Tim Gratz

Remember the song, Looking For Love in All The Wrong Places? Well, the answer to why there is no record of a phone conference between LBJ and Russell abounbt the 1964 Civil Rights Bill in The Assassinations Tape is simple: it was not about the assassination. Such a phone conference did in fact occur. The conversation is reported at page 44 of Margolis, The Last Innocent Year. LBJ to Russell (re the civil rights bill): "I'm not going to cavil and I'm not going to compromise. I'm going to pass it just as it is. Dick, and if you get in my way, I'm going to run you down. I just want you to know that, because I care for you." The book, Before the Storm, by Rick Perlstein, details the story of the draft Goldwater movement and the Goldwater candidacy. It is highly praised and anyone interested in the politics of the 1960s ought to read it. The book has interesting information on Johnson's advocacy of the civil rights bill: (I have it in paperback; quotes are from Ch 14): "Johnson had hardly returned from the Kennedy funeral when he [decided to make] civil rights his strategic priority--the South in 1964 be damned. He called Martin Luther King and told him: 'I'm going to try to be all of your hopes.' King's head spun; the only times that Kennedy had callled him [presumably while President] were to work him over to fire his one Communist-associated deputy. [source, Bechloss, Taking Charge, p 37]. . . . "When black leaders spoke with the President, they steeled themselves for the inevitable request for this or that compromise. It never came. He told them it would pass 'without a word or a comma changed.'" [source: Branch, Pillar of Fire, p. 180.] . . . The book claims that Republican conservatives may have helped pass the bill in the House expecting it would be watered down under the threat of filibuster. But Johnson was true to his word. The reason why Russell's filibuster did not work is because Johnson, expertly, in his usual style, twisted enough arms to obtain votes sufficient for cloture. The book notes that "clouture" votes rarely succeeded. And goes on: "But then, the Senate had never seen a lobbyist as obstinate as Lyndon Baines Johnson. Getting two-thirds of the senators meant getting four-fifths of the Republicans. 'You're either for civil rights or you're not; you're either for the party of Lincoln or you're not,' [LBJ] told [Republican Senators]." The book also pints out that LBJ pointed out shortly after WWII that black soldiers had served their country well and desreved better treatment. Moreover, Johnson was one of only a few Dixie congressmen who did not sign the 1956 Southern manifesto protesting the Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education. Of course, Johnson was able to pass the civil rights bill in large part due to the good will that came to him as a result of the Kennedy assassination. Ironically, JFK may very well not have been able to pass the civil rights bill had he lived. So, in one sense, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a legacy to his martydom. But LBJ supported the bill and worked so effectively for it, even being willing to "run over" his long-time friend Russell to pass it, because it reflected his long-held beliefs and because he wanted to be considered a great President. So if white racists were behind the assassination, they got what they dam deserved, and our country, and the South, is much better off for it! I do have to add, however, that I consider LBJ's legacy here mixed. There were provisions in his Great Society program that, unintentionally, but tragically, contributed to the break-up of black families, with very unfortunate results for black children, and our society.

I agree, that if my theory is to stand up, that JFK was assassinated because of his change in position on topics such as civil rights, the Cold War and the MICC, then I have to explain why LBJ forced Richard Russell and his fellow racists to accept the 1965 Civil Rights Act. This is even more surprising given LBJ long record of public hostility to civil rights. Caro makes the point that LBJ was able to remove the effectiveness of the 1957 Civil Rights Act. This is why the civil rights activists were so upset when LBJ was selected as JFK's running mate. The fact that LBJ was a racist is not only shown by his political record. It is also supported by information from his friends who claim he was a nasty racist in private (apparently he called his black servants “niggers” in front of people). There is two possible reasons for this action. LBJ was being blackmailed by a liberal in JFK’s government who knew who was responsible for the assassination. This helps to explain why Richard Russell changed his mind on the subject. When the bill was first introduced Russell told the Senate: "We will resist to the bitter end any measure or any movement which would have a tendency to bring about social equality and intermingling and amalgamation of the races in our (Southern) states." Russell organized 18 Southern Democratic senators in filibustering this bill. With the help of conservatives in the Republican Party he would have had no difficulty in blocking the bill. Although in public LBJ and Russell were in great conflict over the civil rights bill, this is not reflected in the taped telephone conversations between the two men. In fact, they appear to be the best of friends and the issue is never raised. On the 15th June, 1964, Russell privately told Mike Mansfield and Hubert Humphrey, the two leading supporters of the Civil Rights Act, that he would bring an end to the filibuster that was blocking the vote on the bill. This resulted in a vote being taken and it was passed by 73 votes to 27. Why did Russell do this? Had he been converted to the issue of civil rights? No. One answer is that both Johnson and Russell were being blackmailed into passing this legislation. There is another possibility. When LBJ signed the 1964 Civil Rights Act he made a prophecy that he was “signing away the south for 50 years”. This proved accurate. In fact, the Democrats have never recovered the vote of the white racists in the Deep South. This is the electorate that now gives its support to the Republican Party. A new alliance has therefore taken place between the white racists, right-wing conservatives and Christian fundamentalists. Maybe that was the long-term objective. It has resulted in the liberals in America losing all political power. Was that the long-term objective of the conspiracy? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Understand again that I was never a fan of LBJ but perhaps, just perhaps, he was not the racist you think he was, despite his use of the "N" word. Consider this quotation from Johnson's biographer Robert Dallek when he appeared on the PBS program Booknotes (September 22, 1991): "I told a lot of unpleasant things about Johnson in this book, but I also see him as a man of great vision and thoughtfulness about what needed to be done to change the South, to improve the condition of the South, to bring the South into the mainstream of American economic and political life. What Johnson wanted to do from very early on in his career -- see this was the impulse that came out of the New Deal. In 1938 there was a famous report issued by the New Deal saying that the South was the country's number one economic problem and that changes had to be made. Johnson saw this. He jumped onto this report and tried to use it as a springboard to help the South. The objective was to take these New Deal programs, to take the federal government largess -- the CCC and the NYA, the PWA, the Rural Electrification Administration, the Tennessee Valley Authority -- and build a new infrastructure in the South, change the condition of the tenant farmers, improve the standard of living of laborers and in that way, help the South's economy and bring it into the mainstream of the country's life. "But there was something else Johnson understood early on, which was that the South couldn't do this fully until it ended racial segregation. He understood that segregation in the South not only segregated the races, but segregated the South from the rest of the nation. So from early in his career, he was thinking about this. Now, this is not to say that Lyndon Johnson got on a soapbox in 1937 or '38 running for Congress and began shouting in Texas, 'Well let's have a civil rights bill that will overcome segregation.' "He was too much the politician to ever do that. What he does is behind the scenes. For example, when he's head of the National Youth Administration, he would occasionally spend the night at a black college. He wanted to see how the programs were working and how they were helping the young black students. If this were known in this era of strict segregation, it would have been severe injury of his chances for running for a congressional office. But it does it out of a kind of compassion, and he's not doing it because New Dealers are so committed to black rights at this time. They're not. The Roosevelt administration was not making great advances at all on the civil rights front. "So Johnson does it out of a genuine compassion, I think, for the suffering of these people. He gets to Congress. One New Deal farm administrator says, In '38 the'Johnson began to raise unshirted hell about the fact that black farmers were getting a smaller share of the pie than the white farmers.' There's the first federal housing act passed, and Johnson's one of the three congressmen that takes advantage of this. He gets public housing for Austin, Texas, and he wants to have public housing built not only for poor whites, but for blacks and Hispanics. He tells the city fathers, 'This is what you've got to do. Let's go for this, and we'll improve the well-being of the poorest people in our city.' So there is a genuine compassion on this man's part." [Emphas supplied.] Or consider these words from Johnson's first State of the Union Address: "Let me make one principle of this administration abundantly clear: All of these increased opportunities -- in employment, in education, in housing, and in every field -- must be open to Americans of every color. As far as the writ of Federal law will run, we must abolish not some, but all racial discrimination. For this is not merely an economic issue, or a social, political, or international issue. It is a moral issue, and it must be met by the passage this session of the bill now pending in the House. "All members of the public should have equal access to facilities open to the public. All members of the public should be equally eligible for Federal benefits that are financed by the public. All members of the public should have an equal chance to vote for public officials and to send their children to good public schools and to contribute their talents to the public good. "Today, Americans of all races stand side by side in Berlin and in Viet Nam. They died side by side in Korea. Surely they can work and eat and travel side by side in their own country." Lyndon Johnson was also, of course, the first president to appoint a black man to the Supreme Court. I respectfully submit that LBJ's unpublicized acts in the thirties and the clear passion of his langauge in his State of the Union demonstrate that he was not the typical Southern Democrat racist. The idea that LBJ was blackmailed into supporting the Civil Rights Act by a liberal who had evidence to link him to the assassination makes little sense. First, where did the liberal get the evidence? Second, why would the liberal decide that rather than immediately bringing the evidence to the attention of the chief law enforcement officer of the United States (who happened to be the victim's brother) or to the Warren Commission he will instead use the evidence he has so quickly acquired to blackmail LBJ into supporting the Civil Rights Act (an act of blackmail that must have occured before LBJ's State of the Union address). Well, unlike most blackmailers, this blackmailer is a man of his word, for not only does he not come forward with his evidence after the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, he does not come forward with it after LBJ is no longer president; in fact, he does not come forward with it even after LBJ is dead. What a man of integrity this blackmailer must have been! Perhaps, after all, there is honor among blackmailers, if not among thieves! Any thoughts on who this blackmailer was? Maybe the blackmailer was in fact behind the assassination; planted the evidence to frame LBJ; and then used the evidence to get LBJ to force passage of the civil rights acts, which was his ultimate motive in the assassination. (No--this is tongue-in-cheek.) If LBJ could kill Kennedy and cover it up, why couldn't he just kill the blackmailer--a fate often met by blackmailers, after all. And it wouldn't even take a presidential commission to cover it up. Again, remember, there is no question in my mind that LBJ was vile, corrupt, uncouth, and maybe even an abuser of dogs. But I do not see him embracing the civil rights legislation out of blackmail. I think he wanted to secure his place in history (which is probably the primary objective of most presidents) and, as Dallek noted, he recognized that if the South was to become an economic power in the United States it would have to end segregation. Lyndon Johnson was right about civil rights.

John, I've enjoyed reading your posts and the Part I about the Lincoln assassination was most interesting and informative. I do not believe, however, that the "white power elite" was the organization behind the JFK assassination. If it was, it consisted of a bunch of dam (sorry--couldn't help it) fools because LBJ probably did more to advance the civil rights movement than JFK ever dreamed of. Take, for instance, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that, I submit, over a number of years did much to reform the South. LBJ's views on civil rights should not have been a big surprise to the "white power elite" since (as so well documented in Caro's book Master of the Senate) LBJ was largely responsible for the passage of the civil rights bill of 1957. Let me make clear that I do not argue that the Southern "white power elite" had nothing to do with the assassination out of any sympathy for these people. Let me digress to add a little personal history. I was a teen-ager in the 1960s and I remember how repulsed I was with the tv pictures of the aggressive police tactics against the civil rights workers. I used to almost hate the deep south because of segregation and its mistreatment of blacks. When I was in high school, my home town had a very small percentage of blacks. I'm quite sure there was only one black family in my high school, and the oldest member of that family was the smartest student in his class. Tremenduous civil rights progress has occured in our country in the last forty years and a large part of the progress is attributable to the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Whatever else may be said (rightly) about him, LBJ must be given credit for that. LBJ once remarked that his support for civil rights would probably cause the Democrats to lose the South forever (words to that effect--I do not recall the exact quote with precision). He was correct. A political realignment did start in the late 1960s with the "Southern strategy" of Richard Nixon. JFK was the last Democrat elected President whose home state was north of the Mason-Dixon line. I was never a fan of LBJ. I read A Texan Looks at Lyndon when it was first published (in 1964. I believe) and I knew he was corrupt. I remember the Bobby Baker and Billie Sol Estes scandals. I dxo not believe LBJ's War on Poverty accomplished much. And we can all agree on how he mishandled the War in Vietnam. But he deserves credit for championing the Voting Rights Act of 1965 even when he realized his party would probably pay a dear price for it. Many historians argue that the good will that LBJ had as a result of the assassination of JFK helped the passage of the Civil Rights Act. It may also be true that only a Southern Democrat was in a position to accomplish the passage of controversial civil rights (just as only a Republican conservative could make the opening to Red China). So if the motive behind the assassination was to preserve the "Southern way of life", the conspirators were a bunch of dam fools!

Ron, Upon further research, I would agree with you that the meeting of the Intelligence Oversight Board was not the sort of meeting at which one would find Williams or Hunt. I found an interestingly descriptive portrayal of the McCone-Helms lunch following the morning's grilling by the Board in Beschloss's Crisis Years, page 672: "The two men and several colleagues took their meal in a small room next to the Director's office that McCone called the 'French Room'.... Furnished with a round table, television, and easy chairs, the chamber was one of a maze of holding rooms designed by Allen Dulles so that visitors who did not wish to encounter one another did not risk doing so. A door flew open. McCone's aide Walter Elder cried out, 'President Kennedy has been shot!'" It would still be interesting to obtain a full roster of those present for the meeting, which cannot be found in Clark Clifford's book. Tim <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Utah Senator Robert Bennett was the CIA corporate frontman for a number of domestic operations through out the twentieth century.... I think McCord signed in there, and Mr Russell left, and their was a team in the hotel across the street, Liddy, Hunt and one other young man (name) [baldwin].... Meanwhile r.bennett and his phony mullen co. is doing known illegal domestic operations with the same characters. The theory that the watergate burglary concerned the prostittuition ring, an ongoing blackmain and political extortion ring? Hane you heard about the trick book, the lawsuit over even naming the woman with the supposed trick book at the democratic state headquarters desk in the mid 1972 may election season. And I am the one who says the theory needs more specifics, and Bennetts realtionship to those mercenaryoutings and madcap commando programs, those plans remained secret. How they interface with the Nixon oval office is not really totally clear. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> The prostitution ring had formerly included Maureen Dean, and Bennett is my candidate for Deep Throat. Tim <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I do not believe Maureen (then unmarried) was ever shown to be a member of the prostitution ring but her room-mate was the madam of the ring. It is the theory of the book Silent Coup that John Dean orchestrated the cover-up in large part to protect Maureen. I ran into a good synopsis of the theory that the CIA deliberately caused the Watergate burglars to be caught. I'll post it tomorrow (need time to relocate it).

I would certainly add Oswald's defection and repatriation, his relations with the White Russian [read Nazi] community, the Paines [bell Hellicopter], sharing a building with Banister [anti-Castro; anything but communist (ABC)], and his destroyed note to the local Dallas FBI. How can anyone easily dismiss all of this? Tim <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Absolutely right. So much information refutes the "lone nut" scenario, but our problem was needing to articulate several good reasons why the WCR was wrong within the space constraints of letters responding to book reviews. One can debate whether every member of the WC was part of a deliberate cover-up but it is interesting how much information was deliberately withheld from the WC. For instance, Helms was asked if the CIA had any information on Ruby and after a long delay he answered (almost, if I recall, on the eve of publication of the WC report) "No" in almost so few words. But of course the CIA had a report that a witness had seen Jack Ruby visiting Trafficante in Castro's prison in 1959. This is just an example I recently noticed. (Of course we all know that the CIA withheld info re its plots to assassinsate Castro.) It would be interesting to put together a paper on how much information, and possible leads, the FBI and CIA withheld from the WC (without even considering deliberate falsification and destruction of evidence). The WC was clearly a "rush to judgment" and I cannot think of a better example than its not waiting a few weeks for the FBI to complete its investigation of the Odio incident--but had the publication been put off, the FBI investigation would have shown that Hall, Howard and Seymour were all denying visiting Odio, which destroyed the WC's "resolution" of the Odio incident as a simple case of mistaken identity.

On October 31, 2004 the New York Times Review of Books printed a review of Max Holland's book "The Assassination Tapes". The review was by Thomas Mallon, author of Mrs. Paine's Garage. In the review, Mallon states that forty years after the publication of the WCR there is still no compelling reason to believe that Oswald was anything other than a lone nut seeking a place in history (words to that effect). My writing colleague Mark Howell sent a reply (on letterhead of the Key West Citizen) discussing the absurdity of that proposition. Due to space considerations, we limited the letter to two incidents we had researched for our 2003 articles: 1) the Odio incident; and 2) the sighting, by the well-respected manager of the Key West Airport, of LHO and Jack Ruby together in the Key West Airport in the summer of 1963. (We consider the airport manager the most credible witness to an Oswald-Ruby association.) We also pointed out, of course, that Oswald's actions after his arrest were inconsistent with a theory that he shot the president to gain fame and notoriety in the history books. As of last Sunday (December 5) the NYT had not published Mark's letter (or any other letter, for that matter) in response to the Mallon review. By looking at other letters published, it is possible they could still publish Mark's letter this coming Sunday, but that would probably be the latest! It will be interesting to see if the Times publishes any protests to Mallon's remarks. I assume his remarks must have generated other replies as well.

Anxiously awaiting your post! I know I got the dam right, and I know from another thread that you believe the "MIC" was behind the assassination. Obviously, Brown and Root (later "Kellogg Brown and Root", I believe), could be considered part of the MIC. With respect to MIC, what about the connection between the Paines and Bell Helicopter? You posted (quite sure it was you) an interview with Bobby Kennedy in which Bobby denied that JFK was going to withdraw from the War in Vietnam. How was JFK threatening the MIC? Are you referring to his speech at American University? As you can tell, a lot of people are awaiting you thoughts on the connection between events in 1865 and the assassination. All I can think of is that the Lincoln assassination was definitely a conspiracy (forget all that nonsense about Lincoln being shot in a Ford (theatre) and Kennedy being shot in a Ford (car), etc. But I know you're getting at something more than the Lincoln assassination, so I for one am waiting for your post!

John, the dam to which you are refering, is, of course, the Mansfield Dam, a dam on the lower Colorado River that was to be built by George and Herman Brown of the Brown and Root Construction Company. The story is told in Caro's The Path To Power. FDR had verbally approved of the dam and the Brown Brothers had sunk $1.5 million into it when it was discovered that the dam site was on Texas land not federal land and construction stopped. Soon after LBJ was first elected to Congress, he interceded with two FDR aides to cut through bureacratic red tape to allow the Bureau of Reclamation to fund the dam. "Of all the things I've ever done," LBJ once wrote, "nothing has ever given me as much satisfaction as bringing power to the hill country of Texas." In May of 1939 George Brown (of the Brown and Root Construction Company) wrote to LBJ: "I hope you know, Lyndon, how I feel in reference to what you have done for me [in securing the approval for the dam project] and I'm going to try to show my appreciation through the years with actions rather than words." The Brown brothers, starting in 1941, helped to fund all of LBJ's campaigns. In 1940 the company constructed the Corpus Christi Naval Air Station, the first of several big war projects. After the war, it continued to construct US air and naval bases in France, Spain and Guam. In 1962 it won the contract to build the $200 million manned space center in Houston (now, of course, called the Johnson Space Center). In 1962 the company was purchased by Halliburton, and it was a major contractor for the war in Vietnam. And yes it should be noted that, at least according to William Torbitt, George and Herman Brown helped finance Permindex. Members of this Forum will recognize that name and its alleged connection to the Kennedy assassination. The only problem is that, at least IMO, all this information has no dam connection to the assassination. (For Nancy's benefit, the Hoover Dam was not named after J. Edgar Hoover; and Herbert Hoover had an ironclad alibi for Nov 22, 1963. Moreover, I've carefully searched through all of the photos of the crowd at Dealey Plaza, and none of the people bear even a superficial resemblance to Herbert Hoover.)

Have you (or Forum members in general) read the Analysis of Nosenko's [CIA] Polygraph Examination written by an expert engaged by the House Select Committee on Assassinations? I just ran across it on Ken Rahn's web-site. You can call it up here: http://karws.gso.uri.edu/Marsh/HSCA/NOSENKO.TXT The expert was quite critical of the CIA polygraphers. Interestingly, the expert did a "blind" analysis: i.e. he examined the charts to determine which answers indicated decption, without knowing the questions--which, of course, is the proper procedure. On October 18, 1966 Nosenko was given a polygraph test which contained 32 questions about LHO. The expert reported that Nosenko's answers to the following 10 questions contained (in his words) "valid indicators of lying": I will first list the question and then the Nosenko answer. ONE Q. Did you receive special instructions about what to tell Americans about the Oswald case? A. No. TWO Q. Was Oswald recruited by the KGB as an agent? A. No. THREE Q. Did the KGB consider Oswald abnormal? A. No. FOUR Q. To your knowledge did Oswald talk to a KGB officer in Mexico City? A. [Tim: None listed in the report I found on-line.] FIVE Q. Is your contact with the Oswald case part of your legend? [Tim: None listed in the report I found on-line.] SIX Q. Did you hear of Oswald prior to President Kennedy's assassination? A. Yes. SEVEN Q. Did you hear of Oswald only after President Kennedy's assassination? A. No. EIGHT Q. Did you personally order ____________ in 1959, to collect materials on Oswald? A. Yes. NINE Q. Did the KGB instruct you to tell us that Oswald was a bad shot? A. No. TEN Q. Did the KGB give the Oswalds any kind of help in their departure from the Soviet Union? A. No. This report does not list every question the CIA polygraph examiner gave Nosenko. The expert listed four questions he would have asked Nosenko. One of which was: Did the KGB order Oswald to assassinate President Kennedy? By implication, incredibly, this question (presumably the most salient) was not one of the myriad questions propounded to Nosenko by the CIA polygraphist. But if the expert was right, and Nosenko was lying, it means: (1) The KGB recruited Oswald as an agent, and gave the Oswalds assistance in returning to the United States. (2) Despite his statements about being the KGB agent in charge of the Oswald file, Nosenko had never heard of Oswald before the JFK assassination. (3) Nosenko received special instructions about what to tell the Americans about the Oswald case. I need not comment on the implications of the above. Nosenko was given polygraph examinations in 1964, 1966 and 1968. This report discusses all those examinations. The questions above came from the 1966 examination. Any researcher interested in the Nosenko story should, IMO, read this report in its entirety. (It's 9 pages.) While we are on the subject of polygraph examinations, it is my understanding that one of the reasons certain people in the CIA were wary of Cubela is that he had refused to take a CIA polygraph (in 1961 I believe.)

Interesting posting. You ask some very important questions. I agree that the choice of Oswald means that it was definitely not an official CIA or FBI operation. It is possible that it could have been planned by rogue CIA agents with a grudge against their leaders. They knew that if their role was discovered it would be covered-up. There is a very good reason why we know that Khrushchev or Castro were not behind the assassination of JFK. As Oswald correctly pointed out after he was arrested. What is the point of replacing JFK with LBJ? The Soviets knew that LBJ was more of a hard-line cold warrior than JFK. This action would have given them a good excuse for a US invasion of Cuba. It is for this reason that we know it was not the Soviets who organized the conspiracy. The people who used Oswald either wanted to implicate the Soviets, Castro, or some other secret organization that Oswald was a member of (CIA/FBI). They did this either to get something else to happen (an invasion of Cuba) or to ensure CIA/FBI involvement in the cover-up. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> John, respectfully, LBJ did have an excuse to invade Cuba, including intelligence reports out of Cuba (some of which may have been false) linking LHO to a Cuban plot. But LBJ understood the potential ramifications of an outright US invasion of Cuba. Why would LBJ want to potentially initiate a nuclear exchange which, as he said, could kill 39 million Americans (maybe even himself or his family), merely to solve the murder of a man for whom, by all reports, he was not particularly fond, and from whose death he certainly benefited politically? LBJ's problem was that if the public believed (or if a thorough investigation proved) that Castro was behind the assassination, he might have commited political suicide by refusing to invade Cuba. Hence his need to shut off an adequate investigation (that might or might not have shown Cuban involvement) and quickly convince the public that LHO was a lone nut. Assuming that Cubela was an agent provacateur (as the circumstances suggest and many believe) then Castro knew that a high-ranking government official had assured Cubela that Cubela's plan to assassinate Castro had the personal support of Robert Kennedy. And there are reports that Cubela was also assured that language would be inserted in a JFK speech to demonstrate JFK's own support for the Cubela operation (which happened at JFK's Nov 18 speech to the IAPA in Miami). As I said in my first post, if Cubela was a Castro "dangle", it matters not whether RFK and/or JFK were indeed aware of the Cubela operation--Cubela (and through him Castro) were convinced that the plot was endorsed by the Kennedys. Granted, there were risks in an assassination, but what did Castro have to lose? His own life was at stake. If the Kennedys were indeed behind the latest plot to kill him (initiated on the same day that he made a point of telling an American reporter of the risks to the lives of American officials if plots to kill Cuban officials continued) how long could Castro survive continued US efforts to shoot him, poison his food, or scratch him with a poison pen? Moreover, it is possible that if, after the assassination it looked like an American invasion was planned, Castrro had proof of the American plots against his life (is it possible Cubela was even able to record Fitzgerald's Oct 29th meeting with him?). Castro could perhaps count on world public opinion to prevent an American invasion if the CIA plots were publicized. Under this scenario, Castro thought (rightly or wrongly, it matters not) that the Kennedys were behind efforts to kill him. How on earth could Johnson have possibly been worse for Castro than the Kennedys, who were plotting his demise? To paraphrase a saying, it can't get much worse than that! And indeed, as I pointed out, according to Joseph Califano's recently published memoirs, LBJ ordered Califano to once and for all stop the operations against Castro. I do agree with you that it was possible that "rogue CIA agents" may have been involved, or anti-Castro Cubans who were not aware of LHO's ties to US intelligence (if such ties did exist, which the circumstances certainly suggest (as Sen Schweiker once famously observed, LHO had the "fingerprints of intelligence all over him"). But if "rogue CIA agents" or anti-Castro Cubans planned the assassination to trigger a US invasion of Cuba, their plan backfired. If, instead, it was a Cuban-initiated operation to stop further US efforts to assassinate Castro, the motive behind the assassination was successful. Of course, one of the first reasons people suspected a conspiracy was Ruby's murder of LHO. In this regard, I think the significance of the fact that Trafficante had ties to both Ruby and Cubela can hardly be minimized. And there is evidence, of course, that the Trafficante organization was behind the murders of Giancana and Rosselli. In the 1960s our government plotted the murder of Patrice Lumumba and Trujillo--who were in fact murdered (but not, according to the Church Committee, directly by CIA assets); we authorized a plot against the Diems in Vietnam that led to their murders; and we tried numerous timnes to kill Castro. Perhaps the assassination of John F. Kennedy was the tragic price our country paid for the endorsement of murder as a valid instrument of foreign policy.

Thanks for the publicity. I have been meaning to update my page on Nosenko for some time. I have done so this morning. It is worth following the links from this page. It is especially important to look at the role Anatoli Golitsin played in this. I think the Nosenko case is a much under-researched area of the JFK assassination. Yuri Nosenko was deputy chief of the Seventh Department of the KGB. His main responsibility was the recruitment of foreign spies. In June 1962 Nosenko made contact with the CIA in Geneva. He said he was in urgent need of money and was willing to sell secrets to the West. He added he did not want to defect because he was unwilling to leave his wife and children behind in the Soviet Union. Nosenko, like Anatoli Golitsin, who had defected in December, 1961, he provided evidence that John Vassall was a Soviet agent. However, most of his evidence undermined that given by Golitsin. This included Golitsin's claim that a senior figure in the Admiralty was a spy. When Golitsin had been interviewed he had claimed the KGB would be so concerned about his defection, they would attempt to convince the CIA that the information he was giving them would be completely unreliable. He predicted that the KGB would send false defectors with information that contradicted what he was saying. The CIA were now uncertain whether to believe Golitsin or Nosenko. In January 1964 Nosenko contacted the CIA and said he had changed his mind and was now willing to defect to the United States. He claimed that he had been recalled to Moscow to be interrogated. Nosenko feared that the KGB had discovered he was a double-agent and once back in the Soviet Union would be executed. Nosenko arrived in the United States on 14th February, 1964. However, soon afterwards, Nosenko was undermined by the US National Security Agency who had been monitoring communications between Moscow and Geneva. It discovered that Nosenko had lied about being recalled to the Soviet Union. He was now taken to a CIA detention cell and after extensive interrogation he admitted the story about him being recalled was untrue. Nosenko claimed that he had important information about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. He told the CIA that he had been the KGB officially who had personally handled the case of Lee Harvey Oswald. After interviewing Oswald it was decided that he was not intelligent enough to work as a KGB agent. They were also concerned that he was "too mentally unstable" to be of any use to them. Nosenko added that the KGB had never questioned Oswald about information he had acquired while a member of the U.S. Marines. This surprised the CIA as Oswald had worked as a Aviation Electronics Operator at the Atsugi Air Base in Japan. Members of the Warren Commission were pleased to hear this information as it helped to confirm the idea that Oswald had acted alone and was not part of a Soviet conspiracy to kill John F. Kennedy. CIA chief of intelligence, James Jesus Angleton, did not believe parts of Nosenko's story. He was supported by another KGB defector, Anatoli Golitsin. He had worked in some of the same departments as Nosenko but had never met him. After being interviewed for several days Nosenko admitted that some aspects of his story were not true. For example, Nosenko had previously said he was a lieutenant colonel in the KGB. He confessed that he had exaggerated his rank to make himself attractive to the CIA. However, initially he had provided KGB documents that said Nosenko was a lieutenant colonel. The story was further complicated by the fact that another Soviet KGB defector under FBI control (code name Fedora) corroborated Nosenko's story. Therefore, if Nosenko was lying, it meant that Fedora was also a disinformation agent sent to the United States to confuse the security agencies. Nosenko was given two lie detector tests by the CIA. Both suggested he was lying about Lee Harvey Oswald. The CIA now decided to put Nosenko under intense physical physical and psychological pressure. This involved him being kept in solitary confinement for 1,277 days. A light was left burning in his unheated cell for twenty-four hours a day and he was given nothing to read and his guards were ordered not to speak to him. However, Nosenko did not crack and insisted that Oswald was not a KGB agent. James Jesus Angleton, chief of the CIA's counter-intelligence section, believed that Anatoli Golitsin was a genuine double-agent but argued that Nosenko was part of a disinformation campaign. However, Richard Helms (CIA) and J. Edgar Hoover (FBI) believed Nosenko and considered Golitsin was a fake. Nosenko was eventually released and was given a false identity. He became an adviser to the CIA and the FBI on a salary of more than $35,000 a year. He was also given a lump sum of $150,000 as payment for his ordeal. What was therefore going on? Nosenko told a great many lies and is now seen as a disinformation agent. If that was the case, Fedora was also a disinformation agent. What were the KGB up to? There is two possible explanations. (1) The KGB was involved in the assassination of JFK. (2) The KGB was not involved in the assassination but feared that the American government would use this invented conspiracy as an excuse to invade Cuba. Therefore Nosenko was sent to America to convince the CIA that this was not the case. I believe the second of these options. It clearly made no political sense at all for the Soviets to assassinate JFK. What is interesting is the desire of the CIA and FBI to believe Nosenko. This is especially true of the decision by the KGB not to interrogate Oswald about his knowledge of the U-2 plane. This is of course nonsense. So also is the claim that Oswald was not intelligent enough to work as a double-agent. We therefore have to assume that Oswald was in fact a triple agent. That is to say, he was sent to the Soviet Union by the CIA as a disinformation agent. This involved him convincing the Soviets he was willing to return to the United States as a spy. However, when he returned to the States he once again became a CIA/FBI agent. If he had been a Soviet spy he would never have associated himself with left-wing groups in America. However, when Oswald was arrested they became convinced that he had been set up by the FBI/CIA in order to instigate an invasion of Cuba. Sending Nosenko to the West was a desperate attempt to stop this happening. However, unknown to the Soviets, LBJ had already decided not to invade Cuba and instead was involved in covering up his connections with the KGB and CIA. That leaves us with the question why? I have attempted to answer that with my seminar on LBJ. This analysis raises another important issue, If Nosenko was a disinformation agent, Anatoli Golitsin was a true KGB defector. Therefore it is interesting to see what other information he supplied. It included the claim that Kim Philby, Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess were members of a Ring of Five agents in MI5. We now know that was true. Golitsin also provided information about two spies in the Admiralty. Using the information supplied by Golitsin, MI5 came to the conclusion that one of these men could be John Vassall, a 37-year-old clerk working in the Admiralty. He was later convicted as a spy. Golitsin also suggested that W. Averell Harriman had been a Soviet spy, while he was the U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union during the Second World War. Angleton was convinced by this story as he knew someone was involved in spying the negotiations that took place between Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt. However, other CIA officers thought the story ridiculous and Harriman was appointed by LBJ as ambassador-at-large for Southeast Asian affairs. Jim Marrs has a very good section in his book Crossfire on Nosenko. He quotes a passage from a book by Arkady Shevchenko (Breaking With Moscow). It is worth reading this passage very carefully. In November 1963, President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. Everyone in the (Soviet) mission was stunned and confused, particularly when there were rumors that the murder had been Soviet-inspired... Our leaders would not have been so upset by the assassination if they had planned it and the KGB would not have taken upon itself to venture such a move without Politburo approval. More important, Khrushchev's view of Kennedy had changed. After Cuba, Moscow perceived Kennedy as the one who had accelerated improvement of relations between the two countries. Kennedy was seen as a man of strength and determination, the one thing that Kremlin truly understands and respects. In addition, Moscow firmly believed that Kennedy's assassination was a scheme by "reactionary forces" within the United States seeking to damage the new trend in relations. The Kremlin ridiculed the Warren Commission's conclusion that Oswald had acted on his own as the sole assassin. There was in fact widespread speculation among Soviet diplomats that Lyndon Johnson, along with the CIA and the Mafia, had masterminded the plot. Perhaps one of the most potent reasons why the U.S.S.R. wished Kennedy well was that Johnson was anathema to Khrushchev. Because he was a southerner, Moscow considered him a racist (the stereotype of any American politician from below the Mason Dixon line), an anti-Soviet and anti-Communist to the core. Further, since Johnson was from Texas, a center of the most reactionary forces in the United States, according to the Soviets, he was associated with the big-time capitalism of the oil industry, also known to be anti-Soviet. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> It is worth considering the possibility of KGB involvement in the assassination. Joseph Trento, the journalist who reported the story that E Howard Hunt may have been in Dallas on 11-22-63, wrote a book, The Secret History of the CIA. In that book Trento claims that a faction in the KGB helped orchestrate or sponsor the Kennedy assassination was also behind the peaceful ouster of Khruschev a year later. His theory at least merits consideration. I have always considered it anamalous to argue that: (1) LHO was an agent of US intelligence; (2) LHO was merely a patsy; and (3) the CIA was behind the assassination. If LHO was indeed a US intelligence asset, it would be foolhardy for the CIA to use him as a patsy. Would be more likely the planners were anti-CIA, eg KGB, who knew LHO was a CIA agent. Or, the possibility that the assassination was planned by someone who wanted to blame it on Castro and who did not know that LHO was a CIA agent, e.g. for instance anti-Castro Cubans. If Nosenko was a disinformation agent and Golitsin was genuine, it does not necessarily mean that LHO was a KGB agent, of course. Nosenko might have been a false defector on a KGB mission but intended by the KGB to convince the US of what was in fact true: the assassination was not a KGB operation. On the other hand, if Nosenko was a false defector, the possibility cannot be discounted that the information he was supplying was false. John states that it made no sense for the KGB to assassinate JFK. Consider this chronology, however: (1) Late March a Soviet ship is sunk in Havana harbor. (2) Late April Castro and a large entourage travel to Moscow and spend four or five weeks there. (3) On the same day that Cubela recontacts the CIA in Brazil, Castro goes to the Brazilian Embassasy in Havana to warn about American efforts to kill Cuban leaders. (4) On October 29, 1963 Desmond Fitzgerald advises Cubela that he is a personal emissary of Robert Kennedy and that RFK support's Cubela's plans to overthrow Castro, plans that involve the assassination of Castro. Helms told Fitzgerald he could make this representation without clearing it with RFK. (5) Obviously, Cubela's plan was a violation of JFK's agreement to keep US hands of Cuba if the Soviets withdrew the missiles. (6) Within a month JFK is dead. (7) According to Joseph Califano, who was working on anti-Castro operations for JFK, after the assassination LBJ ordered Califano to stop the anti-Castro operations. (8) While in prison in 1959, Trafficante was visited by (among others, presumably) Jack Ruby and Rolando Cubela. (9) Add to this the strange saga of Gilberto Lopez, who came to Key West from Cuba in 1961, but around the time that Castro and crew were in Moscow, moved to Tampa (home, of course, of Mr. Trafficante). Lopez obtained a visa to visit Mexico for fourteen days, and he entered Mexico from Texas on November 23. A few days later, he flew to Cuba, never to return to the U.S. Who was the primary beneficiary of the JFK assassination? Well, it may have saved LBJ jail time but, arguably, the man who benefited the most was Fidel Castro, becaue it saved his LIFE. I mean, sooner or later one of the CIA-sponsored assassination efforts against Castro would have probably succeeded. If this scenario (obviously a hypothetical but one consistent with many of the facts) is correct, how could the KGB be assured that LBJ would not retaliate if KGB or Cuban involvement was suspected? Well, if it looked like events were heading in that direction, did the KGB have evidence through Cubela that JFK's brother had personally endorsed plans to kill Castro? Did Castro have motive to kill JFK? Yes. Was the motivation "retaliation" for past US efforts to kill him? Well, since the efforts were continuing, and did so despite Castro's Sept 7, 1963 warning, wouldn't the motive be more properly classified as "self defense"? Understand this motive works whether or not JFK and RFK were in fact apprised of the CIA assassination efforts. What matters is, if Cubela was indeed a double agent whose allegiance was to Castro, through Cubela Castro had reason to believe (whether correctly or not) that the Kennedy brothers had personally endorsed his assassination. This is a scenario that fits some of the facts in the assassination. I would like to find out what basis Trento has for asserting that a faction within the KGB sponsored the JFK assassination (he even names names of KGB officials involved). In any event, I submit it bears some consideration that Trento had information that supported the story he reports in his book.

The book Wedge by Riebling contains interesting discussion of the Nosenko case. There was a movie made about the Nosenko case (I have it in VHS). It's not a bad movie. Not sure if you can get it froim, for instance, Netflix. Nosenko never told CIA apparently that KGB was bugging the Oswalds' apartment. Nosenko may very well have been correct that LHO was not a KGB agent but his defection may nonetheless have been a KGB operation. The Nosenko affair just adds more mystery to the assassination.

The motorcade in Miami was cancelled. JFK traveled between the airport and his speaking engagement by helicopter because of security concerns. Ron <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Not true according to Gordon Winslow (I discussed this very point with Mr. Winslow two days ago) Hopefully Mr Simkin will help post the photo of JFK and Sen Smathers in Miami on Nov 18, 1963. There are riding through a crowd in an open convertible. The photo will speak for itself.

Michael Piper Collins certainly seems anti-Semitic to me (and to the ADL as well.) I'd like to know whether Tim Carroll has read Collins' materials and agrees that Collins seems anti-Semitic.

But my point is that the motorcycles were not there in Key West on November 26, 1962 or in Miami on November 18, 1963. Moreover, it looks like from the photo that JFK is standing up in the Lincoln in the Tampa photo. If someone had wanted to shoot at him from a Tampa building, what good would the motorcycles have done? Secret service agents on running boards, perhaps. Perhaps such a secret service agent would have jumped on JFK after the first shot in Dallas and prevented the tragedy. Looking at four motorcades may be insufficient to make generalizations, but the Tampa motorcade is apparently the only one of four in which the presidential car was surrounded by police motorcycles.

I have a photo from Kennedy's visit to Miami on Monday, November 18, 1963 that shows Kennedy and Smathers standing up in an open convertible to greet crowds standing within inches of the convertible. Anyone could have shot him at close range with a pistol. As I also said in my post on Kennedy in Key West in November of 1962 he rode in an open Lincoln (his car of choice) down the Key West main street, past at least one tall building. It is apparent there was little security then either. Shanet says the security was poor to the point of being negligent. That may very well be the case, but it tends to refute the contention sometimes raised that the security was deliberately loosened in Dallas to permit the assassination. Understand I definitely believe there was a conspiracy (you all know that), but that does not mean that every argument in support of a conspiracy is correct. I think the images of Kennedy in Key West in 1962 and in Miami in Nov of 1963 (and I have also seen a photo somewhere of JFK in Hawaii) conclusively negates the prooposition that there was "security stripping" in Dallas.

Delete for now--sorry

Here is some information on Caddy from the book Secret Agenda by Jim Hougan: After leaving Baldwin at Howard Johnson's, Hunt [went] to his old office in the Executive Office Building. There he placed some materials in his safe and removed $10,000 in cash to be used for bail and as a legal retainer. He then telephoned Douglas Caddy to ask that Caddy represent the men who were under arrest. While not usually a practioner of criminal law, Caddy could be trusted so fas as Hunt was concerned: he had recently served as the Washington representative of the General Foods corporation, working out of an office at the Mullen Company. As such, he had been standing at an important intersection between the public and private sectors: it was General Foods' account with the Mullen Company that provided cover to CIA officers abroad. Whether Caddy knew this or was himself a CIA "asset" is unknown, The Senate seems never have questioned Caddy about his work for Mullen or General Foods. Hougan's book then makes reference to his Appendix II which is a very interesting read for persons interested in the Watergate story but too lengthy to reproduce here. That Appendix does contain one interesting piece of information, however, that may relate to the Kennedy Assassination. In Appendix II, Hougan states that John Paisley was the CIA's liason with the Plumbers. According to the "namebase" web-site, Secret Agenda was the first book to link Paisley to the Plumbers. Of course, most members of the Forum know that Paisely had reported connections to the investigation of the Kennedy assassination (some say he was a friend of Nosenko) and died under mysterious circumstances on September 23, 1978 (in a death officially ruled a "suicide"). Some people claim Paisley was a Soviet mole. Reportedly, he had on his boat a briefcase of CIA documents that should not have left the CIA.

As I mentioned in the Post JFK in Key West, JFK rode through the streets of Key West in an open Lincoln convertible with no more protection than he had in Dallas. Please explain why his protection in Dallas was any different than any of the other places where he rode in open cars past tall buildings. There were several buildings lining the main street in Key West from which an assassin could eaily have shot at the President. And presumably Key West had a number of unhappy Cuban exiles so protection could have been an issue here. Again, it does not seem to me that the protection protocols were any different in Key West in Nov 62 than they were in Dallas in Nov 63.

Great decision! Keep the Forum professional!

Below is the text of articles from Mark Howell and me (published in the Nov. 26 2004 edition of Solares Hill) regarding JFK's Nov. 26 1962 trip to Key West, in which he was accompanied by every member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. See our previous post "Missiles of Key West." One point I did want to make re the supposed "security stripping" of the JFK motorcade in Dallas is that I have seen the photograph of JFK riding in an open Lincoln convertiible down the main street in Key West iand believe me there appeared to be no greater security than in Dallas (and there were a few tall buildings) so I wonder about the proposition that security was deliberately relaxed in Dallas. Kennedy Visits Key West ‘The Most Dangerous Days America Has Faced’ by Tim Gratz At 3:35 in the afternoon on a clear fall day in the Florida Keys, 42 years ago today, military personnel at the Naval Air Station on Boca Chica stood in pristine military formation. The huge plane came in from the Northeast, a Boeing 707 bearing the words “United States of America” and the presidential seal. Aboard Air Force One were President John F. Kennedy, his long-time secretary Evelyn Lincoln, Florida Governor Farris Bryant, two Florida congressmen and the commanding officers of the Army, Air Force, Navy and Marines (the joint chiefs of staff). The Cuban missile crisis had ended one month earlier, and the President and the military brass were visiting the Keys to inspect the military installations hurriedly installed at the Boca Chica NAS and in Key West in response to the crisis. The President also came to thank personally the soldiers in the Keys who had served through a crisis in which the world teetered on the brink of a nuclear exchange. Two superpowers, the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R., had faced off over the placement of Russian missiles in Cuba. Historians cite Kennedy’s negotiation of a peaceful resolution to the missile crisis as his greatest accomplishment. But several of the Joint Chiefs traveling on Air Force One with Kennedy to Key West that day had strenuously argued instead for a military invasion of Cuba. Kennedy and his entourage were met at Boca Chica by Key West Mayor C.B. Harvey, Monroe County Sheriff Jack Spottswood, the Key West Chief of Police, the local FBI agent, the Key West Customs agent, and a member of military intelligence. The Customs agent, Cesar Diosdado, it has subsequently been revealed, was on the CIA payroll and responsible for supervising part of the CIA’s secret war against Castro that was launched from the Keys. Shortly after the passengers from Air Force One had disembarked, a navy jet arrived, carrying White House Press Secretary Pierre Salinger and 75 members of the White House press corps. At Boca Chica NAS, Kennedy and the Joint Chiefs inspected several Air Force F-104 fighter jets; the Marine Air Group 14 FSU aircraft; and the Navy P2V, S2F and WF2 aircraft; and he greeted the crews of the planes. At 4:15 p.m, Kennedy presented presidential citations to the Navy and Marine Light Photographic Squadrons. In his remarks, Kennedy stated that the reconnaissance flights over Cuba launched from the NAS at Boca Chica “played the most important and most critical part in the most dangerous days America had faced since the end of World War II.” The presidential party then boarded 10 vehicles for the half-hour trip to Key West. Passengers in the lead car included the police chief and Sheriff Spottswood. The second car, carrying President Kennedy, was a white Lincoln Continental convertible lent by a Miami Lincoln-Mercury dealer. Accompanying Kennedy in the Lincoln were Admiral Robert L. Dennison, supreme allied commander and commander of the Atlantic fleet, and Rear Admiral R. Y. McElroy, commander of the base. The motorcade was followed by several police vehicles and two buses containing the press. In Key West, the President inspected several Hawk missiles installations. Back on October 20, 1962, just two days before Kennedy announced the quarantine on Cuba, the 65th Artillery, based in Fort Meade, had received orders to relocate with its Hawk missiles to Key West. By October 29, 1962, the Army’s Air Defense Command Post and four firing batteries were ready for action in defense of Key West. After viewing the missiles, Kennedy’s entourage drove by the battalion headquarters and barracks located in the Casa Marina Hotel. The empty building had been leased to the Army, at an annual cost of about $63,000, by the Teamsters Union — headed by an old nemesis of the President, Jimmy Hoffa. From Casa Marina, the convoy of cars traveled down Duval Street where the President was greeted by crowds of onlookers and flag-wavers in a “somber” mood, reported The Key West Citizen, given the serious nature of the President’s visit. A photograph of the Duval Street motorcade is displayed in Clinton Marketplace in Mallory Square. From Duval, the entourage went to the Whitehead Street entrance to the Naval Air Station Key West, arriving at approximately 5 p.m. At the Key West NAS, Kennedy inspected the members of the Navy’s Underwater Swimmers School, standing in parade formation. Then he briefly boarded the U.S.S. Chopper submarine. The Chopper was launched in 1945 and, after several tours in the South Pacific, was moved from her base in San Diego to Key West. At the start of the missile crisis, the Chopper went to a naval air base in Mayport, Fla. where it picked up members of an underwater demolition team. The Chopper’s mission was to deliver the demolition team to Havana harbor, where the team would swim underwater to sabotage ships. But the missile crisis was resolved before that eventuality, and the Chopper returned to Key West. Michael Whelan, an electrician on the Chopper, relates an interesting story regarding security at the Key West NAS: “When we came back [to Key West], to get from the boat to the barracks you had to pass through about four ID checkpoints. These were manned by guys fresh out of boot camp and handed a real weapon for the first time and told to protect the station. They scared me more than the imagined enemy. But with all the security, the Conch Train still had open access to the base.” (The Chopper was decommissioned in 1969 after she came perilously close to sinking in an exercise off the coast of Cuba.) At sunset, the President and his party snapped to attention as all the ships at the Key West NAS lowered their flags. They returned to their cars for the half-hour trip to the Boca Chica NAS. Shortly before 8 p.m., Kennedy, Mrs. Lincoln and the Joint Chiefs were back on board Air Force One as it lifted off for its flight back to Washington. The whirlwind tour lasted less than two-and-a-half hours. President Kennedy was in the city proper for little more than one hour and 15 minutes. It was the last time a sitting President, or for that matter the Joint Chiefs of Staff, visited Key West. Less than a year later, Kennedy would be dead. ••••• In researching this story (plus Mark Howell’s Soundings below), we read the 1962 Key West Citizen and Miami Herald coverage of the President’s visit. One story mentioned that President Kennedy took time out of his busy schedule to chat with Sheriff (later State Senator) John Spottswood about the upcoming movie, “PT 109.” The Warner Bros. film featured Kennedy’s heroics as a PT commander in the South Pacific during World War ll. An art director from the studio had been roaming South Florida in search of locations for the film when a Key Largo realtor recommended he get in touch with Spottswood in Key West. Spottswood, a long-time friend of President Harry Truman, owned a key called Munson Island that he and Truman used as a fishing camp. The island was entirely undeveloped except for a wooden outhouse. Spottswood agreed to let Warner Bros. film scenes for “PT 109” on Munson Island without charge. In June, 1962, the crew began to arrive in Key West. The cast soon followed, including Cliff Robertson (the Big Kahuna in 1959’s “Gidget”) as Lt. Jack Kennedy. Most of them stayed at the Holiday Inn (now Holiday Inn Beachside). The filming on Munson Island took six weeks. What Spottswood got in exchange for use of the island was a minor part as a Navy chef in “PT 109.” The movie premiered in Hollyood in January, 1963. The original story of PT 109 was told by John Hersey, author of “Hiroshima,” who had visited Jack Kennedy in a Boston hospital while he recovered from the sinking of the boat. Hersey’s article was published in The New Yorker in March, 1944, establishing Kennedy as a war hero and helping to launch his political career. Hersey himself retired in Key West, where he wrote his last book, “Key West Tales.” Munson Island was later sold to a group of investors who developed it as the upscale resort known as Little Palm Island. The developers saved Spottswood’s outhouse, now called the Truman Outhouse and used as a phone booth, since cell phones are prohibited on the island. ••••• From Mark Howell’s “Soundings” Deployed in the Lower Keys at the time of President John F. Kennedy’s visit in 1962 (and manufactured by Raytheon) was the Hawk missile. One of the design engineers of the Hawk was Jack Ryan. Ryan later married Zsa Zsa Gabor (briefly) and designed the very first Barbie doll for Mattel. ••••• President Kennedy hobnobbed with a number of notables on his Key West visit 42 years ago, including Gen. Maxwell Taylor, Gen. Curtis LeMay (“Five Days in May,” anyone?) and U.S. Rep. Dante Fascell, but perhaps none quite so memorable as the mayor of Key West, C.B. Harvey, husband of county mayor-to-be Wilhelmina Harvey. Harvey, who already had given the Key to the City to two sitting Presidents, Truman and Eisenhower, gave Kennedy a bent key. It was a symbol of the damage done to the Keys’ economy by the Cuban Missile crisis, said the mayor. Kennedy told Harvey he hoped the Presidential visit would make a difference. Harvey told the press he thought the President’s tour would do “a world of good for Key West.” ••••• One of the men serving in the Hawk squadron of the 6th Battalion, 65th Artillery in 1970 was a young sergeant named Doug Sheehan, who went on to TV superstardom in the 1980s as Joe Kelly in “General Hospital,” then as Ben Gibson in “Knots Landing,” plus other continuing roles. ••••• The purpose of the Army’s Hawk missiles in the Lower Keys was to defend Key West and the Naval Air Station from attack by low-altitude aircraft during Kennedy’s standoff with Kruschev over the quarantine of Cuba. The Hawk missiles were a couple of days late in arriving here from Fort Meade due to “poor performance by the rail carrier.” They continued on their journey from Homestead Air Force Base by road. The heat and salt air of the Keys led to serious moisture contamination and corrosion problems in the Hawk system. Attempted solutions included “changing desiccant, adding desiccant, coating parts with rust-resisting solutions, taping missile openings and seams, and various other methods, none of which was successful” (this from missilesofkeywest.com). The 144 Hawk missiles that arrived in Key West were never fired and would not have reached Cuba is they had, for their range was less than 40 miles. They departed the Keys 17 years later, “restationed” to Ft. Bliss, Texas. The fact is that the Hawk missile, though deployed during conflicts in Vietnam and the Persian Gulf, has never been fired in combat by the United States. Its first combat use was in 1967 when Israel fired Hawk missiles during the Six Day War with Egypt. The Hawk was not used by the coalition during Operation Desert Storm but it did see action during the Persian Gulf War when Kuwaiti air-defense units downed about 22 Iraqi aircraft and one combat helicopter with Hawk missiles during the invasion of 1990. ••••• Each of the four Hawk batteries in the Lower Keys were eventually named after local lads killed in Vietnam. Alpha Battery, located on Fleming Key, is the Eckwood Solomon missile site, after the soldier killed near Pleiku in 1966 who was born in Key West in 1940, entered the Army in 1959 and was the first American to attend the Philippines Military Academy. Bravo Battery, abandoned at the end of Government Road, is the Richard A. Recupero site, after the St. Augustine native who lived in Key West for 15 years, entered the service in 1965 and was killed near Tay Ninh Province in 1966. Charlie Battery, originally on Boca Chica and then moved to Bay Point on Saddlebunch Key, is the Florentino R. Roque site, after the soldier who was born in Key West in 1945, lived here until he enlisted in 1963 and was killed near Ong Tauong Village in 1966. Delta Battery on Boca Chica is the Peter S. Knight site, after the soldier born in Key West in 1935 who lived here until he enlisted in 1957 and was killed near Binh Duong Province in 1966.

Jim, Good seminar. I will try to reply at greater length and with more thought, but for now I'm struck by the quote you have from Walker: Oswald was a ward of both states. You know bloomin' well he was a ward of the Kennedy state and a ward of the Khrushchev state." In a sense, I believe he was correct; both Kennedy and Khrushchev were secretly working together through still highly classified correspondence to escape their respective positions as hostages to both nations' hard-liners and nationalistic dogma. Tim <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Interesting thought. Do you know that in his book The Secret Wars of the CIA, journalist Joseph Trento claims that it was a faction of the KGB that orchestrated the JFK assassination, and that the same faction, within a year, organized the bloodless coup that removed Khruschev from power in the Soviet Union? Kind of a KGB "rogue elephant" theory, I guess.

I suppose I shouldn't be trusted. :] On another note, I heard that LBJ abused animals. Not sure if it's true, though, as I've only read a few books on him. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Now, come on, it's one thing to accuse Lyndon of conspring to kill JFK, but to call him an abuser of dogs on top of it! (There is a famous photo of him picking up his beagle (I think it was) by the dog's ears.)

I am quite certain that I read that JFK had nominated Smith to be an ambassador (I think to Sweden or some similar place) but Smith's stands on Cuba had been so controversial that he ultimately asked that his nomination be withdrawn. Smith served as mayor of the Town olf Palm Beach from 1971 to 1977. After Florence died, he remarried a lady named Lesley. She was elected Mayor of Palm Beach in 2000 and is still the mayor. There is a E.T. Smith Memorial Park in Palm Beach. When I can afford it, I'd like to buy Smith's book, The Fourth Floor. It refers to the second echelon of State Dept bureacracy with whom Smith often quarreled. (The top level of the State Dept was on the Fifth Floor.) <{POST_SNAPBACK}> One addition: a minor correction to John's post. Smith's home (estate) in Palm Beach was next to the estate of Joseph P. Kennedy. JFK was not the owner of the property but he of course had free access to it. I assume most forum members know that in his Oct 21, 1960 foreign policy debate with Nixon, JFK quoted Smith, who he pointed out was a Republican appointed ambassador top Cuba, who had complained about the Eisenhower Nixon administration's not paying sufficient attention to the Castro threat (JFK had met with Smith in Havana over the 1957 Christmas holiday) . Wonder what would have happened if Nixon had known about JFK's alleged affair with Florence that per your post was still going on in 1960?

I am quite certain that I read that JFK had nominated Smith to be an ambassador (I think to Sweden or some similar place) but Smith's stands on Cuba had been so controversial that he ultimately asked that his nomination be withdrawn. Smith served as mayor of the Town olf Palm Beach from 1971 to 1977. After Florence died, he remarried a lady named Lesley. She was elected Mayor of Palm Beach in 2000 and is still the mayor. There is a E.T. Smith Memorial Park in Palm Beach. When I can afford it, I'd like to buy Smith's book, The Fourth Floor. It refers to the second echelon of State Dept bureacracy with whom Smith often quarreled. (The top level of the State Dept was on the Fifth Floor.)