Domestic Operations

Context is always important to all types of research and one of the things I run across frequently in JFK literature seems to be misunderstanding of what the CIA has done and can do in terms of operating inside the United States. Sometimes I’m surprised to see broad statements about the Agency not operating legally inside the United States – even when it had phone numbers in major cities. For JFK research,  the context of what actually goes on in domestic activities  is important as a benchmark for what might have been happening with around Lee Oswald.

In SWHT I give several examples of CIA domestic activities – ranging from the orchestration of the purchase of the first covert infiltration vessel going into Cuba by private citizens (the CIA did pay for modifications and operation of the vessel) to the mechanics of creating domestic mailing and residence backstops for agents serving overseas. Other examples range from installing a tape recorder for William Pawley in his office (and repairing it when it broke) to the interview of individuals coming back from Cuba (Gerry Hemming was even given a temporary low level classification during a period of some months for debriefing purposes).  I go over a host of additional domestic activities in my covert warfare book including little things like briefing major American corporate business people before the operation in Guatemala, using corporate owned boats to move arms there for the coup and also using the same company to produce commercial covers for personnel doing logistics operations on the project. Fro the moment though, I thought  I’d share a few examples form a long time CIA Clandestine Services officer. Henry A. Compton writes about his final years of service in The Art of Intelligence.

It appears that the most recent designation (well as far as we know) for the function is “National Resources”, fairly recently created by the joining of “National Collections” (passive collection of intel from individuals having access to foreign sources – officers debrief American contacts who are involved in activities which match the master intelligence target lists) and Foreign Resources (officers in FR recruited foreigners inside the U.S. who are going to be returning home, to nations of intelligence interest).

Compton points out that the combination was a good one since Americans being debriefed about foreign intel might well have knowledge of foreign citizens who could be useful, either as recruits or simply in identifying useful sources for passive routine business or academic contact  by American citizens).

In writing of domestic intelligence collection, the point is made that numbers of Americans (referred to as private sector partners)  from business people to academics, are quite willing volunteers and working with them is very much routine.  Its a bit like open source collection, its simply from people doing their day jobs, traveling for companies, for eduction, etc and sharing information. Its very little different now than in 1963, with a bit of a change in priorities and targets of course. Among the types of individuals described were a Chief Executive Officer of a major corporation, a University President, and several business people and scientists from key areas such as biotechnology and nanotechnology. He describes the willingness to cooperate in producing possible intelligence in regard to everything from Al Qaeda covert money movements, to recruiting of Americans and technology purchases.  Which indeed is nothing new, I’ve read CIA documents from 1962 and 1963 where Corporate presidents and senior executives used their overseas resources to actively collect intelligence, spending company funds to do so.

So, if you thought, as I once did many years ago, that the CIA only operated overseas or that it was very mysterious to find Clay Shaw (in a World Trade Center) as a CIA asset – not at all.  In fact I’ve seen CIA documents relating to assets at other World Trade Centers including LA and San Francisco. When you think about it, it makes a lot of sense.

 

 

 

 

When did it start?

It’s been a bit longer than I expected before getting back here to post again. The good news is that I have now completed my draft of the book I’ve been working on for some two years – an exploration of the practices and pitfalls of American covert convert warfare over some 70 years to the present. Still lots to do on it but the bulk of the research and writing is done, some 18 chapters and well over 400 pages I’m estimating.  But just as I finished that I came down with a couple of types of winter illnesses and that’s kept me away for a bit too.

Anyway, I promised that with this being the 50th anniversary year, I’d offer a few more posts on the murder of President Kennedy. One question that I’m often asked, is when do I feel the conspiracy actually started – which leads to an conditional answer because we know that there really were multiple efforts in play which involved targeting JFK. One that Stu and I write about in The Awful Grace of God is the recruiting and training of very covert rifle teams with the goal of carrying out attacks on high government and financial leaders. That conspiracy is quite well documented and involved rifle teams training in both California and Florida, it leaked to the FBI and actually a leak about a National States Rights party threat to the President came out of San Antonio during the Texas trip.

So, when I answer the question (and the answer seems not to satisfy most who ask it) I try to isolate the Dallas plot and attack from other things being planned by different groups.  And that leads me to Lee Oswald and the fact that Oswald had been manipulated for some sort of incident related to JFK on the East Coast, which was supposed to happen in September.  The first report we had of that was from Richard Case Nagell, who offered it based on what he said was his personal observation of people recruiting Oswald while he was in New Orleans. Interesting on the face of it but even more so when we come up with two completely independent sources of corroboration.  The first, is the report from a young lady whose mother was helping Marina pack to move out of New Orleans back to Dallas.  The young woman reported that while her mother was with Marina, Oswald was chatting her up (pretty consistent for Lee) and talking about going back to Washington D.C.  He was pretty vague about the trip but when pressed he blurted out that he had to go back there to get a gun…which she thought pretty strange.  This incident and the researcher who interviewed the young woman are covered in SWHT.

But beyond that, we have something far more solid.  We have a series of letters that Oswald wrote to the SWP and CPUSA about moving back to the East Coast, volunteering his services and even asking if he should “go underground”.  Pretty incriminating stuff actually, not highlighted by the WC due to its rather explosive nature I suppose. Or perhaps because the WC also had to deal with Oswald’s manuscript written earlier – which expresses his total disgust with the CPUSA.  Comparing the letters with the manuscript might have raised some dangerous questions about his real motives.

So….the first part of my answer to the question of when “it” started is – August in New Orleans, but with Washington D.C. as the venue and Oswald as the patsy.  Which suggests that the plot for Dallas started once the D.C. action aborted and it became extremely likely that Lee would be in Dallas for the birth of his new baby daughter, during the same period  in which the President would be traveling to Texas.

Somebody did talk

Happy New Year everyone!   Given that this is the 50th Anniversary year of the JFK assassination, I’m going to revisit the JFK plot with a couple of posts before I go back to wrap up my covert warfare manuscript.  If you have not visited the new web site http://www.jfkfacts.org, you should – its a good place to keep current on discussions which will be going on this  year.. They had requested a post from me and the following has just gone up on the web site….I’m going to post it here as well and then return in a few days with a post or two on my view of when the actual conspiracy came together and how it evolved into the attack in Dallas. But for now, here’s is a revisit of John Martino for those who may not be familiar with research in that area….

Somebody did talk. His name was John Martino. He was a credible source,
and his story has been corroborated in significant ways. What he said is one
of the clearest indicators that opponents of JFK’s Cuba policy had
foreknowledge that Kennedy might be assassinated in Dallas.

http://jfkfacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/John-Martino.jpg

Castro Political Prisoner

Martino, a native of New Jersey, was a petty racketeer as a young man.
Arrested for gambling and loan sharking charges, he developed an
Expertise in electronic equipment related to gambling. In the 1950s, he gravitated
to south Florida and then to Havana where his skills won him a  security job
at the casino in the new Deauville Hotel in Havana.

When Fidel Castro’s revolutionary movement took power in 1959, the
Deauville was closed and Martino was arrested for criticizing Castro. He
spent three years in jail, a bitter experience that he detailed in his
book “I Was Castro’s Prisoner.” Upon his release, he threw himself into the
clandestine war against Castro. A publicity tour for the book took him to New
Orleans and Dallas in the fall of 1963 where he associated with other anti-Castro
activists.

In the days affter JFK was killed, Martino devoted considerable effort to
linking Lee Harvey Oswald to the Cuban government, claiming that Oswald
had gone to Cuba (a claim that has never been verified). Without supporting
evidence, Martino gained attention from investigators but convinced no
one of his claims.

In 1975 Martino was dying and he knew it.  He started telling a quite different
story about the events of 1963, confessing to two acquaintances that he
had participated in a conspiracy to assassinate President Kennedy.

The first was John Cummings, an investigative reporter at New York’s *
Newsday*, who had covered Martino’s return from Cuba in 1962 and stayed
in contact with him over the years.

“He told me he’d been part of the assassination of Kennedy,” Cummings
recounted later. “He wasn’t in Dallas pulling trigger, but he was
involved. He implied that his role was delivering money, facilitating things. He
asked me not to write it while he was alive.” It is worth noting that
Cummings was an award winning reporter who did not make his reputation by
believing tall tales.

The second person to whom Martino confided was a former business partner
named Fred Claassen. He  said Martino told him. “The anti-Castro people put
Oswald together. Oswald didn’t know who he was working for–he was just ignorant
of who was really putting him together. Oswald was to meet his contact at the Texas
Theater [the movie house where Oswald was arrested]. They were to meet Oswald in
the theater and get him out of the country, and then eliminate him. Oswald made
a mistake….there was no way we could get to him. They had Ruby kill him.”

Martino’s widow Florence declined to talk to congressional investigators
in the 1970s, but later acknowledged her husband’s story to British author
Anthony Summers. She said that her husband had advance knowledge of
JFK’s assassination. “Flo, they’re going to kill him,” she recalls him saying
in November 1963. “They’re going to kill him when he gets to Texas.”

Martino’s son, Edward, then a senior in high school, recalls that on Friday
Nov. 22, 1963 his father told him to stay home from school and listen to
the radio. When the news came from Dallas, “my father went white as a
sheet. But it wasn’t like ‘Gee whiz’.’ It was more like confirmation.”

Martino, now a business consultant and custom software developer has not
profited in any way from his story. Nor did his mother, now deceased.

Summers reported the Martino story in Vanity Fair magazine in 1994 and
His  1998 book “Not in Your Lifetime. The most complete version of Martino’s
involvement in the anti-Castro movement and his subsequent confession is
found my his 2010 book “Somebody Would Have Talked.”

There were other people who showed foreknowledge that JFK would be killed
in Dallas but none whose story is so well-documented as John Martino. He
was somebody who talked.

 

 

 

FBI vs. CIA

First off, Happy Holidays to everyone!  I’m still off researching and writing but taking a brief break before Christmas.

One of the books I’ve been going through recently for some reference material is The Art of Intelligence, by Henry Compton, who played a lead role in early field CIA operations in Afghanistan. However, well before that he spent a good bit of time assigned working inside and with joint FBI operations. He was struck by the major differences in outlook and  approach between the two agencies and goes into comparing them at some length.  For those of us who spend a good deal of time with FBI and CIA documents, and FBI investigations, it provides some interest context and may explain some of the things that look “strange” from the outside.  So I’ll list a few of his comparisons below:

FBI is geared to respond to crimes, hence its basically reactive- it tends to collect intelligence seriously only after a crime of some sort has been committed, and then it is very specifically targeted towards the crime.  If may get informant reports and leads all the time but generally they just sit in local field office files until a crime happens, and if none does they get pitched after set period of time.  In contrast the CIA lives on written reports. Now if you have somebody like an organized crime figure who has committed crimes, they you may run up a few thousand pages of surveillance files, but again that is after the fact of the first criminal act.

FBI agents focus on oral communications, not written; if they write something down it makes it available to defense counsels under due diligence – which compromises the information and possibly sources as well. The feel they are reducing their flexibility if they write down too much – and written information can be used against the prosecution in court. Agents are recruited and trained to investigate and make arrests, not write reports. (which may explain why we see lots of reports from headquarters by SAIC’s on investigations but not a lot going on until their is a crime in play).  The CIA is built around analysis of reports and has always had a better system of communications – and of course normally has no concern about reports being used against them. Reports are the life of the intelligence side of the Agency.

The FBI never had a good or even workable communication system. All their information was in local field office files and if someone wanted to get the big picture they had to travel to multiple offices and spend weeks in the files. That was exacerbated by the lack of any routine reporting until a crime was being investigated.

The FBI loved sources but only if they could tie them to probable crimes and their paid informants were actually recruited on the basis of being asked to give testimony in court cases. Of course they had other classes of informants but they were all somewhat provisional until they got to the point of being potentially useful in a criminal action. Obviously this is a totally different approach than the CIA, who loves sources of all kinds, the more the better and the more they have they more they can feed their data mill for the analysts. On the other and, the FBI folks are paranoid about somehow undermining the prosecution.

Of special importance is the fact that major FBI offices often held their evidence files locally, to support Federal prosecutions; it was not all necessarily shared with headquarters. So – when we are forced to rely on headquarters files we may be missing the good stuff. In he CIA, everything went to headquarters because their span of interest was much broader geographically.

The FBI lived on investigations of crimes or suspected crimes, to their investigations were often after the fact – and what limited reporting was done, was done then. If they were following something it was pretty much oral, no crime, no paper. The exception would be when they were somehow involved with other agencies, which I suppose explains why so many of the items we find are mulch-agency distribution.

Of course none of this hard and fast I’m sure but it does seem to explain a lot of what we document geeks turn up – or don’t turn up. You begin to appreciate why why you find from the FBI only supports the planned prosecutors case rather than running around in other leads…it’s SOP to support court cases.

– Larry

 

 

 

 

 

 

Oswald and “subversives”

 

I realize that I haven’t posted much lately but with the Dallas Lancer conference and continued writing I just don’t seem to get around to it. However, during the Dallas conference we had some dialog about substantive loose ends which really should be addressed with the upcoming 50th anniversary. And one of those its the very real, and immensely important question of who FBI Agent Hosty was referring to when he remarked to a Secret Service agent following the assassination that the FBI had observed Oswald meeting with two subversives but since it was an intelligence matter they had been  unable to communicate about it.  He assured the agent that his FBI superiors mist undoubtedly be sharing that information with the Secret Service.

I discuss this incident in considerable detail in SWHT on pages 198-199 and a couple of other  places. The agent, William Patterson, reported the conversation in a memorandum.  At one point in time when I was having some limited communications with Jim Hosty I gave him a copy of Patterson’s memo and asked if he would like to comment on it after he had time to read and think about it.  We did talk further, he was very friendly and open about most things we discussed, including several details of FBI surveillance on Oswald in Mexico City that never seem to have made it into any official records, but he just didn’t prefer to discuss the Patterson incident.

Now I believe that both Patterson and Hosty were telling the truth in their remarks and that Oswald had indeed been observed meeting with “subversives” in Dallas some two weeks before the assassination. Now who would that be?  Given that Oswald was not under full time surveillance perhaps it was when he himself made contact with the “subversives”.  One thing we do know is that the Bureau was going full tilt into the issue of Cuban exiles purchasing weapons and preparing for attacks on Cuba. There is also reason to suspect that the FBI may well have had the house on Harlandale street under regular surveillance.

We should have paid a lot more attention to this lead over the years, especially when documents began to show up that an FBI agent named Heitman had the Cuban beat in Dallas, that among other things he was investigating suspected Cuban double agents among the exiles and that he was pulled off for a great deal of the Dallas JFK investigation for some six months after the assassination – including checking into a couple of exiles who had a Rambler station wagon and who had attended a meeting in which John Martino had made an appearance.  What is perhaps even more interesting is that while a few pre assassination documents are available, the vast majority on Heitman are post assassination.

It seems a lead deserving really serious inquiry, hopefully one more more people will choose to dig into it as we enter the 50th year after the assassination.

 

– Larry

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lansdale OSO and SACSA

I know there are a number of folks who are interested in General Lansdale and my studies have given a bit broader background than is sometimes discussed so I thought I would share it.

Generally everyone knows that Lansdale was Air Force, detached to support the CIA in the area of  special operations and related political action, primarily in the Far East.

But many may not know that Lansdale was actually head of the Saigon Military Mission in the mid-1950′s. He arrived in 1954 and initiated psych war and political action efforts in the south and also paramilitary operations against the North. His propaganda is credited with producing much of the fear that led the huge Catholic exodus from the North. Later he became head of the joint U.S./French Training Relations and Instruction team working under the National Security Division – in reality his real work was building the U.S. backed Diem regime.  Lansdale helped launch the first major military campaign against the Vietminh in the South and by 1957 tens of thousands of their cadre had reportedly been killed (anyone who was anti government seems to have been open to classification as Vietminh). Lansdale ended his tour in Vietnam in 1959 and rotated back to Washington, being assigned to the Joint Chiefs staff under General Erskine in the Office of Special Operations.

After JFK’s election, Kennedy had called for an in depth review of the Vietnam situation and was particularly interested in the lack of any success in the covert operations the CIA was conducting against North Vietnam.

Lansdale had returned to Vietnam to study that subject among others and produced a report  which favorably impressed JFK and ultimately (following the Bay of Pigs disaster) led to JFK calling on Lansdale to lead the Mongoose project against Cuba. It was good timing for Lansdale since the OSO was disbanded at that point and all of its officers assigned to other duties. Actually under General Erskine, the OSO had carried out a variety of intelligence roles ranging from special operations coordination to participation in reconnaissance satellite development. The new Defense Secretary (McNamara) apparently had nothing against Erskine but thought that many of the OSO work was duplicate in nature and that its staff would best be distributed.

In general the Joint Chiefs and the Army in particular were not nearly as excited about the potential for special operations as JFK, however in a 1962 response to the Presidential interested it created the Office of Special Assistant for Counter Insurgency and Special Activities. SACSA served as something of a successor to OSO, although with a much more focused mission. It would have several chiefs during the 1960′s and early 70′s, fading away circa 1974 as the last chief was reassigned.  SACSA did play a role in Vietnam with MACV/SOG, the pacification program and with what became known as Phoenix.

As to Lansdale, while Mongoose had not succeeded it had not really failed either – it had been superseded by the Cuban Missile Crisis and agreements with the Russians. JFK reportedly remained a real fan of Lansdale and his high profile, aggressive special operations attitude and actually floated him as Ambassador to South Vietnam.

There was strong push back on that both from the State Department (which feared personal influence with Diem) and from the Joint Chiefs (who much preferred conventional warfare over special operations).  Kennedy then proposed him as Chief of the newly created Military Assistance Advisory Group to Vietnam but eventually settled by putting Lansdale in a staff position as assistant to the Secretary of Defense. That would have been a pretty difficult position given that McNamara seems to have had limited regard for Lansdale and his own set of issues with the Joint Chiefs.

During a fact finding trip to Vietnam with JCS Chief Taylor, Lansdale apparently ignored his instructions not to resume his high level political contacts, following the trip Lansdale was assigned to anti-Cuban counter insurgency-  but any real functions he might have had as Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations were functionally taken over by the new SACSA group. In the summer of 1963, while on a fact finding tour of Latin America he received notification from the Pentagon that he was being retired from active duty.  He had become odd man out.

Reference for the above include Robert Gillespie’s book Black Ops Vietnam and John Prodos books President’s Wars and his biography of William Colby.

 

 

 

 

 

Hunting Soft Files

In reading further in John Stockwell’s extremely informative book, I ran across another example of a soft file and some insights in how they could be collected.

Stockwell discusses the fact that various CIA stations in Africa were very concerned about the travels of Senator Clark, of the Subcommittee on Foreign Affairs.  Clark had been briefed on the Angola covert operation but he had been given the standard brief that was being given to Congress and even State Department Staff in Angola itself.  In other words a brief that avoided some of the sticky details that Congress might be worried about – such as shipments of weapons directly into Angola and CIA personnel inside the country, not just coordinating from across the border in Zaire.

So there was some communication going on about the Senator and efforts being made by CIA stations to prepare people he might talk to – now you might ask yourself, should the CIA be telling people just what to say and what not to say to a Senator but hey…   So, as a person of interest, albeit an American and a Senator, there were several soft/working files open on the Senator including one at HQ that Stockwell had access to – and in reading that he saw that Clark had been mentioned by name in station cable traffic.  Big oops there since cables are official documents, numbered, logged, recorded in chronological files and in the computer system that recorded all cable traffic, etc…and if Congress had decided to investigate the Angola project somebody might have seen him mentioned and been smart enough to ask for office files on him and

Stockwell points out that soft files had become much more in use after passage of the FOIA legislation and as there were more and more Congressional investigations of the Agency.

So, we are learning a lot more about soft files – they can pertain to individuals of particular operational interest (like Sturgis – thanks Zach), they can relate to people the Agency is concerned about for political reasons and they can relate to actual operations. Stockwell notes that such files are referred to as “unofficial”, “convenience” or “soft” files and that they are used for anything the office considers to be sensitive from a security or even a political standpoint.  One specific example he gives is:

“Surveillance of American Citizens”    –  aha!

Now if the CIA had Oswald under surveillance domestically it would be extremely sensitive and if they had him under surveillance in Mexico City it would be equally sensitive.  I won’t go into all the names on Zach’s list but we do know MC had Duran targeted so that might explain her file.  Hargraves might make since given his involvement with paramilitary actions agaisnt Cuba.

And Lee Oswald….hmmmm…  now if you had Oswald under surveillance would you want to go into any detail on that, say around November 23rd?

Now if that darn soft file list had just had a column for “office” where the file was resident, we would know a whole bunch more.  But this does call out one area for some really serious research; if somebody can find out just how the HSCA knew to look for soft files and how they requested them and how they were provided…we could learn a lot.  And then the question is, did the HSCA try to follow up on that list and collect Oswald’s soft file???  By the way, the list Zach found must be from the HSCA collection, but did they get it themselves or take it from somewhere else?

– lots to be learned here,   Larry

 

 

 

 

Soft Files

 

Most researchers have come across the term before, although its a shame that nobody with actual CIA operating experience explained the term to HSCA investigators.  I’ve been reading a great book by CIA officer John Stockwell on the Angola operations and he gives some extremely valuable insights into not only real world field operations (and reporting) but into what seems to have been pretty much SOP inside at least the Plans/Operations directorate.

Stockwell describes the fact that in staff and working group meetings his boss, the Africa Division Chief, the Chief would not allow a transcript to be made of any meeting nor would he allow anyone to actually write a report on such meetings. He would work late at night, writing his own summary of the meeting and then he would put any related and necessary communications out as “blind” documents without headings or addresses. This meant that none of the work group activities were documented in official CIA records; only such reports as he himself might choose to write for transmission up the chain of command.  All of the working documents, the blind documents would go into “soft files” outside the CIA record keeping system, meaning that technically they did not exist and that legally, in case of internal CIA or Congressional or other legal requests, they did not have to be provided and could simply be destroyed.

The blind documents and summary reports were kept in a “soft file” in the Chief’s desk.

Now this was being done for an officially approved operation – IAFortune.  It had been approved by the 40 Committee, the President, and funded with approval by designated Congressional committees and sub committees. No hanky panky going on at all, yet the Africa Division head was ensuring that nobody could legally request certain details of how field operations were being conducted (including the fact that CIA officers were being sent into the field against specific 40 Committee direction).  Or if they did request them, he could of course write his own official report, that would become a numbered CIA document.

Now before this I had vaguely thought that soft files might just be sort of a vest pocket thing, documents pertaining to what an individual was doing – but then if its just you doing it, why documents at all?

So as it turns out “soft files” seem to relate to actual operations, involving multiple people but operations where things are going on that are being conducted deniable from even within the Agency itself – in the Angola case, the Africa Division manager was already sitting at HQ.

Imagine running this past the HSCA investigators, would they just not throw up their hands?

And while you are imaging that, keep in mind that at least one HSCA document lists a series of individuals that they have been informed (how is unclear) were the subject of “soft files”.  Three individuals have always stood out to me – Lee Oswald, Sylvia Duran and Roy Hargraves.  I’d like to look at the other names again now but that particular document is buried deep within my boxes and file cabinets.  I’m pondering where it might be though….

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Garden Party Syndrome

 

Ok, you should have been able to tell from the title this was going to be a different sort of post….if you thought it was about the Murchison Party, feel free to exit now…grin.

Over the last year I’ve received hundreds of forwarded messages from friends and family, most all of them political and upon fact checking them I’ve noticed that well over 95% are flat out wrong, about 4% are partially factual but “spun” to make a political point far from the facts and 1 or 2% are actually true.  The disturbing thing is that I often get the same messages (some reworked in four or five versions over three or four years) from the same people or multiple people and upon querying them it seems they never fact check anything before forwarding it – if it agrees with their politics or worldview.  Which mans that I have a lot of friends and family who keep getting “played” – some of these messages are quite well constructed as disinformation and clearly are originated by “parties unknown” but with some pretty good skill at such things.

Now when I started studying the JFK assassination something like 20 years ago, there were several journals and one of the first things I did was order all the back issues so that I would have a baseline in reading new work.  I than I spent the better part of ten years going from one highly attractive theory (and group of bad guys) to another…..eventually being forced to toss some of the most fascinating, and sensational ones. I met some people with very sharp minds, and extreme critical abilities (Mary Ferrell being one of the most analytical individuals I’ve ever met…other than a college humanities professor who used to dissect me in class – the best instructor I ever had).  And what I found was that those folks worked with data without fitting it to any per-conceptions – heck, Mary was not even a particular fan of JFK back in 1963. What she was, was eminently open minded – no holds barred open minded.  Mary would never have been mistaken for a “groupie”, even for Jim Garrison.

But it appears to me that incresingly (perhaps reflecting today’s politics) that a great number of folks have chosen sides and are now defending worldviews rather than engaging in dialog. I was struck recently by a post from someone whose passion I admire, stating that they didn’t need to read a new book because they had read a bad review of it (and no, it wasn’t mine, I’ll get that off my chest momentarily). When did we get to the point of tossing entire books because we either don’t agree with their premise (as stated on the book jacket I suppose) or because somebody picked out a handful of issues with the book?  Would we treat documents that way, would we be satisfied if we just read some of the documents or would we want all of them?  Do historians work that way with sources? Do investigators – perhaps they never use criminals as sources and use ministers (well that was a bit radical but the point is about the baby/bath thing).

OK, diatribe warning, now to my personal  issue. I recently read an Amazon review of AGOG in which the individual said he was disappointed because in my  previous books I had seemed bright and now I’ve gotten much less so.  Why you ask, well because I don’t reach the same conclusion he already held.  Now a few years ago when I started writing people wrote to me and said something like “hey Larry, what did you say that, seems stupid to me but did I miss something” and then we could at least have an exchange…not to imply I convinced everyone but still….  Well the funny thing is that seems to have largely gone away….and in this case the reader did not even seem to take the time to read the appendix at the rear of the book which at least gives some explanation of the points he objected to (or if he did he felt free not to mention that it had been addressed, even if poorly or stupidly).

This all does not seem a good thing to me – nor does the barrage of political emails with no fact checking or the polarization in politics, etc, etc.  So I figured the least I could do was object…sort of like my humanities teacher did when he would embarrass me in class when I said something “safe”,  rather than really showing I had put any head sweat in to a point and examined all the sides and angles.

Oh, as far as the title of the post….well if you were old like me and a Rick Nelson fan like me it would be self explanatory. But if not – Rick found that people applauded if he just sang the same old, familiar, comfortable songs they were used to but not if he tried to move out of the box they had built for him.  His response was that if he was only doing that sort of music he would rather drive a truck (I put in a few hundred hours driving a wheat truck back in the 60′s myself).

I admit that I’d probably be generally thought to be smarter if I always wrote about the same bad guys, and played the same scenarios with just a bit of elaboration or a few new details….but, hey, its just not gonna happen – just in case you were wondering (transparency statement completed).

– Larry

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Back channel to Cuba

If you’ve read Nexus or even SWHT you are aware of how significant the highly secret (well other than to Angleton, Helms, the NSA, etc) dialogs between JFK and Fidel’s representatives were by fall 1963.  We have extensive documentation on that now, largely from State Department archives – by the way, I’d like to recommend the online State Department history files. There is an amazing amount of primary data there and often we can learn more about CIA activities there than directly from the CIA.

What everyone may not realize is that JFK had good reason, despite the whole thing being a long shot, to believe that Attwood might well pull off something significant in Cuba. Attwood, formally a scriptwriter for JFK, had volunteered for diplomatic assignment to Africa because he felt that the new Kennedy initiative (which accepted nationalism and even saw a place for neutrality in the post-colonial nations) could effectively combat the Soviet outreach on the African continent.

Attwood arrived at his new post in Guinea shortly after the Bay of Pigs disaster, only to be surprised that the U.S. action against Cuba had not actually undermined his mission, as he had feared. At the U.N. Stevenson had just finished voting along with the Soviets and the Asian and African delegations for independance in Angola (against the Europeans) and that had made a major impression.

Attwood was able to approach Sekou Toure, a committed revolutionary and Lenin Peace Prize winner, with success. With help by diplomatic blunders by Soviet personnel in Guinea, Attwood moved Toure back towards a position of dealing more positively with America. In fact, during the Cuban missile crisis, Toure refused a request from Khrushchev to allow Soviet planes to refuel in route to Cuba.

Clearly Attwood represented the sort of New Frontier diplomacy that was more pragmatic and not totally wedded to the standard Cold War dialectic found among so many American Ambassadors. At the time Attwood was enjoying modest success in separating Guinea peacefully from Soviet influence, Ambassador Timberlake in Angola was becoming much more deeply involved in the standard confrontation, turning to his military mission and the CIA for covert combat action.

OK, so this is not pure assassination stuff, but as I’ve said, I plan to report back on things that turn up as I wade through my study of 50 years of deniable warfare around the globe.