Howard Willens, a former Warren Commission staffer, acknowledged in a an email interview with JFK Facts that deputy CIA director Richard Helms was “not truthful” with the Commission and there is “no doubt” that counterintelligence chief James Angleton did not cooperate with the inquiry into JFK’s assassination.
While vigorously defending the Commission’s conclusions, Willens admitted he was naive about the CIA. Asked about a passage in his journal from March 1964 in which he wrote that senior CIA officials “did not have an axe to grind” in the commission’s investigation, Willens acknowledged “my comments about the CIA were naive to say the least.”
When asked if the Commission knew that the Special Investigations Group, an office within the CIA’s Counterintelligence Staff, had been well informed about Oswald’s family travels and politics between 1959 and 1963, Willens did not respond directly. He said he was “aware of this CIA interest,” without addressing the specific question of SIG’s interest in Oswald.
Willens said he did not think the Warren Commission should have taken testimony from Angleton, who used the super-secret SIG to monitor Oswald and to investigate possible Soviet spies in the ranks of the CIA.
“There is little doubt that Angleton, if called, would have been as non-responsive as Helms,” Willens added.
Willens gave no quarter in his defense of the Commission’s controversial conclusions declaring “no contrary evidence has emerged after 50 years.” He declined to debate in any way Mark Lane or the Commission’s original critics. When another Commission staffer said that Lane made a living “telling lies,” Lane threatened to sue but was not willing to defend his arguments in court, according to Willens.
Willens also dismissed the conspiracy theory of former CIA analyst Brian Latell who argues that the Castro government had advance knowledge that Oswald intended to kill Kennedy.
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I will post the complete Q&A with Howard Willens tomorrow.
I’ve wondered if Hunt’s claim of being a “benchwarmer” was intended to imply that had an attempted Dealey Plaza assassination failed, there were contingencies in place…
Sullivan is what got the Liberty Lobby off the hook for claiming that E. Howard Hunt was involved in the assassination.
Lane radically distorted and misrepresented the case in Plausible Denial.
http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/denial.htm
Here is a question that I think needs to be asked. Do you do anything here except post links to your soporific website? It seems as though you post here only to drive up the traffic there. Maybe you could make your site more interesting. As it is, it puts the feet to sleep. If I want THE ACCEPTED OFFICIAL STORY, I just go read the Warren Report and the testimony that supposedly supports it. For all the Warren Report’s flaws (principle one being it’s literally incredible) it’s a far more interesting read than anything you have to offer.
Uh huh. It’s the conclusion of the WC that is flawed, not necessarily the evidence they compiled.
So you were fully aware of the way Lane misleads and withholds information from his readers?
For example, assuming your have read Plausible Denial, did you believe the jury was convinced that Hunt was an assassination conspirator, or did you know better?
E. Howard Hunt lying his ass off was the only reason Liberty Lobby had any liability at all. Hunt, just before death, admitted that he had been a “backbencher” in the JFK assassination and he indicted Lyndon Johnson and CIA operatives in JFK’s death.
“One of the things he [my father, E. Howard Hunt] liked to say around the house was ‘let’s finish the job — let’s hit Ted [Kennedy].'”
–
-Saint John Hunt (the son of E. Howard Hunt), interviewed on The Alex Jones Show, 14 May 2007
Sidenote: the JFK assassination was a controversial issue with the family (brother) of CIA’s David Atlee Phillips, who also suspected him in the JFK assassination as well. Before he died, Phillips said, yes, he had been in Dallas (killing JFK).
Willens is deceitful, deceitful as a lawyer, for saying Mark Lane was not willing to defend his arguments in court.
Why? Because in 1964, the U.S. Supreme Court held that a public official (shortly thereafter expanded to a “public person”) could not maintain a defamation suit unless he or she alleged and showed that the defamer either (a) knew the defamatory statement was false, or (b) made the defamatory statement, which was false, with “reckless disregard” of its truth or falsity (New York Times v. Sullivan).
It is difficult to the point of being nearly impossible for a public person like Mark Lane to maintain a defamation suit against a skilled antagonist who claims he lied about the JFK case.
Willens knows that. He’s still shading the truth in a big way.
IMO, JFK Facts should afford no outlet for his views.
Plus there’s the fact that Lane did prove CIA complicity in a court of law: http://www.libertylobby.org/articles/2000/20000207cia.html
Oh, so that’s what was meant about Lane arguing in court.
Okay, I agree here too.
Mark Lane was not afraid to challenge the status quote from the very start of his criticism of the WCR.
He probably would’ve loved to have made his case in such a public forum.
Apparently, he didn’t have to after his lawsuit threat.
Willens is willfully uninformed. Or dishonest.
There are the revelations about two NPIC Zaprudrer events on the nights of 23 and 24 November. Humes’s testimony to the ARRB about a 3-5 mm hole in the head that had to be covered with rubber. Dr. Gary Aguilar’s work on the agreement of Parkland and Bethesda witnesses as to a blow-out hole in the back of the head. The relatively recent revelations about the magic bullet (C.E. 399) and how it was never confirmed as the bullet found on the Parkland stretcher. And so much more over the last 50 years.
That Willens has his head in the sand is the most charitable thing I can think to say of him.
Mark Lane doesn’t have to defend his arguments on the JFK assassination in court if he sues another for defamation (that he lied).
This just appears to me to be more spin to cast a negative light on a WC dissenter like Lane.
I bought Willens and McAdams’ books at the 6th Floor Museum last November (well might as well have a few books on the pro-WC side eh?).
I don’t think Willens is a bad person, and probably is a very good lawyer who had an illustrious career. His insight might shed more light on this case. But if he admits that he was naive about the CIA, perhaps he’s naive about other conclusions of the WC.
Allen Dulles served on the Warren Commission and apparently did not inform his fellow commissioners that the CIA under his leadership had recruited the Mafia to assassinate Castro. This act of omission must be explored fully to understand the Warren Commission and its report.
What true patriot covers up the fact of assassination plots of a foreign leader using the MAFIA for chrissakes during the investigation of a US president’s assassination?
In fact, Dulles steered the commission from Day One to a lone nut, knowing full well that either Castro or blowback from the assassination plots could have been real possibilities.
A true patriot who before and during WWII advised and facilitated investments for his bosses on wall street in the Third Reich. Who after the war facilitated the Americanization of the German spy system for use in the Cold War (instead of execution/prison for war crimes), and, the transfer of the Nazi rocket scientists to the USA, undermining the President’s (Truman) instructions and deceiving him in the process.
Some might say the last was a prelude to the BOP in it’s deception. But that got him fired by “that little Kennedy, he thought he was a God”.
Was it Hoffa or Trafficante maybe who said of RFK after JFK’s assassination “he’s just another lawyer now”?
Thus was Allen Dulles at that point. Right.
JJA didn’t think so. Neither did LBJ.
Willens is a perfect example of how WC defenders have to maintain an impossible belief system: yes, the government lied to us and covered up what they knew, but hey, it was still just a couple of lone nuts doing the killing that weekend. Nothing to see here, folks, just move on…
The fact that, 50 years later, he still refuses to get into specifics about investigative issues faced by the WC is incredible.