Gary Hart

[John Simkin]

Gary Hart is an interesting figure in the JFK investigation. Hart worked as an attorney for the United States Department of Justice from 1964 to 1965. He then became special assistant to the solicitor of the Department of the Interior (1965-1967). Hart then established his own law practice in Denver, Colorado.

Hart managed the campaign of George McGovern to become the party's presidential candidate in 1972. Hart also took charge of McGovern campaign to defeat Richard Nixon. Hart's strategy was disrupted by Nixon's Operation Sandwedge and Operation Gemstone. Hart was unable to convince the American public that the White House was involved in the Watergate break-in and McGovern only carried Massachusetts and the District of Columbia.

Hart was elected to the Senate in 1972. In 1975, Frank Church became the chairman of the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities. Members of this committee included Hart (Colorado), Walter Mondale (Minnesota), Richard Schweiker (Pennsylvania), Philip Hart (Michigan), Howard Barker (Tennessee) and Barry Goldwater (Arizona). This committee investigated alleged abuses of power by the Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Intelligence.

The committee looked at the case of Fred Hampton and discovered that William O'Neal, Hampton's bodyguard, was a FBI agent-provocateur who, days before the raid, had delivered an apartment floor-plan to the Bureau with an "X" marking Hampton's bed. Ballistic evidence showed that most bullets during the raid were aimed at Hampton's bedroom.

Church's committee also discovered that the Central Intelligence Agency and Federal Bureau of Investigation had sent anonymous letters attacking the political beliefs of targets in order to induce their employers to fire them. Similar letters were sent to spouses in an effort to destroy marriages. The committee also documented criminal break-ins, the theft of membership lists and misinformation campaigns aimed at provoking violent attacks against targeted individuals.

One of those people targeted was Martin Luther King. The FBI mailed King a tape recording made from microphones hidden in hotel rooms. The tape was accompanied by a note suggesting that the recording would be released to the public unless King committed suicide.

In September, 1975, a sub-committee made up of Hart and Richard Schweiker was asked to review the performance of the intelligence agencies in the original John F. Kennedy assassination investigation. Hart and Schweiker became very concerned about what they found. On 1st May, 1976, Hart said: "I don't think you can see the things I have seen and sit on it."

When the Final Report of the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations was published in 1976, Hart joined Walter Mondale and Philip Hart to publish an appendix to the report. The three men pointed out that "important portions of the Report had been excised or security grounds". However, they believed that the CIA had "used the classification stamp not for security, but to censor material that would be embarrassing, inconvenient, or likely to provoke an adverse public reaction to CIA activities."

Hart called for a new Senate Committee to look into the events surrounding the assassination of JFK. He said it was necessary to take a closer look at Lee Harvey Oswald and his relationship with the FBI and the CIA. In an interview he gave to the Denver Post Hart said the questions that needed answering included: "Who Oswald really was - who did he know? What affiliation did he have in the Cuban network? Was his public identification with the left-wing a cover for a connection with the anti-Castro right-wing?"

In the interview Hart went on to state that he believed Oswald was probably operating as a double-agent. He thought this was one of the reasons why the FBI and CIA had made "a conscious decision to withhold evidence from the Warren Commission."

In 1985 Hart and William S. Cohen, another member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, published the novel Double Man. According to Bob Woodward: "This is an expertly crafted thriller that is full of many uncomfortable plausibilities. Though clearly labeled fiction, it dances knowledgeably with many old and new ghosts, including the CIA, the KGB, the Kennedy assassination, terrorism, and a range of state secrets. The Double Man has to be taken, minimally, as a grim warning about the intelligence services in our own country and elsewhere."

Hart left the Senate in 1987 in order to concentrate on becoming president in 1988. He soon emerged as the Democratic Party front-runner. However, on 3rd May, 1987, the Miami Herald published a story that suggested that Hart was having a sexual relationship with Donna Rice. Hart's wife supported him claiming that his relationship with Rice was non-sexual. Two days later the Miami Herald obtained a photograph of Hart with Rice abord the Monkey Business. This photograph was subsequently published in the National Enquirer.

A Gallup Poll found that 64% of those surveyed thought the media treatment of Hart was "unfair" whereas 53% believed that marital infidelity had little to do with a president's ability to govern. Despite these views the stories about Rice had badly damaged his campaign. In the New Hampshire primary Hart won only 4% of the votes and soon after announced that he was withdrawing from the race.

As a result of this failure Hart left politics. Is it possible that the CIA was involved in stopping Hart becoming president? The CIA had long-term links with the Miami Herald.

Richard D. Mahoney, Hart's friend and speech writer, wrote the excellent Sons & Brothers about the Kennedy Assassination. Hart is not mentioned in the text but could he have been a source for Mahoney's theory that the CIA and the anti-Castro Cubans in Florida were behind the assassination?

[David Talbot]

This is an extract from an article that appeared in Salon Magazine (15th September, 2004)

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/09/...n/index_np.html

One of the most aggressive investigators on the Church Committee was the young, ambitious Democratic senator from Colorado, Gary Hart, who along with Republican colleague Richard Schweiker, began digging into the swampy murk of southern Florida in the early 1960s. Here was the steamy nursery for plots that drew together CIA saboteurs, Mafia cutthroats, anti-communist Cuban fanatics and the whole array of patriotic zealots who were determined to overthrow the government of Cuba -- the Iraq of its day. "The whole atmosphere at that time was so yeasty," says Hart today. "I don't think anybody, Helms or anybody, had control of the thing. There were people clandestinely meeting people, the Mafia connections, the friendships between the Mafia and CIA agents, and this crazy Cuban exile community. There were more and more layers, and it was honeycombed with bizarre people. I don't think anybody knew everything that was going on. And I think the Kennedys were kind of racing to keep up with it all."

Schweiker's mind was blown by what he and Hart were digging up - there is no other way to describe it. He was a moderate Republican from Pennsylvania and he would be chosen as a vice presidential running mate by Ronald Reagan in 1976 to bolster his challenge against President Jerry Ford. But Schweiker's faith in the American government seemed deeply shaken by his Kennedy probe, which convinced him "the fingerprints of intelligence" were all over Lee Harvey Oswald.

"Dick made a lot of statements inside the committee that were a lot more inflammatory than anything I ever said, in terms of his suspicions about who killed Kennedy," recalls Hart. "He would say, 'This is outrageous, we've got to reopen this.' He was a blowtorch."

Hart too concluded Kennedy was likely killed by a conspiracy, involving some feverish cabal from the swamps of anti-Castro zealotry. And when he ran for president in 1984, Hart says, whenever he was asked about the assassination, "My consistent response was, based on my Church Committee experience, there are sufficient doubts about the case to justify reopening the files of the CIA, particularly in its relationship to the Mafia." This was enough to blow other people's minds, says Hart, including remnants of the Mafia family of Florida godfather Santo Trafficante, who plays a key role in many JFK conspiracy theories. "(Journalist) Sy Hersh told me that he interviewed buddies of Trafficante, including his right-hand man who was still alive when Hersh wrote his book ('The Dark Side of Camelot'). He didn't put this in his book, but when my name came up, the guy laughed, he snorted and said, "We don't think he's any better than the Kennedys." Meaning they were keeping an eye on Hart? "At the very least. This was in the 1980s when I was running for president, saying I would reopen the (Kennedy) investigation. Anybody can draw their own conclusions."

[Dawn Meredith]

Two days later the Miami Herald obtained a photograph of Hart with Rice abord the Monkey Business. This photograph was subsequently published in the National Enquirer.

As a result of this failure Hart left politics. Is it possible that the CIA was involved in stopping Hart becoming president? The CIA had long-term links with the Miami Herald.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

The CIA-controlled press was just merciless toward Hart after the pic of Donna Rice and Hart was published. Years later I read somewhere that Hart believed that it was a frame up.

There has never been a doubt in my mind that he could not be "permitted" to become become president because of what he knew about the assassination of JFK. The Hart-Schweiker Senate sub committee, (under the larger Church Commitee), spent two years investigating JFK's assassination. This lead directly to HSCA. A brilliant video, with much commentary from Richard Schweiker, called "The Killing of President Kennedy" was released. Not sure when, I copied mine from a friend's in the mid 80's.

Clinton also had asked an aid to look into the assassination. Of course Sid Blumenthal, who co-ed. "Government By Gunplay" with Assassination Information Information Bureau's Harvey Yazijian, became a top aid to Bill and Hillary. During

Monica-gate Sid, who was known in the WH as "GK"- (Grassy Knoll)- was called before the Starr-chamber. Perhaps this explains Sid's reluctance to discuss these matters -(JFK assassination)- today. In "Gunplay" Sid has three excellent pieces, the forward" , an article on Cointelpro- (How the FBI tried to destroy the Black Panthers")- and a piece on The Rockerfeller Commission. Sid also did some excellent investigative work on the Itek Corp, in Massachsuetts, detailing its CIA history. (Itek "studied" the Zapruder film) several times, including in 1975 for a Dan Rather/CBS "documentary" (cover-up) of the JFK assassination.

Dawn

[Dixie Dea]

A friend of mine. was invited to a Presidents Prayer Breakfast, about 10 years ago. After he returned, he told me that he ran across Donna Rice, at the Hotel where he was staying. They talked some and ended up having dinner together one night. I laugheed, and ask what she was doing at a Prayer Breakfast! He told me that she was a very nice woman and also quite interesting to talk to. He also told me that she is a devout re-dedicated Christain. Plus she had also helped to set up the Prayer Breakfast that year.

What happened to Donna Rice is that she was raised in a religous family, as she was also. She was an over achiever with a promising future. She went off to college and as happens to many with this background, she got involed with a little faster group then she was use to being with. At some point she was the victim of a date-rape, which grealy upset her. Following depression, she started drinking some with her friends and doing things she had never done before. Later she became involved with a guy that turned out to be a drug dealer and who was busted and sent to prison.

Eventually she found herself at a party in Miami, where she met Gary Hart. After awhile, the party continued on to a boat called the Monkey Business, which Gary Hart had chartered. She and Gary were attracted to each other. But, at that point she didn't realize he was married or actually much about him. However, she did become aware that he was married, before they all left for that overnight boat trip to Bimini. They did become involved and he did tell her that he was married and that he was going to run for President.

Then a so-called friend borrowed some photos of that trip, to show to her boyfriend, but never returned them. Donna discovered much later, they were evidently the ones who had tipped off the Miami Herold. But, the MH wouldn't use the photos with no story....so the media spied on Hart and Rice for the info and then broke with the story.

The couple was able to sell the photos to National Enquirer though.

After the scandal broke, Donna didn't know what to do, so she went back home to So Carolina, to be with her family where she resumed her former religious life.

For a couple of years, Donna was silent. When she finally broke her self-imposed silence she emerged as a leading national spokesperson for the fight against illegal pornography, specifically protecting children.

Today, Doinna is married to a technology executive, Jack Hughes. She is also Director of Marketing and Communications at "Enough Is Enough!", a nonprofit organization dedicated to stopping illegal pornography, assisting victims, and making the Internet safe for children.

___________

Dixie

[John Simkin]

Here is the appendix written by Gary Hart, Walter Mondale and Philip Hart that appeared in the Final Report of the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations (1976):

We fully support the analysis, findings, and recommendations of this Report. If implemented, the recommendations will go far toward providing our nation with an intelligence community that is more effective in protecting this country, more accountable to the American public, and more responsive to our Constitution and our laws. The key to effective implementation of these recommendations is a new intelligence oversight committee with legislative authority.

Committees of Congress have only two sources of power: control over the purse and public disclosure. The Select Committee had no authority of any kind over the purse strings of the intelligence community, only the power of disclosure. The preparation of this volume of the Final Report was a case study in the shortcomings of disclosure as the sole instrument of oversight. Our experience as a Committee graphically demonstrates why legislative authority-in particular the power to authorize appropriations-is essential if a new oversight committee is to handle classified intelligence matters securely and effectively.

In preparing the Report, the Select Committee bent over backwards to ensure that there were no intelligence sources, methods, or other classified material in the text. As a result, important portions of the Report have been excised or significantly abridged. In some cases the changes were clearly justified on security grounds. But in other cases, the CIA, in our view, used the classification stamp not for security, but to censor material that would be embarrassing, inconvenient, or likely to provoke an adverse public reaction to CIA activities.

Some of the so-called security objections of the CIA were so outlandish they were dismissed out of hand. The CIA wanted to delete reference to the Bay of Pigs as a paramilitary operation, they wanted to eliminate any reference to CIA activities in Laos, and they wanted the Committee to excise testimony given in public before the television cameras. But on other more complex issues, the Committee's necessary and proper concern for caution enabled the CIA to use the clearance process to alter the. Report to the point where some of its most important implications are either lost, or obscured in vague language. We shall abide by the Committee's agreement on the facts which are to remain classified. We did what we had to do under the circumstances and the full texts are available to the Senate in classified form. Within those limits, however, we believe it is important to point out those areas in the Final Report which no longer fully reflect the work of the Committee.

For example:

(1) Because of editing for classification reasons, the italicized passages in the Findings and Recommendations obscure the JVO significant policy issues involved. The discussion of the role of U.S. academics in the CIA's clandestine activities has been so diluted that its scope and impact on the American academic institutions is no longer clear. The description of the CIA's clandestine activities within the United States, as well as the extent to which CIA uses its ostensibly overt Domestic Contact Division for such activities, has been modified to the point where the Committee's concern about the CIA's blurring of the line between overt and covert, foreign and domestic activities, has been lost.

(2) Important sections which deal with the problems of "cover" were eliminated. They made clear that for many years the CIA has known and been concerned about its poor cover abroad, and that the Agency's cover problems are not the result of recent congressional investigations of intelligence activities. The deletion of one important passage makes it impossible to explain why unwitting Senate collaboration may be necessary to make effective certain aspects of clandestine activities.

(3) The CIA insisted upon eliminating the actual name of the Vietnamese institute mentioned on page 454, thereby suppressing the extent to which the CIA was able to use that organization to manipulate public and congressional opinion in the United States to support the Viet Nam War.

(4) Although the Committee recommends a much higher standard for undertaking covert actions and a tighter control system, we are unable to report the facts from our indepth covert action case studies in depth which paint a picture of the high political costs and generally meager benefits of covert programs. The final cost of these secret operations is the inability of the American people to debate and decide on the future scope of covert action in a fully informed way.

The fact that the Committee cannot present its complete case to the public on these specific policy issues illustrates the dilemma secrecy poses for our democratic system of checks and balances. If the Select Committee, after due consideration, decided to disclose more information on these issues by itself, the ensuing public debate might well focus on that disclosure rather than on the Committee's recommendations. If the Select Committee asked the full Senate to endorse such disclosure, we would be unfairly asking our colleagues to make judgments on matters unfamiliar to them and which are the Committee's responsibility.

In the field of intelligence, secrecy has eroded the system of checks and balances on which our Constitutional government rests. In our view, the only way this system can be restored is by creating a legislative intelligence oversight committee with the power to authorize appropriations. The experience of this Committee has been that such authority is crucial if the new committee is to be able to find out what the intelligence agencies are doing, and to take action to stop things when necessary without public disclosure. It is the only way to protect legitimate intelligence secrets, yet effectively represent the public and the Congress in intelligence decisions affecting America's international reputation and basic values. A legislative oversight committee with the power to authorize appropriations for intelligence is essential if America is to govern its intelligence agencies with the system of checks and balances mandated by the Constitution.

[John Simkin]

You can find some very cheap copies of Gary Hart's book, Double Man, from here:

http://www.abebooks.co.uk/servlet/SearchRe...n&x=75&sortby=3

[Tim Gratz]

I suspect that it is possible that someone set Hart up with Rice, and that the relationship was then "leaked" by someone who wanted, for whatever reason, to derail his candidacy. It is only a suspicion.

But a single affair ruined Hart's presidency.

Clearly anyone with knowledge of the facts could have ruined JFK's presidency by publishing the fact that he shared a friend with a major Mafia don and that he had an affair with a lady suspected of ties to an Eastern bloc intelligence organization. Or, they could have used their knowledge of those plots to blackmail Kennedy.

Why, then, the assassination?

Several possibilties suggest themselves: (1) the conspirators were unaware of either relationship (but Rosselli and Giancana were aware of Campbell); or (2) the conspirators hated JFK enough they wanted to murder him, not just drive him from office.

[Tim Gratz]

All right, here is the trivia question: who introduced Rice to Hart, and where? Anyone remember?

P.S. Dixie has it wrong, I am quite sure. The party was not in Miami, but there were Miami connections. Hint: there were two Dons involved, but in this case they were not Mafia dons.

Edited August 13, 2005 by Tim Gratz

[John Simkin]

Clearly anyone with knowledge of the facts could have ruined JFK's presidency by publishing the fact that he shared a friend with a major Mafia don and that he had an affair with a lady suspected of ties to an Eastern bloc intelligence organization.  Or, they could have used their knowledge of those plots to blackmail Kennedy.

Why, then, the assassination?

Several possibilties suggest themselves: (1) the conspirators were unaware of either relationship (but Rosselli and Giancana were aware of Campbell); or (2) the conspirators hated JFK enough they wanted to murder him, not just drive him from office.

Politics in the early 1960s was very different to the late 1960s. It was Richard Nixon who really developed the idea of “black propaganda” in American politics (I would have thought you would have remembered that Tim).

Of course lots of journalists knew about JFK’s affairs but they also knew that no newspaper would publish these stories. This includes those newspapers that hated JFK. It was an agreement that held until Nixon. It was an arrangement that suited both parties. The Republicans had not published stories about the sexual activities of F. D. Roosevelt and the Democrats had not written about Dwight Eisenhower. Nor did they write about Nixon’s homosexual relationship with Bebe Rebozo.

Dorothy Kilgallen was a close friend of Florence Smith, who had been having an affair with JFK since 1944. A friend asked her why she did not write an article about JFK’s love life (Kilgallen held right-wing views and was the country’s leading gossip columnist at the time). Kilgallen replied that journalists did not do that kind of thing. Anyway, if they did write such stories, the papers would never print these stories. You should read Seymour Hersh’s book, The Dark Side of Camelot, to see how this worked.

This is why JFK was so reckless with his sexual activities. For example, the FBI had evidence of him making regular visits to Cuba in the 1950s in order to carry on his affair with the ambassador’s wife.

In the 1950s and early 1960s it was information about financial corruption that most worried politicians. People like Lyndon Johnson used this information to blackmail politicians. If the politician did not play ball, the story would be leaked to people like Drew Pearson and Jack Anderson. They would publish stories about corruption but as far as I am aware, they never went with stories about sex.

[Tim Gratz]

But John you did not answer my question: Who introduced Donna to Gary, and at whose party?

John you may be correct about the code of conduct among journalists. So is it your position that even the minions of OM adhered to the unwritten understanding?

[Tim Gratz]

John, it shows how dumb journalists were in the sixties,

Now all journalists realize that sex is sexier than money!

[John Simkin]

But John you did not answer my question:  Who introduced Donna to Gary, and at whose party?

Was it you? I hear she was a Born Again Christian posing as a tart.

John, it shows how dumb journalists were in the sixties,

Now all journalists realize that sex is sexier than money!

Maybe they knew that all the time. Maybe they had different morals then. It was only after a period of Republican rule under Nixon that journalists were completely corrupted by money.

While we are asking questions. What do you think of the posts I have made about your mates Donald Segretti and Karl Rove?

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=4487

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=3812

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=4437

[Tim Gratz]

I shall reply to those tomorrow. "Mates" in the English or Australian sense is true of Karl Rove, "boy genius" "bush's brain" but not of Segretti, as you full well know, John.

I shall give other members time to figure out who introduced Rice to Hart and at whose party. One hint (beside the fact that both had first names of Don) is that the party was a New Years Eve party at Aspen, Colorado.

One other hint (shades of conspiracy!), the host of the party had worked with G. Gordon Liddy.

Edited August 13, 2005 by Tim Gratz

[Tim Gratz]

My bet is Pat will know the answer (probably from memory) to who the two Dons were.

But John you never answered my question: were all the thousands of OM journalists willing to play by the rules and cover up a president's adultery?

Did you know that adultery is grounds for discharge and punishable if done by a military officer?

John, were any of JFK's important political decisions influenced by his sexual activities? If so, did the American public have the right to know this?

[Tim Gratz]

John, you are aware, I assume, that the Church Committee also covered up a very salient fact that MIGHT have played a role in the assassination?