Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy (57 page)

In an Oval Office meeting on June 23, 1972 just five days after the
Nixon-connected burglars were caught in the Watergate office complexNixon spoke with his chief of staff, H. R. Haldeman, saying:

Of course, this Hunt [Watergate burglar and CIA liaison man with the
anti-Castro Cubans E. Howard Hunt], that will uncover a lot of things. You
open that scab, there's a hell of a lot of things, and we feel that it would
be very detrimental to have this thing go any further . . . the President
believes that it is going to open the whole Bay of Pigs thing up again.

Later that same day, Nixon spoke with Haldeman again, saying:

.. . very bad to have this fellow Hunt, ah, he knows too damned much,
if he was involved-you happen to know that? [Hunt was not with the
Watergate burglars, but was in radio contact with them from across
the street.] If it gets out that this is all involved, the Cuba thing would
be a fiasco. It would make the CIA look bad, it's going to make Hunt
look bad, and it's likely to blow the whole Bay of Pigs thing, which we
think would be very unfortunate-both for the CIA, and for the country,
at this time, and for American foreign policy. Just tell him to lay off . . .

After telling Nixon that the FBI was aware of CIA operatives' involvement in the Watergate affair, Haldeman tells his chief:

... the problem is it tracks back to the Bay of Pigs and it tracks back to
some other, the leads run out to people who had no involvement in this,
except by contracts and connection, but it gets into areas that are liable
to be realized.

What could Nixon and Haldeman have been talking about? The "whole
Bay of Pigs thing" had been over for more than ten years. Nixon was out
of office when the actual invasion began and the assault's disastrous
consequences were a matter of historical record. Could they have been
circuitously referring to the interlocking connections between CIA agents,
anti-Castro Cubans, and mobsters that likely resulted in the Kennedy
assassination? Did they themselves have some sort of insider knowledge of
this event?

Researchers are left guessing. However, it is significant to recall that
when Hunt later demanded $2 million to keep quiet about what he knew,
Nixon agreed and the money was raised.

It may also be significant to consider the number of people connected
with the Warren Commission that were hired or considered for employment by Nixon's circle during Watergate.

John Dean's lawyer was Commission Administrative Aide Charles N.
Shaffer; John Ehrlichman hired Commission Senior Counsel Joseph Ball as
his lawyer; Nixon initially wanted Commission General Counsel J. Lee
Rankin as Watergate Prosecutor then wanted Commission Member John
McCloy but later accepted Commission Special Counsel Leon Jaworski
(who represented Texas Attorney General Waggoner Carr); Nixon named
Rankin to "edit" White House tapes; Nixon accepted Commission Senior
Counsel Albert E. Jenner as chief minority counsel for the House Judiciary
Committee considering Nixon's impeachment and Nixon asked Commission Counsel Arlen Specter to help with his defense.

Specter, now Senator from Pennsylvania, was the chief architect of the
controversial "single-bullet theory" for the Warren Commission. He was
a protege of Nixon's attorney general, John Mitchell, and had served as
co-chairman of the Pennsylvania division of the Committee to Re-Elect the
President (CREEP) in 1972.

Commission attorney David Belin-still its most ardent supporter-headed
Lawyers for Nixon.

In the final days of Watergate, organized-crime investigator Dan E.
Moldea revealed that military authorities, including Nixon's chief of staff,
General Alexander Haig, began to connect their chief with several mobsters, including Florida's Santos Trafficante, believed responsible for setting up heroin routes from Vietnam and making payoffs to Nixon associates.

Moldea quoted a Justice Department official as saying:

The whole goddamn thing is too frightening to think about. We're
talking about the President of the United States . . . a man who pardoned organized crime figures after millions were spent by the government putting them away, a guy who's had these connections since he
was a congressman in the 1940s. I guess the real shame is that we'll
never know the whole story, it'll never come out.

In a final nose thumbing to the American people, Nixon appointed
former Warren Commission member Gerald R. Ford as vice president after

the resignation of Spiro Agnew.
One of Ford's first public actions was to pardon Nixon of any crimes.

The question has been raised: If there was a plot to assassinate Kennedy,
wouldn't someone have been aware of it'?

There are many indications that someone was in the fall of 1963.

We already have learned of many incidents of people with foreknowledge of Kennedy's death-including racist J. A. Milteer and Rose Cherami.

It also appears that some corporate leaders may have been aware of
Kennedy's pending fate.

In the thirty minutes following Kennedy's assassination in Dallas, the
Dow Jones average fell more than 21.16 points. An estimated six million
shares of stock changed hands, wiping out about $15 billion in paper
values on the New York Stock Exchange alone. It was the greatest Stock
Market panic since 1929. The panic and confusion was such that the
Securities and Exchange Commission closed the Stock Exchange shortly
after 2 p.m., more than eighty minutes before normal closing time. It was
the first emergency shutdown of the Stock Market since August, 1933.

A few sharp investors-or perhaps individuals with a knowledge of
what was to come-had taken "short" positions in scattered areas of the
market. That is, some stocks unaccountably were sold before the market
dropped, indicating some people may have had advanced word that something momentous was about to happen.

Then when the Stock Market reopened on November 26, 1963, just
four days after the assassination-the New York Stock Exchange made a
record $21 billion advance, more than regaining the losses incurred the day
Kennedy died. It was the biggest single-day rise in the history of the Stock
Market. More huge profits were made. No one has publicly indentified the
men who made their own private killing in the Stock Market, but it has
been estimated that the profits made just on November 22 alone totaled
more than $500 million.

It has been suggested by at least one author that the immense amount of
money which changed hands on November 22, 1963, was the motivation
behind Kennedy's death. And while most researchers reject this idea,
many do believe that certain individuals-using insider information on the
impending assassination-could not resist the temptation to profit from
their knowledge.

Another overlooked aspect of Kennedy's attempt to reform American
society involves money.

Kennedy apparently reasoned that by returning to the Constitution,
which states that only Congress shall coin and regulate money, the soaring
national debt could be reduced by not paying interest to the bankers of the
Federal Reserve System, who print paper money then loan it to the
government at interest.

He moved in this area on June 4, 1963, by signing Executive Order
1 1,1 10 which called for the issuance of $4,292,893,815 in United States
Notes through the U.S. Treasury rather than the traditional Federal Reserve System. That same day, Kennedy signed a bill changing the backing
of one- and two-dollar bills from silver to gold, adding strength to the
weakened U.S. currency.

Kennedy's comptroller of the currency, James J. Saxon, had been at
odds with the powerful Federal Reserve Board for some time, encouraging
broader investment and lending powers for banks that were not part of the
Federal Reserve system. Saxon also had decided that non-Reserve banks
could underwrite state and local general obligation bonds, again weakening
the dominant Federal Reserve banks.

A number of "Kennedy bills" were indeed issued-the author has a
five-dollar bill in his possession with the heading "United States Note"
-but were quickly withdrawn after Kennedy's death.

According to information from the Library of the Comptroller of the
Currency, Executive Order 1 I ,110 remains in effect today, although successive administrations beginning with that of President Lyndon Johnson
apparently have simply ignored it and instead returned to the practice of
paying interest on Federal Reserve notes.

Today we continue to use Federal Reserve Notes, and the deficit is at an
all-time high.

Considering that the battle over U.S. monetary control by a monolithic
central bank is an issue that dates back to the founding of the Republic,
some assassination researchers believe Kennedy's little-noted efforts to
reform the money supply and curtail the Federal Reserve System may have
cost him much more than just the enmity of the all-powerful international
bankers.

President Kennedy inched farther out on a limb with big business on
January 17, 1963, when he presented both his administration's budget and
proposals for tax reform that included a tax cut.

Kennedy's tax proposals included relieving the tax burden of lowincome and elderly persons, revising tax treatment of capital gains for a
better flow of capital funds, and broadening the base of individual and
corporate income taxes to remove special privileges and loopholes and
even to do away with the oil depletion allowance.

This action brought the beleaguered President into direct confrontation
with one of the most powerful and singleminded groups in Americawealthy oilmen.

The history of oil is replete with stories of unbounded greed, business
chicanery, and even violence.

During 1923, the first major oil scandal occurred when it was discovered that President Warren G. Harding's secretary of the interior, Albert
B. Fall, had accepted money from oilmen in exchange for secretly leasing
drilling rights on government land in Wyoming known as the Teapot
Dome.

By 1933, there were calls for making the vital oil industry a public
utility with governmental controls. One of the men supporting this move
was President Franklin Roosevelt's secretary of the interior, Harold Ickes.
However, FDR was finally turned against the plan by Texas Congressman
Sam Rayburn, Lyndon Johnson's mentor, who faithfully represented Texas
oil interests in Washington.

After World War II, the Marshall Plan began turning recovering European nations away from coal to oil. Refining capacity in Europe tripled in
just a -few years.

In 1950, a secret agreement was reached between the State Department
and major oil companies that allowed all royalties paid to Arab nations to
be applied as tax credits.

Dwight Eisenhower was elected with strong support from the oil industry and, early in 1953, in one of his first actions, he stopped a grand jury
investigation into the "international Petroleum Cartel" citing reasons of
"national security. "

The same year, a CIA-backed coup reinstated the Shah of Iran and new
oil arrangements were made with Iran. Ironically, the Iranian coup was
masterminded by Kermit Roosevelt, Teddy's grandson, who went on to
become a vice president of Gulf Oil.

The Suez Crisis in 1956 signaled the end of British and French colonialism in the Middle East and the major oil companies moved to consolidate
their power.

When John F. Kennedy became President in 1961, the oil industry felt
secure.

But President Kennedy then began to assault the power of the oil giants
directly, first with a law known as the Kennedy Act, and later by attacking
the oil depletion allowance. The Kennedy Act, passed on October 16,
1962, removed the distinction between repatriated profits and profits reinvested abroad. Both were now subject to U.S. taxation. The measure also
was aimed at preventing taxable income from being hidden away in
foreign subsidiaries and other tax havens. While this law applied to
industry as a whole, it particularly affected the oil companies, which were
greatly diversified with large overseas operations.