Colonel Fletcher Prouty Re-Considered

 Fletcher Prouty Re-Considered

I think Col. Fletcher Prouty sometimes gets a bad rap, especially from the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) and those Lone Nutters who are threatened by what he has to say. But there are certain undisputable things you can’t take away from him.

Prouty is a part of the composite character “Mr. X,” portrayed by Donald Sutherland in Oliver Stone’s “JFK.” 

Prouty was a Colonel in the Air Force, and he most certainly worked in the Pentagon, with an office just down the hall from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as the focal point officer (1955-1963) responsible for coordinating special operation activities between the Pentagon and the CIA. He was a close associate of General Victor “Brute” Krulak, a major player in the JFK assassination story.

After he retired Prouty wrote an important book The Secret Team (Prentice-Hall, 1973-1992-1997, Skyhorse 2008-2011)in which he describes how the CIA was originally established to serve as a government Think Tank, analyzing intelligence, but quickly became involved clandestine and covert operations.  The Secret Team, or ST, is a phrase coined by L. Fletcher Prouty in 1973, alleging a covert alliance between the United States' military, intelligence, and private sectors to influence political decisions.    

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_Team   ]

I first met Prouty through my Committee for an Open Archives (COA) and Coalition on Political Assassinations (COPA) associate John Judge, and my knowing Prouty played a big part in obtaining the cooperation of Ralph Cox in writing the story of the CIA propriety airlines – CIAir.    

 [https://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2008/01/ciair.html  ]

Back in 1992, with the impending release of Oliver Stone’s “JFK,” the media blitz sparked an American University professor to host a conference of the subject of films and politics, and when one of the speakers couldn’t make a planned panel on the subject, the moderator asked John Judge to fill in.

That was a major boost for our fledging organization the Committee for an Open Archives (COA), as John Judge certainly stood out and his opinions were widely appreciated, especially so because the event was carried live and archived by C-SPAN TV.

Shortly thereafter National Public Radio host Diane Rehm whose show was then broadcast from studios at American University, asked John to be a guest, and John brought Fletcher Prouty along with him, another successful media boost for COA.

[  https://www.npr.org/2016/12/23/506653136/radios-diane-rehm-a-mainstay-of-civil-discourse-signs-off   ]

American University is also the home of history professor Peter Kuznick, who worked with Oliver Stone in making a series of alternative history programs. 

Faculty Profile: Peter Kuznick

Anna Kasten Nelson Collection | American University, Washington, DC

Anna K. Nelson (1933–2012) | Perspectives on History | AHA

Anna K. Nelson - JFK Assassination Debate - The Education Forum

One of the Assassination Records Review Board members Anna Kasten Nelson, also taught there, as well as Max Holland’s wife, Professor Alana Holland, who once advised him “to look for patterns,” something that Max doesn’t seem to bother doing. But I certainly do – as seeing such patterns has led me to Collins Radio, Bell Helicopter, Civil Air Patrol, Defense Language Institute, Pan Am Bank of Miami, and other such subjects that reoccur throughout the JFK assassination story. I will later outline how these subjects fit into the assassination story. 

As for Colonel Prouty, he appears to be a sort of like the Colonel Martin Casey, “Jiggs” character in Seven Days in May, who begins to perceive what he believes is a coup d’etat in the works and blows the whistle on it.

Prouty believed that because he was out of the loop on the JFK assassination plans, he was sent on a mission to the South Pole, and was on his way home in New Zealand when the assassination occurred. There he read of the basic background of Lee Harvey Oswald – Civil Air Patrol, USMC, stationed at Atsugi U2 base, learned Russian language, defector to Soviet Union, returns with no consequences, Fair Play for Cuba Committee, visits to Cuban and Soviet embassies in Mexico City, etc., and like most intelligence analysists worth their salt, concluded Oswald was some sort of covert operative, and therefore the assassination was a covert intelligence operation.

Unlike most conspiracy theorists who try to pin the blame for the assassination squarely on the shoulders of the CIA, Prouty believed the plan for the assassination originated at the Pentagon. John Judge used to say that, “I started from the ground up and Prouty started from the top and worked down and we met at the Pentagon.”

While I don’t dismiss the role of the CIA in the assassination, especially what came out of their Miami JMWAVE station, they worked closely with the military that supported their covert operations, especially those against Cuba.

The Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) interviewed Prouty and tried to discredit him, focusing on his allegation that military intelligence agents were often used in presidential security, as they were in Mexico City when the president visited there, and an phone call Prouty received from a former military intelligence agent sometime after the assassination, which Prouty himself says was an almost “Irrelevant issue,” as reflected in their published reports.

 [  https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.onthetrailofdelusion.com/amp/fletcher-prouty-s-interview-with-the-arrb-part-eight   /  https://www.onthetrailofdelusion.com/post/fletcher-prouty-and-army-intelligence-in-dallas   ].

Those who poo-poo any conspiracy in the assassination often use those reports to discredit Prouty, and illogically conclude that if he was wrong about one thing everything else he says is invalid. Well that’s just not the case.

Military intelligence may not be directly involved in domestic presidential security, they are required to keep the Secret Service informed of any threats against the President they are aware of, and they just didn’t do that. And military intelligence was all over Dealey Plaza that day, as Army Intelligence agent James Powell took photos of the TSBD and was caught inside during the dragnet. As the ARRB was informed at a public session, an Army intelligence officer from Fort Sam Hood said that he was part of a communications unit that filmed or video taped the assassination as an assignment, so they must have had foreknowledge of not only the assassination but when and where it would occur, as Phil Ochs put it, “national security observers.”

And it was an Army intelligence officer who notified the Dallas Police that they had a file on Oswald that included the alias Alec Hidel.

The whole military intelligence angle needs to have it’s own article, and will.

Prouty wrote another post-JFK movie book - JFK – The CIA, Vietnam and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy (Skyhorse, 2013), with an introduction by Oliver Stone and a Foreward by Jesse Ventura.

He also confirmed the CIA’s propriety ownership of ostensibly commercial airlines like Air America, but there were others – as I wrote about in CIAir and Gene Wheaton confirmed as he was named president of one of them – National Cargo, where he worked closely with Carl Jenkins, one of the Bay of Pigs and JMWAVE trainers.

It is indisputable that Prouty was a Colonel in the Air Force and personally knew and worked closely with others who are entwined in this story, Generals Edwin Lansdale and Victor “Brute” Krulak to name two.

I had never heard of Krulak until Prouty mentioned him, but now recognize that he was very much in the thick of things as Special Assistant for Counter-Insurgency Activities – responsible for military support for the CIA covert ops against Cuba. Krulak worked directly for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but had an office in the White House where he refused to wear a suit and tie instead of his military uniform. A personal friend of the President, JFK’s PT-109 took some of Krulak’s marines off an enemy held beach under fire, as portrayed in the book and film PT-109.

[ For more on Krulak see: https://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2021/04/brute-life-of-victor-krulak-us-marine.html?m=1 ]

It was Krulak’s deputy – Colonel Walter Higgins, who wrote the memo of the September 1963 meeting when the head of CIA’s Cuban desk – Desmond FitzGerald briefed the Joint Chiefs of Staff – the document that I consider the most significant smoking record released under the JFK Act.

[ https://jfkcountercoup2.blogspot.com/2021/09/the-signifiance-of-higgins-memo.html ]

When Prouty first saw the photos of the Dealey Plaza tramps he thought he recognized then recently retired Gen. Lansdale walking in the background, and sent the photo to Krulak, who wrote back to Prouty that it most certainly was Lansdale, same haircut, same walk, same ring, and wondered what he was doing there?  I think that is something we should be wondering too.

[ Krulak letter: https://prouty.org/letter.html ]

[https://ratical.org/ratville/JFK/USO/appD.html ]

I don’t put much faith in photo identification evidence, as they are all controversial and subject to opinions, but then John Newman told me that when he was researching the background of Lansdale at that time, he traced Lansdale to Fort Worth, Texas, where he was a few nights before the assassination, as was the President. So he was in the area at the time.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the fact that Prouty sometimes gave talks to some questionable groups, as many others have, and you can’t be judged by those you share a stage with – as those who have with Fetzer, JV Baker, LaRouche and Roger Stone.

[https://www.pinterest.com/pin/162129655321187041/]

So Colonel Fletcher Prouty gave us a lot of good leads that can be independently corroborated, and while he may have exagerated certain aspects of the story and came to some wrong conclusions, many of the leads panned out and far exceed those negative things.

 [Spartacus on Prouty: https://spartacus-educational.com/JFKprouty.htm ]

One of Prouty’s biggest supporter, Len Osanic has some of his interviews archived on line including two with John Judge one of which may be the NPR talk show:

http://www.blackopradio.com/video.html

Collected Works of Fletcher Prouty:

http://www.umsl.edu/~thomaskp/prouty.htm

Political Assassination Just Prior to 9-11

 Political Assassination Prior to 9-11

The recent media blitz on the 20^th anniversary of the September 11^th attacks reminded me of my own reporting, as I was a working journalist at the time. I interviewed a New Jersey Air National Guard 177^th air wing fighter pilot who was with his wingman on the tarmac at Atlantic City airport at the time the first plane hit the World Trade Center tower, and was ordered not to take off an return to their base headquarters, where they learned of the attack.

If they had taken off there was no doubt they would have crossed paths and could have intercepted the second plane, but they were only armed with bombs as they were going on a practice bomb run in upstate New York. They later speculated they could have tipped the wings of the plane and forced it to crash without hitting its target, but that would have probably been suicidal for themselves as well.

I also knew Kurt Loder, my first editor, whose apartment was in the shadow of the World Trade Center, who left his windows open when he fled, and when permitted to return a few weeks later found everything covered with inches of dust and debris. Charlie Montgomery, an ex-Marine and former editor of mine at the Atlantic City Sun, was then working for the magazine tabloids out of Florida, and was suspected of being infected with anthrax, the poison powder sent to their offices that killed a few fellow workers. The main suspect in that chemical attack was a scientist who worked for a US military lab, much like the Wuhan, China lab the French built that is the suspected source of the COVID 19 virus.

Shortly after September 11^th I went back to my pile of Philadelphia morning Inquirer newspapers and took out the Tuesday, September 11, but of course there was no mention of the terrorist attacks that occurred later that morning, after the paper had went to press. I was looking for any possible clues that were missed that could have indicated the attacks were coming, and found a small, one column few inches long news report buried deep in the paper about the assassination of the leader of the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan.

It is now known that the September 9^th assassination of Ahmad Shah Massoud was engineered by Osama Bin Laden, also believed to be the mastermind of the September 11^th attacks two days later.

The suicide bombers posed as television media journalists whose bombs were planted in their camera equipment, a Modus Operandi very similar to the planned assassination of Fidel Castro when he visited South America, a plan devised by David Atlee Phillips and Antonio Veciana, both of whom have been implicated in the assassination of President Kennedy. That plan failed when the anti-Castro Cuban bombers didn’t feel like killing themselves, and didn’t believe they would escape alive if they tried to carry it out.

My point is that whenever a political assassination occurs, it should set off alarms as it is a forerunner of bad things to come. 

I haven’t seen any media references to the assassination of Ahmad Shah Massoud, except in the short reports that his son is now leading the resistance to the Taliban in Afghanistan, though he lacks the military experience his father had in fighting the Soviets and Taliban.

Then I came across this article from France that tries to put it all together:

Death of an Afghan icon: 20 years since the assassination of Ahmad Shah Massoud

https://www.france24.com/en/asia-pacific/20210909-death-of-an-afghan-icon-20-years-since-the-assassination-of-ahmad-shah-massoud

Two days before 9/11, an Al-Qaeda suicide squad posing as journalists sat down for an interview with Ahmad Shah Massoud, the last major commander resisting the jihadist group's Taliban allies in northern Afghanistan.

Before he could answer a question, they detonated explosives that investigators later said had been cunningly disguised in their camera equipment.

Twenty years on, Massoud's assassination and the September 11 attacks on the United States are for many Afghans the twin cataclysms that started yet another era of uncertainty and bloodshed -- and which continue to reverberate following the Taliban's return.

The charismatic Massoud, known as the Lion of Panjshir after his native valley, built his name during the 1980s as a brilliant guerrilla commander repelling Soviet forces.

By the late 1990s, he was fighting the Taliban -- and their Al-Qaeda allies.

Both wanted him gone.

The audacious hit was ordered by Osama bin Laden himself.

The assassins pretended to be filming a documentary, and secured the Massoud interview by presenting a concocted back story printed on a letterhead from an Islamic centre in Britain. They used stolen Belgian passports to travel.

Then they hit a wall -- Massoud was too busy to sit down with them when they arrived in August 2001 at his base in Khwaja Bahauddin village.

"They spent 10 days with us calmly and patiently waiting, and never unnecessarily insisting on the interview," Fahim Dashti, a journalist and close Massoud aide, told AFP a few weeks after the assassination.

Dashti was setting up his own camera to record the interview as the two Al-Qaeda operatives relayed their questions in Arabic to the commander's close aide, Masood Khalili, for translation.

"We were not feeling comfortable," Khalili told AFP in October 2001, especially because they had asked questions about bin Laden.

"The 'cameraman' had a nasty smile. The 'journalist' was very calm," he said.

Just as Massoud heard the translation, the explosives went off.

'Your leader is dead'

The killing sent shockwaves across Afghanistan and the world.

Massoud was seen as the last big hope by anti-Taliban Afghans at the time, and by Western governments as a potent ally against even more hardline Islamists.

With his Northern Alliance resistance already on the back foot against the Taliban, his aides hid his death for days.

A week after he was killed, Massoud was buried in his home district of Bazarak -- his body shrouded in the colours of the Afghan flag and with thousands of followers in the funeral procession.

A marble tomb was built attracting huge numbers of devotees.

"When (Massoud) was killed, I was in Panjshir. The resistance forces were...surrounded from all sides," a 47-year-old resident of the area told AFP on Monday, requesting anonymity because of security fears.

"The Taliban even announced on the radio: your leader is dead and you're done. But... the death of the leader gave the people another reason to fight harder."

The tables were turned within weeks as the United States, looking to punish the Taliban for harboring the 9/11 perpetrators, invaded Afghanistan.

The Taliban regime fell by the end of 2001, pummelled by American bombers guided by Northern Alliance fighters.

Al-Qaeda, hoping to get the upper hand both against the United States and in Afghanistan with their two major attacks, was on the run.

Panjshir falls

The Taliban launched a lightning offensive as the last US-led troops left Afghanistan this year, capping their 20-year insurgency with the capture of Kabul on August 15.

Once again, the main opposition emerged in Panjshir -- led this time by Ahmad Massoud, who was 12 years old when Al-Qaeda killed his father.

But the Taliban swiftly sent fighters to surround the area, claiming eventually on Monday that they had captured Panjshir.

Among the resistance dead in the heavy fighting was Fahim Dashti, the journalist who survived the Massoud bombing 20 years ago.

One Taliban account posted a picture of fighters in Panjshir standing in front of a vandalised Ahmad Shah Massoud poster.

Ahmad Shah Massoud's brother Ahmad Wali said in Geneva Tuesday that while their National Resistance Front was "wounded", thousands of fighters can come back at any time.

It is a difficult scenario for Mohammad Sana Safa, a 63-year-old who worked with Massoud in the 1980s when there were daily attacks by the Soviets.

"Ahmad Massoud is a young man, patriotic, but he has no military experience like his father," Safa said Monday.

"Had (his father) been alive today, we would have not witnessed this... the fall of Panjshir to the Taliban."

(AFP)

CAPA Conference Update

 CAPA UPDATE

As everyone knows who has been studying political assassinations for any length of time, things happen very slowly, then a lot happens at once. Sometimes we can predict the events, sometimes not.

Now we know every November 22 anniversary there will be news and special media reports, but this year, we also know that something big will occur on Tuesday, October 26, 2021, as that is the deadline for the president to decide whether to continue with holding JFK assassination records or release them in full as required by the JFK Act of 1992.

Either way it will be a big news day and covered by all the major media networks and there will be commentary in the Washington Post and New York Times as well as by anyone interested in this case. I will be writing a preview and a review after the fact.

Therefore something will happen, and we can at least prepare for it. Towards that end I am working with CAPA, David Talbot’s Truth and Reconciliation Committee, the Assassination Archives and research Center, Mary Ferrell, JFK Facts and others interested in this subject. At first we sent letters to the Chairwomen of the House Oversight Committee Rep. Carolyn Maloney, and President Biden, requesting they hold oversight hearings and release the records in full. But at this point in time I don’t think either will happen, unless the public can be generated to contact their representatives in Congress and demand it, as they did after the release of Oliver Stone’s movie JFK.

[ https://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2021/03/free-thejfk-files-during-sunshine-week.html ]

Attorney Mark Zaid put together a letter that received a positive response from the Public Interest Declassification Board, a branch of the National Archives. He got a number of others with a variety of viewpoints to co-sign on, emphasizing the fact that this is not about conspiracy but about releasing all of the records as the law requires.

[ https://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2021/06/letter-to-public-interest.html ]

I tried to lease a room at the JFK Center for the Performing Arts in Washington DC in order to hold a press conference on October 26, but it now appears that if we do hold such a press conference it will be done virtually.

November 22, 2021 is a Monday, and as far as I can tell there will be three conferences, one in person conference sponsored by Judith Vary Baker at the Magnolia Hotel in Dallas. Randy Benson, the college film professor and director of the award winning documentary The Searchers, about independent researchers focusing on John Judge, will be the keynote speaker. JVB has also announced that this will be her last in person conference in Dallas, and I assume she will also conduct the memorial service at 12:30 pm at Dealey Plaza that Monday.

Debra Conway and Larry Hancock will be hosting a virtual on line conference though the dates have yet to be announced. I have been asked to make a presentation for them, and will probably do so, the topic of which has yet to be determined. I will report on this as the information becomes available.

Last March, as things seemed to be getting better, and looked like they would continue in that direction, the CAPA board decided to hold an in person conference in Dallas in November, but the Marriot Courtyard, where we held a successful conference two years ago, was already booked. We then reserved the Sheraton, where a lot of JFK Assassination activities occurred.  But that didn’t work out and the third hotel we reserved had a pipe leak and will not be ready in time.

So with all that in addition to the rise in COVID cases, and the fact that Texas is one of the nation’s hot-spots, the CAPA board decided to not have an in person conference in Dallas this year because of the problems with the hotels and COVID, so we will be having another virtual conference that is shaping up nicely, as CAPA secretary Glenda Devaney explains here:

GREETINGS FROM CAPA!

We hope all of you are in good health and doing well.

We regret to announce that CAPA will be having a virtual conference instead of an in-person one this year. So far only a handful of people have registered for the conference. We suspect that most people wanted to wait until closer to the time of the conference because of all the confusion and unpredictability. But we fear that things will probably get worse, not better -  too much uncertainty and too many obstacles in our way.

We are extremely disappointed about this as we were looking forward to seeing all of you. Our online schedule and registration will be available soon. We believe we have an excellent program lined up and hope you all can access it. If, for some reason, you are not able to access the program on the days it will be streamed, we will have a package of the presentations available after the conference.

We will provide information on how to register for the conference soon.

Here is the program for the virtual conference:
 
Since the JFK/Media Panel was so successful last year, we are planning on having it again with some new participants. We are planning to have a half-day on the subject of “The JFK Assassination and the Media,” a topic that has not been discussed and investigated by the mainstream media. Andrew Kreig will chair the panel. Participants in the panel will be Dr. Cyril Wecht, Russ Baker, James Wagenvoord, and Jacob Hornberger.
 
Tink Thompson and Gary Aguilar will speak about Tink’s new book, “Last Second in Dallas.”
 
Dr. Cyril Wecht will be our keynote speaker – topic to be announced closer to the conference.
 
James Wagenvoord will speak about his experiences working at Life magazine in 1963. He has much to share since he was at the epicenter of the magazine responsible for much of the news about the assassination. Title of the talk is “My LIFE Story and LIFE’s Life Story.”
 
Russell Kent, who spoke last year about the House Select Committee on Assassinations Forensic Pathology Panel, will speak about his new book, “JFK: Medical Betrayal.”
 
Stephen Jaffe is the last living investigator on the staff of New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison in the 60's. Jaffe was also one of the producers of the feature film “Executive Action” in 1973. And, for the first time, for the CAPA audience, Jaffe will show a new documentary that he produced with his late partner, author and attorney Mark Lane. It’s entitled, “A Rush to Judgment,” after Lane’s best-selling book and includes some rare interviews with witnesses Lane interviewed in 1966. It also includes historic new interviews. Jaffe will also show a brief, almost never seen documentary film about the making of “Executive Action” with interviews of the stars (Burt Lancaster, Robert Ryan and Will Geer, as well as the executive producer Edward Lewis). Jaffe will take questions about his time with Garrison.
 
David Montague was head of investigations for the United States JFK Assassination Records Review Board and will speak about his time in that position.
 
Andrew Kiel will speak on J. Edgar Hoover, LBJ, and the Secret Service presenting additional information not included in his previous talk.
 
We will also have a panel on the history and status of withholding of the JFK assassination records. David Montague will chair the panel; participants so far are Michael Nurko, Bill Kelly and Jacob Hornberger.
 
We are again planning a special day for high school, college, and law school students. This will be held online, as it was last year, on Friday, November 19.  We want to get more young people interested in this tragic event that changed the course of our country and hopefully enlist them in our cause. We are planning a program that will give them the opportunity to see what President Kennedy was like as a person and a president and educate them about the truth of the assassination. The event will be free to students attending high schools, universities and law schools. If anyone has suggestions for schools or national organizations you think might be interested, please let me know and I will send out invitations.
 
Thank you all for your support of CAPA and its  worthy cause -
Pursue the release of withheld records -  Find the Truth -  Seek Justice.
 
Best regards
Glenda de Vaney
CAPA Program Chair

In addition the CAPA Research Committee, that I head, will be presenting some of the most advanced research on a number of topics, including General LeMay on 11/22/63, Valkyrie and Pathfinder at Dealey Plaza, and synopsis of the inter-related stories of Gene Wheaton and Carl Jenkins, including reports on recent interviews with Jenkins.

In addition, CAPA is already preparing for an in person conference in Dallas next November, and has reserved the Marriott Courtyard, where we held the successful 2019 conference, and if JVB lives up to her word and will not be in Dallas next year, CAPA will try to obtain the permit for Dealey Plaza for 11/22/22 and hold a traditional 12:30 memorial service in the Penn Jones-John Judge style.

In the meantime there’s a lot to be done before this year is out, especially in regards to October 26 and November 22, and I will be in the thick of it.

Billkelly3@gmail.com

Sirhan B. Sirhan and Luis Angel Castillo

 Sirhan B. Sirhan and Luis Angel Castillo

Sirhan B. Sirhan and Luis Angel Castillo 

The possibility of Sirhan B. Sirhan (SBS) being paroled in the assassination of RFK has reignited the debate over his role in the murder and whether he was a programed assassin, in the Manchurian Candidate mold.

LA coroner Dr. Thomas Noguchi, who performed the autopsy, said in his report that RFK was killed by a bullet to the back of the head that was shot from inches away, so SBS, feet in front of him when he was wrestled to the ground, did not kill RFK.

But his general attitude and behavior clearly indicate he was out of his mind at the time and probably programed to do what he did.

That, to me, is reminiscent of another programed assassin – Luis Angel Castillo.

While Castilo comes into the JFK story on a number of levels, Robert Lipka is the best.

Lipka was a National Security Agency (NSA) file clerk when he was recruited by the Soviet KGB to turn over documents in exchange for money. He went undetected however, and retired to eastern Pennsylvania. And there he lived undisturbed until Vasili Mitrokhin, a KGB archivist, defected as the Soviet Union began to fall apart. At first Mitrokhin offered his services to the Americans, but they turned him down so he fell into the arms of the British MI-5, counter-intelligence branch.

In order to establish his bonafides, Mitrokhin gave up Lipka and the MI5 informed the FBI. They tracked Lipka down to a small town outside of Philadelphia, and an FBI agent posed as a Soviet who slipped up to the seat next to Lipka at a bar and requested his services once again, in exchange for money. While Lipka explained he no longer worked for NSA, he accepted the deal, and was promptly arrested.

Luckily there was a reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer present in the court where Lipka was arranged, and listened to the charges against him. When given the opportunity to say something, Lipka confessed and said that one of the documents he read as an NSA file clerk “named the real assassin of President Kennedy.”

With that the judge banged his gavel and ended the proceedings. As Lipka was being led away, the reporter asked him the name of JFK’s real assassin, and Lipka replied – Luis Angel Castillo.

Now there is a new book about Lipka and Mitrokhin, that goes into many details, and I’ve ordered it, but someone who read it informed me that it doesn’t mention the Castillo reference at all.

In any case, I learned, many years ago, that there was a Congressional invesigative document regarding Castillo that was at the Gerald Ford Presidential Library in Michigan, and wrote to them about it, but was informed that it was classified. After the JFK Act of 1992 was passed however, I was informed that it was now available, and obtained it from a then research associate Todd Vaughn.  Vaughn has since flipped and is now an anti-conspiracy and lone nut advocate in league with a dozen others, all of whom claim to be former silly conspiracy theorisits who have since seen the light. Another former independent researcher who I worked with and is now in league with Vaughn is attorney Mark Zaid, who I worked with at the Assassination Archives and Research Center (AARC) in DC when we were lobbying for the JFK Act. And he comes into play in this story as well.

And the document from the Ford Library is a WOW!

Castillo was arrested in the Phillipines for attempted assassination, and it was there his mental programing was diagnosed. Back in the USA he was incarcerated at a Bordentown, New Jersey detention center where an MKULTRA doctor ran things. He was either paroled or escaped from there, and when the FBI tracked him down to his mother’s house, she said that some men in suits had picked him up and drove away with him. She said she didn’t expect to ever see him again. 

https://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2008/01/luis-angel-castillo.html

https://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2020/05/luis-angel-castillo-revisited.html?m=1

http://jfkcountercoup2.blogspot.com/2016/09/nsa-kennedy-assassination-records.html

A faithful reader of my blog and now research associate Richard Booth contacted me and informed me that a former FBI agent involved with the Lipka case wrote a book about it – “Fool’s Mate,” a 380 page book that for some reason fails to even mention the name Luis Angel Castillo, even though that was part of his original arrangement in court proceedings.

https://www.turningthepagebooks.com/book/9780465003129

As Richard Booth said to me, “The only reason that the book would omit the fact that Lipka mentioned Castillo or said he saw the name of JFK's assassin in NSA files would be if that information were indeed seen on classified documents due to the laws in this country relating to classified information and pre-publication review of books.”

In the epilogue of his book, FBA SA John Whiteside wrote this: "Special thanks go out to my attorney Mark Zaid who has stood by me in my dealings with the pre-publication review units during the second round of reviews. Following Jenny’s editing of the original manuscript, I was again required to run the manuscript through the pre-publication review process at NSA and the FBI. This time it took ten months before the manuscript was approved once more for publication. Mark is one of the finest and best known attorneys in the Washington, DC area and his assistance was invaluable to me.”

So the references Lipka made about Luis Angel Castillo at his arrangement, which was also covered and reported on by another Pennsylvania paper besides the Philadelphia Inquirer article I read. 

Full news report from the Harrisburg Patriot-News: JFKCountercoup2: Article from newspaper about Lipka

These news reports re: Castillo and JFK were intentionally censored by FBI and NSA redactors, as overseen by Whiteside’s finest and best known attorney in Washington D.C. – Mark Zaid.

While Zaid has recently been promoting the full release of the JFK records in open letters, he is also proud of the fact he is a national security lecturer at the Center for International Studies, where David A. Phillips, E. Howard Hunt, Ed Lansdale, Joe Smith and others received their training in psychological warfare, black propaganda and covert operational procedures.

Zaid has also made a reputation for himself for representing CIA and military whistle blowers, but when I called him during the 9/11 Congressional Hearings and asked him to represent one of former FBI agent John O’Neill’s undercover operatives, he said, “They can’t afford my fees.”

Well, right then and there I knew where Zaid rated.

And when the NSA records on the assassination of President Kennedy were released, a number of records known about from news reports – such as the documents on Luis Angel Castillo, were not among them. 

Back from the Front

I was driving a Hummer at a military base on July 28, my 70th birthday. 

My helmet reads: S&TCD
 C5ISR Center U.S.ARMY CCDC | S&TCD

While I was away and failed to post many new articles, a faithful reader, Marshall Hester, emailed me:  "Hi Bill. Have not seen a post lately on JFKCountercoup to further educate me. In hopes you are doing well." 

Well its nice to know someone was concerned, and yes, I am doing okay. It's just that after more than two years of inactivity, Uncle Sam finally called me back to duty, and for the month of July I was very busy working with the military at JBMDL -Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, driving a Hummer to assist them in testing equipment. 

When I mentioned this on Facebook, someone asked if it was a conflict of interest to be employed by the military-industrial-complex while working as a research director for an anti-assassination organization (CAPA-US.org). I said, No, I was infiltrating them. The same thing I told John Judge about a decade ago when he objected as I began working for the military part-time as a COB - Citizen on the Battlefield. 

Usually we do role playing scenarios working closely with Op4 - Opposition Force, creating situations that the soldiers will most likely encounter on the battlefield, mainly training national guardsman and reservists before they are deployed overseas. I enjoy the work and try to do my best, just following orders. Working in training gave me some good insight into how they trained the JMWAVE Pathfinders. 

This time was different however, and driving Hummers and assisting in testing equipment was sometimes stressful, but exciting at the same time. We worked for 10 sometimes 12 hours a day, though there was some down time, when I had an hour or so to catch up on my reading, and wrote reviews I posted earlier. 

What have I learned that I can apply to my JFK research? Well for one the Army's unofficial motto is "Hurry up and wait." Which allowed for some of the downtime and reading. Another thing is they do everything over and over again until it is done right. At first things are a little sloppy, but with good instructors and operational leaders, things begin to fall into place, and in the end, they said they were happy with the tests and the demonstrations they conducted. I think it is my contribution, however small, to enhancing our national security. 

I usually work for a sub-contractor to the main contractor, which is usually General Dynamics, a company that fits into the JFK assassination story on a number of levels. In addition, some of the radios that we handled that were being tested, when you turn them on read: Rockwell International. That's the company that merged with Collins Radio, the company that made and serviced the radios aboard AF1 and SAC planes, and the company that Gene Wheaton worked for when he earned a Presidential citation for security work in the Middle East. 

While I can' get into the details of what we did, a few years ago I worked as a COB alongside some first class Army snipers and wrote an article that I think deserves review: JFKcountercoup: View from the Sniper's Nest

Well that exercise is over now, it was only part time, so I am back to my primary mission JFK research and will be contributing more frequently to JFKCountercoup, hopefully on a daily basis.

Among the things I am working on is a review of the US Marine Guidebook, that Oswald supposedly memorized before he enlisted, and gave his copy to Carlos Bringuier, who was asking six figures for it over the internet a few years ago. 

I will also be writing an article on Fletcher Prouty, and try to set the record straight on him. There's also one coming up on the October 26 deadline for the President to decide whether to release the remaining JFK assassination records according to the JFK Act of 1992, or to continue with holding them, as well as a follow up after that decision is made. 

Then there's previews of the CAPA conference in November that is being prepared, as well as the LANCER conference coming up, and Judyth Vary Baker's Dallas conference at the Magnolia hotel, that she promises will be her last in person conference in Dallas, though that's hard to believe. 

The next article I am preparing now is on Sirhan B. Sirhan and another programed assassin who fits in to the JFK story - Luis Angel Castilo.

In any case, I'm back, and will be posting more frequently, and hope you stick around for the fireworks. 

If you want you can contact me anytime at: 

Billkelly3@gmail.com 

Jackie: "LBJ did it."

 Jackie: “LBJ did it.”

Pamela Turnure and Pam and Eddie Fisher 

After reading and writing a review of Phil Nelson’s “JFK Mastermind of the JFK Assassination,” I came across an interesting Facebook post by Robert Morrow, who I mention in the Nelson review as a protégé of Roger Stone and a proponent of the LBJ did it theory.

As in most cases, there are two Robert Morrows involved in this one, a Robert Morrow from Baltimore, who wrote two books on the assassination of JFK that he claims are based on his firsthand knowledge.

Then there is this Robert Morrow from Texas, whose recent post supports his LBJ theory that is very intriguing.

Morrow posted a page of Eddie Fisher’s autobio “Been There Done That,” in which he quotes Pamela Turnure, Jackie Kennedy’s Press Secretary, from when they were flying back to DC from Dallas with Jackie Kennedy.

Fisher, a popular 1950s era singer and actor, is best known for having five wives, three of whom were Hollywood supestarts – Elizabeth Taylor, Debbie Reynolds and Connie Stevens.

Apparently Fisher also found time to have an affair with Pam Turnure Jackie Kennedy’s personal secretary and publicist when she was First Lady in the White House.  Before that Turnure had been Senator Kennedy’s receptionist and it was the President who hired her.

Undoubtedly during pillow talk, Turnure confided to Fisher that on the Air Force One plane trip from Dallas, Jackie said, “LBJ did it.”

Now we know Jackie Kennedy knew LBJ very well, as was quite aware of his trecherous ways, and suspecting him would be a natural first impression after such a tragic day.

It is reminiscent of RFK’s first reaction to the assassination was to ask CIA director John McCone if his people were responsible. While McCone naturally said no, he was intentionally kept out of the loop on a number of significnat CIA black ops that have a direct bearing on the assination including ZRRIFLE and the JMWAVE’s Pathfinder plans.

Then RFK called his close personal friend Luis Wililams and asked him if the Cubans were responsible.

On page 258 of Fisher’s book “Been There Done That,” he writes: “On the flight back to Washington after the murder, Pam told me, Jackie Kennedy told her, ‘Lyndon Johnson did it.’ Words I will never forget.”

“Of all he women I was with afer Elizabeth, Pam Turnure was the one my friends thought I should marry. Jennie Grossinger loved her. And maybe I would’ve, but Pam did the one thing I really couldn’t handle. She fell in love with me. I needed an independent women, a women who could live happily without me. But after we fell in love she started canceling her own plans so we could be together. That was the wrong thing to do if you wanted to be with me. Most of my relationships ended in some sort of friendly fashion, but not this one.”

“One night Pam had too much to drink. We argued about something and she warned me that if we didn’t stay together she was going to commit suicide. That was the wrong thing to say to me. I walked out angrilly. I wasn’t doing such a great job being responsible for my own life, and I had no intention of being responsible for hers. The next morning, when I wlked into the living room at the Pierre, every gift I’d given her was lying on the couch. I  never saw her again.”

One thing that Turnure did was to assist in Jackie's historical renovation of the White House and the popular TV tour. A Mr. Castro was responsible for overseeing the restoration and he was assisted by Mrs. Dorman, wife of Col. Dorman, General LeMay's aide who can be heard on the Clifton AF1 tapes. 

The thing that makes this so important is that Pam Turnure is still alive. She married New York investment banker Robert N. Timmins and now resides in Edwards, Colorado.

If anyone gets her contact information and tries to interview her, please don’t bother asking her about her affair with JFK, as it has been thoroughly documented elsewhere, but like most secretaries, she must know a lot of the secrets. 

LBJ Mastermind of the JFK Assassination?

LBJ Mastermind of the JFK Assassination by Philip Nelson (Skyhorse 2011)

I put off reading this book because of the title, since I knew LBJ was not the mastermind of the Dealey Plaza Operation mainly because he rejected the original cover-story that Fidel Castro was behind the conspiracy and redirected the inquiry to the equally false deranged lone nut scenario.

Compiling all of the facts and evidence that indicates a certain person was responsible – whether it is Lee Harvey Oswald, Fidel Castro, or LBJ is not the way to investigate a homicide – as whatever occurred must fit all the facts, not just a few. And Phil Nelson falls in line behind a number of others who have tried to pin the tail on LBJ – from Craig Zerbel’s The Texas Connection (1991), Roger Stone, Robert Morrow and others, and they’re all wrong.

At first I thought it might be a pretty good book, as Nelson does describe some of the key characters and major events in accurate detail and begins with a good premise:

“It is not the intent of this book to provide a comlete list of all the errors, anomaliesm, inconsistencies and impossibilities of the Warren Report, since that has already been done by other cited authors, but to build upon preexisting research and provide a succinct but comprehensive overview of the entire plot and its cover-up.” 

But he also buys into pretty much every silly conspiracy theory that comes down the pike, and his focus – on LBJ, is misplaced. LBJ most certainly was not the Mastermind of the Dealey Plaza operation, though he was a key factor in diverting the Phase One Cover-Story – that Castro was behind the conspiracy, to the equally false Phase Two Cover-Story – that of the deranged lone nut.

The very fact that one of his first moves as President was to reject the idea that Castro Cuban Commies were behind the death of the president, a main element in the plan, is proof enough that he was not part of the planning, as he did not want to invade Cuba. Then he used the same allegation in order to convince Earl Warren and the others to serve on the Warren Commission – in order to avoid World War III.  So they had to go with the derganged loner scenario to avoid killing everyone.

How he did that is a story unto itself: The Tipping Point Link -   [https://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2019/08/the-tipping-point-revived.html  ]

Nelson pretty much establishes the fact that LBJ was a sociopath – who had no qualms about killing his adversatries, and how he wiggled his way into the VP spot, knowing that JFK would not fullfill his term of office, under any circumstances, but he fails to show how LBJ was the mastermind of anything, other than the cover-up.

I have a few LBJ stories myself. When I had an hour wait at the Trenton train station for an AMTRACK train, I went to Delorenzo’s taven, then across the street. I had a beer at the bar and a guy next to me ordered lunch – the LBJ Special. I asked the bartender about it, and he said it was a filet mingon steak and a poached egg, - what LBJ ordered when he was there on a whistlestop tour during the 1960 campaign.

Then there’s Clare Luce Booth’s story of sharing a limo ride with LBJ to the inaguration, when she asked him why he would leave the job of Speaker of the House to the less powerful job of Vice President. LBJ replied that one out of five presidents died in office, and he liked those odds, and could improve on them.

While Nelson fits LBJ into almost every aspect of the assassination, when it comes to the actual logistics he conceeds it was based out of the CIA’s JMWAVE station in Florida. “The logistics of the ‘crime of the century’ had been worked out by men who held some of the highest offices of the government and involved about a dozen; they also had access to an assortment of the best equipment to carry out their mission. But most did not known any more than they needed to know to perform their own part…and had no knowledge of the ultimate objective of their assignments. Many were veterans of ‘Operation Mongoose,’ and were not involved in ZR/RIFLE or ‘Operation 40,’ but this operation was only supposed to be a failed assassination attempt,....The only unifying object of their diversionary mission was the promise of being the catalyst for a new and eneergized retaliatory attack on Cuba to finally achief the permanent removal of Fidel Castro….The men coming into place in Dealey Plaza that morning were working on a covert operation that had been cloned from the earlier efforts to assassinate Castro and invade Cuba. The operationi was modified in the final days once the final nod was given by the commander of the operation.”  

LBJ was not the commander of the operation.  What occurred at Dealey Plaza was not the result of a plot, or just a conspiracy, it was a much more specific covert intelligence operation, one that included psychological warfare aspects, a cover-story and was much too complicated  - in the word of Gene Wheaton – too convoluted, for LBJ to comprehend let alone concieve.

Nelson believes LBJ had advance knowledge of not only the assassination, but the time and place it would take place as shortly before his car entered Dealey Plaza, LBJ ducked down on the floor of the limo with a radio tuned to the Secret Service Charlie Channel, the tape of which has never surfaced.

Apparentlly LBJ had a penchant for thinking while sitting on the toilet. Aboard Air Force One on the return trip, shortly after being sworn in as president, a top military aide found LBJ sitting on a toilet, crying and asking if the missles were flying.

Then back at his home, the Elms, he went up to bathroom off his bedroom, sat on the toilt and had his top three aides join him as he enumerated on their next course of action.

One of which was to shut down the CIA’s Cuban operations, that he knew were behind the Dealey Plaza Operation. He did this officially at a meeting on December 2, 1963, before the year was out.

And then he told the Joint Chiefs of Staff that he would give them their war, but it wouldn’t be in Cuba, but Vietnam, and was very stern in dealing with them. As Nelson quotes Lt. Gen. Charles Cooper (USMC) describing a meeting between LBJ and the Joint Chiefs: “He screamed obscentities, he cursed them personally, he ridiculed them for coming to his office with their ‘military advice.’ Noting that it was he who was carrying the weight of the free world on his shoulders, he called hmem filthy names shitheads, dumb shits, pompous assholed and used ‘the F word’ as an adjective more freely than a Marine in boot camp would use it. He then accsued them of trying to pass the buck for World War III to him. It was unnerving, degrading.”

As for Oswald, Nelson and I agree with his former USMC bunkmate – now retired Judge James Bothello, who said of the post defection and assassination investigations of Oswald: “a cover investigation so that it could be said there had been an investigation…Oswald it was said, was the only Marine ever to defect from his country to another country, a Communist country, during peacetime. That was a major event. When the Marine Corps and American intelligence decided not to probe the reasons for the ‘defection,’ I know then what I know now: Oswald was on an assignment in Russia for American intelligence.”

State Department officer in Moscow, John McVickers agreed, and said that he believed Oswald’s actions were directed by someone else. If his defection was being directed, then the Walker incident was too, as were his FPFCC activities and shennagans in New Orleans and Mexico, as well as being set up as the Patsy and Fall Guy in the assassination.

Professor John Newman, who has studied Oswald’s defection in depth, believes that one person who could have been directing those actions was CIA Counter-Intelligence chief James Jesus Angleton, who Nelson also names as a key player in this chess game.

“The first associate Angleton would involve,” Nelson writes, “was (William) Harvey; everyone at Langley knew he hated both Kennedys with a passion, especially Bobby whom he felt was a bull-headed amateur and had no businessbeing in charge of clandestine activites. Harvey would then enlist others with whom he worked closely in Operation Mongoose, starting with David Phillips and others he knew to be born renegades and fellow haters of the Kennedys: men such as David Morales, Rip Robertson, and Carl Jenkins. It was Harvey who posted David Morales in Miami in 1961 as chief of covert operations for JMWAVE, with the objective of destabilizing Castro by whatever means they could. Morales was a cold-blooded killer who had been involved in all of the deepest black ops situations which called for someone’s elimination. Harvey had no problem recruting those men….The anti-Castro exiles, with whom Harvey and Morales had shared many other missions, were easy to recruit even though they had only the vaguest idea of their single comparment of the entire operation since they had only been told what they ‘needed to know.’”

Which is all Nelson’s speculation. As R. Buckminister Fuller has said, “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”

And while I like Nelson’s hypothesis, he doesn’t build that model, though others are.

On a final note on LBJ, he was nominated for president at the 1964 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, where RFK gave one of his most pasionate speeches in memory of his brother. Since LBJ believed his supporters would nominate RFK for president and he would railroad the convention, LBJ made sure RFK’s speech was at the end, after he was nominated. And because he thought his hotel room was bugged, LBJ stayed at the beachfront home of Caroll Rosenbloom, the owner of the Baltimore Colts who later died mysteriously.

And because the Beatles were scheduled to play the same Boardwalk convention hall the next weekend, LBJ’s daughters stayed behind to attend the show. And when the Beatles played Dallas and drove through Dealey Plaza, they ducked in their limo, just as LBJ had done.