jesus Angleton. It is also argued that Angleton was growing increasingly suspicious of Henry Kissenger and that he "wanted Paisley in Young's proximity was that Paisley may well have been working for Angleton all along." Trento adds that Kissenger was very interested in "how hundreds of pounds of enriched uranium were transferred illegally to Israel to seed their nuclear weapons program". Angleton had been the man responsible for this and feared that if this story was discovered, he would be sacked from the CIA. (14)

Paisley agreed to help the White House to search for the source of these leaks. His first task was to investigate the activities of Daniel Ellsberg. By August 1971, the project to discredit the leakers of the Pentagon Papers became known as Operation Odessa. It is not known what role Paisley played in Watergate. He kept details of these activities from friends and family, including colleagues in the CIA. However, I believe that Paisley job for the CIA was to spy on Nixon’s illegal activities. If that is the case, like Richard Ober, he would have been in a good position to undermine Nixon by leaking information to journalists.

It also has to be remembered that during the Watergate scandal, Nixon tried to blackmail Richard Helms into helping cover-up these illegal activities. This included references to the CIA involvement in the assassination of John F. Kennedy (15). Is it possible that this information came from John Paisley? Was Paisley playing a double game? Was he interested in exposing the illegal activities of both Nixon and the CIA?

In 1971 Paisley began organizing sex parties in Washington. Along with CIA colleague, Donald Burton, Paisley formed the Rush River Lodge Corporation. According to Trento, "Burton and Paisley staged several sex parties at the lodge." Those who attended these parties included politicians and journalists. Burton admitted that a "high-level Nixon appointee enjoyed tying up women and beating them" at these parties. Another person who attended was the beautiful Hana Koecher, an agent with the Czech intelligence service.

Trento argues that another regular at these parties was Carl Bernstein. "In a December 1979 telephone interview, Bernstein denied having attended any such parties. A few days later he called back to say, 'I may have attended the parties, but I never met anyone named John Paisley'. Half a dozen Paisley intimates place Bernstein and Paisley at the same sex parties beginning as early as 1971." (16)

Were these sex parties another example of the CIA obtaining blackmail information to use against the Nixon administration? Why did Paisley and Burton invite Washington journalists like Carl Bernstein to these parties? Was this all part of Operation Mockingbird? In his book, Deep Truth: The Lives of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, Adrian Havill, points out that Woodward assigned another Washington Post reporter, Tim Robinson, to investigate Bernstein’s relationship with John Paisley (17).

In March 1973, James Schlesinger became director of the CIA. According to Donald Burton, Paisley "despised Schlesinger". Burton adds that "Schlesinger told Paisley that he did not like OSR's estimates and wanted them changed". Paisley ignored Schlesinger's orders and in less than six months he had been replaced by William Colby. According to Sam Wilson, Colby's Deputy Director, Paisley became very close to the new head of the CIA. It is therefore surprising that Paisley officially retired from the CIA in 1974. In reality Paisley continued to work for the CIA. He carried out several highly secret assignments where he reported directly to Colby.

In August 1975, the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB) wrote a letter to President Gerald Ford proposing that an outside group of experts be given access to the same intelligence as the CIA analysts and be allowed to prepare a competing National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) and then make an evaluation. The outside group would be called the B Team. The CIA and the intelligence community estimates would be the A Team.

William Colby, the director of the CIA, rejected the idea. On 30 January 1976, Ford sacked Colby and replaced him with George H. W. Bush. Soon afterwards Bush agreed to the setting up a B Team. As a result of this move, outsiders would now have access to all of America's classified knowledge about the Soviet Military.

Paisley was brought out of retirement to become the CIA 'coordinator' for the B Team. It was Paisley who would control the documents that they saw and the information they received. In their book, George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography, Webster Griffin Tarpley and Anton Chaitkin argue that Bush handpicked Paisley for the post. In their view, Paisley was under the control of Bush and his team of right-wing extremists on the B Team. (18)

This is not true. It was Hank Knoche, Bush's deputy, was ordered to organize this new system. Knoche was opposed to the idea of outsiders looking at classified documents. The appointment of Paisley was an attempt to frustrate the work of the B Team.

Members of the B Team included Richard E. Pipes, Lt. General John Vogt, Brigadier General Jasper Welch, Clare Boothe Luce, Paul Nitze, General Daniel O. Graham, William van Cleeve (University of Southern California), Foy Kohler (U.S. Ambassador to Moscow), Seymour Weiss (State Department), Thomas Wolfe (Rand Corporation), Edward Teller and Paul Wolfowitz (Arms Control and Disarmament Agency).

One member of the A team, David S. Sullivan, of the CIA's Office of Strategic Research, came to the conclusion that Paisley had been put into place to prevent the B Team from seeing important classified material. As a result, Sullivan began leaking classified documents concerning the SALT 1 negotiations to Pipes and Graham. He also passed documents to Richard Perle, who at that time was working for Senator Henry Jackson. Sullivan was later dismissed from the CIA for leaking classified documents to Perle. (19)

On 26th December, 1976, David Binder reported in the New York Times that the B Team had changed the National Intelligence Estimate around by 180 degrees. The CIA was furious claiming that right-wing members of the B Team had leaked classified documents to the New York Times and in doing so had compromised national security.

After Paisley’s death, Binder claimed that it was Paisley who leaked this information to him (20). Paisley’s boss, Hank Knoche, dismissed this story. He remains convinced that it was members of the B Team who leaked this information: “The leaks were from the right-wingers. The hard right. The Danny Graham types… the ones that later became part of the Reagan administration.” Knoche explains it was not in Paisley’s interests to undermine the work of the CIA. “The integrity of the process and the objectivity of those estimates is something that John was very, very fond of and that resonated deep within his soul. So the idea of leaking something that would reflect adversely on CIA doesn’t make the slightest bit of sense to me.” (21)

When President Jimmy Carter took office he sacked George H. W. Bush and replaced him with his old friend, Stansfield Turner. Paisley continued to do work for the CIA and records show that Paisley briefed Turner in 1977 and 1978. Paisley's address book included both Turner's home and White House telephone numbers.

In May 1978 Paisley began working for the Washington accounting firm of Coopers & Lybrand. The job had been obtained for Paisley by Dr. K. Wayne Smith, who was a fellow member of the CIA's Military and Economic Advisory Panel. However, Joseph Trento discovered that the CIA was actually paying his $36,000 salary. As Trento points out: "It is clear that the Coopers position was needed as some sort of cover job for Paisley during the spring, quite possibly without the knowledge of Dr. Smith."

Dr. K. Wayne Smith's secretary, Kay Fulford, claims that Paisley rarely visited the Coopers & Lybrand office and most of the time she contacted him via his telephone number at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. As Trento points out: "four years after his retirement, Paisley still had an office at the CIA." (22)

What kind of work was Paisley doing for the CIA when he died? Whatever it was he seems to have been doing it for Stansfield Turner. On 24th September, 1978, John Paisley, took a trip on his motorized sailboat on Chesapeake Bay. He anchored his boat at Hooper's Light and in a radio conversation with his friend, Mike Yohn, Paisley explained that he had an important report to write.

According to the Baltimore Sun, top secret documents concerning “Soviet nuclear capabilities conducted in late 1977 by a CIA group” were found on his boat. The newspaper goes onto argue that “government sources said it is not possible to rule out the theory that the Paisley affair touches on the existence of a Soviet “mole” – a deep-cover Soviet agent planted inside the Agency – and the dead officer’s knowledge thereof.” (23)

This is probably CIA disinformation. A very different story is told by Gerald Sword, the first man to board Paisley’s boat. He looked through the papers and later told the CIA what he found. As Dick Russell points out, he found a CIA memo that stated: “Coast Guard personnel found some papers dealing with the Cuban crisis.” (24) It is not known what was meant by the term “Cuban crisis” but it is possible that Paisley was writing a report about the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

One has to remember that Paisley died during the House Select Committee on Assassinations investigation. Was Paisley involved in writing a report for Stansfield Turner on the assassination of John F. Kennedy?
It is probably no coincidence that another person close to Nixon, and another Deep Throat candidate, William Sullivan, was shot dead near his home in Sugar Hill, New Hampshire, on 9th November, 1977. An inquest decided that he had been shot accidentally by Robert Daniels, the son of a police officer, who was fined $500 and lost his hunting license for 10 years.
Sullivan, who carried out the original FBI investigation into the Kennedy assassination, had been scheduled to testify before the House Select Committee on Assassinations. Had Sullivan, like Paisley, leaked information on the assassination to Nixon?
Sullivan was one of six top FBI officials who died in a six month period leading up to the death of Paisley. Others who were due to appear before the committee who died included Louis Nicholas, special assistant to J. Edgar Hoover and Hoover's liaison with the Warren Commission; Alan H. Belmont, special assistant to Hoover; James Cadigan, document expert with access to documents that related to death of John F. Kennedy; J. M. English, former head of FBI Forensic Sciences Laboratory where Oswald's rifle and pistol were tested and Donald Kaylor, FBI fingerprint chemist who examined prints found at the assassination scene.


Notes

1. William R. Corson, Susan B. Trento and Joseph J. Trento, Widows: The Explosive Truth Behind 25 Years of Western Intelligence Disasters, 1989 (pages 31 -190)

2. Joseph J. Trento, Prelude to Terror, 2005 (page 96-97)

3. William R. Corson, Susan B. Trento and Joseph J. Trento, Widows: The Explosive Truth Behind 25 Years of Western Intelligence Disasters, 1989 (page 173)

4. Dick Russell, The Man Who Knew Too Much, 1992 (page 123)

5. Jim Hougan, Secret Agenda, 1984 (page 316)

6. William R. Corson, Susan B. Trento and Joseph J. Trento, Widows: The Explosive Truth Behind 25 Years of Western Intelligence Disasters, 1989 (page 184)

7. Dick Russell, The Man Who Knew Too Much, 1992 (page 127)

8. Joseph Trento, interview with David S. Sullivan, 1st July, 1988

9. Comments made by Daniel O. Graham in the Wilmington News-Journal (27th June, 1979)

10. Doug Horne, JFK Forum posting (6th June, 2006)

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.ph...=6849&st=15

11. William R. Corson, Susan B. Trento and Joseph J. Trento, Widows: The Explosive Truth Behind 25 Years of Western Intelligence Disasters, 1989 (page 60)

12. Deborah Davis, Katharine the Great, 1979 (page 271)

13. William R. Corson, Susan B. Trento and Joseph J. Trento, Widows: The Explosive Truth Behind 25 Years of Western Intelligence Disasters, 1989 (page 62)

14. William R. Corson, Susan B. Trento and Joseph J. Trento, Widows: The Explosive Truth Behind 25 Years of Western Intelligence Disasters, 1989 (pages 71-73)

15. H. R. Haldeman, The Ends of Power, 1978 (pages 48-50)

16. William R. Corson, Susan B. Trento and Joseph J. Trento, Widows: The Explosive Truth Behind 25 Years of Western Intelligence Disasters, 1989 (pages 71-72)

17. Adrian Havill, Deep Truth: The Lives of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, 1993 (page 105)

18. Webster Griffin Tarpley and Anton Chaitkin, George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography, 1992 (page 323)

19. Joseph Trento, Prelude to Terror, 2005 (page 97)

20. Joseph Trento, interview with David Binder, 24th June, 1979

21. William R. Corson, Susan B. Trento and Joseph J. Trento, Widows: The Explosive Truth Behind 25 Years of Western Intelligence Disasters, 1989 (page 119)

22. William R. Corson, Susan B. Trento and Joseph J. Trento, Widows: The Explosive Truth Behind 25 Years of Western Intelligence Disasters, 1989 (page 131)

23. Baltimore Sun (26th January, 1979)

24. Dick Russell, The Man Who Knew Too Much, 1992 (page 128)

[John Simkin]

Two photographs of John Paisley. One alive, one dead. Is it the same man?

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