Answers sought on CIA role in ‘78 JFK probe

[Octafish]

10. Details from the great Russ Baker via the great DUer Mc_Mike...

There's a good analysis of the Parrott memo in Russ Baker's book 'Family of Secrets'

It runs on pp 45 through 66 (paperback version). I'm not saying you must read my source, though. To sum it up: Poppy bush was in Dallas campaigning against Kennedy and the Democrats on 11-21 and 11-22 morning. He was in Tyler, Texas (he alleges) prepared to give a repug campaign speech, and heard that wires from Dallas confirmed that the President had been assassinated (1:38 pm Central). He didn’t give the political speech. Instead, a few minutes later, he called the FBI to 'finger' Parrott (1:45 pm Central) -- 'There's this guy who volunteers for the organization I'm leading, and he's been talking about killing Kennedy. Gee whiz, I hope he didn’t do anything rash against the guy I’ve been railing against in my Senate run. By the way, I’m not in Dallas, I used my oil buddy’s private jet to go to Tyler, and I’ll use it to go back to Dallas, now'. Fortunately for James Parrott, at the exact same time of the call, Poppy's right hand man in the Harris County repug Party, Kearney Reynolds, was visiting Parrott on behalf of bush to coordinate repug campaign activities with him, and so could provide an alibi to the FBI for Parrott. So what was the point?

There are several points, actually. First, as author Russ Baker points out, bush phoned a FBI agent named Graham Kitchel with the tip. Graham's brother George, an offshore oil engineer, was good friends with Poppy, long-time friends according to an interview George K. himself gave. This ensured his useless tip, among hundreds of calls fielded on what may have been the most hectic day in the FBI’s history, would get action and documentation, unlike a lot of other ‘tips’ that weren’t worthy of documentation. It wasted the Feds’ time and resources, but that waste wasn’t caused in furtherance of a plot against JFK. What the documentation of bush’s ‘tip’ ‘from Tyler’ did, was ‘establish’ the ‘fact’ that bush wasn’t in Dallas, though he was in Dallas on the morning of the 22nd and (according to bush) ‘flew back and was in Dallas on the afternoon of the 22nd’. The FBI memo functioned as a paper trail that explained bush’s presence in Dallas before and after the assassination (because many people saw him there), and ‘established’ that he wasn’t there during it. The result of the useless tip was that “Parrott became Poppy’s alibi, and Poppy’s assistant became Parrott’s.”(--Baker, p. 61). It’s the Texas two step.

Hoover didn’t like the Kennedys, but had no lost love for bush’s bircher crowd, either. He also knew that if they could kill JFK, they could kill Hoover. His reaction to the bush ‘tip’ was a memo of his own a few days later, saying ‘Mr. George Bush of the CIA , we’ve been watching that crowd of armed extremist Batista Cubans you’ve been training, and we think they’re trying to use the assassination as a pretext to launch a war from our soil against Cuba. We know that’s illegal, and we ARE in the business of law enforcement, after all.’ (Those Cubans are the people who Oswald had documented involvement with, working both in favor of their cause and, as the only documented member of the FPCC in New Orleans, ‘against’ their cause. Carlos Bringuier, Antonio Veciana, Col. Orlando Piedro, Sergio Arcacha Smith – those Cubans.)

Hoover’s memo was also important because Poppy denied being in the CIA until he was appointed to lead it, and denies having been in the CIA from the 50’s – 70’s, to this day. Hoover blew bush’s cover, quite purposefully, and told bush’s crowd that they had reached the end of their chain, in action terms.

The reaction to Hoover’s move was an immediate set of leaks in December to Dallas D.A. Wade and ‘friendly’ (to right wing repugs) Dallas reporters saying that Oswald was an FBI informant. And in January, Texas A. G. Waggoner Carr sent Warren Commission General Counsel Rankin a memo about the allegations. Carr said the allegations came from Dallas D.A. Wade, and Wade was unable or unwilling to specify the source of them. That’s the Texas repugs and CIA man bush’s crowd saying ‘How about we pin the assassination on you, Hoover?’

Interestingly, when D.A. Wade was giving a late night press conference as Nov. 22 ended, he identified Oswald as a member of the ‘Free Cuba Committee’. He was corrected by a strip-club owner named Jack Ruby, who had mixed in with the crowd of reporters, and who said ‘That’s the Fair Play for Cuba Committee.’ (The Crusade to Free Cuba Committee was an anti-Castro pro Batista Cuban expatriate crowd who had offices in the New Orleans building at 544 Camp Street. Oswald distributed flyers stamped with that address for the pro-Castro FPCC, he distributed those flyers on the street outside that building, and used that building as a base for his ‘work on behalf of’ Castro.)

I remember discussing Wade’s actions with Zap, the DU WC advocate last year. Why would a DA in a high profile international press conference take public correction from a mob flunky, instead of having the cops remove the guy from the room? How did a mob flunky strip club owner come to have such in depth knowledge about obscure pro and anti Castro groups, to make sure that the anti-Castro group didn’t get blamed, but the pro-Castro group did get blamed? Those two lines from the press conference showed that Wade knew Ruby, and Ruby knew Oswald, but the response to my question from Zap was a glib ‘Why don’t you ask Wade?’, (who is dead).

And finally, regarding Parrott: Baker’s book talked about an interview conducted with Parrott in ’93. The high interest in the Kennedy assassination in the early ‘90’s had led to Congress unanimously passing the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of ’92, which caused the Parrott memo to be released. This generated interest in Parrott, and he gave an interview in ’93. He noted that he had worked for bush’s re-election campaign in ’92, and “in an article covering the frenzied GOP-convention podium attacks on the Clinton-Gore team over family values, Parrott is described as passing out flyers saying ‘no queers or baby killing’, while wearing a plastic shield over his face, explaining that it was protection against the AIDS virus.” (-- Baker, p. 63, sourced to Minneapolis Star-Tribune reporter Steve Berg, 8-19-92.) Parrott was a teabagger 17 years before the movement existed. He suffered no harm from bush’s ‘tip’. If he did, bush wouldn’t have cared, because Parrott is deranged teabag cannon fodder. But he didn’t.

Parrott’s party activism illustrates a point: for those of us who find the ‘official story’ yarn spun by the Warren Commission to be composed of a thousand loose threads, we’re not just re-hashing academic historical facts about the murder of JFK. We believe that the people who committed the crime benefitted from it, and they and their heirs are still around hurting the country. Exposing them will help prevent them from hurting the country more.

Original Post: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024070535#post186

More from Russ Baker: http://whowhatwhy.com/2013/09/16/part-1-mr-george-bush-of-the-central-intelligence-agency/