David Kaiser

John,

Is there any chance the manuscript will become generally available to everyone,such as being added to the Mary Ferrell site ?

As far as I know there is no "manuscript." There is a brief summary, just a few pages, which is what I quoted from. Jeff Morley provided it to me. I believe it was a proposal for a book which for some reason did not go any further.

I appreciate that various people here are reading my book--in one case very carefully--yet I am astonished at how difficult it seems to be for people to distinguish what it does and does not say, even to the point of ascribing accusations to me that I did not make.

While I found William Pawley a most interesting figure and unearthed a great deal of new data about him and his activities, at no time did I state that he was definitely involved in the conspiracy to kill the President. I identified John Martino, Santo Trafficante, Carlos Marcello, and of course Ruby and Oswald as participants. For the record, I did not so identify Loran Hall either, although I did say that he is the link (because of the Odio incident) between Oswald on the one hand and Martino and Trafficante on the other. I have no way of knowing what Hall might or might not have known about the events of NOvember 22 before they took place. Because Martino had so many connections to so many people (including Pawley), his involvement opens the way to speculation about a lot of other folks, too, and Pawley is one of them. Pawley's suicide (there is not a shred of evidence that it was anything else) is somewhat suspicious because the HSCA was trying to interview him at that time, but his family said he was very ill and in great pain. I took great care in The Road to Dallas not to go beyond the evidence I had, and to make definite statements only when clear facts supported them. There is no such evidence linking Pawley to the assassination, and thus, I did not say anything to implicate him. Perhaps my practice of distinguishing between what might be true and what pretty clearly is true is so unusual among JFK authors that seasoned veterans of the case have trouble recognizing it for what it is.

David Kaiser

I am so far two-thirds of the way through “The Road to Dallas”. I do not agree completely with his analysis but it is so important that such a well-respected historian has tackled this subject and shown by looking at released documents that JFK’s death was part of a conspiracy. I have not yet finished the book and I will eventually have a lot of questions for David but initially I have one question that I hope he will answer:

“What was the most important evidence you found while researching your book that suggested that Oswald did not act alone?”

This was the second book that I have written about a famous crime--the first dealt with the case of Sacco and Vanzetti (it had been begun by a friend of mine, William Young, but he passed it on to me when he died in 1980.) I learned a great deal about this kind of enterprise doing that book and I learned a lot more this time. I am also seeing some things more clearly as a result of the reaction to The Road to Dallas.

I must say, John, that your question, in my opinion, exemplifies what has been wrong with the vast majority of JFK assassination research, on all sides of the question. Everyone is looking for one smoking gun or one fact about Oswald's character or one piece of physical evidence that will prove, or disprove, a conspiracy. But that is not what history is about. "The historian's task," wrote Henry Adams, one of the greatest, "is to state facts in their sequence." The King of Hearts told the White Rabbit the same thing (see frontispiece, The Road to Dallas.) That is what I have tried to do.

No single piece of evidence is critical in itself. The problem is to place them within a coherent story, and that is what so many fail to do. My book has delineated in great (and totally unprecedented) detail the network of mobsters, American mercenaries, Cuban exiles, American right-wingers and (at times) CIA operatives that was operating around the country in the early 1960s. It shows the motives of the mobsters, in particular, for wanting to kill JFK. It shows they discussed it. It shows how one of them had prior knowledge. It shows that Oswald had become connected to that network. It shows that Ruby was connected to it as well. It shows that that network mounted a disinformation campaign on the afternoon of November 22 to link Oswald to Fidel. It shows how leading mobsters reacted in 1975 when key elements of the story began to leak out. It shows that certain people admitted involvement. And so on. All this is cumulative and mutually re-enforcing.

After I wrote Postmorem about Sacco and Vanzetti, a statistician I know became interested in the subject. He uses something called Bayesian analysis, which is technique for estimating a combined probability of a certain event, based upon the probabilities of certain related events. I did not try to use this technique formally writing The Road to Dallas but I constantly use it informally. Thus, for instance, if some one claims to have seen Oswald or Ruby at a particular time and place, the critical issue is often not so much the reliability of that particular individual as it is whether other evidence (especially evidence they could not possibly have known about) supports the idea that Oswald or Ruby was there.

The more popular way to deal with the case, sadly, is to postulate either that there was a massive conspiracy--in which case every piece of evidence tending to show a conspiracy must be true--or to postulate that Oswald and Ruby must have been a lone assassin, in which case every suspicious piece of evidence must be dismissed. That may be emotionally simpler but it won't lead to the truth.

I hope this post, and the book, will help some people to think about the case in a new way.

best, David Kaiser

David Kaiser covers the issue of JFK’s involvement in the assassination of Diem in his brilliant book, American Tragedy: Kennedy, Johnson and the Origins of the Vietnam War (2000). On page 275 Kaiser explains that Nixon, during his presidency, made several “unsuccessful attempts to prove – wrongly – that Kennedy had ordered Diem’s assassination.”

Kaiser is a member of this Forum and I will ask him to comment on how Nixon tried to leak this false story.

Yes, E. Howard Hunt had been asked - I'm not sure by whom, probably Chuck Colson - to fabricate cables directly linking JFK to Diem's assassination, and he did so. L Patrick Gray testified about reading, and then destroying, one of them after John Dean gave him the documents in Hunt's safe. That is the main episode I remember.

On page 275 of American Tragedy: Kennedy, Johnson and the Origins of the Vietnam War you argue that Richard Nixon, during his presidency, made several “unsuccessful attempts to prove – wrongly – that Kennedy had ordered Diem’s assassination.”

Could you tell us anything more about these attempts by Nixon to smear Kennedy? Is it linked to Watergate? For example, John Dean gave FBI Director L. Patrick Gray an envelope on 28th June, 1972, that apparently contained documents that implicated Kennedy in Diem’s assassination? Later Gray disclosed that he destroyed these papers that originally came from E. Howard Hunt’s White House safe.

Yes, E. Howard Hunt had been asked - I'm not sure by whom, probably Chuck Colson - to fabricate cables directly linking JFK to Diem's assassination, and he did so. L Patrick Gray testified about reading, and then destroying, one of them after John Dean gave him the documents in Hunt's safe. That is the main episode I remember.

It is true that in some areas of history writing, documents are far more important than interviews. However, in some areas, such as writing about the activities of the intelligence services, documents have to be treated with extreme caution. For a start, documents can be destroyed, doctored or withheld. Senior CIA officials have gone on record as saying that details of some actions, for example, illegal ones, do not appear in documents. If they do, code names are used to make it extremely difficult for researchers to discover “who was doing what”.

CIA agents also create documents with false information (disinformation is an important aspect of the work of a CIA agent). There is an interesting passage in Felix I. Rodriguez’s book, Shadow Warrior. He explains how in 1976 he was asked to carry out CIA work in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. This included the organization of using B-26K bombers and helicopters against insurgents in these countries. The problem was that Rodriguez was known to be working for the CIA and if he got caught it would have caused the government political embarrassment. Therefore he was asked by Ted Shackley to make a very public retirement from the CIA. This included being awarded the Intelligence Star for Valor (page 254).

Of course, Rodriguez, only revealed this information after he had been exposed by the Iran-Contra investigations. If certain investigative journalists had not had the courage to write about these matters, historians would not be able to write about the involvement of the CIA in illegal activities.

It seems to me that historians should be more willing to question the official account that appears in government documents. For example, the brave work of Alfred W. McCoy, professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the author of The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia (1972) and A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror (2006). These are books that could not have been written if McCoy had only used official documents.

There is certainly some truth in what you say. I do not think internal CIA documents say A when not A is the truth very often, but it is obvious that many things are never documented, and any response to any other agency is based upon what is in the documentation, nothing more. (When some one asks, inside the CIA, "what is our conneciton to x?", the answer is, in actual fact, "what is in the files about X?" ) The FBI is a different matter altogether. Data inside the FBI becomes scared as soon as it is written down (or it did.) And they are in the business of collecting data. I have just discovered (actually Newman discovered it) a case in which a senior FBI official created an alternative vision of history but that is VERY rare.

The problem for a responsible historian dealing with the CIA is this: just because various things MIGHT be true must not be taken as a license to believe ANYTHING might be true. I will discuss this point a good deal in the book.

(1) Could you explain the reasons why you decided to become a historian?

I was fascinated by the past!

(2) Is there any real difference between the role of an investigative journalist and a historian?

Yes - a lot. The investigative journalist relies mainly on interviews. The historian relies mainly on documents. There is overlap, but that's the main difference.

(3) How do you decide about what to write about?

I like answering big questions. My last two books (including the one in progress) deal with events in my own lifetime.

(4) The House Select Committee on Assassinations reported that the “committee believes, on the basis of the available evidence, that President John F. Kennedy was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy”. However, very few historians have been willing to explore this area of American history. Lawrence E. Walsh’s Iran-Contra Report suggests that senior politicians were involved in and covered-up serious crimes. Yet very few historians have written about this case in any detail? Why do you think that historians and journalists appear to be so unwilling to investigate political conspiracies?

Political history in general is very unfashionable, and before me, only one professional historian, John Newman, has written about the JFK case. It frightens people because so many crazy folk are involved with it, I think. It also requies a huge time commitment.

(5) What is your basic approach to writing about what I would call “secret history”? How do you decide what sources to believe? How do you manage to get hold of documents that prove that illegal behaviour has taken place?

The basic rule is that before-the-fact (in this case, pre-November 1963) documents are more important than after-the-fact ones. There's a hierarchy of evidence. People who come forward years later with stories are suspect, and if they said something different at the time, one has to discount them heavily. Meanwhile, one has to read as many documents as possible to understand the context of a particular event. Almost everything Oswald did looks, actually, like part of something bigger that was happening at the time.

It is true that in some areas of history writing, documents are far more important than interviews. However, in some areas, such as writing about the activities of the intelligence services, documents have to be treated with extreme caution. For a start, documents can be destroyed, doctored or withheld. Senior CIA officials have gone on record as saying that details of some actions, for example, illegal ones, do not appear in documents. If they do, code names are used to make it extremely difficult for researchers to discover “who was doing what”.

CIA agents also create documents with false information (disinformation is an important aspect of the work of a CIA agent). There is an interesting passage in Felix I. Rodriguez’s book, Shadow Warrior. He explains how in 1976 he was asked to carry out CIA work in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. This included the organization of using B-26K bombers and helicopters against insurgents in these countries. The problem was that Rodriguez was known to be working for the CIA and if he got caught it would have caused the government political embarrassment. Therefore he was asked by Ted Shackley to make a very public retirement from the CIA. This included being awarded the Intelligence Star for Valor (page 254).

Of course, Rodriguez, only revealed this information after he had been exposed by the Iran-Contra investigations. If certain investigative journalists had not had the courage to write about these matters, historians would not be able to write about the involvement of the CIA in illegal activities.

It seems to me that historians should be more willing to question the official account that appears in government documents. For example, the brave work of Alfred W. McCoy, professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the author of The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia (1972) and A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror (2006). These are books that could not have been written if McCoy had only used official documents.

There is certainly some truth in what you say. I do not think internal CIA documents say A when not A is the truth very often, but it is obvious that many things are never documented, and any response to any other agency is based upon what is in the documentation, nothing more. (When some one asks, inside the CIA, "what is our conneciton to x?", the answer is, in actual fact, "what is in the files about X?" ) The FBI is a different matter altogether. Data inside the FBI becomes scared as soon as it is written down (or it did.) And they are in the business of collecting data. I have just discovered (actually Newman discovered it) a case in which a senior FBI official created an alternative vision of history but that is VERY rare.

The problem for a responsible historian dealing with the CIA is this: just because various things MIGHT be true must not be taken as a license to believe ANYTHING might be true. I will discuss this point a good deal in the book.

It is true that in some areas of history writing, documents are far more important than interviews. However, in some areas, such as writing about the activities of the intelligence services, documents have to be treated with extreme caution. For a start, documents can be destroyed, doctored or withheld. Senior CIA officials have gone on record as saying that details of some actions, for example, illegal ones, do not appear in documents. If they do, code names are used to make it extremely difficult for researchers to discover “who was doing what”.

CIA agents also create documents with false information (disinformation is an important aspect of the work of a CIA agent). There is an interesting passage in Felix I. Rodriguez’s book, Shadow Warrior. He explains how in 1976 he was asked to carry out CIA work in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. This included the organization of using B-26K bombers and helicopters against insurgents in these countries. The problem was that Rodriguez was known to be working for the CIA and if he got caught it would have caused the government political embarrassment. Therefore he was asked by Ted Shackley to make a very public retirement from the CIA. This included being awarded the Intelligence Star for Valor (page 254).

Of course, Rodriguez, only revealed this information after he had been exposed by the Iran-Contra investigations. If certain investigative journalists had not had the courage to write about these matters, historians would not be able to write about the involvement of the CIA in illegal activities.

It seems to me that historians should be more willing to question the official account that appears in government documents. For example, the brave work of Alfred W. McCoy, professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the author of The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia (1972) and A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror (2006). These are books that could not have been written if McCoy had only used official documents.

There is certainly some truth in what you say. I do not think internal CIA documents say A when not A is the truth very often, but it is obvious that many things are never documented, and any response to any other agency is based upon what is in the documentation, nothing more. (When some one asks, inside the CIA, "what is our conneciton to x?", the answer is, in actual fact, "what is in the files about X?" ) The FBI is a different matter altogether. Data inside the FBI becomes scared as soon as it is written down (or it did.) And they are in the business of collecting data. I have just discovered (actually Newman discovered it) a case in which a senior FBI official created an alternative vision of history but that is VERY rare.

The problem for a responsible historian dealing with the CIA is this: just because various things MIGHT be true must not be taken as a license to believe ANYTHING might be true. I will discuss this point a good deal in the book.

Why is it that most books written about political conspiracies: assassinations of JFK, MLK, RFK, Watergate, Iran-Contra, etc. are written by journalists rather than historians? Is it because of fear or is it something to do with the nature of being a historian?

For example, The House Select Committee on Assassinations reported that the “committee believes, on the basis of the available evidence, that President John F. Kennedy was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy”. However, very few historians have been willing to explore this area of American history. Lawrence E. Walsh’s Iran-Contra Report suggests that senior politicians were involved in and covered-up serious crimes. Yet very few historians have written about this case in any detail? Why do you think that historians and journalists appear to be so unwilling to investigate political conspiracies?

The investigative journalist relies mainly on interviews. The historian relies mainly on documents. There is overlap, but that's the main difference.

The basic rule is that before-the-fact (in this case, pre-November 1963) documents are more important than after-the-fact ones. There's a hierarchy of evidence. People who come forward years later with stories are suspect, and if they said something different at the time, one has to discount them heavily. Meanwhile, one has to read as many documents as possible to understand the context of a particular event. Almost everything Oswald did looks, actually, like part of something bigger that was happening at the time.

Political history in general is very unfashionable, and before me, only one professional historian, John Newman, has written about the JFK case. It frightens people because so many crazy folk are involved with it, I think. It also requies a huge time commitment.

(1) Could you explain the reasons why you decided to become a historian?

I was fascinated by the past!

(2) Is there any real difference between the role of an investigative journalist and a historian?

Yes - a lot. The investigative journalist relies mainly on interviews. The historian relies mainly on documents. There is overlap, but that's the main difference.

(3) How do you decide about what to write about?

I like answering big questions. My last two books (including the one in progress) deal with events in my own lifetime.

(4) The House Select Committee on Assassinations reported that the “committee believes, on the basis of the available evidence, that President John F. Kennedy was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy”. However, very few historians have been willing to explore this area of American history. Lawrence E. Walsh’s Iran-Contra Report suggests that senior politicians were involved in and covered-up serious crimes. Yet very few historians have written about this case in any detail? Why do you think that historians and journalists appear to be so unwilling to investigate political conspiracies?

Political history in general is very unfashionable, and before me, only one professional historian, John Newman, has written about the JFK case. It frightens people because so many crazy folk are involved with it, I think. It also requies a huge time commitment.

(5) What is your basic approach to writing about what I would call “secret history”? How do you decide what sources to believe? How do you manage to get hold of documents that prove that illegal behaviour has taken place?

The basic rule is that before-the-fact (in this case, pre-November 1963) documents are more important than after-the-fact ones. There's a hierarchy of evidence. People who come forward years later with stories are suspect, and if they said something different at the time, one has to discount them heavily. Meanwhile, one has to read as many documents as possible to understand the context of a particular event. Almost everything Oswald did looks, actually, like part of something bigger that was happening at the time.

David Kaiser is Professor in the Strategy and Policy Department of the Naval War College. He is the author of Politics and War: European Conflict from Philip II to Hitler (1990) and American Tragedy Kennedy, Johnson, and the Origins of the Vietnam War (2000)