A DIALOGUE

The Non-Release of the JFK Assassination Documents

This is an edited transcript of the discussion between Dennis Speed, a long-time leader of the LaRouche movement, and Ray McGovern, former CIA senior analyst and founding member, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), following the presentations at the EIR symposium, “Peace on Earth, Or Humanity’s Doom? The Case for Negotiations.” December 17, 2022. The full symposium is available here.

Dennis Speed (moderator): This question is for you, Ray. It has to do with [Fox News host] Tucker Carlson’s broadcast of December 15th concerning the JFK assassination. The reason I’m bringing it up is because of its relationship to what you’ve talked about—the expanded military-industrial complex that you’ve dubbed the MICIMATT (the Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence-Media-Academia-Think Tank Complex).

Here’s a bit of what Carlson had to say, which gets to the point. He stated—among other things in what was a 30-minute discussion:

In 1976, long forgotten, the House of Representatives empaneled a special committee to re-investigate the JFK assassination. Their bipartisan conclusion? Jack Kennedy was almost certainly murdered as a result of a conspiracy. But the question is, a conspiracy by whom? The obvious subject would be the CIA.

Carlson talked about how the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992 had mandated the full disclosure of all documents by 2017, and that Mike Pompeo, then the Director of the CIA, withheld those documents from the public, and that the same thing happened again two days ago, when the Biden administration also withheld documents. Carlson went on to say:

We spoke to someone who had access to the still-hidden CIA documents. A person who is deeply familiar with what they contain. We asked this person directly, “Did the CIA have a hand in the murder of JFK, an American President?” Here’s the reply we received, verbatim: “The answer is, yes, I believe they were involved. It’s a whole different country from what we thought it was. It’s all fake.”

Tucker Carlson did not name that source. He said, “This is not a ‘conspiracy theorist’ we spoke to, not even close. This is someone with direct knowledge of the information that once again is being withheld from the American public.”

The broadcast continued in that vein. Then, near the end, he said:

Many people have known this for a long time, but people who knew would include every director of the CIA since November of 1963. That list would include Obama’s Director of the CIA, John Brennan, one of the most sinister and dishonest figures in American life. That list would also include, we are sad to say, our friend Mike Pompeo, who ran the CIA in the last administration. Mike Pompeo knew this; we asked Pompeo to join us tonight, and although he rarely turns down televised interviews, he refused to come.

Ray, the question is: given the fact that you were a CIA analyst for 27 years, and you also returned various commendations that you got as a result of your differences and clear opposition to what happened, particularly in Iraq in 2003, what is your view of what Tucker Carlson said? What is your view about this issue, and what is your view about its relationship to the problem of an honest executive today, and an ability to get to the truth of things?

Six Ways From Sunday

Ray McGovern: Let me begin by quoting New York’s Senator Chuck Schumer, who should have lost to Diane Sare [in the recent midterm election]. After Donald Trump won the Presidency in 2016, the very first week of January, he arranged to get himself on [Rachel] Maddow’s [MSNBC] show. Maddow said, now Senator Schumer, you have something to say about the CIA and how Trump is criticizing the CIA and taking off after them. What did he say? Schumer said,

He’s being very foolish. You take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday to get back at you. I thought Trump was a pretty smart businessman, and maybe he is. But he’s being very foolish to take on Intelligence.

Schumer was telling us what the situation is.

The best book about this is something called JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters, written by James W. Douglass, who happens to be a friend of mine. He pored over all the foregoing books—this is about 12 years ago now—put them all together, and said, yeah, JFK was done in by the Deep State. The CIA, the parts of the Army, parts of the FBI knew about it, and parts of the Secret Service. He was done in, why? Because after the Cuban Missile Crisis—which relates to the kind of situation we face now—after the Cuban Missile Crisis, when JFK realized how close we had come to blowing up the world, he worked out a deal with Nikita Khrushchev, started a test ban treaty; started all kinds of negotiations toward rapprochement. With whom? With the Commies!

Now, you had to have been alive—I was serving in CIA under John Kennedy just for several months. But you had to be aware of the atmosphere. Kennedy was hated because he didn’t support the invasion of Cuba, the Bay of Pigs invasion. He told those CIA types:

This sounds like a cockamamie operation to me. But if Eisenhower approved it, go ahead. But look, we’re not going to commit the U.S. Air Force or the U.S. Army or the U.S. Armed Forces to rescue you if it screws up.

It screwed up royally, and Kennedy held tough. How do we know that he was deceived when they pursued it? We have then CIA Director Allen Dulles’ coffee-stained notes from his desk, saying that Kennedy said we would not commit U.S. forces, but when push comes to shove, he will not be able to avoid committing U.S. forces.

‘JFK and the Unspeakable’

So, what happened? Kennedy stayed true to his pledge not to commit U.S. forces. The whole thing fizzled out, and Kennedy was heard to say to a neighbor up there in Hyannis Port, “I’d like to take the CIA and scatter it into a thousand pieces.” That’s sort of a declaration of war, right? Kennedy and Allen Dulles didn’t get along very well at all. It took him several months to fire Allen Dulles. You don’t fire a well-connected patrician like Allen Dulles, whose brother is the Secretary of State, and who has all kinds of—let’s put it this way—“six ways from Sunday to get back at you,” without paying the price.

It was the substantive issue of John Kennedy trying to figure out how to live with the Russians in a more decent, peaceful way. And the fact that he could not be trusted to support fully the cockamamie schemes of CIA, that did him in. You don’t have to take my word for it. Read Douglass’ book, JFK and the Unspeakable. It’s a quote from Thomas Merton, of all people.

Today, what happened when, under Trump’s watch—he’s still not being wise to the ways of Washington—he got up on the day that the Congressional mandate said he has to release the rest of the JFK documents hidden by the CIA and the FBI. He got up in the morning without telling anybody, and said, “Today’s the day Congress said I have to release those documents. I’m going to release them.” Four hours later, in the middle of the afternoon, he said, “Oh, I changed my mind. I’m not going to release them. The CIA and FBI said it’s too sensitive; we’ll revisit it in six months.” That’s what he said. It doesn’t matter what Congress said, right?

Six months. McGovern makes a little note in his notebook. In six months, it fell through the cracks; nobody remembered that they were going to revisit in six months. Hello! Do you have to be a master psychiatrist or psychologist to figure out that maybe if they don’t want those things released, it’s because it shows that they were involved?

After the Kennedy assassination, all kinds of irregular things happened. The Warren Commission was set up by Lyndon Johnson. Who did they pick to pretty much orchestrate the whole commission proceedings? It was Allen Dulles! Allen Dulles pretty much orchestrated that whole thing. Did LBJ know about all this? James Douglass tells me, yeah, the evidence is pretty clear. Johnson may not have been involved in the actual assassination, but he knew what the plans were; he was not agnostic on that. LBJ appoints Earl Warren, and Earl Warren appoints Allen Dulles.

The Political Parties Are Collapsing

What’s my point here? When honest people—people like me—said “wait a second. This doesn’t parse. There’s some suspicion that the CIA might have been involved in the assassination, and now you’re appointing the previous CIA Director?” Guess what we got? Conspiracy theorists. “You guys are conspiracy theorists.” That’s where the term got its impetus, and to this day, often when you say the truth, and when you stop saying the truth, you’re considered a conspiracy theorist.

Both parties are equally corrupt in all this; both parties are equally afraid of the Deep State. You don’t have to just listen to Chuck Schumer to talk about “they’ve got six ways from Sunday to get back at you.” Talk to the Senators who knew that there were no weapons of mass destruction [in Iraq], but couldn’t say it, because it was classified. Talk to the Senators who know all about Afghanistan. Again, we come back to the Senators and the Representatives who are getting the take from the Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence-Media-Academia-Think Tank complex, the MICIMATT. Putting it in their pockets, appropriating more money for arms building, selling more money, taking a share of that money, putting it in their pockets, getting re-elected. Hello! Is this a great country or what? That’s what it takes; everybody’s afraid, and everybody’s on the take.

The Democrats tried to prevent Trump from winning the election in 2016. It’s documented now. Obama, in October; Hillary Clinton, also in October 2016 authorized all this Russia-gate stuff. We know about it; it’s in court testimony. Not many people know about it, but it’s in court testimony.

Then, what happened in 2020? My goodness! All of sudden, Hunter Biden’s computer comes out, and what does the Deep State do? They hire 51 former senior intelligence agents to say, “Russian operation. We can’t prove it, but it’s got the earmarks of a Russian operation.”

What am I saying, here? I’m saying that the media and the Deep State are joined at the hip now as never before. Both elections, or at least the following election, were probably affected by the fact that no one could tell the truth; Twitter wouldn’t allow it. Only Glenn Greenwald would tell the truth about Biden’s laptop, and how Joe Biden himself was on the take.

The 2016 thing? They tried and failed to derail Trump, but they sure got him for the four years after that. He couldn’t do a damn thing he wanted to do in terms of creating a more decent relationship with Russia.

It’s a sad story. Is the Deep State strong? It sure as Hell is. Is it still around? Of course it is. John Brennan [the former CIA Director] mentioned before. He’s a big commentator on MSNBC; James Clapper, [former Director of National Intelligence], is on CNN. It used to be that the Agency controlled the media; now the Agency is the media.