That Israeli agents have been instrumental in spreading conspiracy theories targeting the CIA has become evident in regard to Oliver Stone’s film JFK released in 1991. It starred Kevin Costner in the role of New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison, who opened an investigation into Kennedy’s assassination in 1967. This film, which shook public opinion to the point of motivating the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992, was produced by Arnon Milchan, described in a 2011 biography as being from his youth “one of the most important covert agents that Israeli intelligence has ever fielded,” involved in arms smuggling from the US to Israel.452 In 2013 Milchan publicly revealed his extended activity as a secret agent of Israel, working in particular to boost Israel’s nuclear program.453
It is therefore no wonder that Stone’s film gives no hint of the Mossad connection that Garrison stumbled upon. So it appears that the confrontation between the official theory and the inside-job conspiracy theory is largely staged by Zionist interests, or at least serves the interest of Israel by keeping the public’s attention away from any thought of Israeli participation. At the same time, the half-truth of the CIA’s involvement serves as a constant threat of blackmail against American institutions, forcing the state to defend tooth and nail its impossible theory (magic bullet and all), knowing full well that, if this cover-up is ever revealed, it will be the first to be exposed (for both the operation and its cover-up). Such is the general operating mode by which Israel controls the US: it implicates elements of the US government in its black operations, in order to involve them in the cover-up, as the Zionist-controlled mainstream media serves as a sword of Damocles hanging over their heads.
The same strategy, of playing one lie against another in order to obscure the real issue, has been applied twice in the Kennedy affair. This was, in the very early stage, the strategy employed by Lyndon Johnson and his accomplice Edgar Hoover: while Johnson was circulating within the government the dangerous theory of a communist plot, Hoover spread to the public, as a lid on this bombshell, the reassuring thesis of the lone gunman. The rumor of the communist plot was used as the argument to convince federal and state officials to settle for the lone nut theory as the public version, in the name of the national interest and for the sake of world peace (while the thesis of the communist plot occasionally resurfaces).454 Once the risk of triggering a world war had disappeared, the conspiracy theory of the CIA plot took on the function of the new dangerous thesis that had to be smothered, lest the fire of popular outrage lead to a major crisis. The CIA theory invaded popular culture in the 70s, together with other false leads such as the mafia theory.
Besides this method of “triangulation,” which consists of one camp staging a fight between two other camps while remaining invisible, the general strategy of controlled opposition can be summarized as “contain and contaminate.” First, contain public opinion within strict limits to prevent Israeli involvement from ever being mentioned. Second, contaminate public opinion by a variety of false leads that, by their sheer number, generate a sort of learned helplessness, the sense that “the truth will never be known.” And finally, promote the most bizarre theories that serve as a scarecrow to keep reasonable people away from alternative theories in general.
To summarize, a triple lie has been woven around the Kennedy assassination, each lie corresponding to a fake Oswald: there is the lone-nut Oswald, the Castro-agent Oswald, and the CIA-asset Oswald. None of them is the real Oswald, who has no relevance to the case anyway. So any investigation that focuses on Oswald is bound to lose itself in one of these three false trails. Even the CIA asset Oswald is largely bogus, since in reality, Oswald’s connections to the world of intelligence and espionage mostly involved the Navy. Oswald was a Marine, and it was under the Secretary of the Navy John Connally that he was sent into Russia as a false deserter. Before that, he had been based in Atsugi in Japan with the ONI (Office of Naval Intelligence). The ONI is the oldest American intelligence service (founded in 1881), the first to practice domestic surveillance, and the first to develop a relationship with organized crime, as documented by Professor Jeffrey Dorwart in his two-volume history of the ONI (Naval Institute Press, 1983).
In New Orleans, Oswald kept his post office box in the same building where the ONI had its local office. But while the CIA has always taken the heat for the assassination of President Kennedy, the ONI has managed to escape publicity. When CIA Director Richard Helms was asked by the HSCA about their interest in Oswald after his defection, he said that “it would have been considered a Navy matter,” and recommended they talk to ONI Director Rufus Taylor—who happened to have died two weeks earlier. No wonder the Assassination Records Review Board, formed in the 1990s to reinvestigate Kennedy’s murder, said in a final 236-page report that “the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) was described as a puzzle, if not a black hole.” Johnson’s close ties with the Navy are certainly not unrelated to this black hole.455
For fifty years, the Israeli trail in the Kennedy assassination has been covered up, and anyone who dares mention it is immediately ostracized from the community of respectable Kennedy conspiracy theorists. American congressman Paul Findley nevertheless had the courage to write in March 1992 in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs: “It is interesting to note that in all the words written and uttered about the Kennedy assassination, Israel’s intelligence agency, the Mossad, has never been mentioned.” One single author has seriously examined the case against the Israeli underworld: Michael Collins Piper, in his 1995 book Final Judgment: The Missing Link in the JFK Assassination Conspiracy. Piper has been treated like the plague ever since. But his work has grown in influence. In 2013, in his edition of Kennedy’s letters, including those to Ben-Gurion about Dimona, Martin Sandler writes of Piper’s work: “Of all the conspiracy theories, it remains one of the most intriguing.”456 The Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi should be counted among those convinced by Piper. He declared in 2008: “Kennedy decided to monitor the Dimona nuclear plant. He insisted on doing so, in order to determine whether or not it produced nuclear weapons. The Israelis refused, but he insisted. This crisis was resolved with the resignation of Ben-Gurion. He resigned so he would not have to agree to the monitoring of the Dimona plant, and he gave the green light for the killing of Kennedy. Kennedy was killed because he insisted on the monitoring of the Dimona plant.”457 On September 23, 2009, Gaddafi had the guts to demand a new investigation in a speech to the General Assembly of the United Nations.458
Johnson, a “Jewish President”?
The assassination of President Kennedy was a hidden coup d’état meant to replace an independent government with a government subservient to Israel’s interests. From the very next day, all of Kennedy’s policies hostile to Israel’s agenda were reversed, without the American people having the slightest idea of what was going on. The American Zionist Council escaped foreign agent status by renaming itself the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). The consequence was that, by 1973, as Senator William Fulbright would remark on CBS, “Israel controls the Senate, […] anything Israel wants, Israel gets.”459
Kennedy’s death relieved Israel of all pressure (diplomatic or otherwise) to stop its nuclear program, or even to be forced to acknowledge it. Historian Stephen Green tells it better: “Perhaps the most significant development of 1963 for the Israeli nuclear weapons program, however, occurred on November 22: On a plane flying from Dallas to Washington, D.C., Lyndon Johnson was sworn in as the 36th President of the United States, following the assassination of John F. Kennedy.” Green explains further: “In the early years of the Johnson administration the Israeli nuclear weapons program was referred to in Washington as ‘the delicate topic.’ Lyndon Johnson’s White House saw no Dimona, heard no Dimona, and spoke no Dimona when the reactor went critical in early 1964.”460
Faced with Johnson’s complete lack of interest in that issue, John McCone resigned from the CIA in 1965: “Whe
n I cannot get the President to read my reports, then it’s time to go.” Israel acquired its first nuclear bomb around 1967, and the public had to wait until 1986 to know about it, thanks to the publication in the Sunday Times of photographs taken by Israeli technician Mordechai Vanunu inside the Dimona complex. (Vanunu was abducted by the Mossad, convicted of treason in Israel, and imprisoned for 18 years, including 11 in solitary confinement).
Under Johnson, military aid to Israel reached $92 million in 1966, more than the total of all previous years combined. Johnson even allowed the delivery of Phantom missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads. As for US foreign policy, it took a decidedly pro-Israel turn, under the supervision of Myer Feldman, now promoted special counsel for the Middle East, with the help of Walt and Eugene Rostow, also sons of Jewish immigrants (the first acting as special counsel for national security, the second as under-secretary of state).461
In 2013, the Associated Press reported on newly released tapes from Johnson’s White House office showing LBJ’s “personal and often emotional connection to Israel.” The tapes showed that during the Johnson presidency, “the United States became Israel’s chief diplomatic ally and primary arms supplier.” An article from the 5 Towns Jewish Times “Our First Jewish President Lyndon Johnson?” recalls Johnson’s continuous support of Jews and Israel in the 1940s and 50s, then his role in the crafting of pro-Israel UN Resolution 242 in November 1967. It concludes: “President Johnson firmly pointed American policy in a pro-Israel direction. In historical context, the American emergency airlift to Israel in 1973, the constant diplomatic support, the economic and military assistance and the strategic bonds between the two countries can all be credited to the seeds planted by LBJ.”
The article also mentions that “research into Johnson’s personal history indicates that he inherited his concern for the Jewish people from his family. His aunt Jessie Johnson Hatcher, a major influence on LBJ, was a member of the Zionist Organization of America.” And, in an additional note: “The facts indicate that both of Lyndon Johnson’s great-grandparents, on the maternal side, were Jewish. […] The line of Jewish mothers can be traced back three generations in Lyndon Johnson’s family tree. There is little doubt that he was Jewish.”462 Johnson, the son of Rebekah Baines and Samuel Johnson, and grandson by his mother of Ruth Huffman, attributed his philo-Semitism to a family inheritance: “Take care of the Jews, ‘God’s Chosen People.’ Consider them your friends and help them any way you can,” he remembered his grandfather saying.463 His wife, known as Lady Bird, would later testify: “Jews have been woven into the warp and woof of all his years.” And is not Johnson the only American president ever to have inaugurated a synagogue—in Austin, a month after becoming President?464 So there is ample ground for believing that Johnson was some kind of crypto-Jew. In any case, there can hardly be any doubt that he was a crypto-Zionist.
With Johnson in control of the White House, Israel could resume its plan of expansion without fear of US interference. Johnson ignored all of Khrushchev’s overtures to pursue the peace process he had started with Kennedy, thus making sure the Cold War would continue to provide the necessary context for America’s support of Israel’s aggression against Egypt. Military involvement in Vietnam, which Kennedy had decided to reduce leading toward full withdrawal by 1965, was instead escalated by Johnson for that very purpose (and for the profit of the military-industrial complex, in which Johnson invested heavily).
In 1967 Israel tripled its area in less than a week, extending to the south, north, and east. It amputated the Gaza Strip and Sinai from Egypt, the Golan Heights from Syria, and the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan. Having learned the lesson of its failure in 1956, Israel succeeded in creating the illusion that it was acting in self-defense. By poisoning Soviet espionage with false communications, Israel incited Nasser to begin troop movements in Sharm el-Sheikh near the Israeli border. On May 27, 1967, Nasser blocked access to the Straits of Tiran, cutting the Israeli Navy’s access to the Red Sea. Israeli propaganda, disseminated in the United States, cast these defensive movements as preparations for aggression, justifying a preventive attack by Israel.
Such propaganda could not deceive American intelligence. But Johnson had given Israel a green light in a letter to Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol, dated June 3: “I want to protect the territorial integrity of Israel […] and will provide as effective American support as possible to preserve the peace and freedom of your nation and of the area.”465 Johnson also asked the CIA to transmit to the Israeli army the precise positions of the Egyptian air bases to be destroyed.
Four days after the start of the Israeli attack, Nasser accepted the ceasefire request from the UN Security Council. It was too soon for Israel, which had not yet achieved all its objectives. It was then that, on June 8, 1967, the USS Liberty, an NSA spy ship, easily recognizable by its large American flag, covered by radar antennae and unarmed, was stationed in international waters off Sinai. For seventy-five minutes, the ship was bombed, strafed, and torpedoed by Israeli Mirage jets and three torpedo boats, with the obvious intention of sinking it without leaving any survivors. (Even the lifeboats were machine-gunned.)
The spy activity of the USS Liberty, some analysts say, was to ensure that Israel would not go beyond the secret US permission to invade Sinai. But the Israeli military hierarchy, and Moshe Dayan in particular, intended to take full advantage of the situation, and as soon as the fighting in Egypt ceased, it redeployed its troops to the north to annex Syrian and Jordanian territories. The attack on the USS Liberty therefore had two objectives: it sought to neutralize US surveillance and with it the American ability to interfere; but it was also conceived as a false flag operation that would have been blamed on Egypt if it had succeeded, that is, if the ship had been sunk and its crew exterminated. Testimonials indicate that Johnson supported this option by intervening personally to prohibit the nearby Sixth Fleet from rescuing the USS Liberty after the crew, despite the initial destruction of its transmitters, had managed to send off an SOS. Everything suggests that the attack on the USS Liberty had been secretly authorized by the White House. Had the subterfuge of blaming the Egyptians worked, the United States would have used the pretext to intervene militarily alongside Israel, probably forcing the USSR to go to war.466
The USS Liberty affair was suppressed by a commission of inquiry headed by Admiral John Sidney McCain II, commander-in-chief of US Naval forces in Europe (and father of Arizona Senator John McCain III). The survivors received a medal in an unadvertised ceremony, accompanied by a formal order never to mention the incident. Only recently have some broken the silence.467
Johnson accepted Israel’s spurious “targeting error” explanation. In January 1968 he invited the Israeli prime minister, Levi Eshkol, to Washington, and warmly welcomed him to his Texas ranch. What’s more, Johnson rewarded Israel by lifting the embargo on offensive military equipment: US-made tanks and aircraft immediately flowed to Tel Aviv. Under Nixon, military sales would reach $600 million in 1971 and $3 billion two years later, making Israel the biggest customer of the US defense industry.
At the end of the Six-Day War, Moscow contented itself with protesting against Israel’s annexation of new territories by breaking diplomatic relations with Tel Aviv and stopping the emigration of its Jewish citizens, which had been accelerating in the previous months. The UN Security Council condemned Israel’s “acquisition of territory by war” and called for “withdrawal of Israel armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict.” This Resolution 242, which has since been frequently invoked in the peace negotiations in the Middle East, has still not been enforced.
On November 27, 1967, faced with Israel’s refusal to comply, De Gaulle denounced in a press conference Israel’s illegal occupation of the territories, “which cannot go without oppression, repression, expulsions. [. . .] Unless the UN itself tore up its own charter, a settlement must be based on the evacuation of the occupied t
erritories.” Some believe that this de Gaulle statement (accompanied by his famous description of the Jewish people as “cocky and domineering”) was not unrelated to the destabilization of his government in May 1968, carried out mainly by Trotskyites with the main agitator being Daniel Cohn-Bendit.468
It bears repeating that the Cold War provided the indispensable context for the Israeli conquest of new territories and the accompanying ethnic cleansing, expanding Israel’s borders and weakening its Arab enemies. Without the Cold War and its propaganda of fear and hatred, there would have been no chance of convincing the American people that Israel was their ally and Nasser their enemy. If we admit that this enterprise had been long premeditated, we may understand that Israel had a major reason to eliminate Kennedy, in addition to those already mentioned: with Kennedy re-elected in November 1964, and Khrushchev simultaneously in power in the USSR, the end of the Cold War loomed before 1968. The monstrous absurdity of the Vietnam War, which had no other purpose than to prolong and intensify this global conflict, would never have taken place.469 With Kennedy and Khrushchev in office, given what is known today of their secret rapprochement, Israel had no chance of accomplishing the tripling of its territory resulting from the Six-Day War. Khrushchev, let us not forget, was the architect of de-Stalinization and the subsequent “thaw.” He rehabilitated many political prisoners, such as Alexander Solzhenitsyn, whom he authorized to publish his first famous work, A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962). Bill Walton remembers that on November 19, 1963, after signing the first Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty, Kennedy declared that “he intended to be the first President of the United States to visit the Kremlin as soon as he and Khrushchev reached another arms control agreement.”470 Kennedy died three days later. Khrushchev, who was in the same position as Kennedy in relation to his hawkish advisors, lost his meager support. He was overthrown in 1964, his country plunged back into the cold, and Solzhenitsyn was again censured.
From Yahweh to Zion Page 34