Rob Reiner's "Who Killed JFK?" Pt. 4

Who supervised the ambush, who shot him, the last of the classified files and Paul Landis

                                     

In this installment I will be reviewing  the last parts of  “Who Killed JFK?”,  that is Chapters 10-12 of the Rob Reiner/ Soledad O’Brien  hosted podcast. Officially, the last part of the series is Chapter 10, but there are two other installments that are billed as bonuses.  Part 11 is a discussion of the still classified documents with Jeff Morley and the last part is an interview with Secret Service agent Paul Landis and his belated revelation about a bullet he found in the back seat of the car.

Chapter 10 begins with Dick Russell relating that while working at The Village Voice in 1975 he got an anonymous letter. Russell was covering the Church Committee at the time. That letter said that the man who ran the JFK assassination was actually named Karl Weidenbach.  Russell had no idea who that was.  But 15 years later he stumbled on the fact that this was the real name of U. S. Army General Charles A. Willoughby. Willoughby worked as Douglas MacArthur’s intelligence chief for decades. Evidently, the mystery of who Weidenbach was had a potent effect on Russell’s psyche since it never left him. He ended up believing the contents of the letter.

The first interview in Chapter 10 is with Rolf Mowatt-Larssen.  He was a long-time CIA officer, and one of his stops was as Moscow Chief of station. He says that the JFK case has the earmarks of a CIA operation.  I have heard Mowatt-Larssen speak about the case at length at a seminar.  The operation of which he speaks is one in which Oswald was the gunman.  I was genuinely upset he was allowed to address the crowd. I wanted to find out who invited him.  From what I could discover it was attorney Larry Schnapf.

After this, Reiner says that we need to keep Northwoods, a False Flag project, and ZR/Rifle—the CIA’s assassination plots against foreign leaders—in mind. Concerning the latter, the show discussed some of the William Harvey notes the Church Committee uncovered.  They say we must blame people like Czechs and Poles, and have a phony 201 file which looks like a Counter-Intelligence file, in order to prove the fall guy was a pro-communist.  I don’t quite understand how this relates to the JFK case since Oswald did have a 201 file, and no one had to prove he was a pro-communist.

The program then interviews Colonel William Bishop, a man Russell talked to in research for his book on Richard Case Nagell. Bishop worked under Willoughby, and then migrated to the CIA.  He was reportedly involved in black operations, like the assassination of Rafael Trujillo and Operation Forty. Also  in Kennedy’s NSC files, there are records of Bishop being connected to Felipe Vidal Santaigo.. (Russell, The Man Who Knew too Much, 2003 edition, p.458) Bishop was well known to Fabian Escalante, chief of Castro’s G-2. According to Escalante, Bishop was with Vidal Santiago in November of 1963 on a trip from Miami to Dallas. Vidal Santiago is suspected of being friends with John Martino and being tangentially involved in the JFK murder by some writers. (Nexus, by Larry Hancock, p. 115)

On the show, Bishop talks about how perfect Dealey Plaza was for an L shaped, triangulation of gunfire. You could have placed anywhere from 3-6 snipers there.  Russell and Reiner think there were four: one on the 6^th floor of the depository, one on the grassy knoll, one in the Dal- Tex building, or the County Records Building, and one on the south knoll at the end of the overpass.

Now comes the climax of the program, where Reiner and Russell name the actual hit team. Here it is:

1.   Jean Soutre-French OAS officer

2.   Herminio Diaz Garcia-militant anti-Castro Cuban exile

3.   Chuck Nicoletti-hit man for Sam Giancana

4.   Jack Canon- former member of the mysterious Z group.

Like the choice of Willoughby, the choice of Canon shows the influence Dick Russell had on the series. Because in the JFK literature there is next to nothing written about him, except in Russell’s The Man Who Knew too Much. (pp. 58, 68) The Asia Times has an informative article about him by Robert Whiting. (8/19/2020) This describes his covert operations in Japan  with something called the Z group—Russell calls it ZED--after the 1945 surrender  and up until about 1951. He then went stateside, and according to Whiting, he asked for a job with CIA. Nagell told Russell, that he was a CIA hit man. How Nagell knew that is not explained. He ended up working at Foreign Intelligence Digest in 1961 with Willoughby. (Russell, p. 68)

Nicoletti may be owing to Plumlee. Plumlee said he knew Nicoletti, saw him in Dallas and saw him once with Roselli in Biscayne Park, Florida, where they were going over some maps. (JFK Countercooup2, 10/10/18). Its unlikely he was an assassin since he was under suspicion in Chicago for  the high profile Leo Foreman murder case at the same time period. (FBI Report of 11/21/63 from SAC Chicago to Director.)

Soutre first came to prominence with Henry Hurt’s 1985 book, Reasonable Doubt. (See pp. 414-19) He was a member of the the Secret Army Organization (OAS), a terrorist group that despised French President Charles DeGaulle’s policy of freeing its north African colony of Algeria. The OAS actually did try to kill DeGaulle, more than once. Kennedy endorsed DeGaulle’s independence policy, and in fact, made a famous speech in the senate in 1957 saying that President Eisenhower and John Foster Dulles were wrong to support France in this violent dispute. According to declassifed CIA files, Soutre was in Fort Worth the morning of the assassination and in Dallas that afternoon. Or at least that is what the French government thought.

Herminio Diaz Garcia comes into play largely through Escalante.  According to a man who was captured by Cuban G-2, Tony Cuesta, Diaz Garcia told him that he was involved in the JFK murder.  Diaz Garcia died during a raid into Cuba, so Escalante could not question him directly. According to another Cuban exile, Reinaldo Martinez, Diaz Garcia told him the same thing, and Martinez told the HSCA’s Robert Blakey. (Daily Mail, 10/16/13). I should add here an achieement of the series is that apparently.

Could one have done better than this quartet?  One might ask, why does one need a quartet? Probably due to the shot from the south knoll.  The problem I have is this: one of these guys is from the Mob, one from a Cuban exile group, one from the OAS, and one from something called Z group, or maybe, on the word of Nagell, the CIA.  Where was the coordination? And without any would there not be the possibility they would run into each other?  Perhaps even take up a spot at the same location? Russell argues that this lack of coordination was likely part of the plan, ipso facto, deniability. Maybe.  But I have to ask: how often is there an ambush to kill a president in broad daylight? Would you not want it to run smoothly? And how about the coordination of weapons and ammunition? What if everyone was firing different ammo?  How would that problem be solved?

From here the show goes to this question: Who had knowledge of the plot and who was setting up Oswald? Reiner and Russell say that Allen Dulles had to know.  They then add that James Angleton and David Phillips were setting up Oswald in advance. They again accent the outburst by Oswald in detention: “I’m just a patsy!”  He did not scream, “I did not do it!” Nor did he say: “I am innocent!” The word choice implies that he knew he was being set up by someone. That and the phone call to John Hurt may be why he had to be eliminated.

As per the men who supervised the plot, they pick Bill Harvey, and predictably, Willoughby.  I have some problems with this.  First, the idea that Harvey would be subordinate to Angleton is a bit hard to digest. Secondly, Harvey was stationed in Rome at the time.  How could he run this operation knowing how hazardous it was and the extensive preparation it would take?  As per Willoughby, he was editing Foreign Intelligence Digest in 1961 and was working with Billy James Hargis in a rightwing Christian nationalist group in 1963.(Russell, p. 68, p. 111) Harvey was going to be dealing with this guy in the most important operation of his life?  As parlor games go, I think others could have done better. ( But I should add, Robert Blakey has now altered his view of the crime from a solely “Mob did it” view.. On the program he says that Oswald was likely a false flag operation and that Harvey might have been working with Roselli on the assassination. He now seems to be in the CIA/Mob/Cuban exile camp, a definite improvement.)

But I do have one question about a detail in the setting up of Oswald.  If Phillips and Angleton were setting up Oswald, why was Mexico City not dealt with? In over five hours I do not recall it being discussed.

O’Brien closes out her end of the show by saying, would Kennedy have avoided the Vietnam War? She replies that is impossible to know.  Well, I tend to disagree with that. But if you do not deal with the subject in any extensive or detailed way, she can say that. Reiner says that if we cannot deal honestly with our past, then we really have no foundation for the future. Kind of a cliché, but it will do.

Chapter 11 is entitled “Withheld Documents”. The featured guest is Jeff Morley and he says that there are 4.684 documents still classified. He then explains how this happened. According to the original 1992 law, only the president could stop the last of the classified documents from being declassified. There were two delays by President Trump to avoid the JFK Record Collections Act deadline of October 2017.  One was for 6 months, the second was for four years.  There were a large amount of documents released under Trump but the CIA pleaded with him not to let them all go. 

President Biden then more or less neutered the act. And I cannot recommend a better essay to read on this than Andrew Iler’s and Mark Adamczyk’s “The Biden/CIA Attempt to Usurp Congress’ Authority over JFK Records” at Kennedys and King.com That title might seem a bit long and involved, but that is what happened under President Biden. He has taken an act of congress that he voted for, stripped it of its extraordinary powers, and more or less turned it into an modified/deluxe Freedom of Information Act. And who in the media is screaming about it?

But even at this late date, there have been interesting nuggets that have turned up.   Like the fact that the CIA station in Miami was investigating the Kennedy case and suspected the anti-Castro Cubans were involved. But yet many files on George Joannides are still classified. My reservation on this  segment is that I think Reiner should have had either attorneys Iler or Adamczyk on to explain how remarkable the JFK Act was, and how Biden legally denuded it.

The final show was built around Secret Service agent Paul Landis. Landis was in Dallas that day riding in the car behind President Kennedy.  He was technically assigned to the First Lady. In a book issued last year called The Final Witness, he made a startling, yet belated claim. He said that once they arrived at Parkland Hospital he helped Jackie Kennedy from the car and saw a bullet in the back seat, actually atop it. He then placed the bullet on Kennedy’s gurney.

That claim made MSM headlines in places like the New York Times, Vanity Fair and People Weekly. The reason being that it would contradict the Warren Commission in two ways. If that bullet was the Magic Bullet CE 399, as Landis seems to think, then that would mean the projectile never did the amazing things it was supposed to have done: gone through two men and made seven wounds.  If it is not CE 399, then there is an extra bullet. Either way the Warren Commission is vitiated. Reiner, understandably, did not question anything about the story, he was clearly just happy to have him on board. Our expert on the Secret Service, Vince Palamara did have some questions.  (See his review of The Final Witness, at Kenendysandkingcom on October 31, 2023.)

All in all, I give Reiner credit for trying to salvage something from his attempted mini-series based on three good JFK books. As I have indicated, the podcast was a mixed bag, with highs and lows.  But thank God it came out when it did.  It helped fend off another probable MSM blitz at the 60^th anniversary.