Garrison’S the Middle East Watergate Chappaquiddick Quest for Justice

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Issue 001 • April / May 2019 • Inaugural Edition

g arrison. THE JOURNAL OF HISTORY & DEEP POLITICS

WHY THE CIA KILLED RFK by Lisa Pease

Jim DiEugenio Jim Hougan Joseph Green William Davy John F. Kennedy Hougan, Liddy, Ted Kennedy, The Eleventh Hour: Faces The Post, & Richard Nixon, & Jim Garrison’s The Middle East Watergate Chappaquiddick Quest for Justice

Caitlin Johnstone • Walt Brown • Randolph Benson • Richard Bartholomew Keith Harmon Snow • David Denton • Emma Best • Donald Jeffries • Nicholas Levis

GARRISON | VOLUME 01 ISSUE 01 | i Featuring a newly released Kenn Thomas interview with John Judge discussing 9/11 ii | GARRISON | APR / MAY 2019 | [email protected] “We choose to... do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.” President John F. Kennedy Rice University, Houston, Texas September 12, 1962

GARRISON | VOLUME 01 ISSUE 01 | 1 Challenging the Historical Establishment and Textbook Conglomerates garrison. A JOURNAL OF HISTORY & DEEP POLITICS APRIL / MAY 2019 • ISSUE 001 Fighting the Establishment’s Narratives Why the CIA Killed RFK By Caitlin Johnstone By Lisa Pease How can alternative communities When Senator Robert F. Kennedy 5 positively and genuinely challenge 58 was murdered in 1968, gone was the establishment’s narratives, first and the hope that a more honest investigation foremost, by getting clear on their own into the assassination of his brother mental narratives? In a mainstream would ever be opened. Who was most media-driven world, how do we all get responsible for RFK’s assassination? Lisa to a place of clarity that allows us to Pease, the author of A Lie Too Big to Fail, understand who we are and what we are looks at the central reason why the CIA even fighting for? killed RFK?

John Judge: The 9/11 Interview Kennedy, Nixon & Chappaquiddick By Kenn Thomas By Joseph E. Green

In 2005, three-and-a-half years On July 18, 1969, Ted Kennedy’s 22 after 9/11, Kenn Thomas of 68 car was driven off a bridge and Steamshovel Press visited John Judge into Poucha Pond on Chappaquiddick in Washington, D.C. to discuss the events Island. Mary Jo Kopechne died inside the of September 11th. This is part one of car when help did not arrive for hours. that interview that covers responsibility Ted Kennedy has taken the brunt of the for 9/11, hijacker identities, the Unocal blame, but Joseph Green wonders if the pipeline, and the Pakistani ISI. real answers to Chappaquiddick may be found within the mysteries of the Nixon Hougan, Liddy, the Post & Watergate tapes. By Jim Hougan The Eleventh Hour: Former Democratic National Jim Garrison’s Quest for Justice, Part II Committee (DNC) secretary Ida 35 By William Davy “Maxie” Wells sued G. Gordon Liddy for daring to present an alternative After the trial of Clay Shaw ended explanation to The Washington Post 74 in 1969, Jim Garrison could have narrative of the Watergate break-ins. essentially given up, a defeated man. Liddy’s version of events centered But he didn’t. He kept writing, he kept around what Det. Carl Shoffler found speaking, and when the HSCA convened, inside the mouth of one of the burglars. some of its talented investigators had That one item alone casts doubt on the a keen interest in what he knew. Jim Larry O’ Brien myth and led Liddy and Garrison was also a prolific writer, and Wells to court. in this article William Davy looks at one of his unpublished works, as well as the Kennedy Faces the Middle East work that carried him through the end of his life. By James DiEugenio When John F. Kennedy entered Genocide in Rwanda 47 the oval office in January 1961, By Keith Harmon Snow he faced many tense situations within and outside of the U.S. One situation Rwanda, Central Africa, 1994. In he inherited was the strife between 92 a mere 100 days, over a million Egypt’s Gamal Nasser and Israel’s David Rwandans were slaughtered in what Ben-Gurion. Kennedy was as open was one of the worst cases of genocide in as any president has been in regard the history of mankind. It was the RPA/F to forging positive relationships with forces of U.S.-trained Paul Kagame the nonaligned world. But how would that stopped the brutality and brought he balance his admiration for Nasser Rwanda to order. Or was it? Keith with the Eisenhower administration’s Harmon Snow explores what really precedent for supporting Israel fully? happened in Rwanda.

2 | GARRISON | APR / MAY 2019 | [email protected] garrison. Thanks for the Road Our Mission Statement That Led Us Here he mission of garrison is to gather a talented We do not pretend to exist in a vacuum, nor do we team of writers, researchers, illustrators, feign a secret origin that stems from a moment of Tphotographers, and editors to produce a vast wisdom and clarity. We weren’t even bitten by magazine that will challenge the mainstream a radioactive spider. We are the linear result of those media, historical establishment, and textbook publications that have come before us. We are both conglomerates that control information today. grateful and thankful to be the next step in a long line We will ultimately tackle controversial topics of publishers who have created challenging, important in unique ways and with a variety of political, work over the last 60 years. philosophical, and ideological perspectives. We This journal is an extension of Jonathan Marshall’s are a non-partisan magazine that seeks not to Parapolitics, Robin Ramsay’s Lobster, Jim DiEugenio disparage any race, religion, culture, creed, gender and Lisa Pease’s Probe Magazine, Kenn Thomas’s or ideology. Steamshovel Press, Edward Keating’s Ramparts, Paul When individuals need taken to task, we will do Krassner’s The Realist, Max Scherr’s Berkeley Barb, that. When an ideology fails historical truth, we will Bill Schaap’s CovertAction Quarterly, and Paranoia challenge it. When corporatist politicians and the magazine. mainstream media begin to push against the first We would also lke to thank Walt Brown for the amendment freedoms of the people, we will push JFKDPQ and Jerry Rose for The Third (and Fourth) back. When there is research to be done on some Decade publications. of the most consequential events and personalities A vital thank you must be given to the thousands in history, we will present it to you. of individuals who have created zines in their own Currently, the identity politics of both the Left homes, schools, and dorm rooms. They wrote what and the Right have left many of us wondering was not being written and wrapped it in their own if the major American political parties are two creative veils. These spirited creators left a legacy for sides of the same coin. Their strategy of divide us that is as crucial as that of the funded publications. and conquer is working. The Deep State, the assassinocracy, and the corruptors have no party. They know only entrenched power and inhumane levels of gain. Within the pages of garrison, we will offer explanations stemming from vast research and collaborative thought. In the end, this is something we will do together: the garrison team and our garrison. readers. A JOURNAL OF HISTORY & DEEP POLITICS Published, Edited, Designed, and Financed Also Featuring: by S.T. Patrick This journal, garrison, is published, edited, • From a Discreet Home Office...... 4 designed, and financed by S.T. Patrick. • JFK in Springfield...... 8 For address changes, status of orders, and • Bartholoviews by Richard Bartholomew...... 12 bulk distribution inquiries, please e-mail us at [email protected]. All • A Blast from Benson by Randolph Benson. . . . .20 rights reserved, except that educators may • William Harvey by David Denton...... 32 make copies of articles for classroom or • The Warren Omission by Walt Brown, PhD. . . . 80 homeschool use only. Article suggestions • FBI vs. Ramparts Magazine by Emma Best. . . . 82 and manuscripts may be sent to the e-mail • Rice-Zelikow Connection by Nicholas Levis. . . 84 address above. The editor of garrison does not guarantee that all work submitted by • Inside the Hilo Herald Warning...... 89 e-mail will be published. • Commentary by Douglas Horne...... 90 Advertising: [email protected] • U.S. Gov’t Uses Humans by Donald Jeffries. . .107 Facebook: @TheGarrisonJournal • Letters to the Editor...... 114 Twitter: @GarrisonJournal

GARRISON | VOLUME 01 ISSUE 01 | 3 FROM THE EDITOR’S DESK From a Discreet Home Office With a High-Powered Laptop Welcome to garrison. great writer is publishing a book now. Writers I want garrison to serve a series of unique are sharing important research in columns, on purposes within the various “-truth communities.” message boards, in blogs, and on podcasts of Through our choices of writers, content, and art, various kinds. I would like to bring that deserving we naturally serve to challenge the historical work to print. establishment that dominates academia today. I will be seeking submissions from writers who It’s an elitist, closed society where the price of not only challenge the mainstream narratives, entry is often years of expensive, rigid adherence but also the alternative ones. As Caitlin Johnstone to the masters of the historical universe. describes in our opening article, quite often Much like Hollywood, mainstream journalism, alternative movements get just as rigid as the and government education, it is a field that likes mainstream media in their own beliefs. Every to award and reward itself. It uses the words reader will not – and should not – agree with “peer review” to mean “transparently vetted,” every article in every issue. If that happened, I but to rise in the field of mainstream history is less would think we were pandering to the alt.masses. like getting green-lighted in an editor’s room at a There should be disagreement so that our own newspaper and more like Tom Cruise’s character entrenched thoughts, beliefs, and assumptions appearing before the masked societal elders can be challenged. I also know that not every at the Eyes Wide Shut costume orgy. There are writer will agree with the others published in clearly delineated leaders, and no one knows garrison. Inclusion of any one particular writer who appointed them. But obtaining an invitation or point of view should not be taken as a tacit to the table will assuredly mean acquiring their endorsement of any other; nor should it be approval and following their rules. seen as a reflection of the ever-changing views I would like to see garrison used as a teaching and ideologies of the editors and writers who tool by educators across the world. Whether work with us. I will personally seek content they be government educators, private school that challenges my beliefs directly, as I always teachers, charter school specialists, virtual open myself to the possibility that I am wrong, education facilitators, or homeschooling parents, misguided, or mistaught. garrison will be used as a supplement to their Lastly, I want to open a door for college- and syllabi. I will be working with the nonprofit potentially high school-aged researchers and think tank CDPR and education specialists in writers who want the opportunity to get a foot in partnerships that will open the roads of access the door of these communities. The writers and into the classroom. No longer will Cengage, editors of this journal should not become a closed Macmillan, and McGraw-Hill be the only voices society of back-patters and rubber-stampers, heard within educational settings. There are ourselves. This door is open to students who other voices, and there are other ways to look at genuinely want in. the monumental events of our past and how they Thank you for coming aboard on this maiden impact the potential paths for our future. voyage, for buying our first issue, and for reading I would also like to pay homage to those who garrison with an open mind. have paved this road before us by re-printing some of the seminal works from the publications that influenced our writers and editors. In conjunction with this, I realized that some of the best work being done today has only been S.T. Patrick printed online. If a website or blog, then, becomes defunct, where would these gems go? Not every Editor-in-Chief 4 | GARRISON | APR / MAY 2019 | [email protected] CAITLIN JOHNSTONE Fighting the Establishment’s NARRATIVES by Getting CLEAR on Your Own

By Caitlin Johnstone nti-establishment movements of voices which agree with my exact worldview are a mess. Whether they’re perfectly. This kind of paranoid, self-cannibaliz- left-wing or right-wing, wheth- ing mentality is rife throughout most anti-estab- er they’re statist or anarchist, lishment circles. whether they’re organized or This happens for a number of reasons, includ- decentralized, whether they ing the fact that the ruling power establishment place emphasis on official or will infiltrate dissident movements that it per- unofficial narratives, any cir- ceives as a threat with the intent of sowing con- cleA of people who are interested in opposing the fusion and division. But the underlying reason an- status quo on a deep, meaningful level almost ti-establishment circles so often find themselves invariably find themselves significantly bogged getting crushed by their own weight is ultimately down by confusion, paranoia, infighting, and mis- because life itself is confusing and difficult to un- directed use of energy. derstand. Every day, for example, I get people in my in- Hardly anyone holds a lucid and steady aware- box and social media notifications telling me I ness of just how much of society is comprised of shouldn’t quote or share anything from this or mental narrative. Most people live their lives un- that lefty journalist or anti-establishment figure der the unquestioned assumption that when they because they’ve said something “problematic” at are moving around in the world, speaking, acting, some point or have some kind of association with forming opinions, having ideas etc., they are in- some aspect of the establishment. Rather than teracting with something that resembles objec- simply using narrative-disrupting tools wher- tive reality. The truth of the matter is that most of ever they come from to fight the establishment the things which draw people’s attention in their narrative control machine, I’m encouraged to day-to-day experience, whether it’s names, titles, isolate myself to the extremely narrow spectrum news stories, political parties, economics, histo-

GARRISON | VOLUME 01 ISSUE 01 | 5 ry, philosophy, religion or what have you, consist The only way to do this is to turn inward and entirely of mental noises firing off inside human sort out your own mental narratives in your own skulls. experience. This takes a lot of dedicated work, You might think it’s a big jump to go from because there are many layers of tightly believed chatting about the sociopolitical dynamics with- narratives which dictate one’s perception of the in dissident movements to making vaguely world that most people aren’t even aware of. Buddhist-sounding observations about human As soon as we’re born we are given a name thought, but it’s really not. The reason our species which has nothing to do with the nature of the is in a mess right now, and thus the reason move- slimy, screaming naked creature which came ments exist which seek to change the status quo, roaring thunderously alive out of the womb. We is because so much of life is dictated entirely by spend our childhood being told who we are in made-up mental narratives which can be easily various ways by our family, then we go to school controlled by the powerful, and hardly anyone to get taught how to think like everyone else and fully grasps this. If they did, the revolution against get labeled good/smart or bad/stupid for the the establishment would very smoothly and rest of our lives based on how well we dance that quickly succeed. dance. Along the ride we pick up coping mecha- Scientific research has found that astronauts nisms to deal with the stress of this whole unnat- suffer problems with coordination, perception, ural ordeal, many of which become extremely and cognition when they are unable to deter- counterproductive unconscious habits in later mine which way is up in space. There is no “up” years. We pick up likes and dislikes, interests and or “down” when you’re outside the gravitational aversions, life philosophies, religious beliefs, soci- The ruling power establishment will infiltrate dissident movements that it perceives as a threat with the intent of sowing confusion “ and division. pull that our bodies ”are adapted to, so its absence etal beliefs, political beliefs, all of which come to- sends our whole system out of whack. Navigating gether to form our worldview. a society that is made of mental narrative is very Because the foundations of our entire world- much the same; if you don’t know which way’s up, view are formed in early childhood long before you’ll get lost and confused. Before you can see we’re mature enough to decide for ourselves the narrative matrix clearly, you might be aware what a useful foundation might look like, we wind “ that some narratives serve power and swat at up interfacing with life through this muddled, in- them while you’re spinning through space, but efficient network of mostly unconscious mental you won’t have any solid ground on which to ori- and perceptual habits which don’t serve us very ent yourself for the purpose of forming a clear well. It is with this warped, endarkened tool that path forward toward a healthy and harmonwious we interact with the vast sea of official and unof- world. ficial narratives we are presented with in our at- Your first and foremost task as a revolutionary, tempts to decipher what’s wrong with the world therefore, is to find solid ground on which to plant and how to fix it. your feet while operating within a swirling sea of The path, then, is to unwind this whole con- narratives and counter-narratives. Without this fused, unconscious muddle of mental and percep- you’ll find yourself expending energy on ineffec- tual habits until we get to the untarnished blank tual agendas, chasing shadows, attacking friends canvass of that powerful screaming baby who “and advancing the interests of the enemy as you first met this wild world, and inhabit it conscious- stumble around trying to fight a threat you can’t ly. That right there is our solid ground. even see clearly. You’ve got to figure out for your- Who are you? Underneath the mental nar- self which way’s up. ratives about who you are? Underneath all the

6 | GARRISON | APR / MAY 2019 | [email protected] stories, labels, and beliefs? Underneath the field role as a tool that can be used when it’s useful and of consciousness full of thoughts, sensory impres- set down when it isn’t, rather than the dominat- sions, and feelings? This is the most important ing feature of every minute of waking existence. inquiry that anyone can possibly engage in, and Unhelpful mental habits can be discarded, and all it is worthy of the entirety of your focus until it’s attempts at narrative manipulation will stand out resolved. like a black fly on a white sheet of paper. All of these swirling, babbling thought stories I can’t tell you how to do this. Everyone’s path have dictated our lives for as long as we can re- to the heart of the fundamental matter is unique, member, but rarely does anyone sit down and and you can only travel it on your own. I can tell start sorting out where they come from and if you that the answer does not exist in the realm they’re useful. We lug around ancient mental nar- of thought, and that it is closer to you than your ratives about life, about how we should be, about own breath. Sincere, dedicated inquiry into your how other people should be, about the best ways own true nature, on your own and in your own to find happiness, about the best ways to avoid way, will lead you to the ground on which you unhappiness, and we rarely consider the possibil- must take your stand in order to fight the estab- ity that we can interact with life unencumbered lishment narrative machine effectively. by that heavy load. • If you want to find solid ground beneath your Caitlin Johnstone is a rogue journalist, a bogan socialist, an feet so that you can push effectively for a healthy anarcho-psychonaut, a guerrilla poet, and a utopia prepper. world, you’ve got to question every assumption Her articles online are entirely reader-supported. She you’ve ever made about yourself and the nature can be followed on Facebook @CaitlinAJohnstone and on of the world, even your very most fundamental Twitter @Caitoz. Her Patreon page is at www.patreon.com/ CaitlinJohnstone. Johnstone is the author of two books, assumptions, because it’s all narrative. As you Rogue Nation: Psychonautical Adventures with Caitlin turn your attention toward your essential nature Johnstone and Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers. and away from your churning, babbling mental Readers can subscribe to her mailing list at CaitlinJohnstone. habits, interest and attention will move away com, while her articles can be read on her own website and at Medium.com/@CaityJohnstone. As an Australian, from mental narratives and toward the solid Caitlin Johnstone decries her “crony vassal state” for being ground upon which they appear. The mind will “essentially an intelligence/military asset of the U.S.- relax, and mental narrative will take on its proper centralized international empire.”

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GARRISON | VOLUME 01 ISSUE 01 | 7 in JFKHowSPRINGFIELD the Secret Service Bungled an Investigation into a Possible 1962 Attempt on the Life of President Kennedy During the Crisis in Cuba

2 By S.T. Patrick ber. “Together they rode to Lincoln’s Tomb, where Kennedy laid a wreath, then they rode again to n October 20, 1962 President John F. Ken- the livestock pavilion of the state fairgrounds. … nedy was leading the country through Then it was back to the landing strip: Kennedy’s day five of what multitudes of historians stay in Springfield lasted just over an hour and a have since speculated could have been half. By 3:45 p.m., he was airborne again, heading Othe road to a nuclear World War III. There was no now for Chicago.” definitive sign then that it was day five of thirteen. Historian James Giglio was even more nonde- It could have been the final day of the crisis, and script, if not outright rosy. “Kennedy’s campaign had the Joint Chiefs and Russian hardliners pre- swing represented a welcome diversion as he en- vailed, the finality could have been catastroph- joyed the animated crowds, the friendly ovations, ic. A recently declassified report now informs us and colorful fall landscape. For a few moments, that it could also have been the final day of Ken- he might have actually forgotten all of the trou- nedy’s life, one year before Dallas. bles he had left behind.”3 On this beautiful fall day, in the middle of what What historians didn’t know then and what would be called the Cuban Missile Crisis, JFK had the JFK research community hadn’t known until made a one-day campaign trip to the Midwest.1 2018 was that two young men, ages 16 and 20, had The midterm election season was in full swing and been arrested after having been spotted pointing Illinois, a rock-solid state for the national Demo- a rifle barrel with a telescopic sight out of a sec- cratic Party, was getting its icing on the electoral ond-story window along the motorcade route. cake, a visit from the popular president. Illinois Police seized the .22-caliber semi-automatic rifle had been one of the key states that had tipped the and a full box of ammunition. 1960 election to Kennedy. Historians have written The rifle was spotted minutes after the motor- about Kennedy’s trip to the Midwest in passing. cade had passed by the location once, but it was “As Air Force One landed at Springfield’s Cap- scheduled to return on its way back to the airport. ital Airport – hardly much more than a landing The two young men were detained and taken to strip – Kennedy picked up a new pack of politi- Secret Service agents on the scene. They admit- cos, Illinois’s Governor Otto Kerner, Senator Paul ted pointing the rifle out of the window, a ques- Douglas, and Congressman Sidney Yates,” wrote tionable action which they claimed was done to Robert Smith Thompson in The Missiles of Octo- test the power of the telescopic sight. They want-

8 | GARRISON | APR / MAY 2019 | [email protected] ed to get a closer look at Kennedy when he returned. The report is not specific, which is curious for such a unique situation at a dangerous time. The exact name and address of the building are not mentioned, nor is it clarified whether or not the rifle was loaded. The report also makes no mention of the young men having been questioned regarding why they would have been carrying a box of ammunition on a mere sightseeing excur- sion. When reporters from Springfield’s State Jour- nal-Register visited the then 16-year-old, now in his 70s, the man scanned the document, said “You’ve got a story … Go with it,” and closed his door, refusing to comment further.4 Reports from the interrogations had been declassified by the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in 2016, but it was not until Stephen Knott, a professor at the U.S. Naval War College, wrote about it in The Washington Post in 2018 that Illinoisans and the research community became aware of the incident. Knott appears to believe that the intentions of the men were nei- Who’s Who ther casual nor optical. in the Secret Service “God knows what would have happened if that Illinois state trooper or whoever it was hadn’t by Vince Palamara spotted the gun on the first pass,” Knott wrote.5 The most concerned officials in Springfield that day should have been the Secret Service. Gerald America’s oldest law enforcement agency, the Blaine was one of the two Secret Service “advance United States Secret Service, has never been men” in Springfield. He mentioned Springfield in exposed like this before. The Secret Service has his book, The Kennedy Detail, but he did not ad- made many headlines through the decades, es- dress the rifle or the two men. When Springfield journalist Crystal Thomas interviewed Blaine by pecially in the last five years. This book presents phone, he minimized the incident as routine.6 a thorough look at more than 100 of the most “Every time you went on a trip, something famous, infamous, and interesting agents who would usually happen,” Blaine said. have protected presidents from William McKin- Author and Secret Service historian Vince ley to John F. Kennedy to President Donald Palamara disagrees with Blaine and does not find him credible on this topic and others. “This did Trump and everyone in between. Students of not happen that often,” Palamara told this writer.7 history will find much to contemplate in this re- “Did the president receive threats on his life? Yes, vealing, entertaining, and sometimes disturbing of course he did. Was it a daily (or) weekly thing? book. Readers will never look at the men who No. … I do not believe Blaine whatsoever. He is guard the president the same way ever again. someone who does not tell the truth. … Blaine is a liar and cannot be trusted. … He plays very fast and loose with the truth and definitely has a huge “Vince Palamara is the foremost authority on the Secret Service pro-government and pro-Warren Commission in the 60s.” — former Secret Service agent Abraham Bolden bias.” Blaine was positioned in the lead car of the presidential motorcade and was not informed of VincePalamara.com the incident until later. “I just heard word that they

GARRISON | VOLUME 01 ISSUE 01 | 9 • • • • This November 28, 1962 document (left) is the final page of a three-page declassified biweekly report entitled “De- partment of the Treasury.” Similar reports were logged by the various agencies and departments within the administration. The Secret Service was a part of the Treasury Department until 2003, at which time it was transfered to the Department of Homeland Security. The report (titled JFKWHCFS-FGRS-Nov281962 by the JFK Library) summarized mundane items such as exenditures and budgets until its last paragraph, the only known existing description of two men taken into Secret Service custody in Springfield, IL on Oct. 19, 1962. The men, 16 and 20 at the time, were brothers-in-law. The report was declassified in early 2016 and is housed at the JFK Library in Boston, MA. Debate exists as to whether the 1962 Springfield incident was part of a covert, dangerous, developing pattern or youthful stupidity.

picked up somebody that was carrying a rifle and field office, Fred Backstrom. At the time of the that they were taking (the rifle) to a gun shop,” Springfield trip, Backstrom had run the office for Blaine told Springfield’s State Journal-Register.8 eight years and had already spent 21 years in the Questions still existed: Rather than exporting Secret Service. He retired in 1973 and died in 1992. the rifle back to FBI headquarters, why was it tak- Knott focuses his work largely on what could en to a gun shop? Was the rifle loaded? Why were have happened if the young men had successful- the young men in possession of a box of ammuni- ly taken shots at Kennedy. tion if they weren’t going to use it? Why was the “Had the president been assassinated at this report not more specific? Should the Secret Ser- time, it probably would have led to a catastroph- vice have performed a more detailed follow-up ic war between the United States and the Soviet on the incident? Why did Blaine not mention this Union that totally changed the face of history,” incident or many of the other similar incidents in Knott wrote.9 his book? Knott and Thomas both write about JFK in “Exactly,” Palamara exclaimed. “Nothing adds Springfield as an odd, isolated coincidence 13 up. It sounds like (the young men were) attempt- months before Dallas. Both work on the assump- ing to make a rationalization of what they may tion that the Warren Commission’s conclusions really have been up to. … The whole strange saga were correct. Neither mention the other foiled does not compute. It sounds like there was a huge plots on Kennedy’s life, such as those in Los Ange- degree of naivete in just ‘accepting’ the story of les, Chicago, Miami, and Tampa, and neither men- an innocent telescopic sightseeing mission.” tion Springfield as a potential part of an escalat- According to Blaine, there were only five ing pattern. Kennedy’s life was in danger before agents in Springfield protecting JFK that day. Dallas. Springfield could have been a legitimate None of them could be pulled off their assigned attempt; it could have been a trial run. detail to follow up. Investigation of the incident If it was simply a case of two foolish young men then would have been the responsibility of the Se- acting out of ignorance, the box of ammunition cret Service special agent in charge of the Spring- and the status thereof within the rifle remain un-

10 | GARRISON | APR / MAY 2019 | [email protected] explained. The lack of a thorough investigation seems neglectful and irresponsible from a Secret Service that diligently investigates lesser threats. “While there were undoubtedly (probably) some ‘innocent’ incidents of bad judgment,” Pala- mara wrote, “there were definitely quite a few threats to President Kennedy that were documented by the press at that time, and which largely were only discovered by myself within the last few years.” Knott and Thomas also forsake the idea of any assassination attempt being a false flag pur- posely designed to incite conflict. Instead, Knott pushes the theory that a true attempt on JFK’s life would have solely been misinterpreted as a Rus- sian operation due to the geopolitical situation of October 20, 1962. The danger, to Knott, was the possibility of a misinterpretation that would lead to war rather than any plot-by-design. Without a further investigation or a more specific report, deducing a motive may be unlikely. • ENDNOTES: 1 The October 20, 1962 campaign stop began in Cleveland before Midnight Writer News going to Springfield and then on to Chicago. 2 Thompson, Robert Smith. The Missiles of October: The Declassified Story of John F. Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis. New York: Simon & “The Midnight Writer News Show” with S.T. Schuster, 1992. Page 229. Patrick has, to date, aired over 113 downloadable 3 Giglio, James. The Presidency of John F. Kennedy. Lawrence: University episodes dedicated to historical research on issues, Press of Kansas, 1991. Page 201. 4 Thomas, Crystal. “Rifle Pointed at JFK During 1962 Springfield Vis- figures, and concepts often mistaught, ignored, it.” The Southern Illinoisan. December 2, 2018. Page A13. Thomas, a jour- or wholly dismissed by the mainstream historical nalist with The State Journal-Register, originally wrote the story for the Springfield newspaper. establishment. 5 Ibid., A13. Among the contributors to this publication 6 Thomas Crystal. “Secret Service Agent Remembers Rifle Pointed at JFK During 1962 Springfield Visit.” The State Journal-Register. December alone, Joseph Green, Richard Bartholomew, 21, 2018. (https://www.sj-r.com/news/20181209/secret-service-agent- Randolph Benson, Jeff Worcester, David Denton, remembers-rifle-pointed-at-jfk-during-1962-springfield-visit) 7 Palamara, Vince. Personal email to this writer. February 4, 2018. Donald Jeffries, Jim DiEugenio, Lisa Pease, and Kenn 8 Ibid., Thomas, “Secret Service Agent.” Thomas have all brought their intellect, research, 9 Knott, Stephen F. “The Assassination that Could’ve Sparked World War III.” The Washington Post. November 23, 2018. https://www. and conversation to “The Midnight Writer News washingtonpost.com/outlook/2018/11/23/assassination-that-couldve- Show.” sparked-world-war-iii MWN also airs its own “MWN Legends Series,” S.T. Patrick is the editor-in-chief of garrison. In 2016, episodes that are dedicated to those researchers Patrick began the “Midnight Writer News Show” and and personalities that have come before us. MidnightWriterNews.com to combat the mistaught history that he had confronted for close to ten years as an Advanced * * * * * Placement and International Baccalaureate educator. He serves Follow us on Facebook @MidnightWriterNewsShow on the board of directors of the Center for Deep Political Research and the advisory board of the Colodny Collection. Follow us on Twitter @MWN_STPatrick Patrick holds a B.A. in Mass Communications (Journalism), Email us at [email protected] a B.S. in Secondary Education (Social Studies), and a minor in Political Science. S.T. Patrick would like to thank all the writers Available on the iPhone podcast app and iTunes and readers of garrison. This is a monumental effort to defend Available on Stitcher Radio and other Pod-Apps truthful history that often gets misconstrued, dismissed, or spun by the historical establishment and textbook conglomerates ...and always available FREE at that control information today. Stay in contact with us via email or through our Facebook page. MidnightWriterNews.com

GARRISON | VOLUME 01 ISSUE 01 | 11 BARTHOLOVIEWS: News & Views from Richard Bartholomew 2020: The Deep Political Realities “much was decided before you were born” The assassinocracy is – Jenny Holzer, Truisms, 1977 - 1979 what created the lies voters eactions to the essay at the end of my believe. It is what has pre- book, The Deep State in the Heart of Tex- vented candidates from ad- as, titled “The Deep Political Realities dressing the deep political of the 2016 U.S. General Election,”1 have issues of our time. The take- Rgiven me insight into the cognitive biases held by over was secured with the its readers and the way we tend to take politics assassinations of Reverend at face value based on stubborn political myths. Martin Luther King Jr. and Many are biased against Hillary Clinton. Others Senator Robert Kennedy, the are biased against Donald Trump. Both biases are last political leaders who di- irrelevant to my thesis, except that they prevent rectly addressed them. The readers from comprehending it. assassinocracy is the thing In short, my thesis can be summarized this to understand, and the thing to stop if you want way: What was left of U.S. government by 1963, a legitimate election. As John Judge taught us, after the rise of the post-war Deep State, ceased we won’t have a democracy until we resolve the to exist entirely upon President Kennedy’s death. Kennedy assassination.2 What replaced it can best be called an assassinoc- Clinton haters tell me they are upset about racy. Trump is merely the latest manifestation of Clinton atrocities, as if I am not. It would be insane that usurpation, and Clinton was aware of it all not to be upset about the Clintons, or with anyone along. seriously seeking power within a Deep State fac-

12 | GARRISON | APR / MAY 2019 | [email protected] The transition of power from president to vice president is not only constitutional. Author Richard Bartholomew• • • • argues that it can also be intentional. When the favored advocate of the Deep State is unelectable, he or she is placed on the ticket with a presidential candidate who can win. Then, through age, constitutional limitations, or assassination, the desired candidate of the Deep State ascends to the presidency. After the passing of the JFK Records Act of 1992, there is but one litmus test for every candidate: What is his or her position on the assassinations of JFK, MLK, and RFK? Does the candidate support the full release of the files as described by the 1992 act? tion. My essay on the Clintons is not advocacy but tempt, eliminate Trump. explanatory, as I wrote near its beginning. I said after the primaries it was not about Trump, it was about his vice presidential nomi- Electing the Unelectable nee, and after the convention, I said it was about Mike Pence. It is the Reagan-Bush model and the This question gets to the root of my thesis: If Bush-Cheney model, all of which are corollar- you believed that the only solution was to gain the ies of the Kennedy-LBJ, Eisenhower-Nixon, and 3 powers of the presidency, as RFK did, how would FDR-Truman (Pauley Coup) models. Trump is you realistically do it in this assassinocracy? the culmination of the Eisenhower-Nixon model. I first drafted notes for that essay in 2007 for He was used to get the unelectable into power. personal reference only. I updated and expanded Voters don’t matter in the assassinocracy exit starting in late 2015 sensing its time may have cept to the extent their votes can be manipulat- come. It had, but for too few. I finished it in June ed to help steal elections or to prevent their theft. 2016, two years before my book’s publication. I Donald Trump was “elected” solely for the pur- wrote this sequel based on my observations since pose of being removed after being used primar- the election. My thoughts have evolved, but noth- ily to prevent release of the JFK files. There are ing has happened that contradicts my basic con- dozens of ways to easily remove him. The only cepts. Quite the contrary. question is: Why do it via Russiagate? Of course, From my perspective, Hillary was allowed to the answer is because it is a pretext for war, the believe her double-agent strategy was working ultimate goal being control of China. until election day. It was evident to me, however, that her Deep State enemies would stop her Chasing Hillary and use Trump, like they did Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, to move their preferred, but In 2017, the deadline for the release of all the unelectable, operatives into power and then, as JFK assassination files, it mattered a lot who was with Watergate and the Reagan assassination at- president. Jimmy Carter, during the HSCA inves-

GARRISON | VOLUME 01 ISSUE 01 | 13 tigation, and Bill Clinton, during the ARRB investigation, helped damage those Deep State conspirators. Both presidents paid a price. That Deep State faction was ready for Hillary in advance. Barack Obama surrendered to their threats. As reported by Ray McGovern in 2013, Obama asked supporters privately, when they complained about his reneging on his progressive campaign promises, “Don’t you remember what happened to Dr. King?”4 Bernie Sanders was the Democratic Party’s ROBERT MUELLER sheepdog in the Clintons’ attempted full spectrum dominance. As Bruce A. Dixon reported, “... JFK Records Collection Act and prevent resisters the sheepdog candidate is charged with herding from regaining power. The larger offensive effort activists and voters back into the Democratic was perpetual war and profit. The rest is, as “X” fold who might otherwise drift leftward and out- told Garrison in Oliver Stone’s film JFK, “just scen- side of the Democratic Party.”5 But they underes- ery for the public. ... keeps ‘em guessing like some timated the fervor that became “Bernie or Bust.” kind of parlor game. Prevents ‘em from asking the The fact that there is still no viable third party be- most important question: Why? Why was Kenne- ing founded on that fervor speaks volumes about dy killed? Who benefited? Who has the power to Bernie’s sheepdog role. Nobody got to Bernie. No cover it up?” one had to. He knew his role and played it well. In an assassinocracy, voting for purist policies But it went too well, unexpectedly, and that made gets you only more assassination. The death of it easier for the spooks to hack the needed votes RFK proved being the lesser evil is necessary for for Trump. survival. How else does one become a post-RFK As it turned out, Hillary was no more fooled president? That role applies to the Kennedys as than I. When told on election night of Trump’s up- well as the Clintons. Neither the candidates nor set victory by Campaign Manager Robby Mook, the election process can be taken at face value. as reported by Amy Chozick in her book, Chasing We take it at face value because, “People see Hillary, “Hillary didn’t seem all that surprised. ‘I what they want to see. It’s what con artists prey knew it. I knew this would happen to me … ,’ Hil- on,” as fictional detective Richard Castle said.8 lary said, now within a couple of inches of his face. Confidence artists work together to gain your ‘They were never going to let me be president’.”6 confidence, if not your trust. Maria Konnikova explained further in her The Con Men book, The Confidence Game: “The confidence game starts with basic hu- By discrediting Trump, Robert Mueller is not man psychology. From the artist’s perspective, doing the right thing any more than did the Elec- it’s a question of identifying the victim (the toral College, Congress, or the Supreme Court, put-up): Who is he, what does he want, and all of whom could have stopped or helped stop how can I play on that desire to achieve what I Trump’s presidency. Nor is Trump trying to stop want? It requires the creation of empathy and Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller. If Trump real- rapport (the play): An emotional foundation ly wanted to discredit Mueller, all he would have must be laid before any scheme is proposed, any game set in motion. Only then does it to do is use his JFK Act powers to release the files move to logic and persuasion (the rope): the that are being illegally withheld or redacted since scheme (the tale), the evidence and the way it Oct. 26, 2017. Mueller is Richard Bissell’s great will work to your benefit (the convincer), the 7 nephew, and his wife is Charles Cabell’s cousin. show of actual profits. And like a fly caught in Bissell and Cabell were fired by JFK after the Bay a spider’s web, the more we struggle, the less of Pigs and are alleged JFK conspiracy suspects. able to extricate ourselves we become (the At the JFK Centennial, the larger defensive breakdown). By the time things begin to look effort of the assassinocracy was to prevent files dicey, we tend to be so invested, emotionally of any substance from being released under the and often physically, that we do most of the persuasion ourselves. We may even choose to

14 | GARRISON | APR / MAY 2019 | [email protected] up our involvement ourselves, even as things turn south (the send), so that by the time we’re completely fleeced (the touch), we don’t quite know what hit us. The con artist may not even need to convince us to stay quiet (the blow-off and fix); we are more likely than not to do so ourselves. We are, after all, the best deceivers of our own minds. At each step of the game, con artists draw from a seemingly endless toolbox of ways to manipulate our belief. And as we become more committed, with every step we give them more psychological material to work with.”9 The Front Man

For those who didn’t know already exactly who and what Donald Trump is, Sidney Blumen- thal reminded us in his article, “A Short History of the Trump Family,” (London Review of Books, Feb. 16, 2017): “His genius, Blumenthal wrote, was to promote his clownishness, so that the headlines … became a PR platform … for an American front- The Deep State in man. His salvation was a double play of a con.”10 Trump is the clownish frontman his fellow Deep the Heart of Texas State con artists want you to focus on while they take you for everything you have. We are not the by Richard Bartholomew first country to be hapless marks in this con game Written by Richard Bartholomew and featuring by Trump and his gang. There is an historical ex- a foreword by Edgar Tatro, this book examines ample. many of the underlying connections in Texas to Those who have forgotten that example might the assassination on 11/22/1963. Not a simple naively ask, “What might have happened had the vox populi in Weimar or Nazi Germany spoken Lyndon Johnson-did-it book, this is rather a po- up?” Those who remember that history will an- tent analysis of the forces that continue to en- swer, “Exactly what did happen.” able the kind of power politics existent even to As Hitler scholar Ron Rosenbaum wrote in his the present day. Bartholomew’s research of the Feb. 5, 2017 Los Angeles Review of Books article, JFK assassination includes his discovery of a 1959 “Against Normalization: The Lesson of the ‘Mu- Rambler station wagon possibly used in the con- nich Post’,” it is the same thing happening now, spiracy; a study co-authored with Walter F. Graf and “The playbook is Mein Kampf.”11 involving a rifle clip that contaminates the bal- Upon consulting Hitler’s first post-war biogra- listic evidence; a chronological reconstruction pher, Alan Bullock, Rosenbaum discovered, “Hit- and placement of missing movements edited ler was a ‘mountebank,’ Bullock exclaimed, a con out of the Zapruder film; an in-depth interview man who played the Jewish card, using it to whip of Erwin Schwartz, with author Noel Twyman, up rowdy enthusiasm and give the impression of regarding Mr. Schwartz’s and Mr. Zapruder’s 12 a movement.” early chain of possession of Zapruder’s film; “As it turned out,” Rosenbaum continued, “Hit- and work for author Barr McClellan resulting ler used the tactics of bluff masterfully, at times in Bartholomew’s monograph establishing the giving the impression of being a feckless Chaplin- esque clown, at other times a sleeping serpent, at methods by which the FBI and the Warren Com- others yet a trustworthy statesman. The Weimar mission concealed and obfuscated latent finger- establishment didn’t know what to do, so they prints from the alleged sniper’s nest. pretended this was normal. They ‘normalized’ him.”13 www.SaySomethingRealPress.com/Bartholomew.html

GARRISON | VOLUME 01 ISSUE 01 | 15 Rosenbaum said Hitler “saw that this tac- “No member of the Kennedy family since tic of playing the fool, the Chaplinesque clown, JFK or RFK has dared to say what RFK Jr. does had worked over and over again, worked like in this book. He indicts the CIA.”18 a charm. It kept the West off balance. They con- U.S. Representative Joseph P. Kennedy III, by sistently underestimated him and were divided ducking questions about his uncle’s book during over his plans (‘What does Hitler really want?’). his 2018 campaign,19 was still playing the Kenne- The tactic became irresistible, as repeated suc- dys’ old post-JFK game: going along to get elect- 14 cess always does.” ed. It is the same game Hillary played in 2016, Applying that lesson to Trump, Rosenbaum mostly. For Joe Kennedy, it worked. But now, that explained, “We didn’t take him seriously because game depends on Hillary’s faction winning (via of all the outrageous, clownish acts and gaffes we Russiagate). It certainly looks like it will. With thought would cause him to drop out of the race. Russiagate, as with the propaganda that Oswald Except these gaffes were designed to distract. killed JFK, plausibility is not a requirement. All This was his secret strategy, the essence of his that is required is that enough voters believe the success – you can’t take a stand against Trump Big Lie that foreign spies substantially interfered because you don’t know where Trump is stand- with the election, and that the only remedy is to ing. You can’t find him guilty of evil, you can’t find seat Hillary as the rightful winner in a 2020 do- him at all. And the tactics worked. Trump was not over. taken seriously, which allowed him to slip by the But isn’t Russiagate the Mueller-Trump-an- normal standards for an American candidate. ti-Hillary con game? It is, but it is not unreason- 15 The mountebank won. Again.” able that Hillary and her Deep State enemies What we are seeing in Trump, and what seri- are using the Russiagate juggernaut as means to ous, honest deep political historians have long opposite ends, the latter to protect itself from the seen, is the rise of the Fourth Reich. Read for ex- threat posed by releasing all of the JFK files, and ample, “The Nazi Connection to the John F. Ken- the former to justify a do-over of the 2016 election 16 nedy Assassination,” by Mae Brussell, and “Good in order to free those files. 17 Americans,” by John Judge. Viewing Russiagate as the original plan used by these opposing factions, RFK Jr. has opened Kennedy v. Nixon a second front, which might be more about the Kennedy-Clinton faction’s survival as they try to But where there are Nazis, there is resistance. regain the presidency. That paradigm shift is one A major shift in this battle of Deep State factions of direct confrontation against the Mueller-Trump was signaled by the publication in May 2018 of the faction now that Hillary’s indirect, double-agent book, American Values: Lessons I Learned from strategy failed. The Clintons have always been My Family by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. close to the Kennedys. It was never just the Clin- Edward Curtin emphasized RFK Jr.’s deep polit- tons. In the long term, big picture, I think this pe- ical sea change in his June 11, 2018 review at the riod of factional history since 1960 will be defined Global Research website: as Kennedy vs. Nixon. “American Values revolves around the long war between the Kennedys and the CIA that Ask the Question resulted in the deaths of JFK and RFK. All the other chapters, while very interesting person- The whispers soon after the 2016 election that al and family history, pale in importance. Hillary would run again in 2020, mine included,

We didn’t take him seriously because of all the clownish acts and gaffes we thought would cause him to drop out of the race. Except these “ gaffes were designed to distract. “16 | GARRISON | APR” / MAY 2019 | [email protected] •••• Fred Korth (second to left) was the Secretary of the Navy under President Kennedy. His stepdaughter, Melissa Mar- tha Williams O’Rourke, is the mother of Beto O’Rourke, the 2018 U.S. Senate candidate from Texas. After the dissolu- tion of his first marriage in 1964, Korth entered into a romantic relationship with Marjorie Merriweather Post, the socialite and owner of General Foods, Inc. Post had built a mansion on an exclusive Palm Beach Island. She called it Mar-A-Lago. New York real estate magnate and future president Donald Trump purchased the mansion from Post’s estate in 1985 for a reported $8 million. Korth died in 1998 in El Paso, TX. have been getting louder and are now at conver- of the infamous 8-F Group, putting him close to sational decibels. Those who flinch at the idea are other suspected JFK conspirators. As Ed Tatro reacting to their anti-Clinton biases again, not the wrote in my book’s forward, he was among those evidence. But that she is planning on running is all “headed for prison via the Bobby Baker-Fred any informed observer can say at the moment. Korth-Billie Sol Estes-TFX scandals.”22 In an assassinocracy, with false flags, deep Korth was also named as a target of Oswald in events, and October surprises, the question of the little-known incident of foreknowledge of the who might secretly be an anti-assassinocracy assassination, which I wrote about, involving the successor to RFK comes down to another ques- wrecked submarine Thresher, involving mem- tion: What is his or her position on the assassina- bers of an organization known as Justice for the tions of JFK, MLK, and RFK? Crew of the Thresher. The men claimed its mem- Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke topped early bers were planning to assassinate both John polls as a preferred 2020 presi- B. Connally and Fred Korth. I dential candidate.20 Even with his noted Bill Kelly’s speculation fame, few know his grandfather What is Beto’s “that alternative motives were was Fred Korth, Secretary of the position on the being set up for Oswald in case Navy under President Kennedy, the ‘lone-nut’ scenario did not and an alleged JFK-assassina- assassinations of hold up. The JFCOTT motive, action conspirator. Beto’s mother, JFK, MLK, and RFK? cording to Kelly, ‘was predicated Melissa Martha (Williams), was upon Oswald’s dissatisfaction Korth’s stepdaughter.21 with his ‘undesirable’ military As I noted in my book, “Deputy Defence Secre- discharge’.”23 tary Roswell Gilpatric and resigned Navy Secre- Beto lost his 2018 senate campaign to his op- tary Fred Korth were under particular scrutiny ponent, Senator Ted Cruz, who was famously in [the TFX scandal]. Korth resigned because he accused by Trump of being the son of an alleged had used his office in favor of his own Continen- JFK-assassination conspirator. That the assas- tal National Bank of Fort Worth, which had made sination surfaced at all as a mainstream issue in loans to General Dynamics. Korth also had sever- a post-1968 presidential campaign was not only al Fort Worth business ties to the Oswald family.” strange, but a first. Whatever the reason that Korth was Edwin A. Ekdahl’s lawyer in Tar- happened, its only lasting political effect was to rant County, Texas, when he divorced Margue- prevent Cruz, or anyone else, from mentioning rite Ekdahl (later Oswald). Korth was a member Beto’s relationship to an actual, alleged JFK con-

GARRISON | VOLUME 01 ISSUE 01 | 17 spirator. It has also been shown that his campaign 7 “Ancestry of Robert Mueller.” Accessed February 12, 2019. http:// 24 freepages.rootsweb.com/~battle/genealogy/celeb/mueller.htm “Doro- rhetoric does not match his votes. So the ques- thy Lucile Standish (Cabell).” Accessed February 12, 2019. https://www. tion remains for 2020: What is Beto’s position on geni.com/people/Dorothy-Standish/6000000061504887908 the assassinations of JFK, MLK, and RFK? 8 Rick Castle (Nathan Fillion), Castle, “Fool Me Once...,” Season 2, Episode 4, Air Date: October 12, 2009. 9 Konnikova, Maria. The Confidence Game: Why We Fall for It … Every Time. New York: Viking, 2016, pp. 11-12. “You’re (Reichstag) Fired!” 10 Blumenthal, Sidney. “A Short History of the Trump Family,” Lon- don Review of Books, Feb. 16, 2017. Accessed July 7, 2017. https://www. There is one final deep political reality to the lrb.co.uk/v39/n04/sidney-blumenthal/a-short-history-of-the-trump- family 2020 election that must be mentioned. On March 11 Rosenbaum, Ron. “Against Normalization: The Lesson of the 26, 2017, former Vice President Dick Cheney said ‘Munich Post’,” Feb. 5, 2017. Los Angeles Review of Books. Accessed Russian interference in the election could be “con- January 10, 2019. https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/normalization-les- 25 son-munich-post/ sidered an act of war.” And for a decade, Cheney 12 Ibid. has been predicting a nuclear terrorist strike on 13 Ibid. U.S. soil by the end of the decade.26 Such a deep 14 Ibid. 15 Ibid. event would make 9/11 look like child’s play. A 16 Brussell, Mae. “The Nazi Connection to the John F. Kennedy As- nuclear false-flag attack would also trigger the sassination,” The Rebel, January 1984. Republished in The Mae Brus- draconian Continuity of Government emergen- sell Website. Accessed January 10, 2019. http://www.maebrussell.com/ Mae%20Brussell%20Articles/Nazi%20Connection%20to%20JFK%20 cy measures Dr. Peter Dale Scott has warned us Assass.html about for decades. That would make that deep 17 Judge, John. “Good Americans,” 1983. Republished in Ratville event a de facto, nuclear Reichstag fire. Times. Accessed January 10, 2019. https://ratical.org/ratville/JFK/John- Judge/GoodAmericans.html#fn137 As Dr. Scott concluded in his 2014 essay, “The 18 Curtin, Edward. “‘American Values: Lessons I Learned from My Hidden Government Group”: Family’ by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Book Review,” Global Research, June 11, 2018. Accessed January 10, 2019. https://www.globalresearch.ca/ “The more I study these deep events, the american-values-lessons-i-learned-from-my-family-by-robert-f-kenne- more I see suggestive similarities between dy-jr/5643798 19 Levenson, Michael. “RFK’s children divided over calls for a fresh in- them, increasing the possibility that they are vestigation of his assassination,” Boston Globe, May 31, 2018. Accessed not unrelated external intrusions on American January 9, 2019. https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2018/05/31/ history, but parts of an endemic process, shar- rfk-children-divided-over-calls-for-fresh-investigation-his-assassination/ ing to some degree or other a common source. B5ubwQd9GFDttwNxJOAn6N/story.html 20 Shepard, Steven. “Poll: Biden, Bernie, Beto lead 2020 Dem field,” ...And I would like this audience to investigate Politico, November 12, 2018. Accessed January 9, 2019. https://www. whether elements of this enduring leadership, politico.com/story/2018/11/12/poll-biden-bernie-beto-lead-2020- with its ever-changing mix of CIA veterans and dems-983995 civilian leaders, may have constituted ‘a secret 21 “Beto O’Rourke.” Wikipedia, Wikipedia.org. Accessed January 9, 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beto_O’Rourke government-in-waiting,’ not just under Clinton 22 Bartholomew, p. 249. in the 1990s, not just under Carter in 1980, but 23 Ibid., p. 318. also under Kennedy in November 1963.”27 24 Sirota, David. “Beto O’Rourke frequently voted for Republican legislation, analysis reveals,” The Guardian, December 20, 2018. Ac- cessed January 9, 2019. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/ More to come as this story develops. dec/20/beto-orourke-congressional-votes-analysis-capital-and-main • 25 McCaskill, Nolan D. “Cheney: Russian meddling possibly ‘an act of ENDNOTES: war’,” Politico, March 27, 2017. Accessed January 9, 2019. https://www. 1 Bartholomew, Richard. “The Deep Political Realities of the 2016 politico.com/story/2017/03/dick-cheney-russia-2016-election-act-of- U.S. General Election,” The Deep State in the Heart of Texas. San An- war-236556 tonio, Texas: Say Something Real Press, 2018, pp. 416-21. Accessed Janu- 26 Mccormack, David. “Dick Cheney predicts US will suffer a terror- ary 22, 2019. http://www.joegreenjfk.com/blog/the-deep-political-reali- ist attack ‘far deadlier’ than 9/11 before the decade is over,” Daily Mirror, ties-of-the-us-general-election June 24, 2014. Accessed January 9, 2019. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ 2 Benson, Randolph. The Searchers – Trailer 1. Critical Focus Pic- news/article-2668677/Dick-Cheney-predicts-terrorist-attack-far-dead- tures. Accessed January 22, 2019. https://vimeo.com/223029602 lier-9-11-decade-over.html 3 Stone, Oliver and Kuznick, Peter. The Untold History of the United 27 Scott, Peter Dale. “The Hidden Government Group,” WhoW- States. New York: Gallery Books, 2012, pp. 139-40. hatWhy, Oct. 5, 2014. Accessed January 9, 2019. https://whowhatwhy. 4 McGovern, Ray. “Doubting Obama’s Resolve to Do Right.” Con- org/2014/10/05/the-hidden-government-group-linking-jfk-watergate- sortium News, May 28, 2013. Accessed February 14, 2019. https://con- iran-contra-and-911/ sortiumnews.com/2013/05/28/doubting-obamas-resolve-to-do-right/ 5 Dixon, Bruce A. “Presidential Candidate Bernie Sanders: Sheep- Richard Bartholomew is a co-founder and director of the dogging for Hillary and the Democrats in 2016.” Black Agenda Report, Center for Deep Political Research, author of The Deep State May 7, 2015. Accessed February 14, 2019. https://www.blackagendare- in the Heart of Texas: The Texas Connections to the Kennedy port.com/bernie-sanders-sheepdog-4-hillary Assassination, and an award-winning graphic designer, illustrator 6 Resnick, Gideon. “Hillary Clinton on Election Night: ‘They Were Never Going to Let Me Be President’.” The Daily Beast, April 20, 2018. and editorial cartoonist. Bartholomew’s research has been Accessed January 10, 2019. https://www.thedailybeast.com/hillary-clin- presented at scholarly conferences, and published in books and ton-they-were-never-going-to-let-me-be-president journals on the JFK assassination.

18 | GARRISON | APR / MAY 2019 | [email protected] GARRISON | VOLUME 01 ISSUE 01 | 19 A BLAST FROM BENSON As Families Sometimes Do: It’s Up to You By Randolph Benson some; a bit disappointing for me. Lucky for me that I was approached by one of t the conclusion the attendees, a woman who obviously knew ev- of Oliver Stone’s eryone: fellow attendees, organizers, witnesses, 1991 film JFK, and speakers. She asked if this was my first assas- the character sination trip to Dallas, then asked if I was going to Aof New Orleans District the “other conference.” I responded with a blank Attorney Jim Garrison, stare to which she suggested I go across town to passionately played by check out the real conference: “It’s a lot smaller Oscar-winner Kevin Cost- and less commercial.” ner, delivers the final This was my first taste of the intra-community summation in the trial of divide. accused conspirator Clay Shaw. At the end of the I jumped into my rental car and sped to the old eight-minute-long monologue, Costner breaks Hotel Lawrence – now depressingly a La Quinta the fourth wall and settles his gaze directly into Inn – just a block from Dealey Plaza in downtown the camera and upon the audience . . . at each of Dallas. Crammed into a tiny second-floor meet- us. He then states, profoundly, simply, directly, ing room was the annual regional meeting of “It’s up to you.” COPA, the Coalition on Political Assassinations. While that moment set me upon my journey Around 30 mostly bespectacled and middle-aged into the world of the JFK assassination research- guys listened enraptured to a Santa-meets-Mal- er, it would be a quarter-century before I fully un- colm X character, longtime executive director derstood the true meaning of that line. and co-founder of COPA, John Patrick Judge. Over the next decade, I devoured every video This, I thought, was the real, academic commu- and book that I could relating to the assassina- nity I had been hoping to find. And it was at that tion. It was only in 2001 that I decided it was time moment that I decided to embark upon what was to test the waters of the greater research com- to become a 14-year journey making my film, The munity. Scouring the Internet revealed that there Searchers. was an upcoming conference in Dallas entitled What struck me early on was the political and “November in Dallas.” It was put on by JFK Lanc- philosophical diversity of the research communi- er Publications and Productions. I purchased ty. You’d find the most right-wing conservative a ticket immediately. The event was held in a sitting next to the most left-wing liberal, both grand ballroom of an upscale hotel where hun- working together for the truth behind the murder dreds of attendees sat at tables complete with of our president. How in the hell, I thought, was it complimentary hotel-labelled writing pads and possible that people who couldn’t agree on an ice pens and glasses of water. It seemed to be a ter- cream flavor could agree on this complicated and rific entry for someone like me, a guy who knew confusing area of study? he didn’t know anything but wanted to learn. I Researcher Walt Brown, author of The Peo- found the speakers and their presentations to be ple vs. Lee Harvey Oswald, answered that when extremely interesting. However, having watched I interviewed him in the late Aughts. “If someone every video available regarding JFK research, it were to have told me on November 22nd, 1963 that was a little off-putting – nee creepy – to see peo- a vast majority of my best friends are my friends ple getting autographs of assassination witness- because of that day, I would’ve said, ‘You’re crazy.’ es. (This was still part of the pre-selfie era). It was We’re a family.” After a few seconds, Brown con- the JFK impersonator reciting part of Kennedy’s tinued with the caveat, “But we might do as fami- inauguration speech that revealed this to be less lies sometimes do.” a conference and more a convention. Fine for During my relatively short time as part of the

20 | GARRISON | APR / MAY 2019 | [email protected] community, there have been conferences held John Judge (1947-2014) was by a number of different, sometimes competing, the founder of the Muse- organizations: the Coalition on Political Assas- um of Hidden History and sinations, JFK Lancer, Dealey Plaza UK, the As- the Hidden History Cen- sassination Archives & Research Center, the JFK ter. Judge also founded the Historical Group, JFK: The Continuing Inquiry, Coalition on Political As- and Citizens Against Political Assassinations are sassinations (COPA) and just what come to mind at the moment. And while 9/11 Citizens Watch. He was a University of Dayton it’s tough enough for the community to come to- graduate, a peace activist, gether for a weekend in Dallas every November, a brilliant speaker, and an one need not spend much time on social media organizer of truth activists to see the growing divide in the diaspora of re- around the world. His book, searchers. Facebook alone contains dozens upon Judge for Yourself, is a vital dozens of groups dedicated to the assassination, resource for researchers. and a cursory glance at the comments in those groups reveals a deep mistrust between many State trolls, allowing ad hominem attacks into our researchers. This isn’t new; it’s now just faster, debates, and allowing, ahem, JFK impersonators and the relative anonymity of the Internet makes plays into their hands. As Last Hurrah Bookshop criticism more intense, more personal, and more owner Andy Winiarczyk told me, “I’ve seen the destructive. enemy and they are us.” I also find it increasingly depressing and pro- In the end, we can’t let our political and philo- foundly distressing to see the right/left political sophical differences divide us. We must remain paradigm enter our intra-community debate. We dedicated to working together for the truth be- need to remember that our research is ultimately hind the assassination. We must avoid the pull of about power, not politics. To wit, the most – and the right/left paradigm. We must recognize the best – work done in the Reagan assassination at- true machinations of what Peter Dale Scott iden- tempt was not by a researcher on the right, but tified as “Deep Politics” and avoid the pull of tran- by the most leftist person I’ve ever known: the sient politicians co-opting the term “Deep State” aforementioned John Judge. He’s the one who while not knowing what the hell it means. We interviewed the George Washington Hospital must remember that, as Walt Brown also stated, emergency room doctors, he’s the one who se- “[11/22/63] is the glue that holds us together.” cured the route of the presidential limo as well John Judge said: “We have all the potential in as emergency vehicles, and he’s the one who the world and all the tools that we need. To envi- studied the photographic evidence and located sion what’s right, that’s the job of every genera- the second gun. In fact, he’s the one who coined tion. Even if we don’t think we’ll win, we must try, the term, “the Bushy knoll.” Why did he give a and by pulling together our energies and resourc- damn about a conservative president? Because es we – the research community – can change the he recognized from the very beginning that the world.” removal of a president is about much more than In the end, if we allow our family to become party; it’s about the machinations of power and, divided, all is lost. ultimately, the health of our democracy. It’s up to you. . “Kooks, spooks, and egos.” That’s how Trine Day publisher Kris Millegan accurately describes the greater research community. (I’d person- Documentarian Randolph Benson’s films have garnered ally add naive, but I’d prefer to not bring up my numerous awards, most notably an Oscar for Best Student 20-year-old self.) John Judge, upon watching a Documentary at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and shitty band arranged by another organization Sciences’ Academy Awards and an Excellence in Filmmaking Award at the Cannes Film Festival. His most recent film, The perform on the knoll before the 2009 annual Searchers, a portrait of JFK researchers, was awarded the Orson Dealey Plaza Moment of Silence, remarked, “If Welles Prize at the Tiburon International Film Festival. Information they’re not COINTELPRO, I don’t know what they on The Searchers can be found at TheSearchersFilm.com. Benson are!” He knew that we give the counter-critics has been an instructor at the Center for Documentary Studies at and the mainstream media all the ammo to shoot Duke University for over fifteen years and serves on the Board us down. Allowing poor research, allowing Deep of Directors of the Center for Deep Political Research.

GARRISON | VOLUME 01 ISSUE 01 | 21 araphrasing the great Ernie Hudson: ‘When Kenn Thomas asks you if you want an unpublished interview he did with John Judge for Steamshovel, you say yes.’ John “PJudge gets most of the credit and no blame for my work as a political researcher, and the interview finds him lucid as ever on the seminal event of 21st century American history, thus far. Following John’s death, Kenn has consistently been a great supporter of the Hidden History Center and his kindness has been much appreciated. A meeting of legends follows. . . .”

Joseph E. Green Hidden History Center, Board of Directors Center for Deep Political Research, Board of Directors John Judge on 9/11 AN INTERVIEW BY KENN THOMAS OF STEAMSHOVEL PRESS

22 | GARRISON | APR / MAY 2019 | [email protected] until everybody is aboard the flight and it takes May 27, 2005. off. The home of John Judge. JJ: That’s an internal release to Homeland Washington, D.C. Security. But a public release, after a crash of a Three-and-a-half years after 9/11. plane, that identifies who was on the plane has to be released and made public at some point. They usually wait a period of several days or maybe a KT: I guess the first place to start is to get your week while they individually notify the families, take on exactly who is responsible for the events but, at some point, they also have to post it pub- of 9/11. Who flew the planes into the buildings? licly. If they leave names off of that manifest, they JJ: I don’t think we know yet who is responsible actually can be sued by the families involved. for 9/11 on either the mechanical or the broad- KT: And this happened, right? er level. We certainly don’t know who was on JJ: And this happened. I went immediately the planes and who the specific pilots were oth- to the manifests on the American and United er than the assertions of the 9/11 Commission to Airlines sites and pulled them down within two that effect and the FBI report naming the 19 sus- weeks of 9/11, to my memory. And in each case, pects. The FBI claimed that the list of names and none of the 19 names of the suspects were on the pictures that came out so quickly after the attack manifest. Also, in each case, when I counted the was based on getting that information from the names that were there – and none of them were manifest of the airplanes and then somehow, I Arab names – they were short the total given guess, having enough file information to have for passenger and crew that died on the plane. photos of all these people already, themselves. In other words, if you would say 72 died on the But one has to wonder why, if they had that kind plane, then 68 were listed, and there were names of information on each of these individuals, they missing when you counted the actual names. wouldn’t have been tracking them before that? The number missing is consistent with the of- In any case, they pretty quickly put out both ficial story on three of the flights. The passenger photos. We got pictures early on of Mohammad manifests on three of the flights are short just Atta and one of the other plotters up in Logan the exact number of alleged hijackers in the of- Airport coming through a security check. Finally, ficial story. On Flight 77, the official story is five, on the day the report was released, we got securi- but there are six names missing in that manifest. ty photos of two of the people getting onto Flight That is also consistent with a statement made 77 at Dulles Airport, but presumably either no se- by a woman named Renee May, an airline atten- curity pictures were taken, which doesn’t make dant for American who called her mother. It’s in sense since you’d presume they’d be taking pic- the 9/11 Commission Report. No weight is given tures of everybody coming through, or they hav- to it apparently because it’s contradictory to its en’t released them. version. But she told her mother that she had to If they’re trying to conceal these identities, that call headquarters. She gave her a number to call would make sense. It’s not the case, as some have for the airline, and she said, “Tell them we’re on speculated, that none of them were on the planes the Dulles/LAX route, Flight 77, and we’re being or that no Arabs got on the planes. I have talked hijacked.” Then she said, “And there are six of to ground crew, at least on the American Airlines them, mom.” Flight 77, who later recognized some of the pic- The official story is that there are five, but the tures of some of the people getting on that plane, sixth is consistent both with the number miss- at least. ing from the manifest and from the number of KT: But, of course, there are people who have names missing from a later, Pentagon-released come forward claiming the names actually be- list of bodies identified by a DNA search of all long to them. the remains. It was considered one of the most JJ: The problem is that we don’t really know exhaustive and thorough DNA searches, and that those are these people’s real identities, even they got 98% of the material from the bodies. But if the pictures match. The problem was that the that list also exactly matches the manifest list, airlines release manifests fairly quickly. They’re in terms of number of names, and it is six names required, by law, to release every name. short. None of the names on the DNA list match KT: They don’t release the passenger manifest the conspirators or the alleged hijackers, either.

GARRISON | VOLUME 01 ISSUE 01 | 23 KT: Given that, then why is the official word tigation. If those names actually match the list that there were only five hijackers? of suspects that we were given, then shouldn’t JJ: Well, who knows? Are they concealing an that mean that they would have been glad to list additional hijacker’s identity? Was Hani Hanjour them? The pressure had been put on, because not the pilot of the plane, being so incompetent? whatever those manifest names are, they do not Was there, in fact, a sixth person who was more match those 19, at least to some degree. competent and able to do the maneuvers in the Now, the second layer of the question is that plane? Most pilots told me you’d have to be a very we have seven people that have come forward experienced pilot to do this dogfight maneuver – some in Egypt, some in Saudi Arabia – most in around the Pentagon to come in so low, so fast. I Saudi Arabia – who have said, “That’s me! That’s don’t know. But the implication is that you’ve got my picture, my identification, my name.” In some yet one person on that plane who, to this day, has cases, they said that their identifications had been never been identified in any official or non-offi- stolen in the past. They said, “I was not on that cial version. plane. I was not in the United States.” Some have The manifests, to this day are also still short never been in the United States. Others were pi- all of these names. There’s been no subsequent lots, some of whom were trained in the United release of any more names. But since the airlines States. can be sued for not releasing names, then my Five of the seven names of these people who assumption is that pressure would have to have came forward said, “That’s somebody using my been put on them not to release. I can’t imagine ID. I wasn’t on the plane,” relate to a single com- that pressure, apparently from the government. pany in Saudi Arabia, Saudi Airlines. What this I don’t know where else it would come from, be- means then is that it may not be so surprising cause the corporate interest is to not get sued. that people involved in a criminal enterprise or So, from outside, I would assume it would be the a covert operation would use false identity. But government, the FBI, or somebody in the inves- if they’re using false identity either to hide their •••• Kenn Thomas (left) is the founder of Steamshovel Press, one of the leading ‘zines of its era. As its own subtitle proudly proclaimed, Steamshovel Press was “All Conspiracy, No Theory.” Thomas is also an accomplished author and editor in the field of parapolitics. Among the many works he has authored and co-authored, some of the most notable are The Octopus: Secret Government and the Death of Danny Casolaro (2005), NASA, Nazis & JFK: The Torbitt Document & The JFK Assassination (1996, with a forward by David Hatcher Dave Ratliffe, Childress), Parapolitics: Conspiracy in Contemporary John’s friend and a America (2006), JFK & UFO: Military-Industrial member of the board of Conspiracy from Maury Island to Dallas (2011), and directors at the Hidden History Trumpocalypse Now! (2017). Alongside the late Adam Center, wrote, “While there is now a Parfrey of Feral House, Thomas co-edited Secret and resurgent popular focus on and a concern with fascism, Suppressed II: Banned Ideas and Hidden History into the John began studying this process in the 1960s. He has 21st Century (2009). explained its meaning as being when the state and the In the foreward to Judge for Yourself, Thomas wrote corporations merge into one and how, ‘[i]t is an objective of John Judge (right), “Judge compiled data and ferreted economic and political reality that develops from the out information that made possible an intelligent final stages of monopoly capitalism.’” John Judge died of judgment about the oft covered-up facts of history.” complications from a stroke on April 15, 2014.

24 | GARRISON | APR / MAY 2019 | [email protected] identity or in a covert operation, the reason you it would be released to the public in a short time. would do it is more primarily to give a false spon- Then he said, “I misspoke, myself.” Then there sorship to the event. In other words, to use some- were reports in the U.S. and British press that the one else’s identity so that the wrong people would U.S. brought the evidence to the British. There be blamed. But the report of the 9/11 Commission was a statement, I think by Blair, but certainly by and the FBI’s statements don’t give any credit to some of the British authorities – I believe it was these people. Blair – where he said, “Well, it’s not enough to go I’ve talked to some individuals who, at second to court, but it’s enough to go to war.” hand, know people who know them and have Then the Brits and the U.S. invaded Afghan- spoken to them. The BBC interviewed them. istan. Of course, the invasion had been on the Their pictures were shown in some cases. books for months, if not longer, prior to the ac- KT: What does the 9/11 Commission Report say tual invasion, because the Taliban had stood in about them? That they’re simply not credible? the way of Unocal, an oil company in the United JJ: Nothing! The report doesn’t mention them States who wanted to develop a pipeline down to one degree or another. It doesn’t discount through northern Afghanistan to the Gulf, to the them. It just omits that they even exist or that the water, from the Caspian Sea basin. contradiction is there. Then the report proceeds KT: Didn’t Unocal drop plans to do that? to follow those 19 names, which we can’t match to JJ: Yes, Unocal backed off. Because the Taliban the manifest, which we can only rely on the FBI wouldn’t let it come through southern Afghan- for, to trace them back in istan, a secondary plan history to a cell in Hamburg to bypass them by going to working in Afghanistan across northern Afghan- and being trained to swear- istan through Pakistan to ing fealty to bin Laden, et the sea was then developed cetera. by Enron. Then, of course, But if you have a stolen Enron’s plan was dropped identity, you don’t know six when the company fold- months prior, then, wheth- ed. Now there is going to er you’re talking about the be, I think, one that goes actual person or you’re through Turkey out of the talking about the person Caspian Sea. who stole their identity and KT: This is Unocal? got on the plane with that JJ: No, but Unocal is in- identity. Or if you’re talking volved with another one about yet another person that is being planned to who, at that point, was using the stolen identity. go through Afghanistan. So, they’re back in the So, it’s impossible to track backwards just using picture now, along with Russian and French in- the name and tell yourself anything about how terests, as well. So, there’s been a lot of shifting the plot unfolded. around about who is going to get their hands on But by ignoring that and pretending that it’s the profits from this oil. But the Taliban balked at consistently the same person named in the Ham- the price, basically. Then, not being willing to of- burg cell and everything else, the whole thing fer more, Unocal sent their foreign relations rep- could be an intelligence legend from the begin- resentative to Congress in ’99 and testified that ning – dipping these people into the mujahideen, the Taliban group was basically standing in the into the cells, penetrating the cells, and using way of progress and our access to oil and had to their identities in order to link the event back to be removed. the sponsorship they wanted to show for it. The British and U.S. troops were fully staged The other thing that’s suspicious and doesn’t let for the invasion well before 9/11. In June and us fully identify the plot is the link to bin Laden. At July of 2001, Colin Powell visited the surrounding first, we were told that the entire story would be countries – Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan – and revealed and that those links would be revealed told the leadership there, according to foreign in a white paper. press, at least, that the United States was going to Colin Powell, secretary of state then, said that militarily intervene in Afghanistan in mid-Octo-

GARRISON | VOLUME 01 ISSUE 01 | 25 The Taliban was one of a number of foreign groups and countries that gave the United States preliminary warnings that an attack was “ imminent in the United States. ber, and then take out” the Taliban. rity purposes. Then the 9/11 Commission asked if Then 9/11 happens and becomes the pretext they could talk to their handlers and interroga- and the context under which we’re going to at- tors, and they were rebuffed in that, as well. So, tack Afghanistan because it’s sheltering bin Lad- the 9/11 Commission had to rely solely on redact- en. In fact, the Taliban was one of a number of for- ed reports that were given of their testimony, tak- eign groups and countries that gave the United en by their interrogators. “ States preliminary warnings that an attack was We, of course, don’t know, number one, wheth- imminent in the United States. er these people are yet alive or dead. We don’t KT: Is that so? know if they gave testimony under torture. And JJ: Yes. That’s one of the sources. And when we don’t know if they gave testimony at all. 9/11 happened, the Taliban offered three times to These are the only three sources that link the 19 turn bin Laden over to an independent, interna- suspects to bin Laden. So, the whole case rests on tional tribunal, like a Nuremberg trial, for crimes three prison snitches that no one can interview. against humanity… to turn him over as a possible KT: They are supposedly the masterminds of suspect for interrogation to such a tribunal. The the whole 9/11 plot, but their names are nowhere United States response was, “We don’t negotiate near as recognizable as Osama bin Laden’s. How with terrorists.” is it that the 9/11 Commission didn’t have the au- They invaded Afghanistan, they failed to cap- thority to talk to them? “ture bin Laden – or did they capture and kill him JJ: They were asking the executive branch in but we just don’t know it? Who knows? But at the White House. The White House obstructed least they say they failed to capture him, and his- their investigation from the start. First, they didn’t tory moves that notch forward and on to the war want a panel. Then, when they got the panel, in Iraq, which was also on the books before 9/11. they didn’t want them to see anything. Like Tim But the whole link to bin Laden rests on the of- Roemer, who had sat on the House intelligence ficial claims of the State Department, which nev- and Senate intelligence joint committee that er, to this day, has produced the evidence to the made a report. That report was confiscated and American public. And the evidence produced by vetted for a very long time by the White House. the 9/11 Commission relies on the testimony of One of the commissioners, Max Cleland, quit the three individuals: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who Commission saying it was a whitewash and got is considered the mastermind of the plot, Ramzi appointed by the Bush administration to a job at Yousef, and Ramzi bin al-Shibh. And all three of the Export/Import Bank. Near the time he was these guys are captured at different points. leaving, when that report finally did come out, he So, these three people have been in a status of said that the White House had intentionally de- having been arrested and concealed. Sort of like layed the report to not have it come out prior to going to Guantanamo. But they’re in undisclosed the election. locations. This has lasted years now, in the case The report was damning, but Tim Roemer, who of some of them. They have never been charged had sat in on the hearings – he was one of the com- with anything, although publicly they are said to missioners – said he was not allowed to see the be the masterminds or the plotters behind 9/11. transcripts of his own committee hearings that he They have never been brought into a military tri- sat in on. They were closed hearings, but he was bunal or an open court in the United States. They in them. But when he asked the White House to are held incommunicado to the rest of us. see the transcripts of them, and get the evidence, When the 9/11 Commission attempted to inter- they were denying it, even to him, much less to view them, they were rebuffed for national secu- the rest of them.

26 | GARRISON | APR / MAY 2019 | [email protected] So, they were fighting at all different levels, They’ve heard from Sandy Berger that things are whether they could get certain people to testify. imminent, that this is a big danger from the time When they finally conceded to allow Condoleez- they came into office. za Rice to testify, the agreement was that no oth- That was the point at which Bush took the long er member of the Bush administration’s execu- vacation. He went golfing, and he was out of the tive staff could be asked to testify after she did. White House for a long time after getting the re- That was one of the conditions. Other conditions port that bin Laden was close to doing something. were that Bush and Cheney testify not under But the Commission had to fight tooth and nail oath, not in public. One person was chosen to take to see that, and then only other persons were al- the notes, Phillip Zelikow, the executive director lowed to see certain parts of the full report all the of the 9/11 Commission, and the notes had to be days’ briefings… it is just one layer of obstruction vetted before they were given back, again, to the after another. same people who were sitting in the room listen- So, to this day we don’t know the actual iden- ing. In some cases, certain people were chosen tities of all the people that got on the planes, or to see certain parts of the record, and only they affected the plot, whatever the plot was. We don’t could see it and they could only see it in a locked know what they did on the plane. We don’t know room. They couldn’t take it with them and they which ones were pilots or not pilots. And when couldn’t copy it. In some cases, I think they were we go into the background of the 19 named peo- allowed to make notes, but then the notes had ple here in the United States, at least where peo- to be vetted. It was this insane level of security ple like Daniel Hopsicker and other researchers around all these things. And it was only over time have tracked them inside the United States and that certain documents like the presidential daily talked to people that know them, you’re finding briefing that’s given to the president, for August people that don’t appear to be very devout Mus- 6th of 2001, prior to the attack, became available, lims. They’re college educated, they’re doing though the title of it was concealed in their public drugs, drinking … . statements. KT: Running around with hookers … The title was that bin Laden would attack not JJ: Yes, sleeping around. They don’t follow a just the United States but inside the United States, pattern of people who are fanatics, who are kill- that the attack was imminent, and that it might ing themselves for a religious reason. You also involve hijackings. The response to that report, find instances where it was obvious that the FBI which was requested, apparently, by Bush, was and CIA were stumbling over them, but in some that they give him a report on the imminence of cases when they tried to do anything about it, the attack after he’s heard from Richard Clarke. they were blocked.

GARRISON | VOLUME 01 ISSUE 01 | 27 And so without knowing their real identi- as a base of operations in the Middle East, into the ties, we may just have a criminal enterprise that surrounding sands. stole some IDs, concealing itself, or we may have KT: So, are you suggesting that they are trying an intelligence operation that, as George Tenet to pin this on the Saudis? said the first week after 9/11, is a sophisticated, JJ: Well, that might be one read, that the iden- state-level covert operation. That’s still the way tities that are given seem to lead to Saudi Arabia. I’m analyzing it. If so, then it’s consistent with that Remember, when the joint inquiry report came kind of an operation – to create a legend, a false out, the intelligence committees – Porter Goss and story, a false sponsorship. And even with the peo- Bob Graham’s report – 28 pages were completely ple you are using, if you are using them as nega- redacted and the statement that they made was tive assets, you can have what’s called a false-flag that the pages referred to countries – plural – that operation where you have them thinking that were involved in the 9/11 plot. And Graham con- you are working on behalf of a particular cause tinually hinted and winked at the idea that Saudi or country or interest when, in fact, thy are being Arabia was one of them without… he kept saying, manipulated by the intelligence groups. “I can’t say so or I’ll go to jail,” or something. But KT: What does it take to track it from that an- he clearly was indicating that Saudi Arabia was gle? What other kinds of research can you do? one of these countries. I tried to pin him down on JJ: What you do, then, is you start to take the whether Pakistan was one of these countries, be- suspects, in part, in detail, which is really the way cause we have a link to Pakistani intelligence— the Kennedy assassination was solved, I think. A KT: The ISI. lot of people focus on the gunmen, but the gunmen JJ: Right, the ISI, their military intelligence. The were cut-outs and wouldn’t lead you anywhere, head of ISI at the time of 9/11, General Mahmud even if you could find out their real identities or Ahmed, reportedly, according to the Times of how many there were. I think they are hirelings India (and also The Wall Street Journal confirm- that are meant not to lead you back to the actual ing it), transferred $100,000 to Mohamed Atta in sponsorship. So what bore fruit in the Kennedy Sarasota, Florida, in August of 2002, right before assassination, in my view, was to research the pat- the attack. The carrier for this money was al- sy, the named suspect, the alleged killer. So, when legedly Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, who has his you do Oswald, a whole plethora of stuff opens up own set of ties to being involved in a lot of terror- about his intelligence ties and the legend that’s ist operations, but also being involved with Brit- created about him: a false Oswald in Mexico City ish intelligence. Some hint that he was involved two weeks before the assassination, going to the with U.S. intelligence, as well. So, we don’t really Russian embassy and the Cuban embassy, and know whose side this guy is playing on. trying to get into Cuba, basically to make a link Then, he is brought up under charges of kill- to Castro of an Oswald two weeks before ing The Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel he’s going to be set up as the patsy in the Pearl, although Pearl’s wife was told by killing operation. the Pakistani state authorities – not the KT: So, the named suspects in 9/11 are ISI but the actual state authorities under patsies, then? Musharraf and the police forces – that JJ: I would say that would be the parallel, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed killed her that you see them as patsies, even if they are husband, not Saeed Sheikh. But Sheikh is operational patsies. Even if they are actually the one who has been convicted of doing carrying out the crime, unlike Oswald. so. KT: But they are identified as Saudis … KT: The story that Pearl was pur- JJ: Fifteen of them were from suing when he died was tracking Saudi Arabia. this payoff, right? KT: And, in fact, the war in Af- JJ: Well, that’s at least what the ghanistan, in order to create the wife hints at. She says that he was pipeline you were discussing, is looking into this, because The something that works against U.S. Wall Street Journal is the only U.S. dependency on Saudi oil. source that covered the transfer JJ: Yes, and the U.S. is also mov- of the funds. He’s a Wall Street ing militarily out of Saudi Arabia DANIEL PEARL Journal reporter over there, and

28 | GARRISON | APR / MAY 2019 | [email protected] he was getting close to the circles around Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, so he was getting into the middle of the plot. Then he’s murdered. But the indication from his wife is that he was working on material that might have linked U.S. intelligence to some of the plotting. KT: Some of the ISI plotting. JJ: Yes. And the other link in that is that this general that actually affected the transfer – and this was, in fact, reported early on— KT: He had to resign over it. JJ: Yes, but this was also the first sort of “smoking gun” that the FBI said they were following in the case. They made public LT. GEN. MAHMUD AHMED MOHAMED ATTA statements about it and said that they were track- uting the CIA funds, but he’s also the sort of men- ing this money that was sent to Mohamed Atta. tor to Osama bin Laden. And bin Laden, of course, It’s also interesting, I think, that Mohamed Atta in is adding his own funds, because he comes from Sarasota was renting a room from someone who a very rich Saudi construction family that did a had ties to the Contra-gate operation. Look this great deal of CIA contracting and military con- up, Hopsicker’s book. This is an important story tracting that, in fact, built the caves in Afghani- because, then, General Ahmed then came to the stan that were used for the mujahideen to hide United States on September 4th – the guy who in. Later, we’re told that bin Laden was in these supposedly was the source of this transfer to Atta caves, running the operations of al Qaeda against and the head of Pakistani military intelligence. the United States. This is also important because those were So, here comes the current head of the Paki- the CIA funds that were sent to the mujahideen stani ISI to the United States on September 4th, resistance as part of the large covert operation after having, in August, given money to Moham- to draw the Soviet Union into the struggle in Af- med Atta. And he meets with George Tenet at the ghanistan and then help collapse the Soviet Union CIA, his counterpart. He meets with Colin Pow- by putting them into a quagmire. It was an idea ell and Richard Armitage after 9/11 at the State that came from Zbigniew Brzezinski and Jimmy Department, and on the day off 9/11, he’s having Carter but was basically inherited and carried breakfast with Porter Goss and Bob Graham, out by Reagan and Bush administrations through who are two people who later write the joint in- William Casey as the largest covert operation in telligence report on 9/11 and the intelligence “fail- history in terms of cost – over $3 billion from the ure” – which is how 9/11 is all posed. U.S. and another $3 billion from the Saudis. So, he’s in with all those people, and then he The funding was Saudi royal family and Sau- comes back to Pakistan and his role is exposed. di intelligence through BCCI, the Bank of Credit He is basically forced to resign. His head rolls, be- and Commerce International, which, itself, was cause he’s too close to bin Laden and because he a nest of U.S. covert operations abroad and drug transferred this money to Atta. money. It was also being funded through the opi- KT: A lot of the ISI were sympathetic toward um money in Afghanistan, which was 85-90% of bin Laden and, in fact, have tried to assassinate the world’s opium. So, it was funding things like Musharraf twice now. And there’s still a big fear the Kosovo Liberation Army through the CIA that they might stage a coup. later, but at this time, it was funding the mujahi- JJ: Yes, there’s an apparent split between some deen. Then the CIA was sending a similar amount ISI elements and the state government. It oper- of money, and its conduit was the Pakistani ISI. ates kind of the same way our intelligence doesn’t Through that conduit, the mujahideen would be operate directly with the government – and trained in Pakistan and sent up there. sometimes in opposition to it. One of the major benefactors of that conduit There’s a large Muslim community in Paki- of money was Mr. Hekmatyar. What’s important stan and elements of this international Islamist about him is that he’s not only taking and distrib- terrorism are still being trained there. And these

GARRISON | VOLUME 01 ISSUE 01 | 29 tribal areas are so contentious. So, yeah, there that don’t want to either expose the informant, or have been attempts to kill Musharraf. But this whatever, and it ends up with them going ahead particular guy was Musharraf’s pick. He has and facilitating the crime. been responsible, as a military man, for bringing Or maybe you want a provocateur situation Musharraf into power and staging the coup that where, like in COINTELPRO, they would send FBI put Musharraf in. So, part of his reward was being penetrators into a group that wasn’t otherwise put into this position. But we’re not clear about violent and say, “Oh, I have all these skills. I know what role Pakistan played then or still plays to how to get into these buildings. I know how to this day in terms of this funding, or if there is on- bomb. I can help you blow it up.” They then, actu- going funding and training of terrorists. ally, facilitate and encourage a crime. The point is that you’ve got people from Paki- KT: Entrapment. stani ISI, which had relations right up until that, JJ: Yes, to entrap people who previously obviously, with the American CIA, funneling wouldn’t have even thought of doing such a money into the alleged perpetrators of this plot. crime. So, you don’t know until you get down to It doesn’t have to mean that the whole thing was that level, and that’s certainly not the level of the a creation of American intelligence. Nor does it testimony or the evidence that the 9/11 Commis- have to mean that the whole thing was a blow- sion sought. But those elements are still, to me, up back against intelligence, where they created a in the air. bin Laden who then turned and bit the hand that The other major paradigm problem with the fed him. way you’re looking at 9/11 is that it’s been defined I think an alternate explanation might be that from the beginning as a failure of intelligence – a this doesn’t involve the whole of the U.S. govern- failure of cooperation between the FBI and CIA. It ment intelligence, but involves elements within was a failure of the intelligence agencies to have military intelligence, or DIA, operating abroad. enough human intelligence sources … all these Then the CIA assets may be used as positive as- different failures. And, of course, the response sets to attack the Soviet Union and then turned to the intelligence failure has not been to hold as negative assets who are then attacking the anybody accountable for that failure or to hold United States and are manipulated or penetrated anybody accountable for bad oversight on that in that role, either to stop them or to limit what failure, but, in fact, to reward all those people who they’re doing … or to use them. were involved in the failure and to further fund The CIA does not only penetrate groups that and buttress these intelligence agencies and give would carry out the positive thing they want them an expanded level of powers. done. They’ll also penetrate enemy groups. So did • the FBI. The 1993 bombing of the Twin Towers … NOTE: Part two of the Kenn Thomas interview it’s now known from trial testimony that that en- with John Judge will appear in our next issue. tire operation was penetrated right to the heart We would like to thank Marilyn Tenenoff, Dave by an FBI informant who told the FBI, warned the Ratcliffe, Joseph Green, and Kenn Thomas for the FBI, that they were planning a bomb to go into use of this interview. the building with. The FBI even fed information to them, through this informant, of where the A Special Announcement from most efficacious place to plant the bomb would be, to make the damage happen. Then, they as- Ratical.org sured this informant that, at the last minute, they Dave Ratcliffe of Ratical. would substitute a harmless powder so that the org has announced that he is bomb would never go off. Realizing that it was digitizing Jim Garrison’s 1970 imminent, he asked, “Don’t you want to come in book, A Heritage of Stone. For and raid or stop it?” And they said. “No, don’t wor- more on this project, a section ry about it.” Then, the plot went through and the on John Judge, research on bomb did go off in the building. indigenous populations, and But the FBI was right in the middle of it, even a multitude of reasons why at that time. So, you have these conflicting loy- nuclear energy is destructive alties where you’re penetrating to find out what for the future, visit Ratical. they’re doing, but then there are other elements Ratical.org/HoS

30 | GARRISON | APR / MAY 2019 | [email protected] ...what we do not see because of our assumptions and mis-education ...what we cannot see because of our paradigms and lack of counter-narratives ...what we are not allowed to see by the National Security State

That is Hidden History.

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GARRISON | VOLUME 01 ISSUE 01 | 31 NOTES FROM THE PROFESSOR The Personnel File of William Harvey By Prof. David Denton as they went after political leaders like Castro, who they brazenly viewed as mere “targets.” ike many of the The document gives a chronological account of JFK files released the agency’s relationship with Roselli, even re- in October of 2017, porting that, ironically, the famous mobster was William Harvey’s eventually jailed in 1968 for cheating people out Lfiles contain many redac- of “$400,000 in a rigged gin rummy game.” tions, but what remains is Roselli has long been a mysterious character very intriguing. Harvey regarding the JFK assassination. Some put him has long been considered on the grassy knoll as one of the shooters. Tosh by many researchers Plumlee, a pilot who flew operations for the CIA one of the most likely characters to have partici- and other agencies, suggested that Roselli was pated in the Kennedy murder, and his file reveals in Dealey Plaza as part of an abort team to stop a man with the perfect profile of someone capa- the assassination. Roselli ended up dead, found ble of participating in and carrying out an assas- cut up in an oil drum floating in the Gulf of Mexi- sination plot. He’s described in the file as some- co before he was able to testify before the House one willing to be involved in “highly sensitive” Select Committee in 1976. and “extremely political” operations. He comes However, what may be the most telling infor- across as a dangerous, secretive individual, will- mation in the Roselli document is its reference ing to go rogue. He “moved into positions stron- to Harvey. The agency seems to be delivering a ger than his superior officers” and was “tenacious complete account about its connection to Rosel- and aggressive in the pursuit of his point of view.” li until it came time to talk about his relationship He “had at his disposal a coterie of officers” loyal with Harvey. It states: “In May 1962, Mr. William to him, referred to as “Harvey men.” Harvey took over as Case Officer, and it is not A clear example of all this occurred at the known by this office whether Roselli was used height of the Cuban Missile Crisis when, in a clear operationally from that point on.” Did the agen- act of insubordination, Harvey didn’t bother to cy truly not know what Harvey and Roselli were wait for the invasion orders that never came up to after May 1962, or were they unwilling to from the Kennedys and sent in his team of Cuban put it on paper? Either way, it doesn’t look good. exiles to create havoc in Castro’s Cuba. Ed Lans- After the Cuban debacle, Harvey was as- dale, who oversaw Operation Mongoose, con- signed (exiled?) to be station chief in Rome. This fronted Harvey about this, accusing him of acting allowed him to make connections with Corsican without Lansdale’s knowledge. E. Howard Hunt mobsters. Having been given the task of setting suggested in his final assertions that he refused up an “executive action capability” within the to take on any significant role in the plot against CIA by Richard Bissell in 1961, it seems probable Kennedy because an “alcoholic psycho” like Har- that Harvey could have recruited foreign assas- vey was involved in it. sins from that group. An internal memo describing the relationship In an interview with the House Select Commit- between the CIA and mobster John Roselli gives tee in 1976 shortly before his death, Harvey could us more insight into Harvey. It goes into great de- be described as evasive, vague, and at times tail about how Robert Maheu, an agency go-be- conveniently experiencing a loss of memory. He tween, contacted Roselli in an attempt to recruit tried to imply that the executive action program him to be a liaison between the mafia and the may have originated from the White House. Of CIA. Among other things, it also demonstrated particular note was his attempt to downplay the the agency’s amoral behavior and attitude in the significance of the mysterious asset code named pursuit of their goals. The CIA indicated a will- QJWIN. Some researchers have long suspected ingness to participate in “gangster-type actions” this figure as being a potential foreign assassin

32 | GARRISON | APR / MAY 2019 | [email protected] scribes a center used for operations involved in recruitment, interrogation, and the collection of intelligence. Even though the location is supposed to be redacted, it can be easily read through the markings that the site was located in Madrid, giving someone like Harvey a center to operate out of. There is no doubt he held contempt for the Kennedy brothers, especially Bobby. In a 1999 interview, Harvey’s widow suggested “they were really scum” and that her husband and Bobby were “pure enemies.” In light of the new information which has come forth associated with Har- vey, it becomes even more difficult to ignore the means, motive, and opportunity he possessed in relation to his potential role in the JFK murder. •

Professor David Denton has been a history professor at Ol- ney Central College in Illinois since 1990. Denton directed an oral history project exploring the Vietnam War, 25 years later. Denton became interested in the JFK assassination in the late 1980s and for the last decade has attended historical sympo- siums on the subject in Dallas, Texas. In 2001, he began teaching WILLIAM KING “BILL” HARVEY a course on political assassinations of the 1960s, which explores the deaths of President Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and Martin involved in JFK’s murder. Harvey claimed he was Luther King Jr. Denton holds both a bachelor’s and a master’s uncertain as to QJWIN’s potential involvement in degree from Eastern Illinois University. He was the 1999 recip- the assassination of Lumumba and would claim ient of the OCC Alumnus Award. Denton and researcher Ed Tatro operate the JFK Historical Group (JFKHistorical.com). that “… QJWIN was never involved in any way in the Castro operation – nor, for example, ever in Now Available from the United States … .” This claim seems dubious because in his own bills there are records of a Ratical.org plane trip ticket from Miami to Chicago charged to QJWIN. When pressed by interviewers about recruiting potential assassins as assets, he down- played the possibility and brashly stated “… the one sure way to do it [assassinate someone], was to simply appoint a single senior officer to do everything: to run the operation, kill the person, bury the body, and tell no one.” It’s hard to say if Harvey is being deceptive in this statement or if there are deeper implications in his boldness. In truth, Harvey was in a perfect position to participate in a plot against JFK. He had been a part of Operation Mongoose, which allowed him to develop a loyal following among the most extreme Cuban exiles. His relationship to Roselli, whom he referred to as a “patriot,” gave him a connection to the mafia in the United States, and his time as a station chief in Rome allowed him to History Will Not Absolve Us by Martin Schotz recruit unsavory characters abroad. Hardcover Copies Available for $10 A recently released document may give more insight into Harvey’s foreign operation. It de- Ratical.org/HWNAUbook

GARRISON | VOLUME 01 ISSUE 01 | 33 CENTER FOR DEEP POLITICAL RESEARCH

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34 | GARRISON | APR / MAY 2019 | [email protected] hen Jeff Bezos bought The Washington Post in 2013, he acquired a newspaper with a long and proud legacy. The crown jewel in that legacy is, of W course, the Post’s 1972-3 coverage of the Watergate affair, which saw a pair of “plucky” cub-reporters and their “crusty” editor take on and destroy the evil Sauron in the White House. It was a grand story and an even better film, but Bezos should know that the diamond he bought is only paste. And this, because the orthodox narrative of the Watergate affair, as propounded by the Post, is fake history. That President Nixon and several of his retinue were unscrupulous (and even dangerous) is a matter of fact, and the Post deserves the accolades it receives for helping to document that. But that record is at best a selective one that deliberately obfuscates far more than it reveals. Which is, in essence, that the CIA’s interest in a call-girl operation facilitated by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) was at the very heart of the affair, and that the Post was – and continues to be – complicit and proactive in hiding this from the public. False narratives of this kind strike me as dangerous and lead me (and so many others) to wonder about the assassinations of the 1960s and other events. That is, of course, a risky avocation inasmuch as those who go looking for the truth are inevitably slandered as “conspiracy theorists” and maliciously compared to “Holocaust deniers.” Even so, it strikes me as something of a public service, for how can a country whose history is a tissue of lies and half-truths prevail? Who will fight for it? What follows, then, is my account of a legal skirmish in which I found myself testifying on behalf of a bad man who, however inconveniently, dared to tell the truth. His name is Gordon Liddy. — Jim Hougan March 2019

GARRISON | VOLUME 01 ISSUE 01 | 35 Hougan, Liddy, the Post & Watergate By Jim Hougan deserve the protections given to free speech. The early 30 years after the Watergate ar- judge agreed with the jury’s decision, dismissing rests, an astonishing editorial appeared the suit with the assertion that “no ‘reasonable in The Washington Post, attacking a Bal- jury’ could have found in favor of the plaintiff,” N timore jury for having the temerity to Maxie Wells.1 think for itself. While the Post did not urge that Aghast at the decision, the Post thundered: the guilty parties should be burned at the stake, it was clear from the newspaper’s tenor that a bon- Courts are a capricious venue for argu- fire would not be entirely out of order. ments about history. Sometimes, as when a At issue was the jury’s 7-2 decision in a defama- British court last year resoundingly rejected tion case brought by a woman named Ida “Max- the Holocaust denial of ‘historian’ David Ir- ie” Wells. Instigated by John Dean’s attorneys in ving, litigation can help protect established history from those who would maliciously re- a related matter, the suit accused former White write it. But conspiracy theorizing generally is House spy G. Gordon Liddy of slandering Wells better addressed in the public arena by rigor- during the Q-and-A portion of a speech he’d giv- ous confrontation with facts. That’s true both en at James Madison University. In the judgment out of respect for freedom of speech—even of the jurors, Liddy’s revisionist view of the Water- wrong-headed speech—and because histori- gate break-in, substantially informed by a book cal truth does not always fare so well in court. that I’d written, was sufficiently plausible as to A jury in Tennessee in 1999 embraced the loo-

36 | GARRISON | APR / MAY 2019 | [email protected] niest of conspiracy theories concerning the as- seemed pompous and strangely unprepared – sassination of Martin Luther King Jr. And this characteristics he shared with Wells’s own attor- week, in a federal court in Baltimore, the com- ney, David Dorsen (himself a former deputy of monly understood and well-founded history of Dash’s). After listening to the witnesses for both the Watergate scandal took a hit as well. sides, the jury again returned a verdict in Liddy’s The forum was the defamation case of G. behalf. This time, it was unanimous. Gordon Liddy… . Mr. Liddy has argued that the There were no further appeals, and no more burglary was not an attempt to collect political editorials. The Post buried the story on an in- intelligence on President Nixon’s enemies, but side-page of the Metro section and turned its at- an effort masterminded by then-White House tention to other matters. counsel John Dean to steal pictures of prostitutes—including Mr. Dean’s then-girlfriend and But the “established history” of the Watergate current wife—from the desk of a secretary at affair had suffered a grievous blow. And this, be- the Democratic headquarters. The secretary cause one jury after another did what the Post … is now a community college teacher in Loui- prescribed, but which the Post itself has never siana and was understandably offended by the done in 30 years: They confronted the facts in a implication that she was somehow involved in rigorous way. a call-girl ring. She sued Mr. Liddy, and the battle has dragged on for four years. The Key to the Watergate Break-In The jury failed to reach a unanimous verdict, but it split overwhelmingly in favor of One of the more crucial facts that the jury was Mr. Liddy; the majority of jurors asked to consider was a key that felt that Ms. Wells’s lawyers had one of the arresting officers, failed to prove his theory wrong. One jury after Carl Shoffler, took from Eugenio They found this in spite of the fact that Mr. Liddy relies, for his another did what Martinez, one of the Watergate theory, on a disbarred attorney the Post prescribed, burglars. As physical evidence with a history of mental illness. obtained at the scene, it was lit- The call-girl theory “is possi- but which the Post erally “the key to the break-in.” ble,” one juror (said) … . “It sure itself had never done And, as the FBI determined, it un- makes me more curious.” “We’ll in 30 years: They locked the desk of Maxie Wells. never know” what happened, The issue – why did they pick said another. confronted the facts in the DNC as a target? – has been The danger of such outcomes debated for decades, though one as this one is that this sort of a rigorous way. might not know it by reading The thinking spreads. For whether or not Mr. Liddy’s comments legally defamed Washington Post. Most accounts Ms. Wells, we do know what happened at Wa- of the affair suppose that the break-ins (burglars tergate—and it had nothing to do with prosti- gained access to the DNC on two occasions, once tutes.2 at the end of May 1972 and again on June 17th) were mounted to obtain “political intelligence.” The Post’s alarm at “this sort of thinking” was James McCord, the former CIA officer who led compounded more than a year later, when the “the Cubans” into the Watergate office building, verdict was overturned on appeal. A new trial told the Senate that DNC Chairman Larry O’Brien was ordered. was the target. That’s why he, McCord, installed a room-bug in O’Brien’s office. At least, that’s what Wells v. Liddy Redux McCord said. But E. Howard Hunt and his Cuban cohort of- In Wells v. Liddy redux, Wells sought to bolster fered an entirely different reason for the break-in. her case with the testimony of Sam Dash, chief According to them, they were sent into the DNC counsel of the Senate Select Committee on Pres- to find evidence of illegal campaign contributions 3 idential Campaign Activities in 1973. Having led from Fidel Castro. the Senate’s investigation of the Watergate af- In reality, neither explanation is supported fair, Dash ought to have been an impressive wit- by the evidence. If the burglars were looking for ness. But under cross-examination from Liddy’s financial data, they certainly chose some strange attorneys, John Williams and Kerrie Hook, Dash places to search. DNC Treasurer Robert Strauss’s

GARRISON | VOLUME 01 ISSUE 01 | 37 office was untouched, as were the offices of had Maxie Wells been more candid in her execu- the DNC’s Comptroller. As for the bug in Larry tive session testimony before the Watergate Com- O’Brien’s office, none was ever found – despite mittee. Instead, she neglected to mention that the repeated and rather desperate searches by the FBI had questioned her about the key to her desk FBI and the telephone company. and the circumstances under which the key had Not that the bug would have worked, in any been found. According to Howard Liebengood, case. O’Brien’s office was part of an interior suite who served as the committee’s minority counsel, at the DNC and, as such, it was shielded from Mc- the committee’s investigation might have taken a Cord’s “listening post” in the Howard Johnson’s dramatic turn if the committee had learned of the motel across the street from the Watergate office key’s existence and of Wells’s interview with the building. Moreover, and as Liddy himself pointed FBI. out, the supposed subject of the surveillance – Lar- But it did not. ry O’Brien – wasn’t even in Washington. Nor was The Watergate Committee lacked direct ac- he expected to return anytime soon. More than cess to the FBI’s investigative files and so knew a month before the break-in, the DNC’s chairman nothing about such topics as the key to Maxie had moved to Florida, where the Democratic Wells’s desk or the Bureau’s inability to find any Convention was to be held. bugging devices inside the DNC. The exception to Not that anyone cared. In 1973, the burglars’ mo- this was the single day that Sam Dash was permit- tives weren’t of much interest to anyone. They’d ted to look at the files. Years after the hearings had pleaded guilty, and their trial was over. The story ended, the FBI’s Watergate file was made public had moved on. Now the task of the Senate Water- by this author. Using the Freedom of Information gate Committee was to establish responsibility Act, I was able to obtain the release of more than for the break-ins and to deconstruct the cover-up. 30,000 pages of investigative files, memoranda Or to put it another way, with the burglars con- and air-tels that Senator Sam Ervin’s committee victed, it was now time to put the administration had never seen. on trial. Accordingly, the committee’s attention The issue of the burglary’s purpose was even was focused on higher-ups in the Nixon White raised in Blind Ambition, the John Dean mem- House and, in particular, the Oval Office. Every- oir ghost-written by the well-regarded historian, thing else – like the purpose of the break-in – was Taylor Branch. In that book, we’re told that Dean made to seem irrelevant. raised the issue with Charles Colson in 1974, when Things might have been different, of course, both of them were doing time in federal prison. •••• Of the men assembled on E. Howard Hunt’s Miami team, all had at one time done work for the CIA. Eugenio Martinez was still employed by the CIA and regailed his case officer with tales of his adventures with the Plumbers. Martinez was one of the five burglars arrested in the second Watergate break-in of June 17, 1972. Before acending to the sixth floor DNC offices at the Watergate, James McCord had told Martinez that the basement doors were still taped. They weren’t. At 1:47 a.m., security guard Frank Wills called the police. The dispatcher called at 1:52 a.m. and an unmarked car, conveniently parked a block-and-a-half away, responded. Officer Carl Shoffler and two colleagues entered the Watergate and, minutes later, located the burglars in the sixth floor offices of the Democratic National Committee. The five well-dressed burglars are not in or near the office of Larry O’ Brien, however. They have set up cameras on the desk of secretary Ida “Maxie” Wells. As Shoffler and the other officers line up the burglars for a proper search, Martinez dangerously made a move inside of his coat pocket. Shoffler took Martinez to the ground and demanded that he not move. Inside the breast pocket of the jacket, Shoffler found a notebook with a key taped to it. Later, the FBI will conclude that the key held by Eugenio Martinez belonged to the desk of Ida “Maxie” Wells. For decades, the CIA would contend that the Agency had cut ties with Martinez at least two years before the break-in. In August 2016, however, Judicial Watch obtained CIA documents, through a FOIA request, that would prove that Martinez was a paid asset of the CIA at the time of the June 1972 break-in. President Ronald Reagan pardoned Martinez in 1983. Today, Eugenio Martinez is 96 years old and lives in Miami.

38 | GARRISON | APR / MAY 2019 | [email protected] “Chuck, why do you figure Liddy bugged the any and all evidence on the matter, links between DNC instead of the Democratic candidates?” call girls and the DNC—and, therefore, between Dean asked Colson. “It doesn’t make much call girls and the Watergate affair—have been ru- sense. I sat in (Atty. Gen. John) Mitchell’s office mored or alleged for years. The connection first when Liddy gave us his show, and he only surfaced in a book by a Pulitzer Prize-winning mentioned Larry O’Brien in passing as a target … .” New York Times reporter J. Anthony Lukas. Ac- “It looks suspicious to me,” Dean continued. cording to Lukas, secretaries at the DNC used a “(I)t’s incredible. Millions of dollars have been telephone in the office of Wells’s boss, Spencer spent investigating Watergate. A president Oliver Jr., to make private calls. They did this be- has been forced out of office. Dozens of lives cause Oliver’s office was often empty—he trav- have been ruined. We’re sitting in the can. And eled a lot—and his telephone was thought to be still nobody can explain why they bugged the among the most private in the Democrats’ head- place to begin with.”4 quarters.6 (In fact, Oliver had two phones, one of which was a private line that did not go through Though Dean subsequently repudiated his own the DNC switchboard.) 5 memoir, the anecdote makes a good point. The “They would say, ‘We can talk; I’m on Spencer Watergate affair can only remain a mystery so Oliver’s phone,’ ” Lukas wrote. Quoting Alfred long as its purpose remains hidden. Baldwin, who eavesdropped on these conver- Fortunately, we know today what the Senate sations at the direction of James McCord, Lukas Watergate Committee did not: that Detective reported that “Some of the conversations were Shoffler wrested the key from ‘explicitly intimate.’ ” Baldwin one of the burglars. (According was even more specific in a to Shoffler, Eugenio Martinez deposition that he later gave. was so determined that the key According to the former FBI should not be found, he attempt- agent, many of the telephone ed to get rid of it and may even conversations involved dinner have tried to swallow it.) As arrangements with “sex to fol- much as a confession, that key low.” And while he never heard is prima facie evidence of the “prices” being discussed, Bald- break-in’s purpose. Clearly, the win testified, he guessed that burglars were after the contents “eight out of ten” people would of whatever it was that the key have thought the calls involved unlocked. prostitution.7 The FBI seems to have under- But he himself did not. As a stood this because the Bureau’s EUGENIO MARTINEZ former FBI agent, Baldwin knew agents went from office to of- that for prostitution to occur, fice after the arrests, trying the key on every there has to be a promise of money. But money desk until they found the one that it fit. This was was never discussed, he said, or at least not in Maxie Wells’s desk, and Shoffler, for one, wasn’t his hearing. And since McCord told him that he surprised. When he took the key from Marti- was eavesdropping on telephone conversations nez, Shoffler said, photographic equipment was emanating from the DNC, Baldwin assumed that clamped to the top of that same desk. the women must be amateurs. As incredible as it But what was in it? What did the burglars hope seems, it did not occur to him that McCord might to find? have lied to him about the bug’s location. To Bald- It was precisely this question that was so em- win, it was entirely plausible, or at least possible, barrassing to Wells. In her suit against Liddy, she that one secretary after another would go to a sought to suppress discussion of the key because, private telephone to engage her boyfriend in a she insisted, it unfairly implicated her in allega- conversation that was “extremely personal, inti- tions about a call-girl ring. mate, and potentially embarrassing.”8 A call-girl ring? The more sophisticated Anthony Lukas was skeptical of the idea. As he reported, “So spicy The Call-Girl Ring were some of the conversations on the phone that Well, yes. Although the Post prefers to ignore they have given rise to unconfirmed reports that

GARRISON | VOLUME 01 ISSUE 01 | 39 the telephone was being used for some sort of call-girl service catering to congressmen and other prominent Washingtonians.”9 The same rumors were overheard by others, including the DNC’s Robert Strauss. In a 1996 deposition, Strauss testified that he recalled stories about “some of the state chairmen (who) would come into (Oliver’s) office and use the phone to make dates … .” Strauss added that “in connection Private eye Lou Russell with the use of the tele- (above) and D.C. attorney phones, some of the Phillip Bailley (right) calls … could have been about the relationship between call girls and the embarrassing to some of the people who made DNC was a private eye named Lou Russell. A for- them.” mer FBI agent, Russell had gone on to become The DNC’s treasurer was even more specific in chief investigator for the House Committee on an interview with then-Fox News correspondent Un-American Activities. That was in the early James Rosen. As Rosen has testified, Strauss told 1950s. Fired for soliciting “loans” from witnesses, him that “Democrats in from out of town for a he had turned into a hard-drinking private eye – a night would want to be entertained … . ‘It wasn’t noirish tough-guy who knew a lot about electron- any organized thing, but I could have made the ic eavesdropping. And even more about whores. call, that lady could have made the call’ – the ref- In the months leading up to the Watergate erence was to Maxie Wells – ‘and these people break-ins, Russell was working for James Mc- were willing to pay for sex.’ Those were his exact Cord and moonlighting for the late Bud Fenster- words.”10 wald, a Washington lawyer who’d founded the In an interview with Liddy’s attorneys, DNC Committee to Investigate Assassinations. In the secretary Barbara Kennedy Rhoden acknowl- evenings, Russell hung out with call girls at the edged that she, too, overheard such rumors. Columbia Plaza Apartments, barely a block from Asked if Rhoden had said “it was likely that Spen- the Watergate. And according to Fensterwald cer Oliver and Maxie Wells were running a call- and two of his employees, Russell told them he girl operation,” Rhoden replied, “I might have said was tape-recording telephone conversations that … .” But, she added, “I have no knowledge that between the prostitutes and their clients at the they were.”11 DNC. The women didn’t mind, and the taping was Lou Russell & Phillip Bailley a source of amusement to Russell, who seems to have regaled anyone who’d listen with anecdotes That a relationship may have existed between about the calls.12 a call-girl service and the DNC was dissed and dis- Not that Democrats were the only ones to missed by Wells and her attorneys, and by Spen- avail themselves of the pleasures to be taken at cer Oliver and his attorneys – just as it was by The the Columbia Plaza. Nixon biographer Anthony Washington Post. According to them, the only ev- Summers quotes a longtime Nixon aide who said idence of such a relationship was the testimony of that Nick Ruwe, then Deputy Chief of the Office Phillip Bailley, a disbarred lawyer with a history of Protocol, “was always using those call girls at of mental illness. the place next to the DNC.”13 Ron Walker, Nixon’s But that wasn’t true. One man who knew a lot top advance man, was a second source. Accord-

40 | GARRISON | APR / MAY 2019 | [email protected] ing to Walker, he knew of the brothel next to the House secretary, sources said today.” DNC because “I had colleagues that used call-girl The article did not go unnoticed on Pennsyl- rings.”14 vania Avenue. Within an hour of its publication, In April 1972, the seamy side of Washington was Bailley’s prosecutor received a telephone call rocked when FBI agents raided the office and from the president’s counsel, John Dean, ordering home of Phil Bailley, then a Washington defense him to the White House. “He wanted me to bring attorney whose clientele included prostitutes. ‘all’ the evidence but, mostly, what I brought were Coded address-books, photographs, and sexual Bailley’s address books,” Rudy recalled. “Dean paraphernalia were seized, and what began as a said he wanted to check the names of the peo- simple violation of the Mann Act became a grand ple involved, to see if any of them worked for the jury investigation with ramifications throughout president.”15 the capital. It was, after all, a presidential election year, and Assistant U.S. Attorney John Rudy was placed the names in Bailley’s address books included the in charge of the investigation. Soon, Rudy found secretaries and wives of some of Washington’s himself looking into the Columbia Plaza call-girl most prominent men – as well as the names of the ring and its connections to the DNC – where a sec- johns they serviced. retary was said to have “arranged for liaisons.” At first, Dean wanted Rudy to leave the ad- It was at about this time that Lou Russell ap- dress books with him, but Rudy demurred, point- peared in Rudy’s office. According to Rudy, Rus- ing out that the books were evidence. As a com- sell tried to divert his attention from the Columbia promise, Dean’s secretary was permitted to copy Plaza to another operation that serviced lawyers the books, while Rudy and Dean discussed the and judges on the other side of town. case. When the secretary returned, Dean went But it didn’t work. On June 9th, Bailley was in- through the copies page by page, circling names dicted on 22 felony counts, including charges of with a Parker pen.16 blackmail, racketeering, procuring, and pander- It wasn’t the first time that Dean had shown ing. an interest in such matters. Months before, he’d That same afternoon, The Washington Star dispatched a White House investigator to New published a front-page story, headlined “Capitol York to look into a call-girl ring run by a madame Hill Call-Girl Ring.” According to the article, “The named Xaviera Hollander.17 FBI here has uncovered a high-priced call-girl Like the Bailley case, the Hollander investiga- ring allegedly headed by a Washington attorney tion was generating headlines. One, in The New and staffed by secretaries and office workers York Times, blared “Possible Blackmail of Nixon from Capitol Hill and involving at least one White Officials Checked Here.” The story began, “At

Xaviera Hollander left her position as a secretary at the Dutch consulate in Manhattan to become a high-priced call girl in 1968. By 1970, she had opened her own brothel and had become New York City’s leading madame. In Blind Ambition, Nixon White House counsel John Dean wrote that he had learned that the Knapp Commission, then investigating police corruption within the NYPD, had employed a confidential informant who had “wired the lush business quarters” of Hollander “and made tapes of famous clients having intercourse and engaging in abnormal sexual practices.” The informant had acquired one of two address books Hollander had used, but he had not obtained the more secetive one kept for notable political clients. Dean sent security operative Jack Caulfield to NYC in October 1971 to obtain the more secretive address book but was disappointed when the results showed the client list had as many Republicans as Democrats. Still yet, Dean used the information to “drop hints” around the White House, letting colleagues know he had “ears in hidden places.” One of those he reportedly taunted with the information was press secretary Ron Ziegler. Hollander became internationally famous upon the publication of her 1971 memoir, The Happy Hooker. She was arrested and forced to leave the U.S. after her book became a best-seller.

GARRISON | VOLUME 01 ISSUE 01 | 41 least two high-ranking officials in the Nixon ad- back: Chill... ministration are among the people the Manhat- And so he did. tan District Attorney’s Office intends to question Bailley was remanded to St. Elizabeth’s Hospi- about the possibility that they were blackmailed tal to undergo psychiatric tests. This was an un- because of their association with an East Side welcome and surprising development, inasmuch brothel.” as he had been practicing law before that same Dean’s meeting with Rudy occurred on a Fri- court only a few weeks earlier. Eventually, he was day. On the following Monday, Jeb Magruder certified sane and encouraged to plead guilty to a summoned Liddy to his office and told him that single felony. When he did, he was bundled off to he had to break into the DNC a second time. The a federal prison in Connecticut where, ironically, bugging device that James McCord had suppos- he served on the Inmates Committee with E. How- edly placed on Larry O’Brien’s telephone had yet ard Hunt and other Watergaters. The case-file, to work, and a second bug (apparently the one thick with interviews and evidence, was sealed being monitored by Alfred Baldwin) was gener- and, soon afterwards, it became “lost.” ating little or nothing of political value. This was unfortunate because, a few doors Magruder told Liddy that he wanted the bug down the hall, others in the U.S. Attorney’s Of- in O’Brien’s office repaired, and even more im- fice were putting together a case in which sexual portantly, he wanted to know if O’Brien was sit- blackmail was said to be the central motive in the ting on information that could damage the Nixon Watergate break-in. Assistant U.S. Attorney Earl re-election campaign. It wasn’t put in so many Silbert was convinced that “Hunt was trying to words, but that was Liddy’s understanding of the blackmail Spencer (Oliver).”20 brief that he’d been given. The same point was made by If the purpose of the break-in Charles Morgan, who represented was somewhat vague, the prove- If the purpose of Wells and Oliver at the burglars’ tri- nance of the order was even more the break-in was al in early 1973. Determined to block so. Since Magruder was Atty. Gen. any testimony about the contents Mitchell’s deputy, Liddy assumed somewhat vague, of the conversations that Baldwin that he was conveying an order the provenance of overheard, Morgan said Silbert told from Mitchell. But Mitchell al- him over lunch in December 1972 ways denied that, and Magruder the order was even that “Hunt was trying to blackmail – himself convicted of perjury – more so. Spencer, and I’m going to prove has given conflicting accounts. At it.”21 Morgan was skeptical. Taking first, young Jeb claimed that Lid- a page (or at least a metaphor) dy had acted on his own.18 Later, he insisted that from John Dean’s book, Morgan railed that “Mr. the order was Mitchell’s. More recently, he told an Silbert’s blackmail motive had been woven from interviewer (on tape) that it was none other than whole cloth.”22 Accordingly, he asked the court to John Dean who ordered the break-in.19 bar any testimony about the conversations Bald- Whatever its purpose, the burglary took place win overheard. in the early morning hours of June 17, 1972. Mc- The court complied. Cord and four of his accomplices had not been But what of Bailley? When I interviewed him in inside the DNC for more than a few minutes when the early 1980s, he seemed normal enough: well- the police arrested them. Baldwin watched the dressed, articulate, and intelligent, if bitter about arrests unfold from his seventh-floor aerie in the the events that led to his downfall. In particular, motel across the street, while Hunt and Liddy he was curious to know what I knew about Wa- packed their bags and fled from the Watergate tergate and how it related to him. I insisted he “go Hotel. first,” and so he did. In the weeks that followed, John Rudy had second thoughts. After the Watergate arrests, The Madame of Columbia Plaza his investigation of a link between the Columbia Plaza call-girl ring and the DNC might appear to Bailley told me that he was having an affair be politically motivated. Worried about that per- with a call girl at the Columbia Plaza Apartments, ception, he asked his boss, U.S. Attorney Harold a woman who used the alias “Cathy Dieter.” She Titus, what he should do. And the advice came prevailed upon him to establish a liaison arrange-

42 | GARRISON | APR / MAY 2019 | [email protected] ment with the DNC. A hard-partying young Dem who knew a number of workers at the DNC, Bail- ley told me that one of his acquaintances was a secretary in Spencer Oliver’s office. With her help, he said, the liaison arrangement was established. Here’s how it worked: According to Bailley, if a visitor to the DNC wanted companionship for the evening, the secretary would show him a photograph or photographs that she kept in her desk. If the man was interested, Bailley continued, he’d be sent into Spencer Oliver’s office to await a telephone call. Oliver was constantly traveling, so that his office was often vacant.)When the phone rang for the first time, he was not to answer it. A minute later, it would ring again, and, on this occa- sion, he was to answer it. The caller would be the woman (or one of the women) whose picture the HEIDI RIKAN visitor had just seen. Knowing that the woman was a call girl, the visitor would make whatever ‘I was a call girl at the White House.’ ”24 arrangements he pleased. This would appear to confirm assertions that As I testified in the Wells v. Liddy trial, Bailley Rikan was a prostitute. But Summers undercuts told me that the secretary was Maxie Wells. Ms. the confirmation by reporting in that same book Wells denies that, just as she denies keeping pic- – strangely, and in a footnote – that he “found no tures of call girls in her desk. evidence” of Rikan working as a call girl.25 But what about “Cathy Dieter”? Who was she? In the litigation with John Dean and Maxie According to Gordon Liddy, Dieter’s real name Wells, Liddy took the position that a secret agen- was Heidi Rikan. Liddy testified that he learned da was at work in the break-ins, and that this this from a seemingly authoritative source: Wal- agenda was unknown to him at the time that the ter “Buster” Riggin, a sometime pimp and asso- break-ins occurred. ciate of Joe Nesline, himself an organized crime Here’s how the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals figure in the Washington area. summarized the issue: “Liddy stated that the bur- Formerly a stripper at a seedy Washington glars’ objective during the Watergate break-in nightclub called the Blue Mirror, the late Erica was to determine whether the Democrats pos- “Heidi” Rikan was a friend of Nesline’s and, more sessed information embarrassing to John Dean. to the point, of John Dean and his then-fiancé, More specifically, Liddy asserted that the bur- later wife, Maureen. Indeed, Rikan’s photograph glars were seeking a compromising photograph appears in the memoir that “Mo” wrote about Wa- of Dean’s fiancé that was located in Wells’s desk tergate.23 among several photographs that were used to of- While admitting their friendship with Rikan, fer prostitution services to out-of-town guests.”26 the Deans deny that she ran a call-girl ring, or that Dean and his wife challenged Liddy’s account, she used “Cathy Dieter” as an alias. Beyond Bust- which was first reported in Silent Coup – whose er Riggin’s assertion to Liddy, evidence on the is- authors, Len Colodny & Robert Gettlin (among sue is slim or ambiguous. many others), the Deans sued.27 One writer who attempted to verify the identi- While this writer does not find John Dean’s ac- fication is Anthony Summers. As the Irish investi- count of his own role in the affair to be credible, gative reporter wrote in his massive biography of neither does he think it likely that anyone would President Nixon, “Before her death in 1990, Rikan break into the DNC to retrieve a picture of some- said in a conversation with her maid that she had one’s girlfriend, assuming that such a picture ex- once been a call girl. Explaining that a call girl isted and that it was somehow “compromising.” was a lady that meets men, and men pay them’ – What would – what could – anyone do with such the maid had grown up in the country and knew a photograph? nothing of big-city sins – she added, tantalizingly: One question leads to another. If the instigator

GARRISON | VOLUME 01 ISSUE 01 | 43 The key to Ida ‘Maxie’ Wells’s desk is obviously central to any ‘rigorous consideration’ of the “ facts pertaining to Watergate. of the break-in (whether” Dean, Magruder or public knew nothing. In secret correspondence someone else) was not after pictures in Maxie with the Justice Department and the FBI, Silbert Wells’s desk, what was he after? The matter is railed against the Bureau’s inability to locate a lis- necessarily speculative, but it seems useful to tening device inside the DNC. The Bureau replied, point out that men who make dates with call girls coolly, that while it recognized the difficulties this seldom use their real names. Instead, they use presented for Silbert’s case, it was a matter of fact. “ handles like “Candyman,” or resort to aliases like The DNC was clean. “George Washington.” (One john at the Columbia Because the burglars ultimately pleaded guilty, Plaza—almost certainly a Democrat—used obviating a need for a trial at which the evidence “Richard Nixon” as a nom de guerre.)28 would be presented and contested, the discrep- For that reason, the only person in a position to ancy never came to the public’s attention. Indeed, know who was dating whom was the person fa- Wells’s own attorney (who had also represented cilitating the liaisons. Whether that person kept Dean) seemed stunned by the information when a record of such contacts is unknown. But the in- it came out on cross-examination in Liddy’s trial. stigator of the break-in may have suspected that If this was true, David Dorsen asked, what did it she did. It seems reasonable, then, to suppose that mean? Who, then, was bugged? the burglars may have been looking for a kind of From the witness stand, I suggested that there calendar, or log, rather than a handful of dirty pic- were only two possibilities: Either the bugs were tures that would be of little use to anyone.29 removed from the DNC prior to the break-in on “ June 17 – or Baldwin was listening to telephone The Absense of Bugging Devices conversations emanating from a bugging device at another location. The key to Maxie Wells’s desk, therefore, is ob- Another location? What location? Dorsen viously central to any “rigorous consideration” of wondered. the facts pertaining to Watergate. But it isn’t the The most likely place, I replied, was the call only important fact that The Washington Post girls’ apartment in the Columbia Plaza, a block and other media have done their best to ignore. A from the Watergate and in line-of-sight of Bald- second and equally fundamental one is this: The win’s motel room. only bugging device ever recovered from the This testimony was so discombobulating to headquarters of the DNC was a broken “toy” that Wells’s attorney that we did not get into the ques- the FBI believed had been “salted” in order that tion of McCord’s motives. Why would the veteran it might be found. And it was found, but not until CIA agent lie about bugging Oliver and O’Brien? nearly three months after the Watergate arrests, It is an interesting and important question, and not until Alfred Baldwin had gone public with but it was not one that the jury was obliged to his testimony about eavesdropping on the DNC. answer. Neither was it asked to decide if Liddy But what did it all mean? Did James McCord (or I) are correct in our belief that John Dean or- lie about bugging Larry O’Brien and Spencer Oli- dered the June 17 break-in because, we suspect, ver? And if he did, why did he? And if Alfred Bald- he’d learned of the relationship between the Co- win wasn’t listening to telephone conversations lumbia Plaza call-girl ring and the DNC. Instead, being broadcast by a transmitter inside the DNC, the jury was asked to decide if these issues, and what was he listening to? their corollaries, are sufficiently plausible that These were the questions on Earl Silbert’s lips fair-minded people can disagree about them. So, as he prepared his case against the burglars in the too, with Wells. Was she involved in facilitating summer of 1972. They were questions of which the arrangements between visitors to the DNC and

44 | GARRISON | APR / MAY 2019 | [email protected] call girls at the Columbia Plaza, as Phil Bailley save America from a White House ruled by Sau- claimed? The evidence persuades me that she ron and the hordes of Mordor. To question the re- was, but, once again, it is a matter of opinion. In ceived version of the story is, therefore, a kind of ruling for Liddy, the courts did not decide that the heresy. And so the Post becomes the Inquisition, “alternative theory” of Watergate (as articulat- labeling its critics “conspiracy theorists” while ed by Hougan and Liddy) is correct. Rather, they warning the public against the “danger” of such seem to be saying that the received version of the thinking. Clearly, the Post would rather its read- Watergate affair, as promulgated by John Dean ers let the newspaper do their thinking for them. and The Washington Post, is open to question, and If there wasn’t so much blood on the floor, it that there is enough evidence in support of the al- would be funny. ternative theory that it can (and perhaps should) • be freely discussed. ENDNOTES: 1 Civil Case No. JFM-97-946, “Memorandum” by District Judge J. Frederick Motz, March 19, 2001, U.S. District Court for the District The Rise of the Inquisitors of Maryland. 2 The editorial appeared in the Post on Feb. 4, 2001. The real issue, which in the end may be even 3 Headed by Sen. Sam Ervin, the committee was informally known as more important than the who-shot-who of Wa- “the Watergate committee.” tergate, concerns the arrogance of media such as 4 John Dean, Blind Ambition, Simon & Schuster (1976), pp. 388-91. 5 Blind Ambition was written in 1975, while Gordon Liddy was in The Washington Post, which pretend to an infalli- prison, refusing to talk about Watergate. When Liddy published his bility they do not have. For decades, the Post and own account of the affair, and when other books began to appear, its cousins have refused to tolerate (much less Dean’s inconsistencies and “errors” became as glaring as they were undertake) a re-examination of the Watergate af- numerous. Accordingly, Dean dismissed the book he had once em- fair—or any other major story in which they may braced with pride, claiming that he hadn’t actually read it before it was published, while insisting that much of the book was “made up out of be said to have a stake. whole cloth by Taylor Branch.” A Pulitzer Prize-winner, Branch calls Watergate, after all, was journalism’s finest the allegation a lie. hour. Courageous editors and intrepid young 6 J. Anthony Lukas, Nightmare, Viking (1976), p. 201. reporters risked everything in a brave effort to 7 Ibid.

“I know the names of those responsible for the slaughter... I know the names of the powerful group... I know the names of those who, between one mass and the next, made provision and guaranteed political protection... I know the names of the important and serious figures who are behind the ridiculous figures... I know the names of the important and serious figures behind the tragic kids... I know all these names and all the acts (the slaughters, the attacks on institutions) they have been guilty of... I know. But I don’t have the proof. I don’t even have clues.” - Pier Paolo Pasolini

JimHougan.com

GARRISON | VOLUME 01 ISSUE 01 | 45 8 Nomination of Earl J. Silbert to be United States Attorney, Hear- ings before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, 93d Cong., 2d sess., Available Part I, April-May, 1974, p. 52. 9 Lukas, op. cit., Nightmare, p. 201. MAY 1, 2019 10 Testimony of James Rosen in the first Wells v. Liddy trial. 11 Testimony of Barbara Kennedy Rhoden in the first Wells v. Liddy trial. 12 Jim Hougan, Secret Agenda: Watergate, Deep Throat and the CIA, Random House, 1984, p. 118. 13 The Office of Protocol makes arrangements for White House social events, and for the visits of foreign dignitaries to the nation’s capital. 14 Anthony Summers, The Arrogance of Power (Viking, 2000), p. 422. 15 Hougan, op. cit., pp. 172-3. 16 Ibid. 17 Hollander wrote a book with Robin Moore, The Happy Hooker. 18 John Ehrlichman, Witness to Power, Simon & Schuster (1982), p. 380. 19 This was said to Len Colodny, co-author (with Robert Gettlin) of Silent Coup, St. Martin’s Press (1991), p. 148. 20 Nomination of Earl J. Silbert to be United States Attorney, op. cit., p. 52. 21 “A Report to the Special Prosecutor on Certain Aspects of the Watergate Affair, June 18, 1973 (published in Hearings before the Sen- ate Committee on the Judiciary [concerning Earl J. Silbert’s nomination to be United States Attorney], 93d Cong., 2d sess., Part I, April-May, 1974, pp. 42, 53). 22 Ibid., p. 42. 23 Maureen Dean (with Hays Gorey), Mo: A Woman’s View of Wa- tergate, Simon & Schuster (1975). 24 Summers, op. cit., p. 422. The Most Anticipated New 25 Summers, op. cit., p. 530. 26 Ida Maxwell Wells v. G. Gordon Liddy, No. 98-1962, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, decided July 28, 1999. WATERGATE 27 Dean brought suit against Liddy, St. Martin’s Press, Len Colodny, Robert Gettlin, myself, and more than 100 others, charging a conspir- Book of 2019 acy to defame him and his wife. In particular, the Deans accused the defendants of malice for suggesting that he was “guilty of criminal con- — from the author of Nixon’s Gamble — duct in planning, aiding, abetting, and directing the Watergate break-ins, and gave perjured testimony ... and that all ... historical writings by John Dean ... have been and are a self-serving, ongoing historical fraud.” Af- Author Ray Locker’s Haig’s Coup: How Richard ter years of legal wrangling, the case was settled out of court among Nixon’s Closest Aide Forced Him from Office, is the the Deans, the authors, and their publisher. Terms of the settlement explosive new book that builds upon the brilliant have not been disclosed. Both sides claimed victory. (This writer was work of Jim Hougan, Len Colodny, and Robert Gettlin, dismissed from the case soon after it was filed.) For his part, Liddy while adding Locker’s own exhaustive research. refused to back down, wishing to take the case to court so that he When General Alexander M. Haig Jr. returned could get Dean on the witness stand. In that, Liddy was unsuccessful. The case against him was dismissed. to the White House on May 3, 1973, he found the 28 A copy of a trick-book from one of the call-girl operations at the Nixon administration in worse shape than he had Columbia Plaza was given to this writer by Detective Shoffler. imagined. President Richard Nixon, reelected in an 29 According to Bailley, the photographs in question were in no way overwhelming landslide just six months earlier, had obscene, but were, instead, discrete pictures of attractive women – no accepted the resignations of his top aides—the chief more and no less. of staff H. R. Haldeman and the domestic policy chief John Ehrlichman—just three days earlier. Without them, Nixon stood alone. Nixon needed Jim Hougan is the author of two non-fiction books about the U.S. a savior, someone who would lift his fortunes while intelligence community- Spooks: the Private Use of Secret Agents by Multinational Corporations and the Rich, and Secret Agenda: Watergate, keeping his White House from blowing apart. He Deep Throat and the CIA. A former Washington Editor of Harper’s hoped that savior would be his deputy national Magazine, he has published seven best-selling novels, including The security adviser, Alexander Haig, whom he appointed Genesis Code (which he wrote with his wife under the nom-de-plume chief of staff. But Haig’s goal was not to keep Nixon in “John Case”) and The Magdalene Cipher. A former Alicia Patterson and office—it was to remove him. Rockefeller Foundation fellow, he lives outside Charlottesville, Virginia. In the new Haig’s Coup, Ray Locker uses recently Some of his long journalism pieces can be found on his neglected declassified documents to tell the true story of how website, JimHougan.com Haig orchestrated Nixon’s demise.

46 | GARRISON | APR / MAY 2019 | [email protected] Kennedy Faces the Middle East

By James DiEugenio

ow did American foreign H policy in the Middle East evolve into such an ongoing disaster – to the point that it can now be properly termed a nightmare without end? Why did Secretary of State Hillary Clinton feel so compelled to remove Gaddafi from power in Libya – which turned that country into something even worse: a failed state ruled by warlords? Why does Rep. Tulsi Gabbard get grilled on MSNBC’s Morning Joe for not wanting to overthrow Bashar al-Assad of Syria – her sound reason being that she understands that the same thing that happened in Libya would happen in Syria if we did? It’s almost as if American policy is fostering two poles in the area: the expansion of Muslim fundamentalism coupled with an obeisance to the conservative Likud Party of Israel, with very little to choose from in between.

GARRISON | VOLUME 01 ISSUE 01 | 47 In 2018, it was encouraging that two fe- Eisenhower and Secretary of State John Foster male Muslims were elected to the House of Dulles to side with European imperialism over Representatives. They were Ilhan Omar of emerging Third World nationalism. Kennedy pre- Minnesota and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan. It is not dicted that America’s siding with France in the at all surprising that the Republican Party – so violent Algerian episode would end up in defeat, much under the sway of Likud and corrupt Prime just as the Eisenhower/Dulles backing of France Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – has targeted in Indochina had ended three years earlier.4 them both already. In July of 1995, Netanyahu led Kennedy said that by helping France in Algeria a mock funeral parade featuring a coffin of his op- we were sending the wrong message to both our ponent, Labor Party leader Yitzak Rabin. During European ally and the Third World. And when it the procession his backers shouted, “Death to was over, and France had lost – which Kennedy Rabin!”2 What was Rabin’s crime? He had signed thought they would – the Third World would not an agreement with Yasser Arafat called the Oslo forget who America sided with. Accords, which was the first step in recognizing Geographically, Algeria was the largest nation Palestinians in Israel as full-fledged citizens with in Africa. It was a predominantly Sunni Muslim rights and a claim to land. About three months state. It recognized Islam as the state religion, after Netanyahu’s mock procession, the Likud but it also provided for freedom of worship, and zealots got their wish. Rabin was assassinated by it did not recognize Sharia law. In light of those Yigal Amir. The murderer said he felt religiously facts, and recognizing what the Middle East has justified to kill Rabin since he was betraying Israel. been transformed into today, there is a brief On the one hand we have a growing militant passage in the speech that deserves to be high- Muslim fundamentalist lighted. Kennedy called for movement led by groups like Who will be leading a stepped-up program of al-Qaeda and ISIS, while in student exchanges between Israel, Likud has polarized the Algerians then – North Africa and American public opinion to the point the moderates, or the institutes of higher learning that Netanyahu absolved extremists, terrorists and and technical education. himself of any responsibil- He also wanted the United ity for Rabin’s murder, or outside provocateurs who States to begin to send tutors even for inciting violence.3 capture such a movement as to that area. The idea was to There have been several the conflict drags on? build up a civil service corps milestones that have result- led by a trained managerial ed in the present sorry state class, plus a skilled trade and of affairs. Obviously, George W. Bush’s ill-advised professional group led by knowledgeable admin- and unjustified invasion of Iraq was a major step istrators. That passage was a prelude to the next into the morass. But in this essay, I would like to paragraph: address a historical point that I believe has been largely ignored in chronicling the march of folly In these days, we can help fulfill a great and – so much so that the reader will probably be un- promising opportunity to show the world that aware of much of what follows. a new nation, with an Arab heritage, can establish itself in the Western tradition and successfully withstand both the pull toward Arab II feudalism and fanaticism and the pull toward communist authoritarianism.5 On July 2, 1957 Senator John Kennedy strode to the senate podium to begin one of the most If anything shows how much time and effort controversial speeches made in that body during Kennedy spent on this speech, it is this overlooked that decade. Sen. Kennedy was addressing passage. To my knowledge this was the first pub- America’s backing of France against the attempt lic warning that any politician had given about of the Algerian people to be set free from colo- the possibility of an explosion of Muslim funda- nialism. Today known as the Algeria speech, it mentalism in the area. But beyond that, Kennedy was about more than the civil war going on in the was not just warning about this danger; he was north coast of Africa at that time. It was also about recommending ways to counteract it through the repeating tendency of President Dwight education and cultural exchanges. At this early

48 | GARRISON | APR / MAY 2019 | [email protected] John Foster Dulles (left) was President Dwight Eisenhower’s Secretary of State from 1953-1959. After World War I, he drafted the “war guilt clause” of the Treaty of Versailles that placed the sole blame for the war on Germany and forced the Germans to pay heavy reparations. As Secretary of State, he once called for breaking “down the false distinctions between conventional and nuclear weapons.” In The Untold History of the United States, Peter Kuznick and Oliver Stone wrote, “Dulles never wavered in his committment to maintaining U.S. hegemony and protecting U.S. business interests or in his hatred of communism.” His grandfather and his uncle both served as Secretaries of State and his brother, Allen, was the Director of Central Intelligence from 1953-1961.

date he understood that it was necessary to edu- Central Treaty Organization. cate youth in these areas through a broad liber- There was a problem constructing CENTO. al public schooling, not through madrassas. JFK His name was Gamal Abdel Nasser. understood that there was a war going on, not just for Algerian independence but for what that III independent culture and government would be like. The questions the young senator was posing After Eisenhower and Dulles used the CIA looked forward to today’s problems and, more to overthrow the governments of Iran in 1953 and specifically, to the explosion of Islamic funda- Guatemala in 1954, a number of Third World lead- mentalism that finally did take place in Tehran ers formed a loose alliance called the Non-Aligned in 1979. I am referring, of course, to the return of Movement (NAM). This alliance began in 1955 at the Ayatollah Khomeini, his condemnation of the famous Bandung Conference in Indonesia host- America as the Great Satan, and his subsequent ed by Sukarno. The aim of NAM was to encourage installation of Sharia law in Iran. cooperation among these emerging states, to dis- As John Shaw notes in his book JFK in the courage European colonialism, and, most impor- Senate, Kennedy’s signal achievement during the tantly, to allow the new nations coming out of co- eight years he spent in the upper chamber was that lonialism to choose their own foreign policy paths. he became the leader of his party in finding ways This meant that if a country wanted to stay neutral to break away from Cold War models of thinking.6 in the Cold War, that should not be interpreted as Most of these had been instituted by Secretary being beholden to Moscow. In fact, some of the lead- of State John Foster Dulles. Dulles saw the Third ers of this movement directly criticized Dulles in World through the prism of the Cold War. To him, this regard. And they looked with disdain at his ten- colonialism was satisfactory since it thwarted any dency to create these anti-communist alliances like attempts by native peoples to advocate Marxism SEATO.7 or socialism – which is why, after the French/ Nasser attended the Bandung Conference. American defeat in Indochina at Dien Bien Phu, the His country hosted the following meeting in 1957 in Eisenhower administration installed an English- Cairo, Egypt. Nasser would naturally do this since speaking Catholic, Ngo Dien Diem, in the newly he refused to enter into the Bagdad Pact, or its later created country of South Vietnam. Diem was a incarnation as CENTO. Nasser told Dulles that he very bad choice, but Eisenhower did not want the could not join any organization that included the country unified under the leftist from the north, United Kingdom since they had been the greatest Ho Chi Minh. The pretext Dulles used to intervene colonizing country in the modern world. If he did there was something called SEATO, the Southeast he would lose the faith of his citizenry and his stat- Asia Treaty Organization. This was an American- ure in the Arab world. As Philip E. Muehlenbeck launched alliance meant to thwart communism in has written, “Clearly, Nasser feared losing domes- the area. In the Middle East, America and England tic popular support and being labeled as a ‘sellout’ tried to launch another of these anti-communist al- or ‘western stooge’ if he failed to take a strong an- liances, originally called the Baghdad Pact. When ti-British line.”8 that did not work out, it was changed to CENTO, the Nasser’s refusal marked a turning point in

GARRISON | VOLUME 01 ISSUE 01 | 49 American policy in the Middle East. When Egypt Saud was an object lesson that could have been then recognized Red China, Dulles decided to pull used by the authors of that book, for Saudi Arabia American support for the Aswan Dam project. was an absolute monarchy under the extreme re- This caused Nasser to turn to the Soviets for Aswan ligious form of Islam called Wahhabism. Once the funding and also for military aid. Nasser’s unusual House of Saud took over Arabia in 1932, they insti- and forceful appeal was also due to his pan-Arab tutionalized this religion and later began to finance ambitions. No other figure in the Middle East ap- its exportation abroad with petrodollars.11 pealed across as many borders as did Nasser. This, Beyond that, Saudi Arabia backed the Muslim plus his association with the Soviets, now turned Brotherhood. This was another extremist Islamic him into something of a pariah in the Eisenhower group that advocated for Sharia law. Allen Dulles White House. There is evidence that Allen Dulles encouraged Saudi Arabia to use and reinforce and the CIA attempted to hatch a complex plot to this group to oppose Nasser.12 The policy went kill him and overthrow his government.9 as far as Eisenhower extending a grant to study As a result of the separation from Nasser, an- rail transportation for pilgrims going to Mecca other fateful decision was made: The United States and Medina, part of the effort to refurbish Mecca would now try to build up Saudi Arabia to oppose and the Great Mosque. King Saud hired Sheikh Nasser and Egypt.10 Mohammed bin Laden to do the actual construc- This was an inexplicable decision, and it tion. This contract started the Bin Laden fam- showed that the message of the bestselling novel of ily fortune.13 Thus are the wages of misguided the time, The Ugly American, was based on fact. A anti-communism. major theme of that book was that American for- But beyond that, King Saud could not compete eign policy was primarily based on what we were with Nasser as a regional leader. He was seen as against, namely any taint of communism any- being “dissolute, a sex addict, a drunk, and an all where. But we rarely tried to show those in the Third around seeker of pleasure, served by pimps and World what we were for, that is, how we were going procurers of alcohol in ten lavish palaces.”14 A to help them improve their lives. In short, the com- former ambassador to Saudi Arabia once charac- munists talked about the problems while we talked terized Saud as “weak, stupid, and corrupt and he about the communists. Dulles’s move toward King was surrounded by Levantine courtiers.”15 As the

“If I stop leading my people as a nationalist, then the communists are going to lead them. They would use my partnership in pacts with you to say that I am a stooge.” - Gamal Abdel Nasser to John Foster Dulles

50 | GARRISON | APR / MAY 2019 | [email protected] President John F. Kennedy (left) visits King Saud bin Abdul Aziz (right) in 1962. The King of Saudi Arabia was recovering from surgery at his 18-room oceanside mansion in Palm Beach, FL. King Saud had been under pressure from the outside as Egypt’s Radio Cairo found an increasing audience for its anti-Saud propaganda within his own Kingdom. King Saud was also embroiled in an internal battle with his brother Prince Faisal, who continued to challenge his reign. While Saud sought medical treatment, Faisal formed a cabinet and began pushing for full regency powers. Eventually, Saud was ordered by the grand mufti to acquiesce to Faisal, who then forced Saud’s abdication shortly thereafter. Ironically, Saud spent time living in Egypt at Nasser’s request before dying in Greece in 1969. Saud and Egypt had parted ways as a result of the 1967 Arab-Israel War.

reader can see, the only attribute that someone Once in office, he told his advisors Walt Rostow like Saud would hold for the Dulles brothers was and McGeorge Bundy that he wanted to place that he was opposed to Nasser, one reason being restoring America’s relationship with Nasser to- that Nasser had the stature and appeal to actual- ward the top of his foreign policy agenda.18 ly lead the ideal of a pan Arab union. Those who If we recall Kennedy’s 1957 speech, this at- believed in this ideal thought that the oil of Saudi tempt to mend fences and reverse the previous Arabia should benefit all the Arab states not just policy is quite logical. Nasser was a socialist and the House of Saud.16 a secularist who had established a republic and advocated for land reform. As previously noted, IV he insisted Egypt not be formally aligned with either Russia or the USA but be able to choose its Probably the only country that opposed own way in the world. There was one other point Nasser as much as Saudi Arabia was Israel. To that attracted Nasser to Kennedy: Of all the lead- Israel’s leadership, Nasser was a demon. This ers in the Middle East, no one opposed the Muslim created something of a problem for newly elect- Brotherhood more forcefully than Nasser.19 ed President John Kennedy in January of 1961, What Kennedy saw in Nasser was a way of for Kennedy was quite interested in renewing avoiding the explosion of fanaticism and feudal- America’s relationship with Egypt’s leader. JFK ism that he warned about back in his 1957 speech. disagreed with what Foster Dulles had done in With Nasser, Kennedy felt he could guide the attempting to isolate Nasser. On the presidential Arab countries of the Middle East in a progres- campaign trail, he was quite explicit about this: sive, secular, and perhaps even a republican manner.20 Because of this, Kennedy did not agree with Foster Dulles’s attempt to create a counterweight If we can learn the lessons of the past – if we to Nasser with King Saud. In fact, even though can refrain from pressing our case so hard that the Arabs feel their neutrality and nationalism King Saud was getting medical treatments in are threatened, the Middle East can become Boston in late 1961, Kennedy avoided visiting him an area of strength and hope.17 by staying at the Kennedy compound in Palm Beach, Florida.21 After his release, Saud then

We must formulate, with both imagination and restraint, a new approach to the Middle East--not pressing our case so hard that the Arabs feel their “ ” neutrality and nationalism are threatened.... “ GARRISON | VOLUME 01 ISSUE 01 | 51 rented a home in Palm Beach to recuperate. Palestinians; the West Bank would be annexed Kennedy still did not want to visit him and had to by Israel. Israel would also expand its borders be pushed by the State Department into doing so. into the south of Lebanon, which Ben-Gurion felt On the drive over he muttered, “What am I doing housed too many Muslims. The Israeli leader also calling on this guy?”22 wanted to annex parts of the Sinai and to lay down But perhaps nothing demonstrates how op- a pipeline from Sinai to Haifa in order to refine posed the new president was to the Saudis than petroleum.25 Since neither the USA nor the USSR the fact that Kennedy backed backed it, the invasion was Nasser in his battle over Yemen aborted. The United Nations with Saud. This was due to the also opposed it. Afterwards, rebellion of the Nasser-backed Hammarskjöld brought in Abdullah al-Sallal against peacekeepers to maintain the last Mutawakklite king of the previously existing bor- Yemen, Muhammad al-Badr. In ders. Kennedy wanted the his support of Nasser, Kennedy truce-keepers strengthened; recognized al-Sallal even Israel disagreed. He also op- though he was strongly crit- posed any Israeli intervention icized for doing so by Harold in Jordan and warned Israel’s McMillan of England and for- Deputy Defense Minister eign minister Golda Meir of Shimon Peres and Foreign Israel.23 Minister Golda Meir about this Which brings us to in a cable sent to the American Kennedy’s problems with Embassy in Tel Aviv.26 Israel. If one studies Kennedy’s In reviewing the cable traf- foreign policy views prior to fic that researcher Malcolm entering the White House, one Blunt secured from the could pretty much predict he Kennedy Library, it is evident DAVID BEN-GURION was going to have some diffi- that the Israelis knew about the culties with Israel. First, Kennedy ad- president’s communication channel mired UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld. with Nasser. Without expressing that knowledge, After and during the Suez crisis of late 1956, the Israelis took every opportunity to smear the Hammarskjöld had played an important role in Egyptian leader in Kennedy’s eyes, which includ- establishing patrolled boundaries and clearing ed comparing Nasser to Hitler and saying that if the Suez Canal. That crisis began when Israel, the Egyptians ever won a war with Israel, they France, and England invaded Egypt after Nasser would do to the Jews there what the Third Reich nationalized the Suez Canal, which many his- did during the Holocaust.27 Minister of Education torians believe was in response to Foster Dulles and Culture Abba Eban labeled Nasser’s attempts pulling out of the Aswan Dam deal.24 In the lead- at a Pan Arab league as “Nasserism.” Eban want- up to the invasion David Ben-Gurion was open ed America to side with the non-Arab countries about Israel’s objectives. He wanted the elimina- of the region like Turkey.28 tion of Jordan as a state: The East Bank would go What is striking in reading all of this sound and to Iraq, and this would be the new home for the fury opposing Nasser is that Kennedy was not A regime is liable to come to power in Jordan that will join up with Egypt and submit to the orders of Nasser and his army....a situation would be created where tanks and guns under Nasser’s command or “ direction would be deployed a few yards away form our” Jeruslaem.... - David Ben-Gurion 52“ | GARRISON | APR / MAY 2019 | [email protected] intimidated by it. Justifiably, NSC member and Middle East advisor Robert Komer told McGeorge Bundy that he thought the Israelis were trying to poison Kennedy’s relationship with Nasser.29 As noted above, JFK had chosen this policy as a direct break with Foster Dulles. From the evidence in this traffic, he was going to stick with it. For instance, at a press conference on May 8, 1963 Kennedy said he wanted to encourage progress and welfare in the area as a whole, and this included accep- The Shimon Peres tance of aspirations of the Arabs Negev Nuclear Re- for unity.30 That same month, search Center (top) Kennedy wrote a personal letter is an Israeli nuclear fa- to Gamal Abdel Nasser. He began cility located in the Ne- by acknowledging the problems gev Desert, southeast he was having with Israel. He of the city of Dimona. then added that this would not Its aims were exposed deter him from his original plan to The Sunday Times of economic cooperation with the of London by techni- Egyptian leader. He then added cian Mordechai Vanunu that he would not oppose Nasser’s in 1986 (bottom). attempt to form a pan Arab union – something that Israel strongly opposed. He wanted to live: They could stay where they were, closed the letter by writing that Nasser could be be repatriated outside of Israel, or be relocated reassured against any Israeli expansionism in the back to where they lived in Palestine before the area.31 Nakba. Kennedy advocated this plan as a temporary solution from 1961 into early 1963. At this point V it was rejected by Ben-Gurion,33 but Kennedy still 34 The two main points of contention between tried to push it as late as May of 1963. It was clear Kennedy and Ben-Gurion were over the fate of that the Israeli leadership did not want to pub- the Palestinians and JFK’s suspicions about the licize the issue. They also feared that too many Dimona nuclear reactor. Concerning the first, refugees might choose to be repatriated back to it is not the aim of this essay to elucidate the their homeland in Israel, and if they were refused 35 whole background to the Palestinian/Israeli this would create a crisis at the United Nations. conflict. That would necessitate going back to To show how intent the Israelis were against Theodore Herzl, the creation of Zionism, and the giving any attention at all to the concept of a Balfour Declaration. But suffice it to say, in his Palestinian homeland, Ambassador Harman told discussions with Nasser, Kennedy understood NSC member Robert Komer that they objected to there was a problem to be faced with the plight the stamping of visas to the Holy Land with the 36 of the Palestinians. He and Nasser thought that it destination “Jerusalem/Palestine.” was unwise to try to deal with the Middle East by But the major problem Kennedy had with Ben- leading off with that issue.32 Gurion was the issue of atomic weapons and the But considering that such was the case, what is true function of the nuclear reactor at Dimona. surprising about this cable traffic is that Kennedy The Israelis had a small reactor at Soreq that was is trying to get the Israelis to agree to the so-called too small to produce weapons-grade plutonium. Johnson Plan. This was a concept set forth by the In 1958 they began building another, much larg- UN special envoy Dr. Joseph Johnson. It allowed er reactor nearby at the town of Dimona in the three choices to the Palestinians as to where they Negev Desert. In this regard, they were aided by

GARRISON | VOLUME 01 ISSUE 01 | 53 the French, which was seen as a favor to Israel – before or since – was more opposed to nuclear for participating in the invasion of Egypt in 1956. proliferation than Kennedy.39 France eventually pulled out of the complex Kennedy wanted regular biannual visits to construction project fearing that its eventual use Dimona by both American officials and a neu- would be to produce atomic weapons. In fact, the tral scientist to inspect the site. From the record, French cabled Secretary of State Dean Rusk in Israel granted only two visits, one in 1961 and one August of 1963 that since the plutonium created in 1962, and these visits were limited in both time at Dimona was returned to France, Israel was and scope: They were about 40 minutes long, and trying to buy uranium from Gabon and the Union the inspectors were not given full access to the of South site.40 Robert Komer was especially Africa.37 It frustrated about what he considered was infor- a one-way relationship. The United mation like States was giving a lot of aid to Israel, this that led had intervened in a dispute with Jordan Kennedy over a water issue, and Kennedy had to believe even agreed to schedule a Hawk mis- he had sile shipment to Israel in 1964. Yet been lied Israel had given little or nothing on the to by the Palestinian refugee issue, the strength- Israelis in a ening of the peacekeeping mission, and systematic the Dimona inspection dispute. Komer manner. warned Kennedy that if this continued He had it could prejudice the American posi- good rea- tion with the son to “Why does the United States, a country Arabs, and his believe established on foundations of freedom and effectiveness such was by means of a revolution, oppose the call in ameliorating the case. tensions in the Reviewing the corre- of freedom and revolutionary movements area could be spondence, this author and line up with reactionary forces and diluted. He also counted at least six dif- recommend- ferent occasions when enemies of progress?” ed that if there either Ben-Gurion, Meir - Nasser to JFK was not more or Eban told either reciprocity, Kennedy or a representative of the U.S. govern- there should be a limit to preferential treatment.41 ment that Dimona was not meant to produce What made this all worse was that the State atomic weapons. This began in January of 1961 Department had told Nasser that Dimona was be- and continued until May of 1963. Since that is what ing built for only peaceful purposes.42 Israel was doing, one could conclude that there It cannot be determined with certainty as to was an implicit agreement at the top level of the when Kennedy began to suspect he was being Israeli government that Kennedy and his repre- lied to about Dimona, but in May of 1963 National sentatives would be deceived about this issue. (I Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy collected should add that some of the correspondence has both private and public reports from France and been pulled from this file, so there may be more South Africa that stated Dimona was being de- instances of mendacity on the subject.) signed to create highly enriched uranium.43 Tw o Again, Kennedy had been strongly opposed to days prior, on May 8th, Under Secretary of State the Foster Dulles scenario of using atomic weap- George Ball sent a memo to the American em- ons to save France at the 1954 siege of Dien Bien bassy in Tel Aviv listing the instances when Israel Phu. In fact, he had spoken out against it on the had assured his government that Dimona was a floor of the senate.38 Kennedy had moved for a peaceful atomic-energy plant. On May 10, 1963 Test Ban Treaty with the Soviets and had worked President Kennedy sent a letter to Ben-Gurion hard to achieve one in 1963. As Roger Mattson, an expressing his puzzlement that there had been authority on Dimona, has written, no president no definite schedule for inspections offered by

54 | GARRISON | APR / MAY 2019 | [email protected] Tel Aviv. He stated that no Arab nation was even as vital to peace as the question of Israel’s ef- close to having the ability to produce highly en- fort in the nuclear field.47 riched uranium or weapons-grade plutonium. He On August 20th, Eshkol replied in a vague way then did something that no other American pres- that he would agree to the biannual visits. Bundy ident before or since has done: He threatened to was critical of the reply since it was not specific as pull American support for Israel if no such regu- to the exact dates and what limitations would be lar visits were offered. placed on access. Israel also did not want Nasser There can be no doubt that this letter got Ben- to know about the visits, whereas with Kennedy, Gurion’s attention. He presented the matter to this was a main reason he wanted the visits in the his cabinet and personally drafted the reply.44 first place.48 JFK was trying to sort out the specif- That reply was not at all constructive or respon- ics at the time of his death. sive to the point. He compared Nasser to Hitler A familiar meme was enacted after Kennedy and raised the specter of Israel being vanquished was assassinated. To put it mildly, and in opposi- from the Earth in a war with Egypt. He then pro- tion to what he said in public, President Johnson posed that the West Bank of Jordan should be did not continue Kennedy’s policies. Nasser ob- made a demilitarized zone. He then asked for jected to Johnson’s escalation of the Vietnam a bilateral security agreement with the United Wa r, 49 and in early 1966 he allowed the opening States, which meant that if Nasser would invade of an embassy office for the National Liberation Israel, the United States would directly intervene Front, the government representatives for the on Israel’s behalf.45 A couple of weeks later, on the Viet Cong. Johnson retaliated by cutting off 27th, he replied in a more pointed manner, but still food aid and escalating arms shipments to Israel. was not specific about an agreement. As a result, as he did with Foster Dulles, Nasser Kennedy was not deterred. A month later, on drew closer to the USSR.50 Johnson also reversed June 15th, he repeated the same alternative to Kennedy’s policy toward Saudi Arabia. He grant- Ben-Gurion: Either regular visits to Dimona are ed them a $400 million air defense system, hoist- arranged or America’s backing of Israel would be ed plans for military bases, and wrote up a $100 placed in limbo. It seems pretty evident that, by million grant for military trucks and transport ve- this time, Kennedy suspected the worst because hicles. With all this, King Faisal now called on the Rusk added a note to the American ambassador Muslims in the area to oppose communism.51 that the president wanted the first visit arranged Finally, American policy toward Israel tilted before the reactor reached criticality.46 in a radical way. As Roger Mattson writes in The day after this letter was received, David his book Stealing the Atom, when the CIA told Ben-Gurion resigned as prime minis- Johnson they had definite proof Israel had ter of Israel. He had held that office for a combined 14 years. No one, not even Netanyahu, has occupied it longer. Levi Eshkol succeeded Ben-Gurion. A little over two weeks after Ben-Gurion stepped down, Kennedy issued the same warning to Eshkol. Kennedy wrote:

… [T]his government’s commitment to and support of Israel could be seriously jeopardized if it should be thought that we were unable to obtain reliable information on a subject LEVI ESHKOL JOHN F. KENNEDY

GARRISON | VOLUME 01 ISSUE 01 | 55 developed an atomic device, Johnson barely 19 Op. cit., Dreyfuss, p. 103. arched an eyebrow (Mattson, p. 97). Further, 20 Op. cit., Muehlenbeck, p. 133. 21 Ibid. the CIA had evidence that the uranium used in 22 Library of Congress interviews with State Department the construction of the device originated in the employees Parker T. Hart and Talcott W. Seelye, 1/27/89; 9/15/93. USA. As Mattson proves in his book, the uranium 23 Op. cit., Muehlenbeck, p. 135. came from an Israeli shell company operating 24 Ibid., p. 13. 25 Patrick Tyler, Fortress Israel, pp. 82-83. out of Apollo, Pennsylvania called NUMEC. 26 Memorandum of May 1, 1963; See also memo from Robert Johnson’s tilt toward Israel in advance of the Six Komer to JFK of 12/22/62 ; also Samuel Belk’s memo to McGeorge Day War was so pronounced that Nasser broke Bundy of August 23, 1963. relations with Washington. It was capped by the 27 Letter of May 12, 1963, Ben Gurion to Kennedy; see also USS Liberty Incident, where Israeli jets attacked memorandum of meeting between Ben Gurion and JFK in New York, May 30, 1961. an American communications vessel, killing 34 28 Memorandum of May 7, 1963 meeting between Eban, Rusk, and sailors and wounding 171. There were no trials Israeli Ambassador to the USA Avraham Harman. in Israel over this atrocity, and Johnson chose to 29 Memorandum of May 9, 1963, Komer to Bundy. maintain relations. 30 State Department cable of May 9, 1963. 31 The date on this letter is so faded it cannot be read, but it was As author Robert Dreyfuss and other have transmitted to Nasser through the American ambassador to Egypt in maintained, perhaps the last opportunity May of 1963. America had to construct an overall Middle East 32 Op. cit., Muehlenbeck, pp. 126-27. peace agreement and fend off the rise of Islamic 33 Cable from Ben Gurion to Dean Rusk, January 24, 1963. fundamentalism was with Nasser. That is what 34 Memorandum of meeting, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Walworth Barbour, Ben Gurion, and Meir. Kennedy was trying to do in order to prevent 35 Memorandum from Robert Komer to President Kennedy, the rise of feudalism and fanaticism he warned December 5, 1962. about on the Senate floor in 1957. When Nasser 36 Komer memorandum of meeting with Harman, August 28, 1963. heard Kennedy was dead, he fell into a mental 37 State Department cable from Paris to Dean Rusk, August 14, 1963. depression. He then ordered JFK’s funeral to 38 James DiEugenio, Destiny Betrayed, Second Edition, p. 23. 52 be shown four times on Egyptian television. 39 Roger Mattson, Stealing the Atom Bomb, pp 38-40, 256. The city of Cairo was “overcome by a sense of 40 Memorandum from Robert Komer to President Kennedy, universal tragedy” because “Kennedy was the December 12, 1962. first American president who really understood 41 Ibid. 53 42 Cable from American Embassy in Cairo to Dean Rusk, April 25, the Afro-Asian world.” Within a year, angry 1963. mobs would be attacking American-owned 43 Memorandum from McGeorge Bundy to Robert Komer, May libraries throughout Egypt.54 10, 1963. If one is looking to explain how the Middle East• 44 Cable from Walworth Barbour to Rusk and JFK, May 27, 1963. 45 Letter of May 12, 1963, Ben Gurion to Kennedy. became the mess it is, this is a good place to start. 46 Letter of June 15, 1963, Kennedy to Ben Gurion. Note: James DiEugenio would like to thank researcher 47 Letter of July 4, 1963, Kennedy to Eshkol. Malcolm Blunt for his assistance in obtaining many of 48 Memorandum by McGeorge Bundy to Kennedy, August 23, 1963. the memos used in researching this article. 49 Op. cit., Rakove, p. 241. 50 Ibid., p. 242. ENDNOTES: 51 Op. cit., Dreyfuss, p. 142. 1 Morning Joe program of February 6, 2019. 52 Op. cit., Muehlenbeck, p. 228. 2 Ben Kaspit and Kafir Ilan, Netanyahu: The Road to Power, p. 57. 53 Op. cit., Rakove, p. xvii. 3 Charles D. Smith, Palestine and the Arab-Israel Conflict, pp. 464,466. 54 Op. cit., Rakove, p. xviii. 4 John F. Kennedy, The Strategy of Peace, pp. 66-80. 5 Ibid., p. 75. 6 John T. Shaw, JFK in the Senate, p. 110. James DiEugenio is the author of, most recently, The JFK As- 7 Robert Rakove, Kennedy, Johnson, and the Nonaligned World, pp. 3-5. sassination: The Evidence Today. Prior to that, he wrote Destiny 8 Philip Muehlenbeck, Betting on the Africans, p. 11. Betrayed, the Second Edition. He is the editor and publisher of 9 William Blum, The CIA: A Forgotten History, pp. 100-101. the web site “Kennedys and King,” which is located at 10 Op. cit., Muehlenbeck, p. 14. 11 Robert Dreyfuss, Devil’s Game, pp. 3, 121-23. KennedysandKing.com. 12 Ibid., p. 121. 13 Ibid., p. 125. 14 Ibid., p. 122. James DiEugenio is a frequent guest on Len Osanic’s 15 Ibid. 16 Ibid., p. 142. BlackOpRadio.com 17 Speech at Eastern Oregon College, November 9, 1959. 18 Op. cit., Muehlenbeck, p. 125. 56 | GARRISON | APR / MAY 2019 | [email protected] ennedys K &King

KennedysAndKing.com

Destiny Betrayed, The JFK Assassination: The Second Edition The Evidence Today by James DiEugenio by James DiEugenio Foreward by William Davy Foreward by Oliver Stone

“(Destiny Betrayed, the Sec- “Jim DiEugenio shows us ond Edition) deserves to be how Hollywood and the read, studied, and scoured mainstream media are get- for its revelations ino JFK’s ting the Kennedy assassina- murder. Jim Garrison was tion all wrong.“ truly on the trail of the assassins in the crime of the —Jesse Ventura, author century.“ They Killed Our President —Jim Douglass, author JFK and the Unspeakable on Amazon James DiEugenio’s books are available on Amazon and at other online bookselllers.

GARRISON | VOLUME 01 ISSUE 01 | 57 Why the CIA Killed RFK Kennedy?” The problem is that the short and By Lisa Pease incomplete answer is, because he would have reopened an investigation into the killing of his n my recently published book A Lie Too brother, President John F. Kennedy, that would Big to Fail: The Real History of the Assassi- have led to the CIA. And that leads to the next nation of Robert F. Kennedy, I discuss myr- question, “Why would the CIA have killed JFK?” iad evidence that indicates CIA contractor That requires a much longer answer. I told the Robert Maheu organized the plot to assassinate I producers if I could convince them in five minutes Sen. Robert F. Kennedy. Tom Jackman, a reporter that the CIA had killed Robert Kennedy, I wouldn’t for The Washington Post, realized this was a big have needed to write a 500-page book. story that deserved its place in the historical re- And that’s the problem. Difficult subjects cord, so he wrote an in-depth article.1 require more than soundbites. A 50-year lie can’t Jackman’s article caused a stir of media in- be exposed in a five-minute segment. It’s not re- terest. Politico noted the story in its breakdown alistic to expect that it could. That’s why people of the big news stories of the day on the Monday need to read books to truly understand history. after the piece ran. Radio and podcast producers TV news isn’t designed to handle history respon- reached out to me. KTLA in Los Angeles featured sibly. Even during breaking stories, the first draft me in a TV segment,2 and their news director did of history is usually wrong. The repetition of the a podcast with me.3 initial false information causes historical pollu- Two producers from a major cable news tion that is difficult to rectify. As the wise, old network reached out as well. But the question adage says, “A lie gets halfway around the world they wanted me to answer—in five minutes— while the truth is putting its boots on.”4 And that’s was, “Why would the CIA have killed Robert

58 | GARRISON | APR / MAY 2019 | [email protected] not an accident, as you’ll see. other high-profile clients, had numerous con- The notion that the CIA assassinated the tacts with the Nazis, so FDR sent Allen Dulles to Kennedys is also too frightening for many people Europe to set up spy operations. There, Dulles to believe. They’ve been propagandized for de- connected with Thomas McKittrick, “an old Wall cades through movies, television, and the news Street friend who was president of the Bank for media to believe the CIA never operates domes- International Settlements.” Five directors of the tically and is full of loyal patriots. But if we truly bank would later be charged with war crimes, look at the CIA’s history before and after these as- as BIS funded the Nazis. When the Roosevelt ad- sassinations, that vision falls apart. ministration tried to block BIS funds in the United The CIA was never run like a “Company,” States, McKittrick hired John Foster Dulles, “who despite that being its nickname. Although there successfully intervened on the bank’s behalf.”9 was an ostensible chain of command, numerous Allen Dulles hobnobbed with the Nazi elite and times in the Agency’s early history operatives shredded business papers as WWII was ending took it upon themselves to run operations with- to disconnect his friends from the law. When FDR out permission or knowledge of their higher-ups. declared Germany must surrender uncondition- In some cases, there was deliberate insubordina- ally, Allen Dulles essentially committed treason tion. And instead of being punished, the insubor- and “proposed a kind of no-fault surrender. It was dinates rose to some of the highest positions in a stunningly cynical and insubordinate gambit,” the covert world. David Talbot wrote in his biography of Allen Dulles, The Devil’s Chessboard.10 An American Gestapo After the war, the Republican Party split over whether to create a new In the nascent phases of World central intelligence agency. Senators War II, President Franklin Delano Edward Robertson (R-WY) and Roosevelt sent Wall Street lawyer Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. (R-MA) de- and WWI soldier William “Wild bated the National Security Act of Bill” Donovan to Europe to see 1947 in Congress. Lodge expressed what was going on and whether the urgency of being prepared for the British had the ability to defend any future conflict: “Without unifica- themselves. Donovan earned his nick- tion we are doomed by the nature of fu- name “in Mexico while serving in General ture war, the first effect of which will be to John Pershing’s 1916 expedition against Pancho disunite us tactically.”11 Villa.”5 Wild Bill epitomized the type of men who Robertson responded that the agency the became founding fathers of what eventually be- bill would create “has all the potentialities of an came the CIA. They were often highly educated, American gestapo.”12 But Robertson lost, and the reckless, Republican, and rich enough to believe American gestapo was off and running. the rules didn’t apply to them. As one operative Allen Dulles saw to it that Nazi scientists, tor- put it, “Where else could a red-blooded American turers, and intelligence agents were brought to boy lie, kill, cheat, steal, rape, and pillage with the America under “Operation Paperclip.” Several of sanction and blessing of the All-Highest?”6 them ended up working in the CIA. Allen Dulles Members of the plutocracy hated FDR. J.P. even took Nazi spy chief Reinhard Gehlen to Morgan’s servants knew enough to cut FDR’s Game 6 of the World Series between the Yankees picture from the daily paper before handing it and the Giants in 1951. to him.7 Many members of the business elite had According to The New York Times: investments in Nazi Germany. Roosevelt’s “New Deal” looked a lot like socialism to this crowd “Historians who have studied the docu- (he was considered a “class traitor”8), and the Du ments … have said that at least five associates Ponts and other Wall Street titans joined together of the Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann, the archi- in at least one plot to unseat FDR, which Marine tect of Hitler’s campaign to exterminate Jews, Corps Major General Smedley Butler thwarted. had worked for the C.I.A. … The records also indicate that the C.I.A. tried to recruit two dozen John Foster Dulles and his brother Allen more war criminals or Nazi collaborators.” epitomized this crew. These two Wall Street lawyers who served the Rockefellers, among Allen Dulles befriended General Karl Wolff,

GARRISON | VOLUME 01 ISSUE 01 | 59 in front of tape machines emitting endless- ly looping messages designed to push them towards particular psychiatric epiphanies. “Peggy, you have discovered that your mother never wanted you,” one such tape proclaimed. “Can you see now why you have given affec- tion in such lavish degree to your children and why you became so desperately anxious when your daughter decided to enter a convent?” Messages were repeated for days, weeks, and even months on end, in order to over- whelm the patient’s conscious defences. When patients became distressed by the relentless repetitions, they were restrained using a va- ALLEN & JOHN FOSTER DULLES riety of crude and bizarre methods, from se- who had been Heinrich Himmler’s chief of staff. curing their headphones with tape to immo- Himmler was head of the Gestapo and oversaw bilising them with hallucinogenic substances. the building of the extermination camps. Dulles The results were devastating: Rather than overcoming their conditions, patients often met with him in Germany and cabled Washington emerged with severe memory loss, unable that Wolff was handsome and trustworthy and even to recognise their own families.14 that his deputies should be brought over, too, be- 13 cause they were “moderate” Nazis. People in the CIA called what they did “fun and In the 1950s, Allen Dulles helped the CIA initi- games.” You start to understand the mindset. ate a series of horrific experiments in mind con- The Brothers Dulles enjoyed eight years of un- trol that were so wide-ranging and pernicious fettered control over overt and covert foreign pol- that few scholars have dared to cover what icy under the Eisenhower administration. Despite happened. There were “terminal” experiments, Eisenhower’s staff warning him nearly every where the subject was tortured or drugged to year of his administration that the CIA was out death. Experiments in hypnosis that resulted in of control, Eisenhower either turned a blind eye self-injury were conducted. In other cases, peo- or, in some cases, condoned its worst excesses. ple’s personalities were split by hypnotists into For example, Eisenhower appeared to have giv- multiple personalities that could be separately en an order to kill Congo Prime Minister Patrice programmed. The documented experiments Lumumba, according to meeting notetaker strongly suggest someone could be made to kill Robert Johnson.15 Eisenhower supported regime another person under hypnosis. Hints in the re- change in the democracies of Iran (to support an cord say what the documents can’t: that yes, you oil company later named BP), Guatemala (to sup- can make someone do something against their port United Fruit’s land claims), and in Indonesia moral code if they were hypnotizable enough. (where a huge but secret vein of gold had been Drug addicts and criminals were favorite test discovered), where the coup attempt failed. subjects, as they had no real means to fight back. As I wrote in A Lie Too Big to Fail: “The Cold But sometimes, the victims were just ordinary War was a blanket term for what was in effect a citizens who went into the facility on the wrong series of resource wars. Who would control the day. Dr. Ewen Cameron’s experiments in what he oil supplies around the globe? Who would control called “psychic driving” were perhaps the most the rare earth minerals that made flight, comput- horrific: ers, and cell phones possible? We will perhaps always be involved in resource wars unless we Firstly, distressing memories and pathologi- recognize that nearly every international con- cal behaviours were “annihilated” from the pa- flict is about resources, and that ideology is sim- tient’s mind through an unrelenting regime of 16 electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). While most ply the fig leaf used to hide that fact.” But I need of his peers conservatively limited ECT to 12 to make clear that any leftist leader anywhere on shocks per month to avoid damaging short- the globe was a target to Allen Dulles and his ilk, term memories, Cameron increased this to 12 due to his belief that “leftist” automatically meant shocks per day to capitalise on this usually un- “pro-Soviet,” which is sort of hilarious given the wanted side-effect. Then, patients were placed political situation of the present.

60 | GARRISON | APR / MAY 2019 | [email protected] So Allen Dulles, the man who loved Nazis and all of them, shortly after Kennedy’s death. brought them into the CIA’s fold, the man who was One of the biggest threats he posed to the war insubordinate to FDR, the man who set up psychic profiteers was his opposition to starting a new driving and mind control experiments against war in Vietnam. JFK approved the sending of unwitting and vulnerable U.S. and Canadian cit- advisors to Vietnam in the hopes of training the izens, and the man who spent his life targeting South Vietnamese to defend themselves from leftists, was the man who headed the CIA at the their northern neighbors. But it wasn’t until after start of the Kennedy administration. This is also his death that actual combat troops were inserted the man Kennedy fired in the wake of the Bay of there. Many scholars have argued that Kennedy’s Pigs. And this is the man who sat on the Warren refusal to escalate the conflict in Vietnam was a Commission and deliberately concealed not only key reason for his assassination. You can’t sell he- the CIA’s plots to kill Castro but also the fact that licopters for a war that doesn’t exist. the Kennedys were in the dark about these plots, Others point to Cuba, citing the failed Bay of as the CIA had acted on its own, without the pres- Pigs operation and the fact that Kennedy gave ident’s knowledge or permission.17 in to Soviet demands to remove missiles from Between the years of 1947 and 1963, literally Turkey in exchange for the Soviets stopping their every government led by anyone with a leftward build-up of missiles in Cuba in the wake of the leaning was targeted by the CIA. It would have Cuban Missile Crisis as the reason the CIA wanted been the anomaly had Dulles not considered tar- to kill JFK. (Never mind that the missiles Kennedy geting the leader at home, who was far easier to gave up were set to be decommissioned anyway.) reach. Still others point to his nuclear test ban treaty with the Soviet Union. That cut into the business

Between the years of 1947 and 1963, literally every government led by anyone with a leftward “ leaning was targeted by the CIA. JFK as a Threat ” profits of the nuclear industry and was viewed, Kennedy was as much a threat to the business by those with a warped mindset similar to that class as FDR had been and certainly more of a of Allen Dulles, as a sellout to the communists. threat than the leaders of Iran and Guatemala. Realize that the CIA had deposed leftist leaders He had publicly chewed out U.S. Steel for a sud- elsewhere for stymying American business inter- den increase in the price of steel in response to a ests. “ contact with steelworkers. JFK accused the lead- But I think the strongest argument for why the ers of steel companies of price gouging. The sub- CIA killed JFK was JFK’s war with the CIA itself. sequent publicity forced the leaders to cut their After President Kennedy realized that the CIA prices back to the pre-hike levels. had lied to him about numerous facets of the Bay In another instance, he challenged the outra- of Pigs operation, he fired not just Allen Dulles but geous stockpiling of nickel and other materials. Richard Bissell and Charles Cabell (whose broth- This was lucrative business to those who sold er, Earl Cabell, was both a member of the CIA and materials into the stockpiling program. Kennedy the mayor of Dallas at the time of JFK’s assassina- 18 was outraged to find we had far more material tion. ) President Kennedy expressed the desire stockpiled than was needed and long-term con- to break CIA “into thousands of pieces and scat- 19 tracts that were going to be difficult to end, and ter it to the four winds.” he turned to Congress for help changing the rules. JFK briefly considered appointing RFK to head “In Indonesia, in Ghana, in Brazil, Kennedy was the CIA, but RFK said that would look like nepo- supporting the existing leaders. The CIA would tism. They also both feared Republican backlash. eventually be instrumental in the overthrow of So JFK just had RFK keep tabs on the CIA, which

GARRISON | VOLUME 01 ISSUE 01 | 61 “The poolside telephone rang at Hickory Hill, Bobby Kennedy’s Virginia manor house across the Chain Bridge from Washington, piercing what had been a quiet, unseasonably warm November afternoon. The extension was one of many secure lines that ran through his property, installed by the Signal Corps. It was a testament to his power and place in his brother’s administration —to be within a digit’s reach at all times. On November 22, 1963, Bobby was having a swim and a tuna fish sandwich because it was Friday and he was Catholic. The telephone at the foot of the pool delivered words that burst into his life, never to exit: ‘The president’s been shot.’ ” — John R. Bohrer The Revolution of Robert Kennedy Bloomsbury Press: NY, 2017.

annoyed the independent-minded operators to Deputy Director of Intelligence, “Harvey has no end. destroyed himself today. His usefulness has Robert Kennedy also apparently let it be ended.”21 known that he didn’t want any more Dulleses in At that point, the CIA transferred Harvey to government after the fiasco. So Eleanor Dulles, a Rome. But according to at least one associate, sister to Allen Dulles, who had been quietly work- Harvey was in Dallas shortly before JFK was ing away in the State Department, was told she killed and something he said the day of the assas- had to go.20 sination caused the associate to believe Harvey During the Cuban Missile Crisis, Robert had foreknowledge of the plot, which deeply dis- Kennedy got into an angry exchange with Bill turbed the associate for the rest of his life.22 Harvey, a high-level CIA operative running op- In Vietnam, there was a split between what the erations against Cuba. RFK had ordered all sab- Kennedy administration was asking for and what otage and other operations against Cuba shut the CIA was doing. Journalist Richard Starnes down during the crisis, but then, three days into quoted American officials in Vietnam likening the crisis, he learned Harvey had just sent ten the CIA’s growth to a “malignancy” and warning, commando teams to Cuba. Harvey sent 60 men “If the U.S. ever experiences a ‘Seven Days in May’ to Cuba carrying beacons and flares that could it will come from the CIA, and not the Pentagon,” guide what he assumed would be a military inva- and that CIA had “tremendous power and total sion. RFK was livid and thought Harvey was be- unaccountability” and wondered if “even the ing insubordinate: White House could control it any longer.”23 “I was furious,” Kennedy later related. “I I’d argue that high-ranking members of the said, ‘You are dealing with people’s lives … and CIA killed JFK not for any single reason but for all then you’re going to go off with a half-assed op- these reasons and more. Leaders that Kennedy erations such as this.’” On whose authority had supported were ousted or killed in the wake of Harvey dispatched no less than sixty of these JFK’s and RFK’s deaths, coups that wouldn’t have brave men into Cuba at a time when the slight- been possible with either in office. Both John est provocation might unleash a nuclear holo- Kennedy and Robert Kennedy believed that oth- caust? Kennedy demanded to know. “[Harvey] er nations have the right to self-determination, said we planned it because the military wanted it done, and I asked the military and they and that nations that refused our aid were not au- never heard of it.” Kennedy demanded a bet- tomatically becoming Soviet satellites. Both be- ter explanation and said, “I’ve got two min- lieved that economic aid was cheaper and more utes to hear your answer.” Two minutes later effective in producing the desired result in other Harvey was still talking. Kennedy got up and nations than military aid. Both believed that nu- walked out of the room. That evening when clear war was to be avoided at all costs. Both be- [CIA Director John McCone] returned to CIA lieved that the CIA was out of control and needed headquarters in Langley, he told Ray Cline, his to be reined in. 62 | GARRISON | APR / MAY 2019 | [email protected] “That little Kennedy … he thought he was a the need to kill RFK as well. As a stellar former god,” Allen Dulles told Harper’s assistant editor Senate investigator and effective attorney gen- Willie Morris, who was interviewing him for an eral of the United States, Robert Kennedy knew article about the Bay of Pigs.24 That comment exactly what levers to pull if he had the power to summed up why JFK was likely killed. It was a do so. He could have easily gotten a new inves- matter of projection. Allen Dulles thought he was tigation into his brother’s death and would have a god, and Kennedy overruled him and then fired acted swiftly on what he found. him. It’s not impossible to believe Dulles took it But that wasn’t the only reason the CIA want- upon himself and his well-funded friends at CIA ed RFK dead. and in the business community to quietly do what they had done a few times before – remove a left- Robert Kennedy vs. the CIA ist leader from office. It’s also not impossible to In the last year of his life, the CIA considered see revenge as a secondary motive. spying on “American political and civil rights Former CIA officer James Wilcott had an even leaders such as Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and the more depressing and likely at least partially ac- Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.” as important as spy- curate reason to explain why JFK was killed: ing on the Soviet Union and Communist China, reported The Washington Post.26 The CIA was de- The branch chiefs and deputy chiefs, proj- termined to prevent the “peaceniks” (it wouldn’t ect intelligence officers and operational specialists viewed Kennedy as a threat to the surprise me if the CIA originated that term) from clandestine services. The loss of special privi- ending the Vietnam War. This was so important to leges, allowances, status and early retirement the CIA that they had a widespread and wholly il- that come with the CIA cloak-and-dagger job legal domestic operation called Operation Chaos were becoming a possibility, even a probabili- that paralled the FBI’s “Counterintelligence ty. The prestigious portions of the bureaucrat- Program” (COINTELPRO) operations. Peace ic dominions, ambitiously sought, might be no groups were infiltrated. Leaders were identified, more. Adjustment to a less glamorous job in a discredited, and neutralized in a variety of ways. 25 common profession could be the result. Assassination is just an extreme way to neutral- ize someone’s impact. If you believe that the CIA killed JFK, it’s an And Robert Kennedy was a rock star. When he easy step to understanding why they would feel stood at the podium at the Democratic National

“And in all of these efforts, you were there. All of you. And when there were difficulties, you sustained him. When there were periods of crisis, you stood beside. When there were periods of happiness, you laughed with him. And when there were periods of sorrow, you comforted him. ... “I realize that as an individual, that we can’t just look back, that we must look forward. When I think of President Kennedy, I think of what Shakespeare said in Romeo and Juliet, ‘When he shall die, take him and cut him out in little stars, and he shall make the face of heaven so fine that all the world will be in love with night and pay no worship to the garish sun’. ... “And I think that if we dedicate ourselves as he frequently did to all of you when he spoke, when he quoted from Robert Frost, he said that what he applied to himself but we could apply to the Democratic party and to all of us as individuals, that ‘the woods are lovely, dark and deep, but I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep.’ ” — Robert F. Kennedy 1964 Democratic National Convention August 1964 Nine months after the assassination of JFK

GARRISON | VOLUME 01 ISSUE 01 | 63 Convention in 1964, applause rocked the ven- (except for a typographical error now and ue for 22 full minutes before the crowd quieted then). The stockmarket [sic] tables are cor- enough for him to speak. Everywhere he went, rect (within the same limitation). But when it people reached out to him. People wanted to comes to news which will affect you, your dai- physically touch him. On the 50th anniversary ly life, your job, your relation to other peoples, your thinking on economic and social prob- of his death, I heard associates of his speak at the lems, and, more important today, your going to former site of the Ambassador Hotel where he war and risking your life for a great ideal, then was killed, which is now the Robert F. Kennedy you cannot trust about 98 percent (or perhaps Community Schools, and none of them could ful- 99 percent) of the big newspaper and big mag- ly articulate what made people feel the need to azine press of America.27 touch him. And RFK refused to let security get between him and the people. At times his hands Seldes attributed that to the fact that Big were bloodied from the scratching and clawing Business started buying up all the newspapers. of people trying to get their moment. After his There was a brief period in the history when re- victory in delegate-rich California, and given his porters enjoyed nearly unprecedented freedom – 22-minute ovation at the prior convention, the during the Progressive Era of roughly 1900 to 1917, CIA had every reason to believe he’d become in which the problems of the day were surfaced in president. the media and tackled by the readers to build a To the public, Robert Kennedy said he support- more just society. Ida Tarbell’s famous multipart ed the Warren Report. But in private, to friends expose of the Rockefeller’s Standard Oil trust in like Dick Goodwin, he’d expressed his doubts. 1904 brought down one of the most powerful busi- The day of the assassination, ness empires of the era. Upton when he heard his brother had Sinclair’s 1904 book The Jungle been shot, he called the CIA and exposed the deception in the asked if the CIA had killed his meat industry and led to the pas- brother. He asked CIA Director sage of the Meat Inspection Act John McCone the same thing. in 1906. And he knew the mob and the The elites learned during the CIA had been working together early 1900s that control of the to attempt to kill Fidel Castro. media was essential to protect- He took meetings with conspir- ing their profits. So a concerted acy researchers. So the CIA had GEORGE SELDES effort was made to buy up news- reason to fear that RFK would papers and increase market reopen an investigation into his brother’s death share to push out the independent if he got to the White House. And his popularity voices on the scene. (Back then, there were hun- seemed to assure that he would. dreds if not thousands of independent media out- So the CIA took him out first. But how did they lets. Now, a handful of corporations own nearly all get away with these killings? of what we see and hear in the news.) Reporters By controlling the media. It really doesn’t mat- learned not to speak up, not to push the envelope ter what an investigation finds. It only matters too far. As John Swinton, a former chief editorial what information reaches the public. The CIA writer at The New York Times, said in a toast to operatives knew this from long experience. The the New York Press Club: original goal of the OSS was to match the Nazis in their propaganda efforts. Propaganda and media There is no such thing, at this date of the world’s history, in America, as an independent control were baked into the CIA from Day One. press. You know it and I know it. There is not one of you who dares to write Big Business, the CIA, and the Media your honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in In 1942, the fiercely independent journalist print. I am paid weekly for keeping my honest George Seldes wrote that he believed “most of opinion out of the paper I am connected with. the world press is controlled by special interests Others of you are paid similar salaries for simi- and as a result is corrupt”: lar things, and any of you who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on [T]he baseball scores are always correct

64 | GARRISON | APR / MAY 2019 | [email protected] To the public, Robert Kennedy said he supported the Warren Report. But ““ in private... he expressed his doubts. ... He took meetings with conspiracy researchers. So the CIA had reason to fear that RFK would reopen an investigation into his brother’s death if he got into the White House.

the streets looking for another job. If I allowed way the media reports it, you essentially have un- my honest opinions to appear in one issue of accountable power. When you can defy Congress my paper, before twenty-four hours my occu- and survive, when every time you fail, as on 9/11, pation would be gone. instead of getting penalized you get rewarded The business of the journalists is to destroy with a bigger budget, you feel you are invincible. the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell his In 1991, while a former CIA director named country and his race for his daily bread. You George H. W. Bush was president, CIA Director know it and I know it, and what folly is this Robert Gates wrote in a memo titled “Greater toasting an independent press? CIA Openness” that the CIA’s Public Affairs Office We are the tools and vassals of rich men be- (PAO) “has relationships with reporters from ev- hind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks, they ery major wire service, newspaper, news weekly, “pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our and television network in the nation. This has possibilities and our lives are all the property helped us turn some intelligence failure stories 28 of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes. into intelligence success stories, and it has con- tributed to the accuracy of countless others. In The nascent CIA actively sought out journal- many instances, we have persuaded reporters to ists. They made great spies. They had easy access, postpone, change, hold, or even scrap stories that they could ask pointed questions without raising could have adversely affected national security suspicion. And they could plant disinformation interests or jeopardized sources and methods.” through casual conversation or by running a As I said at a conference sponsored by the story abroad that would “blow back” home. The Wecht Center at Duquesne University in 2013, “It CIA was prohibited from propagandizing the should be clear that any organization that brags American public. So they’d release stories in the about its ability to change ‘intelligence failures’ foreign press that would be picked up at home. It into ‘intelligence success stories’ is, at its heart, an had the same effect, but somehow that was con- anti-democratic organization. The public simply sidered “legal.” cannot make intelligent choices about politics When the Pike Committee, the House’s parallel when failures are misrepresented as successes. to the Church Committee, investigated the CIA’s No business could survive such misrepresenta- operations, it ran across their media assets. But tion for long. But intelligence agencies get away when Congress demanded to know the names of with it.” the journalists involved, the CIA refused to turn The journalists and news directors of the that information over to our elected represen- present era grew up, for the most part, in the tatives. At that moment, it was clear who really post-Watergate era and learned only the official ran the country. Congress was cowed by the CIA verdicts from the assassinations of JFK and RFK, and refused to press the issue. Carl Bernstein took i.e., that Lee Harvey Oswald killed President the Pike Committee’s information and did his John Fitzgerald Kennedy and that a Palestinian own investigation to produce the seminal piece Christian named Sirhan Sirhan killed Senator for Rolling Stone called “The CIA and the Media” Robert Francis Kennedy. Neither assertion in October of 1977. Bernstein showed that ABC, matches the evidence. But newspeople don’t look NBC, CBS, The New York Times, The Washington into the evidence. They talk to “insiders,” who Post, The Los Angeles Times, the AP, Copley often have CIA connections or work for the CIA News Service, Readers Digest, and every other directly, and report back what those “unnamed major media organ in the country had close re- officials” say. And the public gets none the wiser lationships with the CIA. This allowed the CIA to over the years. control what information reached the public and When the CIA’s role in the Castro plots surfaced what didn’t. in 1967, it became easy for people to wonder if When you can commit a crime and control the

GARRISON | VOLUME 01 ISSUE 01 | 65 the CIA had used any of those same operatives of our democratically elected government by in a plot to kill JFK. When New Orleans District covert actors is the story of our time. When Attorney Jim Garrison arrested local business- President John F. Kennedy got a glimpse of how man Clay Shaw for participating in a conspiracy the CIA operated during the Bay of Pigs and to assassinate JFK that involved the CIA, the CIA beyond, he vowed to shatter the Agency into a fired off a memo to its CIA media assets titled thousand pieces. The CIA got to him first. When “Countering Criticism of the Warren Report.”29 If Robert Kennedy evinced an interest in the CIA’s you read the memo, you’ll hear echoes of it every role in his brother’s death, the CIA silenced Robert, time these assassinations are discussed. Point too, before he could rise to a position from which number 4.c., for example, says this: “Conspiracy to challenge them. When the evidence of con- on the large scale often suggested would be spiracy that the Warren Commission suppressed impossible to conceal in the United States., esp. started to surface in the media, the CIA instructed since informants could expect its media assets on how to to receive large royalties, etc.” rebut claims of conspiracy, (Never mind that the CIA and they’ve been running the was also in bed with all the same playbook ever since.30 major publishers, but that’s a It’s time we break that cy- story too big for this piece.) cle and take back our history. When I was interviewed Go read some books. Tell your on KTLA, one of the anchors friends. We need to move rolled his eyes and said words people past theories and to the effect, “but what you’re into knowledge, so we can suggesting would involve a reclaim our history before it big conspiracy with a lot of disappears forever, forcing us people and that just makes no sense.” Do I think to repeat these horrific lessons. he was working for the CIA? Of course not. But • ENDNOTES: I’m pointing out that the CIA was very effective 1 Jackman, Tom, “CIA may have used contractor who inspired ‘Mis- in putting that thought in people’s heads repeat- sion: Impossible’ to kill RFK, new book alleges,” WashingtonPost.com, edly over the years, so much so that the anchor Feb. 9, 2019. (http://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2019/02/09/ thought it was of his own making. cia-may-have-used-contractor-who-inspired-mission-impossible-kill- rfk-new-book-alleges/) Similarly, the memo urges the framing of this 2 “Author Lisa Pease talks about Her New Book ‘A Lie Too Big as “conspiracy theories,” as if no conspiracy can to Fail: The Real History of the Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy’,” ever be actual. The phrase was barely mentioned KTLA.com, March 5, 2019. (https://ktla.com/2019/02/28/author-lisa- in the media before this memo, and widely used pease-talks-about-her-new-book-a-lie-to-big-to-fail-the-real-history- of-the-assassination-of-robert-f-kennedy/) after it, according to a study by Professor Emeritus 3 Ball, Jason and Bobby Gonzalez, “The News Director’s Office: ‘A Lance de Haven-Smith in his book Conspiracy Lie Too Big to Fail: The Real History of the Assassination of Robert Theory in America. F. Kennedy’ with Lisa Pease,”KTLA.com, March 5, 2019. (https://ktla. Most of us are unwilling to admit how thor- com/2019/03/05/the-news-directors-office-a-lie-too-big-to-fail-with- oughly we have been propagandized. And who lisa-pease/) 4 Irish satirist Jonathan Swift wrote in 1710, “Falsehood flies, and has time to chase down history? That’s why it’s the Truth comes limping after it; so that when Men come to be unde- hard to believe the CIA killed either Kennedy. But ceiv’d, it is too late; the Jest is over, and the Tale has had its Effect … it’s only a theory until you face the facts yourself. .” See “A Lie Can Travel Halfway Around the World While the Truth To those of us who have done the research, it’s no Is Putting on Its Shoes,” Quoteinvestigator.com, July 13, 2014. (https:// quoteinvestigator.com/2014/07/13/truth/) longer a theory. It’s the reality. 5 Colby, Gerard and Charlotte Dennett, Thy Will Be Done: The The killing of Robert Kennedy effectively Conquest of the Amazon: Nelson Rockefeller and Evangelism in the Age of ended any hope of a progressive American for- Oil (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., 1995), p. 112. eign policy. We had one, briefly, during President 6 Letter from George White to Sid Gottlieb, quoted in Marks, John F. Kennedy’s reign. And we’ll never have John, The Search for the Manchurian Candidate (New York: W. W. Nor- ton & Company, 1991), p. 109. one again until we understand how the military- 7 Talbot, David, The Devil’s Chessboard (New York: HarperCollins, industrial-intelligence complex works in concert 2015), p. 25. to prevent that. 8 Ibid. When people ask why the assassinations of 9 Talbot, Devil’s Chessboard, op. cit., p. 27. 10 Talbot, Devil’s Chessboard, op. cit., p. 33. the 1960s matter, that’s the reason: The takeover 11 AP, “Lodge Cites Necessity of Unification,” Hartford Courant, July

66 | GARRISON | APR / MAY 2019 | [email protected] 8, 1947. 12 Ibid. 13 Terry Gross Author Interviews, “How Thousands of Nazis Were ‘Rewarded’ With Life in the U.S.,” NPR.com, Nov. 5, 2014. 14 Saunders, David, “The history of brainwashing is a red flag for techno-therapy,” Aeon, Aug. 28, 2017. (https://aeon.co/ideas/the-history-of-brainwashing-is-a-red-flag-for-techno-therapy) 15 “Church Committee: Interim Report – Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders,” p. 55. (https://www.maryferrell.org/ showDoc.html?docId=1156&relPageId=69) 16 Pease, Lisa, A Lie Too Big to Fail: The Real History of the Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy (Port Townsend, WA: Feral House, 2018), p. 15. 17 John Newman has done extensive work proving that Sam Halpern, a high-level CIA officer, lied to journalists and authors claiming that RFK was pushing the plots to kill Castro. But the CIA’s own IG report, to which Halpern was a witness, says the opposite. The CIA only told RFK about its plots to kill Castro after they were inadvertently exposed in the media. The CIA did not tell RFK or JFK about the plots that were continuing. In the CIA’s own report on the plots, the CIA’s Inspector General asked, “Can CIA state or imply that it was merely an instrument of policy?” The answer was: “Not in this case.” See my discussion of this in A Lie Too Big to Fail, op. cit., pp. 478-483. 18 WhoWhatWhy Staff, “Dallas Mayor During JFK Assassination Was CIA Asset,” WhoWhatWhy.org, Aug. 2, 2017. (https://whowhatwhy.org/2017/08/02/dallas-mayor-jfk-assassination-cia-asset/) 19 “A Disaster for CIA,” Alabama Journal, Sept. 19, 1978. 20 Mosley, Leonard, Dulles (New York: The Dial Press, 1978), p. 473. 2 Martin, David C., Wilderness of Mirrors (New York: Harper & Row, 1980), p. 144 Lisa Pease 22 Talbot, Devil’s Chessboard, op. cit., pp. 476-477. 23 Starnes, Richard, Scripps News Service, “Arrogant, Power Mad— That’s our CIA in Viet Nam,” El Paso A Lie Too Big to Fail Herald-Post, Oct. 2, 1963, p. 27. Lisa Pease lays out, in meticulous detail, how the 24 Douglass, James W., JFK and the Unspeakable (New York: Simon & investigation of Robert Kennedy’s assassination Schuster, 2008), p. 16. was botched. Witnesses were silenced by the 25 HSCA executive session testimony of James Wilcott, March 22, Los Angeles Police Department. Evidence was 1978. deliberately altered and, in some instances, 26 Robinson, Timothy S., “At CIA, Domestic and Foreign Spying Had Equal Priority,” Sept. 9, 1979. destroyed. And the justice system (supported by an 27 Seldes, George, The Facts Are … A Guide to Falsehood and Propa- incurious media) failed to present the truth of the ganda in the Press and Radio (New York: In Fact, Inc., 1942), p. 1. case to the public. 28 Boyer, Richard O. and Herbert M. Morais, Labor’s Untold Story Pease reveals through a combination of records (New York: United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America, research and interviews with participants how the 1955/1979.), p. 81. trial was a sham, and how the prosecution did not 29 The document’s author, Chief of WOVIEW, is Ned Bennett. See dare to follow where the evidence led. the full document starting here: https://www.maryferrell.org/show- Was the convicted Sirhan Sirhan a willing Doc.html?docId=3167#relPageId=2&tab=page. participant? Or was he a mind-controlled assassin? 30 CIA memo from Ned Bennett (“Chief of WOVIEW), “Coun- tering Criticism of the Warren Report,” April 1, 1967. (https://www. Lisa Pease goes further than anyone else in proving maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=3167#relPageId=2&tab=page) who likely planned the assassinaton, who the assassin team members were, and why Kennedy was deemed such a threat that he had to be taken out before he became President of the United States. Lisa Pease has been researching the Deep State and its relationship with coups, assassinations, and other major events for more than 25 years. She is the co-author and co-editor “A massively researched and skillfully written ex- of The Assassinations: Probe Magazine on JFK, MLK, RFK and ploration of a terrible miscarriage of justice. With Malcolm X. Lisa was the co-editor of Probe Magazine with Jim much new evidence, it takes what we know about DiEugenio. Her first solo effort, A Lie Too Big to Fail: The Real this case to a new level. Sirhan Sirhan did not kill History of the Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, was released RFK — and the authorities knew it.” on November 20, 2018 and is available now. Her book was the OLIVER STONE recent subject of a positive article in The Washington Post. Lisa Director, JFK and Nixon Pease has a Twitter following which can be joined @LisaPease.

GARRISON | VOLUME 01 ISSUE 01 | 67 Ted Kennedy, Richard Nixon, and CHAPPAQUIDDICK By Joseph E. Green We need to ask the right questions. The right questions, in my opinion, begin with physical re- hat happened at Chappaquiddick? ality. Given any historical explanation, we need The known philanderer and pervert to first check to see if the explanation is possible. Teddy Kennedy got caught with his Seems simple enough, but it’s been anything but Wpants down and got a nice Catholic girl killed in when it comes to deciphering history. Especially the process. You heard this, right? Yeah, he was when you consider the JFK assassination got trying to screw his secretary, got drunk, and pinned on Lee Harvey Oswald, who had poor drove his car off a bridge. Then the bastard ran marksmanship skills, a crappy low-velocity car- off and saved himself while the girl drowned. bine, and one magic bullet; and the RFK assassi- Sick, right? Those Kennedys, they’re all adulter- nation got blamed on a patsy who wasn’t even in ers. It’s disgusting. the right location to cause the wounds found on And maybe that’s what happened. the body, holding a gun that held fewer bullets On the other hand, maybe that’s a narrative then were fired in the incident. And that’s just his- – one that feeds into other narratives about the tory concerning Ted’s brothers. Kennedys that are also fabricated and designed So we may have our work cut out for us. to paint a false historical picture. Ted certainly thought so. He said, complaining about a Boston Aside Globe re-investigation of the incident five years Before we begin with the basic facts of the later: “The problem is, [the questions] haven’t case, I want to take a moment to say that this been answered the way the writers would like to article owes a debt to work done by three re- have them answered. … They’re not going to find 1 searchers in particular: Mae Brussell, Joachim other kinds of facts, because they just don’t exist.” Joesten, and especially Robert B. Cutler. Brussell Self-serving remarks from a man covering him- is fairly well known, while Joesten is known as self? Or sticking to the truth? Or is there another one of the early European researchers into the possibility? How would we decide? case who published one of the first books on the 68 | GARRISON | APR / MAY 2019 | [email protected] subject (Oswald: Assassin or Fall Guy), which Mary Jo Kopechne, unfortunately, did not. No re- still holds up quite well. Cutler is less well known, port was made to the police for about ten hours although he is fascinating character – a former after the incident. architect who began studying assassinations and producing remarkable drawings based on The Context his ideas. He is perhaps best-known through his connection to the theories surrounding Umbrella There’s an element of context that is inescap- Man, although he also gave a lie detector test to able when analyzing something like this. This in- Gordon Novel, the results of which I have held in cident doesn’t happen in a vacuum. First, there’s my hands. (More on that in a future article.) And, the obvious context that two of Ted’s brothers most notably, he did some brilliant work on the had been assassinated during the 1960s. Both the Chappaquiddick incident, which we will explore JFK and the RFK assassinations have elements throughout. One interesting fact is that – as Cutler that make it obvious that they did not happen in notes at one point – all three researchers reached the way they were sold to the public. (You can see the same conclusion independently. my own zines on both cases to get an introduction). Even Ted himself had already survived a The Basic Facts small plane crash. In fact, he survived a small plane crash It was Friday night, July that happened on June 19, 18, 1969, on Chappaquiddick 1964. That’s nine months af- Island in Massachusetts, ter his brother John had been some 237,000 miles from killed in Dallas. Apollo 11, which was at that That date ring a bell? same moment entering the June 19, 1964 was the day the Moon’s gravity. The island, Senate passed the Civil Rights whose name derives from Act of 1964. Ted worked a a Native word for “separat- long day on the Senate floor, ed island,” is accessed via then caught the plane back to a ferry from Edgartown in Massachusetts to receive the Martha’s Vineyard. Kennedy Democratic nomination at had been attending a par- the state’s convention. ty for the Boiler Room Girls, Except he didn’t make it, a group of young women because at a certain point the who had helped in Robert plane dropped like a stone Kennedy’s 1968 election. out of the air. Or a “tobog- The Boiler Room Girls were gan ride,” as he himself said.2 Mary Ellen Lyons, Nancy Two others died; Kennedy Lyons, Rosemary Keough, emerged with a broken back Susan Tannenbaum, Esther Newberg, and Mary that affected him the rest of his life. Jo Kopechne. Also present at the party were That’s the obvious context. Next up is the slight- a few men, friends such as Paul Markham and ly less obvious context. Kennedy’s cousin Joseph Garghan, among others. Let’s rewind a bit to the 1968 election. Richard A few minutes after eleven at night, Kennedy Nixon is the frontrunner on the Republican obtained the keys from his chauffeur (which was side. Bobby Kennedy enters the race for the reportedly unusual) and announced his intention Democratic nomination late, wins the California to leave the party. Mary Jo Kopechne then stat- primary, and then gets shot to death in the pantry ed she wanted to go to her hotel and the senator of the Ambassador Hotel in an obvious conspira- agreed to take her. Kennedy and Mary Jo drove cy on June 4, 1968. out into the night. What sometimes gets forgotten is that Nixon After that, things become fuzzy. What we almost lost in 1968 anyway. He had already been know is that at some point the vehicle became beaten by one Kennedy in 1960, and an assassin’s upended in Poucha Pond, having been driven off bullets prevented him from being beaten by an- a bridge off Dike Road. Ted Kennedy survived. other one. However, the ticket of Edmund Muskie

GARRISON | VOLUME 01 ISSUE 01 | 69 NIXON: Does he do anything? EHRLICHMAN: No, no. He’s very clean. Very clean. NIXON: Be careful, now. “ — Nixon and John Ehrlichman discuss the surveillance of Ted Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey” carried almost as many discuss the prospects of getting the IRS onto the popular votes. Also sometimes lost in the shuf- candidates Muskie and Hubert Humphrey. Then fle is the fact that third-party candidate George the following exchange occurs: Wallace, running with Curtis LeMay as his running mate, took some 13% of the popular vote, NIXON: Teddy? Who knows about the muddying the waters. Kennedys? Shouldn’t they be investigated? So how did Nixon’s first term go? Not so great EHRLICHMAN: IRS-wise, I don’t know “ the answer. Teddy, we are covering – – turns out he didn’t end the Vietnam War as promised. There were a lot of challengers to wor- NIXON: Are you? ry about in 1972. The first one was Ted Kennedy, EHRLICHMAN: – personally. When but, of course, this 1969 Chappaquiddick incident he goes on holidays, when he stopped in – among other things – ruined his presidential am- Hawaii and on his way back from Pakistan. bitions forever. The second was Edmund Muskie NIXON: Does he do anything? again, but he was undone by the “Canuck letter.” EHRLICHMAN: No, no. He’s very clean. It was a letter produced by dirty tricks special- Very clean. 3 ists Donald Segretti and Kenneth Clawson and NIXON: Be careful, now. was forged to make it look like Muskie disliked Nixon still remembers being beaten by John French-Canadians. Then, when Muskie was at- in 1960, and maybe a lot more besides. However, tempting to defend himself outside while it was “ it’s no speculation to say that Nixon was hav- snowing, media reported that he was crying as ing Ted Kennedy tracked, as Ehrlichman says, he spoke. A crying president? Muskie was done, “personally.” although now we would classify what the media A year later, on September 6, 1972, Nixon is did to him as “fake news.” The last contender was having another conversation, this time with George Wallace. Wallace emerged as a real threat Ehrlichman and H. R. Haldeman. The question in ’72. Then – wouldn’t you know it – another lone is about temporary Secret Service protection nut, Arthur Bremer, went out and shot him. On for the candidates. (Prior to the George Wallace the Watergate tapes, Nixon and Charles Colson shooting, candidates were not given protection – discuss planting some pro-George McGovern lit- which is either, depending on your frame of mind, erature in Bremer’s apartment. (Yes, it’s true. I say ironic or sinister.) Ted was not a candidate at this this all the time, but if you really want to know point, but many people expected him to throw his how politics works, there is no better document hat in the ring. They explain the concern: to read than the transcriptions of the Watergate tapes, as we’re going to see in a minute.) HALDEMAN: You’ve got one United In any case, with only McGovern to face, Nixon States senator [Kennedy] who is a second- easily won reelection in 1972. ary factor in the campaign. You give him [Secret Service] coverage through the The Tapes campaign – EHRLICHMAN: Understand, I don’t like Oh, and speaking of the Watergate tapes, we to give him something, but at the same should probably begin there. Nixon was most time – worried about Kennedy running for president in HALDEMAN: And then if he gets shot, 1972, despite the fact that Chappaquiddick still it’s our fault. haunted him three years later. On September 8, EHRLICHMAN: Sure. 1971, Nixon conferred with John Ehrlichman to NIXON: You understand what the 70 | GARRISON | APR / MAY 2019 | [email protected] problem is. If the son of a bitch gets shot, again to his professional art studio – the they’ll say we didn’t furnish it. So you just CIA. Their political section drew up a dev- buy his insurance. Then after the election, astating series of anti-Kennedy political he doesn’t get a goddamn thing. If he gets cartoons. shot, it’s too damn bad. EHRLICHMAN: All right.4 This is Liddy writing this, not some pinko conspiracy theorist. Of course, for a guy like that, Now this is incredible enough, but then Nixon collaborating with the CIA to produce some pro- sees an opportunity and continues: paganda is the least of his worries. For his part, E. Howard Hunt – following the NIXON: Do it on the basis, though, that Daniel Ellsberg break-in – told reporters that ini- we pick the Secret Service men. Not that tially he had received equipment from the CIA not son of a bitch [Secret Service Chief James] for Ellsberg but to help him spy on Ted Kennedy. Rowley. Understand what I’m talking Hunt also said that Nixon’s aide Charles Colson about? Do you have anybody in the Secret had said he would arrange for CIA assistance.7 Service that you can get to? As far as Richard Nixon and his pals were con- EHRLICHMAN: Yeah. cerned, Chappaquiddick was the gift that kept NIXON: Do you have anybody we can on giving. The Democratic challengers since the rely on? death of Bobby Kennedy had been mostly weak EHRLICHMAN: Yeah, we’ve got several. sauce, but the specter of the last Kennedy broth- NIXON: Plant one. Plant two guys on er hung over the American political scene. Would 5 him. This would be very useful. Teddy run? Chappaquiddick ensured that the answer would remain no. (Actually, it appears First, the fact that this exchange survives in the that despite his brothers getting assassinated, a official historical record is amazing. It also gives plane crash, and Chappaquiddick, he seems to the lie to a standard objection to most alleged have given it some real thought – which suggests “conspiracy theories,” in that the degree of con- something about his courage, for all his other trol required is usually posited to be impossible. faults.) Read Nixon’s request again and Ehrlichman’s response. He asks for two guys to be planted on his political enemy like he’s requesting extra pickles Private Intelligence on his burger. John Dean and Richard Nixon had one of the In his autobiography, Plumbers hatchet man G. most interesting conversations in history on Gordon Liddy confirms the interest in Kennedy. March 13, 1973. However, the part that frequently He describes himself first running an anti-Muskie gets quoted from this conversation is not what I campaign and then an anti-McGovern campaign, want to go into here, but rather an earlier bit: but Nixon campaign manager Jeb Magruder re- 6 minds him: “Don’t forget about Kennedy.” Liddy DEAN: … That right after [Ted Kennedy’s doesn’t, acquiring a set of Chappaquiddick pho- role in the death of Mary Jo Kopechne at] tos for his file and going into action: Chappaquiddick somebody [Anthony We paid a substantial amount for the Ulasewicz] was put up there to start ob- large set of glossies, and then Hunt turned serving. Within six hours. NIXON: Did we? DEAN: That’s right. NIXON: I didn’t know that. DEAN: That man watched that – he was there for every second of Chappaquiddick, for a year, and almost two years he worked for – he worked for Jack Caulfield, who was originally on John’s staff. … DEAN: Well, if they get to those bank records between – it starts on July of ’69 through June of ’71, and they say, “What are JOHN EHRLICHMAN & RICHARD NIXON

GARRISON | VOLUME 01 ISSUE 01 | 71 guy who delivered the money to Hunt, an initial $219,000. E. Howard Hunt has, of course, “If Kennedy knew been a popular subject of interest in relation to the Kennedy assas- the bear trap he was sination in addition to Watergate. walking into...” So it is interesting to find out that he went down to Hyannis Port wearing a disguise and using a filter to change his voice as he did his own investi- JOHN DEAN gation into Chappaquiddick.10 It’s also a bit ironic that the innocent hero John these about? Who is this fellow that’s up Dean, Mr. Cancer-on-the-Presidency, is the one in New York that you paid?” there comes who gives the game away with this one comment. Chappaquiddick with a vengeance. This If there are alternative explanations for Dean’s guy is a 20-year detective on the New York remark about Kennedy walking into a bear trap, State – New York City police department. I’d love to hear them. Bear traps are, by their very NIXON: In other words, we – nature, set by someone. DEAN: He is ready to disprove and show Who was that someone? The context is sug- that everything from – gestive. However, many questions remain, some NIXON: We don’t consider that wrong. of them about Kennedy’s own behavior. Why did DEAN: Well, if they get to it, it’s going to he lie about what happened that night? (There’s come out and the whole thing is going to no question that he did.) Next time we will pursue turn around on that one. I mean, if Kennedy some of these mysterious inquiries. knew the bear trap he was walking into – 8 • ENDNOTES: There is a lot to unpack here, but this is a pretty 1 Damore, Leo, Senatorial Privilege: The Chappaquiddick Cover-Up, stunning series of remarks on their own. Let’s be- Washington, D.C.: Regnery Gateway (1988), 413. gin with Tony Ulasewicz – who is this guy? He was 2 Potter, Ned, “Edward M. Kennedy Escaped Death in 1964,” ABC News, August 27, 2009. (https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/sto- a former cop and he was originally hired through ry?id=8271369) Jack Caulfield, a “paranoid” who sold Ehrlichman 3 Brinkley, Douglas and Luke A. Richter, Ed., The Nixon Tapes 1971- on a private intelligence gathering operation 1972, Mariner Books (2015), 262. which he could run in secret. Caulfield knew 4 Brinkley and Richter, The Nixon Tapes, 612. Ulasewicz from the Bureau of Special Services 5 Ibid., 612. 6 Liddy, G. Gordon, Will, New York: St. Martin’s Press (1980), 215. and brought him on board for $22,000 a year, paid 7 Hunter, Marjorie, “Kennedy a Target of Hunt’s C.I.A. Aid,” Marjo- out of the office of Herbert Kalmbach, the presi- rie Hunter, The New York Times, June 29, 1973. dent’s lawyer.9 8 Brinkley, Douglas & Luke A. Richter, ed., The Nixon Tapes 1973 As John Dean relates, Ulasewicz’s first gig (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt: 2015), 223-224. 9 White, Theodore H. Breach of Faith: The Fall of Richard Nixon was to investigate the Chappaquiddick incident, (Atheneum Publishers, New York: 1975), 120-121. which he did more efficiently than the actual lo- 10 Sprague, Richard E., The Taking of America, 1-2-3, “Chapter 7: cal authorities. However, he is more famous for The Control of the Kennedys Threats & Chappaquiddick,” (1985). testifying during the Watergate hearings about (https://ratical.org/ratville/JFK/ToA/ToAchp7.html) his role as a bagman for the president. You may recall that when E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Joseph E. Green is the author of a series of zines for Mi- Liddy were both pinched, Hunt relayed to the crocosm Publishing on the JFK, MLK, and RFK assassinations, president that if he didn’t get paid a lot of money Jonestown, and the Black Panthers. The author of several plays, he was going to start talking. And this is the fa- including Clowntime Is Over and The Vapours, Green also mous March 21, 1973 conversation where Nixon served as a writer/producer on the film King Kill 63 and a re- says he knows it’s possible to get a million dollars search consultant on Randy Benson’s The Searchers. The pub- in cash and where to get it. And this has always lisher of works by John Judge, Dr. Faith Harper, and Richard been a source of great speculation, since what Bartholomew via Say Something Real Press, he also sits on the information does Hunt have that would cause board of directors of the Hidden History Center and Center for Deep Political Research. His main website is JoeGreenJFK. Nixon to unblinkingly talk about getting a million com, where he has articles on a wide variety of topics. in cash to cool him off? Anyway, Ulasewicz is the

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GARRISON | VOLUME 01 ISSUE 01 | 73 The Eleventh Hour: Jim Garrison’s Quest for Justice Part II Note: Part one of William “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts Davy’s two-part “researcher absolutely.” – Lord Acton to Bishop Creighton (1887) profile” can be found in the first issue of Deep Truth By William Davy Journal. To purchase, search for DTJ at Alibris.com. he quote above led off a chapter of one of Jim Garrison’s many unpublished manuscripts. This particular one he had titled The Eleventh Hour. And indeed, to Garrison he must T have felt he and the country had reached that precipice. By the mid-1970s Garrison had been through his crucible. In 1966 as D.A. of Orleans Parish, Garrison had the temerity to open an investigation into President Kennedy’s assassination (and en passant Lee Harvey Oswald’s activities in the summer of 1963). Garrison charged a local New Orleans businessman (and CIA contractor) Clay Shaw as one of the conspirators in (minimally) the framing of Oswald. Garrison lost

74 | GARRISON | APR / MAY 2019 | [email protected] this highest of high-profile cases after two years quoting poet Robert Browning: “One more devil’s of attacks and infiltrations by the intelligence triumph and sorrow for the angels. One wrong apparatus and their mouthpieces in the media. more to man.” Shaw would have been subsequently tried for Not content to just move on after being exposed perjury (and probably convicted) but the Deep in open court, the government charged Garrison State, which had been protecting Shaw all along, with not paying taxes on the ill-gotten gains he was having none of it.1 had just proved he never got. Garrison was fully exonerated. With all this drama swirling about Deep State Strikes Back him while he was still in his third term as D.A., it is The government proceeded to construct a fed- not surprising that he lost his bid for a fourth term 2 eral case against Garrison out of whole cloth. They to U.S. Attorney Harry Connick Sr. had alleged that Garrison, in cahoots with the lo- In 1978 Garrison ran for a judgeship on the cal Mafia, had accepted bribes from the Mob, who Louisiana Court of Appeal, Fourth Circuit. had been skimming gambling winnings from pin- Garrison took out a second mortgage to help fund ball machines. Their chief witness to this nefari- his campaign and still could only raise $40,000. ous activity was one Pershing Gervais. Gervais, a He won anyway. He would keep this seat on the brute of a man, was a walking ball of corruption. bench until his retirement shortly before his Garrison had known Gervais since their World death on October 21, 1992 at 70 years old. War II days and when elected D.A. he assigned Garrison and the HSCA Gervais as his chief investigator. Gervais immediately went to work setting up a protection racket During the brief hiatus between jobs, Garrison and shaking down local politicians and officials, went into private practice but never left the as- not to mention the usual criminal rabble. Word sassination far behind. He would write a nov- began to trickle back to Garrison about Gervais el with the assassination as a backdrop called and his side business and, though Garrison was The Star-Spangled Contract, published in 1976. loyal to a fault, he ran a clean office and so fired Correspondence shows that he was also closely Gervais, allowing him to “resign” in September of following the revelations of the Church, Pike, and 1965. However, the Deep State now had a conve- Rockefeller Committees. But when a congres- nient witness in their deck and they wasted little sional committee was opened to investigate the time playing that card. assassination of JFK, it was Congress that went Space limitations preclude a detailed analy- looking for Garrison. sis of the Gervais affair, but suffice it to say the In the early days of the House Select Committee government overplayed its hand. They recruited on Assassinations, the HSCA was composed Gervais as their chief witness against Garrison, of dogged investigators and prosecutors. The going so far as to putting him and his family in general counsel, Richard Sprague, a big-city witness protection, setting him up with a cushy D.A. almost out of the Garrison mold, had made job with General Motors, and relocating them to headlines by unraveling a complex criminal con- Canada. At one point, the government had over spiracy involving former United Mine Workers 23 agents and attorneys assigned to the Garrison head Tony Boyle that led to a murder convic- case – more than were assigned to the capture of tion. His deputy, Robert Tannenbaum, came from Osama bin Laden. Despite this overkill, Gervais Manhattan D.A. Frank Hogan’s office. They then was tracked down by reporter Rosemary James created various investigative teams and stocked and in a subsequent interview recanted every- them, in many cases, with homicide cops not am- thing, even going so far as admitting the whole bitious career government attorneys or political case was a “put up” job by the government out to hacks. At least that was the plan. get Garrison. Gervais would eventually recant After Sprague made it clear he was going to his recantation, but he had lost any semblance be investigating the intelligence agencies and of credibility by the time he got to the stand. began issuing subpoenas, so too began the at- Garrison, acting as his own attorney for the most tacks and smears. Sprague, himself, singled out part, also proved that tapes purporting to be of David Burnham from The New York Times, him accepting bribes while in conversation with Jeremiah O’Leary of The Washington Star, as Gervais turned out to be spliced and otherwise well as reporters on The Los Angeles Times and altered. Garrison ended his closing argument by Washington Post as ringleaders of this sabotage.

GARRISON | VOLUME 01 ISSUE 01 | 75 any work done at all), but this memo is testament to their commitment and doggedness. There are numerous reports of Shaw/Oswald associations, Shaw/Ferrie associations, and reports on the hit man hired to eliminate Garrison.4 The aforementioned Freeport Sulphur material came out of this mother lode (see Part 1 in the first issue of Deep Truth Journal). The HSCA took this angle very seriously, GAETON FONZI G. ROBERT BLAKEY as there are numerous Freeport documents This interference led to political infighting on the (Standard & Poor’s reports, org charts etc.) in the committee and Sprague’s ouster.3 Notre Dame HSCA collection. law professor G. Robert Blakey was brought on Of course, much of this illustrates the shab- board. He would bring with him an uncomfortable by follow-up conducted by the HSCA, leads that coziness with the CIA and a predilection towards would get no investigative traction: the Freeport a “Mafia did it” solution to the assassination. material, the previously covered INS/ Oswald re- Thankfully, Team 3 was put together during ports, and while the HSCA should be commended Sprague’s tenure and included New Orleans po- for their work with the witnesses in the Clinton/ lice detectives Robert Buras and L.J. Delsa as well Jackson area, that was an area that still demand- as Church Committee holdover, investigative reed aggressive follow-up. porter Gaeton Fonzi. They set about doing their work straight away. During Christmas of 1976 A Name in the Wind Team 3 counsel Jon Blackmer first reached out When this author’s investigative team arrived to Garrison. He was vacationing in Arizona at the in the Clinton and Jackson area, even as late as time, but upon his return Garrison would begin a 1994, virtually every relevant person we talk- long and fruitful relationship with Team 3. They ed to would initially inquire, “Have you tracked interviewed Garrison on numerous occasions down Gladys Palmer?” “Do you know Ruby drove and he would funnel information to the HSCA in her here and to Dallas?” “Oswald spent the night the form of memos that could fill a book on their with her,” and on it went. Palmer was not a part own. of the Clinton/Jackson witness pool that either One memo in particular was picked up on by Garrison or the HSCA questioned, although both researchers upon its release almost 20 years later. investigations were aware of her. Local politician It was dubbed by the circle of New Orleans inves- Jack Rogers, himself a CIA source, brought atten- tigators as the “Mother of all Memos.” The cover tion to her when at first he thought he had discov- document, which Garrison wrote, is just five pag- ered Rose Cheramie’s sister. They weren’t sisters, es but serves to introduce the 29 different attach- of course, but apparently both had stripped at ments that total over 50 pages. These were docu- one of Ruby’s clubs.5 ments from the New Orleans District Attorney’s During his investigation, Garrison received (NODA) office that Garrison obviously felt were help from Governor McKeithen who approved important to the committee’s work. They consist assigning a Louisiana State Police Officer to aug- of many unfollowed leads (at one point Garrison ment Garrison’s staff. Francis Fruge was familiar had run out of time and manpower as his entire with the area and the people in East Feliciana “team” consisted of himself and Assistant D.A. Parish and brought on board an assistant, Anne Andrew Sciambra. It’s a small miracle they got Dischler. Fruge and Dischler would also meet and

76 | GARRISON | APR / MAY 2019 | [email protected] interview many witnesses who spoke of Gladys F. More Opposition from the Junior Senator Palmer. Other tips would make their way to G. The American Fight Against History Garrison: Oswald and Gladys were seen together H. The Juggernaut at two bars east of Baton Rouge (L.J. Delsa would I. Our Self-deception in Viet Nam (modes of repeat this to this author in 1995). Other tips had combat) Oswald and Gladys seen getting in a car togeth- J. Why Our Failure in Viet Nam Was Inevitable er and, as mentioned before, sleeping together. Garrison wanted Fruge more focused on the Part Two: All Roads Lead to Washington Shaw/Oswald sightings, not so much the Palmer/ A. The Problem of Removal of a President Oswald sightings, so many leads remained just B. A Comrade at Arms that. The HSCA had the name, but like with so C. A Social Acquaintance many other leads in the Blakey-led HSCA, it went D. Blood is Thicker Than Water nowhere. E. An Inquiry from England As noted in the first part of this article, the nu- F. The Replacement of the U2 merous conclusions in the HSCA report relative G. The Itinerant Librarian to the Clinton witnesses vindicated Garrison, H. The Intelligence Officer in the Book which is one of the reasons the HSCA has been Depository ignored almost to oblivion. In one of the Team I. A Prevalence of Homicides 3 memos that didn’t make it to the final report, J. The Federal Pre-emption of “Jurisdiction” counsel Jon Blackmer concluded, “We have rea- K. The Announcement of the Lone Assassin son to believe that Shaw was heavily involved in L. The Phone Calls the anti-Castro efforts in New Orleans in the 1960s M. The Travelers and [was] possibly one of the high-level planners, Part Three: The Conspiracy of Silence or a ‘cut-out’ to the planners of the assassination.”6 A. An Early Arrest in New Orleans Garrison the Researcher B. The Change of Scenario in Dallas C. An Early Solution from the Justice Dept. As the Eighties unfolded, Garrison would fo- D. The Elimination of Opponents of the Viet cus more on his non-fiction writing, with the as- Nam War sassination a constant – the ultimate Cold War E. The Pronouncements of High Officials op. Garrison left behind numerous manuscripts, F. The First Trial of Clay Shaw some completely written, others just outlines and G. Obstructions by the Federal Government random ideas. The Murder Machine, A Farewell (and counter attacks) to Justice, Coup d’état, and The Eleventh Hour H. The Subsequent Trial of Clay Shaw were just some of the different titles of the volumes he conceived. Sadly, none of these in their Part Four: Government by Deceit original configurations ever made it to the print- A. The Magic Mirror ing press. The absence of the latter volume is a B. All Hail, Macbeth profound disappointment. Left behind was only C. The Government’s “non-investigation” of the the rough outline to the volume, but what a vol- assassination ume it would have made. The chapter outline D. The Warren Commission: its objective and its itself makes for thought-provoking reading. Had deadline it seen the light of day and kept its original frame- E. The Decline and Fall of Congress: The Tonkin work, The Eleventh Hour would have been con- Gulf figured as follows: F. The “Freedom of Information” Act THE ELEVENTH HOUR G. The President’s “Commission to Prevent Violence” Part One: The Mirror of Viet Nam H. The Re-election of Johnson A. A Change in Compass Course I. The Escalation in Vietnam B. Stability and the Status Quo J. The Atrocities in Vietnam C. America and the Cold War K. The Question of Responsibility D. The Junior Senator from Massachusetts Part Five: The War Game E. America and Southeast Asia A. The Emperor’s Clothes GARRISON | VOLUME 01 ISSUE 01 | 77 B. Corruptions of the Cold War (changes in the criticism of the manuscript got down to the level U.S. Government) of typos (“he misspelled Frazier as Frasier,” she C. Foundations as Conduits would whine). It was enough to kill the deal, and D. The Diminution of Opposition to the Vietnam AFTJ would never see the light of day. Wa r Meanwhile a puzzled Garrison continued. In E. How to Identify an Intelligence Assassination 1986 William Schaap and Ellen Ray of Covert F. Taxation Without Representation Action Information Bulletin had started a small G. The Illusion of “Vietnamization” publishing house called Sheridan Square Press, H. The “Vietnamization” of Richard Nixon had heard of Garrison’s troubles with Prentice I. The Incursions into Cambodia and Laos Hall, and decided to make him an offer. They sent J. The Signs of Fascism in America their in-house editor Zachary Sklar down to New K. “Love It or Leave It” Orleans to meet Garrison. The many-time burned L. The Arrival of Repression Garrison was skeptical from the start (“He may M. The Emergence of a Counter-Culture get a plate of Oysters Rockefeller over his head,” N. The Common Objectives of America and he wrote to Vince Salandria before the meeting). Russia Garrison need not have worried. Sklar was a O. Nuremburg and Viet Nam solid guy and a good writer with a good knowledge of the case. Sklar just had one suggestion This would have been a barnburner of a book, – a page-one rewrite(!) Sklar rightly noted that and the world is a lesser place without it on the there were hundreds of books on the assassina- shelves. However, Garrison would get close to pub- tion written from a third-person perspective. lication with a volume somewhat similar in struc- Garrison, however, occupied a unique vantage ture to The Eleventh Hour that he titled A Farewell point. He was the only man in the world who had to Justice – apologies to Ernest Hemingway. AFTJ indicted and charged someone for conspiracy to covered similar ground: aspects of Cold War his- murder the president. The public would want to tory, the assassination, and Garrison’s own inves- 7 hear his story argued Sklar. Garrison, his batter- tigation. Garrison and his agent sold the book to ies recharged, set about writing an entirely new Prentice Hall and received a sizeable advance. volume. It would carry the title Coup d’état almost However, there was one catch (there’s always a until the date of publication. But by the time it hit catch). Garrison had to have his volume vetted the street it carried its now more familiar title, On by a so-called expert. The researcher the pub- The Trail of The Assassins. lisher chose was Sylvia Meagher, an outspoken A short time later at a conference in Havana, Garrison critic. Her anal-retentive approach to publisher Ellen Ray would slip a copy to filmmak- the minutiae of the evidence may have served er Oliver Stone. On the plane ride home Stone her well for her own volume, Accessories After read the whole book. Then he immediately re- the Fact, but a volume of grand themes, Cold read it. Stone optioned the book, retitling the War history, and the New Orleans investigation film version JFK. Released at the end of 1991, JFK was way out of her swim lane. Her page-by-page was a worldwide hit for Warner Brothers. It was • • • • On December 20, 1991, director Oliver Stone released JFK, a film which was based, in large part, on the written works of Jim Garrison and Jim Marrs. Actor Kevin Costner portrayed Jim Garrison, the DA for Orleans Parish, while Garrison, himself, played a smaller role as Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren. JFK won the Academy Award for Best Cinematography and Best Film Editing. Tommy Lee Jones (Clay Shaw) was nominated for Best Supporting Actor. Zachary Sklar was Stone’s co-writer on the film.

78 | GARRISON | APR / MAY 2019 | [email protected] an event picture ENDNOTES: 1 and the public Shaw being helped, DiEugenio, James, Destiny Betrayed, Chapter 12, Skyhorse Publishing, 2012; Davy, William, Let Justice Be Done, Chapter response led to 13, Jordan Publishing, 1999. hearings in both 2 Gervais affair, DiEugenio, Destiny Betrayed, pp 316-319. the House and 3 Dick Russell, On the Trail of the JFK Assassins, Skyhorse Publishing, the Senate. The 2008, pp 52-55. 4 “The Mother of all Memos,” no HSCA number but memo dated Assassinations September 12, 1977, To: Blackmer, Fenton, Fonzi, et al., From Jim Gar- Records and rison, RE: Clay Shaw Associations (Material and Leads). Review Board 5 Joan Mellen, A Farewell to Justice, Potomac Books, 2005, p. 184 & pp. was formed out 215-217. 6 of the hearings, HSCA memo from S. Jonathan Blackmer to G. Robert Blakey, Gary Cornwall, Ken Klein and Cliff Fenton dated September 1, 1977, and documents HSCA document #002209. and collections 7 A Farewell to Justice manuscript is available as part of the Jim Garri- were released son collection at the National Archives. Not to be confused with the to the National book on Jim Garrison’s case by Joan Mellen who respectfully took the title as an homage to Garrison. Archives, includ- 8 Randich, Erik and Patrick Grant, “Proper Assessment of the JFK ing Garrison’s Assassination Bullet Lead Evidence from Metallurgical and Statistical own. Perspectives,” Journal of Forensic Science, July 2006, Vol. 51, No. 4, pp. Garrison was 717–728. 9 lucky enough to Shipman, Tim, “Oswald Had No Time to Fire all Kennedy Bullets,” The Telegraph, July 1, 2001. see much of the 10 Post reporter George Lardner Jr. would write that the “National progress on the Academy of Sciences’ study made so many mistakes that the chances case first-hand, progress for which he was the of its having been right are about 1 in 100,000.” The Washington Post catalyst. Unfortunately, much of it was witnessed Book World, January 27, 2002, p 4. 11 A representative sample can be found in Davy, Let Justice Be Done, from a hospital bed installed in his home, as he en- and DiEugenio, Destiny Betrayed. tered home hospice care shortly after the film’s release. Though deathly ill, Garrison would still conduct interviews from his death bed. Garrison William Davy began his research into the JFK assassination and its deep political context in the late 1970s after meeting passed on October 21, 1992. America’s foremost political observer and satirist, Mort Sahl. As Had he survived a while longer he would have an unpaid investigator for New Orleans District Attorney Jim seen the Neutron Activation Analysis (NAA) Garrison, Sahl pointed Davy in that direction and his subsequent (a lynchpin for both the FBI and the HSCA to research was focused primarily on that aspect of the Kennedy scientifically prove Oswald’s guilt) refuted in a assassination. Davy’s book on the Garrison case, Let Justice Be peer-reviewed scientific journal.8The Mannlicher Done, was published in 1999 and sold out after two printings. Carcano factory would release a study stating His work has been anthologized in the Feral House compendium that even they, along with Italian Army sharp- The Assassinations. He has also appeared on numerous radio shooters, could not duplicate Oswald’s supposed shows and at many public events. Davy currently serves on the feat with their rifle.9The Washington Post would advisory board of the Center for Deep Political Research. even refute its own support of the National Academy of Sciences conclusion that the Dallas Police Dictaphone tape did not in fact record the assassination.10 And, of course, the witnesses and documents that would come forward validating AVAILABLE key points of Garrison’s case: Shaw’s relationship ON not only with Ferrie, but with Oswald, Banister, and the CIA as well.11 Now Garrison’s legacy lives on in this journal that takes as its title his name – a name that can conjure many meanings to different people. But “...courageously pursued taken at its earliest known etymology it means the truth - and caught it.” “protection,” “a fortified place,” and to “defend.” — Mort Sahl Jim Garrison, both in life and death, will have lived up to his name. • GARRISON | VOLUME 01 ISSUE 01 | 79 WALT BROWN, PhD The Warren Omission: A Commentary on My 1996 Book By Walt Brown, PhD most prominent, made the allegations that the he Warren Omission” commission’s conclusions had to be correct – look began as a play on at all those volumes of evidence that the Warren words – Warren Report was drawn from! Commission/Warren But, as Allen Dulles noted, nobody will read “TOmission, for those who missed the volumes. the obvious. I did. But the underlying thread of My curiosity was arrested by the vast quanti- the idea became more and more ty of totally non-essential things that were asked. obvious each time I went through the testimonies So, I sat down in early 1993, and I counted the in the 15 volumes, a chore that I performed six questions, all 109,830 of them, and I quantified times. them in terms of relevance, leading/hearsay, Three things became clear: First, the Warren calling for conclusions, and (downright) non- Commission was totally averse to saying to a wit- sense. The results were astounding, but ness, “Tell us what happened.” On the contrary, of the 40,000 pages I’ve published, the most sore- the witnesses were put through a series of script- ly overlooked pages were the three tables at the ed questions, with no room for an answer to veer back of Treachery in Dallas, which provide the in the direction of an unsought truth. Secondly, statistical breakdown of the witness testimony – there is a clear suspicion that the witnesses were and lead to The Warren Omission. subject to “subliminal persuasion” before their If you had been asking the questions, whom testimony was taken. “Hello, Mr. ___, my name would you most like to question / interrogate? is Arlen Specter and I represent the President’s Drs. Humes, Finck, and Boswell would have been Commission on the Assassination of President at the top of my list, and I would have wanted Kennedy, and we are going to take your testi- data from all the people involved in the autopsy. mony today in a matter of the highest national If those were your choices, you would have security. Do not worry, as there is nothing to be been sorely disappointed. Humes was asked concerned about. I’m going to ask you about the about 300 questions; Boswell and Finck, who three shots you heard coming from the Texas were in the same room with Humes when he was School Book Depository.” questioned – the worst imaginable testimony sce- One witness, Ronald Fischer, who was across nario – were asked a handful of questions that from the TSBD at the time of the assassination, amounted to, “And you agree with Dr. Humes, didn’t want to play that game, and when he was right?” asked how many shots he heard, his answer was, And, of course, the others present in the “One more than was fired.” Bethesda morgue were wholly ignored, which Finally, it became abundantly clear that the has led to a variety of hypotheses that either the entire purpose of the extensive testimony – 488 president’s remains were stolen and altered, or witnesses, only 93 of whom were heard by mem- else it was actually J.D. Tippit’s body that was ex- bers of the commission, 10 million words, and 15 amined. volumes, followed by 11 volumes of irrelevant And who did the Warren Commission really rubbish that passed for “Commission Exhibits,” grill? Of the 15 people who were asked the most because “Commission Documents” were not questions – totaling 28,213, or more than 25% of made public – was to create quantity instead of the questions asked to 15 of 488 witnesses, all 15 of quality. those individuals were character witnesses who Far too many times, Warren Commission de- had no knowledge of the murder of the president fenders, Gerry Ford and David Belin the two or of his pre-chosen assassin.

80 | GARRISON | APR / MAY 2019 | [email protected] And who were the people most interrogated? The leader of that pack was Ruth Paine (5,236), always willing to do what she could to convict Lee Harvey Oswald. Second place fell to Larry Crafard (3,972), a stumble-bum who was sleeping in Jack Ruby’s club at the time of the assassination and had to explain his hitch- hike to northern Michigan on November 23rd, the day before Ruby made headlines. Third place went to George Senator (2,792), another man who roomed with Ruby and knew less than nothing. Marina Oswald (2,615) had a choice between getting on the bus or being thrown underneath it. Robert Oswald (2,351), Lee’s brother who had not seen LHO in exactly a year LBJ ANNOUNCES WARREN COMMISSION but testified to his deterioration, also suffered from the choice of where he wanted But it was a charade from the get-go. We know to be with respect to the bus. it; the American people do not, and by now, they From there, you hear from accidental tourist don’t care. But it worked five decades ago. George DeMohrenschildt (1,628), who was not • Coming next issue: The Warren Commission asked anything dangerous to the official ver- semantics: How one person said “x” and was dict; Andrew Armstrong (1,592), a parolee who quoted to prove “y.” was Ruby’s bartender and didn’t want to go back to the orange jump suit; John Pic (1,325), LHO’s half-brother who was not allowed to attend his Walt Brown, PhD, is the author of The People v. Lee Harvey half-brother’s funeral or make any phone calls Oswald (1992), Treachery in Dallas (1995), and The Warren Omission (1996). His most ambitious project was The Global to Robert or Marina; Michael Paine (1,019), boy Index to the JFK Assassination, a CD-ROM of 2400 pages, which genius who mistook a rifle in a blanket for tent indexed not just the WC, but also the HSCA, and 100+ of the poles; Jesse Curry (1,002), who testified about the best known JFK books. protection for Sunday’s transfer, not about the assassination that happened in the vehicle behind him on Elm Street; James Martin (979), Marina The Warren Omission Oswald’s business manager; Ralph Paul (956), by Walt Brown, PhD the money behind Ruby; Earl Ruby (947), who This book is currently out-of- raised small monetary amounts for Jack Ruby’s print. However, a select number defense; Eva Grant (918), Ruby’s hysterical sister; of copies can be purchased and Lillian Murret (881), Oswald’s aunt in New directly through Walt Brown by Orleans who had not seen her nephew for years. sending $30 via PayPal. Please The testimony of those individuals, worth less include a full name and address than the paper the words were printed on, would with the order. have filled almost four of the fifteen volumes of * * * * * testimony – and looked great when they were displayed by Gerry Ford or David Belin, the com- PayPal mission’s assistant counsel. [email protected]

GARRISON | VOLUME 01 ISSUE 01 | 81 The FBI Considered Planting a Story Painting Ramparts as Anti-Semitic in Response to CIA Exposé

By Emma Best the Bureau take advantage of a possible opportunity, investigating and publicizing any result- hen it came to dealing with the press, ing factional splits within Ramparts. According one of the Bureau’s favorite weapons to the Bureau, Ramparts’s “staff and its leaders W was… the press. are politically conscious and therefore, subject The FBI’s COINTELPRO investigation of to dissension and deep division.” Articles on this Ramparts magazine appears to have been “would magnify the problem and expose the em- sparked by a combination of their exposés on barrassment of its staff.” the Central Intelligence Agency, their contacts The San Francisco office felt that this shouldn’t at press outlets like the Soviet-controlled TASS, be left to chance and that they should contact “se- and their interviews with foreign leaders and of- lect correspondents or representatives of other ficials. The Bureau described these interviews as publications or news services” about the mater. placing the Ramparts reporters “under the guid- If any were interested, they could be “briefed” by ance of Egyptian propaganda and intelligence the FBI to write an article designed to develop personnel” and felt that “the average reader” schisms in Ramparts’s staff and support structure. would see the resulting article as “pro-Nasser, an- Hoover responded that they had no record of ti-Israel and anti-U.S.” the individual chosen (for briefing), either of his For the FBI’s San Francisco Field Office, investigation or utilization. Hoover required addi- this perception created an opportunity for the tional information before he was willing to make Bureau to sow dissent among Ramparts’s staff, a decision about utilizing them “to develop … a subscribers, and donors. newspaper article discrediting Ramparts.” A 1967 letter from the San Francisco FBI field Specifically, San Francisco wanted to paint the office to Director J. Edgar Hoover suggested that magazine as anti-Semitic for its criticism of Israel,

82 | GARRISON | APR / MAY 2019 | [email protected] a recommendation placed immediately after a Robert Scheer (right) note in a copy of Ramparts’s expose of the CIA. penned the article Parts of San Francisco’s analysis weren’t based in question that so on an “impartial and factual” reference point, disturbed the local San “but from the viewpoint of a hypothetical aver- Francisco office of the age subscriber.” The FBI felt that the average FBI. Along with David subscriber felt a “deep dissatisfaction” which Horowitz, Phil Roos, was responsible for their “social criticism and Maurice Zeitlin, and political dissent.” The average subscriber was Sol Stern, Scheer in sympathetic to “Jewish acquaintances, Israel, 1962 founded one of Jewish culture and Jewish suffering of Nazi per- Berkeley’s first New secution.” By equating Jewish people and Israel, Left journals, Root the Bureau felt they could use criticism of Israel and Branch: A Radical Quarterly. Scheer was working at to turn Ramparts’s presumed average subscriber City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco when he became against the publication. involved with Ramparts. He later served as its Vietnam It’s not immediately clear from the files re- correspondent, managing editor, and editor-in-chief. In leased so far whether the Bureau pursued this 1970, Scheer and a Black Panther Party delegation led by strategy. While that course of action would have Eldridge Cleaver went to North Korea, China, and Vietnam. had the FBI investigate Ramparts and then leak He appeared in various magazines and newspapers after that information to the press in order to discredit Ramparts. After having written a column for The Los the outlet, it doesn’t appear that the Bureau con- Angeles Times for 12 years, Scheer was fired in 2005 after sidered using false information to do so. It’s note- he had written a column called “What We Don’t Know worthy that the FBI didn’t consider the informa- About 9/11 Hurts Us.” In it, he asked, “Would George tion itself to be important for the public to have, W. Bush have been reelected president if the public but rather that the information could further so- understood how much responsibility his administration cial and political divides within Ramparts and its bears for allowing the 9/11 attacks to succeed?” Scheer financial supporters, who the FBI believed had was not against making statements that caused controversy. “emotional and deep nationalistic sympathies for In an April 7, 2010, article he wrote that Harry Truman Israel.” perpetrated “the most atrocious act of terrorism in MuckRock has filed an additional FOIA re- world history when he annihilated the civilian populations quest to learn more about this particular chapter of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.” He has since repeated the in the FBI’s history and how COINTELPRO did stance on multiple radio shows. As Ramparts grew into a and didn’t target Ramparts and other journalistic bi-monthly magazine, its circulation approached 250,000. endeavors that exposed scandals and outrage. ENDNOTES: • This article was originally publshed at MuckRock.com on The image below was taken from an FBI file concerning February 6, 2019. We would like to thank MuckRock for Ramparts magazine and, particularly, an article by Robert allowing us to use the article. MuckRock has worked for the Scheer. It was obtained by MuckRock via a FOIA request. release of close to 4,000,000 pages of documents.

GARRISON | VOLUME 01 ISSUE 01 | 83 The Rice-Zelikow Connection

The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States – aka the Kean Commission or the 9/11 Commission – was “called to life in Nov. 2002, when the White House dropped its objections to an independent 9/11 investigation, after many months of persistent lobbying. At the time, this was seen as a victory for the relatives of those killed on September 11th, and for their allies in the fight for open government and accountability.” The commission was chartered “to prepare a full and complete account of the circumstances surrounding the September 11 attacks.” However, in the grand tradition of failed government commissions, this one was rightly criticized for its astounding conflicts of interest and its abject failure to ask any of the most consequential questions about September 11, including the 23 questions put forward by the Family Steering Committee, a group of 12 September 11 victims’ relatives representing many other 9/11 family groups. A 24-page booklet challenging the commission’s relative inactivity and lack of answers was published in conjunction with the May 2004 Kean Commission hearings in New York City, Scamming America: The Official 9/11 Cover-Up Guide, published at 911Truth.org, contains a series of articles pointing out the most obvious conflicts and failures. The following was the second of five articles included in the booklet.

By Nicholas Levis

ondoleezza Rice is a household name. But commission sees. most Americans still have never heard of In April, the world media focused on Rice’s ap- C the man who wrote a book with her, Philip pearance before the commission. She claimed, Zelikow. not for the first time, that no one could have As the executive director of the Kean imagined terrorists would use hijacked planes as Commission [aka 9/11 Commission, ed.], Zelikow weapons against buildings. This is a demonstra- is responsible for framing the agenda. He leads ble falsehood, which Bush himself inadvertently the research staff. He decides what evidence the exposed a week later. (See “Bush, Rice and the 84 | GARRISON | APR / MAY 2019 | [email protected] Genoa Warning.”1) and ex-Navy secretaries and all of this other Rice’s testimony received mostly bad reviews. stuff,” says Beverly Eckert of the Family Steering The commission was credited with investigative Committee. “We thought it should be professors fervor. Few reports bothered to note that in the and writers, scholars and also people who are in- late 1980s, Rice and Zelikow worked closely to- volved in the news, but not necessarily a part of gether on George H.W. Bush’s national security it. These people [the commissioners] are all a part staff. of it. In many ways the government is part of the Zelikow and Rice co-authored a 1999 book problem.” about their experiences in the first Bush By a hair’s breadth, what we know now as the White House, Germany Unified and Europe Kean Commission almost went down in history as Transformed: A Study in Statecraft.2 The book the “Kissinger Commission.” Soon after assenting presents “a detailed and fascinating account of to an independent investigation, George W. Bush behind-the-scenes discussions and deliberations” kicked it off in Nov. 2002 by appointing Henry during the fall of the Soviet empire, according to Kissinger to chair the panel. Library Journal. Two weeks later, Kissinger declined the ap- Zelikow again served alongside Rice as a mem- pointment. The families and a few of the legisla- ber of the Bush transition team in 2000- 2001, when tors designing the commission had asked him to he took part in White House meetings on the ter- rule out possible conflicts of interest involving his ror threat. Since this was of interest to the 9/11 in- consulting firm, Kissinger Associates. Kissinger vestigation, the Kean Commission refused to name his clients, even recently called Zelikow as a wit- confidentially. In a letter to Bush, he ness, in a closed-door session. opined that service to country would Now imagine if the judge in a ruin his business. trial was a close associate of the During the two weeks of star witness. Imagine if the judge Kissinger’s appointment, the Internet called himself as a witness to and alternative press buzzed at the the case, in secret testimony. A thought of a 9/11 investigation head- parallel situation has arisen, with ed by Richard Nixon’s former secre- Zelikow in the role of the judge tary of state, a known practitioner and Rice as the star witness. of the strategic lie. Kissinger remains Even after September 11, an elder adviser to many of the key two days before the invasion of people in the administration and U.S. Afghanistan, Zelikow went back defense establishment, especially to work for the Bush national HENRY KISSINGER the neoconservative group at the security staff as a member of the Pentagon under Donald Rumsfeld. White House advisory board on for- He is under investigation in several eign intelligence. countries for alleged involvement in Nixon-era Zelikow’s evident conflicts of inter- crimes against humanity in Chile, Indochina est prompted September 11 family leaders to and elsewhere. During a Paris hotel stay in 2001, call for his resignation. “It is apparent that Dr. he received a surprise visit for questioning by a Zelikow should never have been permitted to French magistrate and had to quietly slip out of be Executive Staff Director of the Commission,” the country. the Family Steering Committee concluded in a The failed Kissinger appointment was a global March 20, 1994 statement.3 The commission ig- public relations disaster, but perhaps the admin- nored their plea. istration felt it needed a cover-up artist of his cal- The Rice/Zelikow connection should have iber. Soon after his departure, the job of heading set off alarm bells about the Kean Commission’s in- the 9/11 Commission went to Kean, a less contro- dependence. Yet it barely caused a stir. versial figure who was more willing to reveal his business connections. One of these is worthy of a The Kissinger Commission brief detour.

“When we first envisioned this commission, New Jersey to Afghanistan we did not envision it made up of ex-senators Before taking his current position, Thomas

GARRISON | VOLUME 01 ISSUE 01 | 85 Kean was a director and part owner of Amerada But within the commission, Gov. Kean’s involve- Hess, a company that maintained a partnership ment is by no means exceptional. A look at the with Delta Oil of Saudi Arabia. Since that was the member resumes shows that almost all of them home country for most of the alleged 9/11 hijack- have had business ties to oil companies – or else, ers, and since the Bush family has close business airlines. ties to Saudi elites, many people would think that this was already a serious conflict of interest. Pipelines and Airlines Together with UNOCAL, Delta Oil in the mid- 1990s began negotiating deals with Central Asian After Kean’s appointment, the White House governments, looking to acquire pipeline rights shifted from resisting the very idea of an investi- out of the world’s richest remaining store of un- gation to the more mundane matter of obstruct- developed oil fields. The favored plan was to get ing it. Although the commissioners were all gov- the oil to a port in Pakistan – meaning, through ernment and national security insiders, getting Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. The Taliban security clearances took months. For most of the were courted in the late 1990s by a number of first year, the White House claimed executive American oil projects, including UNOCAL’s. But privilege in withholding access to the Presidential their hardline behavior ruined their international Daily Briefings. The rules were fashioned so that image, and the companies backed off. issuing a subpoena required a majority vote. When the Bush administration came to pow- Bush initially approved a budget of just $3 mil- er in 2001, it opened new pipeline negotiations lion for the panel, which requires a staff of dozens with the Taliban. Despite awards to Afghanistan to comb through millions of documents. Only of $143 million in U.S. aid in the first half of 2001, after months of wrangling did the White House 4 the Taliban refused to accept the U.S. proposal of give in to an additional $8 million in funding. a joint government with the Northern Alliance. Congressional Democrats and Republicans They broke off the back-channel Berlin talks in and the White House set out to apportion the June. At the time, a U.S. representative promised seats in what was termed a bipartisan manner, that the Taliban had a choice between “a carpet meaning five for each party. of gold or a carpet of bombs.” Kean’s vice-chair, Lee Hamilton, was the chair- The White House has admitted that documents man in the 1980s of the House Select Committee placed on Bush’s desk on Sept. 9, 2001 detailed a on Iran/Contra. Afterwards, he told PBS plan for attacking Afghanistan by mid-October Frontline that he didn’t wish to indict Reagan or 2001. Significant deployments to the region of Bush, because he didn’t think it would be “good U.S. and British forces were already underway. for the country,” although a wealth of evidence All that was missing for an invasion was the ca- showed that Reagan and Bush authorized illegal sus belli – the cause for hostilities. That arrived arms shipments to Iran in 1985. Then Chairman two days later, in New York, in the form of the 9/11 Hamilton, a Democrat, was influenced by heavy attacks. political pressure from a hawkish fellow con- The subsequent U.S. invasion of Afghanistan gressman from Wyoming by the name of Dick installed Hamid Karzai as prime minister and Cheney. Zalmay Khalilzad as the powerful White House The New York Post and Fox News have yet to re- envoy to Kabul. Interestingly, both men were port any of the above details concerning Zelikow, previously employed as consultants by UNOCAL. Kean or Hamilton, but in April they devoted much The new Afghan government has since entered energy to exposing commission member Jamie a pipeline consortium. UNOCAL is not known to Gorelick, who served on Bill Clinton’s national se- be involved but is seen within the industry as the curity staff. The Murdoch media and Republican likely ultimate beneficiary of a future pipeline. politicians have said she is too partisan to serve In other words, 9/11 became the reason for an on the commission and urged that she resign. already-planned war in Afghanistan, as a result In May 2003, shortly after joining the Kean of which a long-delayed Afghan pipeline deal was Commission, Gorelick also joined the Washington struck. Given that context, the appointment as firm of Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering. A month ear- commission chair of any oil company director – lier, this firm announced it would defend Saudi let alone the director of one involved in a Central Prince Mohammed al Faisal, third in command in Asian pipeline consortium – appears improper. the Saudi government and a plaintiff in several of

86 | GARRISON | APR / MAY 2019 | [email protected] the billion-dollar lawsuits filed by relatives of 9/11 Foreign Relations (CFR). victims. As for former Illinois Governor James R. Richard Ben-Veniste, former Clinton White Thompson, it really takes no rocket science to fig- House lawyer, was a partner until February 2003 ure out his conflict of interest. He is chairman of in one of the biggest bankruptcy firms in the the Winston & Strawn law firm in Chicago. From world, Weil, Gotshal, and Manges. As the New January 1997 through June 2002, Thompson’s law York Post disclosed, the firm received a famously firm received $1.66 million for federal lobbying ef- inflated $3 million retainer from Enron when the forts on behalf of American Airlines – one of the latter filed for bankruptcy in 2001. two carriers potentially liable for negligence on Former Republican Sen. Slade Gorton is a law- 9/11. yer in the Seattle firm of Preston, Gates and Ellis, which counts among its clients both Delta Air Kean Cuts Deal with White House Lines and the Boeing Employees’ Credit Union. Is either of them likely to want the airlines forced to Under a deal the Kean Commission made pay off lawsuits from September 11 relatives? with the White House in November 2003, Jamie While Henry Kissinger did not make the Gorelick is the only commissioner – alongside cut, he does have close ties to Republican John Executive Director Philip Zelikow – allowed to Lehman, whom he recruited for his staff during view White House documents, such as the fa- the Nixon administration. Lehman, the secretary mous Presidential Daily Briefing entitled “Bin of the Navy under the Reagan administration, Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.” is also close to several members of the current That document (of which the government Bush government. Along with Kean, Hamilton, recently published 1-1/2 pages out of 11) was de- and Gorelick, he is a member of the Council on livered from George Tenet to George Bush on August 6, 2001. Gorelick is a longstanding Tenet associate and an adviser to the CIA. Once again, the investigator is on the friendliest terms with the subject of the investigation. While viewing White House documents, she and Zelikow are allowed to take notes, which remain with the White House. They then report to the other commission members. At one point, the White House withheld the notes. The commission was said to be debating a subpoena for its own notes, instead of the actual documents. Max Cleland Drops Out

Max Cleland, the former Democratic senator from Georgia, objected strenuously to the deal • • • • restricting access to White House documents. In Sen. Max Cleland (D-GA) was wounded in the Vietnam the course of autumn 2003, he issued a challenge War. He received the Silver Star and the Bronze Star. He to both the White House and his fellow members won the U.S. Senate seat in Georgia that was vacated of the Kean Commission. “Bush is scamming after the retirement of Sen. Sam Nunn (D-GA). He was a America,” Cleland declared. moderate Democrat who was one of the 29 Democratic “As each day goes by, we learn that this gov- senators to back the authorization to go to war in Iraq. ernment knew a whole lot more about these He later admitted that the vote was purely political terrorists before September 11 than it has ever (he was in a tight race at the time), and he has called it admitted,” Cleland told The New York Times “the worst vote I cast.” He was defeated by Republican (10/26/03). Saxby Chambliss in 2002. Shortly after being appointed “Let’s chase this rabbit into the ground here,” to the 9/11 Commission, Cleland resigned and accepted Cleland said in an interview (Salon, November a position on the board of the Export-Import Bank. 2003).5 “They had a plan to go to war, and when Before leaving, Cleland accused the Bush White House of 9/11 happened that’s what they did. They went to “stonewalling,” saying they were withholding witnesses. war.” He called this “a national scandal.” Cleland GARRISON | VOLUME 01 ISSUE 01 | 87 compared the Kean Commission to the earlier MASCAL exercise6), investigation of the Kennedy assassination. “The they gave their usu- Warren Commission blew it. I’m not going to be al answer, which can part of that. I’m not going to be part of looking at be summed up as fol- information only partially. I’m not going to be part lows: “We are grateful. of just coming to quick conclusions. I’m not going Please provide us with to be part of political pressure to do this or not do these materials. We will that.” pursue all leads.” The At the time of Cleland’s impassioned outbursts, materials were duly the hearings were not even covering September provided. 11, but issues of Homeland Security. The commis- The next day, Daschle sion was barely a blip on the media radar. Aside SEN. BOB KERREY filled the vacancy with from the Salon interview, Cleland’s revolt was former Senator Bob treated to cursory coverage in a total of two other Kerrey (D-NE), president of The New School outlets, The New York Times and The Washington University and an outspoken hardliner on home- Post. In the midst of an apparent news blackout, land security issues. (Kerrey was also a member followers of the commission process were not of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, which even sure if Cleland had resigned. lobbied foreign countries to support the oust- In December, Bush stepped in and settled the ing of Saddam Hussein.) The decision had been question. He appointed Cleland to direct the U.S. made. The 9/11 Commission had room for no one Export-Import Bank. Cleland accepted, and left but insiders. the commission. Leaving aside the behind-the-scenes stories and conflicts of interest we have detailed, does Ignoring the Elephant the commission truly pursue all leads? In the next article, a case study of how the commission Max Cleland’s departure exposed the com- operates in public, we shall see what happened mission’s conflicts of interest and willingness to when its members had a golden opportunity to compromise its mission. Despite reports of tur- ask top Pentagon officials about the wargames of moil behind the scenes, the public consequences September 11. approached nil. • Yet it was also a chance for the panel to change ENDNOTES: 1 “Bush, Rice and the Genoa Warning: Documenting a demon- course, to address the issues he raised. Activists strable falsehood,” 911Truth.org staff, May 22, 2004; chapter four of launched a campaign to nominate a member of Scamming America: The Official 9/11 Coverup Guide. (http://911truth.org/ the Family Steering Committee (FSC) to fill the bush-rice-genoa-warning-documenting-a-demonstrable-falsehood/) 2 Heilbrunn, Jacob, “Together Again,” The New York Times, March vacancy. Did the commission have room for one 31, 1996. (Germany Unified and Europe Transformed: A Study in Statecraft, person who is not a government insider, and who by Philip Zelikow and Condoleezza Rice, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. (https://www.nytimes.com/1996/03/31/books/togeth- has a clear incentive to seek the truth? A well- er-again.html Accessed March 9, 2019) known FSC member expressed her willingness to 3 “Statement of the Family Steering Committee for the 9/11 serve. Calls and faxes advocating her nomination Independent Commission,” March 20, 2004. (https://911independent- commission.org/mar202004.html) poured in from around the country to the offices 4 By comparison, the Columbia Space Shuttle explosion led to of Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle. He had immediate approval of $30 million for a commission within a week. nominated Cleland, and therefore got to choose The investigation of Bill Clinton’s sexual affairs in the 1990s took up on the order of $40 million in funds. (http://911truth.org/rice-zeli- the replacement. kow-connection-kean-commission-conflicts-of-interest) At the commission’s next public session on 5 Boehlert, Eric, “The president ought to be ashamed,” Salon, Nov. December 8, 2003, Cleland went unmentioned 22, 2003. (https://www.salon.com/2003/11/22/cleland_2/) 6 Kane, Michael, “The Total Failure of the Kean Commission,” until the closing press conference, when a report- 911Truth.org, May 18, 2004; chapter three of Scamming America: The er asked Kean and Hamilton how they intended Official 9/11 Coverup Guide (http://911truth.org/total-failure-kean-com- to restore the commission’s credibility. Both pro- mission/) claimed, needlessly, that Cleland was a man of in- tegrity, without addressing anything he had said. In addition, confronted with open-source ev- Nicholas Levis is an original 9/11 skeptic and has done a con- idence of U.S. military preparations for the 9/11 siderable amount of measured, valuable work within a variety of scenario prior to September 11 (the Pentagon 9/11 Truth communities.

88 | GARRISON | APR / MAY 2019 | [email protected] Inside the Hilo Tribune Herald ‘s “Japan May Strike Over Weekend” Warning of November 30, 1941 By S.T. Patrick Japan, the article said, was “desperate” and may id the Hilo Tribune Herald tip off what attack to “break encirclement.” would have been foreknowledge of the While the article mentioned Hawaii once, in D Pearl Harbor attack that would happen passing (U.S. forces placed on alert), the ma- one week after its publication? jor concerns throughout are Singapore and On November 30, 1941, the HTH led with Thailand, not Pearl Harbor and not direct attacks the ominous headline “Japan May Strike Over on the United States. Weekend.” One week later, Emperor Hirohito’s What the article and two similar, shorter piec- Japan did just that. At 7:48 a.m. on December 7, es on the front page show, is that American jour- 1941, 353 Imperial Japanese aircraft attacked the nalists were getting reports that the Japanese U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. But was were getting more frustrated with diplomatic it a surprise attack, as it is so often labelled in relations. schools? The ”Japan May Strike” headline in the Hilo A low-quality photo of the newspaper’s front Tribune Herald has been used in an overdrama- page can be found many places online. Typically tized way to prove that the U.S. had foreknowl- absent from the photo is the actual text of the ar- edge of the December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl ticle, which the editor of garrison has obtained Harbor. While the idea of foreknowledge, or at from the Hawaii State Library. least an intentional provocation, may be true – The accompanying article is titled “Tokyo and Douglas Horne made a cogent argument for Desperate As Talks Collapse.” motivation in the first issue of Deep Truth Journal It begins, “Cancellation of leaves in Singapore – the text that this headline leads into does not tonight coincided with a widespread belief that prove any sort of foreknowledge. Japan will strike somewhere over the weekend.” The HTH proves that talks with the Japanese Troops in Singapore were all called back to were breaking down and there was a real con- their barracks. cern that World War II would soon be a two-ocean The heightened tension is attributed to the war. And it was. Japan bombed Pearl Harbor and breakdown in talks between Sec. of State Cordell Thailand simultaneously. Singapore did not fall to Hull and Japanese diplomat Saburo Kurusu. the Japanese until February 1942. • GARRISON | VOLUME 01 ISSUE 01 | 89 DOUGLAS HORNE ON PEARL HARBOR The Hilo Tribune Herald Warning A COMMENTARY BY DOUGLAS HORNE I don’t think the headline or the accompanying happen”—MAGIC codebreaking intelligence— article indicate any foreknowledge of the coming was clearly reflected in the article’s focus on attack on Pearl Harbor—rather, merely a sober November 30th as the approximate date of a like- appreciation that war between the United States ly clash between Japan and the United States. and Japan was likely imminent (without any The article was penned in London, which im- opinion being expressed about where such a war plies that some British official was leaking the would break out). content of MAGIC diplomatic intercepts of a most The article (accurately titled “Tokyo Desperate sensitive nature. as Talks Collapse”) reflects two things that were However, the article’s pessimism expressed going on in the diplomatic sphere, namely: (1) the commonly held views within the U.S. State frank recognition by Secretary of State Cordell Department and the British Foreign Office. It Hull that Japan would view his de facto ultima- was widely viewed within both governments by tum (the “Hull Note” of late November 26th) as a this time that war between Japan and the Anglo- non-starter and an insult, and that as a result he Saxon powers in the Far East was inevitable, and had told both Secretary of War Henry Stimson just around the corner, because Japan was clear- and British Ambassador to the U.S. Lord Halifax ly determined to expand its empire by conquest. that the matter of Japanese-U.S. relations was There is persuasive evidence in the record that now “in the hands of the Army and Navy”; and high-level British and American officials knew (2) the MAGIC diplomatic intercept of November that Pearl Harbor was a likely target (including 22, 1941 (of a cable from the Foreign Minister in the diary entries of the Dutch Naval attache in Tokyo to Japanese Ambassador to the United Washington, the anecdotal recollections of British States, Kichisaburo Nomura) which had extend- military codebreakers in Singapore that they reed the deadline for achieving a diplomatic settle- layed warnings about the Pearl Harbor attack ment with the United States from November 25th (derived from JN-25 decryptions) to Churchill, to November 29th (U.S. time), after which “things and FDR’s startling and momentous diplomatic were automatically going to happen.” U-turn (from temporary accommodation with Japan’s internal deadline for achieving a toler- Japan, to a hard line ultimatum on November able diplomatic settlement with the U.S. was the 26th). end of the day on November 30th (Tokyo time), But, in my opinion, this article is not among the hence the instructions from Tokyo to Washington evidence pointing to foreknowledge of an attack to complete negotiations by November 29th on Pearl Harbor, because of its lack of specificity. (Washington time, which was 14 hours behind But it does represent a remarkably accurate as- Tokyo). That deadline extension, married to sessment of the diplomatic consensus within the the ominous certainty that if no solution were British and American governments. found, “things were automatically going to •

CORDELL HULL HENRY STIMSON AMB. NOMURA HIDEKI TOJO CHURCHILL F D R

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GARRISON | VOLUME 01 ISSUE 01 | 91 GENOCIDE IN RWANDA By Keith Harmon Snow

92 | GARRISON | APR / MAY 2019 | [email protected] n early April 1994, Ju- venal Habyarimana and Cyprien Ntaryam- ira, the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi, Iwere returning home by plane from a meeting in Tanzania. They had met Zaire’s1 president Mobutu Sese Seko, and Rwan- da’s President Habyarimana offered Mobutu return passage to Zaire on the presidential air- JUVENAL HABYARIMANA PAUL KAGAME plane. Mobutu declined, and the two Hutu heads of state set off together with the we heard the sound of an airplane. My father’s air- Rwandan chief of staff and several other military plane had its own particular sound. I recognized officers from Rwanda and Burundi on board. it. At that time there were no other airplanes ar- Piloted by a French crew, the Mystere Falcon riving in Kigali. I told my cousins: ‘That’s my fa- 50 – a luxurious jet given as a gift from Jean-Chris- ther’s airplane!’ We waited for it to pass over the tophe Mitterand, the son of the French president house. As his airplane was approaching, we saw – was shot down on approach to Kigali airport. missiles being shot at the airplane. They hit the The family of Juvenal Habyarimana was at home airplane. The airplane exploded in the air and the at the time, at their private residence, less than pieces fell over our house.”3 one kilometer from the Kigali airport, on the path Over the next hundred days a vague and ev- of approach for Kigali’s single runway. No other er-shifting story would congeal that purported planes were scheduled to arrive. to explain who assassinated the two Hutu presi- Jean-Luc Habyarimana was a student at the dents and what the motivations were. The most French high school of Cairo (Egypt) with his widely repeated story was that Hutu extremists 15-year-old sister, Marie-Merci. On vacation in close to President Habyarimana shot the plane Kigali, Jean-Luc spent the afternoon relaxing at down to enable them to proceed with a calculat- home with his family when the unthinkable hap- ed and well-hatched plan to annihilate the coun- pened. His mother, Agathe Habyarimana, was try’s minority Tutsi people. the first one to hear the approaching plane. “Decimation means the killing of every tenth The French magazine Jeune Afrique carried person in a population, and in the spring and ear- an account of the day whose tragic events would ly summer of 1994 a program of massacres deci- subsequently signal what is now universally de- mated the Republic of Rwanda.” On assignment scribed as Rwanda’s “100 days of genocide.” for The New Yorker magazine, journalist Philip Gourevitch boldly crossed the final solution fron- It’s 8:30 p.m., Wednesday, April 6. Less than tier, reporting where few others dared to go, but a hundred meters from the house, Jean-Luc [Habyarimana] and his cousins are just coming most everyone soon would follow. out of the swimming pool. They, too, hear the “Hutus in Rwanda had been massacring Tutsis Mystere 50. The lights of the three-engine jet on and off since the waning days of Belgian co- soon appear, the wheezing intensifies. Sudden- lonial rule in the late Fifties” Gourevitch wrote. ly, three blasts within a few seconds. After the “These state-sanctioned killings were generally first explosion, the plane rocks and its jet en- referred to as ‘work,’ or ‘clearing the bush.’ The gines seem to be racing. After the second, it’s current crisis was triggered in 1990, when the engulfed in flames. After the third, it explodes. Rwandese Patriotic Front, an army led by Tutsi The burning debris of the cockpit falls in the exiles, attacked from Uganda, seizing a foothold garden of the head of state, the wings beyond in the northeast and demanding an end to Hutu the fences, at some dozen meters.2 Power, as the state ideology was called.”4 “I was with two of my cousins, relaxing at the pool of our private residence.” Jean-Luc Habyari- A Problem from Hell mana said. He was 18 at the time. “When we got What really happened in Rwanda in 1994? The out of the pool and we were walking to the house, standard line is that a pre-planned, calculated

GARRISON | VOLUME 01 ISSUE 01 | 93 At 8:30 p.m. on the evening of April 6, 1994, the Mystere Falcon-50 jet carrying the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi was shot down on approach to Kigali airport in Rwanda. The missiles struck the plane in midair and the inferno plummeted from the sky and landed on the grounds of the presidential residence. According to the first accounts by President Habyarimana’s surviving family members, who were at home at the time, the plane’s black box was recovered by French troops who first arrived on the scene. Almost universally, subsequent media reports declared that the black box was missing. U.S. FBI investigator Jim Lyons was one of the first to investigate the double assassination, which also killed other members of Habyarimana’s government and the French crew. Lyons’s investigation was turned over to the International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda, where the inquiry was eventually killed. The facts ascertaining the responsibility of Paul Kagame and the RPA are well established. Photo credit: Cranimer Mugerwa, New Vision, Kampala, Uganda.

genocide occurred because of deep-seated trib- the Hutu majority under the rule of President al animosity between the majority Hutu tribe in Habyarimana. Now, life under Habyarimana was power and the minority Tutsis. According to this arguably very peaceful and productive, tenuous story, at least 500,000 and perhaps 1.2 million Tut- or tumultuous, and the country and its people – sis – and some “moderate” Hutus – were ruthless- Hutus and Tutsis and the indigenous Twa – pros- ly eliminated in a few months, and most of them pered or suffered, depending on whom you ask. were hacked to death with crude farming imple- “Kagame and his Ugandan-raised colleagues ments or machetes. provoked and nourished Rwanda’s 1994 genocide The killers in this story are the “ethnic Hutu” in order to seize power and hang on to it for a very people of Rwanda. They are said to have killed long time.” Canadian journalist Judi Rever has in the coldest of cold blood, an “orgy of violence” come under attack from Kagame for her recent like never before seen, a frenzy that was orga- publications questioning the origins of genocide nized by “Hutu extremists,” 100 days of slaughter and terrorism in Central Africa. She documents from April 6 to July 15, 1994.5 how the RPA infiltrated the Interahamwe and The victims in the standard narrative are the urged these youth militia to kill even more Tutsis, “ethnic Tutsi” people of Rwanda, but their “sav- and how RPF commandos infiltrated Hutu polit- iors,” the (predominantly) Tutsi rebels of the ical parties and their militias to foment greater Rwandan Patriotic Front, are also considered the violence. victims.6 “These sinister, premeditated and deliberate The (mostly) Tutsi forces of the Rwandan Pa- acts fed the savagery,” Rever wrote. “Infiltrat- triotic Front (RPF, or FPR if using the French pro- ing enemy ranks, fueling violence and engaging nunciation) hailed from Uganda, they spoke En- in flase flag operations were vintage tactics its glish, they had lived in Uganda for decades, and young rebel fighters had learned while partici- they were battle-hardened guerrillas who fought pating in [Yoweri] Museveni’s dirty rebellion in alongside Yoweri Museveni in Uganda’s guerril- Uganda in the 1980s.” 7 la war. They shared the “ethnic Tutsi” label with Once the RPF seized power in Rwanda, the their brethren, the Tutsis that never left Rwanda, formerly exiled Tutsis of the RPF were joined by but they were very different. The Tutsis in Rwan- hundreds of thousands of other Tutsis from the di- da spoke French, for example, and had known aspora who flocked back to Rwanda from places more than three decades of coexistence with like Tanzania, Congo, Europe, Burundi, and North 94 | GARRISON | APR / MAY 2019 | [email protected] America. in 2002 for her book A Problem from Hell: Amer- This story of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda has a ica and the Age of Genocide, for which she later rather sad happy ending: The RPF “wins the war” won several other major awards for best non-fic- and “stops the genocide.” After a point, this estab- tion and best reporting.12 lishment narrative took on a life of its own, and it Power is one of the “fifty key thinkers on the is repeated into the present. “The killing contin- Holocaust and genocide” profiled in a book un- ued until the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) won der that title. “Rejecting claims of ignorance over a military victory and took power in a shattered what was happening in Rwanda,” the authors land,” wrote one its primary storytellers, Philip wrote, “of a lack of compassion, or a lack of con- Gourevitch of the The New Yorker.8 crete action as to what could have been accom- In this remarkable story, the Tutsi exiles achieve plished, Power’s research conclusively showed the status of both victim and victor – gaining the that an absence of U.S. involvement was not a license and privileges of both. Not only did the case of inactive ‘bystanderism’ … but, rather, the ethnic Tutsi win and stop the war, but they also result of active non-involvement … .”13 came to rule this tiny African nation – the size of What exactly is meant by “active non-involve- Vermont – even after the Tutsi were wiped out by ment”? genocide. How does a minority ethnic group, the For those people born in the late 1980s or after, victims of genocide who lose hundreds of thou- the “Rwanda Genocide” and related events of the sands of their already few members, manage to 1990s must seem far away and irrelevant. There seize power and rule over their own killers? are plenty of people who want to bury this past – According to the establishment line, the RPF no matter the mountains of skeletons and skulls was born out of the misery and suffering of hun- ever on display under the banner of the “never dreds of thousands of disaffected stateless Rwan- again” crowd – and plenty for whom the past of- dan Tutsi refugees. These are “the Jews of Africa” fers a constant source of facts to be manipulated exiled to Uganda in the late 1950s and 1960s. The to further some political, military, or economic in- exodus of hundreds of thousands of Tutsis (refu- terest. gees) during this era is often dubbed the “practice For those of us who lived through the era, genocide” and the Tutsi-as-victims narrative pro- watching from the sidelines, bystanders to geno- liferated from the eve of Rwanda’s independence cide, it is imperative to continue to probe the (1959) to the present.9 corpse of truth and resuscitate the inconvenient Rwanda’s now president-for-life Paul Kagame and indigestible facts. In the simple words of Afri- commanded the Tutsi exiles and their liberation- can scholar Dr. Amos Wilson, “you cannot under- ist Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA), saving the stand the present unless you first understand the day – the story goes – and rescuing the last few past.”14 Tutsis (in Rwanda) and “moderate” Hutus (in At a U.S. congressional hearing in 1998, chair- Rwanda) by “stopping the genocide.”10 man Christopher Smith’s (R-NJ) opening statement “In three short, cruel months, between April echoed the standard line that has become the boil- and July 1994,” wrote Harvard University’s hu- erplate language used everywhere to describe the man rights and genocide expert Samantha Power “Rwanda Genocide”: on the 10th anniversary of the genocide, “Rwanda On April 6, 1994, Hutu extremists began experienced a genocide more efficient than that the systematic massacre of Rwanda’s minori- carried out by the Nazis in World War II. The kill- ty Tutsi population. They also killed many ers were a varied bunch: drunk extremists chant- thousands of moderate Hutus who refused ing ‘Hutu power, Hutu power’; uniformed soldiers to participate in the bloodshed. For the next and militia men intent on wiping out the Tutsi In- three months, mothers and their babies were yenzi, or ‘cockroaches’; ordinary villagers who hacked to death and families seeking shelter had never themselves contemplated killing be- in churches were butchered inside. People fore but who decided to join the frenzy.”11 stopped at checkpoints were killed on the spot “A fever descended on Rwanda,” Samantha if their ID cards listed their ethnicity as Tutsi. Power reported. Streets were littered with corpses and literally ran red with blood. Estimates of the number of Inexplicable horror. Cockroaches. Fever. Vic- people killed ranged from 500,000 to 1 million.15 tims. Killers. Good versus evil. Samantha Power was awarded a Pulitzer Prize “The genocide that consumed the tiny Cen-

GARRISON | VOLUME 01 ISSUE 01 | 95 tral African country of Rwanda from April to title to the report Rwanda: Death, Despair, and De- July 1994 was in some ways without precedent.” fiance (1995), a very interesting tome produced So begins “Apocalypse in Rwanda,” a chapter in by African Rights, an entity described as a “Lon- Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction. In this don-based NGO.” African Rights’ two co-founders 645-page introductory college text, genocide formerly hailed from Africa Watch, a division of scholar Adam Jones elaborates on the “Rwanda Human Rights Watch. (When one was fired for genocide” by deploying all of the components insubordination, the other resigned and left, too.) of the commonly repeated narrative, and with Jones lifts and republishes whole sections of this great but selective detail he offers claims that report to buttress his arguments about “Geno- are always presented as absolute facts, repeated cide in Rwanda,” but there is never any critical over and again. However, he dismisses outright or analysis of African Rights, or the veracity of the completely ignores a large and growing body of research, or the motivations and interests of the incontrovertible evidence. This latter category authors. includes testimonies, documents, photographs, “In the Office of the Prosecutor of the fledg- investigations, and reports. ling International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda Under the chapter subheading “Genocidal (ICTR), Death, Despair, and Defiance became Frenzy,”16 Jones unfolds the standard story like known as ‘the bible’.” Professor Luc Reydams this: concludes that African Rights was instrumental in shaping and spread- At 8:30 p.m. on April 6, ing an easily consumable 1994, the plane carrying President Habyarimana one-sided narrative of back from talks in Tanza- the Rwandan conflict. nia was shot down as it “One would be hard neared Kigali airport—by pressed to find a more in- either Hutu power or RPF fluential NGO report.”17 elements anxious to scut- “Among the early tle the Arusha peace pro- reports on the geno- cess. By 9:18, the Presiden- cide, none matches Af- tial Guard had begun to rica[n] Rights’s Rwan- erect roadblocks around da: Death, Despair and Kigali. The following day, working from carefully Defiance (September prepared lists, soldiers 1994) for the clinical de- and militias began mur- scription of the atrocities dering thousands of Tutsis AN RPF (FPR IN FRENCH) RALLY IN RWANDA inflicted upon Tutsi vic- and oppositionist Hutus …” tims,” wrote renowned Africa scholar Dr. René Lemarchand, “ranging This is the established and establishment nar- from political murders to collective massacres rative. This is the story that most everyone has in churches, schools, and stadiums, and the daily heard, the story so many people think they un- manhunts conducted on the hills. Significant as derstand, the story that is repeated everywhere it is to our understanding of the sheer savagery like an old wives’ tale or an urban legend. It ap- that has accompanied the carnage, the African pears in one form or another in almost every ac- Rights report is utterly silent on the grisly crimes ademic or popular text dealing with “genocide” and torture inflicted by Tutsi soldiers on innocent or “war crimes” or “mass atrocities” and the pro- Hutu civilians, some of which are by now well duction of such texts is an industry unto itself. documented (Nduwayo, 2002: 9-16; Amnesty In- While Dr. Jones has in passing introduced the ternational, 1994; Des Forges, 1999; Reyntjens and possibility that “RPF elements” may have shot De Souter, 1994).”18 down the presidential plane, most versions of the Dr. Jean-Marie Vianney Higiro is one of many story and most of its storytellers ignore substan- people that have criticized African Rights and its tial evidence establishing that Paul Kagame and co-director, Rakiya Omaar. “This woman of So- the RPF shot down the plane. There is, too, much mali origin is an RPF agent,” he once said. more to this story. Dr. Higiro is the former director of the Rwan- Dr. Adam Jones credits the “Genocidal Frenzy” dan Information Office (ORINFOR). Because

96 | GARRISON | APR / MAY 2019 | [email protected] his daughter was a U.S. citizen, the U.S. Embassy dles the now-clichéd and disingenuous stereo- in Kigali evacuated Dr. Higiro and his family on types about victims and killers. April 9, 1994; the U.S. military flew them out of Bu- Alex De Waal’s ties to U.S. intelligence in- rundi soon after. clude his involvement with Harvard University “[Rakiya Omaar] had her office in Kigali. In and the Council on Foreign Relations. De Waal 1994 she was at Mulindi, the headquarters of the was a member of a CFR task force focused on Rwandan Patriotic Front [commanded by Paul defining a new military and intelligence engage- Kagame]. As the RPF conquered territories from ment with Africa that is cloaked in “humani- the Rwandan Government Forces, she collected tarian” rhetoric.23 (Other members of this “Task information fed to her by the RPF.”19 Force” included former Clinton or Obama offi- Professor Luc Reydams of Notre Dame Uni- cials such as Samantha Power, Gayle Smith, and- versity confirmed this independently. “Based on Chester Crocker.) numerous interviews, [this] article shows that Af- When Human Rights Watch investigated the rican Rights was coopted in the first few weeks “Rwanda genocide” of 1994, they sent Rwanda of the genocide by the Rwandan Patriotic Front expert and former USAID consultant Alison des (RPF) and that the report [Death, Despair, and Forges to tell the story. The product of her long Defiance] was produced with its active support.” investigations was the fat treatise on genocide in Dr. Reydams further established that African Rwanda titled Leave None to Tell the Story. Rights gradually became a single-issue (Rwan- “Alison des Forges is a liar.” Cameroonian jour- da) NGO, a proxy for the RPF, and – by 2003 – it nalist Charles Onana, author of the book The Se- had become an “outright RPF-front organization crets of the Rwandan Genocide, Investigations on funded by and working closely with the RPF’s in- the Mysteries of a President (published in French telligence apparatus.”20 in 2001) is adamant. “She is a LIAR.”24 “An intensive back and forth activity between Rwanda’s long-time president Paul Kagame, this so-called British human rights organization, commander of the “rebel” Rwandan Patriotic African Rights, and the intelligence services of Army that is always credited with “stopping the the president’s office and the military, has been genocide” in 1994, sued Charles Onana for defa- observed,” wrote Paul Rusesabagina, the true- mation in a French court. Kagame lost.25 life hero on which the Hotel Rwanda film was “Alison Des Forges has written a book which based. “Her investigators are very close to the has become the bible regarding Rwanda,” says [RPF] military intelligence apparatus, and the Dr. Higiro. “Everyone points to her book, even modus operandi of both appears to be similar.”21 though some of what she has produced is fiction. The African Rights report was one of the first I don’t think she is an intentional liar, but I don’t to manufacture and promulgate the establish- know why she investigated Hutu human rights ment narrative of “genocide in Rwanda.” It says abuses but no RPF human rights abuses.” very little about RPF/A massacres, and when it does, it attributes any real crimes to a few rogue Genocide or Civil War? RPF soldiers taking revenge.22 There is nothing What really happened in Rwanda? about foreign military involvement, and it ped- Hundreds of thousands of people were killed; • • • • Paul Kagame (far right), then a major in the Ugandan People’s Defense Forces, stands with other participants at the U.S. Army’s General Staff & Command College, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, in 1990. Kagame had a long association with the U.S. military, the CIA, and MI-6, established during the years with Yoweri Museveni in the guerrilla war and coup d’etat that took over Uganda (1980-1986). His studies at Leavenworth included guerrilla insurgency, psychological operations, information warfare, and invasion planning and preparation.

GARRISON | VOLUME 01 ISSUE 01 | 97 that’s clear. There was large-scale butchery. Chil- rescuers. They are disciplined, organized. They dren and old women were killed. There was mass keep a tidy United Nations camp safely behind rape. There were many acts of genocide. But was their lines. They don’t kill Red Cross nurses, or it genocide or civil war? orphaned children, or catholic priests. Not in the “I think that’s a very good question and it is not film. They don’t rape women or hack them to adequately answered.” Howard French covered death with hoes. They have clean, newly pressed west and central Africa for The New York Times. sprite green fatigues. They have shiny modern He is also the author of Africa: A Continent for the weapons. They rescue children and reconnect Taking.26 them to their families.29 Howard French operated on the ground in The Hutus in the standard Rwanda genocide Central Africa (1993-1999) and his reportage of stories are always the bad guys, and they are all the RPF Tutsi rebel army hunting down and mas- bad guys. Every Hutu is a genocidaire – to use the sacring hundreds of thousands of Hutus in Congo ominous French term deployed in English con- is exceptional.27 texts to further underscore the horror, the horror. RPF Tutsis massacring hundreds of thousands The Hutus are the devil incarnate. of Hutus in Congo? How many genocides were And Hutu children? And Hutu children. there? The Tutsis are saintly. Indeed, they are beyond “A minority of 15% [RPF Tutsis] wages a deter- reproach, because they are the victims of geno- mined effort to take over a country and rule in an cide. The Hotel manager’s wife bears an obvi- ethnic way, by force of arms, and has been doing ous cross around her neck, to remind us that the this for years. Two presidents are Tutsis are good, kind Christians. assassinated.” Howard French When the now-celebrated Unit- is adamant. “These are not ex- ed Nations hero Lt. Gen. Roméo cuses for butchery. But these are Dallaire shakes hands with the things that lead one in the direc- devil – as his own popular book tion of civil war, as a descriptor, and the subsequent film Shake as opposed to the one-sided tale Hands With the Devil concur – he that we have been given, of these is shaking hands with Hutu.30 sweet, innocent Tutsis who re- Hotel Rwanda is billed as a mind us of Israel, versus the sav- true story, but how accurate is it? age Hutus who cold-heartedly How much of its establishment butcher people hand-to-hand for narrative is true? How much of it three months.”28 PAUL RUSESABAGINA is built on the pillars of selective The award-winning film Hotel reporting? Did genocide occur in Rwanda offers Hollywood’s version of the con- Rwanda as it is widely portrayed and universally flagration. From the very first words and frames, declared? Did journalist Samantha Power tell it where the image has yet to appear and the screen straight?31 Are entire generations of students be- is completely black, the film Hotel Rwanda steers ing miseducated by Adam Jones’s 645-page uni- viewers’ thinking about “Genocide in Rwanda,” versity tome on genocide? 1994. Here is a story about good versus evil. An The film Hotel Rwanda really takes off from African voice is heard, clearly the announcer on the celebrated book We Wish to Inform You That a Rwandan radio program, and he is describing Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families. the Tutsis as “cockrrrRRROACHES.” The voice is Authored by Philip Gourevitch, the New Yorker ominous, and the black screen underscores the magazine’s premier Africa expert, the 1998 book darkness of Africa. This voice of terror returns won the National Book Critics Circle Award and throughout the film to haunt the innocent but ter- some others.32 rified Tutsis, on screen, and the viewers gripping “Young Philip Gourevitch brings us a report their seats. from the killing fields of Africa … .” Novelist Rob- The good guys are the Tutsis, the victims of ert Stone eulogized Gourevitch in a blurb on the genocide. They are not killers in the movie: They book’s cover. “Like the greatest war reporters, he are never killers. At the end of the film, when a raises the human banner in hell’s mouth, the insig- well-attired guerrilla force is shown – the “rebels” nia of common sense, of quiet moral authority, of of the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA) – they are blessed humor. He has the mind of a scholar along

98 | GARRISON | APR / MAY 2019 | [email protected] with the observative capacity of a good novelist, basically insists. How many Hutus died? How did and he writes like an angel … . I think there is no they die? Where did they die? When did they die? limit to what we may expect from him.” Was the Tutsi genocide planned? Was it system- Funding for Gourevitch’s Rwanda book came atic? Was it a random explosion of pent up eth- from the United States Institute for Peace, a U.S. nic hatreds? Who is responsible for the very real State Department offshoot. The U.S.I.P. also fund- genocide against French-speaking Tutsis? If the ed Luc Reydams’s study of African Rights, in story we have been told does not make sense— which, not coincidentally, he addresses Goure- and it doesn’t—what has been left out or hidden? vitch’s shared role in birthing the establishment How many Hutu people have to die before their tale and Gourevitch’s friendship with Rakiya victimhood is acknowledged? Omaar.33 “The truth is simple enough.” Canadian geno- In the mid-1990s, Philip Gourevitch was dating cide expert Dr. Gerald Caplan offers a very essen- Elizabeth Rubin, the sister of James Rubin, who tialized version of events. “While the world stood was Bill Clinton’s Assistant Secretary of State by (where it wasn’t complicit), a high-ranking and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s press cabal of Hutu extremists in 1994 came perilously attaché and right-hand man.34 James Rubin lat- close to achieving its deranged goal: the extermi- er became economic adviser to President-elect nation of all Tutsi from the face of Rwanda.”37 Barack Obama. James Rubin is married to CNN’s That is the ideological framework of the Christiane Amanpour, who flew to report on “Rwanda Genocide.” There is, today, an industry Rwanda at the start of the “100 days of slaughter.” behind it. “Gourevitch begins the story with the Tutsi as “It is a statement of fact that virtually every these saintly victims.” Howard French is one of scholar who has actually studied the 1994 conflict many people who question Gourevitch’s journal- in [Rwanda] has concluded that a small, sophis- istic excesses. “And I don’t think Gourevitch is a ticated group of power-hungry Hutu extremists, stupid guy. I think that it’s just sheer intellectual enabled by the French state, conspired to ex- dishonesty … . Gourevitch was coming out in the terminate the country’s entire Tutsi population New Yorker every other month with this very and very nearly succeeded.” Dr. Caplan has led well written and – if you don’t know the facts – the moral cavalry against “genocide deniers” or very compelling picture about Rwanda … as the “genocide negationists,” or pretty much anyone Israel of Central Africa and the Tutsis as the Jews who does not tow the now standard Tutsi geno- of Central Africa. That’s powerful stuff. But I’m on cide line.38 the ground in Central Africa seeing that the reali- “The number of books, detailed studies, and ty is very, very different.”35 survivors’ testimonies is already substantial, and “From his first New Yorker article about while there is disagreement about many aspects Rwanda, Gourevitch portrayed Kagame as calm, of Rwanda’s hundred days (as there is too with all intelligent, thoughtful, and questioning,” wrote its tragic forerunners), the central truth is not in Tristan McConnell in the Columbia Journalism doubt. Based on the evidence, denying the geno- Review more than 15 years after the cataclysm of cide of the Tutsi in Rwanda is morally equivalent 1994. He portrayed Kagame as “a man who, hav- to denying the Holocaust. Yet deniers abound … ing stopped a great evil, was working against im- .”39 mense odds and in difficult circumstances to fix The “Genocide in Rwanda” industry revolves his broken country.”36 around a standard, simplified plot. Again and There is a huge spectrum of positions, opinions, again it is distilled down or essentialized, stripped and speculations about what really happened of context or facts and realities that give context in Rwanda. To be sure, hundreds of thousands of its meaning. Like the Holocaust and Cambodia, French-speaking Tutsi people in Rwanda were Rwanda has become one of the top three most the victims of genocide. What about Hutu peo- celebrated examples of the senseless brutality of ple? Let’s repeat that for those who want to claim human beings, thereby providing a polar oppo- that this article is another example of genocide site for the juxtaposition of good versus evil. After denial: Hundreds of thousands of French-speak- the Holocaust and Cambodia, Rwanda emerges ing Tutsi people in Rwanda were the victims of as the next great genocide that has been named. genocide. However, Tutsis were not the only vic- Similar to Cambodia where Pol Pot is the dev- tims, which is what the establishment narrative il incarnate, in Rwanda we have exhibit after

GARRISON | VOLUME 01 ISSUE 01 | 99 volume after exhibit of gruesome photographs rica, Sudan, and some others. of withered corpses and machete-hacked survi- Colonialism was no laughing matter for the vors, and tourist memorials of bleached-white people of Africa. Francophone and Anglophone skulls, used to confirm, usually without a second dictatorships proliferated. thought, that the Hutu tribe committed genocide At the battle of Omdurman (Sudan), it was against the Tutsi tribe in Rwanda in 1994. technological advantage of the Gatling guns de- “Perhaps the clearest single case of genocide ployed under the gaze of a white journalist named since the Holocaust was the slaughter in Rwanda Winston Churchill that silenced the protests of from April to July 1994.” Aryeh Neier, former ex- Sahelian tribesmen armed with spears, bows, ecutive director and co-founder of Human Rights and arrows: Some 50,000 indigenous people were Watch, does not equivocate on the clarity of the slaughtered on September 2, 1898. facts and the premeditation of the evil. “Control The struggles of Ndebele people in Zimbabwe’s of territory was never an issue in Rwanda; the Matabelelands today are grounded in the expan- only point of what took place was to exterminate sionist conquest organized by a white Brit named the Tutsis.”40 Cecil Rhodes (1853-1902). Thousands of Sephar- Control of territory was never an issue in dic Jews migrated from British South Africa and Rwanda? Let us recall that population densities in settled all along the way, establishing colonies in Rwanda and Burundi are very high on the human Bechaunaland (Botswana), Rhodesia (Zambia & crowding index, and the struggle for land has al- Zimbabwe), and in the Belgian Congo. ways been a fundamental source of conflict in the Everyone has heard of the noble Scotsman Da- region. vid Livingstone (1813-1873), an agent of the Lon- don Missionary Society, and of his meeting with The Horror, The Horror the famous Henry Morton Stanley (1841-1904). The first massive deracinating assault on Afri- Stanley was the New York Post journalist who ca was the slave trade prosecuted by Europeans first sensationalized accounts of white American and Arabs. Then soon followed the great white frontier settlers’ encounters with savage native hunter adventurers, the elite explorers backed Americans. Stanley later conquered the Congo by the Royal Geographical Society, men like John Free State for Belgium’s King Leopold II. Sensa- Hanning Speke (1827-1864) and Sir Richard Fran- tionalist and wholly falsified accounts of Stanley’s cis Burton (1821-1890) who by force of arms, con- “explorations” in Central Africa followed. The re- scription, and profit opened up British East Afri- ality – severed limbs, extrajudicial executions for ca, Somalia, and Sudan. With the backing of the the most scurrilous of “offenses,” enslavement, Société de Géographique de Paris, Franco-Italian and rape of Congolese women – was indescrib- 41 explorer Pietro Paolo Savorgnan di Brazza (1852- ably blood-rubber brutal. 1905) penetrated the upper Congo territories Stanley’s attempt to penetrate Ruanda (Rwan- and secured French Equatorial Africa for white da) was repulsed by spear-wielding warriors. France. The natural geography, climate, and isolation European powers formally divided Africa at of the Ruanda and Urundi territories prevented the Berlin Conference (1884-1885). Portugal took easy conquest and delayed colonization. These Angola, Mozambique, and part of today’s Equa- territories were at the strategic junction where torial Guinea. The French empire in Africa sub- the interests of the British East Africa, German sequently grew to include territories of Algeria, East Africa, and Belgian (King Leopold) colonies Benin, Central African Republic, Cameron, Chad, clashed. Congo-Brazzaville, Cote d’Ivoire, Gabon, Guinea, The first European to traverse Ruanda was the Madagascar, Mali, Mauritius, Mauritania, Moroc- German explorer Count Gustav Adolf von Got- co, Niger, Senegal, Seychelles, French Somaliland zen, the future governor of German East Africa, (Djibouti), Togo, and Upper Volta (Burkina Faso). nine years after the Berlin Conference. Christian Germany came away from the Berlin Confer- missionaries followed soon after, both Protestant ence with territories of today’s Namibia, Tanzania and Catholic, and the church influences steadily (Tanganyika and Zanzibar), Rwanda (Ruanda), grew through the German (1885-1916) and Bel- and Burundi (Urundi). The British claimed what gian (1916-1962) colonial occupations. became Botswana, Kenya, Uganda, parts of So- This is central Africa. From the white man’s malia, Egypt, parts of Libya, Rhodesia, South Af- very first portrayals of the “Dark Continent” we

100 | GARRISON | APR / MAY 2019 | [email protected] have falsified and hysterical accounts, psycho- packaged and reconstituted in the evolving syn- logical projections of the white man’s fears and tax and lexicon of modernity and globalization fantasies – the epistemologies of ignorance42 – that today are formulated in white elite terms. onto the people of Africa.43 The discourses of development, conservation, The great white hope, the bloody heart, the human rights, and “humanitarianism” all deploy broken heart, the heart of darkness, apocalypse elaborate rhetorical arguments about the im- now, the coming anarchy – it all adds up to a very portance of indigenous autonomy, national sov- long and simple though equally sophisticated his- ereignty, human rights, global equality, and cul- tory of managing the perceptions of the Western tural heritage. But the rhetoric and propaganda commodities consumer about our destructive re- does not hold water, and the Western media cloak lations with such places. the realities on the ground in Africa in a cyclical, Truth does not matter? Instead, we have block- self-reinforcing structure of power, exploitation, buster box-office hits like Hotel Rwanda, Ava- and profit. tar, Last King of Scotland, Blood Diamond, King Kong, Tarzan, Beasts of No Nation, and Black Pan- The Falsification of Consciousness? ther. Is it any surprise that the successes of such To understand the growth of the standard nar- films drive their reproduction in a more techno- rative on genocide in Rwanda, consider first the logically sophisti- text of Hotel Rwanda— cated special F/X The Official Companion version every “From the white man’s very first Book, which describes decade or so, re- the process of “bringing peated in sequel portrayals of the ‘Dark Continent’ we have falsified and hysterical the true story of an Afri- and prequel, ad can hero to film.”46 nauseam? accounts, psychological projections The book deletes the Does anyone of the white man’s fears and fantasies most basic facts about believe it pure – the epistemologies of ignorance – the Rwandan Patriotic coincidence or onto the people of Africa.” Front and its backers’ accident that the roles in the ongoing war technologically for the Great Lakes re- superior country gion of Africa.47 Wakanda, in Black Panther, is cinematograph- Instead, the book offers an abbreviated time- ically and cartographically pinpointed – in the line of events that accentuate or exaggerate spectator-viewer’s consciousness – to be located those points that serve the predominant Hotel precisely where today’s modern-miracle Rwanda Rwanda mythology, and it excludes those facts 44 is? that would undermine the standard narrative: Did you notice that the “good” lions in the Walt the entire framework of the brutal, bloody war Disney animation film The Lion King are the for control of Rwanda – the people, the resources, full-bodied blond-maned lions of Mustafa and the territory – is obscured. A single example: Simba’s pride, and they live in the green fertile October 1990: “Guerrillas from the Rwandan sunny place, while the emaciated sniveling Scar Patriotic Front (RPF) invade Rwanda from Ugan- is a treacherous-two-faced-back-stabbing-black- da; the RPF is mostly made up of Tutsis. A cease- maned lion who hides in the skeleton shadows of fire is signed on March 29, 1991.” the forbidden zone, “king” of the sniveling and un- First: The above statement uses the definitive trustworthy hyenas, where he plots his conquest term for the RPF action: invaded. The Rwandan 45 of the sunny pridelands? Patriotic Army invaded Rwanda from Uganda. The stereotypes, themes, and mythologies in- However, the context of the RPF ascension to vented in the minds of white invaders and sup- power is obliterated. There is no discussion of planted in the minds of arm-chair travelers and the Tutsi diaspora, its backers, or its political and theater spectators both proscribe and inform a military situation in Uganda. The long brutal his- contemporary mass media culture that deploys tory of Tutsi attacks on Rwanda during the years shape-shifting versions of the civilizing discours- under Hutu control – November 1959 to October es used by the early missionaries, conquerors, 1990 – is obliterated, and along with it the deep and settlers. Contemporary discourses are re- inculcation of fear and terror in the minds, mem-

GARRISON | VOLUME 01 ISSUE 01 | 101 ories, and real lives of the Hutu people. A notable their own publications. The best known of these omission: The RPF’s invasion of October 1990 was is Impuruza, published in the United States (1984- a gross violation of international law against a 1994). Tutsi “refugees” – meaning Tutsi members sovereign nation – more facts that are complete- of aristocratic Tutsi lineages – joined Roger Win- ly ignored. ter, the director of the United States Committee Never condemned by the international “com- for Refugees, to help fund the publication. The munity,” the RPF “struggle” was supported by editor, Alexander Kimenyi, is a Rwandan nation- powerful Western agents and institutions, includ- al and a professor at California State University, ing the World Bank and the IMF, who in the late Sacramento. Like most RPF publications, Impuru- 1980s shackled Rwanda with austerity programs za circulated clandestinely in Rwanda amongst in perfect synchronization with the RPF assault. Hutu and Tutsi elite.49 This led to the heightened inculcation of structur- “A nation in exile, a people without leadership, al violence throughout Rwanda. Combined with ‘the Jews of Africa,’ a stateless nation,” wrote Fes- the crash of coffee prices on the world market, to Habimana, the president of the Association of millions of Rwandans found it impossible to make Banyarwanda in Diaspora USA, in the premier ends meet as the 1990s began. Suffering hit new issue of Impuruza. Habimana called for the unity lows not seen in Rwanda for decades. of Tutsi refugees. “But our success will depend en- The majority of people in Rwanda, besieged by tirely upon our own effort and unity, not through the propaganda of competing factions – a spec- the world community as some perceive … . As trum of political interests aligned with or against long as we are scattered, with no leadership, busi- the RPF or the Rwanda government of Juvenal ness as usual on their part shall always be their Habyarimana – found scapegoats according to policy. We are a very able and capable people their positions in society. Economic interests pre- with abundant blessings. What are we waiting dominated as a few elites – both Hutus and Tutsis for? Genocide?” – increasingly controlled the life or death of the The Association of Banyarwanda in Diaspo- many. The rising insurgency after October 1990 ra USA, assisted by Roger Winter, organized the and the lasting structural violence provoked hos- International Conference on the Status of Ban- tility amongst and between groups, and elites of yarwanda [Tutsi] Refugees in Washington, D.C. in all stripes controlling media outlets of all stripes 1988, and this is where a military solution to the began to use their venues to sow ethnic rivalry as Tutsi problem was chosen. The U.S. Committee the veneer for the deeper agenda: class warfare. for Refugees reportedly provided accommoda- Rwanda under Juvenal Habyarimana from tion and transportation.50 1973 to 1994, was a single party “dictatorship.” Roger Winter is intimate with USAID, and a Everyone was required to join the government long-time ally of Susan Rice, fomer National Secu- party, the National Movement for Democracy rity Advisor (2013-2017), U.S. Ambassador to the and Development, the MRND. Labeling Habyari- UN (2009-2013), Assistant Secretary of State on mana’s government – or the government under African Affairs (1997-2001), Special Assistant to Mobutu in adjacent Zaire – a “dictatorship” is President Clinton (1995-1997), and National Secu- another kind of essentialist reductionism that in rity Council insider (1993-1997). no way accounts for the subtleties or complexi- Winter is also a staunch supporter of U.S. Rep. ties of the alliances and allegiances, the politics, Donald Payne (D-NJ). Winter’s involvement in languages or cultural differences of the people Rwanda was preceded by his long and opaque or places that comprised “Rwanda” or “Zaire” or history with guerrilla movements in Uganda and “Burundi.” South Sudan. In Rwanda, Hutus were dehumanized as of- Winter acted as a spokesman for the RPF and ten as Tutsis. “Pro-opposition newspapers rep- their allies, and he appeared as a guest on major resented MRND [Hutu government] leaders as U.S. television networks such as PBS and CNN. essentially evil and corrupt,” writes Jean-Marie Gourevitch and Winter made contacts on behalf Vianney Higiro. “They were ‘liars, idiots, animals, of the RPF with North American media, particu- bloodthirsty murderers, and warmongers.’ Some larly The Washington Post, The New York Times of these newspapers published drawings of Presi- and Time magazine. dent Habyarimana covered with blood.”48 “Roger Winter is one of Kagame’s most ardent The RPF and Rwandan Tutsi Diaspora had supporters, and one of the most biased and least

102 | GARRISON | APR / MAY 2019 | [email protected] An interesting 20’ x 40’ billboard advertisement seen along a busy highway in Nairobi, Kenya in 2000. This curious ad appears to be government-sanctioned propaganda, possibly created by or for Kenyan President Daniel Arap Moi, who believed Paul Kagame and Yoweri Museveni (Uganda) had assassinated his friend Juvenal Habyarimana. The billboard “message” is very curious. Mortein is a popular Australian brand of insecticide owned by a British company and one of their insecticides is called Doom. The colors of the billboard ad and the actual typical ‘Doom’ ads are similar (black, red, and white) but there exists no insecticide called “Doom Black,” and no brand name appears anywhere on the billboard. Mortein ads for Doom all clearly have the brand name Mortein. No Mortein Doom product uses the full name cockroach: most say either crawling insects or simply roach(es). The woman appears to be whispering a secret, although she is smiling, which suggests the subliminal message, “Don’t be fooled,” and the “Mass Murderer” text— capitalized and underlined—is a double entendre. The term “Inyenzi”—which also came to have two meanings—was by this time widely known to refer to the RPA/F army, and the news of atrocities committed by the RPA/F was widely known in East and Central Africa. credible,” says Dr. René Lemarchand. “It is not for Jean-Marie Higiro says it best: “Academics nothing that Winter has been decorated by [Paul] and journalists divide Hutus into two categories: Kagame for his past services as a praise-singer moderates and extremists, following the myths (griot) on behalf of his patron. He played a key of Hollywood. They never suggest that there role in 1992 in putting Kagame in touch with were Hutus who did not belong to either catego- high-ranking bureaucrats in the U.S. State De- ry. There were those who were terrified by both partment, and he kept in close touch with the RPF sides and who just fled for their lives. Academics in subsequent years. I would trust him about as and journalists never do the same [segregating] far as I can throw a piano.”51 for Tutsis and of course never for the RPF even Second: The language of the above October though the RPF was a conglomerate of Tutsi su- 1990 timeline entry underscores the equally dis- premacists, Republicans, and monarchists. These crepant point that the RPF was “mostly made up supremacists are highly placed in the current gov- of Tutsis.” According to the standard genocide ernment. Tito Rutaremara, one of the ideologues narrative, the cataclysm in Rwanda was a tribal of the RPF, is one of them, and General Ibingira, struggle between Hutus and Tutsis, with some ob- the butcher of Kibeho, [is another] of them.”52 vious involvement of France. The very definition of genocide would be called Who were the non-Tutsi elements of the “most- into question if it turned out that there were po- ly” Tutsi RPF? What is the implication? They litical, economic or class – as opposed to ethnic – were Hutus? How could Hutus be fighting along- motives behind the hundreds of thousands – or as side Tutsis if Hutus were exterminating all Tutsis many as 1.2 million – of deaths of Tutsis that have based on an organized, premeditated plan? The been unequivocally attributed to Hutu genocid- term “moderate Hutu” invites a similar conun- aires. drum: What is a “moderate Hutu” in the interna- A deeper examination of “genocide” in Rwan- tional legal framework of genocide? da raises just such inconvenient questions. The

GARRISON | VOLUME 01 ISSUE 01 | 103 determination of what constitutes genocide is not so cut-and-dried as Hutus versus Tutsis, or lists of targeted Tutsis versus no lists, no matter the terror now invoked in one’s soul on hearing the word Interahamwe, or the sites one may see as a spectator tourist visiting genocide “memorials” in Rwanda (or Uganda). The Lexicon of Dark Continentalism Few people have any proper conception of the true nature of propaganda, its effects on the subconscious, or the ways that emotionally potent oversimplifications can block any true awareness or interpretation of reality.53 Worse, there are fewer still who truly comprehend the ways that such The Tribune, “Uganda’s Business & Economic Newspa- propaganda serves to manufacture consent. per” ran this cover story the week of October 13-19, Beyond the word “Africa” and all that it con- 1995, only a year after the RPF seized power by force jures up in the minds of outsiders, we have numer- in Rwanda. Kenyan President Daniel Arap Moi believed ous subconscious and now programmed or condi- Paul Kagame and Yoweri Museveni (Uganda) had assassi- tioned associations with words that demean and nated his friend Juvenal Habyarimana. Kagame repeatedly subordinate the othered peoples, cultures, and accused Moi of harboring Hutu genocidaires, while Moi places of Africa (substitute: Asia, Latin America repeatedly threatened to have investigators (hunting for etc.). Hutus in Kenya) arrested. Moi made a public speech in These associations universally revolve around October 1995 promising “tough action by Kenyan securi- stereotypes, essentialized constructs, and other ty forces against anybody, be it from the United Nations fictional or imagined re-presentations that like- (UN), venturing into Kenya claiming to be looking for ly emanate from identity-based fears concerned Hutu refugees.” with a loss of power, even as the power relations Moi and Kagame had a diplomatic row over the “Sen- are enhanced in the process. dashonga Affair” in 1996. Seth Sendashonga was a Rwan- The lexicon of “Dark Continentalism”54 de- dan Hutu who had joined the RPF war (1992) and was ployed in and by white public space is rich with appointed Rwanda’s Minister of the Interior in 1995. After labels like savage, Hutu or Tutsi, dictator, Jan- attempting (unsuccessfully) to stop the massacre of Hutu jaweed, Mai Mai, Mau Mau, ebola, anarchy, zom- IDPs at Kibeho internment camp, Sendashonga accused bie, Ju-Ju, Killmonger, voodoo, genocidaire, tribal Kagame and the other “Ugandan Tutsis” of the new (RPF) chief, Akazu, Interahamwe, and Inyenzi. order of mass murder at Kibeho and the subsequent Where does one begin to unpack and radically cover-up, concluding that they would stop at nothing to comprehend the roots of conflict and manipula- achieve their goals. Sendashonga was fired and imprisoned tion of history in Central Africa? in August 1995, and he went into exile in Kenya soon after At the end of the 17th century, one of the Tutsi his release (in late 1995). In February 1996, Sendashonga lineages of Central Africa achieved supremacy was wounded in an assassination attempt in Nairobi. Soon over the local population through bloodshed, co- after, President Moi closed the Rwandan embassy and or- ercion, and alliance. The Mwami, or king, was the dered all diplomats to leave after Kagame refused to annul supreme ruler, and he controlled and allocated the diplomatic immunity for Rwandese embassy official land through his subordinate network of depen- Francis Mugabo, who was caught on the scene with the dent chiefs. By controlling the people, the Mwami 9mm silencer-equipped pistol that wounded Sendashonga. controlled the land. During the assassination attempt, Sendashonga also It was bloody, brutal, murderous, and the Hutu recognized his former RPF bodyguard as one of the two (and ordinary non-aristocratic Tutsi) suffered the assailants. Sendashonga was subsequently assassinated in most horrible abuses – ugly, brutish, and short. Nairobi in 1998. On March 9, 2019, Paul Kagame publicly This pre-colonial history never escaped the racial stated that Sendashonga “crossed the line” and he [Kag- memory of the Hutu people. ame] “is not apologetic about [his assassination].” The term Inyenzi was born prior to the colonial era. It did not originate as a derogatory racial slur

104 | GARRISON | APR / MAY 2019 | [email protected] used by the Hutus to dehumanize Tutsis – the “uni- and nakedness, this is the heart of darkest human formed soldiers and militia men intent on wiping evil, the center that does not hold, the very quin- out the Tutsi Inyenzi, or ‘cockroaches’ ” referenced tessence of Mordor.56 by Samantha Power at the start of this article. “And, in the end,” writes The New Times, These are not mere details to be commoditized Rwanda’s state newspaper run by the now for- in some board game, and understanding the ori- mer Rwandan Patriotic Front, “from politician to gins of these deeply seated narratives deployed the ordinary farmer, Hutus united to get rid of the by different power factions is no trivial pursuit. “cockroaches,” working together to exterminate Dr. Higiro cites a 2003 BBC interview with the their Tutsi friends, neighbors, co-workers and famous Rwandan warlord, Aloys Ngurumbe – family members.”57 who led the Tutsi exiles’ attacks against Rwanda Oh the horror, the horror.58 from Uganda from 1960 to 1968 – where Ngurum- • ENDNOTES: be explained that Inyenzi is the acronym of “In- 1 Zaire (1971-1997) was the name given by then President Joseph gangurarugo yemeye kuba ingenzi.” Desire Mobutu, alias President Mobutu Sese Seko, to what is today the “Inganguraruga was an army division under Democratic Republic of Congo, otherwise known as Congo-Kinshasa. Across the Congo River from the DRC’s capital, Kinshasa, is Brazza- Kigeli Rwabugili, a Tutsi king who ruled Rwan- ville, capitol of the Republic of Congo, ROC, otherwise known as Con- da at the end of the 19th century.” Dr. Higiro ex- go-Brazzaville. From circa 1885 to 1908, King Leopold of Belgium ruled plains the etymology. “Inyenzi means ‘a member the Congo as a personal fiefdom; from 1908 it was dubbed the “Congo of Ingangurarugo who has committed himself to Free State” under the colonial occupation of Belgium. 2 Philippe Gaillard and Hamid Barrada, “Le recit en direct de la famille bravery.’ Rwabugili, the son of King Rwogera, be- Habyarimana” (Rwanda: From Paris, Habyarimana’s Family Recounts the longed to this division. The word ingangurarogo Tragedy), reprinted in Jeune Afrique, Nos 1738-1739, April 28-May 11, 1994: available in English at: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/ comes from ‘kugangura urugo rw’ibwami,’ or ‘to soc.culture.african/Ismd4FXZlw. provoke trouble at the king’s court.’ When Rwa- 3 Private interview, Jean-Luc Habyarimana, Paris, France, December bugili was a child, he and his friends attacked 2011. Rwogera’s court and took away his cattle. More 4 Philip Gourevitch, “Letter from Rwanda: After the Genocide,” The New Yorker, December 18, 1995 Issue: https://www.newyorker.com/ broadly then, ingangurarugo means trouble- magazine/1995/12/18/after-the-genocide. makers. During his reign Rwabugili waged war 5 Unsigned, “Thousands Massacred in Rwanda,” The Guardian, April 9, throughout the Great Lakes of Africa until his 1994; Ann M. Simmons, “Rwandan Atrocities Ignite Hatreds,” The Los An- death in 1895. [Aloys] Ngurumbe stated that his geles Times, 14 December 1997; unsigned, “FACTBOX: Rwandan Geno- cide: some key facts,” Reuters, April 4, 2007; unsigned, “Rwanda’s 100-day supporters chose the label, not extremist Hutus, Bloodbath, a Modern Genocide,” Agence France Presse, 8 May 2016. to whom it is attributed in many writings on the 6 While the terms Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) and Rwandan Pa- 1994 Rwandan genocide.”55 triotic Army (RPA) are often used interchangeably, as they will be in this article, each of these – along with the DMI, Directorate of Military Who were the Inyenzi of the 1960s? And who Intelligence – served a different function before the 1990 invasion from were their supporters? Why was a guerrilla force Uganda, during the period 1990-1994, and after RPF came to power. 7 Judi Rever, In Praise of Blood: The Crimes of the Rwandan Patriotic of exiled Tutsi refugee warriors – calling itself In- Front, Random House Canada, 2018: p. 230 yenzi – allowed to attack the sovereign state of 8 Alex de Waal, “Writing Human Rights and Getting it Wrong,” Boston Rwanda from neighboring states, circa 1959 to Review, June 16, 2016: http://bostonreview.net/world/alex-de-waal-writ- 1968, in contravention of international law? ing-human-rights 9 Stephen Kinzer, A Thousand Hills: Rwanda’s Rebirth and the Man What is the true history of Tutsi and Hutu rela- Who Dreamed It, John Wiley & Sons, 2008: p. 11. tions in Rwanda and Burundi? How did the Tutsis 10 The number of publications, news outlets, individuals or organiza- and Hutus relate to other tribes in the neighbor- tions that have promulgated the story of Kagame and the RPA “stopping ing territories that now comprise parts of Uganda the genocide” or “ending the genocide” are too numerous and ubiqui- tous to cite. Most of them have their origins in the writings of a few key and the Congo? How do victims become killers, individuals or institutions that primed the pump for the establishment and killers become victims? narrative to become so widely seeded and deeply seated in the western Bloodshed, brutality, tribal massacre, orgies military-industrial-academic complex. See, for example: Philip Goure- of violence – this kind of thing happens in Africa, vitch, “The Life After,” The New Yorker Magazine, 4 May 2009. 11 Samantha Power, “Remember the Blood Frenzy of Rwanda,” The right? This is where evil is distilled out of the fet- Los Angeles Times, April 4, 2004. id swamps and primordial forests and steaming 12 Samantha Power, A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of volcanoes, spontaneously regenerating so many Genocide, HarperCollins, 2002. African gollums – heartless, calculating, perfidi- 13 Paul R. Bartrop and Steven Leonard Jacobs, Fifty Key Thinkers on the Holocaust and Genocide, Routledge Press, 2011: p. 242. ous, intoxicated with greed and hatred, foaming 14 Dr. Amos Wilson, The Falsification of Afrikan Consciousness, Afrikan at the mouth with a maleficent hunger for killing. World Infosystems, July 1993. On a continent known for its savagery, spears, 15 Christopher H. Smith, Rwanda: Genocide and the Continuing Cycle

GARRISON | VOLUME 01 ISSUE 01 | 105 of Violence, Hearing Before the Subcommittee on International Opera- Press, 2004. tions and Human Rights, May 5, 1998. 43 See, e.g., J. W. Buel, Heroes of the Dark Continent, B.F. Johnson & 16 African Rights, Rwanda: Death, Despair and Defiance (1995). Co., 1890. 17 Luc Reydams, “NGO Justice: African Rights as Pseudo-Prosecutor 44 Where is the supreme kingdom in the 2018 black fantasy blockbust- of the Rwandan Genocide,” Human Rights Quarterly, Volume 38, No. 3, er Black Panther? The fictional story zooms in to Africa to geographically August 2016: p. 547. situate the kingdom in Rwanda. 45 18 René Lemarchand, Scholarly Review: Rwanda: The State of Research, The Lion King is clearly an anti-immigration film. 46 http://www.massviolence.org/Rwanda-The-State-of-Research?art- Terry George, Ed., Hotel Rwanda – The Official Companion Book, page=4. Lemarchand’s treatise on the Political Awakening in the Congo, Newmarket Press, 2005. 47 from the 1960s, is curiously lacking any reference to some key players The Iceberg of the Conflict in Africa of the Great Lakes Region: and interesting facts that were reasonably well known at the time. He Lawsuit Against Those Responsible for the Concealed Crimes Against also has worked as a consultant for USAID. Humanity, International Forum for Truth and Justice in the Great Lakes 19 Private communication, Jean-Marie Higiro, October 17, 2008. Region of Africa, www.veritasrwanaforum.org. 48 20 Luc Reydams, “NGO Justice: African Rights as Pseudo-Prosecutor Jean-Marie Vianney Higiro, “Rwandan Private Print Media on the Eve of the Rwandan Genocide,” Human Rights Quarterly, Volume 38, No. 3, of the Genocide,” in Thompson (ed.), The Media and the Rwanda Geno- August 2016: p. 547. cide, Pluto Press, 2007. 49 21 Paul Rusesabagina, “Rusesabagina responds to Rwanda govern- Some of them are: Alliance edited by Alliance National Unity ment book on Hotel Rwanda,” EUX-TV (Brussels), https://euxtv. (RANU), an organization that later changed its name into Rwandan Pa- wordpress.com/2008/04/12/rusesabagina-responds-to-rwanda-govern- triotic Front (RPF); Congo Nil, edited in Belgium by Francois Rutanga; ment-book-on-hotel-rwanda/ Impuruza, edited by Alexander Kimenyi in the United States; Inkotanyi, 22 Luc Reydams, “NGO Justice,” op. cit., p. 582. edited by the RPF; Intego, edited by Jose Kagabo in France; Munyarwanda, 23 More Than Humanitarianism: A Strategic U.S. Approach Toward Afri- edited by the Association of Concerned Banyarwanda in Canada; Avant ca, Council on Foreign Relations, Task Force Report Number 56, January Garde; Le Patriote; Huguka; and Umulinzi. 50 2006, https://www.cfr.org/report/more-humanitarianism The term Banyarwanda refers to ethnic Tutsis and has been most 24 Private communication: Charles Onana, Paris, France, February 2004. often used to describe Tutsi refugees in Congo (Zaire). 51 25 The book published in November 2001 entitled Les Secrets Du Personal communication, René Lemarchand, August 2, 2012. René Génocide Rwandais, Enquête Sur les Mystères D’un Président [The Se- Lemarchand is a French political scientist who is known for his research on ethnic conflict and genocide in Rwanda, Burundi, and Darfur. He is crets of the Rwandan Genocide, Investigations on the Mysteries of a a Professor Emeritus at the University of Florida and has worked as a President], was the subject of President Kagame’s initial law suit that was USAID consultant in Côte d’Ivoire (1992-1996) and Ghana (1997-1998). heard in the 17th chamber of the French High court against Cameroo- 52 In April 1995, the Rwandan Patriotic Front massacred thousands of nian Journalist Charles Onana. Rwandan IDPs (internally displaced persons) when they forcibly closed 26 Private interview: French, op. cit. an IDP camp at Kibeho, Rwanda. The 9-square-kilometer camp housed 27 Howard W. French, “In Zaire Forest Hutu Refugees Near the End some 80,000 to 100,000 people. The United Nations estimated some of the Road,” The New York Times, March 13, 1997; see also Howard 4,000 killed, while the RPF counted 385 persons dead. The real death toll W. French, Africa: A Continent for the Taking: The Tragedy and Hope of is believed to be well above 8,000. Africa. 53 See, e.g., Jacques Ellul, Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes, 28 Private interview: French, op. cit. Vintage, 1962. 29 An identical framework is used to portray the Karen guerrillas as 54 The terminology “Dark Continentalism” was coined in: Keith Har- the good guys (and the Government of Burma as the bad guys) when the mon Snow, Towards an Anthropology of White Man in Africa: A Call to Karen show up at the end of the filmBeyond Rangoon. Explore the Militarized White Project of “Dark Continentalism,” Ameri- 30 Lt. General Roméo A. Dallaire, Shake Hands with the Devil: The can Anthropology Association, Annual Symposium, 2008. Failure of Humanity in Rwanda, Arrow Books, 2003. 55 Jean Marie Vianney Higiro, “Rwandan Private Print ,” op. cit., pp. 84- 31 Samantha Power, A Problem from Hell, op. cit. 85. 32 Philip Gourevitch, We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We 56 Gollum is the fictional character in the J.R.R. Tolkien high fantasy Will Be Killed With Our Families: Tales from Rwanda, New York: Farrar, adventure novels The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings (trilogy); Mordor Strauss and Giroux, 1998. is the dark realm of horror and evil. 33 Luc Reydams, “NGO Justice,” op. cit., pp 584 and 587. 57 Kennedy (Tom) Ndahiro, “Dehumanisation: How Tutsis were re- 34 On James Rubin: see Wayne Madsen, Genocide and Covert Opera- duced to cockroaches, snakes to be killed,” The New Times, 13 March tions in Africa, 1993-1999, Mellen Press, 1999. 2014: https://www.newtimes.co.rw/section/read/73836. Tom Ndahiro is 35 Private interview: French, op. cit. one of the Kagame government’s public relations experts. 36 Tristan McConnell, “One Man’s Rwanda,” Columbia Journalism Re- 58 This language first appeared in Joseph Conrad’s 1899 novel Heart view, January/February 2011: https://archives.cjr.org/feature/one_mans_ of Darkness. It has subsequently been deployed widely, usually in racial- rwanda.php . ized contexts where the use and meaning is translated to infer a critical 37 Gerry Caplan, “Why does the University of Toronto’s radio station awareness of racism, but nonetheless further inscribes and reconstitutes promote genocide denial?” Rabble.ca, 30 April 2013. white power dynamics. One poignant example is its use in the Holly- 38 See, e.g., Keith Harmon Snow: “White Slaughter in Black Africa: Dr. wood filmApocalypse Now. Gerald Caplan and the Rwanda Genocide Cranks,” Dissident Voice, 6 May 2013: https://dissidentvoice.org/2013/05/white-slaughter-in-black-africa-genocide-and-denialism/. Keith Harmon Snow is an award-winning war correspondent 39 Gerald Caplan, “Manufacturing Controversy: Left-Wing Denial of and photographer. He has been recognized for more than 15 the Rwandan Genocide,” in Samuel Totten et al (eds.), Controversies in years work challenging and documenting war crimes, crimes the Field of Genocide Studies, Transaction Publishers, 2017: p. 153-154. 40 Aryeh Neier, War Crimes: Brutality, Genocide, Terror, and the Strug- against humanity, and genocide. He testified at the International gle for Justice, Random House, 1998: p. 203. Court of Justice (Spain) in support of international warrants 41 See, e.g., Adam Hocschild, King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, issued against Rwandan Patriotic Front commanders, and at nu- Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa, Mariner Books, 1998. merous other tribunals. His book, The Worst Interests of the 42 Tuana and Sullivan, Race and Epistemologies of Ignorance, SUNY Child, was published in 2015.

106 | GARRISON | APR / MAY 2019 | [email protected] The Disgraceful History of U.S. Government Experimentation on Human Beings

By Donald Jeffries Gottlieb’s mad scientist-style work.2 The notion that the U.S. government would ne of the many subjects seldom discussed by never subject its citizens to dangerous physical the court historians – hidden history, if you or psychological trauma is contradicted by an O will – is the long, sordid practice of United honest examination of our history. According to States government experimentation on other a section of the public law officially establishing populations, and even its own people. a Chemical and Biological Warfare Program, “The use of human subjects will be allowed for The Subjugation of the Most Vulnerable the testing of chemical and biological agents by the U.S. Department of Defense … .” This law Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, the CIA’s Director of permitted the secretary of defense to “conduct Operations of the Technical Services Staff, tests and experiments … on civilian populations oversaw some of the Agency’s most hideous (within the United States).” mind-control experiments under the MKULTRA As far back as 1845, J. Marion Sims, who program. Directed by Allen Dulles, Gottlieb is renowned as the “father of gynecology,” administered LSD and other psychotropic drugs performed medical experiments on female to unwitting subjects, and utilized “techniques African slaves without anesthesia. These women that would crush the human psyche to the point usually died of infection soon afterwards. In 1895, that it would admit anything.”1 He subsequently New York pediatrician Henry Heiman infected a confessed to having dispersed a large quantity four-year-old boy whom he referred to as “an idiot of viruses in Zaire’s Congo River in 1960, for the with chronic epilepsy” with gonorrhea. A year express purpose of contaminating it. One of later, Dr. Arthur Wentworth at Boston’s Children’s Richard Helms’s last acts as CIA director was Hospital performed spinal taps on 20 children to destroy all MKULTRA records relating to Dr. there, to see if the procedure was safe.3 Then-U.S.

GARRISON | VOLUME 01 ISSUE 01 | 107 Surgeon General Dr. Walter Reed, a renowned Wilson created the Chemical Warfare Service name in medical history, used 22 Spanish as a branch within the Army. From 1919-1922, immigrants in Cuba as test subjects to prove that researchers performed bizarre, Frankenstein- yellow fever is contracted from mosquito bites. A like experiments on inmates at San Quentin State real pathfinder, Reed established the practice of Prison, which included transplanting the testicles using healthy test subjects. At least he paid them. of executed inmates and goats into the abdomens In 1906, Harvard Professor Dr. Richard Strong and scrotums of living prisoners. It wasn’t until inflected prisoners in the Philippines with cholera, 1981 that a draconian Virginia state law that had and 13 of them died as a result. The survivors resulted in an estimated 10,000 perfectly normal were given cigars and cigarettes.4 The Nazi women being forcibly sterilized for reasons such defendants at Nuremberg would cite this case as as alcoholism, prostitution, and being the child of a precedent for their own medical experiments. In a retarded mother, was finally ended.7 In 1931, the a very Nazi-like move, Indiana passed the world’s Puerto Rican Cancer Experiment began under first sterilization law in 1907, reserved for those the direction of the Rockefeller Institute for deemed “unfit” to reproduce. In 1911, Dr. Hideyo Medical Research’s Dr. Cornelius Rhoads. Rhoads Noguchi of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical injected his test subjects with cancer cells, and Research published his research regarding the 13 of them died. Rhoads was no misguided do- injection of inactive syphilis into 146 hospital gooder; his writings revealed him to be a virulent patients and healthy children. racist who wanted to wipe out the Puerto Rican In 1913, 15 children at St. Vincent’s House in population.8 Rising rapidly up the ladder, Rhoads Philadelphia were injected with tuberculin, later established the U.S. Army Biological Warfare resulting in permanent blindness in some facilities in Maryland, Utah, and Panama and was of the children. The Pennsylvania House of named to the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission. Representatives was aware of this tragedy, but Rhoads was also deeply involved with radiation the researchers suffered no punishment.5 Tw o experiments performed on prisoners, hospital years later, Dr. Joseph Goldberger, under direction patients, and soldiers. In the 1930s, 17 states from the U.S. Public Health Office, induced passed laws permitting the forced sterilization Pellagra, a debilitating disease that affects the of “flawed” individuals. And again, the Germans central nervous system, in 12 Mississippi inmates.6 would cite these laws at Nuremberg. By 1935, millions had died from the disease, and Perhaps the most well-known example of med- the director of the U.S Public Health Office would ical experimentation occurred at Tuskegee, Ala- reluctantly admit that officials had been aware it bama, beginning in 1932. The U.S. Public Health was caused by a niacin deficiency for quite some Service allowed 400 poor, black sharecroppers time, but failed to act because it mostly affected with syphilis to go untreated, in order to study poor African-Americans. Again, during the them as human guinea pigs. All of them eventu- Nuremberg Trials, Nazi doctors cited this study in ally died. This was the golden era of eugenics, their defense. and the “liberal” hero Margaret Sanger, founder Supposedly in response to the Germans’ use of Planned Parenthood, would utter numerous of chemical weapons in World War I, President onerous comments, including giving “certain

DR. SIDNEY GOTTLIEB DR. WALTER REED DR. RICHARD STRONG DR. J. GOLDBERGER

108 | GARRISON | APR / MAY 2019 | [email protected] dysgenic groups in our population their choice of field cannot be ignored in a time of peace,” this segregation (concentration camps) or steriliza- early day titan of Big Pharma declared. “It must tion.” As many as 4,000 forced sterilizations were be continued on a sufficient scale to provide an taking place in the United States every year by adequate defense.”10 this time. Adolph Hitler would, in 1934, request a Also in 1942, U.S. military doctors infected 400 copy of Eugenicist Leon Whitley’s book The Case prisoners at Stateville Penitentiary in Illinois with for Sterilization. Hitler would write to another malaria. The prisoners, one of whom was Nathan American eugenicist, Madison Grant, informing Leopold of Leopold and Loeb murder case fame, him that his book The Great Race was his “bible.” were told they were part of the war effort. The In his notorious 1939 “Monster Experiment,” Nazis cited this experiment as well during their Dr. Wendell Johnson placed 22 children at the defense at Nuremberg. The same year, the Iowa Soldiers’ Orphan Home under intense Chemical Warfare Service began experimenting psychological duress, which resulted in them with mustard gas and lewisite on 4,000 U.S. developing stutters. In 1941, Dr. William C. Black military personnel. Rounding out the festivities infected a 12-month-old baby with herpes. The for 1942, Harvard University’s Edward Cohn, outraged editor of the Journal of Experimental under sponsorship from the U.S. Navy, injected Medicine, Francis Payton Rous, rejected Black’s prisoners with cow blood, which resulted in manuscript regarding his work, declaring that catastrophic effects, including the death of some. this was “an abuse of power, an infringement of In 1943, researchers the rights of an individual, at the University of and not excusable Cincinnati locked 16 because the illness which mentally disabled followed had implications patients in refrigerated for science” That same cabinets for 120 hours. year, the Archives of During the Manhattan Pediatrics mentioned, Project, which resulted rather matter-of-factly, in the atomic bomb, U.S. experiments where soldiers in Tennessee and doctors had transmitted patients in New York and the severe gum disease Chicago were injected Vincent’s angina from with plutonium, and later sick children to healthy the effects of fluoride on ones. Again in 1941, humans were tested.11 doctors at the University EXPERIMENTS AT ILLINOIS STATE PRISON Few Americans realize of Michigan, including that fluoride is the key the renowned Jonas Salk, sprayed wild influenza chemical component in atomic bombs. The tests virus into the noses of mental patients.9 demonstrated that fluoride causes damage to the central nervous system, but this didn’t stop it from Waging a Curious War being force-fed via the national water supply a decade later. In 1942, President Franklin Roosevelt created From 1944-1946, psychiatric patients at Illinois the first biological warfare program, which was State Hospital were infected with malaria by Dr. backed by the National Academy of Sciences, Alf Alving of the University of Chicago Medical and a new agency, the War Research Service, School. In 1945, 800 Atlanta inmates were infected was established to oversee these activities. with malaria. In 1946-1947, researchers at the In conjunction with this effort, Fort Detrick, University of Rochester injected six human test Maryland opened the same year. It employed subjects with uranium. nearly 500 scientists who worked tirelessly on Starting in 1946, researchers began to tap into developing biological weapons and defenses the readily available market of test subjects at VA against them. Human subjects were used hospitals. From 1946-1953, research sponsored by regularly. George W. Merck, of the giant Merck the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, involving Pharmaceutical Company, was appointed as the doctors at Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts head of the War Research Service. “Work in this General Hospital, M.I.T., and the Boston University

GARRISON | VOLUME 01 ISSUE 01 | 109 School of Medicine, included spiking the cereal of one person, 75-year-old Edward Nevin, died as a mentally disabled youngsters with radioactive result of this hideous experiment. Several others material. A classified April 17, 1947 Atomic Energy contracted serious infections from the chemicals. Commission document advised, “It is desired Much of the information surrounding this sort of that no document be released which refers to experimentation was only begrudgingly released experiments with humans that might have an during legal efforts initiated by Nevin’s grandson adverse reaction on public opinion or result in the late 1970s. In the trial that finally resulted, in in legal suits.”12 From 1950-1953, the U.S. Army 1981, the government actually claimed that they released chemical clouds over six American and needed no permission to spray the public without Canadian cities. In the 1998 book Acres of Skin, their knowledge! One government witness, a Allen M. Hornblum documented how in 1950, 200 current doctor at Fort Detrick, testified, “I would female inmates in Pennsylvania were infected still spray San Francisco again today.” General with the hepatitis virus. William Creasy arrogantly stated, “I would find The CIA’s MKULTRA mind-control program it completely impossible to conduct such a test defined its key objective in a January 1952 trying to obtain informed consent. I could not memo: “Can we get control of an individual to have hoped to prevent panic in the uninformed the point where he will do our bidding against world in which we live in telling them that we his will and even against fundamental laws of were going to spread non-pathogenic particles nature, such as self-preservation?” Allen Dulles over their community; 99 percent of the people laconically complained that there weren’t an wouldn’t know what pathogenic meant.” The adequate number of “human guinea pigs judge in the case was predictably biased to try these extraordinary techniques.” in favor of the government, and even All in all, some 80 institutions, over berated Nevin’s grandson for his lack half of them colleges, would house of respect for military officials. In MKULTRA labs. Their work with the hallway, the psychotic General LSD and heroin revolved around Creasy challenged young Nevin “discrediting individuals, to a fistfight! After spending eliciting information, and some $60,000 in legal fees and implanting suggestions draining himself emotionally, and other forms of mental young Nevin had to witness the control.”13 Over 7,000 members judge inexplicably rule in favor of of the military were unknowingly the military. Nevin’s appeals all the injected with LSD. The CIA also ran way up to the Supreme Court were Project ARTICHOKE, which utilized denied.14 hypnosis and morphine in an attempt to In 1955, the CIA sprayed whooping induce amnesia. Project QKHILLTOP studied cough bacteria over Tampa, Florida. ancient Chinese methods of loosening tongues. Another infamous mad scientist, Dr. D. Ewen Beginning in 1950, the U.S. government Cameron, who would later experiment on helpless intentionally doused 293 populated areas with mental patients in Canada as part of the CIA’s bacteria. No citizens in the areas affected were MKULTRA program, published a 1950 article in even informed, and no safety precautions or the British Journal of Physical Medicine in which medical follow-up ever occurred. Perhaps the he calmly described forcing schizophrenics to lie most memorable of these occurred over San naked under 200-watt red lamps for up to eight Francisco in September 1950. The U.S. Army hours at a time, placing test subjects in an electric showered unsuspecting San Franciscans with cage that overheated their body to 103 degrees, bacteria over the course of eight days. As author and inducing comas by giving patients powerful Leonard J. Cole wrote in his book Clouds of injections of insulin. Ewen Cameron’s work was Secrecy, “Nearly all of San Francisco received 500 partially funded by the Rockefeller Foundation. particle minutes per liter. In other words, nearly At about this same time, the Department of every one of the 800,000 people in San Francisco Defense developed plans to detonate nuclear exposed to the cloud at normal breathing rate … weapons in areas of the desert and secretly were inhaling millions of the bacteria and particles monitor the residents afterward for medical every day during the week of testing.” At least problems and mortality rates.

110 | GARRISON | APR / MAY 2019 | [email protected] Rumors persist that American military forces and disabling purposes.”17 The U.S. Air Force used germ warfare weapons in the Korean conflict, established Operation Whitecoat at around the which included releases of anthrax, the Plague, same time, which involved subjecting test subjects and Yellow Fever. The Eisenhower administration to experimental hepatitis vaccines. The Army responded to the initial allegations by charging Chemical Corps also conducted LSD research those who made such claims with sedition until 1958. The Army released mosquitoes infected (fortunately, none were convicted).15 In 1951, the with yellow fever into residential neighborhoods U.S. Army secretly contaminated the Norfolk in Savannah, Georgia and Avon Park, Florida. Naval Supply Center and Washington, D.C.’s A high incidence of fevers, respiratory disease, National Airport with a strain of bacteria thought stillbirths, and even deaths resulted. After each to be particularly harmful to African-Americans. test, U.S. Army personnel would pose as public In 1952, one test subject died when he was injected health officials as they photographed and tested with mescaline at Columbia University’s New the victims.18 In 1957, the U.S. military launched York State Psychiatric Institute. In 1952, inmates Operation Plumbbob in Nevada, consisting of 29 from Ohio State Prison were injected with live nuclear detonations which released radiation cancer cells at the Sloan-Kettering Institute. that apparently caused 32,000 cases of thyroid Under Allen Dulles’s MKULTRA program, the cancer in the area.19 CIA would douse unsuspecting prisoners, and in Starting in 1957, the CIA hired the more absurd cases the patrons of brothels under aforementioned Dr. D. Ewen Cameron, founder of “Operation Midnight Climax,” with LSD.16 The the McGill University Department of Psychiatry, suspicious death of Dr. Frank Olson apparently to perform a series of horrific LSD studies on resulted from these diabolical LSD experiments. Canadians. What was particularly reprehensible The CIA developed a similar program called about Cameron’s experiments was the fact his test Project MKDELTA, which experimented with subjects were being treated for minor issues like biochemicals “for harassment, discrediting, post-partum depression or simple anxiety. The subjects were placed into vegetative states by use of drugs, electroshock, and sensory deprivation. Attempts were made to literally erase memories and rewrite psyches. The patients were also given paralytic drugs and forced to endure weeks or months of tape loops playing the same music or repetitive statements.20 Under Operation Hardtack, some 300 members of the U.S. Navy were exposed to radiation when 30 nuclear bombs were exploded near the Pacific Islands. On March 1, 1954, the United States exploded the most powerful nuclear bomb in history, in the heart of the Pacific Ocean. The bomb was lovingly named Bravo, and its explosiveness in relation to the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was the same as those first atomic weapons had been in comparison to conventional weaponry. Bravo was laced with plutonium, and it vaporized three of the Bikini Islands. Marshall Islanders were saturated with radioactive fallout, and their pleas for compensation from the U.S. government have gone unheeded for over 60 years. A report presented to the U.N. Human Rights Council claimed that the radiation had caused fatalities and many long-term health consequences, as well as “near-irreversible environmental DR. DONALD EWEN CAMERON contamination.” The radioactive fallout from

GARRISON | VOLUME 01 ISSUE 01 | 111 the blast was widespread and contaminated at 4 Acres of Skin: Human experiments at Holmesburg Prison, A Story least one Japanese tuna trawler. All this was bad of Abuse and Exploitation in the Name of Medical Science by Allen M. enough, but in predictable fashion, the islanders Hornblum, p. 79. 5 Journal of the American Medical Association, February 28, 1914. were quickly converted into test subjects on 6 NBC News, February 27, 2011. the effects of radioactive fallout, conducted by 7 The Washington Post, “Over 7,500 Sterilized by Virginia,” February the U.S. Navy under Project 4.1. Thirty-six years 23, 1980. later, one of the doctors involved would admit, 8 Inter Press Service News Agency, October 21, 2002. 9 US Army Medical Department Office of Medical History. “In retrospect, it was unfortunate that the AEC 10 Clouds of Secrecy: The Army’s Germ Warfare Tests Over Populated [Atomic Energy Commission], because it was a Areas By Leonard A. Cole, p. 15. research organization, did not include support of 11 The New York Times, “Radiation Tests Used Some Healthy People,” basic health care of populations under study.”21 January 19, 1995. From 1956-1970, a shocking continuous study 12 Smithsonian Magazine, “A Spoonful of Sugar Helps the Radioactive Oatmeal Go Down,” March 8, 2017. aimed at finding a cure for hepatitis used mentally 13 American Torture: From the Cold War to Abu Ghraib and Beyond by handicapped children at Willowbrook State Michael Otterman, pp. 21-22. School in Staten Island, New York as test subjects, 14 The New York Times, “Suits Barred in Germ Test Death,” January many of whom died in the process. 18, 1983. 16 “Biological Warfare in the Korean War: Allegations and Cover- This is just a sampling of a much longer list, up” by Thomas Powell, Socialism and Democracy, #31. and every American should be embarrassed 17 San Francisco Weekly, “Operation Climax: How the CIA Dosed by it. I concentrated primarily on human S.F. Citizens with LSD,” March 14, 2012. experimentation within the United States. I could 18 Military Neuroscience and the Coming Age of Neurowarfare by Armin have mentioned, for instance, the ugly 1946-1948 Krishnan, p. 25. 19 UPI, October 29, 1980. U.S. research project in Guatemala, sponsored 20 NPR, “Veteran: Risks in 1950s Bomb Test A Disgrace,” October by the Public Health Service and the National 12, 2012. Institutes of Health, in which prostitutes were 21 “Inside Montreal’s House of Horrors,” Montreal Gazette, January used to infect prisoners, mental patients, and 21, 1984. 22 Civil Beat Hawaii, February 24, 2014. Guatemalan soldiers with syphilis and other 23 PBS, “Reprehensible 1940s Syphilis Study in Guatemala,” October sexually transmitted diseases. It also involved 1, 2010. infecting people more directly, with “inoculations 24 https://www.citizen.org/our-work/health-and-safety/outrage- made from syphilis bacteria poured into the men’s month-unethical-human-experimentation-2015-and-our penises.” Among those infected were orphan 21 children. Donald Jeffries was a teenage volunteer with Mark Lane’s This isn’t just a tragic part of our history. Citizens Committee of Inquiry. His 2007 novel The Unreals was Human experimentation continues, as witnessed lauded by the likes of multi-award winning author Alexander by the 2015 iCOMPARE and FIRST clinical trials. Theroux and Night at the Museum screenwriter R. Ben Garant. His Differing slightly from earlier research, this study first nonfiction book, Hidden History: An Expose of Modern Crimes, permitted first-year medical residents to work Conspiracies, and Cover-Ups in American Politics, became a best- up to 28 consecutive hours, in a twisted effort to seller. His recent Survival of the Richest: How the Corruption of the discover if such grueling workloads cause more Marketplace and Disparity of Wealth Created the Greatest Conspiracy of All has received universal acclaim. His next book, Crimes and death and injuries to patients. These trials are still Cover-Ups in American Politics, will be released in Summer 2019. ongoing and are funded partially by the National Jeffries can be followed at DonaldJeffries.wordpress.com. Institutes of Health.22 In 2017, Physicians for Human Rights released a report that concluded Available the CIA’s post-9/11 torture program amounted to illegal human experimentation. If our real history JUNE 19, 2019 demonstrates anything, there is almost certainly diabolical, top-secret experimentation still being Crimes and Cover-Ups conducted on the most vulnerable human beings, in American by our own government, in the 21st century. Politics • 1776-1963 ENDNOTES: 1 World Heritage Encyclopedia. 2 The Observer, October 16, 1994. 3 Children as Research Subjects: Science, Ethics, and Law by Michael A. Grodin & Leonard H. Glantz, pp. 7-11.

112 | GARRISON | APR / MAY 2019 | [email protected] CRITICALRESISTANCE.ORG

GARRISON | VOLUME 01 ISSUE 01 | 113 Letters to the Editor From Steamshovel to Here Readers should appreciate the emergence away in April 2014. of a new zine discussing parapolitics, especial- Sherman Skolnick in Chicago served as an- ly in the Trump era. The subtitle of my current other source for parapolitical scuttlebutt. The book Trumpocalypse Now: The Triumph of the wheelchair-bound Skolnick began his “Citizens Conspiracy Spectacle, intends to suggest a con- Committee to Clean Up the Courts” as early as nection between the rise of “the notorious D.J.T.” 1963 – before the JFK assassination – and his ag- and the long-running zine underground of writ- itprop and investigative work put Illinois gover- ers, analysts, and activists who took on conspir- nor Otto Kerner Jr. in prison for three years and acy topics starting in the 1980s. led to the resignation of two At that point, parapolitics was Illinois Supreme Court justices. still something verboten in the Skolnick continued his work, mainstream press. Conspiracy issuing regular bulletins and cre- students were considered kooks. ating a telephone hotline (later Of course, they still are to a cer- a public access TV show) that tain extent, and The Donald is reported regularly on the para- considered the super kook in this politics of the day. He crossed regard. However, the cultural over into the zine world via the atmosphere has become much vehicle of The Spotlight, then more open to a larger spectrum a notoriously anti-Jewish, Nazi of information than was avail- symp newspaper published able before the day of the zines. by Willis Carto. Skolnick was Of course, for many still, this is Jewish, and, although he found not necessarily a good thing much of what Carto printed of- I published Steamshovel fensive, he recognized the value Press, one of the better-known of getting his work out on print- efforts in this regard, beginning ed page to a national audience. in the late 1980s. The great ma- SHERMAN SKOLNICK As he once explained to me, ven of conspiracy, Mae Brussell, died being critical of the politics of The in 1988, ending a font of “alternative facts” that Spotlight would be like criticizing the politics of a an information-hungry audience had depend- bus driver – what did it matter if the bus got you ed on for some word outside the confines of the to where you were going? In fact, Mark Lane’s mainstream. Mae’s progeny fell into a factional defense of The Spotlight in a defamation suit split that forestalled the effort. One of them, Dave brought by E. Howard Hunt became the closest Emory, became the model of the “angry, white thing to a legal conviction for the crime of JFK’s guy conspiracy style,” although his politics were murder. Sherman Skolnick died in May 2006. way on the other side of the political spectrum Judge and Skolnick sometimes found their than Alex Jones. John Judge, good humored by work reprinted in a zine called Critique. Initially comparison, went on to found the Coalition on presented as a square-bound, somewhat re- Political Assassinations in Washington, D.C. COPA spectable-looking academic journal with New actually served as a lobbying effort to do some- Age trappings (subtitled “Exposing Consensus thing politically with all that had been learned Reality”), Critique evolved into a magazine for- from decades of study about JFK and other mod- mat shortly before its publisher, Bob Banner, ern American political murders. Judge passed joined a self-help cult, re-titled the magazine

114 | GARRISON | APR / MAY 2019 | [email protected] Sacred Fire, and devoted it to homilies of his guru. with John Judge for lunch at Union Station in This happened at roughly the D.C. when that issue of The New same time Mae Brussell died, and Yorker came out. Today, Judge’s the factional split began among efforts have evolved into the the Brussell sprouts. Hidden History Center in York, Steamshovel Press attempted Pennsylvania, an effort based in to make up for the shortfall. It part on the large archives Judge began as the transcript of an inter- left behind, built in turn on the view I conducted with Ram Dass archive that Mae Brussell left (aka Richard Alpert, Tim Leary’s behind. (Another collection of cohort at Harvard), that I had in- Brussell files, previously belong- tended for the local press due to ing to sprout Tom Davis, remains an upcoming lecture appearance. in private hands.) The local press decided not to use The archives of Steamshovel it, so I created a small magazine Press back issues, a large corre- to put it in so that the work was spondence file, and a collection of not wasted. Steamshovel went, videotapes on the JFK assassina- though, to more issues of overflow tion and other conspiracy topics from my freelance writing work, have been donated to the State mostly as a music critic, before Mae’s death. The Historical Society of Missouri and are available split among her followers and the end of Critique for research. It is all history now, just as it was at changed my agenda. The third issue included the beginning of the zine era. Trump may have a “Call for Papers” on conspiracy topics and ev- co-opted some of the language and ideation of ery issue thereafter was devoted to the topic. I that effort, but his self-destructing administration had been a consumer of conspiracy information likely will only provide it fodder. and circumstance had forced me into the role of producer. Kenn Thomas That was the age of zines, independently pro- Founder, Steamshovel Press duced magazines intended to collect alternative St. Louis, MO. information and present various alternative points of view. Few devoted themselves strictly to parapolitics, although that theme did connect the widely dispersed community. The zines had titles such as Ganymedean and Slime Mode, Crash Collusion, Ferment, and Flatland. Steamshovel Press took its name from a Bob Dylan lyric: “It What did you like about this first issue? takes a steam shovel mama to keep away the What did you not like? What would you like dead; takes a dump truck to unload my head.” to see? Do you have any information that (Perhaps “Dump Truck” would have been a bet- adds to any of the articles printed here? Do ter name.) The mainstream press took some notice that you just want to be heard? Any and all let- this alternative press world concerned itself less ters to the editor can be e-mailed to the with the strict definitions of classically defined editors of garrison at the following address: Left-Right political discourse. A writer for The New Yorker named Michael Kelly, who interviewed me and some others for a cover story on [email protected] the topic, coined the term “fusion paranoia” to characterize what he saw as rightist militia-type Please include a name and location (city and groups coming together with leftist hippy-types state/province/country) when you e-mail. to create a broader critique of the country’s body politic. Sadly, Kelly became the first journalist ca- Any e-mail sent to the above address may sualty of the second Iraq War. be used in this magazine or online. Such a long time ago now! I remember meeting

GARRISON | VOLUME 01 ISSUE 01 | 115 Issue Two Coming in a Couple Months! We’ll see you soon.

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