Oswald as designated patsy; from Bart Kamp's new book

[Pat Speer]

33 minutes ago, Benjamin Cole said:

Interesting.

In hindsight, and from the comfort of my armchair, I am still appalled that the Dep. Attny Gen of the US wanted the FBI on 11/24 to put out a statement that LHO "killed the President." 

Let alone it was early in the game, but add on, how would LHO get a fair trial after that? 

As stated, Katzenbach had all the intellectual tools and advantages, and legal training and experience, that anyone could want. He was not a blundering PR guy. 

Then, in 1965, McCone suggested to LBJ that Katzenbach could be the next CIA director. 

Interesting. Why Katzenbach? 

 

The 11/24 document reflected a phone call made after Oswald's murder, and is a companion piece to the famous Moyers memo. Essentially, Katzenbach had decided, with some encouragement ho doubt, that the country would be better off pushing that Oswald did it, at least for the time being.  It's a bit shocking. But the fear things would escalate took precedence over the desire to get it right. Katzenbach claimed the government could reverse course should any evidence of a conspiracy come to light, but this was wishful thinking, at best. He failed to realize or at least ever publicly admit that once put on the Oswald-did-it highway, the FBI and Secret Service would fail to perform a thorough investigation of other possibilities, and would actually spin the information already available into a prosecutor's brief. His failure in his role as the nation's top cop is perhaps best  demonstrated by his note to the Warren Commission, accompanying the FBI's initial report CD1. He told the Warren Commission they should release the FBI's report and say they agreed with it, and basically perform no investigation for themselves. But the Commission, to its credit, read the report and realized it was lacking, and would not stand the test of time. As it turned out, of course, their own report suffered this same fate. 

Edited October 1, 2023 by Pat Speer

[James DiEugenio]

The back to back memos, one from the FBI and then from the DOJ, pretty much sealed the deal.

How one could do that in the wake of Ruby shooting Oswald live on TV amid 75 police officers is  amazing.

Clearly both were made in a panic mode. I think it was Eugene Rostow who tried to talk to Katzenbach on Sunday, but said he sounded kind of groggy. 

And recall, it was Katzenbach who was at the first Warren Commission meeting.  As Pat says, he was actually pushing for them to simply accept the FBI report.  Some people think that the 25th memo is really based on the 24th FBI one.  In other words Katzenbach was simply following the dictates of the higher ups at the FBI.

There is probably some truth to this.  And if so, I think it is revelatory of how and why RFK decided to just sit it out.

Edited October 1, 2023 by James DiEugenio

[Cliff Varnell]

1 hour ago, James DiEugenio said:

In other words Katzenbach was simply following the dictates of the higher ups at the FBI.

Who were following the dictates of higher ups at the State Department.

[Karl Kinaski]

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Edited October 1, 2023 by Karl Kinaski

[Benjamin Cole]

Katzenbach may have been co-opted by the intel-military community.

I think he was at odds with the FBI and Hoover on many issues, including the establishment of the WC. 

Remember, Katzenbach served in WWII as a bomber-navigator, and was shot down and spent two years in a POW camp. The guy's record is top-notch, but if you served two years in a POW camp you might have certain views on intel-military prerogatives. 

Later, after not becoming CIA Director despite McCone's recommendation, Katzenbach headed up a three-member commission on CIA funding and activities in certain academic and philanthropic groups. 

Then, in November 1967, it was Katzenbach who, after being detailed to study what to do in Vietnam, prepared a "Memorandum From the Under Secretary of State (Katzenbach) to President Johnson."

Katzenbach did say in his memo, "In this situation, excessive expenditures of men and money—which will not measurably shorten the war—are the surest route to failure, not to success."

At least Katzenbach was not clueless. 

But Katzenbach advised merely adjusting course, and that the new mission in Vietnam should be  "to provide the military cover and non-military assistance needed to enable the GVN to grow in capacity and popular support to the point where it can survive and, over a period of years, deal with what will remain a continuing and serious Communist problem."

And a PR program at home, to sell the American public on the continuation of the war. That PR program would entail no more bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong. 

---30---

As I said, after the JFKA, while everyone was alive, some people should have been grilled pretty hard on what really happened. 

I cannot fathom the Deputy AG of the US telling the FBI to declare LHO the "killer" of JFK, a couple of days after the event, or really at any time before the conclusion of a trial in open court. 

My guess is Katzenbach agreed to go along, perhaps even helped craft, what he and others thought should be the official JFKA narrative. Katzenbach told the HSCA he pushed for the Warren Commission to be formed and for Dulles to be on the WC.

Katzenbach defended his actions before the HSCA, here:

https://history-matters.com/archive/jfk/hsca/reportvols/vol3/pdf/HSCA_Vol3_0921_5_Katzen.pdf

Katzenbach told the HSCA he wanted Dulles on the WC, as Dulles would be good at getting information out of the CIA:

"Perhaps naively, but I thought that the appointment of Allen Dulles to the Commision would insure that the Commission had access to anything that the CIA had. I am astounded to this day that Mr. Dulles did not at least make that 648 information available to the other Commissioners. He might have been skeptical about how far it was to go to the staff or how it might be further investigated because there was somewhat more of an aura of secrecy surrounding the CIA in 1964 than there is in 1978."

Well, maybe. I wonder if a fellow as smart and experienced as Katzenbach truly believed Dulles would get the real scoop from the CIA and then tell the WC---on any topic. 

Interesting. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Miles Massicotte]

8 hours ago, Benjamin Cole said:

In reviewing this fascinating document...I have to ask, is it truly from 11/22/63?

6 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

An 11-24-63 internal memo from Alan Belmont to Clyde Tolson of the FBI reflects that "At 4:15 PM Mr. Deloach advised that Katzenbach wanted to put out a statement, 'We are now persuaded that Oswald killed the President, however, the investigation by the Department of Justice and the FBI is continuing." According to Belmont, Deloach was opposed to the idea. In any event, no such statement was issued.

Ben, nice job. I may have to dial my tinfoil back down....

If indeed the document is from 11-24 as Pat quotes above then it is a bit less suspicious. Still suspicious. But not as suspicious as if it came out on the 22nd. I wonder the provenance of this 22nd version of the doc. If it is contemporary, of pages 1 and 2 were stapled together at that time, is it possible that the 2nd page was authentic to the 22nd, and then recycled for the 24th? Seems like the 2nd page probably really dates to the 24th though....

 

[Miles Massicotte]

 

35 minutes ago, Benjamin Cole said:

Katzenbach may have been co-opted by the intel-military community.

I think he was at odds with the FBI and Hoover on many issues, including the establishment of the WC. 

Remember, Katzenbach served in WWII as a bomber-navigator, and was shot down and spent two years in a POW camp. The guy's record is top-notch, but if you served two years in a POW camp you might have certain views on intel-military prerogatives. 

Later, after not becoming CIA Director despite McCone's recommendation, Katzenbach headed up a three-member commission on CIA funding and activities in certain academic and philanthropic groups. 

Then, in November 1967, it was Katzenbach who, after being detailed to study what to do in Vietnam, prepared a "Memorandum From the Under Secretary of State (Katzenbach) to President Johnson."

Katzenbach did say in his memo, "In this situation, excessive expenditures of men and money—which will not measurably shorten the war—are the surest route to failure, not to success."

At least Katzenbach was not clueless. 

Ben I think I agree with you about Katzenbach. If "naively defending his country" is on one end of the spectrum, and "witting CIA agent" is on the other hand, I think Katzenback falls somewhere in between. My opinion about the Katzenbach memo itself has always been that many CTers let it slide too easily. I am not sure if he was coopted, maybe he was, but the memo reveals that at the very least he was more than willing to go along with the narrative that was spoon fed to him and frame Oswald guilty or not because it is what was supposed to happen. Waa he doing all of this wittingly, or was he coopted? I don't know. But I tend not to think, as some do, that the whole "convincing the public" angle was just to prevent World War 3. In my opinion it is more sinister than that.

[Miles Massicotte]

4 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

And recall, it was Katzenbach who was at the first Warren Commission meeting.  As Pat says, he was actually pushing for them to simply accept the FBI report.  Some people think that the 25th memo is really based on the 24th FBI one. 

In those first phone calls with LBJ that we have, I always took Hoover to be somewhat out of the loop, but also quite dead set on keeping the focus on Oswald. If Katzenbsch is pushing the FBI report and that came from the top....Jim I am curious how "in on it" you think Hoover was? Do you think he knew right away? Or even before hand? Or he found out as it was unfolding, but knew what his job was in relation to all of this (framing Oswald).

[Larry Hancock]

I should point out that this sort of action is almost standard practice in a national crisis.  When MLK was shot both Hoover and the AG issued statements within hours that it had been a single shooter, and was not part of some ultra right racist conspiracy.  The AG later admitted that it was simply damage control and they had no idea other than they needed to try and try and control the public reaction as much as possible.

The first response is always to seize control of the message and calm the public as as much as possible. You see it at all levels of government.

[Benjamin Cole]

1 hour ago, Larry Hancock said:

I should point out that this sort of action is almost standard practice in a national crisis.  When MLK was shot both Hoover and the AG issued statements within hours that it had been a single shooter, and was not part of some ultra right racist conspiracy.  The AG later admitted that it was simply damage control and they had no idea other than they needed to try and try and control the public reaction as much as possible.

The first response is always to seize control of the message and calm the public as as much as possible. You see it at all levels of government.

LH--

I think I disagree with you on this one. 

I remember the MLK shooting, and the very real, and then fulfilled, fear that race riots would ensue.

There had been serious race riots in 1965, across the nation. In fact, the damage done to Washington DC by the 1968 King riot took decades from which to recover. 

The threat of domestic civil calamity after the JFKA seems rather slim. People were shocked, but not violent, and certainly not in scale. 

Yes, in 1963 citizens did need assurance that there was a peaceful and proper transfer of power (to LBJ, and that was accomplished) and that every effort would be made to being the true culprit or culprits to justice, after a public and fair trial.

Katzenbach's defense of his 11/24 memo before the HSCA is rather wan, and parts of it stretch credulity. Sure, Dulles could be expected to ferret the truth out of the CIA. Katzenbach believed that? (RFK's first question of McCone was something along the lines of, "Did your guys do it?")

McCone's recommending Katzenbach to LBJ as the next CIA director suggests Katzenbach had a relationship with the CIA deeper than perhaps we know. 

Katzenbach was picked to run a 1967 commission on the CIA and its influence and money in certain student, academic or philanthropic organizations. 

Interesting. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Sandy Larsen]

On 9/30/2023 at 7:48 AM, Jean Ceulemans said:

But I have a little trouble in seeing they planned it all in detail (incl. blaming Russia and Cuba), but somehow had forgotten about the part where they could be causing a nuclear war ?

 

Jean,

It is now a known fact that at least some of the generals in the Joint Chiefs of Staff were advocating a first strike against Russia around the time of Kennedy's administration. The reason being that they felt a nuclear war was inevitable and that America had the advantage at that time.

Also, it has long been a known fact that intelligence operatives fabricated stories indicating that Oswald was in cahoots with Cuba and Russia, including Oswald being given $6500 to kill Kennedy. Those intelligence operatives appear to have been CIA members.

 

[Chuck Schwartz]

Sandy, the JCS, including LeMay, felt that JFK was committing the same sin his father committed - appeasement of  totalarian states. That  is why they viewed JFK as a traitor.  And, that is why they probably approved of Tracy Barnes' assassination plot to kill JFK.  

 

 I believe  the person in the CIA that was critical in setting up Oswald as  a Communist that killed JFK was Johannides .

[Sandy Larsen]

4 hours ago, Miles Massicotte said:

But I tend not to think, as some do, that the whole "convincing the public" angle was just to prevent World War 3. In my opinion it is more sinister than that.

 

There were three  potential solutions to the assassination from which the Johnson administration had to consider:

1. The lone gunman, Oswald, did it.
2. The Cubans and/or Russians hired Oswald to do it.
3. It was a coup d'état. Pulled off by the CIA?

(To the above I'll add one more that has less evidence, but I think really was considered:  4. Oswald's assassination team did it.)

I can't think of anything more sinister than items #2 and #3.

 

[Pat Speer]

5 hours ago, Miles Massicotte said:

 

Ben I think I agree with you about Katzenbach. If "naively defending his country" is on one end of the spectrum, and "witting CIA agent" is on the other hand, I think Katzenback falls somewhere in between. My opinion about the Katzenbach memo itself has always been that many CTers let it slide too easily. I am not sure if he was coopted, maybe he was, but the memo reveals that at the very least he was more than willing to go along with the narrative that was spoon fed to him and frame Oswald guilty or not because it is what was supposed to happen. Waa he doing all of this wittingly, or was he coopted? I don't know. But I tend not to think, as some do, that the whole "convincing the public" angle was just to prevent World War 3. In my opinion it is more sinister than that.

I agree. From studying the statements of those involved in the cover-up, it's clear their main concern was protecting LBJ.

From Chapter 1 at patspeer.com: 

The Delivery Men

While Chief Justice Earl Warren, the chairman of the Warren Commission, and the man tasked with overseeing its investigation of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, is reported to have told his staff that "the truth was their only client," much evidence has arisen over the years to indicate that this simply was not so. The available record, in fact, now suggests that the Commission had another client, one whose interests were to be placed above and beyond the Commission's search for truth. This client was called... "national security" or, more specifically, President Lyndon Johnson.

One need look no further than the memoirs of Warren, for that matter, to see that this is true. There, in the final pages written at the end of his long successful life, Warren admitted that he was strong-armed into chairing the Commission only after Johnson, Kennedy's successor, told him that if people came to believe there was foreign involvement in the assassination it could lead to a war that would kill 40 million. This, one can only assume, gave Warren the clear signal he was NOT to find for a conspiracy involving a foreign power.

But when one reads between the lines--and reads other lines--a fuller picture emerges. Warren was also told he was NOT to find for a domestic conspiracy, or at least anything that could point back to Johnson.

There were signs for this from the get-go. The Voice of America, the U.S. Information Agency's worldwide radio network, had initially reported, in the moments after the shooting, that Dallas, Texas, the scene of the crime, was also "the scene of the extreme right wing movement." It soon stopped doing so. This suggests then that someone in the government was particularly sensitive to the idea that the right wing would be blamed for the shooting, and had ordered the Voice of America to downplay the possibility of a domestic conspiracy.

 

This "sensitivity," moreover, was in the air and spreading. Deputy Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach, whose discussions in the days after the shooting sparked the creation of the Warren Commission, testified before the House Select Committee on Assassinations (the "HSCA") on 8-4-78  that he sensed that the rest of the world would suspect Johnson's involvement, and that this in effect "disqualified" Johnson from leading an investigation into Kennedy's death. Katzenbach then explained that this feeling had led him to believe that "some other people of enormous prestige and above political in-fighting, political objectives, ought to review the matter and take the responsibility" of identifying Kennedy's assassin.

He said much the same thing in subsequent testimony. On 9-21-78 he told the HSCA that his primary concern in the aftermath of the assassination was "the amount of speculation both here and abroad as to what was going on, whether there was a conspiracy of the left or a lone assassin or even in its wildest stages, a conspiracy by the then vice president to achieve the presidency, the sort of thing you have speculation about in some countries abroad where that kind of condition is normal." 

Egads. These words suggest that Katzenbach, who was only running the Justice Department in the aftermath of the assassination, considered Johnson's involvement unthinkable, and not really worth investigating.

And this wasn't the last time Katzenbach suggested as much. In his 2008 memoir Some of It Was Fun, Katzenbach wrote that in the days after the assassination: "Among the many conspiracy theories floating around were those that put conservative Texas racists in the picture and even some that saw LBJ as the moving force."

That Katzenbach's concern about these theories influenced the Warren Commission's investigation, moreover, seems obvious. Howard Willens, a Justice Department attorney reporting to Katzenbach, was made an assistant to Warren Commission General Counsel J. Lee Rankin, and was tasked with 1) hiring the commission's junior counsel (the men tasked with performing the bulk of the commission's investigation), 2) assigning these men specific areas of investigation, 3) supplying these men with the FBI, Secret Service, and CIA reports pertinent to their areas of investigation, 4) working as a liaison between these men and the agencies creating these reports, and 5) helping to re-write the commission's own report. On 7-28-78, in Executive Session, Willens testified before the HSCA; he admitted: "there were some allegations involving President Johnson that were before the Commission and there was understandably among all persons associated with this effort a desire to investigate those allegations and satisfy the public, if possible, that these allegations were without merit."

But these allegations weren't investigated, not really. The Commission's final report amounted to a prosecutor's brief against a lone assassin named Lee Harvey Oswald, and the 26 volumes of supporting data published by the Commission contained next to nothing on Johnson or other possible suspects.

That this "clearing" of Johnson's name was a major factor in the commission's creation is confirmed, moreover, by a 2-17-64 memo written by Warren Commission Counsel Melvin A. Eisenberg. While reporting on the Warren Commission's first staff conference of 1-20-64, Eisenberg recalled that Chief Justice Warren had discussed "the circumstances under which he had accepted the chairmanship of the Commission," and had claimed he'd resisted pressure from Johnson until "The President stated that the rumors of the most exaggerated kind were circulating in this country and overseas. Some rumors went as far as attributing the assassination to a faction within the Government wishing to see the Presidency assumed by President Johnson. Others, if not quenched, could conceivably lead the country into a war which could cost 40 million lives."

Eisenberg's account of Warren's statements was supported, furthermore, by Warren Commission Counsel--and subsequent Senator--Arlen Specter in his 2000 memoir Passion for Truth. In Specter's account, Warren claimed that Johnson had told him "only he could lend the credibility the country and the world so desperately needed as the people tried to understand why their heroic young president had been slain. Conspiracy theories involving communists, the U.S.S.R., Cuba, the military-industrial complex, and even the new president were already swirling. The Kennedy assassination could lead America into a nuclear war that could kill 40 million people..."

 

Now this, apparently, wasn't the only time Warren admitted Johnson's worries extended both beyond and closer to home than the possible thermo-nuclear war mentioned in his autobiography. In his biography of Warren, Ed Cray reported that Warren once confided to a friend that "There was great pressure on us to prove, first, that President Johnson was not involved, and, second, that the Russians were not involved."

And yet Warren refused to put Johnson's fears he'd be implicated on the record. While Warren was interviewed a number of times in his final years about the creation of the Commission, he never admitted in these interviews what he'd readily told his friends and the commission's staff--that Johnson had railroaded him onto the commission in part to clear himself. 

In fact, Warren claimed the opposite. When interviewed by Warren Commission historian Alfred Goldberg on March 28, 1974, Warren told Goldberg the opposite of what he'd told Eisenberg and Specter (and presumably Goldberg) in 1964. Instead of claiming Johnson told him "Some rumors went as far as attributing the assassination to a faction within the Government wishing to see the Presidency assumed by President Johnson," Warren now related "There were of course two theories of conspiracy. One was the theory about the communists. The other was that LBJ's friends did it as a coup d'etat. Johnson didn't talk about that."

It seems likely, then, that even Warren thought it improper for the President, the head of the Executive Branch of Government, to pressure the Chief Justice of the United States, the head of the Judicial Branch of Government, to head a Commission to help clear the President's name.

 

Now, it's not as if Warren's fellow commissioners had a problem with serving this higher purpose--that of clearing their new President. John McCloy, Wall Street's man on the Commission, told writer Edward Epstein on June 7, 1965 that one of the commission's objectives was "to show foreign governments we weren't a South American Banana Republic." Well, seeing as the expression "Banana Republic" is not a reference to countries whose leaders have been killed by foreign enemies, but to countries whose leaders have been killed by domestic enemies, who then assume power, this is most certainly a reference to Johnson.

And it's not as if this was all a big secret. The December 5, 1963, transcripts of the Warren Commission's first meeting reflect that Senator Richard Russell, Johnson's long-time friend and mentor, admitted "I told the President the other day, fifty years from today people will be saying he had something to do with it so he could be President."

And it's not as if Washington insiders were unaware of this non-secret secret. In 1966, columnists Rowland Evans and Robert Novak published Lyndon B. Johnson: The Exercise of Power. There, they discussed the creation of the Warren Commission as follows: "There was first the question of the assassination itself. Inevitably, irresponsible demagogues of the left and right spread the notion that not one assassin but a conspiracy had killed John Kennedy. That it occurred in Johnson's own state on a political mission urgently requested and promoted by Johnson only embellished rancid conspiratorial theories. If he were to gain the confidence of the people, the ghost of Dallas must be shrugged off."

Now, should one still doubt that Johnson was at least as concerned with suspicions of himself as of the Soviets, there is confirmation from an even better source: Johnson himself. In a rarely-cited interview with columnist Drew Pearson, cited in a November 14th, 1993 article in The Washington Post, Johnson admitted that, in his conversation with Warren, in which he convinced Warren to head his commission, Johnson brought up the assassination of President Lincoln, and that rumors still lingered about the conspiracy behind his murder 100 years after the fact. According to Pearson, Johnson admitted telling Warren that "The nation cannot afford to have any doubt this time." 

Well, that says it all. The doubt, according to Johnson, the nation could not afford to have, was doubt about Southern and/or military involvement in the assassination. The rumors about Lincoln's death, after all, revolved largely around his being murdered by The Confederate Army as revenge for his successful campaign to re-unite the States, or his being murdered by his own Secretary of War, or his being murdered by his Vice-President, a Southerner named JOHNSON.

And Johnson acknowledged this was his concern in his presidential memoir, The Vantage Point: Perspectives on the Presidency 1963-1969, published 1971. Of the national mood on 11-24-63, after the man accused of killing President Kennedy, Lee Harvey Oswald, a purported communist-sympathizer, was shot down while in police custody, by Jack Ruby, a man with connections to organized crime, Johnson wrote: "The atmosphere was poisonous and had to be cleared. I was aware of some of the implications that grew out of that skepticism and doubt. Russia was not immune to them. Neither was Cuba. Neither was the State of Texas. Neither was the new President of the United States."

[Joe Bauer]

9 hours ago, Cliff Varnell said:

Who were following the dictates of higher ups at the State Department.

I second that question.

J. Edgar H. ... correct?