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Kid Berwyn

(21,391 posts)
Tue Jul 8, 2025, 03:42 PM Jul 8

Lee Harvey Oswald isn't the only subject CIA lied about re: JFK Assassination



Howard Hughes' "fixer," Robert Maheu, served as the go-between. The scheme was launched when Dwight Eisenhower was president and VP Richard Nixon was the CIA White House Action Officer.

CIA hired the Mafia to assassinate Fidel Castro.

The CIA’s director of security, Howard J. Osborn, sends a detailed summary to the deputy director on the CIA-Mafia collaboration to assassinate Castro before the Bay of Pigs invasion. The history starts with the authorization from the deputy director for plans, Richard Bissell, for “a sensitive mission requiring gangster-type action. The mission target was the liquidation of Fidel Castro.” The report describes how Robert Maheu was used as a CIA “cutout” to approach mobsters Johnny Roselli and Sam Gold. It also describes how the CIA’s Technical Services Division “developed a pill that had the elements of rapid solubility, high lethal content, and little or no traceability” as an assassination device. Six pills were produced and passed initially to a Cuban official with mafia ties, Juan Orta. When he got “cold feet,” the pills were passed to a member of the Cuba Exile Junta, Anthony Verona, to pass to operatives in Havana. But, the report states, “Verona’s potential was never fully exploited as the project was cancelled shortly after the Bay of Pigs episode.”

From the memo:

7. The pitch was made to Roselli on 14 September 1960 at the Hilton Plaza Hotel, New York City. His initial reaction was to avoid getting involved but, through Maheu's persuasion, he agreed to introduce him to a friend, Sam Gold, who knew the "Cuban crowd." Roselli made it clear he did not want any money for his part and believed Sam would feel the same way. Neither of these individuals were ever paid out of Agency funds.

Read the mostly unredacted memo at GWU National Security Archives:

https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/document/20836-6

Mr. Roselli and Mr. Giancana could appear when the House Select Committee on Assassinations subpoenaed them in the late 1970s. Roselli's body was discovered cut into pieces and stuffed into an oil drum floating near Miami. "Sam Gold" referenced in the CIA memo was actually Sam Giancana. Mr. Giancana died in his home in Oak Park, Illinois, where he was shot to death in the back of the head and then six times around the mouth.

The photo above depicting Robert Maheu is from Chicago magazine: How the CIA Enlisted the Chicago Mob to Put a Hit on Castro
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TxGuitar

(4,315 posts)
1. There's an interesting show on Paramount+ (I think)
Tue Jul 8, 2025, 03:53 PM
Jul 8

called Mafia Spies that goes into the CIA plot to kill Castro using the mafia. Pretty interesting.

Kid Berwyn

(21,391 posts)
2. Thank you for the heads-up! Will viddy.
Tue Jul 8, 2025, 04:05 PM
Jul 8

Here's an example of how then-young Dick Cheney helped keep the important history hidden:





Gerald Ford White House Altered Rockefeller Commission Report in 1975; Removed Section on CIA Assassination Plots

White House Aide Dick Cheney Spearheaded Editing of Report to Dampen Impact

New Documents Cast Further Doubt on Commission’s Investigation, Independence


Washington, DC, February 29, 2016 – The Gerald Ford White House significantly altered the final report of the supposedly independent 1975 Rockefeller Commission investigating CIA domestic activities, over the objections of senior Commission staff, according to internal White House and Commission documents posted today by the National Security Archive at The George Washington University (www.nsarchive.org). The changes included removal of an entire 86-page section on CIA assassination plots and numerous edits to the report by then-deputy White House Chief of Staff Richard Cheney.

Today’s posting includes the entire suppressed section on assassination attempts, Cheney’s handwritten marginal notes, staff memos warning of the fallout of deleting the controversial section, and White House strategies for presenting the edited report to the public. The documents show that the leadership of the presidentially-appointed commission deliberately curtailed the investigation and ceded its independence to White House political operatives.

This evidence has been lying ignored in government vaults for decades. Much of the work of securing release of the records was done by the John F. Kennedy Assassinations Records Board in the 1990s, and the documents were located at the National Archives and Records Administration at College Park, Maryland; or at the Gerald R. Ford Library in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Additional mandatory declassification review requests filed by Archive fellow John Prados returned identical versions of documents, indicating the CIA is not willing to permit the public to see any more of the assassinations story than we show here. The documents in this set have yet to be incorporated into standard accounts of the events of this period.

Among the highlights of today’s posting:

* White House officials of the Ford administration attempted to keep a presidential review panel—the Rockefeller Commission—from investigating reports of CIA planning for assassinations abroad.
* Ford administration officials suppressed the Rockefeller Commission’s actual report on CIA assassination plots.
* Richard Cheney, then the deputy assistant to the president, edited the report of the Rockefeller Commission from inside the Ford White House, stripping the report of its independent character.
* The Rockefeller Commission remained silent on this manipulation.
* Rockefeller Commission lawyers and public relations officials warned of the damage that would be done to the credibility of the entire investigation by avoiding the subject of assassinations.
* President Ford passed investigative materials concerning assassinations along to the Church Committee of the United States Senate and then attempted—but failed—to suppress the Church Committee’s report as well.
* The White House markup of the Rockefeller Commission report used the secrecy of the CIA budget as an example of excesses and recommended Congress consider making agency spending public to some degree.

Source:

https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/intelligence/2016-02-29/gerald-ford-white-house-altered-rockefeller-commission-report



Gerald Ford, as a member of the Warren Commission, actually suggested editing the report on behalf of the lone nut "magic bullet" theory. He had the location of one of the President's wounds moved from his shoulder blade to a spot closer to the base of his neck.

https://www.crimemagazine.com/gerald-fords-role-jfk-assassination-cover

Kid Berwyn

(21,391 posts)
4. The Warren Commission was not informed CIA had hired Mafia to kill Castro.
Tue Jul 8, 2025, 04:18 PM
Jul 8

JFK had ordered the CIA not to kill Castro.

It seems a number of the players turned the playbook around and turned the plan, called ZR/RIFLE, on JFK.

Oh! And the CIA kept mum to the Warren Commission.



Richard Nixon's Greatest Cover-Up: His Ties to the Assassination of President Kennedy

Nixon's ties to the assassination of President Kennedy run deep, from his association with Jack Ruby, his ties to Jimmy Hoffa and the Mafia, and his connection to CIA operative E. Howard Hunt. On a tape recorded in Nixon's White House office in 1972 he told two top aides that the Warren Commission Report pulled off "the greatest hoax that has ever been perpetuated." No one knew that better than he did.


by Don Fulsom
October 2, 2009

Excerpt...

What Nixon apparently failed to tell Hess was that the major story from his meeting with reporters in Dallas was certain to fuel the anger of some Texans toward Kennedy. The headline in the Dallas Morning News on November 22 said: "Nixon Predicts JFK May Drop Johnson." Vice President Lyndon Johnson was, of course, a Texan.

On the morning after the assassination, Nixon convened a meeting of Republican leaders at his New York apartment. Those assembled were "already assessing how this event would affect or recreate the possibilities of Nixon running for president," according to Hess.

Snip...

Giancana's half-bother Chuck and nephew Sam claimed in their 1992 book Double Cross that the Mafia don had a long, warm, and mutually rewarding relationship with Nixon that dated back to the 1940s. In those times, Giancana was helping Chicago Syndicate boss Anthony Accardo consolidate the city's rackets and gambling operations, and Nixon was a freshman congressman from California. In recounting for his relatives a big favor the congressman did for Giancana back then, the gangster established a direct link between Nixon and a Chicago hoodlum who later moved to Texas and went on to shoot Lee Harvey Oswald: "Nixon's done me some favors, all right, got us some highway contracts, worked with the unions and overseas. And we've helped him and his CIA buddies out, too. Shit, he even helped my guy in Texas, (Jack) Ruby, get out of testifying in front of Congress back in forty-seven … By sayin' Ruby worked for him."

A 1947 memo, found in 1975 by a scholar going through a pile of recently released FBI documents, supports Giancana's contention. In the memo, addressed to a congressional committee investigating organized crime, an FBI assistant states: "It is my sworn testimony that one Jack Rubenstein of Chicago ... is performing information functions for the staff of Congressman Richard Nixon, Republican of California. It is requested Rubenstein not be called for open testimony in the aforementioned hearings." (Later in 1947, Rubenstein moved to Dallas and shortened his last name.) The FBI subsequently called the memo a fake, but the reference service Facts on File considers it authentic.

Undercover work for the young Congressman Nixon would have been in keeping with Ruby's history as a police tipster and government informant. In 1950, Ruby gave closed-door testimony to Estes Kefauver's special Senate committee investigating organized crime. Committee staffer Luis Kutner later described Ruby as "a syndicate lieutenant who had been sent to Dallas to serve as a liaison for Chicago mobsters." In exchange for Ruby's testimony, the FBI is said to have eased up on its probe of organized crime in Dallas. In 1959, Ruby became an informant for the FBI.

Continues...

https://www.crimemagazine.com/richard-nixons-greatest-cover-his-ties-assassination-president-kennedy



Something else that stinks: The corporate news media have long and often maintained that JFK was the one who ordered the hit on Castro. The reality is much different: It was Nixon.

DickKessler

(403 posts)
6. The Warren Commission was also not informed about how both JFK and RFK sought Castro's assassination.
Tue Jul 8, 2025, 04:35 PM
Jul 8

Operation Mongoose was a Kennedy administration covert action project via the National Security Council and CIA.

The public exposure of such didn’t come about until the 70s and later.

Kid Berwyn

(21,391 posts)
7. True: JFK approved Operation MONGOOSE.
Tue Jul 8, 2025, 05:15 PM
Jul 8

But when he called it off to help defuse the Cuban Missile Crisis , CIA kept on going and it didn't tell JFK or RFK.

From researcher and DUer John Simkin:

During the Cuban Missile Crisis, Robert Kennedy instructed CIA director John McCone, to halt all covert operations aimed at Cuba. A few days later he discovered that William Harvey had ignored this order and had dispatched three commando teams into Cuba to prepare for what he believed would be an inevitable invasion. Kennedy was furious and as soon as the Cuban Missile Crisis was over, Harvey was removed as commander of ZR/RIFLE. On 30th October, 1962, RFK terminated "all sabotage operations" against Cuba. As a result of President Kennedy's promise to Nikita Khrushchev that he would not invade Cuba, Operation Mongoose was disbanded.

SOURCE w/links for details:

https://spartacus-educational.com/JFKzrrifle.htm

MORE: https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/cuba/2019-10-03/kennedy-cuba-operation-mongoose

DickKessler

(403 posts)
10. Your second source indicates that Kennedy continued to plot against Cuba up until his assassination.
Tue Jul 8, 2025, 10:39 PM
Jul 8
On April 21, 1963, McGeorge Bundy reacted to 5412 Group demands for a comprehensive strategy with a paper sketching Cuba alternatives. The CIA provided options to the NSC Standing Group on April 30, and the 5412 Group approved a program on May 24. By June 8 Desmond FitzGerald had converted the April draft plan into an integrated action program. It would be approved. Money would be given to Manuel Artime for a new brigade project. A certain number of actual raids were carried out.The White House expressed satisfaction with some in August, and frustration with others in September, when leaks again bedeviled action. Just days before his murder, President Kennedy met with CIA officers to review the Cuba operation and approve the next batch of targets. On December 19 the secret warriors had their first meeting with President Lyndon Baines Johnson on Cuba operations. LBJ opined that sabotage missions with less than a 50 percent chance of success should be cancelled. From May 1964 on, Johnson progressively cut back the Cuba enterprise.

Kid Berwyn

(21,391 posts)
11. Great. President Truman wondered about CIA after JFK assassination.
Wed Jul 9, 2025, 01:12 AM
Jul 9

One month after the assassination, President Harry S Truman expressed public concern CIA had strayed off the reservation from intelligence gathering of foreign news sources to cloak-and-dagger operations.



Limit CIA Role To Intelligence

By Harry S Truman
The Washington Post, December 22, 1963 - page A11

INDEPENDENCE, MO., Dec. 21 — I think it has become necessary to take another look at the purpose and operations of our Central Intelligence Agency—CIA. At least, I would like to submit here the original reason why I thought it necessary to organize this Agency during my Administration, what I expected it to do and how it was to operate as an arm of the President.

I think it is fairly obvious that by and large a President's performance in office is as effective as the information he has and the information he gets. That is to say, that assuming the President himself possesses a knowledge of our history, a sensitive understanding of our institutions, and an insight into the needs and aspirations of the people, he needs to have available to him the most accurate and up-to-the-minute information on what is going on everywhere in the world, and particularly of the trends and developments in all the danger spots in the contest between East and West. This is an immense task and requires a special kind of an intelligence facility.

Of course, every President has available to him all the information gathered by the many intelligence agencies already in existence. The Departments of State, Defense, Commerce, Interior and others are constantly engaged in extensive information gathering and have done excellent work.

But their collective information reached the President all too frequently in conflicting conclusions. At times, the intelligence reports tended to be slanted to conform to established positions of a given department. This becomes confusing and what's worse, such intelligence is of little use to a President in reaching the right decisions.

Therefore, I decided to set up a special organization charged with the collection of all intelligence reports from every available source, and to have those reports reach me as President without department "treatment" or interpretations.

I wanted and needed the information in its "natural raw" state and in as comprehensive a volume as it was practical for me to make full use of it. But the most important thing about this move was to guard against the chance of intelligence being used to influence or to lead the President into unwise decisions—and I thought it was necessary that the President do his own thinking and evaluating.

Since the responsibility for decision making was his—then he had to be sure that no information is kept from him for whatever reason at the discretion of any one department or agency, or that unpleasant facts be kept from him. There are always those who would want to shield a President from bad news or misjudgments to spare him from being "upset."

For some time I have been disturbed by the way CIA has been diverted from its original assignment. It has become an operational and at times a policy-making arm of the Government. This has led to trouble and may have compounded our difficulties in several explosive areas.

I never had any thought that when I set up the CIA that it would be injected into peacetime cloak and dagger operations. Some of the complications and embarrassment I think we have experienced are in part attributable to the fact that this quiet intelligence arm of the President has been so removed from its intended role that it is being interpreted as a symbol of sinister and mysterious foreign intrigue—and a subject for cold war enemy propaganda.

With all the nonsense put out by Communist propaganda about "Yankee imperialism," "exploitive capitalism," "war-mongering," "monopolists," in their name-calling assault on the West, the last thing we needed was for the CIA to be seized upon as something akin to a subverting influence in the affairs of other people.

I well knew the first temporary director of the CIA, Adm. Souers, and the later permanent directors of the CIA, Gen. Hoyt Vandenberg and Allen Dulles. These were men of the highest character, patriotism and integrity—and I assume this is true of all those who continue in charge.

But there are now some searching questions that need to be answered. I, therefore, would like to see the CIA be restored to its original assignment as the intelligence arm of the President, and that whatever else it can properly perform in that special field—and that its operational duties be terminated or properly used elsewhere.

We have grown up as a nation, respected for our free institutions and for our ability to maintain a free and open society. There is something about the way the CIA has been functioning that is casting a shadow over our historic position and I feel that we need to correct it.

SOURCE: http://www.maebrussell.com/Prouty/Harry%20Truman's%20CIA%20article.html



That would be better known, but for some reason it got left out of the afternoon edition and out of most all of the nation’s other newspapers.

To put some emphasis on Truman’s essay, former CIA Director Allen Dulles tried to get a retraction:



Are Presidents Afraid of the CIA?

By Ray McGovern
December 29, 2009

Excerpt…

Fox Guarding Hen House

The well-connected Dulles got himself appointed to the Warren Commission and took the lead in shaping the investigation of JFK’s assassination.

Documents in the Truman Library show that he then mounted a small domestic covert action of his own to neutralize any future airing of Truman’s and Souers’s warnings about covert action.

So important was this to Dulles that he invented a pretext to get himself invited to visit Truman in Independence, Missouri. On the afternoon of April 17, 1964, Dulles spent a half-hour trying to get the former President to retract what he had said in his op-ed. No dice, said Truman.

No problem, thought Dulles. Four days later, in a formal memo for his old buddy Lawrence Houston, CIA General Counsel from 1947 to 1973, Dulles fabricated a private retraction, claiming that Truman told him the Washington Post article was “all wrong,” and that Truman “seemed quite astounded at it.”

No doubt Dulles thought it might be handy to have such a memo in CIA files, just in case.

A fabricated retraction? It certainly seems so, because Truman did not change his tune. Far from it.

In a June 10, 1964, letter to the managing editor of Look magazine, for example, Truman restated his critique of covert action, emphasizing that he never intended the CIA to get involved in “strange activities.”

CONTINUED...

SOURCE: http://www.consortiumnews.com/2009/122909b.html



Truman did not point a finger of blame at CIA, the Mafia or anyone. However, it is difficult to think of an innocent explanation for Mr. Dulles’ response and actions — months before he would be appointed to the Warren Commission.

AntiFascist

(13,543 posts)
5. Was the CIA also developing a cancer-causing biological weapon...
Tue Jul 8, 2025, 04:27 PM
Jul 8

to be used against Castro? Exposing a monkey virus to x-rays in order to mutate it? This could open up another can of worms.

Kid Berwyn

(21,391 posts)
8. I dunno. But I did ask the Google A.I.
Tue Jul 8, 2025, 05:46 PM
Jul 8
"Castro Assassination Attempts by Type"

Fidel Castro faced numerous assassination attempts, with the CIA and Cuban exiles employing a variety of methods. These included poisoned cigars, a fungus-infected diving suit, and even an exploding seashell. The CIA also explored mafia connections in an attempt to eliminate him.

Here's a breakdown by type of attempt:

CIA & Cuban Exile Attempts:

Poisoned cigars:
A plan involved poisoning cigars with botulinum toxin, capitalizing on Castro's love for cigars.

Diving suit and conch shell:
An attempt involved a scuba diving suit infected with a deadly fungus and a booby-trapped seashell.

Exploding cigars:
Another plan involved using exploding cigars.

Mob-style execution:
The CIA also explored the possibility of enlisting the mafia in an assassination attempt.


Poison pills:
There were plans to use poison pills, possibly through a liaison between the CIA and mobsters, according to a film about the attempts.

Explosives at a museum:
A plot to blow up Castro during a visit to the Ernest Hemingway museum was also considered.

Individual assassins:
The CIA also backed various Cuban exile groups and individuals who attempted to assassinate Castro.

Other Notable Attempts:

Early attempts by student groups:
. Militant anti-Batista groups, particularly the Directorio Revolucionario Estudiantil (DRE), also made attempts on Castro's life.

Multiple attempts by Antonio Veciana:
. A Cuban exile, Antonio Veciana, made several attempts on Castro's life over a period of 17 years.

Attempts by Félix Rodríguez:
. Félix Rodríguez, a CIA operative involved in training Cuban exiles for the Bay of Pigs Invasion, was also involved in some attempts.

Felix Rodriguez wore Che Guevera's Rolex. He also worked for Poppy Bush. I posit he was part of the cabal because his father, the former Senator Prescott Bush, a name now scrubbed from his role in the Wall Street Coup to overthrow FDR in 1933. The big reason though is the paper trail established by Herbert Hoover and the FBI regarding his son, President George Herbert Walker Bush:

History Lesson missing from post-Dallas curricula...

George H. W. Bush was in Dallas on November 22, 1963. I know so because AFTER THE ASSASSINATION he phoned the FBI to report a name he heard threaten JFK:





TO: SAC, HOUSTON DATE: 11-22-63

FROM: SA GRAHAM W. KITCHEL

SUBJECT: UNKNOWN SUBJECT;
ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT
JOHN F. KENNEDY

At 1:45 p.m. Mr. GEORGE H. W. BUSH, President of the Zapata Off-Shore Drilling Company, Houston, Texas, residence 5525 Briar, Houston, telephonically furnished the following information to writer by long distance telephone call from Tyler, Texas.

BUSH stated that he wanted to be kept confidential but wanted to furnish hearsay that he recalled hearing in recent weeks, the day and source unknown. He stated that one JAMES PARROTT has been talking of killing the President when he comes to Houston.

BUSH stated that PARROTT is possibly a student at the University of Houston and is active in political matters in this area. He stated that he felt Mrs. FAWLEY, telephone number SU 2-5239, or ARLINE SMITH, telephone number JA 9-9194 of the Harris County Republican Party Headquarters would be able to furnish additional information regarding the identity of PARROTT.

BUSH stated that he was proceeding to Dallas, Texas, would remain in the Sheraton-Dallas Hotel and return to his residence on 11-23-63. His office telephone number is CA 2-0395.

# # #



Of course, we didn’t know any of that until decades later when another FBI memo mentioned Mr. GEORGE Bush of the CIA” popped up when Poppy was running for president in 1988. A reporter from The Nation asked him about it and CIA replied "It was another George Bush of the CIA." Of course, that guy got tracked down without warning he said that he was assigned to the agency for a couple of weeks from the NWS or someplace.





Date: November 29, 1963

To: Director
Bureau of Intelligence and Research
Department of State

From: John Edgar Hoover, Director

Subject: ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY
NOVEMBER 22, 1963

Our Miami, Florida, Office on November 23, 1963, advised that the Office of Coordinator of Cuban Affairs in Miami advised that the Department of State feels some misguided anti-Castro group might capitalize on the present situation and undertake an unauthorized raid against Cuba, believing that the assassination of President John F. Kennedy might herald a change in U. S. policy, which is not true.

Our sources and informants familiar with Cuban matters in the Miami area advise that the general feeling in the anti-Castro Cuban community is one of stunned disbelief and, even among those who did not entirely agree with the President's policy concerning Cuba, the feeling is that the President's death represents a great loss not only to the U. S. but to all of Latin America. These sources know of no plans for unauthorized action against Cuba.

An informant who has furnished reliable information in the past and who is close to a small pro-Castro group in Miami has advised that these individuals are afraid that the assassination of the President may result in strong repressive measures being taken against them and, although pro-Castro in their feelings, regret the assassination.

The substance of the foregoing information was orally furnished to Mr. George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency and Captain William Edwards of the Defense Intelligence Agency on November 23, 1963, by Mr. W. T. Forsyth of this Bureau.

# # #



These documents used to be all over the Google. Now they are getting harder to find. And some wonder why the Supreme Court legalizes a demented, depraved and corrupted NAZI kakistocracy comprised of plutocrats, oligarchs, played by Trump and his paymaster, Putin. I don't blame the BFEE. I blame the people making a buck off the BFEE -- and their volunteers, of course.





AntiFascist

(13,543 posts)
9. Here's what I got out of Google AI, based on available public info...
Tue Jul 8, 2025, 08:50 PM
Jul 8

Here's a summary of the situation:

CIA plots to use biological agents: The 1975 U.S. Senate Church Committee revealed that the CIA had plots to use biological agents to assassinate Fidel Castro.

African Swine Fever Virus: A report in Newsday presented evidence that CIA-backed operatives introduced African swine fever virus into Cuba in 1971, leading to a significant outbreak among pigs.

Dengue Fever Epidemic: Many Cubans believe that a 1981 dengue fever outbreak in Cuba was caused by the CIA, though concrete evidence is lacking and the U.S. State Department denied involvement.

Broader Biological Warfare against Cuba: There is evidence suggesting the U.S. government, through operations like "Operation Mongoose," planned to use biological agents against Cuba to sabotage crops and livestock.

Kid Berwyn

(21,391 posts)
12. Thank you! Plus: Warren Commissioners Ties to NAZI Germany
Wed Jul 9, 2025, 01:23 AM
Jul 9


Two members of the Warren Commission also, coincidentally sure, played key roles in the rise of post-war fascism. Allen Dulles, as a top official of the OSS and CIA, incorporated NAZI war criminals into the CIA from its founding. John McCloy, as High Commissioner for Germany, allowed Klaus Barbie, Alfred Krupp, eight members of his board, and who-knows-who-else to escape justice. Of course, Dulles and McCloy also were barons of Wall Street and Beltway Insiders, at the heart of the military industrial complex, chums with Prescott Bush n Poppy. So, we can see what that has meant for the United States today.

Background:

The American who let the Nazis rebuild Germany

https://thecritic.co.uk/issues/november-2021/the-american-who-let-the-nazis-rebuild-germany/

CIA and NAZI War Criminals

https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB146/index.htm





The Real McCloy

THE CHAIRMAN: JOHN J. McCLOY; The Making of the American Establishment,
By Kai Bird (Simon & Schuster: $30; 800 pp.)


By ROBERT SHERRILL
APRIL 19, 1992, The Los Angeles Times

EXCERPT...

When McCloy took over as high commissioner of defeated Germany, he talked a tough line about crushing the many still- active Nazis. But he promptly turned to mush, permitting Chancellor Konrad Adenauer to fill his cabinet with notorious antisemites and Nazi war criminals (some of whom became McCloy’s personal friends). McCloy also vastly expanded the shameful programs begun before he got to Germany, of letting some of the worst war criminals off the hook.

He commuted two-thirds of the death sentences of mass murderers (such as the SS officer who personally executed 1,500 Jews) and radically reduced the prison sentences of doctors who had conducted experiments on death-camp inmates, of high-ranking Nazi Judges who had administered Gestapo justice, and of industrialists who had built the Nazi war machine.

McCloy freed some immediately, including Alfred Krupp, whose munitions factories had worked thousands of slave laborers to death. Krupp’s original sentence had included loss of all property; McCloy canceled that punishment and within a few years Krupp was again one of the richest industrialists in the world. Obviously McCloy’s obsequiousness toward money and power made him the wrong man to reform Nazi Germany. “Though he could understand the special culpability of the ‘big Nazis,’ ” Bird writes, “when it came to a wealthy and politically well-connected man like Krupp, he suspended his good judgment.”

As high commissioner, McCloy dabbled disastrously in the intelligence business, setting up a network of agents in Germany that included the likes of Klaus Barbie, who had shipped 78,000 French Jews to the gas chambers, and Gen. Reinhard Gehlen, who had been responsible for some of the “grisliest mass killings on the Eastern Front.” Not surprisingly, many of the intelligence operations carried out under McCloy were, says Bird, “fiascos.”

CONTINUES...

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1992-04-19-bk-588-story.html



Mr. McCloy was joined by another “Mr. Establishment” type with extensive ties to wealthy NAZI industrialists and anti-communist NAZI spy rings, former CIA Director Allen Dulles, in service on the Warren Commission. Coincidentally. Their colleagues kept faith in the Almighty Dollar.



CIA Chief Bush Suppresses the News

By Robert Gardner
FAIR Exclusive
May/June 1999

Documents obtained by FAIR, released through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), show that George Bush, as head of the CIA in 1976, tried to bottle up a news story that exposed the apparent duplicity of another former CIA chief, Richard Helms.

The story, broken on Oct. 1, 1976, by David Martin (now CBS Pentagon correspondent, then with Associated Press), revealed that Helms had given misleading testimony to the Warren Commission investigating the assassination of John Kennedy. Helms testified that the CIA had not "even contemplated" making contact with Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin. Through the FOIA, Martin obtained CIA memos showing that in 1960 the agency "showed intelligence interest" in Oswald and "discussed...the laying on of interviews" with him.

When Bush saw the AP story in the Washington Star, he asked for an internal CIA review to see if the story was true (it was) and if it would "cause problems for Helms." (Helms had lied to a Senate committee about the CIA's role in subverting Chilean democracy and would later be convicted of contempt of Congress.)

After investigating, Bush assistant Seymour Bolten reported back that the exposure of Helms' false testimony to the Warren Commission would probably cause Helms "some anxious moments," though not "any additional legal problems." But Bush was assured that a "slightly better" story had resulted from an Agency phone call to AP protesting that Martin's story was "sloppy." Additionally, Bush was told that an unnamed journalist had "advised his editors . . . not to run the AP story."

Bolten complained to Bush: "This is another example where material provided to the press and public in response to an FOIA request is exploited mischievously and in distorted form to make the headlines." One might more accurately describe it as an occasion where George Bush's CIA pressured one news outlet to back away from an accurate story while using an asset in the press corps to suppress it in another.

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1491



I don’t think US citizens should be considered “Enemies of the State” for upholding the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.



Angus Mackenzie: "Secrets: The CIA's War at Home"

EXCERPT...

A month later someone at the CIA leaked the news of MHCHAOS to Sy Hersh at the New York Times. The story, while sparse, made public the fact that the agency was spying on its citizens. Gerald Ford, in office for less than five months, directed William Colby to issue a report on MHCHAOS to Henry Kissinger. As Mackenzie writes, evidently Ford was not informed that Kissinger was well aware of the operation. He adds:

Because of MHCHAOS and Watergate, Congress began to investigate the CIA. On September 16, 1975 Senators Frank Church and John Tower called Colby to testify at a hearing about CIA assassinations. Colby showed up carrying a CIA poison dart gun, and Church waved the gun before the televison cameras. It looked like an automatic pistol with a telescopic sight mounted on the barrel. Producers of the evening news recognized this as sensational footage, and just as surely Colby recognized his days as director were numbered. He had not guarded the CIA secrets well enough.


Colby was fired on November 2, 1975. His successor was George Herbert Walker Bush.....

Mackenzie's account of Bush's rise and and his fall when Carter assumed office is brief, but intriguing. There is much, much more in Secrets about CIA efforts throughout the years in guarding their work from the public in this under-recognized work. The epilogue is entitled "The Cold War Ends and Secrecy Spreads." Mackenzie closes by writing:

Only recently in the history of the world's oldest republic has secrecy functioned principally to keep the American people in the dark about the nefarious activities of their government. The United States is no longer the nation its citizens once thought: a place, unlike most others in the world, free from censorship and thought police, where people can say what they want, when they want to, about their government. Almost a decade after the end of the cold war, espionage is not the issue, if it ever really was. The issue is freedom... Until the citizens of this land aggressively defend their First Amendment rights of free speech, there is little hope that this march to censorship will be reversed. The survival of the cornerstone of the Bill of Rights is at stake.

Succumbing to brain cancer before he turned fifty, Mackenzie sadly did not live to see the meteoric rise of the internet, nor did he live to see 9/11 and the current Bush Administration and their obsessive devotion to secrecy.

This work has relevance to the current situation regarding the agency's efforts to keep George Joannides' records secret.

SOURCE: http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=10617



Jimmy Carter tried weaning the US off fossil fuels. So the Petrodollars got together with the former spooks to dump Carter and foist a half century of Trickle Down on the nation.



From...

The State, the Deep State, and the Wall Street Overworld

By Prof Peter Dale Scott
Global Research, March 10, 2014
The Asia-Pacific Journal, Volume 12, Issue 10, No. 5

EXCERPT...

The Safari Club Milieu: George H.W. Bush, Theodore Shackley, and BCCI

The usual account of this super-agency’s origin is that it was

the brainchild of Count Alexandre de Marenches, the debonair and mustachioed chief of France’s CIA. The SDECE (Service de Documentation Extérieure et de Contre-Espionnage)…. Worried by Soviet and Cuban advances in postcolonial Africa, and by America’s post-Watergate paralysis in the field of undercover activity, the swashbuckling Marenches had come to Turki’s father, King Faisal, with a proposition…. [By 1979] Somali president Siad Barre had been bribed out of Soviet embrace by $75 million worth of Egyptian arms (paid for… by Saudi Arabia)….95

Joseph Trento adds that “The Safari Club needed a network of banks to finance its intelligence operations,… With the official blessing of George Bush as the head of the CIA, Adham transformed… the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), into a worldwide money-laundering machine.”.96

Trento claims also that the Safari Club then was able to work with some of the controversial CIA operators who were then forced out of the CIA by Turner, and that this was coordinated by perhaps the most controversial of them all: Theodore Shackley.

Shackley, who still had ambitions to become DCI, believed that without his many sources and operatives like [Edwin] Wilson, the Safari Club—operating with [former DCI Richard] Helms in charge in Tehran—would be ineffective. … Unless Shackley took direct action to complete the privatization of intelligence operations soon, the Safari Club would not have a conduit to [CIA] resources. The solution: create a totally private intelligence network using CIA assets until President Carter could be replaced.97

Kevin Phillips has suggested that Bush on leaving the CIA had dealings with the bank most closely allied with Safari Club operations: the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI). In Phillips’ words,

After leaving the CIA in January 1977, Bush became chairman of the executive committee of First International Bancshares and its British subsidiary, where, according to journalists Peter Truell and Larry Gurwin in their 1992 book ‘False Profits’ [p. 345], Bush ‘traveled on the bank’s behalf and sometimes marketed to international banks in London, including several Middle Eastern institutions.’98

Joseph Trento adds that through the London branch of this bank, which Bush chaired, “Adham’s petrodollars and BCCI money flowed for a variety of intelligence operations”99

It is clear moreover that BCCI operations, like Khashoggi’s before them, were marked by the ability to deal behind the scenes with both the Arab countries and also Israel.100

It is clear that for years the American deep state in Washington was both involved with and protected BCCI. Acting CIA director Richard Kerr acknowledged to a Senate Committee “that the CIA had also used BCCI for certain intelligence-gathering operations.”101

Later, a congressional inquiry showed that for more than ten years preceding the BCCI collapse in the summer of 1991, the FBI, the DEA, the CIA, the Customs Service, and the Department of Justice all failed to act on hundreds of tips about the illegalities of BCCI’s international activities.102

Far less clear is the attitude taken by Wall Street banks towards the miscreant BCCI. The Senate report on BCCI charged however that the Bank of England “had withheld information about BCCI’s frauds from public knowledge for 15 months before closing the bank.”103

CONTINUED...

http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-state-the-deep-state-and-the-wall-street-overworld/5372843







George Bush Takes Charge: The Uses of ‘Counter-Terrorism’

By Christopher Simpson
Covert Action Quarterly 58

A paper trail of declassified documents from the Reagan‑Bush era yields valuable information on how counter‑terrorism provided a powerful mechanism for solidifying Bush's power base and launching a broad range of national security initiatives.

During the Reagan years, George Bush used "crisis management" and "counter‑terrorism" as vehicles for running key parts of the clandestine side of the US government.

Bush proved especially adept at plausible denial. Some measure of his skill in avoiding responsibility can be taken from the fact that even after the Iran‑Contra affair blew the Reagan administration apart, Bush went on to become the "foreign policy president," while CIA Director William Casey, by then conveniently dead, took most of the blame for a number of covert foreign policy debacles that Bush had set in motion.

The trail of National Security Decision Directives (NSDDS) left by the Reagan administration begins to tell the story. True, much remains classified, and still more was never committed to paper in the first place. Even so, the main picture is clear: [font size="5"][font color="green"]As vice president, George Bush was at the center of secret wars, political murders, and America's convoluted oil politics in the Middle East.[/font color][/font size]

SNIP...

Reagan and the NSC also used NSDDs to settle conflicts among security agencies over bureaucratic turf and lines of command. It is through that prism that we see the first glimmers of Vice President Bush's role in clandestine operations during the 1980s.

SNIP...

NSDD 159. MANAGEMENT OF U.S. COVERT OPERATIONS, (TOP SECRET/VEIL‑SENSITIVE), JAN. 18,1985

The Reagan administration's commitment to significantly expand covert operations had been clear since before the 1980 election. How such operations were actually to be managed from day to day, however, was considerably less certain. The management problem became particularly knotty owing to legal requirements to notify congressional intelligence oversight committees of covert operations, on the one hand, and the tacitly accepted presidential mandate to deceive those same committees concerning sensitive operations such as the Contra war in Nicaragua, on the other.

The solution attempted in NSDD 159 was to establish a small coordinating committee headed by Vice President George Bush through which all information concerning US covert operations was to be funneled. The order also established a category of top secret information known as Veil, to be used exclusively for managing records pertaining to covert operations.

The system was designed to keep circulation of written records to an absolute minimum while at the same time ensuring that the vice president retained the ability to coordinate US covert operations with the administration's overt diplomacy and propaganda.

Only eight copies of NSDD 159 were created. The existence of the vice president's committee was itself highly classified. The directive became public as a result of the criminal prosecutions of Oliver North, John Poindexter, and others involved in the Iran‑Contra affair, hence the designation "Exhibit A" running up the left side of the document.

CONTINUED...

CovertAction Quarterly no 58 Fall 1996 pp31-40.



There’s a reason Americans know more about the Kardashians than the Kennedy assassinations. The media fill brains with everything under the Sun except truth about what has happened to democracy in the name of national security and greed and fascism.
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