Brute - The Life of Victor Krulak U.S. Marine

 Brute - the Life of Victor Krulak US Marine - (Little Brown, 2010) By Robert Coram. 

General Victor "Brute" Krulak is a relatively obscure but significant player in the JFK assassination drama. 

I first heard his name from Colonel Fletcher Prouty, who I first met at an NYU Law School conference on the assassination, when he gave a lecture in the science hall explaining how you have to understand how covert intelligence operations work in order to learn what really happened at Dealey Plaza. He is the author of a book on the subject called The Secret Team.

Prouty's insights into the assassination were so threatening that they tried to destroy his credibility, but he was a Colonel in the USAF, had an office just down the hall from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and personally knew and worked closely with Generals Krulak and Ed Lansdale, who was head of Operation Mongoose and responsible for getting rid of Castro in Cuba. 

There's a letter from Krulak to Prouty saying that he recognized Lansdale in a photo of Dealey Plaza shortly after the assassination, wondering what he was doing there. 

As detailed in this biography Krulak had an impressive career and life, though I am focused on his association with JFK and his position at the Pentagon 1962-1964 as SACSA - Special Assistant for Counter-Insurgency and Special Activities. 

As explained in his bio, "As the special assistant for special activities, he held one of the most sensitive jobs in the U.S. government: liaison between the military and the CIA. This was the blackest of the black holes and involved some of the most highly classified matters of national defense. It meant that in Vietnam (and Cuba), Krulak was in charge of psychological warfare and covert activities against the enemy, a job that in a few years would be turned over to a much larger group with the innocuous name Studies and Observation Group (SOG)."

"...He was confident enough that when White House staffers suggested he follow the protocol of military officers working in the White House and wear civilian closed, he refused, saying he was serving as a military officer and 'it would diminish the impact of the military for me to wear civilian clothes.'"

"The Krulaks' social life was as busy as ever, but now there was a difference. In Washington, everything is about proximity - about who is close to the president and who has power. It was common knowledge that JFK's time in the Pacific had been the defining moment of his life; he had his closest aides wore tie pins of a miniature PT-109. But going behind enemy lines in the middle of the night to rescue Krulak's Marines had been Kennedy's last big mission in the Pacific, and having been the commanding officer of those Marines gave Krulak a unique cache. Plus, Krulak was the point man, the acknowledged expert, in an area of the highest importance to the Kennedy administration: counterinsurgency." 

As detailed in the book PT-109 by - Robert J. Donovan, and as portrayed in the movie starring Cliff Robertson, Kennedy led his men to the Japanese held Pacific island beach to rescue the stranded Marines, under fire. At the time Krulak promised Kennedy a bottle of whisky for his efforts, but didn't deliver it until JFK was in the White House. 

The PT-109 book was written by the same author who wrote The Assassins, a book Allen Dulles took to the first Warren Commission meeting in trying to make the case that unlike politically motivated European assassins, American assassins were generally just crazy lone nut cases, though some of the other commissioners disagreed, pointing to the Lincoln assassination as a case in point. 

While Krulak had an office at the Pentagon and a desk at the White House, the official records show that he only had one on one meetings with the President a dozen or some times, each one on the subject of Vietnam. 

Krulak later told friends that he did meet with the President privately after hours, delivering the promised bottle of whisky, that they shared. 

While most of Krulak's biography deals with his role in the Vietnam war, Krulak was also responsible for counter-insurgency and special activities in Cuba. 

On September 25, 1963, when CIA officer Desmond FitzGerald briefed the Joint Chiefs of Staff on covert operations against Cuba, Krulak sent his adjunct Colonel Walter Higgins to the meeting, and his resulting memo is, I believe, the single most important document released under the JFK Act for multiple reasons. 

It was Krulak's responsibility to provide any military assistance the CIA required in the course of their covert activities, the subject of FitzGerald's briefing. Since General Taylor was on a special mission to Vietnam, the meeting was run by temporary chair, General Curtis LeMay, the Air Force Chief of Staff. 

During the course of his briefing, that touched on many points - FitzGerald said that the CIA was conducting a detailed study of the German military's July 20, 1944 plot to kill Hitler, in order to adapt it for use against Castro. 

Unfortunately, when a FOIA request was made for that detailed study, it appears the CIA has lost it, which to me, confirms Peter Dale Scott's Negative Template thesis that hold the most important records are the ones being withheld or were destroyed or missing. 

When I get a chance I will post some excerpts from the Krulak biography at my other blogs http://JFKCountercoup2.blogspot.com 

Hemingway and JFK

Hemingway and JFK - Hemingway at Dealey Plaza? 

OSS Col. David Bruce (Left) and Hemingway on the way to Paris 

Ken Burn's new three part PBS documentary on Ernest Hemingway sparked me to write about the aspects of Hemingway's life as they reflect on the assassination of President Kennedy. 

While they actually never met in person, Hemingway and JFK are intimately entwined. For one, many of Hemingway's papers and artifacts are housed at the JFK Presidential Library in Boston, there at the reqest of his fourth wife, Mary, and for good reasons. 

The key connection between Hemingway and JFK, as it is with JFK, Oswald and Ruby, is Cuba. My favorite book about Hemingway is Arnold Samuelson's With Hemingway - One Year in Key West and Cuba. Samuelson, a college student during the Depression, hopped a freight train to Key West to visit Hemingway, and was promptly arrested when he arrived. Eventually he got to see Hemingway, who took him down to the docks and permitted him to stay aboard his fishing yacht, The Pilar. 

Samuelson's manuscript however, even though Samuelson became an English teacher, wasn't discovered by his daughter in the attic until after his death, and she arranged for it to be published. One of the things Hemingway taught Samuelson I found useful, was his advice to not write everything in one sitting, as if you know where the story is going, save some for the next day, and you will have something to begin with. 

Hemingway's military intelligence life began when he ventured to China, then engaged in war with Japan, and reported back on what he learned. Then he began working with ONI - the Office of Naval Intelligence, who supplied him with gasoline and weapons for the Pilar in order for Hemingway to report on any Nazi submarine sightings in the Caribbean while he was fishing. 

One of Hemingway's sons became a JEDBURG - a British trained commando parachuted behind the enemy lines in order to organize bands of anti-Nazi partisan resistance. Unfortunately young Hemingway was captured by the Germans and became a prisoner of war.

Then Hemingway became a war correspondent for Colliers and NANA - the North American Newspaper Alliance, that also included at various times, others involved in this story - Priscilla Johnson McMillan, Ian Fleming of 007 fame, and JFK's paramour Inga Avid. 

For more info on NARA here's a link to an article I wrote with John Judge - JFKCountercoup2: Bottlefed by Oswald's NANA

Although such correspondents were not supposed to have weapons or engage in combat, Hemingway sported a pistol and a machine gun, much to the dismay of other correspondents. 

At some point - probably in the village of Rambouillet, 30 miles southeast of Paris, Hemingway hooked up with OSS - Office of Strategic Services Colonel David Bruce, as there is a photo of them together there. Bruce found Hemingway had accumulated a band of French partisan fighters - some 60 or so, who Hemingway provided intelligence to in order for them to fight the Germans. In a few trucks and Bruce's jeep they made their way to Paris, stopping at every cafe and hotel bar for a drink along the way. 

Bruce would be a major player in this story, as he would be Hemingway's best man at his fourth wedding, and be JFK's ambassador to the Court of St. James in London, where he would be briefed by Art Lundahl of the NPIC - National Photo Interpretation Center on the Soviet missiles in Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Bruce also served as US Ambassador to France and West Germany. 

While the French Army entered Paris and accepted the surrender of the German generals, Hemingway wanted to liberate the bar at the Ritz Hotel, where he had spent many hours drinking and eating with his pal F. Scott Fitzgerald in the 20s and 30s. 

Lee  Harvey Oswald even mentions Hemingway in his letter from Russia to then Navy Secretary John Connally, saying that he went to the Soviet Union as Hemingway went to Paris. Priscilla Johnson assumed that Oswald was referring to Hemingway's life in Paris as a writer, but he also could have been referring to Hemingway's visit with David Bruce, the colonel in the OSS - General Donovan's predecessor to the CIA. 

On August 25, 1944 they arrived at the Ritz, they say Hemingway entered the small alcove bar where there is now a statute of him, and knew the bartender. He placed his machine gun on the bar, looked around at Bruce and his motley group of partisans, and ordered sixty martinis, shaken not sturred. 

The hotel manager, who knew Hemingway, said that the German generals had just left a few hours previous, and that he had kept the best wines from them, so Hemingway said, "Lets have some." 

After the war Hemingway went back to Key West and Havana, where he kept homes, but after the Bay of Pigs disaster, never returned to Cuba. Instead he went to Ketchum, Idaho, where he enjoyed hunting and fishing, though his health was failing and he was being treated for depression with electro shock therapy. In an act of depression, Hemingway killed himself, in a manner very similar to the way George deMohrenschildts committed suicide - shotgun to the head. 

After Hemingway's death, his wife Mary received special permission to travel to Cuba to go to their house there and retrieve manuscripts, art and artifacts that she wanted to keep, and later donated to the Kennedy Library. While there, she was visited by Castro himself, who drove up in a jeep and informed Mary Hemingway they had plans to make the home a museum. 

When Mary informed Edward R. Morrow, head of the US Information Agency, he informed the CIA and Ed Lansdale, then head of Operation Mongoose assigned to get rid of Castro. They discussed a plan to use this information as part of a plot, possibly a plot to kill Castro, as described in an article The Old Man and the CIA: A Kennedy Plot to Kill Castro (The Nation - March 26, 2001). 

The Old Man and the CIA: A Kennedy Plot to Kill Castro? | The Nation

While I distrust David Corn and Gus Russo's interpretation, I will attempt to get a copy of the original Lansdale memo from Larry Haapanen, the person who found it, and report back. 

Okay, I've obtained scanned copies of the Lansdale memo from Larry and have posted them here: 

JFKCountercoup2: Lansdale Memo 16 March 1962 Re: The Hemingway Plot

More to Come on this. 

Billkelly3@gmail.com 

Much to Agree on by Jeff Morley

 Jeff Morely wrote:  There is much to agree on:

*The president was killed by his enemies.

*This view was widely shared in private by men and women of power including Jackie Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Fidel Castro, and Charles de Gaulle, not to mention insiders such as Joe Califano, Win Scott, and John Kerry. They didn't all agree on the causes of JFK's murder but they all agreed the Warren Report is not a credible account of the crime.

* The perpetrators were persons capable of constructing plausible deniabilty around their actions, which means at least some of them belonged to the US intelligence community. 

* Our methodology is empirical, based on the preponderance of available evidence. If and when the government declassifies the last of the JFK files we will be able to fill out the JFK fact pattern, as ably summarized in John's review of David Talbot's Brothers. 

* In a legal perspective, we cannot (at least I cannot) identify any one witting perpetrator who is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of conspiring to kill the president. Those who say this is proof that there was no conspiracy resemble no one much as those legal savants who said the acquittal of OJ Simpson confirmed his innocence.

* The government continues to keep JFK secrets in 2021.

* The still-redacted JFK files document the activities of three categories of CIA officers of continuing interest; 1) those who knew Oswald's biography before 11/22 (and were thus in a position to possibly manipulate him into the role of "patsy" that he claimed); those involved in CIA assassination operations; and those who implicated themselves in the crime.

* We say, without fear of contradiction, that Allen Dulles, Richard Helms, and George Joannides criminally obstructed the investigation of the president’s murder by withholding material evidence from investigators.

* Our conclusions are based on the sturdy foundation laid down by first generation researchers such as Sylvia Meagher and Mary Ferrell; on the groundbreaking reporting of second-generation reporters such as Anthony Summers, Dick Russell, David Lifton, and Gaeton Fonzi; and on the conclusions of the HSCA.

* Our perspective is corroborated by the forensic analysis of Tink Thompson, Cyril Wecht, and Doug Horne, and confirmed by statements of US intelligence operatives themselves: Howard Hunt, Fletcher Prouty and most recently by Rolf Mowatt-Larssen.  Artists such as Oliver Stone, Eryka Badu, Don DeLillo and Bob Dylan have endowed the historical record with resonance of truth-telling. 

* We hope President Biden will do the right thing and orders all the JFK records released without exception in October 2021. This would vindicate the rule of law over the agenda of secret agencies. It would also be popular across partisan lines.

        Of course, the crime has to be seen in the context of the Cold War but understanding it does not require any unanimity about contemporary politics.  

Jeff and Rex Bradford wrote an update on the looming deadlines for release of the remaining records: 

https://www.justsecurity.org/75795/federal-agencies-face-april-deadline-on-secret-jfk-files/

I will be adding my two cents soon - BK 

 any unanimity about contemporary politics.

Colonels at Dealey Plaza (Updated)

 COLONELS AT DEALEY PLAZA - Revised and put in Alphabetical Order 

Colonels are the highest ranking officers on the battlefield – what the snipers call a HPT – High Priority Target – guys who take their insignia off before going out in the open. They are the - Go To guys the Generals personally give instructions and orders and they’re the ones responsible for seeing those orders are carried out.

On the chess board the Colonels are Bishops, Rooks and Knights and capable of maneuvering and striking from different directions and distances.

There were three colonels at the Alamo – Colonel William Barrett Travis, Colonel Jim Bowie and Colonel David Crockett. 

And there were a number of Army and Air Force Colonels directly involved in JFK Assassination – “boots on the ground – in the field" and at the command centers. I intend to get photos and the official files and develop dossiers on each of these men and would appreciate anything you can add to the record.

 Bill Simpich said...No one has done this. The CIA has been done over and over again. Isn't it intriguing that the CIA documents are far more available than those of the military? How many books on military intelligence are out there compared to the CIA? Food for thought. Great project Bill.

 

     -     Col. William “Bill” Amos USAF knew Gen. Joseph J. Cappucci - who expressed personal knowledge of an LBJ backed conspiracy to kill JFK, 

JFKfacts » Senior Air Force officer saw JFK’s assassination as ‘a military coup’  /  Teknosis: Gen. Joseph J. Cappucci, head of Air Force counterintelligence, told Jan Amos and her husband Col. William Henry Amos, that Lyndon Johnson killed JFK

 - Col. Roy I. Batterton, Jr. - US Naval Mission - Haiti - George deMohrenschildt wrote to him from Dallas.

-  Col. William Bishop – Expressed secret knowledge of the assassination.

-  Col. Frank M. “Brandy” Brandstetter – Texan manager of the Havana Hilton when Castro made it his early residence.

 JFKcountercoup: Col. Frank M. Brandstetter / Brandy, Our Man in Acapulco: The Life and Times of Colonel Frank M. Brandstetter - Rodney P. Carlisle, Dominic J. Monetta - Google Books

 - Col. Howard Burris USAF - Native Texan, LBJ's Military aide - met with deMohrenschilt in DC in late April 1963 (p 80) Joan Mellen

-  Colonel William Castorr – Discussed running guns to Cuba with Nancy Perrin Rich’s husband, with Jack Ruby as the bagman. His wife Trudi was good friends with Sylvia Odio.

 -  Col. Philip J. Corso – Asst chief of USA Foreign Technology Division 1961 – who knew Sen. Kenneth Keating (R. NY)  and shared U2 photos of Soviet missiles in Cuba,JFKCountercoup2: Col. Philip J. Corso and Sen. Kenneth Keating (Rep. NY) / JFKCountercoup2: UFOs at Dealey Plaza

-  Lt. Col. William Corson USMC - wrote early history of American intelligence.

-  Col. Jack Crichton MI, USAR 488th MID, who ran the Command and Control center at the Civil Defense Shelter, Dallas State Fairgrounds, and arranged for investigative translators, 

Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, America's Invisible Government, and the ... - Russ Baker - Google Books  /   

Deep Politics and the Death of JFK - Peter Dale Scott - Google Books

-  Col. George Stanton Dorman – LeMay’s aide, whose wife worked at the White House and was there at the time of the assassination, and son who witnessed the burial  of JFK and toured Gen. LeMay’s control and command plane.  http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2012/02/col-george-stanton-dorman.html  /  http://jfkfacts.org/assassination/a-note-on-curtis-lemays-actions-on-nov-22/

-  Col. Sheffield M. Edwards – CIA – Project Bluebird - http://spartacus-

educational.com/JFKedwardsS.htm /http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/sociopolitica/manchurian/marks2.htmM

-   Lt. Col. Fons – Deputy Chief of Staff - 4th Army Headquarters – Ft. Sam Houston, Tx -http://jfkcountercoup2.blogspot.com/2013/07/pd-scott-on-strikeforce-memo.html

-  Col. Alexander Haig - staff officer in the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations (DCSOPS) at the Pentagon 1962-64 https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/alt.assassination.jfk/8150-oOXvjk Captain Pat Gannaway and Alexander Haig, Haig served as a staff officer in the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations (DCSOPS) at the Pentagon (1962–64)

-   Col. Walter Higgins – Aide to Gen. Krulak and author of the Higgins Memo, considered by some to be the single most significant “Smoking Document” among the JFK assassination records and the subject of a number of FOIA requests and an ongoing AARC civil suit. JFKcountercoup: JCS Memo FitzGerald Briefing 25 Sept. 1963  /   JFKcountercoup: Valkyrie At Dealey Plaza

-   Col. Robert Ellis Jones – 112th Military Intelligence Group, Ft. Sam Houston, San Antonio, Texas, contacted the FBI and told them Oswald’s MI file, which was later destroyed,  indicated he used the alias A. J. Hidell   [ http://www.jfklancer.com/RobertJones.html ] Obituary of Col Robert Ellis Jones. http://www.usmilitariaforum.com/forums/index.php?/topic/10534-col-robert-e-jones-passed-away/  Jim Loving: From the obit:"upon completion he was assigned to Special Warfare Directorate, Office of the Chief of Staff for Operations, Department of the Army at the Pentagon 1962-1964, then to the Joints Chiefs of Staff J3, actively engaged in planning and operations of the Vietnam Conflict."

     -  Col. Sam Kail – Stationed at US Embassy Havana, ACSI USAR, who met with deMohrenschildt, with Dorothie Matlack. Mentioned by Veciana. Who's Who in the JFK Assassination: An A to Z Encyclopedia - Michael Benson - Google Books

-  Colonel George de Lannurien - French chief of CI - Counter Intelligence SDECE - in NYC (p.161)

-  Col. Edward Lansdale USAF – (Later General USAF) CIA psych and special warfare specialist under Air Force cover. May have stayed in Fort Worth on JFK's last might there and photographed at Dealey Plaza after the assassination.

-  Lt. Col. Rene Leon - Involved in August 1963 invasion of Haiti that included Loren Hall 

-  Lt. Col. Yuriy Ivanovich Moskalevskiy  http://jfkcountercoup2.blogspot.com/2013/07/col-riy-ivanovich-moskalevskiy.html

-  Col. Erickson Nichols – the USAF embassy military officer who Frank Sturgis reported to at the US Embassy Havana;  JFKCountercoup2: Frank Sturgis - Run By US Military not CIA /  Warrior: Frank Sturgis---The CIA's #1 Assassin-Spy, Who Nearly Killed Castro ... - Jim Hunt, Bob Risch - Google Books 

-  Col. Lawrence Orlov – Was with deMohrenschildt when they first sought out Oswald and vistited him, RIF 104-10431-10034

 - Colonel Roy Pate – 112th Military Intelligence Regional Office.

- Col. Boris T. Pash – Led ALSOS mission,

 http://huachuca.army.mil/files/History_MPASH.PDF /http://www.internmentarchives.com/showdoc.php?docid=00196&search_id=76039

-   Col. Fletcher Prouty, DOD-CIA liaison officer at the Pentagon, friend of Gen. Krulak.  The Col. L. Fletcher Prouty Reference Site / General Charles "Chuck" C. Krulak / 

- Col. Rudolph M. Reich – Commander 316th INTC Group

- Col. Jose Rivera USAR- Betheda, Md.   medical officer with foreknowledge of Oswald and assassination, who worked on special research project at Fort Deitrick, Md.  A New Oswald Witness Goes Public / JFKcountercoup: Col. Jose Rivera & US Army Service Command / Jose Rivera

-  Colonel Richard Lyle Rolfe (1918-1968) 1960, he was serving on the staff of Major General John M. Williams, Asst. Chief of Staff for Intelligence(ACSI), U.S. Army. (Source: Letter from Maj. Gen. Williams to Allen Dulles, Director, CIA, Oct. 4, 1960.) On Oct. 16, 1962, he briefed Brig. Gen. Edward Lansdale on activities of Alpha 66. (Source: Memo from  Col. Jeff W. Boucher, Chief, Collections Branch, ACSI, to Brig. Gen. Lansdale; this doc. is RIF #198-10004-10018}In or around November 1962, he participated in discussions re: Alpha 66 with Brig. Gen. Lansdale, Col. Boucher, and other Army special warfare and intelligence officers. (Source: DOD repot; doc is #180-10104-10394)

-      Lt. Col. William B. Rose – chief of the Army Intelligence Reserve Branch Office of the Assistant Chief of Staff, Intelligence (ACSI USAR) – Pentagon, where most of the field reports end up, especially those of:  JFKCountercoup2: ACSI - Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence, USAR

-    Col. John “Rowlins” Roselli – Civilian made Mafia boss attached to CIA case officer William Harvey during training of  Cubans at JMWAVE,  JFKcountercoup: The Second Plot - The Original Cover Story / The Kennedy Brothers: The Rise and Fall of Jack and Bobby - Richard D. Mahoney - Google Books /  Bradley Ayers

- Lt. Col. O'Wighton Delk Simpson - USAF Intel officer associated with Burris employed by Martin-Marietta in 1963 AFIO.  Bagman?  Son saw "assassination money."

- Col. Ralph Steakley – With Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Cuban Missile Crisis - - Founded the Joint Reconnaissance Center at Pentagon http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/marysdb/showRec.do?mode=searchResult&id=10103 / http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=3059

http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB398/ /https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/kent-csi/docs/v44i4a

-  Lt. Col. George  L. Whitmeyer – (USA Reserve) – Commanding officer of the Nothern District of Texas, occupant of the Pilot Car in the Motorcade driven by Capt. Lumpkin of both Dallas Police Department and US Army Intelligence - http://spartacuseducational.com/JFK488mid.htm /     http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/marysdb/showRec.do?mode=searchResult&id=10103

/ http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=3059

Generals @ Dealey Plaza

 Generals and Admirals at Dealey Plaza 

While Gen. Taylor was on a special mission to Vietnam, General LeMay chaired a Sept. 25, 1963 meeting of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for a briefing by CIA officer Desmond FitzGerald on CIA covert operations against Cuba. FitzGerald mentioned the fact that the CIA was seeking disenchanted Cuban military officers to oppose Castro, much like the German military attempted an assassination and coup against Hitler in 1944. FitzGerald said they had identified about ten such officers, but they had not developed the confidence to talk to one another. That was not a problem in the U.S. military, as the Joint Chiefs of Staff were united in their recommendation that the US military should invade Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis and other than General Taylor, their hatred of the president and his policies. 

                                                               General Maxwell Taylor 

General Maxwell Taylor - Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Taylor was brought out of retirement to serve as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs by President Kennedy, after Kennedy read a book Taylor wrote on military strategy. Taylor led the investigation into the failure at the Bay of Pigs. He was close friends with RFK, who named one of his sons after Taylor. At the time of the assassination Taylor was in a meeting at the Pentagon with the German General Staff, which included two German generals who were involved in the July 20, 1944 plot to kill Hitler, but escaped retribution. The Germans later reported that they were perplexed by Taylor's response to the news of the assassination. He continued the meeting as if nothing had happened, and then took a nap. As US chief representative to NATO, Gen. Lyman Lemnitzer may have also attended that meeting. For more on Taylor: JFKCountercoup2: General Maxwell Davenport Taylor

General Lyman L. Lemnitzer - Appointed by President Eisenhower, Lemnitzer became the fourth Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff 1960-1962. Near the end of WWII Allen Dulles and Lemnitzer met with German military officers to arrange the unconditional surrender of German forces in Italy and Southern Austria, without consulting the President. After the war Lemnitzer helped establish NATO. After disagreements with President Kennedy over Berlin, Cuba and Southeast Asia, Lemnitzer endorsed the Northwoods plan to fake an attack on the USA, blame Cuba and use the attack as a justification of an invasion of Cuba. Lemnitzer was removed as Chairman on September 30, 1962 and was appointed Supreme Allied Commander in Europe (NATO) where he served from 1962 - 1969. Lemnitzer, in 1975 served on President Ford's Commission on CIA Activities within the USA. 

General Victor "Brut" Krulak USMC SACIA - At the Pentagon Krulak was assigned to the position of SACIA - Special Assistant for Counter-Insurgency Activities, which was responsible for support CIA covert operations, primarily in Cuba and Vietnam. As a marine officer in the South Pacific, one of Krulak's marine units was rescued from a Japanese held island by Lt. J. F. Kennedy and PT-109, an incident depicted in the book and the movie.One evening Krulak visited JFK at the White House, apparently after hours, because there is no record of it. Krulak said he took Kennedy a bottle of whisky that he had promised him for rescuing his troops in the South Pacific. Krulak's adjunct Colonel Walter Higgins, wrote the memo of the September 25, 1963 meeting of the Joint Chiefs of Staff when CIA officer Desmond FitzGerald briefed them on the status of CIA covert ops against Cuba, specifically mentioning their "detailed study" of the July 20, 1944 German military plot to kill Hitler, that the CIA was adapting for use against Castro. 

For more on Krulak: JFKCountercoup2: General Victor H. Krulak

General Curtis LeMay - Air Force Chief of Staff, LeMay was temporary chairman and ran the Sept. 25, 1963 meeting while General Taylor was on a special mission to Vietnam. On the Friday before the assassination LeMay wrapped up a two day conference of USAF generals at Maxwell AFB in Alabama. He then went on a hunting and fishing expedition to Michigan with entertainer Author Godfrey. When notified of the assassination, LeMay requested a USAF special mission pick him up at Toronto, and then changed that to Warton, Canada, near where he was apparently hunting and fishing. JFKCountercoup2: AF's Top Generals Complete Two-Day Meetings at MAFB

General Author Godfrey USAF Reserves - A pilot himself, Godfrey owned a special plane given to him by Eddie Rickenbacker, the president of Eastern Airlines. Godfrey picked up LeMay in Alabama and together they went to Detroit and then on to a special hunting and fishing preserve and private club that Godfrey belonged to. At the time of the assassination Godfrey was back at his entertainment studio in New York City, so he must have left LeMay back in Michigan/Canada.  JFKCountercoup2: Godfrey Wings Off To Hunt With Gen. LeMay

   General Edward Lansdale USAF - Lansdale was technically a special warfare and counterinsurgency specialist with the CIA, but given a general's rank in the Air Force. After defeating a suspected communist insurgency by Hulks in the Philippines, Lansdale brought a Philippine counter-insurgency expert Napoleon Villaneuve with him to help train anti-Castro Cuban commandos in Central America, the brigade that would go ashore at the Bay of Pigs. At first Lansdale and others involved in the planning of the operation intended for small groups of commandos be trained and infiltrated into Cuba on the eastern end of the island, where they could set up staging areas in the mountains as Castro himself had done. These commando were called the Pathfinders, and some were infiltrated into Cuba a few weeks before the Bay of Pigs. At some point the plan changed from infiltrating the commandos in small groups to a full fledged mechanized landing, that failed. Lansdale later led Operation Mongoose, the post - Bay of Pigs covert action program to get rid of Castro, and left the CIA/USAF a few months before the assassination. He apparently stayed at a Fort Worth hotel on the eve of the assassination and appears in photographs at Dealey Plaza. 

General Edwin Walker - U.S. Army General Walker was relieved of his European command after distributing John Birch Society and other right wing radical literature to his troops. President Kennedy had him psychologically evaluated, before he moved to Dallas to drum support for right wing and John Birch Society programs. At a February 1963 party at his home, set up for the Oswalds to meet the Paines, at the home of Magnolia Oil company engineer Volkmar Schmidt, Schmidt talked with Oswald for a few hours, suggesting to him that General Walker should be killed as Hitler should have been, specifically mentioning the July 20, 1944 attempt. On April 10, 1963 someone took a shot a Walker through his home office window, and Oswald was later, after the assassination of the President, blamed for that incident as well. Before George deMohrenschildt left for Haiti, the Oswalds gave him a copy of the backyard photo of Oswald with the weapons and communist publications, on which Marina wrote "Hunter of Fascists, ha ha." 

General Thomas Powers - Said to be even more of a right-wing fanatic than LeMay, if that is possible. Vice Commander of the Strategic Air Command (SAC) under Gen. LeMay 48-54, Commander of SAC 57-64. Established Operation Chrome Dome putting B-52 nuke bombers in the air 24-7. During the Cuban Missile Crisis on Oct. 24, 1962, Powers raised the SAC defcon to level 2, without presidential authorization, and did so over non-secure communications so the Soviets would know it. When the RAND corp recommended changes in the command structure to restrain a non-authorized attack, Powers responded: "Restrant? Why are you so concerned with saving their lives? The whole idea is to kill the bastards. In the end if there is one Russian and two Americans left, we win!"

Gen. David M. Shoup USMC 

http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/shoup.htm

General David Monroe Shoup served as the twenty-second Commandant of the Marine Corps from January 1, 1960 until his retirement from active service, December 31, 1963.

As a colonel in World War II, General Shoup earned the Nation's highest award, the Medal of Honor, while commanding the Second Marines, 2d Marine Division, at Betio, a bitterly contested island of Tarawa Atoll. The British Distinguished Service Order was also awarded him for this action. The following citation accompanied his award of the Medal of Honor:

"For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his own life above and beyond the call of duty as commanding officer of all Marine Corps troops in action against enemy Japanese forces on Betio Island, Tarawa Atoll, Gilbert Islands, from November 20 to 22, 1943.

General Shoup was nominated by President Dwight D. Eisenhower on August 12, 1959 to be the 22d Commandant of the Marine Corps, and his nomination for a four-year term was confirmed by the Senate. Upon assuming his post as Commandant of the Marine Corps on January 1, 1960, he was promoted to four-star rank.

On January 21, 1964, shortly after his retirement, General Shoup was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal by President Lyndon B. Johnson for exceptionally meritorious service as Commandant of the Marine Corps.

While Shoup's experience in WWII, like the President, made him want to avoid war, he sided with the other Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Cuban Missile Crisis when they wanted to invade Cuba. After JFK stormed out of an Oval Office meeting with them, leaving the tape recorder running, Shoup was overheard saying to General LeMay: "I agree with that answer, general, I just agree with you, I just agree with you a hundred percent. Somebody's got to keep him from doing the goddamn thing piecemeal. That's our problem. Go in there and frig around with the missiles. You're screwed. You go in there and frig around with anything else, you're screwed," Shoup had added.

General Earle Gilmore "Bus" Wheeler, (January 13, 1908 - December 18, 1975) was a U.S. Army General and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/ewheeler.htm

In 1964 he succeeded Maxwell D. Taylor as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and held that post until 1970. Wheeler died in Frederick, Maryland after a heart attack, while being transported by ambulance from his West Virginia home to Washington D.C.

Considering the large number of general officers available in 1964 with distinguished combat records in World War II and Korea, the staff officer Wheeler was a surprising choice for the top Pentagon post. His relative lack of combat experience, however, might actually have been seen as a plus in the eyes of the new president, Lyndon B. Johnson. The latter was not known for his tolerance of independent thinking, and Wheeler's dutiful acquiesence in Johnson's conduct of the Vietnam War is a failure for which Wheeler has been harshly criticized by some historians.

General William Odom - Commander of the National Security Agency (NSA) and Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence (ACSI). John Newman served under him for two years. When Thomas Powers, author of Intelligence Wars, asked Odom - what makes a good intelligence case officer? Odom thought about it and replied, "Did you see the Paul Newman, Robert Redford movie The Sting? Well that's it." That tells me that Odom took Paul Linebarger's class on propaganda and psychological warfare at the Center for International Studies. Joe Smith, in his book Portrait of a Cold Warrior, describes how Linebarger had his students read David Maurer's The Big Con, which was a linguists study of the slang used by con artists and confidence men, which became the basis for the movie The Sting. 

Admiral George Whelan Anderson, Jr.

http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/gwanders.htm

The Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) in charge of the US blockade of Cuba during Soviet missile crisis in 1962, died March  20, 1992, Arleigh Burke Pavilion nursing home in McLean, Virginia. He was 85 years old and lived in Washington, DC. He died of congestive heart failure, his family said. 

Many military experts had expected that he would become Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS). But a series of major policy disputes with Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara sidetracked his 36-year Navy career, and he was abruptly replaced as operations chief in 1963. Shortly after that, President John F. Kennedy, pleased with the Navy's handling of the blockade, appointed him as US Ambassador to Portugal. During 3 years there, encouraged plans for peaceful transition of the Portuguese colonies in Africa to national independence. 

After leaving his post in Portugal, he returned to Government service from 1973 to 1977 as member and later chairman of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. 

In the Cuban crisis, the US forced the removal of Soviet nuclear missiles from the island. Kennedy was quoted as telling him, "Well, Admiral it looks as though this is up to the Navy," to which he replied, "Mr President, the Navy will not let you down." Time magazine featured him on its cover, calling him "an aggressive blue-water sailor of unfaltering competence and uncommon flare." But he bridled at the extent of McNamara's insistence on civilian involvement in running the operation, regarding it as usurpation of traditional military authority. Historians say that the 2 men even debated specific ship deployments in an argument that erupted in the Situation Room of Pentagon. 

Admiral William "Red" Rayborne, developed Hyman Rickover's nuclear submarine fleet and the Polaris missile. Appointed by President Johnson as Director of Central Intelligence after John McCone, despite not having any intelligence experience. Was Director of CIA during the Ramparts magazine exposure of CIA use of student and non-profit organizations. Replaced in 1966 by his deputy Richard Helms. 

Admiral Chester Bruton. Decorated WWII submarine commander Communications-electronics director of the Joint Staff of the Commander in the European Command 58-60, after which he retired and went to work for Collins Radio in Dallas. Friends with George deMohrenschildt, who visited Bruton and his wife with Marina and Lee Oswald, staying for lunch and lounging by the pool. While deMohrenschildt's idea was to try to get Bruton to get Oswald a job at Collins Radio, after all he worked at a radio factory in USSR, Oswald made his dislike of military top brass very known by insulting Bruton. In 1992, when I obtained Bruton's DC phone number and called him, his daughter answered the phone and said that her father had just died and she was there to collect his effects. 

 Free the JFK Files During Sunshine Week March 14-20, 2021

I am asking for the umpteenth time, to try to direct the Sunshine Week conversations around to the ultimate government secret of all time – the still secret records on the assassination of President Kennedy.

Like 2017, when the JFK Act required the government to release all of its records on the assassination in full, but failed to do so because President Trump was convinced to continue withholding them, his deadline is over this year, possibly in April, but definitely by October, unless, and it’s a big unless, President Biden co-tows to the Deep State and orders them to be withheld, again.

Now it’s up to one man, and one man alone – President Biden, to do nothing and let the records be automatically released, or issue an Executive Order to continue withholding them.

In addition to persuading President Biden to just release the records, the Congressional Oversight Committee must conduct open public hearings on the JFK Act to determine why a law passed by Congress and signed into law by President Bush is not being enforced, what became of the many missing and destroyed records, and why haven’t those responsible been held accountable?

The last oversight hearing on the JFK Act was over 20 yeas ago,

Now that the Democrats have the power, and dominate the committees, you would think that it is more likely to happen, but don’t bet on it, as this is not a liberal-conservative, Democrat-Republican or right wing-left wing issue – it is one of national security, and one the Deep National Security State takes very seriously.

The new chairwomen of the House Oversight Committee is Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D. NY), whose district covers lower Manhattan. If are a constituent of hers, like New York attorney Larry Schnapf, you can write her a letter like he did – link to letter:

While Larry is a lawyer and wrote a really good letter that will get her attention, and the attention of the attorneys and staff of the Oversight Committee, letters should be short and concise, confined to one page, and emailed, faxed and sent by regular mail.

There are slightly more Democrats than Republicans and if you are represented by any of these men and women you should contact them and request they ask the chairwomen to schedule a JFK Act oversight hearing, as only the chairwomen can do so.

[ https://oversight.house.gov/members ]

Of those on the committee I am only familiar with Elenore Norton, the non-voting representative of the District of Columbia. Although she can’t vote, she is a ranking member and the other members of the committee listen to her. I think she is our champion on this committee and I will be asking all of my Washington D.C. friends and associates to not only write to her, but seek a meeting with her and Carolyn Maloney at the Oversight and Reform offices. A short meeting with the top researchers in DC could be very persuasive, as will a reasonable write-in campign by everyone interested in this cause.

Larry Schnapf recently appeared on Len Osanic’s Black Op Radio Show 1032 on March 4 in which he talked about these things. [ https://blackopradio.com/archives2021.html ] as well as a Senate Resolution 281 that urges the president for full release of the records [ https://fas.org/irp/congress/2017_cr/jfk-release.html  ]

Read Larry’s letter to Rep. Maloney: [  https://jfkfacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Rep-Caroyln-Maloney-re-JFK-Oversight.pdf /  https://www.fff.org/explore-freedom/article/letter-to-house-committee-on-oversight-and-government-reform/ ]

Committee Web Site:  [ https://oversight.house.gov/ ]

 

If you wish to contact the Committee, you may write to or call the below information:

2157 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515
Phone: (202) 225-5051
Fax: (202) 225-4784

Preview of Larry Hancock's The Tipping Point

 Preview of Larry Hancock's The Tipping Point 

Larry Hancock’s new book The Tipping Point is a concise summary of his many decades long investigation into the assassination of President Kennedy. 

[Those who want a taste of The Tipping Point before being tempted to purchase it, you can read key excerpts at the Mary Ferrell web site here: https://www.maryferrell.org/pages/Tipping_Point.html ]

I have been following Larry’s work since his landmark Someone Would Have Talked (Updated in 2010), which firmly puts to rest the often repeated and demonstratedly false cliche that if there as a conspiracy to kill the President someone would have talked. They talked all right, and Larry documents numerous cases, each of which leads to the heart of the case.

Since the official deranged lone nut scenario has been proven false, it must have happened another way, and in this book Larry lays out a very believable alternative scenario, one that connects all of the main subjects to Cuba, and defines the essence of a covert intelligence operation, the means by which the conspirators achieved their goal, and got away with it.

The Tipping Point picks up where Josiah Thompson’s Last Second in Dallas leaves off, with the President’s head shattered by two almost simultaneous shots, one from the front and one from behind. While Thompson gives a micro analysis of the eyewitness reports, ballistics, medical evidence, and acoustics, fitting them all together without speculating who was behind the triggers, Hancock puts things in their Cuban context, lays out a chronology and gives names to those who are the most likely candidates for pulling off such an audacious triangulation of firepower.

As with the subjects in his Someone Would Have Talked, and as CIA official Rolf Mowatt-Larsen explained in his 2019 CAPA presentation in Dallas, the suspects are limited, limited to those who had the capability to conduct such complex covert intelligence operations, and many of them are the same ones who talked and most are familiar characters to anyone who has studied the murder of the President in even a superficial manner.

James Jesus Angleton ran the CIA counter-inteligence office that kept particularly keen tabs on Lee Harvey Oswald before the assassination, counter-insurgency expert General Ed Lansale, America’s James Bond William Harvey director of the anti-Castro Cuban Task Force W and the case officer for Mafia Don John Rosselli, along with covert cowboy Rip Robertson, all of whom are associated with the CIA’s Miami station JMWAVE, where most of the intirgue stems from.

Besides documenting most of the references to records released under the JFK Act, Hancock refers to the CIA crypt files that translates the codes into English, puts everything into a clear and concise chronololgy, and quotes the suspect themselves as to their participation in the Cuban ops that were turned against JFK at Dealey Plaza.

Besides the usual suspects, Larry brings some relatively new names into the fold – Carl Jenkins and John I.F. Harper, CIA trainers who prepared the Cuban Pathfinders for the Bay of Pigs and later Mongoose commando attacks against Cuba. And Gene Wheaton, Jenkins’ former housemate and proprietor of a CIA airline propriety company. Wheaton tried to blow the whistle on what he knew about renegade CIA operations but  then CIA director William Casey was in on it, and the Assassination Records Review Board didn’t pay him any attention.

Narrowing down the CIA-Mafia plots to kill Castro to the few that resemble the Dealey Plaza operation, Larry focuses on one particular plot – the Pathfinder Plan. From CIA technicians at the National Photo Interpretation Center (NPIC) we learn that Pathfinder was a plan to infiltrate anti-Castro Cuban commando snipers into Cuba and shoot Castro in the head with high powered rifles as he rode by in an open jeep.

I pretty much see eye to eye with Larry Hancock, and while we are usually on the same page, Larry always seems to be ahead of me, so I know I will learn something new from anything he writes.

 [https://www.maryferrell.org/pages/Tipping_Point_Introduction.html ]

Some excerts:

Reality Check

“…..it had become quite clear, to me at least, that the official history (as portrayed in the Warren Commission Report) of the assassination was simply not credible. That conclusion was based in part on an assessment of the materials offered in support of the Warren Report were questionable in many respects – including the fact that the legal chain of evidence used in support of the report was not only broken, but contained so many questionable elements that an evidentary approach simply did not offer a viable foundation for assessing the crime.”

“Beyond that, the documentary record supported the conclusion that an iterative series of actions had been taken after the assassinationto suppress certain items of evidence, to obfuscate witness testimony, and to preempt any contemporary investigation of conspiracy during the months immediately following the assassination.”

The Back Door

“After fifteen years of my own inquiry into President Kennedy’s murder, I concluded that there had indeed been a conspiracy in play – but that my initial and preferred, evidentiary approach to the crime would remain both frustrating and fruitless. Pursuing a conspiracy by going through the front door was simply not viable.”

“….What we foundwas that irrespective of the individual (we studied) and the lead, to some extent all of them shared some sort of history with the Cuban revoluion of the late 1950s, the rise to power of Fidel Castro, the Cuban resistance to his regime, the various CIA efforts to oust Castro from power or the years-long anti-Castro resistance movement inside Cuba or among Cuban exiles in the United States.”

“Perhaps most startling, not only did all of the sources and associations which seemed most credible connect to Cuba in some fashion, in the end they actually pointed in the same direction that Robert Kennedy appears to have immediately suspected on the afternoon of November 22, 1963.”

The Cuban Backstory

“…Due to its proximity and its long-standing trade relationships with the United States, Cuba was already an area of routine CIA foreign intelligence collections as well as political influence (anti-communist) efforts…..In support of such options the U.S. Army began using commercial covers to secretly place officers inside Cuba to collect military intelligence…..”

The CIA Cuba Project 1960-61

“The initial CIA effort to oust Fidel Castro, approved by President Eisenhower in March, 1960, bailed in its goal to produce well-armed, widespread guerilla action against the Castro regime by the end of October, 1962…”

“Moving dramatically from covert action, the CIA turned to the creation and amphibious landing of a heavily aremed, brigade sized, conventional infantry force – supported by tanks, armored trucks, heavy weapons units and parachute drops as well as by a Cuban volunteer air element.”

BK NOTES: When the original covert insertion of Pathfinder commandos into the east coast mountains was removed from the planning and replaced with the full force brigade, General Ed Lansdale and his Phillipine trainer were removed from the operation.

“It has only been with the release of a body of new information from the CIA’s own internal inquiries and histories as well a great deal of relatively recent oral history work, that we can begin to fully appreciate the disconnnects between the mission as it was directed and understood by President Kennedy, and the actual military operation as it was carried out by (Richard) Bissell and those reporting to him…..”

Covert Action against Cuba 1961-1962

“For the Kennedy administration the year 1962 began with a reset in Cuban affairs. President Kennedy remained committed to action against Cuba, but it was going to be covert action – orchestrated at an interdepartmental level above the CIA. The program would officially begin early in the year, designated Operation Nongoose and headed by a Kennedy appointee rather than a senior CIA officer….Instead the CIA was assigned to a support role, carried out by a relatively small  group designated as Task Force W (headed by William Harvey) and with field operations conducted by the JMWAVE station….”

“Still, a number of the highly trained infiltration cadre that had been originally trained under Carl Jenkins remained operational, although relegated to performing relatively minor missions under officers such as Bay of Pigs veterans Rip Robertson and Grayston Lynch. The paramilitary personnel involved in those missions are of special interest because of the strength of their anti-Castro commitment, and the degree to which they remained militarily active in both sanctioned and unsanctioned efforts against the Castro regime over a number of years.”

Larry and I agree on a number of basic hypothesis. For one, the official story just doesn't hold water, so it must have happened another way. In addition, whatever happened at Dealey Plaza it was a covert intelligence operation that is centered around Cuba, CIA operations against Cuba, and specific CIA-Mafia plans to kill Castro. One of the plans to kill Castro was turned against JFK in Dallas, and the multi-gunman ambush and conspiracy was meant to be transparent, and Castro was to be blamed for it. 

And I think there are others who are working on this case who now think the same - Peter Dale Scott, John Newman, Bill Simpich, Jeff Morley, Malcolm Blunt, Alan Dale and others. 

And every line item is footnoted to the hilt.

Additional Links:

More excerpts from The Tipping Point: JFKCountercoup2: Larry Hancock's The Tipping Point Excerpts

Tipping Point

https://larryhancock.wordpress.com/2019/08/25/cia-pseudonyms-and-aliases/

http://www.larry-hancock.com/documents/index.html

https://www.maryferrell.org/php/pseudodb.php

https://www.maryferrell.org/php/cryptdb.php