JFK Conference: Rex Bradford detailed the historic importance of the Church Committee

[Octafish]

As a Democrat, a DUer and as a citizen of the United States, I was proud to attend "Passing the Torch: An International Symposium on the 50th Anniversary of the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy" at Duquesne University.

One of the important speakers there I was privileged to meet and hear, Mr. Rex Bradford, president of the Mary Ferrell Foundation, discussed “Political Assassinations Revealed: The Church Committee.” In addition to documenting numerable illegal and unconstitutional actions by the CIA, FBI, Pentagon and others in the secret government, are more than willing to lie about it to Under Oath to Congress, meaning there is no accountability for extralegal action, including political assassination and mass murder, to We the People.



Mr. Bradford focused on the Church Committee and its investigations in 1975, the year after Richard Milhous Nixon resigned.

“I think what they did was very valuable work, doing the detailed documentation of the plots to kill Castro and others. Because, I have no doubt, if not for what the Church Committee did, the whole idea that the CIA plotted against these people would be one of these conspiracy theories you hear about with pros and cons, and, reminiscent of some of the other matter that’s before us this week. It’s also striking how much, I think, things have changed in America since 1975. Nowadays, the U.S. openly conducts drone strikes against foreign adversaries, whose senior officials we call, quote, bad guys; and along with collateral damage of family members, the associates who may or may not themselves be bad guys, and the occasional wedding party. In 1975, by contrast, it was a national scandal, the very idea that the executive branch of the U.S. government would contemplate targeted killings abroad.”

-- Rex Bradford, Oct. 18, 2013

Nixon, few remember, had been the victim of a Pentagon spy ring, the Moorer-Radford Affair, in 1971. The elections following Watergate, the resignation and revelations of the Church Committee brought us some important Liberal voices to Washington, including Henry Waxman and Patrick Leahy and other anti-war Democratic leaders. Their work included new laws for open government and sunshine statutes making public many records of import to democracy.

Gerald Ford, the first un-elected president and once a member of the Warren Commission, succeeded Nixon. With Ford, Donald Rumsfeld returned to the White House, accompanied by young Dick Cheney. Then, one day during an off-the-record luncheon for journalistic bigwigs, Ford accidentally revealed the CIA assassination program. One of the journalists present later related what happened to Daniel Schorr, who took the story worldwide via CBS News. The spaghetti hit the fan later on, during the congressional investigations, including the Pike Committee in the House.

“I can only imagine what Dick Cheney thought as New York Congresswoman Bella Abzug took on the National Security Agency,” Bradford said.

Bradford added that the Church Committee succeeded in opening up for full view the nefarious activities of U.S. intelligence agenencies: History. Rationales. Abuses. 14 Volumes of reports from a one-and-a-half-year investigation. The volumes' bland titles don't don’t cover the range of topics discussed within, from the FBI COINTELPRO operations for domestic disruption; to the harassment of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.; to the Joint FBI-CIA mail opening operation; to warrantless electronic surveillance and black bag jobs by FBI and CIA; illegal CIA domestic spying programs and operations, including CHAOS; covert operations and coup plotting against Chile and other nations; and other important topics. Bradford specifically mentioned:

The Church Committee revealed two important areas:

1.) Foreign assassination plotting by the CIA, and

2.) Limited review they conducted of some aspects of the (John F.) Kennedy assassination.

The Chuch Committee made public the secret history of the CIA Executive Action assassination program. It examined the CIA's efforts to assassinate Fidel Castro in Cuba, Patrice Lumumba in Congo, Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, Ngo Dinh Diem in South Vietnam, and Rene Schneider of Chile. The committee also received info, but didn’t examine the cases of Achmed Sukarno in Indonesia and Papa Doc Duvallier in Haiti.

It's interesting to remember that the press revealed some spectacular information about the CIA program, including exploding sea shells, chemical to make Castro's beard fall off. The reality that is not mentioned is the operations were not Keystone Kops: They were deadly serious. Most of the CIA plots involved machine guns, rifles, pistols, explosives, poisons. And four of the five on the list are dead. Only Castro survived.

In 1967, President Johnson ordered a CIA Inspector General to investigate and report on the Castro plots. The resulting record, Bradford reported, is incomplete, especially missing reports of any interviews with John and Robert Kennedy and CIA's Desmond Fitzgerald and Allen Dulles. Later on, when the Church Committee investigated, other important witnesses had passed, including Sam Giancana and Johnny Roselli -- the former found shot five times in the mouth while in federal protective custody and the latter found cut in pieces inside a 55 gallon oil drum floating off the coast of Florida.

Of course, "Plausible Denial" ended many an investigation. What's telling are the phony "201 Files" and other forged, faked, and back-dated documents that were part of the plans of operations from their inception, making it difficult to investigate the connections between participants and events. The record extant, however, is sufficient for people to make clear connections between players and events. This all from Mr. Bradford also brought to my mind we don’t get this in the nation's news media.

Thankfully, while omitted from Corporate McPravda, we have talked about them on DU: Some of the players in ZR Rifle and Operation 40 rose to prominence, including Porter Goss and Friend of Poppy Bush Felix Rodriguez.

Sen. Frank Church led an investigation into the NSA. The NSA launched a secret investigation into Sen. Frank Church. Guess which one was in the public interest? Church lost re-election in the "Reagan Landslide" of 1980. One more thing to remember: The Church Committee was the last time Congress investigated and held to task the intelligence community and the national security establishment, the secret government, that drives the policy of wars for profit and to make the rich get richer.