NSA and the assassination of JFK

[Jim Root]

Gerry

If I follow, are you speaking of the mentor or the mentee? Or do we end with, "it was traced back to the "diverse-sexuality" of the ranter. 'DON'T ASK, AND I WON'T TELL !!'"

Jim Root

[Shanet Clark]

Thanks, I think.........

Edited May 20, 2005 by Shanet Clark

[Ron Ecker]

The director of NSA at the time of the assassination was Gordon Aylesworth Blake, an Air Force lieutenant general. In his book Body of Secrets, about the NSA, James Bamford says that when Blake became NSA director in 1962, he “kept Dr. Louis Tordella as deputy director and largely left to him the agency’s most secret operations. ‘It would be better for NSA and for those activities if I left that to Tordella,’ Blake said. . . . Tordella was on his way to an extraordinary reign as NSA’s chief keeper of the secrets” (p. 97).

“In the aftermath of the assassination, Meredith K. Gardner, one of NSA’s top Soviet codebreakers, was assigned to examine a number of items from assassin Lee Harvey Oswald and suspected to contain codes and ciphers.” Gardner wrote in an internal NSA report, “The appearance of the term ‘micro dots’ on page 44 of Lee Oswald’s address book aroused our suspicions, particularly in that it was associated with the address of the photographic firm where he was once employed’ ” (p. 135).

Frank Rowlett, special assistant to director Blake, did not include this information in the final report to the Warren Commission. He informed deputy director Tordella in a memo that he was eliminating the reference to microdots, as well as a reference to sensitive NSA eavesdropping (Comint) files, against which names in Lee’s and Marina’s address books had been checked with negative results.

Rowlett told Tordella in the memo, “I suggest that you informally (possibly by telephone) call the Commission’s attention to the appearance of the term ‘micro dot’ on page 44 of Oswald’s address book. You might indicate that this reference aroused our suspicion but that we do not feel competent to make an exhaustive examination of the materials for the presence of micro dots – such an examination should be conducted by the FBI or CIA. If micro dots are actually found, we would be happy to collaborate to the fullest degree required in the analysis of these dots.’ . . . Tordella agreed, and the sanitized report was sent to the commission” (p. 136).

Ron

[Jim Root]

Ron

Great piece of information about Rowlett and Gordon Blake. Can you provide the supporting documentation references for Bamford's work.

I am awaiting some information on Gordon Aylesworth Blake as we write. While he did in fact retire as an Air Force Lt. General there are a few interesting facts to keep in mind. First, his rank was reduced to Lt. General when he left the NSA as the result of a dispute with, I believe it was McNamara. Second, Blake was a West Point graduate class of 1931 same as Edwin Walker dispite the fact that he left the Army when an independent Air Force was created. Blake was a West Point Cadet during the same four year period (1927 - 1931) that Maxwell Taylor was an instructor at West Point.

Going a little further Blake and Walker attended flight school together upon graduation from West Point. Blake first studied Signals intelligence at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey for the period of time imediately preceeding the time that Walker spent at the same facility (Walker's association to this program is how I first connected Walker with John B. Hurt). It is my understanding that Blake was one of the select few that went to Ft. Monmouth for the original classes that centered upon the collection of foreign signals intelligence to be used by Friedman's team of cryptologist (of which Frank Rowlett was a member).

When you stated, "Frank Rowlett, special assistant to director Blake" you of course caught my attention because Rowlett was one of the five original members of William Friedman's team that came together in 1930. Another member of this five man team that continued to work for the NSA until just before the assassination of John F. Kennedy was John B. Hurt and you, Ron, know my thoughts about this particular person.

What you are now stating in your post is of significant importance to my research. A personal friend and co-worker of John B. Hurt was assigned by a classmate of Edwin Walkers to review the work done by Meredith K. Gardner, "one of NSA’s top Soviet codebreakers, (who) was assigned to examine a number of items from assassin Lee Harvey Oswald and suspected to contain codes and ciphers.”

You further state, "Frank Rowlett, special assistant to director Blake, did not include this information in the final report to the Warren Commission. He informed deputy director Tordella in a memo that he was eliminating the reference to microdots, as well as a reference to sensitive NSA eavesdropping (Comint) files,against which names in Lee’s and Marina’s address books had been checked with negative results."

We know that Lee Harvey Oswald attempted to call a person named John Hurt the night of the assassiantion. Now you are saying that a friend of NSA's John B. Hurt, Frank Rowlett, withheld "a reference to sensitive NSA eavesdropping (Comint) files, against which names in Lee’s and Marina’s address books had been checked with negative results" John B. Hurt's work and name remained classified till around 1968, two years after Hurts death. Here we can have a factual reason why and how, what is now known as the Raleigh Call name, "John Hurt" was eliminated from the Warren Commissioners and the Warren Report.

"Tordella agreed, and the sanitized report was sent to the commission”

Needless to say this is a revelation that I was not aware of.

Jim Root

[James Richards]

Gordon Blake.

James

[Ron Ecker]

Jim,

Bamford cites Garland's internal NSA report as "NSA, Secret/Comint Channels Only, Meredith K. Gardner Memorandum for the Record, June 15, 1964 (ARRB)." Bamford quotes this memo as stating that "the names appearing in Lee's and Marina's address books have been checked against NSA files but no Comint references have been discovered. . . . In addition to the information on the addresses developed in the personality check, a separate study of NSA address files is being made. While this study is not yet complete, results have so far been negative and there is no reason to expect that anything beyond what the personality check has already turned up will be discovered." Gardner then refers to suspicions being aroused about the term "micro dots" in Oswald's address book.

Bamford cites Rowlett's memo to Tordella as "NSA, Secret/Comint Channels Only, Rowlett to Tordella, June 16, 1964 (ARRB)." Bamford says that "The mention of NSA's Comint files and the possibility of microdots became a sensitive issue within NSA." (Comint, according to Bamford, refers to communications intelligence, meaning eavesdropping on understandable language.) Rowlett hid any reference to them in the final report to the WC. He told Tordella, "I have eliminated two items from the original Memorandum for the Record (referring apparently to Gardner's report). . . . These are the references to 'micro dots' . . . and the Comint reference."

BTW I thought that I read somewhere that either Walker or Taylor was at Pearl Harbor not long before the Japanese attack, but I guess I'm thinking of someone else, as I've checked their bios and find no such reference. The reason I mention that is that Gordon Blake, according to Bamford, was the Pearl Harbor airfield operations officer at the time of the attack. (For his actions that day he received the Silver Star for gallantry.)

Ron

[Jim Root]

Ron

You have made my day a great deal more exciting with the information you have posted. I have requested and should be receiving a more detailed summary of Gordon A. Blakes military record soon (I ordered it at the beginning of the week and received confirmation that it was being sent on Wednesday).

Walker was in Hawaii until November 5th, 1941 (I believe) just 32 days before the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. He was stationed at Schofield Barracks which is close to Fort Shafter where the SIS Listenning Post was located. Two points about this:

1) Walkers withdrawal from Hawaii coincides with a coded intercept that was translated by John B. Hurt that disclosed the possibility of a Japanese attack by the end of November somewhere in the Pacific (they were very close). If Walker was not withdrawn it is conceivable that he would have remained in the Pacific Theater during WWII. As one of the six secretaries to George Marshall, Maxwell Taylor was in a position to withdraw Walker from the Pacific for special assignments as needed during the War. His assignment to the First Special Services Force would be just such an assignment (for several reasons).

2) General Fredericks, USMA 1929, (the first commander of the FSSF and another Taylor protege and Walker associate) was stationed at Fort Shafter, the SIGINT listening post. During the Greek Civil War Gerneral Fredericks would be associated with Thomas Karamessines. Fredericks was also withdrawn from Hawaii in the months preceeding Pear Harbor and was assigned to the War Plans Division in the Old Munitions Buiding where both Taylor and Friedman's group were stationed.

Ron, while the above is of course interesting, it is Rowletts reference to COMINT (communications intelligence) which I find most interesting and where a lot of my research has been pointing for a long time. Form a cousin of John B. Hurt I have learned that Hurt was fluent in Russian. When the question of Hurts ability in the Russian language was placed before my NSA Historian contact, he stated that he could only confirm that (Hurt) spoke Japanese, Latin and French.

If John Hurt was working on Russian Language COMINT in the 1950's and Oswalds "defection" to Russia was a "staged" event designed to "trick" the Soviets into passing known information along intercepted communication channels would Oswald's attempt to call a person by the name of John Hurt send shivers up the spines of people at the top of the intelligence pile?

I am currently reading some of Bamfords work. Seems I will have to read more.

Jim Root

Edited August 28, 2005 by Jim Root

[Gerry Hemming]

Jim,

First, the NSA is the crucial pivotal agency in any joint project, because it has military and civilian aspects and a high level of communications and counter intelligence clearance. It "knows" things that are unavailable to the FBI, CIA and WHite House. It uses an international task to operate on US soil. It was probably subject to direct and covert tasking by Admiral Lemnitzer and General Taylor of the Joint Chiefs. It would have had tapes, taps, bugs, snaps and transcripts on the JFK concerning ELLEN ROMESCH, MARY MEYER, backchannel to Havana, backchannel to Moscow, recreational drug use, gambling, infidelity, etc.,...

The cryptological and mathmatical signals research actually served as a cover for behavioural and political efforts, sanctions, programs were run with very little oversight by the Senate Intelligence Subcommittee chairman Richard Russell.

The nature of these civilian/military research operations are not fully known, but it is quite possible that the Atsugi Japan military base saw a National Security Agency program working in tamdem with MK ULTRA on the recruitment and training of false defectors.

Marshall Carter, an aide to General George C. Marshall (Sect. of State) was in command of the NSA during the assassination and like KARAMESSINES and FITZGERALD was elevated to a DDI position at CIA in the mid 1960's.

I see an EXECUTIVE ACTION or SANCTION, sponsored by the Joint Chiefs, spearheaded by ONI, with the complicity of the other Military Intelligence agencies, such as the NSA. The CIA was a junior partner, and the FBI almost completely out of the loop. If there was a conspiracy (and of course there was) the NSA, being a wiretapping and code-breaking agency, WOULD HAVE KNOWN IN ADVANCE, and this is one more compelling piece of evidence pointing to a real military coup, or security clearance "wet job"...............

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

MY GOODNESS GRACIOUS !! I must immediately query some of the N.A.R.A. "Guru" researchers who obviously have been either wasting their time at College Park, or are hiding things from us.

I will forthwith and posthaste urge them to consult some of the more expert "Wet Dream" UFOgolosts for insider scoop on said "wet jobs, executive actings, and sandman sanctions" !!

How could they have missed the obvious, or are they possibly disinformatziya spooks ??

WOW !!

GPH

__________________________________

[Jim Root]

Gerry

Could you give us your opnion of Maxwell Taylor?

Jim Root

[Robert Howard]

Forgive me for not having the link handy, but when perusing maryferrell.org recently I came across the same document that Steve Thomas mentioned, quoted here.

"It has been determined by the military task force, as a result of the NSA--watch list case study--that Oswald, Jack Ruby, and Earl C. Ruby, Jack's brother, were targeted. An NSA spokesman reported that Oswald's name "appeared" in the rhyming dictionary on the day of the President's assassination."

I have recently come to the conclusion after much reflection that Jack Ruby may have had some type of relationship with the government besides being an informant, I would mention the article below.

Some of the information (which appears very documented, does quite a bit in positing the idea that Ruby was more than just a 'bagman for the mob.' I also ran across another item on maryferrell.org which was entitled "Report of Travel to Bogata During 1948 Demonstrations by Jack Ruby" the assertion was made by an 'unidentified Colombian' apparently during a 'Public Safety Conference in Panama,' During the Foreign Ministers Conference the document further stated that 'there was also speculation that Rubenstein and Che Guevarra visited Panama after the Bogotazo', the document was a 'memo to CI/SIG.' # 462-775

http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/...580&relPageId=5

There is also a strange sentence, to me anyway saying 'Document denied according to Disposition list'

"Mob Connections"

(Jack Ruby, Smuggling With and Spying on Communists, 1938-1958)

http://www.jfklancer.com/mobconnections.html

I personally do not believe that there are 'no NSA Documents concerning the Kennedy Assassination' as I have read previously.

Edited January 25, 2006 by Robert Howard

[Chuck Robbins]

Mark and Jim and Members;

Have you all read "The Puzzle Palace" by James Bamford?

He also wrote "Pretext for War" about 9/11 and the current US/Iraq war.

That was my main source on the role of the NSA in preventing assassinations.

The NSA was a fully mobilized "black bag" and covert ops agency, and its status as a military agency is still debated.

My point is, again, that quite a bit of covert domestic joint agency operations had little or nothing to do with the CIA itself.

People forget that,

but with Oswald, Edwin Walker and the Mannlicher Carcano case of 1963,

I say the CIA was a minor player........the ONI springs to mind, because of JFK's background, Oswald's background and the conservatism of the "admiralty"

Who was in a position to judge a president's loyalty, his clearance or his capacity?

Not really the CIA, that type of executive clearance is something that would emerge from JCS or Betheda Hospital and the Secretary of the Navy or Treasury, based on NSA originating information.

Compared to the NSA, JCS and MI agencies,

the FBI and CIA are just window dressings

.......

Could the CIA and the FBI be the "muscle" that did the "dirty work" for the more elite Govt. agencies?

Chuck

[Chuck Robbins]

The director of NSA at the time of the assassination was Gordon Aylesworth Blake, an Air Force lieutenant general. In his book Body of Secrets, about the NSA, James Bamford says that when Blake became NSA director in 1962, he “kept Dr. Louis Tordella as deputy director and largely left to him the agency’s most secret operations. ‘It would be better for NSA and for those activities if I left that to Tordella,’ Blake said. . . . Tordella was on his way to an extraordinary reign as NSA’s chief keeper of the secrets” (p. 97).

“In the aftermath of the assassination, Meredith K. Gardner, one of NSA’s top Soviet codebreakers, was assigned to examine a number of items from assassin Lee Harvey Oswald and suspected to contain codes and ciphers.” Gardner wrote in an internal NSA report, “The appearance of the term ‘micro dots’ on page 44 of Lee Oswald’s address book aroused our suspicions, particularly in that it was associated with the address of the photographic firm where he was once employed’ ” (p. 135).

Frank Rowlett, special assistant to director Blake, did not include this information in the final report to the Warren Commission. He informed deputy director Tordella in a memo that he was eliminating the reference to microdots, as well as a reference to sensitive NSA eavesdropping (Comint) files, against which names in Lee’s and Marina’s address books had been checked with negative results.

Rowlett told Tordella in the memo, “I suggest that you informally (possibly by telephone) call the Commission’s attention to the appearance of the term ‘micro dot’ on page 44 of Oswald’s address book. You might indicate that this reference aroused our suspicion but that we do not feel competent to make an exhaustive examination of the materials for the presence of micro dots – such an examination should be conducted by the FBI or CIA. If micro dots are actually found, we would be happy to collaborate to the fullest degree required in the analysis of these dots.’ . . . Tordella agreed, and the sanitized report was sent to the commission” (p. 136).

Ron

I believe he also was looking for indentations in LHO's writings, and printed possessions such as books, searching for some form of known code, but with no success. The indentation aspect was something I had never read about before. Was it a well known crypto-key?

Chuck

[Mark Stapleton]

Mr. Hemming,

Some exactly-on-the-point scrivenings by this earnest researcher.  However, most of the covertwork was farmed out by NSA, et al. to Rockwell International and their private armies.  Most of the planning, briefing, etc. over the years took place ["In Isolation"] at the nuke warhead plants at Hanford, WA; Rocky Flats, CO; and Oak Ridge, TN.  Some of my kin were 18-wheeler haulers, and did a lot of the "carrying" for these folks working at the above-mentioned sites.

The Hollywood filmsters repeatedly made reference to the "behind-the-scenes/invisible goverment as "THE TELEPHONE COMPANY".

One more time on Jim Phelps 'Mission Impossible.' The fact that LHO allegedly visited Oak Ridge is very intriguing. Wish Jim P didn't adlib so much. He has LHO going to Oak Ridge to get the poison required to off Castro, as opposed to a sitdown on Kennedy.

http://www.doewatch.com/jfk.html

What's his hit rate in terms of % accuracy? Seems like he puts a lot together on his own, and too much of it doesn't add - like his Sirhan Sirhan scenario, or his record of shots fired in DP, among others.

- lee

Lee,

Just read the Jim Phelps link-it's longer than War & Peace. There's some misses, like his claim that LBJ hated JBC--that isn't right--and his opinion of where the shots were fired from seems to be guesswork without a lot of research.

There's also some hits, IMO. The Oak Ridge stuff is interesting. If LHO did visit the site, it starts to become viable, possibly. The whole cancer research, Mary Sherman, Ferrie, Ruby, DuPont, Grant Stockdale hypothesis sounds like the thoughts of someone who smells a rat but can't quite tie it all in a neat bundle. The sensitivity of the Israeli nuclear issue is an undeniable fact though, borne out comprehensively by Avner Cohen's book. Ruby's martyrdom a selfless act to protect Israel's nuclear program at a critical point in its history? I've never heard that before but that doesn't necessarily preclude its conformity to the truth. Less fanciful than patriotic indignation and it definitely proves Jews have guts.

Also, Nixon's presence in Dallas. The Pepsi convention a mere pretext for RMN assisting with subtle alterations to the motorcade route, combined with a thinly veiled challenge to JFK to travel the streets without the bubbletop? That could give a guy post-assassination amnesia, I suspect.

I recommend members give it a look--if you haven't already--as long as you have an hour or so to spare.

[William Kelly]

Here's a NSA document titled:

"McCloy Discussed Work of Warren's Commission"

http://www.nsa.gov/jfk/jfk00105.tif

BK

[Jim Root]

BK

That same document and another can be found at:

http://www.nsa.gov/jfk/index.cfm

Seems that in a 4 Dec 63 document McCloy, " has serious doubts of the credibility of the investigation to date. He does not eliminate the possibility that the attempt on KENNEDY was made by two

pa(e)rsons..."

I would love to know what is in the 27 Jan 64 document that seems to have had to much information!

Jim Root