Must read. Secret meeting between RFK and Garrison

[Paz Marverde]

Resounding revelations on the assassination of John Kennedy. A conversation with Stephen Jaffe, member of the Garrison’s team that reopened the investigation in 1967

Note: This is a translation of an Italian article by Michele Metta. Original here

A large amount of years from now, the Italian version of Farewell America was published. As it will be even more self-evident thanks to the exclusive revelations that I am going to give now to the L’AntiDiplomatico’s readers, the story of this book is extremely peculiar, and in many ways very similar to that of another volume: Questo è Cefis (This is Cefis), a book published by a mysterious publishing house, apparently written by a likewise mysterious Giorgio Steimetz, and victim of a fast and furious disappearance due to the enormous and compromising revelations on Eugenio Cefis and the assassination of Enrico Mattei it contains. FarewellAmerica too, with the title of L’America brucia (America burns), was here published by a mysterious publishing house, apparently written by a likewise mysterious James Hepburn, was full of astonishing revelations on the assassination of John Kennedy, and almost immediately disappeared from every Italian bookshop. So here it is the necessity to republish it in 2012, thanks to the essayist Stefania Limiti, who in fact is also the author of an appendix containing a beautiful interview to William Turner. He was — please, pay attention — a member of Jim Garrison’s team, the New Orleans DA thanks whose courage, in 1967, the investigation on the assassination of JFK was reopened, coming to so important results that it was the subject for a very appreciated and excellent Oliver Stone’s movie. Interview where Turner confided to Limiti that Farewell America was read by Garrison himself, and that at the end of his reading, a request came from France, asking for someone of the DA staff to travel to Paris in order to apprehend some very important news. Turner would have loved to go, but he absolutely cannot. So, another Garrison’s collaborator was chosen instead: Stephen Jaffe. Jaffe that I was able to reach and that after watching my documentary on the assassination of JFK, has kindly accepted to answer some questions. An even more appreciable decision, given that the revelations contained in his answers will be the subject of a still unpublished work he is writing. A first step was to ask him about a fascinating moment described by Turner of that Parisian travel: de Gaulle in person, the celebrated President of France, gave a card to Jaffe, with written on it a Je suis très sensible a la confiance que vous m’exprimez. Words undoubtedly of appreciation towards both Jaffe and Garrison. Here it is Jaffe’s answer:

The story is true. Gen. De Gaulle personally gave me his card with those words written on it. He did so in response to my request for some evidence that we met. I needed to prove that to my boss, Garrison.

A journey, that made by Jaffe, besides extremely risky and adventurous:

We were being closely watched by our own CIA. They were watching my movements but had trouble keeping up with me in Paris.

Nevertheless, Jaffe has a very positive memory of his European experience:

It was a trip during which I secured some valuable evidence for our investigation.

At talking about Farewell America, Jaffe’s story has become even richer in really fascinating details. Here they are:

I was asked to help with the publication of that book, Farewell America, which was previously to be called “America Burns.” I suggested the title “Farewell America” to the person who was the editor, which Garrison was going to use for his own book. The author was actually a composite of people working together for French Intelligence. They offered to appoint me the US publisher but I refused to be involved because it would have been unethical for me, as a representative of the New Orleans District Attorney, Garrison, to assist in such a commercial venture. I recommended the publisher for whom Turner worked, Ramparts Magazine. That’s how the book was published in the US but I refused any money from it on ethical grounds. They had sent me 10,000 copies of the book but I refused to even pick them up at the dock in Long Beach. That’s how careful I was as a member of Garrison’s staff.

But the most shaking element undoubtedly arrives commenting Turner’s allusion to Limiti on a top-secret meeting between Garrison and Robert Kennedy. Jaffe gave me far more than a confirmation: it was Jaffe himself to organize this extraordinary rendezvous, whose goal for sure opens new scenarios about the assassination of RFK’s motive. Here they are his words:

Before that meeting, I had a contact from a close friend of the Kennedy family who asked me to arrange the meeting. We also had help from another US Senator. RFK told Garrison in New York, at this very confidential meeting, that he was going to reopen the investigation into the assassination of President Kennedy but only after he was elected President. Only with that power, he explained, could he do so.

A phrase, this latest, able to give a deep thrill when put together what the activist and environmentalist RFK Jr., son of Robert Kennedy, declared on the fiftieth anniversary of Dallas:

My father believed the Warren Report was a shoddy piece of craftsmanship. He publicly supported the Warren Commission report but privately he was dismissive of it. My father thought that somebody [else] was involved. The evidence at this point I think is very, very convincing that it was not a lone gunman.

A thrill which becomes even deeper when we add also what written once again by JFK’s nephew inside his latest book, American values:

[CIA agent] Howard Hunt told his son that he met with the CIA’s leading anti-Castro operatives Frank Sturgis and David Morales in a CIA safe house in Miami to discuss the “big event” shortly beforehand –a plan to kill Jack.

On the day Uncle Jack was assassinated, Fidel Castro was meeting with Jean Daniel at his summer presidential palace in Varadero Beach. At one p.m. they received a phone call with news that Jack had been shot. “Es una mala noticia,” Castro said to himself. Then, turning to Daniel, “There is the end to your mission of peace. Everything is going to change.” When the news came twenty minutes later that Jack was dead, Castro called it “a catastrophe.” Then he asked Daniel: “Who is Lyndon Johnson? What authority does he have over the CIA?” Hearing that American authorities were in hot pursuit of a suspect, Castro told Daniel, “You watch and see–I know them–they will try to put the blame on us for this thing.” And he was right. According to investigators on the House Select Committee on Assassinations, immediately following Jack’s assassination, operatives in the CIA’s Western Hemisphere Division promoted evidence–later proven false–suggesting that Castro had orchestrated President Kennedy’s assassination. The Senate’s Church Committee, which investigated the assassination for two years from 1975 to ’77, concluded that Cuba had nothing to do with Jack’s murder. Dan Hardway, an attorney who served as investigator for the House Committee, told me that the source of virtually every story blaming Castro was connected to the CIA’s Western Hemisphere chief and propaganda guru, David Atlee Phillips.

This really means that Robert Kennedy’s son is pointing his finger towards the CIA about the assassination of JFK. CIA which comes back in another point of American values. This one:

[Former CIA head] Allen Dulles told a young writer in 1965, “That little Kennedy, he thought he was a god.” LBJ would later appoint Dulles to the Warren Commission investigating Jack’s assassination, a curious choice at a time when some Americans, including my father, suspected the CIA’s involvement in JFK’s murder.

CIA that –I’m concluding– comes back also in another phrase by Jaffe, this time commenting my documentary I made to synthesize my inquest. Inquest that undoubtedly shows the links between the CIA and Centro MondialeCommerciale, the Italian company Clay Shaw, incriminated by Garrison as a conspirator to kill John Kennedy, worked for; but it also shows, thanks to my exclusive papers, the connections between CMC and the subsequent Italian Strategy of Tension. Here it is his phrase, for which I absolutely thank him:

It has a number of very interesting points in it, particularly regarding Clay Shaw, who’s connection with the CIA has now been proven beyond reasonable doubt.