DON'T GET MAD: GET EVEN

The Era of the Kennedys

It was November, 1941. Harry Stengele and I had driven to the "Nineteenth Hole" Officers Club bar on the Fort Knox golf course. We were both from Armored divisions and at Fort Knox for the Officers Communications course.

We were seated at the bar near the open door when a Jeep drove up in a cloud of dust. The rays of the late afternoon sun silhouetted a man in cavalry boots and britches, with Sam Brown belt. He stepped to the bar, beside us, and ordered a drink.

He picked up his drink, raised his glass saying, "Good afternoon, I'm George Patton. What brings you to Ft. Knox?" I said that I was from the 4th Armored Division at Pine Camp, N.Y. and introduced Harry as the nephew of the famous Casey Stengele of the N.Y. Yankees, and from the 3rd Armored Division at Camp Polk, LA. The conversation continued easily dominated by the Colonel. He talked about "Tanks and War".

As he became more animated he said, "You men are damn fortunate. The greatest war of all time is on the horizon and you are at your prime. You'll be in the middle of the action. I had tanks during World War I; but I'm too old today (56 at that time) for a field assignment."

With that, he emptied his glass and turned toward the door, stopped and looked back, "I want you to remember something. Before this war is over George S. Patton is going to be a hero, or a dead man." Harry and I were stunned.

Pearl Harbor took place on Dec. 7, 1941... less than two weeks after that meeting. As we all know, Patton became a hero... and a dead man.

Almost precisely two years later, I met him again on the island of Sicily where he had just defeated the Germans and Italians.

There are men who live that way. There are men who dedicate their lives to a goal, regardless of the trials and the dangers, to achieve victories that others would never attempt.

Sicily had surrendered on August 17, 1943. During that same month, a Navy Lt. John F. Kennedy, the son of the American Ambassador to the Court of St. James, had his PT boat rammed by a Japanese destroyer off the Solomon Islands. Not long after that he returned to Boston by way of the Mayo Clinic.

Not long after the war ended he began the pursuit of a political career. He was elected the Representative of the 11th District in Massachusetts in 1946 and a Senator in 1952.

I cite this brief background because many people do not realize that John F. Kennedy was perhaps one of the most thoroughly experienced men to run for the office of President, despite his young age. He had an excellent education. He had graduated from Harvard, had been to schools in London and had taken a course at Stanford.

In many ways Jack Kennedy was like Patton. Wealthy and son of Roosevelt's Ambassador to the Court of St. James, he was that type of person. Both men were heroes, and both men met sudden and unexplained deaths.

Let's look at the Kennedy Era: 1942-1963.

A) The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was created by the National Security Act of 1947. Its duties were:

"... to advise, to coordinate, to correlate and evaluate and disseminate [Intelligence] and to perform services of common concern."

The law contained no provision whatsoever for the collection of intelligence or for clandestine activities.

NOTE: As a member of the House of Representatives, John F. Kennedy was well aware of the provisions and limitations of this act.

B) National Security Council directive NSC 5412 of March 15, 1954, decreed that the overt foreign activities of the U.S. Government should be supplemented by covert operations.

NSC 5412 defined "Covert Operations" as;

"all activities conducted pursuant to this directive which are so planned and executed that any U.S. Government responsibility for them is not evident to unauthorized persons and that if uncovered the U.S. Government can plausibly disclaim any responsibility for them."

C) President Eisenhower believed that the CIA should not become a "Fourth Force" along with the Army, Navy and Air Force. Rather he directed that the services should provide military support of the clandestine activities of the CIA. To accomplish this, each service was directed to establish a small, highly classified "Focal Point" office for the CIA's Deputy Director, Plans i.e. clandestine operations contacts.

NOTE: In 1955, I was directed to establish this "Focal Point" office for the U.S. Air Force, and by the end of that year, the Air Force had counterpart offices in all of its major command headquarters around the world for the purpose of providing such highly classified support of CIA operations.

D) John F. Kennedy, elected Senator from Massachusetts in 1952, served during the formulation of this policy. Senator Lyndon B. Johnson appointed Kennedy to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1957. As a member of that committee he was aware of covert operations launched by the CIA.

E) One of the largest "Covert Operations" ever launched was against Sukarno, head of the government of Indonesia. The CIA supported more than 42,000 Indonesians during this rebellion. This covert operation, headed by one of the CIA's top specialists, Frank Wisner, was a total failure. Kennedy was aware of this failure, and of CIA's responsibility for it.

NOTE: A U.S. Marine, Lee Harvey Oswald, from the CIA's Far East Headquarters installation at the Atusgi Air Base in Japan, took part in this major operation.

F) On New Year's Eve, 1959, Fidel Castro marched his victorious band of guerrillas into Havana taking control of that Government. By mid 1959, Vice President Richard Nixon had declared Castro a Communist. Cubans by the thousands fled from the island to Florida.

In March 1960, the NSC approved a CIA proposal to train and equip Cuban exiles for a campaign designed to stir up Cubans, in Cuba, against Castro. Eisenhower approved this proposal but limited it to air-drop and over-the-beach activities. The Commander of the Normandy invasion was not about to approve an invasion of Cuba by a renegade band of exiles.

NOTE: During the early Spring of 1960, the White House banned all over-flights of Communist territory, because of the planned Paris Summit Conference in May of that year.

I was operating a major over-flight program into Tibet in support of native tribesmen defending their country from the Chinese Communist invasion. Despite their urgent need for food and ammunition, I was ordered to stop this overflight program because of the White House ban.

G) On May 1, 1960, the New York Times reported: "The Joint Chiefs of Staff had been meeting 5 days a week for the past two weeks." This was a most unusual situation and has never been explained. Some time earlier a CIA U-2, secret spy plane, had made a crash landing near the Atsugi Air base. It was returned to the Lockheed facilities and repaired. During April 1960, that U-2 was flown to Turkey and then to Peshawar in Pakistan. Early on the morning of May 1, 1960, Capt. Gary Francis Powers took off from Peshawar, in that same U-2, for the longest reconnaissance flight ever scheduled across the Soviet Union to Norway...despite this White House ban on over-flights. In the vicinity of Sverdlovsk the U-2 crash-landed in the Soviet Union. The pilot was captured alive.

On May 5th Krushchev first announced this incident. On that same date, the U.S. Dept. of State announced that a U-2 weather research plane based at Adana, Turkey and operated by NASA, had been missing since May 1, 1960. The first news of this incident did not appear in U.S. papers until May 6th when the Krushchev announcement and the false NASA "cover story" were published.

On May 7th Krushchev announced that the Russians "had the pilot alive and in good health."

NOTE: The NASA cover story release, which subsequently embarrassed President Eisenhower seriously, is interesting because the Public Relations officer for the NASA was a man who had served with the CIA for years in its clandestine services under the cover of an Air Force General. He was fully aware of the clandestine U-2 program.

NOTE: Senator Kennedy, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations committee, was fully aware of the long and detailed testimony given before this Fulbright Committee, May 1960, during which it was stated by the Director of Central Intelligence, Allen W. Dulles, that the Powers U-2 had not been shot down; but rather that it experienced some sort of engine failure at its operational altitude. (I possess a full copy of these 195 pages of sworn testimony.)

Kennedy was fully aware of the CIA's statements, and of the great embarrassment the U-2 flight and the false NASA cover story had caused the President on the eve of the Paris Summit conference. He knew also that Eisenhower had directed that no over-flights should be flown during the months preceding that Summit Conference.

H) During the Spring and Summer of 1960 the CIA was actively recruiting anti-Castro exiles in camps established in Panama, Nicaragua, Guatemala and the United States. Many over-the-beach landings and paradrop operations took place during 1960.

NOTE: In keeping with NSC 5412, these operations were kept secret and few outside of the NSC itself knew of their existence. However, while Senator Kennedy was campaigning for the Democratic Nomination and for the Presidency his associates kept him informed of these operations. In fact, he may have known more about them than members of the NSC.

One day in August 1960, I was directed to go to the Senate Office Building to pick up four men who were to meet with the Secretary of Defense, Thomas Gates. They were in Senator Kennedy's office. He introduced me to his four Cuban guests. They were the CIA's chosen leaders of the anti-Castro Cuban exile group. Kennedy had not only met them there; but at his family's home in West Palm Beach. Kennedy was well informed of this CIA activity that eventually led to the Bay of Pigs operation in April 1961.

I) At the end of the Nixon-Kennedy Presidential campaign, the two candidates took part in four nationally televised debates. The fourth debate was most crucial and Kennedy went on the attack about the failures of the Republican anti-Castro policy. It was this inside knowledge of the CIA's plans and his skillful utilization of it that gave him and edge over Nixon in that debate. Many analysts said that this advantage created the narrow election victory for Kennedy.

NOTE: The serious animosity toward Kennedy, caused by this narrow defeat, began with that election upset. In fact, this bitterness, in the Pentagon, in the CIA and among their powerful industrial allies, was no doubt the cause behind President Eisenhower's unprecedented Farewell Address to the Nation on January 17, 1961:

"The conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence - economic, political, even spiritual - is felt in every city, every statehouse, every office of the Federal Government... In the councils of government we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist... We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted... "

NOTE: This amazing speech was delivered less than a week before Kennedy was inaugurated President of the United States. Its meaning was not lost on him and his associates. He had his eye on the CIA and its allies ever since 1947.

Now that he was President he had many scores to settle, for his treatment during the campaign, for the many mistakes of the CIA over the years, and for the bitterness that arose immediately after the votes had been counted. It became known that Kennedy frequently stated among his associates:

"It has long been a Kennedy tradition... Not to get mad but to get even. I fully realize that I shall not be able to "Get Even" during my first term in office; but during the second term you are going to see some important changes."

This course of action, i.e. to build during the first term, and capitalize on those accomplishments during the second term, was clearly evident to those on the inside. Of course, this tactic did not escape notice of his growing band of enemies.

J) Less than one week after Kennedy's election, and well before his inauguration, the CIA changed its plans for the anti-Castro operations from the Eisenhower approved small unit attacks to a major over-the-beach invasion.

Before the end of October 1960, the Office of the Secretary of Defense had approved a new Special Forces "Green Beret" Counterinsurgency program for U.S. and foreign military students at Ft. Bragg. Although under the auspices of the Army, this new facility, dedicated by the Deputy Secretary of Defense, James Douglas, was operated by the CIA.

Shortly thereafter it was named the "President John F. Kennedy Center." Kennedy had nothing to do with its origin.

Soon after his election, Kennedy re-appointed J. Edgar Hoover as head of the FBI and Allen W. Dulles as Director of Central Intelligence. This was in keeping with a Kennedy characteristic to prefer to have the "opponents" in plain sight rather than working against him undercover. With Bobby as Attorney General, Hoover would be under scrutiny. The President, himself, would take care of Allen Dulles and the CIA.

He had his eye on Dulles ever since the days when Dulles had been the speech-writer for Thomas E. Dewey in that close election won by Harry Truman in 1948.

Because the incumbent Republicans, in 1960, had been so certain Nixon would win that election, they had moved many of the most costly "Big Dollar" procurement "plums" into the 1961 budget year to balance the out-going Eisenhower budget, and to stack the deck with ready-made, high cost procurement items designed for the up-coming warfare in Indochina.

By 1960, the Vietnam War preparations were in their fifteenth year. The expenditure of hundreds of billions of dollars was in the balance. Kennedy's election upset those careful plans and created an enormously hostile atmosphere within the military industrial complex... especially over the 6 billion TFX fighter plane contract that was awarded to the General Dynamics/Grumman proposal rather than Boeing.

NOTE: All of these items, above, caused intense hostility within the bureaucracy in Washington and their allies in the industry. It may be safely said that the ground work for the decision to "do away with" Kennedy, which began with the election of 1960, had emerged to full fruition by 1963, because of these challenging "Kennedy directed" actions.

In many ways the feelings were mutual. The Kennedy team had many scores to settle, and they fully intended "to get even" after the stage had been set with the 1964 election.

K) The Bay of Pigs operation had grown into a well-equipped 3000 man force during Jan, Feb. and March 1961. By April, Allen Dulles was pressing Kennedy to authorize the landing of the exile brigade on Zapata beach. The operational plan had been drawn up by an experienced Marine Colonel and its fundamental stipulation as demanded by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was that all of Castro's combat-capable aircraft, no more than 10, must be destroyed before the Brigade hit the beach.

When Kennedy approved the plan for the landing, he was fully aware of the fact that a bomber strike had been planned for dawn on the day of the landing and that the objective of this strike was the destruction of Castro's last three (7 had been destroyed earlier) aircraft on the ground.

The success of that strike would have assured that Castro would have had no combat-capable aircraft remaining. As a result, there was to be no need to plan for the utilization of U.S. military aircraft in an "Air Support" role. Use of U.S. military personnel and equipment in covert operations were banned by the previously mentioned NSC 5412 directive of March 1954. All of the "ZAPATA" planners knew this prohibition beforehand.

The President approved the ZAPATA Operation on Sunday, April 17, 1961, the day before the landing. As a function of that approval he directed a four-plane strike at dawn, with Cuban exile B-26 bombers, against Castro's remaining aircraft on the ground.

For reasons never adequately clarified in official documents, at 9:30 P.M. on that Sunday night before the landing, Kennedy's National Security Advisor, McGeorge Bundy, telephoned Gen. C. P. Cabell, Deputy Director of Central Intelligence (Dulles was out of the country) and canceled that essential pre-dawn airstrike.

It has never been explained why Cabell and the other CIA leaders did not cancel the landing itself as a result of that crucial call.

Think about that for a minute. Bundy made the call to Cabell. Cabell canceled the strike; but did not cancel the operation. If President Kennedy had wanted the air strike canceled, he would have canceled the whole thing. Why did Bundy and Cabell act as they did?

They all knew, as the Joint Chiefs of Staff had warned them, that without the destruction of Castro's three jet aircraft the operation was doomed to failure. The air strike was not flown, the landing was not canceled and the brigade was captured. These were all serious and inexcusable mistakes by the CIA. Kennedy knew it! Uninformed revisionists have blamed Kennedy for this failure because, they say, he refused "Air Cover" for the Brigade. They have created a contrived account. They are wrong.

L) Only two days after the defeat of the Bay of Pigs Cuban exile Brigade, the Kennedys went into action to "Get Even" again. How many have noted that during the Kennedy administration, when the going got rough, they automatically teamed together? Note what follows!

The President appointed a most unusual and capable Cuban Study Group to determine the: "Immediate Causes of the Failure of Operation ZAPATA." More importantly, and with an eye to the future, the President directed that Group:

"... to study our governmental practices and programs in the areas of military and paramilitary, guerrilla and anti-guerrilla activity which fell short of outright war, with a view to strengthening our work in this area."

As you will see, this was both Kennedy's in action. The special make-up of that group tells its own story. It consisted of Gen. Maxwell Taylor, Admiral Arleigh Burke, Allen Dulles and Bobby Kennedy. As we called it in the Pentagon, "Four Scorpions in a Bottle".

These vastly diverse personalities were joined, on May 10, 1961, by a most significant witness. The Kennedys "Ace in the Hole". This was none other than General Walter Bedell Smith formerly Chief of Staff to General Eisenhower in Europe during WW II, Ambassador to Moscow succeeding Averell Harriman after the Nazi surrender, and - himself - Director of Central Intelligence, under Truman, just prior to Allen Dulles. He was the key to the whole study.

It was General Smith who gave testimony in brief, but succinct words that revealed the hand the Kennedys were playing. When Gen. Smith was asked:

"Should we have intelligence gathering in the same place that you have operations?"

His response was historic and revealed precisely what the Kennedys had in mind.

Gen. Smith said: "I think that so much publicity has been given to CIA that the covert work might have to be put under another roof."

The next question nailed down the subject:

"Do you think you should take covert operations from the CIA?"

Gen. Smith replied:

"It's time we take the bucket of slop and put another cover over it."

NOTE:

It is well to keep in mind that during the next two months that this Cuban Study Group met in the Pentagon it's meetings were attended daily by Bobby Kennedy who returned to the White House each evening to report the high-lights of each day to his brother and the "Irish Mafia" strategy board.

(The Cuban Study Group met in Pentagon room 2E980. My office was just around the corner in 2D958. Many of the witnesses, men I knew well, would stop by my office coming and going from their appearance before the Group.)

By the time Gen. Taylor presented "a unanimous view on all essential points under consideration" in a brief personal cover-letter to the President, June 13, 1961, the most important section of that work was "Memorandum No. 4 Recommendations of the Cuban Study Group". This suggested that Kennedy:

"establish a Strategic Resources Group supported by a Cold War Indications Center which will allow our government readily to focus its resources on the objectives which you set in the so-called Cold War."

It was this letter which contained, almost verbatim, the pivotal National Security Action Memorandum #55, subject,

"Relations of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to the President in Cold War Operations" that was signed by the President on June 28, 1961. With that singular action, Kennedy had agreed with Gen. Walter Bedell Smith to "take the bucket of slop and put another cover over it."

Kennedy had taken the first step on the way to transferring clandestine operations from the CIA to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. That was step #1. The Kennedys were brought up to be fighters.

They knew how to get even.

This was a monumental act. It is notable that, although all of these records have been available to the public, no one has understood the role of the Cuban Study Group as orchestrated by the Kennedys. They had reached an agreement unanimously that the failure of that operation was due to the cancellation of the pre-dawn airstrike on D-Day. That, along with the other evidence proved the tactical inadequacy of the CIA and became grounds for the Kennedys' historic plans.

NOTE: I possess a complete copy of that original report containing their findings, and have had it for many years.

I knew many of the people involved in that project, and was familiar with their testimony. I am amazed that other "historians" who know that Report exists have ignored it. Perhaps I should state that another way, they have chosen to ignore it.

M) With the receipt of this carefully drawn report from the Cuban Study Group, Kennedy began his journey down the road "to get even". Among other specific functions, Kennedy directed that:

"The Joint Chiefs of Staff have a responsibility for the defense of the nation in the Cold War similar to that which they have in conventional hostilities."

From that date on the CIA and its allies knew that its clandestine "Fun and Games" days were over. Opposition to that NSAM was seething underground, and by the end of 1961 Kennedy had fired all of CIA's top covert operators: Allen Dulles, General C. P. Cabell and Mr. Richard Bissell, Chief of the Clandestine Services. This added more fuel to the flames.

N) Simultaneously with the work of the Cuban Study Group, Kennedy authorized - on April 29, 1961 - the movement of 100 non-combatant, military advisors to the U.S. mission in Saigon. This was the first move of troops to Vietnam under Kennedy's orders. It must be kept in mind that, before that warfare ended on precisely that same date in 1975, 8,744,000 Americans had served in the Armed Forces during that period of which 2,700,000 had served in Vietnam. Kennedy's 1961 move was a drop in the bucket. From that time on Kennedy held countless meetings on the subject of hostilities in Indochina.

It must be made clear that from 1945 to 1965 almost all U.S. military personnel in South Vietnam... a relatively small number at that time... served under the operational direction of the CIA, and not under military commanders. This means that during the entire Kennedy period there was no conventional military activity in Vietnam... other than limited training and logistics functions. During this crucial period in his first term, Kennedy said,

"The first thing I do when I'm re-elected, I'm going to get the Americans out of Vietnam."

O) This was no casual statement. In Volume IV of the period 1961-1963 in the GPO publications of the Foreign Relations of the United States, title "VIETNAM-August-December 1963" this official record lists no less than thirty White House level meetings devoted to Vietnam. Most of these meetings were attended by the President.

NOTE: During that period my immediate boss, Gen. Victor H. Krulak was in attendance at more than one-half of them. It was his custom to return with copious notes, sometimes tapes, and would share them with me with instructions to work on them. I was well aware of the subject of most of those meetings. The President set his own tone of these meetings during a press conference on Nov. 14, 1963:

"The objective in South Vietnam was to bring Americans home, permit Vietnamese to maintain themselves as a free and independent country and permit democratic forces within the country to which they can do, of course, much more freely, when the assault from the inside, which is manipulated from the north, is ended."

It had just been announced that on Oct. 30, 1963, there were 16,730 military personnel in South Vietnam. That was only two days before President Ngo Dinh Diem was killed and a bit less than a month before Kennedy's death.

Stories that the military build-up in the Vietnam warfare was a Kennedy action are absurd when we compare 16,730 with the 550,000 who served at one time, and the total of 2,700,000 servicemen who served there over-all. It was not until 1965, eighteen months after Kennedy's death, that military units, under military commanders, invaded South Vietnam at DaNang.

All of these meetings at the White House were designed to plan for the transfer of the war function to the Vietnamese themselves. At one point Kennedy sent Gen. Krulak to Vietnam, Sept. 6 to Sept. 10 for the latest information. Upon Krulak's return, he decided to send Sec. McNamara and Gen. Taylor there to get their own latest ideas, while in the Pentagon Gen. Krulak was preparing a massive document from Kennedy's own policy statements that became the "McNamara-Taylor Trip Report".

It is quite obvious that they could not have put together such a massive and detailed report while traveling. The final report illustrated and bound was flown to Hawaii by jet and given to them. When they landed on the White House lawn on Oct. 2, 1963, they presented it formally to the President. This was how NSAM #263 was created. All that remained was for the formal approval by Kennedy and the signing of the official covering letter by McGeorge Bundy on Oct. 11, 1963.

(The authors of the "Pentagon Papers" pointedly separated the single-sheet covering letter from the body of the NSAM. It appeared, without identification as part of NSAM 263, 18 pages away from the cover-letter that made NSAM 263 official. This is a device of the "historians??" who have done so much to obfuscate and destroy the records of the Kennedy era.

This is the document that announces:

a) "... plans to withdraw 1,000 U.S. military personnel by the end of 1963." and...

b) "... essential functions now performed by U.S. military personnel can be carried out by Vietnamese by the end of 1965. It should be possible to withdraw the bulk of U.S. personnel by that time." i.e. 1965.

This latter statement was of great significance:

a) It established the date for getting Americans out of Vietnam, and the use of the word "Personnel" alone rather than the phrase "Military personnel" underscored that Kennedy was removing the CIA from Vietnam, as well as the military by the end of 1965.

These three items may very well have been key elements in the development of the decision to assassinate the President:

a) The first, NSAM #55, clearly underscored the Kennedys' plan to take the CIA out of the clandestine operations business.

b) The second, NSAM #263, was his decision not to put American armed forces into Vietnam, i.e. to end U.S. participation in the war, and

c) The third, NSAM # 55 & #263, made it clear that the CIA, which had been deeply involved in the operational activities of that warfare since 1954 (1945 with the Office of Strategic Services, OSS) were being removed from that role.

It is interesting to note that some of the most important writers, editors, commentators and publishers of our time burst forth from their dens howling that there "is no substantive historical basis" for such a statement as is quoted, in the film "JFK" from NSAM #263, above. As soon as they learned from purloined copies of the script of Oliver Stone's film that we were using NSAM #263 the sparks flew. This became the battle-cry.

This reaction should not have come as a surprise. The stage had been set long ago. On June 17, 1967, Sec. McNamara had directed:

"a Task Force be formed to study the history of United States involvement in Vietnam from World War II to the present." i.e. Jan 1969. This amazing "history" is now called the "Pentagon Papers" representing the efforts of "36 professionals" under the leadership of Leslie H. Gelb, currently Chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations.

This enormous study was delivered by Clark M. Clifford, then Sec. of Defense, on January 15, 1969. In many ways it is an unbelievable bit of historical review and revisionism. For the purposes of this study, I shall quote from page 223 of volume 2 of the five volume copy of this work known as the "Gravel Edition". It is the edition that was entered into the Congressional Record during August 1971 by Senator Mike Gravel of Alaska... a native of my home town in Massachusetts.

On page 223 a portion of a chronology that begins with Nov. 9, 1963, and progresses as follows:

"20 Nov. 1963 Honolulu Conference. The entire country team meets..."

Press release after Honolulu Conference. The press release gives few details but does reiterate the U.S. intention to withdraw 1,000 troops by the end of the year.

NOTE: This press release appeared in the New York Times of Nov. 21, 1963. Its very existence denied frequently by the media.

"22 Nov. 1963 Lodge Confers with the President"

"Having flown to Washington the day after the conference, Lodge meets with the President and presumably continues the kind of report given in Honolulu".

NOTE: This is the day President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. It gets no mention in this massive erudite historical study.

"23 Nov. 1963 NSAM 273 "Drawing together the results of the Honolulu Conference and Lodge's meeting with the President, NSAM 273 reaffirms the U.S. commitment to defeat the VC in South Vietnam..."

NOTE: NSAM #273 did not exist on Nov. 23, 1963.

Have you noticed something strange here? This scholarly band of PhD's had produced, during eighteen months, what Gelb labeled:

"... a history based solely on documents - checked and rechecked with ant-like diligence. Pieces of paper, formidable and suggestive by themselves, could have meant much or nothing."

Have you noticed, also, that this "ant-like diligence" totally missed the fact others of us knew quite well by 1968, that President John F. Kennedy had been assassinated on that same day, Nov. 22, 1963 that "Lodge confers with the President"?

It is this caliber of planned revisionism, at the highest level, that most dramatically and positively uncovers the cover story that has been devised for three decades to conceal the conspiracy that planned the death of the President and... furthermore... conceals the existence of the Coup d'etat that has effectively controlled the Government of the United States since that date.

When writers, editors, commentators and all the rest can rise in unison because Oliver Stone and I have made it clear in the film "JFK" that the President was assassinated as a result of a conspiracy, and in so doing that all, in unison cite contrived "historical" lies... or blame us for citing historical fact, there can be no other conclusion. The name Oswald can not possibly fill any other role in such a scenario than that of the "Patsy". Of course this is not the whole story, but it is all we need to know to identify the fact of conspiracy.

(I'll close with but one or two more identifiable acts of the conspiratorial scheme.)

When I bought the first newspaper I could obtain on the streets of Christchurch, New Zealand, the day President Kennedy initiated, under the bold headline that told of the President's death there was a large picture of the Texas School Book Depository building from which it was alleged that the fatal shots were fired.

That picture alone confirmed the existence of a conspiracy. Historically, assassinations take place when the usual high degree of protection of the leader of any state is not provided. That condition alone invites planned murder. According to these headlines in New Zealand:

"Three bursts of gunfire, apparently from automatic weapons, were heard. Secret Service men immediately unslung their automatic weapons and pistols."

Interestingly, these same words that had been so quickly flashed around the world had been used by the CBS nation-wide network when it interrupted its mid-day programs to announce the assassination.

But, it was the picture of the building that caught and reminded me of the days when I had been ordered to Mexico City during the late-fifties to work on security preparations for the visit to that city by President Eisenhower. We had taken precaution to assure that during the minutes when the Presidential motorcade would travel down the streets of Mexico City the windows of the overlooking buildings would be closed, by snipers, and that Presidential Protection men would be stationed to observe them. There would be other men on the roofs, some with radios and some would be snipers. No one would be permitted to fire from a "shooter's lair" as it is said Oswald did in Dallas.

Here (show on the screen) is a picture of that infamous Texas Schoolbook Depository Building that was taken at almost the same time as the shooting. Note the open windows. We have all heard that there were no Secret Service or Presidential Protection men at this Dealey Plaza location on that day, at that time.

Look how simple it would have been for someone standing across the street, where this cameraman was, to observe all the windows in a glance. How easy to observe the windows of the other buildings. It could have been done. It ought to have been done. That is the way Presidents are protected... among other things. Why wasn't it done on that day? This is the answer. The decision was made at a high level sufficient to warrant the utilization of the "Murder Inc." capability that Lyndon Johnson referred to shortly before he died. A professional team of "mechanics" could do a clean job and get out of town easily in a city where security coverage was absent.

After that the problem is the cover story. Shortly after midnight that day, on Nov. 23rd, the police announced that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone killer, and that he had fired 3 shots from the School Book Depository building.

Strangely, on the first meeting after Kennedy's death, between Lyndon Johnson and J. Edgar Hoover, Hoover informed the President that Oswald had fired from the "Fifth Floor" of the building. I have a copy of that important Hoover memorandum dated Nov. 29, 1963. This may be a key statement. If the FBI, among others, believed that the shots came from the "Fifth Floor" they may have been mouthing a cover story scenario that failed to take into consideration the size and position of a large tree the stood between the "Fifth Floor" window and the President's car at the time of the first shot. Accordingly, they revised the official story, the gunman's lair was on the sixth floor.

Even today, thirty years later, the market is being flooded with new mythology about Kennedy's murder. A lawyer has recently come out with a book entitled Case Closed. Of all people, a lawyer ought to understand the significance of that statement. The case is not closed. It was never opened. The laws of this country require that the crime of murder be tried in the state where it occurred. The state of Texas has never done that.

Some say that this would be impossible "because Oswald is dead". Oswald was no more than a "patsy" murderer created by the conspiracy. No court has ever found him guilty of the crime. Therefore a court should be convened to try the case, even though they might have to try "John Doe". Such an action would come closer to solving this thirty-year mystery than anything that has been done since that 1963.

This has been a review of some of the facts of the Kennedy era and of essential details of the crime of his assassination. This is an essential study. Nothing has changed the course of our history and our way of life more than this Presidential murder. It remains for us, the American public, to demand our rights and a solution to this most significant crime in the nation's history.

As John F. Kennedy, himself, would have said: "Let's don't sit around and get mad: let's do something. Let's get even."

We have a score to settle. Our lives, and those of our loved ones, and our future depend upon it!