Meet the old war, same as
the new war;
Vietnam to Iraq; America's Criminal Foreign Policies.
*Below quotes are copyrighted
and were written by Michael Smith. 04-30-08
"Never
forgive our tyrants, whether they be Gods or Man.
Nor should we forget our ignorance for ever believing in them."
(MS)
"Religion is the epitome of mans inability to accept responsibility"
(MS)
Reviews of Colonel
Fletcher Prouty's Book
JFK, The CIA & Rich
Texans (part 6)
Patriotism is the belief that
your country is the best simply because you were born there!
Photo of JFK at a swearing in ceremony at the
Whitehouse on 30 Jun 1961.
Vice president Johnson is in the center directly behind and to the
right.
Below photo of 'The Wanted Poster being circulated the
day prior to Kennedy's Assassination
The above handbill was
circulated on November 21, 1963 In Dallas, Texas, one
day before the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
On November 21st, 1963, 43 years
ago today, the 1,035th day of John F. Kennedy's tenure as
President, he asked the Congress for $95.7 million in
supplemental appropriations for fiscal year 1964. He also
asked his economic advisers to prepare a "War on Poverty"
program for 1964. He had previously warned the pentagon that
he has going to bring the troops home from Vietnam after his
second election. He had also prepared and signed a bill to
dissolve the Federal Reserve. Definitely two issues that
would get him assassinated. Then, President Kennedy and Mrs. Kennedy
departed for a two-day trip to Texas.
It was to be his last full
day on Earth.
At the dedication of the Aerospace
Medical Health Center, Brooks Air Force Base, San Antonio,
Texas he gave a talk in which he reminisced: "Frank
O'Connor, the Irish writer, tells in one of his books how,
as a boy, he and his friends would make their way across the
countryside, and when they came to an orchard wall that
seemed too high and too doubtful to permit their voyage to
continue, they took off their hats and tossed them over the
wall -- and then they had no choice but to follow them...
This Nation has tossed its cap over the wall of space, and
we have no choice but to follow it."
And he predicted, "When some meet here in
1990 they will look back on what we did and say that we made
the right and wise decisions. 'Your old men shall dream
dreams, your young men shall see visions.'
San Antonio, Texas , November 21, 1963)
My name is
Mike Smith and I know that while old men do have dreams they
often become nightmares, such as making wars that the young
have to die for!
Later, President Kennedy made brief
remarks to the League of United Latin American Citizens at
the Rice Hotel in Houston, Texas following which he attended
a dinner honoring Representative Albert Thomas, Houston,
Texas.
Texas and Texans
Oil and
Oilmen; today, we want to look at Texans, keeping always in
mind that George W. Bush is a transplanted Texan, and he and
his father have both been "Oilmen." After that, we'll look
at the Secret Service, the men who were supposed to protect
the President. From Farewell America:
The myth of the indispensable man
must be broken if our country is to survive. -
Haroldson Lafayette Hunt
The Panhandle State owes more to
oil than it does to the Alamo. Texas didn't really come into
its own until oil gushed forth from the swamps of Beaumont
on January 10, 1901. Fed by more than 100,000 barrels a day
from the Spindletop well, (1) a lake of oil formed which was
soon consumed by fire. Spindletop set off a second Gold
Rush. The area was overrun by prospectors, the oil field was
plundered, and the price of oil fluctuated wildly. At first,
Rockefeller ignored the Texas strike.
But after Standard Oil of New
Jersey was broken up in 1911, Standard Oil of Indiana bought
up Humble, thereby becoming the largest producer in Texas,
while Socony took over Magnolia. By 1930, the American oil
empire was controlled by 20 big companies which seemed
destined for eternal prosperity. But on October 9, 1930, a
stubborn prospector named "Dad" Joiner struck oil at 3,000
feet in East Texas. He had discovered the richest oil field
in the United States. Forty miles long and 2 to 5 miles
wide, its reserves have been estimated at one and a half
billion tons. By the time Standard and the other big
companies arrived on the scene, thousands of prospectors
were drilling away on tens of thousands of rural and urban
plots. It was the most ruinous waste in the history of oil,
and just at the start of the Depression the bottom dropped
out of the market.
Standard, Gulf, Texaco and Shell
managed to regain control with the help of the federal
government. Laws were voted by the states, concessions were
closed down by force, and the Connally law on "black oil"
put a stop to illegal production in East Texas. When the
basin had been pumped dry, production quotas were
established and order prevailed. Some independent producers
managed to survive, but they were obliged to comply with the
rules set by the Big Four, who tolerated them because their
greater production costs enabled the larger companies to
keep prices high and increase profits.
Thirty years later, in 1963, Texas
accounted for half the proven oil reserves on American soil.
With 95,000 active oil wells owned by 6,500 oil companies
(of the 12,325 in the United States), it constituted a key
position for the big corporations, for it controlled
production in the neighboring states of Louisiana and
Oklahoma (65% of the American total), and therefore prices.
Six companies control 80% of Texas
oil production. Humble produces 15% and refines 30% of this
total. These giants command not only the oil, but also the
sulfur and natural gas markets, and consequently real
estate, transportation facilities, power, water, and banks
throughout the state.
Even without oil, Texas would be
one of the richest states in the Union. One hundred times
larger than Delaware, five times larger than New York, four
times larger than Missouri, three times larger than
Minnesota, twice as large as Montana, it covers 100,000
square miles more than the state of California, and each of
its 254 counties is bigger than the state of Rhode Island.
There are 227,000 ranches in Texas, and the King Ranch
covers more territory than Switzerland. Texas raises 10
million head of cattle and provides one-quarter of the rice,
one-third of the cotton, and half of all the synthetic
rubber consumed in the United States. In 1963 the state had
a population of 10,228,000, including one million Negroes
and one million 'Wetbacks.'
The Second World War turned Texas
into an industrial state. Thanks to the Cold War, its
industries expanded five times faster than those of the rest
of the nation. This industrial expansion reached a
climax in 1963, when General Dynamics of Fort Worth was
awarded the TFX fighter plane contract. The fantastic
development of smaller firms such as Texas Instruments is
directly linked to the war in Vietnam.
Texas offers these
industries lower taxes, cheap labor (poor whites, Negroes
and Wetbacks), restrictive labor legislation (the union shop
is prohibited by state law), and its outstanding
natural resources in oil, natural gas, and sulfur. The
federal government is one of the state's principal
benefactors. Texas ranks second in the nation in terms of
federal aid, with $3.9 billion in 1960-61, or 20.1% of the
total state revenue. The wealthiest of the
wealthy states, Texas in 1960 had 53% more federal employees
and received 65% more federal aid than the average American
state. Washington's favors touched every sector
of the economy. Texas, with the most extensive highway
system (constructed with federal funds) in the country,
received the largest amount of federal aid for paralyzed
children, and the highest subsidies for flood prevention.
But not all the inhabitants
of Texas share in this munificence. In 1963, the state of
Texas spent only $282.46 per person on social welfare
(education, health, hospitals, public welfare), as compared
to the national average of $343.64 per inhabitant (a
difference of 18%). In the field of education, Texas ranked
third in the nation in terms of federal aid per inhabitant,
and 31st in terms of expenditures. It ranked first in terms
of federal aid for child welfare, and 44th in terms of
expenditures. It was second in the nation in terms of
federal aid for the aged, and 40th in terms of expenditures.
It also ranked very high in the number of incarcerations and
low in the number of college enrollments. In 1963 it received
more federal aid for experimental agricultural stations than
any other state in the union, but ranked 47th in terms of
the amount spent on improvements in cattle breeding.
There is little indication that the
people of Texas merit such favoritism. Their state is
first in the nation in terms of murder and armed
robbery, and second for rape. Texas is the realm of
intolerance. It calls itself Democratic, but for the past 25
years it has elected Republicans or would-be Democrats. It
claims to be progressive, but only 15% of its 2.5 million
non-agricultural workers are unionized, and since 1954 a
fine of $20,000 and 20 years in prison punishes membership
in the Communist Party. In 1952, Governor Allan Shrivers
even tried to obtain the death penalty for this "crime."
Texas sees nothing wrong
with prescribing the death penalty for a political opinion,
but it protects the right to commit homicide. It is the
paradise of murder, and even of murder for thrills.
The name "Texas" comes from the
Indian "Tejas," meaning "Friendship," which is also the
state motto. In 1879 Harper's Bazaar wrote, "In the past 12
years there have been 300 murders in Texas, and only 11
death sentences." Since then, Texans have done even better.
In 1960 there were 1,080 murders in Texas, and 5 death
sentences. Of course the number of executions rose sharply
under George W. Bush as governor.
Moreover, Texas has its own
definition of murder. Only 3 of the 254 counties in
Texas require a coroner's examination in the case of sudden
or suspicious death. The 251 others leave it to the Justice
of the Peace (7) to determine the cause of death. A verdict
of death due to natural causes has been known to coincide
with the discovery of a bullet in the body of the deceased.
The FBI estimates that the number of murders actually
committed in Texas is several times the official figure.
Between 5,000 and 10,000 deaths occur every year in Texas
because of brutality, greed, or just because.
One hundred and thirty-two counties
in Texas are prohibitionist, another form of intolerance that
satisfies the Puritanism of its inhabitants and the
interests of the business community. One out of
every 12 Texans -- 800,000 in all -- is illiterate, the
highest percentage in the nation. Texas delivers
fewer high school diplomas than the poorest state in the
union, Mississippi.(9) It ranks third in the nation in terms
of the number of registered automobiles, but only 36th in
terms of insurance coverage.
Backwards, intolerant, and
irresponsible, Texas lifts its soul only towards God, if one
is to judge from the number of its churches. There
are more than 1,000 churches in Dallas alone. Waco (100,000
inhabitants} has 122, Midland (68,000 inhabitants} 82, and
Tyler (50,000 inhabitants) 94. Evangelist Billy Graham
is popular in Texas, and playboys are frowned upon, unless,
of course, they are politicians.
Texans never tire of looking at
money. The center of attraction at the Dallas Petroleum Club
is a long ebony table inlaid with coins from all over the
world. The homes of Highland Park, University Park, and
River Oak are decorated with Cezannes and Renoirs (many of
them fakes), but they rarely contain books. Texans
don't read, with the possible exception of the Sunday
papers. Unlike other American cities, Texas cities
don't have bookstores. There is a second-hand bookstore in
Dallas, but it is in the suburbs. The other bookstores are
run by the churches. On the other hand, Dallas has an opera,
a Museum of Contemporary Art, and 700 garden clubs. Texans
like flowers.
Texas has 1,128 banks, more than any
other state in the Union,(11) but despite its wealth, the
total income of the inhabitants of Texas falls well below
that of many other states. An oligarchic
state if there ever was one, Texas is nevertheless first in
the nation in terms of the number of personal incomes
exceeding $1 million a year. Four-fifths of these
millionaires are oilmen. They also rank the highest in gun
ownership.
In this state of nabobs and
beggars, where whole regions are still without electricity
and where hundreds of thousands of people sleep out of
doors, corruption is an institution, professional witnesses
are a dime a dozen, and if you dial a certain number you can
hear a recorded anti-Semitic diatribe. Well, that's so bad!
Such a privileged state has to have
influence in Washington. It has had, since before Roosevelt.
In 1947, Harry Truman modified the law providing for the
succession to the Presidency in favor of Texan Sam Rayburn,
making the House Majority Leader the third most important
person in the country. Eisenhower, born in Tyler, Texas,
faced a Congress led by House Majority Leader Rayburn, a
Texan, and Senate majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson, another
Texan. But despite the special favors, all the
federal aid, and the federal employees paid by Washington,
the state treasury has often verged on bankruptcy.
In 1959, Texas even paid its employees with rubber checks.
Once again, the federal government was obliged to bailout
the richest state in the union. In 1961, while it was still
young and naive, the Kennedy Administration tried to enforce
the payment of the federal tax on business transactions in
Texas. No Texan could remember this law ever having been
enforced. Texas, the state that fortune smiled upon, lay
outside the frontiers of America. What did it want with the
New Frontier?
Texas is a separate way of
life. The oil industry controls the government, the
politics, and the social life of the state. Its
contribution to the economy is so important, and its
influence so widespread, that it can make or break a
project. The independent producers wield as much, if not
more, power than the Presidents of the major oil companies,
and because their fortunes are generally the result of
personal success and their base of operations less
far-flung, they are also more aggressive. They are thus far
more vulnerable to any attack on the privileges of the oil
industry, and in particular to any change in the laws that
govern it.
It has been estimated that
there are more than 500 millionaires living in Houston, and
probably as many in Dallas. The income of the twenty richest
independent oil producers put together would be enough to
cover the state budget.
Texas, which doesn't know
the meaning of income tax, has no more idea of what a
constitution should be. The Texas Constitution
dates back to 1876. Consequently, the state government has
no power to deal with the abuses of its inhabitants. The
state legislature meets only once every two years. Its
members are paid $10 a day for a period of 120 days. If the
session is prolonged beyond that limit, their pay is halved.
As a result, most state congressmen are either lawyers
representing their clients at Austin or students glad for a
chance to make a little extra money. For that matter, poor
students and teachers interested in politics are especially
well regarded by the real proprietors of the state. The
oilmen finance the studies of a certain number of gifted and
deserving students, and if they are elected to the state
legislature they are rewarded with land leases, stocks, and
allowances enabling them to devote themselves to the service
of their country. The oilmen have little difficulty
in getting their candidates elected to office -- they
control the press, radio and television. Their influence
over the police and judicial authorities is such that only
the most insignificant criminal and civil cases, and those
in which they have no interests at stake, are ever bought to
court.
One of the most eminent figures in
Texas and the oil industry appeared one day in the Cokesbury
Bookstore, a Methodist bookshop in Dallas, to autograph a
book that he had published himself. This man rates only
seven lines in Who's Who: "Haroldson Lafayette Hunt, oil
producer; Vandalia, Ill.; ed. pub. Schs; m. Lynda Bunker
(died May 7, 1955); married 2nd Ruth Ray Weight, December
1957. Oil producer, Hunt Oil Co. Established Facts Forum, a
foundation producing radio and TV programs relating to nat.
issues. Democrat. Address: 4009 W. Lawther Dr., Dallas."
Seven lines isn't much for a man
who was, in 1963, and probably will be until he dies, the
richest man in the world, with a fortune conservatively
estimated at $4 billion. When you get into those kind of
figures, you are no longer talking about wealth, but about
power.
The book that the richest man in
the world had come to autograph was called Alpaca,
undoubtedly after the llama-like South American ruminant of
the same name so noted for its resistance. Alpaca
is Hunt's Bible. It describes a mythical new nation where
income taxes are limited to 25%, and where every citizen is
accorded a number of votes in direct proportion to his
income-tax bracket.(15)
Hunt was accompanied by his second
wife and his two stepdaughters, and the little girls --
Helen, 11, and Sewannee, 10 -- sang a little song:
How much is that book in the
window? The one that says all the smart things.
How much is that book in the
window? I do hope to learn all it brings.
How much is that book in the
window? The one which my Popsy wrote.
How much is that book in the
window? You can buy it without signing a note.
Alpaca! Fifty cents!
Hunt is a hard man to figure out.
Few journalists have even tried. The real personality of
this now long dead Puritan who was 74 in 1963 lies hidden behind a few
cautious descriptions:
"As rich as Croesus, as shrewd as
a riverboat gambler, as tight as a new pair of shoes . .
."
"He thinks communism started in
this country when the government took over distribution of
the mail . . ."
"If he had more flair and
imagination, if he were not basically such a damned hick,
he could have been one of the most dangerous men in America."
For gifted psychologist Hugh
Hefner, Hunt is "an irritating enigma."
"No one, not even his own family,
professes to understand him; no one, not even the partners
he's made rich, seems to have any idea what drove him to
amass his vast fortune; and no one, not even Hunt himself,
seems able to explain just what he was trying to
accomplish in the political arena."
Hunt is the incarnation of Texas,
but he was born into a prosperous family in Illinois. He
left home at 15 with a pack on his back and worked for a
time as a lumberjack. At 22, he took his inheritance of a
few thousand dollars and set out for Arkansas, where in 1912
he bought plantation land that hadn't overflowed for 35
years. That year and the next, it overflowed. The following
year World War I broke out and the price of cotton dropped
to 5 cents a pound. Hunt was ruined.
1918 brought a big land boom, and
Hunt sold his plantation and bought more land. Three years
later, he headed for an oil strike in El Dorado, Arkansas
and began trading in leases. He drilled a few wells in the
West Smackover fields and soon owned a hundred wells in
Louisiana, Arkansas, and Oklahoma. In 1930 he went to East
Texas and bought the famous Dad Joiner well, the Number One
Daisy Bradford, which the big oil companies had disregarded.
Before the Second World War, Hunt had made his first
billion, mostly in oil, and re-invested it not only in oil
and natural gas, but also in a multitude of other
undertakings integrated vertically or horizontally, or
completely diversified.
Hunt, at that time, was the nation's biggest
farmer. His business interests covered five continents and
run from drugs to real estate, cotton, cattle, and timber.
It has been estimated that "the Hunt assets are equal to
those of such corporate complexes as General Electric."
Hunt owns and controls companies the names of which have
never been associated with his. His name does not
appear on the list of the 500 largest international
corporations, although he is probably among the top five.
The Hunt Oil Company (incorporated in Delaware in 1934) owns
producing properties in Texas, Louisiana, North Dakota, and
9 more states, as well as undeveloped acreage in 18 other
states, including Alaska. Hunt is behind a multitude of
independent oil companies such as Placid Oil, the Hunt
Petroleum Corp., and Placid International Oil, Ltd.
(incorporated in 1958 in Delaware), with offices and
activities in Australia, the Netherlands, Lebanon, England,
and 17 other countries.
Haroldson Lafayette Hunt had
neither stockholders nor board of directors. He owns 85 to
90% of the shares in all of his companies. (His family
owns the rest.) This 200 lb. six-footer is a latecomer to
politics. Until he was 60, he occupied himself with drilling
his wells and building his empire. He likes to describe
himself as "a registered Democrat who often votes
Republican." The last President of whom he approved was
Calvin Coolidge. He calls Franklin D. Roosevelt "the first
President to institute the struggle of class against class."
Roosevelt also recognized the Soviet Union, thus bearing, in
his view, the responsibility for "the surrender of hundreds
of millions of people into Communist domination." He
violently attacks the "myth of the indispensable man"
created by Franklin D. Roosevelt and reclaimed by Kennedy.
"This myth must be broken if our country is to survive," he
has been quoted as saying. For him, the principal arms of
the "Indispensable Man" of the Sixties were "Communism" and
"taxes." Communism and taxes, it must be said, are the
keys to the mind and activities of Haroldson Lafayette Hunt.
"The United States have been in
charge of the world since World War Two, during which time
the Communists have taken into domination one third of the
world's population.
"Communist activities in the
United States are criminal and can be spoken of along with
other criminal offenses."
"All services to the public
should be abolished in favor of personal enterprise where
they can be more efficiently and economically performed."
Hunt condemns the "strange persons
with a twisted education who would prefer to be defeated."
He also attacks federal welfare programs for "harming the
general public and giving some persons and groups an
advantage over others." He dismisses Social Security as
"thousands of frivolous projects." He declares, "People who
have wealth should use it wisely, in a way that will do
society the most good. They should be careful that in making
supposedly charitable gifts, their money will not be used to
destroy or impair the American system and promote atheism."
For Hunt, Kennedy's assault on the
tax privileges enjoyed by the oil industry were "criminal
offenses" against "the American system. Depletion allowances
are necessary for irreplaceable resources. The increased net
income for the Government from their elimination would
finance the Government 3 or 4 days per year . . ." he
declares, adding, "We are losing the right to keep a fair
share of the money we earn and a fair share of the profits
we make."
Hunt's letterhead describes him as
an "operator." He considers himself one of the best
poker players in the country, and he probably is. He has
always placed his reliance on competent technicians.
His personal bodyguard is made up of former FBI agents.
Years ago he acquired the habit of acting through
intermediaries. He has his own intelligence network,
and his decisions are carried out by a powerful general
staff. His business interests are so extensive that he
subsidizes (along with other important oilmen) most of the
influential men in Congress, men like Lyndon Johnson. Hunt
was one of the financial backers of Senator Joseph McCarthy
and his war on American Communism,
whose deputy Roy Cohn attracted his attention and has since
worked for him on several occasions.
Hunt is the most powerful American
propagandist of the Far Right. In 1951 he financed "Facts
Forum," a series of radio and television programs which was
later replaced by "Life Line," a one-sided series of
15-minute radio broadcasts carried daily on 409 stations
throughout the country. His propaganda campaign costs him $2
million a year and is financed by companies that he owns, or
on which he is in a position to exert pressure.
Hunt's brand of anti-Communism has
found support in the military camp. In 1952, Hunt supported
the "MacArthur for President" campaign, and he has called
MacArthur "truly the man of this century." He was also
impressed by the MacArthur-trained group of strategists. He once declared, "We should do whatever our
generals advise us to do."
Beginning in 1952, several
influential military men, flattered by Hunt's attention and
conscious of his power, acquired the habit of consulting and
confiding in him. Thus General George C. Kenney (born in
1889), former Commanding General of the Strategic Air
Command, who retired from the Air Force in 1951, told him of
his personal plan for knocking out Russia's nuclear
capacity, based on the strategy of a preventive strike.
General Albert C. Wedemeyer (born in 1897), author of the "Wedemeyer
Reports" and an active member of the John Birch Society, retired from the Army in 1951, and Admiral James
Van Fleet (born in 1892 and retired from the Navy in 1953) were among the specialists consulted by Hunt, who
shared their passion for strategy and extermination.
The advent of Kennedy and McNamara created a stir among the
military, and there were many retirements and dismissals.
The leader of this warrior clan was
General Edwin A. Walker (born in 1909), a Texan who returned
to Dallas after leaving the Army and contacted H. L. Hunt.
Then, with the support of the John Birchers, the
Minutemen, and several of his former subordinates in the US
forces in Germany, he launched an extremist and militarist
campaign. Robert A. Surrey, Walker's "associate," had the
financial backing of Hunt's companies. In 1962 ex-General
Walker ran for Governor of Texas but was defeated by John Connally, whereupon he plunged headlong into a campaign of
politico-economic action. By the winter of 1962-63, plans
were being made for a preventive strike.
Hunt is the Big Man in Texas, the
Giant, the richest and the stingiest, the most powerful
and the most solitary of the oilmen. He has always shied
away from the other Texas and Louisiana oil producers, men
like Michel Halbouty, Ray Hubbard, R. E. Smith, Algur H.
Meadows, Jake Hamon, Kay Kimbell, O. C. Harper, C. V.
Lyman, J. P. Gibbins, Ted Wiener, Thomas W. Blake, John W.
Mecom, Billy Byars and Morgan Davis, but they have interests
in common. Only the solidarity of the oil industry and, in
some cases, fear kept certain habitués of the Fort Worth
Petroleum Club, the Bayou and International Clubs in
Houston, the Club Imperial, the Cipango Club and the Public
Affairs Luncheon Club of Dallas from talking in the months
and weeks preceding November 22. Instead, they let matters
take their course.
The opinions and the
aversions of obstinate old men often lead to excesses.
Embittered puritan potentates frightened to see their lives
drawing to an end are an even greater danger.
Representatives Bruce Alger and Joe Pool stopped up their
ears. In the streets of Texas, "Knock Out the Kennedys"
stickers were already appearing on bumpers and windshields.
Hunt liked to say, "It is through weakness -- not strength
-- that we lose esteem in the world."
FAST FORWARD: At 12:23 on
November 22, from his office on the 7th floor of the
Mercantile Building, Haroldson Lafayette Hunt watched John
Kennedy ride towards Dealey Plaza, where fate awaited him at
12:30. A few minutes later, escorted by six men in two cars,
Hunt left the center of Dallas without even stopping by his
house.
At that very moment; General Walker
was in a plane between New Orleans and Shreveport.
He joined Mr. Hunt in one of his secret hideaways across the
Mexican border. There they remained for a month, protected
by personal guards, under the impassive eyes of the FBI. It
was not until Christmas that Hunt, Walker and their party
returned to Dallas.
In February, 1964, Elgin E. Crull,
Dallas City Manager, declared, "The vast majority of people
in Dallas were affected by the murder of the President as
they would have been by a sudden, violent death in their own
family." But he added, "When life resumed its regular
rhythm, there was general agreement that the actions of two
maverick gunmen -- the alleged assassin and his slayer --
would not impede the dynamic growth of Big D."
See also: Halliburton Is Houston's 'Greater
Hermann G? Werke' for
details on the relationship between H. L. Hunt, Halliburton,
Brown & Root and Permindex, the company with which Guy
Bannister - accused by Jim Garrison of being involved in the
plot to assassinate John F. Kennedy - was associated.
According to the Nomenclature of
an Assassination Cabal manuscript written under the nom de
plume "William Torbitt," both Halliburton and George and
Herman Brown were among the principal financiers of
Permindex, along with Jean de Menil, mob lawyer Roy Cohn,
Dallas oilman H.L. Hunt, and others.
The Vice President and his
neo-con allies such as Defense Secretary Donald Rumseld,
Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, et al., are agents of a
power which is committed to eliminating the principles
espoused in the Declaration of Independence and the
Constitution, in favor of a global bankers' dictatorship.
This same oligarchic power, acting through merchant banks
like Lazard Fr貥s and Rothschild and other financial
institutions, controls a large swath of Wall Street and
corporate America, including Halliburton. Halliburton's
power does not flow from Cheney, but from Cheney's
backers, the Synarchist bankers. Cheney's policy toward
the people of Iraq is the same as Halliburton's policy
toward its asbestos claimants, and the same as G?g's
policy toward the people in the Nazi work camps.
Arbeit Macht Frei (Work Makes You
Free) read the sign over the entrance to Auschwitz. It was
an example of G?g's "big lie" tactic in action. The Cheney
cabal's pronouncements that we must accept police-state
tactics in our own nation and pre-emptive strikes against
other nations in the name of freedom, rings just as false.
Hermann G?g would be proud. ...
Halliburton also has strong
intelligence ties, notably through the presence on its
board from 1977 through 2000 of the King Ranch's Anne
Armstrong, who chaired the President's Foreign
Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB) from 1981 until 1990,
in addition to a stint as U.S. Ambassador to Great
Britain, and her long-standing role as chairman of the
executive committee at the Center for Strategic and
International Studies (CSIS), a powerful Washington
think-tank.
Armstrong's successor as
Halliburton's top spook is Ray Hunt, one of five Dresser
directors to join the Halliburton board. Hunt, the son of
reputed Permindex funder H.L. Hunt, was appointed to the
PFIAB by President George W. Bush in October 2001. Oilman
Hunt is also a trustee of the CSIS and a director of the
King Ranch, suggesting that Hunt is taking the retiring
Armstrong's spot in a long-standing Texas intelligence
network. Hunt is also a trustee of the George Bush
Presidential Library and a former chairman of the Federal
Reserve Bank of Dallas.
See:
Top-secret cronies
(click back to return)
Bush has stacked his foreign advisory board with his Texas
business pals, who stand to profit from access to CIA and
military intelligence.
November 17, 2005 | No discussion
of cronyism in the Bush administration would be complete
without talking about PFIAB, short for the President's
Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. George W. Bush's
latest appointments to the PFIAB, which advises the
president on how various intelligence agencies are
performing, represent a who's who of the Halliburton-Texas
Rangers-oil business crony club that made Bush into a
millionaire and helped propel him into the White House...
Created in 1956 by President
Dwight Eisenhower, the PFIAB is designed -- according to
the White House press release -- to give the president
"objective, expert advice." In an ideal world, the PFIAB
members would analyze the intelligence they get and give
the president their unvarnished opinions about the
relative merits of the different agencies and the work
they are doing. PFIAB members are granted access to
America's most secret of secrets, known as SCI, for Sensitive
Compartmented Information. Members of PFIAB have security
clearances that are among the highest in the U.S.
government. They have access to intelligence that is
unavailable to most members of Congress. They are privy to
intelligence from the Central Intelligence Agency, the
National Security Agency, the military intelligence
agencies and others.
Everything that members do as
part of PFIAB is done in secrecy. None of the information
that they discuss or view is available to the public. They
are not subject to the Freedom of Information Act. And
unlike other public servants who work for the president,
there is no public disclosure of the PFIAB members'
financial interests...
For Bush, it appears that
campaign cash counts far more than expertise. And few
backers have given Bush's campaigns more cash than Ray
Hunt, son of the legendary Dallas billionaire bigamist
oilman H.L. Hunt. PFIAB membership is a plum position for
Hunt, who raised about $100,000 for Bush during the 2000
campaign and also served as the finance chairman of the
Republican National Committee.
Hunt's position at PFIAB may
benefit a familiar entity in the Bush crony network:
Halliburton, which is doing billions of dollars' worth of
reconstruction and logistics work for the U.S. government
in Iraq and on the Gulf Coast. Hunt sits on Halliburton's
board of directors. He got his spot on the Halliburton
board in 1998 while Dick Cheney was running the company.
As soon as Hunt got on the Halliburton board, he was put
on its compensation committee, where he helped determine
Cheney's pay, (click back
to return).
Indeed, in 1998, Hunt's committee decided that Cheney
deserved a bonus of $1.1 million and restricted stock
awards of $1.5 million on top of his regular salary of
$1.18 million.
Hunt has been on the PFIAB since
2001. Presumably, months ahead of everyone else, he had
access to intelligence indicating that the Bush
administration was going to invade Iraq -- information
that could have been of value to certain oil service
companies with operations in the Middle East.... the
decision to appoint Hunt [and other cronies] is part of
the "familiar pattern that we've seen so often with this
administration: The president's pals and supporters are
esteemed more highly than those who have genuine
competence." He continues: "These people aren't the best
and the brightest. They are the best connected. And the
quality of our government suffers as a result."
Secret Service
If they are to conquer, prophets
must have attentive partisans to protect them from the
tumult. (Mohammed)
The decision had been made, the
money raised. The political visionaries made way for the
politicians. It was time to make plans. It isn't enough
to want to kill the President. There is also the Secret
Service to think about. The Presidential assistants were
prepared to affront political obstacles, but their "grace
and their airy flanerie" had shielded them from the
brutal side of American life. Innocent of violence and
ignorant of hate, they failed to see the danger. Only Daniel
P. Moynihan, a former longshoreman, had some idea of such
things. Of all the Cabinet officials, only Bob Kennedy knew
the risks of the Presidency. But he couldn't be behind his
brother every minute of the day.
Kennedy himself did little to
discourage them. He was tolerant, he liked people, and he
had a firm belief in his destiny. His boisterous
sophisticated cronies were barely conscious of the feelings
aroused by the President's revolutionary action, and they
paid little heed to his protection. Ken O'Donnell, who was
in charge of the White House staff, had authority not only
over the personnel, but also over the Secret Service. He
could transfer or fire anyone he wanted, and he had the
power, to introduce reforms. He was also in charge of the
President's trips.
O'Donnell is the soul of integrity,
and, as he liked to say, he would have given his life for
the President. He would have done better to protect him. It
is surprising to realize that this man, chosen by Kennedy
for his intellectual ability, acted without thinking. As he
said one day to Jerry Behn, in his mind, "politics and
protection don't mix." He was mistaken. It is a difficult
and dangerous combination, but it is possible.
O'Donnell, though an excellent
administrator, was a weak man, and he was unsure of himself.
This became evident after the President's death at Parkland
Hospital when, as the highest-ranking White House official
present with the exception of President Johnson, he proved
himself incapable of doing anything more than "standing off
to one side and eyeing the medical examiner icily" when the
latter opposed the removal of President Kennedy's body. It
became all the more evident when, after behaving rudely
towards the new President during the plane trip back to
Washington (which was perhaps his right), he agreed to serve
on his staff. It was he who kicked up such a fuss, only the
day after the assassination, about a Boston funeral, proving
once and for all that John Kennedy was for him more a friend
than a President. He was so happy to have such a man as a
friend that he gave too little thought to his enemies. We
know how much these words may hurt Ken O'Donnell, and how
unjust they may appear, but we imagine that O'Donnell must
be blaming himself.
The 56 Secret Service agents
assigned to the White House detail were under the authority
of the Treasury Department, but the responsible official,
Assistant Treasury Secretary Robert Wallace, left the
everyday direction of the Service to James Rowley, a
mediocre civil servant. Gerald Behn, head of the White House
Secret Service detail, lacked the necessary intelligence and
qualifications for the job.
Three Presidents before Kennedy had
been assassinated (Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley), and
four others (Jackson, Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt and
Truman) had escaped assassination. This record, unequaled in
any other stable republic, should have inspired the Secret
Service to extra vigilance. Margaret Truman's overzealous
bodyguards caused trouble in Sweden, which has some of the
toughest policemen in the world. Eisenhower's trips abroad
were meticulously organized. But since the advent of
television, the protection of the President on American soil
had become a difficult job. So that the public could see the
President, his bodyguards were banished from the
running-boards of the Presidential car. At first they ran
alongside it; later they rode on the back bumper. But nobody
tried to kill Eisenhower during his two terms in office, and
the Secret Service relaxed. Its relaxation was doubly
dangerous, for the illusion remained that the President was
well-protected.
It is difficult, of course, to
protect an active President, and it is impossible to protect
him completely during his public appearances. But there are
ways to reduce the risk, and there are certain rules which
are applied by Presidential security forces throughout the
world, be it in France, the USSR, or Bolivia. The protection
of the President within the United States presents a
special problem. The Secret Service is obliged to cooperate
with the local police, which are sometimes incompetent or
unreliable, and can even, as in Dallas, be dangerous. But
a Presidential security force should be able to rise to the
challenge. The guerrilla warfare specialists who organized
the Dallas ambush were amazed to discover that Kennedy's
Secret Service worked like a troop of boy scouts.
Since its creation following the
assassination of McKinley in 1901, the Secret Service had
degenerated into a myth and a sinecure. In the first place,
it wasn't secret. O'Donnell used Secret Service agents as
errand boys, and at airport stops they handed out souvenirs
to the crowds. They all dressed alike in blue suits with
white shirts and striped ties, and during Presidential trips
they each wore an identical badge. The insignia for the
Texas trip was known three weeks in advance: double white
bars on a red background.
Several members of the White House
detail were not qualified for their jobs. Their average age
was 40, and as in the Senate the highest positions were
awarded on the basis of seniority. Bill Greer, the driver of
the Presidential Lincoln, was 54 and had 35 years'
experience, enough to lull anybody's reflexes. After
O'Donnell and perhaps Kellerman (the agent who rode in the
front of the President's car in Dallas), Greer bears a heavy
responsibility for the success of the assassination. We
shall explain why a little later.
Finally, the Secret Service lacked
direction. A security force must follow certain procedures
and apply certain regulations without exception. The White
House agents had no real leader. During Roosevelt's term in
office, Frank J. Wilson ruled with authority, but the Secret
Service chiefs who succeeded him were nothing but mediocre
bureaucrats.
The White House agents had two sessions a
year on a Washington firing range, but they practiced only
target shooting like any amateur. Their reflexes were never
tested. At any rate, a security agent's gun is of secondary
importance. Generally, he has no time to shoot. His job is
to anticipate an attempt on the President's life. Soviet
security agents, for instance, have narrowly defined
responsibilities. In official motorcades, one agent watches
the windows on the first floor, another those on the second,
another the spectators in the front row, still another the
people standing alone, another the local policemen and a
sixth the soldiers lining the road. Every time a Soviet
official travels, his security agents run down a checklist
of security precautions. No detail is omitted, and there are
no exceptions. The same is true in France for the protection
of President De Gaulle.
Lawson, the Secret Service advance
man in Dallas, let the local authorities show him around the
city, and his report reached the White House only the day
before the President's departure. A secretary whose
married boss is planning an amorous weekend in Miami takes
more precautions than Ken O'Donnell did for John Kennedy in
Texas. Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963 was about
as heavily guarded as the Grand Canyon on a winter day, and
Robert Kennedy's bodyguards showed little more vigilance on
June 5, 1968. Of course, as the Warren Commission Report
points out, "the limited effectiveness of the Secret Service
make it impossible to watch hundreds of buildings and
thousands of windows." That, however, is not the problem.
There is a standard procedure for
assuring the security of a motorcade traversing a city. As
Superintendent Ducret, the man responsible for President De
Gaulle's security, describes it: "Of course, it is
impossible to watch everything and occupy everything along
the President's route. But it can be assumed that occupied
office or apartment buildings are relatively safe. A
potential assassin might, of course, try to enter one of
these buildings, but he would be at the mercy of a witness.
Serious conspirators will rarely take such a risk.
"On the other hand, all
unoccupied buildings, administrative buildings outside of
working hours, warehouses, building sites, and naturally
all bridges, walls, and vacant lots that would be ideal
for an ambush must not only be watched, but actually
occupied by forces placed directly under the supervision
of the Presidential security division."
Surrounded by five
buildings and a great deal of open ground, Dealey Plaza
was the most dangerous spot on President Kennedy's route,
but a few men would have sufficed to guard it effectively.
A representative of the Committee
followed the President's trips at the end of September
through Wisconsin, North Dakota, Wyoming, Montana,
Washington, Utah, Oregon, Nevada and California. Apparently
the Committee planned to assassinate Kennedy, first in
Chicago and then in Florida the week before his trip to
Texas, but both times the Secret Service was alerted. The
Chicago trip was canceled, and special precautions were
taken in Miami (the President used a helicopter). The
Committee would have preferred to act in Florida, but it had
its doubts about the reliability of the Florida state police
and the Tampa and Miami police departments, and the
operation was postponed until Dallas on November 22.
On November 21, the two men in
charge of the ambush observed the Kennedy motorcade in
Houston. In Texas, as in Utah, the Secret Service was
entirely dependent upon the local police. Not only did the
agents behave on these trips as if they were members of the
party; they were always one step ahead. At 12:30 pm, seconds
before the assassination, agent Emory Roberts jotted in his
shift report, "12:35 pm, the President arrived at the Trade
Mart." The Secret Service was already thinking ahead to
tomorrow, when Kennedy was to visit Lyndon Johnson on his
ranch.
Every time the President travels,
the Protective Research Section makes a security check
of the area. The PRS had reservations about the Florida trip
because of the large number of Cuban refugees and the rumors
of an assassination attempt, but it issued no warning about
Texas. The Secret Service, therefore, took no special
precautions. The security measures taken in Dallas were the
same as those in effect in New York, Palm Beach, Tampa,
Miami, Houston and Fort Worth. The Secret Service could
count on the reinforcement of its 28 agents in Texas,
including 5 based in Dallas. Eight agents were assigned to
guard the Trade Mart, but there were none at all at Dealey
Plaza. The Secret Service was so unconcerned about the Texas
trip that it even left its chief behind. At the time of the
assassination, Jerry Behn was dining in a Washington
restaurant. Roy Kellerman, who took his place at Dallas,
proved so incompetent that at Parkland Hospital his men
started taking orders from agent Emory Roberts. Later,
during the flight back to Washington, Rufus Youngblood took
over. These men had traveled 200,000 miles with the
President. Somewhere along the line, they had neglected the
first rule of security: they had lost their reflexes or were
told to back off?
When the first shot rang out at Dealey
Plaza, agent Clint Hill, who was later decorated, was the
first to move, and it took him 7 or 8 seconds to react. In
eight seconds, the average sprinter can cover 80 yards. Yet
"Halfback," the back-up car in which Hill was riding, was
almost touching the Presidential limousine, and neither
vehicle was traveling more than 12 miles an hour.
Kennedy's Secret Service agents
apparently had no idea of the importance of a second in an
assassination attempt. Agent Hickey, riding in Halfback, had
an AR-15 automatic rifle on his lap, but it took him two
seconds to load it and get ready to fire. In two seconds a
modern bullet travels more than a mile.
The organizers of the ambush knew,
of course, that the Secret Service was inefficient, but they
had never imagined that their reflexes were that slow, and
they had laid their plans in the assumption that Kennedy's
agents would react immediately. The tactical and ballistic
aspects of the operation, which we shall examine later, were
based on a hypothetical operating time of three seconds.
This was the estimated reaction time of Kennedy's
bodyguards. But the President's driver could have reduced it
even more. The President's car was a Lincoln with a souped-up
engine specially designed for rapid accelerations, and we
shall see later how speed affects the accuracy of a gunman.
On November 18 in Tampa, the
President ordered the two Secret Service agents off the back
bumper of his car. The men from the Committee noted this
change, which persisted at Fort Worth, San Antonio and
Houston, but they maintained their original plan, which took
into account the possibility of instantaneous intervention
by the bodyguards.
The blame must be laid not so much
on the Secret Service agents as on their chiefs, and on the
White House assistant responsible for the President's
security. We have cited only their most glaring errors, but
there were others -- less important perhaps, but
characteristic of their lack of discipline, such as their
drinking on duty. (11) Abraham Bolden, the only Negro in the
Presidential bodyguard, asked to testify before the Warren
Commission on the subject of some of these accusations, but
the Committee refused to hear him. Later, he was fired from
the Secret Service on grounds of professional
incompetence.(12)
The Secret Service was
guilty of negligence, as the highly respected Wall Street
Journal commented. But its agents were professionals, and
they recognized the work of other professionals. They were
the first in the President's entourage to realize that the
assassination was a well organized plot. They discussed it
among themselves at Parkland Hospital and later during the
plane ride back to Washington. They mentioned it in their
personal reports to Secret Service Chief James Rowley that
night. Ten hours after the assassination, Rowley knew that
there had been three gunmen, and perhaps four, at Dallas
that day, and later on the telephone Jerry Behn remarked to
Forrest Sorrels (head of the Dallas Secret Service), "It's a
plot." "Of course," was Sorrel's reply. Robert Kennedy, who
had already interrogated Kellerman, learned that evening
from Rowley that the Secret Service believed the President
had been the victim of a powerful organization.
President Kennedy was dead, but the
Secret Service was never officially inculpated. There were
several staff changes in the White House detail, but two
agents, Youngblood and Hill, were decorated. Because it
reinforced its thesis, the Warren Commission blamed the
Presidential guards, but a soldier is worth no more than his
commanding officer, and the heads of the Secret Service were
not worth much.
As for Ken O'Donnell, ex-captain of
the Harvard rugby team, at Dallas he was up against a team
that played rough.
NOTES: Texans
1. Discovered by the Dalmatian
engineer Luchich. His associates Galey and Guffey eased him
out and formed a partnership with the richest man in Western
Pennsylvania, Andrew W. Mellon. Other petroleum properties
near Spindletop were ceded to certain Texas politicians in
exchange for their support, in particular to former Governor
Jim Hogg. This concession gave birth to the Texas Company.
Spindletop was also the birthplace of American Shell. After
a time, Andrew Mellon eased out Guffey and reorganized his
company under the name of Gulf Oil.
2. WASHINGTON, Jan. 9, 1968 (UPI)
-- President Johnson's home state of Texas, which only a few
years ago ranked seventh among states getting prime defense
contracts, now has nosed out New York for no. 2 spot,
Pentagon showed today.
California still holds along lead
in first place, but its percentage of total contract awards
during the fiscal year that ended last June 30 has now
slipped to 17.9. Texas got 9.5 percent of the contracts and
New York 8.7 percent.
During fiscal 1966, the percentages
were: California 18.3, New York 8.9, and Texas 7.2. And as
recently as 1962, the percentages for the three were:
California 23.9, New York 10.7, and Texas 4.0, with
Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey and Ohio ahead of
Texas that year.
But Texas has moved up steadily
since Mr. Johnson moved into the White House, thanks in
large part to the controversial F-111 fighter-bomber
(formerly the TFX).
Nearly a third of the contracts
Texas received during fiscal 1967 -- just under $1.2 billion
worth -- were for the F-111, which is being produced by
General Dynamics Corp. at Fort Worth.
3. Texas is the fifth state in the
nation in terms of population (after New York, California,
Pennsylvania, and Illinois), but it is by far the richest in
terms of natural resources. In 1963, the mineral production
of Texas totaled $4,413,084,000.
Texas accounts for 35% of the crude
oil and 42% of the natural gas produced in the United
States. Louisiana, whose petroleum resources are exploited
in large part by companies based in Texas, produced
$2,662,061,000 worth of mineral products. The combined oil
production of Texas and Louisiana equals 35% of the national
total.
4. This percentage was only 12.7%
for the state of New York, and 10. I% for the state of
Illinois, despite their poorer natural resources.
5. Texas (10,228,000 inhabitants
and a revenue of $21,451 billion in 1963) had in 1964
121,376 federal employees, 24 times more than the state of
Wyoming (339,000 inhabitants and a revenue of $834 million,
and 5,175 federal employees), and 17 times more than the
state of Nevada (389,000 inhabitants, $1,246 million in
revenue, and 7,039 federal employees). Ohio, with a
population and revenue comparable to Texas (10,000,000
inhabitants and $25,164 billion) had only 88,785 federal
employees. As for Delaware (480,000 inhabitants), it had
only 3,624 federal employees, more than 40 times fewer than
Texas, for there is a certain minimum of personnel required
by any administrative infrastructure.
Statistics concerning the increase
in federal employees per state since 1939 provide a further
illustration of the favoritism shown the state of Texas:
The number of Federal Employees from 1939 to 1960:
|
Texas |
1939: |
29,818 |
|
|
1960: |
112,647 (increase of 380%) |
|
Wyoming |
1939: |
3,335 |
|
|
1960: |
4,695 (increase of 140%) |
|
Nevada |
1939: |
3,053 |
|
|
1960: |
5,842 (increase of 190%) |
|
New York |
1939: |
97,155 |
|
|
1960: |
179,784 (increase of 190%) |
6. 17,744 miles. California has
9,653 miles of highways, New York 10.700. Illinois 10,995.
7. In Texas, the Justice of the
Peace is an elected magistrate, and not, as in the East, a
minor functionary.
8. In the city of Dallas alone,
there were 120 "official" murders in 1960, and 810
"accidents."
9. Texas ranks 39th in the nation
in terms of the amount spent on education.
High school graduates in 1963:
Texas -- 0.8% ; Mississippi -- 1%
High school students in 1964: Texas
-- 6% ; Mississippi -- 10%
10. The population of Texas is 80%
Protestant, 19% Catholic, and 1% Jewish.
11. The state of Illinois has 1,030
banks, New York 479, and California 200.
12. Incomes in 1964;
Texas ranks in the nation;
less than $2,000 13th
$2,000 to $3,000 17th
$3,000 to $4,000 17th
$4,000 to $5,000 30th
$5,000 to $6,000 38th
$6,000 to $7,000 34th
$7,000 to $9,000 33rd
$10,000 and over 30th
13. Nevertheless, there is a strong
opposition to the oil interests in Texas. It is made up of
people who are more interested in the good of their country
than the state of their pocketbooks, and who are more
American than Texan, together with a certain number of
progressive labor leaders. But this opposition comprises
only one-third of the voters.
14. Contrary to the statistics
published by Fortune in March 1968, which place John Paul
Getty and Howard Hughes at the top of the list.
15. Hunt has written three other
books of the same type: Fabians Fight Freedom, Why Not
Speak? and Hunt for Truth. He also writes a daily and weekly
newspaper column.
16. Bainbridge, The
Super-Americans.
17. Playboy, 1966.
18. The assets of General Electric,
the fourth largest American corporation, equaled $4,851,
718,000 in 1966, or one-third of the assets of Standard Oil
of New Jersey, the largest corporation in the world, more
than Standard Oil of California, and half again as much as
American Shell or Standard of Indiana.
19. The man who was probably the
richest oil producer after Hunt, Roy Cullen of Quintana
Petroleum, had only about a million dollars.
20. The Dallas headquarters of
Placid Oil are located at 2500 First National Bank Building.
H. L. H. Products are located at 700 Mercantile Bank
Building, but most of Hunt's businesses are grouped at 1401
Elm Street: Hunt Oil Co., Hunt Petroleum Corp., Hunt
Caroline Trust Estate, Hunt H. L., Hunt H. L. Jr., Hunt
Hassie Trust, Hunt International Petroleum Company, Hunt
Lamar, Hunt Lamar Trust Estate, Hunt Margaret Trust Estate,
Hunt N. B., Hunt Nelson Bunker, Hunt W. H., Hunt William
Herbert Trust Estate, etc.
21. Described by the Internal
Revenue Service as a person "who holds the management and
exploitation rights and is responsible for production
costs."
22. Not only the Placid Oil Corp.
of Shreveport, but Baker Oil Tools (Dallas and California),
the Harry W. Bass Drilling Co. (Dallas), the Empire Drilling
Co. (Dallas), the Mid-Continent Supply Co., United Tools,
the Hudson Engineering- Corp., the Nation and Geophysical
Co., the New Seven Falls Co., and the First City National
Bank of Dallas.
23. Which included former Generals
like Courtney Whitney and Bonner Fellows, and also certain
of their disciples, such as the brilliant Lawrence Bunker.
24. Texas had as many as ten John
Birch Society chapters, mainly in Dallas and Houston.
25. Commander of the China Theater
(1944-46), Chief of Staff of Generalissimo Chiang Kai Shek,
then Deputy Chief of Staff for Plans and Combat Operations
(1947-48).
26. Commander of the US Naval
Forces in Korea (1948-50).
27. Of which he, like General
Wedemeyer, was a member.
28. Hunt lives modestly, buys
ready-made suits, drives his own standard-make cars,
dislikes private planes, cuts his own hair, and carries his
lunch to work in a brown paper bag.
NOTES: Secret Service
1. We estimate the cost of the
preparation, the assassination itself and the
post-assassination clean-up at between $5 and $10 million.
Contributions varied between $10,000 and $500,000, and there
were about 100 beneficiaries.
2. Manchester, Death of a
President.
3. When the President travels
abroad, the police of the host country are responsible for
his security. In general, they take greater precautions than
those taken in the United States.
4. The California and New York
police are considered relatively reliable.
5. Secret Service agents are less
qualified on the average than FBI agents. They earned between
$600 and $1,000 a month, considerably less (even with
overtime pay) than J. Edgar Hoover's men.
6. The security officers charged
with the protection of President De Gaulle even take the
precaution of photographing the VIPs received by him or who
are in contact with him, for example at the VIP Waiting Room
at Orly Airport. The crowds lining the streets during a
parade are also photographed at vital spots before he
passes, and if De Gaulle stops and approaches the crowd, a
camera follows his every move. Later, these photographs are
carefully studied.
Whenever De Gaulle travels by car,
he is protected by 47 motorcycle policemen spread out in
rows. Several police cars precede and follow the
Presidential vehicle, and the car immediately following the
President contains a sharpshooter and a photographer
equipped with an automatic Japanese camera similar to a
Robot. When de Gaulle makes shorter, routine trips, he is
protected by a smaller force of 8 motorcycle policemen who
surround the car.
There were only 4 motorcycle
policemen at Dallas and all were following President
Kennedy's car, making them totally ineffective. The role of
a motorcycle policeman in this case is (1) to make it
difficult to fire at the President from a crowd, and (2) to
stop anyone who tries from approaching the car. During a
parade along the Champs Elysees in Paris, a woman somehow
managed to climb over the barriers and started towards De
Gaulle's car. She was carrying a bouquet of flowers and was
completely harmless, but the policeman who was supposed to
be watching the barriers at that point lost his job.
7. The Texas School Book
Depository, the Dal-Tex Building, the Dallas County Records
Building, the Criminal Courts, and the Old Court House.
8. The Committee was also probably
trying to throw the Secret Service off the scent.
9. The Protective Research Section,
headed by Robert I. Bouck, had 65 offices across the country
and 50,000 files on people who had threatened the President.
Between November 1961 and November 1963, it investigated 34
Texas residents and opened 115 other files on Texans. On
November 8, 1963, the PRS spent ten minutes inspecting
Dallas.
10. Clint Hill reached the back of
the President's car 2.6 seconds after the final shot. The
shooting lasted about 7 seconds. At least twelve seconds
elapsed between the first shot and the instant when Hill was
in a position to cover the President's body. Vice-President
Johnson was covered by agent Youngblood in less than three
seconds.
11. Several Secret Service agents
were notorious alcoholics. The regulations stipulate that
any Secret Service agent found drinking on duty will be
fired forthwith, and when the President is traveling, his
agents are on duty 24 hours a day. But they were so little
concerned about Texas that four of them In the President's
party sat and drank in a Fort Worth bar until the wee hours
of the morning on the day of the assassination. A century
earlier, President Lincoln's bodyguard had sneaked off for a
drink when Booth entered the Presidential box at Ford's
Theatre.
12. In 1967, Mr. Bolden was being
held at the federal medical center in Springfield, Mo.
_____________________________________________________________________
The Nixon-Bush
Connection
To The Kennedy Assassination
Note: All references to "George Bush"
refer to George Herbert Walker Bush, Father of George "Dubya" Bush who was
"elected" president by a 5 to 4 vote of the Supreme Court in Jan. 2005.
A newly discovered
FBI document reveals that George Bush was directly involved in the 1963
murder of President John Kennedy. The document places Bush working with the
now-famous CIA agent, Felix Rodriguez, recruiting right-wing Cuban exiles
for the invasion of Cuba. It was Bush's CIA job to organize the Cuban
community in Miami for the invasion. The Cubans were trained as marksmen by
the CIA. Bush at that time lived in Texas. Hopping from Houston to Miami
weekly, Bush spent 1960 and '61 recruiting Cubans in Miami for the invasion.
That is how he met Felix Rodriguez.
You may remember
Rodriguez as the Iran-contra CIA agent who received the first phone call
telling the world the CIA plane flown by Gene Hasenfus had crashed in
Nicaragua. As soon as Rodriguez heard that the plane crashed, he called his
long-time CIA supervisor, George Bush. Bush denied being in the contra loop,
but investigators recently obtained copies of Oliver North's diary, which
documents Bush's role as a CIA supervisor of the contra supply network.
In 1988 Bush told
Congress he knew nothing about the illegal supply flights until 1987, yet
North's diary shows Bush at the first planning meeting Aug. 6, 1985. Bush's
"official" log placed him somewhere else. Such double sets of logs are
intended to hide Bush's real role in the CIA; to provide him with "plausible
deniability." The problem is, it fell apart because too many people, like
North and Rodriguez, have kept records that show Bush's CIA role back to the
1961 invasion of Cuba. (Source: The Washington Post, 7/10/90).
That is exactly how
evidence was uncovered placing George Bush working with Felix Rodriguez when
JFK was killed. A memo from FBI head J. Edgar Hoover was found, stating
that, "Mr. George Bush of the CIA had been briefed on November 23rd, 1963
about the reaction of anti-Castro Cuban exiles in Miami to the assassination
of President Kennedy. (Source: The Nation, 8/13/88).
On the day of the
assassination Bush was in Texas, but he denies knowing exactly where he was.
Since he had been the supervisor for the secret Cuban teams, headed by
former Cuban police commander Felix Rodriguez, since 1960, it is likely Bush
was also in Dallas in 1963. Several of the Cubans he was supervising as
dirty-tricks teams for Nixon, were photographed in the Zagruder film.
In 1959 Rodriguez
was a top cop in the Cuban government under Batista. When Batista was
overthrown and fled to Miami, Rodriguez went with him, along with Frank
Sturgis and Rafael Quintero. Officially, Rodriguez didn't join the CIA until
1967, after the CIA invasion of Cuba, in which he participated, and the
assassination of JFK. But records recently uncovered show he actually joined
the CIA in 1961 for the invasion of Cuba when he was recruited by George
Bush. That is how Rodriguez claims he became a "close personal friend of
Bush."
Then "officially"
Rodriguez claims he quit the CIA in 1976, just after he was sent to prison
for his role in the Watergate burglary. However, according to Rolling Stone
reporters Kohn & Monks (11/3/88), Rodriguez still goes to CIA headquarters
monthly to receive assignments and have his blue 1987 bulletproof Cadillac
serviced. Rodriguez was asked by a Rolling Stone reporter where he was the
day JFK was shot, and claims he can't remember.
George Bush claims
he never worked for the CIA until he was appointed director by former Warren
Commission director and then President Jerry Ford, in 1976. Logic suggests
that is highly unlikely. Of course, Bush has a company duty to deny being in
the CIA. The CIA is a secret organization. No one ever admits to being a
member. The truth is that Bush has been a top CIA official since before the
1961 invasion of Cuba, working with Felix Rodriguez. Bush may deny his
actual role in the CIA in 1959, but there are records in the files of
Rodriguez and others involved in the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba that
expose Bush's role. The corporations would not put somebody in charge of all
the state secrets held by the CIA unless he was experienced and well trained
in the CIA. (Source: Project Censored Report, Feb 1989, Dr Carl Jensen,
Sonoma State College).
Recently I
interviewed former CIA liaison officer L. Fletcher Prouty. He is a
consultant for the excellent new movie on how the CIA killed JFK, being made
by Oliver Stone. He told me that one of the projects he did for the CIA was
in 1961 to deliver US Navy ships from a Navy ship yard to the CIA agents in
Guatemala planning the invasion of Cuba. He said he delivered three ships to
a CIA agent named George Bush, who had the 3 ships painted to look like they
were civilian ships. That CIA agent then named the 3 ships after: his wife,
his home town and his oil company. He named the ships: Barbara, Houston &
Zapata. Any book on the history of the Bay of Pigs will prove the names of
those 3 ships. Again, this is more finger prints of George Bush's
involvement in the Bay of Pigs invasion. Yet Bush denies his role in this
great adventure. Why would Bush be so shy about his role in this war? What
is the secret? Is there something dirty about this war that Bush & Nixon
don't want the public to know about?
Answer: Yes there
is. The same people involved in the Bay of Pigs were the people involved in
the Watergate burglary. Why was the Watergate burgalarized [sic]? The CIA
was trying to plug up a possible news leak. They were trying to stop the
Democrats from publishing the photos of Hunt & Sturgis under arrest for the
murder of JFK (May 7, 1977, SF Chronicle.)
Presently, there is
a law suit attempting to force the government to release the records about
the Bay of Pigs invasion. Why are those documents still secret? Why are they
locked in the National Archives along with all the photos from [the] Dallas
assassination of JFK? Why are the 4000 hours of Watergate tapes in which
Nixon is babbling about the mysterious connections between the Bay of Pigs,
Dallas and Watergate also being sealed in the National Archives? Is it
because all three incidents are connected?
Yes. We must demand
the secret files on these 3 cases be released now. For a copy of the
petition to release the files, please write to: Paul Kangas, private
investigator, POB 422644, SF, CA 94142. Thanks to Oliver Stone's blockbuster
new movie on JFK there is now sufficient national movement to reopen all
these cases. The White House fears Stone's new movie so much that they have
hired more CIA journalists to slander the movie & Stone. Don't fall for it.
Every serious investigator now agrees that Oswald did not shoot JFK. That
James Earl Ray did not shoot Dr. Martin Luther King and that Sirhan Sirhan
did not shoot Robert Kennedy. These cases must be reopened so that Sirhan
and Ray can be set free. The only bar that keeps Sirhan in prison is the
tremendous anti-arab racism in Americans: in both blacks & whites.
According to a
biography of Richard Nixon, his close personal and political ties with the
Bush family go back to 1941 when Nixon claims he read an ad in an L A.
newspaper, placed by a wealthy group of businessmen, led by Prescot Bush,
the father of George Bush. They wanted a young, malleable candidate to run
for Congress. Nixon applied for the position and won the job. Nixon became a
mouthpiece for the Bush group. (Source: Freedom Magazine, 1986, L.F.
Prouty).
In fact, Prescot
Bush is credited with creating the winning ticket of Eisenhower-Nixon in
1952.(Source: George Bush, F. Green, Hipocrene, 1988).
Newly discovered
FBI documents prove that Jack Ruby has been an employee of Richard Nixon
since 1947. That that [sic] FBI document Ruby is listed as working as a spy
& hit man for Nixon. On Nov. 22, 63 Ruby was seen by a women who knew him
well, Julian Ann Mercer, approximately an hour before the arrival of JFK's
motorcade, unloading a man carrying a rifle in a case at the Grassy Knoll
from his car. Ruby later was seen on national TV killing a witness who could
link Nixon & Bush to the killing of JFK: Oswald. On the Trail of the
Assassins, Garrison, p xiii.
Richard Nixon was
Vice President from 1952 until 1960. In fact, Nixon was given credit for
planning Operation 40, the secret 1961 invasion of Cuba, during his 1959
campaign for President After Batista was kicked out by the starving people
of Cuba, and Fidel Castro came to power, Castro began telling American
corporations they would have to pay Cuban employees decent wages. Even
worse, Pepsi Cola was told it would now have to pay world market prices for
Cuban sugar.
Pepsi, Ford Motor
Co., Standard Oil and the Mafia drug dealers decided Fidel had to be removed
since his policies of requiring corporations to pay market wages was hurting
their profits. So the corporations asked then Vice-President Nixon to remove
Fidel. Nixon promised he would, just as soon as he'd won the 1960 elections
against some underdog, an unknown Democrat named John Kennedy. It would be
an easy victory for Nixon. The polls had Nixon winning by a landslide.
Besides, Kennedy was a Catholic, and Americans would no more elect a
Catholic President than they would elect a woman, a black or a Jew. This was
1959.
Nixon told Pepsi,
Standard Oil and other corporations who lost property given back to the
farmers of Cuba, that if they would help him win, he would authorize an
invasion to remove Castro. To further impress contributors to his campaign,
then Vice-President Nixon asked the CIA to create Operation 40, a secret
plan to invade Cuba, just as soon as he won.
The CIA put Texas
millionaire and CIA agent George Bush in charge of recruiting Cuban exiles
into the CIA's invasion army. Bush was working with another Texas oilman,
Jack Crichton, to help him with the invasion. A fellow Texan, Air Force
General Charles Cabel, was asked to coordinate the air cover for the
invasion.
Most of the CIA
leadership around the invasion of Cuba seems to have been people from Texas.
A whole Texan branch of the CIA is based in the oil business. If we trace
Bush's background in the Texas oil business we discover his two partners in
the oil-barge leasing business: Texan Robert Mosbacher and Texan James
Baker. Mosbacher is now Secretary of Commerce and Baker is Secretary of
State, the same job Dulles held when JFK was killed. (Source: Common Cause
magazine, 3-4/90).
On the Watergate
tapes, June 23, 1972, referred to in the media as the "smoking gun"
conversation, Nixon and his Chief of Staff, H.R. Haldeman, discussed how to
stop the FBI investigation into the CIA Watergate burglary. They were
worried that the investigation would expose their conection to "the Bay of
Pigs thing." Haldeman, in his book The Ends of Power, reveals that Nixon
always used code words when talking about the 1963 murder of JFK. Haldeman
said Nixon would always refer to the assassination as "the Bay of Pigs."
On that transcript
we find Nixon discussing the role of George Bush's partner, Robert Mosbacher,
as one of the Texas fundraisers for Nixon. On the tapes Nixon keeps refering
to the "Cubans" and the "Texans." The "Texans" were Bush, Mosbacher and
Baker. This is another direct link between Bush and evidence linking Nixon
and Bush to the Kennedy assassination.
In the same
discussion Nixon links "the Cubans," "the Texans," "Helms," "Hunt," "Bernard
Barker," Robert "Mosbacher" and "the Bay of Pigs." Over and over on the
Watergate tapes, these names come up around the discussion of the photos
from Dallas that Nixon was trying to obtain when he ordered the CIA to
burglarize the Watergate. (Source: Three Men and a Barge", Teresa Riordan,
Common Cause magazine, March/April 1990, and San Francisco Chronicle, May
7,1977, interview with Frank Sturgis in which he stated that "the reason we
burglarized the Watergate was because Nixon was interested in stopping news
leaking related to the photos of our role in the assassination of President
John Kennedy.")
After Nixon's
landslide victory in 1972, he knew he had to centralize all power into the
White House to keep his faction in power, not only to hold power, but to
prevent the media from digging into how he secretly shot his way into the
White House, just like Hitler shot his way into control of Germany. The
first thing Nixon did was to demand signed resignations of his entire
government. "Eliminate everyone," he told John Ehrlichman about
reappointment, "except George Bush. Bush will do anything for our cause."
(Source: Pledging Allegiance, Sidney Blumenthal.)
The reason why Bush
will 'do anything" is because his hands have as much of Kennedy's blood on
them as do Nixon's, Hunt's, Sturgis's, Felix Rodriguez's and Gerald Ford's.
This White House gang fears that if the public ever realizes how they shot
their way into power it could set off a spark that would destroy their
fragile fraud and land them in jail.
Other famous
Watergate members of the CIA invasion that Bush recruited were Frank
Sturgis, E. Howard Hunt, Bernard Barker and Rafael Quintero. Quintero has
said publicly that if he ever told what he knew about Dallas and the Bay of
Pigs, "It would be the biggest scandal ever to rock the nation."
Meanwhile, in 1960,
Prescot Bush was running Nixon's campaign. Nixon was sent to South Vietnam
to assure the French-connection government there that if France pulled out,
the U.S. would step in to protect the drug trade from the GoIden Triangle.
(Source: Frontline, 1988, "Guns. Drugs and the CIA"; Alexander Cockburn;
"Cocaine, the CIA and Air America," S.F. Examiner, Feb. 2, '91; The Politics
of Heroin in Southeast Asia, Alfred McCoy, 1972.)
In 1959, Vice
President Nixon was flying all over the world, acting just like presidential
material. It was an easy race for Nixon. Congressman Jerry Ford was doing a
great job fundraising for Nixon, as was George Bush. The rich loved Nixon.
The media picked up every bone Nixon tossed out to them. The biggest problem
was that Nixon was afraid to speak openly of his plan to invade Cuba. The
plan was a secret. No sense in alerting Cuba to the coming invasion. But
Kennedy was taking a harder line on Cuba than Nixon, because Kennedy was not
aware of the corporate/CIA planned invasion.
Nixon lost the 1960
race by the smallest margin in history. At first Bush, Nixon, Cabel and Hunt
decided to just go ahead with the invasion, without informing President
Kennedy. Then, at the last second, at 4 a.m., just two hours before the
invasion was set to go, General Cabel called JFK and asked for permission to
provide U.S. air cover for the CIA invasion. Kennedy said no.
The CIA was furious
with JFK but decided to go ahead with their private invasion anyway. Due to
poor intelligence, the CIA landed at the worst possible beach. A swamp. The
invasion failed. The CIA lost 15 of its best men, killed, with another 1100
in Cuban prisons. It was the worst single blow the CIA ever suffered.
(Source: F. Howard Hunt, Give Us This Day.)
Bush, Nixon and
Hunt blamed Cabel for asking Kennedy and blamed Kennedy for saying no. They
were livid with anger. Nixon's corporate sponsors ordered JFK to make any
deal necessary to recover the 1100 CIA agents imprisoned in Cuba. JFK did.
Once the CIA had its well-trained Cubans back, they decided to continue the
invasion of Cuba just as soon as they could get rid of that S.O.B. Kennedy.
The 1964 election
was fast approaching. Nixon was running against Kennedy again. Bush, Ford
and Nixon knew that they had to get rid of JFK now, or else the Kennedy
clan, with Robert and Ted in the wings, could control the White House until
1984. They decided not to wait until '84 to get back in the White House. The
Cuban teams of "shooters" began following Kennedy from city to city looking
for a window of opportunity to shoot from. They came close in Chicago, but
couldn't get the cooperation of Mayor Daley.
But in Dallas they
had an ace. The mayor was the brother of General Cabel, whom the CIA blamed
for the failure of the invasion. The general prevailed on his brother, Earl,
and the motorcade was changed to pass the grassy knoll at 7 m.p.h. Hunt and
Sturgis shot JFK from the grassy knoll. They were arrested, photographed and
seen by 15 witnesses. But the media turned a blind eye to the photos, and
for 25 years the world has been searching for the truth.
On the day JFK was
murdered, Nixon, Hunt and some of the Watergate crew were photographed in
Dallas, as were a group of Cubans, one holding an umbrella up, like a
signal, next to the President's limo just as Kennedy was shot. The Cubans
can be seen holding up the signal umbrella in the Zapruder film and dozens
of stills taken during the assassination. After the murder they can be seen
calmly walking away.
Nixon denied he was
in Dallas that day, but new photos and stories prove he was there. Nixon
claimed to the FBI he couldn't remember where he was when JFK was killed.
(Source: FBI memo, Feb. 23, 1964, published in Coup d'etat in America,
Weberman & Canfield). Bush, too, claims he can't remember where he was. Jack
Anderson did a TV special in 1988 proving beyond any shadow of doubt that
two of the tramps arrested in Dallas behind the grassy knoll were Hunt and
Sturgis.
After the murder,
former Vice President Nixon asked President Lyndon Johnson to appoint
Nixon's friend, former FBI agent Jerry Ford, to run the Warren Commission.
Nixon also asked LBJ to appoint Nixon's long-time supporter, Judge Earl
Warren, to head the Commission. LBJ agreed. Ford interviewed all the
witnesses and decided which ones would be heard and which ones eliminated.
It is no coincidence that Nixon selected Ford as his Vice President after
Spiro Agnew was ousted. When Nixon himself got busted in the Watergate
scandal, Earl Warren offered to set up another special commission if it
would help get him out of trouble again. Ford, of course, pardoned Nixon for
the Watergate burglary but Nixon is still not out of the woods. There are
4000 hours of Watergate tape. On the June 23, 1972, discussions with John
Ehrlichman and Haldeman there is clear evidence that Nixon is openly
"confessing" to hiring Hunt to kill JFK. That is why the Watergate
"investigation" went into secret session after Congress heard some of the
tapes. This is why only 12 hours of 4000 hours have been released to the
public.
Did Congress
realize that Nixon and Bush had openly discussed killing JFK for stopping
the air cover for the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba? Remember, Nixon taped
virtually every discussion he had with anyone in his inner circle, including
Bush, in order to blackmail people later. There is a photo of Bush reporting
to Nixon in the White House in 1968. It will be interesting to see what they
were talking about on that day, when the full 4000 hours are finally
released. The key to unlocking the secrets behind the 1963 murder of JFK is
hidden in the 3988 hours of unreleased White House tapes. Bush was in Dallas
the day Reagan was shot. (Source: George Bush, F. Green, 1988.) That must
have given Bush a flashback to November 22,1963.
Source:
http://www.sumeria.net/politics/kennedy.html
_____________________________________________________________________
Did you know that if we
could reduce the world's population to a village of precisely 100 people,
with all existing human ratios remaining the same, the demographics would
look something like this:
60 Asians
14 Africans
12 Europeans
8 Latin Americans
5 North Americans and Canadians
Of all of the above, 82 would be non-white and only 18
would be "white."
67 would be non-Christian, or atheists, and only 33 would
be Christian.
5 would control 32% of the entire world's wealth, and
all of them would be US citizens. Mostly Jewish.
80 would live in substandard housing
24 would not have any electricity (And of the 76% that do
have electricity, most would only use it for light at night.)
67 would be unable to read
1 (only one) would have a college education.
50 would be malnourished and 1 dying of starvation.
33 would be without access to a safe water supply.
7 people would have access to the Internet.
If there is a meal in your refrigerator, if you are
dressed and have got shoes, if you have a bed and a roof above your head,
you are better off, than 75% of people in this world.
If you have a bank account, money in your purse and there
is some trifle in your coin box, you belong to 8% of well-provided people in
this world.
If you are able to go to church, mosque or synagogue
without fear of harassment, arrest, torture or death, you are better off
than 50% or 3 billion persons in this world.
I guess you notice that Americans are in the minority
population wise and yet they control the majority of the world's wealth. How
do you think this happened? Divine intervention? An 'enterprising spirit'?
What do you think will happen if that majority of people ever really gets it
in their head that America is an intolerable bully and must no longer be
tolerated? Sure, America could bomb the hell out of the planet and reduce
everyone's lives to a Stone Age existence, but then that would be rather
like cutting off our noses to spite our faces, now wouldn't it?
The acts of John F. Kennedy in the last year - and days -
leading up to his death, extracted from
Farewell America. His words and deeds give us a deep insight as to
how he wished to deal with America's place in the global village; that he
saw the danger and sought to avert just what is happening today: the entire
world is turning against America. As you read his words, and contemplate his
acts, consider them in the light of what we have experienced in America
since his death. We know where the assassins have led us: a world of terror
and heartbreak, of endless war and privation for multiplied millions of
human beings; where would we be today if they had not succeeded in killing
his dream?
_________________________________________________________________________
Notation
on crime and the incapable FBI;
The Cross-dressing FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover presided over the greatest
development of organized crime America has ever seen.
John Edgar Hoover was the son of Dickerson Naylor Hoover,
of German descent, and Annie Marie Schertlin, whose ancestors were Swiss. As
a child, Hoover attended the Lutheran Church until he was in his teens
whereupon he went against his mother's wishes and joined the Presbyterian
Church.
Below Article from; http://www.carpenoctem.tv/mafia/hooverj.html
J. Edgar Hoover
(1895-1972)
FBI Director
Organized crime, the American Mafia and the national crime syndicate were
chartered in the 1920s, concurrent with the establishment of J. Edgar
Hoover's Federal Bureau of Investigation. Both groups - according to former
FBI agent Neil J. Welch and ex-U.S. attorney David W. Marston, in their book
Inside Hoover's FBI - matured in the 1930s. "Although they were presumptive
enemies," the authors suggest, "during their first four decades they
competed primarily for newspaper space."
J. Edgar Hoover was the best FBI director organized crime could ever have
wanted; it was difficult for syndicate members to be antagonized by a law
enforcement official who claimed neither organized crime nor a Mafia existed
in the United States. Without a man like Hoover heading the FBI it is
inconceivable that organized crime and the Mafia could ever have reached the
heights of power, wealth and administrative organization.
Prohibition gave new life to the criminal gangs of an earlier era that had
started to collapse just prior to World War I. Bootlegging brought about the
reconstruction of the gangs.' Suddenly they became so wealthy and powerful
that, instead of being the puppets of the political machines, they pulled
the strings. Illiterate punks became the great robber barons of the 20th
century, and it was these men who provided the muscle to create organized
crime in America (in its truest meaning of a syndicate with interlocking
relationships with other mobs around the country).
To establish a national syndicate, various levels of government officials,
politicians and law enforcement groups were subverted. Aiding in this task
was Hoover, who refused to stalk syndicate gangsters, denying the existence
of such groups as a crime syndicate of Mafia.
Many theories have been offered for Hoover's bizarre behavior, and in each
there is probably at least partial truth. Hoover probably was fearful that,
like other law enforcement agencies that came in contact with organized
crime and the Mafia, the FBI would be tarred with the brush of corruption,
since syndicate criminals had huge funds available for the fix. He preferred
his agents move against such perils to the republic as teenage car thieves.
These were readily apprehended, and he could cite endless if meaningless
statistics to the Senate Appropriations Committee that XXX numbers of cars
worth XXX numbers of dollars were recovered, thus justifying further
expansion of the FBI budget.
One-time number three man in the FBI, William C. Sullivan, stated in his
book, The Bureau: My Thirty Years in Hoover's FBI (published just after his
accidental death): ". . . the Mafia is powerful, so powerful that entire
police forces or even a mayor's office can be under Mafia control. That's
why Hoover was afraid to let us tackle it. He was afraid that we'd show up
poorly. Why take the risk, he reasoned, until we were forced to by public
exposure of our shortcomings." Sullivan, more of less regarded as Nixon's
man in the agency, was most likely to succeed Hoover if Nixon had carried
out his wish to fire Hoover, a step that Nixon drew back from. ("Christ
almighty," Assistant Attorney General Robert Mardian once reported to
Sullivan of an aborted attempt, "Nixon lost his guts.")
In place of fighting organized crime, Hoover lay special emphasis on
relatively easy targets, with a highly publicized war on so-called public
enemies - Dillinger, Ma Barker (who never was charged with any crime),
Pretty Boy Floyd, Machine Gun Kelly (who never fired his gun at anyone in
anger) and other targets more easily hit than the Mafia. "The whole of the
FBI's main thrust," said Sullivan, "was not investigation but public
relations and propaganda to glorify its director."
Historian Albert Fried has written that "Hoover paid so little attention to
organized crime, indeed, so little that one could accuse him of dereliction
of duty." In The Rise and Fall of the Jewish Gangster in America, Fried
contends that Hoover thought organized crime "constituted no immediate
danger to established order. Or, as some have argued, he assumed that the
gang/syndicate members . . . were in fact pillars of the status quo. They at
least had a vested interest in the health of the free enterprise system, in
America's triumph over communism and for that matter over Socialism and
liberalism too - over anything that might remotely threaten their specific
opportunities." Thus, Fried concluded, the more intelligent mobsters a la Al
Capone, Moe Dalitz and Meyer Lansky, were valuable defenders of capitalism
and thus to a certain extent "J. Edgar Hoover's ideological kinsmen."
A Hoover biographer, investigative reporter Hank Missick, carries the idea
even further, declaring, "John Edgar Hoover has received support, as well as
more tangible rewards, from right-wing businessmen who, in turn, have dealt
directly and indirectly with organized crime figures who have not been
disturbed by John Edgar Hoover."
However, the Fried-Messick theses may be granting a depth to Hoover's
motivations that was not really there. The more standard view is that Hoover
simply was too afraid to go after the Mafia and organized crime and
rationalized this fear by claiming: 1) the problem didn't exist and 2)
(falsely) that his agency lacked the authorization to do anything anyway.
This so the argument goes, suffices to explain his reluctance to war on the
syndicate.
Additionally, Hoover regarded some members of organized crime as
"ideological kinsmen" for reasons other than what Fried states. He once told
Frank Costello in the Stork Club, "Just stay out of my bailiwick" and that
he in turn would stay of his. Costello's bailiwick was gambling. Hoover, an
inveterate horse player, was very tolerant of that activity and said, "The
FBI has much more important functions to accomplish than arresting gamblers
all over the country." Only to Hoover was it not apparent that with the end
of Prohibition, gambling became the chief source of revenue to organized
crime, the grease that kept the mob's other rackets functioning - everything
from buying protection from the law to financing enormous narcotics
enterprises - and murder.
Hoover's morning-noon-and-night devotion to duty has always been a bit
exaggerated; within the FBI his disappearances in the afternoon were
legendary. He and his lifelong sidekick Clyde Tolson would head for a
bulletproof car in the courtyard of the Department of Justice after
announcing they were off to work on a case. Actually, they would be on their
way to make the first race at Bowie, Pimlico, Charleston, Laurel, Havre
deGrace - wherever the bangtails were running. Hoover's preoccupation with
the races became so pronounced that he was frequently photographed at the $2
window and had a form letter that was sent out to irate citizens objecting
to his wagering. (He said he was really only interested in the improvement
of the breed and only bet $2 now and then so as not to embarrass his hosts.)
In truth, Hoover played the role of decoy at the $2 window. As Sullivan
stated, and others have confirmed, "He had agents assigned to accompany him
to the track place his real bets at the hundred-dollar window, and when he
won Hoover was a pleasure to work with for days."
But nobody seemed more determined to keep Hoover happy than the boys in the
mob. A happy Hoover was not likely to destroy gamblers and syndic criminals,
and so the mob developed a technique to stroke the FBI kingpin. The key in
this operation was Costello and a mutual friend, gossip columnist Walter
Winchell. Hoover got horse tips from Winchell who got them from Costello
who, in turn, got them from Frank Erickson, the nation's leading bookmaker.
The tips were on "sure things," a term that does not connote in mob
vernacular the best horse in a race as much as the one who was going to win.
Erickson and Costello spelled sure thing: "F-I-X."
This cozy arrangement, corroborated by Winchell staffers, had the desired
effect from Costello's viewpoint. He was a man whom Hoover could not
dislike, one whom he invited for coffee at the Waldorf Astoria. "I got to be
careful of my associates," Costello told him. "They'll accuse me of
consortin' with questionable characters." But as long as Costello provided
Hoover with solid tips - and didn't run with a youth gang heisting cars or
join the Communist Party - he was relatively safe from retribution.
Some may object to the idea of Hoover being influenced so simply by the mob,
through a few race winners, but only a true horseplayer can really
comprehend the warm feelings a gambler has for the man giving him a tip that
stands up.
Whatever the reason, from malfeasance to non-feasance, to laziness, to fear,
to stroking by the mob, J. Edgar Hoover kept right on denying the existence
of organized crime. The charade ended by what FBI agent Welch called "an
accident." The accident was the discovery of the underworld conference at
Apalachin, New York, in 1957. As Welch stated: "The victims of this accident
came in through crime figure Joe Barbara's front door. The lucky ones made
it out into the woods . . . Sixty others left in state police cars. It was
the biggest roundup of organized crime bosses in national history, and it
was an accident."
And another casualty was Hoover. The New York Herald Tribune wondered in an
editorial where Hoover and his FBI were while organized crime was growing in
America. Not even Hoover had the nerve to go on with the line that it didn't
exist. He threw the FBI into a turmoil, demanding his agents now get him off
the hook and prove there was a Mafia and that the bureau had known about it
all the time.
The hot potato was thrown to the research and analysis section and the FBI
was off on an incredible three-decade game of catch-up, learning everything
about the previously-invisible forces of organized crime and the Mafia.
Several agents were put on the research, and one agent, Charles Peck, stayed
in the office every night until 11 or 12, reading no fewer than 200 books on
the Mafia and checking through the New York Times coverage of "organized
crime" for the previous 100 years. The conclusion was inevitable: The Mafia
existed and had operated in America for many decades.
While many FBI agents now felt free to launch investigations against the
mobs, Hoover soon tired of the chase and probably would have eased back on
FBI crackdowns as the heat dissipated. But the appointment in 1961 of Robert
Kennedy as attorney general kept Hoover on his toes. Unlike his
predecessors, who had been fearful of tangling with Hoover, Robert Kennedy
pushed the FBI chief hard; he had to go after the "Cosa Nostra."
When Kennedy resigned office, Hoover saw to it, as Sullivan put it, that
"the whole Mafia effort slacked off again." In fact, the FBI war against the
Mafia remained slack until Hoover's death in 1972. Since then the Mafia and
the FBI have been in a persistent confrontation.
On the day of Hoover's death in 1972 three men, identified to an onlooker as
"Gambino guys from Brooklyn," were leaving Aqueduct Racetrack in New York.
One picked up a copy of the New York Post headlining the FBI chief's demise
and rushed back excitedly to the other two. One of them, clearly the
highest-ranking of the three, kept up a brisk pace and announced with a
shrug of the shoulders: "You know what I feel about this - absolutely
nothing. This guy meant nothing to us one way or other." Quoted by; Herbert
Home, Jewish Mafia
Matching pumps to a print skirt was apparently as important to Hoover as was
catching a crook. Even as of 1967 it had been estimated that 800,000
Americans had been murdered since the turn of the century. Two million
firearms were sold to private citizens in the United States each year.
To learn more about this key cross dressing figure in
American criminal justice history, and to find out about world history,
including Canadian and the history of England, look to the Internet as your
best and most complete resource.
Copyright © 2000 CarpeNoctem. All rights reserved.
Revised: June 2008.
John Fitzgerald Kennedy
The 35th President Of The
United States
Born: May 29, 1917
Assassinated: November 22, 1963
Photo of the Gangster Jack Ruby walking up to and shooting
Oswald surrounded by Dallas Police. He shot him to silence him. Look closely
at Oswald...does this scared little man really look like he just killed the
President of the USA?
