Ray McGovern (former-CIA) Interview

[Scott Kaiser]

I feel like I'm stuck in a rabbit hole with twiddle D and tweedle dumb, which one's which?

Edited February 10, 2016 by Scott Kaiser

[Scott Kaiser]

First off, for the record, there was nothing "rag-tag" about this group of Cubans that formed the Bay of Pigs who all had the same willingness as Fidel Castro, to recapture Cuba, but this time it was to free Cuba from communism. I don't know how many [men] here, in this forum would take up arms to fight for freedom of their homeland, or if they did or were called upon to do so, and if you ever have, does that make you "rag-tag?" If you ask me, that's a real bullxxxx statement made by a researcher, it's no wonder I call them as I see them. Do you understand that statement Paul and Tom?

[Tom Neal]

Do you understand that statement Paul and Tom?

Who you are, I understand perfectly. You make THAT MUCH clear by your *attitude* in every post.

However, whatever point you THINK you are making is not understood due to your inability to express it, not because as you so condescendingly state, you are just so must smarter than everyone else.

[Scott Kaiser]

Do you understand that statement Paul and Tom?

Who you are, I understand perfectly. You make THAT MUCH clear by your *attitude* in every post.

However, whatever point you THINK you are making is not understood due to your inability to express it, not because as you so condescendingly state, you are just so must smarter than everyone else.

Who you are? Forgive me for not introducing myself, my name is Scott Kaiser

I understand / is not understood = I call this an Oxymoron.

Not smarter than everyone else, do I make you feel nervous?

Edited February 10, 2016 by Scott Kaiser

[Paul Brancato]

Scott - we have no way of knowing what you are talking about. You need an editor. Please don't view this as an insult. What may be perfectly clear to you in your experience is not coming across, and I am sure you want it to be understood and felt. Get your ego out of the way and do what I suggested - write an emotionless timeline of your father's life and let it stand on its own at first. You have to birth the baby before it can grow into an adult. Do the hard work and present it here to an audience that is receptive.

[Scott Kaiser]

"I think it is. Think about when Eisenhower was told that Castro had to go. And the way they would do it is arming and otherwise equipping a rag-tag group of Cubans who would land at the Bay of Pigs. Eisenhower was a military man. He should’ve known better—“That’s not going to work”—and young John Kennedy comes in and he says, “Well, I don’t want to be soft on Communism, so if you think this will work, O.K. But for God’s sake, don’t you expect that I’m going to commit U.S military forces to this enterprise. You got that? Repeat. Can you repeat that, Allen Dulles? OK, you got it. All right, good.”

Now, they knew damn well that they wouldn’t be able to unseat Castro. And when Allen Dulles died, there were coffee-stained notes on his desk, which said. “Once we get on the beach, there is no way the president of the United States can refuse to support us with his military.”

This is the biggest load of crap I've ever read in my life, seriously! Let's wait till the guy is dead, then we can manipulate all the crap we want, in-fact, we'll even come up with a story of coffe stained notes on his desk, which desk would this be, his DCI at the CIA desk when he mustered out with his pension in 1963 and died in 1969? So, he still left his notes on a desk that he was suppose to clear out six years ago? Do I have stupid tattooed across my forehead? Ugh!

I'm thinking the coffee-stained notes story has its origins in either the Talbot or the Douglass book. If so - shows the importance of citing sources for one's written assertions. Because people bitch, and writers lose credibility.

Forgive me, for bitching out the obvious. It's more important to keep their credibility.

[David Andrews]

Scott, put some ice in that, at least.

[Scott Kaiser]

Scott, put some ice in that, at least.

David, I like you, you don't seem like some others who would come out swing with their college degree vocabulary worded, intellectually printed, more nonsense crap. You don't strike me as such. Is there a difference of saying questioning what was written which we all already know cannot be proven, to say what JVB also mentions that cannot be proven? What's the difference?

I have no doubt that some folks may want to have a field day with my first book, I would say to them wait till my second comes out, it's just an update of my first, but with more than 70 pages added. I offer this challenge up to anyone, and everyone who discredits my book. I will provide proof of my father's workings and dealings in this covert establishment everyone seems to talk about, and go a step further. I will provide how my father turned on this establishment, discovered information that did link to Kennedy's assassination, [that part is specifically for you Stephen Roy.]

I know I'm not one to make friends easily when we're speaking JFK or Watergate, and I'm just going to be honest with you, when Roger Stone, St. John Hunt and I are sitting back sipping on a Martini and were shooting the crap, we can be best of friends, that is, until we start talking JFK. It's no offense to them, or me, however, I have always told St John I was sorry for my father having his father's photo, and according to many folks whom are still alive today say it was a photo of Hunt in Dealey Plaza. This, is one thing we all three agree on.

My father of course didn't just have Hunt's photos. And, there are a "chain of events" that I exploit in my update. It all starts at my father's childhood, after all, the story is fashioned around him. This is a true story, the challenge is, I will pay to the first person $10,000.00 that proves I'm lying.

We've gone through so many authors, JVB what I'm pointing out here, that I'm now icing, and so many more that you, yourselves have pointed out, what's one more?

Edited February 10, 2016 by Scott Kaiser

[Scott Kaiser]

Nino Diaz - says, Hunt was a [pendejo] for allowing his photo to be taken, he said, he saw the photo of Hunt my father carried around, and it was a picture of Hunt in Dallas.

Rudy Junco - says, he drove my father to the CIA where my father impersonated a CIA agent entered the building and stole the photos, he says they were black and white, and these men were standing outside a hotel room in Dallas.

Eugenio Martinez - says, those were the photos we were all looking for, and your father stole them, how else do you think your father got ahold of them.

Frank Sturgis - said, May 7, 1977 – In an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, Frank Sturgis claims “that the objective of the Watergate break-ins was to locate and destroy the photographs of our role in the assassination of the President.

There are others.

[Scott Kaiser]

Nino Diaz - says, Hunt was a [pendejo] for allowing his photo to be taken, he said, he saw the photo of Hunt my father carried around, and it was a picture of Hunt in Dallas.

Rudy Junco - says, he drove my father to the CIA where my father impersonated a CIA agent entered the building and stole the photos, he says they were black and white, and these men were standing outside a hotel room in Dallas.

Eugenio Martinez - says, those were the photos we were all looking for, and your father stole them, how else do you think your father got ahold of them.

Frank Sturgis - said, May 7, 1977 – In an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, Frank Sturgis claims “that the objective of the Watergate break-ins was to locate and destroy the photographs of our role in the assassination of the President.

There are others.

Oh, and by the way, for anyone who hadn't caught it, in my update, I do expose Frank's motives for saying what he said about locating the photos at the Watergate hotel when Frank already knew my father had them, listen carefully, Frank, already knew my father had them, yet, Frank mentions the Watergate hotel and doesn't says well, we had to kill Kaiser because he had them.

Look at the date of when Frank made the announcement, three months [after] my father was killed, exactly to the date, you see, I will expose it all. I hold nothing back.

Edited February 10, 2016 by Scott Kaiser

[James DiEugenio]

Ray McGovern is a valuable asset for our side since he worked at CIA for 27 years. He is very honest and fearless. He actually stood up to Rumsfeld on TV and exposed the Iraq war for the sham it was.

What he is talking about here, and what Scott does not want to tolerate, are the notes for a Harper's Magazine article that Dulles was going to write about the Bay of Pigs. This was going to be ghosted by author WIllie Morris. (Douglass, p. 16) Dulles was angry about two books that had just been published and become best-sellers: Sorenson's and Schlesinger's. Both of those books countered the cover story Dulles had put out previously through Howard Hunt and Charles Murphy in Fortune in 1961. That piece was a hatchet job on Kennedy and his foreign policy and it also lied about the Bay of Pigs. It said that Kennedy had cancelled the D Day air strikes and that blew the operation.

With all the declassified docs we have today, we now know this is pure horse manure. Because:

1.) The D Day air strikes were not part of the plan, they were only a contingency, and

2.) As the IG Report by Lyman Kirkpatrick states, even if they had been executed, the Cubans had far too much artillery, tanks armor and men to repel the thousand or so Cubans who were now out a lot of ammo since one of their supply ships sunk on the reef.

This is what Hunt, Murphy and Dulles tried to cover up in their 1961article. Why? Because Hunt and Dulles knew that the Taylor Commission inquiry was going to show that Dulles was actually the culpable party--which it did. He had deliberately mislead Kennedy about three key matters: the number of defections that would take place, the ability of the Cuban exiles to go guerrilla, and the overall possibility of success without American direct intervention. These all came out due to Bobby Kennedy's acute questioning, supplemented by other witnesses e.g. Manuelo Ray and Commander Shoup. This is what caused Kennedy to fire Dulles, Bissell and Cabell.

So when Sorenson and Schlesinger began to present Kennedy's side of the Bay of Pigs in 1965, thereby countering the propaganda by Murphy and Hunt, Dulles went to work again. Except, now, with his cover story already used up, and the two authors actually presenting some facts, he had nowhere to go except to spill the beans on his secret agenda. Which was to mislead Kennedy about the chances of success to the point he would have to commit American forces to save himself from a humiliating defeat. That is what was in those notes he made with Morris. And that is why he abandoned the Harper's article. But Dulles made a mistake and left the notes in his files. Therefore, when he died, his wife put them in the Princeton Archives (Dulles' alma mater).

They were found almost two decades later, not by Douglass, or Talbot. They were discovered by scholar and historian Lucien S. Vandenbroucke at the Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library at Princeton.. And he wrote an essay in 1984 for the peer reviewed historical journal Diplomatic History. It was titled "The Confessions of Allen Dulles". (ibid, p. 394) That journal gave Bissell an opportunity to reply and he wrote that he and Dulles "Had allowed Kennedy to persist in misunderstandings about the nature of the Cuban operation."

So, unlike what Scott is insinuating, that is the origin of these notes for the original article. But he knows all this since I had this go round before with him at DPF. He doesn't want to admit that the CIA manipulated and lied to Kennedy. He wants to maintain the Hunt/Murphy mythology. But that is all it was, a myth. in other words, as Daniel Schorr once wrote, the real target of the Bay of Pigs was President Kennedy. (ibid, p. 15)

Edited February 10, 2016 by James DiEugenio

[Tom Neal]

Ray McGovern is a valuable asset for our side since he worked at CIA for 27 years. He is very honest and fearless. He actually stood up to Rumsfeld on TV and exposed the Iraq war for the sham it was.

What he is talking about here, and what Scott does not want to tolerate, are the notes for a Harper's Magazine article that Dulles was going to write about the Bay of Pigs. This was going to be ghosted by author WIllie Morris. (Douglass, p. 16) Dulles was angry about two books that had just been published and become best-sellers: Sorenson's and Schlesinger's. Both of those books countered the cover story Dulles had put out previously through Howard Hunt and Charles Murphy in Fortune in 1961. That piece was a hatchet job on Kennedy and his foreign policy and it also lied about the Bay of Pigs. It said that Kennedy had cancelled the D Day air strikes and that blew the operation.

With all the declassified docs we have today, we now know this is pure horse manure. Because:

1.) The D Day air strikes were not part of the plan, they were only a contingency, and

2.) As the IG Report by Lyman Kirkpatrick states, even if they had been executed, the Cubans had far too much artillery, tanks armor and men to repel the thousand or so Cubans who were now out a lot of ammo since one of their supply ships sunk on the reef.

This is what Hunt, Murphy and Dulles tried to cover up in their 1961article. Why? Because Hunt and Dulles knew that the Taylor Commission inquiry was going to show that Dulles was actually the culpable party--which it did. He had deliberately mislead Kennedy about three key matters: the number of defections that would take place, the ability of the Cuban exiles to go guerrilla, and the overall possibility of success without American direct intervention. These all came out due to Bobby Kennedy's acute questioning, supplemented by other witnesses e.g. Manuelo Ray and Commander Shoup. This is what caused Kennedy to fire Dulles, Bissell and Cabell.

So when Sorenson and Schlesinger began to present Kennedy's side of the Bay of Pigs in 1965, thereby countering the propaganda by Murphy and Hunt, Dulles went to work again. Except, now, with his cover story already used up, and the two authors actually presenting some facts, he had nowhere to go except to spill the beans on his secret agenda. Which was to mislead Kennedy about he chances of success to the point he would have to commit American forces to save himself from a humiliating defeat. That is what was in those notes he made with Morris. And that is why he abandoned the Harper's article. But Dulles made a mistake and left the notes in his files. Therefore, when he died his wife put them in the Princeton Archives.

They were found almost two decades later, not by Douglass, or Talbot. They were discovered by scholar and historian Lucien S. Vandenbroucke at the Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library at Princeton.. And he wrote an essay in 1984 for the peer reviewed historical journal Diplomatic History. It was titled "The Confessions of Allen Dulles". (ibid, p. 394) That journal gave Bissell an opportunity to reply and he wrote that he and Dulles "Had allowed Kennedy to persist in misunderstandings about the nature of the Cuban operation."

So, unlike what Scott is insinuating, that is the origin of these notes for the original article. But he knows all this since I had this go round before with him at DPF. He doesn't want to admit that the CIA manipulated and lied to Kennedy. He wants to maintain the Hunt/Murphy mythology. But that is all it was a myth. in other words as Daniel Schorr once wrote, the real target of the Bay of Pigs was President Kennedy. (ibid, p. 15)

Excellent post, Jim!

And as always, you actually state the facts...not an unsupported opinion.

Tom

[Scott Kaiser]

Ray McGovern is a valuable asset for our side since he worked at CIA for 27 years. He is very honest and fearless. He actually stood up to Rumsfeld on TV and exposed the Iraq war for the sham it was.

What he is talking about here, and what Scott does not want to tolerate, are the notes for a Harper's Magazine article that Dulles was going to write about the Bay of Pigs. This was going to be ghosted by author WIllie Morris. (Douglass, p. 16) Dulles was angry about two books that had just been published and become best-sellers: Sorenson's and Schlesinger's. Both of those books countered the cover story Dulles had put out previously through Howard Hunt and Charles Murphy in Fortune in 1961. That piece was a hatchet job on Kennedy and his foreign policy and it also lied about the Bay of Pigs. It said that Kennedy had cancelled the D Day air strikes and that blew the operation.

With all the declassified docs we have today, we now know this is pure horse manure. Because:

1.) The D Day air strikes were not part of the plan, they were only a contingency, and

2.) As the IG Report by Lyman Kirkpatrick states, even if they had been executed, the Cubans had far too much artillery, tanks armor and men to repel the thousand or so Cubans who were now out a lot of ammo since one of their supply ships sunk on the reef.

This is what Hunt, Murphy and Dulles tried to cover up in their 1961article. Why? Because Hunt and Dulles knew that the Taylor Commission inquiry was going to show that Dulles was actually the culpable party--which it did. He had deliberately mislead Kennedy about three key matters: the number of defections that would take place, the ability of the Cuban exiles to go guerrilla, and the overall possibility of success without American direct intervention. These all came out due to Bobby Kennedy's acute questioning, supplemented by other witnesses e.g. Manuelo Ray and Commander Shoup. This is what caused Kennedy to fire Dulles, Bissell and Cabell.

So when Sorenson and Schlesinger began to present Kennedy's side of the Bay of Pigs in 1965, thereby countering the propaganda by Murphy and Hunt, Dulles went to work again. Except, now, with his cover story already used up, and the two authors actually presenting some facts, he had nowhere to go except to spill the beans on his secret agenda. Which was to mislead Kennedy about he chances of success to the point he would have to commit American forces to save himself from a humiliating defeat. That is what was in those notes he made with Morris. And that is why he abandoned the Harper's article. But Dulles made a mistake and left the notes in his files. Therefore, when he died his wife put them in the Princeton Archives.

They were found almost two decades later, not by Douglass, or Talbot. They were discovered by scholar and historian Lucien S. Vandenbroucke at the Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library at Princeton.. And he wrote an essay in 1984 for the peer reviewed historical journal Diplomatic History. It was titled "The Confessions of Allen Dulles". (ibid, p. 394) That journal gave Bissell an opportunity to reply and he wrote that he and Dulles "Had allowed Kennedy to persist in misunderstandings about the nature of the Cuban operation."

So, unlike what Scott is insinuating, that is the origin of these notes for the original article. But he knows all this since I had this go round before with him at DPF. He doesn't want to admit that the CIA manipulated and lied to Kennedy. He wants to maintain the Hunt/Murphy mythology. But that is all it was a myth. in other words as Daniel Schorr once wrote, the real target of the Bay of Pigs was President Kennedy. (ibid, p. 15)

Thanks for the clarification Jim, this may now explain why my father had Hunt's photo along with "others".

[Scott Kaiser]

Ray McGovern is a valuable asset for our side since he worked at CIA for 27 years. He is very honest and fearless. He actually stood up to Rumsfeld on TV and exposed the Iraq war for the sham it was.

What he is talking about here, and what Scott does not want to tolerate, are the notes for a Harper's Magazine article that Dulles was going to write about the Bay of Pigs. This was going to be ghosted by author WIllie Morris. (Douglass, p. 16) Dulles was angry about two books that had just been published and become best-sellers: Sorenson's and Schlesinger's. Both of those books countered the cover story Dulles had put out previously through Howard Hunt and Charles Murphy in Fortune in 1961. That piece was a hatchet job on Kennedy and his foreign policy and it also lied about the Bay of Pigs. It said that Kennedy had cancelled the D Day air strikes and that blew the operation.

With all the declassified docs we have today, we now know this is pure horse manure. Because:

1.) The D Day air strikes were not part of the plan, they were only a contingency, and

2.) As the IG Report by Lyman Kirkpatrick states, even if they had been executed, the Cubans had far too much artillery, tanks armor and men to repel the thousand or so Cubans who were now out a lot of ammo since one of their supply ships sunk on the reef.

This is what Hunt, Murphy and Dulles tried to cover up in their 1961article. Why? Because Hunt and Dulles knew that the Taylor Commission inquiry was going to show that Dulles was actually the culpable party--which it did. He had deliberately mislead Kennedy about three key matters: the number of defections that would take place, the ability of the Cuban exiles to go guerrilla, and the overall possibility of success without American direct intervention. These all came out due to Bobby Kennedy's acute questioning, supplemented by other witnesses e.g. Manuelo Ray and Commander Shoup. This is what caused Kennedy to fire Dulles, Bissell and Cabell.

So when Sorenson and Schlesinger began to present Kennedy's side of the Bay of Pigs in 1965, thereby countering the propaganda by Murphy and Hunt, Dulles went to work again. Except, now, with his cover story already used up, and the two authors actually presenting some facts, he had nowhere to go except to spill the beans on his secret agenda. Which was to mislead Kennedy about the chances of success to the point he would have to commit American forces to save himself from a humiliating defeat. That is what was in those notes he made with Morris. And that is why he abandoned the Harper's article. But Dulles made a mistake and left the notes in his files. Therefore, when he died, his wife put them in the Princeton Archives (Dulles' alma mater).

They were found almost two decades later, not by Douglass, or Talbot. They were discovered by scholar and historian Lucien S. Vandenbroucke at the Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library at Princeton.. And he wrote an essay in 1984 for the peer reviewed historical journal Diplomatic History. It was titled "The Confessions of Allen Dulles". (ibid, p. 394) That journal gave Bissell an opportunity to reply and he wrote that he and Dulles "Had allowed Kennedy to persist in misunderstandings about the nature of the Cuban operation."

So, unlike what Scott is insinuating, that is the origin of these notes for the original article. But he knows all this since I had this go round before with him at DPF. He doesn't want to admit that the CIA manipulated and lied to Kennedy. He wants to maintain the Hunt/Murphy mythology. But that is all it was a myth. in other words, as Daniel Schorr once wrote, the real target of the Bay of Pigs was President Kennedy. (ibid, p. 15)

While others are also pondering your information, "The Confessions of Allen Dulles." (ibid, p. 394), "as if they truly exist." (ibid, p.1 Scott Kaiser), but of course, these notes were suppose exist because they were going to be ghostwritten, and I thought the assassination of JFK was non-fiction. Slaps my forehead!

I would love to see Bissell's reply, wouldn't you? "And the two author's presenting some facts." God Forbid they get all presented.

So, unlike what Jim remembers, that is the origin of our original debate, "The Bay of Pigs was designed to fail." I don't know how many times I have already gone over this with you, but it really wasn't, again, slaps my forehead! Look at that, and I didn't need to spit out any names. Tom, can I get some cheering too?

Edited February 10, 2016 by Scott Kaiser

[Greg Burnham]

With only one or two relatively minor clarifications, I concur, Jim.

You said:

"1.) The D Day air strikes were not part of the plan, they were only a contingency..."

To which airstrikes are you referring? The pre-dawn airstrikes were not a mere contingency, as they were central to the plan and, according to the Taylor Report, their having been delayed was the "proximate cause of the failure." That they were cancelled is public record. Who canceled them is generally not public knowledge, but by now it should be as it is documented well. Unbeknownst to JFK, McGeorge Bundy made the call to General Cabell on orders from Dean Rusk who had ostensibly deferred to Adlai Stevenson's objections. I wrote about this extensively in an article simply titled: Fiasco

The "other" D-Day airstrikes that are regularly conflated with the pre-dawn airstrikes, were not canceled by Kennedy because they were never ordered by him in the first place! Indeed, he specifically excluded any and all direct US intervention (in an emergency cable from J.C. King to Colonel Jack Hawkins in Nicaragua less than one week prior to D-Day) as they were outside the Rules of Engagement under the circumstances. The ONLY scenario legally allowing JFK to order direct US intervention would have necessarily hinged on the successful establishment of a new "Cuban Government in Exile." This would have been realized only if Brigade 2506 could have secured a beachhead and airstrip, at the very least, before declaring themselves as the new Government. But this never happened because of the cancelation, by McGeorge Bundy, of the pre-dawn airstrikes, which allowed Castro's remaining air force to become airborne, shoot down the Brigade's B-26's when they finally did arrive (too late), sink the Brigade's supply vessels, and pin the Brigade down.

Under those circumstances, any direct intervention by the US would have been a violation of international law. So Kennedy did not cancel any promised airstrikes. However, JFK did refuse to launch direct US intervention the next morning, as it was already too late for the anti-Castro Cubans to declare a government in exile status.

Edited February 10, 2016 by Greg Burnham