By Sonny Laymatina    

“For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.”  – Book of Ecclesiastes (1:18)

Every time I hear someone say the U.S. lost its innocence on November 22, 1963, I say tell it to all the Blacks, Indians and Filipinos who lost theirs’ first – without or before ever getting their own Holocaust Museum on the Washington, D.C. Mall.  An implicitly fitting reminder that some victims are more worthy than other victims. If you don’t think so then just hear the Yankees chortle in “Collateral Murder” in Iraq: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zok8yMxXEwk

The American cartoonist Walt Kelly said it best: “We have met the enemy and he is us.” He was referring to US war crimes in Vietnam like the US Army’s My Lai massacres and the CIA’s Phoenix Program which tortured and killed thousands of South Vietnamese civilians for having their own political opinions: The Phoenix Program http://www.douglasvalentine.com/index.htm

Yet MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow is paid millions to “worry” aloud about Russians who like the Vietnamese, Iraqis, Afghans and Cambodians, have never invaded or bombed the United States.

That said, a few things, among others, stand out for me when thinking about who done it at Dealey Plaza in 1963: one is a 1955 photograph of Civil Air Patrol cadets and their officers standing around a daytime campfire in Louisiana that surfaced after JFK’s assassination; and also, the David Susskind TV interview of former President Harry Truman in 1961.  And of course: Jack Ruby!

Also known as Jacob Rubenstein, a Dallas strip club pimp and former Teamsters Business Agent from Chicago with verifiable Mafia ties to Santos Trafficante and others. Despite Jack Ruby’s underworld resume, the U.S. public was fed the syrupy lie that he killed Lee Harvey Oswald (LHO) on an impulse. That is, out of love, affection, and concern for the dead president, Jackie, and the kids.  However, Jack Ruby had been photographed stalking Oswald at Dallas Police Headquarters on the days preceding his televised killing of Oswald in the police basement:

Jack Ruby (center) mingles with the crowd in a corridor at Dallas Police Headquarters on the night of November 22, 1963, after President Kennedy’s assassination earlier that day.

 https://murderpedia.org/male.R/r/ruby–jack–leon–photos–2.htm

All of which is a clear indication of premeditation and planning, not impulse. Remember we’re talking professional killer pimp here. So, like all good Mafia hitmen, it’s not personal, see, just business. He knows not to ask why and knows even better not to ever tell why. The interview of Jack Ruby in March 1965 was just his own cryptic surmising when he said:

“Everything pertaining to what’s happening has never come to the surface. The world will never know the true facts of what occurred, my motives. The people who had so much to gain, and had such an ulterior motive for putting me in the position I’m in, will never let the true facts come above board to the world.”   http://www.morefamousquotes.com/topics/quotes–about–true–facts/

Lee Harvey Oswald on the other hand was simply a man who knew too much and so he had to go, he was expendable. And being an ex-Marine, Oswald knew that – or should have. Jack Ruby though was a person who didn’t know too much and didn’t need to know. That, taken together with his contemporaneous telephone records proving prior phone calls to associates of Jimmy Hoffa and Carlos Marcellos, well, you don’t need to see shit to know you’re standing in it:

Jack Ruby’s phone calls to associates of Jimmy Hoffa and Carlos Marcellos:

In his book, Crime of the Century, Michael Kurtz points out: “In the month prior to the assassination, Ruby telephoned Irwin Weiner, a “frontman for organized crime”; Robert “Barney” Baker, an associate of Jimmy Hoffa’s; Nofio J. Pecora, a lieutenant of the reputed Louisiana Mafia boss Carlos Marcello; Lewis McWillie, who had ties with organized crime figures Santos Trafficante and Meyer Lansky; and Murray “Dusty” Miller, another individual closely allied with Hoffa and the Mafia. https://spartacus–educational.com/JFKSruby.htm

If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck then it must be a mobster who got ordered to kill Oswald.  And in the process, Ruby deliberately shut off a major avenue of any police homicide investigation. Standard American Mob stuff.  No different really than Sam Giancana and Johnny Roselli being mysteriously killed in 1975 and 1976, just before each was to testify to Congress about JFK’s killing. The fact that Ruby killed Oswald soon after JFK was killed is, according to Gerald Posner (an anti-conspiracy writer), persuasive evidence that professional conspirators were involved. On Martin Luther King, Jr’s assassination at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis on April 4^th, 1968, Posner writes:

“If there was ultimately a conspiracy behind King’s death, a crude family plot seems more likely than a sophisticated operation involving the mafia or some government agency. That James Earl Ray has lived thirty years after the murder is persuasive evidence that professional conspirators were not involved, since if they had been, they would have disposed of him. They could never be safe so long as Ray lived, and he would have little incentive not to turn them in to authorities in order to win his coveted freedom. However, if the conspirators included family members—a charge that all Ray’s relatives have persistently denied—then he would have an incentive to stay silent. The special bond among the Rays would prevent James from turning in the only people he ever trusted.”

From Killing the Dream: James Earl Ray and the Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., by Gerald Posner (1999).  So much for Case Closed on the JFK assassination. That Oswald was killed so soon after JFK’s murder is persuasive evidence that professional conspirators were involved. They could never be safe so long as Oswald lived.  Like a good Mafia soldier then, Jack Ruby fell on a grenade to put out a fire.  Only fools would believe otherwise, given the abundant precedent of similar Mafia chicanery and duplicity in getting rid of people.

Next is that 1955 Civil Air Patrol campfire photograph. In it are the young Air Patrol Cadet Lee Harvey Oswald and his then Scout Master David Ferrie.  Oswald is on the far right in a white Tshirt and jeans while Ferrie is the second person in from the left wearing an Army helmet:

15-year-old Lee Harvey Oswald (circled far right) and David Ferrie (circled second from left) at a Civil Air Patrol meeting in New Orleans, 1955. Ferrie was alleged to have been involved in a conspiracy to assassinate President John F. Kennedy.

The Ferrie photo https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/oswald/glimpse/ferrie.html It proved beyond a doubt, despite any denials, that these two knew each other. Well, so what?

Much has already been written about Lee Harvey Oswald fitting the stereotype of a low-level CIA technical recruit, i.e., southern white, working class, Protestant, former Civil Air Patrol Cadet, ex-US Marine radar technician in Japan, paid for Russian language lessons, etc.

Stranger still was his stint in Russia and his easy return. He was also filmed by a TV news crew in New Orleans promoting left-wing propaganda efforts sympathetic to Castro’s Cuba on behalf of FBI counterinsurgent Guy Bannister (played ably by actor Ed Asner in Oliver Stone’s movie JFK). Then Oswald was seen later in Dallas on another occasion by Sylvia Odie, daughter of a Bay of Pigs veteran, in the company of right-wing anti-Castro Cubans. They were soliciting support and donations shortly before the big day in Dealey Plaza where he worked in the now famous School Book Depository Building. He was even introduced to her as Leon Oswald.

What kinds of people then are often conveniently situated, play both ends of the field, and would deny it, especially when their “patsy” (Oswald’s word) got caught in that movie theater so soon after leaving the crime scenes?  Oswald was a rock not to be looked under.  Thus, the lone nut theory cover-up by LBJ’s Warren Commission. This convenient conclusion though doesn’t work, given Gerald Posner’s logic which is universal and not just particular to any one case.

That is, Jack Ruby, a professional mobster, not only shot Oswald, but also the lone nut theory that apologists for power still curiously cling to with their new and improved double lone nut theory that Oswald and Ruby each acted alone for their own reasons. But this is belied by their verifiable backgrounds and the US government’s ongoing refusal for “national security” reasons to unseal all its records of this matter. Because if they each acted alone for their own reasons then what’s the big national security secret that needs protecting?

Whether Oswald was JFK’s actual shooter, just one of the shooters, or just a pawn star, he was certainly some kind of player in this friendly fire production. Because if he didn’t kill Officer J.D. Tippit later that day, then who did and why?  After all, it was Oswald who was identified as Tippit’s killer by Jack Tatum, Domingo Benavides and Warren Reynolds, the three closest eye witnesses to Tippit’s murder.  And why did Oswald then try to hide out in that nearby movie theater without paying an admission ticket?  Flight is an indication of a guilty mind.  As such, Oswald was obviously on the run when Tippit stopped him – which is why Oswald shot him.

Additionally, the testimony by Oswald’s co-worker, Mr. Buell Frasier, who drove him to work that Friday morning 11-22-63, was especially damning since Mr. Frasier saw Oswald put a wrapped package in the car which Oswald said were (ahem) curtain rods. Also unhelpful to Oswald was the testimony of Betty Payne, the Quaker woman who Oswald and his young family lived with at the time. Betty Payne testified that Oswald’s wife Marina showed her the letter Oswald himself wrote wherein he admitted trying to assassinate right-wing US General Edwin Walker earlier that year with his rifle. Which was not (on 11-22-63) in Betty Payne’s garage where Marina Oswald told Police he had kept it.  Also never found were those curtain rods.

That’s why Ruby had to kill Oswald quickly (with malice aforethought) before he talked too much at, say, a trial where prosecutors could pose questions like: Why did he support both pro and anti-Castro forces? When and where did he last meet David Ferrie & Guy Bannister? Is he now or has he ever been an employee or agent of the CIA? Why does he think he is a patsy? etc.

It seems unlikely though that Oswald got ordered or intentionally set up by the CIA HQ in Langley. Because the CIA is the secret paramilitary arm of the president without his fingerprints at the end of it. Like all good paramilitaries, it is a top-down authoritarian organization that does a pretty good job of just doing as it’s told and is almost always anxious to please. It is hardly coup d’état material – in the U.S. anyway, given its mission to only piss outside the tent.

Like any organization, though, the CIA has its fair share of dissidents and malcontents who don’t rule, but can and sometimes do sabotage. Especially when they feel slighted for any reason (their motive) and are part of an unaccountable black bag operation wherein the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing (their opportunity). Reference the pirate gunrunning by CIA Officer Edwin P. Wilson (who was also set up as a patsy by the CIA), the drug smuggling by CIA pilots, the stealing of saving deposits by the (CIA front) Nugan-Hand Bank Directors, and the selling of national security secrets by top CIA Counter-intelligence Officer Aldrich Ames.

Now enter stage right Cold War warrior and CIA “homo-con” David Ferrie who was also an associate of Carlos Marcellos according to The Washington Post and the House Sub-Committee on Assassination (HSCA):

David Ferrie was an associate of Carlos Marcellos

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1993/03/14/what–the–mob–knew–about–jfksmurder/9803e911–f52f–4944–88f1–c26863e35867/

HSCA Appendix to Hearings – Volume X – Page 111 (441) http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/hsca/reportvols/vol10/html/HSCA_Vol10_0058a.htm

David Ferrie’s day job was as a pilot for Southern Air Transport, the CIA’s clandestine airline. He flew anti-Castro Cubans back and forth between Miami and Nicaragua to train for their secret up-and-coming Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961. Liking men, especially the anti-communist kind, Ferrie apparently made a lot of good friends in this clandestine endeavor, including ex-FBI

Agent Guy Bannister (who Lee Harvey Oswald worked for) and Clay Shaw of New Orleans (who CIA Director Richard Helms said worked for the CIA). Banister even served as a character witness for David Ferrie at his airline pilot’s grievance board hearing in the summer of 1963:

HSCA Appendix to Hearings – Volume X – Page 111 (438) http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/hsca/reportvols/vol10/html/HSCA_Vol10_0058a.htm

In his spare time David Ferrie chicken-hawked as a Civil Air Patrol Scoutmaster, no doubt because of the Civil Air Patrol’s right-wing Jack Armstrong all-American anti-communist ethos and because of all the little Jack Armstrong’s who joined it on the promise of learning to fly. It was here that he and Oswald undeniably met in the 1950s as shown by that photo of them both:

David Ferrie (second from left) and Lee Harvey Oswald (far right) https://www.jfk–online.com/jgphotosdf2.html

Knowledge alone of course does not a conspiracy make, but you cannot have an agreement by two or more people to do something illegal without it. It is essential then to start connecting the dots. Bannister, Ferrie & Oswald were, like Marcellos, Roselli & Ruby, big dots in what was to prove to be, at the very least, a strangely tangled constellation of connected dots involving the Mob, low-level CIA/Government agents, and anti-Castro Cubans, fusing together like a super nova of cross-purposes and shared motives. In his memoir Point to Point Navigation, Gore Vidal pointed to a conspiracy of the CIA, the Mafia and Cuba. He was referring to people like David Ferrie, Carlos Marcellos, Jack Ruby, Santos Trafficante, Sam Giancana, Johnny Rosselli, Bernard Barker, Frank Sturgis, E. Howard Hunt, Charlie Nicoletti and James Files.

Exhibit A for Gore Vidal’s analysis would be James Files, aka James Sutton, an ex-US Army

Ranger in Vietnam and on loan to the CIA in Laos in the late 1950’s. He later worked for the Chicago Mafia hitman Charlie Nicoletti in the early 1960’s. Files was exposed by FBI agents as a JFK assassin after they eavesdropped on his phone conversations with Nicoletti while they investigated another case.  All of which Files himself later admitted to on YouTube.  He even said he was one of two (2) shooters, and that he shot JFK with a mercury loaded round from behind the grassy knoll fence. And he calmly asserted that traces of the mercury should still be in JFK’s head because it’s a mineral which is not likely to have dissipated or disappeared:

James Files shot JFK from the grassy knoll fence https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxtrFoh3Pao

Exhibit B would be all the eye and ear witnesses who said shots came from that fence:

Witnesses on the Grassy Knoll, Dealey Plaza, Dallas, Texas – shot came from hill behind us (where fence is).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJCCW7R2bZU

The railroad workers on the Triple Overpass – shots came from behind that fence https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEq63vTOwcI

The Witnesses: Beverly Oliver – the shots came from the picket fence area.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akIp9Q5x3EY

The Witnesses: James L. Simmons – shot came from in front of us to the left towards the wooden fence.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5No9Jiu0GI

Eye witnesses saw shooter run from fence – shots from front (of JFK).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5sbexPs0hE

The Witnesses: Richard C. Dodd – the (gun) smoke came behind the hedge on the northside of plaza.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YODZyI2qRMw 

Deaf Mute Eyewitness – Ed Hoffman – saw man with rifle behind the fence shoot JFK, saw puff of smoke.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRx5BYh30yk 

The Witnesses: J. C. Price – shots from behind that wooden fence.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Qab4GI2agc

What they saw: James Tague – shots from the left of me… somewhere towards the wooden fence.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhsgRQNre1M

Orville Nix – took film and thought shots came from the fence.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ksi3rWd9JuY

Exhibit C would be the fact that the second and third shots could not have been fired from the same rifle since they were too close together, and they were allegedly fired from an old Italian bolt action single shot rifle at a moving target by a US Marine marksman who got that USMC lowest passing score on a semi-automatic M1 carbine rifle firing at stationary pop-up targets without ever having to change or readjust his cheek-to-stock weld between fired shots:

• – TV Journalist Robert MacNeil at Dealey Plaza on 11-22-63

(at 45-55: “There was a shot followed by two shots close together.”)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exmoxQrlYKk

• – Train Tower Yard Operator Lee Bowers interview by Attorney Mark Lane

(at 537-605: “There were three shots, and these were spaced with one shot then a pause then two shots in very close order such as perhaps a…rap…. rap, rap, almost on top of each other while there was some pause between the first and the second shots. The second and third shots could not have been fired from the same rifle.”) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8H_DaL_tQk

• – There is also nothing unusual about criminal conspiracies in general or two or more people shooting at the same persons.

Exhibit D would be all the forensic and medical evidence proving more than one shooter that forensic medical pathologist and lawyer Cyril Wecht of Pittsburgh nicely summarizes here:

A Case for Conspiracy with Dr. Cyril H. Wecht

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqr8cfATwyo&t=142s

People on death row have been convicted with less evidence. Besides, as Edward Snowden said: “The worst conspiracies are in plain sight.”  It is a shame then that filmmaker Oliver Stone made up stuff in his movie JFK for dramatic effect.  Because just the facts say about Clay Shaw and David Ferrie (played brilliantly by actors Tommy Lee Jones and Joe Pesce) were enough. They were like Barker, Hunt and Sturgis, fanatically anti-communists with CIA and or Mafia ties who hated JFK for good reason: JFK backed out of the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion at the last minute, sending their friends and comrades to death or Cuban prison.

Whether JFK got cold feet or just decided that was a good way to end Nixon’s off-the-shelf (spyspeak for unaccountable) Operation 40 invasion force – that Kennedy inherited after coming into office – is anyone’s guess. But clearly this rogues’ gallery had a lot to be angry about.  Their comrades were set up or sold out.  They may have even seen them getting killed and abandoned on the beach from the decks of the Zapata Oil Company ships the Dorothy and the Houston owned then by George H.W. Bush, and leased to the CIA for the Bay of Pigs invasion force, code named (ahem) “Zapata”:

Bay of Pigs Invasion (1961)

http://self.gutenberg.org/articles/zapata_oil

Hence, former CIA Counterintelligence Chief James Jesus Angleton’s cryptic remark to reporter Seymour Hersh about the CIA and JFK’s assassination: “A mansion has many rooms … I’m not privy to who struck John.” [David Talbot, Brothers, p. 274].  But as the writer Elena Gorokhova once said: “We know they’re lying, they know they’re lying, they know that we know they’re lying, we also know that they know that we know they’re lying, but they still lie.”  The proof of this is Mike Pompeo himself saying: “I was the CIA director. We lied, we cheated, we stole. It was like we had entire training courses.” https://www.newsweek.com/china–responds–iran–usspies–1450789   Which ironically is one of the few times Mighty Mike ever spoke the truth.

Serial killings aside, all other homicide investigations start with the question “Who benefits?” and then proceed to matters involving motive and opportunity. The JFK assassination is no different. In fact, Egypt President Anwar Sadat’s assassination by some of his own dissident troops who saw him as selling out to Israel – though even more blatant and crude in its execution which was also televised – is nonetheless very similar to what most likely happened to JFK.

Anti-Castro Cubans and some of their friendly low-level CIA work associates, like Ferrie, Hunt and Sturgis, as well as mobsters like Marcellos and Trafficante, benefited from Kennedy’s death each with their own vengeful motives and hard-to-believe-just-coincidental opportunities. It was Richard Nixon, with Dwight Eisenhower’s approval, who brought these people together in the first place in 1959 as Operation 40 for the purpose of invading Cuba and secretly assassinating Fidel Castro and anyone else they chose all in the name of U.S. full spectrum dominance:

This photograph was taken in a nightclub in Mexico City on 22nd January, 1963.
It has been argued by Daniel Hopsicker that the men in the photograph are all
members of Operation 40. Hopsicker suggests that the man closest to the
camera on the left is Felix Rodriguez, next to him is Porter Goss and Barry Seal.
Hopsicker adds that Frank Sturgis is attempting to hide his face with his coat.
It has been claimed that in the picture are Albertao ‘Loco’ Blanco (3rd right)
and Jorgo Robreno (4th right)

Operation 40 – see their group photo with Frank Sturgis at a Mexico City nightclub on 1-22-63.  https://spartacus–educational.com/JFKoperation40.htm

The Mob had their own muscle and motives and provided the government with plausible deniability on both foreign and domestic fronts more so than even the Anti-Castro Cubans did.

The Mob was Nixon’s CIA deal with the Devil, similar to Franklin Roosevelt’s earlier OSS deal with Lucky Luciano on the New York docks and in the invasion of Sicily & Italy during WWII. They were after all bipartisan kind of guys and all-American carnivorous capitalists in every sense, and still are. It’s not too hard to believe then that these same people – who were and are in the business of killing people they don’t like – could kill and did kill or helped kill Kennedy. It was not the first time that politics made strange bedfellows and it won’t be the last.

There is even a police informant’s audiotape recording of right-wing activist Joseph Milteer predicting the JFK assassination and how it would all happen 13 days before it all happened:

Thirteen days before Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, a man named Joseph Milteer was tape recorded telling Miami police informant William Somersett that the murder of Kennedy was “in the working,” that the best means of killing Kennedy was “from an office building with a highpowered rifle,” and that “they will pick up somebody within hours afterwards, if anything like that would happen just to throw the public off.” https://www.maryferrell.org/pages/Predictions_of_Joseph_Milteer.html

That is, a patsy will take the fall. And although this could all just be the wishful thinking of an angry degenerate, however prophetic, there also appears to be a photo of Mr. Milteer in Dealey Plaza on 11-22-63:

 https://www.wlrn.org/politics/2013–11–14/a–miami–police–informant–a–propheticracist–and–fresh–questions–about–jfks–death

More significant I think is the Susskind television interviews of former President Harry Truman in 1961.  David Susskind, for those of you who don’t know, was a white-haired U.S. talk show host and Harvard graduate well-groomed in the art and science of fawning over his guests. He was the Charlie Rose of the late 1950s and early 1960s. As he groveled before Truman, he asked the former president what his biggest regret was while serving in the White House. You’d think Truman would have apologized for dropping atom bombs on Japan and then lying about their radioactivity. Instead, he apologized for having founded the CIA (which was really just the reestablishment of the Office of Strategic Services, with OSS General “Wild Bill” Donovan as its first leader) when Truman signed into law the National Security Act of 1947.

Truman said the CIA was an out-of-control bureaucracy and that his advice to President Kennedy was to end it by de-centralizing intelligence gathering activities back to the different military branches. This was all said on national television. Truman was clearly referring to black ops such as Tricky Dick Nixon’s Operation 40 assassination teams and Bay of Pigs invasion force. But since Kennedy needed these people to facilitate the assassinations and regime changes of the Diem Brothers in Vietnam and Castro in Cuba, Truman would not get his wish.

Now put yourself in the CIA HQ management’s position. You’re ideologically committed to the Agency’s mission of U.S. global capitalism and dominance, so much so that you will routinely engage in all kinds of skullduggery from paying journalists here and abroad to write news articles that support U.S. (business) interests, to overthrowing foreign governments and assassinating their leaders who don’t support U.S. (business) interests. But even more than those ends, is your greater love of the means – the CIA itself, which has long been a prime government jobs and contracts tit for Ivy Leaguers on the make with Liberal Arts degrees.

Understandably then, almost all bureaucrats will, if push comes to shove, choose their means, the bureaucracy itself, over their ends – like Catholic bishops protecting pedophile priests rather than their parish victims who, according to that Church’s doctrine, they’re supposed to help. The CIA was already being blamed (perhaps wrongly) for the Bay of Pigs fiasco. Kennedy even fired then CIA Director Alan Dulles over it only to have Dulles show up later working on LBJ’s Warren Commission (conflicts of interest and all) to “investigate” JFK’s death.

Times were hard for spook central and getting harder still. Because along comes Hunt, Ferrie, &

Oswald, along with Roselli, Marcellos & Trafficante and various CIA-connected anti-Castro

Cubans like Bernard Barker who would also later join Frank Sturgis and E. Howard Hunt in Nixon’s 1972 Watergate burglary quest. They were the ones who most likely killed the president, or at least knew who did and why.  And of course, would lie like a rug when asked about it:

1. Howard Hunt cross-examined by Attorney Mark Lane in a libel case plaintiff Hunt lost:

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/denial.htm

Because truth is an affirmative defense. Also, notice Hunt’s children as adults were no longer his alibi. Frank Sturgis was even arrested later on October 31, 1977 in Marita Lorenz’s apartment after Lorenz told police that Sturgis threatened her in an attempt to force her to change her testimony to Federal investigators. Since she (Fidel Castro’s lover) claimed to have been with Frank Sturgis at a meeting with the CIA head in Miami which also included E. Howard Hunt right before the JFK assassination. That arrest was later dismissed for (ahem) lack of evidence:

Sturgis Charges Dropped https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2519&dat=19771105&id=5_ddAAAAIBAJ&pg=1220,803080

Even stranger, the protagonist in E. Howard Hunt’s spy novel Bimini Run is Hank Sturgis whose life parallels Frank Sturgis’ life from 1942 to 1949 in certain salient respects:

Frank Sturgis https://spartacus–educational.com/JFKsturgis.htm

Amazon says this about Hunt’s novel: “As in his first best-selling novel ‘East of Farewell’ and his recent ‘Berlin Ending’, E. Howard Hunt proves again that he is a master story teller as well as a man of action. In this compelling narrative of violence and sex in the Caribbean, he exploits the knowledge he learned so well as one of the key figures in the Bay of Pigs invasion and in his twenty years as a CIA agent.” https://www.amazon.com/Bimini–Run–Howard–Hunt/dp/0425024822

Talk about coming to the fire with gasoline. If the US public ever formally found out that CIA operatives, even low-level ones, had a hand in killing the president, with or without their HQ management’s permission, that would be the end of the CIA. Truman would get his wish and the sheep would eat the sheep dog. The national security bureaucracy, not national security, was threatened, although the securicrats would love to have us think the two are inseparable. Ergo, the subsequent cover up by LBJ’s Warren Commission and the not-so-coincidental convenient deaths of a lot of the various players like drone bees being sacrificed for the good of the hive. All in the name of “national security” of course because “…you can’t handle the truth.”  Now you can believe that or just see with your own eyeballs Frank Sturgis and E. Howard Hunt:

The Three JFK Tramps – see two of the tramps’ facial photo comparisons with Hunt and Sturgis! https://www.pinterest.com/patgutridge/jfk–tramps/

This is no doubt why career CIA officer E. Howard Hunt was able to blackmail Richard Nixon for the now famous hush money that Nixon paid out to him during the Watergate scandal ten years later as “…the darkness reaching out for the darkness.” The press knew Hunt and his fascist partner G. Gordon Liddy were on the White House payroll.  There was no way Nixon could distance himself from them.  That’s what Nixon was referring to when he told his Chief of Staff Bob Haldeman that Watergate would “…open the whole can of worms” on the Bay of Pigs:

Richard Nixon and H.R. Haldeman Watergate White House “Smoking Gun” tape https://www.wyzant.com/resources/lessons/history/hpol/nixon/watergate/smoking–gun

And that’s the truth since Nixon (who like George H. W. Bush was also in Dallas on 11/22/63) wasn’t nearly as concerned about exposing his own involvement in Watergate because he never gave shut-up money to anyone else and, but for one famous 18-minute gap in his White House tapes (which people like to speculate about), he never destroyed his tapes. Nixon’s concern was for the National Security Act of 1947, because he liked it, loved it and wanted more of it. Hence his 1973 overthrow and assassination of Salvadore Allende, the democratically elected socialist president of Chile, and his earlier overthrow of non-communist Prince Norodum Sihanouk of neutral Cambodia in 1970, and then the killings of thousands of people in both those countries.

Ever the lawyer, Nixon in essence took a plea bargain to be forever remembered for his burglaries rather than for his war crimes and many mass murder sprees. The powers-that-be, recognizing Nixon’s dilemma, were only too happy to help usher him out with a presidential pardon from Warren Commission member Gerald Ford with Exxon elitist Nelson Rockefeller, suspected off-the-shelf financier of CIA shit in Latin America, invited in to help out as Ford’s Vice President.  Not surprisingly, Gerald Ford issued an executive order out-lawing political assassinations by the CIA, that has been renewed by other presidents. And then Ford appointed George H.W. Bush CIA Director even though Bush (ahem) had no relevant job experience.

Caught between saving himself or his beloved NSA monster, Nixon would love us all to believe he fell on his patriot’s sword for our own good. However, Noam Chomsky’s observation, that Nixon going out on Watergate was like Al Capone going out on tax evasion, was right on the money. Truth be told, Richard Nixon should have been tried and impeached for war crimes. Just as Ronald Reagan should have been tried and impeached for the Iran-Contra scandal. When his CIA Director Bill Casey resurrected that off-the-shelf (his words) National Security Frankenstein mass murder monster in Latin America with Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North’s abnormal brain.

But don’t feel sorry for JFK because Malcolm X was right: “The chickens had come home to roost.” Let us not forget Kennedy’s assassination programs for Fidel Castro and the Diem Brothers, and his Vietnamese concentration camps he cutely called Strategic Hamlets, or his approval of FBI wiretapping of Martin Luther King’s telephone and blackmailing King later with the audio tapes, and his CIA telling South Africa where Nelson Mandela was hiding:

Nelson Mandela: CIA tip-off led to 1962 Durban arrest https://www.bbc.com/news/world–africa–36296551

There is something to be said for poetic justice. Because Kennedy, like Nixon, was an extremely dangerous president. He brought the world to the brink of nuclear war because of some macho man complex he had. Proving his manhood (euphemistically referred to as “resolve”) by sticking nuclear missiles in northern Turkey only to have Nikita Khrushchev, not surprisingly, respond by sticking nuclear missiles in Cuba. Thus, the Cuban Missile Crisis that Kennedy played like some reckless teenager on a chicken collision car dare. Luckily for all of us, it ended like it began – by Kennedy quietly pulling U.S. missiles out of Turkey, in exchange for Khrushchev pulling his out of Cuba, lending proof to the old dictum that if you don’t ratchet things up to begin with then you won’t have to ratchet things down later on.

Therefore, we should no more worry about who killed JFK then we should about who killed Hale Boggs, the Louisiana Congressman and Warren Commission member, who reportedly wished he hadn’t signed its Report, whose body and plane disappeared without a trace in Alaska:

Hale Boggs https://spartacus–educational.com/JFKboggs.htm

Or who killed James Riddle Hoffa, the Mafia’s Teamsters Union president and JFK/RFK-hater, who also disappeared without a trace in Michigan in 1975.  And let’s not ever forget this:

On 29th March, 1977, Charles Nicoletti (James Files’ boss) was murdered in Chicago. He had been shot three times in the back of the head. George De Mohrenschildt died the same day. Both men were due to appear before the Select House Committee on Assassinations where they were to be asked about their involvement in the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

https://spartacus–educational.com/JFKnicoletti.htm

George De Mohrenschildt, a Russian noble ex-pat, was a man who knew way too much since he was a friend, employee and acquaintance of among others George H.W. Bush, Prescott Bush, Jacqueline Bouvier, William F. Buckley, Clint Murchison; Neil Mallon; Ted Dealey (whose father George Dealey Plaza is named for); H.L. Hunt, Fulgencio Batista; Abraham Zapruder

(who filmed JFK’s assassination); as well as Lee Harvey Oswald and his wife Marina Oswald:

https://spartacus–educational.com/JFKdemohrenschildt.htm

People though get killed or die mysteriously and conveniently all the time. Like Ecuador’s President Jamie Roldós and Panama’s President Omar Torrijos. Both died in fiery plane crashes in 1981 within 2 months of each other, after standing up to the US government & oil companies. And of course, no one got prosecuted for any of that.  Maybe then what happened in Dallas wasn’t such a bad deal after all. Yes, the CIA, and the rest of our so-called National Security State, are still around, getting more powerful and unaccountable than ever. Their democratic demise about as likely as rabbits killing coyotes because power never prosecutes itself.

Moreover, the National Security Act of 1947 has since been bolstered by the Patriot Act of 2001,

2005, 2006 and 2010 giving play to Gore Vidal’s prediction that all republics will sooner or later become oligarchies, if they aren’t already. But the good news is a lot of us from 1963 are still alive. What’s more, those keystone cops and robbers were just killing each other and will continue to, reaping what they sow like Meyer Lansky killing Bugsy Seigel – also “unsolved”.

We should then give thanks for our Dealey bread and let the baby Arlen Spector have his magic bullet bottle, however forensically implausible it may seem. Since it was just the usual suspects grinding each other down for a change and maybe just maybe imploding from within. After all, as the Happy Valley writer Nicky Reid says: “The banana republic always comes home to die.” http://exileinhappyvalley.blogspot.com/

——————————————————————————————————————————————– Sonny Laymatina is a former Criminal Defense Attorney and US Army Veteran who got the same rifle Marksman score as Ex-Marine Lee Harvey Oswald.  (An earlier version of this article first appeared in Z Magazine on January 4, 2004).  

—————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————-

OTHER REFERENCES

The Mary Ferrell Foundation

https://www.maryferrell.org/pages/Main_Page.html

Accessories After the Fact by Sylvia Meagher

https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Accessories–After–the–Fact/Sylvia–Meagher/9781620879979

Rush to Judgment: A Critique of the Warren Commission’s Inquiry into the Murder of JFK by Mark Lane https://www.amazon.com/Rush–Judgment–Critique–Commissions–President/dp/1560250437

Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr (former CIA Officer and subordinate of E. Howard Hunt in Mexico City):  The Warren Report: Fact or Fiction? (Guest: Mark Lane) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=–fPiKZBgXGg

Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr.: The Blackmailing of the President (Guest: E. Howard Hunt) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4xrdo5nsz8&t=7s

Deep Politics and the Death of JFK by Peter Dale Scott

https://www.amazon.com/Deep–Politics–Death–Peter–Scott/dp/0520205197

A review of Gerald Posner, Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK 

(New York: Random House, 1993). by Peter Dale Scott  http://www.assassinationweb.com/scott.htm

Dead Wrong: Straight Facts on the County’s Most Controversial Cover-Ups by Richard Belzer & David Wayne https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/14567915–dead–wrong

Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years by David Talbot https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/524654.Brothers

The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA and the Rise of America’s Secret Government by David Talbot https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book–reviews/david–talbot/the–devils–chessboard/

CIA, Drug Trafficking, and the JFK Assassination (2011) by Douglas Valentine

https://ourhiddenhistory.org/entry/douglas–valentine–cia–drug–trafficking–and–the–jfk–assassination–2009

Last Word: My Indictment of the CIA in the Murder of JFK by Mark Lane https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Last–Word/Mark–Lane/9781620870709

Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, America’s Invisible Government, and the Hidden History of the Last 50 Years by Russ Baker  https://www.amazon.com/Family–Secrets–Americas–Invisible–Government/dp/1608190064

Picture of George H.W. Bush in front of TSBD Building on 11-22-63?

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/451626668882732876/

Affidavit of George William Bush saying he is not George H.W. Bush (with 14 pages of exhibits including FBI Memo below here) http://www.aarclibrary.org/notices/Affidavit_of_George_William_Bush_880921.pdf

Memo (about Bush in Dallas) dated November 22, 1963, from FBI Agent Graham Kitchel to the FBI Agent in Charge in Houston. 

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2005/3/18/100364/–

The Nixon Sightings, Part III: November 22, 1963: “Nixon calls J. Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI, who tells him that the assassin was a left winger with a Castro connection. Nixon, I think, feels relief.” “(Many years later I asked Oliver Stone if he knew that Nixon was in Dallas on November 22, 1963? Oliver Stone, being Oliver Stone, replied, “Was he on the knoll?”)” by Stephen Hess (who was with Nixon on 11-22-63). (Emphasis added). https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2014/12/17/the–nixon–sightings–part–iii–november–22–1963/

Postscript: Why did Nixon feel relief? Mission accomplished? Patsy job well done? Did he get the CIA to fool the FBI like he tried to in Watergate?