"Rogue Elements of CIA": Valid concept or Plausible Denial?

[Nathaniel Heidenheimer]

According to Joeseph Trento the Richard Helms and Ted Shackley combined to form the Saffari Club in 1976.

Although Helms had been nominally removed from the Agency in 1973, he became ambassador to Iran, where,

Trento claims he began organizing a "team -B" for the CIA, with additonal strong ties to Saudi Arabia and other countires in the region.

The purpose? To do and end- run around Carter appointee, Stansfield Turner, who was seen by the CIA as a

Poltergeist of naive reform. (To me this raises interesting questions about the offical 9/11 reports blatenet negligence of 9-11, but that is not the point of this amateurish typing).

Do we discern a parallel to Helms illusiory banishment in the fate of William Harvey in 1962? Harvey was accused by Bobby Kennedy of initiating incendiary attacks around the time of CMC, without the approval of the

president. While he did not leave the agency he was banished to Italy, far away from the JM/WAVE CIA Miami

station, locus of the anti-Castro action. Yet there are signs that Harvey continued to be involved in Cuba policy without the president knowing about it. Was this banishment merely a ruse to facilitate plausible denial?

Dr. John Newman describes how Langely deliberately misled the Mexico City CIA station by not giving it information from the New Orleans FBI office that strongly suggested Oswalds involvement in Counterintelligence activities. This information was, however was sent by Langely to the FBI and Naval Intelligence. The center of the agency was deliberately misleading a branch of the agency.

To me these disparate examples raise a fundemental question about the rleationship of the part to the whole. The CIA's work is often so compartmentalized as to be DELIBERATELY MISLEADING from the point of view of one of its parts.

What does this imply about the idea floated by some writers that "rogue elements of the CIA may have been involved in initiating the assassination, but not the agency as a whole? " Dr. Newman even writes of deliberately obfuscatory filing (as of this minute, not a federal crime) by Langely in order to blur the relationship between part and whole. (See 201 vs. 100 files pp.399-406, "Oswald and the CIA".

To some researchers this may seem a fuzzy question for a botched Langely Daoist. I dont think so, because in the end its about what words to use when we point the final finger.

[Sid Walker]

The CIA's work is often so compartmentalized as to be DELIBERATELY MISLEADING from the point of view of one of its parts.

What does this imply about the idea floated by some writers that "rogue elements of the CIA may have been involved in initiating the assassination, but not the agency as a whole? "

I think that's the only plausible explanation.

Key elements of the CIA must have been involved in the JFK assassination and subsequent cover-up - but the notion that ALL the CIA was involved in clearly false.

It's also clear the the Carter Administration was assassinated by the clandestine team within the USA that has roots going back at least as far as joint complicity in the slaying of JFK. Fortunately for Carter, in his case it was unnecessary to kill him. Killing off his Administration and regime-cleansing initiatives was achieved by the largely 'peaceful' means of treason, deception and mass media bias on a grand scale.

Edited July 27, 2006 by Sid Walker

[Ashton Gray]

What does this imply about the idea floated by some writers that "rogue elements of the CIA may have been involved in initiating the assassination, but not the agency as a whole? "

The only possible correct statement wouldn't involve the adjective "rogue." It would be: "Core elements of the CIA were involved in initiating, planning, and executing the assassination." And of course the entire rank-and-file corpus of CIA wouldn't be put in the loop. But there's not a chance in hell that it wasn't coordinated from the top.

If anything, "rogue elements" was apologist crap floated by the CIA itself when some investigations and researchers started getting too close to the truth.

Ashton Gray

[Ron Ecker]

If anything, "rogue elements" was apologist crap floated by the CIA itself when some investigations and researchers started getting too close to the truth.

Right. My view on "rogue CIA agents" has always been that you either work for the CIA or you don't.

If the CIA has "rogues" working for it, whose fault is that?

[John Simkin]

I think it is misleading to talk about a “rogue” element within the CIA. The corruption of the CIA began in the late 1940s. This involved taking rake-offs from the drug trade in South-East Asia. Some agents were willing to make money for carrying out covert actions for military dictators in the Third World. This often involved assassinating left-wing activists. Tommy Corcoran was involved in organizing these illegal activities. In time, a group of middle-ranking CIA officers emerged who could always be relied on to organize these actions. This included Paul Helliwell, Ted Shackley, Tom Clines, E. Howard Hunt, David Atlee Phillips, David Morales, Carl E. Jenkins, Donald P. Gregg and Ray S. Cline. The acts themselves were usually carried out by CIA assets. In the 1950s these were often Americans but by the 1960s the main source of labour was Cubans that had been involved in the struggle to remove Castro.

On the surface it might seem to be a “rogue” group. However, this does not take into account that senior CIA officers were fully aware of what was going on. It was perceived to be in the interests of the CIA leadership to allow the privatization of US foreign policy. Even if people like Luis Posada Carrilles, Orlando Bosch, Felix Ismael Rodriguez, Chi Chi Quintero, etc. were caught and the CIA was unable to cover-up their crimes it was always possible to deny they had any relationship with the CIA.

The important issue concerns the role these CIA agents played in domestic politics. Were these officers involved in removing John Kennedy, Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter from power?

[Ashton Gray]

I think it is misleading to talk about a “rogue” element within the CIA.

It's 100% pure CIA-brand perfumed holy water, the same brand they spend millions of tax dollars on every year sprinkling all over themselves to try to cover up the ever-growing stench.

In fact, it was the perverse perjurer Richard Helms himself who poured the "CIA was never a rogue elephant" poison into the water, and the "rogue elements" is just a subset of the same lies.

The corruption of the CIA began in the late 1940s. This involved taking rake-offs from the drug trade in South-East Asia.

The CIA hadn't been in existence more than a year when they set Clay Shaw up for good in the CIA-spawned "International Trade Mart" business, giving him the cover that they later claimed they only exploited. It's a complete lie. (And what else is new?)

This is the same general M.O. they used when Helms laundered his own order through Hunt, Colson, Ehrlichman, and back to CIA via Deputy CIA Director Cushman for CIA to "help Hunt," which I covered in White House "Request" for CIA Help Was a Helms Con. Same M.O. It's about as subtle as a zebra's stripes. Of course, when they finally are forced to spit out any "admission," it gets completely flipped around so that, as in the case of "helping Hunt" they were "only following orders," and in the case of Shaw, "oh, well, he was there and had this thing already set up, so we merely utilized—" Just lying scum. They can't issue any statement, ever, without lying.

Some agents were willing to make money for carrying out covert actions for military dictators in the Third World. This often involved assassinating left-wing activists.

And anybody else they decided was an inconvenience to their plans and operations. The entire organization was set up from day one in the exact model that could not otherwise than attract the most debased, amoral, criminal elements in the society who saw the entire organization as completely sanctioned cover, with virtually unlimited funds and power, for any malevolent activity they wished to pursue—all wrapped in the flag and standing in a noble pose on the highest moral ground they can find. <SPIT!>

In time, a group of middle-ranking CIA officers emerged who could always be relied on to organize these actions. This included Paul Helliwell, Ted Shackley, Tom Clines, E. Howard Hunt, David Atlee Phillips, David Morales, Carl E. Jenkins and Ray Cline.

Good lord, don't leave out Richard Helms and Sidney Gottlieb. These two were also central to building CIA's most deadly weapon ever, and one that is almost completely invisible: a still-secret standing army of like-minded psychiatrists gleefully happy to do anything to anybody for the sheer perverted, sadistic pleasure of doing it. Few things from CIA are ever as redacted as the names of their pet psychiatrists, who not only have wreaked more atrocities on mankind than possibly any other group in history, but who have stood for over half a century as CIA's primary totally protected and secret source of blackmail leverage.

"Rogue elements" my ass.

Ashton Gray

[Robert Charles-Dunne]

According to Joeseph Trento the Richard Helms and Ted Shackley combined to form the Saffari Club in 1976.

Although Helms had been nominally removed from the Agency in 1973, he became ambassador to Iran, where,

Trento claims he began organizing a "team -B" for the CIA, with additonal strong ties to Saudi Arabia and other countires in the region.

I have little doubt that Helms quickly set about organizing a "team-B," and can only wonder what role it played in the subsequent neutering of the Carter presidency: the rise against the Shah, the pleading that Carter allow the Shah into the US for much-needed medical treatment, and the resulting seizure of the US Embassy there. I have equally little doubt that the release of the hostages on the date of Reagan's inauguration betokened a covert Republican deal struck with the ayatollahs, but wonder what role Helms and his "team-B" may have played in brokering such an arrangement.

The purpose? To do and end- run around Carter appointee, Stansfield Turner, who was seen by the CIA as a

Poltergeist of naive reform. (To me this raises interesting questions about the offical 9/11 reports blatenet negligence of 9-11, but that is not the point of this amateurish typing).

Do we discern a parallel to Helms illusiory banishment in the fate of William Harvey in 1962? Harvey was accused by Bobby Kennedy of initiating incendiary attacks around the time of CMC, without the approval of the

president. While he did not leave the agency he was banished to Italy, far away from the JM/WAVE CIA Miami

station, locus of the anti-Castro action. Yet there are signs that Harvey continued to be involved in Cuba policy without the president knowing about it. Was this banishment merely a ruse to facilitate plausible denial?

Dr. John Newman describes how Langely deliberately misled the Mexico City CIA station by not giving it information from the New Orleans FBI office that strongly suggested Oswalds involvement in Counterintelligence activities. This information was, however was sent by Langely to the FBI and Naval Intelligence. The center of the agency was deliberately misleading a branch of the agency.

It might be equally true to note that information floated by the MC station about their "Oswald" was also untrue or severely flawed, and withheld from Langley insofar as it pertained to "Oswald"'s contacts with the Cuban consul staff there, until after the assassination. Moreover, the extant cable traffic seems to indicate that there are missives between them we have yet to find. I cannot fathom a scenario in which this is either accidental or pure incompetence; it can only, to my mind, be inferred that a certain party or parties in Langley were in collusion with a certain party or parties in the MC station, using the "Oswald" persona for an ulterior motive.

To me these disparate examples raise a fundemental question about the rleationship of the part to the whole. The CIA's work is often so compartmentalized as to be DELIBERATELY MISLEADING from the point of view of one of its parts.

What does this imply about the idea floated by some writers that "rogue elements of the CIA may have been involved in initiating the assassination, but not the agency as a whole? " Dr. Newman even writes of deliberately obfuscatory filing (as of this minute, not a federal crime) by Langely in order to blur the relationship between part and whole. (See 201 vs. 100 files pp.399-406, "Oswald and the CIA".

To some researchers this may seem a fuzzy question for a botched Langely Daoist. I dont think so, because in the end its about what words to use when we point the final finger.

I don't think this is an either/or question.

For example, let's assume that you're John McCone and when you arrive for work on 11/23, a report on your desk suggests that some of your field people may have been involved in the prior day's events. You are a Kennedy appointee, and theoretically owe him, or his legacy, the debt of honesty. However, in being forthcoming, you also know that you will deal an insurmountable body blow to the Agency which, by your own passionate reasoning, represents the last amorphous line between your country and the Godless commie hordes. Candor will not resurrect the fallen President, will not make you life any easier, and can only lead to unimaginable damage to the Agency. So, you remain silent.

In the process you and your Agency have become accessories after the fact, and must indulge in endless CYA machinations to protect CIA. Yet there is a world of difference between such ex-post facto subterfuge on the one hand, and foreknowledge of the crime, on the other, both legally and morally.

However, in my view such a scenario absolves CIA of nothing. This is an agency of the US government that has struck clandestine relationships with both Fortune 500 companies, to their mutual benefit, as well as clandestine arrangements with the Mob, to their mutual benefit, from the OSS days forward. All of this was done with insufficient oversight by elected officials, and was met by cloaked mutiny when elected officials sought to impose their will upon the Agency. CIA had access to vast sums in untraceable funds that could be drawn from a variety of discretionary accounts, for purposes that required no authorization from - or even the awareness of - the Oval Office; had access to a variety of contract killers; could arrange for forged travel documents in false names; and had access to whatever intelligence was held by other bureaus and agencies of government that might pertain to its own plans. Bill Colby and others asked us to accept their word that they had things under control, claiming that we should accept their word as honorable men. A-hem.... One can be certain that KGB's leadership once said the same thing.

When you have such a convergence of multiple means, the motive and opportunity will not be long in following, no matter what someone within the Agency chooses to do, no matter how outlandish the scheme. This is not the fevered imagining of some delusional crackpot, but an itemization of errors of omission and commission to which the CIA itself has already stipulated, albeit with the greatest reluctance, or has been adjudicated by Congressional committees over CIA's bitter opposition.

So, once again, let's imagine that you are John McCone, and have reason to suspect that some of your own personnel may have played a role in the Dealey Plaza deed. Given the systemic flaws and failings that led to such a possibility, with no system of checks and balances to preclude same, the application of "extreme prejudice" against one's own head of state is less a surprise than it is inevitable. One need only wait to encounter a President who actually thinks he's President, and behaves accordingly.

Irrespective of whether only a few "rogue" elements played a role, it was the massive covert latitude granted those elements by the Agency that made the deed possible. Without those readily available tools of the trade, provided by an Agency long since run amok, the "rogues" would have been forced of necessity to resort to something far more crude, along the lines of a gangland hit. Systemic failure calls for a systemic overhaul, which the Agency has long needed, as Kennedy both recognized and vowed to accomplish. Over his dead body....

Now, were you or I to preside over any corporation that fuctioned in direct contravention of the board's wishes, we would be fired. Once it had been established that you or I pursued our own agenda, against the wishes of those who employed us and ordered us to do otherwise, we would be held to account. Time and again, we have seen various degrees of evidence that CIA has pursued its own policies, in direct violation of Presidential orders, yet there's never been a commensurate degree of accountability for those responsible for such misdeeds.

Why?

[John Simkin]

I think it is misleading to talk about a “rogue” element within the CIA. The corruption of the CIA began in the late 1940s. This involved taking rake-offs from the drug trade in South-East Asia. Some agents were willing to make money for carrying out covert actions for military dictators in the Third World. This often involved assassinating left-wing activists. Tommy Corcoran was involved in organizing these illegal activities. In time, a group of middle-ranking CIA officers emerged who could always be relied on to organize these actions. This included Paul Helliwell, Ted Shackley, Tom Clines, E. Howard Hunt, David Atlee Phillips, David Morales, Carl E. Jenkins, Donald P. Gregg and Ray S. Cline. The acts themselves were usually carried out by CIA assets. In the 1950s these were often Americans but by the 1960s the main source of labour was Cubans that had been involved in the struggle to remove Castro.

Good lord, don't leave out Richard Helms and Sidney Gottlieb. These two were also central to building CIA's most deadly weapon ever, and one that is almost completely invisible: a still-secret standing army of like-minded psychiatrists gleefully happy to do anything to anybody for the sheer perverted, sadistic pleasure of doing it. Few things from CIA are ever as redacted as the names of their pet psychiatrists, who not only have wreaked more atrocities on mankind than possibly any other group in history, but who have stood for over half a century as CIA's primary totally protected and secret source of blackmail leverage.

I have seen no evidence that Sidney Gottlieb was a “freelancer”. Richard Helms is in the same category as Allen Dulles, George Bush and William Casey. It could be argued that “plausible deniability” worked for directors of the CIA in the same way it worked for presidents. The nearest we came to identifying this corrupt network was with Lawrence E. Walsh’s investigation. It is well worth reading the “Iran-Contra: The Final Report”. Walsh makes it clear just how George Bush was able to block his investigation. Who knows what William Casey would have said if it had not been for his untimely death.

I would also suggest members read “Inside the Shadow Government”. Published by the Christic Institute, it reveals that the main source of information on this CIA illegal network came from Gene Wheaton. It was Wheaton who last year named Carl E. Jenkins and Chi Chi Quintero as being involved in the assassination of JFK.

[Ashton Gray]

Good lord, don't leave out Richard Helms and Sidney Gottlieb. These two were also central to building CIA's most deadly weapon ever, and one that is almost completely invisible: a still-secret standing army of like-minded psychiatrists gleefully happy to do anything to anybody for the sheer perverted, sadistic pleasure of doing it. Few things from CIA are ever as redacted as the names of their pet psychiatrists, who not only have wreaked more atrocities on mankind than possibly any other group in history, but who have stood for over half a century as CIA's primary totally protected and secret source of blackmail leverage.

I have seen no evidence that Sidney Gottlieb was a “freelancer”. Richard Helms is in the same category as Allen Dulles, George Bush and William Casey.

I agree with you about Helms's category, and didn't mean to imply in any way that Gottlieb was a "freelancer." I placed my comment badly when I put it after the string of "middle-ranking CIA officers" you named, because it was more directly responsive to the major premise of your message, as summed up in your statement:

• "On the surface it might seem to be a 'rogue' group. However, this does not take into account that senior CIA officers were fully aware of what was going on."
  

Gottlieb probably deserves his own category until the end of time. Hopefully Hell has solitary confinement.

Ashton

[Paul Rigby]

Nathaniel's quote:

"Do we discern a parallel to Helms illusiory banishment in the fate of William Harvey in 1962? Harvey was accused by Bobby Kennedy of initiating incendiary attacks around the time of CMC, without the approval of the president. While he did not leave the agency he was banished to Italy, far away from the JM/WAVE CIA Miami station, locus of the anti-Castro action. Yet there are signs that Harvey continued to be involved in Cuba policy without the president knowing about it. Was this banishment merely a ruse to facilitate plausible denial?"

[Endquote]

Nathaniel,

Don't forget to factor in the "apertura a sinistra" factor when considering Harvey's "banishment" to Italy. What better place to sabotage that particular Kennedy initiative?

Paul

[Robert Howard]

Nathaniel's quote:

"Do we discern a parallel to Helms illusiory banishment in the fate of William Harvey in 1962? Harvey was accused by Bobby Kennedy of initiating incendiary attacks around the time of CMC, without the approval of the president. While he did not leave the agency he was banished to Italy, far away from the JM/WAVE CIA Miami station, locus of the anti-Castro action. Yet there are signs that Harvey continued to be involved in Cuba policy without the president knowing about it. Was this banishment merely a ruse to facilitate plausible denial?"

[Endquote]

Nathaniel,

Don't forget to factor in the "apertura a sinistra" factor when considering Harvey's "banishment" to Italy. What better place to sabotage that particular Kennedy initiative?

Paul

It appears a tragedy of history is in the making, in that, the profoundly important events of the 20th Century [Dec 7, 1941, the Shoah [i.e. Holocaust], the Kennedy Assassination, [and now in our epoch 9/11] have left a grave unfulfilled responsibility for the descendants of those same events. The responsibility is to effectively communicate the events and circumstances of those same events to succeeding generations as insurance, if you will, that they do not happen again. I submit that out of all the above cited the historical events the Kennedy Assassination is the most difficult in the sense that there is such a 'lack of consensus' over what exactly DID happen. What should be in the forefront of every researcher's memory is that it is a fact that during the House Select Committee on Assassinations investigation, the CIA was prepared to admit to "a limited hangout" concerning the Kennedy Assassination Period. Apparently it was not necessitated since episodes like 'luring George Joannides out of retirement to run a flim-flam show re the DRE and their activities in that period. The ARRB inability or indifference to the appearance of Ruth and Michael Paine only serves as an echo.

The great equalizer for the government's obfuscation in the matter has alway's been the American people, who never accepted the fiction of the Warren Report as evidenced in the poll taken as late as 1992, which indicated that most American's not only believed the assassination was a conspiracy but that a preponderance of those polled believed it had been carried out by the CIA. The problem now is that the demographics are against the research community as far as final resolution goes, in the sense that the generation of adults today were obviously not even alive when this seminal event occured; add apathy and indifference to government corruption since then [iran Contra, the S & L Scandal, unanswered questions re: 'other controversial events'] that the argument can be made that there is no semblance of any consensus on the part of the American people as to responding to what we are witnessing in Washington these days, I suppose that is why there are so many peole who get their 'news' from the Daily Show instead of CNN

Coupled with a mainstream media so thoroughly compromised by corporate control that in many cases, it can appear at times to be like Pravda to the point, that when a real 'cutting edge' piece appears it causes shockwaves because it is such a divergence from the status quo. This same dynamic existed during the Teapot Dome Era; America survived that bump in the road, but that was because there was a more cohesive and structured society, a fact that might say more about prospects for America in the Third Millenium, than anything.

Q: What does 'being careful about what you say' [as advised by Bush Administration officials] have to do with democratic principles.

What is happening in America now cannot be viewed as too surprising considering that many people consider the American Civil Liberties Union an extremist group. Ironic considering that it's creation and activities are designed to ensure we live in a Democratic society. Considering the politcal landscape, one might say 'Beam Me Up, Scotty' might be the ultimate answer to - How does the rest of the world view American's?

Edited August 5, 2006 by Robert Howard