Does most every JFKA researcher agree with John Newman's conclusions regarding David Phillips and Alpha 66?

[Paul Brancato]

Agree Chuck. It’s a work in progress. I’m pretty sure that he is taking a long deep look into the military. The connections between Military Intelligence and the Dallas Police has taken a back seat to the CIA focused research for decades. I wonder if Garrison, had he not been waylaid, would have explored this angle more. As secretive as the CIA and FBI have been, the military has been infinitely less forthcoming. Can anyone doubt that the DPD controlled events on the ground? Bunch of racist sob’s moonlighting in Army Reserve Intelligence units and right wing racist orgs. Researchers have been chasing the CIA angle, led down one rabbit hole after another. I know there are many here who disagree with my general point, and I don’t want to be misunderstood either. I don’t think the CIA wasn’t involved, I just think we make too much of the blurry lines between CIA and Military Intelligence. 

[Matt Allison]

To assume the JFK assassination can be solved via just reading documents alone, is a mistake. Not everything made it onto paper. The people from that time that are still alive need to be thoroughly questioned again.

[Rob Clark]

On 6/5/2020 at 4:19 PM, Sandy Larsen said:

I'm asking about this because on another thread Rob Clark is saying that there is no "documented proof" of Phillips' connection to Alpha 66. And he seems to feel strongly about it. This doesn't ring true to me because I've always read that the CIA funded anti-Castro Cuban groups.

Of course the CIA funded certain anti-Castro groups and had contacts / informants in some. He dangled the Bishop/Philips carrot in front of Gaeton Fonzi to get him out of prison...and it worked! A couple years later he's shot in the head and lives, which definitely adds an aura of mystique to his story, despite there being no "documented proof" of Phillips connection to Alpha 66. If someone can find some, I'd like to see it.

"The commission attempted to see if Veciana could identify Phillips as being "Bishop". Veciana insisted that he was not the same person and moreover that he had never met Phillips before either. Some committee members (and also lead investigator Gaeton Fonzi) doubted Veciana, reasoning that he should have at least recognized Phillips, a high-profile officer so heavily involved in Cuban operations.^"

[Anthony Thorne]

I’m following Newman’s work with interest and have read two of the three volumes and a good chunk of the third. I’m reserving judgment until he gets closer to the end of the series though. He has at least two books to go, possibly three depending what he digs up and wants to talk about. Newman did imply in a good Facebook thread that volume four, ARMAGEDDON, is where things really start to dig in deep.

Side note - Newman found the elite country club where various Joint Chiefs and others had hung out as they put together the Northwoods plan - Northwoods was named after the club - and mentioned he was researching it. I Googled the name and found that a three volume history of the club had been privately published among the members decades ago, and sent Newman a link to a case bound copy that was for sale (and they weren’t cheap). Newman bought the books, and anything he found of interest in them will appear in future volumes. He implied it was quite a group of characters who had been meeting there.

Edited June 8, 2020 by Anthony Thorne

[Paul Brancato]

3 minutes ago, Anthony Thorne said:

I’m following Newman’s work with interest and have read two of the three volumes and a good chunk of the third. I’m reserving judgment until he gets closer to the end of the series though. He has at least two books to go, possibly three depending what he digs up and wants to talk about. Newman did imply in a good Facebook thread that volume four, ARMAGEDDON, is where things really start to dig in deep.

Side note - Newman found the elite country club where various Joint Chiefs and others had apparently spent a long time with its members as they put together the Northwoods plan - Northwoods was named after the club - and mentioned he was researching it. I Googled the name and found that a three volume history of the club and it’s membership had been privately published decades ago, and sent Newman a link to a case bound copy that was for sale (and they weren’t cheap). Newman bought the books, and anything he found of interest in them will appear in future volumes. He implied it was quite a group of characters who had been meeting there.

That sounds really interesting. The club is named Northwood Club in Dallas?

Edited June 8, 2020 by Paul Brancato

[Matt Allison]

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Edited July 5 by Matt Allison

[Matt Allison]

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Edited July 5 by Matt Allison

[W. Tracy Parnell]

2 hours ago, Matt Allison said:

Didn't Newman claim that Gaeton interviewed Veciana in prison? That simply isn't true. How am I supposed to believe he's familiar with the rest of the evidence about Bishop?

To be fair, the original plan was for Fonzi to interview Veciana in prison but that didn't happen due to Veciana's early release. That was what Newman was probably thinking of when he wrote that. I believe he is fairly familiar with the Fonzi-Veciana-Bishop matter. What he may have a hard time proving to everyone's satisfaction is that Veciana's release was arranged so that he could tell his story. There is a document in which Zabala states that he believed Veciana was released as part of a "secret deal" with unknown government agents specifically in exchange for testimony implicating the CIA. Newman may be basing his theory on this even though Zabala admitted his statements were speculative.

[Anthony Thorne]

Quote

That sounds really interesting. The club is named Northwood Club in Dallas?

No, and digging the info back up, I was inexact. Northwoods comes from the club's location, with Northwood being a name and locale likely familiar to the club's members.

Northwood in Baltimore, Maryland, from Wikipedia.

Quote

Northwood is a neighborhood in the northeastern section of Baltimore, Maryland in the United States. Northwood is served by the New Northwood and the Original Northwood community associations. The area is also home to the Northwood Shopping Center and the Northwood Baseball League.

The Burning Tree Club in Maryland, from Wikipedia.

Quote

Burning Tree Club is a private, all-male golf club in Bethesda, Maryland. The course at Burning Tree has been played by numerous presidents, foreign dignitaries, high-ranking executive officials, members of Congress, and military leaders.

Newman on the Burning Tree Club and Northwoods - this might have been posted here on the forum before.

 

Quote

 

WHERE DID THE NAME "NORTHWOODS" COME FROM?

When research requires excruciating amounts of time, money and the kind of hard work that is only possible with stamina, progress, when it occurs, is even more rewarding than it would be otherwise. From the files I am currently researching, we can now ascertain the name and location of the secure place where Lemnitzer and his military associates and military-associated outfits like Martin Marietta were able to go meet, golf, dine, and meet clandestinely—knowing that entrance into this highly select male only club was carefully controlled. This fraternity met in Chevy Chase, Maryland, a short drive from the Pentagon—in the Wheaton and Silver Spring area where the name Northwoods IS UBIQUITOUS among the secluded meeting locations of international financial groups like the IMF and World Bank. The military-industrial-security fraternity to which I refer met often at the then super-exclusive Burning Tree Golf Club in Chevy Chase (as well as at a retreat in the Bahamas). At the time, the Burning Tree entrance fee—by invitation only—was $75,000, and the monthly membership fee was $500.

In the attached extract from JCS Chairman Lemnitzer’s Daily Log, the name “Geo. Bunker” belonged to the then Chairman of the Martin-Marietta Company--George M. Bunker--that manufactured, among other items, the Titan missiles and the Jupiter missiles deployed in Turkey. Delk Simpson, Sr., chief of protocol for Bunker’s Martin-Marietta colleague Air Force General Samuel E. Anderson, entertained an elite group of about thirty active duty senior officers for Martin-Marietta. When Lemnitzer (after JFK fired him as CJCS) replaced General Norstad as Commander-in-Chief of Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE), General Anderson was Lemnitzer’s Deputy for Air. The name “Holtner” in the attached 7/14/62 golf “conference,” is elsewhere identified in Lemnitzer’s Daily logs as Major General Holtner; he might be identical with Major General J. Stanley Holtoner, who was assigned to the Pentagon in 1959 to the newly created Office of the Director of Defense Research and Engineering, and remained in that job at least up to September 1962.

 

After Newman posted the above, I saw that a private history of the club and its members was floating around, pictured below (and I see it's two volumes, not three). The two books were selling online for hundreds of dollars. Once alerted to the listing, Newman bought the full set, so if anyone is now well placed to dig into the Burning Tree Club further and investigate the connections, it's him.

 

Edited June 9, 2020 by Anthony Thorne

[Matt Allison]

1 hour ago, W. Tracy Parnell said:

To be fair, the original plan was for Fonzi to interview Veciana in prison but that didn't happen due to Veciana's early release. That was what Newman was probably thinking of when he wrote that. 

?? So? He got it wrong. If he wants to nitpick Veciana's memory of specific dates over half a century ago, he should probably not make mistakes like that.

I appreciate much of John Newman's work. But not on the subject of Veciana so far. Just my opinion, but Dan Hardway's take seems way more solid to me:

https://aarclibrary.org/a-professional-conspirator-questions-about-antonio-veciana-and-his-book-trained-to-kill/

[Matt Allison]

It appears neither Newman or anyone else will be able to question Veciana again

https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/coronavirus/article242778451.html

[W. Tracy Parnell]

9 hours ago, Matt Allison said:

It appears neither Newman or anyone else will be able to question Veciana again

https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/coronavirus/article242778451.html

I don't think the record is insufficient in regards to his statements.

[Chuck Schwartz]

Rob C., in regards to the DAP / Alpha 66 connection, this is on Sparticus.."

Gaeton Fonzi was unconvinced by this evidence. He found it difficult to believe Phillips would not have known the leader of Alpha 66. Especially as Phillips had been in charge of covert action in Cuba when Alpha 66 was established. Other information also emerged to undermine Phillips. CIA agent, Ron Crozier, who worked in Cuba during this period, claimed that Phillips sometimes used the code name, Maurice Bishop.

....

According to Larry Hancock, the author of Someone Would Have Talked, just before his death Phillips told Kevin Walsh, an investigator with the House Select Committee on Assassinations: "My final take on the assassination is there was a conspiracy, likely including American intelligence officers." (Some books wrongly quote Phillips as saying: "My private opinion is that JFK was done in by a conspiracy, likely including rogue American intelligence people.")

David Atlee Phillips died of cancer on 7th July, 1988. He left behind an unpublished manuscript. The novel is about a CIA officer who lived in Mexico City. In the novel the character states: "I was one of those officers who handled Lee Harvey Oswald... We gave him the mission of killing Fidel Castro in Cuba... I don't know why he killed Kennedy. But I do know he used precisely the plan we had devised against Castro. Thus the CIA did not anticipate the president's assassination, but it was responsible for it. I share that guilt."

In January 2004, E. Howard Hunt gave a taped interview with his son, Saint John Hunt, claiming that Lyndon Baines Johnson was the instigator of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and that it was organised by Phillips, Cord Meyer, Frank Sturgis and David Sanchez Morales."

On that last sentence, was that taped interview disinformation or real- I am not sure.

 

[Matt Allison]

Masters of disinformation always included bits that were true when delivering their disinformation. 

[Paul Brancato]

Such as - we gave Oswald the mission to kill Castro.