50 Years Since JFK Assassination Retrospective: CIA Deputy Director Charles Cabell's Clay Shaw Connection

Coincidentally, the person who was unsuccessfully prosecuted for conspiring to assassinate JFK, Clay Shaw, "was asked to introduce the deputy director of the CIA, General Charles P. Cabell, who was in New Orleans to address the Foreign Policy Association," in May 1961, according to Reasonable Doubt: An Investigation Into The Assassination of John F. Kennedy by Henry Hurt.

According to the same book, "Shaw was program chairman" of the New Orleans Foreign Policy Association group and "General Cabell's speech in New Orleans came les than one month after he had personally supervised the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion."

Reasonable Doubt also observed in 1985 that "Today it is known that Cabell and his associates were vehement in their rage toward what they perceived as President Kennedy's `desertion' on the morning of the invasion--the President's refusal to send in military force sufficient to ensure victory."

CIA Deputy Director Cabell's 4 A.M. Bay of Pigs Appeal To JFK

In their book, The Invisible Government, David Wise and Thomas Ross described how CIA Deputy Director Cabell unsuccessfully begged JFK in the early morning hours of April 17, 1961 to approve a second U.S. air strike on Castro's air bases:

"...At 4 a.m. Cabell could stand it no longer. He decided to appeal again to [then Secretary of State Dean] Rusk.

"Cabell drove through the darkened capital to Rusk's hotel...In Rusk's apartment he again expressed his fears over the cancellation of the air strike. Despite the hour the Secretary of State called the President once more in Middleburg. This time Cabell did speak directly to him. In answer to the CIA official's pleadings the President's reply was still negative."

More On `Old Tige' Cabell

Coincidentally, former CIA Deputy Director Charles Cabell and former Dallas Mayor Earle Cabell's grandfather--William `Old Tige' Cabell--helped design the Confederate battle flag while serving on the staff of Confederate General J.E. Johnston. As a Confederate General during the Civil War, the Cabell brothers' grandfather also led a raid into Missouri in October 1864. At the time of his death in 1911, "Old Tige" Cabell was the honorary commander-in-chief of the United Confederate Veterans organization. Between 1893 and 1907, former Confederate General William Cabell was also one of the supervisors of the Louisiana State Lottery and its successor, the Honduras National Lottery.

(Downtown 3/11/92)