Conspiracy or Coup?

Conspiracy or Coup?

The big debate raging is no longer even considering whether or not there was a conspiracy to kill the President, now the arguments are over what kind of conspiracy it was. Was it a simple conspiracy - to conspire - literally meaning "to breath together," - or was it a full fledged coup d'etat - well planned and executed take over of the government? 

While some of this stems from the second point of the Ten Points of Agreement that people have, will or won't sign on to, mainly because of the disagreements over the language, something that took a few months to hammer out among a dozen or so knowledgeable people. 

I too disagree with some of it - beginning with Number One - which is technically correct in that the HSCA concluded JFK was "probably" killed as a result of a conspiracy, but that was in 1978, as now it is no longer "probably" but more certainly - it was a conspiracy to a legal and moral certainty. 

I also disagree with the name of the organization Truth and Reconciliation as Reconciliation which implies that justice will not be done and we'll figure out how to move on without reprimanding those responsible for murder, tampering with evidence, perjury and obstruction of justice. Holding those issues like a sword over the heads of those responsible is the only hammer we have that can make them come clean with the truth. 

Then the "probability" of No.1  is removed with the addition of Number Two - with the additional observation that the conspiracy was conducted in the "highest levels of government" and the assassination carried out by "elements of the national security state." 

I believe it was Christopher Sharrett in  Jerry Rose's Third/Fourth Decade who first analyzed the conflicting conspiracy theories as to whether President Kennedy was killed as a result of a full-fledged coup d’etat or was the victim of a group of rich oil men, mobsters, anti-Castro Cubans and renegade CIA operatives, as there is a clear distinction between the two.

As Christopher Sharrett wrote, “We should not view the assassination as a coup in the traditional sense -- …..but about resolving a disagreement within the state at a time when financial stakes were extremely high.”

https://jfkcountercoup2.blogspot.com/2019/01/christopher-sharrett-on-assassination.html

One particularly contentious aspect of the 2019 Ten Points of Agreement statement is Point #2: “In the four decades since this Congressional finding (that there was probably a conspiracy), a massive amount of evidence compiled by journalists, historians and independent researchers confirms this conclusion. This growing body of evidence strongly indicates that the conspiracy to assassinate President Kennedy was organized at high levels of the U.S. power structure, and was implemented by top elements of the U.S. national security apparatus.”

Some JFK scholars who believe the Mafia was behind the murder of the president, refused to sign on because of the agreement that “this growing body of evidence strongly indicates that the conspiracy to assassinate President Kennedy was organized at high levels of the U.S. power structure and was implemented by top elements of the U.S. national security apparatus,” as Vince Salandria and others said almost immediately.

From a distance, I would say that it was an official inside job since they were allowed to get away with murder(s), so it was officially approved after the fact if not before hand.

While the “renegade” scenario as depicted in the films “Executive Action” and Oliver Stone’s “JFK,” has held sway for the past few decades, the “Seven Days in May” scenario and “Coup” theory has been gaining ground and momentum and is becoming generally accepted as new information is processed, especially from the recently released records.

Paul Hoch once said he didn’t see the conspiracy extending to the Pentagon and Joint Chiefs of Staffs, as John Judge professed, while David Kaiser takes issue with the second of the Ten Points of Agreement point that says “the assassination was organized at high levels of the U.S. power structure, and was implemented by top elements of the U.S. national security apparatus.”

Without getting into the details of the crime, one of the signatories to the Ten Points - Vince Salandria said that the murder of Oswald in police custody was enough to convince him that this was a national security state crime, and Christopher Sharrett, like myself, is one of Salandria's proteges. 

I'd like to know how those who planned the assassination could frame Oswald, blame Castro, and neutralize the attorney general without it being organized “at high levels of the U.S. power structure?”  That is beyond me. 

And the CIA paid and trained JMWAVE Cuban commando Pathfinders who we are now coming to know as those who implemented the Dealey Plaza operation, - they were certainly “top-elements of the U.S. national security apparatus,” as we are coming to know it.

If you try to determine the total truth from the ground up – from the streets and buildings of Dallas, you get cut off by “cut-outs” – what the mobsters called “buffers,” – who serve as middle men between those who call the shots and those who take the shots.

Once I was convinced that one man alone didn’t kill President Kennedy, I too became an adherent of the “renegades” scenario, in which the conspirators were independent of the government, but protected by them, and it took quite a while to understand the total coup idea, scenario and concept. 

But instead of starting at the street scene of the crime, we can better understand what happened by assuming a few basic concepts – 1) regardless of the role of the accused assassin; the murder was a covert intelligence operations, 2) Those who successfully conducted the operation controlled a) the scene of the crime; 2) the communications; 3) the media.

In order to understand the Dealey Plaza Operation – you must approach it from the perspective of those who were capable of  controlling 1-2-3, and only then can you begin to understand who planned the operation, who successfully carried it out, and who continues to promote the cover-story that Oswald and Cuban Communists were behind the dastard deed. 

While a superficial study of the assassination could lead one to believe Lee Harvey Oswald was responsible, or LBJ pulled it off, the Cubans and Russians and Mafia were involved, or any one of the multiple conspiracy theories out there, but a more in depth review of the facts and evidence recognizes that Oswald was not the Sixth Floor Sniper and that one of the conspiracy theories is therefore true. But which one?

That the conspiracy was not only a covert intelligence operation, but a full-coup d’etat is a big leap – and must be supported by the available evidence, especially the documented evidence, and I believe it is.

Instead of starting from the bottom up, to determine the existence of a coup you must start at the top and work down – as a coup d’etat must have certain particular aspects under  total control – especially the scene of the crime and the communications, and only a few people had that capability. 

Sharrett: “We should not view the assassination as a coup in the traditional sense --- obviously there was no imposition of martial law, no prolonged period of bloodletting (discounting murdered witnesses and such). Such a blow against the public would have been intolerable in a major Western democracy after European fascism, and the issue in any event was not about suppressing a popular movement...., but about resolving a disagreement within the state at a time when financial stakes were extremely high.”

As William Turner has pointed out, the mechanism to kill Castro was already in place, and all they had to do was switch targets to JFK in Dallas.

Just as Fred Litwin retrogressed from the truth to the cover-story, others went in the opposite direction. Walter Cronkite said (in Columbia Journalism Review, 1981) that, “I wonder with the CIA plot to assassinate Castro, about he possibilities of setting up something of this kind for whatever international purpose. I’m not as happy as I once was with the Warren Report.”

Major Ralph P. Ganis (USAFR), also explains in his book “The Skorzeny Papers” (Skyhorse 2018) how the international assassination mechanism was already in place and under “command and control.”

“Generally used in military terminology, ”Command and control’ is defined as ‘the exercise of authority and direction by a properly designated commander’ in the accomplishment of a mission….could only be initiated as a result of command and control methods. This effectively removes the possibility that the assassination in Dallas was the act of a lone gunman or originated with a petty personal vendetta…..The existence of a covert assassination capability…the clandestine network operated under formal command and control…those with the authority to activate (this) network and assign targets. Certainly, the national command structure of the United States government in 1963 was in such a position.”

As Ganis put it: “The correct way to say it is this - there was an assassination capability inherent and located within one office of the CIA – that was highly compartmented and highly controlled. So, it’s not like the entire CIA was involved. It was literally only one office, and even then, within the office it was probably on a need to know basis….So we may be literally talking about five individuals…..I mean this, this was a high secret, a high state secret, so it would not have been general knowledge, nor would it have been something that a lot of people would know about." 

Ganis: "The capability itself, the Executive Action capability itself, I equate in the book to the use of Atomic Weapons. The only way to launch this capability would have been by Executive Order – by the President, or the National Command authority – that level, - the Secretary of Defense, at that level. It was a presidential, national command authority level capability. Somebody at the CIA couldn’t use it. It would even have been impossible for even rogue use. This was a Command and Control situation. A target would be designated. But in other words, to use this capability would have required Executive Approval. So this small office within the CIA – called Staff D. And the guy who ran it was a man named William K. Harvey, during that time period. He managed the program. He managed that program – much like maintaining a nuclear bomber.  There are US Air Force personal who man the bomber, and there’s people who maintain the bomber, but they can’t launch the bomber. That comes from the President. The same with this capability.To kill a foreign leader, to liquidate a foreign leader is a very, very risky proposition. So that capability was held at the highest levels of our government.”

So the assassination of President Kennedy was carried out by a well planned and executed covert intelligence operation that was under the top command and control of those within the US government, specifically the national security elements, and that’s the way we have to look at it in order to understand it, how it was carried out, who conducted it, and why they did it.

It isn’t the line of executive power – President-Vice President – It is the line of military power – President – Secretary of Defense – Joint Chiefs of Staff - and that’s where the authority for the Dealey Plaza Operation came from.

More from Chris Sharrett: https://jfkcountercoup2.blogspot.com/2019/01/christopher-sharrett-on-assassination.html  /   https://jfkcountercoup2.blogspot.com/2019/01/an-open-letter-to-assassination.html