David Harold Byrd

D. H. BYRD 

                                         Lee Harvey Oswald in his Civil Air Patrol Uniform 

Texas oil millionaire David Harold D. H. 'Dry Hole" Byrd, owner of the Texas School Book Depository building, was on an African safari big game hunting at the time of the assassination.

A relatively unknown character in most books and stories about the assassination, Byrd is none the less a significant figure who played multiple roles in various aspects of the assassination story.

 For starters he was a financial supporter of the polar explorations of his cousin Admiral Richard Byrd and has a mountain named after him in the Antarctica.

While most of us would assume that military operations are fully funded by the government, three of the CIA's JMWAVE boat crews were partially supported financially by three patriotic American millionaires - William Pawley, Clare Booth Luce and John Rosselli.

So D.H. Byrd, in a similar way, helped his cousin in his explorations,  that included his radio broadcasts from such remote regions, could only picked up by a Cedar Rapids, Iowa, teenager Arthur Collins.

Art Collins, on a radio he built himself in his garage was the only one who could receive the remote polar broadcasts from Admiral Byrd, and he dutifully passed on the information to the Navy. Collins went on to establish his own radio company that with the advent of WWII, became a major defense contractor that eventually supplied and serviced all sideband radios used by USAF, Strategic Air Command (SAC) and the Executive Air fleet, including Air Force One.

While Collins Radio had its headquarters in Collins hometown of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, like other major defense contractors, it opened a factory in Richardson, Texas, near Dallas, for strategic security reasons, so it would be out of the range of Soviet long range ballistic missiles.

As an early aviation pioneer Byrd owned an early aviation company that merged with some of his associates to form Ling, Temco,Voight – LTV.

Byrd married into one of the richest families in Texas (Caruth), and after her death, married a close, pesonal friend of Lyndon B. Johnson.

Byrd was one of those who in September 1941, shortly before Pearl Harbor, formed the Civil Air Patrol (CAP) along with Cord Meyer, Sr., another early aviation pioneer whose son also became entwined in various aspects of the assassination drama.

For the 1952 Annual Report of the CAP, that includes photos and descriptions of D. H. Byrd and Cord Meyer, Sr. – go to: https://www.gocivilairpatrol.com/media/cms/1952_8D184B3F628D7.pdf

Among its members the CAP in New Orleans counted Lee Harvey Oswald, the man accused of assassinating the president from Byrd's building.

As reported in a Pennsylvania newspaper article (Thanks to Greg Parker for pointing this article out), the CAP had plans to send young cadets to a special counter-intelligence spy school at Fort Holabird, Maryland. [York, Pennsylvania, Gazette]

 "It declared that these recruits would be taught the Russian language, Russian military tactics, Russian politics, and all characteristics of the Russian people." The article called it a plan for loyalty police. 

Sound familiar? 

For more on this story go to:

http://jfkcountercoup2.blogspot.com/2017/06/civil-air-patrol-plan-for-loyalty-police.html?m=1

And if you thought that it was a one time affair, think again, as more recently it was reported that the CIA partnered with the CAP to provide it with the latest technology, enabling the CAP cadets to detect citizens who grew marijuana in their backyard so they can be reported and busted.

https://www.auxbeacon.org/cia-partners-with-the-civil-air-patrol-with-spy-technology/

Byrd purchased the building that housed the Texas School Book Depository (TSBD) but left it vacant for many years before leasing it to a food market before the TSBD took over.

If the assassination was a well planned and successfully executed covert intelligence operation then nothing was left to chance and the operators had complete control over the situation and surroundings.

Just as the CIA's JMWAVE NIPIC technicians supplied Carl Jenkins and the Pathfinder sniper teams with U2 and aerial photos, ground photos, blueprints of the duPont estate and maps of the Veradero area, where Fidel Castro was to be shot as he rode by in an open jeep, if what happened at Dealey Plaza was a similar operation, the same pre-planned procedures were used.

The staging area for the shooting of Castro in Veradero, as Felix Rodriguez recounts in his book, was so planned out in advance the gun sight on his sleek German rifle was preset. And one of the planned staging areas in Veradero was to be an apartment associated with Dr. Rolando Cubella (aka AMLASH), who recently pased away, and will be the subject of my next post.

So if the Dealey Plaza shooting was a similar operation then the situation was as controlled as it was in Veradero, and the TSBD building was the staging area, and Byrd was the proprietor.

At the time of the assassination Bryd was on a big game hunting safari in Mozambique, at Safariland, owned by German Werner Von Alvensleben. As Volkmar Schmidt explained to me, "von" is a German designated of royalty.

Byrd was accompanied by Tom May, a Dallas school book publisher, and their weapon of choice was a Mannlicher Schonauer, a more powerful and precise rifle than the Mannlicher Carcano found in the TSBD.

Byrd apparently made annual hunting trips to Africa, but this one was photographly documented by von Alvenensleben's nephew Christian von Alvenensleben, a professional photographer.

While he wanted to capture beautiful animals in their natural habitat on film, he was horrified at the wanton slaughter of the animals for photos and trophies, but he took pictures.

Some 60 of his photos were published in a book and are available on line. 

https://www.booklooker.de/B%C3%BCcher/Angebote/titel=Die+Spur+des+Leoparden

alvensleben.com

One photo of a dead elephant is inscribed "Shot by Col. Byrd."

The Colonel comes from his role in the CAP.

Another caption identified Byrd in a photo that is clearly not him, but he was most certainly there.

Byrd's host, von Alvenensleben, is the son of a German who is identified in an OSS document as an "assassination specialist," who authored a pamphlet supporting the German military's attempted assassination and coup against Hitler on July 20, 1944, code named Valkyrie.

On September 24, 1963, CIA officer Desmond FitzGerald briefed the Joint Chiefs of Staff on their covert operations against Cuba, mentioning the fact that the CIA was studying in detail that German military plot to kill Hitler to be used against Castro. The man they chose to lead that plot was Dr. Rolando Cubella.

The Valkyrie plot to kill Castro is a recurring theme in the JFK assassination story, and von Alvenenslabens association with it is only part of that story.

Another African safari hunting partner of Byrd was U.S. General James Harold Doolittle, famous for bombing of Tokyo early in World War II.

In a FOIA request and civil suit brought by the Assassination Archives and Research Center, the CIA records on Byrd and Alversleben have been requested, as well as the records on Eisenhowers’ Doolittle Commission report on CIA covert operations, that included William Pawley as one of the three commissioners and recommended continued use of covert operations to counter the Soviet and communist menace.

Von Alversleben returned to Dallas as a guest of Byrd, who showed him his Trophy Room, where he proudly exposed the heads of dead animals he killed, and added a window he had removed from the sixth floor of the TSBD building as a additional trophy for his trophy room. 

Lawsuit Over JFK Assassination Records

 Lawsuit Over JFK Assassination Records

https://www.maryferrell.org/pages/JFK_Records_Lawsuit.html

On October 19, 2022, the Mary Ferrell Foundation, a non-profit archive with the internet's largest collection of searchable JFK records, filed a lawsuit against President Biden and the National Archives for failing to implement the 1992 JFK Records Act. These failures have resulted in confusion, gaps in the records, over-classification, and outright denial of thousands of assassination-related files, five years after the law's deadline for full disclosure.

For More Information

Read the complaint in MFF v Biden et al

Key issues in the lawsuit

What is the Mary Ferrell Foundation?

Who is the Foundation's attorney Bill Simpich?

Who was Mary Ferrell?

Learn more about the 2017-2021 releases

Read the 1992 JFK Records Act

Basics of the JFK assassination

State of the JFK Releases 2022

On December 15 of this year, the National Archives is set to release more documents from the JFK Collection, under an order given by President Biden in October of 2021. What is not known is the extent that this release - will it encompass all or most remaining records, or will the can be kicked down the road as it has been since 2017, when under the JFK Records Act all remaining records were to be fully released, except in extraordinary circumstances.

This page documents a set of problems and issues with the state of JFK Collection as of 2022. For background on the document declassifications of 2017-2021, see State of JFK Releases 2021. See links in the sidebar for other related information, including where to view the documents which were released under the JFK Records Act in 2017, 2018, and 2021.

This page was last updated on 10/16/2022.

Summary

The issues described on this page mainly fall into these categories:

Continued withholding - continued redactons in violation of the JFK Records Act

Deficiencies in tracking - various problems with the National Archive's "central directory of identification aids"

Missing records - documents which should have been released in 2017, but weren't

Unjustified redactions - documents with significant and unwarranted redactions

Continued Withholding in Violation of the JFK Records Act

Over 14,000 records still feature "redactions" (blacked out text) - 16,283 if the National Archive's 6-part reference spreadsheet is to be believed. These all should have been fully declassified by October 26, 2017, absent a specific justification in each instance by the president of the United States. Instead, both President Trump and President Biden declassified some records while issuing blanket withholding declarations for the rest.

The JFK Records Act is precise on the process which should have been followed:

"Each assassination record shall be publicly disclosed in full, and available in the Collection no later than the date that is 25 years after the date of enactment of this Act, unless the President certifies, as required by this Act, that (i) continued postponement is made necessary by an identifiable harm to the military defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement of fireign relations; and (ii) the identifiable harm is of such gravity that it outweighs the public interest in disclosure." (JFK Records Act, section 5(g)(2)(D)).

The JFK Act sets a high bar for continued withholding past 2017. But the requisite findings have not been asserted by the president on a case-by-case basis, as the law requires.

Deficiencies in Central Directory of Identification Aids

Background: The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) maintains a 6-part spreadsheet of 319,106 records here: https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/search. Until Oct 2, 2020 this was an online search system rather than a spreadsheet, where it contained the same set of records since 2008. It was then replaced by a 1-part spreadsheet which contained barely half of the 319,106 records (despite the name "jfk-assassination-collection-listing-final.xslx")! After complaints, this spreadsheet was replaced with the current 6-part spreadsheet on June 28, 2021.

See the MFF's JFK Database Explorer, which provides a browse, filter, and search interface to a copy of the data found in these spreadsheets.

NARA's "central directory of identification aids" is a critical resource to accessing JFK records. It is the means by which records may be located and requested for public viewing at the National Archives' facility in College Park, Maryland, where the records are housed. Therefore, errors and omissions in this directory are a huge impediment to public access to the records.

Entire agency collections missing from the central directory

The 319,106-entry spreadsheet that NARA mantains contains not a single entry for records of the Secret Service (prefix 154), National Security Agency (prefix 144), National Security Council (145), or US Army Investigative Records Repository (prefix 194). 360 records from these agencies were actually published online since 2017 by the National Archives, but none of those or other records of this agencies are to be found in the central directory. Even more such records which are not to be found in the central directory are known to exist. The record numbers for such missing entries are set forth

here: MFF_JfkRecordsReleasedOnlineButNotInCentralDirectory.csv.

Other records missing from the central directory

There are many other record entries ("identification aids") missing from the 6-part spreadsheet ("central directory"). In just the records released online in 7 batches in 2017, 2018, and 2021, hundreds of records put online by NARA did not have a matching entry in the directory. This despite the fact that each document put online featured a header "Record Identification Form" page, containing the metadata which should be in the central directory.

Entries are also missing for 472 FBI records (prefix 124-), 250 John F. Kennedy Library records (prefix 176-), and 1 Defense Intelligence Agency record (prefix 111-). The record numbers for these missing records are also included here: 

MFF_JfkRecordsReleasedOnlineButNotInCentralDirectory.csv. 

Note: This list is by no means complete. The public has no practical way of knowing how many more records exist which do not have a corresponding entry in the central directory.

Redactions in the central directory

Thousands of JFK records still feature redactions, but redactions also exist in the entries of the central directory. The MFF wrote a script to extract records featuring fields containing certain values such as [DELETED] or other such variations, and more than 5,000 entries were found to have one or more redacted values. This imperfect listing of redacted entries is located here: 

MFF_JfkRedactedEntriesInCentralDirectory.csv. 

Further, a 2022 update of NARA's 6-part spreadsheet was found to have many entries which featured new redactions not present in the earlier version of the spreadsheet.

Missing Records

Background: In 2016, in response to a FOIA request (see foiaNGC16-095_2016_3603.pdf), NARA released a list of 3,603 records which were "withheld in full" but intended for full or partial release in 2017. These are documents which were not public in any form prior to 2017, as opposed to other records which had been previously released with redactions.

This list was later amended to 3,598 records, and then later still amended (mistakenly) to 3,571.

When documents were released in several batches in 2017 and 2018, MFF conducted an analysis of what was released vs. the list provided by NARA in response to the FOIA. Discrepancies were noted, and email exchanges with NARA clarified some discrepancies but left others unresolved. These are discussed below.

27 Department of Justice records left off the releases

In response to MFF inquiries regarding the change from 3,598 to 3,571 entries, NARA replied with a list of 27 DOJ records, saying the last listing page had been inadvertently removed, and this accounted for the discrepancy between the two lists (3,598 - 3,571 = 27). But despite this acknowledgment, these 27 records were never posted online along with the others being released, and their release status remains unclear. 9 of them are marked "section 11(a)" and thus potentially withheld under this section of the JFK Records Act, but the other 18 have no such marking. See MFF_JfkRecordsMissing27Doj.csv.

Records declared "open in full" which are not publicly available

In response to an inquiry from the MFF regarded other possibly missing records in the 2017 releases, the National Archives provided a spreadsheet containing 337 records marked "Released in Full prior to 2017 project," and Archives' staff provided assurances that these records were "determined to be open in full in the open Collection" and thus in no need of actual release in 2017. See the last 337 entries in the following: MFF_JfkRecords337ReleasedInFull_attachedToNaraEmail_2018-04-06.csv.

However, the MFF in 2019 checked up on a set of 41 records, 27 of which were in the list of 337 "previous released" documents noted above. The spot check was conducted on-site at NARA's College Park MD facility where the JFK Collection resides. The results concerning those 27 spot-checked records:

10 records were indeed available

3 records were available on a 1986-era microfilm (and thus featuring redactions)

13 could not be located

1 contained a "withholding" notice in the box rather than the actual document

Thus more than half of the records spot-checked were not available in any form, and only 10/27 - barely more than a third - were indeed available "in full." The status of the other 310 which were not checked is unknown.

Other unaccounted-for records

MFF has conducted an analysis to see what records from the 2016 FOIA list remain unreleased or unaccounted for. Starting with the 3,598 list of records, MFF removed from that list the following:

2494 records released in 8 batches in 2017, 2018, and 2021

18 DOJ records among the 27 previously discussed (9 are withheld under section 11 and otherwise accounted for here)

337 allegedly "open in full" records previously discussed

515 records marked as withheld under sections 10 or 11 of the JFK Records Act (generally IRS records and records under court seal); see this page at the National Archives: 

https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/withheld-in-full-list?_ga=2.16936121.1273303192.1663005297-1566491686.1613050539

178 records from the CIA's "201 file" on Oswald, which were not put online due to NARA's determination that they were duplicates of already-available records

10 Rockefeller Commission audio records which NARA reported could not be located

1 used typewriter ribbon (record #180-10142-10194) not put online because it is a physical artifact

33 documents where NARA notes "corresponding document has not yet been found in the Collection"; see NARA page listing 79 of these, only 33 of which are in the list of 3,598 withheld-in-full:

  https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/rif-numbers

What remains are 12 unaccounted-for records, listed here: 

MFF_JfkRecordsFrom2016Foia2016UnaccountedFor.csv. Their status is unknown.

Unjustified Redactions

Here are some examples of documents for which continued withholding seems excessive:

a. Memorandum to JFK about Reorganizing the CIA after the Bay of Pigs - A June 30, 1961 memoramdum from Arthur Schlesinger Jr. to President Kennedy about reorganizing the CIA after the Bay of Pigs, NARA Record Number: 176-10030-10422. See pages 9-10 for a page-and-a-half of whiteouts; note that this document is also missing from NARA's central directory.

b. Personnel file of senior counterintelligence officer Birch D. O'Neal who controlled CIA's Lee Oswald file from November 1959 to November 1963 (NARA Record Number 104-10291-10014).

c. Personnel file of senior operations officer David Atlee Phillips who told conflicting stories about Oswald's Sept. 1963 visit to Mexico City (NARA Record Number 104-10194-10026).

d. Personnel file of senior Dallas-based operations officer James Walton Moore who was informed about Oswald's return to Texas in 1962 who allegedly told a CIA asset Oswald was "harmless"(NARA Record Number 1993.07.22.17:13:03:960590).

e. February 1962 Defense Department Northwoods plan for a "false-flag" operation to stage a violent incident in U.S. and blame it on Cuba (NARA Record Number: 202-10002-10104).

f. File on CIA-funded group DRE/AMSPELL which publicized Oswald's pro-Castro activities in August 1963 and sought to blame JFK's assassination on Cuba in November 1963 (NARA Record Number 104-10170-10121).

g. June 25, 1975 testimony of William K. Harvey (CIA chief in charge of the ZR-RIFLE Castro assassination program) to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Activities (NARA Record Number 157-10002-10106).

h. A JFK document removed from the security file of Watergate burglar E. Howard Hunt (NARA Record Number 1993.07.24.08:37:38:680310).

i. Identity of "the infiltration team with mission of assassinating" Cuban Premier Fidel Castro, listed in attachment to September 10, 1964 report on "activities of AMWORLD." (NARA Record Number: 104-10308-10086).

Summary

The list of issues above is not meant to be comprehensive. For example, some documents released in 2018 featured more redactions than the same record with the same record number when released earlier in 2017. This may be a left-hand vs. right-hand issue among the declassifiers, but it doesn't engender confidence in the process.

There are bound to be anomalies and inconsistencies with such a large body of records. However, the problems noted above - regarding problems both with the releases and with the central directory meant to account for them - are serious, greatly impede understanding and accountability, and remain unresolved as of October 2022.

On December 15, 2021, 1,491 additional JFK records were released with fewer redactions than previously - this is the most recent batch of declassified documents from the JFK Collection. But President Biden, as his predecessor had done, kicked the can down the road on many more. More than 16,000 records remain with status REDACT by our best reckoning (see jfkdb.php?field=all&filters=currentstatus:REDACT). These records are currently being reviewed by the National Archives and government agencies, particularly the CIA, which is the source of the majority of the remaining documents. More than 11,000 of the still-redacted records are from this one agency (see jfkdb.php?field=all&filters=recno3:104|currentstatus:REDACT).

President Biden has the ultimate decision-making authority on further JFK releases, and has set a deadline of December 15 of this year for the current review. Will he elect to follow the JFK Records Act's procedures for document-by-document decision-making. Or will he continue the blanket continuation of withholding we have seen since 2017, which Congress originally set as the deadline for full declassification?

Please direct any inquiries to info@maryferrell.org.

News Stories About the Lawsuit

Oct 19, 2022. 'What are they hiding?': Group sues Biden and National Archives over JFK assassination records, by Marc Cuputo, NBC News.

Oct 19, 2022. Biden and National Archives sued over JFK assassination records, by Emily Mae Czachor, CBS News.

Oct 19, 2022. Is Biden blocking the JFK assassination files over hidden bombshells?, by Andrew Feinberg, the Independent.

Oct 19, 2022. Biden, National Archives sued over unreleased JFK assassination records, by Herb Scribner, Axios.

CAPA Dallas Conference Nov. 2022

 GREETINGS FROM CAPA!

Join us for the most important annual conference on the JFK assassination!
 
CAPA is looking forward to seeing everyone at our in-person conference this year. The conference will be held in Dallas at the Crowne Plaza Hotel near Dealey Plaza. The dates for the conference are November 19 and 20. There will be a banquet on Saturday night.
 
Be sure to scroll all the way to the end of the email for an October treat!
 
Here are the exciting events on our program (all presentations include a Q&A session at the end). (New or important info in red.)
 
Be among the first to see the new four-hour Oliver Stone documentary  “JFK – Destiny Betrayed.”
 
Jim Di’Eugenio will be speaking about new and additional information that did not make it into the “JFK – Destiny Betrayed” film.
 
Jeff Meek, who writes a monthly JFK assassination column for the Arkansas Hot Springs Village Voice newspaper, will speak about new evidence he found which Jim Di’Eugenio is including in his upcoming book.
 
The title of the talk by Josiah Thompson and Gary Aguilar will be: "A Granular Account of the Last Second of the Assassination"
 
We will be showing the 45-minute trailer from the film by Libby Handros “Four Who Died Trying” about JFK,  RFK, MLK and Malcom X.
 
David Montague, member of the Assassination Records Review Board, will speak about how he followed up on leads, and the difference in technology between then and now.
 
Russell Kent, who spoke last year about the HSCA Forensic Pathology Panel, will be speaking about the Clark Panel.
 
Paul Bleau will be speaking about how the JFK assassination is covered in the history books at schools in North America and will also chair a panel on this subject with David Denton, Andrew Kiel, and David Montague.
 
Steve Jaffe, the last living investigator for New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison, will be speaking by Zoom about some of his experiences as a forensic photo analyst and his work with France's Secret Service director, Andre Ducret and Interpol after he secretly reached out to French President Charles de Gaulle. He met briefly with de Gaulle in Paris who offered assistance. Jaffe succeeded in securing an early generation copy of the Zapruder film. Jaffe was also one of the producers, with Edward Lewis, of the 1973 film "Executive Action," and various documentaries including "A Rush to Judgment," which he produced with Mark Lane. He was in the process of co-authoring a book with James Wagenvoord, former LIFE Magazine editor and business director, who passed away in late July.
 
David Mantik will be speaking about what happened to JFK’s limousine after the assassination.
 
John Newman will be speaking by Zoom on Volume IV of his series on the Kennedy Presidency: Uncovering Popov's Mole. This volume examines, to an unprecedented extent, the internal and external dynamics of the decades-long search, within CIA, for a Soviet mole who was never exposed or identified. It presents an entirely new perspective on the authority and objectives of the mole (within the CIA's Office of Security), and a dramatic new context in relation to understanding Lee Harvey Oswald's 1959 defection to the USSR.
 
Max Good will be showing his documentary “The Assassination and Mrs. Paine.”
 
Monika Wiesak will be speaking about her book “America’s Last President - What the World Lost When it Lost John F. Kennedy.” Her book is highly recommended by Jim Di’Eugenio.
 
We will be presenting a short clip of former CAPA Board Advisor and speaker at our conferences, James Wagenvoord, who passed away on July 26th. Please see our tribute to James on the home page of the CAPA website written by Steve Jaffe, who will be giving personal remarks during his talk on collaborating with Wagenvoord on a book. James spoke several times at our conferences and was a valued friend and advisor to CAPA whom we will miss very much.
 
Dr. Wecht, Chairman of CAPA and author of numerous books including his latest – “The JFK Assassination Dissected” co-authored with Dawna Kaufmann -  will be the speaker at the banquet. CAPA has a surprise for fans of Dr. Wecht, a look back in time that will delight and inspire you - and maybe even bring down the house!
 
We are again planning a special day for high school, college, and law school students. This will be held online, as it was the last two years, on Friday, November 18.  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. David Denton will introduce the program and answer questions from the students. David Montague will lead the second part of the student conference wherein the students become “federal investigators” and search for answers (see details here).
 
Here is the program schedule:
CAPA 2022 program
Central Time
Saturday 11-19-22
Central time
9:00 – 9:05                       Opening remarks Dr. Wecht
9:05 – 10:00                     Gary Aguilar/Josiah Thompson
10:00 – 12:00                   First half of Oliver Stone documentary
12:00 – 1:00                     Lunch
1:00 – 2:00                       Jim Di’Eugenio
2:00 – 2:30                       Jeff Meek
2:30 – 4:00                       Paul Bleau/panel
4:00 – 4:10                       James Wagenvoord clip
4:10 – 5:30                       Stephen Jaffe
5:30 – 6:00                       Break
6:00 – 7:00                       Mixer
7:00 – 10:00                     Banquet

Sunday 11-20-22
Central time
9:00 – 10:00                     Russel Kent
10:00 – 11:00                   David Montague            
11:00 – 12:00                   John Newman
12:00 – 1:00                     Lunch
1:00 – 2:00                       David Mantik 
2:00 – 4:00                       Second half Oliver Stone documentary
4:00 – 4:15                       Break
4:15 – 5:30                       Libby Handros “Four Who Died Trying” trailer
5:30 – 6:30                       Dinner 
6:30 – 8:15                       Max Good film re: Mrs. Paine
8:15 – 9:15                       Monika Wiesak
             
FOR CAPA MEMBERS ONLY
We are having a mixer with a cash bar (6-7 pm) just before the banquet on Saturday night which begins at 7 pm. The mixer will be for CAPA members only and will provide an opportunity to meet and talk to the conference speakers, including Dr. Wecht.
 
To register for the conference and banquet, please click this link: https://capa-us.org/2022-capa-jfk-conference/
 
The room rate at the Crowne Plaza Hotel, discounted for our group, is as follows: deluxe renovated guest rooms with one king or two queen beds, luxury bedding, mini fridge, one cup coffee maker, multiple USB ports, and hairdryer for $139.00 per night plus tax.  Use the link below to make your reservation. Note that the hotel is offering a discounted rate before and after the conference for people who want to come early and/or stay late. There is discounted self-parking in the attached garage - normally $18 discounted to $10 per night for our group.

Booking Website:
https://book.passkey.com/e/50309916 click on Attendee

CAPA video ad for our conference: https://videopower.cdn.spotlightr.com/watch/MTMwNDk2Nw==


Thank you all for your support of CAPA and its  worthy cause - Pursue the release of withheld records -  Find the Truth -  Seek Justice.

THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS AND THE ASSASSINATION - 60 YEARS ON

THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS AND THE ASSASSINATION – 60 YEARS ON

By William Kelly billkelly3@gmail.com

Because of Russian dictator Vladamer Putin’s nuclear saber rattling, according to President Biden and former CIA Moscow Station Chief Rolff Larssen, we are closer to nuclear catastrophe now than we have been since the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962.

Most people today weren’t even alive at the time but those who were remember the anxiety potential nuclear annihilation caused, and as I was only ten years old at the time, I remember it well, and it’s a subject worth revisiting.

After the Bay of Pigs fiasco in April, 1961, the Cuban Missile Crisis was second most significant event that put the young president at odds with his military commanders.

There were a number of reports from inside Cuba of missiles being moved around, but those reports were used by the president’s opposition and enemies such as Senator Keating and Clare Booth Luce, who wrote about i the Soviet missiles in Cuba in Life Magazine. JFK wanted more accurate and irrefutable evidence of the Soviet missiles in Cuba, and he got it from Art Lundahl, an important but little known character in a number of aspects of the assassination story.

Lundahl was the head of the US Navy Photo Interpretation Lab, but after his analysis of films of UFOs, the CIA had him moved over to their camp, and he was given rooms above a car dealership in a bad section of Washington D.C., which became known as the National Photo Interpretation Center or NPIC

After U2 planes overflew Cuba, the film was flown to the top secret Hawkeye Works run by Kodak in upstate New York, where it was processed before being sent to the NPIC labs in DC, where Lundal and his staff of technicians determined that there were indeed medium range Soviet Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMS) in Cuba.

Some of these photos were then sent to the Army Map Service client in Dallas, Texas, the Jaggers/Chiles/Stoval graphic arts firm, where Lee Harvey Oswald was working at the time. While the head of J/C/S testified that Oswald did not have access to the top secret work they did for the Army Map Service, another employee Dennis Offstein, said that he and Oswald worked on the U2 photos from the USSR, and Oswald mentioned that he was familiar with some of those places because he had lived in Russia. Offstein had also served in the military and attended the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California, where a Warren Commission attorney said Oswald was once affiliated, though those records have disappeared. 

In addition, on the page of Oswald's notebook where he writes down the name "Chaggers/Chiles/Stoval," he also writes the word "microdot," an espionage technique that takes a photo of a document and reduces it to the size of a period, a photo usually taken with a Minox spy camera made especially for that purpose, a camera that Oswald, Michael Paine and Jack Ruby possessed. 

It has also been alleged that it was while working at Jaggers/Chiles/Stoval that Oswald produced the fake Hidel ID card, and he was working there when the rifle and pistol, ordered under the Hidel name, arrived at the Post Office though Hidel was not a name that was approved to receive mail or packages at that Post Office box. No one who worked at the Post Office recalled handing Oswald the rifle and pistol over the counter, and Oswald's daily time sheet shows that on the day they were picked up, though there's no receipt, Oswald worked from before the Post Office opened until after it closed, and one of the clients whose job he worked on was the Sam Bloom Advertising agency, who handled the logistics and promotion of the Dallas motorcade and later for Jack Ruby's trial. 

So if Oswald and Offstein worked on the U2 photos of the USSR, they also most likely worked on the U2 photos from Cuba that the J/C/S technicians blew up into poster size and placed arrows and captions on them to portray the missiles.

Lundahl then took these posters prepared at Chaggers/Chiles/Stoval to the White House where he briefed the President, saying that he was as positive as a photo analysist can be that they were medium range Soviet missiles. Lundahl became known as “The Briefer,” and Kennedy sent him and the posters overseas to brief French President Charles deGaulle and former OSS Colonel David Bruce, Kennedy’s ambassador to the Court of St. James in England, to brief them as well and garner support for whatever he decided to do.

UN Ambassador Adlai Stevenson was then given the U2 photo posters and he presented them to the General Assembly after the Soviet ambassador denied the missiles were there.

When the US military men, led by the Joint Chiefs of Staff learned of the missile in Cuba, they unanimously advised the president to bomb the missiles and Cuba and then invade the island to ensure they eliminated the threat. As accurately portrayed in the White House tapes and transcripts of the day and the film 13 Days, staring Kevin Costner as JFK’s aide, the military, led by Air Force Chief of Staff General Curtis LeMay, were adamant about a military solution, but JFK held out for a negotiated one.  

Although only the president has the authority to declare war, a regional military commander on his own, raised the DEFCON level to 2, one step away from war, and when the president learned of this he admonished that commander saying that he sent a message to the Soviets, a message he didn't want sent. 

Another significant event that took place behind the scenes during the Cuban Missile Crisis was when William Harvey, head of the CIA's Task Force W Cuban desk, ordered the JMWAVE station to send in a number of commando teams to infiltrate Cuba. When Attorney General RFK learned of this, he immediately had those teams recalled, and fired Harvey, who was reposted to the CIA desk in Rome, Italy, though he maintained his role as case officer for John Rosselli. 

Oval Office tapes recorded General LeMay remarking to JFK that “you are in pretty bad fix, Mr. President,” to which JFK responded, “If you haven’t noticed, you are in it with me!”

LeMay also said that a negotiated solution would be “Munich all over again,” referring to the support JFK’s father US Ambassador to England gave Nevell Chamberlain who succumbed to Hitler in Munich allowing the Nazi invasion of Poland and the start of World War II. Chamberlain’s use of the umbrella also sparked the Umbrella Man at Dealey Plaza to protest JFK’s appeasement to communists, the last thing he probably saw before having his brains blown out.

When JFK left the Oval Office he kept the recording tape running that captured LeMay saying, “We’re going to have to do something about those God damned Kennedys,” while JFK said to his brother “And we call ourselves human beings.”

The military were caught with their pants down because they had all of their radars facing north, to detect launches of ballistic missiles, since they knew the Soviets would shoot them over the North Pole. Such missiles, even long range ones could hit Washington D.C., New York, Chicago and San Francisco, but not the southern states, so that’s why the major defense contractors – Bell Helicopter, General Dynamics, Collins Radio, et al., were told to set up their factories in Texas.

Now however, they were threatened by the missiles in Cuba that if launched, could only be detected by one radar, in Mt. Laurel, New Jersey, that many people remember as a giant golf ball off the Turnpike. So the military sent a mobile radar unit to Louisiana aimed at Cuba to warn of any missile launches. These two radars operated under the code name Falling Leaves.

During the heat of the crisis, JFK met with his national security advisors, but one morning, before the meeting could begin, Caroline Kennedy approached her father. At the urging of her mother she had memorized one of JFK's favorite poems, Rendezvous With Death, and as recalled by James Douglas in his book, "Why JFK Was Killed and Why it Matters," she recited it to the president and the men who were going to decide the fate of humanity. It's author, Alan Seeger, who met his date with death at the Battle of Somme during World War I, was a nephew of peace activist and folk singer Pete Seeger. 

Unfortunately, the title of the poem was hijacked by Gus Russo and a German film maker who produced a certified black propaganda movie that blames the assassination on Fidel Castro, a still active disinformation campaign. 

During one such meeting RFK asked Secretary of Defense McNamara what alternatives there were to bombing and invasion, he meekly responded that when they war gamed that scenario, a blockade worked, so JFK ordered a blockade of Cuba so Russian ships taking Soviet missiles could no longer deliver them.

At the same time RFK began a backchannel talk with a Russian journalist he knew who had personal ties to Soviet Premier Khrushchev. They effectively ended the two week long crisis by assuring the Soviets that if they withdrew their missiles the US would never invade Cuba and would remove their ICBMs from Turkey.

When JFK permitted Seven Days in May film director John Frankenheimer to shoot scenes at the White House while he was away, JFK went sailing with his former PT109 shipmate and assistant Secretary of Navy Paul Fay. While sailing Fay asked JFK if he thought a military takeover of the government as portrayed in the movie was possible.  JFK responded that yes, it was possible if three requirements were met – one, there was an incident like the Bay of Pigs, two, if there was a similar incident, like the Cuban Missile Crisis, and three, if there was a third such incident, it could happen.

And there was, - the back channel negotiations JFK was conducting with Fidel Castro at the United Nations. These talks were made through TV reporter Lisa Howard, JFK’s former Choate Academy roommate William Attwood – who introduced JFK to Mary Pinchot (Meyer), and Cuban ambassador  Carlos LeChuga. When LaChuga wasCuban ambassador to Mexico he had an affair with Oswald’s contact at the Cuban embassy Silvia Duran.

Those supposedly secret negotiations, ongoing a the time of the assassination, became known to the Cubans through JFK’s Republican ambassador to Vietnam Henry Cabot Lodge, and that was enough to motivate them to kill the President. The anti-Castro Cuban snipers trained by the CIA at JMWAVE bases in Florida, had the mechanism to kill Castro, the motive and the opportunity was presented in a number motorcades in Philadelphia, Chicago, Tampa, Houston, Fort Worth and Dallas. 

After the successful settlement of the Cuban Missile Crisis, when things calmed down, JFK and RFK visited Art Lundal at his NPIC office and labs above the car dealership, and JFK arranged for NPIC to move into a vacant building on the grounds of the Navy Yard in Capitol Hill. 

That's where the Zapruder Film was taken on two occasions over the weekend of the assassination to make briefing boards. On one occasion it was said the film was brought in from Hawkeye Works, the top secret Kodak lab where U2 and satellite photos were processed. When this fact was related to the Assassinations Records Review Board (ARRB), the CIA censored it as even the name Hawkeye Works was still classified at the time. 

The second occasion the Zapruder film was taken to NPIC was supervised by Dino Brugioni, who wrote two books, one on Photo Fakery and another on NPIC's role in the Cuban Missile Crisis, "Eyeball to Eyeball." Brugioni also wrote the CIA memo relating that eight NPIC technicians participated in an operation called Pathfinder to kill Fidel Castro by shooting him in the head as he rode by in an open jeep on the way to the Dupont estate in Veradero, which he often did. 

Brugioni said that the briefing boards he made were used by Lundal to brief CIA director John McCone on the NPIC's analysis of the Zapruder film. Afterwards Lundal thanked the group who made the boards and said the briefing went okay, though there is no official record of it. Shortly thereafter however, Arthur Schlesinger wrote in his journal that when he asked RFK about the assassination, RFK replied that the CIA thought there were two gunman, probably based on Lundal's briefing. 

On the 20th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1982 a conference held in Cuba where it was revealed that there were four short range tactical nuclear missiles in Cuba. Had Cuba been bombed and invaded they would most certainly have been used and would have provoked World War III, with the bombs killing hundreds of millions of people.

Around the same time as that anniversary, the NPIC posters that had the arrows and captions on them, that Lundal used to brief the President, were placed on public display at the Washington National Airport. 

That November, as John Judge and I were waiting for a plane to take us to Dallas, we looked closely at the posters, and in the bottom corner, where an artist would sign his name to a painting, was the citation:  JAGGER/CHILES/STOVAL-Dallas

Links:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45077/i-have-a-rendezvous-with-death

https://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2017/04/jfks-rendezvous-with-death-on-prayer.html?m=0

Rendezvous At Dealey Plaza II | JFKCountercoup

https://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2009/12/u2-photos-of-cuba-oct-62.html

https://jfkfacts.org/jan-7-1963-under-u-s-government-eyes-oswald-goes-to-work/

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/putin-nuclear-war-threat-intelligence-matters/

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/18/upshot/when-jfk-secretly-reached-out-to-castro.html

TESTIMONY OF DENNIS HYMAN OFSTEIN

https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/10719-jaggars-chiles-stovall/