|
|
Chapter 10
Techniques and Weapons and 100 Dead
Conspirators and Witnesses
Also on this page:
Chapter 11 - - - - Nixon and Ford -The Pardon and the Tapes
Chapter 12 - - - - The Second Line of Defense- Cover-Ups in 1975 and 1976
Chapter 10
Techniques and Weapons and 100 Dead
Conspirators and Witnesses
As Chapter 1 made clear, one of the two fiendish stratagems used by the Power Control Group to cover-up the truth and to fool the people was the use of various intelligence techniques and weapons. The use of such techniques in assassination and murder completely conceals the real killer's presence or the real cause of death. From the moment the crime occurs the public is led to believe that there is either one lone madman assassin or that the death was accidental, due to natural causes, or committed by natural enemies of the victim. Some of the techniques are so unique that they are nearly impossible for the average American to believe.
The intelligence forces of the United States as well as those of other countries have out-Bonded James Bond. The development of sophisticated murder methods and the control of humans for warfare and spying in other countries came home to the United States, effectively used by the Power Control Group. Penn Jones, Jr. published a list of "mysterious deaths" in his series of four volumes, "Forgive My Grief."[1] Sylvia Meagher published facts about the first eighteen witnesses at Dealey Plaza murdered through the use of these techniques in the book, "Accessories After the Fact."[2] Very few people other than researchers pay any attention. Two movies with somewhat wider circulation, "Executive Action" and "The Parallax View," covered the techniques fairly well, but they were considered to be fiction by most viewers. So the PCG goes on murdering where and when it is necessary, and it covers up the murders where necessary.
In 1974 and 1976, two murders became necessary. Rolando Masferrer, mentioned as a JFK conspirator, became dangerous to the PCG, and he was eliminated in early 1976 with a non-sophisticated weapon. A bomb was planted in his car in Miami. The cover-up in this case merely involved planting an informer who claimed Masferrer was killed by a rival antiCastro Cuban faction in Florida.[3]
Clay Shaw became quite nervous in 1974 after Victor Marchetti's statements to the press earlier that year made it known that Shaw was a CIA contract employee and that the CIA gave him assistance and protection before his trial in New Orleans and after Jim Garrison arrested him. Shaw was murdered in New Orleans by the PCG and the murder covered-up by simply controlling his embalming and burial and blocking any local investigation.[4] The reason for his murder was to keep him from talking and from returning to the public eye.
The techniques and weapons fall into several classes. First, there are sophisticated weapons developed by the CIA. An example of this is the umbrella poison dart gun used in Dealey Plaza to shoot JFK in the throat. Such a weapon was postulated by Robert Cutler and the author in mid-1975 as the one that fired the first shot from near the Stemmons Freeway sign.[5] This seemed incredulous to most observers and so wild an idea that the author and Cutler did not discuss it with many researchers. Then Mr. Charles Senseney, a CIA weapon developer at Fort Detrick, Maryland, testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee in September 1975 and described an umbrella poison dart gun he had made.[6] He said it was always used in crowds with the umbrella open, firing through the webing so it would not attract attention. Since it was silent, no one in the crowd could hear it and the assassin merely would fold up the umbrella and saunter away with the crowd. (That is almost exactly what happened in Dealey Plaza. The first shot had always seemed to have had a paralytic effect on Kennedy. His fists were clenched and his head, shoulders and arms seemed to stiffen. There was a small entrance wound in his neck but no evidence of a bullet path through his neck and no bullet was ever recovered that matched that small size.)
Senseney testified that his Special Operations Division at Fort Detrick had received assignments from the CIA to develop exotic weaponry. One of the weapons was a hand-held dart gun that could shoot a poison dart into a guard dog to put it out of action for several hours. The dart and the poison left no trace so that examination would not reveal that the dogs had been put out of action. The CIA ordered about 50 of these weapons and used them operationally. Senseney said that the darts could have been used to kill human beings and he could not rule out the possibility that this had been done by the CIA. He said he had developed a dart-launching device that looked like an umbrella.
A special type of poison developed induces a heart attack and leaves no trace of any external influence unless an autopsy is conducted to check for this particular poison. The CIA revealed this poison in various accounts in the early 1970s.
Among the witnesses, important people and conspirators who might have been eliminated this way are: Clay Shaw, J. Edgar Hoover, Earlene Roberts (Oswald's land-lady) and Adlai Stevenson.
A second category, already discussed in the Robert Kennedy and George Wallace shootings, is the use of a "programmed" assassin. The Manchurian Candidate always seemed to be a science fiction story. It is now well known that the CIA has used hypnosis and "programming" to achieve a number of objectives, including murder. Certainly there is little doubt that Sirhan Sirhan was under hypnosis when he wrote in his diary and when he fired the shots in the general direction of Robert Kennedy.[7] There is also evidence that Arthur Bremer was "programmed" to shoot at George Wallace. It is conceivable that one of the assassins in Dealey Plaza could have been "programmed". A man surfaced after 1975 who--under deprogramming--remembered a firing situation resembling Dealey Plaza. However, it is much less likely that the PCG had to use hypnosis in the JFK murder.
It is completely untrue that Oswald was programmed, as the book "Were We Controlled?" by Lincoln Lawrence (an alias for radio commentator Art Ford) postulates. The evidence shows Oswald didn't fire a shot, that he was on the second floor of the TSBD Building at the time of the shots, and that he was very calm until Patrolman Baker pointed a gun at him. Strangely enough, Ford's thesis is true. We were controlled by the PCG, although he had the details wrong.
A third popular technique is, of course, the patsy. The PCG has developed this to the level of a real science. The assassination is allowed to be obvious, but the assassin is presented as a single madman or criminal who acts alone. Lee Harvey Oswald, Jack Ruby, James Earl Ray, Sirhan Sirhan and Arthur Bremer have all been patsies. They are not all exactly alike, nor is the way in which they were used the same in each case. For example, Oswald and Ray did not fire any shots, while Sirhan, Ruby and Bremer did. Sirhan and Bremer were "programmed", whereas Ruby was talked into killing Oswald by his friends in the PCG. Four of the five men were framed; a lot of evidence was manufactured and planted to implicate them, including fake diaries, fake photographs, planted guns, bullets and shells, and men using their identities. The one who did not fit this category was Ruby. It was not needed in his case because he killed Oswald before live television and believed until the day he died of cancer that his friends were going to get him out of jail in exchange for his "patriotic" act.
The use of "seconds", men who looked like the patsy and who used his name (true of Oswald, Ray and Sirhan) is a common intelligence technique. The planting of fake photos in the case of Oswald required some relatively special photographic facilities, but the job was not done well enough to avoid detection.
A fourth technique is the "accidental" death. Many witnesses and conspirators have been murdered in this way. Lee Bowers, the railroad yard control tower man who saw the real assassins behind the picket fence in Dealey Plaza, was killed when his car rammed into a concrete abutment in Dallas (it was traveling at high speed). The doctor who examined Bowers prior to his removal from the car, stated that he probably received an injection of some kind prior to the crash. Louis Lomax, the black author who was getting close to the truth in the Martin Luther King case, was killed in Arizona when his car was forced off the road after he was made to drive at high speed. Hale Boggs disappeared in an airplane crash that left no trace of the plane. And of course the classic "accident" occurred at Chappaquiddick.
A fifth technique is an induced death that produces another finding of the cause either by disguising the true cause or by controlling the coroner or those in charge of burial. Examples are: David Ferrie's murder by means of a karate chop to the back of his head, disguised as an embolism of the brain, Clay Shaw's murder by means unknown because there was no autopsy and complete control of his removal and burial; Jack Ruby's supposed death by cancer in jail (real cause unknown because he was never out of the PCG's hands until he was under ground).
Then there is a favorite sixth technique: mock suicide. Examples of PCG murders that somehow became suicides are: Hank Killam, a husband of one of Ruby's dancers, who committed suicide by throwing himself through a plate glass window off the street in Miami; Betty Mooney, one of Ruby's girls who hung herself in her jail cell by using her leopard-skin tights; Roger Craig, who shot himself; Jesus Crispin, who knew Sirhan, supposedly killed himself in his jail cell; Grant Stockdale, who threw himself off the top of a tall building in Miami.
There are some on the list who were admittedly murdered, but supposedly not by the PCG. These include Robert Perrin, Nancy Perrin's husband; Buddy Walters, deputy sheriff under Sheriff Decker, shot by a man he was trying to arrest; Eladio Del Valle, a cohort of Ferrie, killed in Miami by an axe on the same day Ferrie was murdered; Rolando Masferrer, blown up in his car; Eddy Benevides, shot by an unknown assailant (he recovered). The cover-ups in each of these cases were put into effect by controlling the investigation or simply by not having one.
The complete list of deaths, including the eight major ones (JFK, RFK, MLK, Mary Jo Kopechne, Lee Harvey Oswald, David Ferrie, Ruby and Clay Shaw) numbers over a hundred. Here is a partial list:
1. John Kennedy 2. Robert Kennedy 3. Martin Luther King 4. Mary Jo Kopechne 5. Lee Harvey Oswald 6. David Ferrie 7. Jack Ruby 8. Clay Shaw 9. Buddy Walthers 10. Roger Craig 11. Eladio Del Valle 12. Rolando Masferrer 13. Hank Killam 14. Rose Cherami 15. Hale Boggs 16. J. Edgar Hoover 17. Louis Lomax 18. Lee Bowers, Jr. 19. Jesus Crispin 20. Jim Koethe 21. Bill Hunter 22. Tom Howard 23. Earlene Roberts 24. Betty McDonald 25. Eddy Benevides 26. Robert Perrin 27. Gary Underhill 28. Bill Chesher 29. Dorothy Kilgallen 30. David Goldstein 31. Levens (first name unknown) 32. Teresa Norton 33. Warren Reynolds 34. Harold Russell 35. Marilyn Moore Walle 36. William Whaley 37. James Worrell, Jr. 38. Captain Frank Martin 39. Mrs. Earl T. Smith 40. Karyn Kupcinet 41. Albert Guy Bogard 42. Hiram Ingram 43. Nicholas Chetta 44. Mary Bledsoe 45. Jude Preston Battle 46. John M. Crawford 47. Richard Carr 48. Kathy Fullmer 49. Clyde Johnson 50. Reverend A. D. W. King 51. Carole Tyler 52. Dr. Mary Sherman 53. Grant Stockdale 54. J. A. Milteer 55. Hugh Ward 56. Perry Russo 57. Maurice Gatlin, Sr. 58. W. Guy Banister 59. Charles P. Cabell 60. Dorothy Hunt 61. Michelle Clark 62. John Roselli 63. Sam Giancana 64. Fred Lee Crisman 65. Carlos Prio Socarras 66. Charles Nicoletti 67. Jimmy Hoffa 68. George De Mohrenschildt 69. General Donald Donaldson 70. Lou Staples 71. William C. Sullivan 72. James Chaney
The large majority of these murders eliminated witnesses to, participants in, or investigators of one of the assassinations. People involved with the participants in one of the assassinations or cover-ups were also listed above. The participants were: Jack Ruby, David Ferrie, Clay Shaw, Rolando Masferrer, J. Edgar Hoover (in the cover-up), and Robert Perrin. There were four investigators: Jim Koethe, Louis Lomax, Dorothy Kilgallen and Hale Boggs. The rest were witnesses or associates.
Two articles[8] written in 1976 analyzed some of these deaths and concluded that they were not accidents unconnected with the assassinations of our leaders. Another analysis by the authors demonstrated that fifty of the first seventy murders met three criteria for proving death by foul means. All involved people directly or indirectly linked to the major assassinations. All met death under violent or very strange circumstances. No autopsies were performed in any of these murders.
The Charles Senseney dart weapon might have been used in some of the murders. The injection given Lee Bowers produced such a paralytic and terrorized expression on Bowers' face that the doctor examining his body exclaimed he had never seen such before. Grant Stockdale was found to have died of a heart attack on his way to the street from the top of a building (a dart might have killed him).
[1] "Forgive My Grief" Volumes I, II, III, IV, Penn Jones, Jr., Self Published, Midlothian, Texas.[2] "Accessories After the Fact," Sylvia Meagher, Scarecrow Press, N.Y., 1976
[3] "Miami Herald," March, 1976.
[4] "The Mysterious Death of Clay Shaw," Richard Russell, "True Magazine."
[5] "The Umbrella Man," R.B. Cutler, & R.E. Sprague, "Gallery Magazine," June, 1978.
[6] "New York Times," September 19, 1975.
[7] "RFK Must Die!," Robert Kaiser, E.P. Dutton & Co. Inc., N.Y.C., 1970.
[8] (a) Self published article by Gary Schoener -- Minneapolis, Minn. Researcher.
(b) Assassination Information Bureau (AIB), Cambridge, Mass, Research project and article.
Chapter 11
Nixon and Ford -- The Pardon and the Tapes
As the Power Control Group grew larger and the number of murders increased through the years, it became more and more difficult to keep the veil of secrecy surrounding the takeover intact. As Nixon's instability increased, the danger of revealing the secret superstructure to the American people increased.
Watergate and Nixon's resignation from office nearly ruined everything for the Power Control Group. A splinter faction in the CIA began showing strength and all of the dirt might have been leaked to the press and to the people. Nixon himself had pulled the most dangerous boner in the history of the PCG. He installed a secret tape recording system that recorded a number of conversations about the PCG's murders, assassinations and dirty tricks. Even worse, Nixon did not destroy the tapes before the Congress found out about them and went after them. As soon as it became obvious that Nixon would be forced to resign, the PCG had to use a desperation strategy.
Gerald R. Ford pardoned Richard M. Nixon on September 8, 1974: such was the PCG's strategy. Many skeptical U.S. citizens nodded their heads knowingly and assumed Nixon had made his "deal" with Ford when he nominated him for the vice presidency. Evans and Novak[1] assumed that Julie Nixon Eisenhower talked Ford into the pardon on grounds that Nixon's health was poor. The Ford's fears for Nixon's health didn't seem to convince very many news media people who saw a rosy-cheeked, apparently robust ex-president in San Clemente.[2]
The pardon seemed to most Americans and news editors a gross error in judgment and a miscarriage of justice. But once again the United States was fooled. This time, the PCG, Nixon and Ford managed to pull the wool over the eyes of the public and to narrowly escape revealing what can be called "the entire rotten crust at the top of American power." Any reasonable hypothesis about what actually happened, based on the evidence at hand, had not been even remotely suggested by either Congress or the media by 1976.
Any explanation of the situation leading to the pardon begins with the relationship between Gerald Ford and Richard Nixon. It goes back to 1960, the year Mr. Nixon planned the overthrow of Castro's Cuba. As earlier chapters have made clear, the U2 incident and the Bay of Pigs was the beginning.
In 1960, Nixon and the White House action officer worked on the plans for what was later called the Bay of Pigs invasion.[3] Prior to that time the PCG and Nixon had accumulated plenty of reasons to want Castro overthrown. The anti-Communist attitude was the superficial reason. Beneath it were Nixon's connections with the Mafia and his friendships and financial holdings that were greatly damaged when Castro closed the casinos run by the mob in Havana.[4] When Nixon and Kennedy debated about the Cuban situation in the 1960 campaign, Nixon purposefully lied to the American people about U.S. plans for an invasion.[5] When he narrowly lost to Kennedy, it created a deep wound, and he and the PCG spent much of the next three years planning revenge.
Nixon became a tool of a number of Cubans and Americans, both inside the CIA and outside, who agreed with him that casting out Castro was highly desirable. One of these men was E. Howard Hunt.[6] Another was Bernard Barker.[7] A third was Carlos Prio Socarras.[8] Richard Bissell, Richard Helms and Allen Dulles were the three higher level men in the PCG.
These Nixon cronies and financial partners became involved with the PCG. They murdered John Kennedy.[9] Whether Nixon was directly involved in the PCG's planning for the assassination is still open to question, although one researcher believes that he was.[10] There certainly is substantial evidence that Nixon was out to at least politically sink Kennedy and Johnson, and aimed to do so in Dallas immediately before Kennedy was killed. (See section on evidence).[11]
Whether Nixon was directly involved in planning the assassination of President John F. Kennedy does not have to be settled here. What is important is that Nixon was directly involved in covering up the truth about who did kill Kennedy. Evidence from the Nixon-Haldeman tapes of June 1972 indicated that Nixon knew the truth about the assassination when he suggested Gerald Ford be part of the Warren Commission.[12]
A close personal friendship had developed between Ford and Nixon during their days together in the Congress, when both were strong, ultraconservative, "red, white and blue", anti-Communist, "religious" members who thought and talked alike.
When Nixon realized that John Kennedy had been killed almost under his nose in Dallas by some of his Bay of Pigs friends, the PCG convinced him he had to do everything in his power to cover it up and to bide his time until his powerful military and intelligence friends could place him in the White House. It took one more murder by the PCG (Robert Kennedy) to get him there, and still another attempted murder to keep him there (George Wallace).
Control over the investigations of these murders was essential for Nixon and the PCG. In order to guide a presidential commission away from the truth, the closed small circle of people in the PCG who knew what had happened to John Kennedy had to be enlarged. Allen Dulles was no problem. He knew the cause was an intelligence/military one from the day it happened. Earl Warren was a different matter. He had to be fooled and later talked into remaining silent "for the good of the country."
A ringleader inside the Warren Commission was crucial. It had to be someone the PCG and Nixon could trust, one who had an honest and trustworthy appearance. Nixon called on Gerry Ford, and he convinced LBJ that Ford should be on the Commission.[13]
Nixon told Ford at some point prior to January, 1964 who killed JFK and why. He convinced Ford that every effort should be made to make sure Oswald was found to be the lone assassin. Ford did an excellent job. He not only steered the Commission away from the facts[14] whenever a key witness was interviewed or an embarrassing situation developed, but he also nailed Oswald's coffin shut personally by publishing his own book on Oswald.[15] This, coming from the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, served to firmly plant in the American mind the idea that there was no conspiracy, that Oswald was the lone assassin, and that the Warren Commission had done a good job.
From the day Ford's book was published, Nixon and Ford became totally beholden to each other. They also both became totally beholden to the members of the PCG who were at or near the top of things and who were part of the small knowledgeable circle. Other members of the PCG's inner circle included J. Edgar Hoover and Richard Helms.
No one could be permitted by the PCG to come into power in the White House, the CIA, the Justice Department or the FBI unless they were part of the PCG and willing to keep quiet and help suppress the truth about the JFK assassination. The PCG's membership widened, of necessity, when Robert Kennedy was killed and Nixon became president. The people involved in killing Robert Kennedy and Nixon's top aides had to be told the truth. This included Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Kissinger, Mitchell (who had the job of controlling Hoover's successors in continuing the coverups) and possibly others. Mitchell was instrumental in stopping Jim Garrison's investigation of Clay Shaw and other PCG members and in totally discrediting Garrison.[16] He was aided by Richard Helms and others in the PCG through CIA support in the Clay Shaw trial cover-up efforts.[17]
The White House plumber section of the PCG decided in 1972, with or without Nixon's knowledge and approval, to assassinate George Wallace, so that Nixon would be assured of the conservative vote. The PCG and its debts once again grew. E. Howard Hunt and Charles Colson, along with Tony Ulasewicz, Donald Segretti and others, were in a position to make demands in exchange for their silence. The Hunt million-dollar blackmail threat to reveal "seedy things" or "hankypanky" was never explainable in terms of Watergate or the Ellsberg break-ins. But three assassinations would certainly be worth a cool million to keep Hunt silent. Again, the Haldeman-Nixon June 23, 1972 tapes are revealing.[18]
When the Watergate crisis occurred, Nixon was trapped by his own tapes, and the PCG was in grave danger. Discussions with Haldeman, Mitchell and others mention the Kennedy assassination conspiracy and the Wallace murder attempt on tape. The PCG was suddenly threatened as a group. The tapes couldn't all be destroyed because too many Secret Service people knew about them. Haldeman and Nixon managed to erase one revealing 18 1/2 minute section about the assassinations, but who could remember exactly what telephone calls or Oval Office conversations might have mentioned the truth about the three murders?
The PCG and Nixon again sensed the need for a successor who would keep quiet. They called on Gerry Ford when Agnew was forced out. Ford and Nixon, bound inextricably together by their mutual cover-up of the assassinations, worked out a deal. Nixon nominated Ford to be his Vice President. The Senate, completely bamboozled by Nixon and Ford, never asked Ford any important questions about the assassinations nor his performance on the Warren Commission. When they asked Ford about his book, he committed perjury twice before the Senate (see item # 15 in the list ennumerated below).
Nixon and Ford agreed that Ford would keep quiet if Nixon remained silent and that Ford would succeed Nixon if he were forced to resign or be impeached. They agreed to a pardon afterward. But the most critical part of the arrangement was that those tapes revealing the truth about the assassinations be kept out of circulation. When the Supreme Court ruled that the tapes must be turned over, it was then time to implement their agreed-upon strategy.
In addition, Jaworski, Colson, Mitchell, Kissinger, Haldeman, Ehrlichman, the Warren Commission, Hunt, Helms, Shaw and anyone else in the PCG had to be bought off, pardoned, protected or killed to insure their silences.
Leon Jaworski resigned. People asked why. The real answer was buried in the fact that Jaworski knew what had been going on. He knew because of information passed on to him by the Ervin Committee and Cox regarding the assassination and the cover-up. He was also personally involved in 1964 in the JFK cover-up.
Jaworski could have been a problem, even though he helped with the JFK cover-up from the beginning.[19] Hunt was taken care of by getting him out of jail, buying him a large estate in Florida and paying him a lot of money.[20] Helms could be counted on. Kissinger may have been a problem, but he finally agreed. His wiretaps were ordered to find out who knew about the assassinations. Hoover was dead. Clay Shaw was murdered.[21] Warren was dead. Richard Russell was dead. John Sherman Cooper was bought off (he received an important ambassadorship). John J. McCloy was too old to worry about.
That left Colson, Mitchell, Haldeman, and Ehrlichman, plus some other small fry. The PCG strategy as planned with these men involved pardons for all of them in exchange for their silence, especially Haldeman and Mitchell, who not only knew what happened to JFK, but who also took overt actions to cover-up. (Haldeman erased the 18 1/2 minutes of tape and Mitchell nailed Jim Garrison.)
Newer members of the PCG may cause some problems. They all have to know the truth by now. Rockefeller and Alex Haig must know. George Bush, William Colby, Edward Levi and Clarence Kelly knew because of their access to the records, and they must have agreed to cover-up continuance. Ford and his cronies in the House had to continue to knock out any efforts by Henry B. Gonzalez of Texas to start a new House Committee investigation of the JFK assassination. They were very successful in their control of the House Rules Committee. Haig seemed to have been bought off with the promise of a top NATO post in exchange for his silence. And control over Frank Church and the Senate Intelligence Committee was necessary.
Gerald Ford remained committed to the PCG and to Nixon.
The tapes had to be controlled and edited at all costs. Nixon no doubt required help in listening to the tapes after Haldeman left and in sorting out those in which assassinations and cover-ups were discussed. General Haig was undoubtedly the man he selected to do the dirty work. It was almost certain that no tapes would be turned over to Judge Sirica or to Jaworski with any assassination references left on them. One of the tapes demanded by Jaworski had such references. This is the recording made on June 23, 1972 in which Nixon and Haldeman are discussing Watergate just six days after the break-in.
The Nixon transcript of that tape turned over to Judge Sirica upon orders of the Supreme Court showed many sections labelled "unintelligible." It is a near certainty that the critical sections were edited out by Nixon and General Haig before they were turned over to Sirica and prior to their transcription. Judge Sirica was the only person in the chain of possession of that tape who could have been counted on to make a scientific analysis of the tape to see whether it was tampered with before he received it. His near brush with death in 1975 must be viewed in that light and in the light of the PCG's use of weapon-induced heart attacks.
The rest of Nixon's tapes that were still in Gerald Ford's possession and control might have contained many references to assassinations and cover-ups. Rather than go through all of them and edit or erase the critical material, it was more likely that Ford would either turn them over to Nixon for total destruction or sit on them as long as he was president.
The evidence for the Power Control Group's and Ford/Nixon's strategy is as follows:
1. Nixon was White House action officer on Cuban invasion plans in 1960.
2. Nixon was in contact with Hunt and others during the Bay of Pigs planning.
3. Nixon lied to the American people by his own admission about the Bay of Pigs during his TV debates with Kennedy in 1960.
4. Nixon was financially linked to the Mafia and to Cuban casino operations before Castro took over.
5. Nixon was acquainted with Hunt, Baker, Martinez, Sturgis, Carlos Prio Socarras, and other Watergate people and anti-Castro people in Florida, and he was financially linked to Baker, Martinez and Socarras.
6. Hunt, Baker, Sturgis and Socarras were connected with the assassination group in the murder of JFK.
7. Nixon was in Dallas for three days, including the morning of the JFK assassination. He was trying to stir up trouble for Kennedy.
8. Nixon went to Dallas under false pretenses. There was no board meeting of the Pepsi Cola Company as he announced his law firm had had to attend.
9. Nixon did not admit being in Dallas on the day Kennedy was shot and did not reveal the true reason for his trip. He held two press conferences on the two days before the assassination, attacking both Kennedy and Johnson and emphasizing the Democratic political problems in Texas.
10. Research indicates that Nixon either knew in advance about assassination plans, or learned about them soon after the assassination.
11. Nixon proposed to Lyndon Johnson that Gerald Ford serve on the Warren Commission.
12. Ford led the Commission cover-up by controlling the questioning of key witnesses and by several other means.
13. Ford helped firmly plant the idea that Oswald was the only assassin and that there was no conspiracy by publishing his own book, "Lee Harvey Oswald: Portrait of the Assassin."
14. Ford purposefully covered up the conspiracy of the PCG in the JFK assassination and also covered up the fact that Oswald was a paid informer for the FBI. He did this by dismissing the subject in his book as worthless rumor and by keeping the executive sessions of the Commission (where Oswald's FBI informer status was discussed) classified Top Secret.
15. Ford continued the cover-up when he was questioned before being confirmed by the Senate as Vice President. He lied under oath twice to the Senate Committee. He stated that he had written his book about Oswald with no access to classified documents. He lied about this because his book used classified documents about Oswald's FBI informer status. He lied when he said that the book was entitled, "Lee Harvey Oswald: Portrait of *an* Assassin." This was significant in 1973 because the public by then had become very skeptical about a lone assassin. By changing one word in the title, Ford made the book seem a little less like what it actually was--an effort to make Oswald the assassin.
16. Jaworski aided in the JFK cover-up by sitting on evidence of conspiracy accumulated by Waggoner Carr, Texas Attorney General, who he represented in liaison with the Warren Commission. He also stopped the critical testimony of Jack Ruby when he testified before the Warren Commission, and diverted attention away from Ruby's intent to reveal the conspiracy to kill both Kennedy and Oswald.
17. Nixon became president in 1968 only because Robert Kennedy was killed by a conspiracy. Nixon was well aware of the conspiracy whether or not he approved of it in advance.
18. John Mitchell and J. Edgar Hoover joined Nixon and the lower level members of the PCG in covering up the RFK murder conspiracy. They classified the evidence "Top Secret" and murdered several witnesses, controlled the judge in the Sirhan trial and the district attorney and the chief of police in Los Angeles during and after the trial. They still control these people and the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. Clarence Kelly also became involved.
19. The plumbers group ordered the assassination of George Wallace in 1972 to insure Nixon's election by picking up Wallace's vote (about 18%, according to polls).
20. J. Edgar Hoover and Richard Helms were aware of who killed John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy. They helped cover-up both conspiracies.
21. John Mitchell controlled the trial of Clay Shaw and the Garrison investigation and discredited Garrison by framing him in a New Orleans gambling case.
22. Nixon and Haldeman discussed the assassination of John Kennedy, the conspiracy, Hunt's involvement, the possibility that Hunt might talk, the cover-up, the Bay of Pigs relationship between Nixon, Hunt and the other PCG members, and the briefing Nixon might have had to give anyone running against him in 1972, on matters of "national security".
23. Nixon and Mitchell discussed the assassinations and the attempt to assassinate George Wallace. Mitchell executed orders to suppress the truth about these events.
24. Gerald Ford had possession of the most critical tapes on which assassinations and cover-ups were discussed.
25. Jaworski could be counted on to keep the assassination material under wraps even after his resignation. He was aware of the conspiracy evidence and cover-up in all three cases (JFK, RFK, George Wallace).
26. Hunt was taken care of and will keep silent. He had been out of jail and living on a beautiful $100,000 estate in Florida with plenty of money, across the street from his Bay of Pigs friend, Manuel Artime.
27. Clay Shaw was murdered by the PCG, undoubtedly to keep him from talking once the truth about his CIA position was revealed by Victor Marchetti. He was embalmed before the coroner could determine the cause of death. Evidence indicates he was killed somewhere and then brought back to his apartment.
28. Hale Boggs, a Warren, Commission member, was possibly killed by the PCG. Bogg's airplane disappeared in Alaska. No trace of it was ever found and no explanation of how the plane could have crashed has ever been given. Mrs. Boggs has expressed doubts about it being an accident.
29. Four of the seven Warren Commission members are dead: Warren, Dulles, Russell and Boggs. Of the remaining members, Ford was President, John McCloy is retired and living in Connecticut, and John Sherman Cooper was made ambassador to East Germany.
30. Richard Russell, Hale Boggs and Cooper believed there was a conspiracy in the JFK assassination. Russell and Boggs both said so publicly.
31. Haldeman erased 18 1/2 minutes of a taped discussion with Nixon. This tape undoubtedly contained "national security" matters. The fact that Haldeman did the erasing can easily be determined by tracing the trail of possession of the tape from the day it was taken out of the vault to the day the gap was discovered. Haldeman had the tape with the recorder alone for nearly 48 hours. No one else had the tape alone long enough to do the erasing.
32. Ford and the PCG contemplated pardons for Mitchell, Haldeman, Ehrlichman and possibly others who know the number one secret.
33. Ford's statements to the sub-committee of the House Judiciary Committee concerning his pardon of Nixon dodged the real issue. Only Elizabeth Holtzman asked questions coming close to the number one secret. When she asked about a prior agreement, Ford said, "I have made no deal, there was no deal, *since I became Vice President*." Those last few words were not reported by the press, but a large number of Americans watched and heard him say them. Of course he spoke truthfully because the "deal" was made *before* he became Vice President.
[1] Evans & Novak column -- September 12. 1974.[2] "Paris Herald Tribune" -- September 12, 1974.
[3] "Compulsive Spy," Tad Szulc, Viking Press, 1974.
[4] "Nixon and the Mafia," Jeff Gerth, "Sundance," December, 1972.
[5] "My Six Crises," Richard M. Nixon.
[6] "Compulsive Spy."
[7] "Nixon and the Mafia."
[8] "Nixon, Bay of Pigs & Watergate," -- R.E. Sprague, "Computers and Automation," January, 1973.
[9] "Nixon, Bay of Pigs & Watergate."
[10] Trowbridge Ford, Holy Cross College, Boston, MA, Several papers and articles.
[11] Warren Commission Hearings & Exhibits -- Vol. 23, Pages 941-943.
[12] Nixon Transcript of June 23 1972 tape -- "New York Times," August 6, 1974.
[13] Trowbridge Ford -- Article on Gerald Ford & Warren Commission.
[14] Ibid.
[15] Gerald Ford "Lee Harvey Oswald: Portrait of the Assassin."
[16] "The Framing of Jim Garrison", R.E. Sprague, "Computers and Automation," December, 1973.
[17] "The CIA and the Kennedy Assassination" -- Unpublished article by R.E. Sprague.
[18] Nixon tape, June 23, 1972.
[19] Warren Commission Exhibits -- Testimony of Jack Ruby, Vol. V, Pages 181-213 and Vol. XIV, pages 504-571. Also Trowbridge Ford article on Jaworski.
[20] "Washington Watch" and Triss Coffin newsletter, August 10, 1974.
[21] Zodiac News Service release -- August 20, 1974.
The Second Line of Defense
Cover-Ups in 1975 and 1976
The mini-war waged by assassination researchers and a few Congressmen from 1964 to 1976 to reopen the major assassination inquiries never really disturbed the Power Control Group. But in 1975, simultaneous with the revelations about all of the terrible things the CIA and the FBI did, the researchers and a few of their friends in the media and in Congress began to draw more attention than was comfortable for the PCG.
A special renewed effort became necessary to extend the cover-ups. Part of this effort was a program to bring the media back under control and to reinforce media support of the cover-ups. This has been discussed in some detail in Chapter 9. Another part of this effort was the expansion of the Rockefeller Commission's assignment to reinforce the cover-up of the JFK assassination conspiracy. Separate new efforts were necessary to control the courts and lawyers and other public officials in the King and Robert Kennedy assassination conspiracies. These were brought about by appeals for new trials by James Earl Ray and Sirhan B. Sirhan. The appeals were accompanied by new revelations. New publicity was given to demands for an investigation into the Wallace shooting by prominent people, including Wallace himself.
A minor success in the JFK case was scored by researchers with the assistance of Dick Gregory, Geraldo Rivera of ABC, Tom Snyder of NBC, Mort Sahl and others. They managed to have the Zapruder film and other photographic evidence of conspiracy shown on local and national television. No one of any intelligence outside the PCG who has even seen the Zapruder film questions the fact that shots came from two different directions in Dealey Plaza. This breakthrough after eleven years of effort put new public and Congressional pressures on the PCG. It was closely followed by a grass roots campaign conducted by Mark Lane's Citizens Commission of Inquiry to reopen the JFK case. Pressure was brought to bear on Congressmen by their local constituents as a result of this campaign. Henry Gonzalez from Texas and Thomas Downing from Virginia introduced resolutions in the House of Representatives calling for the reopening of all four cases and the JFK case, so the public and Congress had a formal base to work with and a goal to reach.
New revelations were made in 1975 about the FBI's and the CIA's information withheld from the Warren Commission. From Dallas came the admission that Oswald had been in closer contact with the FBI than believed and that Jack Ruby had been an FBI informer.
Perhaps the most dangerous development for the PCG was the creation of a sub-committee under the Church committee to investigate the JFK assassination. This two-man subcommittee formed by Senator Gary Hart of Colorado and Senator Schweiker of Pennsylvania became a real threat when it was given authority by the full Senate Committee on Intelligence to conduct their own independent investigation with a staff of nine people. It would be harder to control their efforts than to control the Church committee, where the PCG had several strong allies, including Senators Goldwater and Tower.
Gerald Ford, William Colby, Richard Helms (from his faraway post in Asia) and the other PCG members developed a three-prong strategy for the JFK case in order to cope with all of these new problems.
First came the reinforcement of the lone-assassin Warren Commission scenario. Ford selected David Belin to be chief of staff of the Rockefeller Commission. Ford admitted that Belin in his Rockefeller Commission role--as well as in his advocacy to reopen the JFK case in order to prove the Warren Commission findings correct--was acting as "one of our best staff members." This was necessary so that the Rockefeller Commission could add a new assignment to its original charter and investigate the CIA and FBI. The new assignment was to prove that all of the new questions about the Zapruder film and the evidence for assassins on the grassy knoll were answerable in support of Warren Commission conclusions.
The former Warren commissioner now President, who led the cover-up and pardoned Nixon, nominated the Warren Commission staff lawyer who led the cover-up at the working level as the new Rockefeller Commission chief of staff.
Belin did his job like a faithful dog. He personally called in the most dangerous researchers, including Cyril Wecht and Dick Gregory's cohorts, Ralph Schoenman and Robert Groden, who had been making all of the noise on television. With the help (and possibly the knowledge) of only one other staff man, Belin interviewed these witnesses briefly, almost casually: then he misquoted them, edited their statements, or left them out of the Rockefeller Report. He purposefully did not call any researchers other than Wecht who might have presented some embarrassing evidence of conspiracy. He instead called a number of "experts" from the stable of PCG people, including some of the Ramsey Clark doctors panel that had examined the medical evidence in 1968 to back up the Warren Commission during the Garrison investigation and the Clay Shaw trial. He also called on reliable Dr. Lattimer, the urologist, to testify again about the bullet wounds above the navel.
Belin wrote the chapter of the Rockefeller Commission Report himself. It formed a base for controlled media presentations of the lone assassin scenario. CBS used much of the basic material in its series in 1975. Others quoted liberally from the favorite misquotes of Cyril Wecht and the statements of the CIA doctors concerning the fatal shot at frame 313 of the Zapruder film. That had always been a sticky point with Belin and the other Warren Commission defenders and technical cover-up artists in the PCG. Belin was nearly driven to distraction at times, trying to avoid any discussion of the back-to-the-left acceleration of JFK's head following the Z313 shot.
He was therefore delighted to be able to produce a medical opinion that the back-to-the-left motion was consistent with a shot directly from the rear. The fact that no ballistics experts or physics experts were called to testify about Newton's second law of motion and what happens to an object when struck by a rifle bullet traveling at twice to three times the speed of sound was never questioned by the Rockefeller panel or the media. Belin easily eliminated the assassins on the grassy knoll simply by persuading the FBI to say the assassins weren't there at all.
Over a period of several months in the second half of 1975, the PCG (through its control agents in the 15 media organizations, and by using Belin's creation) hammered away again at the lone assassin thesis. They caused the wave of excitement and furor created by Gregory, Lane, Groden, Schoenman and their friends to die out. Lectures on university campuses, discussions on FM radio talk shows late at night, and conspiracy books and articles in underground newspapers appeared as always. But there was no more showing of the Zapruder film on ABC, NBC or CBS; nor was there any talk of conspiracy in any of the major fifteen national news media organizations.
The second part of the strategy was to create a fall-back, or second line of defense in the JFK case. If necessary the same idea could also be applied in the other three cases when the situation became too dangerous. There was less danger in 1975 in the RFK, MLK and Wallace cases because the researchers and the media had not yet consistently begun to tie in the CIA, FBI and other PCG high level people. In 1976 a danger emerged in the MLK case when it was revealed that J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI might be linked and that Hoover attempted to get King to commit suicide. However, that development occurred several months after the implementation of the strategy began in the JFK case. Of course there had never been any danger with the Chappaquiddick crime, because few researchers realized what the PCG had accomplished in that event. No suspicions existed in Congress either, beyond some curiosity about Tony Ulasewicz and E. Howard Hunt's strange visits to the island and to Hyannisport.
There may be several second lines of defense positions already prepared for the JFK case. The one that has been implemented in 1975 and 1976 is the "Castro did it in revenge" position. The PCG realizes that while the media will behave like slaves to present the first line of defense (Oswald did it alone), the public isn't buying it any more. In 1969, shortly after the Clay Shaw trial ended, the percent of people disbelieving the lone assassin theory fell to its all-time low of just over 50%. By 1976 it had risen to 80%, despite the faithful efforts of CBS, "Time," "Newsweek," et al. More importantly, Richard Schweiker, Gary Hart, Henry Gonzalez, Thomas Downing, and a very large part of the House and Senate weren't buying the lone assassin story any more either.
So, a good second line of defense story was needed. It had to be one that the House and Senate and Schweiker, Church, Downing and hopefully Gonzalez would buy. It had to be one which could be created out of existing facts and then shored up by planted evidence, faked records, dependable witnesses lying under oath, and once again, the control and use of the media. The "Castro did it in revenge" story met these requirements. The media had already helped to some extent by publishing information from Jack Anderson, Lyndon B. Johnson and others about Castro's turning around various CIA agents or sending agents of his own, including Oswald, to assassinate JFK. Perhaps even more importantly, Senator Schweiker said he believed Castro might have been behind the assassination and that this possibility should be investigated.
The Castro story strategy was implemented in 1975. Gradually at first, a story appeared here or there in the press about the assassins assigned to kill Castro. Then the media began to reprint the Jack Anderson story about Castro's turning around of some of these agents. New authors of the story appeared. Anderson's original story seemed to be forgotten. These articles never seemed to have an identifiable source or any proof. Hank Greenspun of the Las Vegas newspaper circuit and the man involved with Howard Hughes, Larry O'Brien, released a story to the "Chicago Tribune." He said his information came from reliable sources.
The momentum began to build. More and more "leaked" information about Castro and assassins and Oswald being a pro-Castroite hit the establishment media. The stories and the sequence of events began to be predictable, if a researcher had understood the PCG and their fight for survival in 1975 and 1976. Then the Church committee and the Schweiker sub-committee issued statements that they were going to investigate the "Castro did it" theory. The PCG began feeding them information in various forms and various ways that would back up the idea. The JFK sex scandal was released by Judith Exner. The PCG provided her with an incentive to spice up the "Castro did it" theory with a little sex involving JFK and one of the assassins assigned to Castro, John Roselli.
The PCG realized they had the double advantage of drawing attention to Roselli and Castro and the turn-around assassin idea, while at the same time gnawing away at JFK's image. There was press speculation that Exner was a Mafia plant in the White House to find out how much JFK knew about the Castro assassination plans. Since Frank Sinatra had introduced Judith to both JFK and Roselli, there was speculation about Sinatra's Mafia friends linked to the rat pack, to Peter Lawford, to JFK's sister and to JFK himself. All of this was meat for the PCG's grinder. It certainly drew Schweiker's attention away from Helms, Hunt, Gabaldin, Shaw, Ferrie, Seymour and all of the other operatives involved in JFK's murder. In fact, the Schweiker staff, which had the names and locations of several participants and witnesses that could pinpoint the Helms-Hunt-Shaw-Gabaldin group as the real assassins as early as September, 1975 did not interview more than one or two of them and did not follow up on the rest at all. Their attention was diverted by the second line of defense strategy and they were also influenced by infiltration by the PCG.
Part three of the strategy was the control of the Congress and the committees in the House and the Senate concerned with investigations of the intelligence community and the JFK assassination. This subject will be covered in depth in Chapter 14. Suffice it to say here that the PCG planted people on the staffs of the Church committee and the Schweiker sub-committee. They exercised control over the other committees in the House and Senate (Abzug, Don Edwards, Pike committees) and they controlled the House Rules committee, which effectively blocked the Gonzalez and Downing resolutions for over a year.
The CIA has always had its supporters in both House and Senate. So has the FBI. So did J. Edgar Hoover (sometimes through blackmail) and Richard Helms. There was a story published in the "Washington Post" about a dinner party given by Tom Braden, former CIA man, at which all of Richard Helms' old buddies rallied to his defense. Several wellknown Congressmen were there and Senator Symington gave a rousing speech supporting Helms in his hour of need.
Gerald Ford, of course, as then titular leader of the PCG, had many old friends in the House. Nixon had many supporters in both House and Senate and still has to this day. Thus, control by the PCG over Congress and committees is not all that difficult. Specific examples will be given in Chapter 14 of how this really works. So the cover-ups continue. The PCG is still in the driver's seat. The three parts of their strategy work very well. The lone assassin story is repeated at least once a month in some media source or other. The "Castro did it" story will no doubt make its official appearance again.
The Congress is under control. Gonzalez was not under control, nor was Downing. But they couldn't do much without the Rules Committee, which was controlled.
The people are left with no effective way of doing anything about the PCG and their crimes. What is worse, there is no way the people can elect the man of their choice.