In light of the Angleton connection, I should note how he worldwide media has given great play to the release of a new book that purported to “prove” that it was the Soviet KGB that concocted the story that the CIA was behind the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
The book purported to be the inside history of the KGB’s secret intelligence operations in the U.S. and Europe The Sword and the Shield by Professor Christopher Andrew of Cambridge-described as “one of the world’s leading authorities on intelligence history,”.
The book was said to be based on extensive notes and transcriptions (secretly compiled over a 12 year period) of vast numbers of files from the KGB archives. The notes themselves were supposedly smuggled out of KGB headquarters by former KGB archivist Vasili Mitrokhin who retired from the KGB in 1984 and who then defected to Britain in 1992 after the CIA had rejected Mitrokhin.
One major problem with the Andrew book is that while it is quite thoroughly footnoted, with hundreds of references to a wide-ranging amount of material, it is not always clear (actually, more often than not) whether Andrew is purporting to cite the Mitrokhin archives as his source or whether the information he is presenting is Andrew’s own interpretation, based on the material of others.
In that sense, then, while the book is quite skilfully written in such a way that it appears to present the information presented as having come from the KGB’s supposedly purloined file, that is not always necessarily the case.
It appears Andrew’s book is presenting the Mitrokhin archives as some sort of effort to counter new official histories of the KGB that are being released by the KGB’s post-Soviet era successor, the SVR.
For example, Andrew lashes out at Lolly Zamoysky, the SVR’s literary editor of the new multi-volume official history, as having been “well known” in the KGB “for his belief in a global Masonic-Zionist plot.”
Thus, Andrew’s book is effectively an attempt to counter allegations of high-level Zionist intrigue that has been documented by the official post-KGB Russian intelligence services.
In that regard, it is quite remarkable to note that in the entirety of this extensively documented and indexed 700-page volume, there is only one indexed reference to Israel and not a single indexed reference to the Mossad, this despite the widely-known fact that the Mossad played a central role alongside the CIA in its operations in Western Europe throughout the period that Andrew has purported to describe.
Likewise, in the same vein, there are only two indexed references to the CIA’s longtime counterintelligence chief, James Jesus Angleton, even though Angleton, who is best remembered for his strident anti-Soviet stance, having spent decades looking for a “KGB mole” in the upper echelons of the CIA and for KGB moles in allied Western intelligence agencies-was also a devoted Israeli loyalist who jealously guarded his role as the CIA’s liaison to the Mossad.
Perhaps the most glaring evidence of outright fraud, per se, in the Andrew production is the flimsy and quite transparent attempt to absolve the CIA of any involvement in the assassination of John F. Kennedy and, at the same time, make it appear as though so-called “theories” linking the CIA to the crime were exclusively disinformation put forth by the KGB.
In fact, when the news of Andrew’s book was first announced in the major media, most reports focused-sometimes exclusively-on the purported revelation that it was actually the KGB that was behind the theory that the CIA was involved in the president’s murder. Most people who read news accounts of the release of the book would probably have gleaned little more than that.
Andrew’s book claimed that KGB data purloined by Mitrokhin revealed that a letter-supposedly written prior to the assassination by JFK’s accused assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, and addressed to a “Mr. Hunt” (presumably the CIA’s E. Howard Hunt)-was actually a KGB forgery. According to Andrew, the letter was fabricated in the mid-1970s after Hunt’s name came to widespread public attention over his involvement in the Watergate scandal and then sent out to independent researchers who were looking into the JFK assassination.
As part of this effort to vindicate the CIA, hinging on the story of the purported KGB forgery, Andrew spends a great deal of energy spinning a literary web around the charge that pioneer JFK assassination investigator Mark Lane was either a witting or unwitting tool of the KGB in his writing of Rush to Judgment, Lane’s ground-breaking critique of the Warren Commission Report on the assassination of President Kennedy.
Andrew connects Lane to the theory that “the CIA killed JFK” but fails to advise his readers that never once in Rush to Judgment did Lane ever allege that the CIA was involved in the president’s assassination.
And Lane’s book never once, in any way, shape or form, referred to the apparently forged “Dear Mr. Hunt” letter so widely heralded in the press coverage of Andrew’s book..
While Lane’s thesis about CIA involvement was outlined in his much later-written 1993 book, Plausible Denial, based in part on the information that came out during Lane’s defense in 1985 of The Spotlight newspaper against a libel suit filed by E. Howard Hunt, the “Dear Mr. Hunt” letter played no part in the scenario outlined in Plausible Denial either.
In addition, in Plausible Denial, Lane develops solid evidence demonstrating that the CIA itself fabricated a scenario linking Oswald to a KGB officer in Mexico.
Since this CIA operation actually took place more than a month before President Kennedy was killed, this evidence-standing alone-demonstrates behind question that the CIA was involved not just in the post-assassination cover-up, but in the planning of the crime itself and in the framing of the patsy. Needless to say, Andrew addresses none of this.
In fact, the “Dear Mr. Hunt” letter was indeed most likely a forgery but the question remains as to “who” concocted the forgery, Christopher Andrew’s claims notwithstanding.
Andrew, of course, contends that the KGB was responsible, but in Final Judgment I very clearly suggest that the letter was a forgery and that the evidence actually points to high-ranking CIA official James J. Angleton as having been the likely perpetrator.
All of this perhaps explains why Andrew is so determined to suppress the facts by targeting Mark Lane who singularly did so much to bring out the truth about the CIA’s complicity.
Andrew actually makes the flat-out allegation that Lane received funding from the KGB at the time he was writing Rush to Judgment, thereby leaving readers to conclude that Lane’s own work was essentially part of a KGB disinformation effort.
Yet, at the same time, buried in the massive footnote section of the book, Andrew himself acknowledges that when Lane supposedly received a paltry $1500 from the KGB’s New York office that “there is no evidence that Lane did realize the source of the funding” although, in the text of the book itself, Andrew contends that the KGB “suspected that he might have guessed where it came from.”
In fact, Lane never once received any substantial contribution of this size from anyone at any time in relation to his work on the JFK assassination.
In addition, Andrew claims that while in Europe Lane made an attempt to visit Moscow to discuss his JFK findings. Again, not true. During that trip Lane actually took an outspoken stand against Soviet censorship and human rights violations during a visit to Bulgaria, where he had been invited to speak at an international conference of attorneys. Lane so offended his hosts by his anti-Soviet remarks that they advised him that his best option was to get out of the country immediately-hardly advice reserved for someone favored by the KGB.
What is most telling about the obvious disinformation campaign against Lane by Andrew is the very fact that not a single one of Lane’s books (on the JFK assassination or any other subject) was ever translated and published under Soviet sponsorship.
Yet Christopher Andrew has made patently false allegations about Lane’s supposed “KGB connection.” The allegations are a deliberate attempt to sully Lane’s reputation and an attempt to refute evidence of CIA complicity in the assassination of President Kennedy.
As such, it is not unfair to note that Andrew’s own teaching and lecturing has, in fact, been subsidized in part by the CIA, a fact that Andrew’s biography on his book’s dust jacket fails to note, but which is mentioned in glowing terms in promotional materials that have been distributed by his publisher. The motivations of Andrew (and his ties to the intelligence community) must certainly raise eyebrows considering just the items that we’ve considered here.
The CIA, of course, had its own problems with JFK. Just six weeks before John F. Kennedy was shot, a top administration official warned that a CIA-orchestrated coup in America was a fearful possibility. The CIA-like its allies in Israel-had good reason (in its own perception) to want to see JFK removed from the White House and replaced with Lyndon B. Johnson.
JFK's battle with the CIA over the Bay of Pigs debacle was just the beginning. JFK was-by the last days of his presidency-not only fighting the CIA's efforts to involve the United States ever more deeply in CIA but he was also moving toward dismantling the CIA entirely. The CIA's very existence was in danger.
This, of course, has brought focus to the CIA as a likely suspect in the JFK assassination and it was a course of investigation followed by New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison in the late 1960s, for which he received much abuse by the major media in America.
In fact, as I have pointed out earlier, Garrison had unwittingly stumbled on the Mossad connection while investigating CIA figures Clay Shaw, David Ferrie, Guy Banister and others whom Garrison had linked to the JFK assassination.
There are other often-mentioned CIA connections to the assassination that also point toward the Mossad although Final Judgment has been the only volume to explore those Mossad connections.
Note for example that a former mistress of Fidel Castro, CIA asset Marita Lorenz, testified that longtime CIA operative Frank Sturgis, famous as an anti-Castro activist, told her after the assssination that he had been involved in the JFK assassination.
Based on his own extensive study of the JFK assassination Cuba's former chief of counterintelligence, General Fabian Escalante Escalante, told journalist Claudia Furiati that Cuban intelligence had determined that, in fact, "Sturgis was in charge of communications-receiving and transmitting information on the movement at Dealey Plaza and the motorcade to the shooters and others."
If Sturgis was involved in the actual mechanics of the assassination, the historical evidence suggests that Sturgis could have been functioning as a knowing Mossad tool in the conspiracy.
The truth is that going back some fifteen years prior to the JFK assassination, Sturgis had worked for the Mossad.
Sturgis was a “Hagannah mercenary during the first (1948) Israeli-Arab war,” and Sturgis also had a girlfriend in Europe in the 1950s who worked for Israeli intelligence and with whom he worked. Sturgis himself said that he assisted his girlfriend as a courier in Europe in a number of her endeavors on behalf of the Mossad.
It was also well known among anti-Castro Cuban exiles that Sturgis had also worked for the Mossad and had done so for a long period of time.
In addition, during the heyday of the CIA's anti-Castro operations in Miami in which Sturgis and E. Howard Hunt were key figures, some 12 to 16 Mossad agents worked out of Miami under the command of Mossad Deputy Director Yehuda S. Sipper, their influence reaching throughout Latin America and the Caribbean.
Citing a 1976 CIA memo, Professor John Newman who has investigated CIA knowledge of Lee Harvey Oswald's activities, says that Sturgis founded the International Anti-Communist Brigade and that “the backers of Sturgis’ group have never been fully established.”
Information outlined by a number of sources suggests that Sturgis’ group could have been an off-shoot of the Mossad's Miami-based operations, intertwined with Sturgis' own CIA-sponsored intrigue in the same sphere of influence.
In fact, a unit of Sturgis’ Brigade was CIA contract agent Gerry Patrick Hemming’s so-called “Interpen” that operated outside New Orleans and Sturgis was connected with those Interpen operations.
Those activities around New Orleans are known to have involved two of the key players surrounding Lee Harvey Oswald prior to the JFK assassination: CIA contract agents Guy Banister and David Ferrie.
In fact, there is an Israeli connection to Interpen. According to Hemming himself, Interpen’s “most important contact in the United States” was New York financier, Theodore Racoosin, whom Hemming described as “one of the key founders of the state of Israel.”
After having read Final Judgment, Hemming frankly told the author that although he personally has seen no evidence that convinces him the Mossad participated directly in the JFK assassination, he did say that “I have known since the late 1960s that the Mossad was aware of the JFK murder even before it happened, and they later did a full investigation on the matter and have since retained all such files.” [Emphasis added.]
In any case, we not only find CIA asset Clay Shaw of New Orleans tied to the Mossad through his association with the Permindex operation (as were Banister and Ferrie), but we also find two other CIA-connected players in the anti-Castro operations out of New Orleans (Sturgis and Hemming) were in the Mossad's sphere of influence. And Lee Harvey Oswald is tied to all of the key players involved. |
