John Neman at JFK Monument at AU
“For thirty years,” John Newman said at the COPA conference, “we’ve been guessing — writing books, writing articles — with about five cards from the deck. And when you do that kind of thing, you’re going to make mistakes. Then, of course, you set yourself up — people make fun of the person who made the guess. But that game’s over. That game’s finished. When the law was passed, and the government had to release all the files in its possession, everything changed. The force of law — the presumption, actually — is for full disclosure.”
The ‘law’ is the JFK Records Act, known formally as The President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992. It was signed by then-President Bush and established the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB), an independent, five-member panel appointed by President Clinton to identify and make available all records related to the assassination of President Kennedy.
The theme and the focus of COPA’s National Conference was any new information to come from the release of any such files. While there was new information, much of the weekend was given over to new interpretations of old evidence and networking by researchers — in short, a meeting of the minds
(7) John Newman, Oswald and the CIA (2008)
It is now apparent that the World War III pretext for a national security cover-up was built into the fabric of the plot to assassinate President Kennedy. The plot required that Oswald be maneuvered into place in Mexico City and his activities there carefully monitored, controlled, and, if necessary, embellished and choreographed. the plot required that, prior to 22 November, Oswald’s profile at CIA HQS and the Mexico station be lowered; his 201 file had to be manipulated and restricted from incoming traffic on his Cuban activities. The plot required that, when the story from Mexico City arrived at HQS, its significance would not be understood by those responsible for reacting to it. Finally, the plot required that, on 22 November, Oswald’s CIA files would establish his connection to Castro and the Kremlin.
The person who designed this plot had to have access to all of the information on Oswald at CIA HQS. The person who designed this plot had to have the authority to alter how information on Oswald was kept at CIA HQS. The person who designed this plot had the authority to alter how information on Oswald was kept at CIA HQS. The person who designed this plot had to have access to project TUMBLEWEED, the sensitive joint agency operation against the KGB assassin, Valery Kosikov. The person who designed this plot had the authority to instigate a counterintelligence operation in the Cuban affairs staff (SAS) at CIA HQS. In my view, there is only one person whose hands fit into these gloves: James Jesus Angleton, Chief of CIA’s Counterintelligence Staff.
Angleton and his molehunters had always held Oswald’s files very close to the vest – from the time of the young Marine’s defection in October 1959 and his offer to provide classified radar information to the Soviets. That offer had lit up the counterintelligence circuits in Washington, D.C. like a Christmas tree. Angleton was the only person who knew – except for perhaps one of his direct subordinates – both the Cuban and Soviet parts of Oswald’s story. He was the only one in the Counterintelligence Staff with enough authority to instigate a counterintelligence operation in the SAS against the FPCC.
In my view, whoever Oswald’s direct handler or handlers were, we must now seriously consider the possibility that Angleton was probably their general manager. No one else in the Agency had the access, the authority, and the diabolically ingenious mind to manage this sophisticated plot. No one else had the means necessary to plant the WWIII virus in Oswald’s files and keep it dormant for six weeks until the president’s assassination. Whoever those who were ultimately responsible for the decision to kill Kennedy were, their reach extended into the national intelligence apparatus to such a degree that they could call upon a person who knew its inner secrets and workings so well that he could design a failsafe mechanism into the fabric of the plot. The only person who could ensure that a national security cover-up of an apparent counterintelligence nightmare was the head of counterintelligence.
John Judge at JFK Monument at AU
Re: June 10th Memorial Service Press Conference – 38th Anniversary of JFK’s “Peace Speech” – American University, Washington, D.C. – Coalition on Political Assassinations (COPA) – PRESS RELEASE –
In what may become an annual event, the Coalition on Political Assassination (COPA) is sponsoring a June 10th memorial service marking the 38th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s famous speech at American University in which he called for an end to the arms race and the Cold War because “we are all mortal.” Many believe this speech reflected the primary differences that JFK had with the Pentagon and the “military-industrial complex” Eisenhower warned of, and may have led to his assassination.Beginning June 10th, COPA will hold a series of conferences focusing on the new legal initiatives, including FOIA requests and appeals, the beginning of a lobby effort to get Congress to hold oversight hearings on the JFK Act, and the evidentiary support for a Federal Grand Jury Petition-Request that will be publicly released that day. There will also be reports of ongoing efforts to secure the release of the files on the HSCA records on the Martin Luther King, Jr. assassination and other Congressional records that remain withheld.For those who would like to participate in both events – the memorial service and lobby effort, Congress will become the target of our offensive when we begin the battle of Capitol Hill by delivering packets of information to members of the House of Representatives. We will encourage them to fulfill their responsibility to enforce the laws that they enact, especially the JFK Act, on which rides the American public’s confidence in the government.
Judge John Tunheim, Jim Lesar, Gary Aguilar and others important witnesses are expected to be called to testify to the success and failures of the JFK Act, the work of the Assassinations Records Review Board (ARRB) and the response of the agencies and departments of government to the law that remains in force, and will remain in force until the last document regarding the assassination is released. It’s not a question of whether there will be oversight hearings on the JFK Act, it is only a matter of when they will occur, and this COPA conference will begin the proceedings. Be there and help make it happen.
It will also be an opportunity for researchers, academics and lawyers to get together and help develop plans of action that will lead to the release of more records and even a possible legal resolution to the most significant criminal political event of the past century.
Dan Alcorn at JFK Monument at AU
On the 35th anniversary of the assassination at Dealey Plaza, Washington attorney Dan Alcorn said, “We have experienced a decline in the public’s trust in government since November,1963, a blimp in the charts that notes the significance of these events. Today a majority of people don’t even bother to vote. The largest turnout of voters in American history was in 1960. The decline in public confidence in the government began with the ambush at Dealey Plaza and has continually declined since then. These trends are very troubling.”
When Dan Alcorn testified at the first public hearings before the Assassinations Records Review Board (ARRB), assembled to declassify the government records regarding the assassination of President Kennedy [Oct. 11, 1994], he cited [Kevin Phillips’ Arrogant Capital as the source of] the public opinion poll when he said, “…In terms of public confidence in the Federal government, what is striking to me is how the confidence had peaked out in 1964 on this graph, and it has been a rather startling, serious and troubling deterioration in the polling data from 1964.”
Dan Alcorn : The federal board – The JFK Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) discovered that many of the records have been destroyed, and we do not have a complete record. Yet we have a much more of a documentary record than we have had ever before.
There’s a memorial down on the street that has a quotation from the bible: “Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.” That quote is also inscribed on the wall of the Central Intelligence Agency headquarters in
McLean, Virginia, so there is a commonality of thought there. Many of us are here today because we have never believed that the government has told us the truth about the assassination, and we believe that unless we know the truth, we are not free. Unless we know the truth about these events we are not a free people and we have not been a free people as long as we have been lied to about the events that occured here. The spirit of our commemorative event is to take those words to heart, and until we know the truth and the full truth of what occured in the street before us today on a day very much like today, a clear, sunny day in the fall of 1963.
On behalf of our organization I will make a challenge to you. Everyone here must be here because you care very deeply about the meaning of this event and what it means to our history as a nation. I will make the challenge to you to join us in our efforts in seeking the full truth about the assassination of President Kennedy. And not just the truth as pieced together by citizens who put in the time and effort to this, but to actually cause the government to tell the truth about this event, and for the government to come forward and give us a full and truthful accounting of what happened here in 1963. Otherwise, we in fact are not the free people we want to be, have been and we should be as a nation.
You know, it is a crime for a citizen of this country to tell a lie to a federal investigator, but it is not a crime for your government to lie to you. And we feel this is an unfair relationship. If it’s a crime for us to lie to our government, it should be a crime for us t o lie as well.
It is in that spirit of investigation and of honest inquiry that our organization has worked closely with the Assassinations Records Review Board to get materials out. They ran into an obstructive wall of secrecy at the federal agencies. They told us that they ran into a Cold War system of secrecy that refused to relent on the documents and information as it related to this event. And this was thirty-five years after the event occured, and after a federal board was set up by the Congress to try to get information released about what happened here.
So we call on you to join us in our efforts. We think that great nations and civilizations cannot survive the kinds of doubt and turmoil that have been raised by the events that happened here. If you study the history of great civilizations you will find that when they lost their way in terms of truth, self-governing, democratic and republican institutions began their decline and was one of the reasons for their ultimate collapse. We do not want the decline and decay of our public and political system. We want to be a part of a healthy revival of those institutions.
We have experienced a decline in the public’s trust in government since November,1963, a blimp in the charts that notes the significance of these events. Today a majority of people don’t even bother to vote. The largest turnout of voters in American history was in 1960. The decline in public confidence in the government began with the ambush at Dealey Plaza and has continually declined since then. These trends are very troubling.
So we ask you to join us and support the effort we have started to try to pursue the truth of these events, to try to pursue credibility, honesty and openness on behalf of our governmental institutions. And by that effort to try to turn our nation in a healthy direction, to build stronger democratic institutions, to build a stronger faith between the pubic and its government. We feel that is essential, and we call on you as free citizens of this nation to join us in that effort.
COPA Group at JFK Monument at AU
http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2009/12/jfk-plaque-american-university.html
Here’s Bill Kelly’s notes from this meeting at American University
American U. Conference Notes – Sunday, June 10, 2001 – B. KellyDan does however, agree with and supports the current grass roots effort to get Congressional Oversight Hearings on the JFK Act, which should also consider basic review of the FOIA Acts as well. Dan believes that Congress, once it recognizes the failures of the FOIA and JFK Acts, will move to strengthen the FOIA and ensure the JFK Act is properly enforced, two things that will assist us in our undertakings.Of all the potential legal initiatives that can be pursued, Congressional Oversight
Hearings will be the easiest to obtain, so strategy and tactics to achieve that goal were the primary topics of conversation.
For the most part, the topics reviewed during this conference were either in regards to 1) the lobby effort to get Congressional Oversight Hearings of the JFK and FOIA Acts and 2) other legal avenues that can be pursued in regards to the JFK assassination.
Present [At various times during the day]: John Judge, T. Carter, Marty Bragg, Bill Kelly, Andrew Win., two of Andrew’s associates, Dennis Bartholomew, Roger Feinman, Gene Case, John Newman, Newman’s research associate and two former students from U.M., Dan Alcorn and wife, a few other researchers whose names I didn’t get, and Michael from New York. Those who sent written regrets were: Dr. Cyril Wecht, Phil Melanson, Dick Gregory, Doug Horne, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Gene McCarty, Debra Conway, Dr. Anna Nelson and George Costello, all of whom voiced support for what we were trying to do.
Although small in number, and we were all disappointed in the number of regrets, we all pretty well knew each other, as seven of us had been together at the Dallas COPA meetings at the Paramount last November, when the concept for the new legal initiatives were announced, and all of us went out of our way to be there. Acknowledging the short notice (six weeks), we all promised to return next year, so everybody will have a full year to prepare to get there, and it will be interesting to see a year from now, how far we’ve gone with our plans.
John Judge chaired the two meetings, with the morning session beginning a little after 9 a.m. With tables set in a conference setting in a square, with everyone facing each other. Before Dan Alcorn arrived, John Judge announced that Dan had decided NOT to pursue the COPA v. DOD FOIA suit, which was last heard unfavorably by the D.C. District Federal Appeals Court. He thought it a waste of time, energy and money we didn’t have to appeal the case to the Supreme Court.
Since COPA’s time to respond to the Appeal’s Court decision has yet to expire, and they also gave COPA another alternative, other than an appeal to the Supremes, which I also believe would be a waste of time, I intend to ask Dan Alcorn if the other possibility could be worthwhile. The Appeals Court also said, in their last ruling, that COPA could request another hearing, at which additional evidence and possible witnesses could be presented. I think, with the identification of new military archives (Center for Military History at Fort McNair) and Army historians who have yet to testify, we should request another hearing.
When I mentioned the Center for Military History, John Newman said that there is also ANOTHER repository of Army records in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, near the U.S. Army War College, but not directly affiliated with it. We also have a new witness who can assist in helping to locate specific records, like the U.S. Army Intel. Surveillance records of MLK and those who were present at Dealey Plaza.
At 12:00 pm a memorial service will be held at the historic plaque at the outdoor sports field at American University which marks the site where JFK gave his famous speech, which is ranked with Washington’s farewell to his troops and Lincoln COPA advisors and directors Prof. Phil Melanson, Dan Alcorn, Esq., John Judge, Jim Lesar, Esq., Dr. Cyril Wecht, Esq., Dr. Gary Aguilar, Judge Joe Brown, Dick Gregory, Oliver Stone and others, including several prominent members of JFK’s White House staff have been invited to attend and speak’s Gettysburg Address as one of the most significant speeches of our age.
After the memorial service, COPA will hold a press conference to announce two new legal initiatives – a Federal Grand Jury Petition-Requesting a proper inquiry into crimes related to the assassination of President Kennedy, and a public lobby effort for Congressional oversight hearings into the JFK Act and the Assassinations Records Review Board (ARRB). As part of this two-pronged effort, COPA will release the petition [See: Federal Grand Jury Petition] and start obtaining signatures of citizens who want to be party to the legal Request, while at the same time begin a lobby effort to get Congress to fulfill it’s responsibility to properly oversee of the JFK Act.
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