John Simkin

I have just found out that Frederick Trubee Davison, a friend of Henry Luce, was a member of the Skull and Bones. He was later to become Director of Personnel for the Central Intelligence Agency.

The following people associated with the assassination of JFK were members of the Skull and Bones secret society: Henry Luce, William Averell Harriman, James Jesus Angleton, William F. Buckley, McGeorge Bundy and George H. W. Bush. Is anyone aware of any others?

Larry Sanger and Wikipedia:

http://thenextweb.com/insider/2011/11/19/larry-sanger-on-co-founding-wikipedia-and-how-online-education-could-change-the-world/?utm_source=sendgrid.com&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=website

"John Martin" was indeed Robert Emmett Johnson's sponsor but he died of a "heart attack" in 1974. He was allegedly murdered by Soviet Intel agents. "Martin" was not the man who helped Michael Hand escape; nevertheless, it is likely whoever did help Hand, came from "Martin's" extensive network of operatives.

Here is a great article from the Sydney Morning Herald of Aug. 21, 1981 that expands on John's story: How Michael Hand Left Australia

Zach

This book details a lot of what happened and how it also involves some of those who are connected to what happened at Dealey Plaza - ie. Thomas Clines, Shackley, Helms, et al.

The Crimes of Patriots -- A True Tale of Dope, Dirty Money, and the CIA, by Jonathan Kwitny

THE CRIMES OF PATRIOTS -- A TRUE TALE OF DOPE, DIRTY MONEY, AND THE CIA

by Jonathan Kwitny © 1987 by Jonathan Kwitny

Table of Contents:

Jacket Cover

Prologue

Cast of Characters

• The End of the Rainbow
• The Cover-Up
• The Golden Triangle
• The Education of a Banker
• Corporate Veils
• Sleight of Hand
• Terrorists and Patriots
• Into Africa
• The Spooking of Australia
• The Un-Bank
• Laughing at the Law
• The Asia Branches
• The U.S. Branches
• Banking in Opiumland
• Officers and Gentlemen
• The Drug Bank
• The "Mr. Asia" Murders
• Bernie of Arabia
• The Admiral's Colors
• Men of Substance
• What the Tape Recorder Heard
• The Wilson Connection
• The Explosion
• Thwarting the Investigators
• "Everybody Left Alive Is Innocent"
• The Agency's Assets

Appendix: The Questions Whose Answers are Secret

This is a great book and well-worth reading. I loved the title of the chapter, "Everybody Left Alive Is Innocent".

Unfortunately, Jonathan Kwitny, did not live a long-life.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKkwitny.htm

Thomas Nast, in political terms, was probably the most influential cartoonist in history. During the American Civil War, Abraham Lincoln is reported to have said: "Thomas Nast has been our best recruiting sergeant. His emblematic cartoons have never failed to arouse enthusiasm and patriotism."

Nast helped five different Republican candidates to win presidential elections. Rutherhood Hayes, who won in 1876 commented that Nast was "the most powerful single-handed aid we had."

In 1884 Nast changed sides and supported the Democratic candidate, Grover Cleveland for president. In doing so, he helped Cleveland become the first Democrat president since 1856. After this, Nast was known as the "presidential maker".

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAnast.htm

Miller Davies, Miami Times (28th May, 1964)

Havana radio reported today that four agents of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency were executed by a firing squad on Tuesday for trying to land on the north coast of Cuba.

The broadcast charged they were agents sent to Cuba by Mandolo Ray, head of the anti-Castro Revolutionary junta, to infiltrate Las Villas Province and lead subversive activities.

One of the executed men were identified as Major Felipe Vidal Santiago, a diplomatic aide in charge of the Cuban Embassy in Venezuela shortly after Castro took over in Cuba...

The broadcast said the three other men executed were Ladislao Gonzales Benitez, Elias Rivero Bello and Alfredo Valdes Linares.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKsantiago.htm

In the first video, part 3, Sheehan refers to the boast of William Pawley in June 1963 after a failed operation in Cuba that Kennedy would soon be killed.

Here is the biography of William Pawley:

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKpawley.htm

Note that the biographical sketch contains this paragraph near its end:

“In June, 1963, a small group, including Pawley, Eddie Bayo, William (Rip) Robertson, John Martino, and Richard Billings, a journalist working for Life Magazine, secretly arrived in Cuba. They were unsuccessful in their attempts to find these Soviet officers and they were forced to return to Miami. Bayo remained behind and it was rumored that he had been captured and executed. However, his death was never reported in the Cuban press.”

Sheehan points in the first video (part 3) that William (Rip) Robertson is shown in Dealey Plaza tipping his hat to signal that the shooting should begin just before Kennedy’s limousine passes by him.

I am interested in the assessments by Forum members of what Sheehan relates in his four-part presentation. I can only state that I found impressive his statements about Watergate. I shall have more comments about this later.

I was shocked to discover that Daniel Sheehan was working on a project with Dick Billings. Do you know if it relates to this subject matter?

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKsheehan.htm

In the first video, part 3, Sheehan refers to the boast of William Pawley in June 1963 after a failed operation in Cuba that Kennedy would soon be killed.

Here is the biography of William Pawley:

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKpawley.htm

Note that the biographical sketch contains this paragraph near its end:

“In June, 1963, a small group, including Pawley, Eddie Bayo, William (Rip) Robertson, John Martino, and Richard Billings, a journalist working for Life Magazine, secretly arrived in Cuba. They were unsuccessful in their attempts to find these Soviet officers and they were forced to return to Miami. Bayo remained behind and it was rumored that he had been captured and executed. However, his death was never reported in the Cuban press.”

Sheehan points in the first video (part 3) that William (Rip) Robertson is shown in Dealey Plaza tipping his hat to signal that the shooting should begin just before Kennedy’s limousine passes by him.

I am interested in the assessments by Forum members of what Sheehan relates in his four-part presentation. I can only state that I found impressive his statements about Watergate. I shall have more comments about this later.

I was shocked to discover that Daniel Sheehan was working on a project with Dick Billings. Do you know if it relates to this subject matter?

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKsheehan.htm

In the first video, part 3, Sheehan refers to the boast of William Pawley in June 1963 after a failed operation in Cuba that Kennedy would soon be killed.

Here is the biography of William Pawley:

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKpawley.htm

Note that the biographical sketch contains this paragraph near its end:

“In June, 1963, a small group, including Pawley, Eddie Bayo, William (Rip) Robertson, John Martino, and Richard Billings, a journalist working for Life Magazine, secretly arrived in Cuba. They were unsuccessful in their attempts to find these Soviet officers and they were forced to return to Miami. Bayo remained behind and it was rumored that he had been captured and executed. However, his death was never reported in the Cuban press.”

Sheehan points in the first video (part 3) that William (Rip) Robertson is shown in Dealey Plaza tipping his hat to signal that the shooting should begin just before Kennedy’s limousine passes by him.

I am interested in the assessments by Forum members of what Sheehan relates in his four-part presentation. I can only state that I found impressive his statements about Watergate. I shall have more comments about this later.

I was shocked to discover that Daniel Sheehan was working on a project with Dick Billings. Do you know if it relates to this subject matter?

Zach Robinson is a talented and gifted writer. I always thought the post referenced by John to be extremely well-written. Zach crafts his sentences so that there is a lot of food for thought in each one.

Zach's posts on the Education Forum follow the same formula. They always contain a lot of valuable, hard to find information.

I hope Zach gets the opportunity to write his own book someday. No doubt it would be a winner.

He could use the researcher pen name "Zach Robinson." Just kidding you Zach.

Zach, if you ever decide to write that book, I can put you in touch with someone who will help you with it a great deal.

Very nice Bio. Glad to see Dickey has a page on Spartacus. Here is an associated Forum topic from many years ago:

Dickey Chapelle and Felipe Vidal Santiago

Chapelle was involved with Robert Emmett Johnson in 1963. Johnson was working with Vidal on some operations concerning Haiti around that same time. This is how Vidal and Chapelle met.

The Miami News: 5/28/64

Vidal Executed in Cuba, Rescued Chapelle from boat explosion 5 months earlier

I wonder what became of Chapelle's interview with Vidal? I assume it was destroyed, but you never know.

Zach

Interesting story. It seems that it was Cuba that moved Chapelle to the right. She seemed to be in favour of national liberation when she was reporting in Hungary, Algeria and Lebanon. She later wrote in What's A Woman Doing Here?: A Reporter's Report on Herself (1962): "I had become an interpreter of violence. I'd covered three revolutions in three years - Hungary, Algeria, Lebanon.... I minded the larger truths that the revolutions had failed. Hungary had fallen to the tanks. Brother still fought brother in Algeria. Rioting continued in Lebanon. But men continued to hope and fight for a better world."

She claims that she was invited to Cuba by supporters of Fidel Castro. However, she was working for the Reader's Digest at the time, and it would seem that reports in favour of Castro would not have gone down well. At this time she began mixing with other anti-communist fanatics such as Henry Luce, Clare Booth Luce, Hal Hendrix, Paul Bethel, William Pawley, Virginia Prewett, Arleigh Burke, Leo Cherne and Ernest Cuneo.

By the way Zach, I share your views on the JFK assassination:

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=1037&st=180&p=216508entry216508

Excuse me, John. I don't think the stock consolidation by Luce after Hadden's death was as your source described.

I did a quick search after reading your post and I found that in 1930, Crowell Hadden, III was a Time, Inc. director. He died five years later. Note that his first cousin was a Time editor in 1935. I would expect more bitterness between the Hadden and the Luce families if there had been a disagreeable stock transfer from the Hadden estate to Luce in 1930.

Isaiah Wilner, the author of The Man Time Forgot (2006), provides information about what happened. Wilner explains the Luce-Hadden relationship in the book: "Luce called Hadden an original and was deeply influenced by his ideas. Throughout their many battles, whether for the editorship of the school paper or for creative control of Time, it was Hadden who won. Luce, who couldn't stand to lose, had been forced to content himself with second place for more than a decade. He had worked as Hadden's deputy in both prep school and college... Luce had continued to live in Hadden's shadow ever since."

In 1928 the two men argued about business matters. Henry Luce was keen to publish a second magazine that he wanted to call Fortune. Hadden was opposed to the idea of publishing a journal devoted to promoting the capitalist system. He considered the "business world to be vapid and morally bankrupt". Together, Hadden and Luce owned more than half of the voting stock and were able to retain control of the company. However, Luce was unable to publish a new magazine without the agreement of his partner.

In December 1928 Briton Hadden became so ill he was unable to go into the office. Doctors diagnosed him with an infection of streptococcus. Hadden believed he had contracted the illness by picking up a wandering tomcat and taking it home to feed it. The ungrateful cat attacked and scratched Hadden. Another possibility was that he had been infected when he had a tooth removed. The following month he was taken to Brooklyn Hospital. Doctors now feared that the bacteria had spread through his blood-stream to reach his heart.

Luce visited Hadden in hospital and tried to buy his shares in the company. Nurses reported that these conversations ended up in shouting matches. One nurse recalled that Hadden and Luce had yelled at each other so loudly that they could be heard from behind the closed door. Doctors believed that Hadden was wasting his precious energies in these arguments and it was partly responsible for his deteriorating condition.

On 28th January, 1929, Hadden contacted his lawyer, William J. Carr and asked him to draw up a new will. In the document, Hadden left his entire estate to his mother. However, he added that he forbade her from selling the stock in Time Incorporated for forty-nine years. His main objective was to prevent Luce from gaining control of the company they had founded together.

Henry Luce visited Hadden every day. He later recalled: "The last time or two that I was there, I guess I knew he was dying and maybe he did. It seemed to me that he knew and every now and again was wanting to say something, whatever it might be he wanted to say in the way of parting words or something. But he never did, so that there was never any open recognition between him and me that he was dying."

Briton Hadden died of heart failure on 27th February, 1929. The following week Hadden's name was removed from Time's masthead as the joint founder of the magazine. Luce also approached Hadden's mother about buying her stock in Time Incorporated. She refused but her other son, Crowell Hadden, accepted his offer to join the board of directors. Crowell agreed to try and persuade his mother to change her mind and in September 1929, she agreed to sell her stock to a syndicate under Luce's control for just over a million dollars. This gave him a controlling interest in the company. Soon after Hadden's death, Luce began publishing Fortune magazine.

I have just had my attention drawn to Wikibin. It seems to deal with articles that have been deleted from Wikipedia. This includes an article on me that used to be on Wikipedia. What is interesting is that I have had a joint message from Daniel Sheehan and Dick Billings who are working on something about the JFK assassination. Now, I would never have put them together.

http://wikibin.org/

Hi John,

Are Sheehan and Billings writing a book? Just curious.

Zach

I don't know yet but they do want to talk about the JFK assassination. If they are, it will be an interesting project given their very different backgrounds.

Henry Luce, the owner of a large media empire, became a key figure in Operation Mockingbird. David Halberstam has pointed out in The Powers That Be (1979): "Luce's politics hardened in the postwar years and Time had become increasingly Republican in its tone. He had been stunned by Truman's defeat of Dewey in 1948. Then in the fall of 1949 China had fallen, the Democratic administration had failed to save Chiang, and that was too much; Truman, and even more Acheson, would have to pay the price. Time was now committed and politicized, an almost totally partisan instrument. The smell of blood was in the air. There was a hunger now in Luce to put a Republican back in power. It was as if Luce, between elections, stood as the leader of the opposition, a kingmaker who had failed to produce a king. The fall of China and the rise of a post-war anti-Communist mood had produced the essential issue to use against the Democrats: softness on Communism."

Luce used his magazines to get Dwight D. Eisenhower elected as president. In 1953 Eisenhower appointed Clare Booth Luce ambassador to Italy; the first American woman ambassador to a major country. Claudio Accogli, a Italian historian, argues that luce was heavily involved in covert anti-communist activities with local cia personnel. Larry Hancock adds: "With no-holds barred political activism and heavy spending (including the support of the SIFAR/Italian Army Secret Service), Luce and the CIA managed to block the probable takeover of the center-left governments, an alliance between Christian Democrats (DC) and the Socialist Democratic Party (PSI)."

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAluce.htm

Dickey Chapelle was a founder member of Citizens Committee to Free Cuba (CCFC). It included several members of Operation Mockingbird: Henry Luce, Clare Booth Luce, Hal Hendrix, Paul Bethel, Virginia Prewett, Leo Cherne and Ernest Cuneo. I wonder if she was also a member. She was an important figure in the disinformation campaign against Fidel Castro.

Here is a picture of Chapelle with Leo Cherne.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKchapelle.htm

I have just had my attention drawn to Wikibin. It seems to deal with articles that have been deleted from Wikipedia. This includes an article on me that used to be on Wikipedia. What is interesting is that I have had a joint message from Daniel Sheehan and Dick Billings who are working on something about the JFK assassination. Now, I would never have put them together.

http://wikibin.org/

Interesting that the Wikipedia entry for C. D. Jackson does not mention buying the Zapruder Film and his negotiations with Marina Oswald for the exclusive rights to her story. Peter Dale Scott argues in his book Deep Politics and the Death of JFK (1996) that Jackson, on the urging of Allen Dulles, employed Isaac Don Levine, a veteran CIA publicist, to ghost-write Marina's story. This story never appeared in print.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Douglas_Jackson

Part IV

In 1975 Senator Richard Schweiker, a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, began investigating the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Two years later the House Select Committee on Assassinations was established. Soon afterwards Schweiker was visited by Vera Glaser, a syndicated Washington columnist. Glaser told him she had just interviewed Luce and that he had given her some information relating to the assassination. According to Gaeton Fonzi, who worked for Schweiker: "Schweiker immediately called Luce and she, quite cooperatively and in detail, confirmed the story she had told Glaser."

In his book, The Last Investigation (1993), Fonzi points out that during the campaign against Fidel Castro in 1963 the captain of one of the boats they were using, was approached by Lee Harvey Oswald who offered his services as a potential Castro assassin. "He said his group didn't believe Oswald, suspected he was really a Communist and decided to keep tabs on him. Fernandez said they found that Oswald was, indeed, a Communist, and they eventually penetrated his cell and tape-recorded his talks, including his bragging that he could shoot anyone". Fernandez also told Luce that Oswald then suddenly came into money and went to Mexico City and then Dallas.

In 1981 President Ronald Reagan appointed Clare to the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. With that, she moved from Honolulu to an apartment in the Watergate complex in Washington. She served on the board until 1983, the year Reagan awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Clare Boothe Luce died of a brain tumor on 9th October, 1987, and was buried at Mepkin Abbey, in South Carolina. A large sum of money was used to establish the Clare Boothe Luce Program. It has been claimed that the organization has given grants of more than $120 million to support over 1,550 women studying science, mathematics and engineering.

The Clare Boothe Luce Award, established in 1991 by the Heritage Foundation, for distinguished contributions to the conservative movement. Winners have included Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, William F. Buckley, Shelby Cullom Davis, Kathryn Wasserman Davis, Richard B. Cheney, Milton Friedman, James L. Buckley and Richard DeVos.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKluceC.htm

What do you think of the colours of this one:

http://www.freepedia.co.uk/SpartacusContent1.htm

From Spartacus: 2) Gaeton Fonzi, The Last Investigation (1993)

Soon a series of stories were planted in the press. Newsweek's "Periscope" column said: "After studying FBI andother field investigations, the CIA has concluded that the Chilean secret police were not involved in the death of OrlandoLetelier...

Jeremiah O'Leary, a Washington Star reporter long close to David Phillips, wrote: "Probers are not ruling out the theory that Letelier might just as well have been killed by leftist extremists to create a martyr as by rightist conspirators."

Reported the Washington Post: "CIA officials say ... they believe that operatives of the present Chilean military junta did not take part in Letelier's killing, according to informed sources. CIA Director Bush expressed this view in a conversation late last week with Secretary of State Kissinger, the sources said. What evidence the CIA has obtained to support his initial conclusion was not disclosed."

One of the more interesting interpretations of the case came from a "Special Report" produced by the Council for Inter-American Security, a right-wing think tank, and distributed to the national media. It was written by Virginia Prewett, the journalist who had a special relationship with David Phillips. The piece Prewett wrote about the Letelier bombing indicates why she was one of Phillips's most effective media assets.

Prewett's "Special Report" was actually a diatribe against the Washington press for initially assuming that Chilean generals were involved in murdering Letelier. She, too, suggested that Letelier may have been sacrificed by leftists to turn world opinion and U.S.policy against the Pinochet regime. "Letelier was headquartered at and operated under the aegis of the radical leftist Institute for Policy Studies," she noted darkly. "Since the days of Stalin and Trotsky, intramural strife and expenditure of human life for political ends have been commonplace within the left."

Yes I found this after I got the spelling right. According to Jim DiEugenio: "Prewett's husband was in the CIA."

http://www.ctka.net/pjm.html

Virginia Prewitt worked for Time Magazine. She was a strong opponent of Fidel Castro and his revolutionary government in Cuba. She joined with Henry Luce, Claire Booth Luce, Hal Hendrix, Paul Bethel, Dickey Chapelle, Edward Teller, Arleigh Burke, Dickey Chapelle, Leo Cherne, Ernest Cuneo, Sidney Hook, Hans Morgenthau and Frank Tannenbaum to form the Citizens Committee to Free Cuba (CCFC).

According to Larry Hancock, the author of Someone Would Have Talked (2006), Prewitt was a close associate of David Attlee Phillips and was involved in promoting the activities of Alpha 66, led by Antonio Veciana: "Virginia Prewett appears to have been one of Phillips' significant media contacts and certainly one of the most consistent sources of media coverage for Alpha 66 activities. The other major source was Life magazine, part of the Luce Media family managed by Claire Booth Luce's husband Henry Robinson "Harry" Luce (a member of the Citizens Committee to Free Cuba, along with Phillips' friends Hal Hendrix and Paul Bethel). Articles by Prewitt and editorials by Time-Life provided the strongest challenge to the Kennedy position on Cuba and were quite consistent with the type of embarrass and back-to-the wall agendas Veciana attributed to Maurice Bishop."

I have been unable to find anything more on her. Any help with this would be appreciated.

http://www.spartacus.../JFKprewitt.htm

I think its spelled Prewett - with an e.

Virginia Prewett also worked for the North American Newspaper Alliance (NANA), owned by Ernest Cuneo and Ivor Bryce. Cuneo is also on the list of CCFC and he hired Ian Fleming of 007 fame to be their European Editor. Fleming also worked for the London Sunday Times, possibly at the same time, and I think Fleming convinced the owner of the LST to allow NANA correspondents to use LST offices.

Prewett was a Caribbean Correspondent for NANA and wrote extensively about anti-Castro Cuban operations, including Alpha 66, some articles being introduced into the Congressional Record - It would be interesting to see which Congressman actually introduced them - as would be necessary.

Prewett was also interviewed by Tony Summers and the British reporter who was an intern with Ben Bradlee, who has not responded to my emails seeking permission to read and post on line his yet unpublished article he wrote at the request of Bradlee.

Larry got the spelling wrong in Someone Would Have Talked. Do you think this could be her?

http://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?gl=allgs&gsfn=Virginia%20G&gsln=Prewett&gss=seo&ghc=20

Virginia Prewitt worked for Time Magazine. She was a strong opponent of Fidel Castro and his revolutionary government in Cuba. She joined with Henry Luce, Claire Booth Luce, Hal Hendrix, Paul Bethel, Dickey Chapelle, Edward Teller, Arleigh Burke, Dickey Chapelle, Leo Cherne, Ernest Cuneo, Sidney Hook, Hans Morgenthau and Frank Tannenbaum to form the Citizens Committee to Free Cuba (CCFC).

According to Larry Hancock, the author of Someone Would Have Talked (2006), Prewitt was a close associate of David Attlee Phillips and was involved in promoting the activities of Alpha 66, led by Antonio Veciana: "Virginia Prewett appears to have been one of Phillips' significant media contacts and certainly one of the most consistent sources of media coverage for Alpha 66 activities. The other major source was Life magazine, part of the Luce Media family managed by Claire Booth Luce's husband Henry Robinson "Harry" Luce (a member of the Citizens Committee to Free Cuba, along with Phillips' friends Hal Hendrix and Paul Bethel). Articles by Prewitt and editorials by Time-Life provided the strongest challenge to the Kennedy position on Cuba and were quite consistent with the type of embarrass and back-to-the wall agendas Veciana attributed to Maurice Bishop."

I have been unable to find anything more on her. Any help with this would be appreciated.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKprewitt.htm

Part III

Jonathan P. Herzog has argued that Luce was motivated by his religious faith: "While he counted anti-Communists like Mundt, Cardinal Spellman, and Chambers as allies, he viewed the Communist threat differently. In his view, it was a symptom and not a disease. Like his wife, Clare, he understood faith as a psychological imperative sought by all people. If religious faith waned, other dogmas would take its place. The success of Communism, then, was not attributable to its message but rather to the fact that it offered people the spiritual certainty they no longer found in Christianity. All the shocking anti-Communist propaganda and shopworn tributes to democracy that America could muster would fail to arrest the Marxian surge. But if Americans filled the spiritual vacuum, if they made religious faith commensurate with military and economic power, then Communism would dissipate."

Henry Luce and Clare Booth Luce were strong opponents of Fidel Castro and his revolutionary government in Cuba. They joined forces with Hal Hendrix, Paul Bethel, Virginia Prewitt, Dickey Chapelle, Edward Teller, Arleigh Burke, Dickey Chapelle, Leo Cherne, Ernest Cuneo, Sidney Hook, Hans Morgenthau and Frank Tannenbaum to form the Citizens Committee to Free Cuba (CCFC). On 25th March, 1963, the CCFC issued a statement: "The Committee is nonpartisan. It believes that Cuba is an issue that transcends party differences, and that its solution requires the kind of national unity we have always manifested at moments of great crisis. This belief is reflected in the broad and representative membership of the Committee."

The Luce family also funded Alpha 66. In 1962 Alpha 66 launched several raids on Cuba. This included attacks on port installations and foreign shipping. The authors of Deadly Secrets: The CIA-Mafia War Against Castro and the Assassination of JFK (1981) argues that Clare Boothe Luce paid for one of the boats used in these raids: "The anti-communist blonde took a maternal interest in the three-man crew she adopted... She brought them to New York three times to mother them."

The Luce media empire led a campaign against the presidency of John F. Kennedy. As Richard D. Mahoney has pointed out: "The cause of liberating Cuba from Castro had become the grail of the Republican right. Life Magazine editorially adopted the cause of the exiles as its own, with photo essays on the raids.... Life's full-throttle opposition to Kennedy... was a problem for the administration. Along with Time, also published by Luce, it was one of the two or three most influential magazines in the country. In April, the president had invited the publisher and his very political wife to lunch at the White House. The Kennedy charm did nothing to deter or otherwise disarm them. The Luces walked out of the lunch to protest the president's warning to cool it on Cuba."

When Kennedy was assassinated, Charles Douglas Jackson purchased the Zapruder Film on behalf of Luce. David Lifton points out in The Great Zapruder Film Hoax (2004) that: "Abraham Zapruder in fact sold the film to Time-Life for the sum of $150,000 - about $900,000 dollars in today's money... Moreover, although Life had a copy of the film, it did little to maximize the return on its extraordinary investment. Specifically, it did not sell this unique property - as a film - to any broadcast media or permit it to be seen in motion, the logical way to maximize the financial return on its investment... A closer look revealed something else. The film wasn't just sold to Life - the person whose name was on the agreement was C. D. Jackson." Luce published individual frames of Zapruder's film but did not allow the film to be screened in its entirety.

Soon after the assassination Charles Douglas Jackson also successfully negotiated with Marina Oswald the exclusive rights to her story. Peter Dale Scott argues in his book Deep Politics and the Death of JFK (1996) that Jackson, on the urging of Allen Dulles, employed Isaac Don Levine, a veteran CIA publicist, to ghost-write Marina's story. This story never appeared in print.

Henry Luce remained active in right-wing politics and in 1964, campaigned for Barry Goldwater of Arizona, the Republican candidate for president. Later that year Henry and Clare Booth Luce retired to their home in Phoenix. He died there on on 28th February, 1967.

Part II

With the success of Time Magazine, Luce decided to expand his publishing interests. In 1929 he brought out the business magazine Fortune. He also recruited Charles Douglas Jackson to help him run his growing media empire. Luce also produced The March of Time for radio (1931) and for the cinema (1935). In November, 1935, Henry married Clare Booth Luce, the former managing editor of Vanity Fair. The followed year he began publishing the picture magazine, Life.

In April 1939 Whittaker Chambers joined Time Magazine as a book and film reviewer. According to Jonathan P. Herzog, the author of The Spiritual-Industrial Complex: America's Religious Battle Against Communism in the Early Cold War (2011): "Chambers slowly climbed through the ranks of Time, Inc. and had entered the inner circle of advisers that Luce depended on for business and editorial decisions. In 1944 Luce made Chambers the head of Time's Foreign News. Predictably, Chambers moulded Time into an anti-Communist mouth-piece."

Warren Hinckle has argued: "Henry Luce believed that a morally slanted press was a responsible press... Life, the flagship picture book of the Luce fleet, afforded photojournalism some of its finest moments, while the text accompanying the pictures that were worth thousands of words was slanted with an ideological warp sufficient to stir Caxton in his grave." The cartoonist, Herbert Block, was equally critical: "Luce's unique contribution to American journalism... is that he placed into the hands of the people yesterday's newspaper and today's garbage homogenized into one neat package."

Luce was a supporter of the Republican Party. His wife, Clare Booth Luce, who shared his right-wing views, was elected to Congress in 1942 and represented Connecticut for the next four years. In her maiden speech she launched a savage attack on the internationalism of Vice President Henry A. Wallace and as a result received a warm response from the isolationists. In February, 1945, he began a campaign for a permanent Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC).

David Halberstam has pointed out in The Powers That Be (1979): "Luce's politics hardened in the postwar years and Time had become increasingly Republican in its tone. He had been stunned by Truman's defeat of Dewey in 1948. Then in the fall of 1949 China had fallen, the Democratic administration had failed to save Chiang, and that was too much; Truman, and even more Acheson, would have to pay the price. Time was now committed and politicized, an almost totally partisan instrument. The smell of blood was in the air. There was a hunger now in Luce to put a Republican back in power. It was as if Luce, between elections, stood as the leader of the opposition, a kingmaker who had failed to produce a king. The fall of China and the rise of a post-war anti-Communist mood had produced the essential issue to use against the Democrats: softness on Communism."

Henry Luce used his media empire to get Dwight D. Eisenhower elected as president. In 1953 Eisenhower appointed Clare Booth Luce ambassador to Italy; the first American woman ambassador to a major country. Claudio Accogli, a Italian historian, argues that luce was heavily involved in covert anti-communist activities with local cia personnel. Larry Hancock adds: "With no-holds barred political activism and heavy spending (including the support of the SIFAR/Italian Army Secret Service), Luce and the CIA managed to block the probable takeover of the center-left governments, an alliance between Christian Democrats (DC) and the Socialist Democratic Party (PSI)."

In 1959 Eisenhower appointed her as ambassador to Brazil. The opposition to her appointment in Congress was led by Wayne Morse of Oregon. Clare commented Morse's actions were the result of him being "kicked in the head by a horse." This remark proved so controversial that Clare resigned the ambassadorship a few days later.

According to Carl Bernstein, Luce's close friend Charles Douglas Jackson, the publisher of Life Magazine, was "Henry Luce's personal emissary to the CIA". He also claimed that in the 1950s Jackson had arranged for CIA employees to travel with Time-Life credentials as cover. Drew Pearson supported this view. In his diary he wrote: "Life magazine is always pulling chestnuts out of the fire for the CIA; and I recall that C. D. Jackson of the Life-Time empire was the man who arranged for the CIA to finance the Freedom Balloons. C. D. Jackson, Harold Stassen and the other boys who went with me to Germany spent money like money while I paid my own way. I always was suspicious that a lot of dough was coming from unexplained quarters and didn't learn until sometime later that the CIA was footing the bill."

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAluce.htm

Apparently, the claim is also made in Isaiah Wilner's book, The Man Time Forgot: A Tale of Genius, Betrayal and the Creation of Time Magazine (2006). I have just ordered a copy and will report back later.