Yes, the CIA Director Was Part of the JFK Assassination Cover-Up

[Octafish]

120. A Thank You to Phil Shenon from Dan Hardway

Mr. Hardway served as a staffer on the House Select Committee on Assassinations, working directly with CIA (at CIA HQ, etc) on documents requested by Congress. I heard him address the Duquesne conference in 2013.

THANK YOU, PHIL SHENON

By Dan Hardway © 2015
Assassination Archives and Research Center,

We all need to thank Phil Shenon for bringing attention to the CIA’s latest position in their continuing stonewalling of the truth in regard to the JFK assassination. The new limited hang-out that Shenon helps test float in his October 6, 2015, Politico piece, “Yes, the CIA Director was Part of the JFK Assassination Cover-Up,” is acknowledgment that DCI John McCone participated in a “benign-coverup” by withholding crucially important information from the Warren Commission. Once again, we can benefit from what is normally gleaned from a limited hangout: 1) it will fill in some blanks; 2) point the way to further avenues of investigation; 3) illustrate the continued lying while admitting to past lying; 4) illuminate the real issues by its misdirection; and 5) ultimately contribute to the long unravelling leading to the eventual revelation of truth. In this case, Shenon’s latest spin on the CIA’s new limited hangout does all this and more. I say “his spin” deliberately because Mr. Shenon’s latest article in Politico1 doesn’t even accurately represent his cited CIA source.

We can elucidate this from an examination of some of the specific assertions Mr. Shenon makes in his article which is based on a recently declassified chapter out of a top secret CIA biography of former CIA Director John McCone.2

SNIP...

VI. “Without this information, (about the Castro assassination plots) the commission never even knew to ask the question of whether Oswald had accomplices in Cuba or elsewhere who wanted Kennedy dead in retaliation for the Castro plots…. information … that might have prompted a more aggressive investigation of Oswald’s potential Cuba ties.”

This is pure spin on the part of Shenon designed to limit the damage of the admission that the CIA has made. At this point in the article, Shenon is explaining how the Agency’s failure to disclose the CIA’s plots, “in cahoots with the Mafia” undermined the commission’s inquiry. If all you read is Shenon, you may think that the only place an investigation of the CIA shenanigans with the Mafia could have led was to Castro and Cuba. But that is far, far from the truth. If the commission had opened the CIA/Mafia/anti-Castro Cuban anti-Castro operations can of worms, much more would have demanded investigation than just the possibility of Cuban government retaliation. Maybe the best way to illustrate that would be to restate this assertion by Shenon: “The commission never even knew to ask the question of whether Oswald had accomplices in, or was used by, persons in Miami, New Orleans, the Mafia, the anti-Castro Cuban organizations, or the intelligence agencies who wanted Kennedy dead in retaliation for his abandonment of the anti-Castro operations, his back-channel negotiations with Castro, his actions during the Bay of Pigs, his failure to invade Cuba during the missile crisis in October as he was strongly urged to do by the national security establishment.” Do you see the problem? An investigation into the CIA/Mafia Castro assassination plots inevitably leads to the broader questions and a broader investigation. These questions are truly incendiary. It is understandable why the Agency would not want these issues investigated. It is also clear that the cover-up, consequently, was anything but benign. Shenon’s attempt to restrict the implications to just the possibility of a Cuban government sponsored retaliation, without ever even acknowledging these broader possible implications, is a strong indication of where he wants to lead a hopefully gullible reading public.

Perhaps the best proof of the validity of this expanded proposition, that revelation of the Castro assassination plots leads to a broader investigation, is history. All you have to do to understand that revelation of the Castro plots inevitably leads to opening up the whole incendiary spectrum of possible suspects and conspiracies is to look at what actually happened when those plots were revealed. When those plots did come to light in the Church Committee’s investigation, the immediate follow-up line of investigation as pursued by the HSCA was not just to investigate the possibility of Cuban national retaliation, but to also pursue the implications of possible involvement in the Kennedy assassination of the frustrated actors in those plots: the CIA, the Mafia and the anti-Castro Cubans. As has been demonstrated widely in the literature since 1978, those three groups had an abundance of possible motivation.21 Indeed, in the time that has now passed since the public confirmation of the CIA’s involvement in the Castro assassination plots, the great weight of the investigatory evidence and analysis tends to show that there is no basis for finding that Castro’s government was involved in a retaliatory strike. Even Robarge reports, “McCone was convinced that neither the Cubans nor the Soviets had sought revenge against John Kennedy, largely because SIGINT (Signals Intelligence) had disclosed the stunned reactions of Cuban and Soviet leaders to Kennedy’s death.”22 Indeed, Robarge also acknowledges Oswald’s “extensive pro-Castro activity and contact with the Soviet embassy in Mexico City violated a longstanding KGB prohibition on its overseas agents having contact with domestic communist parties or Soviet legations.”

Why, then, is Shenon so insistent on reviving the theory that the assassination was a Castro retaliation? Robarge tells us, as many others have since revelation of the Castro assassination plots in the 1970s, that the concern was that revelation of those plots which may have provided a motive for Castro retaliation and that possibility by itself was enough to possibly cause a nuclear war “that can kill 40,000,000 Americans in an hour,” as President Johnson put it. So, even though a lot of disinformation work was done by CIA assets to set up that scenario immediately after the assassination – most of which assets had links to CIA Officer David Atlee Phillips who was succeeded in Miami by George Joannides who still worked for him – it was not used or acknowledged by the government. Even though the theory is rejected by even Robarge, however, it is now safe to assert it as no one thinks that it could lead to war after the passage of so much time. So, in Shenon’s able hands, it is now becoming the fallback position favored by those who still don’t want any investigation of possible incendiary operations that would implicate the CIA in anything more than a benign cover up.

On the other hand, and contrary to Shenon, the evidence fairly evaluated calls into serious question whether the assassination can be laid at the feet of the CIA, the Mafia, the anti-Castro Cubans, or a combination thereof. In light of that, do you not have to wonder whether the CIA’s trying to keep incendiary and diversionary issues from the commission was, in fact, an attempt to keep this incendiary issue from the commission by diverting them to the sole issue of LHO as the lone nut assassin? It should now become more clear why the CIA would finally admit to conspiring to obstruct justice and conceal the Castro assassination plots from the Warren Commission. It wasn’t just to prevent investigation into a communist plot, although that provided convenient cover, it was to prevent investigation into activities that directly implicate the Agency and its allies in the assassination. The cover-up conspiracy was hardly benign, but the Agency realizing that it can no longer legitimize its claim of no cover-up, now seeks to avoid the full implications of their guilt in the cover-up with a propaganda campaign that both labels the cover-up as benign and seeks to, once again, legitimize the propaganda ploy of blaming Castro and the communists for the assassination of the President – the very first theory first floated by the CIA funded anti-Castro Cuban group DRE the day after the assassination, the same DRE that was once run by David Atlee Phillips, that ran what appears to be a propaganda operation in New Orleans in August 1963 involving Oswald, and was run by George Joannides in 1963; the same George Joannides who worked as a CIA undercover operative to derail the HSCA investigation into the post-assassination disinformation efforts of the Agency and the anti-Castro Cubans. Benign, indeed. The conspiracy continues unabated. The disinformation and propaganda campaigns continue unabated. Robarge and Shenon perform their roles, and their articles can only be properly understood, as part of that continuing propaganda campaign.

CONTINUED...

http://aarclibrary.org/thank-you-phil-shenon/

Gee. Obstruction of justice on the part of the nation's secret agencies like the FBI and CIA in the assassination of President Kennedy is way more complicated than what the public has been told by Philip Shenon, the New York Times or anything out of Corporate Owned News.

Good thing for Democracy there's DU and a whole lotta people who pay attention.

PS: You are most welcome, librechik. Thank you for caring all these years on DU. Can you believe it? We're now well into our second decade.