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EPIC1934
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Mon Jan-19-09 10:33 PM Response to Reply #2 |
3. Rockefeller Commission |
This book is so eclectic that nothing is "representative." That said, I found its description of the Rockfeller Commission of 1975, to be provoctive and perhaps usefull in placing it in historical context of prior and later developments in the CIA's negotiation of the 1970's (1970's negotiation of the CIA?)
The authors put the commission in terms of a post-Watergate control mechanism for information about past CIA abuses. They see Watergate as a reprisal by the CIA against Nixon after Nixon threatened to use old CIA stories as blackmail with the goal of getting Helms to cooperate in the Watergate Coverup. (I wonder to what extent the Hunt forgeries of documents blaming Kennedy for the Diem killings were central to this.Even Bland Ghost Writer, Stanley Kutler acknowleges " on June 19 Colson urged that Howard Hunt's White House safe be confiscated....Later that afternoon Dean and his Associate Counsel, Fred Fielding, sifted the contents of Hunt's safe, finding evidence of more"dirty tricks," including an attempt to fabricate a direct link between President Kennedy and the assassination of South Vietnamese President Diem" (The Wars of Watergate, p. 216). Writer J. Anthony Lukas, offers much more on the attmepts to link Kennedy to Diem: Two days later, at a meeting with Haldeman, Ehrlichman, and Mitchell, the President discussed a political strategy which would keep the origins of the Vietnam War "front and center so that the Democrats would "squable about it." They agreed that the "Diem incident" ws the "best ground" for attack because it involved both Averill Harrima-- a Muskie supporter-- and Ted Kennedy. Nixon suggested that several Republican senators might pick up his accusation of September 16th and ' demand that Conein be released from the silence" required by the CIA regulations. "Let the CIA take a whipping on this, Nixon said, demanding that the agency deliver its "entire Diem file" immediately. (Nightmare, p.91) Lucas claims that the initial purpose of this creative autopsy of the Diem murder was to hurt the campaign of Ted Kennedy, especailly among Catholics, by claiming to prove that JFK had ordered the killing of a fellow Catholic. But in the above quote its as if he is trying to kill at least one other bird with a wider shotgun approach. But what of his comment on letting the CIA 'take a whipping'? Does it suggest that Nixon himself thought that the Conein and Kennedy were on the same page about Diem, when they really were not? With this wide angle blast, was Nixon threatening to raise questions that might have shown that the CIA was following its own agenda with the Diem Killing? And was Nixon aware that this would happen? Lucas also offers an interesting quote from Hunt that makes it seem like Hunts forged JFK-Diem documents originated at the suggestion of the White House (Colson) and not the CIA: After about a week, Colson asked him, "What kind of material have you dug up in the files that would indicate Kennedy complicity in Diem's death?" Hunt said that nombody who read the cables would have any doubt about it, but no single cable would establish it. 'you'd have to take a sequence of there of four cables, be aware of their context, and speculate on what was contained in the cables missing from the sequence. According to Hunt, Colson asked, 'Do you think you could improve on them?' Hunt said he would need technical assistance, particularly in finding the original typwriters on which the cables had been typed. "Well, we won't be able to give you any technical help," Hunt recalls Colson saying. This is too hot. See what you can do on your own" (Nightmare, p. 91) All of this makes me wonder if the Diem killing and its very contested narration was not very high up the list of reasons that the CIA felt they had to get to take serious steps in getting rid of Nixon.) Note these paragraphs leading up to the creation of the Rockefeller Commission: In Hersh's New Year's Eve story, " the Bay of Pigs thing" resurfaced with potentially astounding implications: "The Times reported Sunday that the new domestic unit was formed in 1964 but Mr. Hunt realled that it was assmebled shortly after the failure of the Bay of Pigs operaion in 1961. Many Agency men connected with that failure were shunted into the new domestic unit' Hunt placed the date of its founding in 1962, before, not after the Kennedy assassinaiton, and noted that Helms was strenuously opposed to its establishment. Who, then, ran this secret operation of Bay of Pigs veterans? (Morales with his AMOT connections he had developed prior to the invasion, who he then siphoned of to Fort Bennning, separate from the other group of returning BOP veterans?????) According to once source at the DIA, such opperations fell within the domain of the Clandestine Services chif of the Western Hemishphere Division: Nelson Rockefeller's old friend from CIAA days in the Brazilian Amazon, Colonel J.C. King. Four days later, after an even more sensitve oral briefing by Colby in the White House, President Ford announced that he was appointing Nelson Rockefeller to head an eight-member "blue-ribbon commission (including Nelson's old friend and coinvestor in Belgian Congo properties, C. Doulas Dillon) to probe the CIA's illegal operations n the United States. (Thy Will Be Done, p. 735) J.C. King. After reading this book, which is chock-full of ties between King and Neslon Rockefeller, I am wondering if I, for one, may have underestimated his involvement in the original multi-faceted assassination plan, the one that would have culminated in a US invasion of Cuba. Recall that he was very involved in the development of the original BOP invasion plan, and undoubtedly knew of the points in the 1959 and 1960 Castro assassination points that would could have either directly or indirectly implicated Nixon and old FBI contacts from WWII days when the FBI was stronger in Latin America. King is also described as one of the strongest detractors from Kennedy's Alliance For Progress. It is also worth noting that King began his career in Latin America while working for Johsnon and Johnson, the US drug company who dug a lot of the Amazonian ingredients. Later, with Rockefeller money he created a front for MK-ULTRA research called the (Amazon Natural Drug Company). He was heavily involved in the Brazil coup of 1964, the one that Rockefeller's man on the WC found considerably more interesting than attending meetings with Earl-- because of Rockefeller mining investments, among many many others in Brazil. (Nelson Rockefeller) recommended keeping secret what ins some cases even Colby though unnecessary.(Recall Colby's by secretary of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW) and then as his special assistant on Cold War strategy and psychological warfare, Nelson knew about many of the CIA's covert actions, including the mind-control experiments (which were funded partyly through the HEW) and assassination plots. Indeed, as chairman of the National Security Council's Special Group, he was briefed on ALL covert operations and would have had to approve someo of the most questionable ones, including coups and assassinations abroad and continuting mind-control experiments at home. President Ford was particulary interested in having Nelson "look into this assassination business" Nelson understood the implications immediately. He already knew about the attempts on Castro's life and the theory that such attempts had backfired on Kennedy in Dallas "This was another way of chopping my head off and getting me out there where I was the one who was putting the finger on the Kennedy's, see, as chairman of the committee. Also getting me into an impossible hope because I happened to know this thing had been investigated a good many times there was a lot of very interesting leads. With a lot of intersting leads why was it so impossible? By "chopping my head off" was Nelson here implying that his own investigation was limited becasuse it could lead to Nelson Rockefeller and his close associate J.C. King? This "chopping my head" head off seems to be open to a number of different interpretations. Faced with Nesons's threat to resign, Ford dropped his insistence on a written report on this specific subject. But the investigation would go forward.Neson began assembling the case for a Castro-Kennedy Assassination link. 'We got this information and we put it together and it was hot' (This piecing together sounds similar to the alledged Hunt-Colson plan of four years before. Nixon had previously thought of emphasizing Kennedy-Castro assassination alledged ties, before setteling on JFK-Diem instead N.H.) ...... Unable to find any evidence that proved the Kennedys had ordered the CIA to try to kill Castro, Nelson gave up the investigation. Avoiding having to report "got the President off the hook, got me off the hook, got it right where it belonged: in the Congress. Despite Neson's claim that he was sticking ot the commission's original madate to invstigate only the CIA's domestic activities, some activities that bore on oprations overseas were addressed in Nelson's report, but in a highly contained and selective manner. The CIA's illegal cooperation with the NSA in monitoring phone conversations by narcottigs traffickers between Latin America and the US in 1973 was considered a worthy target for criticism; the CIA's ties to American cocaine traffickers operationg between the United States and Columbia were not. The CIA's support for the activiteis of the Cabinet Committee on narcotics Control, including invstigations abroad, was reported; the involvement of the CIA's Air America in the transport of the very Southeast Asian heroin that the committee was so concerned about (and ultimately reported the futility of trying to stop) was not. Nixon's abuse of the CIA on such matters as access to files and equipment, Watergate, and requisitioning more than $33,000 from the CIA to pay for White House responses to mail on the Cambodia invasion was fair game; The CIA's conspiring with mobsters and Cuban exiles in the US to assassinate the Cuban head of state was not. Newither was the CIA's abuse of the names of President Kennedy and Attorney General Robert Kennedy after the missile crisis to continue these assassination attempts illegally and without authorization. While taking a properly critical tone and makig some sound structural and procedural recommendations to correct the most glaring errors of process and of the government's line of authority, Neson, in most cases, projected confidence in the Agency's claim that the abuses had been stopped and reforms had already been enacted, including a prohibition against the assassination of foreign leaders. He did not mention the CIA's unauthorized storage of curare, cobra venom, shellfish poison, and other toxins and biological weapons, in direct wiolation of President Nixon's executive order of February 1970 to destroy the stockpiles. Among the scientists collaborating with the CIA in the illegal storage of these biological weapons were four scientists at Rockefeller University (p.736-737, They Will Be Done) The authors present the Rockefeller Commission as an CIA controlled revelation of some of their secrets, that was made necessary by its conflict with Nixon over Watergate, and at the same time a sign of the CIA's triumph over another president who thought he could control it. THIS IS A VERY ACCURATE DESCRIPTION OF THE INTELLIGENCE "OVERSITE" OF THE MID SEVENTIES, THE ONLY TIME THAT THERE WAS ANY REAL OVERSITE. Even the revelations were Limited hangouts" |
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