JFK's Pre-1960 McCarthy Era Politics--Part 1

In the early 1960s--prior to his elimination in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963 from the world of U.S. power elite presidential politics--JFK was viewed as a politically liberal Democrat by most people in the USA and the world. Yet during the McCarthy Era of the late 1940s and 1950s, JFK was apparently both pro-capitalist and very anti-communist in his political rhetoric and voting record. As Thomas J. Whalen recalled in his 2000 book Kennedy Versus Lodge:

"On the anti-communism front Kennedy was...strident in his criticism of [then-U.S. Republican Senator Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. in 1952 election campaign for Massachusetts' seat in U.S. Senate]...Kennedy...did not shy away from portraying his opponent as being `soft' on communism...

"...Winning votes and hitting the headlines were exactly what John Kennedy had in mind when he attempted to hang the soft-on communism label on Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. in 1952. Indeed, he accused Lodge of having the `number one record among the Republicans' when it came to supporting the supposedly appeasing foreign policy of the Truman administration. Lodge, he further charged, had proven derelict in his duty as senator by failing to support legislation that would have `stopped' trade in war materials with communist China or Soviet Russia...

"Kennedy had been expressing such...views since the beginning of his public career. Running for Congress in 1946...he stressed the `Red Menace' in many of his campaign appearances. `The candidate's political stance was almost ultraconservative,' recalled Kennedy campaign secretary William Sutton. `Many of his speeches emphasized anti-communism as well as anti-collectivism.'

"In an October [1946] radio speech in Boston, Kennedy boasted about having told a group of `intellectual liberals' that the Soviet Union was `a slave state' run by `a small clique of ruthless, powerful and selfish men,' who were bent on world conquest...

"Kennedy continued to be an anti-communist hardliner after he became a congressman. In 1947, as a freshman member of the House Committee on Education and Labor, he publicly called for the perjury indictment of Harlold Christoffel, a United Auto Workers union official who was under suspicion of being a communist for having led a 1941 strike against the Allis-Chalmers Company in Milwaukee...

"Kennedy maintained a steady drumbeat against communism throughout his congressional career. In 1948 he broke with his own party and voted for the Mundt-Nixon Bill, which required the registration of domestic communist front organizations as well as communist organizations and their members. Although vetoed by President Truman, the main provisions of the bill were incorporated into the Communist Control Act of 1950, the so-called McCarren Act, which Kennedy also supported..."

50 Years Since JFK Assassination Retrospective: Did Ruby Have Connections To H.L. Hunt Dynasty?

The guy who killed Lee Oswald on tv two days after JFK was eliminated, Jack Ruby, apparently had a few connections to the family of H.L. Hunt. As Texas Rich by Henry Hurt III recalled in 1981:

"The FBI uncovered two...possible links between Jack Ruby and H.L. Hunt. One was Isaiah Howard Haynes. A black laborer and handyman, Haynes had worked for Ruby for 16 years. His job was to clean up at Ruby's Carousel Club between the hours of 4 and 7 pm. But during nine of those years, Haynes had also been employed as a houseman-porter-chauffeur for the Loyd B. Sands family...Loyd Sands was the son-in-law of H.L. Hunt. Haynes was still employed by both Ruby and the Sands on the day Kennedy was shot. Ruby and the Hunt family also shared another black employee--Andrew Armstrong...He was employed at the Holiday Hill apartments, which the Hunts owned, from May to December of 1961. Two months later, in February of 1962, he went to work for Ruby as a maintenance man at the Carousel Club. Strangely enough, the Warren Commsision investigators questioned Haynes and Armstrong about possible connections or contact between Ruby and Oswald (both said they knew of none), but did not ask them about possible connections between Ruby and the Hunts."

(Aquarian Weekly 1/15/97)

50 Years Since JFK Assassination Retrospective: Was H.L. Hunt Dynasty Involved In JFK Assassination Cover-Up?

As the 1973 movie Executive Action indicated, many folks in the U.S. suspect that Texas oil billionaires like H.L. Hunt were involved in plots that led to JFK's elimination in Dallas on November 22, 1963. And in his 1995 book Killing Kennedy, Harrison Edward Livingstone included the following references to H.L. Hunt and the Hunt dynasty:

"I had high-level information in Dallas that the original Zapruder film (from Zapruder's camera) was first obtained by H.L. Hunt before Life bought what they thought was the original...The indication is that Hunt's people obtained it and passed it on to the FBI who sent it to headquarters in Washington shortly after it was developed...What happened to H.L. Hunt's copy? Why won't the Hunt family discuss this?"

Coincidentally, Texas Rich by Henry Hurt III also recalled in 1981:

"The Hunts learned that President Kennedy's visit to Dallas might be greeted with violence nearly three weeks before the president crossed the state line. The warning came from the family's master intelligence man, Hunt Oil security chief Paul Rothermel. In a November 4, 1963 interoffice memo headlined `POLITICS,' Rothermel informed his boss that there had been `unconfirmed reports of possible violence during the parade' scheduled to take place when Kennedy arrived in town on November 22...

"The pandemonium that engulfed Dallas swept through the offices of Hunt Oil Company with gale force...Someone reportedly began shredding most circulating copies of Rothermel's memo of November 4..."

(Aquarian Weekly 1/15/97)

45 Years Since RFK Assassination Retrospective: Who Burned RFK Assassination Investigation Photos?

Coincidentally, around the time of the 1968 Democratic National Convention much of the photographic evidence related to 1968 Democratic presidential primary candidate and U.S. Senator from New York Robert Kennedy's elimination was apparently burned. According to The Kennedy Encyclopedia by Caroline Latham and Jeannie Sakol:

"In August 1988, the state of California released much of its documentation of the investigation of Senator Robert F. Kennedy's assassination on the night of June 5, 1968. Among the more than 50,000 pages of material was a certificate attesting to the fact that 2,410 photographs taken during the investigation were burned on August 21, 1968, little more than two months after the shooting. The Los Angeles Police Department said they did not know why the photographs were destroyed. Scholars have labeled the burning `incredible' and suggested it might be the resultt of something more sinister than mere incompetence."

(Downtown 7/22/92)

45 Years After RFK Assassination Retrospective: Who Killed RFK?

On June 5, 1968, U.S. Senator from New York and 1968 Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy was mysteriously gunned down in California. And in his 1976 book Heartland, comedian Mort Sahl made the following reference to RFK:

"Two personal friends of Robert Kennedy, one of whom had been his roommate in college, at the request of the Kennedy family, got in touch with Jim Garrison and attended the preliminary hearing of Clay Shaw. They said that Bobby would wait until he was in a position to be relatively assured of the Presidency and then would get deeper into the case and get the guys who killed Jack. Guys. They used the plural. Garrison said to me later he'll be dead if he wins the California primary..."

Coincidentally, a 1975 essay by Allard Lowenstein which appeared in Government By Gunplay: Assassination Conspiracy Theories from Dallas to Today, entitled "Who Killed Robert Kennedy?", observed:

"This year several Stern magazine reporters conducted an extended investigation. Stern is a leading...German newsweekly. Their findings were detailed in a cover story entitled, `The Real Murderer [of Robert Kennedy] is Still Free.' Those findings were not reported in the United States."

(Aquarian Weekly 6/5/96)

50 Years Since JFK Assassination Retrospective: 4 Conspiracies Against JFK?

Long before Oliver Stone made his JFK movie, former Democratic presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy apparently believed that JFK was eliminated by a conspiracy on November 22, 1963. As comedian Mort Sahl recalled in his 1976 book Heartland:

"In an effort to recruit some muscle for [Jim] Garrison, because I was probably the only well-known name on his side, I went to Washington and spoke with Gene McCarthy. `What about the trial?' McCarthy said. `There wasn't only one conspiracy against Jack. There were four. But nobody wants to deal with it...'

In the same book, Sahl also noted that when he spoke with 1972 Democratic Presidential nominee George McGovern around the same time, "McGovern said, `well I think the Warren Report is a lot of crap.'"

(Aquarian Weekly 5/15/96)


30 People Involved In JFK Assassination Plot?

"The Sulzberger Dynasty's New York Times may still be reporting that only one person was responsible for the November 22, 1963 murder of JFK in Dallas. Yet Granma (9/15/93) noted in the early 1990s that "General Fabian Escalante, director for the Cuban Center for National Security Studies tated that `according to Lopez Estrada, an expert on the CIA, the Dallas assassination must have been committed by approximately 30 persons."

(Downtown 10/18/95)

50 Years Since JFK Assassination Retrospective: Who Used `Bishop' Cover Name?

There is apparently some evidence that a CIA employee named "Bishop," who apparently paid Antonio Veciana $253,000...was a former CIA official named David Phillips. As the Appendix To Hearings Before The House Select Committee On Assassinations (Vol. 10) revealed:

"Investigators interviewed a former career agent for the CIA, who for present purposes will be called Ron Cross. From September 1960 until November 1962, Cross was a case officer at the CIA's JM/WAVE station...

"When asked by the committee if he was familiar with anyone using the cover name of Bishop at the JM/WAVE station, Cross said he was almost positive that David Phillips had used the cover name of...Bishop."

Oswald And The CIA by Professor John Newman observed in the early 1990s that "it is fitting that one of the agency's legendary disinformation artists, David Atlee Phillips, should have been in charge of the CIA's counter-intelligence and propaganda effort against the Fair Play for Cuba Committee" and "what the operation tells us is that the agency was sufficiently interested in countering the Fair Play for Cuba Committee to engage in illegal domestic operations..." A number of U.S. writers have asserted that Oswald was attempting to infiltrate the Fair Play for Cuba Committee on behalf of the CIA, prior to apparently being framed by CIA-linked people as their "patsy" for the JFK assassination.

(Downtown 7/19/95)

50 Years Since JFK Assassination Retrospective: NBC's 1967 `Case Of Jim Garrison' Special Revisited

On June 19, 1967 NBC broadcast a 60-minute special on New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison's investigation of the JFK assassination, entitled "The JFK Conspiracy: The Case of Jim Garrison," but "only allowed Garrison to be interviewed for less than two minutes," according to The Kennedy Conspiracy by Paris Flammonde. On July 13, 1967, however, Garrison was finally allowed by NBC to speak to tv viewers for a half-hour and he said the following:


"...Many things that some of the major news agencies have been telling you are untrue...Although you are citizens of the United States, information concerning the cause of the death of your President [JFK] has been withheld from you...President Kennedy was not killed by a lone assassin...There has been, and continues to be, a concerted effort to keep you from learning these facts...

"...The conclusion of the Warren Report, that President Kennedy was killed by a lone assassin, is a fairy tale.

"...This country was not built on the idea that a handful of nobles, whether located in our federal agencies, in Washington, D.C., or in the ews agencies in New York, should decide what was good for the people to know, and what they should not know. This is a totalitarian concept, which presumes that the leaders of our federal government, and the men in control of the powerful press media, constitute a special elite..."

As long ago as May 16, 19067, Garrison told a New Orleans newspaper reporter the following:

"The point is that Clay Shaw and Lee Oswald have the same post-office box number in their address book and this is, in coded form, the unpublished phone number of Jack Ruby in 1963...

"We have had evidence for some time that in Dallas, Texas, Jack Ruby was working for the CIA at the same time Lee Oswald was working for the CIA here (in New Orleans).

"This means that the CIA well knew that these two men knew each other. We also have evidence that Lee Oswald was not the only man in Dealey Plaza who was an employee of the CIA and now we have found the phone number of the CIA in front of Lee Oswald's address book..."

In an October 1967 Playboy magazine itnerview, Garrison also observed that "there are also 51 CIA documents classified toop secret in the National Archives pertaining to Lee Oswald and Jack Ruby" and "in practice, any documents the CIA wanted classified wasa shunted into the Archives without any examination by the sleeping beauties on the [Warren] Commission..."

(Downtown 4/95)

50 Years Since JFK Assassination Retrospective: Jack Ruby's CIA Connection?

The man who who eliminated Lee Oswald on nationwide tv on November 24, 1963, Jack Ruby, was apparently connected to the CIA, according to the now-deceased former New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison. In the October 1967 issue of Playboy magazine, for instance, Garrison stated:

"Ruby appears to have been the CIA's bagman for a wide variety of anti-Castro adventures. In this connection, let me point out that one of the documents classified top secret in the Archives is a CIA file entitled `The Activities of Jack Ruby.' Perhaps this will become a Book-of-the-Month Club selection in September 2038."

As early as 1967, The Kennedy Conspiracy: An Uncommissioned Report On The Jim Garrison Investigation by Paris Flammonde noted the following:

"District Attorney Jim Garrison bases his belief that Ruby was involved in a well-organized conspiracy to kill President John F. Kennedy on the following points: (1) Ruby knew Oswald; (2) Ruby knew Clay Shaw; (3) Ruby knew David Ferrie; (4) he was involved in smuggling guns to anti-Castro rebels in Cuba; (5) he was intimately involved with right-wing anti-Castro exile groups in Dallas; (6) he was a friend of General Walker; (7) he had indicated in letters smuggled out of prison that he belonged to a conspiracy; (8) he was acquainted before the Kennedy conspiracy with Dallas police officer J.D. Tippit; and (9) he was a part-time employee of the Central Intelligence Agency."

(Downtown 2/15/95)

50 Years Since JFK Assassination Retrospective: LBJ's Memo To General Cabell

Prior to being fired by JFK following the CIA's 1961 Bay of Pigs fiasco, former Dallas Mayor Earle Cabell's brother--then-CIA Deputy Director (Gen.) Charles Cabell--apparently was warned by then-Vice President Lyndon Johnson that JFK intended to decrease the CIA's power in Washington, D.C. As former CIA operative Robert Morrow revealed in his early 1990s book First Hand Knowledge: How I Participated In The CIA-Mafia Murder of President Kennedy:


"On Sunday, April 24, 1961, one week after the fiasco on the beaches, I received a call from [former CIA official] Tracy Barnes...He requested that I meet him at the Golden Parrot in Washington for lunch on Monday...I agreed to see General Charles Cabell and was in his office one hour after leaving the Golden Parrot...A third man was with Cabell when Barnes and I entered his office. He was introduced as the Deputy Director of Plans for the Agency, Richard Bissell.

"The General did not waste time with further amenities and chatter...

"`Well, young man, I assume Tracy has told you about the Agency's problems with the White House.'...

"He then reached into his top desk drawer, removed a large file folder and handed it to me.

"The first item I removed from the folder was a memorandum, handwritten on the official stationery created exclusively for the vice-president of the United States. Beneath the stationery's engraved: `Office of the Vice President of the United States,' the salutation read: `My dear Charles':

"...After a number of critical, self-serving comments abaout the intention of the president and his brother to build a Kennedy dynasty in the White House, Lyndon Johnson proceeded forthrightly to the crux of his message.

"The vice-president had learned, `strictly by accident' of the secret directives issued to Defense Secretary Robert McNamara by President Kennedy...McNamara was ordered to employ any and all means at his disposal, which would result in the revocation of the CIA's power...McNamara was further authorized to establish an alternative intelligence agency...

"Immediately beneath the last-written line were the vice-president's initials, `LBJ'."

Morrow also recalled that, after being shown LBJ's memo to the soon-to-be-axed CIA deputy director, he was allowed to "read through numerous reports dealing with everything from unsavory campaign tactics authorized by Kennedy to surveillance reports which explicitly detailed the manner in which he [JFK] occupied many of his nights," during the next half-hour.

Coincidentally, prior to former CIA Deputy Director [Gen.] Cabell's 1971 death, New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison was apparently preparing to accuse the former deputy CIA director of "conspiring to assassinate" JFK.

(Downtown 1/18/95)

50 Years Since JFK Assassination Retrospective: Why JFK Chose LBJ As VP

The U.S. president whose Warren Commission issued a report which apparently covered-up what actually happened in Dallas nearly 50 years ago was Lyndon Johnson. He apparently wasa chosen to be JFK's running mate in 1960 not because of any special qualifications for the U.S. presidency. As Official and Confidential: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover by Anthony Summers noted in the early 1990s:

"For John Kennedy, a key factor in giving Johnson the vice-presidential slot was the threat of ruinous sex revelations, revelations that would have destroyed the `American family man' image so carefully seeded in the national mind, and snatched the presidency from his grasp. The blackmailers, by this account, were Johnson himself--and [J.] Edgar [Hoover].

"The new information comes from Evelyn Lincoln, John ennedy's personal secretary for 12 years...

"[Evelyn] Lincoln's diary, covering most of her Kennedy service, remains locked in a deposit box...

"During their day of decision over the vice-presidency...John [Kennedy] paced up and down and Robert [Kennedy] slumped on a bed. [Evelyn] Lincoln moved in and out of the room with messages. She heard enough, she says, to understand that Edgar's smear information on Kennedy was at the heart of the dilemma. `It was the information J. Edgar Hoover passed to Johnson--about womanizing, and things in Joe Kennedy's background...Johnson was using that as clout.'..."

(Downtown 11/23/94)

50 Years Since JFK Assassination Retrospective: Revisiting The Warren Report

As Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy by Jim Marrs noted, "the Warren Commission Report was made public on September 28, 1964, with the news media voicing virtually unanimous praise and support for the document."

Yet the same book asserted:

"The Warren Commission was in part the result of an attempt by President Lyndon Johnson and his close advisors to blunt independent assassination investigations both in Texas and in Congress.

"Johnson hand-picked commission members--all of whom had long-standing connections with either the military, defense industries, or U.S. intelligence...

"...There were serious conflicts between the commission's pat report and its attendant 26 volumes of testimony and evidence. Likewise, there were serious conflicts between witness testimony as published by the commission and statements to newsmen and researchers by those same witnesses..."

Destiny Betrayed: JFK, Cuba and the Garrison Case by James DiEugenio also stated the following in reference to the U.S. Establishment's official version of what happened on November 22, 1963 in Dallas:

"Finally what sinks the Warren Report is its lack of respect for itself and the reader. We are asked to believe a string of happenstance, improbabilities, incongruities, and flat-out impossibilities...

"...To convict the dead Oswald, the commission could mold the alleged facts to fit its portrait of the accused...

"Yet it served its purpose. It incriminated a lone assassin and shoved the issue under the table for the 1964 election...

"The American people have been lied to before, but the Warren Report moved this phenomenon to a higher plane. The lie was so big, the attendant praise was so lavish, the holes in the story so gaping, thatit quickly sparked a countermovement to the official story..."

(Downtown 9/21/94)

50 Years Since JFK Assassination Retrospective: Did KGB Report On JFK Assassination Question Warren Report's Conclusions?

Unlike the Warren Commission, the KGB in Russia apparently concluded that Lee Oswald was affiliated with the Central Intelligence Agency prior to JFK's mysterious death on November 22, 1963: As Dr. Cyril Wecht noted in his book Cause of Death:

"I was secretly supplied with a copy of the KGB's official report on Lee Harvey Oswald and the Kennedy assassination...

"According to notes in the file, the KGB believed that Oswald was a spy for the CIA...when he sought shelter in the Soviet Union in 1959...

"One document states that Oswald was taught Russian by the military intelligence division...The summary states that, according to intelligence reports in a separate KGB file on the Kennedy assassination, there is evidence that factions within the American intelligence community...played a role in the assassination...

"...I found it quite ironic that the KGB was willing to open its files regarding the Kennedy assassination, but our own government refuses to do the same..."

Cause of Death also observed:

"There are several, fascinating places to visit in Dallas to learn more about the assassination of the president [JFK]: The JFK Assassination Information Center, headed by Larry Howard, a key critic and researcher, has the best collection and organization of evidence that contradicts the Warren Commission's conclusions. It is located in a retail shopping center two blocks from Dealey Plaza. There is also a great tour bus that operates out of the center and takes visitors through every step Oswald is supposed to have made that day...

"What this case needs is a special prosecutor...

"I do not believe the Department of Justice and its sister organization, the FBI, have any interest in solving this case...

"One day, the American public will know the truth about who killed their president [JFK] and why..."


(Downtown 7/27/94)

50 Years Since JFK Assassination Retrospective: Did RFK Plan To Re-Open JFK Assassination Case?

Prior to being mysteriously eliminated in June 1968 from U.S. Establishment politics, New York U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy may have been planning to re-open the JFK assassination case, if elected president in November 1968. According to Deadly Secrets: The CIA-Mafia War Against Castro and the Assassination of JFK by Warren Hinckle and William Turner:

"...Publicly Bobby [Kennedy] took the stance that he believed in the Warren Report even though he hadn't read it, but privately he seethed...

"...He had confided to campaign aide Richard Lubic, who was with him in the Ambassador Hotel pantry the night he was shot, that he would reopen the case once he was elected. On May 28, 1968, a week before he was shot, he disappeared for several hours in Oxnard, California to check privately on a report that a telephone call warning of the assassination had originated there on the morning of November 22, 1963..."

In an interview that appeared in the July 9, 1969 issue of the now-defunct East Village Other alternatiave newspaper [which was reprinted in Our Time: An Anthology of Interviews from the `East Village Other'], Mark Lane also asserted:

"Robert Kennedy sent two emissaries to see Jim Garrison at two different times after he had declared for the presidency...Robert Kennedy wanted Jim to know that if he were elected President, he would apprehend and prosecute those responsible for killing his brother. He also wanted Jim to know that he supported the New Orleans investigation...The interesting thing is that both of them carried the same phrase from Senator Kennedy; the phrase was: `I can't say anything now, there are guns between me and the White House.'"


(Downtown 7/13/94)

50 Years Since JFK Assassination Retrospective: How CIA's Tokyo Station Reacted To JFK's Death

In Chapter VI of its report, the Warren Commission stated the following:

"Director John A. McCone and Deputy Director Richard Helms of the Central Intelligence Agency testified before the commission that no one connected with the CIA had ever interviewed Oswald or communicated with him in any way. In his supplementing affidavit, Director McCone stated unequivocally that Oswald was not an agent, employee, or informant of the CIA, that the Agency never communicated with him in any manner or furnished him any compensation, and that Oswald was never directly or indirectly associated with the CIA..."

Yet Deadly Secrets: The CIA-Mafia War Against Castro and the Assassination of J.F.K. by Warren Hinckle and William Turner described the reaction at the CIA's Tokyo Station to news of JFK's death on November 22, 1963 by stating the following:

"There was joy in the CIA's Tokyo Station...`The conservatives were obviously elated and there was talk of an invasion of Cuba,' said Jim Wilcott, the Tokyo Station financial officer in 1963. According to Wilcott, CIA hardliners `hated Jack Kennedy' because they felt he betrayed the agency over the Bay of Pigs. Agents were breaking out bottles and having drinks to Oswald. Tongues became loose, and there was a great deal of talk about Oswald's connections with the CIA. It was accepted as given that Oswald worked for the agency. This is what Wilcott says he learned:

"`Oswald was originally under control of the Tokyo Station's Soviet Russia Branch. He was trained at Atsugi Naval Air Station, the secret base for Tokyo CIA special operations...When Oswald returned from the USSR in June of 1962, he was brought back to Japan for debriefing. They were having some kind of difficulty with Oswald...He became difficult to handle...'"

The same book noted the following:

"Wilcott told the authors that at first he found it difficult to accept that the man who was said to have shot the president [JFK] worked for the CIA. `Then I heard about more and more employees who had been working on the Oswald project in the late 1950s.' Part of Wilcott's job was to hand out cash for covert CIA operations. `When I expressed disbelief, they told me, "`Well, Jim, so and so drew an advance from you for Oswald'" or "`You gave out money for the Oswald project under such and such a crypto.'"'"

The Deadly Secrets book by Warren Hinckle and William Turner also asserted that "Nixon may have felt the need to cover up Watergate because an investigation would have exposed CIA misdeeds" and "such an investigation would have divulged the deadliest secret of the 20th Century--the government entanglements with organized crime, the mob-CIA plots to kill Fidel Casatro, and the great backfire when the mob and the CIA plotters turned on President Kennedy and murdered him in Dallas."

(Downtown 6/29/94 and 7/13/94)

50 Years Since JFK Assassination Retrospective: Jack Ruby's Mysterious Cancer Death

The man who silenced the apparently CIA-linked Lee Oswald on November 24, 1963--the apparently CIA-linked Jack Ruby--died of cancer on January 3, 1967. As Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy by Jim Marrs recalled:

"On December 9, 1966, two days after his new trial site had been announced, Ruby was moved from the Dallas County Jail to Parkland Hospital after complaining of persistent coughing and nausea.

"Docotrs initially diagnosed his problem as `pneumonia.' The next day, however, the diagnosis was changed to cancer...

"Bruce McCarty operated an electron microscope at Southwest Medical School near Parkland...He was called back to work during the holidays in 1966 to make a study of Ruby's cancer cells...

"McCarty confirmed that Ruby's cells were microvilli, indicating his cancer originated in the digestive system. He was shocked when it was announced that Ruby died from lung cancer.

"Could Ruby have been injected with live cancer cells, which could account for the presence of the microvilli?...

"While none of this information established beyond doubt that Jack Ruby was somehow eliminated through cancer, it certainly shows there is cause enough for researchers to be highly suspicious of his sudden and convenient death..."

The same book also observed:

"At least one former Dallas lawman offered a more mundane explanation for Ruby's sudden and rampant cancer. He told another: `...They just took Ruby in for X-rays...While he sat there for 15 or 20 minutes or more, they just left the X-ray machine on him.'"

(Downtown 6/29/94)

50 Years Since JFK Assassination Retrospective: Revisiting 1993 Cuban TV Documentary

In an article entitled "New Evidence in the Kennedy Assassination" (Granma International 12/8/93), Gabriel Molina described what was contained in a three-part Cuban tv documentary on assassination attempts against former Cuban President Fidel Castro, that was broadcast on Cuban tv in 1993:

"General Fabian Escalanate Font, former head of the Cuban State Security, declared that Cuban counter-revolutionaries and Mafia henchmen, who were manipulated by certain CIA leaders and who had participated in plots to kill Fidel [Castro] were part of the conspiracy surrounding the Kennedy assassination...

"Escalante's sensational accusation pointed to Cubans Eladio del Valle Gutierrez and Herminio Diaz Garcia (both dead, the first murdered under mysterious circumstances) as the gunmen who acted on November 22, 1963, with or without Oswald. It is true that Wilcott, a former CIA officer, saw Oswald at one of the intelligence agency's camps in Japan. That wasn't the only evidence of links between Oswald and the U.S. intelligence agencies or between Jack Ruby, his executioner, and the Mafia. The groups was rounded out by Chicago Mafiosi Lenny Patrick and David Yaras, and by Richard Gaines.

"According to Escalante, another group involved in the presidential assassination  [of JFK] included Cuban-American Frank Sturgis, an important figure in the Bay of Pigs invasion and one of the Watergate `plumbers,' Orlando Bosch and the two Novo brothers, Ignacio and Guillermo, all three of whom are known terrorists; and Dave Phillips, a former head of the CIA for the western hemisphere...

"Escalante also claims that the role of organizer was played by, among others, Richard Helms and Richard Bissell, director and deputy director of the agency, respectively, and Mafia heads Santos Trafficante, Sam Giancana and John Roselli."

(Downtown 1/5/94)

50 Years Since JFK Assassination Retrospective: Who Used Secret Service Credentials On November 22, 1963?

Coincidentally, a former Secret Service Special Agent named Abraham Bolden--who was assigned to the White House Detail in the early 1960s--apparently told A Citizen's Dissent author Mark Lane on December 4, 1967 that "it had been widely known in the Secret Service that an unauthorized person had used Secret Service credentials in Dallas on November 22 [1963]."

PBS's Bill Moyers And Coverage of JFK Assassination

One reason long-time PBS show producer Bill Moyers may still not apparently be very eager to examine what may have really happened in Dallas on November 22, 1963 on his tv show might be because Moyers, coincidentally, was personally involved in the post-assassination shift of presidential power to Lyndon Baines Johnson. As LBJ's Inner Circle by Charles Robert recalled:

"Johnson's lengthening shadow began to take shape in Parkland Hospital in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963 minutes after Kenneth O'Donnell, appointments secretary to President Kennedy, first addressed him as `Mr. President'--to inform him that President Kennedy was dead...

"`Get me Jack Valenti,' he told a friend before leaving the hospital to ride head down on the back seat of an unmarked police car to Love Field. And so Jack J. Valenti...who had ridden in the doomed Dallas motorcade as the Vice-President's guest, became the first post-assassination addition to President Johnson's staff...

"At Love Field...he picked up another trustted Texan, Bill D. Moyers, for the return trip to Washington. Moyers, a Johnson protege'...had been in Austin, Texas, advancing the President's scheduled visit. When he heard of the assassination, he `naturally' flew to Johnson's side. That's where he and Valenti were when LBJ...gave his first presidential order: `Now let's get airborne!'

"...After the President had written out in long hand the...57-word statement he wasa to make on his arrival in Washington...he questioned its adequacy...with Bill Moyers..."

At The White House by Robert Pierpoint also noted that "If anyone had a close working and personal relationship with LBJ it was Moyers" and "Moyers persistently tried to put a humane face on an increasingly inhumane war, explaining the president's Vietnam policies in the most acceptable terms possible."

(Downtown 12/22/93)

50 Years Since JFK Assassination Retrospective: `Newsweek''s 1993 Coverage

In a 1993 "special investigation report," Newsweek magazine (11/22/93) asserted that "Kennedy was almost certainly killed by Lee Harvey Oswald acting alone" and "When Tippit stopped him, Oswald shot him." Yet Double Cross by Sam and Chuck Giancana stated the following in 1992:

"Mooney said that the `alleged lone gunman,' Lee Harvey Oswald, like Ruby, had ties to both the CIA and the Outfit...The short of it, Mooney said, was that Lee Harvey Oswald was a CIA agent.

"Oswald had been a spy for the U.S. government in the Soviet Union, and had been trained to speak fluent Russian...In truth, Mooney said `Lee Harvey Oswald was a right-wing supporter of the `Kill Castro, Bay of Pigs camp'...`CIA all the way.'...

"Mooney now confided that..each man involved in the assassination plot received fifty thousand dollars...from wealthy right-wing Texas oilmen. Precisely who these financiers were, however, Mooney never disclosed.

"In the early spring of 1963, when the decision was reached by Mooney and his CIA associates to finalize plans for their elimination of the President [JFK], Oswald was the natural choice as a fall guy. `They'd already laid the groundwork to make him look like a Commie nut...so they figured it would be no problem to convince people he was a Commie.'...

"Mooney said the entire conspiracy went `right up to the top of the CIA'...

"Mooney said both `Richard Nixon and Lyndon Johnson knew about the whole damned thing,' having met with him several times in Dallas immediately prior to the assassination...

"To eliminate Oswald, Mooney said the CIA had selected White and Tippiet...on the Dallas police force...They were to murder the `lone gunman.' However, Tippit had wavered, Mooney said, allowing Oswald to escape. Thus, White had been forced to kill his partner. `Probably the only real screwup in the whole goddamned deal.'

"`And the rest is history,' Mooney said grinning. `...There was a line into the CIA. If somebody knew too much, the CIA found out about it and took care of the problem'..."

(Downtown 12/8/93)

50 Years Since JFK Assassination Retrospective: Gary Underhill's Mysterious Death

Among the mysterious deaths related to the apparent JFK assassination conspiracy cover-up was the strange death of Gary Underhill. As Jim Marrs recalled in his Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy book:

"One strange incident involved an operative named Gary Underhill...At the time of the assassination, Underhill performed `special assignments' for the CIA and was on close terms with officials of both the Agency and the Pentagon. Several days after the assassination Underhill visited friends in New Jersey. He was badly shaken and fearful. He said that President Kennedy had been killed by a small group within the CIA and that he believed his life was in danger. A short time later, Underhill was found fatally shot in his Washington apartment..."

JFK Assassination `Prophet' Dixon's CIA Connection

Following the assassination of JFK, Jeane Dixon gained some fame for having "predicted" the event. As A Gift of Prophecy: The Phenomenal Jeane Dixon by Ruth Montgomery noted in 1965:

"It was a bright, crisp day in late November. The luncheon had been scheduled several weeks in advance...Mrs. Harley Cope, widow of a rear admiral, and Jeane Dixon, Washington's famous seeress, ordered eggs Florentine...

"The...brunette leaned back against her chair and closed her eyes. `...Something dreadful is going to happen to the president today...'

"Jeane could only nod miserably, while Mrs. Cope explained. `Mrs. Dixon had been foreseeing a tragedy for President Kennedy very soon...'"

Coincidentally, the same book also revealed that prior to November 22, 1963, the CIA-backed Cuban exile leader Mario Garcia Kohly visited Dixon in her office. And in his 1980 book Conspiracy, Anthony Summers wrote:

"In 1978 I interviewed the son of the late Mario Kohly...The younger Kohly recalled opening a bottle of champagne at the news of President Kennedy's death and then calling his father. According to Kohly, `My father seemed elated and quite relieved, he seemed more pleased, I would say, than surprised. I am sure he had knowledge of what really happened in Dealey Plaza...'"

Summers also observed that Kohly's son quoted the deceased CIA-backed Cuban exile leader as saying "John Kennedy was a traitor...He was a Communist."

(Downtown 11/10/93)