Helliwell's cat's paw

[Cliff Varnell]

I want to emphasize that it isn't a matter of some theory of mine -- it was the autopsists who suspected JFK was hit with a high tech weapon.

Thanks for that clarification Cliff. I remember reading about that in the FBI report. It hadn't dawned on me that one of the "good" Doctors, Humes, Boswell or Finck, had come up with that. I assume the existence of such things was not widely disseminated. I wonder where they came by the knowledge to form that question?

They had a wound in the back with no exit, and no bullet.

They had a wound in the throat with no exit and no bullet, but it's an open question if they knew that.

The central question relating to the murder of JFK -- What happened to the bullets causing the back and throat wounds?

I've discussed these basic facts with a couple of folks in their mid-20's and the "government stuff that dissolves" scenario was obvious to them.

[Cliff Varnell]

The fruits of MKNAOMI...

May 8, 1963.

Hue, South Vietnam.

Buddhist protesters crowded around a radio station when two explosions killed eight people.

The Catholic Diem regime blamed the Viet Cong; the Buddhists.blamed Diem.

From JFK and the Unspeakable, pgs 130-1:

<quote on, emphasis added>

Dr. Le Khac Quyen, the hospital director at Hue, said after examining the victim's bodies that he had never seen such
injuries. The bodies had been decapitated. He found no metal in the corpses, only holes. There were no wounds

below the chest. In his official finding, Dr. Quyen ruled that "the death of the people was caused by an explosion which

took place in mid-air," blowing off their heads and mutilating their bodies...

...In May 1963, Diem's younger brother, Ngo Dinh Can, who ruled Hue, thought from the very beginning that the Viet Cong
had nothing to do with the explosions at the radio station. According to an investigation carried out by the Catholic
newspaper, Hoa Binh, Ngo Dinh Can and his advisers were "convinced the explosions had to be the work of an American agent
who wanted to make trouble for Diem." In 1970 Hoa Binh located such a man, a Captain Scott, who in later years became
a U.S. military adviser in the Mekong Delta. Scott had come to Hue from Da Nang on May 7, 1963. He admitted he was the
American agent responsible for the bombing at the radio station the next day. He said he used "an explosive that was still
secret and known only to certain people at the Central Intelligence Agency, a charge no larger than a matchbox with a
timing device."

<quote off>

Holes in the body, no metal.

JFK had two entrance wounds with no exits and no metal found in the body at the autopsy.

The FBI guys at the autopsy took the notion of a high tech weapon strike seriously.

What is the logical basis for modern day researchers automatically disregarding this evidence?

Edited November 7, 2015 by Cliff Varnell

[Cliff Varnell]

From JFK and the Unspeakable, James W. Douglass, pg 131:

<quote on>

According to an investigation carried out by the Catholic newspaper, Hoa Binh, Ngo Dinh Can and his advisers were "convinced the explosions

had to be the work of an American agent who wanted to make trouble for Diem."

<quote off>

And make trouble they did.

The American-generated schism between previously peaceful Catholics and Buddhists lead to a brutal crackdown of the Buddhist pagodas in Saigon

that August..

Ellen J. Hammer's A Death in November: America in Vietnam 1963, pgs 177-80 (emphasis in the original):

<quote on>

Washington, August 24, 1963

A handful of men in the State Department and the White House had been awaiting an opportunity to encourage the Vietnamese army to move against the [Diem] government. They intended to exploit the latest crisis [massive raids on Buddhist pagodas August 21] in Saigon to the full. "Averell [Harriman] and Roger [Hilsman] now agree that we must move before the situation in Saigon freezes," Michael Forrestal of the White House staff wrote in a memorandum to President Kennedy.

..."Harriman, Hilsman and I favor taking...action now," Forrestal informed the president. Kennedy was at his Hyannis Port residence in Massachusetts for the weekend. The three men had drafted a cable of their own to [uS Ambassador to South Vietnam Henry Cabot] Lodge. The substance, according to Forrestal, had been generally agreed to by [commander in chief of Pacific Command (CINCPAC)] Admiral [Harry D.] Felt. "Clearances [are] being obtained from [Acting Secretary of State] Ball and [the Department of] Defense...Will advise you reactions Ball and Defense, but suggest you let me know if you wish comment or hold-up action." A copy of their draft was dispatched to the president.

This would become Department of State telegram No. 243.

It stated that the American government could not tolerate a situation in which power lay in [Diem brother and head of SVN secret police] Nhu's hands. Military leaders were to be informed that the United States would find it impossible to continue military and economic support to the government unless prompt dramatic actions were taken by Diem to redress Buddhist grievances and remove the Nhus from the scene...Ambassador and country team should urgently examine all possible alternative leadership and make detailed plans as to how we might bring about Diem's replacement if this should become necessary...

...Harriman and Hilsman were determined to send their cable that very day. They found Acting Secretary of State [George] Ball on the golf course, and he telephoned the president in Hyannis Port. Kennedy made no difficulty about giving his approval, assuming that the appropriate officials agreed.

After the call to Kennedy the rest was simple. Ball telephoned [secretary of State Dean] Rusk in New York and told him the president had already agreed, and Rusk gave his own unenthusiastic endorsement. When Roswell Gilpatric (McNamara's deputy at Defense) was called at home by Forrestal, he too was told that Kennedy had cleared the telegram and he was assured that Rusk had seen it. Gilpatric reluctantly gave the clearance of the Department of Defense but was concerned enough about the substance of the cable and the way it had been handled to alert General Taylor, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Taylor sent for a copy of the cable. When he read it, his first reaction was that the anti-Diemists in the State Department had taken advantage of the absence of the principal officials to get out instructions that would never have been approved as written under ordinary circumstances. John McCone also was out of town, and rather than try to locate him Harriman had reached Richard Helms, who provided the clearance of the Central Intelligence Agency.

With the president's approval State Department telegram 243 was dispatched to Saigon at 9:36 P.M. on August 24.

John Kennedy would regard this as a major mistake on his part, according to his brother Robert. "He had passed it off too quickly over the weekend at the Cape--he had thought it was cleared by McNamara and Taylor and everyone at State. In fact, it was Harriman, Hilsman and Mike Forrestal at the White House and they were all the ones who were strongly for a coup. Harriman was particularly strong for a coup.

<quote off>

ibid, pg 185:

<quote on>

Washington, August 26-27, 1963

...In the cool halls of the White House the hectic plotting of the weekend took on an air of unreality. Robert Kennedy had talked with Taylor and McNamara and discovered that "nobody was behind it, nobody knew what we were going to do, nobody knew what our policy was; it hadn't been discussed, as everything else had been discussed since the Bay of Pigs in full detail before we did anything--nothing like that had been done before the decision made on Diem, and so by Tuesday we were trying to pull away from that policy..."

President Kennedy belatedly realized that no one had spelled out to him the ramifications for the policy he had approved so lightly. He was irritated at the disagreement among his advisers. Taylor, McNamara, and McCone all were critical of the attempt to run a coup in Saigon. Even Rusk seemed to have second thoughts. "The government was split in two," Robert Kennedy recalled. "It was the only time really in three years, the government was broken in two in a very disturbing way."

<quote off>

ibid, page 198, quoting Robert Kennedy:

<quote on>

"The result [of the cable of August 24] is we started down a road from which we never really recovered...[uS Vietnam military commander General Paul] Harkins was against it and Lodge wasn't talking to Harkins. So Henry Cabot Lodge started down one direction, the State Department was rather in the middle, and they suddenly called off the coup. Then the next five or six weeks we were all concerned about whether they were going to have a coup, who was going to win the coup, and who was going to replace the government. Nobody ever really had any of the answers to any of these things...the President was trying to get rid of Henry Cabot Lodge...The policy he [Lodge] was following was based on that original policy that had been made and then rescinded...that Averell Harriman was responsible for..."

<quote off>

Edited November 7, 2015 by Cliff Varnell

[Cliff Varnell]

Joseph Trento, The Secret History of the CIA, pgs 334-5

<quote on>

Who changed the coup into the murder of Diem, Nhu and a Catholic priest accompanying them? To this day, nothing has been found in government archives tying the killings to either John or Robert Kennedy. So how did the tools and talents developed by Bill Harvey for ZR/RIFLE and Operation MONGOOSE get exported to Vietnam? Kennedy immediately ordered (William R.) Corson to find out what had happened and who was responsible. The answer he came up with: “On instructions from Averell Harriman…. The orders that ended in the deaths of Diem and his brother originated with Harriman and were carried out by Henry Cabot Lodge’s own military assistant.”

Having served as ambassador to Moscow and governor of New York, W. Averell Harriman was in the middle of a long public career. In 1960, President-elect Kennedy appointed him ambassador-at-large, to operate “with the full confidence of the president and an intimate knowledge of all aspects of United States policy.” By 1963, according to Corson, Harriman was running “Vietnam without consulting the president or the attorney general.”

The president had begun to suspect that not everyone on his national security team was loyal. As Corson put it, “Kenny O’Donnell (JFK’s appointments secretary) was convinced that McGeorge Bundy, the national security advisor, was taking orders from Ambassador Averell Harriman and not the president. He was especially worried about Michael Forrestal, a young man on the White House staff who handled liaison on Vietnam with Harriman.”

At the heart of the murders was the sudden and strange recall of Sagon Station Chief Jocko Richardson and his replacement by a no-name team barely known to history. The key member was a Special Operations Army officer, John Michael Dunn, who took his orders, not from the normal CIA hierarchy but from Harriman and Forrestal.

According to Corson, “John Michael Dunn was known to be in touch with the coup plotters,” although Dunn’s role has never been made public. Corson believes that Richardson was removed so that Dunn, assigned to Ambassador Lodge for “special operations,” could act without hindrance.

<quote off>

[Cliff Varnell]

SOD/CIA '63.

Averell Harriman's private army?

Edited November 7, 2015 by Cliff Varnell

[Cliff Varnell]

That's a real leap for me Cliff.....I know you lean that direction but I just have to fall back on the view that if I am CIA and organize an assassination of the President

the last thing I want to do us use my highest level covert weapons, which might or might not be traceable after the fact.

Larry,

While the FBI knew what offensive capabilities had been developed at Ft. Detrick, they were officially briefed on foreign use of MKNAOMI-style technology.

http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/church/reports/vol1/pdf/ChurchV1_6_Senseney.pdf

<quote on>

Senseney: And the only thing that I can say is, I just have to suppose that, having been told to maintain the sort of show and tell

display of hardware that we had on sort of stockpile for them, these were not items that could be used. They were display

items like you would see in a museum, and they used those to show to the agents as well as to the FBI, to acquaint them

with possible ways that other people could attack our own people. (pg 163)

Baker: ...There are about 60 agencies of Government that do either intelligence or law enforcement work.

Senseney: I am sure most all of those knew of what we were doing; yes...

...The FBI never used anything. They were only shown so they could be aware of what might be brought into the country.

(pg 166)

<quote off>

The FBI was primed to blame all hole/no metal wounds on foreign perps.

[Cliff Varnell]

Nexus, pg 36:

<quote on, emphasis in the original>

The Department of Defense's legal counsel conducted the investigation and among other things reported back that MKNAOMI had begun

in the early 1950's and was "intended to stockpile severely incapacitating and lethal materials and to develop gadgetry

for dissemination of these materials."

A June 29, 1975 CIA memorandum has also been located which documents the SOD/CIA relationship and confirms that no

written records were kept; management was by verbal instruction and "human continuity."

<quote off>

The negative template.

Who was left out of the written record yet provided "human continuity"?

Peter Dale Scott's "Deep Events and the CIA's Global Drug Connection"

http://www.globalresearch.ca/deep-events-and-the-cia-s-global-drug-connection/10095

<quote on>

Most people have never heard of Paul Helliwell. Mainstream books about CIA wrongdoings, like Tim Weiner’s Legacy of Ashes, make no mention of him, of his important CIA-related bank, Castle Bank in the Bahamas, or for that matter of an even more important successor bank to Castle, BCCI. In the flood of CIA documents released since 1992, one does not find the name of Helliwell in the archival indices of the National Archive, the National Security Archive, or the Federation of American Scientists. In the million declassified pages stored and indexed on the website of the Mary Ferrell Foundation, Helliwell’s name appears exactly once – and that is on a list of documents that were withheld from review during the CIA’s search in 1974 for records concerning, of all things, Watergate! This silence, even in internal CIA files, about the principal architect of the post-war CIA-drug connection, is eloquent.

<quote off>

[Cliff Varnell]

In a strict legal sense "person of interest" refers to "suspect, subject, target" in a criminal investigation, but my use of the term is the more loosely applied "urban dictionary" definition.

person of interest

1) Someone who isn't a suspect in a crime, but just in consideration.

Given that FBI SA James Sibert took the notion of a MKNAOMI-style, high tech strike seriously enough to investigate it with the FBI Lab -- the Staff Support Group at Ft. Detrick are obvious persons of interest in the murder of JFK.

How could they not?

[Cliff Varnell]

As to the Air Force officer, the only reason I can think of that an AF officer would be there would be as a liaison for aerial delivery systems...either spray or dust systems etc.

http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/church/reports/vol1/pdf/ChurchV1_6_Senseney.pdf

pg 167

<quote on>

Q: Did you describe for us in the previous executive session some of the exotic devices that you developed and displayed

to your customers.[sic]

Senseney: Well, I was project engineer for the M-1, so all of the missile type, the dart type or this would have been

from my part. I know of others but they came under the other four project engineers, they were road depositors--

Q: What are road depositors?

Senseney: A bacteriological aerosol you put on roads, on railroad tracks and things like that.

Q: Who did you give that to?

Senseney: It was not given to anyone. The Army asked for it. It was type--classified for the Army, period.

Q: Did the Army use it?

Senseney: Not to my knowledge.

Q: But it was delivered to the Army. It's an aerosol that sprays a bacteriological agent on the road or railroad track

or some other place.

Senseney: It's a matter of putting the material on the roadway or in between tracks, just like dumping a sack of flour.

Q: Did you ever give that to the CIA?

Senseney: No.

Q: Or any of the other agencies?

Senseney: They had all the prints and specifications for these things but they never asked for them.

<quote off>

Larry, we can rule out the notion the Air Force colonel was there for aerosols.

The sole interest of the "2 CIA colonels" was dart weapons which wouldn't show up in an autopsy.

[Cliff Varnell]

Cliff, I suspect that the Army Colonel was either an admin officer or possibly an engineering officer assigned to the Army support group which was attached to the biological warfare work at Fort Detrick. Army personnel provided logistics, engineering and related technical support for the CIA development there, done under Sydney Gottlieb of CIA Technical Services.

http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/church/reports/vol1/pdf/ChurchV1_6_Senseney.pdf

pg. 169

<quote on>

Q: ,,,[A]s to the kind of items you experimented with and developed, would it be accurate to say that you worked on

and experimented with gadgets for which nobody ever yet has found a use?

Senseney: I think there were some intended uses. For instance, the Special Forces gave us SDR, Small Development

Requirements, indicating that they had a military requirement to meet a certain situation.

Q: Was mostly all of your work then done of the basis of these special requirement requests that came either from the

Special Forces or some other source?

Senseney: That is true.

Q: Did these requests come from the CIA directly, to your knowledge?

Senseney: No; they sort of rode piggyback on most of these. They sort of rode piggyback on the Army's development

and picked off what they thought was good for them, I guess.

Q: But you did not undertake a development or experimental program of a particular weapon until you had some request

from the Special Forces to develop the weapons system?

Senseney: There was one item. It was a hand-held item that could fire a dart projectile. It was done only for them;

no one else.

<quote off>

pg. 170

<quote on>

Q: Were there frequent transfers of material between Dr. Gordon's office and your office, either the hardware or

the toxin?

Senseney: The only frequent thing that changed hands was the dog projectile and its loaders, 4640. This was

done maybe five or six in one quantity. And maybe 6 weeks to 6 months later they would bring those back and

ask for five or six more. They would bring them back expended, that is, they bring all the hardware except the

projectile, OK?

Q: Indicating that they have been used?

Senseney: Correct.

...Q: How much time usually elapsed between the time you gave them these weapons and the time they brought them back

to you expended?

Senseney: Usually 5 to 6 weeks.

<quote off>

Edited November 9, 2015 by Cliff Varnell

[Cliff Varnell]

Yes, that was what I tried to say Cliff, they would have been officers assigned to the Fort Detrick bio/chem warfare developments as part of SOD and then tasked with supporting the CIA's MK/NAIOMI project.

Senseney's testimony doesn't support this job description of the "2 CIA colonels."

MKNAOMI at Ft. Detrick in 1953 consisted of two guys showing up to pick up their dart weapons.

5 or 6 weeks (or 6 months) later they came back to pick up some more dart weapons.

As you see in Shadow Warfare, military personnel are "detailed" to CIA which means they have to have additional security vetting but fundamentally its just an assignment for them.

They were assigned to pick up assassination weapons every 5 or 6 weeks and then deliver them to assassins?

Or did the assassins show up every 5 or 6 weeks to pick up their assassination weapons?

Ultimately, unless they decide to change careers, like David Morales did, they remain service personnel. Of course they may be repeatedly detailed at different times over the length of their service career to the point that it almost becomes a cover in itself. Given what these two officers were doing in supporting R&D I'm guessing that the CIA project was a fairly temporary assignment for them.

The "2 CIA colonels" didn't do R&D. They never gave the R&D team any feed back on effectiveness.

They were on the "agent side."

They were operatives picking up the tools of their trade, not military bureaucrats.

Unless they decided to join CIA Tech Services of course.

Unless it was Ed Lansdale and Lucien Conein, of course. Just say'n...

Of course everyone in that project was under horrendous security restrictions so I doubt either of them would talk about it in their old age.

All this is not really that mysterous. There was a bio/chem warfare group at Fort Detrick, SOD was simply an organization that supported that work and the CIA project was "hidden" under military cover, buried under the rest of the work.

Correct.

This project consisted of CIA operatives in uniform who showed up every 5 or 6 weeks to pick up dart weapons provided by SOD but funded by the CIA.

If somebody got assigned out of SOD to MK/NAIOMI they effectively were working for the CIA its the project was funded by the CIA.

Assigned out of SOD to MKNAOMI to work with the CIA doing what -- other than picking up fresh dart weapons?

I suspect they still retained their regular service connections - whose budget their salaries came out of is a guess but I suspect that remained military as well and only the project expenses - and CIA officers or civilians working for CIA on the project - were funded out of P600 funding.

They didn't work out of Ft. Detrick, whatever they were doing.

Ft. Detrick was their pit stop.

I'm not surprised to find both Army and Air Force involved because we have a pretty good view into the fact that weapons were being developed both for very personalized covert use but also for use on a larger scale....such as against livestock and crops. That would have almost certainly required some sort of aerial delivery.

Not within the interest of MKNAOMI at Ft. Detrick.

Edited November 9, 2015 by Cliff Varnell

[Larry Hancock]

Cliff, I will leave you to your own interpretation, just as I do everyone else. You might want to try and contact Alberelli who knows far more about what was going on there and has seen much more

actual documentation on the projects and staff there than I have; he even interviewed some of them including Gottlieb.

[Gene Kelly]

Cliff;

Connecting some dots, I have always thought that false memorandum (found in Howard Hunt's White House office safe) which incriminates JFK for the Diem murder -- to be suspicious.

Gene

[Brian Schmidt]

Cliff;

Connecting some dots, I have always thought that false memorandum (found in Howard Hunt's White House office safe) which incriminates JFK for the Diem murder -- to be suspicious.

Gene

Gene,

Do you think there was more to it than just attempting to erode Kennedy's legacy with the public?

Edited November 9, 2015 by Brian Schmidt

[Cliff Varnell]

Cliff, I will leave you to your own interpretation, just as I do everyone else. You might want to try and contact Alberelli who knows far more about what was going on there and has seen much more

actual documentation on the projects and staff there than I have; he even interviewed some of them including Gottlieb.

Larry, thank you for your comments. When it comes to a study of the shadows of intel operations you're The Man.

This is a woefully under-investigated aspect of the case -- FBI SA Sibert's call to the FBI Lab investigating MKNAOMI-style weaponry.

Usually when MKNAOMI comes up the discussion quickly devolves into debate over Umbrella Man, so a serious look at MKNAOMI is refreshing.

I gotta say it's problematic studying a memo about a project which didn't write memos as a matter of routine tradecraft.

Apply the negative template: what is left out of the CIA memo cited on pg 36 of Larry Hancock's Nexus?

<quote on, emphasis in original)

A June 29, 1975 CIA memorandum has also been located which documents the SOD/CIA relationship and confirms that no

written records were kept; management was by verbal instruction and "human continuity." The memo refers to "swarms

of project requests" and cites examples of suicide pills, chemicals to anesthetize occupants to facilitate building

entries, "L-pills" and aphrodisiacs for operational use. The memo notes "some requests for support approved by the CIA

had apparently involved assassination."

<quote off>

What is left out?

The dart weapons.

In Hank Albarelli's A Secret Order there are 8 citations of Project MKNAOMI.

How many mentions of dart weapons?

Zero.

Any military colonels attached to MKNAOMI?

Not in A Secret Order.

There's Dr. Sidney Gotlieb, Dr. Sidney Malitz, Dr. Alfred T. Butterworth, and Frank Olson -- all associated with MKNAOMI at Ft. Detrick.

This is intriguing:

A Secret Order, pg: 14

<quote on>

[D]uring WWII George Hunter White and a number of other [Federal Bureau of Narcotics] agents assigned to the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), precursor to the CIA, worked very closely in New York City with Port Security and the Office of Naval Intelligence on what is now commonly called Operation Underworld. This was the top-secret project that involved freeing infamous gangster Charles "Lucky" Luciano from prison in return for his, and the Mafia's, assistance with security at America's ports and the Allied invasion of Italy. All the FBN agents assigned to work on Operation Underworld went on to become covert operatives of the CIA, and would become involved with Projects MK/ULTRA and MK/NAOMI.

<quote off>

Diabolical doctors and crooked ex-drug cops but no dart gun armed CIA men under military cover.

Crooked ex-drug cops -- paging Paul Helliwell!

Edited November 11, 2015 by Cliff Varnell