Memo to (ARRB Chairman) Judge J. Tunheim from T. J. Gunn (Ex. Dir. ARRB)
March 4, 1996
Subject: Lawrence Schiller
Schiller was (Norman) Mailer's assistant on the Oswald book. I spoke with him today following his return from Europe.
Although he was formally pleasant, he said that he had thought "long and hard" about whether to make a copy of the Oswald-KGB file available to us.
(David raised the issue with him several months ago.)
He decided not to.
He said he had reasons for not making them available. I asked him whether he could explain those reasons or advise us on anything that we could do to talk to others.
He said, "no, you just need to respect my reasons."
He also said that head the only copy - clearly implying that Mailer does not have a copy, although Mailer's name did not come up.
Subpoena?
KELLY NOTES: Apparently they did not bother to subpoena the KGB files on Oswald he and Mailer had obtained from the Soviets when they visited, or that would have been mentioned in the ARRB Final Report. They say Schiller agreed to release them at a later date, but that apparently has not happened.
John Judge has a file on Schiller and considers him the scum of the earth.
D. Pursuit ofRecords from Foreign Governments
Assassinationrecords and additional records and information may be located at, or under thecontrol of...Foreign governments.2
In an effort to compile a more complete record of the assassination, the Review Board focused considerable attention on an effort to obtain copies of records contained inthe files of foreign governments. The JFK Act states that it is the "sense of Congress" that the Department of State should take steps to obtain suchrecords which have been the object of much interest since the assassination. In particular, the Board focused much of its efforts on the KGB records thought tobe maintained both in Russia and in Belarus, and on Cuban and Mexican government records. Congress anticipated, and indeed specifically provided in the JFK Act, that the Department of State "should contact" the Russian government and "seek the disclosure of all records of the former Soviet Union" relating to the assassination.3 Furthermore, the Department of State was required to "cooperate in full with the Review Board" in seeking disclosure of relevant records.4 While the Department of State occasionally helped facilitate contacts with foreign counterparts and individual State Department employees provided helpful assistance and advice, overall the Department of State was more of a hindrance than a help to the Review Board. The Board certainly expected much more help than it received from a Department that obviously did not consider pursuit of foreign records about the Kennedy assassination to be a priority. Letters of request to the Department from the Board went unanswered for long periods oftime, cables that contained communications from foreign sources or from United States Embassy personnel to the Board sat for months on the desks of State Department employees without being transmitted to the Board, and important opportunities were missed because the Department did not believe the issue was important enough to raise. The Review Board has identified significant records,but does not believe that these collections will be obtained in full until theDepartment of State determines that such an effort is an important priority.
1. Russia
The Review Board believes that the records of the former KGB exist in Moscow that (1) reflect surveillance of Lee Harvey Oswald and Marina Oswald during 1959 1962, and that (2) reflect the Soviet investigation into the circumstances of the Kennedy assassination. The United States Embassy made requests for these records and a Review Board delegation later visited Moscow and met with representatives of three different archives where it was believed that records existed. The Board received a number of individual records which have been released in the JFK Collection but was unsuccessful in obtaining permission to review or copy the larger sets of files which exist in Moscow. The Board received a significant boost to its efforts when Vice President Gore asked Russian Prime Minister Chernomyrd in March 1998 to release the files. Unfortunately, the National Security Council declined to raise the request in September 1998 during the Clinton-Yeltsin summit meeting. Additional approaches to the Russians continue, but the Review Board strongly recommends that the United States government in general, and the State Department in particular, continue to pursue the release of these important KGB records.
2. Belarus
With the assistance of the United States Embassy in Minsk, Chairman Tunheim, Board Member Hall and Executive Director Marwell in November 1996 reviewed the extensive KGB surveillance file kept in Minsk by the Belarusian KGB.The file details over two years of extensive surveillance and analysis by theKGB of Lee Harvey Oswald during the time that he resided in the Belarusian capital. Some of these records were utilized by Norman Mailer in his bookOswald's Tale. The Board was unable to obtain a copy of the file, in part dueto the deteriorating relationship between the United States and Belarus in 1997 98. Mailer's collaborator in Oswald's Tale, Lawrence Schiller, agreed, in response to the Board's request, to donate copies of documents from the Minsk files, but the records will not be released in the JFK Collection until a later date. Additional efforts are still underway to obtain the files which are unquestionably of strong historical interest. Again, the Board strongly recommends that all possible efforts be made to obtain for the American people this important record of the activities of accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald during the years prior to the assassination.
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Charles W. Thomas in Mexico City
Oswald and the CIA, by John Newman (Carroll & Graff, 1995/Skyhorse, 2008) p. 283:
Charles Thomas’s first discussion with Elena Garro de Pas about Oswald occurred on December 10, 1965, more than two years after the assassination. Charles Thomas, a career Foreign Service officer, was the political officer at the American Embassy at the time. There was something odd about him which we will return to at the end of this chapter. He wrote a memorandum about his conversation with Elena that, according to the Lopez Report, had “more details” than the story as told to Cobb more than a year earlier. Elena repeated the story of the twist party, but according to Thomas’ memo, one of the new “details” was Elena’s charge that Silvia Duran “was Oswald’s mistress while he was there.” 92. According to the Lopez Report, this Thomas memo was also filed in the Oswald chronological file Wx-7241:
A note by this entry in Wx-7241 says, “How did Elena Garro know about Silvia being the mistress of Oswald? This is 1965.” The Mexico City Station did not hear about the Oswald-Duran “affair” until July 1967 when a CIA asset [redacted] reported it. 93
This almost certainly indicates that the October 5 Cobb report did not contain the story of the Oswald-Duran affair. It would also mean that Charles Thomas did not pass this information to the CIA station in Mexico City when he learned it in 1965. However, the Lopez Report also notes that Thomas circulated his memorandum in the embassy and the CIA’s Mexico City station.
Clearly, these claims cannot all be true: If the CIA “asset” did not bring the story to the station’s attention until 1967, Charles Thomas could not have circulated the story in 1965. this issue is resolved by Win Scott’s marginalia on the Thomas memo:
The COS wrote a note on the memo: “What an imagination she [Elena] has?! Should we send her to Headquarters? The Officer replied, on the memo, “Suggest sending. There have been stories around town about this and Thomas is not the only person she has talked to….If memory serves me, didn’t [redacted] refer to Oswald and the local leftists and Cubans in one of her Squibs?” 94
The name behind the redaction is probably Cobb. The CIA station cabled the information in Thomas’s memo to CIA headquarters, and Win Scott wrote on the cable, “Please as Charles Thomas if he’ll ‘follow up.’ Get questions from Ann G[oodpasture]. Please let’s discuss. Thanks.” Scott called a meeting with Thomas and asked him “to get a more detailed account of Ms. Garro’s story.”
Thomas obliged, and met again with Garro on December 25, 1965, after which he wrote a new memo about the Garro allegations. This time Elena’s story about the twist party was “much more detailed,” and she explained that she had earlier held back part of her story because “the Embassy officers did not give much credence to anything she and Elenita said.” According to Thomas’ December 25, 1965 memo,
Elena stated that it was “common knowledge” that Silvia had been Oswald’s mistress. When asked who could verify the allegation, she could only remember one person who had told her this. Elena claimed that person was Victor Rica Galan, a “pro-Castro journalist.”
Clearly, Elena wasn’t holding back any longer. Thomas gave his memo to the CIA station “to aid in its investigation” of the assassination. On the first page of the memo Scott wrote: “Shouldn’t we send to Headquarters?” Someone responded: “Of course.” The Mexico City station did send a cable to headquarters on December 12, 1965, reporting that it was “following up” the story and would send the results in another cable.
On December 27, 1965, the embassy legal attaché, Nathan Ferris, wrote a memo to the ambassador reporting the results of his interviews on November 17 and 24 with Elena and her daughter. According to Ferris, Elena told substantially the same story as she had to Thomas. The Ferris memo further stated this:
…..Inquiries conducted at that time (November 1964), however, failed to substantiate the allegations made by Mrs. Garro de Paz and her daughter. In view of the fact that Mrs. Garro de Paz’ allegations have been previously checked out without substantiation, no further action is being taken concerning her recent repetition of those allegations. 96
Ferris, obviously not interested in Elena’s allegations, sent a copy of the memorandum to the CIA station. Goodpasture summarized the interview, including Ferris’s “failure to substantiate Elena’s story,” in a cable to Headquarters on December 29.
The cable promised to keep Headquarters advised if any further information was to [be] developed….A note stapled to this cable by [redacted] stated, “I don’t know what the FBI did in November 1964, but the Garros have been talking about this for along time and she is said to be extremely bright.” Anne Goodpasture wrote that the FBI had found Elena’s allegations unsubstantiated but that “we will try to confirm or refute Ms. Garro de Paz’ information and follow up.” Win Scott wrote, “She is also nuts.”
In the Duran interview with Summers for this work she again adamantly denied having had a sexual relationship with Oswald: “No, no, no. Of course not. I had a relationship with someone in the embassy, but not with Oswald. He was somebody you couldn’t pay attention to.” 98. As we saw in Chapter 14, Duran admitted having had the affair with Lechuga, and was willing to discuss these important, if embarrassing contacts. While her candor about Lechuga and “somebody at the embassy’ does not make her denial about Oswald true, it does add to her credibility.....
...The anomalies in the story about Oswald’s activities in Mexico City that proliferated in CIA channels do seem to fall into a pattern suggesting an extraordinary possibility: The story was invented after the Warren Commission investigation to falsely implicate the Cuban government in the Kennedy assassination. In this regard, the ease with which Lopez convinced Phillips about the sex story now stands out like a beacon. But who was the spider and who was the fly?
And what about Charles Thomas? His previous assignment had been to Haiti, from January 8, 1961 until the “summer” of 1963 DeMohrenschildt arrived there on June 2, 1963, and it seems likely that both men were there at the same time. In another interesting coincidence, in the fall of 1969, Thomas became involved in deMohrenschilt’s business deals with the Haitian government. This involvement continued after Thomas’ retirement. “I would….be interested in knowing,” Thomas’s lawyer wrote in 1970, “whether you have found a solution to the problem of helping Mr. deMohrenschildt.” 117
In Mexico City in 1965 however, Charles Thomas was a CIA covert action operative, and a key player in the development of the Oswald-Duran sex story. That story gained credibility in the CIA channels in a way that leaves open an unsavory possibility: the story may have been invented after the Warren Commission investigation to falsely implicate the Cuban government in the Kennedy assassination.
Any further information about Charles W. Thomas would be appreciated.
Billkelly3@gmail.com
Charles Thomas’s first discussion with Elena Garro de Pas about Oswald occurred on December 10, 1965, more than two years after the assassination. Charles Thomas, a career Foreign Service officer, was the political officer at the American Embassy at the time. There was something odd about him which we will return to at the end of this chapter. He wrote a memorandum about his conversation with Elena that, according to the Lopez Report, had “more details” than the story as told to Cobb more than a year earlier. Elena repeated the story of the twist party, but according to Thomas’ memo, one of the new “details” was Elena’s charge that Silvia Duran “was Oswald’s mistress while he was there.” 92. According to the Lopez Report, this Thomas memo was also filed in the Oswald chronological file Wx-7241:
A note by this entry in Wx-7241 says, “How did Elena Garro know about Silvia being the mistress of Oswald? This is 1965.” The Mexico City Station did not hear about the Oswald-Duran “affair” until July 1967 when a CIA asset [redacted] reported it. 93
This almost certainly indicates that the October 5 Cobb report did not contain the story of the Oswald-Duran affair. It would also mean that Charles Thomas did not pass this information to the CIA station in Mexico City when he learned it in 1965. However, the Lopez Report also notes that Thomas circulated his memorandum in the embassy and the CIA’s Mexico City station.
Clearly, these claims cannot all be true: If the CIA “asset” did not bring the story to the station’s attention until 1967, Charles Thomas could not have circulated the story in 1965. this issue is resolved by Win Scott’s marginalia on the Thomas memo:
The COS wrote a note on the memo: “What an imagination she [Elena] has?! Should we send her to Headquarters? The Officer replied, on the memo, “Suggest sending. There have been stories around town about this and Thomas is not the only person she has talked to….If memory serves me, didn’t [redacted] refer to Oswald and the local leftists and Cubans in one of her Squibs?” 94
The name behind the redaction is probably Cobb. The CIA station cabled the information in Thomas’s memo to CIA headquarters, and Win Scott wrote on the cable, “Please as Charles Thomas if he’ll ‘follow up.’ Get questions from Ann G[oodpasture]. Please let’s discuss. Thanks.” Scott called a meeting with Thomas and asked him “to get a more detailed account of Ms. Garro’s story.”
Thomas obliged, and met again with Garro on December 25, 1965, after which he wrote a new memo about the Garro allegations. This time Elena’s story about the twist party was “much more detailed,” and she explained that she had earlier held back part of her story because “the Embassy officers did not give much credence to anything she and Elenita said.” According to Thomas’ December 25, 1965 memo,
Elena stated that it was “common knowledge” that Silvia had been Oswald’s mistress. When asked who could verify the allegation, she could only remember one person who had told her this. Elena claimed that person was Victor Rica Galan, a “pro-Castro journalist.”
Clearly, Elena wasn’t holding back any longer. Thomas gave his memo to the CIA station “to aid in its investigation” of the assassination. On the first page of the memo Scott wrote: “Shouldn’t we send to Headquarters?” Someone responded: “Of course.” The Mexico City station did send a cable to headquarters on December 12, 1965, reporting that it was “following up” the story and would send the results in another cable.
On December 27, 1965, the embassy legal attaché, Nathan Ferris, wrote a memo to the ambassador reporting the results of his interviews on November 17 and 24 with Elena and her daughter. According to Ferris, Elena told substantially the same story as she had to Thomas. The Ferris memo further stated this:
…..Inquiries conducted at that time (November 1964), however, failed to substantiate the allegations made by Mrs. Garro de Paz and her daughter. In view of the fact that Mrs. Garro de Paz’ allegations have been previously checked out without substantiation, no further action is being taken concerning her recent repetition of those allegations. 96
Ferris, obviously not interested in Elena’s allegations, sent a copy of the memorandum to the CIA station. Goodpasture summarized the interview, including Ferris’s “failure to substantiate Elena’s story,” in a cable to Headquarters on December 29.
The cable promised to keep Headquarters advised if any further information was to [be] developed….A note stapled to this cable by [redacted] stated, “I don’t know what the FBI did in November 1964, but the Garros have been talking about this for along time and she is said to be extremely bright.” Anne Goodpasture wrote that the FBI had found Elena’s allegations unsubstantiated but that “we will try to confirm or refute Ms. Garro de Paz’ information and follow up.” Win Scott wrote, “She is also nuts.”
In the Duran interview with Summers for this work she again adamantly denied having had a sexual relationship with Oswald: “No, no, no. Of course not. I had a relationship with someone in the embassy, but not with Oswald. He was somebody you couldn’t pay attention to.” 98. As we saw in Chapter 14, Duran admitted having had the affair with Lechuga, and was willing to discuss these important, if embarrassing contacts. While her candor about Lechuga and “somebody at the embassy’ does not make her denial about Oswald true, it does add to her credibility.....
...The anomalies in the story about Oswald’s activities in Mexico City that proliferated in CIA channels do seem to fall into a pattern suggesting an extraordinary possibility: The story was invented after the Warren Commission investigation to falsely implicate the Cuban government in the Kennedy assassination. In this regard, the ease with which Lopez convinced Phillips about the sex story now stands out like a beacon. But who was the spider and who was the fly?
And what about Charles Thomas? His previous assignment had been to Haiti, from January 8, 1961 until the “summer” of 1963 DeMohrenschildt arrived there on June 2, 1963, and it seems likely that both men were there at the same time. In another interesting coincidence, in the fall of 1969, Thomas became involved in deMohrenschilt’s business deals with the Haitian government. This involvement continued after Thomas’ retirement. “I would….be interested in knowing,” Thomas’s lawyer wrote in 1970, “whether you have found a solution to the problem of helping Mr. deMohrenschildt.” 117
In Mexico City in 1965 however, Charles Thomas was a CIA covert action operative, and a key player in the development of the Oswald-Duran sex story. That story gained credibility in the CIA channels in a way that leaves open an unsavory possibility: the story may have been invented after the Warren Commission investigation to falsely implicate the Cuban government in the Kennedy assassination.
Any further information about Charles W. Thomas would be appreciated.
Billkelly3@gmail.com
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Cyril Wecht's New Book - From Crime Scene to Court Room
Cyril Wecht, a founding board member of COPA has a new book - From Crime Scene to Court Room.
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/s_761068.html
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, by Bobby Kerlik, 10-10-2011
Pathologist Wecht adds Michael Jackson, Casey Anthony cases to edition
At the age of 80, forensic pathologist Cyril Wecht said he's never been busier.
He conducts hundreds of autopsies a year, teaches at several local universities, performs consulting work for private attorneys, and recently released a book, "From Crime Scene to Courtroom: Examining the Mysteries Behind Famous Cases."
"I like what I do. I find it exciting and challenging. It's worthwhile," said Wecht of Squirrel Hill. "I have my wits, and I'm fortunate to have good health."
Wecht's newest book, his seventh for the general public, focuses on seven high-profile cases, including those of Michael Jackson and Casey Anthony. The book hits store shelves in the midst of the trial of Dr. Conrad Murray, who is accused of involuntary manslaughter for overmedicating Jackson, and just a few months after a Florida jury acquitted Anthony on charges of murdering her daughter, Caylee. The 25-year-old was convicted of four misdemeanor counts of lying to authorities.
"The Michael Jackson case is going on now, and I go into great detail about it. Similarly with the Casey Anthony case — it's not superficial; it's detailed observations," Wecht said. "With the Michael Jackson case, we did not know when the trial would be held, but it's indeed to our advantage in that sense."
Wecht co-authored the 315-page book with Dawna Kaufmann of Los Angeles, a crime writer who has covered hundreds of high-profile homicide cases for national publications, including the National Enquirer and Globe. It's the second book the two have co-authored.
"When Casey Anthony's verdict came in, I rewrote that chapter," Kaufmann said. "That's kind of why we picked those two (the Jackson and Anthony cases). They're so fresh."
Wecht said he was involved on some level with all the cases in the book. In addition to the Jackson and Anthony cases, it includes chapters about Air Force Col. Philip Shue of Texas, whose bizarre death was an unsolved mystery, either homicide or suicide; Rolling Stones band member Brian Jones, whose 1969 drowning death in his pool left people wondering if it was an accident; Illinois police Officer Drew Peterson, who was accused of killing his wife; and Carol Anne Gotbaum, a Manhattan mother who died in police custody in Phoenix.
"I can't read novels. Why bother when there are so many real mysteries?" Kaufmann said.
The book also examines the case of Gabrielle Bechen, a Greene County 12-year-old girl who was raped and murdered in June 2006 on a Dunkard Township farm. A jury convicted Jeffrey Martin, 54, of the crime, and he remains on death row.
Wecht resigned as Allegheny County coroner in 2006 when a federal grand jury accused him of using his position to defraud Allegheny and other counties. A jury in 2008 deadlocked on the charges, and prosecutors eventually withdrew them after a judge tossed out much of the evidence.
The income from his work motivates him, too, Wecht said.
"I need the money. My lawsuit cost millions. I'm digging out from that, but that's not my primary reason (for continuing to work and write)," Wecht said. "I absolutely intend to keep working."
Bobby Kerlik is a Pittsburgh Tribune-Review staff writer and can be reached at 412-391-0927 or via e-mail, bkerlik@tribweb.com.
Monday, October 3, 2011
Ex-NARA Offical Arrested for theft
Ex-official accused of massive National Archives theft
By: Scott McCabe | 09/29/11
Examiner Staff Writer
http://washingtonexaminer.com/local/2011/09/ex-official-accused-massive-national-archives-theft
A former head of the National Archives department that kept the Zapruder film of President Kennedy's assassination has been charged with stealing sound recordings from the agency over the past 10 years.
Leslie Charles Waffen, 66, who worked for the National Archives and Records Administration for 40 years, was charged with theft of U.S. property. Court documents said officials recovered 955 sound recording items from his Rockville home in October 2010.
A plea hearing has been set for Tuesday before federal Judge Peter J. Messitte in Greenbelt. Waffen faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted.
No attorney was listed for Waffen in court documents.
Archives spokeswoman Susan Cooper said Waffen was the head of the motion picture, sound and video unit at the archives' facility in College Park.
The items recovered from Waffen's home were not known to have gone missing, Archives Inspector General Paul Brachfeld said, but their historic content would be apparent.
"I think the American public ... a lot of it will be things they read about in their history books," Brachfeld told the Associated Press.
In 2004, Waffen was quoted in the New York Times about his department's efforts to preserve recordings from an open microphone on a police motorcycle during Kennedy's motorcade into Dealey Plaza in Dallas, the only known audio recording of the president's assassination.
Waffen's department also had custody of the Zapruder film, the famous 8 mm color home movie of the assassination.
In October, special agents from Brachfeld's office served a search warrant at Waffen's home in the 500 block of Saddle Ridge Lane in Rockville.
Archives investigators located boxes of materials and "identified [the items] right away as theirs" in a basement room and, after securing the contents, removed the boxes from the house and loaded them onto the truck.
The raid occurred after a two-year government report cited "significant weaknesses" in the agency's security and a year after another report found that several important historical documents, including the original patent for the Wright Brothers' flying machine, had gone missing.
smccabe@washingtonexaminer.com
Ex-Archives official admits theft
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/crime-scene/post/ex-archives-official-admits-theft/2011/10/04/gIQA7dh4KL_blog.html
By Ruben Castaneda
A former National Archives employee on Tuesday admitted in federal court that he stole nearly 1,000 audio recordings and sold some on eBay.
Leslie C. Waffen, 66, who was chief of the Archives’ audiovisual holdings, pleaded guilty to embezzlement of government property. He is scheduled to be sentenced March 5 in federal court in Greenbelt.
Federal officials said Waffen sold items belonging to the Archives on eBay in September and October of last year. They said they found “documentary evidence” in Waffen’s home he had been selling items belonging to the Archives since at least August 2001.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Arun G. Rao said in court that one item sold by Waffen was an original master copy of a voice recording of Babe Ruth on a December 1937 hunting trip. The recording sold for $34.74, Rao said.
“This case is especially egregious because the defendant was a high-ranking government employee who violated his obligation to protect historical records that belong to the National Archives and Records Administration,” U.S. Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein said in a statement. “These items were entrusted to the National Archives to be used by all citizens, not to be auctioned for personal profit to the highest bidder.”
Authorities said a tipster led them to Waffen, who worked for the Archives for 37 years. Last October, weeks after Waffen retired from the agency,federal agents raided his Rockville home.
Rao said in court that agents seized 6,153 sound recordings from Waffen’s home, and that officials confirmed that 955 of them belonged to the National Archives.
Archivist of the United States David S. Ferriero said the agency has bolstered security in its facilities. For instance, guards now check the bags of everyone — including employees — leaving the D.C. and College Park facilities, a practice that will be expanded to all Archives’ facilities nationwide, authorities said.
“I am disappointed and angered by Mr. Waffen’s violation of the trust placed in him by colleagues and the American people to safeguard our nation’s history,” Ferriero said. “It is an outrage that an employee entrusted with protecting our heritage became a threat to those holdings.”
Rao said that during sentencing, the government will argue that the recordings Waffen took are valued at at least $70,000. Waffen’s defense attorney will ague the stolen recordings are worth between $30,000 and $70,000.
The audiovisual holdings contain more than 90,000 film, sound and video recordings made by the government and private sources. many are presidential recordings, kept at presidential libraries and museums. Others are held at the Archives’ facility in College Park.
A 2004 New York Times article described Waffen’s efforts to preserve the only known audio recording of John F. Kennedy’s Assassination.
This post has been updated.
By Ruben Castaneda | 12:09 PM ET
By: Scott McCabe | 09/29/11
Examiner Staff Writer
http://washingtonexaminer.com/local/2011/09/ex-official-accused-massive-national-archives-theft
A former head of the National Archives department that kept the Zapruder film of President Kennedy's assassination has been charged with stealing sound recordings from the agency over the past 10 years.
Leslie Charles Waffen, 66, who worked for the National Archives and Records Administration for 40 years, was charged with theft of U.S. property. Court documents said officials recovered 955 sound recording items from his Rockville home in October 2010.
A plea hearing has been set for Tuesday before federal Judge Peter J. Messitte in Greenbelt. Waffen faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted.
No attorney was listed for Waffen in court documents.
Archives spokeswoman Susan Cooper said Waffen was the head of the motion picture, sound and video unit at the archives' facility in College Park.
The items recovered from Waffen's home were not known to have gone missing, Archives Inspector General Paul Brachfeld said, but their historic content would be apparent.
"I think the American public ... a lot of it will be things they read about in their history books," Brachfeld told the Associated Press.
In 2004, Waffen was quoted in the New York Times about his department's efforts to preserve recordings from an open microphone on a police motorcycle during Kennedy's motorcade into Dealey Plaza in Dallas, the only known audio recording of the president's assassination.
Waffen's department also had custody of the Zapruder film, the famous 8 mm color home movie of the assassination.
In October, special agents from Brachfeld's office served a search warrant at Waffen's home in the 500 block of Saddle Ridge Lane in Rockville.
Archives investigators located boxes of materials and "identified [the items] right away as theirs" in a basement room and, after securing the contents, removed the boxes from the house and loaded them onto the truck.
The raid occurred after a two-year government report cited "significant weaknesses" in the agency's security and a year after another report found that several important historical documents, including the original patent for the Wright Brothers' flying machine, had gone missing.
smccabe@washingtonexaminer.com
Ex-Archives official admits theft
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/crime-scene/post/ex-archives-official-admits-theft/2011/10/04/gIQA7dh4KL_blog.html
By Ruben Castaneda
A former National Archives employee on Tuesday admitted in federal court that he stole nearly 1,000 audio recordings and sold some on eBay.
Leslie C. Waffen, 66, who was chief of the Archives’ audiovisual holdings, pleaded guilty to embezzlement of government property. He is scheduled to be sentenced March 5 in federal court in Greenbelt.
Federal officials said Waffen sold items belonging to the Archives on eBay in September and October of last year. They said they found “documentary evidence” in Waffen’s home he had been selling items belonging to the Archives since at least August 2001.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Arun G. Rao said in court that one item sold by Waffen was an original master copy of a voice recording of Babe Ruth on a December 1937 hunting trip. The recording sold for $34.74, Rao said.
“This case is especially egregious because the defendant was a high-ranking government employee who violated his obligation to protect historical records that belong to the National Archives and Records Administration,” U.S. Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein said in a statement. “These items were entrusted to the National Archives to be used by all citizens, not to be auctioned for personal profit to the highest bidder.”
Authorities said a tipster led them to Waffen, who worked for the Archives for 37 years. Last October, weeks after Waffen retired from the agency,federal agents raided his Rockville home.
Rao said in court that agents seized 6,153 sound recordings from Waffen’s home, and that officials confirmed that 955 of them belonged to the National Archives.
Archivist of the United States David S. Ferriero said the agency has bolstered security in its facilities. For instance, guards now check the bags of everyone — including employees — leaving the D.C. and College Park facilities, a practice that will be expanded to all Archives’ facilities nationwide, authorities said.
“I am disappointed and angered by Mr. Waffen’s violation of the trust placed in him by colleagues and the American people to safeguard our nation’s history,” Ferriero said. “It is an outrage that an employee entrusted with protecting our heritage became a threat to those holdings.”
Rao said that during sentencing, the government will argue that the recordings Waffen took are valued at at least $70,000. Waffen’s defense attorney will ague the stolen recordings are worth between $30,000 and $70,000.
The audiovisual holdings contain more than 90,000 film, sound and video recordings made by the government and private sources. many are presidential recordings, kept at presidential libraries and museums. Others are held at the Archives’ facility in College Park.
A 2004 New York Times article described Waffen’s efforts to preserve the only known audio recording of John F. Kennedy’s Assassination.
This post has been updated.
By Ruben Castaneda | 12:09 PM ET
Sunday, October 2, 2011
The Sequoia & the JFK Assassination
NARA Record Number: 124-10369-10008
ADMIN FOLDER-X8: HSCA ADMINISTRATIVE FOLDER, LEE HARVEY OSWALD VOLUME XI
http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=10119&relPageId=188
MR. W. C. SULLIVAN February 12, 1965
D. J. BRENNAN, JR.
SAMUEL P. BERZON
INFORMATION CONCERNING
On February 8, 1965, Mr. Leonard Niederlehner , Acting General Counsel, and James J. Kearney, Assistant General Counsel (Administration), Department of Defense, advised that at 1:15 p.m., on that date, an individual identifying himself as Sam Berzon called from Duluth, Minnesota, area code 218, telephone number 826-1677.
Berzon asked specifically for the General Counsel’s Office and was referred to Kearney. Berzon claimed to be a former classmate of Commander Ismay, the former Commander of the “Sequoia,” the yacht of the Secretary of the Navy. According to Berzon, Ismay called him on February 7, 1965, and sought his advice as to whom he should contact concerning information in Ismay’s possession that the former Secretary of the Navy Fred Korth and Bobby Baker had entertained party girls aboard the “Sequoia”; also information that Ismay allegedly has implicating Korth in the assassination of President Kennedy.
Berzon stated he was interviewed last summer by a Secret Service Agent C. A. Schaefer (phonetic) regarding Korth’s involvement in a conspiracy to assassinate Kennedy.
Berson said that he had suggested that Ismay get in contact with the General Counsel ‘s Office at Defense first, and this was due to the purpose of Berzon’s call to get the General Counsel of Defense to talk to the General Counsel at Treasury.
Mr. Niederlehner identified Ismay as Lieutenant Commander Arthur P. Ismay, formerly Commanding Officer of the “Sequoia” and presently assigned to the Defense Language school, Washington D.C. He resides at the Capatol Park Twin Towers, telephone 732-4232. Niederleher stated that Defense has no plan to contact Berzon and does not propose to comply with his request. They believe Berzon may be a mental case based on his call but wanted to make this information available to the Bureau because of our possible interest from the standpoint of the Bobby Baker and Presidential assassination investigations.
Sam Berzon is in all probability identical with Samuel P. Berzon, who was the subject of an extortion case in our New York City office in which Elaine Gotskind was the victim during the period 1958-1960 of numerous nonspecific threats from Berzon who had rejected her as a suitor in favor of Raymond Reilly. An attorney familiar with Berzon’s threats described him as mentally ill and in need of psychiatric attention. A member of the New York City Police Department advised that Berzon is known to him as a person of obviously mental instability who has been carrying on a personal vendetta against Reilly, a former New York City police officer. Berzon has written the Bureau and other Government agencies making charges of collusion and malfeasance against New York City officials regarding explosions in New York City during October-November, 1960. His correspondence was not acknowledged because of his apparent mental instability.
Bureau files have no pertinent information on Ismay.
OBSERVATIONS:
The story concerning Korth’s involvement in an assassination plot has been publicly voiced on a number of occasions by the mother of Lee Harvey Oswald and has no substantiation. In view of Berzon’s apparent mental instability, previous baselss allegations he has made, and the fact that his current allegations about party girls are not of substantive significance in our investigation of Baker, it is not believed we should become involved in this matter
ACTION:
If approved, Liaison will advise Niederlehner that the Bureau does not propose to undertake investigation of this matter. Niederlehner will be furnished background data concerning Berzon.
End of document.
Bill Kelly Notes: While Berzon's information is discredited by the NYPD, they fail to bother to question Ismay, even though they have his address and phone number.
Berzon's information however, does check out in a number of ways, especially in regards to Ismay, who was the Commander of the Sequoia at the pertinent period of time.
Captain Arthur Peter Ismay
Commander of Sequoia - July 1962 - June 1964.
Defense Language Institute - Washington D.C.
Married Mary C. Carns, daughter of Maj. Gen. Carns, US Army
Commander of Swift Boat Squadron one - Vietnam.
Asst. Special Warfare Officer Officer of Chief Naval Operatations
University of Rochester - Systems Analysis
After military service Ismay worked for Rockwell International (which merged with Collins Radio, of Richardson, Tx.)
The Defense Language Institute is of peculiar interest to those who study the assassinatoin of President Kennedy because Lee Harvey Oswald is said to have been affiliated with the school while he was in the Marines, shortly before he defected to USSR. In addition, two other subjects involved in the assassination - Richard Case Nagel and Ralph Meyers, were also students at the Defense Language Institute at Monterey.
The Commander of the DLI at the time was Col. James L. Collins, who went on to found the DC school where Ismay was stationed after leaving the "Sequoia."
Ismay's commander at the DC DLI would have been Colonel James L. Collins, Jr., who was born in El Paso into a family steeped in Army tradition. The North Dakota National Guardsmen went ashore at Utah Beach on D-Day, served in Vietnam and in Korea. "A linguist who was fluent in French, Italian, German and Spanish, he was a former commanding officer of the Army language school at Monterey, California, and from 1959 to 1962 was the first director of a coordinated Defense Language Institute in Washington. He also spoke some Russian and was an intelligence officer at times during his career." http://www.arlington...jlcollinsjr.htm
Then there's Colonel Samuel Stapleton, the former commander of the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, Calf. who became director of the New Orleans Trade Mart in the 1980s.
It is also telling that after leaving the Navy Ismay would become a top Vice President to defense contractor Rockwell International, the company that merged with Collins Radio, another company with a number of suspicious connections to the assassination. (See: Collins Radio Connections)
While Berzon may have been a mental case, his information about Ismay was correct, as was his information about the parties held on the "Sequoia."
In fact, JFK's last birthday party was held on the "Sequoia," while docked at New York City, a few hours after Marilyn Monroe sang happy birthday Mister President at Madison Square Garden.
And it would seem that if JFK and Jackie had parties on the "Sequoia," that others did too, including RFK and Korth, the Secretary of the Navy who was permitted to resign when it was revealed that he used Navy stationary to do Continental Bank Business and had parties for bank officers aboard the boat.
One headline reads: "Letters Show He Proposed Cruise for Bank Clients"
- New York Times - Nov 10, 1963
Similarly, Mr. Korth's letters to prospective clients of his bank in Fort Worth, ... invitations to dinner and a cruise aboard the small Navy yacht Sequoia,...
RFK and Jackie: Six months after JFK's death, during a May 1964 dinner cruise on the presidential yacht the USS Sequoia, Bobby and Jackie "exchanged poignant glances" before disappearing below deck, leaving Ethel upstairs. "When they returned, they looked as chummy and relaxed as a pair of Cheshire cats," according to Schlesinger.
LBJ got the message, and apparently used the "Sequoia" for his business and pleasure as well.
So, while Berzon was branded a nut case, much of his information on Ismay, Korth and the use of the "Sequoia" for parties checks out, as well as his calling attention to the apparently random bombings in New York City in October and November 1960, which were never solved even though there were 600 NYPD cops assigned to the case.
1960: The Sunday Bomber sets off a series of bombs in New York City subways and ferries during Sundays and Holidays, killing one woman and injuring 51 other commuters.
1. Buckley, Thomas (November 7, 1960)."Bomb in IND Car Kills Woman and Hurts 18 at 125thSt. Stop".The New York Times. Retrieved December 2, 2008.
2. Hailey, Foster (October 13, 1960)."Bomb Injures 33 at Times Sq. Shuttle".The New York Times. Retrieved December 2, 2008.
3. "'Sunday Bomber' Hunted by 600 New York Cops".Jet. November 24, 1960.Retrieved October 19, 2009.
4. "Third Sunday Bomb Rips Staten Island Ferry Deck".The New York Times. October 24, 1960. Retrieved December 2, 2008.
Berzon was also in the army in Japan at he end of the war:
http://www.vets-hall...samuel-p-berzon
Capt. Samuel P. Berzon of Duluth was enlisted in I Company, 3rd Battalion, 305th Infantry, 77th Division of the Army from March 17, 1945 to Nov. 20, 1946. While stationed in Hokkaido, Japan, as a Rifleman in October, 1945, Berzon tells of this close call: “Our Regimental Commander was Col. Winthrop Rockefeller who later became Governor of Arkansas. We were told to proceed to a suspected Chinese slave labor camp high in the mountains of central Hokkaido. The Chinese were forced to work in a salt mine. It was unknown as to how many Japanese troops were still there. This would be the last patrol of World War II, but we never got there. During the course of our march with full field equipment along a dirt road, we paused and took a ten-minute break. I immediately dropped my equipment and headed for a nearby apple orchard filled with ripe, golden apples. I plucked two or three apples from the trees and relaxed along the roadside. My buddy said he was going over to the shin to shrine across the road with his camera to take pictures. I told him I would join him later after finishing my apples. Soon a jeep came roaring up with the Company First Sergeant and driver, he exclaimed to my buddy, ‘Soldier, what are you doing in there?’ He mumbled something about taking pictures. He was then placed under security and whisked off to Division Headquarters. He was given a General Court Martial and sentenced to a lengthy period with a chain gang on Okinawa. It was a close call. Thank God I was just eating an apple. We turned back to our units in the Sapporo area.”
But the clincher is Tom Scully's discovery that Berzon and Ismay were US Naval Academy classmates, who graduated in 1951, shortly before Ismay was assigned to Quantico.
So it is possible that Ismay called Berzon to ask his advice on how to deal with his knowledge of Korth and the assassination.
Greg Parker also I believe this is the Secret Service agent Berzon said interviewed him about Korth: http://ftp.resource.org/courts.gov/c/F2/396/396.F2d.243.19071.html
Further reinforcing the idea that Berzon was a reliable witness, rather than the mental case the NYPD, FBI and Defense Dept. lawyers made him out to be.
Also note the primary recipient of the memo is W.C. Sullivan, which in itself should tell you something.
Tom Scully also points out that Fred Korth, as a Fort Worth attorney, represented Oswald's stepfather in the divorce from his mother, and that John Connally had passed on the letter Oswald sent him from USSR to Korth after Korth replaced him as Navy Secretary.
The FBI docs that Tom posted from Mary Ferrell indicate that Oswald's mother called the FBI, and noted some deep background information on Fred Korth, including the fact that after 27 years of marriage he got a divorce on April 27, 1963, making it even more possible that he and Bobby Baker had Party Girls over on the Sequoia.
There is also mention of Oswald mentioning Korth sometime during the course of his interrogation, which I don't remember, but very well could have happened.
SPARTACUS ON KORTH
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKkorth.htm
Fred Korth was born in Yorketown, Texas, in 1909. His older brother, Romeo Korth was instrumental in implementing rural electrification for South and Central Texas.
During the Second World War he served in the Air Transport Command. By 1945 he had reached the rank of lieutenant-colonel. After the war he worked as a lawyer in Forth Worth, Texas. He joined the Democratic Party and worked with John Connally in helping Lyndon B. Johnson in his 1948 election campaign.
In 1952 Harry S. Truman appointed Korth as Assistant Secretary of the Army. He worked under Frank Pace. Both men left office in 1953. Pace became chief executive of the General Dynamics Corporation in Texas. Korth returned to his law practice. He also became director of the Bell Aerospace Corporation. The chairman of the company, Lawrence Bell, was a fellow member of the Suite 8F Group. Korth also became president of the Continental National Bank of Fort Worth. This was one of General Dynamics bankers.
In the last few months of the administration of Dwight Eisenhower, the Air Force began to argue that it needed a successor to its F-105 tactical fighter. This became known as the TFX/F-111 project. In January, 1961, McNamara, changed the TFX from an Air Force program to a joint Air Force-Navy under-taking. On 1st October, the two services sent the aircraft industry the request for proposals on the TFX and the accompanying work statement, with instructions to submit the bids by 1st December, 1961. Three of the bids were submitted by individual companies: the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation, the North American Aviation Corporation and the Boeing Company. The other three bids represented team efforts: Republic Aviation & Chance Vought; General Dynamics Corporation & Grumman Aircraft; and McDonnell Aircraft & Douglas Aircraft.
It soon became clear that Boeing was expected to get the contract. Its main competitor was the General Dynamics/Grumman bid. General Dynamics had been America’s leading military contractors during the early stages of the Cold War. For example, in 1958 it obtained $2,239,000,000 worth of government business. This was a higher figure than those obtained by its competitors, such as Lockheed, Boeing, McDonnell and North American. More than 80 percent of the firm’s business came from the government. However, the company lost $27 million in 1960 and $143 million in 1961. According to an article by Richard Austin Smith in Fortune Magazine, General Dynamics was close to bankruptcy. Smith claimed that “unless it gets the contract for the joint Navy-Air Force fighter (TFX)… the company was down the road to receivership”.
General Dynamics had several factors in its favour. The president of the company was Frank Pace, the Secretary of the Army (April, 1950-January, 1953). The Deputy Secretary of Defense in 1962 was Roswell Gilpatric, who before he took up the post, was chief counsel for General Dynamics. The Secretary of the Navy was John Connally, a politician from Texas, the state where General Dynamics had its main plant.
Connally left the job in January 1962 and John F. Kennedy now appointed Korth as Secretary of the Navy. According to author Seth Kantor, Korth only got the job after strong lobbying from Lyndon B. Johnson. A few weeks after taking the post, Korth overruled top Navy officers who had proposed that the X-22 contract be given to Douglas Aircraft Corporation. Instead he insisted the contract be granted to the more expensive bid of the Bell Corporation. This was a subsidiary of Bell Aerospace Corporation of Forth Worth, Texas. This created some controversy as Korth was a former director of the company.
Korth also became very involved in discussions about the TFX contract. Korth, was the former president of the Continental Bank, which had loaned General Dynamics considerable sums of money during the late 1950s and early 1960s. Korth later told the John McClellan committee that investigated the granting of the TFX contract to General Dynamics “that because of his peculiar position he had deliberately refrained from taking a directing hand in this decision (within the Navy) until the last possible moment.”
As I. F. Stone pointed out, it was “the last possible moment” which counted. “Three times the Pentagon’s Source Selection Board found that Boeing’s bid was better and cheaper than that of General Dynamics and three times the bids were sent back for fresh submissions by the two bidders and fresh reviews. On the fourth round, the military still held that Boeing was better but found at last that the General Dynamics bid was also acceptable.” Stone goes on to argue: “The only document the McClellan committee investigators were able to find in the Pentagon in favour of that award, according to their testimony, was a five-page memorandum signed by McNamara, Korth, and Eugene Zuckert, then Secretary of the Air Force.”
Robert McNamara justified his support for General Dynamics because “Boeing had from the very beginning consistently chosen more technically risky tradeoffs in an effort to achieve operational features which exceeded the required performance characteristics.”
The TFX program involved the building of 1,700 planes for the Navy and the Air Force. The contract was estimated to be worth over $6.5 billion, making it the largest contract for military planes in the nation’s history.
On 24th October, 1962, Seth Kantor reported in the Fort Worth Press that: “General Dynamics of Fort Worth will get the multibillion-dollar defence contract to build the supersonic TFX Air Force and Navy fighter plane, the Fort Worth Press learned today from top Government sources.”
This was confirmed the following month when the Pentagon announced that the TFX contract would be awarded to General Dynamics. Henry M. Jackson was a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, the Senate Government Operations Committee and the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. He learned that: “Boeing’s bid was substantially lower than its competitor’s. Reports indicated Boeing’s bid was $100 million lower on an initial development contract and that the cost difference might run as high as $400 million on the total $6.5 billion procurement.”
On 12th December, Lyndon B. Johnson visited Forth Worth to join in the festivities at the General Dynamics plant. Congressman James Wright, the Texas Democrat representing the Fort Worth district introduced Johnson as the “greatest Texan of them all”. He pointed out that Johnson had played an important role in obtaining the TFX contract. Wright added “you have to have friends and they have to stick with you through thick and thin even if you do have merit on your side.”
During the McClellan's Permanent Investigations Committee hearings into the contract, Senator Sam Ervin asked Robert McNamara “whether or not there was any connection whatever between your selection of General Dynamics, and the fact that the Vice President of the United States happens to be a resident of the state in which that company has one of its principal, if not its principal office.” At this point McNamara was close to tears and commented that: “Last night when I got home at midnight, after preparing for today’s hearing, my wife told me that my own 12-year-old son had asked how long it would take for his father to prove his honesty.”
McNamara rejected the idea that Lyndon B. Johnson was involved in the decision but evidence was to emerge that he did play an important role in the awarding of the TFX project to General Dynamics. For example, William Proxmire found some interesting information on the TFX project while investigating the role played by Richard Russell in the granting of the C-5A contract to Lockheed. The C-5A was built in Marietta, Georgia, the state that Russell represented. The Air Force Contract Selection Board originally selected Boeing that was located in the states of Washington and Kansas. However, Proxmire claimed that Russell was able to persuade the board to change its mind and give the C-5A contract to Lockhead.
Proxmire quotes Howard Atherton, the mayor of Marietta, as saying that “Russell was key to landing the contract”. Atherton added that Russell believed that Robert McNamara was going ahead with the C-5A in order to “give the plane to Boeing because Boeing got left out on the TFX fighter.” According to Atherton, Russell got the contract after talking to Lyndon Johnson. Atherton added, “without Russell, we wouldn’t have gotten the contract”.
On 26th June, 1963, Clark R. Mollenhoff managed to interview Robert McNamara about his role in awarding the TFX contract to General Dynamics. McNamara claimed that Johnson had applied to political pressure on him concerning the contract. He admitted that he knew all about Fred Korth’s business relationship with General Dynamics and Bell Aerospace. He also revealed he was aware of Roswell Gilpatric’s role “as a lawyer for General Dynamics just prior to coming into government, the role of Gilpatric’s law firm in continuing to represent General Dynamics, and the amount of money Gilpatric had received from the law firm since becoming Deputy Defense Secretary”. However, he was convinced that this did not influence the decision made by Fred Korth and Roswell Gilpatric.
John McClellan, chairman of the Permanent Investigations Committee, continued looking into the activities of Billie Sol Estes and Bobby Baker. During this investigation evidence emerged that Lyndon B. Johnson was also involved in political corruption. This included the award of a $7 billion contract for a fighter plane, the TFX, to General Dynamics, a company based in Texas. When it was discovered that the Continental National Bank of Fort Worth, was the principal money source for the General Dynamics plant. As a result of this revelation Korth resigned from office in October, 1963.
On 22nd November, 1963, a friend of Baker's, Don B. Reynolds told B. Everett Jordan and his Senate Rules Committee that he saw a suitcase full of money which Baker described as a "$100,000 payoff to Johnson for his role in securing the Fort Worth TFX contract".
John McClellan, the chairman of the Senate subcommittee investigating the TFX contract said that he wanted to interview Don B. Reynolds. However, for some reason the subcommittee did not resume its investigation until 1969, after Johnson had left office.
After resigning as Secretary of the Navy, Korth worked as a lawyer in Washington. In 1969 he was elected to the board of OKC Corporation in Dallas. Later that year Fred Korth's daughter Verita Korth, supposedly killed herself with a 20 gauge shotgun.
Fred Korth died in El Paso in September 1998. He is buried under a three century old Texas Live Oak tree on his ranch in Karnes County, Texas.
Saturday, October 1, 2011
Doug Horne, Media & Public Trust Poll
Congress justified the establishment of the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) and the JFK Act because they noted that the decline in the American public's confidence in government began to with his assassination, and has not returned. They thought that a Congressional investigation of the murder and the ostensible release of the assassination records would help reverse that trend, to no avail.
Is it just a coincidence that the public opinion polls continuously show the same number of people believe JFK was killed as a result of a conspiracy as the number of people who have no confidence in their government?
Doug Horne, author of Inside the Assassinations Records Review Board, mentions this phenomena in his latest journal entry.(Re-posted with permission. Thanks Doug)
The JFK Assassination: Still a Taboo Subject for the Mainstream Media in the United States
By Doug Horne
http://insidethearrb.livejournal.com/
Almost 48 years after President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963, the mainstream media (MSM) in this country still treats it as a Taboo Subject. This is a strange state of affairs, given the MSM's propensity to tout its own courage and independence, and its important role as the Fourth Estate in our democracy.
Let me provide just two recent examples.
Last year, as MSNBC "Hardball" host and moderator Chris Matthews interviewed the author of a book about the JFK assassination, he employed a sneering, dismissive tone toward all persons who are convinced there was a conspiracy to murder the 35th President---by implication, tarring all such people as misguided idiots, and irresponsible. As usual, he characterized such persons as nuts, cranks, crazy people, and conspiracy theorists (the ultimate insult employed by anyone still supporting the Warren Commission's seriously flawed and unsupportable findings), and in a rather brutal and intellectually overbearing and arrogant manner, proclaimed that Lee Harvey Oswald was a crazy person, a lone nut, who killed JFK all on his own. In doing so, he was disagreeing with (and insulting) over 75% of the American people, but this didn't seem to bother him.
The real question is, WHY does he continue to proclaim this stance in such an insistent manner? Aside from this issue, Matthews appears to be a pretty bright and well informed guy. How, I asked myself, could he so loudly and insistently proclaim that the Warren Commission got it right, when there is so much overwhelming evidence that its conclusion cannot possibly be true? On this one issue he has consistently shown a very ugly, and obnoxious side of his personality---a "dark side," if you will. I wondered last fall if he really believed the nonsense he was spouting, or whether he was reflexively adopting a stance he had been instructed to adopt in public. And if he had been so instructed, who provided him with his JFK assassination marching orders? Was it the management structure at MSNBC, or was it a cadre within the American intelligence community that remains fixated on this subject (and others that are crucial to the attitudes of Americans toward their own governmental institutions)? Sadly, Keith Olberman and Rachel Maddow, two MSNBC journalists whom I highly respect most of the time, have also spoken derisively about "conspiracy theorists" and have painted anyone who believes that JFK was assassinated by a conspiracy with this overused tar brush.
This past week, a new public opinion poll was released showing that the number of Americans who now trust the American government to "do the right thing all or most of the time" is at an all time low---it is now down to only 15% of those polled. CNN, in reporting this story and providing context, then proceeded to promote inaccurate history in its background pieces on the history of the polling numbers. CNN stated that under President Eisenhower, in the late 1950s, this trust figure was as high as 73% (which is true), and then falsely implied that this was as high as the trust figure had ever been. THIS WAS UNTRUE. In his 1994 book "Arrogant Capital," conservative author Kevin Phillips wrote that in January of 1964 this figure was 78%, and that this was the all-time high watermark for trust in the American government. He published a graph showing that from 1960 through January of 1964, the figure was continuously rising, and therefore, it is clear that the figure rose from 73% to 78% during the Presidency of John F. Kennedy, America's 35th President: a rationalist who touted openness in government, who opposed withholding information from the American people, and who even gave a speech against secrecy and secret societies. (I published the graph used by Phillips as Figure 71, in my own book, "Inside the Assassination Records Review Board," published in 2009 and still available at Amazon.com). Study of the graph reveals that this trust starting dropping precipitately after January of 1964.
The CNN talking heads and anchors proclaimed this past week that the primary reasons for the sharp decline of the high numbers seen in the late 1950s were the Vietnam War and Watergate. But this is only a half truth, at best. They conveniently omitted mentioning when the figure was at its highest (at the end of JFK's Presidency), and also conveniently chose not to mention that the rapid decline in confidence in the U.S. government began very shortly after the JFK assassination.
It is clear to me when studying this graph (you can access it in either Phillips' book or in mine), that the American people began to lose faith in the American government immediately after the JFK assassination; no doubt people smelled a rat when LIFE magazine, and later the Warren Report, began to blow smoke up our collective asses about how (and why) JFK was murdered. The sharp decline on the graph accelerated in 1968. And what happened that year? Three things: the Tet Offensive in Vietnam (when the American people finally realized the USG had been lying to them about the conduct of the war and the prospects for victory); the Martin Luther King assassination; and the Robert F. Kennedy assassination. These two assassinations, like JFK's, were all blamed on lone nut individuals acting on their own---and in each case, there is strong evidence that the official story is not true. The next sharp drop in confidence in the graph occurs between 1972 and 1976, and almost certainly reflects the Watergate scandal, and America's unceremonious ejection from Vietnam, after losing a war for the first time. The nosedive in confidence continues at a rapid rate through 1980, and it is likely that one contributor was the unsatisfactory way in which the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) handled the JFK and MLK assassinations. The HSCA stirred up the muck of bad memories and feelings about those two events, and the electrified public which had demanded the Congressional investigations into the JFK and MLK murders was more than a bit nonplussed about the HSCA whitewash of both events.
So what happened this past week with CNN? I explain it in this way: if the high watermark for faith in the U.S. government during JFK's presidency is event A, and the rapid decline in faith in government after January 1964 is event B, then the MSM could not mention A, without mentioning B and when it occurred. Event B (the loss in confidence in government) began immediately after the assassination, clearly caused by the government's attempt to calm public opinion with soothing lies after JFK was murdered. NBC, CBS, and ABC (most of the time, but not all of the time) have all been participating in the same collective "groupthink"---namely, that Oswald was the lone assassin who killed JFK and that he did it all on his own---since December of 1963. CNN has now joined the club. FOX news is...well, FOX news; one week before air time, the network removed my interview clips (containing explosive new material which the producer had promised me would be used) from its 2003 documentary about the JFK assassination after network officials objected to the content. The anchors and reporters employed by the mainstream networks have obviously been instructed by managing editors and company vice presidents that you do not mention the JFK assassination, unless it is to (1) blame LHO for the event; and (2) disparage any contrary views as the unstable thinking of "conspiracy theorists." (A corollary to this pack mindset is that you don't mention JFK in a historical context unless it is to disparage him or tear down his reputation---since doing so tends to make people not care as much about his assassination.) Event A could not be reported because it would have forced CNN to report event B. If CNN had reported event B, it would have highlighted the fact that the American media had missed the story of the century---had either been asleep at the switch, or muzzled by the government---from December of 1963 throughout 1964. (And indeed, for the most part, it has kept its head in the sand, like an ostrich, ever since the Warren Report came out as well.) The American media is not fond of reporting on its own failures. Doing so, in this case, would raise the ugly specter of why the mainstream media continues to aggressively promote an editorial position on this subject which is diametrically opposed to the opinions of over 75% of the American people.
So in my view, CNN could not mention the truth---that the trust in government was continuously going up (above Eisenhower's numbers) during JFK's presidency, and that it fell precipitately after his assassination, because to do so would attract attention to the positive aspects of JFK's presidency (certainly not in vogue within either conservative or mainstream circles), and would also show, in a way that ANYONE in the viewing audience could understand, that the corrosion of trust in the USG began immediately after JFK's assassination. CNN (and no doubt other networks reporting the same story) could not tell the whole truth about the confidence polling because the whole truth would have contravened the wishes of their corporate and intelligence community masters.
In 1975 reporter Carl Bernstein (in a "Rolling Stone" article) and the New York Times (in a series of piggyback articles) both reported that the CIA had used over 400 media "assets" (both abroad and domestically) to promote its spin on world events to the publics of the world---in other words, for propaganda purposes. Author John LeCarre (British master of spy novels and a former MI 6 agent himself) recently stated in an interview that in the 1960s, when his book "The Spy Who Came in From the Cold" was about to be made into a film, he was flown to America and questioned about his loyalty to the West by American intelligence. (They were not happy that the theme of his book, at the height of the Cold War, was "a plague on both your houses.") In his interview (on the Criterion bonus DVD about that same film), LeCarre stated that most people would be absolutely amazed if they knew how many people in the American intelligence community were sitting around doing nothing but thinking about ways to influence public opinion. (This is clearly against the CIA's charter, by the way---and unlawful---since it is not supposed to participate in any domestic activities.)
If you think this activity has stopped just because of the Church Committee Hearings in the mid-1970s, then I have a bridge to sell you in the Gobi desert.
There are things that we know and believe, and then there is the much smaller universe of things that can be proved in a court of law. There is no doubt in my mind that the MSM's blindness about the true facts of the Kennedy assassination and the ensuing government cover-up (and its continued denigration of his reputation) is self-willed, not inadvertent---and that the media's collective groupthink about the Kennedy assassination (namely, blaming it on a lone nut in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary) is evidence that the CIA is still playing the "Great Wurlitzer" of the media like an impresario. The CIA has in the short term succeeded brilliantly, in that it has gotten the MSM to think and speak in unison, tarring all JFK researchers as "conspiracy theorists" in an effort make them a subject of ridicule, and thereby marginalize their work. When it can, it orchestrates media blackouts of serious new research and new books (such as mine, and Phil Nelson's), for fear that the general public would learn about them and read them, even if they were to be trashed by a hostile reviewer.
In the long term the CIA/MSM propaganda war against JFK researchers is counterproductive and has failed, because lying to the citizenry of a democracy "to protect its institutions," in an attempt to bolster trust in the government, only ends up destroying respect for those institutions, when the lies are eventually revealed. And they are all (or most, anyway) eventually revealed, since as Shakespeare noted, "The Truth Will Out."
Individual reporters dare not report about the overwhelming evidence of conspiracy in the JFK assassination, or the ensuing government cover-up, if their editors forbid them to file such stories, and if they know they will lose their jobs if they attempt to do so. This has been going on since December of 1963; everyone in the MSM knows it; and most of them will not even try anymore for fear of losing their jobs.
This is what we all face as the 50th anniversary approaches. When you are bombarded by even more bullshit and government spin about the assassination of the 35th President two years from now, do not be surprised. Learn to think critically and independently; read as many books as you can; and make up your own minds about what happened in America in November of 1963. If you do not, there is a vast disinformation and propaganda machine out there that will be happy to tell you what to believe on the 50th anniversary of JFK's murder.
The national security spinmasters, Obama's information CZAR Cass Sunstein, and the corporate media would prefer that you spend all your time obsessed with game shows, singing and dancing contests, so-called "reality shows" that are cheap to produce (and are, in reality, garbage), and modern age gladiatorial contests in large outdoor stadiums and indoor sports arenas. When you do focus on history from time to time they want you to accept the vanilla, mainstream, and simplistic interpretations of events ground out like sausage by mainstream historians and the MSM. They want you to engage in Goodthink, and think Goodthoughts. "But don't think too deeply, please." They don't want the American people to think too much about deep politics or historical trends; when we do focus on politics every two years or so, they want us to focus on "the horserace" each election cycle, and not on substantive issues. They definitely don't want us to focus on what has gone wrong in this country since the end of World War II---after all, if we all get really get mad as hell, we might demand basic structural changes to our society and our system of government. These controlling elements of our society prefer that we adopt a "father knows best" mentality, and simply trust the national security elite to manage this nation's international affairs and military policies. They depend upon their allies and assets in the corporate mainstream media (whores, actually) to keep us distracted with pablum, and to define for us, on a daily basis, the bounds of what is "acceptable" for us to publicly discuss, and what is "not acceptable." [This is the game Chris Matthews of MSNBC, and CNN and the other major networks on television, are engaged in.] The loss of independence by the MSM and its failure to ever seriously oppose the nation state with any really hard-hitting investigative reporting on substantive issues (such as war and peace, and why people get assassinated) should be of very serious concern to us all. Once an independent media is lost, tyranny is only one step away.
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