Jim DiEugenio reviews Jeff Morley's The Ghost

[James DiEugenio]

Another thing I give Morley credit for is the work he did on Angleton's rabid Zionism.

Between Angleton and LBJ, the USA pretty much became a cheerleader for Israel in the Middle East.  As exemplified by by the Liberty Incident and then the heist of highly enriched uranium from the NUMEC Plant near Pittsburgh. Morley does  a nice job on this and he used the fine Roger Mattson book on the subject, Stealing the Atom Bomb.

 https://consortiumnews.com/2016/09/11/how-israel-stole-the-bomb/

But as I wrote, I wish he had included how this was, at first, in conflict with JFK's policy, and then, LBJ broke with Kennedy on the Middle East.

Edited March 31, 2018 by James DiEugenio

[Dan Doyle]

31 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said:

By the way I should add the name of a book that does not get mentioned enough.

It was not until I read Acid Dreams that I began to have some doubts about Leary.  

And that is when I began to question the whole MM/JFK/Leary construct.

Its really kind of puzzling to me that Morley accepted it.

Jim,

I'm with Paul on this.  We know JFK and MM saw a lot of each other; i.e., White House logs, photos.  Do we have definitive proof of Leary's account of JFK eating acid with MM, not really.  And I agree, Leary must have been flipped by the US intelligence services, because he surely didn't like prison much.  But, on the other hand, I don't see it as totally out of the realm of possibilities for JFK to indulge in LSD  because, before LSD became a street drug in the mid 1960's,  it was used as a "therapeutic" drug by high society/Hollywood types (Cary Grant and Aldous Huxley come to mind) in LA during the 1950's and early 1960's.   And let's not forget who JFK's brother in law was, Peter Lawford of Rat Pack and Marilyn Monroe fame, who lived in Malibu. 

Given that JJ Angleton was caught by Ben Bradley breaking into MM's place in Georgetown after MM's demise( one .22 cal bullet behind her ear, just like RFK's assassination),  there are justifiable suspicions that MM was on to something concerning 11/22/63 ( parallels Dorothy Kigallen's demise to a degree).  And this was 3 weeks after the Warren Report came out( October '64).   Lastly, we all know who MM's ex husband was, namely Cord Meyer, the #3 guy at the CIA, who gave us Operation Mockingbird, which we are still living with.

[Thomas Graves]

On 3/31/2018 at 8:42 AM, Paul Brancato said:

TG - Thanks for clarifying. Is it your opinion, and/or Bagley’s, that when Golitsyn got ‘carried away’ it was on his own and not KGB inspired? It looked to me like he first established his bonafides and once settled comfortably he proceeded to sow division. One could look at Angleton as a victim of paranoia created by Golitsyn. I’m not saying that’s true, just possible. 

Paul,

I believe that Golitsyn was a flawed true defector, and that Nosenko was a flawed false defector. A big problem for Angleton and eventually for the CIA as a whole was that when the CIA or the FBI or whomever decided not to prosecute long-term mole "SASHA" (Igor Orlov) because he was no longer active, Golitsyn went a little bonkers and decided to cast suspicion on Orlov's former handler, Paul Garbler, and things kind of snowballed out of control from there.  Or perhaps already had, IDK. (I'm away from my books at the moment and I'm sending this reply to you via my tiny android. I'll try to elaborate on this later this afternoon when I'm better able to do so.) Regardless, in my humble opinion it's rather foolish to insinuate that Golitsyn was the false defector of the two for the simple fact that Golitsyn helped to uncover several *important*, *still-active*, and *previously unsuspected* moles and Soviet spies in the U.S. and other NATO countries, whereas false defector Nosenko didn't do jack xxxx in that regard, and whose purpose in life seems, in retrospect, to have been to contradict, divert attention away from, and/or minimize most of what Golitsyn, in his vintage, pre-mid-1964, "golden" period especially, was telling the U.S.

--  TG

Edited April 2, 2018 by Thomas Graves

[James DiEugenio]

Dan:

Let me repeat, Leary had over 20 opportunities over two decades to say anything about that whole imbroglio. He did not.

I am sorry, but that indicates to me that it did not happen.  

I did a lot of work on this whole issue back in the nineties when Sy Hersh's piece of junk about Kennedy came out.  The whole thing with MM is so riddled with contradictions and inconsistencies and out and out lying that IMO its not possible to make any definite conclusions. And there are no credible indications that she investigated Kennedy's assassination.  That was one of the worst parts of Janney's book. Those were all just assumptions to fulfill his construct.

If you have not read my earlier work on this, here is the link:

https://kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/the-posthumous-assassination-of-john-f-kennedy

[Paul Brancato]

2 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

By the way I should add the name of a book that does not get mentioned enough.

It was not until I read Acid Dreams that I began to have some doubts about Leary.  

And that is when I began to question the whole MM/JFK/Leary construct.

Its really kind of puzzling to me that Morley accepted it.

Acid Dreams changed my views also. I recall vaguely the section on Altamont and bad acid. Mostly what I took away from it was to be watchful for domestic dirty tricks against the youth movements. The thing about Leary is I that dropping out, which I did, didn’t work. The Free Speech Movement was I think decimated by the influx of drugs, some bad or tainted, and the suggestion that the System was too corrupted to be worth trying to change. Shootings at Kent State were a nail in the coffin. 

[Robert Harper]

As usual from the K&K site, the article is well written, informed and contextual.

 

 My first introduction to Angleton came via the study of modern poetry. He wasn't mentioned a lot, but if one studied Eliot or Pound, you'd come across a reference here and there, but it was never substantial. I agree with the author's critique of using both the Mimi and the Leary  incidents, as well as  the under-reporting of Angleton's relationship with Israel. I have an additional gripe: finding a footnote.  It is an adventure all it's own; they are listed by chapter, and then each chapter starts with #1. It can be exhausting. I like the method used by Garry Wills and others: notes to pages 10-32, notes to pages 135-157 etc., and numbered sequentially.

 

Anyway,  apropos this thread, I was reading some of reviewer Fred Houpt's remarks on Watergate books by J. Anthony Lukas and

Fred Emery. I hadn't placed Angleton in the Watergate frame until I read these two comments:

 

A surprise bit of trivia is provided by Emery in a footnote. It is about an early discovery of Nixon’s taping procedures in the White House rooms he worked in. Jonathan Aitken wrote a bio on Nixon and it appeared in 1993. He says that “…British Foreign Secretary (and former prime minister) Alec Douglas-Home discovered it. According to Aitken, Home was expounding the detail of some British position on Middle East policy in the Oval Office when he noted that neither Nixon nor, more important, Henry Kissinger was taking any notes. Home discreetly asked the British Ambassador, Lord Cromer, whether Nixon had the Oval Office taped. Cromer asked the embassy man from MI6 to check with his CIA contacts, who “owned up….and kept wanting to know how we’d found out.”

 

Finally, we might have pause to consider what, if anything, the head of CIA counter-intelligence, James. J. Angleton was up to during this period of time. For a somewhat superficial assessment of that, one can read about an Angleton project, called “Operation Chaos”, something put into motion by Lyndon Johnson. See page 309 of “Cold Warrior” by Tom Mangold, hard cover, 1991. Newly appointed CIA director and Angleton’s new boss, Jim Schlesinger, basically told Angleton to shut down what was an illegal domestic operation. Could Angleton have had his eyes on the plumbers all along? He had “former” CIA agents Hunt and McCord right in the thick of things. Makes one wonder.'

 

---

[James DiEugenio]

Well, that is in Morley's book.

He says that Angleton was one of the authors of the Huston Plan.  Then when it was rescinded, Angleton decided to keep Chaos running.

And that is what Colby used to go after him via Hersh.

But of course that was not the real reason Colby got rid of him.  Colby decided that Angleton had simply frozen the CI division in place through Golitsyn's crazy mole hunt. Which at one time actually suspected David Murphy and then Harriman as the mole. And he had ruined too many careers on top of that, and finally that Colby simply did not understand or did not buy the theories which Golitsyn was using about the Kremlin.  I mean Golitsyn even tried to say that the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia was all a feint.

Colby was simply flabbergasted by all this and that  is why he got rid of Angleton.  But that was not revealed to the public until later.

[Michaleen Kilroy]

It's another very erudite and informed review, Jim.  I like the links you include as well.  

No writer gets everything completely right and that includes Morley.  But I do have to say I'm a fan and think he's done more to move the ball forward on finding the full truth about the assassination than just about any one person.  RFK suspected the CIA immediately.  Garrison thought so as well from the leads he found in NO.  Oliver Stone does a movie on Garrison which gives us the JFK Records Act.  Then Morley stands on their soldiers and uses those records to show the highly suspicious way the CIA tried to hide George Joannides from history forever.  Then Morley adds the proven surveillance of Oswald through the years up to two weeks before the assassination by Angleton.  

For me, he's made the most persuasive case of CIA involvement in the assassination, whether Morley believes that or not:

• Within hours of the assassination, propaganda footage of Oswald with the DRE is shown on national TV.
• Joannides and the DRE are run by Richard Helms, the second in command of the CIA.  Helms knows the night of the assassination that's his group on TV with the alleged assassin.  He never tells any investigative body.  He's made liaison to the WC and never says a word. And lies about any relevant knowledge to the assassination to the HSCA in the 70s as well.
• Angleton knows all about this traitorous Russian defector's meeting with Kostikov in MC yet doesn't alert anyone.  Instead, his office downplays it all and Oswald is removed from the FBI's security index.

You could call it criminal negligence if the agency had somehow copped to that.  But the CIA's continued and desperate subterfuge after all these decades tells me they are hiding criminal intent and foreknowledge by the agency's top officials above, IMO.

 

Edited April 1, 2018 by Mike Kilroy

[James DiEugenio]

Like I said, I think that is the point of the book.

Its actually three fold.  He wants to show how Angleton had to have been aware of Oswald from a very early time and how he manipulated the file to limit access, and to confuse things around MC.

The other thing he wants to do is to clearly imply that the WC version of Oswald as the lone sociopath does not hold up since several people in the CIA knew about him.

Third, he clearly implies that Angleton was lying about how much he knew about the affair.

Those are all fine with me.  But I still  do not understand why he left out the Trento meeting with Angleton in 1978.  I really think that is quite provocative in more than one way.

[Rob Couteau]

 

On 4/1/2018 at 12:24 AM, James DiEugenio said:

According to Leary, he also had an affair with Marilyn Monroe. If you believe that, I can sell you some swampland in Florida.

That really made me laugh out loud. There was one thing that Leary said that was true: He once called himself a charlatan. Obsessed with self-promotion as he was, and as indiscreet as he was, there's no way he would ever wait that long to reveal a JFK/LSD connection had there really been one. I also read Acid Dreams and found it intriguing, especially the unresolved question of whether acid did more harm than good in terms of the politicizing of the youth culture. What did you make of the claim in Acid Dreams that RFK's wife may have underwent an LSD-guided psychotherapy (which was not unusual in those years; they used low doses to help people get more in touch with the unconscious). Was there any basis for that claim or was it a mere rumor? They also quoted Senator Robert Kennedy in Congressional hearings questioning the decision to stop funding LSD experimentation by federal agencies connected with mental health research: “I think we have given too much emphasis and so much attention to the fact that [LSD] can be dangerous and that it can hurt an individual who uses it … that perhaps to some extent we have lost sight of the fact that it can be very, very helpful in our society if used properly.” (May 24-26, 1966) I thought that was courageous on his part. It was largely because of Leary's shenanigans that the programs were shut down; they are only recently being refunded. Lastly, getting back on topic, do you think of the story that Morley relates about Angleton getting dosed with LSD - is it true?

Edited April 1, 2018 by Rob Couteau

[Ron Bulman]

37 minutes ago, Rob Couteau said:

 

That really made me laugh out loud. There was one thing that Leary said that was true: He once called himself a charlatan. I also read Acid Dreams and found it intriguing, especially the unresolved question of whether acid did more harm than good in terms of the politicizing of the youth culture. What did you make of the claim in Acid Dreams that RFK's wife may have underwent an LSD-guided psychotherapy (which was not unusual in those years; they used low doses to help people get more in touch with the unconscious). They also quoted Senator Robert Kennedy in Congressional hearings questioning the decision to stop funding LSD experimentation by federal agencies connected with mental health research: “I think we have given too much emphasis and so much attention to the fact that [LSD] can be dangerous and that it can hurt an individual who uses it … that perhaps to some extent we have lost sight of the fact that it can be very, very helpful in our society if used properly.” (May 24-26, 1966) I thought that was courageous on his part. It was largely because of Leary's shenanigans that the programs were shut down; they are only recently being refunded. Lastly, getting back on topic, do you think the story that Morley relates about Angleton getting dosed with LSD - is it true?

It depends on if you believe George White.  Angleton never mentioned it, of course.  It's attributed on page 290 to "GHP, box 7, diary entry for August 25, 1952".  Other notes mention GHP in conjunction with Allen Dulles.  Who is GHP?        

Edited April 1, 2018 by Ron Bulman

[James DiEugenio]

I have never see that incident about LSD and Ethel in any biography of RFK I have read.

But I should add, I have not read them all and we must always allow that Heymann did write a bio of RFK.  I stopped reading it about forty pages in when I began to see the typical unbelievable stuff that no one ever mentioned anywhere else.  And then you saw the footnote to a guy no one had ever talked to before and the transcript being at that Stoneybrook college in New York.  

But I should add, Evan Thomas in his bio of RFK actually sourced some of Heymann's stuff so I did not read that one either.

I don't really consider myself an authority on RFK as I do JFK.  But in my experience, we have to look out for this kind of thing for reasons i explicated in my essay, "The Posthumous Assassination of John Kennedy."

Is it true?  I am not sure.  What and who is the source?

[Rob Couteau]

13 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

What and who is the source?

The first time I heard of it was when reading "Acid Dreams." This is the quote from page 93: [RFK'S] "wife, Ethel, reportedly underwent LSD therapy with  Dr. Ross MacLean (a close associate of Captain Hubbard's) at Hollywood Hospital at Vancouver." I no longer have the book, so I don't know the source. This is the link to the page in Acid Dreams, which also describes RFK's Congressional testimony. Another good book on the subject of LSD history is "Storming Heaven," but I think "Acid Dreams" is better.

https://books.google.com/books?id=e39s92O14EsC&printsec=frontcover&dq=acid+dreams&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiaoMyG1pnaAhXHwVkKHQdhAF4Q6AEIJzAA#v=onepage&q=ethel&f=false

[Dan Doyle]

On 3/31/2018 at 3:42 PM, James DiEugenio said:

Dan:

Let me repeat, Leary had over 20 opportunities over two decades to say anything about that whole imbroglio. He did not.

I am sorry, but that indicates to me that it did not happen.  

I did a lot of work on this whole issue back in the nineties when Sy Hersh's piece of junk about Kennedy came out.  The whole thing with MM is so riddled with contradictions and inconsistencies and out and out lying that IMO its not possible to make any definite conclusions. And there are no credible indications that she investigated Kennedy's assassination.  That was one of the worst parts of Janney's book. Those were all just assumptions to fulfill his construct.

If you have not read my earlier work on this, here is the link:

https://kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/the-posthumous-assassination-of-john-f-kennedy

Jim,

I don't have an axe to grind here.  Whether or not Leary's story about MM and the LSD to JFK is true is really of no consequence, except maybe to the anti-Camelot crowd.    Did JFK ever take LSD, who knows, but I think there is a high probability, given the crowd that JFK socialized with,  that he knew more than one person who had taken it.  Don't forget how trendy the JFK White House was; dancing the twist and hanging with Sinatra. 

What is of consequence is that MM, a close "associate" of JFK's and Cord Meyer's ex-wife, was killed assassination-style, that is 2 point blank range shots, first one to the back of the head and the coup de grace, one to heart,.  All this while she walked in public park during broad daylight in Georgetown DC.  This occurred  3 weeks after the Warren Report had come out.  So either MM's untimely demise was just some random act of violence or there was something more sinister going on; kind of like all the inconvenient deaths of witnesses associated with the events of 11/22/63. 

Speaking of Camelot, have you read "The Road to Camelot" (Oliphant & Wilkie, 2017)?   Good read.  JFK's primary campaign for 1960 noination used a revolutionary strategy.  What JFK figured out was that if he went into the 1960 Democratic Party convention with the majority of state's delegates,  won through the individual state's primary elections(never done before),  he could secure the nomination and avoid going to through the usual state and local party bosses(Favorite Son routine), who traditionally selected the party's nomination for president( smoke filled back rooms!).  And guess who was the odds-on favorite of the party bosses and made no effort to discourage them?  In fact, he was counting on it as his dutiful reward/legacy; ............... none other than "Landslide Lyndon".    Hmmm?

Plus you'll also like the chapter "Defying the Idea of Empire"

 

Edited April 1, 2018 by Dan Doyle

[James DiEugenio]

I have not read that book, but maybe now I should do so.  But I have to say, I avoid even using the word Camelot.  Its too mythological.  

To me, the actual data we have on JFK and how different his outlook was from what came before and after is really strong.  And I am using it to go after these loony left types like Paul Street and Matt Stevenson.

I also have another broadside coming out against my favorite punching bag, Chomsky.  As long as these guys keep it up, and as long as my readers send them to me, I will return the fire.