Hit List: An In-Depth Investigation Into the Mysterious Deaths of Witnesses to the JFK Assassination

by Richard Belzer

  The HSCA published everything they published “butt-backwards.”16

  Historian John Simkin notes further that:

  The House Select Committee on Assassinations refused to publish all the documents obtained during the investigation. The CIA forced all members of the committee, all staff members, all consultants to the committee, and several independent researchers involved in the investigation, to sign a Nondisclosure Agreement.17

  15 Richard Charnin, email to author, 4 Dec. 2011.

  16 Walt Brown, Ph.D., email to author, 27 Nov. 2011.

  17 John Simkin, “House Select Committee on Assassinations”, Spartacus Educational, http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKassassinationsC.htm (accessed 14 May 2012).

  Rising Body Count

  (The Beat Goes On . . .)

  And just when everyone thought the whole thing was too impossible to believe but at least was finally over and done with: The beat went on . . .

  •

  But by their own admission, in their own published findings in the Final Report of the House Select Committee on Assassinations—it clearly states the following, for the year 1977:19

  Number of Witnesses: 35

  Number of Subpoenas Issued: 103

  Number of Immunity Grants: 5

  Now consider this—six high-level FBI officials—all connected to the investigation of the JFK assassination—died during a six-month period in 1977, right when they were scheduled to testify before the Congressional committee. Coincidence? Not likely.

  If we take the number of witnesses for that year—35—the fact that 6, who were all from the FBI, met their deaths in a six-month time period is astonishingly implausible. Mathematicians use the term order of magnitude, which is defined as “An estimate of size or magnitude expressed as a power of ten.”20 In this case, as Richard Charnin puts it:

  The order of magnitude is essentially ZERO, meaning prohibitive—the odds of such a bizarre series of events occurring are simply mathematically impossible.21

  19 House Select Committee on Assassinations, HSCA Final Report: Appendices, 1979: http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/hsca/report/pdf/HSCA_Report_5_Appendices.pdf

  20 Editors of The American Heritage Dictionaries, Houghton Mifflin Company, The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition, 2006.

  21 Richard Charnin, email to author, 4 Dec. 2011, emphasis in original.

  • “CIA and Mafia-connected smugglers Eladio del Valle and David Ferrie, both implicated in the assassination, were sought in 1967 by the New Orleans District Attorney’s office; they were murdered on the same day in separate locations.

  • . . . high-profile gangsters such as Sam Giancana and Johnny Roselli had been brutally murdered.

  • Jimmy Hoffa simply disappeared.

  • Rolando ‘el Tigre’ Masferrer, the financial middleman for Carlos Marcello and his favorite Cuban exile terrorist faction, died in 1976 when his car exploded.

  • On March 28, 1977, the HSCA made telephone calls attempting to locate Chicago hitman Charles Nicoletti; the following day he was shot to death in his car.”18

  • On the very same day that Nicoletti was eliminated—and at the very time that the investigator for the Congressional committee was on his way to meet him—George de Mohrenschildt, a businessman with clear links to the CIA who had been overseeing Oswald in Dallas for the Agency, received a shotgun blast to the face. His burglar alarm had gone off shortly before he was killed, but they labeled it a suicide anyway.

  18 Heiner, Without Smoking Gun, 113.

  The same held true during the same time period for a long list of mobsters who were apparently involved in one way or another with the JFK assassination and were also scheduled to appear before that same Congressional committee. These guys started getting bumped off like there was no tomorrow. So it’s glaringly obvious that somebody didn’t want a lot of these people going on the official record at that particular point in time.

  The public’s interest on this point was not lost on the CIA; their “Damage-Control” unit jumped right to work.

  In a 1967 memo to Central Intelligence Agency Chiefs of Station transmitted by CIA headquarters at Langley, the initiator writes:

  Such vague accusations as that “more than 10 people have died mysteriously” can always be explained in some rational way: e.g., the individuals concerned have for the most part died of natural causes; the (Warren) Commission staff questioned 418 witnesses—the FBI interviewed far more people, conducting 25,000 interviews and reinterviews—and in such a large group, a certain number of deaths are to be expected.22

  An astute observation was made by authors Craig Roberts and John Armstrong:

  If the CIA was not involved with any of the deaths, then it seems a mystery why such a memo would have to be disseminated.23

  Suffice to say that it’s also probably no coincidence that the deaths spiked up dramatically at the points where there was testimony being sought by witnesses:

  Of particular interest is the fact that the greatest number of deaths coincided with the four main investigations conducted by government entities: The Warren Commission (1964–65); the Jim Garrison investigation of the New Orleans connection, and later, Clay Shaw (1965–69); the Senate Committee investigation (1974–76), and the House Committee on Assassinations investigation (1976–79). By graphing out the dates of death, the authors discovered that they peaked in the months leading up to, and during, the above named inquiries—sometimes with an important witness being killed, or “committing suicide” only days or hours prior to their scheduled testimony.24

  Death by Medical “Accident”

  We also determined from our research that sometimes deaths from “complications from surgery” are actually assassinations. As long-time high-level professional assassin Joe Shimon divulged, late in his life, to his querying daughter:

  People are eliminated. Honey, you don’t know how many people are just eliminated, just on the operating table alone.25

  22 Craig Roberts & John Armstrong, JFK: The Dead Witnesses (Consolidated Press International, 1995).

  23 Roberts & Armstrong, The Dead Witnesses

  24 Ibid.

  25 Janney, Mary’s Mosaic (Shimon interview, February 15, 2007), 384.

  Several of the conveniently timely JFK-related deaths, such as William Harvey, were from post-surgery complications; so that is, at the very least, a possibility that has to be considered. Combine that with the fact that “Wild Bill” Harvey was in charge of hiring assassins for the deep cover ZR/RIFLE Project and was removed from that position by the Kennedys, whom he despised—and one can certainly see adequate reason to include that death in any expansive investigation.26 Other deaths could have been the result of poisoning, so that possibility should also be kept in mind when investigating the specific cases.

  The next matter we investigated was every bit as chilling:

  Whether or not the U.S. Intelligence Community had the Capability to Make Assassinations Appear to be from “Natural Causes,” Such as Heart Attacks or Cancer

  The research regarding the feasibility of “medical assassination” is quite shocking. It turns out that what many view as marginal capabilities are actually quite real; such as inducing heart attacks and causing cancer in a victim. In reality, they are actual capabilities based on valid, existing science. The CIA, for example, has had the capability of inducing heart attacks for many years; it’s considered very concrete technology in the world of the professional assassin.27

  So we learned that not only is it possible, it’s a capability that they’ve had for a long time and have worked on with tremendous emphasis. It may sound like a James Bond movie, but CIA technicians have actually testified to Congress about TWEP (Terminate with Extreme Prejudice) weapons. Many of these TWEP weapons were the result of the CIA’s active pursuit of finding ways to kill people that would not look like murder and would leave “no postmortem residue.”28

  Here’s what one memo
said:

  I think the gross divisions in presenting this subject might be:

  1. bodies left with no hope of the cause of death being determined by the most complete autopsy and chemical examinations;

  2. bodies left in such circumstances as to simulate accidental death;

  3. bodies left in such circumstances as to simulate suicidal death;

  4. bodies left with residue that simulate those caused by natural death . . .29

  There you have it, folks—your tax dollars at work! Killing people without trial, at a crime scene near you—and it won’t even look like any funny business was involved.

  U.S. Intelligence Examiner Fred Burks of Berkeley, California, has investigated whether the CIA is capable of inducing heart attacks as a method of assassination, and based on the evidence, concluded that they have had that capability for many decades.

  26 John Simkin, “Biography: William K. Harvey,” Spartacus Educational (accessed 26 Sept 2012): http://www

  .spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKharvey.htm

  27 “Congressional testimony: CIA secret weapon causes heart attack,” Public Education and Empowerment Resource Service (PEERS), (accessed 11 Sept. 2012): http://www.personalgrowthcourses.net/video/cia_secret_weapon

  28 “CIA secret weapon causes heart attack,” PEERS

  29 Jim Marrs & Ralph Schuster, “A Look at the Deaths of Those Involved,” 2002: http://www.assassinationresearch.com/v1n2/deaths.html

  The point is actually confirmed in Congressional testimony. Furthermore, unless there is an autopsy within a few hours—which is extremely unlikely in the case of a heart attack—and the medical examiner knows precisely what he or she is looking for, the method is virtually undetectable because the drug denatures very quickly in the body.30 And it gets even better. Congressional hearings in 1975 were conducted at the behest of an extremely progressive Senator Frank Church, who proved the exact same point. They even held up the gun during the hearing, and you can watch it online: http://www.personalgrowthcourses.net/video/cia_secret_weapon

  Here’s what they testified to in that Congressional hearing:

  Senator Church:

  (Holding up pistol)

  Does this pistol fire the dart?

  CIA Director Colby:

  Yes, it does, Mr. Chairman, and a special one was developed which, potentially, would be able to enter the target without perception.

  Senator Church:

  But also, the toxin itself would not appear in

  the autopsy?

  CIA Director Colby:

  Yes, so that there was no way of perceiving

  that the target was hit.31

  And what, you may ask, did Senator Church get for bringing this important information into the light of day for the American public? They ruined him, that’s what. They did a big “hatchet job” on his life, and his prolific public career suddenly came to a screeching end.

  Mary Embree, a former CIA employee in a division at CIA Headquarters which included poison research, further explains the method of CIA assassination by heart attack:

  One time they wanted me to find out if there was such a thing as a poison that was undetectable; especially one that seemed to mimic a heart attack that would kill someone but it would appear that they had a heart attack. I did find such a thing.32

  30 Fred Burks, Email to author, 5 Dec., 2011

  31 “CIA secret weapon causes heart attack,” PEERS: http://www.personalgrowthcourses.net/video/cia_secret_weapon

  32 PEERS Websites, “Secrets of the CIA” Five courageous former CIA agents reveal deep secrets of the CIA,” (accessed 9 Sept. 2012): http://personalgrowthcourses.net/video/secrets_cia

  Ms. Embree also detailed how the poison was employed and its special properties:

  The poison was frozen into some sort of dart and then it was shot at very high speed into the person, so when it reached the person it would melt inside them and the only thing would be like one little tiny red dot on their body, which was hard to detect. There wouldn’t be a needle left or anything like that in the person.33

  Author Peter Janney spent many years researching the death of JFK’s mistress, Mary Pinchot Meyer. He concluded that even deaths which were related to that murder were government-sponsored and that the deaths of two authors researching that case “along with former Washington Post publisher Philip Graham’s purported suicide, all attest to the CIA’s MKULTRA and other long-running, secret programs in mind control: Its ability to administer powerful, undetected poisons that can induce cancerous tumors, heart attacks, or suicidal depression.”34

  The research of Vietnam veteran Lieutenant Colonel Craig Roberts and co-author John Armstrong led to this conclusion:

  Regarding deaths that could be simulated to appear as “natural causes,” the various assassination experts within the intelligence communities of the world knew quite well of the effects of such chemical agents as sodium morphate, which caused heart attacks; thyon phosphate, which is a solution that can suspend sodium morphate and provide a vehicle to penetrate the surface of the skin with the chemical (which is used to coat something the victim might touch); and beryllium, which is an extremely toxic element that causes cancer and fibrotic tumors.35

  Well, well, well . . . isn’t that reassuring?

  Therefore, as noted historian John Simkin points out:

  It is of course true that Florence Pritchett died of cancer. However, that does not mean she was not murdered.

  Research by Dr. Bernice Eddy and Dr. Sarah Stewart at the National Cancer Institute in 1959 showed that it was possible to inject someone with cancer. . . . The research of Eddy and Stewart was backed up by that of Laurella McClelland working in Philadelphia. As McClelland was working for a vaccine manufacturer, this information was covered up at the time . . .

  As early as 1961 the CIA knew that it was possible to kill someone with a rapid growing cancer virus. Florence Pritchett was not the only one to die this way. This is the way that they got rid of Jack Ruby in 1967.

  33 Ibid.

  34 “MARY’S MOSAIC: The Conspiracy to Murder John F. Kennedy, Mary Pinchot Meyer, And Their Vision For World Peace, By Peter Janney, Joan Ullman, JFK Deep Politics Quarterly, Vol. 17, #4, July, 2012

  35 Roberts & Armstrong, The Dead Witnesses

  Is it a coincidence that JFK’s two long-term mistresses, Florence Pritchett (November, 1965) and Mary Pinchot Meyer (October 1964) both died within two years of JFK? If you add to this the fact that Dorothy Kilgallen, who was using Pritchett as a source for her investigation into the JFK assassination, also died in November, 1965, one cannot help to get suspicious about these “cancer” deaths.36

  It has been clearly established that cancer cells were indeed injected into hundreds of nonconsensual patients in the United States for the purpose of medical experimentation.37 Jack Ruby firmly believed that he’d been injected with cancer cells; and that he even knew when.

  It is widely known that Ruby believed injections he was being given, were cancer cells. He truly believed he was being murdered in this most unusual manner.38

  And Ruby may have been correct. His jailhouse doctor was none other than CIA psychiatrist Louis Jolyon “Jolly” West, reportedly a top expert in the CIA’s MKULTRA program, a project involving special drugging and mind-control techniques that included programming individuals to kill.39 Dr. West was one of the foremost experts in the world on brainwashing and mind control.40 Veteran Jack Ruby researcher Greg Parker examined the timeline in detail and concluded that “it is feasible that the onset of cancer coincided with Dr Jolyon West’s visit in April, 1964 to administer hypnosis and drugs.”41

  Also consider this: Ruby was conclusively linked to research taking place in New Orleans on the development of a fast-acting “super-cancer” to be used as a bioweapon.42 Then he just happens to be the guy who forever silences the key witness, Lee Harvey Oswald, live on national television, convincing about 90 percent of the viewing audience that something was very obviously rotten
in Denmark.

  The District Attorney of New Orleans was also apparently convinced that Ruby had been injected with cancer cells.43 Note the observation of New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison:

  . . . I do find it interesting that Jack Ruby died of cancer a few weeks after his conviction for murder had been overruled in Appeals Court and he was ordered to stand trial outside of Dallas—thus allowing him to speak freely if he so desired.44

  36 John Simkin, “Florence Pritchett: The Forgotten Witness,” 11 Sept. 2007, The Education Forum: http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=2358&st=15

  37 Ronald B. Standler, “Nonconsensual Medical Experiments on Human Beings,” revised 18 June, 2000: http://www

  .rbs2.com/humres.htm

  38 Greg Parker, “Jack Ruby Timeline” (note 12), 23 Nov. 2004, The Education Forum, http://educationforum.ipbhost

  .com/index.php?showtopic=2342

  39 “A Clockwork Orange Career: The maestro of ‘mind-control’ continues to haunt America,” Freedom Magazine (accessed 9 Sept. 2012): http://www.freedommag.org/english/LA/issue02/page12.htm

  40 “Louis Jolyon West,” Wikipedia, accessed 10 Sept. 2012: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Jolyon_West

  41 Greg Parker, “Jack Ruby Timeline” (note 12), 23 Nov. 2004, The Education Forum, http://educationforum.ipbhost