VALKYRIE AT DEALEY PLAZA - 'The
Conspiracy Alone Must Speak."
“We now know what happened at Dealey
Plaza to a fairly good degree of certainty. The motives were piling up –
the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban Missile Crisis, Vietnam, the two-track backchannel
to Cuba – the motives were piling up to the point they had to assassinate him.
I think it’s now pretty obvious, with the information we have today, that the
mechanism of it 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 they killed JFK instead."
- Former FBI agent William W.
Turner at Dallas COPA 2003
Keeping the CIA plots to kill Fidel
Castro from the Warren Commission was one of the major deficits of the Warren
Report and calls into question their primary conclusion that the assassination
of President Kennedy was the work of a lone deranged gunman - Lee Harvey
Oswald.
It doesn’t matter whether the
Cuban-connected Oswald was a lone shooter or a patsy since the CIA plots to
kill Castro throws a major wrench into the deranged lone nut scenario, and adds
a political motive to the murder.
Besides the CIA-Mafia plots
that began during the Eisenhower administration there were other CIA plans to
kill Castro that came later in the game and have a much more serious bearing on
what happened at Dealey Plaza, especially the Valkyrie plot.
In his new and important book "The
Devil's. Chessboard" David Talbot mentions the role Allen Dulles
and his agent-mistress Mary Bancroft played in the July 20, 1944 plot to kill
Hitler - code named Valkyrie. [1]
As Talbot points out and Dulles
suspected would become fodder for conspiracy theorists, Mary Bancroft was a
close personal friend of the mother of Michael Paine, the chief patron and
sponsor of Oswald and his family.
Besides that two degrees of
separation between Oswald and Dulles/Bancroft, the Valkyrie plot to kill Hitler
is mentioned a half-dozen times in the course of the assassination narrative,
and while the significance of this has yet to be fully drawn out, the recurring
Valkyrie theme that runs through the JFK assassination story certainly merits
further scrutiny.
As mentioned in my review
of "Devil's Chessboard" [2] when it comes to
killing Castro the Valkyrie plot has been ignored - despite its numerous direct
ties to what happened at Dealey Plaza, beginning with Lee Harvey Oswald and
Volkmar Schmidt.
OSWALD AND VOLKMAR SCHMIDT
Phillip Shenon devotes a whole
book “A Cruel and Terrible Act” [3] to the subject of a Mexico
City Twist Party where Oswald was supposedly encouraged to kill JFK by some
Cuban Communist diplomats. It's a party that Oswald could not have possibly
attended as I have talked with two other Americans who were also reported
present at the party and write about in my review of Shenon’s book – "A
Cruel and Terrible Twist." [4]
But there was another party that was
attended by Oswald where he was encouraged to commit political assassination -
that of General Walker, which he is also accused of attempting to do.
It was at a February 1963 gathering
at Volkmar Schmidt's Dallas home, a party that George deMohrenschildts set up
specifically for Oswald to meet Michael Paine. DeMohrenschilts said he wanted
Oswald to meet Michael Paine because of their mutual interest in political ideology.
Paine's father Lyman Paine was a founder of the Trotskyite communist party in
America and Oswald subscribed to their magazine The Militant. While Michael
Paine wasn’t at the party, his wife Ruth was and she met Marina and they became
famously friends up until the assassination. It was at that party when Schmidt
says he talked privately with Oswald for over two hours and first brought up
the subject of the Valkyrie plot to kill Hitler.
In a phone conversation with Schmidt [5] he told me that while talking with
Oswald he used a reverse psychology technique he learned from a German doctor
who knew some of those involved in the Valkyrie coup when he mentioned the plot
to kill Hitler to Oswald.
While discussing right-wing general Walker, Schmidt said he compared Walker to
Hitler and asked how different the world would be if Hitler had been
assassinated? Schmidt implied Walker should be killed before he became another
Hitler.
Born in Germany and raised in his formative years by the German doctor, Schmidt
was an oil geologist, as was his friend George deMohrenschilts. Schmidt
was recruited in Germany by Magnolia Oil of Dallas - the company that used the
red Pegasus sign as its logo and later merged with major conglomerates. [6]
Schmidt said that when he learned that Oswald had been accused of taking a shot
at Walker and killing JFK he felt terribly guilty, especially every time he
drove through Dealey Plaza, as he believed he was responsible for planting the
assassination seed in Oswald's mind.
Schmidt said, "naturally it was a terrible responsibility, and for years
when I drove past the underpass I literally had to cry because, you know....
But I exonerate myself completely because I had the best intent, embarrass
Kennedy... I may have triggered it. Actually, a few days after I talked with
him, he bought his weapons."
OSWALDS TO NEW ORLEANS
Shortly after the Walker incident Oswald packed up all his family belongings
and was about to suddenly and unexpectedly move his family to his home town of
New Orleans. But Mrs. Paine, who was driving them to the bus station, suggested
Marina should stay with her in Texas while Oswald went on alone to New Orleans,
find a job and apartment and then she would drive them there when he was
settled in.
And that he did. While reconnecting with his mother's sister, his aunt Muriel
and uncle Dutz Murret he got a job at Reily Coffee and an apartment on Magazine
Street. Ruth Paine then drove Marina, the daughter and the Oswald's belongings,
including the rifle, to New Orleans, where they settled in. [7]
After an interesting and eventful summer in the Crescent City the Oswalds
considered returning to Texas when Ruth Paine wrote to the pregnant Marina and
invited her to come and live with her in Texas until she had the baby. If she
agreed, Ruth Paine wrote, Marina should write her a letter “in care of Arthur
Young, Paoli, Pennsylvania,” where she would be visiting her husband's mother
Ruth Forbes Paine Young. [8]
RUTH FORBES PAINE YOUNG – MARY
BANCROFT AND ALLEN DULLES
Ruth Paine was on a summer station wagon vacation with her kids driving to
Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Washington D.C. and Ohio visiting friends and
family, including the suburban Philadelphia farm of her husband's mother, Ruth
Forbes Paine Young. Another one of the places Ruth Paine visited at the
invitation of Michael’s mother was the Forbes family Naushon Island off
Massachusetts.
As described by yachtsman Walter
Cronkite, “Just off Woods Hole is Hadley Harbor on Naushon Island, a favorite
anchorage or cruising boats. At the end of a narrow twisting passage through
huge rocks, it is a scene of bucolic bliss. The Forbes family (of whom
publisher-adventurer-balloonist-sailor Malcolm Forbes is one) owns the island,
and great mansions grace its hilltops like castles on a Scottish moor. The
harbor shore itself, besides the grassy shelf on which horses, cows, and sheep
graze, is lined with the support mechanism for an island population – a slip
from which the Forbes’ small private ferry runs over to Woods Hole, and a
boatyard which cares for the fleet of pleasure craft. The gracious Forbes not
only permit anchorage in their harbor, but they even have set aside one of
their small islands on which visiting yachtsmen are invited to stretch their
legs. Hadley’s quiet a welcome refuge on those many days when strong winds whip
up the comparatively shallow waters of Buzzard’s Bay and justify its notoriety
as perhaps the Atlantic Coast’s roughest sailing round.” [9]
An eccentric heiress and
humanitarian member of Cord Meyer's World Federalists, Ruth Forbes Paine had
married the equally eccentric Arthur Young, genius inventor of the Bell
Helicopter 47A - the MASH helicopter with glass bubble and girders. [10]
Michael Paine and Ruth Hyde had met and were married in Philadelphia, and after
apprenticing as a helicopter designer with his step-father-in-law, Arthur Young
arranged for Michael Paine to get a job at Bell Helicopter in Texas. So it was
in care of Arthur Young that Marina wrote to Ruth Hyde Paine agreeing to the
new arrangements - Marina would go to Texas to have the baby and wait for Ruth
Paine to pick her up in New Orleans.
Most significant however is Michael's mom Ruth Forbes Paine Young and her close
association with Mary Bancroft, Allen Dulles's agent and mistress who was
intimately involved in the Valkyrie plot to kill Hitler. [11]
In the late 1930s Ruth Forbes Paine traveled with Mary Bancroft on a steamship
to Europe when Bancroft met a Swiss businessman who she would marry, putting
her in position, when the Second World War broke out, to meet and work in the
OSS with Allen Dulles. While with Dulles, the top OSS chef in Europe, Bancroft
met Hans Bernd Gisevius, a Nazi officer who was deeply involved in the Valkyrie
plot to kill Hitler.
THE VALKYRIE PLOT TO KILL HITLER
Years in the making the Valkyrie assassination and coup plan stemmed mainly
from disgruntled military officers and fell to Claus Von Stauffenberg to carry
out on July 20, 1944, leaving a briefcase bomb under a map table next to Hitler
in the Wolfsschanze Wolf's Lair bunker in Bavaria.
In drawing up the Valkyrie plan Von Stauffenberg broke it into two parts -
Phase One would be the order to have the home national army seize all key
government and communication buildings in response to a revolt by the foreign
slave labor, the part of the plan that would be approved by Hitler himself.
Phase Two, the secret part, was the assassination of Hitler.
The control of the radio and media centers was an instrumental part of the
plan, as Von Stauffenberg put it, "the conspiracy alone must
speak."
A third part of the plan was a psychological warfare twist to blame the
assassination on the SS and Gestapo, whose leaders would be rounded up by the
real coup planners, the military generals.
Dulles and Gisevius had opposed the use of a bomb, preferring a pistol up close
or a sniper in a motorcade ambush as more likely to succeed and their fears
proved true. Gisevius supported the coup but was against the bomb
plot, as he told Von Stauffenberg: "I just I have the feeling we'll
never succeed. I'm not speaking through fear. But I have a feeling very few of
us will be alive this time next year, regardless of what happens with your
bomb."
The bomb failed to kill Hitler and hundreds, some say thousands were
subsequently rounded up and executed, but Gisevius escaped with the assistance
of Bancroft and Dulles, who provided him with fake credentials.
After the war Bancroft translated Gisevius' account of the history of the Third
Reich and following Gisevius’ testimony against the Nazi leadership at
Nuremberg, which sent them to the gallows, Dulles brought Gisevius to
Washington as a CIA consultant. In Washington Dulles arranged for the ex-Nazi
officer to stay with his deputy Tom Braden, who lived with his wife and their
eight children in a big house near RFK's Hickory Hill, where their kids played
games and sports with each other. Braden would write a book "Eight Is
Enough" that would be made into a popular family TV show and
pattern for The Brady Bunch. An episode on the ex-Nazi living with all those
kids would certainly be entertaining. And as Talbot notes, Braden also
interviewed Allen Dulles for the Kennedy Presidential Library. [12]
So after visiting Michael's mother, Mary Bancroft's good friend in
Philadelphia, where she got Marina's letter, Ruth Paine drove to DC and visited
her sister, who worked at the CIA, and then went on to Ohio to see her father
before picking up Marina in New Orleans. [13]
Arriving in New Orleans in late September Ruth Paine stayed the night and the
next day took Marina, the daughter and the Oswald's belongings, including the
rifle, and drove them to Texas. Early the following morning Oswald slipped out
of New Orleans and went to Mexico City to visit the Cuban and Soviet embassies.
THE JOINT CHIEFS ARE BRIEFED ON THE
VALKYRIE PLAN
The same September 25th day in Washington DC CIA officer Desmond Fitzgerald
briefed the Joint Chiefs of Staff, temporarily chaired by Air Force Chief Gen.
Curtis LeMay while Gen. Taylor was on a special mission to Vietnam.
Fitzgerald reported to the Joint Chiefs on the CIA's Cuban covert operations
with emphasis on how the military could support them, an assignment given USMC
Gen. Victor H. "Brute" Krulak, Special Assistant for Counter
Insurgency Activities, whose aide Colonel Walter M. Higgins, Jr. was in
attendance. Higgins' memo of the meeting, released under the JFK Act, includes
the bullet point that Fitzgerald mentioned the CIA was studying the Valkyrie
plot and adapting it to use against Castro. [14]
As Higgins wrote in his memo on FitzGerald’s
briefing: “He commented that there was nothing new in the propaganda field.
However, he felt that there had been great success in getting closer to the
military personnel who might break with Castro, and stated that there were at
least ten high-level military personnel who are talking with CIA but
as yet are not talking to each other, since that degree of confidence has not
yet developed. He considers it as a parallel in history; i.e., the plot to
kill Hitler; and this plot is being studied in detail to develop an
approach.”
September 23-25, 1963 was a busy
time on the Devil's Chessboard as there were many moves by key players besides
Ruth Paine moving Marina and the rifle to Texas, Oswald leaving for Mexico and
Fitzgerald briefing the Joint Chiefs on the CIA’s detailed study of the
Valkyrie plot.
JFK also signed the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty with the Soviet Union, against the
advice of the Joint Chiefs, then on September 23, JFK signed National Security
Action Memo 261 approving "Project Four Leaves," assigning the
"highest national priority category for development and production" a
military communications "in response to a recommendation from the
Secretary of Defense," an order that remains classified. [15]
THE CONSERVATION TOUR
JFK then he left September 25 on a "Conservation Tour" with his
Secretary of Interior, the first stop in northeast Pennsylvania to visit the
rural estate of Mary Pinchot Meyer's mother in Milford. Mary Pinchot had
met JFK thru his schoolmate William Attwood, who would later become an
intermediary between JFK and Castro. Mary had married Cord Meyer, an ex-Marine
who founded the World Federalists – an international organization in support of
a strong United Nations, one that included Philadelphia college student
Priscilla Johnson, Michael's mom Ruth Forbes Paine Young and Walter Cronkite.
Cord Meyer joined the CIA in 1951 and became one of Dulles' top assistants, replacing
Tom Braden as chief of the International Organizations Division. [17]
While Mary Meyer had separated from Cord Meyer, she maintained her friendship
with JFK and she accompanied him on the first leg of the Conservation Tour that
took JFK to her mother's house in Pennsylvania. JFK then moved on to Wisconsin
and the Mid-West during which the details of the president's November trip to
Texas were officially announced to the press. [18]
D. H. BYRD’S TSBD AND AFRICAN SAFARI
When Oswald returned to Texas from Mexico in early October he stayed at the
YMCA before taking out a room at the Beckley Street rooming house in Oak
Cliff.
By mid-October Ruth Paine had learned from her morning coffee clatch with
neighbors that there was a job opening at the Texas School Book Depository
(TSBD) and made a phone call to arrange for Oswald to get a job in a building
owned by D.H. Byrd, an oil tycoon and aviation pioneer. Byrd was the founder of
the Civil Air Patrol in Texas, an organization that Oswald was affiliated with
in New Orleans. Byrd was alo on the board of directors of LTV and good friends
with Air Force Chief of Staff General Curtis LeMay. [19]
Byrd financially supported his
cousin Admiral Byrd’s polar expeditions, whose remote radio communications were
intercepted and passed on to the Navy by a young Cedar Rapids, Iowa amateur
radio buff Arthur Collins. By the beginning of World War II Collins’ company
would have US military contracts and after the war, because he was a close
personal friend with General LeMay, Collins handle all of the radio
communications for the Air Force Strategic Air Commands and Air Force One and
senior cabinet and military aircraft. [19a]
At the time of the assassination,
when a sniper was shooting at Kennedy from his building, Byrd was on an African
Safari with a German Barron Werner von Alvensleben, who used a high powered
Mannlicher rifle to hunt. [20]
Von Alvensleben’s father of the same
name was described in OSS reports as a German assassination expert and an avid
supporter of the Valkyrie plot who was sentenced to prison and concentration
camps with those who were arrested for their participation in the plot. He also
wrote a manifesto supporting the plot after it failed. [21]
So besides Volkmar Schmidt using the
Valkyrie plot to instigate Oswald to shoot Walker, Michael Paine’s mother was a
close personal friend of a key participant in the Valkyrie plot – Mary
Bancroft, Allen Dulles’ mistress, the Joint Chiefs of Staff were briefed on the
CIA’s detailed study of the adaption of the Valkyrie plot to use against
Castro, and the owner of the TSBD building from which shots were fired was at
the time on a safari in Africa with a German Barron and son of an assassination
expert who wrote a manifesto in support of the Valkyrie plot and served time in
prison with some of its participants.
Dallas newspapers reported that
after the assassination D. H. Byrd returned home to line the walls of his study
with animal head trophies, and invited the German Barron to visit, showing off
his trophy room that contained one of the TSBD Sixth Floor windows, said to
have been the window from which a sniper shot at President Kennedy.
VALKYRIE IN CUBA
Based mainly on the Higgins Memo reference of the Desmond Fitzgerald briefing
the JCS Washington attorney Jim Lesar, director of the Assassinations Archive
and Research Center, filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the CIA
documents related to the CIA study of the Valkyrie plot that was to be used
against Castro. [22]
But we don’t have to wait until we get those records as we can see for
ourselves from other records how the CIA tried to adapt the Valkyrie plan to be
used against Castro, as they did try to recruit some disenchanted Cuban
military officers who were close to Castro including Rolando Cubella (AMLASH)
and Gen. Almeida, both of whom have been reviewed and analyzed elsewhere. [23]
Among the differences in the Valkyrie plan and the post-Mafia CIA plans to kill
Castro we find that the idea of using a bomb was discarded in favor of a sniper
attack on Castro while he was riding in an open Jeep, a common situation.
Certain aspects of the Valkyrie plan that were adopted to be used against
Castro included the use of the military, the murder of Castro, the takeover of
the Cuban government and the control of the media and the Northwoods style
psych-war media campaign to blame the assassination on communists. [24]
When news of the CIA's plans to kill Castro were made public it was at first
suggested that Castro retaliated and killed JFK before the CIA could kill him,
and some like John Rosselli even claimed that one of the teams sent in by the
CIA by boat was captured by the Cubans and turned and sent back to kill JFK.
[25]
But others like Bill Turner claim it
was more likely that one of the CIA plans to kill Castro was redirected to kill
JFK instead, and that’s what former CIA officer David Atlee Phillips privately
surmised. [26]
If that was the case then it must
have been a CIA plan that utilized a sniper attack on an open car motorcade,
one of a number the CIA had on the shelf ready to go, waiting for the right
situation to present itself.
Among the CIA plans to kill Castro that utilized snipers attacking an open car
in a motorcade were the Hemingway House affair [27] - discussions after the
fact, and the Pathfinder plan to shoot Castro when he visited a north shore
resort he was known to frequent. [28]
In his book “The Hidden
History of the JFK Assassination” by Lamar Waldron (Scribe 2013 p.
228) Lamar Waldron writes (about a October 18, 1963 CIA Memo on Cubela):
“The CIA admits it tried to persuade
Cubela to poison Fidel, but CIA files also show that the Miami CIA station,
where David Morales ran operations, was prepared to provide rifles to him.
Cubela owned a house next to Fidel’s home at Varadero Beach, the resort to
which Fidel drove on many weekends in an open jeep in a sort of re-creation of
his triumphant drive across Cuba after the Revolution. AMWORLD files indicate
that at one point the CIA planned to use snipers to assassinate Fidel as he
drove toward his beach house. Clearly, having Fidel’s neighbor Cubela as part
of a plot would be very advantageous. The CIA could use his house as the
sniper’s nest and/or even blame him for Fidel’s murder.”
Of those anti-Castro Cuban teams
trained at JMWAVE, some were trained in using explosives to attack coastal oil
facilities, operations approved by the Special Group Augmented (SGA) of the
National Security Council (NSC), while other plans, like Pathfinder, were
officially, according to the language in the documents “disapproved,”
apparently by the same SGA of the NSC that approved other missions.
While one team was trained in small
boat operations and basic military commando techniques by US Army Ranger Capt.
Bradley Ayers, another team was instructed in the use of explosives and yet
another was a sniper team, that included a team financially supported by
“Colonel” John Rosselli at Point Mary, a remote government owned area just
north of Key Largo.
Both the Hemingway House affair and Pathfinder plan required accurate high
powered rifles with scopes, similar to the ones they offered to Cubela and
attempted to infiltrate into Cuba on October 31, 1963 when the CIA raider
ship The Rex, using Collins Radio cover, deposited anti-Castro
commandos with high powered rifles with scopes who were captured and paraded on
Cuban TV the next day. The story made the front page of the November 1, 1963
New York Times, and the names of the captured commandos are mentioned in "Red
Friday," the book written by Carlos Bringuier, the DRE Cuban Oswald
was arrested with in New Orleans. [29]
One important aspect of the Valkyrie plan was a psych war operation to blame
the assassination of Hitler on the SS and Gestapo, and monitor and control the
media so "only the conspiracy speaks," just as the Dealey Plaza
operation included blaming the assassination on Castro and a psych war campaign
using CIA media assets that continues today.
Besides the assassination and psych-war aspects of the Valkyrie plot that could
have been adapted to use against Castro and may have been redirected to JFK at
Dealey Plaza, there was one other important part of the Valkyrie plan that
could have been used - getting the victim to sign off on the operation.
Von Stauffenberg drew up the Valkyrie plan as a response to a possible revolt
by slave laborers by mobilizing the home guard to quell the revolt and seize
key government buildings and communications facilities. Hitler approved
and signed off on the plan without knowing the secret Phase that required his
elimination. [30]
If this part of the Valkyrie plan was adapted for use against Castro it should
be noted that the National Security Council and JFK did approve a number of
violent covert operations against targets in Cuba, but JFK rejected the
assassination plans. RFK however, did pressure Des Fitzgerald and others to
step up their Cuban ops against Castro and RFK was personally introduced to
some of the anti-Castro commandos who were being sent to Cuba to attack
strategic installations and infiltrate rifle teams. [31]
The National Security Action memo authorizing a special military communications
project Four Leaves could also be revealing once it is declassified.
The use of Phase One and Phase Two parts of the plan is another interesting
parallel between Valkyrie and Dealey Plaza as they are the same terms used by
Von Stauffenberg for Valkyrie and Peter Dale Scott to describe the official
response to the assassination of JFK.
According to Scott's analysis the
original Phase One is the disinformation cover story to blame the assassination
of JFK on Castro, that could have instigated a full scale US military attack on
Cuba, which was subsequently superseded by the Phase Two promotion of the
deranged lone assassin being responsible for the act. [32]
DES FITZGERALD BETS AGAINST CASTRO
As the CIA officer responsible for covert operations against Cuba, Des
FitzGerald was the person who briefed the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the CIA's
"detailed" study of the Valkyrie plot to kill Hitler. FitzGerald was
also the case officer for Rolando Cubela (AMLASH), one of the military officers
they were recruiting to kill Castro. So it is interesting that FitzGerald, like
the military officers in the fictional "Seven Days in May" used a gambling
bet as a way of communicating their willingness to go along with the coup
plans.
In “The Very Best Men” –
Four Who Dared: The Early Years of the CIA" Evan Thomas
writes: “….Halpern, FitzGerald’s assistant, regarded him (Cubela) as an
assassin and claims that FitzGerald did as well.”
Sam Halpern: “Des was really more
interested in starting a coup, and he hoped that Cubela could organize other
army officers. But in coups, he understood, people die. The way to start a coup
is to knock off the top man. Des felt it was a long shot, but it might work. We
were desperate. Des was willing to try anything.”
Evan Thomas writes: “FitzGerald did
not think it was such a long shot that he was unwilling to make a small bet,
giving reasonable odds. Just six days before he formally signed off on a high-powered
rifle for AMLASH (Cubela), he accepted a little wager from Michael Forrestal,
an official on the National Security Council staff who was a member of the
Georgetown crowd (his father, James V. Forrestal, had been the first secretary
of defense). A memo in FitzGerald’s personal files records a $50 bet with
Forrestal on ‘the fate of Fidel Castro during the period 1 August 1964 and 1
October 1964. (Apparently, Fitzgerald saw a window of vulnerability for the
Cuban leader that was roughly coincidental with the 1964 U.S. presidential
election campaign.)”
“Mr. Forrestal offers two-to-one
odds ($100 to $50) against Fidel’s falling (or being pushed) between the dates
1 August and 1 October 1964. In the event that such a thing should occur prior
to 1 August 1964 the wager herein cancelled. Mr. FitzGerald accepts the wager
on the above terms.”
Memo is dated November 13, 1963,
“One day after FitzGerald briefed Kennedy on the progress of the Cuban
operation and one day before the Special Group approved his plan of continued
covert operations against the Castro Regime.”
Thomas: “Nine days later the
assassination of John F. Kennedy dramatically increased the odds that
FitzGerald would lose his bet.”
According to Thomas, “On November
22, 1963, Des FitzGerald had just finished hosting a lunch for an old friend of
the CIA, a foreign diplomat, at the City Tavern Club in Georgetown, when he was
summoned from the private dining room by the maître d’. FitzGerald returned ‘as
white as a host,’ recalled Sam Halpern. Normally erect and purposeful,
FitzGerald was walking slowly, with his head down. ‘The President has been
shot,’ he said.”
“The lunch immediately broke up. On
the way out the door Halpern anxiously said, ‘I hope this has nothing to do
with Cubans.’ FitzGerald mumbled, ‘Yea, well, we’ll see.’ In the fifteen minute
car ride back to Langley, FitzGerald just stared straight ahead. He was well
aware that in Paris, at almost the moment Kennedy was shot in Dallas, one of
his case officers had been handing a poison pen to a Cuban agent to kill
Castro. It was at the very least a grim coincidence. FitzGerald knew that, in
September, Castro threatened to retaliate against attempts to kill him. ‘United
States leaders should think that if they are aiding in terrorist plans to
eliminate Cuban leaders, they themselves will not be safe,’ the Cuban leader
had publicly declared.”
“The warning that Cubela might be a
‘dangle,’ that he might be secretly working for Castro, took on an ominous new
meaning. Now FitzGerald had to wonder: Had Castro killed Kennedy before Kennedy
could kill him?” [33]
Or, as WillIam Turner suggested, was
one of the CIA plans to kill Castro turned on Kennedy at Dealey Plaza?
MEANWHILE – BACK AT THE PENTAGON
At the time of the assassination
General Maxwell Taylor and the Joint Chiefs of Staff were meeting with the West
German General Staff a group that possibly included General Hans Speidel. Some
of these general staff officers had been ranking officers in the Nazi military
at the time of the Valkyrie coup, such as Speidel, NATO commander (1957-1963),
Germany’s first four star general, former chief of staff to Field Marshall
Erwin Rommel. According to his obituary, at the “time of his disillusion with
the foolhardiness of some of Hitler’s military strategies led him into
conversations with a group of senior officers who were plotting a bold revolt
against Hitler Many of the Plotters Executed. General Speidel was assigned by
the plotters to persuade Rommel to join in, possibly to become head of the
revolutionary government if the conspiracy succeeded….Rommel, who had been
wounded three days before the assassination attempt, was forced to take poison.
General Speidel was arrested,…imprisoned in Berlin, he was released by the
United States troops at the end of the war.”
Both William Manchester and General
Taylor make mention of the visit of the German Generals to the Pentagon, but a
recently released “History of the Joint Chiefs of Staff” (The Joint Chiefs of
Staff and National Policy 1961-1964, [35-36-37] provides some interesting
details:
“Admiral Anderson and General LeMay found themselves increasingly out of step
with civilian leaders, LeMay clashed repeatedly with Secretary McNamara and
struck civilians as being too bellicose in times of crisis….. Kennedy
considered replacing both men but McNamara advised him that was one too
many. Accordingly on 6 May the White House announced (1) that Admiral
David I. McDonald, who was commanding the Sixth Fleet, would succeed Anderson
on 1 August and (2) that LeMay’s term would be extended for one year only….”
“A sudden, tragic transition took
place on 22 November 1963. The JCS were in the Pentagon conferring with their
West German counterparts. General Taylor was taking a post-lunch nap when an
aide awoke him to say that President Kennedy, who was in Dallas, had been shot
and seriously wounded. The JCS assembled around 1400 in Taylor’s office, where
Secretary McNamara soon joined them. They discussed what to do and finally
instructed worldwide commands that “this is the time to be especially on
alert.” Then the JCS rejoined the Germans. After telling them what he knew,
Taylor insisted that they resume their talks. Not long afterward, Taylor
received a note stating that the President was dead; he circulated this paper
to his JCS colleagues surreptitiously without interrupting the discussion. The
Germans may have been puzzled as, one by one, the Chiefs excused themselves for
a time and returned. Finally, late that afternoon, Taylor gave the grim news to
the Germans. “I have rarely seen such ashen faces,” he relates, “or heard such
words of spontaneous grief.”
Such ashen faces and spontaneous
grief were not similarly expressed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, except perhaps
by the Chairman, a close Kennedy family friend.
Certainly some of those German
general officers, on witnessing the behavior of the American military officers
being informed of the sudden death of their Commander in Chief, flashed briefly
on the events of the July 20 1944 failed attempt to assassinate Hitler.
Then in 1964 German intelligence
chief Otto John used the anniversary observance of the July 20th coup attempt
in Berlin to suddenly disappear and resurface behind the Iron Curtain as a
double agent and spy whose betrayal consolidated General Reinhard Gehlen’s
position as head of the German intelligence apparatus, as Talbot details in his
book.
More recently, in 2008 Tom Cruise
started as von Stauffenberg in “Valkyrie,” a major motion picture that
brought the Hitler assassination plot into the popular cultural mainstream.
The results of the Jim Lesar/AARC
FOIA request will also add more details to this line of inquiry.
In conclusion, if the CIA plans to
kill Fidel Castro had anything to do with the assassination of JFK at Dealey
Plaza then the CIA's “detailed” study and proposed adaption of the Valkyrie
plot to be used against Castro should be given close and careful examination
because of the repeated references to it in the assassination narrative.
Notes – Valkyrie at Dealey
Plaza Revisited - “The conspiracy alone must speak.”
1) Talbot, David. “The
Devil’s Chessboard” (HarperCollins, 2015) Re: Valkyrie, p. 134.
“Dulles arranged for Mary….to work with the tall, imperious double agent Hans
Bernd Gisevious…. (who) became involved in the July 20, 1944 bomb plot against
Hitler, barely fleeing with is life to Switzerland when it failed.”
2) Kelly, William. Review of “The
Devil’s Chessboard” :
3) Shenon, Phil – “A Cruel
and Shocking Act” (Picador, 2015)
5) Kelly, William. January 1995
Telephone conversation with Volkmar Schmidt.http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2008/01/volkmar-schmidt-interview.html.
Schmidt said that Dr. Wilhelm Keutemeyer of Heidelberg served as a foster
father whose associates Frederick von Halen and Von Trott were directly
involved in the Valkyrie plot. Schmidt: “….naturally it was a terrible
responsibility, and for years when I drove past the underpass I literally had
to cry because, you know. But I exonerate myself completely because I had the
best intent, embarrassed Kennedy, and I certainly didn’t tell him to take a pot
shot at him.”
6) Magnolia Oil. Jim Braden, who was
arrested as a suspect at Dealey Plaza, and his associate Victor Pierre were
evicted from Dallas by Sheriff Bill Decker and branded the “Honeymooners” for
trying to swindle the heiress of a founder of Magnolia Oil. Volkmar Schmidt
lived with two others who worked for Magnolia Oil, including the son of a Radio
Free Europe administrator.
7) Warren Report, p.
730. Ruth Paine drove Oswald’s family and belongings to New Orleans and back to
Texas in late September. Also see Ruth Paine’s Summer Vacation report by Carol
Hewett, Barbara Lamonica and Steve Jones, 1995 COPA Conference presentation.
8) Ford, Gerald, with John
Stiles “Portrait of the Assassin” Re: Marina’s letter to Ruth
Paine in care of Arthur Young, Paoli, Pa. (BK: This is the only published
reference I know of that mentions this letter).
9) Cronkite, Walter. “North
by Northwest” (Tabletop book) Also note that Woods Hole nautical
acoustics lab was a very busy place on April 10, 1963 when Oswald was
supposedly taking a shot at General Walker, the USS Thresher submarine went
down. Later a group Justice for the Crew of the Thresher (JFCOTT) reportedly
threatened JFK.
10) Young, Arthur. Inventor of the
Bell Helicopter 47A.http://www.arthuryoung.com/about.html
(BK: I also have an extensive three hour tape recorded interview with Young
from when I sat with him for hours in his library.)
11) Bancroft, Mary. “Autobiography
of a Spy” (Wm. Morrow, 1983) p. 55, for Ruth Paine Forbes’ association
with Mary Bancroft. (p. 202-240) for the roles Dulles, Bancroft and Gisevius
played in the July 20, 1944 Valkyrie Plot to kill Hitler.
12) Braden,
Tom. Talbot, David. "Devil's Chessboard" (p. 369,
p.547 JFK Library interview), p. 553 (Rockefeller financial support for covert
ops). Bancroft, Mary. “Autobiography of a Spy” (Wm. Morrow,
1983)
14) Higgins Memo: http://jfkcountercoup2.blogspot.com/2014/04/higgins-memo-numbered-w-bullet-points.htm
- 13. "He commented that there was nothing new in the propaganda
field. However, he felt that there had been great success in getting closer to
the military personnel who might break with Castro, and stated that there were
at least ten high-level military personnel who are talking with CIA but
as yet are not talking to each other, since that degree of confidence has not
yet developed. He considers it as a parallel in history; i.e., the plot to kill
Hitler; and this plot is being studied in detail to develop an
approach."
15) Four Leaves http://whd.jfklibrary.org/Diary/
- White House Diary - For Monday September 23 1963 – SUBJECT: Assignment
of Highest National Security Priority to Project FOUR LEAVES. In response to a
recommendation by the Secretary of Defense, the president, under the authority
granted by the Defense Production Act of 1950, today established the program
listed below as being in the highest national security priority category for development
and production. “President Kennedy assigns the highest national security
priority to Project FOUR LEAVES to develop and produce a military
communications system.” FOUR LEAVES McGeorge Bundy THE WHITE HOUSE
DIARY SEPTEMBER 23 1963 [http://www.jfklibrary.org/White%2BHouse%2B...eptember/23.htm]
18) Texas Trip officially announced.
“President Kennedy’s trip to Dallas was first announced to the public in
September 1963.” – Associated Press Timeline.
Also see: Dallas Morning News
1-9-64; 1-19-64; “Time Out From Safaris”
21) Metacas, Eric. "Bonhoeffer
– Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy" (Thomas Nelson Pub. 2010 p. 502) Among
those there (in prison) were "....the nearly seventy year old Count Werner
Von Alvensleben, who in 1934 had refused to take the infamous oath of
allegiance to Hitler, and who had been persona non grata with the Nazis ever
since." (p. 507) At Buchenwald "Count Von Alvensleben was in cell
number four...was typical of many arrested after the July 20 plot in that he
had done nothing more than be on friendly terms with some of the plotters.
Thousands had been arrested for this crime. Anyone related by blood was guilty
of Sippenhaft (liability of kin), whereby relatives of the accused were
arrested and punished: wives, parents, and children too. Some small children
were taken away from their parents, never to be seen again."
22) Lesar, Jim. AARC FOIA Request to
CIA for records related to the study of the Hitler plot as mentioned in the
Higgin’s report of Desmond FitzGerald’s briefing of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
September, 1963.
23) Waldron, Lamar. Series of books
on JFK of how CIA plot to kill Castro was hijacked by mobsters – “Ultimate
Sacrafice,” “Legacy of Secrecy” and “The Hidden History
of the JFK Assassination.” Also note: “John Rosselli said it was
also his theory that Castro was behind the assassination…He said he knew that a
team had been sent to kill Castro, had been captured and tortured, and turned
to kill Kennedy.” – Bayard Stockton in "Flawed Patriot – The Rise and Fall
of CIA Legend Bill Harvey" (Potomac Books, 2006)
24) Psych War aspect to the plan. Dan
Hardway: “You have to look at the JFK assassination as an operational
plan….with disinformation. (If) the assassination was a mob hit, it wasn’t a
mob hit like the ones they had done previously. They used a different MO in
JFK, they used a patsy, and they used disinformation, both of these techniques
they had learned from the Agency.”
Peter Dale Scott:
on Managed Oswald Stories: “In the days after the murders in
Dallas, the U.S. Was flooded with dubious stories, most of them swiftly
discredited, linking Oswald to either a Cuban or Soviet conspiracy. Those which
most preoccupied the FBI and CIA all came out of Mexico. These stories
exhibited certain common characteristics. 1. They all came from
either directly from an intelligence source, or from someone in the hands of an
intelligence agency…. The Stories changed over time, to support either a
pro-conspiratorial hypothesis (“Phase One”) or a rebuttal of this (“Phase
Two”). 3. The Warren Commission was led to believe that the “Phase
One”stories were without basis. In fact a number of unresolved anomalies
suggest that behind them was some deeper truth, still not revealed. 4. As
just noted, the two main sources, Silvia Duran and Gilberto Alvarado, gave
varying stories while detained by the DFS. Of the two, Duran was actually
tortured, and Alvarado reportedly threatened with torture… In retrospect, these
stories should not have been taken seriously. In fact the CIA was able to rely
on them, not as a source of truth, but as a source of coercive influence over
the rest of the government. It will help us to understand what was going on if
we refer to the stories, not as ‘information’ or even as ‘allegations,’ but as
MANAGED STORIES."
25) The Rex. New York Times,
November 1, 1963, page 1.
26) Phillips, David Atlee: “I
was one of the two case officers who handled Lee Harvey Oswald. After working
to establish his Marxist bona fides, we gave him the mission of killing Fidel
Castro in Cuba. I helped him when he came to Mexico City to obtain a visa, and
when he returned to Dallas to wait for it I saw him twice there. We rehearsed
the plan many times: In Havana Oswald was to assassinate Castro with a sniper's
rifle from the upper floor window of a building on the route where Castro often
drove in an open jeep. Whether Oswald was a double-agent or a psycho I'm not
sure, and I don't know why he killed Kennedy. But I do know he used precisely
the plan we had devised against Castro. Thus the CIA did not anticipate the
President's assassination but it was responsible for it. I share that guilt.”
From unpublished novel.
28) Pathfinder Documents. Dupont
Estate. Re: Pathfinder records - ARRB interviews with NPIC employes stationed
at JMWAVE, where the CIA officers kept the Pathfinder documents filed
separately from regular station files by keeping them in the NPIC section.
ARRB Memo: (a) A folder, stored in
the Photo Interpretation...Area at JMWAVE contained materials related to a plan
to assassinate Castro in the Bay of Pigs Resort area where he maintained a
yacht and was known to vacation. The plan, possibly with the code word
PATHFINDER...apparently had been disapproved and not under active consideration
at the time. Our people did not participate actively in the plan in any
regard. (b) While assigned to the Imagery Analysis Service, a number of
our photo interpreters supported Carl Jenkins of the DD/P concerning a plan to
assassinate Castro at the DuPont Veradero Estate, east of Havana. Castro was
known to frequent the estate and the plan was to use a high powered rifle in
the attempt. The photo interpreter support was restricted to providing
annotated photographs and line drawings of the estate. To our knowledge this
plan was never implemented
29) Bringuier, Carlos. "Red
Friday" (C. Hallberg, 1969)
30) Forman, James. “Code
Name Valkyrie – Count Von Staufenberg and the plot to kill Hitler,” who
quotes Gisevius: “I just have the feeling we’ll never succeed. I’m not speaing
through fear. But I have a feeling very few of us will be alive this time next
year, regardless of what happens with your bomb.”
34) Waldron, Lamar. “The
Hidden History of the JFK Assassination” (Scribe, 2013 p. 228)
35) Manchester, William. “Death
of a President”
36) Taylor, Maxwell. Swords
and Plowshares (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1965), p. 206
37) Poole, Walter S. Pentagon
Historian. “History of the Joint Chiefs of Staff - The Joint Chiefs of Staff
and National Policy 1961-1964” (Volume VIII 1961-1964 Office of Joint
History, Office of the Chairman o the Joint Chiefs of Staff . Washington, D.C.
– (Government Printing Office, 2011 Page 4 – Page 20 digital version)
38) Talbot, David. “The Devil’s
Chessboard” (Re: Otto John’s defection)
