Can we make a list of the most obvious disinformation-driven witnesses in the JFK case?

[Bill Simpich]

Everyone hates disinformation - unless it's something they are invested in!

I am fascinated by it.  I think it's the single biggest reason it's been hard to reach historical resolution in the JFK case.

I would appreciate everyone's take on who are the most obvious disinformation-driven witnesses in the JFK case and how.  

Save the more subtle cases for another time!  Focus on the most obvious XXXXX, and their most obvious lies.

Please include your link that includes your proof - linking to an article is OK, linking to a document is better.

Please avoid the temptation to get into arguments with others - let's focus on the quality of the lies told!

I think we could learn a lot - I think we may have a rough consensus about many of these witnesses.

Here's my first quick attempt at a short list.  Feel free to add your own disinfo-driven witnesses - with only 1-2 sentences on why.

DA Bill Alexander - Along with Lonnie Hudkins and Hugh Aynesworth, spread the obvious lie that Oswald was FBI agent S-172, supposedly as a test to see if the FBI was tapping their phones.  (The nomenclature in the real world would have been like "172-S").  The idea that LHO was an informant terrified the Warren Commission - after the lie was exposed, the notion that Oswald was any kind of spy was dismissed.

Philip Corso - Subsequent to Alexander and company, ,made up a story about Oswald being an FBI informant - later told an enraged Cartha DeLoach (a right-hand man to Hoover) that his sources said that "Oswald could have been a source of information for the FBI."  This was used to bust up a Hearst reporters' planned story in 1964 that Ruby and Oswald were informants - as is now well-known, Ruby was an FBI informant.  How much did Corso get paid for this stunt?

Sam Halpern - Lied about Bobby Kennedy planning to kill Castro. (John Newman, Into the Storm)

Ann Goodpasture - To cause endless confusion, she lied about the Unidentified American Man - "the UAM" a/k/a Mystery Man photo that was taken on 10/2/63 - she said it was taken 10/1/63, and matched it up with the alleged Oswald 10/1/63 phone call to the Soviet Embassy.   This ""Oswald photo" became the background legend for the initial memo sent to HQ on October 8 - describing him as 6 feet tall with an athletic build. (for more, search under "Goodpasture" in State Secret, Chapter 5).

David Phillips - Lied about being with Veciana in Cuba in 1961 (search under "1961" in John Newman's article); lied about being in Mexico City and working with the Soviet desk the first week of Oct. 1963.  (The latter lie grew and grew, search under "Phillips" in State Secret, chapter 5)

Kerry Thornley - Wrote an entire book on "Oswald as a emotionally unstable, sick nut", and camped out in Virginia to make sure he could testify in this vein to the Warren Commission (search under "Idle Warriors" and "Warren Commission" inside these Jim DiEugenio articles).

Antonio Veciana - Lied about seeing David Phillips with Oswald in Dallas shortly before 11/22/63 - lied at the Bethesda conference in 2014 and in his subsequent book about his role in Army Intelligence.   (John Newman, Into the Storm)

 

Edited June 22, 2020 by Bill Simpich

[Robert Montenegro]

I believe the least obvious source of disinformation (and I am sure I will get backlash for this) is United States Air Force Col. Leroy Fletcher Prouty, Chief of Special Operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff under President John F. Kennedy.

For years, he allowed a book to be published, titled "The Secret Team: The CIA and Its Allies in Control of the United States and the World" whereupon Col. Prouty claimed he had no operational access of the Central Intelligence Agency's "Executive Action" capabilities. He just personally oversaw a "focal-point" sheep-dip military officer selection process for CIA Director Allen Welsh Dulles and supplied the CIA with military hardware.

However, if you listen to his response to a college student, at the 1992 American University panal called "JFK: Cinema As History" who asks him point-blank if he, Col. Prouty, was ever involved in the assassination of a political operative, during the course of his relationship with the CIA, Col. Prouty told the college student he was personally involved in the planning the murder of fascist dictator Rafael Leónidas "El Jefe" Trujillo Molina!

Here is a link to Col. Proty's slip: https://www.c-span.org/video/?23934-1/jfk-depiction-history 

Go to the one-hour and forty-six minute mark. Look at Col. Prouty's body language and examine how he quickly, after realizing he blew his public image, refuses to answer anymore questions about his involvement in Central Intelligence Agency "Executive Action" capabilities.

Even David Talbot does not make mention of Col. Prouty being involved in the murder of a chief executive in his excellent 2016 book "The Devil's Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America's Secret Government", and he dedicated an entire chapter to the Trujillo assassination!

Edited June 22, 2020 by Robert Montenegro

[Ron Bulman]

Ruth Paine, George DeMornschild, Jack Ruby?

[Sandy Larsen]

7 hours ago, Bill Simpich said:

David Phillips - Lied about being with Veciana in Cuba in 1961 

 

Wh-what? I thought it was the other way around... with Veciana telling that fib, not Phillips.

 

[Bill Simpich]

Thanks, Sandy!  You are right, I misspoke.  Page 68 of Into the Storm credits that whopper to Veciana, not Phillips.

[Kishan Dandiker]

Helen Markham's testimony still does not make sense to me. 

[Greg Doudna]

 

Gerry Hemming--professional disinformation, dance of the seven veils, nothing specific and substantial and verifiable, ate up enormous amounts of attention and bandwidth of researchers' and public attention. Hemming appears to me to be the anonymous "Operative A" set forth in a 1977 tabloid "Newsreal" with all sorts of wild and outlandish industrial-strength misinformation (claims of personal knowledge of Oswald in training in the Florida Everglades while another Oswald was in Russia; Gen. Edwin Walker present and in command of a safe house of anti-Castro Cubans in Miami; Castro did the Bay of Pigs invasion on himself so as to embarrass the US, etc.): https://archive.org/details/nsia-Newsreal/mode/2up, pp. 5-22. Is this the first entry of Hemming into the world of JFK assassination testimony? This was at the time HSCA was happening when the deaths of high-profile figures were happening just before they were expected to be called to testify.

When the likely correct identity of Silvia Odio's "Leopoldo" came out (from this forum's James Richards: Bernardo de Torres), Hemming "confirmed" it then sought to defuse and derail where that correct lead might go and its implications by putting forth a fictitious identity of "Angel"--as Angelo Murgado--a story that was bought hook-line-and-sinker by Joan Mellen and the Le Fontaines and spun in a way that wrongly impeaches Silvia Odio's highly credible testimony (as James DiEugenio on Angelo Murgado at https://kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-reviews/mellen-joan-a-farewell-to-justice). Hemming stayed more or less actively involved in JFK assassination conspiracy circles for the rest of his life, including I see presenting to conferences in Dallas.

Hemming seemed to make it his full-time career in the second half of his life to screw up research on the JFK assassination, without offering evidence of a single specific prosecutable action related to the JFK assassination.

I see in the archives of this forum that James Richards wrote July 13, 2007 (I cannot get the link on that to copy as a simple string without opening up a large display--the thread was entitled "Operative A" and was begun July 11, 2007): "I think 'Operative A' was part fact part fiction, ultimately with an agenda. I am of the belief that this man was Ramon Orozco who amongst other things was one of Rip Robertson's commandos." I do not know Richards' basis for the Orozco identification suggestion but it seems to me Hemming was "Operative A": "Operative A" was a pilot, so was Hemming; "Operative A" tells a story about being involved in an action in Haiti, so was Hemming; similar military careers and claims of being operative but not agent of CIA; claims of association with Walker, etc. and etc., cp. Hemming at http://cuban-exile.com/doc_426-450/doc0445.html.

Edited June 22, 2020 by Greg Doudna

[David Andrews]

16 hours ago, Robert Montenegro said:

Go to the one-hour and forty-six minute mark. Look at Col. Prouty's body language and examine how he quickly, after realizing he blew his public image, refuses to answer anymore questions about his involvement in Central Intelligence Agency "Executive Action" capabilities.

 

I can be as suspicious of Prouty as any of his detractors, but I don't feel that's what's going on here.  The student presses Prouty about whether he was present for any assassination plans, and Prouty only hesitates momentarily, to choose his words.  His word choice?  "Trujillo."  Period.  That's all he feels he can say, and he's cocky and finite about it.  It's more than was ever gotten out of David Atlee Phillips.  Would you say more in that legal position?  If anything, he bolstered his public image, and we might rather be suspicious of that.

Edited June 22, 2020 by David Andrews

[Robert Montenegro]

17 minutes ago, David Andrews said:

I can be as suspicious of Prouty as any of his detractors, but I don't feel that's what's going on here.  The student presses Prouty about whether he was present for any assassination plans, and Prouty only hesitates momentarily, to choose his words.  His word choice?  "Trujillo."  Period.  That's all he feels he can say, and he's cocky and finite about it.  It's more than was ever gotten out of David Atlee Phillips.  Would you say more in that legal position?  If anything, he bolstered his public image, and we might rather be suspicious of that.

In any case, it is the only time Col. Prouty ever made a statement to the effect that he was involved in the operational structure of an assassination of a chief of state. One word or a bunch of fiction like E. Howard Hunt did.

My point is though, that Col. Prouty always claimed in his books that he never had anything to do "Executive Action" and in this on instance he shoots himself in the foot? 

Col. Prouty was a shrewd operator. He revealed just enough and then claimed he didn't remember the rest, or just couldn't expound on the grounds of classification? 

Quod erat demonstrandum, Col. Prouty lied in all of his books.

Period.

I knew I was gonna catch hell for that one, I mean, the way Len Osanic (whom I think is brilliant) apotheosis Col. Prouty is a grave error in judgement. 

Col. Prouty had to have been involved in, or at least aware of, multiple assassinations of chief executives and military leaders, simply because his position as Chief of Special Operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, allowed him to have a god's-eye view of the whole show.

Edited June 22, 2020 by Robert Montenegro

[David Andrews]

45 minutes ago, Robert Montenegro said:

Col. Prouty had to have been involved in, or at least aware of, multiple assassinations of chief executives and military leaders, simply because his position as Chief of Special Operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he had a god's-eye view of the whole show.

Cool! 

But would anyone have copped to that in the 1970s-1990s?

I'm not particularly opposed to Trujillo getting it, unless there was blowback on JFK, as some think, or unless it can be linked to an executive decision by JFK,, as, say, Lumumba can be linked to Eisenhower and Dulles.

Researchers care so little about Trujillo going down that few (including me) know Kennedy's reaction.  Almost no one researches the hit beyond considering it an Eisenhower-era CIA plan that finally culminated in 1961. 

Edited June 22, 2020 by David Andrews

[Steve Thomas]

Will Fritz

 

Mr. FRITZ. When I started to talk to this prisoner or maybe just before I started to talk to him, some officer told me outside of my office that he had a room on Beckley, I don't know who that officer was, I think we can find out, I have since I have talked to you this morning I have talked to Lieutenant Baker and he says I know maybe who that officer was, but I am not sure yet.
Mr. BALL. Some officer told you that he thought this man had a room on Beckley?
Mr. FRITZ. Yes, sir.

 

Steve Thomas

 

 

[Cliff Varnell]

Two guys on the upper floor of the plot: McGeorge Bundy and W. Averell Harriman.

The President Has Been Shot, Charles Roberts  (p. 141) A reporter for Newsweek, Roberts was on AFI and met McGeorge Bundy at Andrews.

<quote on>

I remember looking at (McGeorge) Bundy because I was wondering if he had any word of what had happened in the world while we were in transit, whether this assassination was part of a plot. And he told me later that what he reported to the president during that flight back was that the whole world was stunned, but there was no evidence of a conspiracy at all.

<quote off>

The Assassination Tapes, Max Holland, (pg 57):

<quote on>

At 6:55 p.m. Johnson has a ten minute meeting with Senator J. William Fulbright and diplomat W. Averell Harriman to discuss possible foreign involvement in the assassination, especially in light of the two-and-a-half-year sojourn of Lee Harvey [in Russia]...Harriman, a U.S. ambassador to Moscow during WWII, is an experienced interpreter of Soviet machinations and offers the president the unanimous view of the U.S. government's top Kremlinologists. None of them believe the Soviets have a hand in the assassination, despite the Oswald association.

<quote off>

This was the genesis of the Lone Nut Cover Story.  Bundy called LBJ on AF1 and told him the lone assassin was in custody.  As soon as Johnson got to the White House he found out that all of his government’s top Kremlinologists concluded the Soviets were innocent.

But there was no such discussion among top Soviet experts on 11/22/63.

By reputation the top 3 Soviet hands were Charles Bohlen, George Kennan, and Harriman himself. According to his biography, Bohlen was traveling by train in Europe. According to Kennan’s biography, he spent the day quietly with Robert Oppenheimer up in Princeton.

By title, the US gov’t’s top Soviet guys were Llewelyn Thompson, Ambassador At Large for Soviet Affairs, and Dean Rusk, Secretary of State.

From their Warren Commission testimonies:

Mr. DULLES:  Did you have any conversations at any time while you were Ambassador or after you returned to the United States with any Soviet official with regard to the Oswald case?

Ambassador THOMPSON: I discussed with the Soviet Ambassador the desire of the [Warren] Commission to receive any documentation that they might have available, but I did not in any way discuss the case itself, nor did the Soviet official with whom I talked. 

Mr. DULLES:   And do you know of any conversations of that nature that any other official of the Department had in connection with the Oswald case?

Ambassador THOMPSON: I do not myself know of any. 

Mr. DULLES: You probably would, would you not, if that had taken place-of any importance? 

Ambassador THOMPSON: Off the record. 

(Discussion off the record.) 

Mr. DULLES: Your testimony is you have no knowledge of any other conversations other than that of the Secretary of State [Dean Rusk], in connection with communications to and from the Soviet Government on this case? 

Ambassador THOMPSON: That is correct.  I know of no other cases where it was discussed with Soviet officials. </q>

Thompson acknowledged discussions with Dean Rusk, but nothing about Harriman or other "top Kremlinologists".  Rusk didn't return to Washington until after Harriman's meeting with Johnson.

Here's what Rusk told the Warren Commission (Vol 5):

<quote on>. 
Secretary RUSK: As the Commission may remember, I was with several colleagues in a plane on the way to Japan at the time the assassination occurred. When we got the news we immediately turned back. After my mind was able to grasp the fact that this event had in fact occurred, which was the first necessity, and not an easy one, I then, on the plane, began to go over the dozens and dozens of implications and ramifications of this event as it affects our foreign relations all over the world. I landed briefly in Hawaii on the way back to Washington, and gave some instructions to the Department about a number of these matters, and learned what the Department was already doing. But one of the great questions in my mind at that time was just that question, could some foreign government somehow be involved in such an episode. I realized that were this so this would raise the gravest issues of war and peace, but that nevertheless it was important to try to get at the truth-to the answer to that question-wherever that truth might lead; and so when I got back to Washington I put myself immediately in touch with the processes of inquiry on that point, and as Secretary of State had the deepest possible interest in what the truthful answer to those questions would be, because it would be hard to think of anything more pregnant for our foreign relations than the correct answer to that question. </q>
 

Bundy lied about there being “no evidence of a conspiracy at all” and Harriman lied about an instant consensus on Soviet complicity.

Edited June 23, 2020 by Cliff Varnell

[Steve Thomas]

J. Edgar Hoover.

 

J.Edgar Hoover's phone call with Lyndon Johnson

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=807#relPageId=3&tab=page

Steve Thomas

 

[Pat Speer]

13 hours ago, Greg Doudna said:

 

Gerry Hemming--professional disinformation, dance of the seven veils, nothing specific and substantial and verifiable, ate up enormous amounts of attention and bandwidth of researchers' and public attention. Hemming appears to me to be the anonymous "Operative A" set forth in a 1977 tabloid "Newsreal" with all sorts of wild and outlandish industrial-strength misinformation (claims of personal knowledge of Oswald in training in the Florida Everglades while another Oswald was in Russia; Gen. Edwin Walker present and in command of a safe house of anti-Castro Cubans in Miami; Castro did the Bay of Pigs invasion on himself so as to embarrass the US, etc.): https://archive.org/details/nsia-Newsreal/mode/2up, pp. 5-22. Is this the first entry of Hemming into the world of JFK assassination testimony? This was at the time HSCA was happening when the deaths of high-profile figures were happening just before they were expected to be called to testify.

When the likely correct identity of Silvia Odio's "Leopoldo" came out (from this forum's James Richards: Bernardo de Torres), Hemming "confirmed" it then sought to defuse and derail where that correct lead might go and its implications by putting forth a fictitious identity of "Angel"--as Angelo Murgado--a story that was bought hook-line-and-sinker by Joan Mellen and the Le Fontaines and spun in a way that wrongly impeaches Silvia Odio's highly credible testimony (as James DiEugenio on Angelo Murgado at https://kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-reviews/mellen-joan-a-farewell-to-justice). Hemming stayed more or less actively involved in JFK assassination conspiracy circles for the rest of his life, including I see presenting to conferences in Dallas.

Hemming seemed to make it his full-time career in the second half of his life to screw up research on the JFK assassination, without offering evidence of a single specific prosecutable action related to the JFK assassination.

I see in the archives of this forum that James Richards wrote July 13, 2007 (I cannot get the link on that to copy as a simple string without opening up a large display--the thread was entitled "Operative A" and was begun July 11, 2007): "I think 'Operative A' was part fact part fiction, ultimately with an agenda. I am of the belief that this man was Ramon Orozco who amongst other things was one of Rip Robertson's commandos." I do not know Richards' basis for the Orozco identification suggestion but it seems to me Hemming was "Operative A": "Operative A" was a pilot, so was Hemming; "Operative A" tells a story about being involved in an action in Haiti, so was Hemming; similar military careers and claims of being operative but not agent of CIA; claims of association with Walker, etc. and etc., cp. Hemming at http://cuban-exile.com/doc_426-450/doc0445.html.

FWIW, I was asked to help prepare questions for an interview to be conducted before Hemming died, in which he told all, so to speak. I didn't know that much about him, but compared his statements to the HSCA, Twyman, Weberman, and this forum to look for holes, and found plenty. I was then invited down to Florida to conduct the interview myself. But received word before departure that Hemming was sick, and that he'd backed out. I went down to Key West anyway, and was glad I did. While there, someone called up Hemming and asked him if he wanted to talk to me. He did, and my wife ended up driving around for an hour while I talked with Hemming on this other guy's cell phone . I concluded Hemming was mostly full of it, talking all this macho crap, but unwilling to put a coherent story down on paper. Previous to our conversation he'd told me he'd fought at Dien Bien Phu. When I confronted him on this by pointing out he was a high school senior at the time, he tried to tell me he'd graduated early and was sent over right away, or some such thing. 

While it remains possible Hemming knew a thing or two, it seems doubtful we'll ever be able to figure out what was what, due to his unparalleled love of BSing and muddying the waters with stuff  much worse than mud.

 

Edited June 23, 2020 by Pat Speer

[John Butler]

3 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

Gerry Hemming--professional disinformation, dance of the seven veils, nothing specific and substantial and verifiable, ate up enormous amounts of attention and bandwidth of researchers' and public attention.

Actually, Greg Douda said the above.

3 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

While it remains possible Hemming knew a thing or two, it seems doubtful we'll ever be able to figure out what was what, due to his unparalleled love of BSing and muddying the waters with stuff  much worse than mud.

This pretty much reflects my opinion of Hemming.  Whenever, I read something from Hemming or listened to a Hemming video that is about what I heard.  BS.  The man in the know who really doesn't tell you much of anything.