Shanet Clark

Re Dawn:"Thank you Tim for the valient attempts to save this thread." The thread was in poor shape. The KGB probably sent Nosenko over as the top man who had knowledge that he wasn't a double agent. When I say triple agent, this is not that far from Oswald's profile. He went over (or was he pushed) in 1959. He stays in USSR until 1962 and then eases back into the US. With both sides watching (military veteran defectors to Cold War antagonist states) then if Oswald went looking for Kostikov in Mexico City, that was a the approach of a triple agent. This alone, along with the Cubella alert, the Kostikov alert, show that the KGB had some level of knowledge, but no we shouldn't just stop and say "the Russkies" and shrug...no. More interesting than the Aristotle Onassis theme is the Pappas Nixon theme, concerning long running corrupt US Greek activities. The general situation concerning Cuba and the mercenary turncoat forces lead to a cursory look at the KGB. Is this what a speculative Maxwell Taylor or an alleged Edwin Walker would want you to think. The CIA was responding, apparently, less than initiating. Dawn: Please don't cruelly reduce Jay Epstein to "disinfo" While his conclusions are often conventional, and he takes much of the record on its face, his analysis of Nosenko and George DeMorenschidt points to the theories expressed in the FORUM. He simply takes a very thought provoking but highly defensible line and lets theorists do what they will. For example, Epstein takes the Mexico City visits at face value. The US intercepted telephone or room mikes where Oswald was in the Cuban and Russian embassies. How is that disinfo, that is totally damning information? Oswald looking through Mexico City embassies for thirteenth section men like KOSTIKOV and NOSENKO. The photos show someone else, the tapes that generated the reports are lost, what else is Epstein to say. His counter defector is inside Cuban and Soviet Western Hemisphere embassies. It is a disappointment to follow Epstein too closely, but he is accurate and insightful, and certainly undeserving of the reductive charge.....

THERE WAS NO LINKAGE BETWEEN IRAQ AND ATTA ie 9/11! Glad you pointed that out, I said Powell should have resigned when Bush improperly linked the World Trade Center event to Saddam Hussien's Iraq. Powell not only counseled 'enough forces to do the job' and a 'clear exit strategy' he stated that the strategic importance needed to rise to a standard high enough to establish true national and international support and command consensus. The righties called this the Vietnam Syndrome and looked for ways to flex their muscle without the Soviet Union, they thought 1991 was a good time to push up the Assyrian Desert highlands above Basra, Mosul and Baghdad. Powell took the GOP false statesman's honors and lost his potentially greater Powell Doctrine legacy when he stayed in too long, and was so used in front of the UN. Shanet: Firstly, as a Vietnam-era thinker, I would state my understanding of, and support for the Powell Doctrine as being the use of overwhelming force to guarantee success coupled with a clear exit strategy. I don't know that the political evaluation of threat level was a factor in his strictly military precepts. Secondly, to allude to a "linkage between Iraq and Mohammed Atta" supports the Bush disinformation used to link 9/11 with Iraq. Is that really what you meant to imply? Atta was an agent for the Saudis, who are strangely very aligned with Israel against Islamic fundamentalism [as was our former bulwark: Saddam Hussein]. The ultimate danger, a nuclear fundamentalist Islamic state, is just one heartbeat away in Pakistan. 9/11 has destabilized the entire region to a degree that has been barely glimpsed thus far. We are looking ahead at some serious trouble, just the way our own fundamentalists like it: perpetual war against the heathens, with an ungodly proportion of our GDP devoted to the military. Tim <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I believe that this "incapacity" framework goes a long way to explain how very high level men who, I'm sure, considered themselves honorable and patriotic, might have rationalized such a sanction to themselves. RE tim carroll/ Thanks for the supporting angle. This rationalization wasn't enough exculpation for the principals (as long as it was classified, top secret indictment and only another deniable motivation). The 25th amendment, due to its text and timing, explains, sheds light, exonerates and implicates these otherwise honorable and patriotic men mentioned in the Warren Commission and subsequent House investigations. It is no light thing to charge the head of the Joint Chiefs or the Deputy Director of the CIA, or the Vice-Presidents and Treasury Secretaries of 1959-1969 with nefarious malfeasance and criminal conspiracy. Unfitness, chronic incapacity for office, these are the quiet charges used to undermine an administration and rationalize a change in the 1963 commander in chief. The frenzy for taping, and extortion, and damaging compromising information (In God's Name 1979) defined the period from 1954 to 1974. The aspects of military coup surrounding Edwin Walker, the 1963 Secret Service and Maxwell Taylor tend to offer a super-ordinate cause, above the CIA activities in Cuba and the South. The act of sending a nominal ABORT TEAM to observe and show some self- protecting foreknowledge, and non-cooperation, on the part of the CIA --This may be the best way of understanding Tosh's evidence concerning WM HARVEY and TRACY BARNES in the November 1963 JM/WAVE observation team out of the CIA. Gerald Ford's "slip" strongly supports this view. And you can bet an arlington coup could cover up its autopsy at Bethesda. Was Lyndon Johnson, Justice Warren and the authors of the 25th amendment covering up a military coup d'etat ?

Jackie was waiting to use the bathroom one evening at Hyannis. Ted Kennedy, who had been toasting, went first, then Tip O'Neill who wasn't feeling well, then Kitty Dukakis, who cut in line. The next morning Jackie ran hot water heater taps to all her toilets.

I haven't read the long post yet (sorry Jim-I will) but I see Jim Root's logic immediately. Two points stand out. Highly, highly classified debates over Army versus Civilian (Nasa) control of high tech satellites, a line of contested authority between New Frontier Camelot types and hardline Cold War military spy activists. Two, after the good 1960 launches of th4e satellites the U2 was no longer a needed US tool, its risks and escalatory power were now overwhelming its observation platform performance potential. But it could still be used for a BlackOp to destabilize the Geneva Convention between Kruschev and Eisenhower. Military CI had a guy named Oswald in Atsugi who was someone the US Army CI could send over, task him with a leak from where he worked on U2 radar, so that the U2 would be vulnerable. With the satellites doing the heavy lifting, the U2 and Gary Powers could be used for a darker mission. Ed Walker, Taylor's trusted extremist, takes Oswald through a quick debriefing and egress from Finland/ingress to USSR with U2 grounding plans. This is plausible, but how well supported? Dulles has same idea, shorts the U2 fuel, so Powers runs out of fuel, in close flak. With classification the way it is -- this is a reasonable scenario of what is unavailable to historians.

I am from West BY GOD Virginia and I come from a land of fragrant foliage, big black bears, cold mountains and warm river plains, wild, wonderful WEST VIRGINIA. I escaped the MOONSHINERS, HILLBILLYS and VIETNAM VETS growing various crops, corn, squash, beans, pigs, chickens and apples. I moved to Georgia where there is RED DIRT and NASCAR and PEANUTS and COTTON. PECAN TREES and a long rugged Atlantic Coastline. Someday I Will live in VIRGINIA, in the GREAT VALLEY, between the BLUE RIDGE and the HIGH ALLEGHENIES. Until then I live in a suburb of a big city in a ranch house on five acres behind a Kroger..................

The Powell Doctrine was the policy of curbing U.S. incursions oversees unless the threat was more substantial...this directly opposed the Imperial expansiveness of the Halliburton and Texas Dynasty wing of the Council of Foreign Relations. I believe Bush Jr. had to go considerabley against fact and the public will to build up the war initiative. The costs are staggering. As a wag put it. "The pentagon gets a billion dollars a day for the last fifteen years, and it needs another trillion to take Iraq?" Senator Robert Byrd from West Virginia opposed the Iraqui expedition on long range historical grounds of American imperialism and watering down the international consensus against persuing aggressive war without more dire and imminent threat than Iraq showed us. Byrd was this week one of two Senators to vote against the new National Intelligence Director reform bill. Doesn't trust Bush. He saw the culture of US intelligence further twisted by the blithe effort to supply the 'facts' about Saddam which were not facts at all but only the opinion of the hawks around Bush. Colin Powell was not a typical New Deal coalition southern black man, he was raised by Jamaicans and he was a competent Post Vietnam military advisor and joint chief officer. I feel sorry for his realizations, his finding out the truth about the dignity of the Secretary of State among his peers. You only really know the Power of the Pentagon when you leave it and look back from the State Department: a portfolio eroded by the current and future system. If he had resigned at the first whiff of linkage between Iraq and Mohammad Atta; then the Powell Doctrine and his legacy in history would stand far higher in status.

For example: Lt. Gen. Marshall Carter (Class of 31) Deputy Director of the CIA 62 - 65, Director of NSA 65 - 69 ........Jim Root That's what I was getting at, an old West Point tie with some people structurally linked to Maxwell Taylor and this theory. As Deputy Director of Plans, Marshall Carter was in a perfect position to apply containment to the agency, protect the brass with plausible deniability, and sanitize things in tandem with the Taylor effort. Moving up to NSA for the balance of the 1960's is again seen against the backdrop od the 25th amendment, the Warren Commission, COINTELPRO And VIetnam. Marshall Carter was a protege of George Marshall and was in the perfect position to participate in the clearance review and executive sanction witnessed in Dallas in late 1963.

Ted Kennedy, Tip O'Neil and Kitty Dukakis all told me!

January Jones has stated, in a rather reduced way, the GREEK TYCOON theory. In the masculine world of the mediterranean, to the victor go the arms and the woman. International Oil shipping and new Pentagon contracts joined the Greek to the ,,,,, I guess there isn't much more to the ARISTOTLE ONASSIS theory. Except that Jaquie married the guy and WHAT WAS THAT ALL ABOUT? Tim Carroll: this will make you L O L : Jackie Kennedy Onassis ran hot water to her toilets! Now that is class!

Very Interesting. They were looking for negligence on Liddy's part. That's the Maxie Wells story, I thought it odd that a politically high powered woman would seek protection as someone "not a public figure" and I really believe Liddy's winning in court here is a victory for freedom of the press and freedom of expression....I am not sure their was a trickbook, let alone a trickbook with xx xxxx's name in it in the desk... Its funny that the Washington Post is so angry that a theory can't be bottled up with lawsuits. Tim---- Of Course Alexander Butterfield, an Air Force man, gave up the tapes, he was the wireman for the Oval Office: but, #### #### the President's Counsel, suggested in his testimony that he began to believe that the Oval Office was being recorded and told Sam Dash "yes I think NIxon recording the Oval Office" Here is Liddy's summary of the outcome of the defamation suit by Ida Maxwell Wells: "In 1999, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled that there was sufficient evidence in the Wells case to warrant a jury trial. After a long trial in the United States District Court in Boston, the jury, on 1 February 2001, hung, split 7 to 2 in my favor, and Judge Motz granted judgment for me as a matter of law on the grounds that no 'reasonable jury' could have found that I 'had been negligent in making the allegedly defamatory remarks upon which Wells's suit was based" (p. 199). Liddy also notes that the Washington Post "erupted in editorial fury" over this on February 4, given "its huge investment in the bogus Woodward and Bernstein theory of Watergate." Quoting from the Post: "The secretary, Ida Wells, is now a community college teacher in Louisiana and was understandably offended by the implication that she was somehow involved in a call girl ring. . . . (T)he majority of jurors felt that Ms. Wells's lawyers had failed to prove (Liddy's) theory wrong. They found this in spite of the fact that Mr. Liddy relies, for his theory, on a disbarred attorney with a history of mental illness. The call girl theory 'is possible,' one juror told Post staff writer Manuel Roig-Franzia. 'It sure makes me more cautious.' 'We'll never know' what happened, said another" (p. 200). Ron <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

QUOTING RON ECKER There's a good summary of Watergate in the appendix ("The Key to Watergate") of Liddy's book When I Was a Kid, This Was Still a Free Country. He means "key" literally, as the key found on Watergate burglar Martinez fit one desk, that of the secretary who kept the photos of prostitutes to be shown to out-of-town guests. A compromising photo therein of Dean's fiance was what the burglars were after. Liddy, who gives credit to the book Silent Coup, is thus convinced that Dean was behind the burglary, and that Dean betrayed his client Nixon "to save his own worthless skin." The secretary sued Liddy for defamation when he portrayed her in public appearances as a procurer of prostitutes for men who visited the DNC. The secretary lost the case. At the conclusion of the book, Liddy says, "It has taken ten years and the expenditure of great energy and treasure to crush the Watergate rat, John Dean. It is personally gratifying, of course." UNQUOTE Great post. The secretary lost? I guess I haven't looked at the case since it was in court. The historians at the major quarterlies take the theory very seriously. The trickbook gives the burglary effort a focus. The efforts of #### to heap responsibility falsely onto Haldeman shows a very cagy guy, Nixon's lawyer, #### #### also was the first to suspect that Nixon was taping the Oval Office and the Phones, and revealed this to the Senate Committee on national television. xx xxxx sat behind him on televisions across America. About those tapes: Nixon says he made them and kept them for his own protection, that they were to be useful in exonerating him. Now regardless of how delusional that is, the motivation may be linked to the wiretapping of Kennedy, the file that was developed and the incapacity invoked. Nixon tape recorded his behavior to protect himself, but from what?

Well, yes, indeed, the little war in Afghanistan; universally hailed in light of the taliban ar-queada connection, a good place to stop, afganistan. I am more concerned with the rush to judgment in Iraq, a poorly planned rushed effort, built on scare tactics, brinksmanship and triumphalism. Many moderates in the US and abroad, especially the U.K. laborites, feel very ill used by Mr. Bush and the Neocon policy group Cheney, Wolfowitz, Perle and Rumsfeld. Mr Powell and Mr. Tenet are interesting cases, under-utilized, overwhelmed. Mr Powell should have quit rather than go to the UN on the "BS he placed in evidence on the Weapons of Mass Destruction. They didn't want to not find them and the didn't not find them until it was too late (Alabama colloquialism) Mr. Powell's Doctrine would have endured as a real policy rule if he had quit and led resistance to initiated war with Iraq. The no fly zones and the lack of WMDs mark the policy that was working, not perfect, but very constraining to Saddam. I have seen no evidence military intelligence is in the Afghanistan drug trade, except for the deductive conclusions or recent past history. The increased market of opium commodity in an occupied country under our protectorate is disturbing. The warlords are distubing, as our allies and leaders in tow. The mujahadeen that metamorphasized into so many terrorist orgs and cells and armies and pressure groups, the CIA's trained paramilitary freedom fighters opposed to Soviet invasions, these are disturbing, as the new face of evil worldwide, the great enemy is our own duckling offspring. Irag is a global chesspiece in the Middle East, the land equivalent to the Iran of the Shah...the neocons wanted the status quo ante Carter and they went for the weak link in the area, Saddam Hussein. The Shah, Nasser, Khadafi and Hussein participated in the oil price hike of the 1970s and all but the shah were militant baathists, our intrinsic interests intersected because of oil and long time Turkish, Austro-Hungarian and Russian interests in the Gulf and eastern Mediterranean Black Sea area. The Suez in 1956 and all that. Mr. Bush abandoned the peace process in the Middle East by declaring for Ariel Sharon in toto. By waging a pre-emptive war on false premises, Bush now has built the precedent into the existing system. Whats to stop a pre-emptive strike of (example country) against (example #2 country)?? In 1967 and 1973 Israel had some reason to pre-empt the Syrian Egyptian Empires moves across the Jordan and up the Sinai peninsula. But the pre-emptive war that brought Israel the angry west bank and lebanese, egyptian and jordanian zones, Mr. Bush has in spades, at a great cost, for little reason. Mr Bush has his own West Bank type problem now , which he didn't have before. WWMD?

Not just Cuba. The proposal that the KGB was involved does reflect poorly on the CIA, in general terms and especially in light of false programs like the Atsugi station experiments and known counter intelligence purges. Col Rawson, buck pearsall's buddy ie ROSELLI was up to his eyeballs in a "veritable murder incorporated" down there. So the emphasis that drives the agency's bad work in the caribean leaves you with these known american and cuban institutional and organized crime figures, gunrunners, typically. And that scenario fits, but a larger yoke may lay with the military coup, the incapacity, the military agencies, theoretically, I think we go there because it was hidden and the organized crime theories have sunk in but havent't satisfied us. Those gentlemen you named were involved.

Tim's questions and my responses in all caps --- I'm yelling at Tim: It is a huge, and probably mistaken leap, to buy into the story of "General Ed Walker's attempted murder by Oswald." The record shows no such thing, until after Marina got worked over. The entire story, and the lack of supporting evidence, fails the smell test. If only she could trust that this is a nation of laws and justice, and that she could feel free to speak openly. RIGHT, THE THING IS A PUT UP JOB OSWALD EITHER DIDN'T DO OR MAYBE DID IT UNDER ORDERS BUT IT LOOKS LIKE A FAKE FRAME TO PIN THE LONE NUT THING ON OSWALD--MARINA'S TESTIMONY IS WORTHLESS TO ME, WHE WAS VERY SCARED AND VERY COACHED Shanet: If you find the idea that Taylor and Walker were running Oswald, what would be your answers to the following questions? What was the 1927 Taylor-Walker connection? cOULD BE SOMETHING THERE, I DON'T KNOW THEIR BIOS THAT WELL Do you believe the U-2 "downing" resulted from information passed to the Soviets by Oswald? POSSIBLY, ITS NOT OUT OF THE QUESTION, ITS THE KIND OF THING THAT COMES UP WHEN YOU HAVE DEFECTORS, U2S, RADAR AND MK-ULTRA, IT IS A PLAUSIBLE COUNTER INTELLIGENCE SCENARIO THAT OSWALD WAS TURNED BY THE RUSSIANS. HE WORKED ON U2 STUFF AND DEFECTED OVER, SO WHO KNOWS MOTIVATION? Do you believe that the U-2 was downed by the Soviets at all? (In other words, was there a SAM involved?) GOOD QUESTION, A HIT WAS A KILL AT 90,000 ALTITUDE, SO I THINK IT IS POSSIBLE HIS HYDROGEN FUEL WAS SHORTED AND HE STARTED COASTING DOWN. HE WOULD CLAIM HE WAS HIT OF COURSE. BUT WAS HE HIT, I DOUBT IT, WAS HE SET UP TO BREAK THE SUMMIT, YES, THAT IS A VERY REASONABLE COUNTER INTELLIGENCE AND BRINKSMANSHIP APPROACH. Do you believe, electorally, that there is any foundation for the statement, "As a result of the U-2 incident Kennedy is elected President?" NO, I DON'T THINK JFK HAD ANY BIG PART OF THE MOTIVATION OR WAS IT FORESEEN HE WOULD BENEFIT, NOR WAS IT KEY TO 1960 ELECTION, THE U2. Do you believe that then-Senator Kennedy conspired with Taylor on the "U-2 downing" and that Taylor's appointment as Chairman of the JCS was a "reward" for said "downing" in 1960 "during the campaign?" JIM HAS BEEN PRETTY STRONG OVERALL, BUT I TOO HAVE TROUBLE WITH ALL THIS. OSWALD AS A PUT UP DOUBLE AGENT AND DISPOSABLE COMMUNIST PATSY, NONE OF THAT IS CLOSELY LINKED TO GARY POWERS, EXCEPT MAYBE THAT HE GAVE UP THE RADIO SECRETS--THATS WHAT THE MAPS OF MINSK INDICATE, THAT HE WAS GIVEN THEM CHAPTER AND VERSE ON THE RADAR CAPACITY---BUT NO I DONT THINK KENNEDY GAVE TAYLOR ANYTHING OF A POLITICAL NATURE FOR THE DIRTY TRICK OF BRINGING DOWN POWERS U2.... Do you believe that Taylor, because he "knows where Oswald is working," directed "the motorcade past that point?" LIKE TO SEE MORE ON THIS AS WELL, JIM IS CERTAINLY SUGGESTING THIS OPERATIONAL STUFF IS STEMMING FROM TAYLOR If "Oswald is a 'patsy' because he went to Russia," what was Oswald doing working out of Banister's offices in New Orleans? WORKING BOTH SIDES, NEVER LEFT THE ONI, TURNED BUT PRETENDS TO BE NOT TURNED, WHO KNOWS, BUT HE IS THERE, A OP/PROGRAM The defection hardly explains who Alek Hidell was, or why he mail-ordered a useless rifle readily obtainable in Texas with no evidence trail. FOLLOWING ORDERS If Walker was such a protege of Taylor's, why was Walker doing anything so transparent and problematic as propagandizing troops in Germany against Kennedy during that administration? ALLIES, WALKER WAS UNDENIABLY THE ECCENTRIC AND LOUD ONE And what purpose would Taylor have in that? What conspiratorial purpose was served by Walker's incitement to riot at 'Ole Miss and his resultant commitment to a mental institution? Is there any evidence of the Taylor-Walker link subsequent to the presidential assassination from any statement ever made by Walker, or anywhere else, for that matter? GOOD POINTS BUT WE REALLY DO HAVE TO REASON BACK FROM THE FRAME THAT SETTLED ON OSWALD, LARGELY BECAUSE OF THE WALKER EVENT. AN ARMY SPY CHIEF AND STAFF CHIEF COULD DO THINGS A CIA DI WOULD NEVER DREAM OF. THE WHOLE POINT OF THE ASCENT OF THE MIL/IND COMPLEX IS THAT THE CLOSED AND CLASSIFIED PERPETUAL WARTIME POWERS OVER INTELLIGENCE REMAIN EIGHTY PERCENT IN THE HANDS OF MILITARY. RUNAWAY CORPORATE MILITARY FIGURES, DEFENSE CONGLOMERATED INCREASE IN EARNINGS WAY BEYOND ANY PRIVATE FIRM. REVOLVING DOOR BETWEEN GENERALS ADMIRALS AND CEO/CFO AT THE PENTAGON AND AEROSPACE INDUSTRY......MORE LATER//////

That would link up to the Maxwell Taylor and Edwin Walker scheme Jim Root has been laying out, and my incapacity of JFK rationalization. Was Lyndon Johnson covering up a military coup?

"Carters Executive Order 12036 January 1978: A Window into Chronic Structural Problems Within the US Intelligence COmmunity" By Shanet Clark 2004 This piece addresses U.S. political history as it relates to late twentieth century intelligence reform. Based on a wide reading of legitimate secondary intelligence sources and primary documents from the Carter Library (and many from the Ford Library) it uses Executive Order 12036 as a case study in incomplete and limited intelligence agency structural reforms. See Porter Goss thread for long post on new intelligence director political issues. {{{{plugging my own post since IVE got attachments posted....& good night}}}

Well, Jim I can only speculate here. Mr. Hurt may have been Mr. Hunt. Mr. Hunt was the future Watergate burglar and Ian Fleming wannabe, Howard Hunt had the unusual position of chief of domestic station WH for the agency in 1963, Mexico City, WH agent in charge of domestic sanctions, supposedly. He retired in 1970, went a little too public and rode the whole Watergate mess to infamy. He may be Mr. Hurt. I believe this is called the Raleigh Call. It may well have been to his classified agency case officer, but we don't know. I don't think he was calling the "Elephant Man" Hollywood actor John Hurt. '.'.'.'.'.' Jim THE Social relations of Walker and Taylor and others, do you know of any West Point or VMI relationships that would shed light on this SEVEN DAYS IN MAY scenario. ?

The activities of the counter-intelligence Cold War spy trade, as acted out by characters like Oswald and Nosenko, Whitaker Chambers and Buy Burgess, makes it perfectly imcumbent on us that we consider that the KGB did in fact do it. If Oswald was a crazy COmmunist from Minsk, the dark secret of the null hyposthesis is that the KGB did it. Counter Defection and the Thirteenth Section of Comrade Nosenko make the theory plausible. E. Jay Epstein holds Oswald's visit to the Mexico City Russian and Cuban Embassies in the weeks before the assassination to have been credible. Oswald was apparently telling the Russians and Cubans something, or trying to get permission to do something. We don't know. It may have been faked. Perhaps the Cubans and Russians only dealt with the authentic Oswald, and did (say he slipped in without going on camera) and the bad photos (see thread) were smoke thrown up by agencies to say "ah, someone else" When Oswald was igniting the WH flap of all time, his KGB contact he was looking for was VALERY VLADIMIROVICH KOSTIKOV. People like Oswald were a thin membrane, an interface, they lived in both worlds and were trusted by neither. By raising the stakes they covered their tracks.

Great thread. I have become very swayed by Jim Root's evidence. The Brinksmanship of Oswald. It smacks of a spychief beyond anything the civilian agency could conjure up. Thank you Jim for posting the relevant Pentagon Papers passages. I think many of us formed our initial impression of Maxwell Taylor from these texts. He replaced Henry Cabot Lodge as ambassador to Saigon in 1964, and many have puzzled over that...the role of Maxwell Taylor in melding the civilian agencies with the military agencies is well known. When General Ed Walker's attempted murder by Oswald is taken into account, the Taylor/Walker/Oswald approach rises to the top. I ask how Oswald could have been expressed into and out of the USSR without something like this Walker scenario to assist. Even is Oswald was a totally free agent defector (which is almost impossible) both sides would have marked him as a US originated asset. It would have been very logical for the KGB to assume Oswald was a US false defector reporting back to the Pentagon. After he came back to Texas it would have been just as logical for the US to see him as a product of two years of Soviet brainwashing. Brinksmanship on the order of the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis called for the use of a false man, a man who could be quickly branded a disloyal American communist, but on closer inspection would end curiosity. To frame a counter-intelligence 'false man' who may or may not have been a Kremlin agent.... What evidence is their that Oswald was supplying news to the Russians in Atsugi? Shanet Was Lyndon covering up a military coup? "Serendipity" glimpses the world of security classifications and clearances for cabinet level executives, including the President, the concept of clinical instability, and unfit incapacity, where an Army chief called the elected President a "weak sister," blackmail, electronic eavesdropping and brinksmanship. .

Great post, Tim. The intertwining is the problem. The shroud of wartime secrecy that the commander in chief can conjure up is a stiff blinder, and the only thing I will say is that this news today shows the end of the stalking horse strategy. Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld have played the Joints' opposition for all its worth, and the stalking Horse in the House, Hastert and the Armed Forces Committee and the Appropriation Committee heads have run out of steam. The political damage of continuing is too great, the dodge has ended. I predicted this in my May Intelligence piece, solicited work. The structures are changing. The National Security Adviser and the Secretary of State, with the Vice President and President, the old four man oversight for the CIA and military operations has been enlarged. We have seen the Vice Presidents serve a security portfolio under Mondale and ROckefeller, and the development of investigatory commission norms. That is why Porter Goss was so immediately accepted. As a house oversight figure, was administratively "investigatory" so that was a good thing. Tenet had been a top Congressional staffer, and Goss had the clearances, the familiarity. The Democrats did not want to appear obstructionist...Porter Goss wasn't too far out and the Democrats assented, knowing that a NID was coming and shaking everyone out, including Goss. John Deuch and Stansfield Turner had battled the NSA and Pentagon, Carter allowed Bobbie Ray Inman an Admiral at NSA to hold the Civil Agencies at bay. Here's the big policy secret: Rumsfeld and the Joint Chiefs hold all the cards. CIA and ambassadors are nothin' That is the way it fell after Maxwell Taylor. The 80% of the intelligence budget part means they will drag their feet and use the Armed/Appropriations committees to stall for a weaker civilian Cabinet overseer. "12036 Executive Order January 1978: chronic structural problems in US intelligence" my article on the probem is on the 1970s intel thread. shanet

Bit of a flap, evidently... they are comparing it to Stansfield Turner or the Angleton Purges: There is major news; the gridlock has broken and the House Republicans have dropped their opposition to the new National Intelligence Director. I have very mixed feelings on all this, based on the primary research (see 1970s thread) I posted on the Intelligence reform tradition, some themes and lessons. Foreign Affairs type political history of the late seventies intelligence community reform effort. (Shanet Clark Thread/JFK) Porter Goss, DCI, brought in staffers from his Congressional Committee as top operational managers and started a revolt. CIA is leaking like a sieve, no report stays classified, all bad news, strange days at the information hole. A director of operations and plans, whose name is known, has left and another deputy director of plans , name withheld, a top agent running case officer senior executive, has left. Directorate of Operations and Plans is in a chickenfight with the Director of Central Intelligence, the former congressman Porter Goss from Florida has antagonized everyone with a shake-up. This complicates the process of forcing co-operation onto the Fifteen Agencies, the Big three, FBI, NSA and CIA, will be sharing more. The recent Vanity Fair outlines the extent of the petty feuding between the bureau and the agency. In my May piece I predicted Appropriations and Armed Forces Congressional Committee chairs would join the military to evade civilian control. Oversight. It was against the law for any CIA operative to even be in Iraq, they missed India, Pakistani weapons, and they fired the gay Arabic translators. The record is clear that the National Security Advisor(s), who are supposed to be the National Intelligence Director -- if they would do their jobs, the president has been ill served. Or has a system of checks and balances and fragmented authority helped duplicate civilian representative norms? Either way, the Brezhinski material sheds light on the Pentagon's overwhelming power to dominate civilian control. To concentrate this new power may make for co-operation, but with it, risks. The NID era will end a period of checkerboard fiefdoms in intelligence, when nobody showed the other teams what they had (and I doubt if that is fair, State and Agency shared through the ambassodors, chief of mission and the CIA chiefs of station, among other ways). True, the FBI and CIA relations were bad leading up to september eleventh, but the important questions about future technology competitions are clouded by secrecy. The Colby admissions, Nelson Rockefeller's committee and classified reports, the attempts by Carter to re-charter the 1947 agency system, are in my 1970s thread.

There is major news: the gridlock has broken and the House Republicans dropped their opposition to the new National Intelligence Director. I have very mixed feelings on all this, based on the primary research (see 1970s thread) I posted on the Intelligence reform tradition, some themes and lessons. No one saw fit to publish it so enjoy, its a real free Foreign Affairs type political history of the late seventies intelligence community reform effort. Porter Goss, DCI, brought in staffers from his Congressional Committee as top operational managers and started a revolt. CIA is leaking like a sieve, no report stays classified, all bad news, strange days at the information hole. A director of operations and plans, whose name is known, has left and another deputy director of plans , name withheld, a top agent running case officer senior executive, has left. Repeat the Directorate of Operations and Plans is in a chickenfight with the Director of Intelligence, the congressman Porter Goss from Florida, has antagonized everyone with a shake-up. THis complicates the process of forcing co-operation onto the Fifteen Agencies, the Big three, FBI, NSA and CIA, will be sharing more. The recent Vanity Fair outlines the extent of the petty feuding between the bureau and the agency. It was against the law for any CIA operative to be in Iraq, they missed India, Pakistani weapons, the record is clear that the National Security Advisors, who are supposed to be the National Intelligence Director if they would do their jobs, the Brezhinski material will shed light on the Pentagons overwhelming power to dominate civilian control. To concentrate this new power may make for co-operation, but with it, risks. The NID era will end a period of checkerboard fiefdoms in intelligence, when nobody showed the other teams what they had (and I doubt if that is fair, State and Agency shared through the ambassodors, chief of mission and the CIA chiefs of station, among other ways. True FBI and CIA relations were bad leading up to september eleventh, but the important questions about future technology competitions are clouded by secrecy. The Colby admissions, Nelson Rockefeller's committee and classified reports, the attempts by Carter to re-charter the 1947 agency system, is in my 1970s thread. Here's a true anecdote about the public side of the CIA. In 1979, I was the William Randolph Hearst / United States Senate Scholar --- week in Washington, I was sent to Washington and quite invited into the Federal departments, Foggy Bottom and the CIA: I have been inside the geodesic dome at Langley, and when I was there I asked hard questions about the missing plutonium the CIA climbers had lost in the Himalayas in the 1960's while trying to spy on China. The poor CIA Public Relations agent was stunned speechless, and a more senior officer took the microphone and said that I had "very good sources of information, the Indian government has taken full responsibility for that in a treaty signed in 1967..." No Foggy Bottom job for me, and they never found the Ganges plutonium .... This was all back in High School... goodnight Shanet

The New York Times Needs to Do a Powerful Piece on Oswald. Here's a guy who defects to USSR for two and a half years, was at Atsgui Japan with the MK/Ultra station, studying radiotelemetry. U-2 Northern high altitude radiotelemetry and signals radio communications for U2 countermeasures, stuff lke that. What is most improbable about Mr Oswald is the Easy out, Easy back in. For him, the Cold War US borders were easier than a handstamp nightclub to get in and out of. When Oswald went to Mexico City and visited Nosenko's contemporaries at the 2nd/13th KGB station, was that unusual. His best friend was a Baron with white russian internationalist aristocratic counterintelligence profiles. LH.Oswad leads literally everywhere, to Castro, to US brainwashers, to Soviet brainwashers, and back to David Ferrie, MI, Marine MI, ONI-MI, Central Agency, Dallas underworld, etc... his entire existence is totally improbable, everything from he did 1959-1964 is a big fat OP/PROGRAM. Not 1 chance, not one in five billion that Dallas 11/63 was one individual's ill will. There were really only two shell cartridges found on the 6th floor, two ejected shells and one live round. Magicker and Magicker, that bolt action nut. Shanet

Great summary of the light board transparency silouette process' failings, but those snaps performed their propagandanistic function if not there proper evidentiary role, exposed as fraud. The snaps and the Gen. Ed Walker thing, these are the corners of the frame.