Richard E. Sprague graduated
from Purdue University in 1942. He was employed as an engineer at
Northrup Aircraft. In in 1950 he co-founded the Computer Research
Corporation in Hawthorne, California in 1950 and served as Vice President
of Sales. In 1960,
he became the Director of Computer Systems Consulting for Touche,
Ross, Bailey, and Smart.
In 1966 Sprague began his
research into the photographic evidence associated with the assassination
of John
F. Kennedy.
He served a year as photographic expert advisor in the investigations
conducted by New Orleans District Attorney Jim
Garrison and
had amassed and analyzed a majority of the known evidence on film
by 1968 when he CO-founded the Committee to Investigate Assassinations.
In 1968 Sprague established
Sprague Research and Consulting for Computer Information Systems Consultation.
Later he worked as a full time consultant to Battelle Memorial Institute
of Frankfurt, Germany.
Sprague worked as an advisor
to Henry
Gonzalez on
House Resolution 203 which proposed the appointment of a committee
to investigate the circumstances surrounding the deaths of John
F. Kennedy,
Robert
Kennedy and
Martin Luther King. He later served as
a consultant to Richard
A. Sprague
and G.
Robert Blakey,
the first and second General Counsels of the House
Select Committee on Assassinations.
Sprague worked with Dick
Russell on In Search of the Assassins
(1977). He also published The Taking of America
in 1985. In the book he names the following as being involved in the
assassination of John
F. Kennedy:
William
Seymour,
Clay
Shaw,
David
Ferrie,
Guy
Banister,
Louis
M. Bloomfield,
Loran
Hall,
Lawrence
Howard,
Harry
Dean, Richard
Case Nagell, Sergio
Arcacha Smith, Carlos
Prio,
Herminio
Diaz Garcia,
Jim
Braden (alias Eugene Hale Brading), John Howard Bowen (alias Albert
Osborne), Ronald Augustinovich, Mary Hope, Emilio Santana, Fred Lee
Crisman and Jim Hicks.
House Select Committee on Assassinations
Richard E. Sprague: The Taking of America
Forum Debates
The Kennedy Assassination
Richard E. Sprague
Watergate
(1)
Richard E. Sprague, The
Taking of America (1985)
The conspiracy to assassinate John Kennedy began in a series of discussions
held in New Orleans in the summer of 1963. The men in the discussions
were extremely angry that Kennedy had stopped plans and preparations
for another invasion of Cuba (scheduled for the latter part of 1963.)
One of the instigators was David Ferrie, a CIA contract agent who
had been training pilots in Guatemala for the invasion. Meetings held
in Ferrie's apartment in New Orleans were attended by Clay Shaw, William
Seymour and several Cubans. Plans for assassinating President Kennedy
developed out of those early meetings. Others whose support was sought
by the group included Guy Banister, Major L. M. Bloomfield, Loran
Hall, Lawrence Howard, Sergio Arcacha Smith and Carlos Prio Socarras.
During this period in
the summer of 1963 Lee Harvey Oswald was working for Guy Banister
on some anti-Castro projects and used the Communist cover of the Fair
Play for Cuba Committee. Oswald attended some of the meetings where
JFK's assassination was discussed.
Oswald either approached
the FBI or they approached him in the later summer of 1963, and he
began to tell the FBI about the plans of the group to assassinate
JFK. Oswald had been a secret informant for the FBI since mid-1962.
In September, the group
moved the scene of their planning to Mexico City. There they solicited
the assistance of Guy Gabaldin, a CIA agent. Meetings were held in
the apartment of Gabaldin, attended by Shaw, Ferrie, Seymour, Gabaldin
and Oswald on at least three occasions. Others were brought into the
conspiracy at this point. These included John Howard Bowen (alias
Albert Osborne), Ronald Augustinovich, Mary Hope, Emilio Santana,
Harry Dean, Richard Case Nagell, and "Frenchy" (an adventurer
who had been working with Seymour, Santana, Ferrie, Howard and others
on the Cuban invasion projects in the Florida Keys). Fred Lee Crisman,
Jim Hicks and Jim Braden (alias Eugene Hale Brading) were also recruited
at this point.
Oswald continued to inform
on the group to the FBI in Dallas. In mid- to late September the assassination
group decided to make Oswald the patsy in the murder. They had discussed
the need for a patsy in the earliest meetings in New Orleans. Billy
Seymour, who resembled Oswald, was selected to use Oswald's name and
to plant evidence in New Orleans, Dallas and Mexico, which could later
be used to frame him. In addition, another man under CIA surveillance
in Mexico City also used Oswald's name in a probable attempt to make
it appear that Oswald was headed for Cuba. His name may have been
Johnny Mitchell Deveraux. His picture appears in the Warren Commission
Volumes as CE 237.
The team needed financial
support for the assassination. They received it from Carlos Prio Socarras
in Miami, who brought more than 50 million dollars out of Cuba. They
also received money from Banister, and from three Texas millionaires
who hated Kennedy: Sid Richardson, Clint Murchison, and Jean DeMenil
(of the Schlumberger Co.). The Murchison-Richardson contribution also
included soliciting the assistance of high-level men in the Dallas
police force. They were powerful members of the Dallas Citizens Council
that controlled the city at that time.
The group in Mexico City
planned to assassinate JFK in Miami, Chicago or Dallas, using different
gunmen in each case. The Miami plan failed because the Secret Service
found out about it in advance and kept JFK out of the open. The Chicago
plan backfired when JFK canceled his plans to attend the Army-Navy
game at Soldiers Field in early November. The group set up two assassination
teams for Dallas. One was in Dealey Plaza; the second was near the
International Trade Mart where JFK's luncheon speech was to be delivered.
The best evidence of CIA
(Deputy-Director of Plans) involvement is the fact that the majority
of the known participants were contract agents or direct agents of
the CIA. In Mexico City, the meetings were held in the apartment of
Guy Gabaldin, a CIA (DDP) agent, working for the Mexico City station
chief. Others attending the meetings who were CIA (DDP) contract or
direct agents included Clay Shaw, David Ferrie, Albert Osborne, Harry
Dean, Richard Case Nagell, Ronald Augustinovich, William Seymour,
Emilio Santana and Fred Lee Crisman. It is likely (but not yet provable
by direct evidence) that the group sought and obtained from the acting
or permanent CIA station chief in Mexico, assistance or approval to
go ahead with assassination plans. Tad Szulc claims that a CIA source
can prove that E. Howard Hunt was acting station chief in Mexico City
at the time of the Gabaldin apartment meetings (August and September
1963). Hunt has denied under oath before the Rockefeller Commission
that he was in Mexico.
In 1967 Richard Helms told a group of CIA officials, including Victor
Marchetti, that both Clay Shaw and David Ferrie were CIA (DDP) contract
agents and that Shaw had to be given CIA protection and assistance
in his New Orleans trial. This is a strong indication that Hunt and
Helms gave "turn of the head" approval to the Shaw-Ferrie
assassination plan as a minimum form of support.
The assassination group,
having failed in Miami and Chicago, moved an operational team into
Dallas during the second week in November of 1963. Shaw, Ferrie, Gabaldin
and other high-level plotters travelled in other directions, establishing
alibis as planned. On November 22, Gabaldin was in Mexico City, Shaw
was in San Francisco, and Ferrie was in New Orleans. The team moving
into Dallas included Albert Osborne, William Seymour, Emilio Santana,
Frenchy, Fred Crisman, Jim Hicks, Jim Braden, and a new recruit from
Los Angeles, Jack Lawrence. There was also a back-up rifle team of
Cubans to be used at a location near the International Trade Mart
in the event something went wrong at Dealey Plaza.
The teams stayed at two
locations in Dallas for two weeks. One was a rooming house run by
a woman named Tammie True. During this period final preparations for
the assassination in Dealey Plaza were made. These included the collecting
of and planting of evidence used to frame Oswald, the recruiting of
the Dallas police participants, and the plans for the escape of the
team members by car and by train. The riflemen selected were William
Seymour in the Depository Building, Jack Lawrence and Frenchy on the
grassy knoll, and Emilio Santana in the Dal Tex building. Jim Hicks
was set up as radio coordinator and a man with each of the riflemen
had a two-way radio...
Upon a visual and oral
signal from the man at the wall and upon a radio command from Hicks,
the team fired its first round of shots. Crisman received the command
from Hicks and caused Frenchy to fire a shot from a position behind
the fence on the knoll, about twenty feet west of the corner of the
fence. This shot missed. The umbrella man fired a shot using his small-bore
umbrella gun. When this shot struck JFK in the throat, the dart paralyzed
JFK and later presented by Commander Humes to the FBI.[2] The shot
was fired at Zapruder frame 189: JFK was behind a large oak tree,
hidden from the sixth floor window of the TSBD Building. On command
from Braden, Emilio Santana fired his first shot two seconds later
from the second floor window of the Dal Tex building at Z 225 after
JFK came out from behind the sign in Zapruder's film. The shot struck
JFK in the back about 5 3/4" down from the collar line, penetrated
to a depth of about two inches and stopped. The bullet fell out of
JFK's back somewhere in or at the Parkland Hospital, or perhaps travelled
down inside the body of the President, and was never recovered.
William Seymour fired his
shot from the west end of the TSBD Building upon command from his
radio man between Z 230 and Z 237, after Santana's shot. He used a
Mauser rifle with no telescopic sight. While he was aiming at JFK,
he fired high and to the right, hitting John Connally in the back.
The bullet travelled through Connally's chest and then entered his
left thigh. The bullet fell out of his thigh in or near Parkland Hospital
and was never recovered. Governor Connally's wrist was not hit at
that time.
Jack Lawrence did not fire
a shot in the first round because from his cupola position he did
not have a clear shot.
Hicks gave a second radio
command for another round of shots as JFK passed the Stemmons Freeway
sign.
Emilio Santana fired his second shot between Z 265 and Z 275. The
bullet narrowly missed JFK, passed over the top of his head and over
the top of the limousine's windshield. It travelled on to strike the
south curb of Main Street, breaking off a piece of concrete which
flew up and hit James Tague. The bullet either disintegrated or flew
into the area beyond the overpass. It was not found.
William Seymour may have
fired a second shot which may have struck JFK in the upper right part
of his head at Z 312. That bullet disintegrated.
Upon command from his radio
man, Jack Lawrence fired his first shot from a pedestal on the west
side of the south entrance to the western cupola on the grassy knoll.
The shot may have hit Connally's wrist.
Frenchy fired the fatal
shot through the trees from his position behind the fence.
The Lawrence shot or possibly
the second Seymour shot produced a bullet fragment that passed through
Connally's right wrist at Z 313. At that time his wrist was elevated
and nearly directly in front of JFK's head, in such a position that
Connally's right palm was facing JFK as the governor fell into his
wife's arms. The fragment entered the front of his wrist and exited
from the back.
(2)
Richard
E. Sprague, The
Taking of America (1985)
The Power
Control Group faced up to the Ted Kennedy and Kennedy family problem
very early. They used the threat against the Kennedy children's lives
very effectively between 1963 and 1968 to silence Bobby and the rest
of the family and friends who knew the truth. It was necessary to
assassinate Bobby in 1968 because with the power of the presidency
he could have prevented the Group from harming the children. When
Teddy began making moves to run for president in 1969 for the 1972
election, the Group decided to put some real action behind their threats.
Killing Teddy in 1969 would have been too much. They selected a new
way of eliminating him as a candidate. They framed him with the death
of a young girl, and threw sexual overtones in for good measure.
Here is what
happened according to Robert Cutler's (You the Jury - 1974)
analysis of the evidence. The Group hired several men and at least
one woman to be at Chappaquiddick during the weekend of the yacht
race and the planned party on the island. They ambushed Ted and Mary
Jo after they left the cottage and knocked Ted out with blows to his
head and body. They took the unconscious or semi-conscious Kennedy
to Martha's Vineyard and deposited him in his hotel room. Another
group took Mary JO to the bridge in Ted's car, force fed her with
a knock out potion of alcoholic beverage, placed her in the back seat,
and caused the car to accelerate off the side of the bridge into the
water. They broke the windows on one side of the car to insure the
entry of water; then they watched the car until they were sure Mary
JO would not escape.
Mary JO actually
regained consciousness and pushed her way to the top of the car (which
was actually the bottom of the car - it had landed on its roof) and
died from asphyxiation. The group with Teddy revived him early in
the morning and let him know he had a problem. Possibly they told
him that Mary JO had been kidnapped. They told him his children would
be killed if he told anyone what had happened and that he would hear
from them. On Chappaquiddick, the other group made contact with Markham
and Gargan, Ted's cousin and lawyer. They told both men that Mary
JO was at the bottom of the river and that Ted would have to make
up a story about it, not revealing the existence of the group. One
of the men resembled Ted and his voice sounded something like Ted's.
Markham and Gargan were instructed to go the the Vineyard on the morning
ferry, tell Ted where Mary JO was, and come back to the island to
wait for a phone call at a pay station near the ferry on the Chappaquiddick
side.
The two men
did as they were told and Ted found out what had happened to Mary
JO that morning. The three men returned to the pay phone and received
their instructions to concoct a story about the "accident"
and to report it to the police. The threat against Ted's children
was repeated at that time.
Ted, Markham
and Gargan went right away to police chief Arena's office on the Vineyard
where Ted reported the so-called "accident." Almost at the
same time scuba diver John Farror was pulling Mary JO out of the water,
since two boys who had gone fishing earlier that morning had spotted
the car and reported it.
Ted called
together a small coterie of friends and advisors including family
lawyer Burke Marshall, Robert MacNamara, Ted Sorenson, and others.
They met on Squaw Island near the Kennedy compound at Hyannisport
for three days. At the end of that time they had manufactured the
story which Ted told on TV, and later at the inquest. Bob Cutler calls
the story, "the shroud." Even the most cursory examination
of the story shows it was full of holes and an impossible explanation
of what happened. Ted's claim that he made the wrong turn down the
dirt road toward the bridge by mistake is an obvious lie. His claim
that he swam the channel back to Martha's Vineyard is not believable.
His description of how he got out of the car under water and then
dove down to try to rescue Mary JO is impossible. Markham and Gargan's
claims that they kept diving after Mary JO are also unbelievable.
The evidence
for the Cutler scenario is substantial. It begins with the marks on
the bridge and the position of the car in the water. The marks show
that the car was standing still on the bridge and then accelerated
off the edge, moving at a much higher speed than Kennedy claimed.
The distance the car travelled in the air also confirms this. The
damage to the car on two sides and on top plus the damage to the windshield
and the rear view mirror stanchion prove that some of the damage had
to have been inflicted before the car left the bridge.
The blood
on the back and on the sleeves of Mary JO's blouse proves that a wound
was inflicted before she left the bridge. The alcohol in her bloodstream
proves she was drugged, since all witnesses testified she never drank
and did not drink that night. The fact that she was in the back seat
when her body was recovered indicates that is where she was when the
car hit the water. There was no way she could have dived downward
against the inrushing water and moved from the front to the back seat
underneath the upside-down seat back.
The wounds
on the back of Ted Kennedy's skull, those just above his ear and the
large bump on the top indicate he was knocked out. His actions at
the hotel the next morning show he was not aware of Mary JO's death
until Markham and Gargan arrived. The trip to the pay phone on Chappaquiddick
can only be explained by his receiving a call there, not making one.
There were plenty of pay phones in or near Ted's hotel if he needed
to make a private call. The tides in the channel and the direction
in which Ted claimed he swam do not match. In addition it would have
been a superhuman feat to have made it across the channel (as proven
by several professionals who subsequently tried it).
Deputy Sheriff
Christopher Look's testimony, coupled with the testimony of Ray LaRosa
and two Lyons girls, proves that there were two people in Ted's car
with Mary Jo at 12:45 pm. The three party members walking along the
road south toward the cottage confirmed the time that Mr. Look drove
by. He stopped to ask if they needed a ride. Look says that just prior
to that he encountered Ted's car parked facing north at the juncture
of the main road and the dirt road. It was on a short extension of
the north-south section of the road junction to the north of the "T".
He says he saw a man driving, a woman in the seat beside him, and
what he thought was another woman lying on the back seat. He remembered
a portion of the license plate which matched Ted's car, as did the
description of the car. Markham, Gargan and Ted's driver's testimony
show that someone they talked to in the pitch black night sounded
like Ted and was about his height and build.
None of the
above evidence was ever explained by Ted or by anyone else at the
inquest or at the hearing on the case demanded by district attorney
Edward Dinis. No autopsy was ever allowed on Mary JO's body (her family
objected), and Ted made it possible to fly her body home for burial
rather quickly. Kennedy haters have seized upon Chappaquiddick to
enlarge the sexual image now being promoted of both Ted and Jack Kennedy.
Books like "Teddy Bare" take full advantage of the situation.
Just which
operatives in the Power Control Group at the high levels or the lower
levels were on Chappaquiddick Island? No definite evidence has surfaced
as yet, except for an indication that there was at least one woman
and at least three men, one of whom resembled Ted Kennedy and who
sounded like him in the darkness. However, two pieces of testimony
in the Watergate hearings provide significant clues as to which of
the known JFK case conspirators may have been there.
E. Howard
Hunt told of a strange trip to Hyannisport to see a local citizen
there about the Chappaquiddick incident. Hunt's cover story on this
trip was that he was digging up dirt on Ted Kennedy for use in the
1972 campaign. The story does not make much sense if one questions
why Hunt would have to wear a disguise, including his famous red wig,
and to use a voice-alteration device to make himself sound like someone
else. If, on the other hand, Hunt's purpose was to return to the scene
of his crime just to make sure that no one who might have seen his
group at the bridge or elsewhere would talk, then the disguise and
the voice box make sense.
The other
important testimony came from Tony Ulasewicz who said he was ordered
by the Plumbers to fly immediately to Chappaquiddick and dig up dirt
on Ted. The only problem Tony has is that, according to his testimony,
he arrived early on the morning of the "accident", before
the whole incident had been made public. Ulasewicz is the right height
and weight to resemble Kennedy and with a CIA voice-alteration device
he presumably could be made to sound like him. There is a distinct
possibility that Hunt and Tony were there when it happened.
The threats
by the Power Control Group, the frame-up at Chappaquiddick, and the
murders of Jack and Bobby Kennedy cannot have failed to take their
toll on all of the Kennedys. Rose, Ted, Jackie, Ethel and the other
close family members must be very tired of it all by now. They can
certainly not be blamed for hoping it will all go away. Investigations
like those proposed by Henry Gonzalez and Thomas Downing only raised
the spectre of the powerful Control Group taking revenge by kidnapping
some of the seventeen children.
It was no
wonder that a close Kennedy friend and ally in California, Representative
Burton, said that he would oppose the Downing and Gonzalez resolutions
unless Ted Kennedy put his stamp of approval on them. While the sympathies
of every decent American go out to them, the future of our country
and the freedom of the people to control their own destiny through
the election process mean more than the lives of all the Kennedys
put together. If John Kennedy were alive today he would probably make
the same statement.
(3)
Richard E. Sprague, The
Taking of America (1985)
The mini-war waged by assassination researchers and a few Congressmen
from 1964 to 1976 to reopen the major assassination inquiries never
really disturbed the Power Control Group. But in 1975, simultaneous
with the revelations about all of the terrible things the CIA and
the FBI did, the researchers and a few of their friends in the media
and in Congress began to draw more attention than was comfortable
for the PCG...
There
may be several second lines of defense positions already prepared
for the JFK case. The one that has been implemented in 1975 and 1976
is the "Castro did it in revenge" position. The PCG realizes
that while the media will behave like slaves to present the first
line of defense (Oswald did it alone), the public isn't buying it
any more. In 1969, shortly after the Clay Shaw trial ended, the percent
of people disbelieving the lone assassin theory fell to its all-time
low of just over 50%. By 1976 it had risen to 80%, despite the faithful
efforts of CBS, Time, Newsweek, et al. More importantly, Richard Schweiker,
Gary Hart, Henry Gonzalez, Thomas Downing, and a very large part of
the House and Senate weren't buying the lone assassin story any more
either.
So,
a good second line of defense story was needed. It had to be one that
the House and Senate and Schweiker, Church, Downing and hopefully
Gonzalez would buy. It had to be one which could be created out of
existing facts and then shored up by planted evidence, faked records,
dependable witnesses lying under oath, and once again, the control
and use of the media. The "Castro did it in revenge" story
met these requirements. The media had already helped to some extent
by publishing information from Jack Anderson, Lyndon B. Johnson and
others about Castro's turning around various CIA agents or sending
agents of his own, including Oswald, to assassinate JFK. Perhaps even
more importantly, Senator Schweiker said he believed Castro might
have been behind the assassination and that this possibility should
be investigated.
The
Castro story strategy was implemented in 1975. Gradually at first,
a story appeared here or there in the press about the assassins assigned
to kill Castro. Then the media began to reprint the Jack Anderson
story about Castro's turning around of some of these agents. New authors
of the story appeared. Anderson's original story seemed to be forgotten.
These articles never seemed to have an identifiable source or any
proof. Hank Greenspun of the Las Vegas newspaper circuit and the man
involved with Howard Hughes, Larry O'Brien, released a story to the
Chicago Tribune. He said his information came from reliable sources.
The
momentum began to build. More and more "leaked" information
about Castro and assassins and Oswald being a pro-Castroite hit the
establishment media. The stories and the sequence of events began
to be predictable, if a researcher had understood the PCG and their
fight for survival in 1975 and 1976. Then the Church committee and
the Schweiker sub-committee issued statements that they were going
to investigate the "Castro did it" theory. The PCG began
feeding them information in various forms and various ways that would
back up the idea. The JFK sex scandal was released by Judith Exner.
The PCG provided her with an incentive to spice up the "Castro
did it" theory with a little sex involving JFK and one of the
assassins assigned to Castro, John Roselli.
The
PCG realized they had the double advantage of drawing attention to
Roselli and Castro and the turn-around assassin idea, while at the
same time gnawing away at JFK's image. There was press speculation
that Exner was a Mafia plant in the White House to find out how much
JFK knew about the Castro assassination plans. Since Frank Sinatra
had introduced Judith to both JFK and Roselli, there was speculation
about Sinatra's Mafia friends linked to the rat pack, to Peter Lawford,
to JFK's sister and to JFK himself. All of this was meat for the PCG's
grinder. It certainly drew Schweiker's attention away from Helms,
Hunt, Gabaldin, Shaw, Ferrie, Seymour and all of the other operatives
involved in JFK's murder. In fact, the Schweiker staff, which had
the names and locations of several participants and witnesses that
could pinpoint the Helms-Hunt-Shaw-Gabaldin group as the real assassins
as early as September, 1975 did not interview more than one or two
of them and did not follow up on the rest at all. Their attention
was diverted by the second line of defense strategy and they were
also influenced by infiltration by the PCG.
(4)
Richard
E. Sprague,
The Taking of America (1985)
Downing and
Gonzalez hired Dick Sprague as chief counsel. Sprague very rapidly
hired the equivalent of his own FBI. He sensed from the start that
he might be up against both the FBI and the CIA, so he carefully screened
his investigators, lawyers, researchers and other personnel to prevent
intelligence penetration of the staff. However, some personnel were
"handed" to him by both Gonzalez and Downing.
It goes almost
without saying that the PCG would have tried to infiltrate the staff.
What they learned by their early infiltration was that Sprague and
his crack team were not only on the right track in both the JFK and
MLK investigations, but also that the tactics used by the PCG in those
weeks were making the staff and some of the committee members suspicious
about the PCG itself.
Faced with
the new committee and Sprague's staff, the PCG had devise a strategy
that included:
1. Attacking Dick Sprague
to discredit him with dirt and print it in the media.
2. Using the media to spread
PCG propaganda and control the sources of all stories concerning the
Select Committee.
3. Using PCG Congressmen
to provide biased, distorted quotes to the media for its use.
4. Trying to discredit
the entire committee by making it appear to be disorganized and unmanageable.
5. Controlling the voting
and lobbying against the continuation of the committee in January
and February.
6. Influencing members
of the House to vote against the Committee through a massive letter
and telegram campaign.
7. Exaggerating the emphasis
placed on the size of the budget requested by Sprague without considering
the need for such a budget.
8. Demanding that the committee
justify its existence by producing new evidence.
9. Splitting the committee
and attempting to create dissension; creating a battle between Henry
Gonzalez and Richard Sprague and between Gonzalez and Downing.
10. Hamstringing the staff
so they could not receive salaries, could not travel, did not have
subpoena power, could not make long distance telephone calls; blocking
access to the key files at the FBI, Justice Department, CIA and Secret
Service.
11. Trying to insert their
own man at the head of the staff.
12. Brainwashing Henry
Gonzalez into believing that Sprague and others were agents.
13. Sacrificing Henry Gonzalez
when it became obvious the PCG could not control him as their chairman.
14. Leaking stories that
seemed to make the committee's efforts unnecessary.
(5)
Richard E. Sprague, The
Taking of America (1985)
The final
report of the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA), issued
in 1979, concluded that a conspiracy existed in the assassination
of President Kennedy. This news should have delighted hundreds of
researchers who had disagreed with the no-conspiracy finding of the
Warren Commission. The fact that it did not, is due to the HSCA conspiracy
being a simple one, with Lee Harvey Oswald still firing all but one
of the shots from the sixth floor window of the Texas School Book
Depository Building. The existence of another shooter and another
shot, from the grassy knoll, was "proved" by the HSCA, based
primarily on acoustical evidence presented in the very last month
of their public hearings. Dr. Robert Blakey and Richard Billings,
chief counsel and report editor for the HSCA, co-authored, in 1981,
a book, The Plot to Kill the President, following the publication
of the HSCA's final report. The book claimed that the other shooter
and Oswald were part of a Mafia plot to kill JFK.
To over simplify
the current (1985) situation, most JFK researchers feel that the American
public had been deceived once again. The HSCA reaffirmed all but one
of the Warren Commission's findings, including even the famed single
bullet theory. The simplified conspiracy finding is now subject to
review by the Justice Department and the FBI because it is based on
very questionable acoustical evidence. Justice commissioned the so-called
Ramsey Panel to review this evidence, in 1981, under the auspices
of the National Academy of Sciences. It found no evidence from the
acoustics that a grassy knoll shot was fired. So, we are back to no-conspiracy
and Oswald being the lone assassin. And even if there was a conspiracy,
Blakey claims it involved the Mafia and not the CIA. The HSCA report
and all of its volumes of evidence omitting any reference to CIA involvement,
concluded that the CIA was not involved, and did not reveal any evidence
that the HSCA staff had collected showing that CIA people murdered
JFK, and that the CIA has been covering up that fact ever since.
Any followers
of CIA activities connected with the JFK assassination, since 1963,
must ask the question, how did they do it? How did the CIA turn things
completely around from the 1976 days when Henry Gonzalez, Thomas Downing,
Richard A. Sprague, Robert Tanenbaum, Cliff Fenton and others were
pursuing the truth about the assassination, to essentially the same
status as when the Warren Commission finished its work? How did they
produce the final cover-up? The answer is that the CIA controlled
the HSCA and its investigation and findings from the early part of
1977, forward. The methods they used were as clever and devious as
any they had used previously to control the Warren Commission, the
Rockefeller Commission, the Garrison Investigation, the Schweiker/Hart
Committee and the efforts of independent researchers.
The first
step taken by the CIA was to use the media they control, along with
some members of Congress they control, and two planted agents on the
staff of and consulting for, Henry Gonzalez, to get rid of both Henry
and Richard A. Sprague. In taking this step, they used the old Roman
approach of divide and conquer. They made Gonzalez and his closest
staff assistant, Gail Beagle, believe that Sprague was a CIA agent
and that Gonzalez must get rid of him. They also made Gonzalez believe
that some of his other associates, both in the HSCA and outside, were
CIA agents. At the same time, they used the media to attack Sprague
mercilessly. The key people in doing this attack on Sprague were three
CIA reporters, George Lardner of the Washington Post, Mr. Burnham
of The New York Times, and Jeremiah O'Leary of the Washington Star.
In all HSCA committee meetings and in Rules Committee and Finance
Committee meetings, these three reporters sat next to each other,
passed notes back and forth, and wrote articles continually attacking
and undermining both Sprague and Gonzalez, as well as the entire committee.
The CIA had the support of top management in all three news organizations
in doing this.
Gonzalez eventually
tried to fire Sprague, was over-ruled by the committee, and then resigned
from the committee. Sprague eventually resigned, because it became
obvious that the CIA controlled members of the Finance and Rules Committees
and other CIA allies in the House, were going to kill the committee
unless he resigned. There are many more details to this story, which
requires a book to describe. Suffice it to say, the CIA accomplished
their first two goals by March 1977. The next steps were to install
a CIA-controlled chief counsel and to get a chairman elected who could
be fooled or coerced into appointing such a counsel. Lewis Stokes
was a perfect choice for chairman. He was, and probably still is,
a good and honest man. But he was completely bamboozled by what the
CIA did and is still doing. The selection and implementation of a
CIA man as chief counsel had to be done in an extremely subtle manner.
It could not be obvious to anyone that he was a CIA man. Stokes and
the other committee members had to be fooled into believing they had
made the choice, and had picked a good man. Professor Robert Blakey,
an apparently scientifically oriented, academic person, with a history
of work against organized crime, was the perfect CIA choice. Once
Dr. Blakey took over as chief counsel, he accomplished goals numbered
3, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 very nicely. The fourth and fifth goals having
been achieved, Blakey set about the other parts of his assignment
very rapidly after he arrived. For Goal 3, he fired Bob Tanenbaum,
Bob Lehner, and Donovan Gay, three loyal Sprague supporters, quickly.
The most important weapon
used by the CIA and Blakey to pursue goals 9 and 10 was instituted
within one week after Blakely arrived. It is by far the most subtle
and far reaching technique used by the CIA to date. It is called the
"Nondisclosure Agreement" and it was signed by all members
of the committee, all staff members including Blakey, all consultants
to the committee, and several independent researchers who met with
Blakey in 1977. Signing the agreement was a condition for continued
employment on the committee staff or for continuing consulting on
a contract basis. The choice was, sign or get out. The author signed
the agreement in July 1977, without realizing its implications at
the time, in order to continue as a consultant. The agreement is reproduced
in full the Appendix and is labelled Exhibit A. The author's consulting
help was never sought after that and the obvious objective was to
silence a consultant and not use his services.
This CIA weapon has several
parts. First, it binds the signer, if a consultant, to never reveal
that he is working for the committee. Second, it prevents the signer
from ever revealing to anyone in perpetuity, any information he has
learned about the committee's work as a result of working for the
committee. Third, it gives the committee and the House, after the
committee terminates, the power to take legal action against the signer,
in a court named by the committee or the House, in case the committee
believes the signer has violated the agreement. Fourth, the signer
agrees to pay the court costs for such a suit in the event he loses
the suit.
These four parts are enough
to scare most researchers or staff members who signed it into silence
forever about what they learned. The agreement is insidious in that
the signer is, in effect, giving away his constitutional rights. Some
lawyers who have seen the agreement, including Richard A. Sprague,
have expressed the opinion it is an illegal agreement in violation
of the Constitution and several Constitutional amendments. Whether
it is illegal or not, most staff members and all consultants who signed
it have remained silent, even after three and a half years beyond
the life of the committee. There are only two exceptions, the author
and Gaeton Fonzi, who published a lengthy article about the HSCA cover-up
in the Washingtonian magazine in 1981.
The most insidious parts
of the agreement, however, are paragraphs 2, 3 and 7, which give the
CIA very effective control over what the committee could and could
not do with so-called "classified" information. The director
of the CIA is given authority to determine, in effect, what information
shall remain classified and therefore unavailable to nearly everyone.
The signer of the agreement, and remember, this includes all of the
Congressman and women who were members of the committee, agrees not
to reveal or discuss any information that the CIA decides he should
not. The chairman of the committee supposedly has the final say on
what information is included, but in practice, even an intelligent
and gutsy chairman would not be likely to override the CIA. Lewis
Stokes did not attempt any final decisions. In fact, the CIA did not
have to do very much under these clauses. The fact that Blakey was
their man and kept nearly all of the CIA sensitive information, evidence,
and witnesses away from the committee members was all that was necessary.
Stokes never knew what he should have argued about with the CIA director.
It is this document which proves beyond doubt that the CIA controlled
the HSCA.
The author attempted to
point out to Stokes in a letter dated February 10, 1978, copy included
herein, Exhibit B, the type of control the agreement gives the CIA
over the HSCA. Stokes replied in a March 16, 1978 letter, Exhibit
C, that he retained ultimate authority and was not bound by the opinion
of the Central Intelligence Director. He also claimed that paragraphs
12 and 14, on extending the agreement in perpetuity and giving the
government the right to file a civil suit in which the signer will
pay all costs, were legal. He said in the letter that the purpose
of the agreement was to give the HSCA control over the conduct of
the investigation including control over the ultimate disclosure of
information to the American public. That is a key admission about
what has actually happened. The only question is, who is controlling
the information in the heads of the staff investigators who discovered
CIA involvement? Was Louis Stokes working for the public or for the
CIA?
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