Thursday, May 4, 2023

Murdoch Axes Smith and Carlson over JFK?

 Murdoch Axes Smith and Carlson over JFK? 

Was Liz Smith fired over this? 

Shortly after Tucker Carlson did a series of shows on the assassination of President Kennedy, concluding that the CIA was behind the dirty deed, he was fired by his ultimate boss media mogul Rupert Murdoch.

That sparked a number of serious questions as to whether the two things were related.

Well, as Ian Fleming used to say, one time is happenstance, twice is a coincidence, but three times is enemy action.

And the coincidence is the case of New York Post gossip columnist Liz Smith, who was fired by Murdock in 2009 shortly after writing an article denouncing the Warren Commission Report as a “fairy-tale,” and promoting Lamar Waldron’s idea that the Carlos Marcello mob hijacked a CIA plan to kill Castro and redirected it to JFK in Dallas.

While it doesn’t rise to the level of “enemy action” yet, it is quite a coincidence and I’m sure that all of the beat reporters in Murdock’s extensive media empire have taken notice and will refrain from wandering too deep into the JFK assassination waters.

I have all three of Lamar Waldron’s books on the JFK assassination, and think highly of his work although we disagree on the Mafia’s contribution to the killing. While the plan to kill Castro was a CIA plan, it was not "hijacked" by the mob, but rather was an off-the-shelf plan “disapproved by higher authority” that was redirected to “higher authority” in Dallas.

Those anti-Castro Cuban Pathfinders who were paid by the CIA and trained to kill Castro, but were prevented from doing so by JFK, first at the Bay of Pigs, then during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and finally during the JFK-Castro back channel negotiations at the UN that were on-going at the time of the assassination. Those Cubans, expert and well practiced snipers, hated JFK as much as they hated Castro, so it didn’t matter who they were shooting at. It’s the chain of command where it gets murky and where the “switch” occurred and who ordered it.

Liz Smith must have known Waldron personally to provide such glowing praise about a book she could not have read, at least in full, as I did, so someone must have told her the contents

She begins with Carlos Marcello’s well worn “confession,” before diving into Waldron’s “Legacy of Secrecy,”

Smith writes, “By the time of JFK's murder, dozens of Marcello associates had infiltrated a CIA operation code-named AMWORLD, a project started by JFK himself. Writer Waldron revealed this back in 2005. This was the CIA's top-secret plan to cooperate with Cuba's army commander, Juan Almeida, to stage a coup against Fidel Castro on Dec. 1, 1963. That was 10 days after JFK's trip to Dallas.”

Although some of the Pathfinders and those involved with Rolando Cubella to murder JFK were also involved in the AMWORLD project, Juan Almeida was on a plane to the Congo on December 1, 1963 and was not in a position to pull off a coup in Cuba, even if he was one of the disenchanted Cuban military officers that Desmond FitzGerald had identified and told the Joint Chiefs of Staff about in the September 25, 1963 briefing, that Smith alludes to.

She writes, in parentheses: “(The CIA and the Joint Chiefs of Staff even referred to the World War II plot to kill Hitler as their role model for getting rid of Castro. You can see that story told by Tom Cruise in the new movie ‘Valkyrie.’).”

Since I had read all three of Waldron’s books on the assassination, and could not recall any such mention of the July 20, 1944 Valkyrie plot to kill Hitler, I had to do some digging, and found it mentioned by Gus Russo in a footnote in his book on the Kennedys and Castros Live By the Sword (thanks Gus) giving the RIF – Record Identification Form number – 202-1000101-10028 – that I found among the Mary Ferrell Foundation site (thanks Rex).

Now Gus is a leader among those who try to pin the tail for the Dealey Plaza operation on Castro's butt, the latest being former Church Com attorney James H. Johnson in Murder, Inc - The CIA Under John F. Kennedy (Potomac Books, 2019), all of which refer to LBJ's "we were running a Murder, Inc. in the Caribbean," and fail in the attempt to claim Castro retaliated for the CIA attempts on his life. But what we know occurred is that it was our own Murder, Inc. that redirected its rifles to JFK in Dallas. 

Russo says (on page 294) that, "....Joseph Califano of the Pentagon's Cuban Coordinating Committee, was being pressed by Des FitzGerald for all the Defense Department intel he could get on key Cuban military officers, scoping for a ''mole' within the regime. (52) FitzGerald was to about to brief the Joint Chiefs and, although Califano was excluded from the meeting on September 25, Des and the Agency were, according to memos later released, studying how German generals had plotted to kill Hitler, in order to develop a way to organize high-ranking Cuban officers to kill Castro" (53) 

(53) - "Califano citing: JCS Memo for the record, Walter Higgins; "Briefing by Mr. Desmond FitzGerald on CIA Cuban Operations and Planning,"{ JFK Collection, JCS Papers, J-3, #29, 202-10001-10028; NARA)"

And there, among the bullet points the CIA’s chief of Cuban operations Desmond FitzGerald spoke about in his briefing of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at a time when Air Force Chief of Staff General Curtis LeMay was acting chief while General Maxwell Taylor was on a special mission to Vietnam, is the key note on the CIA's "detailed study" of the Hitler plot. 

The memo was written by Colonel Walter Higgins, adjunct to General Victor “Brute” Krulak, then Special Assistant for Counter-Insurgency and Special Activities (SACSA), with offices in the Pentagon and White House. Krulak’s job was to give the CIA any special military assistance for covert actions, especially in Cuba and Vietnam.

Under Point 13. Higgins writes: “He (FitzGerald) commented that there was nothing new in the propaganda field. However, he felt that there had been great success in getting closer to 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.”

Then there’s the clincher: “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. (against Castro).”

I have been working on this line of inquiry for some time now, and consider the AMLASH – Dr. Rolando Cubella as the  major participant and not Waldron’s Almeida.

When Jim Lesar and the Assassination Archives and Research Center (AARC) filed a formal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for a copy of the CIA’s “detailed study” of the July 20, 1944 German military plot to kill Hitler (code named Valkyrie), the CIA said it had no records whatsoever in their files regarding that Hitler plot. When the AARC took that response to court, the CIA finally relented and acknowledged that they found one reference to the plot in a propaganda pamphlet that blamed the failure of the plot on communists.

As a good example of Peter Dale Scott’s “negative template” thesis, that holds that what is missing or being withheld is of more significance than what is released to the public, then the CIA’s “detailed study” of the Valkyrie plot to kill Hitler, to be used against Castro, certainly stands out.

That doesn’t prevent us from looking into the details of the Valkyrie Plot ourselves, and as Liz Smith points out, Tom Cruse’s movie “Valkyrie” certainly is a good introduction, as it details how the plot developed, was carried out and failed.

Another good source is Mary Bancroft’s “Autobiography of a Spy,” as Allen Dulles’ OSS assistant and paramour, she served as Dulles’ liaison to German military intelligence officer Hans B. Gisivious, a major player in the plot who Dulles and Bancroft assisted in escaping Berlin after the failure of the coup and thousands were being rounded up and executed. Some conspiracy. 

Since there is no written record on the Valkyrie plot in the CIA files, if we take their word for it, then they probably just consulted with the living survivors of the plot - Gisivious, Bancroft and Dulles were all right there to inform them. 

In the end, it is quite clear that both Tucker Carlson and Liz Smith had reported on the conspiracy to kill President Kennedy shortly before Murdoch sacked them, and that any other Murdoch reporter will meet the same fate if they transgress the line that Murdock and other major media moguls have drawn in the sand against revealing the truth to the assassination of JFK, still a sore spot in our national security after more than half-century.

And I believe someone will, as when something happens twice, it usually happens a third time, and I am waiting for the other shoe to drop.

LINKS

Tucker Carlson on JFK:

Ruby and Oswald: https://youtu.be/PAiRmhXvJHs

CIA was involved: https://www.foxnews.com/video/6317311778112

What Source says: 

Tucker Carlson: Source says yes, the CIA was involved in JFK's assassination | Fox News Video


Liz Smith:

On Waldron and Valkyrie: http://jfkcountercoup2.blogspot.com/2012/08/liz-smith-column-on-valkyrie-plot.html?m=1

NYT Rise and Fall: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/28/nyregion/liz-smith-lions-of-new-york.html

 

Higgins Memo: https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=10246 - relPageId=5

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