Allen Dulles' Weekend at the Farm

[James DiEugenio]

BTW, I posted this yesterday at Twitter, or X, whatever, it has 20,000 impressions so far.

Incredible. 

[Ron Bulman]

Reading about Dulles weekend at the farm near the end of Devil's Chessboard was the icing on the cake for me regarding him.  I'd read things about him for years before the book that made me wonder about his possible involvement.  The book was devastating in many respects.  But him going to the farm after having established an alibi the morning of the 22nd, then staying until after Oswald was dead seemed incriminating to me.

Dulles as CIA director develops the 9000 acre Camp Peary into the Farm.  Builds a home away from home there with a large up to date intelligence library, a remote, control center, for operations.  It had to have top of the line state of the art secure communications systems.  Fired by JFK.  Theoretically he loses access to it.  But there he is from the afternoon of JFK's death until his accused killer is dead.

[James DiEugenio]

I agree Ron.  That was really interesting.

And I liked The Devil's Chessboard a lot.  Its the best bio of Dulles there is.

[Benjamin Cole]

14 hours ago, Paul Brancato said:

Who is Simpson? 
Linda - once we link Schroeder and Dulles to Permindex we are squarely in the international fascist milieu. Ultimately when I talk about post war Nazi inclusion into US Intelligence I’m thinking that borders lose meaning. Permindex represents that totally. 
Jim - Loftus had both official document sources and whitelblowing sources who he could not name. They corroborate each other. You have Kim Philby’s father in bed with the Saudis. Sounds like we inherited that. Then there is Kim Philby who bamboozled Angleton for a decade. But did he? What about the idea that the Soviets had as many Nazis working for them as we did. Not only was the Soviet Union blown up (where are we now though?) but US empire is self destructing too. Who benefits? Stateless billionaires. Maybe a bit simplistic but Angleton, fascist that he (and Hugh, his father) was, and Kim Philby with his fathers connections, meeting regularly for a decade. Robert Montenegro has indicated that he can trace the funding for Israel’s nuclear program to Nazis. Thinking out loud. 
Steve - good post. Same milieu ultimately. Revenge as motive, Dulles, Harvey, Lemnitzer, European fascists, Gehlen Org. 

Recently we have been exposed to the excellent documents work of Robert Montenegro.  

The CIA was running a nest of Nazi skulkers after WWII, and Dulles was running the CIA from 1952 on, after having been involved with the OSS and CIA before that. 

It is hard to get a handle on how large the Nazi contingent was inside the CIA, and also relative to the overall size of the CIA. 

And we do not know how tight-knit the Nazis were, inside the CIA. One might imagine they kept in touch, at least. 

Dulles, and McCloy were all but Nazi sympathizers before and after WWII.

From Wiki: 

"In April 1933, Dulles and Norman Davis met with Hitler in Berlin on State Department duty. After the meeting, Dulles wrote to his brother Foster and reassured him that conditions under Hitler's regime "are not quite as bad" as an alarmist friend had indicated. Dulles rarely spoke about his meeting with Hitler, and future CIA director Richard Helms had not even heard of their encounter until decades after the death of Dulles and expressed shock that his former boss had never told him about it. After meeting with German Information Minister Joseph Goebbels, Dulles stated he was impressed with him and cited his "sincerity and frankness" during their interaction."

McCloy, I have covered in a separate post. 

How does this tie back to the JFKA?

Maybe not at all, but hard to dismiss out of hand.

Within the CIA were dozens of individuals who had little compunction about murder, if money or ideology was involved. 

Could Nazis trick Cuban exiles into being the cat's paw? 

This topic must be approached with every caution, using only the most-reliable information. 

And, of course Dulles and McCloy end up on the WC. 

[James DiEugenio]

The other point about Dulles that I have always found so interesting was his visit to Truman in the spring of 1964.

While he was on the Warren Commission.

As most of us know, Truman had written an editorial, published a month after the assassination.  It said that he never figured the CIA would ever become what it had when he signed the National Security Act.  It turned out that we now know that editorial was started within about a week of the assassination and it was proofread by Admiral SIdney Souers who wrote back words to the effect, what I had planned for you was turned upside down by Allen Dulles.

So Dulles went down with a driver and escort to try and get Truman to retract his editorial.  It did not work.

But that is not the capper.  The capper is this.

As Dulles was leaving, he stopped and said, out of the blue, something like, You know Kennedy always denied those stories about the CIA and Vietnam.  Truman had not  mentioned Vietnam in his editorial. Nor had that come up that day.

What this indicates is that Dulles thought that Truman was really thinking the CIA was involved in the JFK murder and that Vietnam might have been a motivation. (Destiny Betrayed, second edition, pp. 379-80)  

Why would he think that if he was not involved himself?

Edited August 1, 2023 by James DiEugenio

[Paul Rigby]

1 hour ago, James DiEugenio said:

The other point about Dulles that I hav always found so interesting was his visit to Truman in the spring of 1964.

While he was on the Warren Commission.

As most of us know, Truman had written an editorial, published a month after the assassination.  It said that he never figured the CIA would ever become what it had when he signed the National Security Act.  It turned out that we now know that editorial was started within about a week of the assassination and it was proofread by Admiral SIdney Souers who wrote back words to the effect, what I had planned for you was turned upside down by Allen Dulles.

So Dulles went down with a driver and escort to try and get Truman to retract his editorial.  It did not work.

But that is not the capper.  The capper is this.

As Dulles was leaving, he stopped and said, out of the blue, something like, You know Kennedy always denied those stories about the CIA and Vietnam.  Truman had not  mentioned Vietnam in his editorial. Nor had that come up that day.

What this indicates is that Dulles thought that Truman was really thinking the CIA was involved in the JFK murder and that Vietnam might have been a motivation. (Destiny Betrayed, second edition, pp. 379-80)  

Why would he think that if he was not involved himself?

New York World-Telegram & Sun, Tuesday, 24 December 1963, p.13

Truman and the CIA 

By Richard Starnes 

The murmuring chorus of Americans who are deeply concerned with the growing power and headlong wilfulness of the Central Intelligence Agency has been joined by former President Truman.

Mr. Truman must be accounted an expert witness in this matter, because it was under his administration that the CIA came into being. In a copyrighted article he wrote recently that the CIA had strayed wide of the purposes for which he had organized it.

"It has," he wrote, "become an operational and at times a policy-making arm of the government. This has led to trouble and may have compounded our difficulties in several explosive areas."

For writing substantially the same thing from South Viet Nam last fall, this reporter was (and still is) subjected to a calculated behind-the-scenes campaign of opprobrium at the hands of the CIA. So, indeed, has the United States' ambassador to Saigon been subjected to the same sort of behind-the-hand attack, on the theory that he was the source of my account of the CIA's heedless bureaucratic arrogance in Saigon.

Mr. Lodge, it is now charged by CIA apologists, destroyed the effectiveness of one of the CIA's most skilful agents. It is also charged that this reporter violated a gentleman's agreement in naming the agent.

Both charges are false, meaching and disingenuous.

The name of the agent, hurriedly summoned home from Saigon within 24 hours of my account of his stewardship of the huge spook operations, was John Richardson. In my several conversations with Ambassador Lodge, Richardson's name never passed between us.

It was, indeed, not necessary for any wayfaring journals to go to any such exalted figures to descry the activities of the CIA's station chief in Saigon. Richardson, a frequent visitor at the presidential palace and a close adviser to the devious and powerful Ngo Dinh Nhu, was widely known in the Vietnamese capital. Until Mr. Lodge replaced Frederick Nolting as ambassador, most knowledgeable Americans and sophisticated Vietnamese regarded Richardson as the most powerful foreigner in Viet Nam.

It is nonsense to say that Lodge destroyed Richardson's value as a CIA agent. In Saigon, Richardson was as clandestine as a calliope with a full head of steam. It is, moreover, a libel to allege (as high CIA officials have alleged) that this reporter violated an agreement to shield Richardson's identity. In all my assiduous inquiries about the man, never once was it suggested that there was an agreement to keep his identity secret. If there had been any such agreement, I would, of course, have respected it even though it would have been plainly absurd in view of Richardson's notoriety.

This is, unfortunately, more than a parochial dispute between a reporter and a writhing, unlovely bureaucracy. The President of the United States himself has been misled by the CIA mythology regarding just how and by whom Richardson's utility as chief resident spook was destroyed. Neither Lodge nor any journalist cast Richardson in his role in Saigon. If CIA chief John McCone really believes that his man in Saigon was compromised by my dispatches (and presumably he does believe this or he would not have planted and cultivated the tale as thoroughly as he has) then he does not know what is going on in the huge, bumbling apparatus he nominally leads.

Mr. Truman knows whereof he speaks. Wise in the ways of malignant bureaucracy, he knows that unfettered and unaccountable power such as is vested in the CIA is bound to feed upon itself until it poses a threat to the very free institutions it was founded to safeguard. No man alive knows the enormous power that is now vested in the CIA, nor the wealth it dispenses, nor the policy it makes. Most people in government would be appalled if they knew that already the CIA has overflowed its huge new headquarters building in McLean, Va., but it is fact that it has done.

There is far, far too much about the CIA that is unknown to far too many Americans. We will, occasionally and from time to time, twang this same sackbut. It is not a pretty tune it plays, but it is an important one.

[James DiEugenio]

BIngo Paul. 

Just what I think Dulles was thinking about.

Paul has done some of the best work you will see anywhere about those autumn articles and the work of Starnes.

I for one think they are really important.

Paul: Can you please post the original Starnes article?  

 

 

Edited August 1, 2023 by James DiEugenio

[Paul Rigby]

1 hour ago, James DiEugenio said:

Paul: Can you please post the original Starnes article?  

Always a pleasure to revisit that one, this time with its accompanying editorial, and a suitably dishonest Dullesian preface:

In The Craft of Intelligence, published only months earlier, Allen Dulles opined: “I have frequently been asked what ‘myth’ about the CIA has been the most harmful…(I) finally chose the accusation that the CIA made foreign policy, often cut across the programs laid down by the President and Secretary of State, and interfered with what ambassadors and foreign service officers abroad were trying to do.” Now for the truth:

The Washington Daily News, Wednesday, October 2, 1963, p.3

'SPOOKS' MAKE LIFE MISERABLE FOR AMBASSADOR LODGE

'Arrogant' CIA Disobeys Orders in Viet Nam

By Richard Starnes

SAIGON, Oct.2 - The story of the Central Intelligence Agency's role in South Viet Nam is a dismal chronicle of bureaucratic arrogance, obstinate disregard of orders, and unrestrained thirst for power.

Twice the CIA flatly refused to carry out instructions from Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, according to a high United States source here.

In one of these instances the CIA frustrated a plan of action Mr. Lodge brought with him from Washington because the agency disagreed with it.

This led to a dramatic confrontation between Mr. Lodge and John Richardson, chief of the huge CIA apparatus here. Mr. Lodge failed to move Mr. Richardson, and the dispute was bucked back to Washington. Secretary of State Dean Rusk and CIA Chief John A. McCone were unable to resolve the conflict, and the matter is now reported to be awaiting settlement by President Kennedy.

It is one of the developments expected to be covered in Defense Secretary Robert McNamara's report to Mr. Kennedy.

Others Critical, Too

Other American agencies here are incredibly bitter about the CIA.

"If the United States ever experiences a 'Seven Days in May' it will come from the CIA, and not from the Pentagon," one U.S. official commented caustically.

("Seven Days in May" is a fictional account of an attempted military coup to take over the U.S. Government.)

CIA "spooks" (a universal term for secret agents here) have penetrated every branch of the American community in Saigon, until non-spook Americans here almost seem to be suffering a CIA psychosis.

An American field officer with a distinguished combat career speaks angrily about "that man at headquarters in Saigon wearing a colonel's uniform." He means the man is a CIA agent, and he can't understand what he is doing at U.S. military headquarters here, unless it is spying on other Americans.

Another American officer, talking about the CIA, acidly commented: "You'd think they'd have learned something from Cuba but apparently they didn't."

Few Know CIA Strength

Few people other than Mr. Richardson and his close aides know the actual CIA strength here, but a widely used figure is 600. Many are clandestine agents known only to a few of their fellow spooks.

Even Mr. Richardson is a man about whom it is difficult to learn much in Saigon. He is said to be a former OSS officer, and to have served with distinction in the CIA in the Philippines.

A surprising number of the spooks are known to be involved in their ghostly trade and some make no secret of it.

"There are a number of spooks in the U.S. Information Service, in the U.S. Operations mission, in every aspect of American official and commercial life here, " one official - presumably a non-spook - said.

"They represent a tremendous power and total unaccountability to anyone," he added.

Coupled with the ubiquitous secret police of Ngo Dinh Nhu, a surfeit of spooks has given Saigon an oppressive police state atmosphere.

The Nhu-Richardson relationship is a subject of lively speculation. The CIA continues to pay the special forces which conducted brutal raids on Buddhist temples last Aug. 21, altho in fairness it should be pointed out that the CIA is paying these goons for the war against communist guerillas, not Buddhist bonzes (priests).

Hand Over Millions

Nevertheless, on the first of every month, the CIA dutifully hands over a quarter million American dollars to pay these special forces.

Whatever else it buys, it doesn't buy any solid information on what the special forces are up to. The Aug. 21 raids caught top U.S. officials here and in Washington flat-footed.

Nhu ordered the special forces to crush the Buddhist priests, but the CIA wasn't let in on the secret. (Some CIA button men now say they warned their superiors what was coming up, but in any event the warning of harsh repression was never passed to top officials here or in Washington.)

Consequently, Washington reacted unsurely to the crisis. Top officials here and at home were outraged at the news the CIA was paying the temple raiders, but the CIA continued the payments.

It may not be a direct subsidy for a religious war against the country's Buddhist majority, but it comes close to that.

And for every State Department aide here who will tell you, "Dammit, the CIA is supposed to gather information, not make policy, but policy-making is what they're doing here," there are military officers who scream over the way the spooks dabble in military operations.

A Typical Example

For example, highly trained trail watchers are an important part of the effort to end Viet Cong infiltration from across the Laos and Cambodia borders. But if the trailer watchers spot incoming Viet Congs, they report it to the CIA in Saigon, and in the fullness of time, the spooks may tell the military.

One very high American official here, a man who has spent much of his life in the service of democracy, likened the CIA's growth to a malignancy, and added he was not sure even the White House could control it any longer.

Unquestionably Mr. McNamara and Gen. Maxwell Taylor both got an earful from people who are beginning to fear the CIA is becoming a Third Force co-equal with President Diem's regime and the U.S. Government - and answerable to neither.

There is naturally the highest interest here as to whether Mr. McNamara will persuade Mr. Kennedy something ought to be done about it.

(See editorial on page 32.)

Quote

 

The Washington Daily News, 2 October 1963, p.32

Editorial: What’s Wrong in South Viet Nam?

It is a brutally messed up state of affairs that our man, Richard Starnes, reports from South Viet Nam in his article on Page 3 today.

And the mess he has found isn’t Viet Namese. It is American, involving bitter strife among U.S. agencies – which may help explain the vast cost and lack of satisfactory progress in this operation to contain communist aggression.

The whole situation, as described by Mr. Starnes, must be shocking to Americans who believe we are engaged in a selfless crusade to protect democracy in this far-off land.

He has been told that:

•            The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has flatly refused to carry out instructions from Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, frustrating a plan of action he took from Washington.

•            Secret agents, or “spooks,” from CIA “have penetrated every branch of the American community in Saigon.” Who are we fighting there anyhow? The communists, or our own people?

•            The CIA agents represent a tremendous power and are totally unaccountable to anyone. They dabble and interfere in military operations, to the frustration of our military officials.

The bitterness of other American agencies in Saigon toward the CIA, Starnes found, is “almost unbelievable.”

 

 

[Leslie Sharp]

Dick Russell provides a limited analysis of the primary source material of Albarelli's last investigation.  if you continue reading, James Angleton is germane to the discussion of his former boss, DCI Allen Dulles' alleged Weekend At The Farm:

 

Dick Russell: ANGLETON: Listed in the datebook by his last name as well as initials (JA and JJA), the then-head of Counterintelligence for the CIA appears to have been involved in “high-level gathering in DC'' during which “Lancelot planning” was discussed. The Lancelot reference is to a plot to kill JFK. The datebook’s final mention of James Angleton,(December 5, 1963) states: “JA – CLOSE OUT LANCELOT.” Angleton’s name was not generally known until the mid-1970s, when he was forced out of the CIA following revelations that he’d organized an illegal domestic spying program. 

 

Albarelli / Sharp:  

. . . After the war, having immigrated to the US, Clifford Forster ran the American Friends of Paix et Liberté designed to counter the propaganda of the French Communist Party. He later formed several similarly aggressively anti-communist committees in the US focused exclusively on threats to French colonial dominance in Algeria. By 1960, he was chairman/cofounder of The American Committee for France and Algeria, launching a bulletin similar to Willoughby's Foreign Intel Digest called Integration, the preferred term of fascist sympathizers to define the resolution of the Algerian question. Forster wrote, “. . . [we] believe that, in the interests of humanity and Western civilization, American policy as well as that of our allies will be best served by an Algeria integrated with France.” (Sept. 1960—emphasis added) 

            By 1961, President John Kennedy was taking a different position which strongly favored Algerian independence from France.

            Forster had argued, “The importance of Algeria and indeed all of North Africa to the defense of Western Europe cannot be underestimated. . . . These are the simple strategic facts involved in the global struggle between East and West. . . .” 

            A close read of Forster’s analysis of “the importance of Algeria . . .” exposes a far less noble motive. Referring to Oil, Gas & Chemical Service, June 8, 1959, Forster alerts his readers that the petroleum industry publication sounded the warning in these terms: “Recent exploratory successes in North Africa and the development of sizable oil reserves in Algeria have directed attention to the entire northern part of the continent of Africa. The vigorous exploration and development of oil reserves in the Sahara Desert areas of Algeria will bring France into the ranks of important oil producing nations….” Intentional or not, Forster was transparent: rightful independence of Algerians hinged on dominance over the country’s natural resources.      Reflecting on the 1952 “Meadows - Skorzeny” scheme launched in Franco’s Spain compels researchers to wonder how the discovery of vast oil reserves in the Sahara factored into the long-range projections of Texas independent oilmen.

       Among the far-right propaganda outlets touted by Clifford Forster’s Integration were those published by Kent Courtney, an active member of the White Citizens Council, and the John Birch Society (JBS). A critical aspect of what appears on the surface as a loosely knit network, which in retrospect surfaces as a powerful worldwide ideological movement, was the American Opinion Speakers Bureau, promoted by the JBS. That stable of speakers included Clifford Forster, featured speaker at Billy James Hargis' annual “Christian Crusade” convention held in Dallas in 1964, just months after the assassination. Forster was Otto Skorzeny's business friend. As noted previously, Christian Crusade was wrapped up in the Congress of Freedom identified in the Lafitte datebook.

       Apparently, Algeria was still on the mind of former director of the CIA, Allen Dulles in October 1963. In so many words, Dulles agreed with Forster that despite Algerian independence secured in 1962, capitalism writ large was not served by that major political shift on the African continent. During his trip to Dallas, October 28/29—the forty-eight-hour period critical to "Lancelot Planning," according to Pierre Lafitte—the dynamics in Algeria dominated Dulles’s speech before the Dallas Council on World Affairs.

 

. . . On October 17th—one day before James Angleton told Pierre Lafitte that there had been a high-level gathering in DC, the Dallas Morning News published a brief announcement, “Former CIA Boss Sets Dallas Talk.” The story read: “Allen W. Dulles, former director of the Central Intelligence Agency will address a meeting of the Dallas Council on World Affairs at noon on Monday, October 28, in the Baker Hotel . . .” Neil Mallon, a member of the board of Republic National Bank had been a friend and confidant of Allen Dulles throughout Dulles’s tenure as director of Central Intelligence. It was through Dulles’s prompting that Mallon founded the Dallas chapter of the Council on World Affairs, an invaluable instrument for the agency since 1951 and the perfect venue on October 28, 1963, for Dulles to promote his book and speak on national security issues including reference to specific activity in hot spots around the world, suggesting he was being briefed in spite of his having left the agency in 1961. The Dallas chapter of the Independent Petroleum Association of America also held their monthly meeting on October 28th.

            On October 27th, the Dallas Morning News followed up and announced that oil expert Jack Crichton, having recently returned from an oil tour of Romania, would present his report to the Petroleum Engineers on the following Friday, November 1st. 

            On October 29th, Kent Biffle of the Dallas Morning News published a summation of Allen Dulles’s speech the night before under the headline, “Allen Dulles Looks Behind Red Moves”: “Khrushchev announced he ‘isn’t going to the moon next week’ to foil the Kennedy plan for a joint moon effort.” Dulles said, ‘Russians are arming Algerian troops in hopes of finally gaining a solid foothold in Africa . . . The Soviets have been trying for ten to fifteen years to find the foothold they want in Africa. They tried in Egypt, the Congo, Guinea and Ghana.’” Biffle continued, “Dulles said that in arming the Algerians against the Moroccans, the Reds are again trying to find a satisfactory foothold in Africa.” We should underscore here that as DCI Allen Dulles had been a frequent visitor to the hotels and homes of numerous close friends in Dallas, Texas, including of course Mallon. Indeed, some people close to the CIA director would quietly remark that Dallas had become an important base of operations for the CIA, second only to headquarters in Langley, Virginia. (See Endnote.)

            Dulles’s October 28th talk before Mallon’s Dallas Council on World Affairs further tilled the soil when he included reference to the Algerians’ fight for independence—a subject close to the heart of this book. The speech was a companion piece to other recent impassioned anti-communist pleadings at various venues around the city including those of the woeful, anti-Red princess from Romania. Jack Crichton’s report to Dallas petroleum executives—scheduled within days of Dulles’s speech at the DCWA—recapped his Romanian oil tour which most assuredly described the plight of that country under The Reds, planting propaganda and stoking the anti-communist fires in Dallas. Crichton’s talk was just four days prior to Lafitte making a note, Meet with Crichton at Tech building.

Edited August 1, 2023 by Leslie Sharp

[Ron Bulman]

Dulles nor the OAS, e.g., Souetre and many others were not happy with JFK's words six years before his death.

Remarks of Senator John F. Kennedy in the Senate, Washington, D.C., July 2, 1957 | JFK Library

[Leslie Sharp]

6 hours ago, Ron Bulman said:

Dulles nor the OAS, e.g., Souetre and many others were not happy with JFK's words six years before his death.

Remarks of Senator John F. Kennedy in the Senate, Washington, D.C., July 2, 1957 | JFK Library

Did Dulles take his cue from TIME Magazine's headline when he prepped for his speech before the World Affairs Council in Dallas just ten days later?: 

Algeria: The Cuba of Africa

Friday, Oct. 18, 1963

 

 

For a while, at least, Algeria was back at war last week. In the rugged mountains and deep canyons of the Kabylia region, where guerrillas had fought for independence for 71 years, new guerrilla fighting erupted that was almost as bitter as the war against the French. 

 

This time it was a struggle between Algerians. On one side stood President Ahmed ben Bella, whose Socialist dictatorship has so far brought his country little beyond unemployment and hunger. On the other side were 1,000,000 dissident Berbers, led by two of Ben Bella's wartime comrades whose ide ology is vague, but who oppose his ruthless power drive and his economically disastrous rule. 

Sniping at Comrades. At first, Ben Bella pretended to ignore the rebellion. Casually he dropped in to visit an Algiers training school, where he sipped tea and played games with orphaned shoeshine boys learning a new trade. He tried to dispose of the dissidents with ridicule. One of the rebel leaders, Hocine Aït Ahmed, had spent much of the war in French prisons (with Ben Bella himself). Told that Aït Ahmed was now wearing an Algerian army uniform, Ben Bella laughed: "He never got a chance to wear it during the war. I hope he enjoys it." As for the other rebel chieftain, Colonel Mohand Ou el Hadj, who has a brilliant wartime record against the French, Ben Bella contemptuously blamed his defection on the fact that "we were going to nationalize his restaurant in Algiers." 

While sniping at his former comrades, Ben Bella launched a campaign to boost his own popularity. For the first time in seven months, war widows received their pensions. Large shipments of food, much of it donated by the U.S., were hastily trucked to the hungry countryside. Ben Bella seemed to think that he could rally the country against the rebels with promises of further nationalization. But the seizure of medium-sized French land holdings, whose owners had paid better wages than does the government, was far from popular, and no one seemed to think that Algeria's economic misery would be solved by last week's nationalization of 43 butcher shops, 30 bakeries, and several ice-cream and soda-pop factories. The crowds that turned out to hear his speeches were notably unenthusiastic. 

Reluctantly, Ben Bella postponed his scheduled trip to the U.N. General Assembly and openly threatened the rebels. "There will be no discussion with the criminals, no bargaining," he shouted. "They only understand the language of machine guns." 

Sheepish Smile. Even as Ben Bella spoke, his army moved. A convoy of seven Soviet-made 85-mm. cannon, a batch of 37-mm. antiaircraft guns and two fresh battalions rolled along twisting roads into the mountain town of Tizi-Ouzou, on the edge of rebel-held territory. Encamped along the high ridges were the guerrillas. They were equipped with heavy machine guns and recoil less cannon, which they cleaned constantly when they were not listening to their transistor radios or posing for Western news photographers.* Indian-style signal fires on the mountain spread news of the government troops' approach. But each side was unwilling to be the one to touch off a civil war.

[Leslie Sharp]

Notes on the Appointment and Call Diaries 

of Allen Dulles, 1962–1963

by Alan Kent
(essay as published in the appendix of Coup in Dallas by H. P. Albarelli Jr. with Leslie Sharp and Alan Kent)

 

Princeton University, the alma mater of legendary one-time director of the Central Intelligence Agency Allen Dulles, houses a fascinating collection of material compiled by and about Dulles. Among the most interesting sources of information are the appointment and call diaries of Dulles, which are available—more or less—for the years 1939–1974, per Princeton's text. Dulles died in 1969, so I assume that the last figure is in error, unless Dulles possessed even greater powers than his admirers credit him with. Here I will be examining the records of some of Dulles’s doings during 1962–1963. This time period encompasses the formal end of Dulles’s long intelligence career—as is well-known, Dulles was escorted out of the Kennedy government after the CIA’s dicey performance prior to and during the Bay of Pigs invasion—and the assassination of the man who escorted him, President Kennedy. 

            Dulles formally left his position as DCI in November 1961, but by January of the following year he began to create a new position for himself, one in which he had scarcely less influence within a circle of powerful friends than he had enjoyed at the head of CIA, and arguably even less accountability. As Dulles biographer David Talbot wrote: “In truth, the Kennedy purge had left the ranks of Dulles loyalists at the CIA largely untouched. Top Dulles men like Angleton and Helms remained on the job. And the ‘Old Man’s’ shadow knights never abandoned their king…Dulles had been deposed, but his reign continued.”

            Before delving into an examination of some of the patterns and specific detail revealed by this material, a common-sense caveat should be made: Dulles was a very intelligent and devious man, who was quite capable of arranging communications and meetings that would fall outside the records that he and whatever secretarial person or persons he employed over the years created. One example of this is the strange meeting Dulles attended on April 15, 1963 with retired Army general Lucius D. Clay and a (still) mysterious anti-Castro exile, Paulino Sierra Martinez. We know about this meeting today due to CIA monitoring of Sierra’s whirlwind 1963 activities, but there is no hint of the meeting to be found in Dulles’s appointment diaries. It is also the case that more than a few contacts that Dulles had during this time period are redacted, either wholly or in part. Sometimes the redactions are present in the familiar form of a crude crossing out, and others are simply listed as being “redacted.” 

            No doubt, some of Dulles’s contacts, particularly so soon after his departure from a long reign as DCI, would have qualified as “national security” matters, as that category was broadly interpreted at the time. There are, however, more of these redactions than would seem necessary for the communications of a man who was nominally a private citizen at this time of his life. The operative term here, though, is “nominally.” Because the record of his ’62–’63 contacts shows that—with the exception of the absence of meetings with foreign dignitaries and intelligence chiefs that occurred frequently during his time as DCI, Dulles was still doing business.

1962

January 1962 was a pivotal time in the history of CIA, and in Dulles’s life. He was removing himself from the position at the head of the organization, and transferring information and advice to his successor, John McCone. As would be expected, there was much communication with Dulles’s most trusted contacts. Jan. 8, a note from a message left asks him to “Please call Cord Meyer,” and an afternoon appointment with Meyer was arranged. Jan. 9 featured a lunch with Tracy Barnes, a meeting with CIA Counterintelligence head Jim Angleton, and an evening visit by Sen. Prescott Bush. On Jan. 10, Mrs. Tracy Barnes invited Mrs. Dulles to lunch, and a call from former Deputy Director of CIA Gen. Charles Cabell. Cabell invited Dulles to attend a get-together later in the month, celebrating Gen. Cabell’s achievements, prior to Cabell cleaning out his office and moving on as of Jan. 31. On Jan. 15, Angleton met with Dulles at Allen’s home. On Jan. 16, an interesting call from Tracy Barnes took place. “Mr. Barnes said they hoped to have ‘it’ to go tomorrow for Mr. McCone. Mr. Dulles will take ‘it’ in pieces.” Dulles had a 3:45 appointment with McCone on this day, and (presumably) a meeting with the new DCI on the following day in which “it” was presented to McCone. 

            Jan. 17 brought a phone call from another man who had recently been “retired” from the Kennedy administration, former Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Arleigh Burke. Burke’s call was regarding a weekend meeting of the “Defense Committee.” Burke and Dulles would communicate frequently about this shared membership over the next few months, very likely a reference to the developing Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), which was officially inaugurated in September, just before the Cuban Missile Crisis. Jan. 19 was a busy day for the former DCI. Calls from Barnes and Cord Meyer were recorded, as well as a call from a Dulles favorite, E. Howard Hunt. Hunt’s call referred to a “news item,” and the contents of the call were redacted. Five separate phone calls placed to Dulles on Jan. 19 were fully redacted. A Jan. 22 call from a “Col. White” had to do with something referred to as the “deer incident” . . .

            February 1962 had few entries in Dulles’s diaries, but March and April show a good deal more activity. A March 23 note refers to (Redacted), who will be in town “next week.” “What time will be convenient?” asks Dulles’s secretary. On March 28, Angleton’s head of the Research and Analysis Department of CIA CI, Raymond Rocca called, to discuss the “Hohenlohe papers” with Dulles. These papers, which were circulating in a truncated form in the early 1960s, covered a late-World War Two relationship Dulles had developed with Maximilian von Hohenlohe, a Nazi courier, with whom Dulles, then in OSS, was attempting to broker an agreement for a Nazi surrender. This business was not sanctioned by anyone of authority in the US government, and Dulles was understandably nervous about allegations that he had been flirting with treason. On March 30, (Redacted) called to seek an appointment with Dulles, and to remind Allen that his time in Washington was “very limited.” 

            April 3 featured a lunch appointment with Frederick Praeger, the owner of a publishing company which CIA had a long-standing relationship with. Praeger would pitch books he wanted to publish, which comported with Agency interests, but which were not economically feasible to publish, and the Agency would frequently subsidize the publication and marketing of these books. Cord Meyer had been involved in this previously, and Tracy Barnes and his assistant at the Domestic Operations Division, Howard Hunt, would be involved with the Praeger operation. As is often the case during this period of time, Dulles seems to have been actively involved with Agency business that he was supposed to have been separated from.

             In April ’62, Dulles had appointments with important active CIA station head Bronson Tweedy and another appointment with one of Dulles’s Agency favorites, Tracy Barnes. In the wake of the Bay of Pigs fallout, Barnes was busily staking out his Agency future, while his fellow participants in the “fiasco” were shown the door. April 23 brought a call from Agency legend Henry Hecksher regarding an “article on Indonesia,” and a call from Barnes, who said he had decided to “do nothing for the time being.” (A great many of the Dulles calls were monitored for content by Dulles’s secretary. Some were not and are specifically designated “not monitored.”) On April 25, DCI McCone issues a dinner invitation to Dulles. McCone and Dulles would communicate and meet frequently over the next few months. April 30 brought a call from head of CIA’s Far Easter Division, Desmond Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald and Dulles discussed the “situation in Laos.” That situation involved CIA opposition to President Kennedy’s policy of attempted neutrality between competing factions in that country, a policy Kennedy had laid down soon after taking office, amidst a powerful barrage of military and intelligence advice to him to intervene forcefully in Laos.

            The close Dulles-McCone relationship, and Dulles’s frequent “informal” consulting with key Agency personnel on matters concerning US foreign policy brought forth a caustic evaluation from veteran diplomat W. Averill Harriman. Harriman spoke with Kennedy aide Arthur Schlesinger in May 1962. Harriman told Schlesinger that JFK’s policy of Laotian neutrality was being “systematically sabotaged by the military and the CIA.” “McCone and the people in the CIA want the president to have a setback,” Harriman contended. “They want to justify the [interventionist] position CIA took five years ago. They want to prove that a neutral solution is impossible, and that the only course is to turn Laos into an American bastion.” McCone, who largely shared the Dulles perspective, “has no business in the New Frontier,” railed Harriman, who clearly believed, as David Talbot suggests, that Kennedy’s purge of the CIA had not been sweeping enough. In 1963, Dulles would accurately inform a newspaper columnist who had authored a critical piece on CIA operations that “Since my retirement, there have been few important policy changes, and I am wholly in support of its new chief and of its recent work.”

            Nineteen sixty-two would continue to be an “active” year for Dulles, as reflected in his appointment and call diaries. He began to meet regularly with his old friend and former Agency kingpin Frank Wisner, who had suffered a great deal of emotional anguish during his last few years at CIA, and had retired from the Agency in ’62. Dulles met journalist and Agency asset Isaac Don Levine on June 13. On July 13, Dulles also met “Mr. Wyatt,” likely Mark Wyatt, an old-boy Agency operator from the late 1940s, and a man who would be tasked with the unenviable job of supporting Bill Harvey in Rome, after Harvey’s RFK-led exile following the Cuban Missile Crisis. 

            Summer meetings with long-time Agency asset Perkins McGuire and State Department clandestine operator Robert Murphy, as well as continued meetings with McCone filled Dulles’s schedule. McGuire, former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Supply and Logistics, appears multiple times in the papers of Otto Skorzeny and, per the research of historian Ralph Ganis, was the US government contact who authorized the clandestine use of Skorzeny’s training camps by US Army special forces. Multiple meetings with Dulles’s protégé, Angleton, at times with Howard Hunt in tow, and continued frequent contact with Ray Rocca occurred during 1962. Some of the Rocca calls were redacted. In a particularly striking illustration of Dulles’s continued sway within CIA, on Oct. 8, Dulles requested certain OSS records from the new Far Eastern station head William Colby. Records that Dulles probably had no right to have at the time. Colby’s first response was to “request an autographed picture of AD.”

            Dulles continued to communicate regularly with close associate William A. M. Burden during 1962 and early 1963. Burden, the great-great grandson of the founder of the Vanderbilt wealth, railroad baron Cornelius Vanderbilt, who maintained a business office at a New York City address (630 Fifth Avenue) in which Dulles was also ensconced, ran the gamut of US national policy and prime corporate positions. Burden served on the boards of the Hanover Bank, Lockheed Aircraft Co., and CBS during his lengthy career. He had been a director of the Council on Foreign Relations, and founded a family investment firm that bears his name today. During the Second World War he had been a Special Assistant for Research and Development to the Secretary of the Army Air Force. 

            Following a heavy campaign contribution to the 1956 Presidential campaign of Dwight Eisenhower, Burden was granted an ambassadorship to Belgium, a position he held from 1959–1961, during the period of time that the former imperialist power was struggling to hold on to the remnants of past wealth and national glory. After the ascension to power in the Congo of charismatic leader Patrice Lumumba, Burden strongly felt the threat that Lumumba’s independence posed to Belgium’s long-time pre-eminence in the mineral-rich Congo, and was lobbying his long-time friend Dulles for action against Lumumba in 1959. 

            Dulles, Burden, and the State Department’s C. Douglas Dillon led the charge to persuade President Eisenhower to take serious action against Lumumba, culminating in an August 1960 “direct approval” by Eisenhower of Dulles’s backing of a plot to assassinate Lumumba. While the US-Belgian war to eliminate the Congolese leader moved forward in 1960–61, journalist James Phelan would report receiving a postcard from the Congo, mailed by his friend and clandestine source Pierre Lafitte, who was engaged in…something in that embattled country at the time.

1963

In 1963, Dulles maintained some of the same contacts, but there were noticeable differences. Part of this was his interest in preparing the book that would be published under his name in the fall of the year, to be titled The Craft of Intelligence. Dulles spent time going over galleys for the book and in communication with his publisher, a long-time friend, Cass Canfield, of Harper and Row. Dulles also spent a great deal of time with the men who effectively “ghosted” the book: Howard Roman, whose wife Jane Roman was part of Jim Angleton’s shop at CIA Counterintelligence, Fortune magazine reporter Charles Murphy, and E. Howard Hunt, then working for Tracy Barnes at DOD. Dulles tapped renowned CIA analyst Sherman Kent for research, and used Frank Wisner as a sounding board. There was less communication with Angleton on the record than there had been in 1962, and far less communication with Tracy Barnes. In light of the notes made by Pierre Lafitte, the timing of some of the contacts Dulles had with these men will be examined shortly. 

            Tracy Barnes phoned on April 1, but Dulles was not available. Barnes “will call again” the notation reads. But he would not contact Dulles on his business phone for some time. On April 17, dinner was had with Jim and Cicely Angleton. On April 24, Angleton phoned Dulles. On April 23, the November visit of JFK to multiple Texas cities was announced by Lyndon Johnson. May through August ’63 were “light” as far as calls and appointments went. A couple of meetings with Wisner, and an appointment with Praeger were recorded. Angleton phoned on June 28. Lafitte datebook entries during this time period suggest the possibility that Pierre visited New York City, and that he had planned meetings with Charles Willoughby and Ilse Skorzeny, although we do not know when these entries were written. Dulles took a long vacation to Colorado in July, likely aligned with Aspen Institute’s summer schedule. July and August were very light in recorded communications by/with Dulles. 

            June 12 featured an evening reception for Deputy Secretary of Defense Roswell Gilpatric and his wife. Dulles had been invited by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Maxwell Taylor, who had organized the reception. This is as good a place as any to note that both McNamara and Taylor highly respected Allen Dulles. Taylor would serve with Dulles on the board of a major Wall Street investment firm—Nation-Wide Securities—prior to assuming a role in Mexico City with Canadian based Mexican Light and Power, and after he served as Kennedy’s Joint Chief. Nationwide was heavily invested in military contractors. McNamara, interviewed by author Noel Twyman in 1994, took care to absolve Dulles from any possible involvement in the assassination of President Kennedy. “McNamara made a very specific point that in his view it was impossible that Allen Dulles and Richard Helms were behind the Kennedy assassination,” wrote Twyman. “He reiterated several times that Richard Bissell, Allen Dulles, and Richard Helms had been or were still his close personal friends; that he knew them like brothers…” Such was the aura of institutional respectability that surrounded Dulles during his lifetime.

            September and October, as reflected by the appointment and call diaries, heat up considerably for Dulles. Meetings with Arleigh Burke, Cord Meyer, Wisner, and Sam Papich from FBI are recorded, as well as a dinner with former President Eisenhower. September 19 features a very strange bit of clandestine…something. Following a call from Howard Hunt, an entry reads: “Mrs. Nickerson, Montreal, said she had been ‘instructed’ to give ‘very urgent’ material to Mr. Dulles, personally.” “Dulles in N.Y.” “Subsequently, letter and package were delivered.” 

            September also brought a Dulles meeting with the board of Calvin Bullock, Lt., and an agreement to address that board subsequently. The Bullock group, headed by close Dulles associate Hugh Bullock, was one of the top investment-management firms in the United States and, at various times during this period, featured the chairman of General Dynamics (and former Army Secretary) Frank Pace, Gen. Maxwell Taylor, Admiral R.B. Carney (Chief of Naval Operations during the Eisenhower administration), and President of Columbia University, Grayson Kirk on its Board of Directors. No doubt, the degree to which Dulles remained plugged in to strands of national policy during his “retirement” from CIA was of interest to the Bullock people…

            As of September 17, it appears from datebook entries that Pierre Lafitte and his wife Rene are in New York City for a brief stay. This follows a September 16 entry in which Pierre wrote “Set-up complete.” On October 2, another very odd entry appears in Dulles’s phone log. “Mr. Hunt – Figure AWD interested in is ’42.’” This may, of course have to do with Dulles’s recently published book, but it is unusual, and looks to be coded communication from Hunt to AD.

            The record of an October 10 phone call to Dulles was redacted—blacked out—with the only surviving markings being exclamation marks on both ends of the black-out, certainly a provocative look. Dulles met with Papich of FBI on this date, as well as having lunch with Frank Wisner. On October 11, the notation “Two calls redacted” appears. This comes two days after a lengthy Lafitte datebook entry in which Pierre lays out what looks to be a great many particulars that pertain to the upcoming assassination of Kennedy. On October 16, Dulles signed a copy of Craft of Intelligence for “Bob Nichols,” presumably the financial reporter for the Los Angeles Times, Robert Nichols, which aligns with reports that Dulles made a whirlwind, forty-eight-hour DC/LA round trip jaunt, landing him in DC Thursday, October 17. On October 18, Angleton calls Dulles, for the first time in nearly four months. 

            As noted, Lafitte, in a critically important datebook entry dated October 17, wrote “JA call yest. Says High-level gathering in D.C. Lancelot – GO – OK…” 

            On October 19 and 20, there are no recorded communications with Mr. Dulles. On October 17, a Dallas newspaper had announced the arrival of Dulles for book promotional events, and a Dulles address at the Dallas Council on World Affairs scheduled for October 28. One does not need to speculate unduly to come to the conclusion that something of clandestine importance was being attended to during this time period by Mr. Dulles. In light of this meshing of calls and activity, it may not be surprising that “by October 1963, Dulles felt confident enough to speak out against Kennedy’s foreign policy in public, ignoring the Washington etiquette that deemed it bad form to criticize a president whom you had recently served,” as Talbot writes. 

            Prior to the arrival of Dulles in Texas, two phone calls from the previous month should be noted. On September 17, Dulles’s secretary phoned Canon Martin of St. Albans school, and regretfully informed him that, through an error, AWD would be unable to fulfill a previously scheduled October 24 commitment at the renowned D.C. private school, due to the fact that Dulles had an overriding scheduled appearance in Houston on that date. Mr. Martin “was very kind,” and said that he planned to call Mrs. Wilkinson, with whom the initial arrangement had apparently been made. 

            Either Martin, or Dulles’s secretary, phoned Mrs. Wilkinson, who expressed surprise at the cancellation, saying that “she couldn’t understand how the error had occurred, since she had a letter from Harper’s confirming the date and she also knew that AWD had to be in Princeton on the evening of October 24…” Mrs. Wilkinson said she would attempt to change the date of the Dulles appearance to October 31. “We are to call…if this date is satisfactory…although there is a possibility the date cannot be changed,” wrote Dulles’s secretary. The following day, Dulles agreed to an appearance at a book fair at St Albans on October 31. In the context of Dulles’s forthcoming trip and other significant time-line events, it seems likely that Dulles’s priorities for October were distinctly different than they had been months before. 

            On October 25, Dulles arrived in Houston for the first leg of his Texas book promotional tour. Dulles’s Texas itinerary—Houston to Ft. Worth to Dallas—would mirror the schedule of President Kennedy less than a month later. The Texas visit, presumably due to an invitation from his old Dallas friend Neil Mallon, was the only “non-coast” appearance Dulles would make in support of the book. Talbot writes: “Dulles often used speaking engagements and vacations as cover for serious business, and his detour through Texas bears the markings of such a stratagem.” Also on October 25, Lafitte noted “Call JA Wash D.C. - O says - done - Oswald set in place - call Walker & others.” 

            Dulles would deliver the promised address to Mallon’s DCWA, after spending the 27^th in Ft. Worth, with only a speech made to the “Friends of the Fort Worth Library” recorded in his diaries. He returned to Washington D. C. on October 29. On Monday, October 28, and on the following day, Lafitte—who moved easily between his home in New Orleans and Dallas in 1963—entered only the words “Lancelot Planning” in his datebook. Detailed planning for the forthcoming murder of JFK was on the agenda. 

            Dulles began November ’63 with a meeting with Frank Wisner, and a two-hour visit to the Tunisian Embassy on November 5. On November 12, Dulles resumed an old pattern, having lunch with Howard Roman. November 13 featured a meeting with NASA’s golden boy, Wernher Von Braun, who had smoothly moved from providing creative expertise for Adolf Hitler’s rocket technology to doing the same for the American military establishment during the height of the Cold War. On November 14, Tracy Barnes called AD, for the first (recorded) time since April 1 of ’63. The description of the call notes that the two men discussed “the Praeger project,” and that, in itself, would not seem surprising, since Barnes was handling contact with the CIA-subsidized publisher by that time, and since Dulles was still in frequent contact with Praeger.

            If, however (as I have argued elsewhere) Tracy Barnes was the mysterious “T” in Lafitte’s datebook, it is striking that this call was made to Dulles on the day in which “T” engaged in what was an extremely important meeting regarding the rapidly approaching murder of JFK. On November 14, “T” met personally with a crucial cog in the “on the ground” planning for the Dallas event: Jack Crichton, a man who Dulles’s old friend Col. Albert Haney would describe as being a vitally important part of the JFK assassination. Barnes would contact Dulles again on November 18, the day in which a threat against the life of President Kennedy was uncovered in Tampa, Florida.

            Dulles was addressing a Brookings Institution breakfast meeting on November 22, 1963 in Williamsburg, Virginia. After the Dallas shooting, he headed immediately to the northern Virginia countryside, where he would spend the weekend at a top-secret CIA facility known officially as Camp Peary, but referred to within CIA as “The Farm.” As CIA director, Dulles had created what Talbot describes as “a comfortable home” at The Farm. As an active participant in numerous Agency affairs two years after his forced “retirement,” Dulles was still welcome there. As former House Assassinations Committee investigator Dan Hardaway told Talbot: “The Farm was basically an alternative CIA headquarters, from where Dulles could direct ops.” It is not entirely clear from Hardaway’s quote whether he was referring to Dulles’s role in the Agency when he had been formerly in charge, or what was, in 1963, a continuation of his power and influence by less formal means. As has been strongly suggested by a journey through Dulles’s contacts and activities during 1962 and 1963, there seems to have been little substantive difference between the two time periods, at least not to Mr. Dulles and his acolytes.

            November 26 brought a call from President Lyndon Johnson, who was very interested in appointing Dulles to the investigative body that would become known as the Warren Commission. Dulles graciously accepted the position as one of the seven commissioners who would oversee the inquiry; a position that Dulles confidante William Corson later told author Joe Trento that Dulles had “lobbied hard for.” Dulles told Johnson that “I would like to be of any help.” Dulles’s protégé Richard Helms, then CIA Deputy Director of Plans, would allegedly tell historian Michael Kurtz that he had personally persuaded LBJ to appoint Dulles, but it is doubtful that the President needed much persuading on this count. 

            Dulles would throw himself into the job, becoming the Commissioner who attended the highest percentage of WC sessions. Dulles began preparation for the establishment slant that he would bring to the Commission quickly. A December 2 phone contact shows Dulles requesting multiple copies of Isaac Don Levine’s The Mind of an Assassin, Levine’s study of the Kremlin-dispatched murderer of Leon Trotsky. Readers will remember from the epilogue of this book, the datebook entry penned by Pierre Lafitte on November 28, 1963: “Levine will deal with Marina…” 

            December 5, 1963 is a date that resonates historically, both on the surface, and in the back-story provided by the datebook of Pierre Lafitte. The first meeting of the Warren Commission was held, on a day in which Dulles spoke with DDP Richard Helms, and Lafitte recorded the essence of a personal conversation with CIA Counterintelligence head James Angleton in a datebook entry: “JA (Close out Lancelot), with a reference to “T” as well. 

            Allen Dulles would take the stage as the most active member of the Warren Commission, with the intent of wrapping up the investigation of Kennedy’s assassination without drawing undue attention to personnel or operations connected to CIA. Dulles would chat with Angleton on December 11—a “power call” day in which Dulles also talked with Prescott Bush and Dick Helms—confirming a dinner meeting between the two men on December 12, a meeting which likely had to do with the same topic of discussion that occupied Angleton when he spoke with Lafitte a week before. In mid-December, Dulles would be communicating again with CIA DCI McCone, this time pointing toward a forthcoming California meeting.

            Among the many portions of Dulles’s call and appointment diaries that are blacked out, a December entry stands out as being particularly odd. On December 6, a day in which Dulles had one more of the frequent conversations he enjoyed during this time period with Frank Wisner, an entry reads: “REDACTED reported that a group of Air Force officers had planned to try to impeach President Kennedy before next re-election. AWD advised he report to FBI…REDACTED.” As is the case with many of Dulles’s calls and plans during the period of time that he was supposedly out of power, one would like to know more about this. Who made the allegation, where did this person get the information, and whether the word “impeach” should be taken literally, or whether it masks another activity that might have been considered. But Allen Dulles, nor those he moved within close proximity to, were not concerned with abstractions such as the “right to know.” Dulles moved quietly down back-channels of a world he helped to create, and we do the best we can with what is left to us of his life and times.

 

 

 

 

 

[Michael Griffith]

On 7/31/2023 at 3:34 PM, Steve Thomas said:

Lately, I've been speculating lately on "revenge as motive" for the hit on JFK.

Not so much for what he "might" do with respect to getting out of Vietnam, or eliminating the oil depletion allowance, etc., but for what JFK "had" done; and looking at the people who had been "exiled to the frontier". 

This makes a lot of sense. I have always believed that revenge was one of the major motives of the plotters, and probably the biggest motive for some of them. 

Since JFK had no intention of allowing South Vietnam to fall to the Communists, and since LBJ only (and very reluctantly) escalated the war effort after Hanoi vastly escalated their war effort, Vietnam is not a plausible motive. 

Mafia bosses Marcello and Trafficante had two powerful motives: revenge and survival. JFK, through Bobby, had not only infuriated and attacked them but posed an existential threat to them.

CIA figures such as Dulles, Cabell, and Harvey, along with many anti-Castro Cubans (especially veterans of the Bay of Pigs), undoubtedly felt an intense desire for revenge against JFK. 

Edited August 2, 2023 by Michael Griffith

[Ken Davies]

The mafia did not perform the autopsy, form the Warren Commision, stonewall the release of documents for 60 years, and manipulate the MSM for 60 years.

 

[Michael Griffith]

9 hours ago, Ken Davies said:

The mafia did not perform the autopsy, form the Warren Commision, stonewall the release of documents for 60 years, and manipulate the MSM for 60 years.

All true. However, most of our best evidence that points to suspects points to the Mafia. In many cases, the Mafia practically functioned as an arm of the CIA. It is reasonable to believe that the rogue government elements behind the assassination employed the Mafia as the tip of the spear, just as the CIA did with the plots to kill Castro. Also, Jack Ruby's silencing of Oswald clearly proves the Mafia played a major role in the plot, as do the Mafia killings of some key witnesses. Remember, too, that David Ferrie was closely linked to Carlos Marcello.