Assessing New JFK Records, Alec Baldwin's Slam Of NBC Cover-up

From these same kind of patriotic and career motives that often prompt leaders, my late mother Margaret Kreig dropped out of college during World War II and became a pioneering female member of the U.S. Marines. She later overcame barriers to women in the workplace to advance from free-lancing to becoming a globe-trotting journalist and best-selling author.

Her books were Green Medicine: The Search for the Plants that Heal and Black Market Medicine, which revealed that the Mafia and other gangsters were counterfeiting prescription drugs, including those intended for serious conditions. The book and her undercover work in cooperation with federal drug agents prompted a congressional invitation for her to be the star witness at a 1967 hearing on then little-known Mafia, whose existence had been revealed in 1963 by informant Joe Valachi but whose true notoriety would not arise until the 1968 Valachi Papers by Peter Maas and The Godfather movies soon afterward.

Black Market Medicine's back jacket with her photo and bio are shown at right.

In the 1960s, she confided at the time to close family, that she occasionally worked with Col. J. Caldwell King, a former Wall Street banker who rose to become chief of the CIA's Western Hemisphere operations. So I don't need academic research to know that the CIA is both connected to Wall Street and works with undercover assets in the professions, business and politics.

King was himself eased out of office in the JFK-induced purge of those responsible for the Bay of Pigs disaster, according to the 1979 book by former State Department intelligence analyst John D. Marks. His book, The Search for the 'Manchurian Candidate': The CIA and Mind Control, further states that King in 1966 became head of a CIA-front company called the Amazon Natural Drug Company, a linkage that raises still-current questions between agency funding of pharmaceutical and academic efforts. 

Controlled News Agendas?

Despite the public's skepticism about the Warren commission's cherry-picked evidence, virtually all major U.S. media outlets have from beginning used their news and opinion columns for the propaganda role of endorsing the report to the public, not independently reporting on the evidence.

Even more important than that history, the media continue to misinform the American public by "reporting" (either directly or by implication) that little of importance is contained in the released JFK documents. The implication is that the story is no longer important. To the contrary, the cover-up remains of utmost importance as a Rosetta Stone to media performance these days, as indicated by Baldwin's anecdote that NBC supports the Warren report despite its almost innumerable flaws.

To suppress research and dissent, the CIA organized its operatives in newsrooms and academia in the 1960s to smear critics of the Warren report as "conspiracy theorists" who should be regarded as unfit to report or teach, according to now-declassified CIA documents.

Most important was a 50-page CIA memo, known as "CIA Dispatch 1035-960," that instructed agents to contact their media contacts and disparage those, like New Orleans District Attorney Garrison, who were criticizing the Warren Commission claim that Oswald alone killed JFK. The 1967 document is here in the original, and here in reformatted text of its summary. Minutes of CIA meeting that same year indicated fear that Garrison would win a conviction in his murder conspiracy case against New Orleans businessman Clay Shaw.

The national media launched an intense smear campaign against Garrison. NBC News hired former high-ranking Justice Department official Walter Sheridan, who had been an early recruit to the super-secret NSA in the 1950s and later worked as a top aide to Robert F. Kennedy at the Justice Department. A definitive view of the Kennedy clan's complicated motivations then are beyond the scope of this column. But those motivations may be summarized either as simply adherence to the truth (the conventional view promoted by corporate media), or conversely as fear of exposure, death and other reprisal unless or until RFK could assume the powers of the presidency..

Garrison sought and received under broadcasting legal authority of that era a right of reply. His 27-minute outline of the case

But a jury promptly acquitted Shaw of the main charge following more than a dozen deaths (including suicide) of potential witnesses, including the mob and CIA operative David Ferrie, shown at left.

Ferrie, a pilot, had also known Oswald as early as the 1950s (as shown by the adjoining photo of a Ferrie-led Civil Air Patrol chapter, with Oswald standing at far right)..

The CIA Created 'Conspiracy Theory' Smear

To this day, new generations of reporters and academics continue to use the term "conspiracy theory" to taint their colleagues or members of the public who dare to examine sensitive matters like the JFK assassination or other suspected examples of government initiatives against Constitutional government.

Operation Mockingbird

The CIA program in cooperation with up to 40 leading newspapers, broadcast networks, national magazines and major wire services was identified as Operation Mockingbird by investigative reporter and author Deborah Davis, who first reported on it in her suppressed 1979 unauthorized biography Katharine the Great about Katharine Graham, wife of Washington Post Publisher Philip Graham.

Shown at right, Graham had been of the leaders of the Mockingbird propaganda program, and Katharine Graham's own memoir Personal History describes how she and her husband used to dine on a weekly basis with the leader of the CIA program, Frank Wisner and his wife, Polly Wisner.

The Davis  book is being republished Jan. 30 by Graymalkin Media in hardback, with an audio book option also.

Among others who have reported on the program are author, attorney, and former Department of State Foreign Service officer J. Michael Springmann, whose 2014 memoir Visas for Al Qaeda cites several sources describing the beginning of the Mockingbird program. The Education Forum, a web encyclopedia founded by John Simkin, has a comprehensive, updated overview of Operation Mockingbird here.

In a tale that is especially timely now because of the new and adulatory film The Post about the Grahams and their executive editor Ben Bradlee, it's worth noting that Bradlee successfully pressured Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, the first publisher of Katharine the Great, to destroy all copies. Only after nearly a decade of litigation was the author Davis able to bring out new editions of the suppressed book in a second edition via a small publisher, National Press.

It's relevant also that the Graham patriarch Eugene Meyer (shown at left) was essentially a banker (a former chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve and later of the World Bank), and that a significant part of the Post's coverage on sensitive issues can be reasonably suspected of secret agendas when deemed necessary, and hidden even from the vast majority of its working journalists.

The meetings with Wisner are one example, as were the Grahams' work through the years helping to organize and attend the secret annual Bilderberg Group meetings of fellow elites first organized in 1954 by the Rockefeller and Rothschild families.

It is this type of history and context — which can arise from the four million pages of previously declassified documents and more than 2,500 books about the JFK assassination — that is required to understand the marginal significance of such new remaining releases as those put forward on Dec.15 and others still withheld.,

There remain still living witnesses who are willing to give share their experiences and other evidence.

But there has not been an official government investigation of the JFK or Martin Luther King, Jr. murders since Congress backed away in the 1970s from demanding the kinds of answers from the CIA and FBI that Tanenbaum and his boss Richard Sprague had been seeking as counsel for the House Select Committee on Assassinations.

King is shown in a 1962 photo at the National Press Club, where he is reputed to have been the first black ever permitted to speak in the main auditorium. The club's speaker committee chairman resigned over the invitation, helping illustrate the bias and animosities in the nation's capital. The speech is one more indication of a black life that surely mattered, but carries a legacy of a disputed assassination investigation, much like those probes of the JFK and RFK deaths.

Tanenbaum and Sprague were replaced, and the House committee's 1979 report under successor counsel G. Robert Blakey cited the possibility of a conspiracy in JFK's death but ascribed it merely to the Mafia. Critics dispute that finding, including with the argument that the U.S. intelligence and law enforcement communities and their big business supporters are the ones with the clout to enforce the ongoing cover-up these days, not the Mafia.

Looming in the background of that is substantial evidence that Oswald had been a low-level asset of U.S. government agencies growing out of his time as a Marine working on the U-2 spy program in Japan, and that much of his supposedly suspicious activities were part of his cover of ingratiating himself as a supposed Marxist.

He was a patsy, in other words, although he undoubtedly knew plenty and had to be killed along with a number of others. There are several character witnesses to that effect still alive, but few know about them or their stories. Indeed, one of the most readily disproved major contentions of the Warren report is that Oswald's killer Jack Ruby (shown at right killing Oswald) was not affiliated with organized crime.

Ruby, owner of a Dallas nightclub, indisputably had been affiliated with Chicago and New Orleans mobsters for many years, including New Orleans crime boss Carlos Marcello, who controlled Dallas as part of his turf.

What's Next?

Looking ahead to 2018, the news industry will surely commemorate lavishly the 50th anniversaries of the deaths of RFK and MLK, and trot out a familiar crew of supposed experts to extol their legacies and confirm that the official investigations were correct. Some of us will differ about the veracity of the official findings, as we have previously reported here many times..

Regarding the Trump administration’s self-described timetable for future disclosures of JFK documents, the plan is:

• March 12: FBI, CIA and other agencies must report to the archives any material they want withheld
• March 26: National Archives makes its recommendations to the president on what material warrants further withholding
• April 26: The president’s deadline for release of all remaining records.

In sum, the JFK document release process reached another milestone on Dec. 15 that requires ongoing scrutiny by an informed, independent grassroots research community, as we seek to foster with this latest report.

Shown below are excerpts from the reports cited above from the National Archives and from selected news outlets reporting about the release coming to our attention.

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Related News Coverage (Published in reverse chronological order)

Dec. 31

The Indicter, Assessing New JFK Records, Alec Baldwin's Slam Of NBC Cover-up, Andrew Kreig, Dec. 31, 2017. The Indicter is a global human rights journal, founded and edited by Professor Emeritus Marcello Ferrada de Noli, Ph.D. (shown at left), a torture victim in the 1970s and now a retired medical school professor based in Sweden and Italy. It republished the article above, excerpted below.

This month's release of documents related to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy continued the Trump administration's chaotic process that confuses the public under a guise of compliance with a 1992 law requiring full release this year.

Mary Ferrell Foundation President Rex Bradford has described the Trump release process as a "travesty" and Future of Freedom Foundation President Jacob Hornberger called it a "fiasco," as we have previously reported.

Fortunately, the famed actor Alec Baldwin (shown at right) courageously cut through the confusion last month with a bold, civic-minded revelation of how the NBC and MSNBC continue to support the disputed Warren Commission view of the murder — and to suppress alternative discussion.

This column also was reprinted here by The Education Forum, a UK-based global web encyclopedia and discussion group founded by John Simkin.

 WhoWhatWhy, Codebreakers and Killers: CIA Covert Ops and the JFK Assassination, Jimmy Falls, Dec. 21, 2017. To those not acquainted with the multifaceted narrative of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination, the idea that US intelligence was somehow involved sounds like wild speculation — an alternative reality deserving of the pejorative label “conspiracy theory.” But to those more familiar with the facts surrounding the case, and knowledgeable about the formation and history of operations of the various intelligence agencies — particularly the CIA — this doesn’t seem so far-fetched after all.

One of the more notorious CIA operations involved recruiting elements of the American mafia — no friends of Castro after he had closed down their casinos — to whack the dictator through famed mafioso and CIA liaison Johnny Roselli (below at left).

These assassination attempts fell under the auspices of a top-secret assassination program, code name ZR/RIFLE, which was hidden in a strange place — inside the confines of a CIA signals intelligence section called “Staff D.” From what we can tell, Staff D was a kind of liason to the National Security Agency (NSA), which was in the business of breaking codes. Staff D’s goal was to provide the NSA with code books to decrypt foreign signals — by hook or crook. And the man in charge of this section was a notorious CIA figure — William “Bill” Harvey.

To help us understand who Harvey was, the origins and mission of these covert programs, and how Kennedy fell out of favor with the project’s leaders, esteemed JFK researchers Larry Hancock and Bill Simpich gave this joint in-depth talk (1:09:47 hrs. video here) at the recent JFK Lancer conference in Dallas.

WhoWhatWhy, Breaking: National Archives Releases Yet Another 3,500+ JFK Files, Staff report, Dec. 15, 2017. The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) today released its sixth 2017 batch of records that may in some way relate to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The agency’s press release states that this latest cache includes 3,539 documents. It appears that 1,240 files are labeled “withheld-in-full,” meaning the public has never seen these documents before, and 2,259 labeled “withheld-in-part,” meaning they had previously been released to the public, but with some information blacked out. Yet another 439 files on their index give no indication at all of their status.

The documents from this release appear to originate from a mix of government agencies including the FBI, CIA, Army, NSA, and various congressional committees — although approximately 35 percent of the documents listed are not labeled in NARA’s index with an originating agency.

It remains to be seen what percentage of the redactions the various agencies will unredact by the April deadline.

Thus far, only a few of the documents have drawn keen interest — in part, perhaps, because of the unlikelihood that any “smoking gun” documents ever existed, or if they did, the likelihood they have already been removed from government files. Still, experts and aficionados expect to find “breadcrumbs” that, put together, can help paint a better picture of what did happen on November 22, 1963 in Dallas. Polls have consistently shown that the public doubts the conclusion of the Warren Commission that Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone, was responsible.

WhoWhatWhy’s research team has been diligently sifting through these documents since the first release, sorting and analyzing them to try and understand their significance. Stay tuned as we bring you the latest.

National Archives, New Group of JFK Assassination Documents Available to the Public, Staff report, Dec. 15, 2017. In the sixth public release this year, the National Archives today posted 3,539 documents subject to the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992 (JFK Act).  Released documents are available for download.

The versions released today were processed by agencies and, in accordance with the President’s guidance, are being posted expeditiously in order to make the documents available to the public, even before the 2018 deadline established by the President on October 26, 2017.  This is the last release planned by the National Archives for this year. 

At this point, with the exception of 86 record identification numbers where additional research is required by the National Archives and the other agencies, all documents subject to section 5 of the JFK Act have been released either in full or in part.  Any information subject to section 5 of the Act, which has been redacted from documents in any of the six public releases this year, remains subject to further review by the agencies and the National Archives, in accordance with the President’s direction. 

The National Archives will release additional documents in 2018 based on the outcome of the reviews conducted pursuant to the President’s direction.

The National Archives previously released 10,744 documents on Nov. 17, 13,213 documents on Nov. 9, 676 documents on Nov. 3, 2,891 documents on Oct. 26, and 3,810 documents on July 24. The National Archives established the John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection in November 1992, and it consists of approximately five million pages. The vast majority of the collection has been publicly available without any restrictions since the late 1990s.

Related records site: National Archives, JFK Assassination Records: 2017 Additional Documents Release. The National Archives is releasing documents previously withheld in accordance with the JFK Assassination Records Collection Act.  The vast majority of the Collection (88%) has been open in full and released to the public since the late 1990s. The records at issue are documents previously identified as assassination records, but withheld in full or withheld in part. These releases include FBI, CIA, and other agency documents (both formerly withheld in part and formerly withheld in full) identified by the Assassination Records Review Board as assassination records. The releases to date are as follows:

• July 24, 2017: 3,810 documents (read press release)   
• October 26, 2017: 2,891 documents (read press release)   
• November 3, 2017: 676 documents (read press release)   
• November 9, 2017: 13,213 documents (read press release)   
• November 17, 2017: 10,744 documents (read press release)   
• December 15, 2017: 3,539 documents (read press release)

Dallas Morning News, New JFK files show FBI misplaced Oswald's fingerprints, and CIA opened his mail -- and John Steinbeck's, Todd J. Gillman and Charles Scudder, Dec. 15, 2017. The 3,539 records include FBI and CIA reports on Soviet spies, the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and Lee Harvey Oswald's trip to Mexico City a few weeks before he murdered President John F. Kennedy in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963.

This batch likely will be the last released pending a final review of records. Many remain sealed at the request of the FBI, CIA and other agencies that pressed for more time ahead of a deadline set a quarter century earlier.

For decades, debate has raged not only over whether Oswald acted alone but whether the FBI and CIA could have stopped him. The latest documents provide fresh proof that he was in their sights: a 1975 CIA memo marked "top secret" shows that Oswald was on a "watch list" of people whose mail would be intercepted from Nov. 9, 1959, to May 3, 1960, and again from Aug. 7, 1961, through May 28, 1962.

The same watch list included Francis Gary Powers, the U-2 pilot shot down on May 1, 1960. His mail was opened until two months after his release by the Soviets. CIA also opened the mail of Earl Browder, the head of the Communist Party of the United States, playwright Edward Albee, novelist John Steinbeck, and a daughter of David Rockefeller, chairman of Chase Manhattan bank.

Another revelation comes from a July 1978 memo to an attorney on the staff of the House Select Committee on Assassinations: The FBI was unable to locate the original fingerprints lifted from the rifle found at the sniper's perch on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository.

Dallas police turned those over a few days after the assassination and never got them back. Top FBI officials told House investigators that finding the prints would be a "mammoth research effort."

The head of the bureau's fingerprint section told House investigators that standard procedure would have required returning the original prints to Dallas police, but "this case was not routine, nor was it handled as such."

JFKFacts.org, From the JFK files, a spymaster’s dictum on national security, Jefferson Morley (biographer, shown at left, in the recently published book The Ghost of the late CIA Counter-Intelligence Chief James J. Angleton, shown at right), Dec. 19, 2017.  From the new JFK files comes the long-suppressed testimony of CIA counterintelligence chief James Angleton. Among other things, he spoke on the nature of the national security state: “It is inconceivable that a secret intelligence arm of the Government has to comply with all of the overt orders of the Government.” The transcript of Angleton’s closed-door testimony to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Activities in September 1975, was released for the first time 42 years later, on December 15, 2017.

Daily Mail, How the FBI LOST the fingerprints taken from rifle that killed JFK fifteen years after the president was assassinated, new files reveal, Amanda Cashmore, Dec. 18, 2017. The FBI lost fingerprints taken from the rifle agents found in the Texas School Book Depository after the president was assassinated in Dallas, new files have revealed. At the time of the investigation in 1963, agents and outside experts concluded that a palm print taken from the barrel off the rifle belonged to Lee Harvey Oswald.  

But 15 years later in July 1978, the agency revealed that the fingerprints had gone missing in their vast archives. Dallas Police say they sent over the original fingerprints to the FBI, and that those prints were never returned to them.

Justice Integrity Project Readers Guide To JFK Assassination

By Andrew Kreig, JIP Editor, CAPA Board member and Associate Editor and Board member of The Indicter

What follows are excerpts from our Project's so-far 38-previous segments of a "Readers Guide" to the assassination begun in 2013 to underscore both the 50th anniversary of the death and its continuing relevance, particularly slanted media, government, and academic treatment of the death that serves as a Rosetta Stone to similar slanted coverage sensitive matters extending through the decades to today's news.

The Justice Integrity Project cooperates with Citizens Against Political Assassinations (CAPA) and The Indicter, each of which investigates suspected political assassinations around the world. The Project's most recent previous column on these topics for the Readers Guide was JFK Birthday Prompts Inspiration, Art, Advocacy, Snark on June 2, 2017, with this beginning. "The 100th birthday anniversary of President John F. Kennedy on May 29 prompted many memorials about the late president's enduring popularity, the continuing controversies over his murder, and at least one prominent display of mockery of the late president by a big newspaper."

In the Readers Guide below, a red asterisk (*) denotes major articles in the series. Other articles may be regarded as more routine or duplicative treatments sometimes covering specific events.

At right is a photo by this editor in Dallas showing Dealey Plaza. The Texas Book Depository Building where accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald worked is behind the row of trees. The car in the center lane is near the location of President Kennedy's limo at the time of his fatal shooting. The "X" mark is repeatedly painted on the street by author and photographic expert Robert Groden as reminder of the horrific crime that Dallas authorities seek to expunge by removing the X.

1. Project Launches JFK Assassination Readers' Guide, Oct. 16, 2013.
2. Project Provides JFK Readers Guide To New Books, Videos, Oct. 26, 2013. This is a list of new books and films in 2013.
3. Disputes Erupt Over NY Times, New Yorker, Washington Post Reviews of JFK Murder, Nov. 7, 2013. *
4. Self-Censorship In JFK TV Treatments Duplicates Corporate Print Media's Apathy, Cowardice, Nov. 7, 2013.
5. 'Puppetry' Hardback Launched Nov. 19 at DC Author Forum on ‘White House Mysteries & Media,'  Nov. 19, 2013.
6. Major Media Stick With Oswald 'Lone Gunman' JFK Theory, Nov. 27, 2013.
7. JFK Murder Scene Trapped Its Victim In Kill Zone, Nov. 30, 2013.
8. Project Lists JFK Assassination Reports, Archives, Videos, Events, Nov. 2, 2013. *
9. JFK Murder, The CIA, and 8 Things Every American Should Know, Dec. 9, 2013. *
10. JFK Murder Prompts Expert Reader Reactions, Dec. 19, 2013. Reactions to our Dec. 9 column. 
11. Have Spy Agencies Co-Opted Presidents and the Press? Dec. 23, 2013. *
12. Don't Be Fooled By 'Conspiracy Theory' Smears, May 26, 2014. *
13. Experts To Reveal Secrets of JFK Murder, Cover-up at Sept. 26-28 DC Forum , Sept. 5, 2014. 
14. Washington Post Still Selling Warren Report 50 Years Later, Sept. 22, 2014. *
15. JFK Experts To Explode Myths, Sign Books In DC Sept. 26-28, Sept. 24, 2014.
16. Former Cuban Militant Leader Claims CIA Meeting With Oswald Before JFK Killing, Sept. 27, 2014. *
17. JFK Readers Guide: Assassination Books, Reports, Oct. 15, 2014. *
18. Former House JFK Murder Prober Alleges CIA ‘Lied,’ Seeks Hidden Records, Oct. 18, 2014. *
19. The JFK Murder 'Cover-up' Still Matters -- As Does C-SPAN's Coverage, Nov. 11, 2014. *
20. JFK, Nov. 22 and the Continuing Cover-Up, Nov. 24, 2014. *
21. JFK Assassination Readers Guide To 2013-14 Events, Nov. 28, 2014. *
22. CIA, Empowered by JFK Murder Cover-up, Blocks Senate Torture Report, Dec. 1, 2014. *
23. Nearly Too Late, Public Learns of Bill Moyers’ Conflicts Over PBS, LBJ, Jan. 2, 2014.
24. Why Bill O'Reilly's Lie About JFK's Murder Might Matter To You, March 17, 2015.
25. Free Videos Show Shocking Claims About CIA, JFK Murder Probes, June 29, 2015.
26. Pioneering Black Secret Service JFK Guard Abraham Bolden Warns Of Current Lessons, July 22, 2015.
27. Understanding Hollywood-Style Presidential Propaganda From JFK To Trump, Aug. 18, 2015.
28. Beware Of Wrong Conclusions From New CIA Disclosure On Oswald, Sept. 28, 2015.
29. The JFK Murder Cover-Up: Your Rosetta Stone To Today’s News, Nov. 29, 2015.
30. Austin Kiplinger, David Skorton: Two Civic Giants Going And Coming, Dec. 15, 2015.
31. Trump Alleges Rafael Cruz Tie To JFK Murder Suspect Oswald, May 3, 2016.
32. Revelations Confirm Proof Of JFK, RFK Murder Cover-ups, Nov. 25, 2016.
33. Top Experts To Assess JFK Murder Records, Revelations March 16, March 8, 2017.
34. Speaker Program For March 16 Forum On Secret JFK Records, March 8, 2017.
35. JFK Experts Advocate Compliance With Records Deadline, March 8, 2017.
36. At CAPA Forum, JFK Experts See Need, Momentum For Assassination Records Release, March 23, 2017.
37. Time Magazine, History Channel Ramp Up Oswald-JFK Fake News, April 26, 2017.
38. JFK Birthday Prompts Inspiration, Art, Advocacy, Snark, June 2, 2017.
39. Deep State Killed JFK For His Cuba Policy, Peace Advocacy, Experts Say, June 13, 2017.
40. Newly Released JFK Murder Files Prompt Disputes, 'Jigsaw' Solutions, Aug. 4, 2017.
41. CAPA Challenges Warren Report Defenders Sabato, Shenon, Sept. 22, 2017.
42. Trump Plans Release Of Suppressed JFK Records, Oct. 21, 2017.
43. Trump Backs Off Promise To Release All Suppressed JFK Documents Today; Permits Partial Release, Oct. 26, 2017.
44. More JFK Murder Records Released On Nov. 9, Nov. 10, 2017. 
45. TV Star John Barbour Premieres New JFK Documentary In DC With Free Screenings, Lectures, Nov. 13, 2017.
46. Two Major Annual JFK Research Conferences Launch Friday In Dallas, Nov. 15, 2017.
47. DC, Dallas Nov. 22 Events Mark JFK Murder, Official Cover-up, Nov. 22, 2017
48. Assessing Newly Released JFK Records, Alec Baldwin's Slam of NBC Cover-up, Dec. 19, 2017.