ZIPPER FILES
Posted: Fri Sep 04, 2009 5:45 pm
Below you will find an article regarding information that wasupposed to be in the zipper files:The Official Assassinationof John F. KennedybyGregory DouglasThe Official Cover Up…..and Everybody ElseAccording to a document found in R. T. Crowley’s papers, the officially organized assassination of John F. Kennedy by the CIA had the code name: “Operation ZIPPER.” This document, which is entitled “OPERATION ZIPPER Conference Record,” is reproduced in the appendix of this book, with this author’s subsequent explanation of the abbreviations used in it. In the following, the events unfolding between March and November 1963 are reconstructed using both this document and R. T. Crowley’s comments to this author.Early in March of 1963, the matter of the actual assassin became a pressing issue. Because of Crowley’s connections with the mob in Chicago (his father had been an important Chicago politician, parks commissioner, in the Kelly-Nash machine), he received the task of personally contacting members of the Chicago Mafia for advice and possible assistance. Chicago mob leader Sam Giancana, who had assisted in locating persons to carry out the CIA’s murder plots against Fidel Castro, loathed the Kennedy brothers but was far too shrewd to lend any of his identifiable men to cooperate in such a project. In two conferences in the Drake Hotel with Crowley, Giancana agreed to locate assassins who could be expected to perform in a professional manner. It was suggested that perhaps this recruitment might be better done outside of the United States. Rather than involve the Sicilian Mafia, Giancana had one of his connections in that entity contact someone in the Corsican Mafia, the so-called Unione Corse, and it was from the ranks of this Marseille-based, well-knit, and very professional criminal organization that the assassins were found. The plotter’s reasoning was that if the killers were somehow caught before the CIA could kill them first, they could only identify the Chicago Mafia as their employers, and the Mafia would never identify the CIA as the real moving force. If this question arose, the Mafia could much more easily be silenced than foreign killers could.Before the Corsicans were finally brought on board, a co-worker suggested shopping in Beirut, Lebanon, then a center of assassination professionals. The argument against this was that Corsicans would have no problems blending in the background in race conscious Dallas. Darker complexioned Lebanese or Arab professionals would certainly attract unwelcome notice in the provincial southern city.Cuban militants had been ruled out in the beginning as too volatile and inclined to emotional excesses.It would be Marseilles, then, instead of Beirut, that would supply the killers. Early March 1963, the Director of Central Intelligence, John McCone, began a series of delicate contacts outside his immediate circle.The first government agency contacted was the FBI. The first conferences with its director John Edgar Hoover and Deputy Director William Sullivan were held on March 4th. According to the ZIPPER Document, the head of the FBI was permanently kept informed about the CIA’s actions by his top aide William Sullivan. Since Sullivan is described in the ZIPPER Document as a “participant” in the entire plot, it must be assumed that the FBI as a government department was collaborating with the CIA to achieve the projected goal. On March 13 and 15, the next delicate contacts were made to Walter Jenkins and Abe Fortas, top aides of Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson. According to the ZIPPER Document, Jenkins and Fortas, and with them of course the Vice President, were also kept informed about the rising plot. Not a bold man, Johnson’s concerns were entirely typical for him. He had forced himself on the 1960 Democratic ticket against Kennedy’s wishes, and throughout the thousand days of the Kennedy presidency, Johnson was treated with contempt by Kennedy’s people. Their favorite epithet was “Uncle Cornpone,” and it became common knowledge that Kennedy was planning to replace Johnson on the 1964 ticket. To accomplish this, Bobby Kennedy was preparing criminal charges against Bobby Baker, one of Johnson’s top aides. Johnson was aware that such charges would give the Kennedy faction the ability to force him off the ticket. Since Vice Presidents traditionally have run for the Presidency at the expiration of the mandatory two-term limit, any hope of gaining the White House would have been dashed. Johnson, therefore, became a willing if very timid participant in the ZIPPER project.The two most important groups, the FBI and the future President of the United States, were hence quickly convinced to support the CIA:“11. As both the Vice President and the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation has been slated for replacement by the Kennedy faction, their support for this project was practically guaranteed from the outset.12. The Vice President came to believe that an attempt would be made on his life at the same time and was greatly concerned for his own safety.[ ]13. As the Vice President and the Director of the FBI were longtime neighbors and very friendly, the Director has repeatedly assured the [Vice] President that he was not considered a target and that no shots were fired at him in Dallas.” [LBJ was riding two cars behind JKF.] There was, of course, another power to be taken into consideration, which could successfully prevent or reverse the attempted coup d’état: the Armed Forces of the United States of America. To integrate the U.S. Army into their putsch, the Director of the CIA conferred on March 28 with James Jesus Angelton to coordinate the objectives of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the U.S. Army with the CIA’s objectives within Operation ZIPPER.The fourth cautious contact was made on 9 April by James Jesus Angleton: Lt. Colonel Bevin Cass, United States Marine Corps, was U.S. Military Attaché to the Dominican Republic and had been involved with the logistics of the Trujillo assassination. Cass was later Commanding Officer of the Marine Corps infantry training center at Quantico, Virginia.Cass obviously served as a liaison officer between the Joint Chief of Staffs and the CIA, as an entry on 14 April 1963 indicates, according to which Cass was recommended by the Chairman of the JCS, General Lyman Lemnitzer. The fact that LtCol. Cass, as a “participant,” received a copy of the ZIPPER Document, that the Chairman of the JCS was either directly or via LtCol. Cass in frequent contact with the CIA regarding Kennedy’s assassination, and finally because the JCS is expressly mentioned as a “government department directly concerned” in the ZIPPER document that had specific knowledge about the assassination, it must be concluded that the U.S. Armed Forces are the fourth big cornerstone of the assassination of John F. Kennedy and, hence, the overthrow of the democratically elected government of the people of the United States of America. In the middle of April, Chicago Mafia boss Sam Giancana advised Crowley that or the job was one hundred thousand dollars per man and there were four involved.The immediate overseer of the execution of the plot was William King Harvey, former FBI agent and head of the Berlin operations base of the CIA. Harvey was responsible for the construction of the famous Berlin tunnel. Soviet intelligence was fully aware of this interdiction of their secure telephone lines in the Soviet sector of Berlin, and Harvey proudly garnered crates full of creative Soviet disinformation.In addition to this, Angleton contacted Israeli intelligence for assistance. The man he contacted was Amos Manor, then head of Israeli counterintelligence, the Shin Beth, and an old friend of Angleton. Angleton had worked closely with Zionist organizations in Italy during and after World War II and in 1951 had been appointed to be the CIA’s top liaison with both the Shin Beth and the Mossad. Through Angleton’s good offices, the CIA developed a close working relationship with both Israeli agencies, and in order to facilitate his plot against Kennedy, Angleton sought an Israeli agent who would oversee the entire operation.In actuality, the Israeli’s sole reason for existence, as far as Angleton was concerned, was to make entirely certain that the Corsican assassins were removed as soon as possible after their work was done.The man sent to him was known as Binjamin Bauman and he came well recommended. He had been one of the Stern Gang members, a terrorist group controlled by Menachim Begin, later Israeli Prime Minister, who had assisted in blowing up the King David Hotel in Jerusalem in 1946 with heavy loss of life. Begin was still wanted for murder in England, but Bauman had merely changed his name and went to work for the new state in an official capacity. This is a classical example of a terrorist becoming a freedom fighter.John F. Kennedy was decidedly unpopular in Israel because of his firm determination to prevent that state from developing atomic weaponry. A safe house was to be set up in Maryland and there the Corsicans were to be killed, their bodies dissected and put into crab pots. The science of DNA had not yet been discovered, and what the famous soft-shelled crabs could not eat was to be dumped back into the water. Bones do not float.In September of 1963, the visit by Kennedy to Dallas in November was announced and the Angleton assassination plan now had a specific time frame and geographical location with which to work.The Corsicans would be flown to Canada at the end of October, met by members of the Mafia, and driven into the United States over the Windsor, Ontario, International Bridge. They would remain in a Mafia safe house in the Detroit area and then be flown in a private aircraft to the Dallas-Ft. Worth area:52. French intelligence sources have indicated that a recruitment was made among members of the Corsican Mafia in Marseilles in mid-1963. 53. French intelligence sources have also indicated that they informed U.S. authorities in the American Embassy on two occasions about the recruitment of French underworld operatives for a political assassination in the United States. 54. It is not known if these reports were accepted at the Embassy or passed to Washington. 55. In the event, the Corsicans were sent to Canada where they blended in more easily with the French-speaking Quebec population.DIA analysisThe Corsicans were under no circumstances to be told of the role of the CIA in their project. They always considered that they were working solely for the American Mafia and no one else.Weapons for the assassination were procured from Sam Cummings, CIA agent and head of INTERARMCO, a “proprietary” branch of the Agency. This company, run by a British expert living in Warrentown, Virginia, specialized in gun running for the CIA. It was an easy matter for Cummings to procure two silenced .38-caliber pistols, two 7.65-mm surplus Argentine army Mausers, and a specially constructed .223-caliber rifle, which was cut down and modified from a standard NATO weapon. Special bullets for the latter weapon, filled with mercury and designed to explode when entering a body, were manufactured and accompanied the weapon.A check of CIA records located the names of several persons of interest to the Agency in the Dallas area. One was Lee Harvey Oswald, the returned defector, and the other was a man with whom the CIA had extensive and documented dealings. This was the Baltic aristocrat George De Mohrenschildt. Born into the lesser Russian nobility, De Mohrenschildt had served in a Polish cavalry unit, the Promorski Brigade. After the Russian revolution, he immigrated to the United States and acquired a degree in petroleum geology. He traveled in establishment social circles, spent a good deal of time out of the country, and certainly worked for the CIA. He had encountered Oswald quite by accident through his connection with the Russian community in Dallas and became his mentor and, according to a later CIA classified report, his lover.When De Mohrenschildt passed on the information that Oswald had been hired at the Texas School Book Depository on October 16, it was later realized that this building immediately overlooked the route that Kennedy would take on his November 22 visit to Dallas. Oswald was now viewed as the perfect foil:14. Oswald also was intimately connected with de Mohrenschildt who was certainly known to be a CIA operative. Oswald’s connections with this man were such as to guarantee that the CIA was aware of Oswald’s movements throughout his residence in the Dallas area.15. When Oswald secured employment at the Texas Book Depository, de Mohrenschildt, according to an FBI report, reported this to the CIA. DIA analysis77. The pseudo-defector, Oswald, became then important to the furtherance of the plan to kill the American president. He had strong connections with the Soviet Union; he had married a Soviet citizen; he had been noticed in public advocating support of Fidel Castro. His position in a tall building overlooking the parade route was a stroke of great good fortune to the plotters.Russian Intelligence study In the first week of November, the assassination team had been flown to Dallas and spent two weeks in reconnaissance of the entire presidential route. It had initially been felt by the Corsican team leader that the shooting could be done as the cavalcade turned from Houston to Elm Streets. The presidential car would be moving very slowly as it negotiated the right angle turn and would present an excellent target. A shooting blind could be constructed on the top of the Dallas County Records Building on Houston Street that had an excellent line of sight to the Elm Street corner, but flanking buildings were higher and could provide an undesired observer a clear view of the shooters.It was finally decided to use the Book Depository as one base. The railroad overpass was considered another excellent position but eventually ruled out because it was sure to be guarded. To its right, however, the heavy bushes and fences of the elevated “grassy knoll” proved to be irresistible. The official car with the President would be moving slowly past the spot and would permit a slightly downhill shot at very close range. Also, the extensive railroad yards behind this position gave ample room for an unobserved escape.The final disposition of the assassination team was:– A shooter in the Texas Book Depository, sixth floor;– A shooter in the ornamental bushes just before the underpass;– Two English-speaking personnel in suits and equipped with false law enforcement identification in the railroad yard behind the second shooter.It was later reported that if anyone tried to investigate or interfere with the escape of the shooter, the two faux law enforcement agents would be able to display their identification and deflect pursuit.Through his friendship with Oswald, De Mohrenschildt was aware that Oswald had bought a rifle from Klein’s Sporting Goods through the mail in March of that year. Both Oswald and his wife had mentioned this rifle to De Mohrenschildt and he also learned where the weapon was kept.16. The existence and location of Oswald’s mail order Mannlicher-Carcano rifle in the garage of his wife’s friend, Ruth Paine, was also known to de Mohrenschildt at least one week prior to the assassination.DIA analysisOswald was a bad shot with a rifle, the Warren Commission Report to the contrary, and had never even test shot this surplus Mannlicher-Carcano Italian army weapon. Stories about him going to Dallas rifle ranges with others and firing the Carcano were total fabrications as was an accepted tale of him driving a car. Oswald had never shot the purported murder weapon, possessed no driver’s license, and did not know how to drive any kind of a car. On September 26, Oswald went to Mexico City by bus. He returned to Dallas on October 3. During this period, the official story is that Oswald went to the Soviet and Cuban embassies and made very vocal attempts to secure visas for trips to Russia via Cuba. He was told, the official version explains, that a visa to go to Soviet Russia would take four months to process and the Cubans would not grant a visa for Cuba without a Soviet visa.After the assassination, the CIA sent out a number of reports to various American agencies containing their version of the Oswald visit to include physical descriptions and photographs. All of this material was totally incorrect, and the person depicted was very obviously not Lee Harvey Oswald. What Oswald did while in Mexico is not known, but a CIA report of his dramatic visits to the two embassies is a deliberate falsehood: 78. Oswald was then reported by the CIA to have gone to Mexico City on 26 September, 1963 and while there, drew considerable attention to his presence in both the Soviet and Cuban embassies. What Oswald might have done in the Cuban embassy is not known for certain but there is no record of his ever having visited the Soviet embassy in Mexico at that time. CIA physical descriptions as well as photographs show that Oswald was not the man depicted. This appears strongly to be a poor attempt on the part of the CIA to embroil both the Soviet Union and Cuba in their affairs. Russian Intelligence study79.Reports from the CIA concerning Oswald’s September/October visit to Mexico City are totally unreliable and were rejected by the FBI as being ‘in serious error.’ The reasons for Oswald’s visit to Mexico are completely obscure at this writing but the individual allegedly photographed by CIA surveillance in Mexico is to a certainty not Lee Oswald. As the CIA had pictures of the real Oswald, their reasons for producing such an obvious falsity are not easy to ascertain at this remove. DIA analysisThe famous Mexican trip was a typical official red herring deliberately dragged across the investigative trail. In point of fact, it matters not what Oswald did while in Mexico because this trip had no possible bearing on the allegations of assassination heaped onto a dead Oswald.The patently obvious disinformation put out by the CIA about Oswald’s visit either indicates a frantic desire to be current with intelligence matters or, in a more sinister interpretation, a crude attempt to somehow link the assassination to the Soviet Union and Cuba via the predetermined assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald.Had this course been followed during the sittings of the Warren Commission, it might well have forced the timid new President to make accusations against both Russia and Cuba that could quite conceivably lead to armed conflict. Since this is the one thing that Johnson frantically wished to avoid, the Mexico City visitation was relegated to the oblivion of the Warren Commission Report without official attention, but certainly deserving of the subsequent sarcasm from a legion of anti-establishment historians.– Kennedy was shot on Friday, November 22, 1963.– Oswald was shot on Sunday, November 24, 1963.– Chicago Mafia leader, Sam Giancana, was shot to death in the basement of his home in June of 1975, prior to when he was supposed to appear before a Congressional committee.– Oswald’s CIA connection in Dallas, George De Mohrenschildt, is alleged to have shot himself just prior to his scheduled appearance before a Congressional committee in March of 1977.Arranging a murder is relatively simple, but arranging a suicide is much more difficult.The Warren Commission was instituted shortly after the Dallas murders, evidence was gathered and presented to the Commission and a final report was duly released. Predictably, it named Lee Harvey Oswald as the sole assassin and, further, carefully played down the strong connections his killer, Jack Rubenstein, had with the Chicago mob.Historians have discussed the number of witnesses who died in the following months and years. The number tends to raise suspicions of foul play but, so far, no hard evidence of a concerted effort to silence witnesses has been produced. Considering the vast extent of the conspiracy to assassinate Kennedy and overthrow his administration, the conclusions are more than obvious.The Warren Report included a number of issues intended to bolster their case against Oswald. One was the attempt to shoot General Edwin Walker, a retired right wing professional Army officer resident in Dallas, on April 12, 1963. That Oswald had nothing to do with this incident is obvious from examining the published evidence and investigative reports. The General was shot at by a .30-06 rifle. Eyewitnesses all agreed that two dark complexioned men were seen driving away from the scene. Oswald did not own such a gun, was not dark complexioned, and did not drive. The Walker story was supplied by Oswald’s terrified widow who desperately was attempting to avoid being sent back to Russia. She spoke no English and, in general, did what she was told. Her story of the Walker incident has no value whatsoever and could never have been used in a court of law.Of the four Corsicans, three vanished from the face of the earth after being escorted to a private plane at a Dallas area airfield about 2:30 on the afternoon of November 22. They were accompanied by Mr. Bauman and were informed they would be flown first to New Orleans, where the pilot, David Ferrie, was based, and thence to a safe house in Maryland. From the moment they climbed into the two-engined aircraft, they were never seen again.One of the assassins, the man who fired at Kennedy from nearly point blank range and blew out the presidential brains, decided to work his way back to Marseilles on his own. For some unknown reason, he took a commercial bus to Mexico and from there he ended up in Barcelona, Spain. All that is known of him is the name he used on his passport: Guidobaldo Fini.78….It is understood that the actual assassins were subsequently removed in a wet action but that one apparently escaped and has been the object of intense searches in France and Italy by elements of the CIA. Russian Intelligence study80.The hit team was flown away in an aircraft piloted by a CIA contract pilot named David Ferrie from New Orleans. They subsequently vanished without a trace. Rumors of the survival of one of the team are persistent but not proven DIA analysisThere was one other murder that bears directly on the Kennedy assassination. On October 12, 1964, shortly after noon, Mary Pinchot Meyer, 44, former wife of Cord Meyer, Jr., a senior CIA official, was found shot to death in a wooded area near her Georgetown studio. She had been shot once in the head and once in the upper body, a professional technique of assassination.A dazed black day-laborer was found in the vicinity by police and, although not matching the description of an eyewitness, was arrested and put on trial for murder. The suspect, Ray Crump, had no coherent statement for the police at the time of his arrest, and an intensive search of the area failed to locate the handgun used in the killing. This, in spite of the fact that the suspect was apprehended in the immediate area of the killing. Period press reports indicate that a large number of CIA personnel were present immediately after the discovery of the body. Crump was acquitted at his subsequent trial. The prosecution depicted him as a rapist, but he had no record of such offenses. He had been seen waiting on a Washington street corner for day labor prior to being found in a dazed condition on the towpath near Mary Meyer’s body. Her husband, Cord Meyer, Jr., was a close personal friend of James Angleton and a very bitter enemy of John Kennedy. Meyer’s intense hatred of Kennedy was due to the attentions that Kennedy had once paid to his ex-wife. In point of fact, Mary Pinchot Meyer had been Kennedy’s long-term mistress subsequent to her divorce from her husband. Mrs. Meyer had introduced LSD to the President during her many visits to the White House. Immediately after her murder, Crowley associate James Angleton was caught in her Georgetown studio going through her papers. He later removed her diary and kept it. Robert Crowley, who saw it, stated that it contained a significant number of references to her connection with Kennedy, the use of drugs at White House sex parties, and some very bitter comments about the role of her former husband’s agency in the death of her lover the year before.Mary Meyer had made angry and indiscreet comments about her views on her suspicions of CIA involvement in the Kennedy killing to a number of her neighbors, a significant number of whom had husbands that were senior CIA officials.This murder is still listed as unsolved, and the police records have disappeared. Shortly after her murder, her bitter former husband painted “Tough luck, Mary” on the Key Bridge near the site of her death. John Kennedy may have been a charismatic man but neither he nor his family could be considered either ethical or moral. The President and his brother, the Attorney General of the United States, repeatedly betrayed their wives, their criminal associates, their loyal Cuban supporters, and many others with alacrity when it suited them to do so.According to the CIA, the FBI, the Vice President, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, they also betrayed important intelligence secrets to the Soviet Union for political gain. Hence, John F. Kennedy had to die:“6. This removal [of JFK] is the result of a consensus between the various concerned official agencies.” 79 From this brief study, it may be seen that the American President was certainly killed by orders of high officials in the CIA, working in close conjunction with very high American military leaders. It was the CIA belief that Kennedy was not only circumventing their own mapped-out destruction of Fidel Castro by assassination and invasion but actively engaged in contacts with the Soviet Union to betray the CIA actions. 80. The American military leaders (known as the Joint Chiefs of Staff) were also determined upon the same goals, hence both of them worked together to ensure the removal of a President who acted against their best interests and to have him replaced with a weaker man whom they believed they could better control. 81. President Johnson, Kennedy’s successor, was very much under the control of the military and CIA during his term in office and permitted an enormous escalation in Southeast Asia. The destruction of the Communist movement in that area was of paramount importance to both groups.Russian Intelligence study1. The Soviet analysis of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy contains material gleaned from American sources both official and unofficial i.e., media coverage, etc. Some of this material obviously stems from sources located inside various agencies. To date, none of these have been identified. Russian Intelligence study 81. A study of the Soviet report indicates very clearly that the Russians have significant and very high level sources within both the Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Their possession of material relating to certain highly classified American military papers has been referred to the CIC for investigation and action.