RFK assassination program on BBC2, Nov. 20

[John Simkin]

As far as pertinent information goes, even though I do not have the book; in Noel Twyman's "Bloody Treason" Noel features interviews with Ruben [Rocky] Carabajal and attorney Robert Walton, if memory serves correctly. If any of this has been posted already [on this thread, I apologize] Most enlightening extemporaneous detail: The $10 Million Dollar pay-off from Nixon to the CIA [this information ostensibly in the Church Committee Report page 288] to prevent Salvador Allende from coming to power, and in Bloody Treason Twyman quotes Carabajal as stating that David Morales told him [Ruben] he pocketed 2 of the 10 million.

It would be nice to have that posted if it is deemed pertinent. I know the interviews were circa 1995. Just thought it was worth mentioning

This was the main point about the findings of the Otis Pike committee that looked in the funding of the CIA. It was suggested that because the CIA did not have to keep any financial accounts it was suspected that individual agents were stealing millions of dollars from funds that should have been used to overthrow left-wing governments throughout the world. People like Ted Shackley, Edwin Wilson and Tom Clines tried to tap into this web of corruption after they left the agency.

[John Simkin]

I hope you are all following the debate on the Newsnight website. It has created more response than any other item in the history of the programme. This should help them commission Shane O'Sullivan to make a follow-up.

I have now tried to move the debate to a connection between the deaths of RFK and JFK. Please join in.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/newsnight/2006/..._kennedy_1.html

By the way, I see that Mel Ayton has appealed to the moderators for help.

[Shane O'Sullivan]

Thanks for all your comments on the BBC Newsnight film. It's great to see it provoke such a lively discussion. Hats off also to John and the team on the Forum. It has been an invaluable resource to me in researching this. Thanks also to James for his help in identifying the Latin man but he does not look to me like Julio Gran.

Apologies for the length of this posting but I thought I'd try to answer some questions raised here and on the BBC site, then add some information we couldn't fit in to the BBC story.

We only had 12 minutes, so we decided to focus on the new evidence of a CIA presence at the hotel, itself complex enough to get across in the time.

We sketched in some of the existing controversies because they are relevant and still unresolved and we shot a number of interviews we couldn't include in the final edit.

We interviewed Frank Burns, for instance. He was standing one foot behind and to the right of Kennedy. He re-enacted the shooting for us in his living room and placed Sirhan three feet away. On the BBC site, I asked Mel Ayton to provide a witness closer to Kennedy who can place Sirhan's gun one inch behind.

Mr. Ayton regularly trots out Boris Yaro, who was much further away, looking through a camera lens and admitted Kennedy was in silhouette. Yaro also describes Sirhan standing over Kennedy when he slumped to the floor, firing down, which makes no sense at all given the upward trajectory described in the autopsy.

A dozen witnesses place Sirhan's gun several feet away and in front of Kennedy, not one inch behind.

Sirhan's firing trajectory fits the wound patterns of the four other victims and other bullet-holes found in the pantry door-frames.

We did not have time in the film to go back into the ballistics of the case, but the autopsy results and witness testimony provide alarming contradictions, the coroner Dr Noguchi is unconvinced Sirhan acted alone and the fatal bullet has never been matched to Sirhan's gun.

I can suggest a number of possible motivations for these agents. Kennedy had promised to pull out of Vietnam, ending the War, military spending, CIA operations in the region involving Morales at the time and yielding S.E. Asia to the Communists. If elected President, Bobby Kennedy would either micro-manage the CIA as he had done in the secret war on Cuba in 1962-3 or "smash it into a thousand pieces" as his brother had once threatened. He could also use the Presidency to reopen the investigation into his brother's death - going by Morales' comment, these same men may have been involved.

If these are, indeed, CIA agents, what is their connection to Sirhan? Sirhan had no criminal history and no propensity for violence - hardly the ideal hired assassin. If we are to connect the two, from the available evidence, I believe the hypnotic programming of Sirhan to act as a decoy for the real assassin is the most likely explanation. Richard Helms, Director of CIA in 1968, initiated CIA experiments aimed at creating such a "Manchurian Candidate" in 1953.

We interviewed Dr Herbert Spiegel, a world authority on hypnosis at Columbia University. He has studied the case and believes that Sirhan, a highly hypnotisable subject, was programmed to fire at Kennedy using what he calls a "compulsive triad" - a compulsion to comply with the program, an amnesia regarding the programming itself and post-rationalisation - I don't remember shooting Kennedy but I was the only gunman witnesses saw and I was angry at Kennedy for promising to sell the bombers to Israel, so I must have killed him "with twenty years of malice aforethought", as Sirhan said in the trial.

All very complex stuff which we couldn't fit into the BBC piece but which will appear in a longer feature-length documentary on the case which will be available early next year.

I would also like to add some detail on the identifications which we did not have time to include in the film.

Tom Clines said the figure in the video looked like Morales but it wasn't him. He said the figure in the video was fatter and Morales walked with more of a slouch and his tie down, though to me, the figure in the video does walk with a slouch and his tie down. Clines also said he knew Campbell and Joannides and it wasn't them either. He was accompanied by a younger "friend" named Derek, who had worked with him at CIA. When I asked him about the "Secret War" (meaning Cuba), he said "Which one?" and laughed.

Ed Wilson said the guy in the video wasn't Morales but then said he didn't recognise the Morales in the 1959 photo either! My only explanation for this is that Wilson knew Morales from 1972-77, by which point Morales was ageing rapidly due to alcoholism. Wilson agreed it was possible he just wouldn't recognise a younger version of Morales. Wilson didn't know Campbell or Joannides but did recognise the figures in the Campbell-Joannides photographs as being men familiar to him from his Agency days.

We also interviewed Ruben Carbajal some time ago but left him out of the film due to time restrictions because we felt he gave the least credible identification on Morales. He gave us interesting anecdotes on Che Guevara, the Tupamaros and the ten million dollars David stole from the Chilean treasury but when we began to show him the video, he said "no, no, no" before we even came to the clip of Morales and then instantly dismissed him as not "Didi" in a way we found a little strange. He also seemed to change his statement on the line he heard David say in the hotel room in 1973. He told Noel Twyman he couldn't remember the line about Los Angeles and Robert Walton remembered it better. Walton reports hearing Morales say "I was in Dallas when we got the son of a bitch and I was in Los Angeles when we got Bobby."

When I put this to Ruben, he said maybe that was Robert Walton's interpretation of what David said but that's not what he heard. He quotes it now as "I was in Dallas when we got the son of a bitch and I was in Los Angeles when they got him." He said the only reason David would be in Los Angeles at the time was that he had a daughter living near there. Morales home from Laos to visit his daughter in Los Angeles the same night Bobby is assassinated across town? I found that difficult to believe.

Ruben is a generous host and a terrific character to talk to but both myself and my cameraman felt his statements relating to the Robert Kennedy assassination were out of kilter with the other things he had to say. He promised to dig out some photos of David the next morning but couldn't find them after a recent move.

When I spoke to Robert Walton about this, he felt asking Ruben to finger his best friend Morales at the scene of another assassination, with Morales' family still around, was a "tough assignment" for Ruben. Walton himself thought the man in the video could be Morales but with the blurry quality and his deteriorating eyesight, he couldn't be conclusive.

So, it's a complex picture but I place great faith in the positive IDs from Bradley Ayers, Ed Lopez and Wayne Smith, all independent of CIA, with no vested interest. David Rabern is also important in connecting Morales and Campbell on the night.

The BBC film is just the beginning in getting the story out there. I am now starting to edit a longer feature documentary on the case which will be released early next year. As well as extended interviews with Bradley Ayers, Ed Lopez, Wayne Smith, David Rabern and the late Lawrence Teeter, the longer film will also feature interviews with Ambassador Hotel eye-witnesses Frank Burns and Paul Schrade, Dr Herbert Spiegel on hypnotic programming, Antonio Veciana on Maurice Bishop and Cuban feelings about the Kennedys, Haynes Johnson on RFK and the Cubans, Ruben Carbajal and Robert Walton on Morales, Sirhan's original defense investigator Michael McCowan and others.

Finally, the BBC asked the CIA four questions in relation to the film:

Was there a CIA operation on the night of 4th/5th June 1968 in the Ambassador Hotel?

Did the CIA know that several of its employees were to attend the Kennedy rally that night?

Did the CIA become aware after the assassination of Robert Kennedy that some of its operatives were present in the Ambassador hotel?

Can the CIA confirm that the three named above (Morales, Joannides, Campbell) were your employees and match the photos that we've provided?

This was the response:

"It is CIA policy ---we do not confirm or deny employment of an individual.....so I could not possibly comment on the status of these individuals. Please also keep in mind that the CIA does not operate on domestic soil---our mission is focused abroad only. The FBI works on US soil."

Thanks again for your feedback. New leads have already emerged from the piece the other night and we will continue to pursue the story.

Edited November 23, 2006 by Shane O'Sullivan

[Shane O'Sullivan]

I would also like to flag up my response to Jefferson Morley's initial comments on the film and his subsequent post on the BBC website. I have huge respect for the work Jeff has done on Joannides and hope to work with him to clarify Joannides' presence at the hotel.

At 01:49 PM on 22 Nov 2006, Shane O'Sullivan wrote:

We spoke to Jefferson Morley while researching our film but he did not want to be interviewed on camera, citing a lack of knowledge of the RFK case.

Morley agreed that Ed Lopez was an extremely credible witness on Joannides and that his positive ID raises the serious possibility that Joannides is the man in the photograph - I see nothing "unfounded" about that. With his ten years of research into Joannides, Morley knows the implications if Joannides was at the hotel that night.

We spoke to Chief Counsel for the House Select Committee on Assassinations, G. Robert Blakey. He said he had limited contact with Joannides and suggested Ed Lopez and Dan Hardway as the two investigators who had the most contact with him. Hardway said "this could be him. Much younger in the picture than in the 70's and it's been a long time".

In 1963, Joannides was the case officer for the DRE, an anti-Castro group of Cuban exiles supported by the CIA. Joannides' primary contact was Dr Luis Fernandez-Rocha. When I showed Fernandez-Rocha the photograph, he said "This is very important (that I quote him directly) I will neither confirm or deny that this is Joannides".

Yes, the authentication of the photo is uncertain until we have further corroboration but look at the photo in context. The man I think is Joannides is pictured with a man positively ID'd as Gordon Campbell, a former JM-WAVE colleague, with a third JM-WAVE colleague, David Morales, positively ID'd nearby. Three lookalikes who happen to know each other, all behaving like law enforcement types? I thought it suspicious enough to warrant public discussion.

In the interest of balance, we asked Morley to suggest an equally credible witness to identify Joannides but so far, despite his acknowledged expertise on the subject, he has not done so.

His recent pronouncements on my film contradict what he has told me privately and I suggest he actually does some reporting of his own on this story to help us uncover the truth of the matter.

At 03:00 PM on 22 Nov 2006, Jefferson Morley wrote:

I'd like to add some balance to my earlier comments on Shane 'Sullivan's piece on the assasssination of Bobby Kennedy.

I criticized the story for being thinly sourced. But, it must be said, that thinly sourced stories can be true if the source is good.

Ed Lopez is a credible witness and his near certainty that Joannides appears in a photo apparently taken in Los Angeles on the night of June 6, 1968 has to be taken seriously. If Joannides was there, the implications are profound.

So O'Sullivan's piece, while open to criticism, underscores an important issue of JFK accountability for the new U.S. Congress: The CIA must be compelled to abandon its JFK stonewalling and disclose fully about George Joannides's actions and whereabouts in 1963 and 1968.

[Francesca Akhtar]

Yes I agree John it was a very interesting piece and very convincing. I'm just surprised that no one has picked Morales and co. out before from the photos and footage.

I would be interested if someone could identify the latin looking man with a moustache who is seen after the shooting on the footage who I think was waving the other man towards the exit.

I was thinking maybe someone like Larry Hancock or James Richards might know who it is?

Hi Francesca,

The quality of the image makes it a little difficult to be sure but he looks like Julio Gran. Mmm.

James

James do you have any stills of Morales from the programme you could post? I tried taking a pic off the TV with my camera phone but it came out blurred.

[Ron Ecker]

"Please also keep in mind that the CIA does not operate on domestic soil---our mission is focused abroad only."

How odd, then, that Tracy Barnes headed something in the CIA called the Domestic Operations Division, which utilized E. Howard Hunt among others.

[James Richards]

Yes I agree John it was a very interesting piece and very convincing. I'm just surprised that no one has picked Morales and co. out before from the photos and footage.

I would be interested if someone could identify the latin looking man with a moustache who is seen after the shooting on the footage who I think was waving the other man towards the exit.

I was thinking maybe someone like Larry Hancock or James Richards might know who it is?

Hi Francesca,

The quality of the image makes it a little difficult to be sure but he looks like Julio Gran. Mmm.

James

James do you have any stills of Morales from the programme you could post? I tried taking a pic off the TV with my camera phone but it came out blurred.

Francesca,

I can't get any screen captures that reveal clear details. I think one has to do this off the original film itself.

BTW, I would like to congratulate Shane on this excellent piece of work. As to Gran, he will lead one on many a wild chase but it is worth the pursuit.

As for information on Morales, an attempt to track down Nester Moreno and Ramon Thomas Guin may bear fruit. I do not know if they are still alive. Also, there is a man by the name of Rafael Sanchez who I believe was at the Ambassador on the night. In the 1960's, his main connections were with Col. William Bishop and Rolando Masferrer. As of 3 years ago, he was still alive.

FWIW.

James

[John Simkin]

As a result of the great response to Shane O'Sullivan's piece, BBC Newsnight have kept it top of their home-page all week. If we keep the story going we might see the story get on BBC news broadcasts.

[Francesca Akhtar]

That's correct Pat, it was removed after consultation with Noel Twyman who had granted

permission for use in the first edition. Long time readers of this forum may recall

the probable cause but I'm not going to comment further in a public venue.

-- Larry

Look forward to reading the interview with Hargraves in Larry's book. I have just ordered it ad really can't wait to get it as I missed the first edition.

I'm sure he'll correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe Larry had to cut the Hargraves interview for the second edition.

That's a shame - any chance of someone posting the interview on here, or is that a no no as well?

[William Kelly]

That's a shame - any chance of someone posting the interview on here, or is that a no no as well?

Francesca, I will copy and send the interview to you privately. Email me: Bkjfk3@yahoo.com with address.

Nor does the lack of the interview give the book any less significance. I'm sure Larry provides a synopsis. Someone Would Have Talked is the most important book on the assassination to come out in a long time.

Also, while I did notice that the Free Press syndicate picked up SOS's piece and distributed it, here's the first real story I've seen on it from Global Resarch. And Spartacus gets source footnote. Maybe things will pick up steam? - BK

Re-Open RFK assassination

by Michael Carmichael

Global Research, November 22, 2006

Planetary Movement

Planning to write a film script about the case, Shane O’Sullivan, an independent researcher, investigated the assassination of RFK. But, O’Sullivan found much more than he had hoped.

On Monday night, the BBC broadcast O’Sullivan’s report on their high-profile programme, Newsnight. O’Sullivan’s findings shocked many people. Working through an exhaustive analysis of videotapes made at the Ambassador Hotel on the night of RFK’s assassination, O’Sullivan identified three figures as former agents of the CIA. Two of the agents O’Sullivan identified could be seen moving away from the hotel pantry shortly after the shooting of RFK.

Following his preliminary identifications, O’Sullivan presented the video images to more authoritative sources, men who knew the three agents personally. While there was a slender degree of uncertainty (circa 5-10%) the men in the videos were positively identified as the former CIA agents:

David Sanchez Morales;

Gordon Campbell and

George Joannides.

Morales was known to be involved in coups d’etats throughout Latin America and he had a reputation of a dangerous man with an explosive temper who was capable of violence. To entertain his friends, Morales would tell stories about his involvement in the killing and capture of Che Guevara, coups in Latin America and other nefarious covert activities.

Two of the CIA agents in the Ambassador Hotel: Morales and Joannides are now dead, while the whereabouts of the third, Campbell, are presently unknown.

O’Sullivan interviewed Bradley Ayers, US Army Captain retired, who had been stationed at JM-Wave, the Miami base for the CIA. In 1963, David Morales was the Chief of Operations at JM-Wave. Ayers and Morales trained Cuban exiles in the arts of sabotage to be deployed in covert action against the regime of Fidel Castro. On camera, Ayers identified Morales and Campbell with what he described as 95% accuracy. Following that positive identification, Ayers introduced O’Sullivan to David Rabern, a freelance mercenary who had been contracted by the CIA to participate in the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961. Rabern had been in the ballroom of the Ambassador Hotel on the fateful night in 1968.

While Rabern did not know Morales and Campbell by name, he had noticed them talking to each other in the hotel lobby prior to the assassination. Earlier in the same year, Rabern had noticed Campbell in and around several police stations. If true, this report is rather odd considering that the CIA has no jurisdiction on US soil. Another bizarre fact: Morales was officially stationed in Laos in 1968.

O’Sullivan found video images of Campbell with another figure who has now been identified as George Joannides, a pivotal figure in the CIA and the re-investigation of the assassination of JFK.

Joannides had been the Chief of Psychological Warfare Operations at JM-Wave. He had retired from his CIA post, but in 1978 he returned to active duty, as it were, as the liaison between the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) during its re-investigation of the assassinations of JFK and Martin Luther King.

Puzzling, perplexing and problematic, Joannides failed to inform his colleagues at the HSCA that he had ever worked at JM-Wave. This is a troubling enigma for it suggests that he intended to maintain his covert identity – a fact that would compromise his involvement in the HSCA and jeopardize the entire congressional investigation.

A former researcher with the HSCA, Ed Lopez, identified Joannides as the person in the Ambassador Hotel video with what he described on camera as 99% accuracy. More. Lopez recalled Joannides obstructive practice of denying the HSCA access to crucial documents in the re-investigation of the assassination of JFK.

O’Sullivan did not stop there. Moving to Washington, he met Wayne Smith a veteran State Department official who worked with Morales at the US embassy in Havana in the final year of the Batista regime through the Cuban Revolution in 1959 and 1960. When O’Sullivan asked him to respond the Ambassador Hotel video, Smith immediately stated, “That’s him, that’s Morales.” From a conversation in 1975, Smith recalled that Morales stated that JFK deserved to be assassinated. From Smith’s testimony, O’Sullivan learned that Morales “hated the Kennedys” – because of their cancelling the air support for the failed Bay of Pigs invastion of 1961.

In a hotel near the CIA headquarters (now named the George H. W. Bush Center for Central Intelligence) in Langley, Virginia, O’Sullivan met with a former agent, Tom Clines who said that all of the men in the Ambassador Hotel videos had been misidentified as former CIA agents. When O’Sullivan informed him that Ayers and Smith had positively identified the men as Morales, Campbell and Joannides, Clines became “disturbed,” and he refused to go on camera for the interview.

Following his interview of Clines, senior journalists in Washington advised O’Sullivan to take his testimony with a grain of salt as he was known to “blow smoke” deliberately as a routine function to dissemble facts for the press and public.

Gaeton Fonzi was the lead investigator of the HSCA investigation of the assassination of JFK. In his book, The Last Investigation, Fonzi reported the testimony of Bob Walton, a man who met Morales and discussed JFK with him. According to Fonzi’s account, Morales asserted his direct involvement in the assassination of JFK as revenge for the Bay of Pigs.

On the Watergate tapes, Richard Nixon always referred to the assassination of JFK as, “the Bay of Pigs thing.” During Eisenhower’s presidency, Nixon served as the White House liason with the CIA. As Vice-President Nixon worked directly with Allen Dulles and other senior staff at the CIA on the planning of the Bay of Pigs operation. It should be noted that George H. W. Bush has been known to have been integral to the Bay of Pigs operation since the publication of the enormously popular bestselling book of 1991, Plausible Denial, by Mark Lane.

During his campaign for the presidency in 1960, Nixon was shocked that JFK made public the contents of his top-secret intelligence briefings – and had moved to Nixon’s right to advocate overt military intervention against Cuba. The CIA planned to overthrow Castro in an invasion manned with exiled Cubans trained by the staff at JM-Wave. From our perspective today, it is perfectly understandable why JFK would have been compelled to make this policy position public in his presidential campaign. Had he not done so, JFK could have been tarnished with a charge of being, “weak on communism,” by Nixon who had been one of the leading witch-hunters of the disgraceful McCarthy Era.

Upon his inauguration as president, JFK continued to support the plans to attack Cuba with the force of exiled Cubans – a project that Nixon had nurtured, supported and managed for the Eisenhower White House. However, JFK decided to withhold US air support in order to maintain an arm’s length separation from the Cuban invasion.

The Bay of Pigs became a fiasco. JFK accepted the blame, and he immediately ordered a thorough-going reorganization of the CIA. A few months later, Allen Dulles, who had been a free-wheeling manufacturer of coups d’etats while serving as Director of Central Intelligence (DCI), ‘retired’ after a formal conversation with JFK. JFK promptly named a new director, and John McCone who had been the director of the Atomic Energy Commission soon took Dulles’s place as DCI.

JFK’s reorientation of the CIA did not stop there. Recognizing that the agency’s mission to wage a covert Cold War was dangerously counterproductive, JFK ordered the CIA to make nuclear non-proliferation its top priority. Eventually, JFK would successfully negotiate the Test Ban Treaty with Nikita Khruschev in the aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis - by far the most significant strategic confrontation of the entire Cold War.

While rogue elements in the US intelligence community have long been suspected of meddling in his assassination and those of his brother and Martin Luther King, Shane O’Sullivan’s identification of three CIA agents in the Ambassador Hotel on the night of the assassination of RFK suggests strongly that the case should be reopened. The third agent in the Ambassador Hotel, George Joannides, now appears to have been engaged in a sabotage mission during the HSCA investigation of JFK’s assassination.

The assassination of JFK would seem to be an eternal mystery that has long since passed into the realm of myth, however that is not the case for today, technology has provided a wealth of new tools with which to examine evidence in criminal cases – even cold cases over forty years old.

While O’Sullivan is calling for a re-opening of the case of RFK, it is only reasonable to re-open JFK’s case, as well.

In 1968, I was in my final year at the University of North Carolina. From my meeting with a close associate of RFK, I worked as a college and university organizer in his presidential campaign. At the time of his assassination, RFK was the leading candidate for the presidency – far ahead of his nearest rival in the polls and definitely on track to win the November election.

Seeing the BBC broadcast of video tape evidence of three unassigned CIA agents in the Ambassador Hotel Ballroom at the time of RFK’s assassination shocked me. The federal government, Congress and the criminal justice system of the United States failed to protect the president of the United States and its leading presidential candidates. Worse. They have failed to tell the truth to the American people.

Today, on the anniversary of one of the most tragic dates in American history – I propose that he cases of RFK and JFK should be re-opened in either the 110th or the 111th Congress.

We must follow the evidence exhaustively and relentless, leaving no stone unturned and no document unexamined regardless of its current status: Sensitive; Secret, Top Secret or Above Top Secret. To do any less would be to become complicit in the lies and cover-ups that have denied the American people of the truth.

References

CIA role claim in Kennedy killing

Did the CIA kill Bobby Kennedy?

DID CIA KILL RFK? - Screenwriter Finds Evidence Implicating 3 CIA Officers

David Morales/spartacus

Edited November 24, 2006 by William Kelly

[Myra Bronstein]

That's correct Pat, it was removed after consultation with Noel Twyman who had granted

permission for use in the first edition. Long time readers of this forum may recall

the probable cause but I'm not going to comment further in a public venue.

-- Larry

Look forward to reading the interview with Hargraves in Larry's book. I have just ordered it ad really can't wait to get it as I missed the first edition.

I'm sure he'll correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe Larry had to cut the Hargraves interview for the second edition.

Was anything else cut from the second edition Larry?

[Myra Bronstein]

"Please also keep in mind that the CIA does not operate on domestic soil---our mission is focused abroad only."

That's a howler.

So, has it ever been "legal" for the CIA to operate on domestic soil?

[Myra Bronstein]

...So, it's a complex picture but I place great faith in the positive IDs from Bradley Ayers, Ed Lopez and Wayne Smith, all independent of CIA, with no vested interest. David Rabern is also important in connecting Morales and Campbell on the night....

Shane, thank you for posting the additional material, and for focusing on the subject of RFK's murder.

Question: Have you considered using an independent facial recognition expert to compare known photos of the three CIA guys with pictures of the three in the Ambassador?

[Thomas Graves]

You will be able to view this program tonight from here:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/default.stm

___________________________________________

Between the victory speech and the assassination, the David Morales character is wearing his white shirt sans coat. Then about thirty minutes after the shooting, he's wearing his coat. Was putting his coat on some sort of signal to his co-conspirators? Also, after the shooting he's turning from left to right, looking distinctly upwards. I wonder why?

FWIW, Thomas

___________________________________________

Edited November 23, 2007 by Thomas Graves

[William Kelly]

Michael Carmichael's OP-ED piece was picked up by the Baltimore Chronicle. Carmichael is identified as an Oxford historian. Does anyone else sense some momentum building here? -BK

ANALYSIS:

It's Time to Re-Open the Investigation of RFK and JFK Assassinations

by MICHAEL CARMICHAEL

The assassination of JFK would seem to be an eternal mystery that has long since passed into the realm of myth; however, that is not the case for today; technology has provided a wealth of new tools with which to examine evidence in criminal cases—even cold cases over forty years old. Nov. 22, 2006—Planning to write a film script about the case, Shane O’Sullivan, an independent researcher, investigated the assassination of RFK. But, O’Sullivan found much more than he had hoped.

On Monday night, the BBC broadcast O’Sullivan’s report on their high-profile programme, "Newsnight." O’Sullivan’s findings shocked many people. Working through an exhaustive analysis of videotapes made at the Ambassador Hotel on the night of RFK’s assassination, O’Sullivan identified three figures as former agents of the CIA. Two of the agents O’Sullivan identified could be seen moving away from the hotel pantry shortly after the shooting of RFK.

Following his preliminary identifications, O’Sullivan presented the video images to more authoritative sources, men who knew the three agents personally. While there was a slender degree of uncertainty (circa 5-10%) the men in the videos were positively identified as the former CIA agents:

David Sanchez Morales;

Gordon Campbell and

George Joannides

Morales was known to be involved in coups d’états throughout Latin America and he had a reputation of a dangerous man with an explosive temper who was capable of violence. To entertain his friends, Morales would tell stories about his involvement in the killing and capture of Che Guevara, coups in Latin America and other nefarious covert activities.

Two of the CIA agents in the Ambassador Hotel: Morales and Joannides are now dead, while the whereabouts of the third, Campbell, are presently unknown.

O’Sullivan interviewed Bradley Ayers, U.S. Army Captain retired, who had been stationed at JM-Wave, the Miami base for the CIA. In 1963, David Morales was the Chief of Operations at JM-Wave. Ayers and Morales trained Cuban exiles in the arts of sabotage to be deployed in covert action against the regime of Fidel Castro. On camera, Ayers identified Morales and Campbell with what he described as 95% accuracy. Following that positive identification, Ayers introduced O’Sullivan to David Rabern, a freelance mercenary who had been contracted by the CIA to participate in the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961. Rabern had been in the ballroom of the Ambassador Hotel on the fateful night in 1968.

While Rabern did not know Morales and Campbell by name, he had noticed them talking to each other in the hotel lobby prior to the assassination. Earlier in the same year, Rabern had noticed Campbell in and around several police stations. If true, this report is rather odd, considering that the CIA has no jurisdiction on U.S. soil. Another bizarre fact: Morales was officially stationed in Laos in 1968.

O’Sullivan found video images of Campbell with another figure who has now been identified as George Joannides, a pivotal figure in the CIA and the re-investigation of the assassination of JFK.

Joannides had been the Chief of Psychological Warfare Operations at JM-Wave. He had retired from his CIA post, but in 1978 he returned to active duty, as it were, as the liaison between the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) during its re-investigation of the assassinations of JFK and Martin Luther King.

Puzzling, perplexing and problematic, Joannides failed to inform his colleagues at the HSCA that he had ever worked at JM-Wave. This is a troubling enigma, for it suggests that he intended to maintain his covert identity—a fact that would compromise his involvement in the HSCA and jeopardize the entire congressional investigation.

A former researcher with the HSCA, Ed Lopez, identified Joannides as the person in the Ambassador Hotel video with what he described on camera as 99% accuracy. More: Lopez recalled Joannides' obstructive practice of denying the HSCA access to crucial documents in the re-investigation of the assassination of JFK.

O’Sullivan did not stop there. Moving to Washington, he met Wayne Smith, a veteran State Department official who worked with Morales at the US embassy in Havana in the final year of the Batista regime through the Cuban Revolution in 1959 and 1960. When O’Sullivan asked him to respond to the Ambassador Hotel video, Smith immediately stated, “That’s him, that’s Morales.” From a conversation in 1975, Smith recalled that Morales stated that JFK deserved to be assassinated. From Smith’s testimony, O’Sullivan learned that Morales “hated the Kennedys”—because of their cancelling the air support for the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961.

In a hotel near the CIA headquarters (now named the George H. W. Bush Center for Central Intelligence) in Langley, Virginia, O’Sullivan met with a former agent, Tom Clines who said that all of the men in the Ambassador Hotel videos had been misidentified as former CIA agents. When O’Sullivan informed him that Ayers and Smith had positively identified the men as Morales, Campbell and Joannides, Clines became “disturbed,” and he refused to go on camera for the interview.

Following his interview of Clines, senior journalists in Washington advised O’Sullivan to take his testimony with a grain of salt as he was known to “blow smoke” deliberately as a routine function to dissemble facts for the press and public.

Gaeton Fonzi was the lead investigator of the HSCA investigation of the assassination of JFK. In his book, The Last Investigation, Fonzi reported the testimony of Bob Walton, a man who met Morales and discussed JFK with him. According to Fonzi’s account, Morales asserted his direct involvement in the assassination of JFK as revenge for the Bay of Pigs.

On the Watergate tapes, Richard Nixon always referred to the assassination of JFK as “the Bay of Pigs thing.” During Eisenhower’s presidency, Nixon served as the White House liason with the CIA. As Vice-President, Nixon worked directly with Allen Dulles and other senior staff at the CIA on the planning of the Bay of Pigs operation. It should be noted that George H. W. Bush has been known to have been integral to the Bay of Pigs operation since the publication of the enormously popular bestselling book of 1991, Plausible Denial, by Mark Lane.

During his campaign for the presidency in 1960, Nixon was shocked that JFK made public the contents of his top-secret intelligence briefings—and had moved to Nixon’s right to advocate overt military intervention against Cuba. The CIA planned to overthrow Castro in an invasion manned with exiled Cubans trained by the staff at JM-Wave. From our perspective today, it is perfectly understandable why JFK would have been compelled to make this policy position public in his presidential campaign. Had he not done so, JFK could have been tarnished with a charge of being “weak on communism,” by Nixon, who had been one of the leading witch-hunters of the disgraceful McCarthy Era.

Upon his inauguration as president, JFK continued to support the plans to attack Cuba with the force of exiled Cubans—a project that Nixon had nurtured, supported and managed for the Eisenhower White House. However, JFK decided to withhold U.S. air support in order to maintain an arm’s length separation from the Cuban invasion.

The Bay of Pigs became a fiasco. JFK accepted the blame, and he immediately ordered a thorough-going reorganization of the CIA. A few months later, Allen Dulles, who had been a free-wheeling manufacturer of coups d’états while serving as Director of Central Intelligence (DCI), ‘retired’ after a formal conversation with JFK. JFK promptly named a new director, and John McCone, who had been the director of the Atomic Energy Commission, soon took Dulles’s place as DCI.

JFK’s reorientation of the CIA did not stop there. Recognizing that the agency’s mission to wage a covert Cold War was dangerously counterproductive, JFK ordered the CIA to make nuclear non-proliferation its top priority. Eventually, JFK would successfully negotiate the Test Ban Treaty with Nikita Khruschev in the aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis—by far the most significant strategic confrontation of the entire Cold War.

Shane O’Sullivan’s identification of three CIA agents in the Ambassador Hotel on the night of the assassination of RFK suggests strongly that the case should be reopened. While rogue elements in the U.S. intelligence community have long been suspected of meddling in his assassination and those of his brother and Martin Luther King, Jr., Shane O’Sullivan’s identification of three CIA agents in the Ambassador Hotel on the night of the assassination of RFK suggests strongly that the case should be reopened. The third agent in the Ambassador Hotel, George Joannides, now appears to have been engaged in a sabotage mission during the HSCA investigation of JFK’s assassination.

The assassination of JFK would seem to be an eternal mystery that has long since passed into the realm of myth; however, that is not the case for today; technology has provided a wealth of new tools with which to examine evidence in criminal cases—even cold cases over forty years old.

While O’Sullivan is calling for a re-opening of the case of RFK, it is only reasonable to re-open JFK’s case, as well.

In 1968, I was in my final year at the University of North Carolina. From my meeting with a close associate of RFK, I worked as a college and university organizer in his presidential campaign. At the time of his assassination, RFK was the leading candidate for the presidency—far ahead of his nearest rival in the polls and definitely on track to win the November election.

Seeing the BBC broadcast of videotape evidence of three unassigned CIA agents in the Ambassador Hotel Ballroom at the time of RFK’s assassination shocked me. The federal government, Congress and the criminal justice system of the United States failed to protect the president of the United States and its leading presidential candidates. Worse. They have failed to tell the truth to the American people.

Today, on the anniversary of one of the most tragic dates in American history—I propose that the cases of RFK and JFK should be re-opened in either the 110th or the 111th Congress.

We must follow the evidence exhaustively and relentlessly, leaving no stone unturned and no document unexamined regardless of its current status: Sensitive; Secret, Top Secret or Above Top Secret. To do any less would be to become complicit in the lies and cover-ups that have denied the American people of the truth.

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Michael Carmichael is a historian and author based in Oxford, England, UK. He is the founder and chief executive officer of planetarymovement.org. This article is republished in the Baltimore Chronicle with permission of the author. The complete illustrated and referenced article "Death of a Presidency" by Michael Carmichael is online here.

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This story was published on November 22, 2006.