Yes, the CIA Director Was Part of the JFK Assassination Cover Up

[Brian Schmidt]

This Politico article is on the front page of Yahoo. I assumed it was going to be about Allen Dulles and would be covering something from Talbot's new book. Turns out, it's about John McCone and is authored by Philip Shenon. Interesting nonetheless.

Here's the link:

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/10/jfk-assassination-john-mccone-warren-commission-cia-213197

[Martin Blank]

benign cover up? best truth? it's all a diversion.

[Brian Schmidt]

I know, parts of it are hard to read without gagging.

Obviously the CIA would spin it this way, and Shenon is the poster-child for the kind of journalist who blindly accepts it.

[Mark Knight]

If the CIA is willing to "release" this information today...that generally means that you can only trust a portion if it.

[Martin Blank]

If the CIA is willing to "release" this information today...that generally means that you can only trust a portion if it.

well look we're clean. absolutely nothing in those documents morley wants

[Chris Newton]

Mockingbird still alive and well.

Castro-did-it author reveals CIA spin about "best truth".

McCone withheld Dulles plots from Dulles.

You can't make this stuff up. How gullible are we?

[Cliff Varnell]

Mockingbird still alive and well.

Castro-did-it author reveals CIA spin about "best truth".

McCone withheld Dulles plots from Dulles.

You can't make this stuff up. How gullible are we?

Gullible enough to buy this for 54 years.

<quote on>

John McCone came to the CIA as an outsider. An industrialist and an engineer by training, he replaced veteran spymaster Allen Dulles as director of central intelligence in November 1961, after John F. Kennedy had forced Dulles out following the CIA’s bungled operation to oust Fidel Castro by invading Cuba’s Bay of Pigs.

<quote off>

The Bay of Pigs operation has never been satisfactory explained, near as I can tell.

Sure looks like Dean Rusk played a huge roll in bungling the BOP.

I have to wonder if Dulles' ouster was the point of the entire exercise...

Edited October 7, 2015 by Cliff Varnell

[Douglas Caddy]

The CIA Keeps (Accidentally) Legitimizing JFK Conspiracy Theories
B y Charles P. Pierce
October 7, 2015-10-07
www.esquire .com

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a38623/cia-jfk-conspiracy-theories/

[Douglas Caddy]

John Newman wrote on Facebook today:

Shenon’s latest piece in Politico (“Yes the CIA Director was Part of the JFK Assassination Coverup”) is a continuation of the newest stage—begun in 2013—of the propaganda campaign to convince Americans that Robert Kennedy got his brother John killed and then worked to cover it up. The genesis of this new stage was a call from a Warren Commission lawyer to Shenon, who then fed Shenon and used him as the mouthpiece for this outrageous scheme. The Castro-did-it propaganda was part of the true coverup of the plot to kill JFK, and it was in play even before the shots were fired in Dallas. But I knew when I read Shenon’s 2015 paper edition of his book, A Cruel and Shocking Act, that we would be facing a newer, carefully orchestrated campaign to stick it to the Kennedys right at the time when the battle lines are being drawn to force the release—as required by the JFK Records Act—of the remaining JFK records by October 2017. Now, Shenon takes a recently released internal CIA analysis (which also dates to 2013) about DCI McCone blocking the CIA’s anti-Castro plots from the Warren Commission, and uses it to bolster his (Shenon’s) baleful version of history. I will comment on that (David Robarge’s) analysis after thoroughly reading it. Shenon’s Politico piece ends by restating a myth he hopes to make stick: that President Johnson appointed former DCI Allen Dulles to the Warren Commission “at the recommendation of then Attorney General Robert Kennedy.” I will hold back here on commenting about this fabrication because David Talbot’s new book, The Devil’s Chessboard, (to be released next week) so thoroughly (pp. 572-574) demolishes it

[Glenn Nall]

Oglesby's interview with McCone is worth rereading. I personally enjoyed Mr. McCone audibly squirming as his complexion was reduced to the color of Lyndon B. Johnson's neck.

[James DiEugenio]

You know that post by Pierce is not bad considering its in an MSM magazine, namely Esquire.

At least he intimates that the whole Castro did it thing is a pre planned stand in.

[Douglas Caddy]

John Newman wrote on Facebook today (10/7):

I have now read the David Robarge piece. It's actually one declassified chapter from a book he wrote on DCI John McCone's history as the Director of Central Intelligence. The chapter is "DCI McCone and the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy." It is an important analysis that Shenon has clearly cherry picked through (which is what Shenon did with the HSCA work on the case), taking and spinning sentences that paint McCone as the leader of an effort to steer the Warren Commission away from the critical facts supporting Shenon's theme that RFK got his brother killed. There is no support for this kind of agitprop in the Robarge chapter, although one can wonder about the timing of its declassification and whether McCone's actions at the time (which he later regretted) would help the current campaign to breathe life into the Castro-did-it myth. Researchers will find a lot of important details--names of CIA officers and their roles in the rush of events after the assassination. When you have read this chapter, it is clear that Robarge is not arguing or even implying that Castro killed Kennedy and that RFK was responsible.

[Brian Schmidt]

David Talbot responds to Phil Shenon:

Phil Shenon continues to recycle the myth -- long propagated in CIA circles -- that Fidel Castro was behind the JFK assassination. He now adds another piece of disinformation, asserting that Robert Kennedy also fell for this CIA propaganda line. This is completely false. I interviewed over 150 close friends, colleagues and family members of Bobby Kennedy, including Kennedy administration officials and insiders, for my book, "Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years." NONE of them indicated to me that Castro was among Bobby's leading suspects in the assassination of his brother. Instead, they said that RFK immediately focused on the CIA and its ANTI-Castro operation as the source of the plot against President Kennedy. My sources included close advisors of Bobby Kennedy like Adam Walinsky, Frank Mankiewicz, Ed Guthman and Richard Goodwin -- as well as assassination researchers with whom Bobby Kennedy met during his secret search for the truth. I also interviewed the widow and close associates of Walter Sheridan, Bobby Kennedy's top investigator ever since his days as the chief of the 1950s Senate rackets probe. Who are Shenon's sources?

RFK was fully aware of how politically explosive his search for the truth about Dallas was, considering the enormous power wielded by the U.S. security forces that he suspected, and the criminal underworld elements with whom they were aligned. So he was very careful in his public remarks about the Warren Report, which he privately considered a whitewash. It is clear from my research that Bobby Kennedy was biding his time until he could return to the White House, at which point he planned to use the full powers of the executive branch to track down those in Washington who were responsible for murdering his brother.

Shenon also repeats the old canard that RFK urged President Johnson to appoint former CIA director Allen Dulles to the Warren Commission. This bogus story apparently originated with Lyndon Johnson himself, who alleged in his 1971 memoir that Bobby recommended both Dulles and John McCloy, another Republican pillar of the Wall Street-national security world. Johnson, of course, was one of the most notorious fabulists who ever occupied the Oval Office. And his hatred of Bobby Kennedy, who by 1971 was conveniently dead, was one of the core passions of LBJ's life. The notion that Johnson would huddle with his arch enemy to make such a politically delicate choice as the makeup of the Warren Commission is absurd. So is the the idea that Bobby himself would recommend two men who were political enemies of his late brother -- two men with whom JFK had strongly clashed over national security policy. In truth, as close CIA associates of Dulles later revealed, such as Richard Helms, Dulles himself arm-twisted his way onto the Warren Commission, where he and McCloy soon established themselves as the dominant players.

This is one more example of Shenon's gullibility when it comes to covering CIA-related issues. In fact, his new "scoop" in Politico about the Warren Commission is based on newly declassified excerpts from a CIA biography of John McCone, Dulles's successor as CIA director, by CIA historian David Robarge. Shenon treats Robarge's institutional version of this history as an important revelation,when it should be treated with sharp journalistic skepticism. All documents that the CIA freely releases, like Robarge's redacted report on McCone, are made public for a reason. In this case, it's clearly part of the CIA's 50-year campaign to manage public perceptions of the Kennedy assassination.

The mainstream media in this country, from the New York Times (where Shenon once worked) on down, has never had the investigative courage of Bobby Kennedy to deeply examine the true source of the epic crime that took place in Dallas in November 1963. The Washington Post's legendary editor, Ben Bradlee, had the honesty to tell me why, during an interview late in his life. He was afraid it would hurt his rising journalism career, if he dared to open these doors, Bradlee told me.

This is why when Americans search for the truth about the Kennedy assassination, they must look outside these mainstream media circles for the truth, at the pathbreaking work done by independent journalists, historians and citizen researchers.

Edited October 8, 2015 by Brian Schmidt

[Jon G. Tidd]

I subscribe to Douglas Caddy's remarks @ post #9.