The Annotated Shenon and Sabato
Phil Shenon and Larry Sabato are at it again.
After their piece in the Washington Post:
After their piece in the Washington Post:
that the AARC responded to:
they are at it again.
They are picking up where Gus Russo, Brian Latell and Bob Baer left off and are stuck parroting the same old, sorry story that is just not true.
Phil Shenon is a former New York Times reporter who says he is not interested in any other aspect of the assassination of President Kennedy other than that which indicates Castro was behind the dirty deed. In his book A Cruel and Shocking Act – he tries to make the claim that Oswald met Cuban embassy officials at a private Twist Party where they encouraged him to kill JFK. There was a party at which Oswald was encouraged to kill General Walker, but Shenon isn’t interested in that. See my reviews:
Sabato is associated with the
University of Virginia Center for Politics, and together they represent a Punch and Judy show that we will have to get used to, and will have to respond and correct each of their articles, especially as they try to promote the original cover story - the false black propaganda and disinformation campaign to promote the idea that Castro was
behind the assassination of JFK.
How the CIA Came to Doubt the
Official Story of JFK’s Murder
Newly released documents from
long-secret Kennedy assassination files raise startling questions about what
top agency officials knew and when they knew it.
By PHILIP SHENON and LARRY J. SABATO
August 03, 2017
After the assassination of President
John F. Kennedy in November 1963, the CIA appeared eager, even desperate, to
embrace the version of events being offered by the FBI, the Secret Service and
other parts of the government. The official story: that a delusional misfit and
self-proclaimed Marxist named Lee Harvey Oswald killed the president in Dallas
with his $21 mail-order rifle and there was no evidence of a conspiracy,
foreign or domestic. Certainly, the CIA’s leaders told the Warren Commission,
the independent panel that investigated the murder, there was no evidence of a
conspiracy that the spy agency could have foiled.
But thousands
of pages of long-secret, assassination-related documents released by the
National Archives last week show that, within a few years of Kennedy’s murder,
some in the CIA began to worry internally that the official story was wrong — an
alarm the agency never sounded publicly.
KELLY NOTE: These files contain much new information, especially about CIA operations but not only that they began to worry – they knew what we are just learning to know now.
Specifically, key CIA officials were
concerned by the mid-1970s that the agency, the FBI, the Secret Service and the
White House commission led by Chief Justice Earl Warren had never followed
up on important clues about Oswald’s contact with foreign agents, including
diplomats and spies for the Communist governments of Cuba and the Soviet Union,
who might have been aware of his plans to kill Kennedy and even encouraged the
plot. (There is no credible evidence cited in the documents released so far
that Cuban leader Fidel Castro or other foreign leaders had any personal role
in ordering Kennedy’s murder.)
NOTE: The Warren Commission and
Justice Department never followed up on important clues about Oswald’s contacts
with many people – not just the “foreign agents” Shenon and Sabato want us to
follow. And the almost but not credible evidence that Cuban leader Fidel Castro
had a personal role in ordering Kennedy’s murder was a psychological warfare
twist made a part of the original CIA plan to kill Castro and Kennedy. That
part of the plan failed, and it gives us clear insight into the plot that led
to JFK’s death.
The CIA documents also offer
tantalizing speculation about the chain of events in late 1963 that explained
Oswald’s motives for killing Kennedy, which have previously never been
established with certainty —
NOTE: First off, Oswald didn’t kill
anybody, and for Shenon and Sabato to say that clearly indicates that they are
not familiar with the details of the crime that show that Oswald was set up for
the crime and was what he said he was – a Patsy. What’s the motive of the
Patsy? He was a COP – a covert operator and expendable agent who was murdered
in police custody, and a Pawn in a much bigger game.
-
how
he may have become enraged after reading a detailed article in his hometown
newspaper in New Orleans in September suggesting that his hero Castro had been
targeted for assassination by the Kennedy administration.
NOTE: This
article was published in New Orleans and all over the world, and Oswald would
certainly have read it but concluding that he became “enraged” over it demeans
his true cool, calm and collected attitude, even after his arrest.
-
According
to that theory, Oswald, who had rifle training in the Marine Corps, then set
out to seek vengeance on Castro’s behalf—to kill Kennedy before the American
president managed to kill the Cuban leader.
NOTE: That theory has been proven
false, JFK never approved any plan to kill Castro and goes against the grain of
the real operational conspiracy theory that is now taking hold among serious
researchers that the Dealey Plaza Operation – and it was a covert intelligence
operation regardless of Oswald’s role as sniper or Patsy, a CIA plan that
originally targeted Castro but was redirected to JFK in Dallas.
If that proved true, it would have
raised a terrible question for the CIA: Was it possible that JFK’s
assassination was, directly or indirectly, blowback for the spy agency’s plots
to kill Castro?
NOTE: The answer is YES, it was
directly a blowback from the CIA’s plans – not plots to kill Castro.
It would eventually be acknowledged
the CIA had, in fact, repeatedly tried to assassinate Castro, sometimes in
collusion with the Mafia, throughout Kennedy’s presidency. The CIA’s arsenal of
weapons against Castro included a fungus-infected scuba suit, a poison-filled
hypodermic needle hidden in a pen—and even an exploding cigar.
NOTE: The attempt to poison Castro was
the first CIA-Mafia operation that failed, the fungus infected scuba suit was
deep sixed by James Donovan, the lawyer who dived with Castro while negotiating
the release of the Bay of Pigs prisoners, and the poison pen was presented to
Rolando Cubella (AMLASH) on the morning of the assassination. But these are not
the attempts to kill Castro that led to what happened at Dealey Plaza – JFK was
not killed by fungus or poisoned, but his brains were shot out by a very well
trained and efficient first class sniper. Forget all of the CIA plans to kill
JFK except those that involved high powered rifles and they will lead you to
those behind the Dealey Plaza Operation.
The Warren Commission, never told
about the CIA’s Castro plots, mostly ducked the question of Oswald’s motives,
other than saying in its final report that he had expressed a “hatred for
American society.”
JFK historians and the nation’s
large army of private assassination researchers are still scrambling to make
sense of the latest batch of tens of thousands of pages of previously secret
CIA and FBI documents that were unsealed last week by the National Archives.
The documents—441 files that had previously been withheld entirely, along with
3,369 other documents that had been previously released only in part—were made
public under terms of a 1992 law that requires the unsealing of all JFK
assassination-related documents by October, the law’s 25-year deadline.
Since the release last week,
researchers do not appear to have identified any single document that could be
labeled a bombshell or that rewrites the history of the assassination in any
significant way.
NOTE: This isn’t true, there are
many bombshells, many from the previously released records, and many from the
most recent document dump batch, and it is quite clear that neither Shenon nor
Sabato have read any of them. Anyone who wants to really know what’s in the
files should talk to John Newman, Bill Simpich, Malcolm Blunt, Jeff Morley,
Russ Baker or myself, all of whom are perusing the recently released records
and finding tons of bombshells.
Many of the documents, which were
made public only online, are duplicates of files that had been released years
earlier. Other documents are totally illegible or refer to CIA and FBI code
names and pseudonyms that even experienced researchers will take months to
decipher. Several documents are written in foreign languages.
NOTE: Yes, it will take months to
decipher, but the message is now clear: JFK was the victim of a covert
intelligence operation and not a deranged lone nut case.
Still, the newly released documents
may offer an intriguing glimpse of what comes next. The National Archives is
required to unseal a final batch of about 3,100 never-before-seen
JFK-assassination files by the October deadline, assuming the move is not
blocked by President Donald Trump. Under the 1992 Kennedy Assassination Records
Collection Act, the president is the only person empowered to stop the release.
(Congressional and other government officials have told us in confidence that at
least two federal agencies—likely the CIA and FBI—are expected to appeal to
Trump to block the unsealing of at least some of the documents. Even after 54
years, some government officials apparently still want to keep secrets about
this seminal event in U.S. history. The CIA and FBI acknowledged earlier this
year they are conducting a final review of the documents, but have been
unwilling to say if they will ask the president to block some from being
released.)
None of the files released last week
undermines the Warren Commission’s finding that Oswald killed Kennedy with
shots fired from his perch on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book
Depository in Dallas’ Dealey Plaza—a conclusion supported by 21st century
forensic analysis—and that there was no credible evidence of a second gunman.
NOTE: What total BS – Oswald wasn’t
even on the sixth floor when the shots were fired, though there was a Third
Class sniper in the “perch” on the sixth floor, one with a white shirt and bald
spot, who used a third class rifle to pump evidence into the car while the
first class sniper blew off JFK’s head. The conclusion reached by 21st
century forensic analysis – such as that offered by former Justice Department
prosecutor John Orr – and the Zapruder film analysis by NPIC proves that JFK
was hit from two directions and the fatal head shot did not originate from the
Sixth Floor “perch.” For more 21st Century analysis of the evidence
see the CAPA Mock Trial in Houston in November.
But the new documents do revive the
question of why the CIA, so skeptical internally of many of the commission’s
other findings by the 1970s, never acknowledged those suspicions to later
government investigators—or to the public.
NOTE: The reason is the CIA would
have been put out of business, especially the covert action business, that was recommended
by the Dootlittle Commission but opposed by former President Truman in the days
after the assassination when he recognized the Dealey Plaza MO as that of a
covert intelligence operation. When the facts about the CIA Mafia Castro plots
were revealed, it lead to the Pike-Church and HSCA investigations that also
almost put the CIA out of business.
Documents released decades ago show
that CIA and FBI officials repeatedly misled—and often lied outright—to Chief
Justice Warren and his commission, probably to hide evidence of the agencies’
bungling in their surveillance of Oswald before the president’s murder. The CIA
appears also to have been determined to block the commission from stumbling on
to evidence that might reveal the agency’s assassination plots against Castro
and other foreign leaders.
New Window
The CIA historian's report from 2013
that refers to the "benign coverup." (Click to view full document.)
New
Window
The 1964 letter.
In 2013, the CIA’s in-house
historian concluded that the spy agency had conducted a “benign cover-up”
during the Warren Commission’s investigation in 1963 and 1964 in hopes of
keeping the commission focused on “what the Agency believed was the ‘best
truth’ — that Lee Harvey Oswald, for as yet undetermined motives, had acted
alone in killing John Kennedy.”
New
Window
Labeled “SECRET” and stamped
“REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED” on each page, this 1975 memo lists several important
clues about Oswald that went unexplored in the months and years after Kennedy’s
death. (Click to open full document)
But what if the “best truth” was
wrong? According to documents made public last week, the CIA was alarmed by the
mid-1970s to realize that no one had properly followed up on clues about an
especially mysterious chapter in Oswald’s life—a six-day, apparently
self-financed trip to Mexico City beginning in late September 1963, two months
before the assassination.
The reason for the trip has never
been determined with certainty, although he told his wife, Marina, that he went
there to obtain a visa that would allow him to defect to Cuba, much as he had
once attempted to defect to the Soviet Union.
NOTE: He told his wife Marina and
Ruth Paine he was going to Philadelphia to look for a job, and he had four
Philadelphia address in his note book.
The CIA acknowledged long ago that
the agency’s Mexico City station had Oswald under surveillance during the trip,
and that he met there with Cuban and Soviet diplomats and spies. The CIA
station chief said later he was convinced that Oswald had a brief sexual
relationship with a Mexican woman who worked in the Cuban consulate.
NOTE: Yes, Sylvia Duran had a Twist
Party, and was arrested twice and admitted to the sexual fling with Oswald only
under torture, as indicated by the newly released records that Shenon and
Sabato have not read.
Although there is no credible
evidence of Soviet involvement in the assassination, Oswald’s other contacts in
Mexico included—shockingly enough—a KGB assassinations expert who doubled as an
accredited Soviet diplomat. A top-secret June 1964 FBI report, made public in
the 1990s but apparently never seen by key investigators for the Warren
Commission, suggests that Oswald was overheard threatening to kill Kennedy
during his visits to the Cuban diplomatic compound in Mexico.
NOTE: Check out Khruschev’s take on
the assassination as revealed in the new batch of records:
NOTE: Yes, Jerry Patrick Hemming,
former USMC and COP personality like Oswald, said he met Oswald in Southern
California after Oswald left a Cuban consulate there, and Heming thought Oswald
was then working for ONI. More recently someone has come forward saying Oswald
tried to recruit from the them into ONI at the time. But many of the records of
Oswald’s former USMC buddies have disappeared NARA.
I'm going to have to stop responding here, at least for awhile.
The account from the fellow Marine
was of “a lot more possible operational significance” than was realized in the
months after the assassination but was never “run down or developed by
investigation,” according to a 1975 CIA internal memo released last week. “The
record of the beginning of OSWALD’s relationship with the Cubans starts
with a question mark.”
That 27-page memo, which does not
identify its author, is among the most intriguing of the documents in last
week’s batch unsealed by the National Archives. Copies of the document were
found inside larger CIA files released last week, including thick agency files
labeled HELMS HEARING DUPLICATE. That seems to suggest the memo was given to
former Director of Central Intelligence Richard Helms, who led the agency from
1966 to 1973, when he was later summoned to testify secretly to Congress about
his involvement in the CIA assassination plots against Castro and other foreign
leaders. Similar documents about the Kennedy assassination and Oswald were
written in the 1970s by a senior CIA counterintelligence official, Raymond
Rocca, who had served as the agency’s chief liaison to the Warren Commission.
Labeled “SECRET” and stamped
“REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED” on each page, the 1975 memo lists several important
clues about Oswald that went unexplored in the months and years after Kennedy’s
death. (Versions of the same CIA memo were part of the flood of millions of pages
of documents released after the 1992 law, although it has never attracted
detailed attention outside a small circle of assassination researchers. Brian
Latell, a respected former CIA analyst on Cuban intelligence, cited a version
of the document in his 2012 book Castro’s Secrets, which suggested much
closer links between Oswald and Cuba than had previously been known.)
The 1975 document noted the failure
of the CIA, FBI and the Warren Commission to interview a key witness in Mexico
City—Silvia Duran, the Mexican woman who worked in the Cuban consulate and was
reported to have had the affair with Oswald. She is the “sole live witness on
the record regarding Oswald’s activities,” yet her testimony “was taken and
presented, solely, by the Mexican governmental authorities,” the CIA memo said.
Duran, who is still alive, has repeatedly insisted she had no sexual
relationship with Oswald, although she readily acknowledges that she helped him
with his unsuccessful visa application for Cuba.
It was that same CIA memo that
offered a detailed theory of the chain of events that led Oswald to kill
Kennedy—how Oswald, who lived in his hometown of New Orleans for much of 1963,
may have been inspired to assassinate the president if, as seemed probable, he
read an article on Monday, September 9, in the local newspaper, that suggested
Castro was targeted for murder by the United States.
The article, written by a reporter
for The Associated Press in Havana and then published prominently in the Times-Picayune,
was an account of an AP interview with Castro two days earlier, in which the
Cuban strongman angrily warned the Kennedy administration that he was aware of
U.S. assassination plots aimed at Cuban leaders, presumably including him, and
was prepared to retaliate. The article quoted Castro as saying: “U.S. leaders
would be in danger if they helped in any attempt to do away with leaders of Cuba.”
New Window
The September 1963 Times Picayune
story. (Click to view full-size image.)
The CIA memo suggested that if
Oswald, who was known to be an “avid reader” of the Times-Picayune, saw
the article, it might have put the idea in his head to kill Kennedy as retaliation
for the threat the United States posed to Castro—an idea that would have been
in his mind as he left for his trip to Mexico that month. The possibility that
Oswald read the article “must be considered of great significance in light of
the pathological evolution of Oswald’s passive/aggressive makeup” and “his
identification with Fidel Castro and the Cuban revolution,” the CIA memo said.
Immediately after the assassination,
the CIA’s Mexico City station warned CIA headquarters that the AP article might
contain a vital clue about Oswald’s motives for killing Kennedy—and even about
possible Cuban involvement. But according to the 1975 analysis, “There is no
evidence in the files on the Kennedy assassination that the Castro interview
was considered in following up leads or in dealing with the Warren Commission,
although Mexico Station specifically directed headquarters to the AP story very
shortly after the Dallas killing.”
Previously released internal
documents from the Warren Commission show that one of the commission’s most
aggressive staff lawyers believed that Castro’s remarks to the AP—and the
possibility that Oswald read the article—might be of great significance in
explaining Oswald’s motives. But the internal files show that more senior staff
members decided against any reference to the AP article in the commission’s
final report for fear of feeding conspiracy theories about a possible Cuban
link to Kennedy’s death. It does not reflect well on the legacy of either the
CIA or the commission that, half a century after those gunshots rang out in
Dealey Plaza, the newly released documents suggest that at least some of those
conspiracy theories might be true.
Philip Shenon, a former Washington
and foreign correspondent for the New York Times, is the author of A Cruel and Shocking Act: The Secret History of the Kennedy
Assassination.
Larry J. Sabato is the director of
the University of Virginia Center for Politics and author of The Kennedy Half-Century.
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