Dead Wrong: Straight Facts on the Country's Most Controversial Cover-Ups (34 page)

•We know that he quickly called the Director of the CIA, screaming into the telephone: “Did the CIA kill my brother?!”
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•
And
we know that it was Bobby Kennedy’s very own Attorney General’s Office which actually
originated
the coverup, via the memo from staunch Kennedy ally Nick Katzenbach.

Bobby Kennedy called the CIA Director:

“Bobby said that ‘at the time’ of JFK’s death, he ‘asked (CIA Director John) McCone . if they had killed my brother, and I asked him in a way that he couldn’t lie to me, and they hadn’t.’ This statement is important, because Bobby said he asked McCone ‘at the time’ JFK died, meaning something about JFK’s murder made him quickly suspect that the CIA might have been involved.

Second, how could Bobby ask McCone ‘in a way that he couldn’t lie to me’ unless there was some particular operation both men knew about? Clearly, Bobby was asking McCone if a plan meant for Castro had been used on his brother instead . Bobby Kennedy also said that ‘McCone thought there were two people involved in the shooting.’”
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RFK registered immediate recognition of Oswald’s name:

Robert Kennedy registered immediate recognition of Oswald’s name because he knew that Oswald was a component of the anti-Castro operations which RFK headed.

According to recent research:

“Oswald was one of ten dossiers given to RFK to assassinate Castro.”
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“‘Alba’s sources for this information’ included ‘John Rice of the Secret Service (who parked his car in Alba’s garage)’. Alba’s ‘sources also told him that after the assassination, RFK was seen in the Justice Department wailing, ‘I’ve killed my own brother!’”
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Historian John Simkin makes a very astute observation:

“One thing that has always puzzled me is the behavior of Robert Kennedy after the assassination. It must have been clear within hours of it happening that his brother had been killed by the Mafia with the support of rogue elements in the CIA and FBI. Yet, rather than calling for a full investigation into this possibility, he even took measures that attempted to cover up the conspiracy (taking control of the brain and autopsy X-rays that showed he had been hit in the front as well as in the back) ... John F. Kennedy did not in fact order an end to Executive Action. What he tried to do was to bring it under his own control. The plan to assassinate Fidel Castro now became known as Operation Freedom and was to be run by his brother Robert Kennedy ... Now consider the reaction of Robert Kennedy to the news that the man he had arranged to kill Castro had killed his brother. Any full investigation of Oswald and the Kennedy assassination would reveal details of Operation Freedom. What (the conspirators) had cleverly done was to implicate Robert Kennedy into the killing of his brother. He could now be guaranteed to join in the cover-up.”
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The fact that Oswald was manipulated into the tangled web of the JFK plot, assured that no official investigation ever could be made into his identity. Alarm bells went off all over Washington the moment that Oswald’s name was mentioned because, those in a position to know, knew that U.S. intelligence had been seriously compromised. As some researchers conclude:

“The rifle fire in Dallas that killed John F. Kennedy didn’t just start a frantic effort to find his assassins. JFK’s murder also launched a flurry of covert actions by officials like Robert F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Helms to hide the fact that the United States was on the brink of invading Cuba as part of a JFK-authorized coup only ten days away. The plan’s exposure could have cost the life of JFK’s coup leader, Cuban Army Commander Juan Almeida, and led to a nuclear confrontation with the Soviets, just a year after the Cuban Missile Crisis.”
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Therefore, in the eyes of many in the JFK research community, the assassination was clearly a double-edged sword that was also a provocation for war:

“The assassination of President Kennedy was, to put it simply, an anti- Castro’provocation’, an act designed to be blamed on Castro to justify a punitive American invasion of the island. Such action would most clearly benefit the Mafia chieftains who had lost their gambling holdings in Havana because of Castro, and CIA agents who had lost their credibility with the Cuban exile freedom fighters from the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion.”
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The dark “beauty” of the “black op” that killed President Kennedy was that—by its very nature—it
forced the victims to cover up the crime.
Why else would Robert Kennedy have been handcuffed? He was still the Attorney General of the United States with a vast army of investigators at his disposal. Yet he refused to investigate the murder of his own brother. President Johnson did not handcuff Robert Kennedy—the Attorney General was free to pursue his tasks as he saw fit. His actions were handcuffed by the
very nature
of the operation which took JFK’s life.

It should also be noted that RFK personally blamed Carlos Marcello for his brother’s death, and that was something that Bobby confided to several associates.
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As we mentioned in the Marilyn Monroe chapter, there is an unfortunate tendency among researchers to divide into what they consider “pro-Kennedy” and “anti-Kennedy camps.” The resulting polarization creates a type of “block” among some in the research community, who seem to be in denial that the Kennedy brothers (John and Robert) had extramarital affairs (both clearly did), and that Robert Kennedy was present at the home of Marilyn Monroe on the day of her death (which he clearly was). In much the same manner, many researchers divide into camps on the JFK assassination, the most popular of which is that “the CIA did it.” The problem is that, as a result, at least to some in the JFK research community, anything that suggests less than a total belief in the theory that the CIA “did it” tends to be perceived as somehow less than respectful to the Kennedy legacy.

The above notion is both mistaken and misinformed. Genuine research does not
color
itself according to political alliances; it simply follows wher-ever the evidence truly leads. The fact of the matter is that
collectively,
the CIA couldn’t order a pizza—they are a huge organization composed of thousands of individuals of myriad factions and persuasions.

Instead, when we analyze both pre- and post-assassination actions, what we see is a clear pattern of CIA action (as an
agency)
that is in
opposition
to the plots to kill JFK.

The CIA Almost Went Public:

CIA veteran Victor Marchetti, former Executive Assistant to Deputy Director, CIA, in the book he co-authored,
The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence,
exposed an astonishing revelation of which he had direct knowledge:

“ ... at one time the CIA Director considered a public admission that some CIA field agents had been involved in the Kennedy assassination.”
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Logic demands, however, that we realize that the converse of that is then also true; the CIA, as an agency, did not actively plan the assassination. That’s
why
they actually considered “going public” about the actions of several agents (here, those who mistakenly consider themselves Kennedy “loyalists” would point out the intelligence technique known as a “limited hangout”—but that’s an inappropriate attachment to the aforementioned point because there was clearly no
need
to go public). We also know that because, rather than smashing the conspiracy that killed his brother, Robert Kennedy used his office as Attorney General of the United States in 1963 to
cover up
that conspiracy.

CIA officer Victor Marchetti and others in a position to know such as David Atlee Phillips, also gave their personal opinions that although rogue agents were involved, the CIA itself (“as an agency”) was not to blame for the assassination.

Former CIA officer Victor Marchetti made it clear in his work and his writing that he cared deeply about divulging the truth to the American people on intelligence matters. Yet he astutely adds:

Dr. John Newman—who was privy to high levels of intelligence while serving as Executive Assistant to Director, National Security Agency—agrees with Victor Marchetti’s opinion that the documentary evidence does not suggest that the CIA, as an agency, was behind the assassination. However, he also notes that: “we can finally say with some authority that the CIA was spawning a web of deception about Oswald weeks before the president’s murder, a fact that may have directly contributed to the outcome in Dallas.”
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David Phillips, former Director of Western Hemisphere Operations at CIA, concluded basically the same—rogue intelligence agents
were
involved, but not the CIA as an
agency:

“My final take on the assassination is there was a conspiracy, likely including American intelligence officers.”
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It has also been documented that a Military Intelligence “Abort Team” (operating with CIA logistical support) succeeded in bringing Johnny Roselli to Dealey Plaza in an attempt to
thwart
the assassination of President Kennedy.
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Presumably, the intended role of bringing Roselli (who was very active in U.S. Military Intelligence) was to, in effect, cancel the assassination, by making it known that the “game was up.”

“A few key officials . —like Bobby Kennedy, Richard Helms, and others—would also believe that Oswald had done it (at least initially), but not for the reasons most others did. They would think that a US asset like Oswald had ‘turned,’for some reason. Yet that reason couldn’t be publicly revealed—or even fully investigated ... “
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“In a memo kept classified for ten years, the Warren Commission lawyers wrote that ‘the motive of’ the ‘anti-Castroites’ using Oswald ‘would, of course, be expectation that after the President was killed,” that ‘Oswald would be caught or at least his identity ascertained. Law-enforcement authorities and the public would then blame the assassination on the Castro government, and the call for its forcible overthrow would be irresistible.’”
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The apparent reason for all the misrepresentation and the massive cover-up that ensued was that it was necessary for purposes of national security to avert war with Cuba and the Soviets, which had been the apparent intention of the assassination. Those “several CIA agents” mentioned above apparently hijacked a “black op” planned for Castro and redirected it against President Kennedy. David Atlee Phillips, CIA Director, WHO (Western Hemisphere Operations), alluded to that when he wrote:

“I was one of the two case officers who handled Lee Harvey Oswald ... we gave him the mission of killing Fidel Castro in Cuba ... I don’t know why he killed Kennedy. But I do know he used precisely the plan we had devised against Castro.”
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That is further supported by the fact that, in a scenario surpassing the
Seven Days in May
thriller, moments after the President was shot, a false statement blaming Cuba was sent from U.S. Army Intelligence in Texas to the U.S. Strike Command in Florida and armed fighter planes were actually launched to attack Cuba.
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