Ashton Gray

Posting the same response here as I did to the same thing posted in the Watergate forum:

Very interesting post, John, in which I see various streams of data beginning to merge into a far more cohesive channel flowing together instead of dispersing all over the landscape.

Still, I have to comment on a few bits of flotsam and jetsam that I feel continue to attempt to float upstream:

Nixon believed that the CIA leadership played a vital role in his defeat in 1960. He never forgave the CIA for this treachery and this is why he attempted to sort out the agency when he became president in 1968.

What actions do you see as an attempt by Nixon "to sort out the agency" while leaving Richard Helms in place as DCI?

The CIA fought back and set up Nixon over Watergate. When Richard Helms, refused to help him cover-up Watergate, he threatened Helms with exposing him for the role he played in the cover-up of the JFK assassination.

Cite? I have a vague feeling that you are referring here to the 23 June 1972 "whole Bay of Pigs thing" comment made by Nixon.

Now, personally, I don't mind, ever, seeing anyone interpret that statement by Nixon just as broadly as they like, not only to include the Kennedy assassination, but even to include the alleged Big Bang (or the alleged Tree of Life, if you prefer), by their own lights.

However: the thing that does just curdle the cream while still in the cows whenever I see such reference made is the almost predictable omission of the following statements made by Richard M. Nixon—who had been central to the planning of the Bay of Pigs—just moments before he made the "whole Bay of Pigs thing" statement. And it is this (my emphasis added):

• RICHARD NIXON ...we protected Helms from one hell of a lot of things. ...Of course, this is a— this is a— Hunt: you will- that will uncover a lot of things. You open that scab there's a hell of a lot of things and that we just feel that it would be very detrimental to have this thing go any further. This involves these Cubans, Hunt, and a lot of hanky-panky that we have nothing to do with ourselves.
  

Now, I do make an effort to reconcile such things with statements such as your earlier one that Nixon had tried "to sort out the agency" on taking office. I just can't. That's all.

And if you are, indeed, referring to the "whole Bay of Pigs thing" comment as your foundation for stating that Nixon "threatened Helms with exposing him for the role he played in the cover-up of the JFK assassination," please, please—if on no other basis than kindness and mercy—provide this pilgrim with some kind of rationale in response to the following pregnant questions:

1) If Nixon had some specific knowledge of "the role [Helms] played in the cover-up of the JFK assassination," then why didn't Nixon play this trump card publically right then, and sack Helms and put the CIA on trial for the murder of a president? It would have made Watergate look exactly like the "two bit burglary" that it was, and Nixon would have become the hero of the world instead of the most loathesome president in history.

2) The comment by Nixon was made on 23 June 1972 in a private meeting with Haldeman, so why was Helms allowed by Nixon to sit in the DCI seat for seven more months, not only past the Watergate indictments pointing to the White House; not only past the 1 October 1972 secret CIA Remote Viewing contract Helms and Gottlieb engineered; not only past Hunt purportedly "blackmailing Nixon"—of all the people Hunt could blackmail (please note that I'm refraining from laughing out loud right there); not only past Helms and Gottlieb destroying a still-unknown number of truckloads of damning CIA documents; not only past CIA's handing over of the Hunt-Liddy-Fielding photos that would spring Ellsberg and drive the final nails into Nixon's coffin; but even until after Hunt and "the Cuban contingent" had pleaded guilty? What possible "motive" could Nixon have had for sitting passively in his chair for seven months allowing Helms and the CIA cruds to bleed him from every artery, if Nixon had the goods on these same people in relation to the JFK assassination? How can anybody be that stupid and feed himself?

3) Why were payments purportedly of "White House funds" from LaRue given to Hunt's lawyer, Bittman, after Hunt had pleaded guilty to all counts?

None of it adds up. None of it.

When Helms refused to help, Nixon sacked him and replaced him with James Schlesinger. On 9th May, 1973, Schlesinger issued a directive to all CIA employees: “I have ordered all senior operating officials of this Agency to report to me immediately on any activities now going on, or might have gone on in the past, which might be considered to be outside the legislative charter of this Agency. I hereby direct every person presently employed by CIA to report to me on any such activities of which he has knowledge. I invite all ex-employees to do the same. Anyone who has such information should call my secretary and say that he wishes to talk to me about activities outside the CIA’s charter."

...This was dynamite and the CIA now had to destroy Nixon before he destroyed them.

<Head in hands> John, I appreciate your enthusiasm for this scenario. I mean that sincerely. But please, please consider the following incontrovertible facts:

1) William Colby, not James Schlesinger, wrote the directive. Schlesinger signed as he was picking up his hat and coat and walking out the door as DCI, being replaced by Colby. And the entire idea had come from Colby.

2) Schlesinger hadn't been in the DCI chair long enough even to get it warm: three months. He was nothing but a placeholder, since Colby himself had been (hear me, now, please) CIA Director for Covert Operation throughout the CIA's Watergate hoax, and throughout the simultaneous set-up by Helms and Gottlieb of the super-covert Remote Viewing program.

So please, please help this poor pilgrim better understand this scenario by providing some kind of rationale and substantive fact in response to these other pregnant questions:

1) From whence comes the idea that Schlesinger was some kind of loyalist Nixon puppet instead of the die-hard CIA veteran slimebag he was? This reads almost like Mother Goose to me. What is the foundation? What do you feel is the invisible and mysterious thrall that Nixon had Schlesinger in?

2) What benefit did Nixon ever derive from the CIA's "Family Jewels"?

3) Do you have any record at all of Nixon ever even seeing the "Family Jewels"?

While I'm very heartened indeed to see new evaluations of data going in new and interesting directions, I am loath indeed to see old and tiresome myths—many of them written and disseminated by the very Operation Mockingbird that you rightly expose and decry—continue to be perpetuated in the public consciousness when they have no foundation in material fact, and so I cannot do otherwise than call them to attention with an invitation for close and sober analysis and inspection.

Ashton

Very interesting post, John, in which I see various streams of data beginning to merge into a far more cohesive channel flowing together instead of dispersing all over the landscape.

Still, I have to comment on a few bits of flotsam and jetsam that I feel continue to attempt to float upstream:

Nixon believed that the CIA leadership played a vital role in his defeat in 1960. He never forgave the CIA for this treachery and this is why he attempted to sort out the agency when he became president in 1968.

What actions do you see as an attempt by Nixon "to sort out the agency" while leaving Richard Helms in place as DCI?

The CIA fought back and set up Nixon over Watergate. When Richard Helms, refused to help him cover-up Watergate, he threatened Helms with exposing him for the role he played in the cover-up of the JFK assassination.

Cite? I have a vague feeling that you are referring here to the 23 June 1972 "whole Bay of Pigs thing" comment made by Nixon.

Now, personally, I don't mind, ever, seeing anyone interpret that statement by Nixon just as broadly as they like, not only to include the Kennedy assassination, but even to include the alleged Big Bang (or the alleged Tree of Life, if you prefer), by their own lights.

However: the thing that does just curdle the cream while still in the cows whenever I see such reference made is the almost predictable omission of the following statements made by Richard M. Nixon—who had been central to the planning of the Bay of Pigs—just moments before he made the "whole Bay of Pigs thing" statement. And it is this (my emphasis added):

• RICHARD NIXON ...we protected Helms from one hell of a lot of things. ...Of course, this is a— this is a— Hunt: you will- that will uncover a lot of things. You open that scab there's a hell of a lot of things and that we just feel that it would be very detrimental to have this thing go any further. This involves these Cubans, Hunt, and a lot of hanky-panky that we have nothing to do with ourselves.
  

Now, I do make an effort to reconcile such things with statements such as your earlier one that Nixon had tried "to sort out the agency" on taking office. I just can't. That's all.

And if you are, indeed, referring to the "whole Bay of Pigs thing" comment as your foundation for stating that Nixon "threatened Helms with exposing him for the role he played in the cover-up of the JFK assassination," please, please—if on no other basis than kindness and mercy—provide this pilgrim with some kind of rationale in response to the following pregnant questions:

1) If Nixon had some specific knowledge of "the role [Helms] played in the cover-up of the JFK assassination," then why didn't Nixon play this trump card publically right then, and sack Helms and put the CIA on trial for the murder of a president? It would have made Watergate look exactly like the "two bit burglary" that it was, and Nixon would have become the hero of the world instead of the most loathesome president in history.

2) The comment by Nixon was made on 23 June 1972 in a private meeting with Haldeman, so why was Helms allowed by Nixon to sit in the DCI seat for seven more months, not only past the Watergate indictments pointing to the White House; not only past the 1 October 1972 secret CIA Remote Viewing contract Helms and Gottlieb engineered; not only past Hunt purportedly "blackmailing Nixon"—of all the people Hunt could blackmail (please note that I'm refraining from laughing out loud right there); not only past Helms and Gottlieb destroying a still-unknown number of truckloads of damning CIA documents; not only past CIA's handing over of the Hunt-Liddy-Fielding photos that would spring Ellsberg and drive the final nails into Nixon's coffin; but even until after Hunt and "the Cuban contingent" had pleaded guilty? What possible "motive" could Nixon have had for sitting passively in his chair for seven months allowing Helms and the CIA cruds to bleed him from every artery, if Nixon had the goods on these same people in relation to the JFK assassination? How can anybody be that stupid and feed himself?

3) Why were payments purportedly of "White House funds" from LaRue given to Hunt's lawyer, Bittman, after Hunt had pleaded guilty to all counts?

None of it adds up. None of it.

When Helms refused to help, Nixon sacked him and replaced him with James Schlesinger. On 9th May, 1973, Schlesinger issued a directive to all CIA employees: “I have ordered all senior operating officials of this Agency to report to me immediately on any activities now going on, or might have gone on in the past, which might be considered to be outside the legislative charter of this Agency. I hereby direct every person presently employed by CIA to report to me on any such activities of which he has knowledge. I invite all ex-employees to do the same. Anyone who has such information should call my secretary and say that he wishes to talk to me about activities outside the CIA’s charter."

...This was dynamite and the CIA now had to destroy Nixon before he destroyed them.

<Head in hands> John, I appreciate your enthusiasm for this scenario. I mean that sincerely. But please, please consider the following incontrovertible facts, and please, please provide some rationale in response for the questions:

1) William Colby, not James Schlesinger, wrote the directive. Schlesinger signed as he was picking up his hat and coat and walking out the door as DCI, being replaced by Colby. And the entire idea had come from Colby.

2) Schlesinger hadn't been in the DCI chair long enough even to get it warm: three months. He was nothing but a placeholder, since Colby himself had been (hear me, now, please) CIA Director for Covert Operation throughout the CIA's Watergate hoax, and throughout the simultaneous set-up by Helms and Gottlieb of the super-covert Remote Viewing program.

So please, please help this poor pilgrim better understand this scenario by providing some kind of rationale and substantive fact in response to these other pregnant questions:

1) From whence comes the idea that Schlesinger was some kind of loyalist Nixon puppet instead of the die-hard CIA veteran slimebag he was? This reads almost like Mother Goose to me. What is the foundation? What do you feel is the invisible and mysterious thrall that Nixon had Schlesinger in?

2) What benefit did Nixon ever derive from the CIA's "Family Jewels"?

3) Do you have any record at all of Nixon ever even seeing the "Family Jewels"?

While I'm very heartened indeed to see new evaluations of data going in new and interesting directions, I am loath indeed to see old and tiresome myths—many of them written and disseminated by the very Operation Mockingbird that you rightly expose and decry—continue to be perpetuated in the public consciousness when they have no foundation in material fact, and so I cannot do otherwise than call them to attention with an invitation for close and sober analysis and inspection.

Ashton

The CIA had been infiltrated by KGB officers.

Well, ayup. And vice-versa. Since the two agencies worked for the same international commercial interests, it wasn't terribly difficult to exchange personnel and information.

Ashton Gray

The "CIA overthrew Nixon because he was gonna blow the whistle on their scientology research" theory proposed by the mythical figure in the fedora is looneytunes...

Since I've never said any such thing, and only you have, the following will be known henceforth and forevermore as "The Official Pat Speer Theory of Watergate":

"CIA overthrew Nixon because he was gonna blow the whistle on their scientology research" —Pat Speer

I've added it to my sig properly attributed to you. Thank you for the contribution. It will remain there until you answer this question, which you keep evading:

Do you claim that there was one "forged Diem cable," or that there was more than one "forged Diem cable"?

Ashton Gray

But no newspaper dug into the highly compromising fact that the upkeep of the Eisenhower farm was paid for by three oilmen - W. Alton Jones, chairman of the executive committee of Cities Service; B. B. (Billy) Byars of Tyler, Texas, and George E. Allen, director of some 20 corporations and a heavy investor in oil with Major Louey Kung, nephew of Chiang Kai-shek.

Bingo.

I just knew that the Oil/China Connection was going to fall out the hopper sooner or later.

No wonder Wild Bill Donovan had members of his law firm stationed in the OSS China Theater at the end of the war. Now I understand exactly why E. Howard Hunt was working in Donovan's office for several weeks before going to OSS training camp, then—instead of traveling on to China with the rest of his OSS group—went back to D.C. for some time, leaving from there and traveling the western route through India: Hunt unquestionably was on specific orders from Donovan and went back to D.C. for the express purpose of detailed briefing before traveling on to China via India. This all just snapped together.

I'm pressed for time but later will post some of the timeline surrounding that period—which led directly to creation of the CIA by McCloy and fellow crooks.

Ashton

I will read more of your writings on the subject of Watergate.

If I may recommend a starting point, it would be these two posts:

The "Pentagon Papers" leak was a CIA op

And:

There was no "first break-in" at the Watergate

The second article contains links to five other related articles that I believe are crucial to an understanding of Watergate. As told there, it decidedly is not, though, a Robert Redford-Dustin Hoffman vehicle.

It's critical to establish what that was all about in order to turn on the light for 'Merkans in general.

Yes, ma'am. The ones you can get out from in front of "Survivor."

Ashton

About time to destroy the myth that LHO was a poor marksman.

Do you actually think that anyone wanting to set up a patsy for the JFK assassination would have chosen someone who was a "poor marksman"?

By all means, do go right ahead and "destroy the myth." Please destroy it for all time. Let me know if there is any way I can help, won't you?

Ashton Gray

I seem to remember Hartogs being the subject of some sexual assault charges during the mid to late 1960's.

That's absolutely right, James. In 1973 he was ordered to pay $350,000 for sexual exploitation of a patient. I wrote about it in the thread called 1950's CIA "Manchurian Candidate" Memo?

Here's the relevant excerpt from that post:

...in 1973 the sweet and caring Dr. Renatus Hartogs, with "good credentials" and a column in Cosmopolitan magazine, was sued by Julie Roy, who claimed that Hartogs had sexually exploited her. Hartogs attacked her as "an incurable schizophrenic"—then two other women came forward at the trial and said he'd done the same thing to them. He was ordered to pay $350,000.

Ashton

I'm so glad there's someone else besides me pointing the finger in the direction that it truly belongs. You know, folks can analyze a film, snapshot, bullet trajectory, head wounds, etc. til the cows come home. But, when you come right down to it, it goes above and beyond the mundane details of the physical aspects of the kill.

One of the most astutely encapsulated observations I've seen expressed. The so-called "medical evidence" was so contaminated and compromised even by the time it got filtered through the Warren Commission that it is and forevermore will be exactly the tar pit it was crafted to be. And the more "researchers" that can be shoved or lured into it, the better. They check in, but they don't check out.

No amount of doctored and phony "evidence" and "anecdotes," though, can stand as a barrier to methodical and orderly research and investigation and track-back into the fundamentals of means, motive, and opportunity. The connections are in the record. The tracks exist.

Oswald didn't make his "opportunity": it was supplied to him. It was handed to him. It was gifted to him under extraordinary circumstances. And who had the means and motive to provide such opportunity?

The trails, however faint, however well-covered, all lead back in one direction and one direction only.

The "usual suspects," some of which were trotted out only hours after the cold-blooded murder, the rest within days, are downright laughable.

I've seen hardly anybody even bother to wonder how Bringuier and his band of CIA-funded thugs were able to get a broadsheet out before the body was cold screaming "Castro did it!" and throwing an information grenade of confusion into the face of the world with their dog-and-pony-show account of their staged "conflict" with Lee Harvey Oswald and his "now he's anti-Castro, now he's pro-Castro" psy-op. And anybody dense enough to think it ever was anything but a psy-op really ought to be thinking about a career in raising petunias as an alternative to "research."

Then there's the "Texas oil men" truckload of horse manure. Like Texas is some island universe where its "oil men" are somehow completely cut off from the international oil interests and their Siamese twin, the international bankers. Just how naive can it get? Pull-up Huggies, maybe?

You want oil men?

No thanks; I'm trying to quit.

Well, who's the grand- daddy of them all? You need a huge amount of collateral to cover your bases, your losses, your asses, as well as your trail? You got it!

As long as you have your own private international intelligence agency, pretending to be working for the United States, and they have their own little private armies of criminal goons and psychiatrists who will quietly take care of anyone who gets in your way. Or even annoys you. Then can hide anything and everything they want to behind an impenetrable lie of "national security." Very sweet deal indeed.

And, where might that financial house, that's going to be able to handle the job in the most expedient way, be located? It's the connecting of the dots, in the right direction, and IMHO, the yellow brick cobblestone road that always leads back to Nassau Street, NYC.

Only the very best addresses for the very best people.

Ashton

Mr. LIEBELER. Would you tell us how you first became aware, after the assassination, that Lee Oswald was a child with whom you had had previous contact?

Dr. HARTOGS. The first time was, I read it in the newspaper, Justice Kelley, you know, Florence Kelley, made a statement to the press that Oswald had been in the Youth House, and she revealed details of the psychiatric report which immediately made me aware of the fact that I was the one to examine the child, because this was my wording.

There it is. Kelley (or whoever the source was) had used terms he commonly used in his diagnoses. He recognised his style in the phrasing.

To me, this exemplifies with great clarity:

1) Why it is not permissible to bitch-slap a witness, or,

2) Why I do not practice law, or,

3) Perhaps both.

Seriously, thanks very much for this yeomanly job of research. I had many failed attempts at an adequate response before I realized that an adequate response is not possible and had to settle for this one instead.

For the record, I've never really considered that YH was an "on-site MK-Ultra mind-pretzeling machine." I repent deeply for anything I said that might have led to such a conclusion.

I have considered, and still consider, the possibility that it was a clearing house, a "feeder unit" of some description, for just such chicanery, which the testimony of Warthogs—I mean, Hartogs—has done nothing to alleviate in the slightest, no matter how many times I've read it.

I'm afraid that nothing else in your post has led me away from such a possibility, either. I think that this event in the life of Lee Harvey Oswald (or at least one of them) has significance, and that it has some tie in with later anomalies with his whereabouts and doings, particularly in the military.

In the immortal words of Ahme: "I can say no more..."

Ashton

Kennedy was furious about all the press coverage after he was assured it would be stealthy, so by the time the real invasion came about he couldn't risk any more mistakes.

-After the third day of air strikes the CIA had lost ten of their original force of sixteen planes. Something like 10 of sixteen pilots had been killed without achieving their goal.

-Also on day 3--April 18--Kennedy got a note from Khrushchev accusing the US of training the exiles and threatening to give Castro "all necessary assistance" if the invasion wasn't stopped. But Bissell told Kennedy the invasion "could be saved if the President would authorize the use of Navy jets from a carrier then stationed offshore." Finally Kennedy authorized unmarked Navy jets from an aircraft carrier to fly over the Bay of Pigs for one our after dawn on a restricted mission to protect the Cuban's planes, but could only fire if fired upon.

Now it gets really hazy and versions contradict. Bissell was supposed to notify the exile air force of the Navy cover. "Bissell did not write the order out himself. He repeated it verbally to the coloniel on duty." (Plausible deniability?) The colonel at the CIA office transmitted it to the exiles, who took off believing they'd have cover. Then there was no cover and we know how the rest went.

Myra, you've made many good points that need no augmenting (including the two-faced Bundy observation) and I've selected the above passage to respond to specifically only because it's practically a "lights-and-sirens" giveaway that the CIA fix was in on the entire operation at all relevant times.

I don't pretend to know yet why, and I don't pretend to know yet who profitted from it going down the way it did—but somebody did.

I also specifically had not gotten into the bizarre incident involving the CIA ship that made straight for the U.S. base at Guantanamo carrying troops whose dress "could be mistaken for" Castro-Cuban regulars, because I still haven't figured out how this fits into the actual motivation for this CIA clown show that willfully sacrificed God knows how many to death and torture. But it sure as hell wasn't there by some "mix-up." And until its real role in the whole disaster is known, nobody will have a clue about what CIA was doing with all this.

I don't even know what to say about the Mohrenshildt stuff.

Who could?

Ashton

The American pilots were Alabama National Guard pilots recruited by the CIA to fly with the Cubans and sheep-dipped as mercenaries in case they got killed. A few of them did. After they died, a CIA cut-out company paid their families while the families fought to get the U.S. Government to recognize them as Americans killed in service to their country.

Thanks for the info. I've made a note of the CIA coziness with Alabama National Guard, since a little over 10 years later this outfit comes up again as part of the shell-game shuffle of George Bush the Younger during his AWOL period as a pilot—which just happens to coincide with the heart of the CIA's Watergate fraud, in the development of which there had been much discussion of a "chase plane."

The fake company used to pay the families was a creation of Hunt's boss Tracey Barnes and his Domestic Operations Division. Barnes' and Hunt's ability to make paper companies and funnel money through these companies to hide operations from congressional oversight was pretty much a license to kill, don't you think?

This seems to be a fitting cue for CIA's Paul Helliwell's entrance onto this stage of dancing pigs, since Helliwell is cited as having been "paymaster" for the Bay of Pigs.

FLASHBACK TO WW II: On 17 January 1945 Helliwell had been made Chief, Special Intelligence Branch OSS, Chinese Theater. This was just eleven days after James Walton Moore had relocated to "north China." Helliwell was over all covert operations in China, which was his position when Hunt, Conein, et al. arrived in Kunming, China in and around February-March 1945. At almost the same time—on 28 February 1945—George de Mohrenschildt became a U.S. citizen.

Working with Helliwell in China OSS were several peace-time members of William Donovan's New York law firm. Helliwell would have been completely in the know on E. Howard Hunt's mission to "north China," which took place not long at all before the atomic bombs were dropped on Japan. Then on 18 August 1945, Helliwell was put "in charge of postwar intelligence."

Moving forward, Helliwell "officially" joined CIA sometime in 1950, and by 1951 had already been involved, himself, in setting up just such a CIA front as you describe: Sea Supply Corporation. Within two years, in 1953, George H. W. Bush sets up Zapata Oil/ Zapata Offshore. Within three years Zapata Offshore will sink $3.5 million into the SCORPION—"the first three-legged, self-elevating mobile drilling barge"—and deploy it into the Gulf of Mexico.

And five years later is the Bay of Pigs.

Sliding back down into WW II, my keen interest at the moment is what happened financially in relation to China after the war, and who profited. I currently believe that's precisely who the key players in OSS China were working for that last year of the war, and that they knew the bombs were going to be dropped.

Let it also not be forgotten that E. Howard Hunt was "invited" to be in the "newly created Central Intelligence Group" (CIG) before leaving China, and I have documented that Hunt left China about four months before Truman "created" CIG. Hunt's "invitation" was received exactly when McCloy was shuffling certain core components of these hand-picked scum into the little nucleus that would become first CIG and then CIA.

And I currently am of the opinion that the Bay of Pigs had far, far more to do with oil and banking and other commercial interests of CIA's actual masters than there ever has been any hint of.

Ashton

P.S. Yes, Pat, I'm responding to you because your post was on-topic and relevant instead of baiting and badgering.

I'm experiencing that sensation of confusion that is preceeded by my reading of a book. It says that in 1954 the NSC initiated rules that precluded known armed services from assisting in covert CIA operations in peacetime. This meant that President Kennedy could not have ordered airstrikes to bail out the failed Bay of Pigs in 1961 even if he wanted to. Given that this was the law of the land the President was following, it was understood at the time that he had that restriction, so there actually was not the hostile blame of him that we've been led to believe in subsequent years.

Does anyone know any more about this? Is it true? I believe that NSC rule did exist, so it seems feasible.

Has the supposed hatred of Kennedy by the Bay of Pigs survivors been exagerated--or fabricated? Possibly to boost the scenario that some bitter cuban exiles killed him (without the CIA of course...)?

With uncanny precision, Myra, you've managed to open the exact can of worms (and there are so many cans of worms) I was referring to when I said this in the Watergate forum to you:

I for one think "the whole Bay of Pigs thing" goes much, much deeper than thee or we currently know, and by "Bay of Pigs," I mean as the Bay of Pigs, of the Bay of Pigs, and for the Bay of Pigs. Amen.

I can't answer your question, but I know it's a damned good question that shines a good frog-giggin' light on a lot of ugly. I, too, believe the NSC mandates were generally as you describe them, and hoping to get more specifics on that, I want at least to mention the following:

1) Carlos Bringuire had left Cuba in May of 1960 and gone to Guatamala for some undetermined period of time, then was in Argentina for some period, then came to the United States, arriving in Miami, Florida (among other things, home of E. Howard Hunt's little "Cuban regime in exile" as Hunt characterized it) on 8 February 1961.

2) Bringuire stayed in Miami for 10 days, then left there traveling to New Orleans on 18 February 1961. (Very soon after arriving in the Big Easy, Bringuire established his newsletter called Crusada.) On the same day of Bringuire's arrival in New Orleans, MacGeorge Bundy handed JFK two memos: one from Assistant Secretary of State for Latin America Thomas Mann counseling a non-invasion course for dealing with Cuba, the other from CIA's Bissell urging CIA invasion. Kennedy put it on hold.

3) Three weeks later, on 11 March 1961—over a month before the debacle—Kennedy was again pressured by CIA to approve a CIA-run invasion of Cuba. He was briefed by Bissell and Dulles (the, you know, good patriot) that "the Cuban force had to leave Guatemala in the near future," and that a "CIA-run air strike from planes based in Guatemala could then be attributed to defectors from the Cuban air force." If Kai Bird has it right about this, I don't know how this could be overstressed: the entire plan being presented to Kennedy completely addressed the exact NSC rules you've raised, and precluded even a possibility of the "reasons" we have now for Kennedy having ostensibly called off an air strike. The entire thing, including the air cover, purportedly was going to be run by CIA (the air cover somehow "attributed to defectors from the Cuban air force"). According to "George Bush, the Unauthorized Biography," Kennedy had established as a precondition for any such plan that "under no circumstances whatsoever would there be direct intervention by U.S. military forces against Cuba." (And this is entirely consistent with the issue of the NSC rules that you've raised—innit?)

4) On 15 March 1961, "Bundy told Kennedy that he thought the CIA had done 'a remarkable job of reframing the landing plan so as to make it unspectacular and quiet, and plausibly Cuban in its essentials.'" (Sparing here all the gory details leading up to what was by this time essentially a done deal.)

5) (Sharp curve ahead) We move up to about a month later, sometime up around mid-April 1961, not long before the catastrophe in the making, and lo! and behold!, who do you think should arrive—having walked, no less, at least the way he tells it—in Guatemala City? I won't keep you in suspense: George de Mohrenshildt. On a "walking tour of Mexico," doncha' know. Just a little vacation. And he just happened to wind up in Guatamala City just when the biggest U.S. international disaster conceivable is about to take place with Cuban troops that have been based in Guatemala. (My motto: God and the CIA work in mysterious ways.)

6) And now the big climax, quoted the way I've got it here, again from Kai Bird regarding the night of 16 April 1961 (my emphasis): "Only hours before [the Bay of Pigs invasion of 17 April 1961], on Sunday evening, Mac Bundy had phoned Bissell and the CIA's deputy director, General Charles P. Cabell, to say that Kennedy had decided to cancel the D-day air strikes, which would have been flown by American pilots."

Wait. Okay. Where to start? Kennedy didn't call—Bundy called? And who did he purportedly call? Well... CIA cruds who had architected the whole thing, which was supposed to have air cover from... the damned CIA!

And suddenly we come slam up against some of the finest slicing and dicing of language I can recall, and I only can admire it's ambiguity: "which would have been flown by American pilots." Now, please note that doesn't say "of the United States Air Force"—it just sounds like it does. And we are to believe that this little wrinkle comes up at the eleventh hour, when over a month before CIA had said that the air cover would be handled by CIA itself, and would be "attributed to defectors from the Cuban air force."

And with these random, jumbled irreconcilable contradictions, miraculous flukes of relocating anti-Castro Cuban nationals, and the vacationing serendipity of de Mohrenschildts in beautiful, tropical Guatemala, I must leave you. Because I can't make a damned particle of sense out of any of it.

And if I linger even a single moment, I might mention that on the very day the Bay of Pigs invasion started, for some reason Martin Ebon was in Washington, D.C. briefing "a top intelligence agency" on the subject of telepathy. And none of us wants to deal with that right now.

Ashton

<SPIT!> They have plenty of "health professionals" and "former guests" of their mind-bending institutions in their pocket who will tell as many lies as needed, some of them for reasons I won't get into here since I don't like to gratuitously induce nausea.

...[H]ow you conclude that all the evidence showing YH to be a "normal" institution is actually proof of the opposite is beyond my comprehension. Yes, both YH and Hartogs warrant close attention, but let's not get ahead of ourselves.

I'm afraid my expectorative onomatopoeia lost something in translation.

It was a perhaps-too-pithy commentary on the entire field of uncorroborated anecdotal information, and especially on the number of flat-out anecdotal lies I've encountered and documented from psychiatric "health professionals" and some of their "former guests"—not a damp indictment on the particular Youth House at issue.

But it also embodies this sentiment: a front is a front is a front, and they don't generally have big red neon signs over the door flashing, "We're a CIA psychiatric feeder unit. We do mind control better." Any front damned well better have some service they are providing to the community they are in, or something they are producing besides kaleidoscope-eyed mouth-breathing political assassins or lobotomized cardboard box dwellers. Don't you think?

The point being that some public gushing endorsement doesn't mean diddly to me. I consider it utterly irrelevant. I would be amazed if such didn't exist, and the more hideous the purpose of front, the more effusively laudatory would I expect the PR to be. These aren't dolts running intelligence operations, y'know? So the point is that for me, the presence or not of "gee whiz" PR materials is a complete null.

What I consider relevant is that Oswald went into the place, and the only information we have about what he was doing and what was done to him (or even where he actually was) for two weeks is a couple of conflicting reports, one from a serial sex-offender psychiatrist, schooled in Nazi Germany and Montreal, who apparently was in charge of the place.

Other than that—surrrrre, let's hear a "success story." Why not.

The truth is, at this point in time, I can't prove the two psychiatrists knew each other (though I'be be flabbergastered if they didn't). Nor at this point can I prove it actually means anything if they did.

Okay. Please note carefully that I didn't ask you to prove anything. Did somebody? I can't prove Hartogs knew or studied with Penfield, and said so loud and clear. But little pieces add up to big pictures, and sometimes pieces fit and sometimes pieces don't fit, but the ones that get buried in the litter box aren't ever going to be part of the picture. That's pretty certain.

Hopefully we all want the truth to come out.

Devoutly to be wished.

Sometimes that makes it prudent to hold back a little on providing info while research is ongoing so as to limit the possibility of /a/ scaring potential witnesses off and /b/ other researchers running interference.

All right. As you see fit. We have a difference of opinion.

...ince the Paine name has come up, there is another curious intersection of the Paine contingent, Oswald, and the psychiatric underworld (but I repeat myself). That's with Dr. Wilhelm Kuetemeyer, one of the most curious cases in a stampeding herd of "curious cases."

Kuetemeyer has to have been a psychiatrist, having conducted "experiments on schizophrenics" prior to becoming involved in the plot to assassinate Hitler (ostensibly—that's a whole other story). Yet nowhere is he given the name he deserves, always being referred to by the euphimism "Professor of psychosomatic medicine." He is such a shadowy figure whose only connection to the scene seems to be through the equally smoky Volkmar Schmidt, whose "idea" was proposed to de Mohrenschildt for Oswald to meet the Paines.

And yet somehow, throught some mysterious method, somewhere, Kuetemeyer reportedly concocted a "psychological profile" of Lee Harvey Oswald. What a bizarre datum. How? Where? When?

Thanks. Had forgotten about Kuetemeyer. Whilst Epstein reported on the Schmidt the connection, he is silent on any Oswald profile he may have done. Ditto Bartholomew. Ditto. Scott. The sole reportage of this profile seems to be in the so-called Unauthorised Bush Bio which is all over the net. No citation is proved and the authors themselves have dubious background connections. Our fellow member, Bill Kelly once interviewed Schmidt. Maybe he can be persuaded to post the transcript. I think Bill may have been searching for a Kuetemeyer - Dulles connection in that interview.

Yes, that's certainly the only source I've found for the reference, and I certainly hope something else comes up on this. There are several points about it that I find striking.

One is the language about "a detailed psychological profile." Allow me to direct your attention to this brief excerpt from the testimony in Congress before the Watergate Committee by the pathological xxxx and CIA Director (but I repeat myself) Richard Helms:

• RICHARD HELMS: [O]ver a period of some years, the Agency [CIA] had developed a technique for putting together a lot of information about a foreigner—maybe a foreign statesman or a foreign dignitary—and then attempting to analyze, uh, what sort of a human being he was. These things were called, variously, I think "psychological profiles"—as good a title as any..."
  

Another thing that strikes me is Kuetemeyer's purported involvement in the assassination plot against Hitler mentioned as the reason for his having "gone into hiding." Yet he doesn't seem to appear in historical accounts of the plot.

In direct relation to the above, yet another thing that strikes me is that prior to his going into hiding after the 20th July 1944 attempted assassination, Kuetemeyer is reported to have been involved in "conducting experiments on a group of schizophrenics." The only types of "experiments" I know of being done after December 1939 in Germany on mentally ill people were those done to find the best way to murder them in wholesale lots—these psychiatric atrocities in the "Euthanasia Program" being the precursor to the Holocaust.

This now brings me back to Renata Hartogs. Hartogs says he had been practising as a psychologist in Belgium for three years prior to coming to the United States on 4 December 1940. And maybe he was. But with a medical degree? That qualified him to practice psychiatry. Yet he insisted on making the distinction in testimony, making a specific point that it was merely psychology he had been practicing—none of that messy stuff.

Whatever Hartogs or Kuetemeyer (also Kütemeyer) may have been doing in Germany and/or Belgium, I still think it worth mentioning that by December 1940, when Hartogs came to the United States, over 26,000 patients already had been put to death in the "T-4 Euthanasia Program" according to The Encyclopedia of the Holocaust. By the time Kuetemeyer purportedly "went into hiding" in 1944, the "Final Solution" had been developed out of the earlier psychiatric pioneering in mass murder and was well under way.

And, no: that doesn't prove anything.

Ashton

Huh? Is Ashton saying I'm a CIA apologist?

Please don't feed the trolls.

Ashton

Well, good line Ashton. But what exactly are you saying?

1) You were responding to a rhetorical question asked to me, simply for effect, by a person who knows well that I don't respond to his asinine trolling at all.

2) If I ever want to say you are "a CIA apologist," you won't have to ask anybody else whether I did or not. Trust me.

3) You were asking the resident CIA apologist, who by his rhetorical question, of course, was making the case that he is not. On that subject, here is just one quote of note (and you can do any more research on this point yourself if you choose):

Having recently read McCloy's HSCA testimony, along with much of the Executive Session testimony, I must admit I now believe that McCloy and Dulles were both committed patriots trying to do a good job.

It just warms my heart. How about yours?

Ashton

Huh? Is Ashton saying I'm a CIA apologist?

Please don't feed the trolls.

Ashton

THANK YOU! IF IT WASN'T FOR GENERAL EISENHOWER,YOU YOU AND ALL OF EUROPE WOULD BE DOING THE THE GOOSE STEP AND WOULDN'T BE ABLE TO SHARE YOUR POETIC VERSES.....THINK ABOUT IT..........RICHARD /CIA HEADQUARTERS/LANGLEY/VA/USA

I am aware that General Eisenhower played an important role in the Second World War but this statement is completely ridiculous. It also has nothing to do with the subject of the thread (nor does your postings about examples of British corruption).

I know why he's here, and I know exactly why he's trying to sabotage this exact thread. When you posted about Case and the bribe, you just missed by this >< much what all that smoke was there to obfuscate: the CIA running their Siberia Bill through the House at almost the exact instant that Case was handed the cash through the oil interests.

Funny, but Case didn't bring this little matter of the cash up in Congress until two weeks later, on Friday, 3 February 1956.

The fascist pig Richard M. Nixon was in the woodwork trying to help get the CIA's Nazi-model psychiatric concentration camp set up in Alaska with a huge land grant (which of course didn't have anything to do with oil interests—doncha' know).

Anybody familiar with these forums, and especially with the Watergate forum, will know full well the extraordinary amount of energy and ink the resident CIA apologist here has expended trying to paint me as a Nixon-lover. But he's the Main Mouthpiece of the Official Story here, and wants all attention kept on the CIA's fall-guy Nixon so the CIA can keep being fawned over by him as poor patriot good guys just trying to get through the day and earn their paychecks.

But Nixon knew damned well that MK-ULTRA had been created less than three years before the "Alaska Mental Health Bill," and also, it seems, knew damned well about the CIA's secretive perfection of the subject of brainwashing that they had gotten all worked out just in time for their Siberia Bill to get pushed through.

And guess who grabbed the headlines just when it was about to go through the Senate, and become in the United States what Los Angeles Superior Court judge Joseph M. Call, who made a careful study of the act from the legal standpoint, characterized as "the police state working at its best."

It wasn't four years later that Kennedy was elected, and the exact same CIA regime who had been thwarted in the eleventh hour at establishing their psychiatrically controlled police state sure as hell hadn't given up.

I said in another thread that we ain't seen ugly yet. We're getting a glimpse.

Ashton

Given the erudite and relevant contributions of the newest member (who apparently arrived under the "new, improved" membership requirements), I thought I should add something just as pertinent to this thread and this forum:

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!

The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!

Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun

The frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand:

Long time the manxome foe he sought --

So rested he by the Tumtum tree,

And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,

The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,

Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,

And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through

The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!

He left it dead, and with its head

He went galumphing back.

"And, has thou slain the Jabberwock?

Come to my arms, my beamish boy!

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!'

He chortled in his joy.

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe.

Ashton

Man. Looks to me like the recent exposures in the forum have really hit a nerve somewhere.

Ashton

Pat:

Do you claim that there was one "forged Diem cable," or that there was more than one "forged Diem cable"?

Ashton Gray

You have refused to answer any of my questions.

I'll let honest and prudent people who have waded through seven pages of this topic decide for themselves whether I have honored my promise to engage with you and answer relevant question on this one specific issue of the Diem cables or not, and whether that makes your statement above a damned lie or not. It's in the record.

And they also know exactly and unequivocally what my own position is.

By contrast, here is the precisely on-topic, relevant, pertinent question of material fact that goes to the very core of this entire issue, the question that you have gone through seven forum pages dodging and evading and now have squandered yet another post on, wasting everyone's time, in further dodging and evading. So I'm going to ask you again:

Do you claim that there was one "forged Diem cable," or that there was more than one "forged Diem cable"?

Ashton

But Colby's little "let's all go to the confessional booth" melodrama was begun as early as 7 May 1973. By then Colby was CIA's Director of Operations. It was then—with Nixon still in office, with the Watergate hearings raging, and almost precisely coordinated with Daniel Ellsberg's case being thrown out based on the CIA Liddy/Hunt/Fielding op Colby had helped in—that Colby wrote the very memo that was circulated to CIA personnel, inviting them to "come forward with anything the CIA might have done that exceeded the limits of the Agency's charter." The memo that Colby wrote, though, was not circulated over Colby's name, but over then-(briefly)-CIA Director Schlesinger's name.

I'm quoting myself here only because I inadvertently omitted an important point: Archbishop Colby's overwhelming divine inspiration for CIA confessionals came only, of course, after his cult-bretheren, Richard Helms and Sidney Gottlieb, had destroyed the evidence of all the sins they really wanted hidden, and then almost immediately had gone up in the Rapture. (Wait: no, Helms had been given a cushy ambassadorship on the other side of the world, and Gottlieb had "retired" with a fat pension right after they destroyed the CIA records at the end of 1972-beginning of 1973. Well, okay: they'd gone up in the Rapture.)

I can't think of any more propitious moment for a sudden inspiration of "let's all hold hands and confess."

"Kumbaya, my Lord. Kumbaya."

(Okay, put down the iron: I'll stop singing.)

Ashton

Ashton, he may not have been oblivious to it, but Penfold's institute was at McGill, not the University of Montreal.

Right, and while I've never been to Montreal, it appears to me on the map that McGill and the University of Montreal are only across Parc Mont Royal from each other, less than a mile. Each must find his own path through the CIA's maze of mirrors, but it's been my experience, in my wanderings, that they use proximate locations constantly in their tireless efforts at keeping their tracks covered and obfuscating connections. It disperses the attention of trackers in different directions and throws lots more "place names" into the swirling confusion that is their primary product.

Of course this does exactly what it's supposed to do, and as I said, no direct connection has been made between Hartogs and Penfield during this period. But the proximity, and an awareness of this as a favorite ruse is why I posted this about Hartogs and Penfield.

There seems to have been more than one psych report from YH if you believe Florence Kelley. I'll try and find the newspaper article quoting her. Hartogs claimed this article is what jogged his memory on Oswald after the assassination. Trouble was, she quoted from a YH psych report which didn't match Hartogs' report obtained by the WC.

Thanks. Yes, I have limited anecdotal information on this "twosie." If you can find the article I'd love to see it.

Whether or not Hartogs accurately reported "what went on", other health professionals in YH also wrote reports giving a similar picture. I do note that YH was painted as one of the better youth institutes by a former (many times) "guest" of that institute in the '50s.

<SPIT!> They have plenty of "health professionals" and "former guests" of their mind-bending institutions in their pocket who will tell as many lies as needed, some of them for reasons I won't get into here since I don't like to gratuitously induce nausea.

Even though it may look like I disagree that YH and Hartogs are potential high yield investments in research time, that's far from the truth.

No, I completely agree that all such factors, pro and con, should be aired and taken into account.

Oswald's journey to Dealey Plaza imo, started during his time in NYC. Funny you should link Hartogs to Penfold through a university. I have him linked to another psychiatrist through the University of Frankfurt-am-Main. At least they both attended it at around the same time, and later would both live in NYC. As this research is ongoing and may have some significance in areas being looked into by others, I won't name him at this stage, but I'll toss out this teaser... he was closely associated with a member of Lyman Paine's inner circle.

You have my undivided attention, so unless these "others" somehow have staked out a proprietary interest in the truth, I think it would be in the greater good to set forth the name.

Meanwhile, while you mull that over, and since the Paine name has come up, there is another curious intersection of the Paine contingent, Oswald, and the psychiatric underworld (but I repeat myself). That's with Dr. Wilhelm Kuetemeyer, one of the most curious cases in a stampeding herd of "curious cases."

Kuetemeyer has to have been a psychiatrist, having conducted "experiments on schizophrenics" prior to becoming involved in the plot to assassinate Hitler (ostensibly—that's a whole other story). Yet nowhere is he given the name he deserves, always being referred to by the euphimism "Professor of psychosomatic medicine." He is such a shadowy figure whose only connection to the scene seems to be through the equally smoky Volkmar Schmidt, whose "idea" was proposed to de Mohrenschildt for Oswald to meet the Paines.

And yet somehow, throught some mysterious method, somewhere, Kuetemeyer reportedly concocted a "psychological profile" of Lee Harvey Oswald. What a bizarre datum. How? Where? When?

These aren't rhetorical questions. If anyone has any further information it would be greatly appreciated.

And while the following begins to wander from the specific to the general, I am going to state here that we are in SCUBA gear now examing the below-the-water-line part of the iceberg. It is dark, hidden, and almost inconceivably massive, stretching away into black depths that never have been plumbed or viewed.

One of my idle wonderments is the comparison of the reports and evidences of abuses and atrocities we do have about CIA's mind-control projects and programs (and even that considerable mound, of course, only a fraction), versus the almost total vacuum that sits where the names of psychiatrists that had to have been planning and conducting it all for CIA should be. It's astounding.

And it's perhaps more astounding how very little anyone seems to notice this giant sucking hole in the record. It's almost as though people read about BLUEBIRD and MK-ULTRA, and somehow kind of figure that maybe a bunch of lay CIA bureaucrats and agents whose names they know must have been doing all the dirty work. It's almost funny in a very sad and even macabre way.

But one thing is certain: for everything CIA has coughed up about such crimes, nothing has been more jealously and scrupulously protected than their network of accommodating APA and AMA butchers. (I mean scientists and doctors, of course. A slip of the typing fingers.)

Ashton Gray

"Information about Agency dealings with the Washington Post newspaper is extremely sketchy."

--Carl Bernstein

Ashton

P.S. Forgive the smiley abuse. I cannot convey how long and loudly I laughed, but I think I scared the neighbor's cat.

I'd just like to emphasize in this thread that for about two weeks in 1953, beginning on 16 April 1953, Lee Harvey Oswald was in the custody and control of one Dr. Renatus Hartogs, a German psychiatrist.

I think some background is in order in this place and time on the dear Doktor.

After studying at the University of Frankfurt-am-Main and practicing as a psychologist in Belgium, Renatus Hartogs arrived in the United States on 4 December 1940, and soon was studying in a pretty strange place for a new arrival to the states: Montreal, Canada.

It so happens that just six years earlier, in 1934, Dr. Wilder Penfield had been given $1.2 million by (wait for it) the Rockefeller Foundation to establish the Montreal Neurological Institute, where old Wild Wilder Wildest earned a rep for poking probes into the brains of conscious patients, using only local anesthetic. Of course this was all under the veddy, veddy proper veil of "epilepsy research." Uh-huh.

While no direct association is known between Hartogs and Wilder, it almost is inconceivable that a student of psychiatry could study at the University of Montreal and be oblivous to Wilder Penfield's Rockefeller-funded institute and brain poking.

So Hartogs then set up shop in New York, where he became the chief psychiatrist for this veddy, veddy helpful privately-owned "Youth House" for wayward boys, and got his paws on Oswald because Little Lee had been "truant." Well, of course. And Oswald was there (at least that's what Hartogs says) for two weeks or more, and nobody knows at all what went on, except what Hartogs has reported in testimony and in his supplied "report." And you can believe it if you want.

But I can't stop here, because in 1973 the sweet and caring Dr. Renatus Hartogs, with "good credentials" and a column in Cosmopolitan magazine, was sued by Julie Roy, who claimed that Hartogs had sexually exploited her. Hartogs attacked her as "an incurable schizophrenic"—then two other women came forward at the trial and said he'd done the same thing to them. He was ordered to pay $350,000.

And we all lived happily ever after.

AFTERWORD: In 1952, the year before Hartogs got his paws on Little Lee, Shafica Karagulla was in Montreal in as understudy to the always fun Dr. Wilder Penfield. Twenty years later, in early August 1972, she was sitting side-by-side with Ingo Swann on his little trip to L.A. before he commenced a series of experiments with CIA agents under the direction of CIA's Sidney Gottlieb, leading to the secret 1 October 1972 CIA contract with Swann to develop remote viewing.

Ashton Gray