Thursday, October 25, 2007

History's lesson for today: The first JFK conspiracy theorist

You may have read elsewhere that the CIA is stonewalling the congressionally-mandated release of materials pertinent to the JFK assassination, despite protests from a diverse group of authors, including Anthony Summers, John Newman and anti-conspiracist Gerald Posner.

The documents relate to a CIA operative named George Joannides, the chief of psychological operations against Castro. He funded the DRE, an anti-Castro group which was quite well-known at the time. (It was analogous, in today's terms, to the Iraq National Congress.)

Oswald, it seems, had tried to join this anti-Castro group. He then went on to distribute a pro-Castro pamphlet written by Corliss Lamont. (Side note: In his book Destiny Betrayed, Jim DiEugenio proved that all of Oswald's copies of that pamphlet came from a print run purchased, in its entirety, by the CIA -- while LHO was out of the country.)

This site has the most information about Joannides. What fascinates me is that a newspaper funded by this man -- which is to say, by the CIA -- was the very first to moot a JFK conspiracy theory, the day after the tragedy. "Moot" is too mild a word: The paper blared the bald-faced statement that Oswald had killed Kennedy under Castro's orders.

The CIA spread the first JFK conspiracy theory. Fancy that!

Ancient history, you say? Well, I think that this particular nugget of history holds a key lesson for today.

Any group of intelligence professionals hoping to perpetrate a real plot will put a great deal of effort into spreading a completely bogus story. The fake story misleads investigators. It reduces the controversy to a false dichotomy: Either Castro ordered the hit or Oswald acted alone. Keeping the debate stuck between an "official" version and the "approved" non-official version means that no-one will look at any third possibilities.

This tactic succeeded in the 1960s, though only temporarily. I suspect that the same strategy has been employed, more cunningly, in later years. In fact, I feel certain of that.

(Don't bother, trannies. Adults are talking now.)

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

See: 9/11

Anonymous said...

I always thought that if one wanted to insure the cover up of their commission of an audacious, almost unbelievable, crime, they should be sure to sponsor the most ridiculous self-promoters and half-wits to run around telling people what they did, while "helping" them to prove their claim with "facts" gleaned from the established lunatic fringe.

It would guarantee that no self-preserving human being would ever venture far enough into that arena to where they might actually pick up on what DID happen.

priscianus jr said...

I am somewhat baffled by your formalistic reasoning about "conspiracy theories," tout court. The real point is not so much that the CIA was the first to spawn a "conspiracy theory," but that they were first on the mark with a FALSE conspiracy theory designed to lead the public toward a desired direction and away from the actual facts of the matter. And that could only be because... wait for it... they were running the conspiracy. It's called "disinformation."
http://members.aol.com/richrwg/truthno.htm

Oh, sorry. We all know there are no conspiracies. Not in America, anyway. I guess I'm just a "conspiracy nut."

Anonymous said...

The parallels of apparent government involvement and coverup between the JFK case and the 9/11 case have been noted by many writers, including Prof. Peter Dale Scott.

One technique in common is the use of imposters in setting up the patsy(ies) cover story/false flag actors. Just as FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover's memo to all FBI bureau chiefs a year or two before the assassination warned that some parties were using Oswald's identification or passport, so too did FBI Director Mueller acknowledge that 'the hijackers' used forged or stolen identifications (other than their own). While Hoover's memo was a secret, and not known for years until FOIA or other releases were made well down the road after the Warren Commission (and maybe after the House Committee on Assassinations), Mueller's comments were hidden in plain sight, by simply ignoring them. Nobody in the mainstream now suggests there is doubt about their identities, although that is clearly what Mueller was saying.

In the case of Oswald, the Agency or rogue elements therein went to considerable trouble and obstruction of justice to lie that Oswald a) went to the Mexico City embassy of the Soviet Union to seek travel papers to Cuba and b) made a phone call while there to Cuban government officials.

This, despite the fact that the 24/7 surveillance photos of those entering and leaving that embassy showed no Oswald, but rather, iirc, one David Hemming, a CIA contract agent. The recorded telephone conversation didn't sound like Oswald, either (of course, as that was impossible, if it was not Oswald, who was in New Orleans at this time). How were these bits of evidence finessed? Simply by denying they existed any longer at all!

Supposedly, the photos from the embassy surveillance were destroyed, or the cameras/film failed to work that day (sorry, I forget the exact excuse. They later were 'found,' and that's how we know it was the CIA asset who made that visit). Similarly, FBI agents were allowed to hear the audio recordings that 'didn't exist' or 'had been destroyed,' and THEIR reports to the FBI directly that the voice was not that of Oswald was suppressed from the public domain.

This was a clear case of attempting to manufacture a casus bellum, to inflame public opinion to support a war against Cuba, just as the prior plan called Operation Northwood had envisioned creating phony, staged hijackings of civilian airliner planes (to be substituted by re-painted Air Force 'heavy' airplanes flown by remote control, I kid you not, look it up! and then blown up)for the same purpose. When LBJ met with resistance from Earl Warren, who said his position should not be used for such a commission, LBJ told him the lives of 40 million people hung in the balance, referring to the onset of WW III should the false Oswald/Cuba connection become the story believed by the public.

Now, the interesting question in the current situation is the war that had been planned in Afghanistan and Iraq. According to news reports in prominent Japanese and Indian newspapers, their governments had been briefed in late spring/early summer by traveling US officials that we were planning to use military invasions to overthrow the Taliban, with hostilities due to begin by early October (very prescient indeed!). Indeed, the entire war plan against the Taliban was prepared in detail, and sitting on Bush's desk on September 10, 2001.

Now how was it that the Bush administration planned to go to war against a minor power halfway around the world without some extensive propaganda effort (which was nowhere to be seen up to September 10th of that year), unless in fact they were relying on the September 11th events to be the casus bellum?

...sofla