Let's Blame Bobby: ConclusionOn his arrival in this country [from the USSR, Lee Harvey] Oswald took up his duties as an agent of the [Communist] Conspiracy, spying on anti-Communist Cuban refugees, serving as an agitator for "Fair Play for Cuba," and participating in some of the many other forms of subversion that flourish openly in defiance of law through the connivance of the Attorney General, Robert F. Kennedy. In April 1963, [Oswald] was sent to Dallas, where he tried to murder General Edwin Walker. The failure does not reflect on the assassin's professional training: General Walker happened to turn his head at the instant the shot was fired. According to a story that has been neither confirmed nor denied officially at the time that I write, Oswald was arrested as a suspect, but was released through the personal intervention of Robert F. Kennedy, and all inquiry into the attempted assassination of a great American was halted. In the first posting in this series, I presented excerpts from The Man Who Kept the Secrets: Richard Helms and the CIA. That book was the main reason I had believed since my youth that President John F. Kennedy and his younger brother, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, were not only aware of the CIA's program for assassinations but had secretly sanctioned it as a tool of national policy. At its publication, Thomas Powers' book seemed to be an expose' in the wake of revelations about abuses of power by US government agencies, seemingly following in the path of David Halberstam's The Best and the Brightest. Halberstam's critique of the "whip-smart young men" of the Kennedy Administration was legitimate enough at the time; their overconfidence had entrenched the United States in the Vietnam War. But that criticism was also of "the typical American can-do attitude" (usually presented in a much more positive light). And other factors could have been just as crucial (like what President Eisenhower warned about in his Farewell Address). Today we have a bit more information than Halberstam had, and there's evidence that the wrongs done by "the Kennedy men" may have had more to do with Lyndon Johnson's decisions than with John Kennedy's intentions. But Thomas Powers' book was not directly about US involvement in Vietnam. It seemed like an objective overview of CIA history, revealing as much as was possible at the time about the secret background of the recent past. Previously, I briefly noted how often the phrase the Kennedys is repeated in Powers' book: "Cuba was where the Kennedys wanted immediate results." Ordinarily and at face value, I'd be inclined to say "that's just how people talked" in referring to John and Robert Kennedy. But more often than not, it was (and still can be) shorthand for an implicitly unfavorable attitude toward the alleged dynastic ambitions of the Kennedy family as a whole. But the real issue here is that this "talk" looks a bit different in light of other things Powers wrote. His arguments were initially framed by characterizing John Kennedy's interest in the utility of counterinsurgency warfare (hardly unique for the time) as an "obsession." And he stated outright that the best understanding of the CIA was as the president's secret praetorian guard, then dropped further cues to encourage the idea: "...the CIA, under the pressure of presidential demand, would search for the lever which might turn things around..." Moreover, the reader was ostensibly to believe that the CIA was in an unenviable position during the Kennedy Administration, just trying to do its best. "The CIA officers in charge of the Cuban Branch set up by Helms were appalled by the magnitude of the task. 'With what?' they asked. 'We haven't got any assets. We don't even know what's going on in Cuba.'" Again, Powers' work seems to be a straightforward reporting of CIA history. But critical examination reveals that his discussion of the brief period of the Kennedy Administration is focused on CIA assassination plots while giving a distinct impression that hubris uniquely drove John Kennedy and his royal court (and a desire to get even drove Robert Kennedy -- "the Kennedy Vendetta," again). That suggests that Thomas Powers' 1979 book was less the work of a reporter with a civil libertarian bent than an exercise in apologetics for the CIA. That would make sense given the likelihood that Powers relied on Sam Halpern in relating much of the story. (Like background information on the obstacles William Harvey faced during Operation Mongoose -- since Halpern was Harvey's executive assistant on Task Force W). It also seems the most likely explanation of the source for Powers' repetitive referencing of "the Kennedys" and what they "wanted" and "demanded." Sam Halpern did an awful lot of talking over the years, and it seems to be his perspective that's been the most formative in shaping our beliefs about what the CIA did during the Kennedy Administration, and especially about the sinister role allegedly played by Robert Kennedy. Twenty years after Powers' book was published, it was more of the same with Jeff Shesol's Mutual Contempt: Lyndon Johnson, Robert Kennedy, and the Feud That Defined a Decade, but with newly-updated charges based on Max Holland's interpretive scenarios, and with Shesol not bothering to learn much on his own about the murder of President Kennedy. The beat rolled on, with Robert Kennedy's alleged policy excesses taken for granted and firmly implanted, persuading us that -- "in a sense" -- it was he who bore ultimate responsibility for his brother's death. That brings us to the more recent charges laid out by Professor Joan Mellen. Some of us who've been researching these subjects have had more than enough reason to regret it, at least partly because our efforts have been part of something successfully marginalized as (mere) "Conspiracy Theory." Historically, conspiracy theories have been most avidly subscribed to and promoted by upper-class reactionaries, and in more recent times by "the lunatic fringe" of right-wing extremists. So one problem is being lumped in with them. But a more serious issue is how their ideas and paradigms have influenced the presentation and interpretation of evidence in our investigations. Professor Mellen's scenarios lead us to believe that Robert Kennedy was recklessly operating on his own and brought on the death of our beloved President Kennedy. That is not too different from the thinking of conservative people during the Kennedy Administration. They reserved their most intense hatred for Robert Kennedy as head of the Justice Department (especially over the issue of civil rights) while being less hostile toward John Kennedy (since he was "our" leader, the Commander-in-Chief). It's also in keeping with the CIA apologists' line of argument that Robert Kennedy was a 30-something Superman that held sway over all agencies of the US government for the better part of three years, somehow exacting untold damage to our way of life. But most glaring of all is the ready acceptance of conspiracy scenarios originating from the claims of Edwin Walker, Ned Touchstone, and their other Far Right friends. If that's the best we can do at this late date, there's not much room to complain about being marginalized as Conspiracy Theorists, and we might as well go all the way and subscribe to the full arguments laid out by someone like Revilo Oliver. In memoriam aeternam-------------------------------------------- [Excerpts below from Revilo Oliver's testimony before the Warren Commission regarding his article "Marxmanship in Dallas."] Mr. Jenner: Proceed to page 21. The lower right-hand corner of page 21 commences a paragraph the first few words of which or the first sentence of which reads "Careful observers were aware of the feeling of crisis in conspiratorial circles before the assassination." On what was that statement based, or to be more accurate what was the source from which you made that deduction, if it is one?-------------------------------------------- POSTSCRIPT: Once I started posting this series at The Education Forum in 2012, the thread got a special guest appearance by a Mr. Paul Trejo. His initial observations were good examples of taking the excerpts I posted at face value. He later and likewise characteristically gave evidence of apparent confusion, arguing from the perspective of a belief that CIA plots to assassinate Fidel Castro were the same thing as Operation Mongoose as such. (In a different subject area, he had blithely asserted that Medgar Evers in fearing for his own life had asked the NAACP to ease up its pressure on the Ku Klux Klan...........) After my original posting of the excerpts of CIA History Staff interviews with Sam Halpern, Mr. Trejo thanked me -- because he thanks everyone -- for posting what he called Halpern's testimony. He then went on to hold forth on further ideas he had. Regarding testimony, I replied: Well, you're very welcome, but it's not really "testimony," is it (except in the broadest sense that anybody who says anything gives their "testimony" about something)? I think it's important that we not mischaracterize things, on the odd chance that what we write might actually be read by someone and at least occasionally taken seriously. The general point of what I'm doing here, and of what Bill Kelly, Robert Howard and others discovered in the first place, is to show that what Charles Donald Ford had to say in his Memorandum for the Record (an official report BY a CIA Officer, TO his superiors and FOR the official record) is actually much closer to being testimony (in the legal sense) in that one of the first things he said is that what he says in the Memorandum is what he swore to under oath to Senate Select investigators. So that is hardly the same thing as the "testimony" of Sam Halpern in various interviews in which the interviewers were noticeably unobjective, biased, and sympathetic to the interviewee; in other words, Halpern was expressing his opinions and beliefs on various subjects, without being under oath and so not subject to any constraint to tell the truth. That should not be called "testimony" any more than what Tom Cruise might "testify" to in an interview in People magazine. In his original response Mr. Trejo had further said: ....then the data show basically what Lamar Waldron printed in his book, Ultimate Sacrifice in 2006. That is, RFK started a project that he ultimately could not control -- it was centered at 544 Camp Street, and it involved Guy Banister and many Cuban Exile groups like Alpha-66, DRE, INCA and others who played a role in portraying Lee Harvey Oswald as an officer of the FPCC.To which my partial response was: A nice summary of the "Let's Blame Bobby" campaign writ large: if what has been written and said is taken at face-value; if it is not subjected to any kind of critical analysis; if it is assumed to be factual and authoritative because certain sources and authors are authorities, then history stands as it has been written and preferred by certain parties.... Mr. Trejo then replied to this by saying that -- "Actually" -- Sam Halpern in the interview was referring to statements he made before the Church Committee, so that was his testimony (from the point of view of Mr. Trejo, who may have been unable to tell the difference between interviews and legally sworn testimony and/or was unable to conceive of someone like Halpern lying). To this I responded: Actually, Sam Halpern was indeed referring to his testimony before the Church Committee, which testimony (along with that of Richard Helms) pointed a finger at Charles Donald Ford; but Ford's testimony did not back up Helms' and Halpern's allegations, as Ford related that sworn testimony in an official report to his superiors, a Memorandum for the Record. My point being that what Ford had to say in an official report is much more likely to be closer to his sworn testimony than what Sam Halpern had to say about his own testimony many years later in interviews with sympathetic and obviously biased interviewers. In any event, it's clear enough that Halpern himself only went so far in the interviews, saying that his testimony along with Ford's would have to be reviewed in order to prove his allegations against Robert Kennedy. Being cynical, I would say he was sharp enough to recognize that hardly anyone would go to all that trouble, so his allegations would take on a life of their own (especially with the happy assistance of people like Seymour Hersh and Joan Mellen, who would not go only so far but would take Halpern's allegations and run with them as Gospel Truth). Being more generous, I would say Halpern appears to have believed that Ford would back up the allegations, so it's possible Halpern himself was misled on that point. In reviewing all this now, I would tend even more strongly toward the cynical interpretation instead of the generous, as that's "how it's done" in public relations, media manipulation, and guiding of the historical record. The goal appears to be to get the supposedly professional journalists and academics to say what you want or need them to say. Their "honest reporting" and "scholarly research" will then be taken for granted, and there will be little to worry about other than "alternative viewpoints" and "debate." In other words, it all gets dropped into a bucket of relativistic bullshit along the lines of "what is truth?" and so serves the more general goal of obscuring our understanding. Return to Table of Contents |