click the links for recaps of previous chapters:
chapter 1: a cold warrior
chapter 2: kennedy, castro & the CIA
chapter 3: kennedy & vietnam
JFK was not afraid to die, nor was he afraid to live. the trait kennedy admired most in others was courage (thus his 1951 book “profiles in courage”). he had respect for people who stood up and fought for causes, specifically with regard to war. political courage in trying to defuse the CIA and pentagon from “winning” the cold war was a much bigger type of courage, and yet kennedy was not afraid to fight that fight. the choice came down to eisenhower’s “assured destruction” and his own wanting to be “more flexible.”
the vietnam crisis was simmering when kennedy went against his conscience of wanting to appoint edward gullion as the new vietnam ambassador after gullion had worked magic in the congo keeping it independent during his time there. instead, kennedy made what he considered one of his biggest mistakes by allowing his republican rival, henry cabot lodge, to be appointed ambassador. lodge only wanted the position to use as leverage to try for the republican nomination against kennedy in 1964. lodge proceeded to take away all of kennedy’s power on the ground in vietnam and refused to even communicate with diem or guide him away from a potential coup. contrarily, lodge was working closely with henry luce, the media baron and staunch enemy of kennedy, and other generals supporting the coup efforts against diem. kennedy’s next option was to send his friend torbert macdonald to meet with diem to talk diem into removing the nhus from power to reassert some control and save his life, but diem wouldn’t budge. it was a marked defeat for kennedy and another victory for the CIA.
as if being on the CIA and pentagon’s blacklist was not enough, kennedy then found an unforgiving enemy in big business when they lured him into a trap to test his allegiances. kennedy settled a steel strike crisis and brokered a deal to keep steel prices from rising. the next move major steel companies made was a blatant duping by raising prices by 3.5%. kennedy was incensed and made a comment he was never able to live down, “my father always said all businessmen were sons of bitches but i never believed it until now.” he ordered the defense department to only order from small steel companies that had not risen prices or to take business overseas if necessary. the government accounted for 9% of the nation’s total steel market. kennedy further attacked big steel by launching anti-trust investigations against them (which ultimately lead to fines in 1965 for price-fixing). big steel’s response was that they were being treated as “enemies of the people” to which kennedy replied, they were exactly that “by putting pursuit of power and profit” above the interest of the people. seeing that kennedy was prepared to wage war against them, big steel backed down and relented on the price hikes. business leaders, however, never forgot nor forgave kennedy’s handling of the situation or his subsequent recanting of his “all businessmen are sons of bitches” statement. kennedy’s father was a prominent anti-business politician, who fought wall street with roosevelt in the 1930s. douglass sees this through the fortune magazine lens of a test to see whether kennedy would accept defeat and lose credibility or fight back and unite the business world against him. fortune then ran the article reading “steel: the ides of april” to foreshadow the fate of julius caeser onto kennedy. the wall street journal made the quote, “the government set the price. and they did this by the pressure of the fear, by naked power, by threats by agents in the state security police.” u.s. news commented, “the president is acting like a soviet commissar.” it was obvious that the business world clearly had less use for kennedy now than they did before he was elected, back when he was, “their second choice for president and anyone else was their first choice.”
in continuing to probe oswald’s role in the years leading up to the assassination, douglass finds CIA fingerprints all over everything. oswald had been, at the least, a CIA employee as a radar man in the marines. after this, he either a) became a blatant traitor or was b) a double agent. (this chapter continues to point to a double agent role.) angleton, the man in charge of the CIA assassinations unit, had created “201 files” on people to look like counter-intelligence files to be used as assassination scapegoats. oswald had a 201 file, though the document was incompletely preserved as evidence in the JFK assassination investigation. not that the full document could have mattered much anyway since allen dulles told the warren commission that “no CIA employee, even under oath, should ever say truthfully if oswald or anyone else was a CIA employee.” ann egerton, after retiring from the CIA in the 1970s, was somewhat candid in HSCA interviews in implicating oswald as a CIA asset and a security risk that needed to be watched closely, thus the need for the 201 file.
other examples of oswald’s CIA connections came from the wilcott’s, a husband and wife team who resigned from the CIA in good conscience in the 1960s. they gave interviews about the CIA keeping a lid on oswald in the soviet union in the late 1950s and how he was angered by the soviets being “onto him.” douglass continues, through their stories, to outline a structure of how individual employees can carry out certain roles of a larger plot with only a few people knowing the entire plan and outcome from the beginning.
the biggest example of a pawn in the game would undoubtedly have been james nagle. the author of the book “the man who knew too much” walked into a san antonio bank, fired shots into the ceiling and waited in his car for the police to show up and arrest him. he ended up serving four and a half years in prison and his only comment as to why was because he “would rather be arrested than commit murder and treason.” he was holding a double-edged sword. perhaps the most interesting part of the entire JFK assassination is that the KGB knew of the CIA’s plan and, though the KGB was opposed to JFK, they had to work hard to keep him alive because the CIA planned to implicate the soviets as part of the cover up. james nagle was well acquainted with “angel” and “leopoldo,” two cuban double agents, who were financed by alpha 66 and working with oswald right up to the end. nagle had been ordered by the soviets to make oswald aware of angel and leopoldo’s connections and their plans for him. when oswald would not listen to this advice, nagle was then asked to murder oswald. this was the point when nagle bowed out of the game and sent j edgar hoover a letter detailing the kennedy assassination plot before getting himself arrested because his two options a) trusting the KGB, who wanted oswald dead, or b) trusting the CIA, who wanted kennedy dead, both were murder and treason as far as nagle was concerned.
this knowledge that j edgar received may or may not have been “news” to him, but it did raise enough awareness in the insider circles to rework the plan and shift the assassination site from washington to dallas a couple of months later. hoover was certainly aware of the stealthy end-around the CIA did in moving out the de mohrenshildt’s and inserting michael and ruth paine as oswald’s benefactors bringing oswald back to dallas from new orleans. ruth became a close friend of marina oswald so that she could brush up on her russian and then she helped oswald obtain a temporary job at a texas school book depository. at the same time, he had been offered a better paying permanent position at trans texas airways, though he still, under some unclear and unacknowledged set of circumstances, accepted the temporary position at the depository. so, the question was posed, who were the paines? michael, who was a helicopter engineer at bell helicopter, turned out to be no ordinary engineer. he was the step-son of the inventor of the bell helicopter and had the highest level of security clearance. (this minute fact was not known until 30 years later). he was well acquainted in the pentagon and his mother was friends with allen dulles mother and dulles mistress. it seems more and more no small irony that the people coming and going from oswald’s life were moving him into a position on a chessboard. but the fact that many of these circumstances were not known or asked about came as a direct result of the handling of the warren commission by dulles in the aftermath, who stated in mid 1964 that “at this point we are supposed to be closing doors, not opening them.”
well then, case dismissed.
…until chapter 5, “saigon and chicago” which will begin next week…
the vietnam crisis was simmering when kennedy went against his conscience of wanting to appoint edward gullion as the new vietnam ambassador after gullion had worked magic in the congo keeping it independent during his time there. instead, kennedy made what he considered one of his biggest mistakes by allowing his republican rival, henry cabot lodge, to be appointed ambassador. lodge only wanted the position to use as leverage to try for the republican nomination against kennedy in 1964. lodge proceeded to take away all of kennedy’s power on the ground in vietnam and refused to even communicate with diem or guide him away from a potential coup. contrarily, lodge was working closely with henry luce, the media baron and staunch enemy of kennedy, and other generals supporting the coup efforts against diem. kennedy’s next option was to send his friend torbert macdonald to meet with diem to talk diem into removing the nhus from power to reassert some control and save his life, but diem wouldn’t budge. it was a marked defeat for kennedy and another victory for the CIA.
as if being on the CIA and pentagon’s blacklist was not enough, kennedy then found an unforgiving enemy in big business when they lured him into a trap to test his allegiances. kennedy settled a steel strike crisis and brokered a deal to keep steel prices from rising. the next move major steel companies made was a blatant duping by raising prices by 3.5%. kennedy was incensed and made a comment he was never able to live down, “my father always said all businessmen were sons of bitches but i never believed it until now.” he ordered the defense department to only order from small steel companies that had not risen prices or to take business overseas if necessary. the government accounted for 9% of the nation’s total steel market. kennedy further attacked big steel by launching anti-trust investigations against them (which ultimately lead to fines in 1965 for price-fixing). big steel’s response was that they were being treated as “enemies of the people” to which kennedy replied, they were exactly that “by putting pursuit of power and profit” above the interest of the people. seeing that kennedy was prepared to wage war against them, big steel backed down and relented on the price hikes. business leaders, however, never forgot nor forgave kennedy’s handling of the situation or his subsequent recanting of his “all businessmen are sons of bitches” statement. kennedy’s father was a prominent anti-business politician, who fought wall street with roosevelt in the 1930s. douglass sees this through the fortune magazine lens of a test to see whether kennedy would accept defeat and lose credibility or fight back and unite the business world against him. fortune then ran the article reading “steel: the ides of april” to foreshadow the fate of julius caeser onto kennedy. the wall street journal made the quote, “the government set the price. and they did this by the pressure of the fear, by naked power, by threats by agents in the state security police.” u.s. news commented, “the president is acting like a soviet commissar.” it was obvious that the business world clearly had less use for kennedy now than they did before he was elected, back when he was, “their second choice for president and anyone else was their first choice.”
in continuing to probe oswald’s role in the years leading up to the assassination, douglass finds CIA fingerprints all over everything. oswald had been, at the least, a CIA employee as a radar man in the marines. after this, he either a) became a blatant traitor or was b) a double agent. (this chapter continues to point to a double agent role.) angleton, the man in charge of the CIA assassinations unit, had created “201 files” on people to look like counter-intelligence files to be used as assassination scapegoats. oswald had a 201 file, though the document was incompletely preserved as evidence in the JFK assassination investigation. not that the full document could have mattered much anyway since allen dulles told the warren commission that “no CIA employee, even under oath, should ever say truthfully if oswald or anyone else was a CIA employee.” ann egerton, after retiring from the CIA in the 1970s, was somewhat candid in HSCA interviews in implicating oswald as a CIA asset and a security risk that needed to be watched closely, thus the need for the 201 file.
other examples of oswald’s CIA connections came from the wilcott’s, a husband and wife team who resigned from the CIA in good conscience in the 1960s. they gave interviews about the CIA keeping a lid on oswald in the soviet union in the late 1950s and how he was angered by the soviets being “onto him.” douglass continues, through their stories, to outline a structure of how individual employees can carry out certain roles of a larger plot with only a few people knowing the entire plan and outcome from the beginning.
the biggest example of a pawn in the game would undoubtedly have been james nagle. the author of the book “the man who knew too much” walked into a san antonio bank, fired shots into the ceiling and waited in his car for the police to show up and arrest him. he ended up serving four and a half years in prison and his only comment as to why was because he “would rather be arrested than commit murder and treason.” he was holding a double-edged sword. perhaps the most interesting part of the entire JFK assassination is that the KGB knew of the CIA’s plan and, though the KGB was opposed to JFK, they had to work hard to keep him alive because the CIA planned to implicate the soviets as part of the cover up. james nagle was well acquainted with “angel” and “leopoldo,” two cuban double agents, who were financed by alpha 66 and working with oswald right up to the end. nagle had been ordered by the soviets to make oswald aware of angel and leopoldo’s connections and their plans for him. when oswald would not listen to this advice, nagle was then asked to murder oswald. this was the point when nagle bowed out of the game and sent j edgar hoover a letter detailing the kennedy assassination plot before getting himself arrested because his two options a) trusting the KGB, who wanted oswald dead, or b) trusting the CIA, who wanted kennedy dead, both were murder and treason as far as nagle was concerned.
this knowledge that j edgar received may or may not have been “news” to him, but it did raise enough awareness in the insider circles to rework the plan and shift the assassination site from washington to dallas a couple of months later. hoover was certainly aware of the stealthy end-around the CIA did in moving out the de mohrenshildt’s and inserting michael and ruth paine as oswald’s benefactors bringing oswald back to dallas from new orleans. ruth became a close friend of marina oswald so that she could brush up on her russian and then she helped oswald obtain a temporary job at a texas school book depository. at the same time, he had been offered a better paying permanent position at trans texas airways, though he still, under some unclear and unacknowledged set of circumstances, accepted the temporary position at the depository. so, the question was posed, who were the paines? michael, who was a helicopter engineer at bell helicopter, turned out to be no ordinary engineer. he was the step-son of the inventor of the bell helicopter and had the highest level of security clearance. (this minute fact was not known until 30 years later). he was well acquainted in the pentagon and his mother was friends with allen dulles mother and dulles mistress. it seems more and more no small irony that the people coming and going from oswald’s life were moving him into a position on a chessboard. but the fact that many of these circumstances were not known or asked about came as a direct result of the handling of the warren commission by dulles in the aftermath, who stated in mid 1964 that “at this point we are supposed to be closing doors, not opening them.”
well then, case dismissed.
…until chapter 5, “saigon and chicago” which will begin next week…
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