A Lie Too Big To Fail by Lisa Pease

[Matthew Koch]

1 hour ago, Benjamin Cole said:

Shouldn't this thread be moved to the Robert Kennedy Assassination section? 

Some EF-JFKA participants must be squealing....

Bump!

 

[W. Niederhut]

1 hour ago, W. Niederhut said:

Re-posting these original, archival EF threads can be useful, IMO, especially for forum members who post redundant, duplicate threads without even realizing that many of these subjects have already been discussed.

It's the reason I re-posted the old George Estabrooks thread about Manchurian Candidate programming and Sirhan's hypnosis history.

Bump!  🤓

[Benjamin Cole]

1 hour ago, Ron Bulman said:

Did you read my post?  The thread originated in the JFK Assassination Debate part of the forum in December 2018 when there was no RFK Topic section.  It existed there a year before it died.  I bumped it because I want to review it regarding a specific point after having difficulty finding it, and, to expose it to newer members who likely have not ever seen it as I believe it's an interesting and informative thread.  As Stated Above, I intend to move it to the RFK Topic section in 2-3 days where it will be easier to find.  It's been where it's at for over five years.  I don't think 2-3 more days will hurt anything.  Maybe someone new to the forum will find it interesting and informative.  As I found it and only a moderator can move it Mark may do so sooner.  If not, until then, at the risk of being rude, as they say in Arkansas, "Soo Pig", or in Deliverance, "squeal like a pig."

Do you have some sort of personal umbrage at me? If so, why?

I guess the Eastabrook's thread will be moved to the RFK1 section too? 

Is this really necessary?

Are not the JFKA and RFK1A directly linked, and part of the same story? 

 

 

[Robert Burrows]

7 hours ago, Benjamin Cole said:

 

Are not the JFKA and RFK1A directly linked, and part of the same story? 

 

 

Yes.

[Benjamin Cole]

1 hour ago, Robert Burrows said:

Yes.

RB--

Thanks for your collegial comment. 

Certainly Talbot thought the JFKA and RFK1A were part and parcel. 

Certainly Lisa Pease, Larry Hancock and James DiEugenio have concluded there was a snuff job on the RFK1A investigation. 

Why would there be such a snuff job, if Sirhan was a "lone nut"?

And...who could execute a snuff job on the RFK1A investigation?  That is some serious power. 

Maybe Talbot was right: It was higher ups in the CIA that perped the JFKA, and then they were forced to do the RFK1A, as RFK1 drew closer to the presidency. 

Until I began reconsidering the RFK1A, I thought likely it was only lower, rogue CIA elements that perped the JFK. 

But that does not explain the RFK1A investigation snuff job.

Nor the Biden Administration snuff job on the JFK Records. 

Maybe the JFKA went all the way to the top ranks of the CIA. And the RFK1A had to happen to keep that under wraps. 

 

 

[Ron Bulman]

Re-reading this thread tonight.  Up to page 13.  A lot of great comments in it.  It pretty much stays on topic thus far.  More tomorrow.

[Ron Bulman]

Fished the rest of it.  Amazing these days how it never got badly sidetracked or hijacked.  I still recommend it to anyone new interested in the assassination of RFK.  Links in there to Larry Hancock's work on the subject.  Turner and Christian's The Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy comes up.  Shane Sullivan posts.  Jim DiEugenio and Joseph McBride as well as posters Gene Kelly and John Kowalski among others.

That would have never happened if it was in the RFK topic section.  Current forum procedure seems to dictate this thread should be moved there.  It is almost exclusively about RFK.  I don't know when the RFK topic section was established.  As a new moderator it has become useful for moving threads involving current politics, which unfortunately disrupt and distract from the JFK assassination.  So, though I may think the JFK and RFK assassinations may well be related it should in fact be moved.

Before that happens having re read it, I'd like to highlight a few interesting posts.

Pg. 7, bottom.  By me.  Regarding Meier, Maheu, Cesar.

John Meier was one of the few people who could actually see and talk to Howard Hughes at the time as he became more and more of a recluse.  A trusted associate of more than a dozen years.  "Ex" CIA agent Robert Maheu, head of Hughes security also had access to him.  Meier had been introduced to Cesar in Las Vegas by Hooper, an associate of Maheu.   After the assassination Meier heard Cesar's name in a news report, he mentioned this to another associate of Maheu.  The next day Maheu reprimanded Meier, telling him he must never mention that Cesar had worked for him at Bel Air Patrol before the assassination.  Meier told this to Lisa Pease and David Talbot, along with more in an interview just within the last few years.  While writing the book Lisa used two public records on line data base services to inquire about Cesar.  Both listed him as a CIA contract agent.  One responded to an inquiry regarding sources for the claim with "general" sources, land records, marketing surveys...  The other never responded.  In the 70's Cesar himself told the LAPD he worked for Hughes Aircraft.

Pg. 9, bottom Gene Kelly.  Pena came back to the LAPD in April 1968 from USAID (known CA front) to direct the investigation of the RFK assassination in early June.

 

Gene Kelly

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Posted February 11, 2019 · IP 

Manuel Pena has connections to both the JFK and RFK murders. It was Pena who traced Oswald's telescopic sight to a California gun shop.  After the assassination, Senator Dodd helped a Senate Internal Security Subcommittee publish a story that Oswald bad been trained at a KGB assassination school in Minsk. Two mail-order houses were the center points from which Oswald ordered his Smith and Wesson .38 revolver (Seaport Traders of Los Angeles) and his Mannlicher-Carcano rifle (Klein's of Chicago). Oswald ordered his pistol two days before Senator Christopher Dodd's subcommittee began hearings in January 1963. The subcommittee’s statistics later showed a purchase in Texas made from Seaport Traders. One of the groups being investigated for firearm purchases was one that Oswald had in his address book ... the American Nazi Party.  An investigator looking into interstate firearms sales at this time was Manuel Pena, the LAPD lieutenant who was later one of the officers investigating Robert Kennedy's assassination.

Pena had an interesting background; he served in the Navy during WWII and in the Army during the Korean War, and was a Counterintelligence officer in France.  He spoke French and Spanish, and had connections with various intelligence agencies in several countries. In 1967, Pena "retired" from the LAPD, leaving to join AID, a cover for political operations in foreign countries.  Roger LeJeunesse, an FBI agent who had been involved in the RFK investigation, told author William Turner that Pena had performed special assignments for the CIA for more than ten years.  After his retirement from the LAPD (and a public farewell dinner) in November of 1967, Pena inexplicably returned to the LAPD in April 1968 ...  just in time to head the LAPD group called Special Unit Senator that controlled the RFK investigation two months later. Pena was the trusted courier of key evidence being supplied to the FBI ... and he was affiliated with the same mercenaries and cut-outs used by JMWave operatives in various operations -- Saigon, El Salvador, Uruguay, Phoenix -- who were employed by cover with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

 

Pg. 11, 1/3 down.  Me.  

 

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Posted February 24, 2019 · IP 

I can't help but think of my reaction when I read about Robert Maheu's meeting in Las Vegas for breakfast the morning of 6/6/68 with Don Nixon.  After RFK had died at 1:44 that morning.  "Maheu was all smiles, and Don Nixon walks in all smiles. … They embraced each other and Don Nixon said 'Well that prhik is dead".  And Maheu said , "Well it looks like your brother is in now".

If Don Nixon and Maheu knew and realized the implications of RFK's death, so did Tricky Dick, protegee of Prescott Bush, funnel between Allen Dulles and Eisenhower, 

 

Pg. 12, Top of the page.  Gene Kelly.  A Meltzer office in the Ambassador would have made a perfect staging area contol center, with him out of town I'd imagine.  Speculation yes, not unfounded.

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Posted March 2, 2019 · IP 

Ron

Somewhere (can't find it now) I read that Harold Meltzer had an office in and worked out of the Ambassador Hotel at one time. His involvement in LA organized crime is legendary, and goes back to the 1940's and 1950's, as Mickey Cohen's enforcer (see picture below). He was involved in importing heroin from Mexico and Cuba (see D. Valentine's "Strength of the Wolf") and was mentioned as a 'CIA assassin' in December 1960 (see FBN book "The Mafia").  He also was involved with Johnny Rosselli, and some of the gangsters who ultimately betrayed Rosselli by fingering him as an illegal alien. Johnny was born 'Filippo Sacco' in Esperia, Italy and first took the name John Morgan in Boston and Chicago. He later chose to name himself after Cosimo Rosselli, who finished the Sistine Chapel after Michelangelo.  Connecting the dots (to Robert Maheu and others), Rosselli was instrumental in arranging for Howard Hughes to move to Las Vegas and for getting him the top floor of the Desert Inn Hotel.  One also cannot ignore the allegations of Charles Siragusa, and his connection to James Angleton, William Harvey and the CIA's use of Federal Bureau of Narcotics cover personnel as a "magic button".  Here is what the recently released documents say about "Happy" Meltzer, Hanna Yazbeck, and their Lebanese assassins:

Included under tab M is a dossier of one Harold Meltzer, a resident of Los Angeles, with a long criminal record. This is the first instance in which I have noted a U.S. citizen under consideration for any recruitment with respect to the ZRRIFLE project.  Under tab T, information on Orlando Portale, an Italian citizen residing in Detroit, is included.  At tab Y is a page of information on one Hanna Yazbeck.

 

 

The report states, "He often heads up a hatchet squad when disputes arise between the Moslem and Christian underworld factions in Beirut." The second paragraph of this page reads as follows: "During the period I was in Europe (1950-1958), his chief bodyguard as a convicted murderer who owed his release from 'prison to Yazbeck's power. This bodyguard has since been murdered, but Yazbeck has an available pool of assassins.'' 

Gene

 

·. 

 

Last, pg. 16, notes, bottom.  Maheu > Houghton > Pena, let Goliath handle the Sirhan investigation.

Pena was back at LAPD in April from the CIA/USAID then assigned to run Special Unit Senator.

Edited June 16 by Ron Bulman

[Ron Bulman]

Well, I said I'd move this thread to RFK Topics as it is almost exclusively about his assassination and not JFK's.

Before that happens, I want to note a maybe twisted, convoluted, almost nonexistent connection between the RFK assassination and the JFK assassination.  Part of it coming from A Lie Too Big to Fail.

John Meier had seen Thane Cesar in Las Vegas and asked about him.  He knew who he was, that he worked for Maheu.  After the assassination he let this slip to someone else who knew Maheu.  Maheu warned him he must never mention Cesar had worked for him at Bel Air Patrol before the assassination of RFK.

Meier was invited by Maheu to breakfast on June 6, 1968 with Don Nixon, Dick's brother. "After RFK had died at 1:44 that morning.  "Maheu was all smiles, and Don Nixon walks in all smiles. … They embraced each other and Don Nixon said 'Well that prhik is dead".  And Maheu said, "Well it looks like your brother is in now".

Cesar worked for Maheu.

Let's back up to the summer of 1960.  CIA Deputy Director of Plans asked Office of Security chief Sheffield Edwards to contact Mafia members who owned Cuba's numerous gambling hotels and casinos.  (Regarding eliminating Castro)  Edwards contacted Maheu who recommended Johnny Roselli.  A go between at points between Giancana and Trafficante.  Then comes Bill Harvey to take over what was becoming ZR-RIFLE.  He bonds with Roselli.  They reportedly meet in April 1963 in Florida, while Harvey is CIA Chief of Station in Rhome Italy.  Pages 340-343, A Terrible Mistake,  Hank Albarelli.  

Whatever role Roselli may have played in the JFK assassination, one might think Maheu could have indirectly provided the initial connection.

Edited June 18 by Ron Bulman

[Ron Bulman]

In spite of a slight possible convoluted reference to a connection between the RFK and JFK assassinations, time to move this one as it's not about the JFK assassination.  Given the topic, it will be easier for concerned members to find there.

 

On 6/13/2024 at 6:38 PM, Benjamin Cole said:

Shouldn't this thread be moved to the Robert Kennedy Assassination section? 

Some EF-JFKA participants must be squealing....