A Name?

[Lee Forman]

I find the Department 13 & Group 13 stuff, and the Venona transcripts pretty interesting myself.

[Pat Speer]

I find the Department 13 & Group 13 stuff, and the Venona transcripts pretty interesting myself.

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I know little about this part of the case. Are these the NSA intercepts of the Corsicans? or something else?

[Pat Speer]

Well one could argue that if they did they were successful.

Do you draw any inferences from the fake that the KGB faked evidence in the case?

Are you talking about the Hunt letter?  That appeared ten years after the murder and was designed to implicate the CIA.  Has any KGB officer admitted to faking anything prior toi that point? If faking evidence ten years after a crime implies the original commission of the crime, then we should conclude Nixon killed Diem.

Do you draw any inference from Nosenko's flunking the salient questions on his polygraph?

He was a drunk and a bit of a con man. Nevertheless, his info turned out to be more reliable than Angleton's pet Golitsyn.  Even Ted Shackley has vouched for Nosenko's bona fides.

Do you draw any inference from the meetings between Cubela and Kostikov?

Yeah, they were representatives of allied governments.  Kostikov was an expert on wet jobs and Cubela had killed for Castro.  They probably exchanged pointers.  It's interesting that you insist that Kostikov was running Cubela to kill Kennedy, when the only motive they had for killing Kennedy is in your mind.  Doesn't it make an equal amount of sense to believe Kostikov had been working with Cubela to kill Castro?  After all, we KNOW the U.S. had a mole in the Russian embassy.  Who says it wasn't Kostikov?

Do you believe that Trento, who has seen Angleton's documents and had extensive conversations with Angleton and others, thought enough about Angleton's theory to risk his reputation publishing it?

Trento's reputation was achieved via his loyalty and friendship with his CIA sources.  I don't see him mis-representing their theories, no matter how wacky.

Would you agree that Trento due to the foregoing was in a better position to assess Angleton's scenario than any of us who have not had access to those documents?

What documents beyond the Hunt memo Angleton denied under oath existed?

How do you assess Alexander Haig's statement that he saw a document he was ordered to forget and Haig's perspective that there was likely KGB involvement?

I've read Haig's book and only remember Cuban involvement.  There were a number of false documents and stories floated by anti-Castro Cubans right after the assassination.  Most of these have since been proven to have been planted by those closely working with David Atlee Phillips.  I'd bet Haig saw something related to those documents.

How do you assess the report by Hugn McDonald, a well-respected veteran police officer, that there wasa KGB involvement?  Did he risk his reputation merely to make a few bucks?

McDonald also insisted that LBJ was working with the KGB.  Why do you always focus on the commies, and fail to see American involvement?  McDonald decided that the KGB was involved based upon his impressions that Albert Osborne, the old man on the bus, and de Mohrenschildt were both KGB, when they could just as easily have been CIA.  I think McDonald was sincere, but just not up to the task.

When Khruschev came to the US in 1959 he was shocked by the performance of the Can-Can when the dancers showed their underwear.  How do you think Khruschev, a devoted family man, reacted when he learned of JFK's serial adulteries?  No, I withdraw that as a motive.  (Hopefully members know I sometimes kid.)

More later.  I can find in Trento's book a reference to at least one KGB murder in the US in addition to Paisley's, by the way.

Once again, I don't dispute that the CIA killed a few Americans, but it is my understanding these were double-agents involved in spy craft.  Name one political assassination.  And don't tell me Stevenson when he died in Paris after denouncing the Vietnam war and was almost certainly murdered by American intelligence, if at all.

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Edited May 17, 2005 by Pat Speer

[Lee Forman]

I find the Department 13 & Group 13 stuff, and the Venona transcripts pretty interesting myself.

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I know little about this part of the case. Are these the NSA intercepts of the Corsicans? or something else?

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Pat,

Here's one interesting link. The Venona files only cover a limited time period [up to 1945?], but I would say they lend some substance to the unknown destination toward which Mr. Hemming has been driving us.

http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/f...hissvenona.html

The Department 13 and Group 13 stuff is interesting. I don't know whether there was any mutual resource pooling going on or not. The equivalent of the EA program, but in the USSR and the UK respectively. Here's another good link.

http://www.deepblacklies.co.uk/group_13.htm

But I guess my point was the bizarre coincidence of a Department 13 agent [Kostikov] and Lee Oswald.

I hope Mr. Hemming will continue.

- lee

[Tim Gratz]

Pat wrote:

". . .when the only motive they [Cubans] had for killing Kennedy is in your mind."

It absolutely amazes me that a person of Pat's intelligence can write this. I find this harder to understand than quantum physics.

From 1960 on the CIA made numerous attempts to kill Castro, with poisons, bullets, through lovers, through Mafioso, through Cuban exiles. Castro, almost miraculously, kept dodging the bullets.

On the very same day that Castro warned that further American attempts to kill Cuban leaders might jeopardize the safety of the American leaders, the CIA accepted the offer of a supposed Castro confidante to kill Castro. This man was later assured (rightly or wrongly) that Robert Kennedy personally approved of the plans to kill him.

When someone has shot at you forty to fifty times, there comes a time when your patience is exhausted and you decide to shoot back.

Pat, if the US efforts to kill Castro did not give Castro a strong motive to strike back, either in retaliation or in self-defense, then I guess the Church Committee was wrong in concluding the CIA should have disclosed those attempts to the WC.

And if a man is being tried in court for shooting someone, I assume you would conclude the judge should exclude evidence that the victim shot first.

Whether or not Gerry Hemming is correct that Trujillo's son helped finance the JFK assassination in retaliation for the CIA murder of his father, clearly a revenge for a completed murder is a strong motive. So is retaliation (revenge if you will) for attempted murder. But Castro's motive was clearer than that: self defense.

But I guess none of this is true. It's just all in my mind. There were never US attempts to kill Castro. And Cubela is just a creature of my own creation!

Must be a disease I share with Alexander Haig, Lyndon Johnson, James Jesus Angleton, Sen. James Morgan, Jumberto Fontova and Joseph Trento.

Edited May 18, 2005 by Tim Gratz

[Pat Speer]

Pat wrote:

". . .when the only motive they [Cubans] had for killing Kennedy is in your mind."

It absolutely amazes me that a person of Pat's intelligence can write this.  I find this harder to understand than quantum physics.

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Tim, I didn't say Castro had no motive, but that the Russians had no motive. Kostikov, in particular, would have seen that if Fidel was killed Raul would take over, and that he would need Russian assistance even more than Fidel, due to his comparative lack of popularity, and that from this the Soviets would gain in influence over Cuba. They would also have been able to use Fidel's murder to damage U.S. relations all over Latin America. In fact, if the Soviets were half as dastardly as you make them out to be, they would have allowed Oswald into Cuba, killed Fidel themselves and framed Oswald.

I've acknowledged there's a slight possibility Castro was behind the assassination. I just think that this possibility grows smaller and smaller the more you include Soviet intelligence in your scenario.

[Tim Gratz]

Thanks for the clarification, Pat.

As you know, I think it was Trento's scenario (or should we say Angleton through Trento) that there were hard-liners in the SU who did not like the Kennedy-Khruschev moves toward peace (e.g. the hot line, test ban treaty, etc) any more than the hard-liners in the US military. Certainly one can imagine Soviet counterparts to Curtis LeMay, etc. The scenario further goes that a group of such hard-liners (not the Soviet government) first killed Kennedy then deposed Khruschev.

The unfortunate thing is that we do not have access to the information that Trento did to evaluate the scenario.

Conspiratorialists who posit a US establishment coup will look at coincidences and associations as sufficient evidence.

The following scenario (sorry to overuse the word) might be possible:

Angleton saw the ouster of Khruschev so close to the assassination of JFK as more than just a coincidence.

Angleton knew the names of the Russians who "conspired" to oust Khrushchev.

Therefore, taking a quantun leap of logic, he assumed the same group must have conspirec to kill Kennedy.

The logic is based on the assumption that there must be a relationship between the Khruschev ouster and the Kennedy assassination. Coupled with the fact that only people within the Soviets could accomplish both.

I suspect, however, that Angleton either had, or thought he had, more than thism and we do not know what he had. To the extent I suggest a KGB plot, I do so because I assume Trento would not have "gone out on the limb with it" unless he had seen documents or heard statements that convinced him it was likely true. Perhaps Angleton had (1) the Kostikov link; and (2) his suspicions about Nosenko. But perhaps he had far more.

Now, the theory of KGB involvement is not inextricably tied to the "Castro did it" scenario. It is possible Castro did it without the blessing of his Soviet sponsors (he was, after all, upset that the Soviets settled the missile crisis without consulting him). It is also possible, is it not, that someone did it on Castro's behalf but without his express knowledge (just as some think RFK may have been running anti-Castro operations without getting his brother's express approval for everything.

So it is possible that I should call my scenario "Pro-Castro Cubans Did It" assuming that would be broad enough to include Fidel but also broad enough to assume someone acted to save his life but without his express consent.

Edited May 18, 2005 by Tim Gratz

[Robert Howard]

Thanks for the clarification, Pat.

As you know, I think it was Trento's scenario (or should we say Angleton through Trento) that there were hard-liners in the SU who did not like the Kennedy-Khruschev moves toward peace (e.g. the hot line, test ban treaty, etc) any more than the hard-liners in the US military. Certainly one can imagine Soviet counterparts to Curtis LeMay, etc. The scenario further goes that a group of such hard-liners (not the Soviet government) first killed Kennedy then deposed Khruschev.

The unfortunate thing is that we do not have access to the information that Trento did to evaluate the scenario.

Conspiratorialists who posit a US establishment coup will look at coincidences and associations as sufficient evidence.

The following scenario (sorry to overuse the word) might be possible:

Angleton saw the ouster of Khruschev so close to the assassination of JFK as more than just a coincidence.

Angleton knew the names of the Russians who "conspired" to oust Khrushchev.

Therefore, taking a quantun leap of logic, he assumed the same group must have conspirec to kill Kennedy.

The logic is based on the assumption that there must be a relationship between the Khruschev ouster and the Kennedy assassination. Coupled with the fact that only people within the Soviets could accomplish both.

I suspect, however, that Angleton either had, or thought he had, more than thism and we do not know what he had. To the extent I suggest a KGB plot, I do so because I assume Trento would not have "gone out on the limb with it" unless he had seen documents or heard statements that convinced him it was likely true. Perhaps Angleton had (1) the Kostikov link; and (2) his suspicions about Nosenko. But perhaps he had far more.

Now, the theory of KGB involvement is not inextricably tied to the "Castro did it" scenario. It is possible Castro did it without the blessing of his Soviet sponsors (he was, after all, upset that the Soviets settled the missile crisis without consulting him). It is also possible, is it not, that someone did it on Castro's behalf but without his express knowledge (just as some think RFK may have been running anti-Castro operations without getting his brother's express approval for everything.

So it is possible that I should call my scenario "Pro-Castro Cubans Did It" assuming that would be broad enough to include Fidel but also broad enough to assume someone acted to save his life but without his express consent.

I really think Gerry's M.O. whle on the Forum was to mix 'fact' with 'fantasy' the trick was knowing when he was on each particular road; passages on this thread where Mr Hemming appeared most lucid were in the segments discussing Ronald Von Claasen, any relation to Fred?

General Walker: if anyone wants to read the history of the General's national tour with Billy James Hargis, [add Barry Goldwater's rant taking place almost simultaneously and it was like a neo-Nazi barbershop quartet] that ended day's before the assassination, and tell me he was one of the good guy's, I would like to hear the entire symbiosis of that theory] the problems with the nuclear suitcase on Nov. 22nd;

Post Nov. 22, 1963; intrigues involving at least 2 nukes still in Cuba; [there was a story in one of the mainstream magazines circa 1975 where a gov't official was basically hinting at the same thing.] For further reading see 'Hemming Does Dallas'

On the allegation that the GRU, KGB etc were playing US intelligence; no response. But a notation. Remember the Clinton/Yeltsin day's when the Russian's 'released their JFK files?' Followed by the tome by Oleg Nechiporenko. Geez it all meshed with the Warren Commission conclusions, how convenient!

As Gerry used to say: Nuff Said

Edited July 23, 2006 by Robert Howard