Software Vault: The Gold Collection/Software Vault - The Gold Collection (American Databankers) (1993).ISO/cdr11/jfk123.zip/CHAP12

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                               Chapter 12
       The Second Line of Defense and Cover-Ups in 1975 and 1976

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.

A special renewed effort became necessary to extend the cover-ups.  Part
of  this effort was a program to bring the media back under control  and
to reinforce media support of the cover-ups.  This has been discussed in
some detail in Chapter 9.  Another part of this effort was the expansion
of the Rockefeller Commission's assignment to reinforce the cover-up  of
the  JFK assassination conspiracy.  Separate new efforts were  necessary
to control the courts and lawyers and other public officials in the King
and Robert Kennedy assassination conspiracies.  These were brought about
by  appeals for new trials by James Earl Ray and Sirhan B. Sirhan.   The
appeals were accompanied by new revelations.  New publicity was given to
demands  for  an investigation into the Wallace  shooting  by  prominent
people, including Wallace himself.

A  minor  success  in the JFK case was scored by  researchers  with  the
assistance  of Dick Gregory, Geraldo Rivera of ABC, Tom Snyder  of  NBC,
Mort Sahl and others.  They managed to have the Zapruder film and  other
photographic  evidence  of  conspiracy  shown  on  local  and   national
television.   No  one of any intelligence outside the PCG who  has  even
seen  the  Zapruder  film questions the fact that shots  came  from  two
different  directions in Dealey Plaza.  This breakthrough  after  eleven
years  of effort put new public and Congressional pressures on the  PCG.
It  was  closely followed by a grass roots campaign  conducted  by  Mark
Lane's Citizens Commission of Inquiry to reopen the JFK case.   Pressure
was  brought  to bear on Congressmen by their local  constituents  as  a
result  of this campaign.  Henry Gonzalez from Texas and Thomas  Downing
from  Virginia  introduced resolutions in the House  of  Representatives
calling  for  the reopening of all four cases and the JFK case,  so  the
public and Congress had a formal base to work with and a goal to reach.

New  revelations  were  made  in 1975 about  the  FBI's  and  the  CIA's
information  withheld from the Warren Commission.  From Dallas came  the
admission  that  Oswald  had been in closer contact with  the  FBI  than
believed and that Jack Ruby had been an FBI informer.

Perhaps the most dangerous development for the PCG was the creation of a
sub-committee  under  the  Church  committee  to  investigate  the   JFK
assassination.  This two-man subcommittee formed by Senator Gary Hart of
Colorado and Senator Schweiker of Pennsylvania became a real threat when
it  was given authority by the full Senate Committee on Intelligence  to
conduct their own independent investigation with a staff of nine people.
It  would be harder to control their efforts than to control the  Church
committee,  where the PCG had several strong allies, including  Senators
Goldwater and Tower.

Gerald  Ford,  William Colby, Richard Helms (from his  faraway  post  in
Asia) and the other PCG members developed a three-prong strategy for the
JFK case in order to cope with all of these new problems.

First  came  the reinforcement of the  lone-assassin  Warren  Commission
scenario.   Ford  selected  David  Belin to be chief  of  staff  of  the
Rockefeller  Commission.   Ford admitted that Belin in  his  Rockefeller
Commission  role--as well as in his advocacy to reopen the JFK  case  in
order  to  prove the Warren Commission findings correct--was  acting  as
"one  of  our  best  staff members."  This was  necessary  so  that  the
Rockefeller  Commission  could  add a new  assignment  to  its  original
charter  and  investigate the CIA and FBI.  The new  assignment  was  to
prove  that  all of the new questions about the Zapruder  film  and  the
evidence for assassins on the grassy knoll were answerable in support of
Warren Commission conclusions.

The  former Warren commissioner now President, who led the cover-up  and
pardoned Nixon, nominated the Warren Commission staff lawyer who led the
cover-up at the working level as the new Rockefeller Commission chief of
staff.

Belin did his job like a faithful dog.  He personally called in the most
dangerous researchers, including Cyril Wecht and Dick Gregory's cohorts,
Ralph Schoenman and Robert Groden, who had been making all of the  noise
on  television.  With the help (and possibly the knowledge) of only  one
other  staff  man,  Belin interviewed these  witnesses  briefly,  almost
casually:  then he misquoted them, edited their statements, or left them
out  of  the  Rockefeller  Report.  He purposefully  did  not  call  any
researchers other than Wecht who might have presented some  embarrassing
evidence  of conspiracy.  He instead called a number of  "experts"  from
the  stable  of PCG people, including some of the Ramsey  Clark  doctors
panel  that  had examined the medical evidence in 1968 to  back  up  the
Warren  Commission during the Garrison investigation and the  Clay  Shaw
trial.   He  also  called on reliable Dr. Lattimer,  the  urologist,  to
testify again about the bullet wounds above the navel.

Belin  wrote the chapter of the Rockefeller Commission  Report  himself.
It formed a base for controlled media presentations of the lone assassin
scenario.   CBS used much of the basic material in its series  in  1975.
Others  quoted liberally from the favorite misquotes of Cyril Wecht  and
the statements of the CIA doctors concerning the fatal shot at frame 313
of  the Zapruder film.  That had always been a sticky point  with  Belin
and the other Warren Commission defenders and technical cover-up artists
in the PCG.  Belin was nearly driven to distraction at times, trying  to
avoid any discussion of the back-to-the-left acceleration of JFK's  head
following the Z313 shot.

He was therefore delighted to be able to produce a medical opinion  that
the back-to-the-left motion was consistent with a shot directly from the
rear.   The  fact  that no ballistics experts or  physics  experts  were
called  to testify about Newton's second law of motion and what  happens
to  an object when struck by a rifle bullet traveling at twice to  three
times  the speed of sound was never questioned by the Rockefeller  panel
or the media.  Belin easily eliminated the assassins on the grassy knoll
simply by persuading the FBI to say the assassins weren't there at all.

Over  a  period of several months in the second half of  1975,  the  PCG
(through its control agents in the 15 media organizations, and by  using
Belin's creation) hammered away again at the lone assassin thesis.  They
caused  the  wave  of excitement and furor  created  by  Gregory,  Lane,
Groden, Schoenman and their friends to die out.  Lectures on  university
campuses,  discussions  on  FM  radio talk  shows  late  at  night,  and
conspiracy  books  and articles in underground  newspapers  appeared  as
always.  But there was no more showing of the Zapruder film on ABC,  NBC
or  CBS;   nor  was there any talk of conspiracy in  any  of  the  major
fifteen national news media organizations.

The  second  part of the strategy was to create a fall-back,  or  second
line of defense in the JFK case.  If necessary the same idea could  also
be  applied  in  the other three cases when  the  situation  became  too
dangerous.   There was less danger in 1975 in the RFK, MLK  and  Wallace
cases  because  the researchers and the media had not  yet  consistently
begun to tie in the CIA, FBI and other PCG high level people.  In 1976 a
danger emerged in the MLK case when it was revealed that J. Edgar Hoover
and  the  FBI might be linked and that Hoover attempted to get  King  to
commit suicide.  However, that development occurred several months after
the  implementation  of the strategy began in the JFK case.   Of  course
there  had never been any danger with the Chappaquiddick crime,  because
few  researchers realized what the PCG had accomplished in  that  event.
No  suspicions existed in Congress either, beyond some  curiosity  about
Tony Ulasewicz and E. Howard Hunt's strange visits to the island and  to
Hyannisport.

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.

Part  three  of  the strategy was the control of the  Congress  and  the
committees in the House and the Senate concerned with investigations  of
the intelligence community and the JFK assassination.  This subject will
be covered in depth in Chapter 14.  Suffice it to say here that the  PCG
planted  people on the staffs of the Church committee and the  Schweiker
sub-committee.  They exercised control over the other committees in  the
House  and  Senate  (Abzug,  Don  Edwards,  Pike  committees)  and  they
controlled  the  House Rules committee, which  effectively  blocked  the
Gonzalez and Downing resolutions for over a year.

The CIA has always had its supporters in both House and Senate.  So  has
the  FBI.   So  did J. Edgar Hoover (sometimes  through  blackmail)  and
Richard  Helms.   There was a story published in the  "Washington  Post"
about  a dinner party given by Tom Braden, former CIA man, at which  all
of  Richard  Helms' old buddies rallied to his defense.   Several  well-
known Congressmen were there and Senator Symington gave a rousing speech
supporting Helms in his hour of need.

Gerald Ford, of course, as then titular leader of the PCG, had many  old
friends  in  the  House.  Nixon had many supporters in  both  House  and
Senate  and  still  has  to this day.  Thus, control  by  the  PCG  over
Congress  and  committees is not all that difficult.  Specific  examples
will be given in Chapter 14 of how this really works.  So the  cover-ups
continue.   The PCG is still in the driver's seat.  The three  parts  of
their  strategy work very well.  The lone assassin story is repeated  at
least  once a month in some media source or other.  The "Castro did  it"
story will no doubt make its official appearance again.

The Congress is under control.  Gonzalez was not under control, nor  was
Downing.   But they couldn't do much without the Rules Committee,  which
was controlled.

The  people are left with no effective way of doing anything  about  the
PCG  and  their crimes.  What is worse, there is no way the  people  can
elect the man of their choice.