Ultimate Sacrifice by Thom Hartmann & Lamar Waldron

[Tim Carroll]

It has occurred to me that if the Ultimate Sacrifice analysis of the Chicago and Tampa assassination plots is correct, neither of the Kennedy brothers would have allowed Jackie to be riding in an open limo through Dallas only days later. This is especially true considering that Jackie hadn't motorcaded with the President since the Inauguration Day Parade down Pennsylvania Avenue.

This is a very good point. I cannot imagine any husband encouraging his wife to sit in an open-topped car if he really thought he was going to be assassinated.

According to the authors, JFK was a profile in courage when he stood in the limo for the Tampa motorcade on November 18. It's their premise that the Kennedys deliberately concealed the Tampa plot and the earlier one in Chicago on November 2 to protect the C-Day cover. Finally, on its own, Dallas represented a uniquely variegated security threat.

If that November began with the coup in Vietnam and the assassination of Diem, followed the next day by a plot in Chicago, the final countdown meeting for C-Day on the 12th, and then the Tampa plot and Miami Airport circumstance on the 18th, the last thing in the world Kennedy would have done is have Jackie ride with him for the first time since the Inauguration in an open limo through Dallas.

It's somewhat amazing that this wasn't considered by the authors. This is especially true given that they specifically argue that the Cuban Contingency Plan concerned the judgment that as C-Day drew near, "attempts at assassination of American officials" were "likely."

T.C.

[John Dolva]

*prior to the motorcade JFK and Jackie had discussed assassination. JFK said something like if it's going to happen there is no point worrying.

*JFK was a committed christian. ie the world is not the end.

*JFK had a sense of history and his role in it. He also had strong views on what it means to be the chief.

*During the motorcade he sat apart from Jackie.

After being shot he moved towards her. Partly this was her urging(hand on arm)

*JFK was brave. His war record proves that.

*JFK was pumped up with pain killers.

All this and probably other things need to be considered in answering this question.

The fact he was president and one with a particular role makes him different from the average person. Admittedly being severely wounded changes things.

The fact that christianity and its consequences is real is something that atheists need to understand.

______

IF he was going to be assassinated, then his death would have had to be something that gave him the last word.(I suggest it's likely that he will have)

The fact that he moved towards Jackie after being shot the first time indicates that he was NOT expecting it. He had NOT factored it in and consequently 'primed' his response.

[Pat Speer]

The fact that he moved towards Jackie after being shot the first time indicates that he was NOT expecting it. He had NOT factored it in and consequently 'primed' his response.

John, I believe a close look at the film will show that JFK merely leaned to his left and that it was Jackie who did the actual moving. In my presentation I get into some possible medical explanations for this lean.

[Tim Gratz]

JFK "leaning to the left"? What are you trying to do, confirm John's POV that the CMC changed JFK from a dedicated cold warrior to a peacenik?

[John Dolva]

I agree, Pat. I wrote he moved on Jackies urging. The fact that he aquiesed indicates he was 'not primed' by fore thought.

[Tim Gratz]

I have not yet determined whence the title to the Waldron/Hartman opus.

But in terms of an "ultimate sacrifice" the book's theory re the death of Marilyn Monroe is interesting. They speculate that Monroe was being blackmailed by the Mafia to turn on the Kennedys and, in love for them and to escape the pressure, she committed the "ultimate sacrifice" of commiting suicide.

An interesting theory, but from what I have read there is no way her death was a suicide.

[Tim Carroll]

*JFK was a committed christian. ie the world is not the end.... The fact that christianity and its consequences is real is something that atheists need to understand.

When Kennedy's Catholicism was a campaign issue in 1960, Jackie once commented about how unfair the criticism was, when she said, "But he's such a bad Catholic."

While I agree with most historians that Kennedy had a strong sense of fatalism, I don't consider it feasible that he would jeopardize his wife's safety to the extreme degree that can be inferred from Ultimate Sacrifice.

T.C.

[John Dolva]

*JFK was a committed christian. ie the world is not the end.... The fact that christianity and its consequences is real is something that atheists need to understand.

When Kennedy's Catholicism was a campaign issue in 1960, Jackie once commented about how unfair the criticism was, when she said, "But he's such a bad Catholic."

While I agree with most historians that Kennedy had a strong sense of fatalism, I don't consider it feasible that he would jeopardize his wife's safety to the extreme degree that can be inferred from Ultimate Sacrifice.

T.C.

I might just be using different words to make the same point. However to identify someone as christian may not necessarily be denominational. I think in the eyes of the catholic hierarchy JFK would be seen as one other failed human (which is how all are seen anyway). I suspect a referral to christian values would have always been a guide to JFK. The fact that he shows more 'failure' in his personal life doesn't mean he automatically fails to the same degree in for example 'wordly political persona'. But, it does show his humaness.

Fatalism:::Sense of history?? I'm not sure I would use fatalism, but I think I know what you mean and get the point.

And certainly: : "I don't consider it feasible that he would jeopardize his wife's safety to the extreme degree that can be inferred from Ultimate Sacrifice."*

*(I haven't read it but according to it's description's and peoples impressions derived from this thread)

[John Simkin]

Here is a passage from Ted Shackley's book, Spymaster: My Life in the CIA (2005) that you might be interested in:

In January 1963 we were visited by Harvey's replacement, Desmond FitzGerald. "Des" made it plain that regime change in Havana was still at the top of Washington's agenda and that the preferred means to this end was a military coup. Haranguing the troops, he told us to recruit more sources in the Cuban Army and militia, giving preference to people high enough in the hierarchy to be able to comment on the leaders' political views.

We accordingly reviewed our military assets and found them inadequate to the new task at hand. We had sources that were geared to monitoring Soviet troop movements. Our assets were NCOs, logisticians, and food handlers, useful in the past but hardly what we would need for a coup. We would have to see if these existing sources could put us in touch with tankers and combat infantry units, the elements that would be required by any possible coup plotter.

As we started, we got one small break. We learned that Jose Richard Rabel Nunez, a defector from the Agrarian Reform Institute who had flown a small airplane at wave-top level into Key West, Florida, in November 1962, knew a lot of senior army personnel from his own days in the Cuban Air Force, as well as from his close friendship with Fidel with whom he had done a lot of spear fishing in 1960-1962. Consequently, we put Rabel on a special project to build files on the military commanders he knew.

This worked quite well in terms of data collection. The downside was that with each passing month, Rabel became increasingly impatient with our unwillingness to run a high-risk operation to exfiltrate his wife and three children from Havana. We explained to Rabel that his family was under constant DGI surveillance; as we could not get a communications or exfiltration plan to the wife securely, there could be no rescue operation. Rabel tired of this explanation and in August 1965 went back to Cuba in a small boat to get his family. The foolhardy effort failed, Rabel was arrested on September 4, and the work he had done in Miami on military personalities became known to the DGL That in turn permitted the DGI to conclude that the CIA was looking seriously at the coup option.

The net result was that while we upgraded the quality of our military personalities portfolio, we had no prospects of putting a coup team together. We simply lacked secure access to dissidents and so could not reach an understanding with a potential coup central command. What we were looking for in 1963 did not materialize until mid-1989 when Arnaldo Ochoa Sanchez blossomed into a fullblown military threat to Castro as a result of his exploits in Angola.

When I outlined my conclusion privately to Des in about March 1963, his reaction was to say that my judgment was undoubtedly correct. Yet, given the mandate that had been imposed on the CIA by Bobby, we had to keep hacking away at the problem.

Des then lofted the idea of working at arm's length with one or two Cuban exile groups-led respectively by Manuel Artime and Manolo Ray, also known as Manuel Ray Rivero - to see if they could engage in a dialog with a coup group. This effort, if it moved forward, would be run out of Washington. It would require operational support from Miami in the form of caches put into Cuba, perhaps tutorial training of Artime and Ray on how to run operations, and some guidance on how to maintain a fleet of small boats. I told Des all of this was possible, but working with Ray seemed to be a marginal venture at best. He brushed this cautionary note aside with a wave of his hand and countered by saying he would have Alfonso Rodriguez spend a day or two with me in Miami looking at Ray's potential. If this project got off the ground, he said, Rodriguez would be its case officer.

I explained to "Rod" that Ray was not rooted in Miami but in Puerto Rico where he worked in some housing agency and was allegedly close to Luis Munoz Marfn, the governor of Puerto Rico. Rumor had it that pressure from Munoz Mann had moved Bobby to get Ray involved in a new effort to overthrow Castro. There were elements in Miami of Ray's organization, the Revolutionary Movement of the People (MRP). Rod could get a rundown on the group from Dave Morales, Tom Clines, and Bob Wall of the PM branch. I concluded by describing Ray as a far-left ideologue and as much a political and economic threat to American interests in the Caribbean as was Castro. I had no interest, I said, in meeting him.

If I remember correctly, Miami eventually put several caches into Cuba for Ray, which he and his organization never recovered. On the one occasion when Miami was scheduled to have a sea rendezvous with a boatload of Ray's people in order to guide them into a secure Cuban landing site, they did not show up. The explanation they subsequently provided was they had run out of fuel. Talk about the gang that couldn't shoot straight!

Artime was different. He had solid anti-Batista credentials stemming from his early days as a captain in the Rebel Army. He was an early participant in the Movement for Revolutionary Recovery (MRR) and had helped to build the party, although his ambition had then made him a divisive force in the movement. He had prestige in the exile community as a result of having been commander of Brigade 2506 at the Bay of Pigs and as a member of the leadership of the Democratic Revolutionary Front.

So, Des's intention was to subsidize Artime to the tune of $50,000 to $100,000 per month to work from Nicaragua sowing disquiet among the Cuban military as a prelude to an anti-Castro coup; Henry Hecksher would be the case officer for the project. I told Henry that the big unknowns were what the MRR represented in Cuba and what Artime's standing was within the Cuban body politic. Our intelligence suggested that the MRR was not a serious clandestine entity in Cuba, and we had no information indicating that Artime was a popular figure in Cuba around whom a revolutionary movement would rally.

Henry refused to be drawn into this polemic. He said the Kennedys wanted the Artime project to go forward, and go forward it would. We agreed, therefore, that JMWAVE would support the project by helping to equip Artime's troops in Nicaragua, providing operational intelligence on possible boom-and-bang targets in Cuba, tutoring Artime on the management of PM programs, and placing caches in Cuba for recovery by Artime's people.

At some point over the next year, JMWAVE provided Artime's group with all of the above services. This turned out to be a labor of love that produced no tangible results. Artime tried hard to become a player in fomenting a popular uprising in Cuba, but he came to the game too late and without the requisite skills. As a result he was not a success. Thus, after President Kennedy's assassination, the Artime program was phased out.

The third wild card being played in this high-stakes international poker game was Rolando Cubela. We at JMWAVE knew little about him except that he had a drinking problem and wanted desperately to get rid of Castro. This operation was run out of Washington. Nestor Sanchez, an excellent case officer fluent in Spanish, was Cubela's case officer. JMWAVE put some caches into Cuba for Cubela's use. His associates recovered some of these; others they apparently made no attempt to get. In essence this operation was closed down after Kennedy's assassination on November 22, 1963. The CIA formally cut all ties to Cubela in June 1965. While it lasted, however, the operation generated more questions than it answered and produced zero results.

Meanwhile, Bobby Kennedy was still demanding boom-andbang operations. Dave Morales and I spent many a Miami evening by my swimming pool discussing the problem. It was clear that our paramilitary teams were having no trouble reaching the beach. They could take people in and out of Cuba and make caches, but once they tried to go inland, even a quarter of a mile, the trouble would start. We therefore began looking for ways to enable our teams to hit things that were closer to the water, the theory being that if we could succeed near the beaches, perhaps people inland would burn and destroy what they could to keep the resistance alive and expanding. As a result we started hitting softer targets near the shoreline, targets like small highway bridges, culverts in drainage areas, and so forth.

It also seemed that something always went wrong during these sabotage operations. Was there something in our methodology, we wondered, that was tipping our hand to the enemy? Or, despite the high standards of security at our paramilitary training sites and launch facilities, was our mechanism penetrated somewhere along the line?

Dave and I decided one Saturday afternoon we wanted to create a new, compartmented operational cell that would be kept totally apart from everything else we were doing in the paramilitary field. We felt that with new training facilities, new safe houses, new personnel, and new trainers, we would be in a better position to discover whether something was wrong with our previous methods.

Paramilitary at that time included a former naval officer named Bob Simons. Before joining the CIA, he had reached the rank of lieutenant and then resigned to do other things. Simons had been urging Dave and me for some time to look into underwater demolitions (UDT), a technique in which he had had a lot of experience. This was a high-risk venture, but Dave and I decided to go with UDT, so we put Bob in charge of all aspects of the operation, beginning with selection of personnel. He picked a really good bunch of men, all of them excellent swimmers, of course, and highly intelligent. Some even had engineering degrees. Bob also set up the training program, swam with his men, and taught them all he knew about UDT. When we reached the stage of choosing targets, he played a role in drawing up operational plans.

Assuming these operations were going to be successful, we knew we would have to attribute them to someone, and for that we needed a name different from anything that already existed in the Cuban exile milieu. Next, we needed someone who could front for the group, a man with managerial talent, perhaps with money, and unassociated with any Cuban exile organization.

Dave produced a candidate whom he had known in Havana. Rafael M., a man who had become a multimillionaire in business in Cuba, who had seen all his properties confiscated by Castro, and who was now traveling extensively throughout Central America as a representative of various American companies, including Uncle Ben's Rice.

[Gary Buell]

I came across an interesting tidbit about the "coup leader". From "Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Leader", by Jon Lee Anderson, p. 586:

"... his name popped up in a number of reports filed during the Warren Commission's investigation into the JFK assassination, including some quite bizarre ones from J. Edgar Hoover's FBI field agents. One, in particular, reported an alleged sighting of Che Guevara and Jack Ruby--Lee Harvey Oswald's assassin--together in Panama."

Does anyone know anything more on this?

[Gary Buell]

From Perry Russo's testimony (I wasn't able to post both pages I wanted to--page two can be found by search "Che Guevara" on www.maryferrell.org

Edited December 19, 2005 by Gary Buell

[Nathaniel Heidenheimer]

Hartmann is guest-hosting Air America in the 7-10pm Eastern Time slot this week. This is a national radio

show that goes to 84 stations nation-wide.

Carefully crafted questions could convey information to a relatively large audience. Given that there are a lot of liberals on this network who scoff on que whenever the media types the words 'conspiracy theory,' some pointed questions--for example concerning the C.I.A. and the media-- could prove "gate opening".

I didn't listen to the whole show last night, but did catch one disturbing comment by Hartmann. He suggested that Thursday night he would pretty much devote to JFK stuff. Then in response to a caller's comment about Arlen Specter and the Warren Commission, he said something to the effect of the Warren Commission serving a noble purpose that he would talk more about Thursday.

The words he used -- again I could be wrong, because he didn't go into detail-- suggest that he might be buying the line about the WC going along with the lone nut in order to flush the far right "communists did it " argument from public perception, thereby preventing a possible nuclear war. I personnaly see this argument-- which was also offered by Michael Bechloss, the acceptable liberal historian on PBS-- to be a planned patch in the cover up quilt: the conspirators knew that by playing up the threat of nuclear war they could get many different parts of the political spectrum involved in the cover up. Most of these, of course were not involved in the assasination itself.

I see this argument as a kind of liberal firewall, or last ditch effort to defend the Warren Commision. I find it absolutely disgusting. In its elitism, it is every bit as cynical as the neocons. It is just the kind of elitism that was pushed like a drug among cold war liberals like Hoffsteder and Hartz, and we see it today in the Nation magazine's unciritical defense of Plame and Wilson, who worked for April Galispie in the machinations around Sadam Husseins Iraq invasion of 1990.

Professor McNight, are you doing anything Thursday night?

P.S. How great is was to wake up this morning and see posts from Peter Dale Scott and Prof Alfred McCoy.

These are clean-up hitters!! I think they will be able to help us synthesize a lot of disparate threads.

[Robert Howard]

Hartmann is guest-hosting Air America in the 7-10pm Eastern Time slot this week. This is a national radio

show that goes to 84 stations nation-wide.

Carefully crafted questions could convey information to a relatively large audience. Given that there are a lot of liberals on this network who scoff on que whenever the media types the words 'conspiracy theory,' some pointed questions--for example concerning the C.I.A. and the media-- could prove "gate opening".

I didn't listen to the whole show last night, but did catch one disturbing comment by Hartmann. He suggested that Thursday night he would pretty much devote to JFK stuff. Then in response to a caller's comment about Arlen Specter and the Warren Commission, he said something to the effect of the Warren Commission serving a noble purpose that he would talk more about Thursday.

The words he used -- again I could be wrong, because he didn't go into detail-- suggest that he might be

buying the line about the WC going along with the lone nut in order to flush the far right "communists did it "

argument from public perception, thereby preventing a possible nuclear war. I personnaly see this argument-- which was also offered by Michael Bechloss, the acceptable liberal historian on PBS-- to be a planned patch in the cover up quilt: the conspirators knew that by playing up the threat of nuclear war they could get many different parts of the political spectrum involved in the cover up. Most of these, of course were not involved in the assasination itself.

I see this argument as a kind of liberal firewall, or last ditch effort to defend the Warren Commision. I find it absolutely disgusting. In its elitism, it is every bit as cynical as the neocons. It is just the kind of elitism that was pushed like a drug among cold war liberals like Hoffsteder and Hartz, and we see it today in the Nation magazine's unciritical defense of Plame and Wilson, who worked for April Galispie in the machinations around Sadam Husseins Iraq invasion of 1990.

Professor McNight, are you doing anything Thursday night?

P.S. How great is was to wake up this morning and see posts from Peter Dale Scott and Prof Alfred McCoy.

These are clean-up hitters!! I think they will be able to help us synthesize a lot of disparate threads.

It also seemed that something always went wrong during these sabotage operations. Was there something in our methodology, we wondered, that was tipping our hand to the enemy? Or, despite the high standards of security at our paramilitary training sites and launch facilities, was our mechanism penetrated somewhere along the line?

Dave and I decided one Saturday afternoon we wanted to create a new, compartmented operational cell that would be kept totally apart from everything else we were doing in the paramilitary field. We felt that with new training facilities, new safe houses, new personnel, and new trainers, we would be in a better position to discover whether something was wrong with our previous methods.

I just wanted to respond to this excerpt from John's post from Shackley's book. Is it an item of agreement in general that the JM/WAVE station was penetrated by the DGI and/or pro-Castro Cuban's? If so, is there a angle to the possibility that the CIA 'knew' it was penetrated and 'incorporated' that fact into the assassination of JFK, in the sense that it would make the 'Castro and Oswald did it' scenario so vigorously promoted by the DRE seem 'very likely?'

My position is that the Castro did it theory is implausible if not an outright joke, by virtue of the fact that 'if it were true, the CIA would undoubtedly have put it out in concrete, concise factual terms from the beginning; the fact that in 43 years this theory has never been proven gives the lie, compounded by the fact that the more one looks at the CIA/Oswald/Mexico City conundrum, I think it is patently obvious that certain transcripts were 'created after the fact' by Ann Goodpasture, and David Phillips as well as the fact that after Silvia Duran was tortured by the D.F.S. the Agency still had to delete her references to the Oswald she encountered having 'blond hair,' a fact that has never been resolved in any sense of the word.

[John Simkin]

The words he used -- again I could be wrong, because he didn't go into detail-- suggest that he might be buying the line about the WC going along with the lone nut in order to flush the far right "communists did it " argument from public perception, thereby preventing a possible nuclear war. I personnaly see this argument-- which was also offered by Michael Bechloss, the acceptable liberal historian on PBS-- to be a planned patch in the cover up quilt: the conspirators knew that by playing up the threat of nuclear war they could get many different parts of the political spectrum involved in the cover up. Most of these, of course were not involved in the assasination itself.

I agree. This was the only excuse that LBJ could come up with after he decided not to go along with the Castro did it theory being pushed by the FBI and the CIA. It is complete nonsense of course. There was no way that the Soviets would have launched a nuclear war if the US invaded Cuba. It is for the same reason that the US did not launch a nuclear attack when the Red Army marched into Hungary in 1956. It was all to do with sphere of interest policy. It this policy was not kept, the Cold War would have quickly become a Hot War (and I mean hot). This provides the key clue to why LBJ launched a cover-up. It makes no sense at all unless you consider what might have happened following an invasion of Cuba.

The whole world would have demanded to see the evidence for the charge that Castro organized the assassination of JFK. The only evidence for this was evidence manufactured by the FBI and the CIA. Anyone with any political understanding of the Cold War knew that it was not in the political interests of Castro to kill JFK. Questions would have been asked about LBJ’s willingness to believe this story. Was he in someway involved in the assassination? Why was it important that he became president in November, 1963? People would have begun to look closely at the Bobby Baker scandal that had been emerging at that time. Don B. Reynolds testimony about LBJ and the General Dynamics TFX contract, given in a closed session of the Senate Rules Committee on the day of the assassination would have become public. Even if LBJ was not guilty of organizing the assassination, most people would have believed this was the case.

LBJ was a shrewd politician who always kept risks to the minimum. His safest course was to force Hoover and McCone to come up with the lone gunman theory. Then it would be case-closed and he would then be in a position to use his power to cover-up the Bobby Baker scandal. The clue to this concerns the first person they had to kill after the assassination. E. Grant Stockdale on 2nd December, 1963.

[Pat Speer]

LBJ was a shrewd politician who always kept risks to the minimum. His safest course was to force Hoover and McCone to come up with the lone gunman theory. Then it would be case-closed and he would then be in a position to use his power to cover-up the Bobby Baker scandal. The clue to this concerns the first person they had to kill after the assassination. E. Grant Stockdale on 2nd December, 1963.

While I agree with you on 90% of your statements, John, I think maybe on this last one you're being a little over-eager. While the timing of Stockdale's death is certainly suspiciious, do we have any real evidence that he was murdered? Is the autopsy report available? And if he was murdered, is there anything to connect LBJ to the murder? I know you've been able to show how Stockdale was partners with someone who also worked with Baker, but do we have any evidence that this resulted in his death? And when you say "they" had to kill, do you mean LBJ, Hoover, and McCone? I don't see McCone getting involved in any of this stuff...

Edited December 22, 2005 by Pat Speer