PLANS NOT PLOTS

PLANS NOT PLOTS

Most conspiracy theorist and counter-conspiracy debunkers attempt to describe conspiracy at Dealey Plaza as a plot, similar to what was portrayed in the movies “Executive Action” and “JFK” – where the conspirators sit around smoking and drinking and discussing how they are going to wack JFK.

Well it didn’t go down that way.

Rather it was a detailed and distinctive plan, practiced and expertly conducted and mostly successful.

Actually it was two plans, one strategic – the Valkyrie plan, the other tactical – the Pathfinder plan, that were originally aimed at killing Fidel Castro, and redirected to JFK in Dallas.

We know about the Valkyrie plan from Desmond FitzGerald’s September 1963 briefing of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on the CIA’s covert operations against Cuba that required military support. FitzGerald told them that the CIA was making a “detailed study” of the July 20, 1944 German military plan to kill Hitler – co-named Valkyrie, in order to use it against Castro.

FitzGerald told the Joint Chiefs, then chaired by Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Curtis LeMay because Maxwell Taylor was in Vietnam on a special mission for the president, that while they had identified a number of disenchanted Cuban military officers who didn’t like Castro’s communist leanings, they were not confident enough to talk among themselves.

That was not a problem with the US military, as the Joint Chiefs of Staff, other than Maxwell Taylor, were united in their distaste and downright hatred of the president for both the betrayal of the Cubans at the Bay of Pigs and the failure to use force to remove the Soviet missiles from Cuba, as well as the Nuclear Test Ban treaty.

In answer to a FOIA request by the Assassination Archives and Research Center (AARC), the CIA said it has no record of the “detailed study” of the July 20, 1044 German military plan to kill Hitler, and among all of its files, could only find one reference to it in a Cold War era propaganda pamphlet that blamed the failure of the operation on Communists.

Well we now know that the Valkyrie plan led to the use of Dr. Rolando Cubela (AMLASH), who recently died, and it now appears that he was acting as a double-agent and reporting what the CIA was doing to Castro.

As former FBI agent Bill Turner said years ago, "We now know to a fairly good degree of certainty what happened at Dealey Plaza. The motives were piling up - the Bay of Pigs, Cuban Missile Crisis, Vietnam, the back channel to Cuba, - the motives were piling up to the point they had to assassinate him. I think it’s' pretty obvious, with the compilation of the information we have today, that the mechanism of the crime came out of the allegiance between the CIA and the Mafia. They already had an assassination apparatus set up for killing Castro and they just switched targets and killed Kennedy instead."

This opinion was shared by former military investigator Gene Wheaton, who operated a CIA propriety airline and lived in Washington DC with Carl Jenkins, a Bay of Pigs trainer and leader of the Pathfinders at both the Bay of Pigs and JMWAVE.

If that is the case, then we can eliminate most of the 600 or so documented cases of failed plots to kill Castro  by poison, exploding cigars and seashells, tainted diving suits, etc., and focus only on those that were to shoot him in the head with high powered rifles as he rode by in an open jeep, and Pathfinder fits that bill to a tee.

The Pathfinders were the most elite of the Bay of Pigs Cubans who were specially trained and sent in to Cuba weeks before the invasion to set the groundwork. Some were killed, others captured, and a few, like Felix Rodriguez and Chi Chi Quintero, managed to escape and make their way back to the JMWAVE base in Florida. There they were again led by Carl Jenkins, and infiltrated into Cuba on special missions, one of which was to execute the Pathfinder plan to kill Castro.

As far as I can tell there were three Pathfinder teams, each with its own boat, trainer, training area and private supporter in addition to the CIA payroll. The three millionaire private patrons and supporters were Clare Booth Luce, William Pawley and Mafia hoodlum John Rosselli, who actually worked at JMWAVE under the cover of a CIA Army Colonel Rawlston.

Rosselli’s crew were trained as snipers at Point Mary, near Key Largo, by US Army Ranger Edward Roderick and CIA trainer John “I.F.” Harper.

Since the Pathfinders were the most elite of the anti-Castro Cuban commandos trained at JMWAVE, they were given the Pathfinder plan, and practiced it over and over.

Only one CIA document that mentions the Pathfinder plan managed to make it through to the public via the JFK Act, and that was mistakenly or intentionally placed, or misplaced in the middle of the CIA Security File on Frank Sturgis, who had nothing to do with the Pathfinder Plan and didn’t work for the CIA but rather Air Force Intelligence.

This National Photo Interpretation Center (NPIC) document from 1975 was sparked by the Church Committee’s investigation that included CIA plots to kill Castro. Eight NPIC technicians came forward to tell their boss – Dino Brugioni, that they were aware of a plan to kill Castro – the Pathfinder plan, because they had worked on it and the folder was kept in the NPIC section of JMWAVE instead of the Operational File where it belonged.

The NPIC technicians said the Pathfinder plan was to shoot Castro with high powered rifles as he rode by in an open jeep on his way to Xandau, the DuPont’s exclusive and confiscated estate in the resort town of Veradero on the north shore east of Havana, where Castro was known to frequent.

The Pathfinder plan, the NPIC employees reported, was led by Carl Jenkins, but was never implemented because it was “disapproved by higher authority,” with the higher authority being JFK, RFK and the National Security Council, that had to approve all CIA covert operations. But that didn’t stop the Pathfinders, or their leaders, who sent them in to carry out the plan anyway, as Felix Rodriguez described in his book “Shadow Warrior.”

“I was given a weapon… a beautiful German bolt-action rifle with a powerful telescopic sight, all neatly packed in a custom-made padded carrying case… a box of ammo, twenty rounds. I was told that I wouldn't have to sight the rifle, as it had already been zeroed in. Apparently the resistance had obtained a building facing a location that Castro frequented at the time....We were supposed to debark onto a Cuban boat near Varadero Beach, an area I knew from my childhood. From there we would be taken to rendezvous with members of the anti-Castro resistance…..We would be provided a safe house, then move to the room where we'd be able to shoot Fidel….”

It just so happens that Dr. Rolando Cubella (AMLASH) apparently had an apartment overlookig the only road that led to Veradero that was going to be used as a staging area for the attack on Castro that never came.

As John Rosselli told Congress in executive session, and then Jack Anderson afterwards, his team of Cuban commando were sent in three times, but recalled each time, though one time they were captured, and Rosselli believes they were sent back to kill JFK.

When the AARC asked the CIA for the Pathfinder records, they were told there was nothing on Pathfinder in the CIA files, but we pretty much know what became of them. As the NPIC employees said, the Pathfinder folder was kept in their section of the JMWAVE station and not in the Operational File where it belonged, Then we know that the Dino Brugioni’s report on the NPIC description of Pathfinder was mistakenly placed in the middle of Frank Sturgis’ CIA Security File. Then a NPIC secretary was tracked down by the Assassinations Records Review Board  (ARRB).

She told them that the Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy told her to pack the NPIC assassination records in boxes and have them delivered to the Smithsonian Institute in Washington. The ARRB staff questioned her on that, - didn’t she mean the National Archives? No she said, she was positive it was the Smithsonian because she called them to make the arrangements for them to be delivered.

When I asked the National Archives JFK Collection official if the ARRB followed up on that information and checked with the Smithsonian to see if they had the NPIC records, they simply responded, no.

The bottom line is that we shouldn’t be considering silly plots to kill the president, but instead looking closely at the Standard Operating Procedures of the day – detailed contingency plans that were developed to kill Castro, frequently practiced and expertly and successfully  implimented at DealeyPlaza, specifically the Valkyrie strategic plan and the tactical Pathfinder plan. 

JFK Assassination Records in Private Hands

NARA Seeks Check for Classified Docs in Private Hands 

As reported by CBS News: 

National Archives asks representatives of past six administrations to check for classified documents - CBS News

"The National Archives and Records Administration is asking representatives of the six most recent past presidential administrations to comb through their personal records again to check for any classified or other presidential records, according to the text of a letter obtained by CBS News."  

"The request comes after documents with classification markings were found at the private residences of former Vice President Mike Pence, former President Donald Trump and President Joe Biden. CNN was first to report the requests from NARA to past presidents and vice presidents." 

"The Presidential Records Act, passed during former President Jimmy Carter's administration but not effective until the Reagan administration, outlines requirements for the preservation and turning over of all presidential records upon leaving office. The National Archives is responsible for the storage and safekeeping of those records. Letters were sent to representatives of the Trump, Obama, W. Bush, Clinton, H.W. Bush and Reagan administrations." 

"Over the last year there have been several instances reported in the media where records containing classified information and subject to the Presidential Records Act (PRA) have been identified outside of the physical custody of the National Archives and Records Administration," the letters say. "... The responsibility to comply with the PRA does not diminish after the end of an administration. Therefore, we request that you conduct an assessment of any materials held outside of NARA that relate to the Administration for which you serve as a designated representative under the PRA, to determine whether bodies of materials previously assumed to be personal in nature might inadvertently contain Presidential or Vice Presidential records subject to the PRA, whether classified or unclassified."

Now this is turning into a big deal and the new Republican Chairman of the House Oversight Committee - James Comer (R. Ky), is making it a political issue. 

But there's no reason why they should focus on the enforcement of the Presidential Records Act (PRA) while ignoring the JFK Act of 1992, that is not being enforced or given any oversight. 

I have a number of good examples of how significant government records related to the JFK assassination are still in private hands when they should be in the JFK Collection at the National Archives and open to the public - 1) The SS Tampa Advance Report; - 2) Mrs. Lincoln's Oval Office records, and - 3) the HSCA files of the first chief counsel G. Robert Blakey. 

When former SS agent Abraham Bolden correctly noted that the Secret Service intentionally destroyed JFK assassination records AFTER the Congressional passage of the JFK Act, including the Tampa Advance report, another former agent, Gerald Blaine, wrote in his book on the Kennedy Detail, that he personally wrote the Tampa Advance report and kept a copy in a box under his bed all these years, over his wife's objections. 

When I called the attention of the NARA to this passage in his book, they contacted him, obtained numerous documents from him, including the Tampa Advance report, and sent me copies of some of it in appreciation. 

In reading the Tampa Advance report I didn't notice why it was so sensitive the official copy had to be destroyed, other than the fact that the local police were investigating a threat on the life of the president and that the Tampa Sheriff's office stationed deputies with shotguns on every overpass along the motorcade route as well as sharpshooter with rifles on major building. 

What I don't understand is if Blaine had these documents in his possession, why weren't all of the still living SS agents questioned as to whether or not they had any similar documents in their possession. 

From what I understand, until the law was changed under the Carter administration, it was a common practice for government employees to take records home with them, especially when they left office and cleaned out their desks. So why not ask all the SS agents if they have any records? 

- MRS. LINCOLN'S OVAL OFFICE RECORDS 

When JFK was killed, the SS agent who installed it unplugged the tape machines that recorded all of the Oval Office conversations and phone calls made by the president. 

Mrs. Lincoln was then put in charge of cleaning out the Oval Office and with RFK's permission, took pretty much everything home with her, including the tapes, the rocking chair, JFK's watch, etc. 

Then when RFK was killed, she kept most of the items, and when she was not invited to Caroline's wedding, she made out a last will giving all of what was left to a celebrity autograph hound, Robert White, a will that held up in court. White put together a sort of mini-museum that opened at the Trump Towers in New York City, and then moved to the Trump Plaza in Atlantic City where I was asked to write an article promoting it. When I figured out what was going on I declined, but kept up on the story. 

White wasn't very wealthy, and when he needed money he sold off some of the items to his construction company friend, including the Oval Office recordings and the watch. 

White died early on at the age of 54, and the rest of the material was set for auction in New York City when some of the Kennedy family complained and took back some personal items, while the NARA confiscated classified documents that were to be sold at auction. 

Mrs. Lincoln also had two cargo trunks of documents sent to her personal lawyer and friend in Nebraska. The lawyer turned the trunks over to the local Sheriff, who placed them in a secure location - the evidence locker, but when he retired, he took them with him. When I located him and talked with him on the phone, he would not tell me what became of the contents of the two trunks and said he wouldn't respond to anyone or anything other than a court or congressional subpoena. 

RICHARD SPRAGUE, ESQ. 

When I learned that Philadelphia attorney Richard Sprague was named chief counsel of the HSCA, I read in the papers that he had his staff read a book - Legacy of Doubt - by CBS TV editor Peter Noyes (Who is still alive).The book concerns one Jim Brading - aka Braden, who was taken into custody as a suspicious person at Dealey Plaza in the moments  after the assassination. Noyes learned that Brading had legally changed his name to Braden a few weeks before the assassination, and was a swindler, con-man and possibly money man for the Meyer Lansky syndicate. 

Noyes mentioned that Brading was arrested for gambling in Camden, NJ in 1948 but the Camden police would not respond to his requests for a copy of the arrest report. Since my father was a Lieutenant in the Camden police department at the time, I showed him the passage in Noyes' book and the next day he came home from work and handed me Brading's original arrest report and mug shot, that I made copies of and shared with Noyes, Bill Turner, other researchers and I took a copy to Sprague's Philadelphia law office and left it for him. 

I didn't think much of it until after Sprague was fired and replaced by G. Robert Blakey, the founder of the Cornell Institute on Organized Crime and author of the RICO statute to prosecute organized crime conspiracies. After the HSCA folded, I received a phone call from Blakey who said he heard I had obtained Brading's Camden arrest report and asked for a copy. I told him I gave a copy to Sprague and it should be among the HSCA records, but Blakey said that Sprague took all of his files with him, and I said I was glad he did since Blakey locked away the HSCA records for 50 years and as Congressional records, they were not subject to the FOIA. 

Blakey then proceeded to write a book blaming the assassination on organized crime. 

Jim Braden was interviewed for two days behind closed door but those transcripts were sealed until the JFK Act was passed. 

When I contacted the NARA JFK Collection and asked them for any records they in Sprague's files, they referred me to their on line data base for Richard Sprague, but I informed them that was a photo and film consultant to the HSCA, not Richard Sprague, Esq., the first chief counsel. 

While they had thousands of documents in G. Robert Blakey's file, they had nothing at all for Richard  Sprague, Esq.

I informed them when Sprague was still alive that he had his HSCA files in his Philadelphia law office, and they wrote him a letter that he didn't respond to. 

Richard Sprague, Jr. is now in charge of that office, but no one seems interested in getting him to search for and turn over the government records that belong in the JFK Collection at the NARA. 

I will be posting links on the details of these cases that I have previously posted ASAP. 

They are only three examples, there are many more, but my point is made. 

Billkelly3@gmail.com 

Oversight Committee's Anti-Biden Agenda

 Oversight Committee's Anti-Biden Agenda 

Federal Judge John Tunheim, former chairman of the Assassinations Records Review Board (ARRB) recently said that the next step in getting full release of the government's JFK assassination records and full enforcement of the JFK Act is for the House Oversight Committee to hold open public oversight hearings to determine why the act is not being upheld, why so many records are missing and why have so many been destroyed, and who is responsible. And he said more than one hearing would be necessary. 

Now with the Republicans in charge of the committee, it will be up to the chairman Rep. James Comer (R. Ky) to schedule such hearings, and with the next Biden imposed deadline of October 31 - Holloween, such hearings should be held before then. 

hat the Conservative Republican caucus, that held up the Speaker of the House nomination for so long, has stacked the Oversight Committee with anti-Biden activists who are out to nail him. 

https://palmer.house.gov/media-center/in-the-news/dream-team-oversight-committee-stacked-conservative-firebrands

"The House Republican Steering Committee on Tuesday selected several conservative firebrands to serve on the Oversight Committee during the 118th Congress, including multiple members who previously had their committee assignments stripped by House Democrats during the previous Congress...... Along with investigating Biden’s handling of classified documents, the Republican-led Oversight Committee has also pledged to investigate the Biden White House for several things, including the ongoing border and fentanyl crises, the energy crisis, Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, Hunter Biden’s business dealings, and the origins of the coronavirus." 

To that we must add the fact that President Biden has failed to enforce the JFK Act, and has continued to withhold records that Congress ordered released in 2017, and he is being sued, along with the National Archives, for not enforcing the act or releasing the records, as the law provides. 

That is the strategy we must take.and make our case quickly. 

If you are a constituent of any of the members of the House Oversight Committee  - Republicans or Democrats, you should contact them and make them aware of how important oversight hearings on the JFK Act are. 

As the ever vigilant Jefferson Morley has recently pointed out at his JFKFacts blog: 

" The Public Interest Declassification Board (PIDB) is hosting "America’s Secrets: Classified Information and Our Democracy," a two-day event featuring a public meeting of the PIDB and a keynote conversation with the Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines on Thursday, January 26th, and a full-day conference featuring a keynote address from Senator John Cornyn on Friday, January 27th." 

"As Director of National Intelligence, Haines oversees the work of the entire U.S. intelligence community. She is a former deputy director of the CIA, which continues to withhold information from more than 4,000 records related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy."

"Established by statute, the seven member PIDB advises the President of the United States regarding issues pertaining to national classification and declassification policy, including the JFK assassination files."

"The PIDB’s blog: Transforming Classification has more information about the Board’s activities." 

You can also write to the Oversight Committee yourself, using the letter I wrote posted below as an example. Keep your comments short, not more than one page, and be polite. 

Letter to House Oversight Committee Re: Hearings on JFK Act

 LETTER TO HOUSE OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE

Now if everyone who is interested in this will write, email, fax and send a letter to the House Oversight Committee requesting to be notified when a hearing is scheduled, it might encourage them to do their duty and hold such oversight hearings on the JFK Act, as the law requires and as Judge John Tunheim has requested. Tunheim says that this is the next step. 

House Oversight Committee

2157 Rayburn House Office Building, Washington, D.C. 20515

Phone (202) 225-5051

Fax (202) 225-4784

http://oversight.house.gov/contact

Rep. James Comer (R. Ky) Chairman

As you represent the committee responsible for oversight of the JFK Act and President Biden has set a deadline of October 31, 2023 for the final release of the still withheld government JFK assassination records, it is time to hold an open public hearing on the matter.

Since the law stipulated all of the government records on the assassination of President Kennedy should have been released in October, 2017, and the last hearing on the JFK Act was held over 20 years ago, it is imperative that open public hearings are held to determine why the law was not upheld. There are many other questions such as why records were destroyed, some after the passage of the law, why previously released on full are now being redacted, and who is responsible for the continued withholding of these records.

As a journalist who was at the last hearing, and was a member of the Coalition on Political Assassinations (COPA), I followed the work of the Assassinations Records Review Board closely and will also follow the oversight hearings, that are required by law.

Since Rep. Comer the chairman of the Oversight Committee is the only person who can schedule a hearing, he should be aware of Judge John Tunheim’s request for more than one public hearing.

So please inform me when any oversight hearing on the JFK Act is scheduled.

Thank you,
William E. Kelly, Jr.
P. O. Box 250
New Lisbon, N.J. 08064
(609) 346-0229

billkelly3@gmail.com 

Dr. Fredrich Wilhelm "Fritz" Remmler - With LeMay on Nov. 22? Updated.

 Dr. Fredrich Wilhelm "Fritz" Remmler (1890-1972) - Hunter and Falconer 

Thanks to Leslie Sharp for turning us on to Dr.Fredrich Wilhelm "Fritz" Remmler, the German raised in Finland who was  possibly with Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Curtis LeMay at the time of the assassination.

Leslie helped get Hank Abarellie's book Coup In Dallas published (by Skyhorse) after he died, and she is continuing to research important leads.

Fritz was a big game hunter and falconer who was the gamekeeper at the General Motors owned island in north Michigan where some believe LeMay was at the time of the assassination.

Key excerpts from the article posted, with Pictures of Remmler: (  JFKCountercoup2: More on Dr. Fritz Remmler /  Dr. Friedrich Wilhelm "Fritz" Remmler Big Game Hunter & Falconer | AfricaHunting.com  ) : 

“After WWI Remmler ran a business in Finland, collecting wild animals live for zoos and collections around the world, pioneering the safe trapping of elk." 

As they were contemporaries in Finland at the same time, and both hunters, I wonder if Remmler was friends with or knew Simo Hayha - the most prolific sniper of all time. When the Russians invaded Finland, Hayha took up his rifle and donned a white snow hoodie and began shooting Russians. Know as the White Death. According to the Russians, Hayha had over 500 confirmed kills. And he lived to 2002. 

"Remmler came to Canada from Germany in 1951 and was employed as a gamekeeper for General Motors, where he helped maintain land owned by the automaker on Griffith’s Island on Georgian Bay, near Owen Sound,..."

A number of researchers have identified this General Motors hunting resort on Griffith's Island on Georgian Bay as where General LeMay was at the time of the assassination, though others say he may have been at a cabin owned by Jimmie Hoffa. I think it was Griffith's Island. While it is a first class resort, it was quite spartan, didn't have telephones but did have a short wave and Ham radios, LeMay's preferred choice of communication.

At first LeMay had sent for an Air Force executive jet to pick him up in Toronto, but when he learned there was a former Canadian Air Force field nearby in Whairton, he diverted the plane there to meet him and return him to Washington. 

"Remmler... also spent four years working as an officer of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Eventually, he and his family emigrated to rural Ontario where he wrote this memoir.”

Someone might check to see if the RCMP have a file on Remmler or LeMay.

Although his memoirs seem to be limited to his hunting up until 1930, he might mention his work in Canada as well, and it would be nice if someone who can read and translate German would obtain this book. 

“The Memoirs of a Hunter- Experiences in Finland and Russia, 1904-1930” (published in August 2009.) The book is a true tale of hunting in the frozen wilderness of another time. Friedrich describes his adventures in graphic detail. His words are complemented by illustrations by Russian artist Vadim Gorbatov. Ingmar Remmler was doing a little housecleaning when he came across a hidden gem that had been buried for more than 35 years. It was a 450-page manuscript, written in German, that was completed by his father Friedrich, shortly before he died at 82 years of age in 1972 “I found the manuscript at home,” Ingmar said as he held up the work. “My father had originally written it back in 1972. He submitted it to publisher but they rejected it. They said it was too long.”

Remmler's son should be located and questioned about the GM resort. 

It has been pointed out to me that in 1953 General Eisenhower appointed Charles Erwin Wilson Secretary of Defense when Wilson was CEO of General Motors, and that Wilson and LeMay were close allies on military spending.   

In addition, it appears that hiding out at hunting lodges was a popular trend. Max Holland's wife advised him to look for patterns, and while I don't think he does, I think this is quite a pattern - the senior von Alvensleben hiding out at a hunting lodge during the mass execution of Hitler's enemies, Alvensleben being one, D.H. Byrd and the junior Alvensleben at Safari land at the time of the assassination and LeMay and Remmler at the General Motor's hunting lodge in Michigan at the same time. 

     From the Wikipedia entry for the senior Werner von Alvensleben:

"After Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, von Alvensleben belonged to the conservative opposition. He refused to swear the oath of allegiance to Hitler prescribed by law as he was a captain of the reserve. Prior to the "Night of the Long Knives", the purge of the SA leadership around Ernst Röhm and the conservative opposition on 30 June 1934, a hunting companion of earlier times, Graf von Helldorf [1], a member of the SA and one of the organizers of the purge (who eventually turned against Hitler and was executed after the 20 July plot) warned von Alvensleben to spend the coming weekend at his hunting lodge, as he then did, escaping certain assassination; it was thereupon that he was first condemned to death. He had been the go-between for Schleicher to Hitler and had made fun of Hitler for his ambition to be the new Napoleon."

We are also comparing the photos of Remmler in the linked article with those of Safariland to s]ee if he hunted there with Alverslaben or Byrd.

I find it peculiar that while LeMay was away hunting in Michigan, the rest of the Joint Chiefs of Staff were at the Pentagon meeting with the East German General Staff that included two generals who were involved in the July 20, 1944 Valkyrie assassination attempt on Hitler, but escaped retribution. When Chief of Staff General Maxwell Taylor was notified that the president had been shot, he continued the meeting for another two hours, and when notified the president was dead, took a nap. See Manchester's account: 

JFKCountercoup2: The Joint Chiefs of Staff meet with German General Staff 11/22/63

COINTELPRO and The Camden 28

 COINTELPRO AND THE CAMDEN 28

Jefferson Morley, in his December 6, 2022 presentation at the Mary Ferrell Press Conference at the National Press Club in Washington, said that the records released under the JFK Act indicate a strong interest in Lee Harvey Oswald by high level CIA officers while President Kennedy was still alive. He also said there is reason to believe Oswald was involved in a CIA operation before the assassination, one designed to discredit the Fair Play for Cuba Committee that was disbanded shortly after the assassination. In addition, Morley mentioned that this operation may have been a joint FBI-CIA COINTELPRO operation.

We only know about COINTELPRO because a group of anti-war activists, who called themselves the Citizens Committee to Investigate the FBI, broke into the Media, Pennsylvania FBI office and stole their files in the early 1970s. They then distributed the FBI documents to various media outlets, including the Washington Post, and the media recognized the COINTELPRO documents referred to the FBI’s activities against anti-Vietnam War groups.

Media is a small town just outside of Philadelphia, and is where Ruth and Michael Paine were married in 1959 in a Quaker ceremony just around the corner from the FBI office. Since the Media FBI office break-in was never solved, some of those involved, now that the statute of limitations had expired, to write a book about their experince.

But the COINTELPRO documents gave a clear indication as to how the FBI was trying to disrupt the anti-War activities, and the case of the Camden 28 provides an adequate example of that.

Camden is a city across the Delaware River from Philadelphia, and the Camden 28, in the early 1970s, were active anti-war protesters, nominally lead by Father Michael Doyle, an Irish born Catholic priest who was my Religion teacher at Camden Catholic High School and recently died.  If I hadn’t been away at college I probably would have been among them when they broke into the Camden Federal Building and began to steal the military draft records, mine included.

One of the Camden 28 was Robert “Bob” Hardy, an ex-US Marine Corps veteran who was also an FBI informant. Hardy had a truck, provided the ladders, glass cutters and tools, provided by the FBI, and it can be said that the break-in cold not have happened if it wasn’t for the assistance of Bob Hardy and the FBI.

Of course, in the middle of the heist, the FBI, state and local police, including my father, a Camden Police Lieutenant at the time, closed in and arrested them all. When the case got to court, it became clear that Hardy was an FBI informant, and was to provide stats evidence.

As accurately portrayed in the documentary film The Camden 28, by Antholy Giacchino in 2007, in the middle of the trial, Bob Hardy’s son was tragically killed in an accident, and Father Doyle and the rest of the Camden 28 forgave him and sympathized with his plight, so much so that he defected from the FBI and became a witness for the defense. That led to their being found not-guilty.

[ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Camden_28_(film)    ]

[   https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0808190/?ref_=ext_shr_em ]

The COINTELPRO documents from the Media, FBI office, and the story of the Camden 28 clearly how the COINTELPRO operations worked, and the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, with its domestic and foreign attributes, support Morley’s contention that the COINTELPRO operation to discredit the FPCC was a joint FBI-CIA operation.

We know the CIA was involved because of the records that show David Atlee Phillips was part of it, as this document, released in the December15th 2022 batch, clearly indicates.

 [  https://m.facebook.com/photo.php/?fbid=10227561547759826 ]

Anthony Giacchino, director of The Camden 28, also directed The Kennedy Assassination: 24 Hours After (2009), that chronicles the first 24 hours after the assassination, but leaves out a lot of key elements.

[  https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1549069/  ]

In any case, the COINTELPRO documents from the Media FBI office and the story of the Camden 28 both reinforce the idea that Oswald – a Bob Hardy type of individual, was involved in a joint FBI-CIA operation to discredit the FPFCC in the months leading up to the assassination. 

Assassination Records Not in the JFK Collection

  NOTE: This will be continually updated with new cases, footnotes and links. 

 

Bill Kelly – Originally posted on 12 October, 2017

Missing JFK Assassination Records – Revised and Updated

The Black Hole at the Archives – Top Fifty Missing Assassination Records not in the JFK Collection at the National Archives.

By William Kelly

“I do think identifying the missing assassination records is an important project, not because I think we can make the documents appear, but so we can help make this sleeping nation more aware that America has a deep history.”  – Peter Dale Scott

 

The list of missing artifacts, records and documents from ostensibly secure Archives is growing – especially JFK assassination records.

If Peter Dale Scott‘s “Negative Template” theory is correct, what is missing from the extant history is more significant than what is in the documentary record.

As researcher Malcolm Blunt has said, “It’s amazing we have anything left. It’s sickening, just sickening, and a disgrace, an absolute disgrace. The ARRB should have pressured these people into doing a proper search for all of the records.”

This list began when, during a March 2017 press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, I asked Federal Judge John Tunheim if anyone was looking for missing assassination records such as the AF1 tapes and ONI records.

Judge Tunheim shrugged and John Newman said to me, “You are.”

So if it’s up to me I’m going to start looking by making a list of them and prioritizing them as to most significant and easiest to find.

In a private conversation afterwards Judge Tunheim gave me his card and asked me to send him a list and he would look into it.

And this list may be included in the Mary Ferrell-Bill Simpich civil suit against President Biden and the National Archives for not enforcing the JFK Act of 1992.

I began the list with the CIA OS Volume Five file on Lee Harvey Oswald, as it was found missing by Malcolm Blunt and given some publicity.

1)      Oswald CIA Office of Security File Volume 5, last seen by the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA).

2)      Files of the first chief council to HSCA Richard Sprague, who took his files home with him when he was fired for conducting a real investigation. The Assassinations Records Review Board (ARRB), responsible for identifying and obtaining records, missed them because they confused the attorney Richard Sprague with the computer programmer of the same name whose extensive files on the assassination are part of the JFK Collection. Sprague’s HSCA files, paid for by taxpayers that rightfully belong at the Archives, are currently in Sprague’s Philadelphia law office.

3)      Soviet KGB records of Oswald’s time in Moscow and Minsk that were obtained by Norman Mailer are now in the possession of Mailer’s former associate Lawrence Schiller, who refused to turn them over to the ARRB.

4)      Unedited AF1 Radio Transmission tapes from November 22, 1963. Two different edited versions of these tapes are available, one on cassette tapes released by the LBJ Library and a reel to reel version discovered among the personal effects of General Clifton. The White House Communications Agency (WHCA) is responsible for these tapes. As Vince Salandria has pointed out there was a transcript of the complete AF1 radio transmissions in the LBJ White House, where two reporters – T. H. White and William Manchester were permitted to read it and quote from it. They recount conversations not on either of the extant tapes. Pierre Salinger was given a copy of the unedited transcript and quoted from it, and said he returned it to the JFK Library in Boston, but no one there can find it.

5)      Dan Alcorn notes: Joan Mellen found that the Bruce-Lovett Report on the CIA covert operations, that Arthur Schlesinger mentions, is now missing from RFK’s files at the JFK Library. David Bruce was the OSS colonel who accompanied Hemingway to liberate Paris, later JFK’s ambassador to Court of St. James, while Lovett was on board of Moa Bay Mining Company in Cuba and the person who recommended Robert McNamara and McGeorge Bundy to JFK. It’s inconceivable their report on CIA operations is missing, but it is. Even the CIA now wants a copy, if you can find one.

6)      Most of the Zapruder film briefing boards made at NPIC on the day after the assassination are missing, though a few have been found.

7)      Peter Dale Scott wants the minutes of the Honolulu Conference of Nov. 20, 1963. “I consider this omission (even the fact of it) extremely important, not just for understanding the JFK assassination, but for understanding U.S. history. For example: The documents about the Honolulu Conference in the FRUS 1961-1963 Volume make no reference to North Vietnam. The first FRUS record to do so is FRUS Doc. 327 [SECRET]. Memo of Conversation Between Hilsman and Lodge, Nov. 24, 1963, 10 AM.[1]U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963, Vol IV, 632, Doc. 327. Memo of Conversation Between Hilsman and Lodge, Nov. 24.  A SECRET/EYES ONLY second version follows as Doc. 328. There was also a third version, as we learn from this footnote 2 to Doc. 327: “2. Because of different distribution limitations, Hilsman made three separate memoranda of this conversation. The second is infra; the third was not declassified.”[2] U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963, Vol IV, 632, Doc. 327. Memo of Conversation between Hilsman and Lodge, Nov. 24, 1963, 10 AM, fn. 2

8) Church Committee interviews with Gerry Patrick Hemming, Orestes Pena, Immigration and Naturalization Service and Customs officials, and other Church Committee testimony are missing.

9) U.S. Customs records on Cubans, especially by Cesar Diosdado, requested by the HSCA were so voluminous they couldn’t be given to the HSCA, but now consist of only a few records at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).

10) The audio tape recording of Gaeton Fonzi’s interview with Mitch Werbell was erased and the transcript is missing, only Fonzi’s notes remain.

11) John Newman says that Eisenhower era reports on assassinations of foreign leaders that he copied years ago are now missing from the NARA, and he believes such records are being deliberately stolen.

12) Bill Simpich says that CIA Mexico City Station (MCS) cable to Headquarters from September 26-30, 1963 are missing as well as cables from CIA HQ to MCS, JMWAVE to HQ and HQ to JMWAVE cable traffic on the same dates, and all cable traffic between MCS and JMWAVE between September 26 and October 20 and November 22 to December 30, 1963 are missing.

13) The CIA’s “detailed” study of the July 20, 1944 attempt to kill Hitler to be adapted for use against Castro, as mentioned by Desmond FitzGerald in his September 23, 1963 briefing of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is missing, and was the subject of a FOIA lawsuit by the Assassination Archives and Research Center (AARC).

14) Office of Naval Intelligence – ONI Defector File, as identified as an assassination record by Navy Lt. Com. T. Pike, but never turned over to the Archives. See: JFKCountercoup – The Railroading of Lt. Commander Terri Pike.

15) ONI 119 investigation reports on Oswald’s defection and the assassination, as referred to by the Navy investigators who wrote them and the officers who read them.

16) The assassination files of the Director of the ONI Rufus Taylor, whose office had undercover agents working in Jack Ruby’s Carousel Club, installing and maintain the sound system, who reported, in the only surviving document, that Oswald was seen in the club.

17) James Mastrovito – the Secret Service Agent responsible for the SS records on the assassination acknowledged to the ARRB that he “culled” – destroyed many records and flushed into a food processor a vial of material labeled “JFK brain – Armed Forces Institute of Pathology,” with no repercussions.

18) The Secret Service destroyed many records, including the Advance Reports for the Tampa trip after the JFK Act was passed by Congress, although copies of some of these records were found among the personal effects of Agent Gerald Blaine, who wrote the Tampa Advance report. Do other agents also have copies of official records among their personal effects? Is anyone looking?

19) The “Homme Report” from a Congressional subcommittee reportedly contains information on Robert F. Kennedy’s knowledge and approval of CIA plans to kill Fidel Castro.

21) Four boxes of witness testimony turned over to NARA in April 1965 by US Attorney now missing.

22) OSI – Office of Special Investigation military intelligence review of Oswald’s State Department file is missing.

23) When former US Marine officer Oliver Revill joined the FBI he reported on an investigation of Oswald and files on him at a US Marine base in North Carolina, records not in the public record.

24) The Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel had documents excluded from the Warren Commission, according to a memo sent to ARRB and NARA archivist Steve Tilly, “more stuff lost in the shuffle,” says Malcolm Blunt.

25) The ARRB tried to obtain Oswald’s New Orleans court records but were told they were accidentally destroyed when sent for microfilming.

26) Army Intelligence files on Oswald were kept from the Warren Commission and then “routinely” destroyed in 1973.

27) In 1976 when the CIA Counterintelligence (CI) staff were reviewing JFK assassination files the Security Office did not hand over their “secondary files” on Oswald, aka “research files,” that were not seen by HSCA or any other component of the CIA, as Malcolm Blunt says “they are like a whole separate agency.”

28) Larry Haapanen notes, White House Situation Room Incoming-Outgoing Message Log for 11/22/63-11/30/63 (the extant log for November 1963 ends abruptly on the morning of 11/2263).

29) Records of the Dallas-based 488th Military (Strategic) Intelligence Detachment (Counter-Intelligence) unit histories and rosters 1962-1963.30. Records of FBI wiretapping of Oswald while in police custody as well as post assassination taps of Ruth Paine and Michael Paine and Marina and Robert Oswald phones, as reported by Irving police Chief Paul Barger.]

30) Records of FBI wiretapping of Oswald while in police custody as well as post assassination taps of Ruth Paine and Michael Paine and Marina and Robert Oswald phones, as reported by Irving police Chief Paul Barger.

31) White House Communications Agency (WHCA) records for 11/22/63 including tape of Secret Service motorcade security radio “Charlie” channel that included Roy Kellerman talking as the third shot was fired, and radios in LBJ’s car, the AF1 cockpit and the WHCA base station at the Dallas Sheraton hotel.

32) Missing Mexico City records include LILYRIC (Soviet embassy photo records, Sept. ’63); LIFEAT (wiretap records, for all of 1963), daily resumen wiretap summaries for 1963, and records withheld by ARRB at request of CIA and FBI that may be released in the October 26, 2017 data dump.

33) Many relevant FBI 134 Informant records are missing or being withheld.

34) FBI dispatch tape of Dallas calls for 11/22/63 is missing.

35) The National Photo Interpretation Center (NPIC) report on their study of the Zapruder film and Art Lundal’s briefing of CIA Director John McCone is missing, though McCone told RFK that the CIA said there were two gunmen.

36) The JMWAVE NPIC records and other NPIC assassination records were, according to a NPIC secretary, boxed and at the orders of Robert Kennedy sent to the Smithsonian Institute instead of the NARA.

37) FBI’s Mexico City file MX 105-2137. Let me begin with the Board’s explanation of why this file, brought to their attention by me, was not seen by them.

38) Malcolm Blunt: FBI espionage “65” File on Oswald, Correspondence between Office of Security (Bruce Solie and David Slawson during WC investigation….second part of Bruce Solie HSCA Security Classified Testimony, full debriefs of INS and Customs officers at the Department of Justice following their testimony to the Church committee (all missing).

39) Mexico City Station to Headquarters (September 26–30, 1963); Headquarters to Mexico City Station (September 26–30, 1963); JMWAVE to Headquarters (September 26–November 21,1963); Headquarters to JMWAVE (September 26–November 21, 1963); and all traffic between the Mexico City Station and JMWAVE for the periods September 26–October 20, 1963 and November 22–December 30, 1963.

40) Records of the Dallas-based 488th Military Intelligence Detachment (Strategic) and 349th Military Intelligence Detachment (Counter-Intelligence) — for example unit histories and unit rosters from 1962-63.

John Armstrong: Bill, You might also want to include the following:

41) Employment records of LHO collected by the FBI from the Pfister Dental Lab have disappeared.

42) Stripling Junior High (Ft. Worth) records of LHO’s attendance in 1954, collected by the FBI, have disappeared.

43) The “original” US postal money order, allegedly used to pay for the MC rifle, has disappeared.

44) Documents relating to LHO’s discharge from the Marine Corp in March, 1959, reviewed by asst Provost Marshall William Gorsky at El Toro, CA., disappeared.

45) LHO’s Texas driver’s license (and file), seen and handled by numerous employees at the TDPS, disappeared.

46) The Oswald wallet, produced by Capt. Westbrook at 19th & Patton and shown to officers and FBI agent Barrett, was last seen in the hands of Capt. Westbrook.

47) Film taken of anti-Castro Cubans training in Louisiana, which also showed Oswald, has disappeared

48) All original NYC school records of LHO disappeared while in FBI custody. Only photographs remain in the National Archives.

49) FBI files on LHO in NYC from Sept, 1961- March, 1962

50) Interviews by Edward J. Epstein of US Marines who knew LHO in Japan, the Fulton Ousler Collection, kept for years at Georgetown University, are now missing.

51) Complete files of LHO’s attendance at radar school in Keesler (2 files with two different numbers; two different graduation dates; two different class numbers, etc).

52) Marine Corps unit diaries for LHO at El Toro, CA from December, 1958 thru March, 1959.

53) Interviews by John Hart Ely of Marines who knew LHO at El Toro, CA are missing.

54) All employment records of Marguerite Oswald from 1955 thru 1963.

55) SS records for Marina and LHO.