THE ASSASSINATION, JFK, AND CUBA
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2013 AT 3:07PM
Author Unknown
When the murder of President John F. Kennedy was announced, as my plane to Minneapolis was landing, a young man behind me wearing a Goldwater button leaped up and cheered. He quickly returned to his seat amidst stony silence. I deboarded long enough to make contact with some waiting student contacts, turned around as quickly as possible, flew back to Detroit, and then spent several days huddled with close friends in Ann Arbor. One year before, the Cuban missile crisis had turned life upside down. Now, the assassination became a second unthinkable catastrophe, and once again the subject of Cuba was in the air.
Within minutes, allegations were swirling that the shooter, Lee Harvey Oswald, was aligned with Fair Play for Cuba and a former defector to the Soviet Union. In the confusion, rumors spread that he was connected to SDS as well. Nightmares of sudden war and domestic roundups flashed through my mind. I was twenty-three. Ricardo Alarcon, then the youngest member of the Cuban foreign ministry staff, was twenty-six.
I remember being stoic, even cold, trying hard to concentrate and hold onto my mind, as my assumptions all lay shattered again. (Later, when Bobby was killed, I broke down, wept and rushed to stand vigil at his coffin). In the days after JFK’s killing, I braced for a knocks on the door, round ups, maybe bullets through the window. The SDS staff in New York tore through our national membership files and correspondence. No Oswald. Phone lines burned with long-distance questions, speculation, and suggestions.
Shortly a narrative, familiar to us from the South, took shape in the national media. Oswald was “definitely” a lone crackpot, not a conspirator. Yes, he was a communist, and yes, he visited the Cuban embassy in Mexico, and yes, he had returned from Russia with his wife, Marina. This framing of Oswald rested uneasily between two rival speculations; first, that he was a Soviet and Cuban agent and, second, that he was an agent of our own, who killed the president we were coming to respect, for hidden reasons of state. Either way, Cuba was involved again at the center of a global crisis, either as suspected provocateur or as scapegoat to be wiped from the sea.
History shows that the slightest confirmation of a Cuban hand, alone or in league with Moscow, could have triggered global war. For that reason, apparently, the Johnson administration moved quickly to unite the country around the manufactured tale of Oswald acting alone. Rumors of Mafia involvement, perhaps out of rage at Kennedy’s crackdown on the mob, Kennedy’s “loss” of the Cuban casinos, perhaps in dark alliance with the Cuban exiles, were pushed off the public radar too.
No matter what the ultimate truth, the truth was covered up – for the following fifty years. Even today, millions of files at the National Archive contain redactions that won’t be unsealed until 2017. Over one thousand records, each of them 1-20 pages in length, are held from release by the Assassinations Records Review Board [ARRB]. Additionally, unknown numbers of Warren Commission documents are buried in the National Archive. Perhaps most interested are the CIA’s 295 “Joannides files” sought by reporters and researchers for decades without result.
George E. Joannides was the CIA case officer who secretly organized, directed and funded, at $50,000 a month, an anti-Castro Directorio Revolucionario Estudentil (DRE), not Ricardo’s revolutionary student movement.
He relayed, “It was another thing completely unrelated to the DR 13 de marzo. It was organized at Havana University by some right wing students who tried to take the name which has had a very strong tradition, not only during the struggle against Batista but before, against Machado.”
Revealing a general lack of popular support inside Cuba, Joannides tried to carry out the counter-revolution in the name of one of the oldest revolutionary groups in Cuba. According to Jefferson Morley, whom I interviewed in 2013, “They had some support in Havana in 1959 but wouldn’t support the revolution, even from within, so they moved to Miami where the CIA picked them up as articulate young people.”[1] The group, whose plain purpose was to overthrow Fidel, had a membership of some 2,000 who were deployed to the US, Latin America, and international student conference to battle the Cuban communists. The Greek-born Joannides was transferred from Athens to the Miami station by 1963, where he managed the DRE. Joannides was titled the Miami deputy director of psychological warfare operations, code-named JM/WAVE.
The CIA was forced to acknowledge in federal court that in August 1963 Oswald paid a friendly visit to the Directorio office in New Orleans only to be seen a few days later handing out pro-Cuba literature. Abrawl and a radio confrontation ensued between Oswald and the New Orleans DRE. Oswald appeared to be playing a double role. According to the New York Times, “speculation about who might have been behind [Oswald] has never ended, with various theories focusing on Mr. Castro, the mob, rogue government agents or myriad combinations of the above.'[2] Clearly, Morley told me, “Oswald was engaging in provocateur behavior, offering to go fight in Cuba, mentioning his Marine experience, then turning around with the pro-Cuba leaflets. That kind of political agitation is exactly what the CIA was paying the DRE to do.”
When I asked Morley if he thought Oswald was working on someone’s agenda or was nuts, he answered, “Those are the choices.” Morley’s
2003 federal lawsuit charged that Joannnides had secretly financed Cuban exiles that gathered intelligence on Oswald three months before the Kennedy assassination. When Kennedy died, it was claimed, Joannides used CIA funds to help two anti-Castro militants to escape the US for Central America.[3]
Then Joannides’ historic role was elevated in 1978 when the CIA called him out of retirement and named him the agency’s liaison to the US House Select Committee on Assassinations, all while blindsiding the legislators about Joannides’ previous role of running secret operations for a violently anti-Castro organization.[4] In the same disclosure, the CIA refused to release the 295 specific documents concerning Joannides’ background. Morley believes those are only administrative personnel files, not documents disclosing his career in CIA operations. In 2013, the CIA made an “amazing concession”, Morley says, when the agency for the first time acknowledged that Joannides had a residence in New Orleans in the early 1960s, when Oswald and the DRE militants were skirmishing. “For thirty years they said he wasn’t ever near New Orleans. Now there’s powerful evidence that he knew what was going on.”
Joannides went back to Athens in 1964-68, where he participated in the military coup, then to Saigon in 1969-70 where he reunited with his original Miami station chief, Theodore Schackley. After his cover held in the House assassination hearings, he faded into the shadows until dying in 1990 at 68. His obituary identified him only as a “lawyer for the Defense Department” – “so he took the cover story right to the grave,” Morley says.
This story, however incomplete, pierces one of the confusing issues about November 22, leading to one demand and one speculation based on evidence. The demand should be for full disclosure of the CIA documents still held under seal, most of which may never be released in the lifetimes of anyone in the generation for whom the assassination was a pivotal trauma. There can be no “national security” claims to those documents after fifty years. Plainly the secret-keepers intend to contain and dilute the potential reaction to those documents until later generations. In a similar way, the 1865 killing of President Lincoln by a Confederate-based conspiracy was framed as the irrational deed of a deranged actor, not a conspiracy to defeat the Union and block Reconstruction. The purpose of the first Lincoln murder inquests, like the Warren Commission report, was to prevent a violent polarization within an already divided nation.[5]
Second, the unreleased Joannides’ file shows the CIA’s intention to control the narrative of the Kennedy assassination in a way which kept secret the CIA’s role – and that of the Kennedys – in official plots to assassinate Fidel and destroy the Cuban revolution, from injecting lethal poisons in his food and drink to burning of cane fields and oil refineries. Many believe the official “lone assassin” theory was designed to deflect attention away from the labyrinths of the CIA and its sketchy connections with the Cuban exile and Mafia elements who felt betrayed by Kennedy’s failed invasion and investigation of organized crime.
There was no evidence of an invisible Cuban hand, according to the White House, the Warren Commission and two congressional investigations.
After all, why would Fidel and the Cuban intelligence services, who deployed spies effectively in the Miami, Tampa and New Orleans exile communities, carry out an execution of Kennedy, when the certain response would be the destruction of Cuba amidst a wider conflagration? Not that Fidel lacked cause; he later provided Sen. George McGovern evidence of more that twenty schemes to kill him.[6] However vengeful his state of mind, his constant purpose was to repel an invasion from the superpower to his North, not take steps that would guarantee annihilation. And why would the Cuban government take seriously an isolated ex-Marine and ex-defector showing up at their heavily-surveilled Mexico City consulate with a plan to shoot a president whose last-minute Nov. 22 itinerary happened to take him by a six-story building where Oswald happened to have been employed before the president’s plans were known?
We know that Oswald’s last words were, “I’m a patsy.” Exactly whose “patsy” finally might be clarified if and when our government releases the remaining files.
Two Tracks
The administration traveled along two tracks in its Cuba policy, which were known in New Left thinking as repression and cooptation. We had seen the same dualism in the government’s approach to the student civil rights movement, for example, when the administration tried to prevent the 1963 March on Washington while ultimately embracing the historic event. The White House did win a promise from civil rights leaders not to engage in civil disobedience[7]. In foreign policy there was a split between those wanting to apply military force, even nuclear weapons, to roll back Communism, and more rational minds satisfied with great power co-existence and the competition for hearts and minds. Towards Cuba, after the Bay of Pigs humiliation, plans were rolled out for sabotage, guerrilla war and an invasion to topple Castro. Yet there also was a growing realism in the elite, which doubted whether the Cuban revolution could be overthrown from within or without, forcing open a search for of other options. Some would argue that this duality is nothing more than the “forked tongue” of the powerful at work. It is more the nature of statecraft, however, which requires decision-makers to consider the effectiveness of multiple options at the same time. Social movements and revolutionaries face the same challenges in reverse, whether to expect and prepare for exclusion and coercion from the state; or seize on concessions or openings on offer from the establishment. The complexity is dizzying.
On April 21, 1963, JFK adviser McGeorge Bundy wrote a memo defining three “new initiatives” to be considered. The first two had been tried before: to use “all necessary means” to force a “noncommunist” government on Cuba, or a decision to insist on “major but limited ends.” The third option was the serious alternative being considered: “The US could move in the direction of gradual development of some form of accommodation with Castro.” That June, the administration’s “standing group” on Cuba decided it would be useful to examine “various possibilities of establishing channels of communication with Castro.”[8]
In the months before he was shot, the Kennedy administration was in a strategic reversal from its failed military policies towards Cuba. Many recent histories repeat essentially the same story[9] of a split between Kennedy and the CIA in 1963. Kennedy felt obliged to continue supporting the Cuban exiles who survived the Bay of Pigs, while also quietly concluding that another invasion would not be viable. Nor would hit-and-run attacks, though he authorized more of them. Nor would there be an anti-Castro coup from within the Cuban military. Kennedy also had a political reason to maintain the anti-Castro posture; “as a shield against a political uproar in the United States.”[10] Only a secretive and unorthodox approach, organized outside conventional channels, could test the possibilities. The administration had undermined its own diplomatic capacities by refusing recognition to the Castro government.
As far back as late 1961, Kennedy aide Richard Goodwin encountered Che Guevara at the OAS summit in Punta del Este and, after a late-night confidential conversation, told the president that Che was suggesting a “modus vivendi.” The notion was neither explored nor acted on, Goodwin told me years later. But now, in April 1963, word came back from Havana through ABC news anchor, Lisa Howard, that Fidel wanted to improve relations. Howard, described variously as “sexy, stylish…blond and curvy”[11], spent hours with Fidel, including sexual intimacy, on the night of April 21. She interviewed Fidel at length, and rushed back to the US where she told the president of both her affair and Fidel’s peace initiative. White House hawks considered trying to block the ABC interview, one internal memo arguing that “public airing in the United States of this interview would strengthen the arguments of ‘peace’ groups, ‘liberal’ thinkers, Commies, fellow travelers, and opportunistic opponents of the present United States policy.”[12] CIA director John McCone advised, “the matter be handled in the most limited and sensitive manner,” and that, “no active steps be taken on the rapprochement matter at this time.”[13] At this time, McCone’s phrasing acknowledged that rapprochement was being considered. The Howard interview went ahead, but there the matter seemed to stall.
Shortly after, Howard sought out William Attwood, a veteran UN diplomat and former JFK classmate at Choate. Then an assistant to UN ambassador Adlai Stevenson, Attwood seized the initiative. Encouraged by an African diplomat at the UN, Attwood succeeded in gaining Cuban support for ultra-secret exploratory talks. Fidel even offered to meet Attwood at a secret Cuban airfield, a plan the president endorsed.[14] As late as November 18, four days before JFK’s assassination, Fidel approved a preliminary meeting between Attwood and Cuba’s UN representative, Carlos Lechuga. On the same day, Nov. 18, Kennedy gave a major speech in Miami-Dade County on Cuba before the Inter-American Press Association aimed at pushing the secret process along. The two sides, while far apart, clearly were moving towards formal dialogue about co-existence. Interestingly, later interviews showed that both leaders were exploring the idea of accepting Fidel as “a Tito of the Caribbean.”[15] On Oct. 17, Kennedy welcomed Yugoslavia’s leader, Josef Broz Tito, to the White House, in a signal that the US government could be on friendly terms with a Communist and nationalist war hero who was independent of Moscow. If Tito, why not Fidel? The anger rose at Kennedy from the Cuban right who wanted no coexistence with Fidel. They objected sharply to the line inserted in Kennedy’s Oct. 18 speech, which pledged to prevent “another Cuba” in the hemisphere. That language hid a de facto acceptance of the existing Cuban government in militant language against any further revolutions to come.
In the last weeks of his life, JFK saw Jean Daniel, the French journalist at L’Express, who was on his way to Havana to interview Fidel. Kennedy was eager to send a message that “US policy…had created, built and manufactured the Castro movement out of whole cloth without realizing it…Batista was the incarnation of a number of sins on the part of the United States [and] now we shall have to pay for those sins.”[16] Kennedy invited Daniel to visit the White House on his return because “Castro’s reactions interest me.”[17] Daniel talked with Fidel for more than four hours late one night in Havana. Fidel indicated strongly that Kennedy was someone he could have a dialogue with, because he was an “intimate enemy.”[18] He also hoped that Kennedy might learn from experience to be a great president, “the leader who may at last understand that there can be coexistence between capitalists and communists.”[19]
While the “track” of third-party diplomacy was in use, covertly, so too was the conventional one of subversion and destruction. On the very day when Daniel was conveying his message to Fidel and JFK was to die in Dallas, in Paris the CIA delivered a lethal device, disguised as a fountain pen, to a Cuban named Rolando Cubela for the assassination of Fidel. The CIA emissary, Desmond Fitzgerald, posed as a Senate friend of Bobby Kennedy, thus conveying the impression that the Kennedys wanted Fidel finished off. Cubela, whose CIA code name was AM/LASH, was a former military leader of the Cuban revolution who had turned against communism. He rejected the poison pen offer and, ultimately, nothing came of the plot.[20]
While the evidence is clear that the Kennedy administration was engaged in such dark side adventures, the Nov. 22 meeting with AM/LASH in Paris left the Kennedy’s in the dark. Years later, CIA director Richard Helms, who had been appointed under President Johnson, told Senate investigators that the Paris mission proceeded without authorization because “I [Helms] just thought this is exactly the kind of thing…he’s been asking us to do, let’s get on with doing it.”[21] It appears in history’s hindsight that the Kennedys were unleashing demons they could not control when they chose to pursue the track of realism.
The failure to officially recognize Cuba in any way may have caused serious obstacles for any Kennedy initiative towards normalization. The only direct contacts were essentially indirect; a casual meeting between Che and Goodwin, the encounter between Lisa Howard and Fidel, the drafting of Attwood to become involved, the suggestions of an African diplomat, the comments passed through Daniel, and so forth. Few if any in the administration had any experience with Cuba or its revolution. Their thinking was influenced heavily by the Cuban exiles and military chieftains who wanted Fidel overthrown. The Congress and the headlines at the time followed Cold War ideology in lockstep. By contrast, during the 1962 missile crisis, the Kennedys found it possible to negotiate directly, if confidentially, with the long-serving Soviet ambassador, Anatoly Dobryin. Though the US and Soviet Union were Cold War enemies, they exchanged ambassadors and, after the missile crisis, even a direct hot line. Through urgent discussions, they drew conclusions over what signals from Washington or Moscow to believe. They resolved the missile crisis behind the backs of the Joint Chiefs and Soviet generals. In the case of Cuba, by contrast, there was no Dobry in for Robert Kennedy to talk to. There was Lechuga, Fidel’s ambassador in New York, and operatives on the phone in Havana, who were limited to arranging secret contacts about a projected discussion in the future, one not involving any US officials directly. That was the vacuum which made Lisa Howard’s role so essential, so ambiguous and, frankly, so weird. In the subsequent fifty years, there repeatedly have been similar awkward efforts at indirect diplomacy but never a policy of direct diplomacy to manage the US-Cuba relationship.
Perhaps the youthful Ricardo Alarcon might have made a modest contribution to conflict management through direct diplomacy during the turbulent two years between the Bay of Pigs, the missile crisis and the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Instead Ricardo was assigned to be Cuba’s liaison to a new generation of revolutionaries in Central and Latin America.
Evidence of Revision
Evidence of Revision is a 9 hour long documentary series whose purpose is to present the publicly unavailable and even suppressed historical audio, video, and film recordings largely unseen by the American public relating to the assassination of the Kennedy brothers, the little known classified Black Ops actually used to intentionally create the massive war in Viet Nam, the CIA “mind control” programs and their involvement in the RFK assassination and the Jonestown massacre and other important truths of our post-modern time.
The U.S. Government’s Orwellian Office of Public Diplomacy has been in existence in various forms and under various names since World War ONE. The union of American governance and American corporate interests began in Abraham Lincoln’s day and the massaging of public truth began even before the Roman Empire.
The more you know about real history versus official history, the better equipped you are to see behind the lies of our times, even as they are told to you. Some of us knew what was really happening even before the second plane hit the tower.
Episodes included:
- The Assassinations of Kennedy and Oswald,
- The Why of it all referenced to Viet Nam and LBJ,
- LBJ, Hoover and Others. What So Few Know Even Today,
- The RFK Assassination As Never Seen Before,
- The RFK Assassination Continued, MK ULTRA and the Jonestown Massacre,
- MLK Conspiratus.
Watch the full documentary now (playlist – 9 hours)
Please see and at least consider the evidence on “Evidence of Revision” Parts 1-6
The Mystery Man Behind Evidence Of Revision
Posted by: Olav Phillips in ARTICLES January 24, 2013 2 Comments 2555 Views
By Victor Thorn
Since its release in 2006, Evidence of Revision has become recognized as the definitive video account of the JFK assassination. Clocking in at over eight hours on five discs, this epic documentary covers not only the events in Dallas on November 22, 1963, but also the Robert Kennedy assassination, the Jonestown massacre, and the horrors of CIA covert MK-ULTRA mind-control programs. A subsequent production, Evidence of Revision 6, examines serious inconsistencies in the Martin Luther King murder.
Still, despite widespread acclaim, viewers in conspiracy circles and aficionados of this subject still have one question: who made Evidence of Revision? The boxed set case gives absolutely no clue as to the creator of the film, nor does any of the footage. The closing credits simply list “Etymon Productions,” while elsewhere the audience is informed, “History may be revised even as it is being written.”
This mystery compelled me to begin a search one day in June 2006 after a cardboard box arrived in my post office box. Inside was a generic DVD case with no label, markings, or documentation. I was about to discard the packaging when a tiny slip of paper fell out containing only an anonymous email address. A week or so later I watched Evidence of Revision, and after being overwhelmed by the material I decided to contact this enigmatic individual.
Anonymity
Shortly thereafter, we began corresponding, and the tale that unfolded was as compelling as the documentary. I soon discovered that the person behind Evidence of Revision was a fifty-something year old man living in San Diego and going by the pseudonym “Terrence Raymond.” However, due to his rapidly deteriorating physical and financial situation, he feared facing homelessness. With the few remaining dollars left in his possession, Raymond mailedEvidence of Revision to forty different people who ran conspiracy websites, hosted radio shows, or were scholars of the Kennedy assassination. Although he had yet to accept a dime for his efforts, he hoped somebody would notice his work. Little did Raymond know his documentary would become an underground classic, and soon history buffs and those who sought to debunk the enduring cover-up began passing it around like a virus.
To date, Raymond’s only interview took place on WING TV on July 13, 2006 (http://911underground.com/wingtv/). Yet, despite a relative lack of publicity, Evidence of Revision exploded on the Internet, and the mystery associated with the movie served only to broaden its cult appeal. When asked why he wanted to remain anonymous, Raymond would only answer cryptically, “No comment.” However, he did add with a chuckle that one on-line forum speculated on his belonging to some sort of radical political group operating out of the Caribbean.
Beyond Raymond’s hidden identity, the other pressing question asked by viewers is: where did he get all this amazing footage? In the mid-1970s, he served four years of elite military duty in the Naval Photographic Center in Washington, DC, where he was employed by the National Archives White House Presidential Motion Picture Crew. As such, Raymond worked for John F. Kennedy’s and Lyndon Johnson’s personal sound recordists.
Terrence Raymond began his work in the wake of 1974’s Watergate scandal. After President Richard Nixon’s resignation, and after Gerald Ford assumed office, he received secret clearance status and worked on classified film projects for the Pentagon, the White House, and possibly intelligence agencies. Upon being transferred to a reconnaissance squadron in the Florida Keys, Raymond was assigned temporary duty as a petty officer to a supply facility which, according to him, was most likely operated by the CIA.
Being in such close proximity to Agency spooks, political scandals, and media manipulators, Raymond witnessed first-hand a world that increasingly resembled George Orwell’s 1984, complete with doublethink, perpetual war, “Newspeak” propaganda, behavior modification, genetic control, and the alteration of history.
Robert Kennedy & MK-ULTRA
The technique of using ‘manufactured consent’ to sway public opinion struck a chord with Raymond. Being old enough to recall JFK’s assassination, he clearly remembers listening to the radio late one evening in June of 1968 and learning that Robert F. Kennedy had been murdered at the Ambassador Hotel. During this broadcast, it was reported that certain people laughed, celebrated, and admitted responsibility for the killing. But then, just as quickly, these news items vanished from the media landscape, never to be heard again. And just like Lee Harvey Oswald, Robert Kennedy’s convicted assassin, Sirhan Sirhan, became an infamous lone-nut gunman.
This particular event had a profound impact on the teen because, as a child growing up in Whittier, California, Raymond’s mother attended Bible study classes with Richard Nixon’s sister in the Nixon household. There, the participants spoke in tongues, and eventually lapsed into trances. She also described how the Nixon family kept a “Wailing Wall” inside their home where they cried, prayed, and flailed. As a result of these bizarre episodes, Raymond’s mother suffered a nervous breakdown, and was placed in a Pasadena hospital (the name and location of which she cannot remember)where the repeated use of electroshock treatments and Sodium Pentothal completely erased her memory. These procedures occurred in the mid-1950s at a time when MK-ULTRA experiments were being performed on private citizens without their consent. A decade later, it’s likely that Sirhan Sirhan underwent his MK-ULTRA conversion at the same facility. To date, Raymond isn’t sure if his mother was definitively targeted, or simply a random subject for these demented doctors.
However, one certainty remains. After learning that his mother’s nervous breakdown was attributable to her bizarre religious experiences at the Nixon household, Raymond’s dislike for Nixon and his policies grew into utter disgust. He even remembers campaigning against Nixon in his grade school classroom during the 1960 election. A decade later, Raymond would be working across the Potomac from the White House as Nixon resigned under the cloud of the Watergate scandal.
Underground Sources
Prior to his military service, Raymond had already sensed something was awry in the world. While still in high school, he spent countless hours in the library researching JFK’s assassination, focusing especially on books like Mark Lane’s Rush to Judgment (1966), and Jim Garrison’s A Heritage of Stone (1970). With his interest piqued by what lurked in the shadows, he began an investigative odyssey that would span the remainder of his life.
Capitalizing on his experience at the Naval Photographic Center, Raymond embarked upon an obsessive quest to accumulate rare and hard-to-find video footage. To compile a library containing over 3,000 hours of tape, Raymond collected material from swap meets, obscure mail order sources, video store rentals, TV newscasts, documentaries, special underground catalogs, and conspiracy bookstores. He soon discovered other like-minded collectors and realized that if you knew people, it was easier to get “under-the-counter” material that wasn’t available to the public.
Thirty years later and suffering poor health, Raymond came to a realization. If he didn’t put Evidence of Revision together, there existed a high likelihood that this extremely rare material would disappear down a Memory Hole for the rest of eternity. “After all,” he asked me one day during a phone conversation, “how much of the information in this documentary has ever been seen by the American public?” A good deal of the news footage he collected had not been officially released by CBS, NBC, or ABC. Other clips had only been televised once (oftentimes on local stations), and then seemingly disappeared forever. Raymond recalls one occasion when a CBS employee made it known that he could steal 66 hours of extremely rare footage from network archives. However, there was a catch. The man wanted $2,000 per hour to cover the risk involved in misappropriating these tapes. Regrettably, the canisters still remain concealed from public view.
There were other challenges confronting Raymond when beginning this project. He possessed over 200 hours of JFK footage alone, thus compelling him to undergo the laborious process of filtering through this mountain of data. Originally, he intended to make Evidence of Revision a 30-hour opus that explained much more than just the Kennedy assassination. But it soon became clear that such a grand undertaking was unrealistic. Instead, over the course of two years, he pared Evidence of Revision down to its current length of approximately eight hours.
Marked Man
Upon watching this documentary, one quickly surmises that the Kennedy assassination was, in essence, inevitable. For starters, JKF made a very daring and decisive threat to shatter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the wind. Following the Bay of Pigs fiasco, he fired CIA Director Allen Dulles for drafting Operation Northwoods, a clandestine project which eerily resembled the terrorist attacks which arose forty years later on September 11, 2001. For his role in the Bay of Pigs disaster, JFK also terminated General Charles Cabell, who subsequently never forgave him. A bit too coincidentally, Cabell’s brother Earl was the mayor of Dallas, and it was he who helped coordinate the President’s fateful trip to that city in November, 1963. Kennedy also enraged the U.S. military-industrial complex by stressing that the CIA would no longer be in charge of Vietnam and he would now be calling the shots.
Evidence of Revision references an amazing, little-known article written by New York Timescolumnist Arthur Krock which appeared on October 3, 1963. In it, Krock cites how JFK had declared war on the CIA, comparing their growth to a “malignancy.” He added that if there was ever a coup against the United States government, it would originate with the CIA.
Raymond saw Kennedy as a true “radical” who wanted to dramatically change the course of American politics. In his WING TV interview, Raymond asserts that Kennedy was being overtly threatened by the men who eventually killed him, including the CIA, the Italian Mafia, and core members of the machine that wanted to perpetuate Vietnam and the Cold War. Prior to visiting Dallas, plausible threats were also made against the president’s life in Chicago and Miami. As Raymond states, “Kennedy was actually trying to do what was right, but we’ve seen what happens to leaders throughout history who are idealists. Those who are ethical and moral are at a disadvantage because most others don’t play by these same rules.”
The Undesirability of Peace
Beginning with Dwight Eisenhower’s 1961 Farewell Address warning Americans of the military-industrial complex and a “permanent war economy,” JFK harbored serious reservations about the Cold War, Vietnam, and the continuing Cuban embargo. Whereas J. Edgar Hoover called the Soviet Union an “infectious disease,” Kennedy said that he was “anxious to live in harmony with the Russian people.” After all, he reasoned, no nation suffered more during World War II than Russia, with 20 million casualties.
In regard to Vietnam, Evidence of Revision shows how in October 1963—one month before his murder—President Kennedy signed National Security Memorandum 263; legislation that would effectively pull our country out of Vietnam and bring troops home by 1965. Tragically, four days after his assassination, Lyndon Johnson signed National Security Memorandum 273, which sent more troops to Vietnam, beginning a ten-year national catastrophe.
The film then goes on to illustrate how LBJ used a manufactured event—the supposed Gulf of Tonkin attack on American ships performing covert operations—to escalate our involvement in Vietnam even further. Although no torpedoes were fired at U.S. ships, like other false flag terrorist events, the incident was used as justification for intensifying our involvement in the war.
Dangerous ‘Country Bumpkin’
Evidence of Revision vividly paints a portrait of Lyndon Johnson’s integral role in the Kennedy assassination. To truly understand this man, the viewer gets a behind-the-scenes peek at how much the vice president despised the Kennedy brothers. Mocked by Jack and Bobby as a buffoon and laughingstock, Johnson developed an inferiority complex that bubbled into seething hatred. To enact what he saw as justifiable punishment, Johnson first instructed the Dallas Police Chief to control matters before and after the November 22 shooting. He then contacted fellow crony and Texas Governor John Connolly to establish the parade route and security details. Johnson also had the power to work in unison with the CIA and J. Edgar Hoover in Dallas, all of whom had a vested interest in seeing the president dead. As a result, Kennedy’s limousine came to a virtual stop only moments before gunmen opened fire on him.
Afterward, Johnson made a hurried array of phone calls from Washington to Dallas, telling the district attorney not to look beyond Lee Harvey Oswald as the lone assassin. LBJ also told chief surgeon Charles Crenshaw that government officials were to be allowed in the operating room after Oswald was shot to take his “deathbed confession.” LBJ even took charge of selecting Warren Commission members, including Allen Dulles and Bilderberg Group member Gerald Ford. Former Chief Justice Earl Warren later revealed that Johnson told him, “If the truth were told about the assassination, it would lead to World War III.”
One of the most poignant scenes in Evidence of Revision originates with Madeleine Brown, LBJ’s long-time mistress. According to Brown, Johnson, J. Edgar Hoover, Richard Nixon, and billionaire H.L. Hunt met at Clint Murchison’s house the night before Kennedy was killed. Murchison deplored the president, and was arguably the most powerful man in Texas at the time, meaning he probably wielded a great deal of influence over Johnson. The following morning, only hours prior to the shooting, the vice president bragged to his lover, “After today, the Kennedys will never embarrass me again.” Later, LBJ confessed to Brown that Texas oil men and the CIA had killed Kennedy.
Another crucial episode in Evidence of Revision involves Dan Reynolds, an attorney who had visited Capitol Hill on the day of Kennedy’s assassination to present evidence against LBJ regarding corruption, bribery, vote fraud, and possibly even murder. Charging that Johnson misused his various political offices, Reynolds brought records, receipts, invoices, and other documents to implicate the vice president. These charges were undoubtedly impeachable offenses, and the Kennedys would have most certainly dumped Johnson from the Democratic ticket in 1964. But once Kennedy was shot and LBJ took the oath of office, the entire matter was quickly shelved. As they said in ancient Rome, Cui bono—who benefits?
Defiant Patsy
Evidence of Revision presents compelling film footage taken directly from the 6th floor of the Texas School Book Depository where Lee Harvey Oswald purportedly fired the fatal shots on November 22, 1963. There, shortly after the shooting, investigators found three spent shell cartridges on a window ledge sitting neatly in a row, one-inch apart from each other. The obvious question is: what are the chances that someone would frantically fire three shots, make a hasty getaway, and all three cartridges ejected from the gun would land upright in a line in the exact same place, equidistant apart? Maybe this ammunition came from the same arsenal that allowed the Warren Commission’s Arlen Specter to form his preposterous “Magic Bullet” theory.
The documentary also presents news clips from dozens of newscasters saying that the weapon used to kill Kennedy was a 7.65 caliber German Mauser rifle that was found at the scene. Then, when the cartridges didn’t match this particular rifle, broadcasters quickly changed their story—without explanation—saying it was a 6.5 caliber Italian Mannlicher-Carcano mail order rifle. This Orwellian sleight-of-hand is priceless.
Evidence of Revision details direct evidence from government documents showing Lee Harvey Oswald’s intimate involvement in highly sensitive operations for the CIA and FBI, including his Agency payroll number. Another clip explains how CIA representative David Atlee Phillips met with Oswald two months before the assassination. The FBI also interrogated Oswald in Dallas only two weeks prior to Kennedy’s visit.
Even more mystifying are Oswald’s alleged actions following the Kennedy assassination. First, Don Hewitt, famed 60 Minutes producer, discusses how, after Kennedy was shot, Oswald left the Texas Schoolbook Depository and headed toward Jack Ruby’s apartment. Then, sheriff deputy Roger Craig testifies that he saw Oswald get into a grey Rambler after the driver whistled to him.
Evidence of Revision’s footage presents a frozen moment in time as Lee Harvey Oswald’s words are heard firsthand. Upon being arrested and fully aware that he was a patsy, Oswald declares matter-of-factly, “Everybody will know who I am now.” Next, sporting a black eye due to his treatment by the Dallas Police Department, Oswald addresses the cameras, intent on refuting the accusations made against him.
“I didn’t shoot anybody, and I have no legal representation,” he begins. After telling reporters that a “policeman hit me,” he continues to answer questions. “Nobody told me what I’m accused of … I’ve not been charged with killing the President … I emphatically deny these charges … I’m a patsy … I would like certain fundamental rights, like taking a shower.” One hour before a scheduled live press conference Oswald was shot dead on nationwide television. To silence the conspiracy’s fall guy, mobster and Meyer Lansky associate Jack Rubinstein (Ruby) is selected to fire the fatal shots.
Seeds of a Cover-up
Evidence of Revision further illustrates how interwoven the conspirators were, by confirming that a prior relationship existed between Oswald and Ruby. A number of Ruby’s amazing confessions are also included, where he proclaims, “The world will never know the true facts of what happened … It was a complete conspiracy … I’m the only person in the background who knows the whole truth of my circumstances.”
Furthermore, Ruby confides that LBJ was behind the Kennedy assassination, while a number of credible witnesses recall seeing Oswald at Ruby’s bar, the Carousel Club. Evidence of Revision also asserts that Ruby served as an informant for none other than Richard Nixon in 1947.
In charge of concealing these details from the American public was FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, who had been compromised for decades because of certain practices that didn’t reflect his carefully-crafted public image. On the one hand, Hoover indulged his rampant gambling addiction at Clint Murchison’s race track, which brought him into contact with organized crime figures such as Meyer Lansky, Carlos Marcello, and Santos Trafficante. Hoover’s association with notorious underworld figures crippled law enforcement’s ability to battle the crime syndicate for generations because Hoover wouldn’t even admit the Mafia existed.
An even more damning factor revolved around Hoover’s homosexuality and some in flagrante delicto snapshots of him performing oral sex on his lover, fellow FBI-man Clyde Tolson. Mob boss Meyer Lansky obtained the embarrassing photos, as did CIA counterintelligence chief James Jesus Angleton and Carlos Marcello. Needless to say, Lansky blackmailed Hoover with this devastating information, and bragged that he enjoyed “virtual immunity from the FBI.” The Mafia’s control of Hoover was so powerful that the FBI never even formed an organized crime division.
Hoover’s relationship with the vice president was so close that LBJ called him his “brother and personal friend.” This bond grew even stronger due to their mutual hatred of the Kennedy brothers. Evidence of Revision proposes that Hoover’s voluminous files detailing JFK’s adulterous affairs (with Marilyn Monroe, Judith Campbell Exner, and others)were used to blackmail him into selecting LBJ as a running mate in 1960. Hoover threatened to blow the scandal sky high if Jack and Bobby didn’t bow to his wishes. Following the Kennedy assassination, LBJ put the FBI Director in charge of the cover-up. Under this arrangement, all evidence from Dallas was turned over to Hoover, who subsequently attempted to bury anything of relevance.
Rounding out this sordid cast of characters was Richard Nixon, one of the first prominent war hawks following World War II. As Dwight Eisenhower’s vice presidential selection in 1952, Nixon promoted the “Domino Theory,” thus facilitating U.S. military invasions across the globe. Nixon was also one of the first to seek American intervention in Vietnam, at one point even considering the use of tactical nuclear weapons.
In the end, JFK defeated Nixon in the 1960 presidential election, while Kennedy’s murder allowed Lyndon Johnson to become commander-in-chief. When LBJ bowed out in 1968 due to an emotional breakdown, Bobby Kennedy became the odds on favorite to win the election, but his assassination at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles opened the door for Nixon to stroll into the Oval Office.
Terrence Raymond created Evidence of Revision in large part as a reaction to the Kennedy murders. But the facts of his mother’s tragic connection to the Nixon family and MK-ULTRA and his subsequent employment in Washington, D.C. during the Watergate scandal make Raymond’s documentary that much more compelling. After all, without those coincidences and serendipitous links, Evidence of Revision may never have come to be—and these invaluable pieces of the puzzle would be indefinitely lost.
©2009 Victor Thorn. Terrence Raymond is still alive and living in virtual obscurity in northern California. He is very thankful for any efforts to let others know about this very important film. Listen to his full interview with Victor Thorn at http://911underground.com/wingtv.
Victor Thorn is the founder of Sisyphus Press and author of eleven books and ten chapbooks. He has produced four CD-ROMs and DVDs, including the five-disc collection, Evidence of Revision. He is the editor of four anthologies, including The New World Order Exposed, released in Japan, and 9-11 on Trial, released in France to coincide with the fifth anniversary of 9-11. He co-hosted The Victor Thorn Show on the Reality Radio Network from 2002-2003. In February 2004, he co-founded WING TV (World Independent News Group), a daily Internet television and radio talk show viewed in over 100 countries worldwide. The WING TV website can be found at: www.wingtv.net. The DVD Evidence of Revision is available at the WING TV bookstore: www.wingtv.net/bookstore.html, or at Sisyphus Press P.O. Box 10495, State College, PA 16805-0495.