Last Word: My Indictment of the CIA in the Murder of JFK

by Mark Lane

  Last Word

  Works by Mark Lane

  BOOKS

  Rush to Judgment

  A Citizen’s Dissent

  Arcadia

  Chicago Eyewitness

  Conversations With Americans

  Executive Action

  Murder in Memphis

  The Strongest Poison

  SCREENPLAYS

  Executive Action

  Arcadia

  Plausible Denial

  PLAYS

  The Trial of James Earl Ray

  DOCUMENTARY FILMS

  A Rush to Judgment

  Two Men in Dallas

  LAST WORD

  MY INDICTMENT OF THE CIA

  IN THE MURDER OF JFK

  MARK LANE

  INTRODUCTION BY ROBERT K. TANENBAUM

  WITH A CHAPTER BY OLIVER STONE

  A HERMAN GRAF BOOK

  SKYHORSE PUBLISHING

  Copyright © 2011 by Mark Lane

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Skyhorse Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

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  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

  ISBN: 978-1-61608-428-8

  Printed in the United States of America

  In remembrance of the victims.

  Those more than fifty thousand Americans who died in Vietnam. The Vietnamese prisoners of war tortured and executed by the CIA in Vietnam. Those Americans who suffered in abusive experiments and those who died at the hands of the CIA in their own country.

  And John F. Kennedy.

  Contents

  Introduction

  BOOK ONE: THE ASSASSINATION

  The Journey Begins

  The Investigators

  Assassination Nomenclature

  The Witnesses

  Silent Voices

  Implausible Denial

  The Real Firing Line: The Brothers Novo and the Brothers Buckley

  BOOK TWO: THE MEDIA RESPONSE

  The KGB and Jim Garrison by Oliver Stone

  Contacts with Totalitarian Structures

  A Bodyguard of Lies

  The Government and the Media Respond

  The CIA and the Media

  Vincent Bugliosi and Rewriting History

  BOOK THREE: THE SECRET SERVICE

  Abraham Bolden

  The Actions of the Secret Service Agents in the Presidential Limousine

  The Secret Service Agents in the Vice President’s Car

  Actions of Secret Service Agents in the Follow-Up Car

  The Secret Service Speaks After Forty-Seven Years of Silence

  The Assassin Is Confronted

  BOOK FOUR: MEXICO CITY

  The Scenario Begins

  The Legend Is Established: The CIA’s Mexico City Caper

  A Trip to Washington

  BOOK FIVE: THE INDICTMENT

  Introduction

  Harry Truman Writes: Limit CIA Role to Intelligence

  The CIA Today

  The Indictment

  MKULTRA: The CIA’s Dark Secrets

  Locating the Assassins

  The Fourth Branch

  Postscript

  A Letter to the President

  Appendix: The George De Mohrenschildt Story

  Acknowledgments

  Introduction

  Throughout American history, heroic individuals committed to the core principles of American exceptionalism have championed the unpopular righteous cause. They witnessed injustice and sought to correct it. They experienced intolerance and refused to accept it. They encountered evil and struggled to defeat it.

  During many of these confrontations, they risked their reputations and were subjected to public scorn. Yet, they endured not because they reveled in unpopularity but because they understood that momentary public censure borne of ignorance and prejudice was the price paid for a pure soul and the cost of virtuous ethical conviction.

  Mark Lane is such a man and Last Word is incontrovertible corroboration. Throughout his professional career, Lane has used his brilliance in and out of the courtroom to represent the underdog. Time after time, he challenged the government to present trustworthy evidence in the numerous cases he tried. He always spoke truth to power. He was so committed to exposing injustice, it can be said that he was willing to march into hell, to pursue a heavenly cause.

  Lane’s Last Word reveals his courageous challenge to the Warren Commission report and his scathing critique of unconscionable CIA outrages. The penetrating accuracy of his reportage may be measured by the personal attacks he endured that were orchestrated by upper-echelon rogue CIA operatives. In fact, to obfuscate and diminish the credibility of Lane’s critique of the Warren Commission findings, the CIA created and disseminated false and defamatory impressions of, about and pertaining to him. CIA media assets were willing purveyors of this smut.

  Mark Lane had the courage to enter the marketplace of ideas and challenge the government’s version of the Kennedy assassination. Those who truly support the principles expressed in our founding documents, the Declaration of Independence and Constitution, believe fervently that the public square must always be open, democratic, and welcoming. The notion is that the best, most rational, compellingly truthful ideas ought to prevail. Participation is to be encouraged, particularly when it may be deemed unpopular.

  In a free and open democratic society, certainly no government official or agency has the right to engage in defaming any individual simply because his views are critical of those in officialdom. As a result of the CIA’s vitriolic calumny directed at Lane, he suffered public scorn and disgrace. Yet, like others whose path was righteous, he has persevered and has been ultimately vindicated.

  Two other examples of courageous profiles come to mind: John Adams’s legal representation of the British soldiers and their commanding officer Captain Thomas Preston in the case historically recorded as the Boston Massacre. On March 5, 1770, close to the Boston Custom House, a British sentry was confronted by an angry mob. Violence ensued, shots were fired, and five in the unruly crowd were killed. Patriots were outraged and sought a public hanging of the loathsome redcoats. No lawyers except one would represent the British soldiers. When asked to do so, John Adams accepted. As a result of his challenge of the government’s case and ability to penetratingly search for and reveal the truth at trial, the British captain and six of his men were acquitted. Adams chose to honor the principles of a fair trial and render competent counsel to the accused. For so doing, he was publicly vilified.

  In 1784, Alexander Hamilton chose to represent a Tory in a highly celebrated civil case, Rutgers v. Waddington. The plaintiff, a sympathetic patriotic widow, Elizabeth Rutgers, owned a brewery and alehouse on Maiden Lane located in the lower portion of Manhattan near Wall Street in New York City. During the British occupation of New York, she abandoned her property in 1776. At the urging of the Britis
h, Joshua Waddington ultimately took possession and became its operator. The civil complaint lay in trespass seeking damages for the fair rental value of the property.

  During the post–Revolutionary War period, Tories were routinely oppressed. Hamilton’s sense of justice was offended. He also believed that the case had legal significance. On June 29, 1784, he argued Waddington’s cause in the Mayor’s Court in New York City. At issue was the right of a high appellate court to void a legislative act. Hamilton’s legal brilliance carried the day with the court rendering an opinion favorable enough to Waddington that ultimately resulted in an amicable settlement between the parties. However, the case will long be noted for Hamilton’s vision of the doctrine of judicial review, which became the law of the land in 1803 when the U.S. Supreme Court led by Chief Justice John Marshall decided Marbury v. Madison.

  Adams and Hamilton were vilified for choosing to enter the public arena and representing vigorously an extremely unpopular cause. In so doing, they became the predicate to the Mark Lane narrative. These three intrepid advocates have enriched in perpetuity our justice system. All three understood that America would always be special if the strong were just, the weak secure and the marketplace available and welcome to all.

  In early 1977, I first met Mark Lane. At the time, I was deputy chief counsel to the congressional committee investigation into the assassination of President Kennedy. During the course of the investigation, I set aside an afternoon every week to listen to individuals who had information they wished to share with me and the committee. On one such afternoon, Mark Lane came to see me. Before that, I had never met or spoken to him. When he entered the office, I stood to welcome him and asked him to be seated. He refused. Instead, he handed me a sealed envelope. I asked him if he had any suggestions or thoughts about its contents. He said, “When you read the contents, I believe you’ll know exactly what to do.” Immediately, he left. I never spoke to him again during the course of the investigation and for more than a decade thereafter.

  The document in the envelope was a memo dated November 23, 1963, from FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to all bureau supervisory personnel. In substance, it stated that the FBI agents who had questioned Lee Harvey Oswald for approximately seventeen hours had listened to a tape of a conversation between an individual who identified himself as “Lee Oswald” and an individual in the Cuban embassy. The conversation had taken place inside the Russian embassy in Mexico City by this faux alleged Oswald who telephoned the Cuban embassy. The call was made on or about October 1, 1963, just about seven weeks before the assassination. The Hoover memo noted that the agents categorically concluded that the voice on the tape was not that of Lee Harvey Oswald. Based upon the evidence adduced during the investigation, I had reason to believe that David Phillips, the third-ranking member of the CIA in charge of Western Hemispheric operations, employed a nom de guerre, Maurice Bishop. Bishop had significant involvement with anti-Castro Cubans and Lee Harvey Oswald.

  I had Phillips subpoenaed to appear before our committee in executive session. I asked him under oath where we could locate the tape of the so-called Oswald conversation of October 1, 1963, while inside the Russian embassy in Mexico City. Phillips stated that it was CIA policy at the time to recycle the tapes every six or seven days and it was no longer in existence after the first week in October 1963. I then handed him the Hoover memo which, according to the FBI director, clearly revealed that the tape was evidently available in Dallas on November 22 and 23, 1963. Phillips read the memo, then folded it, placed it in his jacket pocket, arose, and walked out of the meeting.

  I immediately urged the committee to recall Phillips and advise him to obtain legal counsel so that he be given an opportunity to purge potential criminal charges of contempt and perjury. Also, there were many more questions that he needed to answer. I further advised the committee of the urgency of the matter and gave them legal options. They chose to do nothing. Thereafter, our staff phones were denied long distance telephone access, “franking privileges” were withdrawn, and staffers’ pay was withheld.

  Prior to my assignment with the Congressional Committee, I served as an assistant district attorney in the New York County District Attorney’s Office under legendary D.A. Frank Hogan. While there, I tried hundreds of cases to verdict. I was Bureau Chief of the criminal courts, ran the Homicide Bureau, and was in charge of the training program for the legal staff.

  From experiences as a prosecutor, I knew well that there is no political way to investigate a case. There is no liberal or conservative way to gather evidence and there is no Democratic or Republican way to evaluate it. Unfortunately, the congressional committee played politics with our investigation and subverted it. The members breached the trust reposed in them by the American people. They assured me that whatever the facts revealed would be forthrightly presented to the public. Regrettably that was false.

  Ironically, Mark Lane was a major moving force to have the committee organized and come to fruition. He supplied compelling evidence that should have energized the congressional probe; instead, ultimately this evidence led to its demise in terms of credibility and integrity. Recognizing that the committee was less than sincere in its search for the truth, Chief Counsel Richard Sprague and I tendered our resignations.

  Whether one agrees with Mark Lane’s conclusions or not, everyone should read Last Word. His courageous efforts, his scholarly research and remarkable advocacy are a tribute to his enormous capacity to seek the truth. We are all a better people because of all that he has done.

  —Robert K. Tanenbaum

  LAST WORD

  BOOK ONE

  THE ASSASSINATION

  The Journey Begins

  I began this improbable journey almost a half century ago. After John Kennedy was murdered, events sped by in whirlwind disorder. J. Edgar Hoover, perhaps the most distrusted official in the country, quickly proclaimed that the assassin was a young man who was guilty beyond all doubt and that there was no possibility that anyone else had been involved. Walter Cronkite, at the time said to be the most trusted man in the country, agreed. Then Lee Harvey Oswald, the alleged assassin (how rarely was that cautionary word employed by the media), was shot to death while Americans observed the murder on national television. Oswald was shot in the Dallas Police and Courts Building while surrounded by police officers by an old and dear friend of many of the cops, including those on duty that day. That Jack Ruby, the murderer, had worked for the FBI as an informant and had been previously employed by Congressman Richard M. Nixon, who was looking into subversive actions by his fellow Americans, was among the many facts suppressed by local and national police and their loyal assets in the news business.

  I had known John when he was a senator seeking to become a president. I supported him for the Democratic Party nomination that took place that year in Los Angeles. I was active in efforts to wrest control of the Democratic Party in New York, led by Carmine DeSapio, from its established leaders, most of whom had substantial connections to organized crime. The founders of our Reform Movement were Eleanor Roosevelt, former governor Herbert Lehman, and many young people who, as in my case, were naïve enough to believe that change is possible. I still hold to that vision in spite of the existence of all evidence to the contrary.

  Murray Kempton, a very clever writer for the then somewhat liberal and somewhat crusading New York Post, observed that the Reform Movement was “mostly comprised of young lawyers seeking to become old judges.” I told him that I was in touch with my colleagues every day and that he was barely acquainted with them. In reply he smiled and nodded. As it turned out he knew them better than I did.

  Both John and his brother Bobby, as well as some of his advisors from Massachusetts who came to New York to look over the political scene, were wary of the regular organization and not quite sure about the reformers either. They suggested a compromise regarding the campaign. Each of the warring branches of the Democrats would select a person to manage the campaign in crucial N
ew York, and they would hopefully work together to get Kennedy elected. They asked that I be the reform designee and the reform leaders, who much preferred Adlai Stevenson as their nominee in any event, were willing to comply.

  I was also nominated by community groups in Yorkville and East Harlem to be their candidate for the New York State legislature. Senator John F. Kennedy endorsed me; I helped to run his campaign locally, and we were both elected. It was during that period that I was able to meet with John and Bobby and discuss political events.

  I had been practicing law in a storefront office in East Harlem for less than ten years. Much of my work had been as a defense counsel in criminal cases. I believed in due process, the presumption of innocence, and the other pillars of our judicial system. I saw them all traduced moments after President Kennedy had been assassinated. Doubts about Oswald’s guilt, or his lone guilt, arose when the evidence was even superficially examined. I thought then, as I do now, that our system of justice was on trial and was not faring too well. There was also the consideration that if Oswald was either innocent or had acted with others, the murderers of a man I knew and respected went unpunished. I could not understand why those believing in law and order were not similarly concerned.