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The Biggest Lies.... Untangled


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6 hours ago, Jim Hargrove said:

I've been trying to catch up to Mr. Baker's work on Cricthon, despite a lot of H&L updates from JA.  Evidence against Crichton is compelling but, as far as I can tell, purely circumstantial.  As a former OSS employee with ties to the Dallas PD and Poppy Bush and especially as creator and long-term commander of the 488th Intel unit in Dallas, he was in a position to pull a lot of strings in that city in 1963.  But the only thing approaching real evidence against him I’ve seen is that he set up the clearly agenda-driven Mamantov as interpreter for Marina and the authorities immediately after the hit.

This is not to make light of his potential involvement in the assassination.  If my life depended on the right answer, perhaps I’d bet he had something fairly significant to do with it, but from what I know so far, it is hardly a slam dunk.  Compare this scant evidence against what we have for the CIA.

For example, there are Oswald’s obvious intelligence ties, the diplomatic war between the Kennedy Administration and the CIA that had spilled into the pages of the NY Times, the simultaneous issue of the FBI cancellation of Oswald’s wanted notice with the CIA’s “Lee Henry Oswald” cable, Nagell’s knowledge of the coming hit, CIA accountant James Wilcott’s sworn testimony, and, even more significantly, how CIA people like Angleton, Hunt, Joannides, and especially Phillips just seemed to be all over this thing like flies on roadkill.  

Where is evidence like that against Crichton and the 488th?  That complaint aside, it wouldn’t surprise me one bit if Crichton was one of the plotters.
 

Well reasoned. The question that lingers for me is the full extent of the ties between the third Reich survivors and key cia men like Harvey,Station Chief in Berlin fo many years, and Angleton, Dulles. 

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Operation Paperclip?  And CMC/Permindex?

One thing I forgot to mention above is that two men associated with Crichton’s 488th Military intelligence detachment were in the pilot car of JFK’s Dallas motorcade: George L. Lumpkin, A member of the 488th, and Lt. Colonel George Whitmeyer, commander of all Army reserve units in East Texas, including the 488th.

Still, none of this is direct evidence of Crichton’s possible involvement in the hit.  But it is intriguing, and quite a nexus of entanglements.

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21 minutes ago, Jim Hargrove said:

Operation Paperclip?  And CMC/Permindex?

One thing I forgot to mention above is that two men associated with Crichton’s 488th Military intelligence detachment were in the pilot car of JFK’s Dallas motorcade: George L. Lumpkin, A member of the 488th, and Lt. Colonel George Whitmeyer, commander of all Army reserve units in East Texas, including the 488th.

Still, none of this is direct evidence of Crichton’s possible involvement in the hit.  But it is intriguing, and quite a nexus of entanglements.

Jim - we know so little about Lumpkin and Whitmeyer. It’s really pathetic that researchers have been unable to penetrate this veil. In my limited Google way I have tried to do so, as has Steve Thomas, Bill Kelly and others. I can only assume others have tried as well. I’ve made inquiries to Peter Dale Scott, who I think was the first to look at Crichton, and John Newman. So far nothing. The 488th has no presence in military history. Yet how can we doubt it’s existence when Colonel Frank M. Brandstetter says that his ‘big brother’ at ACSI, Colonel Rose, gives the ok to his reporting for duty to the 488th for weekend training in 1959. Crichton famously said that there were over 100 men in his Unit, nearly half from the DPD. Yet according to Steve Thomas that statement was given in an oral history for which there is no written record. 

 

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I didn’t even realize the 488th was officially nonexistent.  Would you mind pointing to what you feel is the best online examination of Crichton, Lumpkin and Whitmeyer?  Is there anything that goes much beyond what Russell Baker has presented?

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28 minutes ago, Jim Hargrove said:

I didn’t even realize the 488th was officially nonexistent.  Would you mind pointing to what you feel is the best online examination of Crichton, Lumpkin and Whitmeyer?  Is there anything that goes much beyond what Russell Baker has presented?

I’m going to go over Russ Baker’s book, since it’s been a while. Meanwhile, for Crichton there is some interesting material in The Skorzeny Papers, by Ralph Ganis. For Brandstetter, an important Colonel in my opinion, read his co written autobiography Brandy - Portrait of an Intelligence Officer. Curiously, and suspiciously, Crichton does not appear in that book, though his assignment to the 488th does. 

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  • 4 weeks later...
On 10/11/2017 at 11:53 PM, Jim Hargrove said:

A lot of the evidence for Ruby knowing Oswald originates during the summer of 1963, when Classic LHO® and Marina and family were still in New Orleans.  With all the other evidence linking Phillips with JFK's murder and the attempt to blame it on Castro, I think using McClendon as a cutout makes far more sense than looking to the Mob.
 

Bringing back an old thread to make another link to Gordon Mc!endon. You point out David Atlee Phillips. When I mentioned Crichton I was not yet aware of the close association between McLendon and a fellow member of Crichton’s 488th Strategic Intelligence team, Colonel Frank M. Brandstetter, known as Brandy, who in 1959 was green lighted to join Crichton’s 488th by Colonel Rose, ACSI. In Brandy - Portrait of an Intelligence Officer, a co-written autobiography, the friendship with McLendon is highlighted and clearly life long, as is his two decade relationship with ACSI.

The takeaway for me is that is is a mistake to view the Pentagon and the CIA as wholly separate. Somewhere on this thread a poster suggests we include General Lansdale. I agree completely. Lansdale was on loan from the Military (Air Force) to the CIA. This clearly puts him within LeMay’s sphere of influence as well as CIA brass. He was put in charge of Operation Mongoose, which was run out of JMWAVE. Lansdale appointed William Harvey to head the operation. What more evidence do we need to see my point?

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15 minutes ago, Paul Brancato said:

Bringing back an old thread to make another link to Gordon Mc!endon. You point out David Atlee Phillips. When I mentioned Crichton I was not yet aware of the close association between McLendon and a fellow member of Crichton’s 488th Strategic Intelligence team, Colonel Frank M. Brandstetter, known as Brandy, who in 1959 was green lighted to join Crichton’s 488th by Colonel Rose, ACSI. In Brandy - Portrait of an Intelligence Officer, a co-written autobiography, the friendship with McLendon is highlighted and clearly life long, as is his two decade relationship with ACSI.

The takeaway for me is that is is a mistake to view the Pentagon and the CIA as wholly separate. Somewhere on this thread a poster suggests we include General Lansdale. I agree completely. Lansdale was on loan from the Military (Air Force) to the CIA. This clearly puts him within LeMay’s sphere of influence as well as CIA brass. He was put in charge of Operation Mongoose, which was run out of JMWAVE. Lansdale appointed William Harvey to head the operation. What more evidence do we need to see my point?

The following was from a post I made in the New Documenrs release thread. The CIA skimmed the cream from the Military in a big and comprehensive way.....

P. 28

Department of Defence Directive. December 5, 1957.

Policies governing the assignment of Military Personnel to the CIA.

Cancels the 1952 Directive 1315.2 which governed the use of military personnel in the CIA.

"Certain military personnel should be assigned to the CIA to provide adequate military participation and support at appropriate levels in the agency..... personnel should be the best qualified and most experienced available, with a well-founded understanding of their own service..."

https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/2018/202-10002-10121.pdf

 

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That's interesting, Michael, and the cross-fertilization seemed to go both ways.  Note the part I've put in red from the infamous piece by Richard Starnes (it prompted the even more infamous CIA defense in the NYT by Arthur Krock):

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

The Washington Daily News, Wednesday, October 2, 1963, p.3

'SPOOKS' MAKE LIFE MISERABLE FOR AMBASSADOR LODGE

'Arrogant' CIA Disobeys Orders in Viet Nam

By Richard T. Starnes

SAIGON, Oct.2 - The story of the Central Intelligence Agency's role in South Viet Nam is a dismal chronicle of bureaucratic arrogance, obstinate disregard of orders, and unrestrained thirst for power.

Twice the CIA flatly refused to carry out instructions from Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, according to a high United States source here.

In one of these instances the CIA frustrated a plan of action Mr. Lodge brought with him from Washington because the agency disagreed with it.

This led to a dramatic confrontation between Mr. Lodge and John Richardson, chief of the huge CIA apparatus here. Mr. Lodge failed to move Mr. Richardson, and the dispute was bucked back to Washington. Secretary of State Dean Rusk and CIA Chief John A. McCone were unable to resolve the conflict, and the matter is now reported to be awaiting settlement by President Kennedy.

It is one of the developments expected to be covered in Defense Secretary Robert McNamara's report to Mr. Kennedy.

 

Others Critical, Too

Other American agencies here are incredibly bitter about the CIA.

"If the United States ever experiences a 'Seven Days in May' it will come from the CIA, and not from the Pentagon," one U.S. official commented caustically.

("Seven Days in May" is a fictional account of an attempted military coup to take over the U.S. Government.)

CIA "spooks" (a universal term for secret agents here) have penetrated every branch of the American community in Saigon, until non-spook Americans here almost seem to be suffering a CIA psychosis.

An American field officer with a distinguished combat career speaks angrily about "that man at headquarters in Saigon wearing a colonel's uniform." He means the man is a CIA agent, and he can't understand what he is doing at U.S. military headquarters here, unless it is spying on other Americans.

Another American officer, talking about the CIA, acidly commented: "You'd think they'd have learned something from Cuba but apparently they didn't."

 

Few Know CIA Strength

Few people other than Mr. Richardson and his close aides know the actual CIA strength here, but a widely used figure is 600. Many are clandestine agents known only to a few of their fellow spooks.

Even Mr. Richardson is a man about whom it is difficult to learn much in Saigon. He is said to be a former OSS officer, and to have served with distinction in the CIA in the Philippines.

A surprising number of the spooks are known to be involved in their ghostly trade and some make no secret of it.

"There are a number of spooks in the U.S. Information Service, in the U.S. Operations mission, in every aspect of American official and commercial life here, " one official - presumably a non-spook - said.

"They represent a tremendous power and total unaccountability to anyone," he added.

Coupled with the ubiquitous secret police of Ngo Dinh Nhu, a surfeit of spooks has given Saigon an oppressive police state atmosphere.

The Nhu-Richardson relationship is a subject of lively speculation. The CIA continues to pay the special forces which conducted brutal raids on Buddhist temples last Aug. 21, altho in fairness it should be pointed out that the CIA is paying these goons for the war against communist guerillas, not Buddhist bonzes (priests).

 

Hand Over Millions

Nevertheless, on the first of every month, the CIA dutifully hands over a quarter million American dollars to pay these special forces.

Whatever else it buys, it doesn't buy any solid information on what the special forces are up to. The Aug. 21 raids caught top U.S. officials here and in Washington flat-footed.

Nhu ordered the special forces to crush the Buddhist priests, but the CIA wasn't let in on the secret. (Some CIA button men now say they warned their superiors what was coming up, but in any event the warning of harsh repression was never passed to top officials here or in Washington.)

Consequently, Washington reacted unsurely to the crisis. Top officials here and at home were outraged at the news the CIA was paying the temple raiders, but the CIA continued the payments.

It may not be a direct subsidy for a religious war against the country's Buddhist majority, but it comes close to that.

And for every State Department aide here who will tell you, "Dammit, the CIA is supposed to gather information, not make policy, but policy-making is what they're doing here," there are military officers who scream over the way the spooks dabble in military operations.

 

A Typical Example

For example, highly trained trail watchers are an important part of the effort to end Viet Cong infiltration from across the Laos and Cambodia borders. But if the trailer watchers spot incoming Viet Congs, they report it to the CIA in Saigon, and in the fullness of time, the spooks may tell the military.

One very high American official here, a man who has spent much of his life in the service of democracy, likened the CIA's growth to a malignancy, and added he was not sure even the White House could control it any longer.

Unquestionably Mr. McNamara and Gen. Maxwell Taylor both got an earful from people who are beginning to fear the CIA is becoming a Third Force co-equal with President Diem's regime and the U.S. Government - and answerable to neither.

There is naturally the highest interest here as to whether Mr. McNamara will persuade Mr. Kennedy something ought to be done about it.

 

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8 hours ago, Michael Clark said:

The following was from a post I made in the New Documenrs release thread. The CIA skimmed the cream from the Military in a big and comprehensive way.....

P. 28

Department of Defence Directive. December 5, 1957.

Policies governing the assignment of Military Personnel to the CIA.

Cancels the 1952 Directive 1315.2 which governed the use of military personnel in the CIA.

"Certain military personnel should be assigned to the CIA to provide adequate military participation and support at appropriate levels in the agency..... personnel should be the best qualified and most experienced available, with a well-founded understanding of their own service..."

https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/2018/202-10002-10121.pdf

 

P. 19 of this document is the key. I hope to transcribe this when I get the opportunity

Jim, I didn’t mean to jump-over your post. I made my earlier post in haste, and when I returned I noticed that p. 19 is of the utmost trelevance. 

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1 hour ago, Michael Clark said:

P. 19 of this document is the key. I hope to transcribe this when I get the opportunity

Jim, I didn’t mean to jump-over your post. I made my earlier post in haste, and when I returned I noticed that p. 19 is of the utmost trelevance. 

No problem, Michael.  Thank you for focusing on this once secret memo.

I've loaded up p. 19 of the doc you found to my web server, highlighted in yellow the parts I found most interesting, and have reproduced it below.  

CIA_Mil.jpg

I think this document shows that the CIA wanted to put 874 of its agents into U.S. military positions in FY 1967.  Do you read it differently?

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Jim Hargroves said:

 

   1 hour ago,  Michael Clark said: 

P. 19 of this document is the key. I hope to transcribe this when I get the opportunity

Jim, I didn’t mean to jump-over your post. I made my earlier post in haste, and when I returned I noticed that p. 19 is of the utmost trelevance. 

No problem, Michael.  Thank you for focusing on this once secret memo.

I've loaded up p. 19 of the doc you found to my web server, highlighted in yellow the parts I found most interesting, and have reproduced it below.  

I think this document shows that the CIA wanted to put 874 of its agents into U.S. military positions in FY 1967.  Do you read it differently

 

 

 

Thanks Jim, The salient point I am getting from this is that this whole program should have ended on November 1, 1963 with Landsdale’s resignation. If there are Cter’s who consider, like me, the  possibility that Landsdale may have demurred and revolted from the JFKA ( as much as he dared), then his November 1, 1963 resignation may be explained, for us, by his unwillingness to proceed in the conspiracy and possibly as his effort to undermine it. From documents recently released, Landsdale appears to be well-trusted by JFK and even a second Secretary of Defense, handling the intelligence-controlled military assets. I have posted another set of documents which shows Landsdale to be the alternative and equal, if not higher, authority to Macnamara when it came to CIA military ops. I will look for and post those docs. 

 

Edited by Michael Clark
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This Landsdale doc, for example, originates from the “Office of the Secretary of Defense”.

I have not yet re-read the doc to find further support for my above speculation.

https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/2018/202-10001-10201.pdf

Edited by Michael Clark
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  • 1 year later...


Just wanted to bump this old thread as a reminder for what most of us already know, that the cover-up of the JFK assassination is, and almost always has been, quite obvious.

This thread does not even cover the medical evidence, which also presents obvious signs of a cover-up.

When members of this forum get themselves busy psychoanalyzing what they consider to be the problems of Warren Commission critics, isn’t it remarkable that they pay so little attention to the obvious signs of cover-up in this case?

And let me just add here the reasons to believe what was also obvious all along, that “Lee Harvey Oswald” was a spy working for American intel:


20 Facts Indicating the Oswald Project Was Run by the CIA


1. CIA accountant James Wilcott testified that he made payments to an encrypted account for “Oswald or the Oswald Project.”  Contemporaneous HSCA notes indicate Wilcott told staffers, but wasn't allowed to say in Executive session, that the cryptonym for the CIA's "Oswald Project" was RX-ZIM.

2. A 1978 CIA memo indicates that a CIA operations officer “had run an agent into the USSR, that man having met a Russian girl and eventually marrying her,” a case very similar to Oswald’s and clearly indicating that the Agency ran a “false defector” program in the 1950s.

3. Robert Webster and LHO "defected" a few months apart in 1959, both tried to "defect" on a Saturday, both possessed "sensitive" information of possible value to the Russians, both were befriended by Marina Prusakova, and both returned to the United States in the spring of 1962.

4. Richard Sprague, Richard Schweiker, and CIA agents Donald Norton and Joseph Newbrough all said LHO was associated with the CIA. 

5. CIA employee Donald Deneslya said he read reports of a CIA "contact" who had worked at a radio factory in Minsk and returned to the US with a Russian wife and child.

6. Kenneth Porter, employee of CIA-connected Collins Radio, apparently left his family to marry (and probably monitor) Marina Oswald after LHO’s death.

7. George Joannides, case officer and paymaster for DRE (which LHO had attempted to infiltrate) was put in charge of lying to the HSCA and never told them of his relationship to DRE.

8. For his achievements, Joannides was given a medal by the CIA.

9. FBI took Oswald off the watch list at the same time a CIA cable gave him a clean bill of political health, weeks after Oswald’s New Orleans arrest and less than two months before the assassination.

10. Oswald’s lengthy “Lives of Russian Workers” essay reads like a pretty good intelligence report.

11. Oswald’s possessions were searched for microdots.

12. Oswald owned an expensive Minox spy camera, which the FBI tried to make disappear.

13. Even the official cover story of the radar operator near American U-2 planes defecting to Russia, saying he would give away all his secrets, and returning home without penalty smells like a spy story.

14. CIA's Richard Case Nagell clearly knew about the plot to assassinate JFK and LHO’s relation to it, and he said that the CIA and the FBI ignored his warnings.

15. LHO always seemed poor as a church mouse, until it was time to go “on assignment.”  For his Russian adventure, we’re to believe he saved all the money he needed for first class European hotels and private tour guides in Moscow from the non-convertible USMC script he saved. In the summer of 1963, he once again seemed to have enough money to travel abroad to Communist nations.

16. To this day, the CIA claims it never interacted with Oswald, that it didn’t even bother debriefing him after the “defection.” What utter bs….

17. After he “defected” to the Soviet Union in 1959, bragging to U.S. embassy personnel in Moscow that he would tell the Russians everything he knew about U.S. military secrets, he returns to the U.S. without punishment and is then in 1963 given the OK to travel to Cuba and the Soviet Union again!

18. Allen Dulles, the CIA director fired by JFK, and the Warren Commission clearly wanted the truth hidden from the public to protect sources and methods of intelligence agencies such as the CIA. Earl Warren said, “Full disclosure was not possible for reasons of national security.”

19. CIA's Ann Egerter, who worked for J.J. Angleton's Counterintelligence Special Interest Group (CI/SIG), opened a "201" file on Oswald on December 9, 1960.  Egerter testified to the HSCA: "We were charged with the investigation of Agency personnel....”  When asked if the purpose was to "investigate Agency employees," she answered, "That is correct."  When asked, "Would there be any other reason for opening up a file?" she answered, "No, I can't think of one."

20. President Kennedy and the CIA clearly were at war with each other in the weeks immediately before his assassination, as evidenced by Arthur Krock's infamous defense of the Agency in the Oct. 3, 1963 New York Times. “Oswald” was the CIA’s pawn.

Krock_CIA.jpeg

 

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Jim,

Here's something that might add a few things to your list on Oswald being connected to intelligence agencies.  The article is 55 pages and I feel too long to post here.  There is a link to the article by clicking on Paul Bleau.

Oswald’s Intelligence Connections: How Richard Schweiker clashes with Fake History

Saturday, 29 July 2017 06:00

Written by Paul Bleau

 

Paul Bleau offers an exhaustive review of sixty-four individuals with whom Oswald came in contact, and who had either plausible, probable, or definite intelligence links –– something that Bob Baer seems almost entirely to have missed in the “Tracking Oswald” series.


"We do know Oswald had intelligence connections. Everywhere 

you look with him, there are fingerprints of intelligence."

~Senator Richard Schweiker, The Village Voice, 1975

Edited by John Butler
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Nice write-up, only slightly marred by a couple of errors I noticed.  One was that “Oswald” owned a Minox spy camera, not a Minolta. Mr.  Bleau’s basic case, though, seems well stated, especially his conclusion pointing directly at David Phillips, Hunt, Morales, a now all-too-familiar crew.   

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