The Assignment of Dr. G. Robert Blakey

The theme of the new book is, "The Mafia Did It". Mae Brussell said on her November 28, l980 tape, "I get outraged that G. Robert Blakey is so desperate, 17 years after the assassination of JFK, that a professor of a law school has to go out of his way to tell outright lies about who killed our president."

The compromise was to have the HSCA investigate only the JFK and King cases, and no linkage of cover up investigations. Thus even at the beginning, the CIA and FBI, together with their supporters in the House, limited the invesigation.

Nevertheless, in late 1976, when the HSCA employed Richard A. Sprague as chief counsel, things began to move in the right direction. He brought in some real professional investigators for both cases. Bob Tanenbaum and Bob Lehner, attorneys placed in charge of the JFK and King invesigations were very competent men. Cliff Fenton and Ed Evans, detectives in charge of the field work on the JFK and King cases were also real pros. Researchers and investigators like Ken Klein, Jackie Hess, Gaeton Fonzi and others were also very good.

I was brought into the HSCA's work in the fall of 1976 by Richard A. Sprague. He asked me to do three things. First, act as consultant on the photographic evidence of the JFK case, working for Bob Tanenbaum and Pat Orr. Second, advising him on who the various researchers were around the country and what contributions they might make. Richard A. fully intended to interview in depth every competent researcher and to use their information in his investigations. Third, to consult with Tanenbaum, Fenton and Ken Klein on the information gathered by the Committee to Investigate Assassinations and by the Garrison investigation.

In my own contributions to their efforts, I made sure that Sprague, Tanenhaum, Fenton and Klein were aware of the assassination planning meetings at Guy Gabaldin' s apartment in Mexico City, the participation in the planning and the execution of the assassination by Shaw, Ferrie Seymourr, Santana, Frenchy and all the rest of the players mentioned in "The Taking of America 1-2-3" and the willingness (at that time) of Hosty, Nagell, Dean, Augustinovich, Novel, and others to testify .

The photographic evidence had been examined at length by Richard A. One day in November 1976, Bob Cutler, Chris Sharrett and I put on an all day presentation of the photographic evidence for the entire staff. Follow up presentations were made in July 1977 shortly before Blakey's arrival to the JFK sub-committee of the HSCA and for various staff people working for the committee members plus invited observers from the House and Senate. Emphasis was placed on the hard, solid evidence of the sixth floor window photographs that prove no one fired any shots from that point on November 22, 1963. All JFK staff people seemed convinced that Oswald fired no shots and was set up as a patsy. They seemed to believe that an inelligence-style conspiracy had existed and that the CIA and FBI may have been involved in the murder, and certainly were involved in the coverup.

For me, the first clues to Blakey's real role and assignment came in July, while Bob Tanenbaum was still on the staff. Bob called me, Jack White, and Bob Groden in for a meeting, explaining that Blakey wanted to meet us and to sign a more formal agreement than we had before. As a matter of fact, I had never had a written contract with Richard A. or Tanenbaum. I had volunteered my consulting help and had never asked to be paid, except for a few out of pocket expenses for photographs. I was living in Washington at that time, working for the President's Commission on Electronic Fund Transfers, so I had no t ravel expenses to Washington. Jack White and Bob Groden, as well as Bob Cutler, Chris Sharrett and other researchers had also no asked for compensation, only expenses.

A second clause prevented the three of us from ever using any information or materials that we might develop or learn or give to the committee in the course of our work for the committee. We had to agree not to publish or to tell anyone anything we discovered or were told unless the HSCA permitted us to use the information. Our problem with this was distinguising beween the information we had already given to the committee and anything we might furnish to them in the future. Also how could we prove that something new resulted from efforts of our own as opposed to work for the HSCA?

Richard A. Sprague took a look at that part of the agreement, which became known as the secrecy agreement, and flatly stated that he never would have permitted anything like that to be inserted in anything that the staff or consultants signed. All of the staff members had to sign the same type of agreement that I signed. Sprague said it was like turning the committee over to the CIA.

In other words, if Cliff Fenton discovered something in the course of his New Orleans invetigation that the CIA found would endanger "National Security" or for any other reason ruled that it could not be releasd, Fenton could never reveal that for the rest of his life without being in danger of being suied by the House of Representatives, and paying the costs of that suit. No wonder Cliff and the other staff members have been so siIent these last three years.

Guess who wrote that areement. It certainly wasn't put together by Bob Tanenbaum or Louis Stokes. It was a CIA document if I ever saw one. Jack White, Bob Groden and I with reluctance. It seemed to us we had no choice, either sign or get out. As it turned out, White and I signed and were, in effect, frozen out anyway. Once I signed that agreement, Blakey never called on me for consulting help, except for one desparation period after the acoustical evidence surfaced in December 1977. I was, in effect, taken off the case, forced out. Jack White was frozen out also, except for his testimony at one of the hearings. He was given exceptionally rough treatment at that hearing and in the subsequent report on photographic evidence. Bob Groden continued as a consultant, but under extremely controlled conditions, which included not talking with other researchers.

I didn't respond right away. I went home, thought it over, and wrote him a letter in which I said following his definition of conspiracy, there was none in the JFK case. What we had there was an intelligence operation. Intellience operations like the Bay of Pigs have been known to invoIve hundreds or thousands of people, and no one ever talks. If they do they are killed. This little insight into Blakey's assignment and his method even today of carrying out his assignment , with his small Mafia conspiracy , should have! alerted all of us to what he was planning.

It was like a supposedly scientifically based rebuttal of Sylvia Meagher's critique of the Warren Commission. It was done well enough to satisfy most members of Congress, the media, and most of the public. Suddenly from Richard A. Sprague's level of investigation of the real murderers and their superiors in the ClA and the FBI, we were back to square one. Dealey Plaza with Oswald the proven lone assassin.

The Cliff Fenton six-man team in New Orleans and Mexico were called in and their report completely suppressed. None of the New Orleans witnesses or participants were ever mentioned again. The Committee found Frenchy but did nothing with that evidence and did not put him under oath.

Harry Dean's story as told years before to Jim Rose and Bill Turner was never mentioned. Harry claimed that Seymour was the second Oswald and that both Oswald and Seymour had attended the meetings in Guy Gabaldin's Mexico City apartment. This was never mentioned. No effort was ever made to talk with Gordon Novel as a witness.

Ronald Augustinovich's involvement and Mary Hope's involvement in the Mexioo City meetings were never mentioncd. Nor was Albert Osborne ever mentioned. None or these people testified.

Gordon Novel's employment by the CIA to destroy the Garrison investigation, and the helms statements in front of Victor Marchetti that the CIA paid Clay Shaw's lawyers and followed Garrison's witnesses around, were suppressed. Helms on the witness stand was cool. They never asked him about his backed up Shaw. They didn't ask him about Harry William's statement that Helms, Hunt, Williams and Lyman Kirkpatrick were together in Washington, D.C. on November 22, 1963, talking about the CIA supporting another invasion of Cuba, without JFK's knowledge. There was nothing about L.M. Bloomfield, Permindex, Shaw & Ferrie's trip to Montreal to see Bloomfield. Nothing about Guy Banister, the meetings in New Orleans, etc.

In other words, a new and complete cover up (some caII it the Final Cover Up), of CIA involvement was instigated by Dr. Blakey in the summer of 1977.

Gaeton Fonzi lets Blakey off a little too lightly, attributing his performance to a personal desire to pin the assassination on the Mafia. I say he had an assignment. the question is, who does he work for? The main clues are the Sprague investigations of the CIA and the FBI that were stopped dead in their tracks, and that insidious secret agreement. Both clues pointto the real culprits in all of what has happened to us since 1963. They are the intelligence community, headed by the CIA and the FBI.

All of those red herrings about Roselli and Trafficante and Giancana and Hoffa and Marcello being involved, have been invented by the PCG and Blakey is their best spokesman now. The current situation can be described as the Power Control Group falling back to their third position. The first was the lone assassin position. The second was the "Castro Did It" position. The third is "The Mafia Did It" position.

The CIA and the Power Control Group prepared these fall back positions long ago. They were not forced into the third one until the lone assassin position fell during the last two months of 1977. Now they need Blakey, Billings, Jack Anderson and others to jump in and pin it on the Mafia. Why not? What can the Mafia do to defend themselves? Most of the people being accused were murdered anyway. The sex part of it with Exner, JFK and Roselli makes for juicy reading with the public. Teddy isn't about to do anything. Reagan has shown where he stands in supporting the cover ups of JFK and RFK, back in 1967 and 68. The Justice Department will do nothing under Reagan.

The Congress is finished. The CIA and Blakey saw to that. The field is wide open to the CIA, Blakey and their lackeys to establish for once and for all that, "The Mafia Did It". No organization or group in America has the power to stop the CIA, Blakey and Co. from doing this. The Congress, the Justice Department, the courts, the media, the executive branch in toto; none of them can combat the power of the CIA. This has been demonstrated over and over again since 1963.

1984 is only three years away now, but it seems closer than it ever could have seemed to George Orwell.

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