http://www.opednews.com/articles/Thom-Hartmann-s-book-on-th-by-Jim-Arnold-090713-265.html
by Jim Arnold
July 16, 2009
I have a lot of respect for Thom Hartmann. I'm a regular listener of
his radio program. But I'm unable to reconcile his contribution to
the book Ultimate Sacrifice (by Lamar Waldron with Thom Hartmann,
Carroll & Graf Publishers, New York, 2005), which lays exclusive
blame for the JFK assassination on members of the Mafia. I know
nothing about the principal author, Lamar Waldron, but I'm
disappointed in Hartmann for supporting the book's conclusions.
Ultimate Sacrifice provides thorough documentation of the Mafia's
collaboration with the CIA on various plots, assassinations, and acts
of sabotage against Cuba. Maybe better than any other source, it
details a long-classified Kennedy Administration plan to kill Castro
and install a US-friendly regime in his place. And it gives extensive
coverage of the activities of the intelligence agents, informants,
Cuban Exiles, and Mafia figures in and around the JFK assassination.
But the authors' allegation that three Mafia families (with some help
from Jimmy Hoffa) killed JFK without substantial involvement of
elements of the US government is naïve, and detrimental to our
long-term national interest in a legal and responsible government.
In explaining away our government's role in the JFK assassination
there has always been a dilemma. If it's maintained that elements of
the US government and powerful interests behind the government
weren't involved in the assassination, either the lone gunman theory
has to be defended (always a circus), or some compelling reasons have
to be found for the cover-up of conspiracy. In opting for the latter,
the authors have satisfied themselves with the discovery of various
personal intrigues and secondary conspiracies. The centerpiece of
Ultimate Sacrifice is the story of a Kennedy Administration plan for
a "palace coup" in Cuba, including US military assistance - massive
if need be - to guarantee success in overthrowing the Castro
government. The authors argue that the involvement of the Mafia in
the plan provided a cover for their conspiracy to kill JFK, and that
issues of national security and policy, including protection of the
plan, discouraged an in-depth investigation of the assassination.
But think about it: The authors claim that the US was prepared to
engineer and support a coup against Castro with whatever military
force might be necessary, but was supposedly concerned that the plan,
if revealed, even after it was abandoned, would constitute a terrible
threat to national security, and might even bring about a nuclear war
with the USSR. This is so illogical that only a parochial American
perspective could account for it. First, the use of force is
obviously more provocative than a revelation of an unused plan to use
force. Second, the existence of US plans, not to mention operations
to overthrow the Castro regime may have been a secret to the American
public, but it was hardly breaking news to Cuba and the USSR.
It's not just that the protection of the plan as an option is alleged
to have led to a cover-up and obstructed the investigation of the
conspiracy. The plan was quickly abandoned after JFK was gone and RFK
was marginalized, but its continued suppression even up to the
present time has supposedly been considered more important than
bringing conspirators to justice for the murder of a President.
A secondary reason the authors give for the cover-up of the
conspiracy and obstruction of justice for the high crime of JFK's
assassination was the avoidance of embarrassment to various
government agencies. Certainly, embarrassment would be the lot (at
the very least) of those who were responsible for keeping the
President safe but failed to do so out of incompetence or
dereliction. But for embarrassment to be a prevailing factor in a
cover-up there would have to have been no one in the various chains
of command who was both beyond reproach and seriously disturbed about
the murder of a President. Anyone beyond blame who was committed to
accountability and justice, in a government innocent of the crime,
would only be elevated, both morally and professionally, by insisting
on full disclosure and punishment. The Director of the CIA John
McCone, for one, who had been deceived about various CIA-Mafia
collaborations, and also, no doubt, about CIA involvement in the JFK
assassination, would hardly have been more concerned about his
agency's embarrassment than about uncovering those who had deceived
and betrayed him.
Another motive offered by the authors for the cover-up was protection
of national intelligence secrets, agents, and informants. But
investigations and prosecutions can and do regularly proceed with
whatever safeguards are considered necessary. Closed-door sessions
and presentations of evidence are a common and accepted remedy when
national security is involved. The Warren Commission and the
Congressional investigation of the assassination both used closed
doors, without repercussions. And in fact the prosecution of Jack
Ruby went ahead without public disclosure of his intimate ties with
the Mafia. The government could have gone after the Mafia, and
concealed any sensitive evidence at the same time; in the event, they
chose only to destroy or bury the evidence. All this is fairly
obvious. Frankly, one has to be in psychological denial to believe
that a legitimate concern for secrets would preclude justice for a
murdered President, and punishment for those involved in the treasonous act.
The implication of the theory offered in Ultimate Sacrifice is that
any crime could be committed, even assassination of a President, so
long as certain complications can be contrived. (Are you involved in
law enforcement? A member or asset of an intelligence service? Under
surveillance by a national security agency? Have some important dirt
on someone or some several at the top? Hate the President? Got a
patsy lined up? What's holding you back?)
Ultimate Sacrifice is a story with one overriding theme. The Kennedy
Administration plot to overthrow Castro is regarded as the principle
determining virtually everything that happened, before, during, and
after the JFK assassination. The authors' interpretation of the
reason for the falsification of the autopsy is a good example. RFK's
interference to limit the scope of the autopsy is attributed to his
desire to preserve the anti-Castro plot by ensuring that there would
be a single shooter to blame, so no one involved in both the plot and
the assassination would be implicated or discovered by a thorough
investigation. Aside from the absurdity of RFK being more concerned
about his pet conspiracy than exposing the conspiracy that killed his
brother, there is an entirely reasonable alternative explanation for
RFK's behavior: The Kennedy family didn't want the autopsy to uncover
JFK's serious medical problems - problems so serious he shouldn't
have even been a candidate for President, and shouldn't have been
supported by those who knew of his conditions. Just hours after the
assassination, when a conspiracy to falsify the autopsy to protect
the conspirators couldn't have been suspected, when the significance
of the nature and location of the wounds couldn't have been
anticipated, the Kennedy family's desire to protect the President's
legacy and avoid exposure of their own culpability by limiting the
scope of the autopsy to the immediate cause of death is
understandable; an overriding urge to preserve a plot against Castro,
and in effect, to protect JFK's killers, is not.
The authors are right to finger the Mafia and the Cuban Exiles as
participants in JFK's assassination. Clearly, they had motives to
kill him and important roles in the conspiracy. The Mafia was being
aggressively prosecuted by the Kennedy Administration. The Exiles
felt betrayed by the Bay of Pigs fiasco, and by the tightening
restrictions and controls being put on their anti-Castro activities.
But they would have been foolish to kill the President without
support of powerful interests in and behind the US government. And
they would have been unable to engineer the preconditions and the
cover-up without help from those on the inside.
(I've recently been informed of a film clip on YouTube entitled "JFK
Assassination: Secret Service Stand down" showing Secret Service
agents being waved off the back of the Kennedy limo as it left the
airport for the parade through Dallas. There has been extensive
documentation published elsewhere of government involvement in the
assassination, but this clip may be the most blatant and graphic
evidence. See also "AMBUSH! How the Secret Service set up JFK" and
"JFK's Head Wound", and "Who Killed JFK: The altered medical
evidence" - all on YouTube.)
It's not easy, emotionally, to confront the possibility, and then the
overwhelming evidence, that members of our own government would
conspire to kill our President. Waldron and Hartmann evidently found
it prohibitive. Agencies of the US government are portrayed as
unintentionally and clumsily facilitating the murder and escape from
justice, as when "someone, probably a Secret Service agent, starts
scrubbing the blood off the President's limo, unintentionally
removing what would have been crucial evidence" (p728). (Presumably,
the complete destruction of the limo is to be considered
unintentional too.) In a footnote they state: "We do not believe the
CIA as an organization killed JFK, or that it was the work of a large
clique inside the CIA. More than anything, the CIA's decades-long,
organizational cover-up was designed to hide intelligence failures
and protect reputations, under the guise of protecting those involved
in [the anti-Castro plot]" (p59). Although they recognize that "the
CIA was assuming a leading role in the [anti-Castro] assassination
and coup plots" (p390), and they acknowledge that the CIA often used
assassins recruited from the underworld, and even used the Mafia to
assassinate Trujillo in the Dominican Republic (pp395-396), the same
modus is somehow considered unthinkable within our borders, against
our leaders. They presume that the Mafia initiated the plan to kill
JFK, not that they were enlisted to help do so, as in the combined
anti-Castro plots. They presume that agents and informants in contact
with both the Mafia and CIA were answering to the Mafia, never to the
CIA. They reach loose and easy conclusions, as in the belief that the
government altered the autopsy because they needed time to formulate
a response to the conspiracy - overlooking the problem that a
falsified autopsy can't be undone if a massive response is to be
justified, and all that would actually be needed to buy time would be
a suppression of details about the wounds.
With regard to Oswald, the authors reach for the idea that he was
being monitored by US intelligence in case the KGB would try to
recruit him, rather than describe him as being supervised as a
low-level operative and potential patsy. Between "monitored" and
"supervised" there's a subtle but important distinction, and in
effect, exoneration for the government. The authors' account requires
that the circumstances leading to Oswald's positioning at the book
depository (done without Mafia involvement) is ignored, and it's
necessary to regard the KGB (much like the CIA) as organizationally
inept, which they had to be if they hadn't already identified Oswald
as a US agent when he was in the USSR, hadn't attempted to recruit
him there, and had fallen for the obvious ruse of his act as a
pro-Castro activist. Without these flights of credulity and more, the
authors' only alternative would be to recognize Oswald as a fall-guy
for conspirators in the US government as well as the Mafia.
The US government is consistently regarded in the best possible
light, guilty at most of bumbling and blushing. The authors
acknowledge that rogue elements in the CIA were continuing to work
with the Mafia, against the directive of the Kennedy Administration,
and (astonishingly) without the knowledge of the Director of the CIA.
But careerist elements in the CIA would have no motive to risk their
jobs, defying their superiors by maintaining conspiracies with the
Mafia, unless they had powerful friends higher up in US circles of
power directing them to do so. And the CIA at the top wouldn't fail
to discover the betrayal after the fact, and retaliate, if powerful
forces, more powerful than the CIA, and certainly more powerful than
the Mafia, weren't involved. As it happened, the highest of the
rogues, Deputy Director Richard Helms, wasn't punished, he was promoted.
The authors seem to embrace, at least in regard to the JFK
assassination, the Autonomous Actor view of history, seemingly
unconscious of backstage political forces and interests. The
Kennedys, as if they were two impervious individuals, are considered
to have had a personal grudge against the Mafia, and a passionate
desire to bring "freedom" to Cuba. RFK, in particular, is treated as
if he had a heroic compulsion to remove the Castro regime at all
costs, and was "devastated" when the plan was abandoned by LBJ.
Nixon, the recent Vice President, whose "pressure ... in 1960 must
have been extreme for the CIA to have dealt directly with the mob
bosses" (p388), had some seemingly personal idiosyncrasy egging at
him, a persuasive enough explanation in the authors' opinions to
account for elements of the CIA conspiring with the Mafia - allegedly
against their will, but with enough resolve to defy and deceive, in
the new Administration, their Director, the Attorney General, and the
President. Three Mafia chieftains are considered to have decided
among themselves to kill the President, as if such an eccentric act
wouldn't result in an all-out nationwide pogrom against the Mob. And
LBJ, apparently alone, and as if on a whim, is said to have shut down
the Kennedys' anti-Castro plot soon after becoming President.
From a more historical, rather than psychological perspective, the
pre- and post-assassination political scape has the appearance of
nothing so much as a clandestine conflict, and then an armistice
between warring factions. The Old Establishment was evidently forced
to recognize the deadly power and seriousness of the insurgency of
the New, and was compelled to make peace with concessions. The Old
buried their President quietly, relinquished exclusive hegemony over
the instruments of national dominance, the CIA, FBI, and military.
The New, some of the more public members of whom we've come to
recognize as "Neocons", ceded their Mafia and Cuban allies (who would
be mostly pardoned, but reduced and marginalized to their local
fiefdoms), and gave up their aspirations for a return of Cuba, in
exchange for legitimacy and a significant share of imperial power -
and they got their most lucrative war in Vietnam.
Thus Richard Helms, the rogue Deputy in the CIA, would be promoted to
Director. Allen Dulles, the CIA director fired by JFK after the Bay
of Pigs would be the heavy hand on the Warren Commission. The Old
Establishment had to reconcile themselves to LBJ's right of
succession, and to a Presidency now answerable to both factions. For
his part LBJ had to accept much of the Old Administration bequeathed
to him, with the notable exception of RFK. Some members of the Mafia
and the Exile Community would have to be eliminated as untrustworthy
or beyond redemption, but for the rest it would be business like
usual. Other minor and regional allies of the Old and New, including
the media and the politicians who come and go, remained as before,
loose factions of Democrats and Republicans. Meanwhile,
representatives of the New would be restored (Nixon) or groomed
(Goldwater, Reagan, and Bush the Senior) for the new opportunities.
Ultimate Sacrifice is a good and worthwhile historical reference, as
far as it goes. But beyond the authors' (Waldron's?) rather romantic
vision of our government, there are troubling indications of an
illiberal bias. They (Waldron?) conclude with a sympathetic
recognition of the Cuban "exiles who risked their lives for a cause
they believed in" (p786). Many if not most of the Exiles were intent
on restoring the oppressive Mafia/US corporate haven that was
pre-Castro Cuba. That's certainly a cause, and no doubt they believed
in it, but it's perplexing that Thom Hartmann would lend his name to
such a laudatory acknowledgment. Much of the secrecy surrounding
JFK's assassination is said to have "a legitimate basis in national
security" (p17), but if the basis is not just protection of the
guilty and/or the moot plan for international subversion, we're left
to our own imaginations of what it might be.
The conspirators in the assassination of JFK, the insurgents, the New
Establishment then and now, have little regard for the Constitution,
and the rule of law in general - much less than their abiding
adversaries, the Old Establishment. To lay exclusive blame for the
JFK assassination on relatively minor operatives is to obfuscate what
may be the most crucial problem of our time, the rise of a lawless
ruling elite. The Kennedy assassination is still relevant as the
foothold in power for those elements, and no thanks to Ultimate
Sacrifice, the full disclosure of who conspired, and who has
benefited, remains to be done.
There are no "legitimate national security" issues for secrecy from
the JFK assassination in 1963. The acknowledgment of the culpability
of members of our government, and the release of all related
classified information is in our national interest, and the real
legitimate basis for our national security.
--
Jim Arnold is a former visitant of UC Santa Cruz, union boilermaker,
ex-Marine, Vietnam vet, anti-war activist, dilettante in science with
an earth-shaking theory on the nature of light (which no one will
consider), philosopher in the tradition of Hegel, Merleau-Ponty,
Marx, and Fromm (sigh, no one listens to me on that either), author
of a book on wine clubs (ahem), and cast-off programmer of ancient
computer languages.
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