Beyond the smoking gun: The new JFK files fill in 2 holes in the assassination story

I’ve been hearing from news reporters for major news organizations, who ask, “What’s in the new JFK files? Is there a smoking gun?”

The answer is no. There is no one piece of evidence in the 113,00 pages of JFK records scheduled to be released by October 26, 2017, that will change people’s minds...

But the new JFK files, if released in their entirety, will fill in the two key gaps in the JFK assassination story that have long been obscured by government misconduct, official secrecy, and lazy journalism.

Think of the JFK assassination story as an incomplete mosaic. The new files help complete the picture in two ways.

The new files shed light on the CIA’s use of Lee Oswald for intelligence purposes before November 22, 1963. They also illuminate the illegal actions of government officials to conceal the CIA’s manipulation of Oswald and its plot to kill Fidel Castro in late 1963....

The new files strengthen the claim–long denied by the CIA and mainstream news organizations–that the agency used accused assassin Lee Oswald for intelligence purposes.

Part of the story was brought to light the JFK review board in the 1990s when they released, a complete version of one of the agency’s many pre-assassination cables on Oswald. It was prepared by Jame Angleton’s Counterintelligence Staff on October 10, 1963.

More of the story is coming in the testimony of Orest Pena, a New Orleans bar owner who said he saw Oswald in the company of a senior FBI agents in the summer of 1963. The Pena testimony was not included in the first batch of National Archives releases last week.

The newly-declassified financial records of the CIA front group, the Cuban Revolutionary Council, are also relevant, as Larry explains at The New JFK Show Blog. In his turn as a public supporter of Castro in the summer of 1963, Oswald had repeated contacts with people associated with the CRC. I will be writing more about these records in comings weeks.

Meanwhile, intelligence historian John Newman has already begun to use the new files to develop the granular knowledge of CIA covert operations and cryptonyms necessary to tell this story.

The JFK release last week includes a great deal of material about Russian defector Yuri Nosenko, who claimed to have seen Oswald’s KGB file. The veracity of Nosenko’s claims in the face of CIA interrogation is a key issue that requires deeper analysis, as Newsweek has already reported.

Key documents to come include the still-unreleased testimony of Angleton to the Church Committee on September 12, 1975.

Also important are the operational files of CIA officers hostile to JFK who were involved in assassination operations including Bill Harvey, David Phillips, and Howard Hunt.

The other CIA guided events and missions eventually have become known and admitted over a period time. Conspiring to coverup their knowledge of Oswald’s activities before the WRC is just coming to the surface. Denying their involvement in setting LHO beforehand still continues.

Thought you might appreciate this:

When did Helms and Angleton deny any foreknowledge of Oswald? They acknowledged hearing of him when he went to the USSR:

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=123&search=oswald_AND+1959#relPageId=144&tab=page

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=40&relPageId=132&search=helms_AND oswald AND first

According Jeff Morley -posted October 24, 2017 at 2:32 pm

“Angleton denied paying attention to Oswald which was deceptive. His aide Betty Egerter controlled the Oswald file from December 1959 to November 1963.”

From THE GHOST (The book Jeff Morley just finished writing.)

“”The question was first raised by Senator Charles Mathias, a Republican Brahmin from Maryland on the Church Committee

“To your knowledge,” he asked, “was Oswald ever interrogated when he returned from Russia?”
Angleton fumbled for words.

“I don’t, probably would know but I don’t know whether the military–normally that would fall with the jurisdiction of the military, since he was a military man who defected,” Angleton babbled. “So I don’t know the answer to that.”

In fact, Angleton did know the answer. The FBI interviewed Oswald in the summer of 1962 and Hoover had sent the report to his office, where Betty Egerter signed for it.””

Here’s some more on the Nosenko- KGB connection: .

Agent James Angleton derailed all questions about Oswald as seen in a declassified 1972 CIA memo which ordering that “no defector or source” be asked about LHO. In April 1972, Angleton was attempting to quash all Nosenko-KGB theories which were floating within the CIA. Angleton had a high interest in Nosenko and sought to block other Agency people from questioning the official story of Oswald as a lone assassin. Angleton knew more than anyone, the CIA had been monitored Oswald’s movements for four years, including his politics, personal life, and all foreign contacts.

Here is a summary written by Jeff Marley that’s based on his book-”The Ghost: The Secret Life of CIA Spymaster James Jesus Angleton.” State of the Nosenko Case .... Yuri Nosenko had been resolved to the satisfaction of the CIA leadership by the spring of 1972.

To recap one of the most famous spy vs. spy episodes of the Cold War, Nosenko was KBG officer who defected to the United States in January 1964 with the promise of a $50,000 payment and an annual salary of $25,00 for an indefinite period. Nosenko said, ... that he had seen the KGB’s file on Oswald and that it contained nothing incriminating about the Soviet intelligence agency.

Angleton and other counterintelligence officers didn’t believe Nosenko’s story and persuaded Helms to renege on the agreement. Nosenko was detained, without judicial authorization, at a secret CIA facility in Clinton, Maryland and later at the CIA’s Camp Peary in Virginia, (what would now be called “black sites.”) Nosenko was not tortured but he did endure solitary confinement and hostile interrogation for four years. Angleton believed that Nosenko was a false defector and he set out, in the words of Soviet Bloc division chief David Murphy to “break” him. The new JFK releases contain extensive documentation of the Nosenko affair, including tape recordings and interrogation reports,... Nosenko never confessed. A group of CIA officers who believed Nosenko was a bona fide defector pressed to have Nosenko removed from Angleton’s control....

A fierce bureaucratic struggle ensued which “nearly wrecked” the CIA’s Soviet operations. The struggle was finally resolved by deputy director Rufus Taylor in October 1968, who ruled against Angleton and his allies. Nosenko was released in early 1969 and resettled, at CIA expense,...

Angleton and his acolytes continued to believe that Nosenko was a false defector and continued to search for evidence to confirm this theory.... Richard Helms, a close friend of Angleton, asked CIA officer John Hart to review the case. Hart concluded that Nosenko was a bona fide defector. He wrote up his findings in a classified report called “The Monster Plot,” and in a open source book, The CIA’s Russians, which contains a lucid account of the whole affair.... the Nosenko case was effectively closed by April 1972 and Angleton’s reputation as a paranoid conspiracy theorist was growing within the Agency.

... A close reading of the April 1972 memo shows .... the memo was sent by an Angleton loyalist, his longtime deputy Ray Rocca, identified in the memo as DC/CI (deputy chief, Counterintelligence). Angleton, through Rocca, had arranged for the prior approval of Dick Helms, who was a Nosenko skeptic himself. Rocca did not issue any orders that were not approved by his boss. The order was not directed at Angleton, but at the SB/CI, the counterintelligence office of the Soviet Bloc division. The order asserted that the Counterintelligence Staff, not the Soviet Bloc division, would handle Oswald-related questions.

In other words, the April 1972 memo was not designed to shut down Angleton’s mole hunt. It was an expression of Angleton’s desire to continue the mole hunt that had largely been shut down. But the memo, I believe, was was also motivated by a desire to control unwanted questions about Oswald, who had denied he shot JFK before being killed in police custody.

State of the Oswald Case in 1972 -Oswald: “I’m a patsy”... Angleton had long monitored skeptics of the official story that Oswald acted alone.

In 1968, he set up the so-called Garrison Group within the Counterintelligence Staff to spy on New Orleans prosecutor Jim Garrison who tried to make a conspiracy case against businessman Clay Shaw, who had served as a “highly paid CIA contract source” in the 1950s, .... When Garrison set up a national committee to reopen the JFK investigation in 1969, Angleton asked the FBI for more information on the group’s members. When WC critics held a conference in 1973, Angleton sent a colleague to spy on the proceedings. In short, Angleton kept tabs on people who doubted Oswald’s sole guilt.

More importantly, the April 1972 memo was not the first time Angleton sought to shut down questions about Oswald inside the CIA. It was the third instance, and the other two had nothing to do with Nosenko.

The first time is documented in Phil Shenon’s book, A Cruel and Shocking Act. In September 1969, Angleton received a detailed report from the State Department, written by Charles Thomas, an earnest Foreign Service Officer stationed in Mexico in the 1960s, who had investigated Oswald’s visit to Mexico in September 1963.

Thomas had spoken with several Mexicans who recalled meeting Oswald. He collected credible evidence that Oswald had some kind of relationship with Silvia Duran, an employee of the Cuban Consulate in Mexico City, who was known to the CIA for her good looks and communist sympathies. Thomas’s evidence was sufficient to convince Mexico City station chief Win Scott that Oswald had a sexual relationship with Duran.

Thomas felt obliged to report what he knew to Washington, ... about Oswald’s Cuban contacts. The FBI wasn’t interested. So State Department referred Thomas’ reporting to Angleton. No one outside the CIA knew it at the time, but Angleton had known all about Oswald’s visit to Mexico City six weeks before JFK was killed. His staff had prepared two cables about it that were sent to various Washington agencies and to Win Scott. The existence of these cables was not known in 1969.

Angleton also knew that all personnel at the Cuban Consulate where Duran worked were presumed to work for Cuban intelligence. Yet. Angleton wasn’t interested in Thomas’s information. He replied to the State Department with a note stating he saw “no need for further action.”

The second time Angleton suppressed Oswald information is documented in [Jeff Marley’s] book, Our Man in Mexico. It happened in April 1971. When Mexico City station chief Win Scott suddenly died, Angleton went to Mexico City and seized Scott’s unpublished memoir. In the memoir, Scott flatly–and accurately–disputed a key finding of the Warren Commission.

The commission’s final report stated (on p. 777) that the CIA had not learned of Oswald’s visit to the Cuban Consulate until after the assassination of JFK. That was a lie and Scott knew that it was a lie. His photo and audio surveillance operations reported on all visitors to the Consulate No American came and went the doors of the Consulate without Scott being informed within 24 hours. Oswald’s visit to the Consulate on September 27, 1963 were no exception.

Angleton seized Scott’s manuscript and shared it with no one. So, a year later, in April 1972, when Angleton learned that the Soviet Bloc division asked Soviet defector, Oleg Layalin about Oswald, the counterintelligence chief had two good reasons to seek cut off questions. He wanted to pursue the mole hunt and he wanted to cut off unwanted inquiries into Oswald’s past.

http://jfkfacts.org/cias-angleton-want-cut-off-questions-oswald/

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