Legacy of Secrecy (77 page)

saying the FBI had wanted to “subpoena . . . Edwards to appear before

a Grand Jury to testify as to his last contact with Johnny [Rosselli].” The

CIA strongly objected, since his doing so “would link this Agency and

Rosselli and . . . lead to further and more embarrassing inquires.” The

FBI also wanted Edwards to pressure Rosselli to cooperate with the FBI

with “the implied threat of deportation” if Rosselli refused. The FBI was

told that this tactic “would be strongly resisted” by the CIA because the

whole matter with Rosselli was “extraordinarily sensitive.”9

Richard Helms gave his signed endorsement to the CIA’s refusal to

help the FBI, while the CIA’s General Counsel pointed out that the issue

had also come up regarding Maheu in Senator Edward Long’s hearings

and in Giancana’s prosecution. While it must have looked to Helms as if

this Rosselli problem would keep recurring, he didn’t realize how soon

it would threaten to become public, or that his Security Office would

still be dealing with the Rosselli problem for years to come.10

Helms probably knew that Hoover was angling to find out more

about the CIA-Mafia plots, to use as possible leverage against the CIA

in their ongoing bureaucratic struggle for funding and power. Hoover

knew about only a few parts of the CIA-Mafia plots, and would have

relished getting Rosselli or the CIA in a position where he could learn

the full story, something Helms had to prevent if he wanted to preserve

his own position and reputation.

Because of Commander Almeida, Helms still had a thin veil of

national security to hide behind in dealing with Hoover and the growing

media publicity about a JFK conspiracy. Just five months earlier, a CIA

memo had made it clear that “military leaders like Juan Almeida [still

had] the respect and admiration of the troops,” even though they were

“supporting the regime more out of loyalty than [out] of conviction . . .

without becoming influenced by Communist ideology.”11 As long as

Almeida remained unexposed and subject to use in the future, Helms

could rationalize (and potentially justify) anything that would keep

secret the full range of operations the CIA had used in its attempts to

eliminate Castro.

During the CIA’s back-and-forth with the FBI over its refusal to help

the FBI with Rosselli, Hoover had begun taking an interest in a Cuban

exile who had once been a top aide of Commander Almeida. The former

aide had come to the US a year earlier, was living in Miami, and had

been extremely close to Almeida’s family. As with the CIA-Mafia plots,

Hoover had learned the broad outlines of the JFK-Almeida coup plan

by 1966, probably from his friend LBJ, but there was still much he didn’t

know about the operation.12 However, Richard Helms was determined

to keep his secrets, from Hoover and even from President Johnson.

The recent surge of books and articles suggesting conspiracy in JFK’s

murder caused LBJ’s White House counsel to propose reopening the

JFK assassination investigation, as noted in a December 10, 1966, memo

between LBJ aides Joseph Califano and Bill Moyers. The suggestion was

to “convene a small (2–3) confidential task force” to look at “alleged cir-

cumstantial evidence of the existence and continuance of a conspiracy

[and] events since the assassination [suggesting] a conspiracy.” Despite

the growing media attention, LBJ declined to pursue the idea. As for

Richard Helms, he was determined to stem the growing tide of media

coverage that generated the pressure for a renewed investigation of

JFK’s death.13

Chapter Thirty

In late 1966 and early 1967, Richard Helms and the CIA began a major

new effort to counter critics of the Warren Commission. Most memos

about the CIA’s efforts to manage the media have never been released,

but of the few that have been declassified, the one from January 4, 1967,

is remarkable for its candor and length. This fifty-three-page memo

detailed the CIA’s plan to attack critics of the Warren Report’s “lone

assassin” theory. While the memo has been available to researchers for

years, key portions have always been censored. This book marks the

first time the uncensored version has been disclosed, providing new

insights that were unavailable to earlier investigators. It allows us to

see for the first time who wrote and approved the memo, which CIA

divisions were involved, and what they personally had an interest in

covering up.

While E. Howard Hunt didn’t write the memo, his position of being

“in charge of contacts with US publishers” for the CIA means he would

have been responsible for helping to implement many of its recommen-

dations. In this light, later CIA memos revealing the Agency’s obsessive

monitoring of books and articles about the Jim Garrison investigation

(including those with even the briefest mention of Hunt associates, like

Artime, Varona, and Harry Williams) take on new significance.1

It’s important to look at the context surrounding the CIA’s lengthy

January 4, 1967, memo aimed at countering critics of the Warren Report.

Prior to the surge of media interest in the JFK assassination that began in

the summer and fall of 1966, the CIA had apparently dealt with the rela-

tively few critical authors on an informal and low-key basis, one case at a

time. However, by December 1966, a raft of books and articles presented

an increasing array of evidence that contradicted the Warren Report’s

conclusion by using the Commission’s own documents in its twenty-six

supporting volumes, and a few additional files at the National Archives.

Helms didn’t know what new investigations this information might

trigger, or where those investigations could lead—hence the need for

a broader, coordinated attack by the CIA against the Warren Report’s

critics, detailed in this memo to CIA Station Chiefs.

The CIA’s landmark January 4, 1967, memo was written before Jim

Garrison’s investigation was revealed to the general public, though it

was surely known to the CIA. It was also written before Johnny Ros-

selli ramped up his approach to journalists. However, because Helms

had the memo’s framework in place, the CIA was able to respond more

quickly and effectively to those developments and others. As this CIA

memo was being developed, Jack Ruby was preparing to have a new

trial, and the CIA no doubt worried about what new disclosures that

could generate.

Ramparts
magazine ran two short JFK assassination articles in its

November 1966 issue, and a major piece in January 1967. Though
Ram-

parts
was a relatively small, progressive magazine, it became a major

target for the CIA when it began developing another article for February

1967, one that had a more immediate impact on the Agency, the Johnson

administration, and the national press.

Two days before the CIA’s January 4, 1967, memo on attacking critics

of the Warren Commission, the Agency learned that
Ramparts
was going

to reveal that the CIA had for years secretly funded the National Stu-

dent Association on America’s college campuses. This would be the first

revelation of the tip of a very large iceberg that eventually exposed the

CIA’s massive funding of a variety of domestic foundations, religious

groups, unions, and other organizations.2

The CIA’s reaction to that
Ramparts
story provides insights into how

Richard Helms would implement his plan for dealing with Warren Com-

mission critics. Desmond FitzGerald ordered a subordinate “to discredit

the
Ramparts
editors any way he could. ‘I had all sorts of dirty tricks

to hurt their circulation and financing, [including] blackmail. We had

awful things in mind, some of which we carried off,’” the former CIA

official told Evan Thomas. According to Thomas, “possible examination

by the Agency of
Ramparts
income tax returns was discussed.” Thomas

documented that “two hundred clandestine service case officers worked

round the clock for two weeks on damage control.”3

A rash of newspaper and television news stories appeared in the

wake of
Ramparts
’
revelation of the surreptitious CIA funding, causing

an uproar among the public and Congress. President Johnson eventu-

ally appointed a special commission to look into the matter and quell

the outrage, but because Richard Helms was a member, he was able to

limit the committee’s scope and recommendations.4

380

LEGACY OF SECRECY

It was against that backdrop that the CIA memo detailing plans to

deal with Warren Commission critics was issued and implemented. The

only people aware of Helms’s main goal for that effort were Helms

himself, Desmond FitzGerald, E. Howard Hunt, and a few other CIA

officials: to convince CIA personnel, from Station Chiefs to CIA officers,

that attacks on the Warren Commission were an attack on the CIA itself.

The overt result would be rallying key CIA personnel to defend the

Warren Commission and to attack critics of its “lone nut” conclusion, no

matter how well documented their books, articles, or arguments were.

The covert result, known only to Helms and a few others, would be to

make Helms’s private worries the concerns of the CIA as an organiza-

tion. That would prevent the exposure of Helms’s unauthorized Castro

plots and their ties to JFK’s murder, without Helms’s having to reveal

those plots to additional CIA personnel.

While less than a dozen CIA officials knew about Almeida or about

Helms’s unauthorized Castro plots, hundreds (if not thousands) in the

CIA were aware of other CIA operations that could be exposed if journal-

ists seriously pursued the JFK assassination investigation. These activ-

ities ranged from the CIA’s extensive domestic surveillance network

(which might have been used to track a seeming former defector, like

Oswald) to the CIA’s operations against left-wing organizations like the

Fair Play for Cuba Committee to the Agency’s multimillion-dollar sup-

port for Cuban exile operations. It wasn’t hard for most CIA personnel

to see that promoting the Warren Commission’s conclusion was a good

way to protect the Agency from unwanted scrutiny.

Some CIA officials had other connections that a new JFK investiga-

tion could expose. The uncensored version of the CIA’s January 4, 1967,

memo shows for the first time that the memo was written and “pulled

together by Ned Bennett of the CA [Covert Action] Staff in close con-

junction with CI [Angleton’s Counter-Intelligence]/R&A [Research and

Analysis].” Bennett was an interesting choice because he had written

an important article for the
London Spectator
, entitled “The Theories of

Mr. Epstein,” that trashed the book
Inquest
by Edward Epstein, the same

book that Richard Goodwin had found so compelling. Bennett boasts

in the memo that his
Spectator
article “has attracted widespread atten-

tion”—and he even attached the article to the memo as an example of

the type of piece that could be written to attack critics, and as a resource

whose arguments could recycled in other attacks.5

Ned Bennett was also interesting because CIA files show that in July

1962, Bennett had interviewed a former US serviceman who had just

returned to America from a two-and-a-half-year defection to the Soviet

Union, bringing with him a Russian wife and young child. This “redefec-

tor” (the CIA’s term) was Robert Webster, one of seven Americans to

defect to Russia within months of one another in late 1959 and 1960. Six

of those, including Webster and Lee Harvey Oswald, became redefectors

who returned to the US. Journalist Dick Russell noted the close paral-

lels between Webster’s and Oswald’s defections: Webster defected to

Russia two weeks before Oswald, and Webster returned to the US two

weeks before Oswald. It was almost as if both ex-servicemen were on

the same prearranged schedule, and Webster was a former Navy man,

while Oswald was a former Marine with ties to Naval Intelligence. The

fact that each returned with a Russian wife and new child makes the

parallels even more suspicious. Russell points out that when Oswald

was in Russia, he inquired about Webster at the US embassy, and the

address for “Webster’s Leningrad apartment building [was found] in

[Marina Oswald’s] address book” after JFK’s death. Several authors and

government investigators have speculated that Oswald and Webster

(and the other redefectors) were all part of the same US intelligence

operation.6

The CIA memo of Bennett’s July 1962 interview with Webster raises a

crucial question: If Webster was interviewed by the CIA after his return

to the US, why wasn’t Oswald interviewed, since his circumstances were

almost identical? As we mentioned earlier, a CIA official suggested the

“laying on of interviews” with Oswald after his return, and Richard