JFK files: Search the secret files on John F. Kennedy assassination:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/pol ... 806867001/
Moderators: Elvis, DrVolin, Jeff
by chump » Sat Oct 28, 2017 10:53 am
by elfismiles » Sun Oct 29, 2017 9:51 am
JFK Files Expose CIA Plot to Stage Miami Bombings and Blame Fidel Castro
. . .
“We could develop a Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington.... We could sink a boatload of Cubans enroute to Florida (real or simulated). We could foster attempts on lives of Cuban refugees in the United States even to the extent of wounding in instances to be widely publicized.
...
"Exploding a few plastic bombs in carefully chosen spots, the arrest of a Cuban agent and the release of prepared documents substantiating Cuban involvement also would be helpful in projecting the idea of an irresponsible government,”
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/48102.htm
by stillrobertpaulsen » Tue Oct 31, 2017 8:20 pm
by seemslikeadream » Sat Nov 04, 2017 6:31 pm
NATIONAL ARCHIVES RELEASES 676 MORE JFK FILES
Some of the Previously Unknown Files Are Heavily Redacted
JFK, records, National Archives
The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) released 676 additional JFK assassination records today. It appears that 582 were “withheld-in-full,” meaning they have never been seen by the public. From NARA:
The majority of the public release today consists of 553 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) records that were previously denied in their entirety. Also included in the release are records from components of the Departments of Justice (18) and Defense (48), the House Select Committee on Assassinations (56), and the National Archives (1). Released records are available for download.
Our initial brief inspection has indicated, however, that some of the files contain heavy redactions.
Here is a CIA personnel file on David Sanchez Morales, who is believed to be a key suspect in the JFK assassination by many researchers. Notice the number and extent of the redactions:
.
The White House has said that it will release the remaining approximately 30,000 files on a rolling basis over the next six months, subject to agency review.
The National Archives sent out a press release today saying, “The records included in this public release have not been reviewed by NARA.”
Stay tuned as WhoWhatWhy brings you more.
https://whowhatwhy.org/2017/11/03/natio ... jfk-files/
New Trove of JFK Files Tell of Oswald, Assassins and the Watergate Burglars
Bowing to criticism, the White House approves release of 676 long-secret records
By Jefferson Morley / AlterNet November 3, 2017, 5:09 PM GMT
The latest release of the U.S. government's JFK assassianation files expose a host of CIA secret operations long hidden from the American public.
After last week's limited release of JFK assassination prompted criticism from a federal judge and a caustic tweet from the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, the CIA on Friday made public 676 new documents related to the murder of President Kennedy in Dallas in November 1963.
It may be the most significant bulk release of CIA records since the declassification of the so-called "Family Jewels" files in 2007.
Oswald
The new files shed light on the CIA's surveillance of accused presidential assassin Lee Harvey Oswald in the weeks before Kennedy was shot dead in Dallas.
One cable, written six weeks before JFK died, shows top CIA officals were informed that Oswald had contacted a KGB officer in Mexico City named Kostikov who was suspected of being an assassin.
A never-seen 167-page file shows the CIA knew quite a bit about Kostikov.
"He is considered one of the most effective and dangerous intelligence officers in Mexico," said one undated memo in the file.
Watergate
Some of the files illuminate other CIA machinations of the 1960s and '70s.
One memo, dated June 1964, details conversations between a CIA officer and Rolando Cubela, a Cuban government official who was recruited to kill Cuban leader Fidel Castro in 1963. Known by the code name AMLASH-1, Cubela communciated with the CIA via shortwave radio and hand-delivered letters, according to the memo.
The released records include CIA files on four of the Watergate burglars whose arrest in June 1972 led to the biggest political scandal of the 20th century. At the time the Agency denied any connection to the burglars, describing the men as "former employees."
The files of James McCord, Howard Hunt, Bernard Barker and Frank Sturgis, detail the agency's extensive connections to the burglars before the Watergate scandal erupted.
As the New York Times reports:
"While it was a smaller release than those that were put out last week, a far greater proportion of the documents were being put into the public arena for the first time. Of the 2,891 documents released last week, only 53 had never been disclosed by the archives; the rest had been made public with redactions that were now removed."
Most of these files are new and much more significant historically.
https://www.alternet.org/human-rights/l ... e-burglars
by seemslikeadream » Mon Nov 06, 2017 1:44 pm
THE CIA FLIPS OFF AMERICA
Open Letter from JFK Assassination Expert Dan Hardway
CIA, middle finger
Photo credit: Adapted by WhoWhatWhy from sarang / Wikimedia and CIA / Wikimedia.
The following is an article about an open letter Dan Hardway sent to his senator. Hardway worked as an investigator on the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) in the late 1970s, and is a noted expert on the JFK assassination. He calls on all people interested in transparency to reject an all-encompassing government secrecy that threatens our very liberty and democracy. — WhoWhatWhy Staff
A 1964 CIA memo spells out clearly how James Jesus Angleton, the agency’s famous counterintelligence chief, wanted to deal with inquiries from the Warren Commission:
Jim would prefer to wait out the Commission.1
History seems to be repeating itself. The events of the past two weeks have shown that the CIA is still running a disinformation campaign against anyone who questions the “lone-nut” theory that, according to historian David Robarge, constitutes the agency’s “best truth.”
I recently published an article about the delay in releasing records under the 1992 JFK Records Collections Act. In that article I explained the CIA’s play to discredit those who question the agency’s lone-nut theory,2 and suggested that Robarge, its historian, has told us what to look for in the documents that are still being withheld.3
There has been no explanation, let alone a presidential certification, that the massive redactions in these “released in full” documents meet any of the mandatory exemptions that allow withholding. No identifiable harm is specified. No rationale is given as to why the secrets protected outweigh the public interest in disclosure.
In that article I suggested we should look for information regarding covert operations against Cuba that would, according to Robarge, “circumstantially implicate CIA in conspiracy theories.”4 While I doubt the existence of a “smoking gun,” the circumstantial evidence we might look for in the delayed files could show a correlation between Lee Harvey Oswald’s activities in New Orleans and Mexico City in the late summer and fall of 1963 and CIA covert operations against Cuba being run by George Joannides and David Atlee Phillips involving anti-Castro groups such as the Directorio Revolucionario Estudiantil (DRE).5
I specifically suggested that we look to files on those operations. Some of these files are in the JFK records that are scheduled for release.
George Joannides, Bobby Inman
George Joannides (left) receiving a commendation from Bobby Inman.
Photo credit: CIA / JFKFacts.
On October 26, 1992, Congress passed S. 3006, with only one amendment and very little, if any, opposition. The Senate bill, introduced by Sen. John Glenn (D-OH), was signed the same day by President George H.W. Bush and became Public Law 102-526, (“JFK Records Act”). Among other things the JFK Records Act provided for the collection, preservation and eventual release of all records related to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy, with minimal exceptions.
It mandates, in clear and unambiguous language, “[e]ach assassination record shall be publicly disclosed in full, and available in the Collection no later than the date that is 25 years after the date of enactment of this Act.” The Act allows an exemption to this mandatory requirement only if the president “certifies” that the release of each withheld document “is made necessary by an identifiable harm to” either 1) military defense; 2) intelligence operations; 3) law enforcement; or 4) the conduct of foreign relations and “the identifiable harm is of such gravity that it outweighs the public interest in disclosure.”6
They stood by, grinning, as they watched my reaction upon opening the file to find it largely expurgated. They were grinning so hard because they knew they had waited out the HSCA and there was nothing I could do about it. The Angleton strategy still worked. It is still working today.
On November 3, NARA released some of the files that I have been waiting on. The Excel spreadsheet listing the released files include four files referenced to David Atlee Phillips and one file referenced to the DRE.7 Of the files referencing Phillips, three are of an unspecified nature and one is listed as his Office of Personnel (OP) file. The DRE file is listed as “CIA file on DRE AMSPELL operations.”
AMSPELL is a CIA cryptonym for DRE, the anti-Castro Cuban group that was run by George Joannides in 1963, that had the encounter with Oswald in New Orleans in 1963, and published the first conspiracy theory blaming Castro in their CIA-financed newspaper in Miami on November 23, 1963. For such an active group, the file that was released is a very thin 87 pages of which 61 are expurgated in full.
DRE, newspaper
November 23, 1963, leaders of anti-Castro Cuban Student Directorate (DRE) newspaper link Lee Harvey Oswald in conspiracy with Fidel Castro to assassinate JFK.
Photo credit: Unknown / JFKFacts.
Of the remaining 26 pages, many are largely expurgated. The Phillips files are even worse. The three files of unspecified type may be some of his operational files. These files are even more highly expurgated than the AMSPELL file. Taking the 73-pages long file RIF 104-10177-10135 as an example, a full 48 pages are completely redacted and NOTHING that was released in the file has any substantive info. For all intents and purposes, it remains withheld in full.
The file that is listed as David Atlee Phillips’s OP file is not as heavily redacted as the other three Phillips files, although many of the documents — mainly personnel forms — it contains have been cleansed of any significant data. That, however, is not the end of the story on this file.
This release not only demonstrates that the Angleton strategy is still being applied. It also illustrates the point I have been making about what they are covering up. There may well be nothing we can do about it. It appears our lawmakers are spineless in the face of the intelligence community.
The file starts with a few items of post-retirement correspondence between Phillips and the CIA in 1975 and then proceeds chronologically backwards from his retirement in 1975. I have not yet been able to go through the 358-page file to carefully study all the documents, but I have gone through it well enough to note that all his fitness reports between 1956 and 1965 are missing — not redacted, just simply not there.
Indeed, so far as I have been able to find, there is no record whatsoever of a document in the file dated between 1961 and 1965 — not redacted, just simply not there.
There has been no explanation, let alone a presidential certification, that the massive redactions in these “released in full” documents meet any of the mandatory exemptions that allow withholding. No identifiable harm is specified. No rationale is given as to why the secrets protected outweigh the public interest in disclosure.
“You represent Congress. What the f*** is that to the CIA? You’ll be gone in two years and the CIA will still be there.”
These files are not in compliance with the law no matter what the mainstream media says.
They are an in-your-face flipped bird to the American public. They basically tell us that the CIA is saying that it doesn’t have to comply with the law of the land and that it will not tell us its secrets and that there is nothing we can do about it.
I’ve been here before. It was in a small room in CIA Headquarters in late 1978. I had been fighting to see a file generated by the CIA debriefing of its hired mafioso Johnny Roselli. Scott Breckinridge and George Joannides, CIA liaisons with the HSCA, had just handed me a highly redacted file that violated the HSCA/CIA Memorandum of Understanding mandating unexpurgated access by HSCA to CIA files.
They stood by, grinning, as they watched my reaction upon opening the file to find it largely expurgated. They were grinning so hard because they knew they had waited out the HSCA and there was nothing I could do about it. The Angleton strategy still worked. It is still working today.
James Jesus Angleton
James Jesus Angleton
Photo credit: Adapted by WhoWhatWhy from National Counterintelligence Center / Wikimedia.
This release not only demonstrates that the Angleton strategy is still being applied; it also illustrates the point I have been making about what they are covering up. There may well be nothing we can do about it. It appears our lawmakers are spineless in the face of the intelligence community. Joseph Burkholder Smith, a retired CIA officer, told me and fellow investigator Gaeton Fonzi in 1978, “You represent Congress. What the f*** is that to the CIA? You’ll be gone in two years and the CIA will still be there.”
I also encourage you to not take this insult to your intelligence and ability to govern yourselves without reaction. Refuse to accept the cancer of secrecy that destroys our liberty and ability to govern ourselves. Get involved. Get informed. Stay informed.
To paraphrase that to fit the situation in which we now find ourselves: “You are the people that Congress supposedly represents. What’s that to the CIA? You’ll forget about it in a few weeks or so.”
But I won’t. I wrote a letter to my senator, West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin, on November 3 before I saw the travesty that was the day’s release of JFK documents by NARA. Probably a futile gesture, but one I had to take anyway. Here’s part of what I told him:
On October 26, 2017, as I am sure you are aware, President Donald Trump, at the request of the Central Intelligence Agency and other intelligence community members, disregarded the clear provisions of the law and postponed release of ninety percent of the remaining withheld documents in the JFK Records Collection for an additional six months. In doing this, the President made no findings, issued no orders and certified nothing, merely issuing a statement through the press office saying that all documents will be released “with redactions only in the rarest of circumstances” by April 26, 2018.
The President’s action was not only without authority in law, it was also taken in patent violation of the clear, unambiguous and mandatory terms of a law that your institution passed. …
The real problem that this presents is that it is showing to the nation that the intelligence agencies of our nation are not subject to the laws of the nation. They are effectively above the law. At their request, or pressure, the President of the United States will violate the clear mandates of enacted legislation. And, to date, the reaction of our elected representatives in Congress seems to reinforce the fact that no one is willing to stand up to such blatant disregard of the clear provisions of the duly enacted laws of the nation. I understand that it is the executive branch that is charged with the enforcement of the laws your branch enacts and, in this case, it is the executive branch that is violating the law so there can be little realistic expectation of enforcement from them. But this is the heart of the problem and why it is incumbent upon the Congress to act. At a minimum there should be oversight hearings. At a minimum the Congress should not be seen to willingly acquiesce in executive contempt for the Legislative branch of government and the law of the land.
This action on the part of the intelligence community, the National Archives, and the Executive is only the latest in a long string of actions that disregard the provisions of the JFK Records Act that also subvert and cover up the information related to the assassination of our 35th president. Those other actions are beyond the present scope of this letter, but are things about which I would be glad to speak with you if you have any interest, so I will not go into them here.
To my knowledge there has been no coverage or explanation of why the intelligence community has requested this delay of the President. It was made in secret. What reason have they given for the delay? What kind of pressure have they brought to bear? How can they force a president to so blatantly disregard the law? If they can do this in regard to disclosure of fifty-year-old records, in what else can they exercise a like secret influence that corrupts the laws of the nation? What affect does the existence and use of such secret power have on our democracy? If these things — not just the documents but the method of influence — remain always secret, then how can a citizenry be sufficiently informed so as to exercise their franchise to any real purpose? How can we have faith in our democracy, let alone our government, if this kind of practice is allowed to continue unchallenged? These are the questions that I would like to have answered. But, to make it easier for you, I note you are in a unique position in regard to these issues due to your membership on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Are you at least going to call and press for public hearings on any of these issues? Or are you going to join the vast majority of our representatives and once again cower before the intelligence agencies? Will you stand up for your constituents’ right to participate in their government on an informed basis? Will you stand for holding our government to a standard of open honesty before its citizens and against allowing the real affairs of state to be conducted in secret and in disregard of the laws enacted by the people’s representatives?8
The questions I asked Manchin in that letter are even more pressing today. I don’t know if he’ll even answer, let alone do anything. Maybe, like Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), he’ll send out an apparently frustrated tweet. Or maybe, like the mainstream press, he’ll tout the release of the documents, hoping no one will look to see what a travesty the “release” is because of the massive redactions. At this point all I can do is try to tell the truth about this whole state of affairs.
I also encourage you to not take this insult to your intelligence and ability to govern yourselves without reaction. Do something. If nothing else, circulate this article to everyone you know. Refuse to accept the cancer of secrecy that destroys our liberty and ability to govern ourselves. Get involved. Get informed. Stay informed. Read and follow http://2017jfk.org/home/ and http://jfkfacts.org/. Read WhoWhatWhy.
Join the AARC at http://aarclibrary.org/aarc-membership/. Join CAPA at http://capa-us.org/membership/. If those who exercise the power in this country have such blatant contempt for the law, then the time for serious peaceful civil disobedience may be upon us. Get the word out. Don’t be silent any longer. This is not an issue of the left or the right. Do something. Say something. And don’t stop until you are heard.
https://whowhatwhy.org/2017/11/06/cia-f ... f-america/
by seemslikeadream » Mon Nov 13, 2017 10:24 am
THE JFK FILES: NEW LIGHT ON OSWALD AND MEXICO CITY
Was the FBI being controlled by the CIA?
Photo credit: Adapted by WhoWhatWhy from ralphbijker / Flickr (CC BY 2.0), CIA / Wikimedia and FBI / Wikimedia ralphbijker / Flickr (CC BY 2.0).
Those with a stake in avoiding the truth about John F. Kennedy’s assassination want you to believe Lee Harvey Oswald was a lone nut. If you won’t accept that, they have a fallback position: “It’s even worse. He was working for the commies.”
That “alternative” scenario revolves around a purported Oswald trip to Mexico City in the months before Kennedy’s death, when he allegedly visited Soviet and Cuban missions, met with a handler and sought his escape path to his beloved USSR.
There’s just one problem with this narrative. It probably isn’t true.
Twice over the past week-and-a-half, the National Archives posted new documents as mandated by the President John F. Kennedy Records Collection Act of 1992. First came 676 records and then a whopping 13,213 more. While WhoWhatWhy’s special JFK Records Team has just begun probing this trove for new revelations, preliminary results are intriguing.
Jefferson Morley, author of a just-published biography of the CIA’s longtime counterintelligence chief James Angleton, points out a telling code name on an Agency cable dated October 8, 1963. The cable was sent from the Mexico Station Chief, Winston Scott, under the subject heading LCIMPROVE. As first defined by the CIA for the House Committee on Assassinations in 1978, this cryptonym specified “counter-espionage involving Soviet intelligence services worldwide.” That was Angleton’s domain, and the Scott cable specifically described contacts between Oswald and Consul Valery Kostikov at the Soviet embassy in Mexico City.
As the CIA’s internal 23-page report on Oswald’s stay in Mexico (104-10004-10199) puts it: “it is believed that [Kostikov] works for Department 13 of the KGB, the Department charged with sabotage and assassinations.” This (continued CIA officer “GPFLOOR” in his internal report from the Mexico Station) was “a particularly sinister aspect of OSWALD’s dealings with the Soviets in Mexico City.” The report was dispatched on December 19, 1963, to C/CI [Counterintelligence] from John Whitten of the Western Hemisphere Division, who initially handled the CIA’s investigation in-house.
Surely, James Angleton saw this report, as well as Scott’s pre-assassination cable. Yet, more than curiously, the day after Scott’s October 8 cable was sent, senior FBI agents removed Oswald’s name from a list of persons of interest to the Bureau. Although the FBI had interviewed Oswald on a number of occasions after his return from the USSR in June 1963, suddenly he was no longer deemed worthy of close scrutiny. Had the FBI gotten word from Angleton’s branch of the CIA?
Mexico, phone, passport
The CIA intercepted a call to the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City.
Photo credit: Adapted by WhoWhatWhy from Max Pixel, Alex Covarrubias / Wikimedia and US Department of State.
We haven’t yet seen FBI files related to that decision — which was effected only six weeks prior to the assassination — but we do know that Jane Roman of Angleton’s staff went on to receive and initial an FBI report concerning Oswald on November 15. It came from senior agent Warren DeBrueys of the FBI’s New Orleans office, stating that Oswald had returned from Mexico City and was living in Texas. Angleton’s staff had been closely monitoring Oswald since his alleged defection to the Soviet Union in 1959.
The Mexico City story has long been a jigsaw with numerous loose ends. The Warren Commission Report, for example, mentioned Kostikov in passing as “one of the KGB officers stationed at the embassy.” In the late 1970s, when author Anthony Summers interviewed two Cuban officials said to have seen Oswald at their embassy, neither remained certain he was actually the man who’d come there demanding a visa on September 27.
So what are we learning now?
The post-assassination chronicle by GPFLOOR (headed “We Discover Lee OSWALD in Mexico City”) led off with a description of a phone call the CIA’s Mexico station intercepted on October 1, with Oswald using his own name and speaking broken Russian. He talked to the embassy guard, Obyedkov, “who often answers the phone.” Oswald said he’d visited the embassy a few days earlier and spoken to a consul whose name he’d forgotten but “who had promised to send a telegram for him to Washington. He wanted to know if there were ‘anything new’….
“OBYEDKOV replied: ‘KOSTIKOV; he is dark.’ OSWALD replied: ‘Yes, my name is Oswald.’ The Soviet excused himself for a minute and then said they hadn’t received anything yet….OSWALD started to say: ‘And what…,’ but the Soviet hung up.”
Although the report identifies Ivan Ivanovich Obyedkov himself as “believed to be a KGB man,” it goes on to say:
[It is] most likely that OSWALD’s dealing with OBYEDKOV and KOSTIKOV was nothing more than a grim coincidence, a coincidence due in part to the Soviet habit of placing intelligence men in the Embassies in positions where they receive a large portion of the visitors and phone calls. All of the five consular officers in the Soviet Embassy are known or suspected intelligence officers. Certainly if OSWALD had been a Soviet agent in training for an assassination assignment or even for sabotage work, the Soviets would have stopped him from making open visits and phone calls to the Soviet Embassy in Mexico after he tried it a couple times. Our experience in Mexico, studying the Soviet intelligence service at close range, indicates that they do make some mistakes and are sometimes insecure in their methods, but that they do not persist in such glaring errors.
So someone on the ground with the CIA in Mexico quickly dismissed the importance of the Oswald-Kostikov link. Shortly thereafter, Angleton took the in-house investigation away from Jack Whitten, and gave direct oversight to Birch O’Neal, who ran the Special Operations Group inside Counterintelligence that controlled Oswald’s “201” file upon his alleged defection in 1959.
This much we already knew, from a transcript released in 1993 of a phone call that FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover made to President Lyndon B. Johnson shortly after the assassination. “We have up here the tape and the photograph of the man who was at the Soviet Embassy using Oswald’s name,” Hoover said. “That picture and the tape [sent by the CIA] do not correspond to this man’s voice, nor to his appearance. In other words, it appears that there is a second person who was at the Soviet embassy down there.”
Oswald, CIA, Mexico City
Photo credit: National Archives (PDF)
The CIA had taken photographs of a man outside the Cuban and Soviet consulates, initially identified as Oswald; these photos were sent to Dallas authorities on November 22. The agency was concerned then, and later, that these images now known as the “Mexico City mystery man” might become public.
A 124-page “Mexico Chronology” (104-10013-10004), also included in the November 9 document release, covers the period from before the assassination through the early stages of New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison’s investigation. On May 8, 1967, a memo from “Riggs” at CIA headquarters to the Mexico City station questioned: “In view of recent reopening of the publicity regarding OSWALD and WOFACT evidence, Hqs would like to determine whether the Station still has on hand the negatives from which the prints available at Hqs were made of the unidentified ‘mystery man’ coming out of both the Sov and Cub embassies. If they are still on file, it is requested that they remain so, and that they be forwarded HQs for retention rather than destroyed if the latter action is ever contemplated.” Mexico Station chief Win Scott said he personally checked on May 27 “and negatives are in LIMITED [sic?} photo chrono…for 1 Oct 63.”
Prints were then forwarded to headquarters “of a person leaving the Soviet Embassy,” the negatives remaining in the Station files. And on June 26, headquarters wrote to Mexico again that it “also has a photo taken in front of Cub Emb of a man who appears to be identical with the ‘mystery man.’ The date written on the back of this print is “15 Oct 63.” We have no record of a transmittal dispatch number, only an indication it was forwarded here by your Station … Hqs assumes that you also have the negative.” The Station responded that it did, “filed in LIONION photo Chrono.”
On July 3 Scott sent another memo to headquarters: “The negative of ref photo is filed at Mexi station. This photo was taken in front of the Cub Emb but the photo published in the Warren Comm Report was taken in front of the Sov Emb. This Station has on file negatives of both photos.”
After Winston Scott died suddenly in 1969, James Angleton flew immediately to Mexico City to retrieve the contents of his safe.
Two years earlier, soon after Garrison embarked on his investigation, there had been this on March 6: “MEMO from LICOMET-2 to José (Piccolo) — Attached is a clipping from the publication LUMINERE page 8, of Sol de Mexico, 4 Mar 67: Surveilled OSWALD in Mexico, but Not in Dallas. CIA agents take note, in Mexi airport, of travelers to and from Cuba. The counter-espionage service of the CIA photographed OSWALD when he arrived in Mexico and sent the info to the FBI, emphasizing the fact that OSWALD was in contact with the Sov and Cub Embassies in Mexi.”
David Atlee Phillips, Winston Scott
David Atlee Phillips with Winston Scott ID card inset.
Photo credit: Adapted by WhoWhatWhy from Shane McBryde / YouTube and La Noria Times News / EL UNIVERSAL.
What are we to make of it all? We don’t know who LICOMET-2 was, though we do know Joseph Piccolo had been a case officer in the Cuban branch of the CIA’s Western Hemisphere Division. But was Angleton’s corner of the CIA in cahoots at the time with Hoover’s FBI? And what of David Atlee Phillips, who was running the CIA’s Cuban operations in Mexico City at the time of the assassination — the man in charge of photo and audio surveillance of Cuban diplomatic offices there.
We haven’t learned much from the 358-page “OP” file about Phillips, which was released on November 3. Indeed, there isn’t a single record dated between 1961 and 1965. Not redacted, simply not there. We do learn from later “Fitness Reports” that Phillips was promoted to Operations Officer undercover in Mexico City on September 29, 1963 — coinciding with all the strangeness surrounding Oswald’s visit. Before that, according to a 1961 memo about Phillips, “His next assignment would be a normal field tour in Mexico City, after which he would be assigned to the CA Staff to develop what might best be termed ‘ideological warfare.’”
In a file dated August 5, 1965, a notification of personnel “Reassignment,” Phillips’s previous title is listed as “Chief of Station” in “Mexico City, Mexico.” Yet, as far as was previously known, that post had been held between 1955 and 1969 by Winston Scott.
Clearly something very strange was going on in Mexico City in the months leading up to JFK’s assassination. A man claiming to be Lee Oswald, who apparently looked nothing like him and could barely speak Russian, was making what can only be described as attention-grabbing trips to the Soviet and Cuban consuls. Both the CIA and the FBI were well aware of this during the immediate aftermath of the assassination.
So ask yourself this question: Why would someone who wasn’t Oswald pretend to be Oswald and run around visiting Soviet and Cuban embassies? Could it be that someone was trying to set up Oswald to make it look like he was working with the “commies” to kill Kennedy? If anyone wanted an excuse to start a war with Cuba and the Soviets, this was an opportunity served on a silver platter.
Here’s a follow up question: Why aren’t we hearing more about this in the mainstream media? Instead, we’re hearing the same game-plan story that was trotted out in November 1963 — if Oswald wasn’t a lone-nut, then the Cubans and the Soviets were behind it. Anything but the possibility that powerful Americans conspired to violently remove a sitting president.
https://whowhatwhy.org/2017/11/13/jfk-f ... xico-city/
by American Dream » Mon Nov 27, 2017 5:21 pm
The JFK assassination and ‘Barry & ‘the boys’
The story I want to tell today is about two women from the same family in New Orleans, Louisiana. The first, “Aunt Jada,” was a stripper, exotic dancer extraordinaire, and savvy survivor who managed to play a significant role pointing to Jack Ruby’s knowledge of the upcoming Kennedy Assassination.
The second woman, Jada’s niece Lena, who exemplifies traditional American upward mobility, even in organized crime, became an officer in a hundred million dollar corporation strongly suspected of being involved in the money laundering industry which sprang up around Barry Seal.
Drug smuggling, money laundering, and covert ops leading to assassination plots are hallmarks of the one U.S. governmental Agency, and its most famous operative, Barry Seal, that is most often accused of complicity in the death of John Kennedy.
by seemslikeadream » Sat Mar 03, 2018 1:48 pm
What’s Buried in the Missing JFK Documents?
JFK, records, National Archives
Something weird is going on with those JFK assassination records. But what?
The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has revealed that there are thousands of still-unreleased government files related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Back in December, NARA claimed that only 86 files had yet to be made public.
NARA released approximately 35,000 files to the public in 2017 in a series of six batches, with the last occuring on December 15. But the process was unaccountably messy.
According to the JFK Records Release Act, passed by Congress and signed into law by George H.W. Bush in 1992, all still-classified documents related to the assassination of JFK were to be made public in full by October 26, 2017 — unless the president personally decided that certain documents posed such a risk to national security that their continued suppression outweighed the public good of disclosure.
There was great anticipation leading up to the deadline — researchers and enthusiasts had been waiting 25 years to see these documents. NARA helped pump up the excitement with an early release of a small batch of documents in July. And President Donald Trump seemed to allay fears that he might succumb to pressure from the intelligence community to withhold documents; a series of presidential tweets appeared to indicate that the scheduled release was on track.
But that didn’t happen.
Come the day of the deadline, the White House explained that the various agencies needed time — six months’ worth — to “re-review” all of the records to make sure that national security was not at risk.
Over the course of the next several months, NARA began releasing batches of files. But the releases were a mixture — some of the files were completely unredacted, some were partially redacted, and some were almost completely redacted. The various agencies involved — CIA, FBI, State Department, and others — were given until April 26, 2018, to determine how much of the redacted material would need to remain so.
“The National Archives’ commendable efforts to make the new records available online notwithstanding, overall the release process has been disappointing and disheartening,” Rex Bradford — president of the Mary Ferrell Foundation, which hosts one of the premiere sites for searchable, online JFK documents — told WhoWhatWhy.
“The amount of continued withholding by the CIA and other agencies — including huge stretches of whited-out pages in newly released records — is beyond anything remotely like that contemplated under the JFK Records Act. And the process itself has been marred by abundant errors and moving targets.”
But now there’s been an additional wrinkle.
Back in late October, John Greenewald of the Black Vault filed a FOIA request seeking the number of still-withheld documents at that time. He finally received a response in late January from NARA’s Office of General Counsel who said the following:
We conducted a search and were able to locate an EXCEL spreadsheet that lists everything that has not been released since December 15th, 2017 (the last release date). We are releasing this document [in] full with no redactions. The spreadsheet lists the JFK record number, the decision, the file number, document date, number of pages, and the origination agency.
The list contains 22,933 record numbers. When comparing it to NARA’s master spreadsheet of 2017 releases, it appears that the majority of files on the FOIA list were already made public last year. So “not been released” includes all of the many files that were in fact released in 2017, but with redactions, and are now awaiting the final review deadline in April.
Curiously however, there are 2,901 files listed that are not on NARA’s spreadsheet. That’s certainly a much larger number than the 86 files NARA mentioned in December. WhoWhatWhy has created a spreadsheet detailing these files.
The majority of the files appear not to have been publicly released, while curiously some of the files were released in redacted form in the 90s, yet not as part of the 2017 release.
Seeking clarification, WhoWhatWhy reached out to NARA’s Office of General Counsel and spoke with a FOIA representative who confirmed that the files labeled “Withheld” — nearly 800 in the FOIA list — had indeed not yet been made public. Subsequently a representative from the public relations office clarified that, while they couldn’t confirm the files not on the master spreadsheet, some files were not legally subject to the records release, and thus were not included in the master spreadsheet.
This would make sense, as the JFK Records Act does specify certain exemptions — specifically files falling under section 6103 of the IRS code, sealed grand jury records, and records governed by deeds of gifts or donations to the government.
Unfortunately, the FOIA list does not include any title or subject information. However, from the 795 labeled “withheld,” roughly 40 percent originate from the IRS. That these files might fall under the IRS code could help explain the discrepancy. But why the other “withheld” files and the approximately 2,100 files labeled “redacted” don’t appear on the NARA master list is not yet clear.
Further compounding the confusion is an additional FOIA NARA document of “withheld” files that was released back in 2016. WhoWhatWhy covered this story and some of the interesting files contained in the document. While most of the documents on this list have been released (albeit some in redacted form) as part of the 2017 releases, there appear to be files that overlap with the 2018 list of 2,901, as well as 375 docs unique to this list that are also not on the NARA master list. WhoWhatWhy has created a file highlighting these records — orange for files overlapping with the 2018 list, and green for files unique to the 2016 list.
The first page of this 2016 list reveal some interesting files that appear to have not yet been released: audio tape interviews from the 1970s Rockefeller Commission hearings with CIA agents William “Bill” Harvey, Frank Sturgis, and Sheffield Edwards — persons of great interest to JFK assassination researchers.
Additional pages contain other file names of interest: “TELEPHONE INTERVIEW WITH E. HOWARD HUNT ON MARCH, 7, 1975”; “WARREN REPORT: TASK FORCE STUDY”; and “CUBA: CUBAN INTELLIGENCE AGENTS; PENETRATION OF THE UNITED STATES BY.”
What could be the reason for these files being withheld?
.
Comparing both the 2018 and 2016 lists, there appear to be approximately 3,275 files not yet released to the public.
The reasons why many of these files have not yet been made public could very well prove innocuous. Perhaps it was human error, or they fall outside of the legal scope as mentioned earlier, or perhaps there are duplicates. But from just a cursory review of some of these missing files, there appear to be many documents and audio recordings that are of great public interest, and it is not clear why they were not released.
“Hundreds of withheld-in-full documents targeted for release in a 2016 NARA listing remain withheld, and have magically vanished from a 2018 NARA listing. Hundreds of other documents which have been released do not even appear in NARA’s online database, which we now discover is not a definitive source. And much more. It is getting harder to imagine that when the dust settles there will in fact be an authoritative accounting of documents that already seem to be falling through the cracks,” says Bradford.
With the April deadline for the re-review process fast approaching, new questions are now raised:
Why were these additional files not previously brought to the attention of the public?
When will they be released?
Have these files been “re-reviewed” by the originating agencies?
What is the explanation for these discrepancies?
Stay tuned as we bring you more on this story
https://whowhatwhy.org/2018/03/01/whats ... documents/
by cptmarginal » Sat Mar 03, 2018 2:07 pm
The first page of this 2016 list reveal some interesting files that appear to have not yet been released: audio tape interviews from the 1970s Rockefeller Commission hearings with CIA agents William “Bill” Harvey, Frank Sturgis, and Sheffield Edwards — persons of great interest to JFK assassination researchers.
by cptmarginal » Sat Mar 03, 2018 2:12 pm
by seemslikeadream » Sat Mar 03, 2018 2:38 pm
cptmarginal » Sat Mar 03, 2018 1:07 pm wrote:The first page of this 2016 list reveal some interesting files that appear to have not yet been released: audio tape interviews from the 1970s Rockefeller Commission hearings with CIA agents William “Bill” Harvey, Frank Sturgis, and Sheffield Edwards — persons of great interest to JFK assassination researchers.
Those would be amazing to hear...
At first I made some futile attempts to wade through the newly released files myself on Emma Best's archive.org page, but now I just check in with Doug Campbell's podcast: THE DALLAS ACTION
The show is definitely slow-going or obtuse at times (or most of the time) but it's actually pretty great. One older episode in particular is a must-listen, for the rare recording that he plays: June 12, 2015 "Loran Hall In His Own Words."
by seemslikeadream » Fri Apr 27, 2018 4:26 pm
Trump Orders Release of JFK Assassination Files — But Many Redactions Remain
JFK Records
The National Archives just released 19,045 JFK files. Today was the deadline for President Donald Trump to announce whether files previously either partially redacted or withheld from the public would remain hidden.
In a press release from this morning, NARA explained the process leading up to today:
As permitted by the JFK Act, agencies appealed to the President to continue postponement of certain information beyond October 26, 2017. The President provided agencies with a temporary certification until April 26, 2018 to allow for a re-review of all documents withheld in full or in part under section 5 of the JFK Act and directed agencies to “identify as much as possible that may be publicly disclosed” and to be “extremely circumspect in recommending any further postponement.”
According to NARA, 15,834 of the files still contain redactions. They also claim that 520 documents remain withheld in full from the public because they are not subject to disclosure, such as documents falling under the IRS code or a sealed court order. NARA clarified that the documents with remaining redactions would have another chance for disclosure in three years:
The President has determined that all information that remains withheld under section 5 must be reviewed again before October 26, 2021 to determine whether continued withholding from disclosure is necessary.
The White House also released a presidential memorandum stating the necessity for certain files to remain redacted:
Over the past 180 days, executive departments and agencies (agencies) have reviewed all of the information within records temporarily withheld from release and have proposed to the Archivist of the United States (Archivist) that certain information should continue to be redacted because of identifiable national security, law enforcement, and foreign affairs concerns. The Archivist has reviewed the information agencies proposed to withhold and believes the proposals are consistent with the standard of section 5(g)(2)(D) of the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992 (44 U.S.C. 2107 note) (the “Act”).
I agree with the Archivist’s recommendation that the continued withholdings are necessary to protect against identifiable harm to national security, law enforcement, or foreign affairs that is of such gravity that it outweighs the public interest in immediate disclosure. I am also ordering agencies to re-review each of those redactions over the next 3 years.
Roger Stone, a friend and former political consultant to the president, who also wrote a book on JFK claiming that President Lyndon Johnson was responsible for a conspiracy to assassinate Kennedy, told WhoWhatWhy, “I am pleased that the president directed the final release of 19,045 documents today and that no document has been completely withheld. I am also pleased that the president ordered another review of withheld material by Oct 26, 2021 to determine whether further withholding can be justified. I have not yet had the opportunity to review how much of the material released today has been redacted but I am mindful that the president directed that redactions must relate to persons who are still living.”
The WhoWhatWhy team is currently reviewing the files, and will bring you the latest.
Updated 4/27/2018, 2:30 pm.
https://whowhatwhy.org/2018/04/26/trump ... ns-remain/
by cptmarginal » Fri Apr 27, 2018 4:45 pm
The Black Vault has obtained the thousands of records released thus far, and created a massive index with all records linked and archived on a single page.
[...]
The Documents Withheld
(Note: These statistics below will likely change now that the April 26, 2018, release is in the public domain (and downloadable above). This section will be updated soon…)
This “withheld” list was released via the FOIA to The Black Vault in FOIA Case #NARA-NGC-2018-000072.
It shows 22,933 Documents totaling 442,606 Pages are being withheld, though the list needs clarification.
According to NARA: “We conducted a search and were able to locate an EXCEL spreadsheet that lists everything that has not been released since December 15th, 2017 (the last release date). We are releasing this document if full with no redactions. The spreadsheet lists the JFK record number, the decision, the file number, document date, number of pages, and the origination agency.”
However, upon investigation, NARA also listed the entire set of PARTIALLY released records, along with those completely withheld. Digging deeper, and with the help and verification of Jimmy Falls of the news agency WhoWhatWhy we came up with the same numbers, using two entirely different methods.
It confirms there are 3,082 Documents, totaling 217,114 Pages that are not yet released to the public. (Note: There may be 174 duplicate file numbers on the list of 3,082. I am confirming they are, in fact, duplicates, so this number may shift slightly in the coming days. Additional information is also being reviewed, which may actually make this number grow. Stay tuned…)
We cross referenced the list below, with the master NARA list of released documents, and came up with the same exact conclusion and both verified these numbers. I then called NARA on the telephone on 1/30/2018 to confirm — and they informed me that these records are in the process of being reviewed through April of 2018 for possible release. Although more than 2,200 of the 3,082 should already be online, I told her that I believed they were not, and NARA recommended to wait until at least April of 2018, as more documents are reviewed, released and organized.
Update on 2/9/2018: Jefferson Morley of JFKFacts.org has recently posted some articles regarding the EXACT number of documents currently withheld. Although first reporting the numbers above, he did submit a correction saying the number may be smaller based on additional information obtained from Rex Bradford, president of the Mary Ferrell Foundation. It is believed that some of these records listed as “withheld” and/or “Redact” do actually exist in the Mary Ferrell Foundation archive, or at NARA possibly in only paper form (or digital and set to be released at a later date).
This could very well be the case, and I am very open to the above numbers not being the 100% set in stone record count. But, this brings up a very important factor when sifting through these papers and tackling this topic, and that is the sheer volume and erroneous information that is currently floating around about what really is there — and what is not.
When I built the government document archive here on The Black Vault, I have always utilized only information given to me straight from the U.S. Government to report and create statistics like the above. I was originally told the spreadsheet I received was of entirely “withheld” documents (which my FOIA request asked for) but upon review, I noticed that was not the case, and I confirmed that with NARA who stated that as well over the telephone.
The next step, using only the spreadsheets released officially, I (along with Jimmy Falls of WhoWhatWhy) confirmed the above numbers as those not matching as being released, and as Mr. Bradford confirmed, was accurate on the surface. But, digging deeper, he goes on to say he believes some of these (all of these) reside at his archive, or at NARA (or possibly both) but just not online.
I do not have ‘membership’ access to the Mary Ferrel Foundation archive, so I can not verify myself if 100% of these documents reside there or are withheld. But after conducting some searches on their search engines, and on Google which will hit the MFF database, I did find reference to many of the documents that I spot checked at random, but they have no download link and do not appear to be in the archive, in full. Some examples (and please correct me if I am just lacking a proper membership to view) include: document numbers 157-10014-10152, 157-10014-10158 and 179-20001-10145 which were randomly chosen. These are NOT found in MFF’s archive. These appear as “redact” on the NARA list, which Mr. Bradford stated were in the MFF archive. He asked for examples of these not appearing in the MFF archive, and I believe these are examples, as such. Again, please correct me if I am mistaken… but I only find references to the documents, but not the documents themselves. In addition, they say “Withheld in full” as well on MFF supporting they have yet to be released, despite NARA giving the impressions they were “partially” released and marked as “redact”.
Let me say I have nothing but respect for the Mary Ferrell Foundation and their service to the public of archiving information relating to the JFK Assassination. I am not ‘fighting’ the counter-argument that the number is smaller, but rather, stating that based off the official released lists, the above numbers I posted are accurate based on what they gave me and have released publicly. Whether or not some of the records I deem as “not released yet” have, in fact, been released — that goes into again, that larger issue which I believe, is part of the game the U.S. Government is playing. Massive document dumps, incorrect indexes, non searchable formats, erroneous information, etc. all make all of our jobs, as researchers, reporters, journalists, archivists, or curious minds that much harder.
But, let me end with this explanation on the way I look at it. NARA, along with the U.S. Government, is touting these digital releases as the collection of previously withheld, or partially withheld records. They state:“The National Archives is releasing documents previously withheld in accordance with the JFK Assassination Records Collection Act. The vast majority of the Collection (88%) has been open in full and released to the public since the late 1990s. The records at issue are documents previously identified as assassination records, but withheld in full or withheld in part. These releases include FBI, CIA, and other agency documents (both formerly withheld in part and formerly withheld in full) identified by the Assassination Records Review Board as assassination records. The releases to date are as follows.”
If records being released show that the government is still reviewing a record, but history shows us the records have been released (as the MFF states they have some already) — then this review process is taking much longer than it has to and is much more disorganized (on the part of the U.S. Government) then I first feared. Or, the other way to look at it, is despite a previous (redacted) version of some of these records released in the past, maybe the above number reflects documents still to be reviewed again, and further released without as many redactions. That, may be encouraging, if true.
Bury the public in massive amounts of data, and another generation will pass before any sense is made of it.
by seemslikeadream » Thu May 10, 2018 10:00 am
JFK Files Reveal US Biological Warfare Plans Against Cuba
Cuba, biological warfare
In the summer of 1975, congressional staffer Loch Johnson was searching through classified papers at the LBJ Library in Austin, Texas, when he came across something he couldn’t believe — a covert plan by the US military to deploy biological weapons against Cuba.
This was more than Johnson was bargaining for, even though he was at the archive looking for files related to covert actions directed against Cuba. By July 1975, the Watergate hearings had finished, and three separate, high-level investigations were underway — all aimed at revealing covert and possibly illegal activities of US intelligence agencies, including assassination.
Johnson was working as top aide to Sen. Frank Church (D-ID), chair of the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, the so-called “Church Committee.” The American public knew that their government had a tense relationship with Cuba, especially with its feisty leader, Fidel Castro. The US had unsuccessfully underwritten a Cuban-exile paramilitary invasion at the Bay of Pigs in 1961 — a disaster in every sense. And just a year later, the world came to the brink of nuclear apocalypse after a showdown with the Soviet Union over nuclear missiles it had placed in Cuba.
What the public was not aware of then, and would only discover in later decades, was that the CIA had attempted all manner of assassination plots against Castro, in addition to widespread sabotage actions — such as burning sugarcane fields and blowing up power plants — with the goal of undermining Cuba’s Communist government.
Fidel Castro
Photo credit: Periódico ¡ahora! / Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0)
Some of the assassination plots were exotic — a poisoned diving suit, an exploding shell, an exploding cigar, poison pills, and an exploding pen. One of the more startling revelations was that the CIA had been working closely with the Mafia in its efforts to eliminate Castro.
But that’s not what shocked Johnson that day.
Achieving “Ruination”
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He had come across a memo dated October 30, 1964, from the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) to the Secretary of Defense. In responding to an earlier presidential request for “new ideas related to Cuba,” the Joint Chiefs proposed a project code-named SQUARE DANCE — which Johnson caustically referred to as “their first bright new idea.”
Johnson relayed to his superiors at the Church Committee the details of project SQUARE DANCE:
The proposal envisioned the destruction of the Cuban economy by introducing aerially from off-shore a sugar cane plant parasite called Bunga. The program would begin with a 30 percent reduction of anticipated Cuban sugar production (see page 6) and within three-to-six years the ruination of the sugar industry would be achieved.
But that wasn’t all. Johnson quoted directly from the JCS memo:
The economic and political disturbances caused by this attack could be exacerbated and exploited by such measures as spreading hoof-and-mouth disease among draft animals, controlling rainfall by cloud seeding, mining canefields, burning cane, and directing other acts of conventional sabotage against the cane milling and transportation systems (emphasis added in original document).
Hoof-and-mouth disease (sometimes referred to as foot-and-mouth disease) is highly infectious and affects farm animals such as cattle, sheep, goats, and pigs. The disease causes high fevers followed by blisters in the animal’s mouth and feet. While very rarely affecting humans, it can bring devastating economic consequences to farmers. Containing a 2001 outbreak in the UK cost some £8bn ($12bn) in public and private outlays.
In their memo about the SQUARE DANCE proposal, the US Joint Chiefs spelled out the strategic value of the project: “[Square Dance] would furnish another option to the United States in bringing about the collapse of the Castro regime.”
The memo unearthed by Johnson is not the only instance of the US military proposing to use biological warfare against Castro’s Cuba.
agricultural sabotage, Cuba
Photo credit: National Archives
A JFK document release last year revealed an intelligence memorandum from 1962 discussing the possibility of using biological agents to induce crop failure “which would appear to be of natural origin.” A US Army memo from 1963, recently released by the National Archives, lists a number of “Ideas to Exploit Cuban Vulnerabilities,” including the initiation of “biological warfare against vegetable and animal tissue (except human).”
The October 30,1964, memo, referenced in Johnson’s book National Security Intelligence but digitally released last month by the National Archives, gives us a clearer picture of what that might have looked like.
“Bunga,” known also as Aeginetia Indica, is a flowering weed that acts as a root parasite to nearby plants. It can be particularly harmful to sugarcane crops, which were Cuba’s primary economic output. US intelligence sabotage efforts had long targeted sugar crops, including night raids from offshore boats planting incendiary devices in fields. But this was something different.
Like the earlier memo from 1962, this one mentions the need for deniability: “It appears feasible to introduce gradually Bunga into Cuba and maintain a basis for plausibly disavowing US involvement.”
The 1964 memo leaves no doubt as to the ultimate goal of this program:
The Joint Chiefs of Staff continue to believe that the ultimate objective toward Cuba must be to establish a government in Cuba that is acceptable to the United States.
“The Worst Kind of Foreign Policy Mischief”
.
Johnson makes clear that he does not know if this plan for forcing regime change in Cuba was ever implemented, and suggests that the White House may have been skeptical of the idea. But the alarm in Johnson’s own memo is apparent:
The mere writing of this kind of proposal is a reprehensible first step toward the worst kind of foreign policy mischief. I find it even more repugnant than contingency plans for assassination. These are not the kinds of recommendations which should filter up to the White House from the intelligence community. The agencies must have a better sense of what is acceptable policy, legally and morally. …
The result of SQUARE DANCE would have been parasitic death for the major plant and animal life in Cuba. The feeble efforts of the CIA to direct assassination attempts against Castro pale by comparison with this Army proposal for covert action.
I believe SQUARE DANCE deserves our attention. If assassination is unacceptable, surely too is the widespread destruction of plant and animal life through covert germ warfare.
In 1964, the international law governing the use of biological weapons was the Geneva Protocol of 1925. But its jurisdiction at that time was limited.
“The intentional spread of disease as a method of warfare would be a violation of the Geneva Protocol if the US was a party, which it was not,” Dr. Richard Price, who teaches politics and international law at of the University of British Columbia, told WhoWhatWhy. The Geneva Protocol of 1925 “banned not just asphyxiating gases but also ‘bacteriological’ weapons, but the US did not ratify that until 1975 so was not bound by it [in the early 1960s].”
Price points out, however, that the use of the chemical herbicide Agent Orange during the Vietnam War, while also technically not illegal at the time for the same reason, certainly caused plenty of controversy.
Vietnam War, Agent Orange
During the Vietnam War, the US military exposed up to four million people to the herbicide and defoliant chemical known as Agent Orange. Photo credit: Adapted by WhoWhatWhy from US Army / Wikimedia, Unknown / Wikimedia, and Vietnam News Agency / Wikimedia.
The use of parasitic plants like Bunga, while perhaps not the first thing that comes to mind when thinking of biological weapons, is nevertheless considered a dangerous form of biowarfare by some scholars.
Of course, the US had not officially declared war against Cuba or gained UN authorization — thus the need for “plausible deniability.”
What Really Happened in Korea
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The potential use of covert germ warfare against Cuba, while in itself remarkable, is intriguing for another reason. During the Korean War, the Chinese and North Koreans had protested that the US was using biological weapons against the North Korean people. Downed Air Force pilots had confessed to it, only to claim after their return from North Korean prisoner of war camps that they were the victims of brainwashing. A long-suppressed and controversial international commission report concluded that the allegations were true.
The issue surfaced more recently with the release of the Netflix docudrama series, Wormwood. It is an exploration of the mysterious circumstances surrounding the death of government scientist and CIA employee Frank Olson in 1953, and his family’s decades-long effort to find out what really happened. Olson had worked at Fort Detrick, a US army base in Maryland that happened to be at the center of the US’s biological weapons research.
Related: Government Mind Control Agent Talks
The Wormwood narrative suggests that Olson had doubts and guilt about the work he was doing as it related to the Korean war, and that the CIA had him murdered to prevent him from ever speaking out about the projects.
While the 1964 JCS memo neither confirms nor negates allegations about the use of biological weapons in Korea, it’s clear that the US military was not opposed to using such methods, even if that meant causing drastic harm to the entire civilian population.
What’s also noteworthy is the timing of the memo. The year is 1964: President Lyndon Johnson is now in power after the assassination of JFK, and the plan to overthrow Castro is still a strategic goal. Previous failures to dislodge Castro, which had led to the risk of nuclear annihilation in the Cuban missile crisis, were apparently not strong enough warning signals for the president and JCS.
The goal of US policy toward Cuba would remain regime change, but President Johnson would soon have his hands full with an escalated conflict and ultimate quagmire in Vietnam — one that Kennedy had been seeking to withdraw from before his untimely death.
That summer in 1975, Loch Johnson came to an understanding of what his government was capable of. Although it appears that the White House ultimately rejected the JCS plan, it’s easy to empathise with Johnson’s horror that the US would seriously propose such actions. It would be many decades before the American public learned the shocking truth. If the Church Committee had decided to reveal all of those realities would it have changed the public perception of US foreign policy? Would it have challenged the American notion of American exceptionalism?
Perhaps a more unsettling question is whether those tendencies present in the Joint Chiefs of 1964 are present in the hearts and minds of high office leaders today.
https://whowhatwhy.org/2018/05/09/jfk-f ... inst-cuba/
by seemslikeadream » Thu May 31, 2018 2:01 pm
Scientist Neutralizes JFK’s ‘Back and to the Left’ — Or Does He?
Should we necessarily trust “experts” writing in “peer reviewed” journals who seek to advance interpretations of events preferred by the very establishment whose approval is necessary for career advancement? Is this about National Security — the usual reason given when it comes to hiding the truth in the Kennedy assassination — or is it about job security?
Are we being cynical to wonder about these things? See if the following makes you wonder as well. In any case, if you like puzzles, you should find this report engaging. Or, if you’re not in the mood for much reading, you can skip the report and look at the pictures.
‘Back and to the Left’
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That’s what traumatized viewers saw in the Zapruder film as President John F. Kennedy’s body reacted to a bullet to the head. But what did that movement — seared into all of our minds via television, Oliver Stone’s JFK, and YouTube — actually prove?
That is one of the great mysteries of one of the greatest continuing debates of all time. And it leads to bigger questions: Who killed Kennedy, and why?
To those who support the lone gunman theory, the shot came from behind — the supposed lair of Lee Harvey Oswald. But Kennedy was knocked backward, suggesting he was hit from the front. Which would mean Oswald did not fire that bullet.
This image — combined with the discrepancies in the government’s reporting of the most fundamental facts in the case — perpetuate the well-earned distrust of official sources. (For details on discrepancies in the medical-ballistic evidence, please go here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.)
Lone-gunman theory advocates have sought to explain away this anomaly, utilizing a long string of purported experts. The establishment media, showing little interest in exploring other possibilities, has long promoted these counterintuitive explanations.
The latest comes from Nicholas R. Nalli, a PhD in atmospheric and oceanic sciences and senior research scientist with I.M. Systems Group, Inc. at STAR. He performs research at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and is said to have expertise in geophysics, optics, and remote sensing.
According to his biography, “He is also interested and active in science education and public outreach.” His article on the assassination may be considered public outreach — but it should not be considered “science education.” It is more political than scientific.
Nalli’s article is insidiously misleading, and full of intellectual sinkholes hidden beneath an impressive surface of scientific arcana.
Titled “Gunshot-Wound Dynamics Model for John F. Kennedy Assassination,” it was published in Heliyon, an “open access journal,” and has been getting a lot of attention. It has been promoted in Daily Mail, Newsweek, history.com, Komsomolskaya Pravda, and several other places. According to a press release from Heliyon’s parent company, Elsevier,
The Zapruder film shows the President’s head moving back and to the left, which Dr. Nalli soon realized was due to a recoil effect…
He developed a simple one-dimensional gunshot wound dynamics model to explain the movements observed in the film… This is the first time this aspect of the case has been considered so thoroughly and quantitatively.
In the following report, I focus only on the “recoil effect” (also called the “jet effect”), as presented by Nalli, and by his source of inspiration, Luis Alvarez. I also examine the sources he uses to verify it, in particular, John Lattimer. I leave to others the evaluation of Nalli’s comments on neurospasm.
A Conjuring Act: Don’t Blink
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Nalli embraces the theories of Nobel prize-winning physicist Luis Alvarez who — with the sponsorship of the Department of Energy — designed experiments to “prove” Kennedy’s exploding brain sent his head backward (American Journal of Physics 1976; 44:813-827). Alvarez called it “jet effect.”
Nalli writes that he himself will examine this effect in “considerably more detail.” Before looking at these details, you should first understand something Nalli does not tell you — Alvarez’s work has a fatal flaw. The first amazing hint of it is right in Alvarez’s introduction:
Most of the critics … treat the problem as though it involved only two interacting masses: the bullet and the head. My analysis involves three interacting masses, the bullet, the jet of brain matter observable in frame 313 [Zapruder film], and the remaining part of the head. It will turn out that the jet can carry forward more momentum than was brought in by the bullet, and the head recoils backward, as a rocket recoils when its jet fuel is ejected.
Let’s take a good look at these “three interacting masses” in slow motion:
Bullet enters brain… brain explodes… jet of brain matter propels “remaining” head backward.
But what about the first interaction? The one that occurs before the bullet even gets to the brain: the collision between bullet and the back of the head.
This first collision would knock the head in the direction of the bullet — and that forward movement and transfer of energy would compete with any alleged jet effect causing the head to move backward.
And it had to be quite a violent collision. According to the official narrative, a bullet slammed into the back of JFK’s head traveling at nearly 1900 feet per second, broke into two jacketed fragments, leaving behind multiple lead fragments, and a thin round fragment embedded in the skull.
At first, I thought Alvarez had just assumed readers didn’t need to be told about this first collision, but when I looked at his mathematical equations, I was shocked to see that he didn’t represent it there either.
So how did he avoid it in his actual experiments? For skulls, he used a much softer target — melons wrapped in tape, then fired at them at close range, with a much more destructive bullet than the one that allegedly hit Kennedy.
Despite the way Alvarez rigged his experiments, they didn’t even deliver proof of the jet-effect explanation. Dr. Gary Aguilar reported that photographs in Alvarez’s private files, obtained from Paul Hoch, Alvarez’s graduate student assistant, showed that
Virtually all the objects he fired at flew away from the shooter, not toward him, except for the ones he reported in the AJP. [American Journal of Physics]
If jet effect is a viable explanation for what you see on the Zapruder film — why is so much deception needed to sell it?
Nalli may not have been aware of these more recent revelations about the true results of Alvarez’s experiments, but it is hard to believe he did not see something wrong with the fact that Alvarez tried to make that first interaction, the one between bullet and back of head — disappear.
Did Nalli do the same thing in his own way?
Nicholas Nalli
Photo credit: NOAA
Nalli’s Conjuring Act
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Nalli’s paper begins with the usual pro-government version of the crime, along with the points he wishes to make: that JFK’s head first moved forward a few inches; jet effect moved his head backward; neurospasm moved the rest of his body. His beginning and concluding remarks are all in plain English.
But most of this article consists of dense clouds of calculations. Navigating through them is like wandering through a maze enveloped in haze. For laypersons, including the media, this kind of material is difficult if not impossible to understand. And yet…
Even a layperson can identify a few critical assumptions that cannot be right.
Major Deception on First Collision
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As mentioned earlier, Alvarez completely skipped over the first interaction, the collision between bullet and back of the head. It just doesn’t exist in his calculations. Nalli, on the other hand, did include it, but he greatly diminished its power — and tried to conceal the fact that he did.
The presented areas of the projectile may be estimated from its diameters at skull entrance and exit. Because the Carcano bullet is extremely stable during normal flight through air, the entrance diameter 0 is simply the cross-sectional diameter of an unfired bullet, which is known to be 0.67 cm [centimeters, i.e., about 7 millimeters].
The first thing you should find suspicious is that Nalli suggests the size of the entrance can be “estimated.” Who needs an estimate when the information is on record? This is an egregious act of deception which leads to a false conclusion.
According to the autopsy report, the entrance wound was 6 x 15 millimeters.
Why does Nalli want you to think the entrance wound was only 0.67 cm — or only 7 millimeters — when the true “presented area” is over twice the size implied by Nalli? The importance of that “presented area” is huge!
It is precisely the collision and drag forces acting upon a projectile that impart an impulse force and acceleration on the target… and these forces are directly proportional to projectile’s presented area… [Emphasis mine.]
And Nalli told me in an email on May 18, 2018,
The amount of energy (and momentum) deposited to the target is dependent upon the amount of deformation (flattening) of the projectile from its entrance to its exit. The amount of deformation of the projectile, while not known exactly, is estimated from the beveled exit wound, which was measured to be 2.5 to 3.0 cm in the Autopsy Report.The greater the deformation, the greater the presented area, the greater the energy deposit, and the greater the spray velocity.
Yes, the greater the presented area, the greater the energy deposit, but Nalli applies this more to the spray velocity of brain tissue — the alleged jet effect in other words.
Again I ask, what about the presented area and energy deposit, to the back of the head?
The elliptical shape of the long entrance wound indicates a sideways or tangential hit (the two are different but have much in common). This would mean the bullet was in contact with the bone in front of it longer than it would have been in a nose-on hit.
And the longer bullet and bone are in contact, the more energy is imparted to the bone — and, in some circumstances, the more the head moves, until the bone in front of it detaches completely. According to Capt. Philip Dodge, tangential strikes can actually knock a person down. (Journal of Neurosurgery 9,1952, 472-483.)
Some believe JFK would have moved more dramatically forward had it not been for a nearly simultaneously fired bullet from the front, knocking him backward. And, because of his back brace and the Ace Bandage wound around his waist, JFK may have been more easily pushed in any direction.
Significance: In his calculations, Nalli greatly diminishes the effect of bullet on bone upon entering. How can this not affect his calculations?
Brain Size Misrepresented
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One of Nalli’s false assumptions concerns the mass of John Kennedy’s brain. The following has been the cause of much merriment among the knowledgeable and is what publishers call a “howler”:
Although the autopsy reported the brain mass to be 1500 g, this number will be too small due to the loss of tissue, blood and fluid from the gunshot wound. Given the assumed brain loss for the jet spray of 20 ± 10% … the living brain mass before wounding is taken to be 40% more than the autopsy-measured value, thus ≈ 2100 g. From these parameters, the theoretical spray speed is subsequently calculated to be in the range of ≈3200–3500 cm∕s (depending on the assumed exit wound diameter), which are in general agreement with the observed values from the Zapruder Film, thus lending confidence to these estimates…
The average human adult male brain is between 1300 and 1400 grams (sources: here and here). So how could Kennedy’s brain be 1500 grams after being shot? (The 1500-gram figure is not the only anomaly of the autopsy report concerning the brain. The report did not include any description of the cerebellum, which is highly irregular considering this was an autopsy on a man shot in the head. Please go here for more on this bizarre story.)
Based on the assumption that the brain lost about 40 percent of its mass, Nalli added that much “back into” the brain, making its assumed pre-assassination weight 2100 grams! On this figure, he calculated the spray speed? This would seem to give the rocket quite a boost.
This error strongly suggests that no neurologist vetted this paper, despite its promotion of the neurospasm theory as the only explanation for the movement of Kennedy’s torso after jet effect supposedly moved his head. Although additional brain seems to help fuel Nalli’s theory, I doubt that he used this figure knowing it is comically false.
One of Nalli’s Main References: John Lattimer
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On 13 separate instances, Nalli refers to the work of the late John K. Lattimer, MD, who spent decades using fraudulent means to prove the conclusions of the Warren Commission. His demonstrations of the jet effect and the single bullet theory were so amateurish they would have been scorned as junior high school science projects.
Lattimer reminds me of the kind of cut-rate magician who pulls a rabbit out of the hat without first displaying the “empty” hat.
But all major promoters of the official narrative have depended on his articles for material: authors Gerald Posner and Vincent Bugliosi, for example; producers of numerous TV specials; John McAdams, who runs a website and teaches classes on the assassination at Marquette University; and an assortment of trolls.
Related: Disinformation Part 1: How Trolls Control An Internet Forum
Lattimer was quite a character. The New York Times described him as “a prominent urologist, ballistics expert and collector of historical relics who treated top-ranking Nazis during the Nuremberg war crimes trials.” Among his historical relics were a a glass ampoule that contained the cyanide taken by Hermann Göring, a powder compact with Eva Braun’s initials, President Lincoln’s blood-stained collar, and Napoleon’s penis.
And he “was the first non-governmental medical specialist allowed to examine the evidence in President John F. Kennedy’s assassination.” J. Edgar Hoover was a patient of his and may have had something to do with Lattimer’s involvement in “explaining” the evidence.
You may wonder how a urologist could get published on subjects requiring expertise in neurology and physics. The answer is simple. He submitted them to journals that, unknown to the public, have lenient standards and are not read by specialists with deep knowledge of a subject. And such articles get classified as “Biography” or “Historical Medicine,” which protects them from serious vetting. The mainstream press, assuming the paper has been reviewed by relevant experts, spreads the word.
Luis Alvarez of course had the relevant qualifications, but he published his jet-effect article in one of the less sophisticated physics journals that was read mostly by students.
Both Lattimer and Alvarez wrote in the same manipulative, ingratiating style. Their writing vibrates with buzz words designed to earn your trust. Alvarez included references to Life Magazine… Thanksgiving… Christmas… football… the American flag… his service in World War II… Lattimer’s service in World War II. Somehow, he omitted references to mother, apple pie, the family dog, and church.
Get a Load of This!
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Before getting into Lattimer’s own jet effect, you may wish to see something more immediately comprehensible. The scam revealed below was designed to solve the big problem concerning the location of Kennedy’s back wound: according to clear photographic evidence, it was too low to comport with the single-bullet theory. A bullet from the sixth floor of the Depository Building (the “sniper’s nest”) would not have been able to enter that low, then go up to exit Kennedy’s throat, which was at a higher level. And if it did not exit the throat, this would have to mean the throat wound was caused by a bullet coming from the front. So Lattimer created a model of a skeleton showing the bullet entering several inches higher than it actually did:
RIBS, BULLET PATH
Photo credit: NIH
In Lattimer’s model, the bullet enters at the sixth cervical vertebra (C6) — almost at the top of JFK’s shirt collar! Please compare the above contrivance with the photograph below, showing the actual back wound:
JFK, back wound, autopsy
Photo credit: JFK Lancer
Here is that part of the autopsy face sheet that concerns the location of the back wound — and it is in the back, not the neck:
JFK, back wound, diagram
Photo credit: PaulSeaton.com
Lattimer Conjures Jet Effect
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Getting back to what happened to Kennedy’s head, Nalli said Alvarez’s work “has been backed up by subsequent independent experimental studies.” (This is a bit of a non-starter since not even Alvarez backed up Alvarez.) This comment is accompanied by three references, giving the impression of three separate studies. One of them referred to a study which did not backup Nalli’s claims. The other two refer to the same work — John Lattimer’s — reported in two different places. Here is how Alvarez’s conclusions were “backed up” by Lattimer:
False: Large Bone Fragment Sent ‘40 Feet’ in Air
Lattimer said the largest bone fragment “exploded upward and forward due to the power of this destructive bullet and was forced 40 feet in the air by the explosion of the brain.”
Fact: That large fragment, along with two smaller ones, was found in the back of Kennedy’s limousine. Its journey was only in inches, not feet. You can see it on Kennedy’s right shoulder in the famous Moorman Polaroid photo. And, in several frames of the Zapruder film, you can watch as it makes its way down Kennedy’s back. Secret Service Agent Clint Hill, famous for leaping upon the limousine to protect Mrs. Kennedy, saw a large fragment detach from Kennedy’s head.
[img]False:%20Three%20Bone%20Fragments%20Were%20Found%20in%20the%20Street[/img]
“Three fragments of skull picked up in the street in Dallas account for the majority area of bone that was missing and were clearly the fragments seen leaving the head in a forward and upward direction in frame 313 of the Zapruder move of the shooting.”
Fact: They were found in the limousine. (Another good sized fragment was found on the south lawn.)
False: Mrs. Kennedy Is Thrown Onto Trunk of Car
“Because the exit wound is in the right side, it also drives JFK over towards his left (towards Mrs. Kennedy) where he falls down on the seat. She rises to one knee to let him fall where she had been sitting. Then the car jerks forward and throws her out full length on the car trunk.”
Fact: Secret Service Agent Clint Hill testified to the Warren Commission that Mrs. Kennedy appeared to be reaching for something coming off the the right rear bumper of the car, the right rear tail.” In a recent interview (2017) with MSNBC’s Hallie Jackson, he was more specific. He said she was “trying to grab some of the material that came out of the President’s head.” He also said he was covered in blood and brain.
False: Opening in Skull Was Only on Top, Side
Nalli says JFK’s head was moved to the back and the left because of rapidly exploding brain matter exiting the top right side of his head. And he tells you, “For a thorough description of the head wound, the reader is referred to Lattimer et al.”
Once again, Nalli does not refer you to the autopsy report. Instead, he steers you to Lattimer, who never even saw the wound. Lattimer would never tell you that the occipital bone — which is in the back of the head — was involved. The autopsy report describes the great defect as chiefly on top of the head, but “somewhat” in the occiput. But according to the doctors at Parkland Hospital in Dallas — including the chief neurosurgeon — a great deal of the occiput was involved.
It’s possible that Nalli may not be aware of the discrepancies between what the Dallas doctors observed in the emergency room and what the autopsy doctors in Bethesda, MD, reported — but he doesn’t even give you the official, government-approved (at least in 1964) autopsy information concerning that skull opening.
Here is how Lattimer — and now Nalli — want you to picture Kennedy’s skull opening:
Lattimer, skull diagram
Photo credit: Archive.org
Here is a diagram of how JFK’s skull damage is remembered by J.Thornton Boswell, MD, one of the three pathologists who performed the autopsy:
Boswell, skull diagram
Photo credit: History Matters
False: Damage to Experimental Skulls Duplicated Damage to JFK’s
Does this “duplication of JFK’s skull wound” look valid to Nalli? If so, why?
JFK, skull wound
Photo credit: Archive.org
False: Damage to Experimental Bullets Same as JFK’s Head Bullet
Here is a mysterious lie. It may be only a small thing, but then why lie about it? Lattimer said that in all experiments, his and those performed by the Army for the Warren Commission, there was a “complete separation” of the copper shell and the lead core, which is what he claims happened to the bullet that hit JFK in the head.
Fact: The bullet alleged to have hit JFK in the head broke into two fragments — and both were jacketed. Obviously so:
JFK, bullet fragment
Photo credit: JFK Archives
JFK, bullet fragment
Photo credit: JFK Archives
But here is Lattimer’s curiously false presentation:
JFK, Skull Fragments
Lattimer’s black and white photos of the bullet fragments do not show the bright copper color of the two jacketed fragments. Photo credit: Archive.org
Neither Lattimer nor the Army reproduced the damage to the assumed Carcano bullet fragments found in the front seat. Could those fragments have come from two different bullets? Or maybe the problem has to do with how much energy the bullet would lose if it broke into two jacketed fragments.
Did Nalli notice any of these discrepancies?
Was Nalli Fooled? Or Is He Doing His Own Fooling?
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Does Nicholas Nalli know of the vast amount of evidence that should make him skeptical of the government-approved version of Kennedy’s murder?
Does Nalli notice the differences between that government-approved version — and Lattimer’s tarted up version?
Did he even take a good look at Lattimer’s papers? Or did he just assume that surely Lattimer would accurately present the facts as he understood them, so there was no need to study them. Was he encouraged to rely on him by the others?
But how could anyone, on either side — especially a scientist — let others do their thinking for them?
I ask myself these questions as I try to understand how he could possibly allow his good name to be associated with such a person. Has Nalli been conned by Lattimer and others? How could that happen? Here’s an interesting bit of wisdom from a magician that might explain Nalli’s trust in such people:
A magician will instantly see the truth behind any colleague’s illusion. But we have a bit of an advantage: We know we are being fooled. Scientists are instinctive doubters who employ a rigorous method to zero in on the truth, but they aren’t necessarily trained to expect deception by subjects and collaborators.
I would like to think the magician’s insight explains why Nalli trusted people like John Lattimer — but I can’t help but wonder if it really explains why people trust Nalli.
Because there’s one seemingly small fact that I can’t get out of my mind: When it came to that important first collision, Nalli tried to con us the same way Alvarez did. In Nalli’s case, it was all about a few millimeters.
https://whowhatwhy.org/2018/05/31/scien ... r-does-he/
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