Its been a while but coming up to the anniversary I thought I’d bring you and N22 a conversation jimmy (JR), Mick (MD) and I (MR) had on all things JFK..so grab a tea, beer, wine, smoke sit back, take some time out and have a read!!
>>> MR: So we touched separately on what’s important about keeping the message out there and talked a little about why we started uncensored on Dougs Wednesday special, I suppose the next thing question is, as we are from the UK , why is the assassination so important to the likes of we who weren’t even born in the USA?
>>> JR: well I think the importance for me is transparency. If one government can nearly get away with it, what about the others? What else has been “covered up” or glossed over? And I want to know the truth of what happened. Why all files were classified? Jfk didnt fit the mould they wanted so “they” (who are “they”?)did something about it. People have a right to know. Originally it was about the mystery and inconsistency about it (once you had piqued my interest), but the further you delve into it, the heavier the consequences are from that day to this.What got you started?
>>> MR: firstly bro I have to say I think another major point of interest leading up to the hit is JFK strikes me as the last breed of politician who had the power or is it courage as a president to implement change and indeed did force change to an extent without being bound by those around him, you know his administration, joint chiefs of staff, intelligence community..some call it reckless but only in the sense that they could see it (the hit) coming but I think Kennedy knew what the future held for him and he still did it..and I think with his passing went that breed of politician..not just for the US but for world politics…why did I get involved beyond a passing interest? Well as Doug says in reading about the assassination I felt that something wasn’t right, not just an inkling but the evidence itself just wasn’t solid or ironclad, every area of the case seemed to be ambiguous at every turn, leads left hanging, stonewalling..man the list goes on!!! How about you Mick?
>>> MD: It’s almost as though I was fated to become interested in the JFK assassination. When I was around 8 years old, in the space of a week or so I saw the original airing of The Men Who Killed Kennedy on tv (it only had 3 or 4 episodes at that time) I think it was the 25th anniversary and there were several days of programs dedicated to the various theories and so on, after seeing the Zapruder film for the first time I had nightmares about it for ages, kept seeing the head snap backwards in my sleep, then later that week I was looking through old books and found a copy of Anthony Summers Conspiracy, the 1981 edition, that my dad hadn’t bothered taking back to the library. I read that until I knew it by heart almost! After that most of my oral history and English oral reports were based on the Kennedy assassination, and I always got good marks for them. From then on I have tried to read and watch everything I possibly could on the subject. I felt immediately even at 8-9 years old that there was so much more to it than just one man. My thinking has constantly evolved as more information has been available and I am now convinced that a clique in the CIA used their Anti-Castro exile assets, with a little help from some Organized Crime elements to assassinate JFK.
>>> JR: I think the fascinating thing about it all is how you can focus on the minute detail, the state of the bullets, the ever changing evidence, the medical reports, the direction of the shots, the number of shots and how you can get bogged down investigating these and forget the bigger picture. Only when you delve deeper do you start to consider the far reaching political consequences. ie. FDR money and how that standard is still the same. If jfk administration had managed to change that policy, just think about the difference that would have made today, or if the USA had carried on with a declining advisory role in vietnam its crazy. A true turning point in history. I reckon that is the mad thing, how much would be different today? What do you find the most interesting aspect of it all?
>>> MR: you made a few interesting points there bro, and again with regards all the minutiae of the evidence..each piece, every piece leads somewhere else! Ive looked at aspects of the evidence and tried to take it as it reads from the point of view of a lone theorist and it just doesn’t work for me because the evidence doesn’t stand up as a watertight case against Oswald and that’s,when I look at it logically..for example something like Oswalds prints on the rifle, you would think that that would be a “case closed” element of proving Oswalds guilt and if you take it at face value and accept it as it stands on the page without question it works BUT once you go beyond the page and look at what, for instance, Latona says about the value of the prints in his WC testimony or how the palm print came into being when the DPD said they could find no prints at first, how it was photographed yet there was no physical sign on the rifle of the print when it fell into the FBIs hands, you just can’t ignore that feeling that there is something up, today on that issue alone I think you would run into big problems in court if you were on the prosecution team and that is just one element out of hundreds maybe thousands of anomalies and unanswered questions that plague the official stand of the WC report and therefore the governments stand..how would things be now had JFK lived? Well I don’t think it would be a world without violence, hate, ignorance, greed etc because they are human traits and you can’t push through legislation that would banish human nature!! But I’m absolutely convinced that those who previously would have been allowed to do as they pleased ie. CIA, Pentagon, the corporate establishment, would have had there wings snipped or should I say pulled off and the automny of the military and intelligence establishments would have disappeared..I think Douglass gets it right when he talks of JFK turning from cold war warrior to someone trying to open up channels of dialogue with Russia, Cuba, Vietnam etc I mean he definitely made judgement calls that he regretted deeply but was willing to accept that and try to make amends..yep the power that people were so scared of losing became safe once JFK went and I think everyone realises that..I also think ,something you mentioned earlier , about the transparency of the government,of any government..became something no one was willing to undertake once JFK was gone..and that it kind of put an end to the idea of a politician working in the best interests of the people that put him or her there..The thing that most fascinates me “at the moment” is Oswald and the intelligence community..a hell of a lot of “coincidences” when it comes to the people that Oswald came across, who he was aquainted with, who knew about him especially his path from stepping off the plane from Russia all the way through to Dallas..again if you just look at Oswald from the point of view of a WR apologist and accept what’s written on the page.(and not what’s been omitted and that’s ALOT) without question then Oswald did it but once again look beyond the page and you suddenly find yourself in a roomful of mirrors (yes I nicked that from Hendrix!)..what do you guys think about Oswald?
>>> MD: A wilderness of mirrors Angleton called “The Great Game” of spycraft, and it seems pretty obvious to me that Oswald was a part of that world.
From Atsugi to Dallas the fingerprints of intelligence are never far from Oswald. Seems to me that he was like a pawn on a chessboard, being moved bit by bit into a position where he could be blamed for the assassination.
Obviously it didn’t happen early, and it didn’t happen overnight. His mission to Russia was legitimate…at least in terms of what Angleton wanted….to wreck the U2 summit. It wouldn’t have been an approved mission at the level of the White House, but it’s possible Dulles wanted it done as well.One of the more difficult things to work out is just when Oswald became the ideal patsy candidate for the plotters.
The FPCC stuff was also a legitimate counter intelligence operation, but it appears to me that he was earmarked for the patsy role during this period.
This to me brings Phillips really into the picture. He was running anti-FPCC activities from ’61 onwards (see the Court Wood operation) he also ran the DRE which seems to have been a part of Oswald’s street leafletting operation. They helped stir up the controversy. I think from there Oswald was viewed as a potential patsy. A legitimate op was then piggybacked onto the plot and assets were used perhaps unwittingly. That might explain some of the scrambling we see from certain people after the fact.
>>> JR: What a massive question! I think that he was definitely set up to be the patsy. I had to start this reply about ten times as there is too much to say about the Oswald situation! I agree with Mick that he was definitely intelligence, and that he was set-up as the patsy. If you watch the video of his press conference, you can see the realization of what has happened on his face.
The evidence against him, its just crazy from him being seen by Howard Brennan in the sixth floor window to the nitrate tests and beyond, you can see that it wouldn’t or doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. Even the Dallas Police did not think they had enough evidence to get a conviction.
There are parallels between LHO and Gilberto Lopez in the Tampa Attempt, the police were looking for a young slim white man who had been in contact with the FPCC, Gilberto was also a former defector like Oswald, and Gilberto took trip to Mexico in 63. This looks a lot like the exact same setup as Dallas with a different patsy. To go back to your point Mick, Do you think Phillips was involved in the assassination? Do you think he was the Bishop like Veciana has said and recently publicly acknowledged ? Or do you think this was like the Hunt confession, with a bit of truth and a lot of exaggeration. I think Phillips is interesting too. Didn’t Phillips think that it was very likely that it was a conspiracy and that the intelligence agencies were involved?
What do you guys think of the two Oswald’s theory or that Oswald was a name that the agencies used for operatives like Thomas Eli Davis, who was arrested in Algiers and had admitted using the Oswald name as an Alias (Thomas was affiliated with the CIA, gunrunning I think, had a note on him referring to Oswald or Ruby, (can’t remember which?) when he was arrested in Africa in November 63 for Gun Smuggling. Similarly to Oswald, the Army destroyed his files in 73. The FBI had 200 pages of info on him that they refused to release!
>>> MR: well jimmy let me jump in before Mick does! 🙂 regarding Oswald of course its a whole world of questions..the investigation of who he was and who he was involved with was a whitewash, by that I mean any possible avenue of investigation was consciously ignored by the WC in my opinion. There are curious unanswered questions revolving around many aspects of Oswalds life specifically in the two or three years leading up to the hit as mick and yourself have already mentioned as for Lopez and Vallee they are no brainers I think in either dry runs or failed attempts .Veciana says that he saw Oswald and “Phillips” in Dallas. I think that Phillips WAS Oswalds handler but I don’t know if Phillips was privy to the process or involved in the process of making Oswald a patsy. Although I would suggest that Phillips was perfectly placed as an asset that could be coerced into covering up the Loose ends of the hit.. Its a speculative point that maybe Phillips was being played as well..you know his expertise in the area of subterfuge may have made him a perfect blackmail candidate..but that kind of airbrushes those he worked with from the picture…
>>> MD: The two Oswalds is a tricky question, there are several suspects depending on who you talk to. There’s John Thomas Masen, a member of the Minutemen, a gunsmith in Dallas, when you look into him he’s involved in a lot of gunrunning and it’s entirely possible that he supplied the ammo used in the assassination. He was in the habit of reloading hard ball ammo with softer fragmenting rounds, and both seem to have been used in Dealey Plaza.
There’s William Seymour, who is my prime suspect for an Oswald impersonator, an INTERPEN member who’s build and looks are very similar to Oswalds.
I wasn’t aware of any CIA use of Thomas Eli Davis III, but Ruby was involved with him in smuggling guns to Cuba, and when asked who could possibly screw up his story, he mentioned Davis, the FBI apparently couldn’t find anyone named Davis even though he had a file several inches thick at HQ.
I think it is possible that Phillips was used, the way CIA agents cross-decked from one compartment to another leaves a little wiggle room when it comes to a vest-pocket type operation. If you’re working in several separate places, no one supervisor is going to have a full idea of what you’re up to on a daily basis.
As Larry Hancock has pointed out, if Phillips was running say Alpha 66 off the books, then that has tremendous implications as it was a direct challenge to JFK’s Cuba/Soviet policy.
I tend to lean on the side of Phillips having been involved myself, his connections to things that keep cropping up is just too blatant to ignore.
But the real person of interest, if Phillips had been used, would be David Morales. he would be one of the very few who could have manipulated things to work out the way they did. And I am pretty convinced Morales was high on the chain of command for the Dallas op..
And so I hope you look forward to the next installment which will lead to all things “Morales”..Thanks for reading
