Tag: Oswald

CIA tradecraft & JFK’s assassination: the making of a patsy

Rolf-Mowatt-Larssen
Former CIA station chief Rolf Mowatt-Larssen addresses a conference of JFK researchers in Dallas in November 2019. (Credit: Jefferson Morley)

[ICYMI Part I : A veteran officer analyzes the death of a president / Part II: ‘The very top people.’ / ]

CIA veteran Rolf Mowatt-Larseen proposed a “thought experiment” to the November 2019 JFK conference in Dallas. He reverse-engineered the lone gunman scenario, posing a question both novel and incisive.

 “How can you get away with a really elaborate but very simple plan of deception, to end up in a place where the president is dead and it is blamed on someone else, other than the people who perpetrated it?” he asked. “Not easy.”

CIA tradecraft & JFK’s assassination: A veteran officer analyzes the death of a president

Rolf-Mowatt-Larssen
Former CIA station chief Rolf-Mowatt-Larssen addressed a conference of JFK researchers in Dallas in November 2019. (Credit: Jefferson Morley)

(This article, titled “Under CIA Eyes,” first appeared in Counterpunch, Vol. 25 published in January 2020.).

“I was struck by the intimacy and the smallness of the whole surroundings,” said retired CIA officer Rolf Mowatt-Larssen after his first visit to Dealey Plaza in November 2019.

Dealey Plaza, a grassy Art Deco entry point to downtown Dallas, is where President John F. Kennedy was shot and killed on November 22, 1963. Hundreds of thousands of people still come from around the world to see the spot where the popular liberal president was ambushed. Many of them have the same reaction to the crime scene: the intimacy, the smallness.

Mowatt-Larssen was not just any tourist.

How CIA propaganda assets shaped JFK headlines

Excerpted from Scorpions’ Dance: The President, the Spymaster and Watergate (St Martin’s Press, 2022

“I waited fifty minutes,” Lanuza recalled. “Then I started to call my list.” Decades later he could still rattle off the reporters’ names and publications from memory. “I called Hal Hendrix. He was the most important person in Miami News.” Hendrix, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the missile crisis, would later a corporate executive and CIA asset in Chile. Lanuza called Mary Louise Wilkinson, a sympathetic reporter at the Miami News. He called John Dille, a writer at Life Magazine who had written a laudatory cover story on the DRE.

The CIA’s favorite Cubans linked Oswald to Castro

[Excerpted from Scorpions’ Dance: The President, the Spymaster and Watergate (St Martin’s Press, 2022)]

“At ten past six that evening, Miami station chief Ted Shackley sent a cable to Des Fitzgerald with a copy going to Helms’ office. The station had heard from Luis Fernandez Rocha, the secretary general of the Cuban Student Directorate, whom Helms had grilled in his office almost exactly one year before. The DRE boys said they knew all about the suspected assassin.

ICYM: My friend, David Ferrie

Dave Ferrie watermarked
Pilot in training Rick Bauer (left) with his trainer David Ferrie (photo credit: Rick Bauer)

Back in 2014, Rick Bauer shared his memories of David Ferrie, a man who has been the object of JFK conspiracy speculation for decades.

In Oliver Stone’s “JFK” Ferrie was memorably portrayed by Joe Pesci. In real life, Ferrie was fervently right-wing in his politics and hostile to President Kennedy. He knew Lee Oswald from a young age and he seemed to know of a plot against JFK in 1963, though his exact role in the events leading to the assassination are difficult to determine. He died suddenly in 1967.

Read more: David Ferrie: Up close and personal.

Nothing in the JFK files? Take a look at Birch O’Neal.

Birch O'Neal
Birch O’Neal as a young man. A counterintelligence officer, O’Neal opened the CIA’s Oswald file in November 1959.

As for those 14,000+ JFK files that still contain redactions, some friends tell me, “There’s nothing in there of significance.” This is reassuring. But is it true?

We may find out later this year. President Biden has ordered all JFK files to released by December 15, 2022. I’m looking forward to seeing the unredacted files of those CIA officers most knowledgable about Lee Harvey Oswald before JFK was killed.

For example, Birch Dilworth O’Neal. O’Neal’s 224 page CIA personnel file, released in April 2018, still has scores of redactions.

Why is Birch O’Neal significant?

The CIA Was Reading Lee Harvey Oswald’s Mail

Excerpt from a declassified 1975 Senate memo listing of Americans whose mail was illegally opened by the CIA between 1959 and 1975. Note that the dates are rendered in DAY/MONTH/YEAR format, not MONTH/DAY/Year)

One of the most significant JFK disclosures in recent years is a declassified memo stating that the CIA opened, read, and copied the correspondence of Lee Harvey Oswald, the man who supposedly killed President Kennedy.

This spying was conducted by a super secret office in the Counterintelligence Staff, known as the Special Investigations Group, or CI/SIG.

Secret Document

JFK Most Wanted: ‘Little Historically Significant Material Is Being Withheld’

This commentary comes from Robert Reynolds, a professor at Chi Nan University in Taiwan, via Max Holland’s Washington Decoded site. Since Reynolds mentions my work in his commentary I thought I would introduce him and his work to readers of JFK Facts. Reynolds is part of a diverse listserve of JFK authors and researchers managed by emeritus researcher Paul Hoch. Reynold’s criticism, though I disagreed with it, forced me to clarify my thinking about the last of the JFK files. Here is how Reynolds introduced himself to our group, followed by some highlights of his Washington Decoded piece.

I have responded to Reynolds in a separate post, “JFK Most Wanted: Three Key CIA Files That Need to Be Declassified.”

Declassification of the CIA’s Oswald File Took 58 Years

“On December 15, came yet another revelation. Under an October 22 order from President Biden, the CIA released 953 documents in their entirety for the first time, including two cables about Oswald written six weeks before Kennedy was killed. For the first time in 58 years, these two messages were completely declassified.”

Source: JFK Revisited: Oliver Stone and the New JFK Fact Pattern – CounterPunch.org

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