The Mysterious Life and Death of James McCord

[Michael Clark]

 

1 hour ago, Paul Jolliffe said:

Michael,

You asked an excellent question: since McCord already received his "Q" clearance from the AEC (exactly what was a "Q" clearance, anyway?), why this additional October 16, 1963, clearance? 

Maybe this has something to do with it?

According to the CIA itself, McCord's AEC "Q" clearance on July 27, 1962, came just as 

"Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev decided to develop Cuba into a nuclear base, and in mid-July Soviet shipments of conventional weapons and military equipment intensified. Throughout the summer, American policymakers and intelligence officials speculated about what the buildup meant. The IC concluded that Moscow's actions in Cuba were defensive, designed mainly to shore up a revolutionary ally while marginally improving its own political position in the region.

Director of Central Intelligence John McCone was virtually alone in assessing that the Kremlin had more malevolent intentions: the buildup was a prelude to the deployment of nuclear missiles. McCone believed that Khrushchev was trying to overcome US strategic superiority and extort diplomatic concessions by establishing a nuclear outpost near the United States."

So McCord's 1962 "Q" clearance came just as the CIA was looking for evidence to make its case that the missiles in Cuba were offensive, not defensive.

And so perhaps McCord's October 1963 clearance came just as the CIA was looking for/planting/creating wiretap evidence in Mexico City . . . that Castro - with Soviet approval - would kill Kennedy?

I think there is a connection between the timing of McCord's two clearances and US/Soviet relations. Both times his clearances came just as we were on the brink.

https://www.cia.gov/news-information/featured-story-archive/2007-featured-story-archive/a-look-back-remembering-the-cuban-missile-crisis.html

IIRC, I found a relationship between McCord and a Oxcart camera manufacturer in Connecticut.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_A-12

The docs for that link/relationship should be in the documents I shared on the James McCord thread.

 

[Michael Clark]

@Paul Jolliffe

here is that Oxcart/U2 connection.

On 4/14/2018 at 6:56 PM, Michael Clark said:

CIA program HT AUTOMAT

Keywords: HT AUTOMAT,  AQUATONE, OSI, James McCord Jr., Dr. Herbert Scoville, R. C. Swendiman

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

From "The Almost Classified guide to CIA Front Companies":

Perkin-Elmer (CIA Front Company) Based in Norwalk, Connecticut. Manufactured camera system for project Oxcart, the CIA's SR-71 program and U-2 photography, Project AUTOMAT.

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

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=53772#relPageId=2&tab=page

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

https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/document/cia-rdp61s00750a000500090038-5

ASSIGNMENT OF PERSONNEL: PROJECTS AQUATONE AND HT AUTOMAT

Document Type: 

CREST

Collection: 

General CIA Records

Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): 

CIA-RDP61S00750A000500090038-5

Release Decision: 

RIPPUB

Original Classification: 

S

Document Page Count: 

1

Document Creation Date: 

December 9, 2016

Document Release Date: 

March 12, 2001

Sequence Number: 

38

Case Number: 

 

Publication Date: 

July 30, 1957

Content Type: 

MF

File: 

Attachment	Size
CIA-RDP61S00750A000500090038-5.pdf	40.97 KB

Body: 

Approved For Release 2001/3G/8SE lA-RDP61 S0075OA000500090038-5
1t!DLE VIA TALENT
TCS-1723-57
Copy-Lof.
C .lUi. 957
MEMORA1]JM FOR: Project Director
ATTENTION 25X1A9a
SUBJECT : Assignment of Personnel: Projects AQUATONE and HT AUTOMAT
25X1A9a
1. As a result of the recent assignment of
on indefinite TDY to NSA, this Office has decided on a realignment of
responsibilities relative to OSI participation in Projects AQUATONE

 

 

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

(Note: below, I deleted and added ".pdf" in the following link so it does not automatically show as a document)

https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP61S00750A000500090038-5.pdf

 

 

 

[David Andrews]

12 hours ago, Jim Harwood said:

I'm sorry David I cannot follow your comment although I am sure it's very insightful. I don't know what "neo-LaRoucheist" means nor do I know what the acronym BNDD means. I do disagree with your assessment that Nixon was mobbed up higher than his two predecessors. The Kennedy political machine was organized crime in government. Just look at who went on to run Meyer Lansky's Resorts International subsidiary INTERTEL, all the Kennedy justice boys. Those that didn't join INTERTEL joined the Jacobs money laundering apparatus Emprise. 

I think Tricky Dick had one of his advisors Jack Caufield (???) warn him about what he called the Kennedy machine using their Stephen Smith run private intelligence apparatus INTERTEL to run some kind of operation against him in 1972. We got Watergate so it looks like caufield was at least correct about an operation run against Nixon. 

And by the way Pierre Salinger and five of JFK' s white house staff and advisors (they were Larry O'brien boys-- wasn't Larry the head of the DNC when Watergate burglary happened?) went on to run GRAMCO Management Ltd. a London , Bahamas based "off shore" hot money company that planned to merge with Robert Vesco and Bernie Cornfield's Investors Overseas Services in 1970. Now that's Dope Inc. and you might want to answer what the Kennedy machine is doing running security for Meyer Lansky and laundering dirty money at GRAMCO. It's a puzzle isn't it? 

Good leads in your follow-up, thanks.  BNDD = Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (foreruner of DEA), set up by the Nixon admin, infiltrated by CIA.  The party never stopped, from Vientiane to Mexico City.

Edited April 11, 2019 by David Andrews

[Jim Harwood]

9 hours ago, David Andrews said:

Good leads in your follow-up, thanks.  BNDD = Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (foreruner of DEA), set up by the Nixon admin, infiltrated by CIA.  The party never stopped, from Vientiane to Mexico City.

Here is a good lead David--New York Times 1970. Robert Vesco (who most researchers agree took over Meyer Lansky's dope business) and Bernie Cornfield of IOS or Investors Overseas Services are in talks with JFK intern (Keith Barrish)and JFK press secretary Pierre Salinger to merge IOS and GRAMCO Management Ltd. Also on the GRAMCO side are five former JFK White House staffers and advisors including one guy who would go on to become the CEO of Nike (of course he was a Larry O'Brien man and O'brien would get rewarded for his role in Watergate by getting the plum job as Commissioner of the NBA "I like Mike"). 

Also on the Gramco Management Ltd side of the equation was Prince Borghese of the infamous "Black Pope" Nato and Gladio terrorist networks sometimes fingered in the killing of JFK as well as Enrico Mattei.  So what's Salinger and five former JFK loyalist doing partnering up with Prince Borghese as well as the Vesco/Cornfield / Lansky mob?  It's a puzzle isn't it?  By the way Keith Barrish the JFK intern and head of GRAMCO would go on to produce many hollywood films ala Joe Kennedy Sr. as well as form the restaurant chain Planet Hollywood with partners Bruce Willis, Sly Stallone and Maria Schriver's husband  Arnold the "Governator" . Them Kennedy's they're so clean.  Heroin addiction, dead wives and dead female staffers, Teddy's collaboration with the KGB against the SDI policy. I could go on and on. 

So when you claim Nixon is mobbed up you might want to look closer at the facts.

https://www.nytimes.com/1970/12/19/archives/ios-and-gramco-break-off-talks-ios-and-gramco-terminate-their.html

 

 

[David Andrews]

On 4/10/2019 at 11:37 AM, Joe Bauer said:

The simple truth above regards the eventual price of country raping colonialism.

However, I don't think the last paragraph applies to the truth as well. 

I don't know how anyone could not know that there was so much more involved in England and Churchill's early war stance against Hitler.

They knew Hitler was mad with aggression and had built a war machine that was already so vast and powerful and he would certainly use it on England unfettered as soon as he and it had consumed and consolidated the greater part of continental Europe.

Why wait for the inevitable which would have only made it easier for Hitler?

We should have declared war with Germany much earlier also as we knew what Churchill knew.

If you look at Hitler's war strategies, he was willing to try to bomb England into submission, but he was reticent to invade the shores of a great Nordic empire that he respected and envied.  Several times before invading Russia, Hitler refused to act on plans for a sea-land invasion and occupation of England, hoping to sway the monarchy into a separate peace through his conquest of Europe and Russia.  Once his Russian invasion failed, and the Russian push westward succeeded (and ate up Germany's armies, materiel and capital), all England plans faded.

Edited April 11, 2019 by David Andrews

[David Andrews]

6 hours ago, Jim Harwood said:

Here is a good lead David--New York Times 1970. Robert Vesco (who most researchers agree took over Meyer Lansky's dope business) and Bernie Cornfield of IOS or Investors Overseas Services are in talks with JFK intern (Keith Barrish)and JFK press secretary Pierre Salinger to merge IOS and GRAMCO Management Ltd. Also on the GRAMCO side are five former JFK White House staffers and advisors including one guy who would go on to become the CEO of Nike (of course he was a Larry O'Brien man and O'brien would get rewarded for his role in Watergate by getting the plum job as Commissioner of the NBA "I like Mike"). 

Also on the Gramco Management Ltd side of the equation was Prince Borghese of the infamous "Black Pope" Nato and Gladio terrorist networks sometimes fingered in the killing of JFK as well as Enrico Mattei.  So what's Salinger and five former JFK loyalist doing partnering up with Prince Borghese as well as the Vesco/Cornfield / Lansky mob?  It's a puzzle isn't it?  By the way Keith Barrish the JFK intern and head of GRAMCO would go on to produce many hollywood films ala Joe Kennedy Sr. as well as form the restaurant chain Planet Hollywood with partners Bruce Willis, Sly Stallone and Maria Schriver's husband  Arnold the "Governator" . Them Kennedy's they're so clean.  Heroin addiction, dead wives and dead female staffers, Teddy's collaboration with the KGB against the SDI policy. I could go on and on. 

So when you claim Nixon is mobbed up you might want to look closer at the facts.

https://www.nytimes.com/1970/12/19/archives/ios-and-gramco-break-off-talks-ios-and-gramco-terminate-their.html

 

 

And let's not forget JFK's good friend Grant Stockdale, go-between for the Mob vending machine rackets and the White House.  Stockdale claimed to have delivered (if I remember) $500K in a briefcase to the Oval Office, only to see Kennedy put it into a closet full of briefcases.  This - and Stockdale's post-assassination death - is discussed in past threads.

[Joe Bauer]

3 hours ago, David Andrews said:

And let's not forget JFK's good friend Grant Stockdale, go-between for the Mob vending machine rackets and the White House.  Stockdale claimed to have delivered (if I remember) $500K in a briefcase to the Oval Office, only to see Kennedy put it into a closet full of briefcases.  This - and Stockdale's post-assassination death - is discussed in past threads.

I can't believe JFK would ever need to take payoffs like what is stated in the above article.

Stockdale could very well have been corrupted like that...but JFK...no way!

[David Andrews]

32 minutes ago, Joe Bauer said:

I can't believe JFK would ever need to take payoffs like what is stated in the above article.

Stockdale could very well have been corrupted like that...but JFK...no way!

Stockdale is extensively discussed in the back threads.  All I know, I learned there.

The way Stockdale told it, it was he who was shocked by the far reach of corruption, and by what his friend Jack asked of him.  Then he died.

Edited April 11, 2019 by David Andrews

[David Josephs]

On 4/10/2019 at 12:39 PM, Paul Jolliffe said:

So McCord's 1962 "Q" clearance came just as the CIA was looking for evidence to make its case that the missiles in Cuba were offensive, not defensive.

 

SO DOES THIS MEAN HE WAS less OR more IMPORTANT THAN ALL THE REDACTED NAMES....   

https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/docid-32363606.pdf 

[James DiEugenio]

Sorry I have been away brethren.  I got sick.  I am getting a little worried about my health.  But I feel fortunate since I at least have a health plan for my retirement.

About Stockdale, it was not alleged to be 500 K, it was 50 K.   

The source for this story is Sy Hersh's hatchet job, The Dark Side of Camelot.  Which, as some have said, should really be titled the "Dark Side of Sy Hersh". 

The idea that somehow a multi millionaire like Kennedy, who donated his hundred thousand salary to charity and made secret contributions to people like Tommy Mboya in the six figures, would have to ask someone like Stockdale to raise a five figure amount is preposterous on its face.  

In that book, Hersh understood where to get as much dirt as he could, and if he could not get it from anyone well....we can do what we did with Underwood:

Finally, to prove that Exner was being used as an anti-Kennedy vehicle, consider the Martin Underwood appendage to the saga. By 1997, Exner had gone hog-wild with her mythology. She now said she was carrying money and messages to Chicago from the White House and she would deliver them to a train station with Giancana waiting for her. This was so silly on its face that Hersh knew he needed a corroborating witness for it. So apparently, with help from Gus Russo, he tried to recruit Martin Underwood to accompany Exner in this film noir scenario. Underwood had worked for Mayor Richard Daley in Chicago and then did some advance work in 1960 for the Kennedy campaign. But the Exner follies now collapsed. Under questioning from the Assassination Records Review Board, Underwood would not go along with the scheme and said he knew nothing about such train travel or Judith Exner. (O’Brien, p. 40; see also “ Who is Gus Russo?”)

[Paul Jolliffe]

2 hours ago, David Josephs said:

 

SO DOES THIS MEAN HE WAS less OR more IMPORTANT THAN ALL THE REDACTED NAMES....   

https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/docid-32363606.pdf 

David,

I agree that it is mighty curious that our man's name was not redacted on a list of those whose "Q" clearances were terminated as of March 7, 1972. 

"Q clearance or Q access authorization is the Department of Energy (DOE) security clearance required to access Top Secret Restricted Data, Formerly Restricted Data, and National Security Information, as well as Secret Restricted Data. Restricted Data (RD) is defined in the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 and covers nuclear weapons and related materials. "

"Anyone possessing an active Q clearance is always categorized as holding a National Security Critical-Sensitive position (sensitivity Level 3).^[3] Additionally, most Q-cleared incumbents will have collateral responsibilities designating them as Level 4: National Security Special-Sensitive personnel.^[4] With these two designations standing as the highest-risk sensitivity levels, occupants of these positions hold extraordinary accountability, harnessing the potential to cause exceptionally grave or inestimable damage to the national security of the United States."

So on July 27, 1962, longtime CIA professional James W. McCord, Jr. (and "zap man" for Richard Helms) was issued one of these super-duper clearances from the Dept. of Energy, giving him access to really dangerous nuclear weapons information. And at that very moment, the CIA was virtually alone in trying to persuade the rest of the government that the weapons buildup in Cuba was offensive. 

A "Q" clearance had to be renewed every five years, so McCord's clearance was renewed in 1967 and was good until 1972. (It would seem that it was renewed just as Jim Garrison's case against Clay Shaw was first heating up. But whether it was related to that, well, I don't know.)

We do know that by March of 1972, McCord had recently "retired" from the CIA and was hired by Jack Caulfield  for "defensive" security work at CREEP.  So his "Q" clearance was no longer necessary.

But this brings me back to my post yesterday, about JFK press conference on September 13, 1962, the one in which it is very apparent that Kennedy was very stressed about the arms buildup. He was even more concerned about keeping the military/intelligence/hawks from running wild with their public statements about the situation, which as he said:

"Unilateral military intervention, on the part of the United States, can not currently be either required or justified. And it is regrettable that loose talk about such action in this country might serve to give a thin color of legitimacy to the communist pretense that such a threat exists . . ."

I am sure that McCord's initial "Q" clearance had something to do with the pressure on President Kennedy from his own national security state people who wanted desperately to invade Cuba.

Here is JFK's press conference.

https://www.jfklibrary.org/asset-viewer/archives/JFKWHA/1962/JFKWHA-126/JFKWHA-126

Edited April 12, 2019 by Paul Jolliffe

[Ron Bulman]

5 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

Sorry I have been away brethren.  I got sick.  I am getting a little worried about my health.  But I feel fortunate since I at least have a health plan for my retirement.

About Stockdale, it was not alleged to be 500 K, it was 50 K.   

The source for this story is Sy Hersh's hatchet job, The Dark Side of Camelot.  Which, as some have said, should really be titled the "Dark Side of Sy Hersh". 

The idea that somehow a multi millionaire like Kennedy, who donated his hundred thousand salary to charity and made secret contributions to people like Tommy Mboya in the six figures, would have to ask someone like Stockdale to raise a five figure amount is preposterous on its face.  

In that book, Hersh understood where to get as much dirt as he could, and if he could not get it from anyone well....we can do what we did with Underwood:

Finally, to prove that Exner was being used as an anti-Kennedy vehicle, consider the Martin Underwood appendage to the saga. By 1997, Exner had gone hog-wild with her mythology. She now said she was carrying money and messages to Chicago from the White House and she would deliver them to a train station with Giancana waiting for her. This was so silly on its face that Hersh knew he needed a corroborating witness for it. So apparently, with help from Gus Russo, he tried to recruit Martin Underwood to accompany Exner in this film noir scenario. Underwood had worked for Mayor Richard Daley in Chicago and then did some advance work in 1960 for the Kennedy campaign. But the Exner follies now collapsed. Under questioning from the Assassination Records Review Board, Underwood would not go along with the scheme and said he knew nothing about such train travel or Judith Exner. (O’Brien, p. 40; see also “ Who is Gus Russo?”)

Sorry to hear about health problems, I've had a couple in the last couple years myself.  Thankfully relatively minor, so far.  Glad to see you back.

[James DiEugenio]

Thanks Ron.

Its time consuming going to the doctor and driving around to get tests made. Then they say I am fine, but I still get sick.

Thank God I am not paying for this health plan. 

[Joe Bauer]

8 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said:

Thanks Ron.

Its time consuming going to the doctor and driving around to get tests made. Then they say I am fine, but I still get sick.

Thank God I am not paying for this health plan. 

Jim, sincerely sorry to hear about your health situation.

And with all those tests ..."I still get sick." ?

My gosh, that sounds like a truly frustrating challenge to handle ( mentally and physically ) I am sure and I hope the doctors can discover why you still feel sick sooner rather than later.

Just to offer some brethren support I gotta tell you I think I can honestly say I know how you feel.

At 67, I am dealing with Afib, hyper tension, GI tract problems, immune system problems, prostrate problems, over-weight and sleep problems, even worsening Tinnitus!

So many trips to doctors, exams, and the hospital. I was just in our local hospital for two days last week until my heart went back into sinus rhythm.

Most of these conditions can only be "managed" not cured.

And they call older aging ... "The Golden Years?" 

"Rust Years" is more like it.

My situation is so age typical though I am sure. And I am grateful for every day I can still do normal physical and mental things and be in my right mind.

You've been a research information mentor to me in my years of following and finally posting on this forum. Much appreciation there.

Still catch you on KKUP out of Cupertino.

My wife will have this station on in her room as she gets in bed, and she'll come out and say "Hey, your Jim Di guy is on in a few minutes" ... where upon she hands me my little portable AM/FM and I get my fix on sections of Destiny Betrayed.

Best healing thoughts your way Jim Di.

 

[James DiEugenio]

Thanks, glad to know I am not the only one with these problems. I might ask my doctor to send me to the hospital for more and better testing.

As for the KKUP, I imagine that is Dave Emory's For the Record.

He had me on for a record breaking 12 shows.  That is how much he liked Destiny Betrayed.