JFK asked CIA to form assassination unit

[Douglas Caddy]

JFK asked CIA to form assassination unit

 

http://journaltimes.com/news/national/jfk-asked-cia-to-form-assassination-unit/article_5322fdce-9f6c-5470-9e52-70fbc2f078fd.html

 

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Gerald Campeau wrote this comment on Facebook following the article:

William Harvey, Chief of FI/D, was briefed in February 1961 (by authority of Richard Bissell) on phase one of the gambling syndicate operation. That briefing was in connection with a sensitive operation that Bissell had assigned to Harvey. Harvey describes it thus: Early in the Kennedy administration, Bissell called him in to discuss what Harvey refers to as an Executive Action Capability; i.e., a general stand-by capability to carry out assassinations when required. Harvey's notes quote Bissell as saying, "The White House has twice urged me to create such a capability." Bissell recalls discussing the question of developing a general capability with Harvey. He mentioned the Edwards/gambling syndicate operation against Castro in that context, but he now thinks that the operation was over by then and that reference to it was in terms of a past operation as a case in point. It was on this basis that Harvey arranged to be briefed by Edwards. Harvey's fixing of the date as February was only after review of events both preceding the briefing and following it. He says now that it might have been as early as late January or as late as March 1961.

After some discussion of the problems involved in developing as Executive Action Capability, Bissell placed Harvey in charge of the effort. Harvey says that Bissell had already discussed certain aspects of the problem with [deleted] and with Sidney Gottlieb. Since [deleted] was already cut in, Harvey used him in developing the Executive Action Capability, although never with respect to Castro. We did not question Gottlieb on his knowledge of the program for creating an Executive Action Capability, but Harvey's mention of him in this connection may explain a notation by Dr. Gunn that Harvey instructed Gunn to discuss techniques with Gottlieb without associating the discussion with the Castro operation.

Harvey states that after the decision was made to go ahead with the creating of an Executive Action Capability, and while he was still discussing its development with Bissell, he briefed Mr. Helms fully on the general concept but without mention of the then ongoing plan to assassinate Castro.

The Executive Action program came to be known as ZRRIFLE. Its principal asset was an agent, QJWIN, who had been recruited earlier by [deleted] for use in a special operation in the Congo [the following line was struck through with a pen, but not redacted--it reads: "the assassination of Patrice Lumumba) to be run by [deleted] [deleted] made a survey of the scene, decided he wanted no part in an assassination attempt, and asked to be released--which Bissell granted.) The project name, ZRRIFLE, first appears in the files in May 1961, although the first recorded approval is dated 19 February 1962. The new DD/P (Helms) on that date authorized Harvey, by

[End of comment on Facebook]

 

 

 

[James DiEugenio]

Doug:  This article is from 1993!

Have you read the IG report it refers to?  I have, more than once.  It is available in an online version at MFF.

In the entire over 100 pages, it does not say what this guy said it does.

What he is referring to is a CIA subterfuge to transfer the CIA/Mafia plots to Kennedy when in fact, the Agency started them many years before JFK became president.  And that is detailed in the report.  When Bissell, this guy's source, testified before the Church Committee he had to admit this himself.

I went over this issue at length in The Assassinations (edited by James DiEugenio and Lisa Pease, pgs 326-29)  David Talbot in his book Brothers, also showed how the CIA was still trying to transfer their guilt in this to JFK many years later through the altered words of a dead man.  JFK was appalled at what he thought the CIA was doing behind his back. He suspected that they had Trujillo and Diem bumped off and he wanted to get control of what they were doing. (ibid, p. 329)

He did not and we know what happened to him.  And what is still happening to him.

 

[Ron Ecker]

Didn't Boris Pash run a CIA assassination unit? I think that E. Howard Hunt was one source on Pash, but I don't remember any details.

 

[Douglas Caddy]

Jim: Thank you for clarification on this.

My posting on the forum came about because Ted Rubenstein reposted a photograph of newspaper headlines about the JFK assassination that John Newman had originally put on Facebook last July.

Gerald Campeau then commented on Ted's posting of Newman's photograph. One of the comments is above, "JFK Asked CIA to form an assassination unit."

Campeau's second comment was this:  http://www.angelfire.com/ny/syzergy/castroreport.htm

I now realize that Mr. Campeau was apparently just building an historical record on the subject with his posts.

Your straightening out the matter puts it in proper perspective.