Can We Agree that Allen Dulles was a Ringmaster of the JFKA?

[Chuck Schwartz]

And, perhaps, William Harvey as the detail planner for the Dealey plaza operation.

[Jon Pickering]

Disagree. Dulles, in fact, was what he was always intended to be - a "civilian" patsy to draw heat away from the true ramrods of the assassination, and, other horrible crimes around the planet. They would be - in my opinion - the Joint Chiefs, operating under the full institutional weight of the Armed Forces , as embodied by the Generals and Admiral corps, their staffs, and, key lower ranked personnel.

Edited September 1, 2021 by Jon Pickering
Word change

[Ron Bulman]

3 hours ago, Chuck Schwartz said:

And, perhaps, William Harvey as the detail planner for the Dealey plaza operation.

I'd lean more to Morales on the final details in DP, jmo from reading over the years.  He did die, surrounded by "friends", who stuck around and were supplemented by others who came from far away to Arizona.  To see his body buried.  Make sure he was dead and gone, make sure he was shut up for ever?  

We Got that SOB, didn't we.

After all, it was you and me. . .  Notice the intro by Charlie Watts.

 

[Kirk Gallaway]

8 hours ago, Anthony Thorne said:

I'll need to (re) dig up the references and data to cite it accurately, but when I was going through the post WW2 background of Dulles, McCloy, the CFR, the Rockefeller Foundation and various WW2 armaments interests late last year, the who-was-doing-what-and-when stuff I wrote down had McCloy higher up the chain, for decades, than Dulles was, and Dulles was frequently working for various interests where Dulles was on a panel of ten guys, but McCloy was the chair. This was the pattern for a great long while. And if you view Dulles (as some have already suggested) as being the front guy for a bigger group of interests, it makes sense, as does the smirking presence of McCloy on the Warren Commission.

A couple of years after the JFK assassination, the Pentagon and a few folk put together a study group to discuss (over a long year or two) what had gone wrong during the Cuban missile crisis. Andrew Marshall, later the 'Yoda' at the Pentagon who gave the neocons top level advice for decades, was a key figure. The group settled down at Harvard, and conducted sessions run by Ernest May, who had been the official historian for the Joint Chiefs during the 50's, and who remained a trusted Pentagon advisor for decades afterwards. The group was informally known as 'the May group', as he was nominally the head of it.

May's assistant during the sessions, the guy who kept notes and took records and opened discussions, was Graham Allison, and the Pentagon was so happy with his work that they funded a special new department at Harvard, paid for a new building there, let Allison approve the architecture, and put Allison in charge of the department, where he remained as head or co-head or Dean for the next three or four decades, in-between his stints on the National Security Council and serving as a top advisor to Dick Cheney.

Edward Epstein's (later) Harvard advisors were involved in the study group discussions, and Epstein, the INQUEST author who later became the turncoat who attacked JFK assassination researchers, was then taken under their wing when he went to Harvard in the late 60's. 

John McCloy was a high-level supporter of Allison's department at Harvard - the Kennedy School of Government - and appears (by name and photographically) in offical histories of it. Thereafter through the 70's and onwards, the Kennedy School served as a training ground for incipient Pentagon folk who were picked to have a bright future ahead of them, guys who understood the party line and the overall thrust of what the military industrial complex was pushing for. Allison thereafter also had his pick of retiring Pentagon folk to serve on the staff there, with a lot of applicants putting their hands up. And Allison's coterie of specialised experts wired into the national security state were kept busy in an active advisory capacity through the 70's, the 80's, the 90's and beyond.

 

You might find this interesting Anthony, as well as others. A Walter Cronkite  interview about the Warren Report with John Mc Cloy. John Mc Cloy was a very accomplished person prior to being picked for the Warren Commission. But it is interesting at how the art of public speaking has evolved. After a somewhat prepared  statement, when asked questions, Mc Cloy continually looks away in the interview as if referring to his notes, that don't really exist. He can't seem to know what to do with his glasses and nervously fidgets at times.

Modern public speakers emphasize being more relaxed and there's a developed art of distinguishing "tells" in body language. But not so much back in the day. One could certainly get the impression from Mc Cloy's  body language that he's hiding something.

Around 4:20, "I sat at the window with the very rifle at what seemed, must have been  the exact spot that whoever the assassin was sat"

 

Edited September 1, 2021 by Kirk Gallaway

[Eddy Bainbridge]

I believe the focus should be on a modern day 'reckoning' as opposed to placing blame on historical characters. Research into the dealings of the deceased is worthwhile if it leads to modern day prosecution for the ongoing cover-up of a crime. 

[Benjamin Cole]

19 hours ago, David Andrews said:

Truthfully, JFKA researchers have as much legal evidence to convict any planners and assassins as any lone nutters have to convict Oswald.  Clay Shaw was as close as it got, and that was a worthy investigation that was sabotaged and mismanaged before trial.

Discuss?

Otherwise, Jim - I vote Aye on Dulles.

Clay Shaw was interesting, but probably a handler, is my guess. The actual mechanics and planning of the JFKA rested elsewhere. 

My point about Dulles is this: In the JFKA community we parse evidence fairly well, and look for clues that exculpate LHO. That's fine, and excellent work has been done. 

But how can we pronounce Dulles guilty of planning the JFKA?  He had meetings?  That seems a little thin. 

13 hours ago, Anthony Thorne said:

I'll need to (re) dig up the references and data to cite it accurately, but when I was going through the post WW2 background of Dulles, McCloy, the CFR, the Rockefeller Foundation and various WW2 armaments interests late last year, the who-was-doing-what-and-when stuff I wrote down had McCloy higher up the chain, for decades, than Dulles was, and Dulles was frequently working for various interests where Dulles was on a panel of ten guys, but McCloy was the chair. This was the pattern for a great long while. And if you view Dulles (as some have already suggested) as being the front guy for a bigger group of interests, it makes sense, as does the smirking presence of McCloy on the Warren Commission.

A couple of years after the JFK assassination, the Pentagon and a few folk put together a study group to discuss (over a long year or two) what had gone wrong during the Cuban missile crisis. Andrew Marshall, later the 'Yoda' at the Pentagon who gave the neocons top level advice for decades, was a key figure. The group settled down at Harvard, and conducted sessions run by Ernest May, who had been the official historian for the Joint Chiefs during the 50's, and who remained a trusted Pentagon advisor for decades afterwards. The group was informally known as 'the May group', as he was nominally the head of it.

May's assistant during the sessions, the guy who kept notes and took records and opened discussions, was Graham Allison, and the Pentagon was so happy with his work that they funded a special new department at Harvard, paid for a new building there, let Allison approve the architecture, and put Allison in charge of the department, where he remained as head or co-head or Dean for the next three or four decades, in-between his stints on the National Security Council and serving as a top advisor to Dick Cheney.

Edward Epstein's (later) Harvard advisors were involved in the study group discussions, and Epstein, the INQUEST author who later became the turncoat who attacked JFK assassination researchers, was then taken under their wing when he went to Harvard in the late 60's. 

John McCloy was a high-level supporter of Allison's department at Harvard - the Kennedy School of Government - and appears (by name and photographically) in offical histories of it. Thereafter through the 70's and onwards, the Kennedy School served as a training ground for incipient Pentagon folk who were picked to have a bright future ahead of them, guys who understood the party line and the overall thrust of what the military industrial complex was pushing for. Allison thereafter also had his pick of retiring Pentagon folk to serve on the staff there, with a lot of applicants putting their hands up. And Allison's coterie of specialised experts wired into the national security state were kept busy in an active advisory capacity through the 70's, the 80's, the 90's and beyond.

 

Graham Allison! Boy, that brings back memories. I read his book on the Cuban Missile Crisis as an undergrad in the 1970s. Not a bad book, believe it or not, though I am citing 40-year-old recall. The book probably lacked the deeper, more cynical take on the CIA. Might be worth re-reading. 

 

 

[Anthony Thorne]

The rewrite was co-written with Philip Zelikow, a protege of May’s who became a fixture in Allison’s department.

[Benjamin Cole]

20 hours ago, Jim Hargrove said:

So much agreement here is surprising!  David Talbot captured the big picture when he reviewed all Dulles’s assassination plots and other shenanigans in Iran, Guatemala, Italy, France, the Congo, Cuba, and let’s add the U.S.  Whoever else may have been involved in the JFKA, we all seem to pretty much agree that Dulles played a pivotal role, and not only in the cover-up.  

As Richard Booth pointed out above, Dulles regularly met with Angleton after he (Dulles) was fired.  Mr. Talbot indicated that Dulles was at the CIA’s sprawling “Farm” (Camp Peary in VA) in November 1963.

To Mr. Cole – I understand your point about legal proof, but we’ll probably never get a real trial like you describe, and I’d like the world to know what the available evidence seems to show regarding what really happened.

Mr. Schwartz – Interesting list.  Thanks.  Should we add Clay Shaw?  The Agency’s Ray Rocca (surely among other personnel) apparently thought Shaw would be convicted for conspiring in the hit.

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=6515#relPageId=2&tab=page

 

"To Mr. Cole – I understand your point about legal proof, but we’ll probably never get a real trial like you describe, and I’d like the world to know what the available evidence seems to show regarding what really happened."

Perhaps I misstated or overstated my case. Not necessarily legal proof, but something tangible, like memos, private diaries released, somebody credible actually stating the case that Dulles ordered the JFKA.  (I would require proof beyond reasonable doubt if I was sitting on jury, regarding Dulles guilt.)

So far, we have suppositions based on Dulles position, character (or lack of), his political orientation, his representation of globalist interests and some meetings and whereabouts.  

I entirely disagree with Dulles postwar globalist machinations, which were and are costly to US citizens and taxpayers, and often conducted in an amoral and unethical manner, and led to millions of unnecessary deaths.  

 

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Anthony Thorne said:

The rewrite was co-written with Philip Zelikow, a protege of May’s who became a fixture in Allison’s department.

He was the guy who wrote the Iraq War strategy for Bush II. After public outcry, he then replaced Henry Kissinger as the 9/11 Commission as Executive Director. Then the public learned he wrote the Iraq War strategy, toward the end of his time with the 9/11 commission. Earlier this year he was asked to help with the planned Covid Commission. 

The commission was set up to fail, there are some striking parallels with the Warren Commission. 

Learn history with Philip Zelikow
https://www.corbettreport.com/learn-history-with-philip-zelikow-video/

The 9/11 Suspects - Philip Zelikow
https://www.corbettreport.com/911-suspects-philip-zelikow/

 

Edited September 1, 2021 by Chris Barnard

[David Andrews]

Below is a kind of Gold Standard for locating evidentiary sources in the JFKA, provided in Don DeLillo's novel Libra, which offers a wealth of thought about the assassination. 

Win Everett and Larry Parmenter are fictional CIA officers once involved in the Bay of Pigs, though the latter is modeled on E. Howard Hunt.  I have added in brackets the number of members in each planning group posited.  My comments follow.

Anthony Thorne, pay close attention.  There will be a quiz on this material relevant to that other matter.

++++

Win [Everett] sat nodding. He and Larry Parmenter had belonged to a group called SE Detailed, six military analysts and intelligence men. The group was one element in a four-stage committee set up to confront the problem of Castro's Cuba. The first stage, the Senior Study Effort, consisted of fourteen high officials, including presidential advisers, ranking military men, special assistants, undersecretaries, heads of intelligence. [14] They met for an hour and a half. Then eleven men left the room, six men entered. [9] The resulting group, called SE Augmented, met for two hours. Then seven men left, four men entered, including Everett and Parmenter. [6] This was SE Detailed, a group that developed specific covert operations and then decided which members of SE Augmented ought to know about these plans. Those members in turn wondered whether the Senior Study Effort wanted to know what was going on in stage three. Chances are they didn't. When the meeting in stage three was over, five men left the room and three paramilitary officers entered to form Leader 4. [4] Win Everett was the only man present at both the third and fourth stages.

[…]

Knowledge was a danger, ignorance a cherished asset. In many cases the DCI, the Director of Central Intelligence, was not to know important things. The less he knew, the more decisively he could function. It would impair his ability to tell the truth at an inquiry or a hearing, or in an Oval Office chat with the President, if he knew what they were doing in Leader 4. or even what they were talking about, or muttering in their sleep. The Joint Chiefs were not to know. The operational horrors were not for their ears. Details were a form of contamination. The Secretaries were to be insulated from knowing. They were happier not knowing, or knowing too late. The Deputy Secretaries were interested in drifts and tendencies. They expected to be misled. They counted on it. The Attorney General wasn't to know the queasy details. Just get results. Each level of the committee was designed to protect a higher level. There were complexities of speech. A man needed special experience and insight to work true meanings out of certain murky remarks. There were pauses and blank looks. Brilliant riddles floated up and down the echelons, to be pondered, solved, ignored. It had to be this way, Win admitted to himself. The men at his level were spawning secrets that quivered like reptile eggs.

[…]

After the Bay of Pigs, nothing was the same. […] A new committee replaced the old, structured less cleverly, although many of the same men, to no one's shocked surprise, took chairs in the paneled room. The death of Fidel Castro was the small talk once more. But SE Detailed and Leader 4 would not take part. The groups were disbanded, their members marked not as failed plotters and operatives but as the Americans in the invasion array who had the deepest personal involvement in the exiles' cause. It was precisely the true believers who must be removed. Their contact with the exile leaders, their work in assembling and training the assault brigade, had made these men overresponsive to policy shifts, light-sensitive, unpredictable. All this was unspoken, of course. The groups simply disappeared and the members were given scattered duties unrelated to Castro's Cuba, the moonlit fixation in the emerald sea.

Interestingly, some of the men continued to meet.

 

[Don DeLillo, Libra, p. 15 ff.]

++++

This strikes me as a workable operational model for Bay of Pigs planning, if necessarily incomplete.  The question is, Did planning groups such as this meet later to make "small talk" about the JFKA?  Even ad hoc groups, or groups disguised by other purposes?

Were the top groups then also "men [who] continued to meet" after the BOP, or were those meetings only among the lower echelons most involved in the Cuban fiasco?  If the latter, were these meetings authorized or encouraged through "complexities of speech" and "murky remarks" from above - the equivalent of Oliver Stone's "It was in the wind"?

The evidence that would "convict" Allen Dulles, among others, might be documents and testimony traceable to a chain of groups or group members similar to those of the 14, 9, 6 and 4 men posited.  Can these be found amid, and alongside, murky remarks such as "That little Kennedy - he thought he was a god" and "This is almost as bad as the appeasement at Munich"?

Edited September 2, 2021 by David Andrews

[Jim Hargrove]

16 hours ago, Jon Pickering said:

Disagree. Dulles, in fact, was what he was always intended to be - a "civilian" patsy to draw heat away from the true ramrods of the assassination, and, other horrible crimes around the planet. They would be - in my opinion - the Joint Chiefs, operating under the full institutional weight of the Armed Forces , as embodied by the Generals and Admiral corps, their staffs, and, key lower ranked personnel.

Jon,

Can you think of any evidence to support the contention that Dulles was intended to be a patsy?

[Jim Hargrove]

7 hours ago, Benjamin Cole said:

Perhaps I misstated or overstated my case. Not necessarily legal proof, but something tangible, like memos, private diaries released, somebody credible actually stating the case that Dulles ordered the JFKA.  (I would require proof beyond reasonable doubt if I was sitting on jury, regarding Dulles guilt.)

So far, we have suppositions based on Dulles position, character (or lack of), his political orientation, his representation of globalist interests and some meetings and whereabouts.  

I entirely disagree with Dulles postwar globalist machinations, which were and are costly to US citizens and taxpayers, and often conducted in an amoral and unethical manner, and led to millions of unnecessary deaths.  

Fair enough.  There may not be a single smoking gun, but  let’s look at some considerable circumstantial evidence....

After JFK fired him, Dulles became one of the President’s chief political enemies. Why?  

Beyond his dismissal, surely at the top of his list of grievances was Cuba.  Dulles never told JFK (or the Warren Commission) about the assassination plots against Castro, and yet Richard Bissell testified to the HSCA that, without Dulles’s personal approval, he never would have involved himself in the Castro assassination plots.  Apparently, Dulles didn’t even tell his successor, John McCone, about the plots and he should have.

Surely the primary purpose of the Kennedy Assassination was to provoke an invasion of Cuba, a provocation that was eventually, according to Earl Warren in his autobiography, quashed by LBJ.  Just review the post-assassination shenanigans by David Atlee Phillips, who attempted again and again to link the assassination, and the alleged assassin, with Castro and Cuba.

Dulles’s appearance at LBJ’s Texas ranch just a week before the assassination was probably a set-up to force Johnson to nix any deep look at the Agency or risk being accused of conspiring with it in the hit.  The fact that Dulles was  at the CIA’s Virginia “Ranch” in November 1963 was a clear indication that, though he may have been fired by Kennedy, he was still very much involved with it.

From the it’s a small world department: The mayor of Dallas on 11/22/63 was Earle Cabell, whose brother Charles was CIA Deputy Director under Dulles.  Charles was also fired by Kennedy in the aftermath of the Bay of Pigs.  Howard Roman, husband of CIA’s Jane Roman, helped Dulles write his book, The Craft of Intelligence.

More directly, when they all were involved in the organization of the Bay of Pigs, Dulles was ultimately in charge of Phillips, Hunt, Barker, and Sturgis/Fiorini, all very familiar names in the JFKA.

Almost immediately after the Katzenbach memo, Dulles became the first name on the list of proposed appointees to what became the Warren Commission.  It was Dulles who handed each commission member a book indicating (incorrectly) that assassins or attempted assassins of U.S. Presidents were all lone nuts.  Dulles told the WC nothing about the myriad pulse cameras and backup cameras trained on the Cuban and Russian consulates in Mexico City, undoubtedly because he knew no pictures were taken there of LHO.

Allen Dulles had the motive, means, and opportunity to run the JFKA.  He also had years of experience organizing foreign assassinations of government overthrows. Everything about this case smells like an intell operation, and no one on earth had more experience with American spycraft than Dulles.

This is largely from memory, and so there may be a few errors, but I think it is essentially correct.  If it looks, walks, and quacks like a duck, it probably is one.
 

[Anthony Thorne]

Zelikow was also on the National Security Council Principals Committee (NSC/PC) when Allison was involved in the NSC as well, and he then followed Allison to the same department at Harvard. The NSC/PC is the 'senior interagency forum for consideration of policy affecting national security', which should give you an idea of their outlook on planning the future directions of the Pentagon, the national security state, and the military industrial complex, all of which had reps deeply wired into Allison's group at Harvard.

The NSC/PC also has the autonomy of making decisions without Presidential approval. It was set up as an adjunct of the regular NSC, so it could cover stuff in a hurry without having to bother the President about it. In reality, this also gave the group free reign to go behind the President's back, if they wanted to. 

 

 

[Benjamin Cole]

5 hours ago, Jim Hargrove said:

Fair enough.  There may not be a single smoking gun, but  let’s look at some considerable circumstantial evidence....

After JFK fired him, Dulles became one of the President’s chief political enemies. Why?  

Beyond his dismissal, surely at the top of his list of grievances was Cuba.  Dulles never told JFK (or the Warren Commission) about the assassination plots against Castro, and yet Richard Bissell testified to the HSCA that, without Dulles’s personal approval, he never would have involved himself in the Castro assassination plots.  Apparently, Dulles didn’t even tell his successor, John McCone, about the plots and he should have.

Surely the primary purpose of the Kennedy Assassination was to provoke an invasion of Cuba, a provocation that was eventually, according to Earl Warren in his autobiography, quashed by LBJ.  Just review the post-assassination shenanigans by David Atlee Phillips, who attempted again and again to link the assassination, and the alleged assassin, with Castro and Cuba.

Dulles’s appearance at LBJ’s Texas ranch just a week before the assassination was probably a set-up to force Johnson to nix any deep look at the Agency or risk being accused of conspiring with it in the hit.  The fact that Dulles was  at the CIA’s Virginia “Ranch” in November 1963 was a clear indication that, though he may have been fired by Kennedy, he was still very much involved with it.

From the it’s a small world department: The mayor of Dallas on 11/22/63 was Earle Cabell, whose brother Charles was CIA Deputy Director under Dulles.  Charles was also fired by Kennedy in the aftermath of the Bay of Pigs.  Howard Roman, husband of CIA’s Jane Roman, helped Dulles write his book, The Craft of Intelligence.

More directly, when they all were involved in the organization of the Bay of Pigs, Dulles was ultimately in charge of Phillips, Hunt, Barker, and Sturgis/Fiorini, all very familiar names in the JFKA.

Almost immediately after the Katzenbach memo, Dulles became the first name on the list of proposed appointees to what became the Warren Commission.  It was Dulles who handed each commission member a book indicating (incorrectly) that assassins or attempted assassins of U.S. Presidents were all lone nuts.  Dulles told the WC nothing about the myriad pulse cameras and backup cameras trained on the Cuban and Russian consulates in Mexico City, undoubtedly because he knew no pictures were taken there of LHO.

Allen Dulles had the motive, means, and opportunity to run the JFKA.  He also had years of experience organizing foreign assassinations of government overthrows. Everything about this case smells like an intell operation, and no one on earth had more experience with American spycraft than Dulles.

This is largely from memory, and so there may be a few errors, but I think it is essentially correct.  If it looks, walks, and quacks like a duck, it probably is one.
 

Jim H.--

Everything you cite is true, and probably understated.  And don't forget John McCloy on the WC. Having  Dulles and McCloy on the WC was a travesty.  

Interesting that none of the "good old boys"---Hale Boggs, Richard Russell and John Sherman Cooper ---bought the WC conclusions.

My guess is the national security state planned for the WC Southerners  not to care that much what happened to JFK, and to hew tight to the military complex.  To their credit, the good old boys remained dubious and aloof. They should have issued an overt dissent, and Russell tried, but times were what they were. 

Still, without anything close to a smoking gun, we are left with theories. For example, some people have posited LBJ more or less arranged for the JFKA, while others posit it was not the CIA-Dulles, but other elements of the intel complex. "The Mob did it" had adherents too. 

I think John Newman is going to posit the JFKA was accomplished by elements of the intel complex, but outside of the CIA.

My guess is the JFKA was a false flag op gone wrong, being run under David Atlee Phillips. 

I stay with my gut, that the number of people involved in the JFKA was necessarily small. 

 

Edited September 2, 2021 by Benjamin Cole
typo

[Jim Hargrove]

Mr. Cole,

David Phillips strikes me as a good candidate for the operational leader in every respect but one.

No doubt the assassination conspiracy was kept as small as possible, but certain functions had to be carried out.  Needed, for example, were at least two or three shooters willing to strike a sitting president in broad daylight in the heart of a major American city.  (Some ticked off Cubans might have been crazed enough to take the obvious risks. I doubt many professional hit men would accept such an assignment.)

At least a Dallas cop or two (Westbrook and Ken Croy?) were needed to put into evidence the throw down "Oswald/Hidell" wallet and to lead cops already angered by the Tippit slaying to the patsy’s hideout.  And several people would be needed to make sure the designated patsy was in the right place at the right time so he could be blamed for it all (including Roy Truly, probably). 

Also needed was someone with the ability to fake a Magic Money Order to tie “Oswald/Hidell” to at least some kind of rifle. (U.S. Postal Inspector Harry Holmes was the obvious candidate.)

And well before the hit, you’d have to assume that the search for JFK’s assassin(s) would be relentless—at least until someone was apprehended.  So there had to be a patsy, and then the patsy would have to be silenced before a trial might endanger everyone involved.  And so someone was needed—in advance--to lead the cover-up during an investigation that would surely go to the Feds despite Texas laws.

No doubt I’m forgetting some additional steps here, but more than a mere handful of conspirators were needed to have a chance of success at this murderous scheme.  The usual cut-outs, compartmentalizations, and need-to-know techniques were probably adopted, but despite that, I just don’t think Phillips had the gravitas to pull that off.   But I can think of another Agency man who clearly did.  For me, it’s partly a process of elimination, leaving Dulles as the prime suspect.