Tag Archives: Political Assassination

The CIA Flips Off America

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Photo credit: Adapted by WhoWhatWhy from sarang / Wikimedia and CIA / Wikimedia.

Open Letter from JFK Assassination Expert Dan Hardway

By Dan Hardway

Source: WhoWhatWhy.org

A 1964 CIA memo spells out clearly how James Jesus Angleton, the agency’s famous counterintelligence chief, wanted to deal with inquiries from the Warren Commission:

Jim would prefer to wait out the Commission.1

History seems to be repeating itself. The events of the past two weeks have shown that the CIA is still running a disinformation campaign against anyone who questions the “lone-nut” theory that, according to historian David Robarge, constitutes the agency’s “best truth.”

I recently published an article about the delay in releasing records under the 1992 JFK Records Collections Act. In that article I explained the CIA’s play to discredit those who question the agency’s lone-nut theory,2 and suggested that Robarge, its historian, has told us what to look for in the documents that are still being withheld.3

In that article I suggested we should look for information regarding covert operations against Cuba that would, according to Robarge, “circumstantially implicate CIA in conspiracy theories.”4 While I doubt the existence of a “smoking gun,” the circumstantial evidence we might look for in the delayed files could show a correlation between Lee Harvey Oswald’s activities in New Orleans and Mexico City in the late summer and fall of 1963 and CIA covert operations against Cuba being run by George Joannides and David Atlee Phillips involving anti-Castro groups such as the Directorio Revolucionario Estudiantil (DRE).5

I specifically suggested that we look to files on those operations. Some of these files are in the JFK records that are scheduled for release.

On October 26, 1992, Congress passed S. 3006, with only one amendment and very little, if any, opposition. The Senate bill, introduced by Sen. John Glenn (D-OH), was signed the same day by President George H.W. Bush and became Public Law 102-526, (“JFK Records Act”). Among other things the JFK Records Act provided for the collection, preservation and eventual release of all records related to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy, with minimal exceptions.

It mandates, in clear and unambiguous language, “[e]ach assassination record shall be publicly disclosed in full, and available in the Collection no later than the date that is 25 years after the date of enactment of this Act.” The Act allows an exemption to this mandatory requirement only if the president “certifies” that the release of each withheld document “is made necessary by an identifiable harm to” either 1) military defense; 2) intelligence operations; 3) law enforcement; or 4) the conduct of foreign relations and “the identifiable harm is of such gravity that it outweighs the public interest in disclosure.”6

On November 3, NARA released some of the files that I have been waiting on. The Excel spreadsheet listing the released files include four files referenced to David Atlee Phillips and one file referenced to the DRE.7 Of the files referencing Phillips, three are of an unspecified nature and one is listed as his Office of Personnel (OP) file. The DRE file is listed as “CIA file on DRE AMSPELL operations.”

AMSPELL is a CIA cryptonym for DRE, the anti-Castro Cuban group that was run by George Joannides in 1963, that had the encounter with Oswald in New Orleans in 1963, and published the first conspiracy theory blaming Castro in their CIA-financed newspaper in Miami on November 23, 1963. For such an active group, the file that was released is a very thin 87 pages of which 61 are expurgated in full.

Of the remaining 26 pages, many are largely expurgated. The Phillips files are even worse. The three files of unspecified type may be some of his operational files. These files are even more highly expurgated than the AMSPELL file. Taking the 73-pages long file RIF 104-10177-10135 as an example, a full 48 pages are completely redacted and NOTHING that was released in the file has any substantive info. For all intents and purposes, it remains withheld in full.

The file that is listed as David Atlee Phillips’s OP file is not as heavily redacted as the other three Phillips files, although many of the documents — mainly personnel forms — it contains have been cleansed of any significant data. That, however, is not the end of the story on this file.

The file starts with a few items of post-retirement correspondence between Phillips and the CIA in 1975 and then proceeds chronologically backwards from his retirement in 1975. I have not yet been able to go through the 358-page file to carefully study all the documents, but I have gone through it well enough to note that all his fitness reports between 1956 and 1965 are missing — not redacted, just simply not there.

Indeed, so far as I have been able to find, there is no record whatsoever of a document in the file dated between 1961 and 1965 — not redacted, just simply not there.

There has been no explanation, let alone a presidential certification, that the massive redactions in these “released in full” documents meet any of the mandatory exemptions that allow withholding. No identifiable harm is specified. No rationale is given as to why the secrets protected outweigh the public interest in disclosure.

These files are not in compliance with the law no matter what the mainstream media says.

They are an in-your-face flipped bird to the American public. They basically tell us that the CIA is saying that it doesn’t have to comply with the law of the land and that it will not tell us its secrets and that there is nothing we can do about it.

I’ve been here before. It was in a small room in CIA Headquarters in late 1978. I had been fighting to see a file generated by the CIA debriefing of its hired mafioso Johnny Roselli. Scott Breckinridge and George Joannides, CIA liaisons with the HSCA, had just handed me a highly redacted file that violated the HSCA/CIA Memorandum of Understanding mandating unexpurgated access by HSCA to CIA files.

They stood by, grinning, as they watched my reaction upon opening the file to find it largely expurgated. They were grinning so hard because they knew they had waited out the HSCA and there was nothing I could do about it. The Angleton strategy still worked. It is still working today.

This release not only demonstrates that the Angleton strategy is still being applied; it also illustrates the point I have been making about what they are covering up. There may well be nothing we can do about it. It appears our lawmakers are spineless in the face of the intelligence community. Joseph Burkholder Smith, a retired CIA officer, told me and fellow investigator Gaeton Fonzi in 1978, “You represent Congress. What the f*** is that to the CIA? You’ll be gone in two years and the CIA will still be there.”

To paraphrase that to fit the situation in which we now find ourselves: “You are the people that Congress supposedly represents. What’s that to the CIA? You’ll forget about it in a few weeks or so.”

But I won’t. I wrote a letter to my senator, West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin, on November 3 before I saw the travesty that was the day’s release of JFK documents by NARA. Probably a futile gesture, but one I had to take anyway. Here’s part of what I told him:

On October 26, 2017, as I am sure you are aware, President Donald Trump, at the request of the Central Intelligence Agency and other intelligence community members, disregarded the clear provisions of the law and postponed release of ninety percent of the remaining withheld documents in the JFK Records Collection for an additional six months. In doing this, the President made no findings, issued no orders and certified nothing, merely issuing a statement through the press office saying that all documents will be released “with redactions only in the rarest of circumstances” by April 26, 2018.

The President’s action was not only without authority in law, it was also taken in patent violation of the clear, unambiguous and mandatory terms of a law that your institution passed. …

The real problem that this presents is that it is showing to the nation that the intelligence agencies of our nation are not subject to the laws of the nation. They are effectively above the law. At their request, or pressure, the President of the United States will violate the clear mandates of enacted legislation. And, to date, the reaction of our elected representatives in Congress seems to reinforce the fact that no one is willing to stand up to such blatant disregard of the clear provisions of the duly enacted laws of the nation. I understand that it is the executive branch that is charged with the enforcement of the laws your branch enacts and, in this case, it is the executive branch that is violating the law so there can be little realistic expectation of enforcement from them. But this is the heart of the problem and why it is incumbent upon the Congress to act. At a minimum there should be oversight hearings. At a minimum the Congress should not be seen to willingly acquiesce in executive contempt for the Legislative branch of government and the law of the land.

This action on the part of the intelligence community, the National Archives, and the Executive is only the latest in a long string of actions that disregard the provisions of the JFK Records Act that also subvert and cover up the information related to the assassination of our 35th president. Those other actions are beyond the present scope of this letter, but are things about which I would be glad to speak with you if you have any interest, so I will not go into them here.

To my knowledge there has been no coverage or explanation of why the intelligence community has requested this delay of the President. It was made in secret. What reason have they given for the delay? What kind of pressure have they brought to bear? How can they force a president to so blatantly disregard the law? If they can do this in regard to disclosure of fifty-year-old records, in what else can they exercise a like secret influence that corrupts the laws of the nation? What affect does the existence and use of such secret power have on our democracy? If these things — not just the documents but the method of influence — remain always secret, then how can a citizenry be sufficiently informed so as to exercise their franchise to any real purpose? How can we have faith in our democracy, let alone our government, if this kind of practice is allowed to continue unchallenged? These are the questions that I would like to have answered. But, to make it easier for you, I note you are in a unique position in regard to these issues due to your membership on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Are you at least going to call and press for public hearings on any of these issues? Or are you going to join the vast majority of our representatives and once again cower before the intelligence agencies? Will you stand up for your constituents’ right to participate in their government on an informed basis? Will you stand for holding our government to a standard of open honesty before its citizens and against allowing the real affairs of state to be conducted in secret and in disregard of the laws enacted by the people’s representatives?8

The questions I asked Manchin in that letter are even more pressing today. I don’t know if he’ll even answer, let alone do anything. Maybe, like Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), he’ll send out an apparently frustrated tweet. Or maybe, like the mainstream press, he’ll tout the release of the documents, hoping no one will look to see what a travesty the “release” is because of the massive redactions. At this point all I can do is try to tell the truth about this whole state of affairs.

I also encourage you to not take this insult to your intelligence and ability to govern yourselves without reaction. Do something. If nothing else, circulate this article to everyone you know. Refuse to accept the cancer of secrecy that destroys our liberty and ability to govern ourselves. Get involved. Get informed. Stay informed. Read and follow http://2017jfk.org/home/ and http://jfkfacts.org/. Read WhoWhatWhy.

Join the AARC at http://aarclibrary.org/aarc-membership/. Join CAPA at http://capa-us.org/membership/. If those who exercise the power in this country have such blatant contempt for the law, then the time for serious peaceful civil disobedience may be upon us. Get the word out. Don’t be silent any longer. This is not an issue of the left or the right. Do something. Say something. And don’t stop until you are heard.

Endnotes

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1. Raymond Rocca to Richard Helms, Memo Re Response to Rankin, 5 Mar 1964, NARA Record No.  1993.06.24.14:59:13:840170, available at https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=98075#relPageId=1&tab=page


2. David Robarge, “DCI John McCone and the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy,” Studies in Intelligence, (Vol. 57, No. 3, 09/2013), Approved for Release and declassified, 09/29/2014, at page 20.  Available at http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB493/docs/intell_ebb_026.PDF. Robarge wrote: “The DCI was complicit in keeping incendiary and diversionary issues off the commission’s agenda and focusing it on what the Agency believed at the time was the ‘best truth’: that Lee Harvey Oswald, for as yet undetermined motives, had acted alone in killing John Kennedy.” For my commentary on the CIA’s “best truth”, see Thank You, Phil Shenon available at https://realhillbillyviews.blogspot.com/2015/10/. Note that the “best truth” was conditioned by “at the time” leaving open the real possibility that alternative cover stories may have to be brought to play in the event that time undermined what the Agency considered to be the best truth for them.


3. Dan Hardway, What Were They Hiding and What Should We Look For, 30 Oct 2017, available at https://realhillbillyviews.blogspot.com/2017/10/what-were-they-hiding-and-what-should_30.html


4. Robarge, n. 2 above, at p. 9.


5. This is addressed in more detail at JFKFacts, Exclusive: JFK investigator on how CIA stonewalled Congress, http://jfkfacts.org/hardway-declaration-cia-stonewalled-jfkinvestigation/; Declaration of Dan L. Hardway, Morley v. CIA, CA # 03-02545-RJL, D.C.D.C. 11 May 2016, Docket No. 156.


6. 44 U.S.C. § 2107 note  § 5(g)(2)(D). Emphasis added.


7. https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/2017-release, RIF Nos. 104-10176-10121, 104-10177-10135, 104-10177-10134, 104-10194-10026, and 104-10170-10121.


8. See here for the full letter.

The Color Counterrevolution Cometh

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By Dmitry Orlov

Source: Club Orlov

Had Sun Tsu co-authored a treatise on the art of sports with Capt. Obvious, a quote from that seminal work would probably read as follows:

If your team keeps playing an offensive game and keeps losing, eventually it will end up playing a defensive game, and will lose that too.

Stands to reason, doesn’t it? The team I have in mind is the neocon-infested Washington régime, which is by now almost universally hated, both within the US and outside of its borders, and the offensive game is the game that has been played by the Color Revolution Syndicate, with George Soros writing the checks and calling the shots. Having lost ground around the world, it is now turning its attention to trying to hold on to its home turf, which is the US.

Behind the Washington régime stands a group of transnational oligarchs, including many of the richest people in the world, and the game they play is as follows:

1. Saddle countries around the world with unrepayable levels of debt, most of which is stolen as soon as it is disbursed, leaving a population perpetually saddled with onerous repayment terms. This used to be done by the US to countries around the world, and has most recently been done to the US itself.

2. This game often results in rebellion, and the well-bribed national leaders in the rebellious countries are expected to put down the rebellion using any means necessary. But if they fail to suppress the rebellion, or if they side with the rebels, then they need to be regime-changed and replaced with a more subservient leadership, and the Color Revolution Syndicate swings into action.

3. The first ploy is to organize young people into a “nonviolent” protest movement (“nonviolent” is in quotes because mobbing the streets, shutting down commerce and blocking access to public buildings are all acts of violence). Their goal is to erode the boundaries of what’s allowed, until law and order break down and chaos and mayhem take over. At that point, the leadership that is to be regime-changed is supposed to jump on a plane never to be heard from again. But if they fail to do so, the next step in the program is…

4. Mass murder. Snipers are flown in and kill lots of people indiscriminately, while Western media blames the deaths on the soon-to-be-overthrown government. At this point most national leaders, sensing that their lives are at risk, choose to flee. This is what happened with the Ukraine’s Yanukovich. But sometimes, as happened with Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, they simply retreat to a well-defended residence outside the capital and wait things out. And then a magic thing happens: the revolution chokes on itself. Local self-defense units form to protect neighborhoods; out of them emerges a partisan movement to thwart attempts by foreigners to further destabilize the country; and, after much bloodshed, law and order and a legitimate government return. This could have happened in Egypt, if it weren’t for the efforts of traitors within Mubarak’s own government. But then there is always…

5. Political assassination. If mass murder doesn’t work, it’s time to send in the assassins and physically eliminate the leadership. This has happened in Libya. As Hillary Clinton put it, paraphrasing Julius Caesar, “We came, we saw, he died!” Beware the Ides of March, Hillary!

By this time, it generally has to be conceded that the Color Revolution did not go according to plan, and the Washington régime starts doing its best to pretend that the sad country in question doesn’t exist. If someone manages to make it past face control and has the temerity to point out that it does exist, then the point is made doesn’t matter because it isn’t a vital interest. As Obama just pointed out [paraphrased by Jeffrey Goldberg writing for The Atlantic]: “Ukraine is a core Russian interest but not an American one.” This caused one Zbigniew Brzezinski to spit up all over his shirt. To be sure, there is fine comedy to be had when things don’t go according to plan for the Washington régime.

Recently, things have only been going downhill for the Color Revolution Syndicate. George Soros’s NGOs, which have been used to organize Color Revolutions, have been kicked out of both Russia and China; the silly “Umbrella Revolution” in Hong-Kong went nowhere slowly; Russia used its military training budget to rescue the government in Syria and to thrash ISIS and friends, and then moved on to negotiating a political settlement. And when Soros, in a fit of pique, tried to attack the Chinese currency, the Chinese laughed in his face and beat him about the head and shoulders with a printing press until he retreated.

Not only that, but things haven’t been going so well for the Washington régime either. The fake Democrat/Republican duopoly, which it has been using to simulate democracy and to disguise the fact that it’s all made to order for the same bunch of transnational oligarchs, is in trouble: a barbarian is at the gates. His name is Donald Trump, and he’s had the régime in his sights for many years. And now he is moving in for the kill.

Trump isn’t even that good at it, but this is a super-easy job. As I said, the Washington régime is just as hated within the US as it is around the world, if not more. Trump’s slogan of “Make America great again!” may sound overly ambitious, but what if his promise is to make America great again at exactly one thing—throwing members of the Washington régime on the ground and stomping on their heads until they pop? I am pretty sure that he can get this done.

Moreover, Trump doesn’t even try to be that good, although he is certainly very good at causing people to lose their minds. I came across one commentator who bounced off Carl Jung’s proto-new-age woo-woo on Hitler being a reincarnation of the Norse god Wotan and went on to claim that Trump is a reincarnation of Wotan’s brother Loki the Trickster. But here is a much simpler idea: Trump is an epitome of Trump. He enjoys being himself, and the unwashed multitudes find this aspirational because they are sick and tired of being told how they should think and behave by a bunch of clueless puppets.

Lastly, Trump gets a lot of help—from his enemies. All they have to do for him to prevail is to carry on being themselves—saying politically and perhaps even factually correct things, toeing the party line, carefully distancing themselves from Trump, repeating the talking points fed to them by Washington think tanks and generally being as useless and boring as possible. Then all Trump has to do to win is to distinguish himself from them by being rude, crude, vulgar, crass, obnoxious and raucously fun. Can you figure out on your own which one the people will pick—useless and boring or raucously fun—or will I need to summon Capt. Obvious again?

The Washington régime, and the oligarchs that back it and profit from it, have finally groked all of this, which is why they have been huddling and trying to organize a Color Counterrevolution that can stop Trump in his tracks. Soros and the ‘garchs started throwing around big bags of cash to get the counterrevolution on even before the actual Trump revolution happens. They were initially successful, shutting down a venue in Chicago with the help of Soros-owned Moveon.org. But it seems doubtful that they will prevail in the end. Instead, it seems more likely that they will give rise to a partisan movement.

You see, in the US hatred of the Washington régime runs very deep, with millions of people sick and tired of being swindled by various hated bureaucracies—in government, law, medicine, education, the military, banking… They hate those who took away their jobs and gave them to foreigners and immigrants. They hate those who stole their retirement savings and ruined their children’s futures. They hate the smug university types who keep telling them what to think and how to speak, making them feel inadequate simply for being who they are—salt of the earth Americans, racist, bigoted, small-minded, parochial, willfully ignorant, armed to the teeth and proud of it. There is very little that the régime can ask of these people, because the response to every possible ask is “no, because we hate you.”

And when these people, who are already seething with hatred, look at the political landscape, what do they see? They see the Democrats pushing the candidacy of the banker-crony-crook Clinton, and the only alternative is the full-socialistard “I am from the US government and I am here to help” Sanders who seems to be stuck in some sort of Great Society time warp. (There may be governments that get socialism right; the US government will never be one of them.)

They also see that the Republican establishment, previously so full of pseudorevolutionary puffery, is now so afraid of Trump that it would rather throw the election to the Democrats than support their own candidate, and this fills them with anger and disgust. Take all that seething hatred, mix in lots of anger and disgust, knead it, let it rise, and now you can bake a popular insurgency.

And a popular insurgency, or a partisan movement, is exactly what it takes to defeat the Color Revolution Syndicate. You see, the official authorities, be they the police, the army, the secret service or private security, are limited in the things they can do. In some ways, their hands are tied: if they violate law and order in order to defend law and order, they become mired in self-contradiction, and that just makes it more difficult for them to defend it the next time around.

But the partisans can do anything they want. They can infiltrate the protest movement and commit acts of violence in order to provoke the authorities into taking perfectly justifiable action. They can act to misdirect, demoralize and splinter protest groups. They can use social media to “out” the Color Revolution’s leaders and those who finance them (who, to remain effective, must hide in the shadows). They can liaise with the official authorities and trade favors for information.

If the Color Revolution shows signs of proceeding to the point where the tactics of Massacre and Political Assassination are about to be tried, they can form commando units, to make sure that these tactics lead to some massive unintended consequences, preventing their productive use. And if all else fails, they can form a guerrilla movement which, in order to win, simply has to not lose.

If all goes well then, starting next year, tens of thousands of Washington operatives, along with their friends in various politically connected industries, such as banking, defense, medicine and education, will evacuate to a variety of nonextradition countries (which will no doubt respond by raising the prices of their passports) while thousands more will begin their lengthy sojourns at federal penitentiaries. And thus the crisis will be defused.

And if it doesn’t go well, then we’ll probably be looking at a “deteriorating security environment.” How far it will deteriorate is anyone’s guess, but if you are one of the Washington régime’s stooges then you may want to get yourself a second passport before the prices go up and get out ahead of time.