And here’s a real eye-popper from her book. This is from a conversation with LBJ that she remembered well on New Year’s Eve, 1963—six weeks after the assassination. And please excuse his language, but that’s the way the guy talked:
‘Lyndon, you know that a lot of people believe you had something to do with President Kennedy’s assassination.’
He shot up out of the bed and began pacing and waving his arms screaming like a madman. I was scared!
‘That’s bullshit, Madeleine Brown!’ he yelled. ‘Don’t tell me you believe that crap!
‘Of course not,’ I answered meekly, trying to cool his temper.
‘It was Texas oil and those fucking renegade intelligence bastards in Washington.’531
Marina Oswald
In later years, Marina—Russian-born wife of the accused assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald—went public with her opinion that her husband definitely was being used by the U.S. intelligence community. And being so close to the matter, her views are very relevant.
Marina said that he must have been a government agent:
Porter [her name after remarrying] said that in retrospect, Oswald seemed professionally schooled in secretiveness ‘and I believe he worked for the American government.’
‘He was taught the Russian language when he was in the military. Do you think that is usual that an ordinary soldier is taught Russian? Also, he got in and out of Russia quite easily, and he got me out quite easily.’532
Marina also observed something important that I’ve been pointing out to you throughout this book:
‘It was a very complicated plot, brilliantly executed. Could any intelligent person believe that kind of thing was organized by one man?’533
I’d like to mention that Marina was also severely mistreated by the U.S. government. She was lied to and betrayed, and those were her exact words on the subject, not just mine.534 It wasn’t fair, it wasn’t right, and I think they still owe the woman a formal apology.
There’s an excellent interview of Marina online from an NBC interview with Tom Brokaw, and you can observe for yourself the intelligence with which she states her case; even while being bullied around by Mr. Brokaw:535 youtube.com/watch?v=swHZ0DxB8n8.
Marguerite Oswald
The mother of Lee Harvey Oswald, it should be said, was convinced right from the start that her son was a pawn of U.S. intelligence agents, and she never wavered from that opinion. It’s logical to presume that she probably knew a thing or two about that matter as well. Here’s part of Oswald’s mother’s testimony before the Warren Commission:
I think Lee was an agent. I cannot prove Lee was an agent. But I have facts that may lead up to them . . . I have as much circumstantial evidence that Lee was an agent, as the Dallas police have that he was a murderer.536
Good point, Marguerite!
526 Judyth Vary Baker, Me & Lee: How I came to know, love and lose Lee Harvey Oswald (TrineDay: 2011): meandlee.com/
527 “Lee Harvey Oswald’s ‘ex-girlfriend’ talks conspiracy,” CBS News, November 28, 2012: cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=50135979n
528 Madeleine D. Brown, Texas in the Morning: The Love Story of Madeleine Brown and President Lyndon Baines Johnson (Conservatory Press: 1997), 166; John Simkin, “Suite 8F Group,” Spartacus Educational, retrieved 20 May 2013: spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKgroup8F.htm
529 Brown, Texas in the Morning, 166, emphasis in original.
530 RIE & Robert Gaylon Ross, Sr., “The Clint Murchison Meeting—November 21, 1963,” (Documentary), retrieved 18 May 2013: youtube.com/watch?v=POmdd6HQsus
531 Brown, Texas in the Morning, 189.
532 Lee Harvey Oswald’s widow believes he didn’t act alone,” Associated Press, September 28, 1988: news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1310&dat=19880928&id=mOdVAAAAIBAJ&sjid=r-EDAAAAIBAJ&pg=6750,6875130
533 Ibid.
534 “Marina Porter (Marina Oswald) interview, NBC, 1993,” retrieved 18 May 2013: youtube.com/watch?v=swHZ0DxB8n8
535 Ibid.
536 John Kelin, “Fair Play for Oswald,” November 1993: acorn.net/jfkplace/09/fp.back_issues/03rd_Issue/fp_Oz.html
53
Fabian Escalante and Conclusions of Cuban Intelligence Study
In 1960, Fabian Escalante was Chief of Counterintelligence with Cuba’s Department of State Security—Cuba’s counterpart of the CIA, known as G-2. He actively oversaw counterintelligence tactics regarding efforts to “double” Cuban intelligence agents and otherwise falsified intelligence matters regarding Castro and Cuba.
In 1976, Escalante became head of the whole Department of State Security—the equivalent of CIA Director. In that capacity, which coincided with the investigations being conducted by the House Select Committee on Assassinations, Escalante cooperated with U.S. investigators who were sent to meet with him.
In 1995, Escalante authored the book, The Secret War: CIA Covert Operations Against Castro, 1959–62. He then published JFK: The Cuba Files in 2006, detailing reports from Cuban counterintelligence agents who had successfully infiltrated anti-Castro groups in Miami.
He had also become head of the Cuban Security Studies Center in 1993. In that capacity, Escalante led a major study based on information that was available to him from his unique positions of power. So the conclusions of such a serious intelligence study are not something to be taken lightly.
Here’s what happened according to our judgment. The hawks never supported, they didn’t understand this strategy, didn’t agree. Anything that didn’t agree with a new invasion of Cuba, they didn’t agree with. We think the hawks felt themselves betrayed. According to our judgment there were two strategies to be followed by the US: (1) from the administration; (2) and one from the CIA, the Cuban exiles, and the Mafia—and even they had their own independent objectives. Around that on the part of this latter group, there developed this need to assassinate Kennedy. It seemed to them that Kennedy was not in agreement to the new invasion.537
Author Dick Russell attended a special conference in Nassau between U.S. researchers and Fabian Escalante and detailed some of his revelations:
The most intriguing news to come out of the Nassau conference, however, was Escalante’s revelation about what another leader of the Alpha 66 group allegedly told him. As we have seen, [agent Richard Case] Nagell would never reveal the true identities of ‘Angel’ and ‘Leopoldo’—the two Cuban exiles who he said had deceived Oswald into believing they were Castro operatives. Instead, on several occasions when I prodded him, Nagell had cleverly steered the conversation toward a man named Tony Cuesta—indicating that this individual possessed the knowledge that he himself chose not to express. Cuesta, as noted earlier, had been taken prisoner in Cuba during a raid in 1966.
“Cuesta was blinded [in an explosion] and spent most of his time in the hospital,” Escalante recalled. In 1978, he was among a group of imprisoned exiles released through an initiative of the Carter Administration. “A few days before he was to leave,” according to Escalante, “I had several conversations with Cuesta. He volunteered, ‘I want to tell you something very important, but I do not want this made public because I am returning to my family in Miami—and this could be very dangerous.’ I think this was a little bit of thanks on his part for the medical care he received.”
Escalante said he was only revealing Cuesta’s story because the man had died in Miami in 1994. In a declaration he is said to have written for the Cubans, Cuesta named two other exiles as having been involved in plotting the Kennedy assassination. Their names were Eladio del Valle and Herminio Diaz Garcia.538
537 Fabian Escalante, Cuban Officials and JFK Historians Conference, December 7, 1995: spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKescalante.htm
538 The Man Who Knew Too Much; dickrussell.org/articles/richard.htm
SECTION FOUR
The Why, Who, and How
54
The “Military-Industrial Complex,” JFK’s Foreign Policy & the Joint Chiefs of Staff
He may have been President of
the United States, but John F. Kennedy was at war with his own national security structure.
On July 20, 1961, President Kennedy stormed out of a formal meeting of the National Security Council because he was thoroughly disgusted at the fact that he had just been seriously requested to approve a plan for a surprise nuclear attack against the Soviet Union; a plan that was presented “as though it were for a kindergarten class” by General Lemnitzer, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Allen Dulles, Director of the CIA.539
Kennedy told his Secretary of State about the incident and then said bitterly:
And we call ourselves the human race.540
So it’s no secret that JFK was having huge trouble with his own people in Washington—especially the Joint Chiefs of Staff.541 Those difficulties were extreme and were related to what they perceived as his “too soft” position on communism and his foreign policy overall, as well as his attempts to avoid military interventions that the Joint Chiefs saw as necessary and desirable.
It is very well-documented that JFK not only intended on withdrawing troops from Vietnam, but also on sharply reducing the nuclear threat by going full steam ahead on a nuclear test ban treaty, to be followed by serious negotiations on arms reduction between all the world’s nuclear powers—and accompanied by serious efforts of détente with the Soviet Union, Cuba, and the entire Eastern Bloc.542
These efforts made JFK about as unpopular with the CIA and the Joint Chiefs as a fox in a chicken coop. They hated his guts, openly and intensely. They also opposed his efforts in every way possible to them, including disobeying specific Presidential directives to cease and desist in all covert actions against Cuba. It didn’t stop them; they conducted their raids and black ops anyway, and just failed to notify the President about it.543 It was a war right here at home in Washington.
President Eisenhower, who preceded Kennedy in office, apparently saw the whole thing coming. His farewell address to the nation contained a specific warning that few understood at the time but which now, in retrospect, seems uncanny and very eerie. These were his exact words:
This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence—economic, political, even spiritual—is felt in every city, every state house, every office of the federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.544
Those were strangely direct and harshly chosen words for an outgoing President of the United States.
The clash between those forces—an outgoing President’s warning of the imminent dangers and increasing powers of a “Military-Industrial Complex”; versus the traditional principles of our Republic embodied in the Democratic principles of diplomacy and negotiation—quite clearly came to the flash point of confrontation during Kennedy’s presidency.
539 Talbot, Brothers, 68—69.
540 Talbot, Brothers, 69.
541 Talbot, Brothers.
542 James W. Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable: Why he died and why it matters (Touchstone: 2010); Talbot, Brothers.
543 Ibid.
544 President Dwight D. Eisenhower, “Farewell Address,” January 17, 1961: pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/primary-resources/eisenhower-farewell/
55
The Kennedy Administration’s War on Organized Crime & Big Oil
As if the Kennedy Administration didn’t have enough enemies on the foreign policy and military fronts, its domestic and economic policies also angered a lot of other very powerful people.
As amazing as it sounds, even though there had been many Mafia killings during Prohibition, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover refused to even acknowledge the existence of organized crime.545 Hoover flatly denied that the Mafia operated in the United States. It was not until a big mob meeting in upstate New York made national headlines in 1957, proving that the mob had actually flourished in the U.S.—largely due to the total lack of the FBI’s attention and resources—that the Bureau finally directed some attention toward organized crime. Hoover was also a “closet” homosexual which apparently led to his being blackmailed by the mob.546
Robert Kennedy—Attorney General of the United States in his brother’s administration—was the exact opposite of that. He launched open war against the Mafia in the United States after his brother took office.
The Enemy Within, a book by Robert Kennedy, had exposed the extent of Mafia influence throughout American culture and its dangers and insidious effects.547
Then, under his directorship as Attorney General, for the first time in history, the Department of Justice launched a serious offensive against organized crime, using every legal device in the book (and a few that weren’t) to get them off the streets and limit their abilities to conduct what had been “business as usual.” It was a very organized and effective assault, putting dozens of high-level mobsters in federal prisons.
But there were persistent rumors that the mob was now being doublecrossed by John and Robert Kennedy because it was Mafia help that had given them political victory. It has been reported that Joseph Kennedy cut the deal that got his son elected. According to author Seymour Hersh:
In the 1960 presidential election, Joe Kennedy made a deal with Sam Giancana. This former Al Capone hit man was the most influential gangster in the powerful organized crime syndicate in Chicago. The deal was for Giancana to get out the JFK vote among the rank and file in the mob controlled unions and siphon campaign funds from the corrupt Teamsters union fund. What Giancana would get in return is unknown. JFK’s stolen win in Illinois was crucial to his narrow general election victory of less than one tenth of one percent of the popular vote.548
Frank Sinatra—closely linked to Sam Giancana and organized crime in Chicago—and many of his Hollywood pals, had also played a major support role in helping to get Kennedy elected.
So the mob in general—and “the boys in Chicago” in particular who had “brokered” the deal with Joe Kennedy and reportedly held up their end of the deal—felt that they should have, at the very least, received some preferential treatment from the Kennedy Administration’s Department of Justice. Instead, they got the heat turned up on them higher than it had ever been in history, and they perceived it as a betrayal and a ruthless double-cross.549
Add to all that, the fact that—in a highly controversial deportation proceeding—U.S. Marshals practically kidnapped the sophisticated Carlos Marcello and then dumped him in a Guatemalan jungle; and you can see how there were some very upset gangsters running around and wishing nasty things on the Kennedy brothers.550
On the afternoon of April 4, 1961, eight years after he was ordered deported, Carlos Marcello was finally ejected from the United States. As he walked into the INS office in New Orleans for his regular appointment to report as an alien, he was arrested and handcuffed by INS officials. He was then rushed to the New Orleans airport and flown to Guatemala. Marcello’s attorneys denounced the deportation later that day, terming it “cruel and uncivilized,” and noted that their client had not been allowed to telephone his attorney or see his wife.551
Marcello was livid and always referred to the incident as his “kidnapping”:
Marcello referred to his 1961 deportation as an illegal ‘kidnapping’ . . . he testified that ‘two marshals put the handcuffs on
me and they told me that I was being kidnapped and being brought to Guatemala, which they did, and in thirty minutes time I was in the plane.’ He further testified that ‘they dumped me off in Guatemala, and I asked them, let me use the phone to call my wife, let me get my clothes, something they wouldn’t hear about. They just snatched me and that is it, actually kidnapped me.’552
So the Kennedys were not very popular with Mr. Marcello.
Similarly, the Kennedy Administration was also going after a prize of the oil and gas industry: their favored tax treatment known as the depletion allowance. The issue about changes in the oil depletion allowance sounds complicated but it was simply this; oil millionaires were receiving gigantic tax breaks, and JFK decided that the pigs had been feeding at the trough at public expense for too long and decided to put an end to it. President Kennedy was said to be disturbed by the fact that a man like Texas oil baron H. L. Hunt had an annual income of thirty million dollars and hardly paid any taxes on it.553
Just before John F. Kennedy was assassinated he upset people like Clint Murchison and Haroldson L. Hunt when he talked about plans to submit to Congress a tax reform plan designed to produce about $185,000,000 in additional revenues by changes in the favorable tax treatment until then accorded the gas-oil industry.554
Those Texas oil barons already had huge differences with the “Kennedy liberals from Massachusetts”—in the form of dramatic differences in “fighting communism” and “treatment of Negroes,” among many others. Moving publicly to eliminate their highly prized oil depletion allowance made Kennedy about as popular in Texas as a thief at a bridal shower.
They Killed Our President Page 27
