TBR News July 9, 2017

The Voice of the White House

Washington, D.C., July 9, 2017:”Even though the left wing MLM is not happy with what appears to be a positive meeting between Trump and Putin, it appears that both parties were in general agreement and if this is true, it bodes well for more positive cooperation in the boiling kettle of Mid Eastern disputations. Trust that rabid Trump and Putin haters like Rachel Maddow will do their best to sabotage any genuine cooperation between the United States and Russia. It might be useful to pack the lot of the neo-cons and their hand-puppets to Antarctica to study the giant cities hidden under the ice and once occupied by a race of giant penguins.”

Table of Contents

• Iraqi elite force reaches Mosul Old City riverbank as Islamic State faces defeat
• Mosul: Iraq PM to celebrate victory over IS in the city
• Syria truce goes into effect after Trump-Putin talks
• Turkey will not tolerate Kurdish state & ‘terror havens’ on its borders – Erdogan
• MSM, Still Living in Propaganda-ville
• Donald Trump: time to move forward and work constructively with Russia
• Trump says discussed forming cyber security unit with Putin
• ‘Russiagate’: The Stink Without a Secret
• Senator McCain says Republican healthcare bill likely dead
• The Defense Intelligence Agency Report of April 20, 1978 in re the Kennedy Assassination

 

Iraqi elite force reaches Mosul Old City riverbank as Islamic State faces defeat

July 9, 2017

by Stephen Kalin

Reuters

MOSUL, Iraq-Islamic State militants threw themselves into the Tigris on Sunday, trying to flee the battlefield in Mosul as Iraqi forces reached the riverbank, bringing them to the verge of victory.

After eight months of combat that has left parts of the city in ruins, killed thousands of civilians and displaced nearly one million people, Iraqi officials say they have almost regained full control of Mosul.

The militants have been driven from all but a patch of territory on the western bank of the Tigris bisecting Mosul, where they have staged a last stand in the narrow alleys of the Old City.

Plumes of smoke rose over the Old City on Sunday and the decaying corpses of Islamic State fighters lay in the streets. Scattered bursts of gunfire could be heard and several airstrikes were carried out.

Iraqi military spokesman, Brigadier General Yahya Rasool, told state TV earlier on Sunday that 30 militants had been killed attempting to get away by swimming across the Tigris.

Later, Iraqiya News ran an on-screen headline saying the Counter Terrorism Service (CTS) had raised the Iraqi flag on the Tigris riverbank in the Old City after retaking the Maydan area, and was now advancing toward the Qalayat area.

Islamic State vowed on Saturday to “fight to the death” in Mosul.

Cornered in a shrinking area of the city, the militants have resorted to sending women suicide bombers among the thousands of civilians who are emerging from the battlefield wounded, malnourished and fearful.

The battle has also exacted a heavy toll on Iraq’s security forces.

The Iraqi government does not reveal casualty figures, but a funding request from the U.S. Department of Defense said the CTS, which has spearheaded the fight in Mosul, had suffered 40 percent losses.

The United States leads an international coalition that is backing the campaign against Islamic State in Mosul by conducting airstrikes against the militants and assisting troops on the ground.

The Department of Defense has requested $1.269 billion in U.S. budget funds for 2018 to continue supporting Iraqi forces.

Without Mosul – by far the largest city to fall under militant control – Islamic State’s dominion in Iraq will be reduced to mainly rural, desert areas west and south of the city where tens of thousands of people live.

It is almost exactly three years since the ultra-hardline group’s leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi proclaimed a “caliphate” spanning Syria and Iraq from the pulpit of the medieval Grand al-Nuri mosque.

Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi declared the end of Islamic State’s “state of falsehood” a week ago, after security forces retook the mosque – although only after retreating militants blew it up.

The United Nations predicts it will cost more than $1 billion to repair basic infrastructure in Mosul. In some of the worst affected areas, almost no buildings appear to have escaped damage and Mosul’s dense construction means the extent of the devastation might be underestimated, U.N. officials said.

The militants are expected to revert to insurgent tactics as they lose territory.

The fall of Mosul also exposes ethnic and sectarian fractures between Arabs and Kurds over disputed territories or between Sunnis and the Shi’ite majority that have plagued Iraq for more than a decade.

(Writing by Isabel Coles; editing by David Stamp)

 

Mosul: Iraq PM to celebrate victory over IS in the city

July 9, 2017

BBC

Iraqi PM Haider al-Abadi has visited Mosul to congratulate Iraqi forces for their victory over IS in the city.

Mr Abadi was there to announce the city’s full “liberation”, his office said in a statement.

Iraqi forces, backed by US-led air strikes, have been battling to retake Mosul since 17 October last year.

Islamic State militants seized it in June 2014 before taking much of Iraq’s Sunni Arab heartland and proclaiming a “caliphate” straddling Iraq and Syria.

Kurdish Peshmerga fighters, Sunni Arab tribesmen and Shia militiamen have also been involved in the gruelling battle

The Iraqi prime minister arrived to “congratulate the armed forces and the Iraqi people” on the final defeat of IS in Mosul on Sunday, the statement said. An official speech is expected soon

Iraqi forces have been battling the remaining pockets of jihadists desperately holding out in a tiny area near the Old City.

Sporadic bursts of gunfire could still be heard on Sunday, and plumes of smoke rose into the sky.

Thirty IS militants were killed as they attempted to escape the advance of the Iraqi forces by throwing themselves in the River Tigris, state media said.

The government announced the “liberation” of eastern Mosul in January, but the west of the city, with its narrow, winding streets, has presented a more difficult challenge.

Some 900,000 people have been displaced from the city since 2014 – about half the the pre-war population – aid organisations say.

As “victory” was proclaimed in Mosul, Save the Children warned of the psychological impact on the children “haunted by memories of extreme violence, or of loved ones killed in front of them”.

“For children and their families to process these horrors and rebuild their lives, psychological support will be absolutely crucial”, said Ana Locsin, Save the Children’s Iraq country director.

“But right now the world is providing next to no funding for mental health.”

The Islamic State group has lost large parts of the territory it once controlled in Iraq since the regional offensive began.

But the fall of Mosul does not mean the end of IS in the country. It still has territory areas elsewhere – such as Tal Afar and three towns in the western province of Anbar – and is able to carry out bombings in government-held areas.

French President Emmanuel Macron was among the first to hail the victory of Iraqi forces in Mosul on Sunday, praising the fighters – including French troops in the coalition – who had made it possible.

Analysis: Victory at a terrible cost

by Alan Johnston, BBC World Service Middle East editor

The army has avenged its humiliating defeat by the militants in Mosul three years ago. But victory has come at a terrible cost.

Thousands of civilians have been killed. Much of Mosul has been destroyed.

And the dangers posed by the Islamic State group are not at end.

The militants will go underground and they may well look to make hit-and-run attacks in classic guerrilla style – in Mosul and many other places.

 

Syria truce goes into effect after Trump-Putin talks

A ceasefire deal has gone into effect in three Syrian provinces, with the backing of the US, Russia and neighboring Jordan. US President Donald Trump agreed the terms of the truce with Russia’s Vladimir Putin in Hamburg.

July 9, 2017

DW

The partial truce, which started Sunday, covers the Syrian provinces of Daraa, Sweida and Quneitra in the soutwest. The break in fighting is linked to the “de-escalation deal” endorsed by the American and the Russian president two days earlier at the G20 summit in Hamburg.

A local opposition activist in Daraa, near the Jordanian border, reported calm in the opening minutes of the truce.

“There’s still a lot of anxiety,” said Ahmad al-Masalmeh.

The UK-based Syrian Human Rights Observatory also said “calm was prevailing” with no air strikes or clashes since the truce began at noon local time.

“The main fronts in the three provinces between regime forces and opposition factions have seen a cessation of hostilities and shelling since this morning, with the exception of a few scattered shells fired on Daraa city before noon,” said Rami Abdel Rahman, director of the group, which is monitoring Syria’s civil conflict via a network of activists on the ground.

Russia will deploy its military police to supervise the truce in the provinces alongside the Jordanian border, while also coordinating with the government in Amman and the US.

US still bent on fighting Islamic State

The US was “encouraged by the progress made to reach” the agreement on the open-ended truce, said Trump’s national security adviser H. R. McMaster.

“The United States remains committed to defeating ISIS, helping to end the conflict in Syria, reducing suffering, and enabling people to return to their homes,” he said, using an alternative abbreviation for the jihadist group “Islamic State” (IS). “This agreement is an important step toward these common goals.”

Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu’s also commented on the peace deal, saying his country would “welcome a genuine ceasefire” in southern Syria as long as it does not allow Iran to establish a permanent military presence at Israel’s border.

New peace talks coming up

While international leaders have hammered many similar deals in the past, none of them has managed to permanently stop the fighting in the Middle Eastern country. Syrian warring parties are set to meet for peace talks in Geneva on Monday for yet another effort to end the six-year-long civil war.

UN Deputy Special Envoy for Syria Ramzy Ezzeldin Ramzy praised the deal as a “step in the right direction” which would aid the diplomatic efforts.

“This development helps create the appropriate environment for the talks,” he added, expressing hope that agreements would be reached for other parts of the country.

In his statement, McMaster sad that the US president “discussed the agreement with many world leaders at the G20 Summit,” including Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Britain’s Prime Minister Theresa May and Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel.

On the previous night, regime helicopters allegedly dropped barrel bombs packed with explosives on rebels in the southern city of Daraa, but no casualties were reported.

Turkey will not tolerate Kurdish state & ‘terror havens’ on its borders – Erdogan

July 9, 2017

RT

Ankara will respond decisively to any threats on its borders, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan declared at the end of G20 summit in Hamburg, warning against any push by the Kurds to secure their own independent region.

The Kurds have been the main fighting force battling jihadist on the ground in Iraq and Syria, playing an essential role in the US-led coalition’s campaign against Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) terrorists in Mosul and Raqqa.

In May, the US Department of Defense confirmed the delivery of heavier weapons to US-allied Kurdish fighters which the US believes are needed to outmaneuver the Syrian government and retake the city of Raqqa from IS.

“We will definitely not remain silent and unresponsive to the support and arming of terror organizations next to our borders and the forming of terror havens in the region,” Erdogan warned Saturday at the conclusion of the G20 in Germany, Turkish Radio and Television Corporation quoted.

The Turkish government has urged the US to reverse its decision to broaden support for Syria’s Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (YPG), stating that it is unacceptable for a NATO ally to support “terrorist groups.”

Ankara perceives the YPG as terrorists allied with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a militant movement which Turkey has been battling for three decades. And while Washington agrees with Ankara’s designation of the PKK as a terrorist organization, the US rejects the idea that Kurdish forces in Syria or Iraq should be equated with the PKK.

Turkey also feels threatened by the Kurds in Iraq, especially after the US pumped millions of dollars into the Iraqi army which relies heavily on Kurdish Peshmerga fighters.

Last month Iraq’s Kurdish region announced that they will hold an independence referendum in September. Erdogan spoke out against the move, fearing that it might produce a domino effect leading to Kurdish-controlled autonomous areas (cantons) in northern Syria to declare independence as well.

“We do not support the idea of a divided Iraq, and a referendum would hurt the peace and stability in the country,” Erdogan said in Hamburg. “If division starts in the north, it would extend to Turkmens, Arabs and there can even be a sectarian-based division between Shias and Sunnis.”

Erdogan emphasized that Turkey will not allow a Kurdish state to be established in northern Syria. However, despite repeated reports that the Kurds in Syria want to create their own state, there’s been no official moves to suggest that an independence declaration is imminent.

 

MSM, Still Living in Propaganda-ville

The stakes in U.S.-Russia relations could not be higher – possible nuclear conflagration and the end of civilization – but the U.S. mainstream media is still slouching around in “propaganda-ville”

July 6, 2017

by Robert Parry

consortiumnews

As much as the U.S. mainstream media wants people to believe that it is the Guardian of Truth, it is actually lost in a wilderness of propaganda and falsehoods, a dangerous land of delusion that is putting the future of humankind at risk as tension escalate with nuclear-armed Russia.

This media problem has grown over recent decades as lucrative careerism has replaced responsible professionalism. Pack journalism has always been a threat to quality reporting but now it has evolved into a self-sustaining media lifestyle in which the old motto, “there’s safety in numbers,” is borne out by the fact that being horrendously wrong, such as on Iraq’s WMD, leads to almost no accountability because so many important colleagues were wrong as well.

Similarly, there has been no accountability after many mainstream journalists and commentators falsely stated as flat-fact that “all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies” concurred that Russia did “meddle” in last November’s U.S. election.

For months, this claim has been the go-to put-down whenever anyone questions the groupthink of Russian venality perverting American democracy. Even the esteemed “Politifact” deemed the assertion “true.” But it was never true.

It was at best a needled distortion of a claim by President Obama’s Director of National Intelligence James Clapper when he issued a statement last Oct. 7 alleging Russian meddling. Because Clapper was the chief of the U.S. Intelligence Community, his opinion morphed into a claim that it represented the consensus of all 17 intelligence agencies, a dishonest twist that Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton began touting.

However, for people who understand how the U.S. Intelligence Community works, the claim of a 17-agencies consensus has a specific meaning, some form of a National Intelligence Estimate (or NIE) that seeks out judgments and dissents from the various agencies.

But there was no NIE regarding alleged Russian meddling and there apparently wasn’t even a formal assessment from a subset of the agencies at the time of Clapper’s statement. President Obama did not order a publishable assessment until December – after the election – and it was not completed until Jan. 6, when a report from Clapper’s office presented the opinions of analysts from the Central Intelligence Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Security Agency – three agencies (or four if you count the DNI’s office), not 17.

Lacking Hard Evidence

The report also contained no hard evidence of a Russian “hack” and amounted to a one-sided circumstantial case at best. However, by then, the U.S. mainstream media had embraced the “all-17-intelligence-agencies” refrain and anyone who disagreed, including President Trump, was treated as delusional. The argument went: “How can anyone question what all 17 intelligence agencies have confirmed as true?”

It wasn’t until May 8 when then-former DNI Clapper belatedly set the record straight in sworn congressional testimony in which he explained that there were only three “contributing agencies” from which analysts were “hand-picked.”

The reference to “hand-picked” analysts pricked the ears of some former U.S. intelligence analysts who had suffered through earlier periods of “politicized” intelligence when malleable analysts were chosen to deliver what their political bosses wanted to hear.

On May 23, also in congressional testimony, former CIA Director John Brennan confirmed Clapper’s description, saying only four of the 17 U.S. intelligence agencies took part in the assessment.

Brennan said the Jan. 6 report “followed the general model of how you want to do something like this with some notable exceptions. It only involved the FBI, NSA and CIA as well as the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. It wasn’t a full inter-agency community assessment that was coordinated among the 17 agencies.”

After this testimony, some of the major news organizations, which had been waving around the “17-intelligence-agencies” meme, subtly changed their phrasing to either depict Russian “meddling” as an established fact no longer requiring attribution or referred to the “unanimous judgment” of the Intelligence Community without citing a specific number.

This “unanimous judgment” formulation was deceptive, too, because it suggested that all 17 agencies were in accord albeit without exactly saying that. For a regular reader of The New York Times or a frequent viewer of CNN, the distinction would almost assuredly not be detected.

For more than a month after the Clapper-Brennan testimonies, there was no formal correction.

A Belated Correction

Finally, on June 25, the Times’ hand was forced when White House correspondent Maggie Haberman reverted to the old formulation, mocking Trump for “still refus[ing] to acknowledge a basic fact agreed upon by 17 American intelligence agencies that he now oversees: Russia orchestrated the attacks, and did it to help get him elected.”

When this falsehood was called to the Times’ attention, it had little choice but to append a correction to the article, noting that the intelligence “assessment was made by four intelligence agencies — the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Security Agency. The assessment was not approved by all 17 organizations in the American intelligence community.”

The Associated Press ran a similar “clarification” applied to some of its fallacious reporting repeating the “17-intelligence-agencies” meme.

So, you might have thought that the mainstream media was finally adjusting its reporting to conform to reality. But that would mean that one of the pillars of the Russia-gate “scandal” had crumbled, the certainty that Russia and Vladimir Putin did “meddle” in the election.

The story would have to go back to square one and the major news organizations would have to begin reporting on whether or not there ever was solid evidence to support what had become a “certainty” – and there appeared to be no stomach for such soul-searching. Since pretty much all the important media figures had made the same error, it would be much easier to simply move on as if nothing had changed.

That would mean that skepticism would still be unwelcome and curious leads would not be followed. For instance, there was a head-turning reference in an otherwise typical Washington Post take-out on June 25 accusing Russia of committing “the crime of the century.”

A reference, stuck deep inside the five-page opus, said, “Some of the most critical technical intelligence on Russia came from another country, officials said. Because of the source of the material, the NSA was reluctant to view it with high confidence.”

Though the Post did not identify the country, this reference suggests that more than one key element of the case for Russian culpability was based not on direct investigations by the U.S. intelligence agencies, but on the work of external organizations.

Earlier, the Democratic National Committee denied the FBI access to its supposedly hacked computers, forcing the investigators to rely on a DNC contractor called CrowdStrike, which has a checkered record of getting this sort of analytics right and whose chief technology officer, Dmitri Alperovitch, is an anti-Putin Russian émigré with ties to the anti-Russian think tank, Atlantic Council.

Relying on Outsiders

You might be wondering why something as important as this “crime of the century,” which has pushed the world closer to nuclear annihilation, is dependent on dubious entities outside the U.S. government with possible conflicts of interest.

If the U.S. government really took this issue seriously, which it should, why didn’t the FBI seize the DNC’s computers and insist that impartial government experts lead the investigation? And why – given the extraordinary expertise of the NSA in computer hacking – is “some of the most critical technical intelligence on Russia [coming] from another country,” one that doesn’t inspire the NSA’s confidence?

But such pesky questions are not likely to be asked or answered by a mainstream U.S. media that displays deep-seated bias toward both Putin and Trump.

Mostly, major news outlets continue to brush aside the clarifications and return to various formulations that continue to embrace the “17-intelligence-agencies” canard, albeit in slightly different forms, such as references to the collective Intelligence Community without the specific number. Anyone who questions this established conventional wisdom is still crazy and out of step.

For instance, James Holmes of Esquire was stunned on Thursday when Trump at a news conference in Poland reminded the traveling press corps about the inaccurate reporting regarding the 17 intelligence agencies and said he still wasn’t entirely sure about Russia’s guilt.

“In public, he’s still casting doubt on the intelligence community’s finding that Russia interfered in the 2016 election nearly nine months after the fact,” Holmes sputtered before describing Trump’s comment as a “rant.”

So, if you thought that a chastened mainstream media might stop in the wake of the “17-intelligence-agencies” falsehood and rethink the whole Russia-gate business, you would have been sadly mistaken.

But the problem is not just the question of whether Russia hacked into Democratic emails and slipped them to WikiLeaks for publication (something that both Russia and WikiLeaks deny). Perhaps the larger danger is how the major U.S. news outlets have adopted a consistently propagandistic approach toward everything relating to Russia.

Hating Putin

This pattern traces back to the earliest days of Vladimir Putin’s presidency in 2000 when he began to rein in the U.S.-prescribed “shock therapy,” which had sold off Russia’s assets to well-connected insiders, making billions of dollars for the West-favored “oligarchs,” even as the process threw millions of average Russian into poverty.

But the U.S. mainstream media’s contempt for Putin reached new heights after he helped President Obama head off neoconservative (and liberal interventionist) demands for a full-scale U.S. military assault on Syria in August 2013 and helped bring Iran into a restrictive nuclear agreement when the neocons wanted to bomb-bomb-bomb Iran.

The neocons delivered their payback to Putin in early 2014 by supporting a violent coup in Ukraine, overthrowing elected President Viktor Yanukovych and installing a fiercely anti-Russian regime. The U.S. operation was spearheaded by neocon National Endowment for Democracy President Carl Gershman and neocon Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, with enthusiastic support from neocon Sen. John McCain.

Nuland was heard in an intercepted pre-coup phone call with U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt discussing who should become the new leaders and pondering how to “glue” or “midwife this thing.”

Despite the clear evidence of U.S. interference in Ukrainian politics, the U.S. government and the mainstream media embraced the coup and accused Putin of “aggression” when ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine, called the Donbas, resisted the coup regime.

When ethnic Russians and other citizens in Crimea voted overwhelmingly in a referendum to reject the coup regime and rejoin Russia – a move protected by some of the 20,000 Russian troops inside Crimea as part of a basing agreement – that became a Russian “invasion.” But it was the most peculiar “invasion,” since there were no images of tanks crashing across borders or amphibious landing craft on Crimean beaches, because no such “invasion” had occurred.

However, in virtually every instance, the U.S. mainstream media insisted on the most extreme anti-Russian propaganda line and accused people who questioned this Official Narrative of disseminating Russian “propaganda” – or being a “Moscow stooge” or acting as a “useful fool.” There was no tolerance for skepticism about whatever the State Department or the Washington think tanks were saying.

Trump Meets Putin

So, as Trump prepares for his first meeting with Putin at the G-20 summit in Hamburg, Germany, the U.S. mainstream media has been in a frenzy, linking up its groupthinks about the Ukraine “invasion” with its groupthinks about Russia “hacking” the election.

In a July 3 editorial, The Washington Post declared, “Mr. Trump simply cannot fail to admonish Mr. Putin for Russia’s attempts to meddle in the 2016 presidential election. He must make clear the United States will not tolerate it, period. Naturally, this is a difficult issue for Mr. Trump, who reaped the benefit of Russia’s intervention and now faces a special counsel’s investigation, but nonetheless, in his first session with Mr. Putin, the president must not hesitate to be blunt. …

“On Ukraine, Mr. Trump must also display determination. Russia fomented an armed uprising and seized Crimea in violation of international norms, and it continues to instigate violence in the Donbas. Mr. Trump ought to make it unmistakably clear to Mr.Putin that the United States will not retreat from the sanctions imposed over Ukraine until the conditions of peace agreements are met.”

Along the same lines, even while suggesting the value of some collaboration with Russia toward ending the war in Syria, Post columnist David Ignatius wrote in a July 5 column, “Russian-American cooperation on Syria faces a huge obstacle right now. It would legitimize a Russian regime that invaded Ukraine and meddled in U.S. and European elections, in addition to its intervention in Syria.”

Note the smug certainty of Ignatius and the Post editors. There is no doubt that Russia “invaded” Ukraine; “seized” Crimea; “meddled” in U.S. and European elections. Yet all these groupthinks should be subjected to skepticism, not simply treated as undeniable truths.

But seeing only one side to a story is where the U.S. mainstream media is at this point in history. Yes, it is possible that Russia was responsible for the Democratic hacks and did funnel the material to WikiLeaks, but evidence has so far been lacking. And, instead of presenting both sides fairly, the major media acts as if only one side deserves any respect and dissenting views must be ridiculed and condemned.

In this perverted process, collectively approved versions of complex situations congeal into conventional wisdom, which simply cannot be significantly reconsidered regardless of future revelations.

As offensive as this rejection of true truth-seeking may be, it also represents an extraordinary danger when mixed with the existential risk of nuclear conflagration.

With the stakes this high, the demand for hard evidence – and the avoidance of soft-minded groupthink – should go without question. Journalists and commentators should hold themselves to professional precision, not slide into sloppy careerism, lost in “propaganda-ville.”

 

Donald Trump: time to move forward and work constructively with Russia

US president says Vladimir Putin ‘vehemently denied’ interfering in 2016 US election during G20 meeting, adding: ‘I’ve already given my opinion’

July 9, 2017

by Paul Owen in New York

The Guardian

Donald Trump said on Sunday that it was “time to move forward in working constructively with Russia” after his meeting at the G20 with Vladimir Putin.

After returning from the summit of the world’s leading economies in Germany on Saturday night, Trump began Sunday with a series of tweets defending himself against criticism that he had been too soft on the Russian leader at their first face-to-face meeting.

Trump said that he had “strongly pressed” Putin twice over Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election during their lengthy sit-down, adding: “He vehemently denied it. I’ve already given my opinion …”

US intelligence agencies have stated that Moscow tried to interfere with the election in order to help Trump. But the president himself has been equivocal about whether he believes this, stating on Thursday: “I think it could very well have been Russia. I think it could well have been other countries … Nobody really knows for sure.”

After Friday’s meeting – attended only by the two presidents, Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov, US secretary of state Rex Tillerson, and interpreters – Lavrov claimed Trump had told Putin he accepted the Russian leader’s denials of involvement in attempting to sway last year’s American election, and Putin said on Saturday he thought Trump believed those denials.

“[Trump] asked a lot of questions on this subject,” Putin said. “I, inasmuch as I was able, answered these questions. It seems to me that he took these [answers] on board and agreed with them, but in actual fact, it’s best to ask him how he views this.”

But Reince Priebus, the White House chief of staff, took issue with that on Sunday. “The president absolutely didn’t believe the denial of President Putin,” he told Fox News.

In his tweets on Sunday, Trump went on to hail a ceasefire in south-west Syria brokered by the US, Russia and Jordan, which began at noon local time. “We negotiated a ceasefire in parts of Syria which will save lives,” the US president said. “Now it is time to move forward in working constructively with Russia!”

US intelligence agencies have warned that Russia will keep up its efforts to interfere in US and other elections. Ash Carter, US defence secretary under Barack Obama, told CNN that that worried him. “There are state elections, municipal elections, as well as national elections,” he said. “There are elections in other countries. It’s important that there be consequences for the Russians in regard to this.”

At their meeting in Hamburg on Friday, Trump and Putin also announced they would set up a working group on non-interference in future elections.

“Putin & I discussed forming an impenetrable Cyber Security unit so that election hacking, & many other negative things, will be guarded … and safe,” Trump tweeted.

“This is like the guy who robbed your house proposing a working group on burglary,” Carter said. “It’s they who did this.”

Trump also said he had not discussed sanctions with Russia. The US imposes a number of different sanctions on Russia, relating to Moscow’s backing of separatists in Ukraine, its weapons sales, its human rights violations, and its interference in the 2016 election. “Nothing will be done until the Ukraine & Syrian problems are solved!” Trump tweeted.

Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee, which is conducting one of the current congressional investigations into Russia’s interference in the election and its possible links to the Trump team, criticised the president’s comments on CNN on Sunday morning.

“How can we really believe that the president pressed Putin hard when only the day before he was denying whether we really knew Russia was responsible?” the California Democrat asked. “We’re, I guess, meant to believe that he’s much stronger in private than he’s willing to be publicly, but why does that make any rational sense?

“On the contrary, if he was really determined to press Putin, he would have gone into that meeting and said unequivocally ‘this is what Russia did’. Even by an account from the secretary of state, apparently the president asked Putin whether he did it, he didn’t go in there and confront him and say … ‘We know you did this, you have to stop.’”

John Brennan, former director of the CIA under Obama, agreed, telling NBC News: “I seriously question whether or not Mr Putin heard from Mr Trump what he needed to about the assault on our democratic institutions of the election.”

Schiff went on to condemn Trump’s suggestion that it was now time to “move forward”.

“To say: ‘OK, it’s been resolved, now we can move on’ – I don’t think we can move on. I don’t think we can expect the Russians to be any kind of a credible partner in some kind of cybersecurity unit. I think that would be dangerously naive for this country. If that’s our best election defence, we might as well just mail our ballot boxes to Moscow. I don’t think that’s an answer at all.”

He called the idea of working with Russia on cybersecurity “dangerously naive”, adding: “The president just went into a meeting with a man who ordered hacking of our democratic institutions. So Putin wasn’t just a tangential player here, he wasn’t just a disinterested party.”

‘Putin could be of enormous assistance’

On NBC News, Republican senator Lindsey Graham, a frequent critic of Trump’s, said of the cyber-security working group: “It’s not the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard, but it’s pretty close.”

Another GOP senator frequently at odds with Trump, former presidential candidate John McCain, joked: “I’m sure that Vladimir Putin could be of enormous assistance in that effort, since he is doing the hacking.”

Schiff also said his committee was willing to call Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr, his son-in-law Jared Kushner, and his former campaign manager Paul Manafort, following a New York Times story revealing that the three held a meeting with a Russian lawyer with links to the Russian state shortly after Trump won the Republican nomination, in what appears to have been the earliest known private meeting between key aides to the future president and a Russian.

“It certainly raises questions for a variety of reasons,” said Schiff. “Of course the president’s son had denied having any kind of meetings like this. They claim that this meeting had nothing to do with the campaign and yet the Trump campaign manager is invited to come to the meeting, and there is no reason for this Russian government advocate to be meeting with Paul Manafort, or with Mr Kushner, or with the president’s son if it wasn’t about the campaign and Russia policy.”

He added: “Obviously they were trying to influence one of the candidates, the leading candidate at that time on the Republican ticket.”

Donald Trump Jr has said the meeting was about a program that used to allow US citizens to adopt Russian children, which was ended by Russia in response to American sanctions, known as the Magnitsky Act.

“What it sounds like the meeting may have really been about … is the Magnitsky Act, and that is legislation, very powerful sanctions legislation, that goes against Russian human rights abusers,” Schiff said. “So if this was an effort to do away with that sanctions policy, that is obviously very significant. If they’re talking to the president’s team, then candidate Trump’s team, that contradicts, of course, what the president and his people have said about whether they were meeting with any representatives of the Russian government.”

‘Why did Obama do NOTHING?’

In his Sunday tweets, Trump also renewed his criticism of Obama, who has come under fire for an alleged lack of forcefulness in his response to the cyberattack. The Washington Post has reported that the Obama team was worried about triggering an escalation from Putin that might threaten the credibility of the election result, and also about being seen to be weighing in on the side of Trump’s Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton.

“Why did Obama do NOTHING when he had info before election?” Trump tweeted.

Brennan, the former CIA director, defended the former administration. “I don’t believe that the Obama administration choked,” he said.

“I think we can look at the actions that were taken prior to the election and after the election. I confronted my main Russian counterpart, and – on August 4 – and told him: ‘If you go down this road, it’s going to have serious consequences, not only for the bilateral relationship, but for our ability to work with Russia on any issue, because it is an assault on our democracy.’”

He added: “And President Obama confronted President Putin in September. Jim Clapper [former director of national intelligence] and Jeh Johnson [former homeland security secretary] announced publicly in October about Russian efforts. So, after we did that, I wonder whether or not the Russians then took a step back and said: ‘Wait a minute now, we’re not gonna be as aggressive as we may have been otherwise.’”

But Carter, Obama’s Defence Secretary, admitted: “I think it’s quite clear that that was not sufficient.”

He added: “That’s why it’s so important to press the Russians now. If it were sufficient, Vladimir Putin’s answer to our president wouldn’t have been to say – cast doubt upon it or ask for further intelligence from the United States.”

 

Trump says discussed forming cyber security unit with Putin

July 9, 2017

Reuters

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Twitter on Sunday that he discussed forming a cyber security unit to guard against election hacking with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Tweeting after his first meeting with Putin on Friday, Trump said now was the time to work constructively with Moscow, pointing to a ceasefire deal in southwest Syria that came into effect on Sunday.

“Putin & I discussed forming an impenetrable Cyber Security unit so that election hacking, & many other negative things, will be guarded and safe,” he said following their talks at the G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany.

Trump said he had raised allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election with Putin.

“I strongly pressed President Putin twice about Russian meddling in our election. He vehemently denied it. I’ve already given my opinion…..”

He added: “We negotiated a ceasefire in parts of Syria which will save lives. Now it is time to move forward in working constructively with Russia!”

Republican Senator Marco Rubio of Florida immediately criticized the move on Twitter, saying Putin was not a trusted partner.

Partnering with Putin on a “Cyber Security Unit” is akin to partnering with (Syrian President Bashar al) Assad on a “Chemical Weapons Unit,” he wrote.

Investigations by a special counsel, Robert Mueller, and several U.S. congressional committees are looking into whether Russia interfered in the election and colluded with Trump’s campaign. Those probes are focused almost exclusively on Moscow’s actions, lawmakers and intelligence officials say, and no evidence has surfaced publicly implicating other countries.

Moscow has denied any interference, and Trump says his campaign did not collude with Russia.

(This version of the story corrects the day of meeting in second paragraph to Friday)

(Reporting by David Stamp, Valerie Volcovici and Yasmeen Abutaleb; Editing by Janet Lawrence)

 

‘Russiagate’: The Stink Without a Secret

July 8, 2017

by Craig Murray

AntiWar

After six solid months of coordinated allegation from the mainstream media allied to the leadership of state security institutions, not one single scrap of solid evidence for Trump/Russia election hacking has emerged.

I do not support Donald Trump. I do support truth. There is much about Trump that I dislike intensely. Neither do I support the neo-liberal political establishment in the USA. The latter’s control of the mainstream media, and cunning manipulation of identity politics, seeks to portray the neo-liberal establishment as the heroes of decent values against Trump. Sadly, the idea that the neo-liberal establishment embodies decent values is completely untrue.

Truth disappeared so long ago in this witch-hunt that it is no longer even possible to define what the accusation is. Belief in “Russian hacking” of the US election has been elevated to a generic accusation of undefined wrongdoing, a vague malaise we are told is floating poisonously in the ether, but we are not allowed to analyze. What did the Russians actually do?

The original, base accusation is that it was the Russians who hacked the DNC and Podesta emails and passed them to WikiLeaks. (I can assure you that is untrue).

The authenticity of those emails is not in question. What they revealed of cheating by the Democratic establishment in biasing the primaries against Bernie Sanders, led to the forced resignation of Debbie Wasserman Shultz as chair of the Democratic National Committee. They also led to the resignation from CNN of Donna Brazile, who had passed debate questions in advance to Clinton. Those are facts. They actually happened. Let us hold on to those facts, as we surf through lies. There was other nasty Clinton Foundation and cash for access stuff in the emails, but we do not even need to go there for the purpose of this argument.

The original “Russian hacking” allegation was that it was the Russians who nefariously obtained these damning emails and passed them to WikiLeaks. The “evidence” for this was twofold. A report from private cyber security firm Crowdstrike claimed that metadata showed that the hackers had left behind clues, including the name of the founder of the Soviet security services. The second piece of evidence was that a blogger named Guccifer2 and a website called DNCLeaks appeared to have access to some of the material around the same time that WikiLeaks did, and that Guccifer2 could be Russian.

That is it. To this day, that is the sum total of actual “evidence” of Russian hacking. I won’t say hang on to it as a fact, because it contains no relevant fact. But at least it is some form of definable allegation of something happening, rather than “Russian hacking” being a simple article of faith like the Holy Trinity.

But there are a number of problems that prevent this being fact at all. Nobody has ever been able to refute the evidence of Bill Binney, former Technical Director of the NSA who designed its current surveillance systems. Bill has stated that the capability of the NSA is such, that if the DNC computers had been hacked, the NSA would be able to trace the actual packets of that information as those emails traveled over the Internet, and give a precise time, to the second, for the hack. The NSA simply do not have the event – because there wasn’t one. I know Bill personally and am quite certain of his integrity.

As we have been repeatedly told, “17 intelligence agencies” sign up to the “Russian hacking”, yet all these king’s horses and all these king’s men have been unable to produce any evidence whatsoever of the purported “hack”. Largely because they are not in fact trying. Here is another actual fact I wish you to hang on to: The Democrats have refused the intelligence agencies access to their servers to discover what actually happened. I am going to say that again.

The Democrats have refused the intelligence agencies access to their servers to discover what actually happened.

The heads of the intelligence community have said that they regard the report from Crowdstrike – the Clinton aligned private cyber security firm – as adequate. Despite the fact that the Crowdstrike report plainly proves nothing whatsoever and is based entirely on an initial presumption there must have been a hack, as opposed to an internal download.

Not actually examining the obvious evidence has been a key tool in keeping the “Russian hacking” meme going. On 24 May the Guardian reported triumphantly, following the Washington Post, that

“Fox News falsely alleged federal authorities had found thousands of emails between Rich and WikiLeaks, when in fact law enforcement officials disputed that Rich’s laptop had even been in possession of, or examined by, the FBI.”

It evidently did not occur to the Guardian as troubling, that those pretending to be investigating the murder of Seth Rich have not looked at his laptop.

There is a very plain pattern here of agencies promoting the notion of a fake “Russian crime”, while failing to take the most basic and obvious initial steps if they were really investigating its existence. I might add to that, there has been no contact with me at all by those supposedly investigating. I could tell them these were leaks not hacks. WikiLeaks The clue is in the name.

So those “17 agencies” are not really investigating but are prepared to endorse weird Crowdstrike claims, like the idea that Russia’s security services are so amateur as to leave fingerprints with the name of their founder. If the Russians fed the material to WikiLeaks, why would they also set up a vainglorious persona like Guccifer2 who leaves obvious Russia pointing clues all over the place?

Of course we need to add from the WikiLeaks“Vault 7” leak release, information that the CIA specifically deploys technology that leaves behind fake fingerprints of a Russian computer hacking operation.

Crowdstrike have a general anti-Russian attitude. They published a report seeking to allege that the same Russian entities which “had hacked” the DNC were involved in targeting for Russian artillery in the Ukraine. This has been utterly discredited.

Some of the more crazed “Russiagate” allegations have been quietly dropped. The mainstream media are hoping we will all forget their breathless endorsement of the reports of the charlatan Christopher Steele, a former middle ranking MI6 man with very limited contacts that he milked to sell lurid gossip to wealthy and gullible corporations. I confess I rather admire his chutzpah.

Given there is no hacking in the Russian hacking story, the charges have moved wider into a vague miasma of McCarthyite anti-Russian hysteria. Does anyone connected to Trump know any Russians? Do they have business links with Russian finance?

Of course they do. Trump is part of the worldwide oligarch class whose financial interests are woven into a vast worldwide network that enslaves pretty well the rest of us. As are the Clintons and the owners of the mainstream media who are stoking up the anti-Russian hysteria. It is all good for their armaments industry interests, in both Washington and Moscow.

Trump’s judgment is appalling. His sackings or inappropriate directions to people over this subject may damage him.

The old Watergate related wisdom is that it is not the crime that gets you, it is the cover-up. But there is a fundamental difference here. At the center of Watergate there was an actual burglary. At the center of Russian hacking there is a void, a hollow, and emptiness, an abyss, a yawning chasm. There is nothing there.

Those who believe that opposition to Trump justifies whipping up anti-Russian hysteria on a massive scale, on the basis of lies, are wrong. I remain positive that the movement Bernie Sanders started will bring a new dawn to America in the next few years. That depends on political campaigning by people on the ground and on social media. Leveraging falsehoods and cold war hysteria through mainstream media in an effort to somehow get Clinton back to power is not a viable alternative. It is a fantasy and even were it practical, I would not want it to succeed.

Senator McCain says Republican healthcare bill likely dead

July 9, 2017

by Yasmeen Abutaleb

Reuters

WASHINGTON-A senior U.S. Republican senator predicted on Sunday that the Republican bill to roll back Obamacare would likely fail, adding to growing signs that the bill is in trouble.

“My view is that it’s probably going to be dead,” Senator John McCain, a senior U.S. Republican, said on the CBS program, “Face the Nation.”

The Senate bill, which faces unified Democratic opposition, has been further imperiled during a week-long recess where several Republican senators have had to return to their states and face constituents strongly opposed to the bill. Senators return to Washington on Monday.

The Senate bill keeps much of Obamacare intact but strips away most of its funding. It repeals most Obamacare taxes, overhauls the law’s tax credits and ends its Medicaid expansion. It also goes beyond repealing Obamacare by cutting funding for the Medicaid program beginning in 2025.

White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus said on Sunday on Fox News that U.S. President Donald Trump expected Congress to pass a bill to repeal and replace Obamacare.

Republican Senator Ted Cruz on Sunday said failure to pass the bill was “not an option,” and said the Senate effort must focus on lowering premiums. He pointed to an amendment he offered that is being scored by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which assesses the impact of legislation.

Cruz’s amendment would allow insurers to offer plans that do not comply with Obamacare’s mandate that they charge sick and healthy people the same rates and that they cover a set of essential health benefits, such as maternity care and prescription drugs, as long as they also offer plans that do comply with the regulations.

Cruz’s amendment has drawn the support of conservative senators and groups, who say the amendment will help lower premiums. But moderate Republicans and outside critics say it will erode protections for people with pre-existing conditions and make their insurance unaffordable.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell aims to hold a vote on the legislation, which needs the support of at least 50 of the Senate’s 52 Republicans, before a six-week recess that begins on July 29.

Yet even McConnell cast doubt on the bill’s prospects for passage last week.

Speaking at a luncheon in his home state of Kentucky, McConnell said if Congress fails to follow through on a seven-year pledge to repeal Obamacare, then it must act to shore up private health insurance markets, comments seen as providing a pathway to a bipartisan deal to fix the health system.

(Reporting by Yasmeen Abutaleb, Valerie Volcovici and Caren Bohan; Editing by James Dalgleish)

The Defense Intelligence Agency Report of April 20, 1978 in re the Kennedy Assassination

Note: The following report comes from the files of the late Robert T. Crowley, formerly Deputy Director of Clandestine Operations of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Defense Intelligence Agency

Washington, DC 20301

20 APRIL 1978

SUBJECT: Soviet Intelligence Report on Assassination of President KENNEDY

TO: DIRECTOR

The following report has been prepared at your request in response to a Soviet report on the assassination of President John F. KENNEDY on 22 NOV 1963. The Soviet document (see Enclosure a) has been obtained from a fully reliable source and duly authenticated.

This report is an analysis of the Soviet document and is done on a paragraph-by-paragraph basis.

Material in this analysis has been taken from a number of sources indicated in the Appendix and is to be considered classified at the highest level. Nothing contained in this report may be disseminated to any individual or agency without prior written permission of the Director or his appointed deputy.

This agency does not assume, and cannot verify, the correctness of the material contained herein, although every reasonable effort has been made to do so. Any use of information contained in this report must be paraphrased and sources, either individual or agency, must not be credited.

/s/

VEDDER B. DRISCOLL   Colonel, USA

Chief, Soviet/Warsaw Pact Division 11 1

Directorate for Intelligence Research

 

 

1 Enclosure                                Appendix

Note: The Russian language file is not attached to this report and exists in official translation only

Enclosure A

The Soviet Intelligence Study (translation)

1. On 22 November, 1963, American President John Kennedy was shot and killed during a political motor trip through the Texas city of Dallas. The President was riding at the head of the procession in his official state car, seated in the right rear with his wife on his left side. Seated in front of him was the Governor of Texas and his wife, also on his left side. The vehicle was an open car without side or top protection of any kind. There was a pilot car in front, about a hundred feet, and the President’s car was flanked by motorcycle outriders located two to a side roughly parallel with the rear wheels of the State car.
2. The President and his party were driving at a speed of about 20 kilometers per hour through the built-up area of Dallas and greeted the many people lining the streets along his route. Security was supplied by the Secret Service supplemented by local police. There were two Secret Service agents in the front of the car. One was driving the car. Other agents were in cars following the Presidential vehicle and Dallas police on motorbikes were on both sides of the Presidential car but at the rear of it. There was a pilot car in front of the President’s car but it was at some distance away.
3. The course of the journey was almost past all the occupied area. The cars then turned sharply to the right and then again to the left to go to the motorway leading to a meeting hall where the President was to speak at a dinner. It is considered very bad security for such an official drive to decrease its speed or to make unnecessary turnings or stops. (Historical note: It was just this problem that led directly to positioning the Austrian Heir in front of waiting assassins at Sarajevo in 1914.) The route was set by agents of the Secret Service and published in the Dallas newspapers before the arrival of the President and his party.
4. After the last turning to the left, the cars passed a tall building on the right side of the street that was used as a warehouse for the storage of school books. This building was six stories tall and had a number of workers assigned to it. There were no official security people in this building, either on the roof or at the windows. Also, there were no security agents along the roadway on either side. All security agents were riding either in the Presidential car (two in the front) and in the following vehicles.
5. As the President’s state car passed this building, some shots were heard. The exact source and number of these shots was never entirely determined. Some observers thought that the shots came from above and behind while many more observers in the area stated that the shots came from the front and to the right of the car. There was a small area with a decorative building and some trees and bushes there and many saw unidentified people in this area. Many people standing in front of this area to watch the cars stated that shots came from behind them.
6. When the first shots were fired, the President was seen to lean forward and clutch at his throat with both hands. Immediately when this happened, the Secret Service driver of the President’s state car slowed down the vehicle until it was almost stopped. This was a direct breach of their training which stated that in such events where firing occurred, the driver of the President’s car would immediately drive away as quickly as possible.
7. At the same time as the first shot, there was a second one, this one from behind and above. This bullet struck the Governor, sitting in front of the President and slightly to his right, in the right upper shoulder. The bullet went downwards into the chest cavity, breaking ribs, struck his wrist and lodged in his left upper thigh. There were then two shots fired at the President’s car. The first shot initiated the action and this one appears to have hit the President in the throat. If so, it must have been fired from in front of the car, not behind it.
8. Right at that moment, there was one other shot. The shell obviously struck the President on the upper rear of the right side of his head, throwing him back and to the left. Also, at this time, blood, pieces of skull and brains could be seen flying to the left where the motorbike police guard was struck with this material on his right side and on the right side of his motorbike.
9. Immediately after this final shot, the driver then began to increase his speed and the cars all went at increasing speed down under the tunnel.
10. The fatally injured President and the seriously injured Governor were very quickly taken to a nearby hospital for treatment. The President was declared as dead and his body was removed, by force, to an aircraft and flown to Washington. The badly wounded Governor was treated at the hospital for his wounds and survived.
11. Within moments of the shots fired at the President, a Dallas motorcycle police officer ran into the book building and up to the second floor in the company of the manager of the establishment. Here, the policeman encountered a man later positively identified as one Lee Harvey Oswald, an employee of the book storage company. Oswald was drinking a Coca-Cola and appeared to be entirely calm and collected. (Later it was said that he had rushed down four flights of steps past other employees in a few moments after allegedly shooting the President. It is noted from the records that none of the other employees on the staircase ever saw Oswald passing them.) The elevator which moved freight and personnel between the floors was halted at the sixth floor and turned off so that it could not be recalled to persons below wishing to use it.
12. After meeting the police officer and apparently finishing his drink, Oswald went down to the main floor and left the building, unnoticed.
13. Oswald then went to his apartment by a public bus and on foot, dressed in new clothes and left the building. His apartment manager observed that a police car stopped in front of the building and blew its horn several times. She was unaware of the reason for this.
14. Oswald was then stated to have been halted by a local police officer whom he then was alleged to have shot dead. The only witness who positively identified Oswald as the shooter was considered to be unstable and unreliable.
15. Oswald then entered a motion picture house and was later arrested there by the police. He was beaten in the face by the police and taken into their custody.
16. When the captured Oswald was photographed by the reporters, he claimed that he was not guilty of shooting anyone and this was a position he maintained throughout his interrogations.
17. All records of his interrogation, carried out by the Dallas police and the Secret Service, were subsequently destroyed without a trace.
18. During the course of the interrogations, Oswald was repeatedly led up and down very crowded corridors of the police headquarters with no thought of security. This is an obvious breach of elementary security that was noted at the time by reporters. It now appears that Oswald’s killer was seen and photographed in the crowds in the building.
19. The American Marine defector, Lee Harvey Oswald, entered the Soviet Union in October of 1959. Initially, Oswald, who indicated he wanted to “defect” and reside in the Soviet Union, was the object of some suspicion by Soviet intelligence authorities. He was at first denied entrance, attempted a “suicide” attempt and only when he was more extensively interrogated by competent agents was it discovered that he was in possession of material that potentially had a great intelligence value.
20. Oswald, who as a U.S. Marine, was stationed at the Atsugi air field in Japan, had been connected with the Central Intelligence Agency’s U-2 intelligence-gathering aircraft program and was in possession of technical manuals and papers concerning these aircraft and their use in overflights of the Soviet Union.
21. The subject proved to be most cooperative and a technical analysis of his documentation indicated that he was certainly being truthful with Soviet authorities. In addition to the manuals, Oswald was able to supply Soviet authorities with a wealth of material, much of which was unknown and relatively current. As a direct result of analysis of the Oswald material, it became possible to intercept and shoot down a U2 aircraft flown by CIA employee Gary Powers.
22. On the basis of the quality of this material, Oswald was granted asylum in the Soviet Union and permitted to settle in Minsk under the supervision of the Ministry of the Interior. This was partially to reward him for his cooperation and also to remove him from the possible influence of American authorities at the Embassy in Moscow.
23. Oswald worked in a radio factory, was given a subsidized apartment in Minsk and kept under constant surveillance. He was very pro-Russian, learned to speak and read the language, albeit not with native fluency, and behaved himself well in his new surroundings.
24. Although Oswald was a known homosexual, he nevertheless expressed an interest in women as well and his several casual romantic affairs with both men and women were duly noted.
25. Oswald became involved with Marina Nikolaevna Prusakova, the niece of a Minsk-based intelligence official. He wished to marry this woman who was attractive but cold and ambitious. She wished to leave the Soviet Union and emigrate to the United States for purely economic reasons. Since his marrying a Soviet citizen under his circumstances was often most difficult, Oswald began to speak more and more confidentially with his intelligence contacts in Minsk. He finally revealed that he was an agent for the United States Office of Naval Intelligence and had been recruited by them to act as a conduit between their office and Soviet intelligence.
26. The official material on the CIA operations was entirely authentic and had been supplied to Oswald by his controllers at the ONI. It was apparent, and Oswald repeatedly stated, that the CIA was completely unaware of the removal of sensitive documents from their offices. This removal, Oswald stated, was effected by the ONI personnel stationed at Atsugi air field. Oswald was unaware of the reasons for this operation but had been repeatedly assured that the mission was considered of great national importance and that if he proved to be successful, he would be afforded additional and profitable future employment. It appears that Oswald was considered to be a one time operative and was expendable. His purpose was to establish a reputation as a pro-Russian individual who would then “defect” to the Soviet Union and pass over the U2 material. He did not seem to realize at the time he “defected” that once he had been permitted to live in the Soviet Union, on an official governmental subsidy, returning to America would be very difficult, if not impossible.
27. Now, with his romantic, and very impractical, attachment to Prusakova, he was being pressured by her to marry and then take her with him back to the United States. Oswald was informed that this was not a possible option for him. He became very emotional and difficult to deal with but finally made the suggestion that if he were allowed to marry and return to the United States, he would agree to work in reality for the Soviet Union.
28. After referring this matter to higher authority, it was decided to accede to Oswald’s requests, especially since he was of no further use to Soviet intelligence and might well be of some service while resident in America.
29. Marriage was permitted and his return was expedited both by the Soviet authorities and the Americans who were informed, via a letter from Oswald, that he was in possession of intelligence material of value to them. This valuable information was duly given to him, a reversal to be noted on his original mission!
30. Oswald was given prepared information of such a nature as to impress American intelligence and permitted to contact intelligence officials in the American Embassy in Moscow. He was then permitted by the Americans to return to the United States with his new wife.
31. In America, Oswald no longer worked with the ONI because he was not able to further assist them. Besides, he was viewed as dangerous because he had knowledge of the ONI theft and use of CIA documents.
32. While in America, Oswald then worked as a paid informant for the Federal Bureau of Investigation who had contacted him when he returned and requested his assistance with domestic surveillance against pro-Soviet groups. He was assigned, in New Orleans, the task of infiltrating the anti-Castro groups which were nominally under the control of the CIA.
33. It is noted that there exists a very strong rivalry between the FBI and the CIA. The former is nominally in charge of domestic counterintelligence and the latter in charge of foreign intelligence. They have been fighting for power ever since the CIA was first formed in 1947. Oswald has stated that the FBI was aware of this ONI-sponsored defection with stolen CIA U2 documents but this is not a proven matter.
34. Later, Oswald was transferred to Dallas, Texas, by the FBI and he then secured a position at a firm which dealt in very secret photographic matters. Here, he was able to supply both the FBI and Soviet intelligence with identical data.
35. FBI reports, kept secret, show clearly that Oswald was paid by the FBI as an informant.
36. In New Orleans, a center of Cuban insurgent activity, Oswald was in direct contact with FBI officials and worked for a Guy Bannister, former FBI agent. Oswald infiltrated the ranks of Cuban insurgents and reported his findings to the FBI .
37. At that time, the FBI was involved, at the request of the Attorney General, Robert Kennedy, in watching the clandestine activities of the CIA and its Alpha and Omega special commando groups, some of whom were in training in the New Orleans area.
38. The American President was greatly concerned that continued and fully unauthorized para-military action against Cuba might upset the balance he had achieved in seeking peace with the Soviet Union.
39. It is knows from informants inside the CIA and also from Cuban double agents that the CIA was, in conjunction with the highest American military leadership, to force an American invasion of Cuba.
40. These joint plans, which consisted of acts of extreme provocation by American units against American property and citizens, were unknown to Kennedy.
41. When the American President discovered that Cuban insurgents, under the control of the CIA and with the support of the highest military leadership, were embarked on a course of launching military action against American naval bases under the cover of being Cuban regular troops, he at once ordered a halt.
42. Kennedy also informed Premier Khruschev directly of these planned actions and assured him that he had prevented them from being executed. The Premier expressed his gratitude and hoped that Kennedy would be successful in enforcing his will and preventing any other such adventures.
43. The American President, unsure of the depth of his influence with the leadership of the American military and the CIA, ordered the FBI to investigate these matters and ordered the Director, Hoover, to report directly to him on his findings.
44. Oswald was a part of the FBI surveillance of the Cuban insurgents in the New Orleans area.
45. Oswald made a number of public appearances passing out pro-Castro leaflets in order to ingratiate himself with the insurgents.
46. At the FBI request, a local television station filmed Oswald passing out these leaflets and had this film shown on local stations in order to enhance Oswald’s image. When his mission was finished, Oswald was then sent to Dallas to observe and penetrate the Russian colony there.
47. Two days after the shooting of the American President, the alleged assassin, Oswald was shot to death in the basement of the Dallas Police Department while he was being transferred to another jail. On the day of the assassination, November 22, FBI Chief Hoover notified the authorities in Dallas that Oswald should be given special security.
48. This killing was done in the presence of many armed police officers by a known criminal and associate of the American Mafia named Jack Rubenstein, or “Ruby” as he was also known. “Ruby” had a long past of criminal association with the Mafia in Chicago, Illinois, a major area of gangster control in America. “Ruby” had once worked for the famous Al Capone and then for Sam Giancana. This man was head of the Chicago mob at the time of the assassination.
49. “Ruby” was the owner of a drinking establishment in Dallas that specialized in dancing by naked women and was also a close friend of many police officers in Dallas. “Ruby” had been seen and photographed in the Dallas police department while Oswald was being interrogated. It should be noted here that suspect Oswald was very often taken by Dallas police out into the completely unguarded hallways of the building and in the presence of many persons unknown to the police. This is viewed as either an attempt to have Oswald killed or a very incompetent and stupid breach of basic security.
50. The timing by “Ruby” of his entrance into the guarded basement was far too convenient to be accidental. Also, the method of his shooting of Oswald showed a completely professional approach. “Ruby” stepped out from between two policeman holding a revolver down along his leg to avoid detection. As he stepped towards the suspect, “Ruby” raised his right hand with the revolver and fired upwards into Oswald’s body. The bullet severed major arteries and guaranteed Oswald’s death.
51. Although “Ruby” subsequently pretended to be mentally disturbed, his actions showed professional calculation to a degree. This play-acting was continued into his trial and afterwards. “Ruby” was convicted of the murder of Oswald and sentenced to death. He died in prison of cancer in January of 1967 after an appeal from his sentence had been granted by the court judge. Information indicates that he was given a fatal injection.
52. “Ruby’s” statements should not be confused with his actions. He was a professional criminal, had excellent connections with the Dallas police, had been involved with activities in Cuba and gun running into that country and some evidence has been produced to show that he and Oswald had knowledge of each other.
53. Like Oswald, “Ruby” too had homosexual activities and one public witness firmly placed Oswald in “Ruby’s” club prior to the assassination.
54. In view of later developments and disclosures, the use of a Chicago killer with local Mafia connections to kill Oswald is not surprising. Stories of “Ruby’s” eccentricity were highlighted by American authorities to make it appear that he, like suspect Oswald, was an eccentric, single individual who acted out of emotion and not under orders.
55. As in the case of Oswald, there was never a proven motive for “Ruby’s” acts. Oswald had no reason whatsoever to shoot the President, had never committed any proven acts of violence. Although he was purported to have shot at a fascist General, it was badly presented and in all probability was a “red herring” to “prove” Oswald’s desire to shoot people. “Ruby”, a professional criminal with a long record of violence, claimed he shot Oswald to “protect” the President’s wife from testifying. This statement appears to be an obvious part of “Ruby’s” attempt to defend himself by claiming to be mad.
56. It is obvious that “Ruby” killed Oswald to silence him. Since Oswald was not involved in the killing of the President, continued interrogation of him leading to a court trial would have very strongly exposed the weakness of the American government’s attempt to blame him for the crime.
57. Silencing Oswald promptly was a matter of serious importance for the actual killers.
58. Rubenstein was not a man of intelligence but was a devoted member of the American criminal network.
59. Just prior to the assassination, Rubenstein was in a meeting with representatives of the criminal network and was told that he was to be held in readiness to kill someone who might be in Dallas police custody.
60. It was felt that Rubenstein was a well-connected man with the Dallas police department and that he might have access to the building without a challenge. He was also informed that he could be considered a “great hero” in the eyes of the American public. Rubenstein was a man of little self-worth and this approach strongly influenced him in his future actions.
61. A very large number of published books about the assassination have appeared since the year 1963. Most of these books are worthless from a historical point of view. They represent the views of obsessed people and twist information only to suit the author’s beliefs.
62. There are three main ideas written about:
63. The American gangsters killed the President because his brother, the American Attorney General, was persecuting them;
64. Cuban refugees felt that Mr. Kennedy had deserted their cause of ousting Cuban chief of state Castro;
65. Various American power groups such as the capitalist business owners, fascist political groups, racists, internal and external intelligence organization either singly or in combination are identified.
66. American officials have not only made no effort to silence these writers but in many cases have encouraged them. The government feels, as numerous confidential reports indicate, that the more lunatic books appear, the better. This way, the real truth is so concealed as to be impenetrable.
67. It was initially of great concern to our government that individuals inside the American government were utilizing Oswald’s “Communist/Marxist” appearance to suggest that the assassination was of a Soviet origin.
68. In order to neutralize this very dangerous theme, immediately after the assassination, the Soviet Union fully cooperated with American investigating bodies and supplied material to them showing very clearly that Oswald was not carrying out any Soviet designs.
69. Also, false defectors were used to convince the Americans that Oswald was considered a lunatic by the Soviet Union, and had not been connected with the Soviet intelligence apparatus in any way. He was, of course, connected but it was imperative to disassociate the Soviet Union with the theory that Oswald, an American intelligence operative, had been in collusion with them concerning the assassination.
70. The false defector Nosenko, a provable member of Soviet intelligence, was given a scenario that matched so closely the personal attitudes of Mr. Hoover of the FBI that this scenario was then officially supported by Mr. Hoover and his bureau.
71. Angleton of the CIA at once suspected Nosenko’s real mission and subjected him to intense interrogation but finally, Nosenko has been accepted as a legitimate defector with valuable information on Oswald.
72. Because of this business, Angleton was forced to resign his post as chief of counter intelligence. This has been considered a most fortunate byproduct of the controversy.
73. The FBI has accepted the legitimacy of Nosenko and his material precisely because it suited them to do so. It was also later the official position of the CIA because the issue dealt specifically with the involvement, or non-involvement, between Oswald, a private party, and the organs of Soviet intelligence. Since there was no mention of Oswald’s connection with American intelligence, this was of great importance to both agencies.
74. It is known now that the American gangsters had very close relations with the Central Intelligence Agency. This relationship began during the war when the American OSS made connections with the Sicilian members of the American gangs in order to assist them against the fascists. The man who performed this liaison was Angleton, later head of counter intelligence for the CIA. These gangster contacts were later utilized by the CIA for its own ends.
75. American foreign policy was, and still is, firmly in the hands of the CIA. It alone makes determinations as to which nation is to be favored and which is to be punished. No nation is permitted to be a neutral; all have to be either in the US camp or are its enemies. Most often, the wishes of American business are paramount in the determination as to which nation will receive US support and which will not only be denied this support but attacked. It is the American CIA and not the Soviet Union, that had divided the world into two warring camps.
76. American, and most especially the CIA, attempts to destabilize a Communist state i.e., Cuba, could not be permitted by the Soviet leadership. Castro was a most valuable client in that he provided an excellent base of intelligence and political operations in the American hemisphere. As the CIA had been setting up its own ring of hostile states surrounding the Soviet Union, Cuba was viewed officially as a completely legitimate area of political expansion. Threats of invasion and physical actions against Cuba were viewed by the Chairman as threats against the Soviet Union itself.” “It is an absolute fact that both the American President, Kennedy, and his brother, the American Attorney General, were especially active in a sexual sense. A number of sexually explicit pictures of the President engaging in sexual acts are in the official files as are several pictures of the Attorney General, taken while on a visit to Moscow in 1961.
77. The President was aware that a number of these pictures were in Soviet hands and acted accordingly. In addition to a regular parade of whores into the White House, it was also reliably reported from several sources that the President was a heavy user of various kinds of illegal narcotics. It is also known from medical reports that the President suffered from a chronic venereal disease for which he was receiving medical treatment.
78. In order to better cooperate with the Soviet Union, President Kennedy used to regularly keep in close, private communication with the Chairman. These contacts were kept private to prevent negative influences from the State Department and most certainly from the Central Intelligence Agency. The President said several times that he did not trust this agency who was bent on stirring up a war between the two nations. Through this personal contact, many matters that might have escalated due to the interference of others were peacefully settled.
79. 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.
80. 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.” “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.
81. 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.
82. 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.
83. 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.

 

The Defense Intelligence Agency Report

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.
2. It has long been a concern of the leadership and intelligence organs of the Soviet Union that blame has been attached to them for this assassination.
3. The Soviets felt in the days immediately following the assassination that a plot was being developed, or had been developed prior to the act, that would serve to blame either the Cuban government or themselves for this action.
4. It was felt that the identification of Lee Harvey Oswald as the sole assassin was intended to implicate the Soviet Union in the act because Oswald had been a very vocal supporter of the Marxist theory; had defected to the Soviet Union and had married a Soviet woman with intelligence connections.
5. The strongly stated official policy of putting Oswald forward as the sole assassin greatly alarmed the Soviet Union which had already weathered the very serious Cuban Missile Crisis, a situation that came perilously close to an atomic war between the two powers.
6. The Soviet leadership had established a strong , albeit secret, connection between themselves and the American President but with his death, this clandestine communications channel was closed.
7. The Soviets promptly dispatched a number of senior intelligence personnel and files to Washington in order to reassure President Johnson and his top aides that the Soviet Union had no hand in the assassination.
8. Johnson himself was a badly frightened man who, having witnessed the murder of his predecessor, lived in constant dread of a similar attack on himself. He also had no stomach for the kind of international brinkmanship as practiced by Kennedy and immediately assured the Soviets that he did not believe they had anything to do with the killing.
9. The Soviets had learned of the plans formulated by the JCS to create a reason for military intervention in Cuba in 1962-63. They believed then, and still believe, that the killing of Kennedy was done partially to create a causus belli insofar as the Soviet Union itself was concerned.
10. Their information indicated that while Kennedy had not permitted these provocations to influence his policy, such could not be said for Johnson. He was viewed as an untried individual and best reassured.
11. One of the strongest supporters of the Soviet point of view was FBI Director Hoover.
12. Because of the involvement of his agency with Oswald, it was in Hoover’s best interests to absolve the Soviets of any complicity and maintain the accepted fiction of Oswald as a deranged person working without assistance of any kind and certainly without any connection to any U.S. agency.
13. It has been alleged that Oswald had also worked for the CIA. This has not been proven although it should be noted that Oswald was in direct contact with CIA agents, associated with the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, while in Russia and had been debriefed by that agency after his return from Russia.
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.
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.
17. The background and development of the Presidential trip as hereinafter set forth is in parallel with the Soviet report.
18. The Dallas trip had been in train since late July of 1963. Texas was considered to be a key state in the upcoming 1964 Presidential elections. It was the disqualification of over 100,000 Texas votes, in conjunction with the known fraudulent voting in Chicago in 1960 that gave President Kennedy and his associates a slim margin of victory.
19. The actual route of Kennedy’s drive through downtown Dallas was made known to the local press on Tuesday, November 19. The sharp right turn from Main St. onto Houston and then the equally sharp left turn onto Elm was the only way to get to the on ramp to the Stemmons Freeway. A traffic divider on Main St. precluded the motorcade from taking the direct route, from Main St. across Houston and thence right to the Stemmons Freeway exit.
20. Just after the President’s car passed the Texas Book Depository, a number of shots were fired. There were a total of three shots fired at the President. The first shot came from the right front, hitting him in the neck. This projectile did not exit the body. The immediate reaction by the President was to clutch at his neck and say, “I have been hit!” He was unable to move himself into any kind of a defensive posture because he was wearing a restrictive body brace.
21. The second shot came from above and behind the Presidential car, the bullet striking Texas Governor Connally in the upper right shoulder, passing through his chest and exiting sharply downwards into his left thigh.
22. The third, and fatal shot, was also fired at the President from the right front and from a position slightly above the car. This bullet, which was fired from a .223 weapon, struck the President above the right ear, passed through the right rear quadrant of his head and exited towards the left. Pieces of the President’s skull and a large quantity of brain matter was blasted out and to the left of the car. Much of this matter struck a Dallas police motorcycle outrider positioned to the left rear of the Presidential car.
23. Photographic evidence indicates that the driver, SA Greer, slowed down the vehicle when shots were heard, in direct contravention of standing Secret Service regulations.
24. Reports that the initial hit on the President came from above and behind are false and misleading. Given the position of the vehicle at the time of impact and the altitude of the alleged shooter, a bullet striking the back of the President’s neck would have exited sharply downward as did the projectile fired at Governor Connally purportedly from the same shooter located in the same area of the sixth floor of the Texas Book Depository.
25. The projectile that killed the President was filled with mercury. When such a projectile enters a body, the sudden decrease in velocity causes the mercury to literally explode the shell. This type of projectile is designed to practically guarantee the death of the target and is a method in extensive use by European assassination teams.
26. The disappearance of Kennedy’s brain and related post mortem material from the U.S. National Archives was motivated by an official desire not to permit further testing which would certainly show the presence of mercury in the brain matter.
27. Official statements that the fatal shot was fired from above and behind are totally incorrect and intended to mislead. Such a shot would have blasted the brain and blood matter forward and not to the left rear. Also, photographic evidence indicates that after the fatal shot, the President was hurled towards his left, against his wife who was seated to his immediate left.
28. The so-called “magic bullet” theory, i.e., a relatively pristine, fired, Western Cartridge 6.5 Mannlicher-Carcano projectile produced in evidence, is obviously an official attempt to justify its own thesis. This theory, that a projectile from above and behind struck the President in the upper back, swung up, exited his throat, gained altitude and then angled downwards through the body of Governor Connally, striking bone and passing through muscle mass and emerging in almost undamaged condition is a complete impossibility. The bullet in question was obtained by firing the alleged assassination weapon into a container of water.
29. Three other such projectiles were recovered in similar undamaged condition. One of these was produced for official inspection and was claimed to have been found on Governor Connally’s stretcher at Parkland Hospital. As a goodly portion of the projectile was still in the Governor’s body (where much of it remained until his death some years later), this piece of purported evidence should be considered as nothing more than an official “plant.”
30. Soviet commentary on Oswald is basically verified from both KGB and CIA sources. Oswald, however, was not being run by the ONI (note here that the USMC is under the control of the USN and that ONI would be the appropriate agency of initial contact) but instead by the CIA. Their personnel files indicate that Oswald was initially recruited by ONI for possible penetration of the very pervasive Japanese communist intelligence organization. Atsugi base was a very important target for these spies.
31. Because of a shift in their policy, the CIA found it expedient to exploit their U2 surveillance of the Soviet Union as a political rather than an intelligence operation.
32. The Eisenhower administration’s interest in the possibility of achieving a rapprochement with the Soviet Government created a situation that might have proven disastrous to the CIA continued functions.
33. Internal CIA documents show very clearly that as their very existence was dependent on a continuation of the Cold War, any diminution of East-West hostility could easily lead to their down-sizing and, more important, to their loss of influence over the office of the President and also of U.S. foreign policy.
34. It was proposed, according to top level CIA reports, to somehow use their own U2 flights to create an increase in tension that could lead to a frustration of any detente that might result from a lessening of international tensions.
35. It was initially thought that certain compromising documents could be prepared, sent to the CIA base at Atsugi, Japan, and then somehow leaked to the aggressive Japanese communists. However, it was subsequently decided that there was a strong possibility that the documents might not be forwarded to Soviet Russia and kept in Japan for use in the anti-West/anti-war domestic campaigns.
36. CIA personnel stationed at Atsugi conceived a plan to then arrange for select documents to be given directly to the Soviets via an American defector. It was at this point that Oswald’s name was brought up by an ONI man. A CIA evaluation of Oswald convinced them that he would be the perfect defector. Psychological profiles of Oswald convinced them that he was clever, pro-Marxist, a person of low self-esteem as manifested in his chronic anti-social attitudes coupled with homosexual behavior.
37. As Oswald had developed a strong friendship with his ONI control, it was decided to allow him to think that he was working for the U.S. Navy rather than the CIA. (Note: This has always been a hallmark of CIA clandestine operations. Source agents are always considered expendable by that agency and their record of abandonment of these non-CIA agents if felt necessary is well-known to the intelligence community.)
38. Oswald was told that he was performing a “special, vitally important” mission for the ONI and would be given a very good paying official position when he “successfully returned” from the Soviet Union. CIA and ONI reports indicate that he was never expected to return to the United States after he had fulfilled his function of passing the desired documentation to the Soviet intelligence community.
39. The subsequent interception and shooting down by the Soviets of a U2 piloted by CIA agent Gary F. Powers using the leaked CIA material was sufficient to wreck the projected Eisenhower/Khrushchev meetings and harden the Soviet leader’s attitude towards the West.
40. It should be noted that the Powers U2 was equipped with a delayed action self-destruct device, designed to be activated by the pilot upon bailing out. This device was intended to destroy any classified surveillance material on the aircraft. In the Powers aircraft, the device was later disclosed to have been altered to explode the moment the pilot activated it. This would have resulted in the destruction of both the pilot and his aircraft.
41. After his return to the United States, Oswald was a marked man. He was a potential danger to the CIA, whose unredacted personnel reports indicate that Oswald was considered to be unstable, hostile, intelligent and very frustrated. He was, in short, a loose cannon.
42. While resident in Dallas, Oswald became acquainted with George S. DeMohrenschildt, a CIA operative. DeMohrenschildt, a Balt, had family connections both in Poland and Russia, had worked for the German Ausland Abwehr and later the SD during the Second World War. He “befriended” Oswald and eventually an intimate physical relationship developed between the two men. This infuriated Marina Oswald and their already strained relationship grew even worse. She had come to America expecting great financial rewards and instead found poverty, two children and a sexually cold husband.
43. It was De Mohrenschildt’s responsibility to watch Oswald, to establish a strong inter-personal relationship with him and to learn what information, if any, Oswald might possess that could damage the CIA if it became known.
44. The CIAs subsequent use of Oswald as a pawn in the assassination was a direct result of this concern.
45. The connections of Angleton, Chief of Counter Intelligence for the CIA with elements of the mob are well known in intelligence circles. Angleton worked closely with the Sicilian and Naples mobs in 1944 onwards as part of his duties for the OSS.
46. The connections of Robert Crowley, another senior CIA official, with elements of the Chicago mob are also well known in intelligence circles.
47. The attempts of the CIA and the JCS to remove Castro by assassination are also part of the official record. These assassination plots, called RIFLE show the connections between the CIA and the Chicago branch of the Mafia.
48. This Mafia organization was paid nearly a quarter million dollars to effect the killing of Castro but apparently kept the money and did nothing.
49. Subsequent to the assassination, the CIA put out the cover story that Castro had planned the act in retaliation for the attempts on his life. This is not substantiated either from US or Soviet sources.
50. While the American Mafia had numerous reasons for wishing the removal of the President and, especially, his brother the Attorney General, it does not appear that they were participants in the assassination.
51. It is evident that contact was made between the Chicago Mafia and its counterpart in Sicily in an effort to locate putative assassins.
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.
56. Although the Chicago Mafia did not supply the actual assassins, they did provide the services of one of their lesser members, Jack “Ruby” Rubinstein, a small-time mob enforcer, in the event that Oswald was taken alive.
57. The use of Jack Ruby to kill Oswald has been explained by the official reports as an aberrant act on the part of an emotional man under the influence of drugs. The Warren Commission carefully overlooked Ruby’s well-known ties to the Chicago mob as well as his connections with mob elements in Cuba.
58. Ruby’s early Chicago connections with the mob are certainly well documented in Chicago police files. This material was not used nor referred to in the Warren Report.
59. Ruby’s close connection with many members of the Dallas police infrastructure coupled with a very strong motivation to remove Oswald prior to any appointment of an attorney to represent him or any possible revelations Oswald might make about his probably knowledge of the actual assassins made Ruby an excellent agent of choice. If Oswald had gained the relative security of the County Jail and lawyers has been appointed for him, it would have proven much more difficult to remove him.
60. The Warren Commission was most particularly alarmed by attempts on the part of New York attorney Mark Lane, to present a defense for the dead Oswald before the Commission. Lane was refused this request. A written comment by Chief Justice Earl Warren to CIA Director Allan Dulles was that “people like Lane should never be permitted to air their radical views…at least not before this Commission…”
61. Ruby had been advised by his Chicago mob connections, as well as by others involved in the assassination, that his killing of Oswald would “make him a great hero” in the eyes of the American public and that he “could never be tried or convicted” in any American court of law.
62. Ruby, who had personal identity problems, accepted and strongly embraced this concept and was shocked to find that he was to be tried on a capital charge. Never very stable, Ruby began to disintegrate while in custody and mixed fact and fiction in a way as to convince possible assassins that he was not only incompetent but would not reveal his small knowledge of the motives behind the removal of Oswald.
63. In the presence of Chief Justice Warren, Ruby strongly intimated that he had additional information to disclose and wanted to go to the safety of Washington but Warren abruptly declared that he was not interested in hearing any of it.
64. A polygraph given to Ruby concerning his denial of knowing Oswald and only attempting to kill him as a last minute impulse proved to be completely unsatisfactory and could not be used to support the Commission’s thesis.
65. During his final illness, while in Parkland Hospital, Ruby was under heavy sedation and kept well supervised to prevent any death bed confessions or inopportune chance remarks to hospital attendants. An unconfirmed report from a usually reliable source states that Ruby was given an injection of air with a syringe which produced an embolism that killed him. The official cause of Ruby’s death was a blood clot.
66. It was later alleged that Ruby had metastated cancer of the brain and lungs which somehow had escaped any detection during his incarceration in Dallas. It was further alleged that this terminal cancer situation had existed for over a year without manifesting any serious symptoms to the Dallas medical authorities. This is viewed by non-governmental oncologists as highly unbelievable and it appears that Ruby’s fatal blood clot was the result of outside assistance.
67. Following the assassination, a number of persons died under what can only be termed mysterious circumstances. Also, the FBI seized a number of films and pictures taken by witnesses that were considered to be too sensitive to leave in private hands.
68. Statements by Dallas law enforcement personnel as well as similar statements by witnesses that there had been “several” men in the area of the railroad yard adjacent to the freeway and that these men had “Secret Service” identification created considerable confusion.
69. According to Secret Service records, the only Secret Service agents at the scene were in the motorcade itself and they had no agents in the railroad yard.
70. Witnesses and witness statements introduced before the Warren Commission were carefully vetted prior to introduction as evidence. The home movie of the assault was turned over to the FBI and a spliced version of it was released to the public. This doctored version showed Kennedy reacting in a way that was diametrically opposed to his actual reactions.
71. The concern of Soviet intelligence and government agencies about any possible connection between defector Oswald and themselves is entirely understandable. It was never seriously believed by any competent agency in the United States that the Soviet Union had any part in the assassination of Kennedy and also known that Oswald was a government agent, working for various agencies in his lifetime.
72. Because of the emotional attitudes in official Washington and indeed, throughout the entire nation immediately following the assassination, there was created a potentially dangerous international situation for the Soviets. Oswald was an identified defector with Marxist leanings. He was also believed to be a pro-Castro activist . That both his Marxist attitudes and his sympathies and actions on behalf of the Cuban dictator were simulations was not known to the Warren Commission at the time of their activities.
73. To bolster their eager efforts to convince the American authorities that their government had nothing to do with the assassination, men like Nosenko were utilized to further support this contention. It is not known whether Nosenko was acting on orders or whether he was permitted access to created documentation and given other deliberate disinformation by the KGB and allowed to defect. A great deal of internal concern was expressed upon the Nosenko’s purported defection by Soviet officials but this is viewed at merely an attempt, and a successful one, to lend substance to his importance.
74. James Angleton’s attitude towards Nosenko is a commentary on the duality of his nature. On one hand, Angleton was performing as Chief of Counter Intelligence and openly showed his zeal in searching for infiltraters and “moles” inside his agency while on the other hand, Angleton had very specific personal knowledge that the Soviet Union had nothing to do with the Kennedy assassination.
75. The senior Kennedy, it is known, was heavily involved with rumrunning during the Prohibition era and had extensive mob connections. He had been closely associated with Al Capone, mob boss in Chicago and had a falling out with him over an allegedly hijacked liquor shipment. Capone, Chicago police records indicate, had threatened Kennedy’s life over this and Kennedy had to pay off the mob to nullify a murder contract.” “Anti-Castro Cuban militants viewed Kennedy’s abandonment of their cause with great anger and many members of these CIA-trained and led groups made calls for revenge on the President for his abandonment of their cause.” “Soviet attempts to gain a strategic foothold in close proximity to the United States and certainly well within missile range, was intolerable and had to be countered with equal force. At that time, the threat of major war was not only imminent but anticipated. In retrospect, all out nuclear warfare between the United States and the Soviet Union was only barely averted and only at the last minute.
76. The President’s highly unorthodox form of personal diplomacy vis a vis the Soviets created far more problems that it ever solved. When it came to light, both the DOS and the CIA were extremely concerned that sensitive intelligence matters might have been inadvertently passed to the Soviets.
77. 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.” “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.
78. 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