Legacy's Secrets ONI Source

Lamar Waldron’s Secret ONI Source

Legacy of Secrecy – (Counterpoint, Berkeley, 2008)

There is no listing for ONI in the index, rather it is Naval Intelligence, 24, 56, 77, 84, 87, 139, 140-41, 157, 164-166, 168-169, 196, 214, 234, 247-248, 302, 644, 771.

Waldron and Hartman, in their books Ultimate Sacrifice I and II and Legacy of Secrecy, put forth the conspiracy theory that the Kennedys approved a coup plot in Cuba involving some military officers, specifically Almeida, that was supposed to take place on Dec. 1, 1963, but the plot was hijacked by mafia dons who redirected the plan and JFK was killed instead of Castro. While I do think that one of the officially approved plots for a coup in Cuba or assassination of Castro was redirected to JFK, I don’t think that whoever engineered this operation needed the mafia to redirect their target. While the books are written in an biased attempt to support their thesis, some of the data they present can be more accurately interpreted independently apart from their hypothesis.

One interesting aspect of their book “Legacy of Secrecy” is the introduction of an anonymous character who identifies himself with ONI – the Office of Naval Intelligence, and imparts certain information that they use, which might have some real bearing on the ONI records related to the assassination, and the possibility that ONI is still conducting deliberate, offensive actions against targeted researchers who they know are working on certain aspects of the case.

Legacy of Secrecy

p. 24:

“Among the Joint Chiefs, evidence indicates that only Maxwell Taylor and DIA chief Joseph Carroll were fully informed about Almeida. Others, like Air Force Chief Gen. Curtis LeMay, were too hawkish and close to JFK’s conservative adversaries in Congress to be trusted…The DIA was a newly created umbrella organization that supposed to coordinate the activities of services like Army Intelligence and Navy Intelligence, which later Congressional investigations found had been involved in domestic surveillance for many years.” 11

11. (p, 790):  “While General Carroll probably wouldn’t have appreciated knowing his conversations were being reported to the CIA, his own associates were engaged in similar high-level surveillance. Joseph Califano’s recent autobiography, he points to a time in June 1963 when he and his superiors, Army Secretary Cyrus Vance, ‘secretly ran all’ of ‘the White House and Justice Department…communications lines through the Army war room. Sitting there, Vance and I were able to listen to any conversation the President or Attorney General had…Because we assumed Robert Kennedy would have objected to our eavesdropping, we never let him know.”  Joseph Califano, Jr. Inside: A Public and Private Life (NY Public Affairs, 2004, p. 109).

[BK Notes: Califano is a living witness to these events and works out of a non-profit foundation supported think tank at Columbia University, thought the college has stated there is no connection between them.]

p. 24 continued:

“While the CIA had been tasked with getting more US assets into Cuba prior to the coup, some of those assets were current or former US military personnel who were also involved with the CIA. At least one of them was under ‘tight surveillance’ in November 1963, as he had been since his return form the Soviet Union in 1962. As we first revealed in 2005, Naval Intelligence was maintaining phone, mail, and visual surveillance of Lee Harvey Oswald and his wife. Since Naval Intelligence lacked the resources to maintain such surveillance I many areas, they relied on assistance from the FBI and the CIA. Our source, who maintained reports about Oswald and other domestic surveillance targets, sys that Oswald’s folder contained a CIA phone number to call if he were ever involved in any problem. 12

12. Interview with confidential Naval Intelligence investigator source. 10/27/91

p. 56:

“….Banister also had ties to Naval Intelligence through his close friend Guy Johnson…”

p.77:

“By November 1963, Gilberto Policarpo Lopez had eighteen parallels with Lee Harvey Oswald, according to declassified government files…Both men had an unusual involvement with the small pro-Castro FPCC in 1963….Both men were persons of interest to Naval Intelligence in 1963….”

p.84:

“…DeMohrenschildt attended meetings between business associates and the assistant director of Army Intelligence (part of the DIA, as was Naval Intelligence)…”

p.87:

“As our Naval Intelligence source told us, Oswald was under surveillance the whole time he was in Mexico City – something later confirmed by Win Scott, who at the time was the Mexico City CIA station chief. 21

p.139:

“…Oswald had been a Marine, and was (as Helms would later testify to Congress) the responsibility of Defense Department agencies like Naval Intelligence and the DIA.”

p.140:

“…Oswald was a ‘former’ Marine, and thus the responsibility of Marine and Naval Intelligence, and General Carroll’s DIA…”

p.141:

“…Naval Intelligence (along with Marine Intelligence, G2) had been responsible for the ‘tight surveillance’ on Oswald since his return from Russia, while Oswald’s operational activities appear to have involved the CIA. That meant officials at Naval Intelligence would have to cover up as well, as we’ll soon show.

p.157:

“Oswald under tight surveillance”

p.164-66: 

“…Our confidential Naval Intelligence source – who had helped to compile the reports resulting from the ‘tight surveillance’ of Oswald since his return to the US from Russia – said that ‘on the day of the assassination,’ he and a coworker ‘were called back to their office in Washington.’ After receiving orders from their commander, they ‘destroyed and sanitized lots o the Oswald file.’” 41

41. (p.799): Phone interview with Naval Intelligence surveillance source., 10/27/91 and 12/9/91.

“Confirmation for such document destruction comes from FBI memos, which describe their own interviews with Marines who had served with Oswald. Hover, the FBI agents discovered that some of those Naval Intelligence reports were all missing, leading and FBI agent to say in a memo, ‘Perhaps they have been destroyed.’” 42

42 (p. 799) 4-2-64 FBI memo by T. N. Goble, cited in Echoes of a Conspiracy, 7-22-88.

“The Naval Intelligence file our source handled in the fall of 1963 concerned only the close surveillance of Oswald, not any operational duties Oswald might have had. Those were apparently being handled by or coordinated with, the CIA. Our source said there was ‘a note n the top of the file jacket [that] said to contact the CIA if Oswald was arrested or got into any trouble. There was a name and some sort of code given for someone at the CIA.’” 43

p. 165:

“…Naval Intelligence and its close counterpart, Marine Intelligence (G-2), were components of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) headed by General Joseph Carroll…”

“…Even on the day of JFK’s death, a memo shows that Naval Intelligence considered withholding information from General Carroll. Carroll asked to see Oswald’s Naval Intelligence file, but Naval Intelligence was ‘cautious about passing [the] file to DIA.’ Eventually, after Joint Chiefs Chairman General Maxwell Taylor had made a request, General Carroll was allowed to look at the file, but he was not permitted to keep a copy.”

“It’s hard to say if Naval Intelligence was initially reluctant to share the file for bureaucratic reasons, or because by that time it was probably already incomplete….”  

P. 166:

“…it appears unlikely that General Carroll knew about the destruction of parts of Oswald’s Naval Intelligence file….”

p.168:

“…First, the FBI had assisted Naval Intelligence with some of it s tight surveillance of Oswald, especially in landlocked cities like Dallas, where Naval Intelligence had few assets….”

p. 196:

“…something that not only would have been embarrassing for the FBI, CIA and Naval Intelligence if it were revealed, but also could expose the rather large domestic surveillance program those agencies ran, which was technically illegal…”

p. 214:

“…We’ve noted that photos of the real Oswald in Mexico City did exist, as verified by the CIA’s station chief there, Win Scott, and our own Naval Intelligence source, who saw the photos…”

p. 234:

Harry Williams says “Artime and CIA showed him a photo of Oswald going into the Cuban Embassy in Mexico City….

p.247:

“After Oswald’s death, Naval Intelligence’s goals changed radically. On the afternoon of November 24, the organization transitioned from shredding files about its ‘tight surveillance’ of Oswald to conducting its own, secret internal investigation of JFK’s assassination. Also involved were personnel from Marine Intelligence, and the operation was probably known to the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, General Joseph Carroll. Our Naval Intelligence source participated in this secret investigation, aspects of which were later independently confirmed by the House Select Committee on Assassinations and by a former Navy man who was the son of a prominent admiral.”

“Our source ‘became part of a 6-week Naval Intelligence investigation into JFK’s assassination.’ He said ‘their mission was ‘Did [Oswald] do it?’ not ‘Who did it?’ As part of their investigation, Naval Intelligence personnel went to Dallas, but ‘they were forbidden to have anything to do with the autopsy.’ He said, ‘The result of the Naval Intelligence investigation was that [it] concluded Oswald was not the shooter, due to his skills, the gun, etc., [and that] Oswald was incapable of masterminding the assassination or doing the actual shooting.’ The report’s summary was 6-7 pages, with hundreds of supporting documents.’ Our source had ‘some knowledge that the CIA also conducted [its] own investigation,’ a fact that wasn’t widely known when we talked to the source in 1991.”

“Our source ‘signed a disclosure agreement’ after the investigation, and even after almost thirty years he would convey information only through a trusty intermediary.”

“…When we interviewed the US Navy Admiral’s son, he independently claimed to have seen a copy of the Naval Intelligence report while he was stationed at a large US Navy base in the Pacific in the early 1970s. His account of the report’s conclusions matched very closely those of our Naval Intelligence source.”

“The Naval Intelligence investigation and its conclusions make sense in light of both the tight surveillance Oswald was under before JFK’s death and the problems many experts have documents about the shooting skills required to assassinate JFK, and the poor quality of the Mannlicher-Carcano found in the Book Deposiotry. As an internal Navy and Defense Intelligence matter, t was probably important to the officials involved with the surveillance of Oswald, and with whatever operations he participated in after he returned from Russia, to cover themselves with such an investigation….” 

p.302:

“Indications exist that the heads of Naval and Marine Intelligence knew more than General Carroll, but they never testified either…”

p.644:

“As with JFK’s murder – which spawned secret investigations by the CIA, Naval Intelligence, and even Bobby Kennedy – the LAPD did extensively investigate certain conspiracy allegations regarding Bobby’s death…”

p.771:

“Other crucial JFK assassination files still withheld range from the CIA’s and FBI’s files on Harry Williams to the operational files of the multimillion-dollar AMWORLD program, especially those about Manual Artime’s work on the CIA-Mafia plots. The files of other Mafia figures linked to JFK’s murder, like those of Michael Victor Mertz and Charles Nicoletti, should also be released. Naval Intelligence should still have a vast quantity of files about its secret JFK investigation and FBI-assisted surveillance of Oswald…simply enforcing the 1992 JFK Act is the quickest way to make sure that the most crucial information becomes available to the public at last.”