Black Propaganda Ops

[William Kelly]

Black Propaganda Operations affiliated with the Assassination of JFK:

1) A leaflet was distributed to the Florida Cuban community in November, 1963 that warned of an "Act of God" that would put a "Texan in the White House." See: Dealey Plaza an Act of God or Psychowar? thread :

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.ph...=ACTS+OFFF+GODD

2) Lee Harvey Oswald's Fair Play for Cuba Committee activities in New Orleans in the summer of 1963.

3) Oswald's visit to the Cuban and Russian embassies in Mexico City in Sept., 1963.

4) The photographs of Oswald brandishing a rifle and pistol and copies of two leftest but contradictory magazines in his back yard.

5) The last two issues President Kennedy dealt with before leaving the White House for Texas concerned his backchannel negotiations with Fidel Castro at the UN and the discovery of a cache of weapons in Venezuela that appeared to have come from Cuba. The weapons story was later discovered to be over a year old and planted by the CIA to falsely implicate Cuba.

6) Julio Fernandez, one of three anti-Castro Cubans whose boat was financially supported by Clair Booth Luce, called Luce, wife of the publisher of Time-Life on the evening of the assassination to report information on Oswald's activities in New Orleans. Fernandez, a former Cuban publisher, was married to an attorney who worked for Catholic Welfare Services in Miami.

7) In Miami, shortly after the assassination, Dr. Jose Ignorzio, the chief of clinical psychology for the Catholic Welfare Services, contacted the White House to inform the new administration that Oswald had met directly with Cuban ambassador Armas in Mexico.

8) In Mexico City, David Atlee Philips of the CIA debriefed a Nicaraguan intelligence officer, code named "D," who claimed to have seen Oswald take money from a Cuban at the Cuban embassy. [see: Alvarado Story]

9) In New Zealand, U.S.A.F. Col. Fletcher Prouty read complete biographies of Oswald in the local papers hours after the assassination, indicating to him that a bio of Oswald was pre-prepared.

10) Brothers Jerry and James Buchanan, CIA propaganda assets, began promoting the Castro-did-it theme immediately. According to Donald Freed and Jeff Cohen (in Liberation Magazine), the source of the Buchanan's tales was the leader of the CIA supported International Anti-Communist Brigade (IAB). "Back in Miami," they wrote, "a high powered propaganda machine was cranking out stories that Oswald was a Cuban agent…" Sturgis is quoted in the Pampara Beach Sun-Sentinel as saying that Oswald had talked with Cuban G-2 agents and fracassed with IAB members in Miami in 1962.

11) Jack Anderson used Sturgis and mobster John Rosselli to keep the Castro plot propaganda story going well into the 1970s. [see: Anderson Articles ]

12) The same "propaganda machine" was still pumping out the same lines in 1976 when Gaeton Fonzi interviewed Sturgis, who said that he had recently ran into a friend who worked for the "company" who reminded him of an incident he had completely forgotten about. Sturgis suddenly recalled, "that he had heard about a meeting in Havana about two months before the Kennedy assassination. At the meeting there were a number of high-ranking men, including Castro, hs brother Raul, Ramiro Valdez, the chief of Cuban intelligence, Che Guevara and his secretary Tanya, another Cuban officer, an American known as 'El Mexicano,' and,…oh, yea; Jack Ruby. And the meeting dealt with plotting the assassination of President Kennedy."

13) Seith Kantor, a Scripps-Howard News Service Reporter in Dallas during the assassination, couldn't understand why his telephone call records from Parkland Hospital were being withheld because "disclosure would reveal confidential source of information." When Kantor checked his own records he discovered his editor had told him to call another reporter in Florida or some deep background on Oswald. The reporter in Florida had everything on Oswald, FPFCC, Russian defection, New Orleans radio debate, etc., but instead of using it himself, fed it to Kantor. The reporter was Hal "the Spook" Hendrix, who won the Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the Cuban Missile Crisis and earned his nickname when he "reported" on the Dominican Republic Coup on September 24, 1963, the day before it happened. His CIA affiliations became better known when he went to work for ITT in Chile and was found guilty of withholding information from a Congressional committee concerning his role in the Chilean coup.

14) While other major news organizations have been exposed as CIA media assets, such as CBS News, Life Magazine, the North American Newspaper Alliance and the Copley Newspaper chain, the Scripps-Howard News Service (SHNS) stands out not only because of the Kantor-Hendrix connection, but because of the March 12 news report out of Washington.

[see: Complete text of SHNS article ]

An obvious black propaganda operation that stems from NSA intercepts (note that the NSA does not issue press releases), and continues to implicate Castro in not only the assassination of President Kennedy, but in the planning of an assassination on President Reagan. This story is remarkably similar to the one that Sturgis tells [in #12] and includes many of the same conspirators. [see: SHNS Story]. Also please note that two weeks after this obvious piece of black propaganda disinformation was published, President Reagan was shot in front of the Washington Hilton by John Hinkley.

Edited October 8, 2007 by William Kelly

[William Kelly]

THE COMPLETE TEXT OF BLACK PROP OP ITEM #14

Scripps-Howard News Service – By R. H. Boyce. Thursday, March 12, 1981

Washington – The National Security Agency has alerted the CIA, the White House and State Department to a Latin American newspaper report saying Cuban President Fidel Castro is plotting the assassination of President Reagan, Scripps-Howard News Service has learned.

The NSA, which monitors published and broadcast information around the globe, does not makes such "alert" messages available to the press. But SHNS obtained a copy, which was marked "for official use only." It included the text of the newspaper report as well as a garbled message about the news story directed to the head of Castro's controlled news agency, Presna Latina.

Without revealing its sources, the news report, published yesterday in the Caracas, Venezuela, newspaper El Mundo, asserted the assassination plot called for the slaying to be carried out by Illich Ramirez Sancho, an international terrorists known as Carlos the Jackal. Carlos is said to have organized the massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, West Germany, and has been involved in dozens of terrorists acts.

U.S. officials said the NSA's action in alerting the U.S. intelligence community "suggests that while they are not necessarily ready to believe the report of an assassination plot, nevertheless they (NSA) find it at least worthy of looking into."

The Caracas newspaper story said the assassination plan, "was discussed in a meeting of the International Trust of Crime in Cojimar, an exclusive beach club east of Havana, with the participants of Montonero and Tupamaro thugs, Illich Ramirez, Ramiro Valdez, Cuban Police Minister Carlos Rafael Rodriguez and Fidel Castro."

No identification was found of Ramiro Valdez. Montonero "thugs" are terrorists operating primarily in Argentina while Tupumaros thugs operate in Uruguay. The article said Palestine Liberation Organization chief Yasir Arafat also participated in the plan.

Presna Latina (Latin Press) often has been used by Castro for political ends. The Pressa Latina correspondent in Caracas, at 9:47 a.m. EST yesterday, began transmitting the El Mundo article by cable to Prensa Latina headquarters in Havana. NSA monitored it. At the close of the text, Prensa Latina Caracas began adding what appears to be commentary on the El Mundo report. It reads:

"Everything seems to indicate that Fidel Castro is planning the assassination of U.S. President Ronald Reagan in the same way that he previously ordered the assassination of John F. Kennedy and whose participation the high-ranking U.S. government circles hid…"

There the Prensa Latina cable transmission stopped. Had it been ordered broken off by the Venezuela government, say U.S. officials, NSA would have added the words: "transmission interrupted," to show Venezuela's action. There was no such NSA notation. Officials provided no explanation of why the transmission ended in mid-sentence.

END OF STORY

Edited October 8, 2007 by William Kelly

[Ashton Gray]

Bill, your contributions are always well-researched, well-documented, precise, and a joy to read. I'd like to weave into some of what you posted several other events that I believe are relevant, taking things more or less in chronological order rather than the order you posted them in. If you will bear with me, though, I need to lay a little background at the outset that at first blush may seem to be wandering a bit far afield, but I beg your indulgence:

First, I want to establish that CIA's E. Howard Hunt was summoned to CIA headquarters on or about 15 March 1960 from an assignment he had been on in Montevideo, Uruguay. In Hunt's own words, my emphasis added:

...[A] cable signed jointly by Richard Bissell and Tracy Barnes summoned me to headquarters [CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia near Washington, D.C.]. ...As principal assistant to Bissell, Tracy Barnes told me I was needed for a new project, much like the one on which I had worked for him in overthrowing Jacobo Arbenz. My job, Tracy told me, would be essentially the same as my earlier one—

chief of political action

for a project recommended by the National Security Council and just approved by President Eisenhower: to assist Cuban exiles in overthrowing Castro. Representative Cuban leaders were grouping in Florida and New York, and my responsibility would be to organize them into a broadly representative government-in-exile that would, once Castro was disposed of, form a provisional government in Cuba.

—E. Howard Hunt

Undercover: Memoirs of an American Secret Agent

As has been carefully timelined, Hunt ostensibly remained in Washington from about mid-March 1960 through mid-July of 1960—according to his claims (at which time he left with his family and went to Mexico City). But as you will see below, it is a moral certainty that during this four-month period from mid-March to mid-July 1960, Hunt, as chief of political action for the (superficially) anti-Castro CIA operations, had to have been very actively involved with the establishment in Coral Gables, Florida—on the outskirts of Miami—of what soon would become CIA's JM/WAVE in Miami.

This precursor to CIA's infamous JM/WAVE base at Miami was set up at Coral Gables, Florida in May of 1960—after Hunt had been appointed as chief of political action for the Cuban exiles operations. The cover for the Coral Gables installation was that of "a New York career development and placement firm, backstopped by a Department of Defense contract," the front being known as "Clarence A. Depew and Sons." (This is from an official publication of the U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service: "Cold War in South Florida; Historic Resource Study", a resource I heartily recommend.)

A stunning revelation, though, that has emerged only after timelining all of this information is that E. Howard Hunt, in his autobiography, Undercover, lets the cat out of the bag by admitting that his own "project's forward base" was set up during 1960 "in Coral Gables." So the CIA op going under the cover of "Clarence A. Depew and Sons" beginning in May 1960 in Coral Gables, Florida was in fact the "forward base" for E. Howard Hunt's own Cuban exiles project.

In curious coincidence, May 1960 is also the date of the creation of the Frente Revolucionario Democratico (FRD), forerunner of the Cuban Revolutionary Council. Cite: Report by the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA), "Cuban Revolutionary Council: A Concise History".

In yet another curious coincidence, one Carlos Bringuier, a Cuban attorney, left Havana, Cuba on 4 May 1960, traveling to Guatemala. (Of course Bringuier doesn't say why he went to Guatemala, but don't touch that dial...)

Just a few months after both the FRD and "Clarence A. Depew and Sons" had been established in May 1960, Hunt took his family and ostensibly went to Mexico City in mid-July 1960. Now, Hunt's claim is that he was setting up this Cuban "government-in-exile" in Mexico City. It's a damned lie, because he had no "government-in-exile" yet (stay tuned), so Hunt's actual activities there—if he was there—are unknown. But he purportedly stayed in Mexico City "through the summer."

Of course, Hunt very well could have traveled elsewhere in Central America during that summer of 1960—say, oh, maybe to Guatemala. But maybe not. It's an absolute certainty, though, that someone high up in CIA was very busy in Guatemala during that summer, while Hunt ostensibly was in Mexico City, because in August of 1960 the CIA established the Trax base for training Cuban exiles on the plantation of Roberto Alejos Arzu in Guatemala (which, by the way, is where Carlos Bringuier just happened to be at the time). And, after all, let's not lose sight of the fact that E. Howard Hunt was chief of political action for the Cuban exile operations. So, really, it doesn't matter whether he physically was in Guatemala or not; he was involved in the establishment of Trax.

Still can't get enough "coincidences"? Well, how's this for another: during "the summer of 1960"—around this very same time—George and Jeanne De Mohrenschildt got a sudden irresistible urge to go on a walking tour through Mexico to Central America. (They ultimately would end up in Guatemala City at the precise time of the Bay of Pigs invasion in April 1961.)

At the end of the summer of 1960, though, Hunt went to Miami, sending his family back to Washington, D.C. And this brings us to CIA's JM/WAVE.

As for JM/WAVE itself, quoting from the "Cold War in South Florida" source: "[The Coral Gables] facility was later replaced by the much larger and more extensive JMWAVE operation—backstopped as 'Zenith Technical Enterprises'—at the former Richmond Naval Air Station property leased from the University of Miami."

That publication, though, and even the estimable Spartacus history page on JM/WAVE, are silent on when JM/WAVE actually was established. The Spartacus page seems to imply, at least, that it was after the creation of Operation Mongoose, which didn't happen until 4 November 1961, but this would be a very incorrect impression.

The earliest official record of JM/WAVE that I have found so far is September 1960, exhumed from Volume 10 of the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA):

In Miami...investigators interviewed a former career agent for the CIA, who for present purposes will be called Ron Cross. From September 1960 until November 1962, Cross was a case officer at the CIA's JM/WAVE station, the operational base which coordinated the Agency's activities with the anti-Castro exiles.

And E. Howard Hunt, chief of political action for "the anti-Castro exiles" operations, came to Miami at the end of the summer of 1960. That would be right around September 1960, just as the Coral Gables operation was being subsumed by or converted to JM/WAVE:

...[W]e [sic] moved to Miami, my family returning to Washington while Central Cover laundered me, i.e., a new name and consonant documentation, and assigned me a safehouse in Coconut Grove, not far from the project's forward base in Coral Gables. ...As my principal assistant, a Cuban American named Bernard L. ('Macho') Barker was assigned to me."

—E. Howard Hunt

Undercover: Memoirs of an American Secret Agent

* * *

I came to Miami, and of course there were [Cuban] exiles, all anxious to take weapons in hand and charge back [to Cuba]. And the CIA was given the responsibility of a twofold action against Cuba. There was the psychological warfare branch which I headed [propaganda, covert operations], and the paramilitary which oversaw the training [of Cuban exiles] that took place in Guatemala.

My [other] responsibility was to form and manage the future government of Cuba. At that point I formed the Cuban government-in-exile with Manuel Artime.

—E. Howard Hunt

2004 interview with

Slate

magazine

(Note that here Hunt himself, in the inimitable idiocy of such an inveterate xxxx, admits that he didn't form the "Cuban government-in-exile" until after he arrived in Miami, blowing his earlier excuse for supposedly having been in Mexico City all to hell. Another trademark Hunt footbullet.)

Within four months of Hunt's arrival in Miami and the creation of JM/WAVE, Carlos Bringuier came to the United States from Guatemala on Wednesday, 8 February 1961. He arrived in Miami and stayed there for 10 days. JM/WAVE was already a well-established CIA operation in Miami, and E. Howard Hunt was chief of political action for the entire Cuban exile operation. Bringuier never supplied any reason for having stayed in Miami for 10 days when his real destination apparently was New Orleans.

Whatever the reason, Carlos Bringuier left Miami and traveled to New Orleans on Saturday, 18 February 1961. Shortly after arriving in New Orleans, Bringuier started cranking out a rag called Crusada "for the Cubans"—whatever that means. (Of course what it actually means is "for the CIA and E. Howard Hunt.")

With that foundation laid, I will leave this here for the moment and return later with another post in which at least some of the events you listed are laid out in chronological order, interspersed with other events and information relevant to the foregoing.

Ashton

Edited October 8, 2007 by Ashton Gray

[William Kelly]

Ashton,

Many thanks for your kind comments. It's nice to know that there's somebody out there reading my stuff, other than Tim.

Looking forward to Part II of your interesting additions.

BK

[Tim Gratz]

Well, Bill, here I am again.

First, certain of your "fourteen points" are irrelevant unless you can demonstrate that they FALSELY point to Castro. For instance, it is certainly not clearly established that LHO was not in fact a bona fide Castro supporter. So there go points 2 and 3 unless

you have proof the CIA (or someone) was staging Oswald's pro-Castro work.

Your point #4 would certainly demonstrate that if the photos were faked, it was not the result of intelligence sponsorship (which of course would understand the ideological divergence of the two magazines (or was it a newspaper and a magazine)?

Your point #9 has been successfully "debunked". It amazed me to see you raise it yet again.

Re Point #11, the fact that Sturgis and Rosselli were circulating "Castro did it" stories in no way implicates the CIA since there is compelling evidence that Rosselli did it.

Finally, as I have pointed out before, even if an anti-Castro entity deliberately planted a false story about castro in the wake of the assassination, that does not make DP a "black op" unless you can demonstrate that someone else engineered that story.

And now really finally, we know that the KGB and Fabian Escalante planted false stories to blame others for the assassination. Therefore, we can say with certainty that there is no nexus between a false story and complicity in the assassination.

Edited October 9, 2007 by Tim Gratz

[Tim Gratz]

Bill, would you agree that the CIA never attempted to influence the WC to make a determination that Castro did it?

If you agree with that statement, how in this world could DP be a "black Op" operation?

[Tim Gratz]

Daniel, thanks for the question.

One would reasonably assume that any intelligence officer in the 1960s would understand the difference between the international communist conspiracy and trotskyism. Heck, I did and I was only thirteen at the time.

It does raise this issue, however: if the photos were authentic, what message was LHO attempting to send (since he must also have understood the difference, being an avid reader).

I think it also raises the inference that if the photos were faked, the faker did not possess a high degree of political literacy.

[William Kelly]

Well, Bill, here I am again.

First, certain of your "fourteen points" are irrelevant unless you can demonstrate that they FALSELY point to Castro. For instance, it is certainly not clearly established that LHO was not in fact a bona fide Castro supporter. So there go points 2 and 3 unless

you have proof the CIA (or someone) was staging Oswald's pro-Castro work.

Your point #4 would certainly demonstrate that if the photos were faked, it was not the result of intelligence sponsorship (which of course would understand the ideological divergence of the two magazines (or was it a newspaper and a magazine)?

Your point #9 has been successfully "debunked". It amazed me to see you raise it yet again.

Re Point #11, the fact that Sturgis and Rosselli were circulating "Castro did it" stories in no way implicates the CIA since there is compelling evidence that Rosselli did it.

Finally, as I have pointed out before, even if an anti-Castro entity deliberately planted a false story about castro in the wake of the assassination, that does not make DP a "black op" unless you can demonstrate that someone else engineered that story.

And now really finally, we know that the KGB and Fabian Escalante planted false stories to blame others for the assassination. Therefore, we can say with certainty that there is no nexus between a false story and complicity in the assassination.

Well Tim, Since you dissmiss this whole line of reasoning then I trust you will move on to other matters more important to you and leave this thread alone.

Thanks,

BK

[Tim Gratz]

No, sir, Bill. It is not that easy.

I request that you discuss my points seriatim.

For how many of the points that you raise do you have any evidence that it was a "black op"?

And if it was a "black op" why do you suppose it failed so miserably?

And if it was a "black op" why was it in so many cases executed so sloppily, e.g. the backyard photos, the Alvardo story, etc.

Do you admit that no one in the CIA tried to sell a Castro scenario to the WC? Not Dulles; not Helms; not Angleton; not Rocca.

Do you agree (you MUST) that one of the strongest points that could have been raised to support a Castro scenario (that the CIA had sponsored numerous attempts to kill him) had in fact been withheld from the WC by the CIA.

Note this is labeled the "JFK Assassination Debate", not the "JFK Assassination Discussion". In order for it to be a debate, you need summon to challenge your premises and demand proof for your factual allegations.

That should be important. If you cannot support a factual assertion with evidence, it should fail and progress should be made. But if you can support it with ecidence, your point will be that much stronger than a mere assertion.

Now, if it is your position that you have no evidence whatsoever of a sinister hand directing these stories but the exiustence of that hidden direction can be reasonably inferred from the mere existence of all the "Castro myths" jusr say so. We'll still love you.

Finally, do you admit that from almost day one the KGB was secretly funding persons attempting to blame the assassination on internal US forces? If so, why can we not draw inferences from those activities?

Edited October 9, 2007 by Tim Gratz

[Tim Gratz]

Re Mr Gray's post, I think it is not challenged that Hunt was in Havana in July of 1960 and that when he returned he reported to his CIA superiors that Castro had solidified significant support among theCuban populace and that the only way to remove Castro from control in Cuba was to kill him.

It is not coincidental, I submit, that within a month after Hunt's report Bissel was initiating the contacts with the mafia to enlist the mafia in efforts to kill Castro. I think Hunt's assessment may have been the genesis of the CIA/Mafia plots.

[Tim Gratz]

Bill, yet another onservation.

Assume it was Helms and Phillips.

I assume if I were Helms and you were Phillips, and we had the technoligal abilties and resources available that they did, we could have planed an operation to frame Fidel that would be at least 1,000 times better than the one you suggest.

We could have even left Cuban currency in his place.

Forged his signature to open a bank account and put a bunch of money in it.

Used a rifle traceable to the Cuban military.

The list could of course go on and on.

Would you not agree that you and I could have done better?

My conclusion of course is that either the CIA did not do it or they are even bigger fools than I had thought.

Can we agree on that much?

[Ashton Gray]

I think it is not challenged that Hunt was in Havana in July of 1960 and that when he returned he reported to his CIA superiors that Castro had solidified significant support among theCuban populace and that the only way to remove Castro from control in Cuba was to kill him.

You might want to mention to John Simkin that your representation is "not challenged," because the Spartacus bio on Hunt says that Hunt's purported visit to Cuba was "in 1959"—not "in July of 1960."

It is not coincidental, I submit, that within a month after Hunt's report Bissel was initiating the contacts with the mafia to enlist the mafia in efforts to kill Castro.

It's neither coincidental or noncoincidental, since you haven't documented that Hunt was anywhere near Cuba "in July of 1960." If you have any dispositive evidence, posting it would be worth 1,000 forum pages of ruminating theorizing, and would be worth at least 10,000,000,000,000,000 (to the googolplex) forum pages of false or incorrect "information."

Ashton Gray

[William Kelly]

Bill, yet another onservation.

Assume it was Helms and Phillips.

I assume if I were Helms and you were Phillips, and we had the technoligal abilties and resources available that they did, we could have planed an operation to frame Fidel that would be at least 1,000 times better than the one you suggest.

We could have even left Cuban currency in his place.

Forged his signature to open a bank account and put a bunch of money in it.

Used a rifle traceable to the Cuban military.

The list could of course go on and on.

Would you not agree that you and I could have done better?

My conclusion of course is that either the CIA did not do it or they are even bigger fools than I had thought.

Can we agree on that much?

Tim, the black prop op - disinfo ploy to blame the assassination on Cuba/Castro most certainly did fail, as it was directed at US leadership and policy decision makers who recognized it for what it was and did not respond in kind by invading Cuba.

But apparently, as a propaganda item aimed at the public opinion it was successful in convicing you.

I also wish you would stop creating hypothical situations with real people - you did it with Bradley Ayers and Carl Jenkins and now with Helms and Phillips, all real people whose real stories and testimony is significant, and can only be made less so by you attaching fictional attributes to them.

In addition, please don't intimidate Ashton Gray from posting the second part of his interesting EHH chronology.

Thanks, BK

[Ashton Gray]

In addition, please don't intimidate Ashton Gray from posting the second part of his interesting EHH chronology.

Best laugh I've had in months.

Working...

Ashton

[Gene Kelly]

Gentlemen:

I read BK's posts with much interest and respect. I'm not as well versed as you all are, but my study of all that transpired leads to a strong conclusion that disinformation was rampant and evident after Dealey Plaza. Messrs. Hunt and Phillips were well known for this particular skill ... the Mafia, angry Cuban exiles, LHO (as the perennial loner) and even Castro's resources at the time do not hold a candle to the people best equipped to provide this specialized deliverable. The clear and persistent trail of disinformation is oa compelling indicator for me, personally. And the folks who are expert in this specialty seem obvious. - gene kelly