by Doug Warren and Dennis Burnside - Paper Tiger Book Club
1. The Chicago Plot: America’s first African-American Secret Service Agent, Abraham Bolden, who left the Service as a protest to the poor security being offered JFK and the repeated racist taunts he received, was a witness to a November 2, 1963 assassination plot in Chicago that was identical in many ways to the Dallas plot.
An assassination team of four snipers planned to shoot Kennedy along the route of the presidential motorcade as it traveled from O’Hare through the Loop on its way to the Army-Air Force football game at Soldier Field. The suspects were described by the FBI as “para-military fanatics” and were revealed by an informant named “Lee.”
A landlady confirmed that the four men were renting a room from her when she discovered a cache of high-powered rifles with telescopic sights, thousands of ammunition rounds, and newspaper sketches of the president’s route. The FBI was called but refused to investigate further. Bolden’s former Secret Service colleagues and the Chicago police were placed in charge. They questioned only two of the suspects, and all four were allowed to go free.
Thomas Arthur Vallee was an ex-marine John Bircher, a “lone nut” and a gun collector. He was arrested by the Secret Service en route to Kennedy’s parade route. In his possession was a knife, a rifle, and 300 rounds of ammunition. Valle turned out to be deeply connected to the Intelligence services. His license plate was “frozen,” which means it was inaccessible to the Service or Chicago cops.
The arresting officer in Chicago, Daniel Groth, years later murdered Black Panther leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Clark and was later found to have deep CIA and FBI ties. Groth “caught” Valle after the four para-military types’ cover was blown and Vallee was on his way to his warehouse job - a warehouse that overlooked JFK’s parade route - a job Vallee had only recently begun in August 1963.
After Nov. 22, Bolden was punished and marked for death for connecting the dots between the Chicago and Dallas plots and advocating an investigation.
That Vallee is not remembered in infamy is an accident of history. He was the original patsy who was probably saved by the ultimate patsy, Lee Harvey Oswald.
2. Dr. James Humes, Bethesda Navy pathologist, burned his original JFK autopsy notes in his fire place. His supervisor was so concerned that Humes would be eliminated by the JFK plotters that he ordered Humes be escorted home that night.
3. In 1975, David Slawson, a Warren Commission lawyer and lead investigator, publicly expressed grave doubts about the report’s honesty and accuracy. He was subsequently threatened by the CIA’s counter intelligence chief, James Angleton. During the phone call he was advised to remain “a friend to the CIA” and “to keep his mouth shut.”
4. There are two official government conclusions of JFK’s assassination. The Warren Commission and it’s Lee Harvey Oswald “Angry Lone Nut” conclusion. And the House Select Committee on Assassinations that concluded that both JFK and MLK Jr. “probably died as a result of conspiracy.”
5. Katzenbach Memo: On November 25 1963, just three days after the assassination, a mere 24 hours after Jack Ruby murdered Oswald, and the day of the President’s funeral, Assistant Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach sent a memo to Bill Moyers (yes, that Bill Moyers of PBS fame), who was part of the new Lyndon B. Johnson White House.” The second paragraph stated: “The public must be satisfied that Oswald was the assassin; that he did not have confederates who are still at large; and that evidence was such that he would have been convicted at trial.”
6. JFK Planned to Pull Out of Vietnam by 1965: On October 11, 1963, President Kennedy issued National Security Action Memorandum #263, which stated in part that: ” . . . A program be established to train Vietnamese so that essential functions now performed by U.S. military personnel can be carried out by Vietnamese by the end of 1965. It should be possible to withdraw the bulk of U.S. personnel by that time.” . . .
In accordance with the program to train progressively Vietnamese to take over military functions, the Defense Department should announce in the very near future presently prepared plans to withdraw 1000 U.S. military personnel by the end of 1963.
This action should be explained in low key as an initial step in a long-term program to replace U.S. personnel with trained Vietnamese without impairment of the war effort.” By December 26, 1963, an “interdepartmental committee” consisting of representatives of the Department of Defense, CIA, State Department, and Joint Chiefs of Staff, began plans to escalate “covert action” in Vietnam.
7. Lee Harvey Oswald was a CIA asset: “trained by this agency, under cover of the Office of Naval Intelligence, for Soviet assignments,” beginning in 1957, “until arrangements were made for his entry into the Soviet Union in September 1959.”
8. Warren Commission member and future U.S. President Gerald R. Ford admitted to the Associated Press in 1997 to having Warren Commission lawyers move the location of the “Magic Bullet” entry wound in their final report in 1964: ” . . .. Gerald R. Ford took pen in hand and changed - ever so slightly - the Warren Commission’s key sentence on the place where a bullet entered John F. Kennedy’s body when he was killed in Dallas.
“The effect of Ford’s change was to strengthen the commission’s conclusion that a single bullet passed through Kennedy and severely wounded Texas Gov. John Connally - a crucial element in its finding that Lee Harvey Oswald was the sole gunman.” A small change, said Ford on Wednesday when it came to light, one intended to clarify meaning, not alter history.
”My changes had nothing to do with a conspiracy theory,” he said in a telephone interview from Beaver Creek, Colo. ”My changes were only an attempt to be more precise.”
9. New York Times, October 3, 1963: “The Intra-Administration War in Vietnam” - ” . . . The C.I.A.’s growth was “likened to a malignancy” which the “very high official was not sure even the White House could control . . . any longer.” “If the United States ever experiences [an attempt at a coup to overthrow the Government] it will come from the C.I.A. and not the Pentagon.” The agency “represents a tremendous power and total unaccountability to anyone.”
10. The Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB): Created in 1992 in the wake the Oliver Stone’s film “JFK,” this board prompted the release of two million more declassified pages of documents related to the assassination. According to longtime assassination researcher, Jim DiEugenio, the ARRB produced a treasure trove of new information:
” . . . one of the most surprising things that the ARRB disclosed was the volume of files on Oswald held by both the CIA and FBI – after both agencies had long denied that they had much paper on Oswald. But it was not just the volume of documents, but it was the unexpected direction they pointed.”. . .
As the ARRB’s former counsel Jeremy Gunn said in a speech at Stanford, with what the ARRB discovered, he would much rather be defending Oswald than prosecuting him.”
