Trump Alleges Rafael Cruz Tie To JFK Murder Suspect Oswald
Donald Trump's explosive claim May 3 that Rafael Cruz may have known Lee Harvey Oswald in New Orleans before JFK's assassination in Dallas has since provided a case study in news coverage of sensitive issues.
Regardless of what one thinks of Trump, the reaction to his comments illustrate how he threatens the Washington establishment, including reporters and pundits who slant important news regarding the presidency. Trump showed also that he is careless at best in his commentary. He initially said the man in the photo below was Cruz, father of Texas senator Ted Cruz. Later, Trump falsely told CNN that he had merely wondered whether the man was Rafael Cruz.
Perhaps even more important, Washington insiders are beginning to share a view that candidates risk unprecedented exposure of their darkest secrets in a campaign that will be far more ruthless, unpredictable and momentous than the public can expect from controlled media. This is indicated by, among other things, a report May 5 by the experienced commentator Pepe Escobar, accessible via his Facebook account: How Trump Did It; The Outside The Box Gambit.
Update: Ted Cruz suspended his campaign after Trump trounced him in Indiana's primary by a 53-37 percent margin. Trump was winning also the vast majority of the 57 delegates at stake. In the Democratic race, Bernie Sanders upset Hillary Clinton 52-48 percent with most votes tabulated.
Escobar asserted that a major reason Cruz suspended his campaign was to stop criticism of his family's past. "Of course," added political commentator Joe Lauria, "Cruz also realized that after losing Indiana he would not be able to force a contested convention."
Let's start decoding this situation. In response to campaign efforts by Cruz on behalf of his son before the crucial GOP Indiana primary May 3, Trump said Cruz helped Oswald distribute pro-Castro leaflets in New Orleans three months before President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas in 1963.
“His father was with Lee Harvey Oswald prior to Oswald's being — you know, shot. I mean, the whole thing is ridiculous,” Trump said during a phone interview with Fox News, referring to the man in the necktie at center in the photo. “What is this, right prior to his [JFK] being shot, and nobody even brings it up? They don't even talk about that. That was reported, and nobody talks about it.”
"This is nuts," Ted Cruz responded in defending his father from Trump's charges as voting began during Indiana's crucial primary May 3. "This man [Trump] is a pathological liar....The man is utterly amoral. Morality does not exist for him."
With the stakes so high both in the JFK probe and the current election, the facts and reporting are worth exploring here in a report updated May 5 from our original coverage two days previous:
Federal authorities and the major media have always argued in essence that Oswald acted alone to kill JFK on Nov. 22, 1963. True, the establishment occasionally floats also oddball theories attributed to cranks and "conspiracy theorists."
But their core conclusion, right from the start, has been that Oswald killed JFK alone, as we reported in Major Media Stick With Oswald 'Lone Gunman' JFK Theory. Yet many serious researchers, law enforcement and scientific whistle blowers, and other suppressed voices have long argued that Oswald was a scapegoat who acted with others at a minimum, and may even have been innocent of killing either JFK or a Dallas policeman that day.
Critics of the 1964 Warren Commission draw on a vast array of evidence to show involvement, often compartmentalized by those who did not know the ultimate result of their actions, by rogue elements of government, business, the mob, and Cuban refugee community, with the result that Kennedy was replaced.
To hint at such a monstrous concept means career oblivion even now for prominent officials, pundits and academics. That has long been the case. Declassified 1960s documents show that the CIA orchestrated a campaign to discredit as "conspiracy theorists" those who suggested government misconduct in the JFK case and subsequent mysterious events extending to the present. We summarized the evidence in a 2014 column: Don't Be Fooled By 'Conspiracy Theory' Smears.
That pattern helps explain the instant attacks on Trump May 3 and absence of virtually any commentator willing to explore whether his comments might have a basis in fact worth exploring.
In contrast, investigative reporter Wayne Madsen first reported April 7 evidence strongly suggesting that Rafael Cruz was the mystery man photographed handing out literature on Aug. 16, 1963 in New Orleans. This as outside the International Trade Mart, a significant gateway to Caribbean and Latin America business.
New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison later unsuccessfully prosecuted the trade mart's leader, Clay Shaw, on claims that he was an intelligence asset who conspired to murder the president in a plot involving the president's opponents, including rogue elements of intelligence agencies, other federal authorities, and police.
Nonetheless, Madsen was careful not to conclude definitively that the mystery man in the photo was the elder Cruz. After Madsen's story was published he appeared on a New Orleans radio station that week to ask listeners for help in an ongoing investigation on the mystery man's identity. Similarly, Trump supporter Scottie Nell Hughes aptly told a CNN audience that Trump was raising questions about the photo and related research, and not accusing Ted Cruz's father of plotting murder.
By contrast, dishonest commentators are fudging all distinctions to ridicule and thereby suppress any further inquiry.
In the photo above by the late Johann Rush of WSDU-TV in New Orleans, Oswald is at front left in a white shirt and necktie. He stands next to man never publicly identified by the Warren Commission, center, and also in white shirt. They were handing out leaflets for the Fair Play for Cuba Committee outside the trade mart. The National Enquirer reported that it determined through photo analysis by experts that the man is Rafael B. Cruz, father of GOP presidential candidate Ted Cruz.
The mainstream media -- major newspapers, wire services and broadcast networks -- have always been virtually unified in denunciations of Garrison and his team. Their message remains largely in place until today. Why? The reasons relate to a hidden history encompassing the CIA's empire-building and anti-Communist goals. These serve the agency's Wall Street and other elite controllers. Willing allies with the agency include the major media (whose ownership is, of course, part of "Wall Street"), the Cuban exile community, organized crime, and military contractors, all of whom are occasional allies, as we know know from declassified documents and books.
Thus Madsen's reporting represented a remarkable challenge to the government and media establishment and all who hope for career success within those career paths. He has not been alone in this, of course. More than two thousand books have been written about the JFK death building on the revelations of many whistleblowers, including from the CIA and law enforcement community. More recently, those amplifying questions about a possible Cruz connection to Oswald have included Indiana blogger and attorney Gary Welsh (found dead earlier this month, ruled suicide at age 53). The National Enquirer raised the profile in a cover story last week, and the McClatchy News Service published a balanced news story, and then came Trump's interview on Fox May 3.
We still do not know whether Rafael Cruz was passing out literature in New Orleans with Oswald. The circumstances suggest that Oswald and his fellow leaflet distributors were government assets, including natives of Cuba. Rafael Cruz has lived his life in largely mysterious fashion, despite publishing a memoir this year and many public appearances both on the campaign trail and as a pastor.
Our own Justice Integrity Project reporting through the years and more intensively since Madsen's scoop suggest compelling evidence that the elder Cruz was indeed part of Oswald's effort in New Orleans. Yet major media are now nearly unanimous in continuing the cover up of any thorough inquiry, which could readily be accomplished with in-depth interviews of surviving participants, release of suppressed documents or even a grand jury investigation.
Instead, Madsen (shown in a file photo) and the National Enquirer are now the targets of venom by both the mainstream media and those on alternative website whose chose tool is snark, not any demonstrable knowledge of the JFK or other political assassinations or sex scandals.
By contrast, Madsen with a three-part series in 2006 broke the story that House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) was a gay pedophile hiding his past as a lecherous high school wrestling coach. The mainstream ignore the series and now never gives him credit despite Hastert's guilty plea and sentencing. Similarly, the Enquirer has broken many major scandals covered up elsewhere and yet is automatically ridiculed even though it has almost never had to pay a verdict for defamation for wrong reporting.
Trump Comments Help Expose Controlled Media
Trump is shown in a file photo by Gage Skidmore taken at a Conservative Political Action Committee conference.
Our view is that media coverage of the primary day fracas exemplifies yet again the controlled and shallow news coverage of our nation's most important events. This encompasses current elections and notable past events, such as Kennedy's history-changing murder.
One illustration is a USA Today news report May 3Trump bizarrely links Cruz’s father to JFK assassin; Cruz goes ballistic by Donovan Slack. He focused on personalities not substance by beginning: "The feud between Donald Trump and Ted Cruz hit epic proportions Tuesday as Republican primary voters headed to the polls in Indiana. Trump was asked on Fox News to respond to remarks by the Texas senator's father on the campaign trail. Rafael Cruz had said electing “the alternative” to his son “could be the destruction of America.”
Donovan then wrote:
Then he [Trump] insinuated that Cruz’s father may have played some role in the assassination of John F. Kennedy Jr. [Sic!!] No really. He brought up a questionable National Enquirer story claiming Rafael Cruz appeared in a photo with Oswald shortly before the murder.
As indicated by our notation "Sic" above, the USA Today writer mixes up JFK (the president) and his son, JFK Jr. Editors presumably will correct the story at some point in the future But the error shows the utter historical cluelessness of those journalists involved at one of the nation's most widely circulated dailies and the social media site MSN that redistributed the story. Even worse, the story shows willingness despite their ignorance of history nonetheless to insert their opinion, and adherence to conventional wisdom of their bosses and authorities, by ridiculing Trump for raising the question.
Another illustration is the venom that CNN news reader Kate Bolduan unleashed on Trump senior campaign advisor Barry Bennett for Trump's remarks Tuesday morning. She demonstrated no knowledge or interest in the facts of historical allegations regarding New Orleans in 1963. Instead, like her colleagues, she focused on armchair psychology regarding personal feuds between the candidates, and the "horse race" of who might win the primary and election.
CNN's Ashley Banfield, who "reports" the official pronouncements about legal, defense and political sources, then opined that Trump's supposedly disgraceful comments threatened his credibility. She and the panelists the network convened spent no time whatsoever discussing whether the Madsen/Enquirer/Trump questions about Rafael Cruz might be true. Virtually all of the focus was on Cruz's attack on Trump, not the underlying truth of the allegations.
CNN further embarrassed itself by publishing a column by Money writer and Sunday "Reliable Sources" host Brian Stetler that misquoted Trump in order to thereby characterize him as a fool and "conspiracy" nut. The column's slant (including an unwillingness to quote Trump accurately) speaks for itself in Donald Trump's latest conspiracy theory involves Ted Cruz's father.
Biased Pundits Continue Rush To Judgment
"What this indicates," Madsen told us in an exclusive interview the morning of May 3 as the situation unfolded, "is that sometimes the real news is in the National Enquirer and Wayne Madsen Report, not in the rancid, controlled media, including many of the sycophants who parade as 'alternative' media."
To be clear, Madsen originally raised his reporting as a question and then amplified it with in-depth reporting about the scope of activities before JFK's killing.
Absolutely vital to understanding this story -- but ignored by Cruz and other commentaries populating the airwaves May 3 -- is that neither Madsen, the Enquirer, Trump (nor our Justice Integrity Project for that matter) have ever claimed that that Rafael Cruz was part of a plot to kill JFK. Instead, their allegation is that Cruz was one of a vast number of others who were involved in various subplots to overthrow Castro, some which coincided with efforts by a tiny inner circle (not necessarily involving Cruz) who wanted Kennedy dead for various reasons.
Get involved and think for yourself. That's our advice to readers.
How many commentators do you see or read who point out the remarkable fact that International Trade Mart chief Clay Shaw, shown at left, is the only man in American history ever indicted for murder conspiracy in Kennedy's death?
Shaw won an acquittal at trial but only after many prosecution witnesses died suddenly at early ages, including Oswald and his own killer Jack Ruby, plus many of their New Orleans associates. Also, Shaw apparently testified falsely that he had not been a CIA asset when the historical record (much of it unavailable to Garrison) shows a vast and closely connected network in New Orleans of CIA, Cuban, mob and business allies.
These are relatively simple concepts. But they are almost totally ignored by supposed experts opining on television or in print, as of today, May 3.
In fact, the late Chauncey Holt confessed in his memoir Self Portrait of a Scoundrel that he was handing out pro-Castro literature also with Oswald outside the Trade Mart and did not know that later events would lead to Kennedy's assassination. Holt said that Oswald and almost every one else in the photo (aside from the mystery man, whom Holt did not identify) was an undercover government agent recruited to help keep Cuba in the news to facilitate a U.S. overthrow that Holt and his mob and CIA employers wanted to occur.
Also, Holt claimed that he traveled to Dallas also to deliver government credentials he forged to others convening at Dealey Plaza on Nov. 22s as part of his longstanding work as a operative employed in illegal mob and CIA operations, often in tandem with work as an accountant for seemingly legitimate businesses.
Holt (shown in a portrait) said he used so many aliases in his work with mob leaders like Meyer Lansky, Warren Commission staff attorney Joseph Ball, and various movie stars that even federal prison authorities did not know which of his many names was real when he was imprisoned in 1970 for 25 months for one of his many swindles.
To be sure, some have challenged (and others have vouched for) Holt's credibility. But the important point for current purposes is that there is an extensive research background on these points -- and no one, not the Warren Commission or any other known authority -- has yet conclusively identified the man in the necktie standing next to Oswald.
Again, investigative reporters, Enquirer and Trump are asking simply whether Rafael Cruz was in the 1963 photo. They are not alleging, as Ted Cruz kept alleging to a gullible and incurious national media, that Rafael Cruz killed or plotted to kill Kennedy. That is a debater's trick, not a defense.
Who Dares Raise Question the Warren Commission and Media?
Wayne Madsen is the author of 14 books and a former Navy Intelligence officer and NSA analyst. He is a former defense contractor who worked for, among others, RCA, the parent company of NBC in the 1960s. His opeds have appeared many times in mainstream newspapers during recent years and he has appeared as an expert commentator on eight of the top nine broadcast television stations and cable news networks before his reporting on sensitive covert activities dried up his invitations to the networks. Since then, he is repeatedly smeared by intelligence-connected trolls, including those who concocted a disparaging and demonstrably misleading smear as a Wikipedia biography.
More recently, he wrote the first columns alleging that GOP presidential contender Marco Rubio had been involved in a secret life as a bisexual. Madsen reports that the the first tip came from Indiana lawyer and blogger Gary Welsh, who was reported as a suicide shot to death over the weekend.
Welsh, a conservative former state legislative staffer who published the online commentary site Advance Indiana, was also the first to re-report Madsen's questions about Rafael Cruz. Welsh, shown at left, cooperated also in courageous ways with our Justice Integrity Project, including a favorable report on this author's 2013 book, Presidential Puppetry: Obama, Romney and Their Masters, which reported on the deep influence of Wall Street and the intelligence services over ostensibly independent politicians and news media outlets
Promptly after Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia's death at a remote Texas ranch in February, Madsen traveled there with a team from the Alex Jones radio show to report on the circumstances of the mysterious death and locale.
He wrote this week that the immediate verdict of "suicide" for Welsh on the eve of the May 3 elections is not credible and follows many other suspicious deaths of journalists and sources pursuing sensitive matters, such as Gary Webb, Deborah Jeane "The DC Madam" Palfrey, Philip Marshall, and Michael Hastings.
Madsen cooperated with the Enquirer's cover story portrayed above. The tabloid's unusually large four-page treatment dated May 2 and on newstands carries the bylines of six Enquirer reporters and involved extensive independent investigation.
The response by Cruz and his defenders relies heavily on the accurate factoid that the Enquirer Publisher David Pecker is a friend of Trump and that Trump sometimes exaggerates and indeed tells demonstrable falsehoods.
However, the broadcast networks, major newspapers and their hand-picked commentators — including those from online and other "alternative" and often controlled media — have scant incentive or training in actually investigating the JFK death and those like Oswald demonstrably involved, even if many scholars believe that Oswald himself was a patsy directed by his government handlers to undertake his most suspicious activities in New Orleans and Dallas.
The Big Picture
Exploring those concepts in any depth would lead to career-ending ruin for today's most prominent "journalists," just as it threatened their predecessors and government sources in the 1960s. JFK research James Eugenio wrote on this topic April 22 How CBS News Aided the JFK Cover-up.
A definitive treatment is Jim Garrison's 1967 video response to a smear job orchestrated by NBC News, a key part of the CIA's Operation Mockingbird to coordinate pro-CIA coverage among the nation's major news media. That response is available
. The 27 minutes of that profile in courage are well worth watching for anyone who wants to understand the news of that day -- or May 3, 2016.
Worth reading also are the innumerable books that document the central role of New Orleans in the CIA-led efforts to overthrow Fidel Castro in Cuba, and related efforts leading to the assassination in Dallas. To be sure, neither Garrison nor other Warren Commission critics knew all facts revealed by the more than three million pages of declassified documents and two thousand books about the JFK assassination.
Even now, there has been no one associated with the Warren Commission or subsequent studies who can definitively say who was passing out pro-Castro literature in New Orleans. What's most important is that only a few reporters in the alternative media — one now dead — and presidential candidate Donald Trump dare even ask a question, even when most in the general public have told decades of pollsters that they do not believe the Warren Commission findings of Oswald's sole guilt that are continually touted by those who hope to succeed in media.
There is much more to say about this. For that reason, our project has published a 30-part Readers Guide To JFK Assassination that evaluates major books, TV shows, films and research institutions of all points of view.I have lectured repeatedly on the topic, including a talk aired on C-SPAN in 2014 on why the JFK assassination still matters, and a conference last week at the National Press Club sponsored by the McClendon speaker group that convened intelligence experts, including Madsen, describing major news stories that are currently being suppressed because of the timidity of the mainstream media and wannabes in the alternative media.
For now, the last word goes to the accomplished debater Ted Cruz, who with his media allies hoped to turn Trump's remark May 3 into a positive for a desperate Cruz campaign that was fighting the public's contempt for Washington media and corrupt politicians:
"Today is voting day in Indiana," the Texas senator said. "I ask the people of Indiana: Think about the next five years if this man becomes president."
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Justice Integrity Project Readers Guide To JFK Assassination
* Denotes major articles in this Readers Guide series
At right is a photo by this editor in Dallas showing Dealey Plaza. The Texas Book Depository Building where 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.
Related News Coverage (Reverse Chronological Order)
Updates:
JFK Facts.org, Who was that with Oswald (since it wasn’t Ted Cruz’s dad)? Jefferson Morley, June 13, 2016. In an incisive piece in Washington Decoded, Tim Brennan contributes some useful details to understanding the photograph that Donald Trump used to falsely and absurdly accuse Ted Cruz’s father of involvement in the assassination of President Kennedy.
Forget about the Trumpian BS, says Brennan, and focus on the known facts. What Donald Trump didn’t know about this photo. He was “a Cuban-looking fellow” accompanied by a taller man, according to the testimony of Michael Steele, a young man whom Oswald recruited at a local employment office. Brennan assumes that the “Cuban looking fellow” was, like Steele, recruited at the employment office. Citing a notation in Oswald’s address book, he thinks his name might have been “North.” Another possibility, admittedly more speculative, is that “taller friend” who seemed into on keeping his back to the camera, was John Martino, a former Havana casino employee and anti-Castro author, who later told Newsday reporter John Cummings that he was present that day when Oswald handed out pamphlets. Martino said that he had helped “put together” Oswald as a patsy for JFK’s assassination.
Washington Decoded, In Search of the Third Man, Tim Brennan, June 11, 2016. A false allegation, given prominence by the National Enquirer, was recycled by Donald Trump, the presumed GOP nominee, during an appearance on “Fox & Friends.” Per the article, Trump accused Rafael Cruz, father of candidate Ted, of consorting with the accused assassin of President Kennedy before November 1963: “You know, [Cruz’s] father was with Lee Harvey Oswald prior to Oswald’s being, you know, shot . . . . I mean, what was he doing with Lee Harvey Oswald shortly before the death, before the shooting? It’s horrible.”
The kerfuffle did focus attention on a long-forgotten minor mystery: who was the “unidentified man” who distributed Fair Play for Cuba Committee (FPCC) handbills with Lee Harvey Oswald on the streets of New Orleans scarcely three months before John F. Kennedy’s assassination on 22 November 1963?
Flagpole, Lee Harvey Oswald and Ted Cruz's Father, Donald E. Wilkes, Jr., May 11, 2016. Donald E. Wilkes, Jr. (shown in a file photo) is a professor emeritus at the University of George where he taught in the iaw school for 40 years. Recently, stunning accusations have been made against Rafael Cruz, father of recent presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz. It is alleged that in New Orleans in 1963 the elder Cruz accompanied Lee Harvey Oswald while Oswald was handing out pro-Fidel Castro “HANDS OFF CUBA!” leaflets.
A majority of the researchers who have studied Lee Harvey Oswald’s short but enigmatic life—LBJ famously described Oswald as “quite a mysterious fellow”—believe it is likely that Oswald was both a CIA operative and an FBI informant. Under this approach, Oswald really was an undercover government agent, not a leftist or a Marxist. When he did such things as hand out pro-Castro leaflets or claim membership in the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, he was engaged in sheepdeeping, a term used in the intelligence community to refer to manipulated behavior designed to create a desired image.
It is not improbable that Rafael Cruz, a vocal, militant, activist opponent of Fidel Castro, might have been involved in the CIA’s massive secret anti-Castro activities in New Orleans. Wayne Madsen may well be right in saying that “there is strong reason to believe that Cruz was associated with [the] Central Intelligence Agency’s anti-Castro operations.” If this was the case, Cruz may very well have known that both he and Oswald were undercover American intelligence assets. If so, this would explain why, if he was the man in the photos, he did not, despite his near-fanatical anti-Castroism, loudly remonstrate with a man distributing pro-Castro literature right in front of him.
At any rate, the story of the alleged connection between Lee Harvey Oswald and Rafael Cruz as told and popularized by the National Enquirer is flawed because it rests upon three fundamental factual errors. Contrary to what the Enquirer breathlessly asserts, Cruz was not a “commie;” Oswald was not pro-communist; and Oswald did not assassinate President Kennedy.
Washington Post, Trump’s victory is leading to lunacy in high places, Michael Gerson, May 9, 2016. With the billionaire all but coronated, the GOP is cracking up. This is not even to mention Trump’s pledge to limit press freedom, or his malicious birtherism, or his dangerous vaccine skepticism, or his economic plans that would bring global recession, or his lack of relevant qualifications, or his temperament of brooding and bragging, egotism and self-pity, or his promise to emancipate the world from American leadership, or his accusation that Ted Cruz’s father was somehow involved with Lee Harvey Freaking Oswald.
Mediaite,
.be" target="_blank">CNN’s Stelter Calls Out Trump’s Penchant for ‘Reciting Conspiracy Theories,’ Staff report, May 8, 2016. CNN’s Brian Stelter devoted an entire segment of Reliable Sources today to calling out Donald Trump for pushing conspiracy theories like nobody’s business throughout the entire campaign. “I cringe when I hear Donald Trump reciting conspiracy theories,” Stelter said. “This is harmful no matter how well journalists debunk what he says.” He explained just what a gigantic problem this is for the press when Trump throws stuff out there and hopes it’ll stick. In Trump’s world, Stelter said, there’s no difference between Meet the Press and the National Enquirer.
CTKA (Citizens for Truth about the Kennedy Assassination), Donald Trump, JFK, Oswald and the 2016 Presidential Election, James DiEugenio, Undated, May, 2016. Unexpectedly, the JFK case has been injected into the presidential race this year. The question being posed by Republican candidate Donald Trump is about the father of GOP presidential candidate Ted Cruz, Rafael Cruz.
Although the National Enquirer did carry an article on the Cruz/Trump controversy, the original story did not actually begin there. It actually started with Wayne Madsen. Madsen published a story in the April 7th issue of his online journal called the Wayne Madsen Report....From what I could see in this story, Madsen had two pieces of evidence to make the claim with. Cruz was in New Orleans that summer, and he produced a photo of Rafael for comparison purposes. Neither of which comes close to proving the charge.
PaulCraigRoberts.org, When They Killed JFK They Killed America, Paul Craig Roberts (shown in a file photo), May 7, 2016. In the JFK administration I was a White House Fellow. President Kennedy’s intention was to involve many young Americans in government in order to keep idealism alive as a counter to the material interests of lobby groups.
In my lifetime there has not been another like him. Indeed, today he would be impossible. Conservatives and Republicans did not like him, because he was thoughtful. Their favorite weapon against him was their account of his love life, which according to them involved Mafia molls and Marilyn Monroe. Unlike most presidents, Kennedy was able to break with the conventional thinking of the time. For those of you too young to have experienced John Kennedy and those of you who have forgot his greatness, do yourselves a favor and listen to this 5 minute, 23 second
.
The CIA, the Joint Chiefs, and the Secret Service concluded that JFK was “soft on communism.” So did the Bill Buckley conservatives.
JFK was assassinated because of anti-communist hysteria in the military and security agencies. The Warren Commission was well aware of this. The coverup was necessary because America was locked into a Cold War with the Soviet Union. To put US military, CIA, and Secret Service personnel on trial for murdering the President of the United States would have shaken the confidence of the American people in their own government. Oswald had nothing whatsoever to do with JFK’s assassination. That is why Oswald was himself assassinated inside the Dallas jail before he could be questioned. The evil that resides in Washington does not only kill foreign leaders who try to do the right thing, but also its own.
Facebook, How Trump Did It; The Outside The Box Gambit, Pepe Escobar, May 5, 2016. Pepe Escobar (shown in a file photo) is an experienced reporter on global issues. So why did Ted Cruz simply vanish? From one of my top Beltway sources:
“Think outside the box – and beyond the dramatic cable news headlines. The fact that Cruz Sr. never once mentioned suing Nat’l Enquirer over the Oswald claim tells me that there was some element or possibility of truth. The story may have been a shot across the bow or even a kill shot by Trump's campaign letting the Cruzes know there is more where that came from. Checkmate.
There may be a CIA connection too. The story originally broke weeks ago, and Trump saying, “Not too many evangelicals come out of Cuba?”
The Lee Harvey Oswald story is the SOLE reason for Lyin’ Ted’s departure decision. He was campaigning hard in California. He is so stubborn and defiant that he wasn’t ever dropping out, unless something was about to destroy him or his family – something exactly like this story.”
Wayne Madsen Report (WMR), "Lone nutter" JFK conspiracy theorist attacks WMR editor, May 5, 2016. (Subscription required. Excerpted with permission.) Noted JFK "lone nutter" conspiracy theorist Gus Russo, who has written two books on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, penned a venal screed against WMR's editor on the website "JFK Files." The current importance is that shills like Russo, whom this author has known for years, prosper by standing ready at all times to help the establishment pooh-pooh reporting that undermines the official narrative that Lee Harvey Oswald killed JFK with no official U.S. government cooperation.
JFK Plot Allegations Against Ted Cruz's Father Rafael
The Blaze, Trump Says He Never Believed JFK-Rafael Cruz Conspiracy Theory, Only Wantd People to Read It, Oliver Darcy, May 4, 2016 ((1:36 min. video). Donald Trump said Wednesday that he never believed Ted Cruz’s father was connected to the assassination of John F. Kennedy, just one day after floating a conspiracy theory which suggested exactly that during an interview on national television.Speaking with CNN host Wolf Blitzer, Trump repeatedly said he never thought the theory he cited held water: “Of course I don’t believe it. I wouldn’t believe it. But I did say, let people read it.”
Just one day prior, Trump floated an unsubstantiated National Enquirer report on “Fox & Friends” that suggested Rafael Cruz was with Lee Harvey Oswald shortly before the assassination of Kennedy. “What was he doing with Lee Harvey Oswald shortly before the shooting?” Trump asked at the time. Pressed on the subject after Cruz ended his bid for the White House, the presumptive Republican nominee insisted he never believed the theory he floated. “Of course I don’t think that,” he told Blitzer.
Gawker, Why That Actually Could Be Rafael Cruz With Lee Harvey Oswald, Ashley Feinberg, May 4, 2016. While we do know that Rafael was definitely living in New Orleans by 1967, there’s no definitive record of his location in 1963—so he may very well have been living in New Orleans just months before JFK’s assassination in November of 1963. JIP Editor's note: This column contains astonishing biased claims in keeping with the site's reputation for snark, slander and other shabby reporting, which is why Madsen declined repeated invitations from Gawker to cooperate with its reporter.
Wayne Madsen Report (WMR), Cruz suspends campaign after shellacking in Indiana, Wayne Madsen, May 3, 2016 (Subscription required0. WMR has been told by GOP insiders that there were two main reasons for Cruz's sudden reversal.
Wayne Madsen Report (WMR), Trump refers to Rafael Cruz being with Oswald in New Orleans, Wayne Madsen, May 3, 2016. On the morning of the Indiana primary, GOP frontrunner Donald Trump, appearing on Fox News's "Fox & Friends" morning program, cited Senator Ted Cruz's father, Rafael, being seen and photographed with accused President John F. Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald in New Orleans in August 1963. Trump was referring to a story first broken by WMR and further advanced by the National Enquirer, the popular supermarket tabloid known for scooping the mainstream media on the Gennifer Flowers/Bill Clinton, Donna Rice/Gary Hart, and Rielle Hunter/John Edwards scandals.
Politico, Trump accuses Cruz's father of helping JFK's assassin, Nolan D. McCaskill, May 3, 2016. Donald Trump on Tuesday alleged that Ted Cruz’s father was with John F. Kennedy’s assassin shortly before he murdered the president, parroting a National Enquirer story claiming that Rafael Cruz was pictured with Lee Harvey Oswald handing out pro-Fidel Castro pamphlets in New Orleans in 1963. A Cruz campaign spokesperson told the Miami Herald, which pointed out numerous flaws in the Enquirer story, that it was “another garbage story in a tabloid full of garbage.”
Trump’s tangent followed his rebuke of Rafael Cruz using the pulpit to court evangelicals for his son.
“I implore, I exhort every member of the body of Christ to vote according to the word of God and vote for the candidate that stands on the word of God and on the Constitution of the United States of America,” Rafael Cruz said in a video clip aired by Fox News. “And I am convinced that man is my son, Ted Cruz. The alternative could be the destruction of America.”
Asked to respond, Trump called it a disgrace. “I think it’s a disgrace that he’s allowed to do it. I think it’s a disgrace that he’s allowed to say it,” he said, before touting his support from Jerry Falwell Jr. and other evangelical leaders.
“You look at so many of the ministers that are backing me, and they’re backing me more so than they’re backing Cruz, and I’m winning the evangelical vote,” Trump continued. “It's disgraceful that his father can go out and do that. And just — and so many people are angry about it. And the evangelicals are angry about it, the way he does that.”
“But I think it's horrible,” he added. “I think it's absolutely horrible that a man can go and do that, what he's saying there.”
.be" target="_blank">Jake Tapper: "There is no corroborative evidence that Ted Cruz's father ever met Lee Harvey Oswald," May 3, 2016 (2:05 mins.). Jake Tapper: "There is no corroborative evidence that Ted Cruz's father ever met Lee Harvey Oswald."
MSNBC, Cruz calls Trump ‘serial philanderer’ and ‘pathological liar’ in blistering attack, Staff report, May 3, 2016. Trump’s evidence? A photo, disseminated in fringe circles online and then by the National Enquirer, that conspiracy sleuths claim shows the elder Cruz near Oswald. There is zero evidence the person in question is Rafael Cruz.
Washington Post, The 50-year-old mystery behind that photo of Lee Harvey Oswald, Philip Bump, May 3, 2016. When the ridiculous National Enquirer cover story linking Ted Cruz's father to the assassin of President John F. Kennedy became a focus of discussion Tuesday — thanks to Donald Trump's invoking the story — I saw an opportunity I couldn't resist. I am a Kennedy assassination buff; I own the Warren Commission report and books arguing one side or the other of the conspiracy controversy. (For the record, I think Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone.)
We're asked to believe, then, that Oswald ran into a Rafael Cruz at an employment office in a city where Cruz may not have been living. That Cruz then agreed to join Oswald in passing out fliers, despite their advocating a position that Cruz himself vehemently opposed. That he may or may not have been photographed doing so —and that a witness at the scene thought the other guy passing out fliers was a lot taller than Cruz.
A huge number of chips would have had to fall into place for this to affect the 2016 presidential race. It's much more likely that some guy looking for a job in New Orleans in August 1963 was offered $2 and took it — just like Charles Steele.
Infowars, Trump Links Cruz’s Father to JFK Assassination, Kit Daniels, May 3, 2016. "That was reported, and nobody talks about it," Trump says about mainstream media, GOP Presidential frontrunner Donald Trump seconded on May 3 the explosive allegation that Rafael Cruz, father of presidential rival Ted Cruz.
USA Today, Trump bizarrely links Cruz’s father to JFK assassin; Cruz goes ballistic, Donovan Slack, May 3, 2016. The feud between Donald Trump and Ted Cruz hit epic proportions Tuesday as Republican primary voters headed to the polls in Indiana. Trump was asked on Fox News to respond to remarks by the Texas senator's father on the campaign trail. Rafael Cruz had said electing “the alternative” to his son “could be the destruction of America.”
Then he [Trump] insinuated that Cruz’s father may have played some role in the assassination of John F. Kennedy Jr. [Sic!!] No really. He brought up a questionable National Enquirer story claiming Rafael Cruz appeared in a photo with Oswald shortly before the murder. (The Miami Herald took a critical look at the claims.)
CNN Money, Donald Trump's latest conspiracy theory involves Ted Cruz's father, Brian Stelter, May 3, 2016. Donald Trump did it again on Tuesday, stating something from a highly questionable source as if it's fact. In the past, his claims have come from fringe right-wing web sites and false social media memes. This time it is coming from the National Enquirer. He credulously cited an Enquirer story about a link between Senator Ted Cruz's father and JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald.
No other news outlets have corroborated the alleged link. Cruz called it "nuts" on Tuesday. But the reciting of unproven conspiracy theories has been a tactic of the Trump campaign since last summer. Trump has spoken of Muslims cheering the 9/11 attacks, a protester's imagined links to ISIS, and inflated numbers of Syrian refugees coming to America.
Mediaite, Trump Hilariously Cites Absurd Tabloid Criticism of Rafael Cruz: ‘He Was With Lee Harvey Oswald!’ J.D. Durkin, May 3, 2016. It’s no surprise that during Donald Trump‘s Retweet candidacy here in 2016, there hasn’t been a whole lot of fact-checking that has gone on to many of the wild assertions the frontrunner has been making on the stump. Everything — including conjecture, hearsay, and unsubstantiated claims — has been fair game from the lips of the real estate mogul, but this one may take the cake.
Both pamphleteers were hired by Oswald, rather than volunteers for the organization. One was never identified, and one was Charles Hall Steele Jr. Reclaiming History, Vincent Bugliosi's book that serves as the definitive non-conspiratorial account of the Kennedy assassination, explains:
It was Oswald's best-organized effort. He provided some substance for his phantom FPCC chapter by getting two other young men to help distribute the literature. One of them, a short, young Cuban, only passed out a few of the handful of leaflets [WDSU cameraman Johann Rush] saw Oswald give him on the street after talking to him and his taller companion. The short man, who has never been identified, seemed embarrassed by the entire affair, grinning a lot, and soon left with his companion, who seemed to purposefully keep his back to Rush's camera throughout the entire incident. The other leaflet distributor was a kid named Charles Hall Steele Jr., whom Oswald had recruited at the unemployment office, where Steele was waiting for a friend who was taking a test. Oswald offered two dollars for fifteen or twenty minutes or work. It sounded good to Steele, who asked no questions. He didn't even bother to read the literature he passed out.
Wayne Madsen (WMR), Solid links found between Rafael Cruz's employer and plot to kill JFK, Wayne Madsen, April 29, 2016 (Subscription required and excerpted here with permission). A long-since forgotten dossier maintained by the Central Intelligence Agency on New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison's investigation of the links between Lee Harvey Oswald, expatriate Cubans in New Orleans, and the CIA points to solid links between Rafael Cruz's ultimate oil industry employer, Schlumberger of France and the Netherlands Antilles, and the plot to assassinate President John F. Kennedy in Dallas in 1963.
Cruz's relationship with Schlumberger eventually led to the purchase by the company of Rafael B. Cruz & Associates, Inc., a consulting firm that employed both Rafael, the father of presidential candidate Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, and Eleanor Darragh Wilson Cruz, Senator Cruz's mother.
Consortium News, How CBS News Aided the JFK Cover-up, James DiEugenio, April 22, 2016. With the Warren Report on JFK’s assassination under attack in the mid-1960s, there was a chance to correct the errors and reassess the findings, but CBS News intervened to silence the critics, reports James DiEugenio. In the mid-1960s, amid growing skepticism about the Warren Commission’s lone-gunman findings on John F. Kennedy’s assassination, there was a struggle inside CBS News about whether to allow the critics a fair public hearing at the then-dominant news network. Some CBS producers pushed for a debate between believers and doubters and one even submitted a proposal to put the Warren Report “on trial,” according to internal CBS documents.
Radar, Bombshell Video, Ted Silent On Dad’s Photo Scandal, Melissa Cronin, April 20, 2016. Ted Cruz avoided commenting on his dad's new photo scandal at a campaign event today, Radaronline.com has learned. Ted Cruz supporters are going to have a hard time dismissing this scandal! As RadarOnline.com reported, The National ENQUIRER has uncovered explosive photos of Ted’s father, Rafael Cruz, with JFK killer Lee Harvey Oswald. And multiple experts told The ENQUIRER that the photos are legit!
The chilling photos were unearthed as part of a blockbuster ENQUIRER probe. In the images from 1963, Rafael can be seen handing out pro-Castro pamphlets alongside Oswald in New Orleans. Another similar shot shows Rafael marching in a 1959 political protest carrying a sign supporting the controversial Cuban leader.
And while some experts told The ENQUIRER that the jaw-dropping photos were too old to definitively identify Rafael, others said that the man in the photos appears to be the father of the presidential candidate, and they do not appear to be photoshopped.
Respected photo editor Mitch Goldstone told The ENQUIRER, “There’s more similarity than dissimilarity” between the man in the photos and Rafael. Goldstone is the president and CEO of ScanMyPhotos.com, and has reviewed more than 300 million images over his 26-year career.
JFK Facts.org, Morley on Rafael Cruz, James Angleton and more, Jefferson Morley, April 25, 2016. I will be appearing on Miami’s WIOD talk radio station on Tuesday April 26 from 10-11 am ET with host Fernand Amandi. We’ll discuss the Rafael Cruz theory, my forthcoming JFK ebook, and the continuing national security relevance of James Angleton. You can listen live to the show anywhere on the planet thru wiod.com. You can call in at 866-610-6397. And you can listen live on the iheartradio mobile app.
National Enquirer claims photo is proof that Rafael B. Cruz was standing alongside JFK assassin;
Cruz campaign dismisses allegation as ‘garbage;’
Cruz’s father had been pro-Castro but had turned on him when Cuban leader said he was a communist.
The National Enquirer has published what it says is conclusive evidence that Ted Cruz’s father, Rafael B. Cruz, is the man photographed next to JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald distributing pro-Castro leaflets in 1963 in New Orleans. The Cruz presidential campaign fired back unequivocally. “This is another garbage story in a tabloid full of garbage,” communications director Alice Stewart told McClatchy. “The story is false; that is not Rafael in the picture.”
The explosive suggestion that Cruz’s father would have had any affiliation with Oswald is not corroborated in any other way. Cuban-born Rafael Cruz is now a fervent anti-communist, but there was a time he supported then-rebel leader Fidel Castro. His son, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, frequently relates his father’s arrest and torture by government officials and subsequent escape to the United States.
The elder Cruz ended up at the University of Texas at Austin and still supported Castro, who led the revolution that overthrew the Batista regime in 1959. Castro formally declared himself Marxist in 1961.
“The U.S. government was duped. The American people were duped. I was duped,” Rafael Cruz wrote in his book, A Time for Action, released in January. “When people ask me why I supported Castro in over-throwing the Cuban government, I readily admit that I didn’t realize he was a communist.”
National Enquirer, Ted Cruz’s Father — Caught With JFK Assassin, J.R. Taylor, with Mike Jaccarino, Sharon Churcher, Mike Hammer, Belinda Robinson and Douglas Montero, April 20, 2016. Worked with Lee Harvey Oswald for Kennedy's worst enemy! Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz’s Cuban-born dad was caught on camera in New Orleans — alongside Lee Harvey Oswald — just three months before the assassin killed President John F. Kennedy! The shocking allegations are revealed in the latest bombshell world exclusive from The National Enquirer — on newsstands now! The Enquirer has the disturbing photographic evidence that was buried in secret U.S. government files, with Rafael Cruz, now 77, palling around with the man who murdered America’s 35th president!
Top D.C. insiders have confirmed to The Enquirer that “the man in the photograph is indeed Rafael!” The investigation into the mystery man who might very well be Rafael Cruz provides a potentially chilling look at the family history of the Republican presidential candidate. The Enquirer has the full story behind the bizarre meeting between Rafael Cruz and Oswald as they worked together for one of JFK’s most dangerous enemies! Get all the shocking details — only in today’s issue of The National Enquirer!
Boing Boing, “Ted Cruz Father Linked to JFK Assassination!” and other tabloid stunners, Peter Sheridan, April 20, 2016. My friend Peter Sheridan is a Los Angeles-based correspondent for British national newspapers. He has covered revolutions, civil wars, riots, wildfires, and Hollywood celebrity misdeeds for longer than he cares to remember. As part of his job, he must read all the weekly tabloids. For the past couple of years, he's been posting terrific weekly tabloid recaps on Facebook and has graciously given us permission to run them on Boing Boing. Enjoy! - Mark]
All politics is show business these days, so it’s no surprise that this week’s tabloids and celebrity magazines are knee-deep in matters of state, displaying their usual gifts for gravitas, balance and fairness.
Ted Cruz’s father is linked to JFK’s assassination, Michelle Obama is working to destroy Hillary Clinton, Angelina Jolie plans to run for Congress, and Hillary reveals that she likes Goldfish and hot sauce, we are told in what passes for political coverage.
“Ted Cruz Father Linked to JFK Assassination!” screams the National Enquirer’s typically ungrammatical cover, boasting a “world exclusive investigation.” Photos obtained by the Warren Commission purportedly depicting Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald distributing Communist-leaning pro-Castro pamphlets three months before he shot the president show the killer posed next to a man who for 52 years has remained unidentified by federal investigators -- but who the Enquirer now claims is Ted Cruz’s father, Rafael Cruz. The magazine employed “a group of world-renowned experts in photography and facial recognition” to reach their verdict: “The man in the frame is indeed Rafael." How positive are these experts? Not very.
Mediaite, Okay, National Enquirer Literally Linking Ted Cruz to JFK Assassination Now, Sam Reisman, April 20, 2016. The National Enquirer published a story on Ted Cruz‘s series of alleged sexual affairs (and inexplicably got the media and the candidates to take it even halfway seriously), which failed to derail his campaign. So now the tabloid is now literally connecting the Texas senator to the assassination of JFK.
The candidate’s father, Rafael Cruz, had a “bizarre meeting” in New Orleans with Lee Harvey Oswald, which was caught on camera, according to the Enquirer‘s breathless reporting. Unnamed but “[t]op D.C. insiders” have supposedly confirmed the elder Cruz is the man who appears in photographs “on newsstands now!” (Trump ally Roger Stone has not yet commented on the bombshell.)
JFKFacts.org, The facts about Lee Oswald and Rafael Cruz, Jefferson Morley, April 19, 2016. In response to several queries about the Rafael Cruz (father of Ted) JFK conspiracy theory, I delved into the record with the help of a faithful reader. Here’s what is known: There is no evidence the man is Rafael Cruz. Madsen seems to be believe that a photograph of Ted Cruz taken in the 1950s and the assertions of one anonymous source constitute “evidence.”
Carlos Bringuier, the leader of the Cuban Student Directorate in New Orleans, knew Oswald and he knew the man to Oswald’s right, a Japanese man. Bringuier told the Warren Commission he could not identify the man to Oswald’s left. The Japanese man, Junichi Ehara, was located and he confirmed he took a leaflet from Oswald. He was shown the photo and said he could not identify the man next to Oswald. In February 1967, FBI official W. A. Branigan told deputy FBI director William Sullivan that the mystery man remained unidentified after an “ex[h]austive investigation.” In the context of FBI director J. Edgar Hoover’s query about gaps in the investigation, this person was singled out as an individual associated with Oswald who could not be identified.
By February 1967, New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison was investigating an alleged JFK conspiracy in New Orleans and the FBI and the CIA began to watch him closely.
Crooks & Liars, Latest From Tinfoil Hat Land: Did Ted Cruz's Dad Help Kill JFK?Steve M., April 14, 2016. Via Free Republic and a blog called Milfuegos, I learn of the latest conspiracy theory from Wayne Madsen: Was Ted Cruz's father involved in the assassination of President Kennedy? "... there is a strong reason to believe that Cruz was associated with Central Intelligence Agency's anti-Castro operations." I'm amused by this conspiracy theory. I don't believe it. However, I really, really hope Donald Trump tries to spread it.
Furthermore, a Cuban hired by alleged JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald and who bears a striking resemblance to Cruz is seen in an iconic photograph of Oswald and a group of Cubans Oswald hired who were distributing "Hands off Cuba!" pamphlets in New Orleans in the summer of 1963. The photo of Oswald and other Cubans he hired for the Fair Play for Cuba Committee was taken outside the International Trade Mart in New Orleans on August 16, 1963. WMR [the Wayne Madsen Report] has been informed by a source that the individual to Oswald's left is none other than Rafael Cruz.
Advance Indiana, Investigative Journalist Ties Cruz' Father To Oswald In New Orleans, Gary R. Welsh (shown in file photo), April 10, 2016. Oswald in New Orleans in 1963 with a man Madsen claims is Rafael Cruz on his right. Anyone who has studied the assassination of President John F. Kennedy has understood the key role Cuban-Americans working for the CIA played in the intelligence community plot to kill Kennedy in Dallas, Texas in 1963. Government disinformation agents immediately played up Lee Harvey Oswald's supposed ties to the Fair Play for Cuba Committee in New Orleans prior to Kennedy's assassination, which was supposedly a pro-Castro organization created by the Soviet Union.
More realistically, it was a CIA front group since most of the people associated with the organization in New Orleans, including Oswald, had all worked for the CIA in some capacity. Warren Commission records proving Oswald's ties to the CIA and FBI have remained sealed since the release of the Commission's widely-discredited report in 1964 claiming the assassination was the lone work of Oswald.
Reporters looking into the murky background of the Cuban-immigrant father of Sen. Ted Cruz have uncovered a number of inconsistencies in biographical claims in Sen. Cruz's book that his father had fled to the U.S. in 1957 as an insurgent fighting the Batista regime with only a $100 sewn into his underwear. Newly-reported information by independent investigator Wayne Madsen ties Rafael Bienvenido Cruz to Oswald's work for the supposedly pro-Castro group in New Orleans during the summer of 1963.
Madsen claims that one of the Cubans pictured with Oswald handing out pamphlets for Fair Play outside the International Trade Mart in August, 1963 is Rafael Cruz. The ITM's founder, Clay Shaw, worked for the CIA and was the only other man in the U.S. to face criminal charges in connection with the Kennedy assassination, when NOLA district attorney James Garrison brought charges in what he contended was a wide government conspiracy to assassinate Kennedy. Shaw was acquitted of the charges and Garrison humiliated after federal agencies worked hand-in-hand with mainstream media to discredit his case.
Cruz's Cuban father, also named Rafael Cruz, operated an electronic business in Matanzas, Cuba tied to the American company, RCA. While reporters have been able to confirm an instance where the elder Cruz was arrested by Cuban police and brutally beaten, reporters have found no confirmation the arrest had anything to do with work for forces supporting Castro's efforts to overthrow the pro-American Batista regime. After arriving by a ferry boat from Cuba in Key West, Florida in 1957, Cruz' father made his way to Austin, Texas where he managed to enroll at the University of Texas and earn a degree in mathematics in 1961.
Wayne Madsen Report (WMR), Possible Rafael Cruz link to Oswald brings out the Snopses, Wayne Madsen, April 19, 2016. As some major news develops linking the Cuban father of GOP presidential candidate Ted Cruz to the New Orleans-based plot to assassinate President John F. Kennedy, the perennial "debunking" site Snopes.com has weighed in with a volley of attacks on WMR. Snopes.com was founded as site to debunking so-called "urban legends" and has, in concert with the always-dubious Wikipedia, served as a conduit for official disinformation parlayed by various U.S. government agencies, including the Central Intelligence Agency and Department of State.
Snopes.com is run by a California couple named Barbara and David Mikkelson who founded the San Fernando Valley Folklore Society. The San Fernando valley. The San Fernando valley is best known as the porn capital of the world and many of its residences serve as porn studios for even the most aberrant type of sexual behavior. It also serves as the headquarters of Snopes.com, which specialized in its own form of "smut" aimed at legitimate news stories.
Snopes enjoys a symbiotic relationship with Wikipedia and they often cross-reference their "anti-conspiracy" drivel. In comments made in Washington, DC two years ago, former CBS News reporter Sharyl Attkisson described Snopes.com and Wikipedia as the two worst reference sites on the Internet. As a telltale sign of their collaboration, the Wikipedia site contains no criticism, such as that leveled by Attkisson and others, against Snopes.com.
JFKFacts.org, Debunking the JFK conspiracy theory involving Rafael Cruz, father of Ted, Jefferson Morley, April 14, 2016. The bogus question Did Rafael Cruz Kill JFK? is being peddled by a self-described “conspiracy theorist” with no track record of credible reporting on the JFK story. It echoes on the Internet with Crooks & Liars expressing appropriate derision.
Wonkette, Perfectly Sane ‘Researcher’ Just Asking If Ted Cruz’s Jerk Daddy Killed Kennedy (Yes), Doktor Zoom, April 13, 2016. We can think of about nine bajillion reasons Ted Cruz shouldn’t be president, but here’s one we hadn’t considered: Maybe his dry-drunk daddy was part of a CIA plot to assassinate John F. Kennedy!!! The shocking conspiracy theory comes from the fertile imagination of a guy named Wayne Madsen, who is only asking: Was Ted Cruz’s father involved in the assassination of President Kennedy? Let’s examine the compelling evidence! For one thing, Rafael Cruz Sr. was Cuban, and lived in Dallas and New Orleans. For another, Lee Harvey Oswald was photographed with some Cubans in New Orleans, and then moved to Dallas, where he shot (or was the patsy blamed for shooting) JFK! Back and to the left, sell the movie rights to Oliver Stone, CASE CLOSED!
Or as Madsen puts it in his Wayne Madsen Report (WMR), so it sounds slightly less like completely tenuous, evidence-free speculation: "Based on the presence of the elder Cruz, an anti-Castro activist, in Dallas and New Orleans before the November 22, 1963, assassination of President John F. Kennedy, there is a strong reason to believe that Cruz was associated with Central Intelligence Agency’s anti-Castro operations."
Wayne Madsen Report (WMR), Was the father of presidential hopeful Cruz involved in the JFK assassination? Wayne Madsen, April 7, 2016. Previous questions have surfaced about the 1960s activities of Rafael Cruz, Sr., the father of GOP presidential hopeful Rafael Cruz, Jr. (Ted Cruz). Based on the presence of the elder Cruz, an anti-Castro activist, in Dallas and New Orleans before the November 22, 1963, assassination of President John F. Kennedy, there is a strong reason to believe that Cruz was associated with Central Intelligence Agency's anti-Castro operations.
Furthermore, a Cuban hired by alleged JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald and who bears a striking resemblance to Cruz is seen in an iconic photograph of Oswald and a group of Cubans Oswald hired who were distributing "Hands off Cuba!" pamphlets in New Orleans in the summer of 1963. The photo of Oswald and other Cubans he hired for the Fair Play for Cuba Committee was taken outside the International Trade Mart in New Orleans on August 16, 1963. WMR has been informed by a source that the individual to Oswald's left is none other than Rafael Cruz. The photograph at the trade mart was favorably compared to a 1957 photograph of Cruz attached to an official Cuban Ministry of Education document.
Justice Integrity Project, Readers Guide To JFK Assassination, Andrew Kreig, April 3, 2016. To help researchers of President Kennedy's 1963 assassination and its current implications, the Justice Integrity Project began publishing a Reader's Guide in 2013 to coincide with the shooting's 50th anniversary.
Blogger Commentaries on Rafael Cruz/JFK Controversy
Twilight Language, Which Cruz Was Photographed With Lee Harvey Oswald? Loren Coleman, April 23, 2016. In the most bizarre of weird Presidential election races ever, another strange twist just occurred this week. The National Enquirer, a tabloid with a tabloid mentality, has published for May 2, 2016, a "World Exclusive Investigation" in which they have tied a famed incident running up to the John F. Kennedy assassination to Ted Cruz.
The claim is that Ted Cruz's father, Rafael Cruz, was photographed with Lee Harvey Oswald in New Orleans. It is as if this story is being floated to get these rumors out there to overturn them, or make them part of the fringe. Most conservative and rightwing blogs are taking the National Enquirer story with tongue firmly in cheek.
Rumors of a link between Rafael Cruz and Lee Harvey Oswald first surfaced in the blogosphere in April 2016. The photo shows Lee Harvey Oswald handling out “Fair Play” leaflets, and a man standing nearby in the background has a passing resemblance to a young Rafael Cruz....Given lack of any proof besides a passing resemblence between the man in the photo and Rafael Cruz, we’re calling this one “unproven.” [See here, for more.] But is a deeper truth being hidden? Some feel that's what may be happening here.
What might be the realities being revealed in the midst of this supposedly "tabloid news"?
Cuban Rafael Cruz, a pro-Batista, CIA connected Cuban in exile met his wife in New Orleans (home of Oswald, Guy Bannister, David Ferry, Clay Shaw and the great Jim Garrison). New Orleans was ground zero for the CIA’s Cuban manned “Operation Mongoose”, the Bay of Pigs and as we all know, the JFK Assassination. Anyone familiar with the assassination and the works of Mark Lane, Jim Garrison, Jim Marrs and David Lifton…and many more will be stunned by this troubling information.
Advance Indiana, Investigative Journalist Ties Cruz' Father To Oswald In New Orleans, Gary R. Welsh, April 10, 2016. Oswald in New Orleans in 1963 with a man Madsen claims is Rafael Cruz on his right. Anyone who has studied the assassination of President John F. Kennedy has understood the key role Cuban-Americans working for the CIA played in the intelligence community plot to kill Kennedy in Dallas, Texas in 1963. Government disinformation agents immediately played up Lee Harvey Oswald's supposed ties to the Fair Play for Cuba Committee in New Orleans prior to Kennedy's assassination, which was supposedly a pro-Castro organization created by the Soviet Union.
More realistically, it was a CIA front group since most of the people associated with the organization in New Orleans, including Oswald, had all worked for the CIA in some capacity. Warren Commission records proving Oswald's ties to the CIA and FBI have remained sealed since the release of the Commission's widely-discredited report in 1964 claiming the assassination was the lone work of Oswald.
Reporters looking into the murky background of the Cuban-immigrant father of Sen. Ted Cruz have uncovered a number of inconsistencies in biographical claims in Sen. Cruz's book that his father had fled to the U.S. in 1957 as an insurgent fighting the Batista regime with only a $100 sewn into his underwear. Newly-reported information by independent investigator Wayne Madsen ties Rafael Bienvenido Cruz to Oswald's work for the supposedly pro-Castro group in New Orleans during the summer of 1963.
Madsen claims that one of the Cubans pictured with Oswald handing out pamphlets for Fair Play outside the International Trade Mart in August, 1963 is Rafael Cruz. The ITM's founder, Clay Shaw, worked for the CIA and was the only other man in the U.S. to face criminal charges in connection with the Kennedy assassination, when NOLA district attorney James Garrison brought charges in what he contended was a wide government conspiracy to assassinate Kennedy. Shaw was acquitted of the charges and Garrison humiliated after federal agencies worked hand-in-hand with mainstream media to discredit his case.
Cruz's Cuban father, also named Rafael Cruz, operated an electronic business in Matanzas, Cuba tied to the American company, RCA. While reporters have been able to confirm an instance where the elder Cruz was arrested by Cuban police and brutally beaten, reporters have found no confirmation the arrest had anything to do with work for forces supporting Castro's efforts to overthrow the pro-American Batista regime. After arriving by a ferry boat from Cuba in Key West, Florida in 1957, Cruz' father made his way to Austin, Texas where he managed to enroll at the University of Texas and earn a degree in mathematics in 1961.
Wayne Madsen (WMR), Was the father of presidential hopeful Cruz involved in the JFK assassination? Wayne Madsen, April 7, 2016. Previous questions have surfaced about the 1960s activities of Rafael Cruz, Sr., the father of GOP presidential hopeful Rafael Cruz, Jr. (Ted Cruz). Based on the presence of the elder Cruz, an anti-Castro activist, in Dallas and New Orleans before the November 22, 1963, assassination of President John F. Kennedy, there is a strong reason to believe that Cruz was associated with Central Intelligence Agency's anti-Castro operations.
Furthermore, a Cuban hired by alleged JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald and who bears a striking resemblance to Cruz is seen in an iconic photograph of Oswald and a group of Cubans Oswald hired who were distributing "Hands off Cuba!" pamphlets in New Orleans in the summer of 1963. The photo of Oswald and other Cubans he hired for the Fair Play for Cuba Committee was taken outside the International Trade Mart in New Orleans on August 16, 1963. WMR has been informed by a source that the individual to Oswald's left is none other than Rafael Cruz. The photograph at the trade mart was favorably compared to a 1957 photograph of Cruz attached to an official Cuban Ministry of Education document.
Indiana's May 3 GOP Primary
Cruz Suspends Campaign
Washington Post, Cruz exits race after spirited last stand; Sanders upsets Clinton, Philip Rucker and Anne Gearan, May 3, 2016. Sen. Ted Cruz's blistering criticism of Donald Trump on Tuesday didn't gain traction with Indiana voters. Among Democrats, Sen. Bernie Sanders scored a fresh rationale to remain in the race, despite Hillary Clinton's wide delegate lead.
New York Times, Ted Cruz Confronts Donald Trump Supporters in Indiana, Matt Flegenheimer, May 2, 2016. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas had a date with a waiting car. It was the second of five stops on Monday, the eve of Indiana’s critical primary, and the event at a restaurant here had been billed as little more than a meet-and-greet. When he got back outside, a half-dozen protesters who supported Donald J. Trump were waiting across North Washington Street, some holding signs.
Los Angeles Times, Cruz's faltering campaign shows the risks of depending on a few wealthy donors, Joseph Tanfani and Noah Bierman, May 2, 2016. Ted Cruz, in his outsider’s bid for the White House, has depended heavily on the largesse of just three wealthy donors to establish credibility and stay afloat amid a chaotic nominating process that killed off most of his rivals. Now, at perhaps the most desperate moment in his quest to win the Republican nomination, Cruz is learning the perils of relying on strong-willed magnates who carry their own agendas and have demanded an unprecedented level of control in how their money is spent.
One of the three primary donors to Cruz’s presidential efforts, a private equity manager who recruited the other two top donors, has refrained from spending the vast majority of his $10 million contribution to bolster the Cruz campaign. He is instead fighting openly with the top strategist for the super PACs that were set up to spend the money.
The man at the center of the fight, Toby Neugebauer, is a close friend of Cruz and his wife, Heidi. Neugebauer and his own wife have vacationed with the Cruzes, and he still counts himself a major supporter. But he has refused to spend $9 million of the $10 million he put into a super PAC.
Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders speaks at an-invitation-only press conference at the National Press Club on May 1, 2016 (Justice Integrity Project photo by Andrew Kreig)
Washington Post, Sanders makes a public plea for Democratic superdelegates to switch allegiances, John Wagner, May 1, 2016. The senator from Vermont shows no signs of ending his challenge against Hillary Clinton. White House hopeful Bernie Sanders, who has fought the Democratic establishment throughout his campaign, made an extraordinary appeal Sunday for party insiders to help deliver the nomination to him, even if he doesn’t catch rival Hillary Clinton in the remaining primaries and caucuses.
Addressing reporters at the National Press Club in Washington, Sanders made a public plea for Democratic superdelegates to reconsider their allegiances to Clinton, particularly those in states where he has won nominating contests or those who committed to Clinton before he entered the race. (Sanders is shown in a Gage Skidmore file photo)
OpEd News, Bernie Sanders Gives Press Conference Honoring the First Anniversary of His Candidacy, Marta Steele, May 1, 2016. Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders today held a news conference at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. Strong, angry, spirited, unflinching, the Vermont senator celebrated the one-year anniversary of his entry into the race for nomination as Democratic presidential nominee. He had announced his bid for the nomination in the District.
Indiana Blogger Gary Welsh's Death
Alex Jones Radio Show, Indiana Voting-Fraud Activist Behind Rubio ‘Sex Party’ Leaks Found Dead, Kit Daniels, May 3, 2016. Blogger who exposed voter fraud died right before primary; Indiana Voting-Fraud Activist Behind Rubio ‘Sex Party’ Leaks Found Dead. Voting-fraud activist Gary Welsh, who tipped off Infowars’ Wayne Madsen on Marco Rubio’s foam sex parties, was found dead leading up to the Indiana primary. Police found Welsh’s body in an apartment complex stairwell in Indianapolis, Ind., on May 1 and quickly ruled it a “suicide.”
“Welsh was a well-known lawyer and political commentator in Indiana who combated against the takeover of the state by religious fundamentalists and opposed ‘well-connected’ GOP presidential candidates like Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz, and Rubio,” Wayne Madsen reported. “The timing of Welsh's death just prior to the Indiana GOP primary, one that Cruz hopes to win to keep his chances for the GOP presidential nomination alive, is troubling, to say the least.”
New York Daily News, Indiana political blogger commits suicide after writing Donald Trump post with ominous comment, Jason Silverstein, May 2, 2016. A prolific Indiana political blogger wrote an ominous post last week predicting a Donald Trump victory in his state — and soon afterward committed suicide, police said. Gary Welsh, a lawyer who managed his Advance Indiana blog since 2005, was found in his Indianapolis apartment around 8 a.m. Sunday with a gunshot wound, according to the Indianapolis Star. Officers found him in a stairwell, dead at the scene, according to a police report.
Police ruled Welsh’s death a suicide, but have not released any details about what may have motivated it. One friend, attorney Jim Klimek, said Welsh's mood had been "deteriorating" in the past few weeks. Welsh was facing financial struggles, in part because he spent so much time blogging that it cut into his struggling law practice.
Wayne Madsen Report (WMR), Welsh suicide? Not!Wayne Madsen, (WMR's editor is the author of 14 books and a former Navy intelligence officer), May 2, 2016 (Subscription required; excerpted by permission). Here we go again! It was just after Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Gary Webb (shown in a file photo) contacted this editor and said he, also, was investigating the firm Affiliated Computer Systems (ACS) and wanted us to share notes, that he was reported to have died from two gunshot wounds to the head at his Carmichael, California home. ACS was involved in processing the U.S. student visas for alleged 9/11 hijackers Mohammed Atta and his compatriots.
Before even launching a full investigation, Indianapolis police are calling the sudden death of Indiana political blogger Gary Welsh a "suicide." Never mind the fact that it was Welsh who was the initial source of WMR's recent story on Florida Senator Marco Rubio's "foam bath" exploits in South Beach, Miami....
Indianapolis Business Journal, Blogger Gary Welsh dies in apparent suicide, Staff report, May 1, 2016. Prominent Indianapolis blogger Gary Welsh has died, according to Indianapolis police, who say they are investigating the death as a "tragic suicide." Welsh, 53, wrote the widely followed conservative blog Advance Indiana, which he launched more than a decade ago. He also was a practicing attorney. The Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department's incident report says officers were dispatched to the Lockerbie Glove Factory Lofts, 430 N. Park Ave., before 8 a.m. Sunday after receiving a report of a person found shot in the stairwell of the building. The witnesses who called 911 reported that a gun was next to the body.
IMPD Capt. Richard Riddle said he expects an autopsy will be conducted Monday. He said the Marion County Coroner's Office will determine the official cause of death. Welsh was known for hard-hitting blog posts that took swipes at both Democrats and Republicans. His final post, published Friday, summarized the latest poll results in the GOP presidential primary battle between Donald Trump, Sen. Ted Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich. His post included this disconcerting line: "If I'm not around to see the vote results, my prediction is that Trump wins Indiana with just shy of 50% of the vote, but he will carry every single congressional district and sweep the delegates—assuming the party-chosen delegates honor their rules-bound commitment to support the winner on the first ballot."
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Perhaps even more important, Washington insiders are beginning to share a view that candidates risk unprecedented exposure of their darkest secrets in a campaign that will be far more ruthless, unpredictable and momentous than the public can expect from controlled media. This is indicated by, among other things, a report May 5 by the experienced commentator Pepe Escobar, accessible via his Facebook account: How Trump Did It; The Outside The Box Gambit. 
But their core conclusion, right from the start, has been that Oswald killed JFK alone, as we reported in Major Media Stick With Oswald 'Lone Gunman' JFK Theory. Yet many serious researchers, law enforcement and scientific whistle blowers, and other suppressed voices have long argued that Oswald was a scapegoat who acted with others at a minimum, and may even have been innocent of killing either JFK or a Dallas policeman that day.
We still do not know whether Rafael Cruz was passing out literature in New Orleans with Oswald. The circumstances suggest that Oswald and his fellow leaflet distributors were government assets, including natives of Cuba. Rafael Cruz has lived his life in largely mysterious fashion, despite publishing a memoir this year and many public appearances both on the campaign trail and as a pastor.
Our view is that media coverage of the primary day fracas exemplifies yet again the controlled and shallow news coverage of our nation's most important events. This encompasses current elections and notable past events, such as Kennedy's history-changing murder.
Absolutely vital to understanding this story -- but ignored by Cruz and other commentaries populating the airwaves May 3 -- is that neither Madsen, the Enquirer, Trump (nor our Justice Integrity Project for that matter) have ever claimed that that Rafael Cruz was part of a plot to kill JFK. Instead, their allegation is that Cruz was one of a vast number of others who were involved in various subplots to overthrow Castro, some which coincided with efforts by a tiny inner circle (not necessarily involving Cruz) who wanted Kennedy dead for various reasons.
mob and CIA operations, often in tandem with work as an accountant for seemingly legitimate businesses.
blogger Gary Welsh, who was reported as a suicide shot to death over the weekend.
A definitive treatment is Jim Garrison's 1967 video response to a smear job orchestrated by NBC News, a key part of the CIA's Operation Mockingbird to coordinate pro-CIA coverage among the nation's major news media. That response is available 
At right is a photo by this editor in Dallas showing Dealey Plaza. The Texas Book Depository Building where 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.
handing out pro-Fidel Castro “HANDS OFF CUBA!” leaflets. 
to involve many young Americans in government in order to keep idealism alive as a counter to the material interests of lobby groups.
“Think outside the box – and beyond the dramatic cable news headlines. The fact that Cruz Sr. never once mentioned suing Nat’l Enquirer over the Oswald claim tells me that there was some element or possibility of truth. The story may have been a shot across the bow or even a kill shot by Trump's campaign letting the Cruzes know there is more where that came from. Checkmate.
that conspiracy sleuths claim shows the elder Cruz near Oswald. There is zero evidence the person in question is Rafael Cruz.
Monday, the eve of Indiana’s critical primary, and the event at a restaurant here had been billed as little more than a meet-and-greet. When he got back outside, a half-dozen protesters who supported Donald J. Trump were waiting across North Washington Street, some holding signs.
Clinton. White House hopeful Bernie Sanders, who has fought the Democratic establishment throughout his campaign, made an extraordinary appeal Sunday for party insiders to help deliver the nomination to him, even if he doesn’t catch rival Hillary Clinton in the remaining primaries and caucuses.
(shown in a file photo) contacted this editor and said he, also, was investigating the firm Affiliated Computer Systems (ACS) and wanted us to share notes, that he was reported to have died from two gunshot wounds to the head at his Carmichael, California home. ACS was involved in processing the U.S. student visas for alleged 9/11 hijackers Mohammed Atta and his compatriots.
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