Blame it on the Bobby

[David Boylan]

Yep, In fact I have come to believe the attempt on Walker was a staged event, which had little to do with the plans for 11-22. I doubt they would have risked Oswald to arrest and conviction of attempted murder at that time. The DPD and the FBI are noticeably quiet about looking into Os as a suspect before December 2-3, when Marina officially spilled the beans. Nor can I find, any record of the FBI getting a report from Voshinin, or informing Walker that they may have a suspect in Oswald. (Doesn't mean it didn't happen) As I say, I recall that Walker bitterly complained about the lack of follow-up with regards to his case. Why would he do that if they were keeping him informed? To Cover himself.... posssibly!?

I'll have to refresh my mind on this regarding time frames, by looking at my files.

Yes Hunt is a prime suspect, whom Walker tries to distance himself from after 11-22.

A main puppet master in the Walker arena is Robert Morris.... who was the brains of the 'outfit'

-Bill

As of June the DPD was still looking at Duff/McDuff/"Scotty" as the prime suspect. Watts and his friends had a couple of investigators from Oklahoma trying to get Scotty to confess. The Dallas PD had a 27 page transcript of the recorded conversation.

[Paul Trejo]

As of June the DPD was still looking at Duff/McDuff/"Scotty" as the prime suspect. Watts and his friends had a couple of investigators from Oklahoma trying to get Scotty to confess. The Dallas PD had a 27 page transcript of the recorded conversation.

The case of Scottish emigre William McEwan Duff (alias McDuff) was a fiasco that opens more questions. Clyde Watts knew where McDuff was for months -- in fact Watts got a job for McDuff in Oklahoma, and Walker didn't know about it.

Gerry Patrick Hemming confirmed that McDuff was homosexual, and had a relationship with Edwin Walker that Walker valued. This was evidently a scandal among Walker's associates -- a live-in gigolo right under their noses.

When Walker went out on his "Midnight Ride" with Billy James Hargis, the two office partners at American Eagle Publishing Company (i.e. Walker's home business), namely, Robert Allen Surrey and Julia Knecht, decided to boot McDuff onto the street with nothing but a fine-toothed comb.

Walker was upset that McDuff "decided to leave him" and searched for him for weeks -- even after the 10 April 1963 shooting. Both Robert Allen Surrey and Julia Knecht were certain that McDuff was the shooter, and they told the police this.

The police sought for McDuff in vain for weeks. Walker just wanted his friend to move back in with him. (Shades of this personal dynamic can still be seen in Walker's testimony to the Warren Commission.)

When Clyde Watts finally relented and retrieved McDuff from Oklahoma, McDuff was given a thorough lie-detector test, and his responses came up absolutely clean. No guilt detected whatsoever. McDuff was set free. Walker asked him to stick around, but McDuff looked at Surrey and Knecht and said, "Thanks but no thanks, I've had enough of Dallas."

Questions remain -- what was Watts' relationship with McDuff? Was Watts also gay? Was Walker's homosexuality so open and blatant in Dallas in 1963?

McDuff was a rascal and a gigolo, but he wasn't an assassin.

Best regards,

--Paul Trejo

<edit typos>

Edited February 13, 2013 by Paul Trejo

[Paul Trejo]

Yep, In fact I have come to believe the attempt on Walker was a staged event, which had little to do with the plans for 11-22. I doubt they would have risked Oswald to arrest and conviction of attempted murder at that time. The DPD and the FBI are noticeably quiet about looking into Os as a suspect before December 2-3, when Marina officially spilled the beans. Nor can I find, any record of the FBI getting a report from Voshinin, or informing Walker that they may have a suspect in Oswald. (Doesn't mean it didn't happen) As I say, I recall that Walker bitterly complained about the lack of follow-up with regards to his case. Why would he do that if they were keeping him informed? To Cover himself.... posssibly!?

I'll have to refresh my mind on this regarding time frames, by looking at my files.

Yes Hunt is a prime suspect, whom Walker tries to distance himself from after 11-22.

A main puppet master in the Walker arena is Robert Morris.... who was the brains of the 'outfit'

-Bill

Most interesting, Bill. I don't have enough evidence yet to allow me to bracket the Walker shooting as a "staged" event. I have heard that suspicion before; e.g. Gerry Patrick Hemming thought that, among others.

I do agree with you, that even if this does turn out to be a staged event, it has little or nothing to do with the JFK assassination.

Regarding Walker's continual, life-long complaints about the lack of follow-up with regards to his case -- that has always puzzled me. Your guess, that Walker used this as a ploy to cover his own blame is a viable guess. In fact, it's the only rational way to explain how Walker would stage his own shooting, and then complain for the rest of his life about the government not doing enough to solve it.

Aside from that puzzle, I am left with the stipulated facts -- somebody tried to kill Walker in early April 1963 -- Walker was convinced it was a pair of shooters -- and even after Walker learned (at the most extreme case) that Oswald was his shooter in late November 1963, he still searched high and low for the second shooter for the rest of his life, and was convinced that the State Department was holding back information. That's what he said -- incessantly.

Yet I still suspect that Walker knew that Oswald was one (and only one) of the shooters much earlier than that. We have Hunt's butler as one witness, and we also have Harry Dean, who said that in September, 1963, he was in a meeting with Walker, Loran Hall, Lawrence Howard, Guy Gabaldon and John Rousselot -- and they all made jokes about their Communist patsy, Lee Harvey Oswald.

As for Robert Morris -- he was a lawyer for Senator Joseph McCarthy back in the early 1950's. He was obsessed with the John Birch Society and any notion that Washington D.C. was filled with Communists. He saw himself as a White Knight in the footsteps of Joe McCarthy.

Robert Morris was the genius who got Edwin Walker acquitted by a Mississippi Grand Jury in late January, 1963. They dropped all charges against Walker's clear and unquestionable guilt in leading the deadly riots at Ole Miss on 30 September 1962. (Former Reverend and now Bishop Duncan Gray, Jr. still testifies to anybody who will listen, that he was an eye-witness to Walker himself on that deadly night -- and that to be acquitted Walker had to perjure himself again and again before that Grand Jury.)

Robert Morris, having vindicated Walker's name in January 1963, then immediately set about winning up to $35 million from all the Associated Press syndicates that printed negative sentences about Edwin Walker. They started suiing in January 1963, and didn't stop suing until June 1967.

Robert Morris was certain he would become a multi-millionaire by exploiting the good name of Edwin Walker in this way. Chief Justice Earl Warren reversed all of Morris' winnings. Four years of wasted effort -- served him right.

Best regards,

--Paul Trejo

<edit typos>

Edited February 13, 2013 by Paul Trejo

[William Kelly]

JFKcountercoup: RFK and Operation 3111

Operation 3111 Analysis

A memo approving CIA covert operation 3111 is one of the JFK assassination related documents among the records of Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy that was sought by Max Holland and mentioned in his February 2012 FOIA suit filed with the NARA.

Holland withdrew the suit once it was clear that all the records being sought were released.

We get the document thanks to Max Holland’s persistence, but it comes with his spin on it.

On 28 February 2013, under the title of RFK OK’d Sabotage Against Cuba in November 1963 Holland distributed the document and wrote:

“Ever since the Church Committee’s investigation of the intelligence community in the mid-1970s — if not earlier — it has been well known that Robert F. Kennedy was deeply involved in the Kennedy administration’s efforts to subvert and overthrow the regime of Fidel Castro. RFK regularly attended meetings of the so-called Special Group of the National Security Council, which directed and coordinated US policy toward Cuba, including most covert operations. And as Harris Wofford observed in his 1980 book, Of Kennedys and Kings within the Special Group the attorney general was the driving force behind the clandestine effort to overthrow Castro. From inside accounts of the pressure he was putting on the CIA to ‘get Castro,’ he seemed like a wild man who was out-CIAing the CIA.”

“Still, extant records specifying RFK’s direct involvement are few and far between. One of seven documents released by the National Archives in response to a Judicial Watch lawsuit, however, is an EYES ONLY memo that reveals Robert F. Kennedy personally signed off on a sabotage operation against Cuba in November 1963.”

http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2013/03/cuban-operation-3111.html

JFKcountercoup: RFK and Operation 3111

[Paul Trejo]

JFKcountercoup: RFK and Operation 3111

Operation 3111 Analysis

A memo approving CIA covert operation 3111 is one of the JFK assassination related documents among the records of Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy that was sought by Max Holland and mentioned in his February 2012 FOIA suit filed with the NARA.

Holland withdrew the suit once it was clear that all the records being sought were released.

We get the document thanks to Max Holland’s persistence, but it comes with his spin on it.

On 28 February 2013, under the title of RFK OK’d Sabotage Against Cuba in November 1963 Holland distributed the document and wrote:

“Ever since the Church Committee’s investigation of the intelligence community in the mid-1970s — if not earlier — it has been well known that Robert F. Kennedy was deeply involved in the Kennedy administration’s efforts to subvert and overthrow the regime of Fidel Castro. RFK regularly attended meetings of the so-called Special Group of the National Security Council, which directed and coordinated US policy toward Cuba, including most covert operations. And as Harris Wofford observed in his 1980 book, Of Kennedys and Kings within the Special Group the attorney general was the driving force behind the clandestine effort to overthrow Castro. From inside accounts of the pressure he was putting on the CIA to ‘get Castro,’ he seemed like a wild man who was out-CIAing the CIA.”

“Still, extant records specifying RFK’s direct involvement are few and far between. One of seven documents released by the National Archives in response to a Judicial Watch lawsuit, however, is an EYES ONLY memo that reveals Robert F. Kennedy personally signed off on a sabotage operation against Cuba in November 1963.”

http://jfkcountercou...ation-3111.html

JFKcountercoup: RFK and Operation 3111

Thanks for posting this, William.

Yes, RFK was deeply and personally involved in projects to overthrow Fidel Castro. IMHO this is an important aspect of JFK assassination research.

It has always amazed me that RFK contributed nothing to the Warren Commission effort.

It has always amazed me that RFK contributed nothing to the Jim Garrison investigation.

I was amazed when I read that RFK hired Walter Sheridan to stop Jim Garrison in his tracks. I was also surprised that Jim Garrison -- with all his personal magnetism -- never tried to elicit help from RFK. Nor did Jim Garrison seem to have a clue that so much of the opposition to his case was coming from RFK himself.

If those reports are true, that suggests to me that RFK didn't want Jim Garrison to publicize something that RFK wanted to hide -- and my best guess for the hidden object would be RFK's role in trying to overthrow Fidel Castro.

Best regards,

--Paul Trejo

Edited April 3, 2013 by Paul Trejo

[Pat Speer]

RFK's role in the operations against Castro are well-known, and well-documented. The controversy is over whether he personally directed ASSASSINATION attempts against Castro. And the evidence for this is that he did not, and that, in fact, the CIA HID its assassination attempts from him.

[Paul Trejo]

That is correct Pat.

And after the Missile Crisis, the operations against Castro were greatly reduced. To almost nothing.

In my book I source the Fitzgerald memos to LBJ on this. This is in Chapter 4: Kennedy De-escalates in Cuba.

Is Trejo really going to go all the way back to that rightwing tripe about RFK? Whew.

ANd I also in my book show that RFK did not listen to Sheridan. ANd right up to 1968, he was very curious about what Garrison was digging up.

I mean who do you read Paul?

Jim, it's possible that with my continuing research into right-wing materials that my perspective is affected.

Still, there are objective sources which say that JFK and RFK continued covert operations against Cuba, Operation Mongoose itself was driven by RFK himself -- and the right-wing is not the only source on this.

One fairly good source is the 1999 video, The Murder of JFK: A Revisionist History. Do you take exception to this video?

Sure the operations against Castro were greatly reduced -- almost to nothing, but not quite to nothing. JFK made a deal with Khrushchev about Cuba -- yet JFK was not on principle against covert operations. That stands to reason.

You sourced the Fitzgerald memos to LBJ on the topic of JFK de-escalating in Cuba -- yet is it certain that Fitzgerald knew every particular of every meeting?

Also, regarding RFK and Sheridan -- surely there are conflicting stories about their relationship. Finally -- how did RFK express his "curiosity" about the Jim Garrison case? What did RFK actually say?

Best regards,

--Paul Trejo

Edited April 4, 2013 by Paul Trejo

[Michael Hogan]

C. David Heymann (RFK: A Candid Heymann) does not mention the meeting with Mark Lane. Nor does Arthur Schlesinger (Robert Kennedy and His Times). However, he does include details of a telephone call LBJ made to RFK shortly after the assassination. LBJ told RFK that he believed that his brother had been killed as part of a "worldwide plot".

Schlesinger also includes this interesting passage:

Robert Kennedy perceived so much hatred about, so many enemies: the Teamsters; the gangsters; the pro-Castro Cubans; the anti-Castro Cubans; the racists; the right-wing fanatics; the lonely deluded nuts mumbling to themselves in the night. I do not know whether he suspected how much vital information both the FBI and the CIA deliberately denied the Warren Commission or whether he ever read its report. But on October 30, 1966, as we talked till two-thirty in the morning in P. J. Clarke's saloon in New York City, "RFK wondered how long he could continue to avoid comment on the report. It is evident that he believes that it was a poor job and will not endorse it, but that he is unwilling to criticize it and thereby reopen the whole tragic business.""

The next year Jim Garrison, the New Orleans district attorney, started making sensational charges about a conspiracy. I asked Kennedy what he made of them. He thought Garrison might be onto something; NBC, he added, had sent Walter Sheridan to New Orleans to find out what Garrison had. Garrison's villain turned out to be the CIA. Kennedy said to Sheridan something like: "You know, at the time I asked McCone . . . if they had killed my brother, and I asked him in a way that he couldn't lie to me, and they hadn't."" Kennedy asked Frank Mankiewicz of his Senate staff whether he thought Garrison had anything. "And I started to tell him, and he said, `Well, I don't think I want to know.' Kennedy told me later: "Walter Sheridan is satisfied that Garrison is a fraud."

I cannot say what his essential feeling was. He came to believe the Warren Commission had done an inadequate job; but he had no conviction - though his mind was not sealed against the idea of conspitacy - that an adequate inquiry would necessarily have reached a different conclusion.

[Paul Trejo]

Paul:

Being as objective as I can, I don't see how there can be a better source than FItzgerald. He took over the Cuba desk after Harvey was forced out

He was preparing a review for Johnson in 1964 of all operations in the second half of 1963. ANd this included Artime's Central American ops --which he said were greatly inflated by Manuel. He said Artime actually got off maybe one operation every three months.

He said that there were five raids into Cuba in the last six months of 1963 that the Special Group had sanctioned. He said that in all they had fifty Cuban exiles on hand to run them. He and Helms agreed that considering how cut back these had been, plus Castro's growing control, they felt the whole thing was a waste.

As per RFK's interest in Garrison in 1968, the source is Mort Sahl. I detail in my book a conversation he had with his wife in 1968. He had left to do a show from some big estate RFK and he were staying at. WHen he got back his wife told him that RFK peppered him with questions incessantly as to what Garrison was digging up, since Mort was working with him.

Jim, I do appreciate your patience and objectivity. Fitzgerald is a strong source -- yet he also admits that raids did continue in 1963 -- far smaller than the Bay of Pigs, to be sure -- but raids nonetheless -- and these were sanctioned by JFK and RFK.

I appreciate your source on RFK's interest in Jim Garrison -- but I can't make out what RFK exactly asked. It is fair to suggest that RFK was asking what trouble Jim Garrison was making for him. I say this because one of RFK's closest associates, Nicolas Katzenbach, held the opinion that Jim Garrison was a "complete nut." Is it possible that Katzenbach reflected the attitude of RFK?

Best regards,

--Paul Trejo

[Pat Speer]

A funny but sad anecdote demonstrating some people's irrational and ongoing hatred of Bobby Kennedy...

I was at a Flea Market on Sunday, looking for old magazines, etc. While walking by a booth selling figurines, etc, something caught my eye. It was a candy dish (or ash tray) with pictures of John and Robert Kennedy on the bottom part (the flat part that would presumably be covered by candy or ash). In any event, I muttered "Wow, the Kennedys."

This brought about the following conversation.

Proprietor: "Yeah, that guy's an a**hole!"

Me: "Which guy?"

Proprietor: "Not Kennedy, the other guy."

Me: "They're both Kennedys."

Proprietor's female companion (or wife) (to the proprietor): "Yeah, they're brothers!"

Proprietor: "Well, that guy's an a**hole!"

Me: "Which one? John F. Kennedy or Robert Kennedy?"

Proprietor: "Robert Kennedy!"

Me: "And why, may I ask, do you think Robert Kennedy was an a**hole?"

Proprietor: "Well, he killed Marilyn Monroe. We know that. But mostly because he killed Jimmy Hoffa. And got away with it."

Pause

Me: "Well, that's kinda interesting, considering Robert Kennedy was murdered in 1968, and Jimmy Hoffa didn't disappear until 1975."

Pause

Proprietor's buddy (perhaps in jest): "Well, that just goes to show how evil he was. He planned it out ahead of time."

Edited April 10, 2013 by Pat Speer

[Guest Robert Morrow]

JFKcountercoup: RFK and Operation 3111

Operation 3111 Analysis

A memo approving CIA covert operation 3111 is one of the JFK assassination related documents among the records of Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy that was sought by Max Holland and mentioned in his February 2012 FOIA suit filed with the NARA.

Holland withdrew the suit once it was clear that all the records being sought were released.

We get the document thanks to Max Holland’s persistence, but it comes with his spin on it.

On 28 February 2013, under the title of RFK OK’d Sabotage Against Cuba in November 1963 Holland distributed the document and wrote:

“Ever since the Church Committee’s investigation of the intelligence community in the mid-1970s — if not earlier — it has been well known that Robert F. Kennedy was deeply involved in the Kennedy administration’s efforts to subvert and overthrow the regime of Fidel Castro. RFK regularly attended meetings of the so-called Special Group of the National Security Council, which directed and coordinated US policy toward Cuba, including most covert operations. And as Harris Wofford observed in his 1980 book, Of Kennedys and Kings within the Special Group the attorney general was the driving force behind the clandestine effort to overthrow Castro. From inside accounts of the pressure he was putting on the CIA to ‘get Castro,’ he seemed like a wild man who was out-CIAing the CIA.”

“Still, extant records specifying RFK’s direct involvement are few and far between. One of seven documents released by the National Archives in response to a Judicial Watch lawsuit, however, is an EYES ONLY memo that reveals Robert F. Kennedy personally signed off on a sabotage operation against Cuba in November 1963.”

http://jfkcountercou...ation-3111.html

JFKcountercoup: RFK and Operation 3111

Thanks for posting this, William.

Yes, RFK was deeply and personally involved in projects to overthrow Fidel Castro. IMHO this is an important aspect of JFK assassination research.

It has always amazed me that RFK contributed nothing to the Warren Commission effort.

It has always amazed me that RFK contributed nothing to the Jim Garrison investigation.

I was amazed when I read that RFK hired Walter Sheridan to stop Jim Garrison in his tracks. I was also surprised that Jim Garrison -- with all his personal magnetism -- never tried to elicit help from RFK. Nor did Jim Garrison seem to have a clue that so much of the opposition to his case was coming from RFK himself.

If those reports are true, that suggests to me that RFK didn't want Jim Garrison to publicize something that RFK wanted to hide -- and my best guess for the hidden object would be RFK's role in trying to overthrow Fidel Castro.

Best regards,

--Paul Trejo

There is another RFK operation that both the Kennedy legacy people and the LBJ legacy people are loathe to talk about: the fact that Robert Kennedy was on the verge of politically executing and personally destroying Lyndon Johnson on the day of 11/23/63. At the very second a bullet is entering JFK's head at 12:30PM Central on 11/22 Don Reynolds was testifying about LBJ's corruption and kickbacks before a Senate Rules Committee investigation which RFK had nourished, encourage and fed damaging information about Vice President Johnson. Then there the revelations that Robert Kennedy was also feeding LIFE magazine material for an impending expose on LBJ as James Wagenvoord has testified to and as Robert Caro has discussed in the most recent installation of his biography of Lyndon Johnson. This crushing expose of Lyndon Johnson would have hit the printing presses of LIFE in the next week on 11/29/63.

Lyndon Johnson had a lot easier ways of striking at JFK in Dallas than Fidel Castro did; and unlike the JFK/Castro relationship there were absolutely no secret talks going on between JFK and LBJ to resolve that non-relationship, actual sub rosa war, that was occurring between Johnson & the Kennedys in fall, 1963.

That is why the tentative title of Ed Tatro's unpublished 1,300 page manuscript on the JFK assassination is titled "Urgency to Kill."

Edited April 11, 2013 by Robert Morrow