JFK: CIA, Vietnam & The Plot to Assassinate JFK

by L. Fletcher Prouty

  According to Hoover, in the November 29, 1963, memorandum, the Dallas “chief of police admits he moved Oswald in the morning as a convenience and at the request of motion picture [television] people who wanted daylight.”

  Only essential police and the TV crews were permitted at headquarters—yet somehow Jack Ruby gained entrance. Hoover’s words in the memorandum about this tense scene are important:

  [Ruby] . . . knew all of the police officers in the white-light district . . . that is how I think he got into police headquarters. I said [to Johnson] if they [police] ever made any move, the pictures did not show it, even when they saw him [Ruby] approach and he got right up to Oswald’s stomach; that neither officer on either side made any effort to grab Rubenstein—not until after the pistol was fired.

  This is no place to examine all of the evidence available of this skillfully managed killing of a President, but it may be clear from the examples provided here that the Warren Commission’s “findings” would be more accurately labeled a “contrived scenario.”

  If we have come to the conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald was made the “patsy” for the murder of the President, we must consider again the atmosphere under which the men on the Warren Commission operated. They had been selected and appointed by the President, after a discussion with FBI director J. Edgar Hoover.

  During that discussion, as related in Hoover’s November 29, 1963, memorandum, Johnson stated, “I [Hoover] was more than head of the FBI—I was his brother and personal friend . . . he did want to have my thoughts on the matter to advocate as his own opinion.”

  The commission members were appointed immediately following this Johnson-Hoover conversation—the very same day, as a matter of fact. It was said that they had a clear charter to investigate and to solve this terrible crime. The commission was authorized by Congress to use subpoena powers. The members, all listed here, were experienced in the pathways of supergovernment:

  Chief Justice Earl Warren; former Director of Central Intelligence Allen Dulles; Congressman (later President) Gerald R. Ford; Congressman Hale Boggs (who later mysteriously disappeared in a light-plane crash in Alaska); Sen. Richard B. Russell; Sen. John Sherman Cooper; John J. McCloy, former president of the World Bank.

  As a note of interest:

  It was Allen Dulles who overlooked President Eisenhower’s express orders not to involve Americans in Vietnam, with the creation of the Saigon Military Mission (1954).

  Allen Dulles was in charge of the CIA’s U-2 spy plane operations and of the flight that crash-landed in the Soviet Union on May 1, 1960, causing the disruption of the Paris Summit Conference. Eisenhower had specifically ordered all overflights of Communist territory to be grounded before and during that period.

  The Bay of Pigs operation was planned under Dulles’s leadership, and his failure to be “on duty” that day may have been a contributing factor in its failure (April 18, 1961).

  Dulles was a member of the Cuban Study Group that reviewed that ill-fated operation (1961).

  Dulles was a member of the Warren Commission (1964).

  If any men, in or out of public life, could have solved this murder, these seven men should have been able to do so. But they did not. In blunt language, as we have said throughout this work, they didn’t even try. Why not? What power structure was so strong that it could emasculate a presidential commission?

  A presidential commission is not a court of law, and its processes are not a reasonable substitute for a court. The Warren Commission was given subpoena power, but for some reason it did not use the time-honored adversarial process of cross-examination. The fact that Walter E. Craig, president of the American Bar Association, had been asked to attend the hearings and to “advise the commission whether in his opinion the proceedings conformed to the basic principles of American justice” and that he was “given the opportunity to cross-examine witnesses” had little, if any, bearing on the course and outcome of the commission’s work. Craig never took advantage of this opportunity to cross-examine witnesses.

  The commission never really considered the possibility that anyone other than Oswald, by himself, had committed the crime.

  The President was murdered in Dallas, Texas. By law, the crime of murder must be tried in the state where it is committed. It remains to be tried today. There is no statute of limitations on the crime of murder.

  Why hasn’t the case been tried? Oswald is dead, but that does not preclude a trial. He is as innocent of that crime as anyone else until a court of law has found him guilty. Given the available evidence, no court could convict him. These experienced men on the Warren Commission, particularly the chief justice of the United States, had to have known that. The least they could have done was to order that a trial be held in Texas.

  Why did Texas authorities permit the removal of Kennedy’s body from Texas? Why did they not hold an official autopsy? Why did Dr. James Humes, the man who did an autopsy at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas, burn his original notes? The answers to these questions, and to so many others like them, are, unfortunately, quite obvious. Anyone who came in touch with this case became shrouded under the cloak of secrecy that has covered it for decades. Even now, countless thousands of records are locked away.

  At this point many of us ask, “Who are the people who set up this crime? Who shot the President, and who has been able to maintain the cover-up for three decades?”

  To these questions, there are at least two responses, each on a different yet complementary level. First, “Who?” We shall never know. Throughout history, there is adequate evidence to accept the existence of an almost mythical and certainly anonymous power elite. Buckminster Fuller does his best to describe it; Winston Churchill used the term “High Cabal”; Dr. Joseph Needham, of Cambridge University and a great China scholar, wrote that the Chinese recognize the existence of a power elite that they refer to as “the Gentry.” In the case of the Kennedy murder, there has been no way to pierce its cloak of anonymity, because neither the government of the state of Texas nor the federal government will take positive legal action.

  Second, “Who fired the shots and who covered up the crime?” Lyndon Johnson came as close as anyone has when he said that “we had been operating a damn Murder Inc.” These are the skilled professionals. We shall never discover who they are. The “cover story” is another thing. It has been a masterpiece, all the way from the Lee Harvey Oswald role to statements made by high officials today. One thing we must understand is that the cover story has its band of actors. Many of these actors came from the Cuban exile groups in Miami and New Orleans and were prepared in the huge Operation Mongoose infrastructure that was established ostensibly to eliminate Fidel Castro. Any who are alive today are shielded by the mantle of the cabal.

  The entire plot may be likened to a play, a great tragedy. There are the authors. They created the plot, the scenario, the time, the characters, and the script. Then there are the actors who carried out the scenario as mercenaries. In this case they would have been a band of skilled men who do such things regularly on a worldwide basis for money and protection. In the ultimate sense, they are expendable.

  There are colonies of such experts that are maintained by certain governments, or by select instrumentalities of governments, and by other powers. They are used for such activities regularly.

  Who can command the absolute power sufficient to create such a scenario, and who can put it into operation? The following items will serve to illustrate the extent of the power these people wield.

  The murder of President Kennedy and its accompanying pageantry was witnessed, on film, TV, radio, and in print, by hundreds of millions around the world. David Lawrence, writing in the New York Herald Tribune on November 26, 1963, observed, “Thanks to the inventions of man, instantaneous communication throughout the world has been made possible. No such wide coverage on the same day, simultaneously with the occurrence of a news event, has been achieved in the past.”

  This was true,
of course, with respect to the communications capability, but was the information that traveled around the world the truth of legitimate news, or was it more like a mixture of real news items and orchestrated propaganda that had been prepared and written even before the crime took place?

  For those of us who just happened to be in far-off Christchurch, New Zealand, for example, the Kennedy assassination took place at seventhirty on the morning of Saturday, November 23, 1963.

  As soon as possible, the Christchurch Star hit the streets with an “Extra” edition. One-quarter of the front page was devoted to a picture of President Kennedy. The remainder of the page was, for the most part, dedicated to the assassination story, from various sources. Who were those sources, and how could so much intimate and detailed biographic information about Oswald have been obtained instantaneously? The answer is that it wasn’t obtained “instantaneously.” It had to have been prepared before the crime, and like everything else, prepackaged by the secret cabal.

  This “instant” news, available so quickly and completely in far-off New Zealand, is a most important detail of the murder plan. This newspaper ran an “Extra” edition that was on the streets before noon in Christchurch. It ran news items filed by experienced on-the-spot reporters in Dallas, who reported that the President was hit with a “burst of gunfire.” A few lines below, it said, “Three bursts of gunfire, apparently from automatic weapons,” were heard.

  Another reporter quoted Sen. Ralph Yarborough, who had been riding in the procession, as saying, “ . . . at least two shots came from our right rear.” As confirmed by photographs made at that time, the “right rear” of Senator Yarborough’s position could not have been the alleged lone gunman’s lair six floors above.

  NBC-TV reported that the police took possession of “a British .303-inch rifle . . . with a telescopic sight.” That was not the Italian rifle of the Warren Report.

  Another account in this same newspaper stated that “the getaway car was seized in Fort Worth, Texas.” Whose getaway car? Oswald never left Dallas.

  This type of sudden, quite random reporting is most important, because one can usually find the truth of what occurred in these early news reports. Later, the “news” will be doctored and coordinated and will bear little resemblance to the original, more factual accounts.

  Experienced reporters travel in the presidential party. They know gunfire when they hear it, and they reported “bursts” of gunfire. They reported “automatic weapons.” They reported what they heard and saw. They did not yet have propaganda handouts.

  Neither the FBI nor the Secret Service reported such action. Since automatic weapons were never found, it becomes apparent that the reporters on the scene had heard simultaneous gunfire from several skilled “mechanics” or professional killers and that this gunfire had sounded like “bursts” of “automatic weapons.”

  This reference to “three bursts of gunfire” and “apparently from automatic weapons” that I read first on the front page of the Christchurch Star provides a most important clue. It shows how on-the-spot news coverage creates real facts that are much different from the preprepared cover story, and the after-the-fact Report of the Warren Commission.

  Another factor is important. On-the-spot news coverage benefits from that “instantenous communications throughout the world... simultaneously with the occurrence of a news event” that David Lawrence mentioned in the New York Herald Tribune.

  During early on-the-spot news bulletins CBS made use of these same words: “Three bursts of automatic gunfire, apparently from automatic weapons, were fired at President Kennedy’s motorcade in downtown Dallas.” These same lines were repeated in subsequent CBS bulletins of that date.

  Another point can be made from this bulletin. Although the gunmen may have used “automatic” weapons, it is more likely that what the reporters heard that day was the well-coordinated fire from at least three gunmen in different locations, and that they fired at least three times each.

  This is an old firing-squad and professional hit-man ploy. It serves to remove the certain responsibility from each gunner as a psychological cleanser. If three men are to fire, they all know that two guns are loaded and one gun is firing blanks. The gunmen do not know who had the bullets, or who had the blanks. Each man can choose to believe that he did not kill the victim; and each man can swear an oath that he was not the killer.

  It is relevant to note that these on-the-spot bulletins did not contain the previously written “Lee Harvey Oswald” data that had been fed to the world press and that I read in New Zealand.

  Nowhere does the Warren Report mention the precision control of several guns, yet it is hard to discount the first, eyewitness reports from experienced men.

  On the other hand, almost one-quarter of that front page in Christchurch was taken up with detailed news items about Lee Harvey Oswald. An excellent photograph of Oswald in a business suit and tie was run on page 3. This odd photograph appeared in no other files.

  At the time this edition of the Star went to press, the police of Dallas had just taken a young man into custody and had charged him with the death of a Dallas policeman named J. D. Tippit. They had not accused Oswald of the murder of the President and did not charge him with that crime until early the next morning. Yet a long article put on the wires by the British United Press and America’s Associated Press had been assembled out of nowhere, even before Oswald had been charged with the crime. It was pure propaganda. Where did those wire services get it?

  Nowadays, Oswald is a household name throughout the world, but in Dallas at 12:30 P.M. on November 22, 1963, he was a nondescript twenty-four year-old ex-marine who was unknown to almost everyone. There is no way one can believe that these press agencies had in their files, ready and on call, all of the detailed information that was so quickly poured out in those first hours after the assassination.

  In the long account in the Christchurch Star about Lee Harvey Oswald—which included that fine studio portrait in business suit, white shirt, and tie—these press services provided, and the Star published, some very interesting information.

  According to the account, Lee Harvey Oswald:

  “defected to the Soviet Union in 1959”

  “returned to the United States in 1962”

  “has a [Russian] wife and child”

  “worked in a factory in Minsk”

  “went to the USSR following discharge from the Marine Corps”

  “became disillusioned with life there [in the USSR]”

  “Soviet authorities had given him permission to return with his wife and child”

  “had been chairman of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee”

  . . . and much more.

  The statement by David Lawrence of the Herald Tribune that “instantaneous communications throughout the world has been made possible” is true. It is possible to send news around the world “instantaneously.” But what of the content of that news? Can information on some young unknown be collected and collated “instantaneously”?

  By what process could the wire services have acquired, collated, evaluated, written, and then transmitted all that material about an unknown young man named Lee Harvey Oswald within the first moments following that tragic and “unexpected” event—even before the police had charged him? How could they have justified the collation of such news until after the police had charged him with the crime?

  There can be but one answer: Those in charge of the murder had prepared the patsy and all of that intimate information beforehand.

  Strangely, the FBI, the Secret Service, the Warren Commission, and the Dallas police force instantly declared Oswald to be the killer. They never considered any other possibilities. The evidence was never examined. In newspapers around the world, even as far away as Christchurch, New Zealand, the headlines blared that Oswald was the President’s murderer.

  If one believes the information in the wire-service article, is it possible also to believe that Lee Harvey Oswald, alone,
was the murderer of President John F. Kennedy?

  That is such a powerful question that one wonders why it hasn’t been asked more often by those who have recourse to excellent sources, tenacious investigators, and wide experience—the moguls of the media themselves. How can the press of the world have lived with this fantasy it inherited from clandestine propaganda sources before Kennedy’s body was cold? How has this story been contained for more than twenty-eight long years? We must wonder what has happened to our once-free press.

  We must also wonder at the chilling effect this assassination has had on succeeding presidents.

  Lyndon Johnson was riding in a car behind President Kennedy in the Dealey Plaza motorcade. Johnson was seared by that event. During his November 29, 1963, conversation with J. Edgar Hoover, Johnson asked, “How many shots were fired” and “Were any fired at me?” We may be sure that he thought during his years as President about those shots that went right over his head. As any soldier can tell you, such an experience provides an excellent education.

  We have noted in an earlier chapter that, despite frequent denials, Richard Nixon was in Dallas during those fateful moments, attending a meeting with executives of the Pepsi-Cola Company. According to the general counsel of that company, Nixon and the others in the room knelt in a brief prayer when they heard of Kennedy’s death. Despite this, there were many news stories in which Nixon denied that he was in Dallas at the time of the assassination. Why did Nixon tell so many different, false stories about his whereabouts at that time—all placing himself outside Dallas?

  Although Nixon may not have heard those guns of Dallas, there can be no question that they were never far from his mind, especially during the hectic years of his own presidency. Some people say Nixon became paranoid. That would be understandable.

  Gerald Ford, who became President after Nixon left office, was a member of the Warren Commission. He attended more of its meetings than any other member. He knows the details of the murder of Kennedy well. Add to that his own experience when an assassin fired at him while he was President. He, too, knows the sound of bullets and understands their lesson.