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

[Cliff Varnell]

5 hours ago, Joe Bauer said:

I second that question.

J. Edgar H. ... correct?

I didn’t ask a question.  I’ve presented the receipts for the State Department driving the Lone Nut scenario.

Hoover wanted to push a commie conspiracy.  From a 12/12/63 memo Hoover wrote:

"I urged strongly that we not reach conclusion Oswald was the only man."

[Benjamin Cole]

8 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

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."

Great post PS.

Sometimes I wonder if I see a coopted media in every news article or column.

Then we have Evans and Novak (as quoted by you), back then top-tier columnists (when columnists were important) stating in 1966, "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."

---30---

Right. Only demagogues, indeed only "irresponsible demagogues" with ideological agendas, would spread the "notion" that there could have been a JFKA conspiracy. 

My guess is LBJ was not involved in the JFKA, but complicit in the cover-up. He may have been bamboozled by the what Newman calls the "WWIII" virus or threat. 

Katzenbach, I suspect, thought he should listen to and work with the national security-CIA guys, post JFKA. In times of fear and uncertainty, choose security. And that meant appointing Dulles to the WC, where Dulles would become de facto point man on CIA leads. 

I still suspect the number of witting participants in the JFKA, pre-event, was rather small, probably less than a one-armed man could count on his fingers. 

But complicity in the cover-up was rife. 

 

 

[Ron Bulman]

On 10/1/2023 at 10:16 AM, Chuck Schwartz said:

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 .

Yes on TB's plot.  Joannides was put in place by Helms (?), with direct access to him if I remember right?  A tight knit trio, TB, Helms and JJA who held the files on Oswald?

[James DiEugenio]

In Bart's book, he proffers some info I had not seen that Hoover was blindly pushing for Oswald as the sole killer on the 22nd.

Yet, the guy has no idea what was going on in Mexico City?  And he admits later in the day that the DPD case is very weak.

In fact, Hoover was so unconcerned he went to the racetrack on Saturday.

But he later on did realize that the CIA had deceived him on Oswald in Mexico City.

In fact, its almost funny to see how far behind the curve the FBI was in Mexico City.  Ochoa and Echeverria really had everything in order before the FBI started.  In fact, even Willens was surprised by how those two had rigged it all before the FBI got there.

Hoover despised the Kennedys, especially RFK.  But is there any excuse for Katzenbach, who owed so much to them?  Within 72 hours, he has sold them down the river. How can you close the case after what Ruby just did?  With 75 cops and detectives standing around?  And Patrick Dean saying how Ruby had gotten him into a fix. 

Edited October 3, 2023 by James DiEugenio

[Cliff Varnell]

1 hour ago, James DiEugenio said:

In Bart's book, he proffers some info I had not seen that Hoover was blindly pushing for Oswald as the sole killer on the 22nd.

Hoover apparently changed his mind.

"I urged strongly that we not reach conclusion Oswald was the only man." — Hoover on 12/12/63.

1 hour ago, James DiEugenio said:

Yet, the guy has no idea what was going on in Mexico City?  And he admits later in the day that the DPD case is very weak.

In fact, Hoover was so unconcerned he went to the racetrack on Saturday.

But he later on did realize that the CIA had deceived him on Oswald in Mexico City.

In fact, its almost funny to see how far behind the curve the FBI was in Mexico City.  Ochoa and Echeverria really had everything in order before the FBI started.  In fact, even Willens was surprised by how those two had rigged it all before the FBI got there.

Hoover despised the Kennedys, especially RFK.  But is there any excuse for Katzenbach, who owed so much to them? 

He said Foggy Bottom leaned on him.

The historical record shows the State Department behind the Lone Nut push.

[Benjamin Cole]

42 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said:

In Bart's book, he proffers some info I had not seen that Hoover was blindly pushing for Oswald as the sole killer on the 22nd.

Yet, the guy has no idea what was going on in Mexico City?  And he admits later in the day that the DPD case is very weak.

In fact, Hoover was so unconcerned he went to the racetrack on Saturday.

But he later on did realize that the CIA had deceived him on Oswald in Mexico City.

In fact, its almost funny to see how far behind the curve the FBI was in Mexico City.  Ochoa and Echeverria really had everything in order before the FBI started.  In fact, even Willens was surprised by how those two had rigged it all before the FBI got there.

Hoover despised the Kennedys, especially RFK.  But is there any excuse for Katzenbach, who owed so much to them?  Within 72 hours, he has sold them down the river. How can you close the case after what Ruby just did?  With 75 cops and detectives standing around?  And Patrick Dean saying how Ruby had gotten him into a fix. 

JD--

Yeah, the more I read about Katzenbach, the more I wonder about him. 

He seems totally compromised by, or in bed with, the CIA post-JFKA.

Put Dulles on the WC? Declare LHO guilty, and also a lone nut-assassin, on 11/24?

This is the de facto acting US Attorney General? 

Verily, RFK1 brought Katzenbach into his fold. 

Six years after the JFKA, Katzenbach becomes a corporate lawyer. 

"Katzenbach left government service to work for IBM in 1969, where he served as general counsel during the lengthy antitrust case filed by the Department of Justice seeking the break-up of IBM. He and Cravath, Swaine & Moore attorney Thomas Barr led the case for the computer giant for 13 years until the government finally decided to drop it in 1982."

1969 was one year after Katzenbach advised LBJ how to extend the Vietnam War without incurring too much domestic opposition. 

 

 

 

 

[Sandy Larsen]

4 hours ago, Ron Bulman said:

On 10/1/2023 at 9:16 AM, Chuck Schwartz said:

....That  is why they viewed JFK as a traitor.  And, that is why they probably approved of Tracy Barnes' assassination plot to kill JFK.

4 hours ago, Ron Bulman said:

Yes on TB's plot.  Joannides was put in place by Helms (?), with direct access to him if I remember right?  A tight knit trio, TB, Helms and JJA who held the files on Oswald?

 

Thanks Chuck and Ron.

I'd never seen anybody implicate Tracy Barnes as the plot designer. Where does that come from?

 

[Sandy Larsen]

I don't understand why you guys are speaking of Katzenbach like he was being disloyal or something. It seems to me that he was acting prudently, trying to avert an international crisis.

And Ben, what did he do that helped the CIA? The CIA had just set up Cuba and Russia to take the blame for the assassination, and Katzenbach let Cuba and Russia off the hook. Katzenbach thwarted the CIA's plan!

 

[Benjamin Cole]

1 hour ago, Sandy Larsen said:

I don't understand why you guys are speaking of Katzenbach like he was being disloyal or something. It seems to me that he was acting prudently, trying to avert an international crisis.

And Ben, what did he do that helped the CIA? The CIA had just set up Cuba and Russia to take the blame for the assassination, and Katzenbach let Cuba and Russia off the hook. Katzenbach thwarted the CIA's plan!

 

SL--

Well, at this late date....my best guess...

Here is my short take (and I think that of John Newman's, more importantly): 

The whole Russia-Cuba-LHO connection was phony, planned and intended to stifle a real investigation into the JFKA. Newman calls the LHO-Kremlin-Havana tale the "WWIII virus." 

Someone at the CIA told LBJ, "'Hoo-boy, look at this LHO-Kostikov meeting, we better put the lid on this, or its WWIII." Kostikov was the wet work guy in Mexico City for the KGB. 

So that is what happened. LHO was linked to Kostikov.

LBJ and others  immediately decided that the official narrative was that LHO was the leftie, loner, loser. No true investigation was allowed. 

Katzenbach seemed to fall in line. Puts Dulles on the WC. Who knows about Ford and McCloy. 

The CIA plan (or elements therein) was not to start a nuclear war with Russia, but to execute JFK and squelch an investigation. 

Where Katzenbach might be perceived as disloyal as:

1. Who really shot JFK, who was RFK's brother and President and fellow human being? Katzenbach appeared to favor expediency over truth. No US Asst AG (and de facto AG) should call a suspect guilty, and guilty alone, before even a trial.  And within 48 hours? That is called railroading a guy, kangaroo-court style, a show-trial type tactic. 

2. Katzenbach then goes on to try find a better way for LBJ prosecute the Vietnam War in 1968, a war JFK would have avoided and loathed. 

3. McCone recommends Katzenbach to LBJ to be director of the CIA in 1965. Fishy, if you ask me. Why Katzenbach? Was Katzenbach another CIA asset? Who knows? 

There is more, but that's it for now....

 

Edited October 3, 2023 by Benjamin Cole

[Cliff Varnell]

3 hours ago, Benjamin Cole said:

SL--

Well, at this late date....my best guess...

Here is my short take (and I think that of John Newman's, more importantly): 

The whole Russia-Cuba-LHO connection was phony, planned and intended to stifle a real investigation into the JFKA. Newman calls the LHO-Kremlin-Havana tale the "WWIII virus." 

Someone at the CIA told LBJ, "'Hoo-boy, look at this LHO-Kostikov meeting, we better put the lid on this, or its WWIII." Kostikov was the wet work guy in Mexico City for the KGB. 

Nonsense.  The first people LBJ met with at the White House were Averell Harriman and William Fulbright.  Harriman claimed to speak for all the US Gov’t Kremlinologists and informed him the Soviets were not involved.

Harriman was the #3 man at the State Department.

Katzenbach claimed he was under pressure from State.

I don’t see why folks can’t believe him.

 

[Benjamin Cole]

49 minutes ago, Cliff Varnell said:

Nonsense.  The first people LBJ met with at the White House were Averell Harriman and William Fulbright.  Harriman claimed to speak for all the US Gov’t Kremlinologists and informed him the Soviets were not involved.

Harriman was the #3 man at the State Department.

Katzenbach claimed he was under pressure from State.

I don’t see why folks can’t believe him.

 

Take it up with John Newman.

He does know a little something about LHO and the CIA. 

[Cliff Varnell]

1 hour ago, Benjamin Cole said:

Take it up with John Newman.

He does know a little something about LHO and the CIA. 

You didn’t quote John Newman, did you?

[Benjamin Cole]

23 minutes ago, Cliff Varnell said:

You didn’t quote John Newman, did you?

Yeah, that is John Newman's idea, the "WWIII" virus. 

https://spartacus-educational.com/JFKnewmanJ.htm

"Newman described how the reports in essence created a “World War III” virus, such that after the assassination, no one wanted to look too closely at who Oswald served, lest it touch off a nuclear war with the Soviets or the Cubans.

Newman traced how false information that helped promote this WWIII virus got into Oswald’s file and concluded that the person who controlled the file at those points was Ann Egerter, one of the six or so hand-picked operatives working in James Jesus Angleton’s CI/SIG unit – the Special Investigations Group within the larger 200-man Counterintelligence group at CIA."

---30---

It has been a while since I read his book. 

Newman has since replaced Angleton with Bruce Solie, I think, but the basic idea remains the same. Stunt any investigation into the JFKA, by threatening WWIII, and that ties back to the arranged meeting between Kostikov and LHO. 

I do not see much of a role played by the State Department, but then who knows. 

 

 

[Ron Bulman]

6 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

Thanks Chuck and Ron.

I'd never seen anybody implicate Tracy Barnes as the plot designer. Where does that come from?

 

Coup In Dallas by H. P Albarelli, Et al.  In particular the epilogue, an essay by Alan Kent, "A well-Concealed "T", pgs. 491 - 509.

[Cliff Varnell]

1 hour ago, Benjamin Cole said:

Yeah, that is John Newman's idea, the "WWIII" virus. 

Newman didn’t write this nonsense, you did.

Someone at the CIA told LBJ, "'Hoo-boy, look at this LHO-Kostikov meeting, we better put the lid on this, or its WWIII."