KGB CREATED CIA CONSPIRACY THEORY

Washington Post ^ | November 22, 2003 | Max Holland

[lasereye]

The Warren Report has never been impeached, yet conspiracy theories persist, nay thrive, after 40 years. It's fair to ask why....

Among those who believe in a conspiracy, the most widely accepted theory is that elements of the U.S. government, most conspicuously the CIA, were complicit in gunning down the 35th president in broad daylight....

How is it that Americans have come to embrace a conspiracy theory that reads like a script written by the KGB, the CIA's mortal Cold War adversary? Well, it turns out that Moscow's relentless propagation of that virulent theory and its prevalence here are no mere coincidence. One of the more amazing stories to seep out of the former Soviet empire is the role Moscow played in exploiting Americans' psychological vulnerability after the assassination, and in preying on their devotion to due process. We can piece together this concerted effort only now with the release of documents from Soviet archives -- some disclosures authorized, some not. Taken together, they prove that the KGB played a central, pernicious role in fomenting the belief that the CIA was involved in Kennedy's assassination.

[lasereye]

The writer, a contributing editor at The Nation magazine, is completing a history of the Warren Commission.

Someone from The Nation wrote this!

[ConservativeMan55]

I am not familiar with The Nation magazine?

Good? Bad?

[Dark Wing]

FYI

[ConservativeMan55]

Thanks for the info.

[dr_who_2]

I could believe that. In fact, I imagine a lot of the KGB people who promulgated any conspiracy theorys believed them, too.

[per loin]

But it was CIA operatives in the KGB who got the KGB to plant the story in the Italian newspaper. This kept the conspiracy folk focused on the Kennedy assassination, while the CIA secretly took over every major bakery in the US. By altering the ingredients of bread, the CIA was able to control how people would bet on each week's NFL games.

[StatesEnemy]

How is it that Americans have come to embrace a conspiracy theory that reads like a script written by the KGB, the CIA's mortal Cold War adversary?

As opposed to a "commission" that would have us believe the ballistic ballet of the "Connelly bullet"?

[risk]

Oliver Stone got this on a trip to Cuba? I'd like more info on that!

The word "dupe" has long been out of favor, but that's precisely what Garrison turned out to be after he arrested Clay Shaw in March 1967 and charged him with conspiring to assassinate Kennedy. Owing to a clever piece of KGB disinformation planted in a Communist-owned Italian newspaper, Garrison came to believe that in Shaw he had apprehended an important "CIA operative." And on the basis of this deception (again, revealed by KGB archivist Mitrokhin), Garrison constructed an entire conspiracy edifice, ultimately arguing that the CIA had plotted the assassination-coup d'etat in concert with the military-industrial complex -- again, because Kennedy was allegedly easing up in the Cold War.

If Garrison's persecution of Shaw hadn't been genuine, and tragic, the whole episode would be risible [laughable]. It wasn't. Garrison altered forever the parameters of Americans' nagging doubts, though that transformation went largely unnoticed at the time. Before the spring of 1967, not even the Warren Report's harshest critics dared suggest the government itself was involved. Within the space of a few weeks, Garrison single-handedly legitimated the fable of CIA complicity. Not even Shaw's exoneration in 1971 was sufficient to offset the insidious notion planted by the KGB and unwittingly nurtured by Garrison. After receiving an inadvertent assist from the Watergate and intelligence hearings of the mid-1970s, the KGB could justifiably claim, by the end of the decade, that owing to its "active measures," more Americans believed in its conspiracy theory (or some variation thereof) than in the findings of the Warren Commission.

This preposterous allegation of CIA involvement might have faded with time but for a chance encounter in a Havana elevator between the publisher of Garrison's 1988 memoir and a powerful Hollywood director named Oliver Stone. In "JFK," Stone reconstructs Jim Garrison's edifice so painstakingly that 88 minutes into the movie, the KGB disinformation resurfaces. Jim Garrison (Kevin Costner) hands Clay Shaw (Tommy Lee Jones) the Italian newspaper clipping, and the implication is created that Shaw was a "contract agent for the Central Intelligence Agency." Arguably, Stone's 1991 movie is the only American feature film made during the Cold War to have, as its very axis, a lie concocted in the KGB's disinformation factories.

If and when the archives of the Communist Party's "sword and shield" are fully opened, the KGB's indispensable role in propagating the lie of CIA involvement will take its place among other triumphs of Russian deception, such as the infamous Czarist forgery "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion." Until then there is only this sobering thought, long an axiom of professional intelligence officers: We are never truly deceived by others; we only deceive ourselves.

[WaterDragon]

The conspiracy theory I heard growing up was that LBJ engineered Kennedy's assassination......and that was put about by Democrats who adored LBJ!!!!

[yeetch!]

seems logical. LBJ wanted to be president.

[maestro]

Your# 9.......Yep.

I could believe that. In fact, I imagine a lot of the KGB people who promulgated any conspiracy theorys believed them, too.

It's just not 'snooker' for a KGB disinformation conspiracy not to include a 'pristine' bullet!

(Pristine bullets always help.)

/sarcasm

[RightWingAtheist]

The Nation? Bad, bad, bad VERY bad. One of the oldest continualy published magazines in the U.S., it's also the most hard left national publication. Beginning with the Russian Revolution onwards, it has had a long history of supporting, propagadizing and excusing communist and Anti-American regimes, even Pol Pot's Cambodia. Its motto should be "we've been so wrong for so long"

[maestro]

Your#16......

The Nation? Bad, bad, bad VERY bad. One of the oldest continualy published magazines in the U.S., it's also the most hard left national publication. Beginning with the Russian Revolution onwards, it has had a long history of supporting, propagadizing and excusing communist and Anti-American regimes, even Pol Pot's Cambodia. Its motto should be "we've been so wrong for so long"

That's funny!

Thanks, 'friend'.

[Plutarch]

So what did Oliver Stone know, and when did he know it?

[ConservativeMan55]

Gotcha. I keep my news sources very narrow.

[Joe_October]

I made a trip to Dallas and stopped and visited the book depository and the grassy knoll. The best part of the trip was walking out in front of the book building and visiting all the kooks (uh, experts) who contributed each of their theories. It was very good since they could walk you to the spot and point you to each spot. It's an interesting sight. None of the movies, docu-dramas, studies, reports or books showed it like I saw it there. The CIA from the building down the street is a pretty good theory. Heck, this was probably one of those convergence moments and all the theories are correct. It wasn't two shooters, it was 20.

A few thoughts:

From the grassy knoll (which is just a small hill by the way), I could have hit JFK with a rock. There is a sewage grate right behind the fence. They could have gone down that sewage tunnel to escape as we would have done as kids.

They should have put a gun with an electronic sight in the corner of the book depository and charged a couple bucks to put an electronic slug into the President (bad taste I know but it would answer the question of whether it could be done and make money).

The museum is a all civil rights PC crap. Terrible. Not even particularly done well.

But, in the final analysis, if I wanted to prevent anyone from revealing my secrets (say the mafia did it or LBJ or whoever), I would want every kook to come out and say they sold the bullets to Booth (okay Oswald but that's what I mean) or some such nonsense. If you confuse the truth enough it will never surface.

So, from now on, if you don't actually know something don't offer it. Then, whoever is left that really knows will be the only one speaking.

Me, I blame Clinton. They both wanted the same woman. But, I don't actually KNOW this so, I won't offer it.