JFK Conspiracy for Younger Generations

[B. A. Copeland]

I’ll definitely keep your thinking in mind Cliff and that’s pretty profound, her being ahead of even the master class. Reminds me of Salandria’s excellent logic posted earlier. If a youngster can espouse that, it’s end game thinking.

[Cliff Varnell]

On 2/24/2019 at 2:37 AM, Cliff Varnell said:

I'm a student of the Vincent Salandria School of Research into the Obvious.

After 21 years of engagement in fake debate all over the internet I finally gave up bickering over bs a couple of months ago. 

You can't do fake debate and be of the School of the Obvious.

Another aspect of study in the School of the Obvious is the willingness to take no credit for anything.

How does one take credit for the obvious?

Students of the Obvious don't write articles, much less books.  Don't attend conferences, much less present at one.  At least not since Mr .Salandria and E. Martin Schotz presented at COPA '98.

Penn Jones advised folks to focus on specific areas of the case.  Vincent Palamara found the Secret Service under-researched and he put in a ton of ground-breaking work and now owns the subject.

David Lifton owns pre-autopsy body alteration.  Jim DiEugenio owns the Garrison investigation.  David Talbot owns Dulles-as-top-perp.  Doug Weldon owned the thru and thru limo windshield defect.  Don Thomas owns the acoustics.  Vincent Salandria refused to own the first debunking of the Single Bullet Theory.

In the School of the Obvious we don't own what we present.

Edited February 28, 2019 by Cliff Varnell

[Robert Harper]

On 2/24/2019 at 9:10 PM, Paul Brancato said:

Cliff - thanks for the Salandria interview. His words are so prescient, and so timely. 

What a great interview. I had read him, but had never seen him talk. Surprised to find that he is alive and kicking, God bless him. He thinks in paragraphs and speaks in complete sentences, which alone is worth noting when text- style writing seems rampant and headlines rule. He is so on the button, and doesn't mince words; loved him. He makes very clear the idea that one "knows" through reason and not through "authority." He is eloquent on Garrison and does justice to Meagher and Fonzi; I only wish he threw a bone to the centrality of Mark Lane. Granted he wasn't an investigator or researcher as Salandria uses the terms, but he was a present, breathing, voice of the government deception and showed a great deal of courage amidst attacks and intrusions by government agencies. His expression of the desire to catch and punish the perpetrators of this crime reminded me of similar emotions evoked when I read a book called Killers of the King a few years back by Charles Spencer (Diana's brother). It's a well written and engaging look at how Charles II pursued - to literally the ends of the earth - the killers of his father Charles I. We were deprived of that vision here in America -with JFK Jr as Senator from NY leading the way - when his helicopter...ugh...crashed.

[Michaleen Kilroy]

On 2/24/2019 at 3:02 PM, Paul Brancato said:

I agree. I’ve heard people dismiss Helms as a conspirator, but it stretches the imagination to think he didn’t know what his operatives were up to.

To me, it’s damning evidence of a conspiracy at the highest levels of the agency.

if the DRE’s interactions with LHO were happenstance, you could see covering up the relationship to avoid embarrassment, however wrong to do. 

If Helms et al were lying because the agency was using Oswald for an intelligence purpose, you could also see a coverup to avoid suspicion in the case.

But after 55 years neither of these explanations hold water. The relationship with the DRE that Dulles, Helms, Phillips, Kent, Joannides and finally the entire agency as an institution during the time of ARRB covered up has to be incriminating. 

[Cliff Varnell]

https://ourhiddenhistory.org/entry/douglas-valentine-cia-drug-trafficking-and-the-jfk-assassination-2009

Douglas Valentine: CIA, Drug Trafficking, and the JFK Assassination (2009)

This is a transcript from the 2009 Coalition on Political Assassinations Conference. Douglas Valentine, author of Strength of the Pack discusses the nexus of CIA drug trafficking and the JFK Assassination. Original video of the talk can be found on COPA's upstream channel here.

It's certainly ... quite a honor to be able to speak tonight, to such a well informed and curious audience. I hope that what I can say in the next couple of minutes makes something of a difference. I would like to talk today about the impact of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, what I'll call the FBN. What the FBN played in some of the events surrounding the assassination of JFK.

And I'd like to suggest, and try to show how it might have been possible that an assassin might have moved in and out of position in Dallas as part of a drug smuggling network that was protected, to some extent, by the CIA and certain witting FBN agents. And I'd also like to raise the possibility that the assassin could have been a double agent who had penetrated one of the protected networks that made its way into Dallas.

So let me begin by pointing out that spies and drug smugglers and Federal narcotic agents have one thing in common that's very important. They all assume false identities to smuggle illegal items across borders. They are also experts in avoiding and corrupting police and security officers. I'd like to give you a little relevant history, just to set the stage for what I'm going to say.

In America, spies and drug smugglers have worked together as a matter of official but unstated policy since world war two, when the military hired mafioso, all around the country to ferret out Nazi saboteurs along the coastline, as well as to prevent labor strikes along the waterfront.

Meyer Lansky and Lucky Luciano made the deal with the military, and later in the war the mafia worked with US intelligence in Italy and France and just about every other place around the world. Criminology professor Alan Block, who some of you may be familiar with, has asserted that this so-called "Luciano Project" marked a turning point in America in political history in which professional criminals continued to ply their trade but for new patrons. And those new patrons were America's master spies. People like CIA counterintelligence James Angleton, so this is a very big deal.

But keep in mind that the drug smugglers and that drug smugglers and assassins in the underworld may also be double agents, working for enemy intelligence services, and Angleton certainly always considered this. So I believe and I'll try to show why, some of the secrecy surrounding the JFK assassination has a lot to do with covering up this unholy alliance between America's top drug smugglers, politicians and spies. I'll give you some more history that's relevant to events in Dallas and why I feel this way.

US Government protection of drug traffickers began long before the CIA existed. Starting in 1926, the government secretly protected the drug trafficking Chinese nationalists, because, of course, the nationalists were fighting the communist Chinese. And America always supports anybody who's fighting the communists. In the 1930's and 40's, several very important FBN agents knew that the Chinese Nationalists, that their heroin was entering the US through ports in Galveston, at Tampa, New Orleans, San Francisco and New York, as well as overland from Mexico into Texas. But for many reasons they just stood back and watched. More reasons than I can get into now.

The Mafia got involved in this Chinese Nationalist protected drug network in 1939, just a little bit before the Luciano project started up. When Meyer Lansky sent his confidential agent, Virginia Hill, to Mexico, where she famously seduced a number of top Mexican politicians, army officers, diplomats and police official and brought them into this Mafia-drug network, Virginia Hill bought a nightclub in Nuevo Laredo, and started smuggling heroin into Texas with a woman named Dr. Margaret Chung. Very important, Dr. Chung was a member of the drug smuggling Hip Sing Tong, which was pretty much the outlet for Chinese Nationalist heroin in the United States, and she was also the attending physician to the Flying Tigers, which was the private airline that the government formed to fly supplies to the Chinese Nationalists.

Okay, so the Flying Tigers were the parent of the CIA's drug smuggling airline Air America, which JFK had a lot of problems with. By 1915 [sic, 1955] the CIA was underwriting both the Chinese Nationalist drug smugglers as well as working with the drug smuggling Mexican intelligence service, the DFS, which professor Peter Dale Scott has written about more recently.

Okay, so witting FBN agents knew that Dr. Chung was trafficking in San Francisco, New Orleans, New York and Chicago, and they watched her for years but they never made an arrest. They looked away, not only because the nationalists were fighting the communists, but because by the 1950's, Federal and local police forces were allowing the Mafia to distribute drugs to the black community in the United States for purposes of political repression. So, you have to always remember, the war on drugs is an instrument of political repression, just like the assassination of John Kennedy can be seen in the context of political repression as well.

And the assassins, who serve the elite, the national security elite who run the country as instruments of political repression, these assassins are often bred In that dark corner of the underworld, where spies and drug smugglers mingle, and I'll tell you a little bit about that. This is where is gets more relevant.

Through the 1950's and 1960's a few witting FBN agents naturally assumed a central role as intermediaries between the CIA and the drug smuggling underworld assassins. One of these FBN agents was Charlie Siragusa, and in 1960, when CIA officer Bill Harvey was looking for someone, later codenamed QJ/WIN, to recruit assassins for the CIA, FBN agent Charlie Siragusa appeared at the top of Bill Harvey's list. Siragusa was an expert on Corsican and Sicilian assassins, and Corsicans were recommended, Harvey said, because Sicilians could lead to the Mafia. Which again brings us to the connections the CIA had with the Mafia through the Luciano Project.

Why would the CIA want to hire Corsicans in order to protect the drug smuggling Mafioso in its employ? That's the question that rises from Harvey wanting Corsicans, and of course the answer that comes to mind is that the CIA was planning assassination in the United States. Corsicans would be less likely to be tracked back to the CIA through the mafioso.

Okay, so the person chose for the QJ/WIN job was a drug smuggler, and QJ/WIN being the recruiter of assassins, and the person chosen for that QJ/WIN job was a drug smuggler who worked for the FBN, in Luxembourg in the 1950's. In 1962 [sic, 1961], the CIA quashed drug smuggling charges brought against this guy QJ/WIN, so he would be free to arrange the assassination of Patrice Lumumba. So the CIA, by 1962, is using drug smugglers, brought to his attention by the FBN, in political assassinations.

I'll give you another example of how this works. There is evidence to indicate that Harold Meltzer, a big time drug smuggler and a major player in the protected Mexican drug network I mentioned, was probably very likely another assassin the CIA tried to recruit for through the FBN. Back in the 1940's, the FBN knew that Meltzer traveled regularly between Mexico City, Cuba and Hong Kong. And in 1951 FBN agents arrested him and sent him to prison. After he got out of prison, Meltzer settled in Los Angeles, and in November of 1960 someone, almost certainly FBN agent George White, who some of you are probably familiar with, put Meltzer in touch with Johnny Roselli, and in December 1960 the CIA through Roselli asked Meltzer to join an assassination team. So again, another example of the CIA actually using FBN agents to reach out to assassins for some kind of work that ... Nobody, I'm sure, knows all of the assassinations that they conducted, but the facts are there that they're doing this.

Okay, now it's also ... significant, in terms of the Kennedy assassination, that FBN agents George White and Charlie Siragusa both provided cover for the CIA's MKULTRA drug testing program, which had, as one of it's aims, creating push-button assassins, who would possess no memory of their deeds. In the summer of 1960, the CIA directed FBN agent Charlie Siragusa to open an MKULTRA safe house in New York City, and soon after that they asked him to recruit an assassination squad. This is documented fact. The CIA was offering $1,000,000 per hit. The CIA also asked FBN agent Siragusa to set up a detective agency as a front for illegal CIA operations in America. Siragusa said he refused to do either of these things, and that may be true, but certainly other people, people like Guy Banister for example were certainly willing to play along.

I don't know that Banister did exactly, but he seems to me like a person that would have. I should also note that the CIA used these FBN safe houses to get politicians high on drugs, and film them with prostitutes, some who were probably intelligence agents ... A person like Ellen Romstadt comes to mind ... And the CIA also used these MKULTRA safe houses to accommodate it's drug smuggling assets from around the world, from the far east, from Burma, Corsicans ... A lot. These are places where drug smugglers can stay, for free, without anybody knowing they're in the country.

So by 1960, unwitting FBN agents, agents who weren't working for the CIA were increasingly making cases on Corsicans linked to the French intelligence service SDECE, and it's rival the Secret Army Organization, the OAS, as well as the CIA. This too leads up to Dallas. A little known fact is that one Corsican the FBN arrested in 1960 named labor Irving Brown as an accomplice. The unwitting FBN agents found, in their investigation, that Brown was a CIA agent, and that he had port privileges in New York, meaning that his bag was never checked by customs. And they also found out that he frequently traveled with a Corsican drug smuggler named Maurice Castellani.

The CIA notably shut down the FBN's investigation of CIA agent Brown and Castellani who he was traveling with. They certainly knew everything that was going on with these people. Then in 1962, unwitting FBN agents, those not working for the CIA, arrested Castellani's partner, a Corsican smuggler named Francois Scaglia. But Scaglia's controller in this operation, a Frenchman using the alias John Moran escaped, and I cant get into all the details but he never should have. It's almost as if he was allowed to escape. I believe through years and years of research that John Moran very likely was Michel Victor Mertz, a SDECE agent who managed a heroin network between France and New York with Santo Traficanti Jr.

As you all know, the CIA in 1960 hired Traficanti to assassinate Castro, using MKULTRA technology, in part developed by FBN agents working for the CIA. Once Trafficanti, who was probably the biggest drug smuggler in the United States, went to work for the CIA, his drug network was protected. That protection, evidently, carried over to Michel Victor Mertz, as it also did to Irving Brown and Maurice Castellani. This protected Traficanti-Mertz network, drug smuggling network reached Dallas through Traficanti's courier Benny Indiviglio. And again, this is a documented fact, so the question becomes, could, or did the CIA use one of it's protected drug networks to infiltrate and assassin into Dallas. The system was set up, we know there's protected drug networks, we know it hires assassins who are drug smugglers, and they are there. So they could have done it.

And it's also possible that a drug smuggler, a professional drug smuggler and assassin like Mertz could have infiltrated the CIA's protected drug trafficking networks, and use the opportunity to carry out an assassination. In other words the CIA could have been tricked at it's own game. As some of you, or all of you may know, Michel Mertz emerged as a suspect in the assassination in 1964. When the French asked the FBI to investigate reports that ... OAS terrorist Jean Souetre was in Dallas on November 22nd and had been expelled by the INS that very same day. Souetre was questioned, denied the charge and said that Mertz, a SDECE agent who had infiltrated the OSS was impersonating him. The INS agents description somewhat fit Mertz, but no one ever compared that description to any photographs FBN had of the mystery man from 1962, Jay Moran, nor was in compared to any photographs the FBN may have had of Souetre, who allegedly was a drug trafficker as well, and had been followed for years by the FBN in Marseilles.

The CIA was certainly monitoring Souetre and Mertz, so it would be impossible for them, especially counter-intelligence chief Jay Angleton, to confuse the two. It's his job to know who these people are, and what they're doing. But if, as has been alleged, Angleton was a Soviet or Mossad mole, he could have moved an assassin into Dallas using the Brown-Castellani network I mentioned, or the overland route that had been established in 1939, the Nationalist Chinese one that moved from Mexico into Texas overland, or he could have used the Mertz-Traficanti-Indiviglio route into Dallas. All these things are possible. And, through MKULTRA, Angleton, a central figure in all of this could have used Jack Ruby to assassinate the designated patsy, Lee Harvey Oswald. And here again, witting FBN agents who were virtually absent from any investigation that anybody ever did into the assassination, these FBN agents potentially play a critical role. They work for the CIA protecting it's drug smugglers, recruiting it's assassins, and staffing it's MKULTRA safe houses.

The usual suspects are George White and Charlie Siragusa. Both were involved in the Luciano project and worked for the CIA. Both were assassination experts, and both knew Angleton. White notably, and this is just a little more history, met Santo Traficanti Sr. in September 1945, and right after that meeting, Traficanti acquired total control of the Cuba-Tampa drug connection. Three weeks after that meeting George White became the FBN supervisor in Chicago, where at the same time, Guy Banister was a senior FBI agent. In 1946 in Chicago FBN agent George White obtained none other than Jack Ruby as an informant.

The Chicago mob sent Ruby to Dallas in 1947. In the 1950 through, FBN agent White, Jack Ruby briefed the Kefauver Committee about organized crime in Chicago, on the one condition that the committee stay away from Dallas, and the committee went along with that. I believe that White and all the committee members agreed to stay out of Dallas to protect the CIA Nationalist Chinese mafia drug operation out of Mexico, into Texas, at Laredo.

Ruby, and again this is documented fact, was a small part of this protected drug realm. By 1958 the FBN, the part of it that's not connected with the CIA, had established that Ruby's boss Joe Civello ran the heroin business in Dallas. In 1958 the FBN linked Civello to Traficanti and described Civello as Carlos Marcello's deputy in Dallas. And yet the Warren commission found no significant link between Ruby and organized crime ... Again, I believe at least partially, to deflect attention from the CIA's connection to all the drug smuggling that was going on. Again, this is why the FBN, the Bureau of Narcotics is the one element that never gets brought up in the assassination. Nobody wanted it to track back to the CIA protected drug routes and the assassins and all of that stuff.

Obviously there were compartments within the FBN. For example, Murray Brown, the FBN supervisor in Dallas on November 22nd, 1963 said to me that he knew nothing about the mafia in Dallas, and he insisted to me that Ruby was not an FBN informant. Okay. But FBN headquarters in Washington had a file on Ruby, which Secret Service chief James Rowley requested on November 25th, 1963. Ruby's file is given to Rowley, but he never returned it.

Likewise, the file on Jack Ruby in the New York office went missing after the assassination, and again I believe in both cases it's because Ruby was George White's secret informant, but in White's capacity as a CIA agent, not as an FBN agent. The one thing that I think is most important about this, is I interviewed an old FBN agent who later became a DEA inspector, named Richard Solomey. In 1978, Solomey was part of a joint CIA-DEA investigation at MKULTRA. Solomey told me that he found evidence that George White had used Ruby to kill Oswald. I wrote about this in my latest book.

Solomey said that he was told by his CIA bosses on this victim's task force, not to tell senator Ted Kennedy about his findings. Senator Kennedy had generated this victim's task force investigation into MKULTRA. Solomey told me that he had also found evidence that JFK had used the New York MKULTRA safe house to compromise his political enemies, and that that is why senator Kennedy agreed to censor his report, which is not part of, obviously, the uncensored part is not a part of the official record, and as far as I know Solomey never told this to anybody else. I can't prove it, but he did tell me.

Another little known fact about the FBN, right after the assassination, Mexican officials intercepted a call to Havana from the Cuban embassy in Mexico City. The Cuban's were allegedly claiming credit for the JFK assassination, but instead of telling the FBI or the CIA, they told the FBN agent in charge of Mexico City, a guy named William Durkin. Durkin called FBN headquarters in Washington, which relayed this particular piece of information to, again, secret service Chief Rowley, at which point the theory that Castro had arranged the JFK assassination began to emerge as a viable alternative to the 'Lone Nut' theory. You folks all know much more about this than I do, there may have been other reports coming in about this, but it did come in through the FBN as well.

So, there are lots of dots to connect, that connect the FBN to the assassination of John Kennedy. One last thing I'd like to say is that ... Before closing is I would like to remind you that Rose Cheramie predicted JFK was going to be killed. She was ... Cheramie was a drug addict and a prostitute, working for Ruby I believe, and she heard of this assassination plot while she was traveling from Florida with two men who were Italians, or resembled Italians. The men were taking her to Dallas to obtain money to buy heroin from a seaman. The seaman was to meet them in Houston, after disembarking in Galveston. The customs agent in Galveston verified that the seaman was being investigated for drug smuggling, and the coast guard confirmed that it was interested in the ship. But the seaman, like Moran in 1962, got away, and when asked by the House Select Committee on Assassination, customs officials said that neither the agent nor his reports could be found.

You may not know this, but in 1963, November of 1963, approximately 20 CIA officers were in Texas and Florida operating under customs cover as part of a special unit organized in Houston, to penetrate anti-Castro terrorist groups in the United States. Any one of these 20 CIA agents, posing as customs officials could have facilitated the movements of this seaman, with or without realizing that the seaman may have been an assassin. So, that's yet another potential drug-connected route that an assassin could have used to get into the country.

And that takes up all of our time, before I can even touch on the army of CIA-protected Cuban drug traffickers associated with the assassination of people like Rolando Cubela, a Traficanti associate who enjoyed diplomatic immunity and could travel without his luggage being checked. Cubela traveled between Spain, France, Mexico, Paris and New York, all the major transit points in the illicit drug trade. And, as again, a lot of you probably know, on November 21st, 1963 in Paris, CIA official Desmond Fitzgerald, who replaced Harvey handed Cubela an MKULTRA pen loaded with poison. A pen that had been tested in San Francisco by FBN agent George White, and was rigged with a hypodermic needle designed specifically for assassinations.

So there's just a lot of it going on, a lot of connections between the FBN and assassinations, and I believe the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy. [/q]

Written by OurHiddenHistory on Wednesday March 1, 2017

[Paul Brancato]

Another good one from Cliff. I have Valentine’s books and have read sections of them. This excerpt is so interesting because, as he says, in the murky world of high level drug dealing and Intelligence it’s difficult to know who is working for whom. I notice he never mentions Mankel when referring to QJWIN. I wonder if he has signed on to that now. 

Edited March 6, 2019 by Paul Brancato

[David Andrews]

On 2/26/2019 at 12:21 AM, Cliff Varnell said:

I tell this anecdote all the time.

It's finally in the proper thread!

I once pointed out to a millennial friend of mine that her generation didn't appear all that interested in the Kennedy assassination.

"That's because they make it so boring," she said, and the subject dropped.

A couple weeks later she asked me what I'd been up to and I said --"Giving people hell about the central question of the JFK assassination."  This was in the late summer of 2013.

"What is the central question of the JFK assassination?"

"You don't want to know--"

"No, tell me."

"JFK was shot in the back, there was no exit wound and no bullet found in the autopsy; he was shot in the throat, no exit, no bullet found in the autopsy.  The central question is --what happened to the bullets that caused the back and throat wounds?"

She thought for a second, then said -- "But was it a real autopsy?"

"A lot of problems with the autopsy, but that was the situation...Some people think the bullets were removed prior to the autopsy--"

"Or it was some government s-h-i* that dissolved!" she said with an air of triumph.

About a year later I told this story to another millennial friend of mine and when I got to the line "or some government s-h-i* that dissolved--" she blurted-- "That's what I was gonna say!"

 

Part of the problem of "some government s-h-i* that dissolved" is that, used in a rifle on a moving [sic] target, it doesn't guarantee a fatal wound.  If a dissolving round hit JFK in the skull or sternum, would it penetrate?  If it struck a rib or clavicle, would it be deflected? 

If a poisoned dissolving round was used, would a president's quick death from non-mortal wounds not attract some attention, even at Parkland Hospital?

Has any testing been done with any dissolving rounds to see their potential when propelled by a subsonic or supersonic load?

This is similar to the flechette-from-the-umbrella-weapon issue: was it possible to aim and fire that, and be sure it would hit a vital spot?  Much less, was it possible to aim an umbrella weapon and not lodge the flechette harmlessly in JFK's clothing or the car upholstery, or not to miss the car entirely?  What if the flechette hit Jackie or another passenger?  What if a flechette did not penetrate anything completely, and was found afterward by a non-conspirator?

I'm thinking that dissolving rounds (and flechettes) would have to be used at relatively close range, in small arms.  If not poisoned, dissolving rounds would have to have certainty of hitting vital organs or arteries.  And, unless a dissolving flechette were possible, there would be no disguising a flechette hit.

Edited March 6, 2019 by David Andrews

[David Andrews]

On 2/24/2019 at 9:25 AM, Cliff Varnell said:

12:06 to 14:40 Mr. Salandria discusses his greatest achievement.

I wish we knew more of what Ruth and Michael Paine discussed with Vincent Salandria and Shirley Martin.  Salandria, in his "The Role of the Paines in History" statement (2016), gave us the subtly threatening remarks Michael Paine made when introduced, but not anything after.  Even the tenor of further remarks by the Paines would be important to know.

This is as much as you get about the Paines from the 1994 interview transcript (of the clip above):

"[Oswald] was befriended by Michael Paine, who had secret clearance, working in Bell Helicopter although his father George Lyman Paine had been a Trotskyist and for that kind of clearance, when you’re associated with the family with left wing connections of that sort some quid pro quo has to be given. So Michael Paine, very likely, was doing favors for US intelligence in order to be able to have a secret clearance. He was associated with Oswald and he told me, Michael Paine told me, in an interview, that he would go with Oswald to right-wing meetings in the Dallas area and that Oswald would take very careful notes afterwards and he was apparently reporting on the right wing in Dallas. Michael Paine told me he went with him to the ACLU meeting and that Oswald joined the ACLU."

Here's a link to Michael Paine's subtle threats and their real-world associations in "The Role of the Paines":

https://ratical.org/ratville/JFK/FalseMystery/ThePainesRoleInHistory.html

 

Edited March 6, 2019 by David Andrews

[Cliff Varnell]

7 hours ago, David Andrews said:

Part of the problem of "some government s-h-i* that dissolved" is that, used in a rifle on a moving [sic] target, it doesn't guarantee a fatal wound.

I'd bet the first shot was a paralytic.  JFK appears to seize up paralyzed about 2 seconds after the @Z190 shot in the throat.

Neither the throat shot nor the back shot came close to vital organs.

A first shot/kill shot with conventional weapons wouldn't be guaranteed, either.

7 hours ago, David Andrews said:

 

If a dissolving round hit JFK in the skull or sternum, would it penetrate?  If it struck a rib or clavicle, would it be deflected? 

If a poisoned dissolving round was used, would a president's quick death from non-mortal wounds not attract some attention, even at Parkland Hospital?

That may have been an integral part of the plot.

Blood soluble toxins and paralytics were developed by Charles Senseney, a civilian working for the US Army Special Operations Division .

Senseney's Church Committee testimony:

http://www.aarclibra..._6_Senseney.pdf

<q, emphasis added>

pg 163

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 telldisplay 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 166:

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...

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

</q>

The FBI had been briefed on the appearance of that particular wound pattern -- entrance, no exit, no round found during autopsy.

Sets up perps from outside the country.

If Oswald had turned up dead on Friday, the FBI could have blamed "what might be brought into the country," e.g. the KGB.

The capture of Oswald put a kibosh on the Blame-the-Reds Plan A.

7 hours ago, David Andrews said:

Has any testing been done with any dissolving rounds to see their potential when propelled by a subsonic or supersonic load?

This is similar to the flechette-from-the-umbrella-weapon issue: was it possible to aim and fire that, and be sure it would hit a vital spot?

I don't buy Umbrella Man as a shooter.

7 hours ago, David Andrews said:

 

  Much less, was it possible to aim an umbrella weapon and not lodge the flechette harmlessly in JFK's clothing or the car upholstery, or not to miss the car entirely?  What if the flechette hit Jackie or another passenger? 

Hit with a paralytic, she'd get over it.  Hit with a toxin, she's dead.  Same situation with conventional rounds, no?

7 hours ago, David Andrews said:

 

What if a flechette did not penetrate anything completely, and was found afterward by a non-conspirator?

I'm thinking that dissolving rounds (and flechettes) would have to be used at relatively close range, in small arms.  If not poisoned, dissolving rounds would have to have certainty of hitting vital organs or arteries.  And, unless a dissolving flechette were possible, there would be no disguising a flechette hit.

Blood soluble paralytics are historical fact.

Greg Burnham compiled this :

<q>

From the Church Committee testimony of CIA Director Colby:

 

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 1975.

Testimony of William E. Colby, director of the Central Intelligence Agency. The Committee met at 10 A.M. in the Russell Building.

 

Present: Senators Church, Tower, Mondale, Huddleston, Morgan, Hart of Colorado Baker, Goldwater, Mathias, and Schweiker. Also present: William G. Miller, staff director, Frederick A. 0. Schwarz, chief counsel, Curtis Smothers and Paul Michel, Committee staff members.

 

Chairman Church:

The particular case under examination today involves the illegal possession of deadly biological poisons which were retained within the CIA for five years after their destruction was ordered by the President. . . . The main questions before the Committee are why the poisons were developed in such quantities in the first place: why the Presidential order was disobeyed; and why such a serious act of insubordination could remain undetected for so many years.

 

William Colby:

The specific subject today concerns the CIA's involvement in the development of bacteriological warfare materials with the Army's Biological Laboratory at Fort Detrick, CIA's retention of an amount of shellfish toxin, and CIA's use and investigation of various chemicals and drugs. . . . Information provided by him [a CIA officer not directly associated with the project] and by two other officers aware of the project indicated that the project at Fort Detrick involved the development of bacteriological warfare agents--some lethal--and

associated delivery systems suitable for clandestine use

[emphasis added]. The CIA relationship with the Special Operations Division at Fort Detrick was formally established in May 1952.

 

The need for such capabilities was tied to earlier Office of Strategic Services World War II experience, which included the development of two different types of agent suicide pills to be used in the event of capture and a successful operation using biological warfare materials to incapacitate a Nazi leader temporarily.

 

The primary Agency interest was in the development of dissemination devices to be used with standard chemicals off the shelf. Various dissemination devices such as a fountain pen dart launcher appeared to be peculiarly suited for clandestine use. . . . A large amount of Agency attention was given to the problem of incapacitating guard dogs. Though most of the dart launchers were developed for the Army, the Agency did request the development of a small, hand-held dart launcher for its peculiar needs for this purpose. Work was also done on temporary human incapacitation techniques. These related to a desire to incapacitate captives before they could render themselves incapable of talking, or terrorists before they could take retaliatory action. [Or to prevent guard dogs from barking.]

 

One such operation involved the penetration of a facility abroad for intelligence collection. The compound was guarded by watchdogs which made entry difficult even when it was empty. Darts were delivered for the operation, but were not used.

 

Church:

Have you brought with you some of those devices which would have enabled the CIA to use this poison for killing people?

 

Colby:

We have indeed.

 

Church:

Does this pistol fire the dart?

 

Colby:

Yes it does, Mr. Chairman. The round thing at the top is obviously the sight; the rest of it is what is practically a normal .45, although it is a special. However, it works by electricity. There is a battery in the handle, and it fires a small dart. [self-propelled, like a rocket.]

 

Church:

So that when it fires, it fires silently?

 

Colby:

Almost silently; yes.

 

Church:

What range does it have?

 

Colby:

One hundred meters, I believe; about 100 yards, 100 meters.

 

Church:

About 100 meters range?

 

Colby:

Yes.

 

Church:

And the dart itself, when it strikes the target, does the target know that he has been hit and [is] about to die?

 

Colby:

That depends, Mr. Chairman, on the particular dart used. There are different kinds of these flechettes that were used in various weapons systems, and a special one was developed which potentially would be able to enter the target without perception.

 

Church:

Is it not true, too, that the effort not only involved designing a gun that could strike at a human target without knowledge of the person who had been struck, but also the toxin itself would not appear in the autopsy?

 

Colby:

Well there was an attempt--

 

Church:

Or the dart?

 

Colby:

Yes; so there was no way of perceiving that the target was hit.

 

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 17, 1975

. Richard Helms' testimony:

 

Huddleston:

Mr. Helms, you said you were surprised, or that you had never seen the dart gun that was displayed here yesterday. Would you be surprised or shocked to learn that that gun, or one like it, had been used by agents against either watchdogs or human beings?

 

Helms:

I would be surprised if it had been used against human beings, but I'm not surprised it would have been used against watchdogs. I believe there were various experiments conducted in an effort to find out how one could either tranquilize or kill guard dogs in foreign countries. That does not surprise me at all.

 

Huddleston:

Do you know whether or not it was used, in fact, against watchdogs?

 

Helms:

I believe there were experiments conducted against dogs. Whether it was ever used in a live operational situation against dogs, I do not recall.

 

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 1975

. Testimony of Charles A. Senseney:

 

Senseney:

I worked in the Biological Warfare Section of Fort Detrick from 1953. . . . I was the project engineer of the M-1 dart launcher and following on microorganism projectiles and so forth.

 

Smothers:

Is this a device that looks roughly like a .45 caliber pistol with a sight mount at the top?

 

Senseney:

This was a follow-on. It was to replace the M-1 projectile to go into the Army stockpile. It did look like a .45.

 

Smothers:

Did the CIA have, Mr. Senseney, the wherewithal to utilize this dart launcher against humans?

 

Senseney:

No, they asked for a modification to use against a dog. Now, these were actually given to them, and they were actually expended, because we got all of the hardware back. For a dog, the projectile had to be made many times bigger. It was almost the size of a .22 cartridge, but it carried a chemical compound known as 46-40.

 

Smothers:

And their interest was in dog incapacitation?

 

Senseney:

Right

 

Baker:

Your principle job with the DOD, I take it, was to develop new or exotic devices and weapons: is that correct?

 

Senseney:

I was a project engineer for the E-1, which was type classified and became the M-1. They were done for the Army.

 

Baker:

Did you have any other customers?

 

Senseney:

To my knowledge, our only customer was Special Forces and the CIA, I guess.

 

Baker:

Special Forces meaning Special Forces of the Army?

 

Senseney:

That is correct.

 

Baker:

And the FBI?

 

Senseney:

The FBI never used anything.

 

Baker:

Looking at your previous executive session testimony, apparently you developed for them a fountain pen. What did the fountain pen do?

 

Senseney:

The fountain pen was a variation of an M-1. An M-1 in itself was a system, and it could be fired

from anything

[emphasis added]. It could be put into--

 

Baker:

Could it fire a dart or an aerosol or what?

 

Senseney:

It was a dart.

 

Baker:

It fired a dart . . . a starter, were you talking about a fluorescent light starter?

 

Senseney:

That is correct.

 

Baker:

What did it do?

 

Senseney:

It put out an aerosol in the room when you put the switch on.

 

Baker:

What about a cane, a walking cane?

 

Senseney:

Yes, an M-1 projectile could be fired from a cane; also an umbrella.

 

Baker:

Also an umbrella. What about a straight pin?

 

Senseney:

Straight pin?

 

Baker:

Yes, sir.

 

Senseney:

We made a straight pin, out at the Branch. I did not make it, but I know it was made, and it was used by one Mr. Powers on his U-2 mission.

 

Huddleston:

Were there frequent transfers of material between Dr. Gordon's [a researcher at Fort Detrick] 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 46-40. This was done maybe five or six in one quantity. And maybe six weeks to six 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 of the hardware except the projectile, okay?

 

Huddleston:

Indicating that they have been used?

 

Senseney:

Correct.

 

Huddleston:

But it could have been used on a human being?

 

Senseney:

There is no reason why it could not, I guess.

 

Schweiker:

Mr. Senseney, I would like to read into the record [from a CIA document] at this point a quote from paragraph nine [exhibit 6, document 67]: "When funds permit, adaptation and testing will be conducted of a new, highly effective disseminating system which has been demonstrated to be capable of introducing materials through light clothing, subcutaneously, intramuscularly, and silently, without pain."

 

Now, I just have a little trouble, Mr. Senseney, reconciling your answers in conjunction with this project, when the CIA document makes clear that one of the very specific purposes of the funding and the operation was to find a weapon that could penetrate light clothing subcutaneously, which obviously means through the skin, and intramuscularly, which obviously means through the muscles of a person. And are you saying that you have absolutely no recollection at all that tests or programs were designed to use any of these devices to permeate clothing on people and not dogs?

 

Senseney:

We put them on mannequins.

 

Schweiker:

What's that?

 

Senseney:

We put clothing on mannequins to see whether we could penetrate it. These were the requirements. You almost read the exact requirements that the SDR quoted from the Special Forces there.

 

Schweiker:

I would not expect you to test them on live human beings. I would hope that you did use mannequins, Mr. Senseney. Wouldn't that be directed toward people-usage, though? That is the point we're trying to establish.

 

Senseney:

That is what the Special Forces direction was. You have to look at it this way. The Army program wanted this device. That is the only thing that was delivered to them. It was a spin-off, of course, from the M-1. The M- 1 was a lethal weapon, meant to kill a person, for the Army. It was to be used in Vietnam. It never got there, because we were not fast enough getting it into the logistics system.

 

Schweiker:

What was the most-utilized device of the ones with which you worked and supervised?

 

Senseney:

The only thing I know that was really used was the dog projectile. The other things were in the stockpiles. I don't think anyone ever requested them.

 

Schweiker:

How do you know for certain it was for dogs?

 

Senseney:

Well that is what they asked us to test them against. They wanted to see whether they could put a dog to sleep, and whether sometime later the dog would come back and be on its own and look normal.

 

Schweiker:

Of the devices that came through you, which of these were utilized in any capacity other than for testing?

 

Senseney:

That was the only one that I know of--the dog projectile. I call it a dog projectile. We were developing it because the scenario read that they wanted to be able to make entrance into an area which was patrolled by dogs, leave, the dog come back, and then no one would ever know they were in the area. So that was the reason for the dog projectile.

 

Church:

Thank you Senator Schweiker. I think it is clear that the CIA was interested in the development of a delivery system that could reach human beings, since not many dogs wear clothing. And you would agree with that, wouldn't you?

 

Senseney:

Yes.

 

Church:

Okay.

 

Schwarz:

Along the same line, I assume you must agree that spending money in order to make darts of such a character that they cannot be detected in an autopsy does not have much to do with dogs?

 

Senseney:

No, that would not have anything to do with dogs.

</q>

[David Andrews]

Cliff: So is Kennedy's elbows-up-and fists-clenched gesture caused by a T-3 graze, and maintained so long because of a paralytic?

I think, given the overall situation on a short stretch of Elm Street in Dealey Plaza, with its tall buildings, foliage, and ground-level shooting blinds, that various types of conventional ammo rounds brought satisfaction of all operational goals.

Is the introduction of the projectile gun (note: small arms) into the Church hearings part of the process of the False Mystery creation that Vincent Salandria complained about?  Salandria said that Congressional hearings, however well-meaning, would only produce limited-hangout revelations that intelligence agencies were capable of spooky, nefarious dealings.  The projectile gun, and the Steven Louis Witt umbrella, played out like Halloween pranks in the Committee Room, and signified nothing.

Edited March 7, 2019 by David Andrews

[Kirk Gallaway]

19 hours ago, David Andrews said:

I wish we knew more of what Ruth and Michael Paine discussed with Vincent Salandria and Shirley Martin.  Salandria, in his "The Role of the Paines in History" statement (2016), gave us the subtly threatening remarks Michael Paine made when introduced, but not anything after.  Even the tenor of further remarks by the Paines would be important to know.

This is as much as you get about the Paines from the 1994 interview transcript (of the clip above):

"[Oswald] was befriended by Michael Paine, who had secret clearance, working in Bell Helicopter although his father George Lyman Paine had been a Trotskyist and for that kind of clearance, when you’re associated with the family with left wing connections of that sort some quid pro quo has to be given. So Michael Paine, very likely, was doing favors for US intelligence in order to be able to have a secret clearance. He was associated with Oswald and he told me, Michael Paine told me, in an interview, that he would go with Oswald to right-wing meetings in the Dallas area and that Oswald would take very careful notes afterwards and he was apparently reporting on the right wing in Dallas. Michael Paine told me he went with him to the ACLU meeting and that Oswald joined the ACLU."

Here's a link to Michael Paine's subtle threats and their real-world associations in "The Role of the Paines":

https://ratical.org/ratville/JFK/FalseMystery/ThePainesRoleInHistory.html

 

Good find, Dave! , As far as Specter's almost disaffected owning of the WC findings SBT, etc. that's the way he's always played it.

It's the meeting with the Paines, (you would assume they lived in the same house, and they were reunited for a time? Or maybe one was visiting?) That throughout the trip, they were under  surveillance , the incident with the man at Dealey Plaza and the Paines were tipped off and Michael was subtly threatening? Then stopped by the police on the way home. Whew!

So the Paines are having occasional interviews with another JFK Assassination official story critic. But she's no threat until she brings over Salandria without telling the Paines, but they've already found out he was coming.

My thoughts:, The conclusion Salandria is putting forth is the one I've always considered. That they,  in their " no need to know basis" found themselves in the middle of a situation way beyond them, and seemingly beyond their previous affiliations. If as Salandria implies the reason for their compromise is  Paine's father's Trotskyite background in order to get a work clearance,  it  sounds  very thin. It seems to me,, there would have to be many other reasons. Otherwise, It just seems like a very dangerous, precarious plan that involves  too close an exposure for Dulles. How can Ruth and Michael ever be vetted enough to be assured that when being placed in such a precarious position that they could be expected to stand up to such an enormous pressure as a Presidential Assassination? Nobody can say this fits together like a glove.

He praises Talbot for his exposure of Dulles but Talbot doesn't see the Paines as complicit as Salandria does, but Salandria exhorts them, (now too late for at least one of them),  to finally come clean.

 

 

Edited March 7, 2019 by Kirk Gallaway

[Cliff Varnell]

35 minutes ago, David Andrews said:

Cliff: So is Kennedy's elbows-up-and fists-clenched gesture caused by a T-3 graze, and maintained so long because of a paralytic?

The throat shot may have been a paralytic.  If it were possible to wager on such a thing, that's how I'd bet.

35 minutes ago, David Andrews said:

I think, given the overall situation on a short stretch of Elm Street in Dealey Plaza, with its tall buildings, foliage, and ground-level shooting blinds, that various types of conventional ammo rounds brought satisfaction of all operational goals.

How could a first-shot/kill-shot be guaranteed?

35 minutes ago, David Andrews said:

Is the introduction of the projectile gun (note: small arms) into the Church hearings part of the process of the False Mystery creation that Vincent Salandria complained about?  Salandria said that Congressional hearings, however well-meaning, would only produce limited-hangout revelations that intelligence agencies were capable of spooky, nefarious dealings.  The projectile gun, and the Steven Louis Witt umbrella, played out like Halloween pranks in the Committee Room, and signified nothing.

Free Louis Witt!

[David Andrews]

Kirk,

I'll have to reread Talbot.  It seems odd that he discounts the Paines' complicity.

I think that the establishment's confidence in the Paines rests on Michael's pan in the scales.  He was the stepson of Arthur M. Young, a founder of Bell Helicopter, the new growth industry in defense tech.  Michael's family background could be traded on in ingratiating him with any Leftist groups he might infiltrate.  But how liberal was that family background, really?  Look up the father, Lyman Paine, a rich, supposed Trotskyite from a Progressive-Socialist family background, stretching back to the age of the Social Gospel in America (through his grandfather, the lawyer and philanthropist George Treat Paine).  Lyman Paine was rich enough and establishment enough to marry Ruth Forbes (who later married Arthur Young), another social progressive with money.  Yet Mary Bancroft, Allen Dulles's lover and intelligence operative, was a guest at their 1930s parties.  Michael meets Ruth Hyde, his future wife, a Quaker from an artsy-pacifist family, at Antioch College, considered a hotbed for intelligence recruitment.  Despite his Engineering degree, at the time of JFKA Michael's job at Bell is assembling small electrical devices (one thinks of Oswald in Minsk) - so not a mind occupied beyond the weekday 9-to-5.

Ruth began studying Russian in 1957, at about the time Western relations with Russia, and Russian policy and nuclear testing, were changing from the Stalinist era.  Wikipedia mentions that, "In the late 1950s she participated in Quaker pen pal programs and the East-West Contact Committee, which sponsored visits by three Soviets to the US."

The Paines together had every qualification to be a formidable tag-team of domestic intelligence agents.  There's a certain resemblance to that other cold war fun couple, Cord Meyer and Mary Pinchot: Family privilege, liberal leanings, involvement in peacenik and socially progressive causes - yet associations that bring them into the spheres of government power and the intelligence community, areas not known for their liberality.  When your lives are shaped by the idealism you misplaced in working with these forces, why would you not keep shtum when a president is killed and the assassin gets it the same weekend?

It would be useful to investigate what the Paines were doing in the late 1950s, before and after marriage.

Edited March 8, 2019 by David Andrews

[David Andrews]

1 hour ago, Cliff Varnell said:

The throat shot may have been a paralytic.  If it were possible to wager on such a thing, that's how I'd bet.

How could a first-shot/kill-shot be guaranteed?

Free Louis Witt!

I'm thinking that if there was a paralytic hit at all, it was the back wound, with the round fired from relatively close distance, such as from the Dal-Tex Building. 

The throat wound - though that slug is missing, too - strikes me as a long-range head shot that missed.  A frontal head shot could be covered up, as we've seen.  A frontal chest shot, not so much.  Who would aim for the throat and expect a hit, plus a hit that could be covered up?  It could be argued, though, that a frontal free-for-all was ordered by radio once mortal wounding failed during the turn on Elm and ahead of the Stemmons sign.

I suspect the throat wound came through the windshield, and that it missed the head because the shooter fired on his last possible view of JFK through the windshield and its frame elements, as the limo was descending the Elm Street grade.  Holding JFK in the shooter's scope view as the limo approached and descended may have affected his aim.

Is someone going to fire a dissolving projectile round through a windshield?  Then again, Vincent Salandria would disapprove of this discussion.

Edited March 7, 2019 by David Andrews

[Cliff Varnell]

1 hour ago, David Andrews said:

I'm thinking that if there was a paralytic hit at all, it was the back wound, with the round fired from relatively close distance, such as from the Dal-Tex Building. 

I don't buy it.  JFK raised his fists to a position that would have prevented a second shot to the throat -- a defensive posture.  According to SS SA Glenn Bennett's well-corroborated contemporaneous notes JFK was hit in the back immediately before the head shot/s.

Quote

The throat wound - though that slug is missing, too - strikes me as a long-range head shot that missed. 

I don't buy it.  I'd bet the shot came from Black Dog Man.

Quote

 

A frontal head shot could be covered up, as we've seen.  A frontal chest shot, not so much.  Who would aim for the throat and expect a hit, plus a hit that could be covered up?

Someone who wanted to paralyze JFK first, to prevent a wounded POTUS from ducking down.

Someone who wanted to frame the patsy as an agent of the KGB.

Quote

 

  It could be argued, though, that a frontal free-for-all was ordered by radio once mortal wounding failed during the turn on Elm and ahead of the Stemmons sign.

I suspect the throat wound came through the windshield, and that it missed the head because the shooter fired on his last possible view of JFK through the windshield and its frame elements, as the limo was descending the Elm Street grade.  Holding JFK in the shooter's scope view as the limo approached and descended may have affected his aim.

Is someone going to fire a dissolving projectile round through a windshield? 

I don't buy that, no.

Quote

 

Then again, Vincent Salandria would disapprove of this discussion.

Why do you say that?  We're discussing the bigger picture.

Who would want to frame the patsy as an agent of the KGB?

 

Edited March 7, 2019 by Cliff Varnell