John Newman on Lisa Pease's challenges to his research

[Ron Bulman]

6 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said:

BTW, I hope everyone reads that document that Larry posted.

I think it makes it clear that Alpha 66 was a freelance operation that was being surveyed by G2 but being monitored by CIA.  In fact Vance made it clear he was going to ask CIA for permission to use them.

Cyrus Vance, Yale 1939?  You lost me.  (I had to look).  

[James DiEugenio]

Yes Vance wrote the memo Larry posted.

Here it is again

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=197497#relPageId=1&tab=page

Edited January 2, 2020 by James DiEugenio

[Douglas Caddy]

If I were a young university graduate student today and chose to write my thesis on the subject of a conspiracy in the assassination of President John Kennedy, I would be puzzled at what I found. I would discover that dedicated researchers for decades had promulgated that the CIA and its leaders Allen Dulles and James Angleton were the conspiracy’s principal decision makers and planners. That is up until now.

     Then I would find that a new belief is taking hold among these dedicated researchers, led by renowned scholar John Newman, that the old conspiracy theory was not correct, that everyone had been looking in the wrong direction for all these years, and that this required reorienting research efforts by 180 degrees. The real principal conspirators were in the U. S. Military, not the CIA, and the Pentagon had labored successfully to keep itself clear of the entire tragic saga.  Chief among those Pentagon conspirators was General Lyman Lemnitzer, who served as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1960 to 1962 and then as Supreme Allied Commander Europe of NAT0 from 1963 to 1969.

     As I continued to work on my thesis I would discover that President Kennedy was intrigued by a 1962 book titled, Seven Days in May, and had even made the White House available for filming to lend authenticity to the movie based on the book. The movie was released three months after JFK’s assassination.

     I would then read the book and view the movie that is about a military-political cabal’s planned takeover of the U.S. government in reaction to the president’s negotiation of a disarmament treaty with the Soviet Union. After that I would wait for the dust to settle among the dedicated researchers into the JFK assassination about this new controversial theory before I finished writing my graduate degree thesis.

 

[Joseph McBride]

Penn Jones thought it was a military coup. He was an old Army man himself.

[Pat Speer]

This finger-pointing at the CIA to draw attention from the military goes back to 1964. 

 From patspeer.com, Chapter 1b:

On February 12, 1964, the cinema classic Seven Days in May was released to the public. The film, a cautionary tale directed by John Frankenheimer, depicted an attempted military coup within the United States. The film's creation was encouraged by President Kennedy, who'd told a number of his friends that he thought such a coup was a real possibility should the president lose the support of the Pentagon. The initial response to the film reflects that elements of the media and government, even months after the assassination, still believed that their primary responsibility was to assure a worried public that everything was OK. As reported in David Talbot's Brothers, the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner publicly questioned whether the film should even have been made, as "The world is on too short a fuse," and the film could damage "the American image abroad." Across town, the Examiner's larger rival the L.A. Times shared this concern but instead took the time to assure its readers that nothing like this could happen in America. Meanwhile, congressmen called for the film to be clearly labeled fiction before it could be shown overseas.

The film certainly had an impact. A 2-14 memo from Secret Service Inspector Thomas Kelley to his boss James Rowley discussed proposed legislation making the investigation of a presidential assassination a federal offense, and the sole jurisdiction of the FBI. This, in Kelley's mind, would be a bad thing, and could lead to a "Seven Days in May situation" in which a "venal Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation could in the future bring about or allow the assassination of the President who he either felt was a poor President or a President unacceptable to him..." Kelley then proceeded to point out that the FBI has an appropriation for protection of the President, normally the responsibility of the Secret Service, "in case of an emergency" and that the Secret Service should similarly retain the capacity to investigate assassinations. (As Kelley had just conducted the Secret Service's investigation of the assassination, it can probably be assumed from this that he was not particularly impressed with the FBI's investigation, and that he had doubts about Director Hoover's determination to get to the bottom of the matter.)

Meanwhile, across the country, Americans picked up the February 15, 1964 edition of The Saturday Evening Post. Inside was an article by the CIA-friendly columnist Stewart Alsop, not surprisingly defending the CIA against some recent charges that it was out of control and was conducting its own foreign policy. No doubt concerned about the effect these charges might have on the public, particularly when combined with the almost simultaneous release of Seven Days in May in the theaters, Alsop tried to cut off any speculation of CIA involvement in the assassination of President Kennedy. He actually went further than that, and made out that anyone questioning their involvement was a communist dupe. He complained about the recent treatment of the CIA in general, and then reported "a few highly respectable journals have even half-echoed The Communist Worker's charge that Lee Harvey Oswald, murderer of President Kennedy, went to the Soviet Union in 1959 as a CIA hireling." Alsop then shared even more certain knowledge that he could not possibly know, assuring his readers: "Lee Harvey Oswald never at any time had any connection whatever with CIA, although suspicions on that score are perhaps natural in view of the mystery surrounding Oswald's travels and his sources of income. The highest officials in the CIA are ready to so testify--and indignantly--before the Warren Commission investigating the murder. 'If anybody in the CIA had hired so obvious a psychotic,' says one of the greatest experts in the intelligence business, 'he should have been fired on the spot.'" 

One might rightly wonder if Alsop's "expert" wasn't Allen Dulles himself, seeking to cut off the questions he knew would not be answered by the Warren Commission. One might also wonder why the "highest officials in the CIA" would be so "indignant" about being asked such a reasonable question, by men who fully understood that they would lie with impunity.

Two days later, on February 17, 1964, possibly at the prodding of the same CIA employees who'd probably prodded Alsop (this might have been Allen Dulles-let's be realistic), and possibly at the prodding of President Lyndon Johnson, with whom he was quite friendly and from whom he was hoping to receive a slot as Vice-President, Senator Thomas Dodd of Connecticut made a long speech defending the CIA. Dodd repeatedly, and cynically, quoted President Kennedy in support of the CIA. He concluded "I think it can be stated as a certainty that many countries that remain free today would not be free if it had not been for the CIA." The CIA's possible involvement in killing Kennedy was not among the litany of criticisms dismissed by Senator Dodd. Apparently, such talk was not to be acknowledged within the hallowed halls of the U.S. Senate. 

Within a few days, in its February 21, 1964 issue, Life Magazine published yet another article on Oswald, and once again convicted him in the public eye. The cover featured a photo of Oswald holding a rifle, with a pistol on his hip. The caption read "Lee Oswald with the weapons he used to kill President Kennedy and Officer Tippit." The cover story was entitled "The Evolution of an Assassin." This echoed a 12-20 Life article written with the help of the FBI's report. That article had been entitled "The Assassin: a Cold, Lone Man Who Resented All Authority." Real subtle.

The media's investigation of Kennedy's assassination, if you could call it that, was by now pretty much over. They'd relied upon the FBI, and the FBI had misled them, for political purposes. 

A 2-24-64 FBI memo from F.J. Baumgartner to Deputy Director William Sullivan supports this point. It reports that Oswald's mother, Marguerite Oswald, and Mark Lane, a lawyer trying to present a public defense of Oswald, spoke at a public meeting in New York, sponsored by The National Guardian, a left-wing newspaper. It reports that "At this meeting it was implied that Oswald was not responsible for the assassination and the handling of the investigation by the Government was criticized." It then notes that a "reliable source"--clearly an undercover operative attending the meeting--spotted Alger Hiss, a one-time member of the State Department, accused of being a communist spy, and convicted of perjury relating to his involvement in the communist party--in attendance. Baumgartner then proposed that this be leaked to the press in order to discredit Lane and--by extension--those daring to imply that Oswald's guilt remained open to question. He even wrote the article he proposed and suggested it "be placed with a cooperative news media source at the Seat of Government."

Although, as far as can be determined, this article never saw print, it seems clear that many sharing its bias, prevailed.

Oswald had been convicted as the sole assassin by President Lyndon B. Johnson, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, the New York Times, Newsweek, T.V. Guide, and Life Magazine. The only witnesses called by the Commission up to this date had been members of his own family. 

If there had been conspirators still at large, they were now specks off in the distance. 

 

[Anthony Mugan]

The points I was trying to make earlier, perhaps not all that clearly were that, as far as I understand the current evidence:

1) Professor Newman has convincingly demonstrated that Veciana lied about the circumstances of his recruitment by the CIA. The reason for that lie is not yet clear to me although there are a wide range of possibilities it is premature to form firm conclusions on that.

2) Other researchers have long since demonstrated that Alpha 66 was not under CIA control by 1963 (e.g. Hancock’s ‘Someone Would have Talked and references therein.). They have also discussed that Alpha 66 did collaborate with CIA personnel on specific matters but also that they worked with Army Intelligence.

3) We will just have to wait for Professor Newman to develop his thesis to see exactly what the significance of the material he is working with is and how it fits into the wider picture.

4) It would be as near a certainty as anything in this area can be that, however the Veciana information develops, it will have to fit into a wider picture of a network of individuals centred on the most radical elements of the anti-Castro groups (many of whom were in Operation 40 and in one or more of the groups such as Alpha 66, the DRE etc.) together with individuals very closely associated with them. The current evidence developed by many researchers over many years strongly suggests this will include people from the CIA and the mob. If people more directly associated with the Army fit into that picture more convincingly that they do currently (yes, I’m aware of the DPD officers who were also reservists and various others bits around that side of things such as Prouty’s accusations about Lansdale etc.) then fine, but at the moment the purpose behind Veciana’s lie is unclear.

[Steve Thomas]

On 12/30/2019 at 11:45 AM, Steve Thomas said:

I remembered a conversation Larry Hancock and I had in the Forum back in 2017 about JFK's, Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board.

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/23631-foreign-intelligence-advisory-board/

I was reading through the minutes of the FIA Board (Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board) meeting of January 30, 1964

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=1961#relPageId=1&tab=page

and a couple of things jumped out at me:

5) The Dunlap case was a lot more serious than most of us know about.

Finnegan, James Patrick. Military Intelligence. Center of Military History, United States Army. Wasshington, D.C., 1998. page 139.

https://history.army.mil/html/books/060/60-13-1/cmhPub_60-13-1.pdf?fbclid=IwAR0fXdB8NCpxTOmB-WsJRPxhcgxc9RCvfEdezKJReRSM8mmSPjMe-jr1rVM

 

 

Dunlap will be a concern in the Eugene Dinkin case.

 

Steve Thomas

Edited July 18, 2023 by Steve Thomas

[W. Tracy Parnell]

8 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

Hardway said that not only  did Phillips lie before the HSCA, he admitted he lied.

When did he admit he lied please?

8 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

As Jim Hougan showed, Edwin Wilson knew that Phillips used that alias, and Cliff Fenton, who was chief investigator under Tanenbaum, had sources inside the CIA who also confirmed that this was the case.

I thought it was Terpil rather than Wilson who said Phillips used the alias. As far as what Fenton said, why wasn't this included in the HSCA report on Veciana? Can you provide me with a source for Fenton's statements?

[James DiEugenio]

You are correct, it was Terpil.

The source is Bob Tanenbaum. He is the one who brought Fenton to the HSCA in the first place.

Its pretty obvious why it is not in the HSCA report if you understand what happened when Sprague fell.

This whole thing about somehow Veciana being a pillar of the case is, to me, kind of silly.

Almost as silly as basing a criminal investigation on a Rod Serling movie. 

But that is Mr. Caddy.  First Billy Sol Estes, now this.

[Michaleen Kilroy]

6 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

This finger-pointing at the CIA to draw attention from the military goes back to 1964. 

 From patspeer.com, Chapter 1b:

On February 12, 1964, the cinema classic Seven Days in May was released to the public. The film, a cautionary tale directed by John Frankenheimer, depicted an attempted military coup within the United States. The film's creation was encouraged by President Kennedy, who'd told a number of his friends that he thought such a coup was a real possibility should the president lose the support of the Pentagon. The initial response to the film reflects that elements of the media and government, even months after the assassination, still believed that their primary responsibility was to assure a worried public that everything was OK. As reported in David Talbot's Brothers, the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner publicly questioned whether the film should even have been made, as "The world is on too short a fuse," and the film could damage "the American image abroad." Across town, the Examiner's larger rival the L.A. Times shared this concern but instead took the time to assure its readers that nothing like this could happen in America. Meanwhile, congressmen called for the film to be clearly labeled fiction before it could be shown overseas.

The film certainly had an impact. A 2-14 memo from Secret Service Inspector Thomas Kelley to his boss James Rowley discussed proposed legislation making the investigation of a presidential assassination a federal offense, and the sole jurisdiction of the FBI. This, in Kelley's mind, would be a bad thing, and could lead to a "Seven Days in May situation" in which a "venal Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation could in the future bring about or allow the assassination of the President who he either felt was a poor President or a President unacceptable to him..." Kelley then proceeded to point out that the FBI has an appropriation for protection of the President, normally the responsibility of the Secret Service, "in case of an emergency" and that the Secret Service should similarly retain the capacity to investigate assassinations. (As Kelley had just conducted the Secret Service's investigation of the assassination, it can probably be assumed from this that he was not particularly impressed with the FBI's investigation, and that he had doubts about Director Hoover's determination to get to the bottom of the matter.)

Meanwhile, across the country, Americans picked up the February 15, 1964 edition of The Saturday Evening Post. Inside was an article by the CIA-friendly columnist Stewart Alsop, not surprisingly defending the CIA against some recent charges that it was out of control and was conducting its own foreign policy. No doubt concerned about the effect these charges might have on the public, particularly when combined with the almost simultaneous release of Seven Days in May in the theaters, Alsop tried to cut off any speculation of CIA involvement in the assassination of President Kennedy. He actually went further than that, and made out that anyone questioning their involvement was a communist dupe. He complained about the recent treatment of the CIA in general, and then reported "a few highly respectable journals have even half-echoed The Communist Worker's charge that Lee Harvey Oswald, murderer of President Kennedy, went to the Soviet Union in 1959 as a CIA hireling." Alsop then shared even more certain knowledge that he could not possibly know, assuring his readers: "Lee Harvey Oswald never at any time had any connection whatever with CIA, although suspicions on that score are perhaps natural in view of the mystery surrounding Oswald's travels and his sources of income. The highest officials in the CIA are ready to so testify--and indignantly--before the Warren Commission investigating the murder. 'If anybody in the CIA had hired so obvious a psychotic,' says one of the greatest experts in the intelligence business, 'he should have been fired on the spot.'" 

One might rightly wonder if Alsop's "expert" wasn't Allen Dulles himself, seeking to cut off the questions he knew would not be answered by the Warren Commission. One might also wonder why the "highest officials in the CIA" would be so "indignant" about being asked such a reasonable question, by men who fully understood that they would lie with impunity.

Two days later, on February 17, 1964, possibly at the prodding of the same CIA employees who'd probably prodded Alsop (this might have been Allen Dulles-let's be realistic), and possibly at the prodding of President Lyndon Johnson, with whom he was quite friendly and from whom he was hoping to receive a slot as Vice-President, Senator Thomas Dodd of Connecticut made a long speech defending the CIA. Dodd repeatedly, and cynically, quoted President Kennedy in support of the CIA. He concluded "I think it can be stated as a certainty that many countries that remain free today would not be free if it had not been for the CIA." The CIA's possible involvement in killing Kennedy was not among the litany of criticisms dismissed by Senator Dodd. Apparently, such talk was not to be acknowledged within the hallowed halls of the U.S. Senate. 

Within a few days, in its February 21, 1964 issue, Life Magazine published yet another article on Oswald, and once again convicted him in the public eye. The cover featured a photo of Oswald holding a rifle, with a pistol on his hip. The caption read "Lee Oswald with the weapons he used to kill President Kennedy and Officer Tippit." The cover story was entitled "The Evolution of an Assassin." This echoed a 12-20 Life article written with the help of the FBI's report. That article had been entitled "The Assassin: a Cold, Lone Man Who Resented All Authority." Real subtle.

The media's investigation of Kennedy's assassination, if you could call it that, was by now pretty much over. They'd relied upon the FBI, and the FBI had misled them, for political purposes. 

A 2-24-64 FBI memo from F.J. Baumgartner to Deputy Director William Sullivan supports this point. It reports that Oswald's mother, Marguerite Oswald, and Mark Lane, a lawyer trying to present a public defense of Oswald, spoke at a public meeting in New York, sponsored by The National Guardian, a left-wing newspaper. It reports that "At this meeting it was implied that Oswald was not responsible for the assassination and the handling of the investigation by the Government was criticized." It then notes that a "reliable source"--clearly an undercover operative attending the meeting--spotted Alger Hiss, a one-time member of the State Department, accused of being a communist spy, and convicted of perjury relating to his involvement in the communist party--in attendance. Baumgartner then proposed that this be leaked to the press in order to discredit Lane and--by extension--those daring to imply that Oswald's guilt remained open to question. He even wrote the article he proposed and suggested it "be placed with a cooperative news media source at the Seat of Government."

Although, as far as can be determined, this article never saw print, it seems clear that many sharing its bias, prevailed.

Oswald had been convicted as the sole assassin by President Lyndon B. Johnson, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, the New York Times, Newsweek, T.V. Guide, and Life Magazine. The only witnesses called by the Commission up to this date had been members of his own family. 

If there had been conspirators still at large, they were now specks off in the distance. 

 

This is great stuff, Pat. Thanks for sharing.

I'm fascinated by the way the CIA attempted to manipulate public opinion from the get-go in this case, while also covering up material evidence for decades with top officials lying under oath.  Following that path of public deception and what they're protecting to me is the path to real answers.

And whatever Newman says about Veciana, no one's gonna convince me key agency players weren't involved or enablers.  There's a reason top prosecutors Sprague and Tanenbaum immediately smelled a rat with David Atlee Phillips but the CIA again managed public opinion to get them removed and replaced by Blakey who was obviously going to focus on the mob.

Now a bit of self-aggrandizement.  Jefferson Morley was nice enough to post a presentation I gave to some communications underlings recently.  If I had the time, I'd love to track every way the CIA tried to manipulate public opinion in the JFK case over the past 50+ years:

https://jfkfacts.org/perception-management-public-relations-and-the-jfk-story/

[James DiEugenio]

As per when Phillips admitted he lied, Danny talked about that in his speech at the Wecht conference in 2013.

He did so in detail.  That is online and anyone can listen to it.

And as I said not only did Danny, Eddy and Goldsmith draw up bills for a perjury indictment against Phillips, they did the same for Goodpasture.  And it also concerned Mexico City. 

Is Caddy now going to say that Lemnitzer or Max Taylor controlled all the info coming from Mexico City?  Or did Rod Serling?

Edited January 2, 2020 by James DiEugenio

[James DiEugenio]

Very nice presentation Mike.

Is it OK  if I post it at Kennedys and King?

[Michaleen Kilroy]

9 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said:

Very nice presentation Mike.

Is it OK  if I post it at Kennedys and King?

Absolutely, Jim.  Just sent the PDF. 

[W. Tracy Parnell]

4 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

As per when Phillips admitted he lied, Danny talked about that in his speech at the Wecht conference in 2013.

OK, thanks for the information.

[Ron Bulman]

10 hours ago, Michaleen Kilroy said:

This is great stuff, Pat. Thanks for sharing.

I'm fascinated by the way the CIA attempted to manipulate public opinion from the get-go in this case, while also covering up material evidence for decades with top officials lying under oath.  Following that path of public deception and what they're protecting to me is the path to real answers.

And whatever Newman says about Veciana, no one's gonna convince me key agency players weren't involved or enablers.  There's a reason top prosecutors Sprague and Tanenbaum immediately smelled a rat with David Atlee Phillips but the CIA again managed public opinion to get them removed and replaced by Blakey who was obviously going to focus on the mob.

Now a bit of self-aggrandizement.  Jefferson Morley was nice enough to post a presentation I gave to some communications underlings recently.  If I had the time, I'd love to track every way the CIA tried to manipulate public opinion in the JFK case over the past 50+ years:

https://jfkfacts.org/perception-management-public-relations-and-the-jfk-story/

Great stuff yourself Mr. Kilroy.  Lots of information there in one place but still concise.  

Curious, when you gave the presentation did you elaborate further, and, how did they react?  With questions?