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SECRET EVIDENCE ON THE KENNEDY ASSASSINATION
Document Type:
CREST
Collection:
General CIA Records
Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST):
CIA-RDP75-00001R000100050048-0
Release Decision:
RIPPUB
Original Classification:
K
Document Page Count:
1
Document Creation Date:
November 11, 2016
Document Release Date:
October 1, 1998
Sequence Number:
48
Case Number:
Publication Date:
April 6, 1968
Content Type:
NSPR
File:
Attachment Size
PDF icon CIA-RDP75-00001R000100050048-0.pdf 84.19 KB
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Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP7 THE SATURDAY EVENING PO 6 April 1968 0 the unnatural quiet of the security room of he National Archives in Washington, beneath sad row of naked light bulbs, the records of t Warren Commission investigation of the mur- d of President Kennedy rest in a long double line o green metal shelves. It,,is not a pleasant sight. O c asks: Is this the end of Camelot? The thousands of pages of documents amassed b the commission are stored in gray cardboard boxes alongside the physical exhibits, including L e Harvey Oswald's 6.5-mm. Mannlicher-Car- c no rifle. The windowless security area is pro- t ted by a heavy steel door wired to an alarm s stem. The entire room is, in effect, a vault; only tree persons know how to open the black com- b nation lock on the door. Only members of the Archives staff who hav en cleared for security may enter this room. N otographs may be taken inside it. The great bulk of the documents in the room ut 80 percent, were published by the Warre mmission in 1964 or were made public later. Bu th s gregated from these, in one compartment of t curity room, are 25 boxes containing document that no one outside of the Government or e Warren Commission has read. By estimate of the National Archives, 10 feet, or approximately 25,000 pages, of Warren Com- mission files remain closed in these boxes. Many of the closed documents are classified, some bearing the red-ink stamp: TOP SECRET. Here are some sample titles of secret documents: ^ ? A report by CIA director Richard M. Helms on "Soviet Brainwashing Techniques." ^ An FBI report of an interview with Yuri No- senko, a top Soviet KGB agent who defected to the United States 10 weeks after the assassination of President Kennedy. ^ A CIA report on Lee Harvey Oswald's activities in Mexico, dated October 10, 1963, six weeks be- fore the assassination. ^ A memo to FBI director J. Edgar Hoover from Richard Helms, titled, "Lee Harvey Oswald's Access to Classified Information About the U-2." ^ A memo from Helms to J. Lee Rankin, general counsel of the Warren Commission, concerning "Soviet Use of Assassination and Kidnapping." Cott nnedl Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP75-00001 R000100050048-0
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MAFIA AND CIA LINKED IN JFK MURDER
Document Type:
CREST
Collection:
General CIA Records
Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST):
CIA-RDP88-01315R000300510116-8
Release Decision:
RIFPUB
Original Classification:
K
Document Page Count:
1
Document Creation Date:
December 16, 2016
Document Release Date:
December 20, 2004
Sequence Number:
116
Case Number:
Publication Date:
June 9, 1975
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THE NATIONAL IYAMINER Approved For Release 206/Ar'4 :1W-RDP88-01315R000 MAFIA AND CIA, LINKED IN JFK MURDER C..M-'t-?t /(s Sal$%>N4r Did the Mafia and CIA conspire in the assassination of John F. Kennedy in, 1963? And did the ill-fated president seal his own doom with a decision he had made several months before? New evidence now appears to supiaort the credibility of this astounding theory concerning-JFK's murder in Dallas. .Members of America's top-secret spy organization and known trig- germen for the Mafia were reportedly observed on the scene when the fatal shooting took place. Several CIA agents and at least one member of the Mafia were al- legedly taken Into custody shortly after the shooting ceased, but were quickly released by Dallas police. particular spot when JFK was brutally cut down. - Few experts believe that Lee Harvey Oswald could have fired all the shots which poured Into the president's open convertible. . Many are now convinced that he was simply a patsy who was set up to take- the blame for a carefully planned execution. They believe he was telling the truth .when he Insisted that he was not involved with the assassination. . . It has never been ascertained just why they happened to be at that The 'popular theory now is that Oswald himself was elimi- irlated to keep his lips seated. His killer, nightclub operator Jack Ruby, was known to have close associates among under- world figures. Witnesses claim photographs prove that former CIA agents E. Howard Hunt, convicted Watergater, and Frank Sturgis were present when JFK was slain. Also identified in a photo of those nearby the presidential motorcade was a parolee with a criminal record as long as your arm. ..4 Approved Eugene Hale Brading, with a record dating back to 1934, was allegedly an associate of James (The Weasel) Frattiano, a well- known Mafia figure linked of gangland killings, who was then of the "Smaldones Family" of Denver. In 1963, Brading was living in Los Angeles - on parole at the time. He claimed to be an oil prospector and obtained per- mission from his parole officer to visit Dalls on a business trip. He was scheduled to be in Dallas only for the day of Nov. 21, according to records.' He was supposed to be in Houston on Nov. 22, the day JFK was shot. Why did he stay on in Dallas? It is known he did visit the of- fices of a huge- oil company on Nov. 21. It was later admitted by Jack Ruby that he visited those offices on the same day. Did they know each other, and did they meet by a pre- arranged plan? And did they speak of the assassination which was to take place the fol- lowing day? Ruby told the Warren Com- mission that he visited the Hunt Oil Company offices on Nov. 21 to get a job for an attractive co- ed named Connie Trammel. The Commission did not connect Ruby's visit with Brad- For ReleaseiapQ5fQ1*1t1ghCIAeRER t3I had given a phony name and story when questioned by the FBI just after the shooting. This coincidence did not come to light until years later through the efforts of con- cerned private citizens, headed by Dallas pharmaceutical salesman Al Chapman. It is now learned that JFK' may have incurred the wrath of the CIA and underworld figures, because of the touchy Cuban situation at the time. The young president, al- legedly, discussed the possible assassination of Cuban Premier: Fidel Castro with a close friend, Sen. George A. Smathers of; Florida in 1961 and 1962. He ab- solutely refused to consider the suggestion, although it has'now; been learned that the CIA had ' been linked with assassination: attempts throughout the Carib- bean for years. The converstaions betweeni JFK and Smathers are allegedly contained in the oral history archives of the Kennedy library. "As I recollect," Smathers began, "he (Kennedyl was throwing out a great barrage of questions - he was certain that. it could be accomplished... "The question was whether of not it would accomplish that' which he wanted it to do whether or not the reaction throughout South America would be good or bad... And 5R0N801frl5t1O1b1$ $ican people' react, would the people be gratified?
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Search formSearch Query for FOIA ERR:
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CIA OFFICER OUSTED OVER JFK FILES
Document Type:
CREST
Collection:
General CIA Records
Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST):
CIA-RDP91-00587R000100160006-0
Release Decision:
RIPPUB
Original Classification:
K
Document Page Count:
1
Document Creation Date:
December 22, 2016
Document Release Date:
February 23, 2011
Sequence Number:
6
Case Number:
Publication Date:
June 22, 1979
Content Type:
OPEN SOURCE
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PDF icon CIA-RDP91-00587R000100160006-0.pdf 56.2 KB
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STAT Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/02/23: CIA-RDP91-00587R000100160006-0 Copyright o 1979 Facts on File, Inc.; Facts on File World News Digest June 22, 1979 SECTION: U.S. AFFAIRS; Other U.S. News PAGE: Pg. 466 A3 LENGTH: 289 words HEADLINE: CIA Officer Ousted Over JFK Files BODY: A Central Intelligence Agency officer who was assisting the House Assassinations Committee investigation into the 196.3 murder of President John F. Kennedy was dismissed after his fingerprints were found on sensitive material kept in a committee safe, the CIA acknowledged June 17. [See p. 166C1] CIA spokesman Herbert Hetu said the officer, Regis T. Blahut, was dismissed in the summer of 1978 after the rifled files were discovered by committee members. Hetu said the agency was satisfied that the incident was simply "a matter of curiosity" on Blahut's part. The Washington Post reported June 18 that "informed sources" said there had been an unauthorized entry into the locked safe, where the committee kept physical evidence of the assassination, including autopsy photos, X-rays, and the so-called "magic bullet" that wounded both President Kennedy and then-Texas Gov. John B. Connally. The Post article said that sources said nothing had been taken from the files. The newspaper quoted Blahut as saying there was an innocent explanation for his action. Blahut refused to give it, saying he had signed an oath of secrecy with the CIA. Sources close to the House committee's chief counsel, G. Robert Blakey, were quoted by the Post as saying that Blahut had failed three polygraph examinations. The Post quoted one source as claiming: "He (Blahut) denied he did it., and he flunked that. They also asked him whether anyone ordered him to do it. He said no one and he flunked that." Blahut insisted in his interview with the Post that he had come through the tests with his credibility unblemished. Blahut had been detailed to assist the committee with the CIA records it needed for its investigation. LEXIS? NEXIS LEXIS? NEXIS? Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/02/23: CIA-RDP91-00587R000100160006-0
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7:04- cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-R : Approved For Release 2004/11/01: FARASSORA20030001 CAS waren Comm. CIA2.05.1 FOIA in) WP 45 retin). N122 FORD, Gerald CIAIOI Helms, Richard P.2 M OF D CIA-KENNEDY ASSASSINATION BY DAVID C. MARTIN LANE, MARK SOCY012 Jungmeit WASHINGTON (AP) THE CENTRAL INTITUENCE AGENCY DIRECTED ITS OFFICES AROUND THE WORLD IN 1967 TO EMPLOY PROPAGANDA ASSETS TO COUNTER DOUBTS RAISED BY CRITICS OF THE WARREN COMMISSIONS INVESTIGATION INTO THE ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT KENNEDY. THE PROPAGANDA CAMPAIGN HAS TO BE WAGED IN PART BY PASSING UNCLASSIFIED INFORMATION ABOUT THE ASSASSINATION TO CIA ASSETS WHO COULD USE THE MATERIAL IN WRITING BOOK REVIEWS AND FEATURE ARTICLES THAT WOULD ANSWER AND REFUTE THE ATTACKS OF THE CRITICS. ACCORDING TO A NENLY RELEASED CIA DOCUMENT. THE DOCUMENT SAID ITS AIM WAS TO PROVIDE MATERIAL FOR COUNTERING AND DISCREDITING THE CLAINS OF THE CONSPIRACY THEORISTS, SO AS TO INHIBIT THE CIRCULATION OF SUCH CLAINS IN OTHER COUNTRIES. THE DOCUMENT WAS ANONG SOME 850 PAGES OF MATERIAL RELEASED FRIDAY BY THE CIA UNDER THE FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT. THE DOCUMENTS SHOW THAT THE CIA EXAMINED COPIES OF ALMOST ALL BOOKS ABOUT THE NOVEMBER 1963 ASSASSINATION, INCLUDING ONE BY THEN-CONGRESSHAN GERALD R. FORD. A CIA OFFICER CALLED FORDS BOOK A RE-HASH OF THE OSWALD CASE AND CRITICIZED ITS LOOSE WRITING. A FORD CHAPTER REBUTTING THE CLAIN THAT LEE HARVEY OSWALD WAS AN FBI AGENT IS JUST LOOSE ENOUGH TO PERMIT QUOTATION OUT OF CONTEXT, A MARCH 1965 MENO TO RICHARD HELKS, THEN-DEPUTY CIA DIRECTOR FOR PLANS, SAYS.... THE CHAPTER, AS WRITTEN, COULD BE USED BY THE LEFFIES (MARK LANE ET AL) TO CONTINUE THE CAMPAIGN OF WHICH YOU ARE ALREADY AWARE. FORD WAS A MEMBER OF THE WARREN COMMISSION THAT CONCLUDED THAT OSHALD HAS SOLELY RESPONSIBLE FOR THE ASSASSINATION. FORD QUOTED EXTENSIVELY FROM SECRET SESSIONS OF THE COMMISSION IN THIS BOOK TITLED PORTRAIT OF AN ASSASSIN. MANY OF THE DOCUMENTS RELEASED DEAL WITH INTERNAL AGENCY ASSESSMENTS OF CHARGES RAISED BY MARK LANE IN HIS BOOK RUSH TO JUDGMENT, BY EDWARD JAY EPSTEIN IN A BOOK CALLED INQUEST AND BY FORMER NEW ORLEANS DISTRICT ATTORNEY JIN GARRISON, WHO ALLEGED HE HAD UNCOVERED A CONSPIRACY BEHIND THE KENNEDY ASSASSINATION. THE 1967 DISPATCH TO CHIEFS, CERTAIN STATIONS AND BASES SAYS THAT THE RASH OF BOOKS AND ARTICLES CRITICIZING THE WARREN COMMISSIONS FINDING IS A MATTER OF CONCERN TO THE U.S. GOVERNMENT, INCLUDING OUR ORGANIZATION. EFFORTS TO A Por Release 2004/11/01 CIA RDP88 -0135020002004100018 IMPUGN (THE AND HISDON NEMBERS AND STAFFS TEND TO CAST DOUBT ON THE WHOLE LEADERSHIP OF AMERICAN SOCIETY, THE MENO SAID.
Studies in Intelligence Vol. 45 No. 5 (2001)
The Lie That Linked CIA to
the Kennedy Assassination
Max Holland
The Power of Disinformation
On 2 June 1961, just weeks after the Bay of Pigs debacle, the Senate
Internal Security Subcommittee convened to take testimony from Richard
M. Helms, then an assistant deputy director of the Central Intelligence
Agency. In those halcyon days of the Agency's relationship with Congress,
it was rare for a CIA official to give a presentation that senators had every
intention of making public. The subcommittee, dominated by some of the
fiercest anti-Communist members of the Senate, undoubtedly wanted to
help repair the Agency's tarnished image. The hearing, entitled
"Communist Forgeries," would surely remind Americans of the threat that
Communism posed to Western interests and the Agency's frontline role in
containing that threat.[1]
Helms began his testimony by describing an episode that had just faded
from the headlines. It proved just how virulent and resilient a lie can be
when everything around it seems to fall into place. Although Helms never
used the precise term, the scheme he described would eventually become
better known by its KGB appellation: dezinformatsiya or disinformation.
For years, Soviet propagandists had sought to impugn the United States
by linking it to France's brutal colonial war in Algeria. The effort was a
mediocre success until 22 April 1961, when four Algerian-based generals
organized a putsch against President Charles de Gaulle, who was trying to
extract France from the seven-year conflict. Coincidentally, one of the
plotters, Air Force Gen. Maurice Challe, had served in NATO headquarters
and was unusually pro-American for a senior French officer. This fact
provided the basis for a fabrication that the plotters enjoyed the CIA's
support.
"This lie was first printed on the 23rd of April by a Rome daily," Helms
testified. In English, the headline in Paese Sera read, "Was the Military
Coup d'état in Algeria Prepared in Consultation with Washington?" The
very next day, Pravda, citing Paese Sera, ran a story alleging CIA support for
the revolt, as did TASS and Radio Moscow. Other Soviet Bloc and then
Western outlets picked up the story, which gathered credibility with every
re-telling. Eventually Le Monde, the most respected and influential
newspaper in France, ran a lead editorial that began, "It now seems
established that some American agents more or less encouraged Challe."
The vehemence of the US Embassy's denial was primarily taken as an
indication of the allegation's truth.
As the story spread to this side of the Atlantic, the controversy grew to
such a pitch that it threatened to disrupt President Kennedy's state visit to
France, scheduled for May 1961. Relations remained testy until Maurice
Couve de Murville, France's foreign minister, went before the National
Assembly and sought to quell the allegation. Altogether, Helms
observed, the episode was an "excellent example of how the Communists
use the false news story" to stunning effect. And it had all started with an
Italian paper that belonged "to a small group of journals published in the
free world but used as outlets for disguised Soviet propaganda…instead of
having this originate in Moscow, where everybody would pinpoint it, they
[5]
[4]
[3]
[2]
planted the story first in Italy and picked it up from Italy…."[6]
Helms's testimony reveals that the CIA's Counterintelligence (CI) Staff had
a sophisticated understanding of how dezinformatsiya worked by no later
than 1961. Yet six years later, a grander and more pernicious concoction
originating in the same newspaper, Paese Sera, would go unexamined,
unexposed, and unchallenged. This lapse, while understandable in
context, proved a costly one for the Agency over the long run. Paese Sera's
successful deception turns out to be a major reason why many Americans
believe, to this day, that the CIA was involved in the assassination of
President Kennedy.[8]
[7]
Garrison Opens His Investigation
The complex story begins in early February 1967, when the FBI and CIA
learned about a striking development in New Orleans. Two years after the
completion of the federal inquiry into President Kennedy's death by the
Warren Commission, the local district attorney, Jim Garrison, had opened
his own investigation into the November 1963 assassination. Whatever
Garrison was up to, he did not seem intent on involving the federal
government. So both the Bureau and the CIA simply awaited the next
development, believing, like most Americans, that no responsible
prosecutor would dare reopen the case unless he truly had something.
[9]
On 17 February, the New Orleans States-Item revealed Garrison's
reinvestigation to the world and ignited a media firestorm. The first legal
action, however, did not occur until 1 March 1967, when Garrison
ostentatiously arrested an urbane local businessman named Clay Shaw
and charged him with masterminding a plot that culminated in President
Kennedy's death. Both the Bureau and the CIA rushed to their
respective files and ran name traces on Shaw, a man who had never been
linked to the assassination despite Washington's painstaking investigation.
Insofar as the Agency was concerned, only one sliver of information was
noteworthy. The businessman now charged with the crime of the century
had once been a source for the CIA through its Domestic Contact Service
(DCS).
[10]
The CIA's concerted effort to gather foreign intelligence from domestic
sources had its roots in World War II. After the conflict, careful analysis
revealed that a coordinated effort to collect information known to
American citizens might have averted some bitter failures. Thus, when the
CIA was formed in 1947, it was handed responsibility for the overt
collection of foreign intelligence within the United States, and DCS offices
were discreetly opened in several major cities. DCS officers sought contact
with American citizens who traveled abroad and were in a position to
acquire significant foreign intelligence as a routine matter. The highest
priority, naturally, was attached to debriefing Americans who traveled
behind the Iron Curtain or to international conferences where they met
Soviet Bloc citizens. Although all DCS relationships with individual
Americans were routinely classified "secret," the information gleaned was
often no more confidential than what could be gained from a close reading
of the Wall Street Journal. By the mid-1970s, DCS files contained the names
of 150,000 Americans who had willingly provided information or were
promising sources.[11]
Shaw had volunteered his first report to the DCS in 1948, the year that the
division of Europe into antagonistic blocs hardened. His offering
concerned Czechoslovakia, a country whose fate had gripped Americans'
imagination. Until February 1948, Czechoslovakia had been a pluralistic,
democratic state, mindful of Soviet national security concerns but linked
economically and intellectually to the West. Then, in the space of seven
days, it was abruptly transformed into a Communist dictatorship, a
shattering development because it sugested a replay of events that had
led to the last world war. In December 1948, Shaw informed the CIA about
the new regime's effort to expand exports via the New Orleans Trade Mart.
He shared details about a lease for exhibition space that had been
negotiated with a Czech commercial attaché based in New York.[12]
That voluntary report led to an extended relationship on matters involving
commercial and international trends. Shaw was an observant
businessman who traveled widely. It was effortless for him to pick up the
kind of information useful to analysts inside the US Government. Over the
next eight years, Shaw relayed information on 33 separate occasions, his
fluency in Spanish helping to make him a particularly astute observer of
trends in Central and South America. His reports about devaluation in
Peru, a proposed new highway in Nicaragua, and the desire of Western
European countries to trade with the Soviet bloc—a subject of keen
interest to Washington because of worries about technology transfers—
were invariably graded "of value" and "reliable."[13]
Why the relationship ended after 1956 is not revealed in any of the
recently declassified CIA files or Shaw's own papers. Whatever the reason,
the documentary record is clear: Shaw was not handed off by the DCS
and developed as a covert operative by the CIA's Plans (now Operations)
Directorate. The relationship just lapsed. He had never received any
remuneration and probably considered the reporting a civic duty that was
no longer urgent once the hostility between the two superpowers became
frozen in place and a new world war no longer appeared imminent.[14]
Upon reviewing Shaw's file after the businessman's arrest, Lloyd Ray, chief
of the New Orleans DCS office, expressed some concern but saw no
reason to be alarmed. "While I do not expect that this office will become
involved in the matter," Ray wrote in a 3 March 1967 cable to CIA
headquarters in Langley, Virginia, "nevertheless there is always the
possibility of this." Ray had joined the DCS in 1948 and knew Shaw
Hey Trump remember when Camelot went up in flames or down in flames
personally. A lawyer by training, he sugested briefing Lawrence Houston,
the CIA's general counsel, on the facts of the relationship "to be on the
safe side."[15]
European Leftists Fan the Flames
The day after Ray's cable, on 4 March, the left-wing Roman newspaper
Paese Sera published a "scoop" that would reverberate all the way to New
Orleans and Langley. According to the afternoon daily, Clay Shaw was no
mere international businessman. That profession was a facade for his
involvement in "pseudo-commercial" activities via the Centro Mondiale
Commerciale (CMC), a trade-promotion group headquartered in Rome from
1958 to 1962. The defunct CMC had been "a creature of the CIA," according
to Paese Sera, "set up as a cover for the transfer to Italy of CIA-FBI [sic]
funds for illegal political-espionage activities." Revealingly, one of the
CMC's most nefarious acts, according to Paese Sera, was support for the
"philo-fascists" who had attempted to depose Charles de Gaulle in the
early 1960s.[16]
The plausibility of the Paese Sera allegations was strengthened
immeasurably by a contemporaneous media firestorm. On Valentine's Day,
Ramparts magazine had ignited a controversy over CIA subsidies. As
elite news outlets raced to outdo Ramparts by revealing the methodology
and extent of covert CIA funding around the world, it became known that
anti-communist elements in Italy had been among the beneficiaries of the
CIA's overseas largesse. Moreover, as was the case in 1961, Paese Sera's
1967 scoop was built around certain undeniable facts: the CMC had
existed in Rome; Shaw had been a board member; and now he was
charged with having conspired to murder President Kennedy.
[17]
The Italian defense, interior, and foreign affairs ministries denied the
allegation of a link between the CMC and the CIA, and mainstream Italian
newspapers limited themselves to pointing out the Roman connection of
the businessman arrested in New Orleans. Other outlets, however,
showed less restraint. On 5 March, the day after Paese Sera's scoop, l'Unità,
the newspaper of the Italian Communist Party, published a front page
story headlined, "Shaw…was a Rome agent of the C.I.A." Moscow's Pravda
picked up the story on 7 March, publishing it under the simple headline,
[18]
asked Ray Rocca, chief of Research & Analysis for the CI Staff, to stay
abreast of the situation. During the lull, a lively debate took place between
the CI Staff and the DCS over what to do. The latter argued against
devoting more time and effort to what already seemed to be a "sensational
hoax." Rocca, however, wanted to stay ahead of the disclosure curve, and
ultimately his position prevailed. The CIA intensified its monitoring weeks
before Garrison actually trained his sights on the Agency. "We regret to
have to burden you with this sort of coverage," wrote DCS Chief Murphy in
a 20 March letter to the New Orleans office, "but [it] could be damaging to
the Agency if some link could be exploded by enterprising news
hounds."[25]
Unbeknownst to the Agency, Garrison had been convinced by the Paese
Sera article that Shaw was linked to the CIA; that association, in turn,
implicated the CIA in a cover-up of the Kennedy assassination. A diary
kept by Richard Billings, a LIFE editor who worked closely with the DA in
the early stages of the investigation, corroborates the timing and impact of
the foreign disinformation on Garrison. Billings's entry for 16 March, less
than two weeks after the publication of the first Paese Sera article, notes
that, "Garrison now interested in possible connections between Shaw and
the CIA…article in March issue Humanities [l'Humanité] supposedly
mentions Shaw's company [CIA] work in Italy." Six days later, the DA
had at least one of the articles in hand. Garrison "has copy [of story about
Shaw] datelined Rome, March 7th, from la presse Italien [sic]," Billings
records. "It explains Shaw working in Rome in '58 to '60 period."[27]
[26]
Dezinformatsiya thus exerted a profound influence on the prosecution of
Clay Shaw. Overriding the opposition of his top aides, who had beged him
to drop the case, Garrison now persisted because the DA believed he had
nabbed an important "covert operative." Under the duress and publicity
of indictment, Shaw would surely fold. And the moment he cracked,
Garrison imagined that it would be easy to unmask the sequence of
events leading to the assassination in Dallas.
[28]
US Media Pick Up the Thread
Despite the flurry of articles in Europe's pro-Communist press, the
sensational revelation about Shaw was not playing well at home. This was
a problem for a DA whose modus operandi required a steady drumbeat of
positive publicity. Garrison dared not bring up the allegation openly, as he
later explained in a letter to Lord Bertrand Russell, the famed British
philosopher who was also an avid conspiracy buff. Doing so might hand
skeptics in the media the ammunition to destroy his controversial probe.
Critical articles had begun to appear, including a devastating exposé
of Garrison's sources and methods that ran in the 23 April Saturday Evening
Post. Garrison wanted the Italian story in the news, but via a hidden
hand.
[30]
[29]
On 25 April, the New Orleans States-Item published a front page,
copyrighted story. The headline read, "Mounting Evidence Links CIA to
'Plot' Probe," and the primary source of the article was "Garrison or one of
his people." The story went on to report that Shaw, the pivotal figure in
Garrison's investigation, had been linked to the CIA "by an influential
Italian newspaper." It took more than 20 column inches before the article
notedthat Paese Sera was "leftist in its political leanings." (The US State
Department routinely labeled the afternoon daily a "crypto-Communist"
newspaper.) Inexorably, the Associated Press picked up the New Orleans
States-Item scoop for distribution on its national wire. It was reprinted, in
truncated form, in hundreds of newspapers nationwide on 26 April. Even
the august New York Times ran a brief item from the wires about the
"mounting evidence of CIA links" in District Attorney Jim Garrison's probe
of the assassination. As Richard Billings noted in his diary, "Now
Garrison is hard on the trail of the CIA."[33]
[32]
[31]
The New Orleans States-Item exclusive confirmed the Agency's worst fears.
Just as the media were beginning to catch on that Garrison's case was
flimsy, the DA was moving to draw the CIA into the maelstrom. In a long
memo prepared on 26 April, Rocca concluded that it would be "unwise to
dismiss as trivial any attempts by Garrison to link the Agency to his plot."
Though it is impossible to discern what the New Orleans DA "knows or
thinks he knows," wrote Rocca, the grim truth, given the Ramparts exposé,
was that the "impact of such charges…will not depend principally upon
their veracity or credibility but rather upon their timeliness and the extent
of press coverage." From this point on, Garrison would not utter a word
without it being parsed inside Agency headquarters.
[34]
Having laid the groundwork with his calculated leak to the New Orleans
States-Item, Garrison now unleashed a barrage of sensational accusations.
In no particular order, Garrison alleged that Kennedy's alleged assassin
Lee Oswald had been under the control of the CIA; the CIA had
whitewashed the real assassins; the CIA had lied to the Warren
Commission and concealed evidence with the FBI's connivance— no, the
CIA had lied to the FBI too! As with Senator Joe McCarthy, the
legitimacy conferred by public office gave Garrison a license for audacious
mendacity, a privilege he exploited to the hilt. These charges made for new
accusatory headlines in New Orleans and elsewhere throughout the
month of May, but also served a second purpose. They had the
simultaneous effect of blunting the increasing number of articles
criticizing the DA's probe. The impression left was that Garrison was being
put under siege because he dared to tell the truth.
[35]
A Rock and a Hard Place
The CIA occasionally responded to a specific allegation from the barrage,
but never issued a substantive, thorough rebuttal for fear that it would
only create a larger problem for itself and for Shaw. Disclosing the Shaw-
DCS connection was ruled out as too explosive, given the nature of Shaw's
indictment and the spotlight the Agency was already under because of the
Ramparts exposé. At the very least, DCS sources and methods would be
scrutinized, and virtually all Americans traveling abroad would fall under
suspicion. Every businessman or scholar who had ever cooperated
voluntarily would think twice before doing so again. The DCS as a whole
would likely be damaged, perhaps irreparably. Then, too, the Agency had to
contemplate the cost of disclosure to Clay Shaw. Garrison's scapegoating
of the CIA left officers more persuaded than ever that the DA knew about
Shaw's DCS contact, and that he probably intended to distort the
connection during Shaw's trial.[36]
Despite the surface placidity of the CIA's "no comment" responses,
internally the Agency was seething. The "Red Flash" and "Red Comet"
editions of the New Orleans States-Item, in particular, were received with
the kind of enthusiasm normally reserved for Pravda. The CIA had
weathered public debacles like the Bay of Pigs and the Ramparts exposé;
had deflected criticism in the press and from books; and had resisted
attempts to broaden Congressional oversight. Never in its 20-year
existence, however, had it confronted such a challenge from an elected
public official with legal, albeit limited, authority. Garrison's allegations—
the "grossest we have seen from any responsible American official"—gave
the Agency fits, just as they did Shaw and Shaw's lawyers. For months,
the tactics of what Rocca called "that wild man down there" preoccupied
senior CIA officers. When Shaw's trial appeared imminent, DCI Helms
ordered an ad hoc committee to formulate a strategy—six of CIA's highest
officials comprised this "Garrison Group."[38]
[37]
Ray, the New Orleans DCS chief, sent reports back to headquarters about
efforts to goad the Agency into a reaction that would be good for a few
more headlines. Ray also expressed concern over the possibility that
Garrison might bug DCS offices or tap its telephones, so a secure
communications link with CIA headquarters was established. As the
"bizarre and unsubstantiated" campaign to implicate the CIA reached a
fever pitch in the late spring, an Agency internal memo dated 6 June
observed that Garrison had "attacked CIA more vehemently, viciously and
mendaciously than has any other American official or private citizen
whose comments have come to our attention. In fact, he [has] outstripped
the foreign Communist press, which is now quoting him delightedly."
Left-leaning and Communist organs presented Garrison's allegations as
affirmation of America's deeply confused and corrupt political system. The
KGB delighted in such Garrison quotes as one saying that the CIA was
"infinitely more powerful than the Gestapo [had been] in Nazi
Germany."[40]
[39]
With the benefit of hindsight, it is apparent that the Agency never gained
its footing amid Garrison's blizzard of accusations, even though there were
scattered clues as to what was going on behind the scenes. On 1 May,
for example, Jack Miller, a former assistant attorney general in charge of
the Justice Department's Criminal Division, called the CIA's general
counsel to offer some intelligence that had come to Miller "from within
Garrison's office." Miller's inside information was that a "left-wing
newspaper published in Rome, the Paese Sera," was the source for the
story that Shaw was a director of the CMC and that the CMC was a "CIA
organization." Miller apparently did not know, or did not convey, how much
importance Garrison attached to the ostensible revelation. There is no
evidence that the CI Staff followed up on his inside information.[42]
[41]
The CIA Continues To Play It Low Key
Like the Agency, Shaw's lawyers were groping their way through the fog of
charges generated by Garrison via the media. Shaw's lawyers were
confident that their client was leveling with them and publicly denied that
he was a clandestine CIA operative. In September 1967, however, when
a trial appeared imminent, there was a revealing contact between Shaw's
attorneys and the Justice Department. The defense team was "confused
by the [CIA] smoke-screen Garrison was raising," and wanted to talk to
someone in the federal government "who could steer them as to the true
facts and circumstances," according to an 18 September CIA memo.[44]
[43]
Some sharing of information might have helped, but Agency officials found
the request for cooperation too risky, newly available documents show.
"New Orleans is such a seamy maze that the risk of under-the-table deals
is always present," concluded a 25 September Agency memo. "Moreover, if
Garrison learned of federal assistance to Shaw's lawyers, he'd play it to the
hilt." Shaw's defense team thus returned to New Orleans empty-
handed and puzzled over the government's apparent nonchalance, given
that Washington was very much on trial, too.
[45]
Via this brief contact, the CIA learned that one of its assumptions was
wholly incorrect. All along, Agency officials had presumed that Shaw told
his lawyers about the DCS relationship once his alleged link to the CIA
became an issue. But after meeting with Shaw's defense team, Justice
Department attorneys shared their "very clear impression" that Shaw had
not confided in his own lawyers.[46]
Overhanging everything, insofar as the CIA was concerned, was the
upcoming trial. The Agency had to proceed on the assumption that
Garrison would play his trump card in the courtroom and flummox the jury.
"The fact that Garrison's charges against CIA are false," noted a 13
September memorandum, "does not mean that when he goes to court his
case will collapse like a house of cards." The decision on how to
prepare for that dreaded day was outlined in a memo submitted by
Houston to DCI Helms in October 1967. It is perhaps the most revealing CIA
document generated during the entire affair, as it lays out all the sundry
allegations of CIA involvement and the truth in each instance. The CIA
general counsel's recommendation, developed in consultation with other
members of the Garrison Group, was stark: other than active resistance to
any subpoenas from Garrison, the best course of action was to do nothing.
[48]
[47]
The catch, Houston acknowledged, was that a tight lip threatened to leave
Shaw at Garrison's mercy. Shaw's lawyers would have no way of refuting
allegations without documents and testimony from the CIA. Yet a
controlled disclosure of exculpatory information seemed unachievable. A
local judge would be under intense pressure to rule that the federal
government could not both submit material evidence and hide behind
claims of national security or executive privilege. Under these
circumstances, Houston reasoned, the best thing to do would be to take
no action whatsoever, and hope that the defendant would win acquittal
without CIA intervention. If Shaw were to "be convicted on information that
could be refuted by CIA," concluded Houston, "we may be in for some
difficult decisions."[49]
As it turned out, the dilemma Houston described did not materialize for
more than a year. Shaw's talented legal team, determined to win an
acquittal, introduced several motions (including a request for a change of
venue) that had the effect of postponing the trial repeatedly.
Meanwhile, Garrison kept fine-tuning his theory about the assassination.
In February 1968, he unveiled what would be his final and enduring
explanation during a Dutch television show hosted by a left-wing, anti-
American journalist named Willem Oltmans. According to Garrison, it
was no longer the case that the CIA was an unwitting accomplice to the
murder and then an accessory after the fact. No, the truth had turned out
to be much worse. Garrison now averred that the Agency had consciously
plotted the assassination, executing the plan in concert with the "military-
industrial complex." Both had a vested interest in the continuation of the
Cold War and the escalation of the hot war in Vietnam. President Kennedy
wanted to end both conflicts; that was why he had to be assassinated.
[50]
The shift in Garrison's line went largely unnoticed at first—except at the
CIA, which was monitoring the DA's every utterance. As Rocca observed in
a March 1968 memo, "Garrison has now reached the ultimate point in the
logic of his public statements…. This is by and large the Moscow line." For
a fleeting moment, Rocca, one of the Agency's most esteemed
counterintelligence experts, seemed to be musing about the possibility of
a Soviet hand in all that had happened, given that the statement fit so
neatly with Moscow's known goals. But Rocca's insight never went further
than this brief speculation.[51]
Around the same time in 1968, Garrison began to recognize that an
adverse legal outcome would detract from what he had achieved in the
public mind. Many of his key assistants didn't believe the accusations
about CIA involvement; moreover, none of them could be proved in court.
While expressing confidence that the Shaw indictment would never
actually be tested in a courtroom, Garrison remarked to Tom Bethell, one
of his investigators, that we have "made our point." On this one issue,
the undesirability of a trial, the CIA was in complete agreement with its
New Orleans nemesis. The Agency vastly preferred no trial, even if it meant
Garrison prattling on forever about CIA involvement, uncontradicted by a
decisive verdict. By the time Shaw finally achieved his day in court on 21
January 1969, he was probably the only party who wanted to be there.
The Trial
The trial lasted 35 days. Despite two years' worth of allegations and a
specific promise of testimony that would "rock the nation," Garrison's case
was remarkably unchanged from the loopy account presented at Shaw's
preliminary hearing in March 1967. As such, it was decidedly anticlimactic.
Nonetheless, the Agency's apprehension was palpable throughout the
trial. It closely monitored news accounts and ran name-checks on the
jurors and some witnesses. Officers were in attendance throughout.
The prosecution, to the Agency's surprise, never mentioned the CIA in the
courtroom. The stance of the lead prosecutor, James Alcock, was probably
decisive in this regard. No one on Garrison's staff had belittled the notion
of CIA complicity more than Alcock. The closest Garrison came to
articulating his conspiracy theory about CIA involvement was during the
summation, when he appealed to the jury to deliver a message to those
who had plotted the coup d'état. The jurors were not impressed, and
rendered a unanimous verdict of "not guilty" after deliberating 54 minutes.
Ultimately, it had been left to Shaw's attorneys to raise the issue that had
caused such anxiety within CIA headquarters for two years. They did so
with dispatch, in one question during direct examination of their client.
"Have you ever worked for the Central Intelligence Agency?" asked lead
defense attorney F. Irvin Dymond. "No, I have not," replied Clay Shaw,
reserving for himself a small kernel of truth that no one else in the
courtroom needed to know.[55]
[54]
[53]
[52]
Bittersweet Victory
A "glorious, a wonderful, a sweet, and a very grand victory," one of the
defense lawyers called it. Yet for Shaw, relief was short-lived. Within 48
hours, Garrison rearrested Shaw on two counts of perjury, neither of which
pertained to Dymond's question. If convicted, he faced a 20-year prison
sentence. Garrison's private correspondence right after the verdict makes
clear that he hadn't wavered from the conviction that Shaw was an
"important CIA operative," although he still never uttered those words in
public.
With the media now firmly on Shaw's side—even the New Orleans States-
Item had done an about-face after the verdict—the defendant's lawyers
allowed their client to begin speaking publicly. That openness resulted in
the most expansive answer Shaw would ever give on the subject of the
Paese Sera allegation. Still, he chose to keep concealed his unpaid
cooperation with the DCS.
The idea [behind the CMC] was to have one place where buyers coming into the
Common Market area would find all the Common Market countries represented
in one (trade) center…. It turned out to be either badly planned or badly
organized and it closed very shortly, and that was the last I ever heard of it. I
never heard that it was a CIA operation and I don't know that it was…. Other
than what I've told you, I know nothing more about the Centro Mondiale
Commerciale. I have never had any connection with the CIA.[56]
In 1971, Shaw's lawyers reached a court willing to put an end to Garrison's
abuse of prosecutorial authority. On 27 May, Federal Judge Herbert W.
Christenberry enjoined Garrison from prosecuting the perjury charges and,
for that matter, ever hauling Shaw into a courtroom again in connection
with the Kennedy assassination. The CIA let loose a sigh of relief along
with the long-suffering defendant. The Agency had been cautiously
following the case all the while, even though it no longer generated
adverse headlines—in fact, it was getting almost no headlines at all. "Looks
like Mr. Garrison is on the ropes and will have all he can do to keep the
hornets away," noted DCS Director Murphy in October 1971, as he officially
closed the file. Garrison's pursuit of Shaw was now widely regarded as
a legal farce and a fraud. The episode had even precipitated a bitter split
among the many critics of the Warren Commission report on the
assassination, nearly all of whom had flocked to Garrison's side in 1967.
Now many of them considered the Orleans Parish DA to be the Joe
[58]
[57]
McCarthy of their cause. Just as the Wisconsin senator disgraced anti-
Communism by making reckless charges that ruined innocent peoples'
lives, they believed that Garrison had irrevocably set back the case against
the Warren Report by persecuting an innocent man.
Battle Over Perceptions
Although 1971 marked the nadir of Garrison's legal quest, the Agency was
mistaken in assuming that the strugle over public perceptions had ended.
An abject failure in courts of law, Garrison's probe achieved a latent
triumph in the court of public opinion. The DA's message became part and
parcel of what has been called "the enduring power of the 1960s in the
national imagination."[59]
Garrison triumphed in this sphere partly because his thirst for vindication
was unlimited. He sloughed off Christenberry's decision and adopted the
position that the validity of his investigation ought not to be judged on its
legal results. To anyone who would listen, he claimed that the "company"
(a.k.a. the CIA) was the all-powerful entity that had thwarted his
investigation. The defiant mood in the DA's camp was captured in a 10 July
1971 letter to Garrison from Ralph Schoenman, Bertrand Russell's former
personal secretary and a like-minded conspiracy theorist who remained
staunchly supportive. Schoenman proposed the strategy that Garrison
would eventually pursue.
I have thought about the situation with the company right now. One of their
primary objectives is to keep you off balance, defensive, always on the run from
them and never able to pause sufficiently to regain the offensive…. Paradoxically,
by stopping you from using the courts against Shaw, they have FREED you to
put the case into a book. Now it cannot be considered sub judice or prejudicial
to a trial. So, I sugest urgently that we take the offensive. Let's get out a book,
hard and fast, which nails the case against Shaw that we couldn't get into the
courts…. let's put THEM on the defensive by blowing the Shaw case sky high
with a muck-raking book that closes in on the company even closer.[60]
Before Garrison could follow Schoenman's advice, however, the DA had to
contend with a $5 million dollar lawsuit lodged by Shaw, although his
finances were so depleted that he could barely afford to file. The retired
businessman had retained four lawyers and a small army of private
investigators to keep pace with Garrison. Shortly after giving his first
deposition, Shaw died in August 1974, his lifespan doubtlessly shortened
by having his world shattered.
As the episode faded from view, the Paese Sera articles became akin to
the Dead Sea scrolls of the investigation, an inner secret shared by
Garrison's shrinking band of die-hard believers. Shaw was a "high-ranking
CIA operative in Italy" and the Paese Sera articles proved it. Within this
small circle of pro-Garrison conspiracy buffs, the DA was the person who
had been martyred, victimized by the vast but hidden power of "the
company"andits "disinformation machinery." The alleged link between
Shaw and the CIA became a staple of conspiracy books published in the
post-Vietnam, post-Watergate era.
In December 1973, former CIA officer Victor Marchetti went public with
information that fanned the embers. Marchetti, executive assistant to the
Deputy Director of CIA before his 1969 resignation, had been present at
several high-level meetings in which DCI Helms expressed sympathy for
Shaw's predicament. Marchetti overheard Helms instructing General
Counsel Houston to help Shaw, consistent with the Agency's interests.
Marchetti aired this information shortly before publishing his 1974 exposé,
The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence. In keeping with his now-antagonistic
relationship with the Agency, he couched the disclosure in such a way as
to sugest that it was just as likely that the CIA had concealed a nefarious
connection with Shaw as an innocuous one.
Unfounded assertions of CIA complicity were bolstered inadvertently by a
series of investigations of the Intelligence Community in the 1970s. The
1975 Rockefeller Commission report was followed by the 1976 report of the
Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the 1979 report of the House
Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA). All examined the CIA's
activities both before and after Kennedy's assassination, and, in the case
of HSCA, specifically looked into Shaw's supposed role as a high-ranking
operative. The bottom line in each instance gave no credence to any of
Garrison's allegations about Shaw and the CIA. Inexorably, however, the
mere fact that such questions were asked helped fashion Garrison into
something of a prophet in the public mind.
In 1979, Shaw's link to the CIA was dredged up again when former DCI
Helms gave a deposition in a libel case. The lawsuit involved a 1975 book
entitled Coup d'état in America: The CIA and the Assassination of John F.
Kennedy, yet another book that had swallowed the Paese Sera deception.
[64] Although not party to the suit, Helms was deposed by the defendants'
[63]
[62]
[61]
attorney. Under oath, he divulged the kernel of truth that the Agency and
Shaw had strugled to keep secret when Garrison's probe was at its
height. Helms accurately described Shaw's contact with the CIA from 1948
to 1956: at "one time, as a businessman, (Shaw) was one of the part-time
contacts of the Domestic Contact Division." Garrison, by then a
Louisiana state judge, pounced on Helms's disclosure and distorted it.
Garrison wrote in his memoir that the disclosure represented
"confirmation…that Clay Shaw had been an agent."[66]
[65]
Losing the Fight
Bolstered by these developments, Garrison tried to implement the advice
rendered by Schoenman in 1971: write a "muckraking book" that would
bring the Shaw-CIA connection front and center. It took Garrison more
than four years to find a publisher for his memoir, although he hawked it
with a promise to reveal, for the first time, the actual CIA hand in the
assassination. Fifteen major publishers rejected the manuscript. Finally
the memoir found a home at a small New York-based press, which printed
On the Trail of the Assassins in 1988. For the first time, Garrison made
explicit the connection between his grand conspiracy theory and Shaw's
link to the CIA (Paese Sera's version). To explain why he had not made the
affiliation known when it presumably might have counted—during the trial
—Garrison claimed that he did not learn about Shaw's CIA activities in Italy
until after 1969.[67]
None of this seemed to matter, least of all to the CIA, until the publisher of
Garrison's memoir thrust a copy into the hands of filmmaker Oliver Stone
during an international film festival in Cuba. That chance encounter
eventually led to the endorsement of Paese Sera's disinformation by a
major Hollywood film, JFK. In the movie, Garrison (portrayed by Kevin
Costner) confronts Shaw (played by Tommy Lee Jones) with an Italian
newspaper article exposing Shaw's role as a CIA operative. The
confrontation, of course, never occurred in real life; yet the scene captures
a hidden historical truth. The epicenter of Garrison's prosecution, and the
wellspring for his ultimate theory of the assassination, was the DA's belief
in a fantasy published by a Communist-owned Italian newspaper.[69]
[68]
According to one historian who admires Stone, the movie JFK probably
"had a greater impact on public opinion than any other work of art in
American history" save Uncle Tom's Cabin. While that may be hyperbole,
not many Hollywood films can claim to have generated new legislation. JFK
ignited a public clamor for millions of pages of documents that had been
"suppressed" as part of the government's alleged massive cover-up.
In response, Congress passed a sweeping statute in 1992, the
President John F. Kennedy Records Collection Act, which forced open all
federal records relating to the assassination and an unexpected amount of
state, local, and private records as well—including those of the former
Orleans Parish district attorney. The law directed that these documents be
catalogued and housed at the National Archives.
Oliver Stone likes to assign full credit for the legislation to his film, which is
something of an exageration. The coincidental end of the Cold War also
played a critical role in the enactment and implementation of the 1992 law.
More disingenuously, Stone claims that while the records declassified by
the statute have not produced a "smoking gun," they have opened "a clear
historical record of a cover-up taking place."
In truth, one legacy of Stone's JFK is an altogether ironic one. Far from
validating the film's hero, the new documents have finally lifted the lid on
the disinformation that was at the core of Jim Garrison's unrelenting probe.
The declassified CIA records document that everything in the Paese Sera
story was a lie, and, simultaneously, reveal the genuine nature and
duration of Clay Shaw's innocuous link to the CIA. These same records
explain why the CIA never responded appropriately to the disinformation,
as it had in Helms's 1961 Senate testimony and would later do in swift
response to such schemes in the 1980s. Finally, the personal files turned
over by Garrison's family underline the profound impact that one
newspaper clipping had on a mendacious district attorney adept at
manipulating the Zeitgeist of the late 1960s.
[71]
[70]
[1] Senate Judiciary Committee, Communist Forgeries (Washington, DC:
Government Printing Office, 1961). In September 1961, "Communist
Forgeries" became the first Senate hearing ever translated into three
foreign languages (Spanish, French, and Italian).
[2] Ibid., pp. 2-4.
[3] "Preparato in accordo con Washington il colpo di stato militare in
Algeria?" Paese Sera, 22-23 April 1961.
[4] "Communist Forgeries," pp. 2-4.
[5] "Paris Rumors on C.I.A.," The New York Times, 2 May 1961, and "French
Minister Tries to Halt Rumors of U. S. Role in Mutiny," The New York Times, 6
May 1961.
[6] "Communist Forgeries," pp. 2-3.
[7] The KGB's emphasis on dezinformatsiya as a particularly useful "active
measure" (the Soviet term for covert activities) is a staple in intelligence
literature. Among the earliest reliable accounts is Ladislav Bittman, The
Deception Game: Czechoslovak Intelligence in Soviet Political Warfare
(Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Research Corporation, 1972). See also
Vladislav M. Zubok, "Spy vs. Spy: The KGB vs. the CIA, 1960-1962," Cold War
International History Project Bulletin, Woodrow Wilson International Center
for Scholars, Washington, DC, Issue 4, Fall 1994, pp. 22-33.
[8] Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Secrecy: The American Experience (New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press, 1998), pp. 219-220. On the 30th anniversary of
the assassination, according to national polls cited by Moynihan, three-
quarters of those surveyed believed the CIA had murdered the President.
[9] Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin, had lived in New Orleans for
five months prior to the murder, which provided the pretext for Garrison's
probe.
[10] For the circumstances of Shaw's arrest, see Patricia Lambert, False
Witness: The Real Story of Jim Garrison's Investigation (New York: M. Evans,
1998). At the time of the arrest, Garrison had no knowledge of any actual
or presumed link between Shaw and the CIA.
[11] Commission on CIA Activities Within the United States, Report to the
President (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, June 1975), pp.
208-210.
[12] Subject: Clay L. Shaw, Enclosure 21, Microfilm, Box 23, HSCA
Segregated CIA Collection (hereafter HSCA/CIA Collection), John F.
Kennedy Assassination Records Collection, National Archives (hereafter
JFK NARA). See also Information Report No. 00-B-9381, Central
Intelligence Agency, 27 December 1948, File JFK-M-04 (F2), Box 1,
Miscellaneous CIA Series (hereafter CIA Series), JFK NARA. Seven of
Shaw's reports are contained in this file.
[13] Memo to Director, DCS, from Chief, New Orleans Office, re Clay Shaw, 3
March 1967, JFK-M-04 (F3), Box 1, CIA Series; Memorandum re Garrison
Investigation: Queries from Justice Department, 28 September 1967, Box 6,
Russell Holmes Papers; various Information Reports, JFK-M-04 (F2), Box 1,
CIA Series—all JFK NARA.
[14] Memo to Chief, New Orleans Office, from Chief, Contact Division, re
Case 20791, 4 June 1956, JFK-M-04 (F2), Box 1, CIA Series, JFK NARA.
[15] Memo, Director, DCS, from Chief, New Orleans Office, 3 March 1967,
JFK-M-04 (F3), Box 1, CIA Series, JFK NARA.
[16] "Clay Shaw (arrestato per Kennedy) ha svolto un'oscura attività a
Roma," ("Clay Shaw Carried Out Obscure Activity in Rome") Paese Sera, 4
March 1967. The "scoop" ran for three successive days in Paese Sera. An
accurate description of the CMC's purposes is found in "Rome's Trade
Center—How It Came To Be," Chicago Daily Tribune, 17 September 1960.
[17] On 14 February 1967, Ramparts and The New York Times simultaneously
revealed that the National Students Association had knowingly accepted
cash subsidies from the CIA. See Michael Warner, "Sophisticated Spies:
CIA's Links to Liberal Anti-Communists, 1949-1967," International Journal of
Intelligence and Counterintelligence, Vol. 9, No. 4, Winter 1996/97, pp. 425-
433; Sig Mickelson, America's Other Voice: The Story of Radio Free Europe and
Radio Liberty (New York: Praeger, 1983), pp. 121-124; and Cord Meyer, Facing
Reality: From World Federalism to the CIA (New York: Harper & Row, 1980),
pp. 85-94. In addition to lending the Paese Sera story credence, the
Ramparts exposé may have helped precipitate the disinformation to begin
with.
[18] Corriere della Sera, for example, ran a story on 5 March entitled "Shaw
fu nel consiglio di un centro economico di Roma," ("Shaw Was on the
Council of an Economic Center in Rome") that did not mention the CIA at
all.
[19] "Clay Shaw a travaillé à Rome pour les services US d'espionnage,"
("Clay Shaw Worked in Rome for US Intelligence"), l'Humanité, 8 March 1967.
[20] "Vasta eco alle rivelazioni di Paese Sera sull'attivita italiana di Clay
Shaw," ("Vast Echos from Paese Sera's Revelations on the Italian Activities
of Clay Shaw"), Paese Sera, 6 March 1967. It is possible, of course, that the
stories simply reflected sloppy and sensational journalism rather than
intentional disinformation. Yet one of the entries pertaining to Italy from
the so-called "Mitrokhin archive" sugests a KGB provenance. Vasili
Mitrokhin, the former KGB archivist who defected to Britain in 1992,
brought with him 25,000 pages of handwritten notes about highly
sensitive documents. One brief note refers to a disinformation scheme in
1967 that involved Paese Sera and resulted in publication of a false story in
New York. See Max Holland, "The Demon in Jim Garrison," Wilson Quarterly,
Vol. XXV, No. 2, Spring 2001.
[21] Though not the official organ, Paese Sera was a proprietary company of
the Gruppo Editoriale PCI, and thus owned by the Italian Communist Party.
Gaetano Fusaroli, Giornali in Italia (Parma, Italy: Guanda Editore, 1974), pp.
300-301.
[22] Memo for Chief, CI/R&A, "Trace Results on Persons Connected with
Centro Mondiale Commerciale," 24 March 1967; and "Subject: Clay L.
Shaw," Enclosure 21; both in Microfilm Box 23, HSCA/CIA Collection, JFK
NARA. Counterintelligence officers retrieved Italian coverage of the story
as it appeared in Corriere della Sera and Il Messagero, but not the seminal
Paese Sera article.
[23] Memo from Rocca to Houston, 1 March 1968, Box 85, HSCA/CIA
Collection, JFK NARA. Though outdated, the best work on Soviet
exploitation of the assassination remains Armand Moss, Disinformation,
Misinformation, and the 'Conspiracy' to Kill JFK Exposed (Hamden, CT: Archon
Books, 1987). See also Christopher Andrew & Vasili Mitrokhin, The Sword
and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB (New
York: Basic Books, 1999), pp. 225-230.
[24] "New questions raised on JFK killing," National Guardian, 18 March 1967.
The New York-based Guardian may well have been the publication
referenced in the note from the Mitrokhin archives.
[25] Memo to Chief, New Orleans, from Director, DCS, 20 March 1967, JFK-
M-04 (F2), Box 1, CIA Series, JFK NARA.
[26] "Clay Shaw a travaillé à Rome pour les services U.S. d'espionnage,"
l'Humanité, 8 March 1967.
[27] "Dick Billings's Personal Notes on Consultations and Interviews with
Garrison," p. 25, Richard Billings File, Assassination Archives and Research
Center, Washington, DC.
[28] "The Case That Never Was: Former Aides Attack Garrison's Case
Against Shaw," New Orleans Times-Picayune, 20 November 1983. When
asked in this article why aides opposed Shaw's prosecution, Garrison said
that most of his assistants were not privy to the behind-the-scene
workings of his inquiry.
[29] Letter, Garrison to Russell, 27 August 1967, New Orleans Public Library
Microfilm #92-83, JFK NARA.
[30] James Phelan, "A Plot to Kill Kennedy? Rush to Judgment in New
Orleans," Saturday Evening Post, Vol. CCXL, 6 May 1967, pp. 21-25.
[31] Interview with Rosemary James, 24 February 2000, and interview with
Ross Yockey, 1 March 2000. James and Yockey were two of the five
reporters credited with writing the story.
[32] "A Newspaper Links 'Plot' Figure to C.I.A.," The New York Times, 26 April
1967.
[33] Billings's Notes, p. 27, Assassination Archives and Research Center,
Washington, DC.
[34] 4 Memo for Assistant Deputy Director for Plans from Rocca, 26 April
1967, Box 6, Russell Holmes Papers, JFK NARA.
[35] The Times-Picayune and States-Item published these allegations, and
many others involving the CIA, during the months of May and June 1967.
[36] See, for example, Memorandum No. 7, Re Garrison and the Kennedy
Assassination, 13 September 1967, Box 6, Russell Holmes Papers, JFK
NARA. In point of fact, Garrison was ignorant of the Shaw-DCS relationship
and would remain so for the duration.
[37] Memorandum, Garrison TV Interviews of 21 May 1967 and 28 May 1967,
Box 84, HSCA/CIA Collection, JFK NARA.
[38] Memorandum for the Record, Garrison Group Meeting No. 1, 20
September 1967, Box 46, Russell Holmes Papers, JFK NARA.
[39] Memorandum, Garrison TV Interviews of 21 May 1967 and 28 May 1967,
Box 84, HSCA/CIA Collection, JFK NARA.
[40] Memorandum No. 3, Garrison and the Kennedy Assassination, 1 June
1967, Box 84, HSCA/CIA Collection, JFK NARA.
[41] A July 1968 letter to Senator Richard Russell from DCI Helms is an
excellent summary of the CIA's perception of the Garrison probe. Nowhere
does Helms mention a disinformation scheme as the wellspring of
Garrison's accusations against the Agency. Letter, Helms to Russell with
Attachment "Jim Garrison and the CIA," 24 July 1968, Box 85, HSCA/CIA
Collection, JFK NARA.
[42] Memo for the Record, Report Concerning Garrison-Kennedy-CIA, 1 May
1967, Box 84, HSCA/CIA Collection, JFK NARA. Miller's source was Walter
Sheridan, then a reporter for NBC News and formerly a top aide to
Attorney General Robert Kennedy.
[43] "Oswald Depicted as CIA Agent, Sources Here Say," New Orleans Times-
Picayune, 6 May 1967.
[44] Memorandum for Executive Director-Comptroller, re Garrison
Investigation, 18 September 1967, Box 85, HSCA/CIA Collection, JFK NARA.
[45] Draft Memorandum for the Record, 25 September 1967, Box 85,
HSCA/CIA Collection, JFK NARA.
[46] Cable to New Orleans from Office of General Counsel, 29 September
1967, Box 86, HSCA/CIA Collection, JFK NARA.
[47] Memorandum No. 7, Re Garrison and the Kennedy Assassination, 13
September 1967, Box 6, Russell Holmes Papers, JFK NARA.
[48] Memorandum for the Director from Lawrence Houston, 2 October 1967,
Box 85, HSCA/CIA Collection, JFK NARA.
[49] Ibid.
[50] Memorandum for Director, FBI, 2 March 1968, re Garrison and the
Kennedy Assassination: Interview of Garrison on Dutch TV, 1 March 1968,
Box 85, HSCA/CIA Collection, JFK NARA.
[51] Memo from Rocca to Houston, 1 March 1968, Box 85, HSCA/CIA
Collection, JFK NARA.
[52] "Tom Bethell Diary," 9 March 1968, Box 3, Edward Wegmann Papers,
JFK NARA.
[53] Ibid., 22 February 1968.
[54] Jim Garrison's Closing Argument, 28 February 1969, State of Louisiana
vs. Clay L. Shaw, Criminal District Court, Parish of Orleans, State of
Louisiana, 198-059, Box 5, Jim Garrison Papers, JFK NARA.
[55] Lambert, p. 153.
[56] Clay Shaw Interview, Penthouse, November 1969, pp. 34-35.
[57] Lambert, pp. 174-175.
[58] Memo to Chief, Dallas Field Office, from Director, DCS, 6 October 1971,
File JFK-M-04(F3), Box 1, CIA Series, JFK NARA.
[59] "Steal This Myth: Why We Still Try to Re-Create the Rush of the 60s,"
The New York Times, 8 August 2000.
[60] Letter, Schoenman to Garrison, 10 July 1971, New Orleans Public Library
Microfilm, #92-83, JFK NARA.
[61] See, for example, Robert Sam Anson, "They've Killed the President!" The
Search for the Murderers of John F. Kennedy (New York: Bantam, 1975), p. 122;
Robert D. Morrow, Betrayal(Chicago: Regnery, 1976), p. 92; and Bernard
Fensterwald, Coincidence or Conspiracy? (New York: Zebra Books, 1977), pp.
452-453.
[62] Zodiac News Service Press Release, 21 December 1973, File G-1396,
World Trade Center, Box 8, Jim Garrison Papers, JFK NARA.
[63] Joe Manguno, "Was Jim Garrison Right After All?" New Orleans, June
1976, and Richard Boyle, "The Strange Death of Clay Shaw," True, April 1975.
[64] Michael Canfield and Alan J. Weberman, Coup d'état in America: the CIA
and the Assassination of John F. Kennedy (New York: Third Press, 1975), pp.
39-40.
[65] Deposition of Richard McGarrah Helms, 1 June 1984, E. Howard Hunt,
Jr., Plaintiff, v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., Defendant, No. 80-1121-Civ.-JWK, U.S.
District Court, Southern District of Florida, Box 6, Jim Garrison Papers, JFK
NARA.
[66] Jim Garrison, On the Trail of the Assassins: My Investigation and
Prosecution of the Murder of President Kennedy (New York: Sheridan Square
The views, opinions and findings of the author expressed in this article should
not be construed as asserting or implying US government endorsement of its
factual statements and interpretations or representing the official positions of
any component of the United States government.
Press, 1988), p. 276.
[67] Ibid., p. 87.
[68] Lambert, p. xiii.
[69] To drive home the point, just before the credits roll a reference is
made to Helms's 1979 deposition. Rather than quoting Helms, or accurately
characterizing Shaw as an unpaid and sporadic contact, the following
words appear against a black screen. "In 1979, Richard Helms, director of
covert operations in 1963, admitted under oath that Clay Shaw had worked
for the CIA."
[70] Robert Brent Toplin, editor, Oliver Stone's USA: Film, History, and
Controversy (Lawrence, KN: University Press of Kansas, 2000), p. 174.
[71] Ibid., p. 260.
Max Holland is a Research Fellow at the Miller Center of Public Affairs,
University of Virginia. His current book project—A Need to Know: Inside the
Warren Commission—won the J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award
for 2001.