Paz Marverde

Resounding revelations on the assassination of John Kennedy. A conversation with Stephen Jaffe, member of the Garrison’s team that reopened the investigation in 1967 Note: This is a translation of an Italian article by Michele Metta. Original here A large amount of years from now, the Italian version of Farewell America was published. The story of this book — it will be even more self-evident thanks to the exclusive revelations that I am going to give now to the L’AntiDiplomatico’s readers — is extremely peculiar, and in many ways very similar to that of another volume: Questo è Cefis (This is Cefis), a book published by a mysterious publishing house, apparently written by a likewise mysterious Giorgio Steimetz, and victim of a fast and furious disappearance due to the enormous and compromising revelations on Eugenio Cefis and the assassination of Enrico Mattei it contains. Farewell America too, with the title of L’America brucia (America burns), was here published by a mysterious publishing house, apparently written by a likewise mysterious James Hepburn, was full of astonishing revelations on the assassination of John Kennedy, and almost immediately disappeared from every Italian bookshop. So here it is the necessity to republish it in 2012, thanks to the essayist Stefania Limiti, who in fact is also the author of an appendix containing a beautiful interview to William Turner. He was — please, pay attention — a member of Jim Garrison’s team, the New Orleans DA thanks whose courage, in 1967, the investigation on the assassination of JFK was reopened, coming to so important results that it was the subject for a very appreciated and excellent Oliver Stone’s movie. Interview where Turner confided to Limiti that Farewell America was read by Garrison himself, and that at the end of his reading, a request came from France, asking for someone of the DA staff to travel to Paris in order to apprehend some very important news. Turner would have loved to go, but he absolutely cannot. So, another Garrison’s collaborator was chosen instead: Stephen Jaffe. Jaffe that I was able to reach and that after watching my documentary on the assassination of JFK, has kindly accepted to answer some questions. An even more appreciable decision, given that the revelations contained in his answers will be the subject of a still unpublished work he is writing. A first step was to ask him about a fascinating moment described by Turner of that Parisian travel: de Gaulle in person, the celebrated President of France, gave a card to Jaffe, with written on it: Je suis très sensible a la confiance que vous m’exprimez. Words undoubtedly of appreciation towards both Jaffe and Garrison. Here it is Jaffe’s answer: The story is true. Gen. De Gaulle personally gave me his card with those words written on it. He did so in response to my request for some evidence that we met. I needed to prove that to my boss, Garrison. A journey, that made by Jaffe, besides extremely risky and adventurous: We were being closely watched by our own CIA. They were watching my movements but had trouble keeping up with me in Paris. Nevertheless, Jaffe as a very positive memory of his European experience: It was a trip during which I secured some valuable evidence for our investigation. At talking about Farewell America, Jaffe’s story has become even richer in really fascinating details. Here they are: I was asked to help with the publication of that book, Farewell America, which was previously to be called, “America Burns.” I suggested the title, “Farewell America” to the person who was the editor, which Garrison was going to use for his own book. The author was actually a composite of people working together for French Intelligence. They offered to appoint me the US publisher but I refused to be involved because it would have been unethical for me, as a representative of the New Orleans District Attorney, Garrison, to assist in such a commercial venture. I recommended the publisher for whom Turner worked, Ramparts Magazine. That’s how the book was published in the US but I refused any money from it on ethical grounds. They had sent me 10,000 copies of the book but I refused to even pick them up at the dock in Long Beach. That’s how careful I was as a member of Garrison’s staff. But the most shaking element undoubtedly arrives commenting Turner’s allusion to Limiti on a top-secret meeting between Garrison and Robert Kennedy. Jaffe gave me far more than a confirmation: it was Jaffe himself to organize this extraordinary rendezvous, whose goal for sure opens new scenarios about the assassination of RFK’s motive. Here they are his words: Before that meeting, I had a contact from a close friend of the Kennedy family who asked me to arrange the meeting. We also had help from another US Senator. RFK told Garrison in New York, at this very confidential meeting, that he was going to reopen the investigation into the assassination of President Kennedy but only after he was elected President. Only with that power, he explained, could he do so. A phrase, this latest, able to give a deep thrill when put together what the activist and environmentalist RFK Jr., son of Robert Kennedy, declared on the fiftieth anniversary of Dallas: My father believed the Warren Report was a shoddy piece of craftsmanship. He publicly supported the Warren Commission report but privately he was dismissive of it. My father thought that somebody [else] was involved. The evidence at this point I think is very, very convincing that it was not a lone gunman. A thrill which becomes even deeper when we add also what written once again by JFK’s nephew inside his latest book, American values: [CIA agent] Howard Hunt told his son that he met with the CIA’s leading anti-Castro operatives Frank Sturgis and David Morales in a CIA safe house in Miami to discuss the “big event” shortly beforehand –a plan to kill Jack. On the day Uncle Jack was assassinated, Fidel Castro was meeting with Jean Daniel at his summer presidential palace in Varadero Beach. At one p.m. they received a phone call with news that Jack had been shot. “Es una mala noticia,” Castro said to himself. Then, turning to Daniel, “There is the end to your mission of peace. Everything is going to change.” When the news came twenty minutes later that Jack was dead, Castro called it “a catastrophe.” Then he asked Daniel: “Who is Lyndon Johnson? What authority does he have over the CIA?” Hearing that American authorities were in hot pursuit of a suspect, Castro told Daniel, “You watch and see–I know them–they will try to put the blame on us for this thing.” And he was right. According to investigators on the House Select Committee on Assassinations, immediately following Jack’s assassination, operatives in the CIA’s Western Hemisphere Division promoted evidence–later proven false–suggesting that Castro had orchestrated President Kennedy’s assassination. The Senate’s Church Committee, which investigated the assassination for two years from 1975 to ’77, concluded that Cuba had nothing to do with Jack’s murder. Dan Hardway, an attorney who served as investigator for the House Committee, told me that the source of virtually every story blaming Castro was connected to the CIA’s Western Hemisphere chief and propaganda guru, David Atlee Phillips. This really means that Robert Kennedy’s son is pointing his finger towards the CIA about the assassination of JFK. CIA which comes back in another point of American values. This one: [Former CIA head] Allen Dulles told a young writer in 1965, “That little Kennedy, he thought he was a god.” LBJ would later appoint Dulles to the Warren Commission investigating Jack’s assassination, a curious choice at a time when some Americans, including my father, suspected the CIA’s involvement in JFK’s murder. CIA that –I’m concluding– comes back also in another phrase by Jaffe, this time commenting my documentary I made to synthesize my inquest. Inquest that undoubtedly shows the links between the CIA and Centro MondialeCommerciale, the Italian company Clay Shaw, incriminated by Garrison as a conspirator to kill John Kennedy, worked for; but it also shows, thanks to my exclusive papers, the connections between CMC and the subsequent Italian Strategy of Tension. Here it is his phrase, for which I absolutely thank him: It has a number of very interesting points in it, particularly regarding Clay Shaw, who’s connection with the CIA has now been proven beyond reasonable doubt.

Ditto. Thankful someone still remembers it ...

Absolutely. And RFK Jr. has declared to love that book. By the way: I love it too

So, finally, what's the name of this mysterious relative?

Hanks made shameful efforts to hide the truth on the assassination of JFK

Very interesting, Robert. Thank you

David, I really appreciate people able to be self-critical. Thank you. You are very different from some others here

Thanks. Sounds interesting, since William Harvey is involved

Could you please explain me a little further? Thanks in advance

You are welcome

Well, if you were not his opposer ... I repeat: he was NOT a saint. Nevertheless, he knew

Well, he was someone who knew a lot and was friend of a lot of people, including Sarkozy. He was in no way someone I would take a drink with, but I think he knew what he was talking about on JFK and Dimona

https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/how-trump-and-three-other-us-presidents-protected-israels-worst-kept-secret-its-nuclear-arsenal How Trump and Three Other U.S. Presidents Protected Israel’s Worst-Kept Secret: Its Nuclear Arsenal When a delegation of senior Israeli officials visited the Trump White House on February 13, 2017, they wanted to discuss several issues with their new American counterparts. Topping the list was a secret letter concerning a subject the Israelis had promised the Americans never to discuss publicly—Israel’s undeclared nuclear arsenal. In a recent piece for The New Yorker, I described a tense scene in the West Wing as the Israeli delegation—which included Israel’s Ambassador to the United States, Ron Dermer—tried to get the letter signed by President Donald Trump. By all accounts, the American Administration was eager to please the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, whom Trump had promised to lavish with unprecedented support. But, at that chaotic moment, Trump’s aides felt blindsided by the Israeli request. They knew nothing about the existence of any letters and were confused by the sense of urgency coming from the Israelis. The Americans had other pressing concerns—later that day, Michael Flynn, the national-security adviser, would hand in his resignation letter—and they didn’t appreciate feeling as though the Israelis were telling them what to do. “This is our xxxxin’ house," one of the Americans snapped. The White House’s reaction was understandable. There had been a similar moment of surprise eight years earlier, when Barack Obama became President and received a similar request. The very existence of the letters had been a closely held secret. Only a select group of senior American officials, in three previous Administrations, knew of the letters and how Israeli leaders interpreted them as effectively an American pledge not to press the Jewish state to give up its nuclear weapons so long as it continued to face existential threats in the region. (American officials say the letters weren’t that explicit and fell short of constituting a binding commitment.) When Trump’s aides moved into the White House, they didn’t find any copies of the previous letters left behind by their predecessors. The documents had been sent to the archives. The Israelis, however, had copies. Israel crossed the nuclear threshold on the eve of the Six Day War, in 1967. At that time, it had three nuclear devices, according to Avner Cohen, a nuclear historian at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey and the author of two books on the origins of Israel’s nuclear program. Israeli efforts to build a bomb at the nuclear complex in Dimona had been a source of tension with Washington for nearly a decade. But, by the fall of 1969, when Golda Meir, Israel’s Prime Minister, met with Richard Nixon at the White House, Israel’s possession of nuclear weapons was a fait accompli and the two sides reached an unwritten understanding: the Israelis would not declare, test, or threaten to use their nuclear weapons; and the Americans would not pressure the Israelis to sign a landmark international nuclear-nonproliferation treaty known as the N.P.T. (Israel never became a signatory and U.S. efforts to inspect Dimona stopped.) Successive Israeli governments abided by the arrangement, which, in Hebrew, is referred to as “amimut,” which means opacity. In English, the arrangement is often referred to as Israel's “policy of ambiguity.” A joint document describing the agreement was never prepared. Instead, each side relied on its own notes, a former official said. President Gerald Ford abided by Nixon’s deal. Israeli officials were concerned that Jimmy Carter would chart a different course, but the American position, through the Carter and Reagan Administrations, remained unchanged. The Israelis first started to feel as though the unwritten Meir-Nixon arrangement was no longer sufficient during the Presidency of George H. W. Bush, when, after the first Gulf War, in 1991, world powers talked about the possibility of creating a zone in the Middle East free of weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear arms. The first iteration of the secret letter was drafted during the Clinton Administration, as part of an agreement for Israel’s participation in the 1998 Wye River negotiations with the Palestinians. In the letter, according to former officials, President Bill Clinton assured the Jewish state that no future American arms-control initiative would “detract” from Israel’s “deterrent” capabilities, an oblique but clear reference to its nuclear arsenal. Later, Israeli officials inserted language to make clear to Washington that Israel would “defend itself, by itself,” and that it would, therefore, not consider the American nuclear arsenal to be a substitute for Israeli nuclear arms. George W. Bush, when he became President, followed Clinton’s lead, signing a similar letter, former officials told me. Then, in 2009, a new President, Barack Obama, took office. From almost the start, Netanyahu was distrustful of Obama, and vice versa. “With Obama, we were all crazy,” an Israeli official told me. That April, Obama delivered an aspirational speech in Prague, setting out “America’s commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.” Obama’s advisers subsequently learned “how paranoid Bibi was that Obama was going to try to take away Israel’s nuclear weapons,” a former U.S. official told me, adding, “Of course, that was never our intent.” Obama signed an updated version of the letter in May, 2009. While Israeli officials interpreted the letters as an effective commitment by successive American Presidents not to pressure Israel regarding its nuclear arsenal, U.S. officials told me that they viewed the letters as less categorical. “It was not a blanket ‘We’ll never ask Israel to give up its nuclear weapons.’ It was more, ‘We accepted the Israeli argument that they’re not going to disarm under current conditions in the Middle East,” a former U.S. official told me. Avner Cohen, the Middlebury Institute historian, said that U.S. Administrations have been reluctant to give up entirely on the possibility of ridding the region of nuclear weapons if Israel were to reach a comprehensive peace agreement with its neighbors, including Iran. Ahead of a nonproliferation conference in 2010, Netanyahu became concerned, once again, that Israel could come under international pressure to disarm. In response, Obama made a public statement that echoed the contents of the secret letters, without revealing their existence. “We discussed issues that arose out of the nuclear-nonproliferation conference,” Obama said, after meeting with Netanyahu on July 6, 2010. “And I reiterated to the Prime Minister that there is no change in U.S. policy when it comes to these issues. We strongly believe that, given its size, its history, the region that it’s in, and the threats that are levelled against . . . it, that Israel has unique security requirements. It’s got to be able to respond to threats or any combination of threats in the region. And that’s why we remain unwavering in our commitment to Israel’s security. And the United States will never ask Israel to take any steps that would undermine their security interests.” The tense scene in the West Wing over the letter came on the heels of a particularly chaotic transition, from Obama to Trump. Their advisers distrusted one another, and it is unclear if they ever discussed the Israeli letters before the Inauguration. So when Ambassador Dermer came to the White House to talk to Michael Flynn about arranging for Trump to sign the letter, Trump’s aides were confused and, initially, said that they needed more time. U.S. officials said that the Israelis wanted to limit who could take part in discussions of the letter, citing the need for secrecy. The Americans pushed back. Afterward, senior White House officials huddled together and complained to each other that Dermer had acted as though he owned the White House. Dermer declined to comment on the letter and told me that he does not recall any cursing. Flynn was ousted that night. Later, Trump signed the letter, becoming the fourth U.S. President to do so. Like Obama’s advisers, Trump’s aides were baffled by the importance that Netanyahu placed on getting the letters signed so quickly. Cohen said that the issue is central for Netanyahu because the nuclear arsenal fuels his “sense of impunity, sense of Israel being so powerful, that it can dictate its own terms in the region and beyond.” Adam Entous is a staff writer at The New Yorker.

I do hope other people will follow the idea

Rob, really sorry to see your answer only today. Thanks, first of all, for your kind words. Well, I believe we should create a document, putting together in it all the new elements for which we ask to officially reopen the investigation. What do you think about?

Agree. Thank you

You are a kind person. I appreciate your behaviour

Thank you, David. And I am very happy for this. For some, it's like you said. At the very same time, there are unfortunately others judging it as something without importance. "Who is this Chilean talking of Italian sources?", is, more or less, what they express. I am angry at that

Michael, thank you very much. You expressed perfectly and exactly what I mean and feel

Didn't you created already a thread like that?

Thanks for this, Michael