Post by John Duncan on May 29, 2020 21:24:18 GMT -5
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MURDER UN-INCORPORATED:
Lies, Deception and Treason
by the CIA and Joint Chiefs of Staff
by Gil Jesus
In this narrative, we will look at the CIA and whether or not it deceived the President and was operating on its own because it believed that it was more capable and experienced to make the "tough" decisions than he was, or whether John Kennedy was running a "Murder Incorporated" in the Carribean as Lyndon Johnson had suggested. We will see how the President lost his faith and trust in the CIA after the Bay of Pigs.
And we will see that the CIA was not the only one deceiving the President. In fact, the CIA and at times the military, withheld a lot of facts from the President and purposely deceived him, beginning with the Bay of Pigs and ending with the Vietnam conflict. They did this because they knew well beforehand that John Kennedy would not commit American military strength to contain the spread of Communism and wanted to create these crises to force him to do so.
Both the CIA and the military struggled with John F. Kennedy from the time he was inaugurated until his execution in Dallas. The military in particular, seemed to have problems with Democratic presidents, who were willing to cut military budgets to further their social agenda. The Democratic President prior to Kennedy, Harry S. Truman, had fired General Douglas McArthur during the Korean War. Both the CIA and the military had enjoyed eight years under the Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower, a former general and hero of World War II. In the 1950's the CIA became the operational arm of American business. It literally controlled American Foreign Policy in the affecting changes in foreign governments who were not friendly to the US or its corporations. (Like in Guatemala and Iran.) These changes maintained the balance of power between East and West and served to contain the spread of Communism according to the Truman Doctrine. It also kept open markets for American corporations to sell their goods. The CIA was very successful in the 1950s.
Then came John F. Kennedy.
Kennedy was an unproven, inexperienced, at first even a naive leader, who had a good grasp on what America's role in the world should be and which direction he wanted to take it. His inexperience became his albatross, as everyone from the CIA, the military, and even Soviet Premier Khrushchev, thought that they could push Kennedy around and control him. He had selected a cabinet of the "best and the brightest" minds in the country, many of whom, like himself, were inexperienced in the fields in which they were chosen to lead. Most notable were two of the most important of the Cabinet members : Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, the President's brother.
In addition, McNamara, a former President of the Ford Motor Company, had brought with him a number of accountants from Ford. Nicknamed the "whiz kids", these people were pencil-pushers and numbers men. They had no experience in military strategy or battlefield tactics. But when it came down to what the military wanted in hardware and what the whiz kids wanted to cut, both McNamara and Kennedy supported the whiz-kid side. This gradual disarmament created in the military a sense of hopelessness that manifested itself in the beginning by the public speaking-out of officers such as General Edwin A. Walker. His being relieved of his command in Germany and in effect "muzzled" was a message sent by the Kennedy Administration to the Pentagon: You can disarm willingly, or we can ram it down your throats. Either way, there's nothing you can do or say about it.
By reigning in the military, the CIA and later on the Cuban exiles, John F. Kennedy had locked horns with what Vincent Salandria calls the power of the "warfare-state". By the Winter of 1962-63, the war hawks who had advised the President to invade Cuba, put US troops in Laos, knock down the Berlin Wall, bomb the missile silos in Cuba and invade and escalate the war in Vietnam, had had it with Kennedy. Kennedy's refusal to shed American blood began just a few months after his inauguration.
The Bay of Pigs
By the end of the 1950s, US investment in Cuba amounted to one billion dollars. That investment came from two directions: powerful trusts and corporations and organized crime. Gambling, drugs and prostitution were among the vices available to tourists prior to the Castro revolution. Afterward, however, he booted the American Mafia out of Cuba and nationalized all of their assets and those of the corporations. In the eyes of the US government, this was unacceptable. Castro had to go. As 1960 was coming to a close, the Pentagon accepted the CIA proposal for Operation Pluto a 2,000-man U.S. military contingent that would be ready to spring into action when the "expeditionary force" of Brigade 2506 landed in Trinidad on the island of Cuba. By August 1960, the CIA was working through an intermediary named Robert Maheu with organized crime figures Sam Giancana and Johnny Rosselli to assassinate Castro as a pretext to the invasion.
The Bay of Pigs invasion (or Operation Pluto as it was called) was the first venture into Foreign Policy for the new Kennedy Administration and the CIA's deception started barely a week after the President took office.
CIA Deception # 1 : Briefing the President on Operation Pluto
On January 28th, a week after taking office, the President and his National Security Council was given a general briefing by CIA Director Allen Dulles on the invasion, but the NSC (including the President) was not told about the use of the 2,000-man US force to back up the exile invaders. Dulles stated that there had been a great increase in opposition to Castro's regime. As late as February 8th, the President still did not know about the use of the military. It was not until the end of February that the President's NSC team learned about their use. Wishing to hide the US's role in the invasion, the President denied the use of US forces.
On March 11th, the President asked Richard Bissell to find another landing spot that was less "spectacular". The Joint Chiefs of Staff proposed the "Bay of Pigs" as the alternative landing site. The exile invaders were to be the main landing force. Keeping with the President's wishes, there would be no planned US military involvement. But that doesn't mean, however, that the CIA and the military didn't have a plan to involve US forces in the invasion.
CIA Deception # 2: The Secret Force
A force of one hundred and sixty mercenaries had been secretly trained at the camp at Lake Ponchartrain outside New Orleans. This group was kept separate from the main exile invading force that was being trained in Guatemala. This group, led by Higinio "Nino" Diaz, was supposed to land in the area of Baracoa in the Orient Province, change into uniforms of Castro's Army and pretending to be Castro's troops, attack the US Naval installation at Guantanamo Bay. With a US base under attack, public opinion would have forced the President to send in the Marines. This was the plan that the CIA and the Pentagon "had up their sleeves" to force Kennedy to use the military against his wishes. The CIA did this because they knew well beforehand that John Kennedy would not commit American military strength to the Bay of Pigs invasion and that they would have to force his hand to do so. Those who knew about this group and their mission referred to it as a "diversionary force" designed to get Castro's troops away from the Bay of Pigs long enough to let the brigade land and establish a beachhead. It was no such thing.
And yet, it allowed the brave men of Brigade 2506 to storm Castro's Cuba. It knew that without the second bomber raid on Castro's air force (the remaining T-33 trainer planes he had), the exile force would be bogged down in the marshes and unable to secure the beachhead. But they let them go anyway. Why?
Because the CIA felt that when the chips were down and the exiles were dying on the beach, Kennedy would yield and order the U.S. Military into action. They simply did not believe that any American President would allow such courage and bravery to fail.
In addition, their ace-in-the-hole was the New Orleans force of "Nino" Diaz that was scheduled to attack Guantanamo.
CIA Deception # 3 : The Report of Col. Jack Hawkins
The President asked that the military coordinator of the brigade, Marine Col. Jack Hawkins, report back to him regarding their readiness. Hawkins told the President that they were ready and that everything had been arranged according to Presidential instructions. This however, was not the truth. What the President did NOT know was that Col. Hawkins was a Marine assigned to the CIA and was briefed by the CIA on what to say to the President prior to his meeting with him.
CIA Deception # 4: The Use of Americans in the Invasion
Kennedy also said in a press conference prior to the invasion that, "there will not be, under any circumstances, ANY AMERICANS involved in any action with regard to Cuba." [Kennedy Press Conference, April 12, 1961] But that statement was false, thanks to the CIA. Little did Kennedy know, that some of those B-26s were being piloted (against his wishes and without his
knowledge) by members of the Alabama Air National Guard. This was by agreement that the CIA had with John Patterson, the Governor of Alabama, before Kennedy was elected.
CIA Deception # 5: Escape into the Mountains and the Guerrilla war
The CIA never told the President that by moving the landing site from Trinidad to the Bay of Pigs, he would be negating any chance that the brigade had to get into the mountains and fight a guerrilla war against Castro. The Escambray Mountains were some 85 miles away from the Bay of Pigs. In addition, the bay itself was not supportive of an amphibious landing. The water was shallow and navigating the reefs was tricky. The Navy (Admiral Burke in particular) was aware of this and chose to remain silent because the CIA and the military wanted this attack to fail. Why? So the President would send in the US military to support the invasion.
They were THAT sure that he would not abandon the exile brigade on the shores of Cuba. They were wrong. The President had every intention of keeping his promise of non-military intervention to the American people and the rest of the world.
CIA Deception # 6: The Importance of the Second Bombing Raid against Castro's Air Force
Much to the contrary of what some history books have said, John F. Kennedy did NOT cancel the second exile bombing raid on Cuba. It was cancelled by National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy and Secretary of State Dean Rusk after UN Ambassador Adlai Stevenson threatened to resign and accused the President of lying to him. Stevenson had been told that the US had had no hand in the invasion, which he repeated at the UN. But the cover story that Castro's pilots were rebelling and that two had landed in Florida quickly fell apart. When newsmen were allowed to inspect the B-26's which landed in Florida, they saw that they were not Castro's, the damage did not look legitimate and it became clear that this was a US sponsored attack.
As a result of all of this noise, Bundy cancelled the second air strike. When things went bad, the CIA men (Richard Bissell and General Charles Cabell) called the White House and spoke to Bundy. Then they spoke to Rusk, who told them the reason for the cancellation and offered them a chance to discuss it with the President, which they declined.
There may have been a good reason why they declined and why the decision was made by Bundy and not the President. Apparently, the President was very sick on the evening of April 17th, his temperature rising to 106 degrees. He was treated with massive amounts of penicillin and it was several hours before his fever broke and he was capable of performing his duties. This may also explain why after the debacle, Bundy offered to resign, but Kennedy said no. In a televised speech, he never revealed that he had been incapacitated by sickness and instead took the blame, saying, "it is my responsibility to make decisions that NO ADVISOR (my emphasis) and no ally can make for me."
In the end, he moved Bundy's office into the White House basement.
Later, Bissell and Cabell did speak to the President, but this time they requested that the President reconsider his position on using the military. This is what he refused. This is the only time that John Kennedy refused anything in the Bay of Pigs fiasco. He had publicly stated beforehand that NO American forces would be involved and he was true to his word. He did allow the Navy to pick up survivors and approved the use of Navy jets to escort the B-26s for one hour, but the CIA screwed up the logistics involving the time zones and the jets arrived an hour before the planes.
ZR/RIFLE CIA Deception # 7: The CIA's Executive Action Program
The term "Executive Action" is used to describe "assassination". It is "action" against the Chief Executive of a government. In 1960, the CIA started looking at three foreign leaders as targets for liquidation. They were: Patrice Lumumba of the Congo, Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic, and Fidel Castro Ruiz of Cuba.
We will look at all three of these examples to determine whether or not John Kennedy was running a "Murder Incorporated" in the Carribean as Lyndon Johnson had suggested, or if the CIA was operating on its own because it believed that it was more capable and experienced to make the "tough" decisions than the President was. The CIA's "modus operandi" in the assassinations of Lumumba and Trujillo, and in the attempts on Castro, all involved getting weapons into the hands of those most violently opposed to the target and then just allowing it to occur. This "modus operandi" was also used in the assassination of JFK. The military provided the weapons and got them into the hands of those most violently opposed to Kennedy. And although the "Executive Action" program had not yet received an official designation (later called ZR/RIFLE), the U.S. was planning and taking steps to assassinate Patrice Lumumba of the Congo before Kennedy was even elected.
Patrice Lumumba
After being granted independence by Belgium, the Congo's richest province, Katanga had seceded in June 1960 with the help of Belgian mining interests. Members of the new Congolese army, resentful of the Belgian troops who remained, robbed, raped and murdered white settlers. Paratroopers arrived from Belgium to protect them. The Congo's erratic new premier, Patrice Lumumba, complained that colonial rule was being reimposed. He made it clear that he would accept aid from anyone who to help regain Katanga and force Belgian withdrawal. Twenty thousand UN troops arrived to keep the peace. Soviet Premier Khrushchev offered military support to Lumumba and he accepted it, accusing the West of plotting against him.
On August 26, 1960, Allen Dulles cabled Lawrence Devlin, the American Ambassador in the Congo capital of Leopoldville, saying in effect, "The President has let it be known that he wants this guy taken care of permanently." Although Eisenhower would have preferred some way other than assassination, according to Richard Bissell, "He wanted the problem dealt with."
Congolese troops began arresting UN officials. Congo President Joseph Kasavubu fired Lumumba on September 5, 1960, and expelled Soviet Bloc personnel..The CIA plan to murder Lumumba involved the training of two foreign assassins (one which had the cryptonym WI/ROGUE) in the United States. They were trained separately from each other and each did not know of the other's existence. They would kill him by using toxic biological compounds that would create a disease common to that part of Africa. Although the CIA had planned to kill Lumumba, it didn't get the chance.
On November 27, 1960, Lumumba broke away from UN custody, determined to lead his followers against his replacement Mobutu and the UN troops. He was captured by Mobutu's troops three days later. On January 17th, 1961, three days before John Kennedy's inauguration, Lumumba was flown to Elisabethville, the capital of the secessionist Katanga province, and was murdered there by his domestic opponents within hours of his arrival.
Lumumba's supporters and opponents all felt that once in office, the new President, Kennedy, who had been critical of Eisenhower's Congo policy during the primaries, would force Lumumba's release. Lumumba was murdered before Kennedy got a chance to save him.
Rafael Trujillo
The plans involving the possible assassination of Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic were drawn up in December 1960. Their status was not settled by the time John F. Kennedy took office in January, 1961. The problem with Trujillo, from the US standpoint, was that he was a ruthless, brutal dictator to his own people.
The fear in Washington was that some Socialist or Communist like Castro might come along and overthrow him. So the US sought to get rid of him before that could happen and replace him with a more democratic, humane leader. On April 7, 1961, Richard Bissell approved the sending of machine guns to conspirators in the Dominican Republic. Shortly after the Bay of Pigs fiasco,.the President learned of the plot and ordered the CIA to back away from it because the American public would not stand for assassinations. The President also sent his pal Senator George Smathers to talk Trujillo into leaving on his own.
Having failed in that, the CIA attempted via the US consul, to convince the group planning to kill Trujillo to stop the plan, but it was too late. On May 30th, with Kennedy in Paris and out of the country, the CIA's conspirators stopped Trujillo's car on a highway near the sea and assassinated him.
Fidel Castro Ruz
One of the more interesting of the President's lovers was Judith Exner (or Judith Campbell at the time). Interesting because she maintained a love affair with the President and was associated with mob figures (specifically Sam Gancana and Johnny Rosselli) at the same time. Between the end of 1960 and mid-1962, Mrs. Campbell phone contact with the White House 70 times, according to the White House log.
A few days after the Bay of Pigs invasion, she alleges, the President asked her to fly to Las Vegas and pick up an envelope from Rosselli and then to fly to Chicago and give it to Mob Boss Sam Giancana. On April 28th, she arranged a meeting between the President and Giancana, who greeted the President as "Jack". The following day, she flew to Florida to have dinner with Rosselli and Giancana, who were there for a meeting, and returned to Washington with an envelope for the President.
Throughout the spring and summer of 1961, Mrs. Campbell criss-crossed the country carrying plain 9" X 12" manila envelopes between the President and Giancana and Rosselli and back again. On August 8th, Giancana met with the President in the Oval Office. The last envelope that Kennedy sent out and received back was delivered to him by Mrs. Campbell on August 24, 1961.
There are some of us who believe that these envelopes contained information that Rosselli and Giancana were supplying to the President that involved the CIA's attempts to kill Castro both before the Bay of Pigs invasion and afterward.
Why do we believe this?
Because it was after he received this last envelope that the President made his own feelings on assassination known in a speech at the University of Washington, Kennedy said, " We cannot, as a free nation, compete with our adversaries in tactics of terror, assassination, false promise, counterfeit mobs and crises." What the President was speaking out against was the very things that Dulles, Bissell and Cabell were doing.
After the speech, Dulles was fired as CIA Director and Bissell and Cabell were to follow him down the road to unemployment shortly thereafter.
CONCLUSION
I have read authors' accounts of the government's ZR/RIFLE program and its place in the Kennedy Administration. I find it extremely difficult to believe that either of the Kennedy brothers had a hand in the assassinations of other heads of state.
I base this opinion on several reasons:
Firstly, Richard Helms would have us believe that he was afraid to discuss assassinations with his own DCI (McCone), but not the President or the Attorney General, both of whom had expressed their disagreement with murder as a tool of state at least as much as McCone did.
Secondly, it makes no sense for Helms to send Desmond Fitzgerald, as a "representative of Robert Kennedy" to meet with Rolando Cubela (AM/LASH) about killing Castro without telling the Attorney General, IF RFK was "on-board" in the assassination plots. However, if Helms and Company were keeping the Castro plots from the Kennedys (as I suspect), then Fitzgerald's mission using the AG's name without his knowledge or approval then makes a lot more sense.
Thirdly, JFK tried to get Trujillo and Diem to abdicate, offering them free passage which would assure their safe exile. Doesn't really sound to me like someone who "wants 'em dead".
Rather, it appears that the CIA, which continued the ZR/RIFLE program after the firings of Dulles, Bissell and Cabell, purposely kept from the President.and the Attorney General the ongoing plan to assassinate Fidel Castro well into 1963. Perhaps the reason for keeping this secret from the Kennedys was that Helms found out that the Kennedys were security risks and didn't trust them.
Quote off
MURDER UN-INCORPORATED:
Lies, Deception and Treason
by the CIA and Joint Chiefs of Staff
by Gil Jesus
In this narrative, we will look at the CIA and whether or not it deceived the President and was operating on its own because it believed that it was more capable and experienced to make the "tough" decisions than he was, or whether John Kennedy was running a "Murder Incorporated" in the Carribean as Lyndon Johnson had suggested. We will see how the President lost his faith and trust in the CIA after the Bay of Pigs.
And we will see that the CIA was not the only one deceiving the President. In fact, the CIA and at times the military, withheld a lot of facts from the President and purposely deceived him, beginning with the Bay of Pigs and ending with the Vietnam conflict. They did this because they knew well beforehand that John Kennedy would not commit American military strength to contain the spread of Communism and wanted to create these crises to force him to do so.
Both the CIA and the military struggled with John F. Kennedy from the time he was inaugurated until his execution in Dallas. The military in particular, seemed to have problems with Democratic presidents, who were willing to cut military budgets to further their social agenda. The Democratic President prior to Kennedy, Harry S. Truman, had fired General Douglas McArthur during the Korean War. Both the CIA and the military had enjoyed eight years under the Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower, a former general and hero of World War II. In the 1950's the CIA became the operational arm of American business. It literally controlled American Foreign Policy in the affecting changes in foreign governments who were not friendly to the US or its corporations. (Like in Guatemala and Iran.) These changes maintained the balance of power between East and West and served to contain the spread of Communism according to the Truman Doctrine. It also kept open markets for American corporations to sell their goods. The CIA was very successful in the 1950s.
Then came John F. Kennedy.
Kennedy was an unproven, inexperienced, at first even a naive leader, who had a good grasp on what America's role in the world should be and which direction he wanted to take it. His inexperience became his albatross, as everyone from the CIA, the military, and even Soviet Premier Khrushchev, thought that they could push Kennedy around and control him. He had selected a cabinet of the "best and the brightest" minds in the country, many of whom, like himself, were inexperienced in the fields in which they were chosen to lead. Most notable were two of the most important of the Cabinet members : Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, the President's brother.
In addition, McNamara, a former President of the Ford Motor Company, had brought with him a number of accountants from Ford. Nicknamed the "whiz kids", these people were pencil-pushers and numbers men. They had no experience in military strategy or battlefield tactics. But when it came down to what the military wanted in hardware and what the whiz kids wanted to cut, both McNamara and Kennedy supported the whiz-kid side. This gradual disarmament created in the military a sense of hopelessness that manifested itself in the beginning by the public speaking-out of officers such as General Edwin A. Walker. His being relieved of his command in Germany and in effect "muzzled" was a message sent by the Kennedy Administration to the Pentagon: You can disarm willingly, or we can ram it down your throats. Either way, there's nothing you can do or say about it.
By reigning in the military, the CIA and later on the Cuban exiles, John F. Kennedy had locked horns with what Vincent Salandria calls the power of the "warfare-state". By the Winter of 1962-63, the war hawks who had advised the President to invade Cuba, put US troops in Laos, knock down the Berlin Wall, bomb the missile silos in Cuba and invade and escalate the war in Vietnam, had had it with Kennedy. Kennedy's refusal to shed American blood began just a few months after his inauguration.
The Bay of Pigs
By the end of the 1950s, US investment in Cuba amounted to one billion dollars. That investment came from two directions: powerful trusts and corporations and organized crime. Gambling, drugs and prostitution were among the vices available to tourists prior to the Castro revolution. Afterward, however, he booted the American Mafia out of Cuba and nationalized all of their assets and those of the corporations. In the eyes of the US government, this was unacceptable. Castro had to go. As 1960 was coming to a close, the Pentagon accepted the CIA proposal for Operation Pluto a 2,000-man U.S. military contingent that would be ready to spring into action when the "expeditionary force" of Brigade 2506 landed in Trinidad on the island of Cuba. By August 1960, the CIA was working through an intermediary named Robert Maheu with organized crime figures Sam Giancana and Johnny Rosselli to assassinate Castro as a pretext to the invasion.
The Bay of Pigs invasion (or Operation Pluto as it was called) was the first venture into Foreign Policy for the new Kennedy Administration and the CIA's deception started barely a week after the President took office.
CIA Deception # 1 : Briefing the President on Operation Pluto
On January 28th, a week after taking office, the President and his National Security Council was given a general briefing by CIA Director Allen Dulles on the invasion, but the NSC (including the President) was not told about the use of the 2,000-man US force to back up the exile invaders. Dulles stated that there had been a great increase in opposition to Castro's regime. As late as February 8th, the President still did not know about the use of the military. It was not until the end of February that the President's NSC team learned about their use. Wishing to hide the US's role in the invasion, the President denied the use of US forces.
On March 11th, the President asked Richard Bissell to find another landing spot that was less "spectacular". The Joint Chiefs of Staff proposed the "Bay of Pigs" as the alternative landing site. The exile invaders were to be the main landing force. Keeping with the President's wishes, there would be no planned US military involvement. But that doesn't mean, however, that the CIA and the military didn't have a plan to involve US forces in the invasion.
CIA Deception # 2: The Secret Force
A force of one hundred and sixty mercenaries had been secretly trained at the camp at Lake Ponchartrain outside New Orleans. This group was kept separate from the main exile invading force that was being trained in Guatemala. This group, led by Higinio "Nino" Diaz, was supposed to land in the area of Baracoa in the Orient Province, change into uniforms of Castro's Army and pretending to be Castro's troops, attack the US Naval installation at Guantanamo Bay. With a US base under attack, public opinion would have forced the President to send in the Marines. This was the plan that the CIA and the Pentagon "had up their sleeves" to force Kennedy to use the military against his wishes. The CIA did this because they knew well beforehand that John Kennedy would not commit American military strength to the Bay of Pigs invasion and that they would have to force his hand to do so. Those who knew about this group and their mission referred to it as a "diversionary force" designed to get Castro's troops away from the Bay of Pigs long enough to let the brigade land and establish a beachhead. It was no such thing.
And yet, it allowed the brave men of Brigade 2506 to storm Castro's Cuba. It knew that without the second bomber raid on Castro's air force (the remaining T-33 trainer planes he had), the exile force would be bogged down in the marshes and unable to secure the beachhead. But they let them go anyway. Why?
Because the CIA felt that when the chips were down and the exiles were dying on the beach, Kennedy would yield and order the U.S. Military into action. They simply did not believe that any American President would allow such courage and bravery to fail.
In addition, their ace-in-the-hole was the New Orleans force of "Nino" Diaz that was scheduled to attack Guantanamo.
CIA Deception # 3 : The Report of Col. Jack Hawkins
The President asked that the military coordinator of the brigade, Marine Col. Jack Hawkins, report back to him regarding their readiness. Hawkins told the President that they were ready and that everything had been arranged according to Presidential instructions. This however, was not the truth. What the President did NOT know was that Col. Hawkins was a Marine assigned to the CIA and was briefed by the CIA on what to say to the President prior to his meeting with him.
CIA Deception # 4: The Use of Americans in the Invasion
Kennedy also said in a press conference prior to the invasion that, "there will not be, under any circumstances, ANY AMERICANS involved in any action with regard to Cuba." [Kennedy Press Conference, April 12, 1961] But that statement was false, thanks to the CIA. Little did Kennedy know, that some of those B-26s were being piloted (against his wishes and without his
knowledge) by members of the Alabama Air National Guard. This was by agreement that the CIA had with John Patterson, the Governor of Alabama, before Kennedy was elected.
CIA Deception # 5: Escape into the Mountains and the Guerrilla war
The CIA never told the President that by moving the landing site from Trinidad to the Bay of Pigs, he would be negating any chance that the brigade had to get into the mountains and fight a guerrilla war against Castro. The Escambray Mountains were some 85 miles away from the Bay of Pigs. In addition, the bay itself was not supportive of an amphibious landing. The water was shallow and navigating the reefs was tricky. The Navy (Admiral Burke in particular) was aware of this and chose to remain silent because the CIA and the military wanted this attack to fail. Why? So the President would send in the US military to support the invasion.
They were THAT sure that he would not abandon the exile brigade on the shores of Cuba. They were wrong. The President had every intention of keeping his promise of non-military intervention to the American people and the rest of the world.
CIA Deception # 6: The Importance of the Second Bombing Raid against Castro's Air Force
Much to the contrary of what some history books have said, John F. Kennedy did NOT cancel the second exile bombing raid on Cuba. It was cancelled by National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy and Secretary of State Dean Rusk after UN Ambassador Adlai Stevenson threatened to resign and accused the President of lying to him. Stevenson had been told that the US had had no hand in the invasion, which he repeated at the UN. But the cover story that Castro's pilots were rebelling and that two had landed in Florida quickly fell apart. When newsmen were allowed to inspect the B-26's which landed in Florida, they saw that they were not Castro's, the damage did not look legitimate and it became clear that this was a US sponsored attack.
As a result of all of this noise, Bundy cancelled the second air strike. When things went bad, the CIA men (Richard Bissell and General Charles Cabell) called the White House and spoke to Bundy. Then they spoke to Rusk, who told them the reason for the cancellation and offered them a chance to discuss it with the President, which they declined.
There may have been a good reason why they declined and why the decision was made by Bundy and not the President. Apparently, the President was very sick on the evening of April 17th, his temperature rising to 106 degrees. He was treated with massive amounts of penicillin and it was several hours before his fever broke and he was capable of performing his duties. This may also explain why after the debacle, Bundy offered to resign, but Kennedy said no. In a televised speech, he never revealed that he had been incapacitated by sickness and instead took the blame, saying, "it is my responsibility to make decisions that NO ADVISOR (my emphasis) and no ally can make for me."
In the end, he moved Bundy's office into the White House basement.
Later, Bissell and Cabell did speak to the President, but this time they requested that the President reconsider his position on using the military. This is what he refused. This is the only time that John Kennedy refused anything in the Bay of Pigs fiasco. He had publicly stated beforehand that NO American forces would be involved and he was true to his word. He did allow the Navy to pick up survivors and approved the use of Navy jets to escort the B-26s for one hour, but the CIA screwed up the logistics involving the time zones and the jets arrived an hour before the planes.
ZR/RIFLE CIA Deception # 7: The CIA's Executive Action Program
The term "Executive Action" is used to describe "assassination". It is "action" against the Chief Executive of a government. In 1960, the CIA started looking at three foreign leaders as targets for liquidation. They were: Patrice Lumumba of the Congo, Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic, and Fidel Castro Ruiz of Cuba.
We will look at all three of these examples to determine whether or not John Kennedy was running a "Murder Incorporated" in the Carribean as Lyndon Johnson had suggested, or if the CIA was operating on its own because it believed that it was more capable and experienced to make the "tough" decisions than the President was. The CIA's "modus operandi" in the assassinations of Lumumba and Trujillo, and in the attempts on Castro, all involved getting weapons into the hands of those most violently opposed to the target and then just allowing it to occur. This "modus operandi" was also used in the assassination of JFK. The military provided the weapons and got them into the hands of those most violently opposed to Kennedy. And although the "Executive Action" program had not yet received an official designation (later called ZR/RIFLE), the U.S. was planning and taking steps to assassinate Patrice Lumumba of the Congo before Kennedy was even elected.
Patrice Lumumba
After being granted independence by Belgium, the Congo's richest province, Katanga had seceded in June 1960 with the help of Belgian mining interests. Members of the new Congolese army, resentful of the Belgian troops who remained, robbed, raped and murdered white settlers. Paratroopers arrived from Belgium to protect them. The Congo's erratic new premier, Patrice Lumumba, complained that colonial rule was being reimposed. He made it clear that he would accept aid from anyone who to help regain Katanga and force Belgian withdrawal. Twenty thousand UN troops arrived to keep the peace. Soviet Premier Khrushchev offered military support to Lumumba and he accepted it, accusing the West of plotting against him.
On August 26, 1960, Allen Dulles cabled Lawrence Devlin, the American Ambassador in the Congo capital of Leopoldville, saying in effect, "The President has let it be known that he wants this guy taken care of permanently." Although Eisenhower would have preferred some way other than assassination, according to Richard Bissell, "He wanted the problem dealt with."
Congolese troops began arresting UN officials. Congo President Joseph Kasavubu fired Lumumba on September 5, 1960, and expelled Soviet Bloc personnel..The CIA plan to murder Lumumba involved the training of two foreign assassins (one which had the cryptonym WI/ROGUE) in the United States. They were trained separately from each other and each did not know of the other's existence. They would kill him by using toxic biological compounds that would create a disease common to that part of Africa. Although the CIA had planned to kill Lumumba, it didn't get the chance.
On November 27, 1960, Lumumba broke away from UN custody, determined to lead his followers against his replacement Mobutu and the UN troops. He was captured by Mobutu's troops three days later. On January 17th, 1961, three days before John Kennedy's inauguration, Lumumba was flown to Elisabethville, the capital of the secessionist Katanga province, and was murdered there by his domestic opponents within hours of his arrival.
Lumumba's supporters and opponents all felt that once in office, the new President, Kennedy, who had been critical of Eisenhower's Congo policy during the primaries, would force Lumumba's release. Lumumba was murdered before Kennedy got a chance to save him.
Rafael Trujillo
The plans involving the possible assassination of Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic were drawn up in December 1960. Their status was not settled by the time John F. Kennedy took office in January, 1961. The problem with Trujillo, from the US standpoint, was that he was a ruthless, brutal dictator to his own people.
The fear in Washington was that some Socialist or Communist like Castro might come along and overthrow him. So the US sought to get rid of him before that could happen and replace him with a more democratic, humane leader. On April 7, 1961, Richard Bissell approved the sending of machine guns to conspirators in the Dominican Republic. Shortly after the Bay of Pigs fiasco,.the President learned of the plot and ordered the CIA to back away from it because the American public would not stand for assassinations. The President also sent his pal Senator George Smathers to talk Trujillo into leaving on his own.
Having failed in that, the CIA attempted via the US consul, to convince the group planning to kill Trujillo to stop the plan, but it was too late. On May 30th, with Kennedy in Paris and out of the country, the CIA's conspirators stopped Trujillo's car on a highway near the sea and assassinated him.
Fidel Castro Ruz
One of the more interesting of the President's lovers was Judith Exner (or Judith Campbell at the time). Interesting because she maintained a love affair with the President and was associated with mob figures (specifically Sam Gancana and Johnny Rosselli) at the same time. Between the end of 1960 and mid-1962, Mrs. Campbell phone contact with the White House 70 times, according to the White House log.
A few days after the Bay of Pigs invasion, she alleges, the President asked her to fly to Las Vegas and pick up an envelope from Rosselli and then to fly to Chicago and give it to Mob Boss Sam Giancana. On April 28th, she arranged a meeting between the President and Giancana, who greeted the President as "Jack". The following day, she flew to Florida to have dinner with Rosselli and Giancana, who were there for a meeting, and returned to Washington with an envelope for the President.
Throughout the spring and summer of 1961, Mrs. Campbell criss-crossed the country carrying plain 9" X 12" manila envelopes between the President and Giancana and Rosselli and back again. On August 8th, Giancana met with the President in the Oval Office. The last envelope that Kennedy sent out and received back was delivered to him by Mrs. Campbell on August 24, 1961.
There are some of us who believe that these envelopes contained information that Rosselli and Giancana were supplying to the President that involved the CIA's attempts to kill Castro both before the Bay of Pigs invasion and afterward.
Why do we believe this?
Because it was after he received this last envelope that the President made his own feelings on assassination known in a speech at the University of Washington, Kennedy said, " We cannot, as a free nation, compete with our adversaries in tactics of terror, assassination, false promise, counterfeit mobs and crises." What the President was speaking out against was the very things that Dulles, Bissell and Cabell were doing.
After the speech, Dulles was fired as CIA Director and Bissell and Cabell were to follow him down the road to unemployment shortly thereafter.
CONCLUSION
I have read authors' accounts of the government's ZR/RIFLE program and its place in the Kennedy Administration. I find it extremely difficult to believe that either of the Kennedy brothers had a hand in the assassinations of other heads of state.
I base this opinion on several reasons:
Firstly, Richard Helms would have us believe that he was afraid to discuss assassinations with his own DCI (McCone), but not the President or the Attorney General, both of whom had expressed their disagreement with murder as a tool of state at least as much as McCone did.
Secondly, it makes no sense for Helms to send Desmond Fitzgerald, as a "representative of Robert Kennedy" to meet with Rolando Cubela (AM/LASH) about killing Castro without telling the Attorney General, IF RFK was "on-board" in the assassination plots. However, if Helms and Company were keeping the Castro plots from the Kennedys (as I suspect), then Fitzgerald's mission using the AG's name without his knowledge or approval then makes a lot more sense.
Thirdly, JFK tried to get Trujillo and Diem to abdicate, offering them free passage which would assure their safe exile. Doesn't really sound to me like someone who "wants 'em dead".
Rather, it appears that the CIA, which continued the ZR/RIFLE program after the firings of Dulles, Bissell and Cabell, purposely kept from the President.and the Attorney General the ongoing plan to assassinate Fidel Castro well into 1963. Perhaps the reason for keeping this secret from the Kennedys was that Helms found out that the Kennedys were security risks and didn't trust them.
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