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Author Topic: That "whole Bay of Pigs thing"  (Read 5143 times)

Offline Colin Crow

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Re: That "whole Bay of Pigs thing"
« Reply #8 on: May 07, 2019, 07:55:32 AM »
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"As Vice President, Nixon had chaired Special Group 54-12 that coordinated the actions of the CIA and military intelligence during the latter years of the Eisenhower Administration (Groden & Livingstone, I990, p  316). The Special Group or Committee was established by President Eisenhower to serve as a watchdog by monitoring all covert activities. The 54-12 Committee or Special Group included the Director of the CIA, the President's special assistant for national security. the Deputy Secretary of Defense, the Deputy Undersecretary of State, and by 1957, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs (Roberts, I994, p. 97). Nixon was directly involved in the initial planning ofthe Bay of Pigs invasion."

RENDEZVOUS WITH DEATH: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, By H. R. Underwood

I can't find any "official" references to the statement that Nixon chaired the Special Group however I did find this which tends to contradict that notion.

"President Eisenhower had great confidence in the efficacy of covert operations as a viable supplement or alternative to normal foreign policy activities. The seeming clear success of the operations to overthrow Iranian populist leader Mossadegeh in 1953 and the left-leaning President Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954 was not without their crisis moments in the White House. In 1954 NSC 5412 provided for the establishment of a panel of designated representatives of the President and the Secretaries of State and Defense to meet regularly to review and recommend covert operations. Gordon Gray assumed the chairmanship of the "5412 Committee" as it was called, and all succeeding National Security Advisers have chaired similar successor committees, variously named "303", "40", "Special Coordinating Committee," which, in later Presidential administrations, were charged with the review of CIA covert operations."

https://fas.org/irp/offdocs/NSChistory.htm#Eisenhower
« Last Edit: May 07, 2019, 08:01:04 AM by Colin Crow »

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Re: That "whole Bay of Pigs thing"
« Reply #8 on: May 07, 2019, 07:55:32 AM »


Offline Tom Scully

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Re: That "whole Bay of Pigs thing"
« Reply #9 on: May 07, 2019, 09:42:04 AM »
"As Vice President, Nixon had chaired Special Group 54-12 that coordinated the actions of the CIA and military intelligence during the latter years of the Eisenhower Administration (Groden & Livingstone, I990, p  316). The Special Group or Committee was established by President Eisenhower to serve as a watchdog by monitoring all covert activities. The 54-12 Committee or Special Group included the Director of the CIA, the President's special assistant for national security. the Deputy Secretary of Defense, the Deputy Undersecretary of State, and by 1957, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs (Roberts, I994, p. 97). Nixon was directly involved in the initial planning ofthe Bay of Pigs invasion."

RENDEZVOUS WITH DEATH: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, By H. R. Underwood

I can't find any "official" references to the statement that Nixon chaired the Special Group however I did find this which tends to contradict that notion.

"President Eisenhower had great confidence in the efficacy of covert operations as a viable supplement or alternative to normal foreign policy activities. The seeming clear success of the operations to overthrow Iranian populist leader Mossadegeh in 1953 and the left-leaning President Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954 was not without their crisis moments in the White House. In 1954 NSC 5412 provided for the establishment of a panel of designated representatives of the President and the Secretaries of State and Defense to meet regularly to review and recommend covert operations. Gordon Gray assumed the chairmanship of the "5412 Committee" as it was called, and all succeeding National Security Advisers have chaired similar successor committees, variously named "303", "40", "Special Coordinating Committee," which, in later Presidential administrations, were charged with the review of CIA covert operations."

https://fas.org/irp/offdocs/NSChistory.htm#Eisenhower

Some say 5412 was a deflection and an attempt to discourage the suspicion Majestik-12 had some ufo aliens details it was
holding close. 54 was the year of creation/distraction and 12 was retained from Majestik-12. Nixon being a chair of either 12 group
was unlikely because the purpose of the panel was to fashion a wall of fall guys affording the political leadership, VP and  POTUS,
plausible deniability as to any emerging details of government sponsored dirty work. Majestik-12 and its successor 5412 allegedly authorized all approved Ops in advance. POTUS and VP were always officially out of the loop. The thinness of supporting sources claiming
Nixon chaired either Special  Group is scant, shallow, unimpressive. Plausible deniability at the highest levels is intended to be challenging
to dismantle.

Offline Colin Crow

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Re: That "whole Bay of Pigs thing"
« Reply #10 on: May 08, 2019, 01:41:56 AM »
Macomber facilitated (and more) E Howard Hunt's attempt, while of the Nixon white house, to use classified State Dept cables to and from the US embassy in Saigon, Hunt altered to shift blame for the
assassination of South Vietnamese political leadership, attempting to fraudulantly shift blame to the by then deceased Kennedy brothers.

Hunt's actions might have be some sort of "insurance policy" should leaks of Nixon's involvement with the 1959 Castro plots break before the '72 election. However his attempt to get the story published would indicates a more offensive motivation rather than defensive. Note timing of other "dirty tricks", eg Canuck letter of Feb 1972.

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Re: That "whole Bay of Pigs thing"
« Reply #10 on: May 08, 2019, 01:41:56 AM »


Offline Colin Crow

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Re: That "whole Bay of Pigs thing"
« Reply #11 on: May 08, 2019, 02:48:32 AM »
The thinness of supporting sources claiming
Nixon chaired either Special  Group is scant, shallow, unimpressive. Plausible deniability at the highest levels is intended to be challenging
to dismantle.

Tend to agree about the "plausible deniability" concept should things go south (rather ironic though with Nixon/Watergate don't you think, in the end hard to hold onto).

We do have this on the NSC and structures supporting it's operation under Eisenhower.

"The genesis of the new NSC system was a report prepared for the President in March 1953 by Robert Cutler, who became the President's Special Assistant for National Security Affairs. Cutler proposed a systematic flow of recommendation, decision, and implementation that he later described as the "policy hill" process. At the bottom of the hill, concerned agencies such as State and Defense produced draft policy recommendations on specific topics and worked for consensus at the agency level. These draft NSC papers went up the hill through the Planning Board, created to review and refine the recommendations before passing them on for full NSC consideration. The NSC Planning Board met on Tuesday and Friday afternoons and was composed of officials at the Assistant Secretary level from the agencies with permanent or standing representation on the Council, as well as advisers from the JCS and CIA. Hundreds of hours were spent by the Board reviewing and reconstructing proposed papers for the NSC. Cutler resigned in 1958 in exhaustion. The top of the foreign policy-making hill was the NSC itself, chaired by the President, which met regularly on Thursday mornings.

The Council consisted of the five statutory members: the President, Vice President, Secretaries of State and Defense, and Director of the Office of Defense Mobilization. Depending on the subject under discussion, as many as a score of other senior Cabinet members and advisers, including the Secretary of the Treasury, the Chairman of the JCS, and the Director of Central Intelligence, attended and participated. The agenda included regular briefings by the Director of Central Intelligence on worldwide developments affecting U.S. security, and consideration of the policy papers advanced by the Planning Board. The upshot of the discussions were recommendations to the President in the form of NSC Actions. The President, who participated in the discussion, normally endorsed the NSC Action, and the decision went down the hill for implementation to the Operations Coordinating Board.

President Eisenhower created the Operations Coordinating Board (OCB) to follow up on all NSC decisions. The OCB met regularly on Wednesday afternoons at the Department of State, and was composed of the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, Deputy Secretary of Defense, the Directors of CIA, USIA, and ICA, and the Special Assistants to the President for National Security Affairs and Security Operations Coordination. The OCB was the coordinating and implementing arm of the NSC for all aspects of the implementation of national security policy. NSC action papers were assigned to a team from the OCB for follow-up. More than 40 interagency working groups were established with experts for various countries and subjects. This 24-person staff of the OCB supported these working groups in which officials from various agencies met each other for the first time.

The President's Special Assistant for National Security Affairs, a post held under Eisenhower by Cutler, Dillon Anderson, William H. Jackson, and Gordon Gray, oversaw the flow of recommendations and decisions up and down the policy hill, and functioned in Council meetings to brief the Council and summarize the sense of discussion. The Special Assistant was an essential facilitator of the decision-making system, but, unlike the National Security Adviser created under Kennedy, had no substantive role in the process. The NSC staff managed by the Special Assistant grew during the Eisenhower years, but again had no independent role in the policy process.

President Eisenhower had great confidence in the efficacy of covert operations as a viable supplement or alternative to normal foreign policy activities. The seeming clear success of the operations to overthrow Iranian populist leader Mossadegeh in 1953 and the left-leaning President Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954 was not without their crisis moments in the White House. In 1954 NSC 5412 provided for the establishment of a panel of designated representatives of the President and the Secretaries of State and Defense to meet regularly to review and recommend covert operations. Gordon Gray assumed the chairmanship of the "5412 Committee" as it was called, and all succeeding National Security Advisers have chaired similar successor committees, variously named "303", "40", "Special Coordinating Committee," which, in later Presidential administrations, were charged with the review of CIA covert operations."

and this.....

"Secretary of State Dulles, on the other hand, had reservations about the NSC system. He was the strongest personality in the Eisenhower Cabinet and jealously guarded his role as principal adviser to the President on foreign policy. He had constant, direct access to the President and did not feel that some of the most sensitive issues should be discussed in groups as large as were involved in most NSC meetings. He drew a sharp line between the NSC policy review process and the day-to-day operations of foreign policy, which he maintained were the province of the Department of State. Dulles and his deputies were not comfortable with the scope the NSC review system gave to Secretary of the Treasury George Humphrey, another strong figure in the Cabinet, to intrude budgetary limitations into policy considerations. And Dulles successfully resisted a proposal to substitute the Vice President for the Under Secretary of State as chairman of the OCB, arguing that such a change would impinge on his role as principal adviser to the President on foreign policy."

One wonders who proposed that Nixon should chair the OCB and when things changed after the resignation (April 15) and death (May 24) of Dulles in 1959. Did Nixon assume the chair following the Dulles departure and his expectation as "President in waiting"? I assume this would be a battle between Eisenhower/Nixon and Christian Herter/C. Douglas Dillon.

Interesting to see the following in the Belin, Rockefeller Report.

"C. Douglas Dillon, a member of this Commission, stated that while he served as Under Secretary of State from June 1959 until early January 1961, he heard no discussion of assassination attempts against anyone, except discussions which occurred in late July or early August of 1960 at a meeting at the Pentagon which covered  a great variety of matters in which "...a question regarding the possibility of an assassination attempt against Lumumba was briefly raised. The CIA representative indicated that the Agency did not undertake this sort of operation. This ended consideration of this subject." 
« Last Edit: May 08, 2019, 06:32:04 AM by Colin Crow »

Offline Colin Crow

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Re: That "whole Bay of Pigs thing"
« Reply #12 on: May 08, 2019, 06:14:53 AM »
From Belin's Report (Rockefeller Commission 1875)

"The Executive Director requested complete access to papers of the National Security Council including papers of the Forty Committee and its predecessors and papers of any special groups? or special operating groups.? Such access was not granted.  Also, time did not permit examination of documents that might be available in the Eisenhower, Kennedy or Johnson presidential libraries. Consequently, the investigation is not complete with regard to the question of who, if anyone outside the CIA, authorized or directed the planning of any assassination attempts against foreign leaders. However, with particular reference to the plans directed against Fidel Castro, the investigation is sufficiently complete to show that plans were undertaken by the CIA."

Obviously authorization of any plot to assassinate must come from the WH but the limitations placed upon Belin made it impossible to provide those specific when and who details. Given the mid-1959 timing of the "go-ahead" to discuss with Roselli, does anyone think the "Pres in waiting" Nixon was not all over this thing?

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Re: That "whole Bay of Pigs thing"
« Reply #12 on: May 08, 2019, 06:14:53 AM »


Offline Tom Scully

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Re: That "whole Bay of Pigs thing"
« Reply #13 on: May 09, 2019, 01:02:44 AM »
Colin, what if this excerpt from your last post is a summation of the introduction to explaining why, and Billy Lord outing
"Beamis" aka Fitzgerald Bemiss in 1977 providing a complementary conclusion. (With Macomber carrying water for the principals.)

Of course, this town being the summer home since boyhood of Bush & Bemiss sure doesn't hurt this tale, and neither does the fact Henry Hurt's new father-in-law happened to be a Bemiss relative who was the brother of Freeport Sulphur chairman, Langbourne M Williams.


......
President Eisenhower had great confidence in the efficacy of covert operations as a viable supplement or alternative to normal foreign policy activities. The seeming clear success of the operations to overthrow Iranian populist leader Mossadegeh in 1953 and the left-leaning President Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954 was not without their crisis moments in the White House. In 1954 NSC 5412 provided for the establishment of a panel of designated representatives of the President and the Secretaries of State and Defense to meet regularly to review and recommend covert operations. Gordon Gray assumed the chairmanship of the "5412 Committee" as it was called, and all succeeding National Security Advisers have chaired similar successor committees, variously named "303", "40", "Special Coordinating Committee," which, in later Presidential administrations, were charged with the review of CIA covert operations."

and this.....

"Secretary of State Dulles, on the other hand, had reservations about the NSC system. He was the strongest personality in the Eisenhower Cabinet and jealously guarded his role as principal adviser to the President on foreign policy. He had constant, direct access to the President and did not feel that some of the most sensitive issues should be discussed in groups as large as were involved in most NSC meetings. He drew a sharp line between the NSC policy review process and the day-to-day operations of foreign policy, which he maintained were the province of the Department of State. Dulles and his deputies were not comfortable with the scope the NSC review system gave to Secretary of the Treasury George Humphrey, another strong figure in the Cabinet, to intrude budgetary limitations into policy considerations. And Dulles successfully resisted a proposal to substitute the Vice President for the Under Secretary of State as chairman of the OCB, arguing that such a change would impinge on his role as principal adviser to the President on foreign policy."

One wonders who proposed that Nixon should chair the OCB and when things changed after the resignation (April 15) and death (May 24) of Dulles in 1959. Did Nixon assume the chair following the Dulles departure and his expectation as "President in waiting"? I assume this would be a battle between Eisenhower/Nixon and Christian Herter/C. Douglas Dillon.

Interesting to see the following in the Belin, Rockefeller Report.

"C. Douglas Dillon, a member of this Commission, stated that while he served as Under Secretary of State from June 1959 until early January 1961, he heard no discussion of assassination attempts against anyone, except discussions which occurred in late July or early August of 1960 at a meeting at the Pentagon which covered  a great variety of matters in which "...a question regarding the possibility of an assassination attempt against Lumumba was briefly raised. The CIA representative indicated that the Agency did not undertake this sort of operation. This ended consideration of this subject."

In 1963, Phyllis Bernau and William Macomber married...

https://eisenhower.archives.gov/Research/Finding_Aids/pdf/Dulles_John_Foster_Papers/Special_Assistants_Chronological_Series.pdf


https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP75-00149R000200440037-5.pdf
Washington Star Nov. 4, 1956


Thanks for your comment Thomas. It?s a fascinating human interest story about one family and how the events of that era may or may not have destroyed a man. Cynthia Thomas was an extraordinary woman. She deserved recognition. As there are so few actual researchers on this forum I?m hardly surprised at the lack of comments. It?s much easier for most to simply argue the same crap day after day.

Charles  Thomas had served 18 years in the foreign service at the time of his involuntary seperation from the Dept. of State...
Page 6 of 6:
https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/docid-32263513.pdf




Quote
https://books.google.com/books?id=jRvdwoKQOgQC&pg=PA311&lpg=PA311&dq=george+bush+devine+bemis+meeting&source=bl&ots=u7Yvu_GF9z&sig=16xsVqU5CrpyRAZn1Q7pKu0XPcI&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiUqe7Rk6zLAhXrlIMKHYevB60Q6AEIKDAB#v=onepage&q=george%20bush%20devine%20bemis%20meeting&f=false
The China Diary of George H. W. Bush: The Making of a ?
Jeffrey A. Engel ? 2011 ? ‎History
The Making of a Global President Jeffrey A. Engel ? Bemis, Lias and Devine had a meeting regarding my political future?very thoughtful of them.5 All I know ?

.....
First, the core accusation, hyper curiousity displayed by team Bush towards Lord knowledge, as the HSCA geared up
and it had become clear republicans would lose control of the presidency and of the CIA. This answers the question
of why risk rattling Billy Lord's cage if you were among the innermost Bush circle?



If placing all of the above details in one post seems a leap, consider Priscilla Johnson had only one CIA handler, Garry Coit, on
the day of the JFK Assassination.
On April 25, 1963, two weeks after the shooting attempt against Gen. Edwin Walker, close Roschester, NY friends Tom Devine and
Joseph F Dryer, Jr., held seperate meetings in NYC with George DeMohrenschildt and Clemard Joseph Charles.  Devine was posing as
a businessman while taking direction from and providing feedback on George DeM to CIA. Dryer, Jr. claimed to be read in to the degree
he had received a tip the secretary traveling with George DeM and Clemard Joseph Charles was reporting to CIA.

In 1977, Dryer, Jr. was presented to HSCA by James Kelsey Cogswell, III. This resulted in Dryer, Jr. testifying about his business
activities in Haiti and Cuba and his knowledge of DeMohrenschildt. Cogswell was employed in Cuba and HSCA showed him an
artist rendering of Maurice Bishop and asked Cogswell if the drawing resembled his recollection of Bishop.

Cogswell was linked to CIA, had been married to Will Farish's first cousin (daughter of Stephen Farish).
Quote
In 1953, Cogswell, III marries for a second time, to Joan Farish, daughter of Stephen Power Farish, uncle of Bush friend, Will Farish III. Cogswell's best man was George O. Walbridge, 2d.

Walbridge turns up in a 1955 newspaper photo, standing in Havana, next to his boss, Lem Billings of Emerson Drug Co., and the former Cuban dictator Prio's former press secretary.


It turns out that both Lem Bilings and Walbridge are very close to, and employed by the grandson of the Emerson Drug Co. founder, who also is the nephew by the marriage of Nina McaDoo TO George DeM's late uncle, Ferdinand DeMohrenschildt.

Later reports, including by the HSCA, are that Cogswell, III worked for the CIA, raised money to finance at least one plot to assassinate Castro, knew and socialized with George DeM. and with DeM's other contact, Joseph F. Dryer, was a friend of AMRAZZ-1, aka Joaquin Godoy, and with Antonio Veciana, and had an only sister, Theodora, described in an HSCA report as being acquainted with "Livingston" aka Mitchell Werbell.
Cogswell grew up one mile away
from F Scott Fitzgerald's literary agent, Harold Ober. Cogswell attended Phillips Exeter at the same time as Ober's son, Richard, the future CIA agent close to Angleton. Cogswell first marriage, in 1945, was to the daughter of Cornelius Van Ness. a friend of Fitzgerald in Minnesota, early in his writing career.
Quote
https://www.nytimes.com/1995/07/23/books/the-other-sides-of-paradise.html
The Other Sides of Paradise
By BROOKE ALLEN JULY 23, 1995
...Two new books throw light on the well-known material by telling the life stories of supporting actors in the drama: the Fitzgeralds' daughter, Frances Scott, and the woman with whom Fitzgerald spent the last three years of his life, the Hollywood gossip columnist Sheilah Graham. Both books, oddly enough, are written by their subjects' children....

...DURING her teen-age years in the 1930's, Scottie was fortunate enough to have surrogate parents in the form of Fitzgerald's agent, Harold Ober, and his wife, Anne. She attended Vassar, wrote short stories for several magazines (including The New Yorker) at a precocious age, and in 1943 married Samuel Jackson Lanahan, a law student who came from a well-to-do Baltimore family. The couple moved to Washington, where Lanahan joined the Justice Department. There they became one of the best-and-brightest glamour couples of the heady 50's and 60's. ...
Quote
Fitzgerald conference offers many perspectives on a literary giant ...
https://www.twincities.com/2017/06/28/f-scott-fitzgerald-conference/
Jun 28, 2017 - As president of the organization Fitzgerald in St. Paul, Wilson, joined by his ... During a noon signing, about 30 books were sold, and Page and ... Kilmarnok was opened in 1921 by Cornelius Van Ness, who had no interest in ...


Quote
Operation CHAOS - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_CHAOS
Operation CHAOS or Operation MHCHAOS was the code name (CIA cryptonym) of a United ... under Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) Richard Helms by chief of counter-intelligence James Jesus Angleton, and headed by Richard Ober.

From late August, 1944 until 1946, Tom Devine, Garry Coit, and 16 others were housemates in the Sigma Chi fraternity house on M.I.T. campus.

There were seven Warren Commissioner. The republican, Yale Skull n Bones representation among the seven of the WC, Kentucky
US Senator, John Sherman Cooper, employed Macomber on his Senate staff before Macomber was hired by CIA. Sen. Cooper's wife.:

Quote
Lorraine Cooper, 79, Leader In Washington Society, Dies - The ...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/1985/02/06/lorraine-cooper-79-leader-in-washington-society-dies/87bfe959-8e89-40ad-b03c-1e348a68bcde/?utm_term=.decce2c2be16
Feb 6, 1985 - Lorraine Rowan Cooper, 79, a personality of intelligence and ... Her marriages to Robert McAdoo and Thomas Shevlin Jr. ended in divorce.

Continued.....
« Last Edit: May 09, 2019, 01:55:33 AM by Tom Scully »

Offline Tom Scully

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Re: That "whole Bay of Pigs thing"
« Reply #14 on: May 09, 2019, 01:58:36 AM »
Continued from last post, Post 2 of 2.

A 1966 dated document:


https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=38109&relPageId=2&search=leslie_and%20cogswell


A 1961 dated document.:
Quote
https://paw.princeton.edu/memorial/charles-leslie-rice-jr-?41
Les Rice died Feb. 11, 1997, in Red Bank, N.J.

...Following the war, Dean Mathey '12, Princeton's patron-saint trustee, benefactor, and Wall St. magician, recruited Les as his protege. Having learned much from Mathey at Empire Trust Co., Les set out on his own. He was president and CEO of Gulf States Land & Industries, Inc., working in Texas and living in New Jersey. He retired in 1980 and continued to be active in his Mandan Corp. in Red Bank and in a host of local charities....

Interlock: Art, Conspiracy, and the Shadow Worlds of Mark Lombardi
By Patricia Goldstone





Of course, Brunie was best man in John McCloy's 1930 wedding and then McCloy's Fairfield County, CT next
door neighbor.

« Last Edit: May 09, 2019, 02:37:11 AM by Tom Scully »

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Re: That "whole Bay of Pigs thing"
« Reply #14 on: May 09, 2019, 01:58:36 AM »


Offline Thomas Graves

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Re: That "whole Bay of Pigs thing"
« Reply #15 on: May 09, 2019, 02:50:38 AM »

Fascinating stuff, Mr. Scully.

(LOL)

-- MWT   ;)