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The
Kennedy Assassination from Official Files – Part 6
According to a document found in R. T.
Crowley’s
papers, the officially organized assassination of John F. Kennedy
by the CIA had the code name: “Operation ZIPPER.” This
document, which is entitled “OPERATION ZIPPER Conference
Record,” is reproduced in the appendix of this book, with this
author’s subsequent explanation of the abbreviations used in it.
In the following, the events unfolding between March and November
1963 are reconstructed using both this document and R. T.
Crowley’s comments to this author.
Early in March of 1963, the matter of the actual
assassin became a pressing issue. Because of Crowley’s
connections with the mob in Chicago (his father had been an
important Chicago politician, parks commissioner, in the
Kelly-Nash machine), he received the task of personally contacting
members of the Chicago Mafia for advice and possible assistance.
Chicago mob leader Sam Giancana, who had assisted in locating persons to carry out the CIA’s murder
plots against Fidel Castro, loathed the Kennedy brothers but was far too shrewd to
lend any of his identifiable men to cooperate in such a project.
In two conferences in the Drake Hotel with Crowley, Giancana agreed to locate assassins
who could be expected to perform in a professional manner. It was
suggested that perhaps this recruitment might be better done
outside of the United States. Rather than involve the Sicilian
Mafia,
Giancana had one of his connections in that entity contact someone in
the Corsican Mafia, the so-called Unione
Corse, and it
was from the ranks of this Marseille-based, well-knit, and very
professional criminal organization that the assassins were found.
The plotter’s reasoning was that if the killers
were somehow caught before the CIA could kill them first, they
could only identify the Chicago Mafia as their employers, and the
Mafia would never identify the CIA as the real moving force. If
this question arose, the Mafia could much more easily be silenced
than foreign killers could.
Before the Corsicans were finally brought on board, a
co-worker suggested shopping in Beirut, Lebanon, then a center of
assassination professionals. The argument against this was that
Corsicans would have no problems blending in the background in
race conscious Dallas. Darker complexioned Lebanese or Arab
professionals would certainly attract unwelcome notice in the
provincial southern city.
Cuban militants had been ruled out in the beginning
as too volatile and inclined to emotional excesses.
It would be Marseilles, then, instead of Beirut, that
would supply the killers.
Early March 1963, the Director of Central
Intelligence, John McCone, began a series of delicate contacts outside his immediate circle.
The first government agency contacted was the FBI.
The first conferences with its director John Edgar Hoover and Deputy Director William
Sullivan were held on March 4th. According to the ZIPPER
Document, the head of the FBI was permanently kept informed about
the CIA’s actions by his top aide William Sullivan. Since
Sullivan is described in the ZIPPER Document as a
“participant” in the entire plot, it must be assumed that the
FBI as a government department was collaborating with the CIA to
achieve the projected goal.
On March 13 and 15, the next delicate contacts were
made to Walter Jenkins and Abe Fortas, top aides of Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson. According to the ZIPPER Document, Jenkins and
Fortas, and with them of
course the Vice President, were also kept informed about the
rising plot.
Not a bold man, Johnson’s concerns were entirely typical for him. He had forced himself on
the 1960 Democratic ticket against Kennedy’s wishes, and
throughout the thousand days of the Kennedy presidency, Johnson
was treated with contempt by Kennedy’s people. Their favorite
epithet was “Uncle Cornpone,” and it became common knowledge
that Kennedy was planning to replace Johnson on the 1964 ticket.
To accomplish this, Bobby Kennedy was preparing criminal
charges against Bobby Baker, one of Johnson’s top aides.
Johnson was aware that such charges
would give the Kennedy faction the ability to force him off the
ticket. Since Vice Presidents traditionally have run for the
Presidency at the expiration of the mandatory two-term limit, any
hope of gaining the White House would have been dashed. Johnson,
therefore, became a willing if very timid participant in the
ZIPPER project.
The two most important groups, the FBI and the future
President of the United States, were hence quickly convinced to
support the CIA:
“11. As both the Vice President and the
Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation has been slated
for replacement by the Kennedy faction, their support for this
project was practically guaranteed from the outset.
12. The Vice President came to believe that an
attempt would be made on his life at the same time and was greatly
concerned for his own safety.[[9]]
13. As the Vice President and the Director of
the FBI were longtime neighbors and very friendly, the Director
has repeatedly assured the [Vice] President that he was not
considered a target and that no shots were fired at him in
Dallas.” [LBJ was riding two cars behind
JKF.]
There was, of course, another power to be taken into
consideration, which could successfully prevent or reverse the
attempted coup d’état: the Armed Forces of the United
States of America. To integrate the U.S. Army into their putsch,
the Director of the CIA conferred on March 28 with James Jesus
Angelton to coordinate the objectives of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
of the U.S. Army with the CIA’s objectives within Operation
ZIPPER.
The fourth cautious contact was made on 9 April by
James Jesus Angleton: Lt. Colonel Bevin Cass, United States Marine Corps, was U.S. Military Attaché to the
Dominican Republic and had been involved with the logistics of the
Trujillo assassination.
Cass was later Commanding Officer of the Marine Corps infantry
training center at Quantico, Virginia.
Cass obviously served as a
liaison officer between the Joint Chief of Staffs and the CIA, as
an entry on 14 April 1963 indicates, according to which Cass was
recommended by the Chairman of the JCS, General Lyman Lemnitzer. The fact that
LtCol. Cass, as a “participant,” received a copy of
the ZIPPER Document, that the Chairman of the JCS was either
directly or via LtCol. Cass in frequent contact with the CIA
regarding Kennedy’s assassination,
and finally because the JCS is expressly mentioned as a
“government department directly concerned” in the ZIPPER
document that had specific knowledge about the assassination, it
must be concluded that the U.S. Armed Forces are the fourth big
cornerstone of the assassination of John F. Kennedy and, hence,
the overthrow of the democratically elected government of the
people of the United States of America.
In the middle of April, Chicago Mafia boss Sam
Giancana advised Crowley that or the job was one
hundred thousand dollars per man and there were four involved.
The
immediate overseer of the execution of the plot was William King
Harvey, former FBI agent and head of the Berlin operations base of the CIA.
Harvey was responsible for the
construction of the famous Berlin tunnel. Soviet intelligence was
fully aware of this interdiction of their secure telephone lines
in the Soviet sector of Berlin, and Harvey proudly garnered crates
full of creative Soviet disinformation.
In
addition to this, Angleton contacted Israeli
intelligence for assistance. The man he contacted was
Amos Manor, then head of Israeli counterintelligence, the Shin Beth, and an old
friend of Angleton.
Angleton had worked closely with Zionist organizations in Italy
during and after World War II and in 1951 had been appointed to be
the CIA’s top liaison with both the Shin Beth and the Mossad.
Through Angleton’s good offices, the CIA developed a close
working relationship with both Israeli agencies, and in order to
facilitate his plot against Kennedy, Angleton sought an Israeli
agent who would oversee the entire operation.
In actuality, the Israeli’s sole reason for
existence, as far as Angleton was concerned, was to make
entirely certain that the Corsican assassins were removed as soon
as possible after their work was done.
The man sent to him was known as Binjamin Bauman and he came well
recommended.
He had been one of the Stern Gang members, a terrorist group
controlled by Menachim Begin, later Israeli Prime Minister, who had assisted in blowing up the King
David Hotel in Jerusalem in 1946 with heavy loss of life. Begin was still wanted for murder
in England, but Bauman had merely changed his name
and went to work for the new state in an official capacity. This
is a classical example of a terrorist becoming a freedom fighter.
John
F. Kennedy was decidedly unpopular in Israel because of his firm
determination to prevent that state from developing atomic
weaponry.
A safe house was to be set up in Maryland and there
the Corsicans were to be killed, their bodies dissected and put
into crab pots. The science of DNA had not yet been discovered,
and what the famous soft-shelled crabs could not eat was to be
dumped back into the water. Bones do not float.
In September of 1963, the visit by Kennedy to Dallas
in November was announced and the Angleton assassination plan now had
a specific time frame and geographical location with which to
work.
The Corsicans would be flown to Canada at the end of
October, met by members of the Mafia, and driven into the United
States over the Windsor, Ontario, International Bridge. They would
remain in a Mafia safe house in the Detroit area and then be flown
in a private aircraft to the Dallas-Ft. Worth area:
52. French intelligence sources have
indicated that a recruitment was made among members of the
Corsican Mafia in Marseilles in mid-1963.
53. French intelligence sources have also indicated that
they informed U.S. authorities in the American Embassy on two
occasions about the recruitment of French underworld operatives
for a political assassination in the United States.
54. It is not known if these reports were accepted at the
Embassy or passed to Washington.
55. In the event, the Corsicans were sent to Canada where
they blended in more easily with the French-speaking Quebec
population. DIA analysis
The Corsicans were under no circumstances to be told
of the role of the CIA in their project. They always considered
that they were working solely for the American Mafia and no one
else.
Weapons for the assassination were procured from Sam
Cummings, CIA
agent and head of INTERARMCO, a “proprietary” branch of the
Agency.
This company, run by a British expert living in Warrentown,
Virginia,
specialized in gun running for the CIA. It was an easy matter for
Cummings to procure two silenced .38-caliber pistols, two 7.65-mm
surplus Argentine army Mausers, and a specially constructed
.223-caliber rifle, which was cut down and modified from a
standard NATO weapon. Special bullets for the latter weapon,
filled with mercury and designed to explode when entering a body,
were manufactured and accompanied the weapon.
A check of CIA records located the names of several
persons of interest to the Agency in the Dallas area. One was Lee
Harvey Oswald, the returned defector, and the other was a man with whom the CIA had
extensive and documented dealings. This was the Baltic aristocrat
George De Mohrenschildt. Born into the lesser Russian nobility, De Mohrenschildt had served in
a Polish cavalry unit, the Promorski Brigade. After the Russian
revolution, he immigrated to the United States and acquired a
degree in petroleum geology. He traveled in establishment social
circles, spent a good deal of time out of the country, and
certainly worked for the CIA. He had encountered Oswald quite by accident through
his connection with the Russian community in Dallas and became his
mentor and, according to a later CIA classified report, his lover.
When De Mohrenschildt passed on the information
that Oswald had been hired at the Texas School Book Depository on October
16, it was later realized that this building immediately
overlooked the route that Kennedy would take on his November 22
visit to Dallas. Oswald was now viewed as the
perfect foil:
14. Oswald also was intimately
connected with de Mohrenschildt who was certainly known to be a
CIA operative. Oswald’s connections with this man were such as
to guarantee that the CIA was aware of Oswald’s movements
throughout his residence in the Dallas area.
15. When Oswald secured employment at
the Texas Book Depository, de Mohrenschildt, according to an FBI
report, reported this to the CIA. DIA analysis
77. The pseudo-defector, Oswald,
became then important to the furtherance of the plan to kill the
American president. He had strong connections with the Soviet
Union; he had married a Soviet citizen; he had been noticed in
public advocating support of Fidel Castro. His position in a tall
building overlooking the parade route was a stroke of great good
fortune to the plotters. Russian Intelligence
study
In
the first week of November, the assassination team had been flown
to Dallas and spent two weeks in reconnaissance of the entire
presidential route. It had initially been felt by the Corsican
team leader that the shooting could be done as the cavalcade
turned from Houston to Elm Streets. The presidential car would be
moving very slowly as it negotiated the right angle turn and would
present an excellent target. A shooting blind could be constructed
on the top of the Dallas County Records Building on Houston Street
that had an excellent line of sight to the Elm Street corner, but
flanking buildings were higher and could provide an undesired
observer a clear view of the shooters.
It was finally decided to use the Book Depository as
one base. The railroad overpass was considered another excellent
position but eventually ruled out because it was sure to be
guarded. To its right, however, the heavy bushes and fences of the
elevated “grassy knoll” proved to be irresistible. The
official car with the President would be moving slowly past the
spot and would permit a slightly downhill shot at very close
range. Also, the extensive railroad yards behind this position
gave ample room for an unobserved escape.
The final disposition of the assassination team was:
– A shooter in the Texas Book Depository, sixth floor;
– A shooter in the ornamental bushes just before the underpass;
– Two English-speaking personnel in suits and equipped with false law
enforcement identification in the railroad yard behind the second
shooter.
It
was later reported that if anyone tried to investigate or
interfere with the escape of the shooter, the two faux
law enforcement agents would be able to display their
identification and deflect pursuit.
Through his friendship with Oswald, De Mohrenschildt was aware that Oswald had
bought a rifle from Klein’s Sporting Goods through the mail in
March of that year. Both Oswald and his wife had mentioned this rifle to
De Mohrenschildt and he also learned where the weapon was kept.
16. The
existence and location of Oswald’s mail order Mannlicher-Carcano
rifle in the garage of his wife’s friend, Ruth Paine, was also
known to de Mohrenschildt at least one week prior to the
assassination. DIA
analysis
Oswald was a bad shot with a
rifle, the Warren Commission Report to the contrary, and had never
even test shot this surplus Mannlicher-Carcano Italian army
weapon.
Stories about him going to Dallas rifle ranges with others and
firing the Carcano were total fabrications as was an accepted tale
of him driving a car. Oswald had never shot the purported murder weapon, possessed no
driver’s license, and did not know how to drive any kind of a
car.
On September 26, Oswald went to Mexico City by bus.
He returned to Dallas on October 3. During this period, the
official story is that Oswald went to the Soviet and Cuban
embassies and made very vocal attempts to secure visas for trips
to Russia via Cuba.
He was told, the official version explains, that a visa to go to
Soviet Russia would take four months to process and the Cubans
would not grant a visa for Cuba without a Soviet visa.
After the assassination, the CIA sent out a number of
reports to various American agencies containing their version of the Oswald visit to include physical
descriptions and photographs. All of this material was totally
incorrect, and the person depicted was very obviously not Lee
Harvey Oswald. What Oswald did while in Mexico is not
known, but a CIA report of his dramatic visits to the two
embassies is a deliberate falsehood:
78. Oswald was then reported by the CIA to have gone to
Mexico City on 26 September, 1963 and while there, drew
considerable attention to his presence in both the Soviet and
Cuban embassies. What Oswald might have done in the Cuban embassy
is not known for certain but there is no record of his ever having
visited the Soviet embassy in Mexico at that time. CIA physical
descriptions as well as photographs show that Oswald was not the
man depicted. This appears strongly to be a poor attempt on the
part of the CIA to embroil both the Soviet Union and Cuba in their
affairs. Russian Intelligence study
79.Reports from the CIA
concerning Oswald’s September/October visit to Mexico City are
totally unreliable and were rejected by the FBI as being ‘in
serious error.’ The reasons for Oswald’s visit to Mexico are
completely obscure at this writing but the individual allegedly
photographed by CIA surveillance in Mexico is to a certainty not
Lee Oswald. As the CIA had pictures of the real Oswald, their
reasons for producing such an obvious falsity are not easy to
ascertain at this remove.
DIA analysis
The famous Mexican trip was a typical official red
herring deliberately dragged across the investigative trail. In
point of fact, it matters not what Oswald did while in Mexico because
this trip had no possible bearing on the allegations of
assassination heaped onto a dead Oswald.
The
patently obvious disinformation put out by the CIA about Oswald’s visit either indicates a frantic desire to be current with
intelligence matters or, in a more sinister interpretation, a
crude attempt to somehow link the assassination to the Soviet
Union and Cuba via the predetermined assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald.
Had
this course been followed during the sittings of the Warren
Commission, it might well have forced the timid new President to
make accusations against both Russia and Cuba that could quite
conceivably lead to armed conflict. Since this is the one thing
that Johnson frantically
wished to avoid, the Mexico City visitation was relegated to the
oblivion of the Warren Commission Report without official
attention, but certainly deserving of the subsequent sarcasm from
a legion of anti-establishment historians.
– Kennedy was shot on Friday, November 22, 1963.
– Oswald was shot on Sunday,
November 24, 1963.
– Chicago Mafia leader, Sam Giancana, was shot to death in the basement of his home in June of 1975, prior
to when he was supposed to appear before a Congressional
committee.
– Oswald’s CIA connection in Dallas, George De Mohrenschildt, is alleged to have shot himself just prior to his scheduled appearance
before a Congressional committee in March of 1977.
Arranging a murder is relatively simple, but
arranging a suicide is much more difficult.
The Warren Commission was instituted shortly after
the Dallas murders, evidence was gathered and presented to the
Commission and a final report was duly released. Predictably, it
named Lee Harvey Oswald as the sole assassin and,
further, carefully played down the strong connections his killer,
Jack Rubenstein, had with the Chicago mob.
Historians have discussed the number of witnesses who
died in the following months and years. The number tends to raise
suspicions of foul play but, so far, no hard evidence of a
concerted effort to silence witnesses has been produced.
Considering the vast extent of the conspiracy to assassinate
Kennedy and overthrow his administration, the conclusions are more
than obvious.
The Warren Report included a number of issues
intended to bolster their case against Oswald. One was the attempt to shoot General Edwin Walker, a retired right wing professional Army officer resident in Dallas, on
April 12, 1963. That Oswald had nothing to do with this
incident is obvious from examining the published evidence and
investigative reports. The General was shot at by a .30-06 rifle.
Eyewitnesses all agreed that two dark complexioned men were seen
driving away from the scene. Oswald did not own such a gun, was
not dark complexioned, and did not drive. The Walker story was supplied by
Oswald’s terrified widow who desperately was attempting to avoid
being sent back to Russia. She spoke no English and, in general,
did what she was told.
Her story of the Walker incident has no value whatsoever and could
never have been used in a court of law.
Of the four Corsicans, three vanished from the face
of the earth after being escorted to a private plane at a Dallas
area airfield about 2:30 on the afternoon of November 22. They
were accompanied by Mr. Bauman and were informed they
would be flown first to New Orleans, where the pilot, David Ferrie, was based, and thence to a safe house in Maryland. From the moment
they climbed into the two-engined aircraft, they were never seen
again.
One of the assassins, the man who fired at Kennedy
from nearly point blank range and blew out the presidential
brains, decided to work his way back to Marseilles on his own. For
some unknown reason, he took a commercial bus to Mexico and from
there he ended up in Barcelona, Spain. All that is known of him is
the name he used on his passport: Guidobaldo Fini.
78….It is understood that the
actual assassins were subsequently removed in a wet action but
that one apparently escaped and has been the object of intense
searches in France and Italy by elements of the CIA. Russian Intelligence study
80.The hit team was flown away
in an aircraft piloted by a CIA contract pilot named David Ferrie
from New Orleans. They subsequently vanished without a trace.
Rumors of the survival of one of the team are persistent but not
proven DIA
analysis
There was one other murder that bears directly on the
Kennedy assassination. On October 12, 1964, shortly after noon,
Mary Pinchot Meyer, 44, former wife of Cord Meyer, Jr., a senior CIA official, was found shot to death in a wooded area
near her Georgetown studio. She had been shot once in the head and
once in the upper body, a professional technique of assassination.
A dazed black day-laborer was found in the vicinity
by police and, although not matching the description of an
eyewitness, was arrested and put on trial for murder. The suspect,
Ray Crump, had no coherent statement for the police at the time of his arrest,
and an intensive search of the area failed to locate the handgun
used in the killing. This, in spite of the fact that the suspect
was apprehended in the immediate area of the killing.
Period press reports indicate that a large number of
CIA personnel were present immediately after the discovery of the
body.
Crump was acquitted at his
subsequent trial.
The prosecution depicted him as a rapist, but he had no record of
such offenses. He had been seen waiting on a Washington street
corner for day labor prior to being found in a dazed condition on
the towpath near Mary Meyer’s body.
Her husband, Cord Meyer, Jr., was a close personal friend of James Angleton and a very bitter enemy of
John Kennedy. Meyer’s intense hatred of Kennedy was due to the
attentions that Kennedy had once paid to his ex-wife. In point of
fact, Mary Pinchot Meyer had been Kennedy’s
long-term mistress subsequent to her divorce from her husband.
Mrs. Meyer had introduced LSD to the President during her many
visits to the White House.
Immediately after her murder, Crowley associate James Angleton was caught in her
Georgetown studio going through her papers. He later removed her
diary and kept it. Robert Crowley, who saw it, stated that it contained a significant number of
references to her connection with Kennedy, the use of drugs at
White House sex parties, and some very bitter comments about the
role of her former husband’s agency in the death of her lover
the year before.
Mary Meyer had made angry and
indiscreet comments about her views on her suspicions of CIA
involvement in the Kennedy killing to a number of her neighbors, a
significant number of whom had husbands that were senior CIA
officials.
This murder is still listed as unsolved, and the
police records have disappeared. Shortly after her murder, her
bitter former husband painted “Tough luck, Mary” on the Key
Bridge near the site of her death.
John Kennedy may have been a charismatic man but
neither he nor his family could be considered either ethical or
moral. The President and his brother, the Attorney General of the
United States, repeatedly betrayed their wives, their criminal
associates, their loyal Cuban supporters, and many others with
alacrity when it suited them to do so.
According to the CIA, the FBI, the Vice President,
and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, they also betrayed important
intelligence secrets to the Soviet Union for political gain.
Hence, John F. Kennedy had to die:
“6.
This removal [of JFK] is the result of a consensus between the
various concerned official agencies.”
79 From this brief study, it may be
seen that the American President was certainly killed by orders of
high officials in the CIA, working in close conjunction with very
high American military leaders. It was the CIA belief that Kennedy
was not only circumventing their own mapped-out destruction of
Fidel Castro by assassination and invasion but actively engaged in
contacts with the Soviet Union to betray the CIA actions.
80. The American military leaders (known as the Joint
Chiefs of Staff) were also determined upon the same goals, hence
both of them worked together to ensure the removal of a President
who acted against their best interests and to have him replaced
with a weaker man whom they believed they could better control.
81. President Johnson, Kennedy’s successor, was very much
under the control of the military and CIA during his term in
office and permitted an enormous escalation in Southeast Asia. The
destruction of the Communist movement in that area was of
paramount importance to both groups.
Russian
Intelligence study
1. The Soviet analysis of the assassination of President
John F. Kennedy contains material gleaned from American sources
both official and unofficial i.e., media coverage, etc. Some of
this material obviously stems from sources located inside various
agencies. To date, none of these have been identified.
Russian Intelligence study
81. A study of the
Soviet report indicates very clearly that the Russians have
significant and very high level sources within both the Central
Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Their
possession of material relating to certain highly classified
American military papers has been referred to the CIC for
investigation and action. DIA
analysis
Aftermath
The
chapter “The Official Cover Up” already addresses briefly what
happened after the actual assassination.
The ZIPPER Document contains more interesting pieces of information
that make it understandable how the cover up was implemented and
why it could be so successful.
There
is, of course, the most important fact: that the FBI itself, which
was in charge of all investigations, was a participant in the
assassination. The FBI gave James Jesus Angleton,
the main plotter, complete control of the evidence:
“10.
Following the removal of the President, the new President, who had
been fully briefed prior to the act, agreed ‘in the interest of
national concerns’ to appoint a special Commission chaired by
the Chief Justice, for the purpose of ‘setting public concerns
to rest.’ Mr. Angleton was
in complete control of all evidence presented to this Committee
and worked closely in conjunction with Mr. Sullivan of
the FBI to ensure that nothing was brought before the Committee
that it did not wish to acknowledge.”
It
is also interesting that Gerald Ford,
who became President of the United States of America in 1974,
helped FBI Director J. E. Hoover,
and it is hard to believe that by so doing, he did not know that
he actively participated in the cover-up of the putsch:
“16.
Representative Ford, R, of Michigan, a member of the Commission, is
working closely with Director Hoover and
reports all incoming information directly to him.”
The
CIA’s many supporters within the media did their best to hide
and distort the truth:
“17.
Full cooperation with friendly media sources has ensured that the
public attention has been drawn to Oswald
as
the sole killer. […]
32.
In the matter of the public perception of the Dallas action,
extensive use has been made of Agency connections with major
American media organs, i.e., the New York Times and the Washington
Post. The Times is strongly supporting the Commission and its
findings and we are assured that they will continue to do so. The
same attitude has been clearly and strongly expressed by the
Post.”
A
very interesting effect on U.S. foreign policy had the fact that
the French Intelligence Services, due to their informants in the Unione
Corse, had knowledge about the real assassins of JFK and
threatened the United States if they would not make certain
concessions:
“25.
Also, the [French President] General [Charles] DeGaulle stated
that he was aware through French intelligence reports, that the
assassins of the President were French citizens. The knowledge of
the French government at the highest level that some kind of high
level political assassination was apparently passed on to the U.S.
Embassy in Paris but there is no record of any of these warnings
having been passed on to Washington. If, in fact, these warnings
were passed, there was obviously no heed paid to them.
26.
Because it is viewed as vital that the French become involved in
NATO and to assuage the concerns of the General, guarantees were
given both by the [U.S.] President and the DCI [Director of
Central Intelligence…] that the United States would actively
support French commercial interests in French Indo China in return
for French cooperation with NATO. There were extensive French
rubber plantations in Vietnam as well as significant off-shore oil
deposits.
28.
The General was reassured repeatedly on these points and is now
apparently in agreement with U.S. aims in South East Asia. He made
several remarks about the trade in opium in that area being
extremely lucrative and stated that he had his own problems with
narcotics traffic in the Mediterranean area. With increasing
American military involvement in Vietnam and Laos, the increase in
opium smuggling was highly significant and has not stopped to this
day. It is a published fact that much of the movement of raw opium
from the so-called Golden Triangle was effected by the CIA and its
Air America private airforce.
29. It
is not believed, and electronic surveillance of the President’s
lines of communication while in the United States does not
support, the possibility that he might have actual knowledge of
any American involvement, or projected involvement, in this
sensitive area.
30.
Both the Agency and the President feel that the French President
has ‘fired a shot across our bows’ but that these issues have
now become resolved. The President feels, however, that the French
will have to be watched carefully in the future and that if
American interests become established in French Indo China, we had
best consider our own interests at that time.”
Considering
that the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff had been more than eager to
start a war against Cuba, it might not be surprising that they
were quite open to the French “request” for help in French
Indo China, which could be more appropriately called
“blackmailing America into war.” In fact, the Tonkin incident
in 1965, which triggered America’s involvement in the Vietnam
War, reads like an implementation of what the U.S. Army had
unsuccessfully planned only a few years earlier for Cuba, as James
Bamford correctly noticed.
The
CIA’s statement about “American involvement” in the “trade
in opium” in Indochina, and its assertion that “much of the
movement of raw opium […] was effected by the CIA and its Air
America private airforce”, is a topic that will be dealt with in
a subsequent book, offering much more secret documentation on the
U.S. government as one of the major drug traffickers of the world.
“–spying
on Americans for their political beliefs;
– opening the mail of Americans not suspected of any crime;
– harassing and disrupting legal American political groups simply
for their dissenting views;
– testing neurochemical and biological agents (such as LSD) and
toxins on American citizens without their consent or knowledge,
covering up these activities, and destroying evidence of them;
– engaging in secret wars with neither the consent nor knowledge
of Congress;
– engaging in acts of war or acts that created a high probability
of war without the consent or knowledge of Congress;
– purposely concealing these acts or intentionally misleading
members of the government who have a right to know about such
activities;
– employing the policies and resources of intelligence agencies
to further the goals of private corporations and political groups;
– subverting democratic processes and sponsoring the functional
equivalents of coups d’etat in friendly and allied countries;
– creating private, off-the-books intelligence and operations
organizations in deliberate attempts to evade U.S. law;
– negotiating with terrorists and paying ransom for hostages; and
–
arming insurgent and terrorist organizations with modern
weapons in spite of their anti-American positions.”
33.
J. Nutter, op. cit. p.
300.
To be continued….Appendix: CIA documents
The document actually covers the period from March to
November 1963. According to personal information received from
R. T. Crowley
, the choice of ZIPPER was his. He said that since Kennedy could
not keep his zipper shut, the CIA would do it for him.
Originally, he wanted to call the plot “Operation JANUS”
after the two-faced Roman god (a reference to Kennedy’s
perceived duplicity) but decided that his co-workers were far
too ill-educated to understand it.
See ZIPPER Document, 16, 19, 20 March, 4 April (3:35pm),
9 April (9:08am), 18 April (2:01pm, 2:25pm), 23 & 24 April,
2 May, 6 May (11:10am c.), 10 May, 19 June (1:45pm), 24 Oct.
1963.
The Sicilian Mafia appears to have been the first option,
see ZIPPER Document, 4 April 63 (3:35pm)
See ZIPPER Document, 2 May (4:09pm), 10 May, 12 June
(4:11pm), 16 July (1:45pm), 24 Oct., 14 Nov. 1963.
For information on the Unione Corse and its connection with drugs and the CIA, see also J.
Nutter, op. cit), pp.
180f.
The FBI is listed as a “government department directly
concerned”, see ZIPPER Document, no. 8.b. Though Hoover himself was only a few times directly involved with operation
ZIPPER (4 & 15 March, as well as no. 12), it is obvious that
Hoover’s assistantt
Sullivan was a permanent part of the plot, since he is even listed as a
recipient of the ZIPPER Document itself, and because his name is
mentioned on many occasions: no. 12; 4, 7, 12 (8:30am) & 29
March (2:35pm), 30 April, 2 & 10 May.
See ZIPPER Document, 13, 14, 15, 18 March (9:30am) 25, 28
March (4:45, 4:55pm), 11 April (11:45am), 15 April (5:20pm), 30
April (9:31am), 6 May (11:10am a.), 31 May (1:35pm), 11, 12 June
(5:30pm), 26 June (9:30am).
See ZIPPER Document, 18 March (9:30am), which apparently
refers to the handover of copies of files compiled by the
attorney General Robert F. Kennedy regarding Bobby Baker
; see also the more explicit entry on 5 May, no. 8.
Compare this with Hoover’s Memorandum, and R. T.
Crowley’s Aide-Mémoire, see Appendix.
ZIPPER Document, no. 11-13.
This information was gratefully obtained from a source
inside the U.S. intelligence community, which cannot be revealed
here for legal and privacy reasons.
ZIPPER Document, 9 April (8:31am), 14 April, 24 April
(3:09pm), 5 May, 6 May (11:10am), 25, 28 May (8:32am), 31 May
(3:00pm), 12 June (12:30pm), 25, 26 June (11:30am), 31 July
(9:40am),
As a less important conspirator, we should mention Allen
Dulles
, the former head of the CIA, see ZIPPER Document, 19, 31 July
(9:40am). He, too, had no problem with the concept of the
removal of the man who had removed him as head of the CIA. In
the event of the President’s death, he fully expected to be
called back to duty although he was not in particularly good
health.
See ZIPPER document: participants/recipients, no. 7.; 14,
16 March (3:32pm), 29 March (6:60pm[sic!]), 14, 15 April
(12:35pm), 10, 25 May, 24, 25 June, 5 July, 31 July (11:30 am):
“transfer operation to WKH”, 9, 16, 23, 30 August, 6, 12,
20, 27 Sept., 18 Oct., 1, 14 Nov.
See ZIPPER document, 3 April.
An excellent overview of the CIA/Israeli intelligence
cooperation can be found in P. Grose, op. citpp. 422-424.
See ZIPPER document, 3, 4, 16 July (1:45pm), 17 July, .
See Foreign
Relations of the United States, 1961-1963, Vol. XVII,
Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1994.
See ZIPPER document, no. 9.d.; 18 March (8:44am), 13, 15
April (12:35), 18 April (1:23pm), 6 May (11:10am d.), 14 May, 24
June, 17 July (9:45am). A full listing of CIA proprietary
businesses were in the Crowley Papers but are not included in
this work.
A number of important CIA agents and sources lived in
Warrenton, including Heinrich Müller
, former Gestapo Chief, and Crowley Papers.
Oswald’s Marine Corps Personnel Records indicate that he barely
qualified as a rifle man.
See Warren Report, op. cit. (for stories about the Oswald public appearances with the Carcano, e.g., on the license, p.
266.
Warren Report, op. cit. pp. 301ff.; G. Posner, op.
cit. (pp. 170-176, 211-212.
N. Burleigh, op. cit. pp. 234ff.
N. Burleigh, op. cit. makes references to mysterious “men in suits” at the
murder scene and the fact that newsmen were kept at a distance
during the investigation. Plates following p. 182 and comments
in the text.
Ibid., pp. 273ff.
Ibid., pp. 209ff.; T. C. Reeves, op. citpp.
240f.
T. C. Reeves, ibid., N. Burleigh, op.
cit. pp. 193 et seq.
R. T. Crowley, private communication to the author, and
N. Burleigh, op. cit.
p. 282.
ZIPPER Document, no. 6.
See footnote
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