Cliff Varnell

Another question for those who buy Bowron-as-perp. According to the neck x-ray, there was an air pocket overlapping C7 and T1. How does a needle plunged into the throat leave an air pocket at the back of the neck? How does a conventional round leave such an air pocket? What kind of round would one expect to leave an air pocket? One that dissolved. Just as the autopsists speculated immediately after the autopsy. It's all the case file, Clarise.

Because the round struck above the neck-tie and below the adams apple. Ashton's claim that this area was not exposed is disputed by redundant photographic evidence to the contrary. Scroll down... http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0385474466...670#reader-link Nobody wears their neck tie above their adams apple! Above the neck-tie. Below the adams apple. But don't let me stop anyone from digging yet another black hole in this case. There are so many fruitless areas of research here already -- what's one more?

Burgundy, again. Kathy's questions hangs in the air like a 500 pound house fly. If JFK wasn't reacting to trauma at his throat -- what WAS he doing with both hands up near his throat?

I don't agree, Cliff. It's one of the best threads, imo. Worst case scenario is that Ashton may be wrong but it's a plausible and well-presented case. Why wouldn't the planners have an operative planted in Parkland? Beats me. Because they had the technology to paralyze him, which is exactly what we see happening to JFK in the limo. I don't agree that it's a plausible case. It is yet another example of gratuitous witness-bashing, the amount of which that goes on in this case is repugnant, imo. Answer Kathy's question, please. If JFK wasn't reacting to a shot to his throat -- what was he doing with his hands up around his throat?

I thought the official explanation was that it was an involuntary reflexive reaction to the back shot. (but I have no faith in official explanations). If only the Stemmons Freeway sign had been transparent. Since he brought his hands up in the direction of his throat I'd conclude he was reacting to a wound in the throat. The sick joke is this thread.

Kathy, he and Jackie were playing charades. They did it all the time at the most inappropriate moments. Like on Elm St. Where it looks like JFK's left index finger was clawing at his neck band -- he was signaling, "One word!" Jackie looks at him intently as the limo comes out from behind the sign. "One word! Sounds like...choke? Choke! Sounds like choke!...Joke!..." That's it. Joke.

Let's take this all the way back. Monroe Doctrine (1823) America had 140 years of declared hegemony over the Western Hemisphere. The need for a "boogy-man" to leverage said hegemony appears redundant. And if it was the goal of the Harriman Security State (see Tarpley, Webster) to create a Latin American boogy-man why didn't they do it in Guatemala, with Arbenz (& Che) instead of sacrificing the jewel of the Caribbean to Fidel & Che?

Me: Charles: Absolutely relevant to the operation pinning Oswald on Castro. Review what Martino stated (SWHT pg 272): Please enlighten me how a life-long American mobster, put to killing the patsy while the patsy was literally in the hands of the Dallas police, directly implicates Fidel Castro? In the meantime, as always, I refer to the historical record: James Bamford's BODY OF SECRETS pg 87, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Lyman Lemnitzer wrote in a memorandum to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, April 10, 1962: (quote on, emphasis added) The Joint Chiefs of Staff believe that the Cuban problem must be solved in the near future...Further, they see no prospect of early success in overthrowing the present communist regime either as a result of internal uprising or external political, economic or psychological pressures. Accordingly they believe that military intervention by the United States will be required to overthrow the present communist regime...The Joint Chiefs of Staff believe that the United States can undertake military intervention in Cuba without risk of general war. They also believe that the intervention can be accomplished rapidly enough to minimize communist opportunities for solicitation of U.N. action. (quote off) "UN action" was a documented concern -- a concern that no phony Oswald confession and a rapid Oswald demise was going to allay.

Hoover memo at 5:15pm 11/22/63 directly implicated the head of the FBI in the frame-Castro black-propaganda op.

Larry Hancock's Someone Would Have Talked, ppg 311-2: (quote on) SUMMARY [Chapt. 15] Among the difficulties in understanding the Kennedy conspiracy, perhaps the most challenging is reconciling the many elements that appear to be contradictory. This has been made even more difficult for those who have viewed the "cover-up" as an extension of the conspiracy. That difficulty disappears if we first view the conspiracy to frame Oswald as a Castro (or both Cuba and Soviet associated) conspirator, a plan that came totally unraveled when Oswald was taken into custody. And second, we see that the so-called "cover-up" was an independent, largely unplanned and highly reactive effort to ensure that a Lee Oswald would [take] the fall by himself-- as a lone nut. We may have a [more] descriptive term than "cover-up", see how much sense it makes when you picture it as "damage control." * The plot was to show the US President being killed by a Castro sponsored conspiracy. * The plotters were unable to execute their full plan due to Oswald's capture. * Due to Oswald's role as an intelligence dangle and his contact with Kostikov, the initial appearance was still that Oswald might have been acting as a Communist dupe. * Both the FBI and CIA were aware of the Kostikov implications; when, how, and if they shared this information with the new President is unclear. * Lyndon Johnson personally led the official cover-up to eliminate any public suggestion of conspiracy while leveraging confidential information and the threat of war to make the cover-up work. * The "lone nut" was a creation of the official cover-up, not of the Kennedy plot. * The plotters' follow-on efforts to maintain conspiracy were overwhelmed by Johnson. Johnson's motivation in the cover-up remains uncertain, partially because the historical record has been sanitized to remove any items that would reveal a discussion of conspiracy... (quote off)

I wasn't commenting on your scenario. That's why I didn't quote it. Rather, I was commenting on statements you and Charles made.

And the point you insist on missing is that with Oswald in custody this "irrevocable proof" could not be brought forward beyond Hoover pitching it to an un-moved Bobby Kennedy. The FACT is that Hoover claimed to have evidence of Oswald repeatedly going to Cuba -- but with Oswald captured alive this charge became inoperable. Say what you want, Tim, but there's no way that a gangster killing a patsy in the hands of Dallas police would direct suspicion on Fidel Castro. Explain to me how this would work. First, Captain Fritz announces to the world that Oswald confessed to killing JFK as an agent of Fidel. Then the Castro agent is killed while in police custody -- before or after he makes a public statement? It would have to be before, no? You can't even allow him to yell -- "I'm just a patsy!" And even though there is no record of this confession, and the patsy was gunned down by a man with life-long mob ties, the unsubstantiated statements of Fritz are so powerful that Johnson could claim them "irrevocable proof" of Castro complicity? That's one best saved for the tourists, Tim.

Let's take one point at a time. Please cite from the historical record. Thrill me. What "irrevocable proof" of Castro's involvement did the DPD or FBI or CIA possess?

burgundy is me Ah, Cliff, I added the emphasis above so as to lend weight to a related, simple question. So what? So lacking the "irrevocable proof of Castro involvement," which was the benchmark cited by former-CJCS Lemnitzer for establishing a pre-text to invade (see Bamford's Body of Secrets), the Yale boys Harriman/Bundy pulled the plug on the entire Castro-did-it scenario while LBJ was still in the air Dallas-to-DC. It's all right there in the historical record. In fact, this goes for the entire assassination: how/who/why: "It's all right there in the case file, Clarice. Everything you need to catch them, these men you seek." I'm still waiting to learn how LHO's post-11/22 survival under the circumstances in which it actually occured could have been sufficient to scuttle a serious, long-planned, all-important retaliatory invasion of false sponsor Cuba. Charles, how do you sell a guy claiming to be "just a patsy" as a Castro agent? Think of Oswald-the-Castro-agent as a product. There is going to be a product roll-out that involves murdering the patsy in such a manner which would appear to directly lead to Castro. But what the actual "product roll-out" involved was a living patsy shouting his innocence. How on earth does that point to Castro? And what of two centuries of American jurisprudence that says a man is innocent until proven guilty? How would the United States justify to the world an invasion of Cuba when the man accused of following Castro's orders to kill JFK claims his innocence and no genuine evidence against him actually exists? Again, for the record: The DPD was controlled. And the Dallas boys were hot to trot. SWHT pg 288: Same with Hoover back in DC: id Meanwhile, Bundy calls Johnson from the White House Situation Room and informs him that the lone assassin is in custody. LBJ wasn't in the White House as the new prez more than ten minutes before W. Averell Harriman informed him the Russians weren't involved. From that 7PM meeting on: the official story was Oswald-as-lone-nut. There was NO ONE big enough to over-rule Harriman. Access to LHO was controlled. Nothng transpired at any time -- at least to my knowledge -- to prevent the fabrication of an LHO "I did it for Fidel" confession. I can't for the life of me imagine how that would possibly go down. Was the DPD going to first claim Oswald confessed to killing Kennedy in league with Castro, and then, almost immediately after, Oswald would himself be shot in DPD hands before he could make a public statement? How do you sell that to the world as an excuse to invade another country? It was one thing for Marcos to use a similar scenario as an excuse to kill Aquino -- but as an excuse for America to invade Cuba? No way. No one would have been in a position to challenge the veracity of such a claim. What about Oswald? Was his demise to immediately follow this "false confession"? I like the headlines the next day: OSWALD KILLS KENNEDY FOR CASTRO; RUBY KILLS OSWALD FOR JACKIE. No one in a position to have heard LHO tell the truth about what led him to his cruel fate was in a position to share that info in a believable, verifiable, plan-destroying manner, let alone survive the experience. Wouldn't Oswald's murder -- having occurred immediately after this un-recorded "confession" -- diminish the impact of such a confession? How do you make that stick? First the guy confesses in police custody and then he's murdered in police custody before he could make a public statement? And that would have put B-52s in the air? Nothing about the pre-assassination sheep-dipping of LHO as a Castro sympathiser/agent could have been undone by the patsy's oh so brief survival. His death in police custody un-did all Castro links. If the assassination's sponsors truly desired to precipitate a post-assassination invasion of Cuba -- rather than use the "it looks like Castro and some of his Soviet masters did it" "evidence" only to control investigators with the threat of WW III -- it would have happened. Under what pre-text? Because the Dallas police said the man confessed to being a Castro agent right before he was shot while in police custody by a mobster? What kind of case is that? That's "sponsors" -- as opposed to some assassination facilitators and mechanics who no doubt participated in the hit because of their belief, encouraged by people at the top, that Castro would fall because of their efforts. Sponsors, as in plural. Not all sponsors shared the same agenda post-assassination, I submit. As always, Charles Most enjoyable, as always.

Larry Hancock's Someone Would Have Talked, pg 272: (quote on, emphasis in the original) FAILURE IN DALLAS [John] Martino himself tells us very specifically where the plan went wrong. Lee Oswald did not make it to his contact at the Texas Theatre. There was no opportunity to get him out of Dallas and eliminate him in a manner which would directly implicate Castro. The obvious speculation from this is that Oswald had not actively participated in framing himself, certainly not to the extent of leaving an unmistakable trail to Castro. Nor was Oswald prepared to confess himself as a Castro-supporter acting for the "revolution" or in response to American assassination attempts against Fidel. The most radical aspect of this view of the assassination is the implication that immediately following the assassination, there were actually competing efforts in play. Some of the individuals involved were desperately working to carry on their "script" in the face of Oswald's capture. They also had an urgent need to quickly eliminate Oswald to prevent him from directing attention to them -- given his realization that he had been set up as a patsy. At the same time, individuals within the FBI and CIA were working to cover up their own use of Oswald as an intelligence tool. And, at the highest level of government, a move was underway to constrain any serious investigation of conspiracy and portray Lee Oswald strictly as a "lone nut". The question is whether or not a detailed examination of events in the hours and weeks following November 22 supports this view of events. If it does, we would expect to see that the efforts of all parties would be reactive, spur of the moment, reflecting no advance planning and, at all times, in direct conflict with each other. (quote off)

Still is. Ashton, I didn't get into it with you over the throat thing because we have bigger fish to fry. I think "the Timeline" is the most important work being done. Everything else is Parlor Gaming. Please continue with your Timeline work on the Forum. Can you please point me to "the Timeline" work you're referring to Cliff? Thanks. Myra, The "Black Propaganda Ops" thread is very interesting.

Still is. Ashton, I didn't get into it with you over the throat thing because we have bigger fish to fry. I think "the Timeline" is the most important work being done. Everything else is Parlor Gaming. Please continue with your Timeline work on the Forum.

In all of the following emphasis mine Joseph Trento, The Secret History of the CIA, pg 334-5: (quote on) Having served as ambassador to Moscow and governor of New York, W. Averell Harriman was in the middle of a long public career. In 1960, President-elect Kennedy appointed him ambassador-at-large, to operate “with the full confidence of the president and an intimate knowledge of all aspects of United States policy.” By 1963, according to [Pentagon aide William R.] Corson, Harriman was running “Vietnam without consulting the president or the attorney general.” The president had begun to suspect that not everyone on his national security team was loyal. As Corson put it, “Kenny O’Donnell (JFK’s appointments secretary) was convinced that McGeorge Bundy, the national security advisor, was taking orders from Ambassador Averell Harriman and not the president. He was especially worried about Michael Forrestal, a young man on the White House staff who handled liaison on Vietnam with Harriman.” (quote off) From JFK's taped notations on the Diem coup: http://tapes.millercenter.virginia.edu/cli...nam_memoir.html (quote on) President Kennedy: Opposed to the coup was General [Maxwell] Taylor, the Attorney General [Robert Kennedy], Secretary [Robert] McNamara to a somewhat lesser degree, John McCone, partly based on an old hostility to [Henry Cabot] Lodge [Jr.] which causes him to lack confidence in Lodge's judgement, partly as a result of a new hostility because Lodge shifted his [CIA] station chief; in favor of the coup was State, led by Averell Harriman, George Ball, Roger Hilsman, supported by Mike Forrestal at the White House. (quote off) Via PD Scott: http://www.history-matters.com/pds/DP3_Chapter5.htm#_ftn41 "Assassinations Report, 173. Cf. FRUS, #320; 777 (Bundy memo of April 21, 1963). The other two documents are not in FRUS." (quote on) As early as January 4, 1963, Bundy proposed to President Kennedy that the possibility of communicating with Castro be explored. (Memorandum, Bundy to the President, 1/4/63). Bundy's memorandum on "Cuba Alternatives" of April 23 [sic, i.e. April 21], 1963, also listed the "gradual development of some form of accommodation with Castro" among policy alternatives. (Bundy memorandum, 4/21/63) At a meeting on June 3, 1963, the Special Group agreed it would be a "useful endeavour" to explore "various possibilities of establishing channels of communication to Castro." (Memorandum of Special Group meeting, 6/6/63). (quote off) David Talbot's Brothers, pg 226: (quote on) When Lisa Howard told [envoy William] Attwood that Castro would like to restore communications with Kennedy and offered to set up an informal meeting at her apartment between him and Cuba's UN representative, Carlos Lechuga, the diplomat responded enthusiastically. In a memo he wrote for [Adlai] Stevenson and Averill Harriman -- who he was told was the best direct channel to Kennedy -- Attwood suggested that "we have something to gain and nothing to lose by finding out whether in fact Castro does want to talk"...Stevenson took the proposal to Kennedy, who gave him clearance to pursue the dialogue. Harriman too said he was "adventuresome enough" to like the idea... (quote off) ad·ven·ture (ăd-vĕn'chər) n. 1. 1. An undertaking or enterprise of a hazardous nature. 2. An undertaking of a questionable nature, especially one involving intervention in another state's affairs. Brothers, pg 217: (quote on) By the time Vietnam began to reach a crisis point late in Kennedy's term, much of his national security bureaucracy -- weary with the president's sly maneuvers to avoid war -- was in flagrant revolt against him. The Pentagon and CIA were taking secret steps to sabotage his troop withdrawal plan. And even trusted advisors like Harriman, the Moscow-friendly globe-trotting tycoon whom Kennedy thought he could rely on to help broker a deal on Vietnam, were brazenly undercutting his peace initiatives. (quote off) Vincent Salandria's "The Tale Told by Two Tapes": http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.ph...art=#entry31073 (quote on) In November of 1966, I read Theodore H. White's The Making of the President, 1964... [O]n page 33 I read the following about the flight back to Washington, D.C. from Dallas: ...* The Situation Room of the White House first fingered Oswald as the lone assassin when an innocent government, with so much evidence in Dealey Plaza of conspiracy, would have been keeping all options open. Therefore this premature birth of the single-assassin myth points to the highest institutional structure of our warfare state as guilty of the crime of killing Kennedy. Such a source does not take orders from the Mafia nor from renegade elements. But such a source is routinely given to using the Mafia and supposedly out-of-control renegade sources to do its bidding. * McGeorge Bundy was in charge of the Situation Room and was spending that fateful afternoon receiving phone calls from President Johnson, who was calling from Air Force One when the lone-assassin myth was prematurely given birth. (Bishop, Jim, The Day Kennedy Was Shot, New York & Funk Wagnalls, 1968), p. 154) McGeorge Bundy as the quintessential WASP establishmentarian did not take his orders from the Mafia and/or renegade elements. (quote off) Max Holland's The Kennedy Assassination Tapes, pg 57: (quote on) At 6:55 p.m. Johnson has a ten-minute meeting with Senator J. William Fulbright (D-Arkansas) and diplomat W. Averell Harriman to discuss possible foreign involvement in the assassination, especially in light of the two-and-a-half-year Soviet sojourn of Lee Harvey Oswald...Harriman, a U.S. ambassador to Moscow during World War II, is an experienced interpreter of Soviet machinations and offers the president the unanimous view of the U.S. governments top Kremlinologists. None of them believe the Soviets had a hand in the assassination, despite the Oswald association. (quote off) "The Secret Origins of Skull & Bones": http://www.voxfux.com/features/scull_bones_opium.html Partial roster of Yale club "Skull & Bones": W. Averell Harriman ('13) McGeorge Bundy ('40)

That's a whole lotta' speculating from where I sit; the record says it was a Bundy operation, Joseph Trento, The Secret History of the CIA, pg 334-5, emphasis mine:

Charles, in this post I'll go with burgundy... 1. If I impart nothing else to anyone viewing these pages, let me be remembered for championing the "third alternative" point of view. For these characters, it wasn't a choice between a "readily controlled dope pipeline" or a "'Castro boogeyman [sic].'" They conspired to create and maintain both. And they succeeded. The hypothetical "choice" did indeed involve "a readily controlled dope pipeline out of Havana," OR the Castro boogy-man scenario. Not both. As to the former, on 11/22/63 the Lansky/Trafficante syndicate was still struggling to adequately replace Havana as a distribution hub. It's proximity to the Florida Keys make Havana eternally attractive to narcotics smugglers. Having to pull the US Navy off the coast of Haiti so they could stage smuggling runs was in no way, shape or form a "readily controlled pipeline." That was Harriman's call when it was all said and done -- or so I speculate. I submit their respective smuggling instruments were roughly equivalent -- Zapata Offshore and Murchison Oil Lease. And both owned shipping lines, of course. I can't quantify their respective roles in dope trafficking, but given their respective histories, connections etc. it's productive speculation, imho. Consider: Johnson wasn't in the White House more than 10 minutes 11/22/63 before Harriman shows up to tell him that the Soviets had nothing to do with the assassination. How would Harriman know that as a fact unless he had knowledge of the actual plot? And if Harriman didn't know that as a fact, how does he responsibly present that conclusion to the President of the United States less than 6 hours after the shooting? Looks to me like an employer (Harriman) going over to his employee's house to tell the guy (LBJ) the proverbial What's What. And then a few days later a Harriman protege by the name of George H. W. Bush was briefed by the CIA as to the Cuban exile reaction in Miami. http://newsmine.org/archive/cabal-elite/fa...a-1961-1963.txt The same George Bush of Houston TX who called the FBI to direct attention to a right winger. Is the following a co-incidence? Emphasis mine: Larry Hancock's Someone would Have Talked: Assertions are to be generally avoided, no doubt. Assertions are guilty pleasures best taken in the heat of rhetorical battle. Otherwise, I try to stick to the historical record as closely as possible. Blueprints and layers are not what I'm about. Simplistic, sure. I'm looking for consistencies in the evidence. When the consistencies become sufficiently numerous a preliminary conclusion, a working hypothesis, can be reasonably formed. Not one point of historical fact I've presented in this thread has been challenged. My speculations derived from these facts certainly can be challenged, have been, and will be. I wouldn't want it any other way, Brother Charles!

Charles, in the context of the narcotics trade this is an utter non sequitur. When a beautiful woman dumps a guy, he may make "other arrangements" and still pine after his lost love, no? The dope trade is a series of "arrangements" wherein producers and distributors maximize profits over time by eliminating the middlemen. Meyer Lansky began developing Havana as a smuggler's paradise in the early '30's, and proceeded for the better part of three decades to make it the hub of international narcotics traffic. If other locales in the Caribbean had been of greater potential to the Lansky organization, Lansky would have developed them instead of Cuba. Those "other arrangements" forged after the advent of Fidel -- smuggling ops staged from the Bahamas, the Dominican Republic, and Haiti -- were never as attractive as doing business out of Cuba. It's loss was sorely felt. It's return was keenly desired. The propaganda value of having a "Castro boogyman" pales in comparison to the concrete value of having a readily controlled dope pipeline running thru Havana. Lanksy didn't open his casinos in the Bahamas until 1964. I speculate he was waiting to see how Cuba would play out. Instead of controlling 3rd-Worlders like Batista, Lanksy had to pay off British Commonwealth types at a much higher price. And look at all the names listed in "The deMoh & Charles Show." For the sake of argument, let's say those guys were opening up Haiti as a narcotics hub. All of them were middlemen. With the exception of WUBINY/WUSALINE (CIA), they were all temporary to the on-going arrangements that made up the international narcotics market. If tycoons like Averell Harriman and Clint Murchison, Jr. are regarded as possible sponsors of the JFK assassination, I submit their intent was to reclaim Cuba for its place in the dope biz. Heroin is the most tangible and valuable of commodities, whereas "propaganda value" may bring tangible benefits it isn't, in and of itself, a tangible item. The hard-eyed men who killed Kennedy were after something far more tangible than dropping a propaganda "shock" on the American people. If Oswald had been gunned down Friday afternoon as planned, Castro was toast. Or so I'll continue to argue going forward...

I don't think that, and I have a hard time seeing where you got that impression. It was a keen desire for the military re-acquisition of Cuba that lead to the events of Eleven Twenty Two. Castro wasn't playing ball with the heroin traffickers in 1963, which is why they sought his removal.

Cliff, I agree that what you've been posting here is of extreme importance, although we disagree on its suitability for this thread. I'm posting briefly here only to say that I have not abandoned this, that I am working on creating a unified timeline of relevant events for a separate thread, that I'm having to dance between raindrops to do it, and also that I am having to rely on the assistance and contributions of several other people to help me get it pulled together and to get some of the kinks worked out (and there are more than a few kinks, let me tell you). I can't say with any degree of accurate prediction when I'll be able to post the other thread, but please be aware that it is being worked on diligently, and that all of your data is being very thoroughly appreciated and incorporated. As soon as I possibly can I will post what has been put together on this. I believe you will find it all of great interest. Ashton I look forward to the new thread, Ashton. As far as this one goes, allow me to allude to Bill's original item #10: From John Simkin's "Frank Sturgis" post on this Forum: Can one throw a rock in this case and NOT hit a dope smuggler?

While we're at it: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/VNngo.htm How is this on-topic? Consider that in 1963 the global real estate most coveted by international heroin traffickers was the SE Asian Golden Triangle and the Havana-to-Florida smuggling routes -- not necessarily in that order. The Lansky/Trafficante crime syndicate and, I'll argue going forward, their transportation-tycoon business partners (Zapata Offshore, Murchison Oil Lease) hoped to secure and hold both of these very valuable parcels and thereby eliminate the Corsican Mafia and all manner of other middlemen (see "The deMoh & Charles Show"). According to a source of mine, who was in 1963 the 13-year old daughter of a Diem secret police commander, the May 8 police attack was strictly a CIA-run operation. A Buddhist, she insists that the sectarian hostilities of the spring and summer of 1963 in SVN were fueled by the Americans. I would speculate that the American behind this was Harriman. The 1962 Laotian Accords were designed to clear all foreign troops out of Laos, leaving it "neutral" and thus highly exploitable for its opium production. But the N. Vietnamese left a sizable military presence in Laos -- a Nikita double-cross? There was no way Harriman was going to allow Vietnam to go the "neutral" route.

Ashton, please allow me to add to the time-line another item of (possibly) extreme import. Absolutely on topic... Sunday, 28 April 1963 (on or around) Undersecretary of State W. Averell Harriman and Cuban dictator Fidel Castro are both in Moscow. Via Peter Dale Scott: http://www.history-matters.com/pds/DP3_Chapter5.htm