OPERATION ZIPPER:

[Randy Bednorz]

See? That's the problem with this. You can't disinter those veterans. I don't even know how the law is written on that matter.You'll remember a Clinton appointee, who was provided burial at Arlington, but his military service was questioned somehow. It's just a great irony. I've made a sufficient case for Phillips, and I've only made half my case.With Lansdale, all we have is that Tramps Photo with identification from Prouty and Krulak, and we get Krulak's identification through Prouty. We've got his "Operation Northwoods" provocation proposal; he pops up in Vietnam just before Gulf of Tonkin and following the arrival there of Lucien Conein. Then, you have his psy-war exploits. There was Prouty's story of Lansdale's people visiting villages with film projectors to lecture that "the communists will attack;" dressing up Filipino army troops as Hukbalahap communists to hit those villages a couple weeks later, with properly uniformed troops arriving just as the huts are starting to burn. Vincent Marchetti: Lansdale designed the ballots in the 1955 Vietnam Presidential election to assure Diem's victory, after first transporting 1.6 million north-vietnamese refugees to the south as a ready-made constituency. The only book he wrote was "In the Midst of Wars," 1973 -- in which he admits what Prouty argued: he was "always" CIA. But mostly the book argues advice on Vietnam and cites where Diem -- his close friend -- went wrong.So far, the only thing I've discovered in Phillips that could possibly connect the two is Phillips' remark about serving on the "Vietnam desk" at Langley sometime during the '50s. It doesn't help to infer that that they were in the same business -- propaganda and psy-war -- so they must've crossed paths frequently. Of course they did. But when? Where? Which gatherings of the AFIO or ARIO? Even if there is reliable information that they both knew the Luces, so what? If I had known the Luces, I could've got advance payment for writing Bugliosi's book.Of course, there's that hotel claim-check ticket from Fort Worth dated November 21. Shackelford has even questioned the legibility of the date, saying it could be a few days this way or that way. And it was Shackelford who first tipped me to Fonzi's 1994 book, which led, of course, here -- to this.The best evidence you have about "General Y" is one person's testimony: "Mr. X" -- Col. Prouty.Now it dawns on me that I should make time to drive up to Palo Alto and look at the file-boxes at Stanford. And I'm getting old.

[Bob]

Randy, while we ponder the connections between Phillips and Lansdale, one common one as you said was the Luces. Which takes us to the Zapruder film. I don't think Zapruder was just an ordinary citizen on his lunch break filming the President's motorcade. In fact, here is the data on him...Abraham Zapruder-White Russian affiliation, 32nd degree Mason, active MEMBER of 2 CIA Proprietary Organizations: The Dallas Council On World Affairs and The Crusade For A Free Europe;These two organizations were CIA (backed) Domestic Operations in Dallas whose membership included:Abraham Zapruder, Clint Murchison (owner of the Dallas Cowboys at that time) , Mr. Byrd, (owner of the Texas School Book Depository and the founder of the LCAP), Sarah Hughes, who swore LBJ in as the 36th President while Air Force One was still on the ground in Dallas, George DeMohrenschildt, (CIA contract agent AND best friend of LHO), George Bu$h (also close friend of George DeMohrenschildt), Neil Mallon, (mentor that Bu$h named his son, Neil, after), H.L. Hunt, & Demitri Von Mohrenschildt (George D's brother).In 1953 and 1954 a woman named, Jeanne LeGon worked SIDE by SIDE with Abraham Zapruder at a high end clothing design firm called, Nardis of Dallas. Jeanne LeGon designed the clothing and Abraham Zapruder cut the patterns and the material for her.Incidentally, Abraham Zapruder's obituary mis-states the date/year that he departed Nardis of Dallas, incorrectly citing 1949. The correct year was 1959, [the same year that his "partner in design" Jeanne LeGon became known as, Jean LeGon DeMohrenschildt... She had married Lee Oswald's BEST FRIEND (to be), CIA Contract Agent, George DeMohrenschildt!Also consider this...And DO NOT forget that Zapruder gave his film to Time-Life. Time-Life kept this film under wraps for years so the American public could not view it. But WHO owned Time-Life then? Henry Luce. A Bonesman from 1920. Good friends of Prescott Bu$h, another Bonesman.I also think Fletcher Prouty is a key and solid reference. Look at a letter he sent Jim Garrison in 1990 talking about Lansdale...Dear Jim, It is amazing how things work, I am at home recuperating from a major back operation (to regain my ability to walk); so I was tossing around in bed last night...not too comfortable...and I began to think of Garrison. I thought, "I have got to write Jim a letter detailing how I believe the whole job was done." By another coincidence I had received a fine set of twenty photos from the Sprague collection in Springfield, Mass. As the odds would have it, he is now living just around the corner here in Alexandria. Why not? Lansdale lived here, Fensterwald lives here, Ford used to live here. Quite a community. I was studying those photos. One of them is the "Tramps" picture that appears in your book. It is glossy and clear. Lansdale is so clearly identifiable. Why, Lansdale in Dallas? The others don't matter, they are nothing but actors and not gunmen but they are interesting. Others who knew Lansdale as well as I did, have said the same thing, "That's him and what's he doing there?" As I was reading the paper the Federal Express man came with a book from Jim, that unusual "Lansdale" book. A terrible biography. There could be a great biography about Lansdale. He's no angel; but he is worth a good biography. Currey, a paid hack, did the job. His employers ought to have let him do it right. I had known Ed since 1952 in the Philippines. I used to fly there regularly with my MATS Heavy Transport Squadron. As a matter of fact, in those days we used to fly wounded men, who were recuperating, from hospitals in Japan to Saigon for R&R on the beaches of Cap St Jacque. That was 1952-1953. Saigon was the Paris of the Orient. And Lansdale was "King Maker" of the Philippines. We always went by way of Manila. I met his team. He had arrived in Manila in Sept 1945, after the war was over, for a while. He had been sent back there in 1950 by the CIA(OPC) to create a new leader of the Philippines and to get rid of Querino. Sort of like the Marcos deal, or the Noriega operation. Lansdale did it better. I have overthrown a government but I didn't splash it all around like Reagan and Bush have done. Now, who sent him there? Who sent him there in 1950 (Truman era) to do a job that was not done until 1953 (Ike era)? From 1950 to Feb. 1953 the Director of Central Intelligence was Eisenhower's old Chief of Staff, Gen Walter Bedell Smith. Smith had been Ambassador to Moscow from 1946 to 1949. The lesser guys in the CIA at the time were Allen Dulles, who was Deputy Director Central Intelligence from Aug. 1951 to Feb. 1953. Frank Wisner became the Deputy Director, Plans (Clandestine Activities) when Dulles became DDCI. Lansdale had to have received his orders from among these four men: Truman, Smith, Dulles, and Wisner. Of course the Sec State could have had some input...i.e. Acheson. Who wanted Querino out, that badly? Who wanted HUKS there? In Jan 1953 Eisenhower arrived. John Foster Dulles was at State and Gen Smith his Deputy. Allen Dulles was the DCI and General Cabel his deputy. None of them changed Lansdale's prior orders to "get" Querino. Lansdale operated with abandon in the Philippines. The Ambassador and the CIA Station Chief, George Aurell, did not know what he was doing. They believed he was some sort of kook Air Force Officer there...a role Lansdale played to the hilt. Magsaysay became President, Dec 30, 1953. With all of this on the record, and a lot more, this guy Currey comes out of the blue with this purported "Biography". I knew Ed well enough and long enough to know that he was a classic chameleon. He would tell the truth sparingly and he would fabricate a lot. Still, I can not believe that he told Currey the things Currey writes. Why would Lansdale want Currey to perpetuate such out and out bullshit about him? Can't be. This is a terribly fabricated book. It's not even true about me. I believe that this book was ordered and delineated by the CIA. At least I know the truth about myself and about Gen. Krulak. Currey libels us terribly. In fact it may be Krulak who caused the book to be taken off the shelves. Krulak and his Copley Press cohorts have the power to get that done, and I encouraged them to do just that when it first came out. Krulak was mad! Ed told me many a time how he operated in the Philippines. He said, "All I had was a blank checkbook signed by the U.S. government". He made friends with many influential Filipinos. I have met Johnny Orendain and Col Valeriano, among others, in Manila with Lansdale. He became acquainted with the wealthiest Filipino of them all, Soriano. Currey never even mentions him. Soriano set up Philippine Airlines and owned the big San Miguel beer company, among other things. Key man in Asia. Lansdale's greatest strategy was to create the "HUKS" as the enemy and to make Magsaysay the "Huk Killer." He would take Magsaysay's battalion out into a "Huk" infested area. He would use movies and "battlefield" sound systems, i.e. fireworks to scare the poor natives. Then one-half of Magsaysay's battalion, dressed as natives, would "attack" the village at night. They'd fire into the air and burn some shacks. In the morning the other half, in uniform, would attack and "capture" the "Huks". They would bind them up in front of the natives who crept back from the forests, and even have a "firing" squad "kill" some of them. Then they would have Magsaysay make a big speech to the people and the whole battalion would roll down the road to have breakfast together somewhere...ready for the next "show". Ed would always see that someone had arranged to have newsmen and camera men there and Magsaysay soon became a national hero. This was a tough game and Ed bragged that a lot of people were killed; but in the end Magsaysay became the "elected" President and Querino was ousted "legally." This formula endeared Ed to Allen Dulles. In 1954 Dulles established the Saigon Military Mission in Vietnam...counter to Eisenhower's orders. He had the French accept Lansdale as its chief. This mission was not in Saigon. It was not military, and its job was subversion in Vietnam. Its biggest job was that it got more than 1,100,000 northern Vietnamese to move south. 660,000 by U.S.Navy ships and the rest by CIA airline planes. These 1,100,000 north Vietnamese became the "subversive" element in South Vietnam and the principal cause of the warmaking. Lansdale and his cronies (Bohanon, Arundel, Phillips, Hand, Conein and many others) did all that using the same check book. I was with them many times during 1954. All Malthuseanism. I have heard him brag about capturing random Vietnamese and putting them in a Helicopter. Then they would work on them to make them "confess" to being Viet Minh. When they would not, they would toss them out of the chopper, one after the other, until the last ones talked. This was Ed's idea of fun...as related to me many times. Then Dulles, Adm. Radford and Cardinal Spellman set up Ngo Dinh Diem. He and his brother, Nhu, became Lansdale proteges. At about 1957 Lansdale was brought back to Washington and assigned to Air Force Headquarters in a Plans office near mine. He was a fish out of water. He didn't know Air Force people and Air Force ways. After about six months of that, Dulles got the Office of Special Operations under General Erskine to ask for Lansdale to work for the Secretary of Defense. Erskine was man enough to control him. By 1960 Erskine had me head the Air Force shop there. He had an Army shop and a Navy shop and we were responsible for all CIA relationships as well as for the National Security Agency. Ed was still out of his element because he did not know the services; but the CIA sent work his way. Then in the Fall of 1960 something happened that fired him up. Kennedy was elected over Nixon. Right away Lansdale figured out what he was going to do with the new President. Overnight he left for Saigon to see Diem and to set up a deal that would make him, Lansdale, Ambassador to Vietnam. He had me buy a "Father of his Country" gift for Diem...$700.00. I can't repeat all of this but you should get a copy of the Gravel edition, 5 Vol.'s, of the Pentagon Papers and read it. The Lansdale accounts are quite good and reasonably accurate. Ed came back just before the Inauguration and was brought into the White House for a long presentation to Kennedy about Vietnam. Kennedy was taken by it and promised he would have Lansdale back in Vietnam "in a high office". Ed told us in OSO he had the Ambassadorship sewed up. He lived for that job. He had not reckoned with some of JFK's inner staff, George Ball, etc. Finally the whole thing turned around and month by month Lansdale's star sank over the horizon. Erskine retired and his whole shop was scattered. The Navy men went back to the navy as did the Army folks. Gen Wheeler in the JCS asked to have me assigned to the Joint Staff. This wiped out the whole Erskine (Office of Special Operations) office. It was comical. There was Lansdale up there all by himself with no office and no one else. He boiled and he blamed it on Kennedy for not giving him the "promised" Ambassadorship to let him "save" Vietnam. Then with the failure of the Bay of Pigs, caused by that phone call to cancel the air strikes by McGeorge Bundy, the military was given the job of reconstituting some sort of Anti-Castro operation. It was headed by an Army Colonel; but somehow Lansdale (most likely CIA influence) got put into the plans for Operation Mongoose...to get Castro...ostensibly. The U.S. Army has a think-tank at American University. It was called "Operation Camelot". This is where the "Camelot" concept came from. It was anti-JFK's Vietnam strategy. The men running it were Lansdale types, Special Forces background. "Camelot" was King Arthur and Knights of the Round Table: not JFK...then. Through 1962 and 1963 Mongoose and "Camelot" became strong and silent organizations dedicated to countering JFK. Mongoose had access to the CIA's best "hit men" in the business and a lot of "strike" capability. Lansdale had many old friends in the media business such as Joe Alsop, Henry Luce among others. With this background and with his poisoned motivation I am positive that he got collateral orders to manage the Dallas event under the guise of "getting" Castro. It is so simple at that level. A nod from the right place, source immaterial, and the job's done. The "hit" is the easy part. The "escape" must be quick and professional. The cover-up and the scenario are the big jobs. They more than anything else prove the Lansdale mastery. Lansdale was a master writer and planner. He was a great "scenario" guy. It still have a lot of his personally typed material in my files. I am certain that he was behind the elaborate plan and mostly the intricate and enduring cover-up. Given a little help from friends at PEPSICO he could easily have gotten Nixon into Dallas, for "orientation': and LBJ in the cavalcade at the same time, contrary to Secret Service policy. He knew the "Protection" units and the "Secret Service", who was needed and who wasn't. Those were routine calls for him, and they would have believed him. Cabell could handle the police. The "hit men" were from CIA overseas sources, for instance, from the "Camp near Athena, Greece. They are trained, stateless, and ready to go at any time. They ask no questions: speak to no one. They are simply told what to do, when and where. Then they are told how they will be removed and protected. After all, they work for the U.S. Government. The "Tramps" were actors doing the job of cover-up. The hit men are just pros. They do the job for the CIA anywhere. They are impersonal. They get paid. They get protected, and they have enough experience to "blackmail" anyone, if anyone ever turns on them...just like Drug agents. The job was clean, quick and neat. No ripples. The whole story of the POWER of the Cover-up comes down to a few points. There has never been a Grand Jury and trial in Texas. Without a trial there can be nothing. Without a trial it does no good for researchers to dig up data. It has no place to go and what the researchers reveal just helps make the cover-up tighter, or they eliminate that evidence and the researcher. The first man LBJ met with on Nov 29th, after he had cleared the foreign dignitaries out of Washington was Waggoner Carr, Atty Gen'l, Texas to tell him, "No trial in Texas...ever." The next man he met, also on Nov 29th, was J. Edgar Hoover. The first question LBJ asked his old "19 year" neighbor in DC was "Were THEY shooting at me?" LBJ thought that THEY had been shooting at him also as they shot at his friend John Connally. Note that he asked, "Were THEY shooting at me?" LBJ knew there were several hitmen. That's the ultimate clue...THEY. The Connallys said the same thing...THEY. Not Oswald. Then came the heavily loaded press releases about Oswald all written before the deal and released actually before LHO had ever been charged with the crime. I bought the first newspaper EXTRA on the streets of Christchurch, New Zealand with the whole LHO story in that first news...photos and columns of it before the police in Dallas had yet to charge him with that crime. All this canned material about LHO was flashed around the world. Lansdale and his Time-Life and other media friends, with Valenti in Hollywood, have been doing that cover-up since Nov 1963. Even the deMorenschildt story enhances all of this. In deM's personal telephone/address notebook he had the name of an Air Force Colonel friend of mine, Howard Burrus. Burrus was always deep in intelligence. He had been in one of the most sensitive Attache spots in Europe...Switzerland. He was a close friend of another Air Force Colonel and Attache, Godfrey McHugh, who used to date Jackie Bouvier. DeM had Burrus listed under a DC telephone number and on that same telephone number he had "L.B.Johnson, Congressman." Quite a connection. Why...from the Fifties yet.? Godfrey McHugh was the Air Force Attache in Paris. Another most important job. I knew him well, and I transferred his former Ass't Attache to my office in the Pentagon. This gave me access to a lot of information I wanted in the Fifties. This is how I learned that McHugh's long-time special "date" was the fair Jacqueline...yes, the same Jackie Bouvier. Sen. Kennedy met Jackie in Paris when he was on a trip. At that time JFK was dating a beautiful SAS Airline Stewardess who was the date of that Ass't Attache who came to my office. JFK dumped her and stole Jackie away from McHugh. Leaves McHugh happy???? At the JFK Inaugural Ball who should be there but the SAS stewardess, Jackie--of course, and Col Godfrey McHugh. JFK made McHugh a General and made him his "Military Advisor" in the White House where he was near Jackie while JFK was doing all that official travelling connected with his office AND other special interests. Who recommended McHugh for the job? General McHugh was in Dallas and was on Air Force One, with Jackie, on the flight back to Washington..as was Jack Valenti. Why was LBJ's old cohort there at that time and why was he on Air Force One? He is now the Movie Czar. Why in Dallas? See how carefully all of this is interwoven. Burrus is now a very wealthy man in Washington. I have lost track of McHugh. And Jackie is doing well. All in the Lansdale--deM shadows. One of Lansdale's special "black" intelligence associates in the Pentagon was Dorothy Matlack of U.S. Army Intelligence. How does it happen that when deM. flew from Haiti to testify, he was met at the National Airport by Dorothy? The Lansdale story is endless. What people do not do is study the entire environment of his strange career. For example: the most important part of my book, "The Secret Team", is not something that I wrote. It is Appendix III under the title, "Training Under The Mutual Security Program". This is a most important bit of material. It tells more about the period 1963 to 1990 than anything. I fought to have it included verbatim in the book. This material was the work of Lansdale and his crony General Dick Stillwell. Anyone interested in the "JFK Coup d'Etat" ought to know it by heart. I believe this document tells why the Coup took place. It was to reverse the sudden JFK re-orientation of the U.S. Government from Asia to Europe, in keeping with plans made in 1943 at Cairo and Teheran by T.V. Soong and his Asian masterminds. Lansdale and Stillwell were long-time "Asia hands" as were Gen Erskine, Adm Radford, Cardinal Spellman, Henry Luce and so many others. In October 1963, JFK had just signalled this reversal, to Europe, when he published National Security Action Memorandum #263 saying...among other things...that he was taking 1000 troops home from Vietnam by Christmas 1963 and ALL AMERICANS out of Vietnam by the end of 1965. That cost him his life. JFK came to that "Pro-Europe" conclusion in the Summer of 1963 and sent Gen Krulak to Vietnam for advance work. Kurlak and I (with others) wrote that long "Taylor-McNamara" Report of their "Visit to Vietnam" (obviously they did not write, illustrate and bind it as they traveled). Krulak got his information daily in the White House. We simply wrote it. That led to NSAM #263. This same Trip Report is Document #142 and appears on page 751 to 766 of Vol. II of the Gravel Edition of the Pentagon Papers. NSAM #263 appears on pages 769-770 (It makes the Report official). This major Report and NSAM indicated an enormous shift in the orientation of U.S. Foreign Policy from Asia back to Europe. JFK was much more Europe- oriented, as was his father, than pro-Asia. This position was anathema to the Asia-born Luces, etc. There is the story from an insider. I sat in the same office with Lansdale, (OSO of OSD) for years. I listened to him in Manila and read his flurry of notes from 1952 to 1964. I know all this stuff, and much more. I could write ten books. I send this to you because I believe you are one of the most sincere of the "true researchers". You may do with it as you please. I know you will do it right. I may give copies of this to certain other people of our persuasion. (Years ago I told this to Mae Brussell on the promise she would hold it. She did.) Now you can see why I have always said that identification of the "Tramps" was unnecessary, i.e. they are actors. The first time I saw that picture I saw the man I knew and I realized why he was there. He caused the political world to spin on its axis. Now, back to recuperating. L. Fletcher Prouty

[Randy Bednorz]

Bob -- thanks for posting the Prouty letter to Garrison. I got a lot of insight from that document, probably just before the 2000 election. See, I think his instincts are solid. He was there -- working for Lansdale. He saw people come and go. In that sort of setting, you hear things, or you just feel the tenor -- call them vibes -- in an office. But he's one witness. I think Stone built his entire film around Prouty and Garrison; they were both consultants in the film production.It proves that the sorts of things CIA did, even in conjunction with the military and the "wet-work" teams that Prouty mentioned, were so very compartmentalized. Here's a "sub-theory:" it probably has a basis in rigorous logic about "communication between nodes of a network." Once the organizations were established, it would be possible in certain instances to conduct rogue operations that were (a) secret (b) plausibly deniable (c) in which various participant elements didn't know anything they didn't need to know. [Otherwise, Oswald would've split the TSBD scene as soon as he learned that the motorcade was headed that way.]Prouty, Ayers, Marchetti have all been denounced as "fifth column." And as I see it, because they were compelled to talk on moral grounds.Phillips on the other hand? His compulsion was bizarre and different. Have we proven that yet? By the way. You forgot something about Zapruder. "Dallas Petroleum Club" [easily fitting with those other entities you mention -- and the people.] So easy it is to search for indications that may only be syllables. "Zap Zap Zap . . . " Then, you have that array of pictures suggested by the placement of artists' names on Phillips' page -- which are arrayed like the frames of the digitized Zapruder film. But this is speculation.The facts are, that the phrases in Hunt's book and the choice of words in "Carlos Contract" won't be found on single pages of any other book than "Manchurian Candidate." There are enough indicators that limit how you can swap the pictures, so they only fit in that checkerboard sequence, and in the pattern of the Knight's chess-move. Therefore, the words, their context in the connecting book and relation to sender and recipient are determined, and have meaning. Keep in mind that when "Carlos" was published, Powers had just produced his book about Helms ("Man Who Kept the Secrets") and PHillips wouldn't likely have known that Powers would reveal "Zapata." But Hunt knew, and Phillips knew -- about "Operation Zapata." Correct me -- I don't think Lyman KirkPatrick's IG report on Bay of Pigs was available to the public then -- in 1979 -- either. then again, it might have come out in the Church Committee hearings. But only certain readers would know how to "connect the artists."That's the kind of argument that beats a rebuttal from Bugliosi. So with the speculations, I can't let 'em go . . . but I can't scatter them around as part of the argument. As I may have mentioned, the Gaulloise "helmet" belongs there -- it is consistent with a revelation shortly to follow -- (or bear with me.). And we should probably air the speculations . . . about Helms. But call them what they are -- until we think -- and can argue -- that we know better. As I see it, we broke new ground with your discovery, and we need to treat it like an archeological dig -- with brushes and delicate little trowels.

[Phil Dragoo]

I had read The Secret Team and JFK, The CIA, Vietnam, And The Plot To Assassinate John F. Kennedy , but I'd not seen the March 6, 1990 Prouty letter to Garrison http://www.prouty.org/letter.htmlMasterful presentation by Prouty.How must the Joint Chiefs have despised Johnson when he rebuffed their November, 1965, request to mine Haiphong and bomb Hanoi http://hnn.us/articles/34024.htmlJohnson would surrender the presidency he attained in such blackhearted fashion, destroyed by his misplaced faith in McNamara and Cronkite.Nixon would be toppled by the sabotage of the Hunt-Sturgis team.And Citizen Zapruder was just doing his duty.Don't miss the next condescending lecture on political morality from Bill Moyers.

[Randy Bednorz]

According to Peter Dale Scott ["Deep Politics"], Johnson was being fed bad information -- even bad doctrine -- from the hawks on the Joint Chiefs. Particularly, that would include LeMay. And the Joint Chiefs were being fed proposals like "Operation Northwoods" from Lansdale.For MacNamara, he was getting bad information from Shackley who became Saigon CIA station-chief. The more you think about it, you had knots of careerists manipulating the political level. Then, because of the secrecy and plausible deniability of covert operations, you had knots of careerist left-hands who didn't know what the right-hand was doing; you had people like Phillips who -- just by providence -- were privy to a dangerous combination of projects and some in which they didn't directly participate. Even the media deceptions asked for trouble. Even though MacNamara was getting bad numbers from Saigon, he would've been on the right track if he'd followed the October 10 Trip Report prescriptions. Or would the Joint Chiefs "let" Johnson let MacNamara? The way Scott describes it, you had influence from below MacNamara influencing decisions made above him. My best impressions were that the Trip Report (and NSAM 263 -- the cover memo) was really drafted by Kennedy's staff at Kennedy's behest. There was that group that included Prouty and mentioned in one of Bob's posts. Kennedy had already made the decision to exit Vietnam before MacNamara and Taylor went to Vietnam.Even if you accept Scott's premise about the Joint Chiefs and Johnson, he would still have been influenced directly by Texas industry. Didn't KBR -- or its predecessor -- get the harbor-building project in Vietnam? There are a lot of connections in a network of connected people. Oil and CIA, for one -- but that's been made obvious -- passe'. You also had retired chiefs of staff: Lemnitzer, his friend Edwin Walker -- and they're all tied in to the Right Wing and the industry people. But I find it more unexpected to see Oswald two degrees of association from specific people in the film industry, and through more than one path. that's more connected to a motive within a plan. The others, DeMohrenschildt, for instance, were just subordinate "handlers." I don't think that deMohrenschildt knew more than he needed to know for what he was told to do with Oswald. A lot of those people surrounding Oswald didn't need to know the end to which he was being prepared. Some of them may have just been conveniently asked to observe and report.I'll agree that it was a pernicious combination of networks and influence, and agree with Scott that it was "The dark underbelly of American politics and society." But what you know is one thing; what you suspect is another; and like Denzel Washington says in "Training Day" -- "It's not what you know; It's what you can prove."

[Bob]

Please see this interesting story by Bill Kelly...THE BIG CON at DEALEY PLAZA "President Kennedy’s assassination was the work of magicians," said Hevve Lemarr of French Intelligence. "It was a stage trick complete with actor’s accessories and props. And when the curtain fell the actors and even the scenery, disappeared. But the magicians were not illusionists, but professionals, artists in their own way."It’s natural that well planned and executed covert operations are seen to be like magic tricks. That’s why covert operators are often called spooks.The "spooks" we’ve come to know in the Great Game rank as power playing Knights, Bishops and Rooks. E. Howard Hunt was known as "Knight," and David Atlee Phillips, who was born on Oct. 31 – Halloween, was known to some as Mister "Bishop."Then there’s Ed Lansdale, Frank Wisner, William Harvey, and George Joannides, now legends in their field. Each had covert aliases and code names to conceal their identities, or as the Cubans called them, "war names." The use of aliases is only one attribute all covert intelligence operatives have in common. Other similar attributes include the use of post boxes, dead drops, safe houses, microdots, codes and ciphers, as well as standard trade crafts as outlined in Allen Dulles’ book "The Craft of Intelligence." Of those who standout in the history of espionage during he Cold War - Phillips, Hunt and Lansdale, one thing they all had in common was they were trained in the arts of psychological warfare by a man they considered a legend among legends – Paul Linebarger. Paul Linebarger’s lack of recognition is a testament to his success. In his classes, often taught at night at his home, Linebarger didn’t just use his own book "Psychological Warfare," now recognized as a classic text on the subject, but had his students read David Maurer’s "The Big Con" for examples of how successful convert operations are planned and executed. In the introduction to his book "Intelligence Wars – American Secret History From Hitler to Al Qaeda," Thomas Powers relates an interesting conversation he had with General William Odom at a party hosted by former CIA intelligence officer Haviland Smith. Powers asked General Odom how the CIA could have uncovered and infiltrated Al Qaeda before 9/11.General Odom, the former Army Chief of Staff and director of the National Security Agency said simply - "Like the Sting." Like The Sting. He was of course, referring to the popular, award winning film staring Robert Redford and Paul Newman, but was also giving away the secrets behind the magic, the secrets of the Big Confidence games. DAVID MAURER’S "THE BIG CON." The movie the Sting is based in part on Professor David Maurer’s "The Big Con," a study of street slang of the American confidence men of the early part of the last century. Maurer’s "The Big Con" was first published in 1940 and updated and republished later as "The American Confidence Man." The book began as a linguistic text on the slang and lingo of the grifters and confidence men, but became a manual on how the big confidence scams are played. Maurer, a professor at the University of Louisville, Kentucky, wrote that, "My approach is simple. I determine who the good professionals are, secure their assistance, and work with them much the same as an anthropologist might work with an American Indian tribe he is studying." "I have scrupulously refrained from passing any judgments with a moral bias. My only aim is to tell for the general reader, the story of American confidence men and confidence games, stripped of the romantic aura which commonly hovers over literature of the modern big-time criminal." When Professor Maurer saw the movie "The Sting" when it first came out in the early 1970s, he felt like he was stung. Maurer recognized his story of The Big Con was the basis for the screenplay, without credit, authorization or restitution, and filed suit. Eventually and reluctantly, the movie studio recognized and compensated Maurer before the case went to court. They could produce no other published work from anywhere that mentions Henry Gondorf, one of the movie’s protagonists (Played by Paul Newman), and a real life person and character in Maurer’s book. Gondorf, according to Maurer, was a bartender in and Big Con artist who set up "Big Stores" in the 1920s in Chicago, Atlantic City and New York, running the type of Big Cons portrayed in the film. Unlike small con swindles, which usually take a sucker for whatever he has on him, the Big Con games bilked greedy and ripe victims for much larger sums, and depends upon actors performing a more complicated scheme as well as the cooperation of the local law enforcement. Maurer defines a Big Store as "An establishment against which big-con men play their victims. For the wire and the pay-off, it is set up like a poolroom which takes race bets. For the rag, it is set up to resemble a broker’s office. Stores are set up with a careful attention to detail because they must seem bona fide. After each play, the store is taken down and all equipment stored away in charge of the manager." Maurer, who interviewed many of Gondorf’s friends and fellow con-artists, explained that the purpose of the Big Con is to convince the Mark to deliver cash in a scheme that goes astray, with the Mark separated from his money but none the wiser to the real scheme. Big Con artists didn’t consider themselves thieves because their greedy targets really give them the money. Everyone in the con, except the Mark, are actors, each having a name and a role to play. There is the Manager who sets up the store, the Roper, who is also known as "the Outside Man," who identifies the Mark, brings him to the store, and assists in fleecing him. The Mark is "a victim, or intended victim, someone with money from out of town. The local Dicks (Cops) are on the Take when the Fix is in, and paid off under the stipulation that local citizens wouldn’t be taken as Marks. The Roper identifies and brings the Mark to the Inside Man, who Mauer identifies as "The member of a con mob who stays near the Big Store and receives the Mark whom the Roper brings. Inside men are highly specialized workers; they must have a superb knowledge of psychology to keep the mark under perfect control during the days or weeks while he is being fleeced." When the deal goes down, everyone in the Store is part of the Sting except the Mark, who is given the convincer, then separated from his money and made to feel like its good that he got out without getting killed or arrested. After the best Stings, the Mark doesn’t even realize what really happened. When General Odom told Powers that counter-intelligence agents operate "like the Sting," he meant that the best covert operations are conducted very much like the Big Con confidence schemes, as Paul Linebarger taught them. PAUL M. A. LINEBARGER It’s not even that surprising that General Odom would use the Sting as an example of how the crafts of intelligence works best, mainly because the best black artists in the CIA during the Cold War were trained by Professor Paul M. A. Linebarger (July 1913-1966), whose book on Psychological Warfare and Propaganda (Combat Forces Press, 1948; 1954) is the classic textbook on the subject. Besides being professor of Asiatic Studies at John Hopkins, Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger was also a part time professor at the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), a transparent front for a CIA think tank. It wasn’t until after his death that Linebarger was exposed as being science fiction writer Cordwainer Smith, and that he had worked with E. Howard Hunt in Mexico City. Those CIA recruits who were invited to take Linebarger’s SAIS classes, which he taught at his home at night, were required to use trade-craft in avoiding detection to get there so as to avoid being followed. Among Linebarger’s students were E. Howard Hunt, David Atlee Phillips and Ed Lansdale, three of the most prolific covert operators during the Cold War.When Paul Linebarger gave his lectures to young CIA officers, he warned them that these techniques should never be used domestically, or it would totally destroy our form of democracy. Well those techniques were used in the assassination of President Kennedy, and are being used today, and democracy has never been the same. Another Big Store front in the assassination drama, besides Zenith Technical Services at JM/WAVE and the TSBD itself, was the President’s Suite at the Fort Worth hotel the night before the assassination. It was decorated with exquisite works of original art supplied by a friend of Ruth Paine from Philadelphia, a coincidental fact we would not even know had the President’s not called to thank her, his last phone call on this earth. That the accused assassin worked at the scene of murder should not be surprising, especially if the Big Con techniques were used as suspected. Other accomplices probably worked there too. That the building, the Texas School Book Depository (TSBD) was owned by D.H. Byrd, the founder of the Civil Air Patrol (CAP), should not be surprising either. Byrd was a close associate of many of those who benefited from the Dealey Plaza Sting – General Curis LeMay, Gen. Cabel and Art Collins. Besides the Big Con that was Dealey Plaza and the Big Store that was the TSBD, there was Zenith Technical Enterprises, the false front for JM/WAVE, where the evidennce from Dealey Plaza and Oak Cliff lead back to.As described by former Army officer Bradley E. Ayers, assigned there to train the Cuban commandos, JM/WAVE was set up like a con-artists’ Big Store. "…The Miami headquarters was covered under a civilian corporation known as Zenith Technical Enterprises. The station, or ‘company,’ was located on the University of Miami’s South Campus, adjacent to the abandoned Richmond Naval Air Station, which had been developed by the Navy during World War II as a dirigible base….They had missed no detail in setting up the false front of Zenith Technical Enterprises…a firm doing classified government research....There were phony sales and production charts on the walls and business licenses from the state and federal governments. A notice to salesmen, pinned near the door, advised them of the calling hours for various departments. The crowning touch was a certificate of award from the United Givers’ Fund to Zenith for outstanding participation in its annual fund drive." Zenith Technical Services came complete with a front office, secretaries, photos and awards on the wall and a CEO, though in reality it was nothing more than a fake Hollywood wild west town façade. "I was totally amazed that the cover branch was able to create new people, to change identities, appearances, credentials, passports, or whatever might be necessary for a specific mission," says Ayers. "Some agents had as many as three or four identities, each used for a different task. Characters and personalities materialized and disappeared as if by magic. I came away from the cover branch with a disconcerting awareness. I had always assumed that people were who and what they said they were. Suddenly it seemed apparent that, at least in the CIA, any person could simply be playing a cover role. I resolved that I’d never again accept anyone at face value. I did not know then that my resolve would return to haunt me." Nor is it a coincidence that the head of JM/WAVE’s maritime operations Gordon Campell introduced Ayers to his "Outside man," using the same slang and terminology as the con-men Maurer interviewed for his book. Then after the assassination of JFK, which Ayers suspects was an operation connected to the Cuban ops he was working with at JM/WAVE, the "Outside Man" is mysteriously killed in Ayers' presence, and Gordon Campbell, Ayers later learns, officially died in 1962, both leaving Ayers holding the black bag. As Hevve Lemarr of French Intelligence said, "President Kennedy's assassination was the work of magicians. It was a stage trick, complete with actor's accessories and props. And when the curtain fell, the actors and even the scenery, disappeared. But the magicians were not illusionists, but professionals, artists in their own way."

[Randy Bednorz]

That's a great article. I didn't take the time to get the publication date, before coming in to post."Actors." "Stage tricks." Where did he get that information?I'm posting now pages I would call "The Gold Bug". I'm still "looking over my shoulder" at an impression that the artist-picture solitaire looks like a "mosaic," and the book was published four years after Bugliosi made that statement about building a mosaic. That, too, is speculation. How did Phillips pick Bugliosi? Would it not be likely that the court-case would attract his attention? Might he keep that in mind while writing "Carlos?"Already with terminal health problems in the mid-1980s, Phillips seems to point to his spy-novel, mentions the nephew, the stolen book and "The Gold Bug." With what we already found, this could be a general reference to Phillips' "coded-meanings" in the books. in fact, it is almost unnecessarily redundant. Here's page 165 of "Carlos Contract:"

[Phil Dragoo]

Page 165 suggests Key to Rebecca, the novel by Ken Follett, the film by David Hemmings, star of Antonioni's 1966 Blow-Up where-in photo analysis uncovers a shooter in the foliage.Hunt a con-man? Get out!http://www.saintjohnhunt.com/bond.html wherein his deathbed deflection hangs it all on the dead LBJ, having brought Nixon down with a piece of duct tape.Or was that Sturgis.Now comes Waldron and his spook muse to hang it on Cubans. As Discovery assures us The Mob did it.What's missing from the picture?Cons Imitating Art.

[Randy Bednorz]

I think you deserve a "Bingo!" Phil. "Cons imitating art."I don't want to jump ahead, but a basic premise here has been a link between Phillips and the books of Richard Condon. Before "Manchurian Candidate," Condon had published his first novel: "The Oldest Confession." It involves art theft and art forgery, but I'll go into greater detail later.Somebody could argue: "That reference to 'eighty-five' on page 85 might be a coincidence." Granted -- it might be. The only problem there: we've had too many things occurring in these books that, taken together, are not just coincidental. Especially, the array of pictures on Carlos-page-4 is not coincidental; nor is the masking of a character as "Emilio Zapata Gonzalez" whose description fits David Sanchez Morales.Patrice Lumumba was murdered with CIA participation. The facts only came out during the Church Committee hearings. Before that, it was only known that he was shot -- ostensibly by Africans; that the body was burned to ashes; that someone had taken a souvenir of Lumumba's teeth.In the Church Committee, documents emerged showing that Lumumba's body had been in the trunk of a CIA man's car for more than two hours after he was killed, and that the CIA did, in fact, have Lumumba killed.So the statement "There is no evidence . . . " prefacing the remark about Kennedy and the public who believes there was a conspiracy -- is relevant to Phillips' role in the cover-up.It begs some emphasis here that anyone who had so laboriously prefaced the assassination with the preparation of Oswald would have been deeply involved -- not just in the cover-up -- but in the execution. They would have been at the center of planning it, barring the little details of which specific killers at which specific locations. But we even have James Files suggesting that Phillips gave him some of those specifics.There is also something more subtle in way of a "parallel." Before going to Russia, Oswald enrolled at Albert Schweitzer University in Finland -- a country on Russia's western border. Schweitzer practiced medicine in Gabon -- a country on the western border of the Congo. Perhaps that is a coincidence. But it is a very consistent coincidence.If Phillips created the Oswald presented to the public as the assassin, he certainly did a good job in pointing the red-herring at the KGB. Also, note that he refers specifically to "public opinion" and alludes to it additionally on that page. Public opinion is the target and object if psy-war and propaganda.To the skeptics, I've made my argument that Phillips' priority involves avoiding evidence of an association with Oswald. That association has been declassified, and we can present it here if necessary. It is also evident from the testimony of others -- Senator Schweiker, for instance, in recognizing the police drawing, and Alpha-66 leader Antonio Veciana, recounting his meeting with Oswald and "Bishop" [Phillips] in the Dallas bank building.

[Bob]

Very interesting and illuminating stuff here. Cons imitating art...indeed. We have to think of the business in general. Black Ops is all about deniability and blaming other "actors" for the actual deed. Lot's of false flag operations...see Operation Northwoods for instance. Or better yet see the events of 9/11. How about 11/22/1963? Randy, you are correct about mentioning that Abraham Zapruder was also part of the Dallas Petroleum Club, along with folks like D.H. Byrd, the man who owned the TSBD and founded the LCAP. The LCAP had members such as Lee Harvey Oswald, David Ferrie and Barry Seal. Other members of the Dallas Petroleum Club included David Phillips, Poppy Bu$h and George DeMohrenshidt. Oh...what a tangled web we weave in Black Ops. Black as in Schwarz, as was mentioned in Carlos.