The Kremlin, LBJ, and the JFK Assassination

The American Spectator ^ | 8 November 2017 | Paul Kengor

[GreyFriar]

Newly declassified documents confirm Moscow always knew to play the American left like a fiddle.

President Trump recently authorized a mass declassification of documents relating to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in November 1963. Among the material subsequently released, one document that instantly grabbed headlines was a December 1966 FBI memo reporting the reaction of Soviet and Communist Party USA officials to the Kennedy shooting. The document was headlined in (among other publications) the New York Post, which, in turn, was flagged at the top of the Drudge Report, which attracted a lot of readers. Old JFK conspiracy theorists picked up the torch and were off and running.

“The Soviet Union theorized that President Lyndon B. Johnson could have been behind JFK’s assassination,” began the New York Post, “and also learned Moscow could be blamed and attacked, according to documents in a major release of files related to Kennedy’s slaying.”

This sounds very intriguing, and very new. It isn’t new. And it also requires crucial historical context, especially as certain conspiracy theorists thump their chest in quasi-vindication. Here I’d like to offer that context before delving into the contents of the newly declassified FBI memo.

I provide the context in a book that was published in May. That book, A Pope and a President, focused on Pope John Paul II and Ronald Reagan, and deals at length with the Soviet role in the shooting of John Paul II, but also deals with the Soviet disinformation campaign launched in response to the Kennedy assassination.

[Rockingham]

Thank you for a thorough and well-researched counterpoint with opinions and facts that were new to me. My problem with the scenario you outline is that the assassination fortuitously coincided with separate foreign trips by the Childs' brothers and meetings with high level Communists. Castro called Jack Childs' presence in Cuba and meeting with Castro as the assassination occurred an "amazing coincidence" -- and I am forced to agree.

I am not inclined to think that such a coincidence could be planned in advance. That being so, arranging dialog and scenes for the Childs' brothers visits would have had a large element of chance and improvisation that was contrary to Soviet methods. The balance thus shifts a bit against the scenario you outline.

Moreover, I am hard put to think that the Soviets and the Cubans could also arrange for the evidence pointing to a domestic conspiracy. To toss in a fact of my own, a good friend of mine now passed had a long career as a US Army intelligence deep cover operative and later as a planner and briefing officer. He was also a colleague and friend of CIA officer David Atlee Phillips. One day my friend casually confirmed to me that Phillips' CIA cover name was Maurice Bishop. As I explained to my startled friend, that was and is denied by Phillips and the CIA because of testimony that a Maurice Bishop who looked like Phillips had met with Oswald. (See Gaeton Fonzi's The Last Investigation).

If this connection by Phillips to Oswald is true, Phillips might have been posing as a Cuban intelligence operative and spurred Oswald toward shooting Kennedy. Or perhaps Oswald was being set up as a patsy. Or maybe Phillips was trying to get an idea of what Oswald was up to so as to avert it. These possibilities all point in ominous directions.

There is also the officially long unidentified fingerprint at Oswald's supposed TSBD sniper's nest, which was recently matched to one Malcolm Wallace, a claimed hitman in LBJ's employ. Supposedly, it was Wallace who killed Henry Marshall, the federal investigator who was collecting testimony and evidence that the Department of Agriculture and the Kennedy's expected to make the case for prosecuting LBJ for his role in the Billie Sol Estes scandal. Assuming the fingerprint match is valid, just what was Wallace doing at the sniper's nest?

A commonly missing element from the domestic conspiracy argument is to explain why ordinarily patriotic senior intelligence officers would go rogue and participate in the assassination of a president. If they did, I believe that the reasons were cumulative: Kennedy's botched Bay of Pigs decisions; his secret negotiations and bad deal that ended the Cuban missile crisis and the lies about it; Kennedy's reckless liaisons with women who ranged from interns to mob women to an East German spy; and Kennedy's extortion of cash bribes. Read Sy Hersh's The Dark Side of Camelot. Given the dangers of the Cold War and the difficulty and disruption of impeachment, the plotters may have regarded removal of Kennedy as a national imperative and assassination as the necessary means. Meanwhile, LBJ joins in to prevent his removal from the ticket and eventual prosecution and imprisonment. Such considerations could make for powerful motives.

[otness_e]

Don’t underestimate Soviet disinformation campaigns, especially considering that they’re the ones who pretty much gave “disinformation” its name. These were the same guys who tarnished Pope Pius XII overnight just by insinuating that he’s “Hitler’s Pope”, not to mention turned Che Guevara into a leftist icon, even having Jean Paul Sartre give the infamous description of him being the “most complete human being of the century” despite the fact that he pretty much embarrassed the Soviets with the Cuban Missile Crisis by demanding that they fire the nukes at America, and then we’ve got Operation Ares, which essentially involved the whole anti-War crowd. If they can pull off those kinds of disinformation ops, they most certainly can arrange for the “amazing coincidences” of the Child brothers meeting them at separate places yet around the same time as the assassination. And use common sense, do you REALLY think the KGB would risk speaking in Russian in the first place if Childs was present, ESPECIALLY when Childs knew Russian as well? And for the record, that wasn’t my insinuation at all, it’s Ion Mihai Pacepa and Rychlak’s insinuation. And considering that Pacepa was not only one of the highest Soviet officials to ever defect from the Soviet Union, but also was personally involved in several KGB disinformation operations, it’s pretty clear that he definitely would be a pretty viable source of information on the matter. And besides, he already documented plenty of things that point to the Soviets being involved in at the very least a KGB disinformation operation relating to who shot JFK, if not killing him themselves (like the Mithrokin Archives pretty much all but confirming it, or the fact that many of the guys who did claim that CIA agents, right wingers, or even LBJ were responsible had done so, directly or indirectly, under the direction of the Soviets which is proven in various sources, including KGB documents.). Even Wolfe, an East German spymaster, has implied that Castro at least was involved in the killing.

As far as your point regarding the reasons why patriotic Americans would kill JFK, while I don’t deny that LBJ had his own problems to deal with (and personally, I hated that guy for some bad things he’s done), or that a lot of people were upset with how Bay of Pigs went south under JFK’s direction, there’s actually quite a few things that don’t really work with pinning the blame there. For example, why kill him out in the open in front of a LOT of witnesses? If they just wanted him dead just out of revenge for Bay of Pigs and/or to prevent his VP from being prosecuted, they could have just leaked to the press his sleeping with a Stasi agent [which, dirty matters or not, DOES deal with national security, which even back then they needed to report on], or push come to shove, just have him look like he died in his sleep. That’s what I would have done. And besides, LBJ and other players mentioned in the affair had alibis as well (LBJ apparently didn’t even KNOW that LHO had been involved in the hit until three days afterward based on that declassified CIA memo, ruling him out as the guy who hired him. And Bush Sr.? He wasn’t even at the national stage of politics back then, let alone working with the CIA at top levels.).