You Can't Hide Those Lyin' FBIs

[Jim Hargrove]

While reporting to FBI from 1960 until early 1965 I always admired Director J.E. Hoover,

not until I abruptly quit did they roll out my life as it had sometimes been before laboring for FBI began, while

skillfully but not completely, denying my labor for that agency hit via NARA. At least two importantly urgent, even

dangerous outright lies came under my gaze in late 1990s.

1, Bureau report said that I was in contact with Major William Morgan a leading officer in Castro's

Revolutionary army and soon after I returned from Cuba Morgan was executed by Castro firing squad.

That FBI report from those dangerous days, found by me years later made me a sitting target.

That FBI report was a lie!

2, In 1960 the FBI requested that I stay in position as an officer of a newly formed Chicago chapter of the

Fair Play For Cuba Committee, Castro's Network in the U.S.. Another FBI report states that "Dean

stated he stayed in this position voluntarily. This FBI report was a lie!

H.J. Dean

That's really interesting, Harry. Were all or most of the other officers and/or members of the FPCC Chicago chapter also agents of the U.S. government? Sure seems like it was that way in New Orleans. Someone once joked that author Norman Mailer was the only genuine member of FPCC. Does you experience with the Bureau or the Chicago FPCC shed any light on the New Orleans angle with Oswald.

Don't know if you have been following more recent news about the FBI, but ....

"Pseudoscience in the Witness Box: The FBI faked an entire field of forensic science," is the headline from the April 22, 2015 online edition of Slate Magazine.

The same Slate article quoted a Washington Post story of a few days earlier, which stated: “The Justice Department and FBI have formally acknowledged that nearly every examiner in an elite FBI forensic unit gave flawed testimony in almost all trials in which they offered evidence against criminal defendants over more than a two-decade period before 2000.”

Things look pretty bad for the FBI recently, but how about in earlier days? Surely they were better then, right?

Of course not.... Remember the Frederick Whitehurst scandal from the 1990s? Whitehurst was one of the Bureau's top scientists, and he complained for more than a decade toward the end of the last century about the FBI's vaunted crime lab faking evidence and slanting it toward the prosecution. According to the Feb. 27, 1998 edition of CNN:

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For 10 years Whitehurst complained mostly in vain about lab practices. But his efforts finally led last April to a scathing 500-page study of the lab by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Bromwich.

Bromwich blasted the famed lab for flawed scientific work and inaccurate, pro-prosecution testimony in major cases, including the Oklahoma City and World Trade Center bombings.

Bromwich recommended major reforms, discipline for five agents that is still under consideration and transfer of Whitehurst to other duties.

------------------------------------

Whitehurst, of course, was pilloried endlessly by defenders of the FBI, eventually resulting in the award of more than a million dollars to Whitehurst as compensation, and a new federal law protecting whistleblowers!

So... for a quarter century and probably more, the FBI has clearly been cooking the evidence to favor the prosecution. But that didn't happen back in the good ole' days, right? Not when J. Edgar was in charge.

William Sullivan (a top-ranking FBI official) said, "Hoover did not like to see the Warren Commission come into existence. He showed a marked interest in limiting the scope of it and taking any action which might result in neutralizing it."* He added, "If there were documents that possibly he (Hoover) didn't want to come to the light of the public, then those docu­ments no longer exist, and the truth will never be known."**

NOTES:

* Interview of William Sullivan by Robert Fink, November, 1975; Memo from James P. Kelly to G. Robert Blakey, 11/18/77; HSCA 108-10112-10133, Numbered Files 003406

** Ibid.

[Jim Hargrove]

Thanks for scanning and posting that, Jim.

When I was first made aware of this, I wondered why it isn't something that is more discussed and quoted by researchers. Then I realized that, given the source, it is likely considered to be suspicious. Maybe CTers consider it an attempt to throw them off the trail of the truth.

It could be that this possible FBI connection was used to throw researchers off the more-damaging CIA path.

Sure sounds possible to me. Ford mentioned Oswald and the CIA on page one of chapter one in Portrait of the Assassin, but he simply paraphrased Marguerite Oswald's statements that “her son must have been tied in with the CIA or the State Department.” (Marguerite's real role, John Armstrong suspects, was that of a flycatcher—someone to attract to U.S. intelligence people with inside knowledge of the Oswald Project so they could be identified and … dealt with.)

President Ford said that information from the WC secret meeting indicated Oswald began receiving $200/month from the FBI in September, 1962. Remember, though, that HSCA counsel Robert Tannenbaum in 1996 told the ARRB that he had read a transcript of the secret Warren Commission meeting with top Texas officials, and that they were the “unimpeachable sources” that “Lee Harvey Oswald was a contract employee of the CIA and the FBI.”.

September 1962 may have been the time LHO started receiving payment from the FBI, but my guess is that the starting date was more like the summer of 1963. That's when LHO was hanging out in New Orleans with all sorts of rabid anti-communists pretending to be a Castro-loving leftist. That's when he was arrested in a fake fight handing out FPCC literature, and that's when someone like the CIA's Clay Shaw might have handed our boy off to someone like the FBI's Guy Bannister (former FBI SAIC Chicago who was in frequent contact for Hoover).

If something like this actually occurred, it may be one of the earliest activities in the actual plot to assassinate JFK. It may have been a deliberate effort by some Agency personnel or operatives to move the patsy-to-be from a low-level intelligence asset to a low-level FBI informer, which would soon force Hoover into every stage of denial imaginable and all at once. If so, it worked like a charm!

[Sandy Larsen]

HSCA counsel Robert Tannenbaum in 1996 told the ARRB that he had read a transcript of the secret Warren Commission meeting with top Texas officials, and that they were the “unimpeachable sources” that “Lee Harvey Oswald was a contract employee of the CIA and the FBI.”.

Wow, I did not know that! Is this common knowledge among the researchers? I've never seen it mentioned.

[Jim Hargrove]

Don't know if it's common knowledge, Sandy. I'm doing my best to make it so (see the last line below in my post--though apparently only registered Education Forum members can see it).

IMO, the Assassination Records Review Board did everything in its power to diminish Mr. Tanenbaum's testimony, starting with misspelling his name in the title of the amateurish transcript of his testimony. According to that transcript, the first words out of Mr. Tanenbaum's mouth were:

Good morning. You look at me in stunned silence. I'm here at the request of you to answer questions.

And so it goes....

[Sandy Larsen]

According to that transcript, the first words out of Mr. Tanenbaum's mouth were:

Good morning. You look at me in stunned silence. I'm here at the request of you to answer questions.

LOL, yeah I didn't miss that. Every time I read it it cracks me up.

But seriously....

Do you have any idea why the ARRB wouldn't be interested in Tanenbaum's testimony? If I recall correctly Gaeton Fonzi had a high opinion of him. He quit the HSCA when Sprague left because he could see that the Committee's effectiveness was going to be compromised.

In other words, he seems like one of the "good guys."

Maybe you should consider asking the forum members what they make of the mention of this incident by Ford and then by Tanenbaum.

[Jim Hargrove]

It's probably always a mistake to believe a government--or any institution--can honestly investigate itself. A lot of documents were declassified while the ARRB existed, probably helped as much by the end of the Cold War as the Board itself, which was their Congressional mandate. Despite that, they sure didn't seem to want to explore more fully the points that Tanenbaum made.

I'd love to hear what other forum members think about the pages from Portrait of the Assassin and Tanenbaum's testimony, or, for that matter, FBI malfeasance in general, but most here seem more interested in personal matters and other things.

[Jim Hargrove]

It's interesting to note the clumsiness of some of the players in the first couple of days of the coverup. How some must have winced when they saw this newspaper article, and realized some clod had given the wrong price out.

There were some who were also too eager to give out misinformation that would lead us away from the truths of the assassination. Commander James Humes was one such individual, a bit player thrust into the spotlight. I'm going to begin a thread very soon where I will show how, in his zeal to conceal medical evidence, he made a serious error when writing the autopsy report for JFK.

Or, considering how many alterations were made by the FBI and Warren Commission staff, perhaps it was not Humes who wrote the error into the autopsy report.

Thank you again, Bob, for all those wonderful ballistics reports! Geez, they were WELL DONE!

How wonderful it is that we've OUTLIVED those A-Holes! Their lies are ALL coming undone.... eh?

[Jim Hargrove]

Watch the FBI lie....