"Telling Truth From Disinformation"

"Telling Truth From Disinformation" is the subtitle given to some introductory remarks in the book, The MK/ULTRA Secret: An Account of CIA Deception by Frank Camper, Victoria Lynn Scott, ed. (Savannah, GA: Christopher Scott Publishing, Ltd., 1996). It is an appropriate subtitle inasmuch as it is what the reader will be attempting to do throughout the book's 384 pages. The main title, as given verbatim above from the book's dust jacket and cloth cover, has a double meaning, which is also appropriate to this work of "non-fiction." Camper is the author of the "account." Is he also the author of "CIA Deception"?

MK/ULTRA, for those unfamiliar with the subject, is the CIA codename for secret mind control projects, including the creation of programmed assassins, conducted by the U.S. government since the second world war. Beginning students of MK/ULTRA and the JFK assassination can get a brief, scary lesson by viewing Patrick Stewart's monologue approximately ninety minutes into the 1997 Warner Brothers film, Conspiracy Theory. Intermediate students can get a longer, scary lesson by reading Foreign and Military Intelligence, Book 1, Final Report of the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, United States Senate, (Washington DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1976), pp. i-447. Advanced students can get a brief, scary lesson by learning the identity of Warner Brothers' senior vice president for production. No student of MK/ULTRA or the JFK assassination will get much of a lesson from reading Frank Camper's book.

The stated purpose of Camper's book is to reveal that "Lee Harvey Oswald was the MK/ULTRA Secret, and he didn't even know it." Which begs the question: What, then, is Frank Camper? Frank Camper is an elite covert operative of the first class, according to the book's dust jacket. He reportedly served with the Special Operations Group in Vietnam, penetrated terrorist groups in his deep-cover work around the world, and personally prevented the assassination of Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1985, while Gandhi was in the U.S. on a diplomatic mission.

Evidently, those are just the highlights of a career in espionage and intelligence which is further detailed in his July 1988 Senate Foreign Relations Committee testimony, over a thousand pages of documents released by the CIA, Army Intelligence and other agencies, and presumably fictionalized in his Mindbenders and The MK/ULTRA Secret novels. If you prefer to wait for "Frank Camper: The Movie," his life story, so he tells us, has been optioned for a feature length film. While we await that premier, perhaps Camper will appear on TV again on the Today Show, Larry King Live or 60 Minutes. If we are really lucky, maybe he will tell us about his fellow government spies who have worked undercover at NBC, CNN and CBS in an "OP/MOCKINGBIRD" effort to spread disinformation.

Which brings me to my first point. Only a fool would trust Frank Camper to publicly tell the truth about any subject, never mind MK/ULTRA or the JFK assassination. Camper tells us that "Under the influence of MK/ULTRA, the CIA turned friendly and enemy agents, politicians and business leaders to its own purposes." He adds that "Telling lies and keeping secrets is the business of intelligence and espionage agencies...Espionage professionals keep secrets to protect their country or just to protect their careers." Not to mention their lives. Nonetheless, blind trust in Frank Camper's honesty is exactly what this book requires of its readers.

Digging this hole deeper, Camper writes that "the main secrets of the JFK assassination - who plotted and pulled the trigger - have withstood the assault of many good independent researchers" because "They were not clandestine or covert operations specialists..."

Huh? Have I missed something?

Is it now the official history of this country that JFK was killed by conspirators? The fundamental definition of the crime is still the main official secret of the JFK assassination. That secrecy is what has prevented an all out search for "who plotted and pulled the trigger." Don't get me wrong. That official "secret" is also an official myth. The three biggest official myths of the JFK assassination conspiracy are (1) that it has gone undiscovered, (2) that it has gone undiscovered because nobody talked, and (3) that nobody talked because there were so few conspirators. All three premises constitute a house of cards.

And in light of his view that researchers who are not covert operations specialists should step aside, I would really like to hear Camper's explanation for why L. Fletcher Prouty, Chief of Special Operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, author of the books The Secret Team and JFK: The CIA, Vietnam and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy, and consultant to the film JFK (in which the character "X" is based on Prouty), has not cracked "the main secrets of the JFK assassination." Perhaps it is because, by definition of both, "clandestine or covert operations specialists" and "good independent researchers" of the JFK assassination are mutually exclusive. Of course, not being a good independent researcher would quickly rule Camper out as the true solver of this crime.

Camper's claim that covert operation specialists can better understand the JFK assassination strikes me as similar elitist nonsense as the "jet-effect" theory (a belief that Kennedy's head was thrust back toward the shooter when struck from behind because of alleged forward jet propulsion from an alleged forward exit wound). The intended subliminal message of the jet-effect theory is: "It takes a rocket scientist to understand that Oswald acted alone, and since you're not a rocket scientist, just take one's word for it."

My coauthor, Walter F. Graf, and I gave examples in our article, "The Gun That Didn't Smoke" (see this issue of Fair Play), of how the reality of this case is a war between good independent researchers and covert operations specialists:

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Thomas Powers made two observations which students of John F. Kennedy's assassination have been slow to learn: 1) "...espionage, properly conducted, never announces itself. 'Stolen' information remains in its accustomed place; the 'spy' is a trusted civil servant; the spymaster betrays no sign of special knowledge; even the consumer of the purloined fact may not know whence it came." 2) "...worst of all is when an enemy gains control of your secret apparatus and begins to feed you information of his own choice. Outsiders do not quite believe in such things, but they happen." Perhaps the most difficult aspect of the conspiracy for investigators of JFK's assassination to accept is the fact that some of our most trusted sources have been used to keep us confused about the actual conspiracy.

Philadelphia attorney Vincent J. Salandria, one of the earliest critics of the Warren Commission, wrote in 1971: "I have long believed that the killers actually preempted the assassination criticism by supplying the information they wanted revealed and also by supplying the critics whom they wanted to disclose the data. Does it not make sense that if they could perpetrate a coup and could control the press, they would have endeavored to dominate likewise the assassination criticism?"

Camper continues: "Despite the majority of witnesses and evidence on their side, the time and energy of most conservative JFK assassination researchers has been expended in disputing the Warren Commission, simply making a case that there was a conspiracy..."

Huh?? Again, the issue of conspiracy is the main thing. Unless the definition of the crime as a conspiracy is officially accepted, there are officially no multiple plotters or trigger pullers. Name all the names you want. They will never be entered into the official case history of this crime without an admission of conspiracy. And unless someone plans to make a citizen's arrest and extract believable confessions from the conspirators, the official investigation has to become a conspiracy investigation.

Camper continues further: "...focusing on the timing and number of shots fired, and from where they came...Many conclude that, a massive ongoing government conspiracy has so far managed to keep the details from the world...The more probable truth is almost as bizarre."

Huh??? Ask former Warren Commissioner Gerald Ford, or former Warren Commission counsels David Belin and Arlen Specter to explain their denial of the conspiracy, and see if they do not focus on the timing and number of shots fired, and from where they came. Therein lies the entire case.

There are actually several conflicting single bullet theories, a good reason, among many, to reject them. They are all based on a belief that one bullet caused seven wounds in two men despite its timing, flight path, points of entry and exit, and resulting condition. Rejecting them means there was more than one shooter. It also means there are problems with the ballistics evidence. The FBI controlled and based its conclusions on that ballistics evidence.

The FBI denies the conspiracy. Yet, while it conducts ongoing investigations of the assassination, it fails to pursue the all-important matter of removing crucial ballistics evidence from the right wrist of the cadaver of John B. Connally. If that is not a massive, ongoing government conspiracy keeping details from the world, what is? ("As late as 1975 and 1976, the Federal Bureau of Investigation was pursuing the possibility of a connection between Lee Harvey Oswald and a Tulane University sociology professor, Leonard Reissman." [Jerry D. Rose, "In Pursuit of Leonard Reissman," The Fourth Decade, May 1997, pp. 8-11.])

Camper's notion, that there is a "more probable truth" that "is almost as bizarre," is more bizarre than the conspiracy itself - unless Camper is rationalizing an excuse for publishing yet another book that is not about the solution to this crime, as he appears to be.

But wait, there is more. For thirty years, Camper tells us, "earnest men and women peeled back layers of fabrications of evidence and omissions of fact, only to find more beneath, leaving a legacy of footnoted books and articles," which "simply" prove "a massive ongoing government conspiracy" based, at minimum, on proof of planted and suppressed ballistics evidence.

Does friendly government secret agent Frank Camper concern himself with what that evidence proves or disproves? No. Frank Camper has found a better use for his time and energy. He has allegedly avoided coming under the influence of CIA mind control, wittingly or not, to find a "more probable truth."

Camper promises us "a clear picture of the assassination...with names, dates, means, and motives." And to further show off his investigative talents, unburdened by the "weakness" of the point of view of "scholars, lawyers and journalists" (not to mention the medical professionals whom he forgets), Camper presents his clear, more probable, picture and explains "how each finding and conclusion was reached," without any of those pesky footnotes, and without one of those time and energy-wasting indexes.

Novelist Camper has even thrown in admittedly undocumented, fictional dialog between the assassination conspirators. He says this dialog is "drawn from my own personal experience," whatever that means.

I should mention here that this book's jacket also claims that "The MK/ULTRA Secret will be released as a major motion picture in 1997." That seems to explain why Camper chose to make his book read like the novelization of an action picture. Also, it is October as I write this. If a 1997 release is going to happen, there should already be a trailer for it playing in theaters. I have not seen one, unless this book was the secret basis for Warner Brothers' Conspiracy Theory.

Now that I have let off that steam, I will get off Camper's case for a moment (but only a moment). After all, I disagree with Scott Van Wynsberghe's assessment that we should shoot every dog that has four or more fleas, figuratively speaking ("Chauncey Holt and Problematic Sources," The Fourth Decade, vol. 4, no. 3, March 1997, pp. 19-23).

I propose that we instead become smart enough to recognize the fleas and get rid of them. In fact, I believe that the most problematic sources are those like Van Wynsberghe, who resort to a variation on McCarthyism to stifle debate. If I have learned anything as a researcher, it is that when it comes to the subject of the JFK assassination, we cannot be choosy about where we find the truth. The truth - like the gold Camper tells us Rip Robertson was panning in Nicaragua - is where you find it, whether in The National Enquirer, The New York Times, or on the hypocritically maligned World Wide Web.

So, what new truths or at least verifiable leads has Camper given us in his book? First let's dispense with some old "truths." It is always a warning of wasted effort when anyone begins an explanation of the JFK assassination conspiracy by establishing motives. Conspiracy investigation is about establishing connections, not motives, since, by definition, conspiracies involve multiple motives. Motives, or the lack thereof, can be used to rationalize just about anything.

Camper prepares his motive rationale by rehashing the Bay of Pigs invasion. On this subject, as with all the rest, he breaks his promise to reveal "how each finding and conclusion was reached." We can be fairly certain, however, that Camper did not bother to read Michael D. Morrissey's 1993 article, "The Bay of Pigs Revisited" (The Fourth Decade, January, 1994, pp. 19-27.

Camper pretends that CIA Deputy Director Richard Bissell reduced the number of planes from sixteen to six based solely on Kennedy's use of the word "minimal" regarding the number of air strikes. Even if that were true, "minimal" means the minimum or least required. Yet Camper has "CIA headquarters," not Kennedy, saying no to more pre-invasion air strikes, based again on Kennedy's word "minimal," when the CIA air operations director requests them after reporting too few of Castro's planes destroyed and damaged.

Camper does not even address the fact that the Joint Chiefs and Bissell were against the air strikes that took place two days before D-Day at the Bay of Pigs (D-2). According to CIA Director Allen Dulles, the D-2 strikes were a "plot" by the CIA and National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy to make it appear that Cuban pilots defected and provided the invasion's air support. Morrissey wonders "whom this 'plot' was intended to deceive," since Dulles admitted "that the attempt to make the whole operation look 'plausibly deniable' was hopeless." In the same vein, although he otherwise details the incident, Camper does not mention that on D-2, when the lone pilot posing as a Cuban defector landed a fake Cuban B-26 bomber in Florida, reporters instantly saw through the ruse.

Camper also writes, "Through it all, even with repeated requests from CIA through Secretary of State Dean Rusk to President Kennedy, JFK was firm. No air strikes." This statement is the opposite of the truth. As Morrissey says, "This is patently absurd, since the one thing we know for sure is that Kennedy gave final and formal approval of the D-Day strikes at noon on Sunday, April 16 [D-1]. What happened after that is cloudy, but again the mythology is that Kennedy changed his mind late Sunday evening. There is no clear evidence of this...."

Camper may be relying on some popular sources for this story about CIA requests being relayed to Kennedy through Rusk. It is told in Peter Wyden's Bay of Pigs: The Untold Story (Jonathan Cape, 1979), and repeated in John Ranelagh's The Agency: The Rise and Decline of the CIA (Touchstone, 1986). But because Camper never made good his promise to reveal "how each finding and conclusion was reached," we can only guess. Morrissey says that in the story of this 11:15 p.m. request-relay, originating in the testimony of an unidentified CIA source whom Morrissey thinks is Tracy Barnes, "the impression is given that Rusk was relaying an order the President had just given to him on the telephone, although the actual order had come from McGeorge Bundy at 9:30 p.m."

Camper writes: "The situation on the ground was recognized as being so bad that Deputy Director Bissell authorized American CIA pilots to fly combat missions...He did not tell Kennedy." (p. 35) A page later he writes, "In sheer desperation, CIA Deputy Director Bissell cleared a close air reconnaissance by US Navy jets with JFK. Bissell ordered planes to mark targets for following US military aircraft. He hoped the President would then agree to let the strike go forward...Somewhere between the time the recon jets were in flight [0600, D+2] and the strike was to be launched off the Essex, Kennedy refused to let it go."

Morrissey's analysis reveals the absurdity of Camper's scenario:

1) The crucial D-Day dawn strikes are canceled, supposedly by the President, without the CIA attempting to consult the President directly.

2) The same strikes are made D-Day evening, when it is too late, without consulting the President.

3) The crucial D+2 ammunition resupply convoy is stopped, without consulting the President.

4) The resupply is attempted by air on D+2, when it is too late, this time consulting the President.

We must remember that this was a major U.S. military operation, albeit a covert one, and that the President had responsibility not only as commander-in-chief of the armed forces but more directly as the superior - in fact the only superior - of the CIA. The regular military has the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Secretary of Defense to contend with, but the only person the CIA is accountable to in a covert operation is the President - not to Secretaries of Defense or State. Cabell and Bissell were well aware of this when they were told by Bundy to discuss the matter further with Rusk. Yet we are asked to believe that they were too timid to talk with Kennedy on the two most critical points of this operation (1 and 3 above), while they were bold enough to act on their own (2) or talk with him (4) immediately after those critical points had passed.

In his retelling of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Camper gives it the decided spin that Kennedy's decisions were more political partisanship than brinkmanship. He writes, "The public did not realize that had he been as bold in April 1961 (when the stakes were far lower) as he sounded on television that fateful October 1962 night, there would have been no Castro to accept Soviet missiles, no nuclear crisis." (p. 44)

Camper goes so far as to suggest that Kennedy's resolution of the crisis was motivated solely by a fear of being impeached. In his zeal to establish a conspiratorial motive before he has established a conspiratorial crime, Camper concludes that JFK deserved what he got: "He had to learn there were some men [Bay of Pigs veterans] you do not doublecross." (p. 47)

At one point, Camper writes, "With all due respect for Posner's extensive research and hard work in writing CASE CLOSED, his kinder-gentler KGB facade is not realistic." (p. 90) Extensive research? Hard work? Has Camper read that book?!

Throughout, Camper has CIA agents David Atlee Phillips and David Morales doing the main planning. Phillips and Morales were extensively researched and written about, and their likely planning roles were detailed, in Gaeton Fonzi's book, The Last Investigation (New York: Thunder's Mouth Press, 1993). You would not know about that source from reading Camper's book, however. During the assassination, according to Camper, Morales was sitting in a "parked car on Houston, near the corner of Main, across the street from the old Court House, radios on, but squelched down." (p. 12) Camper's proof? None cited. Credit given to Fonzi or other researchers? None. Although, if you survive to page 189 (and I did only because I promised to write this review), Camper finally admits that Fonzi "is responsible for most of what we know today about David Atlee Phillips."

Camper writes parenthetically on page 107: "(To be fair to Phillips and Morales...it must be clear to the reader that while the conclusion of this book is that they were central to the assassination, there is certainly not enough hard evidence to have convicted them in a court of law. Even though some of the phrases in this book seem to indict them with certainty, do keep in mind it is in the spirit of making a case.)" So much for Camper's promise of "a clear picture of the assassination...with names, dates, means, and motives."

Elsewhere, Camper fails to qualify provably false statements. Camper asks, "What of the doctor's observations at Parkland that the exit wound was to the right rear of the President's head, not the right side?" (p. 278) Answer: "The doctors at Parkland didn't have the time to probe the head wound...none of them had an opportunity to clinically examine the head wound." This claim has been debunked so many times in the last three decades, it is folly for Camper to restate it.

But Camper digs this hole deeper too. "Because JFK was on his back," writes Camper (p. 301), "it gave the impression the exit hole was more rearward than it was." The best and clearest debunking of Camper's gravitational theory comes from the November 22, 1963, statement written at "1630" hours by chief anesthesiologist Marion T. Jenkins: "With the institution of adequate cardiac compression, there was a great flow of blood from the cranial cavity, indicating that there was much vascular damage as well as brain tissue damage." (Warren Report, p. 530) All of the doctors witnessing this "great flow of blood from the cranial cavity" knew the location and nature of the head wound.

Camper's belief that the wound was somehow disguised because "the scalp retained the largest of the skull shards and they were laying back over the wound," (p. 301) is therefore nonsense. Since this was a fantasy also alleged in the conspiracy deniers bible, Case Closed, we can at least begin to understand Camper's "respect" for Gerald Posner's "extensive research and hard work..."

Camper goes on like this on almost every page. Dismantling each cleverly, and not so cleverly, phrased falsehood is beyond the scope of this review. Here and there, Camper identifies a meeting, or a memo, published testimony or a book. He even retypes the Oswald interrogation reports of the FBI, Secret Service and U.S. Postal Inspector. But he reproduces no MK/ULTRA documents. And he gives no specific references that would allow readers to easily test his use of the data. This failure by Camper to prove his claims and cite his sources is especially frustrating whenever he says something that rings true.

I am particularly qualified to address one specific example of a verified, or at least verifiable, revelation in The MK/ULTRA Secret. Camper's treatment of this bit of evidence, including his grammar, logic, research and sources, is a microcosm of his entire book.

In discussing the assassins' preparations on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository, Camper writes (p. 250): "Overlooked in the tension was that when the second round [the last of only two, according to Camper] was chambered, the magazine clip would eject." Camper claims (p. 252) that after the shots were fired from the sixth floor, "The spotter dropped two pieces of 6.5 brass as the sniper picked up his two spend 7.35 casings, and in his haste. the 6.5's ejected cartridge clip." (Spelling and punctuation errors are Camper's.)

Camper continues (p. 261): "Day lifted the Carcano out by the leather guitar strap Oswald had attached to it as a sling, then Captain Fritz pulled the bolt back, jacking a live cartridge out of the chamber. The internal magazine was empty. There is no mention about the 5-round stripper clip [sic - actually it's a 6-round clip], which should have fallen out of the magazine well when the last round was chambered. The clip should have been near the empty brass. The absence of the clip alone proves the 6.5 had not been used in a normal manner."

Camper's factual error and unsupported embellishments aside, it is true that no ammunition clip was found at the sixth floor crime scene. It is also true that the clip's absence was the result of a horrendous mistake on the part of the rifle's planters. That mistake alone proves the conspiracy and coverup. Camper is to be credited for realizing this important fact. Unfortunately, Camper gives absolutely no proof, or analysis of this amazing truth. For that, the reader will have to read Walter Graf's and my article mentioned earlier in this review.

Camper then writes (pp. 261-62): "Weitzman and officer Luke Mooney thought the Carcano was a Mauser." That statement is revealing. In our article on the gun, Walter Graf and I wrote: "He [Posner] informs us that Mooney and Weitzman (actually, it was Boone and Weitzman) thought at first glance that the rifle was a 7.65 bolt-action Mauser." (Case Closed, p. 271)

Throughout Camper's book, there is a haunting feeling that he is merely paraphrasing the basic facts and chronology from Ponser's book. In this instance, Camper makes an identical mistake as Posner. Remember, it was Camper who criticized: "...the time and energy of most conservative JFK assassination researchers has been expended in disputing the Warren Commission..." Camper does not even take the minimal time and energy to dispute basic facts from Posner!

Camper then perpetuates the myth that the Carcano can easily be confused for a Mauser (p. 262). He says, "Only at days end was the rifle being identified as a 6.5mm Carcano." He attributes the misidentification to the "more prosaic truth" of human error.

First, at days end, 12 full hours into the investigation, the Carcano was still being officially identified to the press as a Mauser at a press conference by Dallas District Attorney Henry Wade, who swore he got his information only from the police. All day long, when asked by the press, "...the police reported....a Mauser 7.65 rather than a Mannlicher-Carcano 6.5..." (Warren Report, p. 235). The weapon was not correctly identified to the public until 24 hours after the assassination when Police Chief Jesse Curry angered Wade and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover by publicizing the FBI's lab report giving the gun's correct identity. Wade and Hoover evidently preferred that the public know only the official, false, Mauser identification (see Graf/Bartholomew article).

Second, Mausers are not clip fed. No competent police identification expert in the world could honestly mistake a clip-fed rifle for a non-clip-fed rifle for 24 hours. And at the time of the assassination, 50-year-old Lieutenant John Carl Day, a 23-year police veteran, had been head of the Dallas identification bureau for seven years. The implications of these facts are thoroughly analyzed by Mr. Graf and me in our article on the gun. You be the judge of whose thinking is more prosaic, ours or Camper's.

Nonetheless, Camper's clip revelation brings much needed hope that other parts of his story may be true, although many parts of his story are provably false. One other intriguing, but frustratingly unsupported, revelation by Camper may prove to be of value in the aftermath of Princess Diana's death. Camper lists the favorite assassination techniques of various foreign governments (p. 115). A full year before the death of the Princess of Wales in a strange car accident, he describes the British MI6 as "ingenious at arranging fatal accidents..."

Camper concludes his book saying (p. 384), "In the end, from the conspirators point of view, the assassination was a success. President Kennedy paid with his life for betraying the anti-Castro Cubans, and for causing chaos in Vietnam by allowing the assassination of Diem." Sorry Frank, according to the evidence, that ain't the way it happened.

He adds, "The CIA won, too. It managed to keep MK/ULTRA a secret even through the confusion of the assassination. The loser was America." Camper never says whether he thinks he is on the side of the "winners" or the "losers." One clue might be what he says earlier (p. 306): "If JFK's killers must go free to protect MK/ULTRA, so be it. The truth could not be told. No one man, President [sic] or not, was more important than the security of the nation." Thanks Frank, I feel much more secure. What does that make our secure nation --- a military state?

Unlike Camper, I think the war between good independent researchers and covert operations specialists is still on. And I think conspiracy realists like me are winning against conspiracy deniers like Posner and posthumous character assassins of John F. Kennedy like Camper. Why else would desperately false books like theirs be necessary?

Finally, the book's editor, Victoria Lynn Scott (any relation to publisher unknown), has a highly visible credit on the book's title page. Ms. Scott's willingness to put her name on this work is admirable, considering the book's poor editing. Ms. Scott's honesty in sacrificing her editorial reputation, along with the usefulness of this book as an exercise in telling truth from disinformation, are its only admirable qualities.

I advise readers to wait for the movie. Perhaps it will be distributed by Warner Brothers.

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