John Newman and Greg Burnham Interview

[Sandy Larsen]

On 5/23/2024 at 5:59 PM, Denise Hazelwood said:

But honestly, I just can't see Oswald as being a deep, high-level CIA asset.

 

Reasons to Believe Oswald was a CIA Operative

(Based on Jim Hargrove's list.)

1. CIA accountant James Wilcott testified that he made payments to an encrypted account for “Oswald or the Oswald Project.”  Contemporaneous HSCA notes indicate Wilcott told staffers, but wasn't allowed to say in Executive session, that the cryptonym for the CIA's "Oswald Project" was RX-ZIM.

2. Antonio Veciana said he saw LHO meeting with CIA’s Maurice Bishop/David Atlee Phillips in Dallas in August 1963.

3. A 1978 CIA memo indicates that a CIA operations officer “had run an agent into the USSR, that man having met a Russian girl and eventually marrying her,” a case very similar to Oswald’s and clearly indicating that the Agency ran a “false defector” program in the 1950s.

4. Robert Webster and LHO "defected" a few months apart in 1959, both tried to "defect" on a Saturday, both possessed "sensitive" information of possible value to the Russians, both were befriended by Marina Prusakova, and both returned to the United States in the spring of 1962.

5. Richard Sprague, Richard Schweiker, and CIA agents Donald Norton and Joseph Newbrough all said LHO was associated with the CIA.

6. CIA employee Donald Deneslya said he read reports of a CIA "contact" who had worked at a radio factory in Minsk and returned to the US with a Russian wife and child.

7. George Joannides, case officer and paymaster for DRE (which LHO had attempted to infiltrate) was put in charge of lying to the HSCA and never told them of his relationship to DRE.

8. For his achievements, Joannides was given a medal by the CIA.

9. FBI took Oswald off the watch list at the same time a CIA cable gave him a clean bill of political health, weeks after Oswald’s New Orleans arrest and less than two months before the assassination.

10. Oswald’s lengthy “Lives of Russian Workers” essay reads like a pretty good intelligence report.

11. Oswald’s possessions were searched for microdots.

12. Oswald owned an expensive Minox spy camera, which the FBI tried to make disappear.

13. Even the official cover story of the radar operator near American U-2 planes defecting to Russia, saying he would give away all his secrets, and returning home without penalty smells like a spy story.

14. LHO always seemed poor as a church mouse, until it was time to go “on assignment.”  For his Russian adventure, we’re to believe he saved all the money he needed for first class European hotels and private tour guides in Moscow from the non-convertible USMC script he saved.

15. To this day, the CIA claims it never interacted with Oswald, that it didn’t even bother debriefing him after the “defection.” What utter bs….

16. After he “defected” to the Soviet Union in 1959, bragging to U.S. embassy personnel in Moscow that he would tell the Russians everything he knew about U.S. military secrets, he returns to the U.S. without punishment and is then in 1963 given the OK to travel to Cuba and the Soviet Union again!

17. Allen Dulles, the CIA director fired by JFK, and the Warren Commission clearly wanted the truth hidden from the public to protect sources and methods of intelligence agencies such as the CIA. Earl Warren said, “Full disclosure was not possible for reasons of national security.”

18. CIA's Ann Egerter, who worked for J.J. Angleton's Counterintelligence Special Interest Group (CI/SIG), opened a "201" file on Oswald on December 9, 1960.  Egerter testified to the HSCA: "We were charged with the investigation of Agency personnel....”  When asked if the purpose was to "investigate Agency employees," she answered, "That is correct."  When asked, "Would there be any other reason for opening up a file?" she answered, "No, I can't think of one."

 

[Paul Cummings]

I don't believe any work that I've read has LHO being high-level CIA asset.

[Sandy Larsen]

On 5/23/2024 at 5:59 PM, Denise Hazelwood said:

As for the "Oswald impersonator" in Mexico City--surely if the CIA was behind setting up an Oswald impersonator, they could have sent someone who sort of looked like him? "Harvey," perhaps?

 

You're assuming that the plotters cared about the looks of the Oswald impersonator.

 

On 5/23/2024 at 5:59 PM, Denise Hazelwood said:

And again, Oswald may have been trying to shoot Connally rather than Kennedy. Who knows?

 

Based all the evidence I'm aware of, Oswald didn't have a rifle and wasn't trying to shoot anybody.

 

On 5/23/2024 at 5:59 PM, Denise Hazelwood said:

Why did Ruby seem to calm down after he learned he had killed Oswald?

 

Maybe Ruby was more afraid of what might happen if didn't kill Oswald, than if he did kill Oswald.

 

On 5/23/2024 at 5:59 PM, Denise Hazelwood said:

If the CIA was truly in a conspiracy to murder Kennedy, why all the insistence in the "lone-nut" scenario?

 

The CIA's plan gave LBJ two options, both of them favorable to the CIA. LBJ cold either accept the pretext for war on Cuba/Russia, or he could reject the pretext for war and blame only Oswald.

Either way, there is no further investigation of the assassination! Which is exactly what the CIA wanted.

 

On 5/23/2024 at 5:59 PM, Denise Hazelwood said:

Why not just say that Oswald had an accomplice, but we don't know who that accomplice was?

 

Because that would invite further investigation of the assassination. Not something the perpetrators wanted.

 

On 5/23/2024 at 5:59 PM, Denise Hazelwood said:

Why all the bull-dooky? Why involve more people than just the shooter/s in the cover-up?

 

The CIA plotters had nearly no role in the coverup. That was a task taken on by the LBJ Administration to prevent WW3.

 

On 5/23/2024 at 5:59 PM, Denise Hazelwood said:

Why the autopsy charade? Etc.

 

The body is the Best Evidence. The CIA plotters were involved in making sure the autopsy was compatible with a lone gunman. Because, remember, their plan was to give LBJ the option of choosing conspiracy or lone gunman.

 

On 5/23/2024 at 5:59 PM, Denise Hazelwood said:

If the CIA was truly involved, why even shoot Kennedy at all? Why not poison him and make it look like death from "natural" causes (as was the speculation surrounding Guy Bannister's death)? 

 

I'm pretty sure its not that easy to assassinate a president. If it were, we wouldn't have a Putin leading Russia.

 

On 5/23/2024 at 5:59 PM, Denise Hazelwood said:

What my scenario does is give an accounting of the shots that fits with the evidence--and fits better than any other scenario I've come across.

 

Nobody -- including you -- knows where all the bullet entrances and exits are. Your theory, therefore, adds virtually nothing to the case.

 

On 5/23/2024 at 5:59 PM, Denise Hazelwood said:

If you give my scenario a chance, I think you will find it is very elegant.

 

Your theory does nothing for the case other than making it unnecessarily more complex.

 

[Matt Cloud]

4 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

Glad Matt posted that memo.

The first paragraph is really interesting. And it explains a lot about later works by Halberstam and Sheehan.

See, what those two did later was really kind of a disgrace, and they were never called out on it since they were part of the MSM.

But the truth was rather simple:  they were hawks on Vietnam who did not think Kennedy was doing enough to win.  Halberstam was later so embarrassed by this fact that he went back and cut a very revealing portion out of his first book on Vietnam, The Making of a Quagmire.  The truth is they wanted Kennedy to escalate, and that part of Halberstam's book he later cut was explicit about this point. Kennedy actually wanted Halberstam rotated out of Saigon. 

Well, after Kennedy was murdered, they got their escalation.  And it turned out to be a disaster of epic proportions. In other words, Kennedy was right and they were wrong.

So what happened? In their books, The Best and the Brightest and A Bright Shining Lie, they tried downplay their early hawkishness and somehwo blame Kennedy for what happened in Vietnam. Halberstam's book is really bad as history today. Both men were greatly influenced by John Paul Vann who thought Saigon needed more American aid and not less.

For this deception they became paragons on the Establishment.

Sickening.

Well, leaving the moral judgments aside, what the memo does, among a few things, is reveal the political alignment of the driving force behind escalation in Vietnam.  Contra Carl Oglesby and his right-wing cowboys bent on expanding the Monroe Doctrine into Asia to takeover colonial rubber plantations, it is the Left -- both in the U.S. and elsewhere (i.e., it is Soviet interests) -- that wants escalation.  Or more precisely, the rising Hegelian "former" Trotskyites who want escalation, those who would be recognized by 1973 as the neo-cons.  How else to shed the colonial regime and to achieve self-determination for the Vietnamese and SE Asia but for conflict, for war, perhaps the greatest, fastest engine for social change there is.  From their viewpoint, Vietnam was not a disaster.  It achieved what it was intended to achieve: the end of the colonial regime in Asia and the fracturing of the Democratic Party domestically, and the American polity as a whole.  This enables the neo-con consolidation from 1975-1981. 

[Sandy Larsen]

36 minutes ago, Paul Cummings said:

I don't believe any work that I've read has LHO being high-level CIA asset.

 

Given that the CIA found him disposable, he couldn't have been of much importance to them.

 

[Matt Cloud]

7 hours ago, Robert Morrow said:

It would be nice if you would tell us who wrote that memo for the record.

 

 

It appears to have been written by John A. McCone (the "JAM" at the bottom of the last page), at least signed-off by him as a memorialization of the conversation between he and Reston.  You could have determined that yourself by clicking through to the link.  

[Roger Odisio]

On 5/21/2024 at 5:59 PM, David Boylan said:

Newman and Burnham:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXZo8cm-_Pg

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHl1ICHOEJ4&t=10s

 

How NSAM 273 came to replace the NSAM 263 Kennedy had signed is an important issue.  I found the discussion of it interesting, but ultimately frustrating.

 

Greg Burnham set the stage nicely. 263 was established by Kennedy on Oct 11.  The Honolulu conference was to discuss implementation of that policy. Mainly the logistics of it.

 

Why, then, was 273 reversing 263 drafted by Bundy the day before Kennedy was killed?  

 

Kennedy was in Dallas at the time.  He was not consulted. What reason was there for Bundy or Johnson to think that when Kennedy returned from Dallas he would accept changes to his policy, which had been developed just 6 weeks prior after months of discussion?

 

John Newman said there were actually two drafts of 273. The first draft, done before Kennedy was murdered, *was*, in his opinion. something Kennedy could accept.  It merely said that further action by the South Vietnamese against the North should be done with resources the US gives to them.  But wasn't that clear from 263, whose purpose was to remove American troops from the fighting, but did not intend that the South Vietnamese would be entirely abandoned?

 

If the first memo was not a change in policy, if Kennedy could accept it, why was it necessary to draft a new memo in the first place? Particularly at that time when Kennedys was away from Washington, and without talking to Kennedy first.

 

Newman asserts that those working on 273 did not know the murder was coming the next day. How do we know that?  Because only the killers knew!  WTF!

 

Burnham demurs; he takes issue with Newman.  I'm not sure that's right, he says.

 

What if Burman had said, wait a minute, John.  How do we know Johnson and/or Bundy were *not* part of the group planning the murder? You can't use an assertion they weren't as proof they weren't without first addressing that question.

 

Just yesterday I posted Salandria's take, almost 26 years ago, on the messages sent to the planes coming back to DC by the WH Situation Room run by Bundy  . The messages named Oswald as the lone assassin, something they could not have known at the time. 

 

Salandria goes on: "What they [the passengers on the plane] had heard, smelled, and seen in Dealey Plaza was of no consequence.  The patsy had been selected, and the conclusion of a conspiracy had been ruled out.  Bundy [who was running the Situation Room at the time] was indirectly instructing the Presidential party and the cabinet that he was speaking for the killers....what they had observed in Dealey Plaza was merely evidence, and that the needs of the State rose above evidence....They were circuitously informed that the assassination had been committed by a level of US power that was above and beyond punishment." 

 

OK, I'm thinking.  We're getting to the heart of the matter. Does the fact that 263 policy was reversed tell us anything about who killed Kennedy?  Was it the killers themselves, not some other group, who followed up the murder by changing the  policy? Was that action a companion piece to the messages sent to the planes Friday afternoon, as central bits in the coverup? Was the rapid signing of 273 the week after the murder another piece in the same puzzle?

 

Burnham doesn't pursue that line.  He doesn't get a chance to.  After demurring, about Newman's conclusions, Burnham starts to talk about what his research shows.  But Newman cuts him off, launching into an ad for his book that explains everything.  He had talked to Bundy about 273.  Everything is in his book. He doesn't want to talk anymore about the making of 273. People need to read his book.  The topic abruptly ends.

 

What a shame. Another example of a respected researcher--rightly respected to be sure--protecting the turf he has staked out in writing.  While 60 years of wheel spinning continues and important questions go unaddressed.

 

But the questions raised by 273 remain unresolved.

 

 

[Matt Cloud]

5 minutes ago, Roger Odisio said:

How NSAM 273 came to replace the NSAM 263 Kennedy had signed is an important issue.  I found the discussion of it interesting, but ultimately frustrating.

 

Greg Burnham set the stage nicely. 263 was established by Kennedy on Oct 11.  The Honolulu conference was to discuss implementation of that policy. Mainly the logistics of it.

 

Why, then, was 273 reversing 263 drafted by Bundy the day before Kennedy was killed?  

 

Kennedy was in Dallas at the time.  He was not consulted. What reason was there for Bundy or Johnson to think that when Kennedy returned from Dallas he would accept changes to his policy, which had been developed just 6 weeks prior after months of discussion?

 

John Newman said there were actually two drafts of 273. The first draft, done before Kennedy was murdered, *was*, in his opinion. something Kennedy could accept.  It merely said that further action by the South Vietnamese against the North should be done with resources the US gives to them.  But wasn't that clear from 263, whose purpose was to remove American troops from the fighting, but did not intend that the South Vietnamese would be entirely abandoned?

 

If the first memo was not a change in policy, if Kennedy could accept it, why was it necessary to draft a new memo in the first place? Particularly at that time when Kennedys was away from Washington, and without talking to Kennedy first.

 

Newman asserts that those working on 273 did not know the murder was coming the next day. How do we know that?  Because only the killers knew!  WTF!

 

Burnham demurs; he takes issue with Newman.  I'm not sure that's right, he says.

 

What if Burman had said, wait a minute, John.  How do we know Johnson and/or Bundy were *not* part of the group planning the murder? You can't use an assertion they weren't as proof they weren't without first addressing that question.

 

Just yesterday I posted Salandria's take, almost 26 years ago, on the messages sent to the planes coming back to DC by the WH Situation Room run by Bundy  . The messages named Oswald as the lone assassin, something they could not have known at the time. 

 

Salandria goes on: "What they [the passengers on the plane] had heard, smelled, and seen in Dealey Plaza was of no consequence.  The patsy had been selected, and the conclusion of a conspiracy had been ruled out.  Bundy [who was running the Situation Room at the time] was indirectly instructing the Presidential party and the cabinet that he was speaking for the killers....what they had observed in Dealey Plaza was merely evidence, and that the needs of the State rose above evidence....They were circuitously informed that the assassination had been committed by a level of US power that was above and beyond punishment." 

 

OK, I'm thinking.  We're getting to the heart of the matter. Does the fact that 263 policy was reversed tell us anything about who killed Kennedy?  Was it the killers themselves, not some other group, who followed up the murder by changing the  policy? Was that action a companion piece to the messages sent to the planes Friday afternoon, as central bits in the coverup? Was the rapid signing of 273 the week after the murder another piece in the same puzzle?

 

Burnham doesn't pursue that line.  He doesn't get a chance to.  After demurring, about Newman's conclusions, Burnham starts to talk about what his research shows.  But Newman cuts him off, launching into an ad for his book that explains everything.  He had talked to Bundy about 273.  Everything is in his book. He doesn't want to talk anymore about the making of 273. People need to read his book.  The topic abruptly ends.

 

What a shame. Another example of a respected researcher--rightly respected to be sure--protecting the turf he has staked out in writing.  While 60 years of wheel spinning continues and important questions go unaddressed.

 

But the questions raised by 273 remain unresolved.

 

 

Important questions include: Was 263 used to encourage DIem coup?  And with Diem coup accomplished, is that why 273 was drafted?

 

Was 263 contingent on successful Nixon-esque Vietnamization?  Evidence suggests it was.  (see p. 4, bottom: https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP80B01676R001900150058-5.pdf .)

 

In any case, if Gulf of Tonkin incidents could be jiggered to force Johnson and Congress' hands, same presumably goes for Kennedy had he lived.

 

A useful chron here:

https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/document/05594020

 

[Robert Morrow]

1 hour ago, Matt Cloud said:

It appears to have been written by John A. McCone (the "JAM" at the bottom of the last page), at least signed-off by him as a memorialization of the conversation between he and Reston.  You could have determined that yourself by clicking through to the link.  

I went through the link, and, no, I did not know John McCone's middle initial was "A." And by the way James "Scotty" Reston of the NYT was a complete and total CIA tool who helped to cover up the JFK assassination and he was friendly with Lyndon Johnson.

Likewise in the new book The Georgetown Set: Friends and Rivals in Cold War Washington by Gregg Herken, p. 300

p. 300 Joe Alsop directly accuses LBJ of wiretapping his phone and he even brought his friend Scotty Reston to the White House to personally confront LBJ on this matter. - March 1965.

Also:

NameBase: Journalism and the CIA: The Mighty Wurlitzer (goodtimesweb.org)

QUOTE

During the last half of those ten years, sandwiched between Watergate coverage on one end, and Congressional investigations of the CIA on the other, the media showed some interest in examining their own intelligence connections. The first shoe was dropped by Jack Anderson in late August, 1973, when he revealed that Seymour Freidin, head of the Hearst bureau in London, was a CIA agent. Freidin, already in the news because the Republicans paid him $10,000 in 1972 to spy on the Democrats, confirmed Anderson's story. At that point William Colby, the new CIA director, was asked by the New York Times and the Washington Star-News if any of their staff were on the CIA payroll.

James (Scotty) Reston of the NYT was satisfied with an evasive answer, but when the Star-News editorial board met with Colby, they made some progress. The other shoe dropped with an article by Oswald Johnston on November 30: the Star-News learned from an "authoritative source" (Colby) that the CIA had some three dozen American journalists on its payroll. Johnston named only one -- Jeremiah O'Leary -- who was one of their own diplomatic correspondents. (The Star-News stopped publishing in 1981, at which point O'Leary joined Reagan's national security staff. From 1982 until his death in 1993, he was with the Washington Times.)

UNQUOTE

[Matt Cloud]

3 minutes ago, Robert Morrow said:

I went through the link, and, no, I did not know John McCone's middle initial was "A." And by the way James "Scotty" Reston of the NYT was a complete and total CIA tool who helped to cover up the JFK assassination and he was friendly with Lyndon Johnson.

Likewise in the new book The Georgetown Set: Friends and Rivals in Cold War Washington by Gregg Herken, p. 300

p. 300 Joe Alsop directly accuses LBJ of wiretapping his phone and he even brought his friend Scotty Reston to the White House to personally confront LBJ on this matter. - March 1965.

Also:

NameBase: Journalism and the CIA: The Mighty Wurlitzer (goodtimesweb.org)

QUOTE

During the last half of those ten years, sandwiched between Watergate coverage on one end, and Congressional investigations of the CIA on the other, the media showed some interest in examining their own intelligence connections. The first shoe was dropped by Jack Anderson in late August, 1973, when he revealed that Seymour Freidin, head of the Hearst bureau in London, was a CIA agent. Freidin, already in the news because the Republicans paid him $10,000 in 1972 to spy on the Democrats, confirmed Anderson's story. At that point William Colby, the new CIA director, was asked by the New York Times and the Washington Star-News if any of their staff were on the CIA payroll.

James (Scotty) Reston of the NYT was satisfied with an evasive answer, but when the Star-News editorial board met with Colby, they made some progress. The other shoe dropped with an article by Oswald Johnston on November 30: the Star-News learned from an "authoritative source" (Colby) that the CIA had some three dozen American journalists on its payroll. Johnston named only one -- Jeremiah O'Leary -- who was one of their own diplomatic correspondents. (The Star-News stopped publishing in 1981, at which point O'Leary joined Reagan's national security staff. From 1982 until his death in 1993, he was with the Washington Times.)

UNQUOTE

The issue was from whom did the anti-CIA stories come.  The memo supports the view that it was from the Harriman group -- including Gilpatric, Hilsman, Forrestal, others perhaps at State, and I would include persons such as Yarmolinsky, perhaps Goodwin, too,  Those by and large are the persons that maneuvered the Diem coup into effect.  Halberstam and Sheehan were aligned with their anti-Diem stance.   They perceived him as too Catholic, too traditional, too colonial.

[Denny Zartman]

2 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

You're assuming...

@Sandy Larsen you deserve a medal.

[Denise Hazelwood]

3 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

According to testimony Silvia Duran gave the HSCA, the Mexican police had suspected her of being the center of a communist plot to kill Kennedy.

And didn’t she deny that?

 

3 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

On 11/25/63, the FBI got a report that a man by the name of Gilberto Alvarado claimed to have seen Oswald accept $6500 in the Cuban Consulate to kill Kennedy. Much of his story corroborated Elena Garro's story. This story wasn't taken seriously at first because the date Alvarado gave was before Oswald's time in Mexico City. But later he corrected the date and the FBI took him more seriously.

Changing stories is often indicative of a lie. And if Oswald had accepted the money, then what happened to it?

 

3 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

and we're going to confront her with the original informant, who saw the money pass, so he says, and we're also going to put the lie detector test on him."

So he was suspected of being untruthful. 

 I am more inclined to believe that the CIA was helping the SS to hide their response to the shooting, including the AR-15 accident. After all, there is a cooperative agreement between the CIA and the SS that is triggered by “the death of a President.” The only President that this could ever have applied to is Kennedy.

What you’re reporting here is accusations and innuendo. It’s a fact that these accusations were made, but not a fact that they were proven to be true. It’s a fact that Johnson was worried that a Communist plot was behind the attack, but that was never confirmed. The Hoover phone call you quoted even says that the FBI was not able to actually prove any of the allegations. From the phone call:

3 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

This angle in Mexico is giving us a great deal of trouble because the story there is of this man Oswald getting $6,500 from the Cuban embassy and then coming back to this country with it. We're not able to prove that fact, but the information was that he was there on the 18th of September in Mexico City and we are able to prove conclusively he was in New Orleans that day. Now then they've changed the dates

That said, I really can’t speak to Oswald’s motives. I do think that he had some sort of CIA connection. Perhaps he was a low-level informant who had dreams of being a big-time player. Or perhaps he was trying to hit Connally and got Kennedy instead (an idea that I can’t dismiss and actually like as fitting in with the whole “cluster f***” scenario, but I can’t prove it).Or perhaps he was motivated by some sort Communist plot to kill Kennedy.  But there are a number of other researchers who quote Oswald as saying that he liked Kennedy and contend that he was innocent, and that the TSBD shooter was someone else entirely. Personally I think Oswald really was the TSBD shooter and I like the speculation that he was actually aiming for Connally, but I admit that’s just speculation.

In the end, until something more definitive shows up, I think that any discussion about motive is just speculation.
 

[Sandy Larsen]

54 minutes ago, Denny Zartman said:

@Sandy Larsen you deserve a medal.

 

LOL, thanks Denny.

 

[Sandy Larsen]

2 hours ago, Denise Hazelwood said:

5 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

According to testimony Silvia Duran gave the HSCA, the Mexican police had suspected her of being the center of a communist plot to kill Kennedy.

2 hours ago, Denise Hazelwood said:

And didn’t she deny that?

 

Of course she denied it. But from the FBI's perspective she may have been lying in order to protect herself from prosecution.

 

2 hours ago, Denise Hazelwood said:

5 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

On 11/25/63, the FBI got a report that a man by the name of Gilberto Alvarado claimed to have seen Oswald accept $6500 in the Cuban Consulate to kill Kennedy. Much of his story corroborated Elena Garro's story. This story wasn't taken seriously at first because the date Alvarado gave was before Oswald's time in Mexico City. But later he corrected the date and the FBI took him more seriously.

Expand  

2 hours ago, Denise Hazelwood said:

Changing stories is often indicative of a lie. And if Oswald had accepted the money, then what happened to it?

 

I seem to have lost you.

There was no $6500. There was no talk of assassination. There wasn't even an authentic Oswald. The whole incident was a fabrication carried out by the CIA in an attempt to make it appear that Cuba/Russia paid Oswald $6500 in order to kill Kennedy.

This was done in order to give the U.S. military an excuse for invading Cuba or attacking Russia... and excuse that the American public would accept.

But it was rejected by LBJ. He wanted no war with Cuba or Russia.

 

2 hours ago, Denise Hazelwood said:

What you’re reporting here is accusations and innuendo. It’s a fact that these accusations were made, but not a fact that they were proven to be true.

 

My point wasn't whether or not the CIA's fake story was proven true. My point was that it seemed real enough to Hoover that he was even concerned about it!

 Keep in mind that it had already been decided a week earlier that there hadn't been a conspiracy and that they were going to blame only Oswald. So why were Elena Garro's and Gilberto Alvarado's allegations bothering Hoover? Because, if they were right, he was going to have to live with it!

Can you imagine the WC convicting Oswald of the assassination, only to have the truth of a conspiracy with Cuba or Russia emerging a couple years down the road?

 

[James DiEugenio]

This is what I wrote about Sheehan and Halberstam when Sheehan died.  What he and Halberstam did in Vietnam was really shameful.  Neither man, as far as  I can find, ever acknowledged that Kennedy was getting out at the time of his death.  

Neither man ever acknowledged that this decision had been severely altered, and then changed by Johnson with NSAM 273 and NSAM 288.  

Neither man acknowledged that the American commitment of combat troops, asked for by Vann, turned out to be an epic debacle.

And, as you will see, what Sheehan did to Mark Lane showed that as late as 1971 he was doing his master's bidding.

https://www.kennedysandking.com/obituaries/neil-sheehan-in-retrospect