CIA Successfuly Conceals Bay of Pigs History

[Octafish]

More secret government for a stronger democracy:



CIA SUCCESSFULLY CONCEALS BAY OF PIGS HISTORY

D.C. CIRCUIT SPLIT DECISION RULES CIA DRAFT HISTORY CAN BE KEPT SECRET INDEFINITELY

NATIONAL SECURITY ARCHIVE FOIA LAWSUIT EXPOSES GAP BETWEEN OBAMA ADMINISTRATION'S "TRANSPARENCY" POLICIES AND ACTUAL BUREAUCRATIC (AND JUDICIAL) BEHAVIOR

Posted May 21, 2014
For more information contact:
202/994-7000 or [e-mail]

Washington, DC, May 21, 2014 – The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit yesterday joined the CIA's cover-up of its Bay of Pigs disaster in 1961 by ruling that a 30-year-old volume of the CIA's draft "official history" could be withheld from the public under the "deliberative process" privilege, even though four of the five volumes have previously been released with no harm either to national security or any government deliberation.

"The D.C. Circuit's decision throws a burqa over the bureaucracy," said Tom Blanton, director of the National Security Archive (www.nsarchive.org), the plaintiff in the case. "Presidents only get 12 years after they leave office to withhold their deliberations," commented Blanton, "and the Federal Reserve Board releases its verbatim transcripts after five years. But here the D.C. Circuit has given the CIA's historical office immortality for its drafts, because, as the CIA argues, those drafts might 'confuse the public.'"

"Applied to the contents of the National Archives of the United States, this decision would withdraw from the shelves more than half of what's there," Blanton concluded.

The 2-1 decision, authored by Judge Brett Kavanaugh (a George W. Bush appointee and co-author of the Kenneth Starr report that published extensive details of the Monica Lewinsky affair), agreed with Justice Department and CIA lawyers that because the history volume was a "pre-decisional and deliberative" draft, its release would "expose an agency's decision making process in such a way as to discourage candid discussion within the agency and thereby undermine the agency's ability to perform its functions."

SNIP...

Prior to yesterday's decision, the Obama administration had bragged that reducing the government's invocation of the b-5 exemption was proof of the impact of the President's Day One commitment to a "presumption of disclosure." Instead, the bureaucracy has actually increased in the last two years its use of the b-5 exemption, which current White House counselor John Podesta once characterized as the "withhold if you want to" exemption.

CONTINUED...

http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20140521/

Gosh. What does Volume V contain that is so sensitive?

[DetlefK]

1. Don't worry your pretty little head off.

[Octafish]

5. BFEE chum and CIA director Allen Dulles lied to JFK.

He reported to President John F. Kennedy that the Cuban exile invasion would work without US military intervention. They also knew the plan had been compromised, yet failed to inform the president that Castro knew the place and date for the attack.

Soviets Knew Date of Cuba Attack

By Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, April 29, 2000; A04

Shortly after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961, a top CIA
official told an investigative commission that the Soviet Union had
somehow learned the exact date of the amphibious landing in advance,
according to a newly declassified version of the commission's final report.

Moreover, the CIA apparently had known of the leak to the Soviets--and
went ahead with the invasion anyway.

In an effort to oust Fidel Castro, the CIA organized and trained a force of
about 1,400 Cuban exiles and launched the invasion on April 17, 1961.
Castro's soldiers easily repelled the landing force in less than 72 hours,
killing 200 rebels and capturing 1,197 others in what became one of the
worst foreign policy blunders of the Cold War.

The investigative commission, chaired by Gen. Maxwell Taylor, was
established almost immediately and held a series of secret hearings at the
Pentagon before sending a sharply critical report to President Kennedy in
June 1961.

CONTINUED…

http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/bay-of-pigs/soviets.htm

The un-released Volume V, from what I understand, covers the Taylor investigation. So, it's likely to provide JFK's perspective on the fiasco.

PS: How did you know? My head is little.

[dipsydoodle]

2. File under vacant promises

[Octafish]

9. Whatever's in there, must sure cast some body or some thing in a bad light.

Otherwise, there's not much worth keeping secret that the other side already knows, unless it's to keep it secret from the people who ostensibly elect the nation's leadership.

Appeals Court: CIA Can Keep Bay of Pigs History Secret

Split Decision on 'Draft' Document

by Jason Ditz
AntiWar.com, May 20, 2014

EXCERPT...

The “Volume V” history details CIA involvement in the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961, an attempted CIA-sponsored regime change carried out by paramilitary fighters.

Normally an official government record would eventually be released under the Freedom of Information Act, but preliminary documents aren’t covered, and only the final version has to be released.

That’s where the problem is with Volume V, because it never became a final version at all, and in keeping it marked nominally a “draft” the judges insist the CIA can keep it secret forever.

Judge Judith Rogers, who dissented, said that the CIA hadn’t shown how the release of a document related to 1961 would impact decision-making 50+ years later. Rogers also said that while it made sense to withhold drafts in favor of a final version, it was something else entirely to withhold everything by just never marking anything final.

SOURCE: http://news.antiwar.com/2014/05/20/appeals-court-cia-can-keep-bay-of-pigs-history-secret/

Legalese. So, again, there's neo-Transparency, the non-transparent transparency group tested to be as effective as old Transparency in baffling the Fifth Estate. Now in two sizes: XL for the high networth individual and Pluton sized for the upper high end rollers.

[Demeter]

16. So, which idiot isn't dead yet?

After all, why should they protect dead people?

Or maybe.....it's a program that isn't dead yet. Like the Cuban Embargo and all that jazz.

[Octafish]

22. Corporations never have to die. What Vol. III found Dulles told the 'Economic Royalists'...

The Two Stories About the Bay of Pigs You Never Heard

by David M. Barrett

Mr. Barrett’s new book is The CIA and Congress: The Untold Story from Truman to Kennedy (University Press of Kansas, 2005). He is Associate Professor of Political Science at Villanova University.

EXCERPT...

(2) Days before Christmas 1960, DCI Allen Dulles held an important, and I would say scandalous, meeting in New York. In attendance, Pfeiffer writes, “were the Vice President for Latin America of Standard Oil of New Jersey, the Chairman of the Cuban-American Sugar Company, the President of the American Sugar Domino Refining Company, the President of the American & Foreign Power Company, the Chairman of the Freeport Sulphur Company, and representatives from Texaco, International Telephone and Telegraph, and other American companies with business interests in Cuba. The tenor of the conversation was that it was time for the U.S. to get off dead center and take some direct action against Castro.”

The corporate leaders had many ideas along these lines for Dulles. They included burning sugar cane fields, ruining refineries, interrupting electric power supplies, and putting an embargo on food and medicines going into Cuba. Dulles opposed the embargo idea and told the corporate leaders that he was not in business of policy planning. That, he probably added, was the job of “Higher Authority,” i.e, the United States president. He did comment (Pfeiffer writes) that “what he was interested in was getting rid of Castro as quickly as possible, and in this field, he had direct responsibility and would welcome any ideas or suggestions on how this might be achieved.”

The timing of this meeting was highly sensitive. Republican Eisenhower was soon to exit the presidency, so there was little chance that he would have CIA dislodge Castro (though, as Pfeiffer writes, Ike had insisted that CIA develop effective plans and forces to do so). It was Democrat Kennedy, a proponent of action against Castro during his presidential campaign, who would have to decide whether or not to authorize some version of what CIA had planned. By blabbing to the corporate leaders about wanting to get rid of Castro as soon as possible, Dulles did a disservice to Kennedy. If JFK had chosen in the spring of 1961 not to authorize CIA to invade Cuba, it wouldn’t have been just those thousand-plus Cuban exiles who would have charged Kennedy with a cowardly abandonment; some of the corporate leaders surely would have leaked word of the new president’s “weakness.”

Furthermore, Dulles had endangered CIA’s reputation—if critics of the Agency had known of this meeting, they would have charged that CIA was (in the words of Dulles’ own underling, Tracy Barnes) “protecting economic royalists.” At a minimum, as Pfeiffer writes, corporate interests played a “sometimes overactive” role in support of the anti-Castro efforts.6

Beyond that, the word “covert” means secret. At a time when Eisenhower and Kennedy fervently believed (and told Dulles) that secrecy should shroud CIA’s Cuba plans, the DCI had been horribly indiscreet.

CONTINUED...

http://hnn.us/article/14951

[jwirr]

25. George H W bush.

[Louisiana1976]

30. Well said.

[deutsey]

3. Down the memory hole it goes...n/t

[Octafish]

12. And from its spout, new memories magically appear.

CIA still pushing the ''Castro Knew Ahead of Time'' Lie

The assassination of President Kennedy is still news, 50 years on. And one government agency seems intent to continue foisting the lie that JFK and RFK were trying to kill Castro via "their" man in Havana, Rolando Cubela. Trouble is, the CIA guy claiming to be with RFK, wasn't.

Spies: Ex-CIA Agent In Raleigh Says Castro Knew About JFK Assassination Ahead Of Time

Former CIA agent and author Brian Latell in Raleigh

By The Raleigh Telegram

RALEIGH – A noted former Central Intelligence Agency officer, author, and scholar who is intimately knowledgeable about Cuba and Fidel Castro, says he believes there is evidence that Castro’s government knew about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963 ahead of time.

SNIP...

Robert Kennedy, as the Attorney General of the United States, was in charge of the operation, said Latell. Despite the United States’ best efforts, the operation was nonetheless penetrated by Cuban intelligence agents, said Latell.

Latell said there were two serious assassination attempts by the United States against Castro that even used members of the mafia to help, but both of them were obviously unsuccessful.

He also said that there was a plot by the United States to have Castro jabbed with a pen containing a syringe filled with a very effective poison. Latell said that he believes the experienced assassin who worked for Castro who originally agreed to the plan may have been a double agent. After meeting with a personal representative of Robert Kennedy in Paris, the man knew that the plan to assassinate Castro came from the highest levels of the government, including John F. and Robert Kennedy.

The plan was never carried out, as the man later defected to the United States, but with so many double agents working for Castro also pledging allegiance to the CIA, Latell said it was likely that the information got back to Havana that the Kennedy brothers endorsed that plot with the pen.

CONTINUED...

http://raleightelegram.com/201209123311

Some of what Gaeton Fonzi and other honest investigators found...

James Jesus Angleton
and the Kennedy Assassination, Part II

by Lisa Pease

EXCERPT...

Phillips is the CIA man who most closely ties Angleton in the frequency of his appearance in the assassination story. Phillips appears to have been seen in the presence of Oswald by Antonio Veciana.21 And a "Mr. Phillips" who was running CIA operations against Cuba at a time when that was David Phillips’ job was seen by Gordon Novel in the presence of Guy Banister and Sergio Arcacha Smith, who were themselves in turn seen with Oswald. Oswald even rented an office in Banister’s building that had previously been rented by Sergio Arcacha Smith.22 When the HSCA investigators tracked down the many false "Castro did it" leads, they kept tracing back to assets run by Phillips.23 Dan Hardway, who had much documentation to support that allegation, told Gaeton Fonzi,

I’m firmly convinced now that he ran the red herring, disinformation aspects of the plot. The thing that got him so nervous was when I started mentioning all the anti-Castro Cubans who were in reports filed with the FBI for the Warren Commission and every one of them had a tie I could trace back to him. That’s what got him very upset. He knew the whole thing could unravel.24

Angleton was close friends with Win Scott and ran operations with him. Scott, in turn, was so close to Phillips that he recommended Phillips be his deputy in the Mexico City station while waiting for the next Deputy, Alan White, to arrive.25 Phillips, in turn, connects to JM/WAVE.26 JM/WAVE is another key component in the assassination story, because JM/WAVE trained assassins and participated in some of the plots against Castro. The line between Des FitzGerald’s Special Affairs Staff (the replacement for Harvey’s Task Force W) and the actions of JM/Wave is blurred. The weekend of the Kennedy assassination, John McCone’s executive assistant Walt Elder saw Fitzgerald, and FitzGerald told Elder he had met with Rolando Cubela. He did not tell him that he had given him a poison pen to be used against Castro, nor that he had pretended to be an emissary of Bobby Kennedy’s (Helms had told him not to worry, that he would approve that lie). No mention of assassination was made. But Elder had the distinct impression that FitzGerald was particularly upset that weekend. Evan Thomas, in his book The Very Best Men, painted the following scene:

Elder was struck by FitzGerald’s clear discomfort. "Des was normally imperturbable, but he was very disturbed about his involvement." The normally smooth operator was "shaking his head and wringing his hands. It was very uncharacteristic. That’s why I remember it so clearly," Elder said in 1993. He thought FitzGerald was "distraught and overreacting."

Des Fitzgerald’s wife told author Evan Thomas that the first and last time she ever saw her husband break down in tears was when Oswald was shot by Jack Ruby. Her husband had been upset from the moment of the assassination, and sat silently, watching the news along with millions of others around the globe. When Jack Ruby performed his deed, Fitzgerald began to cry, and said, somewhat cryptically, "Now we’ll never know."27 Thomas evidently thinks this has something to do with Cubela. But does it? Cubela later turned out to be a double agent. But when was that known? Was the CIA trying to provoke Castro, knowing Cubela was his agent and planning a plot with him? Was the CIA engaging in a true assassination plot, or a deception they could later refer to in Castro-did-it scenarios?

CONTINUED...

http://www.ctka.net/pr900-ang.html

Gee. Why would the CIA continue to go through such pains to connect JFK, RFK and Castro 50 years later? -- especially how the historical record clearly shows the CIA hired the Mafia to kill Castro during the Eisenhower administration. Maybe some brave reporter will one day ask someone like Mr. Latell and BFEE appointed judges, too.

[Ichingcarpenter]

4. 'Bay of Pigs' threat by Nixon to CIA chief Helms.

When Nixon was vice president, he and then CIA agent Hunt were principal secret planners of the invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs that failed so miserably when later ordered by President Kennedy. Nixon and Hunt were key leaders of an associated— and also ill- fated—plot to assassinate Castro. For that mission, potential assassins were recruited from Mob ranks, so that if any of their activities were disclosed, organized crime could be blamed.

Helms as then director of the CIA’s covert operations was a key participant in the Castro assassination plots. The plotters also enlisted the support of billionaire Howard Hughes. Like Nixon, Hughes despised the Kennedys and had strong links to both the CIA and the Mob. The mysterious and reclusive Hughes had made large, secret payoff s to Nixon and his brother Donald over most of Nixon’s political career.

“third-rate burglary attempt.”

On June 22, after returning to the White House, Nixon made his first public comment on the burglary. He flatly asserted that “the White House has had no involvement whatever” in the break- in. And he declared, with a straight face, that such an event “has no place in our electoral process or in our governmental process.”

On the twenty-third, in an effort to get the CIA to stop the FBI’s initial Watergate probe, Nixon tried to blackmail CIA Director Richard Helms, apparently by using his knowledge of major CIA secrets to keep the lid on Watergate.

The president wanted to scare Helms with the prospect that, under pressure, an apprehended Hunt might start blabbing to authorities about “the Bay of Pigs.” That phrase, to Bob Haldeman— Nixon’s most trusted aide—was secret Nixon- CIA code for one of the darkest events in our history, an event with tenuous ties to the disastrous 1961 Cuban invasion.

In a post-Watergate book, Haldeman disclosed, “It seems that in all those Nixon references to the Bay of Pigs, he was actually referring to the Kennedy assassination. (Interestingly, an investigation of the Kennedy assassination was a project I suggested when I first entered the White House. Now I felt we would be in a position to get all the facts. But Nixon turned me down.)”

Watergate expert and National Public Radio correspondent Daniel Schorr independently concurs with Haldeman that Nixon’s Watergate threat to the CIA about “the Bay of Pigs” was “about some deeply hidden scandal .


Audiotapes ran on all Nixon’s office and telephone conversations, so the president would not want to refer to John F. Kennedy murder secrets as “Dallas” or “the whole JFK thing.” Why, logically, could the JFK assassination become known to Nixon and Helms and a few others as “the Bay of Pigs”? Perhaps because the cast of characters employed in the 1960 plan to invade Cuba at the Bay of Pigs and kill Fidel Castro and the cast of characters employed in the plan to assassinate Kennedy in 1963 were the same.

Nixon’s Bay of Pigs Secrets "...... http://www.thehistoryreader.com/contemporary-history/nixons-bay-pigs-secrets/

[Ichingcarpenter]

6. see also

The Last Confessions of E. Howard Hunt
Rolling Stone | April 5th Edition
ERIK HEDEGAARD


He was the ultimate keeper of secrets, lurking in the shadows of American history. He toppled banana republics, planned the Bay of Pigs invasion and led the Watergate break-in. Now he would reveal what he'd always kept hidden: who killed JFK

http://somethingthatdescribesmeandmyarticles.blogspot.dk/2013/02/jfk-murder-last-confessions-of-e-howard.html

[Octafish]

14. E Howard Hunt planted phony cables in a White House safe to implicate JFK in Diem assassinations.

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1350&dat=19730508&id=8ghPAAAAIBAJ&sjid=RAIEAAAAIBAJ&pg=4888,5163727

That's a dirty trick of the treasonous kind.

Here' E Howard Hunt talks about his business -- check out before the archives get scrubbed:

http://web.archive.org/web/20041109091003/http://slate.msn.com/id/2107718/

[MinM]

35. Miami Jury: CIA Involved in JFK Assassination

Global Research, May 01, 2014

The Spotlight

Not a single major newspaper nor any national news broadcast has ever reported that on Feb. 6, 1985, a jury in Miami concluded that the CIA was involved in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

This is remarkable, if only because the verdict came in a court case featuring two international celebrities: Watergate burglar E. Howard Hunt — perhaps the most infamous CIA operative in history — and his courtroom nemesis — attorney Mark Lane. Lane’s ground-break ing best-seller, Rush to Judgment, had convinced millions of readers there had been a conspiracy in the JFK assassination, the Warren Commission’s claims notwithstanding.

Scattered news reports did mention Hunt had lost a libel case against The SPOTLIGHT. However, no media reported what the jury forewoman had told the press:


Mr. Lane was asking us to do something very difficult. He was asking us to believe John Kennedy had been killed by our own government. Yet when we examined the evidence closely, we were compelled to conclude that the CIA had indeed killed President Kennedy...

http://www.globalresearch.ca/miami-jury-cia-involved-in-jfk-assassination/5379965

[Octafish]

13. The Texans and the 'Bay of Pigs Thing'

H. R. Haldeman, in his book, "The Ends of Power," cites several conversations where Nixon expressed concern about the Watergate affair becoming public knowledge and where this exposure might lead. Haldeman writes:

"In fact, I was puzzled when he told me, 'Tell Ehrlichman this whole group of Cubans is tied to the Bay of Pigs.' After a pause I said, 'The Bay of Pigs? What does that have to do with this ?' But Nixon merely said, 'Ehrlichman will know what I mean,' and dropped the subject."

Later in his book, Haldeman appears to answer his own question when he says, "It seems that in all of those Nixon references to the Bay of Pigs, he was actually referring to the Kennedy assassination."

In taped conversations with Haldeman, Nixon is obviously worried about what would happen if Hunt's involvement in the Watergate burglary came to light. Nixon says, "Of course, this Hunt, that will uncover a lot of things. You open that scab, there's a hell of a lot of things, and we feel that it would be very detrimental to have this thing go any further...But, you can say, this is sort of a comedy of errors, bizarre, without getting into it, the President believes that it is going to open the whole Bay of Pigs thing up again."

http://dirtypolitics.50megs.com/dirty.htm

Thank you, Ichingcarpenter. Great memory, yours.

[Ichingcarpenter]

15. Notice how the CIA/JFK/Oswald files are also to be hidden

Which adds to the discussion and speculation that they are tied.

This from less than a year ago.


http://www.bostonglobe.com/2013/11/25/government-still-withholding-thousands-documents-jfk-assassination/PvBM2PCgW1H11vadQ4Wp4H/story.html

[rhett o rick]

7. Sounds like someone isnt drinking their cool-aid. Just sayin. nm

[Octafish]

20. Also done with the Soylent Yellow.

For some reason, the truth from the Bay of Pigs days doesn't see the light of BFEEFox News, Corporate McPravda, PBS, or anything resembling mass media. I wonder why that is?

Why Cass Sunstein won’t go to Dealey Plaza

by Jefferson Morley
March 25, 2014

As Cass Sunstein promotes his new book, “Conspiracy Theories and Other Dangerous Ideas,” he avoids talking about JFK conspiracy theories. He didn’t mention JFK in his Reddit AMA last week, though in Bloomberg he uttered the phrase “assassinations of national leaders.”

Sunstein prefers to talking about conspiracy theories to talking JFK facts.

By contrast, when Sunstein talks to Kirkus Review about 9/11 conspiracy theories, he sounds certain of himself, and I can’t disagree with anything he says.

SNIP...

Sunstein expresses no such certainty about the JFK story because the factual case against conspiratorial interpretations of November 22, 1963, is relatively weak and filled with daunting questions like:

How does a Harvard Law professor impeach the testimony of 21 cops at the crime scene?

And, if the CIA isn’t hiding anything, why are they hiding these top secret 7 JFK files, containing more than 3,000 pages of material that has never been seen by the public?

CONTINUED w/links for those who like to know what goes on in their name and on their dime:

http://jfkfacts.org/assassination/why-cass-sunstein-wont-go-to-the-grassy-knoll/

[L0oniX]

8. Next: Hiding Vietnam.

[Octafish]

21. ''By God, we’ve kicked the Vietnam Syndrome once and for all.'' -- GHW Bush

Kicking the Vietnam Syndrome

From the Archive: With Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf’s death on Thursday – and the declining health of ex-President George H.W. Bush – an era of war and intrigue is coming to an end, a time of resurgent U.S. imperialism that saw this warrior seeking peace and the politician wanting war, as Robert Parry wrote in 2011.

By Robert Parry (Originally published on Feb. 28, 2011, and slightly updated)
Consortiumnews.com, December 28, 2012

Two decades ago, with a resounding victory in a 100-hour ground war against Iraqi troops in Kuwait, the first Bush administration completed the restoration of a powerful public consensus, a renewed national commitment that the United States should act as the world’s imperial policeman.

That consensus, which took shape after World War II, had been shattered by the Vietnam War and rebuilding public support for foreign adventures had become a key (though secret) goal of the Persian Gulf ground war, which President George H.W. Bush ordered on Feb. 23, 1991, and called off on Feb. 28.

Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, who died Thursday, commanded U.S. forces during the Persian Gulf War of 1990-91. He favored a negotiated Iraqi withdrawal fromKuwait that would have avoided a ground war, but was overruled by President George H.W. Bush and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Colin Powell. Bush wanted to use the ground war to “kick the Vietnam Syndrome.”
Bush knew that the extra killing of Iraqi and American troops wasn’t needed to achieve the military objective of getting Iraqi forces out of Kuwait, because Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had long signaled his readiness to withdraw.

But Bush and his top political advisers, including Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, insisted on the ground war as a dramatic climax to a story line designed to thrill the American people – and get them to embrace warfare again as an exciting part of the national character.

Bush, Cheney and other senior officials judged that the slaughter of tens of thousands of Iraqi soldiers, mostly poorly trained conscripts, and the combat deaths of some 147 American soldiers was a small price to pay.

On Feb. 28, 1991, just hours after the fighting stopped, Bush gave the public a fleeting glimpse of his secret agenda when he celebrated the ground war victory by blurting out the seemingly incongruous declaration, “By God, we’ve kicked the Vietnam Syndrome once and for all.”

CONTINUED...

http://consortiumnews.com/2012/12/28/kicking-the-vietnam-syndrome/

[phil89]

26. Just "protecting our freedoms"

I guess.

[Octafish]

23. JFK ordered withdrawal from Vietnam. LBJ reversed it four days after Dallas.

In National Security Action Memorandum (NSAM) 263 JFK orders everybody out...



Then in NSAM 273...



Vietnam Withdrawal Plans

The 1990s saw the gaps in the declassified record on Vietnam filled in—with spring 1963 plans for the complete withdrawal of U.S. forces. An initial 1000 man pullout (of the approximately 17,000 stationed in Vietnam at that time) was initiated in October 1963, though it was diluted and rendered meaningless in the aftermath of Kennedy's death. The longer-range plans called for complete withdrawal of U. S. forces and a "Vietnamization" of the war, scheduled to happen largely after the 1964 elections.

The debate over whether withdrawal plans were underway in 1963 is now settled. What remains contentious is the "what if" scenario. What would Kennedy have done if he lived, given the worsening situation in Vietnam after the coup which resulted in the assassination of Vietnamese President Diem?

At the core of the debate is this question: Did President Kennedy really believe the rosy picture of the war effort being conveyed by his military advisors. Or was he onto the game, and instead couching his withdrawal plans in the language of optimism being fed to the White House?

The landmark book JFK and Vietnam asserted the latter, that Kennedy knew he was being deceived and played a deception game of his own, using the military's own rosy analysis as a justification for withdrawal. Newman's analysis, with its dark implications regarding JFK's murder, has been attacked from both mainstream sources and even those on the left. No less than Noam Chomsky devoted an entire book to disputing the thesis.

But declassifications since Newman's 1992 book have only served to buttress the thesis that the Vietnam withdrawal, kept under wraps to avoid a pre-election attack from the right, was Kennedy's plan regardless of the war's success. New releases have also brought into focus the chilling visions of the militarists of that era—four Presidents were advised to use nuclear weapons in Indochina. A recent book by David Kaiser, American Tragedy, shows a military hell bent on war in Asia.

CONTINUED with very important IMFO links:

http://www.history-matters.com/vietnam1963.htm

[johnnyreb]

10. I think that as long as I'm getting a paycheck,

and the bodies are being picked up every week, and our government servants don't confuse me too much, that we should just trust them.

[Octafish]

24. That's some spooky tune, wot?

Just before his assassination, President Kennedy ordered secret peace talks with Castro. Others in government worked against him.



The National Security Archive at George Washington University has the story:

Kennedy Sought Dialogue with Cuba

INITIATIVE WITH CASTRO ABORTED BY ASSASSINATION,
DECLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS SHOW

Oval Office Tape Reveals Strategy to hold clandestine Meeting in Havana; Documents record role of ABC News correspondent Lisa Howard as secret intermediary in Rapprochement effort

Washington D.C. - On the 40th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and the eve of the broadcast of a new documentary film on Kennedy and Castro, the National Security Archive today posted an audio tape of the President and his national security advisor, McGeorge Bundy, discussing the possibility of a secret meeting in Havana with Castro. The tape, dated only seventeen days before Kennedy was shot in Dallas, records a briefing from Bundy on Castro's invitation to a U.S. official at the United Nations, William Attwood, to come to Havana for secret talks on improving relations with Washington. The tape captures President Kennedy's approval if official U.S. involvement could be plausibly denied.

The possibility of a meeting in Havana evolved from a shift in the President's thinking on the possibility of what declassified White House records called "an accommodation with Castro" in the aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Proposals from Bundy's office in the spring of 1963 called for pursuing "the sweet approach…enticing Castro over to us," as a potentially more successful policy than CIA covert efforts to overthrow his regime. Top Secret White House memos record Kennedy's position that "we should start thinking along more flexible lines" and that "the president, himself, is very interested in (the prospect for negotiations)." Castro, too, appeared interested. In a May 1963 ABC News special on Cuba, Castro told correspondent Lisa Howard that he considered a rapprochement with Washington "possible if the United States government wishes it. In that case," he said, "we would be agreed to seek and find a basis" for improved relations.

The untold story of the Kennedy-Castro effort to seek an accommodation is the subject of a new documentary film, KENNEDY AND CASTRO: THE SECRET HISTORY, broadcast on the Discovery/Times cable channel on November 25 at 8pm. The documentary film, which focuses on Ms. Howard's role as a secret intermediary in the effort toward dialogue, was based on an article -- "JFK and Castro: The Secret Quest for Accommodation" -- written by Archive Senior Analyst Peter Kornbluh in the magazine, Cigar Aficionado. Kornbluh served as consulting producer and provided key declassified documents that are highlighted in the film. "The documents show that JFK clearly wanted to change the framework of hostile U.S. relations with Cuba," according to Kornbluh. "His assassination, at the very moment this initiative was coming to fruition, leaves a major 'what if' in the ensuing history of the U.S. conflict with Cuba."

CONTINUED with links, resources...

http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB103/index.htm

This side of the USA vs Castro's Cuba story that is seldom mentioned online, rarely in print, and never on television. This'd be a different world, were not for the War Party.

I believe it's a good thing for Democrats to know, as well as all people who are interested in making peace and building a better world through cooperation, which is how equals do things, rather than intimidation, which is how mobsters do it.

[PeoViejo]

11. Don't forget Poppy.

He's still alive and at risk of embarrassment,

I like that boat..made by Grumman Aircraft...I used to own a smaller version. The MIC is always involved.

[Demeter]

17. Ah, yes...that's the one!

By all means, we must protect Poppy, and his lovely wife and brilliant young sons.

How could I forget that the Head Vampire is still alive! He is alive, I mean, for an Undead person?

[jwirr]

27. Anyone remember the name of Poppy's oil company in Cuba that had been taken over? The name

meant bush in Spanish. It is why I have always thought that he was involved.

[WinkyDink]

28. Arbusto.

[jwirr]

29. That is it. Connected with both Oswald and the Bay of Pigs.

[Octafish]

34. Zapata Offshore

Poppy Bush told FBI his company name, whereabouts in Dallas, and suspicions after JFK was assassinated.

In the hour of the death of President John F. Kennedy, Texas oilman George Herbert Walker Bush named a suspect to the FBI in a "confidential" phone call. He then added he was heading for Dallas. Skeptics need not take my word for it, that's what Poppy told the FBI:



Here's a transcript of the text:

TO: SAC, HOUSTON DATE: 11-22-63

FROM: SA GRAHAM W. KITCHEL

SUBJECT: UNKNOWN SUBJECT;
ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT
JOHN F. KENNEDY

At 1:45 p.m. Mr. GEORGE H. W. BUSH, President of the Zapata Off-Shore Drilling Company, Houston, Texas, residence 5525 Briar, Houston, telephonically furnished the following information to writer by long distance telephone call from Tyler, Texas.

BUSH stated that he wanted to be kept confidential but wanted to furnish hearsay that he recalled hearing in recent weeks, the day and source unknown. He stated that one JAMES PARROTT has been talking of killing the President when he comes to Houston.

BUSH stated that PARROTT is possibly a student at the University of Houston and is active in political matters in this area. He stated that he felt Mrs. FAWLEY, telephone number SU 2-5239, or ARLINE SMITH, telephone number JA 9-9194 of the Harris County Republican Party Headquarters would be able to furnish additional information regarding the identity of PARROTT.

BUSH stated that he was proceeding to Dallas, Texas, would remain in the Sheraton-Dallas Hotel and return to his residence on 11-23-63. His office telephone number is CA 2-0395.

# # #

Gee. Why was Poppy Bush in Dallas when JFK was assassinated?

Could it be, he was on official business? I suspect he was on Secret Government business. After all, his eldest son bragged during his Texas Air National Guard and Harvard grad school days that his daddy was CIA.

Here's an FBI document from the same week of the assassination in which FBI Director J Edgar Hoover briefed one "Mr. George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency." Some strange coincidence there, wot?



Here's a transcript of the above:

Date: November 29, 1963

To: Director
Bureau of Intelligence and Research
Department of State

From: John Edgar Hoover, Director

Subject: ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY
NOVEMBER 22, 1963

Our Miami, Florida, Office on November 23, 1963, advised that the Office of Coordinator of Cuban Affairs in Miami advised that the Department of State feels some misguided anti-Castro group might capitalize on the present situation and undertake an unauthorized raid against Cuba, believing that the assassination of President John F. Kennedy might herald a change in U. S. policy, which is not true.

Our sources and informants familiar with Cuban matters in the Miami area advise that the general feeling in the anti-Castro Cuban community is one of stunned disbelief and, even among those who did not entirely agree with the President's policy concerning Cuba, the feeling is that the President's death represents a great loss not only to the U. S. but to all of Latin America. These sources know of no plans for unauthorized action against Cuba.

An informant who has furnished reliable information in the past and who is close to a small pro-Castro group in Miami has advised that these individuals are afraid that the assassination of the President may result in strong repressive measures being taken against them and, although pro-Castro in their feelings, regret the assassination.

The substance of the foregoing information was orally furnished to Mr. George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency and Captain William Edwards of the Defense Intelligence Agency on November 23, 1963, by Mr. W. T. Forsyth of this Bureau.

# # #

Now I don't know if Poppy was only there to watch what happened or just happened to be there. I do know Poppy Bush has never explained these memos. He's never even admitted where he was the day JFK was killed.

Some Bay of Pigs stuff was code named Operation ZAPATA. The SEC records regarding Zapata were lost to fire.

[MinM]

18. Why would the CIA be stonewalling?

Last edited Thu May 22, 2014, 12:13 PM - Edit history (1)

Because they knew their plan was unworkable (by design)?

Review: Destiny Betrayed 2nd edition

...But even more essential is DiEugenio’s exposition of the Bay of Pigs subterfuge. Drawing on several newer books on this topic, along with recently released documents which more than hint at perfidy on the part of the CIA, he outlines how Jake Esterline’s Trinidad plan, originally conceived as a small-scale penetration by a group of guerrilla-trained exiles, morphed into a full-blown D-Day assault under Dick Bissell’s supervision. It was this mutation, a development that Dulles and Bissell tried to obfuscate, which Kennedy in March 1961 nevertheless saw enough of to ask that it be scaled down. Dulles clearly understood Kennedy’s reluctance to commit, and tried to use the “disposal problem” (what to do with all these exiles?) as leverage, further offering him entirely false assurances about popular support for an uprising and the ability of the brigade to regroup in the mountains should they get pinned down on the beaches, and all the while denying him vital intelligence and refusing to allow him to inspect the details of the plan. JFK appears to have committed only because he was convinced of the essentially guerrilla nature of the action. A new site, the Playa Giron, was in fact chosen because it seemed very unlikely that the landing would encounter resistance there. Kennedy also added the requirement that any air strikes on the day of the invasion were to be conducted by the Cuban brigade after a beachhead had been secured – that is, from Cuban soil. He even asked Bissell if the recommended preliminary surgical strikes against Castro’s T-33 fighters were absolutely necessary, and Bissell assured him they would be minimal. But a CIA memo released in 2005 establishes that Bissell knew from November 1960 onwards that the entire plan was unworkable without the aid of the Pentagon. That memo was never forwarded to the President’s desk [34-37; 44-45].


What happens next is a series of tactical foul-ups followed by efforts to nudge Kennedy into military intervention. Not all of Castro’s T-33’s were taken out prior to the landing because Castro, who knew the invasion was coming, had dispersed them around the island. The main forces were crippled by the sinking of two supply ships. The whole operation was very poorly planned, and Castro managed to regain two of the three landing sites by the third day. At that point Deputy Director Charles Cabell tried to get Victor Marchetti to relay to Kennedy the false story of MiGs strafing the beaches (which Marchetti never delivered). Kennedy had made clear from the outset his refusal to deploy U.S. military force, but the CIA gave orders anyway to fly bombing missions over Castro’s airfields, which did not occur only because of fog [41].


Most decisive in its analysis of this episode is a fact which the book makes unequivocal – that Kennedy never withdrew air support, because the so-called D-Day strikes had never been authorized to begin with; they were not part of the revised plan. McGeorge Bundy reiterated Kennedy’s restriction on them to Cabell the night before the landing, and the next day, he and Bissell tried to argue the point with Dean Rusk. But when Rusk gave the CIA the chance to phone the White House and request such strikes the morning of the invasion, the CIA declined the invitation. On the third day, Cabell and the CIA similarly refused to request a naval escort to resupply the brigade with ammunition. In a conversation with Rusk and Adlai Stevenson the day of the invasion, Kennedy again said he had not approved any such strikes from Nicaragua [44, 46].


After ordering the Taylor inquiry (during which the Joint Chiefs basically tried to hang all the blame on the CIA) and consulting with Robert Lovett, co-author of the Lovett-Bruce report, who laid bare the true nature of the CIA, convincing him to fire Dulles, along with Bissell and Cabell, it became obvious to Kennedy that he had been snookered. Today we may reasonably share his opinion that the operation was a planned failure aimed at backing him into a corner and coercing him into an all-out invasion...

http://destinybetrayed.com/Reviews.html

In fact, as Destiny Betrayed reveals, the myth about calling off air support was originated in a story planted by Allen Dulles with a buddy of his at Fortune magazine.

It's no wonder the CIA has been reticent in handing over additional documents. Just from what can be pieced together so far the evidence is pretty damning.

https://twitter.com/Rigorous_Intuit/status/469326886284578816

http://www.democraticunderground.com/110820336#post10

[MinM]

31. Ukraine

and Iran may turn out to be President Obama's moments of pushing back against the mic.

https://twitter.com/NatCounterPunch/status/469905178171154433

[MinM]

32. Robert Parry

put it best ..

It may be understandable at some level that the still-powerful neocons saw the Ukraine wedge as a useful tool in splintering the Putin-Obama cooperation that had eased tensions over Syria and Iran – two of the neocons’ top targets for “regime change” – but it remains a mystery how anyone could think that the Ukraine adventure has served U.S. national interests...

http://consortiumnews.com/2014/05/24/the-state-departments-ukraine-fiasco/

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025005083

[WillyT]

19. K & R !!!

[CanSocDem]

33. In these days of...

...Snowden, Greenwald and wikileaks, the powers that be are attempting to conceal the history that would expose the dismantling of democracy in the USA.

When dirty tricks and yellow journalism couldn't bring down the Kennedy vision, they used guns.

And now all they need to do is bury the evidence.

Thank you Octafish for keeping the evidence in front of us.


.