During the last three decades, the President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy has been almost always referred to as the Warren Commission. The evidence now available indicates that this was valid in one way. That is, it accurately reflects the fact that President Lyndon Johnson did not initiate the effort to establish the Commission and, based on the available evidence, he had little or nothing to do with its operation.
However, the information now available clearly demonstrates that the commonly used terms "Warren Report" are misleading. These terms are misnomers, and in this particular instance there is great significance in the name. While the use of Warren's name was valid in relation to LBJ's role, its use obscures the actual creators of the Commission and it is deceptive in relation to the identity of those who directed the Commission.
The information and evidence now in the public domain clearly shows that the Commission should have a different name. If the name is to reflect the identity of those who originated the idea for such a commission, hen it should be known as the Rostow Commission, or perhaps the Alsop or Cheson Commission, but not Warren Commission. If the name should reflect the identity ofthose who shaped and directed the Commission, then itprobably should be known as the McCloy Commission, or perhaps the Dulles orRankin Commission, but not Warren Commission.
What the common use of Warren's name does is to conceal from everyday consciousness the real creators and controllers of this Commission. As G. William Domhoff has pointed out in his books Higher Circles (1970) and The Powers That Be (1978), presidential commissions and special government committees are typically dominated by upper-class interests. The purpose of such groups is usually to shape government policy or to manipulate public opinion, or both. In this case, the purpose was to shape and direct an investigation and to control public perception. This Commission would attempt to cover up one of the most important crimes that can be committed---the assassination of a political leader whose values and actions express the real interests of the nation and the majority of people in the world.
It is now obvious that the creators and controllers of the Commission represented what has been referred to variously as the Higher Circles, Wall Street, the East Coast Establishment, the Anglo-American Establishment, or finance capital. The cover-up team included members from different levels of that group, namely Eugene Rostow, Joseph Alsop, Dean Acheson, Dean Rusk, Allen Dulles, and John J. McCloy. Also, at a lower level, there were establishment operatives suich as Nicholas Katzenbach, Alan Belmont of the FBI, and Leon Jaworski.
These men and others constituted the Secret Team, or the Power Elite in a project that was of the utmost importance, the control of post-assassination events. If we treat the cover-up as seriously as Harold Weisberg treated the Warren Report itself, we will have to conclude that in this cover-up there is no sign of mafioso, Cubans (right or left), communists, or middle-class right-wingers. The cover-up is also not the work of any single organization. It was an effort which required the activation of a network of people from Texas and Washington, DC, and from the upper levels of organizations ranging from the FBI, CIA, and the military to most of the nation's media. There is only one force in this country that is capable of doing that; it is the organized, wealthy, and highly integrated networks of people who constitute the Higher Circles. That is also where the evidence leads.
If the JFK assassination had been investigated as a normal homicide, the possibility of it being a contract killing would have been considered, and the victim's last business transaction would have been considered a clue.
The last thing JFK did before leaving the White House for Dallas was to receive a report from William Attwood on his unofficial talks with the Cuban ambassador to the UN, Carlos Lechuga. They were exploring the possibilities of a detente, a ceasing of hostitlities and a reopening of diplomatic relations and economic cooperation between Cuba and the United States.
Attwood and Lechuga had met and talked privately for the first time at a party at the New York apartment of NBC TV journalist Lisa Howard, who had made a name for herself by interviewing JFK, Castro, and Kruschev. Lechuga reported back to Castro while Attwood reported back to McGeorge Bundy and JFK. Attwood and JFK were prep school mates.
Attwood had been an editor for Henry Luce at Newsweek before JFK appointed him ambassador to Guiana, and then as an assistant ambassador at the UN. While they were in school together, Attwood introduced JFK to Mary Pinochet, who married Cord Meyer, the founder of the World Federalists (WF), an organization that supported a strong UN. WF founder Cord Meyer went on to become a CIA officer, assistant to Tom Braden and director of the International Organizations Division, while his ex-wife Mary maintained her close personal relationship with JFK until he was murdered.
Other World Federalists included aspiring Russian scholar Priscilla Johnson (McMillan), Ruth Hyde Paine and her mother-in-law, Ruth Forbes Young, Michael Paine's mother, who married Arthur Young, the inventor of the Bell Helicopter. Ruth Forbes Young organized the World Federalists' annual dinner convention in Philadelphia, and helped establish the International Peace Academy at the UN, which attempted to bring together UN officials on an unofficial basis. One such liaison was the meetings between Attwood and Lechuga, which had to be secret for three reasons:
As the investigation into the assassination proceeded into the last week of November, 1963, some startling revelations were discovered and covered up until the documents were released. Among the most highly classified reports from the Mexico City CIA station are details of a sexual liaison between Lechuga, the Cuban ambassador to the UN, and Sylvia Duran, the Mexican national who Lee Harvey Oswald met at the Cuban Embassy in Mexico. Whoever sent Oswald to Mexico City to meet Sylvia Duran also directed the covert operation that led to the President's death. Besides the Lechuga-Duran-Oswald connection, Oswald and Duran were the targets of a post-assassination effort to link Oswald sexually with Duran, an attempt to link the Cubansto the assassination.
Most researchers in the JFK assassination community know that by studying the official documentation available, little gems can sometimes be found. Once in a while, these little gems help provide clues to comprehending seemingly meaningless "details" in the puzzle of the JFK assassination.
It is to one of those "details," "minutia," or "unexplained incongruities" in New Orleans that I now turn toand hopefully, provide some understanding for one piece of the puzzle. The problem is, every time you understand one piece of the puzzle, many more questions surface regarding the validity of the assumptions of the Warren Report and defenders of the "official version."
One such "detail" can be found in the official documents and reports on the so-called Bolton Ford Dealership episode. The little "gem" is located in Volume X of the HSCA Volumes: it is the name of Gerard Tujague. Remember this name.
As most students of the assassination know, a salesman named Oscar Deslatte of the Bolton Ford Dealership, New Orleans, was visited by men who claimed to represent a group caled FRIENDS OF DEMOCRATIC CUBA, on January 20, 1961. These men wanted to buy ten trucks from Mr. Deslante, and one of the men who did most of the talking identified himself as Joseph Moore. Moore said that he thought they should get the trucks for "no profit" for his organiation. Mr. Deslatte told the FBI later that Moore did notspecify whether the trucks would be used here in the United States or in Cuba. When Mr. Deslatte checked with his manager, Fred Sewell, it was decided to give the gentlemen a break on the price, and reduce the profit margin from $75 per truck to $50 per truck.
As Deslatte was filling out the order for ten trucks, he wrote in Joseph Moore's name as the buyer representing FRIENDS OF DEMOCRATIC CUBA. Seeing this, Moore told Deslatte to change the name on the bid from "Moore" to "Oswald."
It was at this point that the second gentleman spoke up and said that "Oswald" was "his name and it should go on the form as he was the man with the money and would pay for the trucks, if they were purchased."
The real Oswald, in January 1961, was of course in the Soviet Union, so the question is, whh were these people representing the FRIENDS OF DEMOCRATIC CUBA impersonating Oswald in January 1961? Who were the FRIENDS OF DEMOCRATIC CUBA?
Had the FBI sought this answer after the assassination by locating the Articles of Incorporation of the FRIENDS OF DEMOCRATIC CUBA (found in the New Orleans Court House where all public filings are located and available to the public), they would have discovered two things:
At any rate, the FBI didn't seem very interested in Deslatte's tale, especially since Deslatte could not identify a photograph of Lee Harvey Oswald they showed him on 1/25/63 [sic], nor was he able to give a good description of either man to them. He told them that the reason he remembered the incident was because of the name of the organization represented, not the name "Oswald." Deslatte called the FBI after the President was assassianted and after conferring with manager Fred Sewell about "those guys who was in here from Cuba trying to get some buses cheap."
Of course, it makes perfect sense that Deslatte didn't think the photograph of Oswald was either "Joseph Moore" or the other man who said he was "Oswald," because the real Oswald wsa not in New Orleans in 1961.
Whoever identified himself as "Oswald" was not the real Oswald and even though Deslatte thought enough of the incident to contact the FBI after the assassination, they either dismissed or ignored the incident as it is not to be found in the Warren Report at all.
But the evidence was that an organization recently formed by ex-FBI Guy Banister, rabid anti-Communist, was trying to surreptitiously purchase ten trucks---probably in preparation for the Bay of Pigs invasion---and was also using the name and impersonating a defector named "Oswald." But where did Banister's new organization get the name "Oswald"?
The question is why? Why would a staunch anti-Communist and ex-FBI man like Guy Banister and an anti-Communist group like FDC impersonate Oswald?
Record Number: 180100761 0242, Agency File Number: 009039, ARTICLE IV specifies that: "The president, vice president and secretary-treasurer shall [be?] elected annually by the Board of Directors, and shall serve for terms of one year each or until their successors are duly elected and qualified," thus, Tujague serving at the pleasure of Baniser who was a Director, probably advised and discussed with Banister the use of Oswald's name in the truck transaction.
Although the HSCA concluded that there were no outside pressures on the pathologists forcing them to restrict their autopsy, material only recently available has given renewed strength to this idea---and implicated Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara as their source.
In 1965, Finck asserted that an officer who out-ranked him had denied him access to the President's clothes and overruled his request to call the autopsy "incomplete." An acquaintence of Dr. Humes at CBS alleged Humes told him he had orders from someone he refused to disclose---other than stating it was Robert Kennedy---to do a complete autopsy. Thus the autopsy [report] did not go into JFK's kidney disease, etc.
As "JFK's kidney disease" is, in all likelihood, a layman's reference to Kennedy's adrenal insufficiency, we can speculate that the person who denied Finck access to the clothing and overruled his request to call the autopsy "incomplete," also caused the adrenal (*) condition to be omitted from the autopsy report.
An HSCA staff memo on an interview with Boswell states that these glands were omitted because of a "request" by Adm. Burkley to "informally" report on them. The actions of the doctors in later years indicate that this "request" was more alolng the lines of an order.
However, the same interview makes it clear that Burkley was just a puppet.
He indicated that DR. BURKLEY [sic] was basically supervising everything that went on inside the autopsy room and that the commanding officer was also responding to BURKLEY's [sic] wishes. He indicated that ROBERT MCNAMARA [sic] seemed to have acted as liaison between the family and DR. BURKLEY [sic] and that MCNAMARA [sic] kept his head throughout. He implied that MCNAMARA [sic] was never actually in the autopsy room but was working outof the room where the family was staying.
But, the language of the CBS memo raises the ugly specter (pun intended) that McNamara was not acting with the knowledge oor blessing of the Kennedy family. Regardless, if McNamara was behind these restrictions, it would explain why not one of the three has ever commented upon the President's adrenal condition. When asked about them by the HSCA, Humes replied:
"I'd only comment for you that I have strong personal reasons and certain other obligations that suggest to me that it might not be preferable." [Emphasis added.]
He handled the topic much the same with The Journal ofthe American Medical Association in 1992, telling them he was "not prepared to answer." And, Dr. Finck was even more resolute:
"Don't even ask. There were no wounds of the abdomen; the adrenal glands have nothing to do with the wounds and the assassination of the President."
Dr. Boswell has never been asked about the adrenals, nor has he ever volunteered information on them. The behemence in refusing comment is exemplified by their willingness to allow the HSCA to publicly criticize them for the omission rather than to reveal the information.
(*)The adrenal glands sit at the top of each kidney.
* * *