OPERATION ZIPPER:

[ThomZajac]

I enjoy a good row sometimes, Seamus- maybe we made a few others laugh.Looking forward to future postings-Thom

[SeamusCoogan]

ThomZajac wrote:I enjoy a good row sometimes, Seamus- maybe we made a few others laugh.Looking forward to future postings-ThomOi How busy are you Thom you wanna do some editing for me? Ive got my 2nd part to finish off on Prouty and the Christchurch Star and as you noted im crap with my toos lol. You'll find it fun theres a lot of new shit in there that I dont think to many people know about.

[Bob]

Now that's more like it.

[Randy Bednorz]

Seamus sent me a PM today, Feb 21, 2010, and my best guess is that he was mentioning his very lengthy post on this thread. I was a little groggy getting up this morning, and first started checking the most recent threads on the forum.I want to distinguish between my own speculations, my own conclusions and the facts behind them, and the types of literature that inform this topic.I have to speculate about the likelihood of Angleton's role. My understanding of the history around Angleton comes through the Tom Mangold and David Wise books. However well or badly written, they are both consistent and depend on interviews with retired CIA careerists.ANGLETONIt wasn't my idea to demonize or belittle Angleton, but the way I understand it, his career involved the following aspects:1) He was a "good ol' boy" of the Skull & Bones variety, graduating from Yale, head of a poetry club that idolized Ezra Pound [from Angleton's home state -- Idaho.] His father had been with a business-machine company, getting into OSS during the war, and bringing his son into OSS as the war progressed. In this, Angleton was a privileged entrant in CIA's ground-floor, became a beneficiary of Dulles and others, and eventually became Director of Counter-Intelligence.2) There seems to be a consensus that the DCI job had hazards -- especially, that staying in the job too long would cause someone to become clinically paranoid. Angleton certainly stayed in the position too long.3) Assertions in the literature seem to indicate that he was diagnosed to be clinically paranoid before his forced retirement.4) He drank a lot, and smoked a lot. The descriptions of his inebriated behavior suggest that he seemed lucid -- even articulate -- the more intoxicated he became. There's no telling what he revealed during those times or what he may have compromised that would have been kept under wraps while he was sober. But the "defectors-to-USSR" program would less likely have been a leak, even if Angleton imagined so. There's nothing I glean from the declassified KGB documents that insinuates that such a leak existed. There was the Penkovsky affair -- informing us about the Missile CRisis and discovered by KGB afterward, but the indications are that USSR did this without moles inside CIA, and probably without moles inside British intelligence.I don't ever remember Seamus insinuating that Mongoose was run from Angleton's desk. And I'm pretty darn sure that I never said it. What I said was this -- and pay attention, because it is qualified by its source: Helms says that the counter-intelligence projects of Mongoose were separated from Angleton's control -- that Angleton had no involvement in those projects, or the projects that involved Oswald.The indications about paranoia also spill over into Golitsyn's behavior. They inform my SPECULATIONS about how Angleton would react to the news about Oswald-as-assassin, when informed by what Angleton would have known about MKULTRA and other projects. I say that it's a LOT LESS LIKELY (as opposed to how the Douglas book argues it) that Angleton was involved in the plot, and it is A LOT MORE LIKELY that he was highly affected by the aftermath (given his paranoia). In fact, I want to introduce the possibility that Angleton was actually a TARGET AUDIENCE for the cover-story about the assassination.HELMSIf Helms is a suspect -- and he seems to be -- then it is important to hold his autobiography at arms length, but neither can we discount it.Take for instance a comparison of what Howard Hunt, Phillips and Helms say about Oswald:1) Hunt argues vehemently in his introduction to "Give Us this Day," that Oswald was a Communist and Oswald killed Kennedy. When you read that passage (which I believe I posted early in this thread), you can practically imagine Hunt pounding his fist on the desk -- even though we know he had good motives for driving home that point to the readership -- when the book is about the Bay of Pigs invasion -- not the JFK murder.2) In simple sentences ("Night Watch"), Phillips denies ever knowing Oswald, exhibiting a tongue-in-cheek affectation of surprise that Oswald had been in Mexico City or that arguments were linking Oswald with the intelligence communities there.3) Helms book is written in fairly unemotional tone -- it's a memoir. In two places, though, the tone becomes absolutely apoplectic -- to the point of flawed English syntax -- when he argues the same thing that Hunt did in "Give Us This Day."The most obvious things I can accept as certain from Helms' book is this simple combination of facts: 1) Helms knew Phillips going back to Cuba in the 1950s. Phillips mentions Helms glowingly several times in his books, and includes an autographed picture of Helms on the back cover of "Secret Wars Diary."2) Helms and Phillips met with others at Langley (including Angleton) to plan Operation Zapata. I have this from Powers' book on Helms, but there would be other sources. So Helms knew Phillips as more than just an empty suit.3) Helms book begins with his candid acknowledgement of familiarity with Hunt (Phillips' "good buddy") -- to the point with Helms keeping whole boxes of Hunt's spy-novels in his office so that he could give out the paper-backs as gifts to visitors.4) Helms quotes just about every major CIA author of the time in his memoir -- either in the text, or in the footnotes -- including Bissell and Cord Meyer.5) Helms never, never, never mentions Phillips or his books. He doesn't mention Phillips in the text; he doesn't mention him in the Index or bibliography; he doesn't mention him in footnote; and especially -- he doesn't mention Phillips' books. I argue that this is a significant omission, since he gives several paragraphs to Hunt alone, and credit to the other authors.6) Helms had commissioned Phillips to write a eulogy on Wisner for the dedication of a fresco at Langley in Wisner's honor. Phillips includes his draft for submission to Helms and the actual published eulogy in his papers at Library of Congress. It doesn't look like Helms used any of Phillips' material.7) Helms is candid to his readership in explaining Operation Zapata and "Morale Operations" (or propaganda and psy-war). But he also devotes several paragraphs to the old CIA "in-joke" about "condoms" and the weather-balloon propaganda-drops over eastern Europe during the 1950s. I can only speculate (and I emphasize this word) that inclusion of this story serves to promote a cover-story to explain away Phillips' "condom story" that appears in the juxtaposion of paragraphs in "Night Watch" -- which would otherwise insinuate a CIA project to transform Condon's book into a movie and promote the movie.I agree with Seamus that I have a great deal of reading to do when it comes to other possibilities about a conspiracy. Further, even if it were possible to read all 4,000 books (or however many have been published since the Warren Report), you wouldn't much call it "research" to limit your reading to "books about" the assassination. That's not research of any type but the "background" or "preparatory" or "secondary-source" variety. And that's why I took it upon myself to examine Phillips' books -- which are not "about" the assassination on the surface in any way that would be absorbed by a general readership.Further, I have a great deal of re-reading to do, and the development of a file-box of 3x5 cards."DEAD MAN WRITING"I pretty much agree with most of what Seamus says here. Who's alive to testify? The only real judicial notice is the Warren Report. There are document declassifications, and my resurrection of the letter to Bugliosi I photocopied in 2004 only shows that there is much at College Park JFK Collection to be examined -- 12 years after the ARRB closed down. I didn't even find that letter at College Park: it was in the PHillips Collection in the Library of Congress Manuscript room -- donated not long after Phillips' death by his second wife Gina. I seriously doubt that Gina Phillips knew the letter was in there. If she had been of one mind with her deceased husband, had known that he had informed the 1986 mock-trial on British TV, then she might have thought to bury that letter. But this -- again -- is my reasoned speculation.I don't discount involvement of a greater conspiracy of Dulles or Cabell or Bush or Lansdale or others. What I do -- is to show that it's near dead certainty that Hunt knew of Phillips' involvement, that Phillips wanted to boast about it and get his rocks off by slipping those boasts through unsuspecting CIA censors and his gullible readership. Further, the action-chapter of "Carlos" indicates to me only one thing: that Phillips borrowed or "forged" a theme from "Manchurian" to create a "Pygmalion" Oswald; that he orchestrated the essential and original cover-story or cover-stories about the assassination; that he knew enough about the assassination's detailed planning to put him at the center of the enterprise -- by implicating "El Indio" Dave Morales.Finally, he implicates George Bush Senior ("Poppy") in some way. It is hard to dismiss "Mr. Rubbers" in "Carlos" with "Rubbers Goes To Congress" in the Bush biography. The nickname is too unique to dismiss as sheer, random coincidence.So what I posit is that Phillips was one person at the center of the planning and execution. He was proud of it. He boasted about it. That leaves you with a set of theories -- in a "set-theoretical" sense. All theories must include Phillips at or near the center of planning and executing the assassination. The set includes a theory that makes him the sole instigator -- because he had access to enough resources to set it up on his own. The set also includes a much wider conspiracy with Phillips as central operative that would include people like Dulles, Bush, etc.Within a set-theoretic narrowing of the only possible scenarios that now involve Phillips exclusively (that is, all theories that include Phillips as a central and knowing participant) -- there would be several scenarios in how Bush was involved. Those would include Bush-as-knowing-co-conspirator as well as Bush-as-accessory-after-the-fact.But I have to conclude that Bush was involved in either (a) the assassination, (b) the assassination-cover-up conspiracy or (c) both. And he was involved in some way. Among those possibilities, one still must include an involvement that he, himself, may not fully understand or articulate fully. And he was certainly a beneficiary of the assassination, whichever scenario you ascribe to.On the matter of "others" like Dulles. Another point I made provides a good analogy. I say that it is significant that Oswald is only two or three degrees of association away from the Hollywood milieu that made "Manchurian Candidate." In no way do I pursue much the idea that Richard Condon or John Frankenheimer were "conspirators." They just wrote the book and made the movie, and if they knew of CIA involvement in these things, they most likely assumed that they were "doing good." The significance is in Phillips' knowledge about a propaganda project; his real-time knowledge about when the film would be released; his real-time construct of Oswald to be a sow's-ear counterpart to the fictional silk-purse of the movie's hypno-assassin.There may be other "evidence" for the involvement of someone like Bush. I'm just not familiar enough with it. Association provides reason for suspicion. Bush's link to deMorenschildt is significant for that reason. But I neither conclude, nor discount that deMorenschildt (for instance) knew precisely how his involvement with Oswald was part of the assassination planning and preparation.I've been advised to read Newman's book -- and I candidly admit to not having got to it yet. Something I should've done some time ago. Highly plausible that Angleton was running a false defector program to Soviet Union -- I made that argument myself. The Helm's material insinuates that Angleton might have lost track of Oswald; the secondary sources you cite insinuate that even if he didn't, Oswald was under Phillips' control, and we all agree on that. What Angleton knew about Oswald-- I suggest off the top of my head -- would've come through Phillips and McCord. That means a filtering of information from levels below, to levels above.DAVE PHILLIPS as "MASTER OF A CIA-UNIVERSE"I never say this. What I'm willing to accept is either a possibility or a likelihood that:a) The conspiracy was highly compartmentalized. Participants may have known each other by name in other venues, but not known each other by name in the context of the plot or individual roles in it.b) Among those possibilities -- that a faction who had worked out of JM/WAVE knew enough about the details to be held criminally responsible in court if that knowledge and the details had been known at the time.c) And -- among those possibilities also -- that there were people at a higher level who knew enough to be criminally responsible, but knew little enough that their implication and conviction might not stick -- IF the justice system had served JUstice as opposed to a justice system serving a power-elite.I'm fairly certain, though, that the more recent publications, like Waldron's, which infer that the "Mafia hijacked" JM/WAVE projects to realize the assassination -- are false trails. Otherwise, we wouldn't have Phillips' veiled boasts in those books, and an insinuation that the planning of it involved a propaganda and psy-war aspect that served the extension of the Cold War.What I find important comes from my own journey through this stuff. People entertain opinions based on secondary-sources. I hold a conviction that I discovered some things that nobody found before -- in publications that weren't "about" the assassination. So instead of entertaining this theory or that theory proposed by some secondary-source, I have my own, and I can argue my own.Seamus suggests or argues that my understanding of other research -- and other secondary-sources -- may be spotty. I agree. But this is the nature of truth-seeking. If you find some sort of evidence on your own and make your own conclusions, it may take you on a "moon-walk jump" to the facts relating to that evidence or discovery. It requires additional effort to continue jumping to other places on the evidentiary map, covered by other secondary-sources.Thanks for referring me to the Newman book. Jim DiEugenio had mentioned the same thing in a phone-conversation we had.As to my tardiness in getting back -- it wasn't from feeling intimidated by Seamus' post. It was the Xmas season, and we were very busy here. Between Xmas and New Year's, I tried logging on to Wim's web-site, and found that it was "down" or inaccessible. This raised thoughts about the hackers crashing his site in 2005 (twice in a couple months, I understand), and I put getting back to it on the back burner.I've just been busy.It's probably a better idea to make shorter posts in these discussions. I couldn't react to everything Seamus said -- there was a lot to absorb. I still have to fix breakfast this morning -- am in a bit of a hurry . . .

[SeamusCoogan]

This will be a great debate and Im looking forward to it. I think you will find we will build a fairly good consensus than decontruct each others stuff.In fact Randy lets have an email exchange and see what we come up. Can you email and lemme know. Then we can show it around I think thats important.I look forward to doing this but Randy its gonna be slow I'm like you busy as hell. Lemme know what you think.

[Randy Bednorz]

Go for it. In meantime, I have to re-construct my March budget to order the Newman book and (ugh!) the Bugliosi tome.As with Kevin Costner's line as Garrison in the Stone film: "We're goin' back into the case!"I'll send a PM.EDIT ENTRY: 8:23PM Pacific Time, February 21, 2010: Seamus misread something I said about Wisner -- insinuating that I'd said that Wisner was Director of CIA at one point. No criticism of Seamus, but only to say that Wisner was Director of the variously and euphemistically named "Directorate of Plans" or Directorate of Clandestine Operations -- whatever it was called throughout that history. Helms was an assistant under Wisner -- he says in "Look over My Shoulder" that he handled administration -- leaving Wisner to sit in his office and dream up sometimes bizarre projects, or otherwise tweak and manipulate the "Might Wurlitzer" -- the world-wide propaganda network Wisner had established.

[ChristophMessner]

Dear Mr. Bednorz, will you let participate others in your great reflections on other JFK-related fori, too? It would be so necessary! Best wishes and many greetings from Germany, Christoph Messner

[Randy Bednorz]

Yo, Christoph!I can add posts to other threads, if that's what you mean. But I only check in here every several days.Seamus wants to have a further exchange -- which is fine. I have some reading to do, myself.

[Bob]

It's always good to hear from you Randy. Thanks for the education about the mind of David Phillips.

[Bruce Patrick Brychek]

11.23.2012Dear JFK Murder Solved Forum Members and Readers:10.16.2009 - I originally Posted this Important Headline and information targeting the 2012 alleged release date of Information On The Assassination Of JFK.A lengthy, powerful discussion developed that is worth reviewing today, 11.23.2012 while consideringdeveloping, and evaluating your Thought Processes today.WILL ANY MEANINGFUL, TRUTHFUL JFK INFORMATION BE RELAEASED ?WHAT ARE YOUR STRONGEST ARGUMENTS EITHER PRO OR CON ?As always, I strongly recommend that you first read, research, and study material completely about a Subject Matter, and then formulated your own Opinions and Theories.Any additional analyses, interviews, investigations, readings, research, studies, thoughts, or writings on anyaspect of this Subject Matter ?Bear in mind that w are trying to attract and educate a Whole New Generation of JFK Researchers who maynot be as well versed as you.Comments ?Respectfully,BB.