-Caveat Lector-
"THE TAKING OF AMERICA, 1-2-3"
by Richard E. Sprague (1976, 1985)
http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/ToA
Chapter 17
THE FINAL COVER UP: How The CIA Controlled
The House Select Committee On Assassinations
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 oversimplify 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 [1] 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.
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 [2] and the efforts of independent researchers.
The Situation in 1976
In 1976, Henry Gonzalez, member of the House from Texas, and
Thomas Downing from Virginia, were both convinced there was a
massive conspiracy in the JFK assassination. They introduced a
joint bill in the House which resulted in the formation of the
HSCA and an investigation of the JFK and King assassinations.
Gonzalez believed there were at least four conspiracies, in
the assassinations of JFK, MLK, Robert Kennedy and in the
attempted assassination of George Wallace. He introduced an
original bill to have the House investigate all four and the
cover-ups and links among them. Downing was primarily interested
in the JFK case and his original bill dealt only with that
conspiracy. Mark Lane and his committee members and supporters
around the country joined forces with Coretta King and the Black
Caucus in the House to pressure Congressmen and Tip O'Neill to
investigate the King and John Kennedy assassinations. The net
result was a merging of the Gonzalez and Downing bills into a
Final HSCA bill dealing with only two of the cases.
In the fall of 1976, with Downing as chairman, the HSCA
selected Richard A. Sprague, from the Philadelphia District
Attorney's office, to be chief counsel. Sprague hired four
professional investigators and criminal lawyers from New York
City. They were very good and completely independent of the
CIA and FBI, having been trained by one of the best professionals
in the business, D.A. Frank Hogan of New York.
Sprague and his JFK team, headed by Bob Tanenbaum, attorney,
and Cliff Fenton, chief detective, were going after the real
assassins and their bosses, whether this led them to the CIA or
FBI or anywhere else. Sprague had already made it clear to the
HSCA that he would investigate CIA involvement, and subpoena CIA
people, documents and other information, whether classified or
not. He had also had meetings with several researchers,
including the author, and made it known privately that he was
going to use the talent and knowledge of every reliable
researcher on a consulting basis. He had contacted Jim Garrison
in New Orleans and informed him he would be following up on all
of his information and leads. He had initiated an investigation
of the CIA activities in Mexico City connected with the JFK
assassination, including information supplied to Sprague by
the author. [3]
R.A. Sprague and Tanenbaum were aware of the CIA connections
of the individuals involved in the JFK assassination in Dealey
Plaza, in Mexico City, in New Orleans and in the Florida Keys.
They had, in November 1976, exposed the entire HSCA staff to all
of the photographic evidence showing these people in Dealey Plaza
and elsewhere. They were aware of the assassination planning
meetings held by CIA people in Mexico City and knew who the
higher level conspirators were. They had initiated searches for
the real assassins: Frenchy, William Seymour, Emilio Santana,
Jack Lawrence, Fred Lee Crisman, Jim Braden, Jim Hicks, et al.
They were planning to interview CIA contract agents Richard Case
Nagell, Harry Dean, Gordon Novel, Ronald Augustinovich, Mary Hope
and Guy Gabaldin. Cliff Fenton had been appointed head of a team
of investigators to follow up on the New Orleans part of the
conspiracy which had included CIA agents and people: Clay Shaw,
David Ferrie, Guy Banister, Manuel Garcia Gonzalez, Sergio
Arcacha Smith, Gordon Novel and others. They were going to
contact people who had attended assassination planning meetings
in New Orleans.
From the photographic evidence surrounding the sixth floor
window, as well as the grassy knoll, Sprague, Tanenbaum and most
of the staff knew Oswald had not fired any shots, knew no shots
came from the sixth floor window, and knew there had been shots
from the Dal Tex Building and the knoll. They knew the single
bullet theory was not true, and knew there had been a
well-planned crossfire in Dealey Plaza. They were not planning
to waste a lot of time reviewing and rehashing the Dealey Plaza
evidence, except as it might lead to the real assassins.
They had set up an investigation in Florida and the Keys, of
the evidence and leads developed in 1967 by Garrison. Gaeton
Fonzi was in charge of that part of Sprague's team. They were
going to check out the people in the CIA that had been running
and funding the No Name Key group and other Anti-Castro groups.
Seymour, Santana, Manuel Garcia Gonzalez, Jerry Patrick Hemming,
Loran Hall, Lawrence Howard, Frenchy and Cubans Rolando Masferrer
and Carlos Prio Socarras were to be found and interrogated.
Tanenbaum and his research team had seen the photo
collection of Dick Billings from Life magazine which was, by
1976, deposited in the Georgetown University Library's JFK
assassination collection. The No Name Key people and others
showing up in Garrison's investigation appeared in these photos
with high level CIA agents.
In 1977, Henry Gonzalez, who was far more supportive of a
CIA conspiracy idea than Tom Downing, was to become chairman of
the HSCA. Downing did not run for re-election in 1976 and was
retiring. At that point, December 1976, Gonzalez and Sprague
were of the same mind and getting along fine. Researchers were
very pleased with the way things were going and believed Sprague
would expose the CIA's involvement in the JFK cover up.
The CIA's problem
Given this background of the HSCA status in late 1976, it
can easily be seen that the CIA was up against much more serious
opposition than it ever had been before in the JFK murder and
cover-up.
They had ruined Jim Garrison's reputation and curtailed his
investigation by various dirty trick means.
They had been in solid control of the Warren Commission by
the simple expedient of having four of the Commissioners belong
to them; Dulles, Ford, McCloy and Russell.
They were also able to kill enough people who knew the
truth, to slow down any truth-seeking that might have taken
place.
They also hid documents, destroyed and altered evidence,
lied about other evidence, and baldfacedly (Dulles) admitted that
they wouldn't tell the President or the Commission if Lee Harvey
Oswald had been a CIA agent (which he had been).
In the Rockefeller Commission situation they were in
complete control of that attempt to reinforce the Warren
Commission's findings.
And in the Church Committee investigation, the
Schweiker/Hart subcommittee on the JFK case was very limited and
controlled in what they could do.
But in the new situation, in Richard A. Sprague and his
professionals with so much knowledge of the CIA's role in the
murder and the cover-up, they faced a crisis. They knew they had
to do several things to turn it around and to continue to keep
the American public from realizing what was happening.
Here is what they had to do:
*Get rid of Richard A. Sprague.
*Get rid of Henry Gonzalez.
*Get rid of Sprague's key men or keep them away from CIA
evidence or keep them quiet.
*Install their own chief counsel to control the
investigation.
*Elect a new HSCA chairman who would go along, or who could
be fooled.
*Cut off all Sprague's investigations of CIA people. Make
sure none of the people were found or bury any testimony that had
already been found, or murder CIA people who might talk.
*Keep the committee members from knowing what was happening
and segregate the investigation from them.
*Create a new investigative environment whose purpose would
be to confirm all of the findings of the Warren Commission and
divert attention away from the who-did-it-and-why approach.
*Control the committee staff in such a way as to keep any of
them from revealing what they already knew about CIA involvement.
*Control committee consultants in the same way, and staff
members who might leave or who might be fired.
*Continue to control the media in such a way as to reinforce
all of the above.
*Continue to murder witnesses or assassins in emergency
situations if necessary.
The CIA successfully did all twelve of these things. The
techniques they used were much more subtle and devious than those
they had used before, although they did continue with murders of
potential HSCA witnesses and with media control.
How The CIA Did It
The first step taken by the CIA was to use the media they
control, along with some members of Congress they control, and
two agents planted 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 quickly fired Bob
Tanenbaum, Bob Lehner, and Donovan Gay, three loyal Sprague
supporters.
The Nondisclosure Agreement
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
in 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 (see paragraph 13).
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 (see
paragraphs 2 and 12).
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 (see paragraphs 14 and 15).
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 controlled the information in the
heads of the staff investigators who discovered CIA involvement?
Was Louis Stokes working for the public or for the CIA?
Examples of CIA-Control
Some specific examples will serve to illustrate how well the
CIA techniques have worked and are still working.
Garrison Evidence and Witnesses Example
As mentioned earlier, when Blakey arrived, an investigating
team headed by Cliff Fenton, reporting to Bob Tanenbaum, had
already been hard at work tracking down leads to the CIA
conspirators generated by Jim Garrison's investigation in New
Orleans. This team eventually had four investigators, all
professionals, and their work led them to believe that the CIA
people in New Orleans had been involved in a large conspiracy to
assassinate JFK.
As Garrison told Ted Gandolfo, a New York City researcher,
the Fenton team went much further than Garrison, in locating
witnesses and other evidence of assassination planning meetings
held in New Orleans, Mexico City and Dallas.
In fact, they found a CIA man who attended those meetings,
and who was willing to testify before the committee. The
evidence was far more convincing than the testimony presented at
the trial of Clay Shaw. In the Shaw Trial, CIA people were
involved in meetings in addition to the one brought out in the
trial. Clay Shaw, David Ferrie, William Seymour and others
were involved.
Fenton's team discovered a lot of other facts about how the
CIA people planned and carried out the assassination. Their
report about the conspiracy was solid and convincing and they
were convinced.
{cont'd]
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