Ramparts Magazine and the JFK Assassination Options

[John Simkin]

Ramparts Magazine was published between 1962-1975. It was funded by a devout Catholic and was initially a monthly Church-and-secular-affairs magazine. Warren Hinckle was its talented editor. At the time he held right-wing political opinions but was opposed to the Vietnam War and gradually moved to the left. Ramparts was one of the few journals to fully investigate the JFK assassination. Hinckle employed William Turner as one of his main journalists. Turner’s Jesuit education had caused him to rebel against J. Edgar Hoover and he became one of the key figures in exposing FBI dirty tricks campaigns. Hinckle commissioned Turner to write an article on the Warren Commission. This led to some full-scale research into the CIA and the Anti-Castro Cuban community. Hinckle also published some important research carried out by the great Penn Jones.

Ramparts was also the first journal to discover aspects of Operation Mockingbird. As a result the magazine was targeted by the CIA and this eventually led to its demise.

I am currently reading Hinckle’s amazing "If You Have a Lemon, Make Lemonade”. I will be posting some extracts from this book on this thread. You can read some of Ramparts’s articles here:

http://www.hippy.com/php/search.php?cat=2

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[John Simkin]

Here is an extract from Warren Hinckle's book, If You Have a Lemon, Make Lemonade, about Jim Garrison:

My last communication with Garrison was on November 5, 1968. It was not untypical. I was interrupted in midexplanation to an unhappy investor (Keating's stormy departure had not helped the money-raising situation). The investor was turning a tinge yellow at my suggestion that the only way to insure the return of the $20,000 he had previously loaned Ramparts was to cover his bet with an additional $50,000. The interruption was an emergency long-distance telephone call from New Orleans. The caller was in no mood to inquire about the weather. "This is urgent," Jim Garrison said. "Can you take this in your mailroom? They'd never think to tap the mailroom extension."

I excused myself to go to the mailroom for a moment on a matter of high priority and left the investor, sputtering like a referee without a whistle, alone with the latest negative balance sheets. In the mailroom, two bearded Berkeleyite mail boys were running the postage machine under the influence of marijuana. I told them to take a walk around the block and get high on company time, and locked the door behind them.

Garrison began talking when I picked up the mailroom extension: "This is risky, but I have little choice. It is imperative that I get this information to you now. Important new evidence has surfaced. Those Texas oilmen do not appear to be involved in President Kennedy's murder in the way we first thought. It was the Military-Industrial Complex that put up the money for the assassination - but as far as we can tell, the conspiracy was limited to the aerospace wing. I've got the names of three companies and their employees who were involved in setting up the President's murder. Do you have a pencil?"

I wrote down the names of the three defense contractors - Garrison identified them as Lockheed, Boeing, and General Dynamics - and the names of those executives in their employ whom the District Attorney said had been instrumental in the murder of Jack Kennedy. I also logged a good deal of information about a mysterious minister who was supposed to have crossed the border into Mexico with Lee Harvey Oswald shortly before the assassination; the man wasn't a minister at all, Garrison said, but an executive with a major defense supplier, in clerical disguise. I knew little about ministers crossing the Rio Grande with Oswald - but after several years of fielding the dizzying details of the Kennedy assassination, I had learned to leave closed Pandora's boxes lie; I didn't ask.

I said that I had everything down, and Garrison said a hurried good-bye: "It's poor security procedure to use the phone, but the situation warrants the risk. Get this information to Bill Turner. He'll know what to do about the minister. I wanted you to have this, in case something happens... "

I unlocked the mailroom door, and returned to my office. The investor was gone.

I typed up a brief memorandum of the facts as Garrison had relayed them and burned my notes in an oversized ashtray I used for such purposes. I Xeroxed one copy of the memo, which I mailed to myself in care of a post office box in the name of Walter Snelling, a friendly, non-political bartender in the far-removed country town of Cotati, California, where I routinely sent copies of all supersecret Ramparts documents. That night I hand delivered the original to Bill Turner, the former FBI agent in charge of the magazine's investigation of the Warren Commission. Turner had drilled me in a little G-Man security lingo. According to our code, I called him at home and said something about a new vacuum cleaner. He replied that he'd be right over, and said he would meet me at the bar at Trader Vic's, which meant that I was to actually meet him at Blanco's, a dimly lit Filipino bar on the fringe of Chinatown, where we often held secret meetings. That was the way we did things in those days.

"Those days" encompassed several years of sniffing, as Sam Goldwyn might say, along the greenhorn trail of red herrings in the 26 volumes of the Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy. We began asking rude questions in 1965, and by 1968, with paranoia in full bloom, we had divided almost everyone, by some sort of conspiracy litmus test, into "them" and "us." Even "us" was subdivided into good guys, not-so-good-guys, dangerous fanatics and fifth columnists. We ended up seeing "them" lurking behind every potted plant rented by the CIA; and, occasionally, we found a real spook in the shadows.

[Dawn Meredith]

[quote=John Simkin,Aug 24 2005, 05:13 PM]
Here is an extract from Warren Hinckle's book, If You Have a Lemon, Make Lemonade, about Jim Garrison:


I hope you post more from this particular story....

since we many of us have been thinking Tx. and oil for a long time now.

(Of course I have always thought Garrison was onto it from the start).

Dawn

[Tim Gratz]

John, one thing that I found fascinating was William Turner's reports on how he came into possession of the manuscript "Farewell America". I have seen a lengthy piece he once wrote on it.

Can't remember if there is a thread on "Farewell America" but if not it might be worth starting one. It is an intereresting story. As I am sure you and most readers know, it is believed "Farewell America" was written by a member of French intelligence.

[Mark Stapleton]

Fascinating stuff, John. I hope there's more to come. I would like to know who those executives mentioned by Garrison were. The theory that it was the work of the Aerospace wing of the MIC may be closer to the mark than we think.

In Robert Dallek's "JFK-an unfinished life", the author points out that JFK appointed LBJ to be Chairman of the National Space Council (being a canny politician, he probably did this so LBJ would take the fall if there was a major mishap in any of the flights). LBJ worked closely with James Webb, the boss of NASA. Complaints from lobbyists and congressmen from Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania that LBJ was awarding all the contracts to his friends in Texas and California soon followed. JFK responded by appointing Richard Callaghan as aide to Webb in order to ascertain LBJ's "influence on the Space Agency". What I'm suggesting is that if those defence contractors had a hand in planning the assassination, then LBJ would be the first to know. And I believe he knew.

[John Simkin]

John, one thing that I found fascinating was William Turner's reports on how he came into possession of the manuscript "Farewell America".  I have seen a lengthy piece he once wrote on it.

Can't remember if there is a thread on "Farewell America" but if not it might be worth starting one.  It is an intereresting story.  As I am sure you and most readers know, it is believed "Farewell America" was written by a member of French intelligence.

I will start a thread on this later today. Warren Hinckle writes about it in great detail. French intelligence were behind the book. The important question concerns who French Intelligence were working for. Hinckle believes it could have been the CIA. The other possibility is the Kennedy family. More later.

[John Simkin]

Here is an extract from Warren Hinckle's book, If You Have a Lemon, Make Lemonade, about Jim Garrison:

Garrison began talking when I picked up the mailroom extension: "This is risky, but I have little choice. It is imperative that I get this information to you now. Important new evidence has surfaced. Those Texas oilmen do not appear to be involved in President Kennedy's murder in the way we first thought. It was the Military-Industrial Complex that put up the money for the assassination - but as far as we can tell, the conspiracy was limited to the aerospace wing. I've got the names of three companies and their employees who were involved in setting up the President's murder. Do you have a pencil?"

I wrote down the names of the three defense contractors - Garrison identified them as Lockheed, Boeing, and General Dynamics - and the names of those executives in their employ whom the District Attorney said had been instrumental in the murder of Jack Kennedy.

References to General Dynamics is very interesting. In 1963 Senator John Williams of Delaware began investigating the activities of Bobby Baker. As a result of his work, Baker resigned as the secretary to Lyndon B. Johnson on 9th October, 1963. During his investigations Williams met Don Reynolds and persuaded him to appear before a secret session of the Senate Rules Committee.

Reynolds told B. Everett Jordan and his committee on 22nd November, 1963, that Johnson had demanded that he provided kickbacks in return for him agreeing to this life insurance policy. This included a $585 Magnavox stereo. Reynolds was also told by Walter Jenkins that he had to pay for $1,200 worth of advertising on KTBC, Johnson's television station in Austin. Reynolds had paperwork for this transaction including a delivery note that indicated the stereo had been sent to the home of Johnson.

Reynolds also told of seeing a suitcase full of money which Bobby Baker described as a "$100,000 payoff to Johnson for his role in securing the Fort Worth TFX contract". His testimony came to an end when news arrived that President John F. Kennedy had been assassinated.

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

This TFX contract had gone to General Dynamics. The order had been placed by Fred Korth, JFK's Navy Secretary. According to author Seth Kantor, Korth only got the job after strong lobbying from LBJ. Korth was forced to resign on 1st November, 1963. LBJ would have followed if JFK had not been killed in Dallas. We also now know that it had been Robert Kennedy who had been leaking this information to John Williams.

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

After LBJ gained power Williams was one of his first targets. He was blackmailed and eventually was forced to resign in 1970.

[Pat Speer]

I don't remember where I read it but I believe I've read that, shortly before he was killed, Robert Kennedy was investigating LBJ's ties to Jack Halfen and Carlos Marcello. If memory serves this story was first brought to his attention by a Ramparts article. Do Hinkle or Turner refer to such an article in their books?

[John Simkin]

I don't remember where I read it but I believe I've read that, shortly before he was killed, Robert Kennedy was investigating LBJ's ties to Jack Halfen and Carlos Marcello.  If memory serves this story was first brought to his attention by a Ramparts article.  Do Hinkle or Turner refer to such an article in their books?

I will check this. I have just received William Turner's book on Robert Kennedy. Take a look at this passage from Hinckle's book. It refers to the Kennedy family and the assassination. It is an interesting story:

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=4815