FINAL JUDGMENT
The Missing Link in the
JFK Assassination Conspiracy
By MICHAEL COLLINS PIPER
Chapter Sixteen
Double Cross in Dallas?
What Really Happened
in Dealey Plaza ?
James Jesus
Angleton, E. Howard Hunt
and the JFK Assassination.
The
Truth About the "French Connection"
It was in a little publicized libel trial conducted in
Miami in 1985 that veteran Kennedy assassination
investigator Mark Lane proved to the satisfaction of a jury
that the CIA played a part in the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
Lane's groundbreaking best seller, Plausible Denial, published in
1991, told the whole incredible story.
Evidence from that trial also points toward Israel's
connection to the assassination through the offices of
Israel's CIA ally, James Jesus Angleton. It was Angleton
who assisted in the cover-up of his favorite foreign nation's
central role alongside the CIA in the murder of JFK.
There is also strange new evidence that there was much
more happening in Dealey Plaza in Dallas than even many o f
those involved in the events surrounding the JFK
assassination really knew.
Mark Lane's Plausible Denial proved conclusively that the CIA had a
hand in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
As we saw in Chapter 9, Lane's book told how the Washington-based
Spotlight newspaper's libel trial with ex-CIA man E. Howard Hunt brought
into a Florida courtroom the first hard evidence linking the CIA to the
Kennedy assassination.
As noted previously, Lane agreed to serve as The Spotlight's defense
attorney after Hunt won a $650,000 libel judgment against the populist
weekly. It was Lane who successfully handled The Spotlight's defense after
the case again went to trial after the initial libel verdict was overturned.
The libel action stemmed from an article published in the pages of The
Spotlight in 1978.
The article was written by Victor Marchetti, an ex-CIA executive officer
who had become internationally famous after he published his best-selling
critique, The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence, the first book ever censored
prior to publication by the CIA.
After leaving the CIA, Marchetti became a journalist, specializing in
matters relating to the CIA and the intelligence community in general. As
such he was a recognized authority in his field and had done a number of
intelligence-related articles for The Spotlight, among numerous other
publications, both here in the United States and abroad.
As a consequence, when Marchetti approached The Spotlight with a
rather intriguing article which gave an interesting new slant on the JFK assassination furor (in the midst of the House Assassinations Committee
investigation), the editors of the weekly newspaper were interested.
Over the years, several assassination buffs had claimed that the famous photographs taken in Dealey Plaza of three so-called "tramps" being led away from the scene by police officers revealed Hunt as one of those tramps. This story was picked up the tabloids and given wide play.
The leading promoter of the theory that Hunt was one of the "tramps" in Dallas is A. J. Weberman who maintains very close ties to the Jewish Defense League.
Weberman has also been closely associated with Mordechai Levi, a
known agent provocateur of the Israeli Mossad's propaganda and intelligence
arm, the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, which we examine in
further detail in Chapter 17.
(Levi was also active in the Jewish Defense League (JDL), created by militant Rabbi Meir Kahane. In Chapter 8 we saw that Kahane was a CIA asset and protégé of Jay Lovestone who handled CIA liaison with the Meyer Lansky-linked French Corsican and Sicilian Mafias. Lovestone's operation was directed out of James J. Angleton's Israeli desk at the CIA.)
It may very well be that the "Hunt as a tramp" story being touted by Weberman was indeed a CIA-Mossad concoction to further muddy the waters.
What is interesting is that in 1975—precisely at the time when Weberman was publishing and promoting a book that named Hunt as one of the tramps—a strange letter appeared, anonymously, in the mailbox of another (and more reliable) assassination researcher, Penn Jones, Jr.
CIA TO FRAME HUNT?
Marchetti's article suggested that upper echelon executives of the CIA
had decided to frame E. Howard Hunt for involvement in the Kennedy
assassination. Not that Hunt was involved in the crime—simply that the
CIA had decided to frame Hunt for the deed. This distinction is important. Over the years, several assassination buffs had claimed that the famous photographs taken in Dealey Plaza of three so-called "tramps" being led away from the scene by police officers revealed Hunt as one of those tramps. This story was picked up the tabloids and given wide play.
A CIA-MOSSAD CONCOCTION?
However, there are those who believe that the "Hunt as a tramp" story
was, in fact, deliberately trumped up as part of the CIA's scheme to frame
Hunt for involvement in the assassination. It was the CIA's plan to
implicate Hunt that Victor Marchetti exposed in The Spotlight. The leading promoter of the theory that Hunt was one of the "tramps" in Dallas is A. J. Weberman who maintains very close ties to the Jewish Defense League.
(Levi was also active in the Jewish Defense League (JDL), created by militant Rabbi Meir Kahane. In Chapter 8 we saw that Kahane was a CIA asset and protégé of Jay Lovestone who handled CIA liaison with the Meyer Lansky-linked French Corsican and Sicilian Mafias. Lovestone's operation was directed out of James J. Angleton's Israeli desk at the CIA.)
It may very well be that the "Hunt as a tramp" story being touted by Weberman was indeed a CIA-Mossad concoction to further muddy the waters.
What is interesting is that in 1975—precisely at the time when Weberman was publishing and promoting a book that named Hunt as one of the tramps—a strange letter appeared, anonymously, in the mailbox of another (and more reliable) assassination researcher, Penn Jones, Jr.
The letter was written in Spanish and its envelope earned a Mexico
City postmark. The letter accompanied another letter which read as follows:
"Dear Mr. Hunt,
I would like information concerning [sic] my position.
I am asking only for information. I am suggesting that
we discuss the matter fully before any steps are taken by me
or anyone else.
Thank you,
Lee Harvey Oswald."588
Subsequent analyses suggested that the letter may or may not have been Oswald's handwriting (although he was known to misspell even his own middle name as it was misspelled in the letter. When word of the letter's existence gained circulation, the reference to a "Mr. Hunt" created immediate speculation that the Hunt in question was either Texas oilman H. L. Hunt or, more than likely, E. Howard Hunt.
In light of the then-current rumors about Hunt's alleged role in the JFK affair, coupled with his known connections to the CIA and, in particular, Mexico City, where he had been active during his CIA career, the suspicions about E. Howard Hunt were quite natural.
It is interesting, though, that the letter was sent from Mexico City, Hunt's former base of operations. Whether the letter was real or not, it is obvious that someone wanted to throw further suspicion on E. Howard Hunt—and succeeded.
That the Weberman story of "Hunt as a tramp" and the "Dear Mr. Hunt" letter appeared at the same time are particularly intriguing in light of another matter we are about to consider.
Both the "Hunt as a tramp" story and the "Dear Mr. Hunt" letter appear to be part and parcel of a CIA black propaganda operation run by the Mossad's man at the CIA, James J. Angleton.
According to Marchetti, widespread public suspicion of CIA involvement in the president's murder was forcing the CIA to play its hand and "admit" that, in fact, one of its more notorious longtime operatives, Hunt, had indeed been in Dallas on the day that Kennedy was killed.
Obviously, Hunt—with his well-known ties to the anti-Castro Cubans, often considered prime suspects in the JFK assassination—would have a difficult time explaining why he had been in Big D on that fateful day—if indeed he had been.
Interesting, Marchetti's article never said that Hunt had, in fact, been involved in the assassination conspiracy. Marchetti's article said only that top-ranking CIA officials had decided to frame Hunt for the crime. Hunt, according to Marchetti's sources, was deemed expendable.
Marchetti's article reported that a strange in-house CIA memo—allegedly written some years previously—had somehow ended up in the hands of investigators for the House Assassinations Committee and that Hunt, as a consequence, would ultimately be forced to explain his reported presence in Dallas (as described in the memo) on November 22, 1963.
The editors of The Spotlight felt Marchetti's article served, if anything, as an advance warning to Hunt of what his former employers had in mind. The Spotlight's editors didn't, in fact, feel that the article implicated Hunt in the president's murder.
Inexplicably, however, the ex-CIA man decided to sue, even though he ultimately admitted under oath that when he first read The Spotlight's story that Marchetti's contentions seemed plausible indeed. In short, that Hunt did believe that his former colleagues would be willing to throw him to the wolves—for their own nefarious reasons.
Hunt's lawsuit against The Spotlight did go to trial. However, The Spotlight's management did not take the lawsuit seriously. They did not believe either that the article damaged Hunt's reputation or that Hunt's attorneys could prove that the newspaper had published the article maliciously.
(In fact, The Spotlight had invited Hunt to visit the newspaper's editorial offices for an interview to rebut the claims made in Marchetti's article or to even write an article rebutting Marchetti's article.)
During that trial, The Spotlight's attorney unexpectedly stipulated that the newspaper did not believe that Hunt had been in Dallas on November 22, 1963. The trial, however, resulted in a massive $650,000 libel judgment against the newspaper. The Spotlight appealed the judgment and the appeals court granted a new trial on the basis that the trial judge's instructions to the jury had been faulty .
Based upon his own decades of intensive research, Lane had long been convinced that the CIA had been instrumental in orchestrating the JFK assassination, but he had never had a legal forum in which to conduct an investigation of this sort.
The new trial—which took place in 1985 (some seven years after the controversial article had first been published) gave him that opportunity. Lane launched The Spotlight's defense with a very different approach.
He contended that Hunt had indeed been in Dallas just prior to the president's murder and that he would be able to prove it. This took Hunt's lawyers by surprise, to say the least, but despite their efforts to derail Lane's new approach, they were unsuccessful.
The key witness in the second libel trial (conducted in Miami) was
Marita Lorenz, a former CIA operative who had testified before the House
Assassinations Committee in 1978, relating what information she had in
connection with the president's assassination.
Yet, despite the inflammatory nature of what Miss Lorenz had told the committee, her testimony was discounted by the House Committee director G. Robert Blakey (about whose own connections with the CIA and the Meyer Lansky Organized Crime Syndicate we learned in Chapter 10).
Miss Lorenz, a German-born beauty, had, in fact, been the one-time mistress of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, but she had ultimately turned on the Cuban leader and had become involved in anti-Castro activities under the CIA's tutelage. Among her key contacts in the CIA during this period was the CIA's chief liaison with the anti-Castro Cuban operatives, E. Howard Hunt, as well as veteran CIA contract agent Frank Sturgis who essentially functioned as her handler. Mark Lane asked Miss Lorenz to testify in the Hunt trial in The Spotlight's defense, restating—again under oath—what she had told the House Assassinations Committee and what she had told Lane himself years previously.
According to Miss Lorenz, Hunt was the CIA paymaster for a top-secret operation, the purpose of which she did not know. Miss Lorenz said that she had been told by Sturgis that she was to serve as a "decoy."
However, feeling uneasy, Miss Lorenz left Dallas on November 22 and never participated in the operation. It was later she learned that President Kennedy had been assassinated and that, of course Jack Ruby had killed Lee Harvey Oswald, the president's alleged assassin. 589
As for Hunt himself, his contradictory stories about where he was situated both the day before the Kennedy assassination and the day of the assassination itself were suspicious. Lane took excellent advantage of Hunt's sworn statements (in deposition and during the two trials, as well as several other forums) to show those contradictions. These contradictions alone could have spelled Hunt's courtroom demise.
What's more, the witnesses called in Hunt's defense by the ex-CIA man's attorneys only ended up suggesting Hunt had more to hide than he had to admit. Many of these witnesses, in fact, were an assortment of Hunt's former CIA colleagues, a number of whom were represented during their testimony in deposition by CIA-dispatched lawyers.
However, it was the testimony of Marita Lorenz that convinced the jury, once and for all, that The Spotlight (and Lane himself) had a much more plausible story than Hunt. Thus, the stunning courtroom victory for The Spotlight, vanquishing Hunt's libel action.
Leslie Armstrong, a Miami resident who was jury forewoman in the case, issued a statement in conjunction with the release of Lane's written account of the trial:
"Mr. Lane was asking us [the jury] to do something very difficult. He was asking us to believe John Kennedy had been killed by our own government. Yet when we examined the evidence closely, we were compelled to conclude that the CIA had indeed killed President Kennedy." 590
Despite this stunning conclusion, the media remained silent. Very little about Hunt's courtroom defeat appeared in the media, particularly the sum and substance of Miss Lorenz's amazing allegations. This, of course, was real news in every sense but the media chose to ignore what had taken place in that Miami courtroom.
Interestingly, however, as we shall see, there was yet another newspaper report (similar in content to that of Victor Marchetti's disputed article) which—like Marchetti's—suggests that there was a lot more to the story than meets the eye.
This is not to suggest, though, that Hunt was not in Dallas on either November 21 or November 22, 1963.
On the contrary, the evidence we are about to relate suggests that Hunt's presence in Dallas—for whatever purpose—was indeed linked in some fashion to the circumstances surrounding the JFK assassination conspiracy.
This evidence suggests, as we shall see, that it was Angleton—who was also responsible for leaking the memo he drafted that linked Hunt to the JFK assassination.
Before proceeding further with our exploration of Angleton's deeds and misdeeds, particularly in relation to Hunt, it is important to review Victor Marchetti's article (printed in The Spotlight on August 14, 1978) which is published here in pertinent part:
A few months ago, in March, there was a meeting at CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., the plush home of America's super spooks overlooking the Potomac River. It was attended by several high-level clandestine officers and some former top officials of the agency.
The topic of the discussion was: What to do about recent revelations associating President Kennedy's accused assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, with the spy game played between the U.S. and the USSR? A decision was made, and a course of action determined. They were calculated to both fascinate and confuse the public by staging a clever 'limited hangout' when the House Special Committee on Assassinations (H.S.C.A) holds its open hearings, beginning later this month.
A "limited hangout" is spy jargon for a favorite and frequently used gimmick of the clandestine professionals.
When their veil of secrecy is shredded and they can no longer rely on a phony cover story to misinform the public, they resort to admitting—sometimes even volunteering—some of the truth while still managing to withhold the key and damaging facts in the case. The public, however, is usually so intrigued by the new information that it never thinks to pursue the matter further.
We will probably never find out who masterminded the assassination of JFK—or why. There are too many powerful special interests connected with the conspiracy for the truth to come out even now, 15 years after the murder.
But during the next two months, according to sensitive sources in the CIA and on H.S.C.A we are going to learn much more about the crime. The new disclosures will be sensational, but only superficially so. A few of the lesser villains involved in the conspiracy and its subsequent cover-up will be identified for the first time—and allowed to twist slowly in the wind on live network TV . Most of the others to be fingered are already dead.
But once again, the good folks of middle America will be hoodwinked by the government and its allies in the establishment news media. In fact, we are being set up to witness yet another cover -up , albeit a sophisticated one , designed by the CIA with the assistance of the FBI and the blessing of the Carter administration.
A classic example of a limited hangout is how the CIA has handled and manipulated the Church Committee's investigation [of the CIA] two years ago. The committee learned nothing more about the assassinations of foreign leaders, illicit drug programs, or the penetration of the news media than the CIA allowed it to discover. And this is precisely what the CIA is out to accomplish through H.S.C.A with regard to JFK's murder.
Chief among those to be exposed by the new investigation will be E. Howard Hunt, of Watergate fame. His luck has run out, and the CIA has decided to sacrifice him to protect its clandestine services. The agency is furious with Hunt for having dragged it publicly into the Nixon mess and for having blackmailed it after he was arrested.
Besides, Hunt is vulnerable—an easy target as they say in the spy business. His reputation and integrity have been destroyed. The death of his wife, Dorothy, in a mysterious plane crash in Chicago still disturbs many people, especially since there were rumors from informed sources that she was about to leave him and perhaps even turn on him.
In addition it is well known that Hunt hated JFK and blamed him for the Bay of Pigs disaster. And now, in recent months, his alibi for his whereabouts on the day of the shooting has come unstuck.
In the public hearings, the CIA will 'admit' that Hunt was involved in the conspiracy to kill Kennedy. The CIA may go so far as to 'admit' that there were three gunmen shooting at Kennedy. The FBI, while publicly embracing the Warren Commission's 'one man acting alone' conclusion, has always privately known that there were three gunmen . The conspiracy involved many more people than the ones who actually fired at Kennedy, both agencies may now admit . . .
Now, the CIA moved to finger Hunt and tie him to the JFK assassination. H.S.C.A unexpectedly received an internal CIA memorandum a few weeks ago that the agency just happened to stumble across in its old files. It was dated 1966 and said in essence: Some day we will have to explain Hunt's presence in Dallas on November 22, 1963—the day President Kennedy was killed. Hunt is going to be hard put to explain this memo, and other things, before the TV cameras at the H.S.C.A hearings
Hunt's reputation as a strident fanatical anti-communist will count against him . So will his long and close relationship with the anti-Castro Cubans, as well as his penchant for clandestine dirty tricks and his various capers while one of Nixon's plumbers. E. Howard Hunt will be implicated in the conspiracy and he will not dare to speak out— the CIA will see to that.
[Marchetti noted, at this juncture, that Fidel Castro's former mistress, Marita Lorenz had alleged that Hunt was part of a CIA hit squad aiming for President Kennedy.]
Who else will be identified as having been part of the conspiracy and/or cover-up remains to be seen. But a disturbing pattern is already beginning to emerge. All the villains have been previously disgraced in one way or another. They all have 'right wing' reputations. Or they will have after the hearings.
The fact that some may have had connections with organized crime will prove to be only incidental in the long run. Those with provable ties to the CIA or FBI will be presented as renegades who acted on their own without approval or knowledge of their superiors.
As for covering up the deed, that will be blamed on past Presidents, either dead or disgraced. Thus, Carter will emerge as a truth seeker, and the CIA and FBI will have neatly covered their institutional behinds. 591
Marchetti's article is very interesting in many respects. First of all, as noted previously, Hunt himself initially admitted that he believed that the story had a basis in truth—that it was plausible, that indeed his former colleagues in the CIA did consider framing him for involvement in the JFK assassination.
The origin of the memorandum linking Hunt to the JFK assassination is interesting as it is presented by Marchetti. He describes it as a memorandum that “the agency just happened to stumble across in its old files." In other words, one might presume from Marchetti's flippant reference, the CIA had, instead, perhaps concocted the memo. That the agency "just happened to stumble across" the memo at a time when public suspicion of CIA involvement in the JFK assassination was growing is, of course, interesting, to say the least.
If Hunt were indeed in Dallas either on the day JFK was killed—or even the day prior—it would look suspicious. Hunt's long-standing involvement with anti-Castro Cubans through the aegis of his CIA activities—would make Hunt a likely suspect were he, in fact, proved to have been in Dallas at the critical time.
As Marchetti points out, linking Hunt to the JFK assassination would be a cover story that the public would easily accept. The CIA, as an institution, would absolve itself of any responsibility, having thrown Hunt to the wolves as an independent operator out of the CIA's control. Indeed, the CIA could then lay claim to having "solved" the JFK assassination at last. Hunt's alleged involvement would also draw in a number of other false flags—not only the anti-Castro Cubans, but also "right wingers" in general. What's more, considering Hunt's involvement in Watergate (and with Richard Nixon having left the presidency in shame), Nixon himself may have taken some of the heat with many of the public suspecting the very worst—that perhaps Nixon might have had a hand in arranging the JFK assassination.
Not only had Nixon been involved in the earliest high-level anti-Castro planning, alongside Hunt and the CIA, but Nixon himself had been vanquished in the 1960 presidential campaign by Kennedy. That one of Nixon's Watergate burglars was being implicated in the JFK assassination would do no service to Nixon's already tarnished image.
Marchetti also pointed out that "The fact that some [of Hunt's to-be alleged co-conspirators] may have had connections with organized crime will prove to be only incidental in the long run."
This "limited hangout" by the CIA would have, as a consequence, covered up the role of the Israeli-linked Meyer Lansky Organized Crime Syndicate. To delve too deeply into the real origins and linkage of the crime network would have dragged the Israeli connection into the open—if pursued to its logical conclusion.
Now, obviously, the scenario presented in Marchetti's article—the framing of Hunt by the CIA—never, in fact, took place. That it had a basis in truth—that Hunt was being pondered as a "fall guy"—however, seems apparent.
This is supported by the fact that a similar article, based on relatively the same fact situation, appeared during the same period in another newspaper.
While the claims made in the second article are somewhat different than those which appeared in Marchetti's article, it is clear that the similarities, in general, are what are most significant.
The article appeared in the Wilmington, Delaware Sunday News Journal on August 20, 1978. The authors were Joe Trento and Jacquie Powers. The article reads [in pertinent part] as follows:
WASHINGTON—A secret CIA memorandum says that E. Howard Hunt was in Dallas the day President John F. Kennedy was murdered and that top agency officials plotted to cover up Hunt's presence there.
Some CIA sources speculate that Hunt thought he was assigned by higher-ups to arrange the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald.
Sources say Hunt, convicted in the Watergate conspiracy in 1974, was acting chief of the CIA station in Mexico City in the weeks prior to the Kennedy assassination. Oswald was in Mexico City, and met with two Soviet KGB agents at the Russian Embassy there immediately before leaving for Dallas, according to the official Warren Commission report.
The 1966 secret memo, now in the hands of the House assassination committee, places Hunt in Dallas Nov. 22, 1963.
Richard M. Helms, former CIA director, and James J. Angleton, former counterintelligence chief, initialed the memo according to investigators who made the information available to the Sunday News Journal.
According to sources close to the Select Committee on Assassinations, the document reveals:
Three years after Kennedy's murder, and shortly after Helms and Angleton were elevated to their highest positions in the CIA, they discussed the fact that Hunt was in Dallas on the day of the assassination and that his presence there had to be kept secret.
Helms and Angleton thought that news of Hunt's presence in Dallas would be damaging to the agency should it leak out.
Helms and Angleton felt that a cover story, giving Hunt an alibi for being elsewhere the day of the assassination "ought to be considered." . . . . . .
Helms could not be reached for comment. A secretary said that he was out of town and would not be available. When Angleton was questioned by committee staffers, he was "evasive," according to a source who was present. Angleton could not be reached for comment.
Asked to explain why a potentially damaging cover - up plot would be put out on paper, one high-level CIA source said, "The memo is very odd. It was almost as if Angleton was informing Helms, who had just become director, that there was a skeleton in the family closet that had to be taken care of and this was his response."
One committee source says the memo "shows the CIA involvement in the Kennedy case could run into the CIA hierarchy. We are trying not to get ahead of ourselves but the mind boggles." . . . .
Hunt's appearance on the scene in Dallas and Mexico City at the time of the murder adds strength to a theory shared by so me internal CIA investigators. They believe Oswald was working for U.S. intelligence, that he was ordered to infiltrate the KGB, and that this explains his life in Russia. They also believe that Oswald proved to be so unstable that he was "handled" by the KGB into becoming a triple agent, and assigned for the Dallas job.
The same investigators theorize that Hunt was in Dallas that day on the orders of a high-level CIA official who in reality was a KGB mole. Hunt allegedly thought he was to arrange that Oswald be murdered because he had turned traitor. Actually he was to kill Oswald to prevent him from ever testifying and revealing the Russians had ordered him to kill Kennedy, the CIA sources speculate.
CIA investigators are most concerned that either Helms or Angleton might be that mole.
Hunt first detailed the existence of a small CIA assassination team in an interview with the New York Times while in prison in December 1975 for his role in Watergate. The assassination squad, allegedly headed by Col. Boris Pash, was ordered to eliminate suspected double agents and low ranking officials.
Pash's assassination unit was assigned to Angleton, other CIA sources say . . . It was also learned from CIA and committee sources that during the time that the Warren Commission was investigating the Kennedy assassination, Angleton met regularly with a member of the commission—the late Allen Dulles, then head of the CIA and Angleton's boss.
Dulles, on a weekly basis, briefed Angleton about the direction of the investigation. Angleton, according to sources, in turn briefed Raymond Rocca, his closest aide and the CIA’s official liaison with the commission. 592
This article is interesting in many ways. First of all, one of the coauthors, Joseph Trento, admitted under oath during the E. Howard Hunt Spotlight libel trial that he had actually seen the controversial memo in question. Trento also noted that he knew James Jesus Angleton of the CIA and had utilized him as a source on occasion.
In fact, we know, as a consequence of the Hunt libel case against The
Spotlight that intelligence writer, William R. Corson—a longtime
Angleton asset in the media—was actually the immediate source of both the
Marchetti and Trento stories. Corson was obviously working as Angleton's
"cutout" passing on the information that appeared in the two stories.
(And it's probably no accident that one of Corson's associates, in later years before Corson died, engaged in a longtime and determined covert effort to undermine the distribution of Final Judgment and to personally destroy this writer, but to also undermine Mark Lane, whose courtroom victory over Hunt [and effectively over Angleton and Corson] left the intelligence community reeling. But that's another story for another time—but significant still indeed.)
That Angleton was the author of the memo addressed to his CIA superior (and longtime patron) Richard Helms is also of interest, considering Angleton's close working relationship with Israel's Mossad (documented in Chapter 8).
While the Trento story claims that the CIA memo was ostensibly drafted in 1966, the actual date the memo first appeared is subject, of course, to question, as is the actual intent of the memo itself. The article itself notes that a "high-level CIA source" considered the memo to be "very odd" in that it recorded—in writing—the alleged presence in Dallas of longtime CIA operative, Hunt, at the time of JFK's murder.
The evidence suggests that the reason why Angleton's memo was put on paper—and then subsequently released—was that Angleton wanted the story to be leaked to the press—as part of a continuing cover-up of the real origins of the JFK assassination. Hunt—a lower level CIA operative (already tarnished by Watergate)—was being hung out to dry and the real conspirators at the top were washing their hands of the matter.
Joe Trento has subsequently revealed that Angleton did in fact leak the memo to the House Assassinations Committee. However, according to Trento, ''It was all handled in such a way that Angleton was not the source.”593
That the Trento article suggests that Hunt was in fact in Dallas and that he was there on an assignment involving Lee Harvey Oswald is significant as well.
Was Hunt indeed sent to Dallas on a CIA-sponsored pretext, orchestrated by one of his superiors—namely James Jesus Angleton—only to discover, after the fact, that the assassination of John F. Kennedy was in the works?
According to Trento, Angleton told him that Hunt had been sent to Dallas by a high-level Soviet KGB mole working in the CIA. However, says Trento, "I later came to conclude that the mole-sent-Hunt idea was, to use his phrase, disinformation; that Angleton was trying to protect his own connections to Hunt's being in Dallas . . . My guess is, it was Angleton himself who sent Hunt to Dallas, because he didn't want to use anybody from his own shop."594
All of this is interesting, to say the least, and pinpoints Angleton as a key player in the events linking the CIA and Hunt to Dallas. Yet, as we shall see, there is much more to the story of the role played by the CIA's Mossad ally James J. Angleton in the JFK assassination and cover-up.
In fact, Angleton had a hand in the very part of the assassination conspiracy that involved the frame-up of Lee Harvey Oswald as a "pro Castro agitator" guilty of associating with the Soviet KGB.
Lane summarized the situation: "At the outset it should be understood that almost all of the information regarding Oswald's alleged visit to Mexico and his contact with the Soviets and Cubans while there had been fabricated by the Central Intelligence Agency. In its report, the [Warren] commission cited the CIA as the primary source for the Mexico City scenario, declining to seek independent corroboration for the CIA's version of events.
"Nevertheless, the Mexico City scenario constitutes the conventional wisdom as promulgated by the CIA and accepted by the Warren Commission. It remains an article of faith for those who subsequently endorsed the Warren Report, including journalists and official investigating committees. One of the central tenets of the lone assassin theory is Lee Harvey Oswald's presence in Mexico City.
"Soon after the commission was created, the CIA informed Earl Warren that Oswald had been in Mexico from September 26 to October 3, 1963 and that he had spent most of that time in Mexico City.
"According to the CIA, Oswald had visited the Cuban Embassy in Mexico City on September 27 and the Soviet Embassy on October 1. Proof that Oswald had been in the Cuban Embassy, the CIA reported, came from Senora Silvia Duran, a Mexican employed at the Cuban Embassy. Proof that Oswald had been to the Soviet Embassy, the CIA claimed, came from the observations of its own agents."595
Yet, as the evidence shows, Miss Duran only identified Oswald as a visitor to the Cuban Embassy after she had been arrested by the Mexican police at the direction (unknown to her) of the CIA. She was forced into making the statement that the CIA wanted: that Oswald had been to the Cuban Embassy.
After she was released from custody, she spoke out about her experience and the CIA cabled the Mexican police to re-arrest the young lady, but cautioned the police to make sure that Miss Duran knew nothing about the CIA's involvement in her imbroglio.
Finally, under pressure to provide further corroboration of Oswald's activities, the CIA managed to come up with recordings of a telephone conversation between someone alleged to be Lee Harvey Oswald and someone at the Soviet Embassy.
However, even the FBI, having reviewed the recording, concluded that its agents were of the opinion, that it "was NOT Lee Harvey Oswald."596
Despite this provocative conclusion, the FBI report never reached the Warren Commission. Warren and company had only to rely upon the reports from the CIA. (The FBI report only became public some years later when Mark Lane obtained it through the Freedom of Information Act.)
In 1977 David Atlee Phillips, former head of the Western Hemisphere
for the CIA, admitted publicly that Oswald had not been to the Soviet
Embassy in Mexico City.
Phillips, if anybody, should have known inasmuch as he had been CIA station chief in Mexico City at the time of Oswald's alleged visit.
(There have been allegations also, incidentally, that Oswald may have been spotted in Dallas with a CIA operative known as "Maurice Bishop" whom many believe, in fact, was Phillips.)
In a rather fierce debate with Mark Lane at the University of Southern California, a somewhat distressed Phillips confessed: "I am not in a position today to talk to you about the inner workings of the CIA station in Mexico City . . . but I will tell you this, that when the record comes out, we will find that there . . . is no evidence to show that Lee Harvey Oswald visited the Soviet Embassy."597
"One month and twenty-two days before President Kennedy was assassinated, the CIA had set into motion a series of events apparently designed to prevent any American institution from ever daring to learn the truth about the assassination, an assassination that had not yet taken place.
"More than seven weeks before President Kennedy was murdered, the CIA was dramatically and falsely establishing a link between Lee Harvey Oswald and a Soviet diplomat, whom the CIA would later designate as the KGB authority on assassinations in the United States." 598
As a consequence, the Warren Commission, confronted by the CIA with what appeared to be possible Soviet involvement in the Kennedy assassination, moved to suppress what it mistakenly believed to be "the truth."
The fate of the world was in the hands of Chief Justice Earl Warren and his fellow commission members. If the public learned that Oswald was a pawn of the Soviets, a nuclear war could break out. As Mark Lane commented, Warren was "held hostage"599 by the CIA's provocative lie.
During his debate with David Atlee Phillips, Mark Lane exposed all of this before the audience. When confronted and following his confession that Oswald had not been at the Soviet Embassy, Phillips suggested essentially that he didn't want either the CIA or himself to be held responsible for "some CIA guy that I never saw [who] did something that I never heard of.” 600
Now while Phillips was being disingenuous at best, the fact is that it was indeed someone whom he certainly knew who was behind the Mexico City scenario. It was none other than his CIA colleague, James J. Angleton.
What's more, as pointed out by Peter Dale Scott, a report by the House Assassinations Committee "established that, on the death of Win Scott, the by-then retired Mexico City station chief who had sent out the Kostikov cable, CIA counterintelligence chief Angleton flew immediately to Mexico City, retrieved a photograph of 'Oswald' from the family safe, and destroyed it . . . .” 602
What is particularly interesting, in light of all that we have seen in relation to Angleton's ties to the Mossad, Scott adds further: "Angleton may have undertaken this mission on behalf of the agency. Another possibility is that he undertook it on behalf of a cabal within the government who had conspired to create the `Oswald'-Kostikov story." 603
The Mexico City-Oswald scenario was clearly part of the groundwork for the ultimate framing of Lee Harvey Oswald as a communist sympathizer— perhaps even a KGB operative—who had killed the American president.
And in light of the mysterious appearance of the "Dear Mr. Hunt" letter (ostensibly from Lee Harvey Oswald) mailed from Mexico City, we can only speculate as to whether Angleton himself may have been the mastermind behind the leak of that hitherto unknown document as well. Was the "Dear Mr. Hunt" letter also part of Angleton's tangled web of intrigue?
It was Angleton who was so determined to bury any evidence that proved that Oswald was not, in fact, a KGB operative (as we have already seen in Chapter 8.)
It was Angleton who most vociferously accused Soviet defector Yuri
Nosenko of being a KGB plant. Nosenko had come to the United States
following the JFK assassination and claimed insistently that Oswald had not
worked for the Soviet KGB, that the KGB had vetoed any idea of attempting
to recruit Oswald after the young American had "defected" to the USSR
(whether Oswald's "defection" was genuine or not).
The story told by Nosenko disproved Angleton's thesis entirely—which perhaps explains why Angleton dealt so harshly with Nosenko. That Trento's story—leaking the Angleton memo on Hunt—would incorporate a major portion of Angleton's JFK cover story is interesting, to say the least.
This, of course, is part of the great irony of Angleton's complex life in that it was Angleton who was the prime mover behind long-term internal CIA inquiries into possible infiltration of the agency at the highest levels.
However, Angleton's fiercest critics, as we have seen, have suggested that Angleton was indeed a mole—but not for the Soviets; that instead, Angleton was a full-fledged co-opted agent for Israel.
In the context in which we have examined Angleton's role in the CIA, working for—Israel and its Mossad, this appears to be the real driving force behind Angleton's dealings insofar as the JFK assassination was concerned.
That Trento's story notes Angleton's interest in the Warren Commission investigation only displays part of the picture, however. JFK assassination investigator Bernard Fensterwald detailed how very much interested Angleton was in the JFK assassination.
"The extent of Angleton's involvement in the CIA's end of the assassination investigation first became underscored in 1974, when Senator Howard Baker (R-Tenn.) released some information that he had originally secured while serving on the Senate Watergate Committee.
"Senator Baker disclosed that he had come across at least two CIA `dossiers' indicating that the Agency may have been involved in domestic affairs. He disclosed that one of these CIA files, on Warren Commission critic Bernard Fensterwald, Jr., contained copies of several high-level internal CIA memos which clearly showed that James Angleton was the key CIA official in dealing with matters related to the Kennedy assassination.
"In a memo dated January 13, 1969 to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, Angleton noted that Fensterwald was setting up a Washington-based Committee to Investigate Assassinations. In this confidential memo, Angleton . . . went on to request that Hoover run some kind of vaguely defined identification check on Fensterwald and three other Warren Commission critics associated with him. In June, 1976, new information became available regarding Angleton's key role in dealing with the Warren Commission investigation.
"The Senate Intelligence Committee reported that at a meeting in late December of 1963, Angleton had requested that he be allowed to take over CIA responsibility for dealing with the Warren Commission probe.
"The Senate Committee's Final Report noted that, 'Angleton suggested that his own Counterintelligence Division take over the investigation and [Richard] Helms acceded to this suggestion.' Thereafter, Angleton's staff became responsible for all CIA dealings with the Commission.” 604
So it was that Israel's chief advocate at the CIA became that agency's number one in-house handler for JFK assassination investigation—some would call it a "cover-up"—during the Warren Commission's controversial inquiry into the president's murder.
What's more, Angleton's close friend (and FBI source), William Sullivan, number three man at the FBI, was detailed as the FBI's liaison with the Warren Commission.
(In Chapter 17 we shall learn more about how another prominent friend of Israel helped shape Chief Justice Earl Warren's views about the JFK assassination—pointing the finger, like Angleton, in the direction of the communists.")
Mrs. Meyer, in fact, had been a longtime lover of President Kennedy's— one of many, apparently, and her diary contained much information about her relationship with the president. It was her sister, Toni Bradlee, wife of Post editor Ben Bradlee (himself a reported former CIA asset) who provided Angleton Mrs. Meyer's diary for his disposal. 605
What the diary contained is anyone's guess, but it does suggest that Angleton was very much involved in intrigue involving the late president. There have been those who have speculated that the diary may have contained secrets about the CIA-Organized Crime plots to assassinate Castro that JFK may have told Mrs. Meyer about. However, of course, it is just as easy to speculate that perhaps the diary also contained Mrs. Meyer's written memories of President Kennedy's musings about his most unpleasant relationship with the state of Israel.
Angleton's own relationship with Hunt is also quite mysterious to say the least. If indeed Angleton did sign off on a 1966 memo pinpointing Hunt as having been in Dallas, the CIA's shadowy counterintelligence chief seemed to have forgotten by 1972 at the time of the Watergate break-in.
This suggests that Angleton was proclaiming ignorance of Hunt's existence, although this, of course, is highly unlikely, especially since we now know of the existence of the memo from Angleton which was evidently drafted in 1966—six years before the Watergate affair.
Or, logically, we could also suggest that the memorandum itself was not, in fact, drafted in 1966 as we have been told. It could, instead, have been drafted at a much later time and then given the earlier date.
What's more, of course, Angleton was knee-deep in the Bay of Pigs invasion planning and it is inconceivable that he would not be aware of the existence of Hunt, the chief political liaison to the anti-Castro Cuban exiles involved in that operation.
Whichever the case, it strongly suggests that there was a lot more to the Angleton-Hunt relationship than meets the eye.
That it was James Jesus Angleton, Israel's ally at the CIA, who was particularly interested—from the very beginning—in overseeing any investigation of the CIA's links to the JFK assassination.
That Angleton's interest in the furor over the JFK assassination was long-standing and continued well into the years beyond the Warren Commission investigation.
That Hunt was, in some way, connected to events linked to the assassination and that he was, in fact, in Dallas—if not on the day of the murder, at least one day prior.
That when public attention began focusing on the CIA's presumed complicity in the president's murder (during the period of the House Select Committee on Assassinations investigation), a memo (written by Angleton and linking Hunt to the JFK murder) was leaked by Angleton to the House Assassinations Committee.
That Angleton's relationship with Hunt was murky, to say the least, and subject to some suspicion.
That Victor Marchetti's disputed article (subject of E. Howard Hunt's libel suit) was acknowledged by Hunt himself to have some apparent plausibility.
That despite his admission that Marchetti's article might have a basis in truth, Hunt did not choose to challenge his former colleagues in the CIA who may have been intent on implicating him in the assassination conspiracy.
That Joe Trento's similar article shed unusual light on internal CIA intrigue involving Lee Harvey Oswald, E. Howard Hunt and the circumstances surrounding the JFK assassination.
That Hunt insisted that he was not guilty of complicity in the president's murder and chose to use a libel suit against The Spotlight to prove his innocence, however unsuccessful he may have been.
That when Hunt prepared his case against The Spotlight he turned to the CIA for help, which kindly supplied no less than Newton Miler, Angleton's longtime deputy, generally characterized as an "Angleton loyalist,"607 as the chief witness called in Hunt's defense.608
This final point is interesting, especially in light of Hunt's initial suspicion that the CIA intended to frame him as he admitted in testimony.
Could it be that somehow Hunt and his CIA colleagues reached a private accord following the publication of The Spotlight article by Victor Marchetti—the publication of which, in effect, frustrated the until-then secret, internal CIA plot against Hunt?
Could it be that both Hunt and the CIA determined that, whatever really happened in Dallas involving Hunt, Oswald and any other CIA-connected figures, was better left alone?
We can only speculate as to the motivation of Hunt and the CIA in this regard. What we do know, however, is that it was Israel's friend at the CIA, the enigmatic James Jesus Angleton, who was the prime mover behind the memorandum that would have been used to frame Hunt for involvement in the assassination.
Was Angleton simply looking out for the interests of the CIA? Or was he also looking out for his own interests? And if so, what were those interests? What did Angleton know about the JFK assassination?
Angleton sent E. Howard Hunt to Dallas just prior to the assassination. What was Angleton's purpose in doing so?
And why was Angleton involved in the sensitive, top-secret CIA Mexico City intrigue which took place over a month prior to the JFK assassination, linking Lee Harvey Oswald to the Soviets and Castro's Cuba?
Angleton's link to Israel and its Mossad is the key to understanding Angleton's unusual behavior that we have outlined.
The Mossad loyalist, James J. Angleton, was the central player in the intrigue between the CIA and the Mossad in the JFK assassination.
Never-before-published information that we will be reviewing later in this chapter confirms our contention that Angleton was indeed the primary high-level CIA collaborator in the JFK assassination conspiracy.
Angleton was the CIA figure involved with the Mossad—if not in the actual planning of the JFK assassination itself—then certainly in key aspects of the subsequent cover-up. E. Howard Hunt, indeed, may have been Angleton's fall guy—another patsy—from the beginning.
Perhaps he does so for several reasons. One reason may be that Hunt— like many of his colleagues in the CIA—did not necessarily regret the assassination of JFK. Hunt was bitter toward Kennedy for the president's moves against the CIA and Hunt himself probably felt then (as perhaps he does today) that Kennedy was getting a taste of his own medicine.
What's more—and perhaps most importantly, in a personal sense for Hunt—the ex-CIA man cannot fail to note that many of the key JFK assassination witnesses over the years have met early—and violent—deaths. And like all people Hunt wants to live.
Whatever Hunt does know, we will probably never find out—and Hunt intends to keep it that way.
In the February 1, 1992 edition of his newsletter, New American View, a monthly critique of the Israeli lobby and its power in America, Marchetti recently commented on the renewed furor over the JFK assassination. Marchetti's words speak for themselves:
"As for my personal views on the CIA's involvement in JFK's assassination, I do not (repeat do not) believe that the CIA had anything to do with the young president's murder.
"But it was and still is involved with the government's cover-up of the conspiracy . . .
"Finally, E. Howard Hunt had nothing to do with JFK's assassination. Hunt was in Dallas that day by accident. He was working on another case. But his presence there was an embarrassment to the CIA and a potential threat to the government's cover-up of the conspiracy." 609
Marchetti's earlier controversial article in The Spotlight, as we have pointed out, never suggested that Hunt had actually been in Dallas or that he played a part in the assassination—only that the CIA was considering the option of framing Hunt for the president's murder.
And, as we have seen, it was Israel's contact at the CIA, James J. Angleton who was behind the impending operation against Hunt. However, Marchetti's final comment about Hunt's possible appearance in Dallas is interesting, particularly in light of what we are about to consider.
Our source for this little-known information is Gary Wean, formerly of the Los Angeles Police Department's criminal intelligence squad. It was in Chapter 13 that we first became acquainted with Wean who detailed his own dealings and surveillance of Meyer Lansky's Hollywood henchman, Mickey Cohen.
(Wean, it will be recalled, learned that Cohen, along with his Israeli contact, Menachem Begin, later prime minister of Israel, was especially concerned with JFK's Middle East policy and that, in fact, Cohen was using JFK's mistress, actress Marilyn Monroe, as a conduit in an attempt to learn the president's intentions toward Israel.)
According to Wean, it was just several weeks after the president's murder that he (Wean) happened to become acquainted with Dallas Sheriff Bill Decker through their mutual friend, Audie Murphy, the ex-war hero turned-film star. Decker was visiting in Los Angeles and the three men got together along with another friend of Wean's and the talk turned to the JFK assassination.
(Decker, it might be noted, appears to be one Dallas law enforcement official who is definitely in the clear as far as any involvement in the assassination is concerned. It was Decker, in fact, who had ordered his men to investigate the railroad yard behind the picket fence on the grassy knoll from where shots at the president's motorcade appeared to have originated.610 Were Decker a co-conspirator he certainly would not have assisted in the capture of the president's assassins.)
Decker told Wean that he was certain that Lee Harvey Oswald was innocent of the president's murder. The three gentlemen, all of whom were familiar with firearms, didn't believe that Oswald could have carried out the crime with the weapon he was alleged to have used.
"He's scared to death to go to the Dallas P.D. or FBI. There has been a terrible double cross somewhere and everybody is scared shit less of everybody else. You wouldn't believe the crazy suspicions and accusations heaped on all law enforcement in the south by the imbeciles in D.C. and the chaos it has created."
"There was no conspiracy in my sheriff's department involving the assassination nor in the Dallas P.D. I've known all these people too long. I would have known it. Believe me, something as 'crazy' as this I'd feel it in my bones." 611
Wean remembered this conversation and later, during a trip to Ruidoso, New Mexico in the company of Audie Murphy, Wean was introduced to Decker's source from Dallas, whom Wean says was named "John."
According to Wean's source, CIA man E. Howard Hunt was indeed involved with Lee Harvey Oswald—but not in planning the president's assassination. Wean reports that John told him that Hunt had something else in mind altogether.
Essentially, according to Wean's source, Hunt—like other leaders in the anti-Castro movement—was becoming frustrated with the Kennedy' administration's moves to achieve at least an informal detente with Castro. Hunt, of course, had devoted much energy to the drive to undermine Castro and now all of his work was being undone.
Wean quoted his source as describing what happened: "Hunt's festering frustration conceived what's become the most bizarre political assassination intrigue of all time. His scheme was to inflame American people against Castro and stirring patriotism to a boiling point not felt since Pearl Harbor. Enraged Americans would demand that our military invade Cuba wiping out the two-bit dictator for his barbarous attempt to 'assassinate' President Kennedy.” 612
"At first Hunt did not tell Oswald what his exact mission was, except it was of the highest National Security priority . . . It was only two months before the 'fake assassination' when Hunt gave Oswald the rifle, explaining his part in the plan. Oswald was to fire three shots from his rifle 'in the air.' He was to abandon it and empty cartridges at the scene and quickly leave the building for a rendezvous with agents who'd transport him to a secret destination."
He'd remain in hiding until after Cuba was invaded by the U.S. A fake trail to Mexico City ending at the Cuban Embassy would lead investigators to think he'd fled to Cuba, the belief that 'Castro planned the assassination' of President Kennedy [which failed] and [that] the [attempted] 'assassin' was being harbored under [Castro's] protection in Cuba would stir the Americans to a feverish pitch of anger . . ." 614
According to Wean's source, Hunt told Oswald that President Kennedy himself was not aware of the plan, but high-ranking cabinet officers were in on the deal. Oswald would be free to come back and live as a free man after Castro was dealt with. 615
Wean was also told that the famous "attempted assassination" of General Edwin Walker, the outspoken anti-Castro leader in Dallas, was also part of the plan to establish a pattern of violent activity by a suspected "proCastro activist." 616
However, Wean reports, John told him that in the course of the planning for the fraudulent assassination attempt, something went wrong— there was interference from outside—from a power beyond E. Howard Hunt's immediate influence.
John noted: "Of course, all covert operations have inherent dangers and are subject to break-downs. By my God, this was no break-down or neglect of performance, or even bad luck. What happened is incomprehensible. " 617
In short, according to the source in Dallas, Hunt's plan backfired. Shots were actually fired at JFK's motorcade and the president was indeed killed. However, John did not believe that the blame lay at the hands of either the Mafia or the anti-Castro Cubans. He believed that another force had intervened.
"It can't be that the Mafia or Cuban exiles [did] it," noted John. "They had no motive, as they'd already been given inside tips an operation was underway that would return them to Cuba. It would have been totally stupid for them to interfere . . .
According to John: "Only a few of Hunt's most trusted men knew all of his plans down to the last detail. It is impossible to believe any of them is a traitor. Still it's clear, whoever shot Kennedy had to know all these minute details to pull it off the way they did. Something frightening, horribly sinister had interposed Hunt's mission."618
Wean and Audie Murphy listened in shock at what they had been told and, at the time, John gave Murphy a packet of what he described as evidence which backed up his story. However, it was just several days later that John asked that they forget what they had been told.
According to Wean, Murphy informed him that he had been advised from Dallas that "Hunt and his agents have regrouped from their horrified panic and sprung back into action. Hunt's machinations and connection with Oswald had to be covered up at all costs." According to Murphy, military intelligence, the FBI and the CIA were all in a panic.
"If their secrets were to be exposed they'd be rooted out in an eruption of calamitous national anger. In their nightmares all they can see is a firing squad. In fact they have solemnly determined that national security is at stake. That's their justification for a cover-up." 619
To assuage the fears of John in Dallas, he assured John that the documents he had received from him had been destroyed.
Murphy himself may well be one other on the long list of additional victims of the JFK assassination conspiracy. The actor died in a plane crash in 1971. Gary Wean, however, has lived to tell the story of what he was told.
Quite accurately, Wean himself has described how Hunt and Oswald both must have reacted if the story that John told Wean and Murphy was indeed true.
"A double-cross of fantastic dimensions. The consequences were too devastating, and terrifying to grasp. It was the end for them. Regardless of Hunt's convictions that his closest men were beyond suspicion, one of them was a spy—a mole in deep, deep cover." 620
It is up to E. Howard Hunt to provide us the missing pieces of the puzzle. It does not seem likely that he will.
In his book Conspiracy, Anthony Summers describes one John Martino who was known to have connections to both the Mafia, Meyer Lansky's lieutenant, Santo Trafficante, Jr., in particular, and the Central Intelligence Agency. In fact, Martino admitted in 1975 that he had been a CIA contract agent and that he had inside knowledge about the circumstances surrounding the JFK assassination. Summers quotes Martino as having said, "The anti-Castro people put Oswald together. Oswald didn't know who he was working for—he was just ignorant of who was really putting him together." 621
After Martino died in 1978, Summers notes, his widow claimed that "the Company" (i.e. the CIA) picked up his body to determine the cause of death, which was established to have been a heart attack. 622
Martino and film star Audie Murphy unquestionably had at least one connection, indirect, at the least, that can be documented.
Murphy was employed for a period during the mid-1960's by New Orleans businessman, D'Alton Smith.623 Smith was an intimate personal associate of Meyer Lansky's Louisiana front man, Carlos Marcello.
The story told by John Martino, at the very least, has a ring similar to the story told by the "John" whom Gary Wean met in Dallas. However, shortly before Final Judgment went to press, Wean revealed to this author the identity of the gentleman named John who told him what had really happened in Dallas.
According to Wean when he wrote his book describing his meeting with John, he deliberately did not reveal John's last name, although he knew exactly who John was. What's more, according to Wean, he slightly altered his physical description of John in order to protect his identity.
At the time Wean's book was written, John was alive. However, on April 5, 1991 John died, like Audie Murphy, in a bizarre airplane explosion that made national headlines. He was John Tower who, in 1961 had been the first Republican in this century to win a Senate seat from Texas.
A stalwart ally of the CIA throughout his career, it was Tower who took many of the secrets of the Iran-Contra scandal to his grave, having headed the commission which critics contend was a CIA whitewash of the events, particularly those involving Israel's role in the affair.
As Russell notes, "Many people in the CIA had reasons to cover up their own relationship to Oswald, even if this had nothing to do with an assassination conspiracy. In considering this plethora of possibilities . . . what cannot be overlooked is that a 'third force' was aware of the counterspy web [surrounding Oswald] and seized on it to their own advantage." 625
Russell has also pointed out that the anti-Castro Cuban exiles now believe that there was much more going on behind the scenes than even they realized at the time.
According to Russell, "[Legendary longtime CIA contract agent] Gerry Patrick Hemming, who still keeps his ear to the ground in Miami's Little Havana, maintains that some of the exiles who thought they knew the score in 1963 have today become convinced that they were being used.
"They were incited to an anti-Kennedy fervor by being let in on the secret knowledge that Kennedy was seriously exploring accommodation with Castro. They were told that their dream of retaking their homeland was dead—unless something drastic was done. They took the bait.
"Should it have become necessary in the design of the behind-the-scenes planners, the exiles were also expendable. Implicating a few Cuban refugees in the assassination was not desirable, but it would not come at a high cost, especially if . . . they had worked diligently to build a cover as Castro agents.
"Small cogs in the wheel, they could also be made to disappear. So Cuban exiles were merely the base of the pyramid. They had no power to initiate the cover-up that followed. And neither did organized crime."626
'There was a third force—pretty much outside CIA channels, outside our own private operation down in the [Florida] Keys—that was doing all kinds of shit, and had been all through 1963. [emphasis added]
"Then after the assassination, a lot of us presumed that somewhere down the line, the KGB was orchestrating with Fidel to do the Dallas job. Not until later did we figure out that most of the exiles being approached were being set up as patsies themselves.
"And not by Castro or the Russians. It was domestic. Somebody like J. Edgar Hoover. Who else had the power?" 627
Dare we suggest an answer to Hemming's question—"Who else had the power?" Obviously, the answer is this: Israel, its Mossad and Israel's powerful domestic American lobby and its contacts at all levels.
In fact, there have been several widely-read works relating to the JFK assassination which have indeed suggested that Oswald, at least, was roped into some sort of "dummy assassination" type of operation which he was led to believe was of the nature described by Gary Wean's source in Dallas.
Executive Action, the book loosely based on the film of the same name, presents Oswald as being manipulated in this fashion. Likewise with former CIA contract agent Robert Morrow's work, Betrayal, which Morrow based on his own "inside" information from his involvement with figures involved in the conspiracy.
More recently, Don DeLillo's novel, Libra, presents Oswald at the center of a "dummy assassination" attempt which was manipulated by others and went awry. (One CIA character in the novel bears a striking resemblance, in several ways, to E. Howard Hunt.)
However, there is yet one quite extraordinary piece of the puzzle which actually implicates a known longtime Mossad asset with direct involvement in the events in Dealey Plaza. It involves the apparent role by longtime CIA contract operative Frank Sturgis in the actual assassination itself.
Although some JFK researchers express doubts about Miss Lorenz' story, Cuba's chief of counterintelligence, General Fabian Escalante, vouches for her, based on his own extensive study of the JFK assassination. Escalante told journalist Claudia Furiati that Cuban intelligence had determined that, in fact, "Sturgis was in charge of communications—receiving and transmitting information on the movement at Dealey Plaza and the motorcade to the shooters and others." 629
If we are to believe that Sturgis was, in fact, involved in the actual mechanics of the assassination, the historical evidence suggests that Sturgis could have been functioning as a knowing Mossad tool in the conspiracy, or, at the very least, have been indirectly working on behalf of the Mossad. While this assertion will at first astound even the most seasoned reader of JFK assassination literature the following factor must be considered:
What few people know is that Sturgis had ties to Israel's Mossad, going back fifteen years prior to the JFK assassination. Writing in the July 1975 issue of Argosy magazine, F. Peter Model reported that Sturgis was a "Hagannah mercenary during the first (1948) Israeli-Arab war," 630 and that Sturgis also had a girlfriend in Europe in the 1950's who worked for Israeli intelligence and with whom he worked.
Sturgis himself is quoted by JFK assassination researcher A. J. Weberman as having said that he assisted his girlfriend as a courier in Europe in a number of her endeavors on behalf of the Mossad. 631
In addition, former Time-Life correspondent Andrew St. George—who knew Sturgis quite well and spent time with Sturgis alongside Castro in the hills of Cuba during the Cuban revolution—has also reported that it was well known among anti-Castro Cuban exiles that Sturgis had also worked for the Mossad and had done so for a long period of time. 632
In fact, as St. George has also revealed, during the heyday of the CIA's anti-Castro operations in Miami with which Sturgis and E. Howard Hunt were so closely associated, some 12 to 16 Mossad agents worked out of Miami under the command of Mossad Deputy Director Yehuda S. Sipper, their influence reaching throughout Latin America and the Caribbean.
Citing a 1976 CIA memo, Professor John Newman who has investigated CIA knowledge of Lee Harvey Oswald's activities says that Sturgis founded the International Anti-Communist Brigade and that "the backers of Sturgis' group have never been fully established." 633
JFK writers Warren Hinckle and William Turner have said that "most of [Sturgis'] funding came from dispossessed casino owners and was funneled through Norman Roughouse' Rothman,"634 who was, according to author Gus Russo, not only "the partner of Meyer Lansky"635 but also the original "mobster middleman"636 between the CIA and the Lansky syndicate in the Castro assassination plots. Russo, however, says that Rothman's support for Sturgis came "from unknown sources" yet cites Hinckle and Turner as his source. So the question remains: just who really was funding Sturgis?
Could the Sturgis brigade have been part of the Mossad's Miami-based operations, intertwined with Sturgis' own CIA-sponsored intrigue in the same sphere of influence during the same period?
Those activities around Lake Ponchartrain are known to have involved two of the key players surrounding Lee Harvey Oswald prior to the JFK assassination: CIA contract agents Guy Banister and David Ferrie.
In fact, there is an Israeli connection to Interpen. According to Hemming himself, Interpen's "most important contact in the United States" 639 was New York financier, Theodore Racoosin, whom Hemming described as "one of the key founders of the state of Israel." 640
After having read Final Judgment, Hemming frankly told the author that although he personally has seen no evidence that convinces him the Mossad participated directly in the JFK assassination, he did say that "I have known since the late 1960's that the Mossad was aware of the JFK murder even before it happened, and they later did a full investigation on the matter and have since retained all such files." 641 [Emphasis added.]
In light of all of this, we would not be venturing into the world of fantasy to suggest that the operation involving Sturgis, Marita Lorenz and the anti-Castro Cubans who traveled to Dallas, arriving there on November 21, 1963 to meet with E. Howard Hunt (and then with Jack Ruby) was actually a Mossad "false flag" operation, deliberately involving a clique of anti-Castro Cubans manipulated by their Mossad-connected CIA handler.
Since, according to Miss Lorenz, Sturgis later admitted that his team in Dallas did actually participate in the assassination, it is conceivable that although Sturgis and his group did meet up with Hunt in Dallas that Hunt himself did not know that the Sturgis team was going to be involved in an actual assassination attempt or thought they were only involved in a "dummy" assassination attempt—if he even knew that much.
As we have said, Hunt's knowledge—or lack thereof—remains a mystery and his actual culpability in any assassination conspiracy per se cannot be pinned down. But the circumstances do suggest that Hunt does know a lot more about what happened in Dallas than he has admitted.
In any event, there is no question that, based on the facts about Sturgis that we now do know that at least one person who has reportedly confessed to actual involvement in the JFK assassination—Frank Sturgis—did have multiple longtime links to the Mossad for many years prior to (and after) the time of the JFK assassination.
This, in itself, is a major revelation and one that is quite relevant when considering the thesis put forth in Final Judgment.
A character named Chauncey Holt, who claims to have been in Dallas and involved in the circumstances surrounding the assassination summarized things quite well. According to Holt:
"Dallas that day was flooded with all kinds of people who ended up there for some reason. It's always been my theory that whoever was the architect of this thing—and no one will ever know who was behind it, manipulating all these people. I believe that they flooded this area with so many characters with nefarious reputations because they thought, 'Well, if all these people get scooped up it'll muddy the waters so much that they'll never straighten it out." 642
That there were people in Dallas on the day JFK was killed who may not have known the real reason they were there is also buttressed by other sources. Michael Milan, whose book The Squad outlines his role in working as part of a secret U.S. government team collaborating with the Lansky Syndicate says that there were at least several people operating in Dallas who believed that they were not involved in a conspiracy to kill John F. Kennedy, but, instead, in a conspiracy to kill Texas Governor John B. Connally. (We first considered Milan's claims in Chapter 14.) 643
Could some of those involved in the JFK assassination been manipulated into believing that they were involved in a plot against Connally (when in fact the ultimate target was Kennedy)?
Under such a scenario—without delving into the mechanics of the JFK assassination that have been considered time and again by those fascinated by the subject—it is possible that one of the assassins in Dealey Plaza did, in fact, take deliberate aim at Connally, perhaps not knowing that, at the same time, other assassins of whom he was unaware, were, from another location, taking aim at JFK. The Connally shooter was, in effect, a decoy.
In his biography of Connally, James Reston, Jr. suggests that Oswald had been recruited by Jack Ruby as part of an organized crime plan to kill Connally, rather than Kennedy. Reston suggests that Kennedy was the victim, purely by chance.
According to Ostrovsky: "One particularly intriguing aspect of the course was a movie called, "A President on the Crosshairs," a detailed study of the November 22, 1963 assassination of John F. Kennedy.
"The Mossad theory was that the killers—Mafiosa hit men, not Lee Harvey Oswald—actually wanted to murder then Texas Governor John Connally, who was in the car with JFK but was only wounded.
"Oswald was seen as a dupe in the whole thing and Connally as the target of mobsters trying to muscle their way into the oil business.
"The Mossad believed that the official version of the assassination was pure, unadulterated hokum. To test their theory, they did a simulation exercise of the presidential cavalcade to see if expert marksmen with far better equipment than Oswald's could hit a moving target from the recorded distance of 88 yards. They couldn't. It would have been the perfect cover. If Connally had been killed, everyone would have assumed it was an attempt on JFK. If they'd wanted to get Kennedy, they could have got him anywhere."
He writes: "According to what we found, the rifle was probably aimed at the back of Connally's head, and JFK gestured or moved just at the wrong moment—or possibly the assassin hesitated." 644
Now what Ostrovsky notes further is of particular interest, especially in light of the theory presented in Final Judgment. According to Ostrovsky, the Mossad had every film taken of the Dallas assassination, pictures of the area, the topography, aerial photographs—everything.
Is it possible that the reason that the Mossad had so much information about Dealey Plaza was not because the Mossad studied the area AFTER the Kennedy assassination but BEFORE the assassination?
That the Mossad would go to the length of calculating an extensive cover story (presented to its own recruits) is interesting in itself and perhaps further evidence that the Mossad had a very particular interest in the JFK assassination.
There were clearly many forces at work in Dealey Plaza, perhaps beyond the comprehension of any one conspirator—including Oswald, Ruby or even Hunt or Sturgis or any of the others involved. Some of the conspirators may have indeed been led to believe this was a Mafia hit on Connally and that it, in fact, turned out to be a hit on Kennedy.
The Mossad story that it was a botched operation aimed at Connally and resulting in the accidental killing of Kennedy sounds like nothing less than— to borrow a phrase from Ostrovsky—"pure, unadulterated hokum" coming from the Mossad itself.
And then there is the question of the manner in which Lee Harvey Oswald was being made to appear as though he were a pro-Castro/pro-Soviet agitator through the Mexico City Scenario (orchestrated by the CIA) and of his manipulation in New Orleans by the Clay Shaw-Guy Banister apparatus, which, in turn was directly involved in the activities of CIA and Mossad asset Frank Sturgis in the affairs at Lake Ponchartrain. Did Oswald think that he was, in fact, operating on behalf of the CIA—even on behalf of John F. Kennedy himself—setting up a "phony" assassination attempt that could be blamed on Castro, igniting international fury at the Cuban leader? We'll probably never know the truth.
The bottom line is this: at all critical times when Oswald was being set up as the patsy—and following the assassination itself—the fine hand of Israel's Mossad and its allies in the CIA is evident.
(1) To eliminate Connally, who was allegedly perceived to be a roadblock in the way of the mob, and, in turn
(2) To force Kennedy—or otherwise give him the excuse—to finally take action against Fidel Castro who had shut down organized crime operations in Cuba?
Could, for example, some of the conspirators been told that the plan was to kill Connally and make it appear as though it were a Castro sponsored bullet intended for the president which missed—and thereby force Kennedy into retaliating against Castro?
One can only imagine, for example, the surprise of a hidden gunman firing at John Connally when he realized that another gunman was firing at John F. Kennedy.
Or, dare we suggest the most frightening possibility of all: did John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert concoct some anti-Castro provocation—even a "dummy assassination"—that was ultimately infiltrated and manipulated by hostile forces within the CIA and its allies in the Mossad?
One could spend hours concocting a variety of scenarios. However, all of the evidence we have seen suggests that the JFK assassination conspiracy was multi-leveled and ranging out in a variety of directions.
Were all of these "characters with nefarious reputations" simply "false flags" being utilized by what Chauncey Holt called "the architect of this thing"? Were these JFK assassination "suspects" brought there by a force which wanted to "muddy the waters"? If so, we cannot help but be reminded of the Mossad's famous use of false flags in its criminal endeavors. Was there a "dummy assassination" attempt, and if so, who—or what—was the force that intervened?
One investigator, Scott Thompson, who believes in the "dummy assassination" theory, has gone so far as to charge that the provocation against Castro was being carried out with the full knowledge of Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. Thompson alleges that E. Howard Hunt was, in fact, in charge of coordinating the fraudulent assassination attempt. Thompson notes, however, that "it remains unclear to this day who intervened into the dummy assassination set-up and turned it into the real thing.” 645
Former CIA contract agent Robert Morrow has lent credence to the "dummy assassination attempt" scenario. Morrow has reported that he had been told that CIA operatives, working with Cuban exiles, "had some kind of test they were doing, a fake assassination attempt against Kennedy."646
Writing in Farewell America under the pseudonym "James Hepburn," veteran French intelligence officer Herve LaMarre suggests: "Oswald was probably told that he had been chosen to participate in a new antiCommunist operation together with [David] Ferrie and several other agents.
"The plan consisted of influencing public opinion by simulating an attack against President Kennedy, whose policy of coexistence with the Communists deserved a reprimand. Another assassination attempt, also designed to arouse public feeling, had been simulated on April 10 against General [Edwin A.] Walker."647
According to JFK researchers Warren Hinckle and William Turner, Farewell America was prepared under the direction and imprimatur of French President Charles DeGaulle, who was, as we noted in Chapter 15, a victim of assassination attempts financed by the Permindex operation that played the central part in the JFK assassination conspiracy.648 However, according to JFK writer Gus Russo, the book's origins are a little more complicated than that.
Russo claims that shortly after the JFK assassination—when Robert Kennedy launched a private inquiry into his brother's murder, utilizing a British intelligence asset who was a long-time Kennedy family friend (an inquiry which we referenced at the beginning of Chapter 9)—the British investigator hired two former French intelligence operatives to conduct the investigation. Russo says that one was Andre Ducret, former head of the French intelligence agency, and that the other was known only as "Philippe," but believed to be Philippe deVosjoli, former head of French intelligence in Washington.
The French investigators then spent several years conducting the investigation, finally providing RFK a report that alleged, generally, that Texas oil barons in league with Lyndon Johnson had been behind the assassination. Although RFK was killed shortly after receiving the report, the British agent who sponsored the investigation asked the surviving brother, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, what should be done with the report. Kennedy said his family was not interested, according to Russo, and at that point the report was turned over to Herve LaMarre who then fashioned the report into the book Farewell America. While never published in the United States, the book nonetheless received "underground" distribution here.649
However, while the book (and the report on which it was based) may have contained grains of truth, there is good reason to believe that it was largely CIA-Mossad disinformation. Here's why:
If indeed Philippe deVosjoli was one of those who handled the "investigation" for the Kennedy friend in British intelligence, the fact is that Vosjoli had a "long friendship [and] special relationship" with the Mossad's CIA loyalist James J. Angleton 650 to the point that deVosjoli not only refused French orders to spy on the United States, but instead apparently helped Angleton conduct espionage against France.651
Considering this, we can understand why Farewell America was so vague and so inconclusive and steered the finger of blame away from both the CIA and the Mossad, and, for that matter, suppressed the little-known "French connection" to the JFK assassination that has been long discussed, but which, if dissected as we shall now do here, points directly toward not only Angleton at the CIA, but the manipulations of disloyal elements in French intelligence by both Angleton and his Mossad allies.
It's an amazing story that has never been told before, but which we will outline here for the first time ever.
In Neuville's judgment: "Never the Prime Minister of Israel would have involved Mossad people, American Jews or CIA personnel in the execution part of the conspiracy. Even the CIA contract the services of other members of the intelligence community (they like the French style) to wash dirty linens. The right hand does not know what the left did. The cover-up team doesn't know who execute. And the executioners are not interested in the aftermath of their mission. They don't care less."652
According to Neuville's sources, then-Mossad assassination chief Yitzhak Shamir (later prime minister of Israel) arranged the hiring of at least one of the assassins through the deputy chief of the French intelligence service (the SDECE), Colonel Georges deLannurien.
"It was no coincidence," Neuville wrote, "that on the very day of the execution of the president by the French team that [deLannurien] was at Langley meeting with James Jesus Angleton, the Mossad mole."
According to Neuville, "There are no coincidences in the suspicion business—just cover-ups. The case of communist infiltration of the French secret service was an appropriate cover-up to justify the presence of Colonel deLannurien at Langley, Virginia." 653
It seems obvious that Angleton and deLannurien were together for a very specific purpose: damage control—making sure that the assassination cover-up fell into place after the crime itself had been committed. Angleton himself told the House Assassinations Committee that de Lannurien had come to his office for just that purpose: seeking assistance in routing out communist moles in the SDECE. 654
This controversy—alleged KGB infiltration into French intelligence— was a direct result of Angleton's machinations. It was Angleton (often prodded by his Mossad allies) who had a history of fingering alleged Soviet infiltrators in other nations' intelligence services, creating mass disarray, confusion, bitterness and resentment in their ranks.
Following World War II Angleton served as American intelligence liaison with the SDECE and maintained close friendships with a number of French intelligence officials throughout his career. And undoubtedly these were Frenchmen who shared Angleton's devotion to Israel.
One particularly embittered high-ranking SDECE officer, Leonard Houneau, who had been caught in Angleton's web and was ultimately cleared of the slander that he was a Soviet mole, later said, "The whole story was invented. Angleton was a madman and an alcoholic. He was trying to set us against one another." 655
In Chapter 12 we noted that it was Souetre who was picked up in Dallas on November 22, 1963 and expelled from the United States and who was also CIA man E. Howard Hunt's OAS liaison. It was Souetre who also maintained an informal
OAS outpost at Guy Banister's office at 544 Camp Street in New Orleans. What's more, Souetre maintained ties with Meyer Lansky's allies in the Corsican Mafia. All of this, certainly, suggests a very clear pattern which spells more than coincidence. The plot thickens, however. As we saw in Chapter 12, there is some question as to whether the individual picked up in Dallas was, in fact, Souetre or someone using his name.
Souetre has suggested that it was another Frenchman, one Michael Mertz, who may have been the guilty party who was actually in Dallas and using Souetre's name. What makes this allegation most provocative is that Mertz was a former French SDECE officer who had infiltrated the antiDeGaulle OAS and foiled a plot against DeGaulle's life. 657
(There is firm evidence that in at least one instance Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion "foiled" an OAS "plot" against DeGaulle, bringing the conspiracy to DeGaulle's attention. As a consequence, according to Ben-Gurion's biographer, "Ben-Gurion now received [DeGaulle's] gratitude." 658
(In this particular instance, however, the alleged conspirator was released since there was not enough evidence to keep him in custody.659 Was this "plot" perhaps—in reality—an Israeli operation designed to bring Israel back into DeGaulle's good graces? We can only speculate. We can only speculate, likewise, that perhaps Mertz's rescue of DeGaulle from yet another "plot" may have also been a similar Israeli-orchestrated operation.)
In any case, Mertz's connections went much further. Mertz was also engaged in the illegal drug racket, said to be Paris connection man for the Lansky-Trafficante-Corsican Mafia network examined in Chapter 12. 660
Just shortly after the JFK assassination, Dr. Lawrence Alderson, a Houston dentist, was questioned by the FBI. Alderson, who had struck up a friendship with the real Jean Souetre while both were in their respective country's armed services, said that he was told that "The FBI felt Souetre had either killed JFK or knew who had done it."661 And that could have included the aforementioned Mertz.
Former CIA insider Robert Morrow, enmeshed in much of the intrigue surrounding the activities of the Clay Shaw-Guy Banister operation in New Orleans, contends it was Mertz who was on one of the assassination teams that struck down John F. Kennedy in Dallas.662 According to Morrow, Mertz was on the Angleton-supervised CIA ZR/Rifle Team of foreign mercenaries which included the mysterious assassin code-named QJ/WIN. Aside from Mertz, among others put forth as possible French-connected assassins in the events in Dealey Plaza include Robert Blemant, a narcotics trafficker and intermediary between the Corsican Mafia and the CIA; and Joe Attia, a heroin financier and assassin for the SDECE. 663
According to JFK researcher Steve Revele, "Recently released top-secret CIA documents indicate that CIA assassin QJ/WIN was a Luxembourgbased smuggler named Jose Mankel, and the other, WI/ROGUE, was a Soviet-born Paris bank robber David Dzitzichvili (also spelled Tzitzichvili; alias David Dato)." 664
The bottom line, though, is that all of those mentioned have precisely the kind of connections that link them to not only the CIA, but also French intrigue and thence to Israel and its Mossad.
And according to historian Paul Henissart, there was—within the SDECE—a high percentage of anti-DeGaulle officers who were, in fact, sympathetic to the OAS. Like its self-centered American counterpart, the CIA, "the SDECE's main worry, according to well-informed sources, was to protect its own personnel and interests during [the] difficult period [of conflict between DeGaulle and the OAS]. 668
Intelligence historian Richard Deacon has noted, for his own part, that in France, during this difficult period, there was "a good deal of unofficial support for Israel, notably in the [SDECE]"669 pointing further toward the role of SDECE officers in arranging the assassination of John F. Kennedy on behalf of its allies in the Israeli Mossad.
According to Stewart Steven, an authority on the history of the Mossad, "Brilliant in many respects, the SDECE had the reputation internationally of being the rogue elephant of the world's intelligence circus. The CIA regarded it as being 'leaky as a sieve,' and probably with some justification, for few services had so many departmental heads constantly at loggerheads with one another, all serving different masters, either within France itself or in some cases abroad.
"The Israelis, however, had always got along with the French service very well. As an ally in the tricky world in which the Mossad was obliged to operate, the SDECE had proved itself extremely useful, principally because its officers did not feel obliged to necessarily receive political authority for its operations. This gave the service a free booting quality very much like the Israelis themselves but without Israeli discipline and order.
"Mossad's contacts within the service," said Steven, "tended to be with the ex-OAS elements, those opposed to DeGaulle for what they believed to be his sell-out of French interests in the Algerian war of independence." 670
The SDECE was divided into five "services." Service Five was known as "Action" and was dominated by Corsicans. According to Frederick Forsyth's background account of the conflict between DeGaulle and the OAS (the subject of his novel, The Day of the Jackal) these Corsicans, "had been professional thugs from the underworld before being enlisted, kept up their old contacts, and on more than one occasion enlisted the aid of their former underworld friends to do a particularly dirty job for the government.
"It was these activities that gave rise to talk in France of a 'parallel' (unofficial) police, supposedly at the orders of one of President de Gaulle's right-hand men, M. Jacques Foccart. In truth no 'parallel' police existed; the activities attributed to them were carried out by the Action Service strong-arms or temporarily enlisted gang-bosses from the `milieu.’” 672
In light of Forsyth's famous "Jackal," it might be noted that active in Europe during the period of the joint plots against JFK and Charles DeGaulle was a Jewish terrorist group known as the Jewish AntiCommunist League—or JACL. This JACL in fact, collaborated with the OAS. So it seems Frederick Forsyth knew whereof he spoke when he described a fictional OAS-sponsored "Jackal" seeking to destroy DeGaulle.
In 1965 a bizarre crime took place which exposed the close ties between certain elements in DeGaulle's intelligence agency, the Israeli Mossad and the French Corsican Mafia underworld. And, incredibly enough, this same crime implicated individuals whose names have been linked with the JFK assassination as a consequence of subsequent revelations. The crime in question was the murder of a Moroccan political figure, one Mehdi BenBarka who was a critic of the ruling regime in his native country. (Although an Arab regime, the Moroccan government maintained covert cooperation with the Mossad.)
Israeli historian Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi assessed the parameters of Ben-Barka's demise as follows: "The Mossad became involved in the kidnapping of Ben-Barka in Paris. He was later murdered in cold blood. Since the affair took place on French soil, and involved collaboration with right-wing [i.e. pro-OAS] elements in the [SDECE], it led to a major political crisis, to a purge of the service by DeGaulle.” 673
The irony for DeGaulle was immense. According to historian Stewart Steven, "As always . . . one arm of the SDECE didn't know what the other was doing. As one department [of the SDECE] was arranging for Ben Barka's assassination, another [arm of the French intelligence agency] was organizing a regular monthly paycheck paid [Ben Barka] through a French scientific research center, one of the covers for the extensive SDECE operation in Africa." 674
Dan Raviv and Yossi Melman, Israeli historians, commented on the crisis as follows: "De Gaulle, who suspected that his secret agency might be plotting against him, was absolutely furious. He immediately ordered that the secret service's house be put in order. He also directed his anger at Israel." 675 The French president "ordered that the Mossad's European command be removed from Paris, and he also ordered a cessation of all intelligence cooperation between the two nations." 676
According to historian Stewart Steven, "As far as President DeGaulle was concerned, the implications were that Israel was dealing with the OAS in France, which was still active, still bent on revenge, and indubitably involved through its supporters in the SDECE in the killing of Ben Barka. It meant that Israel was involved in illegal activities on French soil, an affront to French nationalism, and it meant that he himself, whose support for Israel had never been challenged, had been dealt with treacherously." 677 According to Steven, the Mossad expulsion from Paris was "a severe blow, perhaps the most severe the Israeli secret service has ever suffered . . . DeGaulle was never to forgive Israel." 678
Ex-Army intelligence officer William Spector told JFK assassination researcher Jim Marrs that David was part of the CIA's ZR/Rifle Team which was under Angleton's supervision and which included the aforementioned assassin, QJ/WIN.
What makes this all the more intriguing is that David has claimed knowledge of a French team of assassins being involved in the JFK murder.679 David himself claims to have been offered a contract to kill JFK by the Lansky-connected Guerini brothers, the leaders of the CIA-backed French Corsican Mafia in Marseille. 680
Incredibly, the French connections come full circle. It was the CIA's QJ/WIN who used his influence to secure the release of one Thomas Eli Davis III from a Moroccan jail after Davis was arrested in North Africa for supplying arms to the OAS. And it was Jack Ruby (who killed Lee Harvey Oswald) who mentioned to his lawyers his connection with Davis. Ruby said that he and Davis had run guns and jeeps to Cuba. 681
DeGaulle clearly discovered that elements of French intelligence and/or agents of his sworn enemies in the OAS had been brought into the JFK assassination conspiracy by the Mossad.
It seems apparent that one or more of the French assassins who played a role in the events in Dallas were recruited by the Mossad through its allies within DeGaulle's intelligence service.
In addition, those in the CIA-connected New Orleans faction of the assassination conspiracy—those framing Lee Harvey Oswald as a pro-Castro agitator—were tied directly the OAS network and the Mossad's Permindex operation that had conspired against DeGaulle.
And at CIA headquarters at Langley, Virginia there was the Mossad's devoted friend and longtime associate of top SDECE officials, James J. Angleton, engaged in intrigue that clearly points to his own involvement in the conspiracy and the subsequent cover-up.
Even the CIA's E. Howard Hunt was tied directly to the French connection as CIA liaison to the OAS. In the end, Hunt's apparent visit to Dallas just prior to the assassination—evidently at Angleton's orders—where he met with longtime Mossad asset Frank Sturgis, put Hunt squarely in the middle of the intrigue. The later attempt to publicly link Hunt to the assassination reaches directly back to Angleton.
These details, taken together with all that we have examined in the pages of Final Judgment, explain the so called "French connection" to the JFK assassination, although, as we have seen, the origin of the conspiracy to kill the American president was not, in fact, French.
There were, very clearly, many, many people involved in the periphery of the assassination conspiracy—whether as active conspirators or not. French President DeGaulle had a direct interest in finding out how his own intelligence service and/or individuals connected thereto had been manipulated by the Mossad and a direct interest in covering it up.
According to Angleton's biographer, Tom Mangold: "Within the year, DeGaulle finally lost his patience with the CIA. The French president, quietly, without any publicity, issued an order terminating all joint operations between SDECE and the CIA. For the next three years the two services remained estranged, a break without precedent between the two friendly countries." 682
This, of course, recalls DeGaulle's decision during the same time frame— as noted previously—to expel the Mossad from France. In light of all that we have considered here, it is likely that a large part of DeGaulle's move against Angleton's CIA and Angleton's Mossad allies arose directly from his discovery that his own intelligence service had been directly compromised through the involvement of SDECE officer Georges deLannurien in helping facilitate the JFK assassination.
Evidently Garrison perceived Permindex as only an indication of Shaw's intelligence connections and nothing more. However, as assassination researcher James DiEugenio, in one of his more perceptive comments, points out: "This is questionable, but even so, Shaw's European connections would have had some effect on his carefully constructed image"684 as some sort of "Wilsonian-FDR-Kennedy liberal." 685
Garrison's own words suggest that he may have had some direction from French intelligence. At one point Garrison said that he had learned that the conspirators plotting the JFK assassination had been penetrated by a foreign intelligence service, but that it had "been for reasons wholly unrelated to an investigation of the president's murder." 686
In fact, this "unrelated" matter could have been (and this is speculation, of course) an investigation by DeGaulle into Shaw and the New Orleans conspirators because of their collaboration with the OAS in plots against DeGaulle. Unfortunately, at least at first, the "French connection" (which is actually the Israeli connection) seems to have gone right by Garrison and perhaps led in part to his failure to convict Shaw in the JFK conspiracy.
We do know that by the late 1970's, the House Assassinations Committee inquiry was looking into the "French connection." However,according to Dick Russell, one committee investigator, Mike Ewing, said the committee "was working on the 'French connection' angle when it closed up shop" in 1978. 687 Thus, as a consequence, the official "investigation" never went as far as it could have and the Israeli connection—through the so-called "French Connection”—remained under wraps (as the conspirators certainly intended).
Russell says that (as known by the CIA and the Warren Commission in 1964) Dinkin had discovered OAS foreknowledge of an assassination plot against President Kennedy supposed to take place in Texas. Unfortunately, for Dinkin, according to Russell, "nobody would give him the time of day except the Israeli ambassador to Luxembourg who . . . advised him how best to present his case at the American embassy there." 688
Poor Dinkin, obviously, had no idea that the Israelis (whom he perceived to be American allies) were, in fact, working closely behind the scenes with the OAS-connected plotters in the JFK assassination conspiracy. Thus, by taking his story to the Israelis, Dinkin was effectively alerting the OAS (and the conspirators) that he had stumbled upon their connections to the impending assassination of the president. This is just another of those fascinating details—somehow missed by the JFK assassination researchers—that points further toward the Israeli connection.
Pinning down the truth of precisely what happened in Dealey Plaza will never be possible, but we believe that in the pages of Final Judgment we have come closer to the truth than ever before.
The information supplied by the former French intelligence officer relative to Israeli Mossad orchestration of the JFK assassination through the aegis of other intelligence networks, specifically James J. Angleton's CIA, and with pro-Israel forces in the SDECE, meshes with other facts assembled in this chapter and through the pages of this volume.
The final judgment is inescapable . . .
Israel was indeed the driving force behind the assassination of President John F. Kenned y. The role of Israel was the unsuspected but ever-present "missing link" in the JFK assassination conspiracy.
Let us now move forward and examine the manner in which the media maneuvered and/or was manipulated by the CIA and the Mossad in covering up the truth about the president's murder. We will also examine the murder of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy. His death was indeed a critical part of the cover-up of his brother's assassination in Dallas.
next
They Dare Not Speak Out: The Media's Silence—
notes
page 574-576 here
http://americanfreepress.net/PDF/Final_Judgment.pdf
Lee Harvey Oswald."588
Subsequent analyses suggested that the letter may or may not have been Oswald's handwriting (although he was known to misspell even his own middle name as it was misspelled in the letter. When word of the letter's existence gained circulation, the reference to a "Mr. Hunt" created immediate speculation that the Hunt in question was either Texas oilman H. L. Hunt or, more than likely, E. Howard Hunt.
In light of the then-current rumors about Hunt's alleged role in the JFK affair, coupled with his known connections to the CIA and, in particular, Mexico City, where he had been active during his CIA career, the suspicions about E. Howard Hunt were quite natural.
It is interesting, though, that the letter was sent from Mexico City, Hunt's former base of operations. Whether the letter was real or not, it is obvious that someone wanted to throw further suspicion on E. Howard Hunt—and succeeded.
That the Weberman story of "Hunt as a tramp" and the "Dear Mr. Hunt" letter appeared at the same time are particularly intriguing in light of another matter we are about to consider.
Both the "Hunt as a tramp" story and the "Dear Mr. Hunt" letter appear to be part and parcel of a CIA black propaganda operation run by the Mossad's man at the CIA, James J. Angleton.
HUNT WAS IN DALLAS
Ironically, as we shall see, the evidence suggests that E. Howard Hunt
was indeed in Dallas—on, at the very least, November 21, 1963—and very
much involved in strange activities in league with key players in the JFK
assassination scenario. According to Marchetti, widespread public suspicion of CIA involvement in the president's murder was forcing the CIA to play its hand and "admit" that, in fact, one of its more notorious longtime operatives, Hunt, had indeed been in Dallas on the day that Kennedy was killed.
Obviously, Hunt—with his well-known ties to the anti-Castro Cubans, often considered prime suspects in the JFK assassination—would have a difficult time explaining why he had been in Big D on that fateful day—if indeed he had been.
Interesting, Marchetti's article never said that Hunt had, in fact, been involved in the assassination conspiracy. Marchetti's article said only that top-ranking CIA officials had decided to frame Hunt for the crime. Hunt, according to Marchetti's sources, was deemed expendable.
Marchetti's article reported that a strange in-house CIA memo—allegedly written some years previously—had somehow ended up in the hands of investigators for the House Assassinations Committee and that Hunt, as a consequence, would ultimately be forced to explain his reported presence in Dallas (as described in the memo) on November 22, 1963.
The editors of The Spotlight felt Marchetti's article served, if anything, as an advance warning to Hunt of what his former employers had in mind. The Spotlight's editors didn't, in fact, feel that the article implicated Hunt in the president's murder.
Inexplicably, however, the ex-CIA man decided to sue, even though he ultimately admitted under oath that when he first read The Spotlight's story that Marchetti's contentions seemed plausible indeed. In short, that Hunt did believe that his former colleagues would be willing to throw him to the wolves—for their own nefarious reasons.
Hunt's lawsuit against The Spotlight did go to trial. However, The Spotlight's management did not take the lawsuit seriously. They did not believe either that the article damaged Hunt's reputation or that Hunt's attorneys could prove that the newspaper had published the article maliciously.
(In fact, The Spotlight had invited Hunt to visit the newspaper's editorial offices for an interview to rebut the claims made in Marchetti's article or to even write an article rebutting Marchetti's article.)
During that trial, The Spotlight's attorney unexpectedly stipulated that the newspaper did not believe that Hunt had been in Dallas on November 22, 1963. The trial, however, resulted in a massive $650,000 libel judgment against the newspaper. The Spotlight appealed the judgment and the appeals court granted a new trial on the basis that the trial judge's instructions to the jury had been faulty .
LANE ENTERS THE CASE
It was at this point that famed JFK assassination investigator Mark
Lane, an attorney, entered into the case—almost purely by chance, having
been introduced to the publisher of The Spotlight by a mutual acquaintance
shortly before the case was heard on appeal. Based upon his own decades of intensive research, Lane had long been convinced that the CIA had been instrumental in orchestrating the JFK assassination, but he had never had a legal forum in which to conduct an investigation of this sort.
The new trial—which took place in 1985 (some seven years after the controversial article had first been published) gave him that opportunity. Lane launched The Spotlight's defense with a very different approach.
He contended that Hunt had indeed been in Dallas just prior to the president's murder and that he would be able to prove it. This took Hunt's lawyers by surprise, to say the least, but despite their efforts to derail Lane's new approach, they were unsuccessful.
Yet, despite the inflammatory nature of what Miss Lorenz had told the committee, her testimony was discounted by the House Committee director G. Robert Blakey (about whose own connections with the CIA and the Meyer Lansky Organized Crime Syndicate we learned in Chapter 10).
Miss Lorenz, a German-born beauty, had, in fact, been the one-time mistress of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, but she had ultimately turned on the Cuban leader and had become involved in anti-Castro activities under the CIA's tutelage. Among her key contacts in the CIA during this period was the CIA's chief liaison with the anti-Castro Cuban operatives, E. Howard Hunt, as well as veteran CIA contract agent Frank Sturgis who essentially functioned as her handler. Mark Lane asked Miss Lorenz to testify in the Hunt trial in The Spotlight's defense, restating—again under oath—what she had told the House Assassinations Committee and what she had told Lane himself years previously.
HUNT & RUBY IN DALLAS
So it was that during the Hunt libel trial, Miss Lorenz testified in a
deposition that just one day prior to Kennedy's assassination, she, along
with Sturgis and several anti-Castro Cuban exiles, met in Dallas with not
only E. Howard Hunt, but also nightclub operator Jack Ruby who later
killed Lee Harvey Oswald, the president's alleged assassin. According to Miss Lorenz, Hunt was the CIA paymaster for a top-secret operation, the purpose of which she did not know. Miss Lorenz said that she had been told by Sturgis that she was to serve as a "decoy."
However, feeling uneasy, Miss Lorenz left Dallas on November 22 and never participated in the operation. It was later she learned that President Kennedy had been assassinated and that, of course Jack Ruby had killed Lee Harvey Oswald, the president's alleged assassin. 589
As for Hunt himself, his contradictory stories about where he was situated both the day before the Kennedy assassination and the day of the assassination itself were suspicious. Lane took excellent advantage of Hunt's sworn statements (in deposition and during the two trials, as well as several other forums) to show those contradictions. These contradictions alone could have spelled Hunt's courtroom demise.
What's more, the witnesses called in Hunt's defense by the ex-CIA man's attorneys only ended up suggesting Hunt had more to hide than he had to admit. Many of these witnesses, in fact, were an assortment of Hunt's former CIA colleagues, a number of whom were represented during their testimony in deposition by CIA-dispatched lawyers.
However, it was the testimony of Marita Lorenz that convinced the jury, once and for all, that The Spotlight (and Lane himself) had a much more plausible story than Hunt. Thus, the stunning courtroom victory for The Spotlight, vanquishing Hunt's libel action.
Leslie Armstrong, a Miami resident who was jury forewoman in the case, issued a statement in conjunction with the release of Lane's written account of the trial:
"Mr. Lane was asking us [the jury] to do something very difficult. He was asking us to believe John Kennedy had been killed by our own government. Yet when we examined the evidence closely, we were compelled to conclude that the CIA had indeed killed President Kennedy." 590
Despite this stunning conclusion, the media remained silent. Very little about Hunt's courtroom defeat appeared in the media, particularly the sum and substance of Miss Lorenz's amazing allegations. This, of course, was real news in every sense but the media chose to ignore what had taken place in that Miami courtroom.
Interestingly, however, as we shall see, there was yet another newspaper report (similar in content to that of Victor Marchetti's disputed article) which—like Marchetti's—suggests that there was a lot more to the story than meets the eye.
THE ANGLETON CONNECTION
In fact, the in-house CIA memorandum linking Hunt to the JFK
assassination was the work of Israel's ally at the CIA, James Jesus
Angleton, whose own history we examined in Chapter 8 and whom we
have met repeatedly throughout these pages. This is not to suggest, though, that Hunt was not in Dallas on either November 21 or November 22, 1963.
On the contrary, the evidence we are about to relate suggests that Hunt's presence in Dallas—for whatever purpose—was indeed linked in some fashion to the circumstances surrounding the JFK assassination conspiracy.
This evidence suggests, as we shall see, that it was Angleton—who was also responsible for leaking the memo he drafted that linked Hunt to the JFK assassination.
Before proceeding further with our exploration of Angleton's deeds and misdeeds, particularly in relation to Hunt, it is important to review Victor Marchetti's article (printed in The Spotlight on August 14, 1978) which is published here in pertinent part:
A few months ago, in March, there was a meeting at CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., the plush home of America's super spooks overlooking the Potomac River. It was attended by several high-level clandestine officers and some former top officials of the agency.
The topic of the discussion was: What to do about recent revelations associating President Kennedy's accused assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, with the spy game played between the U.S. and the USSR? A decision was made, and a course of action determined. They were calculated to both fascinate and confuse the public by staging a clever 'limited hangout' when the House Special Committee on Assassinations (H.S.C.A) holds its open hearings, beginning later this month.
A "limited hangout" is spy jargon for a favorite and frequently used gimmick of the clandestine professionals.
When their veil of secrecy is shredded and they can no longer rely on a phony cover story to misinform the public, they resort to admitting—sometimes even volunteering—some of the truth while still managing to withhold the key and damaging facts in the case. The public, however, is usually so intrigued by the new information that it never thinks to pursue the matter further.
We will probably never find out who masterminded the assassination of JFK—or why. There are too many powerful special interests connected with the conspiracy for the truth to come out even now, 15 years after the murder.
But during the next two months, according to sensitive sources in the CIA and on H.S.C.A we are going to learn much more about the crime. The new disclosures will be sensational, but only superficially so. A few of the lesser villains involved in the conspiracy and its subsequent cover-up will be identified for the first time—and allowed to twist slowly in the wind on live network TV . Most of the others to be fingered are already dead.
But once again, the good folks of middle America will be hoodwinked by the government and its allies in the establishment news media. In fact, we are being set up to witness yet another cover -up , albeit a sophisticated one , designed by the CIA with the assistance of the FBI and the blessing of the Carter administration.
A classic example of a limited hangout is how the CIA has handled and manipulated the Church Committee's investigation [of the CIA] two years ago. The committee learned nothing more about the assassinations of foreign leaders, illicit drug programs, or the penetration of the news media than the CIA allowed it to discover. And this is precisely what the CIA is out to accomplish through H.S.C.A with regard to JFK's murder.
Chief among those to be exposed by the new investigation will be E. Howard Hunt, of Watergate fame. His luck has run out, and the CIA has decided to sacrifice him to protect its clandestine services. The agency is furious with Hunt for having dragged it publicly into the Nixon mess and for having blackmailed it after he was arrested.
Besides, Hunt is vulnerable—an easy target as they say in the spy business. His reputation and integrity have been destroyed. The death of his wife, Dorothy, in a mysterious plane crash in Chicago still disturbs many people, especially since there were rumors from informed sources that she was about to leave him and perhaps even turn on him.
In addition it is well known that Hunt hated JFK and blamed him for the Bay of Pigs disaster. And now, in recent months, his alibi for his whereabouts on the day of the shooting has come unstuck.
In the public hearings, the CIA will 'admit' that Hunt was involved in the conspiracy to kill Kennedy. The CIA may go so far as to 'admit' that there were three gunmen shooting at Kennedy. The FBI, while publicly embracing the Warren Commission's 'one man acting alone' conclusion, has always privately known that there were three gunmen . The conspiracy involved many more people than the ones who actually fired at Kennedy, both agencies may now admit . . .
Now, the CIA moved to finger Hunt and tie him to the JFK assassination. H.S.C.A unexpectedly received an internal CIA memorandum a few weeks ago that the agency just happened to stumble across in its old files. It was dated 1966 and said in essence: Some day we will have to explain Hunt's presence in Dallas on November 22, 1963—the day President Kennedy was killed. Hunt is going to be hard put to explain this memo, and other things, before the TV cameras at the H.S.C.A hearings
Hunt's reputation as a strident fanatical anti-communist will count against him . So will his long and close relationship with the anti-Castro Cubans, as well as his penchant for clandestine dirty tricks and his various capers while one of Nixon's plumbers. E. Howard Hunt will be implicated in the conspiracy and he will not dare to speak out— the CIA will see to that.
[Marchetti noted, at this juncture, that Fidel Castro's former mistress, Marita Lorenz had alleged that Hunt was part of a CIA hit squad aiming for President Kennedy.]
Who else will be identified as having been part of the conspiracy and/or cover-up remains to be seen. But a disturbing pattern is already beginning to emerge. All the villains have been previously disgraced in one way or another. They all have 'right wing' reputations. Or they will have after the hearings.
The fact that some may have had connections with organized crime will prove to be only incidental in the long run. Those with provable ties to the CIA or FBI will be presented as renegades who acted on their own without approval or knowledge of their superiors.
As for covering up the deed, that will be blamed on past Presidents, either dead or disgraced. Thus, Carter will emerge as a truth seeker, and the CIA and FBI will have neatly covered their institutional behinds. 591
Marchetti's article is very interesting in many respects. First of all, as noted previously, Hunt himself initially admitted that he believed that the story had a basis in truth—that it was plausible, that indeed his former colleagues in the CIA did consider framing him for involvement in the JFK assassination.
The origin of the memorandum linking Hunt to the JFK assassination is interesting as it is presented by Marchetti. He describes it as a memorandum that “the agency just happened to stumble across in its old files." In other words, one might presume from Marchetti's flippant reference, the CIA had, instead, perhaps concocted the memo. That the agency "just happened to stumble across" the memo at a time when public suspicion of CIA involvement in the JFK assassination was growing is, of course, interesting, to say the least.
If Hunt were indeed in Dallas either on the day JFK was killed—or even the day prior—it would look suspicious. Hunt's long-standing involvement with anti-Castro Cubans through the aegis of his CIA activities—would make Hunt a likely suspect were he, in fact, proved to have been in Dallas at the critical time.
As Marchetti points out, linking Hunt to the JFK assassination would be a cover story that the public would easily accept. The CIA, as an institution, would absolve itself of any responsibility, having thrown Hunt to the wolves as an independent operator out of the CIA's control. Indeed, the CIA could then lay claim to having "solved" the JFK assassination at last. Hunt's alleged involvement would also draw in a number of other false flags—not only the anti-Castro Cubans, but also "right wingers" in general. What's more, considering Hunt's involvement in Watergate (and with Richard Nixon having left the presidency in shame), Nixon himself may have taken some of the heat with many of the public suspecting the very worst—that perhaps Nixon might have had a hand in arranging the JFK assassination.
Not only had Nixon been involved in the earliest high-level anti-Castro planning, alongside Hunt and the CIA, but Nixon himself had been vanquished in the 1960 presidential campaign by Kennedy. That one of Nixon's Watergate burglars was being implicated in the JFK assassination would do no service to Nixon's already tarnished image.
Marchetti also pointed out that "The fact that some [of Hunt's to-be alleged co-conspirators] may have had connections with organized crime will prove to be only incidental in the long run."
This "limited hangout" by the CIA would have, as a consequence, covered up the role of the Israeli-linked Meyer Lansky Organized Crime Syndicate. To delve too deeply into the real origins and linkage of the crime network would have dragged the Israeli connection into the open—if pursued to its logical conclusion.
Now, obviously, the scenario presented in Marchetti's article—the framing of Hunt by the CIA—never, in fact, took place. That it had a basis in truth—that Hunt was being pondered as a "fall guy"—however, seems apparent.
This is supported by the fact that a similar article, based on relatively the same fact situation, appeared during the same period in another newspaper.
While the claims made in the second article are somewhat different than those which appeared in Marchetti's article, it is clear that the similarities, in general, are what are most significant.
The article appeared in the Wilmington, Delaware Sunday News Journal on August 20, 1978. The authors were Joe Trento and Jacquie Powers. The article reads [in pertinent part] as follows:
WASHINGTON—A secret CIA memorandum says that E. Howard Hunt was in Dallas the day President John F. Kennedy was murdered and that top agency officials plotted to cover up Hunt's presence there.
Some CIA sources speculate that Hunt thought he was assigned by higher-ups to arrange the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald.
Sources say Hunt, convicted in the Watergate conspiracy in 1974, was acting chief of the CIA station in Mexico City in the weeks prior to the Kennedy assassination. Oswald was in Mexico City, and met with two Soviet KGB agents at the Russian Embassy there immediately before leaving for Dallas, according to the official Warren Commission report.
The 1966 secret memo, now in the hands of the House assassination committee, places Hunt in Dallas Nov. 22, 1963.
Richard M. Helms, former CIA director, and James J. Angleton, former counterintelligence chief, initialed the memo according to investigators who made the information available to the Sunday News Journal.
According to sources close to the Select Committee on Assassinations, the document reveals:
Three years after Kennedy's murder, and shortly after Helms and Angleton were elevated to their highest positions in the CIA, they discussed the fact that Hunt was in Dallas on the day of the assassination and that his presence there had to be kept secret.
Helms and Angleton thought that news of Hunt's presence in Dallas would be damaging to the agency should it leak out.
Helms and Angleton felt that a cover story, giving Hunt an alibi for being elsewhere the day of the assassination "ought to be considered." . . . . . .
Helms could not be reached for comment. A secretary said that he was out of town and would not be available. When Angleton was questioned by committee staffers, he was "evasive," according to a source who was present. Angleton could not be reached for comment.
Asked to explain why a potentially damaging cover - up plot would be put out on paper, one high-level CIA source said, "The memo is very odd. It was almost as if Angleton was informing Helms, who had just become director, that there was a skeleton in the family closet that had to be taken care of and this was his response."
One committee source says the memo "shows the CIA involvement in the Kennedy case could run into the CIA hierarchy. We are trying not to get ahead of ourselves but the mind boggles." . . . .
Hunt's appearance on the scene in Dallas and Mexico City at the time of the murder adds strength to a theory shared by so me internal CIA investigators. They believe Oswald was working for U.S. intelligence, that he was ordered to infiltrate the KGB, and that this explains his life in Russia. They also believe that Oswald proved to be so unstable that he was "handled" by the KGB into becoming a triple agent, and assigned for the Dallas job.
The same investigators theorize that Hunt was in Dallas that day on the orders of a high-level CIA official who in reality was a KGB mole. Hunt allegedly thought he was to arrange that Oswald be murdered because he had turned traitor. Actually he was to kill Oswald to prevent him from ever testifying and revealing the Russians had ordered him to kill Kennedy, the CIA sources speculate.
CIA investigators are most concerned that either Helms or Angleton might be that mole.
Hunt first detailed the existence of a small CIA assassination team in an interview with the New York Times while in prison in December 1975 for his role in Watergate. The assassination squad, allegedly headed by Col. Boris Pash, was ordered to eliminate suspected double agents and low ranking officials.
Pash's assassination unit was assigned to Angleton, other CIA sources say . . . It was also learned from CIA and committee sources that during the time that the Warren Commission was investigating the Kennedy assassination, Angleton met regularly with a member of the commission—the late Allen Dulles, then head of the CIA and Angleton's boss.
Dulles, on a weekly basis, briefed Angleton about the direction of the investigation. Angleton, according to sources, in turn briefed Raymond Rocca, his closest aide and the CIA’s official liaison with the commission. 592
This article is interesting in many ways. First of all, one of the coauthors, Joseph Trento, admitted under oath during the E. Howard Hunt Spotlight libel trial that he had actually seen the controversial memo in question. Trento also noted that he knew James Jesus Angleton of the CIA and had utilized him as a source on occasion.
(And it's probably no accident that one of Corson's associates, in later years before Corson died, engaged in a longtime and determined covert effort to undermine the distribution of Final Judgment and to personally destroy this writer, but to also undermine Mark Lane, whose courtroom victory over Hunt [and effectively over Angleton and Corson] left the intelligence community reeling. But that's another story for another time—but significant still indeed.)
That Angleton was the author of the memo addressed to his CIA superior (and longtime patron) Richard Helms is also of interest, considering Angleton's close working relationship with Israel's Mossad (documented in Chapter 8).
While the Trento story claims that the CIA memo was ostensibly drafted in 1966, the actual date the memo first appeared is subject, of course, to question, as is the actual intent of the memo itself. The article itself notes that a "high-level CIA source" considered the memo to be "very odd" in that it recorded—in writing—the alleged presence in Dallas of longtime CIA operative, Hunt, at the time of JFK's murder.
The evidence suggests that the reason why Angleton's memo was put on paper—and then subsequently released—was that Angleton wanted the story to be leaked to the press—as part of a continuing cover-up of the real origins of the JFK assassination. Hunt—a lower level CIA operative (already tarnished by Watergate)—was being hung out to dry and the real conspirators at the top were washing their hands of the matter.
WAS THE MEMO
LEAKED DELIBERATELY?
Did Angleton and Helms really worry, as the article suggests, that the
agency would be damaged by the revelations, or did they, instead, arrange for
the memo to be leaked so that there would be, as Victor Marchetti's
aforementioned article suggested, a "limited hangout" which would absolve
the CIA as an institution of any involvement in the crime? Joe Trento has subsequently revealed that Angleton did in fact leak the memo to the House Assassinations Committee. However, according to Trento, ''It was all handled in such a way that Angleton was not the source.”593
That the Trento article suggests that Hunt was in fact in Dallas and that he was there on an assignment involving Lee Harvey Oswald is significant as well.
WAS HUNT ORDERED TO DALLAS?
Could it be that Hunt had somehow been manipulated into involvement
in the JFK assassination conspiracy, not knowing that there were bigger and
more insidious things going on in the strange world of Lee Harvey Oswald? Was Hunt indeed sent to Dallas on a CIA-sponsored pretext, orchestrated by one of his superiors—namely James Jesus Angleton—only to discover, after the fact, that the assassination of John F. Kennedy was in the works?
According to Trento, Angleton told him that Hunt had been sent to Dallas by a high-level Soviet KGB mole working in the CIA. However, says Trento, "I later came to conclude that the mole-sent-Hunt idea was, to use his phrase, disinformation; that Angleton was trying to protect his own connections to Hunt's being in Dallas . . . My guess is, it was Angleton himself who sent Hunt to Dallas, because he didn't want to use anybody from his own shop."594
All of this is interesting, to say the least, and pinpoints Angleton as a key player in the events linking the CIA and Hunt to Dallas. Yet, as we shall see, there is much more to the story of the role played by the CIA's Mossad ally James J. Angleton in the JFK assassination and cover-up.
In fact, Angleton had a hand in the very part of the assassination conspiracy that involved the frame-up of Lee Harvey Oswald as a "pro Castro agitator" guilty of associating with the Soviet KGB.
THE CIA & THE
MEXICO CITY SCENARIO
The Trento article accepts, as its basis, the story that Lee Harvey
Oswald had been in Mexico City meeting with the Soviets and the Castro
Cubans.
However, as Mark Lane demonstrated in Plausible Denial, the story that
Oswald had been in Mexico City meeting with the communists was an
outright fraud—a concoction of the CIA itself. Lane summarized the situation: "At the outset it should be understood that almost all of the information regarding Oswald's alleged visit to Mexico and his contact with the Soviets and Cubans while there had been fabricated by the Central Intelligence Agency. In its report, the [Warren] commission cited the CIA as the primary source for the Mexico City scenario, declining to seek independent corroboration for the CIA's version of events.
"Nevertheless, the Mexico City scenario constitutes the conventional wisdom as promulgated by the CIA and accepted by the Warren Commission. It remains an article of faith for those who subsequently endorsed the Warren Report, including journalists and official investigating committees. One of the central tenets of the lone assassin theory is Lee Harvey Oswald's presence in Mexico City.
"Soon after the commission was created, the CIA informed Earl Warren that Oswald had been in Mexico from September 26 to October 3, 1963 and that he had spent most of that time in Mexico City.
"According to the CIA, Oswald had visited the Cuban Embassy in Mexico City on September 27 and the Soviet Embassy on October 1. Proof that Oswald had been in the Cuban Embassy, the CIA reported, came from Senora Silvia Duran, a Mexican employed at the Cuban Embassy. Proof that Oswald had been to the Soviet Embassy, the CIA claimed, came from the observations of its own agents."595
OSWALD AND THE KGB?
The CIA told the Warren Commission that Oswald had met with a
Soviet KGB officer named Valeriy Kostikov who was a specialist in
assassination and sabotage; that Kostikov was in charge of Soviet orchestrated
assassinations in the United States. Clearly, the CIA's
implication was that Oswald had been meeting with the KGB officer to plan
JFK's murder.
However, even the Warren Commission was suspicious and asked for
evidence of Oswald's activities in Mexico City. Some four months went by
before the CIA could provide anything other than the testimony of the
aforementioned Miss Duran. Yet, as the evidence shows, Miss Duran only identified Oswald as a visitor to the Cuban Embassy after she had been arrested by the Mexican police at the direction (unknown to her) of the CIA. She was forced into making the statement that the CIA wanted: that Oswald had been to the Cuban Embassy.
After she was released from custody, she spoke out about her experience and the CIA cabled the Mexican police to re-arrest the young lady, but cautioned the police to make sure that Miss Duran knew nothing about the CIA's involvement in her imbroglio.
Finally, under pressure to provide further corroboration of Oswald's activities, the CIA managed to come up with recordings of a telephone conversation between someone alleged to be Lee Harvey Oswald and someone at the Soviet Embassy.
However, even the FBI, having reviewed the recording, concluded that its agents were of the opinion, that it "was NOT Lee Harvey Oswald."596
Despite this provocative conclusion, the FBI report never reached the Warren Commission. Warren and company had only to rely upon the reports from the CIA. (The FBI report only became public some years later when Mark Lane obtained it through the Freedom of Information Act.)
Phillips, if anybody, should have known inasmuch as he had been CIA station chief in Mexico City at the time of Oswald's alleged visit.
(There have been allegations also, incidentally, that Oswald may have been spotted in Dallas with a CIA operative known as "Maurice Bishop" whom many believe, in fact, was Phillips.)
In a rather fierce debate with Mark Lane at the University of Southern California, a somewhat distressed Phillips confessed: "I am not in a position today to talk to you about the inner workings of the CIA station in Mexico City . . . but I will tell you this, that when the record comes out, we will find that there . . . is no evidence to show that Lee Harvey Oswald visited the Soviet Embassy."597
WARREN 'HELD HOSTAGE'
According to Mark Lane: The magnitude of this CIA misconduct can
be fully understood only when its conspiracy to cover up is traced to its
origin. For the CIA charade, which evidently included employing an
impostor for Oswald, began no later than October 1, 1963. "One month and twenty-two days before President Kennedy was assassinated, the CIA had set into motion a series of events apparently designed to prevent any American institution from ever daring to learn the truth about the assassination, an assassination that had not yet taken place.
"More than seven weeks before President Kennedy was murdered, the CIA was dramatically and falsely establishing a link between Lee Harvey Oswald and a Soviet diplomat, whom the CIA would later designate as the KGB authority on assassinations in the United States." 598
As a consequence, the Warren Commission, confronted by the CIA with what appeared to be possible Soviet involvement in the Kennedy assassination, moved to suppress what it mistakenly believed to be "the truth."
The fate of the world was in the hands of Chief Justice Earl Warren and his fellow commission members. If the public learned that Oswald was a pawn of the Soviets, a nuclear war could break out. As Mark Lane commented, Warren was "held hostage"599 by the CIA's provocative lie.
During his debate with David Atlee Phillips, Mark Lane exposed all of this before the audience. When confronted and following his confession that Oswald had not been at the Soviet Embassy, Phillips suggested essentially that he didn't want either the CIA or himself to be held responsible for "some CIA guy that I never saw [who] did something that I never heard of.” 600
Now while Phillips was being disingenuous at best, the fact is that it was indeed someone whom he certainly knew who was behind the Mexico City scenario. It was none other than his CIA colleague, James J. Angleton.
ANGLETON & MEXICO CITY
Assassination researcher Bernard Fensterwald reported in 1977 that,"Angleton had handled several controversial CIA matters relating to the
assassination, such as the mysterious series of CIA photographs taken in
Mexico City in September and October, 1963, in which a man identified by
the CIA as Lee Harvey Oswald turned out not to be Oswald at all." 601 What's more, as pointed out by Peter Dale Scott, a report by the House Assassinations Committee "established that, on the death of Win Scott, the by-then retired Mexico City station chief who had sent out the Kostikov cable, CIA counterintelligence chief Angleton flew immediately to Mexico City, retrieved a photograph of 'Oswald' from the family safe, and destroyed it . . . .” 602
What is particularly interesting, in light of all that we have seen in relation to Angleton's ties to the Mossad, Scott adds further: "Angleton may have undertaken this mission on behalf of the agency. Another possibility is that he undertook it on behalf of a cabal within the government who had conspired to create the `Oswald'-Kostikov story." 603
The Mexico City-Oswald scenario was clearly part of the groundwork for the ultimate framing of Lee Harvey Oswald as a communist sympathizer— perhaps even a KGB operative—who had killed the American president.
And in light of the mysterious appearance of the "Dear Mr. Hunt" letter (ostensibly from Lee Harvey Oswald) mailed from Mexico City, we can only speculate as to whether Angleton himself may have been the mastermind behind the leak of that hitherto unknown document as well. Was the "Dear Mr. Hunt" letter also part of Angleton's tangled web of intrigue?
It was Angleton who was so determined to bury any evidence that proved that Oswald was not, in fact, a KGB operative (as we have already seen in Chapter 8.)
The story told by Nosenko disproved Angleton's thesis entirely—which perhaps explains why Angleton dealt so harshly with Nosenko. That Trento's story—leaking the Angleton memo on Hunt—would incorporate a major portion of Angleton's JFK cover story is interesting, to say the least.
WHAT MOTIVATED ANGLETON?
Pointing toward the intra-CIA turmoil which, in fact, had resulted in
Angleton's ouster from the CIA, is the interesting suggestion in Trento's
story that sources within the CIA had suggested that Angleton was
suspected by some of being a KGB mole.This, of course, is part of the great irony of Angleton's complex life in that it was Angleton who was the prime mover behind long-term internal CIA inquiries into possible infiltration of the agency at the highest levels.
However, Angleton's fiercest critics, as we have seen, have suggested that Angleton was indeed a mole—but not for the Soviets; that instead, Angleton was a full-fledged co-opted agent for Israel.
In the context in which we have examined Angleton's role in the CIA, working for—Israel and its Mossad, this appears to be the real driving force behind Angleton's dealings insofar as the JFK assassination was concerned.
That Trento's story notes Angleton's interest in the Warren Commission investigation only displays part of the picture, however. JFK assassination investigator Bernard Fensterwald detailed how very much interested Angleton was in the JFK assassination.
"The extent of Angleton's involvement in the CIA's end of the assassination investigation first became underscored in 1974, when Senator Howard Baker (R-Tenn.) released some information that he had originally secured while serving on the Senate Watergate Committee.
"Senator Baker disclosed that he had come across at least two CIA `dossiers' indicating that the Agency may have been involved in domestic affairs. He disclosed that one of these CIA files, on Warren Commission critic Bernard Fensterwald, Jr., contained copies of several high-level internal CIA memos which clearly showed that James Angleton was the key CIA official in dealing with matters related to the Kennedy assassination.
"In a memo dated January 13, 1969 to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, Angleton noted that Fensterwald was setting up a Washington-based Committee to Investigate Assassinations. In this confidential memo, Angleton . . . went on to request that Hoover run some kind of vaguely defined identification check on Fensterwald and three other Warren Commission critics associated with him. In June, 1976, new information became available regarding Angleton's key role in dealing with the Warren Commission investigation.
"The Senate Intelligence Committee reported that at a meeting in late December of 1963, Angleton had requested that he be allowed to take over CIA responsibility for dealing with the Warren Commission probe.
"The Senate Committee's Final Report noted that, 'Angleton suggested that his own Counterintelligence Division take over the investigation and [Richard] Helms acceded to this suggestion.' Thereafter, Angleton's staff became responsible for all CIA dealings with the Commission.” 604
So it was that Israel's chief advocate at the CIA became that agency's number one in-house handler for JFK assassination investigation—some would call it a "cover-up"—during the Warren Commission's controversial inquiry into the president's murder.
What's more, Angleton's close friend (and FBI source), William Sullivan, number three man at the FBI, was detailed as the FBI's liaison with the Warren Commission.
(In Chapter 17 we shall learn more about how another prominent friend of Israel helped shape Chief Justice Earl Warren's views about the JFK assassination—pointing the finger, like Angleton, in the direction of the communists.")
THE MURDERED MISTRESS
Angleton's interest in the affairs of John F. Kennedy were evidently
broad-ranging. For example, The Washington Post reported on February 23,
1976 that after Washington socialite Mary Pinchot Meyer was shot to death
(in what was said to be a robbery) on October 12, 1964, it was Angleton
who obtained Mrs. Meyer's diary and destroyed it at CIA headquarters. Mrs. Meyer, in fact, had been a longtime lover of President Kennedy's— one of many, apparently, and her diary contained much information about her relationship with the president. It was her sister, Toni Bradlee, wife of Post editor Ben Bradlee (himself a reported former CIA asset) who provided Angleton Mrs. Meyer's diary for his disposal. 605
What the diary contained is anyone's guess, but it does suggest that Angleton was very much involved in intrigue involving the late president. There have been those who have speculated that the diary may have contained secrets about the CIA-Organized Crime plots to assassinate Castro that JFK may have told Mrs. Meyer about. However, of course, it is just as easy to speculate that perhaps the diary also contained Mrs. Meyer's written memories of President Kennedy's musings about his most unpleasant relationship with the state of Israel.
Angleton's own relationship with Hunt is also quite mysterious to say the least. If indeed Angleton did sign off on a 1966 memo pinpointing Hunt as having been in Dallas, the CIA's shadowy counterintelligence chief seemed to have forgotten by 1972 at the time of the Watergate break-in.
WHAT DID HE KNOW AND
WHEN DID HE KNOW IT?
According to investigative reporter Jim Hougan, Angleton, on June 19,
1972 denied ever having seen Hunt, following revelations that Hunt had
been involved in the Watergate burglary. Hougan quotes Angleton as having
said, "I'd never seen [Hunt] before in my life." 606 This suggests that Angleton was proclaiming ignorance of Hunt's existence, although this, of course, is highly unlikely, especially since we now know of the existence of the memo from Angleton which was evidently drafted in 1966—six years before the Watergate affair.
Or, logically, we could also suggest that the memorandum itself was not, in fact, drafted in 1966 as we have been told. It could, instead, have been drafted at a much later time and then given the earlier date.
What's more, of course, Angleton was knee-deep in the Bay of Pigs invasion planning and it is inconceivable that he would not be aware of the existence of Hunt, the chief political liaison to the anti-Castro Cuban exiles involved in that operation.
Whichever the case, it strongly suggests that there was a lot more to the Angleton-Hunt relationship than meets the eye.
ANGLETON, HUNT &
THE JFK ASSASSINATION
What we can glean from all of that which we have considered thus far is
this: That it was James Jesus Angleton, Israel's ally at the CIA, who was particularly interested—from the very beginning—in overseeing any investigation of the CIA's links to the JFK assassination.
That Angleton's interest in the furor over the JFK assassination was long-standing and continued well into the years beyond the Warren Commission investigation.
That Hunt was, in some way, connected to events linked to the assassination and that he was, in fact, in Dallas—if not on the day of the murder, at least one day prior.
That when public attention began focusing on the CIA's presumed complicity in the president's murder (during the period of the House Select Committee on Assassinations investigation), a memo (written by Angleton and linking Hunt to the JFK murder) was leaked by Angleton to the House Assassinations Committee.
That Angleton's relationship with Hunt was murky, to say the least, and subject to some suspicion.
That Victor Marchetti's disputed article (subject of E. Howard Hunt's libel suit) was acknowledged by Hunt himself to have some apparent plausibility.
That despite his admission that Marchetti's article might have a basis in truth, Hunt did not choose to challenge his former colleagues in the CIA who may have been intent on implicating him in the assassination conspiracy.
That Joe Trento's similar article shed unusual light on internal CIA intrigue involving Lee Harvey Oswald, E. Howard Hunt and the circumstances surrounding the JFK assassination.
That Hunt insisted that he was not guilty of complicity in the president's murder and chose to use a libel suit against The Spotlight to prove his innocence, however unsuccessful he may have been.
That when Hunt prepared his case against The Spotlight he turned to the CIA for help, which kindly supplied no less than Newton Miler, Angleton's longtime deputy, generally characterized as an "Angleton loyalist,"607 as the chief witness called in Hunt's defense.608
This final point is interesting, especially in light of Hunt's initial suspicion that the CIA intended to frame him as he admitted in testimony.
Could it be that somehow Hunt and his CIA colleagues reached a private accord following the publication of The Spotlight article by Victor Marchetti—the publication of which, in effect, frustrated the until-then secret, internal CIA plot against Hunt?
Could it be that both Hunt and the CIA determined that, whatever really happened in Dallas involving Hunt, Oswald and any other CIA-connected figures, was better left alone?
We can only speculate as to the motivation of Hunt and the CIA in this regard. What we do know, however, is that it was Israel's friend at the CIA, the enigmatic James Jesus Angleton, who was the prime mover behind the memorandum that would have been used to frame Hunt for involvement in the assassination.
Was Angleton simply looking out for the interests of the CIA? Or was he also looking out for his own interests? And if so, what were those interests? What did Angleton know about the JFK assassination?
Angleton sent E. Howard Hunt to Dallas just prior to the assassination. What was Angleton's purpose in doing so?
And why was Angleton involved in the sensitive, top-secret CIA Mexico City intrigue which took place over a month prior to the JFK assassination, linking Lee Harvey Oswald to the Soviets and Castro's Cuba?
Angleton's link to Israel and its Mossad is the key to understanding Angleton's unusual behavior that we have outlined.
The Mossad loyalist, James J. Angleton, was the central player in the intrigue between the CIA and the Mossad in the JFK assassination.
Never-before-published information that we will be reviewing later in this chapter confirms our contention that Angleton was indeed the primary high-level CIA collaborator in the JFK assassination conspiracy.
Angleton was the CIA figure involved with the Mossad—if not in the actual planning of the JFK assassination itself—then certainly in key aspects of the subsequent cover-up. E. Howard Hunt, indeed, may have been Angleton's fall guy—another patsy—from the beginning.
HUNT'S SILENCE
What role did E. Howard Hunt play in Angleton's game of intrigue?
Hunt himself is not saying. He has, instead, chosen to deny any
responsibility or involvement—for whatever reasons—and bitterly contests
any suggestions of his connection to the events in Dallas. Perhaps he does so for several reasons. One reason may be that Hunt— like many of his colleagues in the CIA—did not necessarily regret the assassination of JFK. Hunt was bitter toward Kennedy for the president's moves against the CIA and Hunt himself probably felt then (as perhaps he does today) that Kennedy was getting a taste of his own medicine.
What's more—and perhaps most importantly, in a personal sense for Hunt—the ex-CIA man cannot fail to note that many of the key JFK assassination witnesses over the years have met early—and violent—deaths. And like all people Hunt wants to live.
Whatever Hunt does know, we will probably never find out—and Hunt intends to keep it that way.
In the February 1, 1992 edition of his newsletter, New American View, a monthly critique of the Israeli lobby and its power in America, Marchetti recently commented on the renewed furor over the JFK assassination. Marchetti's words speak for themselves:
"As for my personal views on the CIA's involvement in JFK's assassination, I do not (repeat do not) believe that the CIA had anything to do with the young president's murder.
"But it was and still is involved with the government's cover-up of the conspiracy . . .
"Finally, E. Howard Hunt had nothing to do with JFK's assassination. Hunt was in Dallas that day by accident. He was working on another case. But his presence there was an embarrassment to the CIA and a potential threat to the government's cover-up of the conspiracy." 609
Marchetti's earlier controversial article in The Spotlight, as we have pointed out, never suggested that Hunt had actually been in Dallas or that he played a part in the assassination—only that the CIA was considering the option of framing Hunt for the president's murder.
And, as we have seen, it was Israel's contact at the CIA, James J. Angleton who was behind the impending operation against Hunt. However, Marchetti's final comment about Hunt's possible appearance in Dallas is interesting, particularly in light of what we are about to consider.
WAS HUNT A FALL GUY?
There is evidence that Hunt, in fact, may have been inadvertently caught
up in intrigue involving the JFK assassination conspiracy—intrigue beyond
his own control. There have been suggestions that perhaps Hunt was not
actively involved in a genuine assassination plot against Kennedy—as
indeed as suggested in Trento's aforementioned article—and that he was in
Dallas for another purpose entirely. Our source for this little-known information is Gary Wean, formerly of the Los Angeles Police Department's criminal intelligence squad. It was in Chapter 13 that we first became acquainted with Wean who detailed his own dealings and surveillance of Meyer Lansky's Hollywood henchman, Mickey Cohen.
(Wean, it will be recalled, learned that Cohen, along with his Israeli contact, Menachem Begin, later prime minister of Israel, was especially concerned with JFK's Middle East policy and that, in fact, Cohen was using JFK's mistress, actress Marilyn Monroe, as a conduit in an attempt to learn the president's intentions toward Israel.)
THE COP, THE MOVIE STAR
& THE SHERIFF
It was shortly after the JFK assassination that Wean stumbled upon
information relating to the president's murder—information that sheds new—
and interesting—light on how E. Howard Hunt may have come to be implicated
in the crime of the century. According to Wean, it was just several weeks after the president's murder that he (Wean) happened to become acquainted with Dallas Sheriff Bill Decker through their mutual friend, Audie Murphy, the ex-war hero turned-film star. Decker was visiting in Los Angeles and the three men got together along with another friend of Wean's and the talk turned to the JFK assassination.
(Decker, it might be noted, appears to be one Dallas law enforcement official who is definitely in the clear as far as any involvement in the assassination is concerned. It was Decker, in fact, who had ordered his men to investigate the railroad yard behind the picket fence on the grassy knoll from where shots at the president's motorcade appeared to have originated.610 Were Decker a co-conspirator he certainly would not have assisted in the capture of the president's assassins.)
Decker told Wean that he was certain that Lee Harvey Oswald was innocent of the president's murder. The three gentlemen, all of whom were familiar with firearms, didn't believe that Oswald could have carried out the crime with the weapon he was alleged to have used.
`A TERRIBLE DOUBLE
CROSS SOMEWHERE'
However, Wean reports that Sheriff Decker proceeded to elaborate
further, saying, "I have another reason, much stronger, for knowing Oswald
never shot JFK. There's a man in Dallas I've known a longtime. He knows
the entire truth about Oswald's involvement. "He's scared to death to go to the Dallas P.D. or FBI. There has been a terrible double cross somewhere and everybody is scared shit less of everybody else. You wouldn't believe the crazy suspicions and accusations heaped on all law enforcement in the south by the imbeciles in D.C. and the chaos it has created."
"There was no conspiracy in my sheriff's department involving the assassination nor in the Dallas P.D. I've known all these people too long. I would have known it. Believe me, something as 'crazy' as this I'd feel it in my bones." 611
Wean remembered this conversation and later, during a trip to Ruidoso, New Mexico in the company of Audie Murphy, Wean was introduced to Decker's source from Dallas, whom Wean says was named "John."
According to Wean's source, CIA man E. Howard Hunt was indeed involved with Lee Harvey Oswald—but not in planning the president's assassination. Wean reports that John told him that Hunt had something else in mind altogether.
Essentially, according to Wean's source, Hunt—like other leaders in the anti-Castro movement—was becoming frustrated with the Kennedy' administration's moves to achieve at least an informal detente with Castro. Hunt, of course, had devoted much energy to the drive to undermine Castro and now all of his work was being undone.
Wean quoted his source as describing what happened: "Hunt's festering frustration conceived what's become the most bizarre political assassination intrigue of all time. His scheme was to inflame American people against Castro and stirring patriotism to a boiling point not felt since Pearl Harbor. Enraged Americans would demand that our military invade Cuba wiping out the two-bit dictator for his barbarous attempt to 'assassinate' President Kennedy.” 612
FOOTPRINTS TO
CASTRO'S DOORSTEP
"There was to be an attempt on the life of President Kennedy so
`realistic' that it's failure would be looked upon as nothing less than a
miracle. Footprints would lead right to Castro's doorstep, a trail that the
rankest amateur could not lose. Unfortunately for Oswald he fit the bill
perfect for Hunt's operation." 613 "At first Hunt did not tell Oswald what his exact mission was, except it was of the highest National Security priority . . . It was only two months before the 'fake assassination' when Hunt gave Oswald the rifle, explaining his part in the plan. Oswald was to fire three shots from his rifle 'in the air.' He was to abandon it and empty cartridges at the scene and quickly leave the building for a rendezvous with agents who'd transport him to a secret destination."
He'd remain in hiding until after Cuba was invaded by the U.S. A fake trail to Mexico City ending at the Cuban Embassy would lead investigators to think he'd fled to Cuba, the belief that 'Castro planned the assassination' of President Kennedy [which failed] and [that] the [attempted] 'assassin' was being harbored under [Castro's] protection in Cuba would stir the Americans to a feverish pitch of anger . . ." 614
According to Wean's source, Hunt told Oswald that President Kennedy himself was not aware of the plan, but high-ranking cabinet officers were in on the deal. Oswald would be free to come back and live as a free man after Castro was dealt with. 615
Wean was also told that the famous "attempted assassination" of General Edwin Walker, the outspoken anti-Castro leader in Dallas, was also part of the plan to establish a pattern of violent activity by a suspected "proCastro activist." 616
However, Wean reports, John told him that in the course of the planning for the fraudulent assassination attempt, something went wrong— there was interference from outside—from a power beyond E. Howard Hunt's immediate influence.
John noted: "Of course, all covert operations have inherent dangers and are subject to break-downs. By my God, this was no break-down or neglect of performance, or even bad luck. What happened is incomprehensible. " 617
In short, according to the source in Dallas, Hunt's plan backfired. Shots were actually fired at JFK's motorcade and the president was indeed killed. However, John did not believe that the blame lay at the hands of either the Mafia or the anti-Castro Cubans. He believed that another force had intervened.
"It can't be that the Mafia or Cuban exiles [did] it," noted John. "They had no motive, as they'd already been given inside tips an operation was underway that would return them to Cuba. It would have been totally stupid for them to interfere . . .
According to John: "Only a few of Hunt's most trusted men knew all of his plans down to the last detail. It is impossible to believe any of them is a traitor. Still it's clear, whoever shot Kennedy had to know all these minute details to pull it off the way they did. Something frightening, horribly sinister had interposed Hunt's mission."618
Wean and Audie Murphy listened in shock at what they had been told and, at the time, John gave Murphy a packet of what he described as evidence which backed up his story. However, it was just several days later that John asked that they forget what they had been told.
According to Wean, Murphy informed him that he had been advised from Dallas that "Hunt and his agents have regrouped from their horrified panic and sprung back into action. Hunt's machinations and connection with Oswald had to be covered up at all costs." According to Murphy, military intelligence, the FBI and the CIA were all in a panic.
"If their secrets were to be exposed they'd be rooted out in an eruption of calamitous national anger. In their nightmares all they can see is a firing squad. In fact they have solemnly determined that national security is at stake. That's their justification for a cover-up." 619
To assuage the fears of John in Dallas, he assured John that the documents he had received from him had been destroyed.
Murphy himself may well be one other on the long list of additional victims of the JFK assassination conspiracy. The actor died in a plane crash in 1971. Gary Wean, however, has lived to tell the story of what he was told.
Quite accurately, Wean himself has described how Hunt and Oswald both must have reacted if the story that John told Wean and Murphy was indeed true.
`A DOUBLE CROSS OF
FANTASTIC DIMENSIONS'?
According to Wean's assessment of what may have then happened,
"Hunt and Oswald salvaging their senses from the paralyzing shock of
Kennedy being murdered most certainly had identical thoughts: 'I have been
framed.' "A double-cross of fantastic dimensions. The consequences were too devastating, and terrifying to grasp. It was the end for them. Regardless of Hunt's convictions that his closest men were beyond suspicion, one of them was a spy—a mole in deep, deep cover." 620
It is up to E. Howard Hunt to provide us the missing pieces of the puzzle. It does not seem likely that he will.
JOHN'S IDENTITY?
There is additional documentation about the activities of an individual
named "John" who was active in the Dallas area and in Miami (Hunt's base
of operations with the anti-Castro Cuban exiles) immediately before and after
the JFK assassination.In his book Conspiracy, Anthony Summers describes one John Martino who was known to have connections to both the Mafia, Meyer Lansky's lieutenant, Santo Trafficante, Jr., in particular, and the Central Intelligence Agency. In fact, Martino admitted in 1975 that he had been a CIA contract agent and that he had inside knowledge about the circumstances surrounding the JFK assassination. Summers quotes Martino as having said, "The anti-Castro people put Oswald together. Oswald didn't know who he was working for—he was just ignorant of who was really putting him together." 621
After Martino died in 1978, Summers notes, his widow claimed that "the Company" (i.e. the CIA) picked up his body to determine the cause of death, which was established to have been a heart attack. 622
Martino and film star Audie Murphy unquestionably had at least one connection, indirect, at the least, that can be documented.
Murphy was employed for a period during the mid-1960's by New Orleans businessman, D'Alton Smith.623 Smith was an intimate personal associate of Meyer Lansky's Louisiana front man, Carlos Marcello.
The story told by John Martino, at the very least, has a ring similar to the story told by the "John" whom Gary Wean met in Dallas. However, shortly before Final Judgment went to press, Wean revealed to this author the identity of the gentleman named John who told him what had really happened in Dallas.
According to Wean when he wrote his book describing his meeting with John, he deliberately did not reveal John's last name, although he knew exactly who John was. What's more, according to Wean, he slightly altered his physical description of John in order to protect his identity.
At the time Wean's book was written, John was alive. However, on April 5, 1991 John died, like Audie Murphy, in a bizarre airplane explosion that made national headlines. He was John Tower who, in 1961 had been the first Republican in this century to win a Senate seat from Texas.
A stalwart ally of the CIA throughout his career, it was Tower who took many of the secrets of the Iran-Contra scandal to his grave, having headed the commission which critics contend was a CIA whitewash of the events, particularly those involving Israel's role in the affair.
A 'THIRD FORCE'?
Veteran JFK assassination researcher, Dick Russell himself has
pondered the possibility that the CIA's relationship with Lee Harvey
Oswald—whatever the nature of that relationship—was "usurped by another
group.” 624 As Russell notes, "Many people in the CIA had reasons to cover up their own relationship to Oswald, even if this had nothing to do with an assassination conspiracy. In considering this plethora of possibilities . . . what cannot be overlooked is that a 'third force' was aware of the counterspy web [surrounding Oswald] and seized on it to their own advantage." 625
Russell has also pointed out that the anti-Castro Cuban exiles now believe that there was much more going on behind the scenes than even they realized at the time.
According to Russell, "[Legendary longtime CIA contract agent] Gerry Patrick Hemming, who still keeps his ear to the ground in Miami's Little Havana, maintains that some of the exiles who thought they knew the score in 1963 have today become convinced that they were being used.
"They were incited to an anti-Kennedy fervor by being let in on the secret knowledge that Kennedy was seriously exploring accommodation with Castro. They were told that their dream of retaking their homeland was dead—unless something drastic was done. They took the bait.
"Should it have become necessary in the design of the behind-the-scenes planners, the exiles were also expendable. Implicating a few Cuban refugees in the assassination was not desirable, but it would not come at a high cost, especially if . . . they had worked diligently to build a cover as Castro agents.
"Small cogs in the wheel, they could also be made to disappear. So Cuban exiles were merely the base of the pyramid. They had no power to initiate the cover-up that followed. And neither did organized crime."626
WHO HAD THE POWER?
Hemming himself has spoken of at least one faction of anti-Castro
Cuban exiles who seemed to be out of the conventional loop. According to
Hemming: "It's hard to say exactly who this select group of Cuban exiles
was really working for. For a while they were reporting to Bill Harvey's ex-FBI
CIA guys. Some were reporting back to [J. Edgar] Hoover, or the new [Defense
Intelligence Agency]. 'There was a third force—pretty much outside CIA channels, outside our own private operation down in the [Florida] Keys—that was doing all kinds of shit, and had been all through 1963. [emphasis added]
"Then after the assassination, a lot of us presumed that somewhere down the line, the KGB was orchestrating with Fidel to do the Dallas job. Not until later did we figure out that most of the exiles being approached were being set up as patsies themselves.
"And not by Castro or the Russians. It was domestic. Somebody like J. Edgar Hoover. Who else had the power?" 627
Dare we suggest an answer to Hemming's question—"Who else had the power?" Obviously, the answer is this: Israel, its Mossad and Israel's powerful domestic American lobby and its contacts at all levels.
In fact, there have been several widely-read works relating to the JFK assassination which have indeed suggested that Oswald, at least, was roped into some sort of "dummy assassination" type of operation which he was led to believe was of the nature described by Gary Wean's source in Dallas.
Executive Action, the book loosely based on the film of the same name, presents Oswald as being manipulated in this fashion. Likewise with former CIA contract agent Robert Morrow's work, Betrayal, which Morrow based on his own "inside" information from his involvement with figures involved in the conspiracy.
More recently, Don DeLillo's novel, Libra, presents Oswald at the center of a "dummy assassination" attempt which was manipulated by others and went awry. (One CIA character in the novel bears a striking resemblance, in several ways, to E. Howard Hunt.)
However, there is yet one quite extraordinary piece of the puzzle which actually implicates a known longtime Mossad asset with direct involvement in the events in Dealey Plaza. It involves the apparent role by longtime CIA contract operative Frank Sturgis in the actual assassination itself.
MOSSAD OPERATIVE IN DEALEY PLAZA
In the course of her testimony in the case of E. Howard Hunt's libel
suit against The Spotlight, CIA asset Marita Lorenz testified that Sturgis
told her afterward that, "We killed the president that day . . . Everything was
covered in advance. No arrests, no real newspaper investigation. It was all
covered, very professional." 628 Although some JFK researchers express doubts about Miss Lorenz' story, Cuba's chief of counterintelligence, General Fabian Escalante, vouches for her, based on his own extensive study of the JFK assassination. Escalante told journalist Claudia Furiati that Cuban intelligence had determined that, in fact, "Sturgis was in charge of communications—receiving and transmitting information on the movement at Dealey Plaza and the motorcade to the shooters and others." 629
If we are to believe that Sturgis was, in fact, involved in the actual mechanics of the assassination, the historical evidence suggests that Sturgis could have been functioning as a knowing Mossad tool in the conspiracy, or, at the very least, have been indirectly working on behalf of the Mossad. While this assertion will at first astound even the most seasoned reader of JFK assassination literature the following factor must be considered:
What few people know is that Sturgis had ties to Israel's Mossad, going back fifteen years prior to the JFK assassination. Writing in the July 1975 issue of Argosy magazine, F. Peter Model reported that Sturgis was a "Hagannah mercenary during the first (1948) Israeli-Arab war," 630 and that Sturgis also had a girlfriend in Europe in the 1950's who worked for Israeli intelligence and with whom he worked.
Sturgis himself is quoted by JFK assassination researcher A. J. Weberman as having said that he assisted his girlfriend as a courier in Europe in a number of her endeavors on behalf of the Mossad. 631
In addition, former Time-Life correspondent Andrew St. George—who knew Sturgis quite well and spent time with Sturgis alongside Castro in the hills of Cuba during the Cuban revolution—has also reported that it was well known among anti-Castro Cuban exiles that Sturgis had also worked for the Mossad and had done so for a long period of time. 632
In fact, as St. George has also revealed, during the heyday of the CIA's anti-Castro operations in Miami with which Sturgis and E. Howard Hunt were so closely associated, some 12 to 16 Mossad agents worked out of Miami under the command of Mossad Deputy Director Yehuda S. Sipper, their influence reaching throughout Latin America and the Caribbean.
Citing a 1976 CIA memo, Professor John Newman who has investigated CIA knowledge of Lee Harvey Oswald's activities says that Sturgis founded the International Anti-Communist Brigade and that "the backers of Sturgis' group have never been fully established." 633
JFK writers Warren Hinckle and William Turner have said that "most of [Sturgis'] funding came from dispossessed casino owners and was funneled through Norman Roughouse' Rothman,"634 who was, according to author Gus Russo, not only "the partner of Meyer Lansky"635 but also the original "mobster middleman"636 between the CIA and the Lansky syndicate in the Castro assassination plots. Russo, however, says that Rothman's support for Sturgis came "from unknown sources" yet cites Hinckle and Turner as his source. So the question remains: just who really was funding Sturgis?
Could the Sturgis brigade have been part of the Mossad's Miami-based operations, intertwined with Sturgis' own CIA-sponsored intrigue in the same sphere of influence during the same period?
STURGIS, BANISTER,
FERRIE AND OSWALD
As we shall see, this speculation may not be far off the mark. Newman
adds that a reported "sub-unit" 637 of Sturgis' Brigade was CIA contract agent
Gerry Patrick Hemming's Intercontinental Penetration Force (known as
"Interpen"). Citing a February 1, 1977 CIA Security Office memo, Newman
says the anti-Castro Cuban training grounds around Lake Ponchartrain
outside New Orleans were run by Hemming as part of Interpen and that
Sturgis was connected with those Interpen operations. 638 Those activities around Lake Ponchartrain are known to have involved two of the key players surrounding Lee Harvey Oswald prior to the JFK assassination: CIA contract agents Guy Banister and David Ferrie.
In fact, there is an Israeli connection to Interpen. According to Hemming himself, Interpen's "most important contact in the United States" 639 was New York financier, Theodore Racoosin, whom Hemming described as "one of the key founders of the state of Israel." 640
After having read Final Judgment, Hemming frankly told the author that although he personally has seen no evidence that convinces him the Mossad participated directly in the JFK assassination, he did say that "I have known since the late 1960's that the Mossad was aware of the JFK murder even before it happened, and they later did a full investigation on the matter and have since retained all such files." 641 [Emphasis added.]
MOSSAD TENTACLES
SURROUND OSWALD
In any case, we not only find CIA asset Clay Shaw of New Orleans tied
to the Mossad through his association with the Permindex operation (as
were Banister and Ferrie), but we also find two other CIA-connected players
in the anti-Castro operations out of New Orleans (Sturgis and Hemming)
were in the Mossad's sphere of influence. And Lee Harvey Oswald is tied to
all of the key players involved. In light of all of this, we would not be venturing into the world of fantasy to suggest that the operation involving Sturgis, Marita Lorenz and the anti-Castro Cubans who traveled to Dallas, arriving there on November 21, 1963 to meet with E. Howard Hunt (and then with Jack Ruby) was actually a Mossad "false flag" operation, deliberately involving a clique of anti-Castro Cubans manipulated by their Mossad-connected CIA handler.
Since, according to Miss Lorenz, Sturgis later admitted that his team in Dallas did actually participate in the assassination, it is conceivable that although Sturgis and his group did meet up with Hunt in Dallas that Hunt himself did not know that the Sturgis team was going to be involved in an actual assassination attempt or thought they were only involved in a "dummy" assassination attempt—if he even knew that much.
As we have said, Hunt's knowledge—or lack thereof—remains a mystery and his actual culpability in any assassination conspiracy per se cannot be pinned down. But the circumstances do suggest that Hunt does know a lot more about what happened in Dallas than he has admitted.
In any event, there is no question that, based on the facts about Sturgis that we now do know that at least one person who has reportedly confessed to actual involvement in the JFK assassination—Frank Sturgis—did have multiple longtime links to the Mossad for many years prior to (and after) the time of the JFK assassination.
This, in itself, is a major revelation and one that is quite relevant when considering the thesis put forth in Final Judgment.
A character named Chauncey Holt, who claims to have been in Dallas and involved in the circumstances surrounding the assassination summarized things quite well. According to Holt:
"Dallas that day was flooded with all kinds of people who ended up there for some reason. It's always been my theory that whoever was the architect of this thing—and no one will ever know who was behind it, manipulating all these people. I believe that they flooded this area with so many characters with nefarious reputations because they thought, 'Well, if all these people get scooped up it'll muddy the waters so much that they'll never straighten it out." 642
That there were people in Dallas on the day JFK was killed who may not have known the real reason they were there is also buttressed by other sources. Michael Milan, whose book The Squad outlines his role in working as part of a secret U.S. government team collaborating with the Lansky Syndicate says that there were at least several people operating in Dallas who believed that they were not involved in a conspiracy to kill John F. Kennedy, but, instead, in a conspiracy to kill Texas Governor John B. Connally. (We first considered Milan's claims in Chapter 14.) 643
Could some of those involved in the JFK assassination been manipulated into believing that they were involved in a plot against Connally (when in fact the ultimate target was Kennedy)?
Under such a scenario—without delving into the mechanics of the JFK assassination that have been considered time and again by those fascinated by the subject—it is possible that one of the assassins in Dealey Plaza did, in fact, take deliberate aim at Connally, perhaps not knowing that, at the same time, other assassins of whom he was unaware, were, from another location, taking aim at JFK. The Connally shooter was, in effect, a decoy.
In his biography of Connally, James Reston, Jr. suggests that Oswald had been recruited by Jack Ruby as part of an organized crime plan to kill Connally, rather than Kennedy. Reston suggests that Kennedy was the victim, purely by chance.
THE MOSSAD'S JFK COVER STORY
The unusual contention that Connally was the target and that Kennedy
was an unintended victim has some very interesting support.
Former Mossad operative Victor Ostrovsky writes in his book By Way
of Deception that part of his Mossad training included an in-depth review of
the JFK assassination which was part of the required course of study for all
new Mossad recruits. According to Ostrovsky: "One particularly intriguing aspect of the course was a movie called, "A President on the Crosshairs," a detailed study of the November 22, 1963 assassination of John F. Kennedy.
"The Mossad theory was that the killers—Mafiosa hit men, not Lee Harvey Oswald—actually wanted to murder then Texas Governor John Connally, who was in the car with JFK but was only wounded.
"Oswald was seen as a dupe in the whole thing and Connally as the target of mobsters trying to muscle their way into the oil business.
"The Mossad believed that the official version of the assassination was pure, unadulterated hokum. To test their theory, they did a simulation exercise of the presidential cavalcade to see if expert marksmen with far better equipment than Oswald's could hit a moving target from the recorded distance of 88 yards. They couldn't. It would have been the perfect cover. If Connally had been killed, everyone would have assumed it was an attempt on JFK. If they'd wanted to get Kennedy, they could have got him anywhere."
He writes: "According to what we found, the rifle was probably aimed at the back of Connally's head, and JFK gestured or moved just at the wrong moment—or possibly the assassin hesitated." 644
Now what Ostrovsky notes further is of particular interest, especially in light of the theory presented in Final Judgment. According to Ostrovsky, the Mossad had every film taken of the Dallas assassination, pictures of the area, the topography, aerial photographs—everything.
Is it possible that the reason that the Mossad had so much information about Dealey Plaza was not because the Mossad studied the area AFTER the Kennedy assassination but BEFORE the assassination?
That the Mossad would go to the length of calculating an extensive cover story (presented to its own recruits) is interesting in itself and perhaps further evidence that the Mossad had a very particular interest in the JFK assassination.
There were clearly many forces at work in Dealey Plaza, perhaps beyond the comprehension of any one conspirator—including Oswald, Ruby or even Hunt or Sturgis or any of the others involved. Some of the conspirators may have indeed been led to believe this was a Mafia hit on Connally and that it, in fact, turned out to be a hit on Kennedy.
The Mossad story that it was a botched operation aimed at Connally and resulting in the accidental killing of Kennedy sounds like nothing less than— to borrow a phrase from Ostrovsky—"pure, unadulterated hokum" coming from the Mossad itself.
And then there is the question of the manner in which Lee Harvey Oswald was being made to appear as though he were a pro-Castro/pro-Soviet agitator through the Mexico City Scenario (orchestrated by the CIA) and of his manipulation in New Orleans by the Clay Shaw-Guy Banister apparatus, which, in turn was directly involved in the activities of CIA and Mossad asset Frank Sturgis in the affairs at Lake Ponchartrain. Did Oswald think that he was, in fact, operating on behalf of the CIA—even on behalf of John F. Kennedy himself—setting up a "phony" assassination attempt that could be blamed on Castro, igniting international fury at the Cuban leader? We'll probably never know the truth.
The bottom line is this: at all critical times when Oswald was being set up as the patsy—and following the assassination itself—the fine hand of Israel's Mossad and its allies in the CIA is evident.
FALSE FLAGS IN DEALEY PLAZA?
Is it possible that some of the other conspirators at the lowest levels
were led to believe that the whole operation was designed to kill the two
proverbial birds with one stone: that is (1) To eliminate Connally, who was allegedly perceived to be a roadblock in the way of the mob, and, in turn
(2) To force Kennedy—or otherwise give him the excuse—to finally take action against Fidel Castro who had shut down organized crime operations in Cuba?
Could, for example, some of the conspirators been told that the plan was to kill Connally and make it appear as though it were a Castro sponsored bullet intended for the president which missed—and thereby force Kennedy into retaliating against Castro?
One can only imagine, for example, the surprise of a hidden gunman firing at John Connally when he realized that another gunman was firing at John F. Kennedy.
Or, dare we suggest the most frightening possibility of all: did John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert concoct some anti-Castro provocation—even a "dummy assassination"—that was ultimately infiltrated and manipulated by hostile forces within the CIA and its allies in the Mossad?
One could spend hours concocting a variety of scenarios. However, all of the evidence we have seen suggests that the JFK assassination conspiracy was multi-leveled and ranging out in a variety of directions.
Were all of these "characters with nefarious reputations" simply "false flags" being utilized by what Chauncey Holt called "the architect of this thing"? Were these JFK assassination "suspects" brought there by a force which wanted to "muddy the waters"? If so, we cannot help but be reminded of the Mossad's famous use of false flags in its criminal endeavors. Was there a "dummy assassination" attempt, and if so, who—or what—was the force that intervened?
One investigator, Scott Thompson, who believes in the "dummy assassination" theory, has gone so far as to charge that the provocation against Castro was being carried out with the full knowledge of Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. Thompson alleges that E. Howard Hunt was, in fact, in charge of coordinating the fraudulent assassination attempt. Thompson notes, however, that "it remains unclear to this day who intervened into the dummy assassination set-up and turned it into the real thing.” 645
Former CIA contract agent Robert Morrow has lent credence to the "dummy assassination attempt" scenario. Morrow has reported that he had been told that CIA operatives, working with Cuban exiles, "had some kind of test they were doing, a fake assassination attempt against Kennedy."646
Writing in Farewell America under the pseudonym "James Hepburn," veteran French intelligence officer Herve LaMarre suggests: "Oswald was probably told that he had been chosen to participate in a new antiCommunist operation together with [David] Ferrie and several other agents.
"The plan consisted of influencing public opinion by simulating an attack against President Kennedy, whose policy of coexistence with the Communists deserved a reprimand. Another assassination attempt, also designed to arouse public feeling, had been simulated on April 10 against General [Edwin A.] Walker."647
MORE CIA-MOSSAD DISINFORMATION?
Although Farewell America has been an oft-quoted "underground"
classic among JFK researchers, its origins are murky, to say the least.
While the book contains much intriguing information, there is a very good
possibility that the book is classic CIA-Mossad disinformation. According to JFK researchers Warren Hinckle and William Turner, Farewell America was prepared under the direction and imprimatur of French President Charles DeGaulle, who was, as we noted in Chapter 15, a victim of assassination attempts financed by the Permindex operation that played the central part in the JFK assassination conspiracy.648 However, according to JFK writer Gus Russo, the book's origins are a little more complicated than that.
Russo claims that shortly after the JFK assassination—when Robert Kennedy launched a private inquiry into his brother's murder, utilizing a British intelligence asset who was a long-time Kennedy family friend (an inquiry which we referenced at the beginning of Chapter 9)—the British investigator hired two former French intelligence operatives to conduct the investigation. Russo says that one was Andre Ducret, former head of the French intelligence agency, and that the other was known only as "Philippe," but believed to be Philippe deVosjoli, former head of French intelligence in Washington.
The French investigators then spent several years conducting the investigation, finally providing RFK a report that alleged, generally, that Texas oil barons in league with Lyndon Johnson had been behind the assassination. Although RFK was killed shortly after receiving the report, the British agent who sponsored the investigation asked the surviving brother, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, what should be done with the report. Kennedy said his family was not interested, according to Russo, and at that point the report was turned over to Herve LaMarre who then fashioned the report into the book Farewell America. While never published in the United States, the book nonetheless received "underground" distribution here.649
However, while the book (and the report on which it was based) may have contained grains of truth, there is good reason to believe that it was largely CIA-Mossad disinformation. Here's why:
If indeed Philippe deVosjoli was one of those who handled the "investigation" for the Kennedy friend in British intelligence, the fact is that Vosjoli had a "long friendship [and] special relationship" with the Mossad's CIA loyalist James J. Angleton 650 to the point that deVosjoli not only refused French orders to spy on the United States, but instead apparently helped Angleton conduct espionage against France.651
Considering this, we can understand why Farewell America was so vague and so inconclusive and steered the finger of blame away from both the CIA and the Mossad, and, for that matter, suppressed the little-known "French connection" to the JFK assassination that has been long discussed, but which, if dissected as we shall now do here, points directly toward not only Angleton at the CIA, but the manipulations of disloyal elements in French intelligence by both Angleton and his Mossad allies.
It's an amazing story that has never been told before, but which we will outline here for the first time ever.
THE FRENCH CONNECTION
In a private communication to this author after he read the first draft of
Final Judgment—sent to him by no less than former U.S. Congressman
Paul Findley (R-Ill.)—former French intelligence officer Pierre Neuville
stated (based on his own inside knowledge) that a French team—professional assassins—were among the actual shooters in Dealey Plaza, committing the
crime at the behest of the Israeli Mossad. (In the Postscript to this volume
we review the remarkable story of this Frenchman and his own astounding
experiences with the Mossad.) In Neuville's judgment: "Never the Prime Minister of Israel would have involved Mossad people, American Jews or CIA personnel in the execution part of the conspiracy. Even the CIA contract the services of other members of the intelligence community (they like the French style) to wash dirty linens. The right hand does not know what the left did. The cover-up team doesn't know who execute. And the executioners are not interested in the aftermath of their mission. They don't care less."652
According to Neuville's sources, then-Mossad assassination chief Yitzhak Shamir (later prime minister of Israel) arranged the hiring of at least one of the assassins through the deputy chief of the French intelligence service (the SDECE), Colonel Georges deLannurien.
"It was no coincidence," Neuville wrote, "that on the very day of the execution of the president by the French team that [deLannurien] was at Langley meeting with James Jesus Angleton, the Mossad mole."
According to Neuville, "There are no coincidences in the suspicion business—just cover-ups. The case of communist infiltration of the French secret service was an appropriate cover-up to justify the presence of Colonel deLannurien at Langley, Virginia." 653
It seems obvious that Angleton and deLannurien were together for a very specific purpose: damage control—making sure that the assassination cover-up fell into place after the crime itself had been committed. Angleton himself told the House Assassinations Committee that de Lannurien had come to his office for just that purpose: seeking assistance in routing out communist moles in the SDECE. 654
This controversy—alleged KGB infiltration into French intelligence— was a direct result of Angleton's machinations. It was Angleton (often prodded by his Mossad allies) who had a history of fingering alleged Soviet infiltrators in other nations' intelligence services, creating mass disarray, confusion, bitterness and resentment in their ranks.
Following World War II Angleton served as American intelligence liaison with the SDECE and maintained close friendships with a number of French intelligence officials throughout his career. And undoubtedly these were Frenchmen who shared Angleton's devotion to Israel.
One particularly embittered high-ranking SDECE officer, Leonard Houneau, who had been caught in Angleton's web and was ultimately cleared of the slander that he was a Soviet mole, later said, "The whole story was invented. Angleton was a madman and an alcoholic. He was trying to set us against one another." 655
THE OAS MERCENARY
Interestingly enough, it was OAS mercenary, Jean Souetre, who
approached the CIA in June of 1963 with information on alleged communists in the DeGaulle government and in French intelligence—one of
Angleton's widely-documented preoccupations.656 Angleton would have
been very much "in the know" as to Souetre's activities (and, indeed, may
have been actively collaborating with Souetre). In Chapter 12 we noted that it was Souetre who was picked up in Dallas on November 22, 1963 and expelled from the United States and who was also CIA man E. Howard Hunt's OAS liaison. It was Souetre who also maintained an informal
OAS outpost at Guy Banister's office at 544 Camp Street in New Orleans. What's more, Souetre maintained ties with Meyer Lansky's allies in the Corsican Mafia. All of this, certainly, suggests a very clear pattern which spells more than coincidence. The plot thickens, however. As we saw in Chapter 12, there is some question as to whether the individual picked up in Dallas was, in fact, Souetre or someone using his name.
Souetre has suggested that it was another Frenchman, one Michael Mertz, who may have been the guilty party who was actually in Dallas and using Souetre's name. What makes this allegation most provocative is that Mertz was a former French SDECE officer who had infiltrated the antiDeGaulle OAS and foiled a plot against DeGaulle's life. 657
(There is firm evidence that in at least one instance Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion "foiled" an OAS "plot" against DeGaulle, bringing the conspiracy to DeGaulle's attention. As a consequence, according to Ben-Gurion's biographer, "Ben-Gurion now received [DeGaulle's] gratitude." 658
(In this particular instance, however, the alleged conspirator was released since there was not enough evidence to keep him in custody.659 Was this "plot" perhaps—in reality—an Israeli operation designed to bring Israel back into DeGaulle's good graces? We can only speculate. We can only speculate, likewise, that perhaps Mertz's rescue of DeGaulle from yet another "plot" may have also been a similar Israeli-orchestrated operation.)
In any case, Mertz's connections went much further. Mertz was also engaged in the illegal drug racket, said to be Paris connection man for the Lansky-Trafficante-Corsican Mafia network examined in Chapter 12. 660
Just shortly after the JFK assassination, Dr. Lawrence Alderson, a Houston dentist, was questioned by the FBI. Alderson, who had struck up a friendship with the real Jean Souetre while both were in their respective country's armed services, said that he was told that "The FBI felt Souetre had either killed JFK or knew who had done it."661 And that could have included the aforementioned Mertz.
Former CIA insider Robert Morrow, enmeshed in much of the intrigue surrounding the activities of the Clay Shaw-Guy Banister operation in New Orleans, contends it was Mertz who was on one of the assassination teams that struck down John F. Kennedy in Dallas.662 According to Morrow, Mertz was on the Angleton-supervised CIA ZR/Rifle Team of foreign mercenaries which included the mysterious assassin code-named QJ/WIN. Aside from Mertz, among others put forth as possible French-connected assassins in the events in Dealey Plaza include Robert Blemant, a narcotics trafficker and intermediary between the Corsican Mafia and the CIA; and Joe Attia, a heroin financier and assassin for the SDECE. 663
According to JFK researcher Steve Revele, "Recently released top-secret CIA documents indicate that CIA assassin QJ/WIN was a Luxembourgbased smuggler named Jose Mankel, and the other, WI/ROGUE, was a Soviet-born Paris bank robber David Dzitzichvili (also spelled Tzitzichvili; alias David Dato)." 664
The bottom line, though, is that all of those mentioned have precisely the kind of connections that link them to not only the CIA, but also French intrigue and thence to Israel and its Mossad.
ISRAEL'S FRENCH CONNECTIONS
Although the SDECE was DeGaulle's own service, the agency was as
much apparently out of DeGaulle's actual hands-on control as the CIA was
out of JFK's control. As DeGaulle's biographer said of the fight between
DeGaulle and the OAS, the conflict was "within the State itself." 665 In fact,
at least one assassination attempt against DeGaulle by the Permindex-and
Israeli-backed OAS came as a direct result of "inside" information.666 What's
more, there was one high-ranking SDECE official, Louis Betholini, later
discovered to be "an OAS sleeper [secret agent]." 667 And according to historian Paul Henissart, there was—within the SDECE—a high percentage of anti-DeGaulle officers who were, in fact, sympathetic to the OAS. Like its self-centered American counterpart, the CIA, "the SDECE's main worry, according to well-informed sources, was to protect its own personnel and interests during [the] difficult period [of conflict between DeGaulle and the OAS]. 668
Intelligence historian Richard Deacon has noted, for his own part, that in France, during this difficult period, there was "a good deal of unofficial support for Israel, notably in the [SDECE]"669 pointing further toward the role of SDECE officers in arranging the assassination of John F. Kennedy on behalf of its allies in the Israeli Mossad.
According to Stewart Steven, an authority on the history of the Mossad, "Brilliant in many respects, the SDECE had the reputation internationally of being the rogue elephant of the world's intelligence circus. The CIA regarded it as being 'leaky as a sieve,' and probably with some justification, for few services had so many departmental heads constantly at loggerheads with one another, all serving different masters, either within France itself or in some cases abroad.
"The Israelis, however, had always got along with the French service very well. As an ally in the tricky world in which the Mossad was obliged to operate, the SDECE had proved itself extremely useful, principally because its officers did not feel obliged to necessarily receive political authority for its operations. This gave the service a free booting quality very much like the Israelis themselves but without Israeli discipline and order.
"Mossad's contacts within the service," said Steven, "tended to be with the ex-OAS elements, those opposed to DeGaulle for what they believed to be his sell-out of French interests in the Algerian war of independence." 670
JACKAL OR JACL?
To complicate matters, DeGaulle himself had reached a truce with the
OAS in early 1963 and had helped arrange for its members to set up
operations elsewhere. 671 One or more of these "former" enemies of
DeGaulle, now operating under the auspices of his own intelligence service,
or at least within its sphere of influence, may have been brought into the
JFK assassination conspiracy. The likelihood that an Israeli-linked faction of
DeGaulle's intelligence service, the SDECE, might have recruited an
assassin—particularly a Corsican—for the hit against JFK is very strong. The SDECE was divided into five "services." Service Five was known as "Action" and was dominated by Corsicans. According to Frederick Forsyth's background account of the conflict between DeGaulle and the OAS (the subject of his novel, The Day of the Jackal) these Corsicans, "had been professional thugs from the underworld before being enlisted, kept up their old contacts, and on more than one occasion enlisted the aid of their former underworld friends to do a particularly dirty job for the government.
"It was these activities that gave rise to talk in France of a 'parallel' (unofficial) police, supposedly at the orders of one of President de Gaulle's right-hand men, M. Jacques Foccart. In truth no 'parallel' police existed; the activities attributed to them were carried out by the Action Service strong-arms or temporarily enlisted gang-bosses from the `milieu.’” 672
In light of Forsyth's famous "Jackal," it might be noted that active in Europe during the period of the joint plots against JFK and Charles DeGaulle was a Jewish terrorist group known as the Jewish AntiCommunist League—or JACL. This JACL in fact, collaborated with the OAS. So it seems Frederick Forsyth knew whereof he spoke when he described a fictional OAS-sponsored "Jackal" seeking to destroy DeGaulle.
THE INTRIGUE COMES FULL CIRCLE
However, there is even more evidence suggesting that the so-called
"French connection" to the JFK assassination is indeed, instead, the Israeli
connection reaching all the way to Dallas. In 1965 a bizarre crime took place which exposed the close ties between certain elements in DeGaulle's intelligence agency, the Israeli Mossad and the French Corsican Mafia underworld. And, incredibly enough, this same crime implicated individuals whose names have been linked with the JFK assassination as a consequence of subsequent revelations. The crime in question was the murder of a Moroccan political figure, one Mehdi BenBarka who was a critic of the ruling regime in his native country. (Although an Arab regime, the Moroccan government maintained covert cooperation with the Mossad.)
Israeli historian Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi assessed the parameters of Ben-Barka's demise as follows: "The Mossad became involved in the kidnapping of Ben-Barka in Paris. He was later murdered in cold blood. Since the affair took place on French soil, and involved collaboration with right-wing [i.e. pro-OAS] elements in the [SDECE], it led to a major political crisis, to a purge of the service by DeGaulle.” 673
The irony for DeGaulle was immense. According to historian Stewart Steven, "As always . . . one arm of the SDECE didn't know what the other was doing. As one department [of the SDECE] was arranging for Ben Barka's assassination, another [arm of the French intelligence agency] was organizing a regular monthly paycheck paid [Ben Barka] through a French scientific research center, one of the covers for the extensive SDECE operation in Africa." 674
Dan Raviv and Yossi Melman, Israeli historians, commented on the crisis as follows: "De Gaulle, who suspected that his secret agency might be plotting against him, was absolutely furious. He immediately ordered that the secret service's house be put in order. He also directed his anger at Israel." 675 The French president "ordered that the Mossad's European command be removed from Paris, and he also ordered a cessation of all intelligence cooperation between the two nations." 676
According to historian Stewart Steven, "As far as President DeGaulle was concerned, the implications were that Israel was dealing with the OAS in France, which was still active, still bent on revenge, and indubitably involved through its supporters in the SDECE in the killing of Ben Barka. It meant that Israel was involved in illegal activities on French soil, an affront to French nationalism, and it meant that he himself, whose support for Israel had never been challenged, had been dealt with treacherously." 677 According to Steven, the Mossad expulsion from Paris was "a severe blow, perhaps the most severe the Israeli secret service has ever suffered . . . DeGaulle was never to forgive Israel." 678
CHRISTIAN DAVID
It just so happens that a chief suspect in the Ben-Barka murder was one
Christian David, a French gangster who was a known associate of the
aforementioned Michael Mertz, alleged participant in the JFK murder. Ex-Army intelligence officer William Spector told JFK assassination researcher Jim Marrs that David was part of the CIA's ZR/Rifle Team which was under Angleton's supervision and which included the aforementioned assassin, QJ/WIN.
What makes this all the more intriguing is that David has claimed knowledge of a French team of assassins being involved in the JFK murder.679 David himself claims to have been offered a contract to kill JFK by the Lansky-connected Guerini brothers, the leaders of the CIA-backed French Corsican Mafia in Marseille. 680
Incredibly, the French connections come full circle. It was the CIA's QJ/WIN who used his influence to secure the release of one Thomas Eli Davis III from a Moroccan jail after Davis was arrested in North Africa for supplying arms to the OAS. And it was Jack Ruby (who killed Lee Harvey Oswald) who mentioned to his lawyers his connection with Davis. Ruby said that he and Davis had run guns and jeeps to Cuba. 681
THE CIRCLES INTERSECT
IN DALLAS
That Charles DeGaulle would have had an interest in getting to the
bottom of the JFK assassination is evident, inasmuch as there were multiple
French connections to key players in the conspiracy. DeGaulle clearly discovered that elements of French intelligence and/or agents of his sworn enemies in the OAS had been brought into the JFK assassination conspiracy by the Mossad.
It seems apparent that one or more of the French assassins who played a role in the events in Dallas were recruited by the Mossad through its allies within DeGaulle's intelligence service.
In addition, those in the CIA-connected New Orleans faction of the assassination conspiracy—those framing Lee Harvey Oswald as a pro-Castro agitator—were tied directly the OAS network and the Mossad's Permindex operation that had conspired against DeGaulle.
And at CIA headquarters at Langley, Virginia there was the Mossad's devoted friend and longtime associate of top SDECE officials, James J. Angleton, engaged in intrigue that clearly points to his own involvement in the conspiracy and the subsequent cover-up.
Even the CIA's E. Howard Hunt was tied directly to the French connection as CIA liaison to the OAS. In the end, Hunt's apparent visit to Dallas just prior to the assassination—evidently at Angleton's orders—where he met with longtime Mossad asset Frank Sturgis, put Hunt squarely in the middle of the intrigue. The later attempt to publicly link Hunt to the assassination reaches directly back to Angleton.
These details, taken together with all that we have examined in the pages of Final Judgment, explain the so called "French connection" to the JFK assassination, although, as we have seen, the origin of the conspiracy to kill the American president was not, in fact, French.
There were, very clearly, many, many people involved in the periphery of the assassination conspiracy—whether as active conspirators or not. French President DeGaulle had a direct interest in finding out how his own intelligence service and/or individuals connected thereto had been manipulated by the Mossad and a direct interest in covering it up.
DeGAULLE STRIKES BACK
DeGaulle's inquiries into the activities of the SDECE in the year
following the JFK assassination had an interesting consequence. The
Mossad's CIA man James J. Angleton's own machinations—his purported
discovery of KGB "moles" in the SDECE's ranks—had created havoc in
French intelligence forcing the French president to take action. According to Angleton's biographer, Tom Mangold: "Within the year, DeGaulle finally lost his patience with the CIA. The French president, quietly, without any publicity, issued an order terminating all joint operations between SDECE and the CIA. For the next three years the two services remained estranged, a break without precedent between the two friendly countries." 682
This, of course, recalls DeGaulle's decision during the same time frame— as noted previously—to expel the Mossad from France. In light of all that we have considered here, it is likely that a large part of DeGaulle's move against Angleton's CIA and Angleton's Mossad allies arose directly from his discovery that his own intelligence service had been directly compromised through the involvement of SDECE officer Georges deLannurien in helping facilitate the JFK assassination.
PERMINDEX AND THE
FRENCH CONNECTION
As we saw in Chapter 15, the Permindex connection (through Clay
Shaw in New Orleans) did indeed tie together not only the CIA and the
Lansky Syndicate and the Mossad—but also the French connection to the
assassination conspiracy. Unfortunately, however, although New Orleans
District Attorney Jim Garrison knew about Permindex, Garrison—at least at
the time of the Shaw trial—according to Paris Flammonde, felt that
Permindex "did not touch directly" 683 on the conspiracy. Evidently Garrison perceived Permindex as only an indication of Shaw's intelligence connections and nothing more. However, as assassination researcher James DiEugenio, in one of his more perceptive comments, points out: "This is questionable, but even so, Shaw's European connections would have had some effect on his carefully constructed image"684 as some sort of "Wilsonian-FDR-Kennedy liberal." 685
Garrison's own words suggest that he may have had some direction from French intelligence. At one point Garrison said that he had learned that the conspirators plotting the JFK assassination had been penetrated by a foreign intelligence service, but that it had "been for reasons wholly unrelated to an investigation of the president's murder." 686
In fact, this "unrelated" matter could have been (and this is speculation, of course) an investigation by DeGaulle into Shaw and the New Orleans conspirators because of their collaboration with the OAS in plots against DeGaulle. Unfortunately, at least at first, the "French connection" (which is actually the Israeli connection) seems to have gone right by Garrison and perhaps led in part to his failure to convict Shaw in the JFK conspiracy.
We do know that by the late 1970's, the House Assassinations Committee inquiry was looking into the "French connection." However,according to Dick Russell, one committee investigator, Mike Ewing, said the committee "was working on the 'French connection' angle when it closed up shop" in 1978. 687 Thus, as a consequence, the official "investigation" never went as far as it could have and the Israeli connection—through the so-called "French Connection”—remained under wraps (as the conspirators certainly intended).
ISRAEL, AGAIN
In fact, there is an Israeli connection to evidence linking OAS elements
to a plot against President Kennedy. In The Man Who Knew Too Much,
Dick Russell describes the strange story of US Army Private Eugene
Dinkin, a military code-breaker in Europe who—just prior to JFK's
assassination—was monitoring and decoding telegraphic traffic that
originated within the French OAS. Russell says that (as known by the CIA and the Warren Commission in 1964) Dinkin had discovered OAS foreknowledge of an assassination plot against President Kennedy supposed to take place in Texas. Unfortunately, for Dinkin, according to Russell, "nobody would give him the time of day except the Israeli ambassador to Luxembourg who . . . advised him how best to present his case at the American embassy there." 688
Poor Dinkin, obviously, had no idea that the Israelis (whom he perceived to be American allies) were, in fact, working closely behind the scenes with the OAS-connected plotters in the JFK assassination conspiracy. Thus, by taking his story to the Israelis, Dinkin was effectively alerting the OAS (and the conspirators) that he had stumbled upon their connections to the impending assassination of the president. This is just another of those fascinating details—somehow missed by the JFK assassination researchers—that points further toward the Israeli connection.
THE DRIVING FORCE
There clearly is much more to the so-called "French" connection to the
assassination of President Kennedy than meets the eye. Here in Final
Judgment, however, we have outlined the parameters of the French
connection as it has never been done. Pinning down the truth of precisely what happened in Dealey Plaza will never be possible, but we believe that in the pages of Final Judgment we have come closer to the truth than ever before.
The information supplied by the former French intelligence officer relative to Israeli Mossad orchestration of the JFK assassination through the aegis of other intelligence networks, specifically James J. Angleton's CIA, and with pro-Israel forces in the SDECE, meshes with other facts assembled in this chapter and through the pages of this volume.
The final judgment is inescapable . . .
Israel was indeed the driving force behind the assassination of President John F. Kenned y. The role of Israel was the unsuspected but ever-present "missing link" in the JFK assassination conspiracy.
Let us now move forward and examine the manner in which the media maneuvered and/or was manipulated by the CIA and the Mossad in covering up the truth about the president's murder. We will also examine the murder of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy. His death was indeed a critical part of the cover-up of his brother's assassination in Dallas.
next
They Dare Not Speak Out: The Media's Silence—
notes
page 574-576 here
http://americanfreepress.net/PDF/Final_Judgment.pdf
No comments:
Post a Comment