{"id":196472,"date":"2023-11-22T07:54:54","date_gmt":"2023-11-22T11:54:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/?p=196472"},"modified":"2023-11-23T13:03:01","modified_gmt":"2023-11-23T17:03:01","slug":"kennedy-assassination-cia-did-it-theorists-are-covering-for-israel-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/?p=196472","title":{"rendered":"

Kennedy Assassination: “CIA-Did-It” Theorists Are Covering for Israel<\/b><\/h2>"},"content":{"rendered":"

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LAURENT GUY\u00c9NOT
\nThe Unz Review<\/p>\n

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RFK Jr. and the\u00a0Unspeakable<\/em><\/a><\/h2>\n

Dick Russell\u2019s recent biography,\u00a0The Real RFK Jr.: Trials of a Truth Warrior<\/i><\/a>, contains two chapters on RFK Jr.\u2019s quest for truth on the assassinations of his father and uncle.[1]<\/i><\/i><\/a>\u00a0Here is an excerpt from chapter 28:<\/span><\/p>\n

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He was approaching his midfifties when, in 2008, while preparing to give an environmental talk at the Franciscan Monastery in Niagara, New York, Bobby [RFK Jr.] found a copy of a just-published book \u201con my greenroom table, left as an anonymous gift for me.\u201d It was titled\u00a0JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters<\/i>\u00a0by Catholic theologian James W. Douglass. Bobby found the book \u201ca fascinating and meticulous dissection of the circumstances surrounding the assassination.\u201d Bobby spent a lot of time examining Douglass\u2019s thorough footnotes. He noted \u201cthe extraordinary analysis implicated rogue CIA operatives connected to the Cuban project and its Mob cronies.\u201d Bobby was impressed enough to send the book to President Kennedy\u2019s speechwriter Ted Sorenson [Sorensen], who wrote him back in 2010: \u201cIt sat on a table for two weeks and then I picked it up. And once I started I couldn\u2019t put it down. And you know for so many years none of us who were close to Jack could handle ever looking at this stuff and all of the conspiracy books. Well, it seemed that nothing they had would stand up in court. All of us were, you know, \u2018it won\u2019t bring Jack back.\u2019 But I read this and it opened my eyes and it opened my mind and now I\u2019m going to do something about it.\u201d Sorenson said he\u2019d spoken to the author and planned to write a foreword for the paperback edition. \u201cThanks for getting the ball rolling,\u201d he wrote Bobby. However, Sorenson later told Douglass that his wife and daughter had persuaded him that his association with Jack had always been about the president\u2019s life and he should leave it at that. Sorenson died soon after that. Bobby himself \u201cembarked on the painful project of reading the wider literature on the subject.\u201d[2]<\/i><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I have quoted this paragraph at length because it illustrates the remarkable impact of James Douglass\u2019s book,\u00a0JFK and the Unspeakable,<\/i>\u00a0published in 2008. With the endorsement of some of the most prominent JFK-assassination researchers, including film-maker Oliver Stone, it has become the Gideon\u2019s Bible of every JFK amateur. It is representative of the dominant school \u2014 I\u2019ll call them the CIA-theorists \u2014 but the author, a longtime Catholic peace activist with a big heart and a poetic mind, gives his book a spiritual flavor, lifting the story to mythical, even mystical level. It is the story of a man who \u201cturned\u201d from Cold Warrior to peacemaker (during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis), and saved the world from nuclear Armageddon; a man who saw death approaching, but lived up to his ideal of nuclear disarmament, and became immortal. A heroic peacemaker. A Christ, almost.<\/span><\/p>\n

The basic storyline of the book is questionable. According to Jim DeEugenio\u00a0,<\/em>\u00a0there was no \u201cconversion\u201d, because Kennedy had never been a Cold Warrior, despite his rhetoric in the 1960 campaign.<\/em>[3]<\/a>\u00a0Other specifics in Douglass\u2019s narrative, such as the two-Oswald scenario (borrowed from\u00a0<\/em>Richard Popkins\u2019s 1966 book\u00a0The Second Oswald<\/i>), have also received criticism. Nevertheless, Douglass is praised for having defended the CIA-theory with unprecedented talent, and explained in eloquent terms \u201cwhy it matters.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

What\u2019s wrong with Douglass?<\/b><\/h2>\n

I was impressed by Douglass\u2019s book when I first read it in 2011. It set me on the most fascinating intellectual quest, and I am grateful for that. I found a French publisher and helped with the translation.[4]<\/i><\/a>\u00a0But, within a year, as I became familiar with part of Douglass\u2019s bibliography and explored other lines of inquiry, I became aware of the book\u2019s shortcomings, and puzzled by them. Two thick files are missing entirely from Douglass\u2019s material: Johnson and Israel. This is a common characteristic of most works aimed at indicting the CIA, such as Oliver Stone\u2019s recent documentary written by DiEugenio, which I have reviewed\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

I also find the structure of Douglass\u2019s book artful: interweaving Oswald\u2019s story, to prove that he was handled by the CIA, and Kennedy\u2019s story, to prove that the CIA hated him, maintains a constant sense of correlation between those two stories, and it does constitute strong circumstantial evidence that the CIA was involved in the assassination, but it does not prove that the masterminds of the assassination were in the CIA. Far from it.<\/span><\/p>\n

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First of all, what CIA are we talking about? Certainly not the CIA that CIA director John McCone (appointed by Kennedy) knew about. Most CIA-theorists agree that the CIA\u2019s strings attached to Oswald came from the office of Counterintelligence chief James Jesus Angleton. In the words of John Newman, a respected CIA-theorist, \u201cNo one else in the Agency had the access, the authority, and the diabolically ingenious mind to manage this sophisticated plot.\u201d[5]<\/i><\/a>\u00a0But Angleton was certainly not \u201cthe CIA.\u201d Rather, as Peter Dale Scott wrote, he \u201cmanaged a \u2018second CIA\u2019 within the CIA.\u201d[6]<\/i><\/a>\u00a0According to his biographer Jefferson Morley, Angleton operated on his own initiative, sealed from scrutiny and free of any accountability; his supervisor, Richard Helms, \u201clet Angleton do as he pleased, few questions asked,\u201d McCone had no idea what Angleton was doing. Another biographer, Tom Mangold, notes that Angleton\u2019s Counterintelligence Staff \u201chad its very own secret slush fund, which Angleton tightly controlled,\u201d an arrangement \u201cwhich gave Angleton a unique authority to run his own little operations without undue supervision.\u201d[7]<\/i><\/a>\u00a0In fact, Angleton was regarded by many of his peers as a madman whose paranoid obsession with uncovering Soviet moles did great damage to the Agency. The only reason why he was not fired before 1974 (by director William Colby) is because he kept too many files on too many people.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is inconceivable that Angleton directed the whole operation. But if he was not following orders from Richard Helms \u2014 and there is not a single piece of evidence that Helms knew of the assassination \u2014, under whose direction or influence was he operating? That is an easy one: besides Counterintelligence, Angleton headed the \u201cIsraeli Desk\u201d, and he had more intimate contacts with the hierarchy of the Mossad than with his own. He loved Israelis as much as he hated Communists \u2014 apparently believing that one man could not be both. Meir Amit, head of Mossad from 1963 to 1968, called him \u201cthe biggest Zionist\u201d in Washington, while\u00a0Robert Amory, head of the CIA Directorate of Intelligence, called him a\u00a0<\/em>\u201cco-opted Israeli agent.\u201d<\/a>[8]<\/i><\/a>\u00a0While Angleton was disgraced in the U.S. after his forced resignation, he was honored in Israel. After his death in 1987, according to the\u00a0Washington Post<\/a>,\u00a0<\/i>five former heads of Mossad and Shin Bet and three former Israeli military intelligence chiefs were present \u201cto pay final tribute to a beloved member of their covert fraternity.\u201d Among the services he rendered Israel, \u201cAngleton reportedly aided Israel in obtaining technical nuclear data.\u201d[9]<\/i><\/i><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Douglass never mentions Angleton\u2019s Israeli connection. He never mentions Jack Ruby\u2019s Israeli connection either, although Seth Kantor had made them very clear in his book\u00a0Who Was Jack Ruby?\u00a0<\/i>written in 1978. For Douglass, he is just \u201cCIA-connected nightclub owner Jack Ruby.\u201d[10]<\/i><\/a>\u00a0Only by scrutinizing the endnotes can we learn his real name,\u00a0Jacob Rubenstein<\/a>\u00a0(doesn\u2019t sound so Sicilian anymore). Ruby was not \u201cMafia\u201d. Like his mentor Mickey Cohen, he was connected to both Meyer Lansky (boss of the Jewish Crime Syndicate), and Menahem Begin (former Irgun terrorist in chief).<\/span><\/p>\n

Finally, Douglass, like most CIA-theorists, keeps Johnson out of the loop, ignoring the evidence accumulated through 50 years of research that Johnson was in full control before, during and after Kennedy\u2019s assassination. How could Douglass miss Johnson? First, by not asking the most important question: How did they kill Kennedy? In other words: \u201cWhy Dallas, Texas?\u201d Texas was a hostile state for Kennedy (\u201cWe\u2019re heading into nut country,\u201d Kennedy said to Jackie), but it was Johnson\u2019s kingdom, and Johnson knew all Kennedy-haters there. At the very least, there is no way around the premise that the conspirators knew in advance that Johnson would cover them. But Douglass got around it.<\/span><\/p>\n

I say \u201cDimona\u201d, you say \u201cAuschwitz\u201d<\/h2>\n

Having corresponded with Douglass for the translation, I shared my concerns with him by email and letter. First, I advised him to read Phillip Nelson\u2019s book\u00a0LBJ: The Mastermind of JFK\u2019s Assassination<\/a>\u00a0<\/i>(2010), and encouraged him to reconsider Johnson\u2019s role. He answered that he bought Nelson\u2019s book, but didn\u2019t find it convincing, without elaborating.<\/span><\/p>\n

Later, I questioned Douglass about his silence over Kennedy\u2019s determination to forestall Israel\u2019s nuclear ambitions. Kennedy\u2019s effort to lead the world towards general nuclear disarmament is the central and most inspiring theme in Douglass\u2019s book. Kennedy\u2019s resolute opposition to Israel\u2019s secret nuclear bomb factory is the most dramatic manifestation of that effort. For what reason, then, did Douglass choose not to mention it? I asked him in\u00a0an interview<\/a>\u00a0for the French website Reopen 9\/11, and in a long, personal letter. In the interview, Douglass answered: \u201cI have found no convincing evidence that Israel was involved in the Kennedy assassination. The story I wrote is about the reasons for his death. For Israel to be included in this story, Kennedy\u2019s resistance to Israel\u2019s nuclear weapons program would have to be linked to the plot against his life.\u201d By letter, he responded to my arguments with a personal testimony of how Jewish writer Andr\u00e9 Schwarz-Bart, author of the novel\u00a0The Last of the Just<\/a>,\u00a0<\/i>\u201chelped to liberate me from the Christendom that has so murderous a heritage, and to introduce me to a Jewish perspective that I needed to see from within a boxcar approaching Auschwitz.\u201d From there he stated that he does not work on the assumption of Israel\u2019s responsibility in the Kennedy assassination, 9\/11, or any other crime.<\/span><\/p>\n

His justification struck me as irrelevant and irrational, yet very revealing. If I say \u201cDimona,\u201d Douglass says \u201cAuschwitz,\u201d implying, I suppose, that Jews should not be suspected of guilt in the JFK assassination since they are, by essence, innocent victims. Or was I to understand that just mentioning Dimona would risk hurting the Jews, who already suffered so much from the hands of Christians? Or that the word \u201cDimona\u201d has anti-Semitic overtones? Whatever the reason, the troubling fact is that Douglass decided to omit from his book anything that could suggest any complicity of Israel with \u201cthe Unspeakable\u201d. We can say about Douglass what Stephen Green wrote about LBJ after 1963: \u201che saw no Dimona, heard no Dimona, and spoke no Dimona.\u201d[11]<\/i><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

I would not normally share the content of personal letters, but I made an exception because Douglass\u2019s reference to Shwarz-Bart is not confidential (he wrote articles about him), and because it is of public interest, as a candid explanation for the censorship that CIA-theorists consistently impose on themselves regarding Israel in general, and Dimona in particular.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Self-censorship can be strategically justifiable. For example, living in France, I do not openly profess my heretical beliefs on the Holocaust, in order to avoid being put in jail by the powerful French Inquisition. So I can also conceive that Douglass would censor himself as a strategy to minimize the risk of being banned by publishers, and to maximize readership. This is not what Douglass told me, but if this is nevertheless the real reason, I can even agree that it was worth it, since Douglass\u2019s book converted RFK Jr. and other influential people to the falsehood of the official theory.<\/span><\/p>\n

However, it is one thing to avoid a topic altogether, and another to write a book pretending to have solved once and for all the Kennedy assassination, while concealing the facts that may point to a different solution. It is actually worse than that: Douglass kept silent on Kennedy\u2019s angst over Dimona even though it would have reinforced his main thesis about Kennedy\u2019s determination to stop and reverse nuclear proliferation. For some reason, Douglass made sure he didn\u2019t give his readers the slightest chance to start imagining that Israel had any part in Kennedy\u2019s problem with \u201cthe Unspeakable\u201d. Which has led me to say that Israel is the truly unspeakable in\u00a0JFK and the<\/i>\u00a0Unspeakable,\u00a0<\/i>and which motivated me to write\u00a0The Unspoken Kennedy Truth<\/i><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

The CIA-theory as a shield for Israel<\/h2>\n

In this article, I will explain in some detail why the CIA-theory is wrong. By the CIA-theory, I do not mean the theory that high-ranking officers of the CIA were involved (I believe that to be the case). I mean the theory that a core group of CIA executives, with a few military top brass, masterminded and orchestrated the assassination. To the question \u201cWho Killed JFK?\u201d we can of course include both the CIA and the Mossad, as well as the FBI, the Pentagon, the Mafia, Cuban exiles, Texan oil barons, and what have you. But the important question is: Which group was the prime mover? Who had conceived the plot long before others were brought into it? Who was leading, or misleading, all others involved? Who, in the distribution of tasks on a need-to-know principle, knew the global scheme? Not who pulled the trigger, but who pulled the main ropes? As we will see, the answer cannot be the CIA. It cannot be Angleton, and it cannot even be Johnson.<\/span><\/p>\n

I express my gratitude for the work of the dozens of researchers who built up the case against the CIA from the 1960s. Some of them are heroic. They have accumulated enough evidence to prove the conspiracy and the cover-up beyond a reasonable doubt. That is a great success. However, their general CIA-theory must now be recognized as a failure. It was a false lead from the start. Vince Salandria, one of the earliest critique of the Warren Commission (his first article was published in the\u00a0Legal Intelligence<\/i>\u00a0in 1964), held as a teacher by many JFK investigators and by Douglass himself (who dedicated his book to him), became disillusioned by his own CIA-theory, saying frankly to Gaeton Fonzi in 1975: \u201cI\u2019m afraid we were misled. All the critics, myself included, were misled very early. \u2026 the interests of those who killed Kennedy now transcend national boundaries and national priorities. No doubt we are dealing now with an international conspiracy.\u201d[12]<\/i><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

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The CIA-theory, I will argue, serves as a cover for the real perpetrators, like the KGB-theory. The KGB-theory quickly fell apart because it was meant to and because it contains no truth whatsoever, while the CIA-theory is more resistant because it has some truth. The CIA is deeply compromised, but the masterminds were somewhere else. They needed the CIA to be compromised enough for the U.S. government to be forced to cover the whole affairs. At the same time, they use the CIA-theory to shield their own group from suspicion. That is why Israeli\u00a0sayanim\u00a0<\/i>working in the news, book or movie industries have diligently kept the CIA-story alive in public opinion. This was pre-planned limited hangout. In\u00a0\u201cDid Israel kill the Kennedys?\u201d<\/a>\u00a0I have given examples of Zionist agents planting signposts to direct the skeptics towards the CIA and the Mafia (rather than the Mossad and the Mishpucka).\u00a0The classic example is Arnon Milchan, producer of Oliver Stone\u2019s film\u00a0<\/em>JFK\u00a0<\/i><\/em>released, who, by his own admission, acted as a secret Israeli agent working to boost Israel\u2019s nuclear program \u2014 it\u2019s always about Dimona. Another<\/em>\u00a0example, which had previously escaped me, is the\u00a0New York Times\u00a0<\/i>revealing on April 25, 1966 that Kennedy \u201csaid to one of the highest officials of his administration that he wanted \u2018to splinter the C.I.A. in a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds,\u2019\u201d an untraceable statement that has now become one of the most quoted by CIA-theorists, who, in this case, show blind confidence in the reliability of the\u00a0New York Times<\/i>.[13]<\/i><\/i><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

An additional proof that the leading CIA-theorists are less interested in searching for the truth than in covering for Israel\u2019s crimes came to me a two weeks ago, in the form of an email from Benjamin Wecht, son of Cyril Wecht and program administrator for the\u00a0annual symposium on the JFK assassination<\/a>\u00a0organized by\u00a0Citizens Against Political Action (CAPA)<\/a>\u00a0at the Cyril H. Wecht Institute of Forensic Science and Law of Dusquesne University, Pittsburg:<\/span><\/p>\n

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I\u2019m writing to inform you that the poster you\u2019ve proposed for presentation here next month has been rejected, as it fails to meet the academic standards of this institution and, moreover, espouses a position that we feel would be particularly inflammatory \u2013 if not outright disruptive \u2013 at this time and in this place. Our partnering organization, Citizens Against Political Assassinations, is in full concurrence with our decision.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This was in response to a submission that Karl Golovin and I sent for\u00a0the \u201c<\/a>poster session<\/a>\u201d of the upcoming symposium organized on the occasion of the 60th<\/sup>\u00a0anniversary (see our poster at the end of this article, and get it in high-resolution\u00a0here<\/a>). Considering the speciousness of Wecht\u2019s denial or my \u201cacademic standards,\u201d and considering his position that accusing Israel of the crime of the century is \u201cinflammatory\u201d and \u201cdisruptive\u201d, I think it is fair to call Wecht and the organization he represents shameless gatekeepers for Israel. Ultimately, accusing Oswald and accusing the CIA of the crime of the century both serve the same purpose. Which explains why CAPA\u2019s chairman Cyril Wecht, the forensic pathologist tirelessly denouncing the lie of the \u201csingle bullet,\u201d was a friend of Arlen Specter, the inventor of that lie, whom he helped become U.S. senator in 2004.[14]<\/i><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Did Johnson foil the CIA plan?<\/h2>\n
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To understand why the CIA-theory is wrong, we have to start with its biggest inconsistency. Almost unanimously, from Mark Lane to James Douglass, CIA-theorists assume that the assassination was conceived as a false-flag operation to blame Castro and\/or the Soviets, and to justify retaliation against them.<\/span><\/p>\n

This is a natural assumption, based on two facts. First, Oswald was clearly set up as a pro-Castro communist. The scheme included the visits and telephone calls by an Oswald impersonator to both the Soviet and Cuban embassies in Mexico City in late September and early October 1963. The day following Kennedy\u2019s assassination, television networks and national newspapers presented the assumed assassin as a \u201cPro-Castro Marxist.\u201d[15]<\/i><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Secondly, we know that invading Cuba to topple Castro\u2019s pro-Soviet regime was the CIA\u2019s obsession since the late 50s. Under officers like E. Howard Hunt, the CIA organized, funded and trained some of the hundreds of thousands of anti-Castro Cuban exiles in Miami. As a result, \u201cthe CIA\u2019s presence in Miami grew to overwhelming dimensions,\u201d wrote investigative journalist Gaeton Fonzi. \u201cAnd as pervasive as that presence was before the Bay of Pigs, it was but a prelude to a later, larger operation.\u201d[16]<\/i><\/a>\u00a0After the Bay of Pigs (April 1961), \u201ca massive and, this time, truly secret war was launched against the Castro regime,\u201d code named JM\/WAVE, and involving \u201cscores of front operations throughout the area,\u201d as well as planes, ships, warehouses of weapons, and paramilitary training camps. Even after the Cuban Missile Crisis (October 1962), when Kennedy pledged not to invade Cuba, the anti-Castro Cubans on the CIA payroll tried to provoke incidents with Cuba. In April 1963, for example, the paramilitary group Alpha 66 attacked Soviet ships in order \u201cto publicly embarrass Kennedy and force him to move against Castro,\u201d in the words of Alpha 66\u2019s CIA adviser David Atlee Phillips.[17]<\/i><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Those two facts \u2014 the patsy\u2019s pro-Castro profile designed by the CIA, and the CIA\u2019s anti-Castro war plans \u2014 lead to the too obvious inference that the purpose of the Dallas shooting was to forge a false pretext for retaliating against Cuba. That theory has become so dominant in JFK research that most conspiracy-minded people consider it as proven beyond doubt.<\/span><\/p>\n

However, it has one major flaw: there was no invasion of Cuba following Kennedy\u2019s assassination. This fact is embarrassing for CIA-theorists. Although they don\u2019t like to put it this way, it means that the CIA plan failed. If the conspirators believed that setting up Oswald, a documented supporter of Fidel Castro with links to the Soviet Union, would result in a full-scale war against Cuba, they must have been terribly disappointed. James Douglass credits Lyndon Johnson for defeating their plan:<\/span><\/p>\n

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The CIA\u2019s case scapegoated Cuba and the U.S.S.R. through Oswald for the president\u2019s assassination and steered the United States toward an invasion of Cuba and a nuclear attack on the U.S.S.R.. However, LBJ did not want to begin and end his presidency with a global war.[18]<\/i><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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To Johnson\u2019s credit, he refused to let the Soviets take the blame for Kennedy\u2019s murder; to his discredit, he decided not to confront the CIA over what it had done in Mexico City. Thus, while the secondary purpose of the assassination plot was stymied, its primary purpose was achieved.[19]<\/i><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Indeed, from November 23, Johnson worked the phone to smother the rumor of a Communist conspiracy, and started hand-picking the members of the Warren Commission with the express mission of proving the lone-nut theory in order to avoid a nuclear war that would kill \u201c40 millions Americans in an hour\u201d (Johnson\u2019s leitmotiv). Johnson never seems to have contemplated invading Cuba. He kept Kennedy\u2019s promise to Castro and Khrushchev not to do so \u2014 a promise which the CIA regarded as an act of treason. In short, according to Douglass, Johnson was not part of the conspiracy, he actually frustrated the conspirators who had bet on his following their script. Johnson couldn\u2019t save Kennedy, but he saved us from WWIII. And he saved the conspirators as well: no one was fired.<\/span><\/p>\n

That is simply not credible. How can someone working on JFK\u2019s assassination so casually exclude LBJ from the suspects, when he should be the prime suspect in terms of motive (the presidency), means (the vice-presidency) and opportunity (Dallas). Just consider the little known fact, revealed by Dallas Parkland Hospital Dr. Charles Crenshaw in his book\u00a0Conspiracy of Silence\u00a0<\/i>(1992),\u00a0<\/i>that Johnson called the hospital while Dr. Crenshaw was trying to save Oswald\u2019s life, and insisted that he leave the operating room and come to the phone, while an unknown agent with a pistol hanging from his back pocket was left with Oswald. \u201cDr. Crenshaw,\u201d said Johnson on the phone, \u201cI want a deathbed confession from the accused assassin. There\u2019s a man in the operating room who will take the statement. I will expect full cooperation in this matter.\u201d The important word, here, is \u201cdeath,\u201d as Dr. Crenshaw understood. When he came back to the operating room, the agent had disappeared and Oswald\u2019s heart stopped beating. It is clear that Johnson wanted Ruby\u2019s job finished. Despite such outrageous direct interference of Johnson, CIA-theorists claim that Johnson was not involved in the conspiracy, but only in the cover-up.<\/span><\/p>\n

Douglass\u2019s storyline in a nutshell, again: The CIA assassinated Kennedy under the false flag of Communist Cuba, with the presupposition that Johnson was going to retaliate against it. They worked the media to that effect (because, you know, the CIA controls the media). But Johnson, though taken by surprise on November 22, quickly reacted the next day and took control of all investigations and even of media coverage, to defeat the CIA plan.<\/span><\/p>\n

It must have been infuriating for the CIA to be cheated of their Cuban invasion after all they had gone through \u2014 the Bay of Pigs fiasco, the Cuban Missile \u201cappeasement\u201d, and the trouble of assassinating the president. Wouldn\u2019t they want to assassinate Johnson, now? And yet, there is no sign of tension between Langley and the Oval Office after November 1963. We are asked to believe that the CIA, totally disarmed by Johnson\u2019s unexpected reaction, instantly surrendered and went along with the useless, absurd lone-nut theory, even participating in defeating their own painfully staged false-flag. Allen Dulles himself, the CIA director fired by Kennedy after the Bay of Pigs, joined the Warren Commission tasked by Johnson to quench rumors of a Communist plot. The mainstream media quickly fell in line and the Communist conspiracy disappeared entirely from the news (where is Mockingbird when you need it?).<\/span><\/p>\n

Think about it and reach your own conclusion as to how credible this scenario is. It comes down to this: Do you think the conspirators\u2019 plan failed or that it succeeded? If it succeeded, then it was not the CIA\u2019s plan as CIA-theorists see it. It was someone else\u2019s plan.<\/span><\/p>\n

The invisible coup<\/h2>\n

Why would the CIA want to kill Kennedy, anyway? Why not simply make him lose the election in 1964. Surely the CIA had the means to do that, if their control of the media was as great as CIA-theorists tell us. Did the CIA have an urgent need to kill Kennedy, that could not wait one year? No. In a campaign year, Kennedy wasn\u2019t going to do anything that could give his enemies a reason to call him a Communist appeaser. Regarding Vietnam for example, he told Kenny O\u2019Donnell: \u201cIf I tried to pull out completely now from Vietnam, we would have another Joe McCarthy red scare on our hands, but I can do it after I\u2019m reelected. So we had better make damned sure that I\u00a0am\u00a0<\/i>reelected.\u201d[20]<\/i><\/a>\u00a0He did sign, on October 11, 1963, a cautious executive order NSAM 263 for the withdrawal of \u201c1,000 U.S. military personnel by the end of 1963\u201d and \u201cby the end of 1965 \u2026 the bulk of U.S. personnel,\u201d[21]<\/i><\/a>\u00a0but if Kennedy was defeated electorally in 1964, that executive order would be of little consequence. It was, anyway, trashed by Johnson. As\u00a0Ron Unz has recently repeated<\/a>,<\/span><\/p>\n

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most of the different groups that wanted to get rid of [Kennedy] would just have waited and concentrated on political means, and that includes Dulles. This included using their media contacts to damage him politically. The only two that desperately needed to get rid of him immediately were LBJ, whom he was about to drop from the ticket and destroy politically, and Israel, because of the immediate efforts to eliminate their nuclear development program at Dimona. That\u2019s why LBJ and Israel are the overwhelmingly logical suspects.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Research on the JFK assassination must start from the premise that it was a coup d\u2019\u00e9tat. CIA-theorists tend to minimize the primal fact that the assassination resulted in a change of president. So let\u2019s repeat the obvious: whoever assassinated Kennedy wanted to put Johnson in power. That is why defeating Kennedy electorally was not an option: Johnson would have fallen with Kennedy (his epic corruption was to be exposed anyway). Kennedy\u2019s death was Johnson\u2019s only chance to become president \u2014 and, perhaps, to avoid prison. But Johnson could not do it alone, so let me rephrase: Kennedy\u2019s death was the only way for the conspirators to make Johnson president.<\/span><\/p>\n

Can we identify those conspirators? If they needed Johnson as president in 1963, they must be the ones who blackmailed Kennedy into taking Johnson as vice-president in 1960. \u201cI was left with no choice, those bastards were trying to frame me,\u201d Kennedy once confided to Hyman Raskin to justify his choice of Johnson, despite strong opposition from his team, especially his brother Robert.[22]<\/i><\/i><\/a>\u00a0Among the \u201cbastards\u201d was\u00a0Washington Post<\/i>\u00a0columnist Joseph Alsop, who considered himself \u201cone of the warmest American supporters of the Israeli cause,\u201d according to the\u00a0New York Times\u00a0<\/i>obituary<\/a>.\u00a0<\/i>We know from Arthur Schlesinger Jr. that Kennedy made his decision after a closed-door conversation with Alsop and his boss Philip Graham.[23]<\/i><\/i><\/a>\u00a0After Kennedy\u2019s assassination, Alsop was the first to urge Johnson to set up a presidential commission to convince the public that Oswald acted alone. His argument was: \u201cyou do not wish to inflict on the Attorney General, the painful task of reviewing the evidence concerning his own brother\u2019s assassination.\u201d[24]<\/i><\/i><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

In 1960, the \u201cbastards\u201d needed to put Johnson behind Kennedy\u2019s back, so that if and when necessary, they could knock Kennedy out and have Johnson step into the Oval Office. The purpose of the Kennedy assassination had nothing to do with Cuba; it was simply to replace Kennedy with Johnson. That is all it was supposed to do, and that is all it did. It was a success, not a failure.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/div>\n

It had to be an \u201cinvisible coup\u201d so that Americans could be persuaded that nothing would change except the president, and that, under new circumstances, Johnson would act as Kennedy would have acted. There was one thing that Johnson reversed, but Americans did not see it until thirty years later. It concerned U.S. relations with Israel and with Israel\u2019s enemies. Johnson was absolutely indispensable, not for the CIA, but for Israel: no other president would have gone as far as Johnson to support Israel\u2019s invasion of Egypt and Syria in 1967. No other American president, not even Truman, would have let Israel get away with the USS Liberty massacre. Johnson not only let them get away, he helped them do it (read Phillip Nelson\u2019s\u00a0Remember the Liberty<\/i><\/a>).<\/span><\/p>\n

Johnson was committed to Israel, financially (through Abraham Feinberg, see below) and spiritually (\u201cThe line of Jewish mothers can be traced back three generations in Lyndon Johnson\u2019s family tree\u201d).[25]<\/i><\/i><\/a>\u00a0This explains why he filled the Warren Commission with Israeli agents, such as Arlen \u201cMagic Bullet\u201d Specter, later honored by the Israeli government as \u201can unswerving defender of the Jewish State.\u201d[26]<\/i><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

David Ben-Gurion<\/h2>\n

Imagine d<\/em>etective<\/em>\u00a0Columbo investigating the assassination of President Kennedy. He would surely want to know if Kennedy had any strong disagreement with someone shortly before his death. In a\u00a0<\/em>decent<\/em>\u00a0scenario, he would then\u00a0<\/em>get his hands on some recently declassified correspondence which shows, in the words of\u00a0<\/em>Martin Sandler, editor of\u00a0<\/em>The Letters of John F. Kennedy<\/i><\/a>\u00a0(2013), that<\/em>\u00a0\u201c<\/em>a bitter dispute had developed between Israeli prime minister David Ben-Gurion, who believed that his nation\u2019s survival depended on its attaining nuclear capability, and Kennedy, who was vehemently opposed to it. In May 1963, Kennedy wrote to Ben-Gurion explaining why he was convinced that Israel\u2019s pursuit of nuclear weapons capability was a serious threat to world peace.\u201d<\/em>[27]<\/i><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

May 12, Ben-Gurion begged\u00a0<\/em>Kennedy<\/em>\u00a0to reconsider his position on Dimona:\u00a0<\/em>\u201cMr. President, my people have the right to exist\u2026 and this existence is in danger.\u201d[28]<\/i><\/i><\/i><\/a>\u00a0Reading in that same letter a bizarre reference to the \u201cdanger that one single bullet might put an end to [some king\u2019s] life and regime,\u201d[29]<\/i><\/a>\u00a0Columbo wonders if that was a veiled threat. Reading Kennedy\u2019s next letter (June 15), he can see that Kennedy stood firm and insisted on an immediate visit \u201cearly this summer\u201d for \u201cresolving all doubts as to the peaceful nature intent of the Dimona project.\u201d Kennedy made clear that American commitment to Israel could be \u201cseriously jeopardized\u201d in case of failure to comply. Puzzled that the archive contains no response by Ben-Gurion, Columbo soon learns that Ben-Gurion resigned upon receiving Kennedy\u2019s letter. \u201cMany believe his resignation was due in great measure to his dispute with Kennedy over Dimona,\u201d according to Martin Sandler. The insinuation is that Ben-Gurion\u2019s resignation was part of a change of strategy for eliminating the Kennedy obstacle. He would now have to listen to those who had always believed in assassination and terrorism, those whom he had exiled in 1948 but who were now back and pressing him from his right. And he resigned to preserve his place in history. We have to understand Ben-Gurion\u2019s predicament:\u00a0Egypt, Iraq and Syria had just formed the United Arab Republic and proclaimed the \u201cliberation of Palestine\u201d as one of its goals. Ben-Gurion wrote to Kennedy that, knowing the Arabs, \u201cthey are capable of following the Nazi example.\u201d\u00a0<\/em>To claim that this was\u00a0<\/em>just rhetoric is to misjudge the importance of the Holocaust in\u00a0<\/em>Jewish psychology, and in Ben-Gurion\u2019s in particular. In his eyes, Israel\u2019s need for n<\/em>uclear deterrence was non-negotiable. Since he had failed to\u00a0<\/em>overcome<\/em>\u00a0Kennedy\u2019s opposition\u00a0<\/em>by diplomacy<\/em>, somebody else would have to\u00a0<\/em>take care of it in a different way.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s nuclear doctrine has not changed since Ben-Gurion. It has two sides: nukes for Israel, no nukes for Arabs or Iranians. Anyone working against one of those two strategic principles threatens Israel\u2019s existence and must be eliminated. There are many examples in Ronen Bergman\u2019s book\u00a0Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel\u2019s Targeted Assassinations<\/i><\/a>\u00a0(2019).[30]<\/i><\/a>\u00a0Here is an excerpt on how Meir Dagan, appointed by Ariel Sharon to the Mossad in 2002, \u201cin charge of disrupting the Iranian nuclear weapons project, which both men saw as an existential threat to Israel.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Dagan acted in a number of ways to fulfill this task. The most difficult way, but also the most effective, Dagan believed, was to identify Iran\u2019s key nuclear and missile scientists, locate them, and kill them. The Mossad pinpointed fifteen such targets, of whom it eliminated six \u2026 In addition, a general of Iran\u2019s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, who was in charge of the missile project, was blown up in his headquarters together with seventeen of his men.[31]<\/i><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Ben-Gurion handed the Kennedy problem to those who had always relied on murder to eliminate obstacles to the Zionist cause. Yitzhak Shamir was possibly the man of the situation. Disgraced by Ben-Gurion after his assassination of U.N. mediator Count Folke Bernadotte in 1948, Shamir had been allowed back into the Mossad in 1955, where he formed a special hit squad with former members of the murderous Lehi (or Stern Gang). This unit was active until 1964, the year after JFK\u2019s assassination. It carried out an estimated 147 attacks on perceived enemies of Israel, targeting especially \u201cGerman scientists working to develop missiles and other advanced weapons for Egypt.\u201d[32]<\/i><\/i><\/i><\/i><\/i><\/i><\/a>\u00a0Yitzhak Shamir had declared in 1943:<\/span><\/p>\n

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Neither Jewish ethics nor Jewish tradition can disqualify terrorism as a means of combat.\u00a0We are very far from having any moral qualms as far as our national war goes. We have before us the command of the Torah, whose morality surpasses that of any other body of laws in the world: \u201cYe shall blot them out to the last man.<\/em>\u201d[33]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Do you think that such a\u00a0biblical psychopath<\/a>\u00a0would have hesitated to assassinate Kennedy if given the go-ahead? He would have enjoyed it! Conscious of committing the crime of the century for his bloodthirsty god, would he not want to have it filmed, for the historical record? And why not, for the fun of it, send a message with the bullet, in the form of a man holding\u00a0Chamberlain\u2019s black umbrella<\/a>\u00a0to his face? If you think that\u2019s irrational, please read\u00a0\u201cA Conversation in Hell\u201d<\/a>\u00a0by John Podhoretz.<\/span><\/p>\n

Yitzhak Shamir would go on to become prime minister in 1983, just following Menachem Begin, another terrorist responsible for the bombing of the King David Hotel in 1946. Obviously, the assassination of Kennedy changed\u00a0<\/em>profoundly<\/em>\u00a0not only America, but Israel too. No single death, really, has had so profound an effect on world history as Kennedy\u2019s.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Abraham Feinberg<\/h2>\n

The Kennedy problem had another dimension, which, in my scenario, Columbo discovers by borrowing Seymour Hersh\u2019s\u00a0Samson Option\u00a0<\/i>from his local library. There he learns that, during the 1960 campaign, Kennedy had been approached by Zionist financier\u00a0Abraham Feinberg<\/a>, whose business, writes Hersh, was \u201cto ensure continued Democratic Party support for Israel\u201d (in other words, buy Democratic candidates). After Kennedy\u2019s nomination by the Democrats, Feinberg organized a meeting between the candidate and a group of potential Jewish donors in his New York apartment. Feinberg\u2019s message was, according to what Kennedy told Charles Bartlett: \u201cWe know your campaign is in trouble. We\u2019re willing to pay your bills if you\u2019ll let us have control of your Middle East policy.\u201d Kennedy was deeply upset and decided that, \u201cif he ever did get to be President, he was going to do something about it.\u201d[34]<\/i><\/a>\u00a0In the meantime, JFK pocketed 500,000 Jewish dollars and reaped 80 percent of the Jewish votes. Once in office, he made Myer (Mike) Feldman his advisor on the Middle East. According to Alan Hart, \u201cit was a political debt that had to be paid. Feldman\u2019s appointment was one of the conditions of the campaign funding provided by Feinberg and his associates.\u201d[35]<\/i><\/i><\/a>\u00a0Kennedy was aware that Feldman was essentially an Israeli spy in the White House. \u201cI imagine Mike\u2019s having a meeting of the Zionists in the cabinet room,\u201d he once said to Charles Bartlett.[36]<\/i><\/i><\/a>\u00a0Kennedy may have reasoned that it is an advantage to know who\u2019s spying on you, but he probably underestimated the amount of Israeli spying that went on in his White House. He also underestimated the extent to which Feinberg and his Zionist friends held him accountable.<\/span><\/p>\n

Kennedy never surrendered his U.S. Middle East policy to Israel. Former high-ranking U.S. diplomat Richard H. Curtiss remarked in his book\u00a0A Changing Image: American Perceptions of the Arab-Israeli Dispute<\/i>: \u201cIt is surprising to realize, with the benefit of hindsight, that from the time Kennedy entered office as the narrowly-elected candidate of a party heavily dependent upon Jewish support, he was planning to take a whole new look at U.S. Mideast policy,\u201d and \u201cto develop good new personal relationships with individual Arab leaders.\u201d[37]<\/i><\/i><\/a>\u00a0The paradox did not escape Feinberg. Kennedy had to be punished. Considering the aggravating circumstance of his father\u2019s appeasement policy during WWII, a biblical punishment was required.<\/span><\/p>\n

Feinberg was a powerful figure, and one that should be given more attention by JFK researchers. The founder of\u00a0Americans for Haganah<\/i>, he was deeply involved in the Israeli arms smuggling network in the United States, of which Jack Ruby had been part. In the 1950s and 60s, besides building up AIPAC, he was actively involved in Israel\u2019s quest of the Holy Nuke.[38]<\/i><\/a>\u00a0It was Feinberg who organized the only meeting between Ben-Gurion and Kennedy, in New York on May 30, 1961, when Ben-Gurion first begged Kennedy to look the other way from Dimona.[39]<\/i><\/a>\u00a0Commenting on that meeting, Feinberg said to Hersh: \u201cThere\u2019s no way of describing the relationship between Jack Kennedy and Ben-Gurion because there\u2019s no way B.G. was dealing with JFK as an equal, \u2026 B.G. could be vicious, and he had such a hatred of the old man.\u201d The \u201cold man,\u201d here, meant the patriarch Joe Kennedy, JFK\u2019s father.[40]<\/i><\/a>\u00a0It must also be noted that Feinberg had fundraised for LBJ ever since his first stolen election for Senate in 1948.[41]<\/i><\/i><\/i><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

The Double-Cross scenario<\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/div>\n

Let us go back to the inner contradiction of the CIA-theory, the failure of the supposed CIA plan to trigger the invasion of Cuba. John Newman, a retired U.S. Army major and Political Science professor, has thought of a solution. In an epilogue added to the 2008 edition of his 1995 book\u00a0Oswald and the CIA<\/i><\/a>\u00a0(to which Ron Unz has drawn attention\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0here<\/a>), Newman reasons that the real purpose for setting up Oswald as a Communist was not to trigger the invasion of Cuba, but to create a \u201cWorld War III virus\u201d that Johnson would use as a \u201cnational security\u201d pretext to shut all investigations and intimidate everyone, from government officials down to the average American, into accepting the lone-gunner theory, even in the face of its obvious falsehood; \u201cthe World War III pretext for a national security cover-up was built into the fabric of the plot to assassinate President Kennedy.\u201d[42]<\/i><\/a>\u00a0Oswald\u2019s Communist connections made the headlines just long enough to make everyone panicked, and then salvation was offered by the government to a grateful nation: just pretend to believe that Oswald acted alone, or else the Soviets will Hiroshima you. It worked perfectly, because it was plan A, not plan B.<\/span><\/p>\n

Newman\u2019s analysis is a fine improvement to the CIA-theory. But it doesn\u2019t solve the problem. Since Newman believes it was a CIA plan, and more precisely Angleton\u2019s plan, that begs the question of why the CIA would set up a plan that would finally frustrate them of an easy pretext to invade Cuba. We also have to consider that Angleton defended the KGB-theory all his life. When the KGB officer Yuri Nosenko defected to the United States in 1964, and claimed to know for certain that the Soviets had nothing to do with the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Angleton was determined to prove him a liar and kept him in custody under intense questioning and deprivation for 1,277 days. He failed to break his will, and Nosenko was ultimately vindicated. Angleton stuck to his KGB-theory much longer than necessary, and was the main source for Edward Jay Epstein\u2019s book,\u00a0Legend: The Secret World of Lee Harvey Oswald\u00a0<\/i>(1978), which laid the blame on the KGB.[43]<\/i><\/i><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Was Angleton keeping the KGB-theory alive as a way to maintain Americans under the obligation to swallow the lone-nut-theory, lest they trigger WWIII? It is possible, but it is quite unlike Angleton, who, according to all testimonies, was genuinely obsessed with blaming the Soviets for every evil on the surface of the earth, and continued to cause massive damage in the CIA with his quest for \u201cthe mole\u201d, especially in the Office of Soviet Analysis, where everyone speaking Russian fell under suspicion. I think it is more likely that Angleton had been led to believe, from the beginning, that his plan would lead to an invasion of Cuba, a crackdown on Communist sympathizers, and perhaps WWIII.<\/span><\/p>\n

This leads us back to hypothesize that there were actually two distinct plans, one incorporating the other. Angleton, as well as Howard Hunt and a few other CIA officers handling the Cuban exiles, were following a plan that included blaming Castro for the Dallas shooting. But they were double-crossed by another group of conspirators, who were not aiming at toppling Castro, and not even interested in Latin America, but had other concerns. That other group monitored and probably even inspired the CIA plan, but diverted it from its original purpose. They were overseeing the whole scheme from a higher vantage point, while the CIA plotters saw only part of it, though believing they saw it all.<\/span><\/p>\n

Going one step further, some have made the hypothesis that the CIA plan did not include a real assassination, but only a failed attempt, meant not to kill Kennedy, but to put irresistible pressure on him to do something about Cuba. In that hypothesis, the harmless CIA plan was used and modified by a group who wanted to take Kennedy out and put Johnson.<\/span><\/p>\n

Subscribe to New Columns<\/a><\/div>\n

In\u00a0Final Judgment,\u00a0<\/i>Michael Piper mentions a few JFK researchers who have thought of the possibility that the CIA found itself an unwitting accomplice in an assassination committed by a third party, and was left with no choice but to cover the whole plot in order to cover its part in it.[44]<\/i><\/a>\u00a0As early as 1968, an author writing under the pen name James Hepburn cryptically hinted at this idea in\u00a0Farewell America<\/i><\/a>\u00a0\u2014 a book worth reading, well-informed and insightful on Kennedy\u2019s policies. \u201cThe plan,\u201d Hepburn wrote, \u201cconsisted of influencing public opinion by\u00a0simulating an attack against President Kennedy<\/i>, whose policy of coexistence with the Communists deserved a reprimand\u201d (my emphasis). Since things didn\u2019t unfold according to \u201cthe plan,\u201d the implication is that there was a plan above the plan, a conspiracy woven around the conspiracy.[45]<\/i><\/i><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Dick Russell, RFK Jr.\u2019s recent biographer, had pondered the possibility of a double-cross in\u00a0The Man Who Knew Too Much<\/a>\u00a0<\/i>(1992), based on the testimony of longtime CIA contract agent Gerry Patrick Hemming, \u201ca soldier of fortune who eventually ended up training embittered Cuban exiles in Florida for guerrilla warfare against Castro,\u201d and crossed path with Oswald in 1959.[46]<\/i><\/a>\u00a0Hemming told Russell: \u201cThere was a third force \u2014 pretty much outside CIA channels, outside our own private operation down in the [Florida] Keys \u2014 that was doing all kinds of shit, and had been all through \u201863.\u201d[47]<\/i><\/a>\u00a0In the words of Russell: \u201cGerry Patrick Hemming \u2026 maintains that some of the exiles who thought they knew the score in 1963 have today become convinced that they were being used. \u2026 They took the bait.\u201d[48]<\/i><\/a>\u00a0Russell cut these passages off in his shortened 2003 edition, possibly out of concern for Piper\u2019s use of them, since his idea of the \u201cthird force\u201d differed from Piper\u2019s: \u201cIn the end,\u201d he wrote, \u201cwe are left with this terrible question: Was the CIA\u2019s relationship with Oswald \u2026 usurped by another group? \u2026 A group \u2026 that was part of a Pentagon\/\u2018ultraright economic\u2019 apparatus?\u201d[49]<\/i><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Piper also drew attention to a book written by Gary Wean, a former detective sergeant for the Los Angeles Police Department, titled\u00a0There\u2019s a Fish in the Courthouse\u00a0<\/i>(1987, 2nd<\/sup>\u00a0edition 1996).[50]<\/i><\/a>\u00a0The full chapter 44 of Wean\u2019s book, dealing with the Kennedy assassination, is included in\u00a0this pdf document<\/a>, together with other interesting thoughts by the same author. Wean claimed to have been introduced, through Dallas County Sheriff Bill Decker, to a man he simply called \u201cJohn\u201d, but later identified as Texas Senator John Tower. \u201cJohn\u201d told him that CIA man Howard Hunt was involved with Lee Harvey Oswald, but not in planning the President\u2019s assassination. According to \u201cJohn\u201d,<\/span><\/p>\n

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[Hunt\u2019s] scheme was to\u00a0inflame\u00a0<\/i>the American people against Castro and\u00a0stir patriotism\u00a0<\/i>to a boiling point not felt\u00a0since\u00a0<\/i>the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Enraged Americans would demand that our military invade Cuba and wipe out the two-bit dictator for his barbarous\u00a0attempt\u00a0<\/i>to assassinate President Kennedy. \u2026 There was to be an\u00a0attempt\u00a0<\/i>on the life of President Kennedy so\u00a0realistic\u00a0<\/i>that its failure would be looked upon as nothing less than a miracle. The footprints would lead\u00a0directly\u00a0<\/i>to Castro\u2019s doorstep, a trail the rankest amateur couldn\u2019t lose.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

However, the plan was hijacked from outside the CIA, by someone who knew \u201call these minute details [of Hunt\u2019s plan] to pull it off the way they did. Something frightening, horribly sinister had interposed Hunt\u2019s mission.\u201d \u201cHunt\u2019s wild scheme had created the lunatic effect of positioning Kennedy as the target in a shooting gallery,\u201d and someone else had taken advantage of it.<\/span><\/p>\n

As Wean interprets these revelations, \u201cHunt\u2019s scheme of a\u00a0phony assassination\u00a0<\/i>was monitored from the beginning by an insidious enemy\u201d; there was a \u201cconspiracy to\u00a0double cross\u00a0<\/i>a conspiracy.\u201d Wean\u2019s source \u201cJohn\u201d (Tower) did not identify this \u201cinsidious enemy,\u201d but Wean, drawing from his knowledge of organized crime, believes that the CIA plan was hijacked by \u201cthe Mishpucka\u201d \u2014 as, according to Wean, Jewish gangsters named their ethnic criminal organization (the word means \u201cthe Family\u201d in Yiddish). Wean has much to say about the Mishpucka\u2019s ties to the Israeli Deep State. However, like Douglass, he does not see the connection to Johnson, and assumes that Johnson was part of neither the CIA\u2019s nor the Mishpucka\u2019s conspiracy, but only of the cover-up.<\/span><\/p>\n

Writing in 1987, Wean could not think of a more precise motive for the Mishpucka to assassinate Kennedy than greed for war money. JFK was killed because he \u201chad been on the verge of negotiating World Peace,\u201d and that\u2019s bad for business. We know today that Israel had a more precise and urgent need to take Kennedy out. In short, JFK\u2019s assassination was a coup d\u2019\u00e9tat to replace a pro-Egypt president by a pro-Israel president, one who would let Israel make as many nukes as they want with material stolen from the U.S., and would let them triple their territory in 1967.<\/span><\/p>\n

Frankly, I doubt that Wean got his double-cross scenario from John Tower (who was dead when Wean identified him as his source). I believe he got it from his own reasoning and imagination.<\/span><\/p>\n

And all things considered, I find the scenario of a failed assassination staged by the CIA and morphed into a real one by Israel not quite satisfactory, for the following reason: without Israeli interference, such a CIA plan was doomed to fail, because Kennedy would have easily seen through it. He would have known that Castro had nothing to do with it, and he would not have submitted to the pressure. Rather, he would have had his brother conduct a full investigation and would have found out that Oswald was a CIA stooge. His vengeance would have turned against the CIA, not against Castro. Perhaps Angleton was crazy enough to think he could have manipulated Kennedy and get away with it. But then, he was also crazy enough to want to assassinate Kennedy for real.<\/span><\/p>\n

Either way, the most likely scenario, in my opinion at this stage, is that Angleton had been encouraged or convinced, directly or indirectly by his Mossad \u201cfriends\u201d and by Johnson, to stage the Dallas ambush, or contribute to it, with, perhaps, the help of Hunt and a few Cuban exiles, not forgetting the Secret Service (although the latter\u2019s participation to the crime, through agent Emory Roberts and a few others, was certainly supervised by Johnson).[51]<\/i><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Why would Israel need to hijack a CIA operation, rather than just kill Kennedy themselves? Very simply, as I said, they needed the CIA to be so deeply compromised that the whole U.S. government would want to keep the lid on the whole affair. They needed the CIA not so much for preparing the killing zone as for cleaning it up afterwards and doing the cover-up for them. They also needed evidence of the CIA\u2019s implication as a \u201climited hangout\u201d to stir the skeptics in that direction \u2014 a strategy that has been so successful that the CIA-theory has now gained mainstream exposure.<\/span><\/p>\n

This scenario is similar to the one I have theorized in\u00a0\u201cThe 9\/11 Double-Cross Conspiracy Theory,\u201d<\/a> and I believe it is a favorite Israeli operating principle.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/p>\n

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Laurent Guy\u00e9not is the author of the book\u00a0<\/b>The Unspoken Kennedy Truth<\/b><\/i><\/a>,\u00a0<\/b><\/i>and of the film\u00a0<\/b>Israel and the Assassinations of the Kennedy Brothers<\/b><\/i><\/a>.<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Notes<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

[1]<\/a>\u00a0Russell is no newcomer to the JFK assassination, having written two books about it,\u00a0The Man Who Knew Too Much\u00a0<\/i>(1992), and\u00a0On the Trail of the JFK Assassins<\/i>\u00a0(2008).<\/span><\/p>\n

[2]<\/a>\u00a0Dick Russell, The Real RFK Jr.: Trials of a Truth Warrior,\u00a0<\/i>Skyhorse, 2023, p. 329.<\/span><\/p>\n

[3]<\/a>\u00a0\u201cDiEugenio at the VMI seminar, 16 September 2017,\u00a0www.kennedysandking.com\/john-f-kennedy-articles\/jim-dieugenio-at-the-vmi-seminar<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

[4]<\/a>\u00a0James Douglass,\u00a0JFK et l\u2019Indicible: Pourquoi Kennedy a \u00e9t\u00e9 assassin\u00e9,\u00a0<\/i>Demi-Lune, 2013.<\/span><\/p>\n

[5]<\/a>\u00a0John M. Newman,\u00a0Oswald and the CIA: The Documented Truth About the Unknown Relationship Between the U.S. Government and the Alleged Killer of JFK,\u00a0<\/i>Skyhorse, 2008, pp. 613-637. Excerpts on on\u00a0spartacus-educational.com<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

[6]<\/a>\u00a0Peter Dale Scott,\u00a0Deep Politics and the Death of JFK,\u00a0<\/i>University of California Press, 1993, p. 54.<\/span><\/p>\n

[7]<\/a>\u00a0Tom Mangold,\u00a0Cold Warrior \u2014 James Jesus Angleton: The CIA\u2019s Master Spy Hunter<\/i>, Simon & Schuster, 1991, p. 52.<\/span><\/p>\n

[8]<\/a>\u00a0Jefferson Morley,\u00a0The Ghost: The Secret Life of CIA Spymaster James Jesus Angleton,\u00a0<\/i>St. Martin\u2019s Press, 2017, p. 78.<\/span><\/p>\n

[9]<\/a>\u00a0Glenn Frankel, \u201cThe Secret Ceremony,\u201d\u00a0Washington Post,\u00a0<\/i>December 5, 1987, on\u00a0www.washingtonpost.com<\/a>. Andy Court\u2019s article, \u201cSpy Chiefs Honour a CIA Friend,\u201d\u00a0Jerusalem Post,\u00a0<\/i>December 5, 1987, is not online.<\/span><\/p>\n

[10]<\/a>\u00a0James Douglass,\u00a0JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters,<\/i>\u00a0Touchstone, 2008, p. xxxi.<\/span><\/p>\n

[11]<\/a>\u00a0Stephen Green,\u00a0Taking Sides: America\u2019s Secret Relations With a Militant Israel,\u00a0<\/i>William Morrow & Co., 1984, p. 166.<\/span><\/p>\n

[12]<\/a>\u00a0Gaeton Fonzi,\u00a0The Last Investigation: What Insiders Know About the Assassination of JFK,\u00a0<\/i>Skyhorse, 2013, chapter 3.<\/span><\/p>\n

[13]<\/a>\u00a0Tom Wicker, John W. Finney, Max Frankel, F.W. Kenworthy, \u201cC.I.A.: Maker of Policy, or Tool?\u201d,\u00a0New York Times,\u00a0<\/i>April 25, 1966, quoted in Douglass,\u00a0JFK and the Unspeakable,\u00a0<\/i>p. 15.<\/span><\/p>\n

[14]<\/a>\u00a0The link to the article in\u00a0Pittsburg Post Gazette,<\/i>\u00a0which I accessed in 2022, is no longer working:\u00a0https:\/\/www.post-gazette.com\/news\/politics-federal\/2004\/09\/14\/Democrat-Wecht-backs-GOP-s-Specter-in-re-election-bid\/stories\/200409140195<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

[15]<\/a>\u00a0Jefferson Morley,\u00a0Our Man in Mexico: Winston Scott and the Hidden History of the CIA,\u00a0<\/i>University Press of Kansas, 2008, p. 207.<\/span><\/p>\n

[16]<\/a>\u00a0Gaeton Fonzi,\u00a0The Last Investigation: What Insiders Know About the Assassination of JFK,\u00a0<\/i>Skyhorse, 2013, chapter 4.<\/span><\/p>\n

[17]<\/a>\u00a0James Douglass,\u00a0JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters,\u00a0<\/i>Touchstone, 2008, p. xxv and 57.<\/span><\/p>\n

[18]<\/a>\u00a0Douglass,\u00a0JFK and the Unspeakable,\u00a0<\/i>p. 81.<\/span><\/p>\n

[19]<\/a>\u00a0Douglass,\u00a0JFK and the Unspeakable,\u00a0<\/i>p. 232.<\/span><\/p>\n

[20]<\/a>\u00a0Douglass,\u00a0JFK and the Unspeakable,\u00a0<\/i>p. 126.<\/span><\/p>\n

[21]<\/a>\u00a0Douglass,\u00a0JFK and the Unspeakable,\u00a0<\/i>p. 187.<\/span><\/p>\n

[22]<\/a>\u00a0Seymour Hersh,\u00a0The Dark Side of Camelot,\u00a0<\/i>Little, Brown & Co, 1997, p. 126, quoted in Phillip Nelson,\u00a0LBJ: The Mastermind of JFK\u2019s Assassination,\u00a0<\/i>XLibris, 2010, p. 320.<\/span><\/p>\n

[23]<\/a>\u00a0Arthur Schlesinger Jr.,\u00a0A Thousand Days: John Kennedy in the White House\u00a0<\/i>(1965), Mariner Books, 2002, p. 56. Also in Donald Ritchie,\u00a0Reporting from Washington: The History of the Washington Press Corps,\u00a0<\/i>Oxford UP, 2005, p. 146.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/div>\n

[24]<\/a>\u00a0Donald Gibson gives the full telephone transcript in \u201cThe Creation of the \u2018Warren Commission\u2019\u201d, in James DiEugenio and Lisa Pease,\u00a0The Assassinations: Probe Magazine on JFK, MLK, RFK and Malcolm X,<\/i>\u00a0Ferral House, 2003. Alsop was a vocal supporter of America\u2019s involvement in the Vietnam War, and a strong advocate for escalation under Johnson, as David Halberstam documents in\u00a0The Best and The Brightest<\/i>, Modern Library, 2001, p. 567.<\/span><\/p>\n

[25]<\/a>\u00a0Morris Smith, \u201cOur First Jewish President Lyndon Johnson? \u2013 an update!!,\u201d\u00a05 Towns Jewish Times,\u00a0<\/i>April 11, 2013, no longer on 5tjt.com, but accessible via the Wayback Machine on web.archive.org\/web\/20180812064546\/http:\/\/www.5tjt.com\/our-first-jewish-president-lyndon-johnson-an-update\/ A French version published by\u00a0Tribune Juive\u00a0<\/i>is accessible on\u00a0www.tribunejuive.info\/2016\/11\/07\/un-president-americain-juif-par-victor-kuperminc\/<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

[26]<\/a>\u00a0Natasha Mozgovaya, \u201cProminent Jewish-American politician Arlen Specter dies at 82,\u201d\u00a0Haaretz,\u00a0<\/i>October 14, 2012, on\u00a0www.haaretz.com<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

[27]<\/a>\u00a0Martin Sandler,\u00a0The Letters of John F. Kennedy,\u00a0<\/i>Bloomsbury, 2013, p. 333. Listen to Sandler here on this topic:\u00a0https:\/\/www.c-span.org\/video\/?c4547313\/user-clip-jfk-gurion-mossad-dimona<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

[28]<\/a>\u00a0Avner Cohen,\u00a0Israel and the Bomb,\u00a0<\/i>Columbia UP, 1998, pp. 109 and 14;\u00a0Seymour\u00a0<\/i>Hersh,\u00a0The Samson Option: Israel\u2019s Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy,\u00a0<\/i>Random House, 1991, p. 121.<\/span><\/p>\n

[29]<\/a>\u00a0Monika Wiesak,\u00a0America\u2019s Last President: What the World Lost When It Lost John F. Kennedy,\u00a0<\/i>self-published, 2022, p. 214.<\/span><\/p>\n

[30]<\/a>\u00a0Ronen Bergman,\u00a0Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel\u2019s Targeted Assassinations,\u00a0<\/i>John Murray, 2019, p. xv.<\/span><\/p>\n

[31]<\/a>\u00a0Bergman,\u00a0Rise and Kill First,\u00a0<\/i>p. 3.<\/span><\/p>\n

[32]<\/a>\u00a0According to a\u00a0Haaretz\u00a0<\/i>article written by Yossi Melman and dated July 3, 1992, mentioned by Piper,\u00a0Final Judgment,\u00a0<\/i>pp. 118-119. This article cannot be found in\u00a0Haaretz<\/i>\u2019s archive, but was quoted the next day by the\u00a0Washington Times,\u00a0<\/i>and by the\u00a0Los Angeles Times:<\/i>\u00a0\u201cShamir Ran Mossad Hit Squad,\u201d\u00a0Lost Angeles Times<\/i>, July 4, 1992\u00a0https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/archives\/la-xpm-1992-07-04-mn-1072-story.html<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

[33]<\/a>\u00a0\u201cDocument: Shamir on Terrorism (1943),\u201d\u00a0Middle East Report<\/em>\u00a0152 (May\/June 1988), on merip.org\/1988\/05\/shamir-on-terrorism-1943\/<\/span><\/p>\n

[34]<\/a>\u00a0Seymour Hersh,\u00a0The Samson Option: Israel\u2019s Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy,\u00a0<\/i>Random House, 1991, pp. 93, 97.<\/span><\/p>\n

[35]<\/a>\u00a0Alan Hart,\u00a0Zionism, the Real Enemy of the Jews,\u00a0<\/i>vol. 2:\u00a0David Becomes Goliath,\u00a0<\/i>Clarity Press, 2009, p. 269.<\/span><\/p>\n

[36]<\/a>\u00a0Hersh,\u00a0The Samson Option,\u00a0<\/i>pp. 98-100, quoted in Piper\u00a0Final Judgment,\u00a0<\/i>pp. 101-102.<\/span><\/p>\n

[37]<\/a>\u00a0Richard H. Curtiss,\u00a0A Changing Image: American Perceptions of the Arab-Israeli Dispute,\u00a0<\/i>quoted in Piper,\u00a0Final Judgment,\u00a0<\/i>p. 88. Curtiss\u2019s book is hard to get at a reasonable price, but one speech by him, \u201cThe Cost of Israel to the American Public,\u201d can be read on Alison Weir\u2019s website \u201cIf Americans Knew\u201d,\u00a0https:\/\/ifamericansknew.org\/stat\/cost2.html<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Subscribe to New Columns<\/a><\/div>\n

[38]<\/a>\u00a0Michael Collins Piper,\u00a0Final Judgment<\/a>: The Missing Link in the JFK Assassination Conspiracy,\u00a0<\/i>American Free Press, 6th ed., 2005, p. 96.<\/span><\/p>\n

[39]<\/a>\u00a0Hersh,\u00a0The Samson Option,\u00a0<\/i>p. 111; \u201cKennedy-Ben-Gurion Meeting (May 30, 1961),\u201d on\u00a0www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org\/<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

[40]<\/a>\u00a0Hersh,\u00a0The Samson Option,\u00a0<\/i>p. 102.<\/span><\/p>\n

[41]<\/a>\u00a0Hart,\u00a0Zionism, the Real Enemy of the Jews,\u00a0<\/i>vol. 2:\u00a0David Becomes Goliath,<\/i>\u00a0p. 250. On the 1948 stolen election, read Phillip Nelson,\u00a0LBJ: The Mastermind of JFK\u2019s Assassination, XLibris,\u00a0<\/i>2010, p. 66-74.<\/span><\/p>\n

[42]<\/a>\u00a0Newman,\u00a0Oswald and the CIA,\u00a0<\/i>pp. 613-637. Excerpts on\u00a0spartacus-educational.com<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

[43]<\/a>\u00a0As pointed out by Carl Oglesby in\u00a0The JFK Assassination: The Facts and the Theories,\u00a0<\/i>Signet Books, 1992, p. 145, quoted in Michael Collins Piper,\u00a0Final Judgment<\/a>: The Missing Link in the JFK Assassination Conspiracy,\u00a0<\/i>American Free Press, 6th ed., 2005, pp. 166-169.<\/span><\/p>\n

[44]<\/a>\u00a0Piper,\u00a0Final Judgment,\u00a0<\/i>pp. 291-296.<\/span><\/p>\n

[45]<\/a>\u00a0James Hepburn,\u00a0Farewell America<\/a>, Frontiers,\u00a0<\/i>1968, pp. 337-338, quoted in Piper,\u00a0Final Judgment,\u00a0<\/i>p. 301.<\/span><\/p>\n

[46]<\/a>\u00a0Dick Russell,\u00a0The Man Who Knew Too Much,\u00a0<\/i>Carroll & Graf Publishers, 1992, p. 177.<\/span><\/p>\n

[47]<\/a>\u00a0Russell,\u00a0The Man Who Knew Too Much,\u00a0<\/i>p. 539.<\/span><\/p>\n

[48]<\/a>\u00a0Russell,\u00a0The Man Who Knew Too Much,\u00a0<\/i>pp. 703-704.<\/span><\/p>\n

[49]<\/a>\u00a0Russell,\u00a0The Man Who Knew Too Much,\u00a0<\/i>p. 693.<\/span><\/p>\n

[50]<\/a>\u00a0Gareth Wean,\u00a0There\u2019s a Fish in the Courthouse,\u00a0<\/i>Casitas Books, 1987, 2nd<\/sup>\u00a0edition 1996, pp. 695-699. The relevant chapter (44) and other interesting thoughts by Wean can be read on\u00a0https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/NoticesAndReportsToThePeopleByGaryWean<\/a>\u00a0. A useful critical reading of chapter 44 can be read on\u00a0https:\/\/kenrahn.com\/JFK\/Critical_Summaries\/Articles\/Wean_Chap_44.html<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

[51]<\/a>\u00a0For the record, Vince Palamara mentioned, without much conviction, the hypothesis of a \u201csecurity test\u201d by the Secret Service, in response to Edgar Hoover\u2019s intrigue to the take over White House security (the Secret Service was headed by the Department of Treasury): \u201cThe original idea of the security tests may have been to cement the Secret Service\u2019s role as the protector of the President, having successfully stopped an assassination attempt. Conversely, the agency (and the tests) may have been compromised by those in the know\u201d (Vincent Michael Palamara,\u00a0Survivor\u2019s Guilt: The Secret Service and the Failure to Protect President Kennedy,\u00a0<\/i>Trineday, 2013, kindle l. 4586). However, considering the numerous breaches of rule and the scandalously poor performance by the Secret Service on that fatal day, I find the hypothesis not credible).<\/span><\/p>\n

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