I decided to post this to a new thread for two reasons; the first, Fourthbase commented on receiving a virus hit at the source page I linked to. I did not receive a hit myself, but I'd be disappointed if people missed this due to virus concerns, so I've lifted the text. The second reason is obviously it's lengthy size. The author's name is included for reference at the end of the text.
While I'm no expert on the JFK assassination, I'm pretty familiar with Mr Linebarger and his excellent Science Fiction work published under the pseudonym Cordwainer Smith. Paul Linebarger was a pivitol element in the establishment of US Counter Intelligence, but to date, only Hugh Manatee Wins and myself seem to be aware of this person here at RI. I think some people are missing an opportunity to learn about one of the more interesting persons(to me) in the 20th century. "Psychological Warfare" was conceived through him using a fusion of Sun Tzu's Art of War and a thorough understanding of large scale confidence scams.
I'd also be interested in feedback from Hugh and others who are more steeped in the JFK data.
Arcadia
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THE BIG CON at DEALEY PLAZA - Paul Linebarger and David Maurer
President Kennedy's assassination was the work of magicians," said Hevve Lemarr of French Intelligence. "It was a stage trick complete with actor's accessories and props. And when the curtain fell the actors and even the scenery, disappeared. But the magicians were not illusionists, but professionals, artists in their own way." 1.
Whatever you believe happened at Dealey Plaza, President Kennedy was killed there, and regardless of who was ultimately responsible, it is important, at least to the security of the United States, to determine how the assassination occurred.
It's natural that a well planned and executed covert operation seems like a unnatural miracle or a magic trick. That's why covert operators are often called "spooks," their talents are said to be black arts, and they are participants in what they call "the Great Game" of espionage.
The "spooks" we've come to know sometimes compare the Great Game to chess and rank their power as knights, bishops and rooks. E. Howard Hunt was known as "Knight," and David Atlee Phillips, who was born on Oct. 31 – Halloween, was known to some as Mister "Bishop." 2.
Then there's Ed Lansdale, Frank Wisner and William Harvey, all legends, each with covert aliases and code names to conceal their true identities, or as the Cubans called them, "war names." The use of aliases is only one attribute all covert intelligence operatives have in common. Other similar attributes include the use of post boxes, dead drops, safe houses, microdots, codes and ciphers, as well as the standard trade crafts by all intelligence agencies, as outlined in Allen Dulles' book "The Crafts of Intelligence." 3.
Like most trades, "the crafts of intelligence" are taught and passed on by those who were previously taught the arts through a teacher-student, master-apprentice relationship, as they have for generations and over centuries since the days of Sun Tzu. 4.
Some of those individuals who standout in the history of espionage during he Cold War – E. Howard Hunt, David Atlee Phillips and Ed Lansdale, all had one thing in common - they were trained in the black arts of psychological warfare by a man they considered a legend among legends – Paul Linebarger.
That you wouldn't recognize him is a testament to Linebarger's success, as both a teacher and a player in the Great Game.
PAUL M. A. LINEBARGER
Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in July 1913. The grandson of a preacher and the son of an American Judge in the Philippines and advisor to Chinese revolutionary Sun Yat sen, Linebarger's godfather. 5.
Well traveled and a student visitor to Japan, China, France and Germany, Linebarger earned his Ph.D. in political science at John Hopkins University at the age of 21.
Linebarger enlisted in the Army during World War II and served in the Pacific Theater. One report notes, "As a Far East specialist he was involved in the formation of the Office of War Information and of the Operation Planning and Intelligence Board. He also helped organize the Army's first psychological warfare section. Linebarger was sent to China and put in charge of psychological warfare and of coordinating Anglo- American and Chinese military activities. By the end of the war, he had risen to the rank of major."
Based primarily on manuals he produced for the Army during the war, Linebarger's book Psychological Warfare and Propaganda (Combat Forces Press, 1948; 1954) is the classic textbook on the subject, still used today. Taking Sun Tzu's The Art of War, Linebarger updated its principals and applied them to today's international circumstances. 6.
When the CIA produced terrorist and political assassination handbooks for the Contras in Nicaragua and Panamanian dissidents, which were later discovered and published, parts were found to have come from one of Linebarger's psychological warfare manuals. 7. [See: http://www.socialconscience.com/article ... guatemala/]
Although Linebarger also taught at Duke, after the war he became professor of Asiatic Studies at John Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, where he was also a part time professor at the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), a CIA think tank. 8.
It wasn't until after his death that Linebarger was exposed as also being science fiction writer Cordwainer Smith [See: Notes below]. It was then also revealed that he was not only the foremost authority on psychological warfare in the Training Division of the CIA, but that he had also worked on operations with E. Howard Hunt in Mexico City. 9.
Those CIA recruits who were invited to take Linebarger's SAIS classes, which he taught at his Washington D.C. home at night, were required to get there by using trade-craft to avoid detection. 10.
Among Linebarger's most famous, if not successful students, were E. Howard Hunt, Edward Lansdale and David Atlee Phillips, three of the most prolific covert operators during the Cold War. Like Linebarger himself, if they had been truly successful we would never have heard of them.
As explained by Linebarger in his book and classes, propaganda is only one of the tools of the psychological warrior, whose primary goal is defeat the enemy before a battle is fought, using psychological principals that have been used for centuries and outlined by Sun Tzu.
In his studies of psychological warfare, Linebarger breaks propaganda into different categories – white, grey and black propaganda, with black propaganda specifically designed to appear to originate with the opposition. Linebarger devised the STASUM formula for the study of propaganda, and ways by which the opposition's propaganda can be analyzed to determine their intentions and predict their actions. 11.
In his classes Linebarger however, didn't just use his own book Psychological Warfare, but for examples of how successful covert operations are planned and executed he had his students read The Big Con, by David Maurer. 12.
In the introduction to his book Intelligence Wars – American Secret History From Hitler to Al Qaeda, Thomas Powers relates an interesting conversation he once had with General William Odom at a party hosted by former CIA intelligence officer Haviland Smith. 13.
While mingling and sipping cocktails at the party, Powers asked General Odom how the CIA could have uncovered and infiltrated Al Qaeda before 9/11.
General Odom, the former Army Chief of Staff and director of the National Security Agency, looked at Powers, smiled and said simply - "Like the Sting."
Like The Sting.
Odom was, of course, referring to the popular, award winning film staring Robert Redford and Paul Newman, but he was also giving away the secrets behind the magic, the secrets of the Big Con confidence games. 15.
DAVID MAURER'S THE BIG CON.
The movie the Sting is based in part on Professor David Maurer's The Big Con, a study of street slang of the American confidence men of the early part of the last century.
Maurer's The Big Con was first published in 1940 and updated and republished later as The American Confidence Man. The book began as a linguistic textbook on the slang of street grifters, but became a manual on how the big time confidence scams are actually played out.
A professor of linguistics at the University of Louisville, Kentucky, Maurer explained that, "My approach is simple. I determine who the good professionals are, secure their assistance, and work with them much the same as an anthropologist might work with an American Indian tribe he is studying."
"I have scrupulously refrained from passing any judgments with a moral bias," Maurer said. "My only aim is to tell for the general reader, the story of American confidence men and confidence games, stripped of the romantic aura which commonly hovers over literature of the modern big-time criminal." 17.
After the book was published Maurer continued teaching English classes for the next few decades, until the movie "The Sting" came out in the early 1970s. When he saw the film Maurer felt like he was stung.
Maurer recognized that the movie "The Sting" was based on his story of The Big Con, and eventually got a court to agree that his book was the basis for the screenplay, and used without credit, authorization or restitution.
However reluctantly the movie studio had to recognized and compensate Maurer because they could produce no other published work that mentions one of the movie's main protagonists Henry Gondorf (Played by Paul Newman). 18.
Gondorf was not a fictional character, but a real life person and subject of Maurer's book. Gondorf, according to Maurer, was a bartender and Big Con artist who operated big con jobs in the 1920s in Chicago, Atlantic City and New York, running the type of Big Con "stings" portrayed in the film. 19.
Unlike small con swindles, which usually take a sucker for whatever he has on him, the Big Con games bilked greedy and ripe victims for much larger sums, and the proper execution of the con depends upon a controlled theater, actors performing complicated schemes and the cooperation (pay off) of the local law enforcement.
The controlled theater is called the Big Store, which developed from the Dollar Stores, where back rooms promoted small time short cons (ala Three Card Monte). Maurer defines a Big Store as "An establishment against which big-con men play their victims. For the wire and the pay-off, it is set up like a poolroom which takes race bets. For the rag, it is set up to resemble a broker's office. Stores are set up with a careful attention to detail because they must seem bona fide. After each play, the store is taken down and all equipment stored away in charge of the manager."
The "Sting" is point that the Mark is separated from his money.
Maurer, who interviewed many of Gondorf's friends and fellow con-artists, explained that the purpose of the Big Con is to convince the Mark to deliver cash in a scheme that goes astray, with the Mark separated from his money but none the wiser to the real scheme. Big Con artists didn't consider themselves thieves because their greedy targets really give them the money.
Everyone in the con, except the Mark, is an actor, each having a name and a role to play. There is the Manager who sets up the store, the Roper, who is also known as the Outside Man, who identifies the Mark, brings him to the store, and assists in fleecing him. The Mark is a victim, or intended victim, someone with money from out of town. The local Dicks (Cops) are on the Take when the Fix is in, and paid off under the stipulation that local citizens wouldn't be taken as Marks.
The Roper identifies and brings the Mark to the Inside Man, who Maurer identifies as "The member of a con mob who stays near the Big Store and receives the Mark whom the Roper brings. Inside men are highly specialized workers; they must have a superb knowledge of psychology to keep the mark under perfect control during the days or weeks while he is being fleeced."
As Maurer puts it, "Big-time confidence games are in reality only carefully rehearsed plays in which every member of the cast except the mark knows his part perfectly. The inside man is the star of the cast; while the minor participants are competent actors and can learn their lines perfectly, they must look to the inside man for their cues; he must be not only a fine actor, but a playwright extempore as well…"
[Please note that David Atlee Phillips, one of Linebarger's star students, was also an amateur thespian who was a member of an acting troup in Havana that also included Wayne Smith, who spoke at COPA conferences and organized the meetings between COPA members and Cuban intelligence in Rio and the Bahamas.] 20.
When the deal goes down, everyone in the Store is part of the Sting except the Mark, who is given the convincer, then separated from his money in the sting, and then given the shut out, made to feel like its good that he got out without getting arrested or killed. After the best Stings, the Mark doesn't even realize what really happened.
When General Odom told Powers that counter-intelligence agents operate "like the Sting," he meant that the best covert operations are conducted very much like the Big Con confidence schemes, as Paul Linebarger taught them.
In looking at what happened at Dealey Plaza as a Big Con job, it seems that both Kennedy and Oswald, the accused assassin, were set up as Marks. The Texas School Book Depository (TSBD), owned by D.H. Byrd, an avid Cold Warrior, was set up like a Big Store, totally under control of the confidence men who ran the operation. 21.
JFK was the Mark who was hooked and brought to the Big Store by the Outside Man. Whoever the Inside Man was, he was very good, and like Gondorf and Linebarger, has remained behind the scenes, so far. We can be sure however, that whoever was behind the Dealey Plaza operation, he was a student of Linebarger.
When Paul Linebarger gave his lectures to young CIA officers, he warned them that these techniques should never be used domestically, or it would totally destroy our form of democracy.
"On the other side of the coin, it is very hopeful to note that the many and dangerous techniques developed by the OSS (Precursor to the CIA) for covert propaganda, some of which were applied with considerable success in Europe, have not been introduced into domestic U.S. politics, commercial competition or other forms of private life." 23. [See: http://the-open-mind.blogspot.com/2005/ ... rfare.html]
Well those techniques were used domestically in the assassination of President Kennedy, and are still being used today to conceal the truth and postpone justice, and democracy has never been the same.
Among those who have studied the assassination of President Kennedy, Noel Twyman wrote the book Bloody Treason and a pamphlet "Illusion and Denial in the John F. Kennedy Assassination," (October 16, 2000). [Laurel Publishing, P.O.Box 67-5128, Rancho Santa Fe, CA 92067, laurelpubl@home.com (858)- 756-3504]. 24.
In "Illusion and Denial" Twyman writes, "My studies of this subject have led me to believe that the master planners of the JFK assassination were experts in the use of illusion and denial to control entire populations. Evidence of this is found in documents revealing CIA psychological operations (psy-ops) utilized to overthrow foreign governments. A notable example is the successful 1954 overthrow of Guatemala, using population control techniques, in which President Jacobo was deposed by the CIA and replaced with a government that had the blessings of the United Fruit Company. This coup involved David Atlee Phillips, psy-ops specialist in the CIA. Phillips is linked to the JFK assassination in that he was seen meeting with Lee Harvey Oswald in Dallas in late August, 1963, only three months before the assassination." 25.
Indeed, the 1954 overthrow of the government of Guatemala, achieved without a major battle and little violence, was the prime example of the proper application of Linebarger's psychological warfare techniques to contemporary political situations. What became the ill fated Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba was originally planned to be based on "the Guatemala operation," and is an example of the failure to apply the same principals. 26.
There are many connections to the Guatemalan "Operation Success" and what happened at Dealey Plaza, including the facts that accused assassin's principal sponsor Michael Paine was a beneficiary of his family who served on the Board of Directors of the United Fruit Company, the shells discovered at the sniper's nest came from a batch delivered to the United States Marine Corps (USMC) in 1954 when the USMC had no weapons that could use such ammunition, and most of the primary suspects in the Dealey Plaza operation had been a part of Operation Success – including David Atlee Phillips, David Morales, Jacob Easterline, E. Howard Hunt and most of those involved in the Bay of Pigs. 27.
As for the chief beneficiary of the Dealey Plaza Con Job, as Twyman points out, "Lyndon Johnson himself was renown for his mastery of the art of deception. An anecdotal example was reported in the Dallas Times Herald in 1989, quoting Harry Blackstone, Jr. (son of the illusionist "The Great Blackstone") who worked for Johnson. Blackstone, Jr. said: 'I worked quite some time for Lyndon Johnson as broadcast personnel, and I think I learned more about the art of deception from him than I did from my father. I don't mean that in a negative way, but he was a man who understood the art of misdirection – of making the eye watch 'A' when the dirty work was going on at 'B'…'"
"Johnson brought the magician's skills to full bear in his direction of the JFK assassination cover-up," writes Twyman. "The devices used almost suspend belief: massive alterations of autopsy evidence; removal of incriminating frames from the famous Zapruder film; whole suppression of a plethora of other evidence. Perhaps most significant is that he master plan of the JFK assassination was based on psy-ops methods revealed in CIA documents showing handwritten notes of CIA's master assassination planner William Harvey. The JFK assassination plan for covert operations in New Orleans, Dallas and Mexico City was carefully designed to create the illusion that Oswald was a communist hired by Fidel Castro to kill JFK. A large body of CIA documents support this conclusion to the point of historical fact." 28.
In 1977, Jeff Cohn and Donald Freed wrote "Fidel on the Grassy Knoll" in Liberation Magazine that at the time of the assassination in Dallas, "…back in Miami, a high powered propaganda machine was cranking out stories that Oswald was a Cuban agent. It was largely the work of two Miami-based reporters, brothers Jerry and James Buchanan, who were at the same time propaganda officers for the CIA-supported International Anti-Communist Brigade (IAB). The brigade had mob support, too, as explained by IAB attorney: "(The Brigade) was financed by disposed hotel and gambling room operators who operated under Batista." 29.
So the murder of the President at Dealey Plaza was entwined with a black-propaganda operation designed to blame the assassination on Castro, a scenario also outlined by others, including Mathew Smith, who wrote a book about it, The Second Plot. 30.
That the accused assassin worked at the scene of murder should not be surprising, especially if the Big Con techniques were used, and other accomplices probably worked there too. That the Texas School Book Depository (TSBD) was owned by D.H. Byrd, the founder of the Civil Air Patrol (CAP), defense contractor and a close associate of many of those associated with the Dealey Plaza Sting – General Curtis LeMay, Gen. Charles Cabel and Art Collins, founder of Collins Radio.
Besides the Big Con that was pulled off at Dealey Plaza and the "Big Store" that was the TSBD, there were other "Big Store" theater environments established at the Fort Worth Hotel on the night before the assassination and Zenith Technical Enterprises, the false front for JM/WAVE in Florida.
The Presidential Suite at the Fort Worth hotel, where Kennedy stayed the night before the assassination, was decorated with exquisite, original works of original art supplied by a friend of Ruth Paine from Philadelphia, the accused assassin's benefactor. This coincidental fact would never have become known had the President's not called to thank her, his last phone call on this earth. 31. [See: Mrs. Paine's Garage]
Decorating the walls of the Presidential Suite with paintings also provided an exceptional acoustics listening post to those who wanted to hear the President's personal conversations, and an example of the type of control exercised by those about to kill him.
JM/WAVE was an even more dynamic Big Store operation. As described by former Army officer Bradley E. Ayers [See: The Zenith Secret], assigned there to train the Cuban commandos, JM/WAVE was set up exactly like a con-artists' Big Store. "…The Miami headquarters was covered under a civilian corporation known as Zenith Technical Enterprises. The station, or 'company,' was located on the University of Miami's South Campus, adjacent to the abandoned Richmond Naval Air Station, which had been developed by the Navy during World War II as a dirigible base….They had missed no detail in setting up the false front of Zenith Technical Enterprises…a firm doing classified government research....There were phony sales and production charts on the walls and business licenses from the state and federal governments. A notice to salesmen, pinned near the door, advised them of the calling hours for various departments. The crowning touch was a certificate of award from the United Givers' Fund to Zenith for outstanding participation in its annual fund drive." 32.
Zenith Technical Services was set up like a fake Hollywood Wild West town, complete with a front office, secretaries, photos and awards on the wall and a CEO, though in reality it was nothing more than a façade.
"I was totally amazed that the cover branch was able to create new people, to change identities, appearances, credentials, passports, or whatever might be necessary for a specific mission," says Ayers. "Some agents had as many as three or four identities, each used for a different task. Characters and personalities materialized and disappeared as if by magic. I came away from the cover branch with a disconcerting awareness. I had always assumed that people were who and what they said they were. Suddenly it seemed apparent that, at least in the CIA, any person could simply be playing a cover role. I resolved that I'd never again accept anyone at face value. I did not know then that my resolve would return to haunt me."
Nor is it a coincidence that Gordon Campbell, identified as the head of JM/WAVE's maritime operations, introduced Ayers to "Karl" as his "Outside Man," using the same slang and terminology as the con-men described by Maurer in his book.
Gordon Campbell was the "Inside Man" at JM/WAVE, the master of psychology and the one everyone else looked to for their cue.
And Gordon Campbell is the JM/WAVE operator whose death certificate says he died in 1962, two years before Ayers remembers having dinner with him at the Black Forge restaurant in Miami when Campbell explained the deactivation of JM/WAVE, the disassembling of Zenith Technical Service so no trace of it would be left, and disbursement of the Cuban players in the drama. And "Karl," Campbell's Outside Man, supposedly died mysteriously in a helicopter accident witnessed by Ayers.
The JM/WAVE Big Store totally disappeared before the end of 1964, while the Texas School Book Depository (TSBD) is now a museum dedicated to the murder of the president, where you can learn anything about the assassination except the tricks behind the magic of the Big Con.
One thing is for certain however. Those who take up a study of the assassination of President Kennedy, the Bay of Pigs, the Guatemalan Coup of 1954 or any covert operation of the Cold War must have an understanding of psychological warfare and the Big Con in order to understand how those operations were planned and executed.
As for the continued domestic use of such covert operations and assassinations in domestic politics, David Maurer warns in his book The American Confidence Man, that the Big Con schemes can only succeed when graft is accepted and those responsible for the enforcement of the law are bought off and "on the take."
"As long as the political boss (whether he be local, state, national, foreign or of the home-grown variety) fosters a machine wherein graft and bribery are looked upon as a normal phase of government, and as long as juries, judges, and key enforcement officers can be had for a price, the confidence man will continue to live and thrive." 35.
And so will political assassination.
[The Big Con at Dealey Plaza, as updated, was originally the second part of my report to the Fund for Constitutional Government – Investigative Project, (circa 1994), updated 2007.
William Kelly – October, 2007 Bkjfk3@yahoo.com ] 36.
MORE ON PAUL LINEBARGER:
The Open Mind – The Application of Paul Linebarger's psychological warfare to current day U.S. policy [http://the-open-mind.blogspot.com/2005/02/paul-linebargers-psychological-warfare.html]
