JFK: Farewell America, by James Hepburn (pseudonym): French intelligence's Kennedy conspiracy theory: conspiracy president john kennedy french intelligence sdece assassination jfk

JFK: Farewell America, by James Hepburn (pseudonym): French intelligence's Kennedy conspiracy theory: conspiracy president john kennedy french intelligence sdece assassination jfk

Farewell America

20

Tomorrow



"After centuries of oppression, may the revolution which has just taken place across the sea, by offering to all the inhabitants of European asylum against fanaticism and tyranny, teach those who govern men about the legitimate use of their authority! May those courageous Americans, who preferred to see their wives assaulted, their children butchered, their homes destroyed, their fields ravaged, their towns burned, to spill their blood and to die, rather than lose even a tiny portion of their liberty, prevent the enormous growth and the unequal distribution of wealth, extravagance, indolence, and corruption, and guarantee the maintenance of their liberty and the duration of their government. May they defer (at least for several centuries), the judgment pronounced against all the things of this world, the judgment which condemned them to have their birth, their period of strength, their decrepitude, and their end.

"Adversity employs great talents; prosperity renders them useless and carries the inept, the corrupted wealthy and the wicked to the top. May they bear in mind that virtue often contains the seeds of tyranny. May they bear in mind that it is neither gold nor even a multitude of arms that sustains a state, but its morals. May each of them keep in his house, in a corner of his field, next to his workbench, next to his plow, his gun, his sword and his bayonet. May they all be soldiers. May they bear in mind that in circumstances where deliberation is possible, the advice of old men is good, but that in moments of crisis youth is generally better informed than its elders."

DENIS DIDEROT
APOSTROPHE TO THE INSURGENTS, 1782

Historical comparisons are dangerous things, but there is little doubt that Robert Kennedy would have taken up the torch so rudely wrested from his brother's hand. Because his first concern was for his mission, because he was already a states- man, he put off until later the punishment of his brother's assassins. For him, the unity of the nation came before sentiment.

He would certainly have been elected Thirty-Seventh President of the United States, and he would have guided his people towards the Frontier, towards that zone where men must confront the realities of this world, and no longer be content with borrowed images of it.

He would have gone further than his brother John, for five years had passed, and much time had been lost. Younger than John, Robert was more mature when he died, but sadder and lonelier. He lacked his brother's style, but he moved faster. He was the only American politician who was a man of his time . . . who was, in other words, ahead of his time. He liked to say, "I'm going to tell it like it is."

Once he had been laid in the ground, the conspiracy of silence closed once more over the conspiracy of the crime. Life magazine headed its story, "The Kennedys. those princes destroyed by the gods."

This book attempts not so much to describe a crime as to explain how it came about, and to disclose the motives that inspired it. The problems facing the United States today are fundamentally the same as those that it confronted in 1960, but they have grown more serious. Our analysis of the Kennedy years is, in fact, an autopsy of the Johnson administration.

The fortresses that John Kennedy prepared to attack are stronger today than ever before. The America of 1968 differs little from the America of the Eisenhower years.⁽¹⁾

The death of Robert Kennedy, like that of his brother John, was neither an accident nor a misunderstanding. Both crimes bore the signature of frangible bullets. Both murders were the work of a few men desirous of maintaining the political, social and economic situations and philosophy of another era. Most of these men are still in power. Must the American people wait until the year 2038 to examine the files deposited in the National Archives, to hear the testimony of other witnesses? Who can say what the America of 2038 will be like, whether she will take an interest in the dust of centuries past, in the heroes of her history and their assassins?

Long before then, American children will learn in school that John Fitzgerald Kennedy ranks with a Lincoln and a Washington. True, he sometimes showed a lack of realism, too great a faith in the virtue of words. He was too trusting of men, and especially of those around him. He did not belong to that great family of emperors who, from Peter the Great to Frederick of Prussia to Charles De Gaulle, have always placed the interest of the state above sentiment -- even when it caused their heart to suffer.

But it is not only for his generous heart that John Kennedy will be remembered. He was the first to have a prophetic conception of a new Society of Mankind.

Before the double tomb at Arlington, there are lessons to be learned. Ethel and Edward Kennedy made of Robert's funeral an occasion, not of sadness, but of hope. A man can be destroyed, but some men are never vanquished . . . not if the true meaning of their death is understood, and the significance of their struggle.

As this page is written, 200,515 young Americans, dead, wounded or missing in Vietnam, bear witness to the longest and most pointless war the United States has ever known. But the price paid by the Great Society is greater still. The decade of the Sixties opened, you will recall, in the blaze of a New America and the warmth of world affection for her President. As the same decade draws to a close, the one and the other are held in universal contempt.

"I know the look that people give to Americans today -- to the tourists in the streets of Mexico, to the soldiers on leave in the Far East, to the businessmen passing through Italy or Sweden. It is the same look they give to your embassies, your warships, your exhibits throughout the world. It is a terrible look, for it makes no distinctions, no concessions. I know that look, because I am German, and I have felt it in the past. It is a mixture of distrust and resentment, of fear and envy, of hate and absolute contempt. It is the look they give to your President, who can no longer appear in public in any capital of the world; but it is also the look they give to the little old lady in the plane between Delhi and Benares."⁽²⁾

Within the frontiers and the souls of America, the cost is even higher. True, the national income is leaping to new heights. But is that enough?

The United States came into being not as a result of nationalism, nor of ethnic or religious unity, but of a common faith in liberty. It was for freedom that millions of Europeans crossed the Atlantic in the Nineteenth Century. Today, what remains of this faith?

Far from constituting an "American Challenge," it seems to us that the Great Society is tolling its death knell. True, the American way of life remains a model for the consumer society and the socialist republic alike. But if Europe is trying to close the technology gap, it is not with the object of adopting American civilization, but rather of protecting itself from the model, of preventing it from sterilizing its traditions and its particularisms, corrupting its peoples and subjugating its children to the idols of an alien society.

On February 7, 1968, the Chase Manhattan Bank predicted that the New Year would be "prosperous but uncomfortable." Among the most important problems it listed the conduct of the war , firmness in the face of social disorders, inflation, the balance of payments problem, and the financial repercussions of all of these issues.

Richard Nixon, who is more of a realist, or at least more of a demagogue, declared on September 5, 1968, that "What happened in Chicago last week was not the agony of Chicago, and was not even the agony of the Democratic Party. It was the agony of America."

On August 9, after his triumph in Miami, he had said, speaking of the "great" President that was Eisenhower, "This time we'll go on to win. . . It will be different. . . We have to win for Ike. . . We are going to win. It's time to have power go back from Washington, DC, to the cities. Tonight, it's the real voice of America."

A few days later, Hubert H. Humphrey remarked at a Michigan caucus, "I want Richard Nixon to understand that he won't be President just because John F. Kennedy isn't here."

It took the disappearance of two Kennedys to bring to the foreground two Vice-Presidents who had never been more than the shadows of other shadows.

For four years, Lyndon Johnson ran the country as his background and his obligations required, concealing his conservatism beneath minor racial and social reforms. John Kennedy had willed him a country that was almost ready to take the lead of the universe. Because he admired President Kennedy and because he was aware of his own limitations, few men were as badly shaken by the assassination as President Johnson. He understood who was behind it, and he knew that, his personal ambitions notwithstanding, he would always be the hostage of those to whom he owed his political career, of the men who had gone so far as to open that last door. He also knew how much separated him from John Kennedy.

The rich fragrances of four years in the White House were probably not enough to enable him to forget the odors of the back rooms where he had grown up. There is little doubt that he was weary when, on March 31, he handed in his final report.

Robert Kennedy's assassination pushed him down a little more. One June 6 he told his wife and a group of friends who urged him to return to the lead of the Democratic Party, "No, this is the end . . . the end . . . the end."

It was a sad month of August and a gloomy September, and the country found itself confronted with one candidate who "ran like a scared candidate for Sheriff"⁽³⁾ and another who couldn't even sell a used car.

"I'm jumping for joy!" shouted H. H. H., but he was the only person who was, and a little later he slipped into a bedroom and wept . . . "not just for the bloodied kids in the streets, but for his country, his party and himself."⁽⁴⁾

As for the other candidate, Richard Nixon never cries.

One of these two men will be 37th President of the United States. Which is of little importance. The delegates to the Philadelphia Convention in 1787 were right to voice their fears that democracy would bring about an end to freedom. They drew up a Constitution that was a succession of compromises between big states and small. They hoped to protect the government from the pressures of the voters. The political system they created was appropriate for the time of Montesquieu and Locke, and it was well-suited to the type of men present at the Convention -- men wealthy enough to be disinterested, experienced and intelligent enough to govern, and sufficiently idealistic to respect the principles on which the Republic was founded. Apprehending anarchy, distrusting the aristocracy, they gave birth to a synarchic regime. The political leaders of 1968 are twice as old as the founders of the Republic.⁽⁵⁾

Today, the United States is the only major western nation whose political institutions are completely out-of-date, the only democracy that denies its people a direct voice in the choice of its governors, the only great power whose President lacks the authority to institute a simple fiscal reform.

A national image is a very fragile thing. In a single night, the orders issued from the cold depths of the Communist Party destroyed 15 years of efforts and sacrificed the Soviet Union to the myth of the empire of the Tsars.

The USSR admits that it acted in Prague in order to stop a " legal counter-revolution." The men who govern the United States are inspired by the same principles. The two nations that seek to divide up the world are both ruled by anachronisms.

At the heart of the conflict between modern Soviet society and the government of the Kremlin lies the question of freedom of speech. The central problem in today's America is the search for a new moral ethic. Only the young people will know how to find it.

The day after the Los Angeles assassination, Tom Wicker wrote: " A whole new generation -- the children of affluence -- has taken up the cause of the black and the poor, not so much out of class feeling or shared experience, perhaps as from recognition of a common enemy -- the Establishment. It is the Establishment -- the elders, the politicians, the military-industrial complex, the Administration, the press, the university trustees, the landlords, the system -- that represses the black, exploits the poor, stultifies the students, vulgarizes American life. And it is the Establishment, of course, that wages the war in Vietnam . . . Never in history or in any country have such profound struggles as these been waged without bloodshed and human tragedy."

A nation cannot be built without its youth, let alone against its youth. The young people of today may be only real adults in the hesitant world of their fathers.

Robert Kennedy wrote:

"The young people of today reject a morality that measures everything by profit. They know that certain heads of large corporations conspire to fix prices, and that they meet in secret to steal a few pennies every month from the people. They have seen us throw marijuana smokers into jail, but they also see us refuse to limit the sales and advertising of tobacco, which kills several thousand Americans every year. They have seen us hesitate to impose even the most elementary norms of safety on automobile manufacturers, to require department stores and loan companies to reveal the true rates of interest they apply. They have come to realize that organized crime, corruption, bribery and extortion flourish not only because of government tolerance, but also because of the complicity of labor, economic and political leaders . . . "The gap that exists between the generations today will probably never be completely filled, but it must be straddled. It is vital that our young people be made to feel that an evolution is possible, that they be made to realize that this mad, cruel world can give way before their sacrifices . . . Each generation has its principal preoccupation. The youth of today seem to have chosen the dignity of man . . ."

It is you, the youth of the Seventies, who will build a New America.

There are only two alternatives: reform or revolution. The march that lies before you will not be easy. But others have shown you the way.⁽⁶⁾ The Kennedy brothers left behind them not only ..a legacy of zest and vigor,"⁽⁷⁾ but the certainty of a Renaissance. History moves forward only through the genius and the audacity of a few great men. From the ashes of Ghandi, tossed into the Granges and sown from the skies, a modern India will someday arise. The remains of Che Guevara, scattered by the winds, will gradually cover over the last of the empires.

In the short decade of the Sixties, at the end of the Twentieth Century, two sons of Massachusetts certainly did their part. As the Twenty-First Century opens, it is you, the youth of America, who must take up the torch.

For it is "not houses firmly roofed, or the stones of walls well-builded, nay nor canals and dockyards which make the city, but men able to use their opportunities."

Dare, and you will prevail.

That day, even Texas will blossom again.

That day, you will reach the top of the hill.





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NOTES

1. Only the race problem has evolved. Calvin Lockridge, chief of the Black Consortium, has defined this evolution as follows:

"You thought we were ugly, stupid and lazy, and we believed you. All that is finished now. We've decided we're handsome, intelligent, efficient and artistic, and we're not about to change our minds." And he adds, "There's no black problem here. Only a white problem."

2. Hans Magnus Ensensberger.

3. Newsweek.

4. Ibid.

5. Newsweek.

6. Nearly 35 years ago in China, the longest march began. Harassed by Chiang Kai-shek, Mao Tse-tung, with a following of 100,000 men and 300,000 women and children, set out on a stupendous 368-day journey. The pilgrims survived five extermination campaigns. Leaving south China, they crossed the Yunnan mountains, skirted Tibet, traversed the Lolos forest, immense swamps, and the Setchuan and Ken Si deserts, until they finally reached the loop of the Yellow River near the Great Wall. They scaled eighteen mountain ranges, five of them covered with snow, and forded 24 rivers. After 7,500 miles, their number had dwindled to 40,000. But they had faith in China, and in themselves. In a Promised Land reminiscent of the Yucatan Desert, the kind of land where corn can be grown between the stones, the most resistant among them survived and hardened. There they forged their doctrine, and they waited . . .

One day, their grandchildren or their great-grandchildren may live in a China that is worth the cost.

7. Life.





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JFK: Farewell America, by James Hepburn (pseudonym): French intelligence's Kennedy conspiracy theory: conspiracy president john kennedy french intelligence sdece assassination jfk

JFK: Farewell America, by James Hepburn (pseudonym): French intelligence's Kennedy conspiracy theory: conspiracy president john kennedy french intelligence sdece assassination jfk

Farewell America

REVIVAL

"It's the quality and not the length of a man's life that counts. If a man is assassinated while he is fighting to save the soul of the Nation, his death contributes more than anything else to its redemption."

MARTIN LUTHER KING

19

Yesterday



"I don't think in this administration or in our generation or time will this country be at the top of the hill, but some day it will be, and I hope when it is that they will think we have done our part . . ."

JOHN FITZGERALD KENNEDY

Empires have always succumbed to the same disease. With each new conquest, Rome thrust forward her frontiers and retreated from her principles. The first Romans were simple people, wholly devoted to their land and their gods, But the pilgrims, the settlers and the' sages were succeeded by a promiscuous mob that capitalized on the victories. The growing number of slaves and the afflux of the poor swelled the population. The patricians found their chances for survival considerably reduced as hordes of former slaves, freed and newly wealthy, fought over their estates.

For the Romans, all things reflected their greatness -- the victories of Marius, Pompey, and Caesar, but also the Empire, history, and the future of the Roman people. But there was neither justice in the courts nor honesty in the elections. Only one standard decided the merit of a candidate or the innocence of a defendant: gold.

The spectacles at the Circus served to distract the populace. The free wheat and olives distributed to the needy at the Forum served as a subterfuge for social reforms. The aristocracy purchased seats in the Senate. The magistracy of the empire and the spoils of victory went to the senators, the consuls, the praetors, the quaestors, the censors and their wives. Rome had become a corporation.

The government was in the hands of a few opulent families of the world of finance, supported by the military junta. These families knew how to protect their interests: they disguised them as national necessities. The preservation of Rome was identified with that of the ruling families. "The Roman people consisted of a small oligarchy of landowners, bankers, speculators, merchants, artisans, adventurers, and tatterdemalions, avid for pleasure, excitement, and sudden gain, proud, turbulent, corrupted by the life of the city, and placing their own interests ahead of even the most salutary reform . . ."⁽¹⁾

The national honor of the Roman Empire was nothing more than the caprices or the indignation of the rulers of the moment, its political institutions no more than the cupidity of its dignitaries and the indolence of its masses, its history nothing more than a series of petty larcenies and more important crimes.

And then the Gracchus brothers, nephews of Scipion the Mrican, appeared on the scene. The elder brother, Tiberius (160-133 BC), the son of a consul and born a patrician, had been raised by Greek philosophers, Blossus of Cumes and Diophanes of Mytilene. He was a veteran of the Spanish campaign. He was elected a tribune. His fortitude, his temperance, his humanity, his passion for justice and his natural eloquence elicited the admiration of Cicero. It was evident that he would make his mark in politics.

Tiberius was as calm, as sober, and as moderate as his brother Gaius was vehement, impassioned, and impetuous. He worked for Italy, for the people, and for liberty. He would not be stopped by either threats or clamor.

On Rogation Day,⁽²⁾ he addressed the people massed around the tribune. A fragment of this speech, in which he evoked the misery and the helplessness of the people, the depopulation of Italy and the rapacity of the wealthy, has been preserved. "The landowners in mourning dress appeared on the Forum in the most wretched and humble condition in order to move the people whom they despoiled so mercilessly to pity. But they had little confidence in this demonstration, and they hired assassins to kill Tiberius . . ."⁽³⁾

Tiberius, nevertheless, proceeded with his reforms. One of his laws authorized the people to circulate freely on the roads and highways. Another stipulated that the treasure of Attala, who had made the Roman people his heir, would be distributed among the citizens. Other laws distributed lands, subsidized the cost of the first planting, decreased the length of military service, and reorganized the judiciary. Henceforth, no Roman citizen could own more than 750 acres of public land for himself and 375 for each of his sons. This law threatened the owners of the largest herds.

In his speeches Tiberius declared that the will of the people was the supreme authority of the state. This was too much. On the day of his re-election to the tribunate, which would have enabled Tiberius to complete his reforms, Scipion Nasicaa, one of the richest of the landowners, assembled all of the wealthy Romans. Followed by an army of slaves and clients, they climbed to the Capitol. One of Tiberius' colleagues, a tribune, dealt him the first blow. Other assassins finished the job. His body was profaned and thrown into the Tiber.

Rome, which had found senators to assassinate him, found no historian to stigmatize his assassins. After centuries of law and order, the Empire watched with stupefaction as the violence of a faction that had taken the law into its own hands not only went unpunished, but was admired.

Gaius (152-121 BC), eight years younger than his brother, appeared to accept his death and to be unaware of the identities of his assassins. He was appointed quaestor of Sardinia and, against the wishes of the Senate, he did not disappear from view. He lived the life of his soldiers and looked after their interests. He liked long marches and took long, lonely swims in the sea, and he remained chaste.

"The fate of his brother and his reforms had proved that it was vain to attempt to remedy the ills of Rome without first having destroyed, or at least humiliated, the large landowners and the usurpers of the public domain; that the idea of transforming the poor people of Rome into a landowning class was too simple and, in reality, not very effective.

"But once the terror had disappeared, the little people of Rome began to seek a protector, and the victim's brother, who was known for his virtues and was already suspect to the wealthy, appeared to be just the person they needed.

"The persistent hatred of the nobility precipitated him into the fray, although he had no intention of taking up his brother's reforms. Boldly, Gaius ran for the office of tribune and was elected. He immediately proved that he was no ordinary man. He denounced his brother's assassins and punished them. He promulgated the laws that Tiberius would have wanted. He cited Tiberius incessantly in his speeches. He was re-elected a tribune. He reduced the authority of the Senate. He controlled everything, organized everything, imparting his prodigious activity and his indefatigable energy to everyone.

"He was craftier than his brother. He had learned from him, and he had had time to meditate his revenge without beclouding his mind. For a long while, he retained the support of the wealthy by proposing laws that pleased the rich and others that suited the poor. But eventually he voiced the idea that he had so long meditated in silence: that all Italians should be given the rights of citizens."

Rome would be the capital of a vast Italic nation. No longer would the Empire be founded on a municipal oligarchy allied with the corrupt merchants, but on rival classes working in partnership. The former centers of civilization and commerce, now destroyed or declined, would be restored, and the wealth and the multitudes that poured into Rome, threatening to choke the nerve-center of the Empire, would be distributed evenly throughout the different lands.

It was the historic task of Rome that Gaius had in mind, but he thought he could accomplish alone what it was to take six generations to achieve. His grandiose ideas were too premature. His plan to accord the rights of a Roman citizen to all Italians pleased neither the nobility nor the little people.

The Senate decided that things had gone far enough. The Consul Lucien Opimius led the conspiracy. Pursued and about to be taken, Gaius killed himself in a wood dedicated to the Furies. Septimuleius cut off his head. Gaius in his turn was thrown into the Tiber, along with 3,000 of his followers. The year of Gaius' death, the grape harvest was exceptionally good. The nobles, the wealthy, the big and the small landowners bought up all the slaves on the market.

The Gracchus brothers were the last true aristocrats of Rome. Licentiousness robbed the aristocracy of its traditional energy and its virtues. Most of their laws were abolished. The robber barons rid the Roman Empire of all the leaders who had dreamed of being generous, or simply of being just. Balbinus, Emilian, Valerian, Aurelius, and Maximus were assassinated in their turn. Probus lasted six years, Tacitus ten months, and Pertinax 97 days.

Sixteen centuries later, Machiavelli wrote that "men forget the death of their father more easily than the loss of their patrimony, and they hesitate less to harm a man who is loved than another who is feared."

Later, after Honorius, the frontiers of the Empire were overrun by the barbarians. The Empire, invaded, was split asunder, and Rome faded into oblivion. The Gracchus brothers were not forgotten by the Roman people. Statues were erected in their memory, and a cult was founded in their honor.





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NOTES

1. Guglielmo Ferrero.

2. The day the laws were proposed to the people.

3. Leon Jouberti.

JFK: Farewell America, by James Hepburn (pseudonym): French intelligence's Kennedy conspiracy theory: conspiracy president john kennedy french intelligence sdece assassination jfk

JFK: Farewell America, by James Hepburn (pseudonym): French intelligence's Kennedy conspiracy theory: conspiracy president john kennedy french intelligence sdece assassination jfk

Farewell America

18

Slaughter



Hail to the Chief who in Triumph advances! Honor'd and bless'd be the evergreen pine . . ."

Secret Service advance man Lawson met with Police Chief Curry in Dallas on November 13. Together they visited the Trade Mart, where Curry suggested the November 22 banquet be held.⁽¹⁾ Lawson forwarded a favorable report to Washington, and the next day, November 14, O'Donnell confirmed his choice.

That same day, Curry held a meeting with his deputies, Batchelor and Fisher, Lawson, and Sorrels to study the problems raised by the President's visit. The meeting continued into the next day, November 15, with the participation of members of the local host committee. Sorrels and Lawson were preoccupied with security problems in and around the Trade Mart, and Curry promised massive reinforcements.

That weekend, or Monday morning at the latest, J. Edgar Hoover received a TWX (inter-office telegram) from special agent James W. Bookhout of the FBI's Dallas office. The Warren Commission was never informed of the existence of this message. On Monday, November 18, Lawson and Sorrels drove over the motorcade route from Love Field to the Trade Mart for the first time. Curry stressed the fact that it could be covered in 45 minutes, and even suggested that a short section along the Central Express- way be eliminated because of the security risks it offered. After they had driven through the center of the city and reached Dealey Plaza, Curry pointed down Main Street past the railroad overpass and said, "And afterwards there's only the freeway." But instead of turning right into Houston Street in the direction of Elm Street, as the motorcade did on November 22, Curry turned left in front of the Old Courthouse (see map), and neither Lawson nor Sorrels followed the parade route past that point, where they would have been obliged to make a 90 degree right turn into Houston Street, followed 70 yards later by a 120 degree turn to the left into Elm Street. Had they done so, it might have occurred to them that the big Presidential Lincoln would be obliged to slow down almost to a stop in order to make that second turn.⁽²⁾ This type of double turn is contrary to Secret Service regulations, which specify that when a Presidential motorcade has to slow down to make a turn, "the entire intersection must be examined in advance, searched and inspected from top to bottom." Curry, however, brought the reconnaissance to an end at the very point where it became unacceptable (as well as unusual) from the point of view of security.⁽³⁾

On Tuesday, November 19, the Times Herald and the Morning News of Dallas ran stories about Friday's motorcade, but neither of these papers published a map, which would have brought the curious hairpin turn coming at the end of a long straight route to the attention of even a non-observant person like Lawson. That same day, Kennedy asked his secretary, "Where are those clowns?" The "clowns" were O'Donnell, O'Brien, and Powers, who were resting at home that morning after their trip to Florida with the President. At any rate, O'Donnell's presence at the White House that day wouldn't have made any difference. He was only interested in the political aspects of the motorcade -- how many people would be there, and where. On the other hand, Kennedy's perspicacious press secretary, Pierre Salinger, might have noticed the curious hairpin turn had he seen it in one of the newspapers, but it didn't appear in the Dallas papers, and Salinger left that same morning for Honolulu.

The hairpin turn was as ideal a set-up for an ambush as any potential assassin could hope for.⁽⁴⁾ The Committee was not going to let a chance like this go by. The attack was to be carried out by a team of ten men, including four gunmen, each seconded by an assistant who would be responsible for their protection, evacuation, and radio liaison, and who would retrieve the shells. The ninth man would serve as a central radio operator, and the tenth was to create a last-minute diversion to enable the gunmen to get into position.⁽⁵⁾

The layout of the site (see map) determined an optimum firing zone within which the shots would have to be concentrated, but a target riding in a moving vehicle raised a number of special problems. The first concerned the speed of the vehicle. The Presidential car was watched and timed during Kennedy's trips in September, and its minimum speed was estimated at 10 miles an hour. The sharp turn into Elm Street was expected to slow it down even more, but as Dealey Plaza marked the end of the motorcade and the approach to the freeway, the driver would probably accelerate as he came out of the turn. The estimate was therefore cautiously revised to 15 miles an hour.⁽⁶⁾

Fifteen miles an hour is the equivalent of approximately 22 feet per second. That is extremely slow for a car, but extremely fast for a gunman, particularly if he placed in a perpendicular or even a lateral position. The positions of the gunmen were determined with this in mind. The best possible position for an ambush of this sort (when neither explosives nor bazookas or other powerful weapons are used) is in front of and perpendicular to the car. The layout of Dealey Plaza offered several possibilities. The gunman in position no. 1 would have the car coming straight towards him, on a level with him, as it came out of the turn 400 feet away. This position offered a wide firing angle and the possibility of shooting at the President up to a very close range (approximately 100 feet). It seemed so ideal that it was decided to station another gunman, no. 2, beyond no. 1 and close to the railroad overpass. Both would be firing from approximately the same angle. The other two gunmen, 3 and 4, occupied less favorable positions. They could not fire at the President and hope to hit him until a precise instant determined by a number of different factors.

The first was the obstacle presented by the two Secret Service men who habitually rode on the back bumper of the President's car.⁽⁷⁾ The second was the fact that the shots of the four gunmen must be carefully synchronized. After studying these factors and others (distances and angles), the organizers delimited an exact firing zone 60 feet long which took into account the distance of each gunman from his target and the trajectory of his bullet, and which offered the maximum chances for success (see map).

Accuracy was, of course, essential. The gunmen were chosen for their marksmanship, and they were provided with excellent weapons.⁽⁸⁾ But they had to aim at the President's head, and they had to be sure to kill him.⁽⁹⁾ No plans were made for a second round of fire. It was assumed that the first shots would set off instantaneous reactions. Roy Kellerman, in the front seat of the President's car, would throw himself over Kennedy. The President himself might collapse or drop to the floor of the car. In a fraction of a second the driver could accelerate and the car would roar out of sight.

But the reaction on November 22 was one of total surprise. Not only did Kellerman and the driver fail to move (they turned to look at the President), but when agent John Ready wanted to jump off the running board of the backup car,⁽¹⁰⁾ agent Emory Roberts ordered him back. It would seem, then, that some Secret Service agents did have the impulse to jump, but that they felt obliged to ask permission!

What had been planned as a salvo wasn't really a salvo. The first shot was clearly distinct, and the second narrowly preceded the third and fourth, which blended into one. The four shots thus formed three distinct detonations, but the acoustical phenomena at Dealey Plaza led many witnesses to believe that they had heard only two shots.⁽¹¹⁾ The first shot, fired in the open, was muffled, and the second and third, separated by only 2 seconds, had the effect of an echo.

The first bullet came from no. 1 and struck the President in the throat. The second apparently came from no. 4 and hit the President in the back. No. 3 hit Connally, and no. 2's bullet went through a traffic sign between him and the car. Then, as Young blood covered Johnson and spectators began to scream, there was a pause. Four seconds after they opened fire, the gunmen must have been dumbfounded. When the first shot strangled the President, no one moved. At the sound of the second, Governor Connally turned around and was wounded, but the driver still didn't budge, and Kellerman barely turned his head. The final shots awakened the agents in the back-up car, but Kellerman was still lost in his dreams, and Greer failed to react even to the whine of Halfback's siren. Four shots had been fired, and the car was still moving at the same speed. Despite the careful preparations and the skillful marksmanship, not only was the President alive, but he was not mortally wounded. His life depended literally on Greer's reflexes, but the old driver was drugged by 35 years on the job.

The gunmen weren't dreaming, however. They were professionals. The car continued towards 1 and 2. It was 2 who hit the President, and from very close range (see photo, pp. 356-357).⁽¹²⁾ John Fitzgerald Kennedy, strangled by the first shot and knocked forward by the second, was thrust backwards. The bullet pierced his temple and penetrated his brain, and his skull literally exploded.⁽¹³⁾

It would never have happened if the bubbletop had been used that day.⁽¹⁴⁾ The Plexiglas would not have stopped the bullets, but it would have deflected them, interfering with the gunmen's aim. But on the morning of November 22, Ken O'Donnell glanced up at the sky at Fort Worth and noted with satisfaction that "It was going to be a day with a halo around it, a glittering lacuna of a day. There would be no bubbletop."⁽¹⁵⁾ He was right. The sun was shining in Dallas.

In 30 years on the job, J. Edgar Hoover has developed an intelligence system which nothing -- no racket, and certainly no conspiracy -- can escape. Through its extensive network of informers, the FBI knows everything worth knowing that goes on in the United States, even in areas that lie outside its legal jurisdiction.⁽¹⁶⁾ The Dallas conspiracy was born and took root in places where the FBI was well represented. Its informers included former FBI agent James Rowley, chief of the Secret Service, Dallas District Attorney Henry Wade, CIA agent Guy Banister, also a member of the Minutemen, and Lee Harvey Oswald. H. L. Hunt used former FBI agents as bodyguards, and Dallas Police Chief Curry was in contact with several FBI men and was under surveillance by the FBI, which had no fewer than 75 agents in Dallas.

By mid-October, Hoover had been informed of the existence of a plot and was familiar with many of the details. The FBI often launches an investigation on the strength of a rumor, and the information it received that fall from Boston, Chicago and Dallas was based on far more than hearsay, These reports were checked out and verified. The week before the President's departure for Texas, Hoover knew exactly what was going to happen. Why did the FBI fail to intervene?

It is true that the FBI bore no responsibility for the security of the President. It is also true that every year dozens of investigations are made of threats against the life of the President. Moreover, the FBI is an investigative agency, not a national police force. Nevertheless, a section of the FBI Manual issued to each agent stipulates that:

Investigation of threats against the President of the United States, members of his immediate family, the President-Elect, and the Vice-President is within the exclusive jurisdiction of the US Secret Service. Any information indicating the possibility of an attempt against the person or safety of the President, members of the immediate family of the President, the President-Elect or the Vice-President must be referred immediately by the most expeditious means of communication to the nearest office of the US Secret Service. Advise the Bureau at the same time of the information so furnished to the Secret Service and the fact that it has been so disseminated. The above action should be taken without delay in order to attempt to verify the information, and no evaluation of the information should be attempted. When the threat is in the form of a written communication, give a copy to the local Secret Service and forward the original to the Bureau where it will be made available to the Secret Service headquarters in Washington. The referral of the copy to local Secret Service should not delay the immediate referral of the information by the fastest available means of communication to Secret Service locally.

The regulations, however, were ignored.

Hoover, "the man who is almost a legend" (in the words of Rep. Gerald Ford) would probably not have agreed to cooperate with the Committee, but he did absolutely nothing to stop it. He "may not have approved of the assassination, but he didn't disapprove of it either. Hoover preferred to stay out of other people's fights, especially when they involved business circles over which he exercised little control. Faced with a choice between his professional duty and his abhorrence of everything that President Kennedy represented, he chose the latter alternative. He also hoped that the affair would tarnish the reputation of the CIA and shatter his Attorney General.

After the assassination, the FBI pulled out its files and submitted its report. It laid the blame and designated the culprits. Texas got back at Hoover by declaring, on January 24, 1964, that Lee Oswald had been on the FBI payroll as an informer since 1962. Neither the FBI nor the CIA were ever called upon to clear themselves. The assassination was bigger than both of them. It was rooted in a system that had produced a Senator named Lyndon Johnson, and it was suppressed by the same system, now presided over by the same Lyndon Johnson. In the belief that he was acting for the good of the country, Chief Justice Warren agreed to perjure himself.

Regardless of the cost to the country, the FBI's maneuverings paid off. Since 1963 it has been steadily shortening the CIA 's lead in the intelligence race. It has reinforced its control in the field of counter-espionage and branched out into the overseas activities that were once the CIA's private preserve.⁽¹⁷⁾

But although he recognizes its technical competence, President Johnson apparently doesn't trust the FBI with his life. On November 22, 1964, a board presided by Treasury Secretary Douglas Dillon and including Attorney General Nicholas de B. Katzenbach, White House assistant McGeorge Bundy, and CIA Director John McCone examined ways of strengthening Presidential security .It rejected the suggestion that the FBI be given overall responsibility for the protection of the President, including prevention and investigation, leaving the Secret Service with the limited responsibility for his physical protection.

Exactly one year earlier, the stern and hard-working Mr. Hoover had already had his lunch and been back at work for more than 30 minutes when the first news flash clattered over the UPI wires at 1:34 pm EST. But does Mr. Hoover ever learn anything from the wire services?

The following day, November 23, the White House received a package sent over by his remarkable bureau. In it was a piece of President Kennedy's skull.





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NOTES

1. There were five possible locations for the Dallas luncheon, but the Sheraton-Dallas Hotel and Memorial Auditorium refused on various pretenses to play host to the President, the Market Hall was occupied by a bottlers' convention, and the Womens' Building was vetoed by local authorities as being too drab and impractical for serving a luncheon. That left the Trade Mart.

At Curry's urging, Sorrels approved the choice of the Trade Mart on November 4 and advised Behn at the White House.

2. The Warren commission claimed that all motorists are obliged to make this inconvenient detour in order to reach Stemmons Freeway (which leads to the Trade Mart), but the Commission acknowledged that it would have been possible for the motorcade to continue straight down Main Street through the underpass and make a 100 degree turn around a concrete barrier onto the freeway approach. The Commission declared, however, that "a sign located on this barrier instructs Main Street traffic not to make any turns." We do not mean to criticize the Dallas traffic laws, but on November 22 all the streets had been cleared to make way for the motorcade, and it would have been normal to follow the easiest, the quickest, and the safest (because it involved only one turn) route onto the freeway.

3. The route followed by the motorcade that day surprised even Senator Yarborough, a Texan, who may have remembered continuing straight down Main Street onto Stemmons Freeway despite the no turn sign on some other occasion.

4. Reinhard Heydrich, head of the SS Security Service and deputy chief of the Gestapo, was ambushed in similar circumstances on May 29, 1942. Heydrich was driving his open Mercedes towards Prague when, in a hairpin turn, two members of the free Czechoslovak army who had been parachuted by the R.A.F. tossed a bomb into his car and fled under the cover of a smoke screen. The Gestapo executed 1,331 Czechs (including 201 women) and 3,000 Jews in reprisal.

5. A few minutes before the arrival of the motorcade, a man wearing green army fatigues had a sudden fit of epilepsy in Elm Street. The attack lasted less than a minute and was over as suddenly as it had begun, but it drew the attention of the people standing around him. The police took the "epileptic" away.

6. The Warren Commission estimated the speed of the car at 11 miles per hour.

7. The President himself had ordered them off week before at Tampa. The person in charge of the ambush noted in Miami, and later at San Antonio and Houston, that the "human shield" had not been reinstated, but he preferred to take it into account just in case, and the original plan was maintained.

8. Robert Kennedy was killed with an Iver Johnson .22 pistol, one of the best weapons that exists for close-range firing in a crowd.

9. The Committee was worried less about killing John Connally, who was in almost the same line of fire as the President, than about accidentally killing a federal agent, which would have transformed the assassination into a federal rather than a state crime.

This was one of the reasons why a plan for killing driver Bill Greer was dropped, the others being that a dead or wounded driver might press down on the accelerator and send the car hurtling forward, and third that they didn't want to waste their bullets on a secondary target.

10. Manchester, Death of a President, p. 191.

11. People who knew guns, however, and those in the rear of the motorcade who had not yet reached Dealey Plaza, were not fooled. UPI correspondent Merriman Smith reported a "burst" of gunfire, and in Main Street General Clifton and General McHugh mistook the three distinct reports for a salute.

12. Apparently 3 and 4 also took second shots, but missed. They may have been shaken by the general inertia; at any rate, their shots were much more difficult.

13. A study of ballistics makes it clear why, despite the fact that he is so poorly protected, it takes a highly-organized plot and expert gunmen (except on the off-chance) to kill the President of the United States when he is riding in a moving car. Gunmen 3 and 4, stationed in the rear, had difficult shots. They hit the President only once (in the back), and one of their shots also struck Connally. Their other shots probably bounced off the car or hit the ground.

There were two principal reasons why they missed. In the first place, the average spread of an accurate rifle is about 2 inches to either side for every 100 yards. In the second place, in the instant between the time the gunman presses the trigger and the impact of the bullet, a moving target shifts position. For the fastest rifles, such as the Winchester 284 or the Colt AR 15 223, this interval is approximately 1/11th of a second at a distance of 100 yards. In 1/11th of a second, a car moving 10 or II miles an hour advances about a foot and a half. The angle at which they were placed (15 or 20 degrees) reduced this displacement somewhat, but it still amounted to several inches, which was easily doubled by their reflex time. A few inches is enough to miss a target the size of a head. Moreover, it is one thing to shoot on a firing range and quite another to fire from a rooftop or a window overlooking a public park amidst the noises of the crowd.

The feat attributed to Oswald at Dallas was impossible for any but a world champion marksman using a high-precision semi-automatic rifle mounted on a carriage and equipped with an aim corrector, and who had practiced on moving targets in similar set-ups. The rifles used for the assassination were Mausers without scopes. An optical scope has the advantage of bringing the target 3 or 4 times closer, but it needs frequent adjustment and must be handled with care. Furthermore, it is unnecessary for a target 300 feet away. There was some question as to whether heavy rifles with large-caliber bullets or lighter weapons making it easier to follow a moving target should be used. An example of the latter-type weapon is the Colt AR 15.223 mentioned by Manchester, who notes (p. 167) that there was one on the back seat of Halfback, the back-up car, between Secret Service agents George Hickey and Glen Bennett. Manchester states that this rifle has a muzzle velocity so powerful that should a bullet strike a man's chest, it would blow his head off (sic), thereby showing (though elsewhere in the book he describes himself as an expert marksman who, "like Oswald," was trained in the Marine Corps at Parris Island) how little he knows about firearms, The .223 caliber 21 barrel Colt AR 15 Sporter is a powerful weapon, with the same shock power as the NATO 7.62 at a distance of 300 feet, but it has never been known to strike a man's chest and knock his head off. The principal advantages of the AR 15 (known to the military as the M 16) are its light weight (8 lbs.), rate of fire (900 to 1,000 shots per minute), initial speed (3,000 feet per second), range (8,000 yards) and flat trajectory at close range.

The bullets used were frangible bullets specially cast from a lead and silver alloy with no jacket, so that they would disintegrate on impact. The bullet that killed Robert Kennedy was also a frangible bullet.

14. If it had rained that day, the Lincoln would have been covered with its Plexiglas "bubbletop," which according to V. E. Baughman, former chief of the Secret Service, is not bulletproof. The British and the French, however, not to speak of the Russians, use transparent plastic tops that, while heavier, are capable of deflecting even large-caliber bullets fired at point-blank range.

15. Manchester, Death of a President, p. 154.

16. After the assassination, the FBI submitted 25,000 investigative reports. It went so far as to describe the dreams of some of the witnesses.

17. Hoover has always denied this, claiming that the agency's activities abroad are confined to domestic law enforcement and related duties. He is not telling the truth. Since 1963, the FBI has expanded its overseas operations. (It already had offices in London, Tokyo, Paris, Bonn, Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, Mexico, and even Moscow.) It still has a long way to go to catch up with the CIA, but it is trying hard. It is firmly ensconced in the Dominican Republic, where its intelligence reports were so highly regarded by the White House that it was given the green light to operate in other countries. This does not mean that the CIA has abdicated or been relieved of its responsibilities, but that the FBI is concerning itself more and more with overseas intelligence.





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JFK: Farewell America, by James Hepburn (pseudonym): French intelligence's Kennedy conspiracy theory: conspiracy president john kennedy french intelligence sdece assassination jfk

JFK: Farewell America, by James Hepburn (pseudonym): French intelligence's Kennedy conspiracy theory: conspiracy president john kennedy french intelligence sdece assassination jfk

Farewell America

17

Police



"The art of the police consists of not seeing what there is no use seeing."

NAPOLEON

Like an ambush in time of war, a political assassination depends on the nature of the terrain and the competence of the men who occupy it. The Committee had the means to recruit a team of high-qualified men, but the choice of a terrain depended on the enemy.

The spring of 1963 was filled with meetings at which nothing was decided. Several contingency plans were prepared. One consisted of attacking the President in his car on a Virginia highway. Another was to shoot him in Chicago. There was also a suggestion for blowing up the President's Hoeing, Air Force One. These plans were rejected, for they required accomplices among the President's staff. It was too risky. They had to be sure of killing Kennedy. On Thursday, June 6, there was news. The President would meet his assassins on their own territory, the state of Texas.⁽¹⁾ The Committee, however, awaited confirmation of the Texas trip, and the final decision was not made until July. Plans got underway in mid-September.⁽²⁾ It was a complicated plan with many separate parts, but it had one major advantage: the cooperation of the local police.

Well before the assassination, Max Lerner had written:

"In addition to its slums every city has its vice area and its crime problem. Whenever some vice inquiry has caught national attention or a newspaper puts on pressure or a city reform administration gets to power, the police force develops a spurt of energy. At such times, there are 'round-ups' of petty criminals, prostitutes, or even the usual lodging-house population, and sometimes the more scabrous criminals also are kept moving and forced to seek other hunting grounds. But reform administrations are short-lived, and the ties between vice and politics, and between 'rackets' and the respectable business elements of the city, are too close to be easily broken. In many cities the dynasty of political bosses started with the saloonkeeper who knew the weaknesses and tragedies of the slum people and built his political empire on the exchange of loyalty for favors. At a later stage in the dynasty, the boss may have become a contractor, dealing by a Providential coincidence with the very materials the city needed for its public works. There is scarcely a big American city whose administration is not at least marginally involved in this trinity of crime, political corruption, and business favors."⁽³⁾

Colonel Kane, chief of the Baltimore police when Lincoln was assassinated in 1865, was in the pay of the assassins. At Phenix City, Alabama, in 1954, a warrant was issued for the arrest of former District Attorney Silas Garrett, accused of murdering Albert Patterson, who had just been elected to succeed him. In 1958, Albert Patterson's son John was elected Governor of Alabama (with the support of Robert Shelton, Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan), but not before the Mayor of Phenix City had been arrested and the municipal police force stripped of its powers.

In Texas, similar cases occurred every day, but the Grand Jury inquests never revealed anything. Nonetheless, several officials in Jefferson County, Beaumont and Port Arthur were indicted in 1962. County Sheriff Charles Meyer admitted receiving $85,581 in campaign contributions, although no one had dared run against him. The Chief of Police of Port Arthur had received $65,000 for the same reason, although he was appointed rather than elected to office. Beaumont Police Chief J. H. Mulligan, whose official salary was $735 a month, had $40,000 in the bank and owned $73,000 worth of property. District Attorney Ramie Griffin charged between $5,000 and $10,000 to fix a relatively unimportant case. At that time, the municipal budget of Beaumont showed a $1,475,000 deficit.

Dallas ("Big D" to its residents) was in an even worse situation. The city had grown rapidly: from 42.3 square miles in 1942 to 288 in 1963. In 1940, it had placed 31st among American cities. By 1963, it had climbed to 13th place. Its leaders were acutely conscious of the need to protect their city's interests. Dallas was an orderly town. The Crime Confederation, which prospered in other cities, had never succeeded in implanting itself openly in Dallas. Aaron Kohn, who came to New Orleans in 1963 to head the Metropolitan Crime Commission, was puzzled at first. In Chicago, where he came from, there were two kinds of people: those who were honest, and those who were not. In Texas and Louisiana, there was apparently no distinction between the two.

Dallas was careful about appearances. It was a clean town. There was no more gambling, murder, rackets, or prostitution than in any other American city of comparable size. Dallas was too wealthy for such common vices. Organized crime was overpowered in Dallas. "The most virtuous and best-governed city in the United States" had been ruled since 1937 by a Hanseatic oligarchy dominated by seven key leaders. Below them were sixty "level leaders," the Citizens' Council and the Citizens' Charter Association (its political arm). These bodies were consulted and kept informed, but they didn't know everything, and only the Seven had the power to make decisions.

Nothing, with the exception of a natural calamity, could happen in Dallas without the approval of this Holy Synod, which controlled all elective and appointive offices. This included the police. Citing the lawyers for the Warren Commission, Manchester has written (but without expanding on the idea), "If we write what we really think (of the Dallas police), nobody will believe anything else we say."

Despite the opulence of its inhabitants, the Dallas municipal budget was very small -- only half that of Boston. City officials were therefore dependent on the incentives awarded for their obedience and their silence. The Dallas police were paid by the city leaders to carry out their orders, and that covered a lot of territory. The District Attorney's office and the municipal judges were equally corrupt. Considering the importance of the issues at stake, these men were fairly inexpensive. They were paid by the year, with occasional bonuses for good behavior. Sergeants, patrolmen, city clerks and new arrivals were added to the payroll only after a probationary period. If they were unable to adjust to the situation, they were obliged to seek employment elsewhere. There is nothing worse for a cop than to be quarantined by his fellow policemen.

Every one of the Dallas police officials -- Chief Curry, Assistant Chief Charles Batchelor and Deputy Chief N. T. Fisher, J. W. Fritz; Chief of the Homicide and Robbery Bureau, Captain W. P. Gannaway of the Special Division, Captain P. W. Lawrence of the Traffic Division, Captain Glen D. King, Curry's administrative assistant, Chief Investigator Lieutenant J. C. Day of the Identification Bureau, Lieutenant Wells of Homicide, Lieutenant Revill, Inspector Sawyer, and 15 others -- was on the special payroll. The Committee had nothing to fear. The policemen in the lower grades either received bonuses or were afraid. But they kept their mouths shut.

For his good work on November 22, the Citizens' Council voted a motion of confidence in Police Chief Curry. Curry, a great admirer of J. Edgar Hoover, whom he resembles somewhat, has since resigned from the police force for "medical reasons." Apparently he has no financial worries.

Curry and his deputies were accustomed to covering minor offenses, but the assassination of a President was in a class by itself. The plan didn't shock them. The rewards were especially attractive, and so many of their superiors were involved that they had little to fear. But their subordinates presented a problem. Many Dallas policemen were admirers of Kennedy. Many others were cowards. The plot did not extend beyond the official hierarchy. The rank of a Dallas policeman was in direct proportion to his degree of corruption.

Several policemen who belonged to the Minutemen were in charge of coordinating the activities of the police and the Committee. In addition to this internal surveillance, those policemen whom Curry and the Minutemen considered unreliable were carefully removed from the scene. The Dallas police force numbers 1,175 men. On November 22, 400 of them were assigned to Love Field, 200 to the Trade Mart, and the rest were scattered along the parade route between the airport and the end of Main Street.⁽⁴⁾

It may be assumed that all of the Dallas police realized afterwards what had happened. Few protested, but a handful muttered their disapproval. Three of them were murdered, and the others were obliged to flee from Dallas.⁽⁵⁾ The Warren Commission even refused to hear their testimony.

The fact that Curry couldn't count on all of his men complicated matters. The secrecy imposed by the Committee resulted in a certain number of misunderstandings and conflicting testimony by the policemen assigned to the Texas School Book Depository, police headquarters, the railroad overpass, and the Texas Theatre. Like all military organizations, a police department has certain standard operating procedures,⁽⁶⁾and even the Dallas police force has a semblance of administrative organization. As a result, there were a few slip-ups which the Warren Commission was obliged to gloss over. In the minutes following the assassination, several men, including, it would seem, two of the gunmen and a radio operator, were arrested.

The Sheriff of Dallas County, J. E. Decker, was another problem. Neither he nor his principal lieutenants, Eugene Boone, Roger Craig, and Luke Mooney, were considered reliable by Curry and the Committee. It was not that the Sheriff was any less corrupt than the police. But, like Wyatt Earp, he was a loner.

On November 22 the lead car in the Presidential motorcade was driven by Curry. Sheriff Decker, Forrest Sorrels, chief of the Dallas Secret Service, and Winston G. Lawson, the Secret Service advance man from Washington,⁽⁷⁾ were assigned to ride in it. At least two of these men could be dangerous. To minimize the risk of a chance regard upwards, the car used was a closed sedan.

The lead car in a parade is generally a convertible, so as to give its occupants the widest possible view. This was the rule even at Dallas, where open cars were always used in good weather. November 22 was a beautiful day, and the bubble top was removed from the President's convertible.

Forrest Sorrels told the Warren Commission that he was unable to get a good view from the car. As for Lawson, he declared that he saw nothing. Was Curry also instructed to distract the other occupants of the car? Sorrels recalled after the assassination that he had never seen the Chief so nervous and talkative. Sheriff Decker realized that the shots came from the direction of the parking lot, and he declared afterwards that he had radioed his men to close in on the railroad yard. But on Curry's orders the police radio was temporarily out of commission.⁽⁸⁾

The Warren Commission refused to hear the testimony of Sheriff Decker's deputies. The plot died in the silence in which it was born.

There was one leak. Rose Cheramie, whom Ruby dispatched to Miami on November 18, was the victim of an automobile accident near Eunice, Louisiana. She was taken to East Louisiana Hospital in Jackson. On November 19, as she was coming out of a coma, she revealed that the President was to be assassinated three days later. She repeated her story on November 20, but the doctors concluded that she was hysterical and put her under sedation. She recovered and returned to Texas, where she was killed in a hit-and-run accident in a Dallas suburb.





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NOTES

1. On June 5, at the Hotel Cortez in El Paso, President Kennedy informed Governor Connally that he would make an official trip to Texas before the end of the year. The following day, several influential Texans were advised.

2. Information about the President's trip to Dallas appeared in Texas newspapers for the first time on September 13, but his visit was not officially announced by the Dallas Morning News until September 26. The Committee, however, wasn't relying on the newspapers. It knew for certain on Monday, September 16 that the President was coming to Dallas.

3. America as a Civilization, p. 168.

4. And not 365 and 60, respectively, as Manchester writes.

5. See the evidence produced by Mark Lane and District Attorney James Garrison.

6. Curry had several meetings with the organizers of the ambush. A dozen reliable policemen both in and out of uniform were responsible for the security of the assassins themselves. They were supposed to keep the crowd out of Dealey Plaza and watch for journalists and suspicious individuals (a news photographer was asked to leave the railroad overpass). It was also decided that no clear instructions would be issued as to who was allowed into the railroad yard, Dealey Plaza, and the neighboring buildings. They had to make sure that an uninformed and over- zealous policemen didn't arrest or shoot one of the assassins.

The reliable policemen facing the gunmen later declared that they had been instructed by Captain Lawrence to watch only the traffic and any "unusual movements" in the crowd. They claimed they had never even glanced at the buildings.

The gunmens' escape was even simpler. They were evacuated by the police, in official cars.

7. Lawson's name appears 15 times in Death of a President, but Manchester apparently didn't consider it worthwhile interviewing him. His time was probably taken up by interviews with Harry Martin, a Houston caterer, and Peter Saccu, chief caterer of a Forth Worth hotel.

8. Manchester dismisses this incident as a stuck microphone button.





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JFK: Farewell America, by James Hepburn (pseudonym): French intelligence's Kennedy conspiracy theory: conspiracy president john kennedy french intelligence sdece assassination jfk

JFK: Farewell America, by James Hepburn (pseudonym): French intelligence's Kennedy conspiracy theory: conspiracy president john kennedy french intelligence sdece assassination jfk

Farewell America

16

William Bobo



American spies must lead difficult lives. The most honest of them, and even their superiors, don't always know whom they're working for.

VLADIMIR Y. SEMICHASTNY, HEAD OF THE KGB

Many American families named Oswald have petitioned the courts to change their name to Smith or Jones. What they read here will surprise them. The skeptics will complain that we don't know anything, or at least don't tell anything, about "the Oswald affair." If we were to expand on the subject, if we were to take his life apart piece by piece as the Warren Commission tried to do, we would only be attributing to Oswald a role far more important than the part he was destined to play in the Kennedy assassination. To do so would be to divert public attention, as the Warren commission, has done, from the essential matter at hand, the plot.

The Oswald story has been twisted out of all proportion. We have established the truth about the most important aspects of the affair. We have cut out or simplified the parts that seemed to us superfluous. Espionage affairs and conspiracies always have their share of romantic detail, but this is better left aside when the object is to get at the truth. Oswald was nothing more than a bit actor in a play with far wider implications, a pawn who was manipulated by the conspirators. Once he had outlived his usefulness, he was murdered and his body tossed to the crowd.⁽¹⁾ The public, after all, had to be told something.

Senator Millard L. Simpson (Wyoming) has described Oswald as "a Communist with an insane urge to kill." William Manchester wrote that Oswald and Ruby "both were misfits with twisted personalities, outcasts who craved attention, nursed grudges, were prey to wild impulses and fits of murderous temper, couldn't relate to other people -- women especially -- and were indifferent to public affairs." Manchester also describes Oswald as an "arrogant, weedy malcontent" and speaks of his "monumental stupidity."⁽²⁾

Dr. Lewis Robbins claims that Oswald was suffering from "advanced paranoia."⁽³⁾ Manchester agrees, adding, "We now know what kindled the firestorm in Lee Harvey Oswald. It was the disintegration of his marriage. We also know when the wave overwhelmed him. It fell on the evening of Thursday, November 21, 1963." We are asked to believe that Oswald assassinated the President of the United States because his Russian wife made fun of him and left him for a Lesbian!⁽⁴⁾ (Which doesn't prevent Mr. Manchester from suggesting in another part of the book that Oswald, like Ferrie and Ruby, had homosexual tendencies.)

Who was he, really, this "two-gun Pete" whose body was so hastily shoved in the ground on November 25, 1963, in a Fort Worth cemetery? Who was he, really, the man who was buried as "William Bobo"?

Despite an unhappy childhood and a modest education, Oswald was a bright⁽⁵⁾ and well-organized young man⁽⁶⁾ who wrote well and expressed himself with ease. He was impressible, gentle, polite and reserved. His father (who was neither a gangster nor a good-for-nothing, but an insurance salesman) died before he was born, and Lee was placed in an orphanage for a time and deprived of parental affection. His IQ was 118, which according to Dr. Irving Sokolow is well above average. He dropped out of high school in New Orleans at the age of 16 and, like his older brother and his stepbrother, joined the Marine Corps when he was 17, in 1956.⁽⁷⁾

Oswald was a good soldier. He was promoted to Private First Class and sent to Japan, where he was trained as a radio operator. An American who knew him in Tokyo⁽⁸⁾ says, "He was a proud kid, full of the Marine Corps spirit. He didn't talk much, but he really swallowed the Communist line."

At that time, the CIA was developing its U2 program,⁽⁹⁾ and it needed radar specialists. It recruited its personnel from the ranks of the Army, or preferably from the Marine Corps. Oswald was one of those contacted at the Atsugi base in Japan,⁽¹⁰⁾ and he accepted the CIA's offer. At 19, he received his diploma as a radar specialist. His technical training was rounded out by the general courses ("spy training") given to all CIA trainees, and by language classes (Spanish and Russian) and courses in Marxist dialectic. The CIA provided him with a "funny"⁽¹¹⁾ and opened a file on him which contained a report on his Marxist opinions and another stating that he had been court-martialed for carrying a personal weapon and insulting an officer. In 1958, he was sent to Santa Ana, California, where he received detailed instruction on the U2. He had been discharged from the Marine Corps and no longer had regular sessions on the firing range. In addition to his technical abilities, he showed a real aptitude for languages. Moreover, he was reserved and discreet, essential characteristics for a secret agent.

In 1959, the U2 missions were intensified. The CIA was expanding its intelligence rings in China and especially in the Soviet Union. We do not know the nature of Oswald's CIA assignment, but we do know that he left New Orleans on September 20, 1959, for the Soviet Union via Finland.⁽¹²⁾ The President of the United States, however, is sometimes no better informed. Eisenhower declared on May 11, 1960, speaking of the U2 affair, that "these activities have their own rules and methods of concealment which seek to mislead and obscure." The fact that he remained in the Soviet Union for 30 months⁽¹³⁾ indicates that it was probably a long-term assignment, and he may not have been given any specific duties for the first few years. He was immediately placed under surveillance by the Soviet GRU, which among other things seeks to obtain information about the enemy by studying its intelligence techniques. (The goal of every counter-espionage unit is to infiltrate the enemy's intelligence services in order to learn its real intentions, and even to take part in its activities.)

In the past,⁽¹⁴⁾ a spy, once, uncovered, was immediately placed under arrest and most probably executed. Intelligence services today prefer to locate an enemy agent and keep him under surveillance to see what they can learn, or try to recruit him as a double agent. Spies who are arrested are no longer shot; instead, they are exchanged.⁽¹⁵⁾ By allowing an identified agent to remain in the Soviet Union, the Russians may have hoped to learn more about Oswald's mission.

Oswald was permitted to settle in Minsk, a closed city where a school for spying and sabotage, the existence of which the CIA was naturally aware of, is located. He was hired by a local factory as an electrician. In order to be able to watch him day and night, the KGB sent Marina Prusakova, officially a pharmacist at the same factory, onto the scene, and the CIA obtained pictures of the "couple."

Six months after Oswald's arrival in the Soviet Union, Gary Power's U2 plane was shot down by an S A 2 rocket over Sverdlosk in the Urals. The diplomatic reverberations from this incident resulted in the cancellation of the Paris summit conference. The CIA suspended the U2 flights over the Soviet Union, and with it the activities of some of its agents.⁽¹⁶⁾ Oswald, however (who had probably planned on a longer stay), married Miss Prusakova, whom he had taken a liking to and thought might prove useful.

In 1962, the CIA resumed its aerial espionage activity using Midas and Samos satellites (launched by Thor Delta rockets) which overflew Soviet territory at an altitude of 300 miles every 72 hours and required no assistance from the ground. Soon afterwards, Oswald obtained an exit visa and returned to the United States, taking his wife and child with him. The Oswald couple was nothing less than a rather picturesque case of Funkspiel.⁽¹⁷⁾

With Marina Prusakova, the FBI faced a problem similar to that which Oswald had presented to the KGB almost three years before. When Mr. and Mrs. Oswald landed in the United States in June 1962, the FBI re-activated its file on Oswald and opened another on Marina Nikolaevna Prusakova. At the same time, the couple's activities were probably being closely scrutinized and carefully noted in the files of Zapiski.⁽¹⁸⁾

Oswald was recuperated by the CIA but was assigned to another program, probably because, with the exception of the reconnaissance flights over Cuba for which only limited personnel was required, the U2 was seldom used anymore. "Promotions" in intelligence work don't follow the same rules as promotions in the civil service. An agent is obliged to remain inactive for as long as his superiors deem necessary. The CIA, moreover, had reason to suspect Oswald, as it does any operative returning from enemy territory who may have been turned into a double agent. Thus, Oswald was placed under CIA surveillance and was even tested and interrogated by an expert employed by both the CIA and Texas oil circles, a man known as George S. De Mohrenschildt and nicknamed "The Chinese."⁽¹⁹⁾

Oswald attended a training course at a Dallas firm specializing in the reproduction of maps and secret documents and which was run, naturally enough, by the CIA. But the FBI was also interested in Oswald. On June 26, 1962, two FBI agents, John W. Fain and Thomas Carter, made him an offer in line with his abilities. They wanted him to use his Marxist reputation to infiltrate several Communist groups, especially the Young Socialist Alliance, the Socialist Workers Party, and the newspaper The Worker, and to furnish information on the members of the Slavic immigrant community around Fort Worth to which Marina Prusakova, of course, belonged.⁽²⁰⁾

In August 1962 Oswald took out a subscription to The Worker and offered his services as a photographer.⁽²¹⁾ In October and November, he also contacted the Socialist Labor Party and subscribed to its publication The Militant. Throughout the winter of 1962-63, Oswald corresponded with these leftist groups, helping them out from time to time. In October 1962 the CIA, frightened by the Cuban missile crisis, called back those of its agents who were in training or on vacation. Oswald made several trips to New Orleans, where he received new instructions, changed his occupational disguise, and rented a post office box (POB 2915). In April 1963, Oswald was told to move to New Orleans, where he continued to infiltrate Communist groups. It is highly probable that he was working simultaneously for the CIA and the FBI. He tried to join subversive groups like the Fair Play for Cuba Committee (FPCC), which was violently critical of American policy towards Castro. Oswald distributed Communist literature in the streets of New Orleans to win the approval of the FPCC and make contact with the pro-Castro groups in Louisiana. Actually, he was working for the opposition group, the anti-Castro Cuban Democratic Revolutionary Front, which was controlled by the CIA. Oswald worked out of an office located at 544 Camp Street.⁽²²⁾

In New Orleans Oswald encountered several other CIA men, including Banister, Ward, and David Ferrie, all of whom belonged to the Minutemen. Ferrie was what is known as an adventurer. At 45 he was a licensed pilot and had flown for a time for an airline, but he had worked for the CIA since 1955 and had been employed in several Central American operations. Ferrie had worked for Castro in the days when he was an exiled idealist in Mexico and the CIA was behind him. He had parachuted weapons and explosives to Castro and Che Guevara when they were fighting in the Sierra Maestra. One of Ferrie's cargos had enabled the Castro guerrillas to blow up a munitions train belonging to Batista. When Batista was overthrown by Castro, the CIA switched its allegiance to the ex-dictator, and Ferrie was assigned to work against the new Cuban regime.⁽²³⁾ Between 1960 and 1962 he was seen at CIA bases in San Antonio, Puerto Cabezas, Nicaragua, and on Swan Island off Honduras, and he had been one of the instructors at the coffee plantation at Retalhuleu. In Miami he worked for Alex Carlson.⁽²⁴⁾ In New Orleans, he was regarded as a tough guy. Like Banister and Ward, he belonged to the Minutemen. He knew Oswald, whom he had met in 1959, shortly before his departure for the USSR.

All of these men, regardless of their past or their political affiliations, were in the pay of the CIA, and they were hard at work when, in July 1963, the training, the simulated raids, and even the airlifts were called off. President Kennedy had just ordered the CIA to abandon its plans for the invasion and the harassment of Cuba. John McCone argued against this decision, but in the end he was forced to yield. It proved more difficult, however, to convince the men in the lower echelons of the agency.

On July 31, 1963, acting on orders from Washington, the FBI surrounded the CIA training centers and most of the other establishments connected with the Cuban operation and closed them down.⁽²⁵⁾ The following day, August 1, President Kennedy announced the conclusion of a nuclear test ban treaty and the installation of a direct telephone line between the White House and the Kremlin. Once again he stated, "Our goal is not war, but peace."

A few days later, Ferrie was contacted by Clay Shaw, a New Orleans businessman and Director of the International Trade Mart in New Orleans since 1947, who was acting as a front man for another businessman.⁽²⁶⁾ The Committee needed both a commando and a scapegoat. The commando was recruited from among the CIA Minutemen, and Oswald and the anti-Castro men were chosen for the other role. In September he introduced him to Clay Shaw and General Walker.

Oswald was probably told that he had been chosen to participate in a new anti-Communist operation together with Ferrie and several other agents. The plan consisted of influencing public opinion by simulating an attack against President Kennedy, whose policy of coexistence with the Communists deserved a reprimand. Another assassination attempt, also designed to arouse public feeling, had been simulated on April 10 against General Walker.⁽²⁷⁾

Oswald was arrested by the New Orleans police on August 9, but was later freed at the request of FBI agent John L. Quigley. Contrary to the FBI, the upper spheres of the CIA were certainly not informed of the preparations for the assassination.⁽²⁸⁾ The activities of the CIA are highly compartmentalized. The team that operated at Dallas included specialists who had worked for the CIA's DCA.⁽²⁹⁾ Several of them belonged to the Minutemen, which was thus able to keep the upper hand in the situation.⁽³⁰⁾

Oswald had no special reason to suspect this new mission. In four years he had seen and done worse, and he was so psychologically involved in intelligence work that at times he would confuse his assignments for the CIA and the FBI, and his "Marxist" and "anti-Marxist" activities. Furthermore, he was not in the habit of asking questions. There is no doubt that he considered himself well covered on November 22.

Time passed . . . Meticulous as always, Oswald closed the new post office box (PO Box 30061) that he had rented in New Orleans on June 3. He arrived in Dallas on October 2 and rented a room. That same day, Governor Connally held a meeting at the Hotel Adolphus. The principal subject of discussion was the President's trip, but the Governor was not kept informed of all of the plans. On October 3, the Texas Congressional delegation met at the Capitol in Washington, and the following day Governor Connally went to the White House to go over the details of the trip with Ken O'Donnell. October 5, a Saturday, was the final day of a three-day celebration in Houston. Sandra Smith, daughter of Lloyd Hilton Smith, Vice-President of Humble Oil, was wed to a New York broker. Under a tent set up in the garden, the young socialites of Houston and Dallas danced the night away. The two daughters of Henry Ford II whirled in the arms of Ivy League students, and Mr. Morgan Davis was one of the guests.

Between October 7 and 10, Ferrie and six other men arrived in Dallas. On October 14, the Committee arranged to have Oswald hired (at the minimum wage of $1.25 an hour) at the Texas School Book Depository. On October 15, Oswald visited the warehouse, and on October 16, he began taking inventory and moving boxes of books. The other employees were quick to notice that he didn't talk much.

One week later, President Kennedy drove beneath the windows of the Depository. Then the leaves began to fall, and soon the traces disappeared. Policemen, journalists, a taxi driver, women, and a number of other people died suddenly. Even the CIA suffered losses. In 1964, Banister died of a " heart attack," and Ward was killed in a "plane crash." Ferrie was tougher, but he died in 1967 of a "cerebral hemorrhage." These, at least, were listed as the official causes of death.



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NOTES

1. With the exception of a few scholarly works such as Mark Lane's Rush to Judgment, most of the 50-odd books devoted to the Kennedy assassination have little more foundation than the detective story published in Paris in 1931 by an author who used the bizarre and premonitory pseudonym, "Oswald Dallas" (Le Capitaine Fragalle, Collection Le Masque).

2. Explaining Oswald's behavior, Manchester writes: "Kennedy was all-powerful. Oswald was impotent. Kennedy was cheered. Oswald ignored. Kennedy was noble, Oswald ignoble. Kennedy was beloved, Oswald despised. Kennedy was a hero; Oswald was a victim. One man had almost everything, the other had nothing. Kennedy, for example, was spectacularly handsome. Oswald . . . was already balding, and he had the physique of a ferret."

3. Because Oswald, according to Dr. Robbins, deliberately left clues behind him.

4. Mrs. Paine, Marina Oswald's "friend" with whom she was staying at the time of the assassination, was President of the East-West Contacts Committee, an association promoting literary contacts with the Soviet Union.

5. The counselor at the Dallas Employment Office was impressed by Oswald's vocabulary and his aptitudes, and remarked that he expressed himself extremely well.

One of the officials at the US Consulate in Moscow, Richard E. Snyder, calls him "intelligent."

William Stuckey of radio station WDSU in New Orleans describes him as "intelligent and very logical." and adds that Oswald reminded him of a "young attorney."

6. He took notes on everything he read.

7. The Marine Corps has a high percentage of orphans. Perhaps it offers them the warmth and companionship that they never knew at home.

8. Richard N. Savitt.

9. The first squadron of U2s, consisting of three planes, was formed in January 1956 at Watertown Strip in Nevada. Other squadrons were based at Lakenheath Air Force Base in Great Britain, Wiesbaden, Germany, Adana, Turkey, and Atsugi, Japan. The planes were sometimes flown from other secret bases located on Formosa, in Korea, and possibly elsewhere.

10. The CIA maintained an office at Atsugi, which was used as a fueling stop for flights from the United States which operated over the Soviet Union and China.

11. A faked document in CIA jargon.

12. It was probably around then, or perhaps a month later, that the FBI opened a file on Oswald, as it does for all the CIA agents that it manages to identify. This file was kept up to date regularly.

13. It will be recalled that the Warren Commission described Oswald as a penniless soldier who defected to the Soviet Union because he believed in Communism and who tried to renounce his American citizenship in order to live like a Marxist.

14. In his book, The Craft of Intelligence, Allen W. Dulles cites one of his predecessors, a Fifth Century Chinese named Sun Tzu, who classified spies according to category. Things have not changed a great deal since then. Sun Tzu distinguished between: 1) classical agents, introduced from the outside; 2) converted agents, who have been captured and sent back to the enemy; 3) condemned agents, used to transmit false information to the enemy in order to get rid of them; and 4) surviving agents, who have infiltrated the enemy and managed to get out alive.

Dulles adds that all four categories are necessary to an intelligence organization, and that an agent may change categories several times in the course of his career.

15. Two fliers from an Air Force RB 47 shot down on July 1, 1960, Captain Olmsted and Captain McKone, were exchanged in 1960 for two GRU agents, Igor Melekh and Willie Hirsch, arrested by the FBI on October 27, 1960. "The return of the RB 47 fliers and President Kennedy's release of Willie Hirsch and Igor Melekh was the first cautious groping of both sides toward what rapidly became standard procedure. As unthinkable as it might have been in the previous decade. nations began publicly trading their spies in the 1960s" (Wise and Ross, The Espionage Establishment).

On February 10, 1962, Soviet Colonel Rudolf Abel, who was serving a 30-year prison sentence at the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary, was exchanged on a Berlin bridge for U2 pilot Francis Gary Powers.

The recuperation of important captured agents has become customary, and it has sometimes led to the arrest of tourists. To recuperate one of their agents, Igor Alexandrovitch Ivanov, arrested in New York in November 1963, the KGB arrested Professor Frederick C. Barghoorn of Yale and three other American tourists, Wortham, Gilmour and Mott (Mott later committed suicide while being transferred to a forced labor camp). The KGB failed to obtain Ivanov's release, but Kennedy persuaded them to release Professor Barghoorn.

Spy trades are now practiced regularly by the Soviet Union and the Eastern European satellites (Gordon Lonsdale in England, Alfred Frenzel in West Germany, and Zvoboda in France).

16. Oswald was in regular contact with the CIA through its Moscow Station at the American Embassy. As a U2 specialist, he may have used a special radio transmitter broadcasting on a 30 inch wave length, which is undetectable on the ground but can be picked up at 70,000 feet by a U2, which is equipped with an ultra-high frequency recording system (5,000 words in 7 seconds). The discovery in the wreckage of the U2 of the special tape recorder used by Powers probably enabled the Soviets to neutralize this ingenious system of communications.

17. "Funkspiel" consists of infiltrating the enemy intelligence service and feeding the enemy a certain amount of false information, using double agents or what their employers believe are double agents. It is a tricky and subtle game that can be played in a number of different ways. There were some extraordinary cases during the Second World War. More recently, there was Kim Philby, the head of the Soviet Department of British intelligence and a Soviet agent. If Oswald fell into this category, he was no more than an elementary case.

18. Zapiski, the central files department of the KGB, where more than 400 persons are employed.

19. The Chinese claimed to have been born in the Ukraine and to have served in the Polish cavalry. He was recruited by the OSS during the war and entered the University of Texas in 1944; where he obtained his degree in geological engineering (specializing in petroleum geology). The CIA used him in Iran, Egypt, Indonesia, Panama, Guatemala, Haiti, Nicaragua, San Salvador, Honduras, Nigeria, Ghana and Togo. One of his covers was the International Cooperation Administration (ICA), but he also worked for Sinclair Oil.

Mohrenschildt was a distinguished and cultivated man, a member of The Establishment and the New York Social Register. His wife, a White Russian born in China, often worked with him. He belonged to the Dallas Petroleum Club, the Abilene Country Club and the Dallas Society of Petroleum Geologists and had close connections with the oil industry, in particular with the presidents of McGee Oil, Kerr, Continental Oil, Cogwell Oil Equipment Co., Texas Eastern Corp., and with John Mecom of Houston.

20. Infiltrating the American and emigre socialist and Communist movements in the United States in order to obtain information about their activities is one of the major preoccupations of the FBI.

21. Colonel Abel's hobby was also photography, and he had a studio in Kelton Street. Oswald was hardly in the same class with Abel, but photography is a practical hobby which is popular with many intelligence agents.

22. The confusion that reigned in the CIA's operations in New Orleans at that time was such that this address appeared on some of the Communist literature that Oswald was given to hand out on the streets. The slip came to someone's attention, however, and the Camp Street address was replaced by 4907 Magazine Street.

23. One of his "clients" during this period, Eladio del Valle, was killed in Miami the same day Ferrie was found dead in New Orleans. The Cuban's murder has never been explained.

24. Alex E. Carlson, a Spanish-speaking lawyer from Miami Springs who fought in the Philippines and Okinawa, is President of the Double-Chek Corporation, a brokerage firm that serves as a CIA cover for the recruitment of pilots employed in Central American and the Caribbean. He uses post office box addresses for his contacts.

Among the other picturesque figures in this milieu were:

David F. Green, a former Marine Corps Lieutenant who served in Korea and was recruited by the CIA in Tokyo. He was used in Laos and then in South Vietnam, and served as a rifle instructor at the Pontchartrain base.

Kurt Schmitt, a former non-commissioned officer with the 28th Panzer Division of the Wehrmacht, who emigrated to the United States in 1947 and became a naturalized American citizen in 1953. He was recruited by the CIA in 1955 to serve as a radio instructor.

25. More methodical and often more discreet than their CIA counterparts, Mr. Hoover's agents were remarkably well-informed about what was going on in Florida, New Orleans, Texas, and California, and also (we shall see why later) about the CIA's activities abroad.

The FBI kept a file on every identified agent of the CIA, whether he be a temporary, a correspondent, or a contractual, and after the assassination it had little difficulty in determining whom to question. Its reports were so detailed, and were submitted to the Warren Commission so promptly, that even the professional investigators employed by the Commission were surprised. Some of these secret reports are now deposited in the National Archives. Others, more confidential, are still in the hands of the FBI.

FBI agents Regis Kennedy and Warren de Brueys knew David Ferrie well. De Brueys was based in New Orleans, where he was involved in the CIA's anti-Castro activities. After the assassination, the FBI interrogated David Ferrie and Gordon Novel. Novel was a buddy of Ferrie's who had been with the CIA since 1959. He worked through the Double-Chek Corporation and the Evergreen Advertising Agency. He had carried out several missions in the Caribbean, was involved in arms purchases, and knew both Ruby and Oswald. The FBI questioned him on five separate occasions, but Novel didn't scare easily, and he didn't talk.

In 1967 New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison subpoenaed him, but he left Louisiana for Ohio, and Garrison never succeeded in obtaining his extradition.

26. Clay Shaw was indicted by District Attorney Garrison for participating in a plot to assassinate President Kennedy and released on $10,000 bail. But Shaw only acted as an intermediary for the Committee. His trial was repeatedly postponed, and in May 1968, a federal court blocked the case.

27. After his death, Oswald was also blamed for this incident. It seems highly improbable that he played a major role in it. Specialists are hired to deliberately miss someone as well as to kill him, and Oswald was not an expert marksman.

28. The CIA makes it a rule never to admit or claim responsibility for its operations, even when they are successful, as was the case in Guatemala and Iran. As Allen Dulles once remarked, "We are not journalists." Nevertheless, it has deposited 51 Top Secret documents in the National Archives, including several disclosing that Oswald was one of its agents:

Document CD 392, "Reproduction of Official CIA Dossier on Oswald."

Document CD 698, "Reports on Travel and Activities of Oswald."

Document CD 931, "Oswald's Access to Information about U2."

The public will be allowed to read them in the year 2038.

29. The DCA, or Department of Covert Activity, is responsible for sabotages, kidnappings and "liquidations." It is the equivalent of the Soviet KRO.

The first person to mention CIA involvement in the assassination was Gary Underhill, a former OSS agent who occasionally carried out an assignment for the CIA. On November 28, 1963, he told friends in New Jersey that he knew who was responsible for the President's murder. Soon afterwards he was found dead in his Washington apartment with a bullet in his brain.

30. The Minutemen were also in charge of planting evidence against Oswald, removing or destroying other damaging evidence, and killing Patrolman Tippit, but they made several mistakes. The "evidence of premeditation" at a gun shop, a firing range and a used car lot involving a man who resembled Oswald was so obviously fabricated that not even the Warren Commission dared invoke it. Officer Tippit was to be killed by two Minutemen to give other Minutemen on the Dallas police force an excuse to shoot Oswald, but the latter, realizing that this was no simulated assassination but the real thing, had probably grown suspicious. He went to the appointed meeting place at the Texas Theatre, where he was fortunate enough -- for the moment at least -- to be arrested by a police patrol which, as he didn't resist, did not shoot him as planned. Two days later Jack Ruby, another employee of the Committee, killed Oswald (with the cooperation of the Dallas police). Ruby was later liquidated in prison by a slower but no less radical means. (Oswald was not killed instantly, but by attempting artificial respiration a Dallas police inspector managed to aggravate his internal hemorrhaging. Another accomplice was planted at Parkland Hospital where Oswald was taken, and it appears that his intervention hastened Oswald's death.





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