More Disinformation and Black Propaganda - from the CIA

More Disinformation and Black Propaganda at Dealey Plaza – Castro on the Grassy Knoll

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Proof of the Plot and a Conspiracy - Disinformation and Black Propaganda Were Used 

By Bill Kelly – Billkelly3@gmail.com

The evidence and proof there was a conspiracy to kill President Kennedy in Dallas is contained in the disinformation and black propaganda campaigns to blame the murder on Fidel Castro of Cuba. It is what the CIA calls “an active measure” as these media campaigns continue today, as most recently exhibited by Bruce Held, in his continuing series “A Spys Guide to American History.”

https://bruceheld.substack.com/p/60-years-ago-today-the-plot-begins

In it, Held writes on – September 9, 2023 that, “Lee Harvey Oswald got the idea of assassinating President Kennedy 60 years ago today. Up until that day he was desperate to get to Cuba but he was well disposed toward the President. Indeed, he and his wife Marina had a photo of Kennedy alongside a photo of Fidel Castro on their mantel piece. That all changed on Monday morning, 9 September 1963, when Oswald read an interview of Castro which made the front page of the New Orleans Times Picayune as well as every other major newspaper in the US.”

Hold on right there, as Oswald told Michael Paine, “you have to read between the lines” to get the full story from blatent propaganda. First off, Oswald was very “well disposed toward the President,” in fact liked him a lot, and everyone who knew Oswald also knew that. It is also a false assumption that Oswald killed the President he liked so well, as there is a lot of information available that indicates he was not even on the sixth floor of the building at the time of the shooting and was, as he claimed to be, a patsy.

In addition, we do not know for a fact that Oswald even read the article in question, that was not on the front page of the New Orleans Times Picayune, but on page 7. We also know for a fact that the very frugal Oswald did not subscribe to his hometown newspaper, and did not buy it frequently, if at all, as fellow employees at the Texas School Book Depository said Oswald read discarded copies left around the lunchroom by others.

The news article written by Daniel Harker of the Associated Press (AP) of his three hour long interview with Castro at the Brazilian embassy two night previous – on September 7, 1963, is indeed an important piece of the JFK assassination puzzle, but not as it is deliberatly misinterpeted by those who propagate the “Castro did it” disinformation.

 Here we are using the classic definition of  “disinformation” – delibertly false information distributed by an intelligence source in support of a covert intelligence operation, so it is not only false, but is promoted by sources that can be traced to an intelligence agency or network.

The idea that Castro was behind the assassination of JFK is not only clearly classified as disinformation, but is also black propaganda – as defined by the CIA’s Paul Linebarger, who wrote the Army’s manual on Psychological Warfare and Propaganda during the Korean War. He continued to teach the concepts to CIA officers and agents as a professor of the John's Hopskins Center for International Studies. The term “disinformation” comes from the Soviet’s “Dizinformation” agency while “propaganda” stems from the Vatican’s department for the propagating the faith.

[For more on Disinformation at Dealey Plaza see:

[https://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2015/06/disinformation-at-dealey-plazq.html ]

Linebarger broke propaganda down into five different types, ranging from white – a press release,  to shades of grey and black – with black being the attribution of a covert intelligence action to the enemy, in this case the covert action being the assassination and the enemy being Castro.

As the first fake conspiracy theory to surface in the media in the immediate aftermath of the murder, what Peter Dale Scott calls the “Phase One Cover Story,” the idea that Castro had JFK killed was very distinct disinformation and black propaganda widely promoted by many – dozens of CIA officers, agents and their assets, including those in the media.

After Oswald was arrested, blamed for the murder of the President and a policeman and his basic background became widely known, District Attorney Henry Wade went to dinner at a fancy Dallas restaurnat and left it for his assistant DA William Alexander to write up the indictment of Oswald.

Thanks to Vincent Bugliosi (Reclaiming History), we know that at that time, Alexander was communicating with Phildadelphia Inquirer Washington DC editor Joseph Goulden, who was trying to get Aldexander to charge Oswald with killing the President to “further a communist conspiracy.” While Bugliosi doesn’t tell you, Goulden was then a media asset of CIA official David Atlee Phillips, and now oversees Phillips’ archives. So Phillips and Goulden were two of the earliest proponents of the assassination being the result of a “communist conspiracy.”

When LBJ learned of this, when he was back at his VP office in the Executive Office Building, he had his aide call the Attorney General of Texas – and had him track down DA Wade at his dinner table, and have him return to his office to confront Alexander and make sure he did not charge Oswald with “furthering a communist conspiracy." That led directly to PDS’s “Phase Two Cover Story,” the equally false but more palatable deranged lone nut scenario, that most Americans still do not believe.

When HSCA investigator Dan Hardway interviewed David Phillips he asked Phillips why a number of his associates and intelligence assets tried to blame Castro immediately after the assassination, and while Phillips acknowlded knowing them, he didn’t know why they tried to blame Castro.

But that Oswald was the shooter in the window must be accepted as a principle for the “Castro did it” aspect to be even considered, so both cover stories are still in play, at least as far as Bruce Held and company are concerned.

The fact that this very clear and distinct disinformation and black propaganda effort of the assassination being the result of a Cuban Communist Conspiracyy continues today, even after being proven false. That makes it not only an “active measure” but one that is current and not ancient history, as Bruce Held and the CIA would have us believe.

It would take quite a long time to run down all of those who promote this discredited conspiracy theory, but some deserve at least a little attention. I put them in two categories – the self acknowledged CIA agents and those without clear intelligence connections but who propagate this theory.

Besides Bruce Held, who I presume we will be hearing more from as he runs down his “Sixty Years Ago Today” the CIA’s Mockingbird taught the orchestra to play, there’s a number of others. One is Brian Latel, who wrote a book on a former Cuban radio technician who manned the Cuban-Russian radio listening post. When he defected he claimed that Castro himself instructed him to listen to the radio broadcasts from Texas when the President was there, that to Latel is proof that Castro knew the assassination would take place. Well to any reasonable, rational person, that would tell them Castro knew the President would be in Texas, not a state secret, and not that he would be assassinated.

[For more on Latell - https://jfkfacts.org/former-cia-analyst-brian-latell-cuban-intelligence-officers-were-complicit-in-kennedys-death/  /   https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/16059536  /        https://www.csmonitor.com/Books/chapter-and-verse/2012/0319/JFK-assassination-Did-Castro-know-before-it-happened ]

Then there’s Bob Baer, the CIA agent and his LAPD nodding sidekick who apparently had unlimited funding for his TV series JFK Declassified: Tracking Oswald.

 [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JFK_Declassified:_Tracking_Oswald /  https://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2017/05/jfk-declassified-episode-2-more-dis.html ]

Baer traveled to Minsk and Mexico City to try to prove that Oswald was a Communist agent secretly run by the KGB and Castro. His only proof that Oswald was controlled by Castro agents is the fact that he attended a bull fight in Mexico City where he could have secretly met Cuban agents among the tens of thousands of spectators. The only proof Oswald actually attended a bullfight is a postcard he ostensibly brought back from Mexico found among his effects after the assassination. Some proof.

Besides the admitted CIA agents, I hate to write "former CIA agents" because that would be an oxymoron, - David Atlee Phillips, Bruce Held, Brian Latel and Bob Baer, there’s a number of others who chime in the Mockingbird choris without direct ties to the agency – most notably Gus Russo, Phil Shenon and James Johnson.

I knew Russo very well when we shared lunchs together while lobbying for the JFK Act in Washington, and he came across as a truly independent researchers like myself, until, as John Judge told me, Russo was seen having lunch with some high level CIA officials. He then changed his tune to the Castro did it theme, got a book contract for “Brothers In Arms” (  https://jfkfacts.org/the-problem-with-politicos-jfk-conspiracy-theory/  ), and then another book on the Chicago mobsters.

Former New York Times reporter Phil Shenon went on the Castro did it trail at the request of a former Warren Commission lawyer who he refuses to identify (but is probably Arlen Spector or Sam Stern), and wrote a book on his campaign – “A Cruel and Shocking Act.” In it Shenon tries to make the claim that while in Mexico City Oswald attended a”Twist Party” with Syliva Duran, members from the Cuban embassy and two American “Gringos,” one a famous actor who Duran refused to identify.

[ For the CIA’s review of Shenon’s book https://www.cia.gov/static/Review-Cruel-and-Shocking.pdf  ]

Well I identified them from CIA phone intercepts as actor Richard Beymer (West Side Story/ The Longest Day) and former NYC bar owner and later Catholic priest Bradley Pierce, who told me that they were in Mexico at the time of the assassination and not when Oswald was there.

[ My take on the Twist Party:  https://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2015/04/a-cruel-and-shocking-twist.html ]

Then there’s James Johnson, a former Church Committee lawyer who recently wrote “Murder, Inc.” that was published during the Covid crisis so it didn’t get much publicity, and he zeros right in on the CIA plots to kill Castro and what LBJ called “Murder, Inc. in the Caribbean,” that WE were running, not Castro. But instead of focusing on the JMWAVE based mechanisms our CIA set up to kill Castro, Johnson says that the obvious question is whether Castro retaliated and had JFK killed. No, the obvious question is whether Our mechanisms set up to kill Castro were redirected to JFK in Dallas, but Johnson doesn’t bother to go there.

As Jefferson Morley says, Johnson is a different type of fish than self acknowledged CIA agents Phillips, Latel, Baer and Held. But like Russo and Shennon, he still propagates the false illusion of Castro’s complicity, when we know as an established fact that Castro had nothing to do with the Dealey Plaza operation. That is other than to be a victim, like Oswald, of the disinformationa and black propaganda campaign to take the blame for the conspiracy. And there certainly was a conspiracy, one still going on.

How do we know Castro was not behind the Daley Plaza operation – the conspiracy? Well for one we have the reports of the late Jean Daniel, a French reporter who was with Castro at the time of the assassination and observed his immediate reaction – shock and saying “This is very bad.” Daniel, as he reported in The New Republic, had spent time with President Kennedy earlier and JFK gave Daniel a message for Castro, one of possible reconcellation, which coincided with the back channel negotiations between Castro and JFK that were then ongoing at the UN.

In addition, just as the Cuba-Soviet lisenting post monitored American radio communications, the National Security Agency (NSA) monitored all foreign broadcasts, tapped telephones and installed electronic devices (bugs) in all communist embassies abroad. They got the immediate reactions of the Communist officials of the news of the assassination and knew that Castro was not involved.

A representatvie of the Warren Commission, as well as members of the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) personally met with and interviewed Castro and came away with the conviction that he had nothing to do with the murder of the President.

So the idea Castro was behind the assassination conspiracy is clearly  disinformation and black propaganda and were used as part of the assassination operation from its beginnings and today is proof that whatever you believe occurred at Dealey Plaza, it was a covert intelligence operation and thus a conspiracy. 

And now we have Bruce Held’s 60 Years Ago Today – Oct. 16 – Oswald starts work at the TSBD, that is also full of disinformation and propaganda, so it looks like I will have to just follow this guy around and correct him as he goes along.

[ https://bruceheld.substack.com/p/60-years-ago-today-oswald-starts ]

What Bruce Held quotes from Daniel Harker’s September 7-9^th 1963 interview with Castro really is a significant assassination record, and deserves a much closer review than what Bruce Held gives it, the subject of my next article.

More to come – Stay Tuned.