E Howard Hunt: "Deaths? What deaths?"

[Karmadillo]

Your government dollars at work.

http://slate.com/Default.aspx?id=2107718&MSID=624ED279D8024608A2AB873BF0384D68

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ALB: Do you think the Guatemala coup went well?

HH: Yes—it did. And I'm glad I kept Arbenz from being executed.

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ALB: You were worried they would assassinate him right there?

HH: Yeah. … And we'd get blamed for it.

ALB: Some 200,000 civilians were killed in the civil war following the coup, which lasted for the next 40 years. Were all those deaths unforeseen?

HH: Deaths? What deaths?

ALB: Well, the civil war that ensued for the next 40 years after the coup.

more...

[Minstrel Boy]

1. God, that man has some blood on his hands.

If he had any grace or conscience, he would have sickened himself to death over his crimes years ago.

Post-Watergate, when it looked like some concession to the truth on the JFK assassination was unavoidable, the CIA floated Hunt's presence in Dallas as a possible limited hangout for the involvement of "rogue elements" conspiring in Kennedy's murder. He lost a libel suit in 1978; the jury was convinced he was lying, and had been there.

From Watergate's "smoking gun" tape of June 23 1972, it's clear Nixon feared what an investigation could reveal about Hunt:

"Of course, this is a, this is a Hunt, you will- that will uncover a lot of things. You open that scab there's a hell of a lot of things and that we just feel that it would be very detrimental to have this thing go any further. This involves these Cubans, Hunt, and a lot of hanky-panky that we have nothing to do with ourselves."

But that's not the most interesting revelation on the tape.

HR Haldeman, in his book The Ends of Power, cites several conversations where Nixon expressed concern about the Watergate affair becoming public knowledge and where this exposure might lead. Haldeman writes that he was puzzled when Nixon said, "'Tell Ehrlichman this whole group of Cubans (involved in the break-in) is tied to the Bay of Pigs.' After a pause I said, 'The Bay of Pigs? What does that have to do with this ?' But Nixon merely said, 'Ehrlichman will know what I mean,' and dropped the subject."

Later in the book, he reveals that he discovered that Nixon spoke in code about Kennedy's murder. He writes that Nixon's code for the assassination was "the Bay of Pigs."

Now here's Nixon on the tape:

"When you get in these people when you...get these people in, say: 'Look, the problem is that this will open the whole, the whole Bay of Pigs thing, and the President just feels that" ah, without going into the details... don't, don't lie to them to the extent to say there is no involvement, but just say this is sort of a comedy of errors, bizarre, without getting into it, 'the President believes that it is going to open the whole Bay of Pigs thing up again. And, ah because these people are plugging for, for keeps and that they should call the FBI in and say that we wish for the country, don't go any further into this case", period!"

Over and over on the tapes, Nixon talks about Hunt, the Cubans, the Texans, and the "Bay of Pigs thing."

See what's going on here?

Nixon is directing Haldeman to warn the FBI off probing Watergate because it'll touch Hunt, and that could reopen the Kennedy assassination, and expects the FBI, because it has a vested interest in perpetuating the cover up, not to pry any further for the good of the country.

[Karmadillo]

2. Very interesting. Thanks for posting. n/t

n/t

[Minstrel Boy]

3. From the end of the interview, on the JFK assassination:

Slate: I know there is a conspiracy theory saying that David Atlee Phillips—the Miami CIA station chief—was involved with the assassination of JFK.

Hunt: {Visibly uncomfortable} I have no comment.

Slate: I know you hired him early on, to work with you in Mexico, to help with Guatemala propaganda.

Hunt: He was one of the best briefers I ever saw.

Slate: And there were even conspiracy theories about you being in Dallas the day JFK was killed.

Hunt: No comment.

Laura Hunt: Howard says he wasn't, and I believe him.

Slate: Any regrets?

Hunt: No, none. {Long pause} Well, it would have been nice to do Bay of Pigs differently.

More on David Atlee Phillips (I posted this a few days ago here - more info in the thread):

The anti-Castro leader of Alpha 66, Antonio Veciana, was sponsored by the CIA, and his contact was an agent he knew as "Maurice Bishop."

In early September, 1963, in Dallas, Veciana met "Bishop" in the company of Lee Harvey Oswald.

"Bishop" was David Atlee Phillips, then-head of the CIA's Mexico City operations, and later the chief of covert ops for the Western Hemisphere.

Establishing that Bishop was Phillips is the subject of much of House Select Committee on Assassinations' investigator Gaeton Fonzi's The Last Investigation. There is no doubt, reasonable or otherwise: Phillips was Bishop.

In Dick Russell's The Man Who Knew Too Much, retired Cuban intelligence officer Fabian Escalante says that Veciana told a Cuban informant that Bishop was Phillips, but refused to solidly identify him as such before the Committee because Phillips had threatened him. (And, indeed, Veciana was shot in the head, and survived, once the Maurice Bishop story became public.)

Further confirmation from the "Real History Archives":

"Gaeton Fonzi has written a book that details his search for Maurice Bishop called The Last Investigation. To Fonzi's detailed summary of reasons that David Atlee Phillips was indeed the Maurice Bishop that Veciana saw with Oswald, there is a more recent addition. In the back of his updated paperback version of Conspiracy, Anthony Summers tells of Jim Hougan's talk with CIA agent Frank Terpil. Jim Hougan will be familiar to Probe readers from our last issue. He's the author of the best book on Watergate, Secret Agenda.

"Hougan got to know Terpil rather well while making a PBS documentary about him. In a tape-recorded interview, Hougan asked why Terpil was going on and on about David Phillips and the AFIO. Among other things, Terpil alleged (as have others) that Phillips' "retirement" from the CIA was phony, and that he continued to work for the CIA through the AFIO. Hougan asked Terpil why he kept talking about Phillips-was it personal, or political? Political, Terpil replied. Hougan asked where Terpil and Phillips had met. Terpil's answer is astonishing, and terribly important. Terpil had met him in Florida while living there with Hal Hendrix's daughter. Really? Asked Hougan. Yeah, said Terpil, Phillips used to come around with Hal Hendrix, but he wasn't using his real name. He was using an alias. What alias? Bishop, Terpil said, Something Bishop. Maurice Bishop? Hougan asked. Yeah, Terpil replied, Maurice Bishop. Hougan wanted to be sure Terpil wasn't putting him on, but came away convinced that Terpil did not understand the significance of what he was saying and that Terpil was answering honestly. Hougan asked how Terpil knew Bishop was Phillips. Terpil said he had run Bishop through the agency's file system in the CIA's Miami headquarters to find out who this Bishop character was. The name that came out: David Atlee Phillips."

When Phillips was dying of cancer, his brother James asked him at the end of a telephone conversation: "Were you in Dallas on that day?" David started crying, and said "Yes." That was the end of the conversation. (As told in Russell's The Man Who Knew Too Much.)

[tom_paine]

4. More circumstantial evidence the Busheviks killed the Kennedys

Not that Nixon's cryptic (and pointing STRAIGHT to the Imperial Family) "Bay of Pigs" nickname for the Kennedy Assassination.

George Bush lead the CIA liason for the Bay of Pigs.

And Nixon knew.

Now that the Busheviks have fully revealed themselves as Amerikan Caesers, and a murderous lying bunch on par in scope if not in sheer evil (yet) with the Nazis, nothing can disabuseme of this.

caesers don't change much over time.