THE INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY FLIPS OFF
AMERICA
by
Dan L. Hardway
©
November 4, 2017
James
Angleton set the strategy in 1964.
"Jim would prefer to wait out the Commission," as one CIA memo
about Warren Commission inquiries put it.[1] They are still doing that as well as running
their propaganda campaign against anyone who questions the lone-nut theory,
their "best truth" according to David Robarge.[2]
I
recently published an article about the delay in releasing records under the
1992 JFK Records Collections Act. In
that article I explained the CIA’s play to discredit those who question their
lone-nut theory best truth and suggested that their historian, David Robarge,
has told us what to look for in the documents that are still being withheld.[3] In that article I suggested we should look
for information regarding covert operations against Cuba that would
“circumstantially implicate CIA in conspiracy theories” – Mr. Robarge’s words.[4] While I doubt the existence of a “smoking
gun,” the circumstantial evidence we might look for in the delayed files could
show a correlation between Lee Harvey Oswald’s activities in New Orleans and
Mexico City in the late summer and fall of 1963 and CIA covert operations that
were occurring at that time.[5]
I specifically suggest that we look to
files on operations involving George Joannides, the Directorio Revolucionario
Estudiantil (“DRE”) and David Phillips.
These are files, or at least some of them, that are in the JFK records
that were scheduled for release.
On
October 26, 1992, the U.S. Congress passed S. 3006, with only one amendment and
very little, if any, opposition. The
Senate bill, introduced by Senator John Glenn of Ohio, was signed the same day
by the President George H.W. Bush and became Public Law 102-526, (“JFK Records Act”). Among other things the
JFK Records Act provided for the collection, preservation and eventual release
of all records related to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy
with minimal exceptions. It mandates, in
clear and unambiguous language, “[e]ach assassination record shall be publicly disclosed in full, and
available in the Collection no later than the date that is 25 years
after the date of enactment of this Act.”
The Act allows an exemption to this explicit mandatory requirement only
if the President “certifies” that the
release of each withheld document “is made necessary by an identifiable harm to” either 1) military defense; 2)
intelligence operations; 3) law enforcement; or 4) the conduct of foreign
relations and “the identifiable harm is of
such gravity that it outweighs the public interest in disclosure.”[6]
NARA
released some of the files that I have been waiting on yesterday, November 3,
2017. The Excel spreadsheet listing the
released files include four files referenced to David Atlee Phillips and one
file referenced to the DRE.[7] Of the files referencing Phillips, three are
of an unspecified nature and one is listed as his Office of Personnel (OP)
file. The DRE file is listed as “CIA file
on DRE AMSPELL operations.”
AMSPELL
is a CIA cryptonym for DRE, the anti-Castro Cuban group that was ran by George
Joannides in 1963, that had the encounter with Oswald in New Orleans in 1963,
and published the first conspiracy theory blaming Castro in their CIA financed
newspaper in Miami on November 254, 1963.
The file released yesterday, for such an active group, is a very thin 87
pages of which 61 are expurgated in full. Of the remaining 26 pages, many are largely
expurgated. The Phillips files are even
worse. The three files of unspecified
type may be some of his operational files.
These files are even more highly expurgated than the AMSPELL file. Taking the 73 page long file RIF
104-10177-10135 as an example:
3 pages are a
confidential notice that the file has been processed and retired which notice
is reprinted in full;
3 pages are the file’s
routing sheet that has been partially released with redaction of any
significant information;
2 pages are a 1975 FOIA
request from The Bay City Times, a newspaper in Bay City, Michigan, reproduced
in full;
1 page is a Document
Transfer and Cross Reference” form indicating that records of a project
apparently named “Furioso C” have been removed from this file and sent to
another section of the CIA with a redaction that not only removes the
substantive entry but also the name of the space on the form where the entry
was made;
2 pages are partially redacted
memoranda;
3 pages are Security
information forms for Project Furioso C with all substantive information
redacted; 2 pages are a Project Financial Data form from 1952 with no
substantive information that is not redacted;
6 pages are partially
redacted routing sheets for documents, none of which have the routed document
attached;
1 page is a partially redacted cable
from 1952;
2 pages are copies,
unredacted of logs of HSCA access to the file, showing that I saw the file in
1978.
The remaining 48 pages are
redacted in full.
The
file that is listed as David Atlee Phillips’s OP file is not as heavily
redacted as the other three Phillips files although many of the documents,
mainly personnel forms, it contains have been cleansed of any significant
data. That, however, is not the end of
the story on this file. The file starts
with a few items of post-retirement correspondence to between him and the CIA
in 1975 and then proceeds chronologically backwards from his retirement in
1975. I have not yet been able to go
through the 358 page file to carefully study all the documents, but I have gone
through it well enough to note that all his fitness reports between 1956 and
1965 are missing – not redacted, just
simply not there. Indeed, so far as
I have been able to find, there is no record whatsoever of a document in the
file dated between 1961 and 1965 – not
redacted, just simply not there.
There
has been no explanation, let alone a presidential certification, that the
massive redactions in these "released in full" documents meet any of
the mandatory exemptions that allow withholding. No identifiable harm is specified. No rationale is given as to why the secrets
protected outweigh the public interest in disclosure. These files are not in compliance with the
law no matter what the main stream media says.
They are an in-your-face flipped bird to the American public. They basically tell us that the CIA is saying
that they don't have to comply with the law of the land and that they will not
tell us their secrets and that there is nothing we can do about it. I've been here before. It was in a small room in CIA Headquarters in
late 1978. I had been fighting to see a
file generated by the CIA debriefing of Johnny Roselli. Scott Breckinridge and George Joannides had just
handed me a highly redacted file that violated the HSCA/CIA Memorandum of
Understanding mandating unexpurgated access by HSCA to CIA files. They stood by, grinning, as they watched my
reaction upon opening the file to find it largely expurgated. They were grinning so hard because they knew
they had waited out the HSCA and there was nothing I could do about it. The Angleton strategy still worked. It is still working today.
This
release not only demonstrates that the Angleton strategy is still being
applied. It also illustrates the point I
have been making about what they are covering up. There may well be nothing we can do about
it. It appears our lawmakers are
spineless in the face of the intelligence community. Joseph Burkholder Smith, a retired CIA
officer, told me and Gaeton Fonzi in 1978, “You represent Congress. What the f*** is that to the CIA? You’ll be gone in two years and the CIA will
still be there.” To paraphrase that to
fit the situation in which we now find ourselves: “You are the people that
Congress supposedly represents. What’s
that to the CIA? You’ll forget about it
in a few weeks or so.”
But
I won’t. I wrote a letter to my Senator
yesterday before I saw the travesty that was the day’s release of JFK documents
by NARA. Probably a futile gesture, but
one I had to take anyway. Here’s what I
told him:
“Please
allow me first to introduce myself a bit.
While I am your constituent, I do not believe we have ever met. I was born and raised in Webster County, West
Virginia, and still reside on the farm my grandfather purchased in the 1940's
outside of Cowen. I am a graduate of WVU
– 1976 – and while there got to know some of the members of your family. I had the privilege of running your first
cousin Tim Manchin’s campaign for a seat on the WVU student government Board in
the mid-70's. I am a 1980 graduate of
Cornell Law School and a former law clerk for Justice Tom McHugh of the West
Virginia Supreme Court. I took a year
and a half leave of absence from law school to work as a researcher for the
U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee on Assassinations in
1977-1978. My primary area of
responsibility in the Committee’s work was to investigate the Central
Intelligence Agency and Lee Harvey Oswald in Mexico City. Most of the work I produced for the Committee
remains classified. I am presently
registered to vote in Webster County with an Independent affiliation.
"I
am aware that the Republicans in this state are trying to mount a serious
challenge to you in the upcoming election and I am presently considering
whether to become involved in the campaign and, if I do, who I am going to
support. In that regard, and in view of
your position on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, your position on
an issue that is very important to me will influence whether I decide to
actively support you in the upcoming election.
That issue is the release – or I should say, the failure to release –
the records currently held in the JFK Records Collection by the National
Archives and Records Administration.
While the records, and access to them, is of great interest to me, the
real issues raised by the failure to release them are much more fundamental
than just access to the assassination records.
It is these fundamental issues that I want to explain and upon which I
wish to hear your opinion.
"On
October 26, 1992, the U.S. Congress passed S. 3006, with only one amendment and
very little, if any, opposition. The
Senate bill introduced by Senator John Glenn of Ohio was signed the same day by
the President George H.W. Bush and became Public Law 102-526 which is codified
at 44 U.S.C. § 2107 note (“JFK Records Act”). Among other things the JFK
Records Act provided for the collection, preservation and eventual release of all records related to the 1963
assassination of President John F. Kennedy with minimal exceptions. Among its other provision, the JFK Records
Act, at § 5(g)(2)(D), mandates in clear and unambiguous language “[e]ach
assassination record shall be
publicly disclosed in full, and available in the Collection no later than the date that is 25 years
after the date of enactment of this Act.”
The Act allows an exemption to this explicit mandatory requirement only
if the President “certifies” that the
release of each withheld document “is made necessary by an identifiable harm to” either 1) military defense; 2) intelligence
operations; 3) law enforcement; or 4) the conduct of foreign relations and “the identifiable harm is of such
gravity that it outweighs the public interest in disclosure.” [Emphasis added.]
"I
note that this is a law duly enacted and adopted by the democratic processes of
this country in 1992 – a country where we supposedly pride ourselves on being a
nation of laws, a nation where the law applies to each and to all regardless of
status or position. On October 26, 2017,
as I am sure you are aware, President Donald Trump, at the request of the
Central Intelligence Agency and other intelligence community members,
disregarded the clear provisions of the law and postponed release of ninety
percent of the remaining withheld documents in the JFK Records Collection for
an additional six months. In doing this,
the President made no findings, issued no orders and certified nothing, merely issuing a statement through the press
office saying that all documents will be released “with redactions only in the
rarest of circumstances” by April 26, 2018.
"The
President’s action was not only without authority in law, it was also taken in
patent violation of the clear, unambiguous and mandatory terms of a law that
your institution passed. In this situation,
I would be tempted to file a suit against the President if it were not for the
facts that: 1) the Courts have already held that the JFK Records Act does not
provide a basis for any private cause of action for U.S. citizens, Assassination Archives and Research Center
v. Dep’t. of Justice, 43 F.3d 1542, 1544 (D.C. Cir. 1995); 2) Federal Court
litigation is too expensive to allow access to a normal citizen trying to hold
his government accountable; and 3) it would take more than six months to get a
case through to a decision in Federal Court so the action would represent no
type of check or correction to the problem.
"The
real problem that this presents is that it is showing to the nation that the
intelligence agencies of our nation are not subject to the laws of the
nation. They are effectively above the
law. At their request, or pressure, the
President of the United States will violate the clear mandates of enacted
legislation. And, to date, the reaction
of our elected representatives in Congress seems to reinforce the fact that no
one is willing to stand up to such blatant disregard of the clear provisions of
the duly enacted laws of the nation. I
understand that it is the executive branch that is charged with the enforcement
of the laws your branch enacts and, in this case, it is the executive branch
that is violating the law so there can be little realistic expectation of
enforcement from them. But this is the
heart of the problem and why it is incumbent upon the Congress to act. At a minimum there should be oversight
hearings. At a minimum the Congress
should not be seen to willingly acquiesce in executive contempt for the
Legislative branch of government and the law of the land.
"This
action on the part of the intelligence community, the National Archives, and
the Executive is only the latest in a long string of actions that disregard the
provisions of the JFK Records Act that also subvert and cover up the
information related to the assassination of our 35th president. Those other actions are beyond the present
scope of this letter, but are things about which I would be glad to speak with
you if you have any interest, so I will not go into them here.
"To
my knowledge there has been no coverage or explanation of why the intelligence
community has requested this delay of the President. It was made in secret. What reason have they given for the
delay? What kind of pressure have they
brought to bear? How can they force a
president to so blatantly disregard the law?
If they can do this in regard to disclosure of fifty-year-old records,
in what else can they exercise a like secret influence that corrupts the laws
of the nation? What affect does the
existence and use of such secret power have on our democracy? If these things –
not just the documents but the method of influence – remain always secret, then
how can a citizenry be sufficiently informed so as to exercise their franchise
to any real purpose? How can we have
faith in our democracy, let alone our government, if this kind of practice is
allowed to continue unchallenged? These
are the questions that I would like to have answered. But, to make it easier for you, I note you
are in a unique position in regard to these issues due to your membership on
the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
Are you at least going to call and press for public hearings on any of
these issues? Or are you going to join
the vast majority of our representatives and once again cower before the
intelligence agencies? Will you stand up
for your constituents’ right to participate in their government on an informed
basis? Will you stand for holding our
government to a standard of open honesty before its citizens and against
allowing the real affairs of state to be conducted in secret and in disregard
of the laws enacted by the peoples’ representatives?
"I
anxiously await your answer.”
The
questions I asked Joe Manchin in that letter are even more pressing today. I don’t know if he’ll even answer, let alone
do anything. Maybe like Chuck Grassley,
he’ll send out an apparently frustrated tweet.
Or maybe, like the main stream press, he’ll tout the release of the
documents, hoping no one will look to see what a travesty the “release” is
because of the massive redactions. At
this point all I can do is try to tell the truth about this whole state of
affairs. I also encourage you to not
take this insult to your intelligence and ability to govern yourselves without
reaction. Do something. If nothing else, circulate this article to
everyone you know. Refuse to accept the
cancer of secrecy that destroys our liberty and ability to govern
ourselves. Get involved. Get informed.
Stay informed. Read and follow http://2017jfk.org/home/
and http://jfkfacts.org/. Join the AARC at http://aarclibrary.org/aarc-membership/. Join CAPA at http://capa-us.org/membership/. If those who exercise the power in this
country have such blatant contempt for the law, then the time for serious
peaceful civil disobedience may be upon us.
Get the word out. Don’t be silent
any longer. This is not an issue of the
left or the right. Do something. Say something. And don’t stop until you are heard.
*********************
[1]. Raymond Rocca
to Richard Helms, Memo Re Response to Rankin, 5 Mar 1964, NARA Record No. 1993.06.24.14:59:13:840170, available at
https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=98075#relPageId=1&tab=page
[2]. David Robarge, “DCI John McCone and the
Assassination of President John F. Kennedy,” Studies in Intelligence, (Vol. 57,
No. 3, 09/2013), Approved for Release and declassified, 09/29/2014, at page
20. Available at http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB493/docs/intell_ebb_026.PDF. Robarge wrote: “The DCI was complicit in
keeping incendiary and diversionary issues off the commission’s agenda and focusing
it on what the Agency believed at the time was the ‘best truth’: that Lee
Harvey Oswald, for as yet undetermined motives, had acted alone in killing John
Kennedy.” For my commentary on the CIA’s
“best truth”, see Thank You, Phil Shenon available at https://realhillbillyviews.blogspot.com/2015/10/. Note that the “best truth” was conditioned by
“at the time” leaving open the real possibility that alternative cover stories
may have to be brought to play in the event that time undermined what the
Agency considered to be the best truth for them.
[3]. Dan Hardway,
What Were They Hiding and What Should We Look For, 30 Oct 2017, available at
https://realhillbillyviews.blogspot.com/2017/10/what-were-they-hiding-and-what-should_30.html
[4]. Robarge, n. 2
above, at p. 9.
[5]. This is
addressed in more detail at JFKFacts,
Exclusive: JFK investigator on how CIA stonewalled Congress, http://jfkfacts.org/hardway-declaration-cia-stonewalled-jfkinvestigation/; Declaration of Dan L. Hardway, Morley v. CIA,
CA # 03-02545-RJL, D.C.D.C. 11 May 2016, Docket No. 156.
[6]. 44 U.S.C. §
2107 note § 5(g)(2)(D). Emphasis added.
[7]. https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/2017-release,
RIF Nos. 104-10176-10121, 104-10177-10135, 104-10177-10134, 104-10194-10026,
and 104-10170-10121.
