Assassination, Terrorism and the Arms Trade: Debate

[John Simkin]

John, I think these papers are your best work. A kind of "Unified Field Theory" if you will. While there will be nay-sayers who will doubt your conclusions, no one willl be able to make the claim you didn't do your homework or that you had no evidence to support your interpretation of recent history.

Thank you for your kind comments. I am surprised it has not been done before. I suppose Peter Dale Scott’s “Deep Politics” is the closest example to this approach.

I am currently researching into the way the assassinations of MLK and RFK fits into this pattern. (Should be ready in the next couple of days.)

My approach is based on the idea that history is really a study of the present. I believe that we can only understand the relationship between Bush, Halliburton and the Iraq War by looking closely at the long-term relationship between politicians, corporations and the intelligence agencies.

[Pat Speer]

Now, the Howard Hughes helicopters are the Cayuse OH-6A type or Hughes Helicopters 500 series. The "egg shell" -type chopper.

http://www.rotaryaction.com/history.html

The Hughes Helicopters 500 series was derived from the US military's OH-6A Cayuse, which first flew on 27 February 1963, and was chosen by the army as their preferred 'Light Observation Helicopter'. Many variations of the 500 family (aka: 369), were built from 1960s to 1990s, for military and civil use, and the 'flying egg' (as it's nicknamed) became one of the most popular helicopters ever seen in cinema and TV. Hughes Helicopters (founded by the legendary Howard Hughes), was bought out by McDonnell Douglas in 1984, though MD itself merged with Boeing in 1997, only for its commercial line to be sold off by Boeing two years later.

Thanks, Antti, for clearing that up. The Huey and the Hughes were different helicopters. When I looked at the pictures I flashed back to Apocalypse Now and the famous "Charlie don't surf" scene with Robert Duvall blasting out Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries. In that scene the Huey and the Hughes copters fly side by side.

[Antti Hynonen]

Pat Speer Posted Today, 10:29 AM

QUOTE(Antti Hynonen @ Mar 30 2006, 07:45 AM)

Now, the Howard Hughes helicopters are the Cayuse OH-6A type or Hughes Helicopters 500 series. The "egg shell" -type chopper.

http://www.rotaryaction.com/history.html

The Hughes Helicopters 500 series was derived from the US military's OH-6A Cayuse, which first flew on 27 February 1963, and was chosen by the army as their preferred 'Light Observation Helicopter'. Many variations of the 500 family (aka: 369), were built from 1960s to 1990s, for military and civil use, and the 'flying egg' (as it's nicknamed) became one of the most popular helicopters ever seen in cinema and TV. Hughes Helicopters (founded by the legendary Howard Hughes), was bought out by McDonnell Douglas in 1984, though MD itself merged with Boeing in 1997, only for its commercial line to be sold off by Boeing two years later.

Thanks, Antti, for clearing that up. The Huey and the Hughes were different helicopters. When I looked at the pictures I flashed back to Apocalypse Now and the famous "Charlie don't surf" scene with Robert Duvall blasting out Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries. In that scene the Huey and the Hughes copters fly side by side.

Yes, Sir.

You're welcome.

That's one of my favorite movies. I regularly watch this movie as well as other war movies on DVD.

[John Simkin]

John, I think these papers are your best work. A kind of "Unified Field Theory" if you will. While there will be nay-sayers who will doubt your conclusions, no one willl be able to make the claim you didn't do your homework or that you had no evidence to support your interpretation of recent history.

The historian Gerhard Flehinger died this week. He was the author of "Hitler and the Final Solution". He spent over 30 years working with Nazi documents. He was attempting to find irrefutable evidence that the systematic murder of the Jews of Europe was Hitler’s decision. Flehinger admitted that his research was politically motivated. He wanted to make sure that those on the right of the political spectrum would not be able to dilute the immense criminality of Hitler’s policies.

Flehinger discovered that Hitler’s administration devoted major resources and immense cunning to attempting to conceal or destroy evidence for the responsibility for the final solution. That the authorities had systematically falsified documentation in such a way as to lay false trials relating to all aspects of the Nazis’ treatment of European Jewry. They did this so well that Fleinger could find no documentation that definitely proved that there was a direct link between the Holocaust and the Nazi high command. It is this lack of physical evidence that historians like David Irving use to defend their absurd views.

However, what Flehinger was able to do was to assemble such an overwhelming weight of circumstantial material as to make his case incontestable.

We face a similar problem when investigating the JFK assassination. What documentary evidence that existed has been classified or destroyed. We will never be able to prove the case with evidence alone. What we can do is accumulate the circumstantial material to make the case incontestable.

[William Turner]

Part 3 is terriific. It tightly knits the MI-complex, shows its sinuosity, and gives a most graphic example of its continuity in Brown and Root. The Bush administrattion defines it today.

[Ashton Gray]

I can only echo the approbation already sounded on your extraordinary body of work, John, and even that, regrettably, with not a single string of initials to append to my name, nor nary a sheepskin to frame, making mine a faint echo indeed. But it is a fine and estimable reference for the ages.

It also evokes a familiar weariness. It is not a lonely weariness.

It is the weariness of trudging over infinite spans of fictional landscapes labeled "History." It is the weariness of exploring rabbit hole after rabbit hole where there is no rabbit, and no way out. It is the weariness of seeing an attractive and heavily traveled path that seems to lead out the woods, following it forever, and arriving back at its entrance.

What I describe in my lamentations are not the accidents of history; they are the "mind mines" and intellectual booby traps of a never-ending war on history. There are many remarkable and even scholarly works that have approached these subjects, and none that I can name has escaped the fate of innocently laying in an uncountable number of just such bottomless holes, circular mazes, dead-end paths, and intellectual tar pits.

I would be guilty of inexpiable sin if I left this lament without an example of at least one such a booby trap that only recently, after years of research and analysis, has been safely nullified. Before that, it was a deadly and previously inescapable trap of completely fictional "history." It is embodied in the following declarative and emphatic statement (with link):

There was no "first break-in" at the Watergate

It is a simple and unassuming statement. It is a staggering statement. It is an earth-shaking statement. In less than ten words it rewrites decades of fictional "history."

All of "Watergate" hinges on there having been a "first break-in," because every "reason" gratuitously supplied by the men arrested inside the Watergate for being there at all is entirely dependent on this thoroughly nonexistent "historical event."

It never happened. It has no more truth in it than a Loony Tunes cartoon. It now is proven beyond the doubt of any rational and reasonably prudent person that no "first break-in" ever took place at all. It is inarguable.

So inarguable is it that for weeks I have had a standing offer to anybody on this earth to go into that thread and attempt to make the case that a "first break-in" ever did take place. I don't care who you are.

I don't care how many strings of initials you have behind your name. I don't care what "political history" department you work in, or in what university, or for how many decades you've been teaching that there was a "first break-in." Bring the entire staff with you and their whole trainload of trailing initials.

I don't care if you work for the most powerful law firm on the planet. Bring all the partners with you.

I don't care what role you played in or around "Watergate." I don't care how many books you've written or how many millions you've made on them from packaging and selling this fictional garbage. I don't care what lying "newpaper" you work for pumping out this sewage by the millions of gallons all over the world

Bring it on.

I'll embarrass you.

This is no alley-way taunt. It's just certainty, that's all.

I can give even more examples, e.g. one embodied in this equally emphatic and declarative statement of certainty:

The "Pentagon Papers" leak was a CIA op

I make the same offer. I don't care who you are. Come into that thread and debate me. Bring Ellsberg with you. (You won't, because he won't go near it.) I'll eat your lunch.

How many tens or hundreds of thousands, or millions of gallons of ink have been spilled and squandered spreading the complete fiction that Daniel Ellsberg was a lone, principled martyr for the cause of peace and brotherhood? How many trees were felled to build his legend? How many of you were taught that ineffably malicious lie, and have a diploma that required you bowing down to it? How many of you have spread that depraved myth in articles, lectures, books, classes, coffee houses, cocktail parties, and cook-outs? Do you know who wrote that patently idiotic play for the Grand Stage of politics, and wrote that heroic, martyred part for Ellsberg to play? Daniel Ellsberg, that's who. And he had an entire willing CIA to provide all the props and supporting actors, and to give him a CIA-made "Get Out of Jail Free" card that is so blatantly obvious that you have to be teetering on the brink of coma not to see it.

So to every person who reads this, ask yourself these questions: what is your responsibility for perpetuating such self-serving fictions and calling them "history"? What is your responsibility for being a willing and unquestioning soldier in the incessant assault on truth? How many of these iniquitous fictions have you accepted at face value without the least due diligence or critical inspection, and actively spread, like an infection, to others as "fact"?

In a great irony of actual life—one which no writer in existence ever has captured in even the most surreal excursions of literature—we reach deep, deep into our purses and bow down and give our gold to pay for the Lie Machines that crank out fiction after fiction after malignant fiction to publish in newspapers and textbooks so we have something to teach to children and build careers and reputations and forums and fortunes on, so that we can give more gold to the Lie Machines to crank out more lies that we can waste infinite amounts of our lives trying to "figure out," while we work to make more gold to feed the Lie Machines so...

And you wonder why our societies are on a nearly irreversible plunge into an abyss.

Orwell's 1984 at least came close, but Lewis Carroll is probably the greatest historian the world has every produced. No work of history even approximates his uncanny perception of the manufactured fictional universe we each have to wander through infinitely, thanks to these Lie Machines, trying to find the door to the "real" one.

And we have nobody to blame for the "universe" we each try to make sense of but ourselves. Just feed another gold piece into the anonymous Lie Machines they call "Think Tanks," and see what drops out the slot.

Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding!

We have a winnah! There's your history. Go spread the manure all over the earth.

Ashton Gray

Edited July 14, 2006 by Ashton Gray

[Nathaniel Heidenheimer]

I think this article is excellent in explaining the financial aspects of turning the democrats into the spineless toothless money raising vacuum that they have become; in short BUSH ENABLERS

The reason I am posting it on this thread is because its analysis of former DNC chair TERRY MCAULIFFE reminds me in many ways of the role played by Tommy Corcorran, in turning the Democratic Party to the right by trading in on a previously progressive reputation, in exchange for massive corporate donations.

Please get to the middle of this excellent article! It shows the 1980s fiscal origins of today's Bush Enablers, otherwise known as the Democratice party. It should make anyone who defends our legislative branch as

"reresentative" ask the question: representative of whom?

Of course in describing the financial origins of Clinton Inc's "triangulation," it is also usefull for understanding that

Friend of Bill (though certainly not of Iraq) Tony Blair.

http://www.counterpunch.org/stclair10192004.html

PS. If you like this article please post it on Major U.S daily web-sites. Americans need to see this article NOW before the next clinton is given another 700 million dollars to lose again, with a "centerist" campaign.

[John Simkin]

I think this article is excellent in explaining the financial aspects of turning the democrats into the spineless toothless money raising vacuum that they have become; in short BUSH ENABLERS

The reason I am posting it on this thread is because its analysis of former DNC chair TERRY MCAULIFFE reminds me in many ways of the role played by Tommy Corcorran, in turning the Democratic Party to the right by trading in on a previously progressive reputation, in exchange for massive corporate donations.

Please get to the middle of this excellent article! It shows the 1980s fiscal origins of today's Bush Enablers, otherwise known as the Democratice party. It should make anyone who defends our legislative branch as

"reresentative" ask the question: representative of whom?

I am currently reading David Osler's "Labour Party PLC". It is an inside account of how Tony Blair turned the Labour Party into a right-wing and corrupt organization. Osler claimed that much of it was based on what Clinton did to the Democratic Party. Another book, Robin Ramsay's The Rise of New Labour traces the links with America.

[Sterling Seagrave]

Bill Pawley did not found the AVG. The sequence was that Mme. Chiang wanted to create an air force for KMT China, not because she knew anything about air forces, but because she wanted to play a glamorous role in the “defense” of China against the Japanese, who had been encroaching on China for decades - long before America became involved. Her husband, Generalissimo Chiang, “gave” Mme. Chiang the fledgeling KMT air force as her toy, partly to placate her and keep her off his back. She made inquiries in America, looking for somebody who could train her air force. The KMT military attache took her to an air show where Chennault (forced out of the US Army Air Corps for being a blowhard) and his group were performing, she was impressed, asked to meet Chennault, charmed him, and made him an offer on the spot. Chennault accepted so eagerly that he left for China without bothering to inform his wife and family, whom he abandoned. His initial effort to create a KMT air force and train its pilots was a fiasco when they bombed their own people instead of the Japanese. Chennault and Mme. Chiang asked Henry Luce and Tommy Corcoran to help, and Corcoran asked FDR to make fighter aircraft available, and experienced American pilots to fly them. P-40s already destined for Britain were diverted to Burma by FDR’s intercession. FDR then approved the creation of a pseudo “mercenary” air force by taking a number of pilots out of active service and sending them to Burma. To increase their number, trouble-making pilots who were in military stockades were freed on the condition that they go to Burma to fly in China against the Japanese. This was all sub rosa, because America was then not at war with Japan. The so-called “American Volunteer Group” was portrayed as freelance or “mercenary”, but they were actually on a covert mission. Pawley was brought in by Tommy Corcoran to head CAMCO, the engineering company that would assemble the crated airplanes to be flown by the AVG pilots. Since the OSS did not exist at that time, all this was done under the aegis of the intelligence service of the Department of State, supported by the Office of Naval Intelligence which was active on the China coast, and Secretary of War Stimson (who had previously been governor-general of the Philippines and was a friend of Corcoran, Luce, Pawley, United Fruit and Dole Pineapple, and an admirer of Mme. Chiang). Eventually the AVG got its act together and evolved into the Flying Tigers. When the US declared war on Japan, Chennault was reinstated to the Army Air Corps responsible to General Stilwell. All but a handful of the Flying Tigers refused to re-join the Air Corps and mutinied. The mutiny was kept secret until the late 1970s. They were disbanded, many returning to America to get on with their lives, others drifting into Chennault’s airlift over the Hump from India to China, during which gold, drugs and diamonds were carried aboard some of the planes. Among those who were eyewitnesses was John D. McDonald, who later became famous as a novelist. There was a mob of British and American spooks in Chungking and Kunming, where Alsop (given a commission in the US Army) served as Chennault’s mouth-piece to hype the image of the Flying Tigers. The famous name was adopted for all Chennault’s fighter pilots, and was implicit in his choosing the name China Air Transport (CAT) for the OSS subsidized cargo airline Chennault used to smuggle heroin out and wepons in to KMT controlled areas. After the Chiangs fled to Taiwan, CAT became Air America.

Pawley didn’t pay for the JFK assassination. That’s an oversimplification. You could just as well say that H.L.Hunt and the Murchisons paid for it. Or that Pawley’s pals Meyer Lansky and Santo Trafficante (those intimate friends and backroom financiers of Richard Nixon) financed it. Or that it was financed by Edward Lansdale’s friends Nelson Rockefeller and the Rothschilds. Or Paul Helliwell’s off-the-books black banking network. You’ve done a superlative job of laying out many of the people who colluded, so who paid for it is not especially relevant. The real irony is that when Governor Connelly was hit by a ricochet he yelped, “They’re going to kill ALL of us.” (Meaning: “They’re not just going to kill Jack, as we planned.”)

[Sterling Seagrave]

On page 6 of "Gold Warriors" you explain how John Foster Dulles arranged the signing of the peace treaty that stated “the Allied Powers waive all reparations claims of the Allied Powers and their nationals arising out of any actions taken by Japan”. On page 7 you add that “at the end of the post war occupation, all Japan’s indicted war criminals were set free”. You also mention the role played by John J. McCloy played in these events. Is there any connection with McCloy’s actions in Germany in 1950-51? For example, appointing Reinhard Gehlen as head of the West German Secret Service and the freeing of German industrialists, Alfried Krupp and Friedrich Flick, who had both been convicted of serious war crimes at Nuremberg.

Yes, as we explain in much greater detail later in the book, McCloy was part of the group that used Nazi looted gold and Jap looted gold to set up the Black Eagle Trust and a multitude of slush funds growing out of it. We identify most of these people in our book, and they are essentially the same people you include in your excellent Assassination text. Webster Tarpley and Tony Chaitkin also identify them in THE UNAUTHORIZED BIOGRAPHY OF GEORGE BUSH. And they’ve been identified in other books we list in our bibliography, such as those about the Dulles claque and the Carlisle Group. It’s a network that includes the actual owners of The Fed and The Bank of England, Brown Brothers Harriman, Morgan-Chase, Citibank, Rockefeller Holdings, Bilderbergs, Bohemian Grove, Alpine Lodge, etc. etc. I think of the apex of this group as the Druids. Below them are their servants. People like McCloy, the Dulles Brothers, were just outsiders who became insiders because they had talent and could do the leg work. We added two additional chapters to the trade paperback from Verso, which explains a lot about these networks. We’ve dealt with them in the past in ALL our nine books, in different ways, which means we’ve spent thirty years writing about them in various manifestations. The more we learn, the more interesting it becomes (and the more depressing).

[John Simkin]

Here is a message from an undercover agent who wishes to remain anonymous.

There is a persistent theme that Ed Wilson, Shackley et el somehow are a tight group of conspirators. That is not true if for no other reason than that is not how operatives work. The fact is that rarely do these people ever meet, plan, or work in concert. Safety for them lies in extreme compartmental ism. For example, one operative may know, or can guess, that another is developing an asset, or is "running" an agent. Despite a common mission, the level of trust and mutual cooperation is very low. Most operations that fail in fact are the result of "trust". Safety is best accomplished by operating alone. This means that the "dots" cannot be easily connected.

For example, and I speak from experience, operatives depend on "keys" to prove that they are dealing with who they can trust. These keys can be as simple as a torn in half business card which can only match perfectly with the other half when presented by the proper person. Failure to ask for the "key" from the contact can prove fatal to the mission. Yet, it happens! It is a case of lax, or sloppy habits. (How often do you ask your "wife" to prove who she is?)

It becomes difficult to prove what anyone is doing. In "confessions" or betrayals it is often circumstantial evidence and guesswork. This results in scapegoating or the creation of false trails. But, and this is a big one, when top people are guilty of "sins". you should look at their "support" structure. For example, a journalist "exposes" wrong doing. It's not the journalist we should investigate for the "leak", but the people who benefits by the leak. In a knife fight at the top, the knives are blackmail and counter-betrayals. The fight ends when the price is paid.

Did Ed Wilson supply arms ( a couple of rifles) to the Libyans? Most probably, but where did the payments go, who benefits, who supplied? In Vietnam, who ran Shackley? Obviously the answer ultimately is who "created" a Wilson, or a Chi Chi?" Who had the authority or power to create such a powerful agents? The answer will lead you to people much bigger than Ed. And, why did Ed not defend himself by revealing the things he knew? Can you imagine accepting a lifetime of solitary confinement in prison? Who, or what would be worth that?

It takes a man who understands that when you start rolling up the net, you will be destroying the fabric of our national security.

Perhaps Nixon earned his pardon by silence.

The US Senate is controlled by two men. The chairman of the Judiciary Committee (all legislation must go through that committee) and the chairman of appropriations....for obvious reasons he holds the purse strings and these chairmen have the power to make or break appointments ( i.e. federal judgeship's). During the Vietnam War (and the present Gulf War) who were these men, and who did they serve? Who were their "creatures". You can ask the same questions about Hoover, Helms, Bush, etc.

John, you seek the truth, but it is also compartmentalized. Many people hold pieces of it, it would take a lifetime to put those pieces together. The power people, are another story.

[William Kelly]

Here is a message from an undercover agent who wishes to remain anonymous.

John,

I don't have any problems with anything this guy says except:

Did Ed Wilson supply arms ( a couple of rifles) to the Libyans? Most probably, but where did the payments go, who benefits, who supplied? .......

It was more than a couple of rifles. More like a couple of tons of C4 plastic explosives that have probably killed thousands and are still being used by terrorists all over the world.

Maybe Wilson did it with patriotic motives and on orders, but it wasn't a couple of rifles.

BK

[John Simkin]

Some follow up questions:

(1) “For example, and I speak from experience, operatives depend on "keys" to prove that they are dealing with who they can trust. These keys can be as simple as a torn in half business card which can only match perfectly with the other half when presented by the proper person.”

The heroin traffickers in the Mertz-Marcello-Trafficante group that was busted in 1963 running heroin from Mexico City through Texas also used the torn dollar bill method to identify their conspirators.

According to Antonio Veciana CIA agents used the torn dollar method to identify undercover agents.

When Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested he was found with a torn-in-half box top. Do you think it was possible that he was going meet someone in the movie theater with the other half?

Torn-in-half dollar bills were also found in his apartment. Do you think Oswald was a CIA agent?

(2) “It becomes difficult to prove what anyone is doing. In "confessions" or betrayals it is often circumstantial evidence and guesswork. This results in scapegoating or the creation of false trails. But, and this is a big one, when top people are guilty of "sins". You should look at their "support" structure. For example, a journalist "exposes" wrong doing. It's not the journalist we should investigate for the "leak", but the people who benefits by the leak. In a knife fight at the top, the knives are blackmail and counter-betrayals. The fight ends when the price is paid.”

This is a very good point. I believe the CIA is sometimes behind the discovery of information about agents involved in illegal activities. These agents are nearly always dead and are therefore not in a position to tell their story. This helps to take investigators away from more important agents still alive or senior officials whose reputations they are still protecting. For example, information about David Sanchez Morales can be given up whereas Carl E. Jenkins, who is still alive, is protected.

(3) “Did Ed Wilson supply arms (a couple of rifles) to the Libyans? Most probably, but where did the payments go, who benefits, who supplied?”

Do you really mean “a couple of rifles”? According to the prosecution, it was 42,000 pounds of plastic explosives. As William Kelly has pointed out, Wilson sold “a couple of tons of C4 plastic explosives that have probably killed thousands and are still being used by terrorists all over the world.”

(4) “In Vietnam, who ran Shackley? Obviously the answer ultimately is who "created" a Wilson, or a Chi Chi?" Who had the authority or power to create such powerful agents?”

This is of course the big question. Was Shackley freelancing or did others, higher in the command chain, running the show? Did Shackley use investors for his various illegal activities. For example, according to to Fabian Escalante (The Secret War: CIA Covert Operations Against Cuba, 1959-62), in 1959, Jack Alston Crichton and George H. W. Bush raised funds for the CIA's Operation 40. One would assume that Crichton and Bush got back something in return. We know that by the 1970s Bush was very close to Shackley. Is it possible they were working together in the 1960s?

I am reminded of something Gene Wheaton said in 2002: “Reagan never really was the president. He was the front man. They selected a guy that had charisma, who was popular, and just a good old boy, but they got George Bush in there to actually run the White House. They’d let Ronald Reagan and Nancy out of the closet and let them make a speech and run them up the flagpole and salute them and put them back in the closet while these spooks ran the White House. They made sure that George Bush was the chairman of each of the critical committees involving these covert operations things. One of them was the Vice President’s Task Force On Combating Terrorism. They got Bush in as the head of the vice president’s task force on narcotics, the South Florida Task Force, so that they could place people in DEA and in the Pentagon and in customs to run interference for them in these large-scale international narcotics and movement of narcotics money cases. They got Bush in as the chairman of the committee to deregulate the Savings and Loans in ’83 so they could deregulate the Savings and Loans, so that they would be so loosely structured that they could steal 400, 500 billion dollars of what amounted to the taxpayers’ money out of these Savings and Loans and then bail them out. They got hit twice: they stole the money out of the Savings and Loans, and then they sold the Savings and Loans right back to the same guys, and then the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation - the taxpayers money - paid for bailing out the Savings and Loans that they stole the money from and they ran the whole operation, and Bush was the de facto president even before the ‘88 election when he became president.”

(5) “Who had the authority or power to create such a powerful agents? The answer will lead you to people much bigger than Ed. And, why did Ed not defend himself by revealing the things he knew? Can you imagine accepting a lifetime of solitary confinement in prison? Who, or what would be worth that?”

You cannot get more powerful than George H. W. Bush. Wilson of course hinted that he was covering for more powerful figures than himself. The journalist, Diana Wilson wrote: “I talked to Edwin Wilson after he was arrested, indicted and convicted while he was on appeal and in the Marion Illinois prison. I spoke to Wilson by phone on two occasions because I wanted to write a book because I knew some of his employees who "knew" that his operation was "sanctioned" by the CIA. In the early days of Wilson's imprisonment, he was sure that the CIA would not "abandon him" and that it was only a matter of time when the truth would come out.” Why has he not told the story since his release?

(6) “It takes a man who understands that when you start rolling up the net, you will be destroying the fabric of our national security. Perhaps Nixon earned his pardon by silence.”

I suspect it also worked the other way. The full-truth about Nixon was not revealed as long as he remained silent. For example, Nixon’s role in the destroying of George Wallace and Edward Kennedy’s presidential campaigns. To my mind, Watergate was a result of Nixon threatening to expose the illegal activities of the CIA.

[John Simkin]

The heroin traffickers in the Mertz-Marcello-Trafficante group that was busted in 1963 running heroin from Mexico City through Texas also used the torn dollar bill method to identify their conspirators.

According to Antonio Veciana CIA agents used the torn dollar method to identify undercover agents.

When Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested he was found with a torn-in-half box top. Do you think it was possible that he was going meet someone in the movie theater with the other half?

Torn-in-half dollar bills were also found in his apartment. Do you think Oswald was a CIA agent?

Comment by undercover agent:

These and other keys are used so much and are known by so many people that it no longer raises many suspicions. Oswald was probably taught this method by the KGB in Moscow who as a matter of course always provided (they don't anymore) such keys to even potential assets.

Much more safe methods that don't arouse suspicion are used. GPS addresses are better for drops and meetings as such links are easy to hide. Also, the Internet and uses of sophisticate codes (example: a modern electronic chip the size of a thumbnail carries a much improved "enigma" machine.The entire machine measures less than 2 inches square and a half inch thick. It does require being plugged into a PC keyboard in actual use, but it has it's own display.)

[Ron Ecker]

John,

What is the source about Oswald having the torn box top and torn dollar bills? This is the first I've heard of it.

Ron