Mike Kilroy, communications executive in Los Angeles, has some interesting things to say about the JFK assassination story and the art of public relations. In a presentation to a group of young professionals in the communications industry, Kilroy dissected how the story that President Kennedy had been killed by a pro-Castro communist was disseminated on November 22, 1963. It’s a story of perception management.
You can read Kilroy’s presentation here.
Now available on You Tube retired Major General Fabian Escalante, former head and current historian of Cuba’s State Security Department,i gives a sneak preview of his upcoming book Beyond Any Reasonable Doubt. The Assassination of John F. Kennedy and the Aggression Against Cuba. Read more
(l. to r.) Reporter Ed Brackett, attorney James Lesar, and plaintiff Jefferson Morley
USA Today reporter Ed Brackett reported the story first. Read more
Without naming names, the History Channel reports the still-secret records of the Revolutionary Student Directorate or DRE, known by the CIA code name AMSPELL, are among the more anticipated JFK records scheduled to be released in October. Read more
Among the 1,100 secret CIA documents related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy is an 86 page file of the anti-Castro group, Directorio Revolucionario Estudantil (DRE)
The group, commonly known as the Cuban Student Directorate, had a curious double role in the JFK assassination story–a role that the CIA chose to conceal from both the Warren Commission in 1964 and the House Selection Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) in the late 1970s.
The deception was not minor: CIA-funded DRE was the first organization to call public attention to accused assassin Lee Oswald–before JFK was killed.
How the CIA tried to implicate Fidel Castro in JFK’s assassination.
Did Castro figure out JFK’s assassination in just five days?
Cuba’s JFK story: 638 Ways to Kill Castro.
Brian Latell indicts Castro again
Did the CIA seek to hypnotize an assassin to kill Fidel Castro?
November 5, 1963: Listen as JFK considers secret talks with Castro.
Take look at this complete, full color reproduction of the address book of Lee Harvey Oswald, accused assassin of President John F. Kennedy, who was slain in custody of the Dallas police on November 24, 1963. (Courtesy of A.J. Weberman)
What Fidel Castro said on November 23, 1963: Read more
Comes the sad news that Mary La Fontaine has died. I first met Mary and her husband Ray in 1993 after reading a maunscript version of their book Oswald Talked. I was impressed with their writing for many reasons: its witty tone, its use of original sources,and its granular depiction of a subject oddly ignored by JFK researchers: Cuban exiles in Dallas.
It was the LaFontaines who highlighted me to the role of the Cuban Student Directorate (DRE) in the JFK story, a hunch that was amply confirmed by my subsequent reporting. Without the LaFontaines, I might never have discovered the curious case of George Joannides.
Former CIA analyst Brian Latell says Cuban government officials were complicit in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. I have posted my take on Latell’s claims.
Here is how he made his case to me. The interview was conducted by email. I have deleted three questions for which Latell said he had no independent knowledge. Otherwise, Latell’s comments have not been edited.
Via George in the UK:
“… the Warren Commission did not know that the DRE were CIA assets….
George Joannides, chief of CIA covert operations in Miami in 1963, also had a residence in New Orleans, according to the CIA.
In a court motion filed last week, the CIA acknowledged for the first time that deceased CIA officer George Joannides lived in New Orleans while handling contacts with an anti-Castro student organization whose members had a series of encounters with accused presidential assassin Lee Oswald in August 1963.
The unexpected admission came in arguments before a federal court judge about whether the CIA is obliged to pay $295,000 in legal fees incurred during my Freedom of Information Act lawsuit concerning certain 50-year-old JFK assassination records.
In a previous court filing, my attorney Jim Lesar argued that two documents released over CIA objections in 2008 were significant because they showed that Joannides’s espionage assignment took him to New Orleans where Oswald lived.
The answer: certain employees of the U.S. government’s Central Intelligence Agency, otherwise known as the CIA.
Ten years ago I filed a lawsuit seeking the records of a deceased CIA officer involved in the events leading up to the assassination of President Kennedy and its confusing investigatory aftermath. Read more
Reader Photon asks:
Assassination was not his tactic.
“So ‘LBJ and crew’ murdered John Kennedy, but Fidel ‘most certainly was not [involved]’? While I consider it unlikely that Oswald could have cooperated with anybody in a conspiracy, his visit to the Cuban Embassy certainly is intriguing. It is not like Fidel had never sanctioned political assassination in the past. For 50 years he has gotten away with knocking off Camilo Cienfuegos after Huber Matos didn’t do it for him.”
The ensuing fast and furious debate in the comments section on this subject is reminder that the history of assassination as a political technique in the struggle for power in Cuba from 1955 to 1965 is definitely relevant to any discussion of the assassination of JFK.
Jefferson's Morley compulsively readable, and deeply reported biography of CIA spymaster James Angleton is "the best book ever written about the strangest spy chief who ever lived," says Tim Weiner. From the OSS to the CIA to MKULTRA and JFK, Angleton was a ghost of American power. BUY THE GHOST NOW.
In Our Man in Mexico, investigative reporters tells the remarkable story of CIA station chief and what he really thought of JFK's assassination. Click on the cover image to buy it now.
