David Andrews

Be sure to read Bakers full interview (200+ pages) for the Senate history office, which is linked to in the article. It's slow reading, but will reward you with an exhibition of how the sausages are made, and demonstrate that the 20th century Senate was little different from the Senate in the days of Thomas Nast's political cartoons.

I'm supposing that their brand of empirical science precluded firing a frontal shot through the area above the right temple?

Some things to consider: Did Lansdale really know three guys like the tramps personally? Know somebody like, say, Charles Harrelson, personally? Did these three matter enough to him for Lansdale to walk by and give them the "high sign"? If that is Lansdale in the photo, he may have seen the three tramps approaching under "police escort," and taken a stroll past them for a simple reconnaissance, without necessarily knowing them. Where is that "Lansdale" figure heading, anyway? He's not on Elm Street, he's on the Elm Street extension that leads to the parking lot behind the knoll. Did he go to the parking lot, or cut back to Elm Street? Don Roberdeau, in a post above, reports research that cites the tramps-Lansdale picture as taken c. 2:19 PM. Is the "Lansdale" figure in any other photos or film taken at that time?

Paul - I agree. With the intermingling of US and German corporate entities (GE, IG Farben, etc., operating in both countries) before the war, there had to be extra-governmental intel pooling, which I'm sure helped Sullivan Cromwell mesh Brown Brothers with Thyssen. Paperclip and the Gehlen network were, more accurately, sold on the basis of the government's isolationism, not the corporations'.

Interesting to speculate on how much our need for Nazi-origin intelligence on Russia may have been caused by the American 20th-century isolationism that resisted our entrance into both World Wars. That and perhaps a tendency to ignore the Soviet Union after the Russian Revolution could not be reversed.

I'm-a get the book and straighten this out. Bottom line: Fonzi was impressed enough to recommend perjury charges against Phillips. It may have meant a battle of He Said v. He Said that wouldn't hold in court. but the intent was inspired by something Fonzi witnessed.

If I remember, the source for that attributed quotation was C. David Heymann, whose books have been widely discredited: https://www.bing.com/search?q=david heymann jfk&qs=n&form=QBRE&sp=-1&pq=david heymann jfk&sc=0-17&sk=&cvid=233374CD85A149FDB6FB7053E6B2ED87

Perhaps he did him a favor once.

Again, I don't have Fonzi's book in the house, but my recollection is that Fonzi meant that Phillips violated "basic tradecraft" by being spooked when he encountered Veciana in Reston, VA. He later denied knowing Veciana twice on the day Fonzi brought Veciana to confront Phillips during his HSCA testimony.

To play devil's advocate - DeMohrenschildt was for a time an associate of Jacqueline Bouvier's family, and knew the First Lady as a child, which weakens the "habit of writing high level people" quirk angle a bit.

I don't have the Fonzi book in front of me, but here from Spartacus is a Fonzi interview excerpt regarding the first time Fonzi brought Phillips and Veciana together in Reston, VA, which led to Fonzi recommending to Robert Blakey that Phillips be charged with perjury for denying knowing Veciana: (5) Gaeton Fonzi, interviewed on 8th October, 1994. Veciana was introduced by name to Phillips twice, once in the banquet hall and once in the hallway. Phillips even asked that it be repeated and then, when Veciana asked him, "Don't you remember my name?" Phillips responded, "No." As Veciana himself later pointed out, that was odd considering that Veciana had been exceptionally well-known in anti-Castro activity, being the founder, key fund-raiser and spokesman for Alpha 66, the largest and most militant anti-Castro group. It was odd because anti-Castro activity was the heart and soul of Phillips' mission during the period in question. It was impossible for Phillips not to know or remember Veciana's name. Phillips had simply been caught off-guard by Veciana's surprise appearance at Reston and had a little "slip of tradecraft." Phillips himself must have later realized that because later, under oath during his Committee testimony, he decided the only way he could rectify that "slip of tradecraft" was to lie and say that Veciana was never introduced to him by name at that encounter. I urged Chief Counsel Bob Blakey to recommend Phillips be charged with perjury, since we had three witnesses to that Reston encounter: myself, Veciana and an aide from Senator Schweiker's office. Blakey declined to take on the CIA. http://spartacus-educational.com/JFKphillips.htm

But Phillips knew Veciana, and seemed to have some guilty knowledge when he was confronted with Veciana. In The Last Investigation, Gaeton Fonzi published his eyewitness account of bringing Veciana to Phillips' testimony session before HSCA. Phillips reacted as if he'd seen a ghost, and refused to talk to Veciana. I believe Phillips fled the room. See Fonzi's book for the entire action. As Phillips was testifying before a commission specially investigating assassinations, gee - why was he spooked when Veciana appeared?

Remember that Howard Hunt was, allegedly, once going by "Knight."

On a lower operational level, but yes. My sense is that there were migratory field names at CIA, and they were used to confuse field contacts and destroy culpability, but perhaps also to certify persons dropping the name ( e. g., "Bishop") to other persons observing an op at CIA.

Some background on David Irving v. Gitta Sereny, a formidable investigator and admirable historian: [wiki] Books[edit] The Case of Mary Bell was first published in 1972 following Mary Bell's trial; in it Sereny interviewed her family, friends and the professionals involved in looking after Mary during her trial. This book was edited by Diana Athill who would also edit Sereny's Into That Darkness. Into That Darkness (also following an initial article for the Telegraph magazine) was an examination of the guilt of Franz Stangl, the commandant of the Treblinka and Sobibor extermination camps.[9] She spent 70[10] hours interviewing him in prison for the article and when she had finished he finally admitted his guilt; he died of a heart attack nineteen hours later. Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth (1995) is a biographical work on Albert Speer, German minister of Armaments during World War II. In it, Sereny explores how much Speer knew about the Holocaust. During the Nuremberg trials, Speer had avoided a death sentence, claiming all the while that he knew nothing of the Holocaust. However, Sereny concludes that Speer must have known based on a letter he wrote to the Jewish community in South Africa (after the war), and the fact that his closest assistant attended the Wannsee Conference (where the details of the genocide of the Jews were worked out) who could not have failed to inform him about the proceedings. In 1998, she was embroiled in a controversy in the British press when her second book on Mary Bell, Cries Unheard[11] was published and she announced that she was sharing the publishing fee, from MacMillan Publishers, with Mary Bell for collaborating on the book. Sereny was initially criticized in the British press and by the British government, though the book quickly became, and remains, a standard text for professionals working with problem children. Sereny wrote of her final book, The German Trauma (2002): "The nineteen chapters in this book, all intimately concerned with Germany before, during and since the end of the Third Reich, describe more or less sequentially what I saw and learned from 1938 to 1999, thus almost over a lifetime."[12] David Irving libel suit[edit] British writer David Irving initiated a libel case against Sereny and the Guardian Media Group for two reviews in The Observer where she asserted he deliberately falsified the historical record in an attempt to rehabilitate the Nazis. Irving maintained a personal animosity for Sereny, whom he calls "that shriveled Nazi hunter", for successfully refuting his claims since the publication of his book Hitler's War. When, in 1977, Sereny cross-checked the source he cited for his assertion that Hitler knew nothing about the Final Solution, and therefore could not have ordered it, she found he had excised a caveat which would have contradicted his claim. "I know many of the same people as he does who were of Hitler's circle," Sereny said. "That is scary for him. He says we jostle at the same trough. The difference is that he loves that trough, and I don't... There is, I think, [for him] despair in all of this." Although the case did not go to court, the cost to the Guardian Media Group of preparing its legal defence amounted to £800,000.[13]

I can't get into cases now, but I suspect from my own studies that the cognomen "Bishop" was used by more than one person at CIA for forays into the field. I suspect Tracey Barnes used "Bishop:" also when out of the office. Check the past threads for other research on this.

Roger, don't forget that in those days the government was operating on dedicated phone exchanges established in major cities, and there were secure connections to military installations. So - no public record, and any record that was maintained could still be designated Classified. Has anyone sought assassination-period telecommunications records through FOIA?.

Related or not? US groups opposed to Trump and conservatism are now labeling themselves Anti-Fascist or "Anti-Fa." Groups in the opposite camp acknowledge the Anti-Fa in the press and on the internet, but are not disavowing the name "fascist" in indignation. So, apparently Americans are now self-identifying as fascist. Expect them to adopt the name any day now.

I was going to say, was this a "rogue op" strictly to give McCone plausible deniability? May not have worked with RFK. I know of another rogue op like this. Fifty years ago today, a partnership called The Beatles did a side project under the name Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Fooled nobody. If the hit team is CIA-oriented (Mob, Cubans, Corsicans, Prouty's hit team in Greece, Harvey's Euro hit team), then it is done through "normal channels."

Paul wonders if the Army support man is Lansdale (actually General, USAF). This assumes that the support man is a lower-ranking liaison between the planners and higher-ranking officers in the Army (and other services?) Fletcher Prouty cites Lansdale as CIA's man in the USAF and the East Asian theater. So if we have a cabal of Dulles, Phillips, Harvey, Lansdale, and perhaps Angleton - do we not have "the CIA" and not "rogue agents"? It seems like a partners' meeting at a firm, and not a "rogue" operation. If you factor in Helms and Hunt and Morales, well...that's quite a lot of rogues at or near the top. This is not much like Clay Shaw and Dave Ferrie gossiping at mens' parties.

Thank you, Ernie, for the research recommendations. I think the history of FBI counterterrorism, c.1980-present, is underexamined, and too often presented in empty puffery that lists some players and a slew of organizational structure, without presenting any of the process, only the judgment that the results have been heroic, but the resources and internal support lacking. Time for more and better. Peter Lance has been a start, but some of his conclusions are questionable, as is his small industry of creating a shelf of books around the same, repeated core of information.

Ernie, can I put to you the question I asked Larry Hancock? What, in your opinion, are the best books on the FBI 1980-present? Counterterrorism a special interest.

Larry - thanks. I've read the Crumpton book and gotten a lot out of it. I'll have to re-read Richard Clarke to see why you would recommend it. It struck me as a bit empty, like Louis Freeh's My FBI, but I should review Clarke in light of what I've read since his book came out. One book I got a bit out of is Matt Apuzzo, Enemies Within: Inside the NYPD's Secret Spying Unit and Bin Laden's Final Plot against America, which gives good background on the interworkings of CIA and FBI with NYPD prior to 9/11. How do you feel about the portrayal of FBI in Peter Lance's books?

Do these kids really know Piaf? https://www.identityevropa.com/

Larry, what are the best FBI books for the period 1980-present? Counterterrorism emphasis a plus.