textfiles/conspiracy/heritage.sto

Article: 9572 of alt.conspiracy
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From: pfranklin@igc.org (Paul Franklin)
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Subject: Re: Definitive JKF article
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Date: 27 Dec 91 03:14:00 GMT
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                       Heritage of Stone

Reprinted with permission from "High Times" magazine, September
1991, with help from Mark Zepezauer at the Santa Cruz Comic News.

by Steven Hager
Although John F. Kennedy was neither a saint nor a great
intellectual, he was the youngest president ever elected, which may
explain why he was so well attuned to the changing mood of America
in the '60s. Americans had grown weary of Cold War hysteria. They
wanted to relax and have fun. Like the majority of people across
the planet, they wanted peace.
    The President's primary obstacle in this quest was a massive,
power-hungry bureaucracy that had emerged after WWII ~ 
a Frankenstein monster created by anti-Communist paranoia and
inflated defense budgets. By 1960, the Pentagon was easily the
world's largest corporation, with assets of over $60 billion. No
one understood this monster better than President Dwight D.
Eisenhower. On January 17, 1961, in his farewell address to the
nation, Eisenhower spoke to the country, and to his successor, John
Kennedy.
     "The conjunction of an immense military establishment and a
large arms industry is new in the American experience," said
Eisenhower. "We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted
influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial
complex."
    At the beginning of his administration, Kennedy seems to have
followed the advice of his military and intelligence officers. What
else could such an inexperienced President have done? Signs of a
serious rift, however, first appeared after the Bay of Pigs, a CIA-
planned and executed invasion of Cuba that took place three months
after Kennedy took office. The invasion was so transparent that
Kennedy refused massive air support and immediately afterward fired
CIA Director Allen Dulles, Deputy Director General Charles Cabell
and Deputy Director of Planning Richard Bissell.
    Kennedy's next major crisis occurred on October 16, 1962, when
he was shown aerial photos of missile bases in Cuba. The Joint
Chiefs of Staff pressed for an immediate attack. Instead, Attorney
General Robert Kennedy was sent to meet with Soviet Ambassador
Anatoly Dobrynin. In his memoirs, Premier Nikita Krushchev quotes
the younger Kennedy as saying: "The President is in a grave
situation... We are under pressure from our military to use force
against Cuba... If the situation continues much longer, the
President is not sure that the military will not overthrow him and
seize power."
    Military hopes for an invasion of Cuba evaporated as Krushchev
and Kennedy worked out a nonviolent solution to the crisis. In
return, Kennedy promised not to invade Cuba. Angered over the Bay
of Pigs fiasco, the CIA refused to bend to Kennedy's will and
continued their destabilization campaign against Castro, which
included sabotage raids conducted by a secret army, as well as
plots against Castro's life, which were undertaken with the help of
such well-known Mafia figures as Johnny Roselli, Sam Giancana, and
Santos Trafficante. A bitter internal struggle developed around
Kennedy's attempts to disband the CIA's paramilitary bases in
Florida and Louisiana.
    On August 5, 1963, the US, Great Britain and the Soviet Union
signed a limited nuclear-test-ban treaty. Engineered by President
Kennedy and long in negotiations, the treaty was a severe blow to
the Cold Warriors in the Pentagon and the CIA. On September 20,
1963, Kennedy spoke hopefully of peace to the UN General Assembly.
"Today we may have reached a pause in the Cold War," he said. "If
both sides can now gain new confidence and experience in concrete
collaborations of peace, then surely, this first small step can be
the start of a long, fruitful journey."
    "Years later, paging through its formerly classified records,
talking to the National Security Council staff, it is difficult to
avoid the impression that the President was learning the
responsibility of power," writes John Prados, in his recent book
Keepers of the Keys, an analysis of the National Security Council.
"Here was a smoother, calmer Kennedy, secretly working for
rapprochement with Fidel Castro and a withdrawal from Vietnam."
    Although Kennedy's Vietnam policy has not received widespread
publicity, he turned resolutely against the war in June of 1963,
when he ordered Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and Chairman of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Maxwell Taylor to announce from
the White House steps that all American forces would be withdrawn
by 1965. At the time, 15,500 US "advisors" were stationed in South
Vietnam, and total casualties suffered remained a relatively low
100.
    On November 14, Kennedy signed an order to begin the withdrawal
by removing 1,000 troops. In private, Kennedy let it be known the
military was not going to railroad him into continuing the war.
Many of the hard-line anti-Communists ~ including FBI Director J.
Edgar Hoover ~ would have to be purged. Bobby Kennedy would be put
in charge of dismantling the CIA. President Kennedy told Senator
Mike Mansfield of his plans to tear the CIA "into a thousand pieces
and scatter it to the wind." But these plans had to wait for
Kennedy's reelection in 1964. And in order to win that election, he
had to secure the South. Which is why Kennedy went to Texas later
that month.
    Could John Kennedy have stopped the war in Vietnam, as was his
obvious intention? America will never know. His command to begin
the Vietnam withdrawal was his last formal executive order. Just
after noon on November 22, President Kennedy was murdered while
driving through downtown Dallas, in full view of dozens of ardent
supporters, and while surrounded by police and personal bodyguards.
Twenty-eight years later, grave doubts still linger about who
pulled the trigger(s), who ordered the assassination, and why our
government has done so little to bring justice forth.
    In 1963, no American wanted to believe that President Kennedy's
death was a coup d'etat, planned by the military establishment and
executed by the CIA. Today, such a claim can no longer be
dismissed. Why has the national media done such an abysmal job of
presenting the facts to the American people? Hopefully, some light
will be shed by Oliver Stone's upcoming film, JFK, a $30-million
epic starring Kevin Costner, scheduled for release December 20. As
his focal point for the story, Stone has chosen former New Orleans
District Attorney Jim Garrison, the only prosecutor to attempt to
bring this case to court, and a man subjected to one of the most
effective smear campaigns ever orchestrated by the US government.
It is a frightening story of murder, corruption and cover-up. Even
today, 24 years after he brought the case to court, a powerful
media disinformation campaign against Garrison continues.

Born November 20, 1921, in Knoxville, Iowa, Earling Carothers
Garrison ~ known as "Jim" to friends and family ~ was raised in New
Orleans. At age 19, one year before Pearl Harbor, he joined the
army. In 1942, he was sent to Europe, where he volunteered to fly
spotter planes over the front lines. Following the war, he attended
law school at Tulare, joined the FBI, and served as a special agent
in Seattle and Tacoma. After growing bored with his agency
assignments, he returned to New Orleans to practice law. He served
as an assistant district attorney from 1954 to 1958.
    In 1961, Garrison decided to run for district attorney on a
platform openly hostile to then-New Orleans Mayor Victor Schiro. To
the surprise of many, he was elected without any major political
backing. He was 43 years old and had been district attorney for
less than two years when Kennedy was killed. "I was an old-
fashioned patriot," he writes in On the Trail of the Assassins,
(Sheridan Square Press, NY), "a product of my family, my military
experience, and my years in the legal profession. I could not
imagine then that the government would ever deceive the citizens of
this country."
    A few hours after the assassination, Lee Harvey Oswald was
arrested. Two days later, while in Dallas police custody, Oswald
was murdered by nightclub-owner Jack Ruby. Garrison learned that
Oswald was from New Orleans, and arranged a Sunday afternoon
meeting with his staff. With such an important case, it was their
responsibility to investigate Oswald's local connections.
    Within days, they learned that Oswald had been recently seen in
the company of one David Ferrie, a fervent anti-Communist and
freelance pilot linked to the Bay of Pigs invasion. Evidence placed
Ferrie in Texas on the day of the assassination. Also on that day,
a friend of Ferrie's named Guy Bannister had pistol-whipped Jack
Martin during an argument. Martin confided to friends that
Bannister and Ferrie were somehow involved in the assassination.
Garrison had Ferrie picked up for questioning, and turned him over
to the local FBI, who immediately released him. Within a few
months, the Warren Commission released its report stating that
Oswald was a "lone nut" murdered by a misguided patriot who wanted
to spare Jackie Kennedy the ordeal of testifying. Like most
Americans, Garrison accepted this conclusion.
    Three years later, in the fall of '66, Garrison was happily
married with three children and content with his job, when a chance
conversation with Senator Russell long changed his views on the
Warren Commission forever.
    "Those fellows on the Warren Commission were dead wrong," said
Long. "There's no way in the world that one man could have shot up
Jack Kennedy that way."
    Intrigued, Garrison went back to his office and ordered the
complete 26-volume report. "The mass of information was
disorganized and confused," writes Garrison.  "Worst of all, the
conclusions in the report seemed to be based on an appallingly
selective reading of the evidence, ignoring credible testimony from
literally dozens of witnesses."
    Garrison was equally disturbed by the background of the men
chosen by President Johnson to serve on the commission. Why, for
instance, was Allen Dulles, a man fired by Kennedy, on the panel? A
master spy during WWII, Dulles had supervised the penetration of
the Abwehr (Hitler's military intelligence agency) and the
subsequent incorporation of many of its undercover agents into the
CIA. He was powerful, well-connected and had been Director of the
CIA for eight years. Certainly, he was no friend to John Kennedy.
Serving with Dulles were Representative Gerald Ford, a man
described by Newsweek as "the CIA's best friend in Congress," John
McCloy, former assistant secretary of war and Commissioner for
Occupied Germany, and Senator Richard Russell, chairman of the
powerful Senate Armed Services Committee. Russell's home state of
Georgia was filled with military bases and government contracts.
The balance of the commission was clearly in the hands of the
military and the CIA. The entire "investigation" was supervised by
J. Edgar Hoover, who openly detested the Kennedy brothers.
    Another interesting link turned up; The mayor of Dallas was
Earle Cabell, brother of the General Charles Cabell JFK had earlier
fired from the CIA. Earle Cabell was in a position to control many
important details involved in the case, including the Dallas police
force. 
    Based on these general suspicions, Garrison launched a highly-
secret investigation around Lee Harvey Oswald's links to David
Ferrie and Guy Bannister. Unfortunately, Bannister had died nine
months after the assassination. An alcoholic and rabid right-
winger, Bannister had been a star agent for the FBI and a former
Naval Intelligence operative. He was a member of the John Birch
Society, the Minutemen, and publisher of a racist newsletter. His
office at 544 Camp street was a well-known meeting place for anti-
Castro Cubans.
    Ferrie's background was even more bizarre. A former senior
pilot for Eastern Airlines, Ferrie had been the head of the New
Orleans Civil Air Patrol, an organization Oswald had  joined as a
teenager. Ferrie suffered from alopecia, an ailment that left him
hairless. He wore bright red wigs and painted eyebrows. Ferrie had
founded his own religion, and kept hundreds of experimental rats in
his house. He reportedly had flown dozens of solo missions for the
CIA in Cuba and Latin America, and had links to Carlos Marcello,
head of the Mob in Louisiana. Like Bannister, he was extremely
right wing. "I want to train killers," Ferrie had written to the
commander of the US 1st Air Force. "There is nothing I would enjoy
better than blowing the hell out of every damn Russian, Communist,
Red or what-have-you."
    On the day of the assassination, Dean Andrews, a New Orleans
attorney, had been asked to fly to Dallas to represent Oswald. When
asked by the Warren Commission who had hired him, Andrews had
replied Clay Bertrand. Bertrand, Garrison discovered, was a
pseudonym used by Clay Shaw, director of the International Trade
Mart. Shaw, a darling of New Orleans high society, was also well-
connected in international high-finance circles. He was also an
associate of Bannister and Ferrie. Like many others connected with
the assassination, Shaw was a former Army Intelligence operative.
The case against Shaw was circumstantial, but Garrison did have an
eyewitness willing to testify that Shaw had met with Lee Harvey
Oswald just prior to the assassination.
    Just as Garrison was marshalling his case, some strange events
took place. On February 17, 1967, the New Orleans States-Item
published a story on Garrison's secret probe, indicating that he
had already spent over $8,000 of taxpayer's money investigating the
Kennedy assassination. Soon thereafter, Garrison received an
unusually strong letter of support from a Denver oil businessman
named John Miller, hinting that Miller wanted to offer financial
support to the investigation. When Miller arrived in New Orleans,
he met with Garrison and one of his assistants. 
"You're too big for this job," said Miller. "I suggest you accept
an appointment to the bench in federal district court, and move
into a job worthy of your talents."
    "And what would I have to do to get this judgeship?" asked
Garrison.
    "Stop your investigation," replied Miller calmly.
    Garrison asked Miller to leave his office.
    "Well, they offered you the carrot and you turned it down,"
said his assistant. "You know what's coming next, don't you?"

Suddenly, reporters from all over the country descended on New
Orleans, including the Washington Post's George Lardner, Jr. At
midnight on February 22, 1967, Lardner claims to have conducted a
four-hour interview with Ferrie. The following morning, Ferrie was
found dead. Two unsigned, typewritten suicide notes were found. The
letter made reference to a "messianic district attorney."
    Three days later the coroner announced that Ferrie had died of
natural causes and placed the time of death well before the end of
Lardner's supposed marathon interview. Lardner's complicity in the
affair would never be called into question, while his highly-
influential articles in the Washington Post branded Garrison's
investigation a "fraud." It was just the beginning of a long series
of disruptive attacks in the media, and the first in a long series
of bodies connected with the case that would mysteriously turn up
dead.
    With Ferrie gone, Garrison had only one suspect left. He rushed
his case to court, arresting Clay Shaw. 
    Ellen Ray, a documentary filmmaker from New York, came to New
Orleans to film the story. "People were getting killed left and
right," she recalls. "Garrison would subpoena a witness and two
days later the witness would be killed by a parked car. I thought
Garrison was a great American patriot. But things got a little too
heavy when I started getting strange phone calls from men with
Cuban accents." After several death threats, Ray became so
terrified that instead of making a documentary on the trial, she
fled the country.


Article: 9573 of alt.conspiracy
Path: ns-mx!uunet!spool.mu.edu!agate!ames!sgi!cdp!pfranklin
From: pfranklin@igc.org (Paul Franklin)
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy
Subject: Re: Definitive JKF article
Message-ID: <1299600013@igc.org>
Date: 27 Dec 91 03:16:00 GMT
References: <1299600011@igc.org>
Sender: Notesfile to Usenet Gateway <notes@igc.org>
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Nf-ID: #R:cdp:1299600011:cdp:1299600013:000:17917
Nf-From: cdp.UUCP!pfranklin    Dec 26 19:16:00 1991


    Attorney General Ramsey Clark, a close friend of President
Lyndon Johnson, announced from Washington that the federal
government had already investigated and exonerated Clay Shaw.
"Needless to say," writes Garrison, "this did not exactly make me
look like District Attorney of the Year."
    Meanwhile, all sorts of backpedalling was going on at the
Justice Department. If Shaw had been investigated, why wasn't his
name in the Warren Commission Report? "The attorney general has
since determined that this was erroneous," said a spokesman for
Clark. "Nothing arose indicating a need to investigate Mr. Shaw."
    Realizing he was in a political minefield, Garrison presented
his case as cautiously as possible. A grand jury was convened that
included Jay C. Albarado. "On March 14, three criminal-court judges
heard Garrison's case in a preliminary hearing to determine if
there was enough evidence against Shaw to hold him for trial,"
Albarado wrote recently in a letter to the New Orleans Times-
Picayune. "What did they conclude? That there was sufficient
evidence. Garrison then presented his evidence to a 12-member grand
jury. We ruled there was sufficient evidence to bring Shaw to
trial. Were we duped by Garrison? I think not."
    Thanks to all the unwanted publicity, Garrison's staff had
swollen with volunteers eager to work on the case. The 6'6"
Garrison, now dubbed the "Jolly Green Giant," had already become a
hero to the many citizens and researchers who had serious doubts
about the Warren Commission. Unfortunately, a few of these eager
volunteers were later exposed as government informers. Shortly
before the case went to trial, one of the infiltrators Xeroxed all
of Garrison's files and turned them over to Shaw's defense team. 
    On September 4, 1967, Chief Justice Earl Warren announced that
Garrison's case was worthless. The New York Times characterized the
investigation as a "morbid frolic." Newsweek reported that the
conspiracy was "a plot of Garrison's own making." Life magazine
published the first of many reports linking Garrison with the
Mafia. (Richard Billings, an editor at Life, had been one of the
first journalists to gain access to Garrison's inner circle, under
the guise of "wanting to help" the investigation.) Walter Sheridan,
a former Naval Intelligence operative and NBC investigator,
appeared in New Orleans with a film crew. Their purpose? An expose~
titled The Case of Jim Garrison, which was broadcast in June '67.
"It required only a few minutes to see that NBC had classified the
case as criminal and had appointed itself as the prosecutor,"
writes Garrison.
    Puzzled by the intensity of NBC's attack, Garrison went to the
library and did some research on the company. He learned the
network was a subsidiary of RCA, a bulwark of the military-
industrial complex whose defense contracts had increased by more
than a billion dollars from 1960 to 1967. Its chairman, retired
General David Sarnoff, was a well-known proponent of the Cold War.
    "Some long-cherished illusions about the great free press in
our country underwent a painful reappraisal during this period,"
writes Garrison.
    Clay Shaw was brought to trial  on January 29, 1969. It took
less than one month for Garrison to present his case. 
    Demonstrating the cover-up was the easy part. Although the
overwhelming majority of eyewitnesses in Dealy Plaza testified that
the fatal shot came not from the Texas School Book Depository ~
where Oswald worked ~ but from a grassy knoll overlooking the
plaza, the FBI had encouraged many witnesses to alter their
testimony to fit the ~lone nut' theory. Those that didn't were
simply ignored by the commission. The ballistic evidence was flawed
and obviously tampered with. Even though the FBI had received
several warnings of the assassination, they had ignored them.
Security for the President was strangely lax. Although Oswald's
killer, Jack Ruby, had ties to the CIA and the Mafia, this evidence
had been suppressed. Ruby was never allowed to testify before the
commission, and when interviewed in a Texas jail by Chief Justice
Warren and Gerald Ford, he told them: "I would like to request that
I go to Washington... I want to tell the truth, and I can't tell it
here... Gentlemen, my life is in danger." Ruby never made it to
Washington. He remained in jail and died mysteriously before
Garrison could call him as a witness.
    Even more disturbing was the treatment given the deceased
President's corpse. Under Texas law, an autopsy should have been
performed by a civilian pathologist in Dallas. Instead, the body
was removed at gunpoint by the Secret Service and flown to a naval
hospital in Maryland, where an incomplete autopsy was performed
under the supervision of unnamed admirals and generals. The notes
from this "autopsy" were quickly burned. Bullet holes were never
tracked, the brain was not dissected, and organs were not removed.
The autopsy was a botched, tainted affair, performed under military
supervision. (The medical aspects of the case were so weird, they
would later form the basis for a best-selling book on the
assassination, Best Evidence by David Lifton [Macmillan, New
York].)
    The most important and lasting piece of evidence unveiled by
Garrison was an 8mm film of the assassination taken by Abraham
Zapruder, a film that only three members of the Warren Commission
had seen, probably because it cast a long shadow of doubt across
their conclusions. A good analysis of the film can be found in
Cover-Up by J. Gary Shaw with Larry Harris (PO Box 722, Cleburne,
TX 76031):

Had the Zapruder film of the JFK assassination been shown on
national television Friday evening, November 22, 1963, the
Oswald/lone assassin fabrication would have been unacceptable to a
majority of Americans... The car proceeds down Elm and briefly
disappears behind a sign. When it emerges the President has
obviously been shot... Governor Connally turns completely to the
right, looking into the back seat; he begins to turn back when his
body stiffens on impact of a bullet. Very shortly after Connally is
hit, the President's head explodes in a shower of blood and brain
matter ~ he is driven violently backward at a speed estimated at
80-100 feet per second.

Although Time, Inc. could have made a small fortune distributing
this film around the world, they instead secured the rights from
Zapruder for $225,000, then held a few private screenings before
locking the film in a vault. It was shown to one newsman, Dan
Rather, who then described it on national television. Rather
asserted that Kennedy's head went "forward with considerable force"
after the fatal head shot (a statement that would have supported a
hit from behind, from the direction of the School Book Depository).
Several months later, Rather was promoted to White House
Correspondent by CBS. As if to buttress this fabrication, the FBI
reversed the order of the frames when printing them in the Warren
Report. When researchers later drew this reversal to the FBI's
attention, Hoover attributed the switch to a "printing error."
    Although Garrison proved his conspiracy, the jury was not
convinced of Clay Shaw's role in it. He was released after only two
hours of deliberation.

The end of the Clay Shaw trial was just the beginning of a long
nightmare for Garrison. On June 30, 1971, he was arrested by
federal agents on corruption charges. Two years later, the case
came to trial at the height of Garrison's reelection campaign.
Although he won the case, he lost the election by 2,000 votes.
However, the Jolly Green Giant remains widely respected in his home
state, and has recently been elected to his second term on the
second highest court in Louisiana.
    In 1967, the machinations of the CIA were unknown to most
Americans. Today, thankfully, many brave men have left their
comfortable careers in the agency and spoken out against CIA-
sponsored terror around the world. One of these is Victor
Marchetti, who was executive assistant to Director Richard Helms,
and then coauthored The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence with John
D. Marks. In 1975 Marchetti confirmed that Clay Shaw and David
Ferrie had been CIA operatives, and that the agency had secretly
worked for Shaw's defense.
    Over the years, many high-ranking officials have come forward
to support Garrison's theory. "The big story in the Kennedy
assassination is the cover-up," says retired Colonel L. Fletcher
Prouty, Chief of Special Operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff
until 1964. Prouty was on assignment in New Zealand on the day of
the assassination. After carrying a New Zealand newspaper article
back to Washington, he checked the time of Oswald's arrest against
the hour the paper had been printed and, with great horror,
realized Oswald's biography had gone out on the international
newswire before Oswald had been arrested by the Dallas police.
Prouty has since become one of the most persuasive and persistent
critics of the Warren Commission. His book, The Secret Team: The
CIA and its Allies in Control of the United States and the World,
is a frightening portrayal of the hidden rulers of America.
    On March 6, 1975, the Zapruder film made its national-
television debut on ABC's Goodnight America. As a result of this
long-delayed national screening, enough public pressure was put on
Congress to reopen the case. Unfortunately, this investigation
became  as carefully-manipulated as the Warren Commission,
eventually falling under the control of G. Robert Blakey, a man
with close ties to the CIA. As could be expected, Blakey led the
investigation away from the CIA and towards the Mob. Blakey's
conclusion was that President Kennedy was killed as the result of a
conspiracy, and that organized crime had the means, method and
motive. "The Garrison investigation was a fraud," said Blakey.
Richard Billings, the former Life editor, was a prominent member of
Blakey's staff.
    Recently, however, a number of highly-detailed books on the
assassination have appeared, most of which support Garrison's
thesis rather than Blakey's. The best of these include Conspiracy
by Anthony Summers (Paragon House, New York), Crossfire by Jim
Marrs (Carroll & Graf, Inc., New York) and High Treason by Robert
Groden and Harrison Livingstone (Berkeley, New York).
    "Could the Mafia have whisked Kennedy's body past the Texas
authorities and got it aboard Air Force One?" writes Garrison.
"Could the Mafia have placed in charge of the President's autopsy
an army general who was not a physician? Could the Mafia have
arranged for President Kennedy's brain to disappear from the
National Archives?"
    Today, we know that the CIA frequently hired Mafia assassins to
carry out contracts. Undoubtedly some of these men were involved in
the assassination and the cover-up. Shortly before his
disappearance, Teamster boss Jimmy Hoffa said, "Jim Garrison's a
smart man. Anyone who thinks he's a kook is a kook himself." Was
Hoffa silenced because he knew too much about the plot? Just before
their scheduled appearances before the House investigation, Johnny
Roselli and Sam Giancana were brutally murdered in gangland
fashion. Was this a message to other Mob figures who had
fragmentary information on the case?
    In July 1988, The Nation published an FBI memorandum from
Hoover dated November 29, 1963. Obtained through the Freedom of
Information Act, the memo implicated "George Bush of the CIA" in
the Kennedy assassination cover-up. Although President Bush denies
any contact with the CIA prior to his being named director in 1976,
it is reasonable to assume that Zapata, the oil company Bush
founded in 1960, was a CIA front. 
    Former President Richard Nixon is also implicated in the cover-
up. Nixon was in Dallas the day before the assassination, and his
greatest fear during the early days of Watergate was that the "Bay
of Pigs thing" would be uncovered. According to H.R. Haldeman in
The Ends of Power, "Bay of Pigs" was Nixon's code phrase for the
Kennedy assassination.
    As liaison between the CIA and the Pentagon during the Bay of
Pigs, Fletcher Prouty was put in charge of ordering supplies for
the invasion. "The CIA had code-named the invasion ~Zapata,'"
recalls Prouty. "Two boats landed on the shores of Cuba. One was
named Houston, the other Barbara. They were Navy ships that had
been repainted with new names. I have no idea where the new names
came from."
    At the time Bush was living in Houston. His oil company was
called Zapata, and his wife's name was Barbara.
    If Garrison's investigation was not a fraud, it's reasonable to
assume that high-placed individuals in the conspiracy would either
be dead or would have obtained considerable power in the last 28
years. According to an article in the March 4 issue of U.S. News
and World Report, Nixon and Bush have remained close associates.
"Nixon is in contact with Bush or his senior staff every month,"
writes Kenneth Walsh. "Nixon also speaks regularly on the phone
with [National Security Adviser] Brent Scowcroft... and Chief of
Staff John Sununu."
    Earlier this year Len Colodny and Robert Gettlin published
Silent Coup, a well-documented analysis of the real forces behind
the Watergate scandal. According to the authors, Nixon fell prey to
a military coup after refusing to work with the Pentagon. They
claim the famous Deep Throat was, in fact, General Alexander Haig.
    
In the meantime, a well-orchestrated disinformation campaign
against Oliver Stone's movie has predictably appeared, long before
Stone could even begin editing his film. Longtime Kennedy
researchers were not surprised to find the charge led by George
Lardner, Jr., of the Washington Post, the last man to see David
Ferrie alive.
    "Oliver Stone is chasing fiction," wrote Lardner in the May 19
edition of the Post. "Garrison's investigation was a fraud." Later
in the article, he adds: "There was no abrupt change in Vietnam
policy after JFK's death."
    "That is one of the most preposterous things I've ever heard,"
says Zachary Sklar, editor of On The Trail of the Assassins, and
coscreenwriter with Stone on JFK. "Kennedy was trying to get out of
Vietnam, and Johnson led us into a war in which 58,000 Americans
died. Lardner's article is a travesty."
    "I wouldn't give Lardner the time of day," adds Gary Shaw. "I
think he's bought and paid for."
    Mark Lane, author of Rush to Judgment, one of the first books
critical of the Warren Commission, agrees. "The CIA is bringing out
the spooks who pose as journalists," says Lane. "The amazing thing
about the Lardner piece is he's reviewing the film months before
it's even completed."
    Time magazine also slammed the film long before its release.
"Garrison is considered somewhere near the far-out fringe of
conspiracy theories," writes Richard Zoglin, a film critic who
admits to knowing "very little" about the assassination. (For the
25th anniversary of the assassination back in '88, Time ran a cover
story titled "Who Was the Real Target?" Inside was an excerpt from
The Great Expectations of John Connally, a curious book that argued
that Oswald really meant to kill Connally and only hit JFK by
mistake. Someday this book may be viewed as a textbook example of
CIA-sponsored disinformation.) 
    Time, Inc., it will be remembered, is the same company that hid
the Zapruder film for five years. When High Times requested slides
from the film to accompany this article, the current copyright
holder sent them a three-page contract to sign. It included a
prohibition against "any reference... that the Zapruder film was
ever owned by Time, Inc...."
    High Times decided not to run the photos rather than assist
Time, Inc. in their continuing cover-up of the real facts behind
John F. Kennedy's assassination.
    In the next few months, the American people will be bombarded
with information about the Kennedy assassination. Most of it will
be critical of Stone and Garrison. It's important to understand
that much of this criticism will be written by intelligence assets
working for the CIA. Although the Cold War is supposed to be over,
the CIA budget is at an all-time high; $30 billion of taxpayer's
money buys a lot of propaganda.
    How extensive is the CIA's infiltration of the national media?
I called former agent Ralph McGeehee, author of Deadly Deceits, who
has compiled a database on everything published about the agency.
"In 1977, Carl Bernstein wrote an article in Rolling Stone that
named over 400 journalists uncovered by the Church Committee who
were working for the CIA," says McGeehee. If anything, their
numbers have only increased in the last 12 years.
    When will the subversion of the national media end? When the
American people demand it. Unfortunately, the public has not flexed
any muscle in this country since they ended the war in Vietnam. If
you want to help bring justice in this case, there's plenty you can
do: 1) Assist the Assassinations Archives in Washington in their
quest to obtain the documentation on the Kennedy case that remains
sealed to the public. For more information call Jim LeSar at (202)
393-1917. 2) Subscribe to Covert Action Information Bulletin, a
national newsletter on covert CIA activities. For more information
call (202) 331-9763. If you want more detailed information on the
CIA, McGehee's database can be purchased for $99. For more
information call him at (707) 437-8487. 3) Write your
representatives in Congress. Tell them you want a law passed
prohibiting journalists from working for the CIA. Although such a
bill has been proposed many times, it never makes its way out of
committee.
    Finally, stop accepting everything you hear on TV and read in
the newspapers. Buy books on the assassination and cover-up and
educate yourself. Only in this way can we keep hope alive that one
day America will be the sweet land of liberty her founders
intended.