The COPA Conference

Assassination researchers from around the country gathered in the nation's capital in early October for a weekend of meetings and presentations sponsored by the Coalition on Political Assassinations (COPA).

Many leading researchers were on hand for COPA's National Conference, held at the Sheraton Washington Hotel. As the event roughly coincided with the thirtieth anniversary of the release of the Warren Report, it was billed "Three Decades of Doubt," with much of the focus on the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

In advance literature, COPA stated: "The Conference will present professional analysis of recently released documents and long-standing evidence by recognized experts. It will allow presentations and participation by a wide range of independent researchers and investigators on various topics and several major assassinations...the best new evidence revealed in released records will be made public..."

Independent researcher Lisa Pease attended the National Conference and wrote a series of impressions which first appeared on the Usenet newsgroup alt.conspiracy.jfk. With her permission, Fair Play is reproducing Ms. Pease's reports, in a somewhat modified form. This is the first of several parts.

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Thirty Years and Counting

Washington, DC--what a beautiful place! I was prepared to hate it, but I have to say with the combination of wonderful old buildings, the greenery, the autumn-perfect weather, and the clear blue skies, it was lovely.

The first official event of the COPA convention was Friday night, October 7-- a cash bar mixer where I met Bill Turner-- author of The Assassination Of Robert F. Kennedy, and co-author (with Warren Hinckle) of the recently republished Deadly Secrets. I was complimenting him on his wonderful book on RFK and talking about how I thought it was the best book on the subject, only to find I was standing right next to Phil Melanson, author of another excellent book on the RFK case, The Robert F. Kennedy Assassination. Talk about foot in mouth! I honestly love both books, and immediately congratulated Phil on his, but he was teasing me anyway--"Too late now!"

But on to the opening ceremonies, held in a big ballroom and attended by 100-150 people, by my best guess. The first speaker was Dr. Cyril Wecht. Dr. Wecht talked mostly about the significance of the coming together of the various factions of researchers into a new coalition--one dedicated to a common goal of the release of still-classified files pertaining to the JFK assassination. That notion would be reiterated by many throughout the weekend.

The first major presentation of assassination information came that same night from John Newman. I had met Dr. Newman about an hour earlier, and told him I had his book but hadn't yet read it (true) and he laughed, thanked me and said in all seriousness, "Take your time reading it." For those of you unfamiliar with Newman's background, he was, if I have it right, an intelligence analyst for the DIA and is now a history professor as well as the author of JFK and Vietnam. He also has two upcoming books--Oswald and the CIA and JFK and Cuba. No one in the entire research community has ever had the background to correctly and thoroughly decipher all the various notations on CIA, FBI and other agency records until Newman came along. His contribution to the research community in this regard can hardly be exaggerated.

Newman began his address with an explanation of the heated ICBM race between the USSR and the USA in the post-World War Two years, saying the race for technology brought with it a race for intelligence collection. It was critical for the United States to determine the progress of Soviet testing of ICBMs. As former CIA chief Allen Dulles noted in 1963, the USSR chose very remote sites for these tests.

Enter the U-2 spy plane, designed to spy on these sites by flying at altitudes so great it was virtually undetectable. The military base that the U-2 called home was Atsugi Air Force base in Japan, opened in February 1957. By August of that year, Dr. Newman said, the first spy report of Soviet tests landed on Eisenhower's desk.

Then, just 22 days before the launch of Sputnik, an individual whom Newman said "let's just call Private X" arrived at Atsugi.

Soviet leader Nikita Kruschev had fed American fears by exaggerating the USSR ICBM numbers and capabilities. When the first U-2 flights brought back data, the results were quite the opposite and showed how inflated the Soviet's reports were and how the missile "gap" was greatly exaggerated. In fact, the Soviets had not the 140-plus missiles believed to be in existence, but in fact four. Four. Wow! The United States grew bolder as the truth of the US-Soviet missile "gap" was exposed.

Private X's job was in the radar bubble adjacent to the CIA's U-2 hangar, his job being to track U-2's on the Soviet approach. This was his job in both the Philippines for a time as well as Atsugi. Dr. Newman says Private X personally plotted the U-2 flights. But, he told the COPA conference, Private X was not officially in the U-2 program itself.

On May 1, 1960, U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers was shot down over the USSR. Years later, in his book Operation Overflight, Powers wrote Private X gave secrets to the USSR. And the Atsugi base was closed immediately following this incident.

What Newman stressed was curious about all of this is that by the time of the U-2 incident, our Private X had been discharged from the Marines and had "defected" to the USSR, walking into the American Embassy in Moscow and announcing, "I'm going to give up military secrets." Private X--who of course was Lee Harvey Oswald--was very knowledgeable about the U-2 project. The fact that he had such knowledge and the U-2 comes down while Oswald was in the USSR, and the CIA subsequently shows no interest in him--there is no prosecution, no questioning--seems to imply that the CIA knew why Oswald was in the USSR and had no reason to question him.

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Day Two of the COPA Conference--Saturday, October 8, 1994
The morning started promptly at 8:30am (even though most of us had only just gotten to bed much less than 8 hours earlier) with a bunch of groggy yet eager researchers filling the main ballroom where the bulk of the major presentations were held.

Theresa Seay, MA, an expert on but not a believer in the single bullet theory, began with a brief overview of the essential elements of the shots in Dealey Plaza. She laid out the bare minimum of shots needed to account for all of wounds inflicted during the Dealey fusillade, a scenario not necessarily endorsed by all attendees:

1. Throat Shot
2. Back Shot
3. JBC Shot
4. Head Shot
5. Tague Shot

Seay ended her presentation with this statement: "Only the truth makes us really free. If we cannot learn the truth because of continued government cover-ups, we are already a conquered, enslaved nation."

Next to speak was the warm and sincere Col. Fletcher Prouty. By all accounts of those present who have known the man for years, he is far from an anti-semite, and was even invited to speak at the opening (I think it was) of the Holocaust Museum in Washington. He seemed quite upset by the attacks on his character over the years.

In 1960, Prouty worked in the Pentagon for Thomas Gates as Chief of Special Operations. He told how Kennedy's election came as a severe blow to those who had carefully planned for the extension of Eisenhower's rule. He described the atmosphere in the Pentagon upon Kennedy's election as "a tornado," so upset were they. Quoting from his abstract: "The Vietnam War was a major target for heavy expenditures. As far back as 1959 plans had been made to introduce thousands of helicopters into Vietnam. The first move of large combat helicopters came in December 1960 during the Eisenhower `lame-duck' period." He talked at length about how Bell Helicopter made extensive profits through the introduction of helicopters--over 4000--into Vietnam. He referenced Eisenhower's "Beware the Military-Industrial Complex" Farewell Address which he felt was a direct warning to Kennedy about what he would be up against.

Prouty told of how, on the eve of the Bay of Pigs invasion, Kennedy had given the okay for air cover and how at 9:30p.m. McGeorge Bundy, according to the report of the Cuban Study Group (Gen. Maxwell Taylor, Adm. Arleigh Burke, Allen W. Dulles and Bobby Kennedy), cancelled the order.

From Prouty's abstract: "According to the same report, this was the cause of the failure of the invasion. The oft-cited failure to authorize `Air Support' by Kennedy is no more than a libelous cover-story." Prouty contends that Kennedy was being set up for deliberate failure in the Bay of Pigs to see what his reaction would be--and that it was assumed he'd launch a full-scale invasion as the Bay of Pigs was floundering. When Kennedy opted for defeat and retreat or as Prouty put it, "disaster" the powers from the CIA and the Pentagon were stunned--this was not an option they had planned for.

Prouty referenced National Security Action Memoranda 55, 56, and 57, published June 28, 1961. NSAM 55, he said, was designed to take the CIA out of the covert operation business and pass control of same over to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. These NSAMs never did become operative. According to Prouty, "The very existence of these powerful documents made the events of Dallas '63 imperative to the Power Elite."

On November 22, 1962, a long-awaited award for a $6.8 billion aircraft procurement contract was awarded not to the favorite during the Eisenhower days of Boeing, but instead to General Dynamics/Grumman. Prouty said this caused intense animosity towards JFK as he was seen as a traitor in many circles for this change.

Prouty talked about the all-important NSAM 263--the one signalling eventual withdrawal from Vietnam of "`all U.S. personnel" by the end of 1965. Prouty said he wrote part of this document and was quite familiar with it--enough to know that the body of it was printed 40-50 pages away from the cover sheet, making the cover look like a weak, small, separate document.

Prouty also mentioned his common cry that adequate security measures were deliberately avoided in the President's trip to Dallas, citing the turn onto Elm that made Kennedy a sitting duck, which would never have normally been allowed. He also said that snipers would normally have been situated at the top of every tall building encircling the plaza, that windows and even entire buildings would have been sealed off and that the Secret Service had the authority to do that, but not the will.

Quoting from his abstract (ellipsis in the original):

Despite what we believe to be the end of the Cold War, we have no guarantee whatsoever that any nation's society can exist when faced with an era of permanent peace. This has been discussed so prophetically by Leonard Lwein's great book, The Report From Iron Mountain. It was during the Kennedy administration that the atmosphere of the book, Report From Iron Mountain was created and discussed widely in the Pentagon. In those days we heard such comments as: "War itself is the basic social system. It is the system which has governed most human societies of record, as it is today," and "Wars are not caused by international conflicts of interest...rather...war-making societies require--and thus bring about--such conflicts. The capacity of a nation to make war expresses the greatest social power it can exercise; war-making, active or contemplated, is a matter of life and death on the greatest scale subject to social control," and..."War is virtually synonymous with nationhood. The elimination of war implies the inevitable elimination of national sovereignty and the traditional nation-state."

These were Kennedy-era concepts and were discussed widely throughout the administration at that time...particularly in the halls, offices and executive dining rooms of the Pentagon. I worked there from 1955 to 1966, and can affirm that it was this sort of thinking that brought about the inevitable death of the President. He had already said he was going to take the CIA out of clandestine operations, and he followed that by saying that he was not going to put Americans into Vietnam. Those were explosive and dangerous statements. They could have led to an era of unacceptable peace. The conspiratorial flight of the U-2 ended Eisenhower's peace initiatives. The conspiracy's gunmen ended Kennedy's peace initiatives.

During those historic days, I well recall hearing the words of the President, John F. Kennedy: "It has long been a Kennedy tradition...Not to get mad; but to get even. I fully realize that I shall not be able to 'Get Even' during my first term in office; but during the second term you are going to see some important changes."

The Guns of Dallas ended that promise as they ended his life and the hopes of those who were dedicated to achieving the long-time goal of civilized societies...a world at peace.

Morrisey's main thesis is that the Bay of Pigs was deliberately designed to fail from the outset, to justify a much more massive, full scale invasion of Cuba. On the one hand the CIA was assuring the Cuban exiles of air cover. The CIA assured Kennedy "plausible deniability" and promised no US forces would be involved.

Morrissey invited us to imagine what might have happened had the Bay of Pigs been initially successful, i.e. the landing of the 1200 men was secured on the beaches there. Then what? How could 1200 men last against Castro? The CIA, he argued, knew there would be no "massive populist uprising" against Castro from its own intelligence reports.

Morrissey also invited us to consider the personal characteristics of Richard Bissell, the head of this operation. Bissell had a long reputation as a man obsessive on details, a perfectionist, intolerant of mistakes. Why would such a man then make so many mistakes unless they were, in fact, intentional?

The Sunday afternoon before the invasion, JFK gave approval for airstrikes at dawn. JFK was then encouraged by McGeorge Bundy to cancel these airstrikes, which would have destroyed effectively all of Castro's airplanes. Bundy told Bissell and Cabell about this, who took no action to reverse what Bundy had effected. Morrissey asked "Does this sound like they wanted to succeed? Does this sound like mere negligence?"

Had they held the beach, what then? What could a small band of 1200 have done against Castro's army, even with the planes taken out?

From Morrissey's abstract:

A careful reading of this report [the post-invasion inquiry], consisting of the verbatim protocols of the meetings of the investigating committee and Taylor's memoranda summarizing them, compels one to conclude that the CIA leadership sabotaged their own operation. The purpose, I suggest, was to force Kennedy into ordering a full-scale, overt invasion of Cuba to save the troops that were stranded on the beach, which would have led to the overthrow of Castro. I think the CIA knew from the beginning that this was the only realistic way to get rid of Castro.

The failures of the CIA in planning and carrying out this operation were too basic, too numerous, and too systematic to be explained by incompetence. The Agency convinced the military and the Administration that there would be a popular uprising against Castro and that the Brigade could "go guerilla" if necessary, although neither of these was ever a realistic possibility. They insisted, against military advice, on preliminary air strikes two days before the invasion, which served only to embarrass Adlai Stevenson at the UN and alert Castro to what was coming. This plan was partly the brainchild of McGeorge Bundy, JFK's National Security Advisor, who then proceeded to cancel the crucial D-Day air strikes at the last minute, presumably acting on JFK's orders, although the president had personally given his final approval for the operation only hours before.

Cabell and Bissell (Dulles being conveniently out of town) then commenced a series of actions, and non-actions, that only make sense if they were designed to make the operation fail. On two occasions, they inexplicably refused to attempt to obtain presidential authorization for actions that were crucial to success of the operation, and the actions were not taken. On two other occasions, they took virtually the same actions, once with and once without obtaining presidential authorization, but in both of these cases it was too late to save the operation.

When the time came for Kennedy to choose between sending in the Marines and accepting disaster, he chose disaster, much to the surprise, I think, of the CIA leadership. Two and a half years later, when JFK balked again at full-scale commitment to another CIA war, this time in Vietnam, the guns were waiting for him in Dallas.

Another speaker gave what was, I'd say, the first rabble rousing call to arms--passionately delivered by Dr. Carrie Foster, Associate Professor of History at Miami University in Hamilton, Ohio. She began by saying that unlike most in the room, she considered herself not so much a researcher, but more a disseminator if information. Both are surely needed!

She made the point that while the best of history books at least acknowledge that some feel there may have been a conspiracy to assassination JFK, she has yet to find a history book that allows the same for Robert Kennedy or Martin Luther King. She said each of these assassinated men were powerful, charismatic leaders who would have shaken the status quo to its foundations. Disseminators need to look at what followed these deaths, Foster said, and have an obligation to demonstrate that these assassinations fit a pattern of actions designed to preserve an empire.

She went on to talk about how our constitutional system was originally constructed as a system of government of the rich, by the rich, for the rich--"a democracy for the few," as she put it. She pointed out that the Constitution's authors, far from being champions of the people, represented the plutocracy the Constitution was actually designed to protect.

From her abstract:

Americans must come to understand that the basic thrust of their national history, even as colonies of England, has been toward empire, the most powerful extensive empire the world has ever known. And empires rarely serve the interests of the average citizen, whether at home or abroad. Empires are created for the power, profit, and prestige of ruling elites, the American empire being no exception.

And the pattern is clear: from slavery to Shay's Rebellion to the counter revolutionary undemocratic document we refer to as `the' Constitution, to the Mexican, Civil, and Spanish American Wars of the Nineteenth century through the multitudinous and infinitely more destructive wars of the twentieth century, American ruling elites have set their course toward empire. Such a goal has meant second-class citizenship--or worse--for millions of Native Americans, blacks, women, members of the working class, and immigrants from Europe, Latin America, and the Far East.

Creation of an American empire--or, as it became after World War II, global supremacy--has also meant the removal of any and all obstacles perceived by this imperialistic power structure to threaten its objective. First and foremost among such threats has been the persistent demand of ordinary people at home and abroad for genuine democracy. Such audacity cannot be tolerated, of course, so wholesale repression, low-intensity warfare, or full-scale military coercion has been the customary response, always accompanied by a disinformation program both sophisticated and sustained. Nor have disposing of recalcitrant leaders, overthrowing uncooperative governments, and assassination been overlooked as means to the end of the U.S. global hegemony.

It is in this context that we must view the assassinations of JFK, RFK, and MLK, Jr.--three charismatic leaders whose political, economic and social agendas threatened to disrupt the distribution of power and profit they obtained by the 1960's. They shared a vision for the future that was not predicated upon American domination of the world and for these reasons they were dangerous men who had to be "neutralized."

While assassination researchers must continue their probe, those of us who disseminate their findings must do so not just in the context of what followed: a widened war in Vietnam, Watergate, and the scandals of Iran-Contra and the S & L's. We must also demonstrate that the assassinations are consistent with long-established patterns of U.S. history and thus call into question the nature of the American system itself.

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A portion of the COPA conference was devoted to what was termed "Historical Overview." One of the speakers during this section was the affable Bill Turner, former investigator for the FBI and one of Jim Garrison's earliest helpmates during the New Orleans investigation. It was Turner who, in the 1960s, discovered the proximity of the 544 Camp Street and the Lafayette address to Guy Banister's operation.

The title of Turner's talk was "Dangling Lee Harvey Oswald." In his abstract, Turner defined the term:

In intelligence parlance dangling is sending out an operative to pose as an opposition activist to see who is attracted to his cause. During the McCarthy era, for example, the FBI trolled for Red fish. This was the role that Oswald played out on the streets of New Orleans during the critical summer of 1963 as he promoted his rump chapter of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee.

Turner said J.D. Tippit, the Dallas cop slain the same day as JFK, may have been "stalking" Oswald. In support of this Turner cited three attendants at a gas station in Oak Cliff, where Tippit's murder occurred. These witnesses reported seeing Tippit parked there, watching oncoming traffic, then suddenly speeding off in the direction of Oswald's rooming house on North Beckley. Turner seemed convinced it was Tippit who beeped the horn for Oswald at the rooming house, saying in Tippit's car there was a suit hanging in the window, which Earlene Roberts, with her poor eyesight, could easily have mistaken for another officer in the car. He also said that the added 7 she seemed to remember at the end of 10, which would have been Tippit's number, might have been added by Roberts as her friends often showed up in a car with a number that ended in 7. 10+7=107 that she saw. Who knows? Tippit's car was in the area, and three witnesses saw the car waiting for something around the time of Oswald's arrival in the area. Turner went on to say that had Oswald lived, and had it been established that Oswald did in fact shoot Tippit, it may well have been in self defense. Now where have I heard that theory before?

Last in this "Historical Overview" grouping, but not at all least, was James DiEugenio, author of Destiny Betrayed, who spoke of his recent three week investigatory trip to Louisiana. He and several other researchers visited New Orleans, Clinton, Jackson and other areas of interest. Much of what he presented was based on new interviews with people in both Jackson and Clinton.

DiEugenio focused on dispelling what he called the five myths of the "Clinton Incident" from the summer of 1963, when Lee Harvey Oswald, David Ferrie, and a third man were allegedly seen together at a voter registration drive in rural Louisiana.

The myths:

1. That it took place in one day.
2. That it took place only in Clinton.
3. That it was a COINTELPRO activity to infiltrate CORE.
4. That is was Guy Banister with Ferrie and Oswald, not Clay Shaw.
5. That Garrison's six witnesses were all there were.

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Also addressing the COPA Conference was the wonderfully fast speaker Dr. Gary Aguilar. There's nothing I love better than someone who can talk as fast as I can listen, and that's what I found in Aguilar! Determined to cram as much material as possible into his presentation, he flew through what he had. Still, he managed to present quite a convincing argument that JFK's head wound was described by every one of the 42 witnesses at both Bethesda and Parkland hospitals as having been a defect at the rear of the skull. Some of these witnesses indicated that the defect also extended forward. Aguilar quoted not just testimony from the Warren Commission but other testimony over the years, including some from newly released files that also supported this contention.

Quoting from his abstract (all emphasis in the original):

WAS JFK's SKULL DEFECT 13cm OR 17cm?

On the 13 centimeter versus 17centimeter discrepancy, Boswell explained that JFK's skull defect was 17 centimeters long when first examined, but only 13 centimeters after a late-arriving fragment was replaced into the defect. I asked: "On the face sheet--was the 17 centimeters [meant] to reflect the size of the wound before placing fragment of bone that arrived late into the autopsy into the occipital wound, and the 13cm to reflect the size of the wound after the fragment was in place?" He answered, "Right." I followed with, "Was there one large defect in the head from fore to aft, or was [sic] there two?" Boswell answered, "Just one defect." I pushed further, "Does the Rydberg diagram [CE-388] show the bone fragment back in place?" Boswell answered, "Yeah, the--that fragment--the defect--the wound of entrance was at the base of that defect and, eh, the shelving on the inner surface of the bone was half on the intact portion of the skull and half on that fragment that we received from Dallas and replaced."

Boswell's face sheet diagram was prepared on 11/22/63. As it was prepared closer to the event than even the autopsy report, the diagram should be considered at least as reliable. If there was a 17cm continuous skull defect extending to the external occipital protruberance, it seems very unlikely Oswald was responsible.

Gary (it's shorter than typing Aguilar) went on to give more interviews with doctors who said if asked they'd say Kennedy was shot from the front.

One of the highlights of Gary's talk was playing the tape back of the portion of his interview with Boswell where not once but twice Boswell denied ever speaking to Gerald Posner, saying he knew who Posner was, Posner had left him a message but they had never spoken, that Jim [Humes] had spoken to him, but not Boswell.

(By the way--Perry Russo told the DiEugenio bunch in New Orleans he'd never spoken to Posner either, even though Posner cites an "author's interview with Russo" in the notes to his book, Case Closed.)

The significance of the Boswell denial is that Posner went before the Conyers committee and told them that Boswell and Humes placed the wound high, not low. In other words, if Boswell told Gary the truth, Posner lied to congress.

At this point there were questions and answers. I decided to go up and ask the two HSCA people point blank to answer directly the point Aguilar kept hitting on--that 40 people claimed to see the same wound that the autopsy photos did not represent. Purdy had already been squirming and hem-hawing and generally not answering questions, and declined to answer me. Randy started to answer and I politely cut him off (in the interests of time) and said I had not addressed the question to him. Then another man from the HSCA went on with a long rambling answer that kept getting away from the point and three times I had to remind him that the point was why would he accept a piece of evidence so easily tampered with over 40 hard to influence, independent people all making the same observation. When he finally said words to the effect of "Look, a government panel looked into it and what they say is the best we have," I responded "Yeah, and let's have OJ do his own DNA test too." Which brought a howl, applause, and more hem-hawing with no answer. As I went to sit back down I got several thumbs up from people, one of them from Robert Groden, who said "Good question!" There I was, She-Wolf at her tenacious best!

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Thirty Years and Counting will be continued in the next Fair Play.

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