Just before his assassination, President Kennedy ordered secret peace talks with Castro

[Octafish]

Others in government worked against him.



The National Security Archive at George Washington University has the story:

Kennedy Sought Dialogue with Cuba

INITIATIVE WITH CASTRO ABORTED BY ASSASSINATION,
DECLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS SHOW

Oval Office Tape Reveals Strategy to hold clandestine Meeting in Havana; Documents record role of ABC News correspondent Lisa Howard as secret intermediary in Rapprochement effort

Washington D.C. - On the 40th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and the eve of the broadcast of a new documentary film on Kennedy and Castro, the National Security Archive today posted an audio tape of the President and his national security advisor, McGeorge Bundy, discussing the possibility of a secret meeting in Havana with Castro. The tape, dated only seventeen days before Kennedy was shot in Dallas, records a briefing from Bundy on Castro's invitation to a U.S. official at the United Nations, William Attwood, to come to Havana for secret talks on improving relations with Washington. The tape captures President Kennedy's approval if official U.S. involvement could be plausibly denied.

The possibility of a meeting in Havana evolved from a shift in the President's thinking on the possibility of what declassified White House records called "an accommodation with Castro" in the aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Proposals from Bundy's office in the spring of 1963 called for pursuing "the sweet approach…enticing Castro over to us," as a potentially more successful policy than CIA covert efforts to overthrow his regime. Top Secret White House memos record Kennedy's position that "we should start thinking along more flexible lines" and that "the president, himself, is very interested in (the prospect for negotiations)." Castro, too, appeared interested. In a May 1963 ABC News special on Cuba, Castro told correspondent Lisa Howard that he considered a rapprochement with Washington "possible if the United States government wishes it. In that case," he said, "we would be agreed to seek and find a basis" for improved relations.

The untold story of the Kennedy-Castro effort to seek an accommodation is the subject of a new documentary film, KENNEDY AND CASTRO: THE SECRET HISTORY, broadcast on the Discovery/Times cable channel on November 25 at 8pm. The documentary film, which focuses on Ms. Howard's role as a secret intermediary in the effort toward dialogue, was based on an article -- "JFK and Castro: The Secret Quest for Accommodation" -- written by Archive Senior Analyst Peter Kornbluh in the magazine, Cigar Aficionado. Kornbluh served as consulting producer and provided key declassified documents that are highlighted in the film. "The documents show that JFK clearly wanted to change the framework of hostile U.S. relations with Cuba," according to Kornbluh. "His assassination, at the very moment this initiative was coming to fruition, leaves a major 'what if' in the ensuing history of the U.S. conflict with Cuba."

CONTINUED with links, resources...

This is a story I don't see mentioned very often online, rarely in print, and never on television. I believe it's a good thing for Democrats to know, as well as all people who are interested in making peace and building a better world.

[Jackpine Radical]

1. Thanks for that one, Octa.

[Octafish]

2. You're welcome, Jackpine! We get a very limited and distorted history of JFK...

It'd be good for those who don't know him to learn more. Here's a good info from Jim DiEugenio at ConsortiumNews.com:

Why Mr. Hardball Found JFK Elusive

EXCERPT...

Matthews wants the reader to believe that JFK was not all what he is cracked up to be, that he was really just a classic Cold Warrior who wasn’t all that different from Nixon. This, of course, has been the message of most of the Establishment and the mainstream media from approximately the time of Oliver Stone’s film JFK in 1991. (And strangely, the message coincides with alleged icons of the traditional Left like Noam Chomsky and Alexander Cockburn.)

As shown above, the problem is that one can only make that argument by either distorting things, or completely omitting them. And Matthews is systematically rigorous in omitting key points.

For instance, in JFK: Ordeal in Africa, the reason Mahoney illuminates Kennedy’s thinking on Third World colonialism is as background to his actions in Congo in 1961. There, Kennedy pretty much reversed Eisenhower’s policy on Patrice Lumumba versus the Belgian colonialists.

And, in fact, Gullion played a key part in this reversal. There, Kennedy did something that would be considered exceptional today: He allied himself with Lumumba’s followers at the United Nations under the great Swedish statesman Dag Hammarskjold and against the Belgian colonizers.

In fact, CIA Director Allen Dulles understood that Kennedy would be sympathetic to Lumumba. This is why it appears that he hurried up the CIA’s assassination attempt on the African leader so it would occur before Kennedy was inaugurated. (John Morton Blum, Years of Discord, pgs. 23-24)

CONTINUED...

Your service during Vietnam might've been very different...

[NBachers]

3. the sense of loss never diminishes; the sense of "what if" only increases

Patrice Lumumba
John Fitzgerald Kennedy
Dag Hammarskjöld
and on
and on
and on
when will we be free of the people and organizations who do things like this

[Octafish]

6. Thanks for putting it in words, NBachers. The lies have gotten old.

And the lying liars are way past their time. Here's truth from Russ Baker:

The NY Times’ Ostrich Act On JFK Assassination Getting Old

By Russ Baker on Jul 27, 2011

Despite overwhelming contrary evidence, Oswald still labeled “leftist”

Nobody’s perfect. But it’s hard to think of anything as unworthy of a high-quality journalistic institution as the New York Times’ decades-long determination to never, ever, find any reason to question the original story spun by the Warren Commission on the JFK assassination. No matter how much new evidence has come out to the contrary.

SNIP...

Ask any reporter, privately, what he or she thinks on this issue. Putting aside those who will demur on the basis of not having read widely on the topic (a surprisingly large number), you’ll find most believing that the “lone nut” or “Leftist loner” narratives about Oswald are utter junk. This would certainly apply in the New York Times newsroom.

And yet just the other day, there was this obituary. It’s about Warren Leslie, a Dallas reporter who wrote a book on right-wing animosity toward JFK in Dallas at the time of the assassination. Yet, skip down to paragraph 17, and you have this contradictory little morsel:

the lone suspect in the assassination, Lee Harvey Oswald, far from being a right-winger, was an ardent leftist with Communist sympathies.

It’s just neatly slipped in as if it’s an uncontested fact, like the day’s sports scores.

CONTINUED...

Those who seek the truth will never get old. May the United States stay forever young.

[former9thward]

12. There is no dispute Oswald was on the left.

To say differently just defies Oswald's history. He defected to the Soviet Union and then having become tired of the workers paradise came back to the U.S. Oswald was a member of the Fair Play for Cuba group which was known to be a front group for the Communist Party. He publicly handed out literature for the group. He engaged in radio debates with right wingers in New Orleans. Shortly before the Kennedy assassination he attempted to kill a notorious right winger in Dallas, General Edwin Walker. I could go on but the facts are not on your side.

[hifiguy]

28. Oswald was, among other things, a CIA asset.

Just how likely do you think it could that a man who worked in intelligence in Japan for the Marines and Navy could "defect" to the USSR, marry the niece of a KGB colonel and waltz back into the country without ever being interrogated by US intelligence unless he was a part of the intelligence community?

The Russians assumed , correctly as it turns out, that Oswald was a spy of some sort which is why they shipped him off to the provinces after his "defection." Oswald's connections with the intelligence community have been exhaustively detailed by James Douglass. He was what he said he was, a patsy who was set up to take the fall for the CIA killing Kennedy. And Oswald had to be gotten rid of because the CIA had multiple "Oswalds" running around all over the US and Mexico in the months leading up to the assassination. Again, Douglass has documented this beyond doubt.

[former9thward]

29. I have no doubt that Oswald was a patsy.

Whose patsy is up to debate. The Soviet Union of 1960 was not the Russia of today. If they suspected Oswald was a "spy of some sort" they would have immediately expelled him.

Oswald was only briefly in Japan and his working in "intelligence" has, I think, been greatly overstated. He was in constant trouble when he was in the Marines -- he was court-martialed three times and imprisoned once. He tried to learn Russian and when he was given a test he was ranked 'poor'.

I think there is far more evidence that he was a patsy in a mob hit that an elaborate CIA conspiracy.

[T S Justly]

4. Great find, Octafish! Thanks. K&R (nt)

[Octafish]

15. Anytime, T S Justly! Didya read this from Jefferson Morley?

The good spy: how the quashing of an honest C.I.A. investigator helped launch 40 years of JFK conspiracy theories and cynicism about the Feds

Jefferson Morley
Washington Monthly Dec, 2003

It was 1:30 in the morning of Nov. 23, 1963, and John F. Kennedy had been dead for 12 hours. His corpse was being dressed at Bethesda Naval Hospital, touched and retouched to conceal the ugly bullet wounds. In Dallas, the F.B.I. had Lee Harvey Oswald in custody.

The lights were still on at the Central Intelligence Agency's headquarters in Langley, Va. John Whitten, the agency's 43-year-old chief of covert operations for Mexico and Central America, hung up the phone with has Mexico City station chief. He had just learned something stunning: A C.I.A. surveillance team in Mexico City had photographed Oswald at the Cuban consulate in early October, an indication that the agency might be able to quickly uncover the suspect's background.

At 1:36 am, Whitten sent a cable to Mexico City: "Send staffer with all photos of Oswald to HQ on the next available flight. Call Mr. Whitten at 652-6827." Within 24 hours Whitten was leading the C.I.A. investigation into the assassination. After two weeks of reviewing classified cables, he had learned that Oswald's pro-Castro political activities needed closer examination, especially has attempt to shoot a right-wing JFK critic, a diary of has efforts to confront anti-Castro exiles in New Orleans, and has public support for the pro-Castro Fair Play for Cuba Committee. For this investigatory zeal, Whitten was taken off the case.

C.I.A. Deputy Director of Plans Richard Helms blocked Whitten's efforts, effectively ending any hope of a comprehensive agency investigation of the accused assassin, a 24-year-old ex-Marine, who had sojourned in the Soviet Union and spent time as a leftist activist in New Orleans. In particular, Oswald's Cuba-related political life, which Whitten wished to pursue, went unexplored by the C.I.A. The blueribbon Warren commission appointed by President Johnson concluded in September 1964 that Oswald alone and unaided had killed Kennedy. But over the years, as information which the commission's report had not accounted for leaked out, many would come to see the commission as a cover-up, in part because it failed to assign any motive to Oswald, in part because the government's pre-assassination surveillance of Oswald had been more intense than the government ever cared to disclose, and finally because its reconstruction of the crime sequence was flawed.

Both the story of Oswald and the C.I.A., and the way in which it leaked out in bits and pieces fueled a generation of conspiracy-minded authors, journalists, and filmmakers who mined Richard Helms's dubious legacy--a rich vein of ominous ambiguity and unanswered questions about one of the most jarring events of modern American history. The untimely end to Whitten's investigation, which prevented a public airing of what the government actually knew, also contributed to a generation of public cynicism about Washington--to a national mythology of skullduggery, and the suspicion that secret agencies in Washington were up to no good and the truth never gets out. In the decades since Kennedy's death, the "rogue C.I.A. assassin" has become a stock Hollywood character, his villainy engrained in spy movies and the popular culture.

CONTINUED...

Facts are important things. That's why they're used as evidence.

[T S Justly]

18. Yes I did, thank you! And the bulk of the series, too. His interviews are extraordinary.

There is one with a retired CIA analyst or manager, a woman now in her eighties, that blows the lid off
the CIA's denial of Owaldian foreknowledge.

[Octafish]

20. Anne Goodpasture...

The Mystery of Oswald's Contacts with the CIA in Mexico

Jefferson Morley

Mr. Morley is the author of Our Man in Mexico City: Winston Scott and the Hidden History of the CIA, published by the University Press of Kansas. The October 10, 1963 cable and other documents reported in the book can be viewed at http://ourmaninmexico.com/documents.html.

A small group of senior CIA officers may have been running an authorized counterintelligence operation involving Lee Harvey Oswald six weeks before the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963.

That’s the controversial but conditional conclusion I reached while writing the biography of CIA spymaster Winston Scott, the agency’s top man in Mexico for more than a decade. Our Man in Mexico, argues that if there was an Oswald operation, Scott, a brash and brilliant spy, was not a participant. The CIA has never acknowledged the existence of such an operation, if there was one. Many historians will deny it. But the new JFK paper trail is clear: some of Scott’s CIA associates knew much more than they ever disclosed about the man who apparently went on to kill President Kennedy in Dallas.

Newly declassified records and interviews with retired CIA officials illuminate the JFK story as it has never been seen before: through the eyes of Win Scott, long a shadowy figure in the history of the agency who was renowned for the brilliance and diligence of his espionage. In 1963, Scott was serving as the chief of the CIA’s station in Mexico City. It was here his path intersected with Oswald’s.

In the summer of 1963, Oswald, a 23-year old ex-Marine with a Russian wife, leftist political views and a penchant for scheming, was living in New Orleans. In the course of the next 100 days of his life, he would come in contact with four CIA intelligence gathering programs. Two of the programs that Oswald encountered were run by Scott, who operated out of an office on the top floor of the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City. The other two were run by his colleague David Atlee Phillips, a highly regarded counterintelligence officer also stationed in Mexico City. Scott had a front row seat on the events that would culminate in the Dallas tragedy.

Such high-level CIA interest in Oswald does not necessarily mean that there was an operation involving Oswald, much less a CIA conspiracy. The evidence allows different readings. Win Scott himself did his own private investigation of Oswald a few years later and concluded the Soviets were likely behind the gunfire that killed Kennedy. David Phillips, who would go on to found the Association of Foreign Intelligence officers, a pro-CIA lobbying group, said late in life that he believed that JFK was killed by rogue U.S. intelligence officers. Win Scott’s son, Michael who spent more than 20 years sifting his father’s life story, thought Phillips was more likely right.

CONTINUED...


Morley's "Our Man in Mexico City" goes over the story and the times as seen through the life of the station chief, Win Scott. It's a fine, fine, fine read.

[T S Justly]

23. Yes, that is her. The possible burden she's felt for so long was probably equal ...

To the sense of realization Morley felt shortly after the disclosure. Anyway, I've been tempted to ask you
as DU's longtime and respected JFK assassination researcher what about the whole Military-CIA-Mafia nexus
do you find the most fascinating? Is there a detail or overview that any of us would find the most helpful in
gaining a better understanding of our true history? Thanks again, Octafish! - T S

[Octafish]

36. The fact Kennedy was a man of integrity who stood up to men capable of destroying the planet.

James K. Galbraith and Heather A. Purcell tell the story of how President Kennedy said "No" to CIA Director Allen Dulles and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Lyman Lemnitzer when they recommended launching an all-out nuclear attack on the Soviet Union in "fall of 1963."

Did the U.S. Military Plan a Nuclear First Strike for 1963?

Recently declassified information shows that the military presented President Kennedy with a plan for a surprise nuclear attack on the Soviet Union in the early 1960s.

James K. Galbraith and Heather A. Purcell | September 21, 1994

During the early 1960s the intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) introduced the world to the possibility of instant total war. Thirty years later, no nation has yet fired any nuclear missile at a real target. Orthodox history holds that a succession of defensive nuclear doctrines and strategies -- from "massive retaliation" to "mutual assured destruction" -- worked, almost seamlessly, to deter Soviet aggression against the United States and to prevent the use of nuclear weapons.

The possibility of U.S. aggression in nuclear conflict is seldom considered. And why should it be? Virtually nothing in the public record suggests that high U.S. authorities ever contemplated a first strike against the Soviet Union, except in response to a Soviet invasion of Western Europe, or that they doubted the deterrent power of Soviet nuclear forces. The main documented exception was the Air Force Chief of Staff in the early 1960s, Curtis LeMay, a seemingly idiosyncratic case.

But beginning in 1957 the U.S. military did prepare plans for a preemptive nuclear strike against the U.S.S.R., based on our growing lead in land-based missiles. And top military and intelligence leaders presented an assessment of those plans to President John F. Kennedy in July of 1961. At that time, some high Air Force and CIA leaders apparently believed that a window of outright ballistic missile superiority, perhaps sufficient for a successful first strike, would be open in late 1963.

The document reproduced opposite is published here for the first time. It describes a meeting of the National Security Council on July 20, 1961. At that meeting, the document shows, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the director of the CIA, and others presented plans for a surprise attack. They answered some questions from Kennedy about timing and effects, and promised further information. The meeting recessed under a presidential injunction of secrecy that has not been broken until now.

CONTINUED...

http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=did_the_us_military_plan_a_nuclear_first_strike_for_1963

JFK was dealing with people who thought it OK to murder hundreds of millions of innocent people to "win" the war against the communist menace is paramount to me, now an old man. There are many other important examples of his leadership that served to keep the peace, from the Bay of Pigs to shutting down "Murder Inc. in the Caribbean." Funny, this history has been left out of the history books, by accident, I'm sure.

PS: Thank you for the kind words, T S Justly. I really appreciate the load you've carried to help keep the lights on.

[T S Justly]

39. Thank you very much. He had that and he also possessed verifiable personal and physical courage ...

Documented by his mates' telling of his heroism in WW2.

You're welcome and that was very nice to hear. Kind of you to say it, as well. Thank you.

[Gabi Hayes]

5. I really can't believe it's been almost FIFTY years...just think

this is analagous to discussion Lincoln/Booth in 1914.

1914....hmmm

which reminds me, anyone seen the Ascent of Money, on PBS (I know it's presented by a rw creep, but it makes it very plain how immeasurably profitable warmaking has been)

anyway, here's a bit on the french journalist JFK tasked to broach the subject of cuba detente:

John F. Kennedy now decided to send William Attwood to meet Castro. On 14th November, 1963, Lisa Howard conveyed this message to her Cuban contact. In an attempt to show his good will, Kennedy sent a coded message to Castro in a speech delivered on 19th November. The speech included the following passage: "Cuba had become a weapon in an effort dictated by external powers to subvert the other American republics. This and this alone divides us. As long as this is true, nothing is possible. Without it, everything is possible."

Kennedy also sent a message to Fidel Castro via the French journalist Jean Daniel. According to Daniel: "Kennedy expressed some empathy for Castro's anti-Americanism, acknowledging that the United States had committed a number of sins in pre-revolutionary Cuba." Kennedy told Daniel that the trade embargo against Cuba could be lifted if Castro ended his support for left-wing movements in the Americas.

Daniel delivered this message on 19th November. Castro told Daniel that Kennedy could become "the greatest president of the United States, the leader who may at last understand that there can be coexistence between capitalists and socialists, even in the Americas." Daniel was with Castro when news arrived that Kennedy had been assassinated Castro turned to Daniel and said:"This is an end to your mission of peace. Everything is changed."

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKbundyM.htm

the link covers much the same ground as your OP does

thanks for reminding us....I'm afraid it's been too long, and not enough care any more to make the changes necessary to stop the slide into fullbore fascism

on that cheery note.....

[Octafish]

16. Half a century is before most people on earth were born.

Those of us who remember that time know things were different. And our numbers grow smaller each day.

So, on that happy note, a little kindling to keep the dark at bay for a second or two longer:

JAMES WILCOTT'S TESTIMONY

James B. Wilcott, a former CIA accountant, swore in a secret session of the House Select Committee on Assassinations that he was told by other CIA employees that Lee Harvey Oswald was paid by the CIA, and that money he himself had disbursed was for "Oswald or the Oswald project." The HSCA report indicated that other CIA employees discounted Wilcott's testimony, but none of their statements were included in the report. The document excerpted below was acquired by John Armstrong after his JFK Lancer NID97 presentation. Selected pages from the National Archives are presented graphically; the remainder, to preserve bandwidth, are excerpted typographically. A link to the complete text of Wilcott's testimony is provided near the bottom of this page.


EXECUTIVE SESSION

ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 22, 1978

House of Representatives,

John F. Kennedy Subcommittee
of the Select Committee on
Assassinations,

Washington, D.C.

<. . . . >

TESTIMONY OF JAMES B. WILCOTT, A FORMER EMPLOYEE
OF THE CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY:

Mr. Goldsmith. For the record, would you please state your name and address and occupation?

Mr. Wilcott. My name is James B. Wilcott. My address is 2761 Atlantic Street, in Concord, and my occupation is electronic technician.

< . . . . >

Mr. Goldsmith. And, Mr. Wilcott, is it true that you are a former employee with the CIA and that you are here today testifying voluntarily without a subpoena?

Mr. Wilcott. Yes.

Mr. Goldsmith. During what years did you work for the CIA?

Mr. Wilcott. I worked from the years, May, of 1957 to, April, of 1966.

Mr. Goldsmith. And in what general capacity did you work with the CIA?

Mr. Wilcott. All in the finance--in accounting all of the time.

<. . . .>

Mr. Goldsmith. Drawing your attention to the period immediately after the assassination of President Kennedy, at that time, did you come across any information concerning Lee Harvey Oswald's relationship with the CIA?

Mr. Wilcott. Yes, I did.

Mr. Goldsmith. And will you tell the Committee what that relationship was?

Mr. Wilcott. Well, it was my understanding that Lee Harvey Oswald was an employee of the agency and was an agent of the agency.

Mr. Goldsmith. What do you mean by the term "agent?"

Mr. Wilcott. That he was a regular employee, receiving a full-time salary for agent work for doing CIA operational work.

Mr. Goldsmith. How did this information concerning Oswald first come to your attention?

Mr. Wilcott. The first time I heard about Oswald being connected in any way with CIA was the day after the Kennedy assassination.

Mr. Goldsmith. And how did that come to your attention?

Mr. Wilcott. Well, I was on day duty for the station. It was a guard-type function at the station, which I worked for overtime. There was a lot of excitement going on at the station after the Kennedy assassination. Towards the end of my tour of duty, I heard certain things about Oswald somehow being connected with the agency, and I didn't really believe this when I heard it, and I thought it was absurd. Then, as time went on, I began to hear more things in that line.

Mr. Goldsmith. I think we had better go over that one more time. When, exactly, was the very first time that you heard or came across information that Oswald was an agent?

Mr. Wilcott. I heard references to it the day after the assassination.

Mr. Goldsmith. And who made these references to Oswald being an agent of the CIA?

Mr. Wilcott. I can't remember the exact persons. There was talk about it going on at the station, and several months following at the station.

Mr. Goldsmith. How many people made this reference to Oswald being an agent of the CIA?

Mr. Wilcott. At least--there was at least six or seven people, specifically, who said that they either knew or believed Oswald to be an agent of the CIA.

Mr. Goldsmith. Was Jerry Fox one of the people that made this allegation?

Mr. Wilcott. To the best of my recollection, yes.

Mr. Goldsmith. And who is Jerry Fox?

Mr. Wilcott. Jerry Fox was a Case Officer for his branch, the Soviet Russia Branch, Station, who purchased information from the Soviets.

Mr. Goldsmith. Mr. Wilcott, did I ask you to prepare a list of CIA Case Officers working at the Station in 1963?

Mr. Wilcott. Yes, you did.

<. . . .>

Mr. Goldsmith. At the time that this allegation first came to your attention, did you discuss it with anyone?

Mr. Wilcott. Oh, yes. I discussed it with my friends and the people that I was associating with socially.

Mr. Goldsmith. Who were your friends that you discussed this with?

Mr. Wilcott. George Breen, Ed Luck, and .

Mr. Goldsmith. Who was George Breen?

Mr. Wilcott. George Breen was a person in Registry, who was my closest friend while I was in .

Mr. Goldsmith. Was he a CIA employee?

Mr. Wilcott. Yes, he was.

Mr. Goldsmith. And would he corroborate your observation that Oswald was an agent?

Mr. Wilcott. I don't know.

Mr. Goldsmith. At the time that this allegation first came to your attention, did you learn the name of Oswald's Case Officer at the CIA?

Mr. Wilcott. No.

Mr. Goldsmith. Were there any other times during your stay with the CIA at Station that you came across information that Oswald had been a CIA agent?

Mr. Wilcott. Yes.

Mr. Goldsmith. When was that?

Mr. Wilcott. The specific incident was soon after the Kennedy assassination, where an agent, a Case Officer--I am sure it was a Case Officer--came up to my window to draw money, and he specifically said in the conversation that ensued, he specifically said, "Well, Jim, the money that I drew the last couple of weeks ago or so was money" either for the Oswald project or for Oswald.

Mr. Goldsmith. Do you remember the name of this Case Officer?

Mr. Wilcott. No, I don't.

Mr Goldsmith. Do you remember when specifically this conversation took place?

Mr. Wilcott. Not specifically, only generally.

Mr. Goldsmith. How many months after the assassination was this?

Mr. Wilcott. I think it must have been two or three omths after the assassination.

Mr. Goldsmith. And do you remember were this conversation took place?

Mr. Wilcott. It was right at my window, my disbursing cage window.

Mr. Goldsmith. Did you discuss this information with anyone?

Mr. Wilcott. Oh, yes.

Mr. Goldsmith. With whom?

Mr. Wilcott. Certainly with George Breen, the circle of social friends that we had.

Mr. Goldsmith. How do you spell last name?

Mr. Wilcott. (spelling).

<. . . .>

Mr. Goldsmith. Did this Case Officer tell you what Oswald's cryptonym was?

Mr. Wilcott. Yes, he mentioned the cryptonym specifically under which the money was drawn.

Mr. Goldsmith. And what did he tell you the cryptonym was?

Mr. Wilcott. I cannot remember.

Mr. Goldsmith. What was your response to this revelation as to what Oswald's cryptonym was? Did you write it down or do anything?

Mr. Wilcott. No; I think that I looked through my advance book--and I had a book where the advances on project were run, and I leafed through them, and I must have at least leafed through them to see if what he said was true.

CONTINUED...

SOURCE w TESTIMONY: http://home.wi.rr.com/harveyandlee/Wilcott/Wilcott.htm

PS: Thanks for giving a damn, Gabi Hayes. Ex-CIA man James Wilcott testified to Congress that Oswald was a CIA employee and for some reason I'm not really surprised so few Americans know his story. Hieronymus Bosch knew what he was painting about.

[deutsey]

25. I'm not really surprised either, Octofish...especially

when you have "news" reports like this one from Dan Rather (at 2:10):

[Octafish]

31. Dan Rather Blinked

Dan Rather makes me sick. Here's what a fellow Texan had to say:

Dan Rather Blinked

by Penn Jones, Jr
Continuing Inquiry

The greatest criminal in this nation, we think, is a dishonest newsman. Newsmen have been given the highest gift a nation can give a group: a right. Newsmen have been given this right of freedom of the press and freedom of speech in the expectation they would report the truth as honestly as humanly possible. Ordinary criminals kill individuals, but dishonest newsmen are involved in killing a nation--in this case, this democracy. Which brings us to native Texan Dan Rather, a longtime Houstonian, and his new book, The Camera Never Blinks.

SNIP...

But the biggest distortion is what he said he saw when he was one of the few persons in the world privileged to see the Abraham Zapruder film that Saturday morning, November 23. In his narration of the film as part of CBS nationwide television coverage, Rather said the President's head "went forward with considerable violence." This narration confirmed the so-called "Oswald position" for the nation, but he said nothing about the violent backward motion of the President's head which would have strongly suggested a second gunman at that early date. Rather does take care to tell us again that he took no notes.

SNIP...

His book says this about the incident: "At the risk of sounding too defensive, I challenge anyone to watch for the first time a twenty-two second film of devastating impact, run several blocks, then describe what they had seen in its entirety, without notes. Perhaps someone can do it better than I did that day. I only know that I did it as well and as honestly as I could under the conditions.

"But here is where the case gets tricky. Years later, a group of assassination buffs took an audio tape of my description of what I saw in the office of Zapruder's lawyer and laid it over the film as a narration. So the impression was given that Dan Rather was part of a conspiracy. Either that or he was a Communist dupe, or something, how else could he have seen the film, etc. etc."

CONTINUED...

SOURCE: http://www.acorn.net/jfkplace/09/fp.back_issues/05th_Issue/rather.html

ARCHIVE: http://digitalcollections.baylor.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/po-jones/id/1917

Thank you for fighting the good fight, Dwayne-san. Somehow it seems that we still got a chance.

[deutsey]

33. Rather's excuse is such a load

The most pivotal and shocking moment of the Zapruder film is JFK's sudden jolt "back and to the right." Rather gets just about everything else right in his description, but then deliberately leans forward and says exactly what doesn't happen...which coincidentally reflects all those original illustrations claiming that the fatal head shot made JFK lunge forward.

Coincidentally.

Thanks, Octafish, for all you do. Against all the odds, I think with people like you out there we do still have chance.

[Gabi Hayes]

40. I'm looking at my copy of John Newman's "Oswald and the CIA"

I don't remember reading about that. going to check through and see if it's in there.

I talked with two members of the records bureau on the radio when they were doing their 'work,' and they were unaware of some quotes from Richard Helms wrt clay shaw's ties to the CIA....stuff from Newman's book that was obviously readily available

we're not going to be getting the truth in the forseeable future's my guess

cheers

[jwirr]

7. Thanks to my self educated father I was an avid news junky by my teens. Castro was not an

ideolog when he started the revolution in Cuba. I remember that he came to the US to talk with President Eisenhower asking for help in his fight against the Batistas. I think Eisenhowers refusal was the biggest mistake of his career. I can easily believe that Kennedy would be willing to try to undo it. A lot of things would be different if Eisenhower had listened.

[Octafish]

17. Please allow me to say your father taught you well, jwirr.

Thank you for the kind reminder: Ike had the Dulles brothers to "help" him in the foreign policy sphere.

Eisenhower and Latin America: The Foreign Policy of Anti-Communism

Author: Stephen G. Rabe
University of North Carolina Press, 1988

The Republicans captured the White House in 1953 after they claimed that the Truman administration had been "soft on Communism" and after stating that they were determined to turn the tide against the "Red menace." Eisenhower's vice president, Richard Nixon, had spoken of "twenty years of treason," and Eisenhower's secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, had pledged that Republicans would "roll back the Iron Curtain in Eastern Europe."

Secretary Dulles warned that conditions in Latin America were comparable to "conditions as they were in China in the mid-thirties when the Communist movement was getting started," and that the time to deal with this rising menace was "now." In a telephone conversation with his brother, Allen, head of the CIA, he said that "the Communists [were] trying to extend their form of despotism in this hemisphere." In a cabinet meeting he spoke of the need to convince Latin Americans that Communism was "an international conspiracy, not an indigenous movement."

In 1954, Latin America had 13 dictators among its 20 nations, and the anti-Communist declarations by dictators pleased the Eisenhower administration. According to the author, Stephen Rabe, when people wanted the U.S. State Department to "intercede on behalf of the political prisoners rotting in the dungeons of the dictator Pérez Jiménez," Dulles refused. President Eisenhower awarded a Legion of Merit to Peru's dictator, Manuel Odría. Jiménez received his Legion of Merit from the U.S. ambassador in a grand ceremony in Venezuela, winning congratulations for his "energy and firmness of purpose" in having "greatly increased the capacity of the Armed Forces of Venezuela to participate in the collective defense of the Western Hemisphere" and his "concern toward the problem of Communist infiltration."

In Guatemala in 1954 the regime of President Arbenz was pursuing democracy and reform and worried the Eisenhower administration. Arbenz had become Guatemala's president in 1951, according to Rabe the country's first ever peaceful transition of power. Arbenz pledged to create an economically independent capitalist state and had begun to build ports and highways. He convinced the legislature to enact a modest income tax, the first in Guatemala's history, and launched a program of land redistribution, including a loss of 1,700 fallow acres that had belonged to his family. Rabe estimates that "Guatemala's new social welfare programs were more modest than those advocated by liberal Democrats in the United States and Laborites in Great Britain." In 1953 the Eisenhower administration estimated that Communists in Guatemala numbered around 1,000, and it saw Communist influence in organized labor and in the agrarian reform movement. Arbenz's ruling coalition consisted of 51 congressional deputies, four of whom were Communists. In January, 1954, President Eisenhower told Guatemala's foreign minister that he "couldn't help a government which was openly playing ball with Communists" and that the United States was "determined to block the international Communist conspiracy." The Arbenz regime replied that their land reform would undermine the appeal of Communism. According to Rabe, the Eisenhower administration rejected explanations from the Arbenz administration and concluded that Arbenz was either a "dupe" of the Communists or worse. Secretary Dulles spoke of the impossibility of producing evidence tying the Guatemalan government to Moscow but that he and the administration had a "deep conviction that such a tie must exist."

CONTINUED...

Their control of the State Department and CIA revolutionized crony capitalism. Today, their ideological descendants stand on the brink of reintroducing feudalism. And the slaves are happy to think they are serfs.

[frazzled]

8. "Peace" talks might be a bit overstated

It describes talks aimed at "rapprochement" and "improving relations."

But interesting, nonetheless. Too bad it never happened, and we've wasted 50 years in failed efforts to cooperate with and thus influence this tiny nearby nation.

[Octafish]

19. Good point. Here's a memo from GWU's archive...

THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON, D.C.

MEMORANDUM FOR MR. BUNDY

SUBJECT: Approach to Castro

1. Lisa Howard called Vallejo and then put Bill Attwood on the
line. Vallejo repeated his invitation for Bill to come to Cuba,
adding that the visit would be very secure. Bill replied that this
was impossible for the president, that preliminary talks were es-
sential, and that Vallejo might consider coming to New York.

2. Vallejo said he could not make it to New York at this time.
However, a message would be sent to Lechuga instructing him to
discuss an agenda with Bill. Bill agreed that this might be a good
way for the Cubans to convey what was on their mind. He added that
we are prepared to listen.

3. The ball is now in Castro's court. As soon as Lechuga calls
Bill to set up an appointment for the discussion of an agenda, Bill
will get in touch with us.

Gordon Chase

SOURCE: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB103/631119.pdf

Something else that's too bad is how different our economic circumstances would be if we'd become closer to the socialist world, way back when. I'd bet that most of the wealth created in human history wouldn't reside exclusively in the numbered Swiss bank accounts of the planet's relatively tiny number of superrich warmongers currently ruling the roost.

[woo me with science]

9. He also took on the Federal Reserve. nt

[Octafish]

30. JFK battled Wall Street and Big Business

"If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich"
-- Inaugural Address of John F. Kennedy, Friday, January 20, 1961



So, in the short time he had, President Kennedy did what he could to balance the interests of concentrated wealth with the interests of the average American -- necessary for the good of the country.

Professor Donald Gibson detailed the issues in his 1994 book, Battling Wall Street: The Kennedy Presidency.

From the book:

"What (J.F.K. tried) to do with everything from global investment patterns to tax breaks for individuals was to re-shape laws and policies so that the power of property and the search for profit would not end up destroying rather than creating economic prosperity for the country."

-- Donald Gibson, Battling Wall Street. The Kennedy Presidency

More on the book, by two great Americans:

"Gibson captures what I believe to be the most essential and enduring aspect of the Kennedy presidency. He not only sets the historical record straight, but his work speaks volumes against today's burgeoning cynicism and in support of the vision, ideal, and practical reality embodied in the presidency of John F. Kennedy - that every one of us can make a difference." -- Rep. Henry B. Gonzalez, Chair, House Committee on Banking, Finance, and Urban Affairs

"Professor Gibson has written a unique and important book. It is undoubtedly the most complete and profound analysis of the economic policies of President Kennedy. From here on in, anyone who states that Kennedy was timid or status quo or traditional in that field will immediately reveal himself ignorant of Battling Wall Street. It is that convincing." -- James DiEugenio, author, Destiny Betrayed. JFK, Cuba, and the Garrison Case --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Had he lived to serve a second term, I'd bet on JFK over The Fed.

[annabanana]

10. Thank you Octafish!

History lesson du jour!

[Octafish]

32. You are welcome, annabanana! 3 of my teachers: Philip H. Melanson, John M. Newman and Joan Mellen

These are prominent among academics with sterling credentials who have advanced what we know. Here's a bit from each:

Philip Melanson, testimony before the Assassination Records Review Board (24th March, 1995)

The first point I would urge is that your definition of assassination-related records include all U.S. Government files on Lee Harvey Oswald prior to the assassination.

As the board is aware, I'm sure, and much of the public, the enduring controversy of who Oswald really was, what he was, is an inherent part of the historical truth of this case. It's also been an area that's been subject to governmental secrecy over the decades and to deception. So, it's crucial that these be released as part of the record.

Oswald, as you know, is the most complex alleged or real political assassin in American history. Let me refresh our memories about that.

This is a young man who studied the Russian language in the Marine Corps, subscribed to Pravda, had proximity to a U-2 spy plane, defected, or fake defected, to Russia, came back, and had involvements with groups that looked both pro- and anti-Castro, and corresponded with or joined some of the most heavily-targeted domestic political groups of the era.

So, the files pre-assassination on Oswald are very rich, and just as the Warren Commission created assassination records out of Oswald's school transcripts, psychiatrist reports, Marine Corps disciplinary records, those of us who have a different view of Oswald want the full record of what our government agencies knew about him to be released.

And those agencies, let me say, a list of agencies that definitely have or should have had, given their mission, pre-assassination files on Oswald, would include the Marine Corps, the State Department, selective service, FBI, CIA, probably National Security Agency, and Army and Navy intelligence.

And I would also urge that as part of this outreach in pre-assassination Oswald, that the files of the groups that he joined or corresponded with be looked at carefully, as well, because these were groups, as I said, that were heavily targeted by U.S. intelligence, and the key to how they treated or thought of Oswald may lie in those files -- the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, the Communist Party USA, the Socialist Workers Party, and the infamous American Civil Liberties Union.

I also urge the board to focus its disclosure spotlight on some of those agencies that have remained relatively in the shadows.

We're all aware of FBI and CIA and Secret Service, but many of us in the research community would like to see special attention paid to the National Security Agency and to Army intelligence, which has a very poor history of responsiveness, to be charitable, in this case, which indications are has material presently on Oswald, claimed that it destroyed routinely a file on Oswald.

Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms is another agency.

So, these are things that need to be looked at and will shed light on who Oswald was.

Let me get to the part of my suggestions that relate to implementation, and if I am already reinforcing what the board is already thinking, so be it, because some of Chairman Tunheim's comments this morning parallel my suggestions.

I emphasize that the board should develop its own expertise about the files, and I can't stress that enough.

I think it's commendable that you're talking with assassination researchers who understand the case, many of whom are also expert on the files, but I also point out that there are experts who know very little or nothing about the Kennedy assassination who are exceedingly expert on the convoluted filing indices of FBI and CIA, and I hope you will draw upon these people at every stage.

Let me give you my own parallel example from another case.

As the director of the Robert Kennedy assassination archives at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth, when we began to pursue the FBI files on the Robert Kennedy case, the Freedom of Information Act request was drafted in concert with authors who had written on the FBI, ex-agents, scholars knowledgeable in the field, and it was a six-page letter that I was the signatory to, much of the jargon of which I couldn't understand, but it produced 32,000 pages of records where previously similar requests not so detailed, not so expert, had produced one-tenth of that volume, and I think that's proof that, if you are able to tell the agencies where to look, what to look for, you're going to increase the yield tremendously.

I also urge - and I think the chairman spoke to the fact that this is occurring. There is no replacement for the expertise of those who worked on the files contemporaneously, the people who generated them, who use them, who knew what they are about.

Present records custodians may not have that knowledge, and this is important not only in broadening the search but also, frankly, in overcoming the hide-and-seek games, as I call them, that some intelligence agencies play some of the time.

And I would refer to the examples that -- in the Robert Kennedy case, for example, if it hadn't been for the affidavit of a Los Angeles police officer, retired, we would not have known about the super-secret department file on the case that was stuck out at L.A. airport and not in the downtown files.

And similar things have happened in other cases, agents who work, know the convoluted filing system and where things might be hidden, as well as where they might be found. Your experts, outside experts, and your own expertise and staff, I don't mean to discount staff expertise clearly.

The other payoff here is tracing documents from documents and files from files, a very important activity that really requires a detailed knowledge of cryptographs and notations and filing numbers, and also what I call the mirror-image principle, that you will find some state and local agencies who have mandates that cause them to be in touch with Federal agencies and who will have Federal paper in their files that will lead to Federal agency files.

The example I would talk about here is the Dallas police criminal intelligence unit.

Both pre- and post-assassination, that unit within the police department definitely should have or would have had contact with the Central Intelligence Agency, with Army intelligence, with other agencies, and therefore, their files provide a good clue, in mirror-image fashion, to what the Federal agencies might hold.

I was very pleased to hear Chairman Tunheim talk this morning about the search for private records and the broadening of the search.

I applaud that tremendously, and I won't belabor it except to say that the history of disclosure in all three of the assassination cases - Dr. King, Senator Kennedy, President Kennedy - shows us time and time again that some of the most important materials, for varieties of reasons, are held in private hands or are held in public venues beyond the record custodian's purview, and need I remind us that, for example, the acoustical tape so crucial to the House Assassinations Committee work was brought to them from the home of a retired Dallas intelligence officer.

My favorite example in this venue is, when we were getting the District Attorney's files released in the Robert Kennedy case, in a branch office distant from downtown Los Angeles, an employee found a box in a storage closet marked "Sirhan Sirhan case" and sent it downtown, because he had heard on television that we were getting the files disclosed, and that's one of the things that I think is so valuable about your public hearings, your media contacts, and your taking this on the road, so to speak, because it alerts people to what's going on.

In that box happened to be the official filmed re-enactments of Robert Kennedy's murder done by the officials in 1968, an incredible trove of audiotapes of witness interviews, and so, it's very important to keep up that notion of outreach to not only private individuals and collections but things that may be sort of lost in the closets.

I also urge the board -- I know it's not an investigative body, I know it's got limited or scarce resources, but when you're talking to the agencies who hold these files, ask them the questions not only about what they can give you now but about what they should have been giving over the decades and what they should have preserved that they didn't preserve.

We're all about public disclosure, but also, in a certain sense, even though it's not your mission, you're holding these agencies accountable just by the questions you ask them and by your asking them to release files, and over the decades there has been an inexcusable refusal of the public right to know, an unaccountability of certain materials, and I urge you to ask.

Ask the CIA, when you're talking to them, about that mysterious photo of Oswald that everybody has been chasing that's so crucial.

If it's really Oswald in Mexico City, it makes the Warren Commission supporters very happy. If it's an Oswald imposter, it's a window onto conspiracy. Where did it go when it left the private safe of the Mexico City station chief?

And please ask all these Federal agencies, just to please me if you would, cathartically, does anybody have any snippet of an audiotape recording of the 48 hours of interrogation of Lee Harvey Oswald when he was in custody and was talked to by revolving-door interviewers from state, local, Federal agencies too numerous to mention, and yet, we have no preserved record of that moment at which the alleged assassin of our President, who had ties to Cuba and ties to Russia, was being interrogated at the time of our peak national crisis.

So, I know you can't chase everything that's missing, but I urge you to select a few items and try to hold these agencies responsible.

My last point is to encourage you to reverse what has been the trend in disclosure in the last several decades for whatever disclosure we have had.

Agencies have taken the position, largely, that assassination-related records should be withheld if they relate to other secrets, ongoing operations, or intelligence sources and methods.

I am asking the board to disentangle these things, that when there are records held by the CIA or the FBI that are clearly assassination-related, do not accept the response that current operations preclude their release. They can and should be disentangled, and let me give you my example of that.

I and other researchers have focused on this anti-Castro Cuban group in Dallas, ALPHA-66, and without going into theory, which I know is not the Commission's bailiwick, let me just say about this group that it's a terrorist group created by the CIA.

It detested President Kennedy, by its own statements. It was in Dallas. It was illegally well-armed. CIA case officers were meeting with the meetings there. The CIA failed to report this group to the Secret Service, as protective procedure required.

The head of this group was mistaken for Lee Harvey Oswald in two incidents that we reported, one by the FBI, one by the Dallas police.

The point is that - I don't need to go further to say that this is the subject of suspicion, if not intrigue.

The Rockefeller Commission asked the agency to respond about this, and their response was, in part, that they couldn't find such a book in the 1963 Dallas telephone book.

Their second response was that the street on which the group held its meetings could not be found in a Dallas street map, but that's sort of like saying that Beacon Street outside, you know, can't be found in Boston.

My point is that the agency has been terribly unresponsive to previous official investigations and that this is an area of suspicion.

So, ALPHA-66 files in Dallas should be released. The problem that we all face is as follows.

ALPHA-66 is still active, attempted an assassination of Castro, by their own admission, in 1983, and still exists in Miami, perhaps with agency sponsorship.

The fact that they are current and that their operations are current should not preclude the 1963 records from being released.

And finally, I think there is an extraordinary opportunity here that I know the board is aware of.

Not only is it your daunting task to help repair 30 years of distrust and governmental secrecy that have so eroded our democratic culture, but also, it's an extraordinary opportunity for the public right to know.

The idea that, for the first time, citizens will be the judge of the balance between governmental secrecy and what we know, rather than the agencies themselves or the courts, I think is extraordinary, and I just urge you that, at every step along the way -- and I think you're doing this -- consult with those rational, responsible, sober experts in all fields who can help you do your job better and do it in a more timely fashion, because you're aware and I'm aware the clock is running, and the work has to be done, and I thank you very much for allowing me to comment this morning.

SOURCE: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKmelanson.htm

From Newman:

Oswald, the CIA and Mexico City

By John Newman, Ph.D.
Copyright ©1999 by John Newman.
All Rights Reserved.

I. The Rosetta Stone

The Assassination Records Review Board finished its search more than a year ago—a search for records relating to the murder of a president thirty-six years ago. Surprisingly, the passage of time has not managed to erode or cover over all of the important evidence. On the contrary, the work of the Review Board has uncovered important new leads in the case. I will leave medical and ballistic forensics to others. I will confine myself to document forensics, an area for which the work of the board had been nothing less than spectacular. More specifically, I will confine myself to the documentary record concerning Lee Harvey Oswald’s 1963 visit to Mexico City.

In 1978, the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) completed its work, including a report on Oswald’s activities in Mexico written by Eddie Lopez and Dan Hardway. Our first glimpses of their report began shortly after the 1993 passage of the JFK Records Act. Not even all the redactions of those early versions could hide the seminal discoveries in that work. While Lopez couched his words in careful language, he suggested that Oswald might have been impersonated while he was in Mexico City just weeks before the assassination. Lopez was more forthright when I interviewed him about this in 1995. Armed with more CIA documents and the first Russian commentary (Nechiporenko’s book, Passport to Assassination), I went further in my own Oswald and the CIA (Carroll & Graf: 1995) in advancing the argument that Oswald was impersonated in the Mexican capitol. Specifically, someone pretending to be Oswald made a series of telephone calls between 28 September and 1 October, allegedly to and from the Cuban and Soviet consulates in Mexico City.

I concluded then, that, based on the content of the CIA Mexico City telephone transcripts alone, the speaker purporting to be Oswald was probably an impostor. I will not repeat my lengthy discussion here, other than to summarize it in this way: the speaker’s words were incongruous with the experiences we can be reasonably certain Oswald underwent. For reasons still obscure, the CIA has lied consistently for these past several decades about the tapes from which those transcripts were made. The Agency concocted the story that the tapes were routinely destroyed before the assassination. It is perhaps true that some tapes were destroyed before the assassination. But Lopez uncovered FBI documents containing detailed accounts of how two of the tapes were listened to after the assassination by FBI agents familiar with Oswald’s voice.

More evidence would come in time. Shortly after the passage of the JFK Records Act, the public gained access to a telephone transcript the day after the assassination in which FBI Director Hoover informs President Johnson that it is not Oswald’s voice on the tapes. The Review Board diligently followed these leads and settled the matter when they found CIA documents in which the Agency itself explicitly states that some of the tapes were reviewed after the assassination. The CIA’s continued silence on the matter of the tapes stands, like a giant beacon, pointing the way forward to the investigator. The impersonation of Oswald in Mexico by someone who drew attention to an Oswald connection to a KGB assassination officer may prove to be the Rosetta stone of this case.

CONTINUED...

http://www.ctka.net/pr999-osciamex.html

From Mellen:

WHO WAS LEE HARVEY OSWALD?

THE WECHT INSTITUTE, DUQUESNE UNIVERSITY, PITTSBURGH, PA.
OCTOBER 5, 2008
By Joan Mellen
Updated December 16, 2008

I’ve devoted my writing life since the early 1970’s to the subject of this conference, “Making Sense of the Sixties.” My first book was about the 1962 Algerian war of independence from France. So I am especially grateful for the opportunity to say a few words about where we are in assessing the events of the sixties. For me, we’re far beyond searching for one more “smoking gun.” The Kennedy assassination at this moment in our history is about linking the events of the sixties with the crises facing the Republic today. I’ll begin with an anecdote about the detective story writer Dashiell Hammett, the subject of one of my biographies.

SNIP..

At the other extreme is the view that Oswald was a “legend” created within U.S. Intelligence, a composite of two people, one born in the USA with that name, and another, of Eastern European origin, trained from an early age as an agent. That there happens to be a CIA CCD (Central Cover Division) fuels this scenario, along with inconsistencies, such as that Oswald boasted two report cards for the fall term of 1954, one from the Bronx, the other from Louisiana.

Drawing on what we know as certain, the Oswald who is recognizable to us was born in New Orleans, and seems rarely to have been deprived of the company of others. Certainly, he was not a loner in Dallas where he was offered the friendship of CIA asset and so-called oil geologist (he had no degree in the subject) George de Mohrenschildt. De Mohrenschildt reported to the Domestic Contact Service (00) in Dallas on Haitian matters, the existing record shows. The quintessential unreliable narrator, a year before his death, de Mohrenschildt targeted Haroldson Lafayette Hunt as the sponsor of the Kennedy assassination. Coincidentally, H. L. Hunt was unique among Texas oil men in being a lifelong antagonist of the CIA, as has been his son, Nelson Bunker Hunt. It was, perhaps, de Mohrenschildt’s final Agency assignment.

Nor was Oswald particularly solitary in New Orleans during the summer of 1963 where his presence was noted at anti-Castro training camps north of Lake Pontchartrain.

Almost from the moment of his arrival in New Orleans from Texas in April 1963, Oswald sought the acquaintance of CIA and FBI assets. He attempted to infiltrate anti-Castro groups. By the time he was arrested on Canal Street in August, he was so well acquainted with the FBI field office that he told the officer interviewing him, Lieutenant Francis Martello of New Orleans police intelligence, “Call the FBI. Tell them you have Lee Oswald in custody.” It was a moment that Martello neglected to describe to the Warren Commission which he held in utter contempt until the end of his life, as former police intelligence officer Robert Buras, working for the House Select Committee, and a long-time Martello acquaintance, told me.

CONTINUED...

http://www.joanmellen.com/oswald.html

Thank you for caring about our history, annabanana! It's how we got into this global mess today.

[Rex]

11. He also wanted to disband the CIA

and hold accountable the MIC when it killed innocent people in times of war. JFK wanted to change the course of America and certain people decided that was a bad idea and killed him for it.

[Octafish]

35. 'For some time I have been disturbed by the way CIA has been diverted from its original assignment.'

You said what Truman said, Rex. When Ike/Nixon ran CIA, they overthrew Iran, Guatemala, put a hit on Lumumba, and tried to put a hit on Castro. When JFK ran things, he told CIA "No" when they wanted to that kind of stuff, including in Vietnam.

We were reminded how much things were out of control a month after the assassination, Truman wished CIA had stuck to its intended role, writing in The Washington Post of Dec. 22, 1963.

Limit CIA Role to Intelligence

By Harry S Truman
The Washington Post
December 22, 1963 - page A11

INDEPENDENCE, MO., Dec. 21 — I think it has become necessary to take another look at the purpose and operations of our Central Intelligence Agency—CIA. At least, I would like to submit here the original reason why I thought it necessary to organize this Agency during my Administration, what I expected it to do and how it was to operate as an arm of the President.

I think it is fairly obvious that by and large a President's performance in office is as effective as the information he has and the information he gets. That is to say, that assuming the President himself possesses a knowledge of our history, a sensitive understanding of our institutions, and an insight into the needs and aspirations of the people, he needs to have available to him the most accurate and up-to-the-minute information on what is going on everywhere in the world, and particularly of the trends and developments in all the danger spots in the contest between East and West. This is an immense task and requires a special kind of an intelligence facility.

SNIP...

Since the responsibility for decision making was his—then he had to be sure that no information is kept from him for whatever reason at the discretion of any one department or agency, or that unpleasant facts be kept from him. There are always those who would want to shield a President from bad news or misjudgments to spare him from being "upset."

For some time I have been disturbed by the way CIA has been diverted from its original assignment. It has become an operational and at times a policy-making arm of the Government. This has led to trouble and may have compounded our difficulties in several explosive areas.

I never had any thought that when I set up the CIA that it would be injected into peacetime cloak and dagger operations. Some of the complications and embarrassment I think we have experienced are in part attributable to the fact that this quiet intelligence arm of the President has been so removed from its intended role that it is being interpreted as a symbol of sinister and mysterious foreign intrigue—and a subject for cold war enemy propaganda.

Continued...

Secret government is at the root of all of our problems -- from welfare for the wealthy to wars for profit. JFK did all he could to keep the peace and lead a just government.

[Rex]

38. I always like to play 'what if' games im my mind

What if MLK, JFK would have lived to this day how different pretty much EVERYTHING would be in our current state of the nation. Icons were very dangerous to the power players in the 60 and 70s...now they have mercenary forces that fight privateer wars for corporations and so I have to agree with Ike and you that the secret side of the govt will destroy us from within. Kinda like when the MIC 'lost' a billions and billions of dollars and it was brushed aside. The CIA now runs around in America spying on OWS, it is a strange world with the DHS and millions of illegal wiretaps...we have arrived at what MLK and JFK would find as an abomination of govt and Ike too for that matter.

If only Octafish.

We can dream.

[riderinthestorm]

13. I learn something new every time you post Octafish.

Did you watch the program? (The untold story of the Kennedy-Castro effort to seek an accommodation is the subject of a new documentary film, KENNEDY AND CASTRO: THE SECRET HISTORY, broadcast on the Discovery/Times cable channel on November 25 at 8pm)


I'm sorry I missed it. I'll have to do a search and see if I can watch it online as I don't have teevee. Sounds like it was a good one....

The "what ifs" on the Kennedy assassination continue to reverberate for decades... shocking and shameful. We ignore this history at our peril as the MIC is far, far, far stronger than ever with the alliance of Big Corporate interests (Halliburton etc.), and financial conglomerates like the Carlyle Group, the Fed and others increasingly brazen in their despicable actions. It's funny, for a while I thought Obama may be in jeopardy of assassination from those big interests. But he's clearly rolled over and the only peril he faces imho is from some fringe white supremacist..... I know we've theorized that all Presidents since Kennedy have been shown some kind of super secret info on Kennedy's killing to keep them in line. Depressingly enough as more information comes out about his presidency, it only tightens my tinfoil hat.

Thanks for posting.

[Canuckistanian]

14. Interesting story about the reporter, Lisa Howard

Lisa Howard was a reporter who interviewed Castro, became very close to him and even ended up being a major liaison between Cuban and American officials. Per Wiki:

In April 1963, she traveled to Cuba to make an ABC special on Cuban leader Fidel Castro. During his filmed interview, as well as in private conversation with Howard, Castro made it clear that Cuba was interested in improved relations with Washington. On her return to the United States, she was debriefed by CIA deputy director, Richard Helms. In a secret memorandum of conversation sent to President Kennedy, Helms reported that "Lisa Howard definitely wants to impress the U.S. Government with two facts: Castro is ready to discuss rapprochement and she herself is ready to discuss it with him if asked to do so by the U.S. Government.[2] Subsequently Howard used her Upper East Side apartment for the first meeting between a U.S. and Cuban diplomat, and for phone communications between Castro and the Kennedy administration.

According to her daughter, Fritzi Lareau, Howard became smitten with Castro and viewed herself as a grand player on the stage of history. In order to continue the reconciliation agenda, she set up a meeting between UN diplomat William Attwood and Carlos Lechuga, Cuba's UN representative on September 23, 1963 at her upper East side New York apartment, under the cover of a cocktail party. With Howard's support, the Kennedy White House was organizing a secret meeting with an emissary of Fidel Castro in November 1963 at the United Nations--a plan that was aborted when President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas on November 22, 1963.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_Howard_%28reporter%29

[Norrin Radd]

21. kr

[ellisonz]

22. Interesting. n/t

[deutsey]

24. I'm reading "JFK and the Unspeakable" by James Douglass

He makes a very convincing (and substantiated) case for what you post here and for JFK engaging in secret dialogue with Kruschev to prevent WWIII.

Douglass shows how all three men (JFK, Castro, and Kruschev) were doing this cautiously and secretly because they knew hardliners in their respective countries would not condone it.

In fact, that's part of Douglass's case: hardliners in the CIA and military leadership were trying to provoke Cuba and the USSR into war (he includes the Operation Northwoods memo among his supporting data). They saw JFK as either too soft or, worse, a traitor

I'm in the part now about how JFK was pissing off the military leaders and cold warriors over Laos and Vietnam.

Excellent book. I've read other JFK assassination books before but this one is the one that rings most true so far, imo.

[matmar]

26. Try "Ultimate Sacrifice" - Lamar Waldron/Thom Hartmann

There were many "irons in the fire" if you will, regarding Cuba and Castro.

Secret backchannel negotiations instituted by JFK and Bobby, (Lisa Howard was just one example, there were others - French Journalist Jean Daniel, UN Envoy Attwood also were "negotiating", CIA/Mafia attempts (without JFK's approval) at Castro's life, JFK/RFK secret plans for a palace coup in Cuba using General Juan Almeida and blaming the Soviets or a Soviet sympathizer as the killer/s.

The Mafia killed JFK and knew of the secret RFK coup plan and used it as blackmail on Bobby to cover-up the Mafia hit on JFK.

[hifiguy]

27. Great post, Octafish

As you well know, Jim Douglass documented this back-channel diplomacy at great length in JFK and the Unspeakable. This was yet one more reason that certain elements of the military-intelligence community wanted him gone.

[deutsey]

34. +1

[lonestarnot]

37. You are right. Not often enough on the mentioned list, rarely in print and never on the TV box.

Thanks fish for all you do! K & R!