And you Will Know us by the Trail of Dead

Part One: Spies in the Ointment — The Deep State, the CIA, & the "JFK Thing"

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📝 ‘Over the final months of JFK’s presidency, a clear consensus took shape within America’s deep state: Kennedy was a national security threat. For the good of the country, he must be removed. And (CIA Director Allen) Dulles was the only man with the stature, connections, and decisive will to make something of this enormity happen. He had already assembled a killing machine to operate overseas. Now he prepared to bring it home to Dallas. All that his establishment colleagues had to do was to look the other way—as they always did when Dulles took “executive action”.’ — Extract from: The Devil’s Chessboard, Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of the American Secret Government, by David Talbot.

📝 ‘The great of this world are often blamed for not doing what they could have done; they can reply, just think of all the evil we could have done, but did not do.’ — Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, German physicist, satirist, writer (1742-1799)

‘That little Kennedy...He thought he was a God.’ — Allen Dulles, 1965. (CIA Director, 1953-61.)

📝 ‘And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.’ — John 8:33 Inscription on the foyer wall of the CIA building, the “Company” mission statement.

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Introduction: On November 22nd of this year, Americans—along with much of the world—will commemorate the 60th anniversary of the cold-blooded, broad daylight murder of their 35th president John F Kennedy (JFK). With the prospect of his nephew Robert F Kennedy Jr. becoming president the following year, (the latter’s own father also being assassinated less than 5 years later during his own tilt at the Oval Office), there’s no better occasion to revisit this most consequential of events.

Amongst the key objectives in such an exercise will be: a) underscoring once again the role played by elements of America’s own National Security State apparatus in the planning, execution, and the ongoing coverup of the assassination; b) dispelling the absurdity of the official ‘lone gunman/single bullet’ verdict thereby confirming the conspiracy to kill the president; and c) contemplating the implications for the future of the enduring significance of this momentous event in the life of the Republic.

Though hardly limited to them (and often variously acting in cahoots), such “elements” included: the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI); the Zionist regime of Israel and its principal intelligence agency the Mossad; the “National Crime Syndicate” (aka “The Mob” or “Murder Inc.”); the establishment or mainstream media; JFK’s successor Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ) and his network; and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). All of these forces acted at the behest of and/or in the interests of the supranational, arch-criminal globalist confederacy that’s been directing world affairs behind the scenes for generations. One which as recent events have amply demonstrated, now wishes to go prime-time if not make it all official. This cabal is known as the Deep State, or America’s Secret Government.

With the benefit of hindsight we can now safely conclude JFK represented at the time the biggest threat to the confederacy’s primary goals, none of which included the national security of “these” United States or the preservation of liberty, democracy freedom and/or the rule of law per the US Constitution. Neutralising that threat required the expertise and the chutzpah of the CIA, both of which they possessed in spades. Indeed, they didn’t just have ‘form’ in regime change and assassination; it was their raison d’être.

That they also brought to the table serious motive can hardly be disputed; Kennedy’s earlier threat to splinter the agency into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds, was neither forgotten nor forgiven. Few presidents since JFK posed such a singular danger to their power and status. For those that did, neutralising them was a cakewalk after the grand gambit of 11/22. If the denizens of the Deep State could get away with that, the sky was the limit. As we’ll see throughout this series though, offing the POTUS and getting away with it was an “all hands-on-deck” affair.

Written mainly for a younger generation interested in discovering an historical reality absent from their high-school text books, what follows is a series of musings on the “JFK Thing”. His assassination can be viewed as a Rosetta Stone of sorts for unravelling just where and how the “home of the brave and the land of the free” morphed into something entirely different to that purportedly envisioned by its revered Founding Fathers. In this first instalment, Greg Maybury infiltrates the Langley campus—HQ of the CIA, the “Death Star” of the Deep State—to check out if ‘the truth really does set us free’, and perhaps see where some of the bodies are buried.

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— Giving Peace a Fighting Chance —

Although it may not have been widely recognised at the time, in June 1963, just a few months shy of the Big Event, president John Fitzgerald Kennedy (JFK) delivered in his American University (AU) Commencement Address what is arguably the most significant oration of his short-lived, ill-fated tenure as commander-in-chief. In fact, it may well have been the most pivotal in American foreign policy in that era. Forget ‘[the] torch has been passed to a new generation...ask not what your country can do for you’ spiel; never mind the ‘we choose to go to the moon because it is hard’…pitch! 

The following gives us an idea of what was on Kennedy’s mind:

‘I have...chosen this time and place to discuss a topic on which ignorance too often abounds and the truth too rarely perceived. And that’s the most important topic on earth: peace. What kind of peace do I mean and what kind of a peace do we seek?  Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war…Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind….that enables men and nations to grow, and to hope, and build a better life for their children – not merely peace for Americans but peace for all, not merely peace in our time but…in all time.’

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John F. Kennedy: “He thought he was a god”.

In this address, it appeared Kennedy was attempting to re-define the accepted notion of Pax Americana, to articulate a more inclusive, collaborative version, one that would bring folk with them willingly rather than dragging them kicking and screaming to the position. In almost all respects this wasn’t just a redefinition; he was attempting to turn the notion on its head. ‘Peaceful co-existence’ was the sub-text of his message. It seemed the baptism of fire he experienced in his on-the-job training as president thus far had changed him significantly.

But as James Douglass has observed, when Kennedy uttered these words, ‘the priests of our national security state saw him as a heretic.’ He’d already pissed quite a few of them off when he road-blocked their apocalyptic impulses to nuke Cuba and the Soviet Union (Union of Soviet Socialists’ Republics; or USSR) back into the Neolithic during the high drama of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 (CMC). (Kennedy had instead insisted on back channel diplomacy to resolve the crisis.)

Put simply, the hawks weren’t happy with this unexpected pronouncement. This especially from a president they’d already decided wasn’t cut out for the Biggest Game in Town. From the “Duke Nukem” Brass Asses in the Pentagon bunkers to the winkle-pickered wolf-pack in Langley to the righteous, pointy-headed foreign policy and national security wonks down Foggy Bottom way, in the broader Beltway think-tanks, and even a few within his own administration, doubtless this would have come across as appeasement-like, touchy-feely—indeed naïve, unadulterated—nonsense. “Peace” was not in their brochure, and quite a few would’ve been spitting hollow points at the wall at the very mention of it.

For those who were looking then, this represented for Number 35 something of a road to Damascus-like conversion from unreconstructed 1950s era McCarthyite-Lite Cold Warrior to a self-styled global Grand Pax proselyte. Herein Kennedy appeared to openly resist the historically contrived notion of a Pax Americana on the basis that their Cold War adversaries the Soviet Union comprised folk with the same individual aspirations and collective desires as Americans. This, even if the gremlins in the Kremlin were cynical, ruthless, cold-blooded, hard-core, Godless, soul-deprived Commies bent on oppression, tyranny and world domination, the perennial, upstart challengers to America’s “Manifest Destiny” and its long-standing pretensions to ‘exceptionalism’.

As such, a ‘pax’—even one purportedly comprising the noble ideals of freedom, democracy, liberty, the rule of law and basic human rights—predicated by “American weapons of war” was not something as president he saw as desirable. Much less one that would or could work in the long run. Instinctively, he seemed to realise that a peace imposed from on high hegemony was always going to be a phony peace, a (ahem) ‘faux pax’ as it were. 

Clearly, Kennedy’s AU address gives us some insights—though not necessarily conclusive—into where he might have taken the US in its foreign policy in general, and in its fraught relationship with the USSR in particular. To be sure, the counterfactuals here are as enticing as they’re unsettling. What if?…anyone. Or what might have been?

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— Capitalism’s Invisible Army (Locked n’ Loaded) —

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) needs little by way of introduction, being as it is the Deep State’s premier espionage marque, the Stateside ‘poster child’ for History’s Second Oldest Profession. What follows is an off-piste take on The Company’s iniquitous past of spy v spy skulduggery, huggermuggery and thuggery. This time viewed mainly via the lens of its most audacious regime renovation gambit—its most consequential coup d’état, to wit: its well-documented—though not-so well acknowledged—involvement in the planning, execution, and cover-up of the assassination of the 35th president of the United States.

Truth be told, JFK’s assassination had less to do with regime change per se, than it was about preserving the existing order, about which Kennedy, as his AU address pointed to, was mightily conflicted! But let’s not quibble here. Readers will get the point. Either way, it was “Mission Accomplished” as they say, perhaps the agency’s ‘jewel in the crown’ of its infamous Family Jewels’ Collection. Though per the introduction, as we’ll see they did not act alone.

Yet whilst the CIA famously coopted the “the truth shall set you free” maxim as its quasi official positioning statement—which along with evidencing the hard core hubris and chutzpah with which if has long been associated, represents an irony of epic proportion given both the agency’s principal remit and the original source of this expression—it is the following meme which serves best to ‘catchphrase’ its nefarious past, to wit: “And you will know us by the trail of dead”. And if there is one truth it was never going to set free (as it were), it was the specifics of its ‘before, during and after the fact’ involvement in The JFK Thing. (The best we’ve ever got was the ‘limited hangout’.)

To underscore this, when asked by veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh who was responsible for JFK’s murder, James Jesus Angelton—the CIA’s legendary chief of counterintelligence from 1953-73, and one of two Company men (the other being the aforementioned Allen Dulles, both of whom of which more later) most often linked to deep state involvement in the assassination—replied cryptically: “A mansion has many rooms…I’m not privy to who struck John.”

Now if the estimable Hersh was unable get a straight answer from the albeit notoriously furtive spook, then that’s saying a lot, at least much more than was to be found in JJ's response. On the other hand, the fact that Angleton didn’t take the opportunity to uphold the ‘lone gunman-single bullet’ theory so beloved of Warren Omission (sic) fantasists is in itself revealing: in true counterspy fashion, it was what JJ chose not to reveal to Hersh that revealed the most.

For Americans inclined to reflect on such matters then, it must be disquieting in the least to realise that the CIA—ostensibly established to protect and preserve their country’s national security and uphold its treasured democratic ideals—has done more than any other entity to compromise that security, undermine those ideals, and devalue the international good-will and moral capital that America enjoyed at the end of World War Two. Put simply, the CIA must shoulder the lion’s share of the blame for the position in which the U.S. finds itself both domestically, and most certainly within and across the geopolitical landscape.

With little sign the ‘Company’ has learned any lessons from its nefarious past then, it appears self-evident for all but its most ardent apologists, it can no longer be trusted—or for that matter, lay claim—to act in the national interest or in the interests of global stability, peace and security. Old hands like your humble have known this for awhile, and herein the JFK Thing serves as Exhibit A; although I always encourage everyone to do their own research, newcomers might benefit by taking this as a given from the get go, and work your way onwards and upwards from there.

What should be even more disquieting for these same Americans, is that its premier national security agency had its prints all over the “Crime of the Century”, though there were plenty of others to be found (as future episodes will reveal). Such is its cross to bear we might say. Sadly, over the space of six decades, few seem to fully appreciate even now the implications of this cogent reality. It’s one thing offing the leader of any random tin-pot, piss-ant, third-world, no-account backwater nation. It’s a whole other World Series whacking a POTUS.

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— Never a Dulles Moment —

In his introduction to a published extract from David Talbot’s must-read 2015 biography of Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director Allen Welsh Dulles, WhoWhatWhy founder and editor Russ Baker had this to say:

‘No one can possibly understand the precarious state of American democracy today without scrutinizing the often secret path the country was taken on by those in power from the 1950s to the present. Among the elemental figures in forging that path was Allen Dulles. He was the most powerful, and…most sinister…director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Given that outfit’s past, that’s some accomplishment. Dulles’s job was to hijack the US government to benefit the wealthy….Perhaps nothing is more troubling than Dulles’s behavior around the time John F. Kennedy was assassinated.’

Allen Dulles (CIA Director, 1953-1961)

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In any consideration regarding US national security and foreign policy since 1945, and more broadly its place in the geopolitical firmament throughout the Cold War and beyond, the role played by the CIA is as iniquitous as it is ubiquitous. And although it wasted little time exercising its remit from its inception in 1947, for our purposes it is with the JFK assassination around fifteen years later that our narrative herein is most concerned. Moreover, it is also appropriate to begin with Dulles. (It goes without saying though that the CIA-JFK story does not end there on either count. Not by a long shot from the Texas School-Book Depository Building!)

As Baker has alluded to, it was during Dulles’ reign the dubious, multi-faceted business model that those of us in the know have all come to identify with the organisation, was forged. The supreme impresario of espionage, covert action, and spy v spy shenanigans, Dulles—the CIA Director (or DCI) between 1953-61 appointed by President Dwight D (Ike) Eisenhower, and for a short period serving under John Fitzgerald Kennedy (JFK)—was to the CIA what the CIA was/is to America!

All of which is to say is that whatever it was that Dulles brought to the Company table, it reflected itself in what the CIA—both during and well after his tenure—brought to the country. For all its impact and significance—which can hardly be overstated—the Kennedy assassination is but the tip of the Big Ice Block. As it turns out, for his part Baker should know a thing or three about the CIA, Dulles, JFK and related matters, along with America’s Deep State elite cadre and their secretive machinations in general. His own work on the JFK hit ranks as some of the most revealing reportage on the subject, both exploring old propositions, and coming up with a few new ones.

Along with being in a ‘previous life’ a self-confessed conspiracy sceptic if not debunker, Baker’s insights are rendered that much more credible by his own prior background as a mainstream investigative journalist. Moreover, being by his own admission, a relative latecomer to the alternative realities attending numerous ‘deep events’ and ‘state crimes against democracy’ for which full, satisfactory explanations remain outstanding, [this] has perhaps allowed Baker plenty of time to assess these events with a greater degree of intellectual detachment and journalistic objectivity.

Baker’s ‘conversion’ from conspiracy sceptic to someone at least prepped to consider these “alternative realities” so favoured by the conspiracy cohort largely resulted from his research into the Bush family tree. This was itself a journey of discovery apparently inspired in large part by the debacles that unfolded once George W Bush and his cronies were ensconced in the White House just prior to 9/11. His investigation encompassed Bush Junior himself of course. But it by necessity included George HW Bush (Senior) and even his old man Prescott Bush.

The result: his book Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, America’s Invisible Government, and the Hidden History of the Last Fifty Years is, as the title suggests, an engrossing yarn by any measure. It is one of the most significant books chronicling the dirty secrets and ignoble lies that colour the now faded and frayed fabric of the (not always) Grand American Narrative. 

And the Bush dynasty is in its own way, as significant as that of the Kennedy’s.

George HW Bush—like Dulles a CIA Director at one point—was a man of course, again as with Dulles, for whom said “dirty secrets and ignoble lies” were second nature, and keeping them under wraps standard operating procedure. Suffice it to say, if there was one individual in American political history whose ‘hard drive’ this writer would’ve loved to have hacked and downloaded before he ‘bought the farm’ it might’ve been ‘Poppy’ Bush, and that’s a large call! For prurient political interest alone the contents therein of HW’s memory banks would to all intents render the National Security Archives and the as yet unreleased Family Jewels of the CIA pedestrian by comparison. It would certainly have everyone from conspiracy junkies to gung-ho investigative journos to aspiring history Ph.Ds—to say little of the estimable Alex Jones—wetting themselves at the prospect of being granted an exclusive “Access All Areas” privilege as it were.

In Baker’s book, it’s notable that he places HW front and centre at the conspiracy to dispatch POTUS Number 35, with two recurring refrains relevant herein, to wit:

1. prior to and outside of his time as DCI from 1976-77, the degree to which Bush the Elder was actively—if covertly— involved with the CIA and just what his role might have entailed, questions posed by many but never fully answered; and

2. how ‘Poppy’ could credibly claim not to remember his whereabouts on 11/22 and what he was doing, something unique amongst sentient, bipedal, carbon-based life forms of the era—especially aspiring political animals such as he.

It probably goes without saying then that it is these “dirty secrets and ignoble lies” that have long fuelled conspiracy theories regarding the assassination, to the perennial consternation of those within the power structure who would much prefer to let assassinated presidents lie. You know, the very folks who cannot seem to get their heads around one simple reality: That being, their OCD-like propensity for secrecy, subterfuge and high political skulduggery that is the very fuel keeping those conspiracy home-fires burning!

This begs the following rhetorical questions, and should provide a fitting segue to the rest of the narrative herein: When does a conspiracy theory stop being a theory? Who are the real conspiracy theorists? Those that believe in them because of the overwhelming evidence, or those that deny them in spite of the overwhelming evidence?

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The Truth, the Whole Truth, and nothing but the “Best Truth”

As if they required further corroboration, such theories about the JFK Thing have been intermittently underscored by revelations that the CIA—under the then directorship of Dulles’s successor John McCone—conspired to withhold crucial evidence from the Warren Commission. ‘Warren’ was of course the terminally discredited committee of inquiry established by president Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ; of whom more in a later instalment) to investigate in 1964 the events leading up to and surrounding JFK’s assassination in Dallas on November 22, 1963.

JFK and CIA soulmate Allen Dulles—Taking a Walk in the Park

What made some of these belated revelations even more startling (though hardly shocking) at the time they were ‘drip-fed’ to the public is that they have been sourced from an internal CIA report declassified in 2013 on the QT, but had up until then only since come to light. The documents also reveal that the CIA was in communication with alleged assassin Lee Harvey Oswald before JFK’s murder in 1963, and they had been monitoring his mail since 1959, something which has been consistently denied since that fateful day. 

[Author Note: The report on same by Tucker Carlson late last year is really a reprise of this long standing “conspiracy theory”, as well as further confirmation of its veracity.

In this 2013 report, in what was likely another in a long litany of limited hangouts over six decades, McCone and other senior CIA officials stood accused of withholding ‘incendiary’ information from the commission and therefore perverting the course of justice. The CIA reportedly admitted this, lending a wholly fresh take on the old joke about the Warren Omission! 

After noting that the report is based on evidence given by CIA historian David Robarge, one Sophie McAdam observed the following. He (Robarge),

‘….has claimed the cover-up was intended to keep the Commission focused on “what the agency believed at the time was the best truth—that Lee Harvey Oswald, for as yet undetermined motives, had acted alone in killing John Kennedy.” McCone directed the CIA to provide only “passive, reactive and selective” assistance to the…Commission, meaning the investigation was severely compromised and did not follow up any other leads which may have been crucial in the search for truth.’

For his part, what David Talbot made clear in his aforementioned book is that it was Dulles who was both instigator and architect of these cover-ups, the final arbiter of “the best truth” as distinct from the actual truth. This is something that most of the much derided conspiracy theorist community have maintained, or at the very least suspected, all along.

What this unambiguously suggests is that Dulles, though officially ‘retired’ after JFK fired him in the wake of the blowback from the Bay of Pigs debacle—a presidential ‘decision point’ that induced in the imperious, patrician, pipe smoking former CIA chief and his powerful allies an abiding, vengeful animosity towards the president who had the temerity to exercise his executive privilege—remained the real power behind the Langley throne, ever the Stringmaster!

Such was his clout within and across the establishment and the national security state, Dulles virtually owned the Warren Commission. He was therefore in the strongest position to determine both the terms of reference and the outcome from the investigation. In political life it is said that one of the most sacrosanct rules by which politicians and public officials live and die—especially those looking to invoke the KYAC* principle—is ‘never call an inquiry or allow one to proceed unless you can know the outcome’. Until the 9/11 Commission, for its part “Warren’ represented perhaps history’s quintessential exemplar in this regard—its definitive, ‘go to’ case study. [*'Keep your ass covered’.]

After emphasising the extraordinary degree to which the security services such as the CIA and FBI had variously and ‘thoroughly infiltrated and guided’ the conduct of the Warren Commission’s line of inquiry, Talbot offers up the following:

‘…there was no possibility of the panel pursuing an independent course. [And] Dulles was at the centre of this subversion. During the Commission’s ten-month long investigation, he acted as a double agent, huddling regularly with his former CIA associates to discuss the panel’s internal operations.’ [Emphasis added.]

Dulles then had preordained the Commission’s findings with unflinching ruthlessness and unfailing attention to detail. Although the Big Lie of the Commission—the lone gunman/single bullet theory—may not have been one he authored (this has long been attributed to one Arlen Specter, a senior Commission lawyer who later went on to become a U.S senator, apparently never henceforth troubled by embarrassing reflections on his cockamamie contrivance or the critiques it attracted), the spymaster doubtless would have been quite comfortable with this conclusion. It wasn’t like he and his co-conspirators had that many more plausible alternatives given the way things turned out.

What may have made these past and more recent revelations of CIA-inspired Commission cover-ups much more startling—although again hardly shocking for legitimate JFK researchers—would have been if they’d revealed that McCone himself was pressured, cajoled or even convinced for some as yet unknown, but ‘justifiable’ reason to withhold relevant evidence from the Commission by his Machiavellian predecessor, so as to arrive at that “best truth”. Now that would’ve really set a cat amongst the conspiracy theorists and their tin-foil hat cheer-squad.

Having been appointed by the slain president—with a background far removed from the usual clubby, incestuous, Wall Street connected, Ivy League career intelligence fraternity—it remains uncertain as to where McCone’s real loyalty lay at the time, and whether or not he was pressured to keep a lid on any revelations to which he might have actually been privy. All of which is to say, the ‘ring-in’ McCone is unlikely to have had insider knowledge of the Company’s most ‘valuable’, and preciously treasured, of their Family Jewels. And if he was privy to such, there was no way in any event he was going to let the cat out of the bag.

To this day, one of the dodgiest aspects of the Warren investigation to begin with was Dulles’ actual appointment by LBJ to the Commission. Understandably this decision has long been one of the key anomalies fuelling JFK conspiracy theories. This was not just regarding the legitimacy of the investigative process and the integrity of its subsequent findings, but the very criminal act that prompted it in the first place. Of all the movers and shakers directly involved in the conduct of the investigation—from lawyers, investigators, to actual Commission members—Dulles was the boy least likely as it were.

Indeed, Dulles’ should have been the subject of investigation as a possible prime suspect, nay perpetrator, and certainly a key witness, under oath, upon pain of serious jail time if his exposition of the truth was subsequently found wanting. But when it came to the JFK hit, there was no way Dulles was ever going to speak the whole truth and nothing but. Nor allow anyone else to do so. After observing it was the national security establishment…‘that advised the new president (LBJ) to put Dulles on the Warren Commission…[and that] Johnson—finely tuned to the desires of the men who had put him in the Oval Office—wisely obliged them’…, Talbot continued:

‘The Dulles camp itself made no bones about the fact that [Dulles] aggressively lobbied to get appointed to the commission. [McCone’s successor] Dick Helms later told historian Michael Kurtz that he “personally persuaded” Johnson to appoint Dulles. According to Kurtz, Dulles and Helms “wanted to make sure no agency secrets came out in the investigation…And, of course, if Dulles was on the commission, that would ensure the agency would be safe. Johnson felt the same way—he didn’t want the investigation to dig up anything strange.”

“Anything strange” indeed!

To bring this instalment to a suitable conclusion then, and provide a fitting entree into the next segment, at this point we should revisit the origins of the “conspiracy theory” construct. This is a recurring theme when examining the antics of the CIA and the Deep State in general, and one especially pertinent to that ‘inspired’ by its involvement in the JFK Thing. That it also served the purpose of becoming way beyond the Kennedy assassination a ‘one-size-fits-all’ defensive riposte to any and all future challenges from sceptics disinclined to swallow the government du jour’s dubious explanations for dodgy undertakings and dark conspiratorial deeds it wants to keep tightly under wraps (and what government doesn’t have these in plentiful supply?), was more than a collateral benefit: it was and remains the quintessential gift that keeps on giving.

POTUS 35 Takes one for the Team—Kickstarts DIY Conspiracy Theory Trend.

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— The Mother of all Conspiracy Theorists

Perhaps unsurprisingly the pejorative or dismissive phrases “you’re just a conspiracy theorist” or “that’s just a conspiracy theory” were generally unheard of before the JFK Thing, which possibly up until 9/11 at least, might’ve been deemed the Mother of All Modern American Conspiracy Narratives*.

In fact it wasn’t until the Warren Commission handed down its report in 1964 on the assassination that the phrases inserted themselves into common political parlance and popular culture. This was not a happenstance development. From there on it was dutifully employed ad nauseum and ad infinitum firstly by the establishment media (the meme-media?) and all other elements of the Deep State, including by those all too willing to quaff the Commission’s Kool-Aid, or for that matter any official narrative of events. 

(Author Note: I’ve explored the “conspiracy theory” construct in some depth in a three part series titled Once Upon a Paranoid Time in America. For those wishing to understand what all the fuss is about, see here, here, and here.)

This reaction was devised in response to those who both held and voiced deep suspicions about the Commission’s findings, qualms of course it has to be said 60 years on are infinitely more deep-seated, widespread, and plausible today. Indeed all but the most die-hard debunkers or sceptics would say these suspicions are more justified than they ever were. Yet it is the bespoke “conspiracy theory” construct that prevents these theories gaining any critical mass traction with the public at large, even amongst those who pride themselves on their critical thinking chops. It is the perfect antidote to critical political thinking.

Not surprisingly for most folks, it was the CIA that dusted off and ‘reengineered’ the phrase, then resurrected the concept in modern usage terms. For its part the ‘one-stop-shop’ for all the news that’s fit to fake and hide that’s the establishment media of course, has all too willingly been complicit in the CIA’s arguably most successful and insidious conspiratorial gambit of all, a statement that in and of itself is a big call. Indeed, their complicity was essential to its construction and effective rollout, in more ways than the obvious.

Which is to say, for those ‘students’ of the CIA who will be all too familiar with The Company’s tawdry family history and its sub rosa domestic and foreign machinations in general—and particularly its broad sweep cognitive infiltrations via Operation Mockingbird, a topic especially relevant to any discussion of conspiracy theories—once again this is all too plausible. ‘Op-Mock’ being of course, both the ‘mother’ and the ‘Johnnie Walker’ of all Psy-ops! Anyone doubting that only needs to briefly peruse the New York Times and/or the Washington Post, or watch CNN, ABC or MSNBC news for more than five minutes (to name just a few examples), and compare the content presented therein with a more reliable reality, will appreciate this. 

OpMock had its roots going back to the late 1940s, pioneered by the legendary Frank Wisner. Wisner was another prominent CIA alumnus whose CoD interestingly is the subject of a few conspiracy theories, a reveal which might give some pause for those folks who argue that Americans don’t do irony. Yet as successful as OpMock was/is, for some reason the ‘trench-coat ‘n trilby’ tribe down on the Langley Farm don’t make much of a big deal about it on their official website. Funny that! They can be an awfully modest bunch of folk at times. It must be a Spy v Spy thing! In short, if one is inclined to believe all they read, hear and/or see in the mainstream media, then one has ‘Op-Mock’ to thank for that.

It probably goes without saying then that had it not been for the JFK hit and the need by those responsible to keep a lid on the runaway speculation and widespread scepticism that was inevitable after the findings and the official verdict of “Warren”, the phrases “you’re just a conspiracy theorist” and “that’s just a conspiracy theory” would not be what they are today.

In sum, what they are today is without a shadow of doubt one of the Deep State’s most ingenious and most effective defences ever devised against prying into its incessant skullduggery, huggermuggery, and thuggery. Think the events of 9/11, or those of the past three years. And as we’ll see in later instalments, the media’s complicity in covering up the real facts behind the Crime of the Century is a story in and of itself. We’ve only just scratched the surface here…

As if to underscore the preceding and once more the connection between the Deep State, the CIA and the JFK Thing, perhaps a final word here should go to Peter Dale Scott, from his book Dallas '63: The First Deep State Revolt Against the White House:

‘[O]ne of the important sources of covert agencies’ power is their ability to falsify their own records, without fear of outside correction. Does this ability to rewrite their own history empower them to affect, if not control, the history of the rest of society? I believe the evidence [in this book] will justify a limited answer to this question: covert agencies, and the CIA in particular, were powerful enough to control and defuse a crisis in U.S. political legitimacy. They did so by reinforcing an unsustainable claim: Oswald killed the President, and acted alone…’ [Emphasis added.]

Unsustainable? …perhaps. But sixty years on would suggest that the official JFK narrative has ‘sustained’ itself pretty well in any event, as preposterous as it patently is. And with no clear sign yet that Americans are willing to fully embrace the truth about the events of November 22, 1963, or that its government might be prepared to release the material and documentary evidence that will enable them finally to come to terms with the reality of that fateful day, I’d argue that there’s still plenty of ‘sustainable’ to go round for the foreseeable…

‘Nuff said? Well for now at least. The JFK Thing is a big meal. This is but an appetiser.…Yo’ all come back now folks y’hear. We’ve only just begun…

End Part One.

Greg Maybury, 26th May, 2023.

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