Open Letter to Ferriero

Open Letter to the National Archivist of the USA

To: David Ferriero – Archivist of the United States

From: Historical Researchers

Re: JFK Assassination Records

As the Archivist of the United States you are responsible for the preservation of our country’s records, which are our national treasures – our “family jewels,” and the documentation of our nation’s history since its founding.

Conducting an open and honest government is said to be one of the hallmarks of the current administration, and the founding fathers recognized that a democracy requires an informed electorate, one that has all the information and facts necessary to make decisions that effect the directions that the country will take in the future.

Over the course of our entire history no single event has had such a catastrophic impact on our national political system than the assassination of President Kennedy, mainly because of the unresolved nature of the case in both legal and moral terms, and the continued withholding of relevant records from the public.  

Polls have consistently shown that the American public’s confidence in their government began to decline shortly after the release of the Warren Report and has continued to decline ever since. That confidence will never recover until all of the government records on the assassination are released to the public.

When the Warren Commission concluded its work, Chief Justice Earl Warren, in response to a question as to when all of its records would be released, responded by saying, “Not in your lifetime.”

Then when the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) disbanded, its records were sealed for a half-century and its second chief counsel said that he could live with the judgment of historians in fifty years.

Well the American people refused to accept those decisions, and thanks to Oliver Stone’s movie “JFK,” a national consensus forced Congress to pass the JFK Assassination Records Act of 1992, which was reluctantly signed into law by President Bush that October, twenty years ago this month.

That law created the Assassinations Records Review Board (ARRB), which despite releasing over 4 million pages of records, failed to locate the unedited Air Force One radio transmission tapes, the documents of Office of Naval Intelligence director Admiral Rufus Taylor and numerous other records that remain among the government’s holdings but are not included in the JFK Assassination Records Collection at the NARA.

Since the agencies and departments of government knew that the ARRB was a temporary agency, they delayed responding to requests for records, and intentionally kept relevant records from being reviewed or becoming part of the JFK Assassination Records Collection.

Even among those records that were to be included, the CIA has withheld over a thousand documents that have never been properly reviewed. No one even knows how many pages they contain. Other clearly relevant records were excluded, such as the Kefauver Committee records and the Bay of Pigs report, because they were “deemed not relevant” or, like the Joannidies/DRE documents, are considered “operational” records. These are claimed to be exempted from release and are now part of a major FOIA court case which should be resolved in the public’s interest and the that of the CIA.

Some agencies, such as the Department of Defense and the Secret Service, intentionally destroyed relevant records to keep them from being released to the public, and those individuals responsible for the destruction of these historic documents have never been properly questioned or reprimanded for their actions.

Why haven’t you, as the Archivist of the United States, requested Congress to hold mandated oversight hearings on the JFK Act, which they haven’t done in fifteen years, and do its duty and properly oversee the law, which has never been full enforced?

Why doesn’t the NARA, as it has on the anniversaries of the Bay of Pigs, Berlin Wall and Cuban Missile Crisis, release the remaining JFK records and conduct a special program on the anniversary of the assassination?

These records were created by public servants working for the government of the United States and don’t belong to those who created them, the agencies they worked for or the Kennedy family. They belong to the people of the United States - they are a record of our history and we want them now, not in 2017, or 2029 or never.

This is not about supporting or debunking conspiracy theories. Before a national debate on the assassination can even begin, before the anniversary of Kennedy’s death can be properly honored, before we can put this tragedy behind us and move on, we must have all the facts. All the cards must be on the table, the entire truth must be publicly known and no records should be kept secret for reasons of "national security,” or to keep agencies, administrators and bureaucrats from being embarrassed.

Fifty years ago there might have been good reasons to keep some of these records secret but now, it is matter of our national security that they be released to the public.

The provisions of the JFK Assassination Records Act require the full public release of unredacted copies of all related records immediately, when the reason for postponing release in each case is no longer current or relevant, and no later than 2013, with the certification of the Archivist that all such files have been released in full. There is no provision requiring that any file not be released before 2013, it is at the discretion and review of the Archivist to continue review and release until completed.

President Obama created an Executive Order requiring declassification without review of all government records classified for more than 25 years. A subsequent law required a review to be sure they did not contain information regarding nuclear weapons before release, which has slowed the process. A National Declassification Center was created to expedite this massive release of files, well over 400 million records. Yet, the individual agencies and the NARA continue to block release of JFK assassination files classified now for almost 50 years under some exemption. President Obama's intention was to require that no file be classified indefinitely, and your decision to postpone release of these files frustrates that order and the intent of the JFK Act and the Assassination Records Review Board.

What we ask for is not unreasonable.

We want the NARA to identify and count the number of JFK assassination documents still being withheld, how many pages they contain and the reasons for their being withheld.

We want the NARA to include all the remaining withheld JFK assassination-related records, as defined in the JFK Records Act in the National Declassification Review process, as originally intended, and release them in 2013, the 50th anniversary year of the assassination.

We want the NARA to rigorously assume the role previously performed by the ARRB, as the law requires, and continue to fulfill the remaining work until it is done.

Since a copy of the Air Force One tapes were recently discovered, the allegedly destroyed Secret Service documents were found among the effects of a former agent, and the records of the first chief counsel of the HSCA were not obtained by the ARRB, we want the NARA to resume the search for all relevant JFK assassination records, including federal, state, local, foreign and personal files, secure them and make them a part of the JFK Assassination Records Collection, open to the public.

We want you, Mr. Ferriero, as the Archivist of the United States, to do your sworn duty and fulfill the requirements of the JFK Act so you can, as the law requires, report to Congress that the last JFK assassination record has been released to the public.

Thank you for your time and attention to this matter,

Protest at the National Archives to Free the Files

                                                        "THE PAST IS PROLOGUE"

                                  Protest at the National Archives to Free the JFK Assassination Files

PRESS RELEASE

JOHN F. KENNEDY ASSASSINATION RESEACHERS TO PICKET THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES

     Historical researchers will picket the National Archives on Constitution Avenue between Seventh and Ninth Streets, N.W. near the Visitor’s Entrance on Monday, October 8, 2012 between 10:00 a.m. and 12:00 Noon and distribute an open letter to David S. Ferriero, the Archivist of the United States.

     The purpose of the picket will be to protest the decision by the National Archives not to declassify documents related to the assassination of President John Kennedy, a decision made at the request of the Central Intelligence Agency.

     The National Archives' decision is in violation of President Barack Obama' executive order of Tuesday, December 29, 2009 that "no information may remain classified indefinitely" as part of sweeping overhaul of the executive branch's system protecting
classified national security information.

     President Obama also established a new National Declassification Center at the National Archives to speed the process of declassifying historical documents by centralizing their review. The President set a four year deadline for processing a 400-million-page backlog of such records that originally included the JFK assassination records to be released on the 50^th anniversary of Kennedy’s death, but later reneged on that commitment.

The October 8^th picket is in protest that decision by the Archives and the continued withholding of JFK assassination records past the 50^th anniversary of the assassination.

         50 YEARS IS LONG ENOUGH! – FREE THE JFK ASSASSINATION RECORDS

Many thanks to Paul Kuntsler for coordinating this protest. It will be a non-violent protest to free the remaining withheld JFK assassination records, not a debate on the assassination. - BK

Gaeton Fonzi RIP

                                                               GAETON FONZI – RIP

“If it ever becomes known what specific individuals comprised the apparatus that killed Kennedy, the emergence of such individuals, dead or alive, will add but inconsequential detail to the truth about the assassination because we have long known who killed President Kennedy. Could any but the most powerful elite controlling the U.S. Government have been able to manipulate individuals and events before the assassination and then bring such a broad spectrum of internal forces to cover up the crime and control the institutions within our society to keep the assassination of President Kennedy a false mystery for 50 years?”  - Gaeton Fonzi

AS I REMEMBER GAETON – Bill Kelly

After reading of his investigative and journalistic exploits for years I finally got to meet Gaeton Fonzi on November 22^nd, 1998 when I was sitting on Zapruder’s perch on the Grassy Knoll when he walked by. I recognized him and introduced myself, and we talked for quite a while.

Since he was from Philadelphia and I was from Camden, just across the river, we were from the same neck of the woods, and had a number of mutual friends, mainly in the media, but especially Alan Halpern, who was Fonzi’s chief mentor. Halpern had edited my article on the real James Bond, (the Philadelphia ornithologist from whom Ian Fleming had appropriated the name for 007), and served as a consultant to Atlantic City Magazine, where some of my articles were published.

Although we were from the same area and had a number of mutual acquaintances, it was odd and quite fitting that the one and only time our paths would cross was on the Grassy Knoll on the anniversary of the assassination.

I remember reading about Gaeton Fonzi in the newspapers in 1977, somewhat jealous of the reporter investigating the assassination of President Kennedy for the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA), wishing I was in his shoes. The news reports however, weren’t so much about the assassination as they were about the committee’s chief counsel Richard Sprague, who would eventually get fired for doing a good job.

I knew of both Fonzi and Sprague from Philadelphia, where Fonzi was a writer for the Philadelphia Magazine in its heyday, and Sprague was a former district attorney who had successfully prosecuted Tony Boyle for the murder of his United Mine Workers Union rival Jock Yablonski. Sprague and Fonzi, I thought, were the best guys to be in their respective positions, and if left alone they would finally get to the truth behind the assassination of President Kennedy.

Others must have thought the same thing, as detailed in Fonzi’s Washingtonian Magazine article and his book The Last Investigation (Thunders Mouth Press, 1993), since after only six months Sprague was forced out as Chief Counsel and Fonzi had to work under the leadership of G. Robert Blakey, an organized crime expert who would redirect the committee’s investigation away from the CIA and towards the Mafia.

Fonzi went to school at the University of Pennsylvania but learned to be a journalist from Alan Halpern, the unflappable editor of Philadelphia Magazine, where Fonzi’s schoolmate Charles “Chuck” MacNamara also worked. Together, and with others, they helped create the prototype of a regional city magazine driven by creative and hard hitting feature articles.

One of the first articles Fonzi wrote for Philadelphia Magazine was to expose a reporter who extorted money from people for not writing about them. [JFKCountercoup2: Gaeton Fonzi's The Reporter ]

Over the years a lot of people would have paid Fonzi not to write about them except he had scruples.

Fonzi was driven to the Kennedy assassination by Philadelphia attorney Vince Salandria, and Fonzi would become one of Salandria’s committee of correspondence that discussed matters related to the assassination.

Fonzi’s contacts and investigative journalism background go him a job on the staff of Pennsylvania Senator Richard Schweiker, who was one half of the Schweiker-Hart subcommittee of the Church Committee – the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities. An off-shoot of the Watergate scandal, the Church Committee limited its investigation into the Kennedy assassination to cover only certain areas that fell within its purview and assigned Colorado Democrat Gary Hart and Pennsylvania Republican Senator Richard Schweiker to cover these Kennedy angles.

In the course of his work for the Senate Committee Fonzi interviewed a number of anti-Castro Cubans, including Antonio Veciana, who acknowledged that from the time he worked for a bank in Havana in 1960 until the mid-1970s, he had an intelligence case officer who directed many of his anti-Castro activities, including a number of failed plots to kill Castro.

While describing his case officer, who went by the name of “Maurice Bishop,” Veciana told Fonzi of his many meetings with “Mr. Bishop,” including one in Dallas in the summer of 1963 during which “Bishop” also met with another agent – Lee Harvey Oswald.

Based on Veciana’s description, a sketch artist drew a facial portrait of “Maurice Bishop,” which looked familiar to Senator Schweiker, who was driving down the highway when he remembered exactly who – the former CIA officer who had recently testified before his Senate committee – David Atlee Phillips.

[ JFKcountercoup: David Atlee Phillips - The Ultimate Spook]

From the detailed description of “Maurice Bishop” provided by Veciana and a comparison of the background and career of David A. Phillips, it is clear, and without a doubt, “Maurice Bishop” and David Atlee Phillips are one and the same person. [See: JFKCountercoup.blogspot.com "Maurice Bishop" & David Atlee Phillips / JFKcountercoup: "Maurice Bishop" & David Atlee Phillips ]

At the time Veciana saw Oswald and Phillips together – in the lobby of the Southland Building in Dallas, Texas, in the summer of 1963, Veciana was the director of the anti-Castro Cuban group Alpha 66, Oswald was the nominal leader of a Fair Play for Cuba Committee (FPCC) chapter and Phillips was the head of the CIA’s Cuban operations in the Western Hemisphere, which included overseeing the FPFC.

Shortly after meeting in Dallas, Oswald went to the Cuban and Soviet embassies in Mexico City, where Phillips was stationed, and was responsible for the surveillance of those embassies.

When questioned under oath by the Congressional committee, Phillips denied knowing Veciana or ever meeting with Oswald, even though others have confirmed that Phillips did use the name “Bishop” and Phillips lied to the Congressional investigators about other points.

After a few years, Fonzi wrote a lengthily article about the whole affair, edited by Alan Halpern and published in Washingtonian Magazine, an article that was also used as the basis for his book The Last Investigation.

Others have written about the Bishop-Phillips connection, including Anthony Summers (Conspiracy, Not In Your Lifetime) and David Leigh, a British exchange student who Ben Bradlee had commissioned Leigh to write an article for the Washington Post, but was never published.

The Last Investigation is not Fonzi’s only book, as he also wrote a biography of Walter Annenberg, the Philadelphia publisher of the Racing Form and TV Guide and served as Nixon’s ambassador to the Court of St. James.

A few years after meeting Fonzi on the Grassy Knoll, I talked with him on the phone a few times over some research items and knew he was keeping up with the case via the South Florida Research Group. We also exchanged emails over the news of the death of Alan Halpern, the former editor of Philadelphia Magazine. [Alan Halpern RIP JFKCountercoup2: Alan Halpern RIP ]

At the Education Forum John Simpkin has posted Fonzi’s speech accepting the 1998 Mary Ferrell Award at a Dallas Conference, [http://www.spartacus...uk/JFKfonzi.htm]    which is tantalizing inconclusive and leads you on to ask more questions and continue the pursuit of the truth.

Mary Ferrell – JFKLancer Pioneer Award, Dallas, 21st November 21, 1998.

Like most other Americans, after the initial shock of President Kennedy's assassination had dimmed, we fell into the comfortable assumption that the government was handling the matter judiciously, that the prestigious panel of respected individuals, headed by the most prestigious member of the American judicial system, would provide us with a thorough and valid appraisal of exactly what had happened when President Kennedy was killed. What led me to clip the article by Vincent Salandria is that it ran counter to that assumption.

It dealt with only one aspect of the report - the sequence of events surrounding the number and direction of the shots. But that just happened to be the area assigned to another Philadelphia lawyer, a young assistant district attorney whose quick intelligence and impressive record had landed him a staff job on the Warren Commission. His name, of course, was Arlen Specter.

I didn't initially understand some of the technical and complex points Salandria made in his article, but I did grasp the fact that what Salandria was implying was that the Warren Commission Report was wrong...

Local reporters had, of course, asked Specter about the Warren Report when it was released. He was vigorous in defense of its conclusions. He called the Commission's investigation the most exhaustive and complete in history. The single bullet theory, he insisted, was the only possible way to explain how Lee Harvey Oswald had shot President Kennedy. The reporters dutifully reported what he said.

Amazingly enough, even after all those months had gone by since the release of the Warren Report, I was the first journalist to ask Specter about specific details and about the Report's inconsistencies. I apparently caught Specter off guard.

I was shocked by his confusions, his hemming and hawing, his hesitations and evasions. This from someone who was the epitome of the always cool, collected and verbally masterful lawyer, the former star of the Yale Law debating team. I was even more shocked by his inability to provide valid explanations for some of the most blatant inconsistencies in the Report.

I believe the most crucial was the discrepancy between the levels of the so-called "exit" wound in Kennedy's throat and the holes in the back of Kennedy's jacket and shirt. Why were the holes in his back lower than the hole in Kennedy's throat? I still remember Specter hesitating, stuttering, making a few false starts in attempting to answer that question. Finally, he got up from his desk and came around to stand behind me. Well, he said, it was because the President was waving his arm, and then, trying to illustrate why the jacket would ride up, Specter pulled my arm high over my head - far higher than the Zapruder film showed Kennedy waving his hand. "Wave your arm a few times," Specter said, "wave at the crowd." And then jabbing a finger at the base of my neck - not six inches below my collar, where the holes in Kennedy's jacket and shirt were - Specter said, "Well, see, if the bullet goes in here, the jacket gets hunched up. If you take this point right here and then you strip the coat down, it comes out at a lower point."

"A lower point?" I repeated, wondering if Specter were trying to confuse me or was confused himself.

If the entrance holes were at a lower point than the exit hole, how could Oswald have shot Kennedy from the sixth floor window of the Book Depository?

In the end, Specter admitted they had what he described as - quote - "some problems with that."

My interviews also revealed that the Commission had "some problems" with other troublesome evidence, including the so-called "pristine" bullet, the angle of Governor Connally's wounds, the timing of the shots. "Some problems," indeed. I'll never forget the numbing disbelief I came away with after my interviews with Specter. Vince Salandria was right, the Warren Report was wrong, there had to have been a conspiracy.

We were young once and not so brave. We wanted to cling to the myth of a mystery. We wanted to hang onto the questions of motivation and parade the usual suspects and the illusion of a dilemma before the American people. Could the Mob have killed President Kennedy? Could the KGB have killed President Kennedy? Could Castro have killed President Kennedy? Could anti-Castro Cubans have killed President Kennedy? Could the CIA have killed President Kennedy?

I suggest to you that if it ever becomes known what specific individuals comprised the apparatus that killed Kennedy, those individuals will have some association with any or all of the above. And still the emergence of such individuals, dead or alive, will add but inconsequential detail to the truth about the assassination. Because we have known -- and have long known - who killed President Kennedy.

Could any but a totally controlling force - a power elite within the United States Government itself - call it what you will, the military-intelligence complex, the national security state, the corporate-warfare establishment - could any but the most powerful elite controlling the U.S. Government have been able to manipulate individuals and events before the assassination and then bring such a broad spectrum of internal forces to first cover up the crime and then control the institutions within our society to keep the assassination of President Kennedy a false mystery for 35 years?

Is there any doubt that the Warren Commission deliberately set out not to tell the American people the truth?

There is a brief glimpse, an illustration of the level at which that deceit was carried out, in an incident that occurred during the Warren Commission's investigation. Commission chairman Earl Warren himself, with then Representative Gerald Ford at his side, was interviewing a barman, Curtis LaVerne Crafard. Crafard had worked at Jack Ruby's Carousel Club before he was seized by FBI men as he was hightailing it out of town the day after the assassination, having told someone, "They are not going to pin this on me!"

In the interview, Warren asks Craford what he did before he was a bartender.

"I was a Master sniper in the Marine Corps," Craford answered.*

The next question that Warren immediately asked was: "What kind of entertainment did they have at the club?"

http://www.spartacus...uk/JFKfonzi.htm 

Gaeton Fonzi, 76, reporter who wrote of JFK's killing

Sat, Sep. 1, 2012

By Walter F. Naedele

Inquirer Staff Writer

http://www.philly.com/philly/obituaries/20120901_Gaeton_Fonzi__76__reporter_who_wrote_of_JFK_s_killing.html?viewAll=y

Gaeton Fonzi, 76, an investigative reporter for Philadelphia Magazine from 1959 to 1972 who later published his own conspiracy theory of the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy, died Thursday, Aug. 30, of Parkinson's disease at his home in Satellite Beach, Fla.

"He was relentless," D. Herbert Lipson, chairman of Metrocorp, owner of Philadelphia and Boston Magazines, recalled.

That intensity carried on after Mr. Fonzi left Philadelphia.

"His whole obsession was the Kennedy assassination," Marie, his wife of 55 years, said.

"He was in constant contact with everybody about that" for years, she said. "He went and spoke in Dallas almost every year" at gatherings where the assassination there was discussed.

Mr. Fonzi was an investigator for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence from 1975 to 1977 and for the House Select Committee on Assassinations for two years after that, his wife said.

His book on the matter, The Last Investigation, was published in 1993 by Thunder's Mouth Press.

Born in Philadelphia, Mr. Fonzi graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1957, where he wrote for the campus newspaper, the Daily Pennsylvanian.

Mr. Fonzi was briefly a reporter at the Delaware County Daily Times before serving Stateside as an Army infantry officer.

He joined what was then Greater Philadelphia magazine, a publication for business executives, in 1959 and helped turn it into a trendsetting publication.

"My father was one of the owners," Lipson said. After the elder Lipson left in 1960, he said, "I was a brash, precocious kid who made the changes that really began around '60."

Mr. Fonzi, Lipson said, "was there in the beginning with me."

Working closely with editor Alan Halpern, "he did a lot of great stuff" that wasn't being covered by the region's newspapers.

"In those days, we wanted to cure all the ills of the world," Lipson said, and "it could take him years" to gather enough to finally publish an investigation.

For instance, in the years before The Inquirer was bought by what became the Knight-Ridder chain of newspapers and made into a nationally acclaimed newspaper, Mr. Fonzi discovered that one of its reporters, Harry Karafin, had a questionable sideline.

Mr. Fonzi and fellow magazine reporter Greg Walter "authored a lengthy piece accusing Harry J. Karafin of having extorted money from his subjects in exchange for not publishing stories about their misdeeds," The Inquirer reported in Mr. Walter's 1989 obituary.

"It was a piece that led to Mr. Karafin's indictment and imprisonment."

Gil Spencer, the late top editor at the Philadelphia Daily News, said in that 1989 story that Mr. Walter and Mr. Fonzi "were the first to turn regional magazines into investigative instruments.

"And it certainly hit Philadelphia for a real lick, as far as investigative reporting went at that time."

Bernard McCormick, a fellow reporter at Philadelphia Magazine, wrote in a recent appreciation that Mr. Fonzi's "gentle, slow talking, sometimes inaudible manner belied his aggressive journalistic style.

"He joked that his mumbling, halting interview technique worked to his advantage when subjects couldn't stand his pace and blurted out information."

After Philadelphia, Mr. Fonzi joined McCormick as editor and part-owner of Miami magazine before going on to the congressional committees.

Mr. Fonzi then contributed to Gold Coast magazine, part of the Gulfstream Media Group, where McCormick is publisher.

Mr. Fonzi's wife said Sigma Delta Chi, the Society of Professional Journalists, gave him two local awards and a national award.

He ran three marathons, the last when he was in his 50s, said his wife, also a marathoner, whom he met at Penn.

But apart from his investigative work and his family, she said, "his sailboat was his greatest love," a 37-footer that he moored on Biscayne Bay from 1977 to 2002.

In addition to his wife, Mr. Fonzi is survived by sons Guy and Christopher; daughters Irene Fonzi and Maria Fonzi-Gonzales; eight grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.

A Funeral Mass was set for 11 a.m. Tuesday, Sept. 4, at Holy Name of Jesus Church, 3050 N. Highway A1a, Indialantic, Fla., with a 1 p.m. luncheon reception at City Tropics Bistro, 249 Fifth Ave., Indialantic.

BY MARIA CAMILA BERNAL

Friday, 08.31.12

DEATHS

Gaeton Fonzi, journalist and JFK assassination investigator, dies

MBERNAL@MIAMIHERALD.COM

http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/08/31/2979076/gaeton-fonzi-journalist-and-jfk.html

Gaeton Fonzi spent months away from his family conducting interviews in Washington D.C., worked countless hours retrieving documents and files, and dedicated years to writing what would be one of the most recognized publications concluding a conspiracy in the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

“He was writer in his soul,” said his wife, Marie Fonzi. “He never stopped thinking about the stories, about the assassination.”

He wrote more than 100 feature articles as senior editor of Philadelphia Magazine, wrote countless stories for publications nationwide, was the editor of Miami Magazine and the senior editor at Gold Coast Magazine. He won numerous awards for his writing, including two local Sigma Delta Chi Awards and a National Sigma Delta Chi Award.

Recognized as a successful investigative journalist, Gaeton Fonzi was selected to join the U.S. Senate and House Committees that investigated the JFK assassination.

Fonzi died Thursday in the arms of his wife of 56 years after having battled Parkinson’s disease for years. He was 76.

He was born in West New York, N.J. and grew up playing baseball and listening to country music. His love for the New York Yankee’s and admiration of Joe DiMaggio accompanied him all his life.

He met Marie at the University of Pennsylvania where they both studied journalism. He was the editor of the school newspaper and spent the afternoons hanging out with Marie and doing homework with her.

After college, he took a job at the Delaware County Daily, where he filled in for writers who went out on vacation. During the draft for the Korean War, Fonzi became an infantry officer in the U.S. Army but hated the mud, discomfort and dusty roads, his wife recalled.

In 1959 Fonzi joined Philadelphia Magazine where his writings exposed Harry Karafin, a corrupt Philadelphia Inquirer reporter.

In 1972, Fonzi left Philadelphia to work with his colleague, Bernard McCormick, at Miami Magazine and later Gold Coast Magazine.

“It was his reputation that got us to strive,” said McCormick. “His success in investigative reporting was because everyone trusted him and would take risks to give him information.”

When the magazine was sold in 1975, Fonzi went to work for Pennsylvania Senator Richard Schweiker, who headed a committee reopening the investigation of JFK’s murder. Fonzi became the investigator in Florida who explored CIA connections to anti-Castro Cuban groups and possibly to Lee Harvey Oswald.

Schweiker’s committee was dissolved but after Fonzi found a connection between the groups, he continued working for a house sub-committee for the next two years. In 1993, after a decade of research on the assassination, his book “The Last Investigation’’ was published.

In Florida, Fonzi was recognized for teaming up with Fort Lauderdale police organized crime specialist Douglas Haas to expose Michael Raymond, a notorious con man suspected of defrauding and then murdering several Floridians.

“He had tremendous instincts for wrongdoings,” said McCormick. “He got a lot of publicity but he was modest about his work and was never a bragger.”

Fonzi was quiet but known for being the master of the one-liner, said Marie. In his spare time, he liked to run with his wife and go out on his boat. He never missed the Columbus Day Regatta on Biscayne Bay, where they shared beer and had balloon fights. He cooked dinner every night, wrote letters to friends and discussed the beauty of written work with his wife.

He retired and moved to Satellite Beach with his wife in 2003. That same year, Fonzi was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.

In addition to his wife, Fonzi is survived by his four children, Rene, Guy, Maria and Christopher Fonzi. A funeral Mass will be sung at 11a.m. Tuesday at Holy Name of Jesus Catholic Church, 3050 N. A1A, Indialantic, Fla. A luncheon reception will follow at 1 p.m. at City Tropics Bistro, 249 Fifth Avenue, Indialantic, Fla.

Gaeton Fonzi, 76, reporter who wrote of JFK's killing

By Walter F. Naedele

Inquirer Staff Writer

Gaeton Fonzi, 76, an investigative reporter for Philadelphia Magazine from 1959 to 1972 who later published his own conspiracy theory of the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy, died Thursday, Aug. 30, of Parkinson's disease at his home in Satellite Beach, Fla.

"He was relentless," D. Herbert Lipson, chairman of Metrocorp, owner of Philadelphia and Boston Magazines, recalled.

That intensity carried on after Mr. Fonzi left Philadelphia.

"His whole obsession was the Kennedy assassination," Marie, his wife of 55 years, said.

"He was in constant contact with everybody about that" for years, she said. "He went and spoke in Dallas almost every year" at gatherings where the assassination there was discussed.

Mr. Fonzi was an investigator for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence from 1975 to 1977 and for the House Select Committee on Assassinations for two years after that, his wife said.

His book on the matter, The Last Investigation, was published in 1993 by Thunder's Mouth Press.

Born in Philadelphia, Mr. Fonzi graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1957, where he wrote for the campus newspaper, the Daily Pennsylvanian.

Mr. Fonzi was briefly a reporter at the Delaware County Daily Times before serving Stateside as an Army infantry officer.

He joined what was then Greater Philadelphia magazine, a publication for business executives, in 1959 and helped turn it into a trendsetting publication.

"My father was one of the owners," Lipson said. After the elder Lipson left in 1960, he said, "I was a brash, precocious kid who made the changes that really began around '60."

Mr. Fonzi, Lipson said, "was there in the beginning with me."

Working closely with editor Alan Halpern, "he did a lot of great stuff" that wasn't being covered by the region's newspapers.

"In those days, we wanted to cure all the ills of the world," Lipson said, and "it could take him years" to gather enough to finally publish an investigation.

For instance, in the years before The Inquirer was bought by what became the Knight-Ridder chain of newspapers and made into a nationally acclaimed newspaper, Mr. Fonzi discovered that one of its reporters, Harry Karafin, had a questionable sideline.

Mr. Fonzi and fellow magazine reporter Greg Walter "authored a lengthy piece accusing Harry J. Karafin of having extorted money from his subjects in exchange for not publishing stories about their misdeeds," The Inquirer reported in Mr. Walter's 1989 obituary.

"It was a piece that led to Mr. Karafin's indictment and imprisonment."

Gil Spencer, the late top editor at the Philadelphia Daily News, said in that 1989 story that Mr. Walter and Mr. Fonzi "were the first to turn regional magazines into investigative instruments.

"And it certainly hit Philadelphia for a real lick, as far as investigative reporting went at that time."

Bernard McCormick, a fellow reporter at Philadelphia Magazine, wrote in a recent appreciation that Mr. Fonzi's "gentle, slow talking, sometimes inaudible manner belied his aggressive journalistic style.

"He joked that his mumbling, halting interview technique worked to his advantage when subjects couldn't stand his pace and blurted out information."

After Philadelphia, Mr. Fonzi joined McCormick as editor and part-owner of Miami magazine before going on to the congressional committees.

Mr. Fonzi then contributed to Gold Coast magazine, part of the Gulfstream Media Group, where McCormick is publisher.

Mr. Fonzi's wife said Sigma Delta Chi, the Society of Professional Journalists, gave him two local awards and a national award.

He ran three marathons, the last when he was in his 50s, said his wife, also a marathoner, whom he met at Penn.

But apart from his investigative work and his family, she said, "his sailboat was his greatest love," a 37-footer that he moored on Biscayne Bay from 1977 to 2002.

In addition to his wife, Mr. Fonzi is survived by sons Guy and Christopher; daughters Irene Fonzi and Maria Fonzi-Gonzales; eight grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.

A Funeral Mass was set for 11 a.m. Tuesday, Sept. 4, at Holy Name of Jesus Church, 3050 N. Highway A1a, Indialantic, Fla., with a 1 p.m. luncheon reception at City Tropics Bistro, 249 Fifth Ave., Indialantic.

NEW YORK TIMES -

Gaeton Fonzi, 76, Investigated Kennedy Assassination - NYTimes.com

Gaeton Fonzi, Investigator of Kennedy Assassination, Dies at 76

By PAUL VITELLO

Gaeton Fonzi was one of the most relentless investigators on the House Select Committee on Assassinations in the late 1970s, remembered by former colleagues with both awe and echoes of the impatience he inspired with his pursuit of the full story behind the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

They called him Ahab.

Mr. Fonzi was also the staff member most publicly dismayed by the committee’s final report, which concluded in 1979 that the president “was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy.”

Of course it was a conspiracy, said Mr. Fonzi, a journalist recruited mainly on the strength of scathing magazine critiques he had written about the Warren Commission and its conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald had acted alone in killing the president in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963. But who were the conspirators? What was their motive? How could the committee close its doors without the answers?

Mr. Fonzi, who died in Florida on Aug. 30 at 76, nailed those questions to the committee’s locked doors, figuratively, in a long article he wrote the next year for Washingtonian magazine and in a 1993 book, “The Last Investigation.” In both, he chronicled the near-blanket refusal of government intelligence agencies, especially the C.I.A., to provide the committee with documents it requested. And he accused committee leaders of folding under pressure — from Congressional budget hawks, political advisers and the intelligence agencies themselves — just as promising new leads were emerging.

“Is it unrealistic to desire, for something as important as the assassination of a president, an investigation unbound by political, financial or time restrictions?” he asked in Washingtonian.

He never got the answer he had hoped for. Congress never authorized a follow-up to the work of the committee, which, from 1977 to 1979, also re-examined the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., concluding that it, too, “likely” resulted from an unspecified conspiracy.

But historians and researchers consider Mr. Fonzi’s book among the best of the roughly 600 published on the Kennedy assassination, and credit him with raising doubts about the government’s willingness to share everything it knew. The author Jefferson Morley, a former reporter for The Washington Post, said “The Last Investigation” had refocused attention on a handful of reported contacts between C.I.A. operatives and Oswald — tantalizing leads that had long been fascinating to conspiracy buffs but that had never been fully scrutinized by a veteran investigative reporter.

The Central Intelligence Agency has denied that any such contacts occurred, and Mr. Fonzi spent most of his two years with the committee crisscrossing the world trying to prove otherwise. He considered it impossible that the C.I.A. had never made contact with Oswald, a former Marine who defected to the Soviet Union in 1959, repatriated with his Russian wife and baby in 1962, and settled in Dallas, where he openly espoused Communist views.

“We called him Ahab, because he was so single-minded about that white whale,” said G. Robert Blakey, the chief counsel and staff director of the House committee, now a professor at the University of Notre Dame Law School. The white whale for Mr. Fonzi was the meaning of those supposed contacts.

Mr. Blakey was criticized by Mr. Fonzi as overly deferential to the C.I.A., and he now concedes that Mr. Fonzi was probably right on that score. Mr. Blakey said he was shocked in 2003 when declassified C.I.A. documents revealed the full identity of the retired agent who had acted as the committee’s liaison to the C.I.A. The agency never told Mr. Blakey that the agent, George Joannides, had overseen a group of anti-Castro Cuban exiles in Dallas in the months before the assassination, when Oswald had two well-publicized clashes with them.

At the time of the revelation, the C.I.A. said Mr. Joannides had withheld nothing relevant from the committee. Mr. Joannides died in 1990.

“Mr. Joannides obstructed our investigation,” Mr. Blakey said. Asked how that had affected the committee’s work, he added: “We’ll never know. But I can say that for a guy like Gaeton, a guy who really wanted to know what happened to Kennedy, it kind of tortured him.”

Gaetano Fonzi was born in Philadelphia on Oct. 10, 1935, to Leonora and Gaetano Fonzi, a barber. (He later shortened his first name.) After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania, he was a reporter and editor at Philadelphia Magazine. In one article, he and a co-author revealed that a former star reporter for The Philadelphia Inquirer, Harry J. Karafin, had extorted money from local businessmen with threats of unflattering coverage.

Mr. Fonzi died of complications of Parkinson’s disease at his home in Manalapan, Fla., his wife, Marie, said. He is also survived by four children, Irene, Guy and Christopher Fonzi and Maria Fonzi-Gonzalez; eight grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.

In Florida, Mr. Fonzi worked for Miami and Gold Coast magazines, writing investigative articles. He also wrote several other books, including a biography of the media mogul and philanthropist Walter Annenberg. But the Kennedy assassination remained the story that consumed him.

“He thought the murder of President Kennedy was a turning point in history,” his wife said. “He said it was the point when the American people stopped trusting their government.” 

Valkyrie At Dealey Plaza - Updated

                              July 20, 1944 - Hitler Assassination Attempt and Coup Fails 
VALKYRIE AT DEALEY PLAZA – By William Kelly (bkjfk3@yahoo.com)

THE CUBAN CONNECTIONS AND THE PLOTS TO KILL CASTRO

Those who take up a study the assassination of President Kennedy quickly notice that there are many Cuban connections to the murder and most independent researchers eventually recognize that the Cuban angles are the key to understanding the crime.

While Cuba provides common events and recurring characters who figure in the Dealey Plaza drama, the focus has rightly been on the plots to assassinate Fidel Castro.

As it was put by the second chief counsel to the HSCA G. Robert Blakey, "I no longer believe that we were able to conduct an appropriate investigation of the [Central Intelligence] Agency and its relationship to Oswald...I do not believe any denial offered by the Agency on any point. The law has long followed the rule that if a person lies to you on one point, you may reject all of his testimony...We now know that the Agency withheld from the Warren Commission the CIA-Mafia plots to kill Castro. Had the commission known of the plots, it would have followed a different path in its investigation.”

The Warren Commission’s ignorance of the plots to kill Castro is the single most important reason behind the Commission’s failure to determine what really happened at Dealey Plaza. 1.

“We now know to a fairly good degree of certitude what happened,” says former FBI agent Bill Turner. “First of all the motives were piling up – JFK had supposedly withdrawn air cover during the Bay of Pigs, failed to invade Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis and proceeded to withdraw troops from Vietnam. JFK was also on a second track to Cuba, which was to secretly carry on negotiations with Castro to bring about a détente. The motives were piling up to the point they had to assassinate him. I think it’s pretty obvious, with the compilations of the information that we have today, that the whole thing, the mechanism of it came out of the allegiance between the CIA and the web of Cuban exiles and the Mafia. They already had an assassination apparatus set up for killing Castro, and they just switched targets, and they killed Kenned instead.” 2.

Turner’s take – that the mechanism for the assassination of JFK was the same apparatus set up for killing Castro is supported by others, including David Atlee Phillips, who is quoted as stating that, “I was one of the two case officers who handled Lee Harvey Oswald…we gave him the mission of killing Fidel Castro of Cuba…I don’t know why he killed Kennedy. But I do know he used precisely the plan we had devised against Castro. Thus the CIA did not anticipate the president’s assassination, but it was responsible for it. I share that guilt.” 3.

Of the over six hundred documented plots to kill Castro, the ones that are most discussed are the CIA-Mafia plots that began during the Eisenhower administration and were ostensibly terminated in 1962. 4.

Of the many plots to kill Castro, a half dozen or so had direct connections to Dealey  Plaza, 5. , and of them, one stands out conspicuously – the Valkyrie Plot. The Valkyrie plot was ostensibly based on the July 20, 1944 attempt to kill Hitler and was adapted by the CIA for use against Castro in Cuba. If any of the plots to kill Castro were redirected to kill JFK at Dealey Plaza, the Valkyrie plot is the one. This is an analysis of the Valkyrie Plot and its relationship to the assassination of JFK.

“On page 16, col. 7 of the New York Times, January 20, 1970, Senator Richard

Russell stated that the Commission was never able to find those who encouraged Lee Harvey Oswald.”

                                   THE VALKYRIE PLOT AT DEALEY PLAZA

Volkmar Schmidt was the first to bring up the subject of the July 20, 1944 Hitler assassination plot when he mentioned it to the accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald at a private party one evening in February of 1963.  6.

Schmidt said that while growing up in Germany he was best friends with the son of Professor Whilhelm Kuetemeyer, who became somewhat of a surrogate father and mentor. According to Schmidt, Kuetemeyer was also involved in the Valkyrie plot to kill Hitler, as were two of his associates.

Schmidt explained that it was a reverse psychology technique taught to him by Professor Kuetmeyer that he used on Oswald during a three hour conversation in which he also mentioned the plot to kill Hitler.

[For entire interview with Volkmar Schmidt see: http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2008/01/volkmar-schmidt-interview.html] 

Kelly: You mentioned General Walker when you talked with Oswald?

Schmidt: Yes, Professor Kuetemeyer told me you know, to deal with people like this who are disturbed, you have to use empathy, be slightly over zealous yourself to link up with them and [bring] that total insanity towards reality. When I heard how hateful he was towards Kennedy and Cuba, which was kind of irrational, I tried to say "hey, there’s something much more real to be concerned about," because I don’t know about Castro, but I know about this Walker, he’s kind of a Nazi, yea? Not so bad as those Nazis in Germany, but I had specifically mentioned to Lee Harvey Oswald, that Walker had given a speech to the students at the Mississippi campus and those guys went off and killed a couple of journalists.

Kelly: So do you think your conversation with Oswald about Walker may have instigated Oswald to take a pot shot at Walker?

Schmidt: Yes, he did, and naturally it was a terrible responsibility, and for years when I drove past the underpass I literally had to cry because, you know. But I exonerate myself completely because I had the best intent, embarrass Kennedy, and I certainly didn’t tell him to take a pot shot at him...I may have triggered it. Actually, a few days after I talked with him, he bought his weapons.

As for the association to those in the plot to kill Hitler, Schmidt mentions Professor Kuetemeyer, who "…was certainly, and many of his friends were in the circle of those who tried to kill Hitler - Stauffenberg, and several of his close friends were executed, and one of the sons of his friends, lived at his house and became and is still a very close friend of mine - Fritz from Holland. Fritz first name Frederick, Von - the symbol of nobility, Von Halen. He was actually arrested before the plot came out. He knew about the plot and was tortured to death. And another gentleman who was involved was Von Trott, a friend of Kuetemeyer."

A few years ago I wrote an article about how some of those individuals involved in this plot to kill Hitler were also entwined with the events at Dealey Plaza, [July 20, 1944 - November 22, 1963] in which I detail the associations between five people who were entwined in both plots – Schmidt, Kuetmeyer, Allen Dulles, Mary Bancroft and Hans Bernd Gisevius. 7.

[For full article see:http://www.truthmove.org/forum/topic/1344 also posted at:

http://jfkcountercoup2.blogspot.com/2012/08/july-20-1944-november-22-1963.html]

                  HANS BERND GISEVIUS, ALLEN DULLES & MARY BANCROFT

Among those involved in the plot to kill Hitler was one Dr. Hans Bernd Gisevius, a Gestapo officer who tried to get the OSS officer in Switzerland - Allen Dulles, to help a high level cabal of German military officers eliminate Hitler, broker a separate peace with the Western Allies, and then fight the Russians together. This plot evolved into the operation code named Valkyrie that resulted in the July 20, 1944 bomb explosion at the Fuhrer’s “Wolfschanze” bunker headquarters near Rastenburg, Germany.8.

We know this from Mary Bancroft, the stepdaughter of G.W. Barron, the founding publisher of the Wall Street Journal, who was Allen Dulles’ agent and mistress at the time, and served as an intermediary between Dulles and Gisevius.

“Remember, the facts are not the truth. They only indicate where the truth may lie.” – C. W. Barron

As related in her book “Autobiography of a Spy,” Mary Bancroft was also a close personal friend of Michael Paine’s mother Ruth Forbes Paine Young. Their friendship dated from the late 1920s when Ruth Forbes Paine was married to New York architect Lyman Paine, one of the founders of the Trotyskite movement in the U.S. and father of Michael Paine. In her book Bancroft recalled her many prohibition era cocktail conversations with Lyman Paine and visiting the Forbes family island off Massachusetts with Ruth.

[For excerpts of Bancroft’s book: JFKCountercoup2: Mary Bancroft "Autobiography of a Spy"  ]

Bancroft and Ruth Forbes Paine were traveling overseas together on an ocean liner when Bancroft met her future husband, a Zurich businessman. In Switzerland, she hooked up with Dulles, became his personal assistant, translated Gisevius’ manuscript, (a history of the Third Reich), and helped support the Valkyrie Plot.

After a number of failed attempts, on July 20, 1944, Col. Claus Schenk Grav von Stauffenberg planted a briefcase bomb under the map table next to Hitler, left the bunker, witnessed the explosion and then flew back to Berlin where he met with Gisevius. Together they drew up press releases to counter Goebel’s propaganda, but when it became clear that the bomb failed to kill Hitler, those implicated were rounded up and executed. But Gisevius escaped, using false identification provided by Allen Dulles, through his personal assistant Mary Bancroft.

                                                                   Hans B. Gievius

Since Hitler survived the explosion and the plot failed, hundreds, some say over a thousand Germans were rounded up and executed, or were given the opportunity to commit suicide, as Field Marshall Erwin Rommel did. For those who say that hundreds of people can’t conspire to keep a secret, the Valkyrie Plot is a good example of a complex conspiracy, a covert operation that almost succeeded, but in failing, led to the execution of many people.

If JFK had not been killed with the fatal head shot, and had survived, a similar investigation, led by his brother, would have quickly uncovered the fact that the alleged weapon was owned by Oswald, who had spent the previous night at the home of Michael Paine, whose mother was best-friends with Allen Dulles’ chief agent in the Valkyrie Plot to kill Hitler. But with Dulles on the Warren Commission, the CIA plots to kill Castro as well as the Paine’s relationship with Mary Bancroft were kept from the Commission.

Chief among Bancroft’s chores for Dulles was to serve as liaison to Hans B. Gisevius, a major player in the Valkyrie Plot.

Unlike the other victims of the failed assassination attempt, Gisevius survived, spending weeks in hiding until he received the identify documents sent to him by Dulles and Bancroft that allowed him to escape to Switzerland. After the war Gisevius testified against other Nazis at Nuremberg and helped send some to the gallows.

                                                        Gisevius testifying at Nuremberg

Then, on a $5,000 a month CIA retainer arranged by Dulles, Gisevius came to America and moved in with Tom Braden, head of the CIA’s International Organizations Division. 9.

When Gisevius came to America he moved in with the CIA’s Tom Braden, while Oswald, upon returning home from the Soviet Union with his Russian wife, fell in with George DeMohrenschildt and a tight-knit community of anti-Communist White Russians, and the Oswald family eventually moved in with the Paines.

Oswald met Volkmar Schmidt at the same February 1963 party set up specifically for the Oswalds to meet the Paines. At the party Schmidt gave Oswald a three hour history lesson, applying the Hitler assassination analogy to General Walker, while Oswald’s wife would meet Ruth Paine, Michael’s wife, who would become the Oswald family's chief benefactor. 10.

Just think, Schmidt asked Oswald, how history would have changed if Hitler had been assassinated? 

It seems the CIA was thinking exactly the same thing at the same time – as reported in an important memo written by Col. Walter Higgins, which details what occurred at a meeting of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on September 25, 1963. 11.

That was the day President Kennedy left on his Conservation Tour, Oswald left New Orleans for Mexico City and Ruth Paine drove Marina and Oswald’s daughter to her home in Irving, Texas.

                    THE HIGGINS MEMO – CIA BRIEFING OF JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF

At a September 25, 1963 Pentagon meeting chaired by Air Force General Curtis LeMay, Desmond FitzGerald, the officer in charge of the CIA’s Cuban desk, briefed the Joint Chiefs of Staff on the CIA’s Cuban operations, including one patterned on the Valkyrie Plot.

But the convoluted way in which we come to know about the Joint Chief’s briefing is a lesson in itself. It was gossip columnist Liz Smith who first called attention to it indirectly because of the Tom Cruise movie “Valkyrie.”

Around the same time the 2008 Valkyrie movie came out, Lamar Waldron and Thom Hartman published a book “Legacy of Secrecy,” a follow-up on their previous book “Ultimate Sacrifice,” which surmises that the Mafia hijacked one of the CIA plots to kill Castro to assassinate Kennedy. 12.

In one of a number of columns Liz Smith devoted to promoting Waldron’s work, the New York Post columnist mentioned the plots to kill Castro. She said one was specifically designated by the CIA to get some disenchanted Cuban military officers to stage a coup, which would prompt the US government to support the dissident officers once Castro was removed from power, ostensibly by way of assassination.

In her column Liz Smith gave Waldron's “Legacy of Secrecy” a thumbs up when she wrote, "You may wonder why the FBI and CIA withheld information from the committee. By the time of JFK's murder, dozens of (Carlos) Marcello associates had infiltrated a CIA operation code-named AMWORLD, a project started by JFK himself. Writer Waldron revealed this back in 2005. This was the CIA's top-secret plan to cooperate with Cuba's army commander, Juan Almeida, to stage a coup against Fidel Castro on Dec. 1, 1963. That was 10 days after JFK's trip to Dallas.” 13.

The books by Hartman and Waldron, while important in some respects, wrongfully blame the Mafia for killing Kennedy by hijacking the CIA plot to kill Castro, and names Juan Almeida as the leader of the coup, while documents released under the JFK Act clearly show that on the December 1 date in question, Almeida was on a flight to Africa and not in position to lead a coup against Castro. 14.

Smith then wrote: “(The CIA and the Joint Chiefs of Staff even referred to the World War II plot to kill Hitler as their role model for getting rid of Castro. You can see that story told by Tom Cruise in the new movie ‘Valkyrie’).”

I had already pointed out the similarities of common characters at both the Wolf’s Lair and Dealey Plaza, but was quite surprised to learn from Liz Smith’s column that “the CIA and the Joint Chiefs of Staff even referred to the World War II plot to kill Hitler as their role model for getting rid of Castro.”

Since I have both the first edition hardbound and second, expanded softbound versions of Waldron and Hartman’s “Ultimate Sacrifice” and their follow up “Legacy of Secrecy,” which Liz Smith was ostensibly writing about, I carefully searched all three volumes without finding any references to Hitler or the Valkyrie Plot.

I did, however, locate the relevant passage that Liz Smith referred to in another book – Gus Russo’s “Brothers In Arms,” which continues to promote the original cover story of the Dealey Plaza operation – that Castro was behind the assassination. Despite the book’s deceptively false conclusions, this reference is significant. 15.

The reference to the official documentation on this point is buried in a footnote that is referenced from the following paragraph (p. 294):

“….Joseph Califano, of the Pentagon’s Cuban Coordinating Committee, was being pressed by Des Fitzgerald for all the Defense Department intel he could get on key Cuban military officers, scoping for a “mole’ within the regime. Fitzgerald was about to brief the Joint Chiefs and, although Califano was excluded from the meeting on September 25, Des and the Agency were, according to memos later released, studying how German generals had plotted to kill Hitler in order to develop a way to organize high-ranking Cuban officers to kill Castro.”

“At the meeting that day, Des announced that they were having ‘great success’ in finding such officers, and ‘that there were at least ten high-ranking military personnel who were talking to the CIA but as yet [were] not talking to each other, since that degree of confidence [had not] yet developed.”

Thanks to Russo’s footnote, I was able to track down the Higgins Memo in the Mary Ferrell archives and found it to be as close to a smoking document as I have yet seen. While the entire memo is extremely important for more than one reason, and deserves a more thorough and separate analysis, the reference to the plot to kill Hitler is telling.

In his memo, under bullet point 13, Colonel Higgins wrote: “13. He [FitzGerald] commented that there was nothing new in the propaganda field. However, he felt that there had been great success in getting closer to the military personnel who might break with Castro, and stated that there were at least ten high-level military personnel who are talking with CIA but as yet are not talking to each other, since that degree of confidence has not yet developed. He considers it as a parallel in history; i.e., the plot to kill Hitler; and this plot is being studied in detail to develop an approach.”  16.

If the Valkyrie Plot was seriously being studied in detail in 1963 in order to develop a similar “approach” to be used against Castro, the CIA didn’t have to go very far to find some experts who knew about the Valkyrie Plot, as Allen Dulles, Mary Bancroft and Hans Bernard Gisevious were all readily available to advise them. Although they were all alive at the time, today we are left only with written reports and documents, some of which were used in the making of the Tom Cruise movie “Valkyrie,” which made an attempt to be historically accurate.

                                           VALKYRIE – THE MOVIE & THE PLOT

The movie Valkyrie was not a box office sensation but it was financially successful, it was in the popular mainstream, and it called attention to the German heroes behind the plot, although in Germany Tom Cruise’s Scientology background made it quite controversial.

The movie also garnered favorable reviews, including one by Phil Villarreal, who noted that "There is a certain satisfaction in watching the plot come together. Amazingly it was actually Hitler who signed off on his own potential death warrant by authorizing changes in a contingency plan that set reserve troops into action to suppress a government takeover. Von Stauffenberg and his confederates wanted to use the troops to stifle the SS after Hitler's death." 17.

A generic description of the movie says: “Valkyrie is a 2008 American historical thriller film set in Nazi Germany during World War II. The film depicts the 20 July plot in 1944 by German army officers to assassinate Adolph Hitler and to use the Operation Valkyrie national emergency plan to take control of the country.” It also notes that, “Stauffenberg is stunned to learn that no plans exist on the subject of what is to be done after Hitler's assassination…(He) gets the idea of using Operation Valkyrie, which involves the deployment of the Reserve Army to maintain order in the event of a national emergency. The plotters carefully redraft the plan's orders so that they can dismantle the Nazi regime after assassinating Hitler. …with the rewritten Operation Valkyrie orders signed by Hitler…” 18.

The word “valkyrie” stems from old Norse mythology, and is composed of two words, the noun valr, meaning to be slain on the battlefield, and the verb kjosa, meaning “to chose,”  and refers to female Norse god Valkyrja – the “chooser of the slain,” who decides who dies and wins in battle. 19.

The original Valkyrie plan was designed to deal with internal disturbances in emergency situations, was written by General Friedrich Olbricht, in his capacity as head of General Army Office, and was approved by Hitler.  20.

In The Secret War Against Hitler, William Casey wrote:

“….Inside Germany, Abwehr chief Canaris had persuaded Hitler that the presence of millions of foreign workers required a plan to deal with them if they rioted or revolted. General Friedrich Olbricht, chief of staff at the headquarters of the Home Army inside Germany, had developed the emergency plan, called Valkyrie, not so the Home Army could suppress a possible revolt by foreign workers (that was merely a cover for the Home Army to take over security in Berlin), but so the Home Army could be used to suppress the Nazi party and the Gestapo and seize power throughout the German domain. The code word Valkyrie had only to be promulgated and army units would protect or take over all public facilities, and the command post of the Home Army would have the power to impose martial law with complete authority over all other services, including the SS…”

Indeed, besides some of the same characters being involved in both Valkyrie and Dealey Plaza, specific attributes of the Valkyrie plan can be seen to have been adapted and configured into the Dealey Plaza operation, including having the intended victim actually approve the covert operations that would be used against him (The Rex missions) as well as a Northwoods-style false flag variation to blame the assassination on the others (Oswald and Castro).

During World War II the German conspirators convinced Hitler to alter the contingency plans for a national emergency, what we now know as the Continuity of Government (COG) plans, to permit the Army Reserves to assume control, thus checkmating the SS and Gestapo.

Kennedy too, was convinced to approve certain special emergency and contingency plans as well as specific covert actions against Cuba that were used against him at Dealey Plaza. These specific operations were administratively approved by JFK, but also personally exposed to RFK as the coordinator of the Cuban operations, effectively compromising him and checkmating him from properly responding to his brother's assassination by making any moves against the assassins.

In The Making of the President 1964, T.H. White noted that, “Of all the things Kennedy did for Johnson, none, however, was perhaps more instantly important on the weekend of Nov. 22 than a minor decision Kennedy made months before. He had decided that, in the secret and emergency planning for continuity of American government in the happenstance of a nuclear attack, Johnson should be given a major role. Through Major General Chester V. Clifton, who acted as White House liaison with the Department of Defense, all emergency operational planning was made available to the Vice President in duplicate. These plans, envisioning all things – from the destruction of all major cities to the bodily transfer of governing officers to an underground capital – included, of course, detailed forethought of the event of the sudden death of a President.” 21.

“Because he had participated in all these plans,” wrote White, “…the Vice President; on the night of Nov. 22, 1963,…knew exactly all the intricate resources of command and communications at his disposal. Beneath this lay the experience of a man who had spent 30 years observing the work of the federal government, while beneath that lay the instincts of a Texas country boy. Now it was him to act.”

But according to Jim Bishop, in The Day Kennedy Was Shot, "Officials at the Pentagon were calling the White House (WHCA) switchboard at the Dallas-Sheraton Hotel asking who was now in command. An Officer grabbed the phone and assured the Pentagon that Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and the Joint Chief of Staff ' are now the President.” 22.

While everyone knows that the Constitutional lines of authority descend from the President to the Vice President, according to the National Command Authority (NCA), the ability to order the military to undertake a nuclear attack goes from the President to the Secretary of Defense, and then to the Deputy Secretary of Defense (then Roswell Gilpatrick).

It has been noted that, “In the wake of the Berlin crisis, White House and national security staff reviewed emergency planning procedures that had been established during the Eisenhower administration. As part of the single integrated operation plan (SIOP) that would be used by the U.S. government and armed forces in the case of a nuclear attack, Eisenhower’s staff and advisors had also designed civil defense contingency plans for civilians. An essential element in Eisenhower’s military planning was the National Command Authority (NCA) nuclear…. release authority that would have decisive control over the use of nuclear weapons if the President were disabled or killed. According to Thomas B. Allen, of War Games, the nuclear…release authority passes from a dead or disabled President to the Secretary of Defense, and then, if necessary, to the Deputy Secretary of Defense. Allen was unable to determine who would be next in the chain of command since no two authorities consulted agreed to the passing of authority beyond the Deputy Secretary of Defense…The NCA is not an abstraction. It is a real concept embodied in military doctrine, especially the doctrine that governs control over nuclear weapons.” 23.

If the President is unable to employ his authority to order the use of nuclear weapons, the National Command Authority does not follow the Constitution’s line of succession, but the release authority passes from a disabled or dead President to the Secretary of Defense, and then, if necessary, to the Deputy Secretary of Defense.

While the NCA only controlled the use of nuclear weapons, part of the Dealey  Plaza operation included elements that tried to blame the murder on Cuban Communists in an attempt to stimulate an invasion of Cuba. Dallas authorities and the local Army Reserve intelligence unit, in concert with Reserve officers on the Dallas Police, fed information to the media and other military units indicating Cuban Communists were behind the assassination.

Dallas Assistant DA Alexander told CIA media asset Joe Goulden that he was going to charge Oswald with “furthering a communist conspiracy” and Dallas PD officer Stringfellow, a member of the local US Army Reserve unit, informed a Florida military base that Cuban communists were behind the assassination. 24.

Of the ten Cuban officers mentioned by FitzGerald in the Higgins memo, a few have been identified, including Juan Almedia, the primary suspect in “Ultimate Sacrifice,” as well as the well documented case of Rolando Cubella (AMLASH) and Raymon Guin Diaz (AMTRUNK), who the Cubans identified. 

In his book, “Executive Action – 634 Ways to Kill Fidel Castro,” Cuban G2 counter-intelligence officer Fabian Escalante wrote, “While Cubela was in Brazil in September 1963, JM/WAVE was executing an important operation in Cuba under the codename AM/TRUNK. It consisted of recruiting various officers from the Rebel Army that the CIA believed it could hook. Among them was ex-commander Ramon Guin Diaz, one of Cubela’s closest friends, who would subsequently be an active participant in the CIA plans to assassinate the Cuban prime minister…The plan had two parts: the first, the assassination of Fidel, and the second, a coup d’etat instigated by Cubela’s collaborators, backed by a US mini-invasion conducted with a brigade of Cuban mercenaries who were training in Nicaragua under the command of Manuel Artime…” 25.

Just as Nazi Gen. Fromm, commander of the Home Army sat on the fence during the July 20, 1944 assassination attempt, then came down on the conspirators once it was determined that Hitler was still alive, LBJ took the oath of office immediately in order to circumvent the attempt to pass on the National Command Authority to the Secretary of Defense. And as soon as LBJ was informed of the intention of the Dallas authorities to charge Oswald with “furthering a communist conspiracy,” he had his close aide Cliff Carter call Dallas and put an end the talk of conspiracy “because it could lead to World War III.” This was the “Tipping Point,” when the “Phase One” Castro Commie cover story was replaced with the equally implausible “Phase Two” deranged lone nut scenario.

                                                      THE HOMME REPORT

At the time of the Garrison investigation of the assassination inNew Orleans, a U.S. government document reported that Jack Martin, who first called attention to the association between Oswald and David Ferrie, had also attempted to implicate Robert F. Kennedy in the plots to kill Castro.

The report reads in part: "According to Edward SUGGS, aka Jack MARTIN (not a reliable source) [Guy] JOHNSON claimed to have a secret US Senate document called the ‘Homme Report.’ This report allegedly proves that Robert KENNEDY ‘had a contract out’ on Fidel CASTRO at the time President Kennedy was assassinated...." 26.

Guy P. Johnson has been identified as a former assistant district attorney in New Orleans and Office of Naval Intelligence agent who had a secret Senate report written by H.G. Homme, a legal counsel to the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary, which allegedly implicated RFK in the attempted assassination of Castro and the assassination of President Kennedy.

In an article in the Houstonian and in an affidavit, Jack Martin and David Lewis, another New Orleans associate of Oswald, Ferrie and Guy Bannister, asserted that RFK approved the plots to kill Castro. They wrote “…proof of this lies in a document shown us by none other than Guy P. Johnson, Bannister’s old liaison officer and legal advisor. We call it the ‘Homme Report,’ inasmuch as it involves one H.G. Homme, assistant legal counsel of the U.S. Senate’s Committee on the Judiciary,…exposes the fact that the ‘genius’ RFK put out his own personal ‘contract’ (order to murder) on Cuba’s Fidel Castro Luz, in good old Gestapo-Nazi fashion….Wheels silently moved, and the trap had sprung!” 27.

In Counter-Intelligence Aspects of the JFK Assassination, Mike Sylwester wrote:

“Another explanation was proposed by two of Banister’s long-time employees, Jack Martin and David Lewis, in an affidavit they wrote for New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison, dated 20 February 1968. Martin and Lewis said they believed Banister was …had conspired with other high ranking traitors to alter the index so that in case of crisis, the wrong people would be arrested….They also implied that Banister was collaborating with Robert Kennedy, but would double-cross him to bring the fateful crisis about. Specifically, Banister was collaborating with Robert Kennedy to assassinate Fidel Castro, which would boomerang into an assassination of President Kennedy….” 28.

Martin and Lewis also tie the assassination to the re-organization of the civil defense  response, which, along with the attempt to implicate RFK in the Castro plots, ties it directly to the Valkyrie plan. They refer to the “National Emergency Reoganization Plan,” which they call “a piece of existing standby legislation already written into and passed in Federal Statute, whereby they could invoke an immediate and instantaneous dictatorship over the United States at the stroke of a pen on any given or so-called emergency…” 29.

                   BLACKBALLING and NEUTRALIZING ROBERT F. KENNEDY

Another important aspect of the Dealey Plaza operation, also taken from the Valkyrie Plot, was the neutralization of the key elements most likely to oppose the assassination – the SS in the case of the July 20th 1944 Plot and Robert F. Kennedy in regards to Dealey Plaza.

Helmet Streikher, on CIA assignment in Africa, Middle East (1961-1965) acknowledged that, "One of the worst kept secrets in the CIAis the truth about the President's murder. It wasn't Castro or the Russians. The men who killed Mr. Kennedy were CIA contract agents. It had to happen. The man was too independent for his own good. John Kennedy's murder was a two-part conspiracy murder. One was the action end with the killers; the other was the deeper part, the acceptance and protection of that murder by the Intelligence apparatus that controls the way the world operates." 30.

The second part of the assassination was the protection of those actually responsible. The

Official Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms defines a Covert Operation as “An operation that is so planned and executed as to conceal the identity of or permit plausible denial by the sponsor.” It is also noted that “a covert operation differs from a clandestine operation in that emphasis is placed on concealment of identity of sponsor rather than on concealment of the operation.” 31.

In the assassination of President Kennedy we find that covert anti-Castro Cuban operations, approved by JFK, and intentionally exposed to RFK, were utilized in the assassination of President Kennedy, thus blackballing and neutralizing RFK from retaliation after the death of JFK. 

                                                Cuban Bay of Pigs flag presented to JFK 

First the President was asked, in the spring of 1963, to authorize certain CIA cover operations against Cuba that originated at the JMWAVE station in Florida, which he did. Among these approved operations were maritime missions that took place over the late summer and fall of 1963 and utilized anti-Castro Commando teams that were sent into Cuba from the CIA mother ship “Rex.”

On April 1, 1963 - April Fools Day, those responsible for covert operations against Cuba, the Cuban Coordinating Committee, suggested a number of specific plans to be directed against Castro. Some of these specific operations that were approved by the President involved maritime attacks against Cuba from Florida, and included agents and operatives who later became entwined in the events of that took place in Dallas. 32.

While the Cubans were being trained in Florida, the President’s brother, Robert F. Kennedy, was personally introduced to some of the CIA officers and anti-Castro Cuban commandos who were to undertake these missions. It has been documented that RFK visited the JMWAVE Headquarters on a number of occasions, visits that stand out because of his altercations with William Harvey. Harvey was then replaced by Desmond Fitzgerald, who briefed the Joint Chiefs of Staff about the Valkyrie plot and personally met with Rolando Cubela (AMLASH). 33.

David Talbot, in his book Brothers, says that, “The CIA tried to frame Robert Kennedy for the Cubela (AMLASH) plot,” which was tied directly to the Valkyrie plan. Talbot notes that FitzGerald introduced himself to Cubela as a “personal representative of Kennedy’s. But the president’s brother had no idea the CIA was using his name. Helms and Fitzgerald agreed it would be ‘totally unnecessary’ to inform Kennedy of their gambit.” Their gambit was the Valkyrie plot. 34.

US Army Ranger Capt. Bradley Ayers, assigned to the CIA to train the Cubans, recalls two occasions RFK met with the CIA case officers in Florida, once at a station party held at a safe house and another at the Waloos Glades Hunting Camp staging area, where he was personally introduced to some of the commandos who were to execute the covert missions.  35.

According to Ayers, one of the CIA case officers at JMWAVE, a German who went by the name of “Karl,” bore a remarkable resemblance to Oswald, and one of the Cubans, Angelo Murgado, claims to have even mentioned Oswald and his FPCC activities to RFK before the assassination.

Then in the immediate aftermath of the assassination, Robert Kennedy suspected the CIA and the Cubans, asking both CIAdirector John McCone and his Cuban friend Enrique “Harry” Ruiz Williams if their people were responsible for his brother’s murder.

Jack Anderson wrote: “Sources would later tell me that McCone anguished with Bobby over the terrible possibility that the assassination plots sanctioned by the president's own brother may have backfired.” RFK told Walter Sheridan: “I asked McCone if they had killed my brother, and I asked him in a way that he couldn’t lie to me.”

RFK phoned Enrique Ruiz-Williams, his main contact in the Cuban group involved in the plot to kill Castro. According to Haynes Johnson, an American journalist working closely with the anti-Castro Cubans RFK said: “One of your guys did it.” 36.

                                               SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION

It is apparent that the assassination of President Kennedy was an offshoot of the CIA plans to kill Cuban Primer Fidel Castro, specifically the Valkyrie Plot based on the July 20, 1944assassination attempt on Hitler.

There are five key elements of the Valkyrie Plot to kill Hitler that we see used in the Dealey Plaza Operation, including the involvement of related characters, the integration of the national emergency plans, getting the victim to approve certain special operations that would be used against him, the adopting of a false flag-Northwoods style deception to blame the murder on Cuban Communists, and the neutralization of the opposition.

The Valkyrie Plot included the revising of the national emergency response, the president’s approval of the Cuban covert operations that would be used against him, the Northwoods-style false flag deception to frame Oswald and blame the murder on Castro and the compromising of the most serious potential resistance – RFK.  Despite the complexity of the plan, it fits like a glove over what happened at Dealey Plaza, and accounts for most, if not all of the previously unexplained variables.

It is also quite apparent that while the plot remained the same as what was planned for Castro, the switch in targets from Castro to Kennedy did not occur on the street level in New Orleans, Florida or at Dealey Plaza, but at the highest levels of government in Washington, where the specific covert operations and emergency contingency plans were approved months earlier.

That the assassination of the President remains a mysterious enigma fifty years later can be directly attributed to the fact that it was planned that way, a detailed and complex plan based on the Valkyrie plot to kill Hitler, a plan that was not perfect, or carried out in its entirety, but it was a plan that succeeded in killing Kennedy and protecting those actually responsible for the crime.

 Notes, Sources and Footnotes 

1. Warren Commission didn’t know of Plots to kill Castro. Helms: Warren Commission should have known of anti-Castro plots. AP Sept. 23, 1978. http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1454&dat=19780923&id=YbssAAAAIBAJ&sjid=LRMEAAAAIBAJ&pg=7189,4651072 (Other than Alan Dulles, who kept his knowledge of the plots to kill Castro to himself.) Also see entire 2003 G. Robert Blakey statement on CIA.
2. Turner, William. Transcript of presentation made at COPA conference in Dallas (circa Nov. 2003).
3. David A. Phillips novel, “The AMLASH Legacy”. http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=12974 While this quote is from an unpublished fictionalized manuscript, Phillips told Kevin Walsh essentially the same story over cocktails in DC shortly before Philips died.
4. CIA-Mafia Plots. Trying to Kill Fidel Castro, Washington Post, We. June 27, 2007. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/26/AR2007062601467.html
5. Escalante, Fabian. Executive Action – 634 Ways to Kill Fidel Castro (Ocean Press, 2006, p. 167-169) Of the documented plots, the ones with direct connections to Dealey Plaza are a) CIA-Mafia plots (pre-62) b) The Hemingway house plot, c) The Amador Odio, d) The Bayo-Pawley Affair, e) The Rex plot (NYT, Nov. 1, 1963) the last of which is not among the 634 Ways but is mentioned by Carlos Bringuier in his book Red Friday. 
6. Volkmar Schmidt Interview. Kelly, William. Interview with Volkmar Schmidt, January, 1995. http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2008/01/volkmar-schmidt-interview.html  Note I ask Schmidt if he felt responsible for Oswald taking a pot shot at Walker and he said he felt most guilty when driving through Dealey Plaza. Also see Epstein, E. J. Legend. The Secret Life of Lee Harvey Oswald. (McGraw-Hill, 1978, p. 204).
7. Kelly article July 20, 1944-Nov. 22, 1963.- Thanks to these two sites for posting them and keeping them on line. http://www.truthmove.org/forum/topic/1344 /  and  http://www.scam.com/printthread.php?t=115655 also at http://jfkcountercoup2.blogspot.com/2012/08/july-20-1944-november-22-1963.html
8. Bancroft, Mary. Autobiography of a Spy – Debutante, Writer, Confidante, Secret Agent. The True Story of Her Extraordinary Life. (William Morrow, NY, 1983) For pertinent excerpts see: http://jfkcountercoup2.blogspot.com/2012/08/mary-bancroft-autobiography-of-spy.html

9. Gisevius, Hans Bernd (July 14, 1904 – February 23, 1974) Valkyrie: An Insider's Account of the Plot to Kill Hitler, 2009 reprint of one volume abridgement of two volume text, To the Bitter End, 1947. Foreword by Allen Welsh Dulles, introduction by Peter Hoffmann. Translated by Richard and Clara Winston; Da Capo Press, Cambridge, MA ISBN 978-0-306-81771-7. Also see: “Bis zum bittern Ende.” (two volumes, Fretz & Wasmuth, Zurich, 1946, 1954; To the Bitter End,” Richard and Clara Winston, Jonathan Cape, London, 1948; Rutten & Loening, Hamburg, (1964). 
10. Epstein, E. J. Legend. The Secret Life of Lee Harvey Oswald. (McGraw-Hill, 1978, p. 204)
11. Higgins Memo. Briefing by Mr. Desmond Fitzgerand on CIA Cuban Operations and Planning. 09/25/63 NARA Record Number 202-10001-10028.  http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=10246&relPageId=5 also at http://jfkcountercoup2.blogspot.com/2012/08/higgins-memo-re-cia-briefing-of-jcs.html
12. Waldron, Lamar; Hartman, Thom. Ultimate Sacrifice. http://www.ultimatesacrificebook.com/
13. Smith, Liz. New York Post. http://jfkcountercoup2.blogspot.com/2012/08/liz-smith-column-on-valkyrie-plot.html Also see; http://www.nypost.com/p/pagesix/liz_smith/item_ymeevc7p3qWQHkltFqRCLJ
14. See: Almedia on flight to Africa doc.
15. Russo, Gus. Brothers In Arms (p. 294) Russo, Gus. Brothers In Arms – The Kennedys, The Castros, and the Politics of Murder by Gus Russo and Stephen Molton (Bloomsbury, 2008, p. 294) Russo notes quoted: 52. Califano, p. 124; 53. Califano citing: JCS Memo for the Record, Walter Higgins; “Briefing by Mr. Desmond FitzGerald on CIA Cuban Operations and Planning,” JFK Collection, JCS Papers, J-3 #29, 202-10001-10028; NARA; 54. Higgins Memo (as cited in #53).
16. Higgins Memo. Higgins, Walter M. Memo on FitzGerald briefing of Joint Chiefs of Staff, Sept. 25, 1963. http://jfkcountercoup2.blogspot.com/2012/08/higgins-memo-re-cia-briefing-of-jcs.html
17. Villarreal, Phil. Review of the movie Valkyrie. Scripps Howard News Service (SHNS), January 2008. [http://www.scrippsnews.com/node/39380]
18. Valkyrie the movie description. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valkyrie_(film)
19. Valkyrie, the word definition. http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Valkyrie
20. Casey, William, The Secret War Against Hitler (1988, Regency Gateway, p. 115)
21. White, T. H. The Making of the President 1964. http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Making_of_the_President_1964.html?id=RKXSPnb0QiAC
22. Bishop, Jim. The Day Kennedy Was Shot  http://books.google.com/books/about/The_day_Kennedy_was_shot.html?id=6GEXAQAAIAAJ
23.  Allen, Thomas B. War Games. Regarding the National Command Authority (NCA) chain of command.  http://www.wargaming.co/books/allen/homepage.htm http://www.wargaming.co/books/allen/samplepages.htm

24. Kelly, William. The Tipping Point. http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2012/06/tipping-point.html Note: While I give only the two examples of Joe Goulden getting Asst. DA Alexander to indict Oswald “in furtherance of a Communist conspiracy” and Don Stringfellow’s 11/22/63 cable message to MacDill AFB in Florida, there are other examples of the attempt to promote the original Castro Communist cover-story (ie. Another Army Reserve officer Gannaway is quoted in earliest news reports of Oswald’s Cuban Communist background, the DRE release of radio debate, the bogus story that Oswald took money from Cubans in Mexico City, etc.)
25. Escalante, Fabian. 634 Ways To Kill Castro, (Ocean Press, 2006, p. 167-169)
26. Garrison and the Kennedy Assassination. Guy Persac Johnson  http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=111600&relPageId=3
27. Martin, Jack; Lewis, David. Houstonian (Feb. 20 1968) Martin, Jack and Lewis, David (Affidavit, 20 Feb., 1968, also article in Houstonian, Feb. 20 1968) They say the National Emergency Reogranization Plan can be found in Volume 27, Number 35, sub-headed Title 3, of 20th February, 1962, which is listed in the Federal Register, National Archives, under Presidential Documents, Executive Order #10995, through #11005 ff, and #11051, and Part One, Section 101-d http://jfkcountercoup2.blogspot.com/2012/08/guy-p-johnson.html

28. Sylwester, Mike. Counter-Intelligence Aspects of the JFK Assassination http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.culture.discuss.cia-drugs/3227 Also see: http://karws.gso.uri.edu/Marsh/Jfk-conspiracy/RUBY-COM.TXT
29. National Emergency Reorganization Plan
30. Streiker, Helmet. http://www.baylor.edu/lib/poage/jfk/index.php?id=60201
31. US DOD Official Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms. http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/dod_dictionary/
32. See: The Administrative Details http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2012/04/jfk-coup-detat-administrative-details_27.html
33. RFK at JMWAVE – Stockton, Bayard, Flawed Patriot (Potomac Books, 2006)
34. Talbot, David. Brothers – The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years (Free Press, 2007, p. 229-230)
35. Ayers, Bradley. Zenith Secret – A CIA Insider Exposes the Secret War Against Cuba and the Plot that Killed the Kennedy Brothers. (Vox Pop, NY, 2006, p.41, 86  http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2011/09/brad-ayers-us-ranger-trained-cubans-at.html and http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKayers.htm Ayers also points out the Robert Kennedy visited CIA personnel at their base in the Everglades: "I'm confident in my gut, that Bobby Kennedy was aware of what we were doing down there. It wasn't a case of the Agency mounting these assassination operations without the knowledge of the Special Group. RFK had a hands-on kind of control of the operations." 
36. RFK & McCone & Enrique Williams.  http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=1457 

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF SOURCES

Allen, Thomas B. War Games. Regarding the National Command Authority (NCA) chain of commanad. 

Ayers, Bradley. The Zenith Secret – A CIA Insider Exposes the Secret War Against Cuba and the Plot that Killed the Kennedy Brothers. (Vox Pop, NY, 2006, p.41, 86).

Bancroft, Mary Autobiography of a Spy – Debutante, Writer, Confidante, Secret Agent. The True Story of Her Extraordinary Life. (William Morrow, NY, 1983)

Baker, Russ. Family of Secrets (Bloomsbury, 2009)

Bishop, Jim. The Day Kennedy Was Shot.

Brand…. Brandy: Our Man in Acapulco (Denton, Tx, U.N.Texas Press, 1999)

Bringuier, Carlos. Red Friday (Re: Rex Plotters caught in Cuba.

Casey, William. The Secret War against Hitler (Regency Gateway, 1988, p. 115)

Douglas, James. JFK and the Unspeakable (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2008).

JFKcountercoup: JFK and the Unspeakable

Epstein, Edward J. Legend, The Secret Life of Lee Harvey Oswald. (McGraw-Hill, 1978, p. 204)

Escalante, Fabian. Executive Action – 634 Ways to Kill Fidel Castro (Ocean Press, 2006, p. 167-169)

Gisevius, Hans Bernd (July 14, 1904 – February 23, 1974) Valkyrie: An Insider's Account of the Plot to Kill Hitler, 2009 reprint of one volume abridgement of two volume text, To the Bitter End, 1947. Foreword by Allen Welsh Dulles, introduction by Peter Hoffmann. Translated by Richard and Clara Winston; Da Capo Press, Cambridge, MA ISBN 978-0-306-81771-7. Also see: “Bis zum bittern Ende.” (two volumes, Fretz & Wasmuth, Zurich, 1946, 1954; “To the Bitter End,” Richard and Clara Winston, Jonathan Cape, London, 1948; Rutten & Loening, Hamburg, (1964). 

Higgins, Walter M. Memo on FitzGerald briefing of Joint Chiefs of Staff, Sept. 25, 1963.

[http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=10246&relPageId=5]
JFKcountercoup: JCS Memo FitzGerald Briefing 25 Sept. 1963

Hoffman, Peter. History of German Resistance, 1933-1944 (MIT Press, 1977)

Kelly, William. Interview with Volkmar Schmidt, January, 1995. [ JFKcountercoup: Volkmar Schmidt Interview ]

Kelly, William. July 20, 1944-November 22, 1963 article [http://www.truthmove.org/forum/topic/1344; also see: JFKCountercoup2: July 20, 1944 - November 22, 1963  ]

Martin, Jack and Lewis, David (Affidavit, 20 Feb., 1968, also article in Houstonian, 1968) They say the National Emergency Reogranization Plan can be found in Volume 27, Number 35, sub-headed Title 3, of 20th February, 1962, which is listed in the Federal Register, National Archives, under Presidential Documents, Executive Order #10995, through #11005 ff, and #11051, and Part One, Section 101-d.

Russo, Gus. Brothers In Arms – The Kennedys, The Castros, and the Politics of Murder by Gus Russo and Stephen Molton (Bloomsbury, 2008, p. 294)

Russo notes quoted: 52. Califano, p. 124; 53. Califano citing: JCS Memo for the Record, Walter Higgins; “Briefing by Mr. Desmond FitzGerald on CIA Cuban Operations and Planning,” JFK Collection, JCS Papers, J-3 #29, 202-10001-10028; NARA; 54. Higgins Memo (as cited in #53).

Scott, Peter Dale –  Deep Politics, (Re: Crichton 268-70, 276). COPA, 2010. Re: Continuity of Government in Deep Political Events. Peter Dale Scott's Dallas COPA talk.
[ https://deeppoliticsforum.com/forums/showthread.php?5045-Pds-copa-2010 ]

Smith, Liz – New York Post, January 6, 2008.

Sylwester, Mike. Counter-Intelligence Aspects of the JFK Assassination (Fredericksburg, Va.)

Talbot, David. Brothers – “The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years” (Free Press, 2007, p. 229-230)

Turner, William. Transcript of presentation made at COPA conference in Dallas (circa Nov. 2003).

Villarreal, Phil. Review of the movie Valkyrie. Scripps Howard News Service (SHNS), January 2008. [http://www.scrippsnews.com/node/39380]

Waldron, Lamar and Hartman, Thom. Ultimate Sacrifice – John and Robert Kennedy, the Plan for a Coup in Cuba, and the Murder of JFK (Carroll & Graf, NY 2005)

White, T. H. The Making of a the President 1964 (Atheneum, 1965)