Paul Rigby

Myra Bronstein wrote: "I have been looking at "The Life of Nelson A. Rockefeller" by Cary Reich at Amazon. It looks good, unforunately it seems to end before the assassination...Any other books about David or Nelson that give real history, esp their associations with the CIA?

Myra,

One snap-shot I have of Nelson Rockefeller's attitude to CIA post-assassination:

The Washington Daily News, 20 May 1964, p.31

Intelligence (Sic)

by Richard Starnes

A comic-opera security lapse and a sharp indictment of the United States Intelligence bureaucracy marked a not-so-secret briefing for members of Congress and governors during the "eyeball-to-eyeball" Cuban missile crisis.

During the critical days preceding the U.S.-Soviet showdown over installation of Russian missile sites in Cuba, the Administration arranged five regional briefings to keep congressional and state officials abreast of the developments that led the world to the brink of nuclear war in 1962. The briefing for northeastern states was held at the Federal building at 90 Church Street in downtown Manhattan.

Briefing officer was Roger Hilsman, who then was the State Department’s Director of Intelligence and Research. Backed up by maps and aerial photographs, he launched into a highly classified discussion of the crisis that had followed discovery of Soviet missile sites less than 100 miles across the Straits of Florida from the United States.

The briefing had continued for 10 or 15 minutes when one member of the audience interrupted. “Mr. Hilsman,” he said, “you are giving highly secret information here to 100 or more people who are supposed to be Members of Congress or governors. And yet we simply walked in here without any security check whatsoever. No one asked me to produce any identification. How do you know who is actually in this auditorium?”

Mr. Hilsman attempted to reassure his audience by explaining that a yellow scratch pad would be passed around for their signatures. This haphazard approach to security only provoked an uproar, however, and finally the State Department representative agreed that it might be a good idea to require everyone to identify himself.

When this was done, five interlopers were found. One was the chauffeur of Gov. John Volpe of Massachusetts. Neither he nor any of the others was suspected of any subversive intent – but all five were definitely not supposed to hear the secret briefing. In view of the shocking security lapse, Nikita, himself, might have been in the room.

Mr. Hilsman, who later became Under Secretary for Far Eastern Affairs and subsequently resigned as a consequence of President Johnson’s growing dissatisfaction with the conduct of the war in Viet Nam, then concluded the briefing and invited questions from his audience.

Gov. Nelson Rockefeller stood up and pointed out a fact that everyone in the room knew to be true – that Sen. Kenneth Keating (R., N.Y.) had been warning that Soviet rockets were being emplaced in Cuba for a month before the Central Intelligence Agency alerted the National Security Council and the White House to the threat.

“Don’t you believe this represents a major breakdown in our Intelligence community?” Gov. Rockefeller challenged.

“Not at all,” Mr. Hilsman replied with acerbity. “It actually represents a triumph of our Intelligence community.”

“I’m not going to argue with you about it,” Gov. Rockefeller replied, “but I am deeply concerned with the apparent lack of effectiveness of our Intelligence. Ken Keating warned us that the missile sites were under construction long before the CIA ever knew about them.”

Note: Since that time, Gov. Rockefeller has done a great deal of homework on the nation’s elephantine Intelligence apparatus, and today is one of the best-informed experts on the American spy apparatus outside of government. Henry Cabot Lodge, who had his own eyeball-to-eyeball showdown with the high-riding CIA shortly after he became Ambassador to South Viet Nam, and Gov. Rockefeller are the two GOP Presidential hopefuls who are deeply disturbed over the role of the powerful, autonomous and grandly unaccountable CIA.

Of course, Keating was spoonfed by the Agency - most likely by McCone himself, according to one author - precisely to embarrass Kennedy.

Paul

The New York World-Telegram & Sun, Monday, October 14, 1963, p.21

Viet Nam Another Cuba?

By Richard Starnes

The Central Intelligence Agency's role in Viet Nam has been assailed as bureaucratic ineptitude seasoned with arrogance of a high order, and it has been just as warmly defended as selfless patriotism of the utmost puissance.

An insight as to which version is true may be gained by reference to the fully documented - and unchallenged - story of the part played by the CIA in Cuba just before Fidel Castro rose to power. The parallels to today's gathering disaster in Saigon are remarkable, and so is the cloudy, controversial part essayed by the CIA.

Six years ago the same sort of drama was being played out in Havana. Fulgencio Batista, a dictator much hated by the Cuban people, was being harried - and inexorably destroyed - by a tiny guerrilla force of almost comic-opera weakness. Batista's large, well-equipped army was intact. His secret police were savagely efficient. But knowledgeable Americans on the scene felt a growing disquiet. Batista had everything going for him except the support of the people.

These circumstances, of course, are dramatically duplicated in Viet Nam today. And the sharpest parallel may be found in the curious role of the CIA - then as now.

The United States ambassador to Cuba during the twilight of Batista's brutal role was Earl E. T. Smith, a financier and former Army officer. Here is what he has had to say about his relations with the CIA during the period that bears such remarkable resemblance to the present dismal involvement in Saigon:

"In September, 1957, I asked the chief of the CIA section attached to the embassy to review their figures on Communist party strength in Cuba - both as to card-bearing Communists and Communist sympathizers.

"I questioned our estimates because nine years earlier, when the Communists for the last time in Cuba voted as a party under the Communist label, they polled over 120,000 votes…Nevertheless, the embassy CIA estimates on Communist party strength in Cuba in 1957 indicated only 10,000 card-bearing Communists and approximately 20,000 Communist sympathizers.

"It is interesting to note that the CIA officer had a closed mind and demonstrated a resentment to my references to Fidel…as the 'outlaw' and the 'bandit leader' in the hills.

"These feelings of resentment were shown by a remark he made when he walked out of my office. After I had asked him to review the figures, I heard him say. 'We don't care what you think."

That CIA official was subsequently transferred (another parallel to Saigon, where the chief of the CIA mission has lately been removed) but there is room to doubt whether the transfer of one individual could check the CIA's wilful ways.

"In September, 1957, Smith testified before the Senate internal security subcommittee, "the (Cuban) navy had an uprising at Cienfuegos. We in the American embassy were familiar that a revolt of some sort would take place. That information came to us through the CIA or some other source in the embassy."

The revolt failed. And at the trial of the officers who had attempted it, "it was brought out (again quoting Ambassador Smith) "that the No. 2 (CIA) man had said that if the revolution were successful the United States would recognize the revolutionaries."

As soon as the ambassador learned of this attempt by the CIA to fabricate foreign policy, he "laid down the law that neither the ambassador nor anyone else could give any statement as to whom the United States would recognize; that there were only two people in the United States who had that authority; one was the Secretary of State and the other was the President."

Just how poorly informed the CIA remained as to the true nature of Castroism may be gleaned from the testimony before the internal security subcommittee, given nearly a year after Castro came to power by Gen. C.P. Cabell, then deputy director of the CIA. "We believe," Gen. Cabell testified, "that Castro is not a member of the Communist party and does not consider himself to be a Communist."

Here's an earlier, CIA-serving attempt, from the same (Scripps-Howard) newspaper group, to rewrite history. Note the passage highlighted. It's demonstrable rubbish:

The Washington Daily News, 1 May 1963, p.33

Who Knew About Castro?

By Lyle C. Wilson

The prevailing humiliation and confusion of the United States invites some smart politician to ask a sharp question and to press for a clear answer. The question would be:

“How did this fellow, Castro, grab Cuba in the first place?”

The question would not launch a witch hunt. Neither would it be asked in a maneuver to tag some witless State Department understrapper as a subversive character with communist tendencies. But it just might provide some valuable guidance for the future.

Enough is known of the State Department’s attitude toward Fidel Castro when his revolution was developing to assure that it was not communist subversion in the department that caused the United States to foster Castro’s take-over of Cuba on Jan. 1, 1959.

It appears to have been stupidity. The Senate Internal Security Sub-committee went thru the motions of investigating the State Department and the events within it that led up to the tragedy of Castro’s Cuban triumph.

Not much, if anything, came of that investigation, other than many thousands of words. No investigation was needed to establish that U.S. intelligence agencies had Castro’s number long before his triumphal entry into Havana. Years before that our agents knew that The Beard was in cahoots with the communists.

Intelligence reports on Castro’s communist sympathies were submitted in detail to the White House, to the State Department and to the Pentagon. Another question, therefore, arises: Did the President and top officials know of these intelligence reports or were the reports diverted or suppressed?

The answers to that doubletrack question would be interesting. If the reports were submitted and neither the President nor his top aides got them, who did get them? And why were they diverted from the top men. And, if so diverted, by whom?

Those are fair questions. They should have been asked and answered long since. But these questions seem not even to have been asked.

The word here in Washington is that intelligence reports on Castro’s communist affiliations were submitted regularly for the guidance of Administration policymakers. All of this, of course, was during the Eisenhower Administration.

The word is not so clear as to who actually received these reports. There is evidence, however, that these reports did not reach the top where the decision was made to encourage Castro and then to recognize him on his entry into Havana.

Taxpaying stockholders in the Government of the United States may not believe that such things can happen here. But they do happen. It is reasonable to believe that understrappers in Government cut off the Secretary of State, the President and perhaps the Secretary of Defense from information vital to them in judging Castro.

Somebody in Congress should have the gumption to get some simple understandable answers to all of the questions raised by the Castro goof.

If it happened the way it seems to have happened, the guy responsible probably still is in Washington somewhere with a desk, a title and a salary from the taxpayers – ready, willing and able to do it again. The guy is no communist. Just dumb.

After Oswald was captured, Harriman/Bundy pulled a plug on the Castro-did-it

scenario to preserve relations with the Russians, and Cuba was "lost."

The Cuban angle was spiked along time before that!

Paul

Austin Miller's testimony is easily impeached. "I thought at first the motorcycle backfiring or somebody throwed some firecrackers out." Do you suppose he believed there was a motorcycle in the limo?

Ah, such wit. Er, no, do you?

Mark Valenti: The truth is that he wasn't certain where the sound came from - could have been this, could have been that. His testimony has him moving around the overpass, trying to find the source of the disturbance. Had he said he thought someone lit a firecracker and threw it into the car, that would be a different matter. But he doesn't say that. He says it could be a motorcycle, it could be a firecracker.

He wasn't certain where the shots came from? Quite sure?

Mr. Belin: “Where did the shots sound like they came from?”

Miller: “Well, the way it sounded like, it came from the, I would say right there in the car,” 6WCH225

Plainly, a man who had no firm opinion.

Hogan: "You're debating with someone..."

So are you...

Hogan continued:"...who maintains that Harold Weisberg was a "witting servant of the CIA,"

Yep, you have that honour...

More Hogan:"....and implies the same about Josiah Thompson. Speaking of Josiah Thompson and Austin Miller, he once posted this:

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. (bold added)

If you have a copy already, start with, let me see, Austin Miller, perhaps?

Best wishes,

Paul

This is what Thompson's table said on page 262 about Austin Miller's statement:

No. of shots

: 3

Bunching of shots

: 2 & 3

Direction of sound/shots

: ---

Date of report

: 11/22/63

Total time of shots

: few seconds

References

: 6H223-227 19H485 24H217 Archives CD 205, p. 27

Remarks

: Saw "smoke or steam" coming from a group of trees N. of Elm: saw shot hit street past car.

Thanks for reviving that - vindication. In the column entitled "Direction of shot/sounds," hyper-reliable Thompson would have the reader believe Miller offered nothing on the subject. Oh yeah? You can't be serious? Happily, you are. Let's revisit Miller not offering a view on where the shots originated:

Mr. Belin: “Where did the shots sound like they came from?”

Miller: “Well, the way it sounded like, it came from the, I would say right there in the car,” 6WCH225

This the best you could do? C'mon gents, raise the old game.

Paul

Rigby,

Your Hitchens-lite ripostes, addled as they are with your usual withering insults, do little to advance the hunt for an answer. You're a clever boy, but you've aligned yourself with a rather bizarre theory. That's your burden, do try to carry it with dignity.

As I general rule, I bother to read my opponents and quote them fairly. You should try it some time.

Oh, and Austin Miller?

Mr. Belin: “Where did the shots sound like they came from?”

Miller: “Well, the way it sounded like, it came from the, I would say right there in the car,” 6WCH225

Verily, a "bizarre" theory!

Well well well. All that time the CIA was supporting the Fidelistas Mr. George Bush

of the CIA had a mobile oil drilling platform 54 miles off the coast of Cuba. He could

run maintainence crews on and off that platform to the Florida mainland without

going thru US customs inspection.

Now this I like! By the by, I thought parts of Tarpley's Synthetic Terror: Made In USA (Progressive Press, 205) the best things I've read in years.

Paul

Well, let's see...great minds think alike, do they? I'd love to know which other of William Cooper's theories you cozy up to? You know, seeing as how your mind is great and all.

Paul Rigby wrote in Post #8 in this thread, Dec 30 2006, 11:12 PM:

By the way, I think Cooper either a nut or a disinformationist. He was beaten to the punch on the Greer-did-it scenario by twenty years. Newcomb and Adams' Murder From Within remains indispensable reading.

Intelligent response, Mark. So glad you can read. It gets better:

Look, there was an overpass within yards of the limo, why not wait until the car was hidden from view to fire the killshot? Greer and everybody else in Texas could plainly see that many dozens of people were filming the motorcade. Do you truly believe someone with Secret Service training would believe he could sneak a shot in without being seen/photographed/filmed??

Perhaps you'd care to share with us Austin Miller's response to where the shots originated? Or some of the other interesting testimony from observers on the overpass?

So now we know: Sheep seldom differ.

Paul

Cooper's theory about a Greer shot is breathtakingly stupid.

Mark:

I could not agree more.

Dawn

Great minds think alike - or fools seldom differ?

Either of you got an argument?

Paul

For anyone interested in this subject I would suggest that they read Earl E. T. Smith gave evidence to the Senate Committee on the Judiciary on 27th August, 1960.

John,

Interesting post, to which I'll return at greater length when time permits. For the moment, I wanted to draw attention to JFK's familiarity with Smith and his testimony on U.S. support for Castro. Here's the only thing I could find readily to hand:

MILTON S. EISENHOWER. The Wine Is Bitter: The United States and Latin America (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1963), p.54:

"During the television debate on October 21, 1960, Senator Kennedy referred to testimony given before a Senate Committee by Ambassadors Arthur Gardner and Earl E.T. Smith, both of whom had been in Cuba during the Batista regime and were known to be friendly to Batista…Said candidate Kennedy: "[they] warned of Castro, [and] the Marxist influence around Castro…both of them have testified that, in spite of their warnings to the American Government, nothing was done." A few moments later, he said scornfully: "Most of the equipment and arms and resources for Castro came from the United States, flown out of Florida and other parts of the United States to Castro in the mountains."

Paul

Great posts. Thinking some more on this, another point could be made for the Greer shot. At the point of his supposed shot, JFK hadnt been hit "fatally" yet. He had been hit, but not to the extreme that was designed to happen. Greer could very well have been the "last resort" shot, the "fail safe" to make sure the deed got done if all others failed. They had driven all the way down Elm, and were just about leaving the "shooting zone". Greer slowed down. Waited for the shot, and finally decided to take it upon himself to make sure he got the fatal shot. Many beleive that JFK was hit several times, maybe at the exact second. Greers could have been one of two or three that hit Kennedy. Many witnesses testified to the fact that the limo slowed to a crawl, if not stopping completely. Then veering over in the road. It seems to fit very well into the whole scenerio. Just my opinion FWIW

thanks-smitty

Smitty,

I see the attractions of this line of thinking, and, in the absence of dispositive evidence, must continue to permit the possibility that Greer was indeed the executioner of last resort. But my problem is this: what if Greer had been hit inadvertently, perhaps, let us theorise, by a ricochet? The limo is stuck on Elm with a wounded President and a dead, or seriously impaired, driver. Numerous potential complications suggest themselves. Was such a risk - in fact, an abundance of risks - necessary or worth it? Now distraction noises or shots, aimed to create the illusion of ambush from distance, that's another matter.

Paul

The Zapruder film, assuming we can trust its veracity, does not indicate a left front temple impact.

Erick,

We can't assume anything of the sort, in fact, quite the contrary: we must proceed, on the basis of abundant evidence, that the film is a fake designed to hide key elements of truth, not least the entrance point on the left temple.

It would be interesting to learn whether the limo driver was left-handed or ambidextrous, and whether he had a reputation as a quick-draw artist with a .45

The selection of Greer is a subject in itself. His son hints at a fairly pronounced dislike of Catholics, but, of course, there are very many other factors at work, not least in the minds of those who selected him.

Another problem is the brain matter which hit the motorcycle cop to the left and rear of the presidential limousine. That would be more indicative of a shot from the right front of the vehicle.

You've forgotten to factor in the limousine's swerve to the left, against the southern curb of Elm., where it came to rest. Insert that into the paradigm, and you have congruence. Otherwise, how to explain Hargis's left windscreen being hit with brain matter? The limo's swerve placed him to Kennedy's right rear.

Paul

1) Staff Special, “Dallas Man Films Movie of Shooting,” Fort Worth Star-Telegram, (morning edition), November 23, 1963, section 1, p.10:

Dallas, Nov. 22 – One of the very few – perhaps two – pictures of the President’s assassination here Friday was in the possession of a business man who was isolated with the FBI here Friday night.

Abraham Zapruder, owner of a dress factory at the intersection near where the tragic shooting occurred, photographed the incident with his movie camera.

Zapruder, who remained in communicado from shortly after the occurrence, had filmed the assassination attack from near the scene, persons close to him said.

As far as the crush of reporters covering the tragedy knew, there was only one still photograph actually showing Kennedy slumped over, a Polaroid camera picture taken by a young woman. She allowed the print to be shown on a television account of the assassination.

Zapruder's office told the Star-Telegram he was out of the office all afternoon with the FBI. His wife confirmed late Friday night that he was still with the agents.

2) “Photographer Sells Pictures of Assassination for $25,000,” Dallas Morning News, November 24, 1963, p.?

President Kennedy flinches as the first shot strikes him.

Mrs. Kennedy takes her husband in her arms.

The second shot strikes the President in the side of his head, toward the back. His head becomes a blur.

Mrs. Kennedy crawls out over the trunk compartment in the rear of the car trying to escape the line of fire. Her husband slumps to the floor. A Secret Service agent runs to aid Mrs. Kennedy.

This historic picture of the assassination of President Kennedy is recorded on 8-millimeter color movie film shot by Abraham Zapruder, dress manufacturer of 3909 Marquette.

Perched on a concrete pillar in a plaza a few feet away, Zapruder took perfect pictures of a terrible tragedy.

Saturday, Dick Strobel of the Associated Press, Los Angeles; Jack Klinge of United Press International, Dallas, and Dick Strolle, Los Angeles representative of Life Magazine, negotiated with Zapruder for still picture rights to his film.

Rights finally were sold to Life for more than $25,000, Zapruder told one of the other men who were bidding for the film.

3) Richard J. H. Johnston, “Movie Amateur Filmed Attack; Sequence Is Sold to Magazine” New York Times, November 24, 1963, p.5:

An amateur movie camera enthusiast in Dallas recorded a 15-second close-up sequence showing the actual impact of the assassin’s fire on President Kennedy.

The 8-millimeter film clip in color was sold by the photographer, Abraham Zapruder, for about $40,000 to Time-Life, Inc.

Life magazine will publish the pictures in its issue dated Friday, Nov. 29. The issue will be on the streets next Tuesday.

The editors said that time limitations did not permit reproduction in color. The pictures will be printed in black and white.

Mr. Zapruder, president of Jennifer Juniors, Inc., a dress shop in downtown Dallas, declined yesterday in a telephone conversation, to discuss the film or the arrangement for its sale.

A secretary to Mr. Zapruder, speaking from the offices of the dress shop, said that the Secret Service had sent agents to examine Mr. Zapruder’s film and had permitted him to keep or sell it.

The film was developed Friday night. Time-Life editors said yesterday that it had been studied by their Dallas representatives, who were authorized to make the purchase. The film was sent by air to the Chicago laboratories of the magazine.

From a description give by the Life representative in Dallas, the editors said, it appears that the pictures were taken with a telephoto lens.

Mr. Zapruder’s secretary said that Mr. Zapruder was “one of hundreds” who were taking pictures of the Presidential motorcade.

Life editors here said that they were unable last night to give precise details as to what the film showed, but that they were assured that it depicted the impact of the bullets that struck Mr. Kennedy.

The photographic department of The Associated Press in New York acknowledged late yesterday that the AP had bid for the pictures but that Mr. Zapruder had sold the film to Time-Life, Inc. A spokesman said he understood the price was in the vicinity of $40,000.

Mr. Zapruder’s secretary would neither confirm nor deny the figure, nor would Time-Life spokesmen discuss it. The AP spokesman, however, said the figure was “well over $25,000 and close to $40,000.”

4) AP, "Movie Film Depicts Shooting of Kennedy,” Milwaukee Journal, November 26, 1963, part 1, p.3

Dallas, Tex.-AP - A strip of color movie film graphically depicting the assassination of President Kennedy was made by a Dallas clothing manufacturer with an 8 millimeter camera.

Several persons in Dallas who have seen the film, which lasts about 15 seconds, say it clearly shows how the president was hit in the head with shattering force by the second of two bullets fired by the assassin.

Life magazine reportedly purchased still picture rights to the material for about $40,000.

("The film also was being distributed by United Press International Newsfilms to subscribing stations. WITI-TV in Milwaukee is a subscriber, but will reserve judgment on whether to show the film until after its officials have viewed it.")

This is what the film by Abe Zapruder is reported to show:

First the presidential limousine is coming toward the camera. As it comes abreast of the photographer, Mr. Kennedy is hit by the first bullet, apparently in the neck. He turns toward his wife Jacqueline, seated at his left, and she quickly begins to put her hands around his head.

At the same time, Texas Gov. John Connally, riding directly in front of the president, turns around to see what has happened.

Then Mr. Kennedy is hit on the upper right side of the back of his head with violent force. His head goes forward and then snaps back, and he slumps down on the seat.

At this time, Gov. Connolly is wounded and drops forward on his seat.

Mrs. Kennedy then jumps up and crawls across the back deck of the limousine, apparently seeking the aid of a secret service man who has been trotting behind the slowly moving vehicle. He jumps onto the car and shoves Mrs. Kennedy back into the seat. Then he orders the driver to speed to the hospital where the president died.

The elapsed time from the moment when Mr. Kennedy is first struck until the car disappears in an underpass is about five seconds."

5) AP (Dallas), “Amateur captures death shot,” The Province (Vancouver, BC), 26 November 1963, p.1:

A strip of color movie film showing the assassination of President Kennedy was made by a Dallas clothing manufacturer with an eight millimetre camera.

Several persons in Dallas who have seen the film sat it clearly shows how the president was hit in the head with shattering force by the second of two bullets fired by the assassin.

Life magazine is reported to have purchased still picture rights to the material for about $40,000.

The film, made by Abe Zapruder, is reported to show how, as the presidential limousine comes abreast of the photographer, Kennedy is hit by the first bullet, apparently in the neck.

Then Kennedy is hit on the upper right side of the back of his head with violent force.

6) Express Staff Reporter (New York, Monday), “The Man Who Got the Historic Pictures,” Daily Express, Tuesday, 26 November 1963, p.10:

Amateur photographer Abraham Zapruder, owner of a Dallas dress manufacturing business, took the assassination pictures in 8mm colour with a normal lens.

When Mr. Zapruder went to work on Friday he had no intention of watching President Kennedy drive through Dallas. So he left at home his new camera. But his secretary urged Mr. Zapruder to go out and take movies.

Position

He was not very keen, but she pressed him and he drove home to collect his camera.

He returned to the route and took up a position overlooking the road standing on a concrete parapet eight feet above the pavement.

When the procession came into sight he began filming. Just before the President’s car got to him he heard the rifle shots and saw that Kennedy was hit.

Shock

Zapruder said that he stood absolutely transfixed. He knew what was happening and yet he continued to go on filming.

He remembers screaming: “My God! He’s dead!”

Zapruder was in a state of complete shock. He remembers going back to the office, but for a while he was not really aware of what he had recorded. But when the film was hurriedly processed and when he had screened it on Friday evening, he realised its importance and value.

The secret service sent agents to examine the film and permitted him to keep it.

C 1963 Life Magazine Time Incorporated. All rights reserved.

On same page, 4 stills from Z-film; on opposite, a further 7.

7) UPI (Dallas), “Movie Film Shows Murder of President,” Philadelphia Daily News, Tuesday, 26 November 1963, p.3 (4 star edition):

An amateur photographer shot an 8-MM movie film that clearly shows, step-by-step, the assassination of President Kennedy.

The film was made by Abraham Zapruder, a Dallas dress manufacturer. He is selling rights to the film privately. It has been seen by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Secret Service and representatives of the news media.

It is seven feet long, 35 seconds in colour, a bit jumpy but clear.

It opens as the Kennedy motorcade rounds the corner from Houston Street and turns into Elm Street.

Then it picks up the President’s car and follows it down toward the underpass. Suddenly, in the film, Kennedy is seen to jerk. It is the first shot.

Mrs. Kennedy turns, puts her arms around him. A second later, the second shot. The President’s head becomes a blur on the film, lunged forward and up. The second bullet has torn into the back of his head.

He rolls towards Mrs. Kennedy and disappears from sight. Mrs. Kennedy lurches onto the flat trunk deck of the Presidential car as a Secret Service man races to their aid. She is on her hands and knees. She reaches for him. He leaps up on the bumper. She pulls him up on the bumper or he pushes her back as the film ends.

Other films show the car never stopped, but raced to the Parkland Memorial Hospital with Mrs. Kennedy cradling the President.

NB:

UPI (Dallas), “Movie Film Shows Murder of President,” Philadelphia Daily News, Tuesday, 26 November 1963, p.3 (4 star edition):

On page 1, under the headline “Man Who Came to See JFK Makes Tragic Movie,” there is the following blurb above 4 stills: “These dramatic pictures are from an 8mm ‘home movie’ reel, shot by Dallas dressmaker Abraham Zapruder who went to see President Kennedy ride through cheering throngs in Texas city. His camera recorded one of the most tragic moments in American history. Story page 3.”

Below are 4 stills from…the Muchmore film!

8) Arthur J. Snider (Chicago Daily News Service), “Movies Reconstruct Tragedy,” Fort Worth Star-Telegram, (Evening edition), November 27, 1963, section 2, p.1:

Chicago, Nov. 27 – With the aid of movies taken by an amateur, it is possible to reconstruct to some extent the horrifying moments in the assassination of President Kennedy.

As the fateful car rounded the turn and moved into the curving parkway, the President rolled his head to the right, smiling and waving.

At that instant, about 12:30 p.m., the sniper, peering through a four-power telescope sight, fired his cheap rifle.

The 6.5 mm bullet – about .25 caliber – pierced the President’s neck just below the Adam’s apple. It took a downward course.

“If you were wearing a bow tie, the position is just about where the knot is,” said a Dallas neurosurgeon who saw the wound.

The President clutched his throat for a bewildered instant, then began to sag.

A second blast from the high-powered rifle ripped into the right rear of his head at about a 4 o 'clock position.

It was a violent wound. As a motorcycle officer described it: “It just seemed as if his head opened up.”

The President swerved to his left and collapsed into the arms of his wife.

Mrs. Kennedy climbed onto the trunk to beseech aid from a Secret Service man. The President slumped against her leg, bloodying her skirt and stocking.

Meanwhile, Gov. John Connally had turned to see what happened. A third shot rang out.

It struck the governor in the back. The bullet was deflected to his right wrist and lodged in his left thigh. A fragment of rib, fractured by the bullet, punctured a lung.

Sequence pictures of the tragedy were taken by an amateur Dallas photographer and were purchased by Life Magazine. They were published in this week’s Life.

They serve to deny a rumor that the President may have sustained the throat wound from a shot fired at ground level.

They also indicate the President was shot first. It had been conjectured by some that Connally was the prime target.

Identification of two points of entry, the throat and the skull, was made by Dr. Kemp Clark, neurosurgeon, and Dr. Tom Shires, chief of surgery at Parkland Hospital.

They said neither bullet was recovered in the hospital emergency room. One bullet was said to have emerged from the left temple.

If any bullets were lodged in the body, they would have been removed at an autopsy in the Bethesda Navy Hospital, where the President’s body was taken immediately on the return to Washington.

White House Assistant Press Secretary, asked if an autopsy had been performed, said: “The question has been deferred for reply later.”

Officials at Bethesda Naval Hospital declined to comment.

Medical personnel at Parkland Hospital said, however, that a post-mortem examination was performed at Bethesda but no report had yet been received there.

Pathologists in Chicago also expressed the “virtual certainty” that an autopsy was performed.

“It would have been necessary for medical-legal reasons,” one said. “In a trial for murder, it is necessary to state in court how death came about, whether by massive haemorrhage , cell destruction, or whatever.”

“Permission from the family is not needed, although in this case it might have been sought.”

9) John Herbers, “Kennedy Struck by Two Bullets, Doctor Who Attended Him Says,” New York Times, November 27, 1963, p.20:

“…The known facts about the bullets, and the position of the assassin, suggested that he started shooting as the President’s car was coming toward him, swung his rifle in an arc of almost 180 degrees and fired at least twice more.

A rifle like the one that killed President Kennedy might be able to fire three shots in two seconds, a gun expert indicated after tests.

A strip of color movie film taken by a Dallas clothing manufacturer with an 8-mm camera tends to support this sequence of events.

The film covers about a 15-second period. As the President’s car come abreast of the photographer, the President was struck in the front of the neck. The President turned toward Mrs. Kennedy as she began to put her hands around his head.

Connally Turns Around

At the same time, Governor Connally, riding in front of the President, turned round to see what had happened. Then the President was struck on the head. His head went forward, then snapped back, as he slumped in his seat. At that time, Governor Connally was wounded.

The elapsed time from the moment Mr. Kennedy was first struck until the car disappeared in an underpass was five seconds.”

10) Rick Freedman, “Pictures of Assassination Fall to Amateurs on Street,” Editor & Publisher, November 30, 1963, pp.16 & 17:

$40,000 Film Clip

“…It was an amateur movie camera enthusiast in Dallas who recorded a 25-second close-up sequence showing the actual impact of the assassin’s fire on President Kennedy.

Abraham Zapruder, president of a dress shop in Dallas, sold the 8-millimeter color film clip to Time-Life Inc. for about $40,000. Life editors said that deadline limitations did not permit reproduction in color and the pictures were printed in black and white.

Harry McCormick, police reporter of the Dallas Morning News, rushed to the scene of the assassination. He found Abe Zapruder , who said he had taken movies. Seeing a Secret Serviceman he knew, McCormick tried to get the films confiscated, hoping thus they might become public property. Zapruder refused to give them up, and with the S.S. man and McCormick went to the Eastman Kodak plant were the films were processed.

Others by now had heard about the film. Spirited bidding for the rights started McCormick went up to $1,000 for one of the still frames. It showed that terrible second when the bullet hit the President’s head. Time outbid everyone and gained rights to the film.

‘In Zapruder’s room he has a placard on the wall with “Think” but that word is marked out by “Scheme,”’ McCormick said.

‘I’m going to get me one like it,’ the reported remarked.

The picture sequence ran as a four-page spread in Life’s Nov. 29 issue, which came out Nov.26. Taken from about 40 feet away with a normal lens, according to Life, most of the sequence is slightly dark and out-of-focus. But it does show in dramatic fashion the entire fatal few seconds – the President and Mrs. Kennedy riding in the car, the President getting hit, Governor Connally getting hit, Mrs. Kennedy cradling the fallen Chief Executive in her arms, and Mrs. Kennedy jumping up to help a Secret Service man into the President’s limousine.”

Later in the same piece, we find the following description of an untitled/unattributed film shown presumably on Tuesday, 26 November:

“By Tuesday, numerous pictures, both still and movie, were being offered to news media. At least one television station was besieged with protests after it had shown scenes of the President’s motorcade at the moment of the shooting. Many viewers considered them to be too gruesome.”

11) “The Man Who Killed Kennedy,” Time, December 6, 1963, p.29:

The Murder

“…At 12:31 the President’s Lincoln limousine passed by at a speed of 12 to 15 m.p.h. In the car, Texas Governor Connally, who was seated directly in front of Kennedy, heard a shot. ‘I turned to my right,’ he recalled later, from his hospital bed. ‘The President had slumped…Then I was hit, and I knew I’d been hit badly. I thought, my God, they’re going to kill us all.’

What actually happened was made horrifyingly clear in color films taken by Abraham Zapruder, a Dallas clothing manufacturer and an amateur movieman. The strip runs for about 20 seconds – an eternity of history. Kennedy was waving to a friendly crowd. Then came the first shot, and he clutched at his throat with both hands. Connally turned around, raised his right hand toward the President, then fell backward into his wife’s lap as the second shot struck him. The third shot, all too literally, exploded in Kennedy’s head. In less than an instant, Jackie was up, climbing back over the trunk of the car, seeking help. She reached out her right hand, caught the hand of a Secret Service man who was running to catch up, and in one desperate tug pulled him aboard. Then, in less time than it takes to tell it, she was back cradling her husband’s head in her lap.”

If you think about it, alot of things would fit into that scenerio. It just seems far fetched to many, as it is a theory that isnt looked at that much, or thought about.

Smitty,

Isn't that just the genius of the entire scheme - the sheer, breathtaking effrontery of it?

You're also quite right about the explanatory power of the Greer-did model: so much falls into place. If you wanted proof of its potency, watch the lies, smears and evasions to follow!

Have a great New Year,

Paul

Cant wait! lol! Thanks, and the same to you and yours. -smitty

Mr. Griggs' most honest and coherent contribution to the subject yet, x2. Keep up the good work.

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?

Paul, what evidence do you have that the CIA aranged for Powers' plane to be downed?

Len,

Nothing less than a signed confession from Dulles. He was generous like that. As soon as the tippex is dry, I'll scan it and post.

Paul

Tomorrow, I’ll append the Starnes article which gave rise to the chapterlet, so the reader can see what provoked it.

Day late, for which apologies: Never let anyone tell you that mainstream US journalism of the early 1960s was worthless; or confine your searchings to the CIA's NYT.

The New York World-Telegram & Sun, Monday, October 14, 1963, p.21

Viet Nam Another Cuba?

By Richard Starnes

The Central Intelligence Agency's role in Viet Nam has been assailed as bureaucratic ineptitude seasoned with arrogance of a high order, and it has been just as warmly defended as selfless patriotism of the utmost puissance.

An insight as to which version is true may be gained by reference to the fully documented - and unchallenged - story of the part played by the CIA in Cuba just before Fidel Castro rose to power. The parallels to today's gathering disaster in Saigon are remarkable, and so is the cloudy, controversial part essayed by the CIA.

Six years ago the same sort of drama was being played out in Havana. Fulgencio Batista, a dictator much hated by the Cuban people, was being harried - and inexorably destroyed - by a tiny guerrilla force of almost comic-opera weakness. Batista's large, well-equipped army was intact. His secret police were savagely efficient. But knowledgeable Americans on the scene felt a growing disquiet. Batista had everything going for him except the support of the people.

These circumstances, of course, are dramatically duplicated in Viet Nam today. And the sharpest parallel may be found in the curious role of the CIA - then as now.

The United States ambassador to Cuba during the twilight of Batista's brutal role was Earl E. T. Smith, a financier and former Army officer. Here is what he has had to say about his relations with the CIA during the period that bears such remarkable resemblance to the present dismal involvement in Saigon:

"In September, 1957, I asked the chief of the CIA section attached to the embassy to review their figures on Communist party strength in Cuba - both as to card-bearing Communists and Communist sympathizers.

"I questioned our estimates because nine years earlier, when the Communists for the last time in Cuba voted as a party under the Communist label, they polled over 120,000 votes…Nevertheless, the embassy CIA estimates on Communist party strength in Cuba in 1957 indicated only 10,000 card-bearing Communists and approximately 20,000 Communist sympathizers.

"It is interesting to note that the CIA officer had a closed mind and demonstrated a resentment to my references to Fidel…as the 'outlaw' and the 'bandit leader' in the hills.

"These feelings of resentment were shown by a remark he made when he walked out of my office. After I had asked him to review the figures, I heard him say. 'We don't care what you think."

That CIA official was subsequently transferred (another parallel to Saigon, where the chief of the CIA mission has lately been removed) but there is room to doubt whether the transfer of one individual could check the CIA's wilful ways.

"In September, 1957, Smith testified before the Senate internal security subcommittee, "the (Cuban) navy had an uprising at Cienfuegos. We in the American embassy were familiar that a revolt of some sort would take place. That information came to us through the CIA or some other source in the embassy."

The revolt failed. And at the trial of the officers who had attempted it, "it was brought out (again quoting Ambassador Smith) "that the No. 2 (CIA) man had said that if the revolution were successful the United States would recognize the revolutionaries."

As soon as the ambassador learned of this attempt by the CIA to fabricate foreign policy, he "laid down the law that neither the ambassador nor anyone else could give any statement as to whom the United States would recognize; that there were only two people in the United States who had that authority; one was the Secretary of State and the other was the President."

Just how poorly informed the CIA remained as to the true nature of Castroism may be gleaned from the testimony before the internal security subcommittee, given nearly a year after Castro came to power by Gen. C.P. Cabell, then deputy director of the CIA. "We believe," Gen. Cabell testified, "that Castro is not a member of the Communist party and does not consider himself to be a Communist."

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.

- Paul Rigby

Paul, I think it may have been John Simkin who, some time ago, put forward a similar view on Castro (I hope he'll correct me if I'm wrong). I was a little sceptical at the time, but my research on the Gaitan assassination started to make me wonder if it may not be true. One of the conclusions I reached in the Bogota Ripples thread was that John Spiritto organised the hit, and that Raphael Del Pino, who was with Castro, had helped ignite the ensuing riots with the aim of blaming the whole thing on Communists. Del Pino was a US citizen, and a member of the CIO affiliated anti-Communist Union of Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America. Post Cuban revolution, he was sentenced to 30 years for "counter-revolutionary" activities. Spiritto, on the other hand, got off lightly by comparison, despite confessing to organising the hit on Gaitan.

Greg,

Magnificent research, as ever - respect!

Paul

If you think about it, alot of things would fit into that scenerio. It just seems far fetched to many, as it is a theory that isnt looked at that much, or thought about.

Smitty,

Isn't that just the genius of the entire scheme - the sheer, breathtaking effrontery of it?

You're also quite right about the explanatory power of the Greer-did model: so much falls into place. If you wanted proof of its potency, watch the lies, smears and evasions to follow!

Have a great New Year,

Paul

Cliff Varnell:

So Operation Mongoose, Operation Northwoods, and that huge JM/WAVE station

were all figments of the imagination?

It is inconvenient to your pet theory that this anti-Castro effort existed, therefore

it did not exist?

Because a plot fails, that precludes any possibility of such a plot?

Plots only exist when they succeed, is that what you and Ashton are pushing?

All figments of the imagination? Nope, just never implemented because real power had other plans. The Cuban market was simply traded for control of the rest of the region. Economic significance of Argentina, Brazil et al v. Cuba?

Hugo Chavez now fulfils the role of ostensible regional bogeyman, and US plots against him will almost certainly fail precisely as the elaborate paper exercises did in the case of Castro. The dirty secret in contemporary Venezuela's case is that Chavez is working for the economic integration of the region, an integration long earnestly desired by big capital in Washington and New York, but unachievable under overt US command. Hence Chavez's survival. The Guardian recently ran an unusually good piece arguing just this.

One final point: I ain't pushing anything with Mr Gray. On the subject of the medical evidence, I'm essentially on your side. Ashton and I will doubtless cross swords on that topic in due course. I meant what I said: I thought the exchanges between you and Ashton on the subject of Cuba were, and are, vitally important. And I thought Ashton bang on the money here.

Stay sober and virtuous,

Paul

Erick A. Bovick wrote:

If the driver had pulled out a nickle-plated .45 and shot President Kennedy with it, dozens of witnesses would have seen it.

Hugh Betzner, Jr. made explicit reference to doing just that. At least one other well-placed eyewitness described guns in the hands of Kennedy's detail before he was shot. Three further points. The murder took place at the motorcade's fag-end, at the least populated part of the route. Second, can you be sure that witnesses were expressly asked the question by statement-takers? Third, how would you react to seeing a presidential bodyguard shoot a man in broad daylight? Would you not be intimidated by what you saw?

The Connallys would have seen it too.

On the day of his death in June 1993, a close friend of Connally's was asked on a local Houston, Texas, radio station, why it was that Connolly had been the only presidential candidate ever to refuse Secret Service protection when he ran against Ronald Reagan in the 1980 primaries. He replied:

"Well, John always said that having the Secret Service around was a good way to get yourself killed."

Besides that, an over-the-shoulder shot, although not impossible, would have been difficult while steering the car.

But not if the car was slowed to walking pace or stationary. The list of witnesses who said the presidential limo stopped is, as I'm sure you're aware, formidable. Besides, is a rifle shot from 15 to 100 yards away easier than that from a hand-held weapon fired from under 10 feet? It is not self-evident to me that it is.

The ejection port on a .45 is on the right side. The shell would have hit the shooter in the head.

Or simply landed on the grassy southern curb of Elm, assuming the presidential limo swerved to the left as Greer concentrated on things other than driving. Interestingly, witnesses from the front, rear and side of the Lincoln stated that the limo did indeed veer into the southernmost curbside lane of Elm; and there is a close-up sequence of a suited gent pocketing a discharged case from the grassy south curb.

Also, if the driver planned to shoot the president, why would he choose an extremely visible weapon? A blued-metal .45 would not have been as reflective, but still highly visible.

Fair point, if hardly dispositive.

Furthermore the angle of trajectory was wrong for that shot. The bullet would have entered the left temple rather than the right temple.

According to the Parkland doctors, the fatal head shot did indeed enter the left temple. McClelland wrote exactly that, while a surprisingly large number of his colleagues raised the question of a left-front headwound in their testimony before the Warren Commission.

Remove the blinkers, Erick, and have a good, long, honest look at what was actually said and written, not what the grassy knollers have fruitlessly parroted for the past 5 decades.

By the way, I think Cooper either a nut or a disinformationist. He was beaten to the punch on the Greer-did-it scenario by twenty years. Newcomb and Adams' Murder From Within remains indispensable reading.

Paul

I've spent a lot of fruitless time at the library looking through old der spiegels and other publications looking for anything on him. I wonder how much before Chancellor Gerhards visit he came to the US to participate in security peparations for the Dec visit.

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.

I think Vince Palamera has done a very thorough study on the Dallas detail. Someone posted a link to it some time ago.

Agreed - there's some terrific stuff in Palamara's work.

Paul

and 2) your failure to take account of the much greater benefits to the US of Castro remaining in power.

Paul, you write about "the US" is if it were a monolithic entity.

I think you make a crucial mistake in not recognizing the diverse power

centers within the American ruling elite.

Eastern Establishment blue-bloods like McGeorge Bundy represented

different interests than intel cowboys like Robert Maheu.

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?

Just because there were CIA efforts in installing Castro, that doesn't mean

that people didn't change their minds after the deed was accomplished.

Installing Castro was inherently a long-range gambit, for which a swift, public, rhetorical volte-face was essential.

And how on earth does "CIA-Pentagon" reach differ in any respect from "the reach of

the politico-corporate elite"?

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.

Could you expand on how "CIA-Pentagon reach" is divorced from the (usually cooperating

but oft times competing) factions within the American ruling elite?

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.

Cliff Varnell:

I do not buy the view that "the CIA" was, or is, a monolithic entity

wherein all the players are on the same page.

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.

Paul, have you read the following?

THE LAST INVESTIGATION, by Gaeton Fonzi

BREACH OF TRUST, by Gerald McKnight

SOMEONE WOULD HAVE TALKED, by Larry Hancock

Read those and come back and tell me how much scorn you have

for the false-flag scenario.

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.

Cliff Varnell:

In 1963, I'll argue, there were factions in CIA loyal to different masters.

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.

What united them was a desire to invade Cuba. To deny that such sentiment

existed is fallacious, to put it politely.

No, it isn't. To the contrary: it is logical and sustained by the evidence. After all, they didn't invade Cuba!

Paul

Cliff Varnell:

Paul, we can debate the "significance" of the Operation Northwoods documents

all day long, but it isn't going to change the fact that these EXIST.

Cliff, never said they didn't.

It is a fact that the Joint Chiefs in March of 1962 signed off on false-flag/ginned-intel plots against Castro.

It is a fact that in August of 1964 the US military used the false-flag/ginned-intel

Gulf of Tonkin Incident to ramp up US involvement in Vietnam.

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?

It is a fact that Neo-Con foreign policy is often based on ginned-intel, witness

the current war in Iraq.

Absolutely - but not just Neo-Con. Hasn't this mostly been the case?

Given the documentary and historical evidence of these false-flag/ginned-intel

plots and operations, how on Earth can anyone heap "ridicule and scorn" on the

notion that just such a false flag attack on Kennedy was possible?

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.

I don't see where you show any proof that the anti-Castro forces

were any less committed to the overthrow of Castro merely because

other factions in the American ruling elite desired a different result.

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)

I wonder if a similar comparison has been made with the Berlin visit(s). It's just a curiosity arising from Ewald Peters, the German head of security, that a SS detail member spoke highly of, who after the assassination (December) accompanied the Chancellor on a visit to LBJ's ranch, and a month+ later hung himself in jail after being unmasked and arrested as a Nazi war criminal. He was responsible for the Berlin visit security.

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

Paul, I fail to see where you discount the following:

http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/northwoods.html

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.

Cliff Varnell:

I do not buy the view that "the CIA" was, or is, a monolithic entity

wherein all the players are on the same page.

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.

Cliff Varnell:

In 1963, I'll argue, there were factions in CIA loyal to different masters.

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.