Paul Rigby

John, As you whirl your way through post-assassination editions of German newspapers, I'd be interested to know of any bits and pieces you come across of a similar nature to an item like this: John Owen, “Overhaul of Security by Britain,” Daily Telegraph, Saturday, 23 November 1963, p.7: The assassination of President Kennedy will mean a review of British security measures for the Queen, the Royal Family, and senior Ministers. The hidden flaw in the American security screen must be identified to ensure its elimination from British plans. Scotland Yard senior officers responsible for such guards are deeply shocked by news of the assassination. They have spent years, in liaison with the world’s police through Interpol, in perfecting safety measures. FBI Efficiency: Unsuspected loophole Presidential visits to Britain have meant in the past valuable co-operation with the FBI. The efficiency of the American security service is highly praised in the Metropolitan Police. Full reports of the murder of the President will be studied today by the Yard’s Special Branch. The unsuspected loophole in the American security curtain is known as the X-factor. Yard Amazement: Bodyguard beaten Among Yard officers last night was evident amazement that the formidable FBI bodyguard, all picked marksmen, could be beaten. Unspoken, but equally evident, was the fear “This could happen here.” Royal appearances in Britain during recent years have been marked by a growing informality. This attitude, beloved by the crowds, has nevertheless meant grave and additional problems for the Yard and provincial police. For Royal and Ministerial personal security plans are based upon countering attack or interference from the individual, rather than the group. Crowd control, where a gunman could be difficult to spot, is always a major problem. Agreed - there's some terrific stuff in Palamara's work. Paul

Sorry, Cliff, but I just don't buy. Geographical conceptions of power diversity seem to me superficial and ultimately untenable. Has real power in the US really changed locus to that degree? By second or third generation, aren't the descendants of the Cowboys educating their kids at the same schools and unis as the Yankees? Isn't there an elaborate series of organisations and get-togethers - from CFR meetings to Bohemian Grove - designed to prevent precisely the kind of regional fissiparousness you have set in stone? Hasn't that been something akin to a post-Civil War obsession with the Yankees? Installing Castro was inherently a long-range gambit, for which a swift, public, rhetorical volte-face was essential. At most basic level, Wall Street, for example, sees not just an enemy, but a market. Letting LeMay loose on sparsely occupied jungle in south-east Asia is one thing: Letting him zap Moscow or Peking all together another. There is a much greater tendency to group-think and top-down obedience in a military or secret police environments, despite the many and varied efforts to combat that at US military colleges, and CIA think-tanks (IDA, Rand etc.) Political thinking tends to be crude and often alarmingly short-sighted, a problem compounded by the nature of traditional recruitment practices. In the Kennedy assassination? You must share with me the list of resignees or dissidents? And no, I don't think the analysts are synonymous with the cover-ops brigade. Real power lies with the latter: the former is more often than not little more than a retrospective fig-leaf. Read 1 and 2 on your list. 2 most recently. Very fine until it gets onto the Secret Service, at which point it's laughably bad. As I indicated earlier, I don't dissent on the mansion-has-many-rooms idea. But not when it came to killing Kennedy. For all that we disagree on this, I'd be delighted to see a thorough exposition of your ideas on which faction was loyal to whom/or what; and how such divisions manifested themselves both pre- and post-coup. No, it isn't. To the contrary: it is logical and sustained by the evidence. After all, they didn't invade Cuba! Paul

Cliff, never said they didn't. Again, with regard to your first paragraph-statement, I've never said they didn't. But note your second para - it's Vietnam that gets attacked, not Cuba! How come? Are we really to believe that the CIA could successfully sheep-dip Oswald in Russia, but couldn't lay an uncomplicated, if bogus, trail from Oswald to Castro? Yet this is precisely what happened, with Oswald undertaking a series of contradictory steps and poses that rendered "the Castro dunnit" scenario untenable. Angleton couldn't do better in New Orleans than he could in Minsk? Absolutely - but not just Neo-Con. Hasn't this mostly been the case? I haven't poured anything remotely resembling "ridicule and scorn" on the notion - I sought to put a reasoned case that a) the CIA installed Castro, and did so for eminently rational, if thoroughly deplorable, reasons. My point being that this was a long-term, political programme that was not to be terminated within a couple of years of initiation. But the veneer of deep-seated hostility had to be preserved, even as successive would-be coups/assassination attempts were cocked-up and thwarted. Deliberately, in my view. No, not least because I wouldn't attempt anything so half-baked. I accept, mostly without reservation, the enduring determination of most, if not all, of the anti-Castro Cubans, to chuck out Castro. Trouble is, a) they were never the ones with the real power; and I rather suspect that a significant number of anti-Castro Cubans share my disbelief at the genuine resolve of the CIA et al to effect such a change. Paul (first half of post - had to split in two due to exceeding permissible number of quotes)

John, Are you aware of a detailed study of the motorcades featuring Kennedy and his immediate predecessor? I mean very detailed - order of vehicles, position of outriders, SS personnel and locations, pre-trip threat assessments and how they impacted on the routes etc. This would appear to be a gaping lacuna in assassination studies. Paul

Cliff, I don't. In fact, I welcome Bamford's work and think it very significant. I think you entirely right in urging its significance. Were I think you err is in 1) your interpretation of its significance; and 2) your failure to take account of the much greater benefits to the US of Castro remaining in power. What do I mean by 1)? Well, consider the case of China. Twice the military and CIA came close to provoking full-scale war with China, first through the medium of the US intervention in Korea, then again in Vietnam. In both instances, "higher forces" within the politico-corporate elite rallied to thwart the attempts. Luce and his publications, for example, offer fascinating insights into the limitations of CIA-Pentagon reach. I agree, but only up to a point. The degree of consensus among the leadership of the Agency, both formal and actual, as to the desirability of offing Kennedy seems to me formidable; and is reflected in the diverse components of the organisation deployed in coup preparation, execution, and cover-up. Again, qualified agreement. But surely these differences raised their head post-coup, not pre-? In other words, what united them was a shared contempt and hatred for Kennedy. After the coup, the fracture lines appeared. Have a good New Year, Paul

The recent exchanges on this forum between Ashton Gray and Cliff Varnell involved, among other things, a fierce dispute concerning the coup plotters intentions toward Cuba. The former poured scorn on the proposition that Kennedy’s murder was organised as prelude to, and pretext for, a concerted US drive to oust Castro. I agree with him, and think the topic so important I offer the radically incomplete work-in-progress below. My hope is to provoke a full debate on the issue, one I believe is long overdue. What follows is an early draft of a chapterlet in my preface to ‘Arrogant’ CIA: The Selected Journalism of Richard Starnes. A later, greatly expanded, version appears to have disappeared following my hard-drive’s recent encounter with a nifty little Trojan. (I stupidly failed to back up this & many other files.) Tomorrow, I’ll append the Starnes article which gave rise to the chapterlet, so the reader can see what provoked it. Cuban Smoke and the French Connection: why the CIA installed Fidel Castro 3 October –21 November 1963. Between ‘Arrogant CIA’s’ publication on October 2 and the Agency coup in Saigon on November 1, Starnes twice more launched savage attacks on the organisation. America had been here before, insisted Starnes, and the lessons were plain. But the Castro precedent he instanced was a very different story from the fairy tale version propagated at the time by the New Left , and mainstream historians ever since. Starnes refused to forget an inconvenient fact: Castro was armed, financed, and propagandised for, and by, the CIA. And, not content with installing him in Havana, the Agency had then covered Castro’s back for sufficient time to permit the “revolution’s” turn to the left, the turn that sucked the Soviet Union in, and brought the Cold War to within ninety miles of America’s shores – the very object of the exercise for the CIA, and the nation’s military-industrial complex. It was the perfect rejoinder to Eisenhower’s “crusade” for détente. Sections of the US elite had supported ostensibly “revolutionary” insurrections throughout the nineteenth century. Between 1840 and 1852, “American filibusterers, devoted to the slave system, aided Cuban risings against Spain. President Fillmore issued a proclamation forbidding the organization” of such “expeditions on American soil and ordered the civil, naval, and military authorities at the ports of New York and New Orleans to prevent” them from sailing. Kennedy was to face the same difficulty in 1962-63 with the support of Cuban exile raiders by, most notably, Henry Luce and his Time-Life empire. The United States government later adopted the tactic officially, supporting or fomenting “revolutions” in Hawaii, Panama, and Nicaragua. On the eve of the First World War, the US, in a fight for Standard Oil to wrest control Mexican oil from Britain, the waning world hegemon, organised the Madero revolt against Diaz; and later backed Pancho Villa against Huerta. The propaganda campaign for Villa saw him lionised in Hollywood. The father of William F. Buckley, the CIA officer who founded the National Review, was involved in an attempt to overthrow the Mexican government – again, for reasons of petropolitik – in the late 1920s. In the immediate post-war period, genuine Cuban leftists, mostly notably in the trade unions, were systematically murdered or driven into exile. The campaign was exposed at the time .In November 1946, Hoy, the then paper of the Cuban Confederation of Labour (CTC), ran a photostat of two letters, the second of which, from Francesco Aguire to the AFL’s man in Chile, Bernardo Ibanez, dealt with the splitting of Latin American trade unions and a planned campaign to assassinate “anti-Yankee” labour leaders. “Some of Cuba’s outstanding labour leaders were assassinated in that period and a plot to kill Lazaro Pena, the head of the CTC, was uncovered.” The result, in Cuba, as elsewhere, was to create opportunities for the production and insertion of simulacrums of genuine leftists. Into this breach stepped a Jesuit-educated Catholic rightist called Fidel Castro. In January 1948, a Communist leader of the sugar workers, Jesus Larrondo, was shot dead by an army captain in Manzanillo. Among the mourners at the ensuing funeral was, on cue, the enduringly unmolested Fidel. A “hidden hand” recurs so frequently in Castro’s rise to power as to render mainstream accounts silly. In April 1948, Castro participated in a pseudo-Communist revolt in Colombia launched in ostensible response to the CIA-orchestrated assassination of the Liberal presidential candidate, Jorge Eliecer Gaitan. According to a conservative Colombian paper, Castro and the rest of the Cuban delegation were quietly evacuated from the country by the Cuban embassy. Among the US Embassy staff in Bogota at the time was Roy Rubottom , who subsequently reappeared in the Sierra Maestra bringing succour to Castro in 1957. Rubottom was instrumental in organising a briefing for a newly arrived US Ambassador at the hands of Herbert Matthews, the leading, though by no means sole , propagandist for Castro in the pages of the New York Times. One veteran of Central American politics – and at least one CIA coup attempt, in 1954, opposed by the then US Ambassador – went so far as to describe Castro as a “fabrication” of the US press, which had “sold him to Latin America.” The Agency’s effective control of both right and left-wing Castro publicists is neatly conveyed by two figures, Hal Hendrix, and Jules Dubois. The latter was an asset , while the former gives every evidence of being a career intelligence officer. Captured in the aftermath of the militarily stupid, but profile-raising coup attempt of July 1953, Castro was not executed on the spot because he fell into the hands of “a humane officer who ignored orders to summarily execute prisoners.” The same Batista regime that ordered the summary execution of the other prisoners then acted in character by “unexpectedly” releasing Castro into exile a mere fifteen months later. In 1956, in response to pressure from Batista, and as prelude to deportation back to Cuba, the Mexican government ordered the arrest of Castro and his 26 July Movement. Again the “hidden hand” – the CIA’s – intervened to safeguard Castro. “Details of the deal between Castro’s group and the Mexicans remain unclear,” wrote one British obituarist of a former Mexican secret police chief, Fernando Gutierrez Barrios, who reportedly brokered the deal, but what is clear is that the seemingly unlikely friendship between the interrogator from the fanatically anti-Communist DFS – which in the 1970s ran a murderous anti-leftist death squad, the Brigada Blanca - and Castro, endured: “Guttierez visited Havana on many occasions, and when Casto attended the 1988 inauguration of President Carlos Salinas, he was personally attended by his former jailer. The two men even travelled to Tuxpan, in Veracruz, for a memorial ceremony at the spot where the revolutionaries embarked for Cuba.” The same obituarist, writing this time of Arturo Durazo, the DFS member who oversaw the investigation of Castro and his group, wrote vaguely of “political pressure” for the group’s release. That Carlos Prio, the multimillionaire ex-President of Cuba and acknowledged financier of the 26th July Movement, wrote an open letter to the Mexican President in support of Castro is not at issue . What is is the sufficiency of this source in securing Castro’s release. With Castro and his motley band safely restored to Cuban soil in December 1956, CIA money soon flooded in. Between “October or November 1957 and the middle of 1958, the CIA delivered no less than fifty thousand dollars to a half-dozen or more key members of the 26th July Movement in Santiago.” The funds were “handled by Robert D. Wiecha, a CIA case officer …who served in Santiago from September 1957 to June 1959.” In mid-October 1958, a senior figure within the 26th July Movement wrote to Castro detailing the extent of the CIA support in the US Embassy in Havana, and quality of the information that support gave: “I have been in contact with people close to the embassy. These contacts have told me that people who are on our side – but who do not appear to – have had conversations with the ambassador himself. I think this is the best possible, since we are kept up-to-date about everything happening there and of all the possible U.S. plans…” New York Times reporter Tad Szulc knew of this support in 1959, but disclosed it only in 1986. In the aftermath of the Bay of Pigs, the CIA undertook a limited hang-out, conceding to a few, favoured mouthpieces that, yes, there had been some limited supply of arms in this period, but from an “ex-“CIA man, Sam Cummings, whose Interarmco was a private venture. Cummings had reportedly supplied the arms used by the Agency’s Guatemalan proxies to overthrow the Arbenz government in 1954. In his testimony before a Senate Sub-committee on 30 August 1960, Earl T. Smith, the US Ambassador to Cuba from June 1957 to January 1959, complained of precisely this overt, and unbending CIA support within the Embassy for Castro. He drew this conclusion from his bitter experience at the hands of the Agency: “There is no advantage to the United States in sending an Ambassador to a country if the CIA representatives there act on their own and take an opposite position.” Among Ambassador Smith’s guests at the Embassy’s December 1957 Christmas party was a Senator from Massachusetts, whom Smith introduced as the man “who may very well be our next President.” Castro has long been fond of boasting of the number of coup and assassination attempts he has allegedly survived. Almost as fond, indeed, as the CIA has been in confessing its many failures. On the 46th anniversary of his coming to power, readers of one British broadsheet were solemnly informed that the “Cuban Ministry of the Interior has investigated 637 assassination attempts.” And yet the same leader has always been renowned as one of the most accessible rulers in the world, and thus “an easy target for assassination. Yet,” mystifyingly, “no public attempt was ever made against him anywhere.” The CIA had a variety of purposes in mind for revolutionary Cuba. A key intention was to use Cuba as the launch pad and pretext for a series of “revolutionary” movements throughout Latin America that would in turn “compel” CIA intervention in the unfortunate countries concerned. The Caribbean, Central and Latin America would thus be remade in the desired US image, the region’s reformist and nationalist governments alike destroyed in favour of murderous militarised oligarchies and US finance. Castro’s government was to arrest previously supportive CIA men engaged in precisely such activity – in this early instance, against the government of Nicaragua – no later than April 1959. Sihanouk offered a typically shrewd Asian encapsulation: “All the efforts of the CIA were aimed at implanting an armed political opposition inside the country so that we would have to beg for American arms to keep order…” The Bay of Pigs operation was at once a self-sabotaged trap and a smokescreen: the real CIA action in late April 1961 was against De Gaulle. Even elements of the wretchedly timid and censored British press were stirred to a muted observation or two. CIA operations in Europe encountered opposition from Kennedy-appointed Ambassadors. In the summer of 1962, the left-wing Greek nationalist, Andreas Papandreou flew to Washington to protest at the Agency’s role in, among other dark adventures, fixing the October 1961 election. The President was in Florida, so Papandreou had to make do with Carl Kaysen. The protest, in conjunction with the findings of Henry Labouisse, appointed by Kennedy to the Athens ambassadorship earlier that year, resulted in the replacement of the CIA station chief, Laughlin Campbell, in August 1962. Somewhat ironically, Campbell was transferred to Paris.

Evan, Thanks for the info. I'm puzzled Marshall should have advanced such a fantastic argument - he seriously thought wrecking the Paris summit between Ike and Khrushchev was a solid demonstration of CIA judiciousness in the deployment of the U-2? A second thought occurs: Does the Pedlow/Welzenbach tome omit all reference to Scoville's resignation? Surely not?! And a final thought: Are we really to believe Kennedy et al were satisfied with the CIA's performance in the run up to the missile crisis? A Republican Senator, Keating, was being spoon fed info that was withheld from the President and his National Security Adviser - didn't Bundy go on TV in late September '62 to deny the presence of Soviet missiles in Cuba? - and Kennedy was untroubled by this? After the Bay of Pigs? The Agency revolt over the Genevan settlement on Laos? (To name but two pieces of rank insubordination...) Forsooth! Paul

Robert, Thanks for the impressively certain pronouncement from the global-thingyme website. Central claim true, do you think? It certainly prompted me to a rummage through my chaotic files & book shelves. In order of discovery, the following: 1) Michael R. Beschloss. Mayday: Eisenhower, Khrushchev and the U-2 Affair (London: Faber & Faber, 1986), p.391: “In September 1962, U-2 pilots brought back the first concrete evidence of Soviet missiles in Cuba. Stepping up the flights, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara had the fliers formally transferred from CIA back to the Air Force.” 2) Mark J. White. The Cuban Missile Crisis (London: Macmillan Press Ltd., 1996), pp.98-99: “An interesting footnote…was the fact that during the missile crisis the president himself began to question the loyalty of the CIA. On the evening of 25 October Ray S. Cline, deputy director of intelligence, was attending a party hosted by Mrs. Anna Chennault, when an angry Kennedy called. According to Cline, the president said: he had heard stories that CIA officers were alleging that intelligence on offensive missile bases in Cuba had been available for several days before it was called to the attention of the President. He asked me to confirm that I was responsible for the analysis of this kind of intelligence and appropriate dissemination of it to higher authorities, and to tell him the facts in the case.” Cline proceeded to assure Kennedy that these rumours were unfounded, an explanation that apparently satisfied the President. (28) (28) Cline memorandum, “Notification of NSC Officials of Intelligence on Missile Bases in Cuba,” 27 October 1962, in ibid., 149. 3) Stewart Alsop, “CIA: The Battle for Secret Power,” Saturday Evening Post, July 27, 1963, p.19: “As this is written, the job of McCone’s fifth key man is open. Until mid-June, it was occupied by Herbert (Pete) Scoville, an able scientist highly regarded in the White House. Scoville was D.D.R. – deputy director for research, a post newly created by McCone. A more accurate title might be deputy director for technical espionage. Mata Hari, in fact, is rapidly giving ground to such scientific intelligence devices as the U-2, reconnaissance satellites, side-viewing radar, long-range communications intercepts and other unmentionable technical means of finding out what the other side is up to. At the height of the Cuban crisis, the job of overflying Cuba in U-2s was taken out of Scoville’s hands, and assigned to the Pentagon. The deed – the fell deed in the CIA’s eyes – was done with McCone’s approval after a bloody jurisdictional hassle at Scoville’s level, although the hassle did not, contrary to published report, lead to any ‘surveillance gap.’ Scoville is not talking, but it is a good guess that the Pentagon’s tendency to move in on him, and McCone’s tendency to remain above the resulting battle, had a lot to do with his resignation in June. The search for a successor is under way.” Paul

Just exactly what about it amuses you? Is this some sort of parlour game? Dawn Dawn, The alternative is tears. Better laughter. There are some tremendously bright and sincere people who seem to me to utterly misguided in their obsession with the photographic record. It strikes me as a great pity that they're not applying otherwise first rate minds to getting us off that bloody CIA fall-back position on the grassy knoll. Paul

Bill, Yes, but...My hard-drive was Trojaned a month ago, and I lost both the word document and email containing Dick Starnes' recollection of a particularly revealing incident. To keep it brief; and from memory. In early 1960, Starnes resigned as managing editor of the NYWT&S. In the late summer of that year, he was assigned to visit Egypt. Shortly before departure, the third in charge of the Scripps-Howard Washington bureau called him into his office for a chat. Starnes found another figure, unknown to him, present. The stranger turned out to be Agency, and the offer was for the Congo, not Cairo. Present in the Congo for S-H at that time was D'Lynn Waldron: she had proved very helpful to Lumumba, carrying handwritten messages across the border for transmission to Washington. (Lumumba was anxious to establish good relations with Eisenhower and had high hopes that he could correct the myths and rumours surrounding his intentions.) The plan appears to have been to terminate Waldron's tenure, and replace with a tame hack who would run pieces on cannibalism and chaos. Starnes declined the Agency man's offer. The latter turned instead to the unfortunate Henry N. Taylor, who was ex-ONI. No sooner had he arrived in the Congo than he was killed in a clash between government troops and a tribe backed by the Agency. Much of the datings etc for this sequence can be established from Waldron's fascinating website. I hesitate to name the S-H exec who served as the Agency's point man within the group because I can't remember it exactly. I keep thinking of the name "Olin Russell," but don't hold me to that as it has temporarily gone from both memory and computer. Paul

Len/Bill/Robert, Forgive my ignorance, but am I right in recalling that JFK transferred control of the U2 programme from CIA to Pentagon/DIA in either 1961 or 1962? I dimly recollect a senior CIA figure resigned in protest against the transfer. True or false? Paul

Best post of recent weeks, Charlie. To give a concrete example of what Charlie's getting at. Factor in the "missing" left veer of the presidential limo and at least two key pieces of the jigsaw fall instantly into place: the peculiar specificity of Hargis' description of where the brain matter struck his windshield; and that extraordinary series of stills capturing the retrieval of a discharged cartridge case from the south curb of Elm. Watching grown men swop forgeries to their hearts content must greatly amuse Langley. Come to think of it, it does me, too. Paul

Oh dear, not still making that tired old claim, eh, Bill? Either substantiate it - simply tell us in which afternoon New York paper of November 26, plus the edition, article title and page reference, the showing of the Muchmore film is recorded - or retract the claim! Couldn't be simpler, what? Paul

A few bits and pieces on Ruark: Extract from: Barry Ulanov, “Is Sinatra Finished?,” Modern Television & Radio, December 1948 Frank's troubles all started sometime in 1946--just ten years after his memorable visit to the Bing Crosby movie that decided him on his career of moon and swoon. Sinatra happens to be a good-natured guy; in fact, the gold in his heart often seems to make him slightly soft in the head. Anyway, "The Voice" was persuaded by certain political salesmen to identify himself with "Causes" that would (so he was convinced) help mankind. These "Causes" would help the underdog they said--and also help the downtrodden masses. He was shown how to do his bit by attending certain Hollywood rallies, by collecting funds for folks unable to help themselves, by making speeches in ballrooms and ballparks. Frankie went all out in these activities. He's not the kind to spare himself when he firmly believes he is on the side of right. The only trouble was that Frank had been persuaded to tie himself up with "transmission belts." These are outfits (sometimes called "innocent organizations") that use people like Sinatra, who more often leap with good heart than hard head. Unfortunately, the political color of this cause happens to be a deep shade of red! Sinatra's disillusion with his "innocent" activities, plus the bad publicity it resulted in, was followed quickly by a nasty experience that was headlined on thousands of newspapers. That was the smear campaign resulting from Frankie's famous 1947 handshake, in Cuba, with the notorious gangster, Lucky Luciano. It was just plain hard luck for "The Voice" that Robert Ruark, a widely-syndicated columnist, happened to be in Cuba at the time. It seems that the unsavory Luciano was a Sinatra fan, and somehow managed to arrange a meeting with the singer. It also happens that Robert Ruark was nearby when the historical handshake took place . . . Thus started the one-week newspaper sensation that boosted some newspaper circulation sky-high, but did nothing to boost Frankie's reputation. Especially coming on the heels of Frankie's innocent association with pro-Soviet causes. And so another dent was added to the reputation of "The Voice." Now the more a guy hits the front pages, the more the gossip columnists, scandal-mongers and ill-wishers get to work on him. Newspapermen just like to write about other people in trouble. So the disparaging remarks about Frankie's "caverns in his cheeks," his "English Droop figure" and his bevy of swooning, screaming bobby-sox fans increased. There was no romantic scandal to sock Frankie with in the press--so the careless speech here, and the casual handshake there, provided grist for the gossip mill. Full article: http://www.jazzsingers.com/IsSinatraFinished/ Two further Ruark pieces of interest: Robert Ruark, “The Spy Business Is Quite Unnecessary,” The New York World-Telegram & Sun, August 1957 (?), p.?, on the Abel case: “What in the name of the Kremlin, Abel could have found out in America I cannot say. We publish so much of our so-called top secrets in papers and magazines that often a spy can ring for room service and ask for the coffee and the latest printed information on what’s cooking. A lot of this microfilm nonsense is for the moving pictures. Some spies are little sillier than bird-watchers. They see a bird, they know it’s a bird, and they send off a message saying: ‘Saw tufted titmouse today in Connecticut.’ This is a big deal for some bum with a pair of spyglasses. He might have well have said: ‘Saw English sparrow following horse.’ I have known in my time a mess of spies. Mostly, they never bought a drink, and asked questions like, ‘Where is the Sixth Fleet?’ when the Sixth Fleet was anchored in full view. Tangier used to be full of spies, and most of them couldn’t find the way home if they had the cab fare. A spy can be useful in wartime, if you want a bridge blown up, or some people throttled. A spy can be useful in peacetime, if you want to assassinate someone or explode a bridge. But apart from the repulsive physical aspects of espionage, you might as well leave it, because there is not much information a paper-stealer can swipe that’s worth stealing…” [source: Joachim Joesten. They Call It Intelligence: Spies and Spy Techniques Since World War II (NY: Abelard-Schuman, 1963), p.13.] James Tracy Crown. The Kennedy Literature: A Bibliographical Essay on John F. Kennedy (London: University of London Press, 1968), p.160: Writing of Sylvan Fox’s Unanswered Questions About President Kennedy’s Murder (NY: Award Books, 1965), Crown writes: “The question about the official version of the Dallas slaying raised by Fox’s widely distributed paperback seem to have spurred a number of other skeptics to continue their research. Fox’s critique may have been the result of his job as city editor of the late New York World Telegram & Sun, a paper where the deep press room doubts about the government version of Dallas kept popping into print much more frequently than in other papers. See Richard Starnes’ “Warren Report Is Big, But So Is Loophole,” November 25, 1964, and Robert Ruark’s “Puzzled By Warren Report,” October 9, 1964. Ruark, who knew his guns, wrote: “I have read the Report scrupulously several times and the ballistics end of it makes no sense.” Colleague Richard Starnes’s tribute to Richard Ruark, who died in 1965, is to be found here: “One of the Rare Ones,” Washington Daily News, July 2, 1965, p.25 Paul

Well put! PS Not forgotten your request re: Beria. Will atttend to in New Year. Best wishes, Paul

Myra, If you re-visit Krock’s piece, you’ll quickly discover it’s a defence of the CIA, and an attack on Kennedy for permitting public criticism of that fine band of thugs and murderers. The despatch upon which Krock hung his Agency hat, however, is the real McCloy. Here it is: As it’s Christmas, put this in your stocking with it: Paul

Bill, Below, two of my favourite clippings on the first World Trade Centre false flag op. First up, a tale with a moral: For Arab dupes of the CIA and/or Mossad, urine trouble whether “witty” or not. By the way, anyone know if Ms. Hadas dances? Last but not least, a piece which the Egyptian President’s press secretary hastily disavowed a day later, presumably after a less than subtle reminder as to who pays the bills. Mohammed Abdel-Moneim, the unfortunate spin-doctor in question, assured the Associated Press that everyone in the room listening to Mubarak had heard the same wrong thing simultaneously. Similar acoustics, doubtless, to the room in which Kilduff announced his boss’s death.No need, of course, to labour the relevance of previous State Department “bureaucratic errors.” Paul

Answer: Percy was a Cecilian "projector"! John Gerard, S.J. What was the Gunpowder Plot? The Traditional Story Tested by Original Evidence (London: Osgood, McIlvane & Co., 1897), pp.152-3 “Immediately before the fatal Fifth of November, Percy had been away in the north, and he returned to London only on the evening of Saturday, the 2nd. Of this return, Cecil, writing a week later, made a great mystery, as though the traitor’s movements had been of a most stealthy and secret character, and declared that the fact had been discovered from Faukes only with infinite difficult, and after many denials. It happens, however, that amongst the State Papers is preserved a pass dated October 25th, issued by the Commissioners of the North, for Thomas Percy, posting to Court upon the King’s especial service, and charging all mayors, sheriffs, and postmasters to provide him with three good horses all along the road.” Paul

A further glimpse of Starnes' key source for 'Arrogant' CIA is perhaps to be found in another magnificent piece from the period. Here he is pouring scorn on the composition of the Warren Commission in mid-December 1963: A great many journalists talk about speaking truth to power. Few do it. Dick Starnes did, when it mattered.

Nathan, Do you have the misfortune to own a copy of Thompson's Six Seconds? If not, let me know and I'll do you a photocopy of the witness table at the back - it makes fascinating reading, particularly when you compare Thompson's versions of who said what was fired from where, with what they actually said. If you have a copy already, start with, let me see, Austin Miller, perhaps? Best wishes, Paul

Bill, I'd rather call the Z fraud what it is - a fake. Quite right: He, Rather, Snider and any others who described seeing the turn on the Dallas version of the film either a) made it up, or where involved in a complex conspiracy for God knows what purpose. Very plausible. Circular reasoning's finest hour. I am not worthy. Absolutely. On Nov 25, the version he saw in Dallas contained precisely that nonsense. I bet it's the same version the Russians saw that evening, and the viewers of selected UPI-subscribing US TV stations saw on the early afternoon of November 26 - before the film was recalled. Where is the KGB when you need 'em? Damn it, Chekists, leak your recording of the Nov 25 showing! Bill, Pot calling the kettle black, no? Your logical response to Z & others describing the film capture of the presidential limo's turn from Houston onto Elm is....where exactly? And cut out the French - "mon facts" - don't you know there are sensitive American eyes persuing this richly informative thread? Paul

This is about as concise as it's gonna get: Why the Zapruder Film is Authentic Presented in Dallas on Friday, November 20, 1998 by Dr. Josiah Thompson http://home.comcast.net/~ceoverfield/josiah.html Maybe Rigby believes that Thompson, like Weisberg is a witting servant of the CIA. Mike, You're getting the hang of this - yup, absolutely. Or wasn't Thompson a participant in that grand Agency paramilitary op in the Lebanon in '58? Paul

Given the confessions implicating Trafficante, Roselli and Giancana, I firmly believe there exists a filmed trophy of the assassination that will withstand intense scrutiny from the research community. Call me an idealist, but I think it will happen in my lifetime. John, I hope you're right. But don't hold your breath... Paul

Owen, Terrific post, for which thanks. Two points suggest themselves. First, one finds mainstream US press descriptions of CIA-run pseudo-gangs active in Vietnam as early as 1961. From memory, Joe Alsop was the Agency hack, and they appeared in, doubtless among other places, the Washington Post in January or February. Colby was what in 1961 - chief of station? Second, on the subject of Indonesia, worth looking at the memoirs of the US Ambassador to Indonesia during Kennedy's presidency. John M. Allison's Ambassador from the Prairie: Or Allison in Wonderland (Houghton Mifflin Co., 1973) contains some brief but fascinating glimpses of his strained relationship with the Agency. The president's loyal tool, Hersh would have us believe. Paul

Isn't this where the CIA sought to entrap Sukarno in the company of some peroxide hookers? Good old Bing, more interesting than we ever suspected - he ran an Agency knocking shop, complete with cameras...