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COURT FINDS CIA KILLED JFK
Zionist Crime Evidence and "Jewish" Influence/Power > Crimes
of Israel, IDF, Zionists, Mossad or "Jews"
CIA Chief: James Jesus Angleton an Israeli Agent that Killed
JFK
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CrackSmokeRepublican:
Interesting bit here at the bottom on Angleton's "use" of Hunt as a patsy
trigger man... The CSR
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Jury: CIA Involved in JFK Assassination
Not a single major newspaper nor any national news broadcast has ever reported
that on Feb. 6, 1985, a jury in Miami concluded that the CIA was involved in the
assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
This is remarkable, if only because the verdict came in a court case featuring
two international celebrities: Water gate burglar E. Howard Hunt -- perhaps the
most infamous CIA operative in history -- and his courtroom nemesis -- attorney
Mark Lane. Lane's ground-break ing best-seller, Rush to Judgment, had convinced
millions of readers there had been a conspiracy in the JFK assassination, the
Warren Commission's claims notwithstanding.
Scattered news reports did mention Hunt had lost a libel case against The
SPOTLIGHT. However, no media reported what the jury forewoman had told the
press:
Mr. Lane was asking us to do something very difficult. He was asking us to
believe John Kennedy had been killed by our own government. Yet when we examined
the evidence closely, we were compelled to conclude that the CIA had indeed
killed President Kennedy.
Until 1992, when Lane recounted the trial in Plausible Denial and put forth
additional compelling evidence of CIA complicity in the crime, the only
substantive news reports about the trial appeared in The SPOTLIGHT. In issue No.
7 for 1985 (Feb. 18), The SPOTLIGHT announced its victory, detailing the
remarkable events that led to the trial.
The affair was set in motion on Aug. 14, 1978, when The SPOTLIGHT published an
article by former CIA official Victor Marchetti who revealed the CIA intended to
publicly "admit" Hunt had been involved in the JFK assassination, acting as a
"rogue" agent without CIA sanction.
A top CIA liaison to anti-Castro Cuban exiles in the early 1960s, Hunt was
unknown to the public until the Watergate scandal that toppled President Nixon
in 1974 brought Hunt ill fame. Then, after Watergate, when the Rockefeller
Commission investigated CIA misdeeds, two eccentric writers alleged Hunt was one
of three "tramps" photographed in Dallas minutes after the JFK assassination.
Subsequent investigation refuted the "Hunt as tramp" theory. However, scandal
sheets had hyped the story and many came to believe Hunt had a hand in Dallas.
In 1976, growing skepticism about the Warren Commission's claim that a "lone
assassin" had killed JFK forced the House of Representatives to convene a new
assassination inquiry.
In the midst of the House investigation, an unusual development occurred:
As Marchetti's SPOTLIGHT article reported, an in-house CIA memo, ostensibly
written in 1966 -- some 12 years previously -- was leaked to congressional
investigators.
The memo stated Hunt had been in Dallas on the day of the JFK assassination, and
that CIA officials were concerned the agency would one day have to explain
Hunt's presence there.
The SPOTLIGHT subsequently learned CIA Director Richard Helms and the CIA's
chief of counterintelligence, James Angleton, had signed off on the memo.
Marchetti suggested that because the CIA perceived Hunt to be a villain in the
public's eye as a consequence of Watergate, the CIA had decided to sacrifice
Hunt and "admit" he had been involved in the assassination.
The CIA would claim Hunt was acting on his own and that the CIA, as an
institution, had no part in the president's murder. This would satisfy public
demand for a resolution of the JFK controversy and the CIA itself would be
absolved. Hunt would be left to fend for himself.
The SPOTLIGHT felt the article served as warning to Hunt about CIA intentions
and Hunt himself admitted the story seemed plausible. Yet, Hunt still filed suit
against The SPOTLIGHT.
When the case went to trial in federal court in Miami, the jury found in Hunt's
favor, ordering The SPOTLIGHT to pay Hunt $650,000 in damages. However, an error
in the jury instructions resulted in the verdict being overturned. After the
case was ordered for retrial, Lane stepped in for The SPOTLIGHT's defense.
The highlight of the trial was when Lane presented the jury the testimony of
Marita Lorenz, an ex-CIA operative who had worked with Hunt in plots against
Fidel Castro.
Miss Lorenz testified that on Nov. 21, 1963 -- the day prior to the JFK
assassination -- she arrived in Dallas in a two-car caravan from Miami.
Accompanying her were several CIA operatives, armed with telescopic rifles,
including Frank Sturgis who (years later) participated with Hunt in the
Watergate burglary.
She didn't know the purpose of the mission, but upon arrival, the travelers met
with Hunt, who acted as their paymaster, and also Jack Ruby who, days later,
killed the accused assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald.
Uncomfortable, sensing something "big, very big," was impending, she left Dallas
that same day. Later Sturgis told her how big the mission had been: the
assassination of President Kennedy.
The jury listened carefully to her testimony, already suspicious of Hunt after
his performance under Lane's cross-examination. Lane pointed out inconsistencies
in conflicting stories by Hunt over the years about where he had been on Nov.
22, 1963. However, Hunt insisted to the jury that he was in Washington, D.C.
with his wife and three children that day.
Hunt's case collapsed when he was unable to explain, when questioned by Lane,
why his teenage children had asked him if the rumors he was involved in the
events in Dallas were true.
Obviously, if Hunt were in Washington on Nov. 22 he couldn't have been in
Dallas.
Not surprisingly, the jury found in favor of The SPOTLIGHT. Yet, the major media
said nothing about the stunning, historic revelations of this trial.
It was clearly the CIA's counterintelligence chief, James Angleton, who leaked
the CIA memo placing Hunt in Dallas. In fact, Angleton's confidant, reporter Joe
Trento (deposed by Lane in the Hunt case) has said -- based upon what Angleton
told him -- that Hunt had been in Dallas and that it was Angleton who sent him
there (Angleton's own denials notwithstanding). Three conclusions can be
reached:
• The CIA had planned to throw Hunt to the wolves but evidently he and the CIA
reached an accord since Angleton's loyal, longtime deputy, Newton Miler, was
dispatched by the CIA to testify against The SPOTLIGHT in Hunt's defense;
• Because The SPOTLIGHT ex posed the intended CIA scheme to "admit" Hunt's
complicity in the assassination, the operation was shelved; and,
• If there's anybody who knows what really happened in Dallas, it's Hunt.
http://libertylobby.org/articles/2000/20000207cia.html
CrackSmokeRepublican:
James Jesus Angleton and the Kennedy Assassination
"f intelligence-gathering agencies are as necessary as I believe them to be,
then they must repay our blind trust and acknowledge that there may always be
moments in all secret organizations when tyranny manages to slip its leash.
"This was one of those occasions."1
By Lisa Pease
August 12, 1990, was a very big day for Susan Hendrickson. While looking at a
cliff in South Dakota, she saw something no one else had noticed before. Where
others had seen only a sheer wall of rock, she thought she saw something more
special. In the wall of a cliff, she found the outline of a skeleton that proved
to be of enormous importance. The skeleton this amateur paleontologist
discovered now bears her name, Sue, in Chicago’s Field Museum, and is the
largest and most complete skeleton of a Tyrannosaurus rex ever found. From an
outline, Sue helped reconstruct the past.
After a succession of ever more interesting file releases from the National
Archives regarding the Kennedy assassination, it’s time we started recognizing
the outline of one of the biggest skeletons in our national closet, the outline
of the Kennedy assassination conspiracy. Each new release fits into one cohesive
picture. And no single figure is more prominent in this outline than the man who
headed the CIA’s counterintelligence unit for 25 years, James Jesus Angleton. It
was in his realm that a secret, restricted file on a man named Lee Oswald was
opened, long before the assassination. History professor and former intelligence
analyst John Newman has deemed this curious item "the smoking file" because the
lies related to it are so serious as to suggest the CIA had much to do with
Oswald’s activities just prior to the assassination of President Kennedy,
something the CIA has consistently denied. What was the nature of that
involvement and how far did it reach? One cannot answer that without examining
the near omnipresence of Angleton in all matters surrounding the assassination.
Over this two-part series, we will explore how Angleton and his associates are
present at every twist and turn in this case, both before the assassination and
after.
Background
James Jesus Angleton was the son of James Hugh Angleton, an NCR executive who
had once participated in General Pershing’s pursuit in Mexico of Pancho Villa,
and Carmen Moreno, a Mexican woman. He grew up in Boise, Idaho and later Dayton,
Ohio, where NCR was headquartered. At the age of fourteen, his family moved to
Milan, Italy (where NCR manufactured cash registers). Angleton spent summers at
British prep schools and Malvern College. He participated in international Boy
Scout Jamboree events in Scotland, Hungary and Holland. Angleton biographer Tom
Mangold indicates that when the Nazis took over the Boy Scouts in Germany,
Angleton made friends with some anti-Nazi leaders and carried their letters back
to the founder of the international Boy Scout movement in England. Both father
and son would serve the OSS. Angleton’s father was described by Max Corvo, a top
OSS officer in Italy, as "ultra-conservative, a sympathizer with Fascist
officials. He certainly was not unfriendly with the Fascists."2
When he reached college age, Angleton attended Yale, where Angleton first showed
a pension for staying up all night. Insomnia was to plague him most of his life.
Although many who knew him described him as "brilliant," Angleton’s record at
Yale was undistinguished; during his junior and senior years he received two F’s
and four D’s, and ended up withdrawing from another class relating to his major,
English. But Angleton managed to impress teachers with his mysteriousness, his
apparent maturity, and his self-assurance.
Angleton took a serious interest in poetry and, with Reed Whittemore, co-edited
the poetry magazine Furiouso, which included poems by e e cummings and Ezra
Pound, among other notables. Because of his interest in this area, he was to be
called by some the "Poet-Spy."
After graduating in the lowest 25% of his class, Angleton enrolled at Harvard
Law School. According to Mangold, "Angleton’s move to Harvard was not the
consequence of any strong ambition to study law. Rather, like many young men at
the time, he was putting his future on hold." During his Harvard period,
Angleton met and married his wife, Cicely D’Autremont. The marriage took place a
few weeks after Angleton had been drafted into the Army. Shortly thereafter,
through the combined efforts of his OSS father, and his former Yale English
professor Norman Pearson, then heading up the OSS Counterintelligence effort in
London, Angleton was transferred to London to study Italian matters for X-2, the
OSS counterintelligence component.
It was during this period that Angleton met Kim Philby, the man who would become
every counterintelligence officer’s nightmare. Philby rose to a position of
great influence in the British intelligence service, until he was finally
exposed as a Soviet agent and fled behind the Iron Curtain. Angleton was
devastated by this, despite having been warned by Bill Harvey at an early time
that Philby looked like a mole.
In October of 1944, Angleton was transferred to Rome as commanding officer of
Special Counterintelligence Unit Z, a joint American-British detachment. Less
than half a year later, Angleton was made the Chief of X-2 in Italy. He was the
youngest X-2 chief across OSS. His staff included Raymond G. Rocca, who would
loyally serve by his side until Angleton’s ouster from the CIA in 1974.
While he was clearly an accomplished counterintelligence expert by this time,
there was another aspect which deserves mention. In his book The Real Spy World,
longtime CIA officer Miles Copeland describes, through a slightly fictionalized
veil in which he calls Angleton by the false nickname "Mother," a different
story. For background, SI, referenced within, was, according to Copeland, an OSS
division which X-2 officers held in contempt. According to Copeland:
In 1946, an X-2 officer known within the organization as "Mother" took a lot of
information on Palestine from The New York Times; spooked it up a bit with
fabricated details, places, and claims of supersecret sources; and sent it to
the head of SI, Stephen Penrose, for appraisal. After studying it carefully,
Penrose and his assistants decided that the material was "genuine," that its
source must be very deep inside secret Zionist and Arab terrorist groups, and
that arrangements should be made for developing the sources into a regular
espionage network. Mother then negotiated with Penrose for a budget, meanwhile
leading the SI officers through a maze of fake names, fake background reports,
and the like, and finally established that SI would be willing to pay as much as
$100,000 a year out of what was left of OSS funds. Mother then confessed that
the whole thing was a hoax and that the information could have been acquired for
25 cents through the purchase of five issues of The New York Times.3
In other words, Angleton’s activities, however successful, were not limited to
acts of loyalty to his fellow intelligence compatriots, but could occasionally
be directed to more personal, vindictive measures. Copeland paints this as a
jolly escapade. But in his footnotes, he admits that Penrose, against whom this
operation was conducted, suffered a near-breakdown as a result, and was
transferred to less stressful jobs. "[Penrose] and various other top people in
SI (with a few conspicuous exceptions, such as Richard Helms, who defected to
X-2 and went on to become the CIA’s director) were generally thought to be ‘too
Christ-like for the spy business,’ as Mother put it."4 Copeland, by the way, was
one of twenty-five OSS officers Angleton wanted to remember in his 1949 will.
Others included Allen Dulles, "the operator, the patriot;" Richard Helms; and
Ray Rocca.5
After the war, Angleton did not wish to return to his new wife, nor his son,
born in his absence, and chose instead to remain in action in Europe. X-2 was
folded into the Strategic Services Unit (SSU), ostensibly a War Department unit
and a temporary holding place for the then defunct OSS.
Two years after the war, Angleton would return stateside to his wife and son to
work for the amalgam of temporary intelligence agencies that would eventually
become the CIA. There, he would achieve notoriety for his late hours, and for
being, as his secretary Gloria Loomis related, "a terrible taskmaster."6
The SSU and other remaining intelligence units evolved over time into two
separate pieces – the Office of Special Operations (OSO), and the Office of
Policy Coordination (OPC). Richard Helms served with Angleton and Rocca in the
OSO. Stewart Alsop, in his book The Center, the "Prudent Professionals," labeled
the OSO people the "Prudent Professionals." Alsop called the OPC crowd the "Bold
Easterners." The OPC included Frank Wisner, Richard Bissell, Edward Lansdale,
Desmond Fitzgerald and Tracy Barnes.
In Italy, 1947, Angleton participated in an OSO operation given to a group
called SPG, or Special Procedures Group, in which propaganda and other means
were used to keep the Italians from voting any Communists into office.7 Other
means included the Mafia. "Wild Bill" Donovan, founder of the OSS, helped
release "Lucky" Luciano and other Mafia criminals from jail in New York so they
could return to Italy and provide not only contacts, but if necessary, the
strong-arm tactics needed to win the war against incipient Communism in Italy.
Angleton’s later reported contacts with the Mob may well stem back to this
period.
One of the groups most interested in defeating the communists in Italy was, not
surprisingly, the Vatican. Angleton both gave and received intelligence to and
from the Vatican. Among Angleton’s most famous agents in Italy was Mons Giovanni
Montini. Montini would become famous in 1963 when he became Pope Paul VI.8
Angleton has been named as a source for funds which were used to defeat the
Communists. In return, evidently, Angleton obtained access to the Ratlines the
Vatican was using to move people out of Europe to safety abroad. Angleton and
others from the State Department used the Ratlines to ferry Nazis to South
America.9
The OPC crowd held enormous sway in the early days of the CIA, but that changed
in the wake of the spectacular failure at the Bay of Pigs. Curiously, Richard
Helms and Angleton both saw their careers rise by standing on the sidelines and
keeping free of all dealings related to the Bay of Pigs.
Angleton made an interesting comment about the Bay of Pigs episode. He told the
HSCA that before the Bay of Pigs, he had asked Bissell, "Do you have an escape
hatch?" He asked Bissell most plainly, "In case the thing falls flat on its face
is there someone who goes to Castro and says, ‘you have won the battle. What is
your price?’" Angleton explained to the HSCA that he was trying to say, "have
you planned for the failure as much as planned for the success?" The implication
was that this was Angleton’s own modus operandi in such matters.10 We would do
well to remember that statement in the context of the Kennedy assassination and
cover-up.
During the period between the end of the war and the formation of the CIA,
William "Wild Bill" Donovan, the establishment lawyer who created the OSS,
lobbied long and hard for a single intelligence agency to pick up where the OSS
had left off, running secret operations and gathering human intelligence or
"humint" in new and creative ways. In the end, although Donovan would not be a
part of it, the Central Intelligence Agency or CIA was ultimately formed through
the National Security Act of 1947.
Before the CIA was created, many in Congress feared that the creation of a new
intelligence agency would lead to a police state similar to the one they had
just defeated in Germany, and refused to back Donovan’s efforts. But the loudest
protest came from J. Edgar Hoover, who feared a direct encroachment upon the
FBI’s turf. One could argue that the OSS people won because they made the better
case. But there is another possibility here.
Angleton, Hoover and Blackmail
In Tony Summers’ book about J. Edgar Hoover, Official and Confidential, Summers
showed that Meyer Lansky, a top Mob figure, had blackmail power over Hoover
through possession of photos that showed Hoover and his lifelong friend and
close associate Clyde Tolson together sexually. In the paperback edition of the
same book, Summers introduced another figure who evidently had possession of
such photos: James Angleton. If Angleton had such photos, imagine how he could
have used them to force the FBI’s hand during the investigation of the Kennedy
assassination.
Summers names two sources for this allegation: former OSS officer John Weitz,
and the curious Gordon Novel. Weitz claimed he had been showed the picture by
the host of a dinner party in the fifties. "It was not a good picture and was
clearly taken from some distance away, but it showed two men apparently engaged
in homosexual activity. The host said the men were Hoover and Tolson…." Summers
added in the 1994 version, "Since first publication of this book, Weitz has
revealed that his host was James Angleton."11
Novel’s account is even more interesting. Novel said that Angleton had shown him
some photos of Hoover and Tolson in 1967, when Novel was involved in New Orleans
District Attorney Jim Garrison’s case against Clay Shaw. "I asked him if they
were fakes, " Novel recounted, "but he said they were real, that they’d been
taken with a special lens. They looked authentic to me…." Novel’s explanation of
why Angleton showed him the pictures is even more interesting:
I was pursuing a lawsuit against Garrison, which Hoover wanted me to drop but
which my contacts in the Johnson administration and at CIA wanted me to pursue.
I’d been told I would incur Hoover’s wrath if I went ahead, but Angleton was
demonstrating that Hoover was not invulnerable, that the Agency had enough power
to make him come to heel. I had the impression that this was not the first time
the sex pictures had been used. Angleton told me to go see Hoover and tell him
I’d seen the sex photographs. Later, I went to the Mayflower Hotel and spoke to
Hoover. He was with Tolson, sitting in the Rib Room. When I mentioned that I had
seen the sex photographs, and that Angleton had sent me, Tolson nearly choked on
his food."12
Now, Novel has been known to fell a few tall tales in his day. But he has on
other occasions been forthcoming with interesting and sometimes
self-incriminating material (such as his own participation in the Houma raid and
the association between David Phillips and Guy Banister).13 Given Weitz’s
corroboration, and given Angleton’s enormous power over many in high places,
Novel’s account rings true. Novel added that Angleton claimed the photos had
been taken around 1946.14 During the 1945-1947 timeframe, Hoover was battling
hard to prevent the creation of any other intelligence organization separate
from the FBI. And during this period, Angleton was involved with the Mafia in
the Italian campaign. It’s certainly possible under such circumstances that
Lansky or one of his associates may have shared the photos with Angleton. And
the reverse case can also be considered.
Miles Copeland adds additional credibility to this scenario in his account of
this period. "Penetration begins at home," Copeland has Angleton/"Mother"
saying, "and if we can’t find out what’s going on in the offices where our
future is being planned, we don’t deserve to be in business."15 Copeland
presented this scenario:
There are several stories in the CIA’s secret annals to explain how the dispute
was settled, but although they "make better history," as Allen Dulles used to
say, they are only half-truths and much less consistent with the ways of
government than the true ones. Old-timers at the Agency swear that the
anti-espionage people would almost certainly have won out had it not been for
the fact that an Army colonel who had been assigned to the new management group
charged with the job of organizing the new Agency suborned secretaries in the
FBI, the State Department, and the Defense Department and organized them into an
espionage network which proved not only the superiority of espionage over other
forms of acquiring "humint" (i.e. intelligence on what specific human beings
think and do in privacy), but the necessity for its being systemized and tightly
controlled. The colonel was fired, as were the secretaries, but by that time
General John Magruder, then head of the group that was organizing the CIA, had
in his hands a strong argument for creating a professional espionage service and
putting it under a single organization. Also, thanks to the secretaries and
their Army spymaster, he had enough material to silence enemies of the new
Agency—including even J. Edgar Hoover, since Magruder was among the very few top
bureaucrats in Washington on whom Mr. Hoover didn’t have material for
retaliation.16
Is he saying what he appears to be saying? Copeland added, cryptically, "The
success of the old SSU cadre (former OSS and future CIA officers) in
perpetuating itself has been due in part to an extraordinary capacity for
Byzantine intrigue…." And in a footnote to this phrase, Copeland explains, still
somewhat cryptically, "This intrigue was mainly to keep ‘The Hill’ off its
back." Copeland seems to be insinuating that more people than Hoover were
blackmailed to ensure the creation and perpetuation of the CIA.
David Wise also lends credence to such a scenario with this episode. Thomas
Braden, a CIA media operative was confronted by Dulles over a remark Braden had
about one of Dulles’ professional relationships. Wise recounted what followed:
"You’d better watch out," [Allen] Dulles warned him. "Jimmy’s got his eye on
you." Braden said he drew the obvious conclusion: James Angleton had bugged his
bedroom and was picking up pillow talk between himself and his wife, Joan. But
Braden said he was only mildly surprised at the incident, because Angleton was
known to have bugs all over town.17
Braden described how Angleton would enter Dulles’s office "first thing in the
morning" to report the take from the overnight taps:
"He used to delight Allen with stories of what happened at people’s dinner
parties … Jim used to come into Allen’s office and Allen would say, ‘How’s the
fishing? And Jim would say, ‘Well, I got a few nibbles last night.’ It was all
done in the guise of fishing talk."18
More to the point, Braden was upset because "some senator or representative
might say something that might be of use to the Agency. I didn’t think that was
right. I think Jim was amoral."19 It would not be beyond belief that Angleton
routinely used information gathered through clearly illegal taps to blackmail
people into supporting his efforts. No wonder some of his Agency associates
feared him.
Indeed, just about everyone in the Agency who knew Angleton came to fear him and
to avoid crossing his path. This extended from subordinates to some of the
highest officials to serve the agency, including Allen Dulles and Richard Helms.
Angleton was called "no-knock" because he had unprecedented access to senior
agency officials. Said Braden,
"He always came alone and had this aura of secrecy about him, something that
made him stand out—even among other secretive CIA officers. In those days, there
was a general CIA camaraderie, but Jim made himself exempt from this. He was a
loner who worked alone."20
Angleton knew that knowledge was power, so not only would he go to extraordinary
lengths to obtain such, he would also lord his knowledge over others, especially
incoming CIA directors. Said one Angleton contemporary,
"He would put each new director through the embarrassment of having to beg him
to indoctrinate them in important CIA matters. Jim was enormously clever, he
relished his bureaucratic power and was expert at using it. He was utterly
contemptuous of the chain of command. He had a keen sense of what the traffic
would bear in relation to his own interests. It worked like this: when a new
director came in, Jim would stay in his own office out of sight. If a top staff
meeting were requested, he simply wouldn’t attend and would offer endless
delays. He was a master at waiting to see the new director alone—on his own
terms and with his own agenda."21
Angleton’s most powerful patrons were Allen Dulles and Richard Helms. As
biographer Tom Mangold described it,
He was extended such trust by his supervisors that there was often a significant
failure of executive control over his activities. The result was that his
subsequent actions were performed without bureaucratic interference. The simple
fact is that if Angleton wanted something done, it was done. He had the
experience, the patronage, and the clout.22
It wasn’t until William Colby, a longtime nemesis of Angleton’s, became the
Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) that Angleton’s power was dimmed, and
eventually extinguished. But it was a long time coming.
Angleton and the CIA
Before examining Angleton’s relationship with Oswald, it would be useful to
understand Angleton’s relationship with the CIA. Angleton ran the
Counterintelligence unit. The primary role of Counterintelligence is to protect
agents from a foreign intelligence organization from uncovering CIA assets and
operations. Another important role is the ability to disseminate disinformation
to foreign intelligence services in an effort to create for them a false picture
of reality, causing them to act in ways that may be ultimately against their own
interests. In other words, Counterintelligence was a unit that conducted
operations, not just research. For that reason, the CI staff resided inside the
Directorate of Plans (DDP) and not on the analytical side of the agency.
In addition to owning counterintelligence, Angleton also had control over the
FBI’s relationship with the Agency (he owned the liaison relationship between
FBI and CIA), and sole control of the Israeli desk, which included liaison with
their intelligence service, the Mossad.
In the early days of the agency, units were given single-letter identifiers of
(at least) A-D instead of names. Staff A later became Foreign Intelligence;
Staff B became Operations; Staff C became Counterintelligence ; and Staff D,
which dealt with NSA intercept material, among other more notorious activities,
apparently was never called anything other than Staff D.23
From the agency’s inception until 1954, Staff C was run by William Harvey, a
former FBI man who was to one day be introduced to President Kennedy as
"America’s James Bond." During this same period, Staff A was run by Angleton.
After the publication of the Doolittle Report in 195424, Staff C, which then
became simply Counterintelligence, was handed to Angleton. Harvey was given the
coveted Berlin station, a vortex point for operations against the USSR.
CI/SIG and Oswald
Angleton’s complete counterintelligence empire employed over 200 people. Inside
this large group was a small handful of Angleton’s most trusted and
closed-mouthed associates, called the Special Investigations Group (SIG).
According to Ann Egerter, in 1959, when Oswald defected to the Soviet Union,
only "about four or five" people were part of SIG, which was headed by Birch D.
O’Neal. SIG members included Ann Egerter, Newton "Scotty" Miler, and very few
others. Miler was, as of 1955, "either the Deputy or one of the principle
officers with O’Neal," according to Angleton.25 O’Neal, Egerter and Miler all
play interesting roles in this case.
SIG is all-important in the case of the Kennedy assassination because, for
whatever reason, SIG held a 201 file on Lee Oswald prior to the assassination.
Both the Church Committee and HSCA investigators fixated quickly on this point,
because it made no sense under the CIA’s scenario of their relationship (or, as
they professed, non-relationship) with Oswald. What did SIG really do, and why
would Oswald’s file have been there? Why wasn’t it opened when this ex-Marine
(who had knowledge of the CIA’s top secret U-2 program) defected in 1959,
telling embassy personnel he might have something of special interest to share
with the Soviets? Why didn’t that set off alarm bells all over the place? Why
was a 201 file on Oswald not opened for another year after that event? And why,
when he returned to the States, did the CIA not debrief him? Or did they? These
questions and more were adequately raised, to the HSCA’s credit, but not
adequately answered by CIA.
Let’s start with the first issue. What did SIG do? Angleton described the
primary task of SIG to the Church committee in this fashion:
The primary task was the penetration of the Agency and the government and
historical penetration cases are recruitment of U.S. officials in positions,
code clerks. It had a very tight filing system of its own, and it was the only
component in counterintelligence that had access to the security files and the
personnel maintained by the Office of Security.26
The Office of Security’s primary role was to protect the CIA from harm. This
involves monitoring the CIA’s own employees and assets to ensure that no one
leaks data about the CIA, or betrays the CIA in any way. Because of the nature
of what was done there, Office of Security files were the most closely guarded
in the Agency. It is significant, therefore, that Angleton’s CI/SIG group had
access to these files. It is also significant that the Office of Security also
had a file on Oswald, and was running an operation against the FPCC at the time
Oswald was attaching himself visibly to that organization.
To the HSCA, Angleton gave a slightly enlarged definition:
…it had many duties that had to do with other categories of sensitive cases
involving Americans and other things which were not being handled by anybody
else or just falling between the stools and so on.27
Asked whether SIG’s charter would elucidate its operational mandate, Angleton
replied,
It would probably be in fairly camoflauged terms, yes. It was not a unit,
however, whose duties were in other words, explained to people. I mean, in
training school and do on it was very much fuzzed over if anyone was laying out
the CI staff.28
According to Angleton’s close associate Raymond G. Rocca, SIG
…was set up to handle especially sensitive cases in the area of security or
personnel and in particular, cases involving security of personnel who were also
of operational interest, as operators.
In other words, it was an interface with the Office of Security.29
When asked what would cause CI/SIG to open a 201 file on someone, Rocca gave
this answer:
I would imagine that they would have had that occasion whenever a question arose
that concerned people that came within the purview of the mission that I have
described, namely, the penetration of our operations or the advancement of our
particular interests with respect to the security of those operations…. I mean,
there were many sensitive areas that involved aspects, that involved sources and
access to materials that were of higher classification than what you have shown
me.30
When the conversation is brought around to Oswald in particular, Rocca’s answer
is even more interesting:
Rocca: Let me go back and open a little parenthesis about this. What I regard
now, in the light of what you said, is probably a too narrow view of what SIG
was interested in.
They were also concerned with Americans as a security threat in a community-wide
sense, and they dealt with FBI cases, with the Office of Security cases, and
with other cases on the same level, as they dealt with our own, basically….It
would be with respect to where and what had happened to DDP materials with
respect to a defection in any of these places.
Goldsmith: Again, though, Oswald had nothing to do with the DDP at this time, at
least apparently.
Rocca: I’m not saying that. You said it. [Emphasis added.]31
Rocca’s answer hangs out there, teasing us with ambiguity. Did Oswald have
something to do with the Directorate of Plans, the DDP?
...
The rest of this article can be found in The Assassinations, edited by Jim
DiEugenio and Lisa Pease.
Notes
1. Tom Mangold, Cold Warrior / James Jesus Angleton: The CIA’s Master Spy Hunter
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991), p. 10.
2. Biographical data from Thomas Mangold, Cold Warrior, Chapter 2. This
particular quote appears on page 33.
3. Miles Copeland, The Real Spy War (London: First Sphere Books edition, 1978),
pp. 41-42.
4. Copeland, p. 42.
5. Mangold, p. 45.
6. Mangold, p. 44.
7. Thomas Powers, The Man Who Kept the Secrtes: Richard Helms and the CIA (New
York, Pocket Books ed., 1979), p. 35.
8. Mark Aarons and John Loftus, Unholy Trinity (New York: St. Martin’s Press,
1991), p. 89. There are several long passages about Angleton’s relationship with
Montini, the ratlines, and the Vatican throughout the book. Montini became Pope
after the 1963 death of the very liberal Pope John XXIII, about whom the movie
The Shoes of the Fisherman was made.
9. Aarons and Loftus, p. 237.
10. Angleton, 10/5/78 HSCA deposition, p. 92.
11. Anthony Summers, Official and Confidential (New York: Pocket Books ed.,
1994), p. 280
12. Summers, pp. 280-281
13. Lisa Pease, "Novel & Company: Phillips, Banister, Arcacha and Ferrie," Probe
Vol. 4 No. 6 Sept-Oct 1997, p. 32.
14. Summers, p. 281
15. Copeland, p. 44.
16. Copeland, p. 41.
17. David Wise, Molehunt (New York: Avon Books ed., 1992), p. 31
18. Wise, p. 32.
19. Wise, p. 32.
20. Mangold, p. 51
21. Mangold, p. 52
22. Mangold, p. 52
23. Wise, p. 121.
24. The Doolittle report contained this famous instruction: "If the United
States is to survive, long-standing American concepts of ‘fiar play’ must be
reconsidered," and "We must develop effective espionage and counterespionage
services and must learn to subvert, sabotage and destroy our enemies by more
clever, more sophisticated and more effective methods than those used against
us." Quoted in David Martin, Wilderness of Mirrors (New York: Harper and Row,
1980), p. 62.
25. Angleton 9/17/75 Church Committee Deposition (hereafter Angleton 9/17/75
Deposition), p. 16.
26. Angleton 9/17/75 Deposition, p. 17.
27. Angleton HSCA Deposition, p. 146.
28. Angleton HSCA Deposition, p. 146.
29. HSCA Deposition of Raymond G. Rocca (hereafter Rocca HSCA Deposition), p.
206
30. Rocca HSCA Deposition, p. 207.
31. Rocca HSCA Deposition, p. 218
32. HSCA Deposition of Ann Elizabeth Goldsborough Egerter (hereafter Egerter
HSCA Deposition), p. 8.
33. Egerter HSCA Deposition, p. 9.
34. Egerter HSCA Deposition, pp. 9-10.
35. Egerter HSCA Deposition, p. 10.
36. Egerter HSCA Deposition, p. 25.
37. Egerter HSCA Deposition, pp. 22-24.
38. Egerter HSCA Deposition, pp. 43-44.
39. Angleton 2/6/75 Church Committee Deposition (hereafter Angleton 2/6/75
Deposition), p. 21. Schweiker says, "We had a CIA employee who testified to us
that he saw a contact report on Oswald over at Langley."
40. Angleton 2/6/75 Deposition, pp. 20-26
41. The Eldon Henson story is documented in John Newman’s Oswald and the CIA
(New York: Carroll & Graf, 1995). But a near identical episode is also described
by David Atlee Phillips in his memoir, The Nightwatch (New York: Ballantine
Books, 1977). Compare Phillips’ account, pp. 162-164 (paperback version), with
Newman’s account, pp. 362-362. Then look at the document of this episode,
published on page 507 of Newman’s book. Note that "[redacted] witnessed meeting
from nearby table." In his account, Phillips describes watching the trap his
agent was setting for Hensen from a nearby table in a restaurant. According to
the document, Hensen was speaking with Maria Luisa Calderon, a woman who
appeared to perhaps have some foreknowledge of the assassination. (See Rocca
HSCA Deposition, pp. 163-164.) Curiouser and curiouser.
42. Newman, p. 32.
43. Rocca HSCA deposition, p. 230.
44. Angleton 9/17/75 Deposition, p. 30.
45. Angleton 9/17/75 Deposition, p. 33.
46. Reproductions of these cards can be seen in Newman, p. 479.
47. Rocca HSCA deposition, pp. 226-227.
48. Newman, pp. 221-222.
49. Angleton 9/17/75 Deposition, p. 38 and p. 62. The project chief was John
Mertz, and evidently Birch O’Neal was involved as well, (pp. 62, 64) but in
Angleton’s words, "Mr. Miler … had the day to day work" and described Miler as
the principal person to talk to about it. p. 120.
50. Martin, p. 140.
51. Egerter HSCA Deposition, p. 15
52. Egerter HSCA Deposition, p. 30.
53. Egerter HSCA Deposition, pp. 31-38.
54. Rocca HSCA Deposition, p. 210.
55. Rocca HSCA Depostion, p. 212.
56. Philip Agee, Inside the Company: CIA Diary (New York: Bantam Books, 1989
ed.), p. 49.
57. Letter from Sullivan to Belmont, dated May 13, 1964.
58. Angleton 2/6/75 Deposition, pp. 34-38
59. Joseph B. Smith, Portrait of a Cold Warrior (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons,
1976), p. 397.
60. Smith, p. 397.
61. Harvey’s notes were uncovered by the Church Committee. Quotes here come from
Martin, pp. 121-123.
62. Wise, p. 121.
63. Wise, p. 176.
64. Powers, p. 107.
65. Agee, p. 358.
66. Bill Davy, Let Justice Be Done (Reston: Jordan Publishing, 1999), pp. 88-89
and Davy, "File Update", Probe, Jan-Feb 2000, pp. 4-5.
67. Davy, Let Justice Be Done, p. 88.
68. For an example, read about the Loginov episode in Cold Warrior, Chapter 1.
69. Wise, p. 69.
70. HSCA Deposition of Scelso (John Whitten), p. 71.
71. "Hunt says C.I.A. Had Assassin Unit," New York Times 12/26/75, page 9,
column 1.
72. Mark Lane, Plausible Denial (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1991), p. 164.
73. Martin, p. 34.
74. Martin, p. 144.
75. Angleton Deposition to the Church Committee, 6/19/75 (hereafter Angleton
6/19/76 Deposition), p. 87.
76. Peter Wright, Spycatcher (New York: Dell, 1987), pp. 201-205.
77. Angleton 6/19/75 Deposition, p. 84.
78. Scelso/Whitten Deposition, p. 168-169.
79. Rocca HSCA Deposition, pp. 8-9.
80. Rocca HSCA Deposition, p. 9.
81. RIF 104-10086-10003, date not readable, cable apparently from JMWAVE to the
Mexico City Station.
82. Cable 57610, from DIRECTOR to Mexico [ ] JMWAVE, dated 12 Nov 65. See p. 29
this issue.
83. Agee, p. 319.
84. Cable 58683, from DIRECTOR to MEXI, dated 16 Nov 65. See p. 29 this issue.
http://www.ctka.net/pr700-ang.html
CrackSmokeRepublican:
James Jesus Angleton and the Kennedy Assassination, Part II
Bobby knows so little about us. One night he began to talk of muffled suspicions
and stifled half-certainties, and said to me, "I had my doubts about a few
fellows in your agency, but I don't anymore. I can trust John McCone and I asked
him if they had killed my brother, and I asked him in a way that he couldn't lie
to me, and he said he had looked into it and they hadn't.
I told that story to Hugh. You know how rarely he laughs aloud. He actually
struck his thigh. "Yes," he said, "McCone was just the man to ask."
"What," I asked him, "would you have answered?"
"I would have told Bobby that if the job was done properly, I would not be able
to give a correct answer."
- From Norman Mailer's novel Harlot's Ghost.
The character of Hugh Montague (Harlot) is based on James Angleton
By Lisa Pease
The most consistently prominent players in the assassination saga continue to be
James Jesus Angleton and his counterintelligence staff. They held a file on
Oswald predating the assassination by at least three years. After the
assassination, Angleton and his closest associate, Ray Rocca, served as the
gateway between the Warren Commission and the CIA. If anyone was in a position
to move Oswald around prior to the assassination and control the cover-up
afterwards, it was Angleton.
The key associates of Angleton who show up frequently in the Oswald/JFK
assassination story are Raymond G. "The Rock" Rocca, Ann Egerter, Scotty Miler,
and Birch O’Neal. Rocca had been with Angleton since his OSS days in Italy, and
would control the Warren Commission’s relationship with the CIA. The latter
three were members of the tiny CI/SIG unit. Egerter opened Oswald’s 201 file
under the name "Lee Henry Oswald." Scotty Miler controlled the watch list during
the period when Oswald was placed on and taken off that list. Birch O’Neal
controlled CI/SIG during the period of the building of Oswald’s strange 201
file.
In Part I, we examined the likelihood that Oswald was directly involved with
Angleton’s counterintelligence unit in the CIA. When queried about this, Anne
Goodpasture, who played a role in the Mexico City aspects of Oswald’s story, did
not deny a relationship between the two:
Q: Have you had any reason to believe that...CI staff had any role in respect to
Oswald prior to the assassination?
A: I don’t know.1
She was not asked if she had any knowledge, but if she had any "reason to
believe." If she truly had no reason to believe this, her only possible response
would have been "no." Her response indicates clearly that she does have some
doubt about the matter, that she may indeed have had reason to believe this.
Another group that shows up in a few places in the assassination story is Army
intelligence. It is worth noting that, during the interim between the ending of
the OSS and the formation of the CIA, Angleton served as a major in the Army and
helped organize Army Intelligence’s efforts to track down German agents who were
using false identity cards.2 Angleton was not one to lose a contact. Once made,
he would continue to use contacts for life.
Other CIA people who show up often in this story include David Atlee Phillips of
the Western Hemisphere division, who worked with Bill Harvey and later Des
Fitzgerald on Cuban operations; Win Scott and his "right-hand man" Anne
Goodpasture from the Mexico City station; John Whitten ("Scelso") of the Western
Hemisphere, Division 3; Charlotte Bustos of the Mexico City desk at
Headquarters; and Richard Helms and his deputy Thomas Karamessines, who play
large roles in the pre- and post-assassination paper trail. We should also note
that the entire Western Hemisphere was run by J. C. King, a man closely linked
to Nelson Rockefeller. King himself had been involved in the CIA’s assassination
plots involving Castro and Trujillo.3
Interweaving Mexican Threads
There are strange connections that link these various players. Shortly before
the assassination, Oswald’s CI/SIG-held 201 file was transferred to the Mexico
City Headquarters desk, responsible to John Whitten and supported by desk
officer Charlotte Bustos. (Bustos is identified as Elsie Scaleti in the Lopez
Report.4)
Bustos, Ann Egerter of Angleton’s CI/SIG unit (the woman who opened the 201 file
on "Lee Henry [sic] Oswald"), and Stephan Roll, Angleton’s CI liaison to the SR
(Soviet Russia) division, drafted the two now infamous communications that cause
much suspicion of the CIA’s involvement in the Kennedy assassination.5 Although
the two communications were drafted at the same time, the cable to CIA in Mexico
City describes Oswald as 5’10", 165 pounds, with light brown hair; whereas the
teletype to the State Department, Navy and the FBI describes Oswald as being
approximately 35 years old, 6’ tall, with an athletic build and a receding
hairline. Why would Angleton’s people be collaborating with the Mexico City desk
officer to mislead other agencies within the government unless they were in some
measure trying to hide or protect Oswald’s identity?
Immediately following the assassination, Bustos allegedly found a photo of
Oswald from the CIA’s Mexico City surveillance operations. Phil Agee, Joseph
Burkholder Smith, Daniel Watson, and Joseph Piccolo, all CIA employees at some
point, recalled hearing about—and in the latter two cases, actually viewing—such
a photo. According to Agee, Bustos found the photo within an hour or two of the
President’s assassination. John Whitten said of Bustos that she had a "fantastic
memory" and yet, like E. Howard Hunt, Bustos cannot recall what she was doing
the day of the assassination.6 But Anne Goodpasture is the person who supplied
the photo the CIA showed to the FBI as a possible picture of "Oswald".
(Curiously, Goodpasture said in an unsworn ARRB interview that headquarters
refused to send a photo of Oswald to Mexico City, and she was never sure why.7
Of course we know from Oswald’s CIA file that indeed news clippings from his
defection with his photo were present, so the CIA did have a photo of Oswald to
share, and could also have easily obtained more had they asked the Navy or FBI.)
If Bustos had found a photo, another question is raised. Was Bustos’ picture a
true picture of Oswald? Or was it a picture of just another person who was not
Oswald? If Bustos’ picture was of Oswald, for the CIA to have supplied
Goodpasture’s "Mystery Man" photo in place of the real photo suggests a
deliberate effort to deceive. In that case, Bustos’ picture would have to have
been "disappeared" by the agency, lest the evidence of their deception come to
light. And if Bustos’ picture was not Oswald but another man who looked like
him, that also suggests a deliberate effort to deceive, as the picture was shown
to at least two others within the CIA as evidence that Oswald had been in Mexico
City, a point which has never been fully proven. To date, the CIA has taken the
only safe road available, claiming (despite multiple accounts to the contrary)
that no such picture was ever found.
Anne Goodpasture told Jeremy Gunn of the ARRB that she had worked at one point
during her CIA career for James Angleton as a counterintelligence officer, and
that it was the CI group that sent her to Mexico City in 1957.8 Asked to explain
the difference between CE (counterespionage) and CI (counterintelligence),
Goodpasture replied, "Counterespionage was the activity and Counterintelligence
was the product."9
From Mexico, Goodpasture had worked on the case of Rudolph Abel,10 a Soviet
agent working in New York City and curiously, living one apartment below famed
author, FPCC activist and latter-day CIA apologist Norman Mailer.11 Angleton
said of Goodpasture, "I personally have had very little dealings with her but my
men had had a lot of dealings with her. She was always in on very sensitive
cases."12 Goodpasture was also involved with Staff D, which was seriously
involved with several coup attempts and assassination plots. To the ARRB,
Goodpasture downplayed her involvement in Staff D, claiming that she was simply
involved in duplicating and distributing materials.13 However, according to
Angleton, Goodpasture was "very close" to Bill Harvey.14
Goodpasture maintained that in 1963 her sole duty was to the Mexico City station
and Win Scott.15 Goodpasture tells us that Win Scott was "very, very
conservative. He was from Alabama and I think he was a supporter of George
Wallace."16
Goodpasture was later to receive a career achievement award on the
recommendation of David Atlee Phillips, who cited her for having discovered
Oswald at the Cuban embassy. Goodpasture was responsible for delivering the
"deep snow"17 photo of the Mexico "Mystery Man". Significantly for our purposes,
Goodpasture was also the liaison and in most cases, the sole point of contact,
outside of Win Scott, David Phillips, and Scott’s deputy, Alan White, to the
other agencies of the U.S. government regarding the Mexico City station’s CIA
operations.18 And like too many others in this small cadre of CIA employees,
Goodpasture has trouble remembering the moment of Kennedy’s assassination:
I think I heard about it from a phone call from our outside person on the phone
tap operation, and I believe it was around lunchtime when there weren’t too many
people there and as they all filtered back in, there was office gossip, but I
have tried to remember. I’ve heard so many people say I can remember, I was
standing at the telephone or I was in the drugstore, or I was in church and I
really don’t remember who all were there at the time. Dave Phillips said that
someone from the military attaché’s office came up and told him about it and I
don’t remember that....I don’t even remember him being in the station at that
time.19
According to Eddie Lopez, Goodpasture, in addition to her duties for Scott, ran
all of David Phillips’ operations. When asked about Phillips’ politics,
Goodpasture tells a story that remains redacted, a fact especially disturbing
when one considers the whole purpose of the ARRB was to release previously
classified materials, not to add to the secrets. But from the nature of the
testimony around the redacted portion, we can gather that she is giving us some
indication that Phillips was not the liberal he painted himself to be. The
redaction ends with Goodpasture saying,
...but there again, I hate for things like this to be published because there
are 2,000 – over 2,000 books already been [sic] written. The thing that they are
looking for is something of this type that they can put in the other book to
come that will be just short of slander, and I feel that I shouldn’t really
comment on the personalities for that reason. I don’t want my former co-workers
or in Phillips’ case, his family, to think that I’m trying to project him as a
personality that was a show-off or something other than the very sincere
wonderful man that they feel that he is....20
Phillips is the CIA man who most closely ties Angleton in the frequency of his
appearance in the assassination story. Phillips appears to have been seen in the
presence of Oswald by Antonio Veciana.21 And a "Mr. Phillips" who was running
CIA operations against Cuba at a time when that was David Phillips’ job was seen
by Gordon Novel in the presence of Guy Banister and Sergio Arcacha Smith, who
were themselves in turn seen with Oswald. Oswald even rented an office in
Banister’s building that had previously been rented by Sergio Arcacha Smith.22
When the HSCA investigators tracked down the many false "Castro did it" leads,
they kept tracing back to assets run by Phillips.23 Dan Hardway, who had much
documentation to support that allegation, told Gaeton Fonzi,
I’m firmly convinced now that he ran the red herring, disinformation aspects of
the plot. The thing that got him so nervous was when I started mentioning all
the anti-Castro Cubans who were in reports filed with the FBI for the Warren
Commission and every one of them had a tie I could trace back to him. That’s
what got him very upset. He knew the whole thing could unravel.24
Angleton was close friends with Win Scott and ran operations with him. Scott, in
turn, was so close to Phillips that he recommended Phillips be his deputy in the
Mexico City station while waiting for the next Deputy, Alan White, to arrive.25
Phillips, in turn, connects to JM/WAVE.26 JM/WAVE is another key component in
the assassination story, because JM/WAVE trained assassins and participated in
some of the plots against Castro. The line between Des FitzGerald’s Special
Affairs Staff (the replacement for Harvey’s Task Force W) and the actions of
JM/Wave is blurred. The weekend of the Kennedy assassination, John McCone’s
executive assistant Walt Elder saw Fitzgerald, and FitzGerald told Elder he had
met with Rolando Cubela. He did not tell him that he had given him a poison pen
to be used against Castro, nor that he had pretended to be an emissary of Bobby
Kennedy’s (Helms had told him not to worry, that he would approve that lie). No
mention of assassination was made. But Elder had the distinct impression that
FitzGerald was particularly upset that weekend. Evan Thomas, in his book The
Very Best Men, painted the following scene:
Elder was struck by FitzGerald’s clear discomfort. "Des was normally
imperturbable, but he was very disturbed about his involvement." The normally
smooth operator was "shaking his head and wringing his hands. It was very
uncharacteristic. That’s why I remember it so clearly," Elder said in 1993. He
thought FitzGerald was "distraught and overreacting."
Des Fitzgerald’s wife told author Evan Thomas that the first and last time she
ever saw her husband break down in tears was when Oswald was shot by Jack Ruby.
Her husband had been upset from the moment of the assassination, and sat
silently, watching the news along with millions of others around the globe. When
Jack Ruby performed his deed, Fitzgerald began to cry, and said, somewhat
cryptically, "Now we’ll never know."27 Thomas evidently thinks this has
something to do with Cubela. But does it? Cubela later turned out to be a double
agent. But when was that known? Was the CIA trying to provoke Castro, knowing
Cubela was his agent and planning a plot with him? Was the CIA engaging in a
true assassination plot, or a deception they could later refer to in
Castro-did-it scenarios?
Angleton’s Back Channel?
If one was planning an assassination within CIA, wouldn’t it make sense to take
some precautions as to what was communicated, and through what channels? We saw
in Part I of this article how Bill Harvey stressed, "never use the word
‘assassination’" and that nothing should be put on paper. But some
communications need to transpire nonetheless to pull an operation of that scale
off. According to Anne Goodpasture, Angleton had a back channel to Mexico City,
and possibly other stations as well:
Q: Could you describe the different kinds of channels of communication that
Mexico City had with CIA headquarters, and by that I mean cables, dispatches and
that sort of thing, if you need—if Mexico City station needed to communicate
with headquarters, what would be the different methods that could be done?
A: Well, there would be cables, there would be dispatches, there would be
intelligence reports, there would be attachments, I can’t think of anything
else.
Q: For cable communications, was there more than one channel of cables used by
CIA to go to headquarters?
A: I can’t really answer that but I think there was what they call back channel
[sic], but I don’t know the details of it. There again Mr. [Alan] White [,
Scott’s deputy in the Mexico City station] would be the more knowledgeable on
that than I am or someone from communications.
Q: Have you heard, for example, that CI may have had a back channel, not just in
Mexico City but in other stations as well?
A: Well, there’s gossip that I think I have seen or have heard or I don’t think
I dreamed it, that they discussed things through the back channel, but I’m not
sure what that was. You might check—Mr. Helms would be the person who would
know.28
So Angleton appeared to have a private channel he could use with Scott and
presumably other areas around the world to communicate traffic too sensitive to
be seen even by other sworn CIA operatives. And Helms knew about these.
...
The rest of this article can be found in The Assassinations, edited by Jim
DiEugenio and Lisa Pease.
Notes
1. Anne Goodpasture ARRB Deposition, December 15, 1995, p. 90.
2. Tom Mangold, Cold Warrior (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991), p. 41.
3. Gerard Colby and Charlotte Dennett, Thy Will Be Done (New York:
HarperCollins, 1995), pp. 325, 348, 354, 738-740.
4. Compare the Mexico City Report by Eddie Lopez and Dan Hardway (hereafter
called the Lopez Report), p. 109, with the quote from the deposition of
"Scelso", now known to be John Whitten (hereafter known as the Whitten
deposition), p. 31. In both she is described as "sort of the Major Domo of the
Branch."
5. Bustos’ involvement is related in the Lopez Report, and Roll’s involvement is
revealed in John Newman, Oswald and the CIA (New York: Carroll & Graf, 1995).
Egerter’s involvement is noted in both.
6. See "Who’s Running the Country" by Lisa Pease in the Vol. 4 No. 2
(Jan-February, 1997) issue of Probe for sourcing. The allegation and
investigation of Bustos’ photo is investigated in the Lopez Report.
7. Anne Goodpasture ARRB Interview (unsworn, not her deposition), April 23,
1998, p. 9.
8. Goodpasture ARRB Deposition, pp. 9, 10.
9. Goodpasture ARRB deposition, p. 12.
10. Goodpasture ARRB deposition, p. 37.
11. Mark Riebling, Wedge (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994), p. 145-146.
12. James Angleton HSCA deposition, October 5, 1978, p. 157.
13. Goodpasture ARRB deposition, pp. 13, 15.
14. Angleton HSCA deposition, p. 157.
15. Goodpasture ARRB deposition, p. 22.
16. Goodpasture ARRB deposition, p. 57.
17. "Deep snow" was the term given to this photo by David Phillip’s friend, the
FBI Legal Attaché in Mexico City, Clark Anderson. See the FBI memo from SA W. R.
Heitman to SAIC, Dallas, dated 11/22/63 (released in 1994).
18. Goodpasture ARRB Deposition, pp. 19-20.
19. Goodpasture ARRB Deposition, p. 28.
20. Goodpasture ARRB deposition, p. 59.
21. See Gaeton Fonzi, The Last Investigation (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press,
1993) (much of the book is devoted to this topic), and Anthony Summers, Not In
Your Lifetime (New York: Marlowe & Company, 1998), pp. 370-371.
22. Gordon Novel’s Playboy deposition.
23. Fonzi, pp. 292-293.
24. Fonzi, p. 293.
25. Goodpasture ARRB deposition, p. 54.
26. Goodpasture ARRB deposition, p. 54. Goodpasture confirmed that Phillips had
liaison between Mexico City and JMWAVE.
27. Evan Thomas, The Very Best Men (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), p. 308.
28. Goodpasture ARRB deposition, pp. 39-40.
29. Whitten deposition, p. 75.
30. Whitten deposition, p. 76.
31. Raymond G. Rocca HSCA deposition, July 17, 1978, p. 83
32. Rocca HSCA deposition, pp. 83-84.
33. Rocca HSCA deposition, pp. 84-85.
34. Goodpasture ARRB deposition, pp. 127-129, pp. 140-142.
35. Quoted in John Newman’s Probe article titled "Oswald, the CIA and Mexico
City: Fingerprints of Conspiracy" (September-October, 1999), p. 4.
36. Angleton Church Committee deposition of 6/19/75, pp. 78-79.
37. Angleton Church Committee deposition of 2/6/75, p. 31.
38. Angleton Church Committee deposition of 2/6/75, p. 31.
39. Angleton HSCA deposition, p. 89.
40. Richard Goodwin, Remembering America (New York: Little, Brown & Company,
1988), p. 189. Goodwin did not know the genesis of this remark, and mused, "What
did he mean?" In the context of Bobby’s knowledge of prior CIA assassination
attempts, the context now seems clear.
41. Whitten deposition, p. 73.
42. Whitten deposition, p. 113.
43. RIF# 104-10004-10199, "Report on Oswald’s Stay in Mexico," by John Whitten,
12/13/63, p. 19.
44. RIF 104-10018-10040, "Summary of Oswald Case Prepared for Briefing
Purposes", by RID/AN to CI/RA, 12/10/63, p. 16. Note that page numbering stopped
after page 12, but as reproduced, this would be page 16.
45. Whitten deposition, pp. 113-115.
46. Angleton HSCA deposition, p. 74.
47. Harrison Salisbury, Without Fear or Favor (New York: Times Books, 1980), p.
534.
48. Angleton HSCA deposition, 6/19/75, p. 66.
49. Angleton HSCA deposition, 6/19/75, p. 66.
50. David Martin, Wilderness of Mirrors (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers,
1980), p. 173.
51. David Murphy HSCA deposition, August 9, 1978, p. 34. The numbering changes
typeface halfway through, giving rise to the suspicion that the number was not
the original page number, and that perhaps some editing of that transcript has
taken place. This deposition was formerly marked TOP SECRET.
52. Mangold, p. 188.
53. Mangold, p. 189.
54. Mangold, p. 189.
55. Angleton HSCA deposition, 10/5/78, p. 38.
56. David Wise, Molehunt (New York: Avon Books, 1992), p. 157.
57. Martin, p. 177.
58. Whitten HSCA deposition, p. 164.
59. William Davy, Let Justice Be Done : New Light on the Jim Garrison
Investigation (Reston, VA: Jordan Publishing, 1999), pp. 30-31 and p. 285n41.
60. Davy, p. 173.
61. Davy, p. 139.
62. Davy, p. 137.
63. Davy, p. 130.
64. Jim DiEugenio, "Bill and Ed’s Washington Adventure," Probe July-August,
1997, p. 21.
65. Dope, Inc. by the authors of Executive Intelligence Review, p. 448.
66. Jim Hougan, Spooks : The Haunting of America – The Private Use of Secret
Agents (New York: William Morrow, 1978), p. 128.
67. Hougan, p. 371n.
68. Hougan, pp. 129-130.
69. Hougan, p. 130.
70. Hougan, p. 125.
71. Edward Epstein, Preface of The Assassination Chronicles (New York: Carroll &
Graf, 1992), p. 15.
72. Gertz’s letter is quoted in Jim DiEugenio, "The Wegmann Files", Probe
May-June 1997, p. 10.
73. Davy, p. 142.
74. Carl Berstein, "The CIA & the Media", Rolling Stone 10/20/77 reprint, p. 3.
75. Salisbury, p. 534.
76. Salisbury, pp. 596-597.
77. See Salisbury, pp. 501-502 for such an account.
78. Bernstein reprint, p. 2.
79. For a long excerpt of the transcript of this conversation, see Donald
Gibson’s "The Creation of the Warren Commission", Probe May-June 1996.
80. Salisbury, pp. 584-585.
81. Deborah Davis, Katherine the Great : Katherine Graham and Her Washington
Post Empire (New York: Sheridan Square Press, 1991), p. 177.
82. Davis, p. 172.
83. See a document reprinted in Davis, Katherine the Great discussing Bradlee’s
service to the CIA in Paris regarding the Rosenberg case, p. 286 and following.
84. Dick Russell, The Man Who Knew Too Much (New York: Carroll & Graf, 1992), p.
461.
85. Russell, p. 461.
86. Russell, pp. 460, 462.
87. Goodpasture ARRB dep., p. 35.
88. Russell, p. 466.
89. Thomas Powers, The Man Who Kept the Secrets (New York: Pocket Books, 1979),
p. 83.
90. Edward J. Epstein, Deception : The Invisible War Between the KGB and the CIA
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989), p. 98.
91. Mark Lane, Plausible Denial (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1991), p. 171.
92. Dick Russell, p. 476.
93. Angleton HSCA deposition, p. 121.
94. Excerpted from Angleton’s HSCA deposition, pages 119-121.
95. Angleton Church Committee deposition 9/17/75, p. 65.
96. Miles Copeland, The Real Spy World (London: Sphere Books, 1978), p. 285.
97. Angleton HSCA deposition 10/5/78, p. 121.
98. Lane, p. 218.
http://www.ctka.net/pr900-ang.html
kolnidre:
The Black Poper and "terrorism expert" on Agent Jones's show recently, a man
named Levy, referred to Angelton in connection with the nefarious Vatican. He
even called him "Jim Angelton," like they were best buddies (probably were). Had
me jumping up and down, screaming "Angelton was Mossad, bitch!"
CrackSmokeRepublican:
Another good link on Angleton:
http://books.google.com/books?id=trU7nY ... is&f=false
-------
General Reinhard Gehlen and the OSS
by Craig Roberts
While the Operation Paperclip scientists were setting up shop in the U.S.,
General Reinhard Gehlen began re-establishing his presence in West Germany. His
organization, the Gehlen Org, quickly regained control of the majority of his
former agents inside the Iron Curtain, and with the help of many of his former
staff, put them back to work. Though he agreed not to hire any former Gestapo,
SS or SD members, he sought them out and put them on the payroll - the CIA's
payroll - regardless of his promise. And the CIA did not stop him.
Among his recruits were Dr. Franz Six and Emil Augsburg. Six and Augsburg had
been members of an SS mobile Death's Head killing squad that hunted down and
killed Soviet Jews, intellectuals and partisans wherever they could be found.
Six was known as a Streber, or Eager Beaver, for the enthusiastic manner in
which he pursued his job. Gehlen also recruited the former Gestapo chiefs of
Paris, France, and Kiel, Germany. Then, that not being enough, he hired Willi
Krichbaum, the former senior Gestapo leader for southeastern Europe.
Gehlen was pleasantly surprised by what happened next. His new employer, the
OSS, not only encouraged but financed an escape mechanism set up by Gehlen for
former Nazis. The Gehlen Org established, with OSS help, "rat lines" to provide
an underground escape network to be used by former war criminals to escape
prosecution by German war crimes tribunals. By way of this organization, over
5,000 Nazis secretly made their way out of Europe to relocate around the globe.
Most went to South and Central America. The countries of choice were Argentina,
Chile, Nicaragua and El Salvador. Within a few years after their arrival in
these particular countries, the infamous right-wing government "death squads"
made their first appearances. Of note in the expatriate community were such
characters as Dr. Joseph Mengele, who specialized in crude genetic experiments
on Jewish concentration camp inmates, and mass murderer Klaus Barbie, the
infamous "Butcher of Lyons."
According to some sources, former OSS officer James Jesus Angleton, who later
became CIA Chief of Intelligence, was the man responsible for providing the
Nazis with new identities before their departure from the detainment camps.
Angleton worked directly for Dulles.
To satisfy his new employers, Gehlen realized that he had to produce information
that was of value to Washington. He also realized that for an intelligence
organization to be of value, and to justify a large budget, it had to have an
entity that was considered a deadly threat to spy on. He knew that the Americans
had little knowledge concerning both the Russians as a military machine, and
what activities were transpiring behind the Iron Curtain. The Red Menace would
fit the requirement of the ominous threat nicely. All Gehlen had to do was paint
as bleak a picture of the situation as he could, and continue creating reports
that indicated that the scenario was continually deteriorating. The more bad
news he gave Washington, the more money he would have to work with. He knew that
in peacetime, the only way to justify a large intelligence organization was to
make sure there was always "an enemy at the gates."
He began by feeding information to Dulles - and consequently to Truman - that
appeared to show that the Russians were poised to attack the West. He reported
that the Soviet forces in eastern Europe were comprised of 208 crack assault
divisions, most of which were highspeed capable motorized rifle and tank
divisions. Such figures showed that the Communists outnumbered the Western
forces by a ratio of ten-to-one.
Then, in early 1947, he reported to the fledgling CIA that his agents had noted
subtle changes in Soviet billeting and leave policies, and that troops were
being recalled for some unspecified reason. He alluded that this could be the
beginning of a preparation phase for the suspected invasion.
This was followed by Gehlen's prediction that the Russians would move quickly
once all troops and equipment had been activated and put into position for
attack. It wouldn't be long until there was a Soviet blitzkrieg.
In actual fact, Gehlen's information could not have been further from the truth.
By 1946, the Red Army was an over-extended, underequipped, and exhausted force
of combat-riddled units. Many of the battalions that had reached Berlin had done
so on foot. There was not even sufficient motor transport to move one entire
division without depriving another of its motorized assets. Almost half of the
Red Army's transport was horse drawn. In addition to this, U.S. Army
Intelligence had established that the majority of Soviet forces in Eastern
Europe was bogged down in rebuilding the eastern zones, reorganizing security
structures, and performing governmental administrative functions. According to
the intelligence estimate, the Soviet ground and air forces would not be combat
effective against the Western powers for at least the next decade.
The 10:1 Russian superiority figure that Gehlen referred to was unrealistic from
the beginning. Gehlen well knew, as did Dulles and the other veteran OSS agents,
that the Soviet divisional structure was far less in numerical manpower than its
U.S. equivalent. A Soviet division was typically one third as strong as an
American division. And its leadership was far less effective. Instead of being
able to function in combat with flexibility by making on-the-spot field
expedient decisions, the Soviet officers had to wait for orders from upper
echelon before reacting to a change in the flow of battle. This fact in itself
often caused the Soviets grievous losses, and even defeats, during land battles.
The U.S. forces, on the other hand, encouraged battlefield decisions during the
heat of conflict to be made at the lowest levels.
Still, the OSS - and the follow-on CIG (Central Intelligence Group which
replaced the OSS) - chose to conveniently believe Gehlen. Over 70 % of the
reports submitted to Washington on CIA stationary were simply Gehlen's words.
According to a former CIA officer, "Gehlen's reports and analyses were sometimes
simply retyped onto CIA stationary and presented to President Truman without
further comment."
The results of such activities were exactly what the intelligence community -
and the military - wanted. Truman ceased cutting the military budget; increased
spending for weapons research, military equipment, aircraft and the space
program; ordered an increase in the development and construction of nuclear
weapons; and most importantly to the young CIA, began pumping millions of
dollars into the "black" budget for covert operations. In the ten years that
followed the war, the CIA consumed over $200 million dollars of funds that did
not have to be accounted for.
According to Victor Marchetti, former chief analyst on Soviet military
capabilities and author of The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence, "The agency
loved Gehlen because he fed us what we wanted to hear. We used his stuff
constantly, and we fed it to everybody else: the Pentagon; the White House; the
newspapers. They loved it." Marchetti further explained, "Gehlen had to make his
money by creating a threat that we were afraid of, so we would give him more
money to tell us about it. In my opinion, the Gehlen organization provided
nothing worthwhile for understanding or estimating Soviet military or political
capabilities in Eastern Europe or anywhere else."
The final result of all these cloak-and-dagger exercises was a reputed Cold War
that lasted for almost half a century, and cost American taxpayers alone over $8
trillion dollars.
Peacetime intelligence gathering had become big business - profitable to not
only the growing intelligence organizations, but to the defense industry and the
investors who financed both it and the government.
The Medusa File: Secret Crimes and Coverups of the U.S. Government
p. 57-60
by Craig Roberts
Consolidated Press International
http://www.freemasonrywatch.org/gehlen.html
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